(1811-1894)
uruy, whose monumental works upon Grecian and Roman history have been worthily reproduced in England under the editorship of Professor Mahaffy, and in America in sumptuous illustrated editions, was a figure of the first importance both in the educational and in the distinctly literary history of France, throughout nearly half the present century. He became one of the "Immortals" in 1884, succeeding to the chair of Mignet; but his 'History of Ancient Greece,' which was published in 1862, had been already crowned by the Academy. His more extensive 'History of the Grecian People,' published in 1885-1887, won from the Academy the Jean Renaud prize of 10,000 francs.
Jean Victor Duruy
He was born September 11th, 1811, of a family employed in the Gobelins tapestry works in Paris. His predilection for study secured him an opportunity to enter the College of Sainte-Barbe, whence he passed to the Normal School.
When he was twenty-two he began teaching history, first at Rheims, and then in the College of Henry IV. in Paris. Here he began his literary work, mostly upon school-books, of which he wrote many, mainly historical and geographical. He received the degree of Doctor of Letters in 1853, and became successively Inspector of the Academy of Paris, Master of Conferences at the Normal School, Professor of History at the Polytechnic School, and Inspector-General of Secondary Instruction. During the whole of this period he had been engaged with secondary classes, and had become strongly impressed by the faulty condition of the primary and secondary schools. In 1863 Louis Napoleon put him at the head of the educational system of the empire as Minister of Public Instruction. This appointment gave him the opportunity to carry out numerous and important secularizing reforms which brought him into sharp collision with the clerical party. He held his post as minister for six years—six years of struggle with the parsimonious disposition of the administration upon the one hand, and with the hostile clericals upon the other.
The measures in which he was especially interested were the reorganization of the Museum of Natural History, the extension of scientific study, the introduction of the study of modern and contemporary history in the lyceums (a dreadful experiment, according to his opponents), gratuitous and compulsory primary education, the improvement of the night schools, and popular classes for adults. He was to a large extent successful in all these, except in the direction of compulsory education. The efforts which he made to improve the instruction given to young girls brought upon him the tempest. The bishops, with Monsignor Dupanloup of Orléans at their head, raised a veritable crusade, and Pope Pio Nono himself at length entered the hostile ranks. Probably in part because of this conflict, he was superseded in 1869 and was made a member of the Senate, from which he retired to private life, and the prosecution of his literary labors on the fall of the empire, in the following year. He died in 1894.
As an author his style is clear and direct. Among his numerous works the most important are the two great histories, for which, as for other achievements, honors were heaped upon him. In these he laid particular stress upon the milieu—the conditions of place, time, and race. Consequently he has therein written the history of the Greek and Roman peoples, and not merely the history of Greece and Rome,—and has pictured them, so far as possible, as they looked and felt and thought and acted. He exhibits, for example, the growth of the magnificent power of Rome, and its decadence; and shows the all-conquering empire subdued to the manners, the gods, and the institutions of the conquered. And worse:—"They had become enamored of the arts, the letters, and the philosophy of Greece, and dying Greece had avenged itself by transmitting to them the corruption which had dishonored its old age."
The drift of his argument appears in this paragraph, in which he sums up his story of the Eternal City:—"In the earlier portion of its history may be seen the happy effects of a progressively liberal policy; in the later the baneful consequences of absolute power, governing a servile society through a venal administration."
THE NATIONAL POLICY
From the 'History of Rome'
The Roman power, till then confined to the West, was now to penetrate into another universe,—that of the successors of Alexander. The eternal glory of Rome, the immense benefaction by which she effaces the memory of so many unjust wars, is to have reunited those two worlds that in all former ages were divided in interest, and strangers to each other; is to have mingled and fused the brilliant but corrupt civilization of the East with the barbaric energy of the West. The Mediterranean became a Roman lake,—mare nostrum, they said,—and the same life circulated on all its shores, called for the first and the last time to a common existence.
In this work were employed a century and a half of struggles and diplomacy; for Rome, working for a patient aristocracy and not for a man, was not compelled to attain her end at a bound. Instead of rearing suddenly one of those colossal monarchies formed like the statue of gold with feet of clay, she founded slowly an empire which fell only under the weight of years and of the Northern hordes. After Zama she could have attempted the conquest of Africa, but she left Carthage and the Numidians to enfeeble each other. After Cynoscephalæ and Magnesia, Greece and Asia were all ready for the yoke, but she accorded them fifty years more of liberty. This was because, along with the pride of the Roman name and the necessity for dominion, she always retained some of her ancient virtues. The Popiliuses were more numerous than the Verreses. Now she preferred to rule the world; later she will put it to pillage. Thus, wherever Rome saw strength she sent her legions; all power was broken; the ties of States and leagues were shattered; and when her soldiers were recalled they left behind them only weakness and anarchy. But the task of the legions accomplished, that of the Senate began. After force came craft and diplomacy. Those senators, grown old amidst the terrors of the second Punic war, seemed now to have less pleasure in arms than in the game of politics,—the first, in all ages, of Italian arts.
