I have done my desultory picture of our Romeless world, desultory and imperfect as must be every picture attempted in lectures such as these, the object of which is not the communication of minute knowledge on any point. I am still at the threshold of my work. Some solid work I think I have done in inner chambers with the small and faithful band who follow me, who sometimes guide me, through book after book of the historian of the Franks. But what I have as yet preached, so to speak, on the house-tops has been in its own nature general and desultory. I have not, strictly speaking, been teaching; I have been purposely talking in a way which might call up memories in some and might stir up to inquiry in others. But through the general we make our way to the particular. Next term I trust to make even these more public lectures of a more solid kind. I have run with a swift pace through a general view of the Methods of Historical Study, through a general view of the chief periods of European history. This last series fills up for this year the tale of forty-two lectures which the iron rule of our masters demands from me. With such necessity laid upon me, I should think it savoured of arrogancy and impiety if I ventured on such a voluntary work of supererogation as a forty-third lecture. What the Commissioners deem enough you doubtless deem enough; so to-day I bring my desultory story to an end. In October I hope to begin a more regular course, and to make a path, through a true understanding of the early history of Gaul, to a true understanding of the early history of Britain. And I have one word more to say. Since I came here I have learned several things, I have learned one in particular. I have hitherto always shrunk from crying my own wares, from advertising my own writings. Whenever I have quoted myself or referred to myself, it has been with a feeling of doing something that one should be ashamed of. But I have learned in this place where I now stand, from a colleague who is now no longer a colleague, how very silly such modesty is, and how much better it is to quote oneself and talk of oneself as freely as one quotes and talks about anybody else. I will tell you then that a few years back I gave two courses of lectures on the other side of the Ocean which, I venture to think, contain matter worth reading. I think they contain matter specially worth reading by those who think of following my roundabout course in company, first with the Vandal who crosses the Rhine and afterwards with the Saxon who crosses the sea. They were printed in America; some copies have, I know, found their way into Britain. I must put a bold face on the matter, and say that those who have followed me thus far and who purpose to follow me again in October might spend their Long Vacation worse than in giving some part of it to reading my two courses of Lectures to American audiences, bound up in one not very big volume. You will find in them some things that I have said elsewhere, and, though some seem to think that impossible, some things that I have not said elsewhere. And so I bid you farewell for a few months, finding fault with you in nothing, except that, like most other Professors, I wish there were more of you. But one therefore feels all the more kindly to the elect, the faithful, the little band that watched with Ælfred, the stout hearts that lapped with Gideon, even though they be far from reaching the full tale of three hundred. And so I will end the work of my first academic year, with a wish to see you all and more also on the same benches in October; I part from you with the blessing of the modern Greek, εἰς καλὴν ἀντάμωσιν.
GREEK CITIES UNDER ROMAN RULE.
GREEK CITIES UNDER ROMAN RULE.
I have in various forms tried to point out the special importance which, in the history of the world, belongs to the period which saw the establishment of the dominion of the Roman People over the civilized world of its time, especially over the Hellenic and hellenized lands round the eastern Mediterranean. It is of the first importance for the right understanding of general history to take in the real character of the state of things which was brought about by this gradual establishment of the Roman dominion. It is curious to see how constantly that state of things is misunderstood, from looking at the matter with modern eyes. And it is the more curious when we come to think how very modern the eyes must be which are unable to see the matter correctly. For we have hardly to go out of our own century to find lively images of the state of things which Roman conquest brought about. Yet we are constantly tempted to fancy that the rule of the early Roman Emperors, perhaps that of the Roman Commonwealth before them, was a centralized administration, in which all authority issued from a central power. We are used to the great kingdoms and commonwealths of modern Europe, in which local bodies may enjoy a greater or less degree of local independence, but in which they hold that independence in inherent subordination to the central authority, by virtue of laws passed by the central legislature. The land is divided into counties, departments, provinces, administered according to such rules as the central legislature may think good to lay down. It is true that in our own country the shire is, both in idea and in part of the land in historical fact, older than the kingdom. But in a large part of England the shire is as truly a division of the kingdom as a French department, and where it is not so historically it has become so practically. An English shire, an English borough, has no rights or powers but such as it has derived, in some shape or another, from the central power of the land, by act of Parliament or by royal charter. That central power has the same rights and powers in every corner of the kingdom. I speak of course only of the United Kingdom; as soon as we get beyond its limits, as soon as we enter the Scandinavian kingdom and the Norman duchy which lie so near to it but which form no part of it, so soon we still find ourselves in a state of things which has much in common with the Roman dominion. And if all this is true of the United Kingdom, it is yet more true of states like France and Italy, whose geographical divisions and administrative system have been drawn up as something wholly new in quite modern times. Yet down at least to the end of the last century, in many parts of Germany, of Italy, of Switzerland, of all the lands to which the power of Venice reached, the endless varieties of alliance and subjection between different towns and lands presented the closest analogies to the relations of which I have now to speak. Survivals went on even to our own time. In 1865 a small district was still held in condominium by the two free cities of Lübeck and Hamburg. I passed through it with a feeling as if I had been carried back into some distant age. I presume that since 1866 things are different there.
