Edward A. Freeman

“ From that day, most fully in the West, more fully perhaps than we fancy even in the East, an artificial nation grew up, a nation with its blood mingled with the blood of every stock in Europe, but a nation Roman in name, Roman in feeling, Roman in culture, and, with the exception of the merest survivals, Roman in speech. Before the days of Teutonic migration began, Rome had done her work in the West. Gaul and Spain were lands no less Roman than Italy. If the Roman of Gaul was not always eager to fight for Cæsar, so neither was the Roman of Italy ”

“ The sixth century is not a creative, but rather a reactionary age, an age which does much to hinder the growth of new elements, and much to bring back old elements to a place and a power which they had lost. Of all ages in history the sixth is the one in which the doctrine that the Roman Empire came to an end at some time in the fifth sounds most grotesque. Again the Roman armies march to victory, to more than victory, to conquest, to conquests more precious than the conquests of Cæsar or of Trajan, to conquests which gave back Rome herself to her own Augustus. ”

“ Empire. They are survivals, but survivals which modern Europe, Romeless Europe, the Europe of huge kingdoms and of countless armies—happy when kingdoms mean nations and when armies do not simply keep down unwilling subjects—cannot spare from the midst of her. The age of free cities is past; in some lands the mere high-handed robbery of the stranger has wiped them out, as where the fetters of the meanest of oppressors still clank over enslaved Ragusa. In other lands the loss of local freedom has perhaps been outweighed by admission into a wider national unity. ”

“ To their eyes the fact that the world is Romeless will not seem anything wonderful, anything distinctive, because they have never looked with any searching gaze at the ages in which the world was otherwise. Such an one will never see that the great feature of the most modern times, a feature which has reached its height in the times in which we ourselves live, is the absence of any such centre as the world so long gathered itself around. And if he will not see that the world is Romeless, still less will he see that even the Romeless world is not as though Rome had never been. ”

“ Mighty and wonderful indeed are those the most brilliant days in the long annals of the Eastern Empire. Crete, Cyprus, Kilikia, won back from the misbelievers—the Roman eagle again spreading her wings over the Euphrates and the Tigris—the cross again planted in what might seem to be its special home at Antioch and Edessa—all show the part which the Eastern Rome in her proudest days could play in that Eternal Question which is in truth the very substance of her whole history. ”

“ Rome is still eternal in her influence; the world in truth has been for ages so steeped in Roman influences that those influences have ceased to be Roman. But Rome, as a visible and acknowledged centre, has passed away. No longer does an undivided world look to a single Rome as its one undoubted head. No longer does a divided world look to an Eastern and a Western Rome as each the undoubted head of half the world of civilized man. Rome œcumenical in either of her seats has become a thing that is no longer. The younger Rome has passed from us to be the spoil of the barbarian. ”

“ Each nation now, like each city then, does what is right in its own eyes. A nation now, like a city then, may be kept back from the exercise of its inherent powers by dread of the physical strength of some mightier neighbour. But the nations now, like the cities then, acknowledge no common centre of lawful rule, no power which can speak to all with an authority higher than that of physical strength. From our age the great vision of Dante’s Monarchy has passed away, and we have so far gone back to the condition of the ages before whose eyes that wondrous vision had never shown itself. ”

“ In our Hellenic studies we stand on a loftier height, we breathe a purer air, even as the peak of Olympos overtops the height of Alba. We master the tongue of Latium, because it is still the tongue of no small part of the business of practical life, because it meets us at every turn as an essential part of our own law, our own history, our very daily being. ”

“ If the first Punic War was in some sort an episode in European history, a check in the expected march of Rome, still more truly can this be said of the second. The Hannibalian War stands out in the history of the world as before all things a strife between a man and a commonwealth, a strife between the first of men and the first of commonwealths. Yet if Hannibal overshadows Carthage, if Carthage seems but an instrument in his hands, we must remember that Hannibal has no being apart from Carthage, that the work that he does is not the work of Hannibal but the work of Carthage. ”

“ The Persian victories of Heraclius were the last work, the last glories, we might almost say the greatest and noblest glories, of the undivided Empire. The next moment the Eternal Question put on that more fearful and more abiding shape which it still bears in our own day. The two Semitic creeds, the most antagonistic of all creeds simply because they have so much in common, the creed of Rome and the West, the creed of Arabia and the East, stood forth as new badges for each side, badges under which each side drew new life for the eternal struggle. ”

