Vigor of the Early Romans — their Virtues and Vices; their Rigorous Laws; their Defective Education; their Contempt of Labor. — Slavery: its Horrors and Brutalizing Influence. — Education Confined to the Arts of Politics and War; it transformed Courage into Cruelty, and Fortitude into Stoicism. — Robbery and Bribery. — The Vices of Greece and Carthage imported into Rome. — Slaves construct all the great Public Works; they Revolt, and the Legions Slaughter them. — The Gothic Invasion. — Rome Falls. — False Philosophy and Superficial Education promoted Selfishness. — Deification of Abstractions, and Scorn of Men and Things. — Universal Moral Degradation. — Neglect of Honest Men and Promotion of Demagogues. — The Decline of Morals and Growth of Literature. — Darwin’s Law of Reversion, through Selfishness, to Savagery. — Contest between the Rich and the Poor. — Logic, Rhetoric, and Ruin.
In the city of the Seven Hills there was no statue to Pity, as at Athens. In the long line of Roman conquerors there was no one possessing the title to fame, of which, on his death-bed, Pericles boasted, namely, that “no Athenian had ever worn mourning on his account.”
The dominion of Rome was logical. In the legend of Romulus and Remus, suckled by the she-wolf, there is a hint of the rugged vigor which characterized the Roman people, and distinguished them from the earlier nationalities. In all the civilizations anterior to that of Rome there was an element of pliability or softness which belongs to the youth of man. But from the day on which Romulus, with the brazen ploughshare, drew a furrow around the Palatine, both the sinews and the souls of his followers hardened into maturity. The rising walls of the city, so the legend runs, were moistened with the life-drops of Remus, whose derisive remark and act cost him his life, his slayer exclaiming, haughtily, “So perish all who dare to climb these ramparts.” The rape of the Sabines, the conflicts which ensued with that outraged people, their incorporation with the conquerors, their subsequent joint conquests, and the shrewdness displayed in the conservation of the fruits of victory—these events show that man had attained his majority. Under the shadow of the walls of the Eternal City all the great races were associated and mingled—Latins, Trojans, Greeks, Sabines, and Etruscans. The Roman civilization was the product of all that had gone before, as it was destined to be the father of all that should follow it. The Roman had no peer either in courage or fortitude. Aspiring to universal dominion, he toughened himself to achieve it. Dooming his enemy to death or slavery, he was not less self-exacting, his own life, through the cup of poison, the sword, or the opened vein, becoming the forfeit equally of misfortune and shame. The tragic fate of Lucretia, the resulting revolution, the banishment of the Tarquins, and the abolition of the kingly government show the swiftness of Roman retribution and the terrible force of Roman resolution. Roman persistence in the path of conquest for many centuries is typified by Cato in his invocation of destruction upon Carthage. The masculine character of the Roman vices finds illustration in the struggle of Appius, the Decemvir, to possess the person of Virginia by wresting the law from its true purpose, the conservation of justice, and converting it into a shield for lust; and the vigor of Roman virtue is exemplified in the act of Virginius plunging the knife into the heart of his beloved daughter to save her honor. The rigorous laws of Rome testify to the stamina of her people. The father to whom a deformed son was born must cause the child to be put to death, and any citizen might kill the man who betrayed the design of becoming king.
A scientific system of education would have conserved and developed the noble and eliminated the ignoble traits of Roman character. But neither Roman education, philosophy, nor ethics inculcated either respect for labor or reverence for human rights; and hence the laborer was reduced to slavery, and the slave made the victim of every known atrocity. Slavery became the corner-stone of the Roman State, and slavery and labor were synonymous terms. The Roman supply of laborers was maintained by depopulating conquered countries. In the train of the legions, returning to Rome in triumph, there were not only statues, paintings, and other works of art, but thousands of men, women, and children destined to slavery. And the laws in regard to slaves were terrible, as laws touching slavery must always be—for a state of slavery is a state of war. It was a law of Rome that if a slave murdered his master the whole family of slaves should be put to death; and Tacitus relates an instance of the execution of four hundred slaves for the murder of a citizen, their master. In the course of the servile rebellion in Sicily a million slaves were killed; and it should be borne in mind that they were valuable laborers—many of them skilled artisans. Vast numbers of them were exposed to wild beasts in the arena, for the popular amusement. The rebellion of the gladiators was put down only by a resort to awful atrocities, among which was the crucifixion of prisoners. The revolt of the allies was quelled at the cost of half a million lives. But slaves were plenty, for Rome had her bloody hand at the throat of all mankind, and her hoarse cry was, “Your life or your liberty!”