It is of course perfectly true that, at a later age of the Roman dominion, when the Empire began to change into an acknowledged monarchy—though monarchy is not the proper word for a power which was often held by two or more colleagues—that Empire did come much nearer to the character of a modern centralized state. It was mapped out into administrative divisions, and those divisions were administered according to a general law. But the dominion of Rome, Commonwealth and Empire, had been in being for several ages before this change took place. The elder Roman rule was not the rule, despotic or constitutional, of a man over an united territory; it was the rule of a city over other cities and lands, cities and lands standing to the ruling city in every possible relation, from nominally equal alliance to a subjection hardly better than bondage. That so it should be was the natural result of the way in which the Roman dominion was formed. With the political ideas of the third and second centuries before Christ no other state of things was possible. The way in which the dominion of Rome was formed, the process by which the cities and lands of so large a part of the world passed under the supremacy of one ruling city, has much in common with the further process which the growth of that dominion made inevitable, the submission of Rome herself to the dominion of one or more of her own citizens. In both cases the change was gradual. People often talk of the change from the Republic to the Empire, very much as they talk of the English Reformation, as if it were a definite act which took place in some particular year. Yet all that was characteristic in the Imperial power arose out of its gradual growth, its growth through an union of magistracies and extraordinary commissions which virtually bestowed supreme authority on their holder. Above all, out of the original character of the Empire as an extraordinary commission granted by a vote of the Senate came the fact that the Empire remained for ages without any law of succession. A law prescribing a mode of election and a law prescribing a rule of hereditary succession both assume an ordinary office which must be filled by some one; the Empire was in its origin an extraordinary office which might not be filled at all. A vote, or several votes, of the Senate entrusted a single citizen—or more than one citizen—with powers which practically amounted to sovereignty, and which in the end grew into acknowledged sovereignty. But that growth was slow. For a long time after the Empire began, the republican constitution, the republican magistracies, the republican assemblies, still lived on untouched in their outward framework. They had simply lost all living energy through the growth of a power greater than all, a power which sometimes directed their course of action, sometimes itself acted in their stead. If we could conceive, as once or twice did happen for a short time, the controlling power removed, that is, if the extraordinary commissions which made up the Imperial power were not granted to any one, the old elements of the commonwealth were there, able again to act for themselves as of old. The Senate, after ages of utter nullity, actually did act again as an independent body when the Goth was at the gates of Rome and the Emperor was far away at Ravenna. For Rome once more to act without her master there was no need to create any new power, but simply to take the fetters off an old one. In the earlier ages of the Empire, when the old traditions were more lively, when the forms of the old constitution were still observed, such a change would doubtless have been far more easy. A modern kingdom cannot be changed into a republic without an active change in its constitution. The executive authority must be vested in some new power to be created and defined for the purpose. The Roman Empire might have been turned back into a republic by a purely negative change. All that was needed was not to appoint an Emperor. The various powers of the State which had left off acting or had come to act only as the Emperor bade them, would doubtless, from lack of practice, from change in all surrounding circumstances, have found it practically impossible to act as they had done in the days of the old commonwealth. But there would have been no formal hindrance to their so doing; there would have been no need to clothe Senate or magistrates with any powers beyond those which they still held, though in a dormant state.
