initial commit of ebook 13208HEADmain

4 files changed, 12168 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/13208-8.txt b/old/13208-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a2d3a0d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/13208-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6084 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Characters and events of Roman History
+by Guglielmo Ferrero
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Characters and events of Roman History
+
+Author: Guglielmo Ferrero
+
+Release Date: August 17, 2004 [EBook #13208]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMAN HISTORY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, S.R.Ellison and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+    CHARACTERS AND EVENTS OF ROMAN HISTORY
+
+            FROM CÆSAR TO NERO
+
+
+        THE LOWELL LECTURES OF 1908
+
+                   BY
+
+         GUGLIELMO FERRERO, LITT.D.
+
+                AUTHOR OF
+
+  "THE GREATNESS AND DECLINE OF ROME," ETC.
+
+               TRANSLATED BY
+
+           FRANCES LANCE FERRERO
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  The Chautauqua Press
+
+  CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK
+
+  [Copyright deleted]
+
+  By G.P. Putnam's Sons
+
+     Fifth Printing
+
+  The Chautauqua Print Shop
+
+       Chautauqua, N.Y.
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In the spring of 1906, the Collège de France invited me to deliver,
+during November of that year, a course of lectures on Roman history.
+I accepted, giving a résumé, in eight lectures, of the history of the
+government of Augustus from the end of the civil wars to his death;
+that is, a résumé of the matter contained in the fourth and fifth
+volumes of the English edition of my work, _The Greatness and Decline
+of Rome_.
+
+Following these lectures came a request from M. Emilio Mitre, Editor
+of the chief newspaper of the Argentine Republic, the _Nacion_, and
+one from the _Academia Brazileira de Lettras_ of Rio de Janeiro, to
+deliver a course of lectures in the Argentine and Brazilian capitals.
+I gave to the South American course a more general character than
+that delivered in Paris, introducing arguments which would interest a
+public having a less specialized knowledge of history than the public
+I had addressed in Paris.
+
+When President Roosevelt did me the honour to invite me to visit the
+United States and Prof. Abbott Lawrence Lowell asked me to deliver a
+course at the Lowell Institute in Boston, I selected material from the
+two previous courses of lectures, moulding it into the group that was
+given in Boston in November-December, 1908. These lectures were later
+read at Columbia University in New York, and at the University of
+Chicago in Chicago. Certain of them were delivered elsewhere--before
+the American Philosophical Society and at the University of
+Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, at Harvard University in Cambridge, and
+at Cornell University in Ithaca.
+
+Such is the record of the book now presented to the public at large.
+It is a work necessarily made up of detached studies, which, however,
+are bound together by a central, unifying thought; so that the reading
+of them may prove useful and pleasant even to those who have already
+read my _Greatness and Decline of Rome_.
+
+The first lecture, "The Theory of Corruption in Roman History," sums
+up the fundamental idea of my conception of the history of Rome. The
+essential phenomenon upon which all the political, social, and moral
+crises of Rome depend is the transformation of customs produced by the
+augmentation of wealth, of expenditure, and of needs,--a phenomenon,
+therefore, of psychological order, and one common in contemporary
+life. This lecture should show that my work does not belong among
+those written after the method of economic materialism, for I hold
+that the fundamental force in history is psychologic and not economic.
+
+The three following lectures, "The History and Legend of Antony and
+Cleopatra," "The Development of Gaul," and "Nero," seem to concern
+themselves with very different subjects. On the contrary, they present
+three different aspects of the one, identical problem--the struggle
+between the Occident and the Orient--a problem that Rome succeeded in
+solving as no European civilisation has since been able to do, making
+the countries of the Mediterranean Basin share a common life, in
+peace. How Rome succeeded in accomplishing this union of Orient and
+Occident is one of the points of greatest interest in its history. The
+first of these three lectures, "Antony and Cleopatra," shows how
+Rome repulsed the last offensive movement of the Orient against
+the Occident; the second, "The Development of Gaul," shows the
+establishing of equilibrium between the two parts of the Empire; the
+third, "Nero," shows how the Orient, beaten upon fields of battle and
+in diplomatic action, took its revenge in the domain of Roman ideas,
+morals, and social life.
