Chapter II: Part 2

But there is, it appears, a widely prevalent false perspective in the common view of Roman history. The modern reader, especially if he be an Englishman, is a very stern moralist in his judgment of other nations and ages. In addition to this he is a citizen of an empire now extremely self-conscious and somewhat bewildered at its own magnitude. He cannot help drawing analogies from Roman history and seeking in it “morals” for his own guidance. The Roman empire bears such an obvious and unique resemblance to the British that the fate of the former must be of enormous interest to the latter. For this reason alone we are apt to regard the _fall_ of Rome as the cardinal point of Roman history. To this must be added the influence of Gibbon’s great work. By Gibbon we are led to contemplate above all things (with Silas Wegg) her Decline and Fall. Thus Rome has become for many people simply a colossal failure and a horrible warning. We behold her first as a Republic tottering to her inevitable ruin, and then as an Empire decaying from the start and continuing to fester for some five hundred years. This is one of the cases which prove that History is made not so much by heroes or natural forces as by historians. It is an accident of historiography that the Republic was not described by any great native historian until its close, when amid the horrors of civil war men set themselves to idealise the heroes of extreme antiquity and thus left a gloomy picture of unmitigated deterioration. As there was no great historian in sympathy with the imperial regime, the reputation of the early Empire was left mainly in the hands of Tacitus and Suetonius, the former of whom riddled it with epigrams while the latter befouled it with scandal. Nearly all Roman writers had a rhetorical training and a satirical bent: all Romans were praisers of the past. Thus it is that Roman virtue has receded into an age which modern criticism declares to be mythological. It is a further accident that the genius of Rome’s greatest modern historian was also strongly satirical. It was a natural affinity of temper which led Gibbon to continue the story of Tacitus and to dip his pen into the same bitter fluid.

Thus Rome has found few impartial historians and hardly any sympathetic ones. But is it possible to be sympathetic? While every true scholar feels a thrill at the name of Greece, scarcely any one _loves_ Ancient Rome. At the first mention of her name the average man’s thoughts fly to the Colosseum and the Christian martyr “facing the lion’s gory mane” to the music of Nero’s fiddle. His second thought is to formulate his explanation of her decline and fall. The explanations are as various as political complexions. “Luxury,” says the moralist, “Heathendom,” says the Christian, “Christianity,” replies Gibbon. The Protectionist can easily show that it was due to the Importation of free corn, while the Free Trader draws attention to the enormous burdens which Roman trade had to bear. “Militarism,” explains the peace-lover; “neglect of personal service,” replies the conscriptionist. The Liberal and the Conservative can both draw valuable conclusions from Roman history in support of their respective attitudes of mind. “If it had not been for demagogues like Marius and the Gracchi,” says the Conservative, “Rome might have continued to exhibit the courage and patriotism which she displayed under senatorial guidance in the war against Hannibal, instead of rushing to her doom by way of sedition and disorder.” With equal justice the Liberal points to the stupid bigotry with which that corrupt oligarchy, the senate, delayed necessary reforms. That, he says, was the cause of the downfall of Rome. That was the writing on the wall.

Whether it is or is not possible to love Ancient Rome, I would suggest that this attitude of treating her merely as a subject for autopsies and a source of gloomy vaticinations for the benefit of the British Empire is a preposterous affront to history. The mere notion of an empire continuing to decline and fall for five centuries is ridiculous. It is to regard as a failure the greatest civilising force in all the history of Europe, the most stable form of government, the strongest military and political system that has ever existed.

It is just at this point that our own generation can add something of great importance to the study of Roman history. Whatever may be said for its faith, hope is the great discovery of our age. By the help of that blessed word “Evolution” we have learnt not to put our Golden Ages in the past but in the future. In many instances we have discovered that what our fathers called decay was really progress. May it not be so with Rome?

The destiny or function of Rome in world-history was nothing more or less than the making of Europe. The modern family of European nations are her sons and daughters, and some of her daughters have grown up and married foreign husbands and given birth to offspring. For this great purpose it was necessary that the city itself should pass through the phases of growth, maturity and decay. In political terms, it was part of the Roman destiny to translate the civilisation of the city-state into that of the nation or territorial state. Having evolved the Province it was necessary that the City should expire. Conquest on a colossal scale was part of the programme, absolute centralised dominion was another part. For this purpose the change from republic to autocracy was necessary.

Greece, as we have seen elsewhere, by her system of small states enclosed and protected by city walls, had been able, long before the world at large was nearly ripe for it, to develop a civilised culture with habits of thought and speech which are now called European or Occidental. It was in a highly concentrated social life and under artificial conditions that Athens had laid the foundation of all our arts, sciences and philosophies. It was, however, as we saw, impossible for the civic democracy to expand naturally. She could hold a little empire for a few years by means of precarious sea-power. She could throw off a few daughter cities made in her own likeness. But for missionary work on a large scale the city-state was not adapted. Something much larger than a city and much more single-minded than a democracy was necessary for that purpose. The genius of Alexander the Great, an autocrat and a semi-barbarian, enabled him to do much towards propagating Hellenism in the eastern part of the Mediterranean littoral. But his early death prevented the fulfilment of his task and the half of him that was Greek made him consider the planting of new Greek cities the only means for fulfilling it.

