Chapter XIII: Introduction (9)

With this profound and lofty feeling for Nature, did the early philosophers of Greece, who were chiefly Ionians, like Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, consider respectively water, air, and fire, as the primary powers of Nature and of all things; and it was only Anaxagoras, the master of Socrates, who first clearly expounded the nature of that supreme and divine Intelligence which created nature and regulates the world. Prior to this philosopher, Heraclitus had asserted this doctrine, perhaps with greater purity--certainly with more depth and penetration; but in his obscure writings it is less intelligibly expressed. With his supreme Intelligence in Nature, Anaxagoras conjoined the {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}, that is to say, not the real atoms of a lifeless matter, but rather the animated substance of material life. Thus his doctrine was a simple system of dualism, quite in harmony, it would seem, with the feelings of those early ages, as we have noticed a similar system in the history of Indian philosophy. These old Ionian philosophers in general regarded only the internal life in Nature and all existence--the constant change and endless vicissitude in the world and in all things; and hence many of them began to doubt, and at last finally denied, the existence of anything steadfast and enduring. According to that law and march of contrast, which Grecian intellect, whether consciously or unconsciously, invariably pursued, these Ionian philosophers were now opposed by the school of Parmenides, which inculcated the doctrine of an all-pervading unity--and taught that this principle was the first and last, the sole, true, permanent, and eternal Being. Although this system was at first propounded in verse, it was by no means, in its essential and ruling spirit, a poetical Pantheism, like that of the Indians--but more congenial with the intellectual habits of the Greeks, it was a Pantheism thoroughly dialectic, which at first regarded all change as an illusion and idle phenomenon, and at last positively denied the possibility of change. Between these two extreme schools appeared the great disciple of Socrates, who sought, by a path of inquiry completely new, completely foreign to the Greeks--by a range of speculation which soared far above the world of sense, and outward experience, as well as above mere logic, to return to the supreme God-head, infinitely exalted above all nature--deriving the notion of the Deity from immediate intuition, primeval revelation, or profound internal reminiscence. By this doctrine of reminiscence, which is the fundamental tenet of the Platonic system, this philosophy has a strong coincidence or affinity with the Indian doctrine of the Metempsychosis, by the supposition it involves of the prior existence of the human soul. To such a notion of the pre-existence of the soul, in the literal sense of the term, no system of Christian philosophy could easily subscribe. But if, as there is no reason to prevent us, we should understand this Platonic notion of reminiscence in a more spiritual sense--as the awakening or resuscitation of the consciousness of the divine image implanted in our souls--as the soul's perception of that image; this theory would then perfectly coincide with the Christian doctrine of the divine image originally stamped on the human soul, and of the internal illumination of the soul by the renovation of that image--and hence we ought in no way to be astonished that this Platonic mode of thinking, for such it is rather than any exclusive system,--as it is the first great philosophy of revelation clothed and propounded in an European form--should have ever appeared so captivating to the profound thinkers of Christianity. In Plato's time, that host of Sophists who had sprung out of the dialectic contests of the earlier philosophy, out of its rejection and disbelief of every thing permanent, immutable and eternal in Nature, in life, and in knowledge, as well as out of the democratic spirit of the age, and the ever prevailing immorality--in Plato's time, that host of Sophists completely bewildered and confused the public mind, poisoned all principle and morality in their very source, and accomplished the ruin of society in Greece in general, and in Athens in particular. And the masterly portrait which Plato has given us of these Sophists exhibits well this race, and the pernicious influence they exerted over Grecian intellect, and the whole circle of Grecian states; and this political influence of the Sophists forms the third epoch in the history of Greece, which, by means of these popular sycophants, became daily more and more democratic, till at last it perished in anarchy.

The more ancient philosophers of Greece lived almost all in a state of retirement from public life, taking no part in political affairs, or evincing very evident sentiments of hostility to the governments and republics of their native country. They were almost all unfriendly to the prevailing principles of democracy; and the ideal governments, which they, as well as Plato, have sketched, were all in the spirit of a very rigid aristocracy of virtue and law--evincing a very marked predilection for that form of government as it existed, though in a state of great degeneracy, among the Doric Greeks. Long before Plato, the Pythagoreans had inculcated doctrines perfectly similar, or at least of a very kindred nature; and with the view and purpose of introducing their principles into public life, by which undoubtedly the governments and the whole frame of society in Greece, as well as the whole system of Grecian thought, would have assumed a totally new and different shape. But before the Pythagorean confederacy, which was so widely diffused through the Greek states of Southern Italy, was able to accomplish its design, the violent re-action of an opposite party of thinkers destroyed it, or at least deprived it of all ascendancy and political influence.

