Charles Seignobos

“ There Osiris sits on his tribunal, surrounded by forty-two judges; the soul appears before these to give account of his past life. His actions are weighed in the balance of truth, his "heart" is called to witness. "O heart," cries the dead, "O heart, the issue of my mother, my heart when I was on earth, offer not thyself as witness, charge me not before the great god." The soul found on examination to be bad is tormented for centuries and at last annihilated. The good soul springs up across the firmament; after many tests it rejoins the company of the gods and is absorbed into them. ”

“ The Hero.—The hero in Greece is a man who has become illustrious, and after death a mighty spirit—not a god, but a demi-god. The heroes do not live on Olympus in the heaven of the gods, they do not direct the life of the world. And yet they, too, possess a power higher than that of any human, and this permits them to aid their friends and destroy their enemies. For this reason the Greeks rendered them worship as to the gods and implored their protection. ”

“ When, then, O Athenians, will you be about your duty? Will you always roam about the public places asking one of another: What is the news? Ah! How can there be anything newer than the sight of a Macedonian conquering Athens and dominating Greece? I say, then, that you ought to equip fifty galleys and resolve, if necessary, to man them yourselves. Do not talk to me of an army of 10,000 or of 20,000 aliens that exists only on paper. I would have only citizen soldiers. ”

“ The Children.—The Roman child belongs to the father like a piece of property. The father has the right of exposing him in the street. If he accepts the child, the latter is brought up at first in the house. Girls remain here until marriage; they spin and weave under the supervision of their mother. The boys walk to the fields with their father and exercise themselves in arms. The Romans are not an artistic people; they require no more of their children than that they know how to read, write, and reckon; neither music nor poetry is taught them. ”

“ Booty.—In the wars of antiquity the victor took possession of everything that had belonged to the vanquished, not only of the arms and camp-baggage, but of the treasure, the movable property, beasts of the hostile people, the men, women, and children. At Rome the booty did not belong to the soldiers but to the people. The prisoners were enslaved, the property was sold and the profits of the sale turned into the public chest. And so every war was a lucrative enterprise. The kings of Asia had accumulated enormous treasure and this the Roman generals transported to Rome. ”

“ If they had a master like us, fear would inspire them with courage; they would march under the lash against a larger army; but being free and independent, they will have no more courage than that with which nature has endowed them.' 'The Spartans,' replied Demaratus, 'are not inferior to anybody in a hand-to-hand contest, and united in a phalanx they are the bravest of all men. ”

“ Tiberius Gracchus, a tribune of the plebs, exclaimed in a moment of indignation, "The wild beasts of Italy have at least their lairs, but the men who offer their blood for Italy have only the light and the air that they breathe; they wander about without shelter, without a dwelling, with their wives and their children. Those generals do but mock them who exhort them to fight for their tombs and their temples. Is there one of them who still possesses the sacred altar of his house and the tomb of his ancestors? ”

“ No institution, no law fettered his will. "The decree of the emperor has the force of law," say the jurisconsults themselves. Rome recognized then the unlimited despotism that the tyrants had exercised in the Greek cities, no longer circumscribed within the borders of a single city, but gigantic as the empire itself. As in Greece some honorable tyrants had presented themselves, one sees in Rome some wise and honest monarchs (Augustus, Vespasian, Titus) . But few men had a head strong enough to resist vertigo when they saw themselves so elevated above other men. ”

“ Polytheism.—The Greeks, like the ancient Aryans, believed in many gods. They had neither the sentiment of infinity nor that of eternity; they did not conceive of God as one for whom the heavens are only a tent and the earth a foot-stool. To the Greeks every force of nature—the air, the sun, the sea—was divine, and as they did not conceive of all these phenomena as produced by one cause, they assigned each to a particular god. This is the reason that they believed in many gods. ”

