Rome

by W. Warde Fowler

The death of Hadrian in A.D. 138 brings us to the third of the great Cæsars of this age, Titus Antoninus, a man who, at fifty-two, had already done excellent work for the Empire. He is known to history as Antoninus Pius, and this last name, given him apparently on his accession, may be a reminiscence of Virgil’s epithet for his hero, and may be due to the strong sense of duty which marked his whole life, public and private. He seems, indeed, vividly to recall the ideal of the Roman character as we traced it in the third chapter of this book; yet he was not Italian by birth. His family belonged to Nismes in southern Gaul, and that ancient city still honours him with a “Place Antonin,” in which his statue stands. His features, as they appear on portrait busts, entirely confirm the account of him left us by his nephew and successor. Grave and wise, gentle yet firm, religious in the true old Roman sense, pure in life, and simple in all his needs and pleasures, he ruled over a peaceful and contented empire, devoting himself to the work of humanising and softening the life and lot of his subjects.

Let us glance, for example, at his attitude towards slavery, which, when we last noticed it, was threatening to become a deadly poison in the Roman system. During the first century of the Empire, chiefly under the influence of the Stoic philosophy, as later on under that of Christianity, there had been growing up a feeling that a slave was, after all, a human being, and had some claim to be treated as such under the Roman law, beneficent in its dealings with all other human beings. Antoninus followed out this new idea both in legislation and in his private life, as did his successor also, who adored his memory. They limited the right of a master over his slaves in several ways; ordaining that if cruelty were proved against a master, he should be compelled to sell the slave he had ill-treated. It is noteworthy, too, that the philosopher in whom they most delighted, Epictetus, had himself originally been a slave. There is no better way of realising the spirit of humanity which actuated Antoninus and his successor than by making some acquaintance with the moral philosophy of Epictetus, and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. The Golden Sayings of Epictetus, in the Golden Treasury Series,[18] and Dr. Rendall’s translation of the Meditations, will be of use to those who do not read Greek.

Hadrian had left the Empire well guarded, and it does not seem to have occurred to Antoninus to see for himself that Hadrian’s vigilance was maintained. This was the one weak point of his reign, and it cost his successors dear. He only once left Italy, and his mind was never occupied with wars or rumours of wars; he lived tranquilly, and died peacefully, without trouble or anxiety. But we know that even before his death clouds were beginning to gather on the northern frontier; and we cannot but feel that the beautiful tranquillity of Antoninus’s life was hardly compatible with the duty of an imperial guardian.

Marcus Aurelius, the author of the Meditations, succeeded his uncle and adoptive father in A.D. 161. Though not the greatest of the four as a ruler, he was the most remarkable as a man, and holds a higher place than the others in the world’s esteem. We may find parallels in history to Trajan, less easily, perhaps, to Hadrian and Antoninus; but there is no monarch like Marcus, not even in the history of the Jews. It is, indeed, astonishing that Rome, Rome of the hard practical temperament, should have produced a ruler who was a philosopher and almost a saint, and yet capable of government. It is the last striking manifestation of the old Roman spirit of duty and discipline, now kindled into a real ethical emotion by the teaching of the Stoics, far the most inspiring creed then available for a man of action. Without any aid from Christianity, which, indeed, he could not understand and occasionally persecuted, Marcus learnt not only how to make his own life pure, but how to live and work for the world of his day.

But saintliness on the throne, as in the case of St. Louis of France, has its drawbacks in practical work. It is, perhaps, true that the mind of Marcus was more active, and found greater satisfaction, in questioning itself than in anxious inquiry into the state of the Empire. He was not one of those of whom our poet says that they do Duty’s work and know it not; and as a consequence his days were not serene and bright. He had a tendency to be morbid, and, like all morbid men, he was serious even to sadness. It has been well said of him that he is always insisting on his faith in a universe in which, nevertheless, he can find nothing but disappointment.

His sensitiveness about his duty sometimes warped his judgment and blunted his discernment of character. At the outset he made a bad blunder in dividing the imperial power with his brother by adoption, Lucius Verus, who had little principle and much leaning to pleasure. To him he committed the charge of a war with Parthia which became inevitable, and though the Roman arms were successful, this was not due to the skill or energy of either Marcus or Verus. Had a strong scientific mind been in command, it might have been possible to avert or mitigate a calamity which now fell on the Mediterranean world, and had a share, perhaps a large one, in the decay and fall of the Empire. The legions brought back with them from the East one of the most terrible plagues known to history, which can only be compared for its effects with the Black Death in the fourteenth century.

Not only in the East, but nearer home, Marcus had to meet formidable foes who broke through the frontiers with which Hadrian had taken such pains. Pushed forward by pressure from the rear, German tribes unwillingly made their way into Roman territory, overran the new province of Dacia, crossed the Danube, and even passed over the Alps into Italy. Marcus’s difficulties were great, but he met them with patience and courage. The pestilence had so greatly thinned the population that both men and money were wanting for the war, and the struggle to drive back the unwilling invaders was prolonged for thirteen years. It was still going on when Marcus died of fever in camp at Vienna. As he closed his eyes in his tent he must have felt that he had spent himself in vain, and that evil days were in store for the Empire. He left a worthless son, Commodus, who failed to understand the danger, and let things go.

We need not follow the Empire in its downward course. We have seen what the work of Rome in the world was to be, and how at last she accomplished it in spite of constant peril and frequent disaster. From Marcus Aurelius onwards the strain of self-defence was too great to allow of progress in any social or political sense. The monarchy became more absolute, the machinery of government more complicated; the masses were over-taxed, and the middle classes ruined. Depopulation again set in, and attempts to remedy it by settling barbarian invaders within the frontiers had some bad results. In less than a century from the death of Marcus the Empire had been divided into two halves of east and west, with a new capital for the eastern half at Byzantium (Constantinople). This, like all the changes of the later Empire, was meant strictly for the purpose of resisting the invaders; but, none the less, they broke at last through all barriers.

Yet this did not happen before the name and fame of Rome had made such deep impression on their minds that they sought to deserve the inheritance which had thus fallen to them; despising, indeed, the degenerate provincials who struck no blow in their own defence, but full of respect for the majestic power which had for so many centuries confronted and instructed them.[19] They never swept away the civilisation of the Mediterranean; from Julius onwards the Roman rulers had done so much to defend it, had raised its prestige so high, had so thoroughly organised its internal life, that uncivilised peoples neither could nor would destroy it.

We still enjoy its best fruits—the art, science and literature of Hellas, the genius of Rome for law—for “the just interference of the State in the interests and passions of humanity.”[20] We may be apt at the present day, when science has opened out for us so many new paths of knowledge, and inspired us with such enthusiasm in pursuing them, to forget the value of the inheritance which Rome preserved for us. But this is merely a passing phase of feeling; it is really quite inconsistent with the character of an age which recognises the doctrine of evolution as its great discovery. It is natural to civilised man to go back upon his past, and to be grateful for all profit he can gain from the study of his own development. So we may be certain that the claim of Greece and Rome to our eternal gratitude will never cease to be asserted, and their right to teach us still what we could have learnt nowhere else, will never be successfully disputed.