“ The Senate, after ages of utter nullity, actually did act again as an independent body when the Goth was at the gates of Rome and the Emperor was far away at Ravenna. For Rome once more to act without her master there was no need to create any new power, but simply to take the fetters off an old one. In the earlier ages of the Empire, when the old traditions were more lively, when the forms of the old constitution were still observed, such a change would doubtless have been far more easy. A modern kingdom cannot be changed into a republic without an active change in its constitution. ”

“ As Justinian or any man of his age must have looked on the world of the sixth century, an Emperor of the Romans, reigning in the New Rome but shut out from the Old, must not only have been tempted by every feeling of ambition, he must have honestly felt it as the highest of his Imperial duties, to win back the lost lands of Rome, to win back Rome herself, for the Roman commonwealth of which he found himself the head. ”

“ And herein is the highest glory of Greece; herein is the highest value of the tongue and history of Greece as supplying the truest and noblest teaching for the mind of man. In no other study are we so truly seeking knowledge simply to raise and school the mind; in none do we so sharply draw the still abiding line between those who have gone through the refining furnace of those immortal studies and the barbarians—sometimes the self-condemned barbarians—who stand without. ”

“ Christian Cæsars might indeed repeat what a pagan Cæsar had said in unconscious prophecy, that he could better bear the proclamation of a rival Emperor than the election of a Christian Bishop in the Imperial city. A day was to come when, if men deemed that two great lights were set in the Christian firmament, yet it was Cæsar’s moon that shone with a feebler and reflected light, a light that might suffice to rule the night of earthly things, while the sun of the Pontiff shone with a light that came straight from the Creator’s hand, a greater light to rule the day of man’s spiritual being. ”

“ ROME AND THE NEW NATIONS. We have seen Rome rise, step by step, to the headship of Latium, the headship of the West, the headship of the Mediterranean world. At most stages of her course her progress has been slow; at one stage only does she rise to a new position as in a moment. That is when, having been checked on her Eastern course by the Hannibalian war, the city that had overthrown the Eastern masters of the West sprang at once to the headship of the Eastern as well as of the Western world. ”

“ So far have we followed the memorable fifth century, the century, I repeat, in whose first years, if at any time, modern history begins, the century at whose end the existing nations of Europe are still not in being, but at whose beginning they have taken, so to speak, the first feeble steps towards coming into being. ”

“ Yet to this day the free city, even if shorn of its old greatness, its old independence, is still an element in our modern Europe. Those three surviving cities of the great Hansa are precious fragments indeed, fragments in one sense of a world when the Roman power had put on its German garb, reminders in another sense of a world on which the Roman power had not yet risen. ”

“ Syria, Egypt, all the kingdoms of Asia, must count as vassals of Rome. If absolute freedom lives on anywhere in the Mediterranean world, it is where freedom is the shame of Rome rather than her glory; the independence which Rhodes and Athens keep but in name is kept in all its fulness by the pirates of Crete and the pirates of Kilikia.
So the headship of Rome was won over Italy and the Mediterranean world. A dominion had grown [Pg 60] up of which mankind had never seen the like. No king of kings had ever come so near to universal rule as this city of cities. ”

“ The mightiest of Imperial warriors, he who overleaped the fame of Trajan to renew the fame of Alexander, the deliverer of Rome, the conqueror of Persia, the man who brought back the holiest of Christian relics from its heathen bondage, lived to be the man who saw Syria and Egypt lopped away from his Empire, who saw the Holy City that he had redeemed pass away into the hands of misbelievers yet more terrible than those whom he had overthrown. ”

“ So, ages after, men were not lacking to smite the Mongol at Lignitz as the Hun and the Magyar had been smitten before him. But in these wars men were fighting for their homes and for their lives, for their faith only as part of their homes and of their lives. When the great cry of all came up, when to fight for the faith was not to fight for men’s own homes and lives but for the homes and lives of others, then the voice that spoke was the voice, not of Rome’s Emperor but of her Bishop. ”

“ In truth the Old Rome had never before beheld the ancient Hebrew rite which, from the fifth century onwards, had become familiar in the New. For a thousand years longer the titles of her Empire went on; for seven hundred years longer they could be won only before the altar of the Vatican basilica. For full five hundred years longer the Roman Empire of the West was, as such, a living thing, a thing that influenced the minds and acts of men, a mighty fact, a still mightier theory. But in the West the Emperor of the Romans had less and less to do with the Old Rome. ”

