Relations between the East and West.

After Rome had acquired the undisputed mastery of the the world, the Greeks were wont to annoy their Roman masters by the assertion, that Rome was indebted for her greatness to the fever, of which Alexander of Macedon died at Babylon on the 11th of June, 431. As it was not very agreeable for them to reflect on the actual past, they were fond of allowing their thoughts to dwell on what might have happened, had the great king turned his arms (as was said to be his intention at the time of his death) towards the west, and contested the Carthaginian supremacy by sea with his fleet, and the Roman supremacy by land with his phalanxes. It is not impossible that Alexander may have cherished such thoughts; nor is it necessary to resort for an explanation of their origin to the mere difficulty which an autocrat provided with soldiers and ships experiences in setting limits to his warlike career. It was an enterprise worthy of a great Greek king to protect the Siceliots against Carthage and the Tarentines against Rome, and to put an end to piracy on either sea; and the Italian embassies from the Bruttians, Lucanians, and Etruscans, that along with numerous others made their appearance at Babylon, afforded him sufficient opportunities of becoming acquainted with the circumstances of the peninsula, and of contracting relations with it.

The Varronian computation by years of the City is retained in the text; the figures on the margin indicate the corresponding year before the birth of Christ.

In calculating the corresponding years, the year 1 of the City has been assumed as identical with the year 753 b.c., and with Olymp. 6, 4; although, if we take into account the circumstance that the Roman solar year began with the 1st day of March, and the Greek with the 1st day of July, the year 1 of the City would according to more exact calculation correspond to the last ten months of 753 and the first two months of 752 b.c., and to the last four months of 01. 6, 3 and the first eight of 01. 6, 4.

The Roman and Greek money has uniformly been commuted on the basis of assuming the libral as and sestertius, and the denarius and Attic drachma, respectively as equal, and taking for all sums above 100 denarii the present value in gold, and for all sums under 100 denarii the present value in silver, of the corresponding weight. The Roman pound (= 327·46 grammes) of gold, equal to 4000 sesterces, has thus according to the ratio of gold to silver 1: 15.5 been reckoned at 286 Prussian thalers (about £41).

Kiepert's map will give a clearer idea of the military consolidation of Italy than can be conveyed by any description.

The art of measuring brings the world into subjection to man; the art of writing prevents his knowledge from perishing with himself; together they make man, what nature has not made him, all-powerful and eternal. It is the privilege and duty of history to trace the course of national progress along these paths also.

Italian measures.

Measurement necessarily presupposes the development of the several ideas of units of time, of space, and of weight, and of a whole as consisting of equal parts, or in other words of number and of a numeral system. The most obvious bases presented by nature for this purpose are, in reference to time, the periodic returns of the sun and moon, or the day and the month; in reference to space, the length of the human foot, which is more easily applied in measuring than the arm; in reference to gravity, the burden which a man is able to poise (librare) on his hand while he holds his arm stretched out, or the “weight” (libra). As a basis for the notion of a whole made up of equal parts, nothing so readily suggests itself as the hand with its five or the hands with their ten lingers; upon this rests the decimal system. We have already observed that these elements of all numeration and measuring reach back not merely beyond the separation of the Greek and Latin stocks but even to the most remote primeval times.

In requesting English scholars to receive with indulgence this first portion of a translation of Dr. Mommsen's “Römische Gesehichte,” I am somewhat in the position of Albinus; who, when appealing to his readers to pardon the imperfections of the Roman History which he had written in indifferent Greek, was met by Cato with the rejoinder that he was not compelled to write at all—that, if the Amphictyonic Council had laid their commands on him, the case would have been different—but that it was quite out of place to ask the indulgence of his readers when his task had been self-imposed. I may state, however, that I did not undertake this task, until I had sought to ascertain whether it was likely to be taken up by any one more qualified to do justice to it. When Dr. Mommsen's work accidentally came into my hands some years after its first appearance, and revived my interest in studies which I had long laid aside for others more strictly professional, I had little, doubt that its merits would have already attracted sufficient attention amidst the learned leisure of Oxford to induce some of her great scholars to clothe it in an English dress. But it appeared on inquiry that, while there was a great desire to see it translated, and the purpose of translating it had been entertained in more quarters than one, the projects had from various causes miscarried.