“ Hermes, represented with winged sandals, is the god of the fertile showers. But he has other offices; he is the god of streets and squares, the god of commerce, of theft, and of eloquence. He it is who guides the souls of the dead, the messenger of the gods, the deity presiding over the breeding of cattle.
Almost always a Greek god has several functions, quite dissimilar to our eyes, but to the Greeks bearing some relation to one another. ”

“ The Romans kept their costume, tongue, and religion, and never confused these with those of the Greeks. But thousands of Greek scholars and artists came to establish themselves in Rome and to open schools of literature and of eloquence. Later it was the fashion for the youth of the great Roman families to go as students to the schools of Athens and Alexandria. Thus the arts and science of the Greeks were gradually introduced into Rome. "Vanquished Greece overcame her savage conqueror," says Horace, the Roman poet; "she brought the arts to uncultured Latium." ”

“ The Public Domain.—When a conquered people asked peace, this is the formula which its deputies were expected to pronounce: "We surrender to you the people, the town, the fields, the waters, the gods of the boundaries, and movable property; all things which belonged to the gods and to men we deliver to the power of the Roman people." ”

“ Usually in a Greek statue the head is small, the face without emotion and dull. The Greeks did not seek, as we do, the expression of the face; they strove for beauty of line and did not sacrifice the limbs for the head. In a Greek statue it is the whole body that is beautiful. ”

“ The Assyrian People.—The Assyrians were a race of hunters and soldiers. Their bas-reliefs ordinarily represent them armed with bow and lance, often on horseback. They were good knights—alert, brave, clever in skirmish and battle; also bombastic, deceitful, and sanguinary. For six centuries they harassed Asia, issuing from their mountains to hurl themselves on their neighbors, and returning with entire peoples reduced to slavery. They apparently made war for the mere pleasure of slaying, ravaging, and pillaging. No people ever exhibited greater ferocity. ”

“ The conquest of this great horde by two small peoples appeared at that time as a prodigy. The gods, said the Greeks, had fought for them. But there is less wonder when we examine the two antagonists more closely: the Persian army was innumerable, and Xerxes had thought that victory was a matter of numbers. But this multitude was an embarrassment to itself. It did not know where to secure food for itself, it advanced but slowly, and it choked itself on the day of combat. ”

“ Alexander.—Philip of Macedon was assassinated in 336. His son Alexander was then twenty years old. Like all the Greeks of good family he was accustomed to athletic exercises, a vigorous fighter, an excellent horseman (he alone had been able to master Bucephalus, his war-horse) . But at the same time he was informed in politics, in eloquence, and in natural history, having had as teacher from his thirteenth to his seventeenth year Aristotle, the greatest scholar of Greece. He read the Iliad with avidity, called this the guide to the military art, and desired to imitate its heroes. ”

“ Greek Humanity.—In Greece the Romans saw the monuments, the statues, and the pictures which had [Pg 269] crowded their cities for centuries; they came to know their learned people and the philosophers. Some of the Romans acquired a taste for the beautiful and for the life of the spirit. The Scipios surrounded themselves with cultivated Greeks. Æmilius Paullus asked from all the booty taken by him from Macedon only the library of King Perseus; he had his children taught by Greek preceptors. It was then the fashion in Rome to speak, and even to write in Greek. ”

“ The king as man adores himself as god. Being god, the Pharaoh has absolute power over men; as master, he gives his orders to his great nobles at court, to his warriors, to all his subjects. But the priests, though adoring him, surround and watch him; their head, the high priest of the god Ammon, at last becomes more powerful than the king; he often governs under the name of the king and in his stead.
The Subjects of Pharaoh.—The king, the priests, the warriors, the nobles, are proprietors of all Egypt; all the other people are simply their peasants who cultivate the land for them. ”

“ The most powerful statesmen in Rome, Papirius, Fabius, the two Scipios, Cato, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Cæsar, and Crassus, were victorious generals. The nobles who composed the Senate gained by the increase of Roman subjects, and with these they allied themselves as governors to receive their homage and their presents. For the knights—that is to say, the bankers, the merchants, and the contractors—every new conquest was a new land to exploit. The people itself profited by the booty taken from the enemy. ”

