Chapter 33

The abandonment of military duty by the Roman people had, among other things, made slavery more immoral than ever, because there was no longer any semblance of a division of labour: the master could no longer be said to defend the slave in war while the slave supported him by labour at home. Becoming more immoral, slavery became more cruel. The six thousand crosses erected on the road from Capua to Rome after the Servile War were the terrible proof.

As to the existence of an oligarchy in the bosom of the dominant republic, this would in itself have been no great evil to the subject world, to which it mattered little whether its tyrants were a hundred or a hundred thousand; just as to the unenfranchised in modern communities it matters little whether the enfranchised class be large or small. In fact, the broader the basis of a tyranny, the more fearless and unscrupulous, generally speaking, the tyranny is.

We need not overstate the case. If we do we shall tarnish the laurels of Caesar, who would have shown no genius in killing the republic had the republic been already dead. There was still respect for the law and the constitution. Pompey's hesitation when supreme power was within his grasp, Caesar's own pause at the Rubicon, are proofs of it. The civil wars of Marius and Sulla had fearfully impaired, in the eyes of Romans, but they had not utterly destroyed, the majesty of Rome. There were still great characters--characters which you may dislike, but of which you can never rationally speak with contempt--and there must have been some general element of worth in which these characters were formed. If the recent administration of the Senate had not been glorious, still, from a Roman point of view, it had not been disastrous: the revolt of the slaves and the insurrection in Spain had been quelled; Mithridates had been conquered; the pirates, though for a time their domination accused the feebleness of the government, had at length been put down. The only great military calamity of recent date was the defeat of Crassus, whose unprovoked and insane invasion of Parthia was the error, not of the Senate, but of the Triumvirate. Legions were forthcoming for the conquest of Gaul, and a large reserve of treasure was found in the sacred treasure-house when it was broken open by Caesar. Bad governors of provinces, Verres, Fonteius, Gabinius, were impeached and punished. Lucullus, autocrat and voluptuary as he was, governed his province well. So did Cicero, if we may take his own word for it. We may, at all events, take his own word for this, that he was anxious to be thought to have ruled with purity and justice, which proves that purity and justice were not quite out of fashion. The old Roman spirit still struggled against luxury, and we find Cicero suffering from indigestion, caused by a supper of vegetables at the house of a wealthy friend, whose excellent cook had developed all the resources of gastronomic art in struggling with the restrictions imposed by a sumptuary law. There was intellectual life, and all the civilized tastes and half-moral qualities which the existence of intellectual life implies. In spite of the sanguinary anarchy which often broke out in the Roman streets, Cicero, the most cultivated and the least combative of men, when in exile or in his province, sighs for the capital as a Frenchman sighs for Paris. In short, if we consider the case fairly, we shall admit, I believe, that, besides the force of memory and of old allegiance, there was enough of worth and of apparent hope left, not only to excuse republican illusions, but probably to make it a duty to try the issue with fate. I say probably, and, after all, how can we presume to speak with certainty of a situation so distant from us in time, and so imperfectly recorded?

The great need of the world was public virtue--the spirit of self- sacrifice for the common good. This the empire could not possibly call into being. The public virtue of the ancient world resided in the nationalities which the conquering republic had broken up, and of which the empire only sealed the doom. The empire could never call forth even the lowest form of public virtue, loyalty to the hereditary right of a royal family, because the empire never presented itself as a right, but merely as a personal power. The idea of legitimacy, I apprehend never connected itself with these dynasts who were, in fact, a series of usurpers, veiling their usurpation under republican forms. When the spirit which leads man to sacrifice himself to the good of the community appeared again it appeared in associations and notably in one great association formed not by the empire but independently of it in antagonism to its immorality, and in spite of its persecutions. Accidentally the empire assisted the extension of the great Christian association by completing the overthrow of the national religions, but the main part of this work had been done by the republic and it was the merit neither of the republic nor of the empire.

