Part 537

"Italy had been subject to the influence of Greece, ever since it had a history at all. … But the Hellenism of the Romans of the present period [second century B. C.] was, in its causes as well as its consequences, something essentially new. The Romans began to feel the lack of a richer intellectual life, and to be startled as it were at their own utter want of mental culture; and, if even nations of artistic gifts, such as the English and Germans, have not disdained in the pauses of their own productiveness to avail themselves of the paltry French culture for filling up the gap, it need excite no surprise that the Italian nation now flung itself with eager zeal on the glorious treasures as well as on the vile refuse of the intellectual development of Hellas. But it was an impulse still more profound and deep-rooted which carried the Romans irresistibly into the Hellenic vortex. Hellenic civilization still assumed that name, but it was Hellenic no longer; it was, it fact, humanistic and cosmopolitan. It had solved the problem of moulding a mass of different nations into one whole completely in the field of intellect, and to a certain degree in that of politics, and, now when the same task on a wider scale devolved on Rome, she entered on the possession of Hellenism along with the rest of the inheritance of Alexander the Great. Hellenism therefore was no longer a mere stimulus, or subordinate influence; it penetrated the Italian nation to the very core. Of course, the vigorous home life of Italy strove against the foreign element. It was only after a most vehement struggle that the Italian farmer abandoned the field to the cosmopolite of the capital; and, as in Germany the French coat called forth the national Germanic frock, so the reaction against Hellenism aroused in Rome a tendency, which opposed the influence of Greece on principle in a style to which earlier centuries were altogether unaccustomed, and in doing so fell not unfrequently into downright follies and absurdities. No department of human action or thought remained unaffected by this struggle between the new fashion and the old. Even political relations were largely influenced by it. The whimsical project of emancipating the Hellenes, … the kindred, likewise Hellenic, idea of combining republics in a common opposition to kings, and the desire of propagating Hellenic polity at the expense of eastern despotism—which were the two principles that regulated, for instance, the treatment of Macedonia—were fixed ideas of the new school, just as dread of the Carthaginians was the fixed idea of the old; and, if Cato pushed the latter to a ridiculous excess, Philhellenism now and then indulged in extravagances at least as foolish. … {1640} But the real struggle between Hellenism and its national antagonists during the present period was carried on in the field of faith, of manners, and of art and literature. … If Italy still possessed—what had long been a mere antiquarian curiosity in Hellas—a national religion, it was already visibly beginning to be ossified into theology. The torpor creeping over faith is nowhere perhaps so distinctly apparent as in the alterations in the economy of divine service and of the priesthood. The public service of the gods became not only more tedious, but above all more and more costly. … An augur like Lucius Paullus, who regarded the priesthood as a science and not as a mere title, was already a rare exception; and could not but be so, when the government more and more openly and unhesitatingly employed the auspices for the accomplishment of its political designs, or, in other words, treated the national religion in accordance with the view of Polybius as a superstition useful for imposing on the public at large. Where the way was thus paved, the Hellenistic irreligious spirit found free course. In connection with the incipient taste for art the sacred images of the gods began even in Cato's time to be employed, like other furniture, to embellish the chambers of the rich. More dangerous wounds were inflicted on religion by the rising literature. … Thus the old national religion was visibly on the decline; and, as the great trees of the primeval forest were uprooted, the soil became covered with a rank growth of thorns and briars and with weeds that had never been seen before. Native superstitions and foreign impostures of the most various hues mingled, competed and conflicted with each other. … The Hellenism of that epoch, already denationalized and pervaded by Oriental mysticism, introduced not only unbelief but also superstition in its most offensive and dangerous forms to Italy; and these vagaries, moreover, had a special charm, precisely because they were foreign. … Rites of the most abominable character came to the knowledge of the Roman authorities: a secret nocturnal festival in honour of the god Bacchus had been first introduced into Etruria by a Greek priest, and spreading like a cancer, had rapidly reached Rome and propagated itself over all Italy, everywhere corrupting families and giving rise to the most heinous crimes, unparalleled