CHAPTER XVII.
STATE OF THE WORLD IN THE FIRST CENTURY.
The political condition of the world was most melancholy. All power was concentrated at Rome and in the legions. The most shameful and degrading scenes were daily enacted. The Roman aristocracy, which had conquered the world, and which alone of all the people had any voice in public business under the Cæsars, had abandoned itself to a Saturnalia of the most outrageous wickedness the human race ever witnessed. Cæsar and Augustus, in establishing the imperial power, saw perfectly the necessities of the age. The world was so low in its political relations, that no other form of government was possible. Now that Rome had conquered numberless provinces, the ancient constitution, which was based upon the existence of a privileged patrician class, a kind of obstinate and malevolent Tories, could not continue.[17.1] But Augustus had signally neglected every suggestion of true policy, by leaving the future to chance. Destitute of any canon of hereditary succession, of any settled rules concerning adoption, and of any law regulating election, Cæsarism was like an enormous load on the deck of a vessel without ballast. The most terrible shocks were inevitable. Three times in a century, under Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, the greatest power that was ever united in one person fell into the hands of most extravagant and execrable men. Horrors were enacted which have hardly been surpassed by the monsters of the Mongol dynasties. In that fatal list of monarchs, one is reduced to apologizing for a Tiberius, who only attained thorough detestableness towards the close of his life; and for a Claudius, who was only eccentric, blundering, and badly advised. Rome became a school of vice and cruelty. It should be added that the vice came, in a great degree, from the East, from those parasites of low rank and those infamous men whom Egypt and Syria sent to Rome,[17.2] and who, profiting by the oppression of the true Romans, succeeded in attaining great influence over the wretches who governed. The most disgusting ignominies of the empire, such as the apotheosis of the emperors and their deification during life, came from the East, and particularly from Egypt, which was at that period one of the most corrupt countries on the face of the earth.[17.3]
However, the veritable Roman nature still survived, and nobility of soul was far from extinct. The lofty traditions of pride and virtue, which were preserved in a few families, attained the imperial throne with Nerva, and gave its splendor to the age of the Antonines, of which Tacitus is the elegant historian. An age in which such true and noble natures as those of Quintilian, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger were produced, need not be wholly despaired of. The corruption of the surface did not extend to the great mass of seriousness and honor which existed in the better Roman society, and many examples are yet preserved of devotion to order, duty, peace, and solid integrity. There were in the noble houses admirable wives and sisters.[17.4] Was there ever a more touching fate than that of the young and chaste Octavia, the daughter of Claudius, and wife of Nero, remaining pure in the midst of infamy, and slain at twenty-two years of age, without having known a single joy? The epithets “castissimæ, univiræ,” are not at all rare in the inscriptions.[17.5] Some wives accompanied their husbands into exile,[17.6] and others shared their noble deaths.[17.7] The ancient Roman simplicity was not lost. The children were soberly and carefully brought up. The most noble ladies worked with their own hands at woollen fabrics,[17.8] and the excesses of the toilet were almost unknown in the higher families.[17.9]
The excellent statesmen who, so to speak, sprang from the earth under Trajan, were not improvised. They had served in preceding reigns; but they had enjoyed but little influence, and had been cast into the shade by the freedmen and favorite slaves of the Emperor. Thus we find men of the first ability occupying high posts under Nero. The framework was good. The accession of bad emperors, disastrous as it was, could not change at once the general tendency of affairs, and the principles of the government. The empire, far from being in its decay, was in the full strength of vigorous youth. Decay will come, but two centuries later; and, strange to say, under much more worthy monarchs. In its political phase, the situation was analogous to that of France, which, deprived by the Revolution of any established rule for the succession—has yet passed through so many perilous changes without greatly injuring its internal organization or its national strength. In its moral aspect, the period under consideration may be compared to the eighteenth century, an epoch entirely corrupt, if we form our judgment from the memoirs, manuscripts, literature, and anecdotes of the time, but in which, nevertheless, some families maintained the greatest austerity of morals.[17.10]
Philosophy joined hands with the better families of Rome, and resisted nobly. The Stoic school produced the lofty characters of Cremutius Cordus, Thraseas, Arria, Helvidius Priscus, Annæus Cornutus, and Musonius Rufus, admirable masters of aristocratic virtue. The rigidity and exaggeration of this school arose from the horrible cruelty of the Cæsars. The continual thought of a good man was how to inure himself to suffering, and prepare himself for death.[17.11] Lucan, in bad taste, and Persius with superior talent, both gave utterance to the loftiest sentiments of a great soul. Seneca the philosopher, Pliny the Elder, and Papirius Fabianus, kept up a high standard of science and philosophy. Every one did not yield; there were a few wise men left. Too often, however, they had no resource but death. The ignoble portions of humanity at times got the upper hand. Then madness and cruelty ruled the hour, and made of Rome a veritable hell.[17.12]
