A golden age of literature and poetry served now to adorn the general peace, which the mighty Augustus had conferred on the conquered world. This poetry was however but a late harvest which flourished towards the autumn of declining Paganism. Plautus and Terence we can regard merely as tolerably successful imitators of the Greeks. The beautiful diction and poetry of Virgil and Horace are in a general survey of literature chiefly valuable, inasmuch as they gave a noble refinement to a language which, in modern ages, and even still among ourselves, has been universally current; but all this poetry, including that, which the richer, more copious, and more inventive fancy of Ovid produced, can be considered by posterity as only a very thin gleaning after the full bloom and rich harvest of Grecian poetry and art. The real poetry of the Roman people lay elsewhere than in those artificial compositions of Greek scholars. It must be sought for in the festive games of the circus, which the prudent Augustus never neglected—in those theatrical combats, where the Gladiator, wrestling with death, knew how to fall and die with dignity, when he wished to obtain the plaudits of the multitude—in that circus, in fine, which so often afterwards resounded with the cry of an infuriated populace;—"Christianos ad leones," "the Christians to the lions, the Christians to the lions."
In the department of history, the case was very different from what it was in poetry. There the strong practical sense of the Romans, their profound political sagacity, the far wider circle of their political relations, gave them a decided advantage over the Greeks, who can shew no historian, possessed of the simple grandeur of Cæsar;—a style as rapid, and as straight-forward, as the exploits of Cæsar himself; or distinguished, like Tacitus, by that deep insight into the abyss of human corruption; while to Livy must be assigned a place by the side at least of the most illustrious Greeks. Among the Romans, political eloquence and philosophy, by that union of the two, such as prevails in Cicero's writings, as well as by the greater magnitude and practical importance of the subjects which both found for discussion, possess a peculiar charm and value. At this period the study of Greek philosophy was regarded and prosecuted by the Romans merely as an useful auxiliary to eloquence; and in the general depravity of morals, and amid the utter indifference for public misery and universal bloodshed, the philosophy of Epicurus naturally found the most admirers. It was only at a later period, when, under the better emperors, some men had undertaken the task of the moral regeneration of the Roman people and the Roman state, that those who entertained this great design sought for the last plank of national safety in the stoical philosophy, which harmonized so well with the austere gravity of the Roman character. Then this philosophy obtained numerous followers among the Romans, as in earlier times it had found favour with many of them, especially among the Jurists.
In the whole circle of human sciences, jurisprudence is that department of intellect, in which the Romans have thought with the most originality, and have exerted the greatest influence; and which, by means of their writers, has obtained at once a very great degree of refinement, and a very wide diffusion. Cæsar had formed the project of a general digest of Roman laws; but this great design, like so many others he had entertained, was left unexecuted; and the age of Augustus at least was distinguished by two great lawyers of opposite schools. It is by the scientific jurisprudence which they have bequeathed to posterity, more than by any thing else, that the Romans have exerted a mighty influence on after-ages. It must strike us at first sight as singular, that a nation which, in its external relations, had risen to greatness, and indeed had founded its greatness, on so fearful an excess of injustice, should have risen to such eminence in the science of jurisprudence, as the Romans undoubtedly have. But the injustice of their conduct towards other states and nations this people well knew how to conceal under legal forms, and establish on legal titles; and it often happened that, by the inconsistent conduct of other nations, they were able to give a colouring of equity to their acts, and shew on their side the strict letter of law.
In the next place, the Roman jurisprudence regarded more immediately the relations of private life, and all the artificial forms of civil law; and we can well conceive that a people like the Romans, distinguished for so sound a judgment and such strong practical sense, and whose minds were so exclusively bent on civil life, and its various relations, should have attained such distinction in the science of civil jurisprudence, notwithstanding the enormous iniquity of their conduct in the wider historical department of international law; and here we may find an explanation of that apparent contradiction between law and injustice, such as we find frequent examples of in human nature and in the records of history.
