CHAPTER XXII.
EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM—HISTORIC.
ROME.
Vigor of the Early Romans — their Virtues and Vices; their Rigorous Laws; their Defective Education; their Contempt of Labor. — Slavery: its Horrors and Brutalizing Influence. — Education Confined to the Arts of Politics and War; it transformed Courage into Cruelty, and Fortitude into Stoicism. — Robbery and Bribery. — The Vices of Greece and Carthage imported into Rome. — Slaves construct all the great Public Works; they Revolt, and the Legions Slaughter them. — The Gothic Invasion. — Rome Falls. — False Philosophy and Superficial Education promoted Selfishness. — Deification of Abstractions, and Scorn of Men and Things. — Universal Moral Degradation. — Neglect of Honest Men and Promotion of Demagogues. — The Decline of Morals and Growth of Literature. — Darwin’s Law of Reversion, through Selfishness, to Savagery. — Contest between the Rich and the Poor. — Logic, Rhetoric, and Ruin.
In the city of the Seven Hills there was no statue to Pity, as at Athens. In the long line of Roman conquerors there was no one possessing the title to fame, of which, on his death-bed, Pericles boasted, namely, that “no Athenian had ever worn mourning on his account.”
The dominion of Rome was logical. In the legend of Romulus and Remus, suckled by the she-wolf, there is a hint of the rugged vigor which characterized the Roman people, and distinguished them from the earlier nationalities. In all the civilizations anterior to that of Rome there was an element of pliability or softness which belongs to the youth of man. But from the day on which Romulus, with the brazen ploughshare, drew a furrow around the Palatine, both the sinews and the souls of his followers hardened into maturity. The rising walls of the city, so the legend runs, were moistened with the life-drops of Remus, whose derisive remark and act cost him his life, his slayer exclaiming, haughtily, “So perish all who dare to climb these ramparts.” The rape of the Sabines, the conflicts which ensued with that outraged people, their incorporation with the conquerors, their subsequent joint conquests, and the shrewdness displayed in the conservation of the fruits of victory—these events show that man had attained his majority. Under the shadow of the walls of the Eternal City all the great races were associated and mingled—Latins, Trojans, Greeks, Sabines, and Etruscans. The Roman civilization was the product of all that had gone before, as it was destined to be the father of all that should follow it. The Roman had no peer either in courage or fortitude. Aspiring to universal dominion, he toughened himself to achieve it. Dooming his enemy to death or slavery, he was not less self-exacting, his own life, through the cup of poison, the sword, or the opened vein, becoming the forfeit equally of misfortune and shame. The tragic fate of Lucretia, the resulting revolution, the banishment of the Tarquins, and the abolition of the kingly government show the swiftness of Roman retribution and the terrible force of Roman resolution. Roman persistence in the path of conquest for many centuries is typified by Cato in his invocation of destruction upon Carthage. The masculine character of the Roman vices finds illustration in the struggle of Appius, the Decemvir, to possess the person of Virginia by wresting the law from its true purpose, the conservation of justice, and converting it into a shield for lust; and the vigor of Roman virtue is exemplified in the act of Virginius plunging the knife into the heart of his beloved daughter to save her honor. The rigorous laws of Rome testify to the stamina of her people. The father to whom a deformed son was born must cause the child to be put to death, and any citizen might kill the man who betrayed the design of becoming king.
A scientific system of education would have conserved and developed the noble and eliminated the ignoble traits of Roman character. But neither Roman education, philosophy, nor ethics inculcated either respect for labor or reverence for human rights; and hence the laborer was reduced to slavery, and the slave made the victim of every known atrocity. Slavery became the corner-stone of the Roman State, and slavery and labor were synonymous terms. The Roman supply of laborers was maintained by depopulating conquered countries. In the train of the legions, returning to Rome in triumph, there were not only statues, paintings, and other works of art, but thousands of men, women, and children destined to slavery. And the laws in regard to slaves were terrible, as laws touching slavery must always be—for a state of slavery is a state of war. It was a law of Rome that if a slave murdered his master the whole family of slaves should be put to death; and Tacitus relates an instance of the execution of four hundred slaves for the murder of a citizen, their master. In the course of the servile rebellion in Sicily a million slaves were killed; and it should be borne in mind that they were valuable laborers—many of them skilled artisans. Vast numbers of them were exposed to wild beasts in the arena, for the popular amusement. The rebellion of the gladiators was put down only by a resort to awful atrocities, among which was the crucifixion of prisoners. The revolt of the allies was quelled at the cost of half a million lives. But slaves were plenty, for Rome had her bloody hand at the throat of all mankind, and her hoarse cry was, “Your life or your liberty!”
