Frank Frost Abbott

“ That a city-state with the old and narrow local social and political traditions which Rome had could adapt herself to the government of a world-empire composed of such diverse elements as made up the Roman Empire is one of the marvels of history, and a study of the methods which she followed can not fail to throw light on political questions which we have to meet today. The range of social and economic conditions through which Rome went is equally wide. The Romans come on the stage of history as a primitive pastoral people with strongholds on the hills. ”

“ Constitutions of this sort, as Bryce maintains in his Studies in History and Jurisprudence, are flexible. They bend but do not break under the temporary blasts of popular passion or emotion. They have grown up with the people and are part of the fibre of the people. Going back, as they do, into the past, they have the mystery and the dignity which antiquity gives them. The character of the Roman and of the English constitutions reflect the character of the two peoples and their likeness to each other. ”

“ No national heroes will ever supplant Trajan or Ovid in the hearts of the Roumanian people. When the Italians invaded Tripoli a few years ago they thought of themselves as following in the footsteps of their great ancestors, and a political cartoon which had wide vogue in Italy at the time of the war and did much to stimulate enthusiasm for it showed a shadowy Roman commander, perhaps Scipio, landing in Africa at the head of an Italian army. How few modern empires can hope to establish such traditions as these, so far as peoples of alien races and religions are concerned! ”

“ Aristotle’s theory of the organization of society presupposes the inequality of the men who compose it. Cicero believed in natural equality. We are alike, he says, in esteeming the same virtues, in hating the same vices, in our possession of reason and in our capacity for acquiring knowledge. Seneca is almost at the point of extending this conception of natural equality to include even slaves, for, as he says in his treatise on The Giving and Receiving of Favors: “fortune has granted the slave’s body to his master, he buys it and sells it, but the soul of a slave can not be bought and sold.” ”

“ It is the division of humanity into separate states. The proposition which I am concerned to establish today is the division of humanity into separate states, each owing loyalty to itself, each recognizing no law higher than its own will, each looking at every problem from its own point of view, which is the fundamental cause of war.” Rome welded the particularism of the ancient [Pg 137] Mediterranean world into the unity of her Empire. Only by a similar recognition of the solidarity of the interests of all civilized peoples can we hope to emerge from the conditions which threaten us today. ”

“ If one passes from the legislative and executive branches of the Roman government to the judicial, he thinks at once of Roman law, the greatest legacy which Rome has left us. With that subject we are not concerned in this book. But the judicial machinery of the Romans and some phases of their court procedure are of lively interest to one who is comparing Roman and modern institutions. ”

“ If we turn to the comparative results obtained by ancient and modern imperialists; if we ask ourselves whether the Romans, with their imperfect means of locomotion and communication, their relatively low standard of public morality, and their ignorance of many economic and political truths, which have now become axiomatic, succeeded as well as any modern people in assimilating the nations which the prowess of their arms had brought under their sway, the answer can not be doubtful. ”

“ It is true that Spain and Gaul did not have their own legislatures and chief magistrates, but the real administrative units with which Rome dealt in making her arrangements were the city-states of Spain and Gaul, and they had a large measure of self-government conferred on them by their charters. In a province like Spain one finds communities in all the different stages of advancement from the position of a dependent village to a free city or a Roman colony, and one may well ask if the Roman system was not a more practical one than ours. ”

“ A jealous solicitude for the rights of the average citizen is a marked trait of the Roman character. A clear understanding of what the rights of the common man were and an ingrained purpose to protect him in the exercise of them determine the development of judicial procedure in Rome, of law, and of political organizations. Perhaps the Romans have bequeathed to us no greater heritage than their conception of citizenship. ”

“ As Pollock has put it in his Introduction to the History of the Science of Politics: According to Rousseau “every man gives up himself and his individual rights as fully as in Hobbes’ covenant. But the surrender is to the whole society, not to a sovereign. The government is not the sovereign, but a mediator between the community in its corporate capacity and its individual members as subjects.” In his History of the Theory of Sovereignty since Rousseau, Merriam has traced the development of the doctrine into our own times. ”

“ Roman political history has an unusual meaning and value for us, because the Romans had to face so many of the problems which confront us today, and their experience ran through such a wide range. Few peoples can boast of an unbroken history of a thousand years, and perhaps none has tried so many different forms of government. The early monarchy gives way to an oligarchy, to be displaced in turn by a democracy. ”

“ It is a fundamental principle of an aristocracy that no individual should attain undue prominence above others of his class, and perhaps no governing body has devised so many safeguards against Caesarism, and entrenched itself so firmly behind tradition, as the Roman senate did. ”

“ On the first point, if we recall the history of the Roman Republic which has been sketched in the preceding chapter, we shall feel that, although Bryce is speaking of modern democracies, no more accurate description can be given of the limitations which hemmed in the Roman democracy than is to be found in his statement that “popular powers are in practice more frequently negative or deterrent than positive. The people can more readily reject a course proposed to them than themselves suggest a better course.” ”

“ To return now to the doctrine of the natural equality of men and to the belief that the universal capacity for the exercise of political authority should find adequate expression, out of these principles grew the doctrine which Roman lawyers from the second to the sixth century have noted here and there in the Codes, that the power which a government exercises is derived from the people. This source of authority the emperors recognized in the Codes up to the time of Justinian. As the Carlyles have shown, this doctrine was accepted by the lawyers in the Middle Ages. ”

