Roman Forum. She had overcome the moral difficulty, she recoiled before the physical difficulty. The notion of representative arrangements, by which the conquered populations from the Rubicon to the Straits of Messina might appear at Rome by deputy, as they do at this day, never occurred to any Roman, and it is probable that if such an idea had been suggested to him, he would have recoiled from it as from an innovation too daring to be worthy of consideration. Nevertheless, though Rome did not do what a modern state, under similar circumstances, would inevitably have done, she did what no state had ever done before her. She took care indeed, by covering Italy with military posts under the form of colonies, and by joining them by a network of military roads, to make insurrection difficult. But she understood

She

that strength cannot be gained by mere repression. definitely renounced the idea of wringing money from her Italian subjects. No emissaries went forth from her gates, like the tribute-collecting ships from the port of Athens, to impress upon the Etruscans and the Lucanians the feeling of subjection. All that she asked from them was fellowship in arms, in victory, and in spoil. She called them her allies, and she treated them with the dignified consideration which won their respect and attachment. By their help she rose victorious from the great struggle with Carthage.

CHAP.

I.

Head of the

Rome the

Then came the evil days of Rome's too easy victory. The whole Eastern world, Greece, Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt fell into her hands. The Mediter- Nations. ranean coast of Africa was subdued. Spain and Gaul were borne down by the overwhelming force of a disciplined attack. At a later time Southern Germany and Southern Britain were added to her territory. Long before the process was accomplished, the old Roman virtues seemed to have passed away for ever. Magi

СНАР.

I.

§ 11. The Empire and the Roman Law.

strates went forth to plunder, not to govern.

The voters at home chose magistrates who would offer them the highest bribes. The difficulty which had stared the Romans in the face after the conquest of Italy came back upon them in a more bewildering form. The political community consisted of a few hundred thousand demoralised men, living within an easy distance of the Roman Forum. The real community was scattered over every country in Europe, from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, and from the mouths of the Rhine to the wastes of the Sahara. In the face of such a population as this the privileges of the Roman voter were as unimportant as the rights of an elector of Shoreham or Truro are to the cultivators of British India. The conquered nations could not possibly come in person to vote at Rome, and even if the idea of representative government had occurred to any one, the first requisite. of that form of government, identity of interest and feeling, was entirely wanting. The polished scheming Greek, the effeminate Asiatic, the rude Spaniard and Gaul could not be brought by any constitutional arrangements to co-operate in the work of government. The utmost for which they could hope was the substitution of the rule of a man for the rule of the populace of a single city, or for that of the wealthy tyrants who were able to secure the goodwill of that populace by the most nefarious

means.

The establishment of the Empire gave the provinces all that they could hope to have. In the emperors, the old assimilating genius of Rome was quickened into life once more. The very fact that they had risen to power in antagonism with the special society of the city of Rome, led them to consult the interests of the more extensive community. For a time the want of a constitutional limitation upon their powers was not felt in the exist

ence of the stronger tie of a common interest between
themselves and the mass of those whom they governed.
The limits of Roman citizenship, valuable at this period
only from the personal rights which it conferred, were
rapidly extended till they included every free man born
on the soil of the empire. The highest position of all
was thrown open to every race. Gauls, Spaniards,
Africans, and Syrians, wielded as emperors the sway
which had been exercised by Julius and Augustus. For
the first time the idea of scientific law rose on mankind.
Rulers more powerful than the old Persian Kings were
not content to leave each petty community subject to
them to settle its own affairs in its own way, provided
only that it did not fall into arrears in the payment of its
tribute. They conceived the idea of duty from the
rulers to the ruled, of a necessity under which they were
to disseminate the benefits of which they were them-
selves partakers, and to hold out the hand to raise up the
less prosperous or less cultivated of their subjects to the
level which they had reached. In the effort, the legisla-
tor of the empire cut himself adrift from the old notion
of law as the custom of a particular community.
Brought face to face with rules of living as various as the
soil on which they had sprung up, he learned to estimate
them all at their true value. He ceased to ask what was
law at Rome, at Athens, or at Lyons. He searched deep
into the needs and duties of men as the members of the
great human family. His task was rendered possible
by the growth of the sentiment of humanity, which had
found no root in the early days of the empire, when Rome
was still the conquering city, only distinguished from other
cities of the past by the mingled firmness and mildness.
of her sway.

Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento,
Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.

CHAP.

1.

CHAP.
I.

Four centuries later, Rome had become an abstract conception personifying the ideas of thoughtful and §12. Ab- beneficent government. Imperceptibly, as another poet, himself of Gaulish origin, then sang, the city had melted into the world.

stract Con

ception of Rome.

$ 13. The Individual sacrificed to the Society.

Exaudi, regina tui pulcherrima mundi,

Inter sidereos Roma recepta polos;

Exaudi, genetrix hominum genetrixque deorum
Non procul a caelo per tua templa sumus.

Fecisti patriam diversis gentibus unam;
Profuit invitis, te dominante, capi;
Dumque offers victis patrii consortia juris,
Urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat.

No great result is achieved without considerable cost. The action of the government of the empire had bound men more closely together than they had ever been bound before. It had taught them to consider themselves as members of a great society, which claimed their loyalty because it studied their real interests. But it had done nothing to employ them as co-operators in the work. The individual energies of each particular citizen had been weakened in the process of amalgamation. They were left to concentrate themselves on selfish and material, or, at the best, on purely local objects. The bloody spectacles of the gladiatorial combats and the enervating representations of a profligate drama were the staple amusements of the multitude. The Gaulish tribesman, the Roman burgher of olden days, had known that his own temperance, and valour, and prudence, would count for something in advancing the fortunes of the community to which he belonged. The Gaulish or Italian subject of the empire was but a drop in the ocean. Government was regarded by him as something external to himself, something which he was powerless to influence, even in the most infinitesimal degree. The em

pire, therefore, had at its service skilled legislators and rulers, taking in hand the management of an acquiescent population. What it lacked was the spontaneity of individual public spirit diffused over the whole body, and the moral earnestness of individual aspiration after a higher and better life.

CHAP.

I.

Christian

Though the empire did not care to encourage by its $14. The institutions either individual vitality or the development Church. of popular control, another society arose in its midst which occupied the ground which the empire had left untouched. The gospel of the Christian missionaries went straight to the heart of the individual convert. Christ, it told him, had died for his personal salvation, that he might be snatched from sin and the consequences of sin. It invited him not merely to obey laws imposed by some distant authority, but to be pure and righteous and merciful as the spotless model which was ever set before his eyes. Upon this foundation it built up an edifice of universal benevolence. Do what it would, the empire could not abolish slavery or serfdom, could not set aside the distinction between citizens within its limits and the hostile populations without. In Christ Jesus there was neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free. The Christian theory started from the very opposite pole of thought from that from which the empire had started, though it is true that its desire to provide for the life to come rather than for the life of this world, prevented the Church from drawing forth all the practical consequences which were involved in its most cherished ideas.

of the

The organisation of the Church proceeded in the same § 15. Ordirection as its creed. The bishops who with the rest of ganisation the clergy were the instruments of collective acts of Church. charity, and who, as a moral and intellectual aristocracy, maintained the standard of doctrine to deviate from