Chapter I: Part 1

BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCLXXXV. MARCH, 1856. VOL. LXXIX.

CONTENTS.

LIDDELL’S HISTORY OF ROME, 247
MONTEIL, 266
BIOGRAPHY GONE MAD, 285
THE GREEK CHURCH, 304
NICARAGUA AND THE FILIBUSTERS, 314
THE SCOTTISH FISHERIES, 328
SYDNEY SMITH, 350
PEERAGES FOR LIFE, 362
THE WENSLEYDALE CREATION, 369

EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET,
AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON;

_To whom all communications (post paid) must be addressed_.

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

This day is published,

INDEX

TO

THE FIRST FIFTY VOLUMES

OF

BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE.

_In Octavo, pp. 588. Price 15s._

BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCCLXXXV. MARCH, 1856. VOL. LXXIX.

LIDDELL’S HISTORY OF ROME.[1]

Engraved on certain Syrian or Assyrian rocks lie innumerable inscriptions in an unknown character; the solid rock and an Asiatic climate have preserved them for us: they lie there facing the world, in the broad light of day, but none can read them. A whole mountain-side seems covered with the records of departed greatness. What truths, what historic facts might not these mysterious characters disclose! The scholar cannot sleep for desire to interpret them. At length, by extreme ingenuity and indomitable patience, and those happy sudden incidental revelations which ever reward the persevering man, some clue is put into his hand. He begins to read, he begins to translate. We gather round and listen breathless. “I, Shalmanasser,” so runs the inscription, “I assembled a great army—I engaged—I defeated—I slew their sovereigns,—I cast in chains their captains and men of war—I, Shalmanasser, I——” Oh, hold! hold! we exclaim, with thy Shalmanasser! There was no need to decipher the mysterious characters for this. If the rock, with all its inscriptions, can tell us nothing wiser or newer, it is a pity that there were no rains in that climate to wash the surface smooth, and obliterate these boastful records of barbarian cruelty and destruction. Better that the simple weather-stained rock should face the eye of day, oblivious of all but nature’s painless and progressive activities.

Some such feeling as this has passed across the minds of most of us, when invited to peruse new histories of the ancient world. They were terrible men, those warriors of olden time. They besieged towns—and so, indeed, do we; but they did more; they put the children to the sword, and carried away the mother into captivity, and those of the men whom they did not chain and enslave, they slew as grateful sacrifices to their gods! Strange and execrable insanity! and yet the religious rite was the legitimate result, and the clear exponent of their own savage nature. There was no spectacle to them so pleasant as blood that flowed from an enemy. How deny the god who had helped them to win the victory his share in the triumphant slaughter! There have been loathsome and terrible things done upon the earth; let us forget them, as we forget some horrible nightmare. At all events, having known that such men and such times have been, and having gathered what lesson we can from them, let us be spared from the infliction of new Shalmanassers, or from new details of their atrocities. Such feeling of satiety in the old narrative of war and conquest we must confess to participate in, when the narrative relates to some Asiatic monarchy that has appeared and disappeared, leaving no trace of any good result behind it, or which merely lingers on the scene undergoing fruitless and bewildering changes. It is otherwise, however, when we are invited again to peruse the history of Rome, and her conquest of the world, as it has been proudly called. We are reading here the history of European civilisation. The slow, persistent, continuous progress of her consular armies is one of those great indispensable facts, without which the history of humanity could not be written, without which a civilised Christendom could not have existed. It is the conquest of a people, not of a monarch—a people who for many years have to struggle for self-preservation (the secret this of their lasting union and exalted patriotism)—of a people whose pride and ambition undergo the noble discipline of adversity, who, being firmly knit together, proceed steadily to the taming and subjection and settlement of the surrounding nations. It is a conquest the very reverse of those great invasions of Hun or Scythian, where population rolls like an enormous sea from one part of the world to another; it was truly the _settlement_, first of Italy, then of surrounding countries. Nomadic habits were checked. Siculi and Oscans, Sabines, Samnites, and a host of shifting populations too numerous to name, were brought under one government, and moulded into one nation. What the Alps could not do for Italy, was done by the republic of the seven hills. The peninsula was secured from the invasion of the more northern barbarian. The Gaul was first arrested, then subjugated, settled in his own home, civilised and protected. Carthage, who would have conquered or colonised in the interest only of her own commerce, was driven back. Greece, and her arts and her philosophy, were embraced and absorbed in the new empire, which extended over the finest races of men and the most propitious climates of the earth.

It has been well said that the Romans were not the only people who entertained the glorious anticipation of the conquest of the world. There was one other nation that had a still more magnificent conception of its own future destiny, of its own exalted prominence and supremacy. It was impossible for the monotheism of the Jews to attain the elevated character it did, and yet sanction the belief, in any narrow sense, of a national god. The only God of all the world must surely reign over all the world. The universal Monarch must imply a universal monarchy. From this centre of the world,—this holy temple at Jerusalem, and through His chosen and peculiar people, would God govern all the nations of the earth. Such extension of the faith of the Jew to the Gentile was inevitable. All nations would come in, as suppliants and subjects, to the throne of God’s elect. And the prophetic inspiration, though not precisely in the sense in which the ancient Hebrew understood it, was destined to be fulfilled. But it was not the sword of Israel, nor of the angels, that Divine Providence employed to establish the supremacy of the great Truth developed in Judea. It was the sword of the legions of Rome. The armies of a Scipio and a Cæsar were gathering the nations together under the one true worship. The spiritual dominion did issue from Judea, but it governed the world from the throne of the Cæsars.

Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Judea,—these are the four great names which occur to one who looks back on the history of European civilisation. To these four powers or nations we owe that status or condition which has enabled us to make such advances as we claim to be peculiarly our own. Indirect contributions are doubtless due to India and to Persia. Babylon is no more; but a people who once sojourned in Babylon may have learnt something there from the Persian, and transmitted it to us in their imperishable records; and Greek philosophy bears impress, in one phase of it, of the teaching of Indian theosophists. But still the four whom we have mentioned would furnish forth all the essential elements which the past has given to our present European culture.

If we look at the map of the world, or turn under our hand a terrestrial globe, we shall be struck with the peculiar adaptation of the banks of the Nile to be an early seat of civilisation. It is not only that the river, by periodically overflowing its banks, produces a spontaneous or unlaboured fertility, but this fertile tract of land is made precious, and the people are bound to it, by the enormous deserts that extend around it. The desert and the sea imprison the people in their “happy valley,” thus rendering it in all probability one of the earliest abodes of a stationary population. However that may be, it is certain that, whether we appeal to written history or to monumental inscriptions, there is no spot on the earth where the records of the human race extend so far back into antiquity. We must open our history of civilisation with the growth of arts and knowledge in Egypt. From Egypt we proceed to Greece—to Athens, the marvellous, who did so much in so short time, and who accomplished even more for the world at large than for her individual self. She learnt her arts from Egypt; her scientific spirit was her own. What we owe to Judea (which at an early period was not unconnected with Egypt, nor at a later with the mind of Greece) needs not to be here particularised. It was the part of Rome to reduce into order and combine under one sway large tracts of territory and great varieties of people; so that whatever had been given to the Greek, or revealed to the Hebrew, might blend and be diffused over vast portions of the human race. Nor was this office less effectually performed because the empire is seen to break up amidst much temporary confusion, produced by internal corruption and rude invaders. Europe finally assumes a form the most conducive imaginable to progress. It is divided into separate kingdoms, speaking different languages, but possessing a common religion, and many of the same sources of culture. Their similarities, their contrasts, their emulations, form together a condition the most favourable for the excitement and progress of the human intellect.

We can therefore look with complacent admiration, and undecaying interest, upon the wars and victories of ancient Rome. But indeed, such has been the revolution lately brought about in our historical studies, that the mention of a new History of Rome is more likely to call to mind perplexed controversies upon myths and fables, than visions of battles or triumphal processions winding up to the Capitol. Not many years ago, the early periods of Roman history suggested to the imagination the most vivid pictures of war and patriotism; we heard the march of the legions—we followed Cincinnatus from the plough to the camp—we were busied with the most stirring realities and the strongest passions of life. Now these realities have grown dim and disputable, and we are reminded of learned controversies upon poetic legends, or on early forms of the constitution,—we think more of Niebuhr than of Camillus, more of German critics than of the Conscript Fathers. It is not a pleasant exchange, but it is one which must be submitted to. The first question that every one will ask, who hears that Dr Liddell has told again the history of Rome, is, How has he dealt with the mythical or legendary portions? What degree of credibility has he attached to them? Has he followed the example of Arnold, and reserved for them a peculiar style savouring of antique simplicity; or has he followed the older, and, we think, the wiser course, of Livy, and told them with genuine unaffected eloquence, without either disguising their legendary character, or making the very vain attempt to distinguish the germ or nucleus of real fact from the accretions and embellishments of oral tradition?

Before we answer this question, let us say generally of Dr Liddell’s History, that we think the public is indebted to him for a pre-eminently _useful_ book. To the youthful student, to the man who cannot read many volumes, we should commend it as the one History which will convey the latest views and most extensive information. The style is simple, clear, explanatory. There are, indeed, certain high qualities of the writer and the thinker which are requisite to complete our ideal of the perfect historian. We are accustomed to require in him something of the imagination of the poet, combined with and subdued by the wide generalising spirit of the philosopher. We do not wish to have it understood that there is a signal deficiency in these qualities, but, whilst acknowledging the utility of Dr Liddell’s laborious and learned work, we cannot say that he has given to the literature of England a History of Rome.

Indeed, the author in his preface claims for his work no such high distinction. He describes the origin it had in the desire to supply the more advanced students at public schools with a fit work of instruction, conveying to them “some knowledge of the altered aspect which Roman history has assumed.” The work grew upon his hands, “and the character of the book,” he continues, “is considerably changed from that which it was originally intended to bear. A History of Rome suited to the wants of general readers of the present day does not in fact exist, and certainly is much wanted. Whether this work will in any way supply the want is for others to say.”

