Astorians

“ The Roman Empire, which embraced southern and western Europe, western Asia, and even the northern portion of Africa, included the most diverse peoples and races. Egyptians, Arabs, Jews, Greeks, Germans, Gauls, Britons, Iberians,—all alike were under the sovereign rule of Rome. One great state embraced the nomad shepherds who spread their tents on the borders of Sahara, the mountaineers in the fastnesses of Wales, and the citizens of Athens, Alexandria, and Rome, heirs to all the luxury and learning of the ages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What could be worse or more infamous. And since you have alluded as though insultingly to 'ten thousand Greeks,' I am aware that you Romans are yourselves descended from the Greeks, and that the greater part of Italy was colonised by Greeks; however on that fact I do not insist. But at any rate did not you Romans think it very important to have as friends and allies one insignificant tribe of those very Greeks, I mean the Aetolians, my neighbours? ”

“ The Apennines are so easily crossed, that the people on either side can speedily join hands. All the existing boundaries are entirely arbitrary, traced by the brutality of the Middle Ages, or the shaky hand of diplomacy, which undoes to-morrow what it does to-day. A single race covers the soil; the same language is spoken from north to south; the people are all united in a common bond by the glory of their ancestors, and the recollections of Roman conquest, fresher and more vivid than the hatreds of the fourteenth century. ”

“ Their empire, by the progress of colonies and conquests, had been diffused from the Adriatic to the Euphrates and the Nile. Asia was covered with Greek cities, and the long reign of the Macedonian kings, had introduced a silent revolution into Syria and Egypt. In their pompous courts, those princes united the elegance of Athens with the luxury of the East, and the example of the court was imitated, at an humble distance, by the higher ranks of their subjects. Such was the general division of the Roman empire into the Latin and Greek languages. ”

“ Yet there is a matter which I would fain call to thy mind, king. Thou knowest the Etruscans, [503] how mighty they are both by land and sea; for indeed they are nearer by far to thee at Rome than to us at Alba. Bethink thee, therefore, how, when thou shalt give the signal of battle between thy army and our army, the same Etruscans will look on, rejoicing to see us fight together; and how, when the battle is ended, they will fall upon us, having us at disadvantage; for of a truth, whether ye or we prevail, we shall have but little strength remaining to us. ”

“ How we smote the Romans at Noreia twelve years ago, and again eight and four years ago—besides all the Gauls and Iberians and the Bull knows how many others that stood in our way—how we pushed one Roman army before us across the Adige, when they would bar Italy—how this is the host they can hope to raise against us, and we outnumber it perhaps three men to one! ”

“ Between Egypt and Assyria, jostled by both, yielding to neither, lay a strange country, unknown save at its marches even to its neighbours, dwelt-in by a people that held itself aloof from all the earth—a people whom the great empires of the ancient world in vain essayed to conquer, against whom the power of Persia, Egypt, Rome, Byzantium was proven impotence, and at whose hands even the superb Alexander, had he lived to test his dream, might for once have learnt the lesson of defeat. ”

“ The Roman Empire represented no such portion of the human family. Assyria, Persia, Egypt, and the dominating historical peoples were all mixed, and when their uses had culminated, that is, when there was no more use for them, or when they ventured to assume superiority over the rest of the earth, they were submerged. ”

“ As soon as we know anything of the history of the world, we know of wars and alliances between Greeks and Lydians and Persians, of Phœnician settlements all over the world, of Carthaginians trading in Spain and encamped in Italy, of Romans conquering and colonizing Gaul, Spain, Britain, the Danubian Principalities and Greece, Western Asia and Northern Africa. Then again, at a later time, follow the great ethnic convulsions of Eastern Europe, and the devastation and re-population of the ancient seats of civilization by Goths, and Lombards, and Vandals, and Saxons ”

“ Is it likely that the icy plains of the North or the burning sands of Libya hold in store enemies of the Roman nation? All Barbarians, won over to our friendship, will lay down their arms, and Rome, the white-haired great-grandmother, tranquil in her old age, will see the nations respectfully grouped about her as her adopted children, dwelling in harmony and love. ”

“ But every province that was conquered by the Saracens was utterly lopped away; it became the possession of men altogether alien and hostile in race, language, manners, and religion. A large part of the Roman world passed from Aryan and Christian to Semitic and Mahometan dominion. ♦Different fates of the Eastern, Latin, and Greek provinces.♦ But the essential differences among the three main parts of the Empire now showed themselves very clearly. The Eastern provinces, where either Roman or Greek life was always an exotic, fell away at the first touch. ”

“ Athens and Rome, not only in spite of, but just because of their many wars, rose to the zenith of civilization. Great States like Germany and Italy are welded into nationalities only through blood and iron. ”

“ The most superficial student of Roman history must be struck by the extraordinary degree in which the fortunes of the Republic were affected by the presence of foreigners under different names on her soil. The causes of this immigration are discernible enough at a later period, for we can readily understand why men of all races should flock to the Mistress of the World; but the same phenomenon of a large population of foreigners and denizens meets us in the very earliest records of the Roman State—no doubt the instability of society in ancient Italy.... ”

“ But its Western half now took in, not only the greatest of its lost provinces, but vast regions which had never formed part of the Empire in the days of Trajan himself. Again, the distinctive character of the older Roman Empire had been the absence of nationality. The whole civilized world had become Rome, and all its free inhabitants had become Romans. ♦Growing nationality of the two Empires, German and Greek.♦ But from this time each of the two divisions of the Empire begins to assume something like a national character. East and West alike remained Roman in name and in political traditions. ”

