History of Rome

“ Coming into your midst, I feel that the history of Rome lives not only in the interest with which you have followed these lectures, but also, even if in part without clear cognisance, in things here, in the life you lead, in what you accomplish. The heritage of Rome is, for the peoples of America still more than for those of Europe, an heredity not purely artistic and literary, but political and social, which exercises the most beneficent influence on your history. In a certain sense it might be said that America is to-day politically, more than Europe, the true heir of Rome ”

“ The Rome we see today owes its mystery, its sadness and its charm to six and twenty centuries of history, mostly filled with battle, murder and sudden death, deeds horrible in that long-past present which we try to call up, but alternately grand, fascinating and touching now, as we shape our scant knowledge into visions and fill out our broken dreams with the stuff of fancy. In most men's minds, perhaps, the charm lies in that very confusion of suggestions, for few indeed know Rome so well as to divide clearly the truth from the legend in her composition. ”

“ Rome was always a sort of talisman for me; a youth, I studied the history of Italy, and found, while all the other nations were born, grew up, played their part in the world, then fell to reappear no more in the same power, a single city was privileged by God to die only to rise again greater than before, to fulfil a mission greater than the first. I saw the Rome of the Empire extend her conquests from the confines of Africa to the confines of Asia. I saw Rome perish, crushed by the barbarians, by those whom even yet the world, calls barbarians. ”

“ The early history of Rome is a history of war. Its heroes are soldiers. When the city was founded and throughout its early life Italy was divided among different peoples, ruling over different parts of the country. With these peoples—the Latins, the Etruscans, the Volscians, the Samnites—the Romans fought. War with one or other of them was always going on. Its fortune varied, but in the end the Roman spirit and the Roman organization told. One by one the other Italian tribes submitted and accepted Roman overlordship. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rome created the word that denotes this marvellous and monstrous phenomenon, of history, the enormous city, the deceitful source of life and death--urbs--the city. Whence it is not strange that the countless urbes which the grand economic progress of the nineteenth century has caused to rise in every part of Europe and America look to Rome as their eldest sister and their dean. ”

“ The contemplation of the city, however, produces the effect of a vast and solid reading of history. Each of the great representations of the city, always and differently mistress of the world, seems to have chosen its respective quarter—the Rome of the kings and emperors is spread out on the Palatine, Esquiline, and Quirinal; republican Rome occupies the Capitol and Aventine; whilst Christian Rome, isolated and solitary, reigns on the Cœlian and Vatican eminences. ”

“ And especially after Rome was taken by the Goths, he alone possessed the attributes of sovereignty. "He had already towered as far above ordinary bishops in magnificence and prestige as Caesar had above Fabricius."
It was the great name of ROME, after all, which was the mysterious talisman that elevated the Bishop of Rome above other metropolitans. Who can estimate the moral power of that glorious name which had awed the world for a thousand years? Even to barbarians that proud capital was sacred. The whole world believed her to be eternal; she alone had the prestige of universal dominion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The kings increase in, power and surround themselves with new splendour. Abroad, too, Rome suddenly appears as at powerful state ruling far and wide over southern Etruria and Latium. These startling changes are, moreover, ascribed to kings of alien descent, who one and all ascend the throne in the teeth of established constitutional forms. ”

“ It is quite likely that there may be found another history that possesses the same two qualities for which that of Rome is so notable--universality and unity--but one thing we may affirm: up to this time the history of Rome alone has fulfilled this office of universal compendium, which explains how it has always been studied by the learned and lettered of every part of the civilised European-American world, and how in modern intellectual life it is the history universal and cosmopolitan par excellence. ”

“ It has never been difficult for me to realise that contemporary Europe and America, the Europe and America of railroads, industries, monstrous swift-growing cities, might find present in ancient Rome a part of their own very souls, restless, turbulent, greedy. In the Rome of the days of Caesar, huge, agitated, seething with freedmen, slaves, artisans come from everywhere, crowded with enormous tenement-houses, run through from morning till night by a mad throng, eager for amusements and distractions ”

“ To a spectator on the spot, it is remarkable that the events of Roman history, and of Roman life itself, appear not so distant as the Gothic ages which succeeded them. We stand in the Forum, or on the height of the Capitol, and seem to see the Roman epoch close at hand. We forget that a chasm extends between it and ourselves, in which lie all those dark, rude, unlettered centuries, around the birthtime of Christianity, as well as the age of chivalry and romance, the feudal system, and the infancy of a better civilization than that of Rome. ”

“ The mysterious origin of Rome, veiled in the wonders of mythological fable—the stupendous increase of its power, rendered yet more gigantic by the mists of antiquity—its undaunted heroes, who seem to us like the genii of some greater world—its wide dominion, extended over the whole civilized globe—and, finally, its portentous fall, which forms, as it were, the separation between ancient and modern times, have rendered its civil and military history a subject of prevailing interest to all enlightened nations. ”

“ The history of Rome for the next 150 years consists internally of the struggles between the Patricians and Plebeians, and externally of the wars with the Etruscans, Volscians, Æquians, and other tribes in the immediate neighborhood of Rome. ”