+
+The fifth lecture, "Julia and Tiberius," illustrates, by one of the
+most tragic episodes of Roman history, the terrible struggle between
+Roman ideals and habits and those of the Græco-Asiatic civilisation.
+The sixth lecture, "The Development of the Empire," summarises in a
+few pages views to be developed in detail in that part of my work yet
+to be written.
+
+I have said that not all history can be explained by economic forces
+and factors, but this does not prevent me from regarding economic
+phenomena as also of high importance. The seventh lecture, "Wine in
+Roman History," is an essay after the plan in accordance with which,
+it seems to me, economic phenomena should be treated.
+
+The last lecture deals with a subject that perhaps does not, properly
+speaking, belong to Roman history, but upon which an historian of Rome
+ought to touch sooner or later; I mean the rôle which Rome can still
+play in the education of the upper classes. It is a subject important
+not only to the historian of Rome, but to all those who are interested
+in the future of culture and civilisation. The more specialisation
+in technical labour increases, the greater becomes the necessity of
+giving the superior classes a general education, which can prepare
+specialists to understand each other and to act together in all
+matters of common interest. To imagine a society composed exclusively
+of doctors, engineers, chemists, merchants, manufacturers, is
+impossible. Every one must also be a citizen and a man in sympathy
+with the common conscience. I have, therefore, endeavoured to show
+in this eighth lecture what services Rome and its great intellectual
+tradition can render to modern civilisation in the field of education.
+
+These lectures naturally cannot do more than make known ideas in
+general form; it would be too much to expect in them the precision
+of detail, the regard for method, and the use of frequent notes,
+citations, and references to authorities or documents, that belong
+to my larger work on Rome; but they are published partly because I
+consider it useful to popularise Roman history, and partly because
+some of the pleasantest of memories attach to them. Their origin, the
+course on Augustus given at the Collège de France, which proved one of
+the happiest occasions of my life, and their development, leading
+to my travels in the two Americas, have given me experiences of the
+greatest interest and pleasure.
+
+I am glad of the opportunity here to thank all those who have
+contributed to make the sojourn of my wife and myself in the United
+States delightful. I must thank all my friends at once; for to name
+each one separately, I should need, as a Latin poet says, "a hundred
+mouths and a hundred tongues."
+
+GUGLIELMO FERRERO.
+
+TURIN, February 22, 1909.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  "CORRUPTION" IN ANCIENT ROME, AND ITS
+    COUNTERPART IN MODERN HISTORY .........   1
+  THE HISTORY AND LEGEND OF ANTONY AND
+    CLEOPATRA .............................  37
+  THE DEVELOPMENT OF GAUL .................  69
+  NERO .................................... 101
+  JULIA AND TIBERIUS ...................... 143
+  WINE IN ROMAN HISTORY ................... 179
+  SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE .. 207
+  ROMAN HISTORY IN MODERN EDUCATION ....... 239
+  INDEX ................................... 265
+
+
+
+"Corruption" in Ancient Rome And Its Counterpart in Modern History
+
+
+Two years ago in Paris, while giving a course of lectures on Augustus
+at the Collège de France, I happened to say to an illustrious
+historian, a member of the French Academy, who was complimenting me:
+"But I have not remade Roman history, as many admirers think. On
+the contrary, it might be said, in a certain sense, that I have only
+returned to the old way. I have retaken the point of view of Livy;
+like Livy, gathering the events of the story of Rome around that
+phenomenon which the ancients called the 'corruption' of customs--a
+novelty twenty centuries old!"
