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This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. A UTHOR : HAVERFIELD, FRANCIS JOHN TITLE: SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF PLACE: CAMBRIDGE, MASS DA TE : [1916] COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT BIBLIOGRA PHIC MICROFORM TARHFT Master Negative # Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record r 874 ,06 I H299 Haverjfleld, Francis John, 1860-1919. ... Some Roman conceptions of empire, by F. Haver- 1916"* Cambridge, Prmted at the University press ' ClaTS^ssi^^^^^^^ 2^^'" (Occasional publications of the Restrictions on Use: Library of Congress 16-17918 TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA FILM SIZEi ^ ^ Vct ^ Q Q REDUCTION RATIO: \W IMAGE PLACEMENT: ^(^3^13 IIB ^^^^^-1\>L DATE FILMED:__^-J£^15_ INITIALS ^A FILMED BY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODBRI^ErCT c Association for information and Image Management 1100 Wayne Avenue. Suite 1100 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 12 3 4 imliiiiliiiiliiiiiiiiiiimliiiiliiiil TTT Inches TTT 5 iiiliiiili 6 7 8 iiliiiiliiiiliiiilmilii 1 ^M 9 iiiiliii 10 11 iiiilmilniili 1.0 I.I 1.25 m 11^ ■ 50 Emm Urn ■ 60 1& 13.6 1^ Uis.u 1.4 12 13 liiiilniili TTl mm 14 15 mm iinliiiiliiii T 2.5 2.2 2.0 1.8 1.6 MflNUFflCTURED TO flllM STflNDflRDS BY nPPLIED IMRGEp INC. I. i Columbta (Hnttewitti) LIBRARY f r\ w«»*t«fc.-»** ^tJBN^*"^ , '^'^^^^M*,"' { Occasional Publications of the Classical Association, No. 4 Li::k i| SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS ' 1 I ' ' ' • ' QF.mnt(.E I ; I II I r : • t I > I c • . ' » • . • II • > I I ' • , I ' ' ' I » » > I I , • ' I I • • • > • I I I III I BY ' '> ' F. HAVERFIELD, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A, CAMDEN PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD Cambridge: Printed at the University Press m ■BMt^r- " JMMM IWBI • a & • - • • « • • » • « ' * ' '^OTE** • • " .• • • ' * In the summer of 1915*J^rof« ^Yr^^^ R6i)er4 of ihe GlMsical Association and of Leeds University, askecl \ah to rfead a 'paper to the Leeds Branch of the Association in January 1916. I agreed, and it was decided that I should use a paper read by me in May 1915 as President of the Society for Roman Studies, at that Society's annual meeting, but not pubUshed in its Journal. An iUness, which has made me incapable of serious work after Christmas 1915 till now, prevented my reading the MS. myself to the meeting on January 19, and has also hindered my full revision of it for its present pubUcation. I trust my readers wiU pardon any defects. For the two plates, I am indebted to the liberahty of Messrs G. Duckworth, publishers of Mrs Strong's most admirable volume on Roman Sculpture. — F. H. I I Clas3. Assoc. Papers, No. 4 ^ (^ <0 f^ Kindly .lent hy Messi's Duckvortfi, London Fig. 1. DETAIL OF ARA PACIS (p. 11), west wall. From Mrs Strong's Roman Sculpture (Plate XVI) SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE War at all times deters or diverts scholars from learned labours. It calls the younger men to the paramount duty of national defence. It destroys the confidence and quiet of the elder men. It makes research seem valueless, and unreal beside its own realities. In my own University of Oxford, of the twenty men or so who lately taught one branch or another of ancient history, every one of military age and capacity has long ago left us. We, the elders, remain to carry on the work. Shall we carry it on "as usual"? I read somewhere the other day that Great Britain is not making war in the sense that Germany or that France is making war — that from the rising till the setting sun every man, woman and child in those countries thinks of nothing else •save how to destroy the enemy, but that in England other pre-occupations continue. If this means that, in France and in Germany, there is ever present, to almost everyone, the vivid sense of national danger and of the urgent need of national effort, that is true of England, too. I was not long ago in a corner of the west country, where Exmoor hills drop to a harbourless coast — a region not unlike your Robin Hood's Bay and Stainton Dale. In the remote and hidden valley where I lodged, there was little outward sign of war. But those who cared to look closely saw that nearly every man of military age had gone to fight and that to those who had stayed at home,— the young, the old, the women, — the war formed a deep and terrible background to their lives. They did not talk of it : for better or worse, Englishmen seldom say all they feel, just as they seldom say all that they know. They went on with their lives as usual, and yet — not as usual. 1—2 kN&i-i Kii'illii l,}if l,n 3/' .<■<>•>■ Ihieki'-ortli, Loinlon Fig. 1. DETAIL OF ARA PACIS (p. II). west wall. From Mrs Strong's Roman Sculi/ftirt (Plate X\'J) %1-h.oL I 00 ''i SOME ROMAN COXCEPTIOXS OF EMPIRE War at all tiines deters or diverts scholars from learned labours. It calls the younger men to the paramount duty of national defence. It destroys the confidence and quiet of the elder men. It makes research seem valueless, and unreal beside its own realities. In my own University of Oxford, of the twenty men or so who lately taught one branch or another of ancient history, every one of military age and capacity has long ago left us. We, the elders, remain to carry on the work. Shall we cany it on "as usual"? I read somewhere the other day that Great Britain is not making war in the sense that Germany or that France is making war— that from the rising till the setting sun every man, woman