The age of Aristotle concurred with that of the Macedonian sway to terminate anarchy of every kind. To the old evil of a false dialectic, which had become an inveterate habit, and, as it were, a second nature to Grecian intellect, he endeavoured to oppose his ample and substantial logic--and this must be regarded not so much as a wonderful _organum_, a living and never-failing source of scientific truth, but rather as a remedy for that disease of a false, sophistical rhetoric, so prevalent in his own age, and the one immediately preceding--and which had brought about the ruin of all truths, and an universal anarchy of doctrines, even in practical life. With a perspicacious, penetrative, and comprehensive intellect, he has reduced all the philosophic, and all the historical science of preceding ages and of his own time, to a clear, well-ordered system, for the ample instruction of posterity:--in both these sciences, as well as in natural history, he has remained, down to the latest time, the master-guide. In those parts of his philosophy which lie between this natural science and the old dialectic contests, in its primary and fundamental principles, the system of Aristotle, when rightly understood, contains much that leads to the most dangerous errors, especially in his notion of God; though we cannot with justice impute to him the abuse which has been made of his philosophy in subsequent ages. Notwithstanding the many excellent things which are to be found in the Ethics of Aristotle, considered merely as an effort of unassisted reason; yet in all the enquiries after a higher truth--after the first notion of the divine which, in the elder philosophy of nature, was so imperfectly understood, and which in the consummate rationalism of Aristotle was completely misapprehended--in all these important enquiries, the Stagyrite is far from being such a guide as Plato; and his philosophy is not like the Platonic, a scientific introduction to the Christian revelation, and to the knowledge of divine truths. The later systems of philosophy among the Greeks were, with some slight variations of form, mere repetitions, often only mere combinations and compilations, of the ancient philosophy; or they exhibited a thorough degeneracy of science and intellect, as in the atomical system of Epicurus, which even on life and morals had an atomical influence.

The Greek states have long since disappeared from the face of the earth--the republics, as well as the Macedonian kingdoms founded by Alexander, have long since ceased to exist. Many centuries--near two thousand years, have elapsed, since not a vestige remains of all that ancient greatness and transitory power. If the celebrated battles and other mighty events of those ages are still known to us; if they still excite in us a lively interest, it is principally because they have been delineated with such incomparable beauty, such instructive interest, by the great classical writers. It is not the republican governments of Greece, nor the brief and fleeting period of Grecian liberty, which was so soon succeeded by civil war and anarchy--it is not the universal empire of Macedon, which was but of short duration, and was soon swallowed up in the Roman or Parthian domination--it is not these that mark out the place which Greece occupies in the great whole of universal history, nor the mighty and important part she has had in the civilization of mankind. The share allotted to her was the light of science in its most ample extent, and in all the clear brilliance of exposition which it could derive from art. It is in this intellectual sphere only that the Greeks have been gifted with extraordinary power, and have exerted a mighty influence on after-ages. Plato and Aristotle, far more than Leonidas and Alexander the Great, contain nearly the sum and essence of all truly permanent and influential, which the Greeks have bequeathed to posterity. It is evident that I include under these great names the whole classical culture which formed the basis of this Greek science--the general refinement of minds--the fine arts, and above all, the glorious old poetry of Greece. We have to mention another department of Greek science, wherein from its natural clearness and liveliness, its profound observation of man, the most eminent success was attained. And the pre-eminence consists in this--that historical art, as well as historical research were originated by the Greeks, and that both have attained a degree of perfection which has been almost ever unknown to the Asiatic nations, and which even the moderns have only imitated by degrees upon the great models of antiquity. The father of history, Herodotus, has not been without reason compared to Homer, on account of his manifold charms, and the clearness and fulness of his narrative. We remain in utter astonishment, when we reflect on the depth and extent of his knowledge, researches, enquiries, and remarks on the history and antiquities of the various nations of the earth, and of mankind in general. The deeper and more comprehensive the researches of the moderns have been on ancient history, the more have their regard and esteem for Herodotus increased. The later classical historians display much rhetoric; but this was natural, when we consider what a mighty influence rhetoric exerted on public life, and that it had become an all-ruling power in the state. This false rhetoric, that idle pomp of words, the death of all genuine poetry and higher art--as the endless strifes of a false dialectic, are the ruin of all sane and legitimate science, of all precision of intellect, and soundness of judgment--this false rhetoric, by the exclusively sophistical turn which it gave to the public mind and public opinion, accelerated the downfall of government, and of all public virtues in Greece.

The third category or sphere of Grecian intellect and Grecian life which I designated after that of divine art, and natural science, and the varied knowledge of man, was _political rationalism_.[63] I have used that expression, chiefly in reference to the later ages of the Greek Republics, as it is the quality which eminently distinguished them from the Asiatic states, and those of modern Europe.

In the later ages of Athens, and of the other democratic states, the rationalist principles of freedom and equality were the sole prevailing and recognized maxims of government. Considered in this historical point of view, the chief difference between the two principal forms of government consists in this--that the republic is, or at least tends to be, the government of Reason; while monarchy is founded on the higher principles of faith and love. But the distinction lies rather in the ruling spirit--the moral principle which animates these two governments, than in their mere outward form. Republics which are founded on ancient laws and customs, on hereditary rights and usages, on faith in the sanctity of hereditary right, on attachment to ancestral manners (as was undoubtedly the case with the Greek republics in the early ages of their history), such states, so far from being opposed to the true spirit of monarchy, are, to all essential purposes, of a kindred nature with it. Such, too, are those happy republics which, content with the narrow limits of their power and existence, at peace with other states, devoid of ambition, firmly wedded to their ancient rights and customs, figure but little on the arena of history, and occupy but small space in the columns of the gazetteer. In a monarchy, attachment to the hereditary sovereign and to the royal dynasty is the corner-stone and the firmest pillar of the state--whole provinces may be conquered, and important battles may be lost; but while this foundation of love remains unshaken--while this principle is in active operation, the edifice of the state will stand unmoved.

