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Title: The Old Roman World
Author: John Lord
Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6839]
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[This file was first posted on January 31, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD ROMAN WORLD ***
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THE OLD ROMAN WORLD
THE GRANDEUR AND FAILURE OF ITS CIVILIZATION
BY JOHN LORD, LL.D.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE CONQUESTS OF THE ROMANS.
Early History of Rome--Wars under the Kings--Their Results--Gradual
Subjection of Italy--Great Heroes of the Republic--Their Virtues and
Victories--Military Aggrandizement--The Carthaginian, Macedonian, and
Asiatic Wars--Their Consequences--Civil Wars of Marius and Sulla, of
Pompey and Caesar--The Conquests of the Barbarians--Extension of Roman
Dominion in the East--Conquests of the Emperors--The Military Forces of
the Empire--Military Science--The Roman Legion--The Military Genius of
the Romans
CHAPTER II.
THE MATERIAL GRANDEUR AND GLORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
The vast Extent of the Empire--Boundaries--Rivers and Mountains--The
Mediterranean and its Islands--The Provinces--Principal Cities--Great
Architectural Monuments--Roads--Commerce--Agriculture--Manufactures--
Wealth--Population--Unity of the Empire
CHAPTER III.
THE WONDERS OF ANCIENT ROME.
Original Settlement--The Seven Hills--Progress of the City--Principal
Architectural Monuments--A Description of the Temples, Bridges,
Aqueducts, Forums, Basilicas, Palaces, Amphitheatres, Theatres,
Circuses, Columns, Arches, Baths, Obelisks, Tombs--Miscellaneous
Antiquities--Streets--Gardens--Private Houses--Populous Quarters--
Famous Statues and Pictures--General Magnificence--Population
CHAPTER IV.
ART IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
The great Wonders of Ancient Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting--
Famous Artists of Antiquity--How far the Romans copied the Greeks--How
far they extended Art--Its Principles--Its Perfection--Causes of its
Decline--Permanence of its grand Creations
CHAPTER V.
THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION.
The Original Citizens--Comitia Calata--Comitia Curiata--Comitia
Centuriata--Comitia Tributa--The Plebs--Great Patrician Families--The
Aristocratic Structure of ancient Roman Society--The Dignity and Power
of the Senate--The Knights--The Growth of the Democracy--Contests
between Patricians and Plebeians--Rise of Tribunes--Popular Leaders--
Their Laws--The Great Officers of State--Provincial Governors--
Usurpations of fortunate Generals--The Revolution under Julius Caesar and
Augustus--Imperial Despotism--Preservation of the Forms of the
Republic, and utter Prostration of its Spirit
CHAPTER VI.
ROMAN JURISPRUDENCE.
Genius of the Romans for Government and Laws--Development of
Jurisprudence--Legislative Sources--Judicial Power--Courts of Law--The
Profession of Law--Great Lawyers and Jurists--Ancient Codes--Imperial
Codes--The Law of Persons--Rights of Citizens, of Foreigners, of Slaves--
Laws of Marriage, of Divorce, of Adoption--Paternal Power--
Guardianship--Laws relating to Real Rights--Law of Obligations--Laws of
Succession--Testaments and Legacies--Actions and Procedure in Civil
Suits--Criminal Law
CHAPTER VII.
ROMAN LITERATURE.
The Grecian Models--How far they contributed to Roman Creations--The
Development of the Latin Language--The Orators, Poets, Dramatists,
Satirists, Historians, and their chief Works--How far Literature was
cultivated--Schools--Libraries--Literary Legacies of the Romans
CHAPTER VIII.
GRECIAN PHILOSOPHY.
Its gradual Development from Thales to Aristotle--How far the Romans
adopted the Greek Philosophy--What Additions they made to it--How far it
modified Roman Thought and Life--Influence of Philosophy on
Christianity--Influence on modern Civilization
CHAPTER IX.
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AMONG THE ROMANS.
The Mathematical Genius of the Old Astronomers--Their Labors and
Discoveries--Extent of Astronomical Knowledge--The Alexandrian School--
The Science of Geometry and how far carried--Great Names--Medicine--
Geography--Other Physical Sciences and their limited Triumphs
CHAPTER X.
INTERNAL CONDITION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
The Vices and Miseries of Roman Society--Social Inequalities--
Disproportionate Fortunes--The Wealth and Corruption of Nobles--
Degradation of the People--Vast Extent of Slavery--The Condition of
Women--Demoralizing Games and Spectacles--Excessive Luxury and squalid
Misery--Money-making--Imperial Misrule--Universal Egotism and
Insensibility to grand Sentiments--Hopelessness of Reform--Preparation
for Ruin
CHAPTER XI.
THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE.
False Security of the Roman People--Their stupendous Delusions--The
Invasion of Barbarians--Their Characteristics--Their alternate Victory
and Defeat--Desolation of the Provinces--The Degeneracy of the Legions--
General Imbecility and Cowardice--Great public Misfortunes--General
Union of the Germanic Nations--Their Leaders--Noble but vain Efforts of
a Succession of warlike Emperors--The rising Tide of Barbarians--Their
irresistible Advance--The Siege and Sack of Rome--The Fall of Cities--
Miseries of all Classes--Universal Despair and Ruin--The Greatness of
the Catastrophe--Reflections on the Fall of Rome
CHAPTER XII.
THE REASONS WHY THE CONSERVATIVE INFLUENCES OF PAGAN CIVILIZATION DID
NOT ARREST THE RUIN OF THE ROMAN WORLD.
Necessary Corruption of all Institutions under Paganism--Glory succeeded
by Shame--The Army a worn-out Mechanism--The low Aims of Government--
Difficulties of the Emperors--Laws perverted or unenforced--The
Degeneracy of Art--The Frivolity of Literature--The imperfect Triumph
of Philosophy--Nothing Conservative in human Creations--Necessity of
Aid from foreign and Divine Sources
CHAPTER XIII.
WHY CHRISTIANITY DID NOT ARREST THE RUIN OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
The Victories of Christianity came too late--Small Number of Converts
when Christianity was a renovating Power--Their comparative Unimportance
in a political and social View for three Centuries--The Church
constructs a Polity for Itself rather than seeks to change established
Institutions--Rapid Corruption of Christianity when established, and
Adoption of Pagan Ideas and Influences--No Renovation of worn-out Races--
No Material on which Christianity could work--Not the Mission of the
Church to save Empires, but the Race--A diseased Body must die
CHAPTER XIV.
THE LEGACY OF THE EARLY CHURCH TO FUTURE GENERATIONS.
The great Ideas which the Fathers propounded--The Principle of Self-
sacrifice, seen especially in early Martyrdoms--The Idea of Benevolence
in connection with public and private Charities--Importance of public
Preaching--Pulpit Oratory--The Elaboration of Christian Doctrine--Its
Connection with Philosophy--Church Psalmody--The Principle of Christian
Equality--Its Effects on Slavery and the Elevation of the People--The
Social Equality of the Sexes--Superiority in the condition of the modern
over the ancient Woman--The Idea of Popular Education--The Unity of the
Church
INTRODUCTION.
I propose to describe the Greatness and the Misery of the old Roman
world; nor is there any thing in history more suggestive and
instructive.
A little city, founded by robbers on the banks of the Tiber, rises
gradually into importance, although the great cities of the East are
scarcely conscious of its existence. Its early struggles simply arrest
the attention, and excite the jealousy, of the neighboring nations. The
citizens of this little state are warriors, and, either for defense or
glory, they subdue one after another the cities of Latium and Etruria,
then the whole of Italy, and finally the old monarchies and empires of
the world. In two hundred and fifty years the citizens have become
nobles, and a great aristocracy is founded, which lasts eight hundred
years. Their aggressive policy and unbounded ambition involve the whole
world in war, which does not cease until all the nations known to the
Greeks acknowledge their sway. Everywhere Roman laws, language, and
institutions spread. A vast empire arises, larger than the Assyrian and
the Macedonian combined,--a universal empire,--a great wonder and
mystery, having all the grandeur of a providential event. It becomes too
great to be governed by an oligarchy of nobles. Civil wars create an
imperator, who, uniting in himself all the great offices of state, and
sustained by the conquering legions, rules from East to West and from
North to South, with absolute and undivided sovereignty. The Caesars
reach the summit of human greatness and power, and the city of Romulus
becomes the haughty mistress of the world. The emperor is worshiped as a
deity, and the proud metropolis calls herself eternal. An empire is
established by force of arms and by a uniform policy, such as this world
has not seen before or since.
Early Roman history is chiefly the detail of successful wars, aggressive
and uncompromising, in which we see a fierce and selfish patriotism, an
indomitable will, a hard unpitying temper, great practical sagacity,
patience, and perseverance, superiority to adverse fortune, faith in
national destinies, heroic sentiments, and grand ambition. We see a
nation of citizen soldiers, an iron race of conquerors, bent on
conquest, on glory, on self-exaltation, attaching but little value to
the individual man, but exalting the integrity and unity of the state.
We see no fitful policy, no abandonment to the enjoyment of the fruits
of victory, no rest, no repose, no love of art or literature, but an
unbounded passion for domination. The Romans toiled, and suffered, and
died,--never wearied, never discouraged, never satisfied, until their
mission was accomplished and the world lay bleeding and prostrate at
their feet.
In the latter days of the Republic, the Roman citizen, originally
contented with a few acres in the plains and valleys through which the
Tiber flowed, becomes a great landed proprietor, owning extensive
estates in the conquered territories, an aristocrat, a knight, a
senator, a noble, while his dependents disdained to labor and were fed
at the public expense. The state could afford to give them corn, oil,
and wine, for it was the owner of Egypt, of Greece, of Asia Minor, of
Syria, of Spain, of Gaul, of Africa,--a belt of territory around the
Mediterranean Sea one thousand miles in breadth, embracing the whole
temperate zone, from the Atlantic Ocean to the wilds of Scythia. The
Romans revel in the spoils of the nations they have conquered, adorn
their capital with the wonders of Grecian art, and abandon themselves to
pleasure and money-making. The Roman grandees divide among themselves
the lands and riches of the world, and this dwelling-place of princes
looms up the proud centre of mundane glory and power.
In the great success of the Romans, we notice not only their own heroic
qualities, but the hopeless degeneracy of the older nations and the
reckless turbulence of the western barbarians, both of whom needed
masters.
The conquered world must be governed. The Romans had a genius for
administration as well as for war. While war was reduced to a science,
government became an art. Seven hundred years of war and administration
gave experience and skill, and the wisdom thus learned became a legacy
to future civilizations.
It was well, both for enervated orientals and wild barbarians, to be
ruled by such iron masters. The nations at last enjoyed peace and
prosperity, and Christianity was born and spread. A new power silently
arose, which was destined to change government, and science, and all the
relations of social life, and lay a foundation for a new and more
glorious structure of society than what Paganism could possibly create.
We see the hand of Providence in all these mighty changes, and it is
equally august in overruling the glories and the shame of a vast empire
for the ultimate good of the human race.
If we more minutely examine the history of either Republican or Imperial
Rome, we read lessons of great significance. In the Republic we see a
constant war of classes and interests,--plebeians arrayed against
patricians; the poor opposed to the rich; the struggle between capital
and labor, between an aristocracy and democracy. Although the favored
classes on the whole retained ascendancy, yet the people constantly
gained privileges, and at last were enabled, by throwing their influence
into the hands of demagogues, to overturn the constitution. Julius
Caesar, the greatest name in ancient history, himself a patrician, by
courting the people triumphed over the aristocratical oligarchy and
introduced a new regime. His dictatorship was the consummation of the
victories of the people over nobles as signally as the submission of all
classes to fortunate and unscrupulous generals. We err, however, in
supposing that the Republic was ever a democracy, as we understand the
term, or as it was understood in Athens. Power was always in the hands
of senators, nobles, and rich men, as it still is in England, and was in
Venice. Popular liberty was a name, and democratic institutions were
feeble and shackled. The citizen-noble was free, not the proletarian.
The latter had the redress of laws, but only such as the former gave.
How exclusive must have been an aristocracy when the Claudian family
boasted that, for five hundred years, it had never received any one into
it by adoption, and when the Emperor Nero was the first who received its
privileges! It is with the senatorial families, who contrived to retain
all the great offices of the state, that everything interesting in the
history of Republican Rome is identified,--whether political quarrels,
or private feuds, or legislation, or the control of armies, or the
improvements of the city, or the government of provinces. It was they,
as senators, governors, consuls, generals, quaestors, who gave the people
baths, theatres, and temples. They headed factions as well as armies.
They were the state.
The main object to which the reigning classes gave their attention was
war,--the extension of the empire. "_Ubi castra, ibi respublica_."
Republican Rome was a camp, controlled by aristocratic generals.
Dominion and conquest were their great ideas, their aim, their ambition.
To these were sacrificed pleasure, gain, ease, luxury, learning, and
art. And when they had conquered they sought to rule, and they knew how
to rule. Aside from conquest and government there is nothing peculiarly
impressive in Roman history, except the struggles of political leaders
and the war of classes.
But in these there is wonderful fascination. The mythic period under
kings; the contests with Latins, Etruscans, Volscians, Samnites, and
Gauls; the legends of Porsenna, of Cincinnatus, of Coriolanus, of
Virginia; the heroism of Camillus, of Fabius, of Decius, of Scipio; the
great struggle with Pyrrhus and Hannibal; the wars with Carthage,
Macedonia, and Asia Minor; the rivalries between patrician and plebeian
families; the rise of tribunes; the Maenian, Hortensian, and Agrarian
laws; the noble efforts of the Gracchi; the censorship of Cato; the
civil wars of Marius and Sulla, and their exploits, followed by the
still greater conquests of Pompey and Julius; these, and other feats of
heroism and strength, are full of interest which can never be exhausted.
We ponder on them in youth; we return to them in old age.
And yet the real grandeur of Rome is associated with the emperors. With
their accession there is a change in the policy of the state from war to
peace. There is a greater desire to preserve than extend the limits of
the empire. The passion for war is succeeded by a passion for government
and laws. Labor and toil give place to leisure and enjoyment. Great
works of art appear, and these become historical,--the Pantheon, the
Forum Augusti, the Flavian Amphitheatre, the Column of Trajan, the Baths
of Caracalla, the Aqua Claudia, the golden house of Nero, the Mausoleum
of Hadrian, the Temple of Venus and Rome, the Arch of Septimus Severus.
The city is changed from brick to marble, and palaces and theatres and
temples become colossal. Painting and sculpture ornament every part of
the city. There are more marble busts than living men. Life becomes more
complicated and factitious. Enormous fortunes are accumulated. A liberal
patronage is extended to artists. Literature declines, but great
masterpieces of genius are still produced. Medicine, law, and science
flourish. A beautiful suburban life is seen on all the hills, while
gardens and villas are the object of perpetual panegyric. From all
corners of the earth strangers flock to see the wonders of the mighty
metropolis, more crowded than London, more magnificent than Paris, more
luxurious than New York. Fetes, shows, processions, gladiatorial
combats, chariot races, form the amusement of the vast populace. A
majestic centralized power controls all kingdoms, and races, and
peoples. The highest state of prosperity is reached that the ancient
world knew, and all bow down to Caesar and behold in him the
representative of divine providence, from whose will there is no appeal,
and from whose arm it is impossible to fly.
But _mene, mene, tekel, upharsin_, is written on the walls of the
banqueting chambers of the palace of the Caesars. The dream of
omnipotence is disturbed by the invasion of, Germanic barbarians. They
press toward the old seats of power and riches to improve their
condition. They are warlike, fierce, implacable. They fear not death,
and are urged onward by the lust of rapine and military zeal. The old
legions, which penetrated the Macedonian phalanx and withstood the
Gauls, cannot resist the shock of their undisciplined armies; for
martial glory has fled, and the people prefer their pleasures to the
empire. Great emperors are raised up, but they are unequal to the task
of preserving the crumbling empire. The people, enervated and
egotistical, are scattered like sheep or are made slaves. The proud
capitals of the world fall before the ruthless invaders. Desolation is
everywhere. The barbarians trample beneath their heavy feet the proud
trophies of ancient art and power. The glimmering life-sparks of the old
civilization disappear. The world is abandoned to fear, misery, and
despair, and there is no help, for retributive justice marches on with
impressive solemnity. Imperial despotism, disproportionate fortunes,
unequal divisions of society, the degradation of woman, slavery,
Epicurean pleasures, practical atheism, bring forth their wretched
fruits. The vices and miseries of society cannot be arrested. Glory is
succeeded by shame; all strength is in mechanism, and that wears out;
vitality passes away; the empire is weak from internal decay, and falls
easily into the hands of the new races. "Violence was only a secondary
cause of the ruin; the vices of self-interest were the primary causes. A
world, as fair and glorious as our own, crumbles away." Our admiration
is changed to sadness and awe. The majesty of man is rebuked by the
majesty of God.
Such a history is suggestive. Why was such an empire permitted to rise
over the bleeding surface of the world, and what was its influence on
the general destiny of the race? How far has its civilization perished,
and how far has it entered into new combinations? Was its strength
material, or moral, or intellectual? How far did literature, art,
science, laws, philosophy, prove conservative forces? Why did
Christianity fail to arrest so total an eclipse of the glory of man? Why
did a magnificent civilization prove so feeble a barrier against
corruption and decay? Why was the world to be involved in such universal
gloom and wretchedness as followed the great catastrophe? Could nothing
arrest the stupendous downfall?
And when we pass from the great facts of Roman history to the questions
which it suggests to a contemplative mind in reference to the state of
society among ourselves, on which history ought to shed light, what
enigmas remain to be solved. Does moral worth necessarily keep pace with
aesthetic culture, or intellectual triumphs, or material strength? Do the
boasted triumphs of civilization create those holy certitudes on which
happiness is based? Can vitality in states be preserved by mechanical
inventions? Does society expand from inherent laws of development, or
from influences altogether foreign to man? Is it the settled destiny of
nations to rise to a certain height in wisdom and power, and then pass
away in ignominy and gloom? Is there permanence in any human
institutions? Will society move round in perpetual circles, incapable of
progression and incapable of rest, or will it indefinitely improve? May
there not be the highest triumphs of art, literature, and science, where
the mainsprings of society are sensuality and egotism? Is the tendency
of society to democratic, or aristocratic, or despotic governments? Does
Christianity, in this dispensation, merely furnish witnesses of truth,
or will it achieve successive conquests over human degeneracy till the
race is emancipated and saved? Can it arrest the downward tendency of
society, when it is undermined by vices which blunt the conscience of
mankind, and which are sustained by all that is proud in rank, brilliant
in fashion, and powerful in wealth?
These are inquiries on which Roman history sheds light. If history is a
guide or oracle, they are full of impressive significance. Can we afford
to reject all the examples of the past in our sanguine hopes for the
future? Human nature is the same in any age, and human experiences point
to some great elemental truths, which the Bible confirms. _We_ may
be unmoved by them, but they remain in solemn dignity for all
generations; "and foremost of them," as Charles Kingsley has so well
said, "stands a law which man has been trying in all ages, as now, to
deny, or at least to ignore, and that is,--that as the fruit of
righteousness is wealth and peace, strength and honor, the fruit of
unrighteousness is poverty and anarchy, weakness and shame; for not upon
_mind_, but upon _morals_, is human welfare founded. Science
is indeed great; but she is not the greatest. She is an instrument, and
not a power. But her lawful mistress, the only one under whom she can
truly grow, and prosper, and prove her divine descent, is Virtue, the
likeness of Almighty God,--an ancient doctrine, yet one ever young, and
which no discoveries in science will ever abrogate."
Hence the great aim of history should be a dispassionate inquiry into
the genius of past civilizations, especially in a moral point of view.
Wherein were they weak or strong, vital or mechanical, permanent or
transient? We wish to know that we may compare them with our own, and
learn lessons of wisdom. The rise and fall of the Roman Empire is
especially rich in the facts which bear on our own development. Nor can
modern history be comprehended without a survey of the civilization
which has entered into our own, and forms the basis of many of our own
institutions. Rome perished, but not wholly her civilization. So far as
it was founded on the immutable principles of justice, or beauty, or
love, it will never die, but will remain a precious legacy to all
generations. So far as it was founded on pride, injustice, and
selfishness, it ignobly disappeared. _Men_ die, and their trophies
of pride are buried in the dust, but their truths live. All truth is
indestructible, and survives both names and marbles.
Roman history, so grand and so mournful, on the whole suggests cheering
views for humanity, since out of the ruins, amid the storms, aloft above
the conflagration, there came certain indestructible forces, which, when
united with Christianity, developed a new and more glorious condition of
humanity. Creation succeeded destruction. All that was valuable in art,
in science, in literature, in philosophy, in laws, has been preserved.
The useless alone has perished with the worn-out races themselves. The
light which scholars, and artists, and poets, and philosophers, and
lawgivers kindled, illuminated the path of the future guides of mankind.
And especially the great ideas which the persecuted Christians unfolded,
projected themselves into the shadows of mediaeval Europe, and gave a
new direction to human thought and life. New sentiments arose, more
poetic and majestic than ever existed in the ancient world, giving
radiance to homes, peace to families, elevation to woman, liberty to the
slave, compassion for the miserable, self-respect, to the man of toil,
exultation to the martyr, patience to the poor, and glorious hopes to
all; so that in rudeness, in poverty, in discomfort, in slavery, in
isolation, in obloquy, peace and happiness were born, and a new race,
with noble elements of character, arose in the majesty of renovated
strength to achieve still grander victories, and confer higher blessings
on mankind.
Thus the Roman Empire, whose fall was so inglorious, and whose
chastisement was so severe, was made by Providence to favor the ultimate
progress of society, since its civilization entered into new
combinations, and still remains one of the proudest monuments of human
genius.
It is this civilization, in its varied aspects, both good and evil,
lofty and degraded, which in the following chapters I seek to show. This
is the real point of interest in Roman history. Let us see what the
Romans really accomplished--the results of their great enterprises; the
systems they matured with so much thought; the institutions they
bequeathed to our times; yea, even those vices and follies which they
originally despised, and which, if allowed to become dominant,
_must_, according to all those laws of which we have cognizance,
ultimately overwhelm _any_ land in misery, shame, and ruin.
In presenting this civilization, I aim to generalize the most important
facts, leaving the reader to examine at his leisure recondite
authorities, in which, too often, the argument is obscured by minute
details, and art is buried in learning.
CHAPTER I.
THE CONQUESTS OF THE ROMANS.
One of the features of Roman greatness, which preeminently arrests
attention, is military genius and strength. The Romans surpassed all the
nations of antiquity in the brilliancy and solidity of their conquests.
They conquered the world, and held it in subjection. For many centuries
they stamped their iron heel on the necks of prostrate and suppliant
kings, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Caspian Sea. Nothing could impede,
except for a time, their irresistible progress from conquering to
conquer. They were warriors from the earliest period of their history,
and all their energies were concentrated upon conquest. Their aggressive
policy never changed so long as there was a field for its development.
They commenced as a band of robbers; they ended by becoming masters of
all the countries and kingdoms which tempted their cupidity or aroused
their ambition. Their empire was universal,--the only universal empire
which ever existed on this earth,--and it was won with the sword. It
was not a rapid conquest, but it was systematic and irresistible,
evincing great genius, perseverance, and fortitude.
[Sidenote: The Romans fight from a fixed purpose.]
The successive and fortunate conquests of the Romans were the
admiration, the envy, and the fear of all nations--so marvelous and
successful that they have the majesty of a providential event. They
cannot be called a mystery, since we see the persistent adaptation of
means to an end. But no other nation ever evinced this uniform military
policy, except for a limited period, or under the stimulus of a
temporary enthusiasm, such as characterized the Saracens and the
Germanic barbarians. The Romans fought when there was no apparent need
of fighting, when their empire already embraced most of the countries
known to the ancients. The Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, and
the Greeks made magnificent conquests, but their empire was partial and
limited, and soon passed away. The Greeks evinced great military genius,
and the enterprises of Alexander have been regarded as a wonder. But the
Greeks did not fight, as the Romans did, from a fixed purpose to bring
all nations under their sway, and they yielded, in turn, to the Romans.
The Romans were never subdued, but all nations were subdued by them--
even superior races. They erected a universal monarchy, which fell to
pieces by its own weight, when the vices of self-interest had
accomplished their work. They became the prey of barbarians in a very
different sense from that which reduced the ancient empires. They did
not yield to any powerful, warlike neighbor, as the Persians yielded to
the Greeks, but to successive waves of unknown warriors who came in
quest of settlement, and then only when all Roman vigor had fled, and
the whole policy of the empire was changed--when it was the aim of
emperors to conserve old conquests, not make new ones.
[Sidenote: War was a passion with the Romans.]
With the Romans, for a thousand years, war was a passion; and, while it
lasted, it consumed all other passions. It animated statesmen, rulers,
generals, and citizens alike, ever burning, never at rest,--a passion
unscrupulous, resistless, all-pervading, all-absorbing, all-conquering.
Success in war gave consideration, dignity, honor beyond all other
successes. It always has called out popular admiration, and its glory
has ever been highly prized, and it always will be so, but it has not
monopolized all offices and dignities as among the Romans. The Greeks
thought of art, of literature, and of philosophy as well as of war, and
gave their crowns of glory for civic and artistic excellence as well as
for military success. The Greeks fought to preserve or extend their
civilization; the Romans, in order to rule. They had very little respect
for any thing beyond military genius. The successful warrior alone was
the founder of a great family. The Roman aristocracy, so proud, so rich,
so powerful, was based on the glory of battle-fields. Every citizen was
trained to arms, and senators and statesmen commanded armies. The whole
fabric of the State was built up on war, and for many centuries it was
the leading occupation of the people. How insignificant was a poet, or a
painter, or a philosopher by the side of a warrior! Rome was a city of
generals, and they preoccupied the public mind.
[Sidenote: Value placed by the Romans on military art.]
To a Roman, military art was the highest of all. It was constantly being
improved, until it reached absolute perfection, with the old weapons and
implements of war. To its perfection the whole genius of the people was
consecrated; it was to them what the fine arts were to the Greeks, what
priestly domination was to the Middle Ages, and what material inventions
to abridge human labor are to us. The Romans despised literature, art,
philosophy, commerce, agriculture, and even luxury, when they were
making their grand conquests; they only respected their fortunate
generals. Hence there was no great encouragement to genius or ambition
in any other field; but in this field, the horizon perpetually expanded.
Every new conquest prepared the way for successive conquests; ambition
here was untrammeled, energy was unbounded, visions of glory were most
dazzling, warlike schemes were most fertile, until the whole world lay
bleeding and prostrate.
[Sidenote: Lawfulness of war.]
Military genius, however, does not present man in the highest state of
wisdom or beauty. It is very attractive, but "there is a greater than
the warrior's excellence," at least to a contemplative or religious eye.
When men save nations, in fearful crises, by their military genius, as
Napoleon did France when surrounded with hostile armies, or Gustavus
Adolphus did Germany when it was struggling for religious rights, then
they render the greatest possible services, and receive no unmerited
honors. The heart of the world cherishes the fame of Miltiades, of
Charlemagne, of Henry IV., of Washington; for they were identified with
great causes. War is one of the occasional necessities of our world. No
nation can live, or is worthy to live, without military virtues. They
rescue nations on the verge of ruin, and establish great rights, without
which life is nothing. War, however much to be lamented as an evil, is
the last appeal and resource of nations, and settles what cannot be
settled without it; and it will probably continue so long as there are
blindness, ambition, and avarice among men. Nor, under certain
circumstances, of which nations can only be the proper judges, is it
inconsistent with the law of love. Hence, as it is a great necessity, it
will ever be valued as a great science. Civilization accepts it and
claims it. It calls into exercise great qualities, and these intoxicate
the people, who bow down to them as godlike.
[Sidenote: Those who are most successful in war.]
Still, military genius, however lauded and honored, is too often allied
with ambition and selfishness to secure the highest favor of
philosophers or Christians. It does not reveal the soul in its loftiest
aspirations. Men of a coarser type are often most successful,--men
insensible to pity and to reproach, whose greatest merit is in will,
nerve, energy, and power of making rapid combinations. We revere the
intellect of the Greeks more than that of the Romans, though they were
inferior to the latter in military success. We have more respect for
those qualities which add to the domain of truth than those which secure
power. A wise man elevates the Bacons, the Newtons, and the Shakespeares
above all the Marlboroughs and Wellingtons. Plato is surrounded with a
brighter halo than Themistocles, and Cicero than Marius.
[Sidenote: The general evils of war.]
War as a trade is unscrupulous, hard, rapacious, destructive. It foments
all the evil passions; it is allied with all the vices; it is
antagonistic to human welfare. It glories merely in strength; it
worships only success. It raises wicked men to power; it prostrates and
hides the good. It extinguishes what is most lovely, and spurns what is
most exalted. It makes a pandemonium of earth, and drags to its
triumphal car the venerated relics of ages. It is an awful crime, making
slaves of the helpless, and spreading consternation, misery, and death
wherever it goes--marking its progress with a trail of blood, and
filling the earth with imprecations and curses. It is the greatest
scourge which God uses to chastise enervated nations, and cannot be
contemplated with; any satisfaction except as the wrath, which is made
to praise the Sovereign Ruler who employs what means He chooses to
punish or exalt.
[Sidenote: Spirit of the Romans in their wars.]
Now the Romans, in a general sense, pursued war as a trade, to gratify a
thirst for power, to raise themselves on the ruins of ancient
monarchies, to enrich themselves with the spoils of the world, and to
govern it for selfish purposes. There were many Roman wars which were
exceptions, when an exalted patriotism was the animating principle; but
aggressive war was the policy and shame of Rome. Her citizens did not
generally fight to preserve liberties or rights or national existence,
but for self-aggrandizement. Incessant campaigns for a thousand years
brought out military science, courage, energy, and a grasping and
selfish patriotism. They gave power, skill to rule, executive talents;
and these qualities, eminently adapted to worldly greatness, made the
Romans universal masters, even if they do not make them interesting.
They developed great strength, resource, will, and even made them wise
in administration, possibly great civilizers, since centralized power is
better than anarchies; yet these traits do not make us love them, or
revere them. Providence doubtless ordered the universal monarchy, which
only universal war could establish, for the good of the world at that
time, for the advancement of civilization itself. Universal dominion
must be succeeded by universal peace, and in such a peace the higher
qualities and virtues and talents can only be manifested, so that the
Roman rule was not a calamity, but a very desirable despotism. Yet
despotism it was,--cold, remorseless, self-seeking. War made the Romans
practical, calculating, overbearing, proud, scornful, imperious.
[Sidenote: Success of the Romans in war.]
But war made them a great people, and made them eminent in certain great
qualities. Their success in war is tantamount to saying that in one
great field of genius, which civilization honors, they not merely
distinguished themselves, and gained a proud fame which will never die
out of the memory of man, but that they have had no equals in any age.
War enabled them to build up a vast empire, which empire gave a great
impulse to ancient civilization.
[Sidenote: Providence seen in the ascendency of great nations.]
There is something very singular and mysterious in the results of wars
which are caused and carried on by unprincipled and unscrupulous men.
They are made to end in substantial benefits to the human race. The
wrath of man, in other words, is made to praise God, showing that He is
the Sovereign ruler on this earth, and uses what instruments He pleases
to carry out his great and benevolent designs. However atrocious the
causes of wars, and execrable the spirit in which they are carried out,
they are ever made to subserve the benefit of future ages, and the great
cause of civilization in its vast connections. Men may be guilty, and
may be punished for their wickedness, and execrated through all time by
enlightened nations; still they are but tools of the higher power. I do
not say that God is the author of wars any more than He is of sin; but
wars are yet sent as a punishment to those whom they directly and
immediately affect, while they unbind the cords of slavery, and relax
the hold of tyrants. They are like storms in the natural world: they
create a healthier moral life, after the disasters are past. Those
ambitious men, who seek to add province to province and kingdom to
kingdom, and for whom no maledictions are too severe, since they shed
innocent blood, rarely succeed unless they quarrel with doomed nations
incapable of renovation. Thus Babylon fell before Cyrus when her day had
come, and she could do no more for civilization. Thus Persia, in her
turn, yielded to the Grecian heroes when she became enervated with the
luxuries of the conquered kingdoms. Thus Greece again succumbed to Rome
when she had degenerated into a land where every vice was rampant. The
passions which inflamed Cyrus, and Alexander, and Pompey were alike
imperious, and their policy was alike unscrupulous. They simply were
bent on conquest, and on establishing powerful empires, which conquests
doubtless resulted in the improvement of the condition of mankind. There
is also something hard and forbidding in the policy of successful
statesmen. We are shocked at their injustice, cruelty, and
rapaciousness; but they are often used by Providence to raise nations to
preeminence, when their ascendency is, on the whole, a benefit to the
world. There is nothing amiable or benign in the characters of such men
as Oxenstiern, Richelieu, or Bismarck, but who can doubt the wisdom of
their administration? It is seldom that any nation is allowed to have a
great ascendency over other nations unless the general influence of the
dominant State is favorable to civilization; and when this influence is
perverted the ascendency passes away. This is remarkably seen in the
history of the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman Empires, and still more
forcibly in the empire of the popes in the Middle Ages, and of the vast
influence of France and England during the last hundred years. This is
both a mystery and a fact. It is mysterious that bad men should be
allowed to succeed so often, but it is one of the sternest facts of
life, only to be explained on the principle that they are instruments in
the hands of the Great Moral Governor whose designs we are not able to
fathom, yet the wisdom of which is subsequently, though imperfectly,
made known. It was wicked in the sons of Jacob to sell Joseph to the
Ishmaelites; their craft and lies were successful: they deceived their
father and accomplished their purposes; yet his bondage was the means of
their preservation from the evils of famine. The rise and fall of
empires are to be explained on the same principles as the rise and fall
of families. A coarse, unscrupulous but enterprising man gets rich, but
his wealth is made to subserve interests far greater than that of his
children. Hospitals, colleges, and libraries are endowed as monasteries
were in the Middle Ages. If vice, selfishness, and pride were not
overruled, what would become of our world? The whole history of
civilization is the good which is made to spring out of evil. Men are
nothing in comparison with Omnipotence. What are human plans? Yet
enterprise and virtue and talent are rewarded. In the affairs of life we
see that goodness does not lose its recompense, and that vice is
punished; but beyond, what more impressively do we behold than this,
that the instruments of punishment are often the wicked themselves.
[Sidenote: The results of the crusades.]
[Sidenote: Their immediate consequences are disastrous; their ultimate,
beneficial.]
Among the worst wars in history--uncalled for, unscrupulous, fanatical--
were the Crusades. And when were wars more unfortunate, more
unsuccessful? Five millions of Crusaders perished miserably in those mad
expeditions stimulated by hatred of Mohammedanism. No trophies consoled
Europe for its enormous losses, extended over two hundred years. But
those wars developed the resources of Europe; they broke the power of
feudal barons; they promoted commerce and the arts of life; they led to
greater liberality of mind; they opened the horizon of knowledge; they
introduced learned men into rising universities; they centralized the
power of kings; they weakened the temporal jurisdiction of the popes;
they improved architecture, sculpture, and painting; they built free
cities; they gave a new stimulus to all the energies of the European
nations. Their benefits to civilization were not the legitimate result
of destructive passions. The natural penalty of folly and crime was paid
in hardship, sorrow, disease, captivity, disappointment, poverty, and
death. But out of the ashes a new creation arose, not what any of the
leaders of those movements ever contemplated--infinitely removed from
the thoughts of Bernard, Urban, Philip, and Richard, great men as they
were, far-sighted statesmen, who expected other results. The hand which
guided that warfare between Europe and Asia was the hand that led the
Israelites out of Egypt across the Red Sea. Moreover, _quem deus vult
perdere prius dementat_. What uprising more foolish, insane,
disastrous, than the great Southern rebellion! Its result was never
dreamed of for a moment by those Southern leaders. They hoped to see the
establishment of a great empire based on slavery; they saw the utter
destruction of slavery itself. The course by which they anticipated
dominion and riches ended in their temporal ruin. They were made the
destroyers of their own pet system, when it could not have been
destroyed in any other way. It was only by a great war that the fetters
of the slave could be removed, and God sent war so soon as it pleased
Him to bring the wicked bondage to an end. If any thing shows the hand
of God it is the wars of the nations. They are sent like the famine and
the pestilence. All human wisdom and power sink into insignificance when
they are put forth to stop these scourges of the Almighty. It is against
all reason that they ever come; yet they do come, and then crimes are
avenged; evil punishes evil, and succeeding generations are made to see
that the progress of the race is through sorrow and suffering. No great
empire is built up but with the will of God. No empire falls without
deserving the chastisement and the ruin. But God has promised to save
and to redeem, and the world moves on in accordance with natural laws,
and each successive century witnesses somehow or other a great advance
in the general condition of mankind. It is not the great rulers who plan
this improvement. It comes from Heaven. It comes in spite of human
degeneracy, which, if left to itself, would doubtless soon produce a
state of society like that which is attributed to the nations "before
the flood came and destroyed them all."
[Sidenote: Wars over-ruled for the good of nations.]
With this view of war--always aggressive with one party, always a
calamity to both; the greatest calamity known to the nations,
exhausting, bloody, cruel, sweeping every thing before it; a moral
conflagration, bringing every kind of suffering and sorrow in its train,
yet made to result as a retribution to worn-out and degenerate races,
and a means of vast development of resources among those peoples which
have life and energy,--we see the providence of God in the Roman
Conquests. The gradual growth of Rome as a warlike state is a most
impressive example of the agency of a great Moral Governor in breaking
up states that deserved to perish, and in building up a power such as
the world needed in order to facilitate both a magnificent civilization
and the peaceful spread of a new religion. The Greeks created art and
literature; the Romans, laws and government, by which society everywhere
was made more secure and tranquil, until the good which arose from the
evil was itself perverted.
[Sidenote: Growth of Rome under the kings.]
Under the kingly rule Rome becomes the most important and powerful of
the cities of Latium, and a foundation is laid of social, religious, and
political institutions which are destined to achieve a magnificent
triumph. The kings of Rome are all great men--wise and statesmanlike,
patrons of civilization among a rude and primitive people. No state for
more than two hundred years was ever ruled by more enlightened princes,
ambitious indeed, sometimes unscrupulous, but fortunate and successful.
The benefits derived from the conquests and ascendency of the city of
Romulus were seen in the union of several petty states, and the fusion
of their customs and manners. Before the foundation of the city, Italy
was of no account with the older empires. In less than two hundred and
fifty years a great Italian power grows up on the banks of the Tiber,
imbued to some extent with the civilization of Greece, which it receives
through Etruria and the Tarquins.
[Sidenote: Effect of the expulsion of the Tarquins.]
But the growth of Rome under the kings was too rapid for its moral
health. A series of disasters produced by the expulsion of the Tarquins,
during which the Roman state dwindles into a small territory on the left
bank of the Tiber, develops strength and martial virtue. It takes Rome
one hundred and fifty years to recover what it had lost. Moreover its
great prosperity has provoked envy, and all the small neighboring
nations are leagued against it. These must be subdued, or Italy will
remain divided and subdivided, with no central power.
The heroic period of Roman history begins really with the expulsion of
the kings; also the growth of aristocratical power. It is not under
kings nor democratic influences and institutions that Rome reaches
preeminence, but under an aristocracy. All that is most glorious in
Roman annals took place under the rule of the Patricians.
[Sidenote: Rome struggles for existence for 150 years.]
[Sidenote: Beautiful legends of the heroic period.]
[Sidenote: They indicate the existence of great virtues.]
[Sidenote: Petty wars with neighboring states develop patriotism.]
During the one hundred and fifty years--when the future mistress of the
world struggled for its existence with the cities and inhabitants of
Latium, Samnium, and Etruria, whose united territories scarcely extended
fifty miles from Rome, were developed the virtues of a martial
aristocracy. Our minds kindle with the contemplation of their courage,
fortitude, patience, hope, perseverance, energy, self-devotion,
patriotism, and religious faith. They deserved success. The long and
bitter struggle of one hundred and fifty years had more of the nature of
self-preservation than military ambition. The history of those petty
wars is interesting, because it is romantic. Beautiful legends of early
patriotism and heroism have been reproduced in all the histories from
Livy to our times, like those of the knights of King Arthur and the
paladins of Charlemagne in the popular literature of Europe. Poets have
made them the themes of their inspiration. Painters have chosen them as
favorite subjects of art. We love to ponder on the bitter exile of
Coriolanus, his treasonable revenge, and the noble patriotism of his
weeping and indignant mother, who saved her country but lost her son; on
Cincinnatus, taken from the plow and sent as general and dictator
against the Acquians; on the Fabian gens, defending Rome a whole year
from the attacks of the Veientines until they were all cut off, like the
Spartan band at Thermopylae; on Siccius Dentatus, the veteran captain of
one hundred and twenty battles, who was only slain by rolling a stone
from a high rock upon his head; on Cossos, slaying the king of Veii with
his own hand; on the siege of Veii, itself, a city as large as Rome,
lasting ten years, and only finally taken by draining the Alban lake; on
the pride and avarice of the banished Camillus, and his subsequent
rescue of Rome from the Gauls; on the sacred geese of the capitol, and
Manlius who slew its assailants; on the siege of the capitol for seven
months by these Celtic invaders, and the burning and sack of the city,
and its deliverance by the great Camillus. These legends are not
legitimate history, but they show the self-devotion and bravery, the
simplicity and virtue of those primitive ages, when luxury was unknown
and crime was severely punished. It was in those days of danger and
hardship that the foundation of the future military strength of the
empire was laid. We do not read of military science, of war as an art or
trade, or even of great military ambition, for the sphere of military
operations was narrow and obscure, but of preparation for victories,
under men of genius, in the time to come. That part of Roman history
bears the same relation to the age of Marius and Sulla, that the
conquests of the Puritans over the Indians, and the difficulties with
which they contended, do to the gigantic warfare of the North and South
in the late rebellion. The Puritans laid the foundation of the military
virtues of the Americans, in their colonial state, as the Patricians of
Rome did for one hundred and fifty years after the expulsion of the
kings. Those petty wars with Volscians and Acquians brought out the
Roman character, and are the germ of subsequent greatness. They took
place in the infancy of the republic, under the rule of Patricians, who
were not then great nobles, but brave and poor citizens, animated with
patriotic zeal and characterized, like the Puritans, for stern and lofty
virtues and religious faith,--superstitious and unenlightened, yet
elevated and grand,--qualities on which the strength of man is based. It
is not puerile to dwell with delight on the legends of that heroic age,
for the philosopher sees in those little struggles the germs of imperial
power. They were small and insignificant, like the battles of the
American Revolution, when measured with the marshaling of vast armies on
the plains of Pharsalia or Waterloo, but they were great in their
inherent heroism, and in their future results. Who shall say which is
greater to the eye of the Infinite--the battle of Leipsic, or the fight
on Bunker Hill? It is the cause, the principles involved, the spirit of
a contest, which give dignity and importance to the battle-field. Hence
all nations and ages have felt great interest in the early struggles of
Rome. They are full of poetry and philosophical importance. The Roman
historians themselves dwelt upon them with peculiar enthusiasm; and the
record of them lives in the school-books of all generations, and has not
been deemed unworthy of the critical genius of Niebuhr, of Arnold, or of
Mommsen.
[Sidenote: The complete independence of Rome.]
[Sidenote: The Gaulish Invasion.]
The result of this protracted warfare with petty cities and states for
one hundred and fifty years was the complete independence of the City of
the Seven Hills, the regaining of the conquests lost by the expulsion of
Tarquin, the conquest of Latium, the dissolution of the Latin League,
the possession of the Pontine district, and the extension of Roman power
to the valleys of the Apennines. The war with the Gauls was not a
systematic contest. It was a raid of these Celts across the Apennines,
and the temporary humiliation of the Roman capital. The Gauls burned and
sacked the city, but soon retreated, and Rome was never again invaded by
a foreign foe until the hordes of Alaric appeared. The disaster was soon
recovered, and the Romans made more united by the lesson.
With the retreat of the Gauls, B.C. 350, and the recovery of Latium,
B.C. 341 and four hundred and sixteen years from the foundation of the
city, the aggressive period of Roman warfare begins. By this time the
Plebeians made their power felt, and had obtained one of the two
consulships; but for a long time after, the Patricians, though shorn of
undivided sovereignty, still monopolized most of the great offices of
state--indeed were the controlling power, socially and politically. At
no period was Rome a democratic state; never had Plebeians the
ascendency. But now the plebeian influence begins to modify the old
constitution. All classes, after incessant warfare for a century and a
half, and exposed to innumerable feuds, united in enterprises of
conquest. Rome begins to appear on the stage of political history.
[Sidenote: War with the Samnites.]
[Sidenote: Decisive battle of Sentinum.]
The aggressive nature of Roman warfare commenced with Samnium. The
Samnites were a warlike and pastoral people who inhabited the rugged
mountain district between the valleys of the Vulturnus and the Calor,
but they were nevertheless barbarians, and the contest between them and
the Romans was for the sovereignty of Italy. I need not mention the
alleged causes, or the details of a sanguinary war. The alleged causes
were not the true ones, and the details are complicated and obscure. We
deal with results. The war began B.C. 326, and lasted, with short
intervals of peace, thirty-six years. The Roman heroes were M. Valerius
Corvus, L. Papirius Cursor, Q. Fabius Maximus, and P. Decius the
younger. All of these were great generals, and were consuls or
dictators. As in all great contests, lasting a whole generation, there
was alternate victory and defeat, disgraced by treachery and bad faith.
The Romans fought, assisted by Latins, Campanians, and Apulians. The
Samnites defended themselves in their mountain fastnesses with
inflexible obstinacy, and obtained no assistance from allies until
nearly worn out, when Umbrians, Etrurians, and Senonian Gauls came to
the rescue. About sixty thousand men fought on each side. The battle of
Sentinum determined the fate of Samnium and Italy, gained by Fabius and
Decius, and the Samnites laid down their arms and yielded to their
rivals. Their brave general, Pontius, was beheaded in the prison under
the capitol,--an act of inhumanity which sullied the laurels of Fabius.
The Roman power is now established over central and lower Italy, and
with the exception of a few Greek cities on the coast, Latium, Campania,
Apulia, and Samnium are added to the territories of the republic.
[Sidenote: Works of Appius Claudius.]
In the mean time the political inequality between Patricians and
Plebeians had been removed, and a plebeian nobility had grown up,
created by success in war and domestic factions. The great man in civil
history, during this war, was Appius Claudius the Censor, a proud and
inflexible Patrician. His, great works were the Appian road and
aqueduct. The road led to Capua through the Pontine marshes one hundred
and twenty miles, and was paved with blocks of basalt; the aqueduct
passed under ground, and was the first of those vast works which
supplied the city with water.
About ten years elapsed between the conquest of the Samnites and the
landing of Pyrrhus in Italy, B.C. 280, during which the Romans were
brought in contact with Magna Grecia and Syracuse.
[Sidenote: Tarentum invokes the aid of Phyrrus.]
The chief of the Greek-Italian cities was Tarentum, a very ancient
Lacedaemonian colony. It was admirably situated for commerce on the gulf
which bears its name, was very rich, and abounded in fearless sailors.
But like most commercial cities, it intrusted its defense to
mercenaries. It viewed with alarm the growing power of Rome, and unable
to meet her face to face, called in the aid of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus,
the greatest general of the age, which was followed by a general rising
of the Italian states, to shake off the Roman yoke.
[Sidenote: Expedition of Pyrrhus into Italy.]
[Sidenote: He is defeated at the battle of Beneventum.]
Pyrrhus was a soldier of fortune, and practiced war as an art, and
delighted in it like Alexander or Charles XII. He readily responded to
the overture of the Tarentine Ambassador, and sent over a general with
three thousand men to secure a footing, and soon followed with twenty
thousand foot, five thousand horse, and a number of elephants. Among his
troops were five thousand Macedonian soldiers, a phalanx such as the
Romans had never encountered. The Macedonians fought in masses; the
Romans in lines. The first encounter was disastrous to the Romans, whose
cavalry was frightened by the elephants. But Pyrrhus, contented with
victory, did not pursue his advantages, and advanced with easy marches
towards Rome with seventy thousand men. The battle of Heraclea, however,
had greatly weakened his forces; his allies proved treacherous; and he
was glad to offer terms of peace, which were promptly rejected by the
Senate. After spending nearly three years in Italy he retired to
Syracuse, but again tried his fortune against the Romans, and was
signally routed at the battle of Beneventum by Curius Dentatus. He
hastily left Italy to her fate, and the fall of Tarentum speedily
followed, which made the Romans masters of the whole peninsula. The
Macedonian phalanx, which had conquered Asia, yielded to the Roman
legion, and a new lesson was learned in the art of war.
[Sidenote: Results of the Fall of Tarentum.]
[Sidenote: The Romans complete masters of Italy.]
The Romans, by the fall of Tarentum, were now the undisputed masters of
Italy, and had made the first great step towards the conquest of the
world. The city of Romulus was now four hundred and eighty years old,
and the national domain extended from the Ciminian wood in Etruria to
the middle of the Campania. It was called the Ager Romanus, in which was
a population of two hundred and ninety-three thousand men capable of
bearing arms; and the citizens of the various conquered cities, who had
served certain magistracies in them, were enrolled among Roman citizens,
with all the rights to which the citizens of the capital were entitled,--
absolute authority over wife, children, and slaves, security from
capital punishment except by a vote of the people, or under military
authority in the camp, access to all the honors and employments of the
state, the right of suffrage, and the possession of Quirinal property.
They felt themselves to be allies of Rome, and henceforward lent
efficient aid in war. To all practical intents, they were Romans as
completely as the inhabitants of Marseilles are French. Tarentum,
Neapolis, Tibur, Praeneste, and other large cities, enjoyed peculiar
privileges; but armed garrisons were maintained in them, under the form
of colonies. The administration of them was organized after the model of
Rome. Military roads were constructed between all places of importance.
[Sidenote: The virtues of eminent Patricians.]
The same sterling virtues which characterized the absolute rule of the
Patricians still continued, and patriotism partook of the nature of
religious sentiment. Three Decii surrendered their lives for the Roman
army, and Manlius immolated his son to the genius of discipline; Runnus
is degraded from the Senate for possessing ten pounds of silver plate,
although twice consul and once dictator; Regulus, twice consul,
possessed no more than one little field in the barren district of
Papinice. Curius like Fabricius prepared his simple meal with his own
hand, and refused the gold of the Samnites, as Fabricius refused that of
Pyrrhus. The new masters of Italy deserved their empire. There was union
because there was now political equality. The "new men, like Fabricius
and Curius Dentatus, were not less numerous in the Senate than the old
Curial families. The aristocracy of blood was blended with the
aristocracy of merit. The consulship gave unity of command, the Senate
wisdom and the proper strength, preserving a happy equilibrium of
forces,--the combination of royalty, aristocracy, and democracy, which,
with military virtues and austere manners, made an irresistible force."
[Footnote: Durny, _Hist. des Romains_] This period, the fifth
century of the existence of the Roman state, was its heroic age.
[Sidenote: Rome prepares for aggressive and unjust war.]
But now military aggrandizement became the master-passion of the people,
and the uniform policy of the government. Military virtues still
remained, but the morals of state began to decline. Aggressive wars, for
conquest and power, henceforth, mark the progress of the Romans; and not
merely aggressive wars, but unjust and foreign wars. The step of the
Roman is now proud and defiant. Visions of unlimited conquest rise up
before his eye. He is cold, practical, imperious. The eagles of the
legions are the real objects of pride and reverence. Mars is the
presiding deity. Success is the only road to honor.
[Sidenote: Rivalry between Carthage and Rome.]
While Rome was completing the reduction of Italy, Carthage, a Tyrian
colony on the opposite coast of Africa, was extending her conquests in
the Islands of the Mediterranean. The Greek colonies of Sicily had
fallen under her sway. She was a rival whose power was formidable,
enriched by the commerce of the world, and proud in the number of her
allies. The city contained seven hundred thousand inhabitants, and the
walls measured twenty miles in circumference.
[Sidenote: Shall Rome or Carthage have the preeminence.]
[Sidenote: Carthage falls after a long and memorable struggle.]
[Sidenote: Territories acquired by the fall of Carthage.]
Between such ambitious and unscrupulous rivals, peace could not long be
maintained. To the eye of the philosopher the ascendency of Carthage or
of Rome over the countries which border on the Mediterranean was clearly
seen. Which were better? Shall the world be governed by a martial, law-
making, law-loving, heroic commonwealth, not yet seduced and corrupted
by luxury and wealth, or by a commercial, luxurious, selfish nation of
merchants, whose only desire is self-indulgence and folly. Providence
sides with Rome--although Rome cannot be commended, and is ruled by
ambitious and unscrupulous chieftains whose delight is power. If there
is to be one great empire more, before Christianity is proclaimed, which
shall absorb all other empires, now degenerate and corrupt, let that be
given to a people who know how to civilize after they have conquered.
Let the sword rather than gold rule the world--enlightened statesmen
rather than self-indulgent merchants. So Carthage falls, after three
memorable struggles, extending over more than a century, during which
she produced the greatest general of antiquity, next to Caesar and
Alexander. But not even Hannibal could restore the fortunes of his
country, after having inflicted a bitter humiliation on his enemies.
That city of merchants, like Tyre and Sidon, must drink of the cup of
divine chastisement. Another type of civilization than that furnished by
a "mistress of the sea," was needed for Europe, and another rule for
Asia and Africa. The Carthaginians taught the Romans, in their contest,
how to build ships of war and fight naval battles. As many as three
hundred thousand men were engaged in that memorable sea-fight of Ecnomus
which opened to Regulus the way to Africa. Three times did the Romans
lose their fleets by tempests, and yet they persevered in building new
ones. The fortitude of the Romans, in view of the brilliant successes of
Hannibal, can never be sufficiently admired. The defeat at Cannae was a
catastrophe, but the troops of Fabius, to whom was left the defense of
the city, were not discouraged, and with Scipio--religious, self-reliant,
and lofty--the tide of victory turned. By the first Punic war, which
lasted twenty-two years, Rome gained Sicily; by the second, which opened
twenty-three years after the first, and lasted seventeen years, she
gained Sardinia, a foothold in Spain and Gaul, and a preponderance
throughout the western regions of Europe and Africa; by the third, which
occurred fifty years after the second, and continued but four years, she
gained all the provinces of Africa ruled by Carthage, and a great part
of Spain. Nothing was allowed to remain of the African capital. The
departing troops left behind complete desolation. The captives were sold
as slaves, or put to death, and enough of spoil rewarded the victors to
adorn a triumph only surpassed by that of Paulus on his return from the
conquest of Greece.
[Sidenote: Condition of the Macedonian empire.]
[Sidenote: Principles and passions which led to the conquest of Greece.]
In the mean time, in the interval between the second and third Punic
wars, occurred the Macedonian wars, which prepared the way for conquests
in the East. The great Macedonian empire was split up into several
monarchies among the generals of Alexander and their successors. The
Ptolemies reigned in Egypt; the successors of Seleucus in Babylonia;
those of Antigonus in Syria and Asia Minor; those of Lysimachus in
Thrace; and of Cassander in Macedonia. It was the mission of Rome to
subdue these monarchies, or rather her good fortune, for she was
destined to conquer the world. The principles which animated these wars
cannot be defended on high moral grounds, any more than the conquest of
India by England, or of Algeria by France. They were based entirely upon
ambition--upon the passion for political aggrandizement. I confess I
have no sympathy with them. Roman liberties were not jeopardized, nor
were these monarchies dangerous rivals like Carthage. The subjugation of
Italy was in accordance with what we now call the Monroe doctrine--to
obtain the ascendency on her own soil; and even the conquest or of
Sicily was no worse than the conquest of Ireland, or what would be the
future absorption of Cuba and Jamaica within the limits of the United
States. The Emperor Napoleon would probably justify both the humiliation
of Carthage and the conquest of Greece and Asia and Egypt, and others
would echo his voice in defense of aggressive domination, on some plea
of pretended schemes of colonization, and the progress of civilization.
But I do not believe in overturning the immutable laws of moral
obligation for any questionable policy of expediency. I look upon the
great civil wars of the Romans, which followed these conquests, in which
so much blood was shed, and in which Marius and Sulla and Caesar and
Pompey exhausted the resources of the state, and made an imperial
_regime_ necessary, only as the visitation of God in rebuke of such
wicked ambition.
[Sidenote: Greece reaps the penalty of the unscrupulous wars of
Alexander.]
[Sidenote: Degeneracy of the Greeks.]
[Sidenote: Spoils of Greece fall into the hands of the Romans.]
[Sidenote: The triumph of Paulus.]
[Sidenote: Grecian provinces added to the empire.]
The conquest over the Macedonians, however, by the Romans, was not an
unmixed calamity, and was a righteous judgment on the Greeks. Nothing
could be more unscrupulous than the career of Alexander and his
generals. Again, the principle which had animated the Oriental kings
before him was indefensible. We could go back still further, and show
from the whole history of Asiatic conquests that their object was to
aggrandize ambitious conquerors. The Persians, at first, were a brave
and religious people, hardy and severe, and their conquest of older
monarchies resulted in a certain good. But they became corrupt by
prosperity and power, and fell a prey to the Greeks. The Greeks, at that
period, were the noblest race of the ancient world--immortal for genius
and art. But power dazzled them, and little remained of that glorious
spirit which was seen at Thermopylae and Marathon. The Greek ascendency
in Asia and Egypt was followed by the same luxury and extravagance and
effeminacy that resulted from the rule of Persia. The Greeks had done
great things, and contributed to the march of civilization, but they had
done their work, and their turn of humiliation must come. Their vast
empire fell into the hands of the Romans, and the change was beneficial
to humanity. They who had abused their trust were punished, and those
were exalted above them who were as yet uncorrupted by those vices which
are most fatal to nations. The great fruit of these wars were the
treasures of Greece, especially precious marbles, and other works of
art. The victory at Pydna, B.C. 168, which gave the final superiority to
the Roman legion over the Macedonian phalanx, was followed by the
triumph of Paulus himself--the grandest display ever seen at Rome. First
passed the spoils of Greece--statues and pictures--in two hundred and
fifty wagons; then the arms and accoutrements of the Macedonian
soldiers; then three thousand men, each carrying a vase of silver coin;
then victims for sacrifice, with youths and maidens with garlands; then
men bearing vases of gold and precious stones; then the royal chariot of
the conquered king laden with armor and trophies; then his wife and
children, and the fallen monarch on foot; then the triumphal car of the
victorious general, preceded by men bearing four hundred crowns of gold--
the gift of the Grecian cities--and followed by his two sons on
horseback, and the whole army in order. The sack of Corinth by Mummius
was the finale of Grecian humiliation, soon followed by the total
subjection of Macedonia, Greece, and Illyria, forming three provinces.
Nine provinces now composed the territories of Rome, while the kings of
Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt were vassals rather than allies, B.C. 133.
[Sidenote: Change of manners and morals at Rome.]
[Sidenote: Reforms of Cato the Censor.]
[Sidenote: Great degeneracy produced by the Grecian wars.]
The manners and habits of the imperial capital had undergone a gradual
change since the close of the second Punic War. During these fifty
years, the sack of so many Grecian cities, the fall of Carthage, and the
prestige of so many victories, had filled Rome with pride and luxury. In
vain did M. Portius Cato, the most remarkable man who adorned this
degenerate age, lift up his voice against increasing corruption. In vain
were his stringent measures as censor. In vain did he strike senators
from the list, and make an onslaught on the abuses of his day. In vain
were his eloquence, his simple manners, his rustic garb, and his
patriotic warnings. That hard, narrow, self-sufficient, arbitrary,
worldly-wise old statesman, whose many virtues redeemed his defects, and
whose splendid abilities were the glory of his countrymen, could not
restore the simplicities of former times. An age of "progress" had set
in, of Grecian arts and culture, of material wealth, of sumptuous
banquets, of splendid palaces, of rich temples, of theatrical shows, of
circus games, of female gallantries, of effeminated manners--all the
usual accompaniments of civilization, when it is most proud of its
triumphs; and there was no resisting its march--to the eye of many a
great improvement; to the eye of honest old Cato, the _descensus
averi_. Wealth had become a great power; senatorial families grew
immensely rich; the divisions of society widened; slavery was enormously
increased, while the rural population lost independence and influence.
Then took place the memorable struggles of Rome, not merely with foreign
enemies, but against herself. Factions and parties convulsed the city;
civil war wasted the national resources.
[Sidenote: Wars with the Cimbri and Teutones.]
[Sidenote: Success of Marius, who rolls back the tide of northern
emigration.]
It was in that period of civic strife, when factions and parties
struggled for ascendency--when the Gracchi were both reformers and
demagogues, patriots and disorganizes, heroes and martyrs--when
fortunate generals aimed at supreme power, and sought to overturn the
liberties of their country, that Rome was seriously threatened by the
barbarians. Both Celts and Teutones, from Gaul and Germany, formed a
general union for the invasion of Italy. They had successively defeated
five consular armies, in which one hundred and twenty thousand men were
slain. They rolled on like a devastating storm--some three hundred
thousand warriors from unconquered countries beyond the Alps. They were
met by Marius the hero of the African war, who had added Numidia, to the
empire--now old, fierce, and cruel, a plebeian who had arisen by force
of military genius--and the Gaulish hordes were annihilated on the Rhone
and the Po. The Romans at first viewed those half-naked warriors--so
full of strength and courage, so confident of victory, so reckless of
life, so impetuous and savage--with terror and awe. But their time had
not yet come. Numbers were of no avail against science, when science was
itself directed by genius and sustained by enthusiasm. The result of the
decisive battles of Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae was to roll back the tide
of northern immigration for three hundred years, and to prepare the way
for the conquests of Caesar in Gaul.
[Sidenote: The Social War.]
[Sidenote: Rise of Sulla.]
Then followed that great insurrection of the old states of Italy against
their imperious mistress--their last struggle for independence, called
the Social War, in which three hundred thousand of the young men of
Italy fell, and in which Sulla so much distinguished himself as to be
regarded as the rival of Marius, who had ruled Rome since the slaughter
of the Cimbrians and Teutones. Sulla, who had served under Marius in
Africa, dissolute like Antony, but cultivated like Caesar--a man full of
ambition and genius, and belonging to one of the oldest and proudest
patrician families, the Cornelian gens--was no mean rival of the old
tyrant and demagogue, and he was sent against Mithridates, the most
powerful of all the Oriental kings.
This Asiatic potentate had encouraged the insurgents in Italy, and was
also at war with the Romans. Marius viewed with envy and hatred the
preference shown to Sulla in the conduct of the Mithridatic War, and
succeeded, by his intrigues and influence with the people, in causing
Sulla to be superseded, and himself to be appointed in his place.
[Sidenote: Civil wars between Marius and Sulla.]
Hence that dreadful civil contest between these two generals, in which
Rome was alternately at the mercy of both, and in which the most
horrible butcheries took place that had ever befallen the city--a reign
of terror, a burst of savage passion, especially on the part of Marius,
who had lately abandoned himself to wine and riotous living. He died
B.C. 86, victor in the contest, in his seventh consulate, worn out by
labor and dissolute habits, nearly seventy years of age.
[Sidenote: Death of Marius.]
His opportune death relieved Rome of a tyrannical rule, and opened the
way for the splendid achievements of Sulla in the East. A great warrior
had arisen in a quarter least expected. In the mountainous region along
the north side of the Euxine, the kingdom of Pontus had grown from a
principality to a kingdom, and Mithridates, ruling over Cappadocia,
Papalagonia, and Phrygia, aspired for the sovereignty of the East. He
was an accomplished and enlightened prince, and could speak twenty-five-
languages, hardy, adventurous, and bold, like an ancient Persian. By
conquests and alliances he had made himself the most powerful sovereign
in Asia.
[Sidenote: Mithridates.]
Availing himself of the disturbance growing out of the Social War, he
fomented a rebellion of the provinces of Asia Minor, seized Bithynia,
and encouraged Athens to shake off the Roman yoke. Most of the Greek
communities joined the Athenian insurrection, and Asia rallied around
the man who hoped to cope successfully with Rome herself.
[Sidenote: Conquests of Sulla in Greece.]
At this juncture, Sulla was sent into Greece with fifty thousand men.
Athens fell before his conquering legions, B.C. 88, and the lieutenants
of Mithridates retreated before the Romans with one hundred thousand
foot and ten thousand horse, and one hundred armed chariots. On the
plains of Chaeronea, where Grecian liberties had been overthrown by
Philip of Macedon, two hundred and fifty years before, a desperate
conflict took place, and the Pontic army was signally defeated. Shortly
after, Sulla gained another great victory over the generals of the King
of Pontus, and compelled him to accept peace, the terms of which he
himself dictated, after exacting heavy contributions from the cities of
Greece and Asia Minor.
[Sidenote: Death of Sulla.]
The civil war between Sulla and the chiefs of the popular faction that
had been created by Marius, which ended in his complete ascendency in
Italy, stopped for a while the Roman conquests in the East. Sulla,
having undone the popular measures of the last half century, and reigned
supreme over all factions as dictator, died B.C. 78, after a most
successful career, and left his mantle to the most enterprising of his
lieutenants, Cnaeus Pompey, who was destined to complete the Mithridatic
war.
[Sidenote: Character of Sulla.]
If Sulla had not been so inordinately fond of pleasure and luxurious
self-indulgence, he might have seized the sceptre of universal dominion,
and have made himself undisputed master of the empire. He was a man of
extraordinary genius, fond of literature, and a great diplomatist. But
he was not preeminently ambitious like Caesar, and was diverted by the
fascinations of elegant leisure; nor was he naturally cruel, though his
passions, when aroused, were fierce and vindictive. He lived in an age
of exceeding corruption, when it was evident to contemplative minds that
Roman liberties could not be much longer preserved. He had, for a time,
restored the ascendency of the senatorial families, but faction was at
work among the unprincipled chiefs of the republic.
[Sidenote: Lucullus marches against Mithridates.]
On the death of the great dictator, Mithridates broke the peace he had
concluded, and marched into Bithynia, which had been left by will to the
Roman people by Nicomedes, with the hope of its reconquest. He had an
army of one hundred and twenty thousand foot and fifteen thousand horse.
Lucullus, with thirty thousand foot and one thousand horse, advanced
against him, and the vast forces of Mithridates were defeated, and the
king was driven into Armenia, and sought the aid of Tigranes, his son-
in-law, king of that powerful country. He, too, was subdued by the Roman
legions, and all the nations from the Halys to the Euphrates
acknowledged the dominion of Rome.
[Sidenote: Rising greatness of Pompey.]
Still, Mithridates was not subdued, and Pompey, who had annihilated the
Mediterranean pirates, was the only person fit to finish the Mithridatic
war. His successes had been more brilliant than even those of Sulla, or
Lucullus, or Metellus. He was made Dictator of the East, with greater
powers than had ever before been intrusted to a Roman general. He had
success equal to his fame; drove Mithridates across the Caucasus;
reduced Pontus, and took possession of Syria, which had been subject to
Tigranes. The defeated King of Pontus, who had sought to unite all the
barbarous tribes of Eastern Europe against Rome, destroyed himself.
Pompey, after seven years' continued successes, returned to Italy to
claim his triumph, having subdued the East, and added the old monarchy
of the Seleucidae to the dominion of Rome, B.C. 61.
[Sidenote: The early career of Julius Caesar.]
[Sidenote: His victories in Spain.]
[Sidenote: Caesar sent into Gaul.]
But while Pompey was pursuing his victories over the effeminate people
of Asia, a still more brilliant career in the West marked the rising
fortunes of Julius Caesar. I need not dwell on the steps by which he
arose to become the formidable rival of the conqueror of the East. He
bears the most august name of antiquity. A patrician by birth, a
demagogue in his principles, popular in his manners, unscrupulous in his
means, he successively passed through the various great offices of
state, which he discharged with prodigious talent. As leader of the old
popular party of Marius, he sought the humiliation of the Senate, while
his ambition led him to favor every enterprise which promised to advance
his own interests. Leaving the province of Spain, after his praetorship,
before Pompey's return to Italy, his great career of conquest commenced.
He first availed himself of some disturbances in Lusitania to declare
war against its gallant people, overran their country, and then turned
his arms against the Gallicians. In two years he had obtained spoils
more than sufficient to pay his enormous debts, the result of his
prodigality, by which, however, he won the hearts of the thoughtless
citizens, and paved the way for honor. Conqueror of Spain, and idol of
the people, he returned to Rome, B.C. 60, when Pompey was quarreling
with the Senate, formed an alliance with him and Crassus, and by their
aid was elected consul. His measures in that high office all tended to
secure his popularity with the people, and supported by Pompey and
Crassus, he triumphed over the Senate. He then secured the government of
Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum, with two legions, for the extraordinary
term of five years. The Senate added the province of Transalpine Gaul,
then threatened by the Allobrogians, Suevi, Helvetians, and other
barbaric tribes, with the intention of confining him to a dangerous and
uncertain field of warfare.
[Sidenote: His great military genius.]
[Sidenote: His difficulties in the conquest of Gaul.]
[Sidenote: Results of the Gaulish wars.]
[Sidenote: Gaul becomes Latinized.]
That field, however, established his military fame, and paved the way
for his subsequent usurpations. The conquests of Caesar in Western Europe
are unique in the history of war, and furnish no parallel. Other
conquests may have been equally brilliant and more imposing, but none
were ever more difficult and arduous, requiring greater perseverance,
energy, promptness, and fertility of resources. The splendid successes
of Lucullus and Pompey in Asia resembled those of Alexander. We see
military discipline and bravery triumphing over the force of multitudes,
and a few thousand men routing vast armies of enervated or undisciplined
mercenaries. Such were the conquests of the English in India. They make
a great impression, but the fortunes of an empire are decided by a
single battle. It was not so with the conflicts of Caesar in Gaul. He had
to fight with successive waves of barbarians, inured to danger,
adventurous and hardy, holding life in little estimation, willing to die
in battle, intrepid in soul, and bent on ultimate victory. He had to
fight in hostile territories, unacquainted with the face of the country,
at a great distance from the base of his supplies, exposed to perpetual
perils, and surrounded with unknown difficulties. And these were
appreciated by his warlike countrymen, who gave him the credit he
deserved. The ten years he spent in Gaul were the years of his truest
glory, and the most momentous in their consequences on the future
civilization of the world, since it was not worn-out monarchies he added
to the empire, but a new territory, inhabited by brave and simple races,
who were to learn the arts and laws and literature of Rome, and supply
the government with powerful aid in the decline of its strength. It was
the conquered barbarians who, henceforth, were to furnish Rome with
soldiers, and even scholars and statesmen and generals. Among them the
old civilization was to take root, among them new states were to arise
on which the Romans could impress their own remarkable characteristics.
It was the western provinces of the empire that alone were vital with
energy and strength, and which were destined to perpetuate the spirit of
Roman institutions. The eastern provinces never lost the impress of the
Greek mind and manners. They remained Greek even when subdued by the
imperial legions. Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, were filled with Grecian
cities, and Asiatic customs were modified by Grecian civilization. The
West was purely Roman, and the Latin language, laws, and arts were
continued, in a modified form, through the whole period of the Middle
Ages. Even Christianity had a different influence in the West from what
it had in the East. In other words, the West was completely Latinized,
while the East remained Grecian. Though the East was governed by Roman
proconsuls, they could not change the Graeco-Asiatic character of its
institutions and manners; but the barbarians were willing to learn new
lessons from their Roman masters.
[Sidenote: Greatness of Caesar.]
It would require a volume to describe the various campaigns of Caesar in
Gaul, in which a million of people were destroyed. But I only aim to
show results. Most people are familiar with the marvelous generalship
and enterprises of the Roman conqueror--the conquest and reconquest of
the brave barbarians, most of whom were Celts; the uprising of Germanic
tribes as well, and their fearful slaughter near Coblentz; the bloody
battles, the fearful massacres, the unscrupulous cruelties which he
directed; the formidable insurrection organized by Vercingetorix; the
spirit he infused into his army; the incessant hardships of the
soldiers, crossing rivers, mountains, and valleys, marching with their
heavy burdens--fighting amid every disadvantage, until all the
countries north of the Alps and west of the Rhine acknowledged his sway--
all these things are narrated by Caesar himself with matchless force and
simplicity of language.
[Sidenote: Rivalry between Caesar and Pompey.]
Caesar now probably aspired to the sovereignty of the empire, as Napoleon
did after the conquest of Italy. But he had a great rival in Pompey, who
had remained chiefly at Rome, during his Gaulish campaigns, virtually
dictator, certainly the strongest citizen. And Pompey had also his
ambitious schemes. One was the conqueror of the East; the other of the
West. One leaned to the aristocratic party, the other to the popular.
Pompey was proud, pompous, and self-sufficient. Caesar was politic,
patient, and intriguing. Both had an inordinate ambition, and both were
unscrupulous. Pompey had more prestige, Caesar more genius. Pompey was a
greater tactician, Caesar a greater strategist. The Senate rallied around
the former, the people around the latter. Cicero distrusted both, and
flattered each by turns, but inclined to the side of Pompey, as
belonging to the aristocratic party.
[Sidenote: Battle of Pharsalia.]
[Sidenote: Death of Pompey.]
Between such ambitious rivals coalition for any length of time could not
continue. Dissensions arose between them, and then war. The contest was
decided at Pharsalia. On the 6th of June, B.C. 48, "Greek met Greek,"
yet with forces by no means great on either side. Pompey had only forty
thousand, and Caesar less, but they were veterans, and the victory was
complete. Pompey fled to Egypt, without evincing his former greatness,
paralyzed, broken, and without hope. There he miserably died, by the
assassin's dagger, at the age of sixty, and the way was now prepared for
the absolute rule of Caesar.
[Sidenote: Dictatorship of Caesar.]
But the party of Pompey rallied, connected with which were some of the
noblest names of Rome. The battle of Thapsus proved as disastrous to
Cato as Pharsalia did to Pompey. Caesar was uniformly victorious, not
merely over the party which had sustained Pompey, but in Asia, Africa,
and Spain, which were in revolt. His presence was everywhere required,
and wherever he appeared his presence was enough. He was now dictator
for ten years. He had overturned the constitution of his country. He was
virtually the supreme ruler of the world. In the brief period which
passed from his last triumphs to his death, he was occupied in
legislative labors, in settling military colonies, in restoring the
wasted population of Italy, in improving the city, in reforming the
calendar, and other internal improvements, evincing an enlarged and
liberal mind.
[Sidenote: Death of Caesar. His character.]
But the nobles hated him, and had cause, in spite of his abilities, his
affability, magnanimity, and forbearance. He had usurped unlimited
authority, and was too strong to be removed except by assassination. I
need not dwell on the conspiracy under the leadership of Brutus, and his
tragic end in the senate-house, where he fell, pierced by twenty-two
wounds, at the base of Pompey's statue, the greatest man in Roman
history--great as an orator, a writer, a general, and a statesman; a man
without vanity, devoted to business, unseduced by pleasure, unscrupulous
of means to effect an end; profligate, but not more so than his times;
ambitious of power, but to rule, when power was once secured, for the
benefit of his country, like many other despots immortal on a bloody
catalogue. After his passage of the Rubicon his career can only be
compared with that of Napoleon.
[Sidenote: Character of his later wars.]
But Roman territories were not much enlarged by Caesar after the conquest
of Celtic Europe. His later wars were either against rivals or to settle
distracted provinces. Nor were they increased in the civil wars which
succeeded his death, between the various aspirants for the imperial
power and those who made one more stand for the old constitution. At the
fatal battle of Philippi, when the hopes of Roman patriots vanished
forever, double the number of soldiers were engaged on both sides than
at Pharsalia, but fortune had left the senatorial party, of which Brutus
was the avenger and the victim.
[Sidenote: Civil wars after the death of Caesar.]
[Sidenote: Ascendency of Octavian.]
Civil war was carried on most vigorously after the death of Julius. But
it was now plainly a matter between rival generals and statesmen for
supreme command. The chief contest was between Octavian and Antony, the
former young, artful, self-controlled, and with transcendent abilities
as a statesman; the latter bold, impetuous, luxurious, and the ablest of
all Caesar's lieutenants as a general. Had he not yielded to the
fascinations of Cleopatra, he would probably have been the master of the
world. But the sea-fight of Actium, one of the great decisive battles of
history, gave the empire of the world to Octavian B.C. 31, and two years
after the victor celebrated three magnificent triumphs, after the
example of his uncle, for Dalmatia, Actium, and Egypt. The kingdom of
the Ptolemies passed under the rule of Caesar. The Temple of Janus was
shut, for the first time for more than two hundred years; and the
imperial power was peaceably established over the civilized world.
[Sidenote: Necessity for the empire.]
The friends of liberty may justly mourn over the fall of republican
Rome, and the centralization of all power in the hands of Augustus. But
it was a calamity which could not be averted, and was a revolution which
was in accordance with the necessities of the times. Fifty years' civil
war taught the Romans the hopelessness of the struggle to maintain their
old institutions so long as the people were corrupt, and fortunate
generals would sacrifice the public welfare to their ambition. Order was
better than anarchy, even though a despot reigned supreme. When men are
worse than governments, they must submit to the despotism of tyrants. It
is idle to dream of liberty with a substratum of folly and vice. The
strongest man will rule, but whether he rule wisely or unwisely, there
is no remedy. Providence gave the world to the Romans, after continual
and protracted wars for seven hundred years; and when the people who had
conquered the world by their energy, prudence, and perseverance, were no
longer capable of governing themselves, then the state fell into the
possession of a single man.
[Sidenote: Change in the imperial policy.]
Under the emperors, the whole policy of the government was changed. They
no longer thought of further aggrandizement, but of retaining the
conquests which were already made. And if they occasionally embarked in
new wars, those wars were of necessity rather than of ambition, were
defensive rather than aggressive. New provinces were from time to time
added, but in consequence of wars which were waged in defense of the
empire. The conquest of Britain and Judea was completed, and various
conflicts took place with the Germanic nations, who, in the reign of
Antoninus, formed a general union for the invasion of the Roman world.
These barbarians were the future aggressors on the peace of the empire,
until it fell into their hands. The empire of Augustus may be said to
have reached the utmost limits it ever permanently retained, extending
from the Rhine and the Danube to the Euphrates and Mount Atlas,
embracing a population variously estimated from one hundred to one
hundred and thirty millions.
[Sidenote: Perfection of military art.]
When Augustus became the sovereign ruler of this vast empire, military
art had reached the highest perfection it ever attained among any of the
nations of antiquity. It required centuries to perfect this science, if
science it may be called, and the Romans doubtless borrowed from the
people whom they subdued. They learned to resist the impetuous assaults
of semi-barbarous warriors, the elephants of the East, and the phalanx
of the Greeks. Military discipline was carried to the severest extent by
Marius, Pompey, and Caesar.
[Sidenote: The spirit of the Roman soldier.]
The Roman soldier was trained to march twenty miles a day, under a
burden of eighty pounds; yea, to swim rivers, to climb mountains, to
penetrate forests, and to encounter every kind of danger. He was taught
that his destiny was to die in battle. He expected death. He was ready
to die. Death was his duty, and his glory. He enlisted in the armies
with little hope of revisiting his home. He crossed seas and deserts and
forests with the idea of spending his life in the service of his
country. His pay was only a denarius daily, equal to about sixteen cents
of our money. Marriage was discouraged or forbidden. He belonged to the
state, and the state was exacting and hard. He was reduced to abject
obedience, yet he held in his hand the destinies of the empire. And
however insignificant was the legionary as a man, he gained importance
from the great body with which he was identified. He was the servant and
the master of the state. He had an intense _esprit de corps_. He
was bound up in the glory of his legion. Both religion and honor bound
him to his standards. The golden eagle which glittered in his front was
the object of his fondest devotion. Nor was it possible to escape the
penalty of cowardice or treachery, or disobedience. He could be
chastised with blows by his centurion; his general could doom him to
death. Never was the severity of military discipline relaxed. Military
exercises were incessant, in winter as in summer. In the midst of peace
the Roman troops were familiarized with the practice of war.
[Sidenote: Military genius of the Romans.]
[Sidenote: The perfection of military art.]
It was the spirit which animated the Roman legions, and the discipline
to which they were inured, which gave them their irresistible strength.
When we remember that they had not our fire-arms, we are surprised at
their efficiency, especially in taking strongly fortified cities.
Jerusalem was defended by a triple wall, and the most elaborate
fortifications, and twenty-four thousand soldiers, beside the aid
received from the citizens; and yet it fell in little more than four
months before an army of eighty thousand under Titus. How great the
science to reduce a place of such strength, in so short a time, without
the aid of other artillery than the ancient catapult and battering-ram!
Whether the military science of the Romans was superior or inferior to
our own, no one can question that it was carried to utmost perfection
before the invention of gunpowder. We are only superior in the
application of this great invention, especially in artillery. There can
be no doubt that a Roman army was superior to a feudal army in the
brightest days of chivalry. The world has produced no generals superior
to Caesar, Pompey, Sulla, and Marius. No armies ever won greater
victories over superior numbers than the Roman, and no armies of their
size, ever retained in submission so great an empire, and for so long a
time. At no period in the history of the empire were the armies so large
as those sustained by France in time of peace. Two hundred thousand
legionaries, and as many more auxiliaries, controlled diverse nations
and powerful monarchies. The single province of Syria once boasted of a
military force equal in the number of soldiers to that wielded by
Tiberius. Twenty-five legions made the conquest of the world, and
retained that conquest for five hundred years. The self-sustained energy
of Caesar in Gaul puts to the blush the efforts of all modern generals,
except Frederic II., Marlborough, Napoleon, Wellington, Grant, Sherman,
and a few other great geniuses which a warlike age developed; nor is
there a better text-book on the art of war than that furnished by Caesar
himself in his Commentaries. And the great victories of the Romans over
barbarians, over Gauls, over Carthaginians, over Greeks, over Syrians,
over Persians, were not the result of a short-lived enthusiasm, like
those of Attila and Tamerlane, but extended over a thousand years. The
Romans were essentially military in all their tastes and habits.
Luxurious senators and nobles showed the greatest courage and skill in
the most difficult campaigns. Antony, Caesar, Pompey, and Lucullus were,
at home, enervated and luxurious, but, at the head of the legions, were
capable of any privation and fatigue. The Roman legion was a most
perfect organization, a great mechanical force, and could sustain
furious attacks after vigor, patriotism, and public spirit had fled. For
three hundred years a vast empire was sustained by mechanism alone.
[Sidenote: The Roman Legion.]
[Sidenote: Its composition.]
[Sidenote: The infantry the strength of the legion.]
[Sidenote: Its armor.]
[Sidenote: Its weapons.]
[Sidenote: The cavalry.]
[Sidenote: Term of military service.]
The legion is coeval with the foundation of Rome, but the number of the
troops of which it was composed varied at different periods. It rarely
exceeded six thousand men. Gibbon estimates the number at six thousand
eight hundred and twenty-six men. For many centuries it was composed
exclusively of Roman citizens. Up to the year B.C. 107, no one was
permitted to serve among the regular troops except those who were
regarded as possessing a strong personal interest in the stability of
the republic. Marius admitted all orders of citizens; and after the
close of the Social War, B.C. 87, the whole free population of Italy was
allowed to serve in the regular army. Claudius incorporated with the
legion the vanquished Goths, and after him the barbarians filled up the
ranks, on account of the degeneracy of the times. But during the period
when the Romans were conquering the world every citizen was trained to
arms, and was liable to be called upon to serve in the armies. In the
early age of the republic, the legion was disbanded as soon as the
special service was performed, and was in all essential respects a
militia. For three centuries, we have no record of a Roman army
wintering in the field; but when Southern Italy became the seat of war,
and especially when Rome was menaced by foreign enemies, and still more
when a protracted foreign service became inevitable, the same soldiers
remained in activity for several years. Gradually the distinction
between the soldier and the civilian was entirely obliterated. The
distant wars of the republic, like the prolonged operations of Caesar in
Gaul, and the civil contests, made a standing army a necessity. During
the civil wars between Caesar and Pompey, the legions were forty in
number; under Augustus but twenty-five. Alexander Severus increased them
to thirty-two. This was the standing force of the empire, from one
hundred and fifty to two hundred and forty thousand men, and this was
stationed in the various provinces. The main dependence of the legion
was on the infantry, which wore heavy armor consisting of helmet,
breastplate, greaves on the legs, and buckler on the left arm four feet
in length and two and a half in width. The helmet was originally made of
leather or skin, strengthened and adorned by bronze or gold, and
surmounted by a crest which was often of horse-hair, and so made as to
give an imposing look The crest not only served for ornament but to
distinguish the different centurions. The breastplate or cuirass was
generally made of metal, and sometimes was highly ornamented. Chain-mail
was also used. The greaves were of bronze or brass, with a lining of
leather or felt, and reached above the knees. The shield, worn by the
heavy-armed infantry, was not round, like that of the Greeks, but oval
or oblong, adapted to the shape of the body, and was made of wood or
wicker-work. The weapons were a light spear, a pilum or javelin six feet
long, terminated by a steel point, and a sword with a double edge,
adapted to striking or pushing. The legion was drawn up eight deep, and
three feet intervened between rank and file, which disposition gave
great activity, and made it superior to the Macedonian phalanx, the
strength of which depended on sixteen ranks of long pikes wedged
together. The cavalry attached to each legion were three hundred men,
and they originally were selected from the leading men in the state.
They were mounted at the expense of the state, and formed a distinct
order. The cavalry was divided into ten squadrons; and to each legion
was attached a train of ten military engines of the largest size, and
fifty-five of the smaller,--all of which discharged stones and darts
with great effect. This train corresponded with our artillery. Besides
the armor and weapons of the legionaries they usually carried on their
marches provisions for two weeks, and three or four stakes used in
forming the palisade of the camp, beside various tools,--altogether a
burden of sixty or eighty pounds per man. The general period of service
for the infantry was twenty years, after which the soldier received a
discharge together with a bounty in money or land.
[Sidenote: Organization of the legion.]
[Sidenote: The Hastati.]
[Sidenote: The Principes and Velites.]
[Sidenote: The Triarii.]
[Sidenote: The Pilarii.]
[Sidenote: The Equites.]
The Roman legion, whether it was composed of four thousand men, as in
the early ages of the republic or six thousand, as in the time of
Augustus, of was divided into ten cohorts, and each cohort was composed
of Hastati, Principes, Triarii, and Velites. The soldiers of the first
line, called Hastati, consisted of youths in the bloom of manhood, and
were distributed into fifteen companies or maniples. Each company
contained sixty privates, two centurions, and a standard-bearer. Two
thirds were heavily armed, and bore the long shield, the remainder
carried only a spear and light javelins. The second line, the Principes,
was composed of men in the full vigor of life, divided also into fifteen
companies, all heavily armed, and distinguished by the splendor of their
equipments. The third body, the Triarii, was also composed of tried
veterans, in fifteen companies, the least trustworthy of which were
placed in the rear. These formed three lines. The Velites were light-
armed troops, employed on outpost duty, and mingled with the horsemen.
The Hastati were so called because they were armed with the hasta; the
Principes, for being placed so near to the front; the Triarii, from
having been arrayed behind the first two lines as a body of reserve,
armed with the pilum, thicker and stronger than the Grecian lance,--four
and a half feet long, of wood, with a barbed head of iron,--so that the
whole length of the weapon was six feet nine inches. It was used either
to throw or thrust with, and when it pierced the enemy's shield,
[Footnote: Liv. viii. 8.] the iron head was bent, and the spear, owing
to the twist in the iron, still held to the shield. [Footnote: Plut.
Mar. 25.] Each soldier carried two of these weapons. [Footnote: Polyb.
vi. 23.] The Principes were in the front ranks of the phalanx, clad in
complete defensive armor,--men in the vigor of strength. The Pilarii
were in the rear, who threw the heavy pilum over the heads of their
comrades, in order to break the enemy's line. In the time of the empire,
when the legion was modified, the infantry wore cuirasses and helmets,
and two swords; namely, a long one and a dagger. The select infantry
carried a long spear and a shield, the rest a pilum. Each man carried a
saw, a basket, a mattock, a hatchet, a leather strap, a hook, a chain,
and provisions for three days. The Equites wore helmets and cuirasses,
like the infantry, with a broad sword at the right side, and in their
hand a long pole. A buckler swung at the horse's flank. They were also
furnished with a quiver containing three or four javelins.
[Sidenote: The artillery.]
[Sidenote: The Testudo.]
[Sidenote: The Helepolis.]
[Sidenote: The Turris.]
[Sidenote: Scailing-ladders.]
The artillery were used both for hurling missiles in battle, and for the
attack of fortresses. The _tormentum_, which was an elastic
instrument, discharged stones and darts, and was continued until the
discovery of gunpowder. In besieging a city, the ram was employed for
destroying the lower part of a wall, and the balista, which discharged
stones, was used to overthrow the battlements. The balista would project
a stone weighing from fifty to three hundred pounds. The _aries_,
or battering-ram, consisted of a large beam made of the trunk of a tree,
frequently one hundred feet in length, to one end of which was fastened
a mace of iron or bronze, which resembled in form the head of a ram, and
was often suspended by ropes from a beam fixed transversely over it, so
that the soldiers were relieved from supporting its weight, and were
able to give it a rapid and forcible motion backward and forward. And
when this machine was further aided by placing a frame in which it was
suspended upon wheels, and constructing over it a roof, so as to form a
_testudo_, which protected the besieging party from the assaults of
the besieged, there was no tower so strong, no wall so thick, as to
resist a long-continued attack. Its great length enabled the soldiers to
work across the ditch, and as many as one hundred men were often
employed upon it. The Romans learned from the Greeks the art of building
this formidable engine, which was used with great effect by Alexander,
but with still greater by Vespasian in the siege of Jerusalem. It was
first used by the Romans in the siege of Syracuse. The _vinea_ was
a sort of roof under which the soldiers protected themselves when they
undermined walls. The _helepolis_, also used in the attack of
cities, was a square tower furnished with all the means of assault. This
also was a Greek invention, and that used by Demetrius at the siege of
Rhodes, B.C. 306, was one hundred and thirty-five feet high and sixty-
eight wide, divided into nine stories. Towers of this description were
used at the siege of Jerusalem, [Footnote: Josephus _B. J._, ii. 19.]
and were manned by two hundred men employed upon the catapults and rams.
The _turris_, a tower of the same class, was used both by Greeks and
Romans, and even by Asiatics. Mithridates used one at the siege of
Cyzicus one hundred and fifty feet in height. This most formidable
engine was generally made of beams of wood covered on three sides with
iron and sometimes with raw hides. They were higher than the walls and
all the other fortifications of a besieged place, divided into stories
pierced with windows. In and upon them were stationed archers and
slingers, and in the lower story was a battering-ram. They also carried
scaling-ladders, so that when the wall was cleared, these were placed
against the walls. They were placed upon wheels, and brought as near the
walls as possible. It was impossible to resist these powerful engines,
unless they were burned, or the ground undermined upon which they stood,
except by overturning them with stones or iron-shod beams hung from a
mast on the wall, or by increasing the height of the wall, or the
erection of temporary towers on the wall beside them.
[Sidenote: The advantages of defenders.]
[Sidenote: Ordinary way of capture.]
[Sidenote: Strength and advantage of fortresses.]
Thus there was no ancient fortification capable of withstanding a long
siege when the besieged city was, short of defenders or provisions. With
equal forces an attack was generally a failure, for the defenders had
always a great advantage. But when the number of defenders was reduced,
or when famine pressed, the skill and courage of the assailants would
ultimately triumph. Some ancient cities made a most obstinate
resistance, like Tarentum; Carthage, which stood a siege of four years;
Numantia in Spain, and Jerusalem. When cities were of immense size,
population, and resources, like Rome when besieged by Alaric, it was
easier to take them by cutting off all ingress and egress, so as to
produce famine. Tyre was only taken by Alexander by cutting off the
harbor. Babylon could not have been taken by Cyrus by assault, since the
walls were three hundred and thirty-seven feet high, according to
Herodotus, and the ditch too wide for the use of battering-rams. He
resorted to an expedient of which the blinded inhabitants of that doomed
city never dreamed, which rendered their impregnable fortifications
useless. Nor would the Romans have probably prevailed against Jerusalem
had not famine decimated and weakened the people. Fortified cities,
though scarcely ever impregnable, were yet more in use in ancient than
modern times, and greatly delayed the operations of advancing armies.
And it was probably the fortified camp of the Romans, which protected an
army against surprises and other misfortunes, which gave such efficacy
to the legions.
[Sidenote: The Tribunes.]
[Sidenote: The Centurions.]
[Sidenote: Gradation of ranks.]
The chief officers of the legion were the tribunes, and originally there
was one in each legion from the three tribes--the Ramnes, Luceres, and
Tities. In the time of Polybius the number in each legion was six. Their
authority extended equally over the whole legion; but, to prevent
confusion, it was the custom for these military tribunes to divide
themselves into three sections of two, and each pair undertook the
routine duties for two months out of six. They nominated the centurions,
and assigned to each the company to which he belonged. These tribunes,
at first, were chosen by the commander-in-chief,--by the kings and
consuls; but during the palmy days of the republic, when the patrician
power was preeminent, they were elected by the people, that is, the
citizens. Later they were named half by the Senate and half by the
consuls. No one was eligible to this great office who had not served ten
years in the infantry or five in the cavalry. They were distinguished by
their dress from the common soldier. Next in rank to the tribunes, who
corresponded to the rank of brigadiers and colonels in our times, were
the centurions, of whom there were sixty in each legion,--men who were
more remarkable for calmness and sagacity than for courage and daring
valor; men who would keep their posts at all hazards. It was their duty
to drill the soldiers, to inspect arms, clothing, and food, to visit the
sentinels, and regulate the conduct of the men. They had the power of
inflicting corporal punishment. They were chosen for merit solely, until
the later ages of the empire, when their posts were bought, as in the
English army. These centurions were of unequal rank,--those of the
Triarii before those of the Principes, and those of the Principes before
those of the Hastati. The first centurion of the first maniple of the
Triarii stood next in rank to the tribunes, and had a seat in the
military councils, and his office was very lucrative. To his charge was
intrusted the eagle of the legion. [Footnote: Liv. xxv. 5; Caes.
_B.C._, vi. 6.] As the centurion could rise from the ranks, and
rose by regular gradation through the different maniples of the Hastati,
Principes, and Triarii, there was great inducement held out to the
soldiers. In the Roman legion it would seem that there was a regular
gradation of rank although there were but few distinct offices. But the
gradation was not determined by length of service, but for merit alone,
of which the tribunes were the sole judges. Hence the tribune of a Roman
legion had more power than that of a modern colonel. As the tribunes
named the centurions, so the centurions appointed their lieutenants, who
were called sub-centurions.
[Sidenote: Change in the organization of the legions.]
There was a change in the constitution and disposition of the legion
after the time of Marius, until the fall of the republic. The legions
were thrown open to men of all grades; they were all armed and equipped
alike; the lines were reduced to two, with a space between each cohort,
of which there were five in each line; the young soldiers were placed in
the rear, and not the van; the distinction between Hastati, Principes,
and Triarii ceased; the Velites disappeared, their work being done by
the foreign mercenaries; the cavalry ceased to be part of the legion,
and became a distinct body; and the military was completely severed from
the rest of the state. Formerly no one could aspire to office who had
not completed ten years of military service, but in the time of Cicero a
man could pass through all the great dignities of the state with a very
limited experience of military life. Cicero himself served but one
campaign.
[Sidenote: Changes under the emperors.]
[Sidenote: Pay of soldiers.]
Under the emperors, there were still other changes. The regular army
consisted of legions and supplementa,--the latter being subdivided into
the imperial guards and the auxiliary troops. The auxiliaries (Socii)
consisted of troops from the states in alliance with Rome, or those
compelled to furnish subsidies. The infantry of the allies was generally
more numerous than that of the Romans, while the cavalry was three times
as numerous. All the auxiliaries were paid by the state; the infantry
received the same pay as the Roman infantry, but the cavalry only two
thirds of what was paid to the Roman cavalry. The common foot-soldier
received in the time of Polybius three and a half asses a day, equal to
about six farthings sterling money; the horseman three times as much.
The Praetorian cohorts received twice as much as the legionaries. Julius
Caesar allowed about six asses a day as the pay of the legionary, and
under Augustus the daily pay was raised to ten asses--little more than
four pence per day. Domitian raised the stipend still higher. The
soldier, however, was fed and clothed by the government.
[Sidenote: The Praetorian cohort.]
The Praetorian cohort was a select body of troops instituted by Augustus
to protect his person, and consisted of ten cohorts, each of one
thousand men, chosen from Italy. This number was increased by Vitellius
to sixteen thousand, and they were assembled by Tiberius in a permanent
camp, which was strongly fortified. They had peculiar privileges, and
when they had served sixteen years, received twenty thousand sesterces,
or more than one hundred pounds sterling. Each Praetorian had the rank of
a centurion in the regular army. Like the body-guard of Louis XIV., they
were all gentlemen, and formed gradually a great power, like the
janissaries at Constantinople, and frequently disposed of the purple
itself. It would thus appear that the centurion only received twice the
pay of the ordinary legionary. There was not therefore so much
difference in rank between a private and a captain as in our day. There
were no aristocratic distinctions in the ancient world so marked as in
the modern.
[Sidenote: The Roman camp.]
[Sidenote: The guardianship of the camp.]
[Sidenote: The breaking up of the camp.]
Our notice of the Roman legion would be incomplete without allusion to
the camp in which the soldier virtually lived. A Roman army never halted
for a single night without forming a regular intrenchment capable of
holding all the fighting men, the beasts of burden, and the baggage.
When the army could not retire, during the winter months, into some
city, it was compelled to live in the camp. It was arranged and
fortified according to a uniform plan, so that every company and
individual had a place assigned. We cannot tell when this practice of
intrenchment began; it was matured gradually, like all other things
pertaining to the art of war. The system was probably brought to
perfection during the wars with Hannibal. Skill in the choice of ground,
giving facilities for attack and defense, and for procuring water and
other necessities, was of great account with the generals. An area of
about five thousand square feet was allowed for a company of infantry,
and ten thousand feet for a troop of thirty dragoons. The form of a camp
was an exact square, the length of each side being two thousand and
seventeen feet. There was a space between the ramparts and the tents of
two hundred feet to facilitate the marching in and out of soldiers, and
to guard the cattle and booty. The principal street was one hundred feet
wide, and was called Principia. The defenses of the camp consisted of a
ditch, the earth from which was thrown inwards, and strong palisades of
wooden stakes upon the top of the earthwork so formed. The ditch was
sometimes fifteen feet deep, and the vallum or rampart ten feet in
height. When the army encamped for the first time the tribunes
administered an oath to each individual, including slaves, to the effect
that they would steal nothing out of the camp. Every morning at
daybreak, the centurions and the equites presented themselves before the
tents of the tribunes, and the tribunes in like manner presented
themselves to the praetorian, to learn the orders of the consuls, which
through the centurions were communicated to the soldiers. Four companies
took charge of the principal street, to see that it was properly cleaned
and watered. One company took charge of the tent of the tribune, a
strong guard attended to the horses, and another of fifty men stood
beside the tent of the general that he might be protected from open
danger and secret treachery. The velites mounted guard the whole night
and day along the whole extent of the vallum, and each gate was guarded
by ten men. The equites were intrusted with the duty of acting as
sentinels during the night, and most ingenious measures were adopted to
secure their watchfulness and fidelity. The watchword for the night was
given by the commander-in-chief. "On the first signal being given by the
trumpet, the tents were all struck and the baggage packed. At the second
signal, the baggage was placed upon the beasts of burden; and at the
third the whole army began to move. Then the herald, standing at the
right hand of the general, demands thrice if they are ready for war, to
which they all respond with loud and repeated cheers that they are
ready, and for the most part, being filled with martial ardor,
anticipate the question, 'and raise their right hands on high with a
shout.'" [Footnote: Smith, _Dict. of Ant._, art. _Castra_.]
[Sidenote: Line of March.]
Josephus gives an account of the line of march in which the army of
Vespasian entered Galilee. "1. The light-armed auxiliaries and bowmen,
advancing to reconnoiter. 2. A detachment of Roman heavy-armed troops,
horse and foot. 3. Ten men out of every century or company, carrying
their own equipments and the measures of the camp. 4. The baggage of
Vespasian and his legati guarded by a strong body of horse. 5. Vespasian
himself, attended by his horse-guard and a body of spearmen. 6. The
peculiar cavalry of the legion. 7. The artillery dragged by mules. 8.
The legati, tribunes, and praefects of cohorts, guarded by a body of
picked soldiers. 9. The standards, surrounding the eagle. 10. The
trumpeters. 11. The main body of the infantry, six abreast, accompanied
by a centurion, whose duty it was to see that the men kept their ranks.
12. The whole body of slaves attached to each legion, driving the mules
and beasts of burden loaded with the baggage. 13. Behind all the legions
followed the mercenaries. 14. The rear was brought up by a strong body
of cavalry and infantry." [Footnote: Josephus, _B. J._, iii.
6, Section 2.]
[Sidenote: Excitements of military life.]
[Sidenote: Smallness of the Roman armies.]
[Sidenote: How battles were decided.]
From what has come down to us of Roman military life, it appears to have
been full of excitement, toil, danger, and hardship. The pecuniary
rewards of the soldier were small. He was paid in glory. No profession
brought so much honor as the military. And from the undivided attention
of a great people to this profession, it was carried to all the
perfection which could be attained until the great invention of
gunpowder changed the art of war. It was not the number of men employed
in the armies which particularly arrests attention, but the spirit and
genius which animated them. The Romans loved war, but so reduced it to a
science that it required comparatively small armies to conquer the
world. Sulla defeated Mithridates with only thirty thousand men, while
his adversary marshaled against him over one hundred thousand; and Caesar
had only ten legions to effect the conquest of Gaul, and none of these
were of Italian origin. At the great decisive battle of Pharsalia, when
most of the available forces of the empire were employed, on one side or
the other, Pompey commanded a legionary army of forty-five thousand men;
and the cavalry amounted to seven thousand more, but among them were
included the flower of the Roman nobility. The auxiliary force has not
been computed, although it was probably numerous. Caesar had under him
only twenty-two thousand of legionaries and one thousand cavalry. But
every man in both armies was prepared to conquer or die. The forces were
posted on the open plain, and the battle was really a hand-to-hand
encounter, in which the soldiers, after hurling their lances, fought
with their swords chiefly. And when the cavalry of Pompey rushed upon
the legionaries of Caesar, no blows were wasted on the mailed panoply of
the mounted Romans, but were aimed at the face alone, as that alone was
unprotected. The battle was decided by the coolness, bravery, and
discipline of veterans, inspired by the genius of the greatest general
of antiquity. Less than one hundred thousand men, in all probability,
were engaged in one of the most memorable conflicts which the world has
seen.
[Sidenote: Gradual organization of military power.]
[Sidenote: Magnanimity of the early generals.]
Thus it was, by unparalleled heroism in war, and a uniform policy in
government, that Rome became the mistress of the world. The Roman
conquests have never been surpassed, for they were retained until the
empire fell. I wish that I could have dwelt on these conquests more in
detail, and presented more fully the brilliant achievements of
individuals. It took nearly two hundred years, after the expulsion of
the kings, to regain supremacy over the neighboring people, and another
century to conquer Italy. The Romans did not contend with regular armies
until they were brought in conflict with the king of Epirus and the
phalanx of the Greeks, "which improved their military tactics, and
introduced between the combatants those mutual regards of civilized
nations which teach men to honor their adversaries, to spare the
vanquished, and to lay aside wrath when the struggle is ended." In the
fifth century of her existence, the republic appears in peculiar
splendor. Military chieftains do not transcend their trusts; the
aristocracy are equally distinguished for exploits and virtues; the
magistrates maintain simplicity of manners and protect the rights of the
citizens; the citizens are self-sacrificing and ever ready to obey the
call to arms, laying aside great commands and retiring poor to private
stations. Marcus Valerius Corvus, after filling twenty-one curule
offices, returns to agricultural life; Marcus Curius Dentatus retains no
part of the rich spoils or the Sabines; Fabricius rejects the gold of
the Samnites and the presents of Pyrrhus. The most trustworthy are
elevated to places of dignity and power. Senators mingle in the ranks of
the legions, and eighty of them die on the field of Cannae. Discipline is
enforced to cruelty, and Manlius Torquatus punishes with death a
disobedient son. Soldiers who desert the field are decimated or branded
with dishonor. Faith is kept even with enemies, and Regulus returns a
voluntary prisoner to his deadly enemies.
[Sidenote: Results of different wars.]
After the consolidation of Roman power in Italy, it took one hundred and
fifty years more only to complete the conquest of the world--of Northern
Africa, Spain, Gaul, Illyria, Epirus, Greece, Macedonia, Asia Minor,
Pontus, Syria, Egypt, Bithynia, Cappadocia, Pergamus, and the islands of
the Mediterranean. The conquest of Carthage left Rome without a rival in
the Mediterranean, and promoted intercourse with the Greeks. The
Illyrian wars opened to the Romans the road to Greece and Asia, and
destroyed the pirates of the Adriatic. The invasion of Cisalpine Gaul,
now that part of Italy which is north of the Apennines, protected Italy
from the invasion of barbarians. The Macedonian War against Philip put
Greece under the protection of Rome, and that against Antiochus laid
Syria at her mercy; and when these kingdoms were reduced to provinces,
the way was opened to further conquests in the East, and the
Mediterranean became a Roman lake.
[Sidenote: Effect of Roman conquests on society.]
[Sidenote: Degeneracy of morals undermines military power.]
But these conquests introduce luxury, wealth, pride, and avarice, with
arts, refinements, and literature. These degrade while they elevate.
Civilization becomes the alternate triumph of good and evil influences,
and a doubtful boon. Successful war creates great generals, and founds
great families, increases slavery, and promotes inequalities. Demagogues
arise who seduce and deceive the people, and they enroll themselves
under the standards of their idols. Rome is governed by an oligarchy of
military chieftains, and has become more aristocratic and more
democratic at the same time. The people gain rights, only to yield to
the supremacy of demagogues. The Senate is humbled, but remains the
ascendant power, for generals compose it, and those who have held great
offices. Meanwhile the great generals struggle for supremacy. Civil wars
follow in the train of foreign conquests. Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Julius,
Antony, Augustus, sacrifice the state to their ambition. Good men
lament, and protest, and hide themselves. Cato, Cicero, Brutus, speak in
vain. Degenerate morals keep pace with civil contests. Rome revels in
the spoils of all kingdoms and countries, is intoxicated with power,
becomes cruel and tyrannical, and, after yielding up the lives of
citizens to fortunate generals, yields at last her liberties, and
imperial despotism begins its reign,--hard, immovable, resolute,--under
which genius is crushed, and life becomes epicurean, but under which
property and order are preserved. The regime is bad; but it is a change
for the better. War has produced its fruits. It has added empire, but
undermined prosperity; it has created a great military monarchy, but
destroyed liberty; it has brought wealth, but introduced inequalities;
it has filled the city with spoils, but sown the vices of self-interest.
The machinery is perfect, but life has fled. It is henceforth the labor
of emperors to keep together their vast possessions with this machinery,
which at last wears out, since there is neither genius to repair it nor
patriotism to work it. It lasts three hundred years, but is broken to
pieces by the Goths and Vandals.
* * * * *
The highest authority in relation to the construction of an army is
Polybius, who was contemporary with Scipio, at a period when Roman
discipline was most perfect. A fragment from his sixth book gives
considerable information. A chapter of Livy--the eighth--is also very
much prized. Salmasius and Lepsius have also written learned treatises.
Smith's Dictionary, which is full of details in every thing pertaining
to the weapons, the armor, the military engines, the rewards and
punishments of the soldiers, refers to Folard's _Commentaire_, to
_Memoires Militaires sur les Grecs et les Remains_, by Guischard,
and to the _Histoire des Campagnes d'Hannibal en Italie_, by
Vaudencourt. Tacitus, Sallust, Livy, Dion Cassius, Pliny, and Caesar
reveal incidentally much that we wish to know. Gibbon gives some
important facts in his first chapter. The subject of ancient machines is
treated by Folard's Commentary attached to his translation of Polybius.
Caesar's Commentaries give us, after all, the liveliest idea of the
military habits and tactics of the Romans. Josephus describes with great
vividness the siege of Jerusalem. The article on _Exercitus_, by
Prof. Ramsay, in Smith's Dictionary, is the fullest I have read
pertaining to the structure of a Roman army.
For the narrative of wars, the reader is referred to ordinary Roman
histories--to Livy and Caesar especially; to Niebuhr, Mommsen, Arnold,
and Liddell. See also Durny, _Hist. des Romains;_ Michelet,
_Hist. de Rom._ Napoleon's History of Caesar should be read,
admirable in style, and interesting in matter, although a sophistical
defense of usurpation.
CHAPTER II.
THE MATERIAL GRANDEUR AND GLORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
To the eye of an ancient traveler there must have been something very
grand and impressive in the external aspects of wealth and power which
the Roman Empire, in the period of its greatest glory, presented in
every city and province. It will therefore be my aim in this chapter to
present those objects of pride and strength which appealed to the senses
of an ordinary observer, and such as would first arrest his attention
were he to describe the wonders he beheld to those who were imperfectly
acquainted with them.
[Sidenote: Culmination of Roman greatness.]
It is generally admitted that Roman greatness culminated during the
reigns of the Antonines, about the middle of the second century of the
Christian era. At that period we perceive the highest triumphs of
material civilization and the proudest spirit of panegyric and self-
confidence. To the eye of contemporaries it seemed that Rome was
destined to be the mistress of the world forever.
[Sidenote: Extent of the empire.]
[Sidenote: Square miles.]
[Sidenote: Seas and rivers.]
[Sidenote: Boundaries.]
[Sidenote: Scandinavia.]
[Sidenote: Sarmatia.]
[Sidenote: Mountains.]
We naturally glance, in the first place, to the extent of that vast
empire which has had no parallel in ancient or modern times, and which
was erected on the ruins of all the powerful states of antiquity. It was
a most wonderful centralization of power, spreading its arms of hopeless
despotism from the Pillars of Hercules to the Caspian Sea; from the
Rhine and the Danube to the Euphrates and Tigris; from the forests of
Sarmatia to the deserts of Africa. The empire extended three thousand
miles from east to west, and two thousand from north to south. It
stretched over thirty-five degrees of latitude, and sixty-five of
longitude, and embraced within its limits nearly all the seas, lakes,
and gulfs which commerce explored. It contained 1,600,000 square miles,
for the most part cultivated, and populated by peoples in various stages
of civilization, some of whom were famous for arts and wealth, and could
boast of heroes and cities,--of a past history brilliant and impressive.
In nearly the centre of this great empire was Mediterranean Sea, which
was only, as it were, an inland lake, upon whose shores the great cities
of antiquity had flourished, and towards which the tide of Assyrian and
Persian conquests had rolled and then retreated forever. The great
rivers--the Nile, the Po, and the Danube--flowed into this basin and its
connecting seas, wafting the produce of distant provinces to the great
central city on the Tiber. The boundaries of the empire were great
oceans, deserts, and mountains, beyond which it was difficult to extend
or to retain conquests. On the west was the Atlantic Ocean, unknown and
unexplored--that mysterious expanse of waters which filled navigators
with awe and dread, and which was not destined to be crossed until the
stars should cease to be the only guide. On the northwest was the
undefined region of Scandinavia, into which the Roman arms never
penetrated, peopled by those barbarians who were to be the future
conquerors of Rome, and the creators of a new and more glorious
civilization,--those Germanic tribes which, under different names, had
substantially the same manners, customs, and language,--a race more
unconquerable and heroic than the Romans themselves, the future lords of
mediaeval Europe, the ancestors of the English, the French, the
Spaniards, and the Germans. On the northwest were the Sarmatians and
Scythians--Sclavonic tribes, able to conquer, but not to reconstruct;
savages repulsive and hideous even to the Goths themselves. On the east
lay the Parthian empire, separated from Roman territories by the
Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Armenian mountains. The Caucasian range
between the Euxine and the Caspian seas presented an insuperable
barrier, as did the deserts of Arabia to the Roman legions. The Atlas,
the African desert, and the cataracts of the Nile formed the southern
boundaries. The vulnerable part of the empire lay between the Danube and
Rhine, from which issued, in successive waves, the Germanic foes of
Rome. To protect the empire against their incursions, the Emperor Probus
constructed a wall, which, however, proved but a feeble defense.
[Sidenote: Provinces.]
[Sidenote: Results of successive conquests.]
[Sidenote: Vastness of the political power.]
[Sidenote: Empire universal.]
This immense empire was divided into thirty-six provinces, exclusive of
Italy, each of which was governed by a proconsul. The most important of
these were Spain, Gaul, Sicily, Achaia, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt.
Gaul was more extensive than modern France. Achaia included Greece and
the Ionian Islands. The empire embraced the modern states of England,
France, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Bavaria, Austria, Styria,
the Tyrol, Hungary, Egypt, Morocco, Algiers, and the empire of Turkey
both in Europe and Asia. It took the Romans nearly five hundred years to
subdue the various states of Italy, the complete subjugation of which
took place with the fall of Tarentum, a Grecian city, which introduced
Grecian arts and literature. Sicily, the granary of Rome, was the next
conquest, the fruit of the first Punic War. The second Punic War added
to the empire Sardinia, Corsica, and the two Spanish provinces of Baetica
and Tarraconensis--about two thirds of the peninsula--fertile in the
productions of the earth, and enriched by mines of silver and gold, and
peopled by Iberians and Celts. The rich province of Illyricum was added
to the empire about one hundred and eighty years before Christ. Before
the battle of Actium, the empire extended over Achaia, Asia Minor,
Macedonia, Narbonensic Gaul, Cyrenaica, Crete, Cilicia, Cyprus,
Bithynia, Syria, Aquitania, Belgic and Celtic Gaul. Augustus added
Egypt, Lusitania, Numidia, Galatia, the Maritime Alps, Noricum,
Vindelicia, Rhaetia, Pannonia, and Mosia. Tiberius increased the empire
by the addition of Cappadocia. Claudius incorporated the two
Mauritanias, Lycia, Judaea, Thrace, and Britain. Nero added Pontus. These
various and extensive countries had every variety of climate and
productions, and boasted of celebrated cities. They composed most of the
provinces known to the ancients west of the Euphrates, and together
formed an empire in comparison with which the Assyrian and Egyptian
monarchies, and even the Grecian conquests, were vastly inferior. The
Saracenic conquests in the Middle Ages were not to be compared with
these, and the great empires of Charlemagne and Napoleon could be
included in less than half the limits. What a proud position it was to
be a Roman emperor, whose will was the law over the whole civilized
world! Well may the Roman empire be called universal, since it
controlled all the nations of the earth known to the Greeks. It was the
vastest centralization of power which this world has seen, or probably
will ever see, extending nearly over the whole of Europe, and the finest
parts of Asia and Africa. We are amazed that a single city of Italy
could thus occupy with her armies and reign supremely over so many
diverse countries and nations, speaking different languages, and having
different religions and customs. And when we contemplate this great
fact, we cannot but feel that it was a providential event, designed for
some grand benefit to the human race. That benefit was the preparation
for the reception of a new and universal religion. No system of "balance
of power," no political or military combinations, no hostilities could
prevent the absorption of the civilized world in the empire of the
Caesars.
[Sidenote: The Mediterranean the centre of the empire.]
If we more particularly examine this great empire, we observe that it
was substantially composed of the various countries and kingdoms which
bordered on the Mediterranean, and those other seas with which it was
connected. Roman power was scarcely felt on the shores of the Baltic, or
the eastern coasts of the Euxine, or on the Arabian and Persian gulfs.
The central part of the empire was Italy, the province which was first
conquered, and most densely populated. It was the richest in art, in
cities, in commerce, and in agriculture.
[Sidenote: Italy.]
[Sidenote: Natural productions.]
[Sidenote: Population.]
[Sidenote: Cities.]
[Sidenote: Italian Cities.]
[Sidenote: Memorable cities.]
Italy itself was no inconsiderable state--a beautiful peninsula,
extending six hundred and sixty geographical miles from the foot of the
Alps to the promontory of Leucopetra. Its greatest breadth is about one
hundred and thirty miles. It was always renowned for beauty and
fertility. Its climate on the south was that of Greece, and on the north
that of the south of France. The lofty range of the Apennines extended
through its entire length, while the waters of the Mediterranean and the
Adriatic tempered and varied its climate. Its natural advantages were
unequaled, with a soil favorable to agriculture, to the culture of
fruits, and the rearing of flocks. Its magnificent forests furnished
timber for ships; its rich pastures fed innumerable sheep, goats,
cattle, and horses; its olive groves were nowhere surpassed; its
mountains contained nearly every kind of metals; its coasts furnished a
great variety of fish; while its mineral springs supplied luxurious
baths. There were no extremes of heat and cold; the sky was clear and
serene; the face of the country was a garden. It was a paradise to the
eye of Virgil and Varro, the most favored of all the countries of
antiquity in those productions which sustain the life of man or beast.
The plains of Lombardy furnished maize and rice; oranges grew to great
perfection on the Ligurian coast; aloes and cactuses clothed the rocks
of the southern provinces; while the olive and the grape abounded in
every section. The mineral wealth of Italy was extolled by the ancient
writers, and the fisheries were as remarkable as agricultural products.
The population numbered over four millions who were free, and could
furnish seven hundred thousand foot and seventy thousand horse for the
armies of the republic, if they were all called into requisition. The
whole country was dotted with beautiful villas and farms, as well as
villages and cities. It contained twelve hundred cities or large towns
which had municipal privileges. Mediolanum, now Milan, the chief city in
Cisalpine Gaul, in the time of Ambrose, was adorned with palaces and
temples and baths. It was so populous that it lost it is said at one
time three hundred thousand male citizens in the inroads of the Goths.
It was surrounded with a double range of walls, and the houses were
elegantly built. It was also celebrated as the seat of learning and
culture. Verona had an amphitheatre of marble, whose remains are among
the most striking monuments of antiquity, capable of seating twenty-two
thousand people. Ravenna, near the mouth of the Padus (Po), built on
piles, was a great naval depot, and had an artificial harbor capable of
containing two hundred and fifty ships of war, and was the seat of
government after the fall of the empire. Padua counted among its
inhabitants five hundred Roman knights, and was able to send twenty
thousand men into the field. Aquileia was a great emporium of the trade
in wine, oil, and salted provisions. Pola had a magnificent
amphitheatre. Luna, now Spezzia, was famous for white marbles, and for
cheeses which often weighed a thousand pounds. Arutium, now Avezzo, an
Etrurian city, was celebrated for its potteries, many beautiful
specimens of which now ornament the galleries of Florence. Cortona had
walls of massive thickness, which can be traced to the Pelasgians.
Clusium, the capital of Porsenna, had a splendid mausoleum. Volsinii
boasted of two thousand statues. Veii had been the rival of Rome. In
Umbria, we may mention Sarsina, the birthplace of Plautus; Mevania, the
birthplace of Propertius; and Sentinum, famous for the self-devotion of
Decius. In Picenum were Ancona, celebrated for its purple dye; and
Picenum, surrounded by walls and inaccessible heights, memorable for a
siege against Pompey. Of the Sabine cities were Antemnae, more ancient
than Rome; Nomentum, famous for wine; Regillum, the birthplace of Appius
Claudius, the founder of the great Claudian family; Reate, famous for
asses, which sometimes brought the enormous price of 60,000 sesterces,
about $2320; Cutiliae, celebrated for its mineral waters; and Alba, in
which captives of rank were secluded. In Latium were Ostia, the seaport
of Rome; Laurentum, the capital of Latinus; Lavinium, fabled to have
been founded by Aeneas; Lanuvium, the birthplace of Roscius and the
Antonines; Alba Longa, founded four hundred years before Rome; Tusculum,
where Cicero had his villa; Tibur, whose temple was famous through
Italy; Praeneste, now Palestrio, remarkable for its citadel and its
temple of Fortune; Antium, to which Coriolanus retired after his
banishment, a favorite residence of Augustus, and the birthplace of
Nero, celebrated also for a magnificent temple, amid whose ruins was
found the Apollo Belvidere; Forum Appii, mentioned by St. Paul, from
which travelers on the Appian Way embarked on a canal; Arpinum, the
birthplace of Cicero; Aquium, where Juvenal and Thomas Aquinas were
born, famous for a purple dye; Formiae, a favorite residence of Cicero.
In Campania were Cumae, the abode of the Sibyl; Misenum, a great naval
station; Baiae, celebrated for its spas and villas; Puteoli, famous for
sulphur springs; Neapolis, the abode of literary idlers; Herculaneum and
Pompeii, destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius; Capua, the capital of
Campania, and inferior to Rome alone; and Salernum, a great military
stronghold. In Samnium were Bovianum, a very opulent city; Beneventum,
and Sepinum. In Apulia were Sarinum; Venusia, the birthplace of Horace;
Cannae, memorable for the great victory of Hannibal; Brundusium, a city
of great antiquity on the Adriatic, and one of the great naval stations
of the Romans; and Tarentum, the rival of Brundusium, a great military
stronghold. In Lucania were Metapontum, at one time the residence of
Pythagoras; Heraclea, the seat of a general council; Sybaris, which once
was the mistress of twenty-five dependent cities, fifty stadia in
circumference, and capable of sending an army of three hundred
thousand [Footnote: Anthon, _Geog_. _Diet_.] men into the field,
--a city so prosperous and luxurious that the very name of
Sybarite was synonymous with voluptuousness.
[Sidenote: Pompeii.]
Such were among the principal cities of Italy. More than two hundred and
fifty towns or cities are historical, and were famous for the residence
of great men, or for wines, wool, dyes, and various articles of luxury.
The ruins of Pompeii prove it to have been a city of great luxury and
elegance. The excavations, which have brought to light the wonders of
this buried city, attest a very high material civilization; yet it was
only a second-rate provincial town, of which not much is commemorated in
history. It was simply a resort for Roman nobles who had villas in its
neighborhood. It was surrounded with a wall, and was built with great
regularity. Its streets were paved, and it had its forum, its
amphitheatre, its theatre, its temples, its basilicas, its baths, its
arches, and its monuments. The basilica was two hundred and twenty feet
in length by eighty feet in width, the roof of which was supported by
twenty-eight Ionic columns. The temple of Venus was profusely ornamented
with paintings. One of the theatres was built of marble, and was capable
of seating five thousand spectators, and the amphitheatre would seat ten
thousand.
[Sidenote: Sicily and Sardinia.]
[Sidenote: Richness of Sicily.]
[Sidenote: Syracuse.]
But Italy, so grand in cities, so varied in architectural wonders, so
fertile in soil, so salubrious in climate, so rich in minerals, so
prolific in fruits and vegetables and canals, was only a small part of
the empire of the Caesars. The Punic wars, undertaken soon after the
expulsion of Pyrrhus, resulted in the acquisition of Sicily, Sardinia,
and Africa, from which the Romans were supplied with inexhaustible
quantities of grain, and in the creation of a great naval power. Sicily,
the largest island of the Mediterranean, was not inferior to Italy in
any kind of produce. It was, it was supposed, the native country of
wheat. Its honey, its saffron, its sheep, its horses, were all equally
celebrated. The island, intersected by numerous streamy and beautiful
valleys, was admirably adapted for the growth of the vine and olive. Its
colonies, founded by Phoenicians and Greeks, cultivated all the arts of
civilization. Long before the Roman conquest, its cities were famous for
learning and art. Syracuse, a Corinthian colony, as old as Rome, had a
fortress a mile in length and half a mile in breadth; a temple of Diana
whose doors were celebrated throughout the Grecian world, and a theatre
which could accommodate twenty-four thousand people. No city in Greece,
except Athens, can produce structures which vie with those of which the
remains are still visible at Agrigentum, Selinus, and Segesta.
