Arthur E. R. Boak

“ A long series of successful and profitable wars, for Rome was ultimately victorious in every struggle after 387, had engendered in the Roman people a self-confidence and a martial spirit which soon led them to conquests beyond the confines of Italy. During this period of expansion within Italy, Roman policy had been guided by the Senate, a body of unrecorded statesmen of wide outlook and great determination, who not only made Rome mistress of the peninsula but succeeded in laying enduring foundations for the Roman power. ”

“ The realization that Caesar contemplated the establishment of a monarchy aroused bitter animosity among certain representatives of the old governing oligarchy, who chafed under the restraints imposed upon them by his autocratic power and resented the degradation of the Senate to the position of a mere advisory council. It could hardly be expected that members of the Roman aristocracy with all their traditions of imperial government would tamely submit to being excluded from political life except as ministers of an autocrat who was until lately one of themselves. ”

“ For a time Cleopatra, who had frustrated Antony’s last attempt at resistance, hoped to win over Octavian as she had won Caesar and Antony, so that she might save at least Egypt for her dynasty. But finding her efforts unavailing, she poisoned herself rather than grace Octavian’s triumph. The kingdom of Egypt was added to the Roman empire, not as a province but as part of an estate to be directly administered by the ruler of the Roman world who took his place as the heir of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies. The treasures of Egypt reimbursed Octavian for the expenses of his late campaigns. ”

“ But the Romans had not taken into account the military genius of Hannibal, whose audacious plan of carrying the war into Italy upset their calculations. Realizing that he could not transport his army to Italy by sea, he was prepared to cross the Pyrenees, traverse southern Gaul and, crossing the Alps, descend upon Italy from the north. Among the Gauls of the Po valley he hoped to find recruits for his army, and expected that, once he was in Italy, the Roman allies would seize this opportunity of recovering their independence. Deprived of their support Rome would have to yield. ”

“ Roman society under the Principate exhibits in general the same characteristics as during the last century of the Republic. Rome itself was a thoroughly cosmopolitan city, where the concentration of wealth and political power attracted the ambitious, the adventurous and the curious from all lands. Whole quarters were occupied by various nationalities, most prominent among whom were the Greeks, the Syrians, and the Jews, speaking their own languages and plying their native trades. With the freeborn foreign population mingled the thousands of slaves and freedmen of every race and tongue. ”

“ As a statesman he displayed little imagination or constructive ability. He could think of nothing better than to restore the Senate to a position which it had shown itself unable to maintain; and his persecutions of his political opponents had not crushed out opposition to the Senate, but left a legacy of hatred endangering the permanence of his reforms.
The epoch between the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus and the death of Sulla revealed the incapacity of either the Senate or the tribunes and the Assembly to give a peaceful and stable government to the Roman state. ”

“ The republican organs of government had ceased to voice the opinion even of the whole Roman citizen body. The governing circles had proven themselves incapable of bringing about any improvement in the situation and had completely lost the power of preserving peace in the state. Radical reforms were imperative and could only be effective by virtue of superior force. In his resort to corruption and violence in furthering his own career and in his appeal to arms to decide the issue between himself and the Senate, Caesar must be judged according to the practices of his time. ”

“ By the Roman writers who preserved the republican tradition Brutus, Cassius, and their associates were honored as tyrannicides who in the name of liberty had sought to save the republic. Cato, who had died rather than witness the triumph of Caesar, became their hero. But this is an extremely narrow and partizan view. The republic which Caesar had overthrown was no system of popular government but one whereby a small group of Roman nobles and capitalists exploited for their own personal ends and for the satisfaction of an idle city mob millions of subjects in the provinces. ”

“ The imperial government of Rome had crushed out all vestiges of national loyalty among the peoples it had absorbed, and had failed to create any political institutions which would have permitted the provincials, as such, to have participated in the government of the empire. With the gradual decline of municipal autonomy the great mass of the provincials were deprived of the last traces of an independent political life. ”

“ The conquest of Gaul was an event of supreme importance for the future history of the Roman empire, and for the development of European civilization as well. For the time Gallia comata was not formed into a province. Its peoples were made allies of Rome, under the supervision of the governor of Narbonese Gaul, under obligation to furnish troops and for the most part liable to a fixed tribute. Caesar’s campaign in Gaul had given him the opportunity to develop his unusual military talents and to create a veteran army devoted to himself. ”

“ The culture of Greece culminated in its scientific achievements of the third century B. C. At that time in comparison with the Greeks the neighboring, peoples were at best semi-barbarians; in the eastern Mediterranean the Greeks were the dominant race, still animated by a strong love of political freedom. But the Roman conquest with its ruthless exploitation of the provinces ruined the Greek world economically and broke the morale of the Greek peoples, forcing them to seek their salvation in fawning servility to Rome. ”

