FOOTNOTES:

The author of a recent and meritoriousHistory of Rome, Mr. Shuckburgh, is satisfied to quote (p. 231) from Polybius, as explaining the fall of Carthage, the generalisation that "Italians as a nation are by nature superior to Phœnicians and Libyans, both in strength of body and courage of soul"; and to add: "That is the root of the matter, from which all else is a natural growth." This only leaves us asking: "What was the natural root of the alleged physiological superiority?" There must have been reasons. If they were "racial" or climatic, whence the later implied degeneration of the Romans in body or soul, or both? We are driven to the explanation lying in polity and institutions, which it should have been Mr. Shuckburgh's special aim to give, undertaking as he does to deal with "the state of the countries conquered by the Romans." And such explanations are actually offered by Polybius (vi, 53).

§ 6

And yet the deterioration of the Roman State is visibly as sure a sequence as its progress. Nothing that men might then have proposed could save it. In Cicero's day the Senate had become a den of thieves. The spectacle of the wealth of Lucullus, taken in Napoleonic fashion from the opulent East, set governor after governor elsewhere upon a course of ruthless extortion which depraved Rome as infallibly as it devastated the subject States.

Roman exploitation of conquest began in the relatively moderate fashion of self-supporting victors willing to live and let live. Sicily was at first (210) taxed by Marcellus in a fashion of which Livy makes boast;[80]and after the suppression of the slaves' revolt in 131B.C., the system was further reformed. Seventeen towns, retaining their lands, paid a fixed tax to the Republic; eight were immune, save for an annual contribution of 800,000modiusof wheat for free doles in Rome; and the rest of the island paid a tenth of all produce, as under Hiero.[81]Later, the realms of the kings of Macedonia, Pergamos, and Bithynia, and the lands of Cyrene and Cyprus, were made the public patrimony of the conquering State. Sardinia, Spain, North Africa, and Asia were in general taxed a tenth of their produce of all kinds. As the exploitation went on, individual governors added to all this regular taxation a vast irregular plunderon their own account; and nearly every attempt to impeach them was foiled by their accomplices in the Senate.[82]Verres in Sicily, Fonteius in Southern Gaul, Piso in Macedonia, Appius in Cilicia, Flaccus in Asia Minor, wrung infinite gold and loot immeasurable from the victim races by every device of rapacious brigandage, trampling on every semblance of justice, and then devised the ironic infamy of despatching corrupted or terrorised deputations of citizens to Rome to testify to the beneficence of their rule.[83]

It was a riot of robbery in which no public virtue could live. To moralise on the scarcity of Catos is an ill way of spending time if it be not recognised that Catos had latterly become as impossible as eaters of acorns in the upper grades of the ever-plundering State. Cato himself is a product of the last vestiges of the stage before universal conquest; and he begins to show in his own later years all the symptoms of the period of lawless plutocracy. To yearn for a series of such figures is to ask that men shall be capable of holding doggedly by an ethic of honest barbarism while living the lives of pirates and slavers, according no moral sympathy to the larger world of aliens and slaves, yet cherishing a high public spirit for the small world of the patrician State. The man himself was a mere moral anomaly; and in Cato the Younger, dreaming to the last of a loyal republican life, but always ready at his fellow-citizens' behest to go and beat down the rights or liberties of any other State,[84]we have the paternal bias reproduced in an incurable duality. He sought for honour among thieves, himself being one. Concerning the Catonic attitude towards the "degeneration" of Roman patrician life in the age of conquest, it has been truly said that "the policy of shameless selfishness which was pursued by the Roman Senate during this period, and reached its climax in their abominable conduct towards the unhappy, prostrate city of Carthage—the frivolous wars, tending to nothing but aggrandisement and enrichment, waged by Rome continuously after the second Punic War—destroyed the old Roman character[85]far more effectually than Grecian art and philosophy could ever have done. Henceforth there was a fearful increase in internal corruption, immorality,bribery, an insatiable eagerness for riches, disregarding everything else and impudently setting aside laws, orders of the Senate, and legal proceedings, making war unauthorised, celebrating triumphs without permission, plundering the provinces, robbing the allies."[86]And the ideal of conquest inspired it all.

We have only to ask ourselves, What was the administrative class to do? in order to see the fatality of its course. The State must needs go on seeking conquest, by reason alike of the lower-class and the upper-class problem. The administrators must administer, or rust. The moneyed men must have fresh plunder, fresh sources of profit. The proletaries must be either fed or set fighting, else they would clamour and revolt. And as the frontiers of resistance receded, and new war was more and more a matter of far-reaching campaigns, the large administering class at home, men of action devoid of progressive culture, ran to brutal vice and frantic sedition as inevitably as returned sailors to debauch; while the distant leader, passing years of camp life at the head of professional troops, became more and more surely a power extraneous to the Republic. When a State comes to depend for its coherence on a standing army, the head of the army inevitably becomes the head of the State. The Republic passed, as a matter of course, into the Empire, with its army of mercenaries, the senatorial class having outlived the main conditions of its health and energetic stability; the autocracy at once began to delete the remaining brains by banishing or slaying all who openly criticised it;[87]and the Empire, even while maintaining its power by the spell of its great traditional organisation, ran through stage after stage of civic degeneration under good and bad emperors alike, simply because it had and could have no intellectual life commensurate with its physical scope. Its function involved moral atrophy. It needs the strenuous empiricism of a Mommsen to find ground for comfort in the apparition of a Cæsar in a State that must needs worsen under Cæsars even more profoundly than it did before its malady gave Cæsar his opportunity.

Not that the Empire could of itself have died as an organism. There are no such deaths in politics; and the frequent use of the phrase testifies to a hallucination that must greatly hamper political science. The ancient generalisation[88]to the youth, maturity, and decrepitude and death of States is true only in respect of theirvariations of relative military and economic strength, which follow no general rule.

The comparison of the life of political bodies to that of individuals was long ago rightly rejected as vicious by Volney (Leçons d'Histoire, 1794, 6ième Séance), who insisted that political destruction occurred only through vices of polity, inasmuch as all polities have been framed with one of the three intentions ofincreasing,maintaining, oroverthrowing. The explanation is obscure, but the negation of the old formula is just. The issue was taken up and pronounced upon to the same effect in the closing chapter of C.A. Walckenaer'sEssai sur l'histoire de l'espèce humaine, 1798. (Professor Flint, in hisHistory of the Philosophy of History, cites Walckenaer, but does not mention Volney'sLeçons.) Le Play, in modern times, has put the truth clearly and strongly: "At no epoch of its history is a people fatally doomed either to progress or decline. It does not necessarily pass, like an individual, from youth to old age" (cited by H. Higgs inAmerican Quarterly Journal of Economics, July, 1890, p. 428). It is to be regretted that Dr. Draper should have adhered to the fallacy of the necessary decay and death of nations in his suggestive work on theIntellectual Development of Europe(ed. 1875, i, 13-20; ii, 393-98). He was doubtless influenced by the American tendency to regard Europe and Asia as groups of "old countries." The word "decay" may of course be used with the implication of mere "sickness," as by Lord Mahon in the opening sentence of hisLife of Belisarius; but even in that use it gives a lead to fallacy.