[Sidenote: Carthage.]
Africa was one of the great provinces of the empire. It virtually
embraced the Carthaginian empire, and was settled chiefly by the
Phoenicians. Its capital, Carthage, so long the rival of Rome, was
probably the greatest maritime mart of antiquity, next to Alexandria.
Though it had been completely destroyed, yet it became under the
emperors no inconsiderable city, and was the capital of a belt of
territory extending one hundred and sixty miles, from the Pillars of
Hercules to the bottom of the great Syrtis, unrivaled for fertility. Its
population once numbered seven hundred thousand inhabitants, and ruled
over three hundred dependent cities, and could boast of a navy carrying
one hundred and fifty thousand men.
[Sidenote: The richness of Greece.]
Greece, included under the province called Achaia, was the next great
conquest of the Romans, the fruit of the Macedonian wars. Though small
in territory, it was the richest of all the Roman acquisitions in its
results on civilization. The great peninsula to which Hellas belonged
extended from the Euxine to the Adriatic; but Hellas proper was not more
than two hundred and fifty miles in length and one hundred and eighty in
breadth. Attica contained but seven hundred and twenty square miles, yet
how great in associations, deeds, and heroes! When added to the empire,
it was rich in every element of civilization, in cities, in arts, in
literature, in commerce, in manufactures, in domestic animals, in
fruits, in cereals. It was a mountainous country, but had an extensive
sea-coast, and a flourishing trade with all the countries of the world.
Almost all the Grecian states had easy access to the sea, and each of
the great cities were isolated from the rest by lofty mountains
difficult to surmount. But the Roman arms and the Roman laws penetrated
to the most inaccessible retreats.
[Sidenote: Her monuments and arts and schools.]
In her political degradation, Greece still was the most interesting
country on the globe. Every city had a history; every monument betokened
a triumph of human genius. On her classic soil the great miracles of
civilization had been wrought--the immortal teacher of all the nations
in art, in literature, in philosophy, in war itself. Every cultivated
Roman traveled in Greece; every great noble sent his sons to be educated
in her schools; every great general sent to the banks of the Tiber some
memento of her former greatness, some wonder of artistic skill. The
wonders of Rome herself were but spoliations of this glorious land.
[Sidenote: The glory of Athens.]
[Sidenote: Temples.]
First in interest and glory was Athens, which was never more splendid
than in the time of the Antonines. The great works of the age of
Pericles still retained their original beauty and freshness; and the
city of Minerva still remained the centre of all that was elegant or
learned of the ancient civilization, and was held everywhere in the
profoundest veneration. There still flourished the various schools of
philosophy, to which young men from all parts of the empire resorted to
be educated--the Oxford and the Edinburgh, the Berlin and Paris of the
ancient world. In spite of successive conquests, there still towered
upon the Acropolis the temple of Minerva, that famous Parthenon whose
architectural wonders have never been even equaled, built of Pentelic
marble, and adorned with the finest sculptures of Pheidias--a Doric
temple, whose severe simplicity and matchless beauty have been the
wonder of all ages--often imitated, never equaled, majestic even in its
ruins. Side by side, on that lofty fortification in the centre of the
city, on its western slope, was the Propylaea, one of the masterpieces of
ancient art, also of Pentelic marble, costing 2000 talents, or
$23,000,000[Footnote: Smith, Geog. Diet.] when gold was worth more than
twenty times what it is now. Then there was the Erechtheum, the temple
of Athena Polias, the most revered of all the sanctuaries of Athens,
with its three Ionic porticos, and its frieze of black marble, with its
olive statue of the goddess, and its sacred inclosures. The great temple
of Zeus Olympius, commenced by Peisistratus and completed by Hadrian,
the largest ever dedicated to the deity among the Greeks, was four
stadia in circumference. It was surrounded by a peristyle which had ten
columns in front and twenty on its sides. The peristyle being double on
the sides, and having a triple range at either end, besides three
columns between the antae at each end of the cella, consisted altogether
of one hundred and twenty columns. These were sixty feet high and six
and a half feet in diameter, the largest which now remain of ancient
architecture in marble, or which still exist in Europe. This vast temple
was three hundred and fifty-four feet in length and one hundred and
seventy-one in breadth, and was full of statues. The ruins of this
temple, of which sixteen columns are still standing, are among the most
imposing in the world, and indicate a grandeur and majesty in the city
of which we can scarcely conceive. The theatre of Bacchus, the most
beautiful in the ancient world, would seat thirty thousand spectators. I
need not mention the various architectural monuments of this classic
city, each of which was a study--the Temple of Theseus, the Agora, the
Odeum, the Areopagus, the Gymnasium of Hadrian, the Lyceum, and other
buildings of singular beauty, built mostly of marble, and adorned with
paintings and statues. What work of genius in the whole world more
interesting than the ivory and gold statue of Athena in the Parthenon,
the masterpiece of Pheidias, forty feet high, the gold of which weighed
forty talents,--a model for all succeeding sculptors, and to see which
travelers came from all parts of Greece? Athens, a city of five hundred
thousand inhabitants, was filled with wonders of art, which time has not
yet fully destroyed.
[Sidenote: Corinth.]
[Sidenote: The wonders of Corinth.]
[Sidenote: Its luxury.]
Corinth was another grand centre of Grecian civilization, richer and
more luxurious than Athens. When taken by the Romans she possessed the
most valuable pictures in Greece. Among them was one of Dionysus by
Aristides for which Attalus offered 600,000 sesterces. Rich commercial
cities have ever been patrons of the fine arts. These they can
appreciate better than poetry or philosophy. The Corinthians invented
the most elaborate style of architecture known to antiquity, and which
was generally adopted at Rome. They were also patrons of statuary,
especially of works in bronze, for which the city was celebrated. The
Corinthian, vessels of terra cotta were the finest in Greece. All
articles of elegant luxury were manufactured here, especially elaborate
tables, chests, and sideboards. If there had been a great exhibition in
Rome, the works of the Corinthians would have been the most admired, and
would have suited the taste of the luxurious senators, among whom
literature and the higher developments of art were unappreciated. There
was no literature in Corinth after Periander, and among the illustrious
writers of Greece not a single Corinthian appeared. Nor did it ever
produce an orator. What could be expected of a city whose patron goddess
was Aphrodite! But Lais was honored in the city, and rich merchants
frequented her house. The city was most famous for courtesans, and
female slaves, and extravagant luxury. It was like Antioch and Tyre and
Carthage. Corinth was probably the richest city in Greece, and one of
the largest. It had, it is said, four hundred and sixty thousand slaves.
Its streets, three miles in length, were adorned with costly edifices.
Its fortress was one thousand eight hundred and eighty-six feet above
the sea and very strong.
[Sidenote: Sparta.]
Sparta, of historic fame, was not magnificent except in public
buildings. It had a famous portico, the columns of which, of white
marble, represented the illustrious persons among the vanquished Medes.
[Sidenote: Olympia.]
Olympia, the holy city, was celebrated for its temple and its
consecrated garden, where stood some of the great masterpieces of
ancient, art, among them the famous statue of Jupiter, the work of
Pheidias,--an impersonation of majesty and power,--a work which
furnished models from which Michael Angelo drew his inspiration.
[Sidenote: Delphi.]
Delphi, another consecrated city, was enriched with the contributions of
all Greece, and was the seat of the Dorian religion. So rich were the
shrines of its oracle that Nero carried away from it five hundred
statues of bronze at one time.
[Sidenote: Greece enriches Rome.]
Such was Greece, every city of which was famous for art, or literature,
or commerce, or manufacture, or for deeds which live in history. It had
established a great empire in the East, but fell, like all other
conquering nations, from the luxury which conquest engendered. It was no
longer able to protect itself. Its phalanx, which resisted the shock of
the Persian hosts, yielded to the all-conquering legion. When Aemilius
Paulus marched up the Via Sacra with the spoils of the Macedonian
kingdom in his grand and brilliant triumph, he was preceded by two
hundred and fifty wagons containing pictures and statues, and three
thousand men, each carrying a vase of silver coin, and four hundred more
bearing crowns of gold. Yet this was but the commencement of the plunder
of Greece.
[Sidenote: Islands colonized by Greeks.]
And not merely Greece herself, but the islands which she had colonized
formed no slight addition to the glories of the empire. Rhodes was the
seat of a famous school for sculpture and painting, from which issued
the Laocoon and the Farnese Bull. It contained three thousand statues
and one hundred and six colossi, among them the famous statue of the
sun, one hundred and five feet high, one of the seven wonders of the
world, containing 3000 talents--more than 3,000,000 dollars. Its school
of rhetoric was so celebrated that Cicero resorted to it to perfect
himself in oratory.
[Sidenote: Asia Minor.]
[Sidenote: Its extent.]
[Sidenote: Cities.]
[Sidenote: Antioch.]
If we pass from Greece to Asia Minor and Syria, with their dependent
provinces, all of which were added to the empire by the victories of
Sulla and Pompey, we are still more impressed with the extent of the
Roman rule. Asia Minor, a vast peninsula between the Mediterranean,
Aegean, and Euxine seas, included several of the old monarchies of the
world. It extended from Ilium on the west to the banks of the Euphrates,
from the northern parts of Bithynia and Pontus to Syria and Cilicia,
nine hundred miles from east to west, and nearly three hundred from
north to south. It was the scene of some of the grandest conquests of
the oriental world, Babylonian, Persian, and Grecian. Syria embraced all
countries from the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean to the Arabian
deserts. No conquests of the Romans were attended with more eclat than
the subjection of these wealthy and populous sections of the oriental
world; and they introduced a boundless wealth and luxury into Italy. But
in spite of the sack of cities and the devastations of armies, the old
monarchy of the Seleucidae remained rich and grand. Both Syria and Asia
Minor could boast of large and flourishing cities, as well as every kind
of luxury and art. Antioch was the third city in the empire, the capital
of the Greek kings of Syria, and like Alexandria a monument of the
Macedonian age. It was built on a regular and magnificent plan, and
abounded in temples and monuments. Its most striking feature was a
street four miles in length, perfectly level, with double colonnades
through its whole length, built by Antiochus Epiphanes. In magnitude the
city was not much inferior to Paris at the present day, and covered more
land than Rome. It had its baths, its theatres and amphitheatres, its
fora, its museums, its aqueducts, its temples, and its palaces. It was
the most luxurious of all the cities of the East, and had a population
of three hundred thousand who were free. In the latter clays of the
empire it was famous as the scene of the labors of Chrysostom.
[Sidenote: Ephesus.]
Ephesus, one of the twelve of the Ionian cities in Asia, was the glory
of Lydia,--a sacred city of which the temple of Diana was the greatest
ornament. This famous temple was four times as large as the Parthenon,
and covered as much ground as Cologne Cathedral, and was two hundred and
twenty years in building. It had one hundred and twenty-eight columns
sixty feet high, of which thirty-six were carved, each contributed by a
king--the largest of all the Grecian temples, and probably the most
splendid. It was a city of great trade and wealth. Its theatre was the
largest in the world, six hundred and sixty feet in diameter, [Footnote:
Muller, _Anc. Art._] and capable of holding sixty thousand
spectators. Ephesus gave birth to Apelles the painter, and was the
metropolis of five hundred cities.
[Sidenote: Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: The Temple.]
[Sidenote: The Acropolis.]
Jerusalem, so dear to Christians as the most sacred spot on earth,
inclosed by lofty walls and towers, not so beautiful or populous as in
the days of Solomon and David, was, before its destruction by Titus, one
of the finest cities of the East. Its royal palace, surrounded by a wall
thirty cubits high, with decorated towers at equal intervals, contained
enormous banqueting halls and chambers most profusely ornamented; and
this palace, magnificent beyond description, was connected with porticos
and gardens filled with statues and reservoirs of water. It occupied a
larger space than the present fortress, from the western edge of Mount
Zion to the present garden of the Armenian Convent. The Temple, so
famous, was small compared with the great wonders of Grecian
architecture, being only about one hundred and fifty feet by seventy;
but its front was covered with plates of gold, and some of the stones of
which it was composed were more than sixty feet in length and nine in
width. Its magnificence consisted in its decorations and the vast
quantity of gold and precious woods used in its varied ornaments, and
vessels of gold, so as to make it one of the most costly edifices ever
erected to the worship of God. The Acropolis, which was the fortress of
the Temple, combined the strength of a castle with the magnificence of a
palace, and was like a city in extent, towering seventy cubits above the
elevated rock upon which it was built. So strongly fortified was
Jerusalem, even in its latter days, that it took Titus five months, with
an army of one hundred thousand men, to subdue it; one of the most
memorable sieges on record. It probably would have held out against the
whole power of Rome, had not famine done more than battering rams.
[Sidenote: Damascus and other cities.]
Many other interesting cities might be mentioned both in Syria and Asia
Minor, which were centres of trade, or seats of philosophy, or homes of
art. Tarsus in Cilicia was a great mercantile city, to which strangers
from all parts resorted. Damascus, the oldest city in the world, and the
old capital of Syria, was both beautiful and rich. Laodicea was famous
for tapestries, Hierapolis for its iron wares, Cybara for its dyes,
Sardis for its wines, Smyrna for its beautiful monuments, Delos for its
slave-trade, Gyrene for its horses, Paphos for its temple of Venus, in
which were a hundred altars. Seleucia, on the Tigris, had a population
of four hundred thousand. Caesarea, founded by Herod the Great, and the
principal seat of government to the Roman prefects, had a harbor equal
in size to the renowned Piraeus, and was secured against the southwest
winds by a mole of such massive construction that the blocks of stone,
sunk under the water, were fifty feet in length and eighteen in width,
and nine in thickness. [Footnote: Josephus, _Ant_., xv.] The city
itself was constructed of polished stone, with an agora, a theatre, a
circus, a praetorium, and a temple to Caesar. Tyre, which had resisted for
seven months the armies of Alexander, remained to the fall of the empire
a great emporium of trade. It monopolized the manufacture of imperial
purple. Sidon was equally celebrated for its glass and embroidered
robes. The Sidonians cast glass mirrors, and imitated precious stones.
But the glory of both Tyre and Sidon was in ships, which visited all the
coasts of the Mediterranean, and even penetrated to Britain and India.
[Sidenote: Egypt.]
[Sidenote: Its ancient grandeur.]
[Sidenote: Glories of Egypt.]
[Sidenote: Thebes.]
But greater than Tyre, or Antioch, or any eastern city, was Alexandria,
the capital of Egypt, which was one of the last provinces added to the
empire. Egypt alone was a mighty monarchy--the oldest which history
commemorates, august in records and memories. What pride, what pomp,
what glory are associated with the land of the Pharaohs, with its mighty
river reaching to the centre of a great continent, flowing thousands of
miles to the sea, irrigating and enriching the most fertile valley of
the world! What noble and populous cities arose upon its banks three
thousand years before Roman power was felt! What enduring monuments
remain of a its ancient very ancient yet extinct civilization! What
successive races of conquerors have triumphed in the granite palaces of
Thebes and Memphis! Old, sacred, rich, populous, and learned, Egypt
becomes a province of the Roman empire. The sceptre of three hundred
kings passes from Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, to Augustus
Caesar, the conqueror at Actium; and six millions of different races,
once the most civilized on the earth, are amalgamated with the other
races and peoples which compose the universal monarchy. At one time the
military force of Egypt is said to have amounted to seven hundred
thousand men, in the period of its greatest prosperity. The annual
revenues of this state under the Ptolemies amounted to about 17,000,000
dollars in gold and silver, beside the produce of the earth. A single
feast cost Philadelphus more than half a million of pounds sterling, and
he had accumulated treasures to the amount of 740,000 talents, or about
860,000,000 dollars. [Footnote: Napoleon, _Life of Caesar_.] What
European monarch ever possessed such a sum? The kings of Egypt were
richer in the gold and silver they could command than Louis XIV., in the
proudest hour of his life. What monarchs ever reigned with more absolute
power than the kings of this ancient seat of learning and art! The
foundation of Thebes goes back to the mythical period of Egyptian
history, and it covered as much ground as Rome or Paris, equally the
centre of religion, of trade, of manufactures, and of government,--the
sacerdotal capital of all who worshiped Ammon from Pelusium to Axume,
from the Red Sea to the Oases of Libya. The palaces of Thebes, though
ruins two thousand years ago as they are ruins now, were the largest and
probably the most magnificent ever erected by the hand of man. What must
be thought of a palace whose central hall was eighty feet in height,
three hundred and twenty-five feet in length, and one hundred and
seventy-nine in breadth; the roof of which was supported by one hundred
and thirty-four columns, eleven feet in diameter and seventy-six feet in
height, with their pedestals; and where the cornices of the finest
marble were inlaid with ivory moldings or sheathed with beaten gold! But
I do not now refer to the glories of Egypt under Sesostris or Rameses,
but to what they were when Alexandria was the capital of the country,--
what it was under the Roman domination.
[Sidenote: Extent and population of Alexandria.]
[Sidenote: Library.]
[Sidenote: Public buildings.]
[Sidenote: Commerce.]
The ground-plan of this great city was traced by Alexander himself, but
it was not completed until the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. It
continued to receive embellishments from nearly every monarch of the
Lagian line. Its circumference was about fifteen miles; the streets were
regular, and crossed one another at right angles, and were wide enough
to admit both carriages and foot passengers. The harbor was large enough
to admit the largest fleet ever constructed; its walls and gates were
constructed with all the skill and strength known to antiquity; its
population numbered six hundred thousand, and all nations were
represented in its crowded streets. The wealth of the city may be
inferred from the fact that in one year 6250 talents, or more than
6,000,000 dollars, were paid to the public treasury for port dues. The
library was the largest in the world, and numbered over seven hundred
thousand volumes, and this was connected with a museum, a menagerie, a
botanical garden, and various halls for lectures, altogether forming the
most famous university in the empire. The inhabitants were chiefly
Greek, and had all their cultivated tastes and mercantile thrift. In a
commercial point of view it was the most important in the empire, and
its ships whitened every sea. Alexandria was of remarkable beauty, and
was called by Ammianus _Vertex omnium civitatum_. Its dry
atmosphere preserved for centuries the sharp outlines and gay colors of
its buildings, some of which were remarkably imposing. The Mausoleum of
the Ptolemies, the High Court of justice, the Stadium, the Gymnasium,
the Palaestra, the Amphitheatre, and the Temple of the Caesars, all called
out the admiration of travelers. The Emporium far surpassed the quays of
the Tiber. But the most imposing structure was the Exchange, to which,
for eight hundred years, all the nations sent their representatives. It
was commerce which made Alexandria so rich and beautiful, for which it
was more distinguished than both Tyre and Carthage. Unlike most
commercial cities, it was intellectual, and its schools of poetry,
mathematics, medicine, philosophy, and theology were more renowned than
even those of Athens during the third and fourth centuries. For wealth,
population, intelligence, and art, it was the second city of the world.
It would be a great capital in these times.
[Sidenote: Power of the empire seated in the western provinces.]
Such were Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and Africa, all of which had
been great empires, but all of which were incorporated with the Roman in
less than two hundred years after Italy succumbed to the fortunate city
on the Tiber. But these old and venerated monarchies, with their
dependent states and provinces, though imposing and majestic, did not
compose the vital part of the empire of the Caesars. It was those new
provinces which were rescued from the barbarians, chiefly Celts, where
the life of the empire centred. It was Spain, Gaul, Britain, and
Illyricum, countries which now compose the most powerful European
monarchies, which the more truly show the strength of the Roman world.
And these countries were added last, and were not fully incorporated
with the empire until imperial power had culminated in the Antonines.
From a comparative wilderness, Spain and Gaul especially became populous
and flourishing states, dotted with cities, and instructed in all the
departments of Roman art and science. From these provinces the armies
were recruited, the schools were filled, and even the great generals and
emperors were furnished. These provinces embraced nearly the whole of
modern Europe.
[Sidenote: Spain.]
[Sidenote: Its provinces.]
[Sidenote: Productions.]
[Sidenote: Its towns and cities.]
[Sidenote: Its commercial centres.]
Spain had been added to the empire after the destruction of Carthage,
but only after a bitter and protracted warfare. It was completed by the
reduction of Numantia, a city of the Celtiberians in the valley of the
Douro, and its siege is more famous than that of Carthage, having defied
for a long time the whole power of the empire, as Tyre did Alexander,
and Jerusalem the armies of Titus. It yielded to the genius of Scipio,
the conqueror of Africa, as La Rochelle, in later times, fell before
Richelieu, but not until famine had done its work. The civilization of
Spain was rapid after the fall of Numantia, and in the time of the
Antonines was one of the richest and most prized of the Roman provinces.
It embraced the whole peninsula, from the Pillars of Hercules to the
Pyrenees; and the warlike nations who composed it became completely
Latinized. It was divided into three provinces--Boetica, Lusitania, and
Tarraconensis--all governed by praetors, the last of whom had consular
power, and resided in Carthago Nova, on the Mediterranean. Under
Constantine, Spain, with its islands, was divided into seven provinces,
and stood out from the rest of the empire like a round bastion tower
from the walls of an old fortified town. This magnificent possession,
extending four hundred and sixty miles from north to south, and five
hundred and seventy from east to west, including, with the Balearic
Isles, 171,300 square miles, with a rich and fertile soil and
inexhaustible mineral resources, was worth more to the Romans than all
the conquests of Pompey and Sulla, since it furnished men for the
armies, and materials for a new civilization. It furnished corn, oil,
wine, fruits, pasturage, metals of all kinds, and precious stones.
Boetica was famed for its harvests, Lusitania for its flocks,
Tarraconensis for its timber, and the fields around Carthago Nova for
materials of which cordage was made. But the great value of the
peninsula to the eyes of the Romans was in its rich mines of gold,
silver, and other metals. The bulk of the population was Iberian. The
Celtic element was the next most prominent. There were six hundred and
ninety-three towns and cities in which justice was administered. New
Carthage, on the Mediterranean, had a magnificent harbor, was strongly
fortified, and was twenty stadia in circumference, was a great emporium
of trade, and was in the near vicinity of the richest silver mines of
Spain, which employed forty thousand men. Gades (New Cadiz), a
Phoenician colony, on the Atlantic Ocean, was another commercial centre,
and numbered five hundred Equites among the population, and was
immensely rich. Corduba, on the Boetis (Guadalquivir), the capital of
Boetica, was a populous city before the Roman conquest, and was second
only to Gades as a commercial mart. It was the birthplace of Seneca and
Lucan.
[Sidenote: Richness of Gaul.]
[Sidenote: Population and cities.]
[Sidenote: Splendor of Gaulish cities.]
Gaul, which was the first of Caesar's most brilliant conquests, and which
took him ten years to accomplish, was a still more extensive province.
It was inhabited chiefly by Celtic tribes, who, uniting with Germanic
nations, made a most obstinate defense. When incorporated with the
empire, Gaul became rapidly civilized. It was a splendid country,
extending from the Pyrenees to the Rhine, with a sea-coast of more than
six hundred miles, and separated from Italy by the Alps, having 200,000
square miles. Great rivers, as in Spain, favored an extensive commerce
with the interior, and on their banks were populous and beautiful
cities. Its large coast on both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic gave
it a communication with all the world. It produced corn, oil, and wine,
those great staples, in great abundance. It had a beautiful climate, and
a healthy and hardy population, warlike, courageous, and generous. Gaul
was a populous country even in Caesar's time, and possessed twelve
hundred towns and cities, some of which were of great importance.
Burdigala, now Bordeaux, the chief city of Aquitania, on the Garonne,
was famous for its schools of rhetoric and grammar. Massolia
(Marseilles), before the Punic wars was a strong fortified city, and was
largely engaged in commerce. Vienne, a city of the Allobroges, was
inclosed with lofty walls, and had an amphitheatre whose long diameter
was five hundred feet, and the aqueducts supplied the city with water.
Lugdunum (Lyons) on the Rhone, was a place of great trade, and was
filled with temples, theatres, palaces, and aqueducts. Nemausus (NOEmes)
had subject to it twenty-four villages, and from the monuments which
remain, must have been a city of considerable importance. Its
amphitheatre would seat seventeen thousand people; and its aqueduct
constructed of three successive tiers of arches, one hundred and fifty-
five feet high, eight hundred and seventy feet long, and fifty feet
wide, is still one of the finest monuments of antiquity, built of stone
without cement. It is still solid and strong, and gives us a vivid
conception of the magnificence of Roman masonry. Narbo (Narbonne) was
another commercial centre, adorned with public buildings which called
forth the admiration of ancient travelers. The modern cities of Treves,
Boulogne, Rheims, Chalons, Cologne, Metz, Dijon, Sens, Orleans,
Poictiers, Clermont, Rouen, Paris, Basil, Geneva, were all considerable
places under the Roman rule, and some were of great antiquity.
[Sidenote: Illyricum.]
Illyricum is not famous in Roman history, but was a very considerable
province, equal to the whole Austrian empire in our times, and was as
completely reclaimed from barbarism as Gaul or Spain. Both Jerome and
Diocletian were born in a little Dalmatian town.
[Sidenote: Cultivated face of nature.]
[Sidenote: Agricultural wealth.]
Nothing could surpass the countries which bordered on the Mediterranean
in all those things which give material prosperity. They were salubrious
in climate, fertile in soil, cultivated like a garden, abounding in
nearly all the fruits, vegetables, and grains now known to civilization.
The beautiful face of nature was the subject of universal panegyric to
the fall of the empire. There were no destructive wars. All the various
provinces were controlled by the central power which emanated from Rome.
There was scope for commerce, and all kinds of manufacturing skill.
Italy, Sicily, and Egypt were especially fertile. The latter country
furnished corn in countless quantities for the Roman market. Italy could
boast of fifty kinds of wine, and was covered with luxurious villas in
which were fish-ponds, preserves for game, wide olive groves and
vineyards, to say nothing of the farms which produced milk, cheese,
honey, and poultry. Syria was so prosperous that its inhabitants divided
their time between the field, the banquet, and the gymnasium, and
indulged in continual festivals. It was so rich that Antiochus III. was
able to furnish at one time a tribute of 15,000 talents, beside 540,000
measures of wheat. The luxury of Nineveh and Babylon was revived in the
Phoenician cities.
[Sidenote: Natural productions of the various provinces.]
Spain produced horses, mules, wool, oil, figs, wine, corn, honey, beer,
flax, linen, beside mines of copper, silver, gold, quicksilver, tin,
lead, and steel. Gaul was so cultivated that there was little waste
land, and produced the same fruits and vegetables as at the present
day. Its hams and sausages were much prized. Sicily was famous for
wheat, Sardinia for wool, Epirus for horses, Macedonia for goats,
Thessaly for oil, Boeotia for flax, Scythia for furs, and Greece for
honey. Almost all the flowers, herbs, and fruits that grow in European
gardens were known to the Romans--the apricot, the peach, the
pomegranate, the citron, the orange, the quince, the apple, the pear,
the plum, the cherry, the fig, the date, the olive. Martial speaks of
pepper, beans, pulp, lentils, barley, beets, lettuce, radishes, cabbage
sprouts, leeks, turnips, asparagus, mushrooms, truffles, as well as all
sorts of game and birds. [Footnote: Martial, B. 13.] In no age of the
world was agriculture more honored than before the fall of the empire.
[Sidenote: Roads.]
And all these provinces were connected with each other and with the
capital by magnificent roads, perfectly straight, and paved with large
blocks of stone. They were originally constructed for military purposes,
but were used by travelers, and on them posts were regularly
established. They crossed valleys upon arches, and penetrated mountains.
In Italy, especially, they were great works of art, and connected all
the provinces. Among the great roads which conveyed to Rome as a centre
were the Clodian and Cassian roads which passed through Etruria; the
Amerina and Flavinia through Umbria; the Via Valeria, which had its
terminus at Alternum on the Adriatic; the Via Latina, which, passing
through Latium and Campania, extended to the southern extremity of
Italy; the Via Appia also passed through Latium, Campania, Lucania,
Iapygia to Brundusium, on the Adriatic. Again, from the central terminus
at Milan, several lines passed through the gorges of the Alps, and
connected Italy with Lyons and Mayence on the one side, and with the
Tyrol and Danubian provinces on the other. Spain and southern Gaul were
connected by a grand road from Cadiz to Narbonne and Arles. Lyons was
another centre from which branched out military roads to Saintes,
Marseilles, Boulogne, and Mayence. In fact, the Roman legion could
traverse every province in the empire over these grandly built public
roads, as great and important in the second century as railroads are at
the present time. There was an uninterrupted communication from the Wall
of Antonius through York, London, Sandwich, Boulogne, Rheims, Lyons,
Milan, Rome, Brundusium, Dyrrachium, Byzantium, Ancyra, Tarsus, Antioch,
Tyre, Jerusalem--a distance of 3740 miles. And these roads were divided
by milestones, and houses for travelers erected every five or six miles.
[Sidenote: Commerce.]
[Sidenote: Objects of ancient commerce.]
Commerce under the emperors was not what it now is, but still was very
considerable, and thus united the various provinces together. The most
remote countries were ransacked to furnish luxuries for Rome. Every year
a fleet of one hundred and twenty vessels sailed from the Red Sea for
the islands of the Indian Ocean. But the Mediterranean, with the rivers
which flowed into it, was the great highway of the ancient navigator.
Navigation by the ancients was even more rapid than in modern times
before the invention of steam, since oars were employed as well as
sails. In summer one hundred and sixty-two Roman miles were sailed over
in twenty-four hours. This was the average speed, or about seven knots.
From the mouth of the Tiber, vessels could usually reach Africa in two
days, Massilia in three, Tarraco in four, and the Pillars of Hercules in
seven. From Puteoli the passage to Alexandria had been effected, with
moderate winds, in nine days. But these facts apply only to the summer,
and to objects of favorable winds. The Romans did not navigate in the
inclement seasons. But in summer the great inland sea was white with
sails. Great fleets brought corn from Gaul, Spain, Sardinia, Africa,
Sicily, and Egypt. This was the most important trade. But a considerable
commerce was carried on in ivory, tortoise-shell, cotton and silk
fabrics, pearls and precious stones, gums, spices, wines, wool, oil.
Greek and Asiatic wines, especially the Chian and Lesbian, were in great
demand at Rome. The transport of earthenware, made generally in the
Grecian cities; of wild animals for the amphitheatre; of marble, of the
spoils of eastern cities, of military engines, and stores, and horses,
required very large fleets and thousands of mariners, which probably
belonged, chiefly, to great maritime cities like Alexandria, Corinth,
Carthage, Rhodes, Cyrene, Massalia, Neapolis, Tarentum, and Syracuse.
These great cities with their dependencies, required even more vessels
for communication with each other than for Rome herself--the great
central object of enterprise and cupidity.
[Sidenote: The metropolis of the empire.]
[Sidenote: The centre and the pride of the world.]
[Sidenote: Its varied objects of interest.]
In this survey of the provinces and cities which composed the empire of
the Caesars, I have not yet spoken of the great central city--the City of
the Seven Hills, to which all the world was tributary. Rome was so
grand, so vast, so important in every sense, political and social; she
was such a concentration of riches and wonders, that it demands a
separate and fuller notice than what I have been able to give of those
proud capitals which finally yielded to her majestic domination. All
other cities not merely yielded precedence, but contributed to her
greatness. Whatever was costly, or rare, or beautiful in Greece, or
Asia, or Egypt, was appropriated by her citizen kings, since citizens
were provincial governors. All the great roads, from the Atlantic to the
Tigris, converged to Rome. All the ships of Alexandria and Carthage and
Tarentum, and other commercial capitals, were employed in furnishing her
with luxuries or necessities. Never was there so proud a city as this
"Epitome of the Universe." London, Paris, Vienna, Constantinople, St.
Petersburg, Berlin, are great centres of fashion and power; but they are
rivals, and excel only in some great department of human enterprise and
genius, as in letters, or fashions, or commerce, or manufactures--
centres of influence and power in the countries of which they are
capitals, yet they do not monopolize the wealth and energies of the
world. London may contain more people than ancient Rome, and may possess
more commercial wealth; but London represents only the British monarchy,
not a universal empire. Rome, however, monopolized everything, and
controlled all nations and peoples. She could shut up the schools of
Athens, or disperse the ships of Alexandria, or regulate the shops of
Antioch. What Lyons or Bordeaux is to Paris, Corinth or Babylon was to
Rome--secondary cities, dependent cities. Paul condemned at Jerusalem,
stretched out his arms to Rome, and Rome protects him. The philosophers
of Greece are the tutors of Roman nobility. The kings of the East resort
to the palaces of Mount Palatine for favors or safety. The governors of
Syria and Egypt, reigning in the palaces of ancient kings, return to
Rome to squander the riches they have accumulated. Senators and nobles
take their turn as sovereign rulers of all the known countries of the
world. The halls in which Darius, and Alexander, and Pericles, and
Croesus, and Solomon, and Cleopatra have feasted, if unspared by the
conflagrations of war, witness the banquets of Roman proconsuls. Babylon
and Thebes and Athens were only what Delhi and Calcutta are to the
English of our day--cities to be ruled by the delegates of the Roman
Senate. Rome was the only "home" of the proud governors who reigned on
the banks of the Thames, of the Seine, of the Rhine, of the Nile, of the
Tigris. After they had enriched themselves with the spoils of the
ancient monarchies they returned to their estates in Italy, or to their
palaces on the Aventine, for the earth had but _one_ capital--one
great centre of attraction. To an Egyptian even, Alexandria was only
provincial. He must travel to the banks of the Tiber to see something
greater than his own capital. It was the seat of government for one
hundred and twenty millions of people. It was the arbiter of taste and
fashion. It was the home of generals and senators and statesmen, of
artists and scholars and merchants, who were renowned throughout the
empire. It was enriched by the contributions of conquered nations for
eight hundred years. It contained more marble statues than living
inhabitants. Every spot was consecrated by associations; every temple
had a history; every palace had been the scene of festivities which made
it famous; every monument pointed to the deeds of the illustrious dead,
and swelled the pride of the most powerful families which aristocratic
ages had created.
* * * * *
For the ancient authorities, see Strabo, Pliny, Polybius, Diodorus
Siculus, Titus Livius, Pausanias, and Herodotus. There is an able
chapter on Mediterranean prosperity in Napoleon's _History of
Caesar_. Smith, _Dictionary of Ancient Geography_, is exhaustive.
See, also, Muller, article on _Atticus_, in Ersch, and Gruber's
_Encyclopedia_, translated by Lockhart; Stuart and Revett,
_Antiquities of Atticus_; Dodwell, _Tour through Greece_; Wilkinson,
_Hand-book for Travelers in Egypt_; Becker, _Hand-book of Rome_.
Anthon has compiled a useful work on ancient geography, but the most
accessible and valuable book on the material aspects of the old
Roman world is the great dictionary of Smith, from which this chapter is
chiefly compiled.
CHAPTER III.
THE WONDERS OF ANCIENT ROME.
[Sidenote: Early inhabitants of Italy.]
The great capital of the ancient world had a very humble beginning, and
that is involved in myth and mystery. Even the Latin stock, inhabiting
the country from the Tiber to the Volscian mountains, which furnished
the first inhabitants of the city, cannot be clearly traced, since we
have no traditions of the first migration of the human race into Italy.
It is supposed by Mommsen that the peoples which inhabited Latium belong
to the Indo-Germanic family. Among these were probably the independent
cantons of the Ramnians, Tities, and Luceres, which united to form a
single commonwealth, and occupied the hills which arose about fourteen
miles from the mouth of the Tiber. Around these hills was a rural
population which tilled the fields. From these settlements a fortified
fort arose on the Palatine Hill, fitted to be a place of trade from its
situation on the Tiber, and also a fortress to protect the urban
villages. Though unhealthy in its site, it was admirably adapted for
these purposes, and thus early became an important place.
[Sidenote: Foundation of Rome.]
[Sidenote: Settlement under Romulus.]
[Sidenote: Extent of the city at the death of Romulus.]
The legends attribute a different foundation of the "Eternal City." But
these also assign the Palatine as the nucleus of ancient Rome. It was on
this hill that Romulus and Remus grew up to manhood, and it was this
hill which Romulus selected as the site of the city he was so desirous
to build. But modern critics suppose that he did not occupy the whole
hill, but only the western part of it. Varro, whose authority is
generally received, assigns the year 753 before Christ as the date for
the foundation of the city. The first memorable incident in the history
of this little city of robbers was the care of Romulus to increase its
population by opening an asylum for fugitive slaves on the Capitoline
Hill. But this supplied only males who had no wives. And when the
proposal of the founder to solicit intermarriage with the neighboring
nations was rejected, he resorted to stratagem and force. He invites the
Sabines and the people of other Latin towns to witness games. A crowd of
men and women are assembled, and while all are intent on the games, the
unmarried women are seized by the Roman youth. Then ensues, of course, a
war with the Sabines, the result of which is that the Sabines are united
with the Romans and settle on the Quirinal. The Saturnian Hill is left
in possession of the Sabines, while Romulus assumes the Sabine name of
Quirinus, from which we infer that the Sabines had the best of the
conflict. Callius, who, it is said, assisted Romulus, receives as a
compensation the hill known as the Caelian. At the death of Romulus, who
reigned thirty-seven years, Rome comprised the Palatine, the Quirinal,
the Caelian, and the Capitoline hills. [Footnote: M. Ampere, _Hist.
Rom._, tom. i. ch. xii.] The Sabines thus occupy two of the seven
hills, and furnish not only people for the infant city, but laws,
customs, and manners, especially religious observances.
[Sidenote: The public works of Numa.]
The reign of Numa was devoted to the consolidation of the power which
Romulus had acquired, to the civilization of his subjects, and the
improvement of the city. He fixed his residence between the Roman and
the Sabine city, and erected adjoining to the Regia a temple to Vesta,
which was probably only an _oedes sacra_. It was probably along with
these buildings that the Sacra Via came into existence. The Regia became
in after times the residence of the Pontifex Maximus. Numa established
on the Palatine the Curia Saliorum, and built on the Quirinal a temple
of Romulus, afterwards rebuilt by Augustus. He also erected on the
Quirinal a citadel connected with a temple of Jupiter, with cells of
Juno and Minerva. He converted the gate which formed the entrance of the
Sabine city into a temple of Janus, and laid the foundation upon the
Capitoline of a large temple to Fides Publica, the public faith.
[Sidenote: The reign of Tullus Hostilius.]
[Sidenote: Improvement of the city made by Tullus.]
Under the reign of Tullus Hostilius was the capture of Alba Longa, the
old capital of Latium, where Numa had reigned, and the transfer of its
inhabitants to Rome, which thus became the chief city of the Latin
league. They were located on the Caelian, which also became the residence
of the king. He built the Curia Hostilia, a senate chamber, to
accommodate the noble Alban families, in which the Roman Senate
assembled, at the northwest corner of the Forum, to the latest times of
the republic. It was a templum, but not dedicated for divine services,
adjoining the eastern side of the Vulcanal. Out of the spoils of Alba
Longa, Tullus improved the Comitium, a space at the northwest end of the
Forum, fronting the Curia, the common meeting place of the Romans and
Sabines. On the Quirinal Hill he erected a Curia Saliorum in imitation
of that of Numa on the Palatine, devoted to the worship of Quirinus.
[Sidenote: Growth of Rome during the reign of Ancus Martius.]
Ancus Martius, a grandson of Numa, succeeded Tullus after a reign of
thirty-two years. Under him the city was greatly augmented by the
inhabitants of various Latin cities which he subdued. These settled on
the Aventine, and in the valley which separated it from the Palatine,
supposed by Niebuhr to be the origin of the Roman Plebs, though it is
maintained by Lewis that the Plebeian order was coaeval with the
foundation of the city. Ancus fortified Mons Janiculus, the hill on the
western bank of the Tiber, for the protection of the city. He connected
it with Rome by the Pons Sublicius, the earliest of the Roman bridges,
built on piles. The Janiculum was not much occupied by residences until
the time of Augustus. Ancus founded Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber,
which became the port of Rome. It was this king who built the famous
Mamertine Prison, near the Forum, below the northern height of the
Capitoline.
[Sidenote: Tarquinius Priscus.]
[Sidenote: The Cloaca Maxima.]
[Sidenote: Temple of the Capitoline Jupiter.]
A new dynasty succeeded this king, who reigned twenty-four years; that
of the Tarquins, an Etrurian family of Greek extraction, which came from
Corinth, the cradle of Grecian art, celebrated as the birth-place of
painting and for its works of pottery and bronze. Tarquinius Priscus
constructed the Cloaca Maxima, that vast sewer which drained the Forum
and Velabrum, and which is regarded by Niebuhr as one of the most
stupendous monuments of antiquity. It was composed of three semicircular
arches inclosing one another, the innermost of which had a diameter of
twelve feet, large enough to be traversed by a Roman hay-cart.
[Footnote: Arnold, _Hist. of Rom._, vol. i. p. 52.] It was built
without cement, and still remains a magnificent specimen of the
perfection of the old Tuscan masonry. Along the southern side of the
Forum this enlightened monarch constructed a row of shops occupied by
butchers and other tradesmen. At the head of the Forum and under the
Capitoline he founded the Temple of Saturn, the ruins of which attest
considerable splendor. But his greatest work was the foundation of the
Capitoline Temple of Jupiter, completed by Tarquinius Superbus, the
consecrated citadel in which was deposited whatever was most valued by
the Romans.
[Sidenote: Accession of Servius Tullius.]
During the reign of Servius Tullius, who succeeded Tarquin B.C. 578, the
various elements of the population were amalgamated, and the seven
hills, namely, the Palatine, the Capitoline, the Quirinal, the Caelian,
the Viminal, the Esquiline, and the Aventine, were covered with houses,
and inclosed by a wall about six miles in circuit. A temple of Diana was
erected on the Aventine, besides two temples to Fortune, one to Juno,
and one to Luna. Servius also dedicated the Campus Martius, and enlarged
the Mamertine Prison by adding a subterranean dungeon of impenetrable
strength.
[Sidenote: Tarquinius Superbus.]
On the assassination of Servius Tullius, B.C. 535, his son-in-law,
Tarquinius Superbus, usurped the power, and did much for the adornment
of the city. The Capitoline Temple was completed on an artificial
platform, having a triple row of columns in front, and a double row at
the sides. It was two hundred feet wide, having three cells adjoining
one another, the centre appropriated to Jupiter, with Juno and Minerva
on either hand. The temple had a single roof, and lasted nearly five
hundred years before it was burned down, and rebuilt with greater
splendor.
[Sidenote: Rome under the early consuls.]
[Sidenote: Roman roads.]
Such were the chief improvements of the city during the kingly rule.
Under the consuls the growth was constant, but was not marked by grand
edifices. Portunus, the conqueror of the Tarquins at Lake Regillus,
erected a temple to Ceres, Liber, and Libera, at the western extremity
of the Circus Maximus. Camillus founded a celebrated temple to Juno on
the Aventine. But these, and a few other temples, were destroyed when
the Gauls held possession of the city. The city was rebuilt hastily and
without much regard to regularity. There was nothing memorable in its
architectural monuments till the time of Appius Claudius, who
constructed the Via Appia, the first Roman aqueduct. In fact the
constant wars of the Romans prevented much improvement in the city till
the fall of Tarentum, although the ambassadors of Pyrrhus were struck
with its grandeur. M. Curius Dentatus commenced the aqueduct called Anio
Vetus B.C. 278, the greater part of which was under ground. Its total
length was forty-three miles. Q. Flaminius, B.C. 220, between the first
and second Punic wars, constructed the great highway, called after him
the Via Flaminia--the great northern road of Italy, as the Via Appia was
the southern. These roads were very elaborately built. In constructing
them, the earth was excavated till a solid foundation was obtained; over
this a layer of loose stones was laid, then another layer nine inches
thick of rubble-work of broken stones cemented with lime, then another
layer of broken pottery cemented in like manner, over which was a
pavement of large polygonal blocks of hard stone nicely fitted together.
Roads thus constructed were exceedingly durable, so that portions of
them, constructed two thousand years ago, are still in a high state of
preservation.
[Sidenote: Ancient basilicas.]
[Sidenote: Temple of Hercules.]
[Sidenote: Asiatic luxuries.] The improvements of Rome were rapid after
the conquest of Greece, although destructive fires frequently laid large
parts of the city in ruins. The deities of the conquered nations were
introduced into the Roman worship, and temples erected to them. In the
beginning of the second century before Christ we notice the erection of
basilicas, used as courts of law and a sort of exchange, the first of
which was built by M. Portius Cato, B.C. 184, on the north side of the
Forum. It was of an oblong form, open to the air, surrounded with
columns, at one end of which was the tribunal of the judge. The Basilica
Portia was soon followed by the Basilica Fulvia behind the Argentariae
Novae, which had replaced the butchers' shops. Fulvius Nobilia further
adorned the city with a temple of Hercules on the Campus Martius, and
brought from Ambrasia, once the residence of Pyrrhus, two hundred and
thirty marble and two hundred and eighty-five bronze statues, beside
pictures. L. Aemilius Paulus founded an emporium on the banks of the
Tiber as a place of landing and sale for goods transported by sea, and
built a bridge over the Tiber. Sempronius Gracchus, the father of the
two demagogue patriots, erected a third Basilica B.C. 169, on the south
side of the Forum on the site of the house of Scipio Africanus. The
triumph of Aemilius Paulus introduced into the city pictures and statues
enough to load two hundred and fifty chariots, and a vast quantity of
gold and silver. Cornelius Octavius, B.C. 167, built a grand palace on
the Palatine, one of the first examples of elegant domestic
architecture, and erected a magnificent double portico with capitals of
Corinthian bronze. With the growing taste for architectural display,
various Asiatic luxuries were introduced--bronze beds, massive
sideboards, tables of costly woods, cooks, pantomimists, female dancers,
and luxurious banquets. Metellus erected the first marble temple seen in
Rome, before which he placed the twenty-five bronze statues which
Lysippus had executed for Alexander the Great.
[Sidenote: Sack of Corinth.]
[Sidenote: Adornment of the Forum.]
The same year that witnessed the triumph of Metellus, B.C. 146, also saw
the fall of Carthage and the sack of Corinth by Mummius, so that many of
the choicest specimens of Grecian art were brought to the banks of the
Tiber. Among these was the celebrated picture of Bacchus by Aristides,
which was placed in the Temple of Bacchus, Ceres, and Proserpine. The
Forum now contained many gems of Grecian art, among which were the
statues of Alcibiades and Pythagoras which stood near the comitium, the
Three Sibyls placed before the rostra, and a picture by Serapion, which
covered the balconies of the tabernae on the south side of the Forum.
[Sidenote: Aqua Marcia.]
In the year 144 B.C., Q. Marcius Rex constructed the Aqua Marcia, one of
the noblest of the Roman monuments, sixty-two miles in length, seven of
which were on arches, sufficiently lofty to supply the Capitoline with
pure and cold water. Seventeen years after, the Aqua Tepula was added to
the aqueducts of Rome.
[Sidenote: Triumphal Arches.]
The first triumphal arch erected to commemorate victories was in the
year B.C. 196, by L. Sertinius. Scipio Africanus erected another on the
Capitoline, and Q. Fabius, B.C. 121, raised another in honor of his
victories over the Allobroges. This spanned the Via Sacra where it
entered the Forum, and at that time was a conspicuous monument, though
vastly inferior to the arches of the imperial regime.
[Sidenote: Temple of Concord.]
[Sidenote: Basilica Opimia.]
When tranquillity was restored to Rome after the riots connected with
the murder of the Gracchi, the Senate ordered a Temple of Concord to be
built, B.C. 121, in commemoration of the event. This temple was on the
elevated part of the Vulcanal, and was of considerable magnitude. It was
used for the occasional meetings of the Senate, and contained many
valuable works of art. Adjoining this temple, Opimius, the consul,
erected the Basilica Opimia, which was used by the silversmiths, who
were the bankers and pawnbrokers of Rome. The whole quarter on the north
side of the Forum, where this basilica stood, was the Roman exchange--
the focus for all monetary transactions.
[Sidenote: Private palaces.]
[Sidenote: Houses of the nobles.]
The increasing wealth and luxury of Rome, especially caused by the
conquest of Asia, led to the erection on the Palatine of those
magnificent private residences, which became one of the most striking
features the capital. The first of these historical houses was built by
M. Livius Drusus, and overlooked the city. It afterwards passed into the
hands of Crassus, Cicero, and Censorinus. Pompey had a house on the
Palatine, but afterwards transferred his residence to the Casinae,
another aristocratic quarter. M. Aemilius Lepidus also lived in a
magnificent palace; the house of Crassus was still more splendid,
adorned with columns of marble from Mount Hymettus. The house of
Catullus excelled even that of Crassus. This again was excelled by that
of Aquillius on the Viminal, which for some time was the most splendid
in Rome, until Lucullus occupied nearly the whole of the Pincian Hill
with his gardens and galleries of art, which contained some of the
_chefs d'oeuvre_ of antiquity. The gardens of Servilius, which lay
on the declivity of the Houses of Aventine, were adorned with Greek
statues, exceeded in beauty by those of Sallust between the Pincian and
the Quirinal hills, built with the spoils of Numidia, and ultimately the
property of the emperors. The house of Clodius on the Palatine, near to
that of Cicero, was one of the finest in Rome, occupied before him by
Scaurus, who gave for it nearly fifteen million sesterces, about
$650,000. It was adorned with Greek paintings and sculptures. The house
of Cicero, which he bought of Crassus, cost him $150,000. Its atrium was
adorned with Greek marble columns thirty-eight feet high. Hortensius
lived in a house on the Palatine, afterwards occupied by Augustus. The
residence of his friend Atticus, on the Quirinal, was more modest, whose
chief ornament was a grove. Pompey surrounded his house with gardens and
porticos.
[Sidenote: Destruction and rebuilding of the Capitol.]
The year 83 B.C. was marked by the destruction by fire of the old
Capitoline Temple, which had withstood the ravages of the Gauls. Sulla
aspired to rebuild it, and caused to be transported to Rome for that
purpose the column of the Olympian Zeus at Athens. It was completed by
Caesar, and its roof was gilded at an expense of $15,000,000. The
pediment was adorned with statuary, and near it was a colossal statue of
Jupiter.
[Sidenote: Theatre of Pompey.]
In the early ages of the republic there were no theatres at Rome,
theatrical representations being regarded as demoralizing. The regular
drama was the last development even of Grecian genius. The Roman
aristocracy set their faces against dramatic entertainments till after
the conquest of Greece. These plays were introduced and performed on
temporary stages in the open air, or in wooden buildings. There was no
grand theatre till Pompey erected one of stone, B.C. 55, in the Campus
Martius, which was capable of holding eighty thousand spectators, and it
had between its numerous pillars three thousand bronze statues.
[Footnote: _Plin. H. N._, xxxvi. 24.] He also erected, behind his
theatre, a grand portico of one hundred pillars, which became one of the
most fashionable lounging-places of Rome, and which was adorned with
statues and images. Pompey also built various temples.
[Sidenote: Forum Julian.]
[Sidenote: Basilica Julia.]
His great rival however surpassed him in labors to ornament the capital.
Caesar enlarged the Forum, or rather added a new one, the ground of which
cost $2,500,000. It was called the Forum Julian, and was three hundred
and forty feet long by two hundred wide, containing a temple of Venus.
He did not live, however, to carry out his magnificent plans. He
contemplated building an edifice, for the assembly of the Comitia
Tributa, of marble, with a portico inclosing a space of a mile square,
and also the erection of a temple to Mars of unparalleled size and
magnificence. He commenced the Basilica Julia and the Curia Julia--vast
buildings, which were completed under the emperors.
[Sidenote: Rome under the Emperors.]
Such were the principal edifices of Rome until the imperial sway.
Augustus boasted that he found the city of brick and left it of marble.
It was not until the emperors embellished the city with amphitheatres,
theatres, baths, and vast architectural monuments that it was really
worthy to be regarded as the metropolis of the world. The great
improvements of Rome in the republican period were of a private nature,
such as the palaces of senatorial families. There were no temples equal
to those in the Grecian cities either for size, ornament, or beauty.
Indeed, Rome was never famous for temples, but for edifices of material
utility rather than for the worship of the gods; yet the Romans, under
the rule of the aristocracy, were more religious than the Corinthians or
Athenians.
[Sidenote: Works of Augustus.]
[Sidenote: The Subura.]
[Sidenote: Forum Romanum.]
[Sidenote: Its magnificence.]
[Sidenote: Surrounding buildings.]
[Sidenote: Temple of Castor and Pollux.]
[Sidenote: Basilica Julia.]
[Sidenote: Arch of Septimius Severus, and columns of Trajan.]
[Sidenote: Forum Julium.]
[Sidenote: Forum Augusti.]
[Sidenote: Forum of Trajan.]
[Sidenote: Basilica Ulpia.]
On the destruction of the senatorial or constitutional party that had
ruled since the expulsion of the kings, and probably before, and the
peaceful accession of Augustus, B.C. 31, a great impulse was given to
the embellishments of the city. His long reign, his severe taste, and
his immense resources,--undisputed master of one hundred and fifty
millions of subjects,--enabled him to carry out the designs of Julius,
and to restore an immense number of monuments falling to decay. But Rome
was even then deficient in those things which most attract attention in
our modern capitals--the streets and squares. The longest street of Rome
was scarcely three fourths of a mile in length; but the houses upon it
were of great altitude. Moreover the streets were narrow and dark--
scarcely more than fifteen feet in width. But they were not encumbered
with carriages. Private equipages, which form one of the most imposing
features of a modern city, were unknown. There was nothing attractive in
a Roman street, dark, narrow, and dirty, with but few vehicles, and with
dingy shops, like those of Paris in the Middle Ages. The sun scarcely
ever penetrated to them. They were damp and cold. The greater part of
the city belonged to wealthy and selfish capitalists, like Crassus, who
thought more of their gains than the health or beauty of the city. The
Subura, the Sub Velia, and the Velabrum, built in the valleys, were
choked up with tall houses, frequently more, and seldom less, than
seventy feet in height. The hills alone were covered with aristocratic
residences, temples, and public monuments. The only open space, where
the poor people could get fresh air and extensive prospect, was Circus
Maximus and the Forum Romanum. The former was three fourths of a mile in
length and one eighth in breadth, surrounded with a double row of
benches, the lower of stone and the upper of wood, and would seat two
hundred and eighty-five thousand spectators. The Forum was the centre of
architectural splendor, as well as of life and business. Its original
site extended from the eastern part of the Capitoline to the spot where
the Velia begins to ascend, and was bounded on the south by the Via
Sacra, which extended to the arx or citadel. It was that consecrated
street by which the augurs descended when they inaugurated the great
festivals of the republic, and in which lived the Pontifex Maximus.
Although the Forum Romanum was only seven hundred feet by four hundred
and seventy, yet it was surrounded by and connected with basilicas,
halls, porticoes, temples, and shops. It was a place of great public
resort for all classes of people--a scene of life and splendor rarely if
ever equaled, and having some resemblance to the crowded square of
Venice on which St. Mark's stands. Originally it was a marketplace, busy
and lively, a great resort where might be seen "good men walking quietly
by themselves," [Footnote: _Plautus Cuve_, iv. 1. ] "flash men
strutting about without a denarius in their purses," "gourmands clubbing
for a dinner," "scandal-mongers living in glass houses," "perjured
witnesses, liars, braggarts, rich and erring husbands, worn-out
harlots," and all the various classes which now appear in the crowded
places of London or Paris. In this open space the people were assembled
on great public occasions, and here they were addressed by orators and
tribunes. Immediately surrounding the Forum Romanum, or in close
proximity to it, were the most important public buildings of the city in
which business was transacted--the courts of law, the administrative
bureaus, the senate chamber and the principal temples, as well as
monuments and shops. On the north side was the Comitium, an open space
for holding the Comitia Curiata and heavy lawsuits, and making speeches
to the assembled people. During the kingly government the temples of
Janus and Vesta and Saturn were erected, also the Curia Hostilia, a
senate-house, the Senaculum, the Mamertine Prison, and the Tabernae or
porticoes and shops inclosing the Forum. During the republic the temple
of Castor and Pollux, which served for the assembly of the Senate and
judicial business, was erected, not of the largest size, but very rich
and beautiful. The Basilica Portia, where the tribunes of the people
held their assemblies, was founded by Cato the Censor, and this was
followed by the Basilica Fulvia, with columns of Phrygian marble,
admired by Pliny for its magnificence, the Basilica Sempronia, the
Temple of Concord, and the Triumphal Arch of Fabius, to commemorate his
victories over the Allobroges. Under the empire, the magnificent
Basilica Julia was erected for the sittings of the law courts, and its
immense size may be inferred from the fact that one hundred and eighty
judges, divided into four courts, with four separate tribunals, with
seats for advocates and spectators, were accustomed to assemble.
Tiberius erected a triumphal arch near the Temple of Saturn. Domitian
built the Temple of Vespasian and Titus, and erected to himself a
colossal equestrian statue. Near it rose the temples of Divus-Julius and
of Antoninus and Faustina. Beside these were the Triumphal Arch of
Septimius Severus, still standing; the Columns of Phocas and Trajan, the
latter of which is the finest monument of its kind in the world, one
hundred and twenty-seven feet high, with a spiral band of admirable
reliefs containing two thousand five hundred human figures. Beside
these, new fora of immense size were constructed by various emperors,
not for political business so much as courts of justice. The Forum
Julium, which connected with the old Forum Romanum, was virtually a
temple of great magnificence. In front of it was the celebrated bronze
horse of Lysippus, and the temple was enriched with precious offerings
and adorned with pictures from the best Greek artists. It was devoted to
legal business. The Forum Augusti was still larger, and also inclosed a
temple, in which the Senate assembled to consult about wars and
triumphs, and was surrounded with porticoes in which the statues of the
most eminent Roman generals were placed, while on each side were the
triumphal arches of Germanicus and Drusus. More extensive and
magnificent than either of the old fora was the one which Trajan
erected, in the centre of which was the celebrated column of the
emperor, so universally admired, while the sides were ornamented with a
double colonnade of gray Egyptian marble, the columns of which were
fifty-five feet in height. This was one of the most gigantic structures
in Rome, covering more ground than the Flavian Amphitheatre, and built
by the celebrated Apollodorus of Damascus. It filled the whole space
between the Capitoline and Quirinal. The Basilica Ulpia was only one
division of this vast edifice, divided internally by four rows of
columns of gray granite, and paved with slabs of marble.
[Sidenote: Beauty of the Roman Forum.]
Nothing in Rome, or perhaps any modern city, exceeded the glory and
beauty of the Forum, with the adjoining basilica, and other public
buildings, filled with statues and pictures, and crowded with people.
The more aristocratic loungers sought the retired promenade afforded by
the porticoes near the Circus Flaminius, where the noise and clamor of
the crowded streets, the cries of venders, the sports of boys, and the
curses of wagoners, could not reach them. The Forum was the peculiar
glory of the republican period, where the Gracchi enlightened the people
on their political rights, where Cato calmed the passions of the mob,
where Cicero and Hortensius delivered their magnificent harangues.
[Sidenote: Works of Augustus.]
[Sidenote: Temple of Apollo.]
[Sidenote: Theatre of Marcellus.]
The glory of the Augustan age was more seen in the magnificent buildings
which arose upon the hills, although he gave attention to the completion
of many works of utility or beauty in other parts of the city. He
restored the Capitoline temple and the theatre of Pompey; repaired
aqueducts; finished the Forum and Basilica Julia; and entirely built the
Curia Julia. He founded, on the Palatine, the Imperial Palace,
afterwards enlarged by his successors until it entirely covered the
original city of Romulus. Among the most beautiful of his works was the
Temple of Apollo, the columns of which were of African marble, between
which were the statues of the fifty Danaids. In the temple was a
magnificent statue of Apollo, and around the altar were the images of
four oxen--the work of Miron, so beautifully sculptured that they seemed
alive. The temple was of the finest marble; its gates were of ivory,
finely sculptured. Attached to this temple was a library, where the
poets, orators, and philosophers assembled, and recited their
productions. The Forum Augusti was another of the noblest monuments of
this emperor, in order to provide accommodation for the crowds which
overflowed the Forum Romanum. He also built the theatre of Marcellus,
capable of holding twenty thousand spectators.
[Sidenote: Pantheon.]
[Sidenote: Thermae Agrippae.]
[Sidenote: Campus Martius.]
[Sidenote: Works of the Nobles.]
Nor was Augustus alone the patron of the arts. His son-in-law, and prime
minister, Agrippa, adorned the city with many noble structures, of which
the Pantheon remains to attest his munificence. This temple, the best
preserved of all the monuments of ancient splendor, stood in the centre
of the Campus Martius, and contained only the images of the deities
immediately connected with the Julian race and the early history of
Rome. Agrippa was the first to establish those famous baths, which
became the most splendid monuments of imperial munificence. The Thermae
Agrippae stood at the back of the Pantheon. It was fed by the Aqua Virgo,
an aqueduct which Agrippa purposely constructed to furnish water for his
baths. Many other architectural monuments marked the public spirit of
this enlightened and liberal minister, especially in the quarter of the
Circus Flaminius and the Campus Martius. This quarter was like a
separate town, more magnificent than any part of the ancient city. It
was adorned with temples, porticoes, and theatres, and other buildings
devoted to amusement and recreation. It had not many private houses, but
these were of remarkable splendor. Other courtiers of Augustus followed
his example for the embellishment of the city. Statilius Taurus built
the first permanent amphitheatre of stone in the Campus Martius. L.
Cornelius Balbur built at his own expense a stone theatre. L. Marcius
Philippus rebuilt the temple of Hercules Musarum, and surrounded it with
a portico. L. Cornificius built a temple of Diana. Asininius Pollio an
Atrium Libertatis; and Munatius Plaucus a temple of Saturn. Maecenas, who
lived upon the Esquiline, converted the Campus Esquilinus, near the
Subura, a pauper burial-ground offensive to both sight and health, into
beautiful gardens, called the Horti Maecenatis.
Nunc licet esquiliis habitare salubribus atque,
Aggere in Aprico Spatiari, quo modo tristes.
Albis informem spectabant ossibtis agrum.
[Footnote: Horace _Sat._ i. 8.]
Near these gardens Virgil lived, also Propertius, and probably Horace.
The Esquiline, once a plebeian quarter, seems to have been selected by
the literary men, who sought the favor of Maecenas, for their abode. Ovid
lived near the capitol, at the southern extremity of the Quirinal.
[Sidenote: Mausoleum of Augustus.]
Among the other buildings which Augustus erected, should not be omitted
the magnificent Mausoleum, or the tomb of the imperial family at the
northern part of the Campus Martius, near which lay the remains of Sulla
and of Caesar, and which remained the burial-place of his family down to
the time of Hadrian. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to
chapter end.] He also brought from Egypt the obelisk which now stands on
Mount Citorio, and which was placed in that receptacle for
monuments--the Campus Martius.
[Sidenote: Imperial palace.]
Tiberius did but little for the improvement of his capital beyond
erecting a triumphal arch, in commemoration of the exploits of
Germanicus, on the Via Sacra, and establishing the Praetorian Camp near
the Servian Agger. Caligula extended the imperial palace, and began the
Circus Neronis in the gardens of Agrippa, near where St. Peter's now
stands.
[Sidenote: Claudian aqueduct.]
Claudius constructed the two noble aqueducts, the Aqua Claudia and Arno
Novis,--the longest of all these magnificent Roman monuments,--the
latter of which was fifty-nine miles in length, and some of its arches
were one hundred and nine feet in height.
Nero still further extended the precincts of the imperial palace, and
included the Esquiline. The great fire which occurred in his reign, A.D.
65, and which lasted six days and seven nights, destroyed some of the
most ancient of the Roman structures surrounding the Palatine, and very
much damaged the Forum, to say nothing of the statues and treasures
which perished. But the city soon arose from her ashes more beautiful
than before. The streets were laid out on a more regular plan and made
wider, the houses were built lower, and brick was substituted for wood.
[Sidenote: The Imperial Palace.]
The great work of Nero was the construction of the Imperial Palace on
the site of the buildings which had been destroyed by the fire. He gave
it the name of Aurea Domus, and, if we may credit Suetonius, [Footnote:
Suet. _Ner_., 31.] its richness and splendor surpassed any other
similar edifice in ancient times. It fronted the Forum and Capitol, and
in its vestibule stood a colossal statue of the emperor, one hundred and
twenty feet high. The palace was surrounded by three porticoes, each one
thousand feet in length. The back front of the palace looked upon the
artificial lake, afterwards occupied by the Flavian Amphitheatre. Within
the area were gardens and vineyards. It was entirely overlaid with gold,
and adorned with jewels and mother-of-pearl. The supper rooms were
vaulted, and the compartments of the ceiling, inlaid with ivory, were
made to revolve and scatter flowers upon the banqueters below. The chief
banqueting-room was circular, and perpetually revolved in imitation of
the motion of the celestial bodies. There are scarcely no remains of
this extensive palace, which engrossed so large a part of the city, and
which covered the site of so many famous temples and palaces, and which
exhausted even the imperial revenues, great as they were, even as
Versailles taxed the magnificent resources of Louis XIV., and St.
Peter's obliged the Popes to appeal to the contributions of Christendom.
[Sidenote: Temple of Peace.]
The next great edifice which added to the architectural wonders of the
city, was the temple built by Vespasian after the destruction of
Jerusalem, which he called the Temple of Peace. It was adorned with the
richest sculptures and paintings of Greece, taken from Nero's palace,
which Vespasian demolished as a monument of insane extravagance. In this
temple were deposited also the Jewish spoils, except the laws and veil
of the temple.
[Sidenote: Falvian Amphitheatre.]
[Sidenote: The Colosseum.]
But the great work of this emperor, and the greatest architectural
wonder of the world, was the amphitheatre, which he built on the ground
covered by Nero's lake, in the middle of the city, between the Velia and
the Esquiline. For magnitude it can only be compared with the pyramids
of Egypt, and its remains are the most striking monument we have of the
material greatness of the Romans. Though not the first of the
amphitheatres which were erected, its enormous size rendered the
erection of subsequent ones unnecessary. It was here that emperors,
senators, generals, knights, and people, met together to witness the
most exciting and sanguinary amusements ever seen in the world. It was
built in the middle of the city, with a perfect recklessness of expense,
and could accommodate eighty-seven thousand spectators, round an arena
large enough for the combats of several hundred animals at a time. It
was a building of an elliptical form, founded on eighty arches, and
rising to the height of one hundred and forty feet, with four successive
orders of architecture, six hundred and twenty feet by five hundred and
thirteen, inclosing six acres. It was built of travertine, faced with
marble, and decorated with statues. The eighty arches of the lower story
formed entrances for the spectators. The seats were of marble covered
with cushions. The spectators were protected from the sun and rain by
ample canopies, while the air was refreshed by scented fountains. The
nets designed as a protection from the wild beasts were made of golden
wire. The porticoes were gilded; the circle which divided the several
ranks of spectators was studded with a precious mosaic of beautiful
stones. The arena was strewed with the finest sand, and assumed, at
different times, the most different forms. Subterranean pipes conveyed
water into the arena. The furniture of the amphitheatre consisted of
gold, silver, and amber. The passages of ingress and egress were so
numerous that the spectators could go in and out without confusion. Only
a third part of this wonderful structure remains, and whole palaces have
been built of its spoils. [Footnote: Dyer, _Hist. of the City of
Rome_, p. 245. Gibbon, chap. 12. Montaigne, _Essays_, in. 6.
Lipsius, _de Amphitheatro_.]
[Sidenote: Rebuilding of the Capitol.]
[Sidenote: Arch of Titus.]
Another great fire which took place A.D. 80,--the same in which Titus
dedicated the Colosseum,--and which raged three days and nights,
destroyed the region of the Circus Flaminius, including some of the
finest temples of the city, and especially on the Capitoline, and
created the necessity for new improvements. These were made by Domitian,
who rebuilt the Capitol itself with greater splendor on its old site,
and erected several new edifices. Martial speaks with peculiar
admiration of the Temple of the Gens Flavia. [Footnote: Martial,
_L_., ix. Ep. 4, 35. ] He also erected that beautiful arch to his
brother Titus which still remains one of the finest monuments of the
imperial city. The Odeum, a roofed theatre, was erected by him, capable
of holding twelve thousand people. He also made many additions to his
palace on the Palatine--so lofty, that Martial, his flatterer,
described it as towering above the clouds, and Statius compared the
ceiling to the cope of heaven.
[Sidenote: Forum Trajanum.]
[Sidenote: Basilica Ulpia.]
No great improvements were made in the city until Trajan commenced his
beneficent and splendid reign. His greatest work was the Forum which
bears his name, to which allusion has been made, eleven hundred feet
long, in the centre of which was that beautiful pillar, one hundred and
twenty-eight feet high, which is still standing. The Forum, the Basilica
Ulpia, and the temple dedicated by Hadrian to Trajan, were all parts of
this magnificent structure, one of the most imposing ever built, filled
with colossal statues and surrounded with colonnades.
[Sidenote: Temple of Venus and Rome.]
[Sidenote: Mausoleum of Hadrian.]
[Sidenote: Hadrians Villa.]
None of the Roman emperors had so great a passion for building as
Hadrian, who succeeded Trajan A.D. 117. He erected a vast number of
edifices, and in his reign Rome attained its greatest height of
architectural splendor. The most remarkable among the edifices which he
built was the Temple of Venus and Rome, facing on one side the
Colosseum, and the other the Forum, on the site of the Atrium, or the
golden house of Nero. This seems to have been one of the largest of the
Roman temples, erected on an artificial terrace five hundred feet long
and three hundred broad. It was surrounded with a portico four hundred
feet by two hundred, and another portico of four hundred columns
inclosed the terrace on which the temple was built, the columns of which
were forty feet in height. The roof was covered with bronze tiles.
Ammianus Marcellinus classes this magnificent temple with the Capitoline
Temple, the Flavian Amphitheatre, and the Pantheon. The next greatest
work of Hadrian was the Mausoleum, which is now converted into the
Castle of St. Angelo, built on a platform of which each side was two
hundred and fifty-three feet in length. From the magnificent colonnade
which supported the platform on which it was built, and the successive
stories supported by arches and pillars, between which were celebrated
statues, this circular edifice, one hundred and eighty-eight feet in
diameter, must have been one of the most imposing edifices in the city.
After eighteen centuries, it still remains a monument of architectural
strength, and it served for one of the strongest fortresses in Italy
during the Middle Ages. I pass by, without notice, the villa this
emperor erected at Tivoli, the ruins of which are among the most
interesting which remain of that great age.
[Sidenote: Column of Marcus Aurelius.]
[Sidenote: Arch of Septimius Severus.]
[Sidenote: Baths of Caracalla.]
Under Hadrian Rome attained its greatest splendor, and after him, there
was a progressive decline in the arts, since the public taste was
corrupted. Still successive emperors continued to adorn the city. Marcus
Aurelius, the wisest and best of all the emperors, erected a column
similar to that of Trajan, to represent his wars with the Germanic
tribes, and this still remains; he also built a triumphal arch.
Septimius Severus erected the most beautiful of the triumphal arches, of
which the Arc de Triumph in Paris is an imitation; and Caracalla built
one of the greatest of the Roman baths, which, with the porticoes which
surrounded it, formed a square of eleven hundred feet on each side--so
enormous were these structures of luxury and utility, designed not only
for the people as a sanitary measure, but for places of gymnastic
exercises, popular lectures, and the disputations of philosophers. The
Pantheon was merely an entrance to the baths of Agrippa. The baths of
Trajan covered an area nearly as great. But those of Caracalla surpassed
them all in magnificence. Nothing was more striking to a traveler than
the painted corridors, the arched ceilings, the variegated columns, the
elaborate mosaic pavements, the immortal statues, and the exquisite
paintings which ornamented these places of luxury and pleasure. From
amid their ruins have been dug out the most priceless of the statues
which ornament the museums of Italy--the Farnese Hercules, the colossal
Florae, the Torso Farnese, the Torso Belvidere, the Atreus and Thyestes,
the Laocoon, beside granite and basaltic vases beautifully polished,
cameos, bronzes, medals, and other valuable relics of ancient art. To
supply these baths new aqueducts were built, and the treasures of the
empire expended. Those subsequently erected by Diocletian contained
three thousand two hundred marble seats, and the main hall now forms one
of the most splendid of the Roman churches.
[Sidenote: Temples and Palaces.]
[Sidenote: General aspect of the city.]
[Sidenote: What a traveler would see in a walk.]
[Sidenote: The Via Sacra.]
[Sidenote: The Velabrum.]
[Sidenote: The Fora.]
[Sidenote: View from the summit of the Capitoline Hill.]
[Sidenote: Gardens of Lucullus.]
[Sidenote: The Subura.]
[Sidenote: Circus Maximus.]
[Sidenote: View of Rome from the Capitol.]
Such is a brief view of the progress of those architectural wonders
which made Rome the most magnificent city of antiquity, and perhaps the
grandest, in its public monuments, of any city in ancient or modern
times. What a concentration of works of art on the hills, and around the
Forum, and in the Campus Martins, and other celebrated quarters! There
were temples rivaling those of Athens and Ephesus; baths covering more
ground than the Pyramids, surrounded with Corinthian columns and filled
with the choicest treasures, ransacked from the cities of Greece and
Asia; palaces in comparison with which the Tuileries and Versailles are
small; theatres which seated more people than any present public
buildings in Europe; amphitheatres more extensive and costly than
Cologne, Milan, and York Minster cathedrals combined, and seating eight
times as many people as could be crowded into St. Peter's Church;
circuses where, it is said, three hundred and eighty-five thousand
spectators could witness the games and chariot-races at a time; bridges,
still standing, which have furnished models for the most beautiful at
Paris and London; aqueducts carried over arches one hundred feet in
height, through which flowed the surplus water of distant lakes; drains
of solid masonry in which large boats could float; pillars more than one
hundred feet in height, coated with precious marbles or plates of brass,
and covered with bass-reliefs; obelisks brought from Egypt; fora and
basilicae connected together, and extending more than three thousand
feet, in length, every part of which was filled with "animated busts" of
conquerors, kings, and statesmen, poets, publicists, and philosophers;
mausoleums greater and more splendid than that Artemisia erected to the
memory of her husband; triumphal arches under which marched in stately
procession the victorious armies of the Eternal City, preceded by the
spoils and trophies of conquered empires,--such was the proud capital--
a city of palaces, a residence or nobles who were virtually kings,
enriched with the accumulated treasures of ancient civilization. Great
were the capitals of Greece and Asia, but how preeminent was Rome, since
all were subordinate to her. How bewildering and bewitching to a
traveler must have been the varied wonders of the city! Go where he
would, his eye rested on something which was both a study and a marvel.
Let him drive or walk about the suburbs, there were villas, tombs,
aqueducts looking like railroads on arches, sculptured monuments, and
gardens of surpassing beauty and luxury. Let him approach the walls--
they were great fortifications extending twenty-one miles in circuit,
according to the measurement of Ammon as adopted by Gibbon, and forty-
five miles according to other authorities. Let him enter any of the
various gates which opened into the city from the roads which radiated
to all parts of Italy--they were of monumental brass covered with bass-
reliefs, on which the victories of generals for a thousand years were
commemorated. Let him pass up the Via Appia, or the Via Flaminia, or the
Via Cabra--they were lined with temples and shops and palaces. Let him
pass through any of the crowded thoroughfares, he saw houses towering
scarcely ever less than seventy feet--as tall as those of Edinburgh in
its oldest sections. Let him pass through the varied quarters of the
city, or wards as we should now call them, he finds some fourteen
regions, as constituted by Augustus, all marked by architectural
monuments, and containing, according to Lipsius, a population larger
than London or Paris, guarded and watched by a police of ten thousand
armed men. Most of the houses in which this vast population lived,
according to Strabo, possessed pipes which gave a never-failing supply
of water from the rivers which flowed into the city through the
aqueducts and out again through the sewers into the Tiber. Let him walk
up the Via Sacra--that short street, scarcely half a mile in length--and
he passes the Flavian Amphitheatre, the Temple of Venus, and Rome, the
Arch of Titus, the temples of Peace, of Vesta, and of Castor, the Forum
Romanum, the Basilica Julia, the Arch of Severus, and the Temple of
Saturn, and stands before the majestic ascent to the Capitoline Jupiter,
with its magnificent portico and ornamented pediment, surpassing the
facade of any modern church. On his left, as he emerges from beneath the
sculptured Arch of Titus, is the Palatine Mount, nearly covered by the
palace of the Caesars, the magnificent residences of the higher nobility,
and various temples, of which that of Apollo was the most magnificent,
built by Augustus of solid white marble from Luna. Here were the palaces
of Vaccus, of Flaccus, of Cicero, of Catiline, of Scaurus, of Antonius,
of Clodius, of Agrippa, and of Hortensius. Still on his left, in the
valley between the Palatine and the Capitoline, though he cannot see it,
concealed from view by the great temples of Vesta and of Castor, and the
still greater edifice known as the Basilica Julia, is the quarter called
the Velabrum, extending to the river, where the Pons Aemilius crosses it--
a low quarter of narrow streets and tall houses where the rabble lived
and died. On his right, concealed from view by the Aedes Divi Julii and
the Forum Romanum, is that magnificent series of edifices extending from
the Temple of Peace to the Temple of Trajan, including the Basilica
Pauli, the Forum Julii, the Forum Augusti, the Forum Trajani, the
Basilica Ulpia, more than three thousand feet in length and six hundred
in breadth, almost entirely surrounded by porticoes and colonnades, and
filled with statues and pictures--on the whole the grandest series of
public buildings clustered together probably ever erected, especially if
we take in the Forum Romanum and the various temples and basilicas which
connected the whole together--a forest of marble pillars and statues. He
ascends the steps which lead from the Temple of Concord to the Temple of
Juno Moneta upon the Arx or Tarpeian Rock, on the southwestern summit of
the hill, itself one of the most beautiful temples in Rome, erected by
Camillus on the spot where the house of M. Manlius Capitolinus had
stood. Here is established the Roman mint. Near this is the temple
erected by Augustus to Jupiter Tonans and that built by Domitian to
Jupiter Gustos. But all the sacred edifices which crown the Capitoline
are subordinate to the Templum Jovis Capitolini, standing on a platform
of eight thousand square feet, and built of the richest materials. The
portico which faces the Via Sacra consists of three rows of Doric
columns, the pediment is profusely ornamented with the choicest
sculptures, the apex of the roof is surmounted by the bronze horses of
Lysippus, and the roof itself is covered with gilded tiles. The temple
has three separate cells, though covered with one roof; in front of each
stand colossal statues of the three deities to whom it is consecrated.
Here are preserved what was most sacred in the eyes of Romans, and it is
itself the richest of all the temples of the city. What a beautiful
panorama is presented to the view from the summit of this consecrated
hill, only mounted by a steep ascent of one hundred steps. To the south
is the Via Sacra extending to the Colosseum, and beyond it is the Appia
Via, lined with monuments as far as the eye can reach. Little beyond the
fora to the east is the Carinae, a fashionable quarter of beautiful shops
and houses, and still further off are the Baths of Titus, extending from
the Carinae to the Esquiline Mount. This hill, once a burial-ground, is
now covered with the house and gardens of Maecenas, and of the poets whom
he patronized. It is not rich in temples, but its gardens and groves are
beautiful. To the northeast are the Viminal and Quirinal hills, after
the Palatine the most ancient part of the city--the seat of the Sabine
population. Abounding in fanes and temples, the most splendid of which
is the Temple of Quirinus, erected originally to Romulus by Numa, but
rebuilt by Augustus, with a double row of columns on each of its sides,
seventy-six in number. Near by was the house of Atticus, and the gardens
of Sallust in the valley between the Quirinal and Pincian, afterwards
the property of the emperor. Far back on the Quirinal, near the wall of
Servius, were the Baths of Diocletian, and still further to the east the
Pretorian Camp established by Tiberius, and included within the wall of
Aurelian. To the northeast the eye lights on the Pincian Hill covered by
the gardens of Lucullus, to possess which Messalina caused the death of
Valerius Asiaticus, into whose possession they had fallen. In the valley
which lay between the fora and the Quirinal was the celebrated Subura,--
the quarter of shops, markets, and artificers,--a busy, noisy, vulgar
section, not beautiful, but full of life and enterprise and wickedness.
The eye now turns to the north, and the whole length of the Via Flaminia
is exposed to view, extending from the Capitoline to the Flaminian gate,
perfectly straight, the finest street in Rome, and parallel to the
modern Corso. It is the great highway to the north of Italy. Monuments
and temples and palaces line this celebrated street. It is spanned by
the triumphal arches of Claudius and Marcus Aurelius. To the west of it
is the Campus Martius, with its innumerable objects of interest,--the
Baths of Agrippa, the Pantheon, the Thermae Alexandrinae, the Column of
Marcus Aurelius, and the Mausoleum of Augustus. Beneath the Capitoline
on the west, toward the river, is the Circus Flaminius, the Portico of
Octavius, the Theatre of Balbus, and the Theatre of Pompey, where forty
thousand spectators were accommodated. Stretching beyond the Thermae
Alexandrinae, near the Pantheon, is the magnificent bridge which crosses
the Tiber, built by Hadrian when he founded his Mausoleum, to which it
leads, still standing under the name of the Ponte S. Angelo. The eye
takes in eight or nine bridges over the Tiber, some of wood, but
generally of stone, of beautiful masonry, and crowned with statues. At
the foot of the Capitoline, toward the southwest, are the Portico of
Octavius and the Theatre of Marcellus, near the Pons Cestius. Still
further southwest, between the Capitoline and the Aventine, in a low
valley, are the Velabrum and the Forum Boarium, once a marsh, but now
rich in temples and monuments, among which are those of Hercules Fortuna
and Mater Matuta. There are no less than four temples consecrated to
Hercules in the Forum Boarium, one of the most celebrated places in
Rome, devoted to trade and commerce. Beyond still, in the valley between
the Palatine and the Aventine, is the great Circus Maximus, founded by
the early Tarquin. It is the largest open space inclosed by walls and
porticoes in the city. It seats three hundred and eighty-five thousand
people. How vast a city, which can spare nearly four hundred thousand of
its population to see the chariot-races! Beyond is the Aventine itself.
This also is rich in legendary monuments and in the palaces of the
great, though originally a plebeian quarter. Here dwelt Trajan, before
he was emperor, and Ennius the poet, and Paula, the friend of St.
Jerome. Beneath the Aventine, and a little south of the Circus Maximus,
west of the Appian Way, are the great baths of Caracalla, the ruins of
which, next to those of the Colosseum, made on my mind the strongest
impression of any thing that pertains to antiquity, though these were
not so large as those of Diocletian. The view south takes in the Caelian
Hill, the ancient residence of Tullus Hostilius. The beautiful Temple of
Divus Claudius, the Arch of Dolabella, the Macellum Magnum,--a market
founded by Nero,--the Castra Peregrina, the Temple of Isis, the Campus
Martialis, are among the most conspicuous objects of interest. This hill
is the residence of many distinguished Romans. It is covered with
palaces. Among them is the house of Claudius Centumalus--so high, that
the augurs command him to lower it. It towers ten or twelve stories into
the air. Scarcely inferior in size is the house of Mamura, whose
splendor is described by Pliny. Here also is the house of Annius Verus,
the father of Marcus Aurelius, surrounded with gardens. But grander than
any of these palaces is that of Plautius Lateranus, the _egregioe
Lateranorum oedes_, which became imperial property in the time of
Nero, and on whose site stands the basilica of St. John Lateran,--the
gift of Constantine to the bishop of Rome,--one of the most ancient of
the Christian churches, in which, for fifteen hundred years, daily
services have been performed.
[Sidenote: Population.]
[Sidenote: Number of houses.]
Such are the objects of interest and grandeur which strike the eye as it
is turned toward the various quarters of the city. But these are only
the more important. The seven hills, appearing considerably higher than
at the present day, as the valleys are raised fifteen or twenty feet
above their ancient level, are covered with temples, palaces, and
gardens; the valleys are densely crowded with shops, houses, baths, and
theatres. The houses rise frequently to the tenth platform or story. The
suburban population, beyond the walls, is probably greater than that
within. The city, virtually, contains between three and four millions or
people. Lipsius estimates four millions as the population, including
slaves, women, children, and strangers. Though this estimate is regarded
as too large by Merivale and others, yet how enormous must have been the
number of the people when there were nine thousand and twenty-five
baths, and when those of Diocletian could accommodate three thousand two
hundred people at a time. The wooden theatre of Scaurus contained eighty
thousand seats; that of Marcellus would seat twenty thousand; the
Colosseum would seat eighty-seven thousand, and give standing space for
twenty-two thousand more. The Circus Maximus would hold three hundred
and eighty-five thousand spectators. If only one person out of four of
the free population witnessed the games and spectacles at a time, we
thus must have four millions of people altogether in the city. The
Aurelian walls are now only thirteen miles in circumference, but Lipsius
estimates the circumference at forty-five miles, and Vopiscus nearly
fifty. The diameter of the city must have been eleven miles, since
Strabo tells us that the actual limit of Rome was at a place between the
fifth and sixth milestone from the column of Trajan in the Forum--the
central and most conspicuous object in the city except the
capitol. [Footnote: Strabo, lib. v. ch. 3.] Even in the sixth century,
after Rome had been sacked and plundered by Goths and Vandals, Zacharia,
a traveler, asserts that there were three hundred and eighty-four
spacious streets, eighty golden statues of the gods; sixty-six large
ivory statues of the gods; forty-six thousand six hundred and three
houses; seventeen thousand and ninety-seven palaces; thirteen thousand
and fifty-two fountains; three thousand seven hundred and eighty-five
bronze statues of emperors and generals; twenty-two great horses in
bronze; two colossi; two spiral columns; thirty-one theatres; eleven
amphitheatres; nine thousand and twenty-six baths; two thousand three
hundred shops of perfumers; two thousand and ninety-one
prisons. [Footnote: St. Ampere, _Hist. Romaine a Rome_.] This seems
to be incredible. "But," says Story, "Augustus divided the city into
eighteen regions: each region contained twenty-two vici; each vicus
contained about two hundred and thirty dwelling-houses, so that there
must have been seventy-five thousand houses; of these houses, seventeen
thousand were palaces, or domus. If each contained two hundred persons,
(and four hundred slaves were maintained in a single palace,) reckoning
family, freedmen, and slaves, we have three millions four hundred
thousand people, and supposing the remaining fifty-eight thousand houses
to have contained twenty-five persons each, we have in them one million
four hundred and fifty thousand, which would give an entire population
of four millions eight hundred and fifty thousand." If Mr. Merivale's
estimate of seven hundred thousand is correct, then the Colosseum would
hold nearly one in six of the whole population, which is incredible.
Indeed, it is probable that even four millions was under than above the
true estimate, which would make Rome the most populous city ever seen
upon our globe. Nor is it extravagant to suppose this. The city
numbered, according to the census, eighty thousand people in the year
197; and in 683 it had risen to four hundred and fifty thousand. Is it
strange it should have numbered four millions in the time of Augustus,
or even six millions in the time of Arelian, when we bear in mind that
it was the political and social centre of a vast empire, and that empire
the world? If London contains three millions at the present day, and
Paris two millions, why should not a capital which had no rival, and
which controlled at least one hundred and twenty millions of people? So
that Pliny was not probably wrong when he said, "_Si quis altitudinem
tectorum addat, dignam profecto oestimationem concipiat, fateatur qui
nullius urbis magnitudinem potuisse ei comparare._" "If any one
considers the height of the roofs, so as to form a just estimate, he
will confess that no city could be compared with it for magnitude."
[Sidenote: The monuments which survive.]
[Sidenote: Games of Titus.]
Modern writers, taking London and Paris for their measure of material
civilization, seem unwilling to admit that Rome could have reached such
a pitch of glory and wealth and power. To him who stands within the
narrow limits of the Forum, as it now appears, it seems incredible that
it could have been the centre of a much larger city than Europe can now
boast of. Grave historians are loth to compromise their dignity and
character for truth, by admitting statements which seem, to men of
limited views, to be fabulous, and which transcend modern experience.
But we should remember that most of the monuments of ancient Rome have
entirely disappeared. Nothing remains of the Palace of the Caesars, which
nearly covered the Palatine Hill; little of the fora which, connected
together, covered a space twice as large as that inclosed by the palaces
of the Louvre and Tuileries with all their galleries and courts; almost
nothing of the glories of the Capitoline Hill; and little comparatively
of those Thermae which were a mile in circuit. But what does remain
attests an unparalleled grandeur--the broken pillars of the Forum; the
lofty columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius; the Pantheon, lifting its
spacious dome two hundred feet into the air; the mere vestibule of the
Baths of Agrippa; the triumphal arches of Titus and Trajan and
Constantine; the bridges which span the Tiber; the aqueducts which cross
the Campagna; the Cloaca Maxima, which drained the marshes and lakes of
the infant city; but above all, the Colosseum. What glory and shame are
associated with that single edifice! That alone, if nothing else
remained of Pagan antiquity, would indicate a grandeur and a folly such
as cannot now be seen on earth. It reveals a wonderful skill in masonry,
and great architectural strength; it shows the wealth and resources of
rulers who must have had the treasures of the world at their command; it
indicates an enormous population, since it would seat all the male
adults of the city of New York; it shows the restless passions of the
people for excitement, and the necessity on the part of government of
yielding to this taste. What leisure and indolence marked a city which
could afford to give up so much time to the demoralizing sports! What
facilities for transportation were afforded, when so many wild beasts
could be brought to the capital from the central parts of Africa without
calling out unusual comment! How imperious a populace that compels the
government to provide such expensive pleasures! The games of Titus, on
its dedication, last one hundred days, and five thousand wild beasts are
slaughtered in the arena. The number of the gladiators who fought
surpasses belief. At the triumph of Trajan over the Dacians, ten
thousand gladiators were exhibited, and the emperor himself presides
under a gilded canopy, surrounded by thousands of his lords. Underneath
the arena, strewed with yellow sand and sawdust, is a solid pavement so
closely cemented that it can be turned into an artificial lake on which
naval battles are fought. But it is the conflict of gladiators which
most deeply stimulates the passions of the people. The benches are
crowded with eager spectators, and the voices of one hundred thousand
are raised in triumph or rage as the miserable victims sink exhausted in
the bloody sport.
[Sidenote: Roman triumphs.]
But it is not the gladiatorial sports of the amphitheatre which most
strikingly attest the greatness and splendor of the city; nor the
palaces, in which as many as four hundred slaves are sometimes
maintained as domestic servants, twelve hundred in number according to
the lowest estimate, but probably five times as numerous, since every
senator, every knight, and every rich man was proud to possess a
residence which would attract attention; nor the temples, which numbered
four hundred and twenty-four, most of which were of marble, filled with
statues, the contributions of ages, and surrounded with groves; nor the
fora and basilicae, with their porticoes, statues, and pictures, covering
more space than any cluster of public buildings in Europe, a mile and a
half in circuit; nor the baths, nearly as large, still more completely
filled with works of art; nor the Circus Maximus, where more people
witnessed the chariot races at a time than are nightly assembled in all
the places of public amusement in Paris, London, and New York combined--
more than could be seated in all the cathedrals of England and France;
it is not these which most impressively make us feel that Rome was the
mistress of the world and the centre of all civilization. The triumphal
processions of the conquering generals were still more exciting to
behold, for these appeal more directly to the imagination, and excite
those passions which urged the Romans to a career of conquest from
generation to generation. No military review of modern times equaled
those gorgeous triumphs, even as no scenic performance compares with the
gladiatorial shows. The. sun has never shone upon any human assemblage
so magnificent and so grand, so imposing and yet so guilty. And we
recall the picture of it with solemn awe as it moves along the Via Sacra
and ascends the Capitoline Hill, or passes through the theatres of
Pompey and Marcellus, that all the people might witness the brilliant
spectacle. Not only were displayed the spoils of conquered kingdoms, and
the triumphal cars of generals, but the whole military strength of the
capital. An army of one hundred thousand men, flushed with victory,
follows the gorgeous procession of nobles and princes. The triumph of
Aurelian, on his return from the East, gives us some idea of the
grandeur of that ovation to conquerors. "The pomp was opened by twenty
elephants, four royal tigers, and two hundred of the most curious
animals from every climate, north, south, east, and west. These were
followed by one thousand six hundred gladiators, devoted to the cruel
amusement of the amphitheatre. Then were displayed the arms and ensigns
of conquered nations, the plate and wardrobe of the Syrian queen. Then
ambassadors from all parts of the earth--all remarkable in their rich
dresses, with their crowns and offerings. Then the captives taken in the
various wars, Goths, Vandals, Samaritans, Alemanni, Franks, Gauls,
Syrians, and Egyptians, each marked by their national costume. Then the
Queen of the East, the beautiful Zenobia, confined by fetters of gold,
and fainting under the weight of jewels, preceding the beautiful chariot
in which she had hoped to enter the gates of Rome. Then the chariot of
the Persian king. Then the triumphal car of Aurelian himself, drawn by
elephants. Finally the most illustrious of the Senate, the people, and
the army closed the solemn procession, amid the acclamations of the
people, and the sound of musical instruments. It took from dawn of day
until the ninth hour for the procession to pass to the capital, and the
festival was protracted by theatrical representations, the games of the
circus, the hunting of wild beasts, combats of gladiators, and naval
engagements. Liberal donations were presented to the army, and a portion
of the spoils dedicated to the gods. All the temples glittered with the
offerings of ostentatious piety, and the Temple of the Sun received
fifteen thousand pounds of gold. The soldiers and the citizens were then
surfeited with meat and wine. The disbanded soldiery thronged the
amphitheatre, and yelled their fiendish applause at the infernal games,--
the gorged robbers of the world, drunk in a festival of hell,"
[Footnote: Henry Giles.]--a representation of war as terrible as war
itself, compensating to the Roman people the massacres which they could
not see.
If any thing more were wanted to give us an idea of Roman magnificence,
we would turn our eyes from public monuments, demoralizing games, and
grand processions; we would forget the statues in brass and marble,
which outnumbered the living inhabitants, so numerous that one hundred
thousand have been recovered and still embellish Italy, and would
descend into the lower sphere of material life--to those things which
attest luxury and taste--to ornaments, dresses, sumptuous living, and
rich furniture. The art of working metals and cutting precious stones
surpassed any thing known at the present day. In the decoration of
houses, in social entertainments, in cookery, the Romans were
remarkable. The mosaics, signet rings, cameos, bracelets, bronzes,
chains, vases, couches, banqueting tables, lamps, chariots, colored
glass, gildings, mirrors, mattresses, cosmetics, perfumes, hair dyes,
silk robes, potteries, all attest great elegance and beauty. The tables
of thuga root and Delian bronze were as expensive as the sideboards of
Spanish walnut, so much admired in the great exhibition at London. Wood
and ivory were carved as exquisitely as in Japan and China. Mirrors were
made of polished silver. Glass-cutters could imitate the colors of
precious stones so well, that the Portland vase, from the tomb of
Alexander Severus, was long considered as a genuine sardonix. Brass
could be hardened so as to cut stone. The palace of Nero glittered with
gold and jewels. Perfumes and flowers were showered from ivory ceilings.
The halls of Heliogabulus were hung with cloth of gold, enriched with
jewels. His beds were silver, and his tables of gold. Tiberius gave a
million of sesterces for a picture for his bed-room. A banquet dish of
Drusillus weighed five hundred pounds of silver. The cups of Drusus were
of gold. Tunics were embroidered with the figures of various animals.
Sandals were garnished with precious stones. Paulina wore jewels, when
she paid visits, valued at $800,000. Drinking-cups were engraved with
scenes from the poets. Libraries were adorned with busts, and presses of
rare woods. Sofas were inlaid with tortoise-shell, and covered with
gorgeous purple. The Roman grandees rode in gilded chariots, bathed in
marble baths, dined from golden plate, drank from crystal cups, slept on
beds of down, reclined on luxurious couches, wore embroidered robes, and
were adorned with precious stones. They ransacked the earth and the seas
for rare dishes for their banquets, and ornamented their houses with
carpets from Babylon, onyx cups from Bythinia, marbles from Numidia,
bronzes from Corinth, statues from Athens--whatever, in short, was
precious or rare or curious in the most distant countries. The luxuries
of the bath almost exceed belief, and on the walls were magnificent
frescoes and paintings, exhibiting an inexhaustible productiveness in
landscape and mythological scenes, executed in lively colors. From the
praises of Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny, and other great critics, we have a
right to infer that painting was as much prized as statuary, and equaled
it in artistic excellence, although so little remains of antiquity from
which we can form an enlightened judgment. We certainly infer from
designs on vases great skill in drawing, and from the excavations of
Pompeii, the most beautiful colors. The walls of the great hall of the
baths of Titus represent flowers, birds, and animals, drawn with
wonderful accuracy. In the long corridor of these baths the ceiling is
painted with colors which are still fresh, and Raphael is said to have
studied the frescoes with admiration, even as Michael Angelo found in
the Pantheon a model for the dome of St. Peter's, and in the statues
which were dug up from the ruins of the baths, studies for his own
immortal masterpieces.
Thus every thing which gilds the material wonders of our day with glory
and splendor, also marked the old capitol of the world. That which is
most prized by us, distinguished to an eminent degree the Roman
grandees. In an architectural point of view no modern city approaches
Rome. It contained more statues than all the Museums of Europe. It had
every thing which we have except machinery. It surpassed every modern
capitol in population. It was richer than any modern city, since the
people were not obliged to toil for their daily bread. The poor were fed
by the government, and had time and leisure for the luxuries of the bath
and the excitements of the amphitheatre. The citizen nobles owned whole
provinces. Even Paula could call a whole city her own. Rich senators, in
some cases, were the proprietors of twenty thousand slaves. Their
incomes were known to be 1000 pounds sterling a day, when gold and
silver were worth four times as much as at the present day. Rome was
made up of these citizen kings and their dependants, for most of the
senators had been, at some time, governors of provinces, which they
rifled and robbed. In Rome were accumulated the choicest treasures of
the world. Her hills were covered with the palaces of the proudest
nobles that ever walked the earth, Rome was the centre, and the glory,
and the pride of all the nations of antiquity. It seemed impossible that
such a city could ever be taken by enemies, or fall into decay.
"_Quando cadet Roma cadet et mundus_," said the admiring Saxons
three hundred years after the injuries inflicted by Goths and Vandals.
Nor has Rome died. Never has she entirely passed into the hands of her
enemies. A hundred times on the verge of annihilation, she was never
annihilated. She never accepted the stranger's yoke--she never was
permanently subjected to the barbarian. She continued to be Roman after
the imperial presence had departed. She was Roman when fires, and
inundations, and pestilence, and famine, and barbaric soldiers desolated
the city. She was Roman when the Pope held Christendom in a base
subserviency. She was Roman when Rienzi attempted to revive the virtues
of the heroic ages, and when Michael Angelo restored the wonders of
Apollodorus. And Roman that city will remain, whether as the home of
princes, or the future capitol of the kings of Italy, or the resort of
travelers, or the school of artists, or the seat of a spiritual
despotism which gains strength as political and temporal power passes
away before the ideas of the new races and the new civilization.
* * * * *
The most valuable book of reference for this chapter is the late work of
Dr. Dyer, author of the article "Roma" in Smith's Dictionary. In fact
this chapter is a mere compilation of that elaborate work, ("History of
the City of Rome,") which may be said to be exhaustive. Mabillon and
Montfaucon--two French Benedictines--rendered great service in the
seventeenth century to Roman topography. Edward Burton and Richard
Burgess wrote descriptions of Roman antiquities, now superseded by the
writings of those great German scholars, who made a new epoch of Roman
topography--Niebuhr, Bunsen, Platner, Gerhard, and Rostell, who,
however, have succeeded in throwing doubt on many things supposed to be
established. One of the most learned treatises on ancient Rome is the
celebrated _Handbuch_ of Becker. Stephano Piale and Luigi Canina
are the most approved of the modern Italian antiquarians.
[Relocated Footnote:
[Sidenote: Mausoleum of Augustus.]
[Sidenote: Those who were buried in it.]
"This enduring structure, which survived the conflagrations, the wars,
and the anarchies of fifteen hundred years, consisted of a large tumulus
of earth, raised on a lofty basement of white marble, and covered on the
summit with evergreens in the manner of a hanging garden. On the summit
was a bronze statue of Augustus himself, and beneath the tumulus was a
large central hall, round which ran a range of fourteen sepulchral
chambers, opening into this common vestibule. At the entrance were two
Egyptian obelisks, fifty feet in height, and all around was an extensive
grove divided into walks and terraces. The young Marcellus, whose fate
was bewailed by Virgil, was its first occupant. Here was placed Octavia,
the neglected wife of Antony, and Agrippa, the builder of the Parthenon,
and Livia, the beloved wife of Augustus, and beside them the first
imperator himself. Here were the poisoned ashes of the noble Germanicus,
borne from Syria; here the young Drusus, the pride of the Ciaudian
family, and at his side the second Drusus, the son of Tiberius. Here
reposed the dust of Agrippina, after years of exile, by the side of her
husband, Germanicus; here Nero and his mother, Agrippina, and his
victim, Britannicus; here Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and all the
other Caesars to Nerva. Then the marble door was closed, for the
sepulchral cells were full."--Story's _Roba di Roma_.]
CHAPTER IV.
ART IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
In my enumeration of the external glories of the Roman world, I only
attempted to glance at those wonders which were calculated to strike a
traveler with admiration. Among these were the great developments of
Art, displayed in architecture, in statuary, and in painting. But I only
enumerated the more remarkable objects of attraction; I did not attempt
to show the genius displayed in them. But ancient art, as a proud
creation of the genius of man, demands additional notice. We wish to
know to what heights the Romans soared in that great realm of beauty and
grace and majesty.
[Sidenote: Origins and principles of art.]
[Sidenote: Fascinations of art.]
[Sidenote: Development of art.]
[Sidenote: Glory of art.]
The aesthetic glories of art are among the grandest triumphs of
civilization, and attest as well as demand no ordinary force of genius.
Art claims to be creative, and to be based on eternal principles of
beauty, and artists in all ages have claimed a proud niche in the temple
of fame. They rank with poets and musicians, and even philosophers and
historians, in the world's regard. They are favored sons of inspiration,
urged to their work by ideal conceptions of the beautiful and the true.
Their productions are material, but the spirit which led to their
creation is of the soul and mind. Imagination is tasked to the uttermost
to portray sentiments and passions. The bust is "animated," and the
temple, though built of marble, and by man, is called "religious." Art
appeals to every cultivated mind, and excites poetic feelings. It is
impressive even to every order, class, and condition of men, not,
perhaps, in its severest forms, since the taste must be cultivated to
appreciate its higher beauties, but to a certain extent. The pyramids
and the granite image temples of Egypt must have filled even the rude
people with a certain awe and wonder, even as the majestic cathedrals of
mediaeval Europe, with their imposing pomps, stimulated the poetic
conceptions of the Gothic nations. Art is popular. The rude savage
admires a gaudy picture even as the cultivated Leo X. or Cardinal
Mazarini bent in admiration before the great creations of Raphael or
Domenichino. Art appeals to the senses as well as to the intellect and
the heart, and is capable of inspiring the passions as well as the
loftiest emotions and sentiments. The Grecian mind was trained to the
contemplation of aesthetic beauty in temples, in statues, and in
pictures; and the great artist was rewarded with honors and material
gains. The love of art is easier kindled than the love of literary
excellence, and is more generally diffused. It is coeval with songs and
epic poetry. Before Socrates or Plato speculated on the great certitudes
of philosophy, temples and statues were the pride and boast of their
countrymen. And as the taste for art precedes the taste for letters, so
it survives, when the literature has lost its life and freshness. The
luxurious citizens of Rome ornamented their baths and palaces with
exquisite pictures and statues long after genius ceased to soar to the
heights of philosophy and poetry. The proudest triumphs of genius are in
a realm which art can never approach, yet the wonders of art are still
among the great triumphs of civilization. Zeuxis or Praxiteles may not
have equaled Homer or Plato in profundity of genius, but it was only a
great age which could have produced a Zeuxis or Praxiteles. I cannot
place Raphael on so exalted a pinnacle as Luther, or Bacon, or Newton,
and yet his fame will last as long as civilization shall exist. The
creations of the chisel will ever be held in reverence by mankind, and
probably in proportion as wealth, elegance, and material prosperity
shall flourish. In an important sense, Corinth was as wonderful as
Athens, although to Athens will be assigned the highest place in the
ancient world. It was art rather than literature or philosophy which was
the glory of Rome in the period of her decline. As great capitals become
centres of luxury and display, artists will be rewarded and honored. The
pride of a commercial metropolis is in those material wonders which
appeal to the senses, and which wealth can purchase. A rich merchant can
give employment to the architect, when he would be disinclined to reward
the critic or the historian. Even where liberty and lofty aspirations
for truth and moral excellence have left a state, the arts suffer but
little decline. The grandest monuments of Rome date to the imperial
regime, not to the republican sway. When the voice of a Cicero was mute,
the Flavian amphitheatre arose in its sublime proportions. Imperial
despotism is favorable to the adornment of Paris and St. Petersburg,
even as wealth and luxury will beautify New York. When the early lights
of the Church were unheeded in the old capitals of the world, new
temples and palaces were the glory of the state. Art was the first to be
revived of the trophies of the old civilization, and it will be the last
to be relinquished, by those whom civilization has enriched. Art excites
no dangerous passions or sentiments in a decaying monarchy, and it is a
fresh and perpetual pleasure, not merely to the people, but to the
arbiters of taste and fashion. The Popes rewarded artists when they
crushed reformers, and persecuted inquiring genius. The developments of
art appeal to material life and interests rather than to the spiritual
and eternal. St. Paul scarcely alludes to the material wonders of the
cities he visited, even as Luther was insensible to the ornaments of
Italy in his absorbing desire for the spiritual and moral welfare of
society. Art is purely the creation of man. It receives no inspiration
from Heaven; and yet the principles on which it is based are eternal and
unchangeable, and when it is made to be the handmaid of virtue, it is
capable of exciting the loftiest sentiments. So pure, so exalted, and so
wrapt are the feelings which arise from the contemplation of a great
picture or statue, that we sometimes ascribe a religious force to the
art itself, while all that is divine springs from the conception of the
artist, and all that is divine in his conception arises from sentiments
independent of his art, as he is stimulated by emotions of religion, or
patriotism, or public virtue, and which he could never have embodied had
he not been a good man, rather than a great artist, or, at least,
affected by sentiments which he learned from other sources. There can be
no doubt that, through the vehicle of art, the grandest and noblest
sentiments may be expressed. Hence artists may be great benefactors; yet
sometimes their works are demoralizing, as they appeal to perverted
taste and passions. This was especially true in the later days of Rome,
when artists sought to please their corrupt but wealthy patrons. The
great artists of Greece, however, had in view a lofty ideal of beauty
and grace which they sought to realize without reference to profit, or
worldly advantage, or utilitarian necessities. Art, when true and
exalted, as it sometimes is, and always should be, has its end in
itself. Like virtue, it is its own reward. Michael Angelo worked,
preoccupied and wrapt, without the stimulus of even praise, even as
Dante lived in the visions to which his imagination gave form and
reality. Art is therefore self-sustained, unselfish, lofty. It is the
soul going forth triumphant over external circumstances, jubilant and
melodious even in poverty and neglect, rising above the evils of life in
its absorbing contemplation of ideal loveliness. The fortunate accidents
of earth are nothing to the true artist, striving to reach his ideal of
excellence,--no more than carpets and chairs are to a great woman pining
for sympathy or love. And it is only when there is this soul-longing to
reach the excellence it has conceived for itself alone that great works
have been produced. The sweetest strains of music sometimes come from
women where no one listens to their melodies. Nor does a great artist
seek or need commiseration, if ever so unfortunate in worldly
circumstances. He may be sad and sorrowful, but only in the profound
seriousness of superior knowledge, in that isolation to which all genius
is doomed.
[Sidenote: Great artists labor from inspiration.]
We have reason to believe that the great artists of antiquity lived, as
did the Ionic philosophers, in their own glorious realms of thought and
feeling, which the world could neither understand nor share. Their ideas
of grace and beauty were realized to the highest degree ever known on
earth. They were expressed in their temples, their statues, and their
pictures. They did not live for utilities. When art became a utility, it
degenerated. It became more pretentious, artificial, complicated,
elaborate, ornamental even, but it lacked genius, the simplicity of
power, the glory of originality. The horses of the sun cannot be made to
go round in a mill. The spiritual must keep within its own seclusion, in
its inner temple of mystery and meditation.
[Sidenote: Grecian art consecrated to Paganism.]
[Sidenote: Greatness and beauty of Grecian art.]
[Sidenote: Grecian admiration of art.]
Grecian art was consecrated to Paganism, and could not therefore soar
beyond what Paganism revealed. It did not typify those exalted
sentiments which even a Gothic cathedral portrayed--sacrifice; the man
on the cross; the man in the tomb; the man ascending to heaven. Nor did
it paint, like Raphael, etherial beauty, such as was expressed in the
mother of our Lord, her whom all generations shall bless, _regina
angelorum, mater divinae gratiae_. But whatever has been reached by the
unaided powers of man, it reproduced and consecrated, and it realized
the highest conceptions of beauty and grace that have ever been
represented. All that the mind and the soul could, by their inherent
force, reach, it has attained. Modern civilization has no prouder
triumphs than those achieved by the artists of Pagan antiquity in those
things which pertain to beauty and grace. Grecian artists have been the
schoolmasters of all nations and all ages in architecture, sculpture,
and painting. How far they themselves were original we cannot decide,
although they were probably somewhat indebted to the Assyrians and
Egyptians. But they struck out so new a style, and so different from the
older monuments of Asia and Egypt, that we consider them the great
creators of art. But whether original or not, they have never been
surpassed. In some respects their immortal productions remain objects of
hopeless imitation. In the realization of ideas of beauty which are
eternal, like those on which Plato built his system of philosophy, they
reached absolute perfection. And hence we infer that art can flourish
under Pagan as well as Christian influences. We can go no higher than
those ancient Pagans in one of the proudest fields of civilization; for
art has as sincere and warm admirers as it had in Grecian and Roman
times, but the limit of excellence has been reached. It is the mission
of our age to apply creative genius to enterprises and works which have
not been tried, if any thing new is to be found under the sun. Nor was
it the number and extent of the works of art among the Greeks and
Romans, nor their perfection, which made art so distinguishing an
element of the old civilization. It was the spirit of the age, the
absorption of the public mind, the great prominence which art had in the
eyes of the people. Art was to the Greeks what tournaments and churches
were to the men of the Middle Ages, what the Reformation was to Germany
and England in the sixteenth century, what theories of political rights
were to the era of the French Revolution, what mechanical inventions to
abridge human labor are to us. The creation of a great statue was an
era, an object of popular interest--the subject of universal comment. It
kindled popular inspirations. It was the great form of progress in which
that age rejoiced. Public benefactors erected temples, and lavished upon
them the superfluous wealth of the State. And public benefactors, in
turn, had statues erected to their memory by their grateful admirers.
The genius of the age expressed itself in marble histories. And these
histories stand in the mystery of absolute perfection--the glory and the
characteristic of a great and peculiar people.
[Sidenote: Principles of art.]
[Sidenote: Devotion of the Greeks for Art.]
Much has been written on those principles upon which art is founded, and
great ingenuity displayed. But treatises on taste, on beauty, on grace,
and other perceptions of intellectual pleasure, are not very
satisfactory, and must be necessarily indefinite. In what does beauty
consist? Do we arrive at any clearer conceptions of it by definitions?
Whether beauty, the chief glory of the fine arts, consists in certain
arrangements and proportions of the parts to a whole, or in the fitness
of means to an end, or is dependent on associations which excite
pleasure, or is a revelation of truth, or is an appeal to sensibilities,
or is an imitation of Nature, or the realization of ideal excellence, it
is difficult to settle and almost useless to inquire. "Metaphysics,
mathematics, music, and philosophy have been called in to analyze,
define, demonstrate, and generalize." [Footnote: Cleghorn, _Ancient
and Modern Art_, vol. i. p. 67.] Great writers have written ingenious
treatises, like Burke, Alison, and Stewart. Beauty, according to Plato,
is the contemplation of mind; Leibnitz maintained it consists in
perfection; Diderot referred beauty to the idea of relation; Blondel
asserted it was harmonic proportions; Peter Leigh speaks of it as the
music of the eye. Yet everybody understands what beauty is, and that it
is derived from Nature, agreeable to the purest models which Nature
presents. Such was the ideal of Phidias. Such was it to the minds of the
Greeks, who united every advantage, physical and mental, for the
perfection of art. Nor could art have been so wonderfully developed had
it not been for the influence which the great poets, orators,
dramatists, historians, and philosophers exercised on the inspiration of
the artists. Phidias, being asked how he conceived the idea of his
Olympian Jupiter, answered by repeating a passage of Homer. We can
scarcely conceive of the enthusiasm which the Greeks exhibited in the
cultivation of art. Hence it has obtained an ascendency over that of all
other nations. Roman art was the continuation of the Grecian. The Romans
appreciated and rewarded Grecian artists. They adopted their
architecture, their sculpture, and their paintings; and, though art
never attained the estimation and dignity in Rome that it did in Greece,
it still can boast of a great development. But, inasmuch as all the
great models were Grecian, and appropriated and copied by the Romans,--
inasmuch as the great wonders of the "Eternal City" were made by
Greeks,--we cannot treat of Roman art in distinction from Grecian. And
as I wish to show simply the triumph of Pagan genius in the realm of
art, and most of the immortal creations of the great artists were
transported to Rome, and adorned Rome, it is within my province to go
where they were originally found.
"Tu, regere imperio populos, Romane, memento!
Hae tibi erunt artes."
[Sidenote: Art first impressive in achitecture.]
The first development of art was in architecture, not merely among the
Greeks, but among the older nations. Although it refers, in a certain
sense, to all buildings, yet it is ordinarily restricted to those
edifices in which we recognize the principle of beauty, such as
symmetrical arrangement, and attractive ornaments, like pillars,
cornices, and sculptured leaves.
The earliest buildings were houses to protect men from the inclemencies
of the weather, and built without much regard to beauty; but it is in
temples for the worship of God, that architecture lays claim to dignity.
It was the result of devotional feelings; nor is there a single instance
of supreme excellence in art being reached, which was not sacred, and
connected with reverential tendencies. In the erection and decoration of
sacred buildings there was a profound sentiment that they were to be the
sanctuaries of God, and genius was stimulated by pious emotions. In
India, in Egypt, in Greece, in Italy, the various temples all originated
in blended superstition and devotion. Nor did the edifice, erected for
religious worship, reach its culminating height of beauty and grandeur
until that earnest and profoundly religious epoch which felt as injuries
the insults offered to the tomb which covered the remains of the Saviour
of the world. Then arose those hoary and Gothic vaults of Cologne and
Westminster, the only modern structures which would probably have called
out the admiration of an ancient Greek.
[Sidenote: Egyptian architecture.]
[Sidenote: Monuments of Egypt.]
[Sidenote: Temple of Carnack.]
[Sidenote: Features of Egyptian art.]
But architecture is conventional, and demands a knowledge of its system
and a mind informed as to the principles on which it depends for beauty.
Hence, in the oldest temples of India and Egypt, there was probably
vastness, without elegance or even embellishment. But no nation ever
left structures that, in extent and grandeur, can compare with those of
ancient Egypt; and these were chiefly temples. Nothing remains of the
ancient monuments of Thebes but the ruins of edifices consecrated to the
deity--neither bridges, nor quays, nor baths, nor theatres. It was when
the Israelites were oppressed by Pharaoh that the great city of
Heliopolis, which the Greeks called Thebes, arose, with its hundred
gates, and stately public buildings, and magnificent temples. The ruins
of these attest grandeur and vastness. They were built of stone, in huge
blocks, and we are still at a loss to comprehend how such heavy stones
could have been transported and erected. All the monuments of the
Pharaohs are wonders of science and art, especially such as appear in
the ruins of Carnack--a temple formerly designated as that of Jupiter
Ammon. It was in the time of Sesostris, or Rameses the Great, the first
of the Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty, that architecture in Egypt
reached its greatest development. Then we find the rectangular cut
blocks of stone in parallel courses, and the heavy piers, and the
cylindrical column, with its bell-shaped capital, and the bold and
massive rectangular architraves extending from pier to pier and column
to column, surmounted by a deep covered coping or cornice. But the
imposing architecture of Egypt was chiefly owing to the vast proportions
of the public buildings. It was not produced by beauty of proportion, or
graceful embellishments. It was designed to awe the people, and kindle
sentiments of wonder and astonishment. So far as this end was
contemplated, it was nobly reached. Even to this day the traveller
stands in admiring amazement before those monuments which were old three
thousand years ago. No structures have been so enduring as the Pyramids.
No ruins are more extensive and majestic than those of Thebes. The
temple of Carnack and the palace of Rameses the Great, were probably the
most imposing ever built by man. This temple was built of blocks of
stone seventy feet in length, on a platform one thousand feet long and
three hundred wide, with pillars sixty feet in height. But this and
other structures did not possess that unity of design, which marked the
Grecian temples. Alleys of colossal sphinxes form the approach. At
Carnack the alley was six thousand feet long, and before the main body
of the edifice stand two obelisks commemorative of the dedication. The
principal structures do not follow the straight line, but begin with
pyramidical towers which flank the gateways. Then follows, usually, a
court surrounded with colonnades, subordinate temples, and houses for
the priests. A second pylon, or pyramidical tower, now leads to the
interior and most considerable part of the temple, a portico inclosed
with walls, which only receives light through the entablature or
openings in the roof. Adjoining to this is the cella of the temple,
without columns, inclosed by several walls, often divided into various
small chambers, with monolith receptacles for idols or mummies or
animals. The columns stand within the walls. The Egyptians had no
perpetual temples. The colonnade is not, as among the Greeks, an
expansion of the temple; it is merely the wall with apertures. The
walls, composed of square blocks, are perpendicular only on the inside,
and beveled externally, so that the thickness at the bottom sometimes
amounts to twenty-four feet, and thus the whole building assumes a
pyramidical form, the fundamental principle of Egyptian architecture.
The columns are more slender than the early Doric, are placed close
together, and have bases of circular plinths; the shaft diminishes, and
is ornamented with perpendicular or oblique furrows, but not fluted like
Grecian columns. The capitals are of the bell form, ornamented with all
kinds of foliage, and have a narrow but high abacus, or bulge out below,
and are contracted above, with low, but projecting abacus. They abound
with sculptured decorations, borrowed from the vegetation of the
country. The highest of the columns of the temple of Luxor is five and a
quarter times the greatest diameter. [Footnote: Muller.]
[Sidenote: The Pyramids.]
But no monuments have ever excited so much curiosity and wonder as the
Pyramids, not in consequence of any particular beauty or ingenuity, as
from their immense size and unknown age. None but sacerdotal monarchs
would ever have erected them--none but a fanatical people would ever
have toiled upon them. They do not indicate civilization, but despotism.
We do not know for what purpose they were raised, except as sepulchres
for kings. They do not even indicate as high a culture as the temples of
Thebes, although they were built at a considerable period subsequently,
even several generations after Sesostris reigned in splendor. The
pyramid of Cheops, at Memphis, covers a square whose side is seven
hundred and sixty-eight feet, and rises into the air four hundred and
fifty-two, and is a solid mass of stone, which has suffered less from
time than the mountains near it. And it is probable that it stands over
an immense substructure, in which may yet be found the lore of ancient
Egypt, and which may even prove to be the famous labyrinth of which
Herodotus speaks, built by the twelve kings of Egypt. According to this
author, one hundred thousand men worked on this monument for forty
years. What a waste of labor!
The palaces of the kings are mere imitations of the temples, and the
only difference of architecture is this, that the rooms are larger and
in greater numbers. Some think that the labyrinth was a collective
palace of many rulers.
Such was the massive grandeur of Egyptian antiquities: at the best
curiosities, but of slight avail for moral or aesthetic culture, they yet
indicate a considerable civilization at a very remote period--proving
not merely by architectural monuments, but by their system of writing,
an original and intellectual people. [Footnote: Muller, _Ancient
Art_; Wilkinson, _Topog. of Thebes_; Champollion, _Lettres Ecrites
d'Egypt_; _Journal des Sav._ 1836; _Encyclopedia Britannica_;
Strabo.]
[Sidenote: Babylonian architecture.]
Of Babylonian architecture we know but little, beyond what the
Scriptures and ancient authors allude to in scattered notices. But,
though nothing survives of ancient magnificence, we feel that a city
whose walls, according to Herodotus, were eighty-seven feet in
thickness, three hundred and thirty-seven in height, and sixty miles in
circumference, and in which were one hundred gates of brass, must have
had considerable architectural splendor. The Tower of Belus, the Palace
of Nebuchadnezzar, and the Obelisk of Semiramis, were probably wonderful
structures, certainly in size, which is one of the conditions of
architectural effect.
[Sidenote: Tyrian monuments.]
The Tyrians must have carried architecture to considerable perfection,
since the Temple of Solomon, one of the most magnificent in the ancient
world, was probably built by Phoenician artists. It was not remarkable
for size; it was, indeed, very small; but it had great splendor of
decoration. It was of quadrangular outline, erected upon a solid
platform of stone, and having a striking resemblance to the oldest Greek
temples, like those of aegina and Paestum. The portico of the temple, in
the time of Herod, was one hundred and eighty feet high, and the temple
itself was entered by nine gates thickly coated with silver and gold.
The inner sanctuary was covered on all sides with plates of gold, and
was dazzling to the eye. The various courts and porticoes and palaces
with which it was surrounded, gave to it a very imposing effect.
[Sidenote: Early Doric monuments.]
[Sidenote: The principles of Doric architecture.]
[Sidenote: The features of the Doric order.]
[Sidenote: The Parthenon.]
Architecture, however, as the expression of genius and high
civilization, was perfected only by the Greeks. Egyptian monuments were
curiosities to the Greek and Roman mind, as they are to us objects of
awe and wonder. And as we propose to treat of the arts in their
culminating excellence chiefly,--to show what the Pagan intellect of man
could accomplish, unaided by light from heaven, we turn to the great
teacher of the last two thousand years. It was among the ancient
Dorians, who descended from the mountains of Northern Greece eighty
years after the fall of Troy, that art first appeared. The Pelasgi,
supposed to be Phoenicians, erected cyclopean structures fifteen hundred
years before Christ, as seen in the giant walls of the Acropolis,
[Footnote: _Dodwell's Classical Tour_, Muller.] constructed of huge
blocks of hewn stone, and the palaces of the princes of heroic times,
[Footnote: Homer's description of the palace of Odysseus.] like the
Mycenaean treasury, the lintel of the doorway of which is one stone
twenty-seven feet long and sixteen broad. [Footnote: Mure, _Tour in
Greece_.] But these edifices, which aimed at splendor and richness
merely, were deficient in that simplicity and harmony which have given
immortality to the temples of the Dorians. In this style of architecture
every thing was suitable to its object, and was grand and noble. The
great thickness of the columns, the beautiful entablature, the ample
proportion of the capital; the great horizontal lines of the architrave
and cornice, predominating over the vertical lines of the columns; the
severity of geometrical forms, produced for the most part by straight
lines, gave an imposing simplicity to the Doric temple. How far the
Greek architects were indebted to the Egyptian we cannot tell, for
though columns are found amid the ruins of the Egyptian temples, they
are of different shape from any made by the Greeks. In the structures of
Thebes we find both the tumescent and the cylindrical columns, from
which amalgamation might have been produced the Doric column. The Greeks
seized on beauty wherever they found it, and improved upon it. The Doric
column was not, probably, an entirely new creation, but shaped after the
models furnished by the most original of all the ancient nations, even
the Egyptians. The Doric style was used exclusively until after the
Macedonian conquest, and was chiefly applied to temples. The Doric
temples are uniform in plan. The columns were fluted, and were generally
about six diameters in height. They diminished gradually from the base,
with a slight convexed swelling downward. They were superimposed by
capitals proportionate, and coming within their height. The entablature
which the column supported is also of so many diameters in height. So
regular and perfect was the plan of the temple, that, "if the dimensions
of a single column, and the proportion the entablature should bear to
it, were given to two individuals acquainted with the style, with
directions to compose a temple, they would produce designs exactly
similar in size, arrangement, and general proportions." Then the Doric
order possessed a peculiar harmony, but taste and skill were
nevertheless necessary in order to determine the number of diameters a
column should have, and, accordingly, the height of the entablature. The
Doric was the favorite order of European Greece for one thousand years,
and also of her colonies in Sicily and Magna Graecia. The massive temples
of Paestum, the colossal magnificence of the Sicilian ruins, and the more
elegant proportions of the Athenian structures, like the Parthenon and
Temple of Theseus, show the perfection of the Doric architecture.