The next foundation of monarchy is faith in ancient rights--in the heritage of ancestral customs and privileges, according to the several relations of the different classes of the state; and we should beware, in a monarchial government, not to touch or violate with an incautious hand, or change without necessity, hereditary rights and usages which time has consecrated, for such heedless changes shake the very foundations of the social edifice. When a monarchy is founded on a written contract (whether it be intended as a sort of treaty of peace, with some party aspiring to dominion in the state, or be only the successful experiment of some scientific theory of political rationalism), such a government, though it may preserve the outward form, has ceased in all essential points, to be a monarchy according to the old acceptation of the term. An absolute government, whatever shape it may assume, whether it take the form of republicanism, and adopt the rationalist principles of freedom and equality--principles which in the nature of things, and according to the very constitution of human reason, are almost ever inseparable from a spirit of progressive encroachment in foreign policy, (as is sufficiently proved by the inordinate ambition, the insatiable thirst of power which distinguished the great republics of antiquity, in proportion as they became more democratic, and more a prey to anarchy,) or whether the absolute government assume the lawless and illegitimate sway of a military despotism--such a government may indeed be established in a sort of equipoise, circumscribed within tolerably reasonable limits, and preserved at least in its physical existence by means of such a written compact as we have spoken of above. But the old Christian state--the state which is founded in faith and love--can be renovated and re-established; not by the mere dead letter of any theory, though it should contain nothing but the pure dogmatic truth--but by faith--by love--by the religious energy of all the great fundamental principles of moral life.

END OF LECTURE VIII.

LECTURE IX.

Character of the Romans.--Sketch of their conquests.--On strict
law, and the law of equity in its application to History, and
according to the idea of divine justice.--Commencement of the
Christian dispensation.

Instead of that astonishing variety in the states, the races, the political constitutions, the manners, styles of art and modes of intellectual cultivation, which divided from its very origin the social existence of Greece--a division which gave a more rich and diversified aspect to Greek civilization--the ancient history of Italy shews us, on the contrary, how every thing merged more and more in the one, eternal, imperishable, ever-prosperous, ever-progressive, and at last all-devouring, city--Rome. The first ages, indeed, of Italy--the primitive nations that settled that country--such as the Pelasgi, whose early historical existence is attested by those Cyclopean, or more properly, Pelasgic walls and constructions still extant there--the Etruscans, (according to some authors, descended from the more northern race of Rhoetians) from whom the Romans borrowed so many of their idolatrous rites and customs--the Sabines and Samnites, the Latins and the Trojans--lastly the Celts in Northern, and the Greeks in Southern, Italy--all in their several relations to one another, and in the various commixture of their origin and progress, open a wide field of intricate investigation and perplexing research to the historical enquirer. But from the general point of view taken in universal history, all this antiquarian learning soon falls into the back-ground, in the presence of that great central city which quickly absorbs into itself all the ancient states of Italy, and Italy itself, and which, though originally composed of many heterogeneous elements--Latin, Sabine and Etruscan--still was very early moulded into an unity of character--and whose ulterior growth and progress, slow indeed at first, but soon as fearfully rapid as it was immeasurably great, principally attracts the notice of the historical observer. In the later, and still more in the early, ages of Rome, the national idolatry was less poetically wrought and adorned than that of the Greeks--it was altogether much simpler, ruder and more serious than the latter. Even the word _religio_, to take it in its first signification as a second tie, corresponds to a far more definite and serious object than can be found in the gay mythology of the popular religion of the Greeks. Idolatrous rites were closely interwoven into the whole life of the ancient Romans. As the twins of Mars, Romulus and Remus, who were suckled by the she-wolf, were called the founders of the city; so Mars himself was honoured by the Romans as their real progenitor, and principal national divinity--particularly under the name of Gradivus, that is to say the swift for battle, or the strider of the earth. The sacred shields of brass which, on certain appointed festivals, were borne in the military dances, the Palladium, the sceptre of the venerable Priam, formed, together with similar relics of antiquity, the seven holy pledges of the eternal duration and ever flourishing increase of the seven-hilled city, which was honoured under three different names; one whereof was ever kept secret--while the other two referred to its blooming strength and ever enduring power. The ancient cities of the Greeks, those of the Italian nations, whether akin to them, or otherwise, possessed indeed their tutelary deities, their particular sanctuaries, their highly revered Palladium, some ancient oracles, and certain religious rites and festivals consecrated to their honour. But it would not be easy to find another example where the traditionary reverence, we might almost say, the old hereditary deification of the city, had from the earliest period, taken such deep root in the minds of men; and where such a formal worship was so intimately interwoven with manners, customs, and even maxims of state, as among the Romans. And when an universal monarchy had sprung out from this single city, it was still that city--it was still eternal Rome that was ever regarded, not merely as the centre, but as the essence of the whole--the personified conception of the state--the grand idea of the empire. The early traditions of the Romans which, though from the commencement of the city they assume the garb of authentic history, (as in the pages of Livy for instance,) yet are for a long time to be regarded mostly as mere traditions,--evince a fact well entitled to our consideration,--as it serves to show how that strong, inflexible, but harsh, Roman character, such as the later records of history display, manifested itself even in the earliest infancy of this people;--it is this, that among no other nation, did historical recollections even of the remotest antiquity exert such a powerful influence on life, or strike so deep a root in the minds of men. Nearly five hundred years had elapsed since the time of the elder Brutus, when, in the Roman world now so mightily changed, a citizen appealed to the second Brutus in these words--"Brutus, thou sleepest"--as if to urge him to that deed which the first had perpetrated on the proud Tarquin, and by which that celebrated name had become identified with the idea of a bold deliverer. An ardent hatred towards all kings, and towards royalty itself, which from that period remained ever deeply fixed in the Roman mind, characterised this people even in the most ancient period of their history. Not only in the remarks and reflections of the later Roman historians on the first ages of Rome, but in facts themselves, as in the case of Spurius Cassius, we may trace the natural concomitant of this hatred--a passionate jealousy of all powerful party-chiefs, and democratic leaders, who were, perhaps suspected, or probably convicted of aspiring to supreme power in the state, and aiming at the establishment of tyranny--as if the Romans had even then a clear presentiment of the inevitable fate that awaited an empire like theirs, and of the quarter whence their ruin would proceed. Even in the first ages, the Patricians and Plebeians appear on the historical arena, not only as separate classes, such as existed in almost all ancient states, and between whom no matrimonial ties could be formed originally at Rome; but as political parties, in a state of mutual hostility, each of which strove to obtain the ascendancy in the forum and in the state.

