Characters and events of Roman History

by Guglielmo Ferrero

As to Egypt, it not only found in the pacified empire new outlets for its old industries, but also succeeded in engaging a large part of the new commerce with the extreme Orient, which was at this time greatly on the increase. From India and China were imported pearls, diamonds, silk fabrics; for the use of these wares gained largely during this century, as it has done in recent times in Europe and America; perfumes were also imported, and rice, which served as a medicament and to prepare dishes of luxury.

The unity of the Empire was due far more to this great economic development that began under Augustus than to the political action of the early emperors. Little by little, imperial interests became so numerous and so considerable that Rome saw the effort necessary to keep up the unity diminish. Everywhere, even in the most distant regions, powerful minorities formed that worked for Rome and against old separating, anti-uniting forces, against old traditions and local patriotism alike. The wealthy classes everywhere became in a special way wholly favourable to Rome. Therefore there is no more serious mistake than regarding the Roman Empire as the exclusive work of a government: it was in truth created by two diverse forces, operating one after the other—each in its own time, for both were necessary: a force of destruction—the state-devouring policy of Rome; a force of reconstruction—the economic unification. The annihilation of states, without which there would have been no economic unification, was the work of the government and the armies. It was the politicians of the Senate that destroyed so many states by wars and diplomatic intrigues; but the economic unification was made chiefly by the infinitely little—the peasant, the artisan, the educated man—the nameless many, that lived and worked and passed away, leaving hardly trace or record. These unknown that laboured, each seeking his own personal happiness, contributed to create the Empire as much as did the great statesmen and generals. For this reason I can never regard without a certain emotion the mutilated inscriptions in the museums, chance salvage from the great shipwreck of the ancient world, that have preserved the name of some land-owner, or merchant, or physician, or freedman. Lo! what remains of these generations of obscure workers, who were the indispensable collaborators of the great statesmen and diplomatists of Rome, and without whom the political world of Rome would have been but a gigantic enterprise of military brigandage!

The great historic merit of Augustus and of Tiberius is that they presided over the passage from the destructive to the reorganising phase with their wise, prudent, apparently inactive policy. The transition, like all transitions, was difficult; the disintegrating forces were not yet exhausted; the upbuilding forces were still very weak; the world of the time was in unstable equilibrium, violent perturbations certainly yet possible. Without doubt, it is hard to say what would have happened if, instead of being governed by the policy of Augustus, the world had fallen into the hands of an adventurous oligarchy like that which gathered around Alexander the Great; but we can at least affirm that the sagacity and prudence of Augustus, which twenty centuries afterward appear as inactivity, did much to avoid such disturbances, the consequences of which, in a world so exhausted, would have been grave.

Nor is it correct to believe that this policy was easy. Moderation and passivity, even when good for the governed, rust and waste away governments, which must always be doing something, even if it be only making mistakes. In fact, while supreme power usually brings return and much return to him who exercises it, especially in monarchies, it cost instead, and unjustly, to Augustus and Tiberius. Augustus had to offer to the monster, as Tiberius called the Empire, almost all his family, beginning with the beloved Julia, and had to spend for the state almost all his fortune. We know that although in the last twenty years of his life he received by many bequests a sum amounting to a billion and four hundred million sesterces, he left his heirs only one hundred and fifty million sesterces, all the rest having been spent by him for the Republic: this was the singular civil list of this curious monarch, who, instead of fleecing his subjects, spent for them almost all he had. It is vain to speak of Tiberius: the Empire cost him the only thing that perhaps he held dear, his fame. A philosophic history would be wrong in not recognising the grandeur of these sacrifices, which are the last glory of the Roman nobility. The old political spirit of the Roman nobility gave to Augustus and Tiberius the strength to make these sacrifices, and they probably saved ancient civilisation from a most difficult crisis.

It may be observed that Augustus and Tiberius worked for the Empire and the future without realising it. Far from understanding that the economic progress of their time would unify the Empire better than could their laws and their legions, they feared it; they believed that it would everywhere diffuse "corruption," even in the armies, and therefore weaken the imperial power of resistance against the barbarians on the Rhine and the Danube. The German peril—the future had luminously to demonstrate it—was much less than Augustus and Tiberius believed. In other words, the first two emperors thought that the unity of the Empire would be maintained by a vigorous, solid army, while the economic progress, which spread "corruption," appeared to them to put it to risk.