Every Roman freeman was a soldier, and the cultivation of the land, manufactures, and all the pursuits of industry, were carried on by slaves. Slave labor was cheaper than the labor of animals; cattle were taken from the plough and slaughtered for beef that slaves—men—might take their places. Labor fell to the lowest degree of contempt, and the laborer was a thing to be spurned—for the free citizen to labor with his hands was more disgraceful than to die of starvation. Hence there was a class of citizen paupers to whom largesses of corn were doled out by the demagogues of the Senate and the army. Ultimately these citizen-paupers became so vile and filthy that they engendered leprosy and other loathsome diseases, as they dragged their palsied limbs through the streets of the city, crying, “Bread and circuses! bread and circuses!”
Roman education was confined almost exclusively to the training of the sons of rich citizens in the arts of politics and war; and in a State where labor was despised, and whose corner-stone was slavery, and whose shibboleth was conquest, the baseness of these arts may be imagined but hardly described. It promoted selfishness, and in the course of centuries selfishness transformed Roman courage into cruelty, and Roman fortitude into brutal stoicism. The Roman sense of justice was swallowed up in Roman lust of power. Rome became the great robber nation of the world. She was on the land what Greece had once been on the sea—a pirate. She made the streets of the cities she conquered run with blood. Thousands of captives she doomed to death; other thousands graced the triumphs of her generals, and the spoil saved from the fury of the flames, and the more ungovernable fury of the licentious soldiery, was carried home to the Eternal City, there to fall into the hands of the most cunning among the demagogues, for use in the bribery of courts, senators, and the populace.
Tacitus deplored the decline of public virtue. He declared, mournfully, that “Nothing was sacred, nothing safe from the hand of rapacity.” His environment blinded him to the true cause of the depravity he so eloquently deplored—selfishness. Had he been familiar with the inductive method he would have found in a defective system of education the cause of Roman venality and corruption. He might thus have realized the weakness of a community of men who wanted the necessary force and virtue to depose a Tiberius and elevate to his place a Germanicus; or to dethrone a Domitian and crown in his stead an Agricola.
Education in Rome deified selfishness, and hence realized its last analysis—total depravity. Of course nothing was sacred in a community where men were ruthlessly trampled underfoot! Of course nothing was “safe from the hand of rapacity” where the laborer was degraded to a place in the social scale below the leprous pauper whose filthy person provoked disgust, and whose poisonous breath, as he cried for bread, spread abroad disease and death!
It was inevitable that the nation that grew rich through plunder should grow poor in public and private virtue. And such was the fact. The eagles that protected robbers abroad, spread their sheltering wings over defaulters, bribers, and thieves at home. There had been a time in Rome when bribery was punishable with death, but now candidates for office sat at tables in the streets near the polling-places and openly paid the citizens for their votes. The change in the habits of the people was as pronounced as the change in the laws. The early triumphs of the Romans were industrial—flocks and herds; their trophies, obtained in single combat, consisted of spears and helmets. When Cincinnatus was sent for to assume the dictatorship he was found in his field following the plough. Valerius, four times consul, and by Livy characterized as the first man of his time, died so poor that he had to be buried at the public charge. But with the fall of Greece and Carthage, and the reduction of Asia, there was a great social change at Rome. The Roman legions not only carried home the wealth of the countries they conquered but the vices of the peoples they subdued. An ancient writer summarizes the situation in the following graphic sentence: “The only fashionable principles were to acquire wealth by every means of avarice and injustice, and to dissipate it by every method of luxury and profusion.”
The end is not far off. The story of Persia, of Egypt, and of Greece is the story equally of Rome. Avarice and injustice, luxury and profusion do their sure work. The Roman civilization is more than a thousand years old. Asiatic wealth, the luxury and false philosophy of Greece, and a vicious system of education, promoting selfishness, have united to sap its foundations. Society is divided into three classes—an aristocracy based solely upon wealth, cruel and profligate, a mob of free citizens, otherwise paupers, who live by beggary and the sale of their votes, and laborers who are slaves.