The government, although so fearfully unstable at Rome, was much better in the provinces. At a distance the shocks which agitated the capital were hardly felt. In spite of its defects, the Roman administration was far superior to the kingdoms and commonwealths it had supplanted. The time for sovereign municipalities had long gone by. Those little States had destroyed themselves by their egotism, their jealousies, and their ignorance or neglect of individual freedom. The ancient life of Greece, all struggle, all external, no longer satisfied any one. It had been glorious in its day, but that brilliant democratic Olympus of demi-gods had lost its freshness, and become dry, cold, unmeaning, vain, superficial, and lacking in both head and heart. Hence the success of the Macedonian rule, and afterwards of the Roman. The empire had not yet fallen into the error of excessive centralization. Until the time of Diocletian, the provinces and cities enjoyed much liberty. Kingdoms almost independent existed in Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Lesser Armenia, and Thrace, under the protection of Rome. These kingdoms became factious after Caligula, only because the profound policy of Augustus concerning them was diverged from in succeeding reigns.[17.13] The numerous free cities were governed according to their own laws, and had the legislative power and magistracy of autonomic States. Until the third century their municipal decrees commenced with the formula, “The Senate and People of ——”.[17.14] The theatres were not simply places for scenic amusement, but were foci of opinion and discussion. Most of the towns were, in different ways, little commonwealths. The municipal spirit was very strong.[17.15] They had lost only the power to declare war, a fatal power which made the world a field of carnage. “The benefits conferred by Rome upon mankind,” were the theme of adulatory addresses everywhere, to which, however, it would be unjust to deny some sincerity.[17.16] The doctrine of “the Peace of Rome,”[17.17] the idea of a vast democracy organized under Roman protection, lay at the bottom of all political speculations.[17.18] A Greek rhetorician displays vast erudition in proving that Roman glory should be claimed by all the branches of the Hellenic race as a common patrimony.[17.19] In regard to Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt, we may say that the Roman conquest did not destroy any of their liberties. Those nations had either been already long dead to political life, or had never enjoyed it.
Finally, in spite of the extortions of governors and of the violence which is inseparable from despotic sway, the world had in many respects never been so well off. An administration coming from a remote centre was so great an advantage, that even the rapacious Prætors of the latter days of the Republic had failed to render it unpopular. The Julian law had also narrowed down the scope of abuses and peculations. The follies or cruelties of the emperor, except under Nero, reached only the Roman aristocracy and the immediate followers of the prince. Never had men who did not care to busy themselves about politics been able to live more at ease. The ancient republics, in which every one was compelled to take part in the factions, were very uncomfortable places of residence.[17.20] There was continually going on some disorganization or proscription. But under the empire the time seemed made expressly for great proselytisms which should overrule both the quarrels of neighborhoods and the rivalry of dynasties. Attacks on liberty were much more frequently owing to the remnants of the provincial or communal authority than to the Roman administration.[17.21] Of this truth we have had and shall have many occasions to take note.
For those of the conquered countries where political privileges had been unknown for ages, and which lost nothing but the right of destroying themselves by continual wars, the empire was such an era of prosperity and well-being as they had never before experienced; and we may add, without being paradoxical, that it was also for them an era of liberty.[17.22] On the one hand, a freedom of commerce and industry, of which the Grecian States had no conception, became possible. On the other hand, the new régime could not but be favorable to freedom of thought. This freedom is always greater under a monarchy than under the rule of jealous and narrow-minded citizens, and it was unknown in the ancient republics. The Greeks accomplished great things without it, thanks to the incomparable force of their genius; but we must not forget that Athens had a complete inquisition.[17.23] The Chief Inquisitor was represented by the archon, and the Holy Office by the royal portico whence issued the accusations of “impiety.” These were numerous, and it is in this kind of causes that we find the Attic orators most frequently engaged. Not only philosophic heresies, such as the denial of a God or of Providence, but the slightest infractions of the rules of municipal worship, the preaching of foreign religions, and the most puerile departures from the absurdly strict legislation concerning the mysteries, were crimes punishable by death. The gods at whom Aristophanes scoffed on the stage, could sometimes slay. They slew Socrates, and almost Alcibiades; and they persecuted Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Theodorus, Diagoras of Melos, Prodicus of Ceos, Stilpo, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Aspasia, and Euripides.[17.24] Liberty of thought was, in fact, the fruit of the kingdoms which arose out of the Macedonian conquests. An Attalus and a Ptolemy first allowed the thinker those liberties which none of the old republics had permitted. The Roman empire continued the same policy. There was, indeed, under the empire more than one arbitrary decree against the philosophers, but it was always called forth by their entering into political schemes.[17.25] We may search in vain the Roman law before Constantine for a single passage against freedom of thought; and the history of the imperial government furnishes no instance of a prosecution for entertaining an abstract doctrine. No scientific man was molested. Men like Galen, Lucan, and Plotinus, who would have gone to the stake in the Middle Age, lived tranquilly under the protection of the law. The empire inaugurated liberty in this respect; it extinguished the despotic sovereignty of the family, the town, and the tribe, and replaced or tempered it by that of the State. But despotic power is the more vexatious the narrower its sphere of action. The old republics and the Feudal system oppressed individuals much more than did the state. The empire at times persecuted Christianity most severely, but at least it did not arrest its progress.[17.26] Republics, however, would have overcome the new faith. Even Judaism would have smothered it, but for the pressure of Roman authority. The Roman magistrates were all that hindered the Pharisees from destroying Christianity at the outset.[17.27]