Exactly the opposite happened; the army continued to decay, notwithstanding the desperate efforts of Tiberius, while the inner force of economic interests held the countries well bound together. It is impossible to oppose this course of reasoning, in itself most accurate; but what conclusion is to be drawn from it? In the chaotic conflict of passions and interests that make up the world, the deeds of a man or a party are not useful in proportion to the objective truth of the ideas acted out, or to the success attained. Their usefulness depends upon the direction of the effort, on the ends it proposes, on the results it obtains. There are men and parties of whom one might say, they were right to be wrong, when chimerical ideas and mistakes have sustained their courage to carry out an effective effort; there are others, instead, of whom it might be said that they were wrong to be right, when their clear vision of present and past kept them from accomplishing some painful but necessary duty.

Certainly the old Roman traditions were destined to be overwhelmed by the invasion of Oriental ideas and habits; but what might not have happened if every one had understood this from the very times of Augustus; if then no one had opposed the invasion of Orientalism; if mysticism and the monarchy of divine right had transformed Italy or the Empire within fifty years instead of three centuries? I should not at all hesitate to affirm that certain errors are in certain conjunctions much wiser than the corresponding verities. There is nothing more useful in life than resistance, though apparently futile, against social forces fated to perish, because these, struggling on to the very end, always succeed in imposing a part of themselves on the victorious power, and the result is always better than a complete and unantagonised victory of the opposing force. To the obstinate resistance with which republican principles combated Asiatic monarchy in Rome, we must even to-day render thanks for the fact that Europe was not condemned, like Asia, to carry the eternal yoke of semidivine absolutism, even in dynastic regimes. What social force destined to perish would still have power to struggle if it clearly foresaw its inevitable future dissolution; if it did not fortify itself a little with some deluding vision of its own future?

Augustus and Tiberius were deceived. They wished to reanimate what was doomed; they feared what for the moment was not dangerous. They are the last representatives of the policy initiated by the Scipios and not the initiators of the policy that created the bureaucratic Empire of Diocletian: yet this is exactly their glory. They were right to be wrong; and they rendered to the Empire an immense service, for the very reason that the definite outcome of their efforts was diametrically opposed to the idea that animated them. But we need not dwell on this point. Such were the ideas of the two emperors and the results of their work; the true Empire, known to all, the monarchic, Asiaticised, bureaucratic Empire, grew out of this little-governed beginning that Augustus and Tiberius allowed to live in the freedom of the largest autonomy. How was it formed? This is the great problem that I shall try to solve in the sequence of my work. Naturally, I cannot now résumé all the ideas I mean to develop: I confine myself here to some of the simplest considerations, which seem to me surest.

The picture of the Empire, so brilliant from the economic stand-point, is much less so from the intellectual: here we touch its great weakness. Destroying so many governments, especially in the Orient, Rome had at the same time decapitated the intellectual élites of the ancient world; for the courts of the monarchies were the great firesides of mental activity. Rome had therefore, together with states and governments, destroyed scientific and literary institutions, centres of art, traditions of refinement, of taste, of æsthetic elegance. So everywhere, with the Roman domination, the practical spirit won above the philosophical and scientific, commerce over arts and letters, the middle classes over historic aristocracies. Already weakened by the overthrow of the most powerful Asiatic monarchies, these élites received the final blow on the disappearance of their last protection, the dynasty of the Ptolemies in Egypt.

When Augustus began to govern the Empire, the classes that represent tradition, culture the elevated and disinterested activities of the spirit, were everywhere extensive in number in wealth, in energy. It was not long before these ultimate remainders vanished under the alluvial overflow of the middle classes, swollen by the big economic gains of the first century. In this respect, the first and second centuries of the Christian era resemble our own time. In the whole Empire, alike in Rome, in Gaul, in Asia, there were old aristocratic families, rich and illustrious, but they were not the class of greatest power. Under them stood a middle class of merchants, land-owners, orators, jurists, professors, and other intellectual men, and this was so numerous, comfortable, and so potent as to cause all the great social forces, from government to industry, to abandon the old aristocracy and court it like a new mistress. Art, industry, literature, were vulgarised in those two centuries, as to-day in Europe and America, because they had to work mainly for this middle class which was much more numerous, and yet cruder than the ancient élites. It was the first era of the cheap, of vulgarisations, I was about to say of the made in Germany, that enters into history. There was invented the art of silver-plating, to give the bourgeoisie at moderate prices the sweet illusion of possessing objects of silver; great thinkers disappeared; instead were multiplied manuals, treatises, encyclopaedias, professors that summarised and vulgarised. Philosophy gradually gave out, like all the higher forms of literature, and there began the reign of the declaimers and the sophists; that is, the lecture-givers, the lawyers, the journalists. In painting and sculpture, original schools were no more to be found, nor great names, but the number of statues and bas-reliefs increased infinitely. The paintings of Pompeii and many statues and marbles that are now admired in European museums are examples of this industrialised art, inexpensive, creating nothing original, but furnishing to families in comfortable circumstances passable copies of works of art—once a privilege only of kings.