The World's Greatest Books - Volume 11 Part 19

The pope was driven to revive the western empire in order to secure the gift of the exarchy, to eradicate the claims of the Greeks, and to restore the majesty of Rome from the debas.e.m.e.nt of a provincial town.

The emperors of the West would receive their crown from the successor of St. Peter, and the Roman Church would require a zealous and respectable advocate.

Inspired by these motives, Pope Leo, who had nearly fallen a victim to a conspiracy (788), and had been saved and reinstated by Charlemagne, took the opportunity presented by the French king's visit to Rome to crown him emperor. On the festival of Christmas (800), in the church of St.

Peter, Leo, after the celebration of the Holy Mysteries, suddenly placed a precious crown on his head. The dome resounded with the acclamations of the people, his head and body were consecrated with the royal unction, and he was saluted, or adored, by the pontiff after the example of the Caesars.

Europe dates a new era from his restoration of the western empire.

THEODOR MOMMSEN

History of Rome

Theodor Mommsen was born at Garding in Schleswig on November 30, 1817. He studied at Kiel University for three years, examined Roman inscriptions in France and Italy from 1844 to 1847, and attained his first professors.h.i.+p at Leipzig in 1848, and the Berlin Chair of Ancient History in 1858. His greatest work was the "History of Rome," published in 1854, and its successor, the "Roman Provinces." On this work he brought to bear a research and a scholars.h.i.+p of almost unparalleled range and completeness. He was a man capable of vehement and occasionally unreasonable partisans.h.i.+p, and a strict and cold-blooded impartiality would have tempered the enthusiasm of some of his portraits and the severity of others. These defects, however, are less obvious when his history is condensed in small compa.s.s. There are cases in which his judgments are open to adverse criticism. But at the present day it may safely be affirmed that there is no extant history of Rome down to the establishment of the empire which can be regarded as rivalling that here presented. Upwards of 900 separate publications remain as a monument of Mommsen's industry. He died on November 1, 1903.

Iapygians, Etruscans, and Italians, the last certainly Indo-Europeans, are the original stocks of Italy proper. Of the Italians there are two divisions, the Latin and the Umbro-Sabellian. Central Italy was occupied by the Latins, who were established in cantons formed of village groups; which cantons at an early age formed themselves into the loose Latin League, with Alba at its head.

The Roman canton, on both banks of the Tiber, concentrated itself on the city earlier than others. The citizens consisted of the families which const.i.tuted the larger groups of clans or gentes, formed into those tribes. The remainder of the population were their dependents or slaves.

At the head of the family was the father, and the whole community had its king, standing to it in the same relation as the father to the family. His power, within the law, was absolute; but he could not override it or change it on his own authority. This required the formal a.s.sent of the a.s.sembled citizens. The heads of the clans formed a separate body--the Senate--which controlled the appointment of the king, and could veto legislation.

By admission of aliens and absorption of other communities, swelling the number of dependents, was gradually created a great body of plebeians, non-citizens, who began to demand political rights; and whom it was necessary to organise for military purposes which was done by the "Servian Const.i.tution." Gradually Rome won a supremacy in the Latin League, a position of superiority over the aggregate of the other cantons.

In this community arose three political movements: (1) On the part of the full citizen, patricii, to limit the power not of the state, but of the kings; (2) of the non-citizens, to acquire political rights; (3) of antagonism between the great landholders and the land-interests opposed to them. The first resulted in the expulsion of the monarchs, and the subst.i.tution of a dual kings.h.i.+p held for one year only. But in many respects their joint power was curtailed as compared with that of the monarch, while for emergencies they could appoint a temporary dictator.

The change increased the power of the General a.s.sembly, to which it became necessary to admit the non-citizen freeholders who were liable to military duties. The life tenure of the members of the Senate greatly increased the powers of that body, and intensified the antagonism of the patriarch and the plebeians.