Had there been no swarming and aggressive barbarians, standing to later Rome as Rome had done to Carthage—collectively exigent of moral equality as Romans had once been, and therefore conjunctly mighty as against the morally etiolated Italians—the Western Roman Empire would have gone on just as the Eastern[89]so long did, just as China has so long done—would have subsisted with little or no progress, most factors of progress being eliminated from its sphere. It ought now to be unnecessary to point out that Christianity was no such factor, but rather the reverse, as the history of Byzantium so thoroughly proves. No Christian writer of antiquity, save perhaps Augustine[90]in a moment of moral aspiration, shows any perception of the political causation of thedecay and fall of the Empire.[91]The forces of intellectual progress that did arise and collapse in the decline and the Dark Ages were extra-Christian heretical forces—Sabellian, Arian, Pelagian, anti-ritualistic, anti-monastic, Iconoclastic. These once deleted, Christianity was no more a progressive force among the new peoples than it was among the old; and the later European progress demonstrably came from wholly different causes—new empire, forcing partial peace; Saracen contact, bringing physics, chemistry, and mathematics; new discovery, making new commerce; recovery of pagan lore, making new speculation; printing, making books abundant; gunpowder, making arms a specialty; and the fresh competition and disruption of States, setting up fruitful differences, albeit also preparing new wars. To try to trace these causes in detail would be to attempt a complete sociological sketch of European history, a task far beyond the scope of the present work; though we shall later make certain special surveys that may suffice to illustrate the general law. In the meantime, the foregoing and other bird's-eye views of some ancient developments may illustrate those of modern times.