We have already intimated our opinion that there is no other work at present existing which so ably supplies this want; and our immediate object in placing it at the head of this paper was to assist in giving notice to all whom it might concern where such a work of instruction was to be found. The preface then proceeds to touch upon the thorny and perplexing controversies in the early history:—

“The difficulty inseparable from a work of this kind lies in the
treatment of the Early History. Since what may be called ‘The
Revolution of Niebuhr,’ it has been customary to give an abstract of
his conclusions, with little attention to the evidence upon which they
rest. But the acute and laborious criticisms of many scholars, chiefly
German, have greatly modified the faith which the present generation
is disposed to place in Niebuhr’s authoritative dicta; and in some
cases there may be observed a disposition to speak lightly of his
services. If I may say anything of myself, I still feel that reverence
for the great master which I gained in youth, when we, at Oxford,
first applied his lamp to illuminate the pages of Livy. No doubt, many
of the results which he assumes as positive are little better than
arbitrary assertions. But I conceive that his main positions are still
unshaken, or rather have been confirmed by examination and attack. If,
however, they were all abandoned, it will remain true for ever, that
to him is due the new spirit in which Roman history has been studied;
that to him must be referred the origin of that new light which has
been thrown upon the whole subject by the labours of his successors.
In a work like this, dissertation is impossible; and I have
endeavoured to state only such results of the new criticism as seem to
be established. If the young reader has less of positive set before
him to learn, he will at all events find less that he will have to
unlearn.

“Far the greater part of this work was printed off before the
appearance of Sir George Cornewall Lewis’s _Inquiry into the
Credibility of Early Roman History_. Much labour might be saved by
adopting his conclusions, that Roman history deserves little or no
attention till the age at which we can securely refer to
contemporaneous writers, and that this age cannot be carried back
further than the times of Pyrrhus. It is impossible to speak too
highly of the fulness, the clearness, the patience, the judicial
calmness of his elaborate argument. _But while his conclusions may be
conceded in full for almost all the wars and foreign transactions of
early times_, we must yet claim attention for the civil history of
Rome in the first ages of the republic. There is about it a
consistency of progress, and a clearness of intelligence, that would
make its fabrication more wonderful than its transmission in a
half-traditionary form. When tradition rests solely on memory, it is
fleeting and uncertain; but when it is connected with customs, laws,
and institutions such as those of which Rome was justly proud, and to
which the ruling party clung with desperate tenacity, its evidence
must doubtless be carefully sifted and duly estimated, but ought not
altogether to be set aside.”

The large concession which the work of Sir G. C. Lewis seems to have extorted from Dr Liddell after the writing of his own History, was not present to his mind during its composition. He sometimes gives as historical fact such-and-such a war, and then relates some legend as connected with this war. “With the Volscian wars is inseparably connected the noble legend of Coriolanus.” The story of Coriolanus is marked as legend, the Volscian wars as fact. If we are justified in making the concession marked in italics, the Volscian wars are no more history than the story of Coriolanus.

As to the remark here made on the civil or constitutional history of this period, it would have great weight if there were really presented to us in that history a clear, intelligible, indisputable account of the earlier constitutions or governments of Rome. It happens that it is precisely on this subject there has been so much conjecture, and so much debate. So far as Dr Liddell can really trace in the narrative preceding the time of Pyrrhus, a manifest, indisputable, _constitutional history_, so far as he can confidently point to that “consistency of progress and clearness of intelligence” of which he speaks, so far he is entitled to claim for the whole narrative our most respectful attention. But the difficulty is notorious of forming a distinct conception of many points in this constitutional history, and this difficulty has given rise to much of our guess-work. We must take care, therefore, and not fall into the logical error, of _first_ eliminating some consistent view of the constitutional history by the aid of much ingenious conjecture, and _then_ appealing to this consistency in the constitutional history as ground of presumption in favour of the whole narrative.

For our own part, we suspect that there is a greater measure of truth in the legend as it stands than is now generally conceded; and at the same time we have an utter distrust of all the attempts which have been made—laudable and ingenious as they may be—to separate the truth from the fable. We can believe in Tarquin the Proud, in Lucretia, in Coriolanus, much more readily than in any new historical views obtained by a sifting of the narrative which contains these heroic stories. One thing is plain, that no historian of Rome can omit these narratives; and we should much prefer that he would relate them in a natural style—in the style due at least to the noble sentiments they illustrate—than reserve for them (a manner to which Dr Liddell on some occasions leans) a certain bald and ballad simplicity, as if the writer were almost ashamed of having to relate them at all.

It is now generally understood, by all who have paid any attention to the subject, that although the name of Niebuhr is popularly associated with a sceptical and destructive criticism, he is really distinguished by the bold manner in which he has undertaken to construct and restore certain portions of the history. Preceding writers, both ancient and modern, had uttered the word “fable” or “legend;” it was the gathering from the fable some truth indirectly revealed; it was the bold inventive genius, which could recast the old materials into a new form, which characterised his labours. Amongst other things, he fearlessly asserted that a modern critic might obtain a more precise knowledge of the civil history and early constitutions of Rome than Livy or Cicero possessed. Now, these reconstructions of Niebuhr, though received at first with great enthusiasm in many quarters, have not stood their ground against a calm and severe examination; and in this country all such conjectural methods of writing the early history of Rome have lately received a decisive check from the work of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, _On the Credibility of Early Roman History_. This is a work which combines the ample and laborious scholarship of the German, with that sound sense which the Englishman lays especial claim to. We can only here incidentally mention it; but it is impossible, and it will be a long time impossible, for any one to touch upon Roman history without alluding to this work. It will be for many years the text-book for the subject of which it treats.