Dissatisfaction of Philip with Rome

Philip of Maćedon was greatly annoyed by the treatment which he met with from the Romans after the peace with Antiochus; and the subsequent course of events was no fitted to appease his wrath. His neighbours in Greece and Thrace, mostly communities that had once trembled at the Macedonian name not less than now they trembled at the Roman, diligently sought, as was natural, to retaliate on the fallen great power for all the injuries which since the times of Philip the Second they had received at the hands of Macedon. The empty arrogance and venal anti-Macedonian patriotism of the Hellenes of this period found vent at the diets of the different confederacies, and in ceaseless complaints addressed to the Roman senate. Philip had been allowed by the Romans to retain what he had taken from the Ætolians; but in Thessaly the confederacy of the Magnetes alone had formally joined the Ætolians, while those towns which Philip had wrested from the Ætolians in two of the other Thessalian confederacies—the Thessalian in its narrower sense, and the Perrhæbian—were reclaimed by the latter on the ground that Philip had only liberated these towns, and not conquered them. The Athamanes conceived that they might request their freedom; and Eumenes demanded the maritime cities which Antiochus had possessed in Thrace proper, especially Ænus and Maronea, although in the peace with Antiochus the Thracian Chersonese alone had been expressly promised to him.

Situation of Carthage after the peace

The treaty with Rome in 513 gave to the Carthaginians peace, but they paid for it dearly. That the tribute of the Carthage largest portion of Sicily now flowed into the enemy's chequer instead ot the Carthagniian treasury, was the least part of their loss. They felt a far keener regret, when they found that they had to abandon the hope of monopolizing all the lines of traffic between the eastern and the western Mediterranean, just as that hope seemed on the eve of fulfilment. They now beheld their whole system of commercial policy broken up, the south-western basin of the Mediterranean, which they had hitherto exclusively commanded, converted since the loss of Sicily into an open thoroughfare for all nations, and the commerce of Italy rendered completely independent of the Phœnicians. Nevertheless the peaceful Sidonians might perhaps have been disposed to acquiesce in this result. They had met with similar blows already; they had been obliged to share with the Massiliots, the Etruscans, and the Sicilian Greeks what they had previously possessed alone; even now the possessions which they retained, Africa, Spain, and the gates of the Atlantic Ocean, were sufficient to confer power and prosperity. But in truth, where was their security that these at least would continue in their hands?

Roman austerity and Roman pride

Life, in the case of the Roman, was spent under conditions of austere restraint, and, the nobler he was, the less he was a free man. All-powerful custom restricted him to a narrow range of thought and action; and to have led a serious and strict or, to use the characteristic Latin expressions, a grave and severe life, was his glory. Neither more nor less was expected of a Roman than that he should keep his household in good order and unflinchingly bear his part of counsel and action in public affairs. But, while the individual had neither the wish nor the power to be aught else than a member of the community, the glory and the might of that community were felt by every individual citizen as a personal possession to be transmitted along with his name and his homestead to his posterity; and thus, as one generation after another was laid in the tomb and each in succession added its fresh contribution to the stock of ancient honours, the sense of collective dignity in the noble families of Rome swelled into that mighty pride of Roman citizenship, to which the earth has never perhaps witnessed a parallel, and the traces of which, as singular as they are grand, seem to us whenever we meet them to belong as it were to another world.

Political and social distinctions in Rome.

The strict conception of the unity and omnipotence of the state in all matters pertaining to it, which was the central principle of the Italian constitutions, placed in the hands of the single president nominated for life a formidable power, which was felt perhaps by the enemies of the land, but was not less heavily felt by its citizens. Abuse and oppression could not fail to ensue from it, and, as a necessary consequence, efforts were made to accomplish its limitation. It was, however, the grand distinction of the efforts after reform and the revolutions in Rome, that there was no attempt to impose limitations on the community as such or even to deprive it of corresponding organs of expression—that there never was any endeavour to assert the so-called natural rights of the individual in contradistinction to the community—that on the contrary the attack was wholly directed against the form in which the community was represented. Prom the times of the Tarquins down to those of the Gracchi the cry of the party of progress in Rome was not for limitation of the power of the state, but for limitation of the power of the magistrates; nor amidst that cry was the truth ever forgotten, that the people ought not to govern, but ought, on the contrary, to be governed.

That struggle developed itself within the burgess-body. Side by side with it ran another movement, the cry of the non-burgesses for equality of political privileges.

Ancient history.

The Mediterranean Sea with its various branches, penetrating far into the great Continent, forms the largest gulf of the ocean, and, alternately narrowed by islands or projections of the land and expanding to considerable breadth, at once separates and connects the three divisions of the Old World. The shores of this inland sea were in ancient times peopled by various nations, belonging in an ethnographical and philological point of view to different races, but constituting in their historical aspect one whole. This historic whole has been usually, but not very appropriately, entitled the history of the ancient world. It is in reality the history of civilization among the Mediterranean nations; and as it passes before us in its successive stages, it presents four great phases of development,—the history of the Coptic or Egyptian stock dwelling on the southern shore, the history of the Aramæan or Syrian nation, which occupied the east coast and extended into the interior of Asia as far as the Euphrates and Tigris, and the histories of the twinpeoples, the Hellenes and Italians, who received as their heritage the countries bordering on its European shores. Each of these histories was in its earlier stages connected with other regions and with other cycles of historical evolution, but each soon entered on its own peculiar career.