FOOTNOTES:[12]Cp. A. Schwegler,Römische Geschichte, 1853, i, 610-615; Pelham,Outlines of Roman History, 1893, p. 25. When Professor Ferrero (Greatness and Decline of Rome, Eng. trans. 1907, i, 5) pronounces that "The Romans were a primitive people without the defects peculiar to a primitive people," he sets up a needless mystification. They had the defects of their own culture stage, which was far beyond that of "primitives" in the general sense of the term. They were "semi-civilised barbarians," with a long past of institutional life.[13]It might be an interesting inquiry whether a grouping by threes could have arisen from a primary union of two exogamous clans.[14]Schwegler, i, 616. The origin oftribusfromthreeis not an accident special to the Romans. Among the Spartans and Dorians likewise there were three stocks (cp. K.O. Müller,The Dorians, Eng. tr. 1830, i, 35-37; Fustel de Coulanges,La Cité antique, 8e édit. p. 135, note 2); and the great number of Greek epithets in which "three" or "thrice" enters is a proof of the special importance anciently attached to the number. Cp. K.D. Hüllmann,Ursprung der römischen Verfassung durch Vergleichungen erläutert, 1835, p. 24.[15]Greenidge,Roman Public Life, 1901, p. 1.[16]Pelham, p. 20; Fustel de Coulanges, p. 132,sq.; Schwegler, i, 610, 615; Ihne,Early Rome, 1897, p. 108; Ortolan,Hist. de la Législation romaine, ed. Labbé, 1880, pp. 35, 36.[17]Schwegler, i, 611, following Dionysius. Cp. Meyer, ii, 514.[18]Cp. Fustel de Coulanges, pp. 13, 24, 132, 179; Robertson Smith,Religion of the Semites, 1889, pp. 245, 247, 251, etc.; Jevons,Introd. to the History of Religion, ch. xii.[19]Cp. Schwegler, i, 628; Ihne,Early Rome, p. 107; Dupond,Magistratures romaines sous la République, 1877, p. 19. The source of the plebs is one of the vexed points of Roman origins; and the view that they were primarily a conquered population is not yet generally accepted. See Shuckburgh,History of Rome, 1894, p. 44. The true solution seems to be that the plebs were always being added to in various ways—by aliens, by "broken men," by discarded clients, and by fugitives. Cp. Fustel de Coulanges, p. 279.[20]Schwegler, i, 621-28, 636-38; Fustel de Coulanges, p. 277. Note the expressionpopulo plebiquein Livy, xxix, 27; Cicero,Pro Murena, i; Macrobius,Saturnalia, i, 17. Ortolan (endorsed by Labbé) argues (work cited, p. 31) thatpopulus plebsqueno more implies separation thansenatus populusque. But this argument destroys itself. The Senate as suchwasdistinct from the populus, as havingauctoritas, while the populus had onlypotestas. The phrase then was not a pleonasm. By this very analogypopulus plebsqueimplies a vital legal distinction. Niebuhr, who first made the facts clear (cp. hisLectures, Eng. trans. ed. 1870, p. 107), followed Vico, who was led to the true view by knowledge of the separateness of thepopolofrom thecommunein the Italian republics.[21]Schwegler, i, 619; E.W. Robertson, as cited, p. xxvii. Yet the constant tradition is that not only did the mass of the people live mainly on farinaceous food and vegetables, but the upper classes also in the early period ate meat only on festival days. Cp. Guhl and Koner,The Life of the Greeks and Romans, Eng. trans., pp. 501-2; Pliny,H.N., xviii, 3, 19; Ramsay,Roman Antiquities, 1851, p. 437. The cattle then were presumably sold to the people of the Etruscan and Campanian cities. Professor Ferrero leaves this problem in a state of mystery. The early Romans, he writes, had "few head of cattle" (i, 2); but land capture, he admits, meant increase (p. 5); and at the time of the Roman Protectorate over all Italy (266B.C.) he recognises "vast wandering herds of oxen and sheep, without stable or pen" (p. 9), conducted by slave shepherds. On such lands there must have been a considerable amount of cattle-breeding at a much earlier period. On the other hand, noting that the Romans early imported terracottas and metals from Etruria, Phœnicia, and Carthage, "besides ivory-work and ornaments, perfumes for funerals, purple for the ceremonial robes of the magistrates, and a few slaves" (p. 3), Professor Ferrero lightly affirms that "it was not difficult to pay for these in exports: timber for shipbuilding, and salt, practically made up the list."[22]Cp. Schwegler, i, 451, 617-19; ii, 108; E.W. Robertson,Historical Essays in connection with the Land, the Church, etc., 1872, pp. xxvi-vii, 244.[23]E.W. Robertson, as cited, pp. 243-44; Schwegler, i, 617-19.[24]E.W. Robertson, p. xxv.[25]Schwegler, i, 619, and refs.; Robertson, pp. 244-45; Ferrero, i, 9; Greenidge,Rom. Pub. Life, p. 35.[26]Cp. E.W. Robertson, as cited, p. xxv.[27]Schwegler, i, 629; Robertson, p. xxvii.[28]Schwegler, i, 620 and refs.[29]Mommsen (ch. xiii. i, 200) puts this point in some confusion, making the patricians live mostly in the country. Meyer (ii, 521) seems to put a quite contrary view. Greenidge (History of Rome, 1904, p. 11) agrees with Mommsen, putting town houses as a development of the second centuryB.C.[30]According to Niebuhr (Lectures, xv; Eng. trans. ed. 1870, p. 81) and Mommsen (ch. iv), the Palatine and the Quirinal. (But cp. Greenidge, p. 2.) The Palatine was probably the first occupied by Romans. Schwegler, i, 442. Cp. Merivale,General History of Rome, 5th ed. p. 3, as to its special advantages. The Quirinal was held by the Sabines. Cp. Koch,Roman History, Eng. trans. p. 2.[31]Ihne,Early Rome, p. 82.[32]Presumably "Pelasgian." Cp. K.O. Müller,The Dorians, Eng. trans. i, 15; Schwegler, i, 155sq.[33]Perhaps the result of a partial conquest. Cp. Mommsen, vol. i, ch. 6,ad init., as to the precedence of the Palatine priests over those of the Quirinal.[34]So Ihne,Early Rome, p. 5.[35]Cp. Pelham, ch. iii. Ihne, who argues that the narratives concerning the Etruscan kings are no more trustworthy than those as to their predecessors, recognises that Pliny's record of the humiliating conditions of peace imposed on the Romans by Porsenna "would not have been made if the fact of the subjugation of Rome by an Etruscan king had not been incontestable" (Early Rome, p. 79; cp. pp. 85-86).[36]Cp. Mérimée,Études sur l'histoire romaine, t. i,Guerre sociale, 1844, p. 352sq.; Mommsen, B. ii, ch. i (i, 265).[37]Cicero (De Officiis, ii, 12) and Sallust (cited by Augustine,De Civ. Dei, iii, 16) preserved the belief (accepted by Niebuhr) that the oppression of the poor by the rich had been restrained under the kings. Cp. Mahaffy (Problems in Greek History, pp. 81-83; SocialLife in Greece, 3rd ed. p. 83) and Wachsmuth (Hist. Antiq. of the Greeks, Eng. tr. i, 416) as to Greek despots. And see Schwegler,Römische Geschichte, ii, 203, as to the weakness of Rome through class-strifes after the expulsion of the kings.[38]Greenidge, pp. 47-48; Mommsen, i, 72.[39]Greenidge, pp. 147, 262, 273.[40]Niebuhr,Lect.xxv, 3rd Eng. ed. p. 134. So Ihne,Early Rome, p. 80; and also Schwegler, ii, 200. Mommsen takes the traditional view. Cp. Shuckburgh (History of Rome, p. 71), who remarks that the battle was at least not a decisive victory. Meyer (Geschichte des Alterthums, ii, 812) gives no verdict.[41]The demand for the admission of plebeians to the consulate was thus met on the patrician plea that religion vetoed it. Only in 367 was it enacted that one of the two consuls should always be a plebeian.[42]Plebeians first admitted to the Quæstorship, 421B.C.; to the Military Tribuneship, 400; to the Consulate, 367; to the Dictatorship, 356; to the Censorship, 351; to the Prætorship, 337. This left the patricians in possession of the important privilege of membership of the sacred colleges. But that, in turn, was opened to plebeians in 300 or 296.[43]De Officiis, i, 22, 30.[44]Ad Atticum, i, 19.[45]De Officiis, ii, 21.[46]See Long,Decline of the Roman Republic, iv, 272-76, for some interesting details; and refs. in Mérimée,Guerre Sociale, p. 22.[47]Livy, iv, 25.[48]A writer in many respects instructive (W. Warde Fowler,The City State of the Greeks and Romans, 1893, p. 194), in pursuance of the thesis that "the Romans" had an "innate political wisdom" and an "inborn genius" for accommodation, speaks of the process of democratic self-assertion and aristocratic concession as "leaving no bad blood behind," this when social disease was spreading all round. The theorem of "national genius" will suffice to impair any exposition, however judicious otherwise. And this is the fundamental flaw in the argument of Bagehot inPhysics and Politics. Though he notes the possibility of the objection that he is positing "occult qualities" (p. 24), he never eliminates that objection, falling back as he does on an assumed "gift" in "the Romans" (p. 81), instead of asking how an activity was evoked and fostered.[49]Cp. thePolitics, i, 6.[50]Cp. Professor Pelham'sOutline of Roman History, 1893, p. 197; Mérimée,Guerre Sociale, pp. 217, 220.[51]Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains, et de leur décadence, ch. xi. He refers to the many cases in point in modern European history.[52]Dio Cassius, xlvii, 14; xlviii, 6; Appian,Bell. Civ.iv, 3; v, 5, 22.[53]See below, p. 30, as to Carthage.[54]Schwegler,Römische Geschichte, i, 269.[55]Idem, i, 272-73.[56]See Livy, xxxiii, 36, as to theconjuratio servorumthroughout Etruria in 557A.U.C.[57]Schwegler, i, 270, 275.[58]Compare the slave wars of Rome in Sicily with the modern disorders (1892) in the same region, and with Aristotle's testimony as to the constant tendency of the slave populations in Greece to conspire against their owners (Politics, ii, 9).[59]Juvenal,Sat.vi, 368, 593-96; Ovid,Amor. 1. ii, elegg. 13, 14. It is uncertain whether among the ancients any prudential preventive check was thought of. On the whole question see Malthus' fourteenth chapter. Malthus, however, omits to notice that the Romans probably learned the arts of abortion from the Greeks, Egyptians, and Syrians.[60]Ovid speaks of the many women killed,Amor.ii. xiv, 38.[61]Malthus cites Tacitus,De Mor. Germanorum, c. 19; Minucius Felix, c. 30; Pliny,Hist. Nat.xxix, 4.[62]Cp. Shaftesbury,Characteristics, Treatise ii, pt. iii, § 2 (i, 114). Guizot seems to find the process surprising: "Singulier phénomène! C'est au moment où l'Empire se brise et disparaît, que l'Eglise chrétienne se rallie et se forme définitivement. L'unité politique périt, l'unité religieuse s'élève" (Histoire de la civilisation en France, éd. 1874, i, 339). He does not recognise the case as one of cause and effect. Of course, the fall of the State is not necessary to set up new combinations. It suffices that men should be without political influence or national consciousness—e.g., the secret societies of China in recent times.[63]An inquiry, or series of inquiries, into the physiological side of social and political development is obviously necessary, and must be made before sociology can on this side attain much scientific precision. I know, however, no general treatise on the subject except an old essay onChanges Produced in the Nervous System by Civilisation, by Dr. Robert Verity (2nd ed., Edinburgh, 1839). This is suggestive, but, of course, tentative. Cp. Ferrero,Greatness and Decline of Rome, Eng. trans, i, 298-99.[64]Livy, xxxix, 8-18. See below, pt. iii. ch. iii.[65]Cp. Salverte,De la Civilisation, p. 52.[66]The subject is discussed in the author's essay on Mithraism inPagan Christs.[67]M. Hochart (Études d'histoire religieuse, 1890, ch. ix) argues that Constantine was never really converted to Christianity; and this is perhaps the best explanation of his long postponement of his baptism.[68]Compare episodes in the history of the Salvation Army in England (1890), where that body was seen prepared to practise continuous fighting. It had no thought of "Christian" conciliation.[69]Various causes, the chief being probably Greek piracy, had caused in pre-Roman Etruria a decay of the original seaports. See Schwegler,Römische Geschichte, i, 273.[70]On this cp. Ihne,Early Rome, p. 6; and Mommsen, ch. iv.[71]This may have been set up in imitation of the Carthaginian institution ofSuffetae, which would be well known to the Etruscans of the monarchic period, who had much traffic with Carthage. E. Meyer,Geschichte des Alterthums, ii, 701. But it may also be explained by the simple fact that the original army was divided into two legions (id.ii, 812).[72]On this see Montesquieu,Grandeur des Romains, c. 1. No one has elucidated so much of Roman history in so little space as Montesquieu has done in this little book, which Buckle rightly set above theEsprit des Lois. (Cp. the eulogy of Taine, in hisTite-Live.) Its real insight may perhaps best be appreciated by comparing it with the modern work of M. Charles Gouraud,Histoire des Causes de la Grandeur de l'Angleterre(1856), in which it will be hard to find any specification of real causes.[73]The specification of this detail is one of the items of real explanation in Mr. Warde Fowler's scholarly and sympathetic account of the development of the Roman City-State (work cited, c. viii). He credits the Romans with an "innate genius" for combination and constitutionalism as compared with the Greeks, not noticing the fact that Roman unity was in the main a matter of conquest of non-Romans by Romans; that the conquest was furthered by the Roman institutions; that the institutions were first, so to speak, fortuitously shaped in favour of systematic war and conquest by the revolt against kingship; that war and conquest, again, were taken to almost inevitably as the main road to wealth; and that the accommodations of later times were forced on the upper classes by the career of warfare, to which domestic peace was indispensable. (Cp. Hegel as to the element of coercion and patrician policy in the Roman social system.Philos. der Gesch., Theil iii, Abschnitt i, Kap. i.) See below, § 6, as to the very different conditions of the Greek City-States.[74]E.S. Shuckburgh,History of Rome, 1894, p. 16.[75]See below, ch. iii,end; ch. iv, § 2 (c).[76]Cp. Livy, viii, 3-5.[77]Cp. Ferrero,Greatness and Decline of Rome, Eng. trans, i, 240.[78]Cp. Aristotle,Politics, ii, 11; vi, 5.[79]Already in Montesquieu'sGrandeur des Romainsit is pointed out that for Hannibal's soldiers, loaded with plunder, anywhere was Capua. Montesquieu rightly observes that the stock phrase on that head is one of the things everybody says because it has once been said. And it is repeated still.[80]Livy, xxv, 40.[81]Cicero,In Verrem, iii, 6; iv, 65; v, 21, 22.[82]Sallust,Bell. Jugurth., c. 36.[83]Cicero,In Verrem, iii, 20, 38, 81; v, 34;In Pisonem,34-36;Pro Flacco, 12;Pro Fonteio, 5;Pro lege Manilia, 13. See the record in Dureau de la Malle,Econ. polit. des Romains, 1840, vol. ii, liv. iv, ch. 8. Cp. Ferrero, i, 113-14, 183.[84]Cp. Long,Decline of the Roman Republic, ii. 78-81, and Merivale,General History of Rome, pp. 299-300, as to the plunder and annexation of Cyprus. "Whether the annals of British India contain so foul a crime," writes Long, "I leave those to determine who know more of Indian affairs than I do."[85]An admission that national "character" is not a connatural or fixed bias, but a simple function of variables.[86]Teuffel,Hist. of Roman Literature, ed. Schwabe, Eng. trans. i, 122 (§ 91).[87]See the process traced in W.A. Schmidt'sGeschichte der Denk und Glaubensfreiheit im ersten Jahrhundert der Kaiserherrschaft und des Christenthums, 1847.[88]Polybius, vi, 51. See below, ch. iv, § 1 (11).[89]I am aware that Mr. Bury protests against this division; but his own difficulty in calling the middle (Byzantine) Empire the "later Roman Empire," while implicitly accepting the "Holy" Empire asanother"later Roman Empire," is the best proof that the established nomenclature is the most convenient. Nobody is misled by it. A compromise might perhaps be made on the form "Greek Empire," contended for by M. Sathes (Monumenta Historiæ Hellenicæ, i, pref. p. 5), following on M. Rambaud.[90]As cited below, pt. v, ch. i.[91]Salvian, for instance, sees in the barbarian irruption a punishment of Christian sins; he never dreams of asking the cause of the Christian and pre-Christian corruption. Prudentius, again, is a thorough imperialist. See the critique and citations of M. Boissier,La Fin du Paganisme, ii, 136-141,407. Origen had set the note a century before Constantine (Contra Celsum, viii, 68-72).

