Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

Lucretius Carus, born B.C. 95, claims a place among philosophers as well as poets. In his time, the Epicurean principles obtained the greatest popularity, and that in no small degree through his own splendid talents. Consistently with his frigid atheism, and proud rejection of a superintending Providence, the perverted child of genius, who had risen on the breath of popular favor to the equestrian rank, died a wretched suicide when only forty-four years old.

We should not forget that the Epicureans, the Stoics, the Academics, and other sects, subsequent to the time of Alexander, are not to be spoken of as the Greek schools. They belong to a later and generally different age, in which little of philosophic worth was produced, and still less remains. Of Epicurus three letters are preserved by Diogenes Laertius; of Zeno, nothing; of Cleanthes, a single hymn to Jupiter; of the Academics, or New Platonists, a few traditions only.

The device on an old Roman coin, of Julius Cæsar bearing a book in one hand and a sword in the other, represents the genius of many a distinguished citizen of the Republic. Of such was Varro, for he was a soldier, and at the same time the most erudite of his countrymen. He was born at Rieti, near the celebrated cascade of Terni, in Italy. Cæsar appreciated the extensive learning of Varro, and entrusted to him the formation of the great public library. He was a man of ponderous information and unwearied industry, but without a spark of literary taste or philosophical genius. No Roman author wrote so much as he did, and, excepting Pliny, no one probably read so much; yet, notwithstanding all his learning and diligence, he has left nothing that is possessed of either superficial polish or substantial worth.

Not so Marcus Tullius Cicero. He was born B.C. 107, and in the realm of philosophy, as in eloquence, was the noblest Roman of them all. Like most young men of good family, he was instructed by Greek preceptors, and early occupied himself with ancient philosophy, directing his attention principally to the Academic and Stoic systems. Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus engrossed his esteem by turns, as he was an eclectic in taste, and confined himself to no particular school. But his philosophical works, wrought upon the model of Plato, are the most valuable collection of interesting discussions on the grandest themes. In the era of Cicero, scepticism and dogmatism distracted the schools and destroyed the life of philosophy. As Sir James Mackintosh has said, "The Sceptics could only perplex, and confute, and destroy. Their occupation was gone as soon as they succeeded. They had nothing to substitute for what they overthrew; and they rendered their own art of no further use. They were no more than venomous animals, who stung their victims to death, but also breathed their last into the wound."

Cicero speculated after a mode which admitted of great freedom to his genius, controlled by no particular sect, but was at heart most interested in the severest principles, and became almost a Stoic. Doubtless that was the noblest school then extant, the most harmonious with the spirit of Rome, and which preserved her greatest citizens amid the dissoluteness and ferocity of her imperial career. The ennobling influence exerted by that system was exemplified while it exalted the slave of one of Nero's courtiers to become an efficient moral teacher, and breathed equity and mercy into the ordinary concerns of every man. Especially was it honored by the examples of Marcius Portius Cato, and of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who did much to keep alive a loftier regard for virtue and truth throughout all time.

The historians of philosophy have often admired the memorable scenes in which Cæsar mastered a nobility of which Lucullus and Hortensius, Sulpicius and Catullus, Pompey and Cicero, Brutus and Cato, were members. From the time of Scipio, they had sought the Greek philosophy as an amusement or an ornament. The influence of the degenerate Grecian systems was exerted upon all the leading spirits of Rome during five centuries, from Carneades to Constantine. Cassius was an Epicurean, and so was the adroit time-server Atticus, the courtier of each fortunate tyrant of the hour, who could embrace Cicero in all the apparent frankness of true friendship, and then abandon him to kiss the hand of Anthony, imbrued in his blood. Marcus Brutus represented the nobler school of Plato; and if in a fearful crisis he trampled on all venerable precedents of justice to guard the sacred principle itself, it was the result of a direful necessity which he could neither avoid nor resist.