On the occasion of the presentation of spectacles, among a variety of presents slaves (laborers) are thrown into the arena to be scrambled for by the free citizens! But men are cheap. In Asia they sell for sixpence apiece, and Rome has only to send an army there to get them for nothing. To this class, to these slaves, however, the Roman people are indebted for all the arts which make life agreeable. They construct all the great public works. They build the splendid roads over which the Roman legions follow their generals in triumph home to Rome. They make the aqueducts, dig the canals, and construct the buildings, public and private, whose remains still attest their magnificence—the Forum, the amphitheatres, and the golden house of the Cæsars. They build the villas overlooking the Bay of Naples, in which the nobles live in riot and wantonness; they cook the dinners given in those villas; they make the clothes the nobles wear, and the jewels that adorn their persons. They cultivate the fields, follow the plough, train and trim the vine, and gather in the harvest. They raise the corn that is distributed by the nobles among the soldiery, and given as a bribe to the diseased and debauched free citizens for their votes. They feel deeply the injustice of their lot, and, like men, strike for liberty. But the Roman legions are set on them like blood-hounds, and hundreds of thousands of them are slaughtered and made food for birds of prey, and other thousands are thrown into the arena to be torn by wild beasts, and still others are bestowed as gifts upon the populace at the games.
The contest between the rich and the poor is at an end; the rich are millionaires, the poor are beggars. It is the story of Dives and Lazarus over again. The rich are clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day; the poor are full of sores, and live upon the crumbs that fall from the tables of the rich. Rome topples to her fall. The Gothic invader is at her gates, and there is no army to defend them. The barbarian demands a ransom. To obtain it the statues are despoiled of their ornaments and precious stones, and the gods of gold and silver are melted in the fire. The ransom is given, and Alaric retires. But he returns, and this time to pillage. The city is sacked; rich and poor, bond and free, are whelmed in one common ruin. At last the diabolic wish of the infamous Caligula is realized. The Roman people have but one neck, and the Goth puts his foot upon it. Rome falls, the victim of her own crimes, strangled by her own gluttony. Thus ends the first period of the world’s manhood—ends in exhaustion, and a syncope which is destined to last a thousand years.
Long before the fall of the republic Rome had become the seat of all the world’s learning. In robbing conquered countries she not only took their gold and silver, a share of their people for slaves, and their works of art, but their libraries, their philosophy, and their literature. But neither the Greek nor the Roman philosophy contributed in the least to a solution of the pressing social problems of the time. The wise men of Rome were powerless to help either themselves or their fellow-men, because their philosophy was false. It was purely speculative; it had no body of facts to rest upon.
The Roman educators and philosophers were almost as ignorant of physiology as Plato was hundreds of years before, hence they were unable to study the mind in the sole way in which it is intelligently approachable, namely, through its bodily manifestations. In studying the mind as an independent entity there could be no general rules of investigation. The metaphysical philosopher did not study the mind of man; he explored his own mind merely—consulted his own inner consciousness. Hence there were, in Rome, as many systems of philosophy, more or less clearly defined and distinct, as there were philosophers. But they were merely metaphysical speculations, dreams, dependent upon purely subjective processes; and those processes were in turn dependent upon the ever-changing states of mind of each philosopher.
It is obvious that these systems of philosophy could exert no influence upon the community at large, for the community formed no part of the subject matter of their speculations. But they did exert an influence, and a very pernicious one, upon the philosophers themselves, and indeed upon all the cultured men of Rome; for they were thereby made thoroughly selfish, and so rendered incapable of forming a just judgment of public affairs. In considering the mind apart from the body, the body naturally fell into utter contempt. This was the great crime of speculative philosophy; for in engendering a feeling of contempt for the human body it furnished an excuse for slavery. And this contempt logically included manual labor, for the only manual laborer was a slave; and it also extended to the useful arts, for all those arts were the work of slaves. Hence the laborer, being a slave, was placed lower in the social scale than the pauper who sold his vote for a glass of wine. And thus it came about that a factitious right—the right of suffrage—was more highly esteemed by the public than the cardinal virtue of industry, upon which alone the perpetuity of the social compact depends.