It is said with confidence that the empire vastly improved the government of the provinces, and that on this account it was a great blessing to the world. I do not believe that any nation had then attained, I do not believe that any nation has now attained, and I doubt whether any nation ever will attain, such a point of morality as to be able to govern other nations for the benefit of the governed. I will say nothing about our Christian policy in India, but let those who rate French morality so highly, consider what French tutelage is to the people of Algeria. But supposing the task undertaken, the question which is the best organ of imperial government--an assembly or an autocrat--is a curious one. I am disposed to think that, taking the average of assemblies and the average of autocrats, there is more hope in the assembly, because in the assembly opinion must have some force. The autocrat is in a certain sense, raised above the dominant nation and its interests, but, after all, he is one of that nation, he lives in it, and subsists by its support. Even in the time of Augustus, if we may trust Dion Cassius Licinius the Governor of Gaul, was guilty of corruptions and peculations curiously resembling those of Verres, from whom he seems to have borrowed the device of tampering with the calendar for the purpose of fiscal fraud, and when the provinces complained, the Emperor hushed up the matter, partly to avoid scandal, partly because Licinius was cunning enough to pretend that his peculations had been intended to cut the sinews of revolt, and that his spoils were reserved for the imperial exchequer. The rebellions of Vindex and Civilis seem to prove that even Caesar's favourite province was not happy. Spain was misgoverned by the deputies both of Julius and Augustus. In Britain, the history of the revolt of the Iceni shews that neither the extortions of Roman usurers, nor the brutalities of Roman officers, had ended with the republic. The blood tax of the conscription appears also to have been cruelly exacted. The tribute of largesses and shows which the empire, though supposed to be lifted high above all partialities, paid to the Roman populace, was drawn almost entirely from the provinces. Emperors who coined money with the tongue of the informer and the sword of the executioner, were not likely to abstain from selling governorships; and, in fact, Seneca intimates that under bad emperors governorships were sold. Of course, the tyranny was felt most at Rome, where it was present; but when Caligula or Caracalla made a tour in the provinces, it was like the march of the pestilence. The absence of a regular bureaucracy, practically controlling, as the Russian bureaucracy does, the personal will of the Emperor, must have made government better under Trajan, but much worse under Nero. The aggregation of land in the hands of a few great land-holders evidently continued, and under this system the garden of Italy became a desert. The decisive fact, however, is that the provinces decayed, and that when the barbarians arrived, all power of resistance was gone. That the empire was consciously levelling and cosmopolitan, surely cannot be maintained. Actium was a Roman victory over the gods of the nations. Augustus, who must have known something about the system, avowedly aimed at restoring the number, the purity, the privileged exclusiveness of the dominant race. His legislation was an attempt to regenerate old Rome; and the political odes of the court poet are full of that purpose. That the empire degraded all that had once been noble in Rome is true; but the degradation of what had once been noble in Rome was not the regeneration of humanity. The vast slave population was no more elevated by the ascendency of the freedmen of the imperial household than the female sex was elevated by the ascendancy of Messalina.

That intellect declined under the emperors, and that the great writers of its earlier period, Tacitus included, were really legacies of the Republic, cannot be denied; and surely it is a pregnant fact. The empire is credited with Roman law. But the Roman law was ripe for codification in the time of the first Caesar. The leading principles of the civil law seem by that time to have been in existence. Unquestionably the great step had been taken of separating law as a science from consecrated custom, and of calling into existence regular law courts and what was tantamount to a legal profession. The mere evolution of the system from its principles required no transcendant effort; and the idea of codification must have been something less than divine, or it could not have been compassed by the intellect of Justinian. The criminal law of the empire, with its arbitrary courts, its secret procedure, its elastic law of treason, and its practice of torture, was the scourge of Europe till it was encountered and overthrown by the jury system, a characteristic offspring of the Teutonic mind.

Tolerant the empire was, at least if you did not object to having the statue of Caligula set up in your Holy of Holies, and this toleration fostered the growth of a new religion. But it is needless to say that, in this respect, the politicians of the empire only inherited the negative virtue of those of the republic.

As to private morality, we may surely trust the common authorities-- Juvenal, Suetonius, Petronius Arbiter--supported as they are by the evidence of the museums. There was one family, at least, whose colossal vices and crimes afforded a picture in the deepest sense tragic, considering their tremendous effect on the lot and destinies of humanity.

It is a glorious dream, this of an autocrat, the elect of humanity, raised above all factions and petty interests, armed with absolute power to govern well, agreeing exactly with all our ideas, giving effect to all our schemes of beneficence, and dealing summarily with our opponents; but it does not come through the "horngate" of history, at least not of the history of the Roman empire.

The one great service which the empire performed to humanity was this: it held together, as nothing else could have held together, the nations of the civilized world, and thus rendered possible a higher unity of mankind.

