Chapter II: Roman Politics and Modern Politics (2)

One cannot bring to an end even a brief discussion of the influence which the executive and legislative branches of the Roman government have exerted on the political life of our own times without mentioning the remarkable revival which we have seen lately in Italian Fascismo, of the old Roman spirit and of certain Roman political institutions. In its purpose, its spirit, and its external form this movement revives pure Roman tradition. It began to attain its present great strength in the months immediately following the Armistice when there was a marked decline of national feeling and when disorder and class struggles were rife throughout Italy. It assumed the form of a great national movement when it broke the general strike of August 1, 1922, which threatened the orderly life of the whole nation. The Fascisti took this step after the government had failed to set the wheels of industry in motion again. The next step, the setting aside of parliamentary government and the assumption of the dictatorship by Signor Mussolini, the leader of the Fascisti, was inevitable. The whole course of events during the last six months of 1922 duplicates incidents common enough in early Roman history. Disorder arises throughout the peninsula or a great danger confronts the state. The ordinary methods of government are suspended, and a dictator is appointed to meet the emergency. The dictator in the olden time called the citizens to arms, just as Signor Mussolini assembled his one hundred and seventeen thousand armed followers at the Villa Borghese in the autumn of 1922. These men of today show the same spirit of unquestioning obedience to the state which characterized the Roman in olden time. One may well think himself back in the third century B. C., listening to the ancient Roman soldiers gathered before their dictator, when he reads the oath which the assembled Fascisti took in Rome on January 1, 1923: “I swear loyalty to Benito Mussolini, who governs the destinies of Italy. I swear devoted and absolute obedience to his government with uncontrolled conscience, which involves also the supreme sacrifice of life, the renunciation of all personal initiative, and the daily practice of iron discipline.” That this movement was directly inspired by Roman tradition is made plain by the symbols and forms which it takes. It gets its name from the _fasces_, or bundle of rods, which the lictor carried, as a symbol of the authority of the state, and the Fascista army is organized like the old Roman army into _manipuli_, _centuriae_, _cohortes_, and _legiones_.[18]

Who can say what this reawakening of the old Roman spirit may mean for Italy? It has already given rise to a new _Risorgimento_. It was the cause of Italy’s participation in the War and was the result of that War. Italy bore her part of the burden of the War with the other great Powers of Europe. She has freed herself from the economic domination of Germany and from the threat of Austrian invasion. Her “Unredeemed Lands” are restored to her. Her control of the Adriatic seems assured. Out of these achievements surged up the feeling of national independence and solidarity embodied in the Fascista organization, which numbers now several hundred thousand young men, and at the same time it was the Fasci or patriotic groups, which came into existence in the early years of the war, that made these achievements possible. The organization has set a bad precedent in its use of violent methods, and in establishing a military force outside the state. In its dealings with other peoples it may assert national ambitions too vigorously, but it bids fair to give expression to the national genius and to inspire Italy with a new life and vigor.

5. THE JUDICIARY

If one passes from the legislative and executive branches of the Roman government to the judicial, he thinks at once of Roman law, the greatest legacy which Rome has left us. With that subject we are not concerned in this book. But the judicial machinery of the Romans and some phases of their court procedure are of lively interest to one who is comparing Roman and modern institutions. Of most importance to us in this connection are the methods which the Romans followed in dealing with _crimina publica_, with what we may roughly, but somewhat inexactly, call criminal cases. For the hearing of such cases, by the early part of the first century before our era, the Romans had established eight or nine courts under the presidency of praetors and ex-aediles.[19] The competence of these several courts was essentially different from that of our courts and may well lead us to ask ourselves if our system makes for efficiency. One Roman court, for instance, confined itself to hearing cases of magistrates charged with extortion. Others heard respectively only cases of forgery, or of treason, or of corrupt practices at elections, or of peculation in office. Under this system each court was peculiarly qualified from long experience to deal with the class of cases which came before it. Under our practice today where cases of different sorts come before the same judge, such special competence as the Roman praetor and his board of trained jurists attained can hardly be gained. The praetor’s court continued to about the third century. Under the later empire criminal cases were heard in Italy by the city prefect or the praetorian prefect, and in the provinces by the governor.

