THE

NORTH BRITISH REVIEW.

NO. LXXXVIII.

FOR JUNE, 1866.

2. Mommsen's History of Rome. lated by Rev. W. P. Dickson, London: Bentley, 1862.

ART. I.-1. Tableau de L'Empire Romain a far higher degree than ever before, to give depuis la Fondation de Rome jusqu'à vividness and meaning to the past, without la fin du Gouvernement Impérial en Occi- turning it into an exaggerated image of the dent. Par M. AMÉDÉE THIERRY. Paris: present. Niebuhr's work was indeed imDidier et Cie., 1862. perfect, and the power of 'historical divinaTrans- tion' which he supposed himself to possess D.D. often led him to attempt to make bricks without straw; yet he cannot be denied the merit of having first taught us how to make criticism constructive as well as destructive; how to use aright the dangerous weapon of historical analogy; how to search for the THE history of Rome has in a peculiar higher interest of national life, even while sense universal interest. Rome is the bridge we cast aside the lower interest of legend between the ancient and the modern world, and romance. This Niebuhr was the first the vessel in which the treasure of ancient to do; and that he did it imperfectly is only civilisation was preserved, till the nations of a consequence of the fact that he did it modern Europe were ready to receive it. first.

3. Römische Geschichte von Dr. A. Schwegler. Laupps'che Buchhandlung. Tübingen, 1853.

The limit of ancient history is when all the It is not now too much to say that since various peoples who played a part in the Niebuhr we have attained a far juster confirst act of the great drama are dissolved and ception of Roman history as a whole than lost in the universality of Rome. The be- was possessed by native historians. And ginning of modern history is when a new the reason is, that this new criticism has order of peoples seek to sever themselves taught us to ask questions which they did from the unity of the Roman Empire, and not ask, though they afford us sufficient data to acquire independence, Further: Roman for the answers. It has taught us also to history holds the middle place, not only in take full advantage of our position, and view time, but in character. It combines the Roman history as a continuous whole, in a progressive continuity of modern, with sense in which no native historian could so something of the unity and simplicity of an- regard it. To a certain degree, the conticient political life. Through all the perplex- nuity of the national life forced itself upon ing conflict and infinite variety of modern the observation of the Roman historians, politics, Rome still seems to prolong the who in this one point_rise above their far same monotone that awed the ancient world greater Greek rivals. Livy has a far clearer into silence. notion of the relation of the present to the Hence we do not wonder that Roman his- past than Thucydides: Tantæ molis erat tory has been made the battle-field of so Romanam condere gentem.' He sees how many controversies. On this subject Nie- a nation makes and moulds itself by its own buhr gave the first example of that species acts; yet he sees this only in part, and in of historical criticism which has been called its most obvious aspects. He was too the peculiar gift and characteristic of modern much carried away by the passions of the thought; that criticism which enables us, in time to understand the deeper unity of a N-10

VOL. XLIV.

.

progress of which the Empire was the necessary and legitimate end. And this was equally the case with all the writers on whom we have to depend for the image of Roman history.

sympathies were with those who stubbornly maintained its isolated and privileged posi tion, and against those who sought to reduce it to its due place in the whole. The interests of the provinces, the maintenance of peace through the Roman world, seemed to them nothing, when the Roman liberties

that is, the liberty of Rome to tyrannize over the world-were lost. In the picture of Tiberius given us by Tacitus, page after page is filled with his ill-treatment of the miserable nobility that disgraced the names of Cato, Scipio, and Fabius; while we hear of his good government of the world only as a slight palliation. And Livy, in his Preface, declares that the only result of the Roman conquest of the world was to de stroy the liberty and corrupt the virtue by which it was attained.