“ Statues, truly, are rare and coarse; sculptors preferred to execute bas-reliefs similar to pictures on great slabs of alabaster. They represented scenes which were often very complicated—battles, chases, sieges of towns, ceremonies in which the king appeared with a great retinue. Every detail is scrupulously done; one sees the files of servants in charge of the feast of the king, the troops of workmen who built his palace, the gardens, the fields, the ponds, the fish in the water, the birds perched over their nests or flitting from tree to tree. ”

“ The Athenians created so many political functions that a part of the citizens was engaged in fulfilling them. The citizen of Athens, like the functionary or soldier of our days, was absorbed in public affairs. Warring and governing were the whole of his life. He spent his days in the assembly, in the courts, in the army, at the gymnasium, or at the market. Almost always he had a wife and children, for his religion commanded this, but he did not live at home. ”

“ Indra.—The sun, Indra, the mighty one, "king of the world and master of creatures," bright and warm, traverses the heavens on a car drawn by azure steeds; he it is who hurls the thunderbolt, sends the rain, and banishes the clouds. India is a country of violent tempests; the Hindoo struck with this phenomenon explained it in his own fashion. ”

“ Rhetors and philosophers penetrated all Europe, going from one city to another giving lectures. In every province could be found men from the most remote provinces. Inscriptions show us in Spain professors, painters, Greek sculptors; in Gaul, goldsmiths and Asiatic workmen. Everybody transported and mingled customs, arts, and religion. Little by little they accustomed themselves to speak the language of the Romans. From the third century the Latin had become the common language of the West, as the Greek since the successors of Alexander had been the language of the Orient. ”

“ The body of citizens called the people was regarded as absolute master in the state. It is this body that elects the magistrates, votes on peace and war, and that makes the laws. "The law," say the jurisconsults, "is what the Roman people ordains." At Rome, as in Greece, the people do not appoint deputies, they pass on the business itself. Even after more than 500,000 men scattered over all Italy were admitted into the citizenship, the citizens had to go in person to Rome to exercise their rights. The people, therefore, meet at but one place; the assembly is called the Comitia. ”

“ The departure of an army was always accompanied by sacrifices to the gods of the country; it was said that Hamilcar after the sacrifice made his infant son swear eternal enmity to Rome.
Hannibal, brought up in the company of the soldiers, became the best horseman and the best archer of the army. War was his only aim in life; his only needs, therefore, were a horse and arms. He had made himself so popular that at the death of Hasdrubal who was in the command of the army, the soldiers elected him general without waiting for orders from the Carthaginian senate. ”

“ Epicureans and Stoics were in harmony on two points: they disdained the ancient religion and taught that all men are equal, slaves or citizens, Greeks or barbarians. Their Roman disciples renounced in their school certain old superstitions, and learned to show themselves less cruel to their slaves, less insolent toward other peoples.
The conquest of Greece by the Romans gave the arts, letters, and morals of the Greeks currency in the west, just as the conquest of the Persian empire by the Greeks had carried their language, customs, and religion into the Orient. ”

“ To him who asked if he should pay the Roman tax, he replied, "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's." And so the Christian accepted what he found established and himself worked to perfect it, not to remodel society. To make himself pleasing to God and worthy of his kingdom it was not necessary to offer him sacrifices or to observe minute formulas as the pagans did: "True worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth." ”

“ On the softened earth the peasant sows his crop with almost no labor. The Nile, then, brings both water and soil to Egypt; if the river should fail, Egypt would revert, like the land [Pg 21] on either side of it, to a desert of sterile sand where the rain never falls. The Egyptians are conscious of their debt to their stream. A song in its honor runs as follows: "Greeting to thee, O Nile, who hast revealed thyself throughout the land, who comest in peace to give life to Egypt. Does it rise? The land is filled with joy, every heart exults, every being receives its food, every mouth is full. ”