“ Dismissing the notion of occult qualities of race, we look for a rational explanation in the circumstances of the plain which was the cradle of the Roman Empire. It is evident that in the period designated as that of the kings, when Rome commenced her career of conquest, she was, for that time and country, a great and wealthy city. This is proved by the works of the kings, the Capitoline Temple, the excavation for the Circus Maximus, the Servian Wall, and above all the Cloaca Maxima. Historians have indeed undertaken to give us a very disparaging picture of the ancient Rome. ”

“ The history of Rome presents various men of greater genius than Scipio Aemilianus, but none equalling him in moral purity, in the utter absence of political selfishness, in generous love of his country, and none, perhaps, to whom destiny has assigned a more tragic part. ”

“ Rome, by reason of its extent and magnificence, is the most excellent of all the cities of the earth; built gradually in the course of many ages by a long series of emperors, with the assistance of numerous architects and artificers; the realization of immense resources brought together from every part of the world. Destroy this splendid creation, and you will incur eternal obloquy in the memory of succeeding generations. ”

“ No mere guide-book chatter, no parrot-like repetition of an oft-told and wearisome story, but an intelligent conveying of historical facts, evincing a genuine love for research, a profound admiration for the work of the ancient days when Rome ruled the world, and a deep regard for those trophies which the hand of time and the vandalism of man have left to teach us the history of the past."—Tourist Chronicle. ”

“ Throughout the sphere of Roman political influence, of trade and travel, the central position of Rome was recognized and acknowledged. Not only knowledge and authority, but folklore mushroomed, with Rome as its central theme. Asian nomads, searching for grass, Asian potentates seeking new worlds to conquer and plunder, heard of Rome and finally went there. All roads led to Rome. Thousands of miles of stone roads were built as binding forces to hold the Empire together and defend it against all possible enemies. ”

“ For this end we conquered and destroyed the strongholds of the barons who, together with the pope and the Normans, sought to resist us. These are now attacking us on all sides. Haste to Rome, the capital of the world, thus to establish thy imperial sway over the Italian and German lands. ”

“ Rome had begun to enjoy a short repose, like an infant in its cradle, when it was unexpectedly made to rock to its very foundations, by a shortness of provisions; for the absence of anything to eat is sure to afford food to the disaffected. ”

“ The story of Rome from its founding to the end of the regal period, as it is told in the ancient classics, is no longer accepted as history. It is, for the most part, classified with those mythical creations with which an uncultured people endeavor to account for the origin and the evolution and revolutions of their race. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But why should we recall past Ages, and renew those wounds, which though not healed, are nevertheless worn out by the length of time; why should we praise Rome for having ruled the World, if now at this present it rules it more then ever, and domineers over it in a new manner. ”

“ It was not until after the burning of the city by the Gauls that the city was laid out on a better plan; after the Punic wars wealth flowed in abundantly, and private persons began to erect magnificent mansions. From the period of the conquest of Asia until the reign of Augustus, the city daily augmented its splendour, but so much was added by that emperor, that he boasted that "he found Rome a city of brick, and left it a city of marble." ”

“ Establishing the city of Rome as a stable, defensible center of merchandising and commerce, transport, finance, population, wealth and power with a hinterland of associates and dependencies. As it turns out, the city of Rome has outlived both the Roman Empire and Roman Civilization. ”

“ Our common belief in the overshadowing importance of Rome in all our history is probably largely influenced by our literary history being derived from Roman sources, and this Italian view being fed for ecclesiastical purposes in the Middle Ages. In the broader view of the history of civilization in Europe, the spread of law and Latin in Southern Europe is perhaps Rome’s main result. ”

“ The lord of vast but often insubordinate territories, the recognized master of a capital city torn by internecine feud and plots against himself, he needed the support of an effective force for his own preservation and the maintenance of the authority proffered him from all quarters. Hence the necessity of creating an empire of the West, after having snapped every link with that of the East. Thus the history of Rome is still, as in the past, a history of continual strife between pope, emperor and republic ”

“ MYTHS OF EARLY ROME Long after the foundation of Rome, when that city had grown rich and powerful, her poets and historians delighted to relate the many myths which clustered about the earlier stages of her career. According to these myths Rome began as a colony of Alba Longa, the capital of Latium. The founder of this city was Ascanius, son of the Trojan prince Aeneas, who had escaped from Troy on its capture by the Greeks and after long wanderings had reached the coast of Italy. ”

“ The history of municipal freedom in Italy lay in this struggle. But the infiltration of Teutonic and feudal elements broke up the ancient aristocracy of Rome, gave it a special character and left it at the mercy of the people. Then the popes, by the bestowal of lucrative offices, rich benefices and vast estates, and, above all, by raising many nobles to the purple, introduced new blood into the Roman aristocracy, and endued it with increasing strength and vitality. ”

“ He [Pg 4] who ends his work in 476 and he who begins his work in 476 can neither of them ever understand in its fulness the abiding life of Rome, neither can fully grasp the depth and power of that truest of proverbial sayings which speaks of Rome as the Eternal City. And none but those who have thoroughly grasped the place of Rome in the history of the world can ever fully understand the most notable historic feature of the age in which we ourselves live. We live in an age from which Rome has passed away, an age at least in which Rome has lost her headship. ”