The old Romans of these early times were strangers to those various systems of legislation, those rhetorical treatises of jurisprudence, conceived mostly on democratic principles, or to those opposite political theories composed in an aristocratic spirit, which the Greeks then possessed in such abundance. On the contrary, the Romans manifested even then, in the primitive period of their existence, a deep, perspicacious, practical sense, and a mighty political instinct, which showed itself in their first institutions of state. Even in the first idea of the Tribunate--as a regular mode of popular representation--an element of opposition introduced into the very constitution of the state--there was contained the germ of that mighty political power and action, which afterwards a man of energetic character, like Tiberius Gracchus, knew how to exert. This power, had it been kept within due limits, might have proved most beneficial to the community; and a single man, endowed with such a character, and animated by the same spirit of a true patriotic opposition, has often accomplished more at Rome, than whole parliaments in modern free states. The authority of the Censor, negative and restrictive in itself, but still not merely judicial--and which over the conduct of persons was very extensive--the exceptional institution of the Dictatorship, in the early ages of Rome by no means so dangerous--were so many just, and practical political discoveries of the Romans, which evince their statesman-like genius, and which even in later times, among other nations, and under various forms, have served as real and effectual elements in the constitution of states.

The interest of those two parties--the Plebeians and the Patricians--concurred fully but in one point--the desire which both had of constantly invading the neighbouring nations, and obtaining landed possessions for themselves, in the conquests they made for the state. The Plebeians ever and again cherished the hope of being able to obtain for their profit, and that of the poorer citizens, a sort of distribution of the state-lands won in war. But as the Patricians were mostly invested with all the high offices and dignities in war as well as peace, they knew how to turn all the opportunities of conquest to their best advantage, however much they might on particular occasions postpone their private interests as individuals to the general interests of the state. Although, so long as their ancient principles remained unchanged, the Romans were distinguished for the utmost disinterestedness in regard to their country, and for great simplicity of manners, and even frugality in private life, they were in all their foreign enterprises, even in the earliest times, exceedingly covetous of gain, or rather of land; for it was in land, and the produce of the soil, that their principal, and almost only wealth consisted. The old Romans were a thoroughly agricultural people; and it was only at a later period that commerce, trades and arts were introduced among them; and even then they occupied but a subordinate place. Agriculture was even highly honoured by the Romans; and while almost all the celebrated, and in general, most of the proper, names among the Greeks were derived from gods and heroes, and had a poetical lustre, and glorious significancy, it is a circumstance characteristic of the Romans, that the names of many of their most distinguished families, such as Fabius, Lentulus, Piso, Cicero and many others were taken from agriculture, and from vegetables; while others again, as Secundus, Quintus, Septimus, and Octavius, are tolerably prosaic, and are derived from the numbers of the old popular reckoning. The science of agriculture forms one of the few subjects on which the Romans produced writers truly original. That of jurisprudence, in which they were most at home, which they cultivated with peculiar care, and which they very considerably enlarged, had its foundation in the written laws of the primitive period of their history; and in their elder jurisprudence, the Agrarian system very evidently prevails. As a robust, agricultural people, they were eminently fitted for military service; and in practised vigour and constancy under every privation, the Roman infantry with the vigorous masses of its legion, surpassed all military bodies that have ever been organized.

