Hutton Webster

“ Some of the grandest ruins of antiquity are not in the capital city itself, or even in Italy, but in Spain, France, England, Greece, Switzerland, Asia Minor, Syria, and North Africa. Among these are Hadrian's Wall in Britain, the splendid aqueduct known as the Pont du Gard near Nîmes in southern France, the beautiful temple called La Maison Carrée in the same city, the Olympieum at Athens, and the temple of the Sun at Baalbec in Syria Thus the lonely hilltops, the desolate desert sands, the mountain fastnesses of three continents bear witness even now to the widespreading sway of Rome. ”

“ The city lies on a peninsula between the Sea of Marmora and the spacious harbor called the Golden Horn. Washed on three sides by the water and, like Rome, enthroned upon seven hills, Constantinople occupies a site justly celebrated as the noblest in the world. It stands in Europe, looks on Asia, and commands the entrance to both the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. As a sixteenth century writer pointed out, Constantinople "is a city which Nature herself has designed to be the mistress of the world." ”

“ THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV The brilliant reign of the French king cast its spell upon the rest of Europe. Kings and princes looked to Louis as the model of what a king should be and set themselves to imitate the splendor of his court. During this period the French language, manners, dress, art, literature, and science became the accepted standards of good society in all civilized lands. France still retains in large measure the preeminent position which she secured under the "Grand Monarch." ”

“ Hence she presided over the life of women and especially over the sacred rites of marriage. Athena, who sprang full-grown from the forehead of Zeus, embodied the idea of wisdom and all womanly virtues. Aphrodite, who arose from the foam of the sea, was the goddess of love and beauty. Demeter, the great earth- mother, watched over seed-time and harvest. Each deity thus had a kingdom and a function of its own. ”

“ ROMANIZATION OF EAST AND WEST The civilized world took on the stamp and impress of Rome. The East, indeed, remained Greek in language and feeling, but even there Roman law and government prevailed, Roman roads traced their unerring course, and Roman architects erected majestic monuments. The West became completely Roman. North Africa, Spain, Gaul, distant Dacia, and Britain were the seats of populous cities, where the Latin language was spoken and Roman customs were followed. ”

“ When we speak of the "fall" of Rome, we have in mind, not a violent catastrophe which suddenly plunged the civilized world into ruin, but rather the slow and gradual decay of ancient society throughout the basin of the Mediterranean. This decay set in long before the Germans and the Persians became a serious danger to the empire. It would have continued, doubtless, had there been no Germans and Persians to break through the frontiers and destroy. The truth seems to be that, during the third and fourth centuries of our era, classical civilization, like an overtrained athlete, had grown "stale." ”

“ From this place Roman orators addressed their assembled fellow-citizens.
THE GRANDEUR OF ROME How splendid a scene must have greeted an observer in ancient times who, from the height of the Capitol, gazed at the city before him. The Forum was then one radiant avenue of temples, triumphal arches, columns, and shrines. And beyond the Forum stretched a magnificent array of theaters and amphitheaters, enormous baths, colossal sepulchers, and statues in stone and bronze. So prodigious an accumulation of objects beautiful, costly, and rare has never before or since been found on earth. ”

“ Though the army became less and less Roman in blood, it always kept in character and spirit the best traditions of Rome. The long intervals of peace were not passed by the soldiers in idleness. They built the great highways that penetrated every region of the empire, spanned the streams with bridges, raised dikes and aqueducts, and taught the border races the arts of civilization. It was due, finally, to the labors of the legionaries, that the most exposed parts of the frontiers were provided with an extensive system of walls and ramparts. ”

“ HELLENIC INFLUENCE AT ROME We must not imagine, however, that all the changes in Roman life worked for evil. If the Romans were becoming more luxurious, they were likewise gaining in culture. The conquests which brought Rome in touch, first with Magna Graecia and Sicily, then with Greece itself and the Hellenic East, prepared the way for the entrance of Hellenism. Roman soldiers and traders carried back to Italy an acquaintance with Greek customs and ideas. Thousands of cultivated Greeks, some as slaves, others as freemen, settled in the capital as actors, physicians, artists, and writers. ”