and child in those countries thinks of nothing else save how to destroy the enemy, but that in England other pre-occupations continue. If this means that, in France and in Germajiv, there is ever present, to almost everyone, the vivid sense of national danger and of the urgent need of national effort, that is true of England, too. I was not long ago in a corner of the west countrv, where Exmoor hills drop to a harbourless coast — a region not unlike your Robin Hood's Bay and Stainton Dale. In the remote and hidden valley where I lodged, there was little outward sign of war. But those who cared to look closely saw that nearly every man of military age had gone to fight and that to those who had stayed at home,— the young, the old, the women,— the war formed a deep and terrible background to their lives. They did not talk of it : for better or worse. Englishmen seldom say all they feel, just as they seldom say all that they know. They went on with their lives as usual, and yet — not as usual. 1—2 2 SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE I cannot help thinking that some of us in England have taken an unwise line in this matter. There have been demands for small economies in every expenditure not bearing directly on the war. The Treasury has wanted not merely to curtail but to shut up the work of the Ordnance Survey in Southampton, of the Reading Room in the British Museum, and so forth, and excavations have been suspended through the country. The total saving effected by these steps, happily only carried out in part, has been comparatively small, a tiny drop beside the vast war expenditure, but the harm done might in some cases have been serious. When, after considerable expense, you have formed a working staff, it is altogether false economy to scatter it, and to go through all the initial outlay over again. More- over, the effect of these small economies on the opinion of the outside world (if that opinion now matters) cannot be calculated. If it be announced in neutral countries that Great Britain cannot afford two or three hundred pounds to continue an important work of learning, that will not benefit the British exchange in foreign money markets. We act like retail dealers. From this point of view I rather regret that it has not been thought possible to continue next summer at Slack the excava- tions of the last two years, carried out by the University of Leeds and the Yorkshire Archaeologists. These excavations were well carried out and their results were historically inter- esting and important; one is loath to see them suspended. I am aware, however, that in this case difficulties intrude which are quite apart from any question of money, such as it may not be possible to overcome^. This is not w^hat our allies, the French, and, as I believe, our enemies, the Germans, also have done. For all their patriotism, the serious work of those countries which is not warlike has not been utterly forgotten ; the threads of their intellectual life have not been wholly sundered; in duly ^ Indeed the sum needed for another season's work at Slack is quite small — much smaller than the whole £400 which was (one hears) to have been saved by closing the Scottish museums — a measure happily never carried out. SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE 3 limited form, so as not to interfere with the country's needs, education and learned research are still followed by those of them who are too old to fight and who cannot help as soldiers. And this is right. If research is worth anything, if (to take my own case) "Roman Studies" have real value, it does not seem desirable or necessary to drop all intellectual work on them, save in the direst need. Therefore, as I hold, we and societies like ours do well to continue, within due limits, our more serious intellectual activity, issuing our publications and holding at least our regular meetings. During the long period of the Napoleonic wars, a hundred years ago, research and the publication of the results of research went on, in France and in England, not indeed altogether unlessened, but still with real vigour: those 25 years gave us and France some of the most splendid and costly of our great local histories and local studies^. The trouble came after the war was over— in 1816-203. On the other hand, we may perhaps at our meetings prefer to deal with topics which are not purely learned, which combine ancient and modern interests. In the remarks which I am about to offer, I wish to make some observations on certain aspects of the Eoman Empire, to which I have recently noted frequent incidental references in our current literature. I run the risk of falling into generalities which may seem to you trite or untrue, or both: of that you must be judges. 