Krug, in his history of philosophy, admits only two divisions, those of ancient and modern. He assumes as the line of demarcation, the decline of government, manners, arts, and sciences, during the first five centuries of the Christian era. In the above rapid review, we have already passed the culminating point in pagan philosophy at Rome, in the age of Augustus and Cicero. When Alexander had annihilated the republican liberty of Greece, he opened the way for an active commerce between the East and the West, which greatly contributed to enlarge the sphere of the new type of dialectic science. From Periclean excellence, a progressive decline became observable in the spirit of philosophy, which was continuously directed to humbler objects, of a more pedantic character, in commentaries, and compilations without end. Thus Alexandria, from the time of the Ptolemies, became the point of departure whence all the remnants of ancient wisdom emigrated to the opening wilds of the West. Every thing was wisely arranged with this intent. Indian sages came there to meditate, and perceived the connection between their faith and the old Egyptian mysteries. The Persian, who had before waged war against those mysteries, at length declared his belief in the conflict of good and evil powers. Thither came a powerful colony of Jews, and not only built a temple in Egypt, but at the command of an Egyptian monarch the Jewish scriptures were translated into Greek. The same country where speculation began was destined to accumulate at the most favorable point the latest productions, amalgamated into a form exactly fitted to prospective uses, and then, through other agencies as wonderfully prepared be transmitted to the corresponding field. From Moses to Christ, every intellectual stream was made to be tributary to that central river; and from Christ to Constantine, the direction and destination are identical still. When Egypt became a Roman province, proof was given that there was something stronger in the world than Greek subtilty, and which in turn could be equally well subordinate to the ultimate good of mankind. Three Greeks, masters of the Peripatetic, Academic, and Stoic doctrines, were sent as hostages of war to Rome, at the same time that Lucullus and Sylla were enriching the Capitol with conquered libraries. The latter, after the capture of Athens, B.C. 84, sent thither the collection of Apellicon, which was particularly rich in the works of Aristotle. It is worthy of special note that then and there the works of the great founder of later systems were first published. But simultaneously with the era when Greece had lost her political existence, and Rome her republican constitution, the spirit of ancient research was exhausted, and a new philosophy arose from the decay of effete systems. A fresh dogmatical system was established by the New Platonists on a broader basis, in order to prop up the ancient religion, and to oppose a barrier to the rapid progress of the new, but which ended in the wildest metaphysical dreams. In the mean time, Christian teachers, who at first rejected and condemned Greek philosophy, ended by adopting it, in part at least, thus intending to complete and fortify their religious system. This work of fundamental preparation continued until the disunion of the eastern and western empires opened the way for the erection of that grand and romantic superstructure for which the world was by the above instrumentalities prepared.

It was well observed by Justin Martyr, "Those persons before the Christian era, who endeavored by the strength of human understanding to investigate and ascertain the nature of things, were brought into the courts of justice as impious and over-curious." But with the Messiah came more auspicious days, when on all sides schools arose whose ruling character was religious, and whose processes were no longer abstraction, but inspiration and illumination. Philo, born some years before Christ, and Numerius, two centuries after, both leaders of Jewish cabals; and the leading Gnostics, Simon Magus, Menander the Samaritan, and Corinthus, of the first century, as well as Saturninus, Basilides, Carpocrates, and Valentinus, of the second, all had an important preparatory work to perform. Plotinus and Porphyry, too, wrought a good work in their day. And when the apostate Julian, as the incarnated school of Alexandria, became the hero of mysticism, and ascended the throne of Rome, it was that thus he might more manifestly extinguish the lingering brilliancy of the East, and occasion a fairer unfolding in the West. With him and Proclus, sensualism and idealism ended, and Greek philosophy expired in giving birth to that new civilization which dates from the sixth century.

Modern scholars have searched through the voluminous commentators upon Aristotle, which the learned eclecticism of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries of our era produced, some of them still only existing in manuscript, but have found but little worthy of preservation. The time had come when one could no longer hear Plato, in his own silvery tongue, delivering that allegory which compares the human soul to a chariot with winged horses and driver, and which resolves its purest thoughts into reminiscences of a brighter life and nobler companionship. During the martial sway of imperial Rome, the beautiful philosophic fabric which the Greeks had fashioned, like the web of Penelope, was mutilated, defaced, and nearly destroyed.

The Romans were more arbitrary in their ideas than the Greeks, and much less inventive; they were neither as acute to demonstrate, nor as methodical to arrange the elements and results of knowledge. The literary medium of their theories was as declamatory as their notions were loose, and both their political and moral habits tended to obscure their dim conceptions of moral truth. The only redeeming quality amongst them, was national vigor, displayed mainly in warlike pursuits. From the first, the citizens of the Republic seem to have anticipated the attainment of universal empire, and they put forth endeavors commensurate with the presentiment they felt with regard to their destiny. Though unworthy to claim supremacy of esteem for any mental or philosophical enterprise of their own, it should be said to their credit, that they entertained a more vivid and enduring belief in the dignity and predetermined necessity of human advancement than was common to the Greeks. But national excellence in the realms of refined art and thought, was not to be expected while they assigned these pursuits chiefly to slaves. Virgil made one of his a poet; and Horace himself, like several inferior authors, was the son of a freedman. Leading philosophers and coarsest buffoons, the preceptor who taught, and the physician who healed, the architect who built, and the undertaker who buried, were all vassals. It has been said by the most valid authority, that not an avocation, connected with agriculture, manufactures, or education, can be named, but it was the patrimony of slaves.