“ AGE OF PERICLES, 461-429 B.C. The period, about thirty years in length, between the ostracism of Cimon and the death of Pericles, forms the most brilliant epoch in Greek history. Under the guidance of Pericles the Athenian naval empire reached its widest extent. Through his direction Athens became a complete democracy. Inspired by him the Athenians came to manifest that love of knowledge, poetry, art, and all beautiful things which, even more than their empire or their democracy, has made them famous in the annals of mankind. ”

“ Throughout the Middle Ages Constantinople remained the most important city in Europe. When London, Paris, and Vienna were small and mean towns, Constantinople was a large and flourishing metropolis. The renown of the city penetrated even into barbarian lands. The Scandinavians called it Micklegarth, the "Great City"; the Russians knew of it as Tsarigrad, the "City of the Caesars." But its own people best described it as the "City guarded by God." Here, for more than eleven centuries, was the capital of the Roman Empire and the center of Eastern Christendom. ”

“ Temples rose in every province to the deified Augustus, and altars smoked with sacrifices to him. Emperor worship spread rapidly over the ancient world and helped to unite all classes in allegiance to the new government. It provided a universal religion for a universal empire. Yet just at the time when this new cult was taking root, and in the midst of the happy reign of Augustus, there was born in Bethlehem of Judea the Christ whose religion was to overcome the worship of the emperors and with it all other faiths of pagan antiquity. ”

“ Hannibal's plans, however, did not include a siege of the capital. He would not shatter his victorious army in an assault on a fortified town. Hannibal's real object was to bring the Italians over to his side, to ruin Rome through the revolts of her allies. But now he learned, apparently for the first time, that Italy was studded with Latin colonies, [3] each a miniature Rome, each prepared to resist to the bitter end. Not a single city opened its gates to the invader. On such solid foundations rested Roman rule in Italy. ”

“ Roman religion busied itself with the everyday life of man. Just as the household was bound together by the tie of common worship, so all the citizens were united in a common reverence for the deities which guarded the state. The religion of Rome made and held together a nation. ”

“ THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS ABSOLUTISM Most European nations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries accepted the principle of absolutism in government. Absolutism was as popular then as democracy is to-day. The rulers of France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Scandinavia, and other countries, having triumphed over the feudal nobles, proceeded to revive the autocratic traditions of imperial Rome. Like Diocletian, Constantine, and later emperors, they posed as absolute sovereigns, who held their power, not from the choice or consent of their subjects, but from God. ”

“ THE CITIES AND CIVILIZATION The great cities of Flanders, Germany, and Italy, not to speak of those in France, Spain, and England, were much more than centers of trade, industry, and finance. Within their walls learning and art flourished to an extent which had never been possible in earlier times, when rural life prevailed throughout western Europe. We shall now see what the cities of the Middle Ages contributed to civilization. ”

“ If we except the abandonment of Trajan's conquests beyond the Danube and the Euphrates, [9] no part of the huge empire had as yet succumbed to its enemies. The subject peoples, during these four centuries, had not tried to overthrow the empire or to withdraw from its protection. The Roman state, men believed, would endure forever. Yet the times were drawing nigh when the old order of things was to be broken up; when barbarian invaders were to seize the fairest provinces as their own; and when new kingdoms, ruled by men of Germanic speech, were to arise in lands that once obeyed Rome. ”

“ When the Arabs had brought the culture of the Orient to Spain and Sicily, when the Northmen after their wonderful expansion had settled down in Normandy, England, and other countries, and when the peoples of western Europe, whether as peaceful pilgrims or as warlike crusaders, had visited Constantinople and the Holy Land, men's minds received a wonderful stimulus. The intellectual life of Europe was "speeded up," and the way was prepared for the even more rapid advance of knowledge in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as the Middle Ages passed into modern times. ”

“ Vergil guides him through the realms of Hell and Purgatory until he meets his lady Beatrice, the personification of love and purity, who conducts him through Paradise. The Divine Comedy gives in artistic verse an epitome of all that medieval men knew and hoped and felt: it is a mirror of the Middle Ages. At the same time it drew much of its inspiration from Graeco-Roman sources. Athens, for Dante, is the "hearth from which all knowledge glows"; Homer is the "loftiest of poets", and Aristotle is the "master of those who know." ”

“ ITALIAN CITIES OF THE RENAISSANCE Italy, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, was a land particularly favorable to the growth of learning and the arts. In northern Italy the great cities of Milan, Pisa, Genoa, Florence, Venice, and many others had early succeeded in throwing off their feudal burdens and had become independent, self-governing communities. Democracy flourished in them, as in the old Greek city-states. Noble birth counted for little; a man of ability and ambition might rise to any place. ”