[12]Cp. A. Schwegler,Römische Geschichte, 1853, i, 610-615; Pelham,Outlines of Roman History, 1893, p. 25. When Professor Ferrero (Greatness and Decline of Rome, Eng. trans. 1907, i, 5) pronounces that "The Romans were a primitive people without the defects peculiar to a primitive people," he sets up a needless mystification. They had the defects of their own culture stage, which was far beyond that of "primitives" in the general sense of the term. They were "semi-civilised barbarians," with a long past of institutional life.

[13]It might be an interesting inquiry whether a grouping by threes could have arisen from a primary union of two exogamous clans.

[14]Schwegler, i, 616. The origin oftribusfromthreeis not an accident special to the Romans. Among the Spartans and Dorians likewise there were three stocks (cp. K.O. Müller,The Dorians, Eng. tr. 1830, i, 35-37; Fustel de Coulanges,La Cité antique, 8e édit. p. 135, note 2); and the great number of Greek epithets in which "three" or "thrice" enters is a proof of the special importance anciently attached to the number. Cp. K.D. Hüllmann,Ursprung der römischen Verfassung durch Vergleichungen erläutert, 1835, p. 24.

[15]Greenidge,Roman Public Life, 1901, p. 1.

[16]Pelham, p. 20; Fustel de Coulanges, p. 132,sq.; Schwegler, i, 610, 615; Ihne,Early Rome, 1897, p. 108; Ortolan,Hist. de la Législation romaine, ed. Labbé, 1880, pp. 35, 36.

[17]Schwegler, i, 611, following Dionysius. Cp. Meyer, ii, 514.

[18]Cp. Fustel de Coulanges, pp. 13, 24, 132, 179; Robertson Smith,Religion of the Semites, 1889, pp. 245, 247, 251, etc.; Jevons,Introd. to the History of Religion, ch. xii.

[19]Cp. Schwegler, i, 628; Ihne,Early Rome, p. 107; Dupond,Magistratures romaines sous la République, 1877, p. 19. The source of the plebs is one of the vexed points of Roman origins; and the view that they were primarily a conquered population is not yet generally accepted. See Shuckburgh,History of Rome, 1894, p. 44. The true solution seems to be that the plebs were always being added to in various ways—by aliens, by "broken men," by discarded clients, and by fugitives. Cp. Fustel de Coulanges, p. 279.

[20]Schwegler, i, 621-28, 636-38; Fustel de Coulanges, p. 277. Note the expressionpopulo plebiquein Livy, xxix, 27; Cicero,Pro Murena, i; Macrobius,Saturnalia, i, 17. Ortolan (endorsed by Labbé) argues (work cited, p. 31) thatpopulus plebsqueno more implies separation thansenatus populusque. But this argument destroys itself. The Senate as suchwasdistinct from the populus, as havingauctoritas, while the populus had onlypotestas. The phrase then was not a pleonasm. By this very analogypopulus plebsqueimplies a vital legal distinction. Niebuhr, who first made the facts clear (cp. hisLectures, Eng. trans. ed. 1870, p. 107), followed Vico, who was led to the true view by knowledge of the separateness of thepopolofrom thecommunein the Italian republics.