The manner in which a legend, which is itself admitted to be false, may yet convey to us indirectly some important historical truth, admits of easy illustration. Suppose that some chronicler, living in the time of our Henry V., chose to relate a quite fictitious history of Prince Arthur. All his battles, all his victories, his whole kingdom, might be a mere dream; but as the imagination of the writer would have no other types to follow than those which his own times presented to him, he would necessarily convey to us much historical truth touching the reign of Henry V., whilst describing his imaginary Prince Arthur. His inevitable anachronisms would betray him into a species of historical truth. Prince Arthur would assuredly be a valorous knight, and whence would come the ceremony of investiture, and all the moral code of knighthood? Prince Arthur would undoubtedly be a good son of the Church, and from what type would be drawn the picture of the orthodox and pious Christian? If the Prince were to be crowned, whence would come the sceptre and the ball, and the oaths he would take upon his coronation? Prince Arthur would be a knight, a Christian, and a king, after the order of the Plantagenets. It is plain that, in such a fabulous narrative, there would be mingled up much historical matter; it is plain that we, reading such a narrative by the light of knowledge gained from other sources, can detect and discriminate the historic truth: whether, if such a fabulous narrative _stood alone_ before us, we could then make the same discrimination, whether we could then take advantage of its involuntary anachronisms, is another question. Imagination must always have its type or starting-place in some reality, but it may deal as freely with one reality as another; it may take as much liberty with religious ceremonies and coronation oaths as with anything else.

Is there not a slight oversight in the following criticism, which Sir G. C. Lewis makes on the method of Niebuhr? At all events, our quotation of the passage from his work, with a solitary remark of our own upon it, will constitute as brief an exposition as any we can give of this branch of the subject. The question is, what can be gathered of the constitution of Rome under her kings? There is clearly no contemporary history; but _if_ a tradition, though of a quite mythical character, could be fairly pronounced to have originated in the regal period, that tradition might indirectly convey to us some knowledge of the regal constitution. Fragments have come down to us through the works of later classical writers, which may convey this sort of traditional knowledge. Let them by all means be rigidly examined, whatever their ultimate value may be found to be.

“One of the passages,” says Sir G. C. Lewis, “which Niebuhr cites from
Cicero, relates to the constitutional proceedings upon the election of
Numa. Yet Niebuhr holds, not merely that the entire regal period is
unhistorical, but that Numa is an unreal and imaginary personage—a
name and not a man. Now, what reliance, according to Niebuhr’s own
view, is to be placed upon Cicero’s information respecting a man who
never lived, and an event which never happened, even if it was derived
from some pontifical book, which professed to record old customs?”

Continuing the discussion in a note, Sir G. C. Lewis adds:—

“For Niebuhr’s account of the legend of Numa, see _Hist._, vol. i. pp.
237–240. Afterwards he says—‘Hence it seems quite evident that the
pontiffs themselves distinguished the first two kings from the rest,
as belonging to another order of things, and that they separated the
accounts of them from those which were to pass for history.... Romulus
was the god, the son of a god; Numa a man, but connected with superior
beings. If the tradition about them, however, is in all its parts a
_poetical fiction_, the fixing the pretended term of their reigns can
only be explained by ascribing it rather to mere caprice or to
numerical speculations.’—‘With Tullius Hostilius we reach the
beginning of a new secle, and of a narrative resting on historical
ground of a kind _totally different_ from the story of the preceding
period.’ Niebuhr considers the mythico-historical age of Roman History
to begin with the reign of Tullius Hostilius, and the age of Romulus
and Numa to be purely fabulous. Moreover, he commences the second
volume of his History with the following sentence—‘It was one of the
most important objects of the first volume to prove that the story of
Rome under the kings was altogether _without historical foundation_.’
He lays it down likewise that the names of the kings, their number,
and the duration and dates of their reigns, are fictitious; yet he
cites the proceedings at the election of Numa, and of the subsequent
kings, as historical proof of the constitutional practice of that
period.”—Vol. i. p. 123.

Niebuhr does not hold that there was no regal period, however fictitious the history of the kings may be. It was to throw light on that regal period in which the myth of Numa is supposed _to have originated_ that the passage must have been cited, not certainly on the times of Numa. Whatever, therefore, may be the infinitesimal value of the passage cited which relates to the constitutional proceedings upon the election of Numa, there was no logical inconsistency on the part of Niebuhr in making a reference to it. If the myth of Numa really originated in a regal period, what the pontiff declared about it might indirectly convey some information as to the constitution of that regal period.