The juries which sat with the praetor in hearing criminal cases were much larger than ours. The smallest one of which we have any record numbered thirty-two. A case was decided, as it is in most Continental countries today, by a majority vote of the jurors. As used to be the practice in the Scottish courts, the Roman juror could vote that a charge was “not proven,” but probably in the later period such ballots were counted for acquittal. The last extant reference to juries in Roman times is from the second century after Christ. This fact has led some modern writers to take it for granted that there is no connection between the Roman jury system and the modern one. Before medieval life had been studied carefully, this was a natural conclusion. Its character was not well understood, and Roman institutions were so modified in the Middle Ages that they were not easily recognized in their later forms. It is also true that, until very recent times, many who studied the origins of modern institutions did not raise their eyes above the modern horizon, or were led by national pride to find those origins among the peoples of their respective countries. This state of things is true, not only of the jury system, but in the case of other modern institutions, yet a more thorough and impartial historical investigation is giving to the Romans the credit which is due to them. We can do no more here than indicate very briefly the links which connect the modern jury system with the ancient one. The character of that system was indicated in the _Code_ of Theodosius. Much of this _Code_ was adopted in the _Breviary_ of Alaric in 506 A.D. and in other summaries based in part on the Roman law, such as the _Capitularies_ of the Merovingian and Carolingian kings. It is therefore a significant fact that under the Merovingians justice was administered by the Count, but on the verdict of the notables, called in the texts _rachimburgii_ or _boni homines_. These _boni homines_ were chosen by the Count, or judge, at the beginning of the hearing from the freemen assembled in the court. The minimum number chosen was seven. Feudalism put an end to the jury in France, and in its place cases were tried by ordeal, by battle, or by compurgation on the Continent. At this point two or three facts in the historical sequence are noteworthy. Our collection of the _Capitularies_ was made in 827. Within a century the Normans made themselves masters of North Western France. They readily adopted French usages, and it is a fact admitted on all sides, since Palgrave’s great work appeared a century ago, that the beginnings of the English jury system were brought into England by the Normans in the form of an inquest by sworn recognition. At first this method of deciding cases was accepted only as an alternative mode of trial. Twelve knights were selected who were required to declare on oath which contestant in their opinion had the better right. The Continental countries took over the jury from England after 1789. We are not concerned here with the many complex questions which arise in attempting to explain the development of the grand jury and the petty jury on English soil. The outstanding fact is that we owe the judge-and-jury system to the Romans.

One of the most extraordinary features of their judicial system was the fact that the Romans had no permanent public prosecutor. The bringing of criminal actions under the republic was left to private initiative, but there seem to have been enough ambitious politicians to prosecute cases, at least those cases which were likely to bring distinction to the successful prosecutor. Indeed on some occasions the praetor, before beginning a trial, was obliged to give a preliminary hearing to several lawyers who claimed the distinction of bringing the charge against the accused party. The merits and defects of such a system are obvious. Charges were likely to be pushed with vigor, because the reputation of an advocate depended on securing a conviction, and sometimes a patriotic citizen prosecuted a powerful politician when a public prosecutor would have hesitated to do so. But on the whole the plan did not work well. This was especially true when there was a political element in the case. In such circumstances the charge was usually brought by a political opponent, or what was worse still, a political supporter might put the defendant on trial and secure an acquittal, before a real prosecution could take place. Before being allowed to undertake the prosecution of Verres, the venal and tyrannical governor of Sicily, Cicero had to convince the presiding praetor that his claim to the right of conducting the case was better than that of Quintus Caecilius Niger, who had been quaestor of Verres, and hoped to secure the acquittal of his former superior. Such cases of collusion between the prosecutor and the defendant became so common, that a heavy penalty was imposed on those found guilty of it. Even under the empire, when the senate began to hear certain important cases, there was no permanent public prosecutor, but the senate designated members of its own body to conduct the prosecution and the defence. In these trials the senate functioned as a jury, and the presiding consul, as a judge. As the emperor gained a greater control of public affairs, it was not unnatural that he should take over criminal jurisdiction in important cases or delegate it to his prefects. When this point was reached, probably the prosecution of criminal actions was assumed more definitely by the state.

We frequently introduce “character witnesses” in our trials. The Romans went still further. A Roman defendant brought with him to the court as many prominent friends (_advocati_) as he could to make a favorable impression on the jury. In important cases today in America, although attorneys for the prosecution and defence sometimes give the jury brief outlines of the case before the evidence is presented, their formal pleas are not made until the evidence is in. Our method is inductive. Formal pleas were usually made in a Roman court before the testimony was given. Much can be said for the Roman plan. Having the analyses of the case, as presented by the prosecution and defence, clearly in mind, the average juryman is perhaps better qualified to decide which theory is made more probable by the facts in the case and is in a better position to pick out the salient facts than he is when dealing with heterogeneous bits of evidence. The same looseness of procedure which characterized the meetings of the Roman Senate is found in the courts.[20] The jury was not under careful surveillance; demonstrations of approval and disapproval occurred, violent discussions were not always stopped, the rules of evidence were less strict than they are with us, and technicalities played a less important part. In some of these particulars Continental courts have inherited Roman practices more fully than Anglo-Saxon courts have. In consequence of their elimination of technicalities, the Romans brought important criminal cases to an end much more quickly than we do, and justice was cheaper than it is with us. In Anglo-Saxon courts hearsay evidence, the opinions of witnesses, and facts irrelevant to the issue are excluded by the presiding judge. These rules of evidence were not applied in Roman courts, and when the Continental countries reintroduced the jury system, they went back to the Roman practices in this matter, as we noticed a few years ago in the famous trial at Viterbo.