2 I refer to such works as those of John Carter on Architecture (2 folios, 1795-1816), Gough's enlargement of Camden, in 4 foUos, 1789-1806, the 18 volumes of Britton and Brayley's Beauties of England and Wales (1801 foil.), the 4 great quartos of S. Lysons' Reliquiae Romano-britannicae , (1813-17), the 8 quartos of his Magna Britannia (1806-22), and the like, nearly all editions de luxe, sumptuously illustrated, and forming most valuable records of finds, though foreign scholars, like Orelli, in the early nineteenth century paid little heed to them. Our British Universities had Kttle to do with them ; they have been, indeed, throughout indifferent to national antiquities, like the German Universities till quite recently. This class of costly archaeological works, compiled for the most part by men not professed scholars, is almost confined to this country, to France and to Spain. ® T. E. May, Constit. History, Ch. x. SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE 5 A Similarity between the Roman Empire and the Nineteenth Century I am aware that comparisons between ancient and modern things are difficult and often profitless. The great changes which fell upon Europe about 100 years ago— the vast upheaval called the French Kevolution and its Napoleonic outgrowth, the rise of the so-called lower classes, the huge growth of natural science and, in particular, of mechanics and chemistry — have set a deep historical gulf between the nineteenth century and all preceding ages. "Greek," "Koman," "medieval," are all alike "ancient history" to-day. Ancient history now ends about Waterloo Day, 1815. The tactics of Waterloo are as unlike those of our modern battles as the tactics of Plataea or of Marathon. Human nature alone remains the same and, round it, history is continually repeating ever- varying combina- tions. There is, however, one strong likeness between the Koman Empire and the nineteenth century, which might justify a lengthened comparison. Both ages were ages of peace— the one lasting for four centuries (B.C. 31 to about a.d. 370), the other for just a hundred years (a.d. 1815-1914). We stand to-day as the Romans near the end of the Empire stood —at the close of one of the only two longish periods of general peace which this troubled world of ours has yet enjoyed. We, like the Romans of the early fifth century, see a plain reversal to barbarism over much of the civilized world around us. It may be worth while to consider, briefly, a few of the ideas which— as I think— underlay the Roman Empire, and to compare them with those underlying our own. I shall not of course enter into questions of modern controversy, least of all into questions of politics ; that would not be fit on an occasion like the present, nor would it be seemly in a paper read in my absence. My views must, of course, occasionally peep through, and you, I am sure, will forgive the glimpses. We know what the Hundred Years' Peace now just expired has been (1815-1914), a peace broken by ci^ and national wars and by social upheavals, violent indeed,^' but — like some modern explosives — violent mainly within narrow limits of time and space. The peace of the Roman Empire was much the same. It began, like the nineteenth century, after a long period of storms. The Ciceronian age, which immediately preceded it, was indeed as unhappy as the Napoleonic and it was actually longer. Though Cicero himself did not realize it, his lifetime saw, as Mommsen has said, the bankruptcy — political, moral and economic— of the antecedent Graeco- Roman civilization. The last twenty years in this age (B.C. 48-28) are summed up by Tacitus as pure "anarchy"— continua per viginti annos discordia ; non mos, non ius {Ann., iii. 28). After Leipzig or Waterloo, after 1814 or 1815, the world craved peace as eagerly as it ever did after Actium*. When Augustus restored peace, what wonder that he was deified by his contemporaries? The wonder rather is that some modern men call him mediocre and second-rate. For his work lasted; for four hundred years from Actium (b.c. 31) till about A.D. 370, the civilized world had something like peace. Have we an Augustus alive to-day? This then was the primary conception which the Romans attached to Empire — peace. It is perhaps, at first thought, rather surprising that it was not till well within the earlier Empire, till writers like the younger Seneca, the elder Pliny and Tacitus, that the phrase "pax Romana" first appears in its later and fullest sense; till then, pax and pacare meant little else but "conquest" and "to conquer." The way indeed to this rude idea of "peace" had been shown by Caesar's * Even H. v. Treitschke {deutsche Oeschichte, i. 509) closes his account of the battle of Lsipzig with an eloquent word on tie misery of that age: "Drau^sen auf dem Schlaihtfelde hielten die Aasgeier ihren Schmaus; es wehrte lan^e bis die entflohenen Bauern in die verwiisteten Dorfer heimkehrten, und die Leichen in Massengrabern verscharrten. Unter solchen Eleni nahm dies Zeitalter der Kriege vom deutschen Boden Abschied, dis f urchterUche Zeit, von der Arndt sagte : « dahin woUte es fast mitjins komm3n, dass es endUch nur zwei Menschenarten gab, Menschen- fregser und Gefressene ! ' Dem Geschlechte, das solches gesehen, blieb fur immer ein unausloschlicher Abscheu vor dem Kriege, ein tiefes, fiir minder heimgesuchte Zeiten fast unverstandhches Friedensbediirfniss." I I j H ■i I I it i 6 SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE and others' use of pacare, but in the mouths of these earlier men that word was an euphemism, not a statement of a political theory, — so Caesar used desiderare of "losing" men in battle 5. This peace of the early Empire was a real peace, broken here and there by explosions, like our nineteenth century. There was disorder and disaster for a few months in several lands (in May 68 — August 70 a.d.), when Nero, the last and worst of the lulio-Claudians, fell amidst the storms which his misrule had at last excited. Worse disaster followed when, near the close of the second century, Commodus, the last and (once more) the worst of the "Adoptive" Emperors, perished in a like fate. Longer and yet greater evil followed in the middle of the third century. Throughout that century the barbarians were charging in ever-growing multitudes at the long northern frontier of the Empire, that stretched from the North Sea to the Euxine, while within the Empire plague