There is also another element of contradiction in the Roman law, considered both in itself, and in its relation to other codes—a contradiction which strongly pervaded the whole theory of that legislation, and may furnish us with a clue to a right judgment on the Roman jurisprudence, and on the influence it has exercised on posterity. This is the distinction between strict or absolute law, and the law of equity, that is to say, the law qualified by historical circumstances. In the Germanic law, as it is a law of custom and ancient usage, a law qualified by times and circumstances, the principle of equity is more predominant; and we have, indeed, reason to regret that this native and original legislation of the modern European nations should, by the prevailing influence of the more scientific jurisprudence of ancient Rome, have been cast into the back-ground, in proportion as those nations began to mistake the true character of their historical antiquity. The Roman jurisprudence, as it deals in rigid formulas, and adheres to the strict letter, inclines more towards rigid and absolute law; and its spirit has something akin to the stern international policy of the ancient Romans. But is this strict and absolute law a fit criterion to apply to earthly concerns, can it be a true standard of human justice, in its more large and general applications to the great transactions of universal history, and in its relations to divine justice? Every thing absolute (and such undoubtedly is strict law, in the relations of private, and still more in those of public life), everything absolute is sure to provoke its contrary, and if continued, will occasion successive reactions, that can terminate only in the mutual destruction of conflicting parties—the inevitable result of all contests carried to extreme lengths—unless some higher principle of peace intervene to compose and determine them by a divine law of equity.
But if this conciliating principle do not pronounce its sentence, or if it be not attended to, extreme injustice only can spring from this rigid and inflexible application of extreme law; and this is quite in the spirit of the old saying of the Jurists, which we must here apply in a more general sense, in order to estimate with truth and accuracy the nature of the contests which divide the world. "Let justice be done," they say (and the word is here used in the juridical sense of strict and absolute law), "let justice be done, though the world should be ruined." And we may well say in reply:—Woe to mankind, woe to every individual, woe to the world, were they doomed to be finally judged according to this rigid justice, and this rigid justice only, by Him who alone has the power and the right to dispense such severe justice unto men, and judge them by its rules. But since such full and inexorable justice belongs to God only, who is incapable of error; and since all human justice is but the temporary delegate of the divine; it should necessarily be mild, indulgent, qualified by circumstances; and should on the principle of equity be as lenient as possible, and be ever mindful of its due limits. And this principle is applicable to the most important as well as the most insignificant relations of life, and is so thoroughly connected with them all that, according as we adopt the one or the other principle of strict and absolute law, or of mild equity, the whole of our conduct, opinions, and views of the world must differ. The power of the state is only a temporary, and delegated, power, destined to accomplish the ends of divine justice; and this dignity, indeed, is sufficiently exalted, and the responsibility attached to it sufficiently great; but this supreme human justice, unless it disregard its own limits, as well as those of mankind, is not divine justice, nor the immediate authority of God, nor God himself.
The old hereditary vice and fundamental error of the Roman government, and indeed of the Roman people, was that political idolatry of the state, to which the false theory of strict and absolute law was of itself calculated to lead. Although the absolute power of Augustus was still somewhat veiled under the old forms of the Republic, yet even in his reign commenced the formal deification of the person of the Prince, and, under the succeeding emperors, it exceeded all bounds, and descended to the basest forms of adulation. And if even this idolatry had been paid, not so exclusively to the person of an Augustus or a Tiberius, as to the idea of the state identified with that person; and if thus the real object of that Pagan worship had been in the latest, as in the earliest, times, Rome, the eternally prosperous, the everlastingly powerful, the world-destroying, and people-devouring, Rome, to which every thing must fall a sacrifice; still it was not the less a thorough political idolatry. And as a sensual worship of Nature eminently characterized the poetical religion of the Greeks—as the abusive rites of magic were peculiar to the false mysteries of Egypt—so this third and greatest aberration of Paganism,—political idolatry in its most frightful shape, formed the distinguishing character and leading principle of the Roman state, from the earliest to the latest period of its history.