“ In our general survey of the fifth century in the West, we have passed but lightly over the most striking event of its earlier years, the taking of the Roman city by the Goth. Before the century was out, Rome had become used to capture and plunder. Gaiseric and Ricimer had harried her more fiercely than ever Alaric had done. As an event, as an incident, none in the whole history of the world was ever fitted to make a deeper impression on men’s minds than the first Teutonic capture of Rome. ”

“ A protected state now has at least some voice in choosing its protector; it can exercise the old Teutonic right of seeking a lord. And a small state may even keep perfect independence without any protector at all, simply through the jealousies of the greater powers. A small state may sometimes live on in perfect freedom surrounded by powers stronger than itself. Any one of them could at any moment put an end to its freedom; but none of them is likely to make the attempt, because the others, for their own ends, will not allow it. But Rome stood alone in the world ”

“ A man born in Illyricum, raised to power in Britain, schooled in Gaul in the arts of empire, won Rome by his right hand, but only to transplant the very life of Rome to a more abiding seat of power. Diocletian, first of the avowed lords of the Roman world, had not slept for many years in his mausoleum at Spalato before a New Rome had arisen by the Bosporos, before the temples of a new worship on the hill of the Vatican and in the palace of the Laterani had begun to threaten the dominion of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on his own Capitol. ”

“ The friendly power whose day of usefulness was over was exposed to endless attempts on the part of Rome to weaken and break it in pieces. Such is the tale of the kingdom of Pergamon, of the city-commonwealth of Rhodes, of the confederation of Achaia. No part of Roman history is more disgraceful than the dealings of Rome with those three states, the model governments of their several classes. No learning, no eloquence, can avail to whitewash the faithless and brutal dealings of the Roman Senate towards powers whose only fault was to be weaker than Rome and to have done good service to Rome. ”

“ An English shire, an English borough, has no rights or powers but such as it has derived, in some shape or another, from the central power of the land, by act of Parliament or by royal charter. That central power has the same rights and powers in every corner of the kingdom. I speak of course only of the United Kingdom; as soon as we get beyond its limits, as soon as we enter the Scandinavian kingdom and the Norman duchy which lie so near to it but which form no part of it, so soon we still find ourselves in a state of things which has much in common with the Roman dominion. ”

“ Aquitaine and the Imperial Burgundy have so much in common, so much that is utterly unlike anything in France, that, had they had the faintest chance of political union, they might have formed a true nation. But there was no moment, under Romans, under Goths, under Franks, when the two lands formed a political whole apart from any other land. Aquitaine and Burgundy were ever parted, each by itself was split in pieces, while Neustria and Austria ever [Pg 197] kept some measure of union, enough to enable them to grow into the great realms of France and Germany. ”

“ In the West meanwhile Hellas had to strive against a rival yet more worthy of her rivalry, not against a barbarian empire, but against a barbarian commonwealth. The old Phœnicia on the Syrian shore had fallen from its glory; its commonwealths, still rich and flourishing, had sunk into dependencies of the Persian power. The great field of Phœnician enterprise now lay in the western seas. One Phœnician city, the youngest of the great Phœnician cities, had risen to a place in the world and the world’s history such as the cities of the elder Canaan had never reached. ”

“ What might have happened if the East-Gothic power in Italy had been as lasting as the Frankish power in Gaul, or even as the West-Gothic power in Spain, it is vain to guess. As far as we can see, it was the very greatness of Theodoric which kept his power from being lasting. Like so many other of the very greatest of men, he set on foot a system which he himself could work, but which none but himself could work. He sought to set up a kingdom of Goths and Romans, under which the two nations should live side by side, distinct but friendly, each keeping its own law and doing its own work. ”

“ The overthrow of Carthage enabled Rome to go on to the overthrow of Greece; but if Greece was to have a conqueror, it was well that she should have a conqueror who could become a disciple in a way such as the Phœnician never could be. It is hard to name Hannibal along with Attila or even with Abd-al-rahman, yet the day of Zama, or rather the long endurance which made the day of Zama possible, must be set down by the still abiding world of Europe as a great salvation, a crowning mercy, alongside of the work of Aetius and Theodoric and the work of the elder Charles. ”