Although the general style of all the Doric temples is so uniform, yet
hardly two temples were alike. The earlier Doric was more massive; the
latter were more elegant, and were rich in sculptured decorations.
Nothing could surpass the beauty of a Doric temple in the time of
Pericles. The stylobate or pedestal, from two thirds to a whole diameter
of a column in height, was built in three equal courses, which gradually
receded from the one below, and formed steps, as it were, of a grand
platform on which the pillars rested. The column was from four to six
diameters in height, with twenty flutes, with a capital of half a
diameter supporting the entablature. This again, two diameters in
height, was divided into architrave, frieze, and cornice. But the great
beauty of the temple was the portico in front, a forest of columns,
supporting the pediment, about a diameter and a half to the apex, making
an angle at the base of about 14 degrees. From the pediment projects the
cornice, while, at the apex and at the base of it, are sculptured
ornaments, generally, the figures of men or animals. The whole outline
of columns supporting the entablature is graceful, while the variety of
light and shade arising from the arrangement of mouldings and capitals
produce a grand effect. The Parthenon, the most beautiful specimen of
the Doric, has never been equaled, and it still stands august in its
ruins--the glory of the old Acropolis, and the pride of Athens. It was
built of Pentelic marble, and rested on a basement of limestone. It was
two hundred and twenty-seven feet in length, and one hundred and one in
breadth, and sixty-five in height, surrounded with forty-eight fluted
columns, six feet and two inches at the base, and thirty-four feet in
height, while within the peristyle, at either end, was an interior range
of columns, standing before the end of the cella. The frieze and the
pediment were elaborately ornamented with reliefs and statues, while the
cella, within and without, was adorned with the choicest sculptures of
Phidias. The grandest was the colossal statue of Minerva, in the eastern
apartment of the cella, forty feet in height, composed of gold and
ivory; while the inner walls were decorated with paintings, and the
temple itself was a repository of countless treasure. But the Parthenon,
so regular, with its vertical and horizontal lines, was curved in every
line, with the exception of the gable,--pillars, architrave,
entablature, frieze, and cornice, together with the basement--all arched
upwards, though so slightly as not to be perceptible, and these curved
lines gave to it a peculiar grace which cannot be imitated, as well as
solidity.
[Sidenote: The Acropolis.]
Nearly coeval with the Doric was the Ionic order, invented by the
Asiatic Greeks, still more graceful, though not so imposing. The
Acropolis is a perfect example of this order. The column is nine
diameters in height, with a base, while the capital is more ornamented.
The shaft is fluted with twenty-four flutes and alternate fillets, and
the fillet is about a quarter the width of the flute. The pediment is
flatter than of the Doric order, and more elaborate. The great
distinction of the Ionic column is a base, and a capital formed with
volutes, with a more slender shaft. Vitruvius, the greatest authority
among the ancients in architecture, says that, "the Greeks, in inventing
these two kinds of columns, imitated in the one the naked simplicity and
dignity of a man, and in the other, the delicacy and ornaments of a
woman; the base of the Ionic was the imitation of sandals, and the
volutes of ringlets."
[Sidenote: Temple of Minerva.]
The Corinthian order exhibits a still greater refinement and elegance
than the other two, and was introduced toward the end of the
Peloponnesian war. Its peculiarity is columns with foliated capitals,
and still greater height, about ten diameters, with a more ornamented
entablature. Of this order, the most famous temple in Greece was that of
Minerva at Tegea, built by Scopas of Paros, but destroyed by fire four
hundred years before Christ.
Nothing more distinguished Greek architecture than the variety, the
grace, and the beauty of the mouldings, generally in eccentric curves.
The general outline of the moulding is a gracefully flowing cyma, or
wave, concave at one end, and convex at the other, like an Italic
_f_, the concavity and convexity being exactly in the same curve,
according to the line of beauty which Hogarth describes.
[Sidenote: Architecture among the Greeks seen in greatest perfection in
temples.]
The most beautiful application of Grecian architecture was in the
temples, which were very numerous, and of extraordinary grandeur, long
before the Persian war. Their entrance was always to the west or the
east. They were built either in an oblong or round form, and were mostly
adorned with columns. Those of an oblong form had columns either in the
front alone, in the fore and back fronts, or on all the four sides. They
generally had porticoes attached to them. They had no windows, receiving
their light from the door or from above. The friezes were adorned with
various sculptures, as were sometimes the pediments, and no expense was
spared upon them. The most important part of the temple was the cella,
where the statue of the deity was kept, and was generally surrounded
with a balustrade. Beside the cella was the vestibule, and a chamber in
the rear or back front in which the treasures of the temple were kept.
Names were applied to the temples, as well as the porticoes, according
to the number of columns in the portico at either end of the temple,
such as the tetrastyle with four columns in front, or hexastyle when
there were six. There were never more than ten columns in front. The
Parthenon had eight, but six was the usual number. It was the rule to
have twice as many columns along the sides as in front, and one more.
Some of the temples had double rows of columns on all sides, like that
of Diana at Ephesus, and of Quirinus at Rome. The distance between the
columns varied from a diameter and half of a column to four diameters.
About five eighths of a Doric temple were occupied by the cella, and
three eighths by the portico.
[Sidenote: Simplicity of Grecian temples.]
That which gives so much simplicity and harmony in the Greek temples,
which are the great elements of beauty in architecture, is the simple
outline, in parallelogrammic and pyramidal forms, in which the lines are
straight and uninterrupted through their entire length. This simplicity
and harmony are more apparent in the Doric than in any of the other
orders, and pertain to all the temples of which we have knowledge. Nor
can any improvement be made upon them, or any alteration which does not
conflict with established principles. The Ionic and Corinthian, or the
Voluted and Foliated orders, do not possess that harmony which pervades
the Doric, but the more beautiful compositions are so consummate that
they will ever be taken as models of study.
[Sidenote: Matchless proportions of the Grecian temples.]
It is not the magnitude of the Grecian temples and other works of art
which most impresses us. It is not for this that they are important
models. It is not for this that they are copied and reproduced in all
the modern nations of Europe. They were generally small compared with
the temples of Egypt, or the vast dimensions of Roman amphitheatres.
Only three or four would compare in size with a Gothic cathedral, like
the Parthenon, the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, and the Temple of Diana at
Ephesus. Even the Pantheon at Rome is small, compared with the later
monuments of the Caesars. The traveler is always disappointed in
contemplating their remains, so far as size is concerned. But it is
their matchless proportions, their severe symmetry, the grandeur of
effect, the undying beauty, the graceful form which impress us, and make
us feel that they are perfect. By the side of the Colosseum they are
insignificant in magnitude. They do not cover acres like the baths of
Caracalla. Yet who has copied the Flavian amphitheatre? Who erects an
edifice after the style of the Thermae? But all artists copy the
Parthenon. That, and not the colossal monuments of the Caesars, reappears
in the capitals of Europe, and stimulates the genius of a Michael Angelo
or a Christopher Wren.
The flourishing period of Greek architecture was during the period from
Pericles to Alexander--one hundred and thirteen years. The Macedonian
conquest introduced more magnificence and less simplicity. The Roman
conquest accelerated the decline in severe taste, when different orders
were used indiscriminately.
[Sidenote: Beginning of Roman art.]
[Sidenote: Romans copied the Greeks.]
In this state the art passed into the hands of the masters of the world,
and they inaugurated a new era in architecture. The art was still
essentially Greek, although the Romans derived their first knowledge
from the Etruscans. The Cloaca Maxima was built during the reign of the
second Tarquin--the grandest monument of the reign of the kings. It is
not probable that temples and other public buildings were either
beautiful or magnificent until the conquest of Greece, when Grecian
architects were employed. The Romans adopted the Corinthian style, which
they made even more ornamental, and by the successful combination of the
Etruscan arch with the Grecian column, laid the foundation of a new and
original style, susceptible of great variety and magnificence. They
entered into architecture with the enthusiasm of their teachers, but, in
their passion for novelty, lost sight of the simplicity which is the
great fascination of a Doric Temple. "And they deemed that lightness and
grace were to be attained not so much by proportion between the vertical
and the horizontal, as by the comparative slenderness of the former.
Hence we see a poverty in Roman architecture in the midst of profuse
ornament. The great error was a constant aim to lessen the diameter,
while they increased the elevation, of the columns. Hence the massive
simplicity and severe grandeur of the ancient Doric disappear in the
Roman, the characteristics of the order being frittered down into a
multiplicity of minute details." [Footnote: Memes, _Sculpture and
Architecture._] And when they used the Doric at all, they used the
base, which was never done at Athens. They also altered the Doric
capital, which cannot be improved. Again, most of the Grecian Doric
temples were peripteral, that is, were surrounded with pillars on all
the sides. But the Romans did not build with porticoes even on each
front, but only on one, which had a greater projection than the Grecian.
They generally are projected three columns. Many of the Roman temples
are circular, like the Pantheon, which has a portico of eight columns
projected to the depth of three. Nor did the Romans construct hypaethral
temples, or uncovered, with internal columns, like the Greeks. The
Pantheon is an exception, since the dome has an open eye; and one great
ornament of this beautiful structure is in the arrangement of internal
columns placed in the front of niches, composed with antae, or pier-
formed ends of walls, to carry an entablature round under an attic on
which the cupola rests. They also adopted coupled columns, broken and
recessed entablatures, and pedestals, which are considered blemishes.
They again paid more attention to the interior than to the exterior
decoration of their palaces and baths, as we may infer from the ruins of
Adrian's villa at Tivoli, and the excavations of Pompeii.
The Roman Corinthian, like the Greek orders, consisted of three parts,
stylobate, column, and entablature, but the stylobate was much loftier,
and was not graduated, except in the access before a portico. The column
varied from nine and a half to ten diameters, and was always fluted with
twenty-four flutes and fillets. The height of the capital is a diameter
and one eighth; the entablature varies from one diameter and seven
eighths to two diameters and a half. The portico of the Pantheon is one
of the best specimens of the Corinthian order. The entablature of the
temple of Jupiter Stator, like that of the Pantheon, is two diameters
and one half. The pediments are steeper than those made by the Greeks,
varying in inclination from eighteen to twenty-five degrees. The
mouldings used in Roman architectural works are the same as the Grecian
in general form, although they differ from them in contour. They are
less delicate and graceful, but were used in great profusion. Roman
architecture is overdone with ornament, every moulding carved, and every
straight surface sculptured with foliage or historical subjects in
relief. The ornaments of the frieze consist of foliage and animals, with
a variety of other things. The great exuberance of ornament is
considered a defect, although when applied to some structures it is
exceedingly beautiful. In the time of the first Caesars architecture had
a character of grandeur and magnificence. Columns and arches appeared in
all the leading public buildings, columns generally forming the
external, and arches the internal construction. Fabric after fabric
arose on the ruins of others. The Flavii supplanted the edifices of
Nero, which ministered to debauchery, by structures of public utility.
[Sidenote: Changes made by the Romans.]
[Sidenote: Invention of the arch.]
[Sidenote: Uses of the arch.]
The Romans invented no new principle in architecture, except the arch,
which was not known to the Greeks, and carried out by them to greater
perfection than by the Romans; but this, for simplicity, harmony, and
beauty, has never been surpassed in any age, or by any nation. The
Romans were a practical and utilitarian people, and needed for their
various structures greater economy of material than large blocks of
stone, especially for such as were carried to great altitudes. The arch
supplied this want, and is perhaps the greatest invention ever made in
architecture. No instance of its adoption occurs in the construction of
Greek edifices, before Greece became a part of the Roman Empire. Its
application dates back to the Cloaca Maxima, and may have been of
Etrurian invention. It was not known to Egyptians, or Persians, or
Indians, or Greeks. Some maintain that Archimedes of Sicily was the
inventor, but to whomsoever the glory of the invention is due, it is
certain that the Romans were the first to make a practical application
of its wonderful qualities. It enabled them to rear vast edifices into
the air with the humblest materials, to build bridges, aqueducts,
sewers, amphitheatres, and triumphal arches, as well as temples and
palaces; its merits have never been lost sight of by succeeding
generations, and it is at the foundation of the magnificent Gothic
cathedrals of the Middle Ages. Its application extends to domes and
cupolas, to arched floors and corridors and roofs, and to various other
parts of buildings where economy of material and labor is desired. It
was applied extensively to doorways and windows, and is an ornament as
well as a utility. The most imposing forms of Roman architecture may be
traced to a knowledge of the properties of the arch, and as brick was
more extensively used than any other material, the arch was invaluable.
The imperial palace on Mount Palatine, the Pantheon, except its portico
and internal columns, the temples of Peace, of Venus and Rome, and of
Minerva Medica, were of brick. So were the great baths of Titus,
Caracalla, and Diocletian, the villa of Adrian, the city walls, the
villa of Maecenas at Tivoli, and most of the palaces of the nobility;
although, like many of the temples, they were faced with stone. The
Colosseum was of travertine faced with marble. It was the custom to
stucco the surface of the walls, as favorable to decorations. In
consequence of this invention, the Romans erected a greater variety of
fine structures than either the Greeks or Egyptians, whose public
edifices were chiefly confined to temples. The arch entered into almost
every structure, public or private, and superseded the use of long stone
beams, which were necessary in the Grecian temples, as also of wooden
timbers, in the use of which the Romans were not skilled, and which do
not really pertain to the art of architecture. An imposing building must
always be constructed of stone or brick. The arch also enabled the
Romans to economize in the use of costly marbles, of which they were
very fond, as well as of other stones. Some of the finest columns were
made of Egyptian granite, very highly polished.
The extensive application of the arch doubtless led to the deterioration
of the Grecian architecture, since it blended columns with arcades, and
thus impaired the harmony which so peculiarly marked the temples of
Athens and Corinth. And as taste became vitiated with the decline of the
Empire, monstrous combinations took place, which were a great fall from
the simplicity of the Parthenon, and the interior of the Pantheon.
[Sidenote: Magnificence of Roman architecture.]
But whatever defects marked the age of Diocletian and Constantine, it
can never be questioned that the Romans carried architecture to a
perfection rarely attained in our times. They may not have equaled the
severe simplicity of their teachers, the Greeks, but they surpassed them
in the richness or their decorations, and in all buildings designed for
utility, especially in private houses and baths and theatres.
[Sidenote: The effect of columns in architecture.]
The Romans do not seem to have used other than semicircular arches. The
Gothic, or Pointed, or Christian architecture, as it has been variously
called, was the creation of the Middle Ages, and arose nearly
simultaneously in Europe after the first Crusade, so that it would seem
to be of Eastern origin. But it was a graft on the old Roman arch,--in
the shape of an ellipse rather than a circle. Aside from this invention,
to which we are indebted for the most beautiful ecclesiastical
structures ever erected, we owe every thing in architecture to the
Greeks and Romans. We have found out no new principles which were not
equally known to Vitruvius. No one man was the inventor or creator of
the wonderful structures which ornamented the cities of the ancient
world. We have the names of great architects, who reared various and
faultless models, but they all worked upon the same principles. And
these can never be subverted. So that in architecture the ancients are
our schoolmasters, whose genius we revere the more we are acquainted
with their works. What more beautiful than one of those grand temples
which the heathen but cultivated Greeks erected to the worship of their
unknown gods: the graduated and receding stylobate as a base for the
fluted columns, rising at regular distances, in all their severe
proportion and matchless harmony, with their richly carved capitals,
supporting an entablature of heavy stones, most elaborately moulded and
ornamented with the figures of plants and animals, and rising above
this, on the ends of the temple, or over a portico several columns deep,
the pediment, covered by chiseled cornices, with still richer ornaments
rising from the apices and at the feet; all carved in white marble, and
then spread over an area larger than any modern churches, making a
forest of columns to bear aloft those ponderous beams of stone, without
any thing tending to break the continuity of horizontal lines, by which
the harmony and simplicity of the whole are seen. So accurately squared
and nicely adjusted were the stones and pillars of which these temples
were built, that there was scarcely need of even cement. Without noise
or confusion or sound of hammers did those temples rise, since all their
parts were cut and carved in the distant quarries, and with mathematical
precision. And within the cella, nearly concealed by the surrounding
columns, were the statues of the gods, and the altars on which incense
was offered, or sacrifices made. In every part, interior and exterior,
do we see a matchless proportion and beauty, whether in the shaft, or
the capital, or the frieze, or the pilaster, or the pediment, or the
cornices, or even the mouldings--everywhere grace and harmony, which
grow upon the mind the more they are contemplated. The greatest evidence
of the matchless creative genius displayed in those architectural
wonders is that, after two thousand years, and with all the inventions
of Roman and modern artists, no improvement can be made, and those
edifices which are the admiration of our own times are deemed beautiful
as they approximate the ancient models which will forever remain objects
of imitation, No science can make two and two other than four. No art
can make a Doric temple different from the Parthenon without departing
from the settled principles of beauty and proportion which all ages have
endorsed. Such were the Greeks and Romans in an art which is one of the
greatest indices of material civilization, and which by them was derived
from geometrical forms, or the imitation of Nature.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Perfection of Grecian sculpture.]
The genius displayed by the ancients in sculpture, is even more
remarkable than in architecture. It was carried to perfection, however,
only by the Greeks. But they did not originate the art, since we read of
sculptured images from the remotest antiquity. The earliest names of
sculptors are furnished by the Old Testament. Assyria and Egypt are full
of relics to show how early this art was cultivated. It was not carried
to perfection as early, probably, as architecture; but rude images of
gods, carved in wood, are as old as the history of idolatry. The history
of sculpture is in fact identified with that of idols. It was from
Phoenicia that Solomon obtained the workmen for the decoration of his
Temple. But the Egyptians were probably the first who made considerable
advances in the execution of statues. They are rude, simple, uniform,
without beauty or grace, but colossal and grand. Nearly two thousand
years before Christ, the walls of Thebes were ornamented with sculptured
figures, even as the gates of Babylon were of sculptured bronze. The
dimensions of Egyptian colossal figures surpass those of any other
nation. The sitting figures of Memnon at Thebes are fifty feet in
height, and the Sphinx is twenty-five, and these are of granite. The
number of colossal statues was almost incredible. The sculptures found
among the ruins of Carnac must have been made nearly four thousand years
ago. [Footnote: Wilkinson's _Ancient Egyptians_.] They exhibit
great simplicity of design, but without much variety of expression. They
are generally carved from the hardest stones, and finished so nicely
that we infer that the Egyptians were acquainted with the art of
hardening metals to a degree not known in our times. But we see no ideal
grandeur among any of the remains of Egyptian sculpture. However
symmetrical or colossal, there is no expression, no trace of emotion, no
intellectual force. Every thing is calm, impassive, imperturbable. It
was not until sculpture came into the hands of the Greeks that any
remarkable excellence was reached. But the progress of development was
slow. The earliest carvings were rude wooden images of the gods, and
more than a thousand years elapsed before the great masters were
produced which marked the age of Pericles.
It is not my object to give a history of the development of the plastic
art, but to show the great excellence it attained in the hands of
immortal sculptors.
[Sidenote: Admiration for sculpture among the Greeks.]
[Sidenote: High estimation of sculpture among the Greeks.]
The Greeks had an intuitive perception of the beautiful, and to this
great national trait we ascribe the wonderful progress which sculpture
made. Nature was most carefully studied, and that which was most
beautiful in Nature became the object of imitation. They ever attained
to an ideal excellence, since they combined in a single statue what
could not be found in a single individual, as Zeuxis is said to have
studied the beautiful forms of seven virgins of Crotona in order to
paint his famous picture of Venus. Great as was the beauty of Thryne, or
Aspasia, or Lais, yet no one of them could have served for a perfect
model. And it required a great sensibility to beauty in order to select
and idealize what was most perfect in the human figure. Beauty was
adored in Greece, and every means were used to perfect it, especially
beauty of form, which is the characteristic excellence of Grecian
statuary. The gymnasia were universally frequented, and the great prizes
of the games, bestowed for feats of strength and agility, were regarded
as the highest honors which men could receive--the subject of the
poet's ode and the people's admiration. Statues of the victors
perpetuated their fame and improved the sculptor's art. From the study
of these statues were produced those great creations which all
subsequent ages have admired. And from the application of the principles
seen in these forms we owe the perpetuation of the ideas of grandeur and
beauty such as no other people have ever discovered and scarcely
appreciated. The sculpture of the human figure became a noble object of
ambition, and was most munificently rewarded. Great artists arose, whose
works adorned the temples of Greece, so long as she preserved her
independence; and when it was lost, their priceless productions were
scattered over Asia and Europe. The Romans especially seized what was
most prized, whether or not they could tell what was most perfect.
Greece lived in her marble statues more than in her government or laws.
And when we remember the estimation in which sculpture was held, the
great prices paid for masterpieces, the care and attention with which
they were guarded and preserved, and the innumerable works which were
produced, filling all the public buildings, especially consecrated
places, and even open spaces, and the houses of the rich and great,--
calling from all classes admiration and praise,--it is improbable that
so great perfection will ever be reached again in those figures which
are designed to represent beauty of form. Even the comparatively few
statues which have survived the wars and violence of two thousand years,
convince us that the moderns can only imitate. They can produce no
creations which were not surpassed by Athenian artists. "No mechanical
copying of Greek statues, however skillful the copyist, can ever secure
for modern sculpture the same noble and effective character it possessed
among the Greeks, for the simple reason that the imitation, close as may
be the resemblance, is but the result of the eye and hand, while the
original is the expression of a true and deeply felt sentiment. Art was
not sustained by the patronage of a few who affect to have what is
called _taste_. In Greece, the artist, having a common feeling for
the beautiful with his countrymen, produced his works for the public,
which were erected in places of honor and dedicated in temples of the
gods." [Footnote: _Encyclopedia Britannica_, "Sculpture," R. W. T.]
[Sidenote: Phidias and his contemporaries.]
[Sidenote: The statue of Zeus by Phidias.]
But it was not until the Persian wars awakened in Greece the slumbering
consciousness of national power, and Athens became the central point of
Grecian civilization, that sculpture, like architecture and painting,
reached its culminating point of excellence, under Phidias and his
contemporaries. Great artists, however, had previously made themselves
famous, like Miron, Polycletus, and Ageladas; but the great riches which
flowed into Athens at this time gave a peculiar stimulus to art,
especially under the encouragement of such a ruler as Pericles, whose
age was the golden era of Grecian history. Pheidias or Phidias was to
sculpture what Aeschylus was to tragic poetry, sublime and grand. He was
born four hundred and eighty-four years before Christ, and was the pupil
of Ageladas. He stands at the head of the ancient sculptors, not from
what _we_ know of him, for his masterpieces have perished, but from
the estimation in which he was held by the greatest critics of
antiquity. It was to him that Pericles intrusted the adornment of the
Parthenon, and the numerous and beautiful sculptures of the frieze and
the pediment were the work of artists whom he directed. _His_ great
work in that wonderful edifice was the statue of the goddess Minerva
herself, made of gold and ivory, forty feet in height, standing
victorious with a spear in her left hand and an image of victory in her
right; girded with the aegis, with helmet on her head, and her shield
resting by her side. The cost of this statue may be estimated when the
gold alone of which it was composed was valued at forty-four talents.
[Footnote: This sum was equal to $500,000 of our money, an immense sum
in that age. Some critics suppose that this statue was overloaded with
ornament, but all antiquity was unanimous in its admiration. The
exactness and finish of detail were as remarkable as the grandeur of the
proportions.] Another of his famous works was a colossal bronze statue
of Athena Promachus, sixty feet in height, on the Acropolis, between the
Propylaea and the Parthenon. But both of these yielded to the colossal
statue of Zeus in his great temple at Olympia, represented in a sitting
posture, forty feet high, on a pedestal of twenty. In this, his greatest
work, the artist sought to embody the idea of majesty and repose,--of a
supreme deity no longer engaged in war with Titans and Giants, but
enthroned as a conqueror, ruling with a nod the subject world, and
giving his blessing to those victories which gave glory to the Greeks.
[Footnote: The god was seated on a throne. Ebony, gold, ivory, and
precious stones formed, with a multitude of sculptured and painted
figures, the wonderful composition of this throne.] So famous was this
statue, which was regarded as the masterpiece of Grecian art, that it
was considered a calamity to die without seeing it; and this served for
a model for all subsequent representations of majesty and power in
repose among the ancients. It was removed to Constantinople by
Theodosius I., and was destroyed by fire in the year 475. Phidias
executed various other famous works, which have perished; but even those
that were executed under his superintendence, that have come down to our
times, like the statues which ornamented the pediment of the Parthenon,
are among the finest specimens of art which exist, and exhibit the most
graceful and appropriate forms which could have been selected, uniting
grandeur with simplicity, and beauty with accuracy of anatomical
structure. His distinguishing excellence was ideal beauty, and that of
the sublimest order. [Footnote: Muller, _De Phidiae Vita_.]
[Sidenote: Colossal statues of ivory and gold.]
Of all the wonders and mysteries of ancient art, the colossal statues of
ivory and gold were perhaps the most remarkable, and the difficulty of
executing them has been set forth by the ablest of modern critics, like
Winkelmann, Heyne, and De Quincy. "The grandeur of their dimensions, the
perfection of their workmanship, the richness of their materials; their
majesty, beauty, and ideal truth; the splendor of the architecture and
pictorial decoration with which they were associated, all conspired to
impress the beholder with wonder and awe, and induce a belief of the
actual presence of the god."
[Sidenote: The school of Praxiteles.]
After the Peloponnesian War, a new school of art arose in Athens, which
appealed more to the passions. Of this school was Praxiteles, who aimed
to please, without seeking to elevate or instruct. No one has probably
ever surpassed him in execution. He wrought in bronze and marble, and
was one of the artists who adorned the Mausoleum of Artemisia. Without
attempting the sublime impersonation of the deity, in which Phidias
excelled, he was unsurpassed in the softer graces and beauties of the
human form, especially in female figures. His most famous work was an
undraped statue of Venus, for his native town of Cnidus, which was so
remarkable that people flocked from all parts of Greece to see it. He
did not aim at ideal majesty so much as ideal gracefulness, and his
works were imitated from the most beautiful living models, and hence
expressed only the ideal of sensual charms. It is probable that the
Venus de Medici of Cleomenes was a mere copy of the Aphrodite of
Praxiteles, which was so highly extolled by the ancient authors. It was
of Parian marble, and modeled from the celebrated Phryne. His statues of
Dionysus also expressed the most consummate physical beauty,
representing the god as a beautiful youth, crowned with ivy, engirt with
a nebris, and expressing tender and dreamy emotions. Praxiteles
sculptured several figures of Eros, or the god of love, of which that at
Thespiae attracted visitors to the city in the time of Cicero. It was
subsequently carried to Rome, and perished by a conflagration in the
time of Titus. One of the most celebrated statues of this artist was an
Apollo, many copies of which still exist. His works were very numerous,
but chiefly from the circle of Dionysus, Aphrodite, and Eros, in which
adoration for corporeal attractions is the most marked peculiarity, and
for which the artist was fitted by his life with the hetaerae.
[Sidenote: Scopas.]
Scopas was his contemporary, and was the author of the celebrated group
of Niobe, which is one of the chief ornaments of the gallery of
sculpture at Florence. He flourished about three hundred and fifty years
before Christ, and wrought chiefly in marble. He was employed in
decorating the Mausoleum which Artemisia erected to her husband, one of
the wonders of the world. His masterpiece is said to have been a group
representing Achilles conducted to the island of Leuce by the divinities
of the sea, which ornamented the shrine of Domitius in the Flaminian
Circus. In this, tender grace, heroic grandeur, daring power, and
luxurious fullness of life were combined with wonderful harmony.
[Footnote: Muller, 125.] Like the other great artists of this school,
there was the grandeur and sublimity for which Phidias was celebrated,
but a greater refinement and luxury, and skill in the use of drapery.
[Sidenote: Lysippus.]
[Sidenote: The works of Lysippus.]
Sculpture in Greece culminated, as an art, in Lysippus, who worked
chiefly in bronze. He is said to have executed fifteen hundred statues,
and was much esteemed by Alexander the Great, by whom he was extensively
patronized. He represented men, not as they were, but as they appeared
to be; and, if he exaggerated, he displayed great energy of action. He
aimed to idealize merely human beauty, and his imitation of Nature was
carried out in the minutest details. None of his works are extant; but
as he alone was permitted to make the statue of Alexander, we infer that
he had no equals. The Emperor Tiberius transferred one of his statues,
that of an athlete, from the baths of Agrippa to his own chamber, which
so incensed the people that he was obliged to restore it. His favorite
subject was Hercules, and a colossal statue of this god was carried to
Rome by Fabius Maximus, when he took Tarentum, and afterwards was
transferred to Constantinople. The Farnese Hercules and the Belvidere
Torso are probably copies of this work. He left many eminent scholars,
among whom were Chares, who executed the famous Colossus of Rhodes,
Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, who sculptured the group of the
"Laocoon." The Rhodian School was the immediate offshoot from the school
of Lysippus at Sicyon, and from this small island of Rhodes the Romans,
when they conquered it, carried away three thousand statues. The
Colossus was one of the wonders of the world, seventy cubits in height,
and the Laocoon is a perfect miracle of art, in which group pathos is
exhibited in the highest degree ever attained in sculpture. It was
discovered in 1506 near the baths of Titus, and is one of the choicest
remains of ancient plastic art.
The great artists of antiquity did not confine themselves to the
representation of man; but they also carved animals with exceeding
accuracy and beauty. Nicias was famous for his dogs, Myron for his cows,
and Lysippus for his horses. Praxiteles composed his celebrated lion
after a living animal. "The horses of the frieze of the Elgin Marbles
appear to live and move; to roll their eyes, to gallop, prance, and
curvet; the veins of their faces and legs seem distended with
circulation. The beholder is charmed with the deer-like lightness and
elegance of their make; and although the relief is not above an inch
from the back-ground, and they are so much smaller than nature, we can
scarcely suffer reason to persuade us they are not alive." [Footnote:
Flaxman, _Lectures on Sculpture_.]
[Sidenote: Cameos and medals.]
The Greeks also carved gems, cameos, medals, and vases, with
unapproachable excellence. Very few specimens have come down to our
times, but those which we possess show great beauty both in design and
execution.
[Sidenote: Sack of the Grecian cities.]
Grecian statuary commenced with ideal representations of deities, and
was carried to the greatest perfection by Phidias in his statues of
Jupiter and Minerva. Then succeeded the school of Praxiteles, in which
the figures of gods and goddesses were still represented, but in mortal
forms. The school of Lysippus was famous for the statues of celebrated
men, especially in cities where Macedonian rulers resided. Artists were
expected henceforth to glorify kings and powerful nobles and rulers by
portrait statues. The plastic art then degenerated. Nor were works of
original genius produced, but rather copies or varieties from the three
great schools to which allusion has been made. Sculpture may have
multiplied, but not new creations; although some imitations of great
merit were produced, like the "Hermaphrodite," the "Torso," the Farnese
"Hercules," and the "Fighting Gladiator." When Corinth was sacked by
Mummius, some of the finest statues of Greece were carried to Rome, and
after the civil war between Caesar and Pompey the Greek artists emigrated
to Italy. The fall of Syracuse introduced many works of priceless value
into Rome; but it was from Athens, Delphi, Corinth, Elis, and other
great centres of art, that the richest treasures were brought. Greece
was despoiled to ornament Italy. The Romans did not create a school of
sculpture. They borrowed wholly from the Greeks, yet made, especially in
the time of Hadrian, many beautiful statues. They were fond of this art,
and all eminent men had statues erected to their memory. The busts of
emperors were found in every great city, and Rome was filled with
statues. The monuments of the Romans were even more numerous than those
of the Greeks, and among them some admirable portraits are found. These
sculptures did not express that consummation of beauty and grace, of
refinement and sentiment, which marked the Greeks; but the imitations
were good. Art had reached its perfection under Lysippus; there was
nothing more to learn. Genius in that department could soar no higher.
It will never rise to loftier heights.
[Sidenote: Degeneracy of art among the Romans.]
It is noteworthy that the purest forms of Grecian art arose in its
earlier stages. In a moral point of view, sculpture declined from the
time of Phidias. It was prostituted at Rome under the emperors. The
specimens which have often been found among the ruins of ancient baths
make us blush for human nature. The skill of execution did not decline
for several centuries; but the lofty ideal was lost sight of, and gross
appeals to human passions were made by those who sought to please
corrupt leaders of society in an effeminate age. The turgidity and
luxuriance of art gradually passed into tameness and poverty. The
reliefs on the Arch of Constantine are rude and clumsy compared with
those on the Column of Marcus Aurelius.
[Sidenote: Imitation of ancient art.]
But I do not wish to describe the decline of art, or enumerate the names
of the celebrated masters who exalted sculpture in the palmy days of
Pericles, or even Alexander. I simply allude to sculpture as an art
which reached a great perfection among the Greeks and Romans, as we have
a right to infer from the specimens which have been preserved. How many
more must have perished, we may infer from the criticisms of the ancient
authors! The finest productions of our own age are in a measure
reproductions. They cannot be called creations, like the statue of the
Olympian Jove. Even the Moses of Michael Angelo is a Grecian god, and
the Greek Slave a copy of an ancient Venus. The very tints which have
been admired in some of the works of modern sculptors are borrowed from
Praxiteles, who succeeded in giving an appearance of living flesh. The
Museum of the Vatican alone contains several thousand specimens of
ancient sculpture which have been found among the debris of former
magnificence, many of which are the productions of Grecian artists
transported to Rome. Among them are antique copies of the Cupid and the
Faun of Praxiteles, the statue of Demosthenes, the Minerva Medica, the
Athlete of Lysippus, the Torso Belvidere, sculptured by Apollonius, the
Belvidere Antinous, of faultless anatomy and a study for Domenichino,
the Laocoon, so panegyrized by Pliny, the Apollo Belvidere the work of
Agasias of Ephesus, the Sleepy Ariadne, with numerous other statues of
gods and goddesses, emperors, philosophers, poets, and statesmen of
antiquity. The Dying Gladiator, which ornaments the capitol, alone is a
magnificent proof of the perfection to which sculpture was brought
centuries after the art had culminated at Athens. And these are only a
few which stand out among the twenty thousand recovered statues which
now embellish Italy, to say nothing of those which are scattered over
Europe. We have the names of hundreds of artists who were famous in
their day. Not merely the figures of men are chiseled, but animals and
plants. Nature, in all her forms, was imitated; and not merely Nature,
but the dresses of the ancients are perpetuated in marble. No modern
sculptor has equaled, in delicacy of finish, the draperies even of those
ancient statues, as they appear to us after the exposure and accidents
of two thousand years. No one, after a careful study of the museums of
Europe, can question that, of all the nations who have claimed to be
civilized, the ancient Greek and Roman deserve a proud preeminence in an
art which is still regarded as among the highest triumphs of human
genius. All these matchless productions of antiquity, it should be
remembered, are the result of native genius alone, without the aid of
Christian ideas. Nor, with the aid of Christianity, are we sure that any
nation will ever soar to loftier heights than did the Greeks in that
proud realm which was consecrated to Paganism.
* * * * *
We are not so certain in regard to the excellence of the ancients in the
art of painting as we are in reference to sculpture and architecture,
since so few specimens have been preserved. We have only the testimony
of the ancients themselves; and as they had so severe a taste and so
great susceptibility to beauty in all its forms, we cannot suppose that
their notions were crude in this great art which the moderns have
carried to so great perfection. In this art the moderns may be superior,
especially in perspective and drawing, and light and shade. No age, we
fancy, can surpass Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when
the genius of Raphael, Correggio, and Domenichino blazed with such
wonderful brilliancy.
Nevertheless, we read of celebrated schools among the ancients, all of
which recognized _form_ as the great principle and basis of the
art, even like the moderns. The schools of Sicyon, Corinth, Athens, and
Rhodes were indebted for their renown, like those of Bologna, Florence,
and Rome, to their strict observance of this fundamental law.
[Sidenote: Antiquity of painting.]
[Sidenote: Painting among the Egyptians.]
Painting, in some form, is very ancient, though not so ancient as the
temples of the gods and the statues which were erected to their worship.
It arose with the susceptibility to beauty of form and color, and with
the view of conveying thoughts and emotions of the soul by imitation.
The walls of Babylon were painted after Nature with different species of
animals and combats. Semiramis was represented on horseback, striking a
leopard with a dart, and her husband Ninus wounding a lion. Ezekiel
(viii. 10) represents various idols and beasts portrayed upon the walls,
and even princes, painted in vermilion, with girdles around their loins
(xxiii. 14, 15). In ages almost fabulous there were some rude attempts
in this art, which probably arose from the coloring of statues and
reliefs. The wooden chests of Egyptian mummies are painted and written
with religious subjects, but the colors were laid without regard to
light and shade. The Egyptians did not seek to represent the passions
and emotions which agitate the soul, but rather to authenticate events
and actions; and hence their paintings, like hieroglyphics, are
inscriptions. It was their great festivals and religious rites which
they sought to perpetuate, not ideas of beauty or grace. Hence their
paintings abound with dismembered animals, plants, and flowers, censers,
entrails,--whatever was used in their religious worship. In Greece,
also, the original painting consisted in coloring statues and reliefs of
wood and clay. At Corinth, painting was early united with the
fabrication of vases, on which were rudely painted figures of men and
animals. Among the Etruscans, before Rome was founded, it is said there
were beautiful paintings, and it is probable they were advanced in art
before the Greeks. There were paintings in some of the old Etruscan
cities which the Roman emperors wished to remove, so much admired were
they even in the days of the greatest splendor. The ancient Etruscan
vases are famous for designs which have never been exceeded in purity of
form, but it is probable that these were copied from the Greeks.
[Sidenote: Cimon of Cleona.]
But whether the Greeks or the Etruscans were the first to paint, the art
was certainly carried to the greatest perfection among the former. The
development of it was, like all arts, very gradual. It probably
commenced by drawing the outline of a shadow, without intermediate
markings; the next step was the complete outline with the inner
markings, such as are represented on the ancient vases, or like the
designs of Flaxman. They were originally practiced on a white ground.
Then light and shade were introduced, and then the application of colors
in accordance with Nature. We read of a great painting by Bularchus, of
the battle of Magnete, purchased by a king of Lydia seven hundred and
eighteen years before Christ. And as the subject was a battle, it must
have represented the movement of figures, although we know nothing of
the coloring, or of the real excellence of the work, except that the
artist was paid munificently. Cimon of Cleona is the first great name
connected with the art in Greece, and is praised by Pliny, to whom we
owe the history of ancient painting more than to any other author. He
was contemporary with Dionysius in the eightieth Olympiad. He was not
satisfied with drawing simply the outlines of his figures, such as we
see in the oldest painted vases, but he also represented limbs, and
folds of garments. He invented the art of foreshortening, or the various
positions of figures, as they appear when looking upward or downward and
sideways, and hence is the first painter of perspective. He first made
muscular articulations, indicated the veins, and gave natural folds to
drapery. [Footnote: Pliny, xxxv. 34.]
[Sidenote: Greatness of Polygnotus and his school.]
A much greater painter than he was Polygnotus of Thasos, the
contemporary of Phidias, who came to Athens about the year 463 B.C., one
of the greatest geniuses of any age, and one of the most magnanimous;
and had the good fortune to live in an age of exceeding intellectual
activity. He was employed on the public buildings of Athens, and on the
great temple of Delphi, the hall of which he painted gratuitously. He
also decorated the Propylaea, which was erected under the superintendence
of Phidias. His greatness lay in statuesque painting, which he brought
nearly to perfection by the ideal expression, the accurate drawing, and
improved coloring. He used but few colors, and softened the rigidity of
his predecessors by making the mouth of beauty smile. He was the first
who painted woman with brilliant drapery and variegated head-dresses. He
gave great expression to the face and figure, and his pictures were
models of excellence for the beauty of the eyebrows, the blush upon the
cheeks, and the gracefulness of the draperies. He was a great epic
painter, as Phidias was a sculptor, and Homer a poet, since he expressed
not passion and emotion only, but ideal character. He imitated the
personages and the subjects of the old mythology, and treated them in an
epic spirit. He strove, like Phidias, to express character in repose.
His subjects were almost invariably taken from Homer and the Epic cycle.
His pictures had nothing of that elaborate grouping, aided by the powers
of perspective, so much admired in modern art. His figures were grouped
in regular lines, as in the bas-reliefs upon a frieze. He painted on
panels which were afterward let into the walls. He used the pencil,
instead of painting in encaustic with the cestrum.
Among the works of Polygnotus, as mentioned by Pliny, [Footnote: H. N.
xxx. 9, s. 35.] are his paintings in the Temple at Delphi, in the
Portico called Poecile at Athens, in the Propylaea of the Acropolis, in
the Temple of Theseus, and in the Temple of the Dioscuri at Athens. He
took his subjects from the whole range of Epic poetry, but we know
nothing of them except from the praises of his contemporaries.
[Footnote: Pausanias, x. 25-31.] His great merit is said to have
consisted in accurate drawing, and in giving grace and charm to his
female figures. He painted in a truly religious spirit, and upon
symmetrical principles, with great grandeur and freedom, resembling
Michael Angelo more than any other modern artist. Like the Greeks, he
painted with wax, resins, and in water colors, to which the proper
consistency was given with gum and glue. The use of oil was unknown. The
artists painted upon wood, clay, plaster, stone, parchment, but not upon
canvas, which was not used till the time of Nero. They painted upon
tablets or panels, and not upon the walls. These panels were framed and
encased in the walls. The style or cestrum used in drawing, and for
spreading the wax colors, was pointed on one end and flat on the other,
and generally made of metal. Wax was prepared by purifying and
bleaching, and then mixed with colors. When painting was practiced in
water colors, glue was used with the white of an egg or with gums, but
wax and resins were also worked with water, with certain preparations.
This latter was called encaustic, and was, according to Plutarch, the
most durable of all methods. It was not generally adopted till the time
of Alexander the Great. Wax was a most essential ingredient, since it
prevented the colors from cracking. Encaustic painting was practiced
both with the cestrum and the pencil, and the colors were also burnt in.
Fresco was used for coloring walls, which were divided into compartments
or panels. The Fresco composition of the stucco, and the method of
painting, preparing the walls for painting, is described by the ancient
writers: "They first covered the walls with a layer of ordinary plaster,
over which, when dry, were successively added three other layers of a
finer quality, mixed with sand. Above these were placed three layers of
a composition of chalk and marble-dust, the upper one being laid on
before the under one was dry, by which process the different layers were
so bound together that the whole mass formed one beautiful and solid
slab, resembling marble, and was capable of being detached from the wall
and transported in a wooden frame to any distance. The colors were
applied when the composition was still wet. The fresco wall, when
painted, was covered with an encaustic varnish, both to heighten the
color and preserve it from the effects of the sun or the weather. But
this process required so much care, and was attended with so much
expense, that it was used only in the better houses and palaces." The
later discoveries at Pompeii show the same correctness of design in
painting as in sculpture, and also considerable perfection in coloring.
The great artists of Greece were both sculptors and painters, like
Michael Angelo. Phidias and Euphranor, Zeuxis and Protogenes, Polygnotus
and Lysippus, were both. And the ancient writers praise the paintings of
these great artists as much as their sculpture. The Aldobrandini
Marriage, found on the Esquiline Mount, during the pontificate of
Clement VIII., and placed in the Vatican by Pius VII., is admired both
for drawing and color. Polygnotus was praised by Aristotle for his
designs and by Lucian for his color. [Footnote: _Poetica of
Aristotle_, c. 286. _Imagines of Lucian_, c. 7.]
[Sidenote: Contemporaries of Polygnotus.]
Dionysius and Micon were the great contemporaries of Polygnotus, the
former of whom was celebrated for his portraits. His pictures were
deficient in the ideal, but were remarkable for expression and elegant
drawing. [Footnote: Plutarch, _Timol._ 36.] Micon was particularly
skilled in painting horses, and was the first who used for a color the
light Attic ochre, and the black made from burnt vine twigs. He painted
three of the walls of the Temple of Theseus, and also the walls of the
Temple of the Dioscuri.
[Sidenote: The school of Apollodorus.]
With Apollodorus, of Athens, a new development was made in the art of
painting. Through his labors, about 408 B.C., dramatic effect was added
to the style of Polygnotus, without departing from his pictures as
models. "The acuteness of his taste," says Fuseli, "led him to discover
that, as all men were connected by one general form, so they were
separated each by some predominant power, which fixed character and
bound them to a class. Thence he drew his line of imitation and
personified the central form of the class to which his object belonged,
and to which the rest of its qualities administered, without being
absorbed; agility was not suffered to destroy firmness, solidity, or
weight; nor strength and weight agility; elegance did not degenerate to
effeminacy, nor grandeur swell to hugeness." [Footnote: Fuseli, Lect.
I.] His aim was to deceive the eye of the spectator by the semblance of
reality. He painted men and things as they really appeared. He also made
a great advance in coloring. He invented chiaro-oscuro. Other painters
had given attention to the proper gradation of light and shade; he
heightened this effect by the gradation of tints, and thus obtained what
the moderns call _tone_. He was the first who conferred due honor
on the pencil--"primusque gloriam penicillo jure contulit." [Footnote:
Pliny, H. N. xxxv. 11.]
[Sidenote: Peculiarities of Zeuxis as a painter.]
This great painter prepared the way for Zeuxis, [Footnote: Born 455
B.C.] who belonged to his school, but who surpassed him in the power to
give ideal form to rich effects. He began his great career four hundred
and twenty-four years before Christ, and was most remarkable for his
female figures. His "Helen," painted from five of the most beautiful
women of Croton, was one of the most renowned productions of antiquity,
to see which the painter demanded money. He gave away his pictures,
because, with an artist's pride, he maintained that their price could
not be estimated. There is a tradition that Zeuxis laughed himself to
death over an old woman painted by him. He arrived at illusion of the
senses, regarded as a high attainment in art, as in the instance
recorded of his grapes. He belonged to the Asiatic school, whose head-
quarters were at Ephesus, the peculiarities of which were accuracy of
imitation, the exhibition of sensual charms, and the gratification of
sensual tastes. He went to Athens about the time that the sculpture of
Phidias was completed, which modified his style. His marvelous powers
were displayed in the contrast of light and shade which he learned from
Apollodorus. He gave ideal beauty to his figures, but it was in form
rather than in expression. He taught the true method of grouping, by
making each figure the perfect representation of the class to which it
belonged. His works were deficient in those qualities which elevate the
feelings and the character. He was the Euripides rather than the Homer
of his art. He exactly imitated natural objects, which are incapable of
ideal representation. His works were not so numerous as they were
perfect in their way, in some of which, as in the Infant Hercules
strangling the Serpent, he displayed great dramatic power. [Footnote:
Lucian _on Zeuxis_.] Lucian highly praises his Female Centaur as
one of the most remarkable paintings of the world, in which he showed
great ingenuity in his contrasts. His Jupiter Enthroned is also extolled
by Pliny, as one of his finest works. He acquired a great fortune, and
lived ostentatiously.
[Sidenote: Parrhasius of Ephesus.]
Contemporaneous with him, and equal in fame, was Parrhasius, a native of
Ephesus, whose skill lay in accuracy of drawing, and power of
expression. He gave to painting true proportion, and attended to minute
details of the countenance and the hair. In his gods and heroes, he did
for painting what Phidias did in sculpture. His outlines were so perfect
as to indicate those parts of the figure which they did not express. He
established a rule of proportion which was followed by all succeeding
artists. While many of his pieces were of a lofty character, some were
demoralizing. Zeuxis yielded the palm to him, since he painted a curtain
which deceived his rival, whereas Zeuxis painted grapes which deceived
only birds. He was exceedingly arrogant and luxurious, and boasted of
having reached the utmost limits of his art. He combined the magic tone
of Apollodorus with the exquisite design of Zeuxis, and the classic
expression of Polygnotus.
[Sidenote: Contemporaries of Zeuxis.]
Many were the eminent painters that adorned the fifth century before
Christ, not only in Athens, but the Ionian cities of Asia. Timanthes of
Sicyon was distinguished for invention, and Eupompus of the same city
founded a school. His advice to Lysippus is memorable--"Let Nature, not
an artist, be your model." Protogenes was celebrated for his high
finish. His Talissus took him seven years to complete. Pamphilus was
celebrated for composition, Antiphilus for facility, Theon of Samos for
prolific fancy, Apelles for grace, Pausias for his chiaro-oscuro,
Nicomachus for his bold and rapid pencil, Aristides for depth of
expression.
[Sidenote: Art culminates in Apelles.]
[Sidenote: The Venus of Apelles.]
The art probably culminated in Apelles, the Titian of his age, who
united the rich coloring and sensual charms of the Ionian with the
scientific severity of the Sicyonian school. He was contemporaneous with
Alexander, and was alone allowed to paint the picture of the great
conqueror. He was a native of Ephesus, studied under Pamphilus of
Amphipolis, and when he had gained reputation he went to Sicyon and took
lessons from Melanthius. He spent the best part of his life at the court
of Philip and Alexander, and painted many portraits of these great men
and of their generals. He excelled in portraits, and labored so
assiduously to perfect himself in drawing that he never spent a day
without practicing. [Footnote: Pliny, xxxv. 12.] He made great
improvement in the mechanical part of his art, and also was the first
who covered his picture with a thin varnish, both to preserve it and
bring out the colors. He invented ivory black. His distinguishing
excellence was grace, "that artless balance of motion and repose,
springing from character, founded on propriety, which neither falls
short of the demands nor overleaps the modesty of Nature." [Footnote:
Fuseli, Lect. I.] His great contemporaries may have equaled him in
perspective, accuracy, and finish; but he added a grace of conception
and refinement of taste which placed him, by the general consent of
ancient authors, at the head of all the painters of the world. His
greatest work was his Venus Anadyomene, or Venus rising out of the sea,
in which female grace was personified. The falling drops of water from
her hair form a transparent silver veil over her form. It cost one
hundred talents, [Footnote: 243 pounds x 100 = 24300 pounds x 5 =
$121,500.] and was painted for the Temple of Aesculapius at Cos,
and afterwards placed by Augustus in the temple which he dedicated
to Julius Caesar. The lower part of it becoming injured, no one could
be found to repair it. Nor was there an artist who could complete
an unfinished picture which he left. He was a man who courted
criticism, and who was unenvious of the fame of rivals. He was
a great admirer and friend of Protogenes of Rhodes, who was his
equal in finish, but who never knew, as Apelles did, when to
cease correcting. [Footnote: Cicero, _Brut._ 18; _De Orat._
iii. 7. Martial, xxx. 9. Ovid, _Art. Anc._ iii. 403. Pliny, xxxv.
37.]
[Sidenote: Introduction of pictures into Rome.]
After Apelles, the art of painting declined, although great painters
occasionally appeared, especially from the school of Sicyon, which was
renowned for nearly two hundred years. The destruction of Corinth by
Mummius, B.C. 146, gave a severe blow to Grecian art. He carried to Rome
more works, or destroyed them, than all his predecessors combined.
Sylla, when he spoiled Athens, inflicted a still greater injury, and,
from that time, artists resorted to Rome and Alexandria and other
flourishing cities for patronage and remuneration. The masterpieces of
famous artists brought enormous prices, and Greece and Asia were
ransacked for old pictures. The paintings which Aemilius Paulus brought
from Greece required two hundred and fifty wagons to carry them in the
triumphal procession. With the spoliation of Greece, the migration of
artists commenced, and this spoliation of Greece and Asia and Sicily
continued for two centuries; and such was the wealth of Rhodes in works
of art that three thousand statues were found for the conquerors. Nor
could there have been less at Athens, Olympia, or Delphi. Scaurus had
all the public pictures of Sicyon transported to Rome. Verres plundered
every temple and public building in Sicily.
[Sidenote: High value placed by them on painting.]
Thus Rome was possessed of the finest paintings of the world, without
the slightest claim to the advancement of the art. And if the opinion of
Sir Joshua Reynolds is correct, art could soar no higher in the realm of
painting, as well as of statuary. Yet the Romans learned to place as
high value on the works of Grecian genius as the English do on the
paintings of the old masters of Italy and Flanders. And if they did not
add to the art, they gave such encouragement that, under the emperors,
it may be said to have been flourishing. Varro had a gallery of seven
hundred portraits of eminent men. [Footnote: Pliny, H. N. xxx. 2.] The
portraits as well as the statues of the great were placed in the
temples, libraries, and public buildings. The baths especially were
filled with paintings.
[Sidenote: Subjects among the Greeks.]
The great masterpieces of the Greeks were either historical or
mythological. Paintings of gods and heroes, groups of men and women, in
which character and passion could be delineated, were the most highly
prized. It was in the expression given to the human figure--in beauty of
form and countenance, in which all the emotions of the soul as well as
the graces of the body were portrayed--that the Greek artists sought to
reach the ideal, and to gain immortality. And they painted for people
who naturally had taste and sensibility.
[Sidenote: Landscape Painting.]
Among the Romans, portrait, decorative, and scene painting engrossed the
art, much to the regret of such critics as Pliny and Vitruvius. Nothing
could be in more execrable taste than a colossal painting of Nero, one
hundred and twenty feet high. From the time of Augustus, landscape
decorations were common, and were carried out with every species of
license. Among the Greeks we do not read of landscape painting. This has
been reserved for our age, and is much admired, as it was at Rome in its
latter days. Mosaic gradually superseded painting in Rome. It was first
used for floors, but finally walls and ceilings were ornamented with it,
like St. Peter's at Rome. Many ancient mosaics have been preserved which
attest beauty of design of the highest character, like the Battle of
Issus, lately discovered at Pompeii.
In fact, neither statuary nor painting was advanced by the Romans. They
had no sensibility, or conception of ideal beauty. The divine spark of
genius animated the Greeks alone. Still the wonders of Grecian art were
possessed by the Romans, and were made to adorn those grand
architectural monuments for which they had a taste. Greek productions
were not merely matters of property, they were copied and reproduced in
all the cities of the Mediterranean; and though no artist of original
genius arose from Augustus to Constantine, galleries of art existed
everywhere in which the masterpieces of Polygnotus, Pausias, Aristides,
Timanthes, Zeuxis, Parrhasius, Pamphilus, Euphranor, Protogenes,
Apelles, Timomachus, and of other illustrious men, were objects of as
much praise as the galleries of Dresden and Florence.
[Sidenote: Probable perfection of the ancients in painting.]
"The glorious art of these masters, as far as regards tone, light, and
local color," says Muller, "is lost to us, and we know nothing of it
except from obscure notices and later imitations; on the contrary, the
pictures on vases give us the most exalted idea of the progress and
achievements of the arts of design." [Footnote: Muller, Ancient Art,
143.] It is surprising that, with four colors, the Greeks should have
achieved such miracles of beauty and finish as are represented by the
greatest cities of antiquity. The great wonders of the schools of
Ephesus, Athens, and Sicyon have perished, and we cannot judge of their
merits as we can of the statues which have fortunately been preserved.
Whether Polygnotus was equal to Michael Angelo, Zeuxis to Raphael, and
Apelles to Titian, we have no means of settling. But it is scarcely to
be questioned that critics like the Greeks, whose opinions respecting
architecture and sculpture coincide with our own, could have erred in
their verdicts respecting those great paintings which extorted the
admiration of the world, and were held, even in the decline of art, in
such high value, not merely in the cities where they were painted, but
in those to which they were transferred. What _has_ descended to
our times, like the mural decorations of Pompeii and the designs on
vases, go to prove the perfection which was attained in painting, as
well as sculpture and architecture.
[Sidenote: Perfection of art among the ancients.]
And thus, in all those arts of which modern civilization is proudest,
and in which the genius of man has soared to the loftiest heights, the
ancients were not merely our equals: they were our superiors. It is
greater to originate than to copy. In architecture, in sculpture, and in
painting the Greeks attained absolute perfection. Any architect of our
time, who should build an edifice in different proportions than those
which were recognized in the great cities of antiquity, would make a
mistake. Who can improve upon the Doric columns of the Parthenon, or the
Corinthian capitals of the Temple of Jupiter? Indeed, it is in
proportion as we accurately copy the faultless models of the age of
Pericles that excellence with us is attained. When we differ from them
we furnish grounds of just criticism. So, in sculpture, the Greek Slave
is a reproduction of an ancient Venus, and the Moses of Michael Angelo
is a Jupiter in repose. It is only when the artist seeks to bring out
the purest and loftiest sentiments of the soul, and such as only
Christianity can inspire, that he may hope to surpass the sculpture of
antiquity in one department of the art alone--in expression, rather than
beauty of form, on which no improvement can be made. And if we possessed
the Venus of Apelles, as we can boast of having the sculptured Venus of
Cleomenes, we should probably discover greater richness of coloring, as
well as grace of figure, than in that famous Titian which is one of the
proudest ornaments of the galleries of Florence, and one of the greatest
marvels of Italian art.
* * * * *
REFERENCES.--Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art; Muller's Remains of
Ancient Art; A. J. Guattani, Antiq. de la Grande Grece; Mazois, Antiq.
de Pomp.; Sir W. Gill, Pompeiana; Donaldson's Antiquities of Athens;
Vitruvius, Stuart, Chandler, Clarke, Dodwell, Cleghorn, De Quincey.
These are some of the innumerable authorities on Architecture among the
ancients.
In Sculpture, Pliny and Cicero are the most noted critics. There is a
fine article in the Encyclopedia Britannica on this subject. In Smith's
Dictionary are the lives and works of the most noted masters. Muller's
Ancient Art alludes to the leading masterpieces. Montfaucon's Antiquite
expliquee en Figures; Specimens of Ancient Sculpture, by the Society of
Diettanti, London, 1809; Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, by
Taylor Combe; Millin, Introduction a l'etude des Monumens Antiques;
Monumens Inedits d'Antiquite figuree, recuellis et publies par Raoul-
Rochette; Gerhard's Archaol. Zeit.; David's Essai sur le Classement
Chronol. des Sculpteurs Grecs les plus celebres.
In Painting, see Caylus, Memoires de l'ac des Inscr. Levesque, sur les
Progres successifs de la Peinture chez les Grecs; I. I. Grund, Mahlerei
der Griechen; Meyer's Kunstgischichte; Muller, Hist, of Ancient Art;
Article on Painting, Ency. Brit., Article "Pictura," Smith's Dict.;
Fuseli's Lectures; Sir Joshua Reynolds' Lectures. Lanzi's History of
Painting refers to the revival of the art. Vitruvius speaks at some
length on ancient wall paintings. The finest specimens of ancient
painting are found in catacombs, the baths, and the ruins of Pompeii. On
this subject, Winckelmann is the great authority.
CHAPTER V.
THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION.
[Sidenote: The Roman creators of civilization.]
[Sidenote: The Romans sought to govern.]
[Sidenote: The Romans sought to govern through laws.]
[Sidenote: Roman sense of justice.]
It is not from a survey of the material grandeur, or the arts, or the
military prowess of Rome that we get the highest idea of her
civilization. These indicate strength and even genius; but the checks
and balances which were gradually introduced into the government of the
city and empire, by which society was kept together, and a great
prosperity secured for centuries, also show great foresight and
practical wisdom. A State which favored individual development while it
promoted law and order; which secured liberty, while it made the
government stable and respectable; which guaranteed rights to the poorer
citizens, while it placed power in the hands of those who were most
capable of wielding it for the general good, is well worth our
contemplation. The idea of aggrandizement was, it must be confessed, the
most powerful which entered into the Roman mind; but the principles of
national unity, the welfare of citizens, the reign of law, the security
of property, the network of trades and professions, also received
attention there. The aspirations for liberty and national prosperity
never left the Roman mind. The Romans were great creators of
civilization, though in a different sense from the Greeks. What the
principles of art were to the Greeks, those of government were to the
Romans. If the Greeks made statues, the Romans made laws. If the former
speculated on the beautiful, or the good, or the true, the latter
realized the boast of Diogenes--the power to govern men. The passion for
government was the most powerful which a Roman citizen felt, next to the
passion for war. For five hundred years after the expulsion of the
kings, there was the most perfect system of checks and balances in the
government of the state known in the ancient world, and which is
scarcely rivaled in the modern. Power was so wisely distributed that not
even a successful general was able to gain a dangerous preeminence.
Every citizen was a politician, and every Senator a statesman. For five
hundred years there was neither anarchy nor military despotism. If every
citizen knew how to fight, every citizen also knew how to govern, to
submit. No consul dared to exceed his trust; no general, till Caesar,
ventured to cross the Rubicon. The Roman Senate never lost its dignity--
a supreme body which controlled all public interests. The Romans were
sufficiently wise to bend to circumstances. Though proud, the patricians
made concessions to plebeians whenever it was necessary. The right of
citizenship was gradually extended throughout the Empire. Paul lived in
a remote city of Asia Minor, but, by virtue of his citizenship, could
appeal to a higher court than that of the governor. The Romans
succeeded, by their wisdom, in extending their institutions over the
countries they had conquered; and every part of the Empire was well
governed even when military despotism had overturned the ancient
constitution. There were, of course, cases of extortion and injustice,
and most governors made large fortunes; yet the provinces were better
administered, and the rule was more in accordance with justice than
under the native princes. Throughout the vast limits of the Empire, life
and property were safe, and the roads were free of robbers; nor were
there riots in the cities, except on very rare occasions, in which they
were put down with merciless severity. Yet a few hundred men were enough
to preserve order in the largest cities, and a few thousand in the most
extensive provinces. Even under the most tyrannical emperors, justice
and order were enforced. The government was never better administered
than by Tiberius, and further, was never better administered than when
he was abandoned to pleasure in his guarded villa at Capri. There was
the passion to govern the world, but in accordance with laws. The rule
of the Romans was not that of brute force, even when the army was at the
control of the Emperors. The citizens, to the last, enjoyed great social
and political rights. They had great immunities, in reference to
marriage, and the making of wills, and the possession of property. Their
persons were secured from the disgrace of corporal punishment; they
could appeal from the decision of magistrates; they were eligible to
public offices; they were exempted from many oppressive taxes which
still grind down the people in the most civilized states of Europe. The
government of Octavius was the mildest despotism ever known to the
ancient world. That Ulysses of state craft exercised the most extensive
powers under the ancient forms, and all the early emperors disguised
rather than paraded their powers. Contented with real power, the Roman
was careless of its display. He had the tact to rule without seeming to
rule; but rule he must, though not until he had first learned to obey--
obedience to laws and domination were inseparably connected. This made
the Roman yoke endurable, because it was not offensive or unjust. The
Romans were masters of the world by conquest, yet ruled the world they
had subdued by arms in accordance with laws based on the principles of
equity. This sense of justice, in the enjoyment of unbounded domination,
undoubtedly gave permanence to their government. The centurion was ever
present to enforce a decree, but the decree was in accordance with
justice. This was the idea, the recognized principle of government,
although often abused. Paul appealed to Caesar. He might have been
released by the governor, had he not appealed. Here was justice to Paul
in allowing the appeal; and still greater justice in keeping him in
bonds until acquitted by Caesar himself. [Sidenote: Degeneracy under
emperors.]
[Sidenote: Skill of the Romans for government.]
[Sidenote: On what the prosperity was based.]
[Sidenote: Government the great art and science of the Romans.]
[Sidenote: Prosperity of the government.]
It must, however, be confessed that, after the Caesars were fairly
established on their throne, a great indifference to public affairs
ensued. Every office was then, directly or indirectly, in the hands of
the emperor. Cicero expressed the popular sentiment of his day when he
said, "that was the most perfect government which was a combination of
popular and aristocratic authority;"--but in the eighth century of the
city, the system of checks and balances would have fallen to pieces in
the hands of a degenerate people. A constitutional monarchy even was no
longer possible. The vices of the oligarchy, and the fierce reactions of
the democracy, had destroyed all the dreams of the earlier patriots. The
mass of the people had long been passive under the sway of factions and
political intriguers, and they resigned themselves to the despotism of
the emperor without a struggle. But even in this degradation the power
of government remained among the leading classes. The governors of
provinces, taken generally from the Senate and the nobles, were skillful
in their administration of public affairs. They were enlightened in all
political duties. The traditional ideas of government survived for
several generations, even as the mechanism of the army made it powerful
after all real spirit had fled. The Roman still regarded himself as the
favorite of the gods, destined to achieve a vast mission, even the
reduction of the world to political unity. Augustus made every effort,
while he reigned, in the ruin of political institutions, to revive the
forms and traditions of other days. The patricians were favored and
honored, and the Senate still was made to appear august, with a
prostrate world at its feet, to which it was bound to dictate laws and
institutions. Political unity was the grand idea of the Romans, and this
idea has survived to our own times. It was one of the great elements of
Roman civilization. Universal empire was based, in the better days of
the Republic, on public morality, in the iron discipline of families, in
a marvelously well-trained soldiery, in a military system which made the
civil society an army almost ready for the field, in a recognition of
public rights and duties, in a wise system of colonization, in
conciliatory conduct to the conquered races, and in a central power as
the dispenser of all honor and emoluments. The civil wars broke up, in a
measure, this wise and considerate policy; still citizenship extended to
all parts of the empire, even when it was manifest it must soon fall
into the hands of barbarians. And as for the administration of justice,
it was probably better conducted under the emperors than under the
supreme rule of the Senate. Even bad emperors knew how to govern. To the
Roman mind every thing was subordinate to the art of government. And
every characteristic fitted the Romans to govern--energy of will,
practical good sense, the conception of justice, an unyielding pride,
fortitude, courage, and lust of power. And the spirit of domination was
carried out into every thing. It was made a science, an art. Whatever
would contribute to the ascendency of the state was remorselessly
adopted; whatever would interfere with it was abandoned or swept away.
Fierce and tolerant by turns, and as circumstances prompted--such was
the Roman. With submission life was easy, and the government was mild.
And the supreme government rarely entrusted power except to faithful,
capable, and patriotic rulers. The wisest and best were selected for
important offices. The governors of provinces were men of great
experience; they were generals and senators who had passed their term of
active service. They easily made great mistakes. They carried out the
policy of the State. They were acquainted with laws, and the customs of
the people whom they ruled. They were versed in the literature of their
day. They were men of dignity and fortune. They were moderate,
conciliatory, and firm. They were models for rulers for all subsequent
ages. There were, of course, exceptions, but the small number of riots
and rebellions shows the contentment of the people, for they were not
ground down by oppressive laws and exactions, until their spirit was
broken. How munificent were the emperors to such cities as Athens and
Alexandria! Athens was the seat of learning and culture, to the very end
of the empire. Arts and literature and science were fostered in all the
cities. They were adopted as parts of the empire, not treated like
conquered territories. After the destruction of Carthage, the Romans had
no jealousy of cities that once were equals. Their arts were made to
subserve Roman greatness, indeed, but they were left free to develop
their resources. The development of resources was a vital principle of
the Roman government. Spain, Syria, and Egypt, were never more
prosperous than under the imperial rule. All the provinces were more
thriving under the emperors than they had been under their ancient
kings, until the era of barbaric invasions. If war had been the mission
of the republic, peace was the pride of the empire. There were no wars
of importance for three hundred years, except those of necessity. The
end of the emperors was to govern, to preserve peace, and secure
obedience to the laws.
[Sidenote: The aristocracy the real rulers of the state.]
[Sidenote: Defects of Democratic ascendency.]
[Sidenote: The people unfit to govern when unenlightened.]
[Sidenote: Popular element in the Roman state.]
[Sidenote: Rich Plebeians had a great influence in the government.]
But we must bear in mind that, whatever were the popular rights enjoyed
in the republican era, and however vast were the powers wielded by the
emperors after liberty had fled, yet the constitution of Roman society
was essentially aristocratic. All the great conquests were made under
the rule of patricians, and all the leading men under the emperors were
nobles. The government was virtually, from first to last, in the hands
of the aristocracy. Still there was an important popular element,
especially in the latter days of the republic, to which revolutionary
leaders appealed, like the Gracchi, Marius, Catiline, and Caesar. One of
the most humiliating lessons which we learn of antiquity, we are forced
to own, was the signal incapacity of the people to govern themselves,
when they had obtained a greater share of power than the old
constitution had allowed. The republic did not long survive when
successful generals and eloquent demagogues were sustained by the
people. Had Rome been a democracy, as some suppose, the empire never
could have been established. We comfort ourselves, however, by the
reflection, that when the people surrendered themselves to factions and
demagogues and tyrants, they were both ignorant and depraved. Self-
government has never yet succeeded, because there have never been virtue
and intelligence among the masses. So long as we can boast of virtue and
intelligence among the people, we need not despair with the government
in their hands. An enlightened self-interest will suggest the wisest
policy. We only despair of the government of the people when they are
ignorant, brutal, and wicked. As there was no period in the ancient
world when they were not unenlightened, we are reconciled to the fact
that a wise and vigorous administration of public affairs was always
conducted by kings or nobles who had intelligence and patriotism, if
they were proud and imperious. Whatever faith we may justly cherish in
reference to popular sovereignty, grounded on the principles of natural
justice, and the hopes which are held out as the fruit of Christian
ideas, still, as a fact, there is but little in the history of the Roman
commonwealth which reflects much glory on the people, except when
controlled and marshalled by the aristocracy. Just so far as the popular
element prevailed, the state was hurried on to ruin. The aristocratical
element had the ascendency when Rome was most prosperous and most
respected. Yet, while the Roman constitution was essentially
aristocratic for five hundred years, it had a strong popular element
mingled with it. The patricians had the chief power, but they were not
lords and masters in so absolute a sense as to trample on the people
with impunity, nor were they able to deprive them of their rights, or of
all share in the government. They were not feudal nobles, nor a Venetian
oligarchy. And yet it were a mistake to suppose that the distinction
between the classes implied that the aristocratic power was lodged with
the patricians alone. The patricians were not necessarily aristocrats,
nor the plebeians a rabble. The political distinctions passed away
without destroying social inequalities. There were great families among
the plebeians which really belonged to the aristocratic class, at least
in the time of Cicero. Aristocracy may have been based on birth, as in
England, but it was sustained by wealth, as in that country. A very rich
man gained, ultimately, admission to the noble class, as Rothschild has
in London. Without wealth to uphold distinctions, any aristocracy soon
becomes contemptible. That organization of society is most aristocratic
which confers great political and social privileges on a few men, and
retains these privileges from generation to generation, as in France
during the reign of Louis XV. The state of society at Rome under the
republic, favored the monopoly of offices among powerful families. It
was considered very remarkable for even Cicero to rise to the highest
honors of the state with his magnificent genius, character, attainments,
and services; but he shared the consulship with a man of very ordinary
capacity. The great offices were all in the hands of the aristocracy,
from the expulsion of the kings to the times of Julius Caesar. Even the
tribunes of the people ultimately were selected from powerful families.
[Sidenote: The Patricians.]
[Sidenote: The Roman _Gens_.]
The Roman people--_Romanus populus_--under the kings, the original
citizens, were the warriors who built Rome, and conquered the
surrounding cities and districts. They were called _patres_, which
is synonymous with Patricians. [Footnote: Cicero, _De Repub._, ii.
12 Liv., i. 8.] They were united among themselves by kindred and by
political and religious ties. They supported themselves by agriculture
although engaged continually in war. They consisted originally of three
tribes, which gradually were united into the sovereign people. The first
tribe was a Latin colony, and settled on the Palatine Hill; the second
were Sabine settlers on the Quirinal; the third were Etruscans, who
occupied the Caelian. They were distinct, at first, and were not united
fully till the time of Tarquinius Priscus, himself an Etruscan.
[Footnote: Dionys., ii. 62.] As there were no other Roman citizens but
these patricians, they had no exclusive rights under the kings, and
hence there was then no aristocracy of birth. Each of these three tribes
of citizens consisted of ten curiae, and each curia of ten decuries, or
gentes. The three tribes, therefore, contained three hundred gentes. A
gens was a family, and the gentes were aggregates of kindred families.
[Footnote: Nieb., Lect. V.] The name of a gens was generally
characterized by the termination _eia_ or _ia_, as Julia, Cornelia,
and it is to be presumed that each gens had a common ancestor.
But with the growth of the city it came to pass that a gens often
included a great number of families; we read of three hundred Fabii
forming the gens Fabia in the year 275. These families composed,
ultimately, the aristocracy. They were the people who filled all
offices, and alone had the right of voting in the assemblies. As the
gentes were subdivisions of the three ancient tribes, the _populus_
alone had _gentes_, so that to be a patrician and to have a gens
were synonymous. With the growth of Rome new gentes or families were
added which did not claim descent from the ancient tribes. The powerful
gens of the Claudia came to Rome with Atta Claudius, their head, after
the expulsion of the kings. Tullus Hostilius incorporated the Julii,
Servilii and other gentes with the patricians. This ruling class, the
descendants of the conquerors, became a powerful aristocracy, and
ultimately learned to value pride of blood. There are very few names in
Roman history, until the time of Marius, which did not belong to this
noble class. What proud families were the Servilii, the Claudii, the
Julii, the Cornelii, the Fabii, the Valerii, the Sempronii, the Octavii,
the Sergii, and others. [Footnote: Liv., i. 33. Dionys., iii. 31.]
The _Equites_ were originally elected from the patricians, and were
cavalry soldiers, and did not form a distinct class till the time of the
Gracchi. They were composed of rich citizens, whose wealth enabled them
to become judices. They had the privilege of wearing a gold ring, and
had seats reserved for them, like the Senate, at the theatre and circus.
They increased in number with the increase of wealth, and formed an
honorable corps from which the highest officers of the army and the
civil magistrates were chosen. Admission to this body was an
introduction to public life, and was a test of social position. It was
composed of rich plebeians as well as patricians, and was based wholly
on wealth. Pliny says, "It became the third order in the state, and to
the title of _Senatus Populusque Romanus_, there began to be added,
_et Equestris ordo_."
[Sidenote: The Roman plebs.]
[Sidenote: The tribunes.]
[Sidenote: Gradual increase of their power.]
[Sidenote: Their usurpations.]
Beside this _Romanus populus_, which constituted the ruling class
under kings, was another body, made up of conquered people. In early
times their number was small, nor did they appear as a distinct class
until the reign of Tullus Hostilius. After the subjection of Alba, the
head of the Latin Confederacy, great numbers were transferred to Rome,
and received settlements on the Caelian Hill, and were kept under
submission to the patricians. As the Roman conquests extended, their
numbers increased, until they formed the larger part of the population.
They were called _plebs_, or commonalty, and had no political
privileges whatever. They had not even the right of suffrage; but they
were enrolled in the army, [Footnote: Liv., i. 33. Dionys., iii. 31. ]
and made to bear the expenses of the state. At first they were not
allowed to intermarry with the patricians. Their oppression provoked
resistance. The struggle which ensued is one of the most memorable in
Roman history. The haughty oligarchy were obliged gradually to concede
rights. These rights the _plebs_ retained. First they gained a law
which prevented patricians from taking usurious interest. They secured
the appointment of tribunes for their protection. Soon after they had
the right of summoning before their own _Comitia tributa_ any one
who violated their rights. In 449 they had influence sufficient to
establish the Connubium, by which they could intermarry with patricians.
In 421 the plebeians were admitted to the quaestorship. Then, after a
fierce contest, they were made decemvirs. Their next right was the
dignity of the consulship, and led to the dictatorship. In 351 they
secured the censorship, and in 336 the praetorship. Political
distinctions now vanished. The possession of a share of the great
offices created powerful families, and these were incorporated with the
aristocracy. The great privilege of securing tribunes was the first step
to political power, and the most important in the constitutional history
of the state. And it was the tribunes who gradually usurped the greatest
powers. They assumed the right, in 456, of convoking even the Senate.
They also had the right to be present in the deliberations of the
Senate; as their persons were inviolable, they interceded against any
action which a magistrate might undertake during his term of office, and
even a command issued by a praetor. They could compel the Senate to
submit a question to a fresh consultation, and ultimately compelled the
consuls to appoint a dictator. Their power grew to such a height that
they acquired the right of proposing to the _Comitia tributa_, or
the Senate, measures on nearly all the important affairs of the state,
and finally were elected from among the Senators themselves.
[Sidenote: Advancement of Plebeians.]
Through the institution of tribunes, and other circumstances, especially
the increase of wealth, the plebeians, originally so unimportant and
insignificant that they could not obtain admission into the Senate, nor
the high offices of state, nor the occupancy of the public lands,
ultimately obtained all the rights of the patricians, so that gradually
the political distinctions between patricians and plebeians vanished
altogether, 286 B.C., and the term _populus_ was applied to them as
well as to the patricians. [Footnote: Liv., iv. 44; v. 11,12. Cicero
_de Repub._, ii. 37.]
[Sidenote: Gradual increase of their power.]
These rights were only secured by bitter and fierce contests. The
plebeians, during their long struggle, did not seek power to gratify
their ambition, but to protect themselves from oppression. Nor was the
power which they obtained abused until near the close of the Republic.
But while they ultimately were blended, politically, with the
patricians, still the latter monopolized most of the great offices of
the state until the time of Cicero, and socially, always were
preeminent. Yet there were many noble plebeian families who were blended
with the aristocratic class. Aristocracy survived, after the political
distinctions between the two classes were abrogated. Rome was never a
democracy. Great families, whether patrician or plebeian, controlled the
State, either by their wealth or social connections. The Roman nobility
was really composed of all the families rendered illustrious by the
offices they had filled. And as the great officers were taken generally
from the Senate, that body was particularly august.
[Sidenote: The Senate.]
[Sidenote: The prerogative of Senators.]
Until the usurpation of Caesar, the Senate was the great controlling
power of the republic. It not only had peculiar privileges and powers,
but a monopoly of offices. It always remained powerful, in spite of the
victories of the plebeians. The laws proclaimed equality, but for fifty-
nine years after the plebeians had the right of appointment as military
tribunes, only eighteen were plebeians, [Footnote: _Hist. Julius
Caesar_, by Napoleon; chap. ii. 5.] while two hundred and forty-six
were patricians; and while the right of admission to the Senate was
acknowledged on principle, yet no one could enter it without having
obtained a decree of the censor, or exercised a curule magistracy,--
favors almost always reserved for the aristocracy. The Senate was a
judicial and legislative body, and numbered for several centuries but
three hundred men, selected from the patricians. At first they were
appointed by the kings, afterwards by the consuls, and subsequently by
the censors. But as all those who had been appointed by the
_populus_ to the great offices had admission into this body, the
people, that is, the patricians, virtually nominated the candidates for
the Senate. But all magistrates were not necessarily members of the
Senate, only those whom the censors selected from among them, and the
curule magistrates during their office. It was from these curule
magistrates that vacancies were filled up. The office of senator was for
life. When the plebeians obtained the great offices, the Senate of
course represented the whole people, as it formerly had represented the
_populus_. But it was never a democratic assembly, for all its
members belonged to the nobles. It required, under Augustus, 1,200,000
sesterces to support the senatorial dignity. Only a rich man could be,
therefore, a senator. Nor could he carry on any mercantile business. The
Senate was ever composed of men who had rendered great public services,
or who were distinguished for wealth and talents. It was probably the
most dignified and the proudest body of men ever assembled. The powers
of the Senate were enormous. It had the general superintendence of
matters of religion and foreign relations; it commanded the levies of
troops; it regulated duties and taxes; it gave audience to ambassadors;
it proposed, for a long time, the candidates for office to the
_Comitia_; it determined upon the way that war should be conducted;
it decreed to what provinces the consuls and praetors should be sent; it
appointed governors of provinces; it sent out embassies to foreign
states; it carried on the negotiations with foreign ambassadors; it
declared martial law in the appointment of dictators, and it decreed
triumphs to fortunate generals. In short it was the supreme power in the
state, and was the medium through which all the affairs of government
passed. It was neither an hereditary, nor a popular body, yet
represented the state--at first the patrician order, and finally the
whole people, retaining to the end its aristocratic character. The
senators wore on their tunics a broad purple stripe,--a badge of
distinction, like a modern decoration,--and they had the exclusive
rights of the orchestra at theatres and amphitheatres. [Footnote: See
article in Smith's _Dict. of Ant._, by Dr. Schmitz.] Under the
emperors, the Senate was degraded, and was made entirely subservient to
their will, and a mouth-piece; still it survived all the changes of the
constitution, and was always a dignified and privileged body. It
combined, in its glory, more functions than the English Parliament; it
was convoked by the curule magistrates, and finally by the tribunes. The
most ancient place of assembly was the Curia Hostilia, though
subsequently many temples were used. The majority of votes decided a
question, and the order in which senators spoke and voted was determined
by their rank, in the following order: president of the Senate, consuls,
censors, praetors, aediles, tribunes, quaestors. Their decisions, called
_Senatus Consulta_, were laws--_leges_--and were entrusted to
the care of aediles and tribunes. [Footnote: Nieb. _Roman Hist._,
viii. p. 264.]
[Sidenote: The Senate composed of patricians and plebeians.]
[Sidenote: The Senate hold the great offices of state.]
Such was the Roman Senate--an assembly of nobles, whether patrician or
plebeian. The descendants of all who had filled curule magistracies were
_nobiles_, and had the privilege of placing in the atrium of the
house the images and titles of their ancestors--an heraldic distinction
in substance. And as the patricians carried back their pedigree to the
remotest historical period, there was great pride of blood. Few
plebeians could boast of a remote and illustrious ancestry, and every
plebeian who obtained a curule office, was the founder of his family's
nobility, like Cicero--a _novus homo_. This nobility contrived to
keep possession of all the great offices, and it was difficult for a new
man to get access to their ranks. The distinction of Patrician
and Plebeian was secondary, after the _Gracchi_ to that of
_Nobilitas_, yet it was rare to find a patrician gens the families
of which had not enjoyed the highest honors many times over. Thus the
aristocracy was composed of the families of those who had held the
highest offices of the state; but as these offices were controlled by
the Senate and enjoyed by the patricians chiefly, it was difficult to
determine whether nobility was the result of patrician blood, or the
possession of great offices. A man could scarcely be a patrician who had
not held a great office; nor could he often hold a great office unless
he were a patrician. The great offices were held in succession by the
members of the Senate. The two consuls, the ten tribunes, the eight
praetors in the time of Sulla--the twenty quaestors, together with the
governors of provinces, and the generals who were selected from the
Senate, or belonged to it, would necessarily compose a large part of the
nobility, when their term of office lasted but a limited time, so that a
senator with any ability was sure, in the course of his life, of the
highest honors of the state.
[Sidenote: But only those who had distinguished themselves.]
The great executive officers, therefore, belonged to the noble class,
not of necessity, but as a general thing. Cicero was a _novus
homo_, and yet rose by his talents to the highest dignities. It was
rare, however, to confer the highest offices on those who had not
distinguished themselves in war. Military fame, after all, gave the
greatest prestige to the Roman name. Consuls commanded armies, but they
would not have been chosen consuls except for military, as well as
political, talent.
[Sidenote: The Consuls.]
The consul was, after the abolition of the monarchy, the highest officer
of the state. It was not till the year 366 B.C. that a plebeian obtained
this dignity. The powers of consuls were virtually those of the old
kings, with the exception of priestly authority. They convened the
Senate, introduced ambassadors, called together the people, conducted
elections, commanded the armies and never appeared in public without
lictors. Nor were they shorn of their powers till Julius Caesar assumed
the dictatorship. The whole internal machinery of the state was under
their control. But their term of office lasted only a single year. Their
election took place in the _Comitia Centuriata_.
[Sidenote: The censors.]
The censors were next in dignity, and like the consuls, there were two,
and elected in the same manner under the presidency of a consul; only
men of consular rank were chosen to this high office, and hence it was
really higher than the consulship. The censors were chosen for a longer
term than the consuls, and had the oversight of the public morals, the
care of the census, and the administration of the finances. They could
brand with ignominy the highest persons of the state, and could elect to
the Senate, and exclude from it unworthy men. They had, with the aediles,
the control of the public buildings and all public works. They could
take away from a knight his horse, and punish extravagance in living, or
the improper dissolution of the marriage rite. They were held in the
greatest reverence, and when they died were honored with magnificent
funerals.
[Sidenote: The praetors.]
Next in rank were the praetors, at first two in number, and ultimately
sixteen. They exercised the judicial power, both in civil and criminal
cases.
[Sidenote: The aediles.]
The aediles were also curule magistrates, and to them was entrusted the
care of the public buildings, and the superintendence of public
festivals. They were the keepers of the decrees of the Senate, and of
the plebiscita. They superintended the distribution of water, the care
of the streets, the drainage of the city, and the distribution of corn
to the people. It was their business to see that no new deities were
introduced, and they had the general superintendence of the police, and
the inspection of baths. Their office entailed large expenses, and they
were forced into great extravagance to gain popularity, as in the case
of Julius Caesar and Aemilius Scaurus; but the aediles exercised extensive
powers, which, however, were essentially diminished under the emperors.
[Sidenote: The tribunes.]
Allusion has already been made to the tribunes, in connection with the
development of the plebeian power. At first they were only two, then in
creased to five, and finally to ten. It was their business to protect
the plebs from the oppression of nobles, but their authority was so much
increased in the time of Julius Caesar that they could veto an ordinance
of the Senate. [Footnote: Caesar, _De Beil Civ_., 1, 2.] They not
only could stop a magistrate in his proceedings, but command their
viatores to seize a consul or a censor, to imprison him, or throw him
from the Tarpeian rock. [Footnote: Liv. ii. 56, iv. 26; Cicero, _De
Legibus_, iii. 9.] The college of tribunes had the power of making
edicts. After the passage of the Hortensian law, there was no power
equal to theirs, and they could dictate even to the Senate itself. In
the latter days of the republic, the tribunes were generally elected
from among the senators. It was the vast influence which the people had
obtained through the tribunes which led to the usurpation of Caesar; for
he, as well as Marius, rose into power by courting them against the
interests of the aristocracy.
[Sidenote: The quaestors.]
The last of the great magistrates whose office entitled them to a seat
in the Senate were the quaestors, who had charge of the public money.
Originally only two in number, they were raised by Sulla to twenty, and
by Caesar to forty, for political influence. As the Senate had the
supreme direction of the finances they were merely its agents or
paymasters. The proconsul or praetor, who had the administration of a
province, was attended with a quaestor to regulate the collection of the
revenues. The quaestors also were the paymasters of the army.
Such were the great executive officers of the state, having a seat in
the Senate, and belonging to the noble class by their official position
as well as by birth. No one could be consul until he had passed through
all these offices successively, except the censorship.
[Sidenote: Pontifex maximus.]
There was, however, another great Roman dignitary who held his office
for life, which was one of transcendent importance. He was at the head
of the college of priests, which had the superintendence of all matters
of religion. The college of pontiffs, of which, under Julius Caesar,
there were sixteen, were not priests, but stood above all priests, and
regulated the worship of the gods, and punished offenses against
religion. The chief pontiff lived in a public palace in the Via Sacra,
and might also hold other offices. It is a great proof of the talents of
Caesar and of the estimation in which he was held, that, at the age of
thirty-seven, he was chosen to this high dignity, against the powerful
opposition of Catulus, prince of the Senate, and when he had only
reached the aedileship.
[Sidenote: Assemblies of the people.]
[Sidenote: The Comitia Cenuriata.]
In regard to the assemblies of the people, where they voted for the
great officers of state, it must be borne in mind that they were not
made up of the rabble, but of the populus or the patricians till nearly
the close of the republic. Each of the thirty curia had its building for
the discussion of political and legal questions. They had also
collectively an assembly, called _Comitia Curiata_, where the
people voted on the measures proposed by the magistrates. The votes were
given by the curiae, each curia having one collective vote. The assembly
originated nothing, but decided upon the life of Roman citizens, upon
peace and war, and the election of magistrates. This was the primitive
form under the kings. But Servius Tullius instituted the _Comitia
Centuriata_, and hence divided the populus into six property classes,
and one hundred and ninety-three centuriae. The first class was composed
of ninety-eight centuriae, with a property qualification of one hundred
thousand asses; the second of twenty-two centuriae with seventy-five
thousand asses; the third of twenty, with fifty thousand asses; the
fourth of twenty-two, with twenty-five thousand asses; the fifth of
thirty, with eleven thousand asses; and the sixth of any one of those
below twelve and a half minae. Yet this class was the most numerous. The
wealthier classes voted first, and when a majority of the centuries was
obtained the voting stopped. Hence the power was virtually in the hands
of the rich; for, united, they made a majority before the poorer classes
were called upon to vote. The _Comitia Centuriata_ elected the
magistrates and made laws, and formed the highest court of appeal, but
all its decisions had to be sanctioned by the curiae, although in course
of time the curia was a formality. The centuries met in the Campus
Martius, and were presided over by the consuls, who read the names of
the candidates. In the assemblies by centuries, the vote of the first
class prevailed over all the others; in the _comitia_ by curiae the
patricians were supreme.
[Sidenote: The Comitia Tributa.]
[Sidenote: Decline of power of the comitia.]
The _Comitia Tributa_ represented the thirty Roman tribes according
to the Servian constitution, to whom was originally given the right to
elect inferior magistrates. This was a plebian assembly, and had very
insignificant powers, chiefly relating to the local affairs of the
tribes. But when these tribes began to be real representatives of the
people, with the increase of the plebeian classes, matters affecting the
whole state were brought before them by the tribunes. This gave to the
assembly the initiative of measures, which was sanctioned by a law of L.
Valerius Publicola, B.C. 449. This law gave to the decrees passed by the
tribes the power of a real _lex_, binding upon the whole people,
provided it had the sanction of the Senate and the populus in the
_Comitia Centuriata_. In 287 B.C. the Hortensian law made the
plebiscita independent of the sanction of the Senate. When the plebeians
began to be recognized as an essential element in the state, it was
found inconvenient to have the first class, which included the equites,
so greatly preponderant in the comitia of the centuries; and it was
designed to blend the _Comitia Centuriata_ and _the Tributa_
in such a manner as to make only one assembly. This took place after the
completion of the thirty-five tribes, B.C. 241. The citizens of each
tribe were divided into five property classes, and each tribe into ten
centuries, making three hundred and fifty centuries. This comitia was
far more democratic than the comitia of the centuries, and was guided by
the tribunes. When all the Italians were incorporated with the thirty-
five tribes, violence and bribery became the order of the day. Sulla
took away the jurisdiction of the people, and Julius Caesar encroached
still more on popular rights when he decided upon peace and war in
connection-with the Senate--which great question was formerly settled by
the comitia alone. The people retained nothing under him but the
election of magistrates, which amounted to little, since Caesar had the
right to appoint half the magistrates himself, with the exception of the
consuls. After the death of Caesar, the comitia continued to be held, but
was always controlled by the rulers, whose unlimited powers were
ultimately complied with without resistance. Finally the comitia became
a mere farce, and all legislation passed away forever, and was
completely in the hands of the emperor and Senate.
[Sidenote: The nobles retain the chief ascendency.]
[Sidenote: The dictator.]
[Sidenote: The idea of popular government.]
[Sidenote: The Senate retains all real power.]
Thus it would appear that the Roman constitution was essentially
aristocratic, especially for three hundred years after the expulsion
of kings. The _Senate_ and the _populus_ had the whole power.
Gradually, as wealth increased, the _equites_ became an influential
order, not less aristocratical than the patricians. The _plebs_
were not of much consideration till the time of the Gracchi, and always
obtained office with difficulty. It was two hundred years after the
expulsion of kings before the plebeians could even obtain a share of the
public lands. So long as the aristocracy preserved their virtue and
patriotism, the state was most ably administered, and continually
increased in wealth and power. The conquest of Italy was entirely under
the regime of nobles, and even when wealthy plebeian families mingled
with the ancient patricians there was still great difficulty in reaching
preferment, without the advantages of birth. [Footnote: Mommsen,
_Roman Hist_., i. p. 241.] In fourteen years, from 399 to 412, the
patricians allowed only six plebeians to reach the consulship. The lives
of the citizens were protected by the laws, but public opinion remained
powerless at the assassination of those who incurred the hatred of the
Senate. The comitia were free, but the Senate had at its disposal either
the veto of the tribunes or the religious scruples of the people, for a
consul could prevent the meeting of the assemblies, and the augurs could
cut short their deliberations. Even the dictatorship was often a means
of oppressing the plebs, and was a lever in the hands of the
aristocracy, since the dictator was appointed by the consuls under the
direction of the Senate. [Footnote: Liv., viii. 23.] He was a patrician
as a matter of course, until the political distinctions between
patrician and plebeian were removed, and had absolute authority for six
months. He was not held responsible for his acts while in office,
[Footnote: Becker, _Handbuch der Romanisch Alterthumer_, vii. p. 2;
Nieb. _History of Rome_. vol. i. p. 563.] nor was there any appeal
from his decisions. He was preceded by twenty-four lictors, and was
virtually supreme. Between 390 and 416 there were eighteen dictators.
The Senate thus remained all-powerful, in spite of the victories of the
plebeians, and such were its patriotism and intelligence that it
preserved its preponderance. It was during the conquest of Italy that
aristocratic power shone in all its splendor, and the most able men were
entrusted with public affairs. Every thing was sacrificed to patriotism,
and discipline was enforced with cruelty. The most powerful patricians
readily exposed their lives in battle, and a town became a people which
ultimately embraced the world. When the plebeians had grown to be a
power the decline of the republic commenced, and a new organization was
necessary. Great chieftains became dictators for life, and the imperial
sceptre was seized by an unscrupulous but enlightened general. The Roman
_populus_ in an important sense carried out the great idea of self-
government, but, strictly speaking, self-government, as applied to the
people generally, never existed in the Roman Commonwealth. But the idea
was advanced which gave birth to future republics. Nor did the fall of
the old patrician oligarchy divest the Roman commonwealth of its
aristocratic character, for a new aristocracy arose. When the plebeian
families obtained the consulate and other high offices of state, they
were put on a level with the old patrician families, and were allowed
the privilege of placing the wax images of their illustrious ancestors
in the family hall, and to have these images carried in the funeral
procession. As curule magistrates, they had a seat in the Senate, and
wore the insignia of rank--the gold finger-ring and the purple border on
the toga. "The result of the Licinian laws," says Mommsen, "in reality,
only amounted to what we now call the creation of a new batch of
officers." [Footnote: Mommsen, B. III. c. xi.] As all the descendants of
those who had enjoyed the curule magistracy were entitled to the
privilege of these distinctions, the nobility became hereditary. And as
the great officers of state were generally selected from this class,
since they controlled the comitia, the nobility was not merely
hereditary, but it was a _governing_ nobility. The nobility had the
possession of the Senate itself. It monopolized the great offices of
state. The stability of the Roman aristocracy is seen in the fact, that,
from the year 388 to 581, when the consulate was held by one patrician
and one plebeian, one hundred and forty of the consuls, out of the three
hundred and eighty-six, belonged to sixteen great houses. The Cornelii
furnished thirty consuls in one hundred and ninety-three years, the
Valerii eighteen, the Claudii twelve, the Aemilii fifteen, the Fabii
twelve, the Manlii ten, the Postumii eight, the Servilii seven, the
Sulpicii eight, the Papirii four, to say nothing of other curule
offices. Thus the nobility was not composed exclusively of patrician
families, although these were the most numerous, but of old plebeian
families also, in the same way that the English House of Lords is
composed of families which trace their origin to Saxons as well as
Normans, although the Normans, for several centuries, were the governing
class. And as the House of Lords has accessions occasionally from the
ranks of the people, in consequence of great wealth, or political
interest, or eminent genius, or signal success in war, so the Roman
nobility was increased, as old families died out, by the successful
generals who gained the great offices of state. Marius arose from the
people, but his exploits in the field of battle insured his entrance
among the nobility in consequence of the offices he held, even as the
Lord Chancellors of England, who have been eminent lawyers merely, are
made herditary peers in consequence of their judicial position.
[Sidenote: Roman citizens.]
The Roman burgesses again were any thing but a rabble. They were
composed of men of standing and wealth. If they did not compose the
motive-power, they constituted a firm foundation of the state. They had
a clear conception of the common good, and a sagacity in the election of
rulers, and a spirit of sacrifice for the general interests. They had a
lofty patriotism that nothing could seduce. The rabble of Rome were of
no account until the enormous wealth of the senatorial houses raised up
clients and parasites. And when this rabble, who were merely the
dependents of the rich, obtained the privilege of voting, then the
decline of liberties was rapid and fearful, since they were merely the
tools of powerful demagogues.
[Sidenote: Balance of power.]
Thus among the Romans, until the prostration of their liberties, the
powers of government were not in the hands of kings, as among the
Orientals, nor in those of the aristocracy, exclusively, nor in those of
the people; but in all combined, one class acting as a check against
another class. They were shared between the Senate, the magistrates, and
the people in their assemblies. Theoretically, the _populus_ was
the real sovereign by whom power was delegated; but, for several
centuries, the _populus_ meant the patricians, who alone could take
part in the assemblies. The preponderating influence was exercised by
the Senate. The judicial, the legislative, and the executive authority
were as clearly defined as in our times. The magistrates were all
elected by the Senate or the people, and sometimes proposed by the one
and confirmed by the other. No case, involving the life of a Roman
citizen, could be decided except by the _Comitia Centuriata_. The
election of a magistrate, or the passing of a law, though made on the
ground of a _senatus consultum_, yet required the sanction of the
curiae. In legislative measures, a _senatus consultum_ was brought
before the people by the consul, or the senator who originated the
measure, after it had previously been exhibited in public for seventeen
days. The inferior magistrates, whose office it was to superintend
affairs of local interest, were elected by the _Comitia Tributa_.
All the magistrates, however great their power, could, at the expiration
of their office, be punished for transcending their trust. No person was
above the authority of the laws. No one class could subvert the
liberties and prerogatives of another. The Senate had the most power,
but it could not ride over the Constitution. The consuls were not the
creatures of the Senate; they were elected by the centuries, and
presided over the Senate, as well as the assembly of the people. The
abuse of power by a consul was prevented by his colleague, and by the
certainty of being called to account on the expiration of his office.
His power was also limited by the Senate, since he was dependent upon
it. There was no absolute power exercised at Rome, except by the
dictators, but they were appointed only in a national crisis, and then
only for six months. Unless their power were perpetuated, not even they
could overturn the constitution. The senators again, the most powerful
body in the state, were not entirely independent. They could not elect
members of their own body, nor keep them in office. The censors had the
right of electing the senators from among the ex-magistrates and the
equites, and of excluding such as they deemed unworthy. And as the
Senate was thus composed wholly of men who had held the highest offices
or had great wealth, it was a body of great experience and wisdom. Yet
even this august assembly was obliged to submit to the introduction of
any subject of discussion by the tribune. What a counterpoise to the
authority of this powerful body were the tribunes! From their right of
appearing in the Senate, and of taking part in its discussions, and from
their being the representatives of the whole people, in whom power was
supposed primarily to be lodged, they gradually obtained the right of
intercession against any action which a magistrate might undertake
during the time of his office, and without giving a reason. They could
not only prevent a consul from convening the Senate, but could veto an
ordinance of the Senate itself. They could even seize a consul and a
censor and imprison him. Thus was power marvelously distributed, even
while it remained in the hands of the higher classes. The people were
not powerless when their assemblies could make laws and appoint
magistrates, and when their tribunes could veto the most important
measures. The consuls could not remain in office long enough to be
dangerous, and the senators could be ejected from their high position
when flagrantly unworthy. "The _nobiles_ had no legal privileges
like a feudal aristocracy, but they were bound together by a common
distinction derived from a legal title, and by a common interest; and
their common interest was to endeavor to confine the election to all the
high magistracies to the members of their own body." The term
_nobilitas_ implied that some one of a man's ancestors had filled a
curule magistracy, and it also implied the possession of wealth.
Theoretically it would seem that the _nobiles_ were very numerous,
since so many people can ordinarily boast of an illustrious ancestor;
but practically the class was not so large as we might expect. A noble
might be poor, but still, like Sulla, he remained noble. The distinction
of patrician was, long before the reforms of the Gracchi, of secondary
importance; that of _nobilitas_ remained to the close of the
republic. The nobility kept themselves exclusive and powerful from the
possession of the great offices of state from generation to generation;
they prevented their own extinction by admitting into their ranks those
who distinguished themselves to an eminent degree.
[Sidenote: The reign of demagogues.]
But this state of things applied only to the republic in its palmy days.
When democratical influences favored the ascendency of demagogues,--thus
far in the history of our world, the inevitable consequence of a greater
extension of popular liberties than what the people are prepared for,--
then wholesome restraints were removed, and the people were the most
enslaved, when they thought themselves most free. There is no more
melancholy slavery than the slavery of the passions. Ignorant self-
indulgent people are led by their passions; they are rarely influenced
by reason or by enlightened self-interest. Those who most skillfully and
unscrupulously appeal to popular passions, when the people have power,
have necessarily the ascendency in the community. The people, deceived,
flattered, headstrong, follow them willingly. In times of war, and
especially among a martial people, military chieftains, by inflaming the
warlike passions, by holding out exaggerated notions of glory, by
appealing to vanity and patriotism mingled, have ever had a most
extraordinary influence in republics. They have also great influence in
monarchies, when the monarch is crazed by the passion of military
success. Monarchs, with the passions of the people, are led by men who
flatter them even as the people are led. Hence the reign of favorites
with kings. The ascendency of favorites, with sovereigns like Louis
XIII., or even like Louis XIV., is maintained by the same policy as that
which animated Marius and Caesar, or animates the popular favorites of
our times. And this ascendency may be for the better or the worse,
according to the character of the demagogue rulers, or royal favorites.
When a Richelieu or a Cavour holds the reins, a country may be
indirectly benefited by the wisdom of their public acts. When a
Buckingham or a Catiline prevails, a nation suffers a calamity. In
either case, the power which is conceded to be legitimate becomes a
mockery. With Caesar, the popular power is a mere name, even, as with
Richelieu, the kingly is a shadow. In the better days of the Roman
republic, the executive power was kept in a healthy state by the great
authority of the Senate, and the senatorial influence was prevented from
undue encroachment by the watchfulness of the tribunes. And when the
aristocratical ascendency was most marked, the aristocratical body had
too much virtue and ability to be enslaved by ambitious and able men of
their own number. Had the Roman Senate, in the height of its power, been
composed of ignorant, inexperienced, selfish, unpatriotic members, then
it would have been easy for a great intellect among them, whether
accompanied by virtue or not, by appealing perpetually to their pride,
to their rank, to their privileges, to their peculiar passions, to have
led them, as Pitt led the House of Commons. The real rulers of our world
are few, in any community, or under any form of government. They are
always dangerous, when there is a low degree of virtue or intelligence
among those whom they represent. Certain it is, that their power is
nearly absolute when they are sustained by passion or prejudice. The
representative of a fanatical constituency has no continued power,
unless he perpetually flatters those whom, in his heart, he knows to be
lost to the control of reason. And his influence is greater or less,
according to the strength of the popular passions which he inflames, or
in which, as is often the case, he shares. The honest representative of
fanatics is himself a fanatic. Thus Cromwell had so great an ascendency
with his party, because he felt more strongly than they in matters where
they sympathized. But the liberties of Rome were not overturned by
fanatical rulers, but by those who availed themselves of the passions
which they themselves did not feel, in order to compass their selfish
ends. And that is the greater danger in republics--that bad men rise by
the suffrage of foolish people whom they deceive, by affecting to fall
in with their wishes, like Napoleon and Caesar, rather than that honest
men climb to power by the very excess of their enthusiasm, like
Cromwell, or Peter the Hermit. Hence a Mirabeau is more dangerous than a
Robespierre. The former would have betrayed the people he led; the
latter would have urged them on to consistent courses, even if the way
was lined with death. Had Mirabeau lived, and retained his power, he
would have compromised the Revolution, of which Napoleon was the
product, and the work would have had to be done over. But Robespierre
pushed his principles to their utmost logical sequence, and the nation
was satisfied with their folly, in a practical point of view. Napoleon
arose to rebuke anarchy as well as feudal kings, and though maddened and
intoxicated by war, so that his name is a Moloch, he never dreamed of
restoring the unequal privileges which the Revolution swept away.
[Sidenote: Greatness of the constitution.]
The Roman constitution, as gradually developed by the necessities and
crises which arose, is a wonderful monument of human wisdom. The people
were not ground down. They had rights which they never relinquished; and
they constantly gained new privileges, as they were prepared to
appreciate them, or as they were in danger of subjection by the
governing classes. They never had the ascendency, but they enjoyed
renewed and increasing power, until they were strong enough to tempt
aristocratic demagogues and successful generals. When Caesar condescended
to flatter the people, they had become a power, but a power incapable of
holding its own, or using it for the welfare of the state. Then it was
subverted, as Napoleon rode into absolute dominion over the bridge which
the Revolution had built. And the Roman constitution was remarkable, not
only because it prevented a degrading subjection of the masses, even
while it refused them the rights of government, but because it
maintained a balance among the governing classes themselves, and
restricted the usurpations of powerful families, as well as military
heroes. For nearly five hundred years, not a man arose whom the Romans
feared, or whom they could not control--whom they could not at any time
have hurled from the Tarpeian rock had he contemplated the subversion, I
will not say of the liberties of the people, but of the constitution
which made the aristocracy supreme. There were ambitious and
unscrupulous men, doubtless, among those fortunate generals whom the
Senate snubbed, and whom the people adored. But, great as they were in
war, and powerful from family interest and vast wealth, no one of them
ever dared to make himself supreme until Caesar passed the Rubicon--not
Scipio, crowned with the laurels which he had taken from the head of
Hannibal; not Marius, fresh from his great victories over the barbaric
hosts of northern Europe; not even Sulla, after his magnificent
conquests in the east, and his triumph over all the parties and factions
which democracy raised against him. Pompey may have contemplated what it
was the fortune of Caesar to secure. But that pompous magnate could have
succeeded only by using the watchwords and practicing the acts to which
none but a demagogue could have stooped. Before his time, at least for
fifty years, there were too many men in the Senate who had the spirit of
Cato, of Cicero, and of Brutus.
[Sidenote: The Revolution.]
[Sidenote: Effects of imperial rule.]
But, _tempora mutantur_. When the Senate was made up of men whom
great generals selected, whether aristocratic sycophants or rich
plebeians; when the tribunes played into the hands of the very men whom
they were created to oppose; when the high priest of a people,
originally religious, was chosen without regard to either moral or
religious considerations, but purely political; when the high offices of
the state were filled by senators who had never seen military life
except for some brief campaign; when factions and parties set old
customs aside; when the most aristocratic nobles sought entrance into
plebeian ranks in order, like Mirabeau, to steal the few offices which
the people controlled, and when the people, mad and fierce from
demoralizing spectacles, raised mobs and subverted law, then the
constitution, under which the Romans had advanced to the conquest of the
world, became subverted. Under the emperors, there was no constitution.
They controlled the Senate, the army, the tribunals of the law, the
distant provinces, the city itself, and regulated taxes and imposed
burdens, and appointed to high offices whomever they wished. The Senate
lost its independence, the courts their justice, the army its spirit,
and the people their hopes. Yet the old form remained. The Senate met as
in the days of the Gracchi. There were consuls and praetors still. But it
was merely equites or rich men who filled the senatorial benches--tools
of the emperor, as were all the officers of the state. The government of
nobles was succeeded by the government of emperors who, in their turn,
were too often the tools of favorites, or of praetorian guards, until the
assassin's dagger cut short their days.
[Sidenote: The rule of emperors a necessity.]
This is not the place to speculate on the good or evil which resulted
from this change in the Roman government. Most historians and
philosophers agree that the change was inevitable, and proved, on the
whole, benignant. It was simply the question whether the Romans should
have civil wars and anarchies and factions, which decimated the people,
and kept society in a state of fear and insecurity, and prevented the
triumph of law, or whether they should submit to an absolute ruler, who
had unbounded means of doing good, and whom interest and duty alike
prompted to secure the public welfare. The people wanted, above all
things, safety, and the means of prosecuting their various interests.
Under the emperors they obtained the greatest boons possible, when the
condition of society was hollow and rotten to the core. The people were
governed, sometimes wisely, sometimes recklessly, but there were order
and law for three hundred years. It little mattered to the vast
population of the empire who was supreme master, provided they were not
oppressed. The proud _Imperator_, the title and praenomen of all the
Roman monarchs, and which had been invented for Octavian, remained the
fountain of law, the arbiter of all interests, the undisputed ruler of
the world. The old offices nominally remained, but, by virtue of the
censorship, the emperor had the power of excluding persons from the
Senate, and of calling others into it. Thus the august body which was,
under the republic, the counterpoise to executive authority, was
rendered dependent on the imperial will. There was no Senate, but in
name, when it could be controlled by the government. It became a mere
form, or an instrument in the hands of the administration, to facilitate
business. By obtaining the proconsular power over the whole of the Roman
Empire, Octavian made the provincial governors his vicegerents. The
_tribunicia potestas_ which he also enjoyed, enabled him to annul
any decree of the Senate, and of interfering in all the acts of the
magistrates. An appeal was open to him, as tribune, from all the courts
of justice; he had a right to convoke the Senate, and to put any subject
under consideration to the vote of senators. Augustus even seized the
pontificate, which office, that of Pontifex Maximus, put into his hands
all the ecclesiastical courts. As tribune and censor, he also controlled
the treasury, so that all the powers of the state were concentrated in
him alone--that of consul, tribune, censor, praetor, and high priest.
What a power to be exercised by one man in so great an empire! The Roman
constitution was subverted when one man usurped the offices which were
formerly shared by many. No sovereign was ever so absolute as the Roman
Imperator, since he combined all the judicial, the executive, and the
legislative branches of the government; that is, he controlled them all.
[Sidenote: The old forms of government preserved.]
Yet the old machinery was kept up, the old forms, the old offices in
name, otherwise even Augustus might not have been secure on his throne.
The Comitia still elected magistrates, but only such as were proposed by
the government. The Senate assembled as usual, but it was composed of
rich men, merely to register the decrees of the Imperator. The consuls
were elected as before, but they were mere shadows in authority. The
only respectable part of the magistracy was that which interpreted the
laws. The only final authority was the edict of the emperor, who not
only controlled all the great offices of state, but was possessed of
enormous and almost unlimited private property. They owned whole
principalities. Augustus changed the whole registration of property in
Gaul on his own responsibility, without consulting any one. [Footnote:
Niebuhr, Lecture 105.] His power was so unlimited that soldiers took the
oath of allegiance to him, as they once did to the _imperium populi
Romani_. His armies, his fleets, and his officers were everywhere,
and no one dreamed of resisting a power which absorbed everything into
itself.
[Sidenote: The imperial power unable to save the state.]
It is altogether another question whether the prosperity of the state
was greater or less after the subversion of the constitution. For three
hundred years the state was probably kept together by the ancient
mechanism controlled by one central will. The change from civil war and
party faction to imperial centralized power, considering the demoralized
condition of society, was doubtless beneficial. The emperor could rule;
he could not, however, conserve the empire. Doubtless, in most cases, he
ruled well, since he ruled by the of great experience and ability. It is
peculiarly the interest of despots to have able men as ministers. They
never select those whom they deem to be weak and corrupt; they are
simply deceived in their estimate of ability and fidelity. For several
generations, the provinces had experienced governors, the armies had
able generals, the courts of law learned judges. The provinces were not
so inexorably robbed as in the time of Cicero. The people had their
pleasures and spectacles and baths. Property was secure, unless enormous
fortunes tempted the cupidity of the emperors. Justice was well
administered. Cities were rebuilt and adorned. Rome owed its greatest
monuments of art to the emperors. There was a cold and remorseless
despotism; but the unnoticed millions toiled in peace. Literature did
not thrive, since that can only live with freedom, but art received
great encouragement, and genius, in the useful professions, did not go
unrewarded. The empire did not fall till luxury and prosperity enervated
the people and rendered them unable to cope with the barbarian hosts.
Rome was never so rich as when she fell into the hands of Goths and
Vandals. But the empire, under the old constitution, might have
protected itself against external enemies. The mortal wound to Roman
power and glory was inflicted by traitors.
* * * * *
AUTHORITIES.--Niebuhr, Lectures on the History of Rome; Mommsen, History
of Rome; Arnold, History of Rome; Merivale, History of the Romans;
Gibbon, Decline and Fall; Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Antiquities gives the details, and points out the old classical
authorities, as does Napoleon's Life of Caesar. Dionysius, Polybius,
Livy, Plutarch, Cicero, Sallust, all shed light on important points. See
also Gottling, _Gesch der Rom. Staat_. A large catalogue of writers
could be mentioned, but allusion is only made to those most accessible
to American readers.
CHAPTER VI.
ROMAN JURISPRUDENCE.
If the Romans showed great practical sagacity in distributing political
power among different classes and persons, their laws evince still
greater wisdom. Jurisprudence is generally considered to be their
indigenous science. It is for this they were most distinguished, and by
this they have given the greatest impulse to civilization. Their laws
were most admirably adapted for the government of mankind, but they had
a still higher merit; they were framed, to a considerable degree, upon
the principles of equity or natural justice, and hence are adapted for
all ages and nations, and have indeed been reproduced by modern
lawgivers, and so extensively, as to have formed the basis of many
modern codes. Hence it is by their laws that the Romans have had the
greatest influence on modern times, and these constitute a wonderful
monument of human genius. If the Romans had bequeathed nothing but laws
to posterity, they would not have lived in vain. These have more
powerfully affected the interests of civilization than the arts of
Greece. They are as permanent in their effects as any thing can be in
this world--more so than palaces and marbles. The latter crumble away,
but the legacy of Gaius, of Ulpian, of Paulus, of Tribonian, will be
prized to the remotest ages, not only as a wonderful work of genius, but
for its practical utility. The enduring influence of Moses is chiefly
seen in his legislation, for this has entered into the Christian codes,
and is also founded on the principles of justice. It is for this chiefly
that he ranks with the greatest intellects of earth, whether he was
divinely instructed or not.
[Sidenote: Object for which laws are made.]
Roman laws were first made in reference to the political exigencies and
changes of the state, and afterwards to the relations of the state with
individuals, or of individuals with individuals. The former pertain more
properly to constitutional history; the latter belong to what is called
the science of jurisprudence, and only fall in with the scope of this
chapter. The laws enacted by the Roman people in their centuries, or by
the Senate, pertaining to political rights and privileges--those by
which power passed from the hands of patricians to plebeians, or from
the _populus_ to great executive officers--are highly important
and interesting in an historical or political sense. But the genius of
the Romans was most strikingly seen in the government of mankind; and it
therefore the relations between the governing and the governed, the laws
created for the general good, pertaining to property and crime and
individual rights, which, in this chapter, it is my chief object to
show.
[Sidenote: Greeks inferior to the Romans in jurisprudence.]
The Greeks, with all their genius, their great creation in literature,
philosophy, and art, did very little for civilization, which we can
trace, in the science of jurisprudence. They were too speculative for
such a practical science. Nevertheless their speculative wisdom was made
use of by Roman jurists. It was only so far as philosophy modified laws,
that the influence of Greece was of much account.
[Sidenote: Jurisprudence culminates with emperors.]
Nor did Roman jurisprudence culminate in its serene majesty till the
time of the emperors. It was not perfectly developed, until Justinian
consolidated it in the Code, the Pandects, and the Institutes. The
classical jurists may have laid the foundation; the superstructure was
raised under the auspices of those whom we regard as despots.
[Sidenote: Early legislation.]
[Sidenote: The Twelve Tables.]
Ingenious writers, like Vico and Niebuhr, have extended their researches
to the government of the kings, and advanced many plausible
speculations; but the earliest legislation worthy of notice, was the
celebrated code called the Twelve Tables, framed from the reports of the
commissioners whom the Romans sent to Athens and other Greek states, to
collect what was most useful in their legal systems. But scarcely any
part of the civil law contained in the Twelve Tables has come down to
us. All we know with certainty, is that it was the intention of the
decemviral legislation to bring the estates into closer connection, and
to equalize the laws for both. Nor do the provisions of the decemviral
code, with which we are acquainted, show that enlightened regard to
natural justice which characterized jurisprudence in its subsequent
development. It allowed insolvent debtors to be treated with great
cruelty; they could be imprisoned for sixty days, loaded with chains,
and then might be sold into foreign slavery. It sanctioned a barbarous
retaliation--an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But it gave a
redress for lampoons or libels, allowed an appeal from the magistrate to
the people, and forbid capital punishment except by a decision of the
centuries. [Footnote: Lord Mackenzie, part 6.] Niebuhr maintains,
[Footnote: Lecture 25.] in his lectures on the History of Rome, that the
Twelve Tables conceded the right to every _pater familias_ of
making a will, by which regulation the child of a plebeian, by a
patrician mother, could succeed to his father's property, which was of
great importance, and a great step in natural justice. It is supposed
that the most important part of the decemviral legislation was
the _jus publicum_, [Footnote: Cicero, _De Legibus_.] or that
which refers to the Roman constitution. The Twelve Tables obtained among
the Romans a peculiar reverence; they were committed to memory by the
young; they were transcribed with the greatest care, and were considered
as the fountain of right. They were approved by the _comitia
centuriata_, which was the supreme authority, and in the time of
Appius Claudius was composed of patricians alone. If Niebuhr is right in
his statement that the power of making wills was given to plebeians, it
shows a greater liberality on the part of patricians than what they
generally have had credit for, and is hardly to be reconciled with the
statement of Lord Mackenzie, that all marriages between patricians and
plebeians were prohibited by the new code.
[Sidenote: The Twelve Tables the basis of Roman law.]
[Sidenote: Progress of Roman Law.]
The laws of the Twelve Tables were the basis of all the laws, civil and
religious. But the edicts of the praetors, who were the great equity
judges, as well as the common-law magistrates, [Footnote: Maine's
_Ancient Law_, p. 67.] proclaimed certain changes which custom and
the practice of the courts had introduced, and these, added to the
_leges populi_ or laws proposed by the consul and passed by the
centuries, the _plebiscita_ or laws proposed by the tribunes and
passed by the tribes, and the _senatus consulta_, gradually swelled
the laws to a great number. Three thousand plates of brass, containing
these various laws, were deposited in the capitol. [Footnote: Suetonius,
_In Vespa_.] Subtleties and fictions were introduced by the lawyers
to defeat the written statutes, and jurisprudence became complicated,
even in the time of Cicero. The opinions of eminent lawyers were even
adopted by the legal profession, and were recognized by the courts. The
evils of a complicated jurisprudence were so evident in the seventh
century of the city, that Q. Mucius Scaevola, a great lawyer, when
consul, published a scientific elaboration of the civil law. Cicero
studied law under him, and his contemporaries, Alfenus Varus and Aeulius
Gallus, wrote learned treatises, from which extracts appear in the
Digest. Caesar contemplated a complete revision of the laws, but did not
live long enough to carry out his intentions. His legislation, so far as
he directed his mind to it, was very just. Among other laws was one
which ordained that creditors should accept lands as payment for their
outstanding debts, according to the value determined by commissioners.
In his time, the relative value of money had changed, and was greatly
diminished. The most important law of Augustus, was the _lex oelia
sentia_, deserving of all praise, which related to the manumission of
slaves. But he did not interfere with the social relations of the people
after he had deprived them of political liberty. He once attempted, by
his _Lex Julia et Papia Poppaea_, to counteract the custom which
then prevailed, of abstaining from legal marriage and substituting
concubinage instead, by which the free population declined; but this
attempt to improve the morals of the people met with such opposition
from the tribes or centuries, that the next emperor abolished popular
assemblies altogether, which Augustus feared to do. The Senate, in the
time of the emperors, composed chiefly of lawyers and magistrates, and
entirely dependent upon them, became the great fountain of law. By the
original constitution, the people were the source of power, and the
Senate merely gave or refused its approbation to the laws proposed, but
under the emperors the comitia disappeared, and the Senate passed
decrees, which have the force of laws, subject to the veto of the
emperor. It was not until the time of Septimus Severus and Caracalla,
that the legislative action of the Senate ceased, and the edicts and
rescripts of emperors took the place of all legislation.
[Sidenote: Q. Mucius Scaevola.]
The golden age of Roman jurisprudence was from the birth of Cicero to
the reign of Alexander Severus. Before this period it was an occult
science, confined to praetors, pontiffs, and patrician lawyers. There
were no books nor schools to teach its principles. But in the latter
days of the republic law became the fashionable study of Roman youth,
and eminent masters arose. The first great lawyer who left behind him
important works, was the teacher of Cicero, Q. Mucius Scaevola, who wrote
a treatise in eighteen books on the civil law. "He was," [Footnote:
Cicero, _De Or._ i. 39.] says Cicero, "the most eloquent of
jurists, and the most learned of orators." This work, George Long
thinks, had a great influence on contemporaries and on subsequent
jurists, who followed it as a model. It is the oldest work from which
there are any excerpts in the Digest.
[Sidenote: Servius Sulpicius.]
[Sidenote: Labeo.]
[Sidenote: Gaius.]
[Sidenote: Papinian.]
[Sidenote: Paulus.]
Servius Sulpicius, the friend of Cicero, and fellow-student of oratory,
surpassed his teachers Balbus and Gallus, and was the equal in
reputation of the great Mucius Scaevola, the Pontifex Maximus, who said
it was disgraceful for a patrician and a noble to be ignorant of the law
with which he had to do. Cicero ascribes his great superiority as a
lawyer to the study of philosophy, which disciplined and developed his
mind, and enabled him to deduce his conclusions from his premises with
logical precision. He left behind him one hundred and eighty treatises,
and had numerous pupils, among whom A. Ofilius and Alfenus Varus, Cato,
Caesar, Antony, and Cicero, were great lawyers. Labeo, in the time of
Augustus, wrote four hundred books on jurisprudence, spending six months
in the year in giving instruction to his pupils, and in answering legal
questions, and the other six months in the country in writing books.
Like all the great Roman jurists, he was versed in literature and
philosophy, and so devoted to his profession that he refused political
office. His rival, Capito, was equally learned in all departments of the
law, and left behind him as many treatises as Labeo. These two jurists
were the founders of celebrated schools, like the ancient philosophers,
and each had distinguished followers. Masurius Sabinus Gaius and
Pomponius, were of the school of Capito. M. Cocceius Nerva, Sempronius
Proculus, and Juventius Celsus, were of the school of Labeo. Gaius, who
flourished in the time of the Antonines, was a great legal authority;
and the recent discovery of his Institutes has revealed the least
mutilated fragment of Roman jurisprudence which exists, and one of the
most valuable, and sheds great light on ancient Roman law. It was found
in the library of Verona. No Roman jurist had a higher reputation than
Papinian, who was _praefectus praetorio_ under Septimius Severus, an
office which made him only secondary to the emperor--a sort of grand
vizier--whose power extended over all departments of the state. He was
beheaded by Caracalla. The great commentator Cujacius, declares that he
was the first of all lawyers who have been, or who are to be; that no
one ever surpassed him in legal knowledge, and no one will ever equal
him. Paulus was his contemporary, and held the same office as Papinian.