Livy, Cicero, and Sallust,' says M. Thierry, wrote at a period when thereaction of the conquered peoples upon Rome was only beginning to show its strength, and they could not sufficiently separate themselves from the imperial city to judge of it with fairness. They could look at it only as Romans, or even as Roman partisans. Tacitus, perhaps, might have seen farther, but he did not wish to see. Dominated by the religion of the past, enamoured of the ancient political forms, which the progress of the world had by a beneficent necessity destroyed, unjust to the conquered races, Tacitus turned away his eyes from a revolu- Even apart from Roman prejudices, howtion made for their advantage. He would not ever, there was something in the state of the see anything in the birth of a new Rome world which justified the dark pictures of except the corruption of the national morali- Livy and Tacitus. This was not the most ty and the crime of the Cæsars. But he had wretched period of history, but probably it this excuse, that he was not a witness of the was the period when men felt their wretchgreat events which were to impress on the edness most. All national life had been Roman Empire a final and universal charac- crushed out by the armies of Rome, and ter. He did not live to see the construction with the extinction of the nations had passed of that code of Roman law, so justly called away all real belief in the national religions. "written reason;" nor the triumph of a Even Rome herself, conquered in turn by political equality among all freemen; nor her subjects, was unable to preserve her na the victory of Christianity, which gave one tional beliefs and her national morality. God to that community of nations, and pro- But while all limited and national principles claimed all men equal before Him'-(p. 3). had lost their binding force, no higher prin This quotation sums up the whole matter. ciple had yet appeared amid the confusing The historians from whom we have our and conflicting elements. The mere extermain accounts of Roman history lived dur- nal force of the Empire, holding them toing the troubles of the early Empire, when gether in spite of themselves, seemed only the Romans seemed to be ruined by their to tend to their mutual extinction, and to own success, and to have lost their national- help on the decay of what remaining spiritity amid a heterogeneous mixture of all na-ual life there was. The Empire was peace tions, all religions, and all languages. Amid-peace, for the first time, over the civilized this chaos, where anarchy was only kept down by despotism, we find them reverting with longing eyes to a past in which Rome was still true to herself; in which the name of Roman was not yet given to a mixed crowd of Gauls, and Greeks, and Asiatics; in which the simple national worship was not yet refined away by the nobler influences of Greek art, or corrupted by the sensuous fanaticisms of Asia. They were, besides, greatly influenced by the traditions of the Roman aristocracy, who held with tenacity to the idea of the supremaey of the pure Roman blood, or even of the city of Rome, over all the world without its walls, and could not forgive the Empire for lowering that city into a capital, only distinguished as the residence of the sovereign. They inherit, in fact, the tradition of the Roman city in opposition to the Roman Empire, and their

world; but this peace only gave men time to feel their misery. The struggle was over. Revolt against Rome was as impossible as revolt against fate. The only beliefs that had held men together in spiritual bonds had been destroyed, or lived on only in the half belief of superstition. Material force seemed the only power on earth. There was nothing left to live for or to hope. And so again the thoughts of men turned back, with that kind of longing that wishes it could believe, to the simple faith and morality of ancestors who lived before nationalities had ceased to be.

Yet the Roman Empire was the legiti mate result of the very tendencies most characteristic of Roman genius, and cannot be viewed as a melancholy accident; and the whole meaning of Roman history is distorted if we do not recognise this.

We

time by the force of individual genius, but crumbling and disintegrating the moment that force was withdrawn. A Greek State was an isolated and exclusive political unit, without power of assimilating new elements. It might aggrandize itself at the expense of others, but it could not absorb them. The Greek States often made conquests, but they never willingly opened their gates to the conquered. They kept the subject populations in hard vassalage outside their gates, and if they had not enough of Helots to do their servile work, they got others from the

may indeed refuse to follow Comte on the one hand, and Louis Napoleon on the other, when they deify the imperial power, or attribute supernatural wisdom to the Cæsars. And we may laugh at Mr. Congreve when he almost attempts to whitewash the character of Nero. We shall endeavour, before the close of this paper, to show that to believe in the necessity and usefulness of the Roman Empire is a very different thing from believing in the perpetual usefulness of emperors. But this does not hinder us from acknowledging the justice of that view of Roman history maintained by such writers slave-market. Citizenship is a gift so rarely as Mommsen* and Thierry, whose guidance shall mainly follow in this article. After all, the cause of Cato did not please the gods, and the cause of Cæsar did; and this remains true whether we think better or worse of Cato for being pleased with the losing cause.

we

conferred in historic times upon an alien, that we need not take the case into account. Thus the Greek city runs through its commonly short course without ever receiving a recruit, and its conquests soon reach the utmost limits which it is practicable for a small State to administer and hold in subjection. On the other hand, the history of Rome is, as Mommsen expresses it, a continually progressing ovvououós, by which each conquered nation is absorbed in the conquering State, and furnishes it an arm wherewith to reach those who are still farther off, till all the nations of the Mediterranean are successively drawn into the Empire. Thus new life-blood is again and again poured into the State as it is becoming exhausted, and the torch of its life is handed on to new runners. Instead of the alternate anarchy and despotism of the East, and the wavering and shifting balance of power which characterize the history of Greece, we have at Rome a regular progressive continuity of advance, in which each step is made secure ere another is taken. Her campaigns seem to go on year after year, century after century, upon one settled and inherited plan. Her political development is so much of a piece, that we can trace without difficulty the affiliation of the constitution of the Empire from that of the early Monarchy. And the same is the case with its law, and every department of its activity. There is nothing episodic or broken, nothing revolutionary at Rome; but always unhasting, unresting advance, Now, the one distinguishing characteristic which holds firmly to the past, while it of Rome among the nations was its power gains the future. And the one secret of of assimilating and incorporating with itself this stability amid all changes is assimilathe subjects whom it had conquered. The tion. 'What else,' said the Emperor empires of the East were loose aggregates Claudius, brought ruin to the Athenians of discordant tribes, bound together for a and Lacedæmonians, in spite of their suc