6. CONCEPTION OF CITIZENSHIP

_i._ IN TIMES OF PEACE

A jealous solicitude for the rights of the average citizen is a marked trait of the Roman character. A clear understanding of what the rights of the common man were and an ingrained purpose to protect him in the exercise of them determine the development of judicial procedure in Rome, of law, and of political organizations. Perhaps the Romans have bequeathed to us no greater heritage than their conception of citizenship. With them it was not a mere dogma of political philosophy, set forth in the writings of idealists or incorporated in general terms in declarations of rights. It was made a reality in everyday life by law, by tradition, and by political reforms. It finds expression in the first written law which the Romans had, that of the Twelve Tables, and five centuries later we hear an echo of it in the historic claim of St. Paul. This ideal has been before us through the ages, and has been an inspiration and a guide to every true leader of democracy. The laws of the Twelve Tables, of which mention has just been made, set down in written form and in great detail an orderly procedure, which must be followed in a judicial action, and thus informed a citizen of his rights, and laid an obligation on the state to see that they were observed. The Valerio-Horatian law a little later gave a citizen the privilege of appealing in a capital case to the popular assembly. The establishment of the tribunate provided a democratic official to safeguard him against the arbitrary action of a magistrate. The dictatorship, the “final decree of the senate,” and the other devices which the state used under the republic to suspend the rights of citizens were either done away with or hemmed in by constitutional safeguards. Cicero brings his terrible indictment of the governor of Sicily to a fitting climax with the charge that Verres had caused a Roman citizen to be put to death, and turning to the man at the bar he cries: _si tu apud Persas aut in extrema India deprehensus, Verres, ad supplicium ducerere, quid clamitares, nisi ~te civem esse Romanum~_? It is true that there were many slaves in the Roman world, and that many freemen within its limits did not enjoy the full rights of Roman citizenship until late in the imperial period, but these facts do not weaken the point in which we are interested here. Wherever he went a citizen had behind him the sovereignty of the Roman state. Any community which wronged him must make restitution, or it would feel the heavy hand of Rome. This Roman principle that a state may protect its citizens even in a foreign land has been accepted by modern nations and is jealously observed by them. In fact international relations are concerned in large measure with the protection by a state of its citizens or subjects residing in foreign countries. Their passports certify to their citizenship. They may appeal to their minister or ambassador when they think themselves wronged, and may look with confidence for the support of the army and navy of their respective countries, when their lives, liberty, or property are threatened.

_ii._ IN TIMES OF WAR

We have just been considering the fortunate position of the Roman citizen in times of peace. When wars arose, he became the servant of the state. Unlike the Carthaginians, the Romans did not during the periods of the Great Wars, employ mercenaries. Service in the army was compulsory on all citizens between seventeen and forty-six years of age who had property of a certain amount. Those who avoided service were liable to have their property confiscated, or to be sold as slaves, and desertion was a capital offence. Discipline was strict, and punishments were severe. But at the end of a campaign the soldier returned to civil life. Before the close of the third century B.C., however, the territory of Rome extended beyond the sea, and a soldier’s term of service was correspondingly lengthened. This fact made the well-to-do, who were already disinclined to service in the army, still more opposed to it. This was the situation which led Marius to substitute voluntary enlistment for conscription toward the end of the second century. The new plan quickly filled the ranks of the army. The needy and the adventurous found a soldier’s career attractive. They accepted it as their life’s work. Their home was the camp. “_Esprit de corps_ took the place of patriotism.” As I have remarked in my _Roman Political Institutions_: “Henceforth the soldiers who came back to the city after protracted campaigns did not look on their commander, as their fathers had done, as a simple fellow-citizen, who had like themselves been serving the state, and now resumed his place by their side. Long periods of service abroad under the direction of one man had led them to follow implicitly the guidance of an individual.” The veterans of Marius, of Sulla, of Pompey, and of Caesar could be trusted to follow at home the political leadership of the man under whom they had served abroad. This situation threw the control of politics into the hands of those who commanded the largest armies. What was still worse, the state could no longer count on the fidelity of its soldiers. Their allegiance had been transferred from Rome to their commander-in-chief, and the security of the government itself might depend on his loyalty or his lack of political ambition. From the beginning of the first century before Christ to the end of the empire the sinister figure of the army is ever in the background. It was a disturbing force in politics, as we have just seen, by giving political offices and an undue influence to military men without regard to their fitness for political leadership, and by organizing forcible interference with public meetings of which the veterans disapproved; and the claims which the soldiers made for lands and bonuses often put the government in a difficult position. Of some of these evils, of which we have been painfully aware in this country after our various wars, we shall have occasion to speak in the next chapter. Fortunately in our history the army has never threatened the existence of a stable government or been used to overthrow it, as it was used in Rome in the year 68-69 and almost constantly during the third century of our era.

