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 princ.i.p.al, 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 G.o.ds and heroes, and had a poetical l.u.s.tre, and glorious significancy, it is a circ.u.mstance 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 ma.s.ses of its legion, surpa.s.sed all military bodies that have ever been organized.
The Roman state from its origin, and according to its first const.i.tution, 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 l.u.s.t 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 G.o.ds, 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 fort.i.tude and perseverance under misfortune, we can well conceive that in a state so const.i.tuted like theirs, the Romans, by their indefatigable activity in war, should in no very great s.p.a.ce 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 embarra.s.sments, 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 a.s.sume 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 overpa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed her Rubicon, where was that historical limit--that last boundary-line of ambition, after pa.s.sing 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 a.s.signable 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sert 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 const.i.tution 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 const.i.tution, as a.s.serted by the Patricians--or the just claims of the people, and the necessary changes which the altered circ.u.mstances 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 n.o.ble Scipio, the hero of the third Punic war, fell a victim of a.s.sa.s.sination. 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 surpa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 mult.i.tude--he seems to have thoroughly understood the Roman people, for he was the first to introduce the games of the circus, those b.l.o.o.d.y 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 pa.s.sion of the party-leaders of this all-ruling people, become an actual craving--a festive entertainment for the mult.i.tude. 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion 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 circ.u.mference 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 pa.s.sion, 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 Ca.s.sius, 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 n.o.ble 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 mult.i.tude--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 a.s.signed a place by the side at least of the most ill.u.s.trious 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 t.i.tles; 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.
There is also another element of contradiction in the Roman law, considered both in itself, and in its relation to other codes--a contradiction which strongly pervaded the whole theory of that legislation, and may furnish us with a clue to a right judgment on the Roman jurisprudence, and on the influence it has exercised on posterity.
This is the distinction between strict or absolute law, and the law of equity, that is to say, the law qualified by historical circ.u.mstances.
In the Germanic law, as it is a law of custom and ancient usage, a law qualified by times and circ.u.mstances, the principle of equity is more predominant; and we have, indeed, reason to regret that this native and original legislation of the modern European nations should, by the prevailing influence of the more scientific jurisprudence of ancient Rome, have been cast into the back-ground, in proportion as those nations began to mistake the true character of their historical antiquity. The Roman jurisprudence, as it deals in rigid formulas, and adheres to the strict letter, inclines more towards rigid and absolute law; and its spirit has something akin to the stern international policy of the ancient Romans. But is this strict and absolute law a fit criterion to apply to earthly concerns, can it be a true standard of human justice, in its more large and general applications to the great transactions of universal history, and in its relations to divine justice? Every thing absolute (and such undoubtedly is _strict law_, in the relations of private, and still more in those of public life), everything absolute is sure to provoke its contrary, and if continued, will occasion successive reactions, that can terminate only in the mutual destruction of conflicting parties--the inevitable result of all contests carried to extreme lengths--unless some higher principle of peace intervene to compose and determine them by a divine law of equity.
But if this conciliating principle do not p.r.o.nounce its sentence, or if it be not attended to, extreme injustice only can spring from this rigid and inflexible application of extreme law; and this is quite in the spirit of the old saying of the Jurists, which we must here apply in a more general sense, in order to estimate with truth and accuracy the nature of the contests which divide the world. "Let justice be done,"
they say (and the word is here used in the juridical sense of strict and absolute law), "let justice be done, though the world should be ruined."
And we may well say in reply:--Woe to mankind, woe to every individual, woe to the world, were they doomed to be finally judged according to this rigid justice, and this rigid justice only, by _Him_ who alone has the power and the right to dispense such severe justice unto men, and judge them by its rules. But since such full and inexorable justice belongs to G.o.d only, who is incapable of error; and since all human justice is but the temporary delegate of the divine; it should necessarily be mild, indulgent, qualified by circ.u.mstances; and should on the principle of equity be as lenient as possible, and be ever mindful of its due limits. And this principle is applicable to the most important as well as the most insignificant relations of life, and is so thoroughly connected with them all that, according as we adopt the one or the other principle of strict and absolute law, or of mild equity, the whole of our conduct, opinions, and views of the world must differ.
The power of the state is only a temporary, and delegated, power, destined to accomplish the ends of divine justice; and this dignity, indeed, is sufficiently exalted, and the responsibility attached to it sufficiently great; but this supreme human justice, unless it disregard its own limits, as well as those of mankind, is not divine justice, nor the immediate authority of G.o.d, nor G.o.d himself.
