Romanization

“ Genseric
Hymenial songs must cheer these drooping maids--- They each shall choose a Goth or Vandal lord, And rase the lineage of the Roman name In the warm grots of Asdrubal and Hanno, For which their ancestors in Carthage bled, And armies perish'd in the Lybian sands. Leo
Now thou art master of the Roman world, Let clemency bespeak thee more a king, Than all thy triumphs o'er subjected Rome. Genseric
The multitude disarm'd---I leave their lives; Plebeian slaves may tremble and retire; But all of noble or patrician blood, Of ev'ry age and sex, my prisoners are. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sculptors, architects, [Pg 60] painters and even poets, such as there were, came captive to Rome in gangs, were sold at auction as slaves, and became the property of the rich, to work all their lives at their several arts for their master's pleasure; and the State rifled Greece and Asia, and even the Greek Italy of the south, and brought back the masterpieces of an age to adorn Rome's public places. The Roman was the engineer, the maker of roads, of aqueducts, of fortifications, the layer out of cities, and the planner of harbours. ”

“ But we have a manly satisfaction in reading the history of the ancient Romans; even abstracting from their connections and their broils with other states. Their internal progress alone affords ample matter of speculation to a judicious and spirited observer of human nature. We love to trace the various springs of their conduct, and of their advancement in civilization. We contemplate with pleasure the ferments between the patricians and plebeians, the strong exertions of rude genius, the vigorous exercises and hardy virtues of men uncontrouled by timid subjection. ”

“ It seems to me that the chief reason for the eternal fascination of the history of Rome is this, that it includes, as in a miniature drawn with simple lines, well defined, all the essential phenomena of social life; so that every age is able there to find its own image, its gravest problems, its intensest passions, its most pressing interests, its keenest struggles; therefore Roman history is forever modern, because every new age has only to choose that part which most resembles it, to find its own self. ”

“ The old divisions of the land remained to furnish bounds of field and farm for the new settlers. The Roman church, the Roman country-house, was left standing, though reft of priest and lord. But Rome was gone. The mosaics, the coins which we dig up in our fields are no relics of our English fathers, but of a world which our fathers' sword swept utterly away. Its law, its literature, its manners, its faith, went with it. Nothing was a stronger proof of the completeness of this destruction of all Roman life than the religious change which passed over the land. ”

“ Being eclectic, it embraced all gods,—although this is not to say that every Roman worshipped all of these,—and those peoples whom she conquered were not ravished with violence from their creeds and forced to kneel at unlike altars. Each nation might find a parallel for its gods in Rome's pantheon, and so might be brought without shock into Rome's fold. For, take a man's gods from him, whatsoever they may be that he worships, and give him nothing in return to which he can hold, and at once you take from him all that anchors him to the rationalities of life. ”

“ What happier being in the world than that Roman could nature, could Rome ever have produced, if, after leading round the train of captives amid all the circumstance of war, he had breathed out his soul in glory, when just stepping down from his Teutonic car? ”

“ Now in defining the novel of Roman life, those books were excluded, which make use of Roman life merely as an artificial background for religious instruction. But it would certainly be a needless restriction to deny to the novel of Roman life, or indeed to any form of the historical novel, the liberty to present, directly or indirectly, any valuable sort of teaching. It is impossible truly to portray the life of ancient Rome, without teaching many things of lasting value. ”

“ Under the latter head we consider the Roman as a citizen, and we examine the several classes of citizens, their obligations and their privileges; we study the form of their government, its officers and machinery, its legislative, judicial, and executive procedure, its revenues and expenditures, etc. It is evident that no hard and fast line can be drawn between the two branches of the subject: they cross each other at every turn. One scarcely knows, for example, under which head to put the religion of the Romans or their games in the circus. ”

“ Though we have seen the work of the Græco-Romans bearing evidence of combined influence and instruction, there was even at that very epoch a school, or powerful class of artists, in Rome, who retained their own individuality, who were Romans of Rome, and from whose hands, and from their successors, we have inherited grand cameos and intaglios, portraying their emperors, statesmen, philosophers, mythological subjects, and occasionally groups recording important events in Roman history. ”

“ They slew and burnt,
But after, prized what Rome had given away
Out of her strength and her prosperity.
Have they yet learnt
The precious truth distilled from Rome's decay?
Ruins! On England's heart press heavily!
For Rome hath left us more than walls and words
And better yet shall leave; and more than herds
Or land or gold gave the Celts to us in fee;
E'en Blood, which makes poets sing and prophets see. ”

“ The Romanists, who have imagined from what is taught them that they can live a life of dissipation, and yet, provided they confess themselves in their dying hour, be saved, remain in the heretical sect of Rome. ”

“ As the Greek is great through the idea of Art, the Hebrew through the idea of one most holy God; so the Romans are great through the idea of their eternal Rome; great, wheresoever they have fought, written or builded in the inspiration of this idea. The greater Rome grew, the more this idea dilated: the individual lost himself in it: the great men who remain eminent are borne up by this idea, and it makes the littleness of the little men more pronounced. ”