+
+Spoken with a smile and in jest, these words nevertheless were more
+serious than the tone in which they were uttered. All those who know
+Latin history and literature, even superficially, remember with
+what insistence and with how many diverse modulations of tone are
+reiterated the laments on the corruption of customs, on the luxury,
+the ambition, the avarice, that invaded Rome after the Second Punic
+War. Sallust, Cicero, Livy, Horace, Virgil, are full of affliction
+because Rome is destined to dissipate itself in an incurable
+corruption; whence we see, then in Rome, as to-day in France, wealth,
+power, culture, glory, draw in their train--grim but inseparable
+comrade!--a pessimism that times poorer, cruder, more troubled, had
+not known. In the very moment in which the empire was ordering itself,
+civil wars ended; in that solemn _Pax Romana_ which was to have
+endured so many ages, in the very moment in which the heart should
+have opened itself to hope and to joy, Horace describes, in three
+fine, terrible verses, four successive generations, each corrupting
+Rome, which grew ever the worse, ever the more perverse and
+evil-disposed:
+
+  Aetas parentum, peior avis, tulit
+  Nos nequiores, mox daturos
+  Progeniem vitiosiorem.
+
+"Our fathers were worse than our grandsires; we have deteriorated from
+our fathers; our sons will cause _us_ to be lamented." This is the
+dark philosophy that a sovereign spirit like Horace derived from the
+incredible triumph of Rome in the world. At his side, Livy, the great
+writer who was to teach all future generations the story of the city,
+puts the same hopeless philosophy at the base of his wonderful work:
+
+    Rome was originally, when it was poor and small, a unique
+    example of austere virtue; then it corrupted, it spoiled, it
+    rotted itself by all the vices; so, little by little, we have
+    been brought into the present condition in which we are able
+    neither to tolerate the evils from which we suffer, nor the
+    remedies we need to cure them.
+
+The same dark thought, expressed in a thousand forms, is found in
+almost every one of the Latin writers.
+
+This theory has misled and impeded my predecessors in different ways:
+some, considering that the writers bewail the unavoidable dissolution
+of Roman society at the very time when Rome was most powerful, most
+cultured, richest, have judged conventional, rhetorical, literary,
+these invectives against corruption, these praises of ancient
+simplicity, and therefore have held them of no value in the history of
+Rome. Such critics have not reflected that this conception is
+found, not only in the literature, but also in the politics and the
+legislation; that Roman history is full, not only of invectives in
+prose and verse, but of laws and administrative provisions against
+_luxuria, ambitio, avaritia_--a sign that these laments were not
+merely a foolishness of writers, or, as we say to-day, stuff for
+newspaper articles. Other critics, instead, taking account of these
+laws and administrative provisions, have accepted the ancient theory
+of Roman corruption without reckoning that they were describing as
+undone by an irreparable dissolution, a nation that not only had
+conquered, but was to govern for ages, an immense empire. In this
+conception of corruption there is a contradiction that conceals a
+great universal problem.
+
+Stimulated by this contradiction, and by the desire of solving it, to
+study more attentively the facts cited by the ancients as examples of
+corruption, I have looked about to see if in the contemporary world
+I could not find some things that resembled it, and so make myself
+understand it. The prospect seemed difficult, because modern men are
+persuaded that they are models of all the virtues. Who could think to
+find in them even traces of the famous Roman corruption? In the modern
+world to-day are the abominable orgies carried on for which the Rome
+of the Cæsars was notorious? Are there to-day Neros and Elagabaluses?
+He who studies the ancient sources, however, with but a little of the
+critical spirit, is easily convinced that we have made for ourselves
+out of the much-famed corruption and Roman luxury a notion highly
+romantic and exaggerated. We need not delude ourselves: Rome, even in
+the times of its greatest splendour, was poor in comparison with the
+modern world; even in the second century after Christ, when it stood
+as metropolis at the head of an immense empire, Rome was smaller,
+less wealthy, less imposing, than a great metropolis of Europe or
+of America. Some sumptuous public edifices, beautiful private
+houses--that is all the splendour of the metropolis of the empire.
+He who goes to the Palatine may to-day refigure for himself, from the
+so-called House of Livia, the house of a rich Roman family of the
+time of Augustus, and convince himself that a well-to-do middle-class
+family would hardly occupy such a house to-day.