He was the most fertile of Roman law-writers, and there is more taken
from him in the Digest than from any other jurist, except Ulpian. There
are two thousand and eighty-three excerpts from this writer, one sixth
of the whole Digest. No legal writer, ancient or modern, has handled so
many subjects. In perspicuity, he is said to be inferior to Ulpian, one
of the most famous of jurists, who was his contemporary. He has
exercised a great influence on modern jurisprudence from the copious
extracts of his writings in Justinian's Digest. He was the chief adviser
of Alexander Severus, and like Paulus was _praefectus praetorio_. The
number of excerpts in the Digest from him, is said to be two thousand
four hundred and sixty-two, and they form a third part of it. Some
fragments of his writings remain. The last of the great civilians
associated with Gaius, Papinian, Paulus, and Ulpian, as oracles of
jurisprudence, was Modestinus, who was a pupil of Ulpian. He wrote both
in Greek and Latin. There are three hundred and forty-five excerpts in
the Digest from his writings, the titles of which show the extent and
variety of his labors. [Footnote: These facts are drawn from the
different articles of George Long, in _Smith's Dictionary_.]
[Sidenote: The profession of law.]
These great lawyers shed great glory on the Roman civilization. In the
earliest times men sought distinction on the fields of battle, but in
the latter days of the republic honor was conferred for forensic
ability. The first pleaders of Rome were not jurisconsults, but
aristocratic patrons looked after their clients. But when law became
complicated, a class of men arose to interpret it, and these men were
held in great honor, and reached, by their services, the highest
offices--like Cicero and Hortensius. No remuneration was given
originally for forensic pleading, beyond the services which the client
gave to a patron, but gradually the practice of the law became
lucrative. Hortensius, as well as Cicero, gained an immense fortune. He
had several villas, a gallery of paintings, a large stock of wines,
parks, fish-ponds, and aviaries. Cicero had villas in all parts of
Italy; a house on the Palatine with columns of Numidian marble, and a
fortune of twenty millions of sesterces, equal to $800,000. Most of the
great statesmen of Rome, in the time of Cicero, were either lawyers or
generals. Crassus, Pompey, P. Sextus, M. Marcellus, P. Clodius,
Calidius, Messala Niger, Asinius Pollio, C. Cicero, M. Antonius, Caesar,
Calvus, Caelius, Brutus, Catulus, Messala Cervirus, were all celebrated
for their forensic efforts. Candidates for the bar studied four years
under a distinguished jurist, and were required to pass a rigorous
examination. The judges were chosen from members of the bar, as well as,
in later times, the senators. The great lawyers were not only learned in
the law, but possessed great accomplishments. Varro was a lawyer, and
was the most learned man that Rome produced. But, under the emperors,
the lawyers were chiefly distinguished for their legal attainments, like
Paulus and Ulpian.
[Sidenote: Roman jurists.]
During this golden age of Roman jurisprudence, many commentaries were
written on the Twelve Tables, the Perpetual Edict, the Laws of the
People, and the Decrees of the Senate, as well as a vast mass of
treatises on every department of the law, most of which have perished.
The Institutes of Gaius, which have reached us nearly in their original
form, are the most valuable which remain, and have thrown great light on
some important branches previously involved in obscurity. Their use in
explaining the Institutes of Justinian, is spoken of very highly by
Mackenzie, since the latter are mainly founded on the long lost work of
Gaius. A treatise of Ulpian, preserved in the Vatican, entitled
"_Tituli ex corpore Ulpiani_" also contains valuable information,
as well as the "_Receptae Sententiae_" of Julius Paulus, his great
contemporary, both of which works, as well as others of inferior
importance, were lately published at Rome by Dr. Gneist, called
"_Corpus Juris Romani Antejustinianii_." [Footnote: Mackenzie, p.
16.] The great lawyers who flourished from Trajan to Alexander Severus,
like Gaius, Ulpian, Paulus, Papinian, and Modestinus, had no successors
who can be compared with them, and their works became standard
authorities in the courts of law.
After the death of Alexander Severus no great accession was made to
Roman law, until Theodosius II. caused the constitutions, from
Constantine to his own time, to be collected and arranged in sixteen
books. This was called the Theodosian Code, which in the West was held
in high esteem, although superseded shortly after in the East by the
Justinian Code.
[Sidenote: Justinian labors.]
To Justinian belongs the immortal glory of reforming the jurisprudence
of the Romans. "In the space of ten centuries," says Gibbon, "the
infinite variety of laws and legal opinions had filled many thousand
volumes, which no fortune could purchase, and no capacity could digest.
Books could not easily be found and the judges, poor in the midst of
riches, were reduced to the exercise of their illiterate discretion."
[Footnote: Gibbon, ch. 44.] Justinian determined to unite in one body
all the rules of law, whatever may have been their origin, and in the
year 528, appointed ten jurisconsults, among whom was the celebrated
Tribonian, to select and arrange the imperial constitutions, leaving out
what was obsolete or useless or contradictory, and to make such
alterations as the circumstances required. This was called the
_Code_, divided into twelve books, and comprising the constitutions
from Hadrian to Justinian. This was published in fourteen months after
it was undertaken.
[Sidenote: Tribonian.]
[Sidenote: The code of Pandects.]
Justinian authorized Tribonian, then quaestor, "_vir magnificus
magisteria dignitate inter agentes decoratus_," for great titles were
now given to the officers of the crown, to prepare, with the assistance
of seventeen associates, a collection of extracts from the writings of
the most eminent jurists, so as to form a body of law for the government
of the empire, with power to select and omit and alter; and this immense
work was done in three years, and published under the title of Digest or
Pandects. "All the judicial learning of former times," says Lord
Mackenzie, "was laid under contribution by Tribonian and his colleagues.
Selections from the works of thirty-nine of the ablest lawyers,
scattered over two thousand separate treatises, were collected in one
volume; and care was taken to inform posterity that three millions of
lines were abridged and reduced, in these extracts, to the modest number
of one hundred and fifty thousand. Among the selected jurists, only
three names belonged to the age of the republic; the civilians who
flourished under the first emperors are seldom appealed to; so that most
of the writers, whose works have contributed to the Pandects, lived
within a period of one hundred years. More than a third of the whole
Pandects is from Ulpian, and next to him, the principal writers are
Paulus, Papinian, Salvius Julianus, Pomponius, Q. Cervidius Scaevola, and
Gaius. Though the variety of subjects is immense, the Digest has no
claims to scientific arrangement. It is a vast cyclopedia of
heterogeneous law badly arranged; every thing is there, but every thing
is not in its proper place." [Footnote: Mackenzie, p. 25.]
[Sidenote: The Institutes.]
But neither the Digest nor the Code was adapted to elementary
instruction. It was necessary to prepare a treatise on the principles of
Roman law. This was entrusted to Tribonian, and two professors,
Theophilus and Dorotheus. It is probable that Tribonian merely
superintended the work, which was founded chiefly on the Institutes of
Gains, and was divided into four books, and has been universally admired
for its method and elegant precision. It was intended merely as an
introduction to the Pandects and the Code.
[Sidenote: The Novels of Justinian.]
The _Novels of Justinian_ were subsequently published, being the
new ordinances of the emperor, and the changes he thought proper to
make, and are therefore a high authority.
The Code, Pandects, Institutes, and Novels of Justinian, comprise the
Roman law, as received in Europe, in the form given by the school of
Bologna, and is called the "_Corpus Juris Civilis_." "It was in
that form," says Savigny, "that the Roman law became the common law of
Europe; and when, four centuries later, other sources came to be added
to it, the _Corpus Juris_ of the school of Bologna had been so
universally received, and so long established as a basis of practice,
that the new discoveries remained in the domain of science, and served
only for the theory of the law. For the same reason, the Anti-Justinian
law is excluded from practice." [Footnote: Savigny, _Droit Romani_,
vol. i. p. 68.] After Justinian, the old texts were left to moulder as
useless though venerable, and they have nearly all disappeared. The
Code, the Pandects, and the Institutes, were declared to be the only
legitimate authority and alone were admitted to the tribunals or taught
in the schools. The rescripts of the early emperors recognized too many
popular rights to suit the despotic character of Justinian, and the
older jurists, like the Scaevolas, Sulpicius, and Labeo, were distasteful
from their sympathy with free institutions. Different opinions have been
expressed by the jurisconsults as to the merits of the Justinian
collection. By some it is regarded as a vast mass of legal lumber; by
others, as a beautiful monument of human labor. After the lapse of so
many centuries, it is certain that a large portion of it is of no
practical utility, since it is not applicable to modern wants. But
again, no one doubts that it has exercised a great and good influence on
moral and political science, and introduced many enlightened views
concerning the administration of justice, as well as the nature of civil
government, and thus has modified the codes of the Teutonic nations,
which sprang up on the ruins of the old Roman world. It was used in the
Greek empire until the fall of Constantinople. It never entirely lost
authority in Italy, although it remained buried till the discovery of
the Florentine copy of the Pandects at the siege of Amalfi in 1135.
Peter Valence, in the eleventh century, made use of it in a law-book
which he published. With the rise of the Italian cities, the study of
Roman law revived, and Bologna became the seat from which it spread over
Europe. In the sixteenth century, the science of theoretical law passed
from Italy to France, under the auspices of Francis I., when Cujas or
Cujacius became the great ornament of the school of Bourges, and the
greatest commentator on Roman law until Dumoulin appeared. Grotius, in
Holland, excited the same interest in civil law that Dumoulin did in
France, followed by eminent professors in Leyden and the German
universities. It was reserved for Pothier, in the middle of the
eighteenth century, to reduce the Roman law to systematic order--one of
the most gigantic tasks which ever taxed the industry of man. The recent
discoveries, especially that made by Niebuhr, of the long lost work of
Gaius have given a great impulse to the study of Roman law in Germany,
and to this impulse no one has contributed so greatly as Savigny of
Berlin.
The great importance of the subject demands a more minute notice of the
principles of the Roman law, than what the limits of this work should
properly allow. I shall therefore endeavor to abridge what has been
written by the more eminent authorities, taking as a basis the late work
of Lord Mackenzie and the learned and interesting essay of Professor
Maine.
[Sidenote: Law of persons.]
The Institutes of Justinian commenced with the law of persons,
recognizing the distinction of ranks. All persons are capable of
enjoying civil rights, but not all in the same degree. Greater
privileges are allowed to men than to women, to freemen than to slaves,
to fathers than to children.
[Sidenote: Equality of citizens.]
In the eye of the law all Roman citizens were equal, wherever they
lived, whether in the capital or the provinces. Citizenship embraced
both political and civil rights. The political rights had reference to
the right of voting in the comitia, but this was not considered the
essence of citizenship, which was the enjoyment of the _connubium_
and _commercium_. By the former the citizen could contract a valid
marriage, and acquire the rights resulting from it, particularly the
paternal power; by the latter he could acquire and dispose of property.
Citizenship was acquired by birth and by manumission; it was lost when a
Roman became a prisoner of war, or had been exiled for crime, or became
a citizen of another state. An unsullied reputation was necessary for a
citizen to exercise his rights to their full extent.
[Sidenote: Slaves.]
The Roman jurists acknowledged all persons originally free by natural
law; and, while they recognized slavery, ascribed the power of masters
entirely to the law and custom of nations. Persons taken in war were
considered at the absolute control of their captors, and were therefore,
_de facto_, slaves; and the children of a female slave followed the
condition of their mother, and belonged to her master. But masters could
manumit their slaves, who thus became Roman citizens, with some
restrictions. Until the time of Justinian, they were not allowed to wear
the gold ring, the distinguishing symbol of a man born free. This
emperor removed all restrictions between freedmen and citizens.
Previously, after the emancipation of a slave, he was bound to render
certain services to his former master as patron, and if the freedman
died intestate his property reverted to his patron.
[Sidenote: Marriage.]
Marriage was contracted by the simple consent of the parties, though in
early times, equality of condition was required. The _lex
Canuleia_, A. U. C. 309, authorized connubium between patricians and
plebeians, and the _lex Julia_, A. U. C. 757, allowed it between
freedmen and freeborn. By the _conventio in manum_, a wife passed
out of her family into that of her husband, who acquired all her
property; without it, the woman remained in the power of her father, and
retained the free disposition of her property. Poligamy was not
permitted; and relationship within certain degrees rendered the parties
incapable of contracting marriage, and these rules as to forbidden
degrees have been substantially adopted in England. Celibacy was
discouraged. The law of Augustus _Julia et Papia Poppaea_ contained
some seven regulations against it, which were abolished by Constantine.
Concubinage was allowed, if a man had not a wife, and provided the
concubine was not the wife of another man. This heathenish custom was
abrogated by Justinian. [Footnote: D. 25. 7. C. 5, 26.] The wife was
entitled to protection and support from her husband, and she retained
her property independent of her husband, when the _conventio_ was
abandoned, as it was ultimately. The father gave his daughter, on her
marriage, a dowry in proportion to his means, the management of which,
with its fruits during marriage, belonged to the husband; but he could
not alienate real estate without the wife's consent, and on the
dissolution of marriage the _dos_ reverted to the wife. Divorce
existed in all ages at Rome, and was very common at the commencement of
the empire. To check its prevalence, laws were passed inflicting severe
penalties on those whose bad conduct led to it. Every man, whether
married or not, could adopt children, under certain restrictions, and
they passed entirely under paternal power. But the marriage relation
among the Romans did not accord after all with those principles of
justice which we see in other parts of their legislative code. The Roman
husband, like the father, was a tyrant. The facility of divorce
destroyed mutual confidence, and inflamed every trifling dispute, for a
word, or a message, or a letter, or the mandate of a freedman, was quite
sufficient to secure a separation. It was not until Christianity became
the religion of the empire, that divorce could not be easily effected
without a just cause.
[Sidenote: Paternal power.]
Nothing is more remarkable in the Roman laws than the extent of paternal
power. It was unjust, and bears the image of a barbarous age. Moreover,
it seems to have been coeval with the foundation of the city. A father
could chastise his children by stripes, by imprisonment, by exile, by
sending them to the country with chains on their feet. He was even armed
with the power of life and death. "Neither age nor rank, nor the
consular office, could exempt the most illustrious citizen from the
bonds of filial subjection. Without fear, though not without danger of
abuse, the Roman legislators had reposed unbounded confidence in the
sentiments of paternal love, and the oppression was tempered by the
assurance that each generation must succeed in its turn to the awful
dignity of parent and master." [Footnote: Gibbon, c. xliv.] By an
express law of the Twelve Tables a father could sell his children as
slaves. But the abuse of paternal power was checked in the republic by
the censors, and afterwards by emperors. Alexander Severus limited the
right of the father to simple correction, and Constantine declared the
father who should kill his son to be guilty of murder. [Footnote: Ch.
iv. 17.] The rigor of parents in reference to the disposition of the
property of children, was also gradually relaxed. Under Augustus, the
son could keep absolute possession of what he had acquired in war. Under
Constantine, he could retain any property acquired in the civil service,
and all property inherited from the mother could also be retained. In
later times, a father could not give his son or daughter to another by
adoption without their consent. Thus this _patria potestas_ was
gradually relaxed as civilization advanced, though it remained a
peculiarity of Roman law to the latest times, and severer than is ever
seen in the modern world. [Footnote: Maine, _Ancient Law_, p. 143.]
No one but a Roman citizen could exercise this awful paternal power, nor
did it cease until the father died, or the daughter had entered into
marriage with the _conventio in manum_. Illegitimate children were
treated as if they had no father, and the mother was bound to support
them until Justinian gave to natural children a right to demand aliment
from their father. [Footnote: N. 89, ch. xii.] Fathers were bound to
maintain their children when they had no separate means to supply their
wants, and children were also bound to maintain their parents in want.
These reciprocal duties, creditable to the Roman law-givers, are
recognized in the French Code, but not in the English, which also
recognizes the right of a father to bequeath his whole estate to
strangers, which the Roman fathers had not power to do. [Footnote: Lord
Mackenzie, p. 142.] The age when children attain majority among the
Romans, was twenty-five years. Women were condemned to the perpetual
tutelage of parents, husbands, or guardians, as it was supposed they
never could attain to the age of reason and experience. The relation of
guardian and ward was strictly observed by the Romans. They made a
distinction between the right to govern a person, and the right to
manage his estate, although the tutor could do both. If the pupil was an
infant, the tutor could act without the intervention of the pupil; if
the pupil was above seven years of age, he was considered to have an
imperfect will. The tutor managed the estate of the pupil, but was
liable for loss occasioned by bad management. He could sell movable
property when expedient, but not real estate, without judicial
authority. The tutor named by the father was preferred to all others.
[Sidenote: Real rights.]
The Institutes of Justinian pass from persons to things, or the law
relating to real rights; in other words, that which pertains to
property. Some things, common to all, like air, light, the ocean, and
things sacred, like temples and churches, are not classed as property.
Originally, the Romans divided things into _res mancipi_, and
_res nec mancipi_. The former comprehended houses, lands, slaves,
and beasts of burden, and could only be acquired by certain solemn
forms, which, if not observed, the property was not legally transferred.
The latter included all other things, and admitted of being transferred
by simple tradition.
[Sidenote: Occupancy.]
Occupancy, one of the original modes of acquiring property, was applied
to goods and persons taken in war; to things lost by negligence, or
chance, or thrown away by necessity; to pearls, shells, and precious
stones found on the sea-shore; to wild animals, to fish, to hidden
treasure.
Acquisition, by accession, pertained to the natural and industrial
fruits of the land, the rents of houses, interest on money, the increase
of animals, lands gained from the sea, and movables.
[Sidenote: Transfer of property.]
[Sidenote: Testaments and legacies.]
[Sidenote: Laws of succession.]
[Sidenote: The laws in inheritance.]
Two things were required for the transfer of property, for it is the
essence of property that the owner of a thing should have the right to
transfer it,--first, the consent of the former owner to transfer the
thing upon some just ground; and secondly, the actual delivery of the
thing to the person who is to acquire it. Movables were presumed to be
the property of the possessors, until positive evidence was produced to
the contrary. A prescriptive title to movables was acquired by
possession for one year, and to immovables by possession for two years.
Undisturbed possession for thirty years constituted in general a valid
title. When a Roman died, his heirs succeeded to all his property, by
hereditary right. If he left no will, his estate devolved upon his
relations in a certain order prescribed by law. The power of making a
testament only belonged to citizens above puberty. Children under the
paternal power could not make a will. Males above fourteen, and females
above twelve, when not under power, could make wills without the
authority of their guardian; but pupils, lunatics, prisoners of war,
criminals, and various other persons, were incapable of making a
testament. The testator could divide his property among his heirs in
such proportions as he saw fit; but if there was no distribution, all
the heirs participated equally. A man could disinherit either of his
children by declaring his intentions in his will, but only for grave
reasons, such as grievously injuring his person or character or
feelings, or attempting his life. No will was effectual unless one or
more persons were appointed heirs to represent the deceased. Wills were
required to be signed by the testator, or some person for him, in the
presence of seven witnesses who were Roman citizens. If a will was made
by a parent for distributing his property solely among his children, no
witnesses were required, and the ordinary formalities were dispensed
with among soldiers in actual service, and during the prevalence of
pestilence. The testament was opened in the presence of the witnesses,
or a majority of them; and after they had acknowledged their seals, a
copy was made, and the original was deposited in the public archives.
According to the Twelve Tables, the powers of a testator in disposing of
his property were unlimited, but in process of time laws were enacted to
restrain immoderate or unnatural bequests. By the Falcidian law, in the
time of Augustus, no one could leave in legacies more than three fourths
of his estate, so that the heirs could inherit at least one fourth.
Again a law was passed, by which the descendants were entitled to one
third of the succession, and to one half if there were more than four.
In France if a man die leaving one lawful child, he can only dispose of
half of his estate by will; if he leaves two children, the third; if he
leaves three or more, the fourth. [Footnote: _Code Civil_, Art.
913.] In England a man can cut off both his wife and children.
[Footnote: Williams, _Exec._, p. 3.] The Romans recognized bequests
in trust, besides testaments, by which property descended directly to
the heir. The person charged with a trust was bound to restore the
subject at the time appointed by the testator. The trustee could not
alienate an estate without the consent of all the parties interested,
except for the payment of debts. All persons capable of making a will
could leave legacies, real or personal, but these were not due if the
testator died insolvent. When a man died intestate, the succession
devolved on the descendants of the deceased; but, these failing, the
nearest ascendants were called; if there were brothers and sisters, they
were entitled to succeed together along with the ascendants in the same
class. Children succeeded to property, if their father died intestate,
in equal portions, without distinction of sex, and if there was only one
child he took the whole estate. A descendant of either sex, or any
degree, was preferred to all ascendants and collaterals. The descendants
of a son or daughter, who had predeceased, took the same share of the
succession that their parent would have done had he been alive. In
England, if all the children are dead, and only grandchildren exist,
they all take, not by families, but _per capita_, equal shares in
their own right as next of kin, and Mackenzie thinks this arrangement is
more equitable than the Roman. [Footnote: Mackenzie, p. 288] If there
were no descendants, the Roman father and mother, and other ascendants,
excluded all collaterals from the succession except brothers and sisters
of the whole blood, and the children of deceased brothers and sisters.
When ascendants stood alone, the father and mother succeeded in equal
portions, and if only one survived, he or she succeeded to the whole, so
that grandparents were excluded. If there were brothers and sisters of
the whole blood, the estate was divided among them _in capita_,
according to the number of persons, including the father and mother. The
children of a deceased brother were not admitted to the succession along
with ascendants and surviving brothers and sisters. [Footnote:
_Ibid._ 290] If a person died leaving neither ascendants nor
descendants, his brothers and sisters succeeded to his estate in equal
shares. And if the intestate left also nephews and nieces by a deceased
brother or sister, these succeeded, along with their uncles and aunts,
to the share their parent would have taken. On the failure of brothers
and sisters by the whole blood, the brother and sisters by the half
blood succeeded, and if any of these brothers and sisters have died
leaving children, the right of representation was extended to them also,
just as in the case of children of brothers-german. When husband or wife
died, without leaving relations, the survivor was called to the
succession. A widow who was poor and unprovided for had a right to share
in the succession of her deceased husband. When he left more than three
descendants, she was entitled to participate with them equally. If there
were only three or fewer, she was entitled to one fourth of the estate.
If she had children by the deceased, she had only the usufruct of her
portion during her life, and was bound to preserve it for them. If a man
had no legitimate children, he could leave his whole inheritance to his
natural children, or to their mother; but if he had lawful children, he
could leave only one twelfth to the natural children and their mother.
If the father died intestate, without leaving a lawful wife or issue,
his natural children and their mother were entitled to one sixth of the
succession, and the rest was divided among the lawful heirs.
[Sidenote: Contracts.]
In the matter of contracts, the Roman law was especially comprehensive,
and the laws of France and Scotland are substantially based upon the
Roman system. The Institutes of Gaius and Justinian distinguish
four sorts of obligation,--aut _re_, aut _verbis_, aut _literis_,
aut _consenser_. Gibbon, in his learned chapter, prefers to consider
the specific obligations of men to each other under promises, benefits,
and injuries. Lord Mackenzie treats the subject in the order of the
Institutes.
"Obligations contracted _re_--by the intervention of things--are
called by the moderns real contracts, because they are not perfected
till something has passed from one party to another. Of this description
are the contracts of loan, deposit, and pledge. Till the subject is
actually lent, deposited, or pledged, it does not form the special
contract of loan, deposit, or pledge." [Footnote: Mackenzie.]
[Sidenote: Loans.]
In regard to loans, the borrower was obliged to take care of it as if it
were his own. _In rebus commodatis tails diligentia proestanda est,
qualem quisque diligentissimus paterfamilias suis rebus adhibet_.
[Footnote: D. 13, 6, 1 pr.] He could only use a thing for the purpose for
which it was lent; he could not keep it beyond the time agreed upon, nor
detain it as a set-off against any debt. He was bound to restore the
article in the same condition as received, subject only to the
deterioration arising from reasonable use, whether a horse, a house, or
a carriage. And he was required to make good all injuries caused by his
own fault or negligence. If the article perished, without any blame or
neglect, the loss fell on the owner. If the loan was for consumption,
which was called _mutuum_, like corn, or oil, or wine, the borrower
was required to return as much of the same kind and quality, whether the
price of the commodity had risen or fallen. In a loan of money, under
_mutuum_, the borrower was not required to pay interest. Interest
was only due _ex lege_, or by agreement. The rate varied at
different times; generally, it was eight and one third per cent., and
even more than this in the latter years of the republic. Justinian
introduced a scale which varied with different classes of society.
Persons of illustrious rank could lend money at four per cent., ordinary
people at six, and for maritime risks twelve; but it was unlawful to
charge interest upon interest. [Footnote: C. 4, 32, 26, Section 1.]
Property would double, at eight and one third, in twelve years, not so
rapidly as by our system of compound interest, especially at the rate of
seven per cent. In England the usury laws of different monarchs limited
interest from ten per cent, to five; but these were repealed in 1854.
Only five per cent. can now be recovered upon any contract.
[Sidenote: Deposits.]
A deposit differed from a loan in this,--that the depositary was not
entitled to any use of a thing deposited, and was bound to preserve it
with reasonable care, and restore it on demand. As he derived no
advantage, he was entitled to be reimbursed for all necessary charges.
Ship-masters, innkeepers, and stablers, were responsible for the luggage
and effects of travellers intrusted to their care, which policy is now
adopted in both Europe and America, on the ground that if they were not
held strictly to their charge, being not a very reputable class of men
in ancient times, they might be in league with thieves. An innkeeper was
therefore held responsible for loss, or damage, or theft, to secure the
protection of travellers, whose patronage was a compensation. In case of
robbery, when goods were taken by superior force, he was not
responsible, nor was he for loss occasioned by inevitable accident.
[Sidenote: Pledges and securities.]
At Rome, pledges were customary, as a security for money due, on
condition of their restoration after the payment of a debt. Real
property, like houses and lands, as well as movables, were the subject
of pledge. [Footnote: D. 20, 1.] The creditor was bound to bestow
ordinary care and diligence in the preservation of the subject, but he
could not use it, or take the profits of it, without a special contract.
By the _pactum antichresis_, the creditor was allowed to take the
profits in lieu of the interest on his debt; by the _lex
commissoria_, the thing pledged became the absolute property of the
creditor if the debt was not paid at the time agreed on. But as this
condition was found to be a source of oppression, it was prohibited by a
law of Constantine. [Footnote: C, 7, 35.] When the debt, interest, and
all necessary expenses were paid, the debtor was entitled to have his
pledge restored to him. After the time of payment was passed, the
creditor had a right to sell the pledge, and retain his debt out of the
produce of the sale; if there was a deficiency, the balance could be
recovered by an action; if there was a surplus, the debtor was entitled
to it. The Roman pledge was of the nature of the modern business of
pawnbroking and of a mortgage.
[Sidenote: Verbal Contracts.]
Next to the perfection of contracts by the intervention of things
_re_, were obligations contracted by _verbis_--solemn words--
and by _literis_ or writing. The _verborum obligatio_ was contracted
by uttering certain formal words of style, an interrogation
being put by one party and an answer given by the other. These
stipulations were binding. In England all guarantees must be in writing.
[Sidenote: Written obligations.]
The _obligatio literis_ was a written acknowledgment of debt
chiefly employed when money was borrowed, but the creditor could not sue
upon the note within two years from its date, without being called upon
also to prove that the money was in fact paid to the debtor.
[Sidenote: Sales.]
Contracts perfected by consent--_consenses_--had reference to sale,
hiring, partnership, and mandate. All contracts of sale were good
without writing. When an article was sold and delivered, the market
price, as fixed by custom, determined the price, if nothing had been
said about it. The seller was bound to warrant that the thing sold was
free from defects, and when the subject did not answer this implied
warranty, the sale might be set aside. But the seller could stipulate
that he should not be held to warrant against defects. Property was not
transferred without actual delivery. When the sale was completed, all
the risks of the thing sold passed to the purchaser. In the case of
commodities sold by weight, number, or measure, the contract was not
completed until the goods were weighed, counted, or measured, which
sometimes caused considerable difficulty. After delivery, the seller was
bound to warrant the title to the buyer, and to indemnify him for any
loss. [Footnote: D. 22, 2. C. 8, 45.]
[Sidenote: Leases.]
[Sidenote: Agents and Partners.]
In regard to hiring, all sorts of things, which were the subject of
commerce, may be let for hire. Leases of land and houses come under this
head. They were generally given for five years, and unless there was an
express stipulation, the lessee might sublet to another. The lessor was
required to deliver the subject in a good state of repair, and maintain
it in that condition, and to guarantee its peaceable enjoyment; the
lessee was bound to use the subject well, to put it to no use except
that for which it was let, to preserve it in good condition, and restore
it at the end of the term. He was bound also to pay the rent at the
stipulated period, and when two years' rent were in arrear, the tenant
could be ejected. The tenant of a farm was entitled to a remission of
his rent if his crop was destroyed by an unforeseen accident or
calamity. A contractor who agreed to undertake a piece of work was
required to finish it in a proper manner, and if from negligence or
ignorance the work was defective, he was liable to damages. In a
partnership, if there were no express agreement, the shares of profit
and loss were divided equally. Each partner was bound to exercise the
same care for the joint concern as if it were his own. The acts of one
partner were not binding on another, if he acted beyond the scope of the
partnership. If one of the partners advanced money on account of the
partnership, each of the partners were bound to contribute to the
indemnity in proportion to his share of the concern; and if any of them
became insolvent, the solvent shareholders were obliged to make up the
deficiency. [Footnote: D. 17, 2, 67.] An agent could be employed to
transact business for another, but was required to act strictly
according to his orders, and the mandant, who gave the orders, was bound
to ratify what was done by the mandatary, and to reimburse him for all
advances and expenses incurred in executing the commission. By the Roman
law agents were not remunerated. Donations could not be made beyond a
certain maximum. Justinian ordered that when gifts exceeded five hundred
solidi, a formal act stating the particulars of the donation should be
inscribed in a public register.
When a person spontaneously assumed the management of the affairs of
another in his absence, and without any mandate, this was called
_negotiorum gestio_, and the person was bound to perform any act
which he had begun, as if he held a proper mandate, and strictly account
for his management, while the principal was bound to indemnify him for
all advances and expenses.
When money was paid through error it could be recovered, under certain
circumstances. But this point is a matter concerning which the jurists
differ.
[Sidenote: Libels.]
[Sidenote: Damages.]
Acts which caused damage to another obliged the wrongdoer to make
reparation, and this responsibility extended to damages arising not only
from positive acts, but from negligence or imprudence. In an action of
libel or slander, the truth of the allegation might be pleaded in
justification. [Footnote: D. 47, 10, 18.] In all cases it was necessary
to show that an injury had been committed maliciously. But if damage
arose in the exercise of a right, as killing a slave in self-defense, no
claim for reparation could be maintained. If any one exercised a
profession or trade for which he was not qualified, he was liable to all
the damage his want of skill or knowledge might occasion. When any
damage was done by a slave or an animal, the owner of the same was
liable for the loss, though the mischief was done without his knowledge
and against his will. If any thing was thrown from a window of a house
near the public thoroughfare, so as to injure any one by the fall, the
occupier was bound to repair the damage, though done by a stranger.
Claims arising under obligations might be transferred to a third person,
by sale, exchange, or donation; but to prevent speculators from
purchasing debts at low prices, it was ordered that the assignee should
not be entitled to exact from the debtor more than he himself had paid
to acquire the debt with interest,--a wise and just regulation which it
would be well for us to copy. In regard to the extinction of obligations
the creditor is not bound to accept of payments by instalments, or any
thing short of proper payment at the time and place agreed upon. When
several debts were due, the debtor, in making payment, could appropriate
it to any one he pleased. [Footnote: D. 46, 3, 1.] When performance
became impossible, without any fault of the debtor, such as when the
specific subject had perished by unavoidable accident, the obligation
was extinguished; but if the impossibility was caused by the fault of
the debtor, he was still liable. This was a great modification of the
severity of the ancient code, when a debtor could be sold into slavery
for his debt. As certain contracts are formed by consent alone, so they
could be extinguished by the mutual consent of the contracting parties,
without performance on either side. In some cases the mere lapse of time
extinguished an obligation, as in accordance with the modern system of
outlawry.
[Sidenote: Law of actions.]
The next great department of Roman jurisprudence pertained to actions
and procedure. The state conferred on a magistrate or judge jurisdiction
to determine questions according to law. Civil jurisdiction pertains to
questions of private right; criminal jurisdiction takes cognizance of
crimes. When jurisdiction was conferred on a Roman magistrate, he
acquired all the powers necessary to exercise it. The _imperium
merum_ gave the power to inflict punishment; the _imperium
mixtum_ was the power to carry civil decrees into execution. A
_real action_ was directed against a person in the territory where
the subject in dispute was located.
By the ancient constitution, the king had the prerogative of determining
civil causes. The right then devolved on the consuls, afterwards on the
praetor, and in certain cases on the curule and plebeian ediles, who
were charged with the internal police of the city.
[Sidenote: The Praetors.]
The praetor, a magistrate next in dignity to the consuls, acted as
supreme judge of the civil courts, assisted by a council of
jurisconsults to determine questions in law. At first one praetor was
sufficient, but as the limits of the city and empire extended, he was
joined by a colleague. After the conquest of Sicily, Sardinia, and the
two Spains, new praetors were appointed to administer justice in the
provinces. The praetor held his court in the comitium, wore a robe
bordered with purple, sat in a curule chair, and was attended by
lictors.
[Sidenote: Other judges.]
The praetor delegated his power to judges, called Judex, Arbiter, and
Recuperatores. When parties were at issue about facts, it was the custom
for the praetor to fix the question of law upon which the action turned,
and then to remit to a delegate to inquire into the facts and pronounce
judgment according to them. In the time of Augustus there were four
thousand judices, who were merely private citizens, generally senators
or men of consideration. The judex was invested by the magistrate with a
judicial commission for a single case only. After being sworn to duty,
he received from the praetor a formula containing a summary of all the
points under litigation, from which he was not allowed to depart. He was
required not merely to investigate facts, but to give sentence. And as
law questions were more or less mixed up with the case, he was allowed
to consult one or more jurisconsults. If the case was beyond his power
to decide, he could decline to give judgment. The arbiter, like the
judex, received a formula from the praetor, and seemed to have more
extensive power. The recuperatores heard and determined cases, but the
number appointed for each case was usually three or five.
[Sidenote: The centumvirs.]
The centumvirs constituted a permanent tribunal composed of members
annually elected, in equal numbers, from each tribe, and this tribunal
was presided over by the praetor, and divided into four chambers, which,
under the republic, was placed under the ancient quaestors. The
centumvirs decided questions of property, embracing a wide range of
subjects. [Footnote: _Cicero de Orat_., i. 38.] The Romans had no
class of men like the judges of modern times. The superior magistrates
were changed annually, and political duties were mixed with judicial.
The evil was partially remedied by the institution of legal assessors,
selected from the most learned jurisconsults. Under the empire, the
praetors were greatly increased. Under Tiberius, there were sixteen who
administered justice, beside the consuls, six ediles, and ten tribunes
of the people. The emperor himself became the supreme judge, and he was
assisted in the discharge of his judicial duties by a council composed
of the consuls, a magistrate of each grade, and fifteen senators. The
Praetorian prefects, although, at first, their duties were purely
military, finally discharged important judicial functions. The prefect
of the city, in the time of the emperors, was a great judicial
personage, who heard appeals from the praetors themselves.
[Sidenote: Witnesses.]
In all cases brought before the courts, the burden of proof was with the
party asserting an affirmative fact. Proof by writing was generally
considered most certain, but proof by witnesses was also admitted.
Pupils, lunatics, infamous persons, interested parties, near relations,
and slaves, could not bear evidence, or any person who had a strong
enmity against the party. The witnesses were required to give their
testimony on oath. Two witnesses were enough to prove a fact, in most
instances. When witnesses gave conflicting testimony, the judge regarded
those who were worthy of credit rather than numbers. In the English
courts, the custom used to be as with the Romans, of refusing testimony
from those who were interested, but this has been removed. On the
failure of regular proof, the Roman law allowed a party to refer the
facts in a civil action to the oath of his adversary.
[Sidenote: Condition of debtors.]
Under the empire every judgment was reduced to writing and signed by the
judge, and then entered upon a register. [Footnote: C. vii. 45, 12.]
After the sentence, the debtor was allowed thirty days for the payment
of his debt, after which he was assigned over to the creditor and kept
in chains for sixty days, during which he was publicly exposed for three
market days, and if no one released him by paying the debt, he could be
sold as a slave. Justinian extended the period to four months for the
payment of a judgment debt, after which, if the debt was not paid, the
debtor could be imprisoned, but not, as formerly, in the creditor's
house. At first the goods of the debtor were sold in favor of any one
who offered to pay the largest dividend, but in process of time, the
goods of the debtor were sold in detail, and all creditors were paid a
ratable dividend. In no respect are modern codes superior to the Roman,
so much as in reference to imprisonment for debt. In the United States
it has practically ceased, and in England no one can be imprisoned for a
debt under 20 pounds, and in France under 8 pounds.
[Sidenote: Appeal.]
Under the Roman republic, there was no appeal in civil suits, but under
the emperors a regular system was established. Under Augustus, there was
an appeal from all the magistrates to the prefect of the city, and from
him to the Praetorian prefect or emperor. In the provinces there was an
appeal from the municipal magistrates to the governors, and from them to
the emperor. Under Justinian, no appeal was allowed from a suit which
did not involve at least twenty pounds in gold.
[Sidenote: Criminal courts.]
In regard to criminal courts, among the Romans, during the republic, the
only body which had absolute power of life and death was the _comitia
centuriata_. The Senate had no jurisdiction in criminal cases, so far
as Roman citizens were concerned. It was only in extraordinary
emergencies that the Senate, with the consuls, assumed the
responsibility of inflicting summary punishment. Under the emperors, the
Senate was armed with the power of criminal jurisdiction. And as the
Senate was the tool of the imperator, he could crush whomsoever he
pleased.
As it was inconvenient, when Rome had become a very great city, to
convene the comitia for the trial of offenders, the expedient was
adopted of delegating the jurisdiction of the people to persons invested
with temporary authority, called _quaesitores_. These were
established at length into regular and permanent courts, called
_quaestiones perpetuae_. Every case submitted to these courts was
tried by a judge and jury. It was the duty of the judge to preside and
regulate proceedings according to law; and it was the duty of the jury,
after hearing the evidence and pleadings, to decide upon the guilt or
innocence of the accused. As many as fifty persons frequently composed
the jury, whose names were drawn out of an urn. Each party had a right
to challenge a certain number, and the verdict was decided by a majority
of votes. At first the judices were chosen from the Senate, and
afterwards from the Equestrians, and then again from both orders. But in
process of time the _quaestiones perpetuae_ gave place to imperial
magistrates. The accused defended himself in person or by counsel.
[Sidenote: Crimes.]
The Romans divided _crimes_ into public and private. Private crimes
could only be prosecuted by the party injured, and were generally
punished by pecuniary fines, as among the old Germanic nations.
[Sidenote: Treason.]
Of public crimes, the _crimen loesoe majestatis_, or treason, was
regarded as the greatest, and this was punished with death, and with
confiscation of goods, [Footnote: I. 4, 18, 3.] while the memory of the
offender was declared infamous. Greater severity could scarcely be
visited on a culprit. Treason comprehended conspiracy against the
government, assisting the enemies of Rome, and misconduct in the command
of armies. Thus Manlius, in spite of his magnificent services, was
hurled from the Tarpeian Rock, because he was convicted of an intention
to seize upon the government. Under the empire, not only any attempt on
the life of the emperor was treason, but disrespectful words or acts.
The criminal was even tried after death, [Footnote: C. 9, 8, 6.] that
his memory might become infamous, and this barbarous practice existed
even in France and Scotland, as late as the beginning of the seventeenth
century. In England, men have been executed for treasonable words.
Beside treason there were other crimes against the state, such as a
breach of the peace, extortion on the part of provincial governors,
embezzlement of public property, stealing sacred things, bribery, most
of which offenses were punished by pecuniary penalties.
[Sidenote: Capital punishments.]
[Sidenote: Criminal law gradually ameliorated.]
But there were also crimes against individuals which were punished with
the death penalty. Willful murder, poisoning, parricide, were capitally
punished. Adultery was punished by banishment, beside a forfeiture of
considerable property. [Footnote: D, 48, 5.] Constantine made it a
capital offense. The Romans made adultery to consist in sexual
intercourse with another man's wife, but not with a woman who was not
married, even if he were married. Rape was punished with death
[Footnote: C. 9, 13.] and confiscation of goods, as in England till a
late period, when transportation for life became the penalty. The
punishments inflicted for forgery, coining base money, and perjury, were
arbitrary. Robbery, theft, patrimonial damage, and injury to person and
property, were private trespasses, and not punished by the state. After
a lapse of twenty years, without accusation, crimes were supposed to be
extinguished. The Cornelian, Pompeian, and Julian laws formed the
foundation of criminal jurisprudence, which never attained the
perfection that was seen in the Civil Code. It was in this that the full
maturity of wisdom was seen. The emperors greatly increased the severity
of punishments, as probably necessary in a corrupt state of society.
After the decemviral laws fell into disuse, the Romans, in the days of
the republic, passed from extreme rigor to great lenity, as is
observable in the transition from the Puritan regime to our times in the
United States. Capital punishment for several centuries was exceedingly
rare, and this was prevented by voluntary exile. Under the empire,
public executions were frequent and revolting.
[Sidenote: Fines.]
[Sidenote: Exile.]
Fines were a common mode of punishment with the Romans, as with the
early Germans. Imprisonment in a public jail was also rare, the custom
of bail being in general use. Although retaliation was authorized by the
Twelve Tables for bodily injuries, it was seldom exacted, since
pecuniary compensation was taken in lieu. Corporal punishments were
inflicted upon slaves, but rarely upon citizens, except for military
crimes. But Roman citizens could be sold into slavery for various
offenses, chiefly military, and criminals were often condemned to labor
in the mines or upon public works. Banishment was common--_aquae et
ignis interdictio_--and this was equivalent to the deprivation of the
necessities of life, and incapacitating a person from exercising the
rights of citizenship. Under the emperors, persons were confined often
on the rocky islands off the coast, or a compulsory residence in a
particular place assigned. Thus Chrysostom was sent to a dreary place on
the banks of the Euxine. Ovid was banished to Tomi. Death, when
inflicted, was by hanging, scourging, and beheading, also by strangling
in prison. Slaves were often crucified, and were compelled to carry
their cross to the place of execution. This was the most ignominious and
lingering of all deaths. It was abolished by Constantine from reverence
to the sacred symbol. Under the emperors, execution took place also by
burning alive and exposure to wild beasts. It was thus the early
Christians were tormented, since their offense was associated with
treason. Persons of distinction were treated with more favor than the
lower classes, and the punishment was less cruel and ignominious. Thus
Seneca, condemned for privity to treason, was allowed to choose his mode
of death. The criminal laws of modern European states followed too often
the barbarous custom of the emperors until a recent date. Since the
French Revolution, the severity of the penal codes has been much
modified.
[Sidenote: Excellence of laws pertaining to property.]
[Sidenote: Rights of citizens.]
The penal statutes of Rome, as Gibbon emphatically remarks, "formed a
very small portion of the Code and the Pandects; and in all judicial
proceedings, the life or death of the citizen was determined with less
caution and delay than the most ordinary question of covenant or
inheritance." This was owing to the complicated relations of society, by
which obligations are created or annulled, while duties to the state are
explicit and well known, being inscribed not only on tables of brass,
but on the conscience itself. It was natural, with the growth and
development of commerce and dominion, that questions would arise which
could not be ordinarily settled by ancient customs, and the practice of
lawyers and the decisions of judges continually raised new difficulties,
to be met only by new edicts. It is a pleasing fact to record that
jurisprudence became more just and enlightened as it became more
intricate. The principles of equity were more regarded under the
emperors than in the time of Cato. It is in the application of these
principles that the laws of the Romans have obtained so high
consideration. Their abuse consisted in the expense of litigation, and
the advantages which the rich thus obtained over the poor. But if delays
and forms led to an expensive and vexatious administration of justice,
these were more than compensated by the checks which a complicated
jurisprudence gave to hasty or partial decisions. It was in the
minuteness and precision of the forms of law, and in the foresight with
which questions were anticipated in the various transactions of
business, that prove that the Romans, in their civil and social
relations, were very much on a level with modern times. And it would be
difficult to find, in the most enlightened of modern codes, greater
wisdom and foresight than what appear in the legacy of Justinian, as to
all questions pertaining to the nature, the acquisition, the possession,
the use, and the transfer of property. Civil obligations are most
admirably defined, and all contracts are determined by the wisest
application of the natural principles of justice. What can be more
enlightened than the laws which relate to leases, to sales, to
partnerships, to damages, to pledges, to hiring of work, and to quasi
contracts! How clear the laws pertaining to the succession to property,
to the duties of guardians, to the rights of wards, to legacies, to
bequests in trust, and to the general limitation of testamentary powers!
How wise the regulations in reference to intestate succession, and to
the division of property among males and females. We find no laws of
entail, no unequal rights, no absurd distinctions between brothers, no
peculiar privileges given to males over females, or to older sons. In
the Institutes of Justinian, we see on every page a regard to the
principles of natural justice. We discover that the property of the wife
cannot be alienated nor mortgaged by a prodigal husband; that wards are
to be protected from the cupidity of guardians; that property could be
bequeathed by will, and that wills are sacred; that all promises are to
be fulfilled; that he who is intrusted with the property of another is
bound to restitution by the most imperative obligations; that usury
should be restrained; that all injuries should be repaired; that cattle
and slaves should be protected from malice and negligence; that
atrocious cruelties in punishment should not be inflicted; that
malicious witnesses should be punished; that corrupt judges should be
visited with severe penalties; that libels and satires should subject
their authors to severe chastisement; that every culprit should be
considered innocent until his guilt was proved. In short, every thing
pertaining to property and contracts and wills is guarded with the most
zealous care. A man was sure of possessing his own, and of transmitting
it to his children. No infringement on personal rights could be
tolerated. A citizen was free to go where he pleased, to do whatsoever
he would, if he did not trespass on the rights of another; to seek his
pleasure unobstructed, and pursue his business without vexatious
incumbrances. If he was injured or cheated, he was sure of redress. Nor
could he be easily defrauded with the sanction of the laws. A rigorous
police guarded his person, his house, and his property. He was supreme
and uncontrolled within his family. And this security to property and
life and personal rights was guaranteed by the greatest tyrants. The
fullest personal liberty was enjoyed under the emperors, and it was
under their sanction that jurisprudence, in some of the most important
departments of life, reached perfection. If injustice was suffered, it
was not on account of the laws, but the depravity of men, the venality
of the rich, and the tricks of lawyers. But the laws were wise and
equal. The civil jurisprudence could be copied with safety by the most
enlightened of European states. And, indeed, it is the foundation of
their civil codes, especially in France and Germany.
[Sidenote: Abuse of paternal power.]
That there were some features in the Roman laws which we, in these
Christian times, cannot indorse, and which we reprehend, cannot be
denied. Under the republic, there was not sufficient limit to paternal
power, and the _paterfamilias_ was necessarily a tyrant. It was
unjust that the father should control the property of his son, and cruel
that he was allowed such absolute control, not only over his children,
but his wife. But the limits of paternal power were more and more
curtailed, so that under the latter emperors, fathers were not allowed
to have more authority than was perhaps expedient.
[Sidenote: Evils of slavery.]
The recognition of slavery as a domestic institution was another blot,
and slaves could be treated with the grossest cruelty and injustice
without redress. But here the Romans were not sinners beyond all other
nations, and our modern times have witnessed a parallel.
It was not the existence of slavery which was the greatest evil, but the
facility by which slaves could be made. The laws pertaining to debt were
severe, and it was most disgraceful to doom a debtor to the absolute
power of a creditor. To subject men of the same blood to slavery for
trifling debts, which they could not discharge, was the great defect of
the Roman laws. But even these cruel regulations were modified, so that
in the corrupt times of the empire, there was no greater practical
severity than what was common in England one hundred years ago. The
temptations to fraud were enormous in a wicked state of society, and
demanded a severe remedy. It is possible that future ages may see too
great leniency shown to debtors, who are not merely unfortunate but
dishonest, in these our times; and the problem is not yet solved,
whether men should be severely handled who are guilty of reckless and
unprincipled speculations and unscrupulous dealings, or whether they
should be allowed immunity to prosecute their dangerous and disgraceful
courses.
[Sidenote: Evils of divorce.]
The facility of divorce was another stigma on the Roman laws, and the
degradation of woman was the principal consequence. But woman never was
honored in any pagan land. Her condition at Rome was better than it was
at Athens. She always was regarded as a possession rather than as a free
person. Her virtue was mistrusted, and her aspirations were scorned. She
was hampered and guarded more like a slave than the equal companion of
man. But the whole progress of legislation was in her favor, and she
continued to gain new privileges to the fall of the empire.
[Sidenote: Severity of penal law.]
[Sidenote: Certainty of punishment.]
Moreover, the penal code of the Romans, in reference to breaches of
trust, or carelessness, or ignorance, by which property was lost or
squandered, may have been too severe, as is the case in England in
reference to hunting game on another's grounds. It was hard to doom a
man to death who drove away his neighbor's cattle, or entered in the
night his neighbor's house. But severe penalties alone will keep men
from crimes where there is a low state of virtue and religion, and
society becomes impossible when there is no efficient protection to
property. If sheep can be killed by dogs, if orchards can be stripped of
their fruit, and jewelry be appropriated by servants with impunity, a
great stimulus to honest industry is taken away, and men will be forced
to seek more distant homes where they can reap the fruits of toil, or
will give up in despair. Society was never more secure and happy in
England than when vagabonds could be arrested, and when petty larcenies
were visited with certain retribution. Every traveler in France and
England feels that in regard to the punishment of crime, those old
countries, restricted as are political privileges, are vastly superior
to our own. The Romans lost, under the emperors, their political rights;
but they gained protection and safety in their relations with society.
And where quiet and industrious citizens feel safe in their homes, and
are protected in their dealings from scoundrels, and have ample scope
for industrial enterprise, and are free to choose their private
pleasures, they resign themselves to the loss of electing their rulers
without great unhappiness. There are greater evils in the world than the
deprivation of the elective franchise, great and glorious as is this
privilege. The arbitrary rule of the emperors was fatal to political
aspirations and rights, but the evils of political slavery were
qualified and set off by the excellence of the civil code, and the
privileges of social freedom.
[Sidenote: Intricacy and uncertainty of the law.]
The great practical evil connected with Roman jurisprudence was the
intricacy and perplexity and uncertainty of the laws, together with the
expense involved in litigation. The class of lawyers was large, and
their gains were extortionate. Justice was not always to be found on the
side of right. The law was uncertain as well as costly. The most learned
counsel could only be employed by the rich, and even judges were venal.
So that the poor did not easily find adequate redress, and the good
became an evil. But all this is the necessary attendant on a factitious
state of society. Material civilization will lead to an undue estimate
of money. And when money purchases all that artificial people desire,
then all classes will prostitute themselves for its possession, and
justice, dignity, and elevation of sentiment are forced to retreat, as
hermits sought a solitude, when society had reached its lowest
degradation, out of pure despair of its renovation.
* * * * *
The authorities for this chapter are very numerous. Since the Institutes
of Gaius have been recovered, very many eminent writers on Roman law
have appeared, especially in Germany and France. Among those who could
be cited, are Beaufort, Histoire de la Republique Romaine; Colquhoun,
Summary of the Roman Civil Law; De Fresquet, Traite Elementaire de Droit
Romain; Ducaurroy (A. M. Professor of Roman Law at Paris), Les
Institutes de Justinien nouvellement expliquees; Gneist (Dr. Reed),
Institutionum et Regularum Juris Romani; Halifax (Dr. Samuel), Analysis
of the Roman Civil Law; Heineccius (Jo. Gott.), Elementa Juris Civilis
Secundum Ordinem Institutionum; Laboulaye, Essai sur les Lois
Criminelles des Remains; Long's Articles on Roman Law in Dr. Smith's
Dictionary; Maine's Ancient Law; Gaius, Institutionum Commentarii
Quatuor; Marezole (Theodore, Professor at Leipsic), Lebruch der
Institutionem des Romischen Rechts; Maynz (Charles, Professor of Law at
Brussels), Elements du Droit Romain; Ortolan (M., Professor at Paris),
Explication Historique des Institutes de l'Empereur Justinien;
Phillimore, Introduction to the Study and History of Roman Law; Pothier,
Pandectae Justinianae in Novum Ordinem Digestae; Savigny, Geschichte des
Rom. Rechts; Walter, Histoire de la Procedure Civile Chez Romains.
I have found the late work of Lord Mackenzie, on Roman Law, together
with the articles of George Long, in Smith's Dictionary, the most useful
in compiling this notice of Roman jurisprudence. Mr. Maine's Treatise on
Roman Law is exceedingly interesting and valuable. Gibbon's famous
chapter should also be read by every student. There is a fine
translation of the Institutes of Justinian, which is quite accessible,
by Dr. Harris of Oxford. The Code, Pandects, Institutes, and Novels,
are, of course, the original authority, with the long-lost Institutes of
Gaius.
In connection with the study of the Roman law, it would be well to read
Sir George Bowyer's Commentaries on the Modern Civil Law; Irving,
Introduction to the Study of the Civil Law; Lindley, Introduction to the
Study of Jurisprudence; and Wheaton's Elements of International Law;
Vattel, Le Droit des Gens.
CHAPTER VII.
ROMAN LITERATURE.
If the ancient civilization rivaled the modern in the realm of
_art_, it was equally remarkable in the field of letters. It is not
my object to show that it was equal, or superior, or inferior to modern
literature, either in original genius or artistic excellence. That point
would be difficult to settle, and unprofitable to discuss. There is no
doubt as to the superior advantage which the modern world derives in
consequence of the invention of printing, and the consequent diffusion
of knowledge. But the question is in reference to the height which was
attained by the ancient pagan intellect, unaided by Christianity. I
simply wish to show that the ancients were distinguished in all
departments of literature, and that some of the masterpieces of genius
were created by them.
Nor is it my object to write a summary of the literature of antiquity.
It would be as dull as a catalogue, or a dictionary, or a compendium of
universal history for the use of schools in a single volume. And it
would be as profitless. My aim is simply to show that the old
civilization can boast of its glories in literature, as well as in art,
and that the mind of man never more nobly asserted its power than in
Greece and Rome. Our present civilization delights in those
philosophers, poets, and historians, who caught their inspiration from
the great pagan models which have survived the wreck of material
greatness. The human intellect achieved some of its greatest feats
before Christianity was born. The inborn dignity of the mind and soul
was never more nobly asserted than by Plato and Aristotle, by Thucydides
and Tacitus, by Homer and Virgil, by Demosthenes and Cicero. In
attestation, therefore, of the glory of the ancient civilization, in the
realm of literature, it is quite sufficient for our purpose to point out
some of those great lights which, after the lapse of two thousand years
or more, still continue to shine, and which are objects of hopeless
imitation, even as they are of universal admiration. If we can show that
the great heights were reached, even by a few, we prove the extent of
civilization. If genius can soar, under Pagan, as well as under
Christian influences, it would appear that civilization, in an
intellectual point of view, may be the work of man, unaided by
inspiration. It is the triumph of the native intellect of man which I
wish to show.
[Sidenote: Romans borrow from the Greeks.]
Although it is my chief aim to present the magnificent civilization of
the Roman empire under the emperors, I must cite the examples of Grecian
as well as Roman genius, since Greece became a part of that grand
empire, and since Grecian and Roman culture is mixed up and blended
together. Roman youth were trained in the Grecian schools. Young men
were sent to Athens and Rhodes after they had finished their education
in the capital. Athens continued to be, for several hundred years after
her political glory had passed away, the great university city of the
world. Educated Romans were as familiar with the Greek classics as they
were with those of their own country, and could talk Greek as modern
Germans can talk French. The poems which kindled the enthusiasm of Roman
youth are as worthy of notice as the statues which the conquerors
brought from the Ionian cities, to ornament their palaces and baths.
They equally attest the richness of the old civilization. And as it is
the triumph of the pagan intellect which I wish to show, it matters but
little whether we draw our illustrations from Greece or Rome. Without
the aid of Greece, Rome could never have reached the height she
attained.
[Sidenote: Richness of Greek Poetry.]
[Sidenote: The Homeric poems.]
Now how rich in poetry was classical antiquity, whether sung in the
Greek or Latin languages. In all those qualities which give immortality,
it has never been surpassed, whether in simplicity, in passion, in
fervor, in fidelity to nature, in wit, or in imagination. It existed
from the early ages, and continued to within a brief period of the fall
of the empire. With the rich accumulation of ages, the Romans were
familiar. They knew nothing indeed of the solitary grandeur of the
Jewish muse, or the mythological myths of the Ante-Homeric songsters;
but they possessed the Iliad and the Odyssey, with their wonderful
truthfulness, and clear portraiture of character, their absence of all
affectation, their serenity and cheerfulness, their good sense and
healthful sentiments, yet so original that the germ of almost every
character which has since figured in epic poetry can be found in them.
We see in Homer [Footnote: Born probably at Smyrna, an Ionian city,
about one hundred and fifty years after the Trojan War.] a poet of the
first class, holding the same place in literature that Plato does in
philosophy, or Newton in science, and exercising a mighty influence on
all the ages which have succeeded him. For nearly three thousand years
his immortal creations have been the delight and the inspiration of men
of genius, and they are as marvelous to us as they were to the
Athenians, since they are exponents of the learning, as well as of the
consecrated sentiments of the heroic ages. We see no pomp of words, no
far-fetched thoughts, no theatrical turgidity, no ambitious
speculations, no indefinite longings; but we read the manners and
customs of the primitive nations, and lessons of moral wisdom and human
nature as it is, and the sights and wonders of the external world, all
narrated with singular simplicity, yet marvelous artistic skill. We find
accuracy, delicacy, naturalness, yet grandeur, sentiment, and beauty,
such as Pheidias represented in his statues of Jupiter. No poems have
ever been more popular, and none have extorted greater admiration from
critics. Like Shakespeare, Homer is a kind of Bible to both the learned
and unlearned among all people and ages--one of the prodigies of this
world. His poems form the basis of Greek literature, and are the best
understood and the most widely popular of all Grecian composition. The
unconscious simplicity of the Homeric narrative, its vivid pictures, its
graphic details and religious spirit, create an enthusiasm such as few
works of genius can claim. Moreover, it presents a painting of society,
with its simplicity and ferocity, its good and evil passions, its
compassion and its fierceness, such as no other poem affords. [Footnote:
The Homeric poems have been translated into nearly all the European
languages, and several times into English. The last translation is by
the Earl of Derby--a most remarkable work. Guizot, _Cours d'Hist.
Mod_., Lecon 7me; Grote, vol. ii. p. 277; _Studies in Homer_, by
Hon. W. E. Gladstone; Mure, _Critical Hist. of Lang. and Lit. of
Greece_; Muller, _Hist, of the Lit. of Ancient Greece_, translated
by Donaldson.] Nor is it necessary to speak of any other Grecian
epic, when the Iliad and the Odyssey attest the perfection which
was attained one hundred and twenty years before Hesiod was born. Grote
thinks that the Iliad and the Odyssey were produced at some period
between 850 B.C., and 776 B.C.
[Sidenote: Pindar.]
In lyrical poetry the Greeks were no less remarkable, and indeed they
attained to absolute perfection, owing to the intimate connection
between poetry and music. Who has surpassed Pindar in artistic skill?
His _triumphal odes_ are paeans, in which piety breaks out in
expressions of the deepest awe, and the most elevated sentiments of
moral wisdom. They alone of all his writings have descended to us, but
all possess fragments of odes, songs, dirges, and panegyrics, which show
the great excellence to which he attained. He was so celebrated that he
was employed by the different states and princes of Greece to compose
choral songs for special occasions, especially the public games.
Although a Theban, he was held in the highest estimation by the
Athenians, and was courted by kings and princes. [Footnote: Born in
Thebes 522 B.C., and died probably in his eightieth year, and was
contemporary with Aeschylus and the battle of Marathon.] We possess,
also, fragments of Sappho, Simonides, Anacreon, and others, enough to
show that, could the lyrical poetry of Greece be recovered, we should
probably possess the richest collection that the world has produced.
[Sidenote: Greek dramatic poetry.]
But dramatic poetry was still more varied and remarkable. Even the great
masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides, were regarded by contemporaries
as inferior to many tragedies utterly unknown to us.
[Sidenote: Aeschylus.]
The great creator of the Greek drama was Aeschylus, born at Eleusis, 525
B.C. It was not till the age of forty-one that he gained his first
prize. Sixteen years afterwards, defeated by Sophocles, he quitted
Athens in disgust, and went to the court of Hiero, king of Syracuse. But
he was always held, even at Athens, in the highest honor, and his pieces
were frequently reproduced upon the stage. It was not so much his object
to amuse an audience, as to instruct and elevate it. He combined
religious feeling with lofty moral sentiment. And he had unrivaled power
over the realm of astonishment and terror. "At his summons," says Sir
Walter Scott, "the mysterious and tremendous volume of destiny, in which
is inscribed the doom of gods and men, seemed to display its leaves of
iron before the appalled spectators; the more than mortal voices of
Deities, Titans, and departed heroes, were heard in awful conference;
heaven bowed, and its divinities descended; earth yawned and gave up the
pale spectres of the dead, and yet more undefined and ghastly forms of
those infernal deities who struck horror into the gods themselves." His
imagination dwells in the loftiest regions of the old mythology of
Greece; his tone is always pure and moral, though stern and harsh. He
appeals to the most violent passions, and he is full of the boldest
metaphors. In sublimity he has never been surpassed. He was in poetry,
what Pheidias and Michael Angelo were in art. The critics say that his
sublimity of diction is sometimes carried to an extreme, so that his
language becomes inflated. His characters are sublime, like his
sentiments; they were gods and heroes of colossal magnitude. His
religious views were Homeric, and he sought to animate his countrymen to
deeds of glory, as it became one of the generals who fought at Marathon
to do. He was an unconscious genius, and worked, like Homer, without a
knowledge of artistical laws. He was proud and impatient, and his poetry
was religious rather than moral. He wrote seventy plays, of which only
seven are extant; but these are immortal, among the greatest creations
of human genius, like the dramas of Shakespeare. He died in Sicily in
the sixty-ninth year of his age. The principal English translation of
his plays are by Potter, Harford, and Medwin. [Footnote: See Muller and
Bode, histories of Greek Literature.]
[Sidenote: Sophocles.]
The fame of Sophocles is scarcely less than that of Aeschylus. He was
twenty-seven years of age when he appeared as a rival. He was born in
Colonus, in the suburbs of Athens, 495 B.C., and was the contemporary of
Herodotus, of Pericles, of Pindar, of Pheidias, of Socrates, of Cimon,
of Euripides--the era of great men; the period of the Peloponnesian War,
when every thing that was elegant and intellectual culminated at Athens.
Sophocles had every element of character and person which fascinated the
Greeks: beauty of person, symmetry of form, skill in gymnastics,
calmness and dignity of manner, a cheerful and amiable temper, a ready
wit, a meditative piety, a spontaneity of genius, an affectionate
admiration for talent, and patriotic devotion to his country. His
tragedies, by the universal consent of the best critics, are the
perfection of the Grecian drama, and they, moreover, maintain that he
has no rival, Shakespeare alone excepted, in the whole realm of dramatic
poetry, unless it be Aeschylus himself, to whom he bears the same
relation in poetry that Raphael does to Michael Angelo in the world of
art. It was his peculiarity to excite emotions of sorrow and compassion.
He loved to paint forlorn heroes. He was human in all his sympathies,
not so religious as his great rival, but as severely ethical; not so
sublime, but more perfect in art. His sufferers are not the victims of
an inexorable destiny, but of their own follies. Nor does he even excite
emotion apart from a moral end. He lived to be ninety years old, and
produced the most beautiful of his tragedies in his eightieth year, the
"Oedipus at Colonus." He wrote the astonishing number of one hundred and
thirty plays, and carried off the first prize twenty-four times. His
"Antigone" was written when he was forty-five, and when Euripides had
already gained a prize. Only seven of his tragedies have survived, but
these are priceless treasures. The fertility of his genius was only
equaled by his artistic skill. [Footnote: Schlegel, _Lectures on
Dramatic Art_; Muller, _Hist. Lit._; Donaldson's _Antigone_;
Lessing, _Leben des Sophokles_; Philip Smith, article in Smith's
_Dict._.]
[Sidenote: Euripides.]
Euripides, the last of the great triumvirate of the Greek tragic poets,
was born at Athens, B.C. 485. He had not the sublimity of Aeschylus, nor
the touching pathos of Sophocles, but, in seductive beauty and
successful appeal to passion, was superior to both. Nor had he their
stern simplicity. In his tragedies the passion of love predominates, nor
does it breathe the purity of sentiment. It approaches rather to the
tone of the modern drama. He paints the weakness and corruptions of
society, and brings his subjects to the level of common life. He was the
pet of the Sophists, and was pantheistic in his views. He does not paint
ideal excellence, and his characters are not as men ought to be, but as
they are, especially in corrupt states of society. He wrote ninety-five
plays, of which eighteen are extant. Whatever objection may be urged in
reference to his dramas on the score of morality, nobody can question
their transcendent art, or his great originality. With the exception of
Shakespeare, all succeeding dramatists have copied these three great
poets, especially Racine, who took Sophocles for his model. [Footnote:
Muller, Schlegel. Sir Walter Scott on the Drama; Gote, vol. viii. p.
442, Thorne, _Mag. Via. Eurip._ Potter has made a translation of
all his plays.]
[Sidenote: Greek comedy.]
[Sidenote: Aristophanes.]
The Greeks were no less distinguished for comedy. Both tragedy and
comedy sprung from feasts in honor of Bacchus; and as the jests and
frolics were found misplaced when introduced into grave scenes, a
separate province of the drama was formed, and comedy arose. At first it
did not derogate from the religious purposes which were at the
foundation of the Greek drama. It turned upon parodies, in which the
adventures of the gods are introduced by way of sport, like the appetite
of Hercules, or the cowardice of Bacchus. Then the comic authors
entertained spectators by fantastic and gross displays; by the
exhibition of buffoons and pantomimes. But the taste of the Athenians
was too severe to relish such entertainments, and comedy passed into
ridicule of public men and measures, and of the fashions of the day. The
people loved to see their great men brought down to their own level. Nor
did comedy flourish until the morals of society were degenerated, and
ridicule had become the most effective weapon to assail prevailing
follies. Comedy reached its culminating point when society was both the
most corrupt and the most intellectual, as in France, when Moliere
pointed his envenomed shafts against popular vices. It pertained to the
age of Socrates and the Sophists, when there was great bitterness in
political parties, and an irrepressible desire for novelties. In
Cratinus, comedy first made herself felt as a great power, who espoused
the side of Cimon against Pericles, with great bitterness and vehemence.
Many were the comic writers of that age of wickedness and genius, but
all yielded precedence to Aristophanes, whose plays only have reached
us. Never were libels on persons of authority and influence uttered with
such terrible license. He attacked the gods, the politicians, the
philosophers, and the poets of Athens; even private citizens did not
escape from his shafts, and women were subjects of his irony. Socrates
was made the butt of his ridicule, when most revered, and Cleon in the
height of his power, and Euripides when he had gained the highest
prizes. He has furnished jests for Rabelais, and hints to Swift, and
humor for MoliEre. In satire, in derision, in invective, and bitter
scorn, he has never been surpassed. No modern capital would tolerate
such unbounded license. Yet no plays were ever more popular, or more
fully exposed follies which could not otherwise be reached. He is called
the Father of Comedy, and his comedies are of great historical
importance, although his descriptions are doubtless caricatures. He was
patriotic in his intentions, and set up for a reformer. His peculiar
genius shines out in his "Clouds," the greatest of his pieces, in which
he attacks the Sophists. He wrote fifty-four plays. He was born B.C.
444, and died B.C. 380. His best comedies are translated by Mitchell.
Thus it would appear that in the three great departments of poetry,--the
epic, the lyric, and the dramatic,--the old Greeks were great masters,
and have been the teachers of all subsequent nations and ages.
The Romans, in these departments, were not their equals, but they were
very successful copyists, and will bear competition with modern nations.
If the Romans did not produce a Homer, they can boast of a Virgil; if
they had no Pindar, they furnished a Horace, while in satire they
transcended the Greeks.
[Sidenote: Naevius.]
The Romans, however, produced no poetry worthy of notice until the Greek
language and literature were introduced. It was not till the fall of
Tarentum that we read of a Roman poet. Livius Andronicus, a Greek slave,
B.C. 240, rudely translated the Odyssey into Latin, and was the author
of various plays, all of which have perished, and none of which,
according to Cicero, were worth a second perusal. Still he was the first
to substitute the Greek drama for the old lyrical stage poetry. One year
after the first Punic War, he exhibited the first Roman play. As the
creator of the drama, he deserves historical notice, though he has no
claim to originality, and like a schoolmaster as he was, pedantically
labored to imitate the culture of the Greeks. And his plays formed the
commencement of Roman translation-literature, and naturalized the Greek
metres in Latium, even though they were curiosities rather than works of
art. [Footnote: Mommsen, vol. ii. b. ii. ch. xiv.] Naevius, B.C. 235,
produced a play at Rome, and wrote both epic and dramatic poetry, but so
little has survived, that no judgment can be formed of his merits. He
was banished for his invectives against the aristocracy, who did not
relish severity of comedy. [Footnote: Horace, _Ep_. ii. 11, 53.]
Mommsen regards Naevius as the first among the Romans who deserves to be
ranked among the poets. He flourished about the year 550, and closely
adhered to Andronicus in metres. His language is free from stiffness and
affectation, and his verses have a graceful flow. Plautus was perhaps
the first great poet whom the Romans produced, and his comedies are
still admired by critics, as both original and fresh. He was born in
Umbria, B.C. 257, and was contemporaneous with Publius and Cneius
Scipio. He died B.C. 184.
[Sidenote: Plautus.]
The first development of Roman genius in the field of poetry, seems to
have been the dramatic, in which the Greek authors were copied. Plautus
might be mistaken for a Greek, were it not for the painting of Roman
manners. His garb is essentially Greek. He wrote one hundred and thirty
plays, not always for the stage, but for the reading public. He lived
about the time of the second Punic War, before the theatre was fairly
established at Rome. His characters, although founded on Greek models,
act, speak, and joke like Romans. He enjoyed great popularity down to
the latest times of the empire, while the purity of his language, as
well as the felicity of his wit, was celebrated by the ancient critics.
[Footnote: Quint., x. i. Section 99.] Cicero places his wit on a par
with the old Attic comedy, [Footnote: Cicero, _De Off_., i. 29.]
while Jerome spent much time in reading his comedies, even though they
afterward cost him tears of bitter regret. Modern dramatists owe much to
him. Moliere has imitated him in his "_Avare_," and Shakespeare in
his "Comedy of Errors." Lessing pronounces the "_Captivi_" to be
the finest comedy ever brought upon the stage. [Footnote: Smith, _Dict.
of Ant._ art. _Plaut_.] He has translated this play into German.
It has also been admirably translated into English. The great excellence
of Plautus was the masterly handling of the language, and the adjusting
the parts for dramatic effect. His humor, broad and fresh, produced
irresistible comic effects. No one ever surpassed him in his vocabulary
of nicknames, and his happy jokes. Hence he maintained his popularity in
spite of his vulgarity. [Footnote: Mommsen, vol. ii. b. iii. ch. xiv.]
[Sidenote: Terence.]
Terence shares with Plautus the throne of Roman comedy. He was a
Carthaginian slave, and was born B.C. 160, but was educated by a wealthy
Roman, into whose hands he fell, and ever after associated with the best
society, and traveled extensively into Greece. He was greatly inferior
to Plautus in originality, nor has he exerted a lasting influence like
him; but he wrote comedies characterized by great purity of diction, and
which have been translated into all modern languages. [Footnote:
Coleman's _Terence_; Dryden, _On Dram. Poet._; Mommsen, vol.
iii. b. v. ch. xiii.] Anterior to the Augustan age, no tragic production
has reached us, although Quintilian speaks highly of Accius, [Footnote:
Quint., x. 1. Section 97.] especially of the vigor of his style. But
he merely imitated the Greeks. Terence closely copied Menander, whom
Mommsen regards as the most polished, elegant, and chaste of all the
poets of the newer comedy. Unlike Plautus, he draws his characters from
good society, and his comedies, if not moral, were decent. Plautus wrote
for the multitude; Terence for the few. Plautus delighted in a noisy
dialogue and slang expressions; Terence confines himself to quiet
conversation and elegant expressions, for which he was admired by Cicero
and Quintilian, and other great critics. He aspired to the approval of
the good, rather than the applause of the vulgar; and it is a remarkable
fact that his comedies supplanted the more original productions of
Plautus in the latter years of the republic, showing that the literature
of the aristocracy was more prized than that of the people, even in a
degenerate age. The "_Thyestes_" [Footnote: Hor., _Sat_. I 9;
Martial, viii. 18.] of Varius, was regarded in its day as equal to Greek
tragedies. Ennius composed tragedies in a vigorous style, and was
regarded by the Romans as the parent of their literature, although most
of his works have perished. [Footnote: Born B.C. 239.] Virgil borrowed
many of his thoughts, and he was regarded as the prince of Roman song in
the time of Cicero. The Latin language is greatly indebted to him.
Pacuvius imitated Aeschylus in the loftiness of his style. [Footnote:
Born B.C. 170] The only tragedy of the Romans which has reached us was
written by Seneca the philosopher.
[Sidenote: The Aeneid.]
[Sidenote: Virgil.]
In epic poetry the Romans accomplished more, though still inferior to
the Greeks. The "Aeneid" has certainly survived the material glories of
Rome. It may not have come up to the exalted ideal of its author; it may
be defaced by political flatteries; it may not have the force and
originality of the "Iliad," but it is superior in art, and delineates
the passion of love with more delicacy than can be found in any Greek
author. In soundness of judgment, in tenderness of feeling, in chastened
fancy, in picturesque description, in delineation of character, in
matchless beauty of diction, and in splendor of versification, it has
never been surpassed by any poem in any language, and proudly takes its
place among the imperishable works of genius. "Availing himself of the
pride and superstition of the Roman people, the poet traces the origin
and establishment of the 'Eternal City,' to those heroes and actions
which had enough in them of what was human and ordinary to excite the
sympathies of his countrymen, intermingled with persons and
circumstances of an extraordinary and superhuman character to awaken
their admiration and awe. No subject could have been more happily
chosen. It has been admired also for its perfect unity of action; for
while the episodes command the richest variety of description, they are
always subordinate to the main object of the poem, which is to impress
the divine authority under which Aeneas first settled in Italy. The wrath
of Juno, upon which the whole fate of Aeneas seems to turn, is at once
that of a woman and a goddess; the passion of Dido, and her general
character, bring us nearer to the present world; but the poet is
continually introducing higher and more effectual influences, until, by
the intervention of gods and men, the Trojan name is to be continued in
the Roman, and thus heaven and earth are appeased." [Footnote: Thompson,
_Hist. Rom. Lit._, p. 92.] No one work of man has probably had such
a wide and profound influence as this poem of Virgil,--a text-book in
all schools since the revival of learning, the model of the Carlovingian
poets, the guide of Dante, the oracle of Tasso. [Footnote: Virgil was
born seventy years before Christ, and was seven years older than
Augustus. His parentage was humble, but his facilities of education were
great. He was a most fortunate man, enjoying the friendship of Augustus
and Maecenas, fame in his own lifetime, leisure to prosecute his studies,
and ample rewards for his labors. He died at Brundusium at the age of
fifty.]
[Sidenote: Horace.]
In lyrical poetry, the Romans can boast of one of the greatest masters
of any age or nation. The Odes of Horace have never been transcended,
and will probably remain through all the ages, the delight of scholars.
They may not have the deep religious sentiment, and the unity of
imagination and passion which belong to the Greek lyrical poets, but as
works of art, of exquisite felicity of expression, of agreeable images,
they are unrivaled. Even in the time of Juvenal, his poems were the
common school books of Roman youth. Horace, like Virgil, was a favored
man, enjoying the friendship of the great with ease, fame, and fortune.
But his longings for retirement, and his disgust at the frivolities
around him, are a sad commentary on satisfied desires. [Footnote: Born
B.C. 65. The best translation of his works is by Francis; but Horace is
untranslatable.] His odes compose but a small part of his writings. His
epistles are the most perfect of his productions, and rank with the
Georgics of Virgil and the satires of Juvenal, as the most perfect form
of Roman verse. His satires are also admirable, but without the fierce
vehemence and lofty indignation that characterized Juvenal. It is the
folly rather than the wickedness of vice which he describes with such
playful skill and such keenness of observation. He was the first to
mould the Latin tongue to the Greek lyric measures. Quintilian's
criticism is indorsed by all scholars. "_Lyricorum Horatius fere solus
legi dignus, in verbis felicissime audax_." No poetry was ever more
severely elaborated than that of Horace, and the melody of the language
imparts to it a peculiar fascination. If inferior to Pindar in passion
and loftiness, it glows with a more genial humanity, and with purer wit.
It cannot be enjoyed fully, except by those versed in the experiences of
life. Such perceive a calm wisdom, a penetrating sagacity, a sober
enthusiasm, and a refined taste, which are unusual even among the
masters of human thought. It is the fashion to depreciate the original
merits of this poet, as well as those of Virgil and Plautus and Terence,
because they derived so much assistance from the Greeks. But the Greeks
borrowed from each other. Pure originality is impossible. It is the
mission of art to add to its stores, without hoping to monopolize the
whole realm. Even Shakespeare, the most original of modern poets, was
vastly indebted to those who went before him, and even he has not
escaped the hypercriticism of minute observers.
[Sidenote: Catullus.]
In this allusion to lyrical poetry, I have not spoken of Catullus,
unrivaled in tender lyric, and the greatest poet before the Augustan
era. He was born B.C. 87, and enjoyed the friendship of the most
celebrated characters. One hundred and sixteen of his poems have come
down to us, most of which are short, and many of them defiled by great
coarseness and sensuality. Critics say, however, that whatever he
touched he adorned; that his vigorous simplicity, pungent wit, startling
invective, and felicity of expression, make him one of the great poets
of the Latin language.
[Sidenote: Lucretius.]
In didactic poetry, Lucretius was preeminent, and is regarded by
Schlegel as the first of Roman poets in native genius. [Footnote: Born
B.C. 95, died B.C. 52. Smith's _Dict._] He lived before the
Augustan era, and died at the age of forty-two by his own hand. His
great poem "De Rerum Natura," is a delineation of the epicurean
philosophy, and treats of all the great subjects of thought with which
his age is conversant. It somewhat resembles Pope's "Essay on Man," in
style and subject, but immeasurably superior in poetical genius. It is a
lengthened disquisition, in seven thousand four hundred lines, of the
great phenomena of the outward world. As a painter and worshiper of
nature, he was superior to all the poets of antiquity. His skill in
presenting abstruse speculations is marvelous, and his outbursts of
poetic genius are matchless in power and beauty. Into all subjects he
casts a fearless eye, and writes with sustained enthusiasm. But he was
not fully appreciated by his countrymen, although no other poet has so
fully brought out the power of the Latin language. Professor Ramsay,
[Footnote: The translation of Lucretius into English was made by I. M.
Goode, Evelyn, and Drummond.] while alluding to the melancholy
tenderness of Tibullus, the exquisite ingenuity of Ovid, the inimitable
felicity and taste of Horace, the gentleness and splendor of Virgil, and
the vehement declamation of Juvenal, thinks that, had the verses of
Lucretius perished, we should never have known that it could give
utterance to the grandest conceptions with all that self-sustained
majesty and harmonious swell, in which the Grecian muse rolls forth her
loftiest outpourings. The eulogium of Ovid is--
"Carmina sublimis tune sunt peritura Lucreti,
Exitio terras quum dabit una dies."
[Sidenote: Ovid.]
Elegiac poetry has an honorable place in Roman literature. To this
school belongs Ovid, [Footnote: Born B.C. 43. Died A.D. 18.] whose
"Metamorphoses" will always retain their interest. He, with that self-
conscious genius common to poets, declares that his poem would be proof
against sword, fire, thunder, and time,--a prediction, says Bayle,
[Footnote: Bayle, _Dict._] which has not yet proved false. Niebuhr
[Footnote: _Lect._, vol. ii. p. 166.] thinks that, next to
Catullus, he was the most poetical of his countrymen. Milton thinks he
could have surpassed Virgil had he attempted epic poetry. He was nearest
to the romantic school of all the classical authors, and Chaucer,
Ariosto, and Spenser owe to him great obligations. Like Pope, his verses
flowed spontaneously. His "Tristia" were more admired by the Romans than
his "Amores" or "Metamorphoses,"--probably from the doleful description
of his exile,--a fact which shows that contemporaries are not always the
best judges of real merit. His poems, great as was their genius, are
deficient in the severe taste which marked the Greeks, and are immoral
in their tendency. He had great advantages, but was banished by Augustus
for his description of licentious love, "Carmina per libidinosa." Nor
did he support exile with dignity. He died of a broken heart, and
languished, like Cicero, when doomed to a similar fate. But few
intellectual men have ever been able to live at a distance from the
scene of their glories, and without the stimulus of high society.
Chrysostom is one of the few exceptions. Ovid, as an immoral man, was
justly punished.
[Sidenote: Tibullus.]
Tibullus was also a famous elegiac poet, and was born the same year as
Ovid, and was the friend of Horace. He lived in retirement, and was both
gentle and amiable. At his beautiful country seat he soothed his soul
with the charms of literature and the simple pleasures of the country.
Niebuhr pronounces his elegies doleful, [Footnote: _Lect._, vol.
iii. p. 143.] but Merivale [Footnote: _Hist_, vol. iv. p. 602.]
thinks that "the tone of tender melancholy in which he sung his
unprosperous loves had a deeper and purer source than the caprices of
three inconstant paramours." "His spirit is eminently religious, though
it bids him fold his hands in resignation rather than open them in hope.
He alone of all the great poets of his day remained undazzled by the
glitter of the Caesarian usurpation, and pined away in unavailing
despondency, in beholding the subjugation of his country."
[Sidenote: Propertius.]
His contemporary, Propertius, [Footnote: Born B.C. 51.] was, on the
contrary, the most eager of all the flatterers of Augustus,--a man of
wit and pleasure, whose object or idolatry was Cynthia, a poetess and a
courtesan. He was an imitator of the Greeks, but had a great
contemporary fame, [Footnote: Quint., x. 1. Section 93.] and shows
great warmth of passion, but he never soared into the sublime heights of
poetry, like his rival. Such were among the great elegiac poets of Rome,
generally devoted to the delineation of the passion of love. The older
English poets resembled them in this respect, but none of them have
soared to such lofty heights as the later ones, like Wordsworth and
Tennyson. It is in lyric poetry that the moderns have chiefly excelled
the ancients, in variety, in elevation of sentiment, and in imagination.
The grandeur and originality of the ancients were displayed rather in
epic and dramatic poetry.
[Sidenote: Juvenal.]
[Sidenote: Perseus.]
In _satire_ the Romans transcended both the Greeks and the moderns.
There is nothing in any language which equals the fire, the intensity,
and the bitterness of Juvenal,--not even Swift and Pope. But he
flourished in the decline of literature, and has neither the taste nor
elegance of the Augustan writers. He was the son of a freedman, and was
born A.D. 38, and was the contemporary of Martial. He was banished by
Domitian on account of a lampoon against a favorite dancer, but under
the reign of Nerva he returned to Rome, and the imperial tyranny was the
subject of his bitterest denunciation, next to the degradation of public
morals. His great rival in satire was Horace, who laughed at follies;
but he, more austere, exaggerated and denounced them. His sarcasms on
women have never been equaled in severity, and we cannot but hope that
they were unjust. In an historical point of view, as a delineation of
the manners of his age, his satires are priceless, even like the
epigrams of Martial. Satire arose with Lucilius, [Footnote: Born B.C.
148.] in the time of Marius, an age when freedom of speech was
tolerated. Horace was the first to gain immortality in this department.
Persius comes next, born A.D. 34, the friend of Lucan and Seneca in the
time of Nero; and he painted the vices of his age when it was passing to
that degradation which marked the reign of Domitian when Juvenal
appeared, who, disdaining fear, boldly set forth the abominations of the
times, and struck without distinction all who departed from duty and
conscience. This uncompromising poet, not pliant and easy like Horace,
animadverted, like an incorruptible censor, on the vices which were
undermining the moral health and preparing the way for violence; on the
hypocrisy of philosophers and the cruelty of tyrants; on the weakness of
women and the debauchery of men. He discourses on the vanity of human
wishes with the moral wisdom of Dr. Johnson, and urges self-improvement
like Socrates and Epictetus. [Footnote: The best translations of Juvenal
are those of Dryden, Gifford, and Badham.]
I might speak of other celebrated poets,--of Lucan, of Martial, of
Petronius; but I only wish to show that the great poets of antiquity,
both Greek and Roman, have never been surpassed in genius, in taste, and
in art, and few were ever more honored in their lifetime by appreciating
admirers showing the advanced state of civilization which was reached in
every thing pertaining to the realm of thought.
But the genius of the ancients was displayed in prose composition as
well as in poetry, although perfection was not so soon attained. The
poets were the great creators of the languages of antiquity. It was not
until they had produced their immortal works that the languages were
sufficiently softened and refined to admit of great beauty in prose. But
prose requires art as well as poetry. There is an artistic rhythm in the
writings of the classical authors, like those of Cicero and Herodotus
and Thucydides, as marked as in the beautiful measure of Homer and
Virgil. Burke and Macaulay are as great artists in style as Tennyson
himself. Plato did not write poetry, but his prose is as "musical as
Apollo's lyre." And it is seldom that men, either in ancient or modern
times, have been distinguished for both kinds of composition, although
Voltaire, Schiller, Milton, Swift, and Scott are among the exceptions.
Cicero, the greatest prose writer of antiquity, produced only an
inferior poem, laughed at by his contemporaries. Bacon could not write
poetry, with all his affluence of thought and vigor of imagination and
command of language, any easier than Pope could write prose.
All sorts of prose compositions were carried to perfection by both
Greeks and Romans, in history, in criticism, in philosophy, in oratory,
in epistles.
[Sidenote: Herodotus.]
The earliest great prose writer among the Greeks was Herodotus,
[Footnote: Born B.C. 484.] from which we may infer that _History_
was the first form of prose composition which attained development. But
Herodotus was not born until Aeschylus had gained a prize for tragedy,
more than two hundred years after Simonides, the lyric poet, flourished,
and probably six hundred years after Homer sung his immortal epics.
After more than two thousand years the style of this great "Father of
History" is admired by every critic; while his history, as a work of
art, is still a study and a marvel. It is difficult to understand why no
anterior work in prose is worthy of note, since the Greeks had attained
a high civilization two hundred years before he appeared, and the
language had reached a high point of development under Homer for more
than five hundred years. The history of Herodotus was probably written
in the decline of life, when his mind was enriched with great
attainments in all the varied learning of his age, and when he had
conversed with most of the celebrated men of the various countries which
he visited. It pertains chiefly to the wars of the Greeks with the
Persians; but, in his frequent episodes, which do not impair the unity
of the work, he is led to speak of the manners and customs of the
oriental nations. It was once the fashion to speak of Herodotus as a
credulous man, who embodied the most improbable, though interesting
stories. But now it is believed that no historian was ever more
profound, conscientious, and careful; and all modern investigations
confirm his sagacity and impartiality. He was one of the most
accomplished men of antiquity, or of any age,--an enlightened and
curious traveler, a profound thinker, a man of universal knowledge,
familiar with the whole range of literature, art, and science in his
day, acquainted with all the great men of Greece and at the courts of
Asiatic princes, the friend of Sophocles, of Pericles, of Thucydides, of
Aspasia, of Socrates, of Damon, of Zeno, of Pheidias, of Protagoras, of
Euripides, of Polygnotus, of Anaxagoras, of Xenophon, of Alcibiades, of
Lysias, of Aristophanes,--the most brilliant constellation of men of
genius who were ever found together within the walls of a Grecian city,
respected and admired by these great lights, all of whom he transcended
in knowledge. Thus was he fitted for his task by travel, by study, and
by intercourse with the great, to say nothing of his original genius,
and the greatest prose work which had yet appeared in Greece was
produced,--a prose epic, severe in taste, perfect in unity, rich in
moral wisdom, charming in style, religious in spirit, grand in subject,
without a coarse passage; simple, unaffected, and beautiful, like the
narratives of the Bible; amusing, yet instructive, easy to understand,
yet extending to the utmost boundaries of human research--a model for
all subsequent historians. So highly was it valued by the Athenians,
when their city was at the height of its splendor, that they decreed to
its author ten talents, about twelve thousand dollars, for reciting it.
He even went from city to city, a sort of prose rhapsodist, or like a
modern lecturer, reciting his history--an honored and extraordinary man,
a sort of Humboldt, having mastered every thing. And he wrote, not for
fame, but to communicate the results of his inquiries, from the pure
love of truth which he learned by personal investigation at Dodona, at
Delphi, at Samos, at Athens, at Corinth, at Thebes, at Tyre; yea, he
traveled into Egypt, Scythia, Asia Minor, Palestine, Babylonia, Italy,
and the islands of the sea. His episode in Egypt is worth more, in an
historical point of view, than every thing combined which has descended
to us from antiquity. Herodotus was the first to give dignity to
history; nor, in truthfulness, candor, and impartiality, has he ever
been surpassed. His very simplicity of style is a proof of his
transcendent art, even as it is the evidence of his severity of taste.
[Footnote: Dahlman has written an admirable life of Herodotus; but
Rawlinson's translation, with his notes, is invaluable.]
[Sidenote: Thucydides.]
To Thucydides, as an historian, the modern world also assigns a proud
preeminence. He treated only of a short period, during the Peloponnesian
War; but the various facts connected with that great event could only be
known by the most minute and careful inquiries. He devoted twenty-seven
years to the composition of his narration, and he weighed his testimony
with the most scrupulous care. His style has not the fascination of
Herodotus, but it is more concise. In a single volume he relates what
could scarcely be compressed into eight volumes of a modern history. As
a work of art, of its kind, it is unrivaled. In his description of the
plague of Athens he is minute as he is simple. He abounds with rich
moral reflections, and has a keen perception of human character. His
pictures are striking and tragic. He is vigorous and intense, and every
word he uses has a meaning. But some of his sentences are not always
easily understood. One of the greatest tributes which can be paid to him
is, that, according to the estimate of an able critic, [Footnote: George
Long, Oxford.] we have a more exact history of a long and eventful
period by Thucydides than we have of any period in modern history,
equally long and eventful; and all this is compressed into a volume.
[Footnote: Born 471 B.C.; lived twenty years in exile on account of a
military failure.]
[Sidenote: Xenophon.]
Xenophon is the last of the trio of the Greek historians, whose writings
are classical and inimitable. [Footnote: Born probably about 444 B.C.]
He is characterized by great simplicity and absence of affectation. His
"Anabasis," in which he describes the expedition of the younger Cyrus
and the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, is his most famous book. But
his "Cyropaedia," in which the history of Cyrus is the subject, although
still used as a classic in colleges for the beauty of the style, has no
value as a history, since the author merely adopted the current stories
of his hero without sufficient investigation. Xenophon wrote a variety
of treatises and dialogues, but his "Memorabilia" of Socrates is the
most valuable. All antiquity and all modern writers unite in giving to
Xenophon great merit as a writer, and great moral elevation as a man.
If we pass from the Greek to the Latin historians,--to those who were as
famous as the Greek, and whose merit has scarcely been transcended in
our modern times, if, indeed, it has been equaled,--the great names of
Sallust, of Caesar, of Livy, of Tacitus, rise up before us, together with
a host of other names we have not room or disposition to present, since
we only aim to show that the ancients were at least our equals in this
great department of prose composition. The first great masters of the
Greek language in prose were the historians, so far as their writings
have descended, although it is probable that the orators may have shaped
the language before them, and given it flexibility and refinement. The
first great prose writers of Rome were the orators. Nor was the Latin
language fully developed and polished until Cicero appeared. But we do
not write a history of the language: we speak only of those who wrote
immortal works in the various departments of learning.
As Herodotus did not arise until the Greek language had been already
formed by the poets, so no great prose writer appeared among the Romans
for a considerable time after Plautus, Terence, Ennius, and Lucretius
flourished.
[Sidenote: Sallust.]
The first great historian was Sallust, the contemporary of Cicero, born
B.C. 86, the year that Marius died. Q. Fabius Pictor, M. Portius Cato,
L. Cal. Piso had already written works which are mentioned with respect
by the Latin authors, but they were mere annalists or antiquarians, like
the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and had no claim as artists. Sallust
made Thucydides his model, but fell below him in genius and elevated
sentiment. He was born a plebeian, and rose to distinction by his
talents, but was ejected from the Senate for his profligacy. Afterwards
he made a great fortune as praetor and governor of Numidia, and lived in
magnificence on the Quirinal--one of the most profligate of the literary
men of antiquity. We possess but a small portion of his works, but the
fragments which have come down to us show peculiar merit. He sought to
penetrate the human heart, and reveal the secret motives which actuate
the conduct of men. His style is brilliant, but his art is always
apparent. He is clear and lively, but rhetorical. Like Voltaire, who
inaugurated modern history, he thought more of style than of accuracy of
facts. He was a party man, and never soared beyond his party. He aped
the moralist, but erected egotism and love of pleasure into proper
springs of action, and honored talent disconnected with virtue.
Like Carlyle, he exalted _strong_ men, and _because_ they were
strong. He was not comprehensive like Cicero, or philosophical like
Thucydides, although he affected philosophy as he did morality. He was
the first who deviated from the strict narratives of events, and also
introduced much rhetorical declamation, which he puts into the mouths of
his heroes. [Footnote: The best translations of this author are those by
Stewart, 1806, and Murphy, 1807.] He wrote for eclat.
[Sidenote: Caesar.]
Caesar, as an historian, ranks higher, and no Roman ever wrote purer
Latin than he. But his historical works, however great their merit, but
feebly represent his transcendent genius--the most august name of
antiquity. He was mathematician, architect, poet, philologist, orator,
jurist, general, statesman--imperator. In eloquence he was only second
to Cicero. The great value of his history is in the sketches of the
productions, the manners, the customs, and the political state of Gaul,
Britain, and Germany. His observations on military science, on the
operation of sieges, and construction of bridges and military engines,
are valuable. But the description of his military operations is only a
studied apology for his crimes, even as the bulletins of Napoleon were
set forth to show his victories in the most favorable light. His fame
rests on his victories and successes as a statesman rather than on his
merits as an historian, even as Louis Napoleon will live in history for
his deeds rather than as the apologist of Caesar. [Footnote: See
_History of Caesar_, by Napoleon, a work more learned than popular,
however greatly he may be indebted to the labors of others.] The
"Commentaries" resemble the history of Herodotus more than any other
Latin production, at least in style; they are simple and unaffected,
precise and elegant, plain and without pretension.
Caesar was born B.C. 100, and while I admire his genius and his
generosity, I hold in detestation the ambition which led him to overturn
the constitution of his country on the plea of revolutionary necessity.
It is true that there was the strife of parties and factions, greedy of
revenge, and still more of spoils. It was a period of "_great
offenses_," but it was also the brightest period in Roman history, so
far as pertains to the development of genius. It was more favorable to
literature than the lauded "Augustan era." It was an age of free
opinions, in which liberty gave her last sigh, and when heroic efforts
were made to bring back the ancient virtue, and to save the state from
despotism. The lives of Piso, of Milo, of Cinna, of Lepidus, of Cotta,
of Dolabella, of Crassus, of Quintus Maximus, of Aquila, of Pompey, of
Brutus, of Cassius, of Antony, show what extraordinary men of action
were then upon the stage, both good and evil, while Varro, Cicero,
Catullus, Lucretius, and Sallust gave glory to the world of letters. It
may have resulted favorably to the peace of society that the imperial
rule supplanted the aristocratic regime, but it was a change fatal to
liberty of speech and all independent action--a change, the good of
which was on the outside, and in favor of material interests, but the
evil of which was internal, and consumed secretly, but surely, the real
greatness of the empire.
[Sidenote: Prose composition.]
[Sidenote: High social position of historians.]
The Augustan age, though it produced a constellation of poets who shed
glory upon the throne before which they prostrated themselves in abject
homage, like the courtiers of Louis XIV., still was unfavorable to prose
composition,--to history as well as eloquence. Of the historians, Livy
is the only one whose writings are known to us, and only fragments of
his history. [Footnote: Born B.C. 59.] He was a man of distinction at
court, and had a great literary reputation--so great that a Spaniard
traveled from Cadiz on purpose to see him. Most of the great historians
of the world have occupied places of honor and rank, which were given to
them not as prizes for literary successes, but for the experience,
knowledge, and culture which high social position and ample means
secured. Herodotus lived in courts; Thucydides was a great general, also
Xenophon; Caesar wrote his own exploits; Sallust was praetor and governor;
Livy was tutor to Claudius; Tacitus was praetor and consul suffectus;
Eusebius was bishop and favorite of Constantine; Ammianus was the friend
of the Emperor Julian; Gregory of Tours was one of the leading prelates
of the West; Froissart attended in person, as a man of rank, the
military expeditions of his day; Clarendon was Lord Chancellor; Burnet
was a bishop and favorite of William III.; Thiers and Guizot both were
prime ministers; while Gibbon, Hume, Robertson, Macaulay, Grote, Milman,
Neander, Niebuhr, Muller, Dahlman, Buckle, Prescott, Irving, Bancroft,
Motley, have all been men of wealth or position. Nor do I remember a
single illustrious historian who has been poor and neglected.
[Sidenote: Livy.]
The ancients regarded Livy as the greatest of historians,--an opinion
not indorsed by modern critics, on account of his inaccuracies. But his
narrative is always interesting, and his language pure. He did not sift
evidence like Grote, nor generalize like Gibbon; but he was, like
Voltaire and Macaulay, an artist in style, and possessed undoubted
genius. His annals are comprised in one hundred and forty-two books,
extending from the foundation of the city to the death of Drusus, B.C.
9, of which only thirty-five have come down to us--an impressive
commentary on the vandalism of the Middle Ages, and the ignorance of the
monks who could not preserve so great a treasure. "His story flows in a
calm, clear, sparkling current, with every charm which simplicity and
ease can give." He delineates character with great clearness and power;
his speeches are noble rhetorical compositions; his sentences are
rhythmical cadences. He was not a critical historian, like Herodotus,
for he took his materials secondhand, and he was ignorant of geography;
nor did he write with the exalted ideal of Thucydides, but as a painter
of beautiful forms, which only a rich imagination could conjure, he is
unrivaled in the history of literature. Moreover, he was honest and
sound in heart, and was just and impartial in reference to those facts
with which he was conversant.
[Sidenote: Tacitus.]
In the estimation of modern critics, the highest rank, as an historian,
is assigned to Tacitus, and it would be difficult to find his rival in
any age or country. He was born A.D. 57, about forty-three years after
the death of Augustus. He belonged to the equestrian rank, and was a man
of consular dignity. He had every facility for literary labors that
leisure, wealth, friends, and social position could give, and he lived
under a reign when truth could be told.
The extant works of this great writer are the "Life of Agricola," his
father-in-law; his "Annales," which commence with the death of Augustus,
A.D. 14, and close with the death of Nero, A.D. 68; the "Historiae,"
which comprise the period from the second consulate of Galba, A.D. 68,
to the death of Domitian; and a treatise on the Germans.
[Sidenote: Histories of Tacitus.]
His histories describe Rome in the fullness of imperial glory, when the
will of one man was the supreme law of the empire. He also wrote of
events when liberty had fled, and the yoke of despotism was nearly
insupportable. He describes a period of great moral degradation, nor
does he hesitate to lift the veil of hypocrisy in which his generation
had wrapped itself. He fearlessly exposes the cruelties and iniquities
of the early emperors, and writes with judicial impartiality respecting
all the great characters he describes. No ancient writer shows greater
moral dignity and integrity of purpose than Tacitus. In point of
artistic unity he is superior to Livy and equal to Thucydides, whom he
resembles in conciseness of style. His distinguishing excellence as an
historian is his sagacity and impartiality. Nothing escapes his
penetrating eye; and he inflicts merited chastisement on the tyrants who
reveled in the prostrated liberties of his country, while he
immortalizes those few who were faithful to duty and conscience in a
degenerate age. But his writings were not so popular as those of Livy.
Neither princes nor people relished his intellectual independence and
moral elevation. He does not satisfy Dr. Arnold, who thinks he ought to
have been better versed in the history of the Jews, and who dislikes his
speeches because they were fictitious.
[Sidenote: Qualities which give immortality to historians.]
Neither the Latin nor Greek historians are admired by those dry critics,
who seek to give to rare antiquarian matter a disproportionate
importance, and to make this matter as fixed and certain as the truths
of natural science. History can never be other than an approximation to
the truth, even when it relates to the events and characters of our own
age. History does not give positive knowledge which cannot be disputed
except in general terms. We _know_ that Caesar was ambitious, but we
do not know whether he was more or less so than Pompey, nor do we know
how far he was justified in his usurpation. A great history must have
other merits than mere accuracy, or antiquarian research, or display of
authorities and notes. It must be a work of art, and art has reference
to style and language, to grouping of details and richness of
illustration, to eloquence and poetry and beauty. A dry history, if ever
so learned, will never be read; it will only be consulted, like a law-
book, or Mosheim's "Commentaries." We wish _life_ in history, and
it is for the life that the writings of Livy and Tacitus will be
perpetuated. Voltaire and Schiller have no great merit as historians, in
a technical sense, but the "Life of Charles XII." and the "Thirty Years'
War" are still classics. Neander has written one of the most searching
and recondite histories of modern times, but it is too dry, too
deficient in art, to be cherished, and may pass away, like the
voluminous writings of Varro, the most learned of the Romans. It is the
_art_ which is immortal in a book, not the knowledge, or even the
thoughts. What keeps alive the "Provincial Letters"? It is the style,
the irony, the elegance. It is the exquisite delineation of character,
the moral wisdom, the purity and force of language, the artistic
arrangement, and the lively and interesting narratives, appealing to all
minds, like the "Arabian Nights," or Froissart's "Chronicles," which
give immortality to the classic authors of antiquity. We will not let
them perish, because they amuse us, and inspire us. Livy doubtless was
too ambitious in aspiring to write accurately the whole history of his
country. He would have been wiser had he confined himself to a
particular epoch, of which he was conversant, like Tacitus and
Thucydides. But it is taking a narrow view of history to make all
writers after the same pattern, even as it would be bigoted to make all
Christians belong to the same sect. Some will be remarkable for style,
others for learning, and others again for moral and philosophical
wisdom. Some will be minute, and others generalizing. Some dig out a
multiplicity of facts without apparent object, and others induce from
those facts. Some will make essays, and others chronicles. We have need
of all styles and all kinds of excellence. A great and original thinker
may not have the time or opportunity or taste for a minute and searching
criticism of original authorities; but he may be able to generalize
previously established facts, so as to draw most valuable moral
instruction. History is a boundless field of inquiry. No man can master
it, in all its departments and periods. What he gains in minute details,
he is apt to lose in generalization. If he attempts to embody too much
learning, he may be deficient in originality; if he would say every
thing, he is apt to be dry; if he elaborates too much, he loses life.
Society, too, requires different kinds and styles of history,--history
for students, history for ladies, histories for old men, histories for
young men, histories to amuse, and histories to instruct. If all men
were to write history according to Dr. Arnold's views, then we should
have histories of interest only to classical scholars. A fellow of
Christ Church may demand authorities, even if he never consults one of
them, but a member of Congress may wish to see learning embodied in the
text, and animated by genius, after the fashion of the ancient
historians, who never quoted their sources of knowledge, and who were
valued for the richness of thoughts and artistic beauty of style. The
ages in which they flourished, attached no value to pedantic displays of
labor, or evidences of learning paraded in foot-notes.
[Sidenote: Greatness of the ancient historians.]
Thus the great historians whom I have alluded to, both Greek and Latin,
have few equals and no superiors, in our own times, in those things
which are most to be admired. They were not pedants, but men of immense
genius and learning, who blended the profoundest principles of moral
wisdom with the most fascinating narratives, men universally popular
among learned and unlearned, and men who were great artists in style,
and masters of the language in which they wrote. We claim a superiority
to them, because we are more recondite and critical; but the decline of
Roman literature can be dated to times when commentaries became the
fashion. We improve on commentaries. They are chiefly confined to
biblical questions. _We_ write dictionaries and encyclopedias. In
this respect we are superior to the ancients. Our latest fashion of
histories makes them very long, and very uncertain, containing much
irrelevant matter, and more remarkable for learning than for genius, or
elegance of diction. Yet Macaulay, Prescott, and Motley have few equals
among the ancients in interest or artistic beauty.
[Sidenote: Suetonius.]
[Sidenote: Marcellinus.]
Rome can boast of no great historian after Tacitus, who should have
belonged to the Ciceronian epoch. Suetonius, born about the year A.D.
70, shortly after Nero's death, was rather a biographer than historian.
Nor as a biographer does he take a high rank. His "Lives of the Caesars,"
like Diogenes Laertius' "Lives of the Philosophers," are rather
anecdotical than historical. L. A. Florus, who flourished during the
reign of Trajan, has left a series of sketches of the different wars
from the days of Romulus to those of Augustus. Frontinus epitomized the
large histories of Pompeius. Marcellinus wrote a history from Nerva to
Valens, and is often quoted by Gibbon. But none wrote who should be
adduced as examples of the triumph of genius, except Sallust, Caesar,
Livy, and Tacitus.
[Sidenote: Ancient orators.]
[Sidenote: Ancient eloquence.]
There is another field of prose compositions in which the Greeks and
Romans gained great distinction, and proved themselves equal to any
nation of modern times, and this was that of eloquence. It is true we
have not a rich collection of ancient speeches. But we have every reason
to believe that both Greeks and Romans were most severely trained in the
art of public speaking, and that forensic eloquence was highly prized
and munificently rewarded. It commenced with democratic institutions,
and flourished as long as the people were a great power in the state. It
declined whenever and as soon as tyrants bore rule. Eloquence and
liberty flourished together; nor can there be eloquence when there is
not freedom of debate. In the fifth century before Christ--the first
century of democracy--great orators arose, for without the power and the
opportunity of defending himself against accusation, no man could hold
an ascendent position. Socrates insisted upon the gift of oratory to a
general in the army, [Footnote: Xen. _Mem._, iii. 3, 11.] as well as
to a leader in political life. In Athens the courts of justice were
numerous, and those who could not defend themselves were obliged to
secure the services of those who were trained in the use of public
speaking. Thus the lawyers arose, among whom eloquence has been more in
demand, and more richly paid than in any other class, certainly of
ancient times. Rhetoric became connected with dialectics, and in Greece,
Sicily, and Italy, both were most extensively cultivated. Empedocles was
distinguished as much for rhetoric as for philosophy. It was not,
however, in the courts of law that eloquence displayed the greatest fire
and passion, but in political assemblies. These could only coexist with
liberty; and a democracy was more favorable than an aristocracy to a
large concourse of citizens. In the Grecian republics, eloquence as an
art, may be said to have been born. It was nursed and fed by political
agitations; by the strife of parties. It arose from appeals to the
people as a source of power; and, when the people were not cultivated,
it appealed chiefly to popular passions and prejudices. When they were
enlightened, it appealed to interests.
[Sidenote: Pericles.]
It was in Athens, where there existed the purest form of democratic
institutions, that eloquence rose to the loftiest heights in the ancient
world, so far as eloquence appeals to popular passions. Pericles, the
greatest statesman of Greece, was celebrated for his eloquence, although
no specimens remain to us. It was conceded by the ancient authors, that
his oratory was of the highest kind, and the epithet of Olympian was
given him as carrying the weapons of Zeus upon his tongue. [Footnote:
Plutarch; Cic. _De Orat_., iii. 34; Quin., x. i. Section 82;
Plat. _Phed_., p. 262.] His voice was sweet, and his utterance
distinct and rapid. Pisistratus was also famous for his eloquence,
although he was a usurper and a tyrant. Isocrates [Footnote: Born 436
B.C.] was a professed rhetorician, and endeavored to base it upon sound
moral principles, and rescue it from the influence of the Sophists. He
was the great teacher of the most eminent statesmen of his day. Twenty-
one of his orations have come down to us, and they are excessively
polished and elaborated; but they were written to be read; they were not
extemporary. His language is the purest and most refined Attic dialect.
Lysias [Footnote: Born B.C. 458.] was a fertile writer of orations also,
and he is reputed to have produced as many as four hundred and twenty-
five. Of these only thirty-five are extant. They are characterized by
peculiar gracefulness and elegance, which did not interfere with
strength. So able were these orations, that only two were unsuccessful.
They were so pure that they were regarded as the best canon of the Attic
idiom. [Footnote: Dion. _Lys_., ii. 3.]
[Sidenote: Demosthenes.]
But all the orators of Greece--and Greece was the land of orators--gave
way to Demosthenes, born B.C. 385. He received a good education, and is
said to have been instructed in philosophy by Plato, and in eloquence by
Isocrates. But it is more probable that he privately prepared himself
for his brilliant career. As soon as he attained his majority, he
brought suits against the men whom his father had appointed his
guardians for their waste of property, and was, after two years,
successful, conducting the prosecution himself. It was not until the age
of thirty that he appeared as a speaker in the public assembly on
political matters, and he enjoyed universal respect, and became one of
the leading statesmen of Athens, and henceforth he took an active part
in every question that concerned the state. He especially distinguished
himself in his speeches against Macedonian aggrandizements, and his
Philippics are, perhaps, the most brilliant of his orations. But the
cause which he advocated was unfortunate. The battle of Cheronea, B.C.
338, put an end to the independence of Greece, and Philip of Macedon was
all-powerful. For this catastrophe Demosthenes was somewhat responsible,
but his motives were pure and his patriotism lofty, and he retained the
confidence of his countrymen. Accused by Aeschines, he delivered his
famous Oration on the Crown. Afterwards, during the supremacy of
Alexander, he was again accused, and suffered exile. Recalled from
exile, on the death of Alexander, he roused himself for the deliverance
of Greece, without success, and, hunted by his enemies, he took poison
in the sixty-third year of his age, having vainly contended for the
freedom of his country,--one of the noblest spirits of antiquity,
spotless in his public career, and lofty in his private life. As an
orator, he has not probably been equaled by any man of any country. By
his contemporaries he was regarded as faultless as a public speaker, and
when it is remembered that he struggled against physical difficulties
which, in the early part of his career, would have utterly discouraged
any ordinary man, we feel that he deserves the highest commendation. He
never spoke without preparation, and most of his orations were severely
elaborated. He never trusted to the impulse of the occasion. And all his
orations exhibit him as a pure and noble patriot, and are full of the
loftiest sentiments. He was a great artist, and his oratorical successes
were greatly owing to the arrangement of his speeches and the
application of the strongest arguments in their proper places. Added to
this moral and intellectual superiority was the "magic power of his
language, majestic and simple at the same time, rich yet not bombastic,
strange and yet familiar, solemn without being ornamented, grave and yet
pleasing, concise and yet fluent, sweet and yet impressive, which
altogether carried away the minds of his hearers." [Footnote: Leonhard
Schmitz.] His orations were most highly prized by the ancients, who
wrote innumerable commentaries on them, but most of these criticisms are
lost. Sixty, however, of these great productions of genius have come
down to us, and are contained in the various collections of the Attic
orators by Aldus, Stephens, Taylor, Reiske, Dukas, Bekker, Dobson, and
Sauppe. Demosthenes, like other orators, first became known as the
composer of speeches for litigants; but his great fame was based on the
orations he pronounced in great political emergencies. His rival was
Aeschines, but he was vastly inferior to Demosthenes, although bold,
vigorous, and brilliant. Indeed, the opinions of mankind, for two
thousand years, have been unanimous in ascribing to Demosthenes the
highest position as an orator of all the men of ancient and modern
times. David Hume says of him, "that, could his manner be copied, its
success would be infallible over a modern audience." "It is rapid
harmony exactly adjusted to the sense. It is vehement reasoning, without
any appearance of art. It is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom involved
in a continual stream of argument; so that, of all human productions,
his orations present to us the models which approach the nearest to
perfection." [Footnote: _Dissertation of Lord Brougham on the
Eloquence of the Ancients._]
[Sidenote: Roman orators.]
It is probable that the Romans were behind the Athenians in all the arts
of rhetoric; and yet in the days of the republic celebrated orators
arose, called out by the practice of the law and political meetings. It
was, in fact, in forensic eloquence that Latin prose first appears as a
cultivated language; for the forum was to the Romans what libraries are
to us. And the art of public speaking was very early developed. Cato,
Laelius, Carbo, and the Gracchi are said to have been majestic and
harmonious in speech. Their merits were eclipsed by Antonius, Crassus,
Cotta, Sulpitius, and Hortensius. The last had a very brilliant career
as an orator, although his orations were too florid to be read. Caesar
was also distinguished for his eloquence, the characteristics of which
were force and purity. Caelius was noted for lofty sentiment; Brutus for
philosophical wisdom; Callidus for a delicate and harmonious style, and
Calvus for sententious force.
[Sidenote: Cicero.]
But all the Roman orators yielded to Cicero, as the Greeks did to
Demosthenes. These two men are always coupled together when allusion is
made to eloquence. They were preeminent in the ancient world, and have
never been equaled in the modern.
Cicero was not probably equal to his great Grecian rival in vehemence,
in force, in fiery argument, which swept every thing away before him;
and he was not probably equal to him in original genius; but he was his
superior in learning, in culture, and in breadth. [Footnote: Born B.C.
106.] He distinguished himself very early as an advocate; but his first
great public effort was in the prosecution of Verres for corruption.
Although defended by Hortensius, and the whole influence of the Metelli
and other powerful families, Cicero gained his cause,--more fortunate
than Burke in his prosecution of Warren Hastings, who was also sustained
by powerful interests and families. Burke also resembled Cicero in his
peculiarities and in his fortunes more than any modern orator. His
speech on the Manilian law, when he appeared as a political orator,
greatly contributed to his popularity. I need not describe his memorable
career; his successive election to all the highest offices of state, his
detection of Catiline's conspiracy, his opposition to turbulent and
ambitious partisans, his alienations and friendships, his brilliant
career as a statesman, his misfortunes and sorrows, his exile and
recall, his splendid services to the state, his greatness and his
defects, his virtues and weaknesses, his triumphs and martyrdom. These
are foreign to my purpose. No man of heathen antiquity is better known
to us, and no man, by pure genius, ever won more glorious laurels. His
life and labors are immortal. His virtues and services are embalmed in
the heart of the world. Few men ever performed greater literary labors,
and in most of its departments. Next to Aristotle, he was the most
learned man of antiquity, but performed more varied labors than he,
since he was not only great as a writer and speaker, but as a statesman,
and was the most conspicuous man in Rome after Pompey and Caesar. He may
not have had the moral greatness of Socrates, nor the philosophical
genius of Plato, nor the overpowering eloquence of Demosthenes, but he
was a master of all the wisdom of antiquity. Even civil law, the great
science of the Romans, became interesting in his hands, and is divested
of its dryness and technicality. He popularized history, and paid honor
to all art, even to the stage. He made the Romans conversant with the
philosophy of Greece, and systematized the various speculations. He may
not have added to the science, but no Roman, after him, understood so
well the practical bearing of all the various systems. His glory is
purely intellectual, and it was by pure genius that he rose to his
exalted position and influence.
But it was in forensic eloquence that he was preeminent, and in which he
had but one equal in ancient times. Roman eloquence culminated in him.
He composed about eighty orations, of which fifty-nine are preserved.
Some were delivered from the rostrum to the people, and some in the
Senate. Some were mere philippics, as savage in denunciation as those of
Demosthenes. Some were laudatory; some were judicial; but all were
severely logical, full of historical allusion, profound in philosophical
wisdom, and pervaded with the spirit of patriotism. "He goes round and
round his object, surveys it in every light, examines it in all its
parts, retires and then advances, compares and contrasts it,
illustrates, confirms, and enforces it, till the hearer feels ashamed of
doubting a position which seems built on a foundation so strictly
argumentative. And having established his case, he opens upon his
opponent a discharge of raillery so delicate and good natured that it is
impossible for the latter to maintain his ground against it; or, when
the subject is too grave, he colors his exaggerations with all the
bitterness of irony and vehemence of passion. But the appeal to the
gentler emotions is reserved for the close of the oration, as in the
defense of Cluentius, Caelius, Milo, and Flaccus; the most striking
instances of which are the poetical bursts of feeling with which he
addresses his client, Plaucius, and his picture of the desolate
condition of the vestal Fonteia, should her brother be condemned. At
other times his peroration contains more heroic and elevated sentiments,
as in the invocation of the Alban Altars, and in his defense of Sextius,
and that on liberty at the close of the third Philippic." [Footnote:
Newman, _Hist. Rom. Lit._, p. 305.]
Critics have uniformly admired his style as peculiarly suited to the
Latin language, which, being scanty and unmusical, requires more
redundancy than the Greek. The simplicity of the Attic writers would
make Latin composition bold and tame. To be perspicuous, the Latin must
be full. Thus Arnold thinks that what Tacitus gained in energy he lost
in elegance and perspicuity. But Cicero, dealing with a barren and
unphilosophical language, enriched it with circumlocutions and
metaphors, while he formed it of harsh and uncouth expressions, and thus
became the greatest master of composition the world has seen. He was a
great artist, making use of his scanty materials to the best effect; and
since he could not attain the elegance of the Greeks, he sought to excel
them in vigor. He had absolute control over the resources of his
vernacular tongue, and not only unrivaled skill in composition, but tact
and judgment. Thus he was generally successful, in spite of the venality
and corruption of the times. The courts of justice were the scene of his
earliest triumphs; nor did he speak from the rostra until he was praetor
on mere political questions, as in reference to the Manilian and
Agrarian laws. It is in his political discourses that he rises to the
highest ranks. In his speeches against Verres, Catiline, and Antony, he
kindles in his countrymen lofty feelings for the honor of his country,
and abhorrence of tyranny and corruption. Indeed, he hated bloodshed,
injustice, and strife, and beheld the downfall of liberty with
indescribable sorrow.
Cicero held a very exalted position as a philosophical writer and
critic; but we defer what we have to say on this point until we speak of
the philosophy of the ancients. Upon eloquence his main efforts were,
however, directed, and eloquence was the most perfect fruit of his
talents. Nor can we here speak of Cicero as a man. He has his admirers
and detractors. He had great faults and weaknesses as well as virtues.
He was egotistical, vain, and vacillating. But he was industrious,
amiable, witty, and public spirited. In his official position he was
incorruptible. He was no soldier, but he had a greater than a warrior's
excellence. In spite of his faults, his name is one of the brightest of
the ancients. His integrity was never impeached, even in an age of
unparalleled corruption, and he was pure in morals. He was free from
rancor and jealousy, was true in his friendships, and indulgent to his
dependents. [Footnote: Professor Ramsay, of Glasgow, has written a most
admirable article on Cicero in Smith's _Dictionary_. It is very
full and impartial. Cicero's own writings are the best commentary on his
life. Plutarch has afforded much anecdote. Forsythe is the last work of
erudition. The critics sneer at Middleton's _Life of Cicero_; but
it has lasted one hundred years. It is, perhaps, too eulogistic. Drumann
is said to have most completely exhausted his subject in his
_Geschichte Roms_.]
Thus in oratory, as in history, the ancients can boast of most
illustrious examples, never even equaled. Still, we cannot tell the
comparative merits of the great classical orators of antiquity, with the
more distinguished of our times. Only Mirabeau, Pitt, Fox, Burke,
Brougham, Webster, and Clay, can even be compared with them. In power of
moving the people, some of our modern reformers and agitators may be
mentioned favorably; but their harangues are comparatively tame when
read.
[Sidenote: Varro.]
In philosophy, the Greeks and Romans distinguished themselves more than
even in poetry, or history, or eloquence. Their speculations pertained
to the loftiest subjects which ever tasked the intellect of man. But
this great department deserves a separate chapter. There were
respectable writers, too, in various other departments of literature,
but no very great names whose writings have descended to us.
Contemporaries had an exalted opinion of Varro, who was considered the
most learned of the Romans, as well as their most voluminous author. He
was born ten years before Cicero, and he is highly commended by
Augustine. [Footnote: Born B.C. 116; _Civ. Dei_., vi. 2.] He was
entirely devoted to literature, took no interest in passing events, and
lived to a good old age. St. Augustine says of him, "that he wrote so
much that one wonders how he had time to read; and that he read so much,
we are astonished how he found time to write." He composed four hundred
and ninety books. Of these only one has descended to us entire--"De Re
Rustica"--written at the age of eighty; but it is the best treatise
which has come down from antiquity on ancient agriculture. We have parts
of his other books, and we know of books which have entirely perished
which, for their information, would be invaluable; especially his
"Divine Antiquities," in sixteen books--his great work, from which St.
Augustine drew his materials for his "City of God." He wrote treatises
on language, on the poets, on philosophy, on geography, and various
other subjects. He wrote satire and criticism. But although his writings
were learned, his style was so bad that the ages have failed to preserve
him. It is singular that the truly immortal books are most valued for
their artistic excellences. No man, however great his genius, can afford
to be dull. Style is to written composition, what delivery is to a
public speaker. John Foster, one of the finest intellects of the last
generation, preached to a "handful" of hearers, while "Satan" Montgomery
drew ecstatic crowds. Nobody goes to hear the man of thoughts, every
body to hear the man of words, being repelled or attracted by
_manner_.
[Sidenote: Seneca.]
Seneca was another great writer among the Romans, but he belongs to the
domain of philosophy, although it is his ethical works which have given
him immortality, as may be truly said of Socrates and Epictetus,
although they are usually classed among the philosophers. He was a
Spaniard, and was born a few years before the Christian era, was a
lawyer and a rhetorician, a teacher and minister of Nero. It was his
misfortune to know one of the most detestable princes that ever
scandalized humanity, and it is not to his credit to have accumulated,
in four years, one of the largest fortunes in Rome, while serving such a
master. But since he lived to experience his ingratitude, he is more
commonly regarded as a martyr. Had he lived in the republican period, he
would have been a great orator. He wrote voluminously on many subjects,
and was devoted to a literary life. He rejected the superstitions of his
country, and looked upon the ritualism of religion as a mere fashion;
but his religion was a mere deism, and he dishonored his own virtues by
a compliance with the vices of others. He saw much of life, and died at
fifty-three. What is remarkable in his writings, which are clear but
labored, is, that under pagan influences and imperial tyranny, he should
have presented such lofty moral truth; and it is a mark of almost
transcendent talent that he should, unaided by Christianity, have soared
so high in the realm of ethical inquiry. Nor is it easy to find any
modern author who has treated great questions in so attractive a way.
[Sidenote: Quintilian.]
Quintilian is a Latin classic, and belonged to the class of
rhetoricians, and should have been mentioned among the orators, like
Lysias the Greek, a teacher, however, of eloquence, rather than an
orator. He was born A.D. 40, and taught the younger Pliny, also two
nephews of Domitian, receiving a regular salary from the imperial
treasury. His great work is a complete system of rhetoric.
