Importance of Roman history in this

religious direction it took. In place of the dogmas of rival philosophical schools, we have now to deal with the tenets of conflicting sects. The whole history of those unhappy times displays the investigation. organizing and practical spirit characteristic of Rome. Greek democracy, tending to the decomposition of things, led to the Sophists and Sceptics. Roman imperialism, ever constructive, sought to bring unity out of discords, and draw the line between orthodoxy and heresy by the authority of councils like that of Nicea. Following the ideas of St. Augustine in his work, "The City of God," I adopt, as the most convenient termination of this age, the sack of Rome by Alaric. This makes it overlap the age of Faith, which had, as its unmistakable beginning, the foundation of Constantinople.

Greek intellectual life displays all its phases completely, but not so was it with that of the Romans, who came to an untimely end. They were men of violence, who disappeared in consequence of their own conquests and crimes. The consumption of them by war bore, however, an insignificant proportion to that fatal diminution, that mortal adulteration occasioned by their merging in the vast mass of humanity with which they came in contact.

Great diffi

ing it.

I approach the consideration of Roman affairs, which is thus the next portion of my task, with no little diffidence. It is hard to rise to a point of view sufficiently elevated and clear, where the extent of dominion is so great geographically, and the reasons of policy are obscured by the dimness and clouds of so many centuries. culty of treat- Living in a social state the origin of which is in the events now to be examined, our mental vision can hardly free itself from the illusions of historical perspective, or bring things into their just proportions and position. Of a thousand acts, all of surpassing interest and importance, how shall we identify the master ones? how shall we discern with correctness the true relation of the parts of this wonderful phenomenon of empire, the vanishing events of which glide like dissolving views into each other? Warned by the example of those who have permitted the shadows of their own imagination to fall upon the scene, and have mistaken them for a part of it, I

shall endeavour to apply the test of common sense to the facts of which it will be necessary to treat; and, believing that man has ever been the same in his modes of thought and motives of action, I shall judge of past occurrences in the same way as of those of our own times.

In its entire form the Roman power consists of two theocracies, with a military domination intercalated. The first of these theocracies corresponds to Triple form of the fabulous period of the kings; the military Roman power. domination to the time of the republic and earlier Cæsars; the second theocracy to that of the Christian emperors and the Popes.

cracy and

times.

The first theocracy is so enveloped in legends and fictions that it is impossible to give a satisfactory account of it. The biographies of the kings offer such undeniable evidence of being mere romances, that, since the time of Niebuhr, they have been received by historians in that light. But during the reigns of the pagan The first theoemperors it was not safe in Rome to insinuate publicly any disbelief in such honoured legends legendary as those of the wolf that suckled the foundlings; the ascent of Romulus into heaven; the nymph Egeria; the duel of the Horatii and Curiatii; the leaping of Curtius into the gulf on his horse; the cutting of a flint with a razor by Tarquin; the Sibyl and her books. The modern historian has, therefore, only very little reliable material. He may admit that the Romans and Sabines coalesced; that they conquered the Albans and Latins; that thousands of the latter were transplanted to Mount Aventine and made plebeians; these movements being the origin of the castes which long afflicted Rome, Early Roman the vanquished people constituting a subor- history. dinate class; that at first the chief occupation was agriculture, the nature of which is not only to accustom men to the gradations of rank, such as the proprietor of the land, the overseer, the labourer, but also to the cultivation of religious sentiment, and even the cherishing of superstition; that, besides the more honourable Occupations in which the rising state was engaged, she had, from the beginning, indulged in aggressive war, and was therefore perpetually liable to reprisal-one of her

first acts was the founding of the town of Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, on account of piracy; that, through some conspiracy in the army, indicated in the legend of Lucretia, since armies have often been known to do such things, the kings were expelled, and a military domination fancifully called a republic, but consisting of a league of some powerful families, arose.

Throughout the regal times, and far into the republican, the chief domestic incidents turn on the strife of the upper caste or patricians with the lower or plebeians, manifesting itself by the latter asserting their right to a share in the lands conquered by their valour; by the extortion of the Valerian law; by the admission of the Latins and Hernicans to conditions of equality; by the transference of the election of tribunes from the centuries to the tribes; by the repeal of the law prohibiting the marriage of plebeians with patricians and by the eventual concession to the former of the offices of consul, dictator, censor, and prætor.