+
+Moreover, the palaces of the Cæsars on the Palatine are a grandiose
+ruin that stirs the artist and makes the philosopher think; but if
+one sets himself to measure them, to conjecture from the remains the
+proportions of the entire edifices, he does not conjure up buildings
+that rival large modern constructions. The palace of Tiberius, for
+example, rose above a street only two metres wide--less than seven
+feet,--an alley like those where to-day in Italian cities live only
+the most miserable inhabitants. We have pictured to ourselves
+the imperial banquets of ancient Rome as functions of unheard of
+splendour; if Nero or Elagabalus could come to life and see the
+dining-room of a great hotel in Paris or New York--resplendent with
+light, with crystal, with silver,--he would admire it as far more
+beautiful than the halls in which he gave his imperial feasts. Think
+how poor were the ancients in artificial light! They had few wines;
+they knew neither tea nor coffee nor cocoa; neither tobacco, nor the
+innumerable _liqueurs_ of which we make use; in face of our habits,
+they were always Spartan, even when they wasted, because they lacked
+the means to squander.
+
+The ancient writers often lament the universal tendency to physical
+self-indulgence, but among the facts they cite to prove this dismal
+vice, many would seem to us innocent enough. It was judged by them
+a scandalous proof of gluttony and as insensate luxury, that at a
+certain period there should be fetched from as far as the Pontus,
+certain sausages and certain salted fish that were, it appears, very
+good; and that there should be introduced into Italy from Greece the
+delicate art of fattening fowls. Even to drink Greek wines seemed for
+a long time at Rome the caprice of an almost crazy luxury. As late
+as 18 B.C., Augustus made a sumptuary law that forbade spending for
+banquets on work-days more than two hundred sesterces (ten dollars);
+allowed three hundred sesterces (fifteen dollars) for the days of the
+Kalends, the Ides, and the Nones; and one thousand sesterces (fifty
+dollars) for nuptial banquets. It is clear, then, that the lords
+of the world banqueted in state at an expense that to us would seem
+modest indeed. And the women of ancient times, accused so sharply by
+the men of ruining them by their foolish extravagances, would cut a
+poor figure for elegant ostentation in comparison with modern dames
+of fashion. For example, silk, even in the most prosperous times, was
+considered a stuff, as we should say, for millionaires; only a few
+very rich women wore it; and, moreover, moralists detested it, because
+it revealed too clearly the form of the body. Lollia Paulina passed
+into history because she possessed jewels worth several million
+francs: there are to-day too many Lollia Paulinas for any one of them
+to hope to buy immortality at so cheap a rate.
+
+I should reach the same conclusions if I could show you what the Roman
+writers really meant by corruption in their accounts of the relations
+between the sexes. It is not possible here to make critical analyses
+of texts and facts concerning this material, for reasons that you
+readily divine; but it would be easy to prove that also in this
+respect posterity has seen the evil much larger than it was.
+
+Why, then, did the ancient writers bewail luxury, inclination
+to pleasure, prodigality--things all comprised in the notorious
+"corruption"--in so much the livelier fashion than do moderns,
+although they lived in a world which, being poorer and more simple,
+could amuse itself, make display, and indulge in dissipation so much
+less than we do? This is one of the chief questions of Roman history,
+and I flatter myself not to have entirely wasted work in writing my
+book [1] above all, because I hope to have contributed a little,
+if not actually to solve this question, at least to illuminate it;
+because in so doing I believe I have found a kind of key that opens
+at the same time many mysteries in Roman history and in contemporary
+life. The ancient writers and moralists wrote so much of Roman
+corruption, because--nearer in this, as in so many other things, to
+the vivid actuality--they understood that wars, revolutions, the great
+spectacular events that are accomplished in sight of the world, do not
+form all the life of peoples; that these occurrences, on the contrary,
+are but the ultimate, exterior explanation, the external irradiation,
+or the final explosion of an internal force that is acting constantly
+in the family, in private habit, in the moral and intellectual
+disposition of the individual. They understood that all the changes,
+internal and external, in a nation, are bound together and in part
+depend on one very common fact, which is everlasting and universal,
+and which everybody may observe if he will but look about him--on the
+increase of wants, the enlargement of ideas, the shifting of habits,
+the advance of luxury, the increase of expense that is caused by every
+generation.