The old hereditary vice and fundamental error of the Roman government, and indeed of the Roman people, was that political idolatry of the state, to which the false theory of strict and absolute law was of itself calculated to lead. Although the absolute power of Augustus was still somewhat veiled under the old forms of the Republic, yet even in his reign commenced the formal deification of the person of the Prince, and, under the succeeding emperors, it exceeded all bounds, and descended to the basest forms of adulation. And if even this idolatry had been paid, not so exclusively to the person of an Augustus or a Tiberius, as to the idea of the state identified with that person; and if thus the real object of that Pagan worship had been in the latest, as in the earliest, times, Rome, the eternally prosperous, the everlastingly powerful, the world-destroying, and people-devouring, Rome, to which every thing must fall a sacrifice; still it was not the less a thorough political idolatry. And as a sensual worship of Nature eminently characterized the poetical religion of the Greeks--as the abusive rites of magic were peculiar to the false mysteries of Egypt--so this third and greatest aberration of Paganism,--political idolatry in its most frightful shape, formed the distinguishing character and leading principle of the Roman state, from the earliest to the latest period of its history.
Under Augustus the Roman empire was well nigh rounded off in extent, since the geographical situation, as we before observed, of all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean might be considered a sufficiently wide natural frontier. The counties on the coast of Africa were protected by the contiguous deserts; on the Northern side of the empire, which was more menaced by invasion, the strongly fortified borders of the Rhine and the Danube formed a secure barrier. Towards the eastern and Asiatic frontier, the Parthians were indeed a powerful and formidable enemy, but there was no probability they would ever seek, as the Persians had once done, to penetrate so far beyond their boundaries; while, on the other hand, the Romans had no real interest in extending their conquests further into that region, or into the interior parts of central Asia, as such a policy would only lead them further from the centre of their empire and their power, now unalterably fixed in Italy and the old, eternal city. The thoughts and feelings of all the better Romans were no longer turned on the aggrandizement of their empire, but solely and exclusively on a great internal regeneration of public morals, and as far as was practicable, of the state itself, according to those ideal conceptions which they formed of old Rome in her better and more prosperous days. These projects of social regeneration were nearly in the same spirit and of the same tendency as those which the better emperors of succeeding ages, a Trajan and a Marcus Aurelius actually attempted to accomplish. Others again were filled with apprehensions for the future; and well indeed might they entertain the most alarming presentiments; for when the licentiousness of public morals was growing to a more and more fearful height, and a succession of indolent emperors was hastening the downfall of the state, the strong fortifications of the Northern frontier could afford little protection, and the nations of the North must burst in without resistance upon the empire. This event did really occur, though at a much later period; but all that was to precede that event--the quarter whence the new principle would rise up in the world, that was to overcome Rome herself and regenerate mankind--all this was certainly not antic.i.p.ated by any Roman of those times, however generous and exalted might be his sentiments, and profound and penetrative his understanding. Nay, when this phenomenon did actually appear, it was but too evident that they were at first unable to seize and comprehend its meaning and purport. And what was then that new power, which was to conquer, and did really conquer, the earthly conquerors of the world? The old universal empire of Persia, and the subsequent one of Macedon, had long since pa.s.sed away, and disappeared from the face of the earth. The oppressive military despotism of Rome had to fear no rival that would at all equal her in power. The influence of the Greek Philosophy, which had previously sunk into great degeneracy, was completely debased under the yoke of Roman domination, and barely sufficed to adorn and dignify the Roman sway, still less to work a fundamental change and reform in the Roman government.
It was the divine power of Love, tried in sufferings, and sacrificing to high Love itself not only life, but every earthly desire; and from which proceeded the new words of a new life, a new light of moral and divine science, that was to unfold new views of the world, introduce a new organization of society, and give a new form to human existence. And such was that primitive energy of Christian love, which displayed itself in the internal harmony, and close union of the Christian church; in the rapid diffusion of its doctrines through all the countries and among all the nations of the then known world; in its courageous resistance to all the a.s.saults of persecution; in the careful preservation of its purity from all alloy and corruption; in its firmer consolidation and more manifold development in words, and works and deeds; in writings and in life; that not many generations, and but a few centuries had pa.s.sed away, before Christianity became a ruling power in the world--an indirect and spiritual power indeed, but more than any other active and influential.