7. TAXATION AND FINANCE

In the fields of taxation and public finance we have not much to learn from the Romans, save by way of warning. Most of the revenue of the state came from the provinces, and for several centuries was collected by tax-farmers.[21] We are familiar enough in more recent times with the exploitation of provinces, or colonies, as we call them, by the state or the great trading company, because most modern nations have followed Rome’s policy of making their colonies subserve the interests of the mother country. In Sicily, the first overseas territory which the Romans acquired, they took over the system of taxation which they found in vogue there. That system rested on the Oriental theory that the land belonged to the sovereign, and that those who held the land paid rent for its use. This was the basis of taxation in all the later provinces also. Next in importance to the tribute were the customs duties. They brought in a large revenue, but were a great impediment to trade. Rome held almost all the civilized world. Consequently duties collected on the frontiers of the empire would not have amounted to much. What the Romans did was to divide the empire into tariff districts, and collect duties from those entering these districts. Trade suffered in consequence, as it did in France before the Revolution under similar conditions. The only other important tax in this connection was the five per cent inheritance tax imposed on property left to others than near relatives. It was instituted by Augustus, was levied on Roman citizens, and met with violent opposition. This system, taken in its entirety, relieved Italy from the burden of taxation.

The grant of Roman citizenship to practically all freemen in the provinces by Caracalla in 212 was therefore a severe blow to Italy, because it raised the provinces to the level of the peninsula, and paved the way for Diocletian to apply his fiscal reforms to the whole Roman world.[22] His system of taxation was one of the most complete and methodical that has ever been known. We can speak of only a few of its salient features here. The population was divided into three classes, the owners of land or other property, merchants, and laborers. For the first class, the class most important for the purpose of taxation, the fiscal unit was the _caput_ or _iugum_. The _caput_ was the working power of a man in good health. A _iugum_ was a piece of land from which a fixed return might be expected. The number of _capita_ and _iuga_ was determined by a careful census at fixed intervals, and each land owner paid according to the number of laborers and _iuga_ on his estate. The tax paid by merchants depended on the capital invested in their business. Laborers paid a poll tax. The plan was well thought out, but the failure of the government to reduce the valuation of property as the prosperity of the empire declined, and its inability to reduce its own expenses made the taxes an intolerable burden, and contributed largely to impoverish the people and ruin local self-government. The Roman system of taxation, with some modifications, continued in use after the dissolution of the Empire and exerts an influence on our modern systems. Duties were still collected on wares in transit at frontiers, at bridges and at other points on the public highways. A quota of the produce was required from the owners of land, and the property of those who died without leaving a will went to the crown. It is clear that most of the Roman taxes, for instance, customs duties, the inheritance tax, a tax on landed property, and a poll tax, have been taken over by us, and find a place in our modern systems of taxation.

The funds which came into the imperial treasury from the different sources mentioned above were spent mainly on the government of the provinces, on roads, bridges, and other public works, on religion, on the army and navy, and on the city of Rome. It is impossible to find out the size of these different items. It has been calculated that in the early part of the first century the army cost 160,000,000 sesterces a year, a sum which, with some hesitation, one may roughly estimate had the purchasing value of $8,000,000. An imperial procurator in one of the provinces received an annual salary which ranged from $3,000 to $15,000. The expense of provincial government was tremendously increased from the second century on by the development of an elaborate bureaucratic system. The outgo for the city of Rome included expenditures for the construction and maintenance of public works, for religious purposes, and to provide food and amusement for the populace. We notice the absence from the list of charges of certain items like appropriations for education and charity which form an important part of a modern budget.

Under the republic the control of finances rested mainly with the senate; under the empire it was divided between the emperor and the senate. The republican system of financial administration would seem to us very loose, and surprising in the case of so practical a people as the Romans. Under it the senate appropriated money for a period of five years to be used by the censors in the construction of public works, and lump sums were voted for expenditure by the other civil magistrates, and itemized accounts were not required of them. As happened in so many other matters, with the empire a better system of financial administration came in. The government collected most of the taxes through its own agents. The supervision of receipts and expenditures was more thorough, and we hear of something approaching an itemized budget. The lion’s share of the revenues went into the imperial fiscus. The funds at the emperor’s disposal were also materially augmented by the development of crown property and of the emperor’s private fortune. Many large private estates were confiscated by the emperor, and many legacies were left to him. Indeed it was often a hazardous thing for a rich man to pass over the emperor in his will. The hereditary principle of succession was never formally recognized in the Roman constitution, but it was practically followed from Augustus to Nero, so that the interesting distinction which we make today between crown property and the patrimony of the emperor was not adopted before the year 69.