Every Roman freeman was a soldier, and the cultivation of the land, manufactures, and all the pursuits of industry, were carried on by slaves. Slave labor was cheaper than the labor of animals; cattle were taken from the plough and slaughtered for beef that slaves—men—might take their places. Labor fell to the lowest degree of contempt, and the laborer was a thing to be spurned—for the free citizen to labor with his hands was more disgraceful than to die of starvation. Hence there was a class of citizen paupers to whom largesses of corn were doled out by the demagogues of the Senate and the army. Ultimately these citizen-paupers became so vile and filthy that they engendered leprosy and other loathsome diseases, as they dragged their palsied limbs through the streets of the city, crying, “Bread and circuses! bread and circuses!”
Roman education was confined almost exclusively to the training of the sons of rich citizens in the arts of politics and war; and in a State where labor was despised, and whose corner-stone was slavery, and whose shibboleth was conquest, the baseness of these arts may be imagined but hardly described. It promoted selfishness, and in the course of centuries selfishness transformed Roman courage into cruelty, and Roman fortitude into brutal stoicism. The Roman sense of justice was swallowed up in Roman lust of power. Rome became the great robber nation of the world. She was on the land what Greece had once been on the sea—a pirate. She made the streets of the cities she conquered run with blood. Thousands of captives she doomed to death; other thousands graced the triumphs of her generals, and the spoil saved from the fury of the flames, and the more ungovernable fury of the licentious soldiery, was carried home to the Eternal City, there to fall into the hands of the most cunning among the demagogues, for use in the bribery of courts, senators, and the populace.
Tacitus deplored the decline of public virtue. He declared, mournfully, that “Nothing was sacred, nothing safe from the hand of rapacity.” His environment blinded him to the true cause of the depravity he so eloquently deplored—selfishness. Had he been familiar with the inductive method he would have found in a defective system of education the cause of Roman venality and corruption. He might thus have realized the weakness of a community of men who wanted the necessary force and virtue to depose a Tiberius and elevate to his place a Germanicus; or to dethrone a Domitian and crown in his stead an Agricola.
Education in Rome deified selfishness, and hence realized its last analysis—total depravity. Of course nothing was sacred in a community where men were ruthlessly trampled underfoot! Of course nothing was “safe from the hand of rapacity” where the laborer was degraded to a place in the social scale below the leprous pauper whose filthy person provoked disgust, and whose poisonous breath, as he cried for bread, spread abroad disease and death!
It was inevitable that the nation that grew rich through plunder should grow poor in public and private virtue. And such was the fact. The eagles that protected robbers abroad, spread their sheltering wings over defaulters, bribers, and thieves at home. There had been a time in Rome when bribery was punishable with death, but now candidates for office sat at tables in the streets near the polling-places and openly paid the citizens for their votes. The change in the habits of the people was as pronounced as the change in the laws. The early triumphs of the Romans were industrial—flocks and herds; their trophies, obtained in single combat, consisted of spears and helmets. When Cincinnatus was sent for to assume the dictatorship he was found in his field following the plough. Valerius, four times consul, and by Livy characterized as the first man of his time, died so poor that he had to be buried at the public charge. But with the fall of Greece and Carthage, and the reduction of Asia, there was a great social change at Rome. The Roman legions not only carried home the wealth of the countries they conquered but the vices of the peoples they subdued. An ancient writer summarizes the situation in the following graphic sentence: “The only fashionable principles were to acquire wealth by every means of avarice and injustice, and to dissipate it by every method of luxury and profusion.”