The modern world owes what it is greatly to the community which the Roman Empire was the means of establishing among European nations. In view of this result, we may ask what there was in the character and tendencies of Rome that made it above all other nations the instrument of this transition from the old world of isolation to the new world of community. Urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat,' says a poet of the sixth century; "You have made the world into one city.' These words describe, perhaps more accurately than the poet was aware, the transition from the municipal civilisation of ancient times to a more comprehensive unity of mankind, which at first, as is usual in such cases, veiled itself under municipal forms. Before this 'patriotism without a country' could grow up, it is true Christianity had to fill the dry bones of the Roman with new life, and teach men to rejoice in the destruction of the barriers which divided them from each other. Rome only gave the form, Christianity gave the spirit. Yet even to give the form, the Roman nation must have had a power of transcend ing its own limits, of dying in order to live, such as is found in none other of the narrow nationalities of the ancient world.

cess in war, except that they treated the conquered as aliens? But our founder, * Dr. Dickson's translation of Mommsen is a solid Romulus, was so wise, that in one day he and careful piece of work. It does not, indeed, returned enemies into citizens.' Rome lived produce the vividness and energy of Mommsen's style, but it reaches a far higher measure of accuracy than on amid the fall of all the powers of the is often attained in translations from the German. ancient world, not because it was the

strongest, but because it was not like them, exclusive. 'It was,' as Mr. Bryce well expresses it, 'by Rome's self-abnegation that she Romanized the world.'

ing a magistracy in his own city. After those we have the other Italian tribes, who stood to Rome in various and fluctuating relations, according to the manner of their subjugation and the degree of their fidelity. Some, e.g., had only the private rights of Romans, and were governed by a prefect appointed by the Roman prætor, others were allied municipalists, regulating their

Rome, if we follow the legend, begins as it ends, with a colluvies. This at least would not have been an inappropriate beginning for that State in which, in the end, all special colours of nationality were to be, lost. During all the regal period we find internal affairs without interference from on record a series of additions of new cit- Rome. Finally, beyond Italy we have an izens transferred into the city from her first outmost circle of provinces, which were conquests, and it was probably this absorb- treated worst of all. In the first instance, ing policy which enabled Rome so early to they were used simply as a means of aggranoutstrip all the other Latin cities. There is dizing the sovereign city; their taxes were something analogous in that early measure confiscated and increased; much of their of comprehension, whereby all Attica was land was appropriated by Roman citizens, absorbed in the city of Athens. But and they themselves, when allowed to retain Athens never repeated the experiment; her it, had only an usufruct, subject to heavy widening empire and lessening population dues. The laws and rules by which they never tempted her to strengthen herself were governed were prescribed by an edict with new citizens. Still less did Athens of the Roman governor, who was all but ever contemplate the possibility of com- irresponsible, and could use the rod or the municating the privileges of citizenship to axe without the possibility of resistance or those who remained without her walls. revenge. But Rome discovered a new method of growth, when the old method was no longer applicable. When she could no longer transfer her conquered subjects within the walls of the city, she invented a way where by the city might be, in the language of M. Thierry, spiritualized and transferred beyond its own walls.' She forged new bonds to bind to herself those whom she subdued, and make their resources available for the sovereign city. The first and most violent of these bonds was the colonization system; a Roman colony was at once an outpost against the foe, and a means of repressing imperfectly subdued populations. It differed from a Greek colony in many ways, but above all in this, that it had no independence; it was merely a suburb of Rome, and was, till the time of Sulla, governed by deputies of the Roman magistracy. The next bond was the communication of different degrees of Roman citizenship. The gift became in time too precious to be conferred at once, even if it had been safe to confer it on those who had just ceased to be open enemies. Hence it was doled out in separate portions (under such names as Jus Latii, or Jus Italicum), according as it became necessary to conciliate or reward new allies, or to bring the forces of the State into a more compact unity. First came the plebeian, possessing from very early times all the rights of a patrician burgess, except the right of holding a magistracy. Next the Latin ally, who was the equal of the citizen so far as regarded private rights, and might even acquire the full frauchise by fill

Thus the Roman Empire becomes a vast hierarchy, in which the provinces form the base, and on them are successively built Italy, Latium, and Rome. And even within the city there is the division of patrician and plebeian, or in later times of the ruling aristocracy of noble families of both orders, and the simple freemen. This is the spectacle that the Roman Empire presents to us when its career of conquest is drawing to a close. It had crushed all nations beneath it, but only to rear an immense throne for privilege: and it is this immense system of inequality and exclusion on which the sympathies of the Roman historians are spent. But it was impossible that the work of Rome should stop here. Her genius tended to equality, and all her greatest men were levellers. Her work was not to set the nationality of Rome or of Latium above all the world, but to bring all nations under one equal law. She had subdued the nations by assimilation, by partially adopting other nations into her family. She was urged by inevitable necessity to complete what she had begun. She had sacrificed her exclusive prejudices to overcome the world; she was obliged to sacrfice herself, her nationality, and even her liberty, to maintain the conquest.

