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The Historians' History of the World 06 [The Early Roman Empire]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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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. At Lake Trasimenus, battalions of soldiers charge through the victorious army by which they are surrounded. At Cannæ, ranged in a circle, fifty thousand men die to the last man, those in front ceaselessly falling and those behind taking their place.
The Romans fight for honour and duty, incapable of yielding, because the heart of men revolts against the slightest approach and appearance of pardon, because humiliation is worse than ruin, because it is better to lose everything than to yield an inch. That is why Rome becomes prouder in reverse and only consents to treat in order to pardon, why she will only suffer around her protégés, suppliants, and subjects, and “carries her empire as far as the earth and her courage as high as the sky.” Pride renders one calm. The man who aims at being worthy remains serious, and the Romans without emotion or enthusiasm accomplished the greatest results. Pride sanctifies the fatherland because the citizen gets from it glory and ascendency, without which he cannot exist. Pride sacrifices the family because it considers as weakness the affections on which it is founded.
Livy shows in his speeches how simple, quiet, and deliberate self-sacrifice is in Rome. Q. Fabius presided over the comitia; the first hundred nominate his nephew Otacilius consul. He stops the voting and coldly says, “We have tried thee, Otacilius, in lesser posts, and thou certainly hast done nothing which justifies us giving thee more important ones. For three reasons did we equip the fleet you commanded this year; in order to lay the African coast, in order to protect the shores of Italy, and above all that no reinforcements, food, or money be sent through from Carthage to Hannibal. Name Otacilius consul, if he has rendered to the state—I don’t say all these services, but a single one. It matters more to thee, Otacilius, than to any one else that a burden under which you would be crushed be not laid on your shoulders. Herald, recall to the vote the century of the young men of Anio.” As Otacilius cries out with rage that Fabius himself wishes to remain in the consulship and throws himself upon him, the consul orders the lictors to approach, and he informs Otacilius that, not having entered the city, his arms and arrows have been carried on in advance. Fabius is so sure of his disinterestedness that he does not fear appearing ambitious and tyrannical, and the people judging the same, at once elect him consul.
The son of Manlius has fought against his father’s orders. He appears with his spoil. Without saying a word to him, the father turns away and orders the army to be assembled, and at once the following sentence, “Since without respect for consular authority or paternal majesty, T. Manlius, thou hast against orders, outside the ranks, fought the enemy, and destroyed, as far as was in thy power, military discipline, upon which until to-day Roman deeds have always stood; since thou hast forced me to forget either the republic or myself and mine, let us rather bear the penalty of the crime ourselves than that the republic pay so heavily for our fault. We shall be a sad but salutary example to coming generations. Without doubt, a father’s natural love and that proof of courage deceived by empty glory move me in thy favour. But since it is necessary by thy death to sanction the orders of the consuls or by thy pardon forever to nullify them, I do not think if there runs a drop of our blood in thy veins, that thou willst refuse to restore by thy punishment military discipline, which has been overthrown by thy error. Go, lictor, tie him to the stake.”
This argument, which ends like a thunderbolt, is terrible because it is so sudden. Judge by this example to what an extent Roman zeal was carried. In the soul of the magistrate there seemed to exist a permanent tribunal which was ever ready to deliver judgment. They had no need to raise themselves above their own level in order to attain self-denial; it came naturally to them. In the same way the savages of America tranquilly offered up their limbs for torture and by education, temperament, habit, and nature mocked at what the martyrs with all their exaltation dared hardly face.
The soothsayer having declared that the victorious army must lose its general, Manlius and his brother general without any signs of emotion, summon their officers on the eve of battle and agree that there, where they saw the army give way, one or the other should sacrifice himself.
By pride of citizenship, Livy brings out the fine sides of this character; by precision of oratory, he reveals the characteristic features, for he is obliged to arrange his subject to suit his audience and to touch Roman passions by Roman arguments. Consider in Camillus’ discourse, that religion which is really but a doctrine, so minutely and carefully following the consecrated form, so attached to outward rites, observing not the spirit but the letter which alone prevents the people from emigrating to Veii. As it is political and local it attaches the government and the citizen to the soil. “We have a town founded according to omens and augurs in which there is not a corner where the gods and their worship are not to be found. Our solemn sacrifices take place on certain days. Will you forsake, Romans, all these private and public gods? How little your actions resemble that of the young M. C. Fabius whom the enemy watched with as much admiration as you, when, amongst the Gallic javelins, coming down from the citadel he offered up on the Quirinal the solemn sacrifice of the house of Fabia. The vestals can only have one abode, one from which nothing can eject them except the surrender of the town. Jupiter’s flamen cannot spend one night outside Rome without crime. Would you make these Roman priests Veientine priests, and would you abandon vestal virgins? Oh, Vesta! And the flamen living in another country, shall he every night commit an impious act which the republic must atone for with him? Here is the Capitol, where a human head was once found, when the soothsayers said that here would be the head of the world and the seat of the empire. Here are Vesta’s sacred fire, the shields fallen from heaven, and, if you stay here, the gods all-merciful.”
One sees that the love of country is as much religious as it is political; the gods live on the soil and are Romans; what must be the strength of this sentiment which unites all others! In our days they are separate. The town we live in, the religion we follow, and the country to which we belong make up three distinct worlds, often unfriendly to each other. Amongst the ancients, there was but one, the city. The family was sacrificed to it; it made one with religion; the soul and thought of man were absorbed in his country; and from every point of view, the citizen alone was visible.
THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES
Let us try in a few words to sum up the philosophy of the epoch as it is given by our contemporaries. We are not leaving Livy behind us by showing how his work has been perfected. “Great queen,” said Bossuet, before Henrietta Maria’s tomb, “I gratify your tenderest desires in praising this great monarch, and your heart, dust though it is, awakes to hear me.” Livy would not listen with indifference to the modern philosophers who explain, perfect, and complete the history of his country. To act with a personal interest in view, and consequently to organise the means of so doing is the dominant trait in the history and genius of Rome. Therefore its spirit is that of calculating reflection rather than of poetical invention and philosophical speculation, and its character consists of a reasoned will, not of feelings or affections.
From this arises that never-ending struggle with the unfruitfulness of a naturally sterile land, that contempt for him who loses his patrimony, the fame of him who increases it, economy, frugality, greed, avarice, the spirit of chicanery, all the virtues and all the vices which generate and preserve wealth, the tendency to regard property as a sacred trust, and the boundary of a field as a limitation of divine origin, the protection of lands and credit by severe laws, legal deeds drawn up in minute and inviolable forms—in a word, every institution calculated for the protection of acquired property.