And, again, the wretched state of public morals may be inferred from the fact that the right of suffrage, through which the idle, leprous pauper was elevated above the industrious laborer and above the useful arts, was notoriously the subject of open traffic in the streets of Rome on every election day. Thus Roman philosophy landed the Roman people in the last ditch, for it led to the deification of abstract ideas and to scorn of things. That this utter perversion of the truth and wreck of justice was the cause of the decline of the Roman Empire there is no doubt.
It is equally plain that the noted men of Rome were utterly ignorant of the cause of the disorders which afflicted the body politic. There is no evidence, either in their lives or their works, that they brought to the consideration of the great social problems of the time any practical philosophy whatever. Suetonius, with a graphic pen, portrays the cruelties of the Cæsars, but hints at no cause therefor inherent in the social system. Cicero forecasts the doom of the republic, but has no remedy to propose except that of the elevation of Pompey rather than Cæsar. Livy and Tacitus deplore the decay of public and private virtue, but are silent on the subject of the infamy of slavery and on the shame of degrading labor. The moral sentiments of Seneca and Aurelius are of the most elevated character, but the fact that they ignore slavery, the slave, the laborer, and the useful arts, shows either that they never thought upon those fundamental social questions, or that their thoughts ran in the popular channel; in a word, that their philosophy was so shallow as to render them callous to the great crimes upon which the Roman State rested.
That the subjective philosophy and the defective educational system of the Romans rendered them selfish, and hence corrupt, there is abundant evidence. Cicero professed the most lofty patriotism, but he was without moral courage. It was he who congratulated the public men of Rome, after the usurpation of Cæsar, upon the privilege of remaining “totally silent!” He regarded Pompey as “the greatest man the world had ever produced,” but deserted him in his extremity, which was equally the extremity of his country. He denounced Cæsar as the cause of the culminating misfortunes of Rome, but went down upon his knees to him, and rose to his feet only to exhaust all the resources of his matchless eloquence in fulsome adulation of the destroyer of the Republic.
Seneca’s moral precepts are sublime, but his political maxims are atrocious. Witness this pretence of an all-embracing love for man—“Whenever thou seest a fellow-creature in distress know that thou seest a human being.” Contrast with this exalted sentiment of the great stoic his political maxim—“Terror is the safeguard of a kingdom”—and reflect that he lived under the reigns of Claudius and Nero. The millions of slaves in the Roman dominions were “human beings,” but Seneca had no practical regard for them as “fellow-creatures in distress.” His beautiful humanitarian sentiment was a barren ideality—it bore no fruit; but his brutal political maxim caused him to thrive. Under the favor of Claudius he amassed a vast fortune. His palace in the city was sumptuously furnished, his country-seats were splendidly appointed, and he possessed abundance of ready money. “There can be no happiness without virtue,” exclaims this prosperous Roman citizen. But while he pens this lofty sentiment he is accused of avarice, usury, and extortion, charged with complicity in the Piso conspiracy, and banished for the crime of adultery.
The debasing influence of the Greek philosophy, upon the Roman people, is shown by contrasting the characters of the distinguished men who were honored by the public at widely separated periods of time. Thus, during the period 400-350 B.C., Camillus, noted above all his contemporaries for the purity of his public life, was uninterruptedly honored with the highest offices in the State, and loved and respected by all classes of the community. But three hundred years later Cæsar, who involved the country in civil war to compass his ambition, and in which struggle liberty perished—he was preferred, in all the political struggles preliminary to his assumption of supreme power, to Cato, whose patriotism was unquestioned, and whose rigid virtue was proverbial throughout the Roman Empire. So also of a still later period, Agricola and Germanicus were renowned for the possession of the highest qualities of true manhood, joined to the practice in public life of the most austere and self-sacrificing virtue. Both served the State with courage, ability, and zeal; but the one, after a brilliant career in the West, was forced into retirement, and the other, after splendid services in the East, was exiled and poisoned.
Previous to the introduction of the Greek philosophy, and the Greek education and social habits, the Roman people were worthy of their noblest representative—Camillus. At that early period of their history they rewarded virtue and punished vice. But during the Empire, after the invasion of Greek manners, they were unworthy of their best representatives—Cato, Germanicus, and Agricola. To those great and good men they preferred Cæsar, Caligula, and Nero: they rewarded vice and punished virtue. There is in this circumstance unquestionable evidence of a great declension in character. But the remarkable fact in regard to this period of Roman history is that the declension in character was accompanied by a species of great mental growth or power.