“ Every island of the Aegean, every city of Asia, is flooding Rome with its vices and its venal arts.558 Quickness of intellect and depravity of morals, the brazen front and the ready tongue are driving into the shade the simple, unsophisticated honesty of the old Roman breed. At the morning receptions of the great patron, the poor Roman client, who has years of honest, quiet service to show, even the impoverished scion of an ancient consular line, are pushed aside by some sycophant from the Euphrates,559 who can hardly conceal the brand of recent servitude upon him. ”

“ Bless the Greeks for restricting population so the well-fed few could kindle a watch-tower in the west, and damn the prostitution and sodomy and wars of colonization by which they did it. Bless the Romans for their strength to smash down every wall that hemmed their building genius, and damn them for their weakness that never broke the bloody grip of Etruscan savagery on their minds. ”

“ The great wars of the Roman Republic against the Greek monarchies were huge treasure-seeking and slave-driving enterprises that reduced to servitude the most able and most refined part of the population of the conquered countries. Rome had created a great Mediterranean state, but at a terrible price. The civilization she had set up had no religion save an empty formalism, and no heart at all. ”

“ As for that splendid group beyond, one may question if Athens, Rome, or Byzantium, whose sumptuous culture of brain and body achieved an almost criminal comeliness by Christian standards, ever equalled them: question, too, whether their selfish perfection or the travesty of it in this mob of women dull with luxury, of men brutalised by the scramble of getting it for them—be less desirable for the race! ”

“ We will leave you all heaven--leave the earth to us. Roman youths, you have the choice. Will you wait until this cautious Byzantium vouchsafes to take pity upon Italy?--you may become weary old men before then!--or will you in old Roman fashion, win freedom with your own swords? ”

“ For a while they had been subdued by the Etruscans, but taught by their conquerors to use arms in strong masses, they had applied this lesson by driving off their oppressors and re-establishing their old independent town meetings, returning again to the tilling of the soil. A prolific and puritanic folk with a strict social morality they outgrew their boundaries and began to expand. ”

“ How Rome succeeded in accomplishing this union of Orient and Occident is one of the points of greatest interest in its history. The first of these three lectures, "Antony and Cleopatra," shows how Rome repulsed the last offensive movement of the Orient against the Occident; the second, "The Development of Gaul," shows the establishing of equilibrium between the two parts of the Empire; the third, "Nero," shows how the Orient, beaten upon fields of battle and in diplomatic action, took its revenge in the domain of Roman ideas, morals, and social life. ”

“ To the East, he touched upon the irreclaimable Sclaves and Avars—in the South, he came on the settlements of the Italian Greeks—in Spain, he rested upon the Saracens of Cordova. It was hard for the secure centre of the empire to be destroyed and ruined by the struggles of the frontier populations, with which it had no more sympathy in blood and language than with the people with whom they fought. Already, also, we have seen how local their government had become. They had their own dukes and counts, their own bishops and priests to refer to. ”

“ This civilization began to spread in the barbaric world immediately after the famous conquests of Sesostris, and continued during the time of the Persian, Grecian and Roman empires, culminating with the downfall of the latter, and thus completing the order of civilization made possible by Egypt. Egypt conquered and levied tribute upon the barbarian. Rome conquered, and the barbarian became the Roman citizen. The present configuration of Europe rose from the ruins of Rome, and assumed the form through which a greater variety of power could operate than in the previous era. ”

“ In almost all of our colonies or dependencies today, in the Philippines, in Asia, and in Africa we have to deal only with peoples less advanced in civilization than we are, but the Romans had not only to civilize and govern the stubborn tribes of Gaul and Spain, but also to make their authority [Pg 5] respected in the Greek East, among peoples who could boast of a civilization far higher and older than their own. ”

“ Asia Minor, Egypt and Syria gathered the rich harvests Roman peace made possible. Their industrial centers cultivated and renewed all the traditions that had caused their former celebrity. A more intense intellectual life corresponded with the economic activity of these great manufacturing and exporting countries. They excelled in every profession except that of arms, and even the prejudiced Romans admitted their superiority. The menace of an Oriental empire haunted the imaginations of the first masters of the world. ”

“ It is a just though trite observation, that victorious Rome was herself subdued by the arts of Greece. Those immortal writers who still command the admiration of modern Europe, soon became the favourite object of study and imitation in Italy and the western provinces. But the elegant amusements of the Romans were not suffered to interfere with their sound maxims of policy. ”

“ The simple Asturians never questioned the truth or even the probability of the legend; the priesthood, who sustained the credit of the fiction by every expedient of intimidation and imposture, advanced steadily in consideration and wealth, while the miracles daily wrought by the precious relic confirmed its holy character,—a relic which surpassed in the efficacy of its miraculous virtues the wonderful mementos of the martyrs which had been rescued from obscurity and decay in the catacombs of Rome. ”

“ Of all the peoples in Italy Rome ought in the order of events to have been her successor, and yet when we contrast the influence of Etruria on Rome with the influence of the Greek colonies of Southern Italy we see an amazing difference. ”

“ It was not only that wars and faction fights had wasted the life of the Greek people, but with the opening of the far East by Alexander, and the development of the West under Roman rule, Commerce had shifted its centres, and the Greeks had left their old homes for new regions. Still keen on money, philosophy and art, they thronged Alexandria, Antioch and Rome, and a thousand other cities. ”