Dr Liddell may well speak of the “altered aspect which Roman history has assumed.” We begin our annals with an account of the “religious myth,” of which, however, the specimens are very few. Romulus is _Strength_ and Numa is _Law_; they are godlike persons, or in communication with gods; they together found the city of Rome. Strength and Law assuredly founded the city: it is good philosophy, whatever history it makes; and the pontiffs were fully justified in placing these kings where they did—the first, and presiding, and eternal kings of every commonwealth. From the religious myth we proceed to the “heroic legend.” In this species of fable the veritable man and his real action is extolled—is exaggerated—is multiplied. The hero himself is multiplied, or he is transplanted from one region to another. The story is expanded and enriched by each successive narrative, until a literary age makes its appearance. It then assumes a fixed form, from which any wide deviation is no longer permissible.

In all such heroic legends, when they have been fairly born on the soil on which we find them, and have not been transplanted from a foreign country, there is always some element of historic truth. For what we call invention must start from, or be supplied with, given facts. There is a vague but very prevalent error on the nature and power of _poetical invention_. It is spoken of as something that will account at once for the marvellous narrative. This is supposed to spring forth complete from some poet’s brain. Poetical invention can only take place where there is already some amount and variety of known incidents or traditional stories; these the poet strings together in new combinations. The first writers in metre (as we may see in the earliest ballads of Spain and of other countries) content themselves with a bald narrative of some fact or tradition. Their successors add to this narrative—add a sentiment or a detail; and when the number of such narratives has increased, poetical invention, in its highest form, becomes possible. It has been lately a favourite hypothesis that the earliest literature of Rome consisted of a number of poems or ballads, which supplied the first historians with their materials. It appears to us highly probable that separate legends were shaped into something like completeness of form before any continuous history of the city of Rome was written; but whether such legends were written first in prose or verse is matter of very little moment, and of very great uncertainty.

After expressing the belief that there is a substratum of truth in these heroic legends, it is not very satisfactory to be compelled to add that we cannot distinguish it from the superstructure of fiction. Unfortunately, it is not the marvellous and supernatural—which, indeed, are but sparingly introduced—which have alone contributed to deprive these legends of their credibility: they have been convicted, in some cases, of historic falsehood. A species of pious fraud has been committed to conceal the defeats of the Romans. Family pride has, in other instances, led to the undue exaltation of individual heroes. We must chiefly honour these legends, after all, as manifestations of the mind and spirit of the Romans, rather than as positive materials of history.

We always revert to this consolation—every literature must be the history of the _thoughts_, if not of the _deeds_ of a people; and all our various records are chiefly valuable as they enable us to write the history of the human mind. How pre-eminently this is the case wherever the subject of religion is introduced! Omens, auguries, oracles—what matters whether in this or that case they were really seen or uttered? the great fact is, that they were currently believed in, and acted on. The _belief_ here is all that we can possibly be concerned with. Whether Æneas really did see that white sow, with her litter of thirty pigs, which he took for so good an omen of prosperity (it was no bad sign of fertility), may be questioned; but even the invention of such an incident proves that men, and wise men, were supposed to be under the influence of such omens. That an eagle pounced down, and took from the head of Tarquin his cap, and, after wheeling in the air, _put it on again_, is what we do not believe; eagles, neither at Rome or elsewhere, have this habit of restitution. But the frequency of legends of this kind points to a time when men were in the constant expectation of finding their own future destiny prefigured to them in the actions of birds and beasts, or the operations of inanimate nature. What was the precise _degree_ of influence which superstitions of this nature exercised on the course of human conduct, must still be problematical. Did any pious general, at the head of the legions at Rome, really determine whether he should give battle or not by the appetite with which the sacred chickens took their food? Did men ever colonise, or build a city, according to the flight of vultures or the perching of an eagle?

But superstition itself, and that in some of its most terrible forms, is animated and dignified by the spirit of Roman patriotism. Read this old story of the self-devotion of Decius, as Dr Liddell tells it to us. It will be an excellent example in which to take our stand, if we would estimate at their full value these old heroic legends. One of those decisive battles is to be fought which is to determine the supremacy of Rome in Italy.

“The Latin army marched hastily southward to protect their Oscan
allies, and it was in the plains of Campania that the fate of Rome and
Latium was to be decided. (The two consuls, Manlius and Decius,
commanded in the Roman camp.)

“When the two armies met under Mount Vesuvius, they lay opposed to one
another, neither party choosing to begin the fray. It was almost like
a civil war: Romans and Latins spoke the same language; their armies
had long fought side by side under common generals; their arms,
discipline, and tactics were the same.

“While the armies were thus lying over against each other, the Latin
horsemen, conscious of superiority, used every endeavour to provoke
the Romans to single combats. The latter, however, were checked by the
orders of their generals, till young Manlius, son of the consul, stung
to the quick by the taunts of Geminus Metius, a Latin champion,
accepted his challenge. The young Roman conquered, and returned to the
camp to lay the spoils of the enemy at his father’s feet. But the
spirit of Brutus was not dead; and the stern consul, unmindful of his
own feelings and the pleading voices of the whole army, condemned his
son to death for disobedience to orders. Discipline was thus
maintained, but at a sore expense, and the men’s hearts were heavy at
this unnatural act.