[21]Schwegler, i, 619; E.W. Robertson, as cited, p. xxvii. Yet the constant tradition is that not only did the mass of the people live mainly on farinaceous food and vegetables, but the upper classes also in the early period ate meat only on festival days. Cp. Guhl and Koner,The Life of the Greeks and Romans, Eng. trans., pp. 501-2; Pliny,H.N., xviii, 3, 19; Ramsay,Roman Antiquities, 1851, p. 437. The cattle then were presumably sold to the people of the Etruscan and Campanian cities. Professor Ferrero leaves this problem in a state of mystery. The early Romans, he writes, had "few head of cattle" (i, 2); but land capture, he admits, meant increase (p. 5); and at the time of the Roman Protectorate over all Italy (266B.C.) he recognises "vast wandering herds of oxen and sheep, without stable or pen" (p. 9), conducted by slave shepherds. On such lands there must have been a considerable amount of cattle-breeding at a much earlier period. On the other hand, noting that the Romans early imported terracottas and metals from Etruria, Phœnicia, and Carthage, "besides ivory-work and ornaments, perfumes for funerals, purple for the ceremonial robes of the magistrates, and a few slaves" (p. 3), Professor Ferrero lightly affirms that "it was not difficult to pay for these in exports: timber for shipbuilding, and salt, practically made up the list."

[22]Cp. Schwegler, i, 451, 617-19; ii, 108; E.W. Robertson,Historical Essays in connection with the Land, the Church, etc., 1872, pp. xxvi-vii, 244.

[23]E.W. Robertson, as cited, pp. 243-44; Schwegler, i, 617-19.

[24]E.W. Robertson, p. xxv.

[25]Schwegler, i, 619, and refs.; Robertson, pp. 244-45; Ferrero, i, 9; Greenidge,Rom. Pub. Life, p. 35.

[26]Cp. E.W. Robertson, as cited, p. xxv.

[27]Schwegler, i, 629; Robertson, p. xxvii.

[28]Schwegler, i, 620 and refs.

[29]Mommsen (ch. xiii. i, 200) puts this point in some confusion, making the patricians live mostly in the country. Meyer (ii, 521) seems to put a quite contrary view. Greenidge (History of Rome, 1904, p. 11) agrees with Mommsen, putting town houses as a development of the second centuryB.C.

[30]According to Niebuhr (Lectures, xv; Eng. trans. ed. 1870, p. 81) and Mommsen (ch. iv), the Palatine and the Quirinal. (But cp. Greenidge, p. 2.) The Palatine was probably the first occupied by Romans. Schwegler, i, 442. Cp. Merivale,General History of Rome, 5th ed. p. 3, as to its special advantages. The Quirinal was held by the Sabines. Cp. Koch,Roman History, Eng. trans. p. 2.

[31]Ihne,Early Rome, p. 82.

[32]Presumably "Pelasgian." Cp. K.O. Müller,The Dorians, Eng. trans. i, 15; Schwegler, i, 155sq.

[33]Perhaps the result of a partial conquest. Cp. Mommsen, vol. i, ch. 6,ad init., as to the precedence of the Palatine priests over those of the Quirinal.

[34]So Ihne,Early Rome, p. 5.

[35]Cp. Pelham, ch. iii. Ihne, who argues that the narratives concerning the Etruscan kings are no more trustworthy than those as to their predecessors, recognises that Pliny's record of the humiliating conditions of peace imposed on the Romans by Porsenna "would not have been made if the fact of the subjugation of Rome by an Etruscan king had not been incontestable" (Early Rome, p. 79; cp. pp. 85-86).

[36]Cp. Mérimée,Études sur l'histoire romaine, t. i,Guerre sociale, 1844, p. 352sq.; Mommsen, B. ii, ch. i (i, 265).

[37]Cicero (De Officiis, ii, 12) and Sallust (cited by Augustine,De Civ. Dei, iii, 16) preserved the belief (accepted by Niebuhr) that the oppression of the poor by the rich had been restrained under the kings. Cp. Mahaffy (Problems in Greek History, pp. 81-83; SocialLife in Greece, 3rd ed. p. 83) and Wachsmuth (Hist. Antiq. of the Greeks, Eng. tr. i, 416) as to Greek despots. And see Schwegler,Römische Geschichte, ii, 203, as to the weakness of Rome through class-strifes after the expulsion of the kings.

[38]Greenidge, pp. 47-48; Mommsen, i, 72.

[39]Greenidge, pp. 147, 262, 273.

[40]Niebuhr,Lect.xxv, 3rd Eng. ed. p. 134. So Ihne,Early Rome, p. 80; and also Schwegler, ii, 200. Mommsen takes the traditional view. Cp. Shuckburgh (History of Rome, p. 71), who remarks that the battle was at least not a decisive victory. Meyer (Geschichte des Alterthums, ii, 812) gives no verdict.

[41]The demand for the admission of plebeians to the consulate was thus met on the patrician plea that religion vetoed it. Only in 367 was it enacted that one of the two consuls should always be a plebeian.

[42]Plebeians first admitted to the Quæstorship, 421B.C.; to the Military Tribuneship, 400; to the Consulate, 367; to the Dictatorship, 356; to the Censorship, 351; to the Prætorship, 337. This left the patricians in possession of the important privilege of membership of the sacred colleges. But that, in turn, was opened to plebeians in 300 or 296.

[43]De Officiis, i, 22, 30.

[44]Ad Atticum, i, 19.

[45]De Officiis, ii, 21.

[46]See Long,Decline of the Roman Republic, iv, 272-76, for some interesting details; and refs. in Mérimée,Guerre Sociale, p. 22.

[47]Livy, iv, 25.

[48]A writer in many respects instructive (W. Warde Fowler,The City State of the Greeks and Romans, 1893, p. 194), in pursuance of the thesis that "the Romans" had an "innate political wisdom" and an "inborn genius" for accommodation, speaks of the process of democratic self-assertion and aristocratic concession as "leaving no bad blood behind," this when social disease was spreading all round. The theorem of "national genius" will suffice to impair any exposition, however judicious otherwise. And this is the fundamental flaw in the argument of Bagehot inPhysics and Politics. Though he notes the possibility of the objection that he is positing "occult qualities" (p. 24), he never eliminates that objection, falling back as he does on an assumed "gift" in "the Romans" (p. 81), instead of asking how an activity was evoked and fostered.

[49]Cp. thePolitics, i, 6.

[50]Cp. Professor Pelham'sOutline of Roman History, 1893, p. 197; Mérimée,Guerre Sociale, pp. 217, 220.

[51]Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains, et de leur décadence, ch. xi. He refers to the many cases in point in modern European history.

[52]Dio Cassius, xlvii, 14; xlviii, 6; Appian,Bell. Civ.iv, 3; v, 5, 22.

[53]See below, p. 30, as to Carthage.

[54]Schwegler,Römische Geschichte, i, 269.

[55]Idem, i, 272-73.

[56]See Livy, xxxiii, 36, as to theconjuratio servorumthroughout Etruria in 557A.U.C.

[57]Schwegler, i, 270, 275.

[58]Compare the slave wars of Rome in Sicily with the modern disorders (1892) in the same region, and with Aristotle's testimony as to the constant tendency of the slave populations in Greece to conspire against their owners (Politics, ii, 9).

