The Grandeur That Was Rome: a survey of Roman culture and civilisation

by J. C. Stobart

For all this elaborate bulwark, the Parthian question was not really settled. They continued to exercise an undue influence in Armenia, and in A.D. 1 there was another solemn mission to the East and a conference between Phraates the Parthian king and Gaius the grandson of Augustus. Once more the Parthian professed submission, and once more the court poets struck their obsequious lyres. When Phraates died, his uncle Orodes who succeeded ruled with such cruelty that he was assassinated. Thereupon the Parthians sent to Rome for a king and Augustus gave them a nephew of the murdered tyrant, a youth also of Roman education. We note this proceeding as common in the foreign policy of Augustus. He must have had something like a school for young barbarian princes at Rome, but whether the lessons that they learnt in Roman society were altogether salutary is doubtful.

Behind this wall the great provinces of Asia, Syria, and Bithynia were wrapped in profound security. Here Greek culture continued to flourish with periodical incursions of oriental religion and philosophy. In every considerable town the Jews formed a great and growing section of the population but even they were half Greek in their ways of life. The country was rich and lazy and utterly unwarlike. Civilisation had risen to a high pitch and it was probably this part of the world which sent to Rome those artists who contributed to the revival of sculpture. Pretty little epigrams in Greek elegiacs seem to have been their principal literary accomplishment. These provinces have very little history—happily for them—at this period. We know them best from the Acts of the Apostles, where we get a glimpse of their superstitions, their eagerness to embrace new religions. We see the fanaticism of Ephesus with its magnificent temple of Diana and stately worship, a religion of oriental character overlaid with Greek culture, and only rivalled in its attractions by the Roman amphitheatre. For these people as for the rest of the world Augustus had his policy. Since worship was their instructive need and Euhemerism had accustomed them to worship men, he set up an elaborate cult of himself, or rather, by a subtle distinction without a difference, a cult of “the genius of Augustus.” Temples were built to “Rome and Augustus” and an elaborate hierarchy of “High Priests,” “Asiarchs,” and “Bithyniarchs,” which became the highest social distinctions in the society of the day. This was his method of securing the allegiance of nations devoted to religion and flattery. Here in the near future was to be the field of that momentous conflict between this State religion and Christianity, with other oriental faiths, such as Mithraism, also claiming their proselytes.

Plate XLVII. THEATRE OF MARCELLUS, ROME

As for old Greece, the Romans never denied their spiritual debt to her, and accordingly they regarded Greece with something of the veneration which a man feels for his university. Augustus himself had been educated at Apollonia, he sent his heirs to various Greek cities for their education. It would have seemed sacrilege to educated Romans to put a legate in charge of Athens. Hence we find Greece enjoying quite an exceptional position in the empire, indeed without exception the freest and most favoured part of it. Towns such as Athens, Lacedæmon, Thespiæ, Tanagra, Platæa, Delphi, and Olympia were free and almost sovereign. Athens continued to coin her silver drachms with the old design of Pallas and the owl, elected her own archons and generals, held assemblies and even had a sort of empire extending over all Attica, part of Bocotia and five islands of the Cyclades. One Julius Nicanor, her “new Themistocles,” purchased the island of Salamis and presented it to his city in the civilised manner of empire-building. Sparta, too, though now shrunken to the size of a village, bore rule over Northern Laconia, while in the south there was a free confederacy to keep her in order. Beside these cities of ancient renown stood the new and splendid creation of Augustus—Nicopolis, the city of victory founded on the promontory of Actium in commemoration of the great victory of 31. Nicopolis had its great athletic festival like Olympia and ruled over a considerable territory. In addition to these free cities there were some Roman colonies. Corinth rose again from her ashes as an important commercial city founded by Julius Cæsar. Patras, on the Corinthian Gulf, a new foundation of Augustus, became one of the most important cities of Greece, as it is to-day. The rest of Southern Greece, consisting mainly of obscure villages, formed the new senatorial province of Achaia and was governed by a proconsul at Corinth. It was a poor unmilitary province. The northern part formed the senatorial province of Macedonia. Thessalonica and Apollonia were the principal centres of government and civilisation in this region. In Greece, as elsewhere, Augustus made it his aim to focus a national unity upon religion. The old Achæan league was revived as a religious gathering with Argos for its centre, and the Delphic Amphictyony, the oldest surviving institution in Europe, became the basis of a Panhellenic confederacy which met annually for religious purposes under Roman patronage, a sort of Eisteddfod combining religion with culture. It sacrificed to Cæsar, and here, too, we find a president called “Helladarch.” But although Greece had liberty and peace, something was amiss with her. Her shrunken population continued to decline. In Strabo’s Geography, Thebes is a mere village.

Plate XLVIII. INNER COURT, FARNESE PALACE, ROME

Crossing the water we find that the newly conquered kingdom of Egypt was the key to the whole position of Augustus. It was the wealth of Egypt which had reconciled Rome to monarchy and it was by means of that wealth that he continued to hold the allegiance of his subjects. Like Greece it had an ancient civilisation which impressed the Romans as something beyond their comprehension. Alexandria, in particular, as the gateway to the wealth of Egypt, and as the greatest existing centre of Greek culture, not to mention its huge population and commercial advantages, seemed to the Romans a really dangerous rival. The fear of that rivalry had been felt very acutely at Rome when news came of the ambitious schemes of Cleopatra and the subservience of Antony. Augustus was really heading something like a national crusade when he declared war upon them. The same fears now actuated him in settling the treatment of Egypt as a province. Though he writes “I added Egypt to the Roman empire,” he treated it rather as an imperial domain under a prefect or viceroy closely attached to his interests. Its first prefect was Cornelius Gallus, a knight from the Gallic colony of Fréjus, a poet himself and a friend of Vergil. Cornelius Gallus was in fact the hero of the famous eclogue: neget quis carmina Gallo? It was specially ordained that no senator might visit Egypt without the express permission of Cæsar. The native Egyptians were already overridden by a Greek aristocracy dating from Alexander’s conquest. They had no rights, and no nationality was designed for them as it had been elsewhere. Augustus accepted the elaborate bureaucratic system which he had found in existence when he came. The Greek aristocracy lived almost exclusively in Alexandria, possessing a municipal constitution, magistracy, and priesthood of their own. The ecclesia was stopped but otherwise there was no attempt to Romanise Egypt. The old Egyptian worship of Isis and Osiris had conquered all its conquerors and continued to make inroads even into Rome itself where Augustus was forced to accept it as irresistible. All that had happened in Egypt was that Augustus had taken the place of the Ptolemies in the official religion. It was the motive of fear which led to the appointment of a mere knight as viceroy, though he had three legions under his command. The officials under him were knights or freedmen. The taxes remained very heavy, as was necessary, but now the Egyptians were placed in a better position to pay them. Even before the civil war was quite ended in 29 B.C. Augustus had employed his soldiers to clear the canals and raise the level of the dams which ensure the Egyptian harvests. This process continued, and Egypt never had such prosperity again until Lord Cromer came to resume the work of Augustus. The harvest depended simply on the height to which the Nile rose. The ancient Nilometer at Elephantine records that the Nile rose to an unprecedented height in the latter days of Augustus. Formerly a level of eight ells had meant famine, now it ensured a tolerable harvest. Another inscription found at Coptos gives us the names of the Roman soldiers who built reservoirs of water along the great roads. Then the trade with India along the Red Sea first began to grow great. Whereas in the time of Cleopatra hardly twenty ships sailed to India in a year, there was already in Strabo’s day (about A.D. 18) a great fleet of Indiamen. Taxes on exports and imports returned a huge revenue to the imperial purse.