"_Institutiones Oratoriae_" is one of the clearest and fullest of
all rhetorical manuals ever written in any language, although, as a
literary production, inferior to the "_De Oratore_" of Cicero. It
is very practical and sensible, and a complete compendium of every topic
likely to be useful in the education of an aspirant for the honors of
eloquence. In systematic arrangement, it falls short of a similar work
by Aristotle; but it is celebrated for its sound judgment and keen
discrimination, showing great reading and reflection. He should be
viewed as a critic rather than as a rhetorician, since he entered into
the merits and defects of the great masters of Greek and Roman
literature. In his peculiar province he has had no superior. Like
Cicero, or Demosthenes, or Plato, or Thucydides, or Tacitus, he would be
a great man if he lived in our times, and could proudly challenge the
modern world to produce a better teacher than he in the art of public
speaking.
[Sidenote: Lucian.]
There are other writers of immense fame, who do not represent any
particular class in the field of literature, which can be compared with
the modern. But I can only draw attention to Lucian, a witty and
voluminous Greek author, who lived in the reign of Commodus, wrote
rhetorical, critical, and biographical works, and even romances which
have given hints to modern authors. But his fame rests on his
"Dialogues," intended to ridicule the heathen philosophy and religion,
and which show him to have been one of the great masters of ancient
satire and mockery. His style of dialogue--a combination of Plato and
Aristophanes--is not much used by modern writers, and his peculiar kind
of ridicule is reserved now for the stage. Yet he cannot be called a
writer of comedy, like MoliEre. He resembles Rabelais and Swift more
than any other modern writers, and has their indignant wit, indecent
jokes, and pungent sarcasms. He paints, like Juvenal, the vices and
follies of his time, and exposes the hypocrisy that reigns in the high
places of fashion and power. His dialogues have been imitated by
Fontanelle and Lord Lyttleton, but they do not possess his humor or
pungency. Lucian does not grapple with great truths, but contents
himself in ridiculing those who have proclaimed them; and, in his cold
cynicism, depreciates human knowledge, and all the great moral teachers
of mankind. He is even shallow and flippant upon Socrates. But he was
well read in human nature, and superficially acquainted with all the
learning of antiquity. In wit and sarcasm, he may be compared with
Voltaire, and his end was the same, to demolish and pull down, without
substituting any thing in its stead. His skepticism was universal, and
extended to religion, to philosophy, and to every thing venerated and
ancient. His purity of style was admired by Erasmus, and he has been
translated into most European languages. The best English version is
rendered by Dr. Franklin, London, 2 vols. 4to. In strong contrast to the
"Dialogues" is the "City of God," by Saint Augustine, in which he
demolishes with keener ridicule all the gods of antiquity, but
substitutes instead the knowledge of the true God.
Thus the Romans, as well as Greeks, produced works in all departments of
literature which will bear comparison with the masterpieces of modern
times. And where would have been the literature of the early Church, or
of modern nations, had not the great original writers of Athens and Rome
been our schoolmasters? And when we further remember that their glorious
literature was created by native genius, without the aid of
Christianity, we are filled with amazement, and may almost be excused if
we deify the reason of man. At least we are assured that literature as
well as art may flourish under pagan influences, and that Christianity
has a higher mission than the culture of the mind. Religious skepticism
cannot be disarmed if we appeal to Christianity as the test of
intellectual culture. The realm of reason has no fairer fields than
those which are adorned by pagan art. Nor have greater triumphs of
intellect been witnessed in these, our Christian times, than among that
class which is the least influenced by Christian ideas. Some of the
proudest trophies of genius have been won by infidels, or by men
stigmatized as such. Witness Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Hegel, Fichte,
Gibbon, Hume, Buckle. And then how many great works are written without
the inspiration or the spirit of a living Christianity! How little
Bulwer, or Byron, or Dumas, or Goethe owe, apparently, to Christian
teachings! Is Emerson superior to Epictetus, in an ethical point of
view? Was Franklin a great philosopher, or Jefferson a great statesman,
because they were surrounded by Christian examples? May there not be the
greatest practical infidelity, with the most artistic beauty and native
reach of thought? Milton justly ascribes the most sublime intelligence
to Satan and his angels on the point of rebellion against the majesty of
Heaven. A great genius may be kindled by the fires of discontent and
ambition, which will quicken the intellectual faculties, even while they
consume the soul, and spread their devastating influence on the homes
and hopes of man.
* * * * *
RERERENCES.--There are no better authorities than the classical authors
themselves, and their works must be studied in order to comprehend the
spirit of ancient literature. Modern historians of Roman literature are
merely critics, like Drumann, Schlegel, Niebuhr, Muller, Mommsen, Mure,
Arnold, Dunlap, and Thompson. Nor do I know of an exhaustive history of
Roman literature in the English language. Yet nearly every great writer
has occasional criticisms, entitled to respect. The Germans, in this
department, have no equals. As critics and commentators they are
unrivaled.
CHAPTER VIII.
GRECIAN PHILOSOPHY.
Whatever may be said of the inferiority of the ancients to the moderns
in natural and mechanical science, which no one is disposed to question,
or even in the realm of literature, which can be questioned, there was
one department which they carried to absolute perfection, and to which
we have added nothing of consequence. In the realm of art they were our
equals, and probably our superiors; in philosophy they carried logical
deductions to their utmost limit. They created the science. They
advanced, from a few crude speculations on material phenomena, to an
analysis of all the powers of the mind, and finally to the establishment
of ethical principles which even Christianity did not overturn. The
progress of the science, from Thales to Plato, is the most stupendous
triumph of the human understanding. The reason of man soared to the
loftiest flights that it has ever attained. It cast its searching eye
into the most abstruse inquiries which ever tasked the famous intellects
of the world. It exhausted all the subjects which dialectical subtlety
ever raised. It originated and it carried out the boldest speculations
respecting the nature of the soul and its future existence. It
established most important psychological truths. It created a method for
the solution of the most abstruse questions. It went on, from point to
point, until all the faculties of the mind were severely analyzed, and
all its operations were subjected to a rigid method. The Romans never
added a single principle to the philosophy which the Greeks elaborated;
the ingenious scholastics of the Middle Ages merely reproduced their
ideas; and even the profound and patient Germans have gone round in the
same circles that Plato and Aristotle marked out more than two thousand
years ago. It was Greek philosophy in which noble Roman youth were
educated, and hence, as it was expounded by a Cicero, a Marcus Aurelius,
and an Epictetus, it was as much the inheritance of the Romans as it was
of the Greeks themselves, after their political liberties were swept
away, and the Grecian cities formed a part of the Roman empire. The
Romans learned, or might have learned, what the Greeks created and
taught, and philosophy became, as well as art, identified with the
civilization which extended from the Rhine and the Po to the Nile and
the Tigris. Grecian philosophy was one of the distinctive features of
ancient civilization long after the Greeks had ceased to speculate on
the laws of mind, or the nature of the soul, or the existence of God, or
future rewards and punishments. Although it was purely Grecian in its
origin and development, it cannot be left out of the survey of the
triumphs of the human mind when the Romans were masters of the world,
and monopolized the fruits of all the arts and sciences. It became one
of the grand ornaments of the Roman schools, one of the priceless
possessions of the Roman conquerors. The Romans did not originate
medicine, but Galen was one of its greatest lights; they did not invent
the hexameter verse, but Virgil sung to its measure; they did not create
Ionic capitals, but their cities were ornamented with marble temples on
the same principles as those which called out the admiration of
Pericles. So, if they did not originate philosophy, and generally had
but little taste for it, still its truths were systematized and
explained by Cicero, and formed no small accession to the treasures with
which cultivated intellects sought everywhere to be enriched. It formed
an essential part of the intellectual wealth of the civilized world,
when civilization could not prevent the world from falling into decay
and ruin. And as it was the noblest triumph which the human mind, under
pagan influences, ever achieved, so it was followed by the most
degrading imbecility into which man, in civilized countries, was ever
allowed to fall. Philosophy, like art, like literature, like science,
arose, shined, grew dim, and passed away, and left the world in night.
Why was so bright a glory followed by so dismal a shame? What a comment
is this on the greatness and littleness of man!
[Sidenote: Commencement of Grecian speculations.]
The development of Greek philosophy is doubtless one commence-of the
most interesting and instructive subjects Grecian in the whole history
of mind. In all probability it originated with the Ionian Sophoi, though
many suppose it was derived from the East. It is questionable whether
the oriental nations had any philosophy distinct from religion. The
Germans are fond of tracing resemblances in the early speculations of
the Greeks to the systems which prevailed in Asia from a very remote
antiquity. Gladish sees in the Pythagorean system an adoption of Chinese
doctrines; in the Heraclitic system, the influence of Persia; in the
Empedoclean, Egyptian speculations; and in the Anaxagorean, the Jewish
creeds. [Footnote: Lewes, _Biog. Hist. of Philos_., Introd.] But
the Orientals had theogonies, not philosophies. The Indian speculations
aim to an exposition of ancient revelation. They profess to liberate the
soul from the evils of mortal life--to arrive at eternal beatitudes. But
the state of perfectibility could only be reached by religious
ceremonial observances and devout contemplation. The Indian systems do
not disdain logical discussions, or a search after the principles of
which the universe is composed; and hence we find great refinements in
sophistry, and a wonderful subtlety of logical discussion; but these are
directed to unattainable ends,--to the connection of good with evil, and
the union of the supreme with nature. Nothing came out of these
speculations but an occasional elevation of mind among the learned, and
a profound conviction of the misery of man and the obstacles to his
perfection. [Footnote: See Archer Butler's fine lecture on the Indian
Philosophies.] The Greeks, starting from physical phenomena, went on in
successive series of inquiries, until they elevated themselves above
matter, above experience, even to the loftiest abstractions, and until
they classified the laws of thought. It is curious how speculation led
to demonstration, and how inquiries into the world of matter prepared
the way for the solution of intellectual phenomena. Philosophy kept pace
with geometry, and those who observed nature also gloried in abstruse
calculations. Philosophy and mathematics seem to have been allied with
the worship of art among the same men, and it is difficult to say which
more distinguished them, aesthetic culture or power of abstruse
reasoning.
[Sidenote: Thales.]
[Sidenote: Water the vital principle of Nature.]
We do not read of any remarkable philosophical inquirer until Thales
arose, the first of the Ionian school. He was born at Miletus, a Greek
colony in Asia Minor, about the year B.C. 636, when Ancus Martius was
king of Rome, and Josiah reigned at Jerusalem. He has left no writings
behind him, but he was numbered as one of the seven wise men of Greece.
He was numbered with the wise men on account of his political sagacity
and wisdom in public affairs. [Footnote: Miller, Hist, of Grec. Lit., ch.
xvii.]
"And he, 't is said, did first compute the stars
Which beam in Charles' wain, and guide the bark
Of the Phoenician sailor o'er the sea."
He was the first who attempted a logical solution of material phenomena,
without resorting to mythical representations. Thales felt that there
was a grand question to be answered relative to the _beginning of
things_. "Philosophy," it has been well said, "may be a history of
_errors_, but not of _follies_" It was not a folly, in a rude
age, to speculate on the first or fundamental principle of things. He
looked around him upon Nature, upon the sea and earth and sky, and
concluded that water or moisture was the vital principle. He felt it in
the air, he saw it in the clouds above, and in the ground beneath his
feet. He saw that plants were sustained by rain and by the dew, that
neither animal nor man could live without water, and that to fishes it
was the native element. What more important or vital than water? It was
the _prima materia_, the [Greek: archae], the beginning of all things--the
origin of the world. [Footnote: Aristotle, _Metaph._, 1. c. 3;
Diog. Laertius, _Thales_.] I do not here speak of his astronomical
and geometrical labors--as the first to have divided the year into three
hundred and sixty-five days. He is celebrated also for practical wisdom.
"Know thyself," is one of his remarkable sayings. But the foundation
principle of his philosophy was that water is the first cause of all
things--the explanation, of the origin of the universe. How so crude a
speculation could have been maintained by so wise a man it is difficult
to conjecture. It is not, however, the _reason_ which he assigns
for the beginning of things which is noteworthy, so much as the
_fact_ that his mind was directed to the solution of questions
pertaining to the origin of the universe. It was these questions which
marked the Ionian philosophers. It was these which showed the inquiring
nature of their minds. What is the great first cause of all things?
Thales saw it in one of the four elements of nature, as the ancients
divided them. And it is the earliest recorded theory among the Greeks of
the origin of the world. It is an induction from the phenomena of
animated nature--the nutrition and production of a seed. [Footnote:
Bitter, b. iii. c. 3; Lewes, ch. 1.] He regarded the entire world in the
light of a living being gradually maturing and forming itself from an
imperfect seed state, which was of a moist nature. This moisture endues
the universe with vitality. The world, he thought, was full of gods, but
they had their origin in water. He had no conception of God as
_Intelligence_, or as a _creative_ power. He had a great and
inquiring mind, but he was a pagan, with no knowledge of a spiritual and
controlling and personal deity.
[Sidenote: Anaximenes. Air the _animus mundi_.]
Anaximenes, his disciple, pursued his inquiries, and adopted his method.
He also was born in Miletus, but at what time is unknown, probably B.C.
529. Like Thales, he held to the eternity of matter. Like him, he
disbelieved in the existence of any thing immaterial, for even a human
soul is formed out of matter. He, too, speculated on the origin of the
universe, but thought that _air_, not water, was the primal cause.
[Footnote: Cicero, _De Nat. D_., i. 10.] This seemed to be
universal. We breathe it; all things are sustained by it. It is Life--
that is pregnant with vital energy, and capable of infinite
transmutations. All things are produced by it; all is again resolved
into it; it supports all things; it surrounds the world; it has
infinitude; it has eternal motion. Thus did this philosopher reason,
comparing the world with our own living existence,--which he took to be
air,--an imperishable principle of life. He thus advanced a step on
Thales, since he regarded the world not after the analogy of an
imperfect seed-state, but that of the highest condition of life,--the
human soul. [Footnote: Ritter, b. iii. c. 3.] And he attempted to refer
to one general law all the transformations of the first simple substance
into its successive states, for the cause of change is the eternal
motion of the air.
[Sidenote: Diogenes. Air and soul identical.]
Diogenes of Apollonia, in Crete, one of his disciples, born B.C. 460,
also believed that air was the principle of the universe, but he imputed
to it an intellectual energy, yet without recognizing any distinction
between mind and matter. [Footnote: Diog. Laert., ii. 3; Bayle, _Dict.
Hist. et Crit._] He made air and the soul identical. "For," says he,
"man and all other animals breathe and live by means of the air, and
therein consists their soul." [Footnote: Ritter, b. iii. c. 3.] And as
it is the primary being from which all is derived, it is necessarily an
eternal and imperishable body; but, as _soul_, it is also endued
with consciousness. Diogenes thus refers the origin of the world to an
intelligent being--to a soul which knows and vivifies. Anaximenes
regarded air as having Life. Diogenes saw in it also Intelligence. Thus
philosophy advanced step by step, though still groping in the dark; for
the origin of all things, according to Diogenes, must exist in
_Intelligence_.
[Sidenote: Heraclitus--Fire the principle of life.]
Heraclitus of Ephesus, classed by Ritter among the Ionian philosophers,
was born B.C. 503. Like others of his school, he sought a physical
ground for all phenomena. The elemental principle he regarded as
_fire_, since all things are convertible into it. In one of its
modifications, this fire, or fluid, self-kindled, permeating every thing
as the soul or principle of life, is endowed with intelligence and
powers of ceaseless activity. "If Anaximenes discovered that he had
within him a power and principle which ruled over all the acts and
functions of his bodily frame, Heraclitus found that there was life
within him which he could not call his own, and yet it was, in the very
highest sense, _himself_, so that without it he would have been a
poor, helpless, isolated creature; a universal life which connected him
with his fellow-men,--with the absolute source and original fountain of
life." [Footnote: Maurice, _Moral and Metaph. Phil._] "He
proclaimed the absolute vitality of nature, the endless change of
matter, the mutability and perishability of all individual things in
contrast with the eternal Being--the supreme harmony which rules over
all." [Footnote: Lewes, _Biog. Hist. of Phil._] To trace the divine
energy of life in all things was the general problem of his philosophy,
and this spirit was akin to the pantheism of the East. But he was one of
the greatest speculative intellects that preceded Plato, and of all the
physical theorists arrived nearest to spiritual truth. He taught the
germs of what was afterwards more completely developed. "From his theory
of perpetual fluxion Plato derived the necessity of seeking a stable
basis for the universal system in his world of ideas." [Footnote: Archer
Butler, series i. lect. v.; Hegel, _Gesch. D. Phil._, i. p. 334.]
Anaxagoras, the most famous of the Ionian philosophers, was born B.C.
500, and belonged to a rich and noble family. Regarding philosophy as
the noblest pursuit of earth, he abandoned his inheritance for the study
of nature. He went to Athens in the most brilliant period of her history,
and had Pericles, Euripides, and Socrates for pupils. He taught that the
great moving force of nature was intellect [Greek: nous]. Intelligence
was the cause of the world and of order, and mind was the principle of
motion; yet this intelligence was not a moral intelligence, but simply
the _primum mobile_--the all-knowing motive force by which the
order of nature is effected. He thus laid the foundation of a new system
which, under the Attic philosophers, sought to explain nature, not by
regarding matter in its different forms, as the cause of all things, but
rather mind, thought, intelligence, which both knows and acts--a grand
conception unrivaled in ancient speculation. This explanation of
material phenomena by intellectual causes was his peculiar merit, and
places him in a very high rank among the thinkers of the world.
Moreover, he recognized the reason as the only faculty by which we
become cognizant of truth, the senses being too weak to discover the
real component particles of things. Like all the great inquirers, he was
impressed with the limited degree of positive knowledge, compared with
what there is to be learned. "Nothing," says he, "can be known; nothing
is certain; sense is limited, intellect is weak, life is short"
[Footnote: Cicero, _Qu. Ac._, i. 12.]--the complaint, not of a
skeptic, but of a man overwhelmed with the sense of his incapacity to
solve the problems which arose before his active mind. [Footnote:
Lucret., lib. i. 834-875.] Anaxagoras thought that this spirit [Greek:
Nous] gave to all those material atoms, which, in the beginning of the
world, lay in disorder, the impulse by which they took the forms of
individual things, and that this impulse was given in a circular direction.
Hence that the sun, moon, and stars, and even the air, are constantly
moving in a circle. [Footnote: Muller, _Hist. Lit. of Greece_,
chap. xvii.]
[Sidenote: Anaximander thought that the Infinite is the origin of
things.]
In the mean time another sect of philosophers arose, who like the
Ionians, sought to explain nature, but by a different method.
Anaximander, born B.C. 610, was one of the original mathematicians of
Greece, yet, like Pythagoras and Thales, speculated on the beginning of
things. His principle was that the _Infinite_ is the origin of all things.
He used the word [Greek: archae] to denote the material out of which
all things were formed, as the everlasting and divine. [Footnote: Arist.,
_Phy_., iii. 4.] The idea of elevating an abstraction into a great
first cause is certainly puerile, nor is it easy to understand his
meaning, other than that the abstract has a higher significance than the
concrete. The speculations of Thales tended toward discovering the
material constitution of the universe, upon an _induction_ from
observed facts, and thus made water to be the origin of all things.
Anaximander, accustomed to view things in the abstract, could not accept
so concrete a thing as water; his speculations tended toward
mathematics, to the science of pure _deduction_. The primary being
is a unity, one in all, comprising within itself the multiplicity of
elements from which all mundane things are composed. It is only in
infinity that the perpetual changes of things can take place. [Footnote:
Diog. Laert., i. 119; Cicero, _Tus. Qu._, i. 16; Tennemann, p. 1,
ch. i. Sec. 86.] This original but obscure thinker prepared the way for
Pythagoras.
[Sidenote: Pythagoras--Number the essence of things.]
[Sidenote: Order and harmony in nature.]
This philosopher and mathematician, born about the year B.C. 570, is one
of the great names of antiquity; but his life is shrouded in dim
magnificence. The old historians paint him as "clothed in robes of
white, his head covered with gold, his aspect grave and majestic, wrapt
in the contemplation of the mysteries of existence, listening to the
music of Homer and Hesiod, or to the harmony of the spheres." [Footnote:
Lewes, _Biog. Hist. Phil._] To him is ascribed the use of the word
_philosopher_ rather than _sophos_, a lover of wisdom, not wise
man. He taught his doctrines to a select few, the members of which
society lived in common, and venerated him as an oracle. His great
doctrine is, that _number_ is the essence of things, by which is
understood the _form_ and not the _matter_ of the sensible.
The elements of numbers are the _odd_ and _even_, the former
being regarded as limited, the latter unlimited. Diogenes Laertius thus
sums up his doctrines, which were that "the _monad_ is--the
beginning of every thing. From the monad proceeds an indefinite
_duad_. From the monad and the duad proceed _numbers_, and from
numbers _signs_, and from these _lines_, of which plain figures
consist. And from plain figures are derived solid bodies, and
from these sensible bodies, of which there are four elements, fire,
water, earth, and air. The world results from a combination of these
elements." [Footnote: Diog. Laert., _Lives of Phil._] All this is
unintelligible or indefinite. We cannot comprehend how the number theory
will account for the production of corporeal magnitude any easier than
we can identify monads with mathematical points. But underlying this
mysticism is the thought that there prevails in the phenomena of nature
a rational _order, harmony_, and conformity to _law_, and that
these laws can be represented by numbers. Number or harmony is the
principle of the universe, and order holds together the world. Like
Anaximander, he passes from the region of physics to metaphysics, and
thus opens a new world of speculation. His method was purely deductive,
and his science mathematical. "The _Infinite_ of Anaximander became
the _One_ of Pythagoras." Assuming that number is the essence of
the world, he deduced that the world is regulated by numerical
proportions, in other words, by a system of laws, and these laws,
regular and harmonious in their operation, _may_ have suggested to
the great mind of Pythagoras, so religious and lofty, the necessity for
an intelligent creator of the universe. It was in moral truth that he
delighted as well as metaphysical, and his life and the lives of his
disciples were disciplined to a severe virtue, as if he recognized in
numbers or order the necessity of a conformity to all law, and saw in
obedience to it both harmony and beauty. But we have no _direct_
and positive evidence of the kind or amount of knowledge which this
great intellect acquired. All that can be affirmed is, that he was a man
of extensive attainments; that he was a great mathematician, that he was
very religious, that he devoted himself to doing good, that he placed
happiness in the virtues of the soul or the perfect science of numbers,
and made a likeness to the Deity the object of all endeavors. He
believed that the soul was incorporeal, [Footnote: Ritter, b. iv. chap
i.] and is put into the body by the means of number and harmonical
relation, and thus subject to a divine regulation. Every thing was
regarded by him in a moral light. The order of the universe is only a
harmonical development of the first principle of all things to virtue
and wisdom. [Footnote: Our knowledge of Pythagoras is chiefly derived
from Aristotle. Both Ritter and Brandis have presented his views
elaborately, but with more clearness than was to be expected.] He
attached great value to music, as a subject of precise mathematical
calculation, and an art which has a great effect on the affections.
Hence morals and mathematics were linked together in his mind. As the
heavens were ordered in consonance with number, they must move in
eternal order. "The spheres" revolved in harmonious order around the
great centre of light and heat--the sun--"the throne of the elemental
world." Hence the doctrine of "the music of the spheres." _Pythagoras
ad harmoniam canere mundum existimat_. [Footnote: Cicero, _De Nat.
D_., iii. ii. 27.] The tendency of his speculations, obscure as they
are to us, was to raise the soul to a contemplation of order and beauty
and law, in the material universe, and hence to the contemplation of a
supreme intelligence reigning in justice and truth. Justice and truth
became therefore paramount virtues, to be practiced, to be sought as the
great end of life, allied with the order of the universe, and with
mathematical essences--the attributes of the deity, the sublime unity
which he adored.
The Ionic philosophers, and the Pythagoreans, sought to find the nature
or first principle of all things in the elements, or in numbers. But the
Eleatics went beyond the realm of physics to pure metaphysical
inquiries. This is the second stage in the history of philosophy--an
idealistic pantheism, which disregarded the sensible and maintained that
the source of all truth is independent of sense.
[Sidenote: Xenophanes.--God the first great cause.]
The founder of this school was Xenophanes, born in Colophon, an Ionian
city of Asia Minor, from which, being expelled, he wandered over Sicily
as a rhapsodist or minstrel, reciting his elegiac poetry on the loftiest
truths; and at last came to Elea, about the year 536, where he settled.
The great subject of his inquiries was God himself--the first great
cause--the supreme intelligence of the universe. "From the principle
_ex nihilo nihil fit_, he concluded that nothing could pass from
non-existence to existence. All things that exist are eternal and
immutable. God, as the most perfect essence, is eternally One,
unalterable, neither finite nor infinite, neither movable nor immovable,
and not to be represented under any human semblance." [Footnote:
Tennemann, _Hist. of Phil._, p. 1, Section 98.] What a great
stride was this! Whence did he derive his opinions? He starts with the
proposition that God is an all-powerful being, and denies all beginning
of being, and hence infers that God must be from eternity. From this
truth he advances to deny all multiplicity. A plurality of gods is
impossible. With these sublime views--the unity and eternity and
omnipotence of God--he boldly attacked the popular errors of his day. He
denounced the transference to the deity of the human form; he inveighed
against Homer and Hesiod; he ridiculed the doctrine of migration of
souls. Thus he sings,--
"Such things of the gods are related by Homer and Hesiod,
As would be shame and abiding disgrace to mankind,--
Promises broken, and thefts, and the one deceiving the other."
[Footnote: See Ritter, on Xenophanes. See note 20, in Archer Butler,
series i. lect vi.]
And, again, respecting anthropomorphic representations of the Deity,--
"But men foolishly think that gods are born like as men are,
And have, too, a dress like their own, and their voice and their figure
But there's but one God alone, the greatest of gods and of mortals,
Neither in body, to mankind resembling, neither in ideas."
God seen in all the manifestations of nature.
[Sidenote: God seen in all manifestations of nature.]
[Sidenote: He sought to create a knowledge of God.]
Such were his sublime meditations. He believed in the _One_, which
is God; but this all-pervading, unmoved, undivided being was not a
personal God, nor a moral governor, but the deity pervading all space.
He could not separate God from the world, nor could he admit the
existence of world which is not God. He was a monotheist, but his
monotheism was pantheism. He saw God in all the manifestations of
nature. This did not satisfy him, nor resolve his doubts, and he
therefore confessed that reason could not compass the exalted aims of
philosophy. But there was no cynicism in his doubt. It was the soul-
sickening consciousness that Reason was incapable of solving the mighty
questions that he burned to know. There was no way to arrive at the
truth, "for," as he said, "error is spread over all things." It was not
disdain of knowledge, it was the combat of contradictory opinions that
oppressed him. He could not solve the questions pertaining to God. What
uninstructed reason can? "Canst thou by searching find out God, canst
thou know the Almighty unto perfection." What was impossible to Job, was
not possible to him. But he had attained a recognition of the unity and
perfections of God, and this conviction he would spread abroad, and tear
down the superstitions which hid the face of truth. I have great
admiration of this philosopher, so sad, so earnest, so enthusiastic,
wandering from city to city, indifferent to money, comfort, friends,
fame, that he might kindle the knowledge of God. This was a lofty aim
indeed for philosophy in that age. It was a higher mission than that of
Homer, [Footnote: Lewes has some shallow remarks on this point, although
spirited and readable. Ritter is more earnest.] great as his was, but
not so successful.
Parmenides of Elea, born about the year B.C. 536, followed out the
system of Xenophanes, the central idea of which was the existence of
God. With him the central idea was the notion of _being_. Being is
uncreated and unchangeable; the fullness of all being is _thought_;
the _All_ is thought and intelligence. He maintained the uncertainty
of knowledge; but meant the knowledge derived through the senses.
He did not deny the certainty of reason. He was the first who drew
a distinction between knowledge obtained by the senses, and that
obtained through the reason; and thus he anticipated the doctrine of
innate ideas. From the uncertainty of knowledge derived through the
senses, he deduced the twofold system of true and apparent knowledge.
[Footnote: Prof. Brandis's article in Smith's _Dictionary_.]
[Sidenote: Zeno introduces a new method.]
Zeno of Elea, the friend and pupil of Parmenides, born B.C. 500, brought
nothing new to the system, but invented _Dialectics_, that logic
which afterwards became so powerful in the hands of Plato and Aristotle,
and so generally admired among the schoolmen. It seeks to establish
truth by refuting error by the _reductio ad absurdum_. While
Parmenides sought to establish the doctrine of the _One_, Zeno
proved the non-existence of the _Many_. He denied that appearances
were real existences, but did not deny existences. It was the mission of
Zeno to establish the doctrines of his master. But, in order to convince
his listeners, he was obliged to use a new method of argument. So he
carried on his argumentation by question and answer, and was, therefore,
the first who used dialogue as a medium of philosophical communication.
[Footnote: Cousin, _Nouveaux Fragments Philosophiques_.]
[Sidenote: Empedocles.--Love the moving cause of all things.]
Empedocles, born B.C. 444, like others of the Eleatics, complained of
the imperfection of the senses, and looked for truth only in reason. He
regarded truth as a perfect unity, ruled by love,--the only true force,
the one moving cause of all things,--the first creative power by whom
the world was formed. Thus "God is love," a sublime doctrine which
philosophy revealed to the Greeks.
[Sidenote: The loftiness of the Eleatic philosophers.]
Thus did the Eleatic philosophers speculate almost contemporaneously
with the Ionians, on the beginning of things and the origin of
knowledge, taking different grounds, and attempting to correct the
representations of sense by the notions of reason. But both schools,
although they did not establish many truths, raised an inquisitive
spirit and awakened freedom of thought and inquiry. They raised up
workmen for more enlightened times, even as scholastic inquirers in the
Middle Ages prepared the way for the revival of philosophy on sounder
principles. They were all men of remarkable elevation of character as
well as genius. They hated superstitions and attacked the
Anthropomorphism of their day. They handled gods and goddesses with
allegorizing boldness, and hence were often persecuted by the people.
They did not establish moral truths by scientific processes, but they
set examples of lofty disdain of wealth and factitious advantages, and
devoted themselves with holy enthusiasm to the solution of the great
questions which pertain to God and nature. Thales won the respect of his
countrymen by devotion to studies. Pythagoras spent twenty-two years in
Egypt to learn its science. Xenophanes wandered over Sicily as a
rhapsodist of truth. Parmenides, born to wealth and splendor, forsook
the feverish pursuit of sensual enjoyments to contemplate "the quiet and
still air of delightful studies." Zeno declined all worldly honors to
diffuse the doctrines of his master. Heraclitus refused the chief
magistracy of Ephesus that he might have leisure to explore the depths
of his own nature. Anaxagoras allowed his patrimony to run to waste in
order to solve problems. "To philosophy," said he, "I owe my worldly
ruin and my soul's prosperity." They were, without exception, the
greatest and best men of their times. They laid the foundation of the
beautiful temple which was constructed after they were dead, in which
both physics and psychology reached the dignity of science. [Footnote:
Archer Butler in his lecture on the Eleatic school follows closely, and
expounds clearly, the views of Ritter.]
Nevertheless, these great men, lofty as were their inquiries, and
blameless their lives, had not established any system, nor any theories
which were incontrovertible. They had simply speculated, and the world
ridiculed their speculations. They were one-sided; and, when pushed out
to their extreme logical sequence, were antagonistic to each other,
which had a tendency to produce doubt and skepticism. Men denied the
existence of the gods, and the grounds of certainty fell away from the
human mind.
[Sidenote: Circumstances which favoured the Sophists.]
[Sidenote: Character of the Sophists.]
This spirit of skepticism was favored by the tide of worldliness and
prosperity which followed the Persian War. Athens became a great centre
of art, of taste, of elegance, and of wealth. Politics absorbed the
minds of the people. Glory and splendor were followed by corruption of
morals and the pursuit of material pleasures. Philosophy went out of
fashion, since it brought no outward and tangible good. More scientific
studies were pursued--those which could be applied to purposes of
utility and material gains; even, as in our day, geology, chemistry,
mechanics, engineering, having reference to the practical wants of men,
command talent, and lead to certain reward. In Athens, rhetoric,
mathematics, and natural history supplanted rhapsodies and speculations
on God and Providence. Renown and wealth could only be secured by
readiness and felicity of speech, and that was most valued which brought
immediate reward, like eloquence. Men began to practice eloquence as an
_art_, and to employ it in furthering their interests. They made
special pleadings, since it was their object to gain their point, at any
expense of law and justice. Hence they taught that nothing was immutably
right, but only so by convention. They undermined all confidence in
truth and religion by teaching its uncertainty. They denied to men even
the capability of arriving at truth. They practically affirmed the cold
and cynical doctrine that there is nothing better for a man than that he
should eat and drink. _Qui bono_, the cry of the Epicureans, of the
latter Romans, and of most men in a period of great outward prosperity,
was the popular inquiry,--who shall show us any good?--how can we become
rich, strong, honorable?--this was the spirit of that class of public
teachers who arose in Athens when art and eloquence and wealth and
splendor were at their height in the fifth century before Christ, and
when the elegant Pericles was the leader of fashion and of political
power.
[Sidenote: Power and popularity of the Sophists.]
[Sidenote: Influence of the Sophists.]
These men were the Sophists--rhetorical men who taught the children of
the rich; worldly men who sought honor and power; frivolous men,
trifling with philosophical ideas; skeptical men, denying all certainty
to truths; men who, as teachers, added nothing to the realm of science,
but who yet established certain dialectical rules useful to later
philosophers. They were a wealthy, powerful, honored class, not much
esteemed by men of thought, but sought out as very successful teachers
of rhetoric. They were full of logical tricks, and contrived to throw
ridicule upon profound inquiries. They taught also mathematics,
astronomy, philology, and natural history with success. They were
polished men of society, not profound nor religious, but very brilliant
as talkers, and very ready in wit and sophistry. And some of them were
men of great learning and talent, like Democritus, Leucippus, and
Gorgias. They were not pretenders and quacks; they were skeptics who
denied subjective truths, and labored for outward advantage. They were
men of general information, skilled in subtleties, of powerful social
and political connections, and were generally selected as ambassadors on
difficult missions. They taught the art of disputation, and sought
systematic methods of proof. They thus prepared the way for a more
perfect philosophy than that taught by the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, or
the Elentae, since they showed the vagueness of their inquiries,
conjectural rather than scientific. They had no doctrines in common.
They were the barristers of their age, _paid_ to make the "worse
appear the better reason," yet not teachers of immorality any more than
the lawyers of our day,--men of talents, the intellectual leaders of
society. If they did not advance positive truths, they were useful in
the method they created. They taught the art of disputation. They
doubtless quibbled when they had a bad cause to present. They brought
out the truth more forcibly when they defended a good cause. They had no
hostility to truth; they only doubted whether it could be reached in the
realm of psychological inquiries, and sought to apply it to their own
purposes, or rather to distort it in order to gain a case. They are not
a class of men whom I admire, as I do the old sages they ridiculed, but
they were not without their use in the development of philosophy.
[Footnote: Grote has a fine chapter on the Sophists (part ii. ch. 67).]
The Sophists also rendered a service to literature by giving
definiteness to language, and creating style in prose writing.
Protagoras investigated the principles of accurate composition; Prodicus
busied himself with inquiries into the significance of words; Gorgias
proposed a captivating style. He gave symmetry to the structure of
sentences.
[Sidenote: Socrates.]
[Sidenote: The method of Socrates.]
[Sidenote: Ethical inquiries of Socrates.]
The ridicule and skepticism of the Sophists brought out the great powers
of Socrates, to whom philosophy is probably more indebted than to any
man who ever lived, not so much for a perfect system, but for the
impulse he gave to philosophical inquiries, and his successful exposure
of error. He inaugurated a new era. Born in Athens in the year 470 B.C.,
the son of a poor sculptor, he devoted his life to the search for truth,
for its own sake, and sought to base it on immutable foundations. He was
the mortal enemy of the Sophists, whom he encountered, as Pascal did the
Jesuits, with wit, irony, puzzling questions, and remorseless logic.
Like the earlier philosophers, he disdained wealth, ease, and comfort,
but with greater devotion than they, since he lived in a more corrupt
age, when poverty was a disgrace and misfortune a crime, when success
was the standard of merit, and every man was supposed to be the arbiter
of his own fortune, ignoring that Providence who so often refuses the
race to the swift and the battle to the strong. He was what in our time
would be called eccentric. He walked barefooted, meanly clad, and withal
not over cleanly, seeking public places, disputing with every body
willing to talk with him, making every body ridiculous, especially if
one assumed airs of wisdom or knowledge,--an exasperating opponent,
since he wove a web around a man from which he could not be extricated,
and then exposed him to ridicule, in the wittiest city of the world. He
attacked every body, and yet was generally respected, since it was
_errors_ and not the person, _opinions_ rather than vices; and
this he did with bewitching eloquence and irresistible fascination; so
that, though he was poor and barefooted, a Silenus in appearance, with
thick lips, upturned nose, projecting eyes, unwieldy belly, he was
sought by Alcibiades and admired by Aspasia. Even Xantippe, a beautiful
young woman, very much younger than he, a woman fond of the comforts and
pleasures of life, was willing to be his wife, even if she did
afterwards torment him, when the _res angusta domi_ disenchanted
her from the music of his voice and the divinity of his nature. "I have
heard Pericles," said the most dissipated and voluptuous man in Athens,
"and other excellent orators, but was not moved by them; while this
Marsyas--this Satyr--so affects me that the life I lead is hardly worth
living, and I stop my ears, as from the Syrens, and flee as fast as
possible, that I may not sit down and grow old in listening to his
talk." He learned his philosophy from no one, and struck out an entirely
new path. He declared his own ignorance, and sought to convince other
people of theirs. He did not seek to reveal truth so much as to expose
error. And yet it was his object to attain correct ideas as to moral
obligations. He was the first who recognized natural right, and held
that virtue and vice are inseparably united. He proclaimed the
sovereignty of virtue, and the immutability of justice. He sought to
delineate and enforce the practical duties of life. His great object was
the elucidation of morals, and he was the first to teach ethics
systematically, and from the immutable principles of moral obligation.
Moral certitude was the lofty platform from which he surveyed the world,
and upon which, as a rock, he rested in the storms of life. Thus he was
a reformer and a moralist. It was his ethical doctrines which were most
antagonistic to the age, and the least appreciated. He was a profoundly
religious man, recognized Providence, and believed in the immortality of
the soul. From the abyss of doubt, which succeeded the speculations of
the first philosophers, he would plant grounds of certitude--a ladder
on which he would mount to the sublime regions of absolute truth. He did
not presume to inquire into the Divine essence, yet he believed that the
gods were omniscient and omnipresent, that they ruled by the law of
goodness, and that, in spite of their multiplicity, there was unity--a
supreme intelligence that governed the world. Hence he was hated by the
Sophists, who denied the certainty of arriving at the knowledge of God.
From the comparative worthlessness of the body he deduced the
immortality of the soul. With him, the end of life was reason and
intelligence. He proved the existence of God by the order and harmony of
nature, which belief was certain. He endeavored to connect the moral
with the religious consciousness, and then he proclaimed his convictions
for the practical welfare of society. In this light Socrates stands out
the grandest personage of pagan antiquity,--as a moralist, as a teacher
of ethics, as a man who recognized the Divine.
[Sidenote: The mission of Socrates.]
[Sidenote: The great aim of the Socratic method.]
So far as he was concerned in the development of Grecian philosophy
proper, he was probably inferior to some of his disciples. Yet he gave a
turning-point to a new period, when he awakened the _idea_ of
knowledge, and was the founder of the theory of scientific knowledge,
since he separated the legitimate bounds of inquiry, and was thus the
precursor of Bacon and Pascal. He did not attempt to make physics
explain metaphysics, nor metaphysics the phenomena of the natural world.
And he only reasoned from what was assumed to be true and invariable. He
was a great pioneer of philosophy, since he resorted to inductive
methods of proof, and gave general definiteness to ideas. [Footnote:
Arist., _Metaph_., xiii. 4.] He gave a new method, and used great
precision of language. Although he employed induction, it was his aim to
withdraw the mind from the contemplation of nature, and to fix it on its
own phenomena,--to look inward rather than outward, as carried out so
admirably by Plato. The previous philosophers had given their attention
to external nature; he gave up speculations about material phenomena,
and directed his inquiries solely to the nature of knowledge. And, as he
considered knowledge to be identical with virtue, he speculated on
ethical questions mainly, and the method which he taught was that by
which alone man could become better and wiser. To know one's self, in
other words, "that the proper study of mankind is man," he was the first
to proclaim. He did not disdain the subjects which chiefly interested
the Sophists,--astronomy, rhetoric, physics; but he discussed moral
questions, such as, what is piety? what is the just and the unjust? what
is temperance? what is courage? what is the character fit for a
citizen?--and such like ethical points. And he discussed them in a
peculiar manner, in a method peculiarly his own. "Professing ignorance,
he put perhaps this question--What is law? It was familiar and was
answered off-hand. Socrates, having got the answer, then put fresh
questions applicable to specific cases, to which the respondent was
compelled to give an answer inconsistent with the first, thus showing
that the _definition_ was too narrow or too wide, or defective in
some essential condition. [Footnote: Grote, part ii. ch. 68.] The
respondent then amended his answer; but this was a prelude to other
questions, which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with the
amendment; and the respondent, after many attempts to disentangle
himself, was obliged to plead guilty to his inconsistencies, with an
admission that he could make no satisfactory answer to the original
inquiry which had at first appeared so easy." Thus, by this system of
cross-examination, he showed the intimate connection between the
dialectic method, and the logical distribution of particulars into
species and genera. The discussion first turns upon the meaning of some
generic term; the queries bring the answers into collision with various
particulars which it ought not to comprehend, or which it ought to
comprehend, but does not. He broke up the one into many by his
analytical string of questions, which was a novel mode of argument. This
was the method which he invented, and by which he separated _real_
knowledge from the _conceit_ of knowledge, and led to precision in
the use of definitions. It was thus that he exposed the false, without
aiming even to teach the true; for he generally professed ignorance, and
put himself in the attitude of a learner, while he made by his cross-
examinations the man from whom he apparently sought knowledge to be as
ignorant as himself, or, still worse, absolutely ridiculous. Thus he
pulled away all the foundations on which a false science had been
erected, and indicated the way by which alone the true could be
established. Here he was not unlike Bacon, who pointed out the way that
science could be advanced, without founding any school or advocating any
system; but he was unlike Bacon in the object of his inquiries. Bacon
was disgusted with ineffective _logical_ speculations, and Socrates
with ineffective _physical_ researches. [Footnote: Archer Butler,
s. i. 1. vii.] He never suffered a general term to remain undetermined,
but applied it at once to particulars, and by questions the purport of
which was not comprehended. It was not by positive teaching, but by
exciting scientific impulse in the minds of others, or stirring up the
analytical faculties, which constitute his originality. "The Socratic
dialectics, clearing away," says Grote, [Footnote: Grote, part ii. ch.
68; Maurice, _Ancient Philosophy_, p. 119.] "from the mind its mist
of fancied knowledge, and, laying bare the real ignorance, produced an
immediate effect like the touch of the torpedo; the newly created
consciousness of ignorance was humiliating and painful, yet it was
combined with a yearning after truth never before experienced. Such
intellectual quickening, which could never commence until the mind had
been disabused of its original illusion of false knowledge, was
considered by Socrates not merely as the index and precursor, but as the
indisputable condition of future progress." It was the aim of Socrates
to force the seekers after truth into the path of inductive
generalization, whereby alone trustworthy conclusions could be formed.
He thus improved the method of speculative minds, and struck out from
other minds that fire which sets light to original thought and
stimulates analytical inquiry. He was a religious and intellectual
missionary preparing the way for the Platos and Aristotles of the
succeeding age by his severe dialectics. This was his mission, and he
declared it by talking. He did not lecture; he conversed. For more than
thirty years he discoursed on the principles of morality, until he
arrayed against himself enemies who caused him to be put to death, for
his teachings had undermined the popular system which the Sophists
accepted and practiced. He probably might have been acquitted if he had
chosen it, but he did not wish to live after his powers of usefulness
had passed away. He opened to science new matter and a new method, as a
basis for future philosophical systems. He was a "colloquial
dialectician," such as this world has never seen, and may never see
again. He was a skeptic respecting physics, but as far as man and
society are concerned, he thought that every man might and ought to know
what justice, temperance, courage, piety, patriotism, etc., were, and
unless he did know what they were he would not be just, temperate, etc.
He denied that men can know that on which they have bestowed no pains,
or practice what they do not know. "The method of Socrates survives
still in some of the dialogues of Plato, and is a process of eternal
value and universal application. There is no man whose notions have not
been first got together by spontaneous, unartificial associations,
resting upon forgotten particulars, blending together disparities or
inconsistencies, and having in his mind old and familiar phrases and
oracular propositions of which he has never rendered to himself an
account; and there is no man who has not found it a necessary branch of
self-education to break up, analyze, and reconstruct these ancient
mental compounds." [Footnote: Grote has written very ably, and at
unusual length, respecting Socrates and his philosophy. Thirlwall has
also reviewed Hegel and other German authors on Socrates' condemnation.
Ritter has a full chapter of great value. See Donaldson's continuation
of Muller. The original sources of knowledge respecting Socrates are
found chiefly in Plato and Xenophon. Cicero may be consulted in
his _Tusculan Questions_.] The services which he rendered to
philosophy, as enumerated by Tennemann, [Footnote: Tennemann;
Schliermacker, _Essay on the Worth of Socrates as a Philosopher_,
translated by Bishop Thirlwall, and reprinted in Dr. Wigger's _Life of
Socrates_.] "are twofold,--negative and positive: _Negative_,
inasmuch as he avoided all vain discussions; combated mere speculative
reasoning on substantial grounds, and had the wisdom to acknowledge
ignorance when necessary, but without attempting to determine accurately
what is capable, and what is not, of being accurately known.
_Positive_, inasmuch as he examined with great ability the ground
directly submitted to our understanding, and of which man is the
centre."
Socrates cannot be said to have founded a school, like Xenophanes. He
did not bequeath a system of doctrines; he rather attempted to awaken
inquiry, for which his method was admirably adapted. He had his
admirers, who followed in the path which he suggested. Among these were
Aristippus, Antisthenes, Euclid of Megara, Phaedo of Elis, and Plato, all
of whom were disciples of Socrates, and founders of schools. Some only
partially adopted his method, and all differed from each other. Nor can
it be said that all of them advanced science. Aristippus, the founder of
the Cyreniac School, was a sort of Epicurean, teaching that pleasure was
the end of life. Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynics, was both
virtuous and arrogant, placing the supreme good in virtue, but despising
speculative science, and maintaining that no man can refute the opinions
of another. He made it a virtue to be ragged, hungry, and cold, like the
ancient monks; an austere, stern, bitter, reproachful man, who affected
to despise all pleasures, like his own disciple Diogenes, who lived in a
tub, and carried on a war between the mind and body--brutal, scornful,
proud. To men who maintained that science was impossible, philosophy is
not much indebted, although they were disciples of Socrates. Euclid
merely gave a new edition of the Eleatic doctrines, and Phaedo speculated
on the oneness of the good.
[Sidenote: Plato.]
[Sidenote: His education and travels.]
[Sidenote: He adopts the Socratic method.]
It was not till Plato arose that a more complete system of philosophy
was founded. He was born of noble Athenian parents B.C. 429, the year
that Pericles died, and the second year of the Peloponnesian War, and
the most active period of Grecian thought. He had a severe education,
studying poetry, music, rhetoric, and blending these with philosophy. He
was only twenty when he found out Socrates, with whom he remained ten
years, and from whom he was separated only by death. He then went on his
travels, visiting every thing worth seeing in his day, especially in
Egypt. When he returned, he commenced to teach the doctrines of his
master, which he did, like him, gratuitously, in a garden near Athens,
planted with lofty plane-trees, and adorned with temples and statues.
This was called the Academy, and gave a name to his system of
philosophy. And it is this only with which we have to do. It is not the
calm, serious, meditative, isolated man that I would present, but _his
contribution_ to the developments of philosophy on the principles of
his master. And surely no man ever made a richer contribution. He may
not have had the originality or breadth of Socrates, but he was more
profound. He was preeminently a great thinker--a great logician--skilled
in dialectics, and his "Dialogues" are such exercises of dialectical
method that the ancients were divided whether he was a skeptic or a
dogmatist. He adopted the Socratic method, and enlarged it. "Socrates
relied on inductive reasoning, and on definitions, as the two principles
of investigation. Definitions form the basis of all philosophy. To know
a thing, you must know what it is not. Plato added a more efficient
process of analysis and synthesis, of generalization and
classification." [Footnote: Lewes, _Biog. Hist. of Philos_.]
"Analysis," continues the same author, "as insisted on by Plato, is the
decomposition of the whole into its separate parts--is seeing the
_one_ in many. Definitions were to Plato, what general or abstract
ideas were to later metaphysicians. The individual thing was transitory;
the abstract idea was eternal. Only concerning the latter could
philosophy occupy itself. Socrates, insisting on proper definitions, had
no conception of the classification of those definitions which must
constitute philosophy. Plato, by the introduction of this process,
shifted philosophy from the ground of inquiries into man and society,
which exclusively occupied Socrates, to that of dialectics." Plato was
also distinguished for skill in composition. Dionysius of Halicarnassus
classes him with Herodotus and Demosthenes in the perfection of his
style, which is characterized by great harmony and rhythm, as well as
the variety of elegant figures. [Footnote: See Donaldson's quotations,
_Hist. Lit. of Greece_, vol. ii. p. 257.]
[Sidenote: His doctrines.]
[Sidenote: The end of science is the contemplation of truth.]
Plato made philosophy to consist in the discussion of general terms, or
abstract ideas. General terms were synonymous with real existences, and
these were the only objects of philosophy. These were called
_Ideas_; and ideas are the basis of his system, or rather the
subject matter of dialectics. He was a Realist, that is, he maintained
that every general term, or abstract idea, has a real and independent
existence. Here he probably was indebted to Pythagoras, for Plato was a
master of the whole realm of philosophical speculation; but his
conception of _ideas_ is a great advance on the conception of
_numbers_. He was taught by Socrates that beyond this world of
sense, there was the world of eternal truth, and that there were certain
principles concerning which there could be no dispute. The soul
apprehends the idea of goodness, greatness, etc. It is in the celestial
world that we are to find the realm of ideas. Now God is the supreme
idea. To know God should be the great aim of life. We know him by the
desire which like feels for like. The divinity within feels for the
divinity revealed in beauty, or any other abstract idea. The longing of
the soul for beauty is _Love_. Love then is the bond which unites
the human to the divine. Beauty is not revealed by harmonious outlines
which appeal to the senses, but is _Truth_. It is divinity. Beauty,
truth, love, these are God, the supreme desire of the soul to
comprehend, and by the contemplation of which the mortal soul sustains
itself, and by perpetual meditation becomes participant in immortality.
The communion with God presupposes immortality. The search for the
knowledge of God is the great end of life. Wisdom is the consecration of
the soul to the search; and this is effected by dialectics, for only out
of dialectics can correct knowledge come. But man, immersed in the flux
of sensualities, can never fully attain this high excellence--the
knowledge of God, the object of all rational inquiry. Hence the
imperfection of all human knowledge. The supreme good is attainable; it
is not attained. God is the immutable good, and justice the rule of the
universe. "The vital principle of his philosophy is to show that true
science is the knowledge of the good; is the eternal contemplation or
truth, or ideas; and though man may not be able to apprehend it in its
unity, because he is subject to the restraints of the body, he is,
nevertheless, permitted to recognize it, imperfectly, by calling to mind
the eternal measure of existence, by which he is in his origin
connected." [Footnote: Ritter, _Hist, of Phil_., b. viii. p. 2,
chap. i.] He was unable to find a transition from his world of ideas to
that of sense, and his philosophy, vague and mystical, though severely
logical, diverts the mind from the investigations of actual life--from
that which is the object of experience.
[Sidenote: The object of Plato's inquiries.]
The writings of Plato have come down to us complete, and have been
admired by all ages for their philosophical acuteness, as well as beauty
of language. He was not the first to use the form of dialogue, but he
handled it with greater mastery than any one who preceded him, or has
come after him, and all with a view to bring his hearers to a
consciousness of knowledge or ignorance. He regarded wisdom as the
attribute of the godhead; that philosophy is the necessity of the
intellectual man, and the greatest good to which he can attain. This
wisdom presupposes, however, a communion with the divine. He regarded
the soul as immortal and indestructible. He maintained that neither
happiness nor virtue can consist in the attempt to satisfy our unbridled
desires; that virtue is purely a matter of intelligence; that passions
disturb the moral economy.
[Sidenote: God the immutable good.]
"When we review the doctrines of Plato, it is impossible to deny," says
Hitter, "that they are pervaded with a grand view of life and the
universe. This is the noble thought which inspired him to say, that God
is the constant and immutable good; the world is good in a state of
becoming, and the human soul that in and through which the good in the
world is to be consummated. In his sublimer conception, he shows himself
the worthy disciple of Socrates. His merit lies chiefly in having
advanced certain distinct and precise rules for the Socratic method, and
in insisting, with a perfect consciousness of its importance, upon the
law of science, that to be able to descend from the higher to the lower
ideas by a principle of the reason, and reciprocally from the
multiplicity of the lower to the higher, is indispensable to the perfect
possession of any knowledge. He thus imparted to this method a more
liberal character. While he adopted many of the opinions of his
predecessors, and gave due consideration to the results of the earlier
philosophy, he did not allow himself to be disturbed by the mass of
conflicting theories, but breathed into them the life-giving breath of
unity. He may have erred in his attempts to determine the nature of
good; still he pointed out to all who aspire to a knowledge of the
divine nature, an excellent road by which they may arrive at it."
Plato is very much admired by the Germans, who look upon him as the
incarnation of dialectical power; but it were to be hoped that, some
day, these great metaphysicians may make a clearer exposition of his
doctrines, and of his services to philosophy, than they have as yet
done. To me, Ritter, Brandis, and all the great authorities, are
obscure. But that Plato was one of the greatest lights of the ancient
world, there can be no reasonable doubt. Nor is it probable that, as a
dialectician, he has ever been surpassed; while his purity of life, and
his lofty inquiries, and his belief in God and immortality, make him, in
an ethical point of view, the most worthy of the disciples of Socrates.
He was to the Greeks what Kant was to the Germans, and these two great
thinkers resemble each other in the structure of their minds and their
relations to society.
The ablest part of the lectures of Archer Butler of Dublin, is devoted
to the Platonic philosophy. It is a criticism and an eulogium. No modern
writer has written more enthusiastically of what he considers the
crowning excellence of the Greek philosophy. The dialectics of Plato,
his ideal theory, his physics, his psychology, and his ethics, are most
ably discussed, and in the spirit of a loving and eloquent disciple. He
represents the philosophy which he so much admires as a contemplation
of, and the tendency to, the absolute and eternal good. The good is
enthroned by Plato in majesty supreme at the summit of the whole
universe, and the sensible world is regarded as a development of supreme
perfection in an inferior and transitory form. Nor are ideas
abstractions, as some suppose, but archetypal conceptions of the divine
mind itself--the eternal laws and reasons of things. The sensible world
is regarded as an imperfect image of ideal perfection, yet the
uncertainty of physical researches is candidly admitted. The discovery
of theological and moral truth, is the great object even of the
"_Timoeus_." Hence the physics of Plato have a theological
character--are mathematical rather than experimental. The psychology
represents the body as the prison of the soul, somewhat after the spirit
of oriental theogonists, and the aim of virtue is to preserve the
distinctness of both, and realize liberty in bonds. The doctrine of
preexistence is maintained, as well as a future state. In the ethics,
the perfection of the human soul--the perfection which it may attain--is
distinctly unfolded, and also the unity of the great ideas of the
beautiful, just, and good. The "_Phoedo_" enforces the supremacy
of wisdom, and the "_Philebus_" the "_summum bonum_." _Love_ is
the aspiration after a communion with perfection. The chief
excellence of the philosophy which Plato taught, consists in the
immutable basis assigned to the principles of moral truth; the defects
are a want of distinct apprehension of the claims of divine justice in
consequence of human sin, and an indirect discouragement of active
virtue.
The great disciple of Plato was Aristotle, and he carried on the
philosophical movement which Socrates had started to the highest limit
that it ever reached in the ancient world. He was born at Stagira B.C.
384, of wealthy parents, and early evinced an insatiable thirst for
knowledge. When Plato returned from Sicily he joined his disciples, and
was his pupil for seventeen years, at Athens. On the death of Plato, he
went on his travels, and became the tutor of Alexander the Great, and
B.C. 335, returned to Athens, after an absence of twelve years, and set
up a school, and taught in the Lyceum. He taught while walking up and
down the shady walks which surrounded it, from which he obtained the
name of Peripatetic, which has clung to his name and philosophy. His
school had a great celebrity, and from it proceeded illustrious
philosophers, statesmen, historians, and orators. He taught thirteen
years, during which he composed most of his greater works. He not only
wrote on dialectics and logic, but also on physics in its various
departments. His work on "The History of Animals" was deemed so
important that his royal pupil presented him with eight hundred talents--
an enormous sum--for the collection of materials. He also wrote on
ethics and politics, history and rhetoric; letters, poems, and speeches,
three fourths of which are lost. He was one of the most voluminous
writers of antiquity, and probably the most learned man whose writings
have come down to us. Nor has any one of the ancients exercised upon the
thinking of succeeding ages so great an influence. He was an oracle
until the revival of learning.
[Sidenote: Genius of Aristotle.]
"Aristotle," says Hegel, "penetrated into the whole mass, and into every
department of the universe of things, and subjected to the comprehension
its scattered wealth; and the greater number of the philosophical
sciences owe to him their separation and commencement." [Footnote: Hagel
is said to have comprehended Aristotle better than any modern writer,
and the best work on his philosophy is by him.] He is also the father of
the history of philosophy, since he gives an historical review of the
way in which the subject has been hitherto treated by the earlier
philosophers.
"Plato made the external world the region of the incomplete and bad, of
the contradictory and the false, and recognized absolute truth only in
the eternal immutable ideas. Aristotle laid down the proposition that
the idea, which cannot of itself fashion itself into reality, is
powerless, and has only a potential existence, and that it becomes a
living reality, only by realizing itself in a creative manner by means
of its own energy." [Footnote: Adolph Stahr, Oldenburg.]
[Sidenote: Vast attainments of Aristotle.]
But there can be no doubt as to his marvelous power of systematization.
Collecting together all the results of ancient speculation, he so
elaborated them into a coordinate system, that for two thousand years he
reigned supreme in the schools. In a literary point of view, Plato was
doubtless his superior, but Plato was a poet making philosophy divine
and musical; but Aristotle's investigations spread over a far wider
range. He wrote also on politics, natural history, and ethics, in so
comprehensive and able manner, as to prove his claim to be one of the
greatest intellects of antiquity, the most subtle and the most patient.
He differed from Plato chiefly in relation to the doctrine of ideas,
without however resolving the difficulty which divided them. As he made
matter to be the eternal ground of phenomena, he reduced the notion of
it to a precision it never before enjoyed, and established thereby a
necessary element in human science. But being bound to matter, he did
not soar, as Plato did, into the higher regions of speculation; nor did
he entertain as lofty views of God, or of immortality. Neither did he
have as high an ideal of human life. His definition of the highest good
was a perfect practical activity in a perfect life.
With Aristotle closed the great Socratic movement in the history of
speculation. When Socrates appeared there was the general prevalence of
skepticism, arising from the unsatisfactory speculations respecting
nature. He removed this skepticism by inventing a new method, and by
withdrawing the mind from the contemplation of nature, to the study of
man himself. He bade men to look inward.
[Sidenote: Ethics the great subject of inquiry with Plato.]
Plato accepted his method, but applied it more universally. Like
Socrates, however, ethics were the great subject of his inquiries, to
which physics were only subordinate. The problem he sought to solve was
the way to live like the gods. He would contemplate truth as the great
aim of life.
[Sidenote: Main inquiries of Aristotle had reference to physics and
metaphysics.]
With Aristotle, ethics formed only one branch of his attention. His main
inquiries were in reference to physics and metaphysics. He thus, by
bringing these into the region or inquiry, paved the way for a new epoch
of skepticism. [Footnote: Lewes, Ritter, Hegel, Maurice, Diogenes
Laertius. See fine article in _Encyclopedia Britannica._ Schwegler,
translated by Seelyn.]
It is impossible, within the proper limits of this chapter, to enter
upon an analysis of the philosophy of either the three great lights of
the ancient world, or to enumerate and describe their other writings. I
merely wish to show what are considered to be the vital principles on
which their systems were based, and the general spirit of their
speculations. The student must examine these in the elaborate treatises
of modern philosophers, and in the original works of Plato and
Aristotle.
[Sidenote: Their characteristic inquiries.]
Both Plato and Aristotle taught that reason alone could form science;
but Aristotle differed from his master respecting the theory of ideas.
He did not deny to ideas a _subjective_ existence, but he did deny
that they have an objective existence. And he maintained that the
individual things alone _existed_, and if individuals only exist,
they can only be known by _sensation_. Sensation thus becomes the
basis of knowledge. Plato made reason the basis of knowledge,
but Aristotle made _experience_. Plato directed man to the
contemplation of ideas; Aristotle, to the observations of Nature.
Instead of proceeding synthetically and dialectically like Plato, he
pursues an analytic course. His method is hence inductive--the
derivation of certain principles from a sum of given facts and
phenomena. It would seem that positive science commenced with him, since
he maintained that experience furnishes the principles of every science;
but, while his conception was just, there was not sufficient experience
then accumulated from which to generalize with effect. He did not
sufficiently verify his premises. His reasoning was correct upon the
data given, as in the famous syllogism, "All black birds are crows; this
bird is black; therefore this bird is a crow." The defect of the
syllogism is not in the reasoning, but in the truth of the major
premise, since all black birds are not crows. It is only a most
extensive and exhaustive examination of the accuracy of a proposition
which will warrant reasoning upon it. Aristotle reasoned without
sufficient examination of the major premise of his syllogisms.
[Sidenote: Logic of Aristotle.]
Aristotle was the father of logic, and Hegel and Kant think there has
been no improvement upon it since his day. And this became to him the
real organon of science. "He supposed it was not merely the instrument
of thought, but the instrument of investigation." Hence it was futile
for purposes of discovery, although important to aid the processes of
thought. Induction and syllogism are the two great instruments of his
logic. The one sets out from particulars already known to arrive at a
conclusion; the other sets out from some general principle to arrive at
particulars. The latter more particularly characterized his logic, which
he presented in sixteen forms, showing great ingenuity, and useful as a
dialectical exercise. This syllogistic process of reasoning would be
incontrovertible, if the _general_ were better known than the
_particular_. But it is only by induction, which proceeds from the
world of experience, that we reach the higher world of cognition. We
arrive at no new knowledge by the syllogism, since the major premise is
more evident than the conclusion, and anterior to it. Thus he made
speculation subordinate to logical distinctions, and his system, when
carried out by the schoolmen, led to a spirit of useless quibbling.
Instead of interrogating Nature, as Bacon led the way, they interrogated
their own minds, and no great discoveries were made. From a want of a
proper knowledge of the conditions of scientific inquiry, the method of
Aristotle became fruitless. [Footnote: Maurice, _Anc. Phil_. See
Whewell, _Hist. Ind. Science_.]
Though Aristotle wrote in a methodical manner, yet there is great
parsimony of language. There is no fascination in his style. It is
without ornament, and very condensed. His merit consisted in great
logical precision, and scrupulous exactness in the employment of terms.
[Sidenote: The Skeptics.]
Philosophy, as a great system of dialectics, as an analysis of the power
and faculties of the mind, as a method to pursue inquiries, as an
intellectual system merely, culminated in Aristotle. He completed the
great fabric of which Thales laid the foundation. The subsequent schools
of philosophy directed attention to ethical and practical questions,
rather than to intellectual phenomena. The skeptics, like Pyrrho, had
only negative doctrines, and had a disdain of those inquiries which
sought to penetrate the mysteries of existence. They did not believe
that absolute truth was attainable by man. And they attacked the
prevailing systems with great plausibility. Thus Sextus attacked both
induction and definitions. "If we do not know the thing we define," said
he, "we do not comprehend it because of the definition, but we impose on
it the definition because we know it; and if we are ignorant of the
thing we would define, it is impossible to define it." Thus the skeptics
pointed out the uncertainty of things and the folly of striving to
comprehend them.
The Epicureans despised the investigations of philosophy, since, in
their view, they did not contribute to happiness. The subject of their
inquiries was happiness, not truth. What will promote this, was the
subject of their speculation. Epicurus, born B.C. 342, contended that
pleasure was happiness; that pleasure should not be sought for its own
sake, but with a view of the happiness of life obtained by it. He taught
that it was inseparable from virtue, and that its enjoyments should be
limited. He was averse to costly pleasures, and regarded contentedness
with a little to be a great good. He placed wealth not in great
possessions, but few wants. He sought to widen the domain of pleasure,
and narrow that of pain, and regarded a passionless state of life the
highest. Nor did he dread death, which was deliverance from misery.
Epicurus has been much misunderstood, and his doctrines were
subsequently perverted, especially when the arts of life were brought
into the service of luxury, and a gross materialism was the great
feature of society. Epicurus had much of the practical spirit of a
philosopher, although very little of the earnest cravings of a religious
man. He himself led a virtuous life, because it was wiser and better to
be virtuous, not because it was his duty. His writings were very
voluminous, and in his tranquil garden he led a peaceful life of study
and enjoyment. His followers, and they were numerous, were led into
luxury and effeminacy, as was to be expected from a skeptical and
irreligious philosophy, the great principle of which was that whatever
is pleasant should be the object of existence. [Footnote: the doctrines
of the Epicureans are best set forth in Lucretius.]
The Stoics were a large and celebrated sect of philosophers; but they
added nothing to the domain of thought,--they created no system, they
invented no new method, they were led into no new psychological
inquiries. Their inquiries were chiefly ethical. And if ethics are a
part of the great system of Grecian philosophy, they are well worthy of
attention. Some of the greatest men of antiquity are numbered among
them--like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. The philosophy they taught was
morality, and this was eminently practical and also elevated.
[Sidenote: Zeno.]
The founder of this sect, Zeno, born rich, but reduced to poverty by
misfortune, was a very remarkable man, and a very good one, and
profoundly revered by the Athenians, who intrusted him with the keys of
their citadel. The date of his birth is unknown, but he lived in a
degenerate age, when skepticism and sensuality were eating out the life
and vigor of Grecian society, when Greek civilization was rapidly
passing away, when ancient creeds had lost their majesty, and general
levity and folly overspread the land. Deeply impressed with the
prevailing laxity of morals and the absence of religion, he lifted up
his voice, more as a reformer than as an inquirer after truth, and
taught for more than fifty years in a place called the Porch, which had
once been the resort of the poets. He was chiefly absorbed with ethical
questions, although he studied profoundly the systems of the old
philosophers. He combated Plato's doctrine that virtue consists in
contemplation, and of Epicurus, that it consisted in pleasure. Man, in
his eyes, was made for active duties. He also sought to oppose
skepticism, which was casting the funereal veil of doubt and uncertainty
over every thing pertaining to the soul, and God, and the future life.
"The skeptics had attacked both perception and reason. They had shown
that perception is, after all, based upon appearance, and appearance is
not a certainty; and they showed that reason is unable to distinguish
between appearance and certainty, since it had nothing but phenomena to
build upon, and since there is no criterion to apply to reason itself."
Then they proclaimed philosophy a failure, and without foundation. But
he, taking a stand on common sense, fought for morality, as did Reid and
Beattie, when they combated the skepticism of Hume.
[Sidenote: Doctrines of the Stoics.]
[Sidenote: Influence of the Stoics.]
Philosophy, according to Zeno and other Stoics, was intimately connected
with the duties of practical life. The contemplation, recommended by
Plato and Aristotle, seemed only a covert recommendation of selfish
enjoyment. The wisdom, which it should be the aim of life to attain, is
virtue. And virtue is to live harmoniously with nature. To live
harmoniously with nature is to exclude all personal ends. Hence pleasure
is to be disregarded, and pain is to be despised. And as all moral
action must be in harmony with nature, the law of destiny is supreme,
and all things move according to immutable fate. With the predominant
tendency to the universal which characterized their system, the Stoics
taught that the sage ought to regard himself as a citizen of the world
rather than of any particular city or state. They made four things to be
indispensable to virtue: a knowledge of _good and evil_, which is
the province of the reason; _temperance_, a knowledge of the due
regulation of the sensual passions; _fortitude_, a conviction that
it is good to suffer what is necessary; and _justice_, or
acquaintance with what ought to be to every individual. They made
_perfection_ necessary to virtue, and saw nothing virtuous in the
mere advance to it. Hence the severity of their system. The perfect
sage, according to them, is raised above all influence of external
events; he submits to the law of destiny; he is exempt from desire and
fear, joy or sorrow; he is not governed even by what he is exposed to
necessarily, like sorrow and pain; he is free from the restraints of
passion; he is like a god in his mental placidity. Nor must the sage
live only for himself, but for others; he is a member of the whole body
of mankind; he ought to marry, and to take part in public affairs, but
he will never give way to compassion or forgiveness, and is to attack
error and vice with uncompromising sternness. But with this ideal, the
Stoics were forced to admit that virtue, like true knowledge, although
attainable, is beyond the reach of man. They were discontented with
themselves, and with all around them, and looked upon all institutions
as corrupt. They had a profound contempt of their age, and of human
attainments; but it cannot be denied they practiced a lofty and stern
virtue, and were the best people in their degenerate times. Their God
was made subject to Fate, and he was a material god, synonymous with
Nature. Thus their system was pantheistic. But they maintained the
dignity of reason, and the ideal in nature, the actualization of which
we should strive after, though without the hope of reaching it. "As a
reaction against effeminacy, Stoicism may be applauded; as a doctrine,
it is one-sided, and ends in apathy and egotism." [Footnote: See Cicero,
_De Fin_. and _Tusculan Questions_; Diogenes Laertius on Zeno.
This historian is quite full on this subject, and seems to furnish the
basis for Ritter.]
With the Stoics ended all inquiry among the Greeks of a philosophical
nature worthy of especial mention, until philosophy was revived in the
Christian schools of Alexandria, where faith was united with reason. The
Stoics endeavored to establish the certitude of human knowledge in order
that they might establish the truth of moral principles, and the basis
of their system was common sense, with which they attacked the godless
skepticism of their times, and raised up a barrier, feeble though it
was, to prevailing degeneracy. The struggles of so many great thinkers,
from Thales to Aristotle, all ended in doubt and in despair. It was
discovered that all of them were wrong, but that their error was without
a remedy.
[Sidenote: Bright period of Grecian philosophy.]
The bright and glorious period of Grecian philosophy was from Socrates
to Aristotle. Philosophical inquiries began about the origin of things,
and ended with an elaborate systematization of the forms of thought,
which was the most magnificent triumph that the unaided intellect of man
ever achieved. Socrates founds a school, but does not elaborate a
system. He reveals most precious truths, and stimulates the youth who
listen to his instructions by the doctrine that it is the duty of man to
pursue a knowledge of himself, which is to be sought in that divine
reason which dwells within him and which also rules the world. He
confides in science; he loves truth for its own sake; he loves virtue,
which consists in the knowledge of the good.
[Sidenote: Summary.]
Plato seizes his weapons and is imbued with his spirit. He is full of
hope for science and humanity. With soaring boldness he directs his
inquiries to futurity, dissatisfied with the present, and cherishing a
fond hope of a better existence. He speculates on God and the soul. He
is not much interested in physical phenomena. He does not, like Thales,
strive to find out the beginning of all things, but the highest good, by
which his immortal soul may be refreshed and prepared for the future
life he cannot solve, yet in which he believes. The sensible is an
impenetrable empire, but ideas are certitudes, and upon these he dwells
with rapt and mystical enthusiasm,--a great poetical rhapsodist like
Xenophanes, severe dialectician as he is, believing in truth and beauty
and goodness.
Then Aristotle, following out the method of _his_ teachers,
attempts to exhaust experience, and directs his inquiries into the
outward world of sense and observation, but all with the view of
discovering from phenomena the unconditional truth, in which he, too,
believes. But every thing in this world is fleeting and transitory, and,
therefore, it is not easy to arrive at truth. A cold doubt creeps into
the experimental mind of Aristotle with all his learning and all his
logic.
The Epicureans arise. They place their hopes in sensual enjoyment. They
despair of truth. But the world will not be abandoned to despair. The
Stoics rebuke the impiety which is blended with sensualism, and place
their hopes on virtue. But it is unattainable virtue, while their God is
not a moral governor, but subject to necessity.
Thus did those old giants grope about, for they did not know the God who
was revealed unto Abraham, and Moses, and David, and Isaiah. They solved
nothing, since they did not _know_, even if they speculated on, the
_Great First Cause_. And yet, with all their errors, they were the
greatest benefactors of the ancient world. They gave dignity to
intellectual inquiries, while they set, by their lives, examples of a
pure morality--not the morality of the gospel, but the severest virtue
practiced by the old guides of mankind.
[Sidenote: Philosophy among the Romans.]
The Romans added absolutely nothing to the philosophy of the Greeks. Nor
were they much interested in any speculative inquiries. It was only the
ethical views of the old sages which had attraction or force to them.
They were too material to love pure subjective inquiries. They had
conquered the land; they disdained the empire of the air.
[Sidenote: Followers of the Greeks.]
There were, doubtless, students of the Greek philosophy among the
Romans, perhaps as early as Cato the Censor. But there were only two
persons of note who wrote philosophy, till the time of Cicero,
Aurafanius and Rubinus, and these were Epicureans.
[Sidenote: Cicero.]
Cicero was the first to systematize the philosophy which contributed so
greatly to his intellectual culture. But even he added nothing. He was
only a commentator and expositor. Nor did he seek to found a system or a
school, but merely to influence and instruct men of his own rank. He
regarded those subjects, which had the greatest attraction for the
Grecian schools, to be beyond the power of human cognition, and,
therefore, looked upon the practical as the proper domain of human
inquiry. Yet he held logic in great esteem, as furnishing rules for
methodical investigation. He adopted the doctrine of Socrates as to the
pursuit of moral good. He regarded the duties which grow out of the
relations of human society preferable to the obligations of pursuing
scientific researches. Although a great admirer of Plato and Aristotle,
he regarded patriotic calls of duty as paramount to any study of science
or philosophy, which he thought was involved in doubt. He had a great
contempt for knowledge which could neither lead to the clear
apprehension of certitude, nor to practical applications. He thought it
impossible to arrive at a knowledge of God, or the nature of the soul,
or the origin of the world. And he thus was led to look upon the
sensible and the present as of more importance than inconclusive
inductions, or deductions from a truth not satisfactorily established.
[Sidenote: His eclecticism.]
Cicero was an Eclectic, seizing on what was true and clear in the
ancient systems, and disregarding what was simply a matter of
speculation. This is especially seen in his treatise "De Finibus Bonorum
et Malorum," in which the opinions of all the Grecian schools concerning
the supreme good are expounded and compared. Nor does he hesitate to
declare that happiness consists in the cognition of nature and science,
which is the true source of pleasure both to gods and men. Yet these are
but hopes, in which it does not become us to indulge. It is the actual,
the real, the practical, which preeminently claims attention; in other
words, the knowledge which will but furnish man with a guide and rule of
life. [Footnote: _De Fin._, v. 6.] Indeed, the sum of Philosophy,
to the mind of Cicero, is that she is an instructress and a comforter.
He takes an entirely practical view of the end of philosophy, which is
to improve the mind, and make a man contented and happy. For philosophy
as a science,--a series of inductions and deductions,--he had profound
contempt. He also regards the doctrines of philosophy as involved in
doubt, and even in the consideration of moral questions he is pursued by
the conflict of opinions, although, in this department, he is most at
home. The points he is most anxious to establish are the doctrines of
God and the soul. These are most fully treated in his essay, "De Natura
Deorum," in which he submits the doctrines of the Epicureans and the
Stoics to the objections of the Academy. [Footnote: _De Nat. D._,
iii. 10.] He admits that man is unable to form true conceptions of God,
but acknowledges the necessity of assuming one supreme God as the
creator and ruler of all things, moving all things, remote from all
mortal mixture, and endued with eternal motion in himself. He seems to
believe in a divine providence ordering good to man; in the soul's
immortality, in free-will, in the dignity of human nature, in the
dominion of reason, in the restraint of the passions as necessary to
virtue, in a life of public utility, in an immutable morality, in the
imitation of the divine.
[Sidenote: His ethics.]
The doctrines of Cicero on ethical subjects, are chiefly drawn from the
Stoics and Peripatetics. They are opinions drawn sometimes from one
system and sometimes from another. Thus he agrees with the disciples of
Aristotle, that health, honors, friends, country, are worthy objects of
desire. Then again, he coincides with the Stoics that passions and
emotions of the soul are vices. But he recedes from their severe tone,
which elevated the sage too high above his fellow-men.
[Sidenote: Character of his philosophical writings.]
Thus there is little of original thought in the moral theories of
Cicero, and these are the result of observation rather than of any
philosophical principle. We might enumerate his various opinions, and
show what an enlightened mind he possessed; but this would not be the
development of philosophy. His views, interesting as they are, and
generally wise and lofty, yet do not indicate any progress of the
science; He merely repeats earlier doctrines. These were not without
their utility, since they had great influence on the Latin fathers. They
were esteemed for their general enlightenment. He softened down the
extreme views of the great thinkers before his day, and clearly unfolded
what had become obscured. He is a critic of philosophy; an expositor
whom we can scarcely spare.
If any body advanced philosophy among the Romans, it was Epictetus, and
he even only in the realm of ethics. Qumtius Sextius, in the time of
Augustus, had revived the Pythagorean doctrines. Seneca had recommended
the severe morality of the Stoics, but they added nothing that was not
previously known. The Romans had no talent for philosophy, although they
were acquainted with its various systems. Their greatest light was a
Phrygian slave.
[Sidenote: Epictetus.]
[Sidenote: His lofty ethical system.]
Epictetus taught in the time of Domitian, and though he did not leave
any written treatises, his doctrines were preserved and handed down by
his disciple Arrian, who had for him the reverence that Plato had for
Socrates. The loftiness of his recorded views makes us feel that he must
have been indebted to Christianity; for no one, before him, has revealed
precepts so much in accordance with its spirit. He was a Stoic, but he
held in the highest estimation Socrates and Plato. It is not for the
solution of metaphysical questions that he was remarkable. He was not a
dialectician, but a moralist, and, as such, takes the highest ground of
all the old inquirers after truth. With him, philosophy, as it was to
Cicero and Seneca, is a wisdom of life. He sets no value on logic, nor
much on physics; but he reveals sentiments of great simplicity and
grandeur. His great idea is the purification of the soul. He believes in
the severest self-denial; he would guard against the syren spells of
pleasure; he would make men feel that, in order to be good, they must
first feel that they are evil; he condemns suicide, although it had been
defended by the Stoics; he would complain of no one, not even of
injustice; he would not injure his enemies; he would pardon all
offenses; he would feel universal compassion, since men sin from
ignorance; he would not easily blame, since we have none to condemn but
ourselves; he would not strive after honor or office, since we put
ourselves in subjection to that we seek or prize; he would constantly
bear in mind that all things are transitory, and that they are not our
own; he would bear evils with patience, even as he would practice self-
denial of pleasure; he would, in short, be calm, free, keep in
subjection his passions, avoid self-indulgence, and practice a broad
charity and benevolence. He felt he owed all to God; that all was his
gift, and that we should thus live in accordance with his will; that we
should be grateful not only for our bodies, but for our souls, and
reason, by which we attain to greatness. And if God has given us such a
priceless gift, we should be contented, and not even seek to alter our
external relations, which are doubtless for the best. We should wish,
indeed, for only what God wills and sends, and we should avoid pride and
haughtiness, as well as discontent, and seek to fulfill our allotted
part. [Footnote: A fine translation of Epictetus has been published by
Little and Brown.]
[Sidenote: Marcus Aurelius.]
Such were the moral precepts of Epictetus, in which we see the nearest
approach to Christianity that had been made in the ancient world. And
these sublime truths had a great influence, especially on the mind of
the most lofty and pure of all the Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius, who
_lived_ the principles he had learned from a slave, and whose
"Maxims" are still held in admiration.
[Sidenote: General observations.]
Thus did the speculations about the beginning of things lead to
elaborate systems of thought, and end in practical rules of life, until,
in spirit, they had, with Epictetus, harmonized with many of the
revealed truths which Christ and his Apostles laid down for the
regeneration of the world. Who cannot see in the inquiries of the old
philosopher, whether into nature, or the operations of mind, or the
existence of God, or the immortality of the soul, or the way to
happiness and virtue, a magnificent triumph of human genius, such as has
been exhibited in no other department of human science? We regret that
our limits preclude a more extended view of the various systems which
the old sages propounded--systems full of errors, yet also marked by
important truths, but whether false or true, showing a marvelous reach
of the human understanding. Modern researches have discarded many
opinions which were highly valued in their day, yet philosophy, in its
methods of reasoning, is scarcely advanced since the time of Aristotle;
while the subjects which agitated the Grecian schools, have been from
time to time revived and rediscussed, and are still unsettled. If any
science has gone round in perpetual circles, incapable, apparently, of
progression or rest, it is that glorious field of inquiry which has
tasked more than any other the mightiest intellects of this world, and
which, progressive or not, will never be relinquished without the loss
of what is most valuable in human culture.
* * * * *
For original authorities in reference to the matter of this chapter,
read Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Philosophers; the Writings of Plato
and Aristotle; Cicero, De Nat., De Or., De Offic., De Div., De Fin.,
Tusc. Quaest.; Xenophon, Memorabilia; Boethius, De Idea Hist. Phil.;
Lucretius.
The great modern authorities are the Germans, and these are very
numerous. Among the most famous writers on the history of philosophy,
are Bruckner, Hegel, Brandis, I. G. Buhle, Tennemann, Ritter, Plessing,
Schwegler, Hermann, Meiners, Stallbaum, and Speugel. The history of
Ritter is well translated, and is always learned and suggestive.
Tennemann, translated by Morell, is a good manual, brief, but clear. In
connection with the writings of the Germans, the great work of Cousin
should be consulted.
The English historians of ancient philosophy are not so numerous as the
Germans. The work of Enfield is based on Bruckner, or is rather an
abridgment. Archer Butler's Lectures are suggestive and able, but
discursive and vague, as is the History of Ancient Philosophy by
Maurice. Grote has written learnedly on Socrates and the other great
lights. Lewes' Biographical History of Philosophy has the merit of
clearness, and is very interesting, but rather superficial. Henry has
written a good epitome. See also Stanley's History of Philosophy, and
the articles in Smith's Dictionary, on the leading ancient philosophers.
Donaldson's continuation of Muller's History of the Lit. of Greece, is
learned, and should be consulted with Thompson's Notes on Archer Butler.
There are also fine articles in the Encyclopedias Britannica and
Metropolitana. Schleirmacher, on Socrates, translated by Bishop
Thirlwall.
CHAPTER IX.
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AMONG THE ROMANS.
[Sidenote: Wonders of modern science.]
[Sidenote: Every great age distinguished for something never afterwards
equaled.]
It would be absurd to claim for the ancients any great attainments in
science, such as they made in the field of letters or the realm of art.
It is in science, especially when applied to practical life, that the
moderns show their great superiority to the most enlightened nations of
antiquity. In this great department, modern genius shines with the
lustre of the sun. It is this which most strikingly attests the advance
of society, which makes their advance a most incontestible fact. It is
this which has distinguished and elevated the races of Europe more
triumphantly than what has resulted from the combined energies of Greeks
and Romans in all other departments combined. With the magnificent
discoveries and inventions of the last three hundred years in almost
every department of science,--especially in physics, in the
explorations of distant seas and continents, in the analysis of chemical
compounds, in the explanation of the phenomena of the heavens, in the
wonders of steam and electricity, in mechanical appliance to abridge
human labor or destroy human life, in astronomical researches, in the
miracles which inventive genius has wrought,--seen in our ships, our
manufactories, our wondrous instruments, our printing-presses, of our
observatories, our fortifications, our laboratories, our mills, our
machines to cultivate the earth, to make our clothes, to build our
houses, to multiply our means of offense and defense, to make weak
children do the work of Titans, to measure our time with the accuracy of
the orbit of the planets, to use the sun itself in perpetuating our
likenesses to distant generations, to cause a needle to guide the
mariner with assurance on the darkest night, to propel a heavy ship
against the wind and tide without oars or sails, to make carriages
ascend mountains without horses at the rate of thirty miles an hour, to
convey intelligence with the speed of lightning from continent to
continent, under oceans that ancient navigators never dared to cross;
these and other wonders attest an ingenuity and audacity of intellect
which would have overwhelmed with amazement the most adventurous of
Greeks and the most potent of Romans. The achievements of modern science
settle forever the question as to the advance of society and the
superiority of modern times over those of the most favored nations of
antiquity. But the great discoveries and inventions to which we owe this
marked superiority are either accidental or the result of generations of
experiment, assisted by an immense array of ascertained facts from which
safe inductions can be made. It is not, probably, the superiority of the
Teutonic races over the Greeks and Romans to which we may ascribe the
wonderful advance of modern society, but the particular direction which
genius was made to take. Had the Greeks given the energy of their minds
to mechanical forces as they did to artistic creations, they might have
made wonderful inventions. But it was so ordered by Providence. Nor was
the world in that stage of development when this particular direction of
intellect would have been favored. There were some things which the
Greeks and Romans exhausted, some fields of labor and thought in which
they never have been, and, perhaps, never will be, surpassed; and some
future age may direct its energies into channels which are as unknown to
us as clocks and steam-engines were to the Greeks. This is the age of
mechanism and of science, and mechanism and science sweep every thing
before them, and will probably be carried to their utmost capacity and
development. Then the human mind may seek some new department, some new
scope for energies, and a new age of wonders may arise,--perhaps after
the present dominant races shall have become intoxicated with the
greatness of their triumphs and have shared the fate of the old
monarchies of the East. But I would not speculate on the destinies of
the European nations, whether they are to make indefinite advances,
until they occupy and rule the whole world, or are destined to be
succeeded by nations as yet undeveloped,--savages, as their fathers
were when Rome was in the fullness of material wealth and grandeur. We
know nothing of the future. We only know that all nations are in the
hands of God, who setteth up and pulleth down according to his infinite
wisdom.
I have shown that in the field of artistic excellence, in literary
composition, in the arts of government and legislation, and even in the
realm of philosophical speculations, the ancients were our
schoolmasters, and that among them were some men of most marvelous
genius, who have had no superiors among us.
[Sidenote: The ancients deficient in the application of science.]
But we do not see the exhibition of genius in what we call science, at
least in its application to practical life. It would be difficult to
show any department of science which the ancients carried to any degree
of perfection. Nevertheless, there were departments in which they made
noble attempts, and in which they showed considerable genius, even if
they were unsuccessful in great practical results.
[Sidenote: Labors of the ancients in astronomy.]
Astronomy was one of these. So far as mathematical genius is concerned,
so far as astronomy taxed the reasoning powers, such men as
Eratosthenes, Aristarchus, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy were great lights, of
whom humanity may be proud; and, had they been assisted by our modern
accidental inventions, they might have earned a fame scarcely eclipsed
by that of Kepler and Newton. The Ionic philosophers added but little to
the realm of true philosophy, but they were pioneers of thought, and
giants in their native powers. The old astronomers did as little as they
to place science on a true foundation, but they showed great ingenuity,
and discovered some great truths which no succeeding age has repudiated.
They determined the circumference of the earth by a method identical
with that which would be employed by modern astronomers. They
ascertained the position of the stars by right ascension and
declination. They knew the obliquity of the ecliptic, and determined the
place of the sun's apogee as well as its mean motion. Their calculations
on the eccentricity of the moon prove that they had a rectilinear
trigonometry and tables of chords. They had an approximate knowledge of
parallax. [Footnote: Delambre, _Hist. d'Astr. Anc._, tom. 1, p.
184.] They could calculate eclipses of the moon, and use them for the
correction of their lunar tables. They understood spherical
trigonometry, and determined the motions of the sun and moon, involving
an accurate definition of the year, and a method of predicting eclipses.
They ascertained that the earth was a sphere, and reduced the phenomena
of the heavenly bodies to uniform movements of circular orbits.
[Footnote: Lewis, _Hist. of Astron._, p. 209.] We have settled, by
physical geography, the exact form of the earth, but the ancients
arrived at their knowledge by astronomical reasoning. "The reduction of
the motions of the sun, moon, and five planets to circular orbits, as
was done by Hipparchus, implies deep concentrated thought and scientific
abstraction. The theory of eccentrics and epicycles accomplished the end
of explaining all the known phenomena. The resolution of the apparent
motions of the heavenly bodies into an assemblage of circular motions,
was a great triumph of genius, [Footnote: Whewell, _Hist. Induc.
Science_, v. i. p. 181.] and was equivalent to the most recent and
improved processes by which modern astronomers deal with such motions."
But I will not here enumerate the few discoveries which were made by the
Alexandrian school. I only wish to show that there are a few names among
the ancients which are inscribed on the roll of great astronomers,
limited as were the triumphs of the science itself. But, until the time
of Aristarchus, most of the speculations were crude and useless. Nothing
can be more puerile than the notions of the ancients respecting the
nature and motions of the heavenly bodies.
[Sidenote: Astronomy born in Chaldea.]
Astronomy was probably born in Chaldea as early as the time of Abraham.
The glories of the firmament were impressed upon the minds of the rude
primitive races with an intensity which we do not feel with all the
triumphs of modern science. The Chaldean shepherds, as they watched
their flocks by night, noted the movements of the planets, and gave
names to the more brilliant constellations. Before religious rituals
were established, before great superstitions arose, before poetry was
sung, before musical instruments were invented, before artists
sculptured marble or melted bronze, before coins were stamped, before
temples arose, before diseases were healed by the arts of medicine,
before commerce was known, before heroes were born, those oriental
shepherds counted the hours of anxiety by the position of certain
constellations. Astronomy is, therefore, the oldest of the ancient
sciences, although it remained imperfect for more than four thousand
years. The old Assyrians, Egyptians, and Greeks made but few discoveries
which are valued by modern astronomers, but they laid the foundation of
the science, and ever regarded it as one of the noblest subjects which
could stimulate the faculties of man. It was invested with all that was
religious and poetical.
[Sidenote: Discoveries made by oriental nations.]
The spacious level and unclouded horizon of Chaldea afforded peculiar
facilities of observation; and its pastoral and contemplative
inhabitants, uncontaminated by the vices and superstitions of subsequent
ages, active-minded and fresh, discovered, after a long observation of
eclipses--some say extending over nineteen centuries--the cycle of two
hundred and twenty-three lunations, which brings back the eclipses in
the same order. Having once established their cycle, they laid the
foundation for the most sublime of all the sciences. Callisthenes
transmitted from Babylon to Aristotle a collection of observations of
all the eclipses that preceded the conquests of Alexander, together with
the definite knowledge which the Chaldeans had collected about the
motions of the heavenly bodies. It was rude and simple, and amounted to
little beyond the fact that there were spherical revolutions about an
inclined axis, and that the poles pointed always to particular stars.
The Egyptians also recorded their observations, from which it would
appear that they observed eclipses at least one thousand six hundred
years before the commencement of our era. Nor is this improbable, if the
speculations of modern philosophers respecting the age of the world are
entitled to respect. The Egyptians discovered, by the rising of Sirius,
that the year consists of three hundred and sixty-five and one quarter
days, and this was their sacred year, in distinction from the civil,
which consisted of three hundred and sixty-five days. They also had
observed the courses of the planets, and could explain the phenomena of
the stations and retrogradations, and it is even asserted that they
regarded Mercury and Venus as satellites of the sun. Some have
maintained that the obelisks which they erected served the purpose of
gnomons, for determining the obliquity of the ecliptic, the altitude of
the pole, and the length of the tropical year. It is thought that even
the Pyramids, by the position of their sides toward the cardinal points,
attest their acquaintance with a meridional line. The Chinese boast of
having noticed and recorded a series of eclipses extending over a period
of three thousand eight hundred and fifty-eight years, and it is
probable that they anticipated the Greeks two thousand years in the
discovery of the Metonic cycle, or the cycle of nineteen years, at the
end of which time the new moons fall on the same days of the year. They
determined the obliquity of the ecliptic, one thousand one hundred years
before our era, to be 23 degrees 54' 3-15". The Indians, at a remote
antiquity, represented celestial phenomena with considerable exactness,
and constructed tables by which the longitude of the sun and moon are
determined. Bailly thinks that astronomy was cultivated in Siam three
thousand one hundred and two years before Christ, which hardly yields in
accuracy to that which modern science has built on the theory of
universal gravitation. The Greeks divided the heavens into
constellations fourteen centuries before Christ. Thales, born 640 B.C.,
taught the rotundity of the earth, and that the moon shines with
reflected light. He also predicted eclipses. Anaximander, born 610 B.C.,
invented the gnomon, and constructed geographical charts.
[Sidenote: The early Greek investigators.]
But the Greeks, after all, were the only people of antiquity who
elevated astronomy to the dignity of a science. They however confessed
that they derived their earliest knowledge from the Babylonian and
Egyptian priests, while the priests of Thebes asserted that they were
the originators of exact astronomical observations. [Footnote: Diod., i.
50.] Diodorus asserts that the Chaldeans used the Temple of Belus, in
the centre of Babylon, for their survey of the heavens. [Footnote:
Diod., ii. 9.] But whether the Babylonians or the Egyptians were the
earliest astronomers, it is of little consequence, although the pedants
make it a grave matter of investigation. All we know is, that astronomy
was cultivated by both Babylonians and Egyptians, and that they made but
very limited attainments. The early Greek philosophers, who visited
Egypt and the East in search of knowledge, found very little to reward
their curiosity or industry; not much beyond preposterous claims to a
high antiquity, and an esoteric wisdom which has not yet been revealed.
They approximated to the truth in reference to the solar year, by
observing the equinoxes and solstices, and the heliacal rising of
particular stars. Plato and Eudoxus spent thirteen years in Heliopolis
for the purpose of extracting the scientific knowledge of the priests,
but they learned but little beyond the fact that the solar year was a
trifle beyond three hundred and sixty-five days. No great names have
come down to us from the priests of Babylon or Egypt. No one gained an
individual reputation. The Chaldean and Egyptian priests may have
furnished the raw material of observation to the Greeks, but the latter
alone possessed the scientific genius by which indigested facts were
converted into a symmetrical system. The East never gave valuable
knowledge to the West. It gave only superstition. Instead of astronomy,
it gave astrology; instead of science, it gave magic and incantations
and dreams--poison which perverted the intellect. [Footnote: Sir G. G.
Lewis, _Hist. of Anc. Astron._, p. 293.] They connected their
astronomy with divination from the stars, and made their antiquity reach
back to two hundred and seventy thousand years. There were soothsayers
in the time of Daniel, and magicians, exorcists, and interpreters of
signs. [Footnote: Dan. i. 4, 17, 20.] They were not men of scientific
research, seeking truth. It was power they sought, by perverting the
intellect of the people. The astrology of the East was founded on the
principle that a star or constellation presided over the birth of an
individual, and either portended his fate, or shed a good or bad
influence upon his future life. The star which looked upon a child at
the hour of his birth, was called the horoscopus, and the peculiar
influence of each planet was determined by professors of the genethliac
art. The superstitions of Egypt and Chaldea unfortunately spread both
among the Greeks and Romans, and these were about all that the western
nations learned from the boastful priests of occult science. Whatever
was known of real value among the ancients, is due to the earnest
inquiries of the Greeks.
[Sidenote: Researches of the Greeks.]
And yet their researches were very unsatisfactory until the time of
Hipparchus. The primitive knowledge, until Thales, was almost nothing.
The Homeric poems regarded the earth as a circular plain, bounded by the
heaven, which was a solid vault or hemisphere, with its concavity turned
downwards. And this absurdity was believed until the time of Herodotus,
five centuries after; nor was it exploded fully in the time of
Aristotle. The sun, moon, and stars, were supposed to move upon, or
with, the inner surface of the heavenly hemisphere, and the ocean was
thought to gird the earth around as a great belt, into which the
heavenly bodies sunk at their setting. [Footnote: _Il_., vii. 422;
_Od_., iii. i. xix. 433.] Homer believed that the sun arose out of
the ocean, ascending the heaven, and again plunging into the ocean,
passing under the earth, and producing darkness. [Footnote: _Il_.
viii. 485.] The Greeks even personified the sun as a divine charioteer
driving his fiery steeds over the steep of heaven, until he bathed them
at evening in the western waves. Apollo became the god of the sun, as
Diana was the goddess of the moon. But the early Greek inquirers did not
attempt to explain how the sun found his way from the west back again to
the east. They merely took note of the diurnal course, the alternation
of day and night, the number of the seasons, and their regular
successions. They found the points of the compass by determining the
recurrence of the equinoxes and solstices; but they had no conception of
the ecliptic--of that great circle in the heaven, formed by the sun's
annual course, and of its obliquity when compared with the equator. Like
the Egyptians and Babylonians, they ascertained the length of the year
to be three hundred and sixty-five days; but perfect accuracy was
wanting for want of scientific instruments, and of recorded observations
of the heavenly bodies. The Greeks had not even a common chronological
era for the designation of years. Thus Herodotus informs us that the
Trojan War preceded his time by eight hundred years: [Footnote:
_Il_, ii. 53.] he merely states the interval between the event in
question and his own time; he had certain data for distant periods. Thus
the Greeks reckoned dates from the Trojan War, and the Romans from the
building of their city. And they divided the year into twelve months,
and introduced the intercalary circle of eight years, although the
Romans disused it afterwards until the calendar was reformed by Julius
Caesar. Thus there was no scientific astronomical knowledge worth
mentioning among the primitive Greeks.
Immense research and learning have been expended by modern critics, to
show the state of scientific astronomy among the Greeks. I am equally
amazed at the amount of research, and its comparative worthlessness,
for what addition to science can be made by an enumeration of the
puerilities and errors of the Greeks, and how wasted and pedantic the
learning which ransacks all antiquity to prove that the Greeks adopted
this or that absurdity. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated
to chapter end.]
[Sidenote: Thales.]
[Sidenote: Anaximander and Anaximenes.]
But to return. The earliest historic name associated with astronomy in
Greece was Thales, the founder of the Ionic school of philosophers, born
639 B.C. He is reported to have predicted an eclipse of the sun, to have
made a visit to Egypt, to have fixed the year at three hundred and
sixty-five days, and to have determined the course of the sun from
solstice to solstice. He attributed an eclipse of the moon to the
interposition of the earth between the sun and moon; and an eclipse of
the sun to the interposition of the moon between the sun and earth.
[Footnote: Sir G. G. Lewis, _Hist. of Astron._, p. 81.] He also
determined the ratio of the sun's diameter to its apparent orbit. As he
first solved the problem of inscribing a right-angled triangle in a
circle, [Footnote: Diog. Laert, i. 24.] he is the founder of geometrical
science in Greece. He left, however, nothing to writing, hence all
accounts of him are confused. It is to be doubted whether in fact he
made the discoveries attributed to him. His speculations, which science
rejects, such as that water is the principle of all things, are
irrelevant to a description of the progress of astronomy. That he was a
great light, no one questions, considering the ignorance with which he
was surrounded. Anaximander, who followed him in philosophy, held to
puerile doctrines concerning the motions and nature of the stars, which
it is useless to repeat. His addition to science, if he made any, was in
treating the magnitudes and distances of the planets. He attempted to
delineate the celestial sphere, and to measure time by a sun-dial.
Anaximenes of Miletus taught, like his predecessors, crude notions of
the sun and stars, and speculated on the nature of the moon, but did
nothing to advance his science on true grounds, except the construction
of sun-dials. The same may be said of Heraclitus, Xenophanes,
Parmenides, Anaxagoras. They were great men, but they gave to the world
mere speculations, some of which are very puerile. They all held to the
idea that the heavenly bodies revolved around the earth, and that the
earth was a plain. But they explained eclipses, and supposed that the
moon derived its light from the sun. Some of them knew the difference
between the planets and the fixed stars. Anaxagoras scouted the notion
that the sun was a god, and supposed it to be a mass of ignited stone,
for which he was called an atheist.
[Sidenote: Socrates.]
[Sidenote: Pythagoras.]
Socrates, who belonged to another school, avoided all barren
speculations concerning the universe, and confined himself to human
actions and interests. He looked even upon geometry in a very practical
way, so far as it could be made serviceable to land measuring. As for
the stars and planets, he supposed it was impossible to arrive at a true
knowledge of them, and regarded speculations upon them as useless. The
Greek astronomers, however barren were their general theories, still
laid the foundation of science. Pythagoras, born 580 B.C., taught the
obliquity of the ecliptic, probably learned in Egypt, and the identity
of the morning and evening stars. It is supposed that he maintained that
the sun was the centre of the universe, and that the earth revolved
around it. But this he did not demonstrate, and his whole system was
unscientific, assuming certain arbitrary principles, from which he
reasoned deductively. "He assumed that fire is more worthy than earth;
that the more worthy place must be given to the more worthy; that the
extremity is more worthy than the intermediate parts; and hence, as the
centre is an extremity, the place of fire is at the centre of the
universe, and that therefore the earth and other heavenly bodies move
round the fiery centre." But this was no heliocentric system, since the
sun moved like the earth, in a circle around the central fire. This was
merely the work of the imagination, utterly unscientific, though bold
and original. Nor did this hypothesis gain credit, since it was the
fixed opinion of philosophers, that the earth was the centre of the
universe, around which the sun and moon and planets revolved. But the
Pythagoreans were the first to teach that the motions of the sun, moon,
and planets, are circular and equable. Their idea that they emitted a
sound, and were combined into a harmonious symphony, was exceedingly
crude, however beautiful. "The music of the spheres" belongs to poetry,
as well as the speculations of Plato.
[Sidenote: Eudoxus.]
Eudoxus, who was born 406 B.C., may be considered the founder of
scientific astronomical knowledge among the Greeks. He is reputed to
have visited Egypt with Plato, and to have resided thirteen years in
Heliopolis, in constant study of the stars, communing with the Egyptian
priests. His contribution to the science was a descriptive map of the
heavens, which was used as a manual of sidereal astronomy to the sixth
century of our era. He distributed the stars into constellations, with
recognized names, and gave a sort of geographical description of their
position and limits, although the constellations had been named before
his time. He stated the periodic times of the five planets visible to
the naked eye, but only approximated to the true periods.
The error of only one hundred and ninety days in the periodic time of
Saturn, shows that there had been, for a long time, close observations.
Aristotle, whose comprehensive intellect, like that of Bacon, took in
all forms of knowledge, condensed all that was known in his day in a
treatise concerning the heavens. [Footnote: Delambre, _Hist. de
l'Astron. Anc._, tom. i. p. 301.] He regarded astronomy as more
intimately connected with mathematical science than any other branch of
philosophy. But even he did not soar far beyond the philosophers of his
day, since he held to the immobility of the earth--the grand error of
the ancients. Some few speculators in science, like Heraclitus of Pontus
and Hicetas, conceived a motion of the earth itself upon its axis, so as
to account for the apparent motion of the sun, but they also thought it
was in the centre of the universe.
[Sidenote: Meton.]
The introduction of the gnomon and dial into Greece advanced
astronomical knowledge, since they were used to determine the equinoxes
and solstices, as well as parts of the day. Meton set up a sun-dial at
Athens in the year 433 B.C., but the length of the hour varied with the
time of the year, since the Greeks divided the day into twelve equal
parts. Dials were common at Rome in the time of Plautus, 224 B.C.;
[Footnote: Ap. Gell., _N. A._, iii. 3.] but there was a difficulty
of using them, since they failed at night and in cloudy weather, and
could not be relied on. Hence the introduction of water-clocks instead.
[Sidenote: Aristarchus.]
Aristarchus is said to have combated (280 B.C.) the geocentric theory so
generally received by philosophers, and to have promulgated the
hypothesis "that the fixed stars and the sun are immovable; that the
earth is carried round the sun in the circumference of a circle of which
the sun is the centre; and that the sphere of the fixed stars having the
same centre as the sun, is of such magnitude that the orbit of the earth
is to the distance of the fixed stars, as the centre of the sphere of
the fixed stars is to its surface." [Footnote: Lewis, p. 190.] This
speculation, resting on the authority of Archimedes, was ridiculed by
him; but if it were advanced, it shows a great advance in astronomical
science, and considering the age, was one of the boldest speculations of
antiquity. Aristarchus also, according to Plutarch, [Footnote: Plut.,
_Plac. Phil._, ii. 24.] explained the apparent annual motion of the
sun in the ecliptic, by supposing the orbit of the earth to be inclined
to its axis. There is no evidence that this great astronomer supported
his heliocentric theory with any geometrical proof, although Plutarch
maintains that he demonstrated it. [Footnote: _Quaest. Plat._, viii.
1.] This theory gave great offense, especially to the Stoics, and
Cleanthes, the head of the school at that time, maintained that the
author of such an impious doctrine should be punished. Aristarchus has
left a treatise "On the Magnitudes and Distances of the Sun and Moon,"
and his methods to measure the apparent diameters of the sun and moon,
are considered sound by modern astronomers, [Footnote: Lewis, p. 193.]
but inexact owing to defective instruments. He estimated the diameter of
the sun at the seven hundred and twentieth part of the circumference of
the circle, which it describes in its diurnal revolution, which is not
far from the truth; but in this treatise he does not allude to his
heliocentric theory.
[Sidenote: Archimedes.]
[Sidenote: Eratosthenes.]
Archimedes, born 287 B.C., is stated to have measured the distance of
the sun, moon, and planets, and he constructed an orrery in which he
exhibited their motions. But it was not in the Grecian colony of
Syracuse, but of Alexandria, that the greatest light was shed on
astronomical science. Here Aristarchus resided, and also Eratosthenes,
who lived between the years 276 and 196 B.C. He was a native of Athens,
but was invited by Ptolemy Euergetes to Alexandria, and placed at the
head of the library. His great achievement was the determination of the
circumference of the earth. This was done by measuring on the ground the
distance between Syene, a city exactly under the tropic, and Alexandria
situated on the same meridian. The distance was found to be five
thousand stadia. The meridional distance of the sun from the zenith of
Alexandria, he estimated to be 7 degrees 12', or a fiftieth part of the
circumference of the meridian. Hence the circumference of the earth was
fixed at two hundred and fifty thousand stadia, not far from the truth.
The circumference being known, the diameter of the earth was easily
determined. The moderns have added nothing to this method. He also
calculated the diameter of the sun to be twenty-seven times greater than
of the earth, and the distance of the sun from the earth to be eight
hundred and four million stadia, and that of the moon seven hundred and
eighty thousand stadia--a very close approximation to the truth.
[Sidenote: Hipparchus.]
[Sidenote: Greatness of Hipparchus.]
Astronomical science received a great impulse from the school of
Alexandria, and Eratosthenes had worthy successors in Aristarchus,
Aristyllus, Apollonius. But the great light of this school was
Hipparchus, whose lifetime extended from 190 to 120 years B.C. He laid
the foundation of astronomy upon a scientific basis. "He determined,"
says Delambre, "the position of the stars by right ascensions and
declinations; he was acquainted with the obliquity of the ecliptic. He
determined the inequality of the sun, and the place of its apogee, as
well as its mean motion; the mean motion of the moon, of its nodes and
apogee; the equation of the moon's centre, and the inclination of its
orbit; he likewise detected a second inequality, of which he could not,
for want of proper observations, discover the period and the law. His
commentary on Aratus shows that he had expounded, and given a
geometrical demonstration of, the methods necessary to find out the
right and oblique ascensions of the points of the ecliptic and of the
stars, the east point and the culminating point of the ecliptic, and the
angle of the east, which is now called the nonagesimal degree. He could
calculate eclipses of the moon, and use them for the correction of his
lunar tables, and he had an approximate knowledge of parallax."
[Footnote: Delambre, _Hist. de l'Astron. Anc._, tom. i. p. 184.]
His determination of the motions of the sun and moon, and method of
predicting eclipses, evince great mathematical genius. But he combined,
with this determination, a theory of epicycles and eccentrics, which
modern astronomy discards. It was, however, a great thing to conceive of
the earth as a solid sphere, and reduce the phenomena of the heavenly
bodies to uniform motions in of circular orbits. "That Hipparchus should
have succeeded in the first great steps of the resolution of the
heavenly bodies into circular motions is a circumstance," says Whewell,
"which gives him one of the most distinguished places in the roll of
great astronomers." [Footnote: _Hist. Ind. Science_, vol. i. p.
181.] But he even did more than this. He discovered that apparent motion
of the fixed stars round the axis of the ecliptic, which is called the
Precession of the Equinoxes, one of the greatest discoveries in
astronomy. He maintained that the precession was not greater than fifty-
nine seconds, and not less than thirty-six seconds. Hipparchus framed a
catalogue of the stars, and determined their places with reference to
the ecliptic, by their latitudes and longitudes. Altogether, he seems to
have been one of the greatest geniuses of antiquity, and his works imply
a prodigious amount of calculation.
[Sidenote: Posidonius.]
[Sidenote: The Roman Calendar.]
Astronomy made no progress for three hundred years, although it was
expounded by improved methods. Posidonius constructed an orrery, which
exhibited the diurnal motions of the sun, moon, and five planets.
Posidonius calculated the circumference of the earth to be two hundred
and forty thousand stadia by a different method from Eratosthenes. The
barrenness of discovery, from Hipparchus to Ptolemy, in spite of the
patronage of the Ptolemies, was owing to the want of instruments for the
accurate measure of time, like our clocks, to the imperfection of
astronomical tables, and to the want of telescopes. Hence the great
Greek astronomers were unable to realize their theories. Their theories
were magnificent, and evinced great power of mathematical combination;
but what could they do without that wondrous instrument by which the
human eye indefinitely multiplies its power?--by which objects are
distinctly seen, which, without it, would be invisible? Moreover, the
ancients had no accurate almanacs, since the care of the calendar
belonged to the priests rather than to the astronomers, who tampered
with the computation of time for temporary and personal objects. The
calendars of different communities differed. Hence Julius Caesar rendered
a great service to science by the reform of the Roman calendar, which
was exclusively under the control of the college of pontiffs. The Roman
year consisted of three hundred and fifty-five days, and, in the time of
Caesar, the calendar was in great confusion, being ninety days in
advance, so that January was an autumn month. He inserted the regular
intercalary month of twenty-three days, and two additional ones of
sixty-seven days. These, together of ninety days, were added to three
hundred and sixty-five days, making a year of transition of four hundred
and forty-five days, by which January was brought back to the first
month in the year after the winter solstice. And to prevent the
repetition of the error, he directed that in future the year should
consist of three hundred and sixty-five and one quarter days, which he
effected by adding one day to the months of April, June, September, and
November, and two days to the months of January, Sextilis, and December,
making an addition of ten days to the old year of three hundred and
fifty-five. And he provided for a uniform intercalation of one day in
every fourth year, which accounted for the remaining quarter of a day.
[Footnote: Suet., _Caesar_, 49; Plut., _Caesar_, 59.]
"Ille moras solis, quibus in sua signa rediret,
Traditur exactis disposuisse notis.
Is decies senos tercentum et quinque diebus
Junxit; et pleno tempora quarta die.
Hic anni modus est. In lustrum accedere debet
Quae consummatur partibus, una dies."
[Footnote: Ovid, _Fast._, iii.]
[Sidenote: Caesar's labors.]
Caesar was a student of astronomy, and always found time for its
contemplation. He is said even to have written a treatise on the motion
of the stars. He was assisted in his reform of the calendar by
Sosigines, an Alexandrian astronomer. He took it out of the hands of the
priests, and made it a matter of pure civil regulation. The year was
defined by the sun, and not, as before, by the moon.
Thus the Romans were the first to bring the scientific knowledge of the
Greeks into practical use; but while they measured the year with a great
approximation to accuracy, they still used sun-dials and water-clocks to
measure diurnal time. And even these were not constructed as they should
have been. The hours on the sun-dial were all made equal, instead of
varying with the length of the day, so that the hour varied with the
length of the day. The illuminated interval was divided into twelve
equal parts, so that, if the sun rose at five A.M. and set at eight
P.M., each hour was equal to eighty minutes. And this rude method of
measurement of diurnal time remained in use till the sixth century. But
clocks, with wheels and weights, were not invented till the twelfth
century.
The earlier Greek astronomers did not attempt to fix the order of the
planets; but when geometry was applied to celestial movements, the
difference between the three superior planets and the two inferior was
perceived, and the sun was placed in the midst between them, so that the
seven movable heavenly bodies were made to succeed one another in the
following order: 1. Saturn; 2. Jupiter; 3. Mars; 4. The Sun; 5. Venus;
6. Mercury; 7. The Moon. Archimedes adopted this order, which was
followed by the leading philosophers. [Footnote: Lewis, p. 247.]
[Sidenote: Ptolemy and his system.]
The last great light among the ancients in astronomical science was
Ptolemy, who lived from 100 to 170 A.D. in Alexandria. He was acquainted
with the writings of all the previous astronomers, but accepted
Hipparchus as his guide. He held that the heaven is spherical and
revolves upon its axis; that the earth is a sphere, and is situated
within the celestial sphere, and nearly at its centre; that it is a mere
point in reference to the distance and magnitude of the fixed stars, and
that it has no motion. He adopted the views of the ancient astronomers,
who placed Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars next under the sphere of the fixed
stars, then the sun above Venus and Mercury, and lastly the moon next to
the earth. But he differed from Aristotle, who conceived that the earth
revolves in an orbit round the centre of the planetary system, and turns
upon its axis--two ideas in common with the doctrines which Copernicus
afterward unfolded. But even he did not conceive the heliocentric theory
that the sun is the centre of the universe. Archimedes and Hipparchus
both rejected this theory.
In regard to the practical value of the speculations of the ancient
astronomers, it may be said that, had they possessed clocks and
telescopes, their scientific methods would have sufficed for all
practical purposes. The greatness of modern discoveries lies in the
great stretch of the reasoning powers, and the magnificent field they
afford for sublime contemplation. "But," as Sir G. Cornwall Lewis
remarks, "modern astronomy is a science of pure curiosity, and is
directed exclusively to the extension of knowledge in a field which
human interests can never enter. The periodic time of Uranus, the nature
of Saturn's ring, and the occupation of Jupiter's satellites, are as far
removed from the concerns of mankind as the heliacal rising of Sirius,
or the northern position of the Great Bear." This may seem to be a
utilitarian view with which those philosophers, who have cultivated
science for its own sake, finding in the same a sufficient reward, as in
truth and virtue, can have no sympathy.
[Sidenote: Result of ancient investigations.]
The upshot of the scientific attainments of the ancients, in the
magnificent realm of the heavenly bodies, would seem to be that they
laid the foundation of all the definite knowledge which is useful to
mankind; while in the field of abstract calculation they evinced
reasoning and mathematical powers which have never been surpassed.
Eratosthenes, Archimedes, and Hipparchus were geniuses worthy to be
placed by the side of Kepler, Newton, and La Place. And all ages will
reverence their efforts and their memory. It is truly surprising that,
with their imperfect instruments, and the absence of definite data, they
reached a height so sublime and grand. They explained the doctrine of
the sphere and the apparent motions of the planets, but they had no
instruments capable of measuring angular distances. The ingenious
epicycles of Ptolemy prepared the way for the elliptic orbits and laws
of Kepler, which, in turn, conducted Newton to the discovery of the laws
of gravitation--the grandest scientific discovery in the annals of our
race.
[Sidenote: Geometry.]
[Sidenote: Ancient Greek geometers.]
[Sidenote: Euclid.]
[Sidenote: Archimedes.]
Closely connected with astronomical science was geometry, which was
first taught in Egypt,--the nurse and cradle of ancient wisdom. It arose
from the necessity of adjusting the landmarks, disturbed by the
inundations of the Nile. Thales introduced the science to the Greeks. He
applied a circle to the measurement of angles. Anaximander invented the
sphere, the gnomon, and geographical charts, which required considerable
geometrical knowledge. Anaxagoras employed himself in prison in
attempting to square the circle. Pythagoras discovered the important
theorem that in a right-angled triangle the squares on the sides
containing the right angle are together equal to the square on the
opposite side of it. He also discovered that of all figures having the
same boundary, the circle among plane figures and the sphere among
solids, are the most capacious. The theory of the regular solids was
taught in his school, and his disciple, Archytas, was the author of a
solution of the problem of two mean proportionals. Democritus of Abdera
treated of the contact of circles and spheres, and of irrational lines
and solids. Hippocrates treated of the duplication of the cube, and
wrote elements of geometry, and knew that the area of a circle was equal
to a triangle whose base is equal to its circumference, and altitude
equal to its radius. The disciples of Plato invented conic sections, and
discovered the geometrical loci. They also attempted to resolve the
problems of the trisection of an angle and the duplication of a cube. To
Leon is ascribed that part of the solution of a problem, called its
_determination_, which treats of the cases in which the problem is
possible, and of those in which it cannot be resolved. Euclid has almost
given his name to the science of geometry. He was born B.C. 323, and
belonged to the Platonic sect, which ever attached great importance to
mathematics. His "Elements" are still in use, as nearly perfect as any
human production can be. They consist of thirteen books,--the first four
on plane geometry; the fifth is on the theory of proportion, and applies
to magnitude in general; the seventh, eighth, and ninth are on
arithmetic; the tenth on the arithmetical characteristics of the
division of a straight line; the eleventh and twelfth on the elements of
solid geometry; the thirteenth on the regular solids. These "Elements"
soon became the universal study of geometers throughout the civilized
world. They were translated into the Arabic, and through the Arabians
were made known to mediaeval Europe. There can be no doubt that this
work is one of the highest triumphs of human genius, and has been valued
more than any single monument of antiquity. It is still a text-book, in
various English translations, in all our schools. Euclid also wrote
various other works, showing great mathematical talent. But, perhaps, a
greater even than Euclid was Archimedes, born 287 B.C., who wrote on the
sphere and cylinder, which terminate in the discovery that the solidity
and surface of a sphere are respectively two thirds of the solidity and
surface of the circumscribing cylinder. He also wrote on conoids and
spheroids. "The properties of the spiral, and the quadrature of the
parabola were added to ancient geometry by Archimedes, the last being a
great step in the progress of the science, since it was the first
curvilineal space legitimately squared." Modern mathematicians may not
have the patience to go through his investigations, since the
conclusions he arrived at may now be reached by shorter methods, but the
great conclusions of the old geometers were only reached by prodigious
mathematical power. Archimedes is popularly better known as the inventor
of engines of war, and various ingenious machines, than as a
mathematician, great as were his attainments. His theory of the lever
was the foundation of statics, till the discovery of the composition of
forces in the time of Newton, and no essential addition was made to the
principles of the equilibrium of fluids and floating bodies till the
time of Stevin in 1608. He detected the mixture of silver in a crown of
gold which his patron, Hiero of Syracuse, ordered to be made, and he
invented a water-screw for pumping water out of the hold of a great ship
he built. He used also a combination of pulleys, and he constructed an
orrery to represent the movement of the heavenly bodies. He had an
extraordinary inventive genius for discovering new provinces of inquiry,
and new points of view for old and familiar objects. Like Newton, he had
a habit of abstraction from outward things, and would forget to take his
meals. He was killed by Roman soldiers when Syracuse was taken, and the
Sicilians so soon forgot his greatness that in the time of Cicero they
did not know where his tomb was. [Footnote: See article in Smith's
_Dictionary_, by Prof. Darkin, of Oxford.]
[Sidenote: Eratosthenes.]
Eratosthenes was another of the famous geometers of antiquity, and did
much to improve geometrical analysis. He was also a philosopher and
geographer. He gave a solution of the problem of the duplication of the
cube, and applied his geometrical knowledge to the measurement of the
magnitude of the earth--one of the first who brought mathematical
methods to the aid of astronomy, which, in our day, is almost
exclusively the province of the mathematician.
[Sidenote: Apollonius of Perga.]
Apollonius of Perga, probably about forty years younger than Archimedes,
and his equal in mathematical genius, was the most fertile and profound
writer among the ancients who treated of geometry. He was called the
Great Geometer. His most important work is a treatise on conic sections,
regarded with unbounded admiration by contemporaries, and, in some
respects, unsurpassed by any thing produced by modern mathematicians.
He, however, made use of the labors of his predecessors, so that it is
difficult to tell how far he is original. But all men of science must
necessarily be indebted to those who have preceded them. Even Homer, in
the field of poetry, made use of the bards who had sung for a thousand
years before him. In the realms of philosophy the great men of all ages
have built up new systems on the foundations which others have
established. If Plato or Aristotle had been contemporaries with Thales,
would they have matured so wonderful a system of dialectics? and if
Thales had been contemporaneous with Plato, he might have added to his
sublime science even more than Aristotle. So of the great mathematicians
of antiquity; they were all wonderful men, and worthy to be classed with
the Newtons and Keplers of our times. Considering their means, and the
state of science, they made as _great_, though not as _fortunate_
discoveries--discoveries which show patience, genius, and power
of calculation. Apollonius was one of these--one of the master
intellects of antiquity, like Euclid and Archimedes--one of the master
intellects of all ages, like Newton himself. I might mention the
subjects of his various works, but they would not be understood except
by those familiar with mathematics. [Footnote: See Bayle's _Dict_.;
Bossuet, _Essai sur L'Hist. Gen. des Math_.; Simson's _Sectiones
Conicae_.]
[Sidenote: Cultivation of geometry by the Greeks.]
Other famous geometers could also be mentioned, but such men as Euclid,
Archimedes, and Apollonius are enough to show that geometry was
cultivated to a great extent by the philosophers of antiquity. It
progressively advanced, like philosophy itself, from the time of Thales,
until it had reached the perfection of which it was capable, when it
became merged into astronomical science. It was cultivated more
particularly by the disciples of Plato, who placed over his school this
inscription, "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here." He believed
that the laws by which the universe is governed are in accordance with
the doctrines of mathematics. The same opinion was shared by Pythagoras,
the great founder of the science, whose great formula was, that number
is the essence or first principle of all things. No thinkers ever
surpassed the Greeks in originality and profundity, and mathematics,
being highly prized by them, were carried to the greatest perfection
their method would allow. They did not understand algebra, by the
application of which to geometry modern mathematicians have climbed to
greater heights than the ancients. But then it is all the more
remarkable that, without the aid of algebraic analysis, they were able
to solve such difficult problems as occupied the minds of Archimedes and
Apollonius. No positive science can boast of such rapid development as
geometry for two or three hundred years before Christ, and never was the
intellect of man more severely tasked than by the ancient
mathematicians.
[Sidenote: Empirical sciences.]
No empirical science can be carried to perfection by any one nation or
in any particular epoch. It can only expand with the progressive
developments of the human race itself. Nevertheless, in that science
which for three thousand years has been held in the greatest honor, and
which is one of the three great liberal professions of our modern times,
the ancients, especially the Greeks, made considerable advance. The
science of medicine, having in view the amelioration of human misery,
and the prolongation of life itself, was very early cultivated. It was,
indeed, in old times, another word for _physics_,--the science of
nature,--and the _physician_ was the observer and expounder of
physics. The physician was supposed to be acquainted with the secrets of
nature--that is, the knowledge of drugs, of poisons, of antidotes to
them, and the way to administer them. He was also supposed to know the
process of preserving the body after death. Thus Joseph commanded his
physician to embalm the body of his father seventeen hundred years
before the birth of Christ, and the process of embalming was probably
known to the Egyptians beyond the period when history begins. Helen, of
Trojan fame, put into wine a drug that "frees man from grief and anger
and causes oblivion of all ills." [Footnote: _Odyssey_, b. iv.]