[59]Juvenal,Sat.vi, 368, 593-96; Ovid,Amor. 1. ii, elegg. 13, 14. It is uncertain whether among the ancients any prudential preventive check was thought of. On the whole question see Malthus' fourteenth chapter. Malthus, however, omits to notice that the Romans probably learned the arts of abortion from the Greeks, Egyptians, and Syrians.

[60]Ovid speaks of the many women killed,Amor.ii. xiv, 38.

[61]Malthus cites Tacitus,De Mor. Germanorum, c. 19; Minucius Felix, c. 30; Pliny,Hist. Nat.xxix, 4.

[62]Cp. Shaftesbury,Characteristics, Treatise ii, pt. iii, § 2 (i, 114). Guizot seems to find the process surprising: "Singulier phénomène! C'est au moment où l'Empire se brise et disparaît, que l'Eglise chrétienne se rallie et se forme définitivement. L'unité politique périt, l'unité religieuse s'élève" (Histoire de la civilisation en France, éd. 1874, i, 339). He does not recognise the case as one of cause and effect. Of course, the fall of the State is not necessary to set up new combinations. It suffices that men should be without political influence or national consciousness—e.g., the secret societies of China in recent times.

[63]An inquiry, or series of inquiries, into the physiological side of social and political development is obviously necessary, and must be made before sociology can on this side attain much scientific precision. I know, however, no general treatise on the subject except an old essay onChanges Produced in the Nervous System by Civilisation, by Dr. Robert Verity (2nd ed., Edinburgh, 1839). This is suggestive, but, of course, tentative. Cp. Ferrero,Greatness and Decline of Rome, Eng. trans, i, 298-99.

[64]Livy, xxxix, 8-18. See below, pt. iii. ch. iii.

[65]Cp. Salverte,De la Civilisation, p. 52.

[66]The subject is discussed in the author's essay on Mithraism inPagan Christs.

[67]M. Hochart (Études d'histoire religieuse, 1890, ch. ix) argues that Constantine was never really converted to Christianity; and this is perhaps the best explanation of his long postponement of his baptism.

[68]Compare episodes in the history of the Salvation Army in England (1890), where that body was seen prepared to practise continuous fighting. It had no thought of "Christian" conciliation.

[69]Various causes, the chief being probably Greek piracy, had caused in pre-Roman Etruria a decay of the original seaports. See Schwegler,Römische Geschichte, i, 273.

[70]On this cp. Ihne,Early Rome, p. 6; and Mommsen, ch. iv.

[71]This may have been set up in imitation of the Carthaginian institution ofSuffetae, which would be well known to the Etruscans of the monarchic period, who had much traffic with Carthage. E. Meyer,Geschichte des Alterthums, ii, 701. But it may also be explained by the simple fact that the original army was divided into two legions (id.ii, 812).

[72]On this see Montesquieu,Grandeur des Romains, c. 1. No one has elucidated so much of Roman history in so little space as Montesquieu has done in this little book, which Buckle rightly set above theEsprit des Lois. (Cp. the eulogy of Taine, in hisTite-Live.) Its real insight may perhaps best be appreciated by comparing it with the modern work of M. Charles Gouraud,Histoire des Causes de la Grandeur de l'Angleterre(1856), in which it will be hard to find any specification of real causes.

[73]The specification of this detail is one of the items of real explanation in Mr. Warde Fowler's scholarly and sympathetic account of the development of the Roman City-State (work cited, c. viii). He credits the Romans with an "innate genius" for combination and constitutionalism as compared with the Greeks, not noticing the fact that Roman unity was in the main a matter of conquest of non-Romans by Romans; that the conquest was furthered by the Roman institutions; that the institutions were first, so to speak, fortuitously shaped in favour of systematic war and conquest by the revolt against kingship; that war and conquest, again, were taken to almost inevitably as the main road to wealth; and that the accommodations of later times were forced on the upper classes by the career of warfare, to which domestic peace was indispensable. (Cp. Hegel as to the element of coercion and patrician policy in the Roman social system.Philos. der Gesch., Theil iii, Abschnitt i, Kap. i.) See below, § 6, as to the very different conditions of the Greek City-States.

[74]E.S. Shuckburgh,History of Rome, 1894, p. 16.

[75]See below, ch. iii,end; ch. iv, § 2 (c).

[76]Cp. Livy, viii, 3-5.

[77]Cp. Ferrero,Greatness and Decline of Rome, Eng. trans, i, 240.

[78]Cp. Aristotle,Politics, ii, 11; vi, 5.

[79]Already in Montesquieu'sGrandeur des Romainsit is pointed out that for Hannibal's soldiers, loaded with plunder, anywhere was Capua. Montesquieu rightly observes that the stock phrase on that head is one of the things everybody says because it has once been said. And it is repeated still.

[80]Livy, xxv, 40.

[81]Cicero,In Verrem, iii, 6; iv, 65; v, 21, 22.

[82]Sallust,Bell. Jugurth., c. 36.

[83]Cicero,In Verrem, iii, 20, 38, 81; v, 34;In Pisonem,34-36;Pro Flacco, 12;Pro Fonteio, 5;Pro lege Manilia, 13. See the record in Dureau de la Malle,Econ. polit. des Romains, 1840, vol. ii, liv. iv, ch. 8. Cp. Ferrero, i, 113-14, 183.

[84]Cp. Long,Decline of the Roman Republic, ii. 78-81, and Merivale,General History of Rome, pp. 299-300, as to the plunder and annexation of Cyprus. "Whether the annals of British India contain so foul a crime," writes Long, "I leave those to determine who know more of Indian affairs than I do."

[85]An admission that national "character" is not a connatural or fixed bias, but a simple function of variables.

[86]Teuffel,Hist. of Roman Literature, ed. Schwabe, Eng. trans. i, 122 (§ 91).

[87]See the process traced in W.A. Schmidt'sGeschichte der Denk und Glaubensfreiheit im ersten Jahrhundert der Kaiserherrschaft und des Christenthums, 1847.

[88]Polybius, vi, 51. See below, ch. iv, § 1 (11).

[89]I am aware that Mr. Bury protests against this division; but his own difficulty in calling the middle (Byzantine) Empire the "later Roman Empire," while implicitly accepting the "Holy" Empire asanother"later Roman Empire," is the best proof that the established nomenclature is the most convenient. Nobody is misled by it. A compromise might perhaps be made on the form "Greek Empire," contended for by M. Sathes (Monumenta Historiæ Hellenicæ, i, pref. p. 5), following on M. Rambaud.

[90]As cited below, pt. v, ch. i.

[91]Salvian, for instance, sees in the barbarian irruption a punishment of Christian sins; he never dreams of asking the cause of the Christian and pre-Christian corruption. Prudentius, again, is a thorough imperialist. See the critique and citations of M. Boissier,La Fin du Paganisme, ii, 136-141,407. Origen had set the note a century before Constantine (Contra Celsum, viii, 68-72).

GREEK POLITICAL EVOLUTION

The politico-economic history of Greece has been less cleared up than that of Rome, by reason not only of the greater complexity of the problem, but of the predominance of literary specialism in Greek studies.

