The Old Roman World : the Grandeur and Failure of Its Civilization. John Lord
This is both a mystery and a fact. It is mysterious that bad men should be allowed to succeed so often, but it is one of the sternest facts of life, only to be explained on the principle that they are instruments in the hands of the Great Moral Governor whose designs we are not able to fathom, yet the wisdom of which is subsequently, though imperfectly, made known. It was wicked in the sons of Jacob to sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites; their craft and lies were successful: they deceived their father and accomplished their purposes; yet his bondage was the means of their preservation from the evils of famine. The rise and fall of empires are to be explained on the same principles as the rise and fall of families. A coarse, unscrupulous but enterprising man gets rich, but his wealth is made to subserve interests far greater than that of his children. Hospitals, colleges, and libraries are endowed as monasteries were in the Middle Ages. If vice, selfishness, and pride were not overruled, what would become of our world? The whole history of civilization is the good which is made to spring out of evil. Men are nothing in comparison with Omnipotence. What are human plans? Yet enterprise and virtue and talent are rewarded. In the affairs of life we see that goodness does not lose its recompense, and that vice is punished; but beyond, what more impressively do we behold than this, that the instruments of punishment are often the wicked themselves.
[Sidenote: The results of the crusades.]
[Sidenote: Their immediate consequences are disastrous; their ultimate, beneficial.]
Among the worst wars in history—uncalled for, unscrupulous, fanatical—were the Crusades. And when were wars more unfortunate, more unsuccessful? Five millions of Crusaders perished miserably in those mad expeditions stimulated by hatred of Mohammedanism. No trophies consoled Europe for its enormous losses, extended over two hundred years. But those wars developed the resources of Europe; they broke the power of feudal barons; they promoted commerce and the arts of life; they led to greater liberality of mind; they opened the horizon of knowledge; they introduced learned men into rising universities; they centralized the power of kings; they weakened the temporal jurisdiction of the popes; they improved architecture, sculpture, and painting; they built free cities; they gave a new stimulus to all the energies of the European nations. Their benefits to civilization were not the legitimate result of destructive passions. The natural penalty of folly and crime was paid in hardship, sorrow, disease, captivity, disappointment, poverty, and death. But out of the ashes a new creation arose, not what any of the leaders of those movements ever contemplated—infinitely removed from the thoughts of Bernard, Urban, Philip, and Richard, great men as they were, far-sighted statesmen, who expected other results. The hand which guided that warfare between Europe and Asia was the hand that led the Israelites out of Egypt across the Red Sea. Moreover, quem deus vult perdere prius dementat. What uprising more foolish, insane, disastrous, than the great Southern rebellion! Its result was never dreamed of for a moment by those Southern leaders. They hoped to see the establishment of a great empire based on slavery; they saw the utter destruction of slavery itself. The course by which they anticipated dominion and riches ended in their temporal ruin. They were made the destroyers of their own pet system, when it could not have been destroyed in any other way. It was only by a great war that the fetters of the slave could be removed, and God sent war so soon as it pleased Him to bring the wicked bondage to an end. If any thing shows the hand of God it is the wars of the nations. They are sent like the famine and the pestilence. All human wisdom and power sink into insignificance when they are put forth to stop these scourges of the Almighty. It is against all reason that they ever come; yet they do come, and then crimes are avenged; evil punishes evil, and succeeding generations are made to see that the progress of the race is through sorrow and suffering. No great empire is built up but with the will of God. No empire falls without deserving the chastisement and the ruin. But God has promised to save and to redeem, and the world moves on in accordance with natural laws, and each successive century witnesses somehow or other a great advance in the general condition of mankind. It is not the great rulers who plan this improvement. It comes from Heaven. It comes in spite of human degeneracy, which, if left to itself, would doubtless soon produce a state of society like that which is attributed to the nations "before the flood came and destroyed them all."
[Sidenote: Wars over-ruled for the good of nations.]
With this view of war—always aggressive with one party, always a calamity to both; the greatest calamity known to the nations, exhausting, bloody, cruel, sweeping every thing before it; a moral conflagration, bringing every kind of suffering and sorrow in its train, yet made to result as a retribution to worn-out and degenerate races, and a means of vast development of resources among those peoples which have life and energy—we see the providence of God in the Roman Conquests. The gradual growth of Rome as a warlike state is a most impressive example of the agency of a great Moral Governor in breaking up states that deserved to perish, and in building up a power such as the world needed in order to facilitate both a magnificent civilization and the peaceful spread of a new religion. The Greeks created art and literature; the Romans, laws and government, by which society everywhere was made more secure and tranquil, until the good which arose from the evil was itself perverted.
[Sidenote: Growth of Rome under the kings.]
Under the kingly rule Rome becomes the most important and powerful of the cities of Latium, and a foundation is laid of social, religious, and political institutions which are destined to achieve a magnificent triumph. The kings of Rome are all great men—wise and statesmanlike, patrons of civilization among a rude and primitive people. No state for more than two hundred years was ever ruled by more enlightened princes, ambitious indeed, sometimes unscrupulous, but fortunate and successful. The benefits derived from the conquests and ascendency of the city of Romulus were seen in the union of several petty states, and the fusion of their customs and manners. Before the foundation of the city, Italy was of no account with the older empires. In less than two hundred and fifty years a great Italian power grows up on the banks of the Tiber, imbued to some extent with the civilization of Greece, which it receives through Etruria and the Tarquins.
[Sidenote: Effect of the expulsion of the Tarquins.]
But the growth of Rome under the kings was too rapid for its moral health. A series of disasters produced by the expulsion of the Tarquins, during which the Roman state dwindles into a small territory on the left bank of the Tiber, develops strength and martial virtue. It takes Rome one hundred and fifty years to recover what it had lost. Moreover its great prosperity has provoked envy, and all the small neighboring nations are leagued against it. These must be subdued, or Italy will remain divided and subdivided, with no central power.
The heroic period of Roman history begins really with the expulsion of the kings; also the growth of aristocratical power. It is not under kings nor democratic influences and institutions that Rome reaches preeminence, but under an aristocracy. All that is most glorious in Roman annals took place under the rule of the Patricians.
[Sidenote: Rome struggles for existence for 150 years.]
[Sidenote: Beautiful legends of the heroic period.]
[Sidenote: They indicate the existence of great virtues.]
[Sidenote: Petty wars with neighboring states develop patriotism.]
During the one hundred and fifty years—when the future mistress of the world struggled for its existence with the cities and inhabitants of Latium, Samnium, and Etruria, whose united territories scarcely extended fifty miles from Rome, were developed the virtues of a martial aristocracy. Our minds kindle with the contemplation of their courage, fortitude, patience, hope, perseverance, energy, self-devotion, patriotism, and religious faith. They deserved success. The long and bitter struggle of one hundred and fifty years had more of the nature of self-preservation than military ambition. The history of those petty wars is interesting, because it is romantic. Beautiful legends of early patriotism and heroism have been reproduced in all the histories from Livy to our times, like those of the knights of King Arthur and the paladins of Charlemagne in the popular literature of Europe. Poets have made them the themes of their inspiration. Painters have chosen them as favorite subjects of art. We love to ponder on the bitter exile of Coriolanus, his treasonable revenge, and the noble patriotism of his weeping and indignant mother, who saved her country but lost her son; on Cincinnatus, taken from the plow and sent as general and dictator