“ Besides, the Romans were rising in civilization, and caught at every shadow of improvement. The people of the North were totally the reverse. They were the children of Nature—of Nature yet unbetrothed to Art. ”

“ TO THE ROMANS.
Thou shalt atone, O Roman, for the sins of your ancestors, though innocent, till you shall have repaired the temples and tottering shrines of the gods, and their statues, defiled with sooty smoke. Thou boldest sway, because thou bearest thyself subordinate to the gods; to this source refer every undertaking; to this, every event. The gods, because neglected, have inflicted many evils on calamitous Italy. ”

“ Though the Romans are no more but a fable and an ornament of rhetoric, we have here their New England Farmer, the very manual those Roman farmers read, speaking as if they were to hear it, its voice not silenced, as if Rome were still the mistress of the world,—as fresh as a dripping dish-cloth from a Roman kitchen. ”

“ There was one Rome built by the hands of many generations of Romans, and another built up by the imaginations of many generations of Quirites. This process of creating a divinity after their own image did not shock the Roman people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Art was with them a slave, well fed, well clad, well housed, well paid, to make power more powerful, to dazzle the people, to proclaim the universal dominion of Rome over the world. The Roman character was dry and geometrical, and therefore in its artistic taste architectural and monumental. Anything that could serve, by means of technical perfection, to promote art, was encouraged, adopted, and supported by the Romans. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And the Roman plays appear definitely Roman only because the strength of Rome was the eternal strength of the world,—pure family life, sustained by agriculture, and defended by simple and fearless manhood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Happily for us, the written symbols employed by the Romans, which are now the chief medium of expression for all the languages of Europe, America, Australia, and the greater part of civilized Africa, reflect exactly the rough and stalwart energy which made Rome to Europe what we are to the world. ”

“ The greatest of the works of Rome, the Empire founded by her in Europe, including the immense territory bounded by the Rhine and the Danube, lay a vast ruin: a ruin of shattered monuments, of peoples relapsed into barbarism, of perished arts, of forgotten tongues, of laws thrown to the four winds, of roads, villages, cities razed from the face of the earth, swallowed up in the primeval forest which slowly and tenaciously thrust out its tentacles, in that cemetery of a past civilisation, and entwined the giant bones of Rome! ”

“ The others occurred annually, and were named from the gods to whose honour they were dedicated.
12. The Romans were a more grave and domestic people than the lively Greeks; their favourite dress, the toga or gown, was more formal and stately than the Grecian short cloak; their demeanour was more stern, and their manners more imposing. The great object of the old Roman was, to maintain his dignity under all circumstances, and to show that he could controul the emotions to which ordinary men too readily yield. ”

“ If a complicated system of laws and government, on which the reason and experience of ages were expended, did not prevent the empire from falling into the hands of barbarians, much less was to be expected of art, for which the Romans were also distinguished in common with the Greeks. Much is said of the ennobling influence of those great creations which gave so great lustre to ancient civilization. ”

“ When we think of the Romans of the period after the civil wars we must think of men intelligent, cultivated, educated, polished by contact with a wide and various world of affairs, their minds opened by foreign travel and the study of Greek language and literature. ”

“ Only those facts and events which illustrate the real character of the Roman people, which show the progressive development of Rome as a world power, and which explain the influence that Rome has exercised upon modern civilization, have been emphasized. ”

“ Rome’s story is less startling, must perforce be, since like ours, it was subsequent. One does not discover the North Pole or Betelgeuse twice. When the Romans reached the stage of self-consciousness, when they felt the desire to express themselves they found in well-nigh perfect mold the natural forms of expression, developed with sure taste by the Greeks out of song, dance, march-hymn, devotional prayer, dirge, entertaining narrative, or mimic representation. ”

“ We can only judge the old Latin race, as especially embodied in the Roman, from its literature, its history and its institutions. From these we gather that it was a stock excellent for great ideals in the way of conquering and administering, a people of admirable commanders and engineers and jurists, a practical people, but a people not distinguished by brilliance of fancy, great delicacy of taste, notable depth of imagination or poignancy of feeling. Roman literature, left to itself, would, we may believe, have proved a very solid and rather heavy thing. ”

“ Year after year the flower of the Roman youth were marched to her distant colonies and died upon foreign fields; and in return the Gauls and Thracians> Syrians and Egyptians, were brought to Italy and Rome. The art, learning, and civilization of Rome, which had thrived upon their native soil, and had each year grown more deeply rooted, were like plants pulled up and strewed broadcast over the earth, to take root where they could, or to be crowded out by the more vigorous but rank native growth. ”

“ The Roman mind, naturally vigorous and active, was still uncultivated, when, about two centuries and a half before the Christian era, [1] conquest made the inhabitants of the capital acquainted, for the first time, with Greek science, art, and literature; and the last rays of classic taste and learning ceased to illumine the Roman world before the accession of the Antonines. ”