+
+[Footnote 1: _The Greatness and Decline of Rome_. 5 vols. New York and
+London.];
+
+Look around you to-day: in every family you may easily observe the
+same phenomenon. A man has been born in a certain social condition and
+has succeeded during his youth and vigour in adding to his original
+fortune. Little by little as he was growing rich, his needs and his
+luxuries increased. When a certain point was reached, he stopped. The
+men are few who can indefinitely augment their particular wants, or
+keep changing their habits throughout their lives, even after the
+disappearance of vigour and virile elasticity. The increase of wants
+and of luxury, the change of habits, continues, instead, in the new
+generation, in the children, who began to live in the ease which their
+fathers won after long effort and fatigue, and in maturer age; who, in
+short, started where the previous generation left off, and therefore
+wish to gain yet new enjoyments, different from and greater than
+those that they obtained without trouble through the efforts of the
+preceding generation. It is this little common drama, which we see
+re-enacted in every family and in which every one of us has been and
+will be an actor--to-day as a young radical who innovates customs,
+to-morrow as an old conservative, out-of-date and malcontent in the
+eyes of the young; a drama, petty and common, which no one longer
+regards, so frequent is it and so frivolous it seems, but which,
+instead, is one of the greatest motive forces in human history--in
+greater or less degree, under different forms, active in all times and
+operating everywhere. On account of it no generation can live quietly
+on the wealth gathered, with the ideas discovered by antecedent
+generations, but is constrained to create new ideas, to make new and
+greater wealth by all the means at its disposal--by war and conquest,
+by agriculture and industry, by religion and science. On account of
+it, families, classes, nations, that do not succeed in adding to
+their possessions, are destined to be impoverished, because, wants
+increasing, it is necessary, in order to satisfy them, to consume the
+accumulated capital, to make debts, and, little by little, to go to
+ruin. Because of this ambition, ever reborn, classes renew themselves
+in every nation. Opulent families after a few generations are
+gradually impoverished; they decay and disappear, and from the
+multitudinous poor arise new families, creating the new _élite_ which
+continues under differing forms the doings and traditions of the old.
+Because of this unrest, the earth is always stirred up by a fervour
+for deeds or adventure--attempts that take shape according to the
+age: now peoples make war on each other, now they rend themselves in
+revolutions, now they seek new lands, explore, conquer, exploit; again
+they perfect arts and industries, enlarge commerce, cultivate
+the earth with greater assiduity; and yet again, in the ages more
+laborious, like ours, they do all these things at the same time--an
+activity immense and continuous. But its motive force is always the
+need of the new generations, that, starting from the point at which
+their predecessors had arrived, desire to advance yet farther--to
+enjoy, to know, to possess yet more.
+
+The ancient writers understood this thoroughly: what they called
+"corruption" was but the change in customs and wants, proceeding from
+generation to generation, and in its essence the same as that which
+takes place about us to-day. The _avaritia_ of which they complained
+so much, was the greed and impatience to make money that we see to-day
+setting all classes beside themselves, from noble to day-labourer; the
+_ambitio_ that appeared to the ancients to animate so frantically
+even the classes that ought to have been most immune, was what we call
+_getting there_--the craze to rise at any cost to a condition higher
+than that in which one was born, which so many writers, moralists,
+statesmen, judge, rightly or wrongly, to be one of the most dangerous
+maladies of the modern world. _Luxuria_ was the desire to augment
+personal conveniences, luxuries, pleasures--the same passion that
+stirs Europe and America to-day from top to bottom, in city and
+country. Without doubt, wealth grew in ancient Rome and grows to-day;
+men were bent on making money in the last two centuries of the
+Republic, and to-day they rush headlong into the delirious struggle
+for gold; for reasons and motives, however, and with arms and
+accoutrements, far diverse.