unchastity, falsifying of testaments, and murdering by poison. More than 7,000 men were sentenced to punishment, most of them to death, on this account, and rigorous enactments were issued as to the future. … The ties of family life became relaxed with fearful rapidity. The evil of grisettes and boy-favourites spread like a pestilence. … Luxury prevailed more and more in dress, ornaments and furniture, in the buildings and on the tables. Especially after the expedition to Asia Minor, which took place in 564, [B. C. 190] Asiatico-Hellenic luxury, such as prevailed at Ephesus and Alexandria, transferred its empty refinement and its petty trifling, destructive alike of money, time, and pleasure, to Rome. … As a matter of course, this revolution in life and manners brought an economic revolution in its train. Residence in the capital became more and more coveted as well as more costly. Rents rose to an unexampled height. Extravagant prices were paid for the new articles of luxury. … The influences which stimulated the growth of Roman literature were of a character altogether peculiar and hardly paralleled in any other nation. … By means of the Italian slaves and freedmen, a very large portion of whom were Greek or half Greek by birth, the Greek language and Greek knowledge to a certain extent reached even the lower ranks of the population, especially in the capital. The comedies of this period indicate that even the humbler classes of the capital were familiar with a sort of Latin, which could no more be properly understood without a knowledge of Greek than Sterne's English or Wieland's German without a knowledge of French. Men of senatorial families, however, not only addressed a Greek audience in Greek, but even published their speeches. … Under the influence of such circumstances Roman education developed itself. It is a mistaken opinion, that antiquity was materially inferior to our own times in the general diffusion of elementary attainments. Even among the lower classes and slaves there was considerable knowledge of reading, writing, and counting. … Elementary instruction, as well us instruction in Greek, must have been long ere this period imparted to a very considerable extent in Rome. But the epoch now before us initiated an education, the aim of which was to communicate not merely an outward expertness, but a real mental culture. The internal decomposition of Italian nationality had already, particularly in the aristocracy, advanced so far as to render the substitution of a broader human culture for that nationality inevitable: and the craving after a more advanced civilization was already powerfully stirring men's minds. The study of the Greek language as it were spontaneously met this craving. The classical literature of Greece, the Iliad and still more the Odyssey, had all along formed the basis of instruction; the overflowing treasures of Hellenic art and science were already by this means spread before the eyes of the Italians. Without any outward revolution, strictly speaking, in the character of instruction the natural result was, that the empirical study of the language became converted into a higher study of the literature; that the general culture connected with such literary studies was communicated in increased measure to the scholars; and that these availed themselves of the knowledge thus acquired to dive into that Greek literature which most powerfully influenced the spirit of the age—the tragedies of Euripides and the comedies of Menander. In a similar way greater importance came to be attached to the study of Latin. The higher society of Rome began to feel the need, if not of exchanging their mother-tongue for Greek, at least of refining it and adapting it to the changed state of culture. … But a Latin culture presupposed a literature, and no such literature existed in Rome. … The Romans desired a theatre, but the pieces were wanting. On these elements Roman literature was based; and its defective character was from the first and necessarily the result of such an origin. … Roman poetry in particular had its immediate origin not in the inward impulse of the poet, but in the outward demands of the school, which needed Latin manuals, and of the stage, which needed Latin dramas. Now both institutions—the school and the stage—were thoroughly anti-Roman and revolutionary. … The school and the theatre became the most effective levers in the hands of the new spirit of the age, and all the more so that they used the Latin tongue. {1641} Men might perhaps speak and write Greek, and yet not cease to be Romans; but in this case they were in the habit of speaking in the Roman language, while the whole inward being and life were Greek. It is one of the most pleasing, but it is one of the most remarkable and in a historical point of view most instructive, facts in this brilliant era of Roman conservatism, that during its course Hellenism struck root in the whole field of intellect not immediately political, and that the school-master and the maître de plaisir of the great public in close alliance created a Roman literature."