The modern Greek historian, Paparrigopoulo, has published in French anHistoire de la Civilisation hellénique(Paris, 1878), which condenses his learned Greek work in five volumes; but the general view, though sometimes suggestive, is both scanty and superficial as regards ancient Greek history, and runs to an unprofitable effort at showing the "unity" of all Hellenic history, Pagan and Christian, in terms of an assumed conception of Hellenic character.The posthumousGriechische Culturgeschichteof Jakob Burckhardt (1898) throws little light on social evolution. Trustworthy, weighty, and lucid, like all Burckhardt's work, it is rather a survey of Greek moral conditions than a study of social development, thus adding something of synthesis to the previous scholarly literature on the subject without reducing the phenomena to any theory of causation. It includes, however, good studies of vital social developments, such as slavery, to which Grote and Thirlwall paid surprisingly little attention, and which Mahaffy handles inadequately. This is also to be studied in W.R. Patterson'sNemesis of Nations(1907)—with some caution as regards the political generalisations.Since the first edition of the present work there has appeared, in Dr. G.B. Grundy'sThucydides and the History of his Age(1911) a new recognition of the fundamental character of economic conditions in Greek as in other history. Dr. Grundy, finding no academic precedent for his sociological method, has urged as new truths propositions which for economic historians are or should have been axioms. The result, however, is a really stimulating and valuable presentment of Greek history in terms of causal forces.The chapters on Greece in Dr. Cunningham'sWestern Civilisation(1898), though they contain not a few explanations of Greek culture-phenomena on the old lines, in terms of themselves, are helpful for the purposes of the present inquiry,since they really study causation, as do Meyer'sWirthschaftliche Entwickelung des Alterthumsand some other recent German treatises, of which Dr. Cunningham makes use.Much use, however, remains to be made of these and previous expert studies. Boeckh's great work on thePublic Economy of the Athenians, which, though containing economic absurdities, hardly deserves even in that regard the strictures passed on it by the first English translator (Sir G.C. Lewis, 1828; 2nd ed. 1842; superior American ed. tr. from 2nd German ed. by A. Lamb, 1857), has not very fruitfully affected the later historians proper. The third German edition by Fränkel, 1886, typifies the course of scholarship. It corrects details and adds a mass ofapparatus criticusequal in bulk to the whole original work, but supplies no new ideas. Heeren's section on Greece in hisIdeen, etc., translated as aSketch of the Political History of Ancient Greece(1829), and also as part of Heeren'sThoughts on the Politics, etc., ofthe Ancient World, is too full of early misconceptions to be well worth returning to, save for its general view. On the other hand, Grote's greatHistory of Greece, though unmatched in its own species, and though a far more philosophical performance than that of Mitford (which Professor Mahaffy and the King of Greece agree in preferring for its doctrine), is substantially a narrative and critical history on the established lines, and does not aim at being more than incidentally sociological; and that of Bishop Thirlwall, though in parts superior in this regard, is substantially in similar case. At several points, indeed, Grote truly illuminates the sociological problem—notably in his view of the reactions between the Greek drama and the Greek life. Of the German general histories, that of Holm (Eng. tr. 4 vols. 1894-98) is a trustworthy and judicious embodiment of the latest research, but has no special intellectual weight, and is somewhat needlessly prolix. The history of Dr. Evelyn Abbott, so far as it has gone, has fully equal value in most respects; but both leave the need for a sociological history unsatisfied. Mr. Warde Fowler'sCity State of the Greeks and Romans(1893) points in the right direction, but needs following up.Apart from Burckhardt and Cunningham, the nearest approach yet made to a sociological study of Greek civilisation is the series of works on Greek social history by Professor Mahaffy (Social Life in Greece;Greek Life and Thought from the Age of Alexander to the Roman Conquest;The Greek World under Roman Sway;Problems of Greek History; andSurvey of Greek Civilisation). These learned and brilliant volumes have great value as giving more vivid ideas of Greek life than are conveyed by any of the regular histories, and as constantly stimulating reflection; but they lack method, omit much, and abound regrettably in capricious and inconsistent dicta. TheSurveyis disappointing as emphasising rather than making good the defectsof the previous treatises. G.F. Hertzberg'sGeschichte Griechenlands unter der Herrschaft der Römer(1866), and indeed all his works on Greek history, are always worth consulting.Some help may be had from the volume on Greece in theIndustrial History of the Free Nationsby W.T. M'Cullagh (1846); but that fails to throw any light on what should have been its primary problem, the rise of Greek industry, and is rather sentimental than scientific in spirit. For later Greece, Finlay (History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans, revised ed. 7 vols. 1877) becomes illuminating by his interest in economic law, though he holds uncritically enough by some now exploded principles, and exhibits some religious prejudice. His somewhat entangled opening sections express his difficulties as a pioneer in sociological history—difficulties only too abundantly apparent in the following pages. Professor J.B. Bury'sHistory of the Later Roman Empire(2 vols. 1889) is an admirable work; but it does not attempt, save incidentally, to supersede Finlay in matters economic.

The posthumousGriechische Culturgeschichteof Jakob Burckhardt (1898) throws little light on social evolution. Trustworthy, weighty, and lucid, like all Burckhardt's work, it is rather a survey of Greek moral conditions than a study of social development, thus adding something of synthesis to the previous scholarly literature on the subject without reducing the phenomena to any theory of causation. It includes, however, good studies of vital social developments, such as slavery, to which Grote and Thirlwall paid surprisingly little attention, and which Mahaffy handles inadequately. This is also to be studied in W.R. Patterson'sNemesis of Nations(1907)—with some caution as regards the political generalisations.

Since the first edition of the present work there has appeared, in Dr. G.B. Grundy'sThucydides and the History of his Age(1911) a new recognition of the fundamental character of economic conditions in Greek as in other history. Dr. Grundy, finding no academic precedent for his sociological method, has urged as new truths propositions which for economic historians are or should have been axioms. The result, however, is a really stimulating and valuable presentment of Greek history in terms of causal forces.

The chapters on Greece in Dr. Cunningham'sWestern Civilisation(1898), though they contain not a few explanations of Greek culture-phenomena on the old lines, in terms of themselves, are helpful for the purposes of the present inquiry,since they really study causation, as do Meyer'sWirthschaftliche Entwickelung des Alterthumsand some other recent German treatises, of which Dr. Cunningham makes use.

Much use, however, remains to be made of these and previous expert studies. Boeckh's great work on thePublic Economy of the Athenians, which, though containing economic absurdities, hardly deserves even in that regard the strictures passed on it by the first English translator (Sir G.C. Lewis, 1828; 2nd ed. 1842; superior American ed. tr. from 2nd German ed. by A. Lamb, 1857), has not very fruitfully affected the later historians proper. The third German edition by Fränkel, 1886, typifies the course of scholarship. It corrects details and adds a mass ofapparatus criticusequal in bulk to the whole original work, but supplies no new ideas. Heeren's section on Greece in hisIdeen, etc., translated as aSketch of the Political History of Ancient Greece(1829), and also as part of Heeren'sThoughts on the Politics, etc., ofthe Ancient World, is too full of early misconceptions to be well worth returning to, save for its general view. On the other hand, Grote's greatHistory of Greece, though unmatched in its own species, and though a far more philosophical performance than that of Mitford (which Professor Mahaffy and the King of Greece agree in preferring for its doctrine), is substantially a narrative and critical history on the established lines, and does not aim at being more than incidentally sociological; and that of Bishop Thirlwall, though in parts superior in this regard, is substantially in similar case. At several points, indeed, Grote truly illuminates the sociological problem—notably in his view of the reactions between the Greek drama and the Greek life. Of the German general histories, that of Holm (Eng. tr. 4 vols. 1894-98) is a trustworthy and judicious embodiment of the latest research, but has no special intellectual weight, and is somewhat needlessly prolix. The history of Dr. Evelyn Abbott, so far as it has gone, has fully equal value in most respects; but both leave the need for a sociological history unsatisfied. Mr. Warde Fowler'sCity State of the Greeks and Romans(1893) points in the right direction, but needs following up.