+
+As I have already said, ancient civilisation was narrower, poorer,
+and more ignorant; it did not hold under its victorious foot the whole
+earth; it did not possess the formidable instruments with which we
+exploit the forces and the resources of nature: but the treasures of
+precious metals transported to Italy from conquered and subjugated
+countries; the lands, the mines, the forests, belonging to such
+countries, confiscated by Rome and given or rented to Italians; the
+tributes imposed on the vanquished, and the collection of them; the
+abundance of slaves,--all these then offered to the Romans and to the
+Italians so many occasions to grow rich quickly; just as the gigantic
+economic progress of the modern world offers similar opportunities
+to-day to all the peoples that, by geographical position, historical
+tradition, or vigorous culture and innate energy, know how to excel
+in industry, in agriculture, and in trade. Especially from the Second
+Punic War on, in all classes, there followed--anxious for a life more
+affluent and brilliant--generations the more incited to follow the
+examples that emanated from the great metropolises of the Orient,
+particularly Alexandria, which was for the Romans of the Republic what
+Paris is for us to-day. This movement, spontaneous, regular, natural,
+was every now and then violently accelerated by the conquest of
+a great Oriental state. One observes, after each one of the great
+annexations of Oriental lands, a more intense delirium of luxury and
+pleasure: the first time, after the acquisition of the kingdom of
+Pergamus, through a kind of contagion communicated by the sumptuous
+furniture of King Attalus, which was sold at auction and scattered
+among the wealthy houses of Italy to excite the still simple desires
+and the yet sluggish imaginations of the Italians; the second time,
+after the conquest of Pontus and of Syria, made by Lucullus and by
+Pompey; finally, the third time, after the conquest of Egypt made by
+Augustus, when the influence of that land--the France of the ancient
+world--so actively invaded Italy that no social force could longer
+resist it.
+
+In this way, partly by natural, gradual, almost imperceptible
+diffusion, partly by violent crises, we see the mania for luxury and
+the appetite for pleasure beginning, growing, becoming aggravated
+from generation to generation in all Roman society, for two centuries,
+changing the mentality and morality of the people; we see the
+institutions and public policy being altered; all Roman history
+a-making under the action of this force, formidable and immanent in
+the whole nation. It breaks down all obstacles confronting it--the
+forces of traditions, laws, institutions, interests of classes,
+opposition of parties, the efforts of thinking men. The historical
+aristocracy becomes impoverished and weak; before it rise to power the
+millionaires, the _parvenus_, the great capitalists, enriched in the
+provinces. A part of the nobility, after having long despised them,
+sets itself to fraternise with them, to marry their wealthy daughters,
+cause them to share power; seeks to prop with their millions the
+pre-eminence of its own rank, menaced by the discontent, the spirit
+of revolt, the growing pride, of the middle class. Meanwhile, another
+part of the aristocracy, either too haughty and ambitious, or too
+poor, scorns this alliance, puts itself at the head of the democratic
+party, foments in the middle classes the spirit of antagonism against
+the nobles and the rich, leads them to the assault on the citadels of
+aristocratic and democratic power. Hence the mad internal struggles
+that redden Rome with blood and complicate so tragically, especially
+after the Gracchi, the external polity. The increasing wants of
+the members of all classes, the debts that are their inevitable
+consequence, the universal longing, partly unsatisfied for lack of
+means, for the pleasures of the subtle Asiatic civilisations, infused
+into this whole history a demoniac frenzy that to-day, after so many
+centuries, fascinates and appals us.
+
+To satisfy their wants, to pay their debts, the classes now set
+upon each other, each to rob in turn the goods of the other, in
+the cruelest civil war that history records; now, tired of doing
+themselves evil, they unite and precipitate themselves on the world
+outside of Italy, to sack the wealth that its owners do not know
+how to defend. In the great revolutions of Marius and Sulla,
+the democratic party is the instrument with which a part of the
+debt-burdened middle classes seek to rehabilitate themselves by
+robbing the plutocracy and the aristocracy yet opulent; but Sulla
+reverses the situation, makes a coalition of aristocrats and the
+miserable of the populace, and re-establishes the fortunes of the
+nobility, despoiling the wealthy knights and a part of the middle
+classes--a terrible civil war that leaves in Italy a hate, a
+despondency, a distress, that seem at a certain moment as if they must
+weigh eternally on the spirit of the unhappy nation. When, lo! there
+appears the strongest man in the history of Rome, Lucullus, and drags
+Italy out of the despondency in which it crouched, leads it into the
+ways of the world, and persuades it that the best means of forgetting
+the losses and ruin undergone in the civil wars, is to recuperate
+on the riches of the cowardly Orientals. As little by little the
+treasures of Mithridates, conquered by Lucullus in the Orient, arrive
+in Italy, Italy begins anew to divert itself, to construct palaces
+and villas, to squander in luxury. Pompey, envious of the glory of
+Lucullus, follows his example, conquers Syria, sends new treasures to
+Italy, carries from the East the jewels of Mithridates, and displaying
+them in the temple of Jove, rouses a passion for gems in the Roman
+women; he also builds the first great stone theatre to rise in
+Rome. All the political men in Rome try to make money out of foreign
+countries: those who cannot, like the great, conquer an empire,
+confine themselves to blackmailing the countries and petty states that
+tremble before the shadow of Rome; the courts of the secondary kings
+of the Orient, the court of the Ptolemies at Alexandria,--all are
+invaded by a horde of insatiable senators and knights, who, menacing
+and promising, extort money to spend in Italy and foment the growing
+extravagance. The debts pile up, the political corruption overflows,
+scandals follow, the parties in Rome rend each other madly, though
+hail-fellow-well-met in the provinces to plunder subjects and vassals.