went to and fro, and sedition and disloyalty, born of these double evils, spread through the ranks alike of officers and of soldiers. In the main, the inner peace of the Empire was none the less upheld. Nor was there, of course, ever absolute peace on the frontiers. The reign of Pius was chosen by Gibbon^ as the happiest period in Roman and in human history. It was marked by many fierce local wars and disasters — in Britain, in Africa, in Egypt, in Judaea, in Armenia, in Greece, and on the Danube. Within the Empire there were brigands active in many places — as every reader of Lucian and of Apuleius will remember. But there are dacoits in India under the British rule; such local evils mean no more than a pimple or a wart on a man, disfiguring him but not typical or disastrous. And on the other side, the evidences of Roman peace are many. Let me quote just two. If any part of the Roman Empire was ^ Augustus, of course, erected in B.C. 19 a shrine which he called ara Pads Augustae (Mon. Ancyr., cap. xii.), which is mentioned on coins. But he himself issued no coins with the legends later so common Pax aug{u8ta) or Pad augustae: he seems almost alone among the Emperors, save for Trajan, in having avoided or neglected this. * Chap, ii, etc. SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE 7 hard to police, the Atlantic coasts must have offered peculiar problems. Pirates could descend upon them from lands out- side the Empire, from Caledonia, from northern Europe, perhaps even from Morocco and from the never quite quiet north and north-west of Spain. What harm Moorish pirates may then have wrought on the coasts of southern Spain and Portugal, there is hardly enough evidence to determine. But come further north to Gaul and Britain, and a fair prospect of peace greets us. Here the country-houses and farms of well-to-do landowners and farmers stand close to the shore as though no seafaring foe threatened. In county Glamorgan on the north shore of the Bristol Channel, scarce a mile from high- water mark, a comfortable country-house with good mosaics, good heating apparatus, looked out over the water from Llantwit Major. In the end it was destroyed — sacked (as its ruins prove) and burnt — in some wild midnight raid, but that was not till after the opening of the fourth century. Till then, at any rate, the Channel must have been clear of dangerous Irish raiders. So, too, on the south coast. At Holcombe, near Lyme Regis, in a sheltered nook behind the sea-cliffs, a house obviously built for the comfort of a wealthy family lasted on till the fourth century'. Further east, on the same south coast, there were houses as much (or more) exposed, on the edges of the Isle of Wight and the littoral of Sussex. Where the Queen's Hotel now stands at Eastbourne, a Roman "villa" stood till the same late date — so near the sea that when the Hotel was built about 1848, part of it was found to have been washed away by the tides^. Nor was the east coast less attractive to peaceful residents. There were Roman " villas " near Harwich and at Felixstowe and a group of them round the sinuous estuaries of Coin and Blackwater. On Mersea Island, a little east of Colchester, you can — or could quite lately — walk to church along a surviving Roman mosaic pavement almost ' Found about and before 1872, Archaeologiay XL v. 462 (compare Report of Devon Assoc., xxiii. 82). The coins include Constans and Trajan, probably Trajan Decius. The site can still be traced. ^ Philosophical Transactions, p. 351, a few objects in the Caldecott Museum at Eastbourne, Sussex Archaeological Collections, ii. 257. 1—5 8 SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE 9 ' within the spray of the sea^. Till the coming of the fourth century the sea must have been as safe along all these dangerous coasts as it is to-day. Were I addressing an audience which might be expected to know the Atlantic coasts of France as well as it may be expected to know those of Britain, I could quote similar evidence of Koman peace from Brittany and Normandy. I prefer to turn to another piece of evidence illustrating the same grip of that strong Empire at a later date and on a land frontier. The Roman, or, as he might be more justly called, Gallo-Eoman poet, Ausonius born at Bordeaux spent many years in public service at Trier on the Mosel, in the second half of the fourth century. The land of his inhabitation on the Mosel was, like his birth-land on the Garonne, a rich valley set with vineyards, and with double loyalty he sat down to describe it in rich- coloured verse. His picture ^^ is of peace and plenty, of towns looking forth from ancient walls, of chateaux overhanging river-banks, of wide vineyards full of merry workers singing at their tasks, of watermen rowing and towing great barges (as they do to-day) along the swift stream, of many fishers with net or line or rod, of watermills, and here and there a quarry, of boat-races, regattas and country-fairs, of a rich, happy and populous countryside, of a river-god who can be hailed: Salve magne parens frugiunqiie viruntque. Ausonius wrote that in a.d. 371 : the actual land he sang of was hardly a day's gallop from the Rhine frontier: but he has scarcely five lines on war and on the barbarian inroads. Thirty years later still, in 400, Claudian^^ praises the peace even of the Rhine — "you could not tell which bank was Roman": "the Rhine was as prosperous and peaceful as the Tiber in Italy" and '' new houses clothed its banks." He shows us a region such as » Proceedings of the Soc. of Antiq., xvi. (1897), 422. In the late 4th century the fort of Othona