The Historians' History of the World 06

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.

In other countries the natural family, established on the basis of a common origin, is ruled by the affections; but the Roman family, absolutely civil, founded on a community of obedience and of rites, is only the chattel and the property of the father, governed according to his will, subordinate to the state, ever bequeathed by law in the presence of the state, a kind of province in the hands of the father which supplies soldiers for the public benefit.

Made up of different races, united by violence, the work of force and will, and not of relationship and nature, the Roman state contained two organised bodies, struggling regularly and legally, not through passion, but through interest, and united under the best devised and organised constitution that has ever been known. By the state’s systematic and methodical mode of conquest for the sole object of preserving and exploiting, military art was carried to the highest possible point, and political skill and administrative talent united to bring together by force the whole of the then known world into an empire organised by one dominant city.

Roman policy consisted in turning the conquered nations into Roman soldiers, and foreign princes and magistrates into Roman ministers, thus strengthening the controlling power at the least possible expense. Military art consisted in subjecting the bravest and strongest soldiers to the strictest obedience, that is to say, in obtaining the greatest amount of strength from the vast forces at command. All her wisdom was exerted to increase her power and to spare herself. An institution of will, a machine for conquest, a matter of organisation, the state occupied all thought, absorbed all love, and claimed submission in every act and institution.

The sway of personal interest and national egoism produces a contempt for humanity. The human species, when unconquered, is looked upon as material for conquest, conquered it is a prey to be made use of and abused. Slaves are trampled upon with atrocious cruelty, entire nations are destroyed, vanquished kings are led in triumph and put to death.

The gods are abstractions, and utterly without poetry, such as calm reflection discerns in the humblest agricultural or domestic operations, scourges adored through fear, foreign gods received into the temple through interested motives as vanquished foes were received into the city, and subject to the Jupiter of the Capitol as nations were to Rome. The priests were laymen divided into classes, and officiated only under the authority of the senate, which regulated all expiatory ceremonies and alone, with the people, could make innovations. Worship consisted of minute ceremonies, scrupulously observed because all poetical and philosophical spirit which is the interpreter of symbols, was wanting; dull, unilluminated reason attaching itself only to the letter. The senate used religion as a political machine, and like all else it was but an instrument of government.

In the world of art we find nothing indigenous, except family memoirs, written in the interests of a race, dry chronicles drawn up for public use, rituals, account books, collections of laws, books of moral sayings, memoranda of political satires—in short, government documents, maxims of conduct, and political essays.