Here then was the part which Rome had to play. She had to do for the West what Alexander had attempted for the East. In some respects her task was harder, for her work lay among warlike barbarians, but easier in that she had not to face the corrupting influence of a rival and more ancient civilisation.

Rome too began as a city-state and it was while she was still in that condition that Greek civilisation came to her and took her by storm. It was the new wine that burst the old bottle when Rome attempted to transform herself into a Greek democracy, and failing became a monarchy once more. It was not, therefore, a case of “decline and fall” when Rome ceased to be a republic. No liberal need heave a sigh for the departed republic. It was an oligarchy that had for a century deserved to be replaced by something better, and the change was even an upward step in liberty for all but a few hundreds of Roman nobles. If we can but turn our minds away from the gossip of the court and the spite of the discontented aristocracy to a just survey of that majestic and enduring system of provincial government, we shall be able to discern progress where historians would have us lament decay.

It was progress again when Rome gradually ceased to be a city-state with a surrounding territory and became successively the capital of an empire and then one of half a dozen great centres of government. Finally it was progress, as we ought by now to be able to see, when the artificial ramparts on the Rhine and Danube broke down and the new nations came into their inheritance. By that time Rome had accomplished her work and the phase of the city-state was over.

Some such convictions as these are, I think, inevitable to any one who views European history as a whole in the light of any theory of historical evolution. Rome has long been the playground of satirists and pessimists. Unfortunately at this date it is difficult if not impossible to shake their verdict and to read Roman history in the new light. To do so you cannot follow the authorities, for they were all on the side of deterioration. The idea of progress was unknown to the ancient world, and above all others the Romans believed that their Golden Age was behind them. It becomes necessary therefore to extract truth from unwilling witnesses, always a precarious and suspicious undertaking. All the Roman men of letters believed with Horace:

damnosa quid non imminuit dies?
ætas parentum peior auis tulit
nos nequiores, mox daturos
progeniem uitiosiorem.[1]

Unless we are prepared to accept the rank of _progenies vitiosissima_ we are compelled to discount this whole tendency of thought and read our authorities between the lines. They were all rhetoricians, all bent on praising the past at the expense of the present and the future; none of them were over-scrupulous in dealing with evidence. If all the historians had perished and only the inscriptions remained we should have a very different picture of the Roman empire, a picture much brighter and, I think, much more faithful to truth.

LATINISM

Hellenism we know and understand; every true classical scholar is a Hellenist by conviction. But what is Latinism and who are our Latinists? The altar fires are extinct and the votaries are scattered. Except for a small volume of the choicest Latin poetry of the Augustan age, what that is Latin gives us pleasure to-day? Greek studies seem to attract all that is most brilliant and genial in the world of scholarship: Latin is mainly relegated to the dry-as-dusts. Who reads Lucan out of school hours? Who would search Egypt for Cicero’s lost work “De Gloria”? Who would recognise a quotation from Statius?

It has not always been so. Once they quoted Lucan and Seneca across the floor of the House of Commons. The eighteenth century was far more in sympathy with Ancient Rome than we are. In those days it would not have seemed absurd to argue the superiority of Vergil over Homer. Down to that day Latin had remained the alternative language for educated people, the medium of international communication, even for diplomacy, until French gradually took its place. Only if you specifically sought to reach the vulgar did you write in English. Though Dr. Johnson could write a very pretty letter in French, he used habitually to converse with Frenchmen in Latin; not that it made him more intelligible, for, in fact, no foreigner could understand the English pronunciation of Latin; but that he did not wish to appear at a disadvantage with a mere Frenchman by adopting a foreign jargon. As for public inscriptions, though half the literary men in London signed a round-robin entreating the great autocrat to write Oliver Goldsmith’s epitaph in English, Johnson “refused to disgrace the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English inscription.”

What is the cause of the eclipse which Latin studies are still suffering? One cause, perhaps, is to be found in the misuse of the language by the pedagogues and philologists of the past in the school and the examination-room. But another cause is the recent discovery of the true Greek civilisation, whereby scholars have come to realise that Latin culture is in the main only secondary and derivative. At the present moment we are passing through a stage of revolt against classicism, convention, and artificiality. We know that Greek culture, truly discerned, is neither “classic” nor conventional nor artificial, but Latinism is still apparently subject to all these terms. The Latinity of Cicero, Vergil, Ovid, Horace, Lucan, and the greater part of the giants, in fact all the Latin of our schools is--what Greek is not--really and truly classical. They were not writing as they spoke and thought. They had studied the laws of expression in the school of rhetoric, and on pain of being esteemed barbarous they wrote under those laws. Style was their aim. Their very language was subject to arbitrary laws of syntax and grammar. The English schoolboy who approaches Cicero by way of the primer’s rules and examples is entering into Latin literature by much the same road as the Romans themselves. The Romans were grammarians by instinct and orators by education. Thus Latin is fitted by nature for schoolroom use, and for all who would learn and study words, which after all are thoughts, Latin is the supremely best training-ground. The language marches by rule. Rules govern the inflexions and the concords of the words. The periods are built up logically and beautifully in obedience to law. Latin, of all languages, least permits translation. You have only to translate Cicero to despise him.