The Roman state from its origin, and according to its first constitution, was nothing else than a well organized school of war, a permanent establishment for conquest. Among other nations, as among the Persians and Greeks, the desire of military glory and the lust of conquest was only a temporary enthusiasm, called forth by some special cause, or some mighty motive--a sudden sally--the thought of a moment. Among the Romans it is precisely the systematically slow and progressive march of their first conquests, their inflexible perseverance, their unremitting activity, the vigilant use of every advantageous opportunity, which strike the observer, and explain the cause of their mighty success in after-times. That unshaken constancy under misfortune, which ever characterised the Romans, they displayed even at this early period during the conquest of their city by the Gauls; though this misfortune, like that people itself, was but a transient calamity. In general, the Romans never evinced greater energy than when they were overcome, or when they met with an unexpected resistance. Sometimes in a moment of extreme urgency, their generals, like the Consul Decius Mus, taking a chosen body of troops, invoked the national Gods, devoted themselves to death, and rushed on the superior forces of the enemy, whereby though they fell the victims of their zeal, they saved the army from the menaced ignominy of defeat, and achieved a signal victory. With such a character, such unshaken fortitude and perseverance under misfortune, we can well conceive that in a state so constituted like theirs, the Romans, by their indefatigable activity in war, should in no very great space of time have conquered and subdued all the surrounding nations and states of Italy. It was thus they successively overcame the kindred and confederated tribes of Latium, and the rude Sabines; that, after a long and obstinate siege of the Tuscan city of Veii, they became masters of the Etrurian League, lords of the beautiful Campania, and vanquished the warlike Samnites on the Apennine range, and on the coast of the Adriatic. They now cast their eyes on the rich provinces of Magna Graecia. In the war against Tarentum, which was in alliance with Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, they came for the first time in contact with the great extra-Italic Greek powers, and had to encounter, in the ranks of the enemy, the unwonted spectacle of war-elephants, which were there employed according to the Asiatic custom. After the loss of the first battles, they were victorious; and they now added Apulia and Calabria to their conquests. Each step in the career at victory drew after it new embarrassments, new occasions, and new matter for future wars. The inhabitants of Syracuse, who had been for some time governed by tyrants, formed on the retreat of Pyrrhus, an alliance with the Carthaginians, then masters of half of Sicily, and sought their protection against the Romans, who were confederated with their enemies, another party in the island. This brought on the first Punic war with that Republic, then mistress of the sea. In this warfare against Pyrrhus and the Carthaginians, the Romans, who had been hitherto confined within the secluded circle of the petty states of Italy, appeared for the first time on the great historical theatre of the then political world. In that age which was immediately subsequent to the time of Alexander the Great, the different Macedonian and other Greek powers of importance formed, together with Egypt and Carthage, a variously connected system of states, in one respect, not unlike the political system of modern Europe, at the end of the 17th and during the greater part of the 18th century. For, according to a principle of the balance of power, each state sought to strengthen itself by alliances, and to repress an overwhelming ascendancy, without on that account at all relaxing its efforts for its own aggrandizement. That on one hand, the fluctuating condition and internal troubles of those countries, and on the other, the fresh youthful vigour, the steady perseverance and constancy of the Roman people, would soon put an end to this system of equilibrium--to these political oscillations between the different states, and bring about the complete triumph and decided ascendancy of the Romans, might indeed have been easily foreseen, and was in the very nature of things. After the first Punic war, the Romans to the conquest of Sicily added that of Corsica and Sardinia; and they next subdued the Cisalpine Gauls in the North of Italy. When even Hannibal, the most formidable enemy the Roman Republic ever had to encounter, and the one who had the most deeply studied its true character, and the danger threatening the world from that quarter; when even he, after the many great victories which, in a long series of years, he had obtained over the Romans, in the second Punic war; though he shook the power, was unable to break the spirit of this people;--when this was the case, one might regard the great political question of the then civilized world as settled; and it could no longer be a matter of doubt that that city justly denominated Strength, and which even from of old had been the idol of her sons, (who accounted every thing as nought in comparison with her interests); that that city, I say, was destined to conquer the world, and establish an empire, the like whereof had never yet been founded by preceding conquerors. The second Punic war terminated under the elder Scipio before the walls of Carthage, and it completed the destruction of that rival of Rome, at least as a political power. The Princes and states that while it was yet time, should have formed a firm and steadfast league against the common foe, fell now separately under the sword of the victors, and the yoke of conquest. In the further progress of their triumphs, the conquerors knew how to assume a certain character of generosity, and give a certain colour of magnanimity to their acts, in the eyes of a gazing and terrified world. Thus, for instance, after the defeat of Philip, King of Macedon, they declared to deluded Greece that she was free; and again, Antiochus the Great, whose arrogance had given offence to many, and whose overthrow was in consequence the subject of very general joy, was compelled to cede the Lesser Asia as far as Mount Taurus; and the victors gave away the conquered provinces and kingdoms to the Princes in their alliance, and affected not to have the intention of subduing and keeping all for themselves. For it was yet much too soon to let the unconquered states and nations perceive that all, without distinction, were destined, one after the other, to become the provinces of the all-absorbing empire of Rome. Thus now overpassing the limits of Greece, the Romans had obtained a firm footing in Asia; and this first step was soon enough to be succeeded by other and still further advances. Historians have often remarked the decisive moment when Caesar, after an instant's reflection and delay, crossed the Rubicon; but we may ask now, when Rome herself had passed her Rubicon, where was that historical limit--that last boundary-line of ambition, after passing which no return, no halt were possible; if now, when all right, all justice, every human term and limit to ambition were lost sight of, if now idolized Rome in the fulness of her Pagan pride, and in her rapid career of destruction, marching from one crime against the world to another, descending deeper and deeper into the abyss of interminable, foreign and domestic bloodshed, was, from the summit of her triumphs, to sink beyond redemption, down to Caligula and Nero?--We might point out, as an instance of this ever growing and reckless arrogance, the moment when the last king of Macedon,[64] not more than a century and a half from the death of Alexander the Great, was led in triumph into the city of the conquerors, a captive and in chains, to sate the eyes of the Roman populace. It entered into the high designs of Providence in the government of the world, during this middle and second period of universal history, that each of the conquering nations should receive its full measure of justice from another worse than itself, emerging suddenly from obscurity, and chosen as the instrument of its annihilation or subjection. But a still more decisive example of the spirit of Roman conquests was the cruel destruction of Carthage in the third Punic war, begun without any assignable motive and from pure caprice. In this case no other resistance could be expected than the resistance of despair, which here indeed showed itself in all its energy. For seventeen days the city was in flames, and the numbers that were exterminated amounted to seven hundred thousand souls, including the women and children sold into slavery; so that this scene of horror served as an early prelude to the later destruction of Jerusalem. The wiser and more lenient Scipios had been against this war of extermination, and had had to contend with the self-willed rancour of the elder Cato; yet a Scipio conducted this war, and was the last conqueror over the ashes of Carthage. And this was a man universally accounted to be of a mild character and generous nature; and such he really was in other respects and in private life. But this reputation must be apparently estimated by the Roman standard, for whenever Rome and her interests were at stake, all mankind and the lives of nations were considered as of no importance. Besides, it is really not in the power of a General to do away with the cruelty of any received system of warfare.

