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Rome

Chapter 15: Transcriber’s Notes
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About This Book

The narrative surveys the rise and development of ancient Rome, outlining its advance in Italy, the formation of Roman character, and the decisive struggle with Carthage and Hannibal; it then traces expansion, the tensions between dominion and degeneracy, revolutionary upheavals and the settlement under Augustus, and everyday life across the imperial system, closing with the era of the Antonines. Emphasis falls on practical institutions and public works, military and legal organization, social and civic habits, and the ways political power and cultural values combined to secure dominance while also producing forces of change.

Yet this did not happen before the name and fame of Rome had made such deep impression on their minds that they sought to deserve the inheritance which had thus fallen to them; despising, indeed, the degenerate provincials who struck no blow in their own defence, but full of respect for the majestic power which had for so many centuries confronted and instructed them.[19] They never swept away the civilisation of the Mediterranean; from Julius onwards the Roman rulers had done so much to defend it, had raised its prestige so high, had so thoroughly organised its internal life, that uncivilised peoples neither could nor would destroy it.

We still enjoy its best fruits—the art, science and literature of Hellas, the genius of Rome for law—for “the just interference of the State in the interests and passions of humanity.”[20] We may be apt at the present day, when science has opened out for us so many new paths of knowledge, and inspired us with such enthusiasm in pursuing them, to forget the value of the inheritance which Rome preserved for us. But this is merely a passing phase of feeling; it is really quite inconsistent with the character of an age which recognises the doctrine of evolution as its great discovery. It is natural to civilised man to go back upon his past, and to be grateful for all profit he can gain from the study of his own development. So we may be certain that the claim of Greece and Rome to our eternal gratitude will never cease to be asserted, and their right to teach us still what we could have learnt nowhere else, will never be successfully disputed.

November, 1911.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following books are suggested as among those most likely to be useful to students who wish to pursue the subject further—

I. Large Histories. Mommsen: History of Rome to the Death of Cæsar, with an additional volume entitled The Provinces of the Roman Empire; the whole, in the English translation, is in seven volumes. Heitland: The Roman Republic, in three volumes (a recent publication). Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edited by Prof. Bury.

II. Smaller histories in one volume. Pelham: Outlines of Roman History (a masterly work). How and Leigh: A History of Rome to the Death of Cæsar. Bury: The Student’s Roman Empire. There are many school histories, but these are rather fuller and more interesting.

III. Books on special subjects of Roman life, etc. Greenidge: Roman Public Life, in Macmillan’s Handbooks of Art and Archæology. Warde Fowler: Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero. Life of Cicero, by Strachan-Davidson, and Life of Cæsar, by Warde Fowler, both in Putnam’s series of “Heroes of the Nations.” Cæsar’s Conquest of Gaul, by T. Rice Holmes. Dill: Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius.

IV. Ancient authorities in translation. Plutarch’s Roman Lives may be read with advantage in any translation, e.g. that of Langhorne. The most valuable lives are those of Cato the Elder, Æmilius Paullus, the two Gracchi, Marius and Sulla, Pompey and Cæsar, Brutus and Antony. There is a translation of the whole Correspondence of Cicero with his Friends, by E. S. Shuckburgh, published by Bell & Sons.

FOOTNOTES

[1]The best known of these, and perhaps the most beautiful, is that of Coriolanus, which has descended from Plutarch to Shakespeare, and so become immortal.
[2]The Latin words which expressed these two mutual rights, commercium and connubium, are still in use in various forms in the languages of modern Europe.
[3]The Latin word is fauces, i.e. jaws, etymologically the same word as the hause of our Lakeland, which means a narrow pass.
[4]Greenidge, Roman Public Life, p. 105.
[5]With the exception of the southern Samnites, who joined Hannibal after Cannæ.
[6]This was Fabius Maximus, who has given his name to the familiar phrase, “Fabian tactics.”
[7]Seeley’s Life of Stein, II. 422.
[8]Plutarch’s Lives of Cato the Elder and Æmilius Paullus, which can be read in a translation, will give examples of this better type of education.
[9]In Plutarch’s Life of him, especially chaps, v. and vi., where Plutarch is plainly reproducing the evidence of an eyewitness.
[10]He came of an old Roman patrician family.
[11]See below, p. 184.
[12]Georgics I, 463 foll.
[13]See below, p. 206.
[14]From Mr. James Rhoades’s version.
[15]Sir A. H. Layard.
[16]Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, 1st edn., p. 163.
[17]This is the title by which the princeps was usually known in the Empire; see e.g. Matt. xxii. 17 foll., or Acts xxv. 10 foll.
[18]By Hastings Crossley: Macmillan & Co.
[19]Bryce, Holy Roman Empire.
[20]This is Mommsen’s definition of Law.