In the world of letters, as in that of politics, there are the virtues of order and the virtues of liberty. Our own eighteenth century was logical in mind because it had to clothe its thoughts in a language of precision. But even Pope and Addison are rude barbarians compared with Vergil and Cicero. _De gustibus non est disputandum_--let some prefer the plain roast and others the made dish. Latin may be an acquired taste, but no sort of excellence is mortal. Latin will come into its own again along with Dryden and Congreve, along with patches and periwigs. Meanwhile it must be a very dull soul who is unmoved by the grandeur of Roman history, the triumphant march of the citizen legions, the dogged patriotism which resisted Hannibal to the death, and the pageantry and splendour of the Empire. One must be blind not to admire the massive strength of her ruined monuments, arches, bridges, roads, and aqueducts. And one must be deaf indeed not to enjoy the surges of Ciceronian oratory or the rolling music of the Vergilian hexameter. Greece may claim all the charm of the spring-time of civilisation, but Rome in all her works has a majesty which must command, if not love, wonder and respect. Mommsen justly remarks that “it is only a pitiful narrow-mindedness that will object to the Athenian that he did not know how to mould his State like the Fabii and Valerii, or to the Roman that he did not learn to carve like Phidias and to write like Aristophanes.”

Under the flowing toga of Latinism the natural Roman is concealed from our view. It is possible that the progress of research and excavation may to some extent rediscover him and distinguish him, as it has already done for his Hellenic brother, from the polished courtiers of the Augustan age who have hitherto passed as typical products of Rome.

It is astonishing how little we really know of Rome and the Romans after all that has been said and written about them. The ordinary natural Roman is a complete stranger to us. It is certain that he did not live in luxury like Mæcenas, but how did he live and what sort of man was he? We can discern that his language was not in the least like that of Cicero. It appears that he neither dreaded nor disliked emperors like Nero, as did Tacitus and Juvenal. As for his religion, much has already been done, and more still remains to be done, to show that he did not really worship the Hellenised Olympians who pass in literature for his gods. Recent scholarship has done something to reveal to us the presence of a real national art in Rome, or at any rate of an artistic development on Italian soil which made visible steps of its own out of Hellenic leading-strings. Thus there is some hope that the real Roman will not always elude us. But for the present in the whole domain of art, religion, thought, and literature, Greek influence has almost obliterated the native strain. For the present, therefore, we must be content to regard Roman civilisation as mainly derivative, and our principal object will be to see how Rome fulfilled her task as the missionary of Greek thought. This object, together with the unsatisfactory nature of the records, must excuse the haste with which I have passed over the earlier stages of Roman republican history. It is obvious that the first three centuries of our era will be the important part of Roman history from this point of view. Also, if the progress of civilisation be our main study, nothing in Roman history before the beginning of the second century B.C. can come directly under our attention. When the Romans first came into contact with the Greeks they were still barbarians, with no literature, no art, and very little industry or commerce. The earlier periods will only be introductory.

ITALY AND THE ROMAN

The pleasant land of Italy needs no description here. Our illustrations[2] will recall its sunny hill-sides, its deep shadows, its vineyards and olive-yards. But there are one or two features of its geography which have a bearing upon the history of Rome.

To begin with, the geographical unity of the Italian peninsula is more apparent than real. The curving formation of the Apennines really divides Italy into four parts--(1) the northern region, mainly consisting of the Po valley, a fertile plain which throughout the Republican period was scarcely considered as part of Italy at all, and was, in fact, inhabited by barbarian Gauls; (2) the long eastern strip of Adriatic coast, an exposed waterless and harbourless region, with a scanty population, which hardly comes into ancient history; (3) the southern region of Italy proper, hot, fertile, and rich in natural harbours, so that it very early attracted the notice of the Greek mariners, and was planted with luxurious and populous cities long before Rome came into prominence; and (4) the central plain facing westward, in which the river Tiber and the city of Rome occupy a central position. Etruria and Latium together fill the greater part of it. Its width is only about eighty miles, so that there is no room for any considerable rivers to develop, and, in fact, there are only four rivers of any importance in a coast-line of more than 300 miles. We may call the whole of this region a plain in distinction from the Apennine highlands; but it is, of course, plentifully scattered with hills high enough to provide an impregnable citadel, and to this day crowned with huddled villages.

Rome herself on her Seven Hills began her career by securing dominion over the Latin plain which surrounded her on all sides but the north. The Roman Campagna,[3] which is now desolate and fever-stricken, was once all populous farmland. The river Tiber, though its silting mouth and tideless waters now render it useless for navigation, was in the flourishing days of Ancient Rome navigable for small vessels and Ostia was a good artificial harbour at its mouth. Thus it is history rather than geography which has made Rome into an unproductive capital. We may conclude that geography has placed Rome in a favourable position for securing the control of the Mediterranean and especially of the western part of it.

