King of the Romans

“ Ever have I found you loyal and true, in business and counsel. Because of your prowess I hold the heritage of divers neighbouring princes in subjection. Lords, you have hearkened to the letters carried by the ambassadors of Rome, and to the malice they threaten if we do not after their commandment. Very despiteful are they against us, and purpose to work us bitter mischief. But if God be gracious to His people, we shall yet be delivered from their hand. Now these Romans are a strong nation, passing rich and of great power. ”

“ No tidings I have heard for a great while past sounded so good and fair as the news that presently we shall have strife with Rome. These Romans are a people whom I neither love with my heart, nor esteem in my mind, but hate because they are very orgulous and proud. Upright folk should avoid their fellowship, for they are an evil and a covetous race, caring for no other matter but to heap treasure together, and add to their store. The emperor of this people, by fraud and deceit, has fastened this quarrel upon us, sending you letters with an embassy. ”

“ JEneas is too plain for any Roman to mistake. The divinity which protects Rome is the Lord of heaven and earth and all that is therein. There is no God or Lord like unto Him. Blessed are the Romans who have this Lord for their God. The majesty of the Roman empire, now at the crowning summit of its progress, is the immediate efflux of this sovereign power, and the one ia for ever bound up with the other. If such was the doctrine sung by Virgil, surely none could be more grateful to Augustus, the sovereign ruler of an empire so guided and protected. ”

“ In the history of the ancient world the Romans played the part that men of our race have played in the history of the modern world. They knew, as we claim to know, how to govern: how to govern themselves, and how to govern other people. To this day much in our laws and in our system of government bears a Roman stamp. They were great soldiers and could conquer: they could also hold and keep their conquests and impress the Roman stamp on all the peoples over whom they ruled. ”

“ They have given them victory, and dominion, and power, and wealth. What more could they want of them? I could understand that we, whose god did nothing to assist us in our fight against the Romans, should seek other gods who might do more for us. But that a Roman should have been discontented with his gods is more than I can understand. ”

“ If, then, they now possess the power of bestowing empire, when they were kings themselves, from whence had they received their kingly honours? Whom did Jupiter and Saturn worship? A Sterculus, I suppose. But did the Romans, along with the native-born inhabitants, afterwards adore also some who were never kings? ”

“ They loved virtue. Nevertheless, they had nothing in common with the patricians of old who, having no other care than the fattening of their swine, and the performance of the sacred rites, conquered the world for the better administration of their farms. This nobility of the byre, instituted by Romulus and Remus, was long since extinct. The patrician families created by the divine Julius and by the Emperor Augustus, had passed away. Intelligent men from all the provinces of the Empire had stepped into their places. Romans in Rome, they were nowhere strangers. ”

“ Filled with this passion for the glory of Rome, I here invoke thy spirit now with the Gods, oh deified Augustus; and thy image interwoven in the ensigns, and thy memory, oh deceased father. Let thy revered spirit, oh Augustus, let thy loved image and memory, oh Drusus, still dear to these legions, vindicate them from this guilty stain, this foul infamy of leaving to foreigners the honour of defending and avenging the Roman State. They are Romans; they already feel the remorses of shame; they are already stimulated with a sense of honour: improve, oh improve this generous disposition in them ”

“ And the Romans—the true Romans—of the Regola and the Popolo, of the Monti district and the Trevi district, who add the adjective Roman to their name like a title of nobility, who eat dumplings on Thursdays, tripe on Sundays, and lamb at all times, who like white wine and the fireworks at Sant' Angelo, who are proud of their March water, and calmly allow the beetles to swarm in their old houses, the sceptical, clever, impassive, and industrious Romans, who are good husbands and kind lovers, they certainly are not asleep. ”

“ Though conquer'd princes grace his chariot wheels,
Though tributary monarchs wait his nod,
And vanquish'd nations bend the knee before him,
E'er shone with half the lustre that surrounds
This voluntary sacrifice for Rome!
Who loves his country will obey her laws;
Who most obeys them is the truest patriot.
Reg. Be our last parting worthy of ourselves.
Farewell! my friends.—I bless the gods who rule us,
Since I must leave you, that I leave you Romans. ”

“ These men, by their smooth speech, their effrontery and ready wit, their infinite capacity for assuming every mood and humouring every caprice of the patron, are creeping into the recesses of great houses, worming out their secrets, and mastering their virtue.560 Rome is becoming a Greek town,561 in which there will soon be no place for Romans. ”

“ Thus the sacrileges of the Romans are as numerous as their trophies. They boast as many triumphs over the gods as over the nations; as many spoils of battle they have still, as there remain images of captive deities. ”

“ A new prospect now opens before us. The rough paths through which we have hitherto threaded our way grow smoother as we approach their close. Rome, so long dark and gloomy to our view, brightens at length like a landscape when the rain is past and the first rays of returning sunlight stream through the parting clouds. Some days have elapsed, and in those days the temples have yielded all their wealth; the conquered Romans have bribed the triumphant barbarians to mercy; the ransom of the fallen city has been paid. ”

“ There are far too many Romans," he continued, "who have no family altar nor ancestral tomb. They have fought well for Rome, and are falsely called the masters of the world; but the results of [Pg 168] their fighting can only be seen in the luxury of the great, while not one of them has a clod of dirt to call his own." ”

“ This conduct made him leave his province with a fair reputation; being rich himself, and having enriched his soldiers, and having received from them the honorable name of Imperator. There is a law among the Romans, that whoever desires the honor of a triumph must stay without the city and expect his answer. ”