The example of the first great re-action of nations, too late aroused, was set by Greece in the war of the Achaian league. It terminated like all the preceding wars;--Corinth was consumed, and its destruction involved that of an infinite number of noble and beautiful works of art, belonging to the better ages of Greece. Among the nations of the North and West that lived under a yet free and natural form of government, the Spaniards distinguished themselves by a peculiar obstinacy of resistance. Scipio was unable to conquer Numantia; the people who defended their liberty behind this rampart, set fire to the city, and the remaining defenders devoted themselves to a voluntary death. In the public triumph which the Romans celebrated on this occasion, they were able to exhibit only a few brave Lusitanians of a gigantic size. Now commenced the civil wars:--the first was occasioned by Tiberius Gracchus, then leader of the popular party at Rome. To undertake the complete justification of any one of the leading men in the Roman parties, would be an arduous, not to say impracticable task; yet we may positively assert of the elder Gracchus, that he was the best man of his party; as the same observation will apply to the Scipios in the opposite party of the Patricians. The proposal of Gracchus was this--that the rights of Roman citizens should be extended to the rest of Italy. It was in the very nature of things that such a change, or at least one very similar, should now take place, as in fact it did somewhat later; for after the conquest of so many provinces, the disproportion between the one all-ruling city and the vast regions which it had subdued, was much too great to continue long. The armed insurrection of all the Italian nations that occurred soon after, sufficiently proves of what vital importance this measure was considered. But the pride of the ruling Patricians was extremely offended at this claim--they regarded it as an attempt to subvert the ancient constitution of the country--and, in the revolt that ensued, Tiberius Gracchus lost his life. From that time forward the principles apparently contended for on both sides were mere pretexts--whether it were the maintenance of the law, and of the ancient constitution, as asserted by the Patricians--or the just claims of the people, and the necessary changes which the altered circumstances of the times demanded, as alleged by the opposite party. It was now an open struggle for ascendancy between a few factious leaders and their partisans--a civil war carried on between fierce and formidable Oligarchs.