A pa.s.sage on Elias in the Old Testament, which we have already had occasion to cite, may be applied to the imperceptible beginnings of this great moral revolution, produced in the world by a new effort of G.o.d"s power. When the prophet, from the bottom of his soul had sighed after death, and had journeyed for the s.p.a.ce of forty days towards the holy mountain of h.o.r.eb, the splendour and omnipotence of the Deity were revealed to him, and pa.s.sed before his mortal eyes. There came a great and strong wind, which overthrew the mountains and split the rocks; but, as the scripture saith, G.o.d was not in the wind. There came afterwards a violent earthquake with fire--but G.o.d was neither in the earthquake, nor in the fire. Now there arose the soft breath and gentle whistling of a tender air: in this, Elias recognized the immediate presence of his G.o.d, and in awe and reverence he veiled his face. Such was the origin of Christianity, as compared with the all-subduing and world-convulsing sway of the conquering nations of preceding ages.
In the last years of Augustus, the first deified Emperor--occurs the birth of our Saviour in the time of Tiberius, the foundation of the Christian religion;--and in the reign of Nero, the first perfectly authentic record of that great event in the Roman history. There is indeed an account which says that, previously, Tiberius, on the report of the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, had received information of the new religion, and had made a formal proposal to the Senate to place Christ among the G.o.ds, according to the Roman custom, and to declare him worthy of divine honours. It is true indeed, that the single testimony of Tertullian, on which this account rests, is not of such weight and historical importance as not to be obnoxious to many serious doubts, which perhaps however, have been carried somewhat too far. It still remains a clear historical testimony on a matter of fact; and as long as this is susceptible of a natural explanation, it argues a perverse spirit of historical criticism, or rather a total absence of all criticism, to be ever suspecting fabrications, and supposit.i.tious writings. That an account of this great event might, nay must almost necessarily, have been transmitted to Rome by the Roman Procurator of the province of Judea, is proved by the narrative of Tacitus, who connects the name of this governor with the first mention of the Christians. Such an account may have been easily sent even by the Roman captains, who were in Palestine, and one of whom we know, as an eye-witness, gave such a memorable testimony in favour of the Son of G.o.d, who had died upon the cross; for, according to the general tradition of the church, this man afterwards became a Christian. There is again in the character of Tiberius nothing at all at variance with this account; for however dark, and mistrustful, and cruel, and corrupt might be the character of that Emperor, we cannot deny he was possessed of a powerful and profound understanding. He was by no means unsusceptible of religious impressions, nor indifferent on matters of religion; but he followed therein his own peculiar views and opinions; and hence it is quite natural that his attention should be easily drawn to any extraordinary religious event. He detested, and even persecuted the Egyptian idolatry, and the Jewish worship, and ordered that the sacerdotal robes and sacred vessels of their priests should be burned.
He had a strong faith in destiny, was somewhat addicted to astrology, and dreaded signs in the heavens. If his hostility towards the Jews and his persecution of that nation, be alledged as an objection to the truth of this narrative, (as if it were absolutely necessary that he should have confounded the Christians with the Jews); we may reply that this is a purely arbitrary hypothesis, and that it is far more natural to conclude that, when Tiberius had received from Pilate, or other Roman captains, certain intelligence of the life and death of our Saviour, he was no doubt informed by these eye-witnesses of the hatred and persecution which our Saviour had sustained from the Jews. The single fact indeed, that Christianity was so much opposed to the Pagan worship and the political idolatry of the Romans--as for instance to the sacrifice before the image of the Emperor--was in all probability not stated nor clearly explained in this first account, composed by persons very little acquainted with the true nature of the new Revelation.