was built close by and indicates need for defence at that date hereabouts. ^^ Mosella, passim, esp. vv. IGO foil., 200 (regattas), 240 foil, (fishers), 380, etc. A convenient ed. is by C. Hosius (Marburg, 1894), with notes. ^^ See de cons. Stilich., ii. 187, etc. / >4 By the kindness of Messrs Duckv:orth, London Fig. 2. DETAIL OF ARA PACIS, lower frieze: Therme Museum, Rome (see p. 11). From Mrs Strong's Roman Sculpture (Plate XVIII) 8 SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE 9 within the spray of the sea^. Till the coming of the fonrth century the sea must have been as safe along all these dangerous coasts as it is to-day. Were I addressing an audience which might be expected to know the Atlantic coasts of France as well as it may be expected to know those of J^ritain, 1 could (juote similar evidence of Roman peace from Brittany and Normandy. I prefer to turn to another piece of evidence illustrating the same grip of that strong Empire at a later date and on a land frontier. The Roman, or, as he might be more justly called, (Jallo-Roman poet, Ausonius born at Bordeaux spent many years in pubhc service at Trier on the Mosel, in the second half of the fourth century. The land of his inhabitation on the Mosel was, like his birth-land on the Garonne, a rich valley set with vineyards, and with double loyalty he sat down to describe it in rich- coloured verse. His picture ^^ is of peace and plenty, of towns looking forth from ancient walls, of chateaux overhanging river-banks, of wide vineyards full of merry workers singing at their tasks, of watermen rowing and towing great barges (as they do to-day) along the swift stream, of many fishers with net or line or rod, of watermills, and here and there a ((uarry, of boat-races, regattas and country-fairs, of a rich, happy and populous countryside, of a river-god who can be hailed: Sal re nnujne pareits j'rxijtuuque ciruixqac. Ausonius wrote that in A.D. 371 : the actual land he sang of was hardly a day's gallop from the Rhine frontier: but he has scarcely five lines on war and on the bar])arian inroads. Thirty years later still, in 400, Claudian^^ praises the peace even of the Rhine — ''you could not tell which bank was Roman'': "the Rhine was as prosperous and peaceful as the Tiber in Italy"' and '' new houses clothed its banks." lie shows us a region such as » Proceetlhigs of Ike Soc. of Aitfi'/., xvi. (1807), 422. In tlic latf 4th century the fort of Othonu was built close by and inclieates need for defence at that date hereabouts. i« Mosella, passim, esp. vv. 100 foil., 2(M) (regattas), 240 foil, (fishers), 380, etc. A convenient eil. is by C. Hosius (Marburg, 181)4), with notes. " See de cons. Stilich.y ii. 187, etc. Lij the ki7i(hiess of Messrs Duckv;orth, London Fig. 2. DETAIL OF ARA PACTS, lower frieze: Tliernic Museum, Rome (sec p. 11). From Mrs Strong's Mornan Sculptart (Plate XVlll) 10 SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE 11 many districts were in northern Gaul down to the latest days of the Empire — such as many districts in precisely the same land were till ten to twelve months ago. He was hardly dead before the Empire fell. In 406 the great barbarian raid burst over Gaul : uno fumavit Gallia tola rogo^^, and the hillsides that he had praised became as Louvain and Dinant are to-day. Three or four hundred years' peace — more profound and unbroken in some provinces than in others, but long and real in all, was no small achievement. It suggests the question — how was it done? Many writers have asked why the Empire fell — no one has asked why it took so long to fall? Peace alone, after all, is a necessary preliminary to Empire, not an imperial ideal of much originality itself. We need to know what further conceptions of Empire the Roman Imperiahsts had. The Romans of the Republic clearly had no definite notions. The phrase Roman Imperiahsm is the title of a stimulating and highly suggestive work recently issued about the Roman Republic i^, but that idea found no place in the history of any age till after Cicero was dead. Cicero himself, for all his philosophical studies, had no outlook in such things. Caesar doubtless had, but he never put it into written system. As a rule, we are referred to the poets, and the birth-song of the Empire is fomid in seven lines of Vergil — those lines which conclude the great muster-roll of Republican heroes which Anchises unfolds to Aeneas in the sixth Aeneid: — Excudent alii spiiantia inollius aera, (credo equideiu), vivos ducent de marmore voltus, orabunt causae melius, caelique meatus describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent, tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento — hae tibi erunt artes — pacisque imponere morem, parcere subiectis et debellare superbos. (vi. 847-853.) They are perhaps the stateliest hues and certainly the best 12 Orient., Common., u. 184. JSee Classical Review, xix. (1905), 126-8. " Tenney Frank, Roman Imperialism (New York, 1914). known that even Vergil ev^r wrote. But they are a poor christening-hymn for a nation. It is often said of Vergil, that "all later Latin hterature and thought depend on him," that he was "not only the interpreter of the Rome that was before him but the guide and the prophet of the Rome that was to be after him." This is true, but only in small part. Vergil's proper genius lay in tenderer and more delicate emotions than in those of even a patriotic politician; that subtle observer of nature, that profound student of the human mind, understood less of political men grouped in states than of natural human men taken one by one in the