The minting of Roman money had the same history as the control of the budget. The senate had charge of it under the republic. Under the empire the emperor directed the gold and silver coinage; the senate issued bronze coins. Two episodes in the history of Roman coinage are of interest to the student of modern economic conditions. If Professor Frank’s conclusions in a recent number of _Classical Philology_[23] are correct, Rome had a real bimetallic standard from 340 to 150 B.C. This was maintained by changing from time to time the amount of metal entering respectively into the silver and bronze coins of the period in question. The Roman system did not, however, involve the free and unlimited coinage of both metals, because the state limited its issue of money to the estimated needs of the community. The other incident occurs under the empire. It has its parallel in the unlimited issue of paper money today by many European governments. The Roman government was hard pressed to meet its obligations. It did so by debasing the coinage. This process was carried so far that in the third century it refused to receive its own silver coins in payment of taxes. Constantine brought order out of this confusion, by making the gold _solidus_ the standard. This coin became the parent of the gold coinages both of the East and the West. It was accepted by the barbarian states. From the time of Pepin it was struck in silver and was current until 1793. The modern French word _sou_ is of course an abbreviation of its name.

8. IMPERIALISM

Of all Rome’s achievements in the field of politics none was so far-reaching in its influence and so lasting in its effects as her conquest of the world and her successful government of it for five hundred years or more. With the story of her conquests we are not concerned here. But, as President Butler of Columbia University has said in his _Annual Report_ for 1921: “No educated citizen of a modern free state can afford to ignore the lessons taught by the Roman Empire, which for centuries held together in a commonwealth that was both prosperous and contented peoples widely differing in religious faith, in racial origin, and in vernacular speech.” How did she weld them all, Britons, Gauls, Spaniards, and Africans, into one people whose feeling of unity was so strong that even in the intervening centuries it has not died out altogether? No national heroes will ever supplant Trajan or Ovid in the hearts of the Roumanian people. When the Italians invaded Tripoli a few years ago they thought of themselves as following in the footsteps of their great ancestors, and a political cartoon which had wide vogue in Italy at the time of the war and did much to stimulate enthusiasm for it showed a shadowy Roman commander, perhaps Scipio, landing in Africa at the head of an Italian army. How few modern empires can hope to establish such traditions as these, so far as peoples of alien races and religions are concerned! That the Romans were more successful in developing a feeling of solidarity and loyalty throughout their empire than modern nations have been, we have the testimony from different points of view of such competent judges as Lord Cromer and Boissier. In his _Ancient and Modern Imperialism_ Lord Cromer says: “If we turn to the comparative results obtained by ancient and modern imperialists; if we ask ourselves whether the Romans, with their imperfect means of locomotion and communication, their relatively low standard of public morality, and their ignorance of many economic and political truths, which have now become axiomatic, succeeded as well as any modern people in assimilating the nations which the prowess of their arms had brought under their sway, the answer can not be doubtful. They succeeded far better.” Elsewhere he remarks that “there has been no thorough fusion, no real assimilation between the British and their alien subjects, and, so far as we can now predict, the future will in this respect be but a repetition of the past.”

Not only is this unparalleled achievement of the Romans worthy of notice from the historical point of view, but the methods of assimilation and government which gave them their success should be peculiarly interesting and instructive to us in these days of fierce national rivalry for the control of undeveloped lands and natural resources. It is only fair to say that the Romans were more successful among the semi-civilized peoples of the West than they were in the Greek East. It is also true that most of the peoples within the limits of the empire were of the white races, and that towards the dark races the Romans do not seem to have shown the same repugnance on the score of color which modern white peoples show. Furthermore, the acceptance of polytheism in the ancient world facilitated the amalgamation of two alien peoples, because each of them was tolerant of the religion of the other and readily received the other’s deities into its pantheon, whereas, as we know, the monotheistic creeds of modern conquering peoples, like Christianity and Mohammedanism, stand as a barrier between the conquerors and the conquered. In addition to the concrete civilizing agencies which they employed, and which we shall have occasion to notice in a moment, we may find the grounds of their success in certain mental and political qualities and habits. The Romans were not idealists. Consequently they did not try to foist a new political and social system on a conquered people. Indeed they were intellectually phlegmatic and drew back from the task of thinking out a political system in its entirety. They lacked alertness of mind and were not much interested in political philosophy. Their policy at home and abroad was that of opportunism. When they acquired a new territory, therefore, they were content to introduce a few general arrangements and then allow the conquered people to go on living their own life, retaining their old religion, customs, practices, and local institutions. Besides adopting this wise policy of tolerance, in the best period of provincial government the Romans followed sound administrative principles. They established a graded civil service, with reasonable hope of promotion for competent officials. In this way they developed a corps of experienced administrators. They paid adequate salaries to provincial governors and their subordinates, and secured them reasonably well against removal on purely political grounds. The home government kept a close supervision of provincial officials, and courts were provided for the trial of charges brought against them. So far as we know, these wise principles for the government of dependencies were first put into application by the Romans, and few, if any, of our modern empires are observing them with the same care that certain Roman emperors did.[24]

Along with a good administrative system went protection of life and property and the gradual extension of Roman law. The patience and moderation of the Roman come out with special clearness in the last matter. In spite of the supreme regard in which he held his own law, the Roman allowed provincial cities of native origin to retain their own local codes. Only colonies were required to adopt Roman law, but, since the colony enjoyed special privileges, native communities were often eager to gain the status of colonies, and with that status went the willing acceptance of Roman law. The everyday life of the Spaniard or the African under Roman rule went on as it had before. He carried on his daily occupations as in the past. He worshipped his native gods, and took part in his city’s traditional festivals and merrymakings. If some one infringed on his rights, he brought action under the old-time laws before magistrates of his own choosing. Some general changes, however, which came with Roman rule materially improved his condition. His taxes were usually less than they had been before the Romans came. His life and property were safer. Trade developed, and he saw his native town grow. This wise treatment tended in time to make the natives of the West look on the Roman government with a friendly eye.