The domestic

In these domestic disputes we see the origin of the Roman necessity for war. The high caste is necessity for steadily diminishing in number, the low caste foreign war. as steadily increasing. In imperious pride, the patrician fills his private jail with debtors and delinquents; he usurps the lands that have been conquered. Insurrection is the inevitable consequence, foreign war the only relief. As the circle of operations extends, both parties see their interest in a cordial coalescence on equal terms, and jointly tyrannize exteriorly.

The geographical dominion of Rome was extended at first with infinite difficulty. Up to the time of the capture of the city by the Gauls a doubtful existence was maintained in perpetual struggles with the adjacent towns and chieftains. There is reason to believe that in the very infancy of the republic, in the contest that ensued upon the expulsion of the kings, the city was taken by Porsenna. The direction in which her influence first Gradual spread was toward the south of the peninsula. Tarentum, one of the southern states, brought over to its assistance Pyrrhus the Epirot. He did little in the way of assisting his allieshe only saw Rome from the Acropolis of Præneste; but

spread of Roman in

fluence to the

south.

from him the Romans learned the art of fortifying camps, and caught the idea of invading Sicily. Here the rising republic came in contact with the Carthaginians, and in the conflict that ensued discovered the military value of Spain and Gaul, from which the Carthaginians drew an immense supply of mercenaries and munitions of war. The advance to greatness which Rome now made was prodigious. She saw that everything turned Rome builds on the possession of the sea, and with admir- a navy, able energy built a navy. In this her expectations were more than realized. The assertion is quite true that she spent more time in acquiring a little earth in Italy than was necessary for subduing the world after she had once obtained possession of the Mediterranean. From the experience of Agathocles she learned that the true method of controlling Carthage was by invading Africa. and invades The principles involved in the contest, and the Africa. position of Rome at its close, are shown by the terms of the treaty of the first l'unic War-that Carthage should evacuate every island in the Mediterranean, and Results of the pay a war-fine of six hundred thousand pounds. first Punic In her devotion to the acquisition of wealth Carthage had become very rich; she had reached a high state of cultivation of art, yet her prosperity, or rather the mode by which she had attained it, had greatly weakened her, as also had the political anomaly under which she was living, for it is an anomaly that an Asiatic people should place itself under democratic forms. Her condition in this respect was evidently the consequence of her original subordinate position as a Tyrian trading station, her rich men having long been habituated to look to the mother city for distinction. As in other commercial states, her citizens became soldiers with reluct ance, and hence she had often to rely on mercenary troops. From her the Romans received lessons of the utmost importance. She confirmed them in the estimate they had formed of the value of naval power; taught them how to build ships properly and handle them; how to make military roads. The tribes of Northern Italy were hardly included in the circle of Roman dominion when a fleet was built in the Adriatic, and, under the pretence of

War.

War.

putting down piracy, the sea power of the Illyrians was extinguished. From time immemorial the Mediterranean had been infested with pirates; man-stealing had been a profitable occupation, great gains being realized by rarsoms of captives, or by selling them at Delos or other slave-markets. At this time it was clear that the final mastery of the Mediterranean turned on the possession of Spain, the great silver producing country. The rivalry for Spain occasioned the second Punic War. It is needResults of the less to repeat the well-known story of Hannisecond Punic bal, how he brought Rome to the brink of ruin. The relations she maintained with surrounding communities had been such that she could not trust to them. Her enemy found allies in many of the Greek towns in the south of Italy. It is enough for us to look at the result of that conflict in the treaty that closed it. Carthage had to give up all her ships of war except ten triremes, to bind herself to enter into no war without the consent of the Roman people, and to pay a war-fine of two millions of pounds. Rome now entered, on the great scale, on the policy of disorganizing states for the purpose of weakening them. Under pretext of an invitation from the Athenians to protect them from the King of Rome invades Macedon, the ambitious republic secured a footGreece, ing in Greece, the principle developed in the invasion of Africa of making war maintain war being again resorted to. There may have been truth in the Roman accusation that the intrigues of Hannibal with Antiochus, king of Syria, occasioned the conflict between Rome and that monarch. Its issue was a prodigious event in the material aggrandizement of Rome-it was the cession of all his possessions in Europe and those of Asia north of Mount Taurus, with a war-fine of the cession of three millions of pounds. Already were seen the effects of the wealth that was pouring into vinces of An- Italy in the embezzlement of the public money tiochus. by the Scipios. The resistance of Perses, king of Macedon, could not restore independence to Greece; Revolt of Per- it ended in the annexation of that country, Epirus and Illyricum. The results of this war were to the last degree pernicious to the victors and the

and compels

all the Eu

ropean pro

ses.