Otherwise such an account would have produced on a man imbued with Roman prejudices no other impression but that of aversion and disgust. The idea and proposal itself of regarding an extraordinary man endowed with wonderful and divine power, at G.o.d and as worthy of divine honours, has nothing at all improbable in itself, or at all inconsistent with Roman rites and usages, of with Roman opinions respecting G.o.ds and deified men. The only thing really improbable in the whole affair, is that the Senate of that time should have dared to oppose and contradict Tiberius in this matter. However, if the Senate, as we may easily imagine, were hostile to the proposal of Tiberius, it was easy for them to adopt some evasive form, and indirectly to impede and set aside this matter, which as it regarded old national rites, fell entirely within their jurisdiction. But this circ.u.mstance, as we said before, is the only thing which appears at all exaggerated in this account. It is easy to understand from this how the proposition of Tiberius, which was never carried into execution should have fallen into complete oblivion, and should never have come to the knowledge of Tacitus; as we may conclude, from his account of the Christians, that he would not otherwise have suffered this circ.u.mstance to pa.s.s unnoticed. Singular and remarkable as this fact may be, it is of no importance in itself; it forms only a single incident in the strange and contradictory impressions which the new religion produced on the minds of the Romans. A pa.s.sage of Suetonius, in his history of Claudius, would show that the Christians were confounded with the Jews, for, speaking of that Emperor, he says, "he expelled the Jews from the Capital, for, at the instigation of _Chrestus_, they were ever exciting troubles in the state." _Chrestus_ in the Greek p.r.o.nunciation, has the same sound with Christus; and we may easily conceive that what the Christians said of their invisible Lord and Master, that he interdicted them such and such Pagan rites, may in a matter so totally strange and unintelligible to the Romans, have been easily misunderstood, as applying to a chief and party-leader actually in existence. In the same way, by the troubles spoken of in the pa.s.sage above cited, may be understood the accustomed and just refusal of the Christians to comply with the illicit demands of the Pagans.
A fuller light is thrown on this subject by the narrative of Tacitus in his history of Nero; and, however much the Christian religion may be misrepresented by the Roman historian, his account has still a character thoroughly historical, and amidst its very misrepresentations, is perfectly intelligible, if we take care to distinguish the chief historical traits. When Nero, at the height of his crimes and presumption had set Rome on fire, in order to have a lively and dramatic spectacle of the burning of Troy, he afterwards strove to screen himself from the odium of this misdeed, and to throw the blame entirely upon the Christians, who must have been then tolerably numerous in Rome. Tacitus thinks they were not the authors of the conflagration laid to their charge; and his feelings revolt at the inhuman cruelties which Nero inflicted upon them; but, he adds, many horrible things were said of them, and that it was known in particular they were animated by sentiments of hatred towards the whole human race. That we are to understand by this hatred towards the human race nothing more than that rigid rejection by the Christians of all the idolatrous rites, maxims and doctrines of the Heathen world, is perfectly evident of itself.
Among the horrible things, of which the Christians were accused, we are in all probability to understand _the repasts of Thyestes_, for their enemies make use of that very term in their accusations;--accusations which were received with eager credulity by a populace that held them in abhorrence. Although this charge was no doubt afterwards the effect of malicious calumny, and deliberate falsehood, yet it is very possible that a gross misconception may originally have given rise to it, and that this accusation, egregiously false as it was, proceeded from an obscure and confused knowledge of the mystery of the holy sacrifice, and of the reception of the Sacrament in that divine feast of love solemnized in the Christian a.s.semblies.
Even in the official report, which the better and well-meaning younger Pliny transmitted to Trajan in the year 120, while he was governor of Pontus and Bithynia, we can clearly discern the embarra.s.sment of the generous Roman, who was at a loss how to consider the new religion, so perfectly mysterious and totally inexplicable did it appear to him; and who in consequence was quite undetermined what he was to do, and how he was to treat the matter. He writes that, according to the confessions wrung from the Christians by torture, after the Roman custom, they were found to entertain an excessive, strange, heterogeneous, an very perverse, faith of superst.i.tion; but that in other respects they were people of irreproachable morals, and who on a certain day of the week, Sunday, a.s.sembled in the morning to sing the praises of their G.o.d Christ, and to engage themselves to the fulfilment of the most important precepts of virtue, and that they met again in the evening to enjoy a simple and blameless repast. He adds that their numbers had already increased to such an extent that the altars of Paganism were nearly abandoned; and that a great number of women, boys and children belonged to their sect. He is at a loss to know, with respect to the latter, whether he should make any difference in the degree of punishment which, it appears, they have inevitably incurred under the old Roman laws against all societies and fraternities not sanctioned by the state; and on this subject he demands further instructions from the emperor, in this memorable official letter, which is still extant, and contains the most ancient portrait of the Christians drawn by a Roman hand.
Thus then, in this period of the world, in this decisive crisis between ancient and modern times, in this great central point of history, stood two powers opposed to each other:--on one hand, we behold Tiberius, Caligula and Nero, the earthly G.o.ds, and absolute masters of the world, in all the pomp and splendor of ancient paganism--standing, as it were, on the very summit and verge of the old world, now tottering to its ruin:--and, on the other hand, we trace the obscure rise of an almost imperceptible point of Light, from which the whole modern world was to spring, and whose further progress and full development, through all succeeding ages, const.i.tutes the true purport of _modern history_.
END OF VOL. I.
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