At the same time, a landed n.o.bility was developing; and when fresh land was acquired by the state, the Patricians claimed to control it. But the great agricultural population could not submit to this process of land absorption, and the consequent strife took the form of a demand for political recognition, which issued in the appointment of Tribunes of the Plebs, with power of administrative veto.

The struggle over privileges lasted for two hundred years. First the Canuleian law made marriage valid between patricians and plebeians, and inst.i.tuted for a time military tribunes. The Licinian law, eighty years later, admitted plebeians to the consuls.h.i.+p, and also required the employment of free labour in agriculture. The decisively democratic measure was the Horticunian law, after another seventy years, giving the exclusively plebeian a.s.sembly full legislative power. The practical effect of the changes was to create a new aristocracy, semi-plebeian in origin, and to reduce the personal power of the chief officers of state, while somewhat increasing that of the remodelled Senate; rendering it a body selfish indeed in internal matters, but essentially patriotic as well as powerful.

_I.--The Description of Italy_

During the period of this long const.i.tutional struggle, Rome and her kinsfolk had first been engaged in a stubborn and ultimately successful contest with the non-Aryan Etruscan race; and then Italy had been attacked by the migrating Aryan hordes of the Celts, known as Gauls, who sacked Rome, but retired to North Italy; events giving birth to many well-known stories, probably in the main mythical. But the practical effect was to impose a greater solidarity of the Latin and kindred races, and a more decisive acceptance of Roman hegemony.

That hegemony, however, had to be established by persistent compulsion, and there were three stages in its completion. First, the subjection of the Latins and Campanians; then the struggle of Rome with the Umbrian-Samnites; finally, the decisive repulse of the Epirote invader Pyrrhus--in effect a h.e.l.lenic movement. The Roman supremacy established through the exhaustion of the valiant Samnites required to be confirmed by stern repression of attempts to recover liberty. But the h.e.l.lenic element in Italy, antagonistic to the growing Roman power, in effect invited the intervention of the Epirote chief. But his scheme was not that of an imperial statesman, but of a chivalrous and romantic warrior.

His own political blunders and the iron determination of the Romans, destroyed his chances of conquest. His retirement left Rome undisputed lord of Italy; which in part shared full citizens.h.i.+p, in part possessed only the more restricted Latin rights, and in part only rights conceded under varying treaties.

A sense of common Italian nationality was developing. But if Rome was queen of Italy, Carthage was queen of the seas. Maritime expansion was precluded, though Rome's position fitted her for it. Carthage was the one Phoenician state which developed political as well as commercial power. The commercial cities of North Africa were in subordination to her, in the Western Mediterranean she had no rivals, her domestic government was oligarchical.

Roman intervention in the affairs of Sicily, where Carthage was the dominant power, produced the rupture between the two great states which was bound to come sooner or later. Sicily itself was the scene of the initial struggle, which taught Rome that her victories on land were liable to be nullified by the Carthaginian sea power. She resolved to build a navy, on the plan of adopting boarding tactics which would a.s.similate a naval engagement to a battle on land. These tactics were successful enough to equalise the fighting value of the respective fleets. The Romans were enabled to land an invading army under Regulus in Africa.

Though superior on land, the general's blundering led to a disaster, and for some time misfortune by sea and failure by land dogged the Romans.

But Carthage failed to use her opportunity; she did not attempt to strike a crus.h.i.+ng blow when she could have done so. But the private energy of Roman patriots at last placed on the seas a fleet which once more turned the scale, whereas it was on land that the brilliant Carthaginian Hamilcar had displayed his genius and daring. The first Punic War gave Rome predominance in Sicily, and a position of maritime equality. Sardinia was added to the Roman dominion, and her provincial administration came into being.

She was carrying her expansion farther over Celtic regions, when Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar, hurled himself against her, and came near to destroying her. Hamilcar had conceived the idea of imperial expansion, and given it shape by creating a dominion in Spain; he had looked forward to the life-and-death struggle with Rome that was destined to his son; for which Spain was to be the base. Hannibal, left in control in Spain, deliberately challenged Rome to war.