“In the night before the day on which the consuls resolved to fight,
each of them was visited by an ominous dream, by which it was revealed
that whichever army first lost its general should prevail; and they
agreed that he whose division first gave ground should devote himself
to the gods of the lower world.

“In the morning, when the auspices were taken, the liver of the victim
offered on the part of Decius was defective, while that of Manlius was
perfect. And the event confirmed the omen; for Manlius, who commanded
on the right, held his ground, while the legions of Decius on the left
gave way.

“Then Decius, mindful of his vow, sent for Valerius, the chief
pontiff, to direct him how duly to devote himself. He put on his toga,
the robe of peace, after the Gabine fashion, bringing the end or
lappet under the right arm, and throwing it over his head; and then,
standing on a javelin, he pronounced the solemn form of words
prescribed, by which he devoted the army of the enemy along with
himself to the gods of death and to the grave. Then, still shrouded in
his toga, he leaped upon his horse, and dashing into the enemy’s
ranks, was slain.

“Both armies were well aware of the meaning of the act. It depressed
the spirits of the Latins as much as it raised those of the Romans.
The skill of Manlius finished the work of superstitious awe.... The
enemy fled in irretrievable confusion.”

One consul sacrifices his son to the cause of military discipline; the other consul sacrifices himself to the gods, to obtain the destruction of the enemy. We believe in a Decius, in some Decius, at some time, in some battle. Many of the details brought here together were probably added by different narrators. But it may be laid down, we think, as a sound canon of criticism, _that no act of moral greatness was ever invented till the like of it had been really performed_. Imagination of what the human heart is capable of cannot precede the genuine feelings, the genuine heroism of man. The several acts of Manlius and of Decius are Roman deeds, whether they occurred precisely here or not. Then note the traces we have in this legend of the rite of human sacrifice, and the terrible boon extorted by it. Indeed, the whole passage is fertile of suggestions which we will not weaken by attempting to enumerate.

Rome had scarcely obtained the ascendancy over her neighbours when her own destruction was threatened by the Gauls. Yet ultimately this invasion of the Celt, by weakening her enemies more than herself, was not unpropitious to the final predominance of Rome. “The Gauls,” writes Dr Liddell, “burst upon Latium and the adjoining lands with the suddenness of a thunderstorm; and as the storm, with all its fury and destructiveness, yet clears the loaded air, and restores a balance between the disturbed powers of nature, so it was with this Gallic hurricane. It swept over the face of Italy, crushing and destroying. The Etruscans were weakened by it; and if Rome herself was laid prostrate for a season, the Latins also suffered greatly, the Volscians were humbled, and the Æquians so shattered that they never recovered from the blow.”

It was a disastrous day for Rome. A large portion of her army, under her great general Camillus, was absent from the city. What forces she could muster were routed and dispersed. There were not enough men to defend the city; it was given up to the Gauls. The Capitol alone held out. Finally, the Romans were fain to ransom themselves, and to obtain peace, by the payment of one thousand pounds in weight of gold. The popular and legendary history tells us, that whilst this gold was being weighed out—and just as the insolent Gaul had thrown his sword into the scale, bidding them weigh that too, with his “Woe to the conquered!”—the great Camillus returned with his army, marched into the forum, ordered the gold to be returned, declared that it was with _iron_ he meant to redeem the city, and forthwith drove out the Gauls, so completely destroying their host that not a man was left to carry home the news of their calamity.

“So ran the legend,” continues Dr Liddell, “embellished by the touch
of Livy’s graceful pen. But, unfortunately for Roman pride, here also,
as in the tale of Porsenna, traces of true history are preserved,
which show how little the Roman annalists regarded truth. Strabo and
Diodorus mention stories to the effect that the Gauls carried off the
gold without let or hindrance from Camillus, but that they were
attacked in Etruria, some said by the Romans themselves, others said
by the friendly people of Cæré, and obliged to relinquish their
precious booty. But Polybius has left clearer and more positive
statements. That grave historian tells us, as if he knew no other
story, that the departure of the Gauls was caused by the intelligence
that the Venetians, an Illyrian tribe, had invaded their settlements
in northern Italy; that, on receiving this intelligence, they proposed
to make a treaty; that the treaty was made; that they actually
received the gold, and marched off unmolested to their homes.”

Where did Polybius get _his_ story? The legend may be false, but where were the materials from which Polybius could have obtained a more historical account? But before again alluding to this subject, we cannot but pause to take notice that here also is a striking example of the value of the legend as a history of the mind and thoughts of a people, even where it fails us as a history of events. Consider what must have been the religious faith, what the ardent patriotism, that gave birth to this magnificent fable (if fable it is) of the conduct of the Senate, when the army of Rome had been utterly vanquished, and the Gaul, in insolent confidence of victory, was rejoicing and revelling at the gates. Here it is, in the version of Dr Liddell:—

“Meantime the Senate at Rome did what was possible to retrieve their
fallen fortunes. With all the men of military age they withdrew into
the Capitol, for they had not numbers enough to man the walls of the
city. These were mainly Patricians. Many of the Plebeians had fallen
in the battle; many had escaped to Veii. The old men of this order,
with the women, fled for safety to the same city. The priests and
vestal virgins, carrying with them the sacred images and utensils,
found refuge at the friendly Etruscan city of Cæré. _But the old
Senators, who had been Consuls or Censors, and had won triumphs, and
grown grey in their country’s service, feeling themselves to be now no
longer a succour but a burthen, determined to sacrifice themselves for
her; and M. Fabius, the Pontifex, recited the form of words by which
they solemnly devoted themselves to the gods below, praying that on
their heads only might fall the vengeance and the destruction._ Then
as the Gauls approached, they ordered their ivory chairs to be set in
the Comitium, before the temples of the gods, and there they took
their seats, each man clad in his robes of state, to await the coming
of the avenger.