It is worth while also to notice the neighbours by whom she was surrounded when she first struggled forward into the light. Just across the Tiber to the north of her were the Etruscans of whom we shall see more in the next chapter. Their pirate ships scoured the sea while their merchants did business with the Greeks of Sicily, Magna Græcia and Massilia. It was perhaps her position at the _tête du pont_ that led to Rome’s early prominence in war. Across the water on the coast of Africa was the dreaded city of Carthage, which had for centuries been striving to establish itself on the island of Sicily. All these were seafaring, commercial peoples, but it was not by sea that Rome met them. Behind Rome, among the valleys and on the spurs of the Apennines, were a whole series of sturdy highland clans who like all highlanders noticed the superior fatness of the valley sheep. It was against these Umbrians, Marsians, Pelignians, Sabines, and Samnites that the cities of the plain were constantly at feud, and it was mainly her struggles with these that kept the Roman swords bright in early days.

As to the Romans themselves and their origin there is little that we can say for certain. Ancient ethnology is not by any means yet secure of its premises. One thing is clear enough, if we can place any reliance whatever upon literary records--the national characteristics of the ancient Roman were very unlike those of the modern Italian. The one was bold, hardy, grave, orderly and inartistic: the other is sensitive, vivacious, artistic, turbulent and quick-witted. There is not a feature in common between them and yet the modern Italian is surely the normal South European type. As you go southwards through France you find the people approaching these characteristics more and more. The Spaniard and the Greek share them. The Ancient Roman of republican days, unless he is a literary invention, is assuredly no southerner in temperament, though the southern qualities undoubtedly begin to grow clear as Roman history progresses. And then the whole of early Roman history is marked by a strife between the two orders Patrician and Plebeian, which is certainly not simply a struggle between two political parties, nor a mere conflict between rich and poor. There is a division between the two of religion and custom in such matters as burial, for example, and marriage-rites. The patricians fear contamination of their blood if the plebeians are allowed to intermarry with them. These considerations and others like them have led Prof. Ridgeway to formulate for Rome, as he has already done with success for Greece, a theory of northern invasion and conquest in very early days. Probably it is a theory which can never be proved nor disproved, so woefully scanty is our evidence for the earliest centuries of Roman history. But it explains the great riddle of Roman character as no other theory does.

The archæology of the spade does not help us much though it has made some interesting discoveries on the soil of Italy. There is of course at the base a Neolithic culture resembling that of the rest of Europe. Then there is a phase of pile-dwellings widely spread among the marshes of the Lombard plain called the “Terramare” civilisation. As this phase belongs to the bronze age we may infer that civilisation developed later in Italy than in Greece owing to the lack of fortified cities. In this Terramare period the dead were carefully buried whole, often folded up into a sitting posture to fit their contracted graves. Then comes an Early Iron period, called “The Villanova,” where the cremated ashes of the dead are collected in urns and deposited in vaults generally walled with flat slabs of stone. Above these two stages come Etruscan and Gallic remains and then those of the Rome of history. It is probable enough that the Iron Age of the Villanova culture represents a conquest from the north. It is likely that in prehistoric times Italy experienced the same fate as throughout the ages of history. The Alpine passes are easier from north to south than in the reverse direction, and the smiling plains of North Italy have always possessed an irresistible attraction for the barbarian who looks down upon them from those barren snow-clad heights. Whether the invader be an Umbrian or Gaulish or Gothic or Austrian warrior, Italia must pay the price for her “fatal gift of beauty.”

I

THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME

arx æternæ dominationis.
TACITUS.

That Rome was not built in a day is the only thing we really know about the origin of Rome. There is, however, nothing to prevent us from guessing. The modern historian of the Economic School would picture to us a limited company of primeval men of business roaming about the world until they found a spot in the centre of the Mediterranean, a convenient depot alike for Spanish copper and Syrian frankincense, handy for commerce with the Etruscans of the north, the Sicilian Greeks of the south, and the Carthaginians of the African coast. They select a piece of rising ground on the banks of the river Tiber, about fifteen miles from its mouth, a spot safe and convenient for their cargo-boats, and there they build an Exchange, found a Chamber of Commerce (which they quaintly term _senatus_), and institute that form of public insurance which is known as “an army.” Thus equipped they proceed by force or fraud to acquire a number of markets, to which in due course they give the name of “Empire.”

This picture, being modern, is naturally impressionistic and rather vague in its details. From all accounts a good deal of engineering would be required to make the natural Tiber suitable for navigation on a large scale. Not only does its mouth silt up every year and its channel constantly change, but just between the hills on the very floor of Rome every spring made pools and swamps. Nor is there any tide in the Mediterranean to help the rowers up to the city against the stream. The Etruscans, who diversified their commercial operations with systematic piracy, held almost the whole of this western coast in subjection. The Greeks of the south, who have plenty to say about Etruscan and Carthaginian seafarers, have forgotten to mention their early Roman customers. But perhaps that is because the primeval trader from Rome cannot have had anything much to sell, and certainly had no money at all to buy with. In founding his Bourse he seems to have forgotten to provide a Mint; at any rate, long after the Sicilian Greeks had evolved a most exquisite coinage of silver and gold, the Romans were still content with the huge and clumsy copper _as_. I think we may confidently dismiss external trade from among the causes of the early rise of Rome. The coinage is the surest evidence we possess, no foreign trade could have passed in the Mediterranean on a basis of the copper _as_, and in Latin the equivalent for “money” is a word denoting “cattle.” Whoever the early Romans were, they were mainly, as all their religion and traditions show, land-soldiers and farmers.