“ FROM THE WARS WITH THE SAMNITES AND THOSE WITH PYRRHUS, TO THE BEGINNING OF THE FIRST PUNIC WAR; WHEN THE ROMANS BEGAN TO EXTEND THEIR CONQUESTS BEYOND ITALY.
The brave man is not he who feels no fear
For that were stupid and irrational;
But he, whose noble soul his fear subdues,
And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from.—Baillie.
1. The Romans had triumphed over the Sab'ines, the Etru'rians, the Latins, the Her'nici, the Æ'qui, and the Volsci; and now began to look for greater conquests. ”

“ The Romans were most anxiously eager about the things of the world, owing to their riches, their empire, their victories; and their kings they reckoned to be equal to the gods, and so they even called them. ”

“ If the unbounded extent of the Roman empire proved the ruin of the republic, the vast compass of the city was no less fatal to it.
The Romans had subdued the whole universe by the assistance of the nations of Italy, on whom they had bestowed various privileges at different times. ”

“ but I know not, why any one but a schoolboy, in his declamation, should whine over the commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt, and, in their corruption, sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another. ”

“ A fouler brotherhood than they the lords of Heaven, Rome does not contain. Am I to be called upon to worship a set of wretches chargeable with all the crimes and vices to be found on earth? It is this accursed idolatry, O Romans, that has sunk you so low in sin! They are your lewd, and drunken, and savage deities, who have taught you all your refinement in wickedness ”

“ For who is so worthless or indolent as not to wish to know by what means and under what system of polity the Romans in less than fifty-three years have succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government—a thing unique in history? ”

“ The old men, scarred and seamed in the battles of an age when fighting was all hand to hand, kept the shops, or sunned themselves in the market-place, shelling and chewing lupins to pass the time, as the Romans have always done, and telling old tales, or boasting to each other of their half-grown grandchildren, and of their full-grown sons, fighting far away in the hills and the plains that Rome might have more possession. ”

“ They believed that Jupiter Optimus—Jupiter Maximus—was lord of the universe, and that he had appointed the Romans to become the chief of men, provided they followed his commands—to brave all difficulty, and to stand up with an invincible front—to be ready to do and die; and also to have the same sacred regard to veracity, to promise, to integrity, and all the virtues that surround that noblest quality of men—courage—to which the Romans gave the name of virtue, manhood, as the one thing ennobling for a man. ”

“ But the question is not so much how the Roman Empire or any other great thing came to an end—everything must come to an end some time, it is only scientists who wonder that a state should die—the interesting question is how did the Romans become so great, under what circumstances were they born and bred? ”

“ The Roman grandees divide among themselves the lands and riches of the world, and this dwelling-place of princes looms up the proud centre of mundane glory and power.
In the great success of the Romans, we notice not only their own heroic qualities, but the hopeless degeneracy of the older nations and the reckless turbulence of the western barbarians, both of whom needed masters.
The conquered world must be governed. The Romans had a genius for administration as well as for war. While war was reduced to a science, government became an art. ”

“ The Roman is a coarse form of humanity, Curtius, compared with either the Greek or the Palmyrene. Romans will best conquer the world, or defend it; but its adorning should be left to others. Their hands are rude, and they but spoil what they touch. Since the days of Cicero, and the death of the Republic, what has Rome done to advance any cause, save that of slavery and licentiousness? A moral Hercules is needed to sweep it clean of corruptions, which it is amazing have not ere this drawn down the thunder of the gods. Julia would say that Christ is that Hercules. ”

“ All the incentives to victory are on our side. The Romans have no wives to kindle their courage; no parents to taunt them with flight; many have either no country or one far away. Few in number, dismayed by their ignorance, looking around upon a sky, a sea, and forests which are all unfamiliar to them ”

“ 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. ”

“ From this public and private pride, born with the foundation of Rome, nourished by a succession of victories and by habitual domination, there resulted a particular kind of courage. The Romans do not fight through an outburst of bravery and of imagination, as the Athenians, or for the need of action and activity like the barbarians, but by maxims of pride and obstinacy. Their defeats are admirable. ”

“ They would have easily found a way, as all people do, to conform their religious doctrine and offerings to their feelings and instincts. But the Romans, by nature and long training, lovers of blood, their country built upon the ruins of others, and cemented with blood—the taste for it is not easily eradicated. ”

“ In Mucius Scaevola, in Regulus, in Marcus Curtius, and many others the fine qualities of the old Roman temper, pride, courage, will, devotion, a love of their country that went beyond all other feelings, even unto death, stand out. One can see the main lines of the character that made the Romans what they afterwards became—the conquerors and law-givers first of a single city, Rome, then of the whole plain of Latium in which that city stood: then, after driving back barbarian invaders from the north and Greek invaders from the south, of all Italy: later of the known world. ”

“ Hence it is by their laws that the Romans have had the greatest influence on modern times, and these constitute a wonderful monument of human genius. If the Romans had bequeathed nothing but laws to posterity, they would not have lived in vain. ”

“ And he has civilised the greater part of the world by means of Greek colonies, and so made it easier for the world to be governed by the Romans. For the Romans themselves not only belong to the Greek race, but also the sacred ordinances and the pious belief in the gods which they have established and maintain are, from beginning to end, Greek. And beside this they have established a constitution not inferior to that of any one of the best governed states, if indeed it be not superior to all others that have ever been put into practice. ”