The power of Rome over her allies and dependencies during the Commonwealth and the early Empire was very much of the same kind as the power of the Emperors over Rome herself. It was something which overshadowed a crowd of old powers and liberties, which brought them down to practical nullity, but which in no way formally abolished them. The republican institutions of Rome under the early Empire, the constitutions of the allied states, of the dependencies, even of the direct subjects of Rome, under both the early Empire and the Commonwealth, were much in the same state as a man or a beast that is fettered or bridled. His inherent physical powers of action are not lessened; only they cannot be exercised, or can be exercised only according to the will of a master. So it was with Rome herself under the Emperors; so it was yet more strikingly with the dependencies of Rome under Rome republican or imperial. As Rome herself submitted only gradually to the rule of her Emperors, so the dependencies of Rome submitted only gradually to the rule of Rome. There could hardly have been one Roman province in which, as in an English county or a French department, every inch of soil stood in the same relation to the central power. Within the geographical bounds of most provinces, above all within the bounds of the Greek and hellenized provinces, there were cities and districts standing to Rome in all those endless relations which were the natural result of the different times and the different circumstances under which their connexion with Rome began. Here was a free and equal ally of Rome, a city which Rome had been glad to receive as a free and equal ally at a time when her alliance was really valuable. Nothing had happened to give any excuse for dragging down the old ally to any inferior position. In theory she was still as free as ever, keeping every power of a sovereign state within and without. No Roman magistrate had any authority within her territory; if she sent offerings to Rome or to Rome’s master, if she supplied a contingent to a Roman army, all was the gift of pure friendship from one equal ally to another. A neighbouring town might be in the strictly provincial relation; over her soil the Roman people had become, not only sovereign, but landlord; she might keep her old municipal constitution, but it was purely by the grant or sufferance of the ruling city. Such a city yielded obedience to Rome, because Rome was an acknowledged mistress; if its free neighbour practically yielded obedience to Rome no less, it was simply because, in an alliance between the weak and the strong, the strong will always give law to the weak. And between these two extremes there were endless intermediate shades. Besides the absolutely independent ally, there were allies who also had treaties with Rome, but whose treaties were less favourable, treaties which bound both sides alike, but which formally placed one of the contracting parties in a higher and the other in a lower position. Again, there were towns of the province itself on which Rome had bestowed, not by treaty but by her own grant, higher rights than the rest of the province. One city was free, keeping its own law, exempt from the ordinary jurisdiction of the Roman governor, paying no tax or tribute to Rome, but holding all these privileges by grant from the Roman state. Another was equally free within its own walls, but bought its privileges by the payment of tribute to Rome. And as there were within every Greek-speaking province spots which remained spots of free Hellas abiding in their old freedom, so there might be other spots which were transplanted fragments of the soil of Latium or of Rome itself, keeping in the foreign land the rights of Latium or of Rome. That is, there might be within the bounds of the province Latin or Roman colonies, or towns to which, without being in their origin Latin or Roman colonies, Rome had thought good to grant, sometimes her own full citizenship, sometimes only the half-citizenship of Latium. Of these, the free and allied city, the Roman and the Latin colony, were geographically within the province, but they were not legally part of it. To the Roman and the Latin colony we have nothing exactly answering in modern Europe; but Andorra and San Marino are still lively illustrations of the position of a small state which has powerful neighbours. San Marino, a perfectly independent state, but which, as wholly surrounded by its great neighbour, is practically cut off from exercising any of the external powers of an independent state, is in exactly the position of a free and equal ally of Rome. Such an ally might keep perfect internal freedom, but it was in the nature of things cut off from any foreign policy. Andorra, a dependent and tributary state, though keeping full internal freedom, would, if it had only one protecting lord, also have its parallels among the dependent allies of Rome. But, in the complication of mediæval relations, Andorra has two protecting lords, two receivers of tribute. That was a state of things which could not be in the days of the Roman Peace.