Livy takes a more sensible view. He admits that the current accounts of the foundation of the city are involved in mystery and miracle, but he asserts with justice that if any city deserved a miraculous origin Rome did. Thereupon he proceeds to relate the pleasant tale of her foundation in the year 753 B.C. by Romulus and Remus.

It is surely unprofitable to search very deeply for grains of truth in the sands of legend which cover the early traditions of Rome, but it is sometimes interesting to conjecture how and why the legends were invented. The story of Romulus and Remus, for example, may have taken its rise in a

“sacristan’s tale” about an ancient work of art representing a wolf suckling two babes. A fairly ancient copy of this motive is preserved in the famous Capitoline Wolf.[4] The wolf at least is ancient, and the children have been added in modern times from representations of the famous group on ancient coins. It is possible that the original statue may go back to days of totemistic religion when the wolf was the ancestor of a Roman clan.

The Seven Kings of Rome are for the most part mere names which have been fitted by rationalising antiquarians, presumably Greek, with inventions appropriate to them. Romulus is simply the patron hero of Rome called by her name. Numa, the second, whose name suggests _numen_, was the blameless Sabine who originated most of the old Roman cults, and received a complete biography largely borrowed from that invented for Solon. Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Martius were the _hostile_ and _martial_ inventors of military systems. Servius Tullius was a man of _servile_ origin, and on this foundation Freeman built his belief that the Roman kingship was a career open to talent!

As for the two Tarquins, the latter of whom was turned by Greek historians into a typical Greek tyrant and made the subject of an edifying Greek story of tyrannicide closely modelled on the story of Harmodius, their names are said to be Etruscan. There is a recent theory that the saving of Rome by Horatius and his comrades is fable designed to conceal the real conquest of Rome by the Etruscans. As a matter of fact there is a good deal of other evidence for that theory: reluctant admissions in history and literature, records of an ancient treaty of submission, the fact that the ritual and ornament of supreme authority at Rome seems to be of Etruscan origin, and above all the evidence of the stones. There are traces of very early skill and activity in building at Rome, and, unless the Romans afterwards declined very remarkably in the arts and crafts, their early works, such as the walls and some of the sewers, must have been built under foreign influence. That some sort of early kingship at Rome is more than a legend is certain; the whole fabric of the Roman constitution and its fundamental theory of _imperium_ imply the existence of primeval kingship. On the whole, then, we may well believe that at some early period the city of Rome under Etruscan princes formed part of an empire which embraced a number of ports and towns up and down the Italian coast, though it did not necessarily concern itself with the intervening and surrounding territories. During all the early centuries of Rome it must have been a constant struggle between civilised walled towns on or near the coast and warlike hill tribes, quite uncivilised, from the mountainous interior.

These mysterious Etruscans have formed the theme of an internecine war of monographs. On the whole we may pronounce that those scholars who maintain their Lydian origin have completely demolished the arguments of those who aver that they sprang from the Rhætian Alps--and _vice versâ_. It remains possible, therefore, that the Etruscans came from nowhere in particular but were as aboriginal and autochthonous as any European people. It is true that we cannot make out much of their language, but that is also true of the aboriginal Cretans--and of many other autochthonous peoples. Their earliest remains are of a type familiar to us in the earliest strata of production all over the Mediterranean coast-lands--prehistoric polygonal masonry, a beehive tomb, incised _bucchero nero_ vases and so forth. Their later and finer work shows a distinct cousinship with that of Greece though sometimes curiously debased and uncouth in spirit. In bronze-working they were very skilful.[5] They developed painting to a high pitch in early times, and the British Museum possesses some interesting examples from Cære. It was indeed believed by Pliny that Corinthian painters had settled in Etruria, that being the usual account by which the ancients explained resemblances. But we may believe that the art of painting is indigenous on the soil of Tuscany. Their pottery is very similar to that of Greece.[6] It appears that the flourishing period of Etruscan art coincided with that of the greatest

extent of their empire, namely, the sixth and early fifth centuries B.C. Their plastic work was mostly in terra-cotta, for the native marbles do not seem to have been quarried. Some of their terra-cotta coffins, adorned with conventional portraits of the deceased and finished off by the application of paint, show considerable technical skill, but always that strange grotesque spirit.[7] From all accounts these Etruscans were a superstitious and cruel race. It was from them that the Romans learnt their bloody craft of divination by the inspection of the entrails of newly slain victims, and there is little doubt that the victims had not always been the lower animals. We are told that the insignia of royalty at Rome--the toga with scarlet

or purple stripes, the toga with purple border, the sceptre of ivory, the curule chair, the twelve lictors with their axes in bundles of rods--were borrowed from the Etruscans. Thus it seems that the ancient garb of the Roman citizen, a tunic covered by a long mantle or toga, a costume which is essentially the same as the _chiton_ and _himation_ of the Greeks, started as a fashion introduced by their more civilised northern neighbours. It seems clear also that the earliest Roman art, the decoration of temples with painted terra-cotta ornaments, was Etruscan in origin. Some of the earliest statues of the gods seem to have been painted, for we hear of a very ancient red Jupiter. Thus there is some probability that Rome passed through a period, perhaps in the sixth century, of alien rule and alien civilisation. Remembering the cousinship between Greece and Etruria we shall find that Rome had been prepared for the reception of Greek culture in very early times.