“ THE ROBIN HOOD BALLADS The same democratic spirit breathes in the old English ballads of the outlaw Robin Hood. According to some accounts he flourished in the second half of the twelfth century, when Henry II and Richard the Lion-hearted reigned over England. Robin Hood, with his merry men, leads an adventurous life in Sherwood Forest, engaging in feats of strength and hunting the king's tall deer. Bishops, sheriffs, and gamekeepers are his only enemies. For the common people he has the greatest pity, and robs the rich to endow the poor. ”

“ They made citizenship a privilege which came to a person only by birth, a privilege which he lost by removal to another city. Elsewhere he was only a foreigner without legal rights—a man without a country. ”

“ THE FUTURE Far away in the north, remote from the noisy conflicts of Greek political life, a new power was slowly rising to imperial greatness—no insignificant city-state, but an extensive territorial state like those of modern times. Three years after the battle of Mantinea Philip II ascended the throne of Macedonia. He established Hellenic unity by bringing the Hellenic people within a widespread empire. Alexander the Great, the son of this king, carried Macedonian dominion and Greek culture to the ends of the known world. ”

“ Athens, men felt, had built up an empire on the ruins of Hellenic liberty.
NATURE OF THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY If the Athenians possessed an empire, they themselves were citizens of a state more democratic than any other that has existed, before or since, in the history of the world. They had now learned how unjust was the rule of a tyrant or of a privileged class of nobles. They tried, instead, to afford every one an opportunity to make the laws, to hold office, and to administer justice. Hence the Athenian popular assembly and law courts were open to all respectable citizens. ”

“ MEANING OF THE RENAISSANCE LATER PERIOD OF THE MIDDLE AGES The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, covering the later period of the Middle Ages, are commonly known as those of the Renaissance. This French word means Rebirth or Revival. It is a convenient term for all the changes in society, law, and government, in science, philosophy, and religion, in literature and art which gradually transformed medieval civilization into that of modern times. ”

“ The products of Byzantine industry, including silks, embroideries, mosaics, enamels, and metal work, were exchanged at that city for the spices, drugs, and precious stones of the East. Byzantine wares also found their way into Italy and France and, by way of the Russian rivers, reached the heart of eastern Europe. Russia, in turn, furnished Constantinople with large quantities of honey, wax, fur, wool, grain, and slaves. A traveler of the twelfth century well described the city as a metropolis "common to all the world, without distinction of country or religion." ”

“ NUMBER AND CHEAPNESS OF SLAVES The number of slaves, though great enough in Athens and other Greek cities, reached almost incredible figures during the later period of Roman history. Every victorious battle swelled the troops of captives sent to the slave markets at Rome. Ordinary slaves became as cheap as beasts of burden are now. The Roman poet Horace tells us that at least ten slaves were necessary for a gentleman in even moderate circumstances. Wealthy individuals, given to excessive luxury, might number their city slaves by the hundreds, besides many more on their country estates. ”

“ EUROPE IN ASIA The new world in the East, thus entered by the Portuguese and later by other European peoples, was really an old world—rich, populous, and civilized. It held out alluring possibilities, not only for trade, but also as a field for missionary enterprise. Da Gama and Albuquerque began a movement, which still continues, to "westernize" Asia by opening it up to European influence. It remains to be seen, however, whether India, China, and Japan will allow their ancient culture to be extinguished by that of Europe. ”

“ There were the distant frontiers on the Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates to be guarded; there were all the provinces to be governed. A single ruler, however able and energetic, had more than he could do. In the second place, the succession to the imperial throne was uncertain. Now an emperor named his successor, now the Senate elected him, and now the swords of the legionaries raised him to the purple. Such an unsettled state of affairs constantly invited those struggles between rival pretenders which had so nearly brought the empire to destruction. ”

“ In Greece, where many little states constantly at war bordered one another, a slave could often run away to liberty. In a great empire like Rome, where no boundary lines existed, this was usually impossible. Freedom, however, was sometimes voluntarily granted. A master in his will might liberate his favorite slave, as a reward for the faithful service of a lifetime. A more common practice permitted the slave to keep a part of his earnings until he had saved enough to purchase his freedom. ”