Imperium in imperio

“ God is the universal head. And even as man is body as well as soul, the human community is State as well as Church; and the State needs the emperor for its head, as the Church has the pope. The Roman Dominion, imperium mundi, was legitimate, and by divine appointment has passed over to the Roman-German emperor. Other views sustaining the scheme of co-ordination upheld a plurality of states, rather than one universal Imperium. ”

“ In the seven centuries that had elapsed since the Second Empire had been founded on the shattered remnants of the First, the nobles of the Imperium had come slowly to realize that the empire was not to be judged by the examples of its predecessor. ”

“ It is these that create a power which more than any other makes the state. The mild kingship of the high-priest of the common cult gives way to the organised rule of an imperium, and the king, praetor or dictator, is the result, the coherence of infant organisation being dependent on the strength of the executive power. ”

“ The emperor had swallowed up the empire, and there was no authority or influence beside. This is the main feature of the first or Imperial Century, that, wherever we look, we see but one,—one gorged and bloated brutalized man, sitting on the throne of earthly power, and all the rest of mankind at his feet. ”

“ Prosperity of the empire. The empire was not so large as it subsequently became, nor was it at that height of power and prosperity which followed a century of peace, when uninterrupted dominion had reconciled the world to the rule of the Cæsars. But it was the golden age of imperial domination, when arts, science, and literature flourished, and when the world rested from incessant wars. It was not an age of highest glory to man, since all struggles for liberty had ceased ”

“ The Ambition of the Emperor
But the new emperor, while thus actively engaged in labors of peace, by no means lived up to the spirit of his motto, “The Empire is peace.” An empire founded upon the army needs to give employment to that army. A monarchy sustained by the votes of a people athirst for glory needs to do something to appease that thirst. A throne filled by a Napoleon could not safely ignore the “Napoleonic Ideas,” and the first of these might be stated as “The Empire is war.” ”

“ STAUFFACHER. The empire only is my feudal lord. FURST. What needs must be, we'll do, but nothing further. We'll drive these tyrants and their minions hence, And raze their towering strongholds to the ground, Yet shed, if possible, no drop of blood. Let the emperor see that we were driven to cast The sacred duties of respect away; And when he finds we keep within our bounds, His wrath, belike, may yield to policy; For truly is that nation to be feared, That, when in arms, is temperate in its wrath. ”

“ When the Empire nestled into rest; after the convulsions in which it was born; when a generation had passed away of those who had been Roman citizens; when a generation arose, which, excepting one man, the emperor, was a nation of Roman subjects,—then the Empire was at its height of power, its centralization was complete, the system of its civilization was at the zenith of its success.
At that moment it was that there dawned at Rome the first gray morning-light of the new civilization. ”

“ They have been motive causes, it would seem, in the processes by which this 'imperium' has been established; as, e.g., the acquisition of military power by a tribal chieftain, the conquest of one tribe by another, the supersession of the independent prerogatives of families by a tyrant which was the antecedent condition of the formation of states in the ancient world, the supersession of feudal prerogatives by the royal authority which served the same purpose in modern Europe. ”

“ The new system, if it involved the peril of strife among the regents, led to a more vigilant and efficient government in the different provinces, and provided for a peaceful succession to the throne. But the government came to resemble, in the omnipotence of the emperor, in the obsequious homage paid to him, and in the cringing manners of the court, an Oriental despotism. The old heathen religion was considered by conservative Romans to be an essential part of the imperial system, and indispensable to the unity of the empire. ”

“ Once more a great man sat upon the throne of the empire, in whose mind and in whose will was set the dream of the reconquest, of the re-establishment of the empire through the West, of the promulgation of the great code by which the new Europe was to realise itself. ”

“ The history of the empire presents the spectacle of a state without any political organisation, by which the tyranny of a ruler could be checked when it became insupportable. The only means were assassination; and the only power that either the emperor could use to maintain himself, or a conspirator could employ to seize the power or secure it for another, was the soldiery. ”

“ From the Pillars of Hercules to the Caspian Sea one stern will ruled all classes and orders. No one could fly from the agents and ministers of the Emperor; he controlled the army, the Senate, the judiciary, the internal administration of the empire, and the religious worship of the people; all offices, honors, and emoluments emanated from him. All influences conspired to elevate the man whom no one could hope successfully to rival. Revolt was madness, and treason absurdity. Nor did the Emperors attempt to check the gigantic social evils of the empire. ”

“ How much greater right have we to the imperial title, therefore, than the many who have been made emperor without any religious ceremony or holy rite being performed by a pope, being elected only by the senate and people of Rome, who had no regard for such holy rites? And some have been made emperor by even less authority, being proclaimed by the army, and others by women, and others in still other ways. ”

“ The making of a nation and the building of nations up into empires is, humanly speaking, the greatest and noblest work that human hands and brains can find to do, for the making of an empire means, in its ultimate analysis, the substitution of order for anarchy, of commerce for plunder, of civilisation for savagery—in a word, of peace for strife. ”

“ To-day the words 'Empire' and 'Imperialism' fill the place in everyday speech that was once filled by 'Nation' and 'Nationality.' In the never-ending struggle of political principles authority rather than liberty seems for the moment to have the upper hand; power and dominion rather than freedom and independence are the ideas that appeal to the imagination of the masses; men's thoughts are turned outward rather than inward; the national ideal has given place to the Imperial. ”

“ Why are these men coming? What has induced them to volunteer to take part in our battles? They are thousands of miles away. Is it not perfectly clear that they are coming because of the principles for which the Empire stands, which in their eyes are much more than power? [Hear, hear.] The Empire stands for justice, for righteousness, for good government, for mercy, for truth. ”