Solomon was a great botanist, with which the science of medicine is
indissolubly connected. The "Ayur Veda," written nine hundred years
before Hippocrates was born, sums up the knowledge of previous periods
relating to obstetric surgery, to general pathology, to the treatment of
insanity, to infantile diseases, to toxicology, to personal hygiene, and
to diseases of the generative functions. [Footnote: Wise, _On the
Hindu System of Medicine_, p. 12.] The origin of Hindu medicine is
lost in remote antiquity.
[Sidenote: Hippocrates.]
Thus Hippocrates, the father of European medicine, must have derived his
knowledge, not merely from his own observations, but from the writings
of men unknown to us, and systems practiced for an indefinite period.
The real founders of Greek medicine are fabled characters, like Hercules
and Aesculapius--that is, benefactors whose names have not descended to
us. They are mythical personages, like Hermes and Chiron. One thousand
two hundred years before Christ temples were erected to Aesculapius in
Greece, the priests of which were really physicians, and the temples
themselves were hospitals. In them were practiced rites apparently
mysterious, but which modern science calls by the names of mesmerism,
hydropathy, mineral springs, and other essential elements of empirical
science. And these temples were also medical schools. That of Cos gave
birth to Hippocrates, and it was there that his writings were commenced.
Pythagoras--for those old Grecian philosophers were the fathers of all
wisdom and knowledge, in mathematics and empirical sciences, as well as
philosophy itself--studied medicine in the schools of Egypt, Phoenicia,
Chaldea, and India, and came in conflict with sacerdotal power, which
has ever been antagonistic to new ideas in science. He traveled from
town to town as a teacher or lecturer, establishing communities in which
medicine as well as numbers was taught.
The greatest name in medical science, in ancient or in modern times,--
the man who did the most to advance it; the greatest medical genius of
whom we have record,--is Hippocrates, born on the island of Cos B.C.
460, of the great Aesculapian family, and was instructed by his father.
We know scarcely more of his life than we do of Homer himself, although
he lived in the period of the highest splendor of Athens. And his
writings, like those of Homer, are thought by some to be the work of
different men. They were translated into Arabic, and were no slight
means of giving an impulse to the Saracenic schools of the Middle Ages
in that science in which the Saracens especially excelled. The
Hippocratic collection consists of more than sixty works, which were
held in the highest estimation by the ancient physicians. Hippocrates
introduced a new era in medicine, which, before his time, had been
monopolized by the priests. He carried out a system of severe induction
from the observation of facts, and is as truly the creator of the
inductive method as Bacon himself. He abhorred theories which could not
be established by facts. He was always open to conviction, and candidly
confessed his mistakes. He was conscientious in the practice of his
profession, and valued the success of his art more than silver and gold.
The Athenians revered him for his benevolence as well as genius. The
great principle of his practice was trust in nature. Hence he was
accused of allowing his patients to die; but this principle has many
advocates among scientific men in our day, and some suppose the whole
philosophy of homeopathy rests on the primal principle which Hippocrates
advanced. He had great skill in diagnosis, by which medical genius is
most severely tested. His practice was cautious and timid in contrast
with that of his contemporaries. He is the author of the celebrated
maxim, "Life is short and art is long." He divides the causes of disease
into two principal classes,--the one comprehending the influence of
seasons, climates, and other external forces; the other from the effects
of food and exercise. To the influence of climate he attributes the
conformation of the body and the disposition of the mind. He also
attributes all sorts of disorders to a vicious system of diet. For more
than twenty centuries his pathology was the foundation of all the
medical sects. He was well acquainted with the medicinal properties of
drugs, and was the first to assign three periods to the course of a
malady. He knew, of course, but little of surgery, although he was in
the habit of bleeding, and often employed his knife. He was also
acquainted with cupping, and used violent purgatives. He was not aware
of the importance of the pulse, and confounded the veins with the
arteries. He wrote in the Ionic dialect, and some of his works have gone
through three hundred editions, so highly have they been valued. His
authority passed away, like that of Aristotle, on the revival of
European science. Yet who have been greater ornaments and lights than
these distinguished Greeks?
[Sidenote: Galen.]
The school of Alexandria produced eminent physicians, as well as
mathematicians, after the glory of Greece had departed. So highly was it
esteemed that Galen went there to study five hundred years after its
foundation. It was distinguished for inquiries into scientific anatomy
and physiology, for which Aristotle had prepared the way. He was the
Humboldt of his day, and gave great attention to physics. In eight books
he developed the general principles of natural science known to the
Greeks. On the basis of the Aristotelian researches, the Alexandrian
physicians carried out extensive inquiries in physiology. Herophilus
discovered the fundamental principles of neurology, and advanced the
anatomy of the brain and spinal cord.
[Sidenote: Medical science among the Romans.]
Although the Romans had but little sympathy for science or philosophy,
being essentially political and warlike in their turn of mind, yet when
they had conquered the world, and had turned their attention to arts,
medicine received great attention. The first physicians were Greek
slaves. Of these was Asclepiades, who enjoyed the friendship of Cicero.
It is from him that the popular medical theories as to the "pores" have
descended. He was the inventor of the shower-bath. Celsus wrote a work
on medicine which takes almost equal rank with the Hippocratic writings.
Medical science at Rome culminated in Galen, as it did at Athens in
Hippocrates. He was patronized by Marcus Aurelius, and availed himself
of all the knowledge of preceding naturalists and physicians. He was
born at Pergamus about the year A.D. 165, where he learned, under able
masters, anatomy, pathology, and therapeutics. He finished his studies
at Alexandria, and came to Rome at the invitation of the emperor. Like
his patron, he was one of the brightest ornaments of the heathen world,
and one of the most learned and accomplished men of any age.
"_Medicorum dissertissimus atque doctissimus_." [Footnote: St.
Jerome, _Comment. in Aoms_, c. 5, vol. vi.] He left five hundred
treatises, most of them relating to some branch of medical science,
which give him the merit of being one of the most voluminous of authors.
His celebrity is founded chiefly on his anatomical and physiological
works. He was familiar with practical anatomy, deriving his knowledge
from dissection. His observations about health are practical and useful.
He lays great stress on gymnastic exercises, and recommends the
pleasures of the chase, the cold bath in hot weather, hot baths to old
people, the use of wine, three meals a day, and pork as the best of
animal food. The great principles of his practice were that disease is
to be overcome by that which is contrary to the disease itself, and that
nature is to be preserved by that which has relation with nature. As
disease cannot be overcome so long as its cause exists, that, if
possible, was first to be removed, and the strength of the patient is to
be considered before the treatment is proceeded with. His "Commentaries
on Hippocrates" served as a treasure of medical criticism, from which
succeeding annotators borrowed. No one ever set before the medical
profession a higher standard than Galen, and few have more nearly
approached it. He did not attach himself to any particular school, but
studied the doctrines of each--an eclectic in the fullest sense.
[Footnote: See Leclerc, _Hist. de la Medicine_; Hartt Shoengel,
_Geschichte der Arzneykunde_. W. A. Greenhill, M.D., of Oxford, has
a very learned article in Smith's _Dictionary_.] The works of Galen
constituted the last production of ancient Roman medicine, and from his
day the decline in medical science was rapid, until it was revived among
the Arabs.
The physical sciences, it must be confessed, were not carried by the
ancients to any such length as geometry and astronomy. In physical
geography they were particularly deficient. Yet even this branch of
knowledge can boast of some eminent names. When men sailed timidly on
the coasts, and dared not explore distant seas, the true position of
countries could not be ascertained with the definiteness that it is at
present. But geography was not utterly neglected, nor was natural
history.
[Sidenote: Physical geography.]
Herodotus gives us most valuable information respecting the manners and
customs of oriental and barbarous nations, and Pliny has written a
natural history, in thirty-seven books, which is compiled from upwards
of two thousand volumes, and refers to twenty thousand matters of
importance. He was born A.D. 23, and was fifty-three when the eruption
of Vesuvius took place which caused his death. Pliny cannot be called a
scientific genius, in the sense understood by modern savants; nor was he
an original observer. His materials are drawn up second hand, like a
modern encyclopedia. Nor did he evince great judgment in his selection.
He had a great love of the marvelous, and is often unintelligible. But
his work is a wonderful monument of human industry. It treats of every
thing in the natural world--of the heavenly bodies, of the elements, of
thunder and lightning, of the winds and seasons, of the changes and
phenomena of the earth, of countries and nations, seas and rivers, of
men, animals, birds, fishes, and plants, of minerals and medicines and
precious stones, of commerce and the fine arts. He is full of errors;
but his work is among the most valuable productions of antiquity. Buffon
pronounced his natural history to contain an infinity of knowledge in
every department of human occupation, conveyed in a dress ornate and
brilliant. It is a literary rather than a scientific monument, and as
such it is wonderful--a compilation from one hundred and sixty volumes
of notes. In strict scientific value, it is inferior to the works of
modern research; but there are few minds, even in these times, who have
directed inquiries to such a variety of subjects.
[Sidenote: Strabo.]
[Sidenote: Construction of maps.]
[Sidenote: Ptolemy.]
Geographical knowledge was advanced by Strabo, who lived in the Augustan
era; but researches were chiefly confined to the Roman empire. Strabo
was, like Herodotus, a great traveler, and much of his geographical
information is the result of his own observations. It is probable he is
much indebted to Eratosthenes, who preceded him by three centuries, and
who was the first systematic writer on geography. The authorities of
Strabo are chiefly Greek, but his work is defective, from the imperfect
notions which the ancients had of astronomy; so that the determination
of the earth's figure by the measure of latitude and longitude, the
essential foundations of geographical description, was unknown. The
enormous strides, which all forms of physical science have made since
the discovery of America, throw all ancient descriptions and
investigations into the shade, and Strabo appears at as great
disadvantage as Pliny or Ptolemy; yet the work of Strabo, considering
his means, and the imperfect knowledge of the earth's surface, and
astronomical science, was really a great achievement of industry. He
treats of the form and magnitude of the earth, and devotes eight books
to Europe, six to Asia, and one to Africa. His great authorities are
Eratosthenes, Polybius, Aristotle, Antiochus of Syracuse, Posidonius,
Theopompus, Artemidorus Ephorus, Herodotus, Anaximenes, Thucydides, and
Aristo, chiefly historians and philosophers. Whatever may be said of the
accuracy of the great geographer of antiquity, it cannot be denied that
he was a man of immense research and learning. His work in seventeen
books is one of the most valuable which have come down from antiquity,
both from the discussions which run through it, and the curious facts
which can be found nowhere else. It is scarcely fair to estimate the
genius of Strabo by the correctness and extent of his geographical
knowledge. All men are lost in science, and science is progressive. The
great scientific lights of our day may be insignificant, compared with
those who are to arise, if profundity and accuracy of knowledge is the
test. It is the genius of the ancients, their grasp and power of mind,
their original labors which we are to consider. Anaxagoras was one of
the greatest philosophical geniuses of all ages; but, as philosophy is a
science, and is progressive, his knowledge could not be compared with
that of Aristotle. Again, who doubts the original genius and grasp of
Aristotle, but what was he, in accuracy of knowledge and true method, in
comparison with the savants of the nineteenth century; yet, it would be
difficult to show that Aristotle was inferior to Bacon or Cuvier, or
Stuart Mill. If, however, we would compare the geographical knowledge of
the ancients with that of the moderns, we confess to the immeasurable
inferiority of the ancients in this branch. When Eratosthenes began his
labors, it was known that the surface of the earth was spherical. He
established parallels of latitude and longitude, and attempted the
difficult undertaking of measuring the circumference of the globe by the
actual measurement of a segment of one of its great circles. Posidonius
determined the arc of a meridian between Rhodes and Alexandria to be a
forty-eighth part of the whole circumference--an enormous calculation,
yet a remarkable one in the infancy of astronomical science. Hipparchus
introduced into geography a great improvement, namely, the relative
situation of places, by the same process that he determined the
positions of the heavenly bodies. He also pointed out how longitude
might be determined by observing the eclipses of the sun and moon. This
led to the construction of maps; but none have reached us except those
which were used to illustrate the geography of Ptolemy. Hipparchus was
born B.C. 276, the first who raised geography to the rank of a science.
He starved himself to death, being tired of life, like Eratosthenes,
more properly an astronomer, and the most distinguished among the
ancients, born about 160 B.C., although none of his writings have
reached us. The improvements he pointed out were applied by Ptolemy
himself, an astronomer who flourished about the year 160 at Alexandria.
His work was a presentation of geographical knowledge known in his day,
so far as geography is the science of determining the position of places
on the earth's surface. The description of places belongs to Strabo. His
work was accepted as the textbook of the science till the fifteenth
century, for in his day the Roman empire had been well surveyed. He
maintained that the earth is _spherical_, and introduced the terms
_longitude_ and _latitude_, which Eratosthenes had established,
and computed the earth to be one hundred and eighty thousand
stadia in circumference, and a degree five hundred stadia in length,
or sixty-two and a half Roman miles. His estimates of the length
of a degree of latitude were nearly correct; but he made great errors in
the degrees of longitude, making the length of the world from east to
west too great, which led to the belief in the practicability of a
western passage to India. He also assigned too great length to the
Mediterranean, arising from the difficulty of finding the longitude with
accuracy. But it was impossible, with the scientific knowledge of his
day, to avoid errors, and we are surprised that he made so few.
* * * * *
REFERENCES.--An exceedingly learned work has recently been issued in
London, by Parker and Son, on the Astronomy of the Ancients, by Sir
George Cornwall Lewis, though rather ostentatious in his parade of
authorities, and minute on points which are not of much consequence.
Delambre's History of Ancient Astronomy has long been a classic, but
richer in materials for a history than a history itself. There is a
valuable essay in the Encyclopedia Britannica, which refers to a list of
authors, among which are Biccoli, Weilder, Bailly, Playfair, La Lande.
Lewis makes much reference to Macrobius, Vitruvius, Diogenes Laertius,
Plutarch, and Suidas, among the ancients, and to Ideler, Unters. uber
die Art. Beob. der Alten.
Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences may also be consulted with
profit. Leclerc, Hist, de Med.; Spengel, Gesch. der Arzneykunde.
Strabo's Geography is the most valuable of Antiquity. See also Polybius.
[Relocated Footnote: The style of modern historical criticism may thus
be exemplified, like the discussions of the Germans, whether the Arx on
the Capitoline Hill occupied the northeastern or southwestern corner,
which take up nearly one half of the learned article in Smith's
Dictionary, on the Capitoline. "Thales supposed the earth to float on
the water, like a plank of wood": [Greek: oi d hudatos keisthai touton
gar archaiotaton pareilaephamen ton logon hon phasin eipein thalae ton
Milaesion]. Aristot., _De Coel_., ii. 13: "_Quoe sequitur Thaletis
ineptq sententia est. Ait enim terrarum orbem aqua sustineri._" Seneca,
_Nat. Quoest_., iii. 13. This notion is mentioned in _Schol. Iliad_,
xiii. 125. This doctrine Thales brought from Egypt. See Plut., _Pac_.,
in. 10; Galen, c. 21. But this maybe doubted. Callimach., _Frag_., 94;
Hygin, _Poet. Astr_., ii. 2; Martin, _Timee de Platon_., tom. ii. p.
109, thinks it questionable whether Thales saw Egypt. Diog. Laert.,
viii. 60. Compare, however, Sturz, _Thales_, p. 80; Proclus, _in Tim_.,
i. p. 40; _Schol. Aristophanes, Nub_., ii. 31; Varro, ii. vi. 10. See
also, _Ideler Chron_., vol. i. p. 300. But Brandis sheds light upon the
point, though his suggestions conflict with Origen, _Phil_., p. 11; also
with Aristotle, _De Coel_., ii. 13.
This style of expending learning on nothing, meets with great favor with
the pedants, who attach no value to history unless one half of the page
is filled with erudite foot-notes which few can verify, and which prove
nothing, or nothing of any consequence.]
CHAPTER X.
INTERNAL CONDITION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
We have now surveyed all that was glorious in the most splendid empire
of antiquity. We have seen a civilization which, in many respects,
rivals all that modern nations have to show. In art, in literature, in
philosophy, in laws, in the mechanism of government, in the cultivated
face of nature, in military strength, in aesthetic culture, the Romans
were our equals. And this high civilization was reached by the native
and unaided strength of man; by the power of will, by courage, by
perseverance, by genius, by fortunate circumstances; by great men,
gifted with unusual talents. We are filled with admiration by all these
trophies of genius, and cannot but feel that only a superior race could
have accomplished such mighty triumphs.
But all this splendid external was deceptive. It was hollow at heart.
And the deeper we penetrate the social condition of the people, their
real and practical life, the more we feel disgust and pity supplanting
all feelings of admiration and wonder. The Roman empire, in its shame
and degradation, suggests melancholy feelings in reference to the
destiny of man, so far as his happiness and welfare depend upon his own
unaided strength. And we see profoundly the necessity of some foreign
aid to rescue him from his miseries.
It is a sad picture of oppression, of injustice, of poverty, of vice,
and of wretchedness, which I have now to present. Glory is succeeded by
shame, and strength by weakness, and virtue by vice. The condition of
the great mass is deplorable, and even the great and fortunate shine in
a false and fictitious light. We see laws, theoretically good,
practically perverted; monstrous inequalities of condition, selfishness,
and egotism the mainsprings of life. We see energies misdirected, and
art corrupted. All noble aspirations have fled, and the good and the
wise retire from active life in despair and misanthropy. Poets flatter
the tyrants who trample on human rights, and sensuality and Epicurean
pleasures absorb the depraved thoughts of a perverse generation.
[Sidenote: The imperial despotism.]
The first thing which arrests our attention as we survey the grand
empire which embraced the civilized countries or the world, is the
imperial despotism. It may have been a necessity, an inevitable sequence
to the anarchy of civil war, the strife of parties, great military
successes, and the corruptions of society itself. It may be viewed as a
providential event in order that general peace and security might usher
in the triumphs of a new religion. It followed naturally the subversion
of the constitution by military leaders, the breaking up of the power of
the Senate, the encroachments of democracy and its leaders, the wars of
Sulla and Marius, of Pompey and Julius. It succeeded massacres and
factions and demagogues. It came when conspiracies and proscriptions and
general insecurity rendered a stronger government desirable. The empire
was too vast to be intrusted to the guidance of conflicting parties.
There was needed a strong, central, irrepressible, irresistible power in
the hands of a single man. Safety and peace seemed preferable to glory
and genius. So the people acquiesced in the changes which were made;
they had long anticipated them; they even hailed them with silent joy.
Patriots, like Brutus, Cassius, and Cato, gave themselves up to despair;
but most men were pleased with the revolution that seated Augustus on
the throne of the world. For twenty years the empire had been desolated
by destructive and exhaustive wars. The cry of the whole empire was for
peace, and peace could be secured only by the ascendency of a single
man, ruling with absolute and unresisted sway.
[Sidenote: Necessity of revolution.]
[Sidenote: Imperial Rule.]
Historians generally have regarded the revolution, which changed the
republic to a monarchy, as salutary in its influences for several
generations. The empire was never so splendid as under the Caesars. The
energies of the people were directed into peaceful and industrial
channels. A new public policy was inaugurated by Augustus--to preserve
rather than extend the limits of the empire. The world enjoyed peace,
and the rich consoled themselves with riches. Society was established
upon a new basis, and was no longer rent by factions and parties.
Demagogues no longer disturbed the public peace, nor were the provinces
ransacked and devastated to provide for the means of carrying on war. So
long as men did not oppose the government they were safe from
molestation, and were left to pursue their business and pleasure in
their own way. Wealth rapidly increased, and all mechanical arts, and
all elegant pleasures. Temples became more magnificent, and the city was
changed from brick to marble. Palaces arose upon the hills, and shops
were erected in the valleys. There were fewer riots and mobs and public
disturbances. Public amusements were systematized and enlarged, and the
people indulged with sports, spectacles, and luxuries. Rome became a
still greater centre of wealth and art as well as of political power.
The city increased in population and beautiful structures. The emperors
were great patrons of every thing calculated to dazzle the eyes of their
subjects, whether amusements, or palaces, or baths, or aqueducts, or
triumphal monuments. Artists and scholars flocked to the great emporium,
as well as merchants and foreign princes. Nor was imperial cruelty often
visited on the humble classes. It was the policy of the emperors to
amuse and flatter the people, while they deprived them of political
rights. But social life was free. All were at liberty to seek their
pleasures and gains. All were proud of their metropolis, with its gilded
glories and its fascinating pleasures. The city was probably supplied
with better water, and could rely with more certainty on the necessaries
of life, than under the old regime. The people had better baths, and
larger houses, and cheaper corn. The government, for a time, was
splendidly administered, even by tyrants. Outrages, extortions, and
disturbances were punished. Order reigned, and tranquillity, and outward
and technical justice. All classes felt secure. They could sleep without
fear of robbery or assassination. And all trades flourished. Art was
patronized magnificently, and every opportunity was offered for making
and for spending fortunes. In short, all the arguments which can be
adduced in favor of despotism in contrast with civil war and violence,
and the strife of factions and general insecurity of life and property,
can be urged to show that the change, if inevitable, was beneficial in
its immediate effects.
[Sidenote: Despotism of the emperors.]
[Sidenote: Tyranny of the emperors.]
Nevertheless, it was a most lamentable change from that condition of
things which existed before the civil wars. Roman liberties were
prostrated forever. Tyrants, armed with absolute and irresponsible
power, ruled over the empire; nor could their tyranny end but with their
lives. Noble sentiments and aspirations were rebuked. The times were
unfavorable to the development of genius, except in those ways which
subserved the interests of the government. Under the emperors we read of
no more great orators like Cicero, battling for human rights, and
defending the public weal. Eloquence was suppressed. Nor was there
liberty of speech in the Senate. The usual jealousy of tyrants was
awakened to every emancipating influence on the people. They were now
amused with shows and spectacles, but could not make their voices heard
regarding public injuries. The people were absolutely in the hands of
iron masters. So was the Senate. So were all orders and conditions of
men. One man reigned supreme. His will was law. Resistance to it was
vain. It was treason to find fault with any public acts. From the
Pillars of Hercules to the Caspian Sea one stern will ruled all classes
and orders. No one could fly from the agents and ministers of the
empire. He was the vicegerent of the Almighty, worshiped as a deity,
undisputed master of the lives and liberties of one hundred and twenty
millions of people. There was no restraint on his inclinations. He could
do whatever he pleased, without rebuke and without fear. No general or
senator or governor could screen himself from his vengeance. He
controlled the army, the Senate, the judiciary, the internal
administration of the empire, and the religious worship of the people.
All offices and honors and emoluments emanated from him. All opposition
ceased, and all conspired to elevate still higher that supreme arbiter
of fortune whom no one could hope successfully to rival. Revolt was
madness, and treason absurdity. And so perfect was the mechanism of the
government that the emperor had time for his private pleasures. It was
never administered with greater rigor than when Tiberius secluded
himself in his guarded villa. And a timid, or weak, or irresolute
emperor was as much to be feared as a monster, since he was surrounded
with minions who might be unscrupulous. Nor was the imperial power
exercised to check the gigantic social evils of the empire,--those which
were gradually but surely undermining the virtues on which strength is
based. They did not seek to prevent irreligion, luxury, slavery, and
usury, the encroachments of the rich upon the poor, the tyranny of
foolish fashions, demoralizing sports and pleasures, money-making, and
all the follies which lax principles of morality allowed. They fed the
rabble with com and oil and wine, and thus encouraged idleness and
dissipation. The world never saw a more rapid retrograde in human
rights, or a greater prostration of liberties. Taxes were imposed
according to the pleasure or necessities of the government. Provincial
governors became still more rapacious and cruel. Judges hesitated to
decide against the government. A vile example was presented to the
people in their rulers. The emperors squandered immense sums on their
private pleasures, and set public opinion at defiance. Patriotism, in
its most enlarged sense, became an impossibility. All lofty spirits were
crushed. Corruption, in all forms of administration, fearfully
increased, for there was no safeguard. Women became debased from the
pernicious influences of a corrupt and unblushing court. Adultery,
divorce, and infanticide became still more common. The emperors thought
more of securing their own power and indulging their own passions than
of the public good. The humiliating conviction was fastened upon all
classes that liberty was extinguished, and that they were slaves to an
irresponsible power. There are those who are found to applaud a
despotism; but despotism presupposes the absence of the power of self-
government, and the necessity of severe and rigorous measures. It
presupposes the tendency to crime and violence, that men are brutes and
must be coerced like wild beasts. We are warranted in assuming a very
low condition of society when despotism became a necessity.
Theoretically, absolutism may be the best government, if rulers are wise
and just; but, practically, as men are, despotisms are cruel and
revengeful. There are great and glorious exceptions; but it cannot be
denied that society is mournful when tyrants bear rule. And it is seldom
that society improves under them, without very powerful religious
influences. It generally grows worse and worse. Despotism implies
slavery, and slavery is the worst condition of mankind,--doubtless a
wholesome discipline, under certain circumstances, yet still a great
calamity.
[Sidenote: Augustus.]
The Roman world was fortunate in having such a man as Augustus for
supreme ruler, after all liberties were subverted. He was one of the
wisest and greatest of the emperors. He inaugurated the policy of his
successors, from which the immediate ones did not far depart. He was
careful, in the first place, to disguise his powers, and offend the
moral sentiments of the people as little as possible. He met with but
little opposition in his usurpation, for the most independent of the
nobles had perished in the wars, and the rest consulted their interests.
He selected the ablest and most popular men in the city to be his
favorite ministers--Maecenas and Agrippa. His policy was peace. He
declined the coronary gold proffered by the Italian states. He was
profuse in his generosity, without additional burdens on the state, for,
as the heir of Caesar, he came into possession of eight hundred and fifty
millions of dollars, the amount which the Dictator had amassed from the
spoils of war. He was but thirty-three years of age, in the prime of his
strength and courage. He purged the Senate of unworthy members, and
restored the appearance of its ancient dignity. He took a census of the
Roman people. He increased the largesses of corn. He showed confidence
in the people whom he himself deceived. He was modest in his demeanor,
like Pericles at Athens. He visited the provinces and settled their
difficulties. He appointed able men as governors, and perpetuated a
standing army. He repaired the public edifices, and adorned the city.
But he gradually assumed all the great offices of the state. He clothed
himself with the powers and the badges of the consuls, the praenomen of
imperator, the functions of perpetual dictator. He exacted the military
oath from the whole mass of the people. He became _princeps
senatus_. He claimed the prerogatives of the tribunes, which gave to
him inviolability, with the right of protection and pardon. He was also
invested with the illustrious dignity of the supreme pontificate. As the
Senate and the people continued to meet still for the purpose of
legislation, he controlled the same by assuming the initiative, of
proposing the laws. He took occasion to give to his edicts, in his
consular or tribunitian capacity, a perpetual force; and his rescripts
or replies which issued from his council chamber, were registered as
laws. He was released from the laws, and claimed the name of Caesar. The
people were deprived of the election of magistrates. All officers of the
government were his tools, and through them he controlled all public
affairs. The prefect of the city became virtually his minister and
lieutenant. Even the proconsuls received their appointment from him.
Thus he became supreme arbiter of all fortunes, the fountain of all
influence, the centre of all power, absolute over the lives and fortunes
of all classes of men. Strange that the people should have submitted to
such monstrous usurpations, although decently veiled under the names of
the old offices of the republic. But they had become degenerate. They
wished for peace and leisure. They felt the uselessness of any
independent authority, and resigned themselves to a condition which the
Romans two centuries earlier would have felt to be intolerable.
[Sidenote: General character of the emperors.]
Of the immediate successors of Augustus, none equaled him in moderation
or talents. And with the exception of Titus and Vespasian, the emperors
who comprised the Julian family, were stained with great vices. Some
were monsters; others were madmen. But, as a whole, they were not
deficient in natural ability. Some had great executive talents, like
Tiberius--a man of vast experience. But he was a cruel and remorseless
tyrant, full of jealousy and vindictive hatred. Still, amid disgraceful
pleasures, he devoted himself to the cares of office, and exhibited the
virtues of domestic economy. Nor did he take pleasure in the sports of
the circus and the theatre, like most of his successors. But he
destroyed all who stood in his way, as most tyrants do. Nor did he spare
his own relatives. He was sensual and intemperate in his habits, and all
looked to him with awe and trepidation. There was a perfect reign of
terror at Rome during his latter days, and every body rejoiced when the
tyrant died.
[Sidenote: Caligula.]
Caligula, who succeeded Tiberius, belonged to the race of madmen. He put
to death some of the most eminent Romans, in order to seize on their
estates. He repudiated his wife; he expressed the wish that Rome had but
one neck, that it could be annihilated by a blow; he used to invite his
favorite horse to supper, setting before him gilded corn and wine in
golden goblets; he wasted immense sums in useless works; he took away
the last shadow of power from the people; he impoverished Italy by
senseless extravagance; he wantonly destroyed his soldiers by whole
companies; he was doubtless as insane as he was cruel, luxurious,
rapacious, and prodigal; he adorned the poops of galleys with precious
stones, and constructed arduous works with no other purpose than
caprice; he often dressed like a woman, and generally appeared with a
golden beard; he devoted himself to fencing, driving, singing, and
dancing, and was ruled by gladiators, charioteers, and actors. Such was
the man to whom was intrusted the guardianship of an empire. No wonder
he was removed by assassination.
[Sidenote: Claudius.]
His successor was Claudius, made emperor by the Praetorians. He took
Augustus for his model, was well disposed, and contributed greatly to
the embellishment of the capital. But he was gluttonous and intemperate,
and subject to the influence of women and favorites. He was feeble in
mind and body. He was married to one of the worst women in history, and
Messalina has passed into a synonym for infamy. By this woman he was
influenced, and her unblushing effrontery and disgraceful intrigues made
the reign unfortunate. She trafficked in the great offices of the state,
and sacrificed the best blood of the class to which she belonged.
Claudius was also governed by freedmen, who performed such offices as
Louis XV. intrusted to his noble vassals. Claudius resembled this
inglorious monarch in many respects, and his reign was as disastrous on
the morals of the people. When the death of his wife was announced to
him at the banquet, he called for wine, and listened to songs and music.
But she was succeeded by a worse woman, Agrippina, and the marriage of
the emperor with his niece, was a scandal as well as a misfortune. Pliny
mentions having seen this empress in a sea-fight on the Fucine Lake,
clothed in a soldier's cloak. Daughter of an imperator, sister of
another, and consort of a third, she is best known as the mother of
Nero, and the patroness of every thing that was shameful in the follies
of the times. That an emperor should wed and be ruled by two such
infamous women, indicates either weakness or depravity, and both
qualities are equally fatal to the welfare of the state over which he
was called to rule.
[Sidenote: Nero.]
The supreme power then fell into the hands of Nero. He gave the promise
of virtue and ability, and Seneca condescended to the most flattering
panegyrics; but the prospects of ruling beneficently were soon clouded
by the most disgraceful enormities. He destroyed all who were offensive
to those who ruled him, even Seneca who had been his tutor. Lost to all
dignity and decency, he indulged in the most licentious riots,
disguising himself like a slave, and committing midnight assaults. He
killed his mother and his aunt, and divorced his wife. He sung songs on
the public stage, and was more ambitious of being a good flute-player
than a public benefactor. It is even said that he fiddled when Rome was
devastated by a fearful conflagration. He built a palace, which covered
entirely Mount Esquiline, the vestibule of which contained a colossal
statue of himself, one hundred and twenty feet high. His gardens were
the scenes of barbarities, and his banqueting halls of orgies which were
a reproach to humanity. He wasted the empire by enormous contributions,
and even plundered the temples of his own capital. His wife, Poppaea,
died of a kick which she received from this monster, because she had
petulantly reproved him. Longinus, an eminent lawyer, Lucan the poet,
and Petronius the satirist, alike, were victims of his hatred. This last
of the Caesars, allied by blood to the imperial house of Julius, killed
himself in his thirty-first year, to prevent assassination, to the
universal joy of the Roman world, without having done a great deed, or
evinced a single virtue. Flute-playing and chariot races were his main
diversions, and every public interest was sacrificed to his pleasures,
or his vengeance--a man delighting in evil for its own sake.
[Sidenote: Galba.]
Nero was succeeded by Galba, who also was governed by favorites. He was
a great glutton, exceedingly parsimonious, and very unpopular. In the
early stages of his life, he appeared equal to the trust and dignity
reposed in him; but when he gained the sovereignty, he proved deficient
in those qualities requisite to wield it. Tacitus sums up his character
in a sentence. "He appeared superior to his rank before he was emperor,
and would have always been considered worthy of the supreme power, if he
had not obtained it." He was assassinated after a brief reign.
[Sidenote: Otho.]
His successor, Otho, finding himself unequal to the position to which he
was elevated, ended his life by suicide. Vitellius, who wore the purple
next to him, is celebrated for cruelty and gluttony, and was removed by
assassination. Titus and Vespasian were honorable exceptions to the
tyrants and sensualists that had reigned since Augustus, but Domitian
surpassed all his predecessors in unrelenting cruelty. He banished all
philosophers from Rome and Italy, and violently persecuted the
Christians, and was dissolute and lewd in his private habits. He also
met a violent death from the assassin's dagger, the only way that
infamous monsters could be hurled from power. Yet such was the fulsome
flattery to which he and all the emperors were accustomed, that Martial
addressed this monster, preeminent of all in wickedness and cruelty,--
"To conquer ardent, and to triumph shy,
Fair Victory named him from the polar sky.
Fanes to the gods, to men he manners gave;
Rest to the sword, and respite to the brave;
So high could ne'er Herculean power aspire:
The god should bend his looks to the Tarpeian fire."
[Footnote: Book ix. 101. ]
[Sidenote: The latter emperors.]
Of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, I will not speak, since
they were great exceptions to those who generally ruled at Rome. Their
virtues and their talents are justly eulogized by all historians. Great
in war, and greater in peace, they were ornaments of humanity. Under
their sway, the empire was prosperous and happy. Their greatness almost
atoned for the weakness and wickedness of their predecessors. If such
men as they could have ruled at Rome, the imperial regime would have
been the greatest blessing. But with them expired the prosperity of the
empire, and they were succeeded by despots, whose vices equaled those of
Nero and Vitellius. Commodus, Caracalla, Elagabalus, Maximin, Philip,
Gallienus, are enrolled on the catalogue of those who have obtained an
infamous immortality. At last no virtue or talent on the part of the
few emperors who really labored for the good of the state, could arrest
the increasing corruption. The empire was doomed when Constantine
removed the seat of government to Constantinople. Forty-four sovereigns
reigned at Rome from Julius to Constantine, in a period of little more
than three hundred and fifty years, of whom twenty were removed by
assassination. What a commentary on imperial despotism! In spite of the
virtues of such men as Trajan and the Antonines, the history of the
emperors is a loathsome chapter of human depravity, and of its awful
retribution. Never were greater powers exercised by single men, and
never were they more signally abused. From the time of Augustus those
virtues which give glory to society steadily declined. The reigns of the
emperors were fatal to all moral elevation, and even to genius, as in
the latter days of Louis XIV. The great lights which illuminated the
Augustan age, disappeared, without any to take their place. Under the
emperors there are fewer great names than for one hundred years before
the death of Cicero. Eloquence, poetry, and philosophy were alike
eclipsed. Noble aspirations were repressed by the all-powerful and
irresistible despotism.
The tyranny of these emperors was rendered endurable by the general
familiarity with cruelty. In every Roman palace, the slave was chained
to the doorway; thongs hung upon the stairs, and the marks of violence
on the faces of the domestics impressed the great that they were despots
themselves. They were accustomed to the sight of blood in the sports of
the amphitheatre. They ruled as tyrants in the provinces they governed.
But it must be allowed that the system of education was left untrammeled
by the government, provided politics were not introduced; and it
produced men of letters, if not practical statesmen. It sharpened the
intellect and enlivened thought. The text-books of the schools were the
most famous compositions of republican Greece, and the favorite subjects
of declamation were the glories of the free men of antiquity. Nor was
there any restriction placed upon writing or publication analogous to
our modern censorship of the press, and many of the emperors, like
Claudius and Hadrian, were patrons of literature. Even the stoical
philosophers who tried to persuade the emperor that he was a slave, were
endured, since they did not attempt to deprive him of sovereignty.
Nor could the imperial tyranny be resisted by minds enervated by
indulgence and estranged from all pure aspirations, by the pleasures of
sense. They crouched like dogs under the uplifted arm of masters. They
did not even seek to fly from the tyranny which ground them down.
[Sidenote: Character of the emperors.]
It cannot be denied that, on the whole, this long succession of emperors
was more intellectual and able than oriental dynasties, and even many
occidental ones in the Middle Ages, when the principle of legitimacy was
undisputed. The Roman emperors, as men of talents, favorably compare
with the successors of Mohammed, and the Carlovingian and Merovingian
kings. But if these talents were employed in systematically crushing out
all human rights, the despotism they established became the more
deplorable.
Nor can it be questioned that many virtuous princes reigned at Rome, who
would have ornamented any age or country. Titus, Hadrian, Marcus
Aurelius, Antoninus Pius, Alexander Severus, Tacitus, Probus, Carus,
Constantine, Theodosius, were all men of remarkable virtues as well as
talents. They did what they could to promote public prosperity. Marcus
Aurelius was one of the purest and noblest characters of antiquity.
Theodosius for genius and virtue ranks with the most illustrious
sovereigns that ever wore a crown--with Charlemagne, with Alfred, with
William III., with Gustavus Adolphus.
Of these Roman emperors some stand out as world heroes--greatest among
men--remarkable for executive ability. Julius is the most renowned name
of antiquity. He ranks only with Napoleon Bonaparte in modern times. His
genius was transcendent; and, like Napoleon, he had great traits which
endear him to the world--generosity, magnanimity, and exceeding culture;
orator, historian, and lawyer, as well as statesman and general. But he
overturned the liberties of his country to gratify a mad ambition, and
waded through a sea of blood to the mastership of the world. Augustus
was a profound statesman, and a successful general; but he was stained
with the arts of dissimulation and an intense ambition, and sacrificed
public liberties and rights to cement his power. Even Diocletian, tyrant
and persecutor as he was, was distinguished for masterly abilities, and
was the greatest statesman whom the empire saw, with the exception of
Augustus. Such a despot as Tiberius ruled with justice and ability.
Constantine ranks with the greatest monarchs of antiquity. The vices and
ambition of these men did not dim the lustre of their genius and
abilities.
[Sidenote: The Imperial despotism.]
Their cause was wrong. It matters not whether the emperors were good or
bad, if the regime, to which they consecrated their energies, was
exerted to crush the liberties of mankind. The imperial despotism,
whether brilliant or disgraceful, was a mournful retrograde in the
polity of Rome. It implied the extinction of patriotism, and the general
degradation of the people, or else the fabric of despotism could not
have been erected. It would have been impossible in the days of Cato,
Scipio, or Metellus. It was simply a choice of evils. When nations
emerge from utter barbarism into absolute monarchies, like the ancient
Persians or the modern Russians, we forget the evils of a central power
in the blessings which extend indirectly to the degraded people. But
when a nation loses its liberties, and submits without a struggle to
tyrants, it is a sad spectacle to humanity. The despotism of Louis XIV.
was not disgraceful to the French people, for they never had enjoyed
constitutional liberty. The despotism of Louis Napoleon is mournful,
because the nation had waded through a bloody revolution to achieve the
recognition of great rights and interests, and dreamed that they were
guaranteed. It is a retrograde and not a progress; a reaction of
liberty, which seats Napoleon on the throne of Louis Philippe; even as
the reign of Charles II. is the saddest chapter in English history. If
liberty be a blessing, if it be possible for nations to secure it
permanently, then the regime of the Roman emperors is detestable and
mournful, whatever necessities may have called it into being, since it
annulled all those glorious privileges in which ancient patriots
gloried, and prevented that scope for energies which made Rome mistress
of the world. It was impossible for the empire to grow stronger and
grander. It must needs become weaker and more corrupt, since despotism
did not kindle the ambition of the people, but suppressed their noblest
sentiments, and confined their energies to inglorious pursuits. Men
might acquire more gigantic fortunes under the emperors than in the
times of the republic, and art might be more extensively cultivated, and
luxury and refinement and material pleasures might increase; but public
virtue fled, and those sentiments on which national glory rests vanished
before the absorbing egotism which pervaded all orders and classes. The
imperial despotism may have been needed, and the empire might have
fallen, even if it had not existed; still it was a sad and mournful
necessity, and gives a humiliating view of human greatness. No lover of
liberty can contemplate it without disgust and abhorrence. No
philosopher can view it without drawing melancholy lessons of human
degeneracy--an impressive moral for all ages and nations.
If we turn to the class which, before the dictatorship of Julius, had
the ascendency in the state, and, for several centuries, the supreme
power, we shall find but little that is flattering to a nation or to
humanity.
[Sidenote: The Roman aristocracy.]
The Roman aristocracy was the most powerful, most wealthy, and most
august that this world has probably seen. It was under patrician
leadership that the great conquests were made, and the greatness of the
state reached. The glory of Rome was centred in those proud families
which had conquered and robbed all the nations known to the Greeks. The
immortal names of ancient Rome are identified with the aristocracy. It
was not under kings, but under nobles, that military ambition became the
vice of the most exalted characters. In the days of the republic, they
exhibited a stern virtue, an inflexible policy, an indomitable will, and
most ardent patriotism. The generals who led the armies to victory, the
statesmen who deliberated in the Senate, the consuls, the praetors, the
governors, originally belonged to this noble class. It monopolized all
the great offices of the state, and it maintained its powers and
privileges, in spite of conspiracies and rebellions. It may have yielded
somewhat to popular encroachments, but when the people began to acquire
the ascendency, the seeds of public corruption were sown. The real
dignity and glory of Rome coexisted with patrician power.
[Sidenote: Great families.]
And powerful families existed in Rome until the fall of the empire. Some
were descendants of ancient patrician houses, and numbered the
illustrious generals of the republic among their ancestors. Others owed
their rank and consequence to the accumulation of gigantic fortunes.
Others, again, rose into importance from the patronage of emperors. All
the great conquerors and generals of the republic were founders of
celebrated families, which never lost consideration. Until the
subversion of the constitution, they took great interest in politics,
and were characterized for manly patriotism. Many of them were famous
for culture of mind as well as public spirit. They frowned on the
growing immoralities, and maintained the dignity of their elevated rank.
The Senate was the most august assembly ever known on earth, controlling
kings and potentates, and making laws for the most distant nations, and
exercising a power which was irresistible.
[Sidenote: Degeneracy of the nobles.]
Under the emperors this noble class had degenerated in morals as well as
influence. They still retained their enormous fortunes, originally
acquired as governors of provinces, and continually increased by
fortunate marriages and speculations. Indeed, nothing was more marked
and melancholy at Rome than the disproportionate fortunes, the general
consequences of a low or a corrupt civilization. In the better days of
the republic, property was more equally divided. The citizens were not
ambitious for more land than they could conveniently cultivate. But the
lands, obtained by conquest, gradually fell into the possession of
powerful families. The classes of society widened as great fortunes were
accumulated. Pride of wealth kept pace with pride of ancestry. And when
Plebeian families had obtained great estates, they were amalgamated with
the old aristocracy. The Equestrian order, founded substantially on
wealth, grew daily in importance. Knights ultimately rivaled senatorial
families. Even freedmen, in an age of commercial speculation, became
powerful for their riches. Ultimately the rich formed a body by
themselves. Under the emperors, the pursuit of money became a passion;
and the rich assumed all the importance and consideration which had once
been bestowed upon those who had rendered great public services. The
laws of property were rigorous among the Romans, and wealth, when once
obtained, was easily secured and transmitted.
[Sidenote: Gigantic fortunes.]
Such gigantic fortunes were ultimately made, since the Romans were
masters of the world, that Rome became a city of palaces, and the spoils
and riches of all nations flowed to the capital. Rome was a city of
princes, and wealth gave the highest distinction. The fortunes were
almost incredible. It has been estimated that the income of some of the
richest of the senatorial families equaled a sum of five million dollars
a year in our money. It took eighty thousand dollars a year to support
the ordinary senatorial dignity. Some senators owned whole provinces.
Trimalchio--a rich freedman whom Petronius ridiculed--could afford to
lose thirty millions of sesterces in a single voyage without sensibly
diminishing his fortune. Pallas, a freedman of the Emperor Claudius,
possessed a fortune of three hundred millions of sesterces. Seneca, the
philosopher, amassed an enormous fortune.
[Sidenote: Character of the nobles.]
[Sidenote: Excessive luxury.]
[Sidenote: Luxury of the aristocracy.]
[Sidenote: Luxury of the nobles.]
The Romans were a sensual, ostentatious, and luxurious people, and they
accordingly wasted their fortunes by an extravagance in their living
which has had no parallel. The pleasures of the table and the cares of
the kitchen were the most serious avocation of the aristocracy in the
days of the greatest corruption. They had around them a regular court of
parasites and flatterers, and they employed even persons of high rank as
their chamberlains and stewards. Carving was taught in celebrated
schools, and the masters of this sublime art were held in higher
estimation than philosophers or poets. Says Juvenal:--
"To such perfection now is carving brought,
That different gestures, by our curious men
Are used for different dishes, hare or hen."
Their entertainments were accompanied with every thing which could
flatter vanity or excite the passions. Musicians, male and female
dancers, players of farce and pantomime, jesters, buffoons, and
gladiators, exhibited while the guests reclined at table. The tables
were made of Thuja-root, with claws of ivory or Delian bronze, and cost
immense sums. Even Cicero, in an economical age, paid six hundred and
fifty pounds for his banqueting table. These tables were waited upon by
an army of slaves, clad in costly dresses. In the intervals of courses
they played with dice, or listened to music, or were amused with dances.
They wore a great profusion of jewels--such as necklaces and rings and
bracelets. They reclined at table after the fashion of the Orientals.
They ate, as delicacies, water-rats and white worms. Gluttony was
carried to such a point that the sea and earth scarcely sufficed to set
off their tables. The women passed whole nights at the table, and were
proud of their power to carry off an excess of wine. As Cleopatra says
of her riotings with Antony,--
"O times!--
I laughed him out of patience; and that night
I laughed him into patience: and next morn,
Ere the ninth hour, I drank him to his bed."
The wines were often kept for two ages, and some qualities were so
highly prized as to sell for about twenty dollars an ounce. Large hogs
were roasted whole at a banquet. The ancient epicures expatiate on
ram's-head pies, stuffed fowls, boiled calf, and pastry stuffed with
raisins and nuts. Dishes were made of gold and silver, set with precious
stones. Cicero and Pompey one day surprised Lucullus at one of his
ordinary banquets, when he expected no guests, and even that cost fifty
thousand drachmas--about four thousand dollars. His beds were of purple,
and his vessels glittered with jewels. The halls of Heliogabalus were
hung with cloth of gold, enriched with jewels. His beds were of massive
silver, his table and plate of pure gold, and his mattresses, covered
with carpets of cloth of gold, were stuffed with down found only under
the wings of partridges. Crassus paid one hundred thousand sesterces for
a golden cup. Banqueting rooms were strewed with lilies and roses.
Apicius, in the time of Trajan, spent one hundred millions of sesterces
in debauchery and gluttony. Having only ten millions left, he ended his
life with poison, thinking he might die of hunger. The suppers of
Heliogabalus never cost less than one hundred thousand sesterces. And
things were valued for their cost and rarity, rather than their real
value. Enormous prices were paid for carp, the favorite dish of the
Romans. Drusillus, a freedman of Claudius, caused a dish to be made of
five hundred pounds weight of silver. Vitellius had one made of such
prodigious size that they were obliged to build a furnace on purpose for
it; and at a feast in honor of this dish which he gave, it was filled
with the livers of the scarrus (fish), the brains of peacocks, the
tongues of a bird of red plumage, called Phaesuicopterus, and the roes of
lampreys caught in the Carpathian Sea. Falernian wine was never drunk
until ten years old, and it was generally cooled with ices. The passion
for play was universal. Nero ventured four hundred thousand sesterces on
a single throw of the dice. Cleopatra, when she feasted Antony, gave
each time to that general the gold vessels, enriched with jewels, the
tapestry and purple carpets, embroidered with gold, which had been used
in the repasts. Horace speaks of a debauchee who drank at a meal a
goblet of vinegar, in which he dissolved a pearl worth a million of
sesterces, which hung at the ear of his mistress. Precious stones were
so common that a woman of the utmost simplicity dared not go without her
diamonds. Even men wore jewels, especially elaborate rings, and upon all
the fingers at last. The taste of the Roman aristocracy, with their
immense fortunes, inclined them to pomp, to extravagance, to
ostentatious modes of living, to luxurious banquets, to
conventionalities and ceremonies, to an unbounded epicureanism. They
lived for the present hour, and for sensual pleasures. There was no
elevation of life. It was the body and not the soul, the present and not
the future, which alone concerned them. They were grossly material in
all their desires and habits. They squandered money on their banquets,
their stables, and their dress. And it was to their crimes, says
Juvenal, that they were indebted for their gardens, their palaces, their
tables, and their fine old plate. The day was portioned out in the
public places, in the bath, the banquet. Martial indignantly rebukes
these extravagances, as unable to purchase happiness, in his Epigram to
Quintus: "Because you purchase slaves at two hundred thousand sesterces;
because you drink wines stored during the reign of Numa; because your
furniture costs you a million; because a pound weight of wrought silver
costs you five thousand; because a golden chariot becomes yours at the
price of a whole farm; because your mule costs you more than the value
of a house--do not imagine that such expenses are the proof of a great
mind." [Footnote: Book iii. p. 62.]
Unbounded pride, insolence, inhumanity, selfishness, and scorn marked
this noble class. Of course there were exceptions, but the historians
and satirists give the saddest pictures of their cold-hearted depravity.
The sole result of friendship with a great man was a meal, at which
flattery and sycophancy were expected; but the best wine was drunk by
the host, instead of by the guest. Provinces were ransacked for fish and
fowl and game for the tables of the great, and sensualism was thought to
be no reproach. They violated the laws of chastity and decorum. They
scourged to death their slaves. They degraded their wives and sisters.
They patronized the most demoralizing sports. They enriched themselves
by usury, and enjoyed monopolies. They practiced no generosity, except
at their banquets, when ostentation balanced their avarice. They
measured every thing by the money-standard. They had no taste for
literature, but they rewarded sculptors and painters, if they
prostituted art to their vanity or passions. They had no reverence for
religion, and ridiculed the gods. Their distinguishing vices were
meanness and servility, the pursuit of money by every artifice, the
absence of honor, and unblushing sensuality.
[Sidenote: Gibbon's account of the nobles.]
[Sidenote: Sarcasms of Ammianus Marcellinus.]
Gibbon has eloquently abridged the remarks of Ammianus Marcellinus,
respecting these people: "They contend with each other in the empty
vanity of titles and surnames. They affect to multiply their likenesses
in statues of bronze or marble; nor are they satisfied unless these
statues are covered with plates of gold. They boast of the rent-rolls of
their estates. They measure their rank and consequence by the loftiness
of their chariots, and the weighty magnificence of their dress. Their
long robes of silk and purple float in the wind, and, as they are
agitated by art or accident, they discover the under garments, the rich
tunics embroidered with the figures of various animals. Followed by a
train of fifty servants, and tearing up the pavement, they move along
the streets as if they traveled with post-horses; and the example of the
senators is boldly imitated by the matrons and ladies, whose covered
carriages are continually driving round the immense space of the city
and suburbs. Whenever they condescend to enter the public baths, they
assume, on their entrance, a tone of loud and insolent command, and
maintain a haughty demeanor, which, perhaps, might have been excused in
the great Marcellus, after the conquest of Syracuse. Sometimes these
heroes undertake more arduous achievements: they visit their estates in
Italy, and procure themselves, by servile hands, the amusements of the
chase. And if, at any time, especially on a hot day, they have the
courage to sail in their gilded galleys from the Lucrine Lake to their
elegant villas on the sea-coast of Puteoli and Cargeta, they compare
these expeditions to the marches of Caesar and Alexander. Yet, should a
fly presume to settle on the silken folds of their gilded umbrellas,
should a sunbeam penetrate through some unguarded chink, they deplore
their intolerable hardships, and lament, in affected language, that they
were not born in the regions of eternal darkness. In the exercise of
domestic jurisdiction they express an exquisite sensibility for any
personal injury, and a contemptuous indifference for the rest of
mankind. When they have called for warm water, should a slave be tardy
in his obedience, he is chastised with an hundred lashes; should he
commit a willful murder, his master will mildly observe that he is a
worthless fellow, and should be punished if he repeat the offense. If a
foreigner of no contemptible rank be introduced to these senators, he is
welcomed with such warm professions that he retires charmed with their
affability; but when he repeats his visit, he is surprised and mortified
to find that his name, his person, and his country are forgotten. The
modest, the sober, and the learned are rarely invited to their sumptuous
banquets; but the most worthless of mankind--parasites who applaud every
look and gesture, who gaze with rapture on marble columns and variegated
pavements, and strenuously praise the pomp and elegance which he is
taught to consider as a part of his personal merit. At the Roman table,
the birds, the squirrels, the fish which appear of uncommon size, are
contemplated with curious attention, and notaries are summoned to
attest, by authentic record, their real weight. Another method of
introduction into the houses of the great is skill in games, which is a
sure road to wealth and reputation. A master of this sublime art, if
placed, at a supper, below a magistrate, displays in his countenance a
surprise and indignation which Cato might be supposed to feel when
refused the praetorship. The acquisition of knowledge seldom engages the
attention of the nobles, who abhor the fatigue and disdain the
advantages of study; and the only books they peruse are the 'Satires of
Juvenal,' or the fabulous histories of Marius Maximus. The libraries
they have inherited from their fathers are secluded, like dreary
sepulchres, from the light of day; but the costly instruments of the
theatre, flutes and hydraulic organs, are constructed for their use. In
their palaces sound is preferred to sense, and the care of the body to
that of the mind. The suspicion of a malady is of sufficient weight to
excuse the visits of the most intimate friends. The prospect of gain
will urge a rich and gouty senator as far as Spoleta; every sentiment of
arrogance and dignity is suppressed in the hope of an inheritance or
legacy, and a wealthy, childless citizen is the most powerful of the
Romans. The distress which follows and chastises extravagant luxury
often reduces the great to use the most humiliating expedients. When
they wish to borrow, they employ the base and supplicating style of the
slaves in the comedy; but when they are called upon to pay, they assume
the royal and tragic declamations of the grandsons of Hercules. If the
demand is repeated, they readily procure some trusty sycophant to
maintain a charge of poison or magic against the insolent creditor, who
is seldom released from prison until he has signed a discharge of the
whole debt. And these vices are mixed with a puerile superstition which
disgraces their understanding. They listen with confidence to the
productions of haru-spices, who pretend to read in the entrails of
victims the signs of future greatness and prosperity; and this
superstition is observed among those very skeptics who impiously deny or
doubt the existence of a celestial power." [Footnote: Found in the sixth
chapter of the fourteenth, and the fourth of the twenty-eighth, book of
Ammianus Marcellinus.]
Such, in the latter days of the empire, was the leading class at Rome,
and probably in the cities which aped the fashions of the capital. There
was a melancholy absence of elevation of sentiment, of patriotism, of
manly courage, and of dignity of character. Frivolity and luxury
loosened all the ties of society. The animating principle of their lives
was a heartless Epicureanism. They lived for the present hour, and for
their pleasures, indifferent to the great interests of the public, and
to the miseries of the poor. They were bound up in themselves. They were
grossly material in all their aims. They had lost all ideas of public
virtue. They degraded women; they oppressed the people; they laughed at
philanthropy; they could not be reached by elevated sentiments; they had
no concern for the future. Scornful, egotistical, haughty, self-
indulgent, affected, cynical, all their thoughts and conversation were
directed to frivolities. Nothing made any impression upon them but
passing vanities. They ignored both Heaven and Hell. They were like the
courtiers of Louis XV. in the most godless period of the monarchy. They
were worse, for they superadded pagan infidelities. There were memorable
exceptions, but not many, until Christianity had reached the throne.
"One after another, the nobles sunk into a lethargy almost without a
parallel. The proudest names of the old republic were finally associated
with the idlest amusements and the most preposterous novelties. A
Gabrius, a Callius, and a Crassus were immortalized by the elegance of
their dancing. A Lucullus, a Hortensius, a Philippus estimated one
another, not by their eloquence, their courage, or their virtue, but by
the perfection of their fish-ponds, and the singularity of the breeds
they nourished. They seemed to touch the sky with their finger if they
had stocked their preserves with bearded mullets, and taught them to
recognize their masters' voices, and come to be fed from their hands."
[Footnote: Merivale, chap. ii.]
[Sidenote: Condition of the people.]
As for the miserable class whom they oppressed, their condition became
worse every day from the accession of the emperors. The Plebeians had
ever disdained those arts which now occupy the middle classes. These
were intrusted to slaves. Originally, they employed themselves upon the
lands which had been obtained by conquest. But these lands were
gradually absorbed or usurped by the large proprietors. The small
farmers, oppressed with debt and usury, parted with their lands to their
wealthy creditors. In the time of Cicero, it was computed that there
were only about two thousand citizens possessed of independent property.
These two thousand people owned the world. The rest were dependent; and
they were powerless when deprived of political rights, for the great
candidate for public honors and offices liberally paid for votes. But
under the emperors the commons had subsided into a miserable populace,
fed from the public stores. They would have perished but for largesses.
Monthly distributions of corn were converted into daily allowance for
bread. They were amused with games and festivals. From the stately baths
they might be seen to issue without shoes and without a mantle. They
loitered in the public streets, and dissipated in gaming their miserable
pittance. They spent the hours of the night in the lowest resorts of
crime and misery. As many as four hundred thousand sometimes assembled
to witness the chariot races. The vast theatres were crowded to see male
and female dancers. The amphitheatres were still more largely attended
by the better populace. They expired in wretched apartments without
attracting the attention of government. Pestilence and famine and
squalid misery thinned their ranks, and they would have been annihilated
but for constant succession to their ranks from the provinces. In the
busy streets of Rome might be seen adventurers from all parts of the
world, disgraced by all the various vices of their respective countries.
They had no education, and but little of religious advantages. They were
held in terror by both priests and nobles. The priest terrified them
with Egyptian sorceries, the noble crushed them by iron weight. Like
Iazzaroni, they lived in the streets, or were crowded into filthy
apartments. Several families tenanted the same house. A gladiatorial
show delighted them, but the circus was their peculiar joy. Here they
sought to drown the consciousness of their squalid degradation. They
were sold into slavery for trifling debts. They had no home. The poor
man had no ambition or hope. His wife was a slave; his children were
precocious demons, whose prattle was the cry for bread, whose laughter
was the howl of pandemonium, whose sports were the tricks of premature
iniquity, whose beauty was the squalor of disease and filth. He fled
from a wife in whom he had no trust, from children in whom he had no
hope, from brothers for whom he felt no sympathy, from parents for whom
he felt no reverence. The circus was _his_ home, the wild beast
_his_ consolation. The future was a blank. Death was the release
from suffering. Historians and poets say but little of his degraded
existence; but from the few hints we have, we infer depravity and brutal
tastes. If degraded at all, they must have been very degraded, since the
Romans had but little sentiment, and no ideality. They were sunk in
vice, for they had no sense of responsibility. They never emerged from
their wretched condition. The philosophers, poets, scholars, and lawyers
of Rome, sprang uniformly from the aristocratic classes. In the
provinces, the poor sometimes rose, but very seldom. The whole aspect of
society was a fearful inequality--disproportionate fortunes, slavery,
and beggary. There was no middle class, of any influence or
consideration. It was for the interest of people without means to enroll
themselves in the service of the rich. Hence the immense numbers
employed in the palaces in menial work. They would have been enrolled in
the armies, but for their inefficiency. The army was recruited from the
provinces--the rural population--and even from the barbarians
themselves. There were no hospitals for the sick and the old, except one
on an island in the Tiber. The old and helpless were left to die,
unpitied and unconsoled. Suicide was so common that it attracted no
attention, but infanticide was not so marked, since there was so little
feeling of compassion for the future fate of the miserable children.
Superstition culminated at Rome, for there were seen the priests and
devotees of all the countries which it governed--"the dark-skinned
daughters of Isis, with drum and timbrel and wanton mien; devotees of
the Persian Mithras, imported by the Pompeians from Cilicia; emasculated
Asiatics, priests of Berecynthian Cybele, with their wild dances and
discordant cries; worshipers of the great goddess Diana; barbarian
captives with the rites of Teuton priests; Syrians, Jews, Chaldean
astrologers, and Thessalian sorcerers." Oh, what scenes of sin and
misery did that imperial capital witness in the third and fourth
centuries--sensualism and superstition, fears and tribulations,
pestilence and famine, even amid the pomps of senatorial families, and
the grandeur of palaces and temples. "The crowds which flocked to Rome
from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, brought with them
practices extremely demoralizing. The awful rites of initiation, the
tricks of magicians, the pretended virtues of amulets and charms, the
riddles of emblematical idolatry, with which the superstition of the
East abounded, amused the languid voluptuaries who neither had the
energy for a moral belief, nor the boldness requisite for logical
skepticism." They were brutal, bloodthirsty, callous to the sight of
suffering, and familiar with cruelties and crimes. They were
superstitious, without religious faith, without hope, and without God in
the world.
[Sidenote: The slaves.]
[Sidenote: Slavery.]
We cannot pass by, in this enumeration of the different classes of Roman
society, the number and condition of slaves. A large part of the
population belonged to this servile class. Originally introduced by
foreign conquest, it was increased by those who could not pay their
debts. The single campaign of Regulus introduced as many as a fifth part
of the whole population. Four hundred were maintained in a single
palace, at a comparatively early period. A freedman in the time of
Augustus left behind him four thousand one hundred and sixteen. Horace
regarded two hundred as the suitable establishment for a gentleman. Some
senators owned twenty thousand. Gibbon estimates the number at about
sixty millions, one half of the whole population. One hundred thousand
captives were taken in the Jewish war, who were sold as slaves, and sold
as cheap as horses. [Footnote: Wm. Blair, _On Roman Slavery_,
Edinburgh, 1833; Robertson, _On the State of the World at the
Introduction of Christ_.] Blair supposes that there were three slaves
to one freeman, from the conquest of Greece to the reign of Alexander
Severus. Slaves often cost two hundred thousand sesterces. [Footnote:
Martial, xii. 62.] Every body was eager to possess a slave. At one time
his life was at the absolute control of his master. He could be treated
at all times with brutal severity. Fettered and branded he toiled to
cultivate the lands of an imperious master, and at night he was shut up
in subterranean cells. The laws did not recognize his claim to be
considered scarcely as a moral agent. He was _secundum hominum
genus_. He could acquire no rights, social or political. He was
incapable of inheriting property, or making a will, or contracting a
legal marriage. His value was estimated like that of a brute. He was a
thing and not a person--"a piece of furniture possessed of life." He was
his master's property, to be scourged, or tortured, or crucified. If a
wealthy proprietor died, under circumstances which excited suspicion of
foul play, his whole household was put to the torture. It is recorded,
that, on the murder of a man of consular dignity by a slave, every slave
in his possession was condemned to death. Slaves swelled the useless
rabbles of the cities, and devoured the revenues of the state. All
manual labor was done by slaves, in towns as well as the country. Even
the mechanical arts were cultivated by the slaves. And more, slaves were
schoolmasters, secretaries, actors, musicians, and physicians. In
intelligence, they were on an equality with their masters. They came
from Greece and Asia Minor and Syria, as well as from Gaul and the
African deserts. They were white as well as black. All captives in war
were made slaves, and unfortunate debtors. Sometimes they could regain
their freedom; but, generally, their condition became more and more
deplorable. What a state of society when a refined and cultivated Greek
could be made to obey the most offensive orders of a capricious and
sensual Roman, without remuneration, without thanks, without favor,
without redress. [Footnote: Says Juvenal, _Sat._ vi., "Crucify that
slave. What is the charge to call for such a punishment? What witness
can you present? Who gave the information? Listen! Idiot! So a slave is
a man then! Granted he has done nothing. I _will_ it. I insist upon
it. Let my will stand instead of reason." Read Martial, Juvenal, and
Plautus.] What was to be expected of a class who had no object to live
for. They became the most degraded of mortals, ready for pillage, and
justly to be feared in the hour of danger. Slavery undoubtedly proved
the most destructive canker of the Roman state. It destroyed its
vitality. It was this social evil, more than political misrule, which
undermined the empire. Slavery proved at Rome a monstrous curse,
destroying all manliness of character, creating contempt of honest
labor, making men timorous yet cruel, idle, frivolous, weak, dependent,
powerless. The empire might have lasted centuries longer but for this
incubus, the standing disgrace of the pagan world. Paganism never
recognized what is most noble and glorious in man; never recognized his
equality, his common brotherhood, his natural rights. There was no
compunction, no remorse in depriving human beings of their highest
privileges. Its whole tendency was to degrade the soul, and cause
forgetfulness of immortality. Slavery thrives best, when the generous
instincts are suppressed, and egotism and sensuality and pride are the
dominant springs of human action.
[Sidenote: Degradation of woman.]
The same influences which tended to rob man of the rights which God has
given him, and produce cruelty and heartlessness in the general
intercourse of life, also tended to degrade the female sex. In the
earlier age of the republic, when the people were poor, and life was
simple and primitive, and heroism and patriotism were characteristic,
woman was comparatively virtuous and respected. She asserted her natural
equality, and led a life of domestic tranquillity, employed upon the
training of her children, and inspiring her husband to noble deeds. But,
under the emperors, these virtues had fled. Woman was miserably
educated, being taught by a slave, or some Greek chambermaid, accustomed
to ribald conversation, and fed with idle tales and silly superstitions.
She was regarded as more vicious in natural inclination than man, and
was chiefly valued for household labors. She was reduced to dependence;
she saw but little of her brothers or relatives; she was confined to her
home as if it were a prison; she was guarded by eunuchs and female
slaves; she was given in marriage without her consent; she could be
easily divorced; she was valued only as a domestic servant, or as an
animal to prevent the extinction of families; she was regarded as the
inferior of her husband, to whom she was a victim, a toy, or a slave.
Love after marriage was not frequent, since she did not shine in the
virtues by which love is kept alive. She became timorous, or frivolous,
without dignity or public esteem. Her happiness was in extravagant
attire, in elaborate hair-dressings, in rings and bracelets, in a
retinue of servants, in gilded apartments, in luxurious couches, in
voluptuous dances, in exciting banquets, in demoralizing spectacles, in
frivolous gossip, in inglorious idleness. If virtuous, it was not so
much from principle as from fear. Hence she resorted to all sorts of
arts to deceive her husband. Her genius was sharpened by perpetual
devices, and cunning was her great resource. She cultivated no lofty
friendships; she engaged in no philanthropic mission; she cherished no
ennobling sentiments; she kindled no chivalrous admiration. Her
amusements were frivolous, her taste vitiated, her education neglected,
her rights violated, her sympathy despised, her aspirations scorned. And
here I do not allude to great and infamous examples which history has
handed down in the sober pages of Suetonius and Tacitus, or that
unblushing depravity which stands out in the bitter satires of the
times. I speak not of the adultery, the poisoning, the infanticide, the
debauchery, the cruelty of which history accuses the Messalinas and
Agrippinas of imperial Rome. I allude not to the orgies of the Palatine
Hill, or the abominations which are inferred from the paintings of
Pompeii. But there was a general frivolity and extravagance among women
which rendered marriage inexpedient, unless large dowries were brought
to the husband. Numerous were the efforts of emperors to promote
honorable marriages, but the relation was shunned. Courtesans usurped
the privilege of wives, and with unblushing effrontery. A man was
derided who contemplated matrimony, for there was but little confidence
in female virtue or capacity. And woman lost all her fascination when
age had destroyed her beauty. Even her very virtues were distasteful to
her self-indulgent husband. And whenever she gained the ascendency by
her charms, she was tyrannical. Her relations incited her to despoil her
husband. She lived amid incessant broils. She had no care for the
future, and exceeded men in prodigality. "The government of her house is
no more merciful," says Juvenal, "than the court of a Sicilian tyrant."
In order to render herself attractive, she exhausted all the arts of
cosmetics and elaborate hair-dressing. She delighted in magical
incantations and love-potions. In the bitter satire of Juvenal, we get
an impression most melancholy and loathsome:--
"'T were long to tell what philters they provide,
What drugs to set a son-in-law aside.
Women, in judgment weak, in feeling strong,
By every gust of passion borne along.
To a fond spouse a wife no mercy shows;
Though warmed with equal fires, she mocks his woes,
And triumphs in his spoils; her wayward will
Defeats his bliss and turns his good to ill.
Women support the _bar_; they love the law,
And raise litigious questions for a straw;
Nay, more, they fence! who has not marked their oil,
Their purple rigs, for this preposterous toil!
A woman stops at nothing, when she wears
Rich emeralds round her neck, and in her ears
Pearls of enormous size; these justify
Her faults, and make all lawful in her eye.
More shame to Rome! in every street are found
The essenced Lypanti, with roses crowned,
The gay Miletan, and the Tarentine,
Lewd, petulant, and reeling ripe with wine!"
[Sidenote: Condition of woman.]
In the sixth satire of Juvenal is found the most severe delineation of
woman that ever mortal penned. Doubtless he is libellous and
extravagant, for only infamous women can stoop to such arts and
degradations, which would seem to be common in his time. But, with all
his exaggeration, we are forced to feel that but few women, even in the
highest class, except those converted to Christianity, showed the
virtues of a Lucretia, a Volumnia, a Cornelia, or an Octavia. There was
but a universal corruption. The great virtues of a Perpetua, a
Felicitas, an Agnes, a Paula, a Blessilla, a Fabiola, would have adorned
any civilization. But the great mass were, what they were in Greece,
even in the days of Pericles, what they have ever been under the
influence of Paganism, what they ever will be without Christianity to
guide them, victims or slaves of man, revenging themselves by
squandering his wealth, stealing his secrets, betraying his interests,
and deserting his home.
[Sidenote: Games and festivals.]
Another essential but demoralizing feature of Roman society, were the
games and festivals and gladiatorial shows, which accustomed the people
to unnatural excitements, and familiarity with cruelty and suffering.
They made all ordinary pleasures insipid. They ended in making homicide
an institution. The butcheries of the amphitheatre exerted a fascination
which diverted the mind from literature, art, and the enjoyments of
domestic life. Very early it was the favorite sport of the Romans.
Marcus and Decimus Brutus employed gladiators in celebrating the
obsequies of their fathers, nearly three centuries before Christ. "The
wealth and ingenuity of the aristocracy were taxed to the utmost, to
content the populace and provide food for the indiscriminate slaughter
of the circus, where brute fought with brute, and man again with man, or
where the skill and weapons of the latter were matched against the
strength and ferocity of the first." Pompey let loose six hundred lions
in the arena in one day. Augustus delighted the people with four hundred
and twenty panthers. The games of Trajan lasted one hundred and twenty
days, when ten thousand gladiators fought, and ten thousand beasts were
slain. Titus slaughtered five thousand animals at a time. Twenty
elephants contended, according, to Pliny, against a band of six hundred
captives. Probus reserved six hundred gladiators for one of his
festivals, and massacred, on another, two hundred lions, twenty
leopards, and three hundred bears. Gordian let loose three hundred
African hyenas and ten Indian tigers in the arena. Every corner of the
earth was ransacked for these wild animals, which were so highly valued
that, in the time of Theodosius, it was forbidden by law to destroy a
Getulian lion. No one can contemplate the statue of the Dying Gladiator
which now ornaments the capitol at Rome, without emotions of pity and
admiration. If a marble statue can thus move us, what was it to see the
Christian gladiators contending with the fierce lions of Africa. The
"Christians to the lions," was the watchword of the brutal populace.
What a sight was the old amphitheatre of Titus, five hundred and sixty
feet long, and four hundred and seventy feet wide, built on eighty
arches, and rising one hundred and forty feet into the air, with its
four successive orders of architecture, and inclosing its eighty
thousand seated spectators, arranged according to rank, from the emperor
to the lowest of the populace, all seated on marble benches, covered
with cushions, and protected from the sun and rain by ample canopies!
What an excitement when men strove not with wild beasts alone, but with
one another, and when all that human skill and strength, increased by
elaborate treatment, and taxed to the uttermost, were put forth in the
needless homicide, and until the thirsty soil was wet and matted with
human gore! Familiarity with such sights must have hardened the heart
and rendered the mind insensible to refined pleasures. What theatres are
to the French, what bull-fights are to the Spaniards, what horse-races
are to the English, these gladiatorial shows were to the ancient Romans.
The ruins of hundreds of amphitheatres attest the universality of the
custom, not in Rome alone, but in the provinces.
[Sidenote: The circus.]
The sports of the circus took place from the earliest periods. The
Circus Maximus was capable of containing two hundred and sixty thousand,
as estimated by Pliny. It was appropriated for horse and chariot races.
The enthusiasm of the Romans for races exceeded all bounds. Lists of the
horses, with their names and colors, and those of drivers, were handed
about, and heavy bets made on each faction. The games commenced with a
grand procession, in which all persons of distinction, and those who
were to exhibit, took part. The statues of the gods formed a conspicuous
feature in the show, and were carried on the shoulders as saints are
carried in modern processions. The chariots were often drawn by eight
horses, and four generally started in the race.
The theatre was also a great place of resort. Scaurus built one capable
of seating eighty thousand spectators. That of Pompey, near the Circus
Maximus, could contain forty thousand. But the theatre had not the same
attraction to the Romans that it had to the Greeks. They preferred
scenes of pomp and splendor.
[Sidenote: The circus and theatre.]
[Sidenote: Baths.]
No people probably abandoned themselves to pleasures more universally
than the Romans, after war ceased to be the master passion. All classes
alike pursued them with restless eagerness. Amusements were the fashion
and the business of life. At the theatre, at the great gladiatorial
shows, at the chariot races, senators and emperors and generals were
always present in conspicuous and reserved seats of honor; behind them
were the ordinary citizens, and in the rear of these, the people fed at
the public expense. The Circus Maximus, the Theatre of Pompey, the
Amphitheatre of Titus, would collectively accommodate over four hundred
thousand spectators. We may presume that over five hundred thousand
people were in the habit of constant attendance on these demoralizing
sports. And the fashion spread throughout all the great cities of the
empire, so that there was scarcely a city of twenty thousand people
which had not its theatres, or amphitheatres, or circus. The enthusiasm
of the Romans for the circus exceeded all bounds. And when we remember
the heavy bets on favorite horses, and the universal passion for
gambling in every shape, we can form some idea of the effect of these
amusements on the common mind, destroying the taste for home pleasures,
and for all that was intellectual and simple. What are we to think of a
state of society, where all classes had leisure for these sports. Habits
of industry were destroyed, and all respect for employments which
required labor. The rich were supported by the contributions from the
provinces, since they were the great proprietors of conquered lands. The
poor had no solicitude for a living, for they were supported at the
public expense. They, therefore, gave themselves up to pleasure. Even
the baths, designed for sanatory purposes, became places of resort and
idleness, and ultimately of improper intercourse. When the thermae came
fully into public use, not only did men bathe together in numbers, but
even men and women promiscuously in the same baths. In the time of
Julius Caesar, we find no less a personage than the mother of Augustus
making use of the public establishments; and in process of time the
emperors themselves bathed in public with the meanest of their subjects.
The baths in the time of Alexander Severus were not only kept open from
sunrise to sunset, but even the whole night. The luxurious classes
almost lived in the baths. Commodus took his meals in the bath. Gordian
bathed seven times in the day, and Gallienus as often. They bathed
before they took their meals, and after meals to provoke a new appetite.
They did not content themselves with a single bath, but went through a
course of baths in succession, in which the agency of air as well as
water was applied. And the bathers were attended by an army of slaves
given over to every sort of roguery and theft. "_O furum optume
balmariorum_," exclaims Catullus, in disgust and indignation. Nor was
water alone used. The common people made use of scented oils to anoint
their persons, and perfumed the water itself with the most precious
perfumes. Bodily health and cleanliness were only secondary
considerations; voluptuous pleasure was the main object. The ruins of
the baths of Titus, Caracalla, and Diocletian, in Rome, show that they
were decorated with prodigal magnificence, and with every thing that
could excite the passions--pictures, statues, ornaments, and mirrors.
Says Seneca, Epistle lxxxvi., "_Nisi parietes magnis et preciosis
orbibus refulserunt_." The baths were scenes of orgies consecrated to
Bacchus, and the frescoes on the excavated baths of Pompeii still raise
a blush on the face of every spectator who visits them. I speak not of
the elaborate ornaments, the Numidian marbles, the precious stones, the
exquisite sculptures, which formed part of the decorations of the Roman
baths, but the demoralizing pleasures with which they were connected,
and which they tended to promote. The baths became, according to the
ancient writers, ultimately places of excessive and degrading
debauchery.
"_Balnea, vina, Venas corrumpunt corpora nostra_."
[Sidenote: Dress and ornament.]
The Romans, originally, were not only frugal, but they dressed with
great simplicity. In process of time, they became extravagantly fond of
elaborately ornamented attire, particularly the women. They wore a great
variety of rings and necklaces; they dyed their hair, and resorted to
expensive cosmetics; they wore silks of various colors, magnificently
embroidered. Pearls and rubies, for which large estates had been
exchanged, were suspended from their ears. Their hair glistened with a
network of golden thread. Their stolae were ornamented with purple bands,
and fastened with diamond clasps, while their pallae trailed along the
ground. Jewels were embroidered upon their sandals, and golden bands,
pins, combs, and pomades raised the hair in a storied edifice upon the
forehead. They reclined on luxurious couches, and rode in silver
chariots. Their time was spent in paying and receiving visits, at the
bath, the spectacle, and the banquet. Tables, supported on ivory
columns, displayed their costly plate; silver mirrors were hung against
the walls, and curious chests contained their jewels and money. Bronze
lamps lighted their chambers, and glass vases, imitating precious
stones, stood upon their cupboards. Silken curtains were suspended over
the doors and from the ceilings, and lecticae, like palanquins, were
borne through the streets by slaves, on which reclined the effeminated
wives and daughters of the rich. Their gardens were rendered attractive
by green-houses, flower-beds, and every sort of fruit and vine.
But it was at their banquets the Romans displayed the greatest luxury
and extravagance. No people ever thought more of the pleasures of the
table. And the prodigality was seen not only in the indulgence of the
palate by the choicest dainties, but in articles which commanded, from
their rarity, the highest prices. They not only sought to eat daintily,
but to increase their capacity by unnatural means. The maxim, "_Il
faut manger pour vivre, et non pas vivre pour manger_," was reversed.
At the fourth hour they breakfasted on bread, grapes, olives, and cheese
and eggs; at the sixth they lunched, still more heartily; and at the
ninth hour they dined; and this meal, the _coena_, was the
principal one, which consisted of three parts: the first--the
_gustus_--was made up of dishes to provoke an appetite, shell-fish
and piquant sauces; the second--the _fercula_--composed of
different courses; and the third--the dessert, a _mensae
secundae_--composed of fruits and pastry. Fish were the chief object
of the Roman epicures, of which the _mullus_, the _rhombus_,
and the _asellus_ were the most valued. It is recorded that a
mullus (sea barbel), weighing but eight pounds, sold for eight thousand
sesterces. Oysters, from the Lucrine Lake, were in great demand. Snails
were fed in ponds for the purpose, while the villas of the rich had
their piscinae filled with fresh or salt-water fish. Peacocks and
pheasants were the most highly esteemed among poultry, although the
absurdity prevailed of eating singing-birds. Of quadrupeds, the greatest
favorite was the wild boar, the chief dish of a grand _coena_, and
came whole upon the table, and the practiced gourmand pretended to
distinguish by the taste from what part of Italy it came. Dishes, the
very names of which excite disgust, were used at fashionable banquets,
and held in high esteem. Martial devotes two entire books of his
"Epigrams" to the various dishes and ornaments of a Roman banquet. He
refers to almost every fruit and vegetable and meat that we now use--to
cabbages, leeks, turnips, asparagus, beans, beets, peas, lettuces,
radishes, mushrooms, truffles, pulse, lentils, among vegetables; to
pheasants, ducks, doves, geese, capons, pigeons, partridges, peacocks,
Numidian fowls, cranes, woodcocks, swans, among birds; to mullets,
lampreys, turbots, oysters, prawns, chars, murices, gudgeons, pikes,
sturgeons, among fish; to raisins, figs, quinces, citrons, dates, plums,
olives, apricots, among fruit; to sauces and condiments; to wild game,
and to twenty different kinds of wine; on all of which he expatiates
like an epicure. He speaks of the presents made to guests at feasts, the
tablets of ivory and parchment, the dice-boxes, style-cases, toothpicks,
golden hair-pins, combs, pomatum, parasols, oil-flasks, tooth-powder,
balms and perfumes, slippers, dinner-couches, citron-tables, antique
vases, gold-chased cups, snow-strainers, jeweled and crystal vases,
rings, spoons, scarlet cloaks, table-covers, Cilician socks, pillows,
girdles, aprons, mattresses, lyres, bath-bells, statues, masks, books,
musical instruments, and other articles of taste, luxury, or necessity.
The pleasures of the table, however, are ever uppermost in his eye, and
the luxuries of those whom he could not rival, but which he reprobates:--
"Nor mullet delights thee, nice Betic, nor thrush;
The hare with the scut, nor the boar with the tusk;
No sweet cakes or tablets, thy taste so absurd,
Nor Libya need send thee, nor Phasis, a bird.
But capers and onions, besoaking in brine,
And brawn of a gammon scarce doubtful are thine.
Of garbage, or flitch of hoar tunny, thou'rt vain;
The rosin's thy joy, the Falernian thy bane."
[Footnote: Martial, b. iii. p. 77.]
[Sidenote: A poet's dinner.]
He thus describes a modest dinner, to which he, a poet, invites his
friend Turanius: "If you are suffering from dread of a melancholy dinner
at home, or would take a preparatory whet, come and feast with me. You
will find no want of Cappadocian lettuces and strong leeks. The tunny
will lurk under slices of egg; a cauliflower hot enough to burn your
fingers, and which has just left the garden, will be served fresh on a
black platter; white sausages will float on snow-white porridge, and the
pale bean will accompany the red-streaked bacon. In the second course,
raisins will be set before you, and pears which pass for Syrian, and
roasted chestnuts. The wine you will prove in drinking it. After all
this, excellent olives will come to your relief, with the hot vetch and
the tepid lupine. The dinner is small, who can deny it? but you will not
have to invent falsehoods, or hear them invented; you will recline at
ease, and with your own natural look; the host will not read aloud a
bulky volume of his own compositions, nor will licentious girls, from
shameless Cadiz, be there to gratify you with wanton attitudes; but the
small reed pipe will be heard, and the nice Claudia, whose society you
value even more than mine." [Footnote: _Ibid_. b. v. p. 78.]
How different this poet's dinner, a table spread without luxury, and
enlivened by wit and friendship, from that which Petronius describes of
a rich freedman, which was more after the fashion of the vulgar and
luxurious gourmands of his day.
[Sidenote: Expensive furniture.]
Next to the pleasures of the table, the passion for expensive furniture
seemed to be the prevailing folly. We read of couches gemmed with
tortoise-shell, and tables of citron-wood from Africa. Silver and gold
vases, Tables, also, of Mauritanian marble, supported on pedestals of
Lybian ivory; cups of crystal; all sorts of silver plate, the
masterpieces of Myro, and the handiwork of Praxiteles, and the
engravings of Phidias. Gold services adorned the sideboard. Couches were
covered with purple silks. Chairs were elaborately carved; costly
mirrors hung against the walls, and bronze lamps were suspended from the
painted ceilings. But it was not always the most beautiful articles
which were most prized, but those which were procured with the greatest
difficulty, or brought from the remotest provinces. That which cost most
received uniformly the greatest admiration.
[Sidenote: Money making.]
If it were possible to allude to an evil more revolting than the sports
of the amphitheatre, or the extravagant luxuries of the table, I would
say that the universal abandonment to money-making, for the enjoyment of
the factitious pleasures it purchased, was even still more melancholy,
since it struck deeper into the foundations which supported society. The
leading spring of life was money. Boys were bred from early youth to all
the mysteries of unscrupulous gains. Usury was practiced to such an
incredible extent that the interest on loans, in some instances equaled,
in a few months, the whole capital. This was the more aristocratic mode
of making money, which not even senators disdained. The pages of the
poets show how profoundly money was prized, and how miserable were
people without it. Rich old bachelors, without heirs, were held in the
supremest honor. Money was the first object in all matrimonial
alliances, and provided that women were only wealthy, neither bridegroom
nor parent was fastidious as to age, or deformity, or meanness of
family, or vulgarity of person. The needy descendants of the old
Patricians yoked themselves with fortunate Plebeians, and the blooming
maidens of a comfortable obscurity sold themselves, without shame or
reluctance, to the bloated sensualists who could give them what they
supremely valued, chariots and diamonds. It was useless to appeal to
elevated sentiments when happiness consisted in an outside, factitious
life. The giddy women, in love with ornaments and dress, and the godless
men, seeking what they should eat, could only be satisfied with what
purchased their pleasures. The haughtiest aristocracy ever known on
earth, tracing their lineage to the times of Cato, and boasting of their
descent from the Scipios and the Pompeys, accustomed themselves at last
to regard money as the only test of their own social position. There was
no high social position disconnected with fortune. Even poets and
philosophers were neglected, and gladiators and buffoons preferred
before them. The great Augustine found himself utterly neglected at
Rome, because he was dependent on his pupils, and his pupils were mean
enough to run away without paying. Literature languished and died, since
it brought neither honor nor emolument. No dignitary was respected for
his office, only for his gains; nor was any office prized which did not
bring rich emoluments. And corruption was so universal, that an official
in an important post was sure of making a fortune in a short time. With
such an idolatry of money, all trades and professions fell into
disrepute which were not favorable to its accumulation, while those who
administered to the pleasures of a rich man were held in honor. Cooks,
buffoons, and dancers, received the consideration which artists and
philosophers enjoyed at Athens in the days of Pericles. But artists and
scholars were very few indeed in the more degenerate days of the empire.
Nor would they have had influence. The wit of a Petronius, the ridicule
of a Martial, the bitter sarcasm of a Juvenal, were lost on a people
abandoned to frivolous gossip and demoralizing excesses. The haughty
scorn with which a sensual beauty, living on the smiles and purse of a
fortunate glutton, would pass, in her gilded chariot, some of the
impoverished descendants of the great Camillus, might have provoked a
smile, had any one been found, even a neglected poet, to have given them
countenance and sympathy. But, alas! every body worshiped the shrine of
Mammon. Every body was valued for what he _had_, rather than for
what he _was_; and life was prized, not for those pleasures which
are cheap and free as heaven, not for quiet tastes and rich affections
and generous sympathies and intellectual genius,--the glorious
certitudes of love, esteem, and friendship, which, "be they what they
may, are yet the fountain-life of all our day,"--but for the
gratification of depraved and expensive tastes; those short-lived
enjoyments which ended with the decay of appetite, and the _ennui_
of realized expectation,--all of the earth, earthy; making a wreck of
the divine image which was made for God and heaven, and preparing the
way for a most fearful retribution, and producing, on contemplative
minds, a sadness allied with despair, driving them to caves and
solitudes, and making death the relief from sorrow. Cynicism, scorn,
unbelief, and disgusting coarseness and vulgarity, made grand sentiments
an idle dream. The fourteenth satire of Juvenal is directed mainly to
the universal passion for gain, and the demoralizing vices it brings in
its train, which made Rome a Pandemonium and a Vanity Fair.
"Flatterers," says he, "consider misers as men of happy minds, since
they admire wealth supremely, and think no instance can be found of a
poor man that is also happy; and therefore they exhort their sons to
apply themselves to the arts of money making. Come, boys; sack the
Numidian hovels and the forts of Brigantes, that your sixtieth year may
bestow on you the eagle which will make you rich. Or, if you shrink from
the long-protracted labors of the camp, then bring something that you
may profitably dispose of, and never let disgust of trade enter your
head, nor think that any difference can be drawn between perfumes and
leather. The smell of gain is good from any thing whatever. No one
asks you _how_ you get money, but _have_ it you must." The poet
Persius paints this passion for gold, displayed in the customs of the
day, in a strain at once lofty and mournful, bitter and satirical:
[Footnote: _Satire_ ii.]--
"O that I could my rich old uncle see
In funeral pomp! O that some deity
To pots of buried gold would guide my share!
O that my ward, whom I succeed as heir,
Were once at rest! Poor child! he lies in pain,
And death to him must be accounted gain.
By will thrice has Nerius swelled his store,
And now he is a widower once more.
O groveling souls, and void of things divine!
Why bring our passions to the immortal's shrine?"
The old Greek philosophers gloried in their poverty; but poverty was the
greatest reproach to a Roman. "In exact proportion to the sum of money a
man keeps in his chest," says Juvenal, [Footnote: _Satire_ iii.]
"is the credit given to his oath. And the first question ever asked of a
man is in reference to his income, rather than his character. How many
slaves does he keep? How many acres does he own? What dishes are his
table spread with?--these are the universal inquiries. Poverty, bitter
though it be, has no sharper sting than this,--that it makes them
ridiculous. Who was ever allowed at Rome to become a son-in-law if his
estate was inferior, and not a match for the portion of the young lady?
What poor man's name appears in any will? When is one summoned to a
consultation even by an aedile?"
"Long, long ago, in one despairing band,
The poor, self-exiled, should have left the land."
And with this reproach of poverty there was no means to escape from it.
Nor was there alleviation. A man was regarded as a fool who gave any
thing except to the rich. Charity and benevolence were unknown virtues.
The sick and the miserable were left to die unlamented and unknown.
Prosperity and success, no matter by what means they were purchased,
secured reverence and influence.
Indeed, the Romans were a worldly, selfish, Epicurean people, for whom
we can feel but little admiration in any age of the republic. They never
were finely moulded. They had no sentiment, unless in the earlier ages,
it took the form of glory and patriotism. In their prosperity, they were
proud and scornful. In adversity, they buried themselves in low
excesses. They were not easily moved by softening influences. They had
no lofty idealism, like the Greeks; nor were they even social, as they
were. They were disgustingly _practical. Oui bono?_--"who shall
show us any good?"--this was their by-word, this the sole principle of
their existence. They were jealous of their dignity, and carried away by
pomps and show. They were fond of etiquette and ceremony, and were
conventional in all their habits. They had very little true intellectual
independence, and were slaves of fashion as they were of ceremony and
dress. They were inordinately greedy of social position and of social
distinctions. They loved titles and surnames and inequalities of rank.
They plumed themselves on taking a common-sense view of life, disdaining
all lofty standards. They were dazzled by an outside life, and cared but
little for the great certitudes on which real dignity and happiness
rest. They had no conception of philanthropy. They lived for themselves.
Nor had they veneration for ideal worth or beauty or abstract truth.
They were reserved and reticent and haughty in social life. They were
superstitious, and believed in dreams and omens and talismans. They were
hospitable to their friends, but chiefly to display their wealth and
pomp. They were coarse and indecent in banquets. They loved money
supremely, but squandered it recklessly to gratify vanity. They had no
high conceptions of art. They were copyists of the Greeks, and never
produced any thing original but jurisprudence. They did not even add to
the arts and sciences, which they applied to practical purposes. Their
literature never produced a sentimentalist; their philosophy never
soared into idealism; their art never ventured upon new creations. Their
supreme ambition was to rule, and to rule despotically. They gloried in
slavery, and degraded women and trod upon the defenseless. They had no
pity, no gentleness, no delicacy of feeling. They could not comprehend a
disinterested action. They lived to eat and drink, and wear robes of
purple, and ride in chariots of silver, and receive greetings in the
market-place, and be attended by an army of sycophants, flatterers, and
slaves. What was elevated and what was pure were laughed at as unreal,
as dreamy, as transcendental. All science was directed to
_utilities_, and utilities were wines, rare fishes and birds,
carpets, silks, cooking, palaces, chariots, horses, pomps. Their supreme
idea was conquest, dominion over man, over beast, over seas, over
nature--all with a view of becoming rich, comfortable, honorable. This
was their Utopia. Epicurus was their god. Sensualism was the convertible
term for their utilities, and pervaded their literature, their social
life, and their public efforts; extinguishing poetry, friendship,
affections, genius, self-sacrifice, lofty sentiments--the real utilities
which make up our higher life, and fit man for an ever-expanding
felicity. Practically, they were atheists--unbelievers of what is fixed
and immutable in the soul, and glorious in the soul's aspirations. They
had will and passion, sagacity and the power to rule, by which they
became aggrandized; but they were wanting in those elements and virtues
which endear their memory to mankind. They were both tyrants and
sensualists; fitted to make conquests, unfitted to enjoy them. In an
important sense, they were great civilizers, but their civilization
pertained to material life. They worshiped the god of the sense, rather
than the god of the reason; and, compared with the Greeks, bequeathed
but little to our times which we value, except laws and maxims of
government, and ideas of centralized power.
Such was imperial Rome, in all the internal relations of life, and amid
all the trophies and praises which resulted from universal conquest. I
cannot understand the enthusiasm of Gibbon for such a people, or for
such an empire,--a grinding and resistless imperial despotism, a
sensual and proud aristocracy, a debased and ignorant populace,
disproportionate fortunes, slavery flourishing to a state unprecedented
in the world's history, women the victims and the toys of men, lax
sentiments of public morality, a whole people given over to demoralizing
sports and spectacles, pleasure the master passion of the people, money
the mainspring of society, all the vices which lead to violence and
prepare the way for the total eclipse of the glory of man. What was a
cultivated face of nature, or palaces, or pomps, or a splendid material
civilization, or great armies, or a numerous population, or the triumph
of energy and skill, when the moral health was completely undermined?
The external grandeur was nothing amid so much vice and wickedness and
wretchedness. A world, therefore, as fair and glorious as our own, must
needs crumble away. There were no proper conservative forces. The poison
had descended to the extremities of the social system. A corrupt body
must die when vitality had fled. The soul was gone. Principle,
patriotism, virtue, had all passed away. The barbarians were advancing
to conquer and desolate. There was no power to resist them, but
enervated and timid legions, with the accumulated vices of all the
nations of the earth, which they had been learning for four hundred
years. Society must needs resolve itself into its original elements when
men would not make sacrifices, and so few belonged to their country. The
machine was sure to break up at the first great shock. No state could
stand with such an accumulation of wrongs, with such complicated and
fatal diseases eating out the vitals of the empire. The house was built
upon the sands. The army may have rallied under able generals, in view
of the approaching catastrophe; philosophy may have gilded the days of a
few indignant citizens; good emperors may have attempted to raise
barriers against corruption; and even Christianity may have converted by
thousands: still nothing, according to natural laws, could save the
empire. It was doomed. Retributive justice must march on in its majestic
course. The empire had accomplished its mission. The time came for it to
die. The Sibylline oracle must needs be fulfilled: "O haughty Rome, the
divine chastisement shall come upon thee; the fire shall consume thee;
thy wealth shall perish; foxes and wolves shall dwell among thy ruins:
and then what land that thou hast enslaved shall be thy ally, and which
of thy gods shall save thee? for there shall be confusion over the face
of the whole earth, and the fall of cities shall come." [Footnote: If
any one thinks this general description of Roman life and manners
exaggerated, he can turn from such poets as Juvenal and Martial, and
read what St. Pani says in the first chapter of the _Epistle to the
Romans._]
* * * * *
REFERENCES.--Mr. Merivale has written most fully of modern writers on
the condition of the empire. Gibbon has occasional paragraphs which show
the condition of Roman society. Lyman's Life of the Emperors should be
read, and also DeQuincy's Lives of the Caesars. See, also, Niebuhr,
Arnold, and Mommsen, though these writers have chiefly confined
themselves to republican Rome. But, if one would get the truest and most
vivid description, he must read the Roman poets, especially Juvenal and
Martial. The work of Petronius is too indecent to be read. Ammianus
Marcellinus gives us some striking pictures of the latter Romans.
Suetonius, in his Lives of the Caesars, furnishes many facts. Becker's
Gallus is a fine description of Roman habits and customs. Smith's
Dictionary of Antiquities should be consulted, as it is a great
thesaurus of important facts. Lucian does not describe Roman manners,
but he aims his sarcasms on the hollowness of Roman life, as do the
great satirists generally. Tillemont is the basis of Gibbon's history,
so far as pertains to the emperors.
CHAPTER XI.
THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE.
We have contemplated the grandeur and the glory of the Roman empire; and
we have also seen, in connection with the magnificent triumphs of art,
science, literature, and philosophy, a melancholy degradation of
society, so fatal and universal, that all strength was undermined, and
nothing was left but worn-out mechanisms and lifeless forms to resist
the pressure of external enemies. So vast, so strong, so proud was this
empire, that no one dreamed it could ever be subverted. With all the
miseries of the people, with that hateful demoralization which pervaded
all classes and orders and interests, there was still a splendid
external, which called forth general panegyrics, and the idea of public
danger was derided or discredited. If Rome, in the infancy of the
republic, had resisted the invading Gauls, what was there to fear from
the half-naked barbarians who lived beyond the boundaries of the empire?
The long-continued peace and prosperity had engendered not merely the
vices of self-interest, those destructive cankers which ever insure a
ruin, but a general feeling of security and self-exaggeration. The
eternal city was still prosperous and proud, the centre of all that was
grand in the civilization of the ancient world. Provincial cities vied
with the capital in luxuries, in pomps, in sports, and in commercial
wealth. The cultivated face of nature betokened universal prosperity.
Nothing was wanting but energy, genius, and virtue among the people.
[Sidenote: Prosperity deceptive.]
But all this prosperity was deceptive. All was rotten and hollow at
heart; and, had there not been universal delusion, it would have been
apparent that the machine would break up at the first great shock. There
was no spring in the splendid mechanism. It was broken, and society had
really been retrograding from the time of Trajan--from the moment that
it had completed its task of conquest. There was a strange torpor
everywhere, so soon as external antagonism had ceased, and if the
barbarians had not come the empire would have been disintegrated, and
would scarcely have lasted two centuries longer.
[Sidenote: The empire had fulfilled its mission.]
Moreover, the empire had fulfilled its mission. It had conquered the
world that a great centralization of power might be created, under which
peace and plenty might reign, and a new religion might spread.
Still, whatever the plans of Providence may have been in allowing that
imperial despotism to grow and spread from the banks of the Tiber to the
uttermost parts of the civilized world, we cannot but feel that a great
retribution was deserved for the crimes which Rome had committed upon
mankind. He that takes the sword shall perish with the sword. Rome had
drank of the blood of millions, and was foul with all the abominations
of the countries she had subdued, and her turn must come, and a new race
must try new experiments for humanity.
[Sidenote: War the instrument of punishment.]
The great instrument of God in punishing wicked nations and effecting
important changes, is war. There are other forms or divine displeasure.
Plague, pestilence, and famine are often sent upon degraded peoples. But
these are either the necessary attendants on war itself, or they are
limited and transient. They do not produce the great revolutions in
which new ideas are born and new forms of social life arise.
But war seems to be the ultimate scourge of God, when he dooms nations
to destruction, or to great changes. It combines within itself all kinds
of evil and calamity--poverty, sickness, captivity, disgrace, and
death. A conquered nation is most forlorn and dismal. The song of the
conquered is--"By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept."
The passions which produce war are born in hell. They are pride,
ambition, cruelty, avarice, and lust. These are the natural causes which
array nation against nation, or people against people. But these are
second causes. The primary cause is God, who useth the passions and
interests of men, as his instruments of punishment.
[Sidenote: Illustrated by the history of nations.]
How impressive the history of the different civilized nations, which
formed so large a part of the universal monarchy of the Romans. Assyria,
Egypt, Persia, Asia Minor, Palestine, Greece, had successively been
great empires and states--independent and conquering. They arose from
the prevalence of martial virtues, of courage, temperance, fortitude,
allied with ambition and poverty. Then monarchs craved greater power and
possessions. Their passions were inexcusable; but they possessed men who
were powerful and not enslaved to enervating vices. They made war on
nations sunk in effeminacy and vile idolatries--men worse than they. The
conquered nations needed chastisement and reconstruction; and,
generally, by their blindness and arrogance, provoked the issue. Wealth
and power had inflated them with false security, with egotistic aims; or
else had enervated them and undermined their strength. They became
subject to a stronger power. Their pride was buried in the dust. They
became enslaved, miserable, ruined. They were punished in as signal,
though not miraculous manner, as the Antediluvians, or the cities of
Sodom and Gomorrah. The same hand, _however_, is seen in vengeance
and in mercy. They regained in adversity the strength they had lost in
prosperity, and civilization lost nothing by their sufferings.
[Sidenote: Wars over-ruled.]
The conquering powers, in their turn, became powerful, wealthy, and
corrupt. Effeminacy and weakness succeeded; war came upon them, and they
became the prey of the stronger. Their conquerors, again, were enslaved
by their vices, and their empire passed away in the same gloom and
despair.
We see, however, in each successive conquest, the destruction, not of
civilization, but of men. Countries are overrun, thrones are subverted,
the rich are made slaves, the proud utter cries of despair; but the land
survives, and arts and science take a new direction, and the new masters
are more interested in great improvements than the old tyrants. The
condition of Babylonia was probably better for the Persian conquest,
while the whole oriental world gained by the wars of Alexander. Grecian
culture succeeded Persian misrule. The Romans came and took away from
Grecian dynasties, in Asia and Egypt, when they became enfeebled by
prosperity and self-indulgence, the powers they had usurped, without
destroying Grecian civilization. That remained, and will remain, in some
form, forever, as an heirloom of priceless value to all future nations.
The Greeks, when they conquered the Persians, had also spared the most
precious monuments of their former industry and genius. The Romans,
also, when they conquered Greece itself, guarded and prized her peculiar
contributions to mankind. And they gave to all these conquered
territories, something of their own. They gave laws, and a good
government. The Grecian and Asiatic cities were humiliated by what they
regarded as barbaric inroads; for the culture of Athens, Corinth,
Antioch, and Ephesus, was higher than that of Rome, at that time; but
who can doubt a beneficent change in the administration of public
affairs? Society was doubtless improved everywhere by the Roman
conquests. It is not probable that Athens, after she became tributary to
Rome, was equal to the Athens of Pericles and Plato; but it is probable
that society in Athens was better than what it was for a century before
her fall. But what if particular cities suffered? These did not
constitute the whole country. Can it be doubted that Syria, as a
province, enjoyed more rational liberty and more scope for energy, under
the Roman rule, than under that of the degenerate scions of the old
Grecian kings? We see a retribution in the conquest, and also a blessing
in disguise.
[Sidenote: The Celtic nations.]
But still more forcibly are these truths illustrated in the conquest of
the Celtic nations of Europe. They were barbarians; they had neither
science, nor literature, nor art; they were given over to perpetual
quarrels, and to rude pleasures. Ignorance, superstition, and
unrestrained passions were the main features of society. Other rude
warriors wandered from place to place, with no other end than pillage.
They had fine elements of character, but they needed civilization. They
were conquered. The Romans taught them laws, and language, and
literature, and arts. Cities arose among them, and these conquered
barbarians became the friends of order and peace, and formed the most
prosperous part of the whole empire. It was from these Celtic nations
that the Roman armies were recruited. The great men of Rome, in the
second and third centuries, came from these Celtic provinces. They
infused a new blood into the decaying body. Who can doubt the benefit to
mankind by the conquests of Britain, of Gaul, and of Spain? The Romans
proved the greatest civilizers of the ancient world, with all their
arrogance and want of appreciation of those things which gave a glory to
the Greeks. They introduced among the barbaric nations their own arts,
language, literature, and laws; and the civilization which they taught
never passed away. It was obscured, indeed, during the revolutions which
succeeded the fall of the empire, but it was gradually revived, and
beamed with added lustre when its merits were at last perceived.
Thus wars are not an unmixed calamity, since the evils are overruled in
the ultimate good of nations. But they are a great calamity for the
time, and they are sent when nations most need chastisement.
[Sidenote: Conquest of the Celts.]
The Romans triumphed, by their great and unexampled energy and patience
and heroism, over all the world, and erected their universal empire upon
the ruins of all the states of antiquity. They were suffered to increase
and prosper, that great ends might be accomplished, either by the
punishment of the old nations, or the creation of a new civilization.
But they, in their turn, became corrupted by prosperity, and enervated
by peace. They had been guilty of the most heartless and cruel
atrocities for eight hundred years. Their empire was built upon the
miseries of mankind. They also must needs suffer retribution.
It was long delayed. It did not come till every conservative influence
had failed. The condition of society was becoming worse and worse, until
it reached a depravity and an apathy fatal to all genius, and more
disgraceful than among those people whom they stigmatized as barbarians.
Then must come revolution, or races would run out and civilization be
lost.
[Sidenote: Barbaric conquests.]
God sent war--universal, cruel, destructive war, at the hands of unknown
warriors; and they effected a total eclipse of the glory of man. The
empire was resolved into its original elements. Its lands were overrun
and pillaged; its cities were burned and robbed; and unmitigated
violence overspread the earth, so that the cry of despair ascended to
heaven, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Caspian Sea. Indeed, the end
of the world was so generally believed to be at hand, on this universal
upturning of society, that some of the best men fled to caves and
deserts; and there were more monks that sought personal salvation by
their austerities, than soldiers who braved their lives in battle.
It is this great revolution which I seek to present, this great
catastrophe to which the Romans were subjected, after having conquered
one hundred and twenty millions of people. It was probably the most
mournful, in all its aspects, ever seen on the face of this earth since
the universal deluge. Never, surely, were such calamities produced by
the hand of man. The Greeks and Romans, when they had conquered a
rebellious or enervated nation, introduced their civilization, and
promoted peace and general security. They brought laws, science,
literature, and arts, in the train of their armies; they did not sweep
away ancient institutions; they left the people as they found them, only
with greater facilities of getting rich; they preserved the pictures,
the statues, and the temples; they honored the literature and revered
the sages who taught it; they may have brought captives to their
capitals as slaves, but they did not root out every trace of
cultivation, or regarded it with haughty scorn. But, when their turn of
punishment came, the whole world was filled with mourning and
desolation, and all the relations of society were reversed.
[Sidenote: Infatuation of the Romans.]
It was a sad hour in the old capital of the world, when its blinded
inhabitants were aroused from the stupendous delusion that they were
invincible; when the crushing fact stared every one in the face, that
the legions had been conquered, that province after province had been
overrun, that proud and populous cities had fallen, that the barbarians
were advancing, treading beneath their feet all that had been deemed
valuable, or rare, or sacred, that they were advancing to the very gates
of Rome,--that her doom was sealed, that there was no shelter to which
they could fly, that there was no way by which ruin could be averted,
that they were doomed to hopeless poverty or servitude, that their wives
and daughters would be subject to indignities which were worse than
death, and that all the evils their ancestors had inflicted in their
triumphant march, would be visited upon them with tenfold severity. The
Romans, even then, when they cast their eyes upon external nature, saw
rich corn-fields, smiling vineyards, luxurious gardens, yea, villas and
temples and palaces without end; and how could these be destroyed which
had lasted for centuries? How could the eternal city, which had not seen
a foreign enemy near its gates since the invasion of the Gauls, which
had escaped all dangers, so rich and gay, how could she now yield to
naked barbarians from unknown forests? They still beheld the splendid
mechanism of government, the glitter and the pomp of armies, triumphal
processions, new monuments of victory, the proud eagles, and all the
emblems of unlimited dominion. What had _they_ to fear? "_Nihil
est, Quirites, quod timere possitis_."
[Sidenote: Fatal security of the Romans.]
Nor to the eye of contemporaries was the great change, which had
gradually taken place since the reign of Trajan, apparent. Cowardice and
weakness were veiled from the view of men. In proportion to the
imbecility of the troops, were the richness of their uniform, and the
insolence of their manners. It was the day of boasts and pomps. All
forms and emblems had their ancient force. All men partook of the vices
and follies which were praised. In their levity and delusion, they did
not see the real emptiness and hollowness of their institutions. A
blinded generation never can see the signs of the times. Only a few
contemplative men hid themselves in retired places, but were denounced
as croakers or evil minded. Every body was interested in keeping up the
delusion. Panics seldom last long. The world is too fond of its ease to
believe the truths which break up repose and gains. All felt safe,
because they had always been protected. Ruin might come ultimately, but
not in their day. "_Apres moi le deluge_" No one would make
sacrifices, since no one feared immediate danger. Moreover, public
spirit and patriotism had fled. If their cities were in danger, they
said, better perish here with our wives and children than die on the
frontiers after having suffered every privation and exposure. There must
have been a universal indifference, or the barbarians could not have
triumphed. The Romans had every inducement which any people ever had to
a brave and desperate resistance. Not merely their own lives, but the
security of their families was at stake. Their institutions, their
interests, their rights, their homes, their altars, all were in
jeopardy. And they were attacked by most merciless enemies, without pity
or respect, and yet they would not fight, as nations should fight, and
do sometimes fight, when their country is invaded. Why did they offer no
more stubborn resistance? Why did the full-armed and well-trained
legions yield to barbaric foes, without discipline and without the most
effective weapons? Alas, dispirited and enervated people will never
fight. They prefer slavery to death. Thus Persia succumbed before
Alexander, and Asia Minor before the Saracen generals. Martial courage
goes hand in hand with virtue. Without elevation of sentiment there will
be no self-sacrifice. There is no hope when nations are abandoned to
sensuality or egotism.
[Sidenote: Weakness of the empire.]
We must believe in a most extraordinary degeneracy of society, or Rome
would not have fallen. With any common degree of courage, the empire
should have resisted the Goths and Vandals. They were not more numerous
than those hordes which Marius and Caesar annihilated even in their own
marshes and forests. It was not like the Macedonians, with their
impenetrable phalanx, and their perfected armor, contending with semi-
barbarians. It was not like the Spaniards, marching over Peru and
Mexico. It was not like the English, with all the improved weapons of
our modern times, firing upon a people armed with darts and arrows. But
it was barbarians, without defensive armor, without discipline, without
prestige, attacking legions which had been a thousand years learning the
art of war. _Proh Pudor!_ The soldiers of the empire must have lost
their ancient spirit. They must have represented a most worthless
people. We lose our pity in the strength of our indignation and disgust.
A civilized nation that will yield to barbarians must deserve their
fate. Noble as were the elements of character among the Germanic tribes,
they were yet barbarians in arts, in manners, in knowledge, in
mechanisms. They had nothing but brute force. Science should have
conquered brute force; but it did not. We cannot but infer a most
startling degeneracy. It is to be regretted that we have no more
satisfactory data as to the precise state of society. I am inclined to
the opinion that society was much more degraded than it is generally
supposed. When for two centuries the whole empire scarcely produced a
poet, or a philosopher, or an historian; when even the writings of
famous men in the time of Augustus were lost or unread; when, from
Trajan to Honorius, a period of three hundred and fifty years, scarcely
a work of original genius appeared, it must be that society was utterly
demoralized, and all life and vigor had fled.
[Sidenote: Conquerors of Rome.]
Then it was time for the empire to fall. And it is our work to sketch
the ruin--and such a ruin. The bloody conquerors were Goths and Vandals,
and other Teutonic tribes--Franks, Sueves, Alans, Heruli, Burgundians,
Lombards, Saxons. They came originally from Central Asia, in the region
of the Caspian Sea, and were kindred to the Medes and Persians. They
drove before them older inhabitants, probably Celtic nations, and
ultimately settled in the vast region between the Baltic and the Danube,
the Rhine and the Vistula, embracing those countries which are now
called Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany.
[Sidenote: The Germanic nations.]
All these tribes were probably similar in manners, habits, tastes, and
natural elements of character. Tacitus has furnished us with the most
authentic record of their customs and peculiarities. [Footnote: Tacitus,
_De Moribus Germanorum_.] Their eyes were stern and blue, their
hair red, their bodies large, their strength great. They were ruled by
kings, but not with unlimited power. The priests had also an
extraordinary influence, which they shared with the women, who were
present in battles, and who were characterized for great purity and
courage. Even the power to predict the future was ascribed to women. The
Germans were superstitious, and were given to divinations by omens and
lots, by the flight of birds and the neighing of horses. They transacted
no business, public or private, without being armed. They were warlike
in all their habits and tastes, and the field of battle was the field of
glory. Their chief deity was an heroic prince. Odin, the type-man of the
nation, was a wild captain, who taught that it was most honorable to die
in battle. They hated repose and inactivity, and, when not engaged in
war, they pursued with eagerness the pleasures of the chase; yet, during
the intervals of war and hunting, they divided their time between
sleeping and feasting. They loved the forests, and dangerous sports, and
adventurous enterprises. They abhorred cities, which they regarded as
prisons of despotism. A rude passion for personal independence was one
of their chief characteristics, as powerful as veneration for the women
and religious tendency of mind. They would brook no restraint on their
wills or their passions. Their wills were stern and their passions
impetuous. They only yielded to the voice of entreaty or of love. They
were ordinarily temperate, except on rare occasions, when they indulged
in drunken festivities. Chastity was a virtue which was rigorously
practiced. There were few cases of adultery among them, and the
unfaithful wife was severely punished. Men and women, without seductive
spectacles or convivial banquets, were fenced around with chastity, and
bound together by family ties. Polygamy was unknown, and the marriage
obligation was sacred. The wife brought no dowry to her husband, but
received one from him, not frivolous presents, but oxen, a caparisoned
steed, a shield, spear, and sword, to indicate that she is to be a
partner in toil and danger, to suffer and to dare in peace and war.
Hospitality was another virtue, extended equally to strangers and
acquaintances, but, at the festive board, quarrels often took place, and
enmities once formed were rarely forgiven. Vindictive resentments were
as marked as cordial and frank friendships. They drank beer or ale,
instead of wine, at their feasts, although their ordinary drink was
water. Their food was fruits, cheese, milk, and venison. They had an
inordinate passion for gambling, and would even stake their very freedom
on a throw. Slavery was common, but not so severe and ruthless as among
the Romans. They had but little commerce, and were unacquainted with the
arts of usury. Their agriculture was rude, and corn was the only product
they raised. They had the ordinary domestic animals, but their horses
were neither beautiful nor swift.
[Sidenote: The native elements of character of the barbarians.]
It is easy to see that, in their manners and traits, they had a great
resemblance to the Celts, before they were subdued and civilized, but
were not so passionate, nor impulsive, nor thoughtless, nor reckless as
they. Nor were they so much addicted to gluttony and drunkenness. They
were more persevering, more earnest, more truthful, and more chaste. Nor
were they so much enslaved by the priesthood. The Druidical rule was
confined to the Celts, yet, like the Celts, they worshiped God in the
consecrated grove. Their religion was pantheistic: they saw God in the
rocks, the rain, the thunder, the clouds, the rivers, the mountains, the
stars. He was supposed to preside everywhere, and to be a supreme
intelligence. Their view of God was quite similar to the early Ionic
philosophers of Greece: "_Regnator omnium deus, coetera subjecta atque
parentia_." They Were never idol-worshipers; they worshiped nature,
and called its wonders gods. But this worship of nature was modified by
the worship of a hero. In Odin they beheld strength, courage,
magnanimity, the attributes they adored. To be brave was an elemental
principle of religion, and they attributed to the Deity every thing
which could inspire horror as the terrible,--the angry god who marked
out those destined to be slain. Hence their groves, where he was
supposed to preside, were dark and mysterious. We adore the gloom of
woods, the silence which reigns around. "_Lucos atque in iis silentia,
ipsa adoremus_." While the priests of this awful being were not so
despotic as the Druids, they still exercised a great ascendency: they
conjured the storms of internal war; they pronounced the terrible
anathema; they imparted to military commanders a sacred authority; and
they carried at the head of their armies the consecrated banner of the
Deity. In short, they wielded those spiritual weapons which afterward
became thunderbolts in the hands of the clergy, and which prepared the
way for the autocratic reign of the popes, in whom the Germanic nations
ever recognized the vicegerent of their invisible Lord. They were most
preeminently a religious people, governed by religious ideas--by which I
mean they recognized a deity to whose will they were to be obedient, and
whose favor could only be purchased by deeds of valor or virtue. Their
morality sprung out of veneration for the Great Unseen, in whose hands
were their destinies.
This trait is the most remarkable and prominent among the Germans, next
to their fierce passion for war, their veneration for woman, and their
love of personal independence, to which last Guizot attaches great
importance. The feeling one's self a man in the most unrestricted sense,
was the highest pleasure of the German barbarian. There was a
personality of feeling and interest hostile to social forms and
municipal regulations. They cared for nothing beyond the gratification
of their inclinations. To be unrestrained, to be free in the wildest
sense, to do what they pleased under the impulse of the moment, this was
their leading characteristic. Who cannot see that such a trait was
hostile to civilization, and would prevent obedience to law--would make
the uncultivated warrior unsocial and solitary, and lead him, in after-
times, when he got possession of the lands of the conquered Romans, to
build his castle on inaccessible heights and rugged rocks? Hence
isolated retreats, wild adventures, country life, the pleasures of the
chase, characterized the new settlers. They avoided cities, and built
castles.
[Sidenote: National traits.]
[Sidenote: Character of the Germanic nations.]
This passion for liberty, accompanied with the spirit of daring,
adventure, and war, would have been fatal but for the rule of priests,
and the great influence of woman. In this latter element of character,
the barbarians from Scandinavia stand out in interesting contrast with
the civilized nations whom they subverted. They evidently had a greater
respect for woman than any of the nations of antiquity, not excepting
the Jews. In her they beheld something sacred and divine. In her voice
was inspiration, and in her presence there was safety. There was no true
enthusiasm for woman in Greece even when Socrates bowed before the
charms of Aspasia. There was none at Rome when Volumnia screened the
city from the vengeance of her angry son. But the Germans worshiped the
fair, and beheld in her the incarnation of all virtue and loveliness.
And thus, among such a race, arose the glorious old institution of
chivalry, which could not have existed among the Romans or the Greeks,
even after Christianity had softened the character and enlarged the
heart. In the baronial mansion of the Middle Ages this natural
veneration was ripened into devotion and gallantry. Among the knights,
zeal for God and the ladies was enjoined as a single duty; and "he who
was faithful to his mistress," says Hallam, "was sure of salvation, in
the theology of castles, if not of cloisters." This devotion was
expressed in the rude poetry of barbarous ages, in the sports of the
tournament and tilt, in the feasts of the castle, in the masculine
pleasures of the chase, in the control of the household, in the
education of children, in the laws which recognized equality, in the
free companionship with man, in the trust reposed in female honor and
virtue, in the delicacy of love, and in the refinements of friendship.
This trait alone shows the superior nature of the Germanic races,
especially when taught by Christianity, and makes us rejoice that the
magnificent conquests of the Romans were given to them for their proud
inheritance.
Such were the men who became the heirs of the Romans,--races never
subdued by arms or vices, among whom Christianity took a peculiar hold,
and gradually developed among them principles of progress such as were
never seen among the older nations. Can we wonder that such men should
prevail?--men who loved war as the Romans did under the republic; men
who gloried in their very losses, and felt that death in the field would
secure future salvation and everlasting honor; men full of hope, energy,
enthusiasm, and zeal; men who had, what the old races had not,--a soul,
life, uncorrupted forces.
Yet, when they invaded the Roman world, it must not be forgotten that
they were rude, ignorant, wild, fierce, and unscrupulous. They were held
in absolute detestation, as the North American Indians, whom they
resembled in many important respects, were held in this country two
hundred years ago. Their object was pillage. They roamed in search of
more fruitful lands and a more congenial sky. They were bent on
conquest, rapine, and violence. They were called the Northern Hordes--
barbarians--and even their vices were exaggerated. They were, indeed,
most formidable and terrific foes; and when conquered in battle would
rally their forces, and press forward with renewed numbers.
[Sidenote: The Goths.]
The first of these Teutonic barbarians who made successful inroads were
the Goths. I do not now allude to the Celtic nations who were completely
subdued and incorporated with the empire before the accession of the
emperors. Nor do I speak of the Teutons whom Marius defeated one hundred
years before the Christian era, nor yet of the Germanic tribes who made
unsuccessful inroads during the reigns of the earlier emperors. Augustus
must have had melancholy premonitions of danger when his general, Varus,
suffered a disgraceful defeat by the sword of Arminus in the dark
recesses of the Teuto-burger Wald, even as Charlemagne covered his face
with his iron hands when he saw the invasion of his territories by the
Norman pirates. For three centuries there was a constant struggle
between the Roman armies and the barbarians beyond the Rhine. In the
reign of Marcus Antoninus they formed a general union for the invasion
of the Roman world, but they were signally defeated, and the great
pillar of Marcus Aurelius describes his victories on the Danube, who
died combating the Vandals, A.D. 180. In the year 241 A.D., the great
Aurelian is seen fighting the Franks near Mayence, who, nevertheless,
pressed forward until they made their way into Spain.
[Sidenote: Invasion of the Goths.]
The most formidable of the enemies of Rome were the Goths. When first
spoken of in history they inhabited the shores of the Baltic. They were
called by Tacitus, Gothones. In the time of Caracalla they had migrated
to the coast of the Black Sea. Under the reign of Alexander Severus,
222-235, A.D., they threatened the peace of the province of Dacia. Under
Philip, A.D. 244-249, they succeeded in conquering that province, and
penetrated into Mosia. In the year 251, they encountered a Roman army
under Decius, which they annihilated, and the emperor himself was slain.
Then they continued their ravages along the coasts of the Euxine until
they made themselves masters of the Crimea. With a large fleet of flat-
boats they sailed to all the northern parts of the Euxine, took Pityus
and Trapezus, attacked the wealthy cities on the Thracian Bosphorus,
conquered Chalcedon, Nicomedia, and Nice, and retreated laden with
spoil. The next year, with five hundred boats--they cannot be called
ships,--they pursued their destructive navigation, destroyed Cyzicus,
crossed the Aegean Sea, and landed at Athens, which they plundered.
Thebes, Argos, Corinth, and Sparta were unable to defend their
dilapidated fortifications. They advanced to the coasts of Epirus and
devastated the whole Illyrian peninsula. In this destructive expedition
they destroyed the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus, with its one
hundred and twenty-seven marble columns sixty feet in height, and its
interior ornamented with the choicest sculptures of Praxiteles. But they
at length got wearied of danger and toil, and returned through Mosia to
their own settlements. Though this incursion was a raid rather than a
conquest, yet what are we to think of the military strength of the
empire and the condition of society, when, in less than three hundred
years after Augustus had shut the temple of Janus, fifteen thousand
undisciplined barbarians, without even a leader of historic fame, were
allowed to ravage the most populous and cultivated part of the empire,
even the classic cities which had resisted the Persian hosts, and retire
unmolested with their spoils? The Emperor Gallienus, one of the most
frivolous of all the Caesars, received the intelligence with epicurean
indifference, and abandoned himself to inglorious pleasures; and as Nero
is said to have fiddled while his capital was in ashes, so he, in this
great emergency, consumed his time in gardening and the arts of cookery,
and was commended by his idolatrous courtiers as a philosopher and a
hero.