_T. Mommsen, The History of Rome, book 3, chapter 13 (volume 2)._

Panætius was the founder of "that Roman Stoicism which plays so prominent a part in the history of the Empire. He came from Rhodes, and was a pupil of Diogenes at Athens. The most important part of his life was, however, spent at Rome, in the house of Scipio Æmilianus, the centre of the Scipionic circle, where he trained up a number of Roman nobles to understand and to adopt his views. He seems to have taken the place of Polybius, and to have accompanied Scipio in his tour to the East (143 B. C.). He died as head of the Stoic school in Athens about 110 B. C. This was the man who, under the influence of the age, really modified the rigid tenets of his sect to make it the practical rule of life for statesmen, politicians, magnates, who had no time to sit all day and dispute, but who required something better than effete polytheism to give them dignity in their leisure, and steadfastness in the day of trial. … With the pupils of Panætius begins the long roll of Roman Stoics. … Here then, after all the dissolute and disintegrating influences of Hellenism,—its comœdia palliata, its parasites, its panders, its minions, its chicanery, its mendacity—had produced their terrible effect, came an antidote which, above all the human influences we know, purified and ennobled the world. It affected, unfortunately, only the higher classes at Rome; and even among them, as among any of the lower classes that speculated at all, it had as a dangerous rival that cheap and vulgar Epicureanism, which puffs up common natures with the belief that their trivial and coarse reflections have some philosophic basis, and can be defended with subtle arguments. But among the best of the Romans Hellenism produced a type seldom excelled in the world's history, a type as superior to the old Roman model as the nobleman is to the burgher in most countries—a type we see in Rutilius Rufus, as compared with the elder Cato. … It was in this way that Hellenistic philosophy made itself a home in Italy, and acquired pupils who in the next generation became masters in their way, and showed in Cicero and Lucretius no mean rivals of the contemporary Greek. … Till the poem of Lucretius and the works of Cicero, we may say nothing in Latin worth reading existed on the subject. Whoever wanted to study philosophy, therefore, down to that time (60 B. C.) studied it in Greek. Nearly the same thing may be said of the arts of architecture, painting, and sculpture. There were indeed distinctly Roman features in architecture, but they were mere matters of building, and whatever was done in the way of design, in the way of adding beauty to strength, was done wholly under the advice and direction of Greeks. The subservience to Hellenism in the way of internal household ornament was even more complete. … And with the ornaments of the house, the proper serving of the house, especially the more delicate departments—the cooking of state dinners, the attendance upon guests, the care of the great man's intimate comforts—could only be done fashionably by Greek slaves. … But of course these lower sides of Hellenism had no more potent effect in civilising Rome than the employing of French cooks and valets and the purchase of French ornaments and furniture had in improving our grandfathers. Much more serious was the acknowledged supremacy of the Greeks in literature of all kinds, and still more their insistence that this superiority depended mainly upon a careful system of intellectual education. … This is the point where Polybius, after his seventeen years' experience of Roman life, finds the capital flaw in the conduct of public affairs. In every Hellenistic state, he says, nothing engrosses the attention of legislators more than the question of education, whereas at Rome a most moral and serious government leaves the training of the young to the mistakes and hazards of private enterprise. That this was a grave blunder as regards the lower classes is probably true. … But when Rome grew from a city controlling Italy to an empire directing the world, such men as Æmilius Paullus saw plainly that they must do something more to fit their children for the splendid position they had themselves attained, and so they were obliged to keep foreign teachers of literature and art in their houses as private tutors. The highest class of these private tutors was that of the philosophers, whom we have considered, and while the State set itself against their public establishments, great men in the State openly encouraged them and kept them in their houses. … As regards literature, however, in the close of the second century B. C. a change was visible, which announced the new and marvellous results of the first. … Even in letters Roman culture began to take its place beside Greek, and the whole civilised world was divided into those who knew Greek letters and those who knew Roman only. There was no antagonism in spirit between them, for the Romans never ceased to venerate Greek letters or to prize a knowledge of that language. But of course there were great domains in the West beyond the influence of the most western Greeks, even of Massilia, where the first higher civilisation introduced was with the Roman legions and traders, and where culture assumed permanently a Latin form. In the East, though the Romans asserted themselves as conquerors, they always condescended to use Greek, and there were prætors proud to give their decisions at Roman assize courts in that language."

_J. P. Mahaffy, The Greek World under Roman Sway, chapter 5._

HELLENION, The.

See NAUKRATIS.

HELLESPONT, The.

The ancient Greek name of what is now called the straits of The Dardanelles, the channel which unites the Sea of Marmora with the Ægean. The name (Sea of Helle) came from the myth of Helle, who was said to have been drowned in these waters.

HELLESPONTINE SIBYL.

See SIBYLS.

HELLULAND.

See AMERICA: 10TH-11TH CENTURIES.

HELOTS.

See SPARTA: THE CITY.

HELVECONES, The.

See LYGIANS.

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HELVETIAN REPUBLIC, The.

Switzerland is sometimes called the Helvetian Republic, for no better reason than is found in the fact that the country occupied by the Helvetii of Cæsar is embraced in the modern Swiss Confederacy. But the original confederation, out of which grew the federal republic of Switzerland, did not touch Helvetian ground.

See SWITZERLAND: THE THREE FOREST CANTONS, and A. D. 1332-1460.

HELVETIC REPUBLIC OF 1798, The.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1792-1798.

HELVETII, The arrested migration of the.