During this period a literature was created which has ever since been famous, and which still exerts a considerable influence upon man. Cæsar’s Commentaries, the Orations of Cicero, the Annals of Tacitus, Livy’s History, the Odes and Satires of Horace, the Meditations of Aurelius, and the Morals of Seneca are in all the world’s libraries, and, in the universities, are placed in the hands of the most favored youth of all the civilized countries of the world, as models of style and exponents of a civilization whence all modern civilizations sprung. But this literature possessed no saving quality, because in so far as it was elevated in morals it did not represent the Roman people, not even the authors themselves generally, as has been shown. As a matter of fact, during the period of the creation of the great literature of Rome, Darwin’s law of “reversion” was in active operation. There was a “black sheep” in every noble Roman family. Bad men appeared, not now and then, at long intervals, as in all civilizations, but every day and everywhere; and these men were political and social leaders. They moulded the policy of the State and set the fashion in society. Under their direction the Roman people retrograded towards a state of savagery, and savagery is but another name for selfishness. Selfishness in its worst estate is the essence of human depravity, and to that condition the Roman people fell, at the time when their moralists were inditing those sublime sentiments which still challenge the admiration of all great and good men.
That the Roman people were as dead to the influence of high moral sentiments as the Britons were when first encountered by Cæsar, shows that they had degenerated to a similar condition of savagery, or to a condition of absolute selfishness, which is its moral equivalent. Given a savage state, two savages and one dinner; the savages will fight to the death for the dinner. Given a state of civilization absolutely selfish, two contestants and one prize; each contestant will exhaust all the resources of artifice, duplicity, and falsehood to secure the prize. To this deplorable condition the Roman people were reduced by subjective educational processes. Selfishness causes the individual to seek his own interest in total disregard of the interest of others. Hence it tends directly to the disintegration of society, since the essence of the civil compact is the pledge of each member of the community that he will do no injury to his fellows. Selfishness violates this pledge; for to gain its end it ruthlessly crushes whatever appears in its path.
In Rome selfishness did its complete work. It transformed the government from a pure democracy into an oligarchy composed of wealthy citizens, who called themselves nobles. By this class wealth was made the sole standard of social and political distinction, and in its presence, and through its influence, the old strife between the patricians and the plebeians gave way to a state of hostility between the rich and the poor—always the last analysis of social disorder. The contest was distinguished by assassinations, embezzlements of the public money, the quarrels of rival demagogues, and civil wars, and it culminated in Cæsar and the empire.
The nobles, or aristocrats, who wrought the work of transformation, were refined and elegant in their manners, and accomplished in the tricks of finance, the technicalities of the law, and the arts of oratory. They were the product of the Roman schools of rhetoric and logic, whose subjective methods obscured the truth, promoted vanity, and deified selfishness. All the guards of honor and rectitude having been swept away by Cæsar, a savage contest for supremacy ensued among the aristocrats. The prize for which they contended consisted of the spoil of the Roman legions and the product of the labor of the Roman slaves. This was the Roman patrimony—the price of blood and of the sweat of enforced toil. For this prize the Roman aristocrats struggled like savages fighting for the one dinner.
It is the old struggle, the struggle witnessed by each, in turn, of the nations of antiquity—the struggle in which selfishness vanquishes itself. But this is a struggle of giants, is on a grander scale, and is more conspicuous, for the historian, pen in hand, records its bloody scenes. It is the last act in a great drama, a drama that has lasted a thousand years. It is the conclusion of the long struggle of a few large-brained, unscrupulous individuals, to grasp the fruits of the toil of all men. The conspirators are about to fail, as such conspiracies have always failed and must always fail, and like Samson in his blind fury they will pull down upon their own devoted heads the pillars of the temple. The struggle culminates in a hand-to-hand conflict for the mastery between the baffled chiefs of the conspiracy to enslave mankind—the supreme effort of selfishness—and it involves the authors and their victims in one common disaster. Once more it is proved that a false system of education, a system which exalts abstract ideas and degrades things, promotes selfishness; that selfishness is the equivalent of savagery, and that savagery, however refined, wrecks society.