But the Romans used positive agencies in civilizing and Romanizing newly conquered peoples. The most effective of these agencies were the building of roads, the introduction of Latin, and the founding of colonies. The success of modern imperialist states has been determined in large measure by their wise or unwise use of these means of developing a dependency and of binding it to the rest of the empire, but we have much to learn in all three of these matters from Roman methods. The first of the great Roman roads, the Appian Way, was built in 312 B.C., near the close of the conquest of Central Italy. It ran from Rome to Capua, and was soon extended to the port which today bears the name of Brindisi. Before the close of the second century B.C. four other great highways had been constructed connecting Rome with Genoa, Reggio, Rimini and other points in Northern Italy. From these trunk-lines, branch roads were then built to large towns not situated on the main highway. This network of roads connected all the important districts of Italy with one another and with Rome. Those who have seen the remains of the Appian Way or of other Roman roads know how well they were built. The policy which was adopted for Central Italy, for Southern Italy, and for Northern Italy, as section after section of the peninsula yielded to Roman arms, was carried into the provinces. A map of Spain, for instance, at the close of the reign of Augustus showing the system of roads laid out by his engineers proves how thorough the Romans were in their plans for the pacification of the country and the development of its resources. These roads in the provinces, like the Trans-Siberian railway, were built first of all for military purposes. They made it easy to send troops and supplies to all parts of the empire. But they served a larger purpose in facilitating trade, in bringing remote regions into closer communication with one another and with Rome, and in developing a common way of living and of thinking throughout the world. In other words they helped to make the empire a unit. Even after the political bonds which held the Empire together had been relaxed, the roads were left. They made trade and travel possible. They furnished a ready means of communication between different parts of the world, and exerted a powerful influence in preserving for us the features of Roman civilization.[25]

One reason why the Romans surpassed modern imperialist states in their use of this effective civilizing agency is the fact that they employed their legionaries and auxiliaries in times of peace in the construction of roads and other public works. The story of the Third Augustan Legion in Africa, as Reid outlines it in his _Roman Municipalities_, is illuminating.[26] This legion was stationed in Northern Africa for a century and a half or two centuries, and from the numerous inscriptions which the French have brought to light there we can see the beneficent results of its labors throughout the province. In addition to the roads which it built, and the chains of forts, which it constructed along the frontier, there were at least five large towns which owed their construction almost entirely to the soldiers of the Third Legion. They developed the town of Theveste and constructed all the public buildings in it. When the surrounding country became peaceful and prosperous, the legion moved on to a new outpost, always enlarging the sphere of Roman influence. This is the history of Timgad. At first it was a military post, established to check raids by nomad tribes through the mountains. The soldiers constructed temples, baths, and all the other public buildings needed in a Roman city, and by 100 A.D. its importance was recognized by its elevation to the proud position of a Roman colony. In all parts of the Empire we find inscriptions recording the building by the soldiers of roads, bridges, amphitheatres, aqueducts, and harbors. Whether soldiers in modern times could be used for such purposes is doubtful, but we can at least see in the use which the Romans made of their soldiers one reason for their success as empire-builders.

In another way the soldiers played an important part in Romanizing newly conquered territory. Near every important garrison _canabae_, or settlements of merchants and camp-followers, sprang up. Many of the auxiliaries married native women, who made their homes in these villages. At the end of their term of service these foreign soldiers were made Roman citizens. Their marriages with native women were legalized, and they settled down in these communities on the frontier, to introduce Roman ideas and Roman institutions in the surrounding country. When we remember that there were probably 200,000 auxiliary troops in the second century, we can readily understand what a great influence their settlement in the provinces must have had. In this connection it is convenient to speak of the “organizations of Roman citizens,” or the _conventus civium Romanorum_, as they were called. As soon as a new province had been acquired, Roman bankers, merchants, ship-owners, and publicans went to it and settled in the important cities. They quickly formed an organization of their own in the community where they lived, because it was natural for Romans to form a political or social organization, and because certain rights and privileges which they had set them off from the rest of the community. They made up the aristocracy of the towns where they lived, and many natives must have been spurred on to accept Roman ideas and attain Roman citizenship for the sake of being enrolled in the _conventus_. The trade which these merchants carried on, and which a fine system of roads made possible, had a levelling influence throughout the Empire. Italy and Gaul sent their pottery and bronze utensils, Syria its silk and linen, Egypt its cotton goods and ivory, and Arabia its gums and spices to all the great centres of the world. The articles of everyday use and many articles of luxury were, therefore, the same in all the provinces, and must have had a great influence in making the daily life of all the people under Roman rule uniform. Trade usually “followed the flag,” but in some cases enterprising Roman merchants went in advance of it. Trajan found them in the capital of Parthia when he took that city, and there was an “organization of Roman citizens” in Alexandria long before Rome established a protectorate over Egypt.