I ventured to note, as one of the sources of illusion, a somewhat exaggerated estimate of the amount and value of the Roman element transfused by the empire into modern civilization. The theory of continuity, suggested by the discoveries of physical science, is prevailing also in history. A historical theory is to me scientific, not because it is suggested by physical science, but because it fits the historical facts. It may be true that there are no cataclysms in history, but still there are great epochs. In fact, there are great epochs, even in the natural history of the world; there were periods at which organization and life began to exist. There may have been a time at which a still further effort was made, and spiritual life also was brought into being. Things which do not come suddenly or abruptly, may nevertheless be new. A great sensation has been created by an article in the _Quarterly_, on "The Talmud," which purports to shew that the teachings of Christianity were, in fact, only those of Pharisaism. The organ of orthodoxy, in publishing that article, was rather like our great mother Eve in Milton, who "knew not eating death." But after all, Pharisaism crucified Christianity, and probably it was not for plagiarism. Supposing we adopt the infiltration theory of the Barbarian conquests, and discard that of a sudden deluge of invasion, it remains certain, unless all contemporary writers were much mistaken, that some very momentous change did, after all, occur. Catholicism and Feudalism were the life of the Middle Ages. Catholicism, though it had grown up under the Empire, and at last subjugated it, was not of it. As to Feudalism, it is possible, no doubt, to find lands held on condition of military service under the Roman empire as well as under the Ottoman empire, and in other military states. But is it possible to find anything like the social hierarchy of Feudalism, its code of mutual rights and duties, or the political and social characters which it formed?

In France and Spain, much of the Roman province survived, but in England, not the least influential of the group of modern nations, it was, as we have every reason to believe, completely erased by the Saxon invaders, who came fresh from the seats of their barbarism, hating cities and city life, and ignorant of the majesty of Rome. If a Roman element afterwards found its way into England with the Norman conquest, it was rather ecclesiastical than imperial, and those who brought it were Scandinavians to the core. Alfred had been at Rome in his boyhood, it is true, and may have brought away some ideas of central dominion; but his laws open with a long quotation, not from the Pandects, but from the New Testament--his character is altogether that of a Christian, not of a Roman ruler, and if he had any political model before him, it was, probably, at least as much the Hebrew monarchy as the military despotism of the Caesars. Many of the Roman cities remained, and with them their municipal governments, and hence it is assumed that municipal government altogether is Roman. But there was a municipal government in the Saxon capital, and evidently there must be wherever large cities exist with any degree of independence. The Roman law was, at all events so far lost in the early part of the Middle Ages when Christendom was in process of formation that the study of it afterwards seemed new. Roman literature influenced that of mediaeval Christendom down to about the end of the twelfth century. Our writers of the time of Henry II. compose in half classical Latin and affect classical elegancies of style. But then comes a philosophy which in spite of its worship of Aristotle is essentially an original creation of the mediaeval and Catholic mind couched in a language Latin indeed but almost as remote from classical Latin as German itself: the tongue in truth of a new intellectual world. Open Aquinas and ask yourself how much is left of the language or the mind of Rome. The eye of the antiquary sees the Basilica in the Cathedral, but what essential resemblance does the Roman place of judicature and business bear to that marvellous and fantastic poetry of religion writing its hymns in stone? In the same manner the Roman _castra_ are traceable in the form as well as the designation of the mediaeval _castella_. But what resemblance did the feudal militia bear to the legionaries? And what became of the Roman art of war till it was revived by Gustavus Adolphus? The outward mould of Christendom the Roman empire was and that it was so gives it great dignity and interest, but it was no more. The life came from the German forest the life of life from the peasantry of Galilee the least Romanized perhaps of the populations beneath the sway of Rome.

The founder of the Roman empire was a very great man. With such genius and such fortune it is not surprising that he should be made an idol. In intellectual stature he was at least an inch higher than his fellows which is in itself enough to confound all our notions of right and wrong. He had the advantage of being a statesman before he was a soldier whereas Napoleon was a soldier before he was a statesman. His ambition coincided with the necessity of the world which required to be held together by force, and therefore his empire endured for four hundred, or if we include its eastern offset, for fourteen hundred years, while that of Napoleon crumbled to pieces in four. But unscrupulous ambition was the root of his character. It was necessary in fact to enable him to trample down the respect for legality which still hampered other men. To connect him with any principle seems to me impossible. He came forward, it is true, as the leader of what is styled the democratic party, and in that sense the empire which he founded may be called democratic. But to the gamblers who brought their fortunes to that vast hazard table, the democratic and aristocratic parties were merely _rouge_ and _noir_. The social and political equity, the reign of which we desire to see was, in truth, unknown to the men of Caesar's time. It is impossible to believe that there was an essential difference of principle between one member of the triumvirate and another. The great adventurer had begun by getting deeply into debt, and had thus in fact bound himself to overthrow the republic. He fomented anarchy to prepare the way for his dictatorship. He shrank from no accomplice however tainted, not even from Catiline; from no act however profligate or even inhuman. Abusing his authority as a magistrate, for party purposes, he tries to put to a cruel and ignominious death Rabirius, an aged and helpless man, for an act done in party warfare thirty years before. The case of Vettius is less clear, but Dr. Mommsen, at all events, seems to have little doubt that Caesar was privy to the subornation of this perjurer, and when his perjuries had broken down, to his assassination. Dr. Mommsen owns that there was a dark period in the life of the great man; in that darkness it could scarcely be expected that the Republicans should see light.