“ A conflict with the secular power was rendered inevitable by the very nature of Christianity, which was non-Roman, non-national, and monotheistic, refusing recognition to the cults of the state, and denying the divinity of the ruler. The Romans regarded the imperial cult from the political standpoint and considered the refusal to recognize the divinity of the princeps as an act of treason. On the other hand, Christians looked upon the question as a matter of conscience and morality and regarded the worship of the princeps as an act of idolatry. ”

“ During the first and second century the population of Rome must have been in the neighborhood of one million, but in the third century it began to decline as a result of pestilence and the general bankruptcy of the empire. Inevitably in such a city there were the sharpest contrasts between riches and poverty, and the luxurious palaces of the wealthy were matched by the squalid tenements of the proletariat. In outward appearance Rome underwent a transformation which made her worthy to be capital of so vast an empire. ”

“ Cruel, they took delight in gladiatorial combats, especially in Campania, where the Romans learned this custom. Bold and energetic warriors, as their conquests show, they lacked the spirit of discipline and coöperation, and were incapable of developing a stable political organization. Nevertheless, they played an important part in the cultural development of Italy, even though here their chief mission was the bringing of the Italian peoples into contact with Hellenic civilization. ”

“ The pagan Oriental cults whose penetration of the European provinces is so marked a feature in the religious life of the principate were the cults of the peoples of western Asia and Egypt which had become Hellenized and adapted for world expansion after Alexander’s conquest of the Persian empire. From this time onward they spread throughout the Greek culture world but it was not until the establishment of the world empire of Rome with its facilities for, and stimulus to, intercourse between all peoples within the Roman frontiers that they were able to obtain a foothold in western Europe. ”

“ The population of the empire was divided into a number of sharply defined castes, each of which was compelled to play a definite rôle in the life of the state. The sons of senators, soldiers, curiales, corporati, and coloni had to follow in their fathers’ walks of life, and each sought to escape from the tasks to which he was born. In the eyes of the government collegiati, curiales, and coloni existed solely to pay taxes for the support of the bureaucracy and the army. ”

“ The basic stratum of this system was the Roman element: religious ideas that the Romans probably held in common with the other Latin and Italian peoples. Although traces of a belief in magic; and of the worship of natural objects and animals, survived from earlier stages of religious development, it was “animism” that formed the basis of what we may call the characteristic Roman religious ideas. Animism is the belief that natural objects are the abode of spirits more powerful than man, and that all natural forces and processes are the expression of the activity of similar spirits. ”

“ Hannibal left Italy with the remnant of his veterans after a campaign which had established his reputation as one of the world’s greatest masters of the art of war. For nearly fifteen years he had maintained himself in the enemy’s country with greatly inferior forces, and now after inflicting many severe defeats and never losing a battle he was forced to withdraw because of lack of resources, not because of the superior generalship of his foes. Before leaving Italian soil he set up a record of his exploits in the temple of Hera Lacinia in Bruttium. ”

“ There were several reasons for the persistence of paganism. The Oriental and Orphic cults exercised a powerful hold over their votaries, and made an appeal very similar to that of Christianity. Stoicism, with its high ideal of conduct, remained a strong tradition among the upper classes of society; and Neoplatonism had a special attraction for men of intelligence and culture. Roman patriotism, too, fostered loyalty to the gods under whose aegis Rome had grown great, and until the close of the fourth century the Roman Senate was an indefatigable champion of the ancient faith. ”

“ It seems certain, too, that the last of the Roman kings were Etruscans and belong to the period of Etruscan domination in Rome and Latium. As far as can be judged, the Roman monarchy was not purely hereditary but elective within the royal family, like that of the primitive Greek states, where the king was the head of one of a group of noble families, chosen by the nobles and approved by the people as a whole. About the end of the sixth century the kingship was deprived of its political functions, and remained at Rome solely as a lifelong priestly office. ”

“ The chief characteristics of the military organization of the late empire were the complete separation of civil and military authority except in the person of the emperor, the sharp distinction between the mobile forces and the frontier garrisons, and the ever-increasing predominance of the barbarian element, not merely in the rank and file of the soldiers, but also among the officers of highest rank. ”

“ The progress of Romanization in the provinces is clearly marked by the participation of provincials in the literary life of Rome. From the Cisalpine, from Narbonese Gaul, and from Spain, men with literary instincts and ability had been drawn to the capital as the sole place where their talents would find recognition. But gradually some of the provinces developed a Latin culture of their own. The first evidences of this change came from the age of the Antonines, when a Latin literature made its appearance in the province of Africa. ”

“ The military system of Augustus strongly emphasized and guaranteed the supremacy of Italy and the Italians over the provincials. Both the officers and the elite troops were drawn almost exclusively from Italy or the latinized parts of the western provinces. In like manner the reservation of the higher grades of the civil administration, the second prop of Roman rule, for Roman senators and equestrians, as well as the exclusion of the provincial imperial cult from Italian soil, marked clearly the distinction between the conquering and the subject races of the empire. ”