Apart from Burckhardt and Cunningham, the nearest approach yet made to a sociological study of Greek civilisation is the series of works on Greek social history by Professor Mahaffy (Social Life in Greece;Greek Life and Thought from the Age of Alexander to the Roman Conquest;The Greek World under Roman Sway;Problems of Greek History; andSurvey of Greek Civilisation). These learned and brilliant volumes have great value as giving more vivid ideas of Greek life than are conveyed by any of the regular histories, and as constantly stimulating reflection; but they lack method, omit much, and abound regrettably in capricious and inconsistent dicta. TheSurveyis disappointing as emphasising rather than making good the defectsof the previous treatises. G.F. Hertzberg'sGeschichte Griechenlands unter der Herrschaft der Römer(1866), and indeed all his works on Greek history, are always worth consulting.

Some help may be had from the volume on Greece in theIndustrial History of the Free Nationsby W.T. M'Cullagh (1846); but that fails to throw any light on what should have been its primary problem, the rise of Greek industry, and is rather sentimental than scientific in spirit. For later Greece, Finlay (History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans, revised ed. 7 vols. 1877) becomes illuminating by his interest in economic law, though he holds uncritically enough by some now exploded principles, and exhibits some religious prejudice. His somewhat entangled opening sections express his difficulties as a pioneer in sociological history—difficulties only too abundantly apparent in the following pages. Professor J.B. Bury'sHistory of the Later Roman Empire(2 vols. 1889) is an admirable work; but it does not attempt, save incidentally, to supersede Finlay in matters economic.

§ 1

The political history of ancient Greece, similarly summarised, will serve perhaps even better the purpose of illuminating later evolution. That history has served historian after historian as a means of modern polemic. The first considerable English historians of Greece, Gillies and Mitford, pointed to the evil fate of Greek democracy as a conclusive argument against countenancing democracy now; never stopping to ask whether ancient monarchies had fared any better than the democracies. And it is perfectly true that present-day democracies will tend to bad fortune just as did the ancient unless they bottom themselves more firmly and guide themselves by a deeper political science. It will not suffice that we have rejected the foundation of slavery, on which all the Greek polities rested. The strifes between the demos and the aristocracy in the Greek City-States would have arisen just as surely, though more slowly, if the demos, instead of being an upper-grade populace owning slaves, had included the whole mass of the artisan and serving class.[92]Where population increases at anything like the natural animal rate, and infanticide is not overwhelming, poverty must either force emigration or breed strife between the "have-nots" and the "haves," barring such continuous stress of war as suffices at once to thin numbers and yield conquerors the lands of the slainlosers. During some centuries the pressure was in part relieved by colonisation, as had already happened among the Phœnicians;[93]the colonies themselves in turn, with their more rapid evolution, developing the inevitable strife of rich and poor more quickly and more violently than the mother cities.[94]Among these, it was when that relief seemed to be exhausted that strife became most dangerous, being obscurely perceived to be a means to advancement and prosperity for individuals, as well as for the State which could extort tribute or plunder from the others. War, however, limits agriculture, so that food supply is kept proportionately small; and with peace the principle of population soon overtakes lost ground; so that, though the Greek States like others tended to gain in solidarity under the stimulus of foreign war, the pressure of poverty was always breeding fresh division.

If we take up Grecian history after the settling down of the prehistoric invasions, which complicated the ordinary process of rupture and fission, that process is seen occurring so frequently, and in so many different States, that there can be no question as to the presence of a general sociological law, not to be counteracted in any community save by a radical change of conditions. Everywhere the phenomena are broadly the same. The upper class ("upper" in virtue either of primary advantages or of special faculty for acquiring wealth) attains to providing for its future by holding multitudes of poorer citizens in debt—the ancient adumbration of the modern developments of landlordism, national debts, and large joint-stock enterprises, which yield inheritable incomes. In early times, probably, debt led as often to adult enslavement in Greece as in Rome;[95]but in a world of small and warring City-States, shaken by domestic division, constantly making slaves by capture and purchase, and always exposed to the risk of their insurrection, this was too dangerous a course to be long persisted in,[96]and the creditor was led to press his mortgaged debtor in otherways. The son or the daughter was sold to pay the father's dues, or to serve in perpetual payment of interest; and the cultivator's share was ever at the lowest point. The pressure increases till the mass of debtors are harassed into insurrection, or are used by an adventurer to establish himself as despot.[97]Sometimes, in later days, the documents of debt are publicly destroyed;[98]sometimes the land is divided afresh.[99]Landholders burdened with debt would vote for the former course and resist the latter;[100]and as that was clamoured for at Athens in early times, it may be presumed that in some places it was resorted to. Sometimes even a refunding of interest would be insisted on.[101]Naturally such means of rectification availed only for a moment; the despot stood a fair chance of being assassinated; the triumphant demos would be caballed against; the exiled nobles, with the cold rage of Theognis in their hearts, would return; and the last state of the people would be worse than the first; till again slackened vigilance on one side, and intolerable hardship on the other, renewed the cycle of violent change.

In the course of ages there was perforce some approach to equipoise;[102]but it was presumably at the normal cost of a definite abasement of the populace;[103]and it was by a famous stroke of statecraft that Athens was able so to solve her first great crisis as to make possible some centuries of expanding democratic life. The name of Solon is associated with an early crisis (594B.C.) in which debt and destitution among the Athenian demos (then still for the most part small cultivators, for whom the city was a refuge fortress, but as a rule no longer owning the land they tilled) brought matters to the same point as was marked in Rome by the Secession of the Plebs. The Athenian oligarchy was very much like the Roman; and when the two sides agreed to call in Solon as arbitrator it was with a fairly general expectation that he would take the opportunity to become tyrant. The people knew him to be opposed to plutocratic tyranny; the nobles and traders, anxious for security, thought him sure to be their friend; and both sorts had small objection to such a one as "despot." But Solon, a noble of moderate means, who had gained prestige in the wars of Athens with her neighbour,Megara, and some knowledge of life as a travelling trader, brought to his problem a higher vision than that of a Roman patrician, and doubtless had a less barbarous stock to deal with. Later ages, loosely manipulating tradition, ascribed to him a variety of laws that he cannot have made;[104]but all the records concur in crediting him with a "Seisachtheia," a "shaking-off-of-burdens," and a healing of the worst of the open wounds of the body politic. All existing mortgages were cancelled; all enslavement for debt was abolished; Athenians who had been sold into alien slavery were bought back (probably by a contribution from relieved debtors[105]); and the coinage was recast—whether or not by way of reducing State payments is not clear.

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