The fifth century seems to have been a period of decline for the Etruscan power. The Greek republics, with, as I hope we agreed, their northern stiffening, had advanced far beyond their Etruscan kinsmen in intelligence, and the tyrant Hiero of Syracuse defeated them in a great sea-fight in 474 B.C. It is agreeable to the historian to have a fact so certain and a date so well attested in all the wilderness of legend that surrounds the early history of Italy. Then the warlike hill tribes of the Southern Apennines began to press upon their southern colonies, and finally the Gauls from the north swept down upon Etruria at the beginning of the fourth century and broke up their declining empire for ever. It was probably during this period that the Romans expelled their Etruscan princes, and replaced royalty by a pair of equal colleagues sharing most of the royal power and regal emblems except crown and sceptre. So we get to the Rome of the earliest credible tradition--a Rome governed by two consuls and a senate of nobles. It is a city composed of farm-houses and in each house the head of the family rules in patriarchal majesty.

THE GROWING REPUBLIC

Thus it is necessary to throw overboard a great mass of edifying and famous history in the interest of youth. There were no contemporary records, the annals and _fasti_ upon which Livy’s immediate predecessors relied in the first century B.C. are demonstrably of late concoction. Everywhere we can see the influence of Greek artists importing fragments of Greek history, rationalising names and customs, antedating and reduplicating later constitutional struggles, writing appropriate speeches for early parliamentarians who never existed, and generally demonstrating the power of Greek invention to flatter Roman credulity. The great families of 200 B.C. and onwards found themselves as rich and powerful as nabobs; they had great historic names, and when there was a funeral in the family they sent out a long procession of waxen images to represent the noble ancestors of the deceased. At such times there would be funeral orations recounting the deeds of those heroic ancestors. Every family had its traditions, as glorious and as authentic as those of the descendants of Brian Boru. When literature came into fashion and needy Greek scribes offered a plausible _stilus_ to any rich patron, Roman history began to exist, sometimes bearing respectable Roman names but always written in Greek. It is thus that we get the series of heroic actions attributed to Fabii and Horatii and deeds of wicked pride ascribed to ancestral Claudii. Whatever it may cost us in pangs for the fate of pretty tales I fear we must not scruple to use the knife freely in this region of literary history. A glance at the following coincidences will help to allay our scruples: Tarquin the Roman tyrant was driven out in the same year as Hippias the Athenian tyrant (510 B.C.); the Twelve Tables at Rome were drawn up in the same year as the code of Protagoras at Thurii (451 B.C.); 300 Fabii died to a man in the battle of Cremera just about the same time as 300 Spartans died to a man with Leonidas at Thermopylæ in 480 B.C. To put it briefly: Nothing anterior to the Gallic invasion of 390 B.C. and very little for nearly another century can be accepted on literary evidence alone.

So far as we can read the stones, the earliest Rome consisted of a settlement on the Palatine Hill, with a citadel and a temple on the Capitol, and with a forum or market on the low ground between them. On the Esquiline Hill was a plebeian settlement. It was a pastoral and agricultural community, expressing wealth in terms of cattle, ploughing and reaping so much of the Campagna as their farmers could reach in a day or their armies protect. From the very earliest times the community consisted of a few great houses of patrician blood with numerous clients and slaves. In every house the father was king absolute, with power of life and death over his sons, daughters, and slaves. Daughters passed from the hand of the father to the hand of the husband, like any other property, by a form of sale. Out of remote antiquity comes a piece of genuine Latin:

SI PARENTEM PVER VERBERIT AST OLE PLORASIT PVER
DIVIS PARENTVM SACER ESTO

--“If a boy beats his father and the father complains let the boy be devoted to the gods of parents,” _i.e._ slain as a sacrifice. It was a commonwealth of such parents--no republican lovers of liberty, be sure--whose chiefs met to discuss policy in the temple, as the Senate, and who themselves assembled in a body, fully armed, as the _comitium_, to vote upon the Senate’s decrees conveyed by the consuls.

Grim and despotic in peace these Roman aristocrats were fierce and tenacious in war. As soon as she was free, if not earlier, Rome appeared as a member of the Latin League which ruled over the Plain of Latium under the presidency of Alba Longa. This piece of tradition is attested by many survivals in ritual. Her earliest wars were against neighbours like Gabii, whose very name made the later Romans smile, so insignificant a village it was. It was in these little contests that the early Romans learnt their trade as warriors, and if any one seeks to know the causes of Rome’s victorious career the answer is, I suppose, that she fought very bravely and obeyed her generals better than her enemies obeyed theirs. Discipline was her secret, and discipline came, no doubt, from the strict patriarchal system in her homes, a system assuredly not of Mediterranean birth.