In fact, this invasion of the Goths was not contemplated with that alarm
which it ought to have excited, but rather as an accidental evil, like a
pestilence or a plague. Moreover, it was lost sight of in the general
misery and misfortunes of the times. The Emperor Valerian had just been
defeated and taken prisoner by Sapor. Pretenders had started up in
nineteen different places for the imperial purple. Banditti had spread
devastation in Sicily. Alexandria was disturbed by tumults. Famine and
the plague raged for ten years in nearly all parts of the empire. Rome
lost by the pestilence five thousand daily, while half the inhabitants
of Alexandria were swept away. Soldiers, tyrants, barbarians, and the
visitation of God threatened the ruin of the Roman world.
But the ruin was staved off one hundred years by the labors and genius
of a series of great princes, who traced their origin to the martial
province of Illyricum. And all that was in the power of the emperors to
do was done to arrest destruction. No empire was ever ruled by a
succession of better and greater men than the calamities of the times
raised up on the death of Gallienus, A.D. 268. But what avail the energy
and talents of rulers when a nation is doomed to destruction? We have
the profoundest admiration for the imperial heroes who bore the burdens
of a throne in those days of tribulation. They succeeded in restoring
the ancient glories--but glories followed by a deeper shame. They
attempted impossibilities when their subjects were sunk in sloth and
degradation.
[Sidenote: Success and the defeat of the Goths.]
Claudius, one of the generals of Gallienus, was invested with the purple
at the age of fifty-four. He restored military discipline, revived law,
repressed turbulence, and bent his thoughts to head off the barbaric
invasions. The various nations of Germany and Sarmatia, united under the
Gothic standard, and in six thousand vessels, prepared once more to
ravage the world. Sailing from the banks of the Dniester, they crossed
the Euxine, passed through the Bosphorus, anchored at the foot of Mount
Athos, and assaulted Thessalonica, the wealthy capital of the Macedonian
provinces. Claudius advanced to meet these three hundred and twenty
thousand barbarians. At Naissus, in Dalmatia, was fought one of the most
memorable and bloody battles of ancient times, but not one of the most
decisive. Fifty thousand Goths were slain in that dreadful fight. Three
Gothic women fell to the share of every imperial soldier. The
discomfited warriors fled in consternation, but their retreat was cut
off by the destruction of their fleet; and on the return of spring the
mighty host had dwindled to a desperate band in the inaccessible parts
of Mount Hemus.
[Sidenote: Victories of Claudius.]
Claudius survived his victory but two years, and was succeeded, A.D.
270, by a still greater man--his general Aurelian, whose father had been
a peasant of Sirmium. Every day of his short reign was filled with
wonders. He put an end to the Gothic war; he chastised the Germans who
invaded Italy; he recovered Gaul, Spain, and Britain, from the hands of
an usurper; he destroyed the proud monarchy which Zenobia had built up
in the deserts of the East; he defeated the Alemanni who, with eighty
thousand foot and forty thousand horse, had devastated the country from
the Danube to the Po; and, not least, he took Zenobia herself a prisoner
--one of the most celebrated women of antiquity, equaling Cleopatra in
beauty, Elizabeth in learning, and Artemisia in valor--a woman who
blended the popular manners of the Roman princes with the stately pomp
of oriental kings.
Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, the widow of Odenatus, ruled a large portion
of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, and with a numerous army she advanced
to meet the imperial legions. Conquered in two disastrous battles, she
retired to the beautiful city which Solomon had built, shaded with
palms, ornamented with palaces, and rich in oriental treasure. Then
again, attacked by her persevering enemy, she mounted the fleetest of
her dromedaries, but was overtaken on the banks of the Euphrates, and
brought a captive to the tent of the martial emperor, while Palmyra, her
capital, with all its riches, fell into the hands of the conqueror.
[Sidenote: Successes of Aurelian.]
Aurelian, with the haughty queen who had presumed to rise up in arms
against the empire, returned to successes of Rome, and then was
celebrated the most magnificent triumph which the world had seen since
the days of Pompey and of Caesar. And since the foundation of the city,
no conqueror more richly deserved a triumph than this virtuous and
rugged soldier of fortune. And as the august procession, with all the
pomp and circumstance of war, moved along the Via Sacra, up the
Capitoline Hill, and halted at the Temple of Jupiter, to receive the
benediction of the priests, and to deposit within its sacred walls the
treasures of the East, it would seem that Rome was destined to surmount
the ordinary fate of nations, and reign as mistress of the world _per
secula seculorum_.
But this grand pageant was only one of the last glories of the setting
sun of Roman greatness. Aurelian had no peace or repose. "The gods
decree," said the impatient emperor, "that my life should be a perpetual
warfare." He was obliged to take the field a few months after his
triumph, and was slain, not in battle, but by the hands of assassins--
the common fate of his predecessors and successors--"the regular portal"
through which the Caesars passed to their account with the eternal Judge.
He had boasted that public danger had passed--_"Ego efficiam ne sit
aliqua solicitudo Romana. Nos publicae necessitates teneant; vos occupent
voluptates."_ But scarcely had this warlike prince sung his requiem
to the agitations of Rome before new dangers arose, and his sceptre
descended to a man seventy-five years of age.
Tacitus, the new emperor, was however worthy of his throne. He was
selected as the most fitting man that could be found. Scarcely was he
inaugurated, before he was obliged to march against the Alans, who had
spread their destructive ravages over Pontus, Cappadocia, Cilicia, and
Galatia. He lost his life, though successful in battle, amid the
hardships of a winter campaign, and Probus, one of his generals, who had
once been an Illyrian peasant, was clothed with the imperial purple,
A.D. 278.
[Sidenote: The successes of Probus.]
This vigorous monarch was then forty-five years of age, in the prime of
his strength, popular with the army, and patriotic and enlarged in his
views. He reigned six years, and won a fame equal to that of the ancient
heroes. He restored peace and order in every province of the empire; he
broke the power of the Sarmatian tribes; he secured the alliance of the
Gothic nation; he drove the Isaurians to their strongholds among the
mountains; he chastised the rebellious cities of Egypt; he delivered
Gaul from the Germanic barbarians, who again inundated the empire on the
death of Aurelian; he drove back the Franks into their morasses at the
mouth of the Rhine; he vanquished the Burgundians, who had wandered in
quest of booty from the banks of the Oder; he defeated the Lygii, a
fierce tribe from the frontiers of Silesia, and took their chieftain
Semno alive; he passed the Rhine and pursued his victories to the Elbe,
exacting a tribute of corn, cattle, and horses, from the defeated
Germans; he even erected a bulwark against their future encroachments--a
stone wall of two hundred miles in length, across valleys and hills and
rivers, from the Danube to the Rhine--a feeble defense indeed, but such
as to excite the wonder of his age; he, moreover, dispersed the captive
barbarians throughout the provinces, who were afterward armed in defense
of the empire, and whose brethren were persuaded to make settlements
with them, so that, at length, "there was not left in all the
provinces," says Gibbon, "a hostile barbarian, a tyrant, or even a
robber."
After having destroyed four hundred thousand barbarians, the victor
returned to Rome, and, like Aurelian, celebrated his successes in one of
those gorgeous triumphs to which modern nations have no parallel. Then
he again, like the conqueror of Zenobia, mounted the Pisgah of hope, and
descried the Saturnian ages which, in his vision of Peace, he fancied
were to follow his victories. _"Respublica orbis terrarum, ubique
secura, non arma fabricabit. Boves habebuntur aratro; equus nasciter ad
pacem. Nulla erunt bella; nulla captivitas. Aeternes thesauros haberet
Romana respublica."_ But scarcely had the paeans escaped him, before,
in his turn, he was assassinated in a mutiny of his own troops--a man of
virtue and abilities, although his austere temper insensibly, under
military power, subsided into tyranny and cruelty.
Without the approbation of the Senate, the soldiers elected a new
emperor, and he too was a hero. Carus had scarcely assumed the purple,
A.D. 282, before he marched against the Persians, through Thrace and
Asia Minor, in the midst of winter, and the ambassadors of the Persian
king found the new emperor of the world seated on the grass, at a frugal
dinner of bacon and pease, in that severe simplicity which afterward
marked the early successors of Mohammed. But before he could carry his
victorious arms across the Tigris, he suddenly died in his tent, struck,
as some think, by lightning. His son Carinus was unworthy of the throne
to which he succeeded, and his reign is chiefly memorable for the
magnificence of his games and festivals. His reign, and that of his
brother Numerian, was however short, and a still greater man than any
who had mounted the throne of the Caesars since Augustus, took the helm
at the most critical period of Roman history, A.D. 285.
[Sidenote: Diocletian.]
This man was Diocletian, rendered infamous in ecclesiastical history, as
the most bitter persecutor the Christians ever had; a man of obscure
birth, yet of most distinguished abilities, and virtually the founder of
a new empire. He found it impossible to sustain the public burdens in an
age so disordered and disorganized, when every province was menaced by
the barbarians, and he associated with himself three colleagues who had
won fame in the wars of Aurelian and Carus, and all of whom had rendered
substantial services--Galerius, Maximian, and Constantius. These four
Caesars, alive to the danger which menaced the empire, took up their
residence in the distant provinces. They were all great generals; and
they won great victories on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, in
Africa and Egypt, in Persia and Armenia. Their lives were spent in the
camp; but care, vexation, and discontent pursued them. The barbarians
were continually beaten, but they continually advanced. Their progress
reminds one of the rising tide on a stormy and surging beach. Wave after
wave breaks upon the shore, recedes, returns, and nothing can stop the
gradual advance of the waters. So in the hundred years after Gallienus,
wave after wave of barbaric invasion constantly appeared, receded,
returned, with added strength. The heroic emperors were uniformly
victors; but their victories were in vain. They were perpetually
reconquering rebellious provinces, or putting down usurpers, or
punishing the barbarians, who acquired strength after every defeat, and
were more and more insatiable in their demands, and unrelenting in their
wills. They were determined to conquer, and the greatest generals of the
Roman empire during four hundred years could not subdue them, although
they could beat them.
[Sidenote: Constantine.]
The empire is again united under Constantine, after bloody civil wars,
A.D. 324, thirty-four years after Diocletian had divided his power and
provinces with his associates. He renews the war against the Goths and
Sarmatians, severely chastises them as well as other enemies of Rome,
and dies leaving the empire to his son, unequal to the task imposed upon
him. The inglorious reigns of Constantius and Gallus only enabled the
barbarians to renew their strength. They are signally defeated by the
Emperor Julian, A.D. 360, who alone survives of all the heirs of
Constantius Chlorus. The studious Julian, who was supposed to be a mere
philosopher, proves himself to be one of the most warlike of all the
emperors. He repulses the Alemanni, defeats the Franks, delivers Gaul,
and carries the Roman eagles triumphantly beyond the Rhine. His
victories delay the ruin of the empire; they do not result in the
conquest of Germany, and he dies, mortally wounded, not by a German
spear, but by the javelin of a Persian horseman, beyond the Tigris, in
an unsuccessful enterprise against Sapor, A.D. 363.
[Sidenote: New invasions of barbarians.]
After his death the ravages of the barbarians became still more fearful.
The Alemanni invade Gaul, A.D. 365, the Persians recover Armenia, the
Burgundians appear upon the Rhine, the Saxons attack Britain, and spread
themselves from the Wall of Antoninus to the shores of Kent, the Goths
prepare for another invasion; in Africa there is a great revolt under
Firmus. The empire is shaken to its centre.
Valentinian, a soldier of fortune, and an able general, now wears the
imperial purple. Like Diocletian, he finds himself unable to bear the
burdens of his throne. He elects an associate, divides the empire, and
gives to Valens the eastern provinces. All idea of reigning in peace,
and giving the reins to pleasure, has vanished from the imperial mind.
The office of emperor demands the severest virtues and the sternest
qualities and the most incessant labors. "Uneasy sits the head that
wears a crown," can now be said of all the later emperors. The day is
past for enjoyment or for pomp. The emperor's presence is required here
and there. Valentinian rules with vigor, and gains successes over the
barbarians. He is one of the great men of the day. He reserves to
himself the western provinces, and fixes his seat at Milan, but cannot
preserve tranquillity, and dies in a storm of wrath, by the bursting of
a blood-vessel, while reviling the ambassadors of the Quadi, A.D. 375,
at the age of fifty-four.
[Sidenote: Disasters of Valens.]
His brother, Valens, Emperor of the East, had neither his talents nor
energy; and it was his fate to see the first great successful inroads of
the Goths. For thirty years the Romans had secured their frontiers, and
the Goths had extended their dominions. Hermanric, the first historic
name of note among them, ruled over the entire nation, and had won a
series of brilliant victories over other tribes of barbarians after he
was eighty years of age. His dominions extended from the Danube to the
Baltic, including the greater part of Germany and Scythia. In the year
366 his subjects, tempted by the civil discords which Procopius
occasioned, invaded Thrace, but were resisted by the generals of Valens.
The aged Hermanric was exasperated by the misfortune, and made
preparations for a general war, while the emperor himself invaded the
Gothic territories. For three years the war continued, with various
success, on the banks of the Danube. Hermanric intrusted the defense of
his country to Athanaric, who was defeated in a bloody battle, and a
hollow peace was made with Victor and Arintheus, the generals of Valens.
The Goths remained in tranquillity for six years, until, driven by the
Scythians, who emerged in vast numbers from the frozen regions of the
north, they once more advanced to the Danube and implored the aid of
Valens. [Footnote: See Ammianus Marcellinus, b. xxi., from which Gibbon
has chiefly drawn his narratives.] The prayers of the Goths were
answered, and they were transported across the Danube--a suicidal act of
the emperor, which imported two hundred thousand warriors, with their
wives and children, into the Roman territories. The Goths retained their
arms and their greed, and pretended to settle peaceably in the province
of Mosia. But they were restless and undisciplined barbarians, and it
required the greatest adroitness to manage them in their new abodes.
They were insolent and unreasonable in their demands and expectations,
while the ministers of the emperor were oppressive and venal.
Difficulties soon arose, and, too late, it was seen by the emperor that
he had introduced most dangerous enemies into the heart of the empire.
[Sidenote: Fritigern, leader of the Goths.]
[Sidenote: Death of the Emperor Valens.]
The great leader of these Goths was Fritigern, who soon kindled the
flames of war. He united under his standard all the various tribes of
his nation, increased their animosities, and led them to the mouth of
the Danube. There they were attacked by the lieutenants of Valens, and a
battle was fought without other result than that of checking for a time
the Gothic progress. But only for a time. The various tribes of
barbarians, under the able generalship of Fritigern, whose cunning was
equal to his bravery, advanced to the suburbs of Hadrianople. Under the
walls of that city was fought the most disastrous battle, A.D. 378, to
the imperial cause which is recorded in the annals of Roman history. The
emperor himself was slain with two thirds of his whole army, while the
remainder fled in consternation. Sixty thousand infantry and six
thousand cavalry were stretched in death upon the bloody field--one
third more than at the fatal battle of Cannae. The most celebrated orator
of the day, though a Pagan, [Footnote: Libanius of Antioch.] pronounced
a funeral oration on the vanquished army, and attributed the
catastrophe, not to the cowardice of the legions, but the anger of the
gods. "The fury of the Goths," says St. Jerome, "extended to all
creatures possessed of life: the beasts of the field, the fowls of the
air, and the fishes of the sea." The victors, intoxicated with their
first great success, invested Hadrianople, where were deposited enormous
riches. But they were unequal to the task of taking so strong a city;
and when the inhabitants aroused themselves in a paroxysm of despair,
they raised the siege and departed to ravage the more unprotected West.
Laden with spoils, they retired to the western boundaries of Thrace, and
thence scattered their forces to the confines of Italy. From the shores
of the Bosphorus to the Julian Alps nothing was to be seen but
conflagration and murders and devastations. Churches were turned into
stables, palaces were burned, works of priceless value were destroyed,
the relics of martyrs were desecrated, the most fruitful provinces were
overrun, the population was decimated, the land was overgrown with
forests, cultivation was suspended, and despair and fear seized the
minds of all classes. So great was the misfortune of the Illyrian
provinces that they never afterward recovered, and for ten centuries
only supplied materials for roving robbers. The empire never had seen
such a day of calamity.
[Sidenote: Desperate condition of the Romans.]
This melancholy state of affairs, so desperate and so general, demanded
a deliverer and a hero; but where was a hero to be found? Nothing but
transcendent ability could now arrest the overthrow. Who should succeed
to the vacant throne of Valens?
[Sidenote: Theodosius.]
[Sidenote: His character and illustrious deeds.]
The Emperor Gratian, who wielded the sceptre of Valentinian in the West,
in this alarming crisis, cast his eyes upon an exile, whose father had
unjustly suffered death under his own sanction three years before. This
man was Theodosius, then living in modest retirement on his farm in
Spain, near Valladolid, as unambitious as David among his sheep, as
contented as Cincinnatus at the plough. Great deliverers are frequently
selected from the most humble positions; but no world hero, in ancient
or modern times, is more illustrious than Theodosius for modesty and
magnanimity united with great abilities. No man is dearer to the Church
than he, both for his services and his virtues. The eloquent Flechier
has emblazoned his fame, as Bossuet has painted the Prince of Conde.
Even Gibbon lays aside his sneers to praise this great Christian
Emperor, although his character was not free from stains. He modestly
but readily accepted the vacant sceptre and the conduct of the Gothic
war. He was thirty-three years of age, in the pride of his strength, and
well instructed in liberal pursuits. No better choice could have been
made by Gratian. He was as prudent as Fabius, as magnanimous as Richard,
as persevering as Alfred, as comprehensive as Charlemagne, as beneficent
as Henry IV., as full of resources as Frederic II. One of the greatest
of all the emperors, and the last great man who swayed the sceptre of
Trajan his ancestor, his reign cannot but be too highly commended,
living in such an age, exposed to so many dangers, invested with so many
difficulties. He was the last flickering light of the expiring monarchy,
beloved and revered by all classes of his subjects. "The vulgar gazed
with admiration on the manly beauty of his face and the graceful majesty
of his person, which they were pleased to compare with the pictures and
medals of the Emperor Trajan; while intelligent observers discovered, in
the qualities of the heart and understanding, a more important
resemblance to the best and greatest of the Roman emperors." [Footnote:
Gibbon, chap. xxvi.]
Mr. Long, of Oxford, in a fine notice of Theodosius, thinks that the
praises of Gibbon are extravagant, and that the emperor was probably a
voluptuary and a persecutor. But Gibbon is not apt to praise the
favorites of the Church. Tillemont presents him in the same light as
Gibbon. [Footnote: Tillemont, _Hist, des Emp._ vol. v.] A man who
could have submitted to such a penance as Ambrose imposed for the
slaughter of Thessalonica, could not have been cast in a different mould
from old David himself. For my part I admire his character and his
deeds.
[Sidenote: Defeat of the Goths.]
Soon as he was invested with the purple, he gave his undivided energies
to the great task intrusted to him; but he never succeeded in fully
revenging the battle of Hadrianople, which was one of the decisive
battles of the world in its ultimate effects. He had the talents and the
energy and the prudence, but he was beset with impossibilities. Still,
he staved off ruin for a time. The death of Fritigern unchained the
passions of the barbarians, and they would have been led to fresh
revolts had they not submitted to the authority of Athanaric, whom the
emperor invited to his capital and feasted at his table, and astonished
by his riches and glory. The Visigoths, won by the policy or courtesy of
Theodosius, became subjects of the empire. The Ostrogoths, who had
retired from the provinces of the Danube four years before, returned
recruited with a body of Huns, and crossed the Danube to assail the
Roman army, but were defeated by Theodosius; and a treaty was made with
them, by which they were settled in Phrygia and Lydia. Forty thousand of
them were kept in the service of the emperor; but they were doubtful
allies, as subsequent events proved, even in the lifetime of the
magnanimous emperor. [Footnote: Zosimus, i. 4.]
[Sidenote: Honorius and Arcadius.]
Theodosius died at Milan in the arms of Ambrose, A.D. 395, and with his
death the real drama of the fall of Rome begins. His empire was divided
between his two sons, Honorius and Arcadius, who were unworthy or
unequal to maintain their great inheritance. The barbarians, released
from the restraint which the fear of Theodosius imposed, recommenced
their combinations and their ravages, while the soldiers of the empire
were dispirited and enervated. About this time they threw away their
defensive armor, not able to bear the weight of the cuirass and the
helmet; and even the heavy weapons of their ancestors, the short sword
and the pilum, were supplanted by the bow,--a most remarkable retrograde
in military art. Without defensive armor, not even the shield, they were
exposed to the deadly missiles of their foes, and fled at the first
serious attacks, especially of cavalry, in which the Goths and Huns
excelled.
[Sidenote: Alaric, king of the Visigoths.]
History has taken but little notice of the leaders of the various tribes
of barbarians until Alaric appeared, the able successor of Fritigern. He
belonged to the second noblest family of his nation, and first appears
in history as a general of the Gothic auxiliaries in the war of
Theodosius against Eugenius, A.D. 394. In 396, stimulated by anger or
ambition, or the instigation of Rufinus, [Footnote: Socrates, _Eccles.
Hist._, vii. 10.] he invaded Greece at the head of a powerful body,
and devastated the country. He descended from the plains of Macedonia
and Thessaly, and entered the classic land, which for a long time had
escaped the ravages of war, through the pass of Thermopylae. Degenerate
soldiers, half armed, now defended the narrow passage where three
hundred heroes had once arrested the march of the Persian hosts. But
Greece was no longer Greece. The soldiers fled as Alaric advanced, and
the fertile fields of Phocis and Boeotia were at once covered with
hostile and cruel barbarians, who massacred the men and ravished the
women in all the villages through which they passed. Athens purchased
her preservation by an enormous ransom. Corinth, Argos, Sparta, yielded
without a blow, but did not escape the fate of vanquished cities. Their
palaces were burned, their works of art destroyed, their women subjected
to indignities which were worse than death, and their families were
enslaved. [Footnote: Gibbon, chap. xxx.]
[Sidenote: Succeses of the Goths.]
Only one hope remained to the feeble and intimidated Arcadius, and that
was the skill and courage of Stilicho, by birth a Vandal, but who had
risen in the imperial service until he was virtually intrusted by
Theodosius with the guardianship of his sons and of the empire. He was
the lieutenant of Honorius, who had espoused his daughter, but summoned
by the dangers of Arcadius, he advanced to repulse the invaders of
Greece, who had not met with any resistance from Thermopylae to Corinth.
A desperate campaign followed in the woody country where Pan and the
Dryads were fabled to reside in the olden times. The Romans prevailed,
and Alaric was in imminent peril of annihilation, but was saved by the
too confident spirit of Stilicho, and his indulgence in the pleasures of
the degenerate Greeks. He effected his release by piercing the lines of
his besiegers and performing a rapid march to the Gulf of Corinth, where
he embarked his soldiers, his captives, and his spoil, and reached
Epirus in safety, from which he effected a treaty with the ministers of
Arcadius, which he never intended to keep, and was even made master-
general of Eastern Illyricum. Successful war brings irresistible
_eclat_ equally among barbarians and civilized nations. There is no
fame like the glory of a warrior. Poets and philosophers drop their
heads in the presence of great military chieftains; and those people who
rest their claims to the gratitude or the admiration of the world on
their intellectual and moral superiority, are among the first to yield
precedence to conquering generals, whether they are ignorant, or
unscrupulous, or haughty, or ambitious. The names of warriors descend
from generation to generation, while the benefactors of mind are
forgotten or depreciated. Who can wonder at military ambition when
success in war has been uniformly attended with such magnificent
rewards, from the times of Pompey and Caesar to those of Marlborough and
Napoleon?
The Gothic robber and murderer was rewarded by his nation with all the
power and glory it could bestow. He was made a king, and was assured of
unlimited support in all his future enterprises.
[Sidenote: Danger of Italy.]
He cast his eyes on Italy, for many generations undefiled by the
presence of a foreign enemy, and enriched with the spoils of three
hundred triumphs. He marched from Thessalonica, through Pannonia to the
Julian Alps; passed through the defiles of those guarded mountains, and
appeared before the walls of Aquileia, one of the most important cities
of Northern Italy, enriched by the gold mines of the neighboring Alps,
and a prosperous trade with the Illyrians and Pannonians. Here the great
Julius had made his head-quarters when he made war upon Illyria, and
here the younger Constantine was slain. It was the capital of Venetia,
and had the privilege of a mint. It was the ninth city of the whole
empire, inferior in Italy to Rome, Milan, and Capua alone. It was
situated on a plain, and was strongly fortified with walls and towers.
And it seems to have resisted the attacks of Alaric, who retired to the
Danube for reinforcements for a new campaign.
[Sidenote: Stilicho commands the Romans.]
The Emperor Honorius, weak, timid, and defenseless at Milan, was
overwhelmed with fear, and implored the immediate assistance of his only
reliable general. Stilicho responded to the appeal, and appreciated the
danger. He summoned from every quarter the subjects or the allies of the
emperor. The fortresses of the Rhine were abandoned; the legions were
withdrawn from Britain; the Alani were enlisted as auxiliaries, and
Stilicho advanced to the relief of his fugitive sovereign, who had fled
from Milan to a town in Piedmont, just in time to rescue him from the
grasp of Alaric, who, in his turn, became besieged by the troops which
issued from all the passes of the Alps. The Goths were attacked in their
intrenchments at Pollentia, and were obliged to retreat, leaving the
spoils of Corinth and Argos, and even the wife of Alaric. The poet
Claudian celebrated the victory as greater than even that achieved by
Marius over the Cimbri and Teutones. The defeated Goth, however, rose
superior to misfortune and danger. He escaped with the main body of his
cavalry, broke through the passes of the Apennines, and spread
devastation on the fruitful fields of Tuscany, and was resolved to risk
another battle for the great prize which he coveted--the possession of
Rome itself. He was, however, foiled by Stilicho, who _purchased_
the retreat of the enemy for forty thousand pounds of gold. But the
Goths respected no treaties. Scarcely had they crossed the Po, before
their leader resolved to seize Verona, which commanded the passes of the
Rhaetian Alps. Here he was again attacked by Stilicho, and suffered
losses equal to those incurred at Pollentia, and was obliged to retreat
from Italy, A.D. 404.
[Sidenote: Infatuation of the Romans.]
The conqueror was hailed with joy and gratitude; too soon succeeded by
envy and calumny, as is usual with benefactors in corrupt times. The
retreat of Alaric was regarded as a complete deliverance; and the Roman
people abandoned themselves to absurd rejoicings, gladiatorial shows,
and triumphant processions. In the royal chariots, side by side with the
emperor, Stilicho was seated, and the procession passed under a
triumphal arch which commemorated the complete destruction of the Goths.
For the last time, the amphitheatre of Rome was polluted with the blood
of gladiators, for Honorius, exhorted by the poet Claudian, abolished
forever the inhuman sacrifices.
[Sidenote: New hordes of barbarians.]
[Sidenote: Devastation of Gaul.]
Yet scarcely was Italy delivered from the Goths, before an irruption of
Vandals, Suevi, and Burgundians, under Rodogast or Rhadagast, two
hundred thousand in number of fighting men, beside an equal number of
women and children, issued from the coast of the Baltic. One third of
these crossed the Alps, the Po, and the Apennines, ravaged the cities of
Northern Italy, and laid siege to Florence, which was reduced to its
last necessity, when the victor of Pollentia appeared beneath its walls,
with the _last_ army which the empire could furnish, and introduced
supplies. Moreover, he surrounded the enemy in turn with strong
intrenchments, and the barbaric host was obliged to yield. The leader
Rodogast was beheaded, and the captives were sold as slaves. Stilicho, a
second time, had delivered Italy; but one hundred thousand barbarians
still remained in arms between the Alps and the Apennines. Shut out of
Italy, they invaded Gaul, and never afterward retreated beyond the Alps.
Gaul was then one of the most cultivated of the Roman provinces; the
banks of the Rhine were covered with farms and villas, and peace and
plenty had long accustomed the people to luxury and ease. But all was
suddenly changed, and changed for generations. The rich corn-fields and
fruitful vineyards became a desert. Mentz was destroyed and burned.
Worms fell after an obstinate siege, and experienced the same fate.
Strasburg, Spires, Rheims, Tournay, Arras, Amiens, passed under the
German yoke, and the flames of war spread over the seventeen provinces
of Gaul. The country was completely devastated, and all classes
experienced a remorseless rigor. Bishops, senators, and virgins were
alike enslaved. No retreat was respected, and no sex or condition was
spared. Gaul ceased to exist as a Roman province.
[Sidenote: Assassination of Stilicho.]
Italy, however, had been for a time delivered, and by the only man of
ability who remained in the service of the emperor. He might possibly
have checked the further progress of the Goths, had the weak emperor
intrusted himself to his guidance. But imperial jealousy, and the voice
of faction, removed forever this last hope of Rome. The frivolous Senate
which he had saved, and the timid emperor whom he had guarded, were
alike demented. The savior of Italy was an object of fear and hatred,
and the assassin's dagger, which cut short his days, inflicted a fatal
and suicidal blow upon Rome herself.
[Sidenote: Alaric ravages Italy.]
[Sidenote: Rome without defenders.]
The Gothic king, in his distant camp on the confines of Italy, beheld
with undissembled joy, the intrigues and factions which deprived the
emperor of his best defender, and which placed over his last army
incompetent generals. So, hastening his preparations, he again descends
like an avalanche upon the plains of Italy. Aquileia, Altinum,
Concordia, and Cremona, yielded to his arms, and increased his forces.
He then ravaged the coasts of the Adriatic; and, following the Flaminian
way, crossed the passes of the Apennines, ravaged the fertile plains of
Umbria, and reached without obstruction the city which for six hundred
years had not been violated by the presence of a foreign enemy. But Rome
was not what she was when Hannibal led his Africans to her gates. She
was surrounded with more extensive fortifications, indeed, and contained
within her walls, which were twenty-one miles in circuit, a large
population. But where were her one hundred and fifty thousand warriors?
Where were even the three armies drawn out in battle array, that had
confronted the Carthaginian leader? She could boast of senators who
traced their lineage to the Scipios and the Gracchi; she could enumerate
one thousand seven hundred and eighty palaces, the residence of wealthy
and proud families, many of which were equal to a town, including within
their precincts, markets, hippodromes, temples, fountains, baths,
porticoes, groves, and aviaries; she could tell of senatorial incomes of
four thousand pounds of gold, about eight hundred thousand dollars
yearly, without computing the corn, oil, and wine, which were equal to
three hundred thousand dollars more--men so rich that they could afford
to spend five hundred thousand dollars in a popular festival, and this
at a time when gold was worth at least eight times more than its present
value; she could point with pride to her Christian saints, one of whom,
the illustrious Paula, the friend of St. Jerome, was the sole proprietor
of the city of Nicopolis, which Augustus had founded to commemorate his
victory over Antony; she could count two millions of inhabitants,
crowded in narrow streets, and four hundred thousand pleasure-seekers
who sought daily the circus or the theatre, and three thousand public
female dancers, and three thousand singers who sought to beguile the
hours of the lazy rabble who were fed at the public expense, and who,
for a small copper coin, could wash their dirty bodies in the marble
baths of Diocletian and Caracalla; but where were her defenders--where
were her legions?
[Sidenote: Alaric beseiges Rome.]
[Sidenote: Disgraceful terms of peace.]
The day of retribution had come, and there was no escape. Alaric made no
efforts to storm the city, but quietly sat down and inclosed the
wretched citizens with a cordon through which nothing could force its
way. He cut off all communications with the country, intercepted the
navigation of the Tiber, and commanded the twelve gates. The city,
unprovided for a siege, and never dreaming of such a calamity, soon felt
all the evils of famine, to which those of pestilence were added. The
most repugnant food was eagerly devoured, and even mothers are said to
have tasted the flesh of their murdered children. Thousands perished
daily in the houses, and the public sepulchres infected the air. Despair
at last seized the haughty citizens, and they begged the clemency of the
Gothic king. He derided the ambassadors who were sent to treat, and
insulted them with rude jests. At last he condescended to spare the
lives of the people, on condition that they gave up _all_ their
gold and silver, _all_ their precious movables, and _all_ their
slaves of barbaric birth. More moderate terms were afterward
granted; but the victor did not retreat until he had loaded his wagons
with more wealth and more liberated captives than the Romans had brought
from both Carthage and Antioch. He retired to the fertile fields of
Tuscany to make negotiations with Honorius; and it was only on condition
that he were appointed master-general of the armies of the emperor, with
an annual subsidy of corn and money, and the free possession of the
provinces of Dalmatia, Noricum, and Venetia, for the seat of his
kingdom, that he would grant peace to the emperor, who had entrenched
himself at Ravenna. These terms were disregarded, and once more Alaric
turned his face to Rome. He took possession of Ostia, one of the most
stupendous works of Roman magnificence, and the port of Rome secured,
the city was once again at his mercy. Again the Senate, fearful of
famine and impelled by the populace, consented to the demands of the
conqueror. He nominated Atticus, prefect of the city, emperor instead of
the son of Theodosius, and received from him the commission of master-
general of the armies of the West.
[Sidenote: Alaric takes Rome.]
[Sidenote: The miseries of the Romans.]
The new emperor had a few days of prosperity, and the greater part of
Italy submitted to his rule, backed by the Gothic forces. But he was
after all a mere puppet in the hands of Alaric, who used him as a tool,
and threw him aside when it suited his purposes. Atticus, after a brief
reign, was degraded, and renewed negotiations took place between Alaric
and Honorius. The emperor, having had a temporary relief, broke finally
with the barbarians, who held Italy at their mercy, and Alaric,
vindictive and indignant, once again set out for Rome, now resolved on
plunder and revenge. In vain did the nobles organize a defense.
Cowardice and treachery opened the Salarian gate. No Horatius kept the
bridge. No Scipio arose in the last extremity. In the dead of night the
Gothic trumpet rang unanswered in the streets. The Queen of the World,
the Eternal City, was the prey of savage soldiers. For five days and
nights she was exposed to every barbarity and license. Only the
treasures collected in the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul were
saved. Although the captor had promised to spare the lives of the
people, a cruel slaughter was made, and the streets were filled with the
dead. Forty thousand slaves were let loose by the bloody conquerors to
gratify their long-stifled passions of lust and revenge. The matrons and
virgins of Rome were--exposed to every indignity, and suffered every
insult. The city was abandoned to pillage, and the palaces were stripped
even or their costly furniture. Sideboards of massive silver, and
variegated wardrobes of silk and purple, were piled upon the wagons. The
works of art were destroyed or injured. Beautiful vases were melted down
for the plate. The daughters and wives of senatorial families became
slaves--such as were unable to purchase their ransom. Italian fugitives
thronged the shores of Africa and Syria, begging daily bread. They were
scattered over various provinces, as far as Constantinople and
Jerusalem. The whole empire was filled with consternation. The news made
the tongue of old St. Jerome to cleave to the roof of his mouth in his
cell at Bethlehem, which even was besieged with beggars. "For twenty
years," cried he, "Roman blood has been flowing from Constantinople to
the Julian Alps. Scythia, Thrace, Macedonia, Dacia, Epirus, Dalmatia,
Achaia, the two Pannonias," yea, he might have added, Gaul, Britain,
Spain, and Italy, "all belong to the barbarians. Sorrow, misery,
desolation, despair, death, are everywhere. What is to be seen but one
universal shipwreck of humanity, from which there is no escape save on
the plank of penitence." The same bitter despair came from St.
Augustine. The end of the world was supposed to be at hand, and the
great churchmen of the age found consolation only in the doctrine that
the second coming of our Lord was at hand to establish a new
dispensation of peace and righteousness on the earth, or to appear as a
stern and final judge amid the clouds of heaven.
[Sidenote: The Goths in Italy.]
After six days the Goths evacuated the city they had despoiled, and
advanced along the Appian way into the southern provinces of Italy,
destroying ruthlessly all who opposed their march, and loading
themselves with still greater spoils. The corn, wine, and oil of the
country were consumed within the barbarian camp, and the beautiful
villas of the coast of Campania were destroyed or plundered. The rude
inhabitants of Scythia and Germany stretched their limbs under the shade
of the Italian palm-trees, and compelled the beautiful daughters of the
proud senators of the fallen capital to attend on them like slaves,
while they quaffed the old Falernian wines from goblets of gold and
gems. Nothing arrested the career of the Goths. Their victorious leader
now meditated the invasion of Africa, but died suddenly after a short
illness, and the world was relieved, for a while, of a mighty fear.
[Sidenote: Ravages in other provinces.]
His successor Adolphus suspended the operations of war, and negotiated
with the emperor a treaty of peace, and even enlisted under his standard
to chastise his enemies in Gaul. But the oppressed provincials were
cruelly ravaged by their pretended friends, who occupied the cities of
Narbonne, Toulouse, and Bordeaux, and spread from the Mediterranean to
the Ocean. Adolphus espoused Placidia, a sister of Honorius, to the
intense humiliation of the ministers of Honorius. But the marriage
proved fortunate for the empire, and the Goths settled down in the
fertile provinces they had conquered, and established a Gothic kingdom.
Among the treasures which the Goths carried to Narbonne, was a famous
dish of solid gold, weighing five hundred pounds, ornamented with
precious stones, and exquisitely engraved with the figures of men and
animals. But this precious specimen of Roman luxury was not to be
compared with the table formed from a single emerald, encircled with
three rows of pearls, supported by three hundred and sixty-five feet of
gems and massive gold, which was found in the Gothic treasury when
plundered by the Arabs, and which also had been one of the ornaments of
a senatorial palace. [Footnote: This emerald table was probably colored
glass. It was valued at five hundred thousand pieces of gold.] The favor
of the Franks was, in after times, purchased with this golden dish by a
Spanish monarch, who stole it back, but compensated by a present of two
hundred thousand pieces of gold, with which Dagobert founded the Abbey
of St. Denys. [Footnote: Gibbon, chap. xxx.]
[Sidenote: New barbaric invasions.]
[Sidenote: Permanent settlements of the Goths in Spain.]
The sack of Rome by the Goths was followed by the successful inroads of
other barbaric tribes. The Suevi, the Alans, and the Vandals invaded
Spain, which for four hundred years had been prosperous in all the arts
of peace. The great cities of Corduba, Merida, Seville, Bracara, and
Barcelona, testified to her wealth and luxury, while science and
commerce both elevated and enfeebled the people. Yet no one of the Roman
provinces suffered more severely. Gibbon thus quotes the language of a
Spanish historian. "The barbarians exercised an indiscriminate cruelty
on the fortunes of both Spaniards and Romans, and ravaged with equal
fury the cities and the open country. Famine reduced the miserable
inhabitants to feed on the flesh of their fellow-creatures, and
pestilence swept away a large portion of those whom famine spared. Then
the barbarians fixed their permanent seats in the country they had
ravaged with fire and sword; Galicia was divided between the Suevi and
the Vandals; the Alani were scattered over the provinces of Carthagenia
and Lusitania, and Botica was allotted to the Vandals." But he adds, and
this is a most impressive fact, "that the greater part of the Spaniards
preferred the condition of poverty and barbarism to the severe
oppressions of the Roman government." [Footnote: Gibbon, chap. xxx.]
The successors of Alaric, A.D. 419, established themselves at Toulouse,
forty-three years after they had crossed the Danube, which became the
seat of the Gothic empire in Gaul. About the same time the Burgundians
and the Franks obtained a permanent settlement in that distracted but
wealthy province, and effected a ruin of all that had been deemed
opulent or fortunate.
[Sidenote: The Romans leave Britain.]
Meanwhile, Britain had been left, by the withdrawal of the legions, to
the ravages of Saxon pirates, and the savages of Caledonia. The island
was irrevocably lost to the empire, A.D. 409, although it was forty
years before the Saxons obtained a permanent footing, and secured their
conquest.
But a more savage chastisement than Rome received from the Goths--the
most powerful and generous of her foes--was inflicted by the Vandals,
whose name is synonymous with all that is fierce and revolting.
[Sidenote: The Vandals.]
These barbarians belonged to the great Teutonic race, although some
maintain that they were of Slavonic origin. Their settlements were
between the Elbe and the Vistula; and, during the reign of Marcus
Aurelius, they had, with other tribes, invaded the Roman world, but were
defeated by the Roman emperor. One hundred years later they settled in
Pannonia, where they had a bitter contest with the Goths. Defeated by
them, they sought the protection of Rome, and enlisted in the imperial
armies. In 406, they crossed the Rhine and invaded Gaul, and it was not
in the power of the Franks to resist them. They advanced to the very
foot of the Pyrenees, inflicting every atrocity upon the Celtic and
Roman inhabitants. Neither age, nor sex, nor condition was spared, and
the very churches were given to the flames. They then crossed into
Spain, A.D. 409, and settled in Andalusia, and under its sunny skies
resumed the agricultural life they had led in Pannonia. [Footnote:
Sheppard's _Fall of Rome_, p. 364.] The land now wore an aspect of
prosperity; rich harvests covered the plains, while the hills were white
with flocks. They seem to have lived in amity with the Romans, so that
"there were found those who preferred freedom with poverty among the
barbarians, to a life rendered wretched by taxation among their own
countrymen." [Footnote: Orosious, vii. 41.] This testimony is confirmed
by Salvian, who declares, "they prefer to live as freemen under the
guise of captivity, rather than as captives under the guise of freedom."
[Footnote: _De Gub. Dei_, v.] If this be true, it would seem that
the rule of the barbarians was preferred to the taxation and oppression
with which they were ground down by the Roman officials. And this
conclusion is legitimate, when we remember the indifference and apathy
that seized the old inhabitants when the empire was seriously
threatened. It may have been that the irruptions of the barbarians were
not regarded as so great a calamity after all, if they should break the
bondage and alleviate the misery which filled the Roman world.
[Sidenote: Success of the Vandals.]
The Roman government, it would seem, [Footnote: Sheppard, p. 364.] would
not tolerate the Vandals in Spain, and intrigued with the Goths, their
hereditary enemies, to make an attack upon them, perhaps with the view
of weakening the strength of the Goths themselves, A.D. 416. Wallia,
king of the Goths, was successful, and the Vandals were worried. The
Romans also sent an army to reconquer Spain from their grasp, which
drove the Vandals into Andalusia. But the Vandals turned upon their
enemies and entirely discomfited them, and twenty thousand men were left
dead upon the field. Spain was now entirely at the mercy of these
infuriated barbarians, who might have peacefully settled had it not been
for the jealousy of the imperial government, which, in those days, drew
upon itself evils by its own mismanagement. For two years "Vandalism"
reigned throughout the peninsula, which was pillaged and sacked.
[Sidenote: Genseric.]
The king of these Vandals was Genseric, the worthy rival of Alaric and
Attila, as a "scourge of God." If we may credit the writers who belonged
to the people whom he humbled, [Footnote: Procopious, _Bell.
Vand._, i. 3.] he was one of the most hideous monsters ever clothed
with power. He was ambitious, subtle, deceitful, revengeful, cruel, and
passionate. But he was temperate, of clear vision, and inflexible
purpose.
[Sidenote: The Vandals Threaten Africa.]
He cast his eyes on Africa, the granary of Rome, and the only province
which had thus far escaped the ravages of war. In the hour of triumph,
and in the plenitude of power, he resolved on leaving Spain, which he
held by uncertain tenure, since he was only an illegitimate son of the
late monarch Gunderic, and founding a new kingdom in Africa. It was rich
in farms and cities, whose capital, Carthage, had arisen from her ashes,
and was once again the rival of Rome in majesty and splendor. She had
even outgrown Alexandria, and her commerce was more flourishing than
that of the capital of Egypt. She was even famous for schools and chairs
of philosophy; but more for those arts which material prosperity ever
produces.
[Sidenote: Dissensionsof Roman generals.]
There were, at that time, two distinguished generals in the service of
the empire--Boniface and Aetius, the former of whom was governor of
Africa. They were, unfortunately, rivals, and their dissensions and
jealousies compromised the empire. United, they could have withstood,
perhaps, the torrent which was about to sweep over Africa and Italy.
Aetius persuaded the emperor to recall Boniface, while he advised the
Count to disobey the summons, representing it as a sentence of death.
Boniface put himself in the attitude of a rebel, and fearing the
imperial forces, invited Genseric and his Vandals to Africa, with the
proposal of an alliance and an advantageous settlement. Doubtless he was
driven to this grand folly by the intrigues of Aetius.
Genseric gladly availed himself of an invitation which held out to him
the richest prize in the empire. With fifty thousand warriors he landed
on the coast of Africa, formed an alliance with the Moors, and became as
dangerous an ally to Count Boniface, as Lord Clive was to the native
princes of India. Africa was then disturbed by the schism of the
Donatists, and these fanatical people were taken under the
_protection_ of the Vandals. The Moors always hated their Roman
masters. With Vandals, Moors, and Donatists, leagued together, Africa
was in serious danger.
[Sidenote: The Vandals invade Africa.]
The landing of the Vandals, who, of all barbarians, bore the most
terrible name, was the signal of head-long flight. Consternation seized
all classes of people. The gorges and the caverns of Mount Atlas were
crowded with fugitives. The Vandals burned the villages through which
they marched, and sacked the cities, and destroyed the harvests, and cut
down the trees. The Moors swelled the ranks of the invaders, and
indulged their common hatred of civilization and of Rome. Boniface, too
late, perceived his mistake, and turned against the common foe; but was
defeated in battle, and forced to cede away three important provinces as
the price of peace, A.D. 432. But peace was not of long duration. The
Vandals continually encroached upon more valuable territory. Moreover,
they had been nominally converted to Christianity, and were bitter
zealots of the Arian faith, and most relentlessly persecuted the
Catholic Christians who adhered to the Nicene Creed.
[Sidenote: Genseric at Carthage.]
[Sidenote: Fate of the city.]
At last (439 A.D.), the storm burst out, and the world was thunderstruck
with the intelligence that Genseric had seized and plundered Carthage.
Suddenly, without warning, in a day looked not for, this magnificent
city was plundered, and her inhabitants butchered by the most faithless
and perfidious barbarians, who trampled out the dying glories of the
empire. Her doom was like that pronounced upon Tyre and Sidon. The
bitter cry which went up from the devastated city proclaimed the
retribution of God for sins more hideous than those of Antioch or
Babylon. Of all the cities of the world, Carthage was probably the
wickedest--a seething caldron of impurities and abominations, the home
of all the vices which disgraced humanity--so indecent and scandalous as
to excite the disgust of the barbarians themselves. According to one of
the authors of those times, as quoted by Sheppard, [Footnote: Salvian,
_De Gub. Dei_, vii. 251.] "they were notorious for drunkenness,
avarice, and perjury--the peculiar sins of degenerate commercial
capitals. The Goths are perfidious but chaste, the Franks are liars but
hospitable, the Saxons are cruel but continent; but the Africans are a
blazing fire of impurity and lust; the rich are drunk with debauchery,
the poor are ground down with relentless oppression, while other vices,
too indecent to be named, pollute every class. Who can wonder at the
fall of Roman society? What hope can there be for Rome, when barbarians
are more chaste and temperate than they?"
In the sack of Carthage, the voluminous writings of Augustine, then
breathing his last in prayer to God that the fate of Sodom might be
averted, were fortunately preserved, and have doubtless done more to
instruct, and perhaps civilize, the western nations, than all the arts
and sciences of the commercial metropolis. It is singular how little
remains of the commercial cities of antiquity, which we value as
trophies of civilization. A few sculptured ruins are all that attest
ancient pride and glory. The poems of a blind schoolmaster at Chios, and
the rhapsodies of a wandering philosopher on the hills of Greece, have
proved greater legacies to the world than the combined treasures of
Africa and Asia Minor. Where is the literature of Carthage, except as
preserved in the writings of Augustine, the influence of which in
developing the character of the barbarians cannot be estimated.
[Sidenote: Renewed dangers of Rome.]
The cry of agony which went from Carthage across the Mediterranean,
announced to Rome that her turn would come. She looked in vain to every
quarter for assistance. Every city and province had need of their own
forces. Theodoric, king of the Visigoths, was contending with Aetius; in
Spain the Sueves were extending their ravages; Attila menaced the
eastern provinces; the Emperor Valentinian was forced to hide in the
marshes of Ravenna, and see the second sack of the imperial capital, now
a prostrate power--a corpse in a winding-sheet.
[Sidenote: The Vandals in Italy.]
The Vandals landed on the Italian coast. They advanced to the Tiber's
banks. The Queen of Cities wrapped around her the faded folds of her
imperial purple, rent by faction, pierced with barbaric daggers, and
trampled in the dust. Yet not with the dignity of her great Julius did
she die. She begged for mercy, not proud and stately amid her
executioners, but like a withered hag, with the wine-cup of sorceries in
her hand, pale, haggard, ghastly, staggering, helpless.
[Sidenote: Sack and fall of Rome.]
The last hope of Rome was her Christian bishop, and the great Leo, who
was to Rome what Augustine had been to Carthage, in his pontifical
robes, hastened to the barbarians' camp. But all he could secure was the
promise that the unresisting should be spared, the buildings protected
from fire, and the captives from torture. Even this promise was only
partially fulfilled. The pillage lasted fourteen days and fourteen
nights, and all that the Goths had spared was transported to the ships
of Genseric. Among the spoils were the statues of the old pagan gods
which adorned the capitol, the holy vessels of the Jewish temples which
Titus had brought away from Jerusalem, and the shrines and altars of the
Christian churches enriched by the liberality of popes and emperors. The
gilding of the capitol had cost Domitian twelve million dollars, or
twelve thousand talents, but the bronze on which it was gilt was carried
away. The imperial ornaments of the palace, the magnificent furniture
and wardrobe of senatorial mansions, and the sideboards of massive
plate, gold, silver, brass, copper, whatever could be found, were
transported to the ships. The Empress Eudoxia herself was stripped of
her jewels, and carried away captive with her two daughters, the only
survivors of the great Theodosius. Thousands of Romans were forced upon
the fleet, while wives were separated from their husbands, and children
from their parents, and sold into slavery. [Footnote: Gibbon, chap.
xxxvi.]
[Sidenote: The doom of Rome.]
[Sidenote: The heroism of the Pope.]
Such was the doom of Rome, A.D. 455, forty-five years after the Gothic
invasion. The haughty city had met the fate she had inflicted upon her
rivals. And she never would probably have arisen from her fall, but
would have remained ruined and desolate, had not her great bishop,
rising with the greatness of the crisis, and inspired with the old
imperishable idea of national unity, which had for three hundred years
sustained the crumbling empire, exclaimed to the rude spoliators, now
converted to his faith, while all around him were desolation and ruin,
weeping widows, ashes, groans, lamentations, bitter sorrows--nothing
left but recollections, nothing to be seen but the desolation spoken of
by Jeremy the prophet, as well as the Cumean Sybil; all central power
subverted, law and justice by-words, literature and art crushed, vice
rampant multiplying itself, the contemplative hiding in cells, the rich
made slaves, women shrieking in terror, bishops praying in despair, the
heart of the world bleeding, barbarians everywhere triumphant--in this
mournful crisis, did Leo, the intrepid Pontiff, alone and undismayed,
and concentrating within himself all that survived of the ambition and
haughty will of the ancient capital, exclaim to the superstitious
victors, in the spirit if not in the words of Hildebrand, "Beware, I am
the successor of St. Peter, to whom God has given the keys of the
kingdom of heaven, and against whose church the gates of hell cannot
prevail; I am the living representative of divine power upon the earth;
I am Caesar, a Christian Caesar, ruling in love, to whom all Christians
owe allegiance; I hold in my hands the curses of hell, and the
benedictions of heaven; I absolve all subjects from allegiance to kings;
I give and take away, by divine right, all thrones and principalities of
Christendom--beware how you desecrate the patrimony given me by your
invisible king, yea, bow down your necks to me, and pray that the anger
of God may be averted." And the superstitious conquerors wept, and bowed
their faces to the dust, in reverence and in awe, and Rome again arose
from her desolation--the seat of a new despotism more terrible than the
centralized power of the emperors, controlling the wills of kings,
priests, and people, and growing more majestic with the progress of
ages; a vital and mysterious power which even the Reformation could not
break, and which even now gives no signs of decay, and boldly defies, in
the plenitude of spiritual power, a greater prince than he who stood in
the winter time three days and nights before the gates of the castle of
Canossa, bareheaded and barefooted, in abject submission to Gregory VII.
[Sidenote: Renewed invasion of barbarians.]
[Sidenote: The Huns.]
While the Vandals were thus plundering Rome, a still fiercer race of
barbarians were trampling beneath their feet the deserted sanctuaries of
the empire. The Huns, a Slavonic race, most hideous and revolting
savages, Tartar hordes, with swarthy faces, sunken eyes, flat noses,
square bodies, big heads, broad shoulders, low stature, without pity, or
fear, or mercy--equally the enemies of the Romans and the Germans--races
thus far incapable of civilization, now spread themselves from the Volga
to the Danube, from the shores of the Caspian to the Hadriatic. They
were a nomadic people, with flocks and herds, planting no seed, reaping
no harvest, wandering about in quest of a living, yet powerful with
their horses and darts. For fifty years after they had invaded Southern
Europe, their aid was sought and secured by the rash court of
Constantinople, as a counterpoise to the power of the Goths and other
Germanic tribes. They were obstinate pagans, and had an invincible
hatred of civilization. They had various fortunes in their migrations
and wars, and experienced some terrible defeats. But they had their eyes
open to the spoil of the crumbling empire--"ripe fruit" for them to
pluck, as well as for the Goths and Vandals.
[Sidenote: Attila.]
The leader of the Huns at this period was Attila--a man of great
astuteness and military genius, who succeeded in conquering, one after
another, every existing tribe of barbarians beyond the Danube and the
Rhine, and then turned his arms against the eastern empire. This was in
the year 441. They ravaged Pannonia, routed two Roman armies, laid
Thessaly in waste, and threatened Constantinople. The Emperor
Theodosius, A.D. 446, purchased peace by an ignominious tribute, so
great as to reduce many leading families to poverty. "The scourge of God"
then turned his steps to the more exhausted fields of the western
provinces, and invaded Gaul. The Visigoths had there established a
kingdom, hostile to the Vandal power. The Huns and the Vandals united,
with all the savage legions which could be collected from Lapland to the
Indus, against the Goths and imperial forces under the command of Aetius.
"Never," says Thierry, [Footnote: _Histoire d'Attilla_, vol. i.
p. 141] "since the days of Xerxes, was there such a gathering of nations
as now followed the standard of Attila, some five hundred thousand
warriors--Huns, Alans, Gepidae, Neuvi, Geloni, Bastarnae, Heruli,
Lombards, Belloniti, Rugi, some German but chiefly Asiatic tribes, with
their long quivers and ponderous lances, and cuirasses of plaited hair,
and scythes, and round bucklers, and short swords." This heterogeneous
host, from the Sarmatian plains, and the banks of the Vistula and
Niemen, extended from Basle to the mouth of the Rhine. Attila directed
it against Orleans, on the Loire, an important strategic position. Aetius
went to meet him, bringing all the barbaric auxiliaries he could
collect--Britons, Franks, Burgundians, Sueves, Saxons, Visigoths. It was
not so much Roman against barbarian, as Europe against Asia, which was
now arrayed upon the plains of Champagne, for Orleans had fallen into
the hands of the Huns. There, at Chalons, was fought the most decisive
and bloody battle of that dreadful age, by which Europe was delivered
from Asia, even as at a later day the Saracens were shut out of France
by Charles Martel. "_Bellum atrox, multiplex, immane, pertinax, cui
simile nulla usquam narrat antiquitas._" [Footnote: Jordanes.] Attila
began the fight; on his left were the Ostrogoths under Vladimir, on his
right were the Gepidae, while in the centre were stationed the Huns, with
their irresistible cavalry. Aetius stationed the Franks and Burgundians,
whose loyalty he doubted, in the centre, while he strengthened his
wings, and assumed the command of his own left. The Huns, as expected,
made their impetuous charge; the Roman army was cut in two; but the
wings of Aetius overlapped the cavalry of Attila, and drove back his
wings. Attila was beaten, and Gaul was saved from the Slavonic invaders.
It is computed that three hundred thousand barbarians, on both sides,
were slain--the most fearful slaughter recorded in the whole annals of
war. The discomfited king of the Huns led back his forces to the Rhine,
ravaging the cities and villages through which he passed, and collected
a new army. The following year he invaded Italy.
[Sidenote: The Roman general Aetius.]
[Sidenote: Retreat of Attila.]
Aetius alone remained to stem the barbaric hosts. He had won one of the
greatest victories of ancient times, and sought for a reward. And
considering the brilliancy of his victory, and the greatness of his
services, the marriage of his son with the princess Eudoxia was not an
unreasonable object of ambition. But his greatness made him unpopular
with the debauched court at Ravenna, and he was left without a
sufficient force to stem the invasion of the Huns. Aquileia, the most
important and strongly fortified city of Northern Italy, for a time
stood out against the attack of the barbarians, but ultimately yielded.
Fugitives from the Venetian territory sought a refuge among the islands
which skirt the northern coast of the Adriatic--the haunts of fishermen
and sea-birds. There Venice was born, which should revive the glory of
the West, and write her history upon the waves for a thousand years.
Attila had spent the spring in his attack on Aquileia, and the summer
heats were unfavorable for further operations, and his soldiers clamored
for repose; but, undaunted by the ravages which sickness produced in his
army, he resolved to cross the Apennines and give a last blow to Rome.
Leo again sought the barbarians' camp, and met with more success than he
did with the Vandals. Attila consented to leave Italy in consideration
of an annual tribute, and the promise of the hand of the princess
Honoria, sister of the Emperor Valentinian, who, years before, in a fit
of female spitefulness for having been banished to Constantinople, had
sent her ring as a _gage d'amour_ to the repulsive barbarian. He
then retired to the Danube by the passes of the Alps, where he spent the
winter in bacchanalian orgies and preparations for an invasion of the
eastern provinces. But his career was suddenly cut off by the avenging
poniard of Ildigo, a Bactrian or Burgundian princess, whom he had taken
for one of his numerous wives, and whose relations he had slain.
[Sidenote: Disasters of the Huns.]
On his death, the German tribes refused longer to serve under the
divided rule of his sons, and after a severe contest with the more
barbarous Huns, the empire of Attila disappeared as one of the great
powers of the world, and Italy was delivered forever from this plague of
locusts. The battle of Netad, in which they suffered a disastrous
defeat, was perhaps as decisive as the battle of Chalons. They returned
to Asia, or else were gradually worn out in unavailing struggles with
the Goths.
[Sidenote: The Avars.]
The Avars, a tribe of the great Turanian race, and kindred to the Huns,
a few years after their retreat, crossed the Danube, established
themselves between that river and the Save, invaded the Greek empire,
and ravaged the provinces almost to the walls of Constantinople. It
would seem from Sheppard that the Avars had migrated from the very
centre of Asia, two thousand miles from the Caspian Sea, fleeing from
the Turks who had reduced them to their sway. [Footnote: Sheppard, Lect.
iv.] In their migration to the West, they overturned every thing in
their way, and spread great alarm at Constantinople. Justinian, then an
old man, A.D. 567, purchased their peace by an annual tribute and the
grant of lands. In 582, the Avar empire was firmly established on the
Danube, and in the valleys of the Balkan. But it was more hostile to the
Slavic tribes, than to the Byzantine Greeks, who then occupied the
centre and southeast of Europe, and who were reduced to miserable
slavery. With the Franks, the Avars also came in conflict, and, after
various fortunes, were subdued by Charlemagne. Their subsequent history
cannot here be pursued, until they were swept away from the roll of the
European nations. Moreover, it was not until _after_ the fall of
Rome, that they were formidable.
[Sidenote: Final disasters of the empire.]
[Sidenote: Imbecile emperors.]
The real drama of the fall of Rome closes with the second sack of the
city by the Vandals, since the imperial power was nearly prostrated in
the West, and shut up within the walls of Ravenna. But Italy was the
scene of great disasters for twenty years after, until the last of the
emperors--Augustulus Romulus; what a name with which to close the series
of Roman emperors!--was dethroned by Odoacer, chief of the Heruli, a
Scythian tribe, and Rome was again stormed and sacked, A.D. 476. During
these twenty years, the East and the West were finally severed, and
Italy was ruled by barbaric chieftains, and their domination permanently
secured. Valentinian, the last emperor of the race of Theodosius, was
assassinated in the year 455 (at the instigation of the Senator Maximus,
of the celebrated Anician family, whose wife he had violated), a man who
had inherited all the weaknesses of his imperial house, without its
virtues, and under whose detestable reign the people were so oppressed
with taxes and bound down by inquisitions that they preferred the
barbarians to the empire. The successive reigns of Maximus, Avitus,
Majorian, Severus, Anthemius, Olybrius, Glycerius, Nepos, and
Augustulus, nine emperors in twenty--one years, suggests nothing but
disorder and revolution. The murderer of Valentinian reigned but three
months, during which Rome was sacked by the Vandals. Avitus was raised
to his vacant throne by the support of the Visigoths of Gaul, then ruled
by Theodoric, a majestic barbarian, and the most enlightened and
civilized of all the leaders of the Gothic hosts who had yet appeared.
He fought and vanquished the Suevi, who had established themselves in
Spain, in the name of the emperor whom he had placed upon the throne,
but he really ruled on both sides of the Alps, and Avitus was merely his
puppet, and distinguished only for his infamous pleasures, although, as
a general, he had once saved the empire from the Huns.
[Sidenote: Last days of Rome.]
He was in turn deposed by Count Ricimer, a Sueve, and generalissimo of
the Roman armies, and Majorian, whom Ricimer thought to make a tool, was
placed in his stead. But he was an able and good man, and attempted to
revive the traditions of the empire, and met the fate of all reformers
in a hopeless age, doubtless under the influence of Ricimer, who
substituted Severus, a Lucanian, who perished by poison after a reign of
four years, so soon as he became distasteful to the military
subordinate, who was all-powerful at Rome, and who ruled Italy for six
years without an emperor with despotic authority. During these six years
Italy was perpetually ravaged by the Vandals, who landed and pillaged
the coast, and then retired with their booty. Ricimer, without ships,
invoked the aid of the court of Constantinople, who imposed a Greek upon
the throne of Italy. Though a man of great ability, Anthemius, the new
emperor, was unpopular with the Italians and the barbarians, and he,
again, was deposed by Ricimer, and Olybrius, a senator of the Anician
house, reigned in his stead, A.D. 472. It was then that Rome for the
third time was sacked by one of her own generals. Olybrius reigned but a
few months, and Glycerius, captain of his guard, was selected as his
successor--an appointment disagreeable to the Greek Emperor Leo, who
opposed to him Julius Nepos--a distinguished general, who succeeded in
ejecting Glycerius. The Visigoths, offended, made war upon Roman Gaul.
Julius sent against them Orestes, a Pannonian, called the Patrician, who
turned a traitor, and, on the assassination of Julius, entered Ravenna
in triumph. His son, christened Romulus, the soldiers elevated upon a
shield and saluted Augustus; but as he was too small to wear the purple
robe, they called him Augustulus--a bitter mockery, recalling the battle
of Actium, and the foundation of Rome. He was the last of the Caesars. It
was easier to make an emperor than keep him in his place. The bands of
Orestes clamored for lands equal to a third of Italy. Orestes hesitated,
and refused the demand. The soldiers were united under Odoacer--chief of
the Heruli, a general in the service of the Patrician--one of the
boldest and most unscrupulous of those mercenaries who lent their arms
in the service of the government of Ravenna. The. standard of revolt was
raised, and the barbarian army marched against their former master.
Leaving his son in Ravenna, Orestes, himself an able general trained in
the service of Attila, went forth to meet his enemy on the Lombard
plains. Unable to make a stand, he shut himself up in Pavia, which was
taken and sacked, and Orestes put to death. The barbarians then marched
to Ravenna, which they took, with the boy who wore the purple, who was
not slain as his father was, but pensioned with six thousand crowns, and
sent to a Campanian villa, which once belonged to Sulla and Lucullus.
The throne of the Caesars was hopelessly subverted, and Odoacer was king
of Italy, and portioned out its lands to his greedy followers, A.D. 476.
He was not unworthy of his high position, but his kingdom was in a sad
state of desolation, and after a reign of fourteen years he was in turn
supplanted by the superior genius of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths,
under whom a new era dawned upon Italy and the West, A.D. 490.
[Sidenote: Dismemberment of the empire.]
The Roman empire was now dismembered, and the various tribes of
barbarians, after a contest of two hundred years were fairly settled in
its provinces.
[Sidenote: The settlement of the Ostrogoths in Italy.]
In Italy we find the Ostrogoths as a dominant power, who, migrating from
the mouth of the Danube, with all the barbarians they could enlist under
the standard of Theodoric, prevailed over Odoacer, and settled in Italy.
The Gothic kingdom was assailed afterward by Belisarius and Narses, the
great generals of Justinian, also by the Lombards under Alboin, who
maintained themselves in the north of Italy.
[Sidenote: The settlement of the franks in Gaul.]
Gaul was divided among the Franks, the Burgundians, and the Visigoths,
whose perpetual wars, and whose infant kingdom, it is not my object to
present.
[Sidenote: The settlement of the Saxons in Britain.]
Britain was possessed by the Saxons, Spain by the Vandals, Suevi, and
Visigoths, and Africa by the Vandals, while the whole eastern empire
fell into the hands of the Saracens, except Constantinople, which
preserved the treasures of Greek and Roman civilization, until the
barbarians, elevated by the Christian religion, were prepared to ingraft
it upon their own rude laws and customs.
It would be interesting to trace the various fortunes of these Teutonic
tribes in the devastated provinces which they possessed by conquest. But
this would lead us into a boundless field, foreign to our inquiry. It is
the fall of Rome, not the reconstruction by the new races, which I seek
to present. It would also be interesting to survey the old capital of
the world in the hands of her various masters, pillaged and sacked by
all in turn; but her doom was sealed when Alaric entered the gates which
had been closed for six hundred years to a foreign enemy, and the empire
fell, virtually, when the haughty city, so long a queen among the
nations, yielded up her palaces as spoil. The eastern empire had a
longer life, but it was inglorious when Rome was no longer the superior
city.
[Sidenote: Reflections on the fall of the empire.]
The story of the fall of the grandest empire ever erected on our earth
is simple and impressive. Genius, energy, and patience led to vast
possessions, which were retained by a uniform policy which nothing could
turn aside. Prosperity and success led to boundless self-exaggeration
and a depreciation of enemies, while the vices of self-interest
undermined gradually all real strength. Society became utterly
demoralized and weakened, and there were no conservative forces
sufficiently, strong to hold it together. Vitality was destroyed by
disproportionate fortunes, by slavery, by the extinction of the middle
classes, by the degradation of woman, by demoralizing excitements, by
factitious life, by imperial misrule, by proconsular tyranny, by
enervating vices, by the absence of elevated sentiments, by an all-
engrossing abandonment to money-making and the pleasures it procured, so
that no lofty appeal could be made to which the degenerate people would
listen, or which they could understand. The empire was rotten to the
core--was steeped in selfishness, sensuality, and frivolity, and the
poison pervaded all classes and orders, and descended to the extremities
of the social system. What could be done? There was no help from man.
The empire was on the verge of dissolution when the barbarians came.
They only gave a shock and hastened the fall. The empire was ripe fruit,
to be plucked by the strongest hand.
Three centuries earlier a brave resistance would have been' made, and
the barbarians would have been overthrown and annihilated or sold as
slaves. But they were now the stronger, even with their rude weapons,
and without the arts of war which the Romans had been learning for a
thousand years. Yet they suffered prodigious losses before they became
ultimately victorious. But they persevered, driven by necessity as well
as the love of adventure and rapine. Wave after wave was rolled back by
desperate generals; but the tide returned, and swept all away.
Fortunately, they reconstructed after they had once destroyed. They were
converts of Christianity, and had sympathy with many elements of
civilization. "Some solitary sparks fell from the beautiful world that
was passed upon the night of their labors." These kindled a fire which
has never been extinguished. They had, with all their barbarism, some
great elements of character, and in all the solid qualities of the
heart, were superior to the races they subdued. They brought their fresh
blood into the body politic, and were alive to sentiments of religion,
patriotism, and love. They were enthusiastic, hopeful, generous, and
uncontaminated by those subtle vices which ever lead to ruin. They made
innumerable mistakes, and committed inexcusable follies. But, after a
long pilgrimage, and severely disciplined by misfortunes, they erected a
new fabric, established by the beautiful union of German strength and
Roman art, on the more solid foundations of Christian truth.
* * * * *
The authorities for this chapter are not numerous. They are the
historians of the empire in its decline and miseries. Gibbon's history
is doubtless the best in English. He may be compared with Tillemont's
Hist, des Emperors. Sheppard has written an interesting and instructing
book on this period, but it pertains especially to the rise of the new
barbaric states. Tacitus' chapter on the Manners of the Germans should
be read in connection with the wars. Gibbon quotes largely from Ammianus
Marcellinus, who is the best Latin historian of the last days of Rome.
Zosimus is an authority, but he is brief. Procopius wrote a history of
the Vandal wars. Gregory of Tours describes the desolations in Gaul, as
well as Journandes. The writings of Jerome, Augustine, and other
fathers, allude somewhat to the miseries and wickedness of the times.
But of all the writers on this dark and gloomy period, Gibbon is the
most satisfactory and exhaustive; nor is it probable he will soon be
supplanted in a field so dreary and sad.
CHAPTER XII.
THE REASONS WHY THE CONSERVATIVE INFLUENCES OF PAGAN CIVILIZATION DID
NOT ARREST THE RUIN OF THE ROMAN WORLD.
[Sidenote: Nothing conservative in mere human creation.]
It is a most interesting inquiry why art, literature, science,
philosophy, and political organizations, and other trophies of the
unaided reason of man, did not prevent so mournful an eclipse of human
glory as took place upon the fall of the majestic empire of the Romans.
There can be no question that civilization achieved most splendid
triumphs, even under the influence of pagan institutions. But it was not
paganism which achieved these victories; it was the will and the reason
of a noble race, in spite of its withering effects. It was the proud
reason of man which soared to such lofty heights, and attempted to
secure happiness and prosperity. These great ends were measurably
attained, and a self-sufficient philosopher might have pointed to these
victories as both glorious and permanent. When the eyes of
contemporaries rested on the beautiful and cultivated face of nature, on
commerce and ships, on military successes and triumphs, on the glories
of heroes and generals, on a subdued world, on a complicated mechanism
of social life, on the blazing wonders of art, on the sculptures and
pictures, the temples and monuments which ornamented every part of the
empire, when they reflected on the bright theories which philosophy
proposed, on the truths which were incorporated with the system of
jurisprudence, on the wondrous constitution which the experience of ages
had framed, on the genius of poets and historians, on the whole system
of social life, adorned with polished manners and the graces of genial
intercourse--when they saw that all these triumphs had been won over
barbarism, and had been constantly progressing with succeeding
generations, it seemed that the reign of peace and prosperity would be
perpetual. It is nothing to the point whether the civilization of which
all people boasted, and in which they trusted, was superior or inferior
to that which has subsequently been achieved by the Gothic races. The
question is, _Did_ these arts and sciences produce an influence
sufficiently strong to conserve society? That they polished and adorned
individuals cannot be questioned. Did they infuse life into the decaying
mass? Did they prolong political existence? Did they produce valor and
moral force among the masses? Did they raise a bulwark capable of
resisting human degeneracy or barbaric violence? Did they lead to self-
restraint? Did they create a lofty public sentiment which scorned
baseness and lies? Did they so raise the moral tone of society that
people were induced to make sacrifices and noble efforts to preserve
blessings which had already been secured.
[Sidenote: Civilisation can only rise to a certain height by unabled
reason.]
I have to show that the grandest empire of antiquity perished from the
same causes which destroyed Babylon and Carthage; that all the
magnificent trophies of the intellect were in vain; that the sources of
moral renovation were poisoned; that nothing worked out, practically and
generally, the good which was intended, and which enthusiasts had hoped;
that the very means of culture were perverted, and that the savor unto
life became a savor unto death. In short, it will appear from the
example of Rome, that man cannot save himself; that he cannot originate
any means of conservation which will not be foiled and rendered nugatory
by the force of human corruption; that man, left to himself, will defeat
his own purposes, and that all his enterprises and projects will end in
shame and humiliation, so far as they are intended to preserve society.
The history of all the pagan races and countries show that only a
limited height can ever be reached, and that society is destined to
perpetual falls as well as triumphs, and would move on in circles
forever, where no higher aid comes than from man himself. And this great
truth is so forcibly borne out by facts, that those profound and learned
historians who are skeptical of the power of Christianity, have
generally embraced the theory that nations _must_ rise and fall to
the end of time; and society will show, like the changes of nature, only
phases which have appeared before. Their gloomy theories remind us of
the perpetual swinging of a pendulum, or the endless labors of Ixion--
circles and cycles of motion, but no general and universal progress to a
perfect state of happiness and prosperity. And if we were not supported
by the hopes which Christianity furnishes, if we adopted the pagan
principles of Gibbon or Buckle, history would only confirm the darkest
theories. But the history of Greece and Rome and Egypt are only chapters
in the great work which Providence unfolds. They are only acts in the
great drama of universal life. The history of those old pagan empires is
full of instruction. In one sense, it seems mournful, but it only shows
that society must be a failure under the influences which man's genius
originates. This world is not destined to be a failure, although the
empires of antiquity were. I fall in with the most cheerless philosophy
of the infidel historians, if there is no other hope for man, as
illustrated by the rise and fall of empires, than what the pagan
intellect devised. But this induction is not sufficiently broad. They
have too few facts upon which to build a theory. Yet the theory they
advance is supported by all the facts brought out by the history of
pagan countries. And this is my reason for bringing out so much that is
truly glorious, in an important sense, in Roman history, to show that
these glories did not, and could not, save. And the moral lesson I would
draw is, that _any_ civilization, based on what man creates or
originates, even in his most lofty efforts, will fail as signally as the
Grecian and the Roman, so far as the conservation of society is
concerned, in the hour of peril, when corruption and degeneracy have
also accomplished their work. Paganism cannot give other than temporary
triumphs. Its victories are not progressive. They do not tend to
indefinite and ever-expanding progress. They simply show an intellectual
brilliancy, which is soon dimmed by the vapors which arise out of the
fermentations of corrupt society.
[Sidenote: The virtues of the primitive races.]
[Sidenote: Decline of civilization in the ancient races.]
The question here may arise why the Greeks and Romans themselves arose
from a state of barbarism to the degree of culture which has given them
immortality? Why did they not remain barbarians, like the natives of
Central Africa? But they belonged to a peculiar race--that great
Caucasian race which, in all of its ramifications, showed superior
excellences, and which, in the earliest times, seems to have cherished
ideas and virtues which probably were learned from a primitive
revelation. The Romans, in the early ages of the republic, were superior
to their descendants in the time of the emperors in all those qualities
which give true dignity to character. I doubt if there was ever any
great improvement among the Romans in a moral point of view. They
acquired arts as they declined in virtue. If strictly scrutinized I
believe it would appear that the Roman character was nobler six hundred
years before Christ than in the second century of our era. It was the
magnificent material on which civilizing influences had to work that
accounts for Roman greatness, in the same sense that there was a dignity
in the patriarchal period of Jewish history not to be found under the
reigns of the kings. The same may be said of the Greeks. The Homeric
poems show a natural beauty and simplicity more attractive than the
rationalistic character of the Athenians in the time of Socrates. There
was a progress in arts which was not to be seen in common life. And this
is true also of the Persians. They were really a greater people under
Cyrus than when they reigned in Babylon. There are no records of the
Indo-Germanic races which do not indicate a certain greatness of
character in the earliest periods. The Germanic tribes were barbarians,
but in piety, in friendship, in hospitality, in sagacity, in severe
morality, in the high estimation in which women were held, in the very
magnificence of superstitions, we see the traits of a noble national
character. It would be difficult to show absolute degradation at any
time among these people. How they came to have these grand traits in
their primeval forests it is difficult to show. Certainly they were
never such a people as the Africans or the Malay races, or even the
Slavonic tribes. These natural elements of character extorted the
admiration of Tacitus, even as the Orientals won the respect of
Herodotus. It is more easy to conceive why such a people as the Greeks
and Romans were, in their primitive simplicity, when they were brave,
trusting, affectionate, enterprising, should make progress in arts and
sciences, than why they should have degenerated after a high
civilization had been reached. They made the arts and sciences. The arts
and sciences did not make them. They were great before civilization, as
technically understood, was born. Why they were so superior to other
races we cannot tell. They were either made so, or else they must have
received a revelation from above, or learned some of the great truths
which by God were taught to the patriarchs. Possibly the wisdom they
very early evinced had come down from father to son from the remotest
antiquity. The divine savor may have leavened the whole race before
history was written. With their uncorrupted and primitive habits, they
had a moral force which enabled them to make great improvements. Without
this force they never would have reached so high a culture. And when the
moral force was spent, the civilization they created also passed away
from them to other uncorrupted races. The Greeks learned from Egyptians,
as Romans learned from Greeks. Civilization only reached a limited state
among the Egyptians. It never advanced for three thousand years. Greek
culture retrograded after the age of Pericles. There were but few works
of genius produced at Rome after the Antonines. The age of Augustus saw
a higher triumph of art than the age of Cato, yet the moral greatness of
the Romans was more marked in the time of Cato than in that of Augustus.
If moral elevation kept pace with art, why the memorable decline in
morals when the genius of the Romans soared to its utmost height? The
virtues of society were a soil on which art prospered, and art continued
to be developed long after real vigor had fled, but only reached a
certain limit, and declined when life was gone. In other words, the
force of character, which the early Romans evinced, gave an immense
impulse to civilization, whose fruits appeared after the glory of
character was gone; but, having no soil, the tree of knowledge at last
withered away. If the old civilization had a life of itself, it would
have saved the race. But as it was purely man's creation, his work, it
had no inherent vitality or power to save him. The people were great
before the fruits of their culture appeared. They were great in
consequence of living virtues, not legacies of genius. They ran the
usual course of the ancient nations. The sterling virtues of primitive
times produced prosperity and material greatness. Material greatness
gave patronage to art and science. Art and science did not corrupt the
people until they had also become corrupted. But prosperity produced
idleness, pride, and sensuality, by which science, art, and literature
became tainted. The corruption spread. Society was undermined, and the
arts fell with the people, except such as ministered to a corrupt taste,
like demoralizing pictures and inflammatory music. Why did not the arts
maintain the severity of the Grecian models? Why did philosophy
degenerate to Epicureanism? Why did poetry condescend to such trivial
subjects as hunting and fishing? Why did, the light of truth become dim?
Why were the great principles of beauty lost sight of? Why the
discrepancy between the laws and the execution of them? Why was every
triumph of genius perverted? It was because men, in their wickedness,
were indifferent to truth and virtue. Good men had made good laws; bad
men perverted them. A corrupted civilization hastened, rather than
retarded the downward course, and civilization must needs become corrupt
when men became so. We cannot see any progress in peoples without moral
forces, and these do not originate in man. They may be retained a long
time among a people; they are not natural to them. They are _given_
to them; they are given originally by God. They are the fruit of his
revelations. Neither in the wilderness nor in the crowded city are they
naturally produced. A perfect state of nature, without light from
Heaven, is extreme rudeness, poverty, ignorance, and superstition, where
brutal passions are dominant and triumphant. The vices of savages are as
fatal as the vices of cities. They equally destroy society. Place man
anywhere on the earth, or under any circumstances, without religious
life, and moral degradation follows. Whence comes religious life? Where
did Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, those eastern herdsmen and shepherds,
get their moral wisdom? Surely it was inherited from earlier patriarchs,
taught them by their fathers, or given directly from God himself.
[Sidenote: Virtues of primitive life.]
The most that can be said of a primitive state of society is that it is
favorable for the _retention_ of religious and moral truth, more so
than populous cities, since it has fewer temptations to excite the
passions. But a savage in any country will remain a savage, unless he is
elevated and taught through influences independent of himself.
Hottentots make no progress. Greeks made progress, since they had moral
wisdom communicated to them by their ancestors: the divine light
struggled with human propensities. When outward circumstances were
favorable the virtues were retained; they were not born, and these were
the stimulus to all improvement; and when they were lost, all
improvement that is real vanished away. Civilization is the fruit of
man's genius, when man is virtuous. But it does not renovate races. It
is only religion coming from God which can do this.
It would be an interesting inquiry how far the religion of the old
Greeks and Romans was pure--how far it was uncontaminated by
superstitions. I think it would be found on inquiry, if we had the means
of definite knowledge, that all that was elevating to the character had
descended from a remote antiquity, and that the superstitions with which
it was blended were more recent inventions. The ancestors of the Greeks
were probably more truly religious than the Greeks themselves. And as
new revelations were not made by God, the primitive revelations were
obscured by increasing darkness, until superstition formed the
predominant element.
[Sidenote: Christianity the only conservative power.]
Hence the revelations of God can only be preserved in a written form,
without change or comment. Christianity is perpetuated by the Bible. So
long as the Bible exists Christianity will have converts, and will be
able to struggle successfully with human degeneracy. The revelations
originally made to the eastern nations became traditions. The standard
was not preserved in a written form to which the people had access.
[Sidenote: Primitive life favors virtue.]
[Sidenote: Evils of prosperity.]
[Sidenote: The superiority of the early to the later Greeks in Virtue.]
Moreover, the Greeks and Romans, when they were most virtuous, when they
were in a state to produce a civilization, had great obstacles to
surmount and difficulties to contend with. These ever develop genius and
keep down destructive passions. Strength ever comes through weakness and
dependence. This is the stern condition of our moral nature. It is a
primeval and unalterable law that man must earn his living by the sweat
of his brow, even as woman can only be happy and virtuous when her will
is subject to that of her husband. A condition where labor is not
necessary engenders idleness, sensuality, indifference to suffering,
self-indulgence, and a conventional hardness that freezes the soul.
Never, in this world, have more exalted virtues been brought to light
than among the Puritans in their cold and dreary settlements in New
England, even those which it is the fashion to attribute to congenial
climates and sunny skies. The Puritan character was as full of passion
as it was of sacrifice. We read of the existence and culture of
friendship, love, and social happiness when the country was most
sterile, and the difficulty of earning a living greatest. There was an
outward starch and acerbity produced by toil and danger. But when people
felt they could unbend, they were not icebergs but volcanoes, because
the fires which burned unseen were those of the soul. The mirth of wine
is maudlin and short-lived. It prompts to no labor, and kindles no
sacrifices. It is satanic; it blazes and dies, a horrid mockery,
exultant and evanescent. But the joy of homes, the beaming face of
forgiveness, the charity which covers a multitude of faults, the
assistance rendered in hours of darkness and difficulty, enthusiasm for
truth, the aspiration for a higher life, the glorious interchange of
thoughts and sentiments, these are well-springs of life, of peace, and
of power. Nothing is to be relied upon which does not stimulate the
higher faculties of the mind and soul. Ease of living blunts the moral
sensibilities, and even the beauty of nature is not appreciated, when
"all save the spirit of man is divine." But when men are earnest and
true, uncorrupted by the vices of self-interest, and unseduced by the
pleasures of factitious life, then even nature, in all her wildness, is
a teacher and an inspiration. The grand landscape, the rugged rocks, the
mystic forests, and the lofty mountains, barren though they be, bring
out higher sentiments than the smiling vineyard, or the rich orange-
grove, or the fertile corn-field, where slaves do the labor, and lazy
proprietors recline on luxurious couches to take their mid-day sleep, or
toy with frivolous voluptuousness. Neither a great nor a rich country is
anything, if only pride and folly are fostered; while isolation,
poverty, and physical discomfort, if accompanied by piety and
resignation, are frequently the highest boons which Providence bestows
to keep men in mind of Him. Prosperity may have been the blessing of the
old Testament, but adversity is the blessing of the New--the mysterious
benediction of Christ and Apostles and martyrs. A rich country does not
make great men, except in craft or politics or business calculations;
nor is there a more subtle falsehood than that which builds a nation's
hope on the extent of its prairies, or the deep soil of its valleys, or
the rich mines of its mountains, or the great streams which bear its
wealth to the ocean. Mr. Buckle, fallaciously and sophistically,
instances--Egypt as peculiarly fortunate and happy, because it possessed
the Nile; but all that was glorious in Egypt passed away before
authentic history was written, while Greece, with her barren mountains,
laid the foundation of all that was valuable in the ancient
civilization. What survives of Carthage or Antioch or Tyre that society
now cherishes? Yet much may be traced to Greece when the people were
poor, and struggling with the waves and the forests. It is not nature
that ennobles man; it is man that consecrates nature. The development of
mind is greater than the development of material resources. True
greatness is not in an easy life, but in the struggle against nature and
the victory over adverse influences. Even in our own country, it will be
seen that schools and colleges and religious institutions have more
frequently flourished when the people were poor and industrious than
when they were rich and prodigal. Why has New England produced so many
educators? Why is it that so few eminent men of genius and learning have
arisen out of the turmoil and vanity of prosperous cities? Why is it
that money cannot create a college, and is useless unless there is a
vitality among its professors and students? The condition of national
greatness is the same as that seen in the rise and fortunes of
individuals. Industry, honesty, and patience, are greater than banks and
storehouses. Character, even in a wicked and busy city, is of more value
than money.
These truths are most emphatically illustrated by the civilization of
the Romans. We are attracted by the glitter and the glare of arts and
sciences. Let us see what they did for Rome, when Rome became
degenerate. Let us review the chapters that have been written in this
book. We point with pride to the trophies of genius and strength. We do
not disparage them. They were human creations. Let us see how far they
had a force to save.
The first great development of genius among the Romans was military
strength. We are dazzled by the glory of warlike deeds. We see a grand
army, the power of the legions, the science of war. Why did not military
organizations save the empire in the hour of trial?
[Sidenote: The Roman armies in the republic.]
[Sidenote: Decline of military virtues.]
[Sidenote: Degeneracy of the legions.]
The legions who went forth to battle in the days of Aurelian and
Severus, were not such as marched under Marius and Caesar. The soldiers
of the republic went forth to battle expecting death, and ready to die.
The sacrifice of life in battle was the great idea of a Roman hero, as
it was of a Germanic barbarian. Without this idea deeply impressed upon
a soldier's mind, there can be no true military enthusiasm. It has
characterized all conquering races. Mere mechanism cannot do the work of
life. Under the empire, the army was mere machinery. It had lost its
ancient spirit; it was not inspired by patriotic glory; it maintained
the defensive. The citizens were unwilling to enlist, and the ranks were
gradually filled with the very barbarians against whom the Romans had
formerly contended. The army was virtually composed of mercenaries from
all nations, adventurers who had nothing to lose, who had but little to
gain. They were turbulent and rebellious. Revolts among the soldiers
were common. They brought new vices to the camps, and learned in
addition all the vices of the Romans. They were greedy, unreliable, and
cherished concealed enmities. They had no common interest or bond of
union. They were always ready for revolt, and gave away the highest
prizes to fortunate generals. They sold the imperial dignity, and became
the masters rather than the servants of the emperors. Diocletian was
obliged to disband the Praetorian band. The infantry, which had
penetrated the Macedonian phalanx, threw away their defensive armor, and
were changed to troops of timid horsemen, whose chief weapon was the
bow. And they wasted their strength in civil contests more than against
barbaric foes. They no longer swam rivers, or climbed mountains, or
marched with a burden of eighty pounds. They scorned their ancient fare
and their ancient pay. They sought pleasure and dissipation. The expense
of maintaining the army kept pace with its inefficiency. Soldiers were a
nuisance wherever they were located, and fanned disturbances and mobs.
Their license and robbery made them as much to be dreaded by friends as
by enemies. They assassinated the emperors when they failed to comply
with their exorbitant demands. They often sympathized with the very
enemies whom they ought to have fought. Enfeebled, treacherous, without
public spirit, caring nothing for the empire, degenerate, they were thus
unable to resist the shock of their savage enemies. Finally, they could
not even maintain order in the provinces. "There was not," says Gibbon,
"a single province in the empire in which a uniform government was
maintained, or in which man could look for protection from his fellow
man." What could be hoped of an empire when people were unwilling to
enlist, and when troops had lost the prestige of victory? The details of
the military history of the latter Romans are most sickening--revolts,
rival generals, an enfeebled central power, turbulence, anarchy. Even
military obedience was weakened. What would Caesar have thought of the
soldiers of Valentinian siding with the clergy of Milan, when Ambrose
was threatened with imperial vengeance? What would Tiberius have thought
of the seditions of Constantinople, when the most trusted soldiers
demanded the head of a minister they detested? Where was the power of
mechanism, without genius to direct it? What could besieged cities do,
when treachery opened the gates? The empire fell because no one would
belong to it. How impotent the army, without spirit or courage, when the
hardy races of the North, adventurous and daring, were pouring down upon
the provinces--men who feared not death; men who gloried in their very
losses! The legions became utterly unequal to their task; they were
recalled from the distant provinces in the greater danger of the
capitals; and the boundaries of the empire were left without protectors.
The empire was created by strength, enthusiasm, and courage; when these
failed, it melted away. And even if the old discipline were maintained,
how inadequate the army against the overwhelming tide of barbarians,
fully armed, and bent on conquest. In all the victories of Valerian,
Constantine, and Theodosius, we see only the flickering lights of
departing glory. Military genius, united with patriotism, might have
delayed the fall, but where was the glory of the legions in those last
days? Military science belonged to the republic, not the empire. One
reason why the army did not save the empire was, because there was no
army capable of meeting the exigencies of the fourth and fifth
centuries. It was corrupted, perverted, conquered.
[Sidenote: The hopeless imbecility of the army under emperors.]
[Sidenote: Despair of the military emperors.]
Nor could _any_ army, however strong, do more than prop up existing
institutions. These themselves were rotten. Despotism cannot save a
state. The reign of Louis XIV. was one of the most brilliant in modern
annals. But no reign ever more signally undermined the state. It is the
patriotism of soldiers that saves, not their physical force. Their force
can be turned against the interests of a state as well as employed in
its favor. Despotism sows the seeds of future ruin. No state was ever
supported by military strength, except for a time, and then only when
the soldiery were animated by noble sentiments. The imperial forces of
Rome, while they preserved the throne of absolutisms, destroyed the
self-reliance of the citizens, and supported wicked institutions. The
difference in the aims of government under the Caesars, and under the
consuls, was heaven-wide. The military genius which created an empire,
was misdirected when that empire sought to perpetuate wrong. How
different is the spirit which animated the armies of the United States,
when they sought to preserve the institutions of liberty and the
integrity of the state, from that spirit which animates the armies of
the Sultan of Turkey! The Roman empire under the later emperors was more
like the Ottoman empire, than the republic in the days of Cato. It was
sick, and must die. A great army devoted to the interests of despotism
generates more evils than it cures. It eats out the vitals of strength,
and poisons the sources of renovation. It suppresses every generous
insurrection of human intelligence. It merely arms tyrants with the
power to crush genius and patriotism. It prevents the healthful
development of energies in useful channels. The most that can be said in
favor of the armies of the empire is, that they preserved for a time the
decaying body. They could not restore vitality; they warded off the
blows of fate. They could only keep the empire from falling until the
forces of enemies were organized. No generalship could have saved Rome.
The great military emperors must have felt that they were powerless
against the combination of barbaric forces. The soul of Theodosius must
have sunk within him to see how fruitless were his victories, how barren
_any_ victories to such a diseased and crumbling empire. Diocletian
retired, in the plenitude of his power, to die of a broken heart. The
utmost the emperors could do, was to erect on the banks of the Bosphorus
a new capital, and virtually make a new combination of those provinces
most removed from danger. The old capital was abandoned to its fate.
[Sidenote: The Roman constitution.]
[Sidenote: Infamy of the imperial regime.]
[Sidenote: Abortive efforts of good emperors.]
The elaborate and complicated constitution of the Romans, on which so
much genius and experience were employed, was subverted when Caesar
passed the Rubicon. Only forms remained, a bitter mockery, and a thin
disguise. These were nothing. Neither consuls, nor praetors, nor
pontiffs, nor censors, nor tribunes existed, except in name. Every
office of the republic was absorbed in the imperial despotism. The
glorious constitution, which gave authority to Cato and dignity to
Cicero, was a dead-letter. Flatterers, and sycophants, and courtiers,
took the place of senators. The imperial despotism crushed out every
element of popular power, every protest of patriots, every gush of
enthusiasm. The constitution could not save when it was itself lost.
Never was there a more wanton and determined disregard of those great
rights for which the nations had bled, than under the emperors. Every
conservative influence that came from the people was hopelessly
suppressed. The reign of beneficent emperors, like the Antonines, and of
monsters like Nero and Caracalla, was alike fatal. The seal of political
ruin was set when Augustus was most potent and most feared. Government
simply meant an organized mechanism of oppression. There is nothing
conservative in government which does not have in view the interests of
the governed. When it is merely used to augment gigantic fortunes, or
create inequalities, or encourage frivolities, and allows great evils to
go unredressed, then its very mechanism becomes a refinement of despotic
cruelty. When sycophants, jesters, flatterers, and panderers to passions
become the recipients of court favor, and control the hand that feeds
them, then there is no responsible authority. The very worst government
is that of favorites, and that was the government of Rome, when only
courtiers could gain the ear of the sovereign, and when it was for their
interest to cover up crimes. What must, have been the government when
even Seneca accumulated one of the largest fortunes of antiquity as
minister? What must have been the court when such women as Messalina and
Agrippina controlled its councils? The ascendency of women and
sycophants is infinitely worse than the arbitrary rule of stern but
experienced generals. The whole empire was ransacked for the private
pleasure of the emperors, and those who surrounded them. "_L'etat,
c'est moi_," was the motto of every emperor from Augustus to
Theodosius. With such a spirit, so monopolizing and so proud, the rights
of subjects were lost in an all-controlling despotism, which crushed out
both grand sentiments and noble deeds. None could rise but those who
administered to the pleasures of the emperor. All were sure to fall who
opposed his will. From this there was no escape. Resistance was ruin.
There was a perfect system of espionage established in every part of the
empire, and it was impossible to fly from the agents of imperial
vengeance. And the despotism of the emperors was particularly hateful,
since it veiled its powers under the forms of the ancient republic,
until in the very wantonness of its vast prerogatives it threw away its
vain disguises, and openly and insultingly reveled on the forced
contributions of the world. There were good and wise emperors who sought
the welfare of the state, but these were exceptions to the general rule.
Octavius, that Ulysses of state craft, checked open immoralities by
legal enactments, discouraged celibacy, expelled unworthy members from
the Senate, appointed able ministers and governors, and sought to
prevent corruption, which was then so shameful. Vespasian introduced a
severe military discipline among the legions, permitted citizens to have
free access to his person, and promoted many great objects of public
utility.
[Sidenote: Hadrian.]
[Sidenote: Marcus Aurelius.]
Hadrian attempted to give dignity to the Senate, and visited in person
nearly all the provinces of his empire, impartially administered
justice, magnificently patronized art, and encouraged the loftiest form
of Greek philosophy. Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius set, in their
own lives, examples of the sternest virtue, although they were deceived
in the character of those to whom they delegated their powers, and were
even ruled by unworthy favorites. Marcus Aurelius was, after all, the
finest character of antiquity who was intrusted with absolute power.
Contrasted with Solomon, or Augustus, or even Theodosius, he was a model
prince, for he had every facility of indulging his passions, but his
passions he restrained, and lived a life of the severest temperance and
virtue to the end, sustained by the severest doctrines of the Stoical
school. All that his rigid severity and moral elevation could do to save
a decaying empire was done. He sought to base the stability of the
throne on a rigid morality, on self-denial and self-sacrifice. When only
twelve, he adopted the garb and the austerities of a philosopher,
believing in virtue for its own sake.
From his earliest youth he associated with his instructors in the
greatest freedom, and it was the happiness of his life to reward
philosophers and scholars. He promoted men of learning to the highest
dignities of the empire, and even showed the greatest reverence for the
cultivation of the mind. Philosophy was the great object of his zeal,
but he also gave his attention to all branches of science, to law, to
music, and to poetry. His disposition was kind and amiable, and he
succeeded in acquiring that self-command and composure which it was the
professed object of the Stoics to secure. He was firm without being
obstinate, gentle without being weak. He was modest, retiring, and
studious. He believed that it was necessary for good government that
rulers should be under the dominion of philosophy. He was so universally
beloved and esteemed, that everybody who could afford it had his statue
in his house. No man on a throne was ever held in such profound
veneration. If ever there was, in a heathen country, an example of
sublime virtue, it shone in the life of Marcus Aurelius; if ever there
was an expression of supernal beauty, it was in his features beaming
with love and gentleness and humility. He never neglected the duties of
his office. He was noble in all the relations of a family. He was the
model of an emperor. He only complained of want of time to prosecute his
literary labors. He was probably the most learned man in his dominions.
The Romans called him brother and father, and the Senate felt that its
ancient dignity was restored. He had great causes of unhappiness. The
barbarians invaded his territories; a long peace had destroyed martial
energies; the Roman world was sinking into languor and decay; his
adoptive brother Verus lived in luxury and dissoluteness; his wife
Faustina was a second Messalina, abandoned to promiscuous profligacy; a
pestilence ravaged Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, and Gaul, still this great
man preserved his serenity, his virtues, and his fame. He was unseduced
by any kind of mortal temptation, and left an unstained character, and
an unrivaled veneration for his memory. And when we consider that he was
the absolute master of one hundred and twenty millions, having at his
disposal the riches of the world, and all its pleasures,--above public
opinion, with no law to check him--a law only to himself, we find more
to admire than in Solomon before his fall. _His meditations_ have
lately been translated and published--a work full of moral wisdom,
rivaling Epictetus in morality, and the sages of the Middle Ages in
contemplative piety. Niebuhr says it is more delightful to speak of him
than of any man in history. The historical critic can see but one
defect--his persecution of the Christians. He was doubtless a bigoted
Stoic, as Paul was, at one time, a bigoted Pharisee; and the great
delusion of his life was to rear a basis of national prosperity on the
sublime morality of the philosophers whom he copied. He sought to save
the state by the Stoical philosophy. Never were nobler efforts put forth
on the part of a philosophic prince; but neither his patronage of
philosophers, nor his own bright example, nor the doctrines of the
Porch, conservative as they are, were of any avail. The Roman world
could not be saved by the philosophy of Aurelius any more easily than
the imperial despotism could be averted by the patriotism of Cicero. He
was succeeded, after a glorious reign of twenty years, by his son
Commodus, as incapable of managing an empire as Rehoboam was the kingdom
of his father Solomon. Thus are the schemes and enterprises of the best
men baffled by a mysterious power above us, who holds in his own hands
the destinies of nations--the Divine Providence who giveth and who
withholdeth strength.
Marcus Aurelius did all that human virtue could do to arrest the ruin
which he saw, with the saddest grief, was impending over the empire, in
spite of all the external prosperity which called forth such universal
panegyric. And the empire was also favored by a succession of military
emperors, who tried the force of arms, as Aurelius had philosophy.
Never did abler men reign on an absolute throne. All that genius and
experience and skill could do to arrest the waves of the barbarians was
done. A succession of most brilliant victories marked these later days
of Rome. Amid unparalleled disasters, there were also most memorable
triumphs. The glory of the Roman name was revived in Claudius, Aurelian,
Probus, Carus, Diocletian, Constantius, Galerius, Constantine, Julian,
all of whom rendered important services. These great emperors were
uniformly victors, yet were doomed to hurl back perpetually advancing
forces of Teutonic warriors, who were resolved on conquest. Diocletian
was a second Augustus, and Constantine another Julius. But their
conquests and reconstructions were all in vain. The barbarians advanced.
They were getting more and more powerful with defeat; the Romans weaker
and weaker after victory. In the middle of the fourth century the Goths
were firmly settled in Dacia, the Persians had recovered the provinces
between the Euphrates and the Tigris, Gaul was invaded by Germans, the
Saxons had ravaged Britain, the Scots and Picts had spread themselves
from the wall of Antoninus to the shores of Kent, Africa had revolted,
Sapor had broken his treaties, the Goths had crossed the Danube, the
Emperor Valens had been slain, with sixty thousand infantry and six
thousand cavalry. From the shores of the Bosphorus to the Julian Alps,
nothing was to be seen but rapes, murders, and conflagrations. Palaces
were destroyed, churches were turned into stables, the relics of martyrs
were desecrated, women were ravished, bishops were praying in despair,
cities had fallen, the country was laid waste; the desolation extended
to fishes and birds. Fruitful fields became pastures, or were overgrown
with forests. The day of ruin was at hand. There was needed a hero to
arise, a deliverer, a second Moses. And a great man appeared in the
person of Theodosius--the most able and valiant of all the emperors
after Julius Caesar.
[Sidenote: Theodosius.]
The career of Theodosius is exceedingly interesting, since it shows that
every thing which imperial genius could do to arrest ruin, was done by
him.
Theodosius was thirty-three years of age when summoned from retirement
to govern the world. He had learned the art of war from his father in
Britain, and had, in his lifetime, defeated the Sarmatians. The Romans,
disheartened by the tremendous defeat they had sustained under the walls
of Adrianople, and the death of Valens the emperor, had no longer the
courage to brave the Goths in the open field, and Theodosius was too
prudent to lead them against a triumphant enemy. He retired to
Thessalonica to watch the barbarians. In four years he had revived the
courage of his troops, even as Alfred subsequently rekindled the martial
ardor of the Saxons after their defeat by the Danes. On the death of
Fritigern, the first great historic name among the Visigoths, his
soldiers were demoralized, and divided by jealousies, and were won over
by the arts and statesmanship of Theodosius, and a treaty was made with
them by which they obtained a settlement within the limits of the
empire, and became the allies of the emperor. The Ostrogoths were soon
after defeated in a decisive battle on the Danube, and all fears were
removed, at least for the present, of these hostile barbarians.
[Sidenote: Successors of Theodosius.]
[Sidenote: Diocletian.]
Theodosius was equally fortunate in his conflicts with Maximus, who had
usurped the provinces of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, and who meditated the
conquest of Italy. At Aquileia the usurper was seized, after a
succession of defeats, stripped of his imperial ornaments, and delivered
to the executioner, and Theodosius reigned without a rival in the
renovated empire, practicing the virtues of domestic life, rewarding
eminent merit, and protecting the interests of the church. He restored
the--authority of the laws, and corrected the abuses of the preceding
reigns. Whatever rival or enemy, in those distracted times, raised
himself up against the imperial authority, was easily subdued. Eugenius
met the fate of Maximus, and Arbogastes turned his sword against his own
breast. Theodosius reigned in peace and wisdom, the idol of the church,
and the object of fear to the barbaric world. He had his defects and
vices, and committed errors and crimes, but his reign was beneficent,
and the Christian world hoped that the evils which threatened the empire
were removed. Alas, the empire was doomed. The death of Theodosius was
the signal for renewed hostilities. His sons, the feeble Arcadius and
Honorius, were unequal to the task of governing the empire, and it fell
into the hands of the barbarians, who ruthlessly marched over the
crumblings ruins, regardless of the treasures of the classic soil and of
the guardians which Christianity presented in the presence of protesting
bishops. The empire could not be saved by able emperors, however great
their military genius. Absolutism, whether wielded by tyrants, or
philosophers, or generals, was alike a failure. What hope for the empire
when the Senate inculcated maxims of passive obedience to tyrants; when
such lawyers as Papinias and Paulus declared that emperors were freed
from all restraints? What could Alexander Severus do when the most
illustrious man in the empire--the learned and immortal Ulpian--was
murdered before his eyes by the guards, of which he was the prefect, and
when such was the license of the soldiers, that the emperor could
neither revenge his murdered friend, nor his insulted dignity; when his
own life was sacrificed to the discontents of an army which had become
the master of the emperors themselves? After the murder of this brave
and enlightened prince, no emperor was safe upon his throne, or could do
more than oppose a feeble barrier to the barbarians upon the frontiers.
External dangers may have raised up able commanders, like Decius,
Aurelian, and Probus; but they could not prevent the inroads of the
Goths, or heal the miseries of society. Of the nineteen tyrants who
arose during the reign of Gallienus, not one died a natural death. And
when, after a disgraceful period of calamities, Diocletian ascended the
throne, the ablest perhaps of all the emperors after Augustus, no
talents could sustain the weight of public administration, and even this
emperor attempted to extinguish the only influence that had power to
save. Absolutism had sowed seeds of ruin, which were destined to bear
most wretched fruit.
[Sidenote: Roman jurisprudence.]
Jurisprudence was the science of which the Romans have the most to
boast; and this was not perfected until the time of the emperors. It was
closely connected with the constitution, but was superior to it, since
it was based upon the principles of natural justice or equity. This has
lasted when all material greatness has vanished, and still forms the
basis of the laws of European nations. This was a great element of
civilization itself; it was part of the mechanism of social order; it
pervaded all parts of the empire; it made the reign of tyrants
endurable.
There is no doubt that the excellence of the laws formed one of the most
powerful conservative influences of pagan antiquity. We glory in those
laws as one of the proudest achievements of the human mind. But laws are
rather an exponent of the state of society than a controlling force
which modifies it. If a murderer is to be hung, or a thief imprisoned,
the rigid law shows simply no mercy to murderers and thieves; it does
not create a sentiment which prevents, though it may punish, iniquity.
The wise division of property among heirs may operate against injurious
accumulations, but does not prevent disproportionate fortunes. The more
complicated the jurisprudence, the more need it seems that society has
of restraints and balances. The law cannot go higher than the fountain.
The more perfect the state of society, the less need there is of laws.
The cautious guards against fraud simply show that frauds are common and
easy. The minute regulations in reference to the protection of property
and contracts, show that the prevailing customs and habits of dealers
were corrupt, and needed the strong arm of a protecting government. As a
general thing, it will be found that the laws are best, and most rigidly
enforced, when iniquity prevails. A man is safe in Paris when he is not
in Boston, but we do not infer from this fact that society is higher,
but that there is a sterner necessity on the part of government to
restrain crime. The laws of the Romans give the impression of the
necessity of a constant watchfulness and supervision to prevent the
strong preying upon the weak. Other influences are more necessary than
laws to keep men virtuous and orderly. Laws are necessary, indeed; but
they are not the first conditions of social existence.
[Sidenote: Perversion of the laws.]
But what are we to think of laws when they are either evaded or
perverted, when there is not wisdom to feel their justice or virtue to
execute them? What are laws if judges are corrupt? The venality of the
judges of Rome was proverbial. Even in the comparatively virtuous age of
Cicero, a friend wrote to him not to recall a certain great functionary,
since he himself was implicated in his robberies, and the request was
granted. The empire was regarded as spoil, and the provinces were robbed
of their most valuable treasures. Witness the extortions of Verres in
Sicily, when a residence of two years was enough to make the fortune of
a provincial governor. Nor was Roman law ever independent of political
power. The praetors were politicians having ambitious aims beyond the
exercise of judicial authority. Influential men could ever buy verdicts,
and the government winked at the infamy. There _was_ justice in the
_abstract_, but not in the _reality_. And when jurisprudence
became complicated, judgments were made on technical points rather than
on principles of equity. It was as ruinous to go to law at Rome as in
London. Lawyers absorbed the money at issue by their tricks and delays.
They made the practice of their noble profession obscure and uncertain.
Clients danced attendance on eminent jurists, and received promises,
smiles, and oyster-shells. It was, too, often better to submit to an
injury than seek to redress it. Cases were decided _against_
justice, if some technical form or ancient usage favored the more
powerful party. Lawyers formed a large and powerful class, and they had
fortunes to make. Instead of protecting the innocent, they shielded the
guilty. Those who paid the highest fees were most certain of favorable
verdicts. The laws practically operated to make the rich richer and the
poor poorer. Between the venality of the court and the learned jugglery
of advocates, there was little hope for the obscure and indigent. Says
Merivale: "The occupation of the bench of justice was the great
instrument by which powerful men protected their monopolies; for, by
keeping this in their own hands, they could quash every attempt at
revealing, by legal practice, the enormities of their administration.
And the means of seduction allowed by law, such as the covert bribery of
shows and festivals, were used openly and boldly." What, then, could be
hoped from the laws when they were made the channel of extortion and
oppression? Law, the glory of Rome in the abstract, became the most
dismal mockery of the rights of man. Salt is good, but if the salt has
lost its savor it is good for nothing, not even for the dunghill. When
the laws practically add to the evils they were intended to cure, what
hope is there in their conservative influence? The practice of the law
ever remained an honorable profession, and the sons of the great were
trained to it; but we find such men as Cyprian, Chrysostom, and
Augustine, who originally embarked in it, turning from it with disgust,
as full of tricks and pedantries, in which success was only earned by a
prostitution of the moral powers. Laws perverted were worse than no laws
at all, since they could be turned by cunning, and sharp lawyers against
truth and innocence. It would be harsh and narrow to say that lawyers
were not necessary; but they did very little to avert evils. A wicked
generation pressed over the feeble barriers which the laws presented
against iniquity. They were only cobwebs to catch the insignificant.
Unless good laws are enforced by virtue and intelligence, they prove a
snare. It is the enforcement of laws, on the principles of justice, not
the creation of them, that saves a state.
[Sidenote: Art among the later Romans.]
If a complicated system of laws and government, on which the reason and
experience of ages were expended, did not prevent the empire from
falling into the hands of barbarians, much less was to be expected of
art, for which the Romans were also distinguished in common with the
Greeks. Much is said of the ennobling influence of those great creations
which gave so great lustre to ancient civilization. Founded on
imperishable ideas, we naturally attribute to them a great element of
national preservation, as they were of glory and pride.
[Sidenote: Its inherent beauty.]
It cannot be denied that art, when in harmony with the exalted ideals of
beauty and grace, which it seeks to perpetuate on canvas or in marble,
does much to improve the taste, to promote refinement and aesthetic
culture. And when art is pursued with a lofty end, seeking, like virtue,
its own reward, there is much that is ennobling in it. Even that
literature is most prized and most enduring which is artistic, like the
odes of Horace, the epics of Virgil, the condensed narrative of Tacitus;
like the "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," or the "Deserted Village," or
"Corinne," or "Waverley." Varro was the most learned writer whom Rome
produced, and the most voluminous. Yet scarcely any thing remains of his
productions. They were deficient in art, like German histories--very
useful in their day, but only survive in the writings of those who made
use of their materials. Hence science is not so enduring as poetry, when
poetry is exalted, since it is superseded by new discoveries. Hence
style in writing, when of great excellence, gives immortality to works
which could not have lived without it, even had they been ever so
profound. Voltaire's "Charles XII." is still a classic, like the numbers
of the "Spectator," although superficial, and, perhaps, unreliable. A
great painting is like the history of Thucydides--it lives because it is
a creation. Hence art, when severe and lofty, cannot be too highly
praised or cherished. A man cannot write for bread as he writes for
fame; and he cannot write for fame as he writes to satisfy his own
ideal. The immortal poets are those who sing themselves away to the
regions of bliss, in a divine ecstacy, from love of art, or to give
expression to the feelings which fill the soul. Sir Walter Scott could
write his "Ivanhoe" when inspired by the sentiments which warmed the
chivalrous ages; he became a mere literary hack when he wrote to pay his
debts.
[Sidenote: The true artist.]
The true artist is one of the favorites of Heaven, in a great measure
exalted above mortal commiseration, even if his days are clouded with
cares and sorrows. He lives in a different and purer atmosphere than
ordinary men. He may not banquet on the pleasures of sense, but he
revels in the joys of the soul. A Dante may be sad and sorrowful, as
when, in his gloomy wanderings and isolations, he asked of Fra Ilario
the rest and peace of his sacred monastery; but he was sad as a greater
than he wept over Jerusalem, in the profound seriousness of superior
knowledge, in the sublime solitariness of an inhabitant of another and
grander sphere. Genius ever partakes of this sadness, and it is as
shallow to mistake it for misery as it would be to pity the saint
passing through the tribulations of our worldly pilgrimage, in full view
of the unending glories which are in store for him in the celestial
city. The higher joys of the soul are foreign to frivolity, tumult, and
the mirth of wine,--those pleasures most prized by the weak or sensual.
There is nothing more sublime in this world than the example of a lofty
nature seeking the imperishable, the true, the beautiful, the good, amid
discomfort, or reproach, or neglect.
Such are truly great artists. Sometimes they are munificently rewarded
by their generation with praises and material goods, as was Apelles
among the Greeks, and Raphael among the Italians. Sometimes their
excellence was unappreciated, except by a few. But whether appreciated
or not, the great artists of antiquity belong to the constellation of
men of genius which shall shine forever. They lived in their own
glorious realm of thought and feeling, which the world can neither
understand nor share. They did not live for utilities. They lived to
realize their own exalted ideas of excellence.
[Sidenote: Decline of art.]
[Sidenote: Prostitution of art.]
[Sidenote: The later Romans incapable of appreciating art.]
[Sidenote: The degradation of art.]
[Sidenote: utter failure of art as a conservative power.]
But this was not the case in imperial Rome. All writers speak of a most
signal decline in the arts from Augustus to Diocletian. Even
architecture became corrupted. It was without taste, or a mere copy,
like the arch of Constantine, from the older models. There were no
original edifices erected, and such as were built were in defiance of
all the principles that were established by the Greek architects. Least
of all did art encourage grand sentiments. It did not paint ethereal
beauty. It did not chisel the marble to elevate or instruct. Statues
were made to please the degraded taste of rich but vulgar families, to
give pomp to luxury, to pander wicked passions. Painting was absolutely
disgraceful; and we veil our eyes and hide our blushes as we survey the
decorations of Pompeii. How degrading the pictures which are found amid
the ruins of ancient baths! Art was sensualized, perverted, corrupting.
Paintings appealed either to perverted tastes, or fostered a senseless
pride, or stimulated unholy passions, or flattered the vanity of the
rich--brought angels down to earth, not raised mortals to heaven. They
commemorated the regime of tyrants, or amused the wealthy classes, whose
wealth had bought alike the muse of the poets and the visions of the
sculptor. Art was venal. She sold her glories, which ought to be as
unbought as the graces of life and the smiles of beauty; and she became
a painted Haetera, drunk with the wine-cups of Babylon, and fantastic
with the sorceries of Egypt. How could she, thus prostituted, elevate
the people, or arrest degeneracy, or consecrate the ancient
superstitions? She facilitated rather than retarded the ruin. It is
marvelous how soon art degenerated with the progress of luxury,
reproducing evil more rapidly than good, and obscuring even truth
itself. Pleasures that appeal to the intellect will ever be in
accordance with prevailing tastes, and the more exquisite the art the
more fatally will it lead astray by the insidious entrance of a form as
an angel of light. We cannot extinguish art without destroying one of
the noblest developments of civilization; but we cannot have
civilization without multiplying the dangers and temptations of human
society. And even granting that the arts of the pagan world had a
refining influence on the few, what is this unless accompanied with the
virtues which grow out of self-sacrifice? I am not speaking of those
glories which art ought to represent, but of those attractions which it
presents when degraded. What conservative influence can result from the
Venus of Titian? Why did not art reform morals, as morals elevated art?
And why did art degenerate? Why did it not keep its own? The truth is,
that art is esoteric, and not popular. The imagination of the vulgar is
not sufficiently cultivated to see, in the emblems which art typifies,
those passions or sentiments which have moved generations with
enthusiasm. A Gothic cathedral is infinitely more interesting to a man
of sentiment or learning than to an unlettered boor. The ignorant cannot
appreciate the historical fidelity and marvelous study of races which
appear in such a statue as the African Sybil. We must comprehend the
character of Moses before we can kindle with admiration at the dignity
and majesty which Michael Angelo impersonated in his statue. When
Phidias, Praxiteles, and Lysippus moulded their clay models, they had a
Pericles, a Plato, or a Demosthenes for their critics and admirers. It
was for them they worked, and by them they were stimulated--not the
rabble crowd of slaves and sycophants. But when, at Rome, there was no
Cicero, no Octavius, no Mecaenas, no Horace, the artists toiled to please
imperial gluttons, pretentious freedmen, ignorant generals, drunken
senators, and venal judges. Their sublime art became the handmaid of
effeminacy, of vanity, of sensuality. It could not rise above the level
of those who dedicated themselves to its service. It did not make men
better. Was Leo X. a wiser Pope because he delighted in pictures? Did
art make the Medici at Florence more susceptible to religious
impressions? Does art sanctify Dresden or Florence? Does it make modern
capitals stronger, or more self-sacrificing, better fitted to contend
with violence, or guard against the follies which undermine a state?
What are the true conservative forces of our world? On what did Luther
and Cranmer build the hopes of regeneration? The cant of dilettanti
would be laughed at by the old apostles and martyrs. Art amuses, and may
refine when it is itself pure. It does not brace up the soul to
conflict. It does not teach how to resist temptation. It presents
temptations rather. It gilds the fascinations of earth. It does not
point to duties, or the life to come. That which is conservative is what
saves, not what adorns. We want ideas, invisible agencies, that which
exalts the mind above the material. So far as art can do this it is
well. It is a great element of civilization. So far as gardens and
flowers and villas and groves can do this, let us have them. Let us make
a paradise out of a desert. Man was put into Eden to dress and to keep
it. The material, rightly directed and used, is part of our just
inheritance. Man is physical as well as intellectual. It is monkish and
erratic to spurn the outward blessings of Providence. An inheritance in
Middlesex is worth more than one in Utopia. Give us beauty and grace--
they are invaluable. But let us remember, also, that it is chiefly from
moral truth that the soul expands--the recognition of responsibilities
and duties. No matter how splendid we make the triumphs of art in its
aesthetic influence, the question returns, Did these, in their best
estate, in Greece and Rome, lead to patriotism, to sacrifice, to an
elevated social home? And if these did not arrest corruption, how could
art, when perverted, save a falling empire? All profound inquiries as to
the progress of the race centre in moral truths,--those which have
reference to the spiritual rather than the material, the future rather
than the present. Art failed because it did not propound grand ideas
which pertain to spiritual and future interests. It especially failed
when it pandered to perverted tastes, when it was the mere pastime of
the rich, and diverted the mind from what is greatest and holiest. St.
Paul, when he wandered through the Grecian cities, said very little of
the sculptures and the temples which met his eye at every turn. He was
not insensible to beauty and grandeur. But he felt that all renovating
forces came from the ideas which he was sent to preach. He did not
condemn art; he probably admired it; but this he saw was a poor
foundation of national happiness and strength. If the severe morality of
the Stoics was a feeble barrier against corruption, how much more feeble
were temples to Minerva, and statues to Jupiter, and pictures of Venus?
Great was Diana of the Ephesians, but not as an influence to stem
degeneracy. Exalt art as highly as we can, it is not a renovating power,
and it is this of which we speak.
[Sidenote: Attempts of literature.]
[Sidenote: Degradation of literature.]
Literature attempted something higher than art; nor need we expatiate on
its transcendent excellence in the classical ages. This itself was art,
art in the highest and most enduring form, and will live when marbles
moulder away. Virgil, Cicero, Horace, Tacitus, Livy, Ovid, were great
artists, and civilization will perpetuate their fame. They cannot die.
What more immortal than the artistic delineations of man and of nature
which the poets and historians wrought out with so much labor and
genius? When did men, uninspired by Christianity, utter sentiments more
tender, or thoughts more profound, or aspirations more lofty? They are
our perpetual study and marvel--prodigies of genius, such as appear only
at great intervals. All that is most valuable in the ancient
civilization is perpetuated in its literature, and survives empires and
changes. The men who were amused and instructed by these great
masterpieces _have_ passed away, as well as their empire, but these
will interest remotest generations. These live by their own vitality. If
the unaided intellect of man could soar so high under the withering
influence of paganism and political slavery and social degradation, we
cannot but feel that Christianity has higher missions to accomplish than
to stimulate the intellectual faculties of man; and, while we remember
that, in our own times, some of the highest creations of genius have
been made by those who have repudiated the spirit of Christianity, we
cannot but feel that conservative influences do not come from
literature, in its best estate, unless its ideas are inspired by the
Gospel. The great writers of the Augustan age did not arrest degeneracy,
any more than Goethe and Bulwer and Byron and Hugo have in our own day.
They amused, they cultivated, they adorned; they did not save. Nor is it
probable that the great masterpieces of antiquity were favorite subjects
of study, except with a cultivated few, any more than Milton, Bacon, and
Pascal are read in our times by the people. They enriched libraries;
they were venerated and preserved in costly bindings; but they were not
familiar guides. The people read nothing. The great writers of antiquity
complain of the frivolity of the public taste. Moreover, the troubles of
the empire and the corruptions of society were unfavorable to lofty
creations of genius. Men were absorbed in passing events; and literary
men generally pandered to the vile taste of the people, or stooped to
adulate the monsters whom they feared. Hunting and hawking furnished
subjects for the muse of the poets. History was reduced to dull and dry
abridgments, and still drier commentaries. The people sought scandalous
anecdotes, or demoralizing sketches, or frothy poetry. The decline in
letters, like the decline in art, kept pace with the public misfortunes.
When lofty and contemplative characters were saddened and discouraged,
in view of public and private corruption, and saw ruin approaching, they
had no spirit to make great exertions--and exertions which would not be
appreciated. They sought retreats. There was no life, no enthusiasm in
literature. It was conventional--to suit fashionable coteries, with whom
strength was unpalatable and dignity a rebuke. Sound was preferred to
sense. Rhetoric supplanted thought. A sentimental flow of words passed
current for poetry. Literary men united into mutual admiration
societies, and exalted their own frivolous productions. As the penny-a-
liners of our day enumerate in their catalogue of great men chiefly
those who have written romances and poetry for magazines, and pass
unnoticed the stern thinkers of the age, so the literary gossips of Rome
made the city ring, like grasshoppers, with their importunate chink.
Unfortunately they were the only inhabitants of the field, for "no great
cattle" kept silence under the shadow of the protecting oak. Nero
suppressed the writings of Lucan, because he painted, in his
"Pharsalia," the follies of the time. Lucian gave vent to his bitter
sarcasms, and raised the veil of hypocrisy in which his generation had
wrapped itself; but his mockery, like that of Voltaire, demolished,
without seeking to substitute any thing better instead. Petronius
laughed at the vices he did not wish to remove, and in which he himself
shared. Juvenal and Martial both flattered the tyrants they detested.
The nobles may have laughed at their bitter sarcasms, but they pursued
their pleasures. Literature, under Augustus, did but little to elevate
the Roman mind. What could be expected when it was coarse, feeble, and
frivolous? If intellectual strength will not keep men from vices, what
can be expected when intellect panders to passions and interests? There
is no more absurd cant than that the culture of the mind favors the
culture of the heart. What do operas and theatres for the elevation of
society? Does a sentimental novel prompt to duty? Education seldom keeps
people from follies when the will is not influenced by virtues. If
Socrates sought the society of Aspasia, if Seneca amassed a gigantic
fortune in the discharge of great public trusts, if Cicero languished in
his exile because deprived of his accustomed pleasures, if Marcus
Aurelius was blind to the rights and virtues of Christians, what could
be hoped of the literary sensualists of the fourth century? If knowledge
did not restrain the passions of philosophers, how could passions be
restrained when every influence tended to excite them? Athens fell when
her arts and schools were in the zenith of their glory, how could Rome
stand when arts and schools undermined the moral health? Neither poets,
nor historians, nor critics had in view the regeneration of society.