“At length the Gallic host approached the city, and came to the
Colline gate. It stood wide open before their astonished gaze, and
they advanced slowly, not without suspicion, through deserted streets,
unresisted and unchecked. When they reached the Forum, there, within
its sacred precincts, they beheld those venerable men sitting like so
many gods descended from heaven to protect their own. They gazed with
silent awe; till at length a Gaul, hardier than his brethren, ventured
to stroke the long beard of M. Papirius. The old hero raised his ivory
staff and smote the offender, whereupon the barbarian in wrath slew
him; and this first sword-stroke gave the signal for a general
slaughter. Then the Romans in the Capitol believed that the gods had
accepted the offering which those old men had made, and that the rest
would be saved.”

Grander fable never was invented—never grew up out of grander feelings or wilder convictions. How little do we seem to know of the ancient religion of Rome! We listen too exclusively to the poets of the Augustan age. Elegant fictions and placid deities, from whom little was to be hoped or feared, did not constitute the religion of early times. There were terrible gods in those days—without whom, indeed, no religion has existed which has really influenced the conduct of mankind.

The next great event in the history of Rome which arrests our attention is the war with Pyrrhus. Here the Romans come in contact with a literary people. The attention of the Greeks is drawn towards them. Greek historians collect what accounts they can of these new barbarians, who are pronounced to be “not barbarians at least in war.” The first Roman historians wrote in the Greek language. We enter, it is said, into the historic period.

This is a fit place to quote some judicious remarks which Dr Liddell makes on the sources of early Roman history:—

“When the Gaul departed and left Rome in ashes, it was not only the
buildings of the city that perished. We are expressly told that all
the public records shared in the general destruction—the Fasti, or
list of yearly magistrates with their triumphs, the Annales
Pontificum, and the Linen Rolls (_libri lintei_), which were annual
registers or chronicles of events kept by the pontiffs and augurs.

“This took place, we know, about the year 390 B.C.

“Now the first Roman annalists, Fabius Pictor, Cincius Alimentus, Cato
the Censor, with the poets Nævius and Ennius, flourished about a
century and a half after this date. Whence, then, it is natural to
ask, did these writers and their successors find materials for the
history of Rome before the burning of the city? What is the authority
for the events and actions which are stated to have taken place before
the year 390 B.C.?

“The answer to these questions may partly be found in our fifth
chapter. The early history of Rome was preserved in old heroic lays or
legends, which lived in the memories of men, and were transmitted by
word of mouth from one generation to another. The early history of all
nations is, as we have said, the same; and even if we had the Fasti
and the Annals complete, we should still have to refer to those
legendary tales for the substance and colour of the early history. The
Fasti, indeed, if they were so utterly destroyed as Livy states, must
have been preserved in memory with tolerable accuracy, for we have
several lists of the early magistrates which only differ by a few
omissions and transpositions. The Annals and Linen Rolls, if we had
copies of them, would present little else than dry bones without
flesh—mere names with a few naked incidents attached, much of the same
character as the famous Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. For narrative we should
still have been dependent upon the legends. We might know the exact
time at which Coriolanus appeared at the head of the Volscian host,
but the story would remain untouched....

“The false statements of the Patrician period are quite different in
kind from the greater part of the legendary fictions of Greece or
Regal Rome. There we discern no dishonesty of purpose, no intentional
fraud; here, much of the baser coin is current. In the legends of
Porsenna and Camillus the dishonour of Rome and the triumphs of the
invaders are studiously kept out of sight, and glorious deeds are
attributed to heroes who are proved to have no claim to such honour.”