Whether the geese who cackled were authentic or merely ætiological fowls I know not, but it is certain that Rome did not suffer so severely from the Gallic invasion as did her neighbours across the Tiber. Probably it was only the last wave of a great invasion which reached as far as Rome, burnt the Palatine settlement and the humble wattled dwellings of the poor on the Esquiline, and failed to storm the Capitol. At any rate the Gallic invasion of 390 B.C. seems to have started the Romans on their career of conquest, mainly at the expense of the Etruscans. But there were incessant wars with all her neighbours; every summer the army marched out as a matter of course. If it was not a decaying Etruscan town to be taken by siege it was a Latin neighbour, or failing them a Volscian or Sabine community from the hills. Summer, while the corn could be left to do its own growing, was the time for battle. To have been at peace in summer would have been slackness, to wage war in winter a grave solecism. So in short space Rome became an important little town, head of the Latin League and probably the strongest unit in Central Italy. It appears that she began about now to emerge into international notice by the great powers, for we have a treaty of 348 B.C., which may probably be accepted as genuine though the actual date is not so certain, between Rome and Carthage, wherein the Romans, in consideration of promising not to trade in Carthaginian waters, are permitted to do business with the Carthaginian ports in Sicily and acknowledged as suzerains of the Latin League. Thus Rome has apparently by this time some overseas traffic.

If no other art, diplomacy seems always to have been at home on Roman soil, and in all her works Rome shows a genius for statecraft. It must have been at some very early date that she discovered her great secret of _divide et impera_. She had already become so far the greatest power in the Latin League, that she had equal rights with all the others combined. The allies, it seems, claimed to supply the general of the allied army on alternate days and to have a half-share of the plunder. Against these very modest demands Rome was firm. She fought the League and beat it in 338; then she divided and ruled the cities. With each she made a separate treaty, granting to each two of the rights of citizenship--the right to trade and the right to marry with her citizens. But she allowed no such rights between the other members of the League, however close neighbours they might be. In this way Rome became the staple market of all Latium; all traffic passed through her hands and her wealth and population increased.

These city-states had no means of ruling otherwise than tyrannically. Their whole constitution forbade it. We have seen elsewhere[8] that citizenship in a city-state implied membership of a corporate body, a close partnership in a company of unlimited liability with very definite privileges and responsibilities. Full citizenship at Rome meant a vote in electing the city magistrates and a vote in the _comitium_, which decided matters like peace and war. It was obvious that you had to be very jealous about extending these rights to outsiders. But Rome went part of the way, granted parts of the citizen rights, and thereby showed finer imperial statecraft than any Greek state had yet discovered. Her first offshoot was Ostia, the town she planted at the mouth of her river only fifteen miles off, her first _Colonia_. The men of Ostia remained citizens of Rome, and might vote in the elections if they thought it worth while, but were exempt from the duty of serving in the army because their own town formed a standing garrison in the Roman service. Then when the Romans made conquests in Etruria or Campania or any region where the natives spoke a foreign language and therefore could not fight in the legions under Roman officers, they would receive the “citizenship without vote,” which enabled them simply to trade and marry like Romans. Thirdly, some of the Latin towns became merely _municipia_, that is, country towns enjoying full Roman citizenship if they came to the city, but at home a local constitution with considerable powers of self-government and a magistracy modelled on that of Rome, namely, senators and consuls under other names. All this granting of rights--without any tribute--was, according to the ways of ancient city-states, surprising generosity or the deepest statesmanship. Already Rome begins to show the genius of empire-building: she was relentless and unscrupulous in conquering, but generous and broad-minded in governing. Such was the wisdom of her council of despots--the Senate.

Nevertheless these “allies” were more sensible of the liberties they had lost than of the rights they had gained by coming under the expanding wing of Rome. The latter part of the fourth century shows the growing state embarked upon a terrific struggle which lasted on and off from summer to summer for nearly fifty years. Her principal foes were the warlike Samnites of the Southern Apennines, closely akin, it seems, to the dominant race at Rome. This tremendous conflict is clearly the turning-point of Roman history. At various stages nearly all the peoples of Italy rose and enrolled themselves among the enemy, the Latins, the Etruscans, the Umbrians, the Marsi, the Gauls (for they too were brought in again by the Etruscans in their last efforts for freedom) and the Samnites themselves, a race of born fighters under competent generals. Once, in 321 B.C., both consuls and the entire army of Rome were entrapped at the Caudine Pass, but Rome never thought of surrender. Doggedly her Senate refused to know when it was beaten and continued the struggle. Fortunately it was one purpose against many, and Rome beat her enemies in detail until she was able to emerge victorious.

The history of that great conflict has come down to us in an incomplete state full of fairy-tales and omissions, but it is clear that the Roman Senate showed extraordinary resolution and tenacity, as it did in the next century against foreign enemies. Beaten to its knees again and again it refused any terms of peace short of victory. That is a marvellous thing, if Rome was really one among many towns of Latium. It is to be noted that this was the war in which she learnt the new system of fighting whereby she was fated to conquer the world. Hitherto in ancient warfare a battle array had meant a solid line in which the men stood shoulder to shoulder in several ranks, pressing on with spear and shield against a similar line of the enemy. It was largely a question of weight in the impact. You tried to make your line deep enough to prevent yielding and long enough to envelop the enemy’s flank: once you could turn or break the enemy’s line victory was yours. But the Romans, either because they were often outnumbered on the field of battle, or, as some say, in fighting the Gallic warriors with their long swords, found it necessary to fight not shoulder to shoulder but in open order--not in a solid phalanx but in open companies or “maniples.” This had a far-reaching effect: it made every Roman soldier a self-reliant unit, who could fence skilfully with his favourite weapon, the sword, instead of merely pushing a long pike as his neighbours did. It is clear that only an army of natural soldiers could have adopted such an innovation successfully. Once established, it made the Roman soldier invincible. The maniple of 200 men was not only far more mobile than a solid phalanx, but it covered a length of ground equal to that of three times its own numbers. Formerly only the front rank--the _principes_--had required a full suit of armour and it was only the richest who could afford it. Now the whole army had to be properly equipped, and this reacted upon the social and political system of the city.