They wrote, as poets and novelists write now, for bread, for fame, for
social position. If such a man as Racine, so lofty and severe, was
killed by a frown from Louis XIV., how could such an elaborate
voluptuary as Petronius live out of the smiles of Nero and the
flatteries of the court? If literature is feeble to arrest degeneracy
when it is lofty, inasmuch as it reaches only the cultivated few, how
inadequate it is when it is itself corrupted! The taste of our times,
with all our glorious Christian literature, and our public libraries,
our lecturers, our preachers, our professors, and our standard classical
authorities, is scarcely kept from being perverted by the flimsy
literature which has inundated us, and the newspaper platitudes which we
devour with our breakfast. With every effort of true and Christian
philanthropists, it is questionable whether there is any moral progress
among us. There is a material growth; but does the moral correspond,
with all our immense machinery for the elevation of society? What, then,
could be expected at Rome, where there were no public libraries, no
newspapers, no lyceums, no pulpits, no printing-presses, and where books
were the solace of a few aristocrats, and where these aristocrats could
only be amused by scandalous anecdotes and frivolous poetry. Literature
did not even hold its own. It steadily declined from the Augustan age.
It declined in proportion as the people had leisure to read it. Instead
of elevating society, society corrupted literature. The same may be said
of literature as was said of art. It did not fulfill its mission, if it
was intended to save. It could reach only a small part of the
population, and those whom it did reach were simply amused.
[Sidenote: Failure of literature.]
It would be too sweeping to affirm that the better forms of Roman
literature did not refine and elevate, but unfortunately they reached
only a few minds, and not always those who had political and social
power. Literature was not powerful enough, was not sufficiently
circulated, and the greater part of it was demoralizing, thus proving a
savor of death rather than a savor of life. When a civilization
reproduces evil more rapidly than good, there is not much hope for
society, except from some signal interposition of Almighty power.
Society is infinitely gloomy to a contemplative man, when there are no
antidotes to the poison which is rapidly consuming the vitality of
states. We contemplate approaching death, and death amid the array of
physical glories. It is like a rich man laid on the bed from which he
will never rise, surrounded with every comfort and every pleasure that
men seek. Literature was a feeble medicine to the dying patient. Had all
classes banqueted on the rich treasure of the mind, and been content,
then there might have been some hope. But this was not the fact. Only a
few reveled in the glories of thought. And these scorned the people.
[Sidenote: Ancient philosophy.]
But philosophy attempted something higher and nobler--even to reform
morals, especially at Rome. The Romans had but little taste for abstract
speculations. And hence they did not extend the boundaries of thought
and reason beyond the limits which the Greeks arrived at. But they
adopted what was most practical in the Grecian philosophy, and applied
it to common life.
If there is any thing lofty in paganism, it is philosophy. It proposed
to seek the beautiful, the true, the good; to divert men from degrading
pursuits; to set a low estimate on money, and material gains, and empty
pleasures. It was calm, fearless, and inquiring. All sects of
philosophers despised the pursuits of the vulgar, and affected wisdom.
Minerva, not Venus, not Diana, was the goddess of their idolatry. It
deified reason, and sought to control the passions. It longed for the
realms of truth and love. It believed in the divine, and detested the
gross. Hence the philosophers were not eager for outward rewards, and
kept aloof from the demoralizing pleasures of the people. They attired
themselves in a different garb, lived retired, and studied the welfare
of the soul. Mind was adored, and matter depreciated. They were esoteric
men who abhorred vice, and sought the higher good. Morally, they were in
general superior to other men, as they were in intellectual gifts and
attainments. And they opposed the popular current of opinions, and
stemmed popular vices. They were the reformers of the ancient world, the
sages--earnest men, advocating the great certitudes of love and
friendship and patriotism--the lofty spirits of their time, preoccupied
and rapt in their noble inquiries into nature and God. Look at Socrates,
so careless of dress, walking barefooted, giving what he had away,
courting mortification, and disdaining popular favor, if he could only
persuade his pupils of the greatness of the infinite and imperishable.
Look at Pythagoras, refusing political office, and consecrating himself
to teaching. Look to Xenophanes, wandering over Sicily in the holy
enthusiasm of a rhapsodist of truth. Look at Parmenides, forsaking
patrimonial wealth, that he might teach the distinction between ideas
obtained through the reason, and ideas obtained through the senses. Look
at Heraclitus, refusing the splendid offers of Darius, and retiring to
solitudes, that he might explore the depths of his own nature. See
Anaxagoras, allowing his fortune to melt away, that he might discover
the many faces of nature. See Empedocles, giving away his fortune to
poor girls, that he might attack the Anthropomorphism of his day; or
Democritus declining the sovereignty of Abdera, that he might have
leisure to speculate on the distinction between reflection and
sensation; or Diogenes living in a tub; or Plato in his garden; or
Aristotle in the shady side of the Lyceum; or Zeno guarding the keys of
the citadel. See the good Aurelius, in later and more corrupt ages,
forsaking the pleasures of an imperial throne, that he might meditate on
his soul's welfare, or the slave Epictetus, unfolding the richest
lessons of moral wisdom to a corrupt and listless generation.
[Sidenote: The Romans fail to appreciate philosophy.]
The loftier forms of the ancient philosophy were never popular, even at
Athens. The popular teachers were sophists and rhetoricians, who, as men
of fashion and ambition, despised the sublime speculations of Socrates
and Plato. The Platonic philosophy had a hold only of a few, and these
were men of powerful minds, but stood aloof from the prevailing tastes
and pleasures. It had still less influence on the Roman mind, which was
practical and worldly. Platonism opposed the sensualism and materialism
of the times, believed in eternal ideas, sought the knowledge of God as
the great end of life--a sublime realism which was hardly more
appreciated than Christianity itself. Platonism was doubtless the
highest effort of uninspired men, under the influence of pagan ideas and
institutions, to attain a knowledge of God and the soul. It gloried in
immortality, and claimed for man a nature akin to the deity, and
destined to a higher development after death. It endeavored to
understand our complex nature, and trace a connection between earth and
heaven. It sought to distinguish between forms and essence, the
spiritual and the sensual. It spiritualized the popular mythology, and
insisted on the unity on which it fundamentally rests. It did not sneer
at religious earnestness, and looked upon the beatitudes of the soul as
the highest good of earth.
[Sidenote: Platonism.]
But such knowledge was too wonderful for the Romans. It was high, and
they could not attain unto it. Its ends were too spiritual and elevated.
There was scarcely an eminent Roman who adopted the system. Cicero came
the nearest to understand its spiritual import, but it was too lofty
even for him. He composed a republic and a treatise of laws, in which
reason and the rule of right should be made the guide of states and
empires. In this way Platonism, as a sublime hypothesis, entered into
jurisprudence. It affected the thinking of master minds, even as it
entered into Christianity at a later period, and formed an alliance with
it. But, practically, it did not have much effect on life and manners.
It was regarded as a system of mysticism, cherished by a very small
esoteric body of believers, who were spurned as dreamers. They were
looked upon very much as the transcendentalists of our own day are
regarded, with whom the great body of even thinkers had but little
sympathy. There was no more respect for Plato at Rome than there is for
Kant among the merchants of London. His name may have been pronounced
with an oracular admiration, but there was no profound appreciation of
him, no general knowledge of his writings, no sympathy for his
doctrines. They were to the Romans foolishness, somewhat after the sense
that Christianity was to the Greeks. They transcended their experience,
went beyond the limits of their thoughts, and sought spiritual
certitudes which they disdained.
[Sidenote: The Aristotelian philosophy.]
[Sidenote: Its failure.]
The philosophy of Aristotle was nearly as distasteful to the Romans as
that of Plato, and it was less lofty. It had a skeptical tendency, and
excluded scientific light from the sphere of activity, and inculcated a
proud and self-reliant spirit. The academics denied the possibility of
arriving at truth with certainty; and, therefore, held it uncertain
whether the gods existed or not, whether the soul is mortal or survives
the body, whether virtue is preferable to vice, or the contrary. They
sneered at religious earnestness, and tacitly encouraged influences
greatly to be dreaded. They held in supreme contempt the popular
religion, and made a mockery of religious ceremonies. They undermined
superstition, but weakened religion also by substituting nothing instead
of the absurdities they brushed away. Lucian was a type of these
philosophers, and his bitter sarcasms were more powerful than the logic
of Cicero to destroy what could not be proved. The academics may be said
to have been the rationalists of antiquity. The old religions could not
maintain their ground before the inquiring skepticism and sarcastic wit
of these irreligious philosophers, who contented themselves with a
lifeless deism--a system which did not, indeed, deny the existence and
providence of God, but which attributed to the Deity an indifference
respecting the affairs of men. Dr. Neander, in the first volume of the
"History of the Church," has shown the effects of the unbelief of the
academics on the state of society at Rome, especially on the men of rank
and fashion. Infidelity, in any form, can have no conservative
influence. It is designed to pull down, and not to build up.
Superstition, with all its puerilities, is better than a scornful and
proud philosophy which takes no cognizance of popular wants and
aspirations.
[Sidenote: The Stoical philosophy.]
If any form of ancient philosophy could have renovated society, it was
the Stoical school, which Zeno had founded. It commended itself, in a
corrupt age, to many noble and powerful minds, because it raised them
above the corruption around them, and proclaimed an ideal standard of
morality. The Romans cared very little for mere speculations on God or
the universe; but they did revere that which proposed a practical aim.
The Stoics despised prevailing baseness, and set examples of a severe
morality. Marcus Aurelius, one of the loftiest followers of this school,
was a model of every virtue, and he looked upon his philosophy as a
means of salvation to a crumbling empire. But the Stoics, with all their
morality, were the Pharisees of pagan antiquity. They held themselves
superior to all other classes of men. They gloried in their proud
isolation. And with all the loftiness of Stoicism, it did not teach of a
God who governed the world in mercy and love, but according to the iron
decrees of necessity. It attacked error with a stern severity, but had
no toleration for human weakness. It confounded the idea of God with
that of the universe, and therefore destroyed his personality, making
the Deity himself an influence, or a development. The Stoic despised the
age, and despised every influence to elevate it which did not come from
himself. He treated the most wholesome truths so partially as to be led
into the greatest absurdities of doctrine and inconsistencies with their
general principle. Epictetus, indeed, infused a new life into the
Stoical philosophy. He taught the doctrine of passive endurance so
forcibly that the Christians claimed him for their own. But there was
nothing which appealed to the people in Stoicism. It was too stern and
cold. It had no humanity. Hence they stood aloof, as they did from all
the systems of Grecian philosophy. It was not for them, but for the
learned and the cultivated. It was a system of thought; it was not a
religion--a speculation and not a life. Like Platonism, the Stoical
philosophy was esoteric, and only appealed to a few elevated minds, who
had affected indifference to the evils of life, and had learned to
conquer natural affections. The Stoical doctrines of Epictetus had a
more practical end in view than those of Zeno, since they were applied
to Roman thought and life. We cannot deny the purity and beauty of his
aphorisms, but he was like Noah preaching before the flood. He had his
disciples and admirers, but they made a feeble barrier against
corruptions. It was the protest of a man before a mob of excited and
angry persecutors resolved on his death. It was no more heard than the
dying speech of Stephen. It was lost utterly on a people abandoned to
inglorious pleasure.
[Sidenote: The Epicurean philosophy.]
The only form of philosophy which was popular with the Romans, and which
was appreciated, was the Epicurean. The disciples of this school were,
of course, the luxurious, the fashionable, the worldly, and it exercised
upon them but a feeble restraining influence. It denied the providence
of God; it maintained that the world was governed by chance; it denied
the existence of moral goodness; it affirmed that the soul was mortal,
and that pleasure was the only good. If the more contemplative and the
least passionate rebuked gross vices, they still advocated a tranquil
indifference to outward events that showed neither loftiness nor fear of
judgment. Their system was openly based upon atheism. Self-love was the
foundation of all action, and self-indulgence was the ultimate good. The
Epicureans were the patrons of the circus, and the theatre, and the
banquet, and, indeed, of all those vanities and follies which disgraced
the latter days of Rome. Their influence tended to enervate and corrupt.
Their philosophy, instead of preserving old forms of life, old customs,
old institutions, old traditions and associations, made a mockery of
them all, and was as efficient in producing decay as was the philosophy
of the eighteenth century in France in paving the way for the
revolution. The purest type of Epicureanism may have refined a few of
the better sort, but the prevailing influence, doubtless, undermined
society. The god of the reason was allied with the god of the sense, and
the maniac soul of the lying prophet entered the schools. Education, as
directed by them, served only to make youth worldly and frivolous.
Teachers sought to amuse and not to instruct, to make royal roads to
knowledge, to exalt the omnipotence of money, to set a high value on
what passes away. They limited man to himself, and acknowledged no other
object of human exertion than is to be found within the compass of the
fleeting phenomena of the present life. They had no wish beyond the
present hour, and only aimed to console man in the corruption and misery
which he saw around him. They had no high aims; nor did they seek to
produce profound impressions. They adapted themselves to what was,
rather than what ought to be. They were easy and gracious, but utterly
without earnestness. The Peripatetic inquired, sneeringly, "What
_is_ truth?" The Epicurean languidly said, "What is truth to
_me_. There is no truth nor virtue, nor is there a God, nor a place
of rewards and punishments. This world is my theatre. Let me eat and
drink, for to-morrow I die. I will abstain from inordinate self-
indulgence, for it will shorten my life, or produce satiety, ennui,
disgust--not because it is wrong. I will make the most of earth and of
my faculties for pleasure. Wealth is the greatest blessing, poverty the
greatest calamity. Friends are of no account, unless they amuse me or
help me. The sentiment of friendship is impossible, and would be
unsatisfactory." The true Epicurean quarreled with no person and with no
opinions. Nothing was of consequence but ease, prosperity, self-
forgetfulness. The soul of man could aspire to nothing beyond this life;
and when death came, it was a release, a thing neither to be regretted
nor rejoiced in, but an irresistible fate. What could be expected from
such a system? What renovation in such a cold, barren, negative faith,
without hope, without God in the world? The most prevalent of all the
systems of philosophy, so far from doing good, did evil. How could it
save when its ends were destructive of all those sentiments on which
true greatness rests? What could be expected of a philosophy which only
served to amuse the great, to throw contempt on the people, to undermine
religious aspirations, to vitiate the moral sense, to ignore God and
duty and a life to come?
Thus every influence at Rome, whether proceeding from art, or
literature, or philosophy, or government, instead of saving, tended to
destroy. All these things came from man, and could not elevate him
beyond himself. Even religion was a compound of superstitions, ritual
observances, and puerilities. It did not come from God. It was neither
lofty nor pure. What good there was soon became perverted, and the evil
was reproduced more rapidly than good. Only error seemed to have
vitality. The false lights which sin had kindled shed only a delusive
gleam. The soul occasionally asserted the dignity which God had given
it, and great men swept and garnished houses, but devils reentered, and
the normal condition of humanity was what the Bible declares it to be
since Adam was expelled from Paradise. Genius, energy, ambition, were
allowed to win their victories, and they shed a glorious light, and for
a time exalted the reason of man, but alas, were soon followed by shame
and degradation.
[Sidenote: All forms of civilization fail to be conservative.]
And what is the logical inference--the deduction which we are compelled
to draw from this mournful history of the failure of all those grand
trophies of the civilization which man has made? Can it be other than
this: that man cannot save himself; that nothing which comes from him,
whether of genius or will, proves to be a conservative force from
generation to generation; that it will be perverted, however true, or
beautiful, or glorious, because "men love darkness rather than light."
All that is truly conservative, all that grows brighter and brighter
with the progress of ages, all that is indestructible and of permanent
beauty, must come from a power higher than that of man, whether
supernatural or not--must be a revelation to man from Heaven, assisted
by divine grace. It must be divine truth in conjunction with divine
love. It must be a light from Him who made us, and which alone baffles
the power of evil.
He did send Christianity, when every thing else had signally failed, as
it will forever fail. And this is the seed of the woman which shall
bruise the serpent's head.
We have now to show why this great renovating and life-giving influence
did not prevent the destruction of the empire; and we may be convinced
that if this great end could not be accomplished in accordance with the
plans of Providence, and in accordance with the laws by which He rules
the world, Christianity was in no sense a failure, as man's devices
were; but, through the mouths and writings of great bishops, saints, and
doctors, projected its saving truths far into the shadows of barbaric
Europe, and laid the foundation for a new and more glorious
civilization--a civilization not destined to perish, so far as it is in
harmony with divine revelation.
CHAPTER XIII.
WHY CHRISTIANITY DID NOT ARREST THE RUIN OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
One of the most interesting inquiries which is suggested by history is,
Why Christianity did not prevent the glory of the old civilization from
being succeeded by shame? This is not only a grand inquiry, but it is
mysterious. We are naturally surprised that literature, art, science,
laws, and the perfect mechanism of government should have proved such
feeble barriers against degeneracy, for these are among the highest
triumphs of the human mind, and such as the world will not willingly let
die. But a still more potent and majestic influence than any thing which
proceeds from man still remained to the haughty masters of the ancient
world. A new religion had been proclaimed with the establishment of the
empire, which gradually broke down the old superstitions, conquered the
hatred and prejudices of both Greeks and Romans, supplanted the old
systems of Paganism, and went on from conquering to conquer, until it
seated itself on the imperial throne, and proved itself to be the wisdom
and the power of God.
But we see that as this wonderful religion gained ground, whether in
changing the lives of individuals, or in allying itself with dominant
institutions, the Roman Empire declined. When Christianity was first
proclaimed, the Roman eagles surmounted the principal cities of
antiquity, and the central despotism on the banks of the Tiber was the
law of the world. When it was a feeble light on the mountains of
Galilee, the glory of Rome was the object of universal panegyric, and
the city of the seven hills rejoiced in a magnificence which promised to
be eternal. But when Paganism yielded to Christianity, and when the
latter had spread to every city and village in the empire, with its
grand hierarchy of bishops and doctors, the proud empire was in ruins.
It would even seem that its decline and fall kept pace with the triumphs
of a religion it had spurned and persecuted.
[Sidenote: Society retrograded as Christianity spread.]
What is the explanation of this grand mystery? Why should society have
declined as Christianity spread, if, as we believe, Christianity is the
great conservative force of the world, and is destined to regenerate all
government, science, and social life? If the stability of the empire
rested on virtues, and was undermined by vices, virtue must have
declined and vice increased. But how can we reconcile such a fact with
the progress of a religion which is the mainspring of all virtue, and
the destruction of all vice? We do know that Christianity did not
prevent the empire from falling, but also we have the testimony of poets
and historians to the exceeding wickedness of society when Christianity
was fairly established.
[Sidenote: A mysterious fact.]
In presenting the strange phenomenon of a falling empire with an all-
conquering religion, it is necessary to grapple with the gloomy problem.
We have unbounded faith in the power of Christianity to save the world,
and yet we see a mighty empire crumbling to pieces from vices which
Christianity did not subdue. What a deduction might be drawn from this
strange fact, that Christianity _can_, _but did not, save_.
How mournful the future of modern Christian nations if the
same fact should be repeated--if civilization should decline as
Christianity achieves its triumphs! Is it possible that civilization,
the triumph of human genius and will, may fade away as Christianity,
which gives vitality to society, advances? Has civilization nothing to
do with Christianity?
[Sidenote: Christianity not however a failure.]
But there can be nothing mournful in the developments of a divine
religion--nothing discouraging in the conquests which seemed incomplete.
Nor did it really, in any important task, prove a failure; but amid the
ashes of the old world, as it disappeared, we see the new creation, and
listen to melodious birth-songs. Indeed, the fall of the empire, when we
profoundly survey it, instead of detracting from Christianity, only
prepared the way for higher triumphs, and for a loftier development of
civilization itself. Future ages have probably lost nothing by the ruin
of Rome, while the world has gained by the establishment of
Christianity, even by the seeds of truth planted by the early church.
Still, it cannot be questioned that, in the Roman empire, vices and
corruptions spread with terrific and mournful rapidity even after
Christianity was revealed--so rapidly, indeed, that Christianity opposed
but a feeble barrier.
The history of Christianity among the Romans suggests these three
inquiries:--
First, why it proved so feeble in arresting degeneracy; secondly, how
far it conserved old institutions; and thirdly, how far it created a new
and higher civilization.
[Sidenote: Christianity fails to check degeneracy.]
The first inquiry, on a superficial view, is discouraging. We see a
sublime realism making quietly its converts by thousands, without
seemingly checking ordinary vices. We are reminded of Socrates creating
Platos, yet failing to reform Athens. We behold witnesses of the truth
in every land, which gradually sinks deeper and deeper in infamy as the
witnesses increase. And, when the land is about to be overrun by
barbarians, when despair seizes the public mind, and desolation
overspreads the earth, and good men hide in rocks, and dens, and caves,
we see the church resplendent with wealth and glory, her bishops
enthroned as dignitaries, princes doing homage to saints, and even the
barbarians themselves bowing down in reverence and awe. How barren these
ecclesiastical victories seem to a superficial or infidel eye! If
Christianity is what its converts claim, why did it accomplish so
little?
[Sidenote: Yet still a conquering religion.]
But, in another aspect, the victories do not seem so barren; and they
even appear more and more majestic the more they are contemplated. There
is something grand in the spread of new ideas which are unpalatable to
the mighty and the wise. Considering the humble characters of the early
Apostles and their disciples, their triumphs were really magnificent. It
is astonishing that the teachings of fishermen should have supplanted
the teachings of Jewish rabbis and Grecian philosophers, amid so great
and general opposition. It is remarkable that their doctrines should
have so completely changed the lives of those who embraced them. It is
wonderful that emperors who persecuted and sages who spurned the
religion of Jesus, should have been won over by a moral force superior
to all the venerated influences of the old religion of which they were
guardians and expounders. It is surprising that such relentless and
bloody persecutions as took place for three hundred years should have
been so futile. When we remember the extension of Christianity into all
the countries known to the ancients, and the marvelous fruits it bore
among its converts, making them brothers, heroes, martyrs, saints,
doctors--a benediction and a blessing wherever they went; and when we
see these little esoteric bands, in upper chambers or in catacombs,
persecuted, tormented, despised, yet gaining daily new adherents,
without the aid of wealth, or learning, or social position, or political
power, until generals, senators, and kings came willingly into their
fraternity, and bound themselves by their rules, and changed the whole
habits of their lives, looking to the future rather than the present--
the infinite rather than the finite; blameless in morals, lofty in
faith, heavenly in love; sheep among wolves, yet not devoured--we feel
that Christianity cannot be too highly exalted as a conquering power.
But the point is, not that Christianity failed to conquer, but that it
failed to save the Roman world. The conquests of the church are
universally admitted and universally admired. They were the most
wonderful moral victories ever achieved. But, while Christianity
conquered Rome, why did she fail to arrest its ruin? Vice gained on
virtue, rather than virtue gained on vice, even when the cross was
planted on the battlements of the imperial palaces.
[Sidenote: Christianity too late to save.]
The victories of Christianity came not too late for the human race, but
for the stability of the Roman empire. Had Christianity completely
triumphed when Julius Caesar overturned the republic, the empire might
have lasted. But when Constantine was converted, the empire was shaken
to its foundations, and the barbarians were advancing. No medicine could
have prevented the diseased old body from dying. The time had come. When
the wretched inebriate embraces a spiritual religion with one foot in
the grave, with a constitution completely undermined, and the seeds of
death planted, then no repentance or lofty aspiration can prevent
physical death. It was so in Rome. Society was completely undermined
long before the emperors became Christians. The fruits of iniquity were
being reaped when Chrysostom and Augustine lifted up their voices. The
body was diseased, so that no spiritual influence could work upon it.
Had every man in the empire been a Christian, yet, when, the army had
lost its discipline and efficiency, when patriotism had fled, when
centuries of vices had enfeebled the physical forces, when puny races
had lost all martial ardor, and could present nothing but weakness and
cowardice--all from physical causes, how could they have successfully
contended with the new and powerful barbaric armies? Christianity saves
the soul; it does not restore exhausted physical functions. The vices
which had undermined were learned before Christianity protested, and
were dominant when Christianity was feeble. The effects of those vices
were universal before a remedy could be applied.
[Sidenote: Limited number of the converts.]
[Sidenote: Early Christians unimportant.]
Moreover, when Christianity itself was a vital and conquering force, the
number of its converts formed but a small proportion of the inhabitants
of the empire. Witnesses of the truth were sent into every important
city in the world, but they simply protested in a dark corner. Their
warning voice was unheeded except by a few, and these were unimportant
people in a social or political or intellectual point of view. Even when
Constantine was converted, the number of Christians in the empire,
according to Gibbon, whose statement has not been refuted, was only one
fifth of the whole population. And this accounts for the insignificant
social changes that Christianity wrought. A vast majority was opposed to
them even in the fourth century. There were doubtless large numbers of
Christians at Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, Corinth, Ephesus, and other
populous cities, in the third century, and also there were powerful
churches in the great centres of trade, where people of all nations
congregated; but they were exposed to bitter persecutions, and they
durst not be ostentatious, not even in those edifices where they
congregated for the worship of Jehovah. For two centuries they worshiped
God in secret and lonely places, exposed to persecution and scorn. Not
only were the Christians few in number, when compared with the whole
population, but they were chiefly confined to the humble classes. In the
first century not many wise or noble were called. No great names have
been handed down to us. Now and then a centurion was converted, or some
dependent on a great man's household, or some servant in the imperial
family; but no philosophers, or statesmen, or nobles, or generals, or
governors, or judges, or magistrates. In the first century the
Christians were not of sufficient importance to be generally persecuted
by the government. They had not even arrested public attention. Nobody
wrote against them, not even Greek philosophers. We do not read of
protests or apologies from the Christians themselves. No contemporary
historian or poet alludes to them. They had no great men in their ranks,
either for learning, or talents, or wealth, or social position. In the
cities they were chiefly artisans, slaves, servants, or mechanics, and
in the country they were peasants. They were unlettered, plebeian,
unimportant. If there were distinguished converts, we do not know their
names. Ecclesiastical history is silent as to distinguished persons
except as persecutors, or as great contemporaries. We read of the
calamities of the Jews, of Herod Agrippa, of Philo, of Nero's
persecution, of the emperors, but not of Christians. Eusebius does not
narrate a single interesting or important fact which took place in the
first century through the agency of a great man. We know scarcely more
than what is contained in the New Testament. We read that Clement was
bishop of Rome, but know nothing of his administration. We do not know
whether or not he was a man of any worldly consideration. Nothing in
history is more barren than the annals of the church in the first
century, so far as great names are concerned. Yet in this century
converts were multiplied in every city, and traditions point to the
martyrdoms of those who were prominent, including nearly all of the
Apostles.
[Sidenote: Obscurity of the early Christians.]
[Sidenote: Their intense religious life.]
In the second century there are no greater names than Polycarp,
Irenaeus, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Clement Melito, and Apollonius--quiet
bishops or intrepid martyrs--bishops who addressed their flocks in upper
chambers, and who held no worldly rank--famous only for their sanctity
or simplicity of character, and only mentioned for their sufferings and
faith. We read of martyrs, some of whom wrote valuable treatises and
apologies; but among them we find no people of rank, not even ladies
like Paula and Marcella and Fabiola, in the time of Jerome, unless
Symphorosa is an exception. It was a disgrace to be a Christian in the
eye of fashion or power. Even the great Marcus Aurelius, so
distinguished as a man and a philosopher, had supreme contempt of the
new apostles of truth, and was one of their most unrelenting
persecutors. The early Christian literature is chiefly apologetic, and
the doctrinal character of the fathers of this century is simple and
practical, showing no great acquaintance with the system of heathen
thought. There were controversies in the church--an intense religious
life--great activities, great virtues, but no outward conflicts, no
secular history, nothing to arrest public notice. But the converts to
Christianity, plebeian as they were, were yet of sufficient consequence
to be persecuted. They had attracted the notice of government. They were
looked upon as fanatics who sought to destroy a reverence for existing
institutions. But they had not as yet assailed the government, or the
great social institutions of the empire. In this century the polity of
the church was quietly organized. There was an organized fellowship
among the members: bishops had become influential, not in society, but
among the Christians; dioceses and parishes were established; there was
a distinction between city and rural bishops; delegates of churches
assembled to discuss points of faith, or suppress nascent heresies; the
diocesan system was developed, and ecclesiastical centralization
commenced; deacons began to be reckoned among the higher clergy; the
weapons of excommunication were forged; missionary efforts were carried
on; the festivals of the church were created; Gnosticism--a kind of
philosophical religion--was embraced by many leading minds; catechetical
schools taught the faith systematically; the formulas of baptism and the
other sacraments became of great importance; marriage with unbelievers
was discouraged; and monachism became popular. The internal history of
the church becomes interesting, but still the Christians had no great
influence outside their own body; it was esoteric, quiet, unobtrusive;
and it was a very small body of pure and blameless men, who did not
aspire to control society.
[Sidenote: The empire in a hopeless state.]
While the church was thus laying the foundation of its future polity and
power, but nothing more, and failed to attract the great, or men of
ambitious views--those who led society--the empire was approaching a
most fearful crisis. Hadrian had built a wall from the Rhine to the
Danube to arrest the incursions of barbarians; the Roman garrisons
beyond the Danube were withdrawn; the Goths had advanced from the
Vistula and the Oder to the shores of the Black Sea; the Jews were
dispersed; a chaos of deities was in the Roman Pantheon; Grecian
philosophy had degenerated; the taste of the people had become utterly
corrupt; games and festivals were the business and the amusement of the
people; the despotism of the emperors had utterly annulled all rights; a
succession of feeble and wicked princes ruled supreme; the empire was
falling into a state of luxury and inglorious peace; the middle classes
had become extinct; and disproportionate fortunes had vastly increased
slavery. The work of disintegration had commenced.
[Sidenote: The church of the third century.]
The third century saw the church more powerful as an institution.
Regular synods had assembled in the great cities of the empire; the
metropolitan system was matured; the canons of the church were
definitely enumerated; great schools of theology attracted inquiring
minds; the doctrines of faith were systematized; Christianity had spread
so extensively that it must needs be persecuted or legalized; great
bishops ruled the growing church; great doctors speculated on the
questions which had agitated the Grecian schools; church edifices were
enlarged, and banquets instituted in honor of the martyrs. The church
was rapidly advancing to a position which extorted the attention of
mankind. But even so late as the close of the third century, there were
but few Christians eminent for riches or rank. There were some great
bishops like Cyprian, Hippolytus, Victor, Demetrius; some great
theologians like Origen, Tertullian, and Clement; some great heretics
like Hermogones, Sabellius, and Novatian--all marked men, immortal men;
but of no great influence outside their ranks.
What could they do in a time of so much public misery and misfortune as
marked the empire when it was ruled by monsters; when the barbarians had
obtained a foothold in the provinces; when the capital was deserted by
the emperors for the camp; and when signs of decay and ruin were
apparent to all thoughtful minds?
[Sidenote: The church of the fourth century.]
It was not till the fourth century--when imperial persecution had
stopped; when Constantine was converted; when the church was allied with
the state; when the early faith was itself corrupted; when superstition
and vain philosophy had entered the ranks of the faithful; when bishops
became courtiers; when churches became both rich and splendid; when
synods were brought under political influence; when monachists had
established a false principle of virtue; when politics and dogmatics
went hand in hand, and emperors enforced the decrees of councils--that
men of rank entered the church, and the church had a visible influence
on the state. It was not till the fourth century that such great names
as Arius, Athanasius, Hosius, Eusebius, Cyril of Alexandria, Hilary of
Poictiers, Martin of Tours, Diodorus of Tarsus, Ambrose of Milan, Basil
of Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen, Theophilus of
Alexandria, Chrysostom of Constantinople, arose and made their voices
heard in the council chambers of the great.
[Sidenote: The empire dismembered before the political triumphs of
Christianity.]
But when the church had become a mighty and recognized power, when it
had assailed social institutions, when it drew men of rank into its
folds, when it was no longer an obloquy to be a Christian--then the seat
of empire had been removed to the banks of the Bosphorus; then the Goths
and Vandals had become most formidable enemies, and Theodosius, the last
great emperor, was making a brave but futile attempt to revive the
glories of Trajan and the Antonines. The empire was crumbling to pieces--
was dying--and even Christianity could not save it politically.
[Sidenote: The Christians form an imperfect barrier against corruption.]
[Sidenote: The Christians an esoteric band of worshipers.]
[Sidenote: Christians powerless outside their ranks.]
[Sidenote: The church powerless outside its circle.]
[Sidenote: Christianity itself corrupted.]
Thus, when Christianity was pure, and a truly renovating religion, it
had no social influence on the leaders of rank and fashion. How could
people of no political or social position, who were objects of ridicule
and contempt, have effected great social or political changes? Until
their conversion, they had not modified a law, and still less enacted
one. How could they reach the ear of those who disdained, repelled, and
persecuted them? They had no influence on the makers or the executors of
laws. They could not call in the vast power of fashion, for they had no
social prestige. They could not create a public opinion, for they were
obliged to hide to save their lives. They had no learning to attract
philosophers. They were not allowed to preach in public, and could not
reach the people. They had no schools, nor books, nor colleges. They
could not assail public institutions, for despotism was established and
was irresistible. There was no liberty of speech by which they might
have made converts above their rank. They could not subvert slavery
without influencing those who controlled it. They could not destroy
disproportionate fortunes, since the wealthy were protected by
government. They could not interfere with games and demoralizing
spectacles, for these were controlled by the emperor and his ministers,
whose ear they could not reach, and upon whom all lofty arguments would
have been wasted. The court, the army, the aristocracy, rushed with
headlong eagerness into excesses and pleasures, which could not have
been arrested by the wise and good of their own rank; much less by a
class who were obnoxious and forgotten. The Christians could not even
utter indignant protests without personal danger, to which they were not
called. There was no possible way of presenting a barrier against
corruption, outside their own ranks. Obscure men in these times can
write books, but not under the empire; now they can lecture and preach,
but not then. They were obliged to conceal their sentiments when there
was danger of being suspected of being Christians. Those who have
observed the resistless tyranny of fashion in our times--how even
Christians are drawn into its eddies, not merely in such matters as
dress, and houses, and education, but even in pleasures which are
questionable, and in opinions which are false--what are we to think of
the overwhelming influence of fashion at Rome, when society was still
more artificial, when its leaders were kings and tyrants, and when all
the propensities of human nature were in accordance with the customs
handed down for centuries, and endorsed by all who were powerful in
ordinary life. If Christians are so feeble in Paris, London, and New
York, in suppressing acknowledged evils which come from the world, how
could the early Christians prevent the ascendency of evils among those
over whom they had no influence--perhaps those who did not feel them to
be evils at all. If Christians who affect great social position in our
cities cannot break up theatres and other demoralizing pleasures, how
could the early Christians bring the games of the amphitheatre into
disrepute? If social evils increase among us in spite of churches and
schools and a free press and lectures, how could we expect them to
decrease when no power was exerted to bring them into disrepute, and
when the general tone of society was infinitely lower than in the worst
capitals of modern times? What would wealthy senators, with their armies
of clients and slaves, or the frivolous courtiers of godless emperors,
or the sensual equestrians who composed a moneyed class, care for
opposition to their pleasures from those whom they despised, and with
whom they never associated, and who had no influence on public opinion?
The Christians could not, and dared not, make their voices heard, to any
extent, outside their own esoteric circle. They had an influence, or
their circle could not have increased, but it was private and concealed.
Artisans talked with artisans, servants with servants, soldiers with
soldiers. They converted, quietly and unobtrusively, by private talk and
blameless lives, those with whom alone they freely mingled. Thus their
numbers multiplied, but their prestige did not increase, until these
mechanics and laborers and slaves exercised some fortunate influence, by
occasional entreaties, on their haughty masters. A favorite slave could
sometimes gain the ear of the lady whose hair she dressed; or some
veteran and trusted servant might persuade an indulgent master to listen
to the new truths which were such a life to him. Thus the circle of the
Christians gradually embraced some of the more candid and intellectual
and fearless of the great. But it should be borne in mind that as the
circle was enlarged, especially so as to embrace people whose lives had
been egotistical and self-indulgent, the standard of morality was
lowered. Also we should remember, as the circle increased, even of
devout believers, that vice and degeneracy increased also outside the
circle, and also as rapidly. The overwhelming current of corruption
swept every thing away before it. What if the small minority were
virtuous, when the vast majority were vicious. They were only witnesses
of truth; they were not triumphant conquerors of error. If the state
could have lasted a thousand years longer in peace and prosperity, then
the leaven of the Gospel might have leavened the whole lump. But the
barbarians could not wait for society to be renovated. They came when
society was most enervated. When the Christians had gained sufficient
influence to stop the games of the circus and the amphitheatre; when
they had induced emperors to modify slavery; when they uttered protests
against demoralizing amusements, the barbarians had advanced, and were
becoming the new masters of the empire. The prayers of Augustine, the
letters of Jerome, the sermons of Chrysostom, the ascetic example of
Basil, could no more arrest the march of the avengers of centuries of
misrule than the intercession of Abraham could stop the thunderbolts of
God on the guilty inhabitants of Sodom. The Roman world, so long
abandoned to every folly and sin, must reap the bitter fruit. It was no
reproach to Christianity that it did not avert the consequences of sin,
any more than it was a reproach to Jonah that he could not save Nineveh.
If Christianity effects so little with us, when there are no opposing
religions, and all institutions are professedly in harmony with it; when
it controls the press and the schools and the literature of the country;
when its churches are gilded with the emblem of our redemption in every
village; when its ministers go forth unopposed, and have every facility
of delivering their message, even to the wise and mighty; when
philanthropy comes in with its mighty arm and knocks off the fetters of
the slave, and sends the Gospel to every land--how could it affect
society when every influence was against it. If religion wanes before
the dazzling forces of a brilliant material civilization, and scarcely
holds her own, when all profess to be governed by Christian truth, so
that in a moral and spiritual view, society rather retrogrades than
advances, I am amazed that it made so considerable a progress in the
Roman empire, and increased from generation to generation until it shook
the throne of emperors. And the example of the early church would seem
to indicate that religion can only spread in a healthy manner, by
constantly guarding and purifying those who profess it. It would seem
that the true mission of the church is to elevate her own members rather
than to mingle in scenes which have a corrupting influence. It is not
easy to make the theatre a means of moral improvement, for it will be
deserted when it rises above popular tastes, and the more it panders to
these tastes the more it flourishes. The theatre may have been elevated
at Athens, when the citizens who thronged to hear the plays of Sophocles
were themselves cultivated. Racine may have been relished at Versailles,
but only because the court of a great king composed the audience. The
theatre never rises _above_ the taste of those who patronize it.
Christian teachings would have been spurned at Rome even had there been
no persecution. The church flourished because it instructed its own
members, and quietly gained an extension of its influence, not because
it appealed to those who opposed it. The church, in those days, was not
a philanthropical institution, or an educational enterprise, or a
network of agencies and "instrumentalities" to bring to bear on society
at large certain ameliorating influences or benignant reforms. These
were beyond its reach. But it was a secret body of believers, a kind of
freemasonry which aimed to control and reform those who belonged to it.
Its rules were for members, not the outside world. Hence the history of
the early church refers chiefly to its discipline, to its officers, to
the management of dioceses, to councils, holydays, festivals, liturgies,
creeds, bearing only on its own internal organization. The members of
this secret society lived apart from the world, absorbed in their own
spiritual interests, or seeking to save the souls of those with whom
they came in contact. The true triumphs of Christianity were seen in
making good men of those who professed her doctrines, rather than
changing outwardly popular institutions, or government, or laws, or even
elevating the great mass of unbelievers. And it is more comforting to
feel that the church was small and pure than that it was large and
corrupt. And for three centuries there is reason to believe that the
Christians, if feeble in influence and few in numbers when compared with
the whole population, were remarkable for their graces and virtues--for
their noble resistance to those temptations which enthrall so great a
number of our modern believers. Insignificant in every public sense,
they may not have lifted up their voices against the system of slavery
which did so much to undermine the state; they may not have lectured
against the despotic power of the imperator; they may have taken but
little interest in politics, rendering unto Caesar whatever was due,
whether taxes or obedience; they may not have formed schools or colleges
or lyceums; they may not have meddled with any thing outside their
ranks, except to preach temperance, justice, and a judgment to come, and
a Saviour who was crucified, and a heaven to be obtained; but they did
practice among themselves all the duties enjoined by Christ and his
Apostles; they refused to sacrifice to the gods of pagan antiquity; they
visited no shows; they attended no pageants; they gave no sumptuous
banquets; they did not witness the games of the theatre and the circus;
they did not play at dice, or take usury, or dye their hair, or wear
absurd ornaments, or indulge in unseemly festivities: they detested
astrologers and soothsayers, shrines, images, and idolatry; they kept
the Sabbath, educated their children in the faith, settled their
disputes without going to law, were patient under injuries, were
charitable and unobtrusive, were full of faith and love, practicing the
severest virtues, devout and spiritual when all were worldly and
frivolous around them, ready for the martyr's pile, and looking to the
martyr's crown. That Christianity should have rescued so many from the
pollution of paganism in such general degeneracy, is very wonderful.
That it should have extended its circle of sincere believers amid
increasing degeneracy, is still more so, and is a most encouraging fact
to the friends of religious progress. If it could not reach the
fashionable and the worldly wise before society was undermined, and the
provinces had become the prey of barbarians, it still could boast of a
glorious army of martyrs, witnesses of the truth, whom all ages will
hold in veneration, precious seed for future and better times. If
Christianity, when it was a life,--a great transforming and renovating
power, reforming what was bad, conserving what was good,--had but little
influence beyond the circle of believers, still less could it save the
empire when it was itself corrupted, when it was a mere nominal
religion, however extensively it had spread. When it became the religion
of the court and of the fashionable classes, it was used to support the
very evils against which it originally protested, and which it was
designed to remove.
[Sidenote: It adopts oriental errors.]
It first adopted many of the errors of the oriental philosophy.
Gnosticism was embraced by many of the leading intellects of the church.
It was the reaction of that old aristocratic spirit which had ruled the
pagan world. It was an eclecticism of knowledge and culture which had
originally despised the doctrines of the Cross. It united the oriental
theosophy with the Platonic philosophy, both of which were proud,
exclusive, disdainful. "It drew a distinction between the man of
intellect, whose vocation it was to know, and the man who could not rise
above blind and implicit faith." The early Christians were characterized
for the simplicity of their faith. But with the triumphs of faith arose
the cravings for knowledge among the more cultivated part of the
converts.
[Sidenote: Attempts to reconcile reason with faith.]
Paul had seemingly discouraged all vain speculations, and the Grecian
spirit of philosophy, believing that they would not avail to the
explanation of the Christian mysteries, but rather prove a stumbling-
block and a folly, since the realm of faith was essentially different
from the realm of reason--not necessarily antagonistic, but distinct.
This fundamental principle has ever been maintained by the more orthodox
leaders of the church--by Athanasius, Augustine, Bernard, Pascal,
Calvin--even as the fundamental principle of sound philosophy which
Bacon advocated, that the world of experience and observation could not
be explained by metaphysical deductions, has been the cause of all great
modern progress in the sciences. The Gnostics, the men who aimed at
superior knowledge, disdained the humbling doctrine of Paul, which made
faith supreme over all forms of philosophy, and were the first to seek
solutions of difficult points of theology by abstruse inquiries--
honorable to the intellect, but subversive of that docile spirit which
Christianity enjoined. This tendency to speculation was unfortunate, but
natural to those active minds who sought to discover a connection
between the truths taught by revelation, and those which we arrive at by
consciousness. Grecian philosophy, when most lofty, as expressed by
Plato, was based on these mental possessions--these internal
convictions reached by logic and reflection. What more harmless, and
even praiseworthy, to all appearance, than was this earnest attempt to
reconcile reason with faith? The finest minds and characters of the
church entered into the discussion with singular intensity and ardor.
They would explain the Man-God, the Trinity, the Word made flesh, and
all the other points which grew out of grace and free will. A
dialectical spirit arose, which combated or explained what had formerly
been received with unquestioning submission. In the first century there
was scarcely any need of creeds, for the faith of the Christians was
united on a few simple doctrines, such as are expressed in the Apostles'
Creed. In the second and third centuries agitations and speculations
began, and with the Gnostics, that class who invoked the aid of Oriental
and Grecian philosophies in the propagation of the new religion. It was
to be made dependent on human speculation--a most dangerous error, since
it reintroduced the very wisdom which knew not God, and which the
Apostles ignored. It ushered in the reign of rationalism, which still
refuses to abdicate her throne, and which is absolutely rampant and
exulting in the great universities of the most learned and inquiring of
European nations.
[Sidenote: Gnosticism.]
But Gnosticism partook more of the haughty and exclusive spirit of the
eastern sages, than of the patient and inquiring nature of the Grecian
schools. It soared into regions whither even Platonism did not presume
to venture. It sought to subject even the Grecian mind to its wild and
lofty flights. The doctrines which Zoroaster taught pertaining to the
two antagonistic principles of good and evil--the oriental dualism--
Parsism had great fascination, especially to those who were inclined to
monastic seclusion. The spirit of Evil, which seemed to be dominant on
earth, and which was associated with material things, chained the soul
to sense. The soul, longing for truth and holiness--for God and heaven--
panted to be free of the corrupting influences of matter, which
imprisoned the noblest part of man. The oriental Christian, not fully
emancipated from the spirit which Buddhism communicated to all the
countries of the East--that is, the longing of the soul for the release
from matter, its reunion with the primal power from which all life has
flowed, and the estrangement from human passions and worldly interests--
sought repose and retirement where the mind would be free to dwell on
the great questions which pertained to God and immortality. The
dualistic principle, one of the chief elements of Gnosticism, harmonized
with the prevailing temper of that age, even as the pantheistic
principle rules the schools of philosophy in our own. All Christians
were alive to consciousness of the power of evil. Gnosticism recognized
it. Christianity triumphs over it by the power of the Cross which
procures redemption. Gnosticism would work out salvation by
abstractions, by ascetic severities, by a renunciation of the pleasures
of the world. Hence it is the real father of monasticism--that spirit of
seclusion and self-abnegation which became so prevalent in the third and
fourth centuries, and which remained in the church through the mediaeval
period. Gnosticism busied itself with the solution of insoluble
questions respecting the origin of evil, which Christianity justly
relinquished to the domain of useless inquiries--"the wisdom of the
world." Gnosticism would acknowledge no limits to human speculation;
Christianity accepts mysteries hidden from the wise and prudent, and yet
revealed unto babes. Hence all sorts of crudities of belief crept into
the church, such as the idea of the demiurge, and the different ways of
contemplating the person of Christ. Moreover, the Gnostics subjected the
New Testament to the boldest criticism, affirming it to be impossible to
arrive at the true doctrines of Christ; and hence they sought to go
beyond Christ, explaining difficult subjects by rationalistic
interpretations. Cerinthus placed a boundless chasm between God and the
world, and filled it up with different orders of spirits as intermediate
beings. Basilides supposed an angel was set over the entire earthly
course of the world. Valentine announced the distinction between a
psychical and pneumatical Christianity. Ptolemaeus maintained that the
creation of the world did not proceed from the supreme God. Bardesanes
sought to trace the vestiges of truth among people of every nation.
Carpocrates maintained that all existence flowed from one supreme
original being, to whom it strives to return. Prodicus asserted that as
men were sons of the supreme God, a royal race, they were bound by no
law. Saturnine advanced a fanciful system on the creation. Tatian
advocated the mortality of the soul. Marcion attempted to sunder the God
of Nature and the God of the Old Testament from the God of the Gospel.
It is difficult to enumerate all the fanciful theories propounded by the
Gnostics, and which arose from the attempt to engraft Orientalism upon
Christianity.
[Sidenote: Manicheism.]
A still greater attempt to blend Christianity with the religions of
ancient Asia was made by Mani, a Persian, who especially attempted to
fuse Zoroastrian with Christian doctrines. He aimed to produce the
utmost estrangement from all mundane influences, since the evil
principle held in bondage the elements springing out of the kingdom of
light. Deliverance from this bondage he regarded as the great end and
aim of life. His spirit was pantheistic, probably derived from Buddhism,
which he had learned during his extensive journeys into India and China.
He adopted the dualism of Zoroaster, and supposed two principles
antagonistic to each other, on the one side God, the primal light, from
whom all light radiates, on the other side Evil, whose essence is self-
conflicting uproar, matter, darkness. Most nearly connected with the
supreme God were Aeons,--the channels for the diffusion of light,--
innumerable in number and of surpassing greatness. The Aeon-mother of
life generated the primitive man to oppose the powers of darkness. Hence
man's nature is full of dignity, although he was worsted in the conflict
with Evil. But the spirit raises him once more to the kingdom of light,
and purifies his soul which sprung from the primitive man. The pure soul
is Christ, enthroned in the sun, superior to all contact with matter,
and incapable of suffering.
[Sidenote: Mysticism.]
These were some of the features of that mystical philosophy which made
Christ the spirit of the sun, giving light and life to the soul
imprisoned in the kingdom of darkness. Man thus becomes a copy of the
world of light and darkness, struggling against matter, elevated by the
source of life--a soul living in the kingdom of light, and a body
derived from the kingdom of darkness, and enticed by all the pleasures
of sense, and thus drawn down to the world which is matter and evil,
counteracted by the angel of light. This is the dualism which formed the
essential element of the Manichean speculations, so congenial to the
mystic theogonies of the East, and which was embraced by a portion of
the eastern church, especially by those who were fascinated by the
refinements and pretensions of a philosophy which aimed to solve the
highest problems of existence--the nature of God, and the creation of
man. These daring speculations, which led astray so many inquiring
minds, were, however, too mystical and indefinite to reach the popular
mind, and they pertained to questions which did not shock Christian
instincts, like those which attacked the person or the offices of
Christ. Gnosticism was viewed as a sort of Judaism, inasmuch as it did
not rest its exclusiveness on the title of birth, but on especial
knowledge communicated to the enlightened few. It was a philosophy whose
esoteric doctrines soared above the comprehension of the vulgar; but it
affected more than the surface of society; it poisoned the minds of
those who aspired to lead the intelligence of the age. Its spirit was
antagonistic to the simplicity of the faith, and so, as it prevailed,
was an influence much to be dreaded, and called forth the greatest
energies of the Alexandrian school, in order to defeat it and nullify
it. But its dangerous seeds remained to germinate a rationalistic
theology, especially when united with the Neo-Platonic philosophy.
[Sidenote: Adoption of oriental ceremonies and pomps.]
But the church was not only impregnated with the errors of pagan
philosophy, but it adopted many of the ceremonials of oriental worship,
which were both minute and magnificent. If any thing marked the
primitive church it was the simplicity of worship, and the absence of
ceremonies and festivals and gorgeous rites. The churches became, in the
fourth century, as imposing as the old temples of idolatry. The
festivals became authoritative; at first they were few in number, and
purely voluntary. It was supposed that when Christianity superseded
Judaism, the obligations to observe the ceremonies of the Mosaic law
were abrogated. Neither the apostles nor evangelists imposed the yoke of
servitude, but left Easter and every other feast to be honored by the
gratitude of the recipients of grace. The change in opinion, in the
fourth century, called out the severe animadversion of the historian
Socrates, but it was useless to stem the current of the age. Festivals
became frequent and imposing. The people clung to them because they
obtained a cessation from labor, and obtained excitement. The ancient
rubrics mention only those of the Passion, of Easter, of Whitsunday,
Christmas, and the descent of the Holy Spirit. But there followed the
celebration of the death of Stephen, the memorial of John, the
commemoration of the slaughter of the Innocents, the feast of Epiphany,
the feast of Purification, and others, until the Catholic Church had
some celebration for some saint and martyr for every day in the year.
They contributed to create a craving for an outward religion, which
appealed to the senses and the sensibilities rather than the heart. They
led to innumerable quarrels and controversies about unimportant points,
especially in relation to the celebration of Easter. They produced a
delusive persuasion respecting pilgrimages, the sign of the cross, and
the sanctifying effects of the sacraments. Veneration for martyrs
ripened into the introduction of images--a future source of popular
idolatry. Christianity was emblazoned in pompous ceremonies. The
veneration for saints approximated to their deification, and
superstition exalted the mother of our Lord into an object of absolute
worship. Communion-tables became imposing altars typical of Jewish
sacrifices, and the relics of martyrs were preserved as sacred amulets.
[Sidenote: Monastic life.]
Monastic life ripened also into a grand system of penance, and expiatory
rites, such as characterized oriental asceticism. Armies of monks
retired to gloomy and isolated places, and abandoned themselves to
rhapsodies and fastings and self-expiations, in opposition to the grand
doctrine of Christ's expiation. They despaired of society, and abandoned
the world to its fate--a dismal and fanatical set of men, overlooking
the practical aims of life. They lived more like beasts and savages than
enlightened Christians--wild, fierce, solitary, superstitious, ignorant,
fanatical, filthy, clothed in rags, eating the coarsest food, practicing
gloomy austerities, introducing a false standard of virtue, regardless
of the comforts of civilization, and careless of those great interests
which were intrusted them to guard. They were often men of extraordinary
virtue and influence, and their lives were not assailed by great
temptations. They abstained from marriage, and celibacy came to be
regarded as the angelic virtue--a proof of the highest and purest
Christian life. Vast numbers of men left the sanctities and beatitudes
of home for a cheerless life in the desert, and their gloomy and
repulsive austerities were magnified into extraordinary virtues. The
monks and hermits sought to save themselves by climbing to Heaven by the
same ladder that had been sought by the soofis and the fakirs,--which
delusion had an immense influence in undermining the doctrines of grace.
Christianity was fast merging itself into an oriental theosophy.
[Sidenote: Ambition and wealth of the clergy.]
Again the clergy became ambitious and worldly, and sought rank and
distinction. They even thronged the courts or princes, and aspired to
temporal honors. They were no longer supported by the voluntary
contributions of the faithful, but by revenues supplied by government,
or property inherited from the old temples. Great legacies were made to
the church by the rich, and these the clergy controlled. These bequests
became sources of inexhaustible wealth. As wealth increased, and was
intrusted to the clergy, they became indifferent to the wants of the
people, no longer supported by them. They became lazy, arrogant, and
independent. The people were shut out of the government of the church.
The bishop became a grand personage, who controlled and appointed his
clergy. The church was allied with the state, and religious dogmas were
enforced by the sword of the magistrate. An imposing hierarchy was
established, of various grades, which culminated in the bishop of Rome.
The emperor decided points of faith, and the clergy were exempted from
the burdens of the state. There was a great flocking to the priestly
offices when the clergy wielded so much power, and became so rich; and
men were elevated to great sees, not because of their piety or talents,
but influence with the great. What a falling off from the teachings of
the original clergy, when bishops were the companions of princes rather
than preachers to the poor, and when the clergy could live without the
offerings of the people, and were appointed from favor and not from
merit. The spiritual mission of the church was lost sight of in a
degrading alliance with the state and the world. "Make me bishop of
Rome," said a pagan general, "and I too would become a Christian."
[Sidenote: The church conforms to the world.]
[Sidenote: Christianity produces witnesses, but is not all conquering.]
When Christianity itself was in such need of reform, when Christians
could scarcely be distinguished from pagans in love of display, and in
egotistical ends, how could it reform the world? When it was a pageant,
a ritualism, an arm of the state, a vain philosophy, a superstition, a
formula, how could it save, if ever so dominant? The corruptions of the
church in the fourth century are as well authenticated as the purity and
moral elevation of Christians in the second century. Isaac Taylor has
presented a most mournful view of the state of Christian society when
the religion of the cross had become the religion of the state. And the
corruptions kept pace with the outward triumphs of the faith, especially
when the pagans had yielded to the supremacy of the cross. The same fact
is noticeable in the history of Mohammedanism. When it was first
declared by the extraordinary man who claimed to be the greatest of the
prophets of God, when it was a sublime theism, immeasurably superior to
the prevailing religions of Arabia, and especially when it was
promulgated by moral means, its converts were few, but these were lofty.
When it was extended by an appeal to the sword, and to the bad passions
of men, when it gave a promise of demoralizing joys, and was embraced by
powerful classes and chieftains, it had rapidly extended over Asia and
Africa, and even invaded Europe. Mohammedanism doubtless prevailed in
consequence of its very errors, by adapting itself to the corrupt
inclinations of mankind. If it prospered by means of its truths, why was
its progress so slow when it was comparatively pure and elevated? The
outward triumphs of a religion are no indications of its purity, since
the more corrupt it is the more popular it will be, and the purer it is
the less likely it is to be embraced, except by a few, whom God designs
to be witnesses of his power and truth. Buddhism and Brahminism have
more adherents than Mohammedanism, and Mohammedanism more than
Christianity, and Roman Catholic Christianity has more than
Protestantism, and Protestantism, when it is a life, is narrowed down to
a very small body of believers. Christianity which is popular and
fashionable, is not necessarily elevated and ennobling, and when it is
fashionable or popular is very apt to assume the forms of an imposing
ritualism, or to be blended with philosophical speculations, or to sink
to the degradation of superstitious rites and ceremonies. When
Christianity falls to the level of prevailing fashions and customs and
opinions, it has not a very powerful renovating influence on human life.
The Jesuits made great conquests in Japan and China, but how barren they
have proved. The Puritans planted the barren hills of New England with
stern and rugged believers in a spiritual and personal God, and they
have extended their principles throughout the country. What renovating
influence has the nominal Christianity of South America, or Spain, or
Italy? The religion embraced by the wise and great is apt to become a
rationalism, and that professed by the degraded populace to become a
superstition. The reception of Christianity in the heart implies
sacrifices and self-denial, and will not be cordially embraced except by
a few thus far, in any age. The Lollards in England, in the time of
Henry VII., were a feeble body, but they did more to infuse a religious
life than the whole machinery and influence of the Roman Catholic
Church. And as soon as the Church of England gained over the state, and
became established, it began to degenerate, and had need of successive
reforms. How feeble every form of dissent as a truly renovating power
when it has become triumphant! What have the fashionable court religions
of Europe done towards the real regeneration of society? Protestantism
in Germany, when it was protesting, had a mighty life. When universities
and courts accepted it, it became a poisonous rationalism, or a dead
formula. Puritanism, established in New England just previous to the
Revolution, was a very different thing from what it was when its
adherents were exiles and wanderers. It spread and was honored, but
retained chiefly its forms, its traditions, its animosities. How rapidly
the Huguenots degenerated after the battle of Ivry! Even Jesuitism could
not stand before its own triumphs. Its real life was in the times of
Xavier and Aquaviva, not of Escobar and La Chaise. Any dominant faith
will find its supporters among those whose practical lives are false to
the original principles. Its powers of renovation depend upon its
exalted doctrines, not upon the numbers who profess it, because, when
dominant, men are drawn to it by ambition or interest. They degrade it
more than it elevates them. Hence it would almost seem that
Christianity, in this dispensation, is designed to call out witnesses
of its truths, in every land, the elect of God, rather than to
be a universally renovative power on human institutions. But if it is
destined to be all-conquering, bringing government and science and
social life in harmony with its spirit, as most people believe, and
perhaps with the greatest evidence on their side, still its _real_
conquests must be slow, without supernatural aid. It will spread, from
its inherent life and power; it will become corrupted, and fail to exert
as great a spiritual influence as was hoped; it will be reformed, after
great debasements, when it is scarcely more than a nominal faith, except
among the few witnesses; and the reforming party or sect will gain
ascendency, and in its turn become degenerate and powerless as a
renovating force. So history seems to indicate, from the times of
Theodosius to our own, specially illustrated by the establishment of the
different monastic orders, the great awakenings under Luther and Calvin
and Knox, the successes of Jesuits and Jansenists, the triumphs of the
Puritans, the Quakers, and the Methodists, the rise of Puseyism, or the
Church of England. That Christianity remains vital in the world, and
makes true advances from generation to generation, can scarcely be
questioned. But these advances are slow and delusive. Spiritual power
will pass away as the conquering party gains adherents from the world of
fashion and of rank. It will not become extinct, but the difference
between its true influence, when it is persecuted and when it is
triumphant, is less than generally supposed. The spiritual cannot be
measured by the material. Who can tell wherein true and permanent
influence abides? Who can estimate the power of spiritual agencies? It
is common to speak of enlarged spheres of usefulness; but a clergyman in
a humble parish may set in motion ideas which will have more effect on
the age in which he lives, and on succeeding times, than by any splendid
position in a large and populous city. God seeth not as man seeth. To
fill the sphere which Providence appoints is the true wisdom; to
discharge trusts faithfully and live exalted ideas, that is the mission
of good men.
[Sidenote: Reasons why Christianity did not save the empire.]
Christianity, then, in the fourth century was not more of a renovating
power in consequence of its rapid extension and vast external influence.
It was never more sublime than when it made martyrs and heroes of the
few who dared to embrace its doctrines. There was more hope of its
regenerating the world when it was a continually expanding circle of
devout believers, uncompromising and aggressive, than when it numbered
the wise and noble and mighty, with their old vices and follies. Its
external triumphs rather diminished its spiritual power.
If Christianity failed as a gorgeous ritualism, armed with the weapons
of the state, and allied with pagan philosophy, attractive as it was
made to different classes, where is the hope of the renovation of this
world from the effects of climate, soil, material wealth, and the other
boasts of physical improvements and culture? What a poor basis for the
hopes of man to rest upon is furnished by such guides as the Comtes, the
Buckles, and the Mills? If a fashionable and popular religion could not
save, how can a cold materialism which chains the thoughts to sense, and
confines aspirations to worldly success.
Christianity, as it would seem, did not avert the ruin of the empire,
because, when pure, it had but little influence outside its circle of
esoteric believers, while society was rotten to the core, and was
rapidly approaching a natural dissolution. When it was dominant it
failed, because it was itself corrupted, and the ruin had begun. The
barbarians were advancing to desolate and destroy, were routing armies
and sacking cities and enslaving citizens, when the great fathers of the
church were laying the foundation of a Christian state. The ruin of the
empire was threatening when Christianity was a proscribed and persecuted
faith; it was inevitable when it was grasping the sceptre of princes.
[Sidenote: True mission of the church.]
[Sidenote: The fall of the empire a necessity.]
[Sidenote: The creation which succeeds destruction.]
[Sidenote: What is truly valuable never perishes.]
[Sidenote: Reconstruction.]
Moreover, we take a low and material view of Christianity when we wonder
why it did not save the empire. It was sent to save the world, not the
institutions of an egotistical people. Why should we grieve that it
failed to perpetuate such an organization or government as that wielded
by the emperors? What was a central and proud despotism, with vast
military machinery, and accompanying aristocracies and inequalities, and
the accumulated treasure of all ages and nations on the banks of the
Tiber, compared with a state more favorable for the development of a new
civilization? What does humanity care for the perpetuation of Roman
pride? Providence attaches but little value to human sorrows and
sacrifices, to the melting away of delusions, pomps, vanities, and
follies, compared with the spread of those indestructible ideas on which
are based the real happiness of man. If the empire had withstood the
shock of barbarians, a state would have existed unfavorable to the
higher and future triumphs of the cross. Where was hope, when imperial
despotism, and disproportionate fortunes, and slavery, and the reign of
conventional forms and traditions, and the tyranny of foolish fashions
were likely to be perpetuated? How could Christianity have subverted
these monstrous evils without producing revolutions more blasting than
even barbaric violence? There seem to be some evils so subtle,
poisonous, and deeply-rooted that nothing but violence can remove them.
How long before slavery would have been destroyed in the United States
by any moral means? How could slavery be destroyed when the most
eloquent of Christian teachers were its defenders, and all its kindred
institutions were upheld by the church? So of slavery in the Roman
Empire. There were sixty millions of slaves, not of the posterity of
Ham, but of Shem and Japhet. Every prosperous person was eager to
possess a slave, nor had Christianity openly and signally rebuked such a
gigantic institution. Where was the hope of the abolition of such an
evil when Christianity adapted itself to prevailing fashions and
opinions, and only thought of alleviating some of its worst forms? Would
slaves decrease when worldly men became the overseers of the church, and
emperors presided at councils? Where were the hopes of its abolition
when the whole world was its theatre, and every rich man its defender;
where, instead of four millions, there were sixty millions, and where
the general level of morality and intelligence was lower than it is at
present? So of disproportionate fortunes. They were a hopeless evil. If
aristocratic institutions keep their ground in the best country of
Europe, what must have been the grasp of nobles in the Roman world?
Abandonment to money-making was another social evil. If we in America
cannot weaken its power, even in the most Christian communities; if we
cannot prevent the tyranny of money in our very churches, where we are
reminded every Sunday that it is the root of all evil, yea, when we have
Bibles in our hands,--what could a corrupted Christianity do with it
when material pleasures were more prized than they are with us, and when
philanthropic institutions were unborn? If the whole power of the
Gallican Church was exerted to prop up the feudal privileges of the
French noblesse, and there was needed a dreadful and bloody revolution
to destroy them, much more was a revolution needed at Rome to destroy
the inherited powers of a still prouder and more powerful aristocracy.
If the rights of women are so slowly recognized among the descendants of
chivalrous nations, with all the moral forces of the Gospel, how
hopeless the elevation of women among peoples where woman for thousands
of years was regarded as a victim, a toy, or a slave? When we remember
the inherited opinions of Orientals, Greeks, and Romans as to the
condition and duties and relations of the female sex, it seems as if no
ordinary instruction could have broken the fetters of woman for an
indefinite period. The institutions of the pagan world were too firmly
rooted to afford hope to Christian teachers, if ever so enlightened. The
great cardinal principle of the common brotherhood of man could only be
applied under more favorable circumstances. The unity of the empire
_did_ facilitate the outward triumphs and spread of Christianity,
and perhaps that was the great mission which the Roman empire was
designed by God to promote. But the social and political institutions of
the Romans were exceedingly adverse to a healthy development of
Christian virtue. The teachers of the new religion originally aimed
entirely at the salvation of the soul. It was to save men from the wrath
to come, and publish tidings of great joy to the miserable populace of
the ancient world, that apostles labored. They did not attack political
or great organized systems of corruption openly and directly. It was
enough to promise Heaven, not to change the structure of society. For
four centuries neither the condition of woman nor of the slave was
radically improved. Christianity could not, without miraculous power,
bear its best fruit on a Roman soil. It could not do its best work on
degenerate and worn-out races. How many centuries would it take for
Christianity, even if embraced by all the people of Japan or China, to
make as noble Christians as in Scotland or New England? There must be a
material to work upon. There was not this material in the Roman empire.
A dreadful revolution was necessary, in which new and uncorrupted races
should obtain ascendency, and on whom Christianity could work with
renewed power. In such a catastrophe, the good must suffer with the
evil, the just with the unjust. A Gothic soldier would not spare a
cloister any sooner than a palace, or a palace sooner than a hut, a
philosopher more readily than a peasant. Christians as well as pagans
must drink the bitter cup, for natural law has no tears to shed and no
indulgence to give. The iniquities of the fathers were visited upon the
children, even to the third and fourth generation. And what if there was
suffering on the earth? Tribulation is generally a blessing in disguise.
Men are not born for undisturbed happiness on earth, but for a
preparation for heaven. Whatever calls the thoughts from a lower to a
higher good is the greatest boon which Providence gives. The monstrous
calamities of the fourth and fifth centuries had a marked influence in
opening the portals of the church, even for the barbarians themselves--
for they were not converted until they became conquerors. A new life, in
spite of calamities, was infused into the empire, tottering and falling.
It was among the new races that the new creation began, and it is among
their descendants that the loftiest triumphs of civilization have been
achieved. So it was ultimately a good thing for the world that the
empire and all its bad institutions were swept away. Creation followed
destruction, and the death-song was succeeded by a melodious birth-song.
All suffering and sorrow were over-ruled. Future ages were the better
for such sad calamities. Temples were destroyed, but the sublime ideas
of beauty and grace by which they were erected still survive. Armies
were annihilated, but military science was not lost. Libraries were
burned, but models of ancient style survived to incite to new creation.
Anarchy prevailed, but new states arose on the ruins of the old
provinces. Men passed away, but not the fruits of the earth, nor the
relics of genius. The new races gave a new impulse, when fairly
established, to agriculture, to commerce, and to art. The fall of the
empire was the destruction of fortunes and of farms, the change of
masters, the dissolution of the central power of emperors, the breaking
up of proconsular authority, the dissipation of conventionalities and
fashions; but these were not the ruin of human hopes or the bondage of
human energies. Genius, poetry, faith, sentiment, and piety, remained.
Nor was the earth depopulated; it was decimated. All the substantial
elements of greatness were moulded into new forms. A fresh and beautiful
life arose among the simple and earnest people who had descended from
the Oder and the Vistula. Entirely new institutions were formed. The old
fabric was shattered to pieces, but of the ruins a new edifice was
constructed more calculated to shelter the distressed and miserable. The
barbarians seized the old traditions of the church and invested them
with poetical beauty. The Teutonic civilization, more Christian than the
Roman, surpassed it in all popular forms, and became more adapted to the
wants of man. Probably nothing really great in civilization has ever
perished, or ever will perish. I don't believe in "lost arts." They are
only buried for a time, like the glorious sculptures of Praxiteles or
Lysippus, amid the debris of useless fabrics, to be dug up when wanted
and valued, as models of new creations. I doubt if any thing really
valuable in even the Egyptian, or Assyrian, or Indian civilization has
hopelessly passed away, which can be made of real service to mankind. It
is, indeed, a puzzle how the capstones of the Pyramids were elevated--
such huge blocks raised five hundred feet into the air; but I believe
the mechanical forces are really known, or will be known, at the proper
time, and will be again employed, if the labor is worth the cost. We
could build a tower of Babel in New York, or a temple of Carnac, or a
Colosseum, and would build it, if such a structure were needed or we
could afford the waste of time, material, and labor. There is nothing in
all antiquity so grand as a modern railroad, or the _Great Eastern_
steamship, or the Erie Canal. Nebuchadnezzar's palace would not compare
with St. Peter's Church or Versailles, nor his hanging gardens with the
Croton reservoirs. Gibraltar or Ehrenbreitstein is more impregnable than
the walls of Babylon, which Cyrus despaired to scale or batter down.
Every succeeding generation inherits the riches and learning of the
past, even if Rome and Carthage are sacked, and the library of
Alexandria is burned. The barbarians destroyed the monuments of former
greatness--temples, palaces, statues, pictures, libraries, schools,
languages, and laws. These _they_ did not restore, but they were
restored by their descendants, as there was need, and new creations
added. The Parthenon reappears in the Madeleine; the Golden House of
Nero in the Tuileries and the Louvre; Jupiter of Phidias in the Moses of
Michael Angelo; the Helen of Zeuxis in the Venus of Titian; the library
of Alexandria in the Bibliotheque Imperiale; the Academy of Plato in the
University of Oxford; the orations of Cicero in the eloquence of Burke;
the Institutes of Justinian in the Code Napoleon. In addition, we have
cathedrals whose architectural effect Vitruvius could not have
conceived; pictures that Polygnotus could not have painted; books which
Aristotle could not have imagined; universities before which Zeno would
have stood awestruck; courts of law that would have called out the
admiration of Paul and Papinian; houses which Scaurus would have envied;
carriages that Nero would have given the lives of ten thousand
Christians to possess; carpets that Babylon could not have woven; dyes
surpassing the Tyrian purple; silks, velvets, glass mirrors, sideboards,
fabrics of linen and cotton and wool, ships, railroads, watches,
telescopes, compasses, charts, printing-presses, gunpowder, fire-arms,
photographs, engravings, bank-notes, telegraphic wires, chemical
compounds, domestic utensils, mills, steam-engines, balloons, and a
thousand other wonders of a civilization which no ancient race attained.
_We_ have lost nothing of the old trophies of genius, and have
gained new ones for future civilization. The Romans, if left in
possession of the provinces they had conquered for two thousand years
longer, would never, probably, have made our modern discoveries and
inventions. They would have been more like the modern inhabitants of
China. A new race was required to try new experiments and achieve new
triumphs. The Greeks and Romans did their share, fulfilled a great
mission for humanity, but they could not monopolize forever the human
race itself.
[Sidenote: Every age has a peculiar mission.]
Every great nation and age has its work to do in the field of
undeveloped energies; but the field is inexhaustible in resources, for
the intellect of man is boundless in its reserved powers. No limit can
be assigned to the future triumphs of genius and strength. We are as
ignorant of some future wonders as the last century was of steam and
telegraphic wires. Nor can we tell what will next arise. The wonders of
the Greeks and Romans would have astonished Egyptians and Assyrians. The
Oriental civilization gave place to the Hellenic and the Roman; and the
Hellenic and Roman gave place to the Teutonic. So the races and the ages
move on. They have their missions, become corrupt, and pass away. But
the breaking up of their institutions, even by violence, when no longer
a blessing to the world, and the surrender of their lands and riches to
another race, not worn out, but new, fresh, enthusiastic, and strong,
have resulted in permanent good to mankind, even if we feel that the
human mind never soared to loftier flights, or put forth greater and
more astonishing individual energies than in that old and ruined world.
[Sidenote: How far Christianity conserved.]
How far Christianity conserved the treasures of the past we cannot tell.
No one can doubt the influence of Christianity in reviving letters, in
giving a stimulus to thought, in creating a noble ambition for the good
of society, and producing that moral tone which fits the soul to
appreciate what is truly great. It was the church which preserved the
manuscripts of classical ages; which perpetuated the Latin language in
chants and litanies and theological essays; which gave a new impulse to
agriculture and many useful arts; which preserved the traditions of the
Roman empire; which made use of the old canons of law; which gave a new
glory to architecture in the Gothic vaults of mediaeval cathedrals; which
encouraged the rising universities; which gave wisdom to rulers and laws
to social life. The monasteries and convents, in their best ages, were
receptacles of arts, beehives of industry, schools of learning, asylums
for the miserable, retreats for sages, hospitals for the poor, and
bulwarks of civilization which rude warriors dared not assail. What did
not the Christian clergy guard and perpetuate?
[Sidenote: The real triumphs of Christianity.]
That the Teutonic nations would have arisen to as lofty a platform as
the ancient Greeks or Romans, without Christianity, is probable enough.
There is no limit to the intellect of a noble race until corrupted.
Without Christianity, society might still have possessed our modern
discoveries, since the Gothic races have shown a distinguishing genius
in mechanical inventions. I apprehend that Christianity has not much to
do with many of the wonders of our present day; and I find some classes
of men who have made great attainments in certain channels in antagonism
to Christianity. I question whether a spiritual religion has given an
impulse to steam navigation, or rifled cannons, or electrical machines,
or astronomical calculations, or geological deductions. It has not
created scientific schools, or painters' studios, or Lowell mills, or
Birmingham wares, or London docks. Material glories we share with the
ancients; we have simply improved upon them. In some things they are our
superiors. We do not see the superiority of modern over ancient
civilization in material wonders, so much as in immaterial ideas. What
is really greatest and noblest in our civilization comes from Christian
truths. Certainly, what is most characteristic is the fruit of spiritual
ideas, such as paganism never taught,--never could have conceived; such,
for instance, as pertains to social changes, to popular education, to
philanthropic enterprise, to enlightened legislation, to the elevation
of the poor and miserable, to the breaking off the fetters of the slave,
and to the true appreciation of the mission of woman. Nor was the Roman
empire swept away until the seeds of all these great modern
improvements, which raise society, were planted by the sainted fathers
and doctors of the church. They worked for us, for all future ages, for
all possible civilizations, as well as for their own times. They are,
therefore, immortal benefactors of the human race, since they were the
first to declare great renovating ideas. The early church is the real
architect of European civilization. She laid the foundation of the noble
edifice under which the nations still shelter themselves against the
storms of life. Christianity not only rescued a part of the population
of the Roman empire from degradation and ruin; it not only had glorious
witnesses or its transcendent power and beauty in every land, thus
triumphing over human infirmity and misery as no other religion ever
did; but it has also proved itself to be a progressively conquering
power by the great and beneficent ideas which were planted in the minds
of barbarians, as well as oriental Christians, and which from time to
time are bearing fruit in every land, so as to make it evident to any
but a perverted intellect, that Christianity is the source of what we
most prize in civilization itself, and that without it the nations can
only reach a certain level, and will then, from the law of depravity,
decline and fall like Greece, Asia Minor, and Rome. If we had no
Christianity, we should be compelled, so far as history teaches us
lessons, to adopt the theory of Buckle and his school, of the necessary
progress and decline of nations--the moving round, like systems of
philosophy, in perpetual circles. But, with the indestructible ideas
which the fathers planted, there must be a perpetual renovation and an
unending progress, until the world becomes an Eden.
* * * * *
REFERENCES.--The reader is directed only to the ordinary histories of
the church. The great facts are stated by all the historians, and few
new ones have been brought to light. Historians differ merely in the
mode of presenting their subject. The ecclesiastical histories are
generally deficient in art, and hence are uninteresting. The ablest and
the most learned of modern historians is doubtless Neander. He is also
the fullest and most satisfactory; but even he is unattractive. Mosheim
is dry and dull, but learned in facts. Dr. Schaff has most ably
presented primitive Christianity, and his recent work is both popular
and valuable. Milman is the best English writer on the church, and he is
the most readable of modern historians. Tillemont and Dupin are very
full and very learned. But a truly immortal history of the church,
exhaustive yet artistic, brilliant as well as learned, is yet to be
written. The ancient historians, like Eusebius and Socrates and Zosimus,
are very meagre. The genius and spirit of the early church can only be
drawn from the lives and writings of the fathers.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE LEGACY OF THE EARLY CHURCH TO FUTURE GENERATIONS.
It is my object in this chapter to show the great Christian ideas which
the fathers promulgated, and which have proved of so great influence on
the Middle Ages and our own civilization. These were declared before the
Roman empire fell; and if they did not arrest ruin, still alleviated the
miseries of society, and laid the foundation of all that is most
ennobling among modern nations. The early church should be the most
glorious chapter in the history of humanity. While the work of
destruction was going on in every part of the world, both by vice and
violence, there was still the new work of creation proceeding with it, a
precious savor of life to future ages. If there is any thing sublime, it
is the power of renovating ideas amid universal degeneracy. They are
seeds of truth, which grow and ripen into grand institutions. These did
not become of sufficient importance to arrest the attention of
historians until they were cultivated by the Germanic nations in the
Middle Ages.
It could be shown that almost everything which gives glory to Christian
civilization had its origin in the early church. Few are aware what
giants and heroes were those fathers and saints whom this age has been
taught to despise. We are really reaping the results of those conflicts--
conflicts with bigoted Jewish sects; conflicts with the high priests of
paganism, with Greek philosophers, with Gnostic Manichaean illuminati;
with the symbolists, soothsayers, astrologers, magicians, which mystic
superstition conjured up among degenerate people. And not merely their
conflicts with the prince of the power of the air alone, but with
themselves, with their own fiery passions, and with tangible outward
foes. They were illustrious champions and martyrs in the midst of a
great Vanity Fair, in a Nebuchadnezzar fire of persecutions, an all-
pervading atmosphere of lies, impurities, and abominations which cried
to heaven for vengeance. They solved for us and for all future
generations the thousand of new questions which audacious paganism
proposed in its last struggles; they exposed the bubbles which charmed
that giddy generation of egotists; they eliminated the falsehoods which
vain-glorious philosophers had inwrought with revelation; and they
attested, with dying agonies, to the truth of those mysteries which gave
them consolation and hope amid the terrors of a dissolving world. They
absorbed even into the sphere of Christianity all that was really
valuable in the system they exploded, whether of philosophy or social
life, and transmitted the same to future ages. And they set examples, of
which the world will never lose sight, of patience, fortitude, courage,
generosity, which will animate all martyrs to the end of time. And if,
in view of their great perplexities, of circumstances which they could
not control, utter degeneracy and approaching barbarism, they lent their
aid to some institutions which we cannot endorse, certainly when
corrupted, like Manichaeism and ecclesiastical domination, let us
remember that these were adapted to their times, or were called out by
pressing exigencies. And further, let us bear in mind that, in giving
their endorsement, they could not predict the abuse of principles
abstractly good and wise, like poverty, and obedience, and chastity, and
devout meditation, and solitary communion with God. In all their conduct
and opinions, we see, nevertheless, a large-hearted humanity, a
toleration and charity for human infirmities, and a beautiful spirit of
brotherly love. If they advocated definite creeds with great vehemence
and earnestness, they yet soared beyond them, and gloried in the general
name they bore, until the fundamental doctrines of their religion were
assailed.
For two centuries, however, they have no history out of the records of
martyrdom. We know their sufferings better than any peculiar ideas which
they advocated. We have testimony to their blameless lives, to their
irreproachable morals, to their good citizenship, and to their Christian
graces, rather than to any doctrines which stand out as especial marks
for discussion or conflict, like those which agitated the councils of
Nice or Ephesus. But if we were asked what was the first principle which
was brought out by the history of the early church, we should say it was
that of martyrdom. Certainly the first recorded act in the history of
Christianity was that memorable scene on Calvary, when the founder of
our religion announced the fulfillment of the covenant made with Adam in
the Garden of Eden. And as the deliverance of mankind was effected by
that great sacrifice for sin, so the earliest development of Christian
life was the spirit of martyrdom. The moral grandeur with which the
martyrs met reproach, isolation, persecution, suffering, and death, not
merely robbed the grave of its victory, but implanted a principle of
inestimable power among all future heroes. Martyrdom kindled an heroic
spirit, not for the conquest of nations, but for the conquest of the
soul, and the resignation of all that earth can give in attestation of
grand and saving truths. We have a few examples of martyrs in pagan
antiquity, like Socrates and Seneca, who met death with fortitude,--but
not with faith, not with indestructible joy that this mortal was about
to put on immortality. The Christian martyrdoms were a new development
of humanity. They taught the necessity of present sacrifice for future
glory, and more, for the great interests of truth and virtue, with which
good men had been identified. They brought life and immortality to the
view of the people, who had not dared to speculate on their future
condition. Their martyrs inspired a spirit into society that nothing
could withstand; a practical belief that the life was more than meat;
that the future was greater than the present: and this surely is one of
the grand fundamental principles of Christianity. They incited to a
spirit of fortitude and courage under all the evils of life, and gave
dignity to men who would otherwise have been insignificant. The example
of men who rejoiced to part with their lives for the sake of their
religion, became to the world the most impressive voice which it yet
heard of the insignificance of this life when compared with the life to
come. "What will it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his
own soul?" became thus one of the most stupendous inquiries which could
be impressed on future generations, and affected all the relations of
society. Martyrdom was one solution of this mighty question which
introduced a new power upon the earth, for we cannot conceive of
Christianity as an all-conquering influence, except as it unfolds a new
and superior existence, in contrast with which the present is worthless.
The principle of martyrdom, setting at defiance the present, led to
unbounded charity and the renunciation of worldly possessions. What are
they really worth? Every martyr had the comparative worthlessness of
wealth and honor and comfort profoundly impressed upon his mind, in view
of the greatness of the Infinite and the importance of the future.
The early martyrdoms thus brought out with immeasurable force the
principle of faith, without which life can have no object,--faith in
future destinies, faith in the promises of God, faith in the power of
the Cross to subdue finally all forms of evil. The sacrifice of Christ
introduced into the world sentiments of unbounded love and gratitude,
that He, the most perfect type of humanity, and the Son of God himself,
should come into this world to bear its sins upon the cross, and thus
give a heaven which could not be bought by expiatory gifts. It was love
which prompted the crucifixion of Jesus; and love produced love, and
stimulated thousands to bear with patience the evils under which they
would have sunk. The martyrdoms of the early Christians did not indeed
kindle sentiments of gratitude; but they inspired courage, and led to
immeasurable forms of heroism. The timid and the shrinking woman, the
down-trodden slave, and the despised pauper, all at once became serene,
lofty, unconquerable, since they knew that though their earthly
tabernacle would be destroyed, they had a dwelling in the heavens free
from all future toil and sorrow and reproach. Martyrdoms made this world
nothing and heaven everything. They proved a powerful faith in the
ultimate prevalence of truth, and created an invincible moral heroism,
which excited universal admiration; and they furnished models and
examples to future generations, when Christians were subjected to bitter
trials.
We cannot but feel that martyrdom is one of the most impressive of all
human examples, since it is the mark of a practical belief in God and
heaven. And while we recognize it as among the most interesting among
spiritual triumphs, we are persuaded that the absence of its spirit, or
its decline, is usually followed by a low state of society. Epicureanism
is its antagonistic principle, and is as destructive as the other is
conservative. The moment men are unwilling to sacrifice themselves to a
great cause, they virtually say that temporal and worldly interests are
to be preferred to the spiritual and the future. The language of the
Epicurean is intensely egotistic. It is: "Soul, take thine ease; eat,
drink, and be merry;" to which God says, "Thou fool." Christianity was
sent to destroy this egotism, which undermined the strength of the
ancient world; and it created a practical belief in the future, and a
faith in truth. Without this faith, society has ever retrograded; with
it there have been continual reforms. It is an important element of
progress, and a mark of dignity and moral greatness.
Shall we seek a connection between their martyrdoms and civilization?
They bore witness to a religion which is the source of all true progress
upon earth; they attested to its divine truth amid protracted agonies;
they were illustrious examples for all ages to contemplate.
Perhaps the most powerful effect of their voluntary sacrifice was to
secure credence to the mysteries of Christianity. Socrates died for his
own opinions; but who was ever willing to die for the opinions of
Socrates? But innumerable martyrs exulted in the privilege of dying for
the doctrines of Him whose sacrifice saved the world. Nor to these had
death its customary terrors, since they were assured of a glorious
immortality. They impressed the pagan world with a profound lesson that
the future is greater than the present; that there is to be a day of
rewards and punishments. Amid all the miseries and desolations of
society, it was a great thing to bear witness to the reality of future
happiness and misery. The hope of immortality must have been an
unspeakable consolation to the miserable sufferers of the Roman Empire.
It gave to them courage and patience and fortitude. It inspired them
with hope and peace. Amid the ravages of disease, and the incursions of
barbarians, and the dissolution of society, and the approaching eclipse
of the glory of man, it was a great and holy mystery that the soul
should survive these evils, and that eternal bliss should be the reward
of the faithful. Nothing else could have reconciled the inhabitants of
the decaying empire to slavery, war, and pillage. There was needed some
powerful support to the mind under the complicated calamities of the
times. This support the death and exultation of the martyrs afforded. It
was written on the souls of the suffering millions that there was a
higher life, a glorious future, an exceeding great reward. It was
impossible to see thousands ready to die, exulting in the privilege of
martyrdom, anticipating with confidence their "crown," and not feel that
immortality was a certitude brought to light by the Gospel. And the
example of the martyrs kindled all the best emotions of the soul into a
hallowed glow. Their death, so serene and beautiful, filled the
spectators with love and admiration. Their sufferings brought to light
the greatest virtues, and diffused their spirit into the heart of all
who saw their indestructible joy. Is it nothing, in such an age, to have
given an impulse to the most exalted sentiments that men can cherish?
The welfare of nations is based on the indestructible certitudes of
love, friendship, faith, fortitude, self-sacrifice. It was not Marathon
so much as Thermopylae which imparted vitality to Grecian heroism, and
made that memorable self-sacrifice one of the eternal pillars which mark
national advancement. So the sufferings of the martyrs, for the sake of
Christ, warmed the dissolving empire with a belief in Heaven, and
prepared it to encounter the most unparalleled wretchedness which our
world has seen. They gave a finishing blow to Epicureanism and skeptical
cynicism; so that in the calamities which soon after happened, men were
buoyed with hope and trust. They may have hidden themselves in caves and
deserts, they may have sought monastic retreats, they may have lost
faith in man and all mundane glories, they may have consumed their lives
in meditation and solitude, they may have anticipated the dissolution of
all things, but they awaited in faith the coming of their Lord. Prepared
for any issue or any calamity, a class of heroes arose to show the moral
greatness of the passive virtues, and the triumphs of faith amid the
wrecks of material grandeur. Were not such needed at the close of the
fourth century? Especially were not such bright examples needed for the
ages which were to come? Polycarp and Cyprian were the precursors of the
martyrs of the Middle Ages, and were of the Reformation. Early
persecutions developed the spirit of martyrdom, which is the seed of the
church, impressed it upon the mind of the world, and prepared the way
for the moral triumphs of the Beckets and Savonarolas of remote
generations. Martyrdoms were the first impressive facts in the history
of the church, and the idea of dying for a faith one of the most signal
evidences of superiority over the ancient religions. It was a new idea,
which had utterly escaped the old guides of mankind.
Another great idea which was promulgated by the church long before the
empire fell, was that of benevolence. Charities were not one of the
fruits of paganism. Men may have sold their goods and given to the poor,
but we have no record of such deeds. Hospitals and eleemosynary
institutions were nearly unknown. When a man was unfortunate, there was
nothing left to him but to suffer and die. There was no help from
others. All were engrossed in their schemes of pleasure or ambition, and
compassion was rare. The sick and diseased died without alleviation.
"The spectator who gazed upon the magnificent buildings which covered
the seven hills, temples, arches, porticoes, theatres, baths and
palaces, could discover no hospitals and asylums, unless perchance the
temple of Aesculapius, on an island in the Tiber, where the maimed and
sick were left in solitude to struggle with the pangs of death." But the
church fed the hungry, and clothed the naked, and visited the prisoner,
and lodged the stranger. Charity was one of the fundamental injunctions
of Christ and of the Apostles. The New Testament breathes unbounded
love, benevolence so extensive and universal that self was ignored.
Self-denial, in doing good to others, was one of the virtues expected of
every Christian. Hence the first followers of our Lord had all things in
common. Property was supposed to belong to the whole church, rather than
to individuals. "Go and sell all that thou hast" was literally
interpreted. It devolved on the whole church to see that strangers were
entertained, that the sick were nursed, that the poor were fed, that
orphans were protected, that those who were in prison were visited. For
these purposes contributions were taken up in all assemblies convened
for public worship. Individuals also emulated the whole church, and gave
away their possessions to the poor. Matrons, especially, devoted
themselves to these works of charity, feeding the poor, and visiting the
sick. They visited the meanest hovels and the most dismal prisons. But
"what heathen," says Tertullian, "will suffer his wife to go about from
one street to another to the houses of strangers? What heathen would
allow her to steal away into the dungeon to kiss the chain of the
martyr?" And these works of benevolence were not bestowed upon friends
alone, but upon strangers; and it was this, particularly, which struck
the pagans with wonder and admiration--that men of different countries,
ranks, and relations of life, were bound together by an invisible cord
of love. A stranger, with letters to the "brethren," was sure of a
generous and hearty welcome. There were no strangers among the
Christians; they were all brothers; they called each other brother and
sister; they gave to each other the fraternal kiss; they knew of no
distinctions; they all had an equal claim to the heritage of the church.
And this generosity and benevolence extended itself to the wants of
Christians in distant lands; the churches redeemed captives taken in
war, and even sold the consecrated vessels for that purpose on rare
occasions, as Ambrose did at Milan. A single bishop, in the third
century, supported two thousand poor people. Cyprian raised at one time
a sum equal to four thousand dollars in his church at Carthage, to be
sent to the Manichaean bishops for the purposes of charity. Especially in
times of public calamity was this spirit of benevolence manifested, and
in striking contrast with the pagans. [Footnote: Neander, vol. i.
Section 3.] When Alexandria was visited with the plague during the
reign of Gallienus, the pagans deserted their friends upon the first
symptoms of disease; they left them to die in the streets, without even
taking the trouble to bury them when dead; they only thought of escaping
from the contagion themselves. The Christians, on the contrary, took the
bodies of their brethren in their arms, waited upon them without
thinking of themselves, ministered to their wants, and buried them with
all possible care, even while the best people of the community,
presbyters and deacons, lost their own lives by their self-sacrificing
generosity. [Footnote: Eusebius, 1. vii. chap. 22.] And when Carthage
was ravaged by a similar pestilence in the reign of Gallus, the pagans
deserted the sick and the dying, and the streets were filled with dead
bodies, which greatly increased the infection. No one came near them
except for purposes of plunder; but Cyprian, calling his people together
in the church, said: "If we do good only to our own, what do we more
than publicans and heathens." Animated by his words, the members of the
church divided the work between them, the rich giving money, and the
poor labor, so that in a short time the bodies which filled the streets
were buried.
And this principle of benevolence has never been relinquished by the
church. It was one of the foundation-pillars of monastic life in the
Middle Ages, when monasteries and convents were blessed retreats for the
miserable and unfortunate, where all strangers found a shelter and a
home; where they diffused charities upon all who sought their aid. The
monastery itself was built upon charities, upon the gifts and legacies
of the pious. In pagan Rome men willed away their fortunes to favorites;
they were rarely bestowed upon the poor. But Christianity inculcated
everywhere the necessity of charities, not merely as a test of Christian
hope and faith, but as one of the conditions of salvation itself. One of
the most glorious features of our modern civilization is the wide-spread
system of public benevolence extended to missions, to destitute
churches, to hospitals, to colleges, to alms-houses, to the support of
the poor, who are not left to die unheeded as in the ancient world.
Every form of Christianity, every sect and party, has its peculiar
charities; but charities for some good object are a primal principle of
the common creed. What immeasurable blessings have been bestowed upon
mankind in consequence of this law of kindness and love! What a
beautiful feature it is in the whole progress of civilization!
The early church had set a good example of patience under persecution,
and practical benevolence extended into every form of social life which
has been instituted in every succeeding age, and to which the healthy
condition of society may in a measure be traced.
The next mission of the church was to give dignity and importance to the
public preaching of the Gospel, which has never since been lost sight
of, and has been no inconsiderable element of our civilization. This was
entirely new in the history of society. The pagan priest did not exhort
the people to morality, or point out their religious duties, or remind
them of their future destinies, or expound the great principles of
religious faith. He offered up sacrifices to the Deity, and appeared in
imposing ceremonials. He wore rich and gorgeous dresses to dazzle the
senses of the people, or excite their imaginations. It was his duty to
appeal to the gods, and not to men; to propitiate them with costly
rites, to surround himself with mystery, to inspire awe, and excite
superstitious feelings. The Christian minister had a loftier sphere.
While he appealed to God in prayer, and approached his altar with
becoming solemnity, it was also his duty to preach to the people, as
Paul and the Apostles did throughout the heathen world, in order to
convert them to Christianity, and change the whole character of their
lives and habits. The presbyter, while he baptized believers and
administered the symbolic bread and wine, also taught the people,
explained to them the mysteries, enforced upon them the obligations,
appealed to their intellects, their consciences, and their hearts. He
plunged fearlessly into every subject bearing upon religious life, and
boldly presented it for contemplation.
What a grand theatre for the development of mind, for healthy
instruction and commanding influence, was opened by the Christian
pulpit. There was no sphere equal to it in moral dignity and force. It
threw into the shade the theatre and the forum. And in times when
printing was unknown, it was almost the only way by which the people
could be taught. It vastly added to the power of the clergy, and gave
them an influence that the old priests of paganism could never exercise.
It created an entirely new power in the world, a moral power, indeed,
but one to which history presents no equal. The philosophers taught in
their schools, they taught a few admiring pupils; but the sphere of
their teachings was limited, and also the number whom they could
address. The pulpit became an institution. All the Christians were
required to assemble regularly for public instruction as well as
worship. On every seventh day the people laid aside their secular duties
and devoted themselves to religious improvement. The pulpit gave power
to the Sabbath; and what an institution is the Christian Sabbath. To the
Sabbath and to public preaching Christendom owes more than to all other
sources of moral elevation combined. It is true that the Jewish
synagogue furnished a model to the church; but the Levitical race
claimed no peculiar sanctity, and discharged no friendly office beyond
the precincts of the temple. In the synagogue the people assembled to
pray, or to hear the Scriptures read and expounded, not to receive
religious instruction. The Jewish religion was as full of ceremonials as
the pagan, and the intellectual part of it was confined to the lawyers,
to the rabbinical hierarchy. But the preaching of the great doctrines of
Christianity was made a peculiarly sacred office, and given to a class
of men who avoided all secular pursuits. The Christian priest was the
recognized head of the society which he taught and controlled. In
process of time, he became a great dignitary, controlling various
interests; but his first mission was to preach, and his first theme was
a crucified Saviour. He ascended the pulpit every week as an authorized
as well as a sacred teacher, and, in the illustration of his subjects,
he was allowed great latitude in which to roam. It is not easy to
appreciate what a difference there was between pagan and Christian
communities from the rise of this new power, and we might also say
institution, since the pulpit and the Sabbath are interlinked and
associated together. Whatever the world has gained by the Sabbath, that
gain is intensified and increased vastly by public teaching. It placed
the Christian as far beyond the Jew, as the Jew was before beyond the
pagan. It also created a sacerdotal caste. The people may have had the
privilege of pouring out their hearts before the brethren, and of
speaking for their edification, but all the members were not fitted for
the secular office of teachers. Christianity claims the faculties of
knowledge, as well as those of feeling. Teaching was early felt to be a
great gift, implying not only superior knowledge, but superior wisdom and
grace. Only a few possessed the precious charisma to address profitably
the assembled people, [Greek: charisma didaskalias], and those few
became the appointed guides of the Christian flocks, [Greek: didaskaloi].
Other officers of the new communities shared with them the administration,
but the teacher was the highest officer, and he became gradually the
presbyter, whose peculiar function it was to discourse to the people on
the great themes which it was their duty to learn. And even after the
presbyter became a bishop, it was his chief office to teach publicly,
even as late as the fourth and fifth centuries. Leo and Gregory, the
great bishops of Rome, were eloquent preachers.
Thus the church gradually claimed the great prerogative of eloquence.
Eloquence was not born in the church, but it was sanctified, and set
apart, and appropriated to a thousand new purposes, and especially
identified with the public teaching of the people. The great mysteries,
the profound doctrines, the suggestive truths, the touching histories,
the practical duties of Christianity were seized and enforced by the
public teacher; and eloquence appeared in the sermon. In pagan ages,
eloquence was confined to the forum or the senate chamber, and was
directed entirely into secular channels. It was always highly esteemed
as the birthright of genius--an inspiration, like poetry, rather than an
art to be acquired. But it was not always the handmaid of poetry and
music; it was brought down to earth for practical purposes, and employed
chiefly in defending criminals, or procuring the passage of laws, or
stimulating the leaders of society to important acts. The gift of tongue
was reserved for rhetoricians, lawyers, politicians, philosophers; not
for priests, who were intercessors with the Divine. Now Christianity
adopted all the arts of eloquence, and enriched them, and applied them
to a variety of new subjects. She carried away in triumph the brightest
ornament of the pagan schools, and placed it in the hands of her chosen
ministers. The pulpit soon began to rival the forum in the displays of a
heaven-born art, which was now consecrated to far loftier purposes than
those to which it had been applied. As public instruction became more
and more learned, it also became more and more eloquent, for the
preacher had opportunity, subject, audience, motive, all of which are
required for great perfection in public speaking. He assembled a living
congregation at stated intervals; he had the range of all those lofty
inquiries which entrance the soul; and he had souls to save--the
greatest conceivable motive to a good man who realizes the truths of the
Gospel. All human enterprises and schemes become ultimately insipid to a
man who has no lofty view of benefiting mankind, or his family, or his
friend. We were made to do good. Take away this stimulus, and energy
itself languishes and droops. There is no object in life to a seeker of
pleasure or gain, when once the passion is gratified. What object of
pity so melancholy as a man worn out with egotistical excitements, and
incapable of being amused. But he who labors for the good of others is
never ennuied. The benevolent physician, the patriotic statesman, the
conscientious lawyer, the enthusiastic teacher, the dreaming author, all
work and toil in weary labors, with the hope of being useful to the
bodies, or the intellects, or the minds of the people. This is the great
condition of happiness. There is an excitement in gambling as in
pleasure, in money-making as in money-spending; but it wears out, or
exhausts the noble faculties, and ends in ennui or self-reproach and
bitter disappointment. It is not the condition of our nature, which was
made to be useful, to seek the good of others. They are the happiest and
most esteemed who have this good constantly at heart. There can be no
unhappiness to a man absorbed in doing good. He may be poor and
persecuted like Socrates; he may walk barefooted, and have domestic
griefs, and be deprived of his comforts--but he is serene, for the soul
triumphs over the body. Now, what motive so grand as to save the
immortal part of man. This desire filled the ancient Christian orator
with a preternatural enthusiasm, as well as gave to him an unlimited
power, and an imposing dignity. He was the most happy of mortals when
led to the blazing fire of his persecutors, and he was the most august.
The feeling that he was kindling a fire which should never be quenched,
even that which was to burn up all the wicked idols of an idolatrous
generation, unloosed his tongue and animated his features. The most
striking examples of seraphic joy, of a sort of divine beauty playing
upon the features, are among orators. In animated conversation, a person
ordinarily homely, like Madame de Stael, becomes beautiful and
impressive. But in the pulpit, when the sacred orator is moving a
congregation with the fears and hopes of another world, there is a
majesty in his beauty which is nowhere else so fully seen. There is no
eloquence like that of the pulpit, when the preacher is gifted and in
earnest. Greece had her Pericles and Demosthenes, and Rome her
Hortensius and Cicero. Many other great orators we could mention. But
when Greece and Rome had an intellectual existence such as that to which
our modern times furnish no parallel, in our absorbing pursuit of
pleasure and gain, and amid the wealth of mechanical inventions, there
were, even in those classic lands, but few orators whose names have
descended to our times; while, in the church, in a degenerated period,
when literature and science were nearly extinct, there were a greater
number of Christian orators than what classic antiquity furnished. Yea,
in those dark and miserable ages which succeeded the fall of the Roman
empire, there were in every land remarkable pulpit orators, like those
who fanned the Crusades. There was no eloquence in the Middle Ages
outside the church. Bernard exercised a far greater moral power than
Cicero in the fullness of his fame. And in our modern times, what
orators have arisen like those whom the Reformation produced, both in
the Roman Catholic church, and among the numerous sects which protested
against her? What orator has Germany given birth to equal in fame to
Luther? What orator in France has reached the celebrity of Bossuet, or
Bourdaloue, or Massillon? Even amid all the excitements attending the
change of government, who have had power on the people like a Lacordaire
or Monod? In England, the great orators have been preachers, with a very
few exceptions; and these men would have been still greater in the arts
of public speaking had they been trained in the church. In our day, we
have seen great orators in secular life, but they yield in fascination
either to those who are accustomed to speak from the sacred desk, or to
those whose training has been clerical, like many of our popular
lecturers. Nothing ever opened such an arena of eloquence as the
preaching of the Gospel, either in the ancient, the mediaeval, or the
modern world, not merely from the grandeur and importance of the themes
discussed, but also from the number of the speakers. In a legislative
assembly, where all are supposed to be able to address an audience, and
some are expected to be eloquent, only two or three can be heard in a
day. Only some twenty or thirty able speeches are delivered in Congress
or Parliament in a whole session; but in England, or the United States,
some thirty thousand preachers are speaking at the same time, many of
whom are far more gifted, learned, and brilliant than any found in the
great councils of the nation. Nor is this eloquence confined to the
Protestant church; it exists also in the Roman Catholic in every land.
There are no more earnest and inspiring orators than in Italy or France.
Even in rude and unlettered and remote districts, we often hear
specimens of eloquence which would be wonderful in capitals. What chance
has the bar, in a large city, compared with the pulpit, for the display
of eloquence? Probably there are more eloquent addresses delivered every
Sunday from the various pulpits of Christendom than were pronounced by
all the orators of Greece during the whole period of her political
existence. Doubtless there are more touching and effective appeals made
to the popular heart every Sunday in every Christian land, than are made
during the whole year beside on subjects essentially secular. Then what
an impulse has pulpit oratory given to objects of a strictly
philanthropic character! The church has been the nurse and mother of all
schemes of benevolence since it was organized. It is itself a great
philanthropic institution, binding up the wounds of the prisoner,
relieving the distressed, and stimulating great enterprises. For all of
this the pulpit has been called upon, and has lent its aid; so that the
world has been more indebted to the eloquence of divines than to any
other source. Who can calculate the moral force of one hundred and fifty
thousand to two hundred thousand Christian preachers in a world like
ours, most of whom are arrayed on the side of morality and learning. It
may be said that these benefits may more properly be considered to flow
from Christianity as revealed in the Bible; that the Bible is the cause
of all this great impulse to civilization. We do not object to such an
interpretation; nevertheless, in specifying the influence of the church,
even before the empire fell, the creation of pulpit eloquence should be
mentioned, since this has contributed so much to the moral elevation of
Christendom. Christianity would be shorn of half her triumphs were it
not for the public preaching of her truths. Paganism had no public
teachers who regularly taught the people and stimulated their noblest
energies. It was a new institution, these Sabbath-day exercises, and has
had an inconceivable influence on the progress and condition of the
race. The power of the Gospel was indeed the main and primary cause; but
the church must have the credit of appropriating what was most prized in
the intellectual centres of antiquity, and giving to it a new direction.
Christian oratory is also an interesting subject to present in merely
its artistical relations. Its vast influence no one can question.
Again, who can estimate the debt which civilization, in its largest and
most comprehensive sense, owes to the fathers of the early church, in
the elaboration of Christian doctrine. They found the heathen world
enslaved by a certain class of most degrading notions of God, of deity,
of goodness, of the future, of rewards and punishments. Indeed, its
opinions were wrong and demoralizing in almost every point pertaining to
the spiritual relations of man. They met the wants of their times by
seizing on the great radical principles of Christianity, which most
directly opposed these demoralizing ideas, and by giving them the
prominence which was needed. Moreover, in the church itself, opinions
were from time to time broached, so intimately allied with pagan
philosophies and oriental theogonies, that the faith of Christians was
in danger of being subverted. The Scriptures were indeed recognized to
contain all that is essential in Christian truth to know; but they still
allowed great latitude of belief, and contradictory creeds were drawn
from the same great authority. If the Bible was to be the salvation of
man, or the great thesaurus of religious truth, it was necessary to
systematize and generalize its great doctrines, both to oppose dangerous
heathen customs and heretical opinions in the church itself. And more
even than this, to set forth a standard of faith for all the ages which
were to come; not an arbitrary system of dogmas, but those which the
Scriptures most directly and emphatically recognized. Christian life had
been set forth by the martyrs in the various forms of teaching, in the
worship of God, in the exercise of those virtues and graces which Christ
had enjoined, in benevolence, in charity, in faith, in prayer, in
patience, in the different relations of social life, in the sacraments,
in the fasts and festivals, in the occupations which might be profitably
and honorably carried on. But Christianity influenced thought and
knowledge as well as external relations. It did not declare a rigid
system of doctrines when first promulgated. This was to be developed
when the necessity required it. For two centuries there were but few
creeds, and these very simple and comprehensive. Speculation had not
then entered the ranks, nor the pagan spirit of philosophy. There was
great unity of belief, and this centered around Christ as the Redeemer
and Saviour of the world. But, in process of time, Christianity was
forced to contend with Judaism, with Orientalism, and with Greek
speculation, as these entered into the church itself, and were more or
less embraced by its members. With downright Paganism there was a
constant battle; but in this battle all ranks of Christians were united
together. They were not distracted by any controversies whether idolatry
should be or should not be tolerated. But when Gnostic principles were
embraced by good men, those which, for instance, entered into monastic
or ascetic life, it was necessary that some great genius should arise
and expose their oriental origin, and lay down the Christian law
definitely on that point. So when Manichaeism, and Arianism, and other
heretical opinions, were defended and embraced by the Christians
themselves, the fathers who took the side of orthodoxy in the great
controversies which arose, rendered important services to all subsequent
generations, since never, probably, were those subtle questions
pertaining to the Trinity, and the human nature of Christ, and
predestination, and other kindred topics, discussed with so much acumen
and breadth. They occupied the thoughts of the whole age, and emperors
entered into the debates on theological questions with an interest
exceeding that of the worldly matters which claimed their peculiar
attention. It is not easy for Christians of this age, when all the great
doctrines of faith are settled, to appreciate the prodigious excitement
which their discussion called forth in the times of Athanasius and
Augustine. The whole intellect of the age was devoted to theological
inquiries. Everybody talked about them, and they were the common theme
on all public occasions. If discussions of subjects which once had such
universal fascination can never return again, if they are passed like
Olympic games, or the discussions of Athenian schools of philosophy, or
the sports of the Colosseum, or the oracles of Dodona, or the bulls of
mediaeval popes, or the contests of the tournament, or the "field of the
cloth of gold," they still have a historical charm, and point to the
great stepping-stones of human progress. If they are really grand and
important ideas, which they claimed to be, they will continue to move
the most distant generations. If they are merely dialectical deductions,
they are among the profoundest efforts of reason in the Christian
schools of philosophy.
We cannot, of course, enter into the controversies through which the
church elaborated the system of doctrines now generally received, nor
describe those great men who gave such dignity to theological inquiries.
Clement was raised up to combat the Gnostics, Athanasius to head off the
alarming spread of Arianism, and Augustine to proclaim the efficacy of
divine grace against the Pelagians. The treatises of these men and of
other great lights on the Trinity, on the incarnation, and on original
sin, had as great an influence on the thinking of the age and of
succeeding ages, as the speculations of Plato, or the syllogisms of
Thomas Aquinas, or the theories of Kepler, or the expositions of Bacon,
or the deductions of Newton, or the dissertations of Burke, or the
severe irony of Pascal. They did not create revolutions, since they did
not labor to overturn, but they stimulated the human faculties, and
conserved the most valued knowledge. Their definite opinions became the
standard of faith among the eastern Christians, and were handed down to
the Germanic barbarians. They were adopted by the Catholic church, and
preserved unity of belief in ages of turbulence and superstition. One of
the great recognized causes of modern civilization was the establishment
of universities. In these the great questions which the fathers started
and elaborated were discussed with renewed acumen. Had there been no
Origen, or Tertullian, or Augustine, there would have been no Anselm, or
Abelard, or Erigena. The speculations and inquiries of the Alexandrian
divines controlled the thinking of Europe for one thousand years, and
gave that intensely theological character to the literature of the
Middle Ages, directing the genius of Dante as well as that of Bernard.
Their influence on Calvin was as marked as on Bossuet. Pagan philosophy
had no charm like the great verities of the Christian faith. Augustine
and Athanasius threw Plato and Aristotle into the shade. Nothing more
preeminently marked the great divines whom the Reformation produced,
than the discussion of the questions which the fathers had systematized
and taught. Nor was the interest confined to divines. Louis XIV.
discussed free will and predestination with Racine and Fenelon, even as
the courtiers of Louis XV. discussed probabilities and mental
reservations. And in New England, at Puritan firesides, the passing
stranger in the olden times, when religion was a life, entered into
theological discussions with as much zest as he now would describe the
fluctuations of stocks or passing vanities of crinoline and hair dyes.
Nor is it one of the best signs of this material age that the interest
in the great questions which tasked the intellects of our fathers is
passing away. But there is a mighty permanence in great ideas, and the
time, we trust, will come again when indestructible certitudes will
receive more attention than either politics or fashions.
The influence of the fathers is equally seen in the music and poetry
which have come down from their times. The church succeeded to an
inheritance of religious lyrics unrivaled in the history of literature.
The _Magnificat_ and the _Nunc dimittis_ were sung from the
earliest Christian ages. The streets of the eastern cities echoed to the
seductive strains of Arius and Chrysostom. Flavian and Diodorus
introduced at Antioch the antiphonal chant, which, improved by Ambrose,
and still more by Gregory, became the joy of blessed saints in those
turbulent ages, when singing in the choir was the amusement as well as
the duty of a large portion of religious people. So numerous were the
hymns of Ambrose, Hilary, Augustine, and others, that they became the
popular literature of centuries, and still form the most beautiful part
of the service of the Catholic church. Who can estimate the influence of
hymns which have been sung for fifty successive generations? What a
charm is still attached to the mediaeval chants! The poetry of the early
church is preserved in those sacred anthems. They inspired the
barbarians with enthusiasm, even as they had kindled the rapture of
earlier Christians in the church of Milan. The lyrical poets are
immortal, and exert a wide-spread influence. The fervent stanzas of
Watts, of Steele, of Wesley, of Heber, are sung from generation to
generation. The hymns of Luther are among the most valued of his various
works. "From Greenland's icy mountains"--that sacred lyric--shall live
as long as the "Elegy in a Country Church-yard," or the "Cotter's
Saturday Night," yea, shall survive the "Night Thoughts," and the
"Course of Time." There is nothing in Grecian or Roman poetry that fills
the place of the psalmody of the early church. The songs of Ambrose were
his richest legacy to triumphant barbarians, consoling the monk in his
dreary cell and the peasant on his vine-clad hills, speaking the
sentiment of a universal creed, and consecrating the most tender
recollections. So that Christian literature, in its varied aspects, its
exegesis, its sermons, its creeds, and its psalmody, if not equal in
artistic merit to the classical productions of antiquity, have had an
immeasurable influence on human thought and life, not in the Roman world
merely, but in all subsequent ages.
But the great truths which the fathers proclaimed in reference to the
moral and social relations of society are still more remarkable in their
subsequent influence.
The great idea of Christian equality struck at the root of that great
system of slavery which was one of the main causes of the ruin of the
empire. Christianity did not break up slavery; it might never have
annihilated it under a Roman rule, but it protested against it so soon
as it was clothed with secular power. As in the sight of heaven there is
no distinction of persons, so the idea of social equality gained ground
as the relations of Christianity to practical life were understood. The
abolition of slavery, and the general amelioration of the other social
evils of life, are all a logical sequence from the doctrine of Christian
equality,--that God made of one blood all the nations of the earth, that
they are equally precious in his sight, and have equal claims to the
happiness of heaven. All theories of human rights radiate from, and
centre around, this consoling doctrine. That we are born free and equal
may not, practically, be strictly true; but that the relations of
society ought to be viewed as they are regarded in the Scriptures, which
reveal the dignity of the soul and its glorious destinies, cannot be
questioned; so that oppression of man by man, and injustice, and unequal
laws militate with one of the great fundamental revelations of God.
Impress Christian equality on the mind of man, and social equality
follows as a matter of course. The slave was recognized to be a man, a
person, and not a thing. Whenever he sat down, as he did once a week,
beside his master, in the adoration of a common Lord, the ignominy of
his hard condition was removed, even if his obligations to obedience
were not abrogated. As a future citizen of heaven, his importance on the
earth was more and more recognized, until his fetters were gradually
removed.
From the day when Christian equality was declared, the foundations of
slavery were assailed, and the progress of freedom has kept pace with
Christian civilization, although the Apostles did not directly denounce
the bondage that disgraced the ancient world. It was something to
declare the principles which, logically carried out, would ultimately
subvert the evil, for no evil can stand forever which is in opposition
to logical deductions from the truths of Christianity. Moral philosophy
is as much a series of logical deductions from the doctrine of loving
our neighbor as ourself as that great network of theological systems
which Augustine and Calvin elaborated from the majesty and sovereignty
of God. Those distinctions which Christ removed by his Gospel of
universal brotherhood can never return or coexist with the progress of
the truth. A vast social revolution began when the eternal destinies of
the slave were announced. It will not end with the mere annihilation of
slavery as an institution; it will affect the relations of the poor and
the rich, the unlucky and the prosperous, in every Christian country
until justice and love become dominant principles. What a stride from
Roman slavery to mediaeval serfdom! How benignant the attitude of the
church, in all ages, to the poor man! The son of a peasant becomes a
priest, and rises, in the Christian hierarchy, to become a ruler of the
world. There was no way for a poor peasant boy to rise in the Middle
Ages, except in the church. He attracts the notice of some beneficent
monk; he is educated in the cloister; he becomes a venerated brother, an
abbot, perhaps a bishop or a pope. Had he remained in service to a
feudal lord, he never could have risen above his original rank. The
church raises him from slavery, and puts upon his brow her seal and in
his hands the thunderbolts of spiritual power, thus giving him dignity
and consideration and independence. Rising, as the clergy did in the
Middle Ages, in all ages, from the lower and middle classes, they became
as much opposed to slavery as they were to war. It was thus in the bosom
of the church that liberty was sheltered and nourished. Nor has the
church ever forgotten her mission to the poor, or sympathized, as a
whole, with the usurpations of kings. She may have aimed at dominion,
like Hildebrand and Innocent III., but it was spiritual domination,
control of the mind of the world. But she ever sympathized with
oppressed classes, like Becket, even as he defied the temporal weapons
of Henry II. The Jesuits, even, respected the dignity of the poor. Their
errors were trust in machinery and unbounded ambition, but they labored
in their best ages for the good of the people. And in our times, the
most consistent and uncompromising foes of despotism and slavery are in
the ranks of the church. The clergy have been made, it is true,
occasionally, the tools of despotism, and have been absurdly
conservative of their own privileges, but on the whole, have ever lifted
up their voices in defense of those who are ground down.
The elevation of woman, too, has been caused by the doctrine of the
equality of the sexes which Christianity revealed; not "woman's rights"
as interpreted by infidels; not the ignoring of woman's destiny of
subservience to man, as declared in the Garden of Eden and by St. Paul,
but her glorious nature which fits her for the companionship of man.
Heathendom reduces her to slavery, dependence, and vanity. Christianity
elevates her by developing her social and moral excellences, her more
delicate nature, her elevation of soul, her sympathy with sorrow, her
tender and gracious aid. The elevation of woman did not come from the
natural traits of Germanic barbarians, but from Christianity. Chivalry
owes its bewitching graces to the influence of Christian ideas. Clemency
and magnanimity, gentleness and sympathy, did not spring from German
forests, but the teachings of the clergy. Veneration for woman was the
work of the church, not of pagan civilization or Teutonic simplicity.
The equality of the sexes was acknowledged by Jerome when he devoted
himself to the education of Roman matrons, and received from the hand of
Paula the means of support while he, labored in his cell at Bethlehem.
How much more influential was Fabiola or Marcella than Aspasia or
Phryne! It was woman who converted barbaric kings, and reigned, not by
personal charms, like Eastern beauties, but by the solid virtues of the
heart. Woman never occupied so proud a position in an ancient palace as
in a feudal castle. When Paula visited the East, she was welcomed by
Christian bishops, and the proconsul of Palestine surrendered his own
palace for her reception, not because she was high in rank, but because
her virtues had gone forth to all the world; and when she died, a great
number of the most noted people followed her body to the grave with
sighs and sobs. The sufferings of the female martyrs are the most
pathetic exhibitions of moral greatness in the history of the early
church. And in the Middle Ages, whatever is most truly glorious or
beautiful can be traced to the agency of woman. Is a town to be spared
for a revolt, or a grievous tax remitted, it is a Godiva who intercedes
and prevails. Is an imperious priest to be opposed, it is an Ethelgiva
who alone dares to confront him even in the king's palace. It is
Ethelburga, not Ina, who reigns among the Saxons--not because the king
is weak, but his wife is wiser than he. A mere peasant-girl, inspired
with the sentiment of patriotism, delivers a whole nation, dejected and
disheartened, for such was Joan of Arc. Bertha, the slighted wife of
Henry, crosses the Alps in the dead of winter, with her excommunicated
lord, to remove the curse which deprived him of the allegiance of his
subjects. Anne, Countess of Warwick, dresses herself like a cook-maid to
elude the visits of a royal duke, and Ebba, abbess of Coldingham, cuts
off her nose, to render herself unattractive to the soldiers who ravage
her lands. Philippa, the wife of the great Edward, intercedes for the
inhabitants of Calais, and the town is spared.
The feudal woman gained respect and veneration because she had the moral
qualities which Christianity developed. If she entered with eagerness
into the pleasures of the chase or the honor of the banquet, if she
listened with enthusiasm to the minstrel's lay and the crusader's tale,
her real glory was her purity of character and unsullied fame. In
ancient Rome men were driven to the circus and the theatre for amusement
and for solace, but among the Teutonic races, when converted to
Christianity, rough warriors associated with woman without seductive
pleasures to disarm her. It was not riches, nor elegance of manners, nor
luxurious habits, nor exemption from stern and laborious duties which
gave fascination to the Christian woman of the Middle Ages. It was her
sympathy, her fidelity, her courage, her simplicity, her virtues, her
noble self-respect, which made her a helpmeet and a guide. She was
always found to intercede for the unfortunate, and willing to endure
suffering. She bound up the wounds of prisoners, and never turned the
hungry from her door. And then how lofty and beautiful her religious
life. History points with pride to the religious transports and
spiritual elevation of Catharine of Sienna, of Margaret of Anjou, of
Gertrude of Saxony, of Theresa of Spain, of Elizabeth of Hungary, of
Isabel of France, of Edith of England. How consecrated were the labors
of woman amid feudal strife and violence. Whence could have arisen such
a general worship of the Virgin Mary had not her beatific loveliness
been reflected in the lives of the women whom Christianity had elevated?
In the French language she was worshiped under the feudal title of Notre
Dame, and chivalrous devotion to the female sex culminated in the
reverence which belongs to the Queen of Heaven. And hence the qualities
ascribed to her, of Virgo Fidelis, Mater Castissima, Consolatrix
Afflictorum, were those to which all lofty women were exhorted to
aspire. The elevation of woman kept pace with the extension of
Christianity. Veneration for her did not arise until she showed the
virtues of a Monica and a Nonna, but these virtues were the fruit of
Christian ideas alone.
We might mention other ideas which have entered into our modern
institutions, such as pertain to education, philanthropy, and missionary
zeal. The idea of the church itself, of an esoteric band of Christians
amid the temptations of the world, bound together by rules of discipline
as well as communion of soul, is full of grandeur and beauty. And the
unity of this church is a sublime conception, on which the whole
spiritual power of the popes rested when they attempted to rule in peace
and on the principles of eternal love. However perverted the idea of the
unity of the church became in the Middle Ages, still who can deny that
it was the mission of the church to create a spiritual power based on
the hopes and fears of a future life? The idea of a theocracy forms a
prominent part of the polity of Calvin, as of Hildebrand himself. It is
the basis of his legislation. He maintained it was long concealed in the
bosom of the primitive church, and was gradually unfolded, though in a
corrupt form, by the popes, the worthiest of whom kept the idea of a
divine government continually in view, and pursued it with a clear
knowledge of its consequences. And those familiar with the lofty schemes
of Leo and Gregory, will appreciate their efforts in raising up a power
which should be supreme in barbarous ages, and preserve what was most to
be valued of the old civilization. The autocrat of Geneva clung to the
necessity of a spiritual religion, and aimed to realize that which the
Middle Ages sought, and sought in vain, that the church must always
remain the mother of spiritual principles, while the state should be the
arm by which those principles should be enforced. Like Hildebrand, he
would, if possible, have hurled the terrible weapon of excommunication.
In cutting men off from the fold, he would also have cut them off from
the higher privileges of society. He may have carried his views too far,
but they were founded on the idea of a church against which the gates of
hell could not prevail. Who can estimate the immeasurable influence of
such an idea, which, however perverted, will ever be recognized as one
of the great agencies of the world? A church without a spiritual power,
is inconceivable; nor can it pass away, even before the material
tendencies of a proud and rationalistic civilization. It will assert its
dignity when thrones and principalities shall crumble in the dust.
Such are among the chief ideas which the fathers taught, and which have
entered even into the modern institutions of society, and form the
peculiar glory of our civilization. When we remember this, we feel that
the church has performed no mean mission, even if it did not save the
Roman empire. The glory of warriors, of statesmen, of artists, of
philosophers, of legislators, and of men of science and literature in
the ancient world, still shines, and no one would dim it, or hide it
from the admiration of mankind. But the purer effulgence of the great
lights of the church eclipses it all, and will shine brighter and
brighter, until the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head.
This is the true sun which shall dissipate the shadows of superstition
and ignorance that cover so great a portion of the earth, and this shall
bring society into a healthful glow of unity and love.
* * * * *
In another volume I shall present, more in detail, the labors of the
Christian Fathers in founding the new civilization which still reigns
among the nations. And in the creation which succeeded destruction we
shall be additionally impressed with the wisdom and beneficence of the
Great First Cause, through whose providences our fallen race is led to
the new Eden, where truth and justice and love reign in perpetual beauty
and glory.
THE END.
[Transcriber's Note: The spellings "panygeric," "beauitful," and
"sytematically" occurred as such on lines 2285, 2473, and 10763,
respectively, and were corrected.]
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