In his _Ancient and Modern Imperialism_ Lord Cromer remarks: “Modern Imperialist nations have sought to use the spread of their language in order to draw political sympathy to themselves. This has been notably the case as regards the French in the basin of the Mediterranean, and--though perhaps less designedly--as regards the English in India. I do not think that either nation is likely to attain any great measure of success in this direction. They will certainly be much less successful than the Romans. Neither in French, British, nor, I think I may add, Russian possessions is there the least probability that the foreign will eventually supplant the vernacular languages.” Elsewhere he says: “(My) conclusion is that the great proficiency in some European language often acquired by individuals amongst the subject races of the modern Imperialist Powers in no way tends to inspire political sympathy with the people to whom that language is their mother tongue.... Indeed, in some ways, it (i.e., language) rather tends to disruption, inasmuch as it furnishes the subject races with a very powerful arm against their alien rulers.” This frank confession by a competent authority that the languages of the dominant nations are not making much progress among the subject races, and that proficiency in them tends often to alienate the conquered people from their rulers, a fact which we have seen illustrated lately in the case of the leaders of the revolutionary movements in India, brings into striking relief not only the remarkable success which the Romans had in making Latin the common language of the western world but also the effective use which they made of it in unifying the Empire. In two chapters of my book on _The Common People of Ancient Rome_ I have tried to show what the nature of this language was and how it spread through the Empire.[27] In Dacia, or modern Roumania, for instance, a province beyond the Danube, which the Romans held for only one hundred and seventy-five years, Latin was so firmly established that it has persisted in its modern form to the present day. In his _Romanization of Roman Britain_ Haverfield has shown for this remote province from a study of the ephemeral inscriptions on bricks and tiles that “Latin was employed freely in the towns of Britain, not only on serious occasions or by the upper classes, but by servants and work-people for the most accidental purposes.” The missionaries who carried it throughout the ancient world were the soldier, the colonist, the trader, and the official. It surprises one to find out, also, that all classes could not only speak Latin, but could read and write it. Across the Empire from Britain to Dacia it is the same story. On the tombstones of the petty merchant and the freedman, as well as on the bronze tablets which contain laws and decrees, the language is Latin, and essentially the same Latin as one would hear in the city of Rome. It is clear that modern Imperialist states have much to learn from the methods which Rome employed so successfully in furthering the use of her language by subject races. Lord Cromer regrets the fact that acquaintance with the tongue of the ruling people often becomes in modern times a weapon which is turned against that people. In the Roman provinces it conferred distinction, opened the way to fuller rights and privileges and made the possessor of it a stronger supporter of the Roman régime.

Nothing brings out better the great contrast between the individualism of modern times and the solidarity of the Roman commonwealth than a comparison of the methods followed now and two thousand years ago in settling an undeveloped country.[28] Reports of the great resources of Alaska come to Oregon and Colorado and New York. Men from all quarters hurry there indiscriminately. On some promising location a village grows up, almost over night. It has no magistrates, no common council. Some of the more public-spirited citizens gradually band themselves together to preserve order and dispense a rude justice. In time a municipal government is organized. The Roman method of occupying a new territory was far different from this. It consisted primarily in the establishment of colonies in the new region. The most desirable locations for strategic and commercial reasons were picked out, and a law was passed in the popular assembly authorizing the establishment of a colony, and providing for commissioners to found it. From three hundred to several thousand colonists were then enrolled, and marched out in military order to the chosen site. The commissioners assigned the allotments, drew up a charter for the new community, and appointed its first magistrates and the members of the local senate. This compact and highly organized community of Romans served as a military outpost and a centre for the extension of Roman civilization. The complete pacification and Romanization of Italy was largely due to the influence of these colonies. More than four hundred and forty such communities were established in Italy and the provinces. Modern empires have much to learn from this feature of Roman policy, and it would almost seem as if we were beginning to appreciate its value. The State of California has in late years adopted a system of colonization closely resembling the Roman. It selects a site, appoints experts to subdivide the land, chooses the colonists carefully, and sends the colony out under a board of directors. Under a measure proposed by the United States Secretary of the Interior, Secretary Lane, a year or two ago, but not yet adopted by the Congress, similar settlements were to be established on government land by the coöperation of the federal and state governments. An interesting experiment along Roman lines, but under private auspices, was made in July, 1921, when an organized band of selected colonists set out from Brooklyn to found a settlement in Idaho, with the coöperation of that state.[29] The advantages which the Roman plan has over our ordinary method of settling a new region are apparent at once.