"The Helvetii, who inhabited a great part of modern Switzerland, had grown impatient of the narrow limits in which they were crowded together, and harassed at the same time by the encroachments of the advancing German tide. The Alps and Jura formed barriers to their diffusion on the south and west, and the population thus confined outgrew the scanty means of support afforded by its mountain valleys. … The Helvetii determined to force their way through the country of the Allobroges, and to trust either to arms or persuasion to obtain a passage through the [Roman] province and across the Rhone into the centre of Gaul. … Having completed their preparations, [they] appointed the 28th day of March [B. C. 58] for the meeting of their combined forces at the western outlet of the Lake Lemanus. The whole population of the assembled tribes amounted to 368,000 souls, including the women and children; the number that bore arms was 92,000. They cut themselves off from the means of retreat by giving ruthlessly to the flames every city and village of their land; twelve of one class and four hundred of the other were thus sacrificed, and with them all their superfluous stores, their furniture, arms and implements." When the news of this portentous movement reached Rome, Cæsar, then lately appointed to the government of the two Gauls, was raising levies, but had no force ready for the field. He flew to the scene in person, making the journey from Rome to Geneva in eight days. At Geneva, the frontier town of the conquered Allobroges, the Romans had a garrison, and Cæsar quickly gathered to that point the one legion stationed in the province. Breaking down the bridge which had spanned the river and constructing with characteristic energy a ditch and rampart from the outlet of the lake to the gorge of the Jura, he held the passage of the river with his single legion and forced the migratory horde to move off by the difficult route down the right bank of the Rhone. This accomplished, Cæsar hastened back to Italy, got five legions together, led them over the Cottian Alps, crossed the Rhone above Lyons, and caught up with the Helvetii before the last of their cumbrous train had got beyond the Saone. Attacking and cutting to pieces this rear-guard (it was the tribe of the Tigurini, which the Romans had encountered disastrously half a century before), he bridged the Saone and crossed it to pursue the main body of the enemy. For many days he followed them, refusing to give battle to the great barbarian army until he saw the moment opportune. His blow was struck at last in the neighborhood of the city of Bibracte, the capital of the Ædui—modern Autun. The defeat of the Helvetii was complete, and, although a great body of them escaped, they were set upon by the Gauls of the country and were soon glad to surrender themselves unconditionally to the Roman proconsul. Cæsar compelled them—110,000 survivors, of the 368,000 who left Switzerland in the spring—to go back to their mountains and rebuild and reoccupy the homes they had destroyed.

_C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 6 (volume 1)._

ALSO IN: _Cæsar, Gallic Wars, chapters 1-29._

_G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 4, chapter 1._

_Napoleon III., History of Julius Cæsar, book 3, chapter 3 (volume 2)_.

HELVII, The.

The Helvii were a tribe of Gauls whose country was between the Rhone and the Cevennes, in the modern department of the Ardêche.

_G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 4, chapter 17._

HENGESTESDUN, Battle of.

Defeat of the Danes and Welsh by Ecgbehrt, the West Saxon king, A. D. 835.

HENNERSDORF, Battle of (1745).

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1744-1745.

HENOTICON OF ZENO, The.

See NESTORIAN AND MONOPHYSITE CONTROVERSY.

HENRICIANS.

See PETROBRUSIANS.

HENRY, Latin Emperor at Constantinople (Romania), A. D. 1206-1216.

Henry (of Corinthia), King of Bohemia, 1307-1310.

Henry, King of Navarre, 1270-1274.

Henry, King of Portugal, 1578-1580.

Henry, Count of Portugal, 1093-1112.

Henry (called the Lion), The ruin of.

See SAXONY: A. D. 1178-1183.

Henry (called the Navigator), Prince, The explorations of.

See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1415-1460.

Henry (called the Proud), The fall of.

See GUELFS AND GHIBELLINES.

Henry I., King of Castile, 1214-1217.

Henry I., King of England, 1100-1135.

Henry I., King of France, 1031-1060.

Henry I. (called The Fowler), King of the East Franks (Germany), 919-936.

Henry II., Emperor, A. D. 1014-1024; King of the East Franks (Germany), 1002-1024; King of Italy, 1004-1024.

Henry II. (of Trastamare), King of Castile and Leon, 1369-1379.

Henry II. (first of the Plantagenets), King of England, 1154-1189.

Henry II., King of France, 1547-1559.

Henry III., Emperor, King of Germany, and King of Burgundy, 1089-1056.

Henry III., King of Castile and Leon, 1390-1407.

Henry III., King of England, 1216-1272.

Henry III., King of France (the last of the Valois), 1574-1589; King of Poland, 1573-1574.

Henry IV., Emperor, 1077-1106; King of Germany, 1056-1106.

Henry IV., King of Castile and Leon, 1454-1474.

Henry IV., King of England (first of the Lancastrian royal line), 1399-1413.

Henry IV. (called the Great), King of France and Navarre (the first of the Bourbon kings), 1589-1610. Abjuration.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1591-1593.

Assassination.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1599-1610.

Henry V., Emperor, 1112-1125; King of Germany, 1106-1125.

Henry V., King of England, 1413-1422.

Henry VI., King of Germany, 1190-1197; Emperor, 1191-1197; King of Sicily, 1194-1197.

Henry VI., King of England, 1422-1461.

Henry VII. (of Luxemburg), King of Germany, 1308-1313; King of Italy and Emperor, 1312-1313.

Henry VII., King of England, 1485-1509.

Henry VIII., King of England, 1509-1547.

HENRY, Patrick, The Parson's cause.

See VIRGINIA: A. D. 1763.

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HENRY, Patrick: The American Revolution.