INDEX

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A
Actium, battle of, 187
Agrippa, M. Vipsanius, 201
Alps, the, 98, 148, 171
Antoninus Pius, 243 foll.
Antony, Mark, 187
Apennines, the, 20
Armenia, 165, 234
Army, the Roman, 70 foll., 130, 207, 217
Augustus, 188, 192, 199 foll., 210
Auspices, 67
B
Brindisi, 49, 175
Britain, 170, 219 foll., 239 foll.
Byzantium, 249
C
Cæsar, Julius, 11, 168 foll., 173 foll.
Cæsar in Shakespeare, 179
Campania, 20, 41, 102, 104
Cannæ, battle of, 102
Carthage, 38, 86 foll., 212
Cato the Elder, 12 foll., 15, 18, 61, 63, 120, 126
Cato the younger, 173
Catullus, poet, 182
Caudine Forks, 44
Censors, 81 foll.
Census under Empire, 202
Cicero, M. Tullius, 183 foll.
Citizenship, 132 foll., 152, 178
Colonies, 40, 48, 101
Commercium, 32, 39
Consuls, 30, 45, 73 foll.
Corfinium, 153
D
Dictator, 75
E
Education, 61, 120, 235
Etruscans, 21 foll., 24 foll.
F
Familia, 57 foll.
Flaminius, C., 99 foll.
Fregellæ, 49
Frontiers, 166, 171, 200, 204 foll., 233 foll., 239
G
Gauls, 35, 86, 96 foll., 99, 168 foll.
Gilds under Empire, 223 foll.
Gracchus, Gaius, 141 foll.
Gracchus, Tiberius, 137 foll.
H
Hadrian, Emperor, 237 foll.
Hamilcar Barca, 93 foll.
Hannibal, 94 foll., 113
Hasdrubal, 106
I
Imperium, 66 foll., 73 foll., 128, 207
Inscriptions, 220
J
Jupiter, 28 foll.
L
Latins, 23, 31, 33 foll., 36, 38 foll., 134
Law, Roman, 31, 78, 158, 242, 250
Livy, historian, 38, 210
Lucretius, poet, 10, 180
Lucullus, L., 164
Lugdunum (Lyons), 204
M
Marcus Aurelius, 245 foll.
Marius, 147, 149 foll.
Massilia, 115
Messana, 89
Metaurus, battle of, 107
Mithradates, 162 foll.
N
Nismes, 218, 227, 243
Nobilitas, 80
P
Paterfamilias, 58 foll.
Patricians and plebeians, 77
Paul, St., 216, 230
Pharsalia, battle of, 175
Philip of Macedon, 101, 113 foll.
Pliny the younger, 236
Pompeius, Gn., 165 foll.
Pontifices, 68
Princeps, 197, 206
Provinces, 118, 203, 213, 217 foll.
Pyrrhus, 50 foll.
R
Regulus, 92
Respublica, 72, 197
S
Samnites, 23, 42 foll.
Scipio Africanus, 108
Senate, 30, 35, 47, 53, 63, 69, 103, 129, 144, 158, 197
Sicilian Greeks, 52, 86
Slavery, 57, 59, 125 foll., 141, 244
Spain, 94, 115
Sulla, L. Cornelius, 147, 155
T
Tacitus, historian, 12, 14, 231
Tarentum, 42, 50, 52
Tiber, river, 22, 24, 26
Tiberius, Emperor, 206
Tigranes of Armenia, 164 foll.
Trajan, Emperor, 232 foll.
Trasimene, battle of, 100
Tribunes of the people, 78, 139
U
Umbrians, 23
V
Veii, 34
Via Appia, 49
Via Flaminia, 48
Via Latina, 49
Virgil, 10, 13, 15, 188 foll., 198
Z
Zama, battle of, 109

Transcriber’s Notes

  • Retained copyright information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.
  • Silently corrected a few palpable typos.
  • In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.