The Romans had to reverence and submit to theocracy under the form of a triple authority—the political authority; the paternal authority; and the legal authority. Wherever the Roman turned to, in that vast empire, which was bounded in the west by the Atlantic, in the north by the Rhine and the Danube, in the east by the Euphrates, and in the south by the deserts of Arabia and Africa, he met his triple crown of authority. He was confronted by some consul or proconsul, some law, some edict, some whim or caprice of an invisible something, that always had a visible lictor at its command with a bundle of sticks, ready for flogging, or, in urgent cases, with a well-sharpened axe to sever the head from the trunk. He had to obey a power, with innumerable soldiers, ready to punish whole provinces if they resisted that ever present, ever vigilant, and ever-active State abstraction. Whilst in Greece, the individual man was developed with all his bodily and intellectual faculties in science and art, Rome disturbed and hindered this individual development, concentrating the static and dynamic forces of her citizens on brutal military enterprises.
Rome, through its theocratical spirit, oppressed the conquered by the conqueror, the poor by the rich, the ‘nihil habentes’ by the ‘possedentes,’ the client by the patron, the plebeian by the patrician, humanity by priests and gods, and the individual by the State. The Roman as individual was never a self-acting, self-conscious, and free-thinking entity, but a mere cipher after the State unit; a wheel in a large and complicated machine; a drop of water in an ocean; an atom in the universe. The Greek recognised in the State only an agglomeration of men like himself; this sum total of citizens had to serve him; the State was to him a means, not an aim. The Greek demanded of the State that it should protect him in the free and perfect use of his bodily and intellectual faculties. He was, if he liked, poet, magistrate, athlete, judge, dancer, philosopher, fighter, priest, wrestler, tragedian, soldier, or singer; all for his own sake, without ever becoming an over-regulated or over-regulating pedant. He worshipped his gods without restraining dogmas; he never allowed his individuality to be absorbed by some incomprehensible, shapeless, universal theocracy; his whole scientific and artistic national career was one glorious struggle against such an accomplishment. All this was the very reverse with the Romans. That Rome had no art or science of her own, was the effect of those causes which we have here tried to sketch in a general way.
The Romans, like the Greeks, were a mixture of Aryans and Turanians, with this difference, that with the Greeks the Aryan element predominated, whilst with the Romans the Turanian, and even the black elements formed a considerable portion of the national State body. The Greek element, which, at the time of the earliest formation of the Roman State, was very powerful, soon became absorbed in the Gallic, Iberian, African, Egyptian, and Syrian elements. The enervating south was not counterbalanced by the energetic north, but, on the contrary, the south predominated; and as in the south-east theocratic despotism flourished, the same principle was adopted by the Romans, and worked into a perfect system.
That the language of the Romans had a common origin with that of the Greeks, Persians, and Indians is evident from the consideration even of a few words. The verbs sum (I am), do (I give), and the words pater, mater, frater, are Sanskrit. The most important pastoral and agricultural expressions are Sanskrit, showing that a certain degree of civilisation must have been brought with them by the settlers, after their separation from their Trans-Himâlâyan brethren, when they peopled the shores of the Mediterranean, and occupied that small coast-land which was probably once connected with the African continent through Sicily.
Pecus, sus, taurus, and canis are Sanskrit words. The Sanskrit agras (meadow) is the Latin ager (Germ. acker, acre). The Sanskrit kurnu (Germ. korn, corn, grain) is the Latin granum. The settlers were undoubtedly acquainted with even higher elements of a steady and civilised life. The Sanskrit word aritram (ship and oar), survived as aratrum the plough, cutting through the ground like the aritram through the waves. The Sanskrit damas, δόμος {domos} is the Latin domus; naus is navis; akshas is axis (Germ. achse) a coach or cart; and we have in the Sanskrit vastra, the Latin vestis (vestment), not only a proof of the connection between the Aryans of the Ganges, and those on the shores of the Tiber, but a living testimony that the former had left off tattooing their bodies and used textile fabrics. The Romans were first called Ramnes. Three races may be said to have furnished the first settlers on the Seven Hills, the Ramnes, Titians, and Lukeres. From this threefold confederation we have the word tribuere, tribus (tribe). Later Pelasgians, Sabines, Albans, Etruskans, and Hellenes joined the first settlers, and formed by degrees the Roman State.
As the Britons at one time earnestly believed that they were the direct descendants of Brutus, the son of Æneas, we need not wonder that the Romans should have indulged in the flattering faith that they were the direct descendants of Æneas himself. They had scarcely attained a settled state, when they began to work out their legends and myths, concerning the divine foundation of their town, which had taken place under seven kings.
1. Romulus, a god-man, for he and his brother, Remus, were incarnations of the war-god Mars and miraculously born of a virgin. Their uncle Amulius, fearing that they might deprive him of his throne, had them exposed in the swollen Tiber in a cradle. The river subsided, and the cradle was caught by a sacred fig-tree at the foot of the Palatine hill, and a she-wolf had pity on the boys, and suckled them. The founders of Rome thus mythically imbibed, with their foster-mother’s milk, that savage brutality and thirst for blood which distinguished the citizens of the Holy City for thousands of years. Romulus and Remus were found by shepherds, and brought up by them. Subsequently a town was founded by the twins, and Romulus then killed his brother and ruled alone. He divided the people into curiæ.
2. Numa Pompilius enlarged the town and introduced a settled form of worship, not out of piety, but in order to subject the citizens to the will of the State.
3. Tullus Hostilius improved upon the theocratical institutions of Numa, and gave Rome a military organisation, as the secret tool with which her will was to be enforced throughout a vast part of the globe.
4. Ancus Martius commanded the citizens to have taste and to beautify the town, or rather had this done, superintending the improvements himself. He is stated to have been a grandson of Numa.