rough. And here he presented the rising Empire with a description which is as flat in thought as it is matchless in expression. Think of it. Rome was not to care for art^*, for oratory or for science ! A generation which had seen fashioned the stately sculptures which adorned the Ara Pacis^^ was not to care for statuary. A generation, for whom were written the Catilinarian orations and the Philippics, was to despise oratory, and utterly to forget Cicero. Rule by sheer might (imperio) was to be culture; Rome was to aim at a compulsory peace — such peace as Tacitus damned in the epi- gram "they make a wilderness and call it peace"; then, she was to spare — scornful word — the weak, and utterly to crush out all independence. We miss the horror of this ideal by importing into the verses notions which are not there, by adding to "peace" the notions of civilization and de- velopment, to "spare" the notions of tenderness and pity. Vergil did not add those notions ; he set forth an ideal which would be rejected to-day even by our modern German enemy, who, after all, does claim that he is fighting for a definite 1* It has been objected to me that Vergil does not actually say that Rome was not to care for art, etc. That, however, is clearly Vergil's meaning, and so Macaulay understood it, as he restates it in the Prophecy of Capys — although he very wisely set that prophecy in a wilder and more savage frame, thus making the sentiment more credible. ^® The best account of the Ara Pacis in EngUsh is probably that in IVIrs S. A. Strong's excellent volume on Roman Sculpture (London, 1916), from which by the Uberality of its publishers, Messrs Duckworth, my * two illustrations are taken. v' : 12 SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE 13 well-ordered civilization, for scientific progress and for artistic excellence^®. The Empire, of course, did better than Vergil. Just as, in its religious growth, it passed out beyond the religious ideals of the sixth Aeneid — so it soon left behind also its political ideals. What are the main features of the real Empire? The most conspicuous feature is not perhaps that which most mattered. History has been defined as the Book of Kings, and if any history be that, the ordinary history of the Empire is little more than a list of Emperors' portraits. Now, for an Empire — even with the peculiar Roman constitution — you must clearly have Emperoi;^. But the actual working of the Roman imperial machinery went on without so very much regard for the rulers. As a whole, the Roman Emperors were not men of genius. Mommsen, indeed, perhaps exaggerated when he said — "in the long roll of rulers from Augustus to Diocletian, amid the crowd of worthless, of second-rate, of foolish men, we meet no real statesman — at the best only an able administrator like Vespasian or a mediocre fighter like Trajan' (Reden, p. 109). But there is truth in this; it is rare to find the character of the Roman ruler reacting forcibly on the Roman state. Good rulers like Hadrian, no doubt, did good. Nero's follies produced scattered troubles, the viler follies of Commodus, working on a state already smitten hard by plague and by ' external war, bore more evil fruit. But the evils were overcome, the machinery of the Empire continued to perform its functions, though its nominal directors failed for a while to guide it. It follows that if the Emperors did not matter, we need not assign much prominence among the Roman conceptions of Empire to the constitutional position of the ruler or of the Principate generally. Mommsen, in one of those addresses on politics ancient and modern, which foreign custom occasion- ^* It is improper that I should here express any opinion whether Germany is actually fighting for such things. But that she thinks so is a practical fact, which wise men will note. The fear that the Slavonic • world would drag down the German in den Abgrund ihrer Unkultur, as a German put it many years ago, was almost one of the causes of the war. ally requires of University Professors, traced the strength of the Principate to a feature which he found also in the position of the Hohenzollern rulers of Germany. The Princeps, he alleged, was not a mere despot: he combined some sort of despotism, or constitutionalism, in any case some supreme military authority, with the idea of office, of prescribed duties, of responsibilities — responsibilities, not to a parliament, but to his own and his people's conscience. How far this ia^a true view of the position of the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Germany, I cannot now ask. Everything depends, in such a case, on how the institution be actually worked. The " servants of the state," such as Mommsen tells us the Hohenzollern rulers are, may so easily become its masters if they wish. One can see that in the Roman Empire some rulers were actually what we should call "servants of the state," spending their whole activity in its cause — Hadrian, Pius and Marcus in the second century, Claudius, Aurelian, Probus and Diocletian in the third. Other, also able rulers, were emphatically, for good or evil, "autocrats" — Trajan, Septimius Severus, Constantine I. Others again such as Alexander Severus and Gordian wielded little actual military authority at all. Empires need not roll forward If we turn from personalities to the facts of the Empire itself, we shall get a rathe- different answer to our enquiry into the Roman conceptions of Empire. It seems to be a modern creed that Empires must unceasingly grow. Whether they like it or not, they must roll forward. When an Empire becomes