The effusion of blood was still greater in the troubles which the younger Caius Gracchus occasioned, and which had the same motive and the same object as the preceding commotions, though conducted with more animosity, and stained by greater crimes; and in the Patrician party, the noble Scipio, the hero of the third Punic war, fell a victim of assassination. Murders and poisoning were now every day more common; and it became the practice to carry daggers under the mantle. On this occasion we may cite an observation, made not by any father of the church, or any Christian moralist; but by a celebrated German historian, who was in other respects an enthusiastic admirer of the Republican heroism of the ancients: "Rome, the mistress of the world," says he, "drunk with the blood of nations, began now to rage in her entrails." Of Marius and Sylla, on whom next devolved the conduct of the Patrician and Plebeian parties in the civil war, now conducted on a more extended scale, it is difficult to decide which of the two surpassed the other in cruelty and blood-thirstiness. Marius was indeed of a ruder, and more savage character--but Sylla evinced perhaps a more systematic and relentless ferocity. Both were great generals; and it was only after obtaining splendid victories over foreign nations that they could think of turning their fury against their native city, after having spent their rage on the rest of mankind. The victories of Marius had delivered Rome from the mighty danger with which she had been menaced, by the irruption of the powerful tribes of the Cimbri and Teutones--the first fore-runner of the Great Northern migration. Danger served but to arouse the Roman people to more triumphant exertions; and every effort of hostile resistance, when once overcome, tended only to confirm their universal dominion. The greatest and most formidable of these efforts of resistance was made by Mithridates, King of Pontus--it began by the murder of eighty thousand Romans in his dominions, and the simultaneous revolt of all the Italian nations against the Roman sway. No enemy of the Romans, since Hannibal, had formed such a deep-laid plan as Mithridates, whose intention it was to unite in one armed confederacy against Rome all the nations of the North, from the regions of Mount Caucasus, as far as Gaul and the Alps. By his victories over this enemy, Sylla prepared to return to Rome, torn and convulsed by civil war; and on his entry into the city, he treated it with all the infuriated vengeance of a conqueror, proscribed, gave full loose to slaughter, and perpetrated the most execrable atrocities. We may cite as a strange instance of the still surviving greatness of the Roman character, the fact, that Sylla, immediately after all this immense bloodshed, as if every thing had passed in perfect conformity to law and order, laid down the Dictatorship, retired peacefully to his estate, and there prepared to write his own history. In one respect, however, he was a flatterer of the multitude--he seems to have thoroughly understood the Roman people, for he was the first to introduce the games of the circus, those bloody combats of animals, those cruel Gladiatorial fights, which afterwards, under the Emperors, became like bread, one of the most indispensable necessaries to the Roman people, and one of the most important objects of concern to its rulers. For these games, where the Roman eye delighted to contemplate men devoted to certain death contend and wrestle with the most savage animals, Pompey on one occasion introduced six hundred lions on the arena, and Augustus, four hundred panthers. Thus did a thirst for blood, after having been long the predominant passion of the party-leaders of this all-ruling people, become an actual craving--a festive entertainment for the multitude. And yet the Romans of this age, when we consider their conduct in war--in the battles and victories they won, or the strength of character they evinced, whether on the tented field, or on the arena of political contests, displayed an admirable, we might sometimes say a super-human, energy; so that we are often at a loss how to reconcile our admiration with the detestation which their actions unavoidably inspire. It was as if the iron-footed God of war, Gradivus, so highly revered from of old by the people of Romulus, actually bestrode the globe, and at every step struck out new torrents of blood; or as if the dark Pluto had emerged from the abyss of eternal night, escorted by all the vengeful spirits of the lower world, by all the Furies of passion and insatiable cupidity, by the blood-thirsty demons of murder, to establish his visible empire, and erect his throne for ever on the earth. There can be no doubt that if the Roman history were divested of its accustomed rhetoric, of all the patriotic maxims and trite sayings of politicians, and were presented with strict and minute accuracy in all its living reality, every humane mind would be deeply shocked at such a picture of tragic truth, and penetrated with the profoundest detestation and horror. The licentiousness of Roman manners, too, was really gigantic; so that the moral corruption of the Greeks appears in comparison a mere infant essay in the school of vice.

The civil wars that next followed had in all essential points the same character with the first, though the fearful recollection, which still dwelt in men's minds, of the times of Marius and Sylla, tended to introduce at first a certain caution in all external proceedings; but in the course of their progress, these wars resumed the sanguinary character of the earlier civil contests. The proper circle of the Roman conquests, whose natural circumference was now marked out by all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, was, in the second period of the civil wars, pretty well filled up by Caesar and Pompey--by Pompey on the side of Asia, and by Caesar on the side of the incomparably more formidable and more warlike nations of the North-western frontier. The conquest of Gaul was achieved by an uncommon effusion of human blood, even according to a Roman estimation; and in the fifty battles related by Caesar to have been fought in the Gallic war, in the complete subjugation of Spain, in the first wars on the Germanic frontiers and in Britain, as well as in the North of Africa against Juba, and against the son of Mithridates, the number of men left on the field is computed at twelve hundred thousand; and it is to be observed that as Caesar is his own historian, these estimates have in part been given by himself. Yet was he praised for his goodness and the mildness of his character; but this praise must be measured by the Roman standard, and it is so far true that Caesar was by no means vindictive, nor in general subject to passion, nor cruel without a motive. But, whenever his interest required it, he was careless what blood he spilled. The war between Caesar and Pompey extended over all the provinces and regions of the Roman world; but, when conqueror, Caesar formed and followed up the plan of completing and consolidating his victory by a system of lenity and conciliation. With all his indefatigable activity and consummate wisdom, with all the equanimity, prudence and energy of his character, he appears to have been still weak enough to imagine that the laurels he had acquired, in a way unequalled by any, were insufficient without the diadem--at least he gave occasion for such a suspicion. And so the second Brutus perpetrated on his person the act, for which the elder had been so highly commended by all Roman historians. To relate the subsequent civil war of Brutus and Cassius, the reconciliation between Antony and Octavius, which involved the death of Cicero, the new rupture and war between the latter rivals, would serve only to swell this account of Rome and her destinies. These contests terminated in the establishment of monarchy, when the bloody proscriptions and civil wars of preceding times were forgotten, and Octavius, under the name of Augustus, appeared as the restorer of general peace, and the first absolute monarch of the Roman world;--a monarch whose long reign was on the whole very happy, when compared with previous times, and who during his life was half-deified by his subjects. Unlimited power was still clothed and half veiled in the old republican forms and expressions; and the recollection of Caesar's fate was too present to the mind of the cautious Augustus, for him ever to neglect those forms and usages. It would really appear as if the world were destined to breathe for a time in peace, and to repose awhile from those earlier wars, before another and a higher peace descended, and became visible on the earth--and along with that other, higher and divine peace, a new and spiritual combat, waged not with the warlike parties of old, nor even with external and earthly power, but with the secret and internal cause of all those agitations, and all that injustice in the world.