THE CONSTITUTION

In ancient times a man’s rights as citizen depended entirely upon his duties as a soldier. The _comitium_ was the army, and the preponderance of voting power went to the rich who could afford a panoply. Now the soldiers were equalised and therefore the citizens claimed equality. We cannot put much faith in Livy’s story of the struggle between the two orders for political equality; the details, which include elaborate reports of the speeches delivered, are clearly free compositions based upon much later controversies between the republicans and democrats of Livy’s own earlier days. There is a great deal of confusion and contradiction in the accounts of the various legislative measures by which the plebeians were gradually admitted to equality with the patricians. But the story of the Secession of the Plebs--there are two such stories, but probably that is the result of duplication--is so distinctive and peculiarly Roman that it scarcely seems like an invention. To put it shortly, the plebeians won their rights by means of that very modern weapon--a strike. Being refused the rights for which they were agitating, they refused to join the citizen levy, but marched out under arms to the neighbouring Sacred Mount, and threatened to set up a new Rome of their own there. The political instinct was healthy and strong among them: the plebeians formed themselves into a second corporation organised like the patricians. Where the patricians had their two consuls with two prætors under them, the plebeians had their two tribunes and two ædiles. Where the patrician army had its _comitium_ meeting in groups called “curies,” the plebeians had their assembly meeting in tribes. So the new magistracies and the new meetings became part and parcel of the Roman republic. The tribunes were protected not so much by laws as by an oath: their persons were declared sacred, and they had the right to thrust their sacred persons between the plebeian offender and the consul’s lictor who came to arrest him, thus expressing the ultimate sovereignty of the army of Roman citizens. That is, in broad outline, how the story of political equality at Rome has come down to us. But it must not be supposed that even now the Roman republic was in anything but externals like the Greek democracy. The Roman _comitia_ never debated like the Athenian _ecclesia_. They assembled to listen to such speeches as the magistrates or their invited friends might choose to make upon topics which had previously been selected, discussed and decreed by the senate; they were there to ratify the senate’s decisions with “Yes” or “No.” Even then they did not vote as individuals; each “century,” each “cury,” or each “tribe,” according to the form of meeting summoned, was a single voting unit. Everything in the system tended to put real power into the hands of the executive. When you get the executive able to control policy you get efficiency, but if you want liberty you must adopt other means. The senate at Rome gradually came to consist entirely of retired magistrates, and so to exhibit all the knowledge, competence, experience, and bigoted self-confidence which we expect from retired functionaries.

The republican constitution had invented two devices to save itself from tyranny, and, according to tradition, had invented them at the very beginning of republicanism. One was the collegial system by which every magistracy was held in commission by two or more colleagues. There were two consuls from the first, sharing between them most of the royal prerogatives, heads of the executive in peace and supreme generals in war, with power of life and death, or full _imperium_, at any rate on the field of battle. There was at first only one prætor, for he was then merely the consuls’ lieutenant in time of war; but when, as soon happened, the prætor became a judge in time of peace, that office, too, was given to a pair of colleagues. There were, it is said, at first two tribunes of the plebs, principally charged with the protection and leadership of their own order; but as the city grew their numbers were increased to ten. So there were two ædiles, who principally looked after affairs of police in the city. There were two censors, ranking highest of all in the hierarchy of office because their sphere was so largely connected with religion. Their duty was to number the people and to expiate that insult to heaven with a solemn rite of purification. In numbering they also had to assess every man’s property for the purpose of fixing his rank in the army and in the state. All these magistrates had powers of jurisdiction in various spheres. All the priests and prophets, too, of whom there were many varieties, were formed into colleges. Only the _pontifex maximus_ stood alone without a colleague--and he had an official wife. We are too familiar with the working of “boards” and “commissions” to misunderstand the purpose of this system. Theory required unanimity in each board, each member of it had power to stop action by the others, one powerful weapon to that end being the religious system whereby nothing could be attempted without favourable omens. You had only to announce unpropitious auspices to stop any action whatever.

The other great check against official tyranny was the system of annual tenure. All magistrates, except the censors, who had a lengthy task before them and therefore held office for five years, were annual. While this was some safeguard for liberty, it told heavily against efficiency, especially in the case of military leadership by the consuls. It also meant the gradual creation of a great number of office-holders, past and present. It was not quite so effective as the corresponding Athenian system of balloting for office in checking personal eminence, but it certainly succeeded in putting a great number of nonentities and failures into high office--even the supreme command of the legions.

THE EARLY ROMAN