stationary, it declines (wrote the late Prof. Cramb, the other day) ; when it ceases to advance, it recedes, and the Empire which has begun to recede is dead. That is a natural belief in this age, when the more powerful empires of the world have all been busy land-grabbing in every continent for the last forty or fifty years. It might easily have been the creed of a man who lived through the Hfetime of Horace (65 — 8 B.C.) and who in his later middle life saw immense additions made to an Empire full of vigour. It was not the creed of Augustus 14 SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE 15 sr k himself, nor of most of the statesmen of the early Empire. The frontiers which Augustus left, remained the Roman frontiers with little change for 500 years till the Western Empire ultimately fell. A few additions were made ; Claudius converted some protectorates and began the conquest of southern Britain — but that conquest hardly ever extended to the Highlands nor permanently to Ireland. Vespasian took in a few frontier districts which had "matured" — (as the suburban builder says) — on the Rhine and the Danube; Trajan seized Dacia; Pius, Marcus, Severus, added something here or there: there was even a later advance in the east. But the general frontiers remain unaltered. This inaction may be in part due to geography. The Empire, as Augustus left it, had natural limits which it could not easily overstep— in the west the wide and shoreless Atlantic, in the south the impassable Sahara, in the north the storms and snows of Russia and of Germany and of the Arctic Circle beyond ; even in the east, deserts or mountains forbade much easy progress. But it was less these difficulties than his own recognition of the real nature of his Empire which stopped the Roman. His was, as has been so often said, a Mediterranean Empire — with its capital Rome right in its centre: when it left the Mediterranean, it left behind its unity and its own clear purpose, intruding into alien climates and unforeseen problems. Its statesmen preferred to work out their own empire of Mediterranean area, largely uncivilized and undeveloped as it was when Augustus first conquered much of it. Now and again a trader pushed out further — along the West African coast, or across Hungary and Poland to the amber-treasures of Palmnicken^', or over the eastern seas by the aid of the monsoon to the Malabar littoral. Contrast with this the strength of the Chinee under 1' Pliny, Nat. Hist., 37, 45. The Museum at Carnuntum actually contains fragments of amber possibly brought by this trader or successors of his. According to Friedrich Hirth, Rome exported amber to China. On ancient amber generally see a careful article by Bliimner in "Pauly- Wissowa Realencycl." (art. Bernstein). the Han dynasty which began about 200 B.C. They pushed out a long arm 2000 miles westwards of Pekin, and nearly 1500 miles beyond the true Chinese wall and border, towards Kashgar and Khotan and the gate of the European overland trade route. The way was incredibly long and hard: most of it lay along a line of small oases between monstrous deserts and enormous mountains ; the measureless wastes of the Tarim basin spread continuously north of it; and the uncHmbed summits of the Kuenlun overhung it on the south. Yet along this narrow perilous trail the Chinese laid hold on the inner- most recesses of Asia : they hold them to this day. Such was not the ideal or the wish of the Roman. To him (and not to Tiberius only) it was natural to follow the often cited precept of Augustus — coercere intra terminos imperium. No doubt there were occasional bursts of forward policy — as when Trajan reached the Persian Gulf. Tacitus, composing his Annals in the middle or towards the end of Trajan's conquests, somewhat behttles the advice of Augustus — yet he himself, in darker days 20 years before, amid the disasters of Domitian's wars, had been only too ready to write gloomily (Germ., 33. 8, fata imperii urgentia), of the fortune or destiny which drove the Empire on, and that tone seems more characteristic of the Empire in general through all its four centuries. The American Professor, Tenney Frank, in his most interesting survey of Roman Imperiahsm under the Roman Repubhc^^, has tried to show that it was also characteristic of the earher Roman expansion under the Republic — that even that warlike and conquering state seldom fought and seldom annexed save from motives of self-defence. I hardly know whether we should argue that republican Rome grew despite herself, or because she chose to grow: it seems clear, however, from Frank's book that, of set systematic expansion extending over large areas or many generations, Rome shows no trace till the wars of Caesar and of Pompey, at the very end of all Republican activity. The expansion of the Republic was in a sense unconscious : the non-expansion of the Empire was in a sense conscious. 18 See note 13. 16 SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE 17 ! i We may transfer to the Roman Empire the sentences which Tacitus wrote (Genn.