The challenge was accepted, war was declared, and Hannibal accomplished the amazing feat of leading an army of 60,000 men from Spain and effecting the pa.s.sage of the Alps, while the Romans were landing an army in Spain. In a brilliant campaign, he defeated the stubborn Roman legions at Vercellae and the Trebia.

But success depended not on the winning of victories by an isolated force, but on the disruption of Italy. His superiority in the field was again demonstrated at Trasimenus, but no Italian allies came in. He outwitted Fabius, and then utterly shattered at Cannae a Roman force of double his own numbers. For a moment it seemed that Italian cohesion was weakening; but the Roman Senate and people were stirred only to a more dogged resolution.

Cannae failed to break up the Roman confederation. Generals.h.i.+p unaided could accomplish no more. In Spain, where young Scipio was soon winning renown, the Roman arms were in the ascendant, and in Sicily. No effective aid was coming from Macedon, though war was declared between her and Rome. Hannibal's activities began to be paralysed; by slow degrees he was forced into the south. Hannibal succeeded in crossing the Alps with fresh forces, but by a brilliant operation was annihilated on the Metaurus. The time had come when Scipio could disregard Hannibal and strike at Carthage herself. Even Hannibal's return could not save her. The victory of Zama decided the issue. Carthage became virtually a tributary and subject state. Spain was a Roman province, and North Africa a sort of protectorate.

The threatening extension of Macedonian power now demanded the protecting intervention of Rome; an honest act of liberation for the Greeks, but entailing presently the war with Antiochus of Syria.

Antiochus had left Phillip and Macedon in the lurch; now he sought to impose his own yoke in place of theirs. The practical outcome was his decisive overthrow at the battle of Magnesia, and the cession to Rome of Asia Minor. Pergamus, under the house of Actalus, was established as a protected kingdom, as Numidia under Masinissa had been. The Greek states, however, were becoming conscious that their freedom was hardly more than a name; Perseus of Macedon once more challenged Rome, not without Greek support. Macedon was finally crushed by Aemilius Paullus at Pydna. From that moment, Rome dropped the policy of maintaining free states beyond the seas, which had manifestly failed. Virtually, the known world was divided into subjects and dependencies of Rome, so vast was the change in the forty years between the battles of the Metaurus and Pydna.

Rapid extension of dominion by conquest had demoralising results; the ruling race was exposed to strong temptations in the provinces, and the city remained the seat of government, while the best of the burgesses were distributed elsewhere. Hence, the popular a.s.sembly became virtually the city mob, while the ruling families tended more and more to form a close and greedy and plutocratic oligarchy. The demoralisation was very inadequately checked by the austerity of the censors.h.i.+p as exercised by Cato.

In the provinces, the Spanish natives revolted, and were only repressed after severe fighting. In Greece, Asia and Africa, the Roman rule gave neither freedom nor strong government. In Africa, the disturbances led to the wiping out of Carthage; in Greece to the complete subjection of the dependent states; in the Far East, a new Parthian power arose under Mithridates. The Mediterranean was allowed to be infested by pirates.

Revolution was at hand. Politics had become reduced to a process of intrigue for office emoluments, involving a pandering to the city mob for its suffrages.

_II.--The Revolution_

Socially, the most patent evil was the total disappearance of the free agricultural cla.s.s, the absorption of all the land into huge estates under slave labour. The remedy proposed by Tiberius Gracchus was the partial state resumption of land and its re-allotment. He adopted unconst.i.tutional methods for carrying his proposals, and was murdered in a riot led by the oligarchs. Appeals to the Roman populace were not, unfortunately, appeals to the Roman nation.

His brother, Gaius, deliberately designed a revolution. He proposed to work through the antagonism of the aristocrats and the wealthy non-senatorial equestrian order; and by concentrating power in the hands of the tribunate, hitherto checked by the restrictions on re-election.