The noblest feature in Caesar's character was his clemency. But we are reminded that it was ancient, not modern clemency, when we find numbered among the signal instances of it his having cut the throats of the pirates before he hanged them, and his having put to death without torture (_simplici morte punivit_) a slave suspected of conspiring against his life. Some have gone so far as to speak of him as the incarnation of humanity. But where in the whole history of Roman conquest will you find a more ruthless conqueror? A million of Gauls, we are told, perished by the sword. Multitudes were sold into slavery. The extermination of the Eburones went to the verge even of ancient license. The gallant Vercingetorix, who had fallen into Caesar's hands under circumstances which would have touched any but a depraved heart, was kept by him a captive for six years, and butchered in cold blood on the day of the triumph. The sentiment of humanity was at that time undeveloped. Be it so, but then we must not call Caesar the incarnation of humanity.

Vast plans are ascribed to Caesar at the time of his death, and it seems to be thought that a world of hopes for humanity perished when he fell. But if he had lived and acted for another century what could he have done with those moral and political materials but found what he did found--a military and sensualist empire? A multitude of projects are attributed to him by writers who we must remember are late and who make him ride a fairy charger with feet like the hands of a man. Some of these projects are really great, such as the codification of the law and measures for the encouragement of intellect and science; others are questionable, such as the restoration of commercial cities from which commerce had retired; others, great works to be accomplished by an unlimited command of men and money, are the common dreams of every Nebuchadnezzar. What we know if we know anything of his intentions is that he was about to set out on a campaign against the Parthians in whose plains this prototype of Napoleon might perhaps have found a torrid Moscow. No great advance of humanity can take place without a great moral effort excited by higher moral desires. The masters of the legions can only set in action by their fiat material forces. Even these they often misdirect; but if the empire could have given every man Nero's golden house the inhabitants might still have been as unhappy as Nero.

It is not doubtful that Caesar was a type of the sensuality of his age. His worshippers even feel it necessary to gird at characters deficient in sensual passion with a friskiness which is a little amusing when you connect it with the spectacles and the blameless life of a learned professor. So gifted a nature will absorb a good deal of mere sensual vice, it is true, but a sensualist could hardly be a pure and noble organ of humanity. In this I have the Positivists with me. Even in Caesar's lifetime the world had a taste of the vicissitudes of empire while he was revelling in the palace of Cleopatra and leaving affairs to Antony and Dolabella. Perhaps the satiety of the voluptuary had something to do with the recklessness with which at the last he neglected to guard his life. He was the greatest patron of gladiatorial shows and signalized his accession to power by magnificent scenes of carnage in the arena--a strange dawn for the day of a new civilization. Must we not a little doubt the consistency of his policy and even his insight when we find him after all this enacting sumptuary laws?

Still Caesar was a very great man and he played a dazzling part, as all men do who come just at the fall of an old system, when society is as clay in the hands of the potter, and found a new system in its place, while the less dazzling task of making the new system work, by probity and industry, and of restoring the shattered allegiance of a people to its institutions, descends upon unlaurelled heads. But that the men of his time were bound to recognise in him a Messiah, to use the phrase of the Emperor of the French, and that those who opposed him were Jews crucifying their Saviour, is an impression which I venture to think will in time subside. No golden scales were hung out in heaven to shew the republicans that the balance of Divine will had turned, and that their duty was submission. "Momentumque fuit mutatus Curio rerum--" The only sign vouchsafed to them was the conversion of an unprincipled debauchee.

They have, therefore, a fair claim to be judged each upon the merits of his case, and not in the lump as enemies of the human race; and to judge them fairly is a good exercise in historical morality. The three principal names in the party are those of Cato, Cicero, and Marcus Brutus. Pompey, though the nominal chief of the republicans, may rather, as Dr Mommsen truly says, be called the first military monarch of Rome. There is a vigorous portrait of him, from the republican point of view, by Lucan, who, though detestable as an epic poet, sometimes in his political passages, and especially in his characters, shews himself the countryman of Tacitus. Pompey is there described with truth as combining the desire of supreme power with a lingering respect for the constitution. The great aristocrat is painted as simple in his habits of life, and his household as uncorrupted by the fortunes of its lord--the last relics of the control imposed by the spirit of the republic on private luxury, which was soon to be released by the Empire from all restraint and carried to the most revolting height.