“ But his empire was to be more than a confederacy, it was to be an effective entity with the imperial rule supreme over all, with the imperial army a ready instrument of war in the hands of the sovereign, to compel the Universal Peace, as he called his empire, and with the king’s officers able to exercise sufficient authority for the protection, not only of the constituent parts of the empire against one another but also of the individual against the arbitrary action of the individual community. ”

“ You are going to build up a magnificent empire, founded on—slavery. But I tell you, the ruin and desolation of our dear country—that will be your empire. And as for the institution you mean to perpetuate and strengthen, it will be crushed to atoms between the upper and nether millstones of the war you are bringing upon the nation. ”

“ The dream of political unity, the majestic theory of the Universal Empire corresponding to the Universal Church, with its head, the Emperor, the crown of the feudal system and the earthly King of kings, was only perhaps a dream, a theory, an aspiration; but it remains in many ways the noblest, the most coherent, and the most satisfying political ideal yet conceived by the mind of man, and it as invested the Middle Ages with a grandeur to which our modern world, with all its manifest gains and advantages, has not yet attained. ”

“ Emperor. It is manifest that human power depends on the will of the supreme Glory.
People. Abundance to the world! As thou hast lived, so rule. Incorrupt rulers for the world! and so on.
Emp. Since the most serene Augusta Ariadne with the assent of the illustrious nobles and by the election of the glorious Senate and mighty armies, and the consent of the sacred people, have advanced me, though unwilling and hesitating, that I should assume the care of the Empire of the Romans, agreeably to the clemency of the Divine Trinity.... ”

“ Thus passes this glorious array—Emperors on horseback or in chariots, their guards and soldiery, captives and slaves both men and women, trophies and spoils of war. In these few minutes while we watch, the triumphs of seven centuries of Empire rise up before us and fade away into that general oblivion which so few men survive, and even those often, as it seems, only by some chance or trick of fortune. ”

“ The imperial sceptre being held by weak emperors, there sprang up in every part of the empire, competitors for the throne—several rivals frequently appearing in the field at the same time. The barbarians pressed upon all the frontiers, and thrust themselves into all the provinces. The empire seemed on the point of falling to pieces. ”

“ The mere notion of an empire continuing to decline and fall for five centuries is ridiculous. It is to regard as a failure the greatest civilising force in all the history of Europe, the most stable form of government, the strongest military and political system that has ever existed. ”

“ Did not the beautiful empress herself buckle the sword upon the emperor, and even upon the boy Prince Imperial, who should go and witness for himself his father's triumphs, and receive an object lesson, as it were, in avenging insult to the imperial dignity, which would one day be in his keeping? ”

“ Our Empire could play the part of the Imperator Pacificus for whom the Middle Ages longed, and it could do it, not by holding the nations of the earth in the iron grip of Rome, but while leaving full scope for the free play of the multitudinous forces of humanity in all their legitimate fields of action. ”

“ In the world around us, if a very small nation is stirred to war against the emperor, he is at no pains to go to the front in person, but sends soldiers with their officers, and they carry on the war. But if the nation in motion against him is a very great one, powerful enough to ravage his empire, the emperor himself is compelled to take the field, with those in the palace and in his camps, and to join in battle. Consider then your own dignity. ”

“ This ideal of a docile nation led by a triumphant emperor whose intelligence embraces everything throws considerable light on the relations of imperialism to party government and parliamentary institutions. ”

“ An empire based on brotherhood—a holy human empire of the World, including all races and colours in a common unity and equality—yes! But these shoddy empires based on militarism and commercialism, and built up in order to secure the unclean ascendancy of two outworn and effete classes over the rest of mankind—a thousand times no! ”

“ Does it seem incredible that a private citizen should grasp the sword and the sceptre, subdue his native country, and erect a monarchy by his victorious arms? In the moving picture of the dynasties of the East, a hundred fortunate usurpers have arisen from a baser origin, surmounted more formidable obstacles, and filled a larger scope of empire and conquest. ”

“ Empire to them meant—for the great men, lucrative satrapies or pachalics, with powers altogether unlimited, pomp inferior only to that of the great king, and standing armies which they employed at their own discretion sometimes against each other—for the common soldiers, drawn from their fields or flocks, constant plunder, abundant maintenance, and an unrestrained license, either in the suite of one of the satraps, or in the large permanent troops which moved from Susa to Ekbatana with the Great King. ”

“ It was the custom, during the times of the Empire, for each successive troop of gladiators, before beginning their conflict, to advance to the Imperial box when the Emperor was present, and to salute him with the words, “Ave, Cæsar Imperator; morituri te salutant.” ”

“ The sons of the sovereign were to pass through all the ranks of the army.
Every emperor who should attach to himself a privileged body, under the name of guard of honor, or any other designation, was, by the fact, to be regarded as at war with the nation, and should be driven from the throne, which then was to be occupied by one of the councillors of state, chosen by the majority of the members of that body. ”

“ Think of such a man,--not master of a little barbaric island or a half-established throne in a country no bigger than a small province, but the supreme sovereign of a vast empire, at the time of its greatest splendor and prosperity, with no mortal power to keep his will in check,--nothing but the voice within him ”

“ The life-blood of this Empire is trade; its supreme interest is manifestly peace. The conception of the meaning of empire which is indicated by its history is not a conception of dominion for dominion's sake, imposed by brute force. ”

“ These emperors strove to defend the empire by exterminating the Christians; if they had been greater men, they would have adopted the new religion, pruned it of all doctrines that might menace the imperial authority, translating Jesus to the highest heaven, and taking for themselves his place upon the earth--as I have done. ”