The Roman national festival.

The growth of art, and of poetic art especially, in antiquity was intimately associated with the development of national festivals. The extraordinary thanksgiving-festival of the Roman community which, had been organized in the previous period mainly under Greek influence, the ludi maximi, or Romani (P. 235), acquired during the present epoch a longer duration, and greater variety in the amusements. Originally limited to one day, the festival was prolonged by an additional day after the happy termination of each of the three great revolutions of 245, 260 and 387 and thus at the close of this period it had already a duration of four days.

The Roman stage.

A still more important circumstance was, that, probably on the institution of the eurule ædileship (387) which was from the first intrusted with the preparation and oversight, of the festival (P. 306), it lost its extraordinary character and its reference to a special vow made by the general, and took its place in the series of the ordinary annual festivals. Nevertheless the government adhered to the rule of allowing the proper spectacle, namely the chariot-race which was its principal feature, to take place not more than once at the close of the festival. On the other days the multitude were probably left mainly to furnish amusement for themselves, although musicians, dancers, rope-walkers, jugglers, jesters and such like would not fail to make their appearance on the occasion, whether hired or not. But about the year 390 an important change occurred, which must have been connected with the fixing and prolongation of the festival that took place shortly before.

Etrusco-Carthaginian maritime supremacy.

In the previous chapters we have presented an outline of development of the Roman constitution during the first two centuries of the republic; we now recur to the commencement of that epoch, for the purpose of tracing the external history of Rome and of Italy. About the time of the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome the Etruscan power had reached its height. The Tuscans, and the Carthaginians who were in close alliance with them, possessed undisputed supremacy in the Tyrrhene Sea. Although Massilia, amidst continual and severe struggles, maintained her independence, the sea-ports of Campania and of the Volscian land, and, after the battle of Alalia, Corsica also (P. 153), were in the possession of the Etruscans. In Sardinia, the sons of the Carthaginian general, Mago, laid the foundation of the greatness both of their house and of their city, by the complete conquest of the island (about 260); and in Sicily, while the Hellenic colonies were occupied with their internal feuds, the Phosnicians retained their told on the western half without meeting with effectual opposition. The vessels of the Etruscans were no less dominant in the Adriatic; and their pirates were dreaded even in the more eastern waters.

Subjugation of Latium by Etruia

By land also their power seemed to be on the increase. Subjugation To acquire possession of Latium was an object of most decisive importance to, which was separated by the Latins alone from the Volscian towns which were dependent on it, and from its possessions in Campania. Hitherto the firm bulwark of the Roman power had sufficiently protected Latium, and had successfully maintained against Etruria the frontier line of the Tiber.

Artistic endowments of the Italians.

Poetry is impassioned language, and its modulation is melody. While in this sense no people is without poetry of the and music some nations have received a preeminent endowment of poetic gifts. The Italian nation, however, was not and is not one of these. The Italian is deficient in the passion of the heart, and in the longing to idealize what is human and to give life to the things of the inanimate world, which form the very essence of poetic art. His acuteness of perception and his charming versatility enabled, him to excel in irony and in the vein of tale-telling such as we find in Horace and Boccaccio, in the graceful pleasantries of love and song which are presented in Catullus and in the best popular songs of Naples, above all in low comedy and in farce. Italian soil gave birth in ancient times to burlesque tragedy, and in modern times to burlesques of the poetry of chivalry. In rhetoric and theatrical art especially no other nation equalled or equals the Italians. But in the more perfect kinds of art they have hardly advanced beyond cleverness of execution, and no epoch of their literature has produced a true epos or a genuine drama. The very highest literary works that have been successfully produced in Italy, divine poems like Dante's Commedia, and historical treatises such as those of Sallust and Macchiavelli, of Tacitus and Colletta, are pervaded by a passion more rhetorical than spontaneous. Even in music, both in ancient and modern times, real creative talent has been far less conspicuous than the facility, which speedily assumes the character of virtuosoship, and enthrones in the room of genuine and genial art a hollow and heart-withering idol.

Development of law.

Police.

