(In the British Museum)
Those excellent statesmen who under Trajan seemed to spring from the ground were not the product of the moment. They had been in office during the preceding reigns, only they had had but little influence, being kept in the background by the freedmen and infamous favourites of the emperor. Men of the greatest merit thus occupied high places under Nero. The framework was good, and the rise of the bad emperors to power, although disastrous, did not suffice to change the general order of things and the principles of the state. The empire, far from being decadent, was in all the vigour of a most robust youth. The decadence was to come two hundred years later, and strange to say under far less wicked emperors.
Politically the situation was analogous to that of France, which since the Revolution has never enjoyed a direct succession of its ruling powers, and can pass through perilous fortunes without hopelessly damaging its internal organisation and national force. We naturally compare the first century of the empire to the eighteenth century, an epoch absolutely corrupt if we judge from the collections of anecdotes belonging to the times, and during which certain families nevertheless maintained their austere customs.
Philosophy made alliance with the honest Roman families and offered a noble resistance. The school of stoics produced such grand characters as Cremutius Cordus, Thrasea, Helvidius Priscus, Annæus Cornutus, Musonius Rufus—all admirable upholders of aristocratic virtue. The rigidity and exaggeration of this school were due to the horrible cruelty of the government of the cæsars. The one idea of a man of real worth was to accustom himself to pain and to prepare for death. Lucan with bad taste, and Persius with superior talent, expressed the highest sentiments of a great spirit. Seneca the philosopher, Pliny the Elder, and Papirius Fabianus kept up a high standard of learning and philosophy. All were not corrupted; there were some shining lights; but too often their only alternative was death. The ignoble portion of humanity from time to time got the upper hand. The spirit of frenzy and of cruelty then burst forth and turned Rome into a veritable hell.
The government, which in Rome was so uncertain, was far better in the provinces, and the shocks which disturbed the capital were hardly felt there. In spite of its faults the Roman administration was far superior to the monarchies and republics which had disappeared through conquest. The reign of sovereign municipalities had passed away many centuries before. The small states had been killed by their egotism, their jealousy, their ignorance, and their disregard of private rights. The old Grecian life, made up of struggles entirely external, no longer satisfied the people. It had been charming in its day; but that brilliant Olympus, a democracy of demi-gods, having lost its freshness, had become hard, unfeeling, vain, superficial, for lack of sincerity and real uprightness. This was the cause which resulted in the Macedonian domination, followed by Roman rule.
The evils of excessive centralization were yet unknown to the empire. Up to the time of Diocletian the towns and provinces were allowed great liberty. In Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Lower Armenia, and Thrace there were independent kingdoms under the protection of Rome. These kingdoms only became sources of danger from the time of Caligula onwards, because the great and far-sighted policy which Augustus had traced with regard to them had not been carried out. The free towns—and they were numerous—governed themselves according to their own laws; they had legislative power and administered justice as in a self-governing country; until the third century, municipal decrees were promulgated with the formula, “the senate and the people.” Theatres served not only for scenic pleasures, they were everywhere centres of agitation and public opinion. The favour of the Romans towards the human race was the theme of some adulatory orations which were not, however, devoid of all sincerity. The doctrine of the “Roman peace,” the idea of a great democracy organised under the protection of Rome, was the basis of all thought. A Greek orator displayed vast learning in proving that the glory of Rome ought to be regarded by all the branches of the Hellenic race as a sort of common inheritance. As far as Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt are concerned, it may be said that the Roman conquest did not destroy a single liberty. Those countries were either indifferent to political life or had never known it.
In spite of the exactions of the governors and the acts of violence inseparable from absolute government, the world, in many ways, had never been so happy. An administration coming from a centre far away was such an advantage, that even the pillage of the prætors of the latter end of the republic did not succeed in rendering it odious. Moreover, the lex Julia had greatly limited the field of abuses and extortion. Excepting under Nero, the follies or the cruelty of the emperor did not go beyond the Roman aristocracy and the immediate surroundings of the prince. Never had those who wished to leave politics alone lived in greater peace. The republic of ancient times, where everyone was forced into party quarrels, was not pleasant to live in; supersession and exile were too frequent.
Now it seemed as if the times were ripe for wide propagandism, superior to the quarrels of little towns, to the rivalries of dynasties. Attempts against liberty owed their origin to the independence which still remained to the provinces and communities, rather than to the Roman administration. In those conquered countries where political needs had not existed for several centuries, and where the people were deprived only of the power of tearing each other to pieces by continual warfare, the empire was an era of prosperity and welfare until then unknown and, we may add without paradox, of liberty. On the one hand the freedom of trade, and industry, and that personal liberty of which the Greek had no idea, became possible. On the other hand the freedom which consists in liberty of opinion could only be benefited by the new régime.
This liberty always gains in dealing with kings and princes more than in dealing with a jealous and narrow-minded middle class. The Greek republics had no such liberty of opinion. The Greeks achieved great things without it, thanks to the unequalled power of their genius, but for all that, Athens was actually under an inquisition. The inquisitor was the archon, the holy office was the royal portico where charges of impiety were tried. Accusations of this nature were very frequent—it was the favourite theme of Attic orators. Not only philosophical offences, such as denying God or providence, but the slightest offence against the municipal doctrines, preaching a strange religion, the most puerile omissions of the scrupulous laws pertaining to the mysteries, were crimes punished with death. The gods whom Aristophanes scoffed at on the stage could sometimes slay. They slew Socrates, they all but slew Alcibiades; Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Theodorus the atheist, Diagoras of Melos, Prodicus of Ceos, Stilpo, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Aspasia, Euripides, were more or less seriously threatened.