In effect, he meant to destroy the oligarchy by making the Tribune a perpetual dictator, and thus to carry through social reforms; to establish also legal equality first for the Italians, then for the provinces also. But these reforms were not particularly attractive to the city mob, and the other side could play the demagogue. The condition of Caesarism is the control of physical force; Gaius Gracchus fell because he had not that essential control. The oligarchy remained supreme. The plans of Gracchus for planting colonies and distributing allotments were nullified.

The evils of slave labour multiplied, and issued in servile insurrections. In Numidia, the able Masimissa had been succeeded by Micipsa. On Micipsa's death, the rule was usurped by his illegitimate nephew Jugurtha, whose story has been told by Sall.u.s.t. The war was at least terminated less by the low-born general in command, Marius, than his brilliant lieutenant Sulla. But Marius re-organised the army on the basis which was to make a military despotism practicable, as it made a professional instead of a citizen army.

But now a new foe appears; the first Teutonic (not Celtic) hordes of the Cimbri and Teutones; to meet with an overwhelming check at the hands of Marius at Aquae s.e.xtiae and Vercellae. The successful soldier allied himself with the popular leader Saturninus; the programme of Gaius Gracchus was resuscitated. But Marius, a political incapable, separated from the demagogues, and by helping to crush them, effaced himself.

Livius Drusus attempted to carry out the Gracchan social reform, with the senate instead of the tribunate as the controlling power; the senatorial party themselves wrecked his schemes, and the antagonistic power of the equestrian order was advanced.

But the immediate outcome was the revolt of the Italians, the _socii_ (whence the name social war). They were not citizens, not on an equal footing with the citizens before the law. The revolt was suppressed, but the legions were completely out of hand. The attempt of Sulpicius to head the reform movement was answered by Sulla, who for the first time led a Roman army against Rome, crushed Sulpicius, prescribed some of his adherents, and placed the power of the senate on a stronger footing by legal enactment. Then he went to the East, to conduct the war against Mithridates.

While Sulla was conducting his operations, military and diplomatic, with skill and success in the East, his arrangements at Rome had left discontent and disappointment seething. There was another revolution, led by Cinna, Marius and Sertorius; it mastered Rome. Marius spilt seas of blood, but soon died. For three years Cinna was supreme, but he had no constructive policy.

But now Sulla had finished his work in the East. He was returning at the head of a body of veterans devoted to him; and his diplomacy won over half Italy to his side. The struggle with the revolutionary government was not greatly prolonged, and it was decisive.

In plain terms, the Roman const.i.tution had gone utterly to wreck; Sulla was in something of the same position as Oliver Cromwell. He had to reconstruct under conditions which made a const.i.tutional restoration impracticable; but his control of the efficient military force gave him the necessary power. That any system introduced must be arbitrary and find its main sanction in physical force--that it should partake of terrorism--was inevitable.

Sulla obtained the formal conferment on himself of absolute power. He began by applying this rule of terror not vindictively, but with impersonal mercilessness, against the lives and property of the opposition. In the const.i.tution which he promulgated the senatorial body was alone recognised as a privileged cla.s.s; the senate itself was increased, it recovered full control of the judiciary and of legislation; no power was left of cancelling members.h.i.+p. The tribunician power was curtailed.

The civil and military functions of consuls and praetors were separated.

They were to hold civil power in Italy proper during their year of office; they were then to have a second year in military control of a province. The planting of military colonies provided numerous garrisons whose interests were a.s.sociated with the new const.i.tution. When Sulla had done his work, he resigned his extraordinary powers with entire indifference. In a little more than a year he died.

The Sullan const.i.tution saved the Roman empire from imminent collapse; but it was impossible that it should be more than a makes.h.i.+ft, like Cromwell's protectorate. There were huge cla.s.ses with perpetual grievances; the removal of the military forces to the provinces left the city of Rome without adequate governors of the provinces themselves. And there was no man of the hour of supreme ability to carry on work demanding a master.

_III.--Pompey and Caesar_