In the development of law during this period within the Roman commonwealth, probably the most important material innovation was that peculiar control which the community itself, and, in a subordinate degree, its office-bearers, began to exercise over the manners and habits of the individual citizens. The germ of it is to be sought not so much in the religious anathemas which had served in the earliest times as a sort of substitute for police (P. 184), as in the right of the magistrates to inflict property-fines (multœ) for offences against order (P. 159). In the case of all fines of more than two sheep and thirty oxen or, after cattle-fines had been by the decree of the people in 324 commuted into money, of more than 3020 libral asses (30), the decision soon after the expulsion of the kings passed by way of appeal into the hands of the community (P. 259);. and thus procedure by fine acquired an importance which it was far from originally possessing. Under the vague category of offences against order men might include any accusations they pleased, and by the higher rates in the scale of property fines they might accomplish whatever they desired. The dangerous character of such arbitrary procedure was brought to light rather than obviated by the mitigating proviso, that such property-fines, where they were not fixed by law at a definite sum, should not exceed half the estate of the person fined. To this class belonged the police laws, which from the earliest times were especially abundant in the Roman commonwealth.

Ramnes.

About fourteen miles up from the mouth of the river Tiber hills of moderate elevation rise on both banks of the stream, higher on the right, lower on the left bank. With the latter group there has been closely associated for at least two thousand five hundred years the name of the Romans. We are unable, of course, to tell how or when that name arose: this much only is certain, that in the oldest form of it known to us the inhabitants of the canton are called, not Romans, but (by a shifting of the sound that easily occurs in the earlier period of a language, but fell very early into abeyance in Latin) Ramnians (Ramnes), a fact which constitutes an expressive testimony to the immemorial antiquity of the name. Its derivation cannot be given with certainty; possibly “Ramnes” may mean “foresters” or “bushmen.”

But they were not the only dwellers on the hills by the bank of the Tiber. In the earliest division of the burgesses of Rome a trace has been preserved of the fact that that body arose out of the amalgamation of three cantons once probably independent, the Ramnians, Tities, and Luceres, into a single commonwealth—in other words, out of such a synoikismos as that from which Athens arose in Attica, The great antiquity of this threefold division of the community is perhaps best evinced by the fact that the Romans, in matters of constitutional law especially, regularly used the forms “tribuere” (to “divide into three”) and “tribus” (a “third”) in the sense of “partition” and “part,” and “part,” and the latter expression (“tribus”) early lost, like our “quarter,” its original signification of number.

Extension of the Roman territory.

The brave and impassioned Italian race doubtless never lacked occasion for feuds among themselves and with their neighbours: as the country flourished and civilization advanced, feuds must have become gradually changed into wars, and raids for pillage into regular conquests, and political powers must have begun to assume shape. No Italian Homer, however, has preserved for us a picture of these earliest frays and plundering excursions, in which the character of nations is moulded and expressed, like the mind of the man in the sports and enterprises of the boy; nor does historical tradition enable us to form a judgment, with even approximate accuracy, as to the outward development of power and comparative resources in the several cantons of Latium. It is only in the case of Rome, at the utmost, that we can trace in some degree the extension of its power and of its territory. The earliest demonstrable boundaries of the united Roman community have been already stated (P. 48); in the landward direction they were on an average just about five miles distant from the capital of the canton, and it was only toward the coast that they extended as far as the mouth of the Tiber (Ostia), at a distance of somewhat more than fourteen miles from Rome. “Larger and smaller tribes,” says Strabo, in his description of the primitive Rome, “surrounded the new city, some of whom dwelt in independent villages, and were not subordinate to any national union.” It seems to have been at the expense of these neighbours of kindred lineage in the first instance that the earliest extensions of the Roman territory took place.

Relations of Italy with other lands.

In the history of the nations of antiquity a gradual dawn ushered in the day; and in their case too the dawn was in the east. While the Italian peninsula still lay enveloped in the dim twilight of morning, the regions of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean had already emerged into the full light of a varied and richly developed civilization. It falls to the lot of most nations in the early stages of their development to be taught and trained by some rival sisternation; and such was destined to be in an eminent degree the lot of the peoples of Italy. The circumstances of its geographical position, however, prevented this influence from being brought to bear upon the peninsula by land. No trace is to be found of a resort in early times to the difficult route by land between Italy and Greece. There were, indeed, in all probability from time immemorial, tracks for purposes of traffic, leading from Italy to the lands beyond the Alps; the oldest route of the amber trade from the Baltic joined the Mediterranean at the mouth of the Po (on which account the delta of the Po appears in Greek legend as the native country of amber), and that route was joined by another leading across the peninsula and over the Apennines to Pisæ; but from these regions no elements of civilization could come to the Italians. It was the seafaring nations of the East that brought to Italy whatever foreign, culture reached it in early times.