^Sb) of the Chauci, the East-Frisian tribe which (if it has left survivors at all to-day) has (as German scholars tell us) perhaps its descendants somewhere in modern England — it (he says) protected its greatness by its moderation, free from greed, free from lawlessness, in quiet and seclusion it provoked no wars, devastated no lands, pillaged no other tribe's property. The great proof of its character and its strength lay in this, that it needed not to show its strength by doing wrong. We mav be thankful that Rome made no effort to expand. Had she grown, she would — or might — have wasted her strength, and squandered her manhood in difficult wars: had she conquered in those wars, she would have added to her subjects tribes who would have Romanized slowly or not at all: her population would have in the end been less unified, less Roman. The struggle with the migrant barbarians of Central Asia, the terrible "kings that rose up out of the populous east, To make their quarry of her" would have followed just as much, but there would have been a smaller body of Roman culture to civilize at least a portion of these barbarians and to hand on the torch of human civilization. Local Freedom A second conception which the Romans attached to Empire can also be traced in the Republic. It has been often noted that the statesmen of the Republic introduced into their conquests very little direct control. They desired (one often thinks) to be free of the trouble of actual administration, and they left almost everything to the native authorities. After conquest they left these sometimes as local magistrates in city-towns; sometimes as client princes in "protected" principalities. Only here and there did the central authorities intrude, for special reason, on the normal local government. In two provinces, for instance, in Sicily and in the N.W. region of Asia Minor which the Romans called especially Asia, the Roman capitalists saw a chance of profit to themselves by adapting a peculiar native system of taxation; though the step was cruel and inhuman to the provincial, with the aid of Gains Gracchus they forced it upon the Roman govern- ment. In some provinces, again, the senate allowed a favoured land speculation to its own members, with extraordinary results; six senators (the elder Plinyi^ tells us in a passage which illustrates equally well the habits of the senate and of the Emperor Nero) ^ere lords of half the province of Africa proconsularis (Tunis) when Nero put them to death. But, in general, the Republic began unconsciously and the Empire consciously continued a system of extraordinary local freedom. For some reason, English readers of Roman history have failed to note this. A little while ago, I read in a really carefully edited English evening newspaper (there is such a thing) a review of a professed and indeed competent historian, who was cited with hearty approval.. The late Lord Beaconsfield— the reviewer and the historian combined to say— "with a levity not unfamiliar to him," once ascribed "the phrase im/perium ac libertas'' to a Roman historian. "Not only did no Roman historian use the phrase— the conception of imperialism which it embodies is false to the Roman genius- no statesman, no Roman historian, not Caesar nor Marcus, could have bracketed these words." Then the reviewer added: "The peoples subdued by Rome received justice from her, but the ideal of Freedom, which secures for every soul the power to move in the highest paths of its being, is not Roman." Now the peccant phrase ''imferimn et libertas" is taken (as is not unknown) almost straight from Tacitus^o, and as for the thing itself there has never been an Empire which allowed to its subjects such full local freedom as did Rome. Augustus, as Tacitus observes, organized the chaotic con- quests of the Republic and his own into an Empire— an organization with extraordinary results, definite and defensible frontiers, with an organized army and organized naval squadrons, with a regulated civil government in Italy and in Nat. Hist, 18, 35. He does not say that the owners were senators, but it is fairly obvious. 20 Tacitus, Agr., 3. If 18 SOME ROMAN CONCEPTIONS OF EMPIRE j. , H i the Dominions, and with real Unity and coherence — cuncta inter se connexa, Ann,, i. 9, fin. He did not, however, so far as we know, introduce any absolutely new methods of local self- government. Augustus was very cautious about new things in all directions. But he developed the older order by founding in the provinces, with his time-expired soldiers, many munici- palities of which the citizens were Roman and the charters involved local autonomy; he elsewhere accepted (as in Gaul) similar arrangements for local government, which seem to have been left by Caesar — and thus turned what might have become merely transitory freedom into permanent independence. The dog that bit the shadow dropt the bone. The Empire neither grasped at any shadowy extension of dominion, nor did it demand in detail logical completeness of despotic power. Instead, it amalgamated its natural dominions to itself, so that they became Roman: if thereby it missed some unessentials of Empire, it won solid loyalty. Individuals might revolt against an Emperor: no province revolted against Rome. Listen to Claudian from Egypt, writing about a.d. 400, as he apostrophises Roman rule, and its liberality: haec est in gremium victos quae sola recepil, Alone she gathers to her bosom those whom late she vanquished; citizens, not foes, she calls them now. Their conqueror they proclaim — mother, not mistress. So her general name enfellowships mankind, makes fast, with bands of love devout, the far-off daughter lands, that, wheresoe'er we range, 'tis all one race, — debtors to her by whose peacemaking grace no place is strange but everywhere a home, — one world-wide family all akin with Rome^i. » Claud., de cons. Stilich., m. 150-160 (I owe the translation to Prof. Phillimore, of Glasgow University). The sentiment is probably borrowed from Aristides {laud. Rom., p. 265) who wrote in the second century. See my Romanization oj Roman Britain (ed. 3, 1915), pp. 11-13. t-r % ■j^' ^*v- «5:^