A discussion of this feature of the policy which the Romans followed in a newly acquired territory naturally leads us to speak of their attitude toward native communities. Lord Cromer remarks that the Roman provinces did not have self-government. It is true that Spain and Gaul did not have their own legislatures and chief magistrates, but the real administrative units with which Rome dealt in making her arrangements were the city-states of Spain and Gaul, and they had a large measure of self-government conferred on them by their charters. In a province like Spain one finds communities in all the different stages of advancement from the position of a dependent village to a free city or a Roman colony, and one may well ask if the Roman system was not a more practical one than ours. We treat Porto Rico, for instance, as a unit. All the villages or cities in the island are put on the same legal basis, no matter what the state of civilization of the different towns may be. The Romans would have granted the full rights of citizenship to one or two of them, and advanced the others from their more lowly state as they became more civilized and prosperous. In this way they held before native communities a prize which those communities were always eager to attain, and from the first century of our era we find one town after another advancing to a fuller enjoyment of civic rights. The same policy was applied to individuals. Roman citizenship was often granted to selected persons in a community. Such a grant identified the interests of these provincial leaders with those of Rome, and enlisted their support for the Roman régime.

The agencies which the Empire used so successfully in Romanizing the provinces, that is to say the establishment of law and order, the retention of local self-government, the liberal grants of citizenship to qualified individuals and cities, the development of a good civil service, the building of roads, the construction of public works, the introduction of the Latin language and of Roman law, and the unifying influence in the later period of the Church, engendered a feeling of solidarity throughout the Western World, which was one of the most valuable legacies handed down by the Romans to later times. Even Claudian, the last important Roman poet, writing after the crushing defeat of Valens by the barbarians at Adrianople, saw clearly that, in spite of all the disasters which had overtaken Rome, the sense of unity still persisted throughout the Western World. He writes in sorrow of the goddess, Roma:

“H_er voice is weak, and slow her steps; her
eyes_
D_eep sunk within; her cheeks are gone;
her arms_
A_re shrivelled up with wasting leanness_,”

but at another moment he cries triumphantly: “We who drink of the Rhone and the Orontes are all one nation.” The feeling which Claudian expresses persisted throughout the Middle Ages. The German states in Italy recognized it by putting the portrait of the Eastern Emperor on their coins. As Poole remarks in his _Illustrations of the History of Mediaeval Thought_: “The Empire of Charlemagne was no mere resuscitation of the extinct empire of the West. It was the continuation of that universal empire, whose seat Constantine had established at Byzantium, but whose existence there was now held to have terminated by the succession of a woman, the empress Irene.... The empire, therefore, went back to its rightful seat, and its title devolved on Charlemagne.” All the minor rulers also throughout the civilized parts of Europe thought of their authority as coming to them from the Roman Empire. This feeling of unity was kept up by the use of the old Roman highways of commerce, by the employment of the Latin language as the _lingua franca_ of Europe, by the Church, and by the continued use of Roman law. Roman law in particular was a stabilizing influence for many centuries after the dissolution of the Empire. In the East and in the portions of Italy controlled by Justinian’s successors the _Code_ of Justinian was in force. Roman law entered largely also into the _Breviary_ of Alaric, the laws of the Burgundians, the edict of Theodoric, and the French capitularies. The law of Justinian was taught in the schools of Rome and Ravenna without much interruption from the sixth to the eleventh century, and with the revival of commerce which followed the Crusades, there was a vigorous development of Roman mercantile law. After the tenth century “the trend was toward unity within certain areas and the political separation of these great areas from each other.” This drift toward nationalism reached its climax at the time of the Reformation. The spirit of a larger unity, which earlier centuries had taken over from the Roman Empire, disappeared in great measure, but the longing for it and the need of it and the knowledge that it once existed and may be called to life again, find expression today in the organization of the League of Nations. How disastrous has been its displacement by the present intense nationalistic spirit is recognized on all sides. It would almost seem as if Philip Kerr, who had served as Confidential Secretary of Lloyd George at the Peace Conference in Paris, was thinking of the irreparable loss which Europe has suffered in this respect, when he said in his address at the Williamstown Conference in 1922: “What is the fundamental cause of war? I do not say the only cause of war, but the most active and constant cause. It is not race or religion or color or nationality or despotism, or progress, or any of the causes usually cited. It is the division of humanity into separate states. The proposition which I am concerned to establish today is the division of humanity into separate states, each owing loyalty to itself, each recognizing no law higher than its own will, each looking at every problem from its own point of view, which is the fundamental cause of war.” Rome welded the particularism of the ancient Mediterranean world into the unity of her Empire. Only by a similar recognition of the solidarity of the interests of all civilized peoples can we hope to emerge from the conditions which threaten us today.