Roman history presents to us a higher unity of meaning and purpose, if we regard the Latin war, the Social war, and the last wars of the Roman Republic, as, in a certain sense, continuations of the struggle of the plebeians for equal rights; that is, if we regard them, not as the insurrections of con

quered subjects, but rather as one long po-The debate between privilege and numbers litical struggle between the privileged and the had again to be repeated. Here too there unprivileged members of the same State. seem to have been men among those in For Rome could not regard any longer as actual possession wise enough to plead the foreigners those whose blood and treasure cause of the oppressed, and here too the she had used so freely, and whose rights she question could not be decided without a had already partially acknowledged. Plato sharp struggle; though in this case, as we said that all fighting between Greek and have already stated, it was a struggle the Greek was to be regarded as civil dissen- scene of which lay not in the Forum, but sion and not as war. And so we may say that the contests between the many and the few, between the city and the empire, are but the fights of opposing factions, though the Forum is changed for the battle-field.

in the battle field. The result was in appearance, but only in appearance, unfavourable to the Latins, for the Romans had learnt such a lesson from the contest that they were glad to enrol many of the most important Latin towns in their tribes. This is the second victory of the levelling tendencies of Rome over the exclusive tendencies of the minority.

powers

The great struggle for equality begins, as has been said, with the plebeians, who consisted mainly of those conquered populations transferred within the walls by the policy of the kings. There is some reason The admission of the Latins was thus to believe that the later kings were attempt- really a popular measure, but it had an effect ing to emancipate themselves from the the reverse of popular; it threw the aristocracy by becoming leaders of the peo- which had been slowly won by the assembly ple. They were tyrants in the Greek sense, back into the hands of the aristocracy. The and perhaps on the Greek model. By the senate again became, as in early times, the expulsion of the kings the aristocracy re- controlling power at Rome, and the comitia gained their early predominance, and were merely the means whereby it transacted enabled to exclude the commonalty. Yet business. The cause of this change was the commons soon began to make head that the popular assembly had ceased to be against them. They could not be prevented the assembly of the people. The citizens from doing so, for it was they who provided, were now scattered at great distances from in the most literal sense, the sinews of war. Rome, and could not come up every marThey were aided to this success by the fact ket-day for State business. At intervals a that the oligarchy were not united. There great question might draw the farmers to were ever from time to time arising among the Forum to record their votes, but in genthem individuals superior to the prejudices eral the mob of the capital, and not the of their order, and desirous of continuing real mass of burgesses, were the only atthe liberal policy of the kings; and these tendance at the assemblies, and the mob of individuals always counselled concession, or even, in some instances, put themselves at the head of the plebeians to win it. Such were Cassius, Manlius, Mælius, and at one time the powerful gens of the Fabii. These men had to die martyrs for the unity of the State; their order could not forgive them a patriotism larger than its own: yet they at least succeeded in presenting a powerful And this explains the peculiar bitterness protest against a selfish policy, and the con- of the third great political struggle, that cessions they forced often outlived them. began when the Italians began to demand a Finally, after a long struggle, the attack of share in the rights and privileges of Romans. the commons from without, combined with The oligarchy, in whom was concentrated in the authority of many of its own best its utmost intensity the narrow national members within, forced the patricians to pride of Rome, set their faces against adopen their citadel, the jus honorum to the mitting such a colluvies of nations to efface unprivileged many, and the work of level- the national character of the State: and ling had passed through its first stage. even the populace, who might be willing to Meantime a new class had come within follow their leaders against the aristocracy the pale of the Roman State, who bore all in other points, felt like aristocrats when the burdens but had few of the privileges they were asked to lower the value of their of citizens, and to whom even the plebeians burgess rights. Again and again great stood in the relation of an aristocracy. statesmen arose, who saw the nature of the These were the Latin allies, the main crisis, and urged the dominant party to give strength of the Roman armies for centuries. way, but the policy of selfishness and ex

the capital could never be permitted to govern the State. It was natural, therefore, that though the assembly remained nominally supreme, the senate should draw to itself all the real functions of government. The popular body was paralysed by its own bulk, and the oligarchy again assumed the helm of affairs.