A golden age of literature and poetry served now to adorn the general peace, which the mighty Augustus had conferred on the conquered world. This poetry was however but a late harvest which flourished towards the autumn of declining Paganism. Plautus and Terence we can regard merely as tolerably successful imitators of the Greeks. The beautiful diction and poetry of Virgil and Horace are in a general survey of literature chiefly valuable, inasmuch as they gave a noble refinement to a language which, in modern ages, and even still among ourselves, has been universally current; but all this poetry, including that, which the richer, more copious, and more inventive fancy of Ovid produced, can be considered by posterity as only a very thin gleaning after the full bloom and rich harvest of Grecian poetry and art. The real poetry of the Roman people lay elsewhere than in those artificial compositions of Greek scholars. It must be sought for in the festive games of the circus, which the prudent Augustus never neglected--in those theatrical combats, where the Gladiator, wrestling with death, knew how to fall and die with dignity, when he wished to obtain the plaudits of the multitude--in that circus, in fine, which so often afterwards resounded with the cry of an infuriated populace;--"Christianos ad leones," "the Christians to the lions, the Christians to the lions."

In the department of history, the case was very different from what it was in poetry. There the strong practical sense of the Romans, their profound political sagacity, the far wider circle of their political relations, gave them a decided advantage over the Greeks, who can shew no historian, possessed of the simple grandeur of Caesar;--a style as rapid, and as straight-forward, as the exploits of Caesar himself; or distinguished, like Tacitus, by that deep insight into the abyss of human corruption; while to Livy must be assigned a place by the side at least of the most illustrious Greeks. Among the Romans, political eloquence and philosophy, by that union of the two, such as prevails in Cicero's writings, as well as by the greater magnitude and practical importance of the subjects which both found for discussion, possess a peculiar charm and value. At this period the study of Greek philosophy was regarded and prosecuted by the Romans merely as an useful auxiliary to eloquence; and in the general depravity of morals, and amid the utter indifference for public misery and universal bloodshed, the philosophy of Epicurus naturally found the most admirers. It was only at a later period, when, under the better emperors, some men had undertaken the task of the moral regeneration of the Roman people and the Roman state, that those who entertained this great design sought for the last plank of national safety in the stoical philosophy, which harmonized so well with the austere gravity of the Roman character. Then this philosophy obtained numerous followers among the Romans, as in earlier times it had found favour with many of them, especially among the Jurists.

In the whole circle of human sciences, jurisprudence is that department of intellect, in which the Romans have thought with the most originality, and have exerted the greatest influence; and which, by means of their writers, has obtained at once a very great degree of refinement, and a very wide diffusion. Caesar had formed the project of a general digest of Roman laws; but this great design, like so many others he had entertained, was left unexecuted; and the age of Augustus at least was distinguished by two great lawyers of opposite schools. It is by the scientific jurisprudence which they have bequeathed to posterity, more than by any thing else, that the Romans have exerted a mighty influence on after-ages. It must strike us at first sight as singular, that a nation which, in its external relations, had risen to greatness, and indeed had founded its greatness, on so fearful an excess of injustice, should have risen to such eminence in the science of jurisprudence, as the Romans undoubtedly have. But the injustice of their conduct towards other states and nations this people well knew how to conceal under legal forms, and establish on legal titles; and it often happened that, by the inconsistent conduct of other nations, they were able to give a colouring of equity to their acts, and shew on their side the strict letter of law.

In the next place, the Roman jurisprudence regarded more immediately the relations of private life, and all the artificial forms of civil law; and we can well conceive that a people like the Romans, distinguished for so sound a judgment and such strong practical sense, and whose minds were so exclusively bent on civil life, and its various relations, should have attained such distinction in the science of civil jurisprudence, notwithstanding the enormous iniquity of their conduct in the wider historical department of international law; and here we may find an explanation of that apparent contradiction between law and injustice, such as we find frequent examples of in human nature and in the records of history.