There is only one San Marino within the geographical bounds of Italy, and San Marino is not one of the great cities of Italy. It is therefore a harmless political curiosity, with whose rights the Italian kingdom has no temptation to meddle. It might be otherwise if the kingdom had many such independent towns and districts within its borders, and if any of the great cities of Italy were reckoned among them. Now one of the ugliest features of Roman history, one which comes out in every page of the history of the second century B.C., is the ungenerous way in which Rome treated her independent allies the moment they ceased to be useful to her. As long as they served as checks on some other power, so long they were made not a little of; as soon as the dangerous power was overthrown or humbled, the ally which had helped to overthrow it became an object of Roman jealousy. The friendly power whose day of usefulness was over was exposed to endless attempts on the part of Rome to weaken and break it in pieces. Such is the tale of the kingdom of Pergamon, of the city-commonwealth of Rhodes, of the confederation of Achaia. No part of Roman history is more disgraceful than the dealings of Rome with those three states, the model governments of their several classes. No learning, no eloquence, can avail to whitewash the faithless and brutal dealings of the Roman Senate towards powers whose only fault was to be weaker than Rome and to have done good service to Rome. This feeling of jealousy towards the allies lingered on long after all ground for jealousy had passed away, when the free city was free only within its own walls, and could not lift hand or foot against the mighty ally by whose dominion it was hemmed in. But the wrongs of these cities under Roman rule were far more largely due to more immediate causes, to the overbearing love of power, to the baser love of gain, which formed the dark side of the Roman character. The liberties of these weak states were often encroached on, not only by the Roman state itself, but by particular Roman magistrates, and even by powerful men who were not at the moment magistrates. The establishment of the Empire undoubtedly did something to check the oppressions of the Roman governors, on whom there was very little check under the commonwealth. But if the Empire led to less oppression on the part of the representatives of the central power, it led to more meddling on the part of the central power itself. A man placed at the head of the world stands in a different position from a city placed at the head of the world. To the ruling city the dependent states are simply dependent states; it gets what it can out of them, but it has no temptation to meddle for the sake of meddling. The ruling man has temptations to meddle, and it may even be that, the better disposed he is, his temptations to meddle become greater. The natural tendency of the Empire was to unity and centralization everywhere and in every way. Under imperial rule, the endless variety of relations among the allies, dependents, and subjects of Rome gradually changed into the one character of direct members of the Roman Empire. But the change was slow. Sovereign commonwealths sank into municipalities, and municipalities sank into something less than municipalities, by mere force of circumstances, without any formal act. It is often very hard to say when this or that free city finally lost its distinct being through absolute incorporation in the Roman Empire. It is certain that the memory of past freedom, as something that still was not wholly past, lived on for ages. Under the early Empire the commonwealths of Greece and Asia, whatever was their formal relation, were in practice, not only subject to the Roman Empire, but very much at the mercy of the governors of the provinces within which they geographically lay. But they still were commonwealths, though dependent or even subject commonwealths. Their senates, assemblies, or other ruling bodies, had practically sunk to the functions of town-councils, and they were open, in a way in which an English town-council is not, to the caprice of an external power. But they were town-councils which had been sovereign parliaments. Some of them were in theory sovereign parliaments still. And even those which were furthest from that character, the councils of those towns which were neither free and allied states, nor Roman colonies, nor in any way privileged above the general provincial relation, had not wholly lost their original character. Deep into the time of the Empire, the old character of the Roman dominion, that of a city ruling over other cities, still left its traces. In such a state of things the authority of the councils or assemblies of the subject states might practically be smaller than that of the town-council of an English borough. That is, the assembly might be afraid of acting in any matter of importance without the leave of the central power or its representative. It might practically confine its action to matters of routine and ceremony, at most to votes of honours and setting up of statues, because any bolder action would awaken Roman jealousy. That is to say, the free and allied state could in theory do everything, even the provincial town could in theory do many things, according to its own free will. But generations of submission to an irresistible neighbour had taught it not to exercise that free will except according to the higher will of the power which was supreme over all. If the rights of the subordinate state became formal or even null, it was because they were wide and indefinite; they were the powers of a community which still kept a distinct being, but which was placed under the irresistible influence, sometimes under the direct dominion, of a stronger community. This is a position altogether different from that of a town or district in a modern kingdom or commonwealth where every part of the land has equal rights. In such a kingdom or commonwealth, whatever powers, great or small, this or that board or council has, are held according to the law of the land. As long as those powers are exercised according to the law of the land, no administrative interference is to be feared; if the law is broken, if the local authority steps beyond its legal powers, the wrong will be made good, not by an arbitrary will, but by a legal process. It was wholly different with the cities of which we speak, whether free, dependent, or subject; they were still separate commonwealths with inherent rights, even if those rights could no longer be exercised; their assemblies had once been parliaments, and to both the forms and the feelings of parliaments they still clave. And one city at least among the allies of Rome kept its substantial freedom down to an age when many fancy that the Roman power itself had altogether vanished from the earth. The freedom of Cherson was overthrown, not by Mummius in the second century on one side, not by Vespasian in the first century on the other, but by the Amorian Theophilos in the ninth. Till that day the last of the Greek commonwealths lived on its ancient life, and for the simplest of reasons. Not only the Emperor himself, but the proconsul of Achaia, of Macedonia, or of Asia, could at any moment encroach on, the Emperor could at any moment destroy, the freedom of any Greek city that lay geographically within those provinces. He had always the physical power to encroach or to destroy; not uncommonly he had the will. But the commonwealth which lay far away in the Tauric Chersonêsos stood in another case. The faithful ally could not be changed into the helpless subject, except by the same kind of effort which was needed for a Gothic or a Persian war.