“ If an immigrant from ancient Rome of the first century before our era should disembark in New York tomorrow, he would need less training in understanding our political machinery than many of our contemporary immigrants do, because the Anglo-Saxon and the Roman show the same characteristics in their political life. Both peoples are opportunists. Both peoples are inclined to meet a new situation by making as little change as possible in the old machinery. ”

“ When this point in the development of the empire had been reached, the preëminence of the city of Rome [Pg 46] had gone, the distinction between Italy and the provinces had been obliterated, Roman citizenship had lost its significance, the splendor of the senate and the magistracies had faded, and the municipalities, which had been the pride and glory of the early empire, were plunged in poverty and wretchedness. In their place is an autocrat, kept in power by an army made up largely of barbarians, who carried out his wishes through a bureaucracy ”

“ For the roots of the present lie deep in the past; and nothing in the past is dead to the man who would learn how the present comes to be what it is.” So Stubbs wrote on finishing his history of the English Constitution and on sending it out to the public. What he has said when thinking of the beginnings of constitutional government in England is true in a higher degree of the relations of modern political institutions to those of Rome. This is the case partly because we owe to Rome so much of our political philosophy and so much of our political system. ”

“ In the fourth century the Emperor Julian, who was far from warlike, on mounting the throne, gave to every Roman soldier a bonus whose nominal value was equal to about thirty-two dollars. Since there were probably 400,000 soldiers in the army, this action cost the government $12,800,000 or nearly $50,000,000 if we roughly estimate that gold and silver would purchase four times as much then as they do now. The militaristic spirit of Rome has descended to us and makes its influence felt today. ”

“ Disorder arises throughout the peninsula or a great danger confronts the state. The ordinary methods of government are suspended, and a dictator is appointed to meet the emergency. The dictator in the olden time called the citizens to arms, just as Signor Mussolini assembled his one hundred and seventeen thousand armed followers at the Villa Borghese in the autumn of 1922. These men of today show the same spirit of unquestioning obedience to the state which characterized the Roman in olden time. ”

“ The political and social problems which confronted Rome are those which America, England, and France face today, and nothing brings out more clearly the close relation which our civilization bears to hers than the identity of these ancient and modern problems. ”

“ The dual government of the prince and the senate which follows develops into the empire, and the emperor in time becomes the autocratic monarch. In this period of a thousand years from the seventh century before our era to the fourth century after it, we may see in the practical experiences of the [Pg 4] Roman people the points of strength and of weakness in an aristocracy, a plutocracy, a parliamentary government, a democratic empire, and an autocracy. We may also trace in the history of Rome the development of a city-state into a world-wide empire. ”

“ The tax paid by merchants depended on the capital invested in their business. Laborers paid a poll tax. The plan was well thought out, but the failure of the government to reduce the valuation of property as the prosperity of the empire declined, and its inability to reduce its own expenses made the taxes an intolerable burden, and contributed largely to impoverish the people and ruin local self-government. The Roman system of taxation, with some modifications, continued in use after the dissolution of the Empire and exerts an influence on our modern systems. ”

“ What is the fundamental cause of war? I do not say the only cause of war, but the most active and constant cause. It is not race or religion or color or nationality or despotism, or progress, or any of the causes usually cited. ”

“ Most cities were allowed to keep a large measure of self-government under the early empire, and this fact kept alive the sentiment of local pride and the local patriotism of the citizens. So long as the cities were free to manage their own affairs, the empire was prosperous. As the cities lost their sense of responsibility, or as the central government encroached on their rights, as it began to do in the second century of our era, the decline of the empire set in. ”

“ Probably no people in antiquity used experts so freely, and perhaps in modern times the practice is not so general as it was in Rome. A magistrate was elected directly by the people each year. He was better aware of the trend of popular sentiment than the average prime minister. He could confidently be expected to advocate progress or change. Attached to his office was a consilium, or body of expert advisers, who were familiar with precedent and usage and who would hold fast to the mos maiorum. In all departments of Roman public life such boards of advisers are to be found. ”

“ Cicero regards any government as legitimate which secures justice and promotes the well being of all its citizens, but he is dissatisfied with monarchy or aristocracy. As the Carlyles have remarked, in their History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the West, which has been of great service to me at many points in this chapter in tracing the development of Roman political doctrines through the Middle Ages, Cicero believed that “every citizen had in him some capacity for political authority, [Pg 57] some capacity which ought to find a means of expression.” ”

“ Equally applicable to the history of the patriciate, the [Pg 63] senatorial oligarchy, and the plutocracy under the Republic is his remark, drawn from a study of modern conditions, that “nature is always tending to throw power into the hands of the Few, and the Few always tend by a like natural process to solidify into a Class, as the vapours rising from the earth gather into clouds. Fortunately the Class, by a like process, is always tending to dissolve.... Thus Free Government cannot but be, and has in reality always been, an Oligarchy within a Democracy.” ”

“ Money was freely used by unscrupulous aspirants for office, but it is not probable that capital played the important part in directing the policy of the state which certain modern writers ascribe to it. The suppression of piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean and the restoration of order in Asia Minor by Pompey were undoubtedly brought about by the influence of the bankers and tax-farmers, but two or three important considerations make it reasonably certain that “big business” did not have the political power in Rome which it has with us today. ”

“ It is clear that modern Imperialist states have much to learn from the methods which Rome employed so successfully in furthering the use of her language by subject races. Lord Cromer regrets the fact that acquaintance with the tongue of the ruling people often becomes in modern times a weapon which is turned against that people. In the Roman provinces it conferred distinction, opened the way to fuller rights and privileges and made the possessor of it a stronger supporter of the Roman régime. ”