If the legends of the Regal period are mythical, and if those of the Patrician period were falsified by bards and minstrels, who made it their vocation to flatter the family pride of the nobles, it is plain there is little of historic narrative relating to these early times which can be depended on. There is no essential difference in the account which Dr Liddell and Sir G. C. Lewis give of the materials of the early history of Rome; but the first of these writers has a far greater faith in that species of constructive or conjectural history, in which Niebuhr was so great an artist, than the second can at all admit. Sir G. C. Lewis contends with great force and clearness that historical evidence does not differ in kind from judicial evidence. They are both founded “on the testimony of credible witnesses.” Unless you can trace your narrative to some contemporary writer who had a fair opportunity of knowing the facts to which he testifies, you have nothing worthy of the name of history. Nor can any ingenuity of reasoning avail if the materials on which you reason are constantly open to suspicion. In the time of the second Punic war there commences a series of Roman historians or annalists who recorded the events of their own age; their works are lost to us, but they furnished subsequent writers, whose histories remain, with _their_ materials. If now, for the years preceding this epoch, you have nothing but a series of meagre official annals, kept by the chief pontiff, some ancient treaties, and a few laws which you can bring into court as historical evidence—if you have nothing but these “dry bones,” there is no help for it; you must be contented with the skeleton. By no means can you, in any legitimate manner, cover these bones. You have no narrative, both lifelike and trustworthy, that extends beyond the age of Pyrrhus. Here the Greek historian steps in. Moreover, the war with Pyrrhus was “not so long prior to the time of Fabius and Cincius (the earliest Roman annalists) as to render it improbable that they and other subsequent writers may have collected some trustworthy notices of it from native tradition and documents.” The speech, too, of Appius the Blind, delivered in the Senate on the occasion of the embassy of Cineas, the minister of Pyrrhus, was extant in the time of Cicero. But beyond this period of the war of Pyrrhus, historic narrative based on acceptable evidence there is none.

Sir G. C. Lewis states the matter, at the opening of his third chapter, in the following lucid manner:—

“In the previous chapter we have followed the stream of Roman
contemporary history up to the war of Pyrrhus, but found that at that
point the contemporary writers deserted us. There is no trace of any
historical account of Roman affairs by a contemporary writer, native
or foreign, before that time; nor can it be shown that any Roman
literary work, either in verse or prose, was then in existence. But
although there was no contemporary history, and no native literature
at Rome before the war with Pyrrhus, yet we have a history of Rome for
472 years before that period, handed down to us by ancient classical
writers as a credible narrative of events.”

But we must not be seduced further into following the discussions of Sir G. C. Lewis “on the credibility of the early Roman history.” We must not forget that it is Dr Liddell’s History we have at present before us. The wars of Pyrrhus are related by him in a very distinct and spirited manner, and the chivalrous character of the Greek prince—the _Cœur-de-Lion_ of his age—stands out before us in very clear relief. The wars, too, of a greater than Pyrrhus—of the Carthaginian general, Hannibal—are told with more perspicuity than will be found, we think, in the pages of any of his predecessors. But for very manifest reasons we must pass over voluminous details of this description.

No portion of the work will be read with more interest and profit than those chapters which give an account of the civil constitution of Rome, such as it existed in the palmy days of the republic. We confess ourselves to be utterly incredulous of the ability of any writer to describe to us what the constitution of Rome was under her kings, or during the earlier periods of the commonwealth. So much the more pleasure do we derive from a view of that constitution when the clouds seem to break away, and it stands revealed to us in the light of history. When he has driven Hannibal out of Italy, conquered Sicily, and imposed those terms on Carthage which ended the second Punic war, Dr Liddell takes the occasion to review the constitution of Rome such as it displayed itself when the republic was in its full vigour. It was during the time of the Punic wars, he tells us, that this most remarkable and most complex system of government under which men ever lived, attained to some completeness of form. Our own British constitution is often cited as a marvel of complexity; incongruous powers and institutions come into collision at this and that point, till a harmonious action is at length produced; and the prerogative of the Crown is seen to be opposed by the privilege of Parliament, in such a manner as rather to represent a contest between rival institutions, than an understood co-operation of great functionaries of state. But the British constitution is a simple and consistent scheme when compared with the constitution of the Roman republic; with its wild right of the Tribune, which at once seems subversive of all law; with its annual elections, and that even of the general at the head of its armies, which seems at once subversive of all military discipline, and an insuperable obstacle to all military success; with its coequal legislative assemblies, which seems to strike at once at the unity of the laws, and to be a provision for the dissolution of the society.

That which explains the mystery, that which accounts for the long duration and signal success of so complicated a system, is to be found in the predominating power of the Senate. And if again we are asked how it happened that the Senate endured so long, and was not sooner dissolved or reduced to subjection by some military chief, we can only refer to the jealousy which the great men of Rome, patrician or plebeian, entertained of each other. Many a patrician would have been king, none would have endured to have a king over him. This determination to bow to no superior, except the law, except the State, is the feeling of every aristocracy which grows up within a city. It is otherwise with a territorial aristocracy. Here some form of our feudal system invariably presents itself; the common safety requires it. But in a municipal aristocracy, like that of Rome or Venice, the prevailing spirit, the _conservative feeling_, is precisely this determination, that no one member of the body shall obtain predominance over the rest. Looking at the history of Rome and the magnitude of her conquests, we feel that it was inevitable that the Senate should succumb at length to some victorious Cæsar, and we feel that it was equally inevitable that it should deliver its last protest in the daggers of a Brutus and a Cassius.

An extract from this portion of Dr Liddell’s work cannot fail to be acceptable to our readers. What precisely was the august Senate of Rome many of us may not distinctly remember, if indeed we have ever been so distinctly told as we are in the pages of this writer. We have no space to enter on the description of the two legislative assemblies, the “Tribe Assembly,” and the “Centuriate Assembly,” as they are here called, nor of the extraordinary power of the Tribune; we must limit our quotation to that part which rather bears on the ordinary and executive government of Rome.