Several other causes dictated this policy of reserve. Against the Gauls, the Samnites, Pyrrhus, and Hannibal,—in other words, for the defense of Latium and of Italy,—Rome had employed all her strength; it was then a question of her existence: whereas, in the wars with Greece and with Asia, her ambition and her pride alone were interested; and wisdom demanded that some relaxation be given to the plebeians and the allies. The Senate had moreover too many affairs on its hands—the wars with Spain, with Corsica, with Cisalpina, and with Istria—to admit of its becoming deeply involved in the East. Therefore two legions only will fight Philip and Antiochus—that will suffice to conquer, but would be too little to despoil them. Furthermore, the Senate believed that in penetrating into this Greek world, where an old glory concealed so much weakness, they could not accord too much to prudence. These pitiless enemies of the Volscians and the Samnites will not proceed in their next wars by exterminating their adversaries and wasting their country. "It was not with such a purpose," said they, "that they came to pour out their blood; they took in hand the cause of oppressed Greece." And that language and that policy they will not change after victory. The first act of Flamininus, on the day after Cynoscephalæ, was to proclaim the liberty of the Greeks. All who bore that respected name seemed to have the right to Roman protection; and the little Greek cities of Caria, and of the coasts of Asia and Thrace, received with astonishment their liberty from a people that they hardly knew. All were captivated by this apparent generosity. None perceived that in restoring independence to the cities and States, Rome wished to break up the confederations that sought to reorganize and would perhaps have given new force to Greece. In isolating them and attaching them to herself by grateful ties, she placed them almost insensibly under her influence. She made allies of them; and every one knows what the allies of Rome became. Thus the Senate was so well satisfied with this policy, which created division everywhere and awakened extinct rivalries, that for half a century it followed no other.
RESULTS OF THE ROMAN DOMINION
From the 'History of Rome'
Although in literature Rome was but the echo of Greece, she civilized all the Western world, for which the Greeks had done nothing. Her language, out of which sprang the various languages of the Romance nations, is in case of need a means of communication among scholars of all countries, and her books will always remain—a wise selection being made—the best for the higher culture of the mind. They have merited above all others the title of litteræ humaniores, the literature by which men are made. A cardinal, reading the 'Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius' (written in Greek, it is true, but written by a Roman), exclaimed, "My soul blushes redder than my scarlet at sight of the virtues of this Gentile."
Suppose Rome destroyed by Pyrrhus or Hannibal, before Marius and Cæsar had driven the German tribes back from Gaul: their invasion would have been effected five centuries sooner; and since they would have found opposed to them only other barbarians, what a long night would have settled down upon the world!
It is true that when the Roman people had laid hands upon the treasures of Alexander's successors, the scandal of their orgies exceeded for a century anything that the East had ever seen; that their amusements were sanguinary games or licentious plays; that the Roman mind, after receiving a temporary benefit from Greek philosophy, went astray in Oriental mysticism; and that finally, after having loved liberty, Rome accepted despotism, as if willing to astonish the world as much by her great corruption as she did by the greatness of her empire.
But can we say that no other age or nation has known servility of soul, licentiousness in public amusements, and the conspicuous depravity in morals that is always to be seen where indolence and wealth are united?
To the legacies left by Rome which have now been enumerated, we must add another, which ranks among the most precious. Notwithstanding the poetic piety of Virgil, and Livy's official credulity, the dominant note of Latin literature is the indifference of Horace, when it is not the daring skepticism of Lucretius. To Cicero, Seneca, Tacitus, and the great jurisconsults, the prime necessity was the free possession of themselves, that independence of philosophic thought which they owed to Greece. This spirit, begotten of pure reason, was almost stifled during the Middle Ages. It reappeared when antiquity was recovered. From that day the renascent world set forward again; and in the new path France, heir of Athens and of Rome, was long her guide—for art in its most charming form, and for thought, developed in the light.
Upon a medal of Constantine his son presents to him a globe surmounted by a phœnix, symbol of immortality. For once the courtiers were not in the wrong. The sacred bird which springs from her own ashes is a fitting emblem of this old Rome, dead fifteen centuries ago, yet alive to-day through her genius: Siamo Romani.