+In the midst of this vast disorder Cæsar, the man of destiny, rises,
+and with varying fortune makes a way for himself until he beckons
+Italy to follow him, to find success and treasures in regions new--not
+in the rich and fabulous East, but beyond the Alps, in barbarous Gaul,
+bristling with fighters and forests.
+
+But this insane effort to prey on every part of the Empire finally
+tires Italy; quarrels over the division of spoils embitter friends;
+the immensity of the conquests, made in a few years of reckless
+enthusiasm, is alarming. Finally a new civil war breaks out, terrible
+and interminable, in which classes and families fall upon each other
+anew, to tear away in turn the spoils taken together abroad. Out of
+the tremendous discord rises at last the pacifier, Augustus, who is
+able gradually, by cleverness and infinite patience, to re-establish
+peace and order in the troubled empire. How?--why? Because the
+combination of events of the times allows him to use to ends of peace
+the same forces with which the preceding generations had fomented so
+much disorder--desires for ease, pleasure, culture, wealth growing
+with the generations making it. Thereupon begins in the whole Empire
+universal progress in agriculture, industry, trade, which, on a small
+scale, may be compared to what we to-day witness and share; a progress
+for which, then as now, the chief condition was peace. As soon as men
+realised that peace gives that greater wealth, those enjoyments more
+refined, that higher culture, which for a century they had sought by
+war, Italy became quiet; revolutionists became guardians and guards of
+order; there gathered about Augustus a coalition of social forces that
+tended to impose on the Empire, alike on the parts that wished it and
+those that did not, the _Pax Romana_.
+
+Now all this immense story that fills three centuries, that gathers
+within itself so many revolutions, so many legislative reforms, so
+many great men, so many events, tragic and glorious, this vast history
+that for so many centuries holds the interest of all cultured nations,
+and that, considered as a whole, seems almost a prodigy, you can, on
+the track of the old idea of "corruption," explain in its
+profoundest origins by one small fact, universal, common, of the very
+simplest--something that every one may observe in the limited circle
+of his own personal experience,--by that automatic increase of
+ambitions and desires, with every new generation, which prevents the
+human world from crystallising in one form, constrains it to continual
+changes in material make-up as well as in ideals and moral appearance.
+In other words, every new generation must, in order to satisfy that
+part of its aspirations which is peculiarly and entirely its own,
+alter, whether little or much, in one way or another, the condition
+of the world it entered at birth. We can then, in our personal
+experiences every day, verify the universal law of history--a law
+that can act with greater or less intensity, more or less rapidity,
+according to times and places, but that ceases to authenticate itself
+at no time and in no place.
+
+The United States is subject to that law to-day, as is old Europe,
+as will be future generations, and as past ages were. Moreover, to
+understand at bottom this phenomenon, which appears to me to be the
+soul of all history, it is well to add this consideration: It is
+evident that there is a capital difference between our judgment of
+this phenomenon and that of the ancients; to them it was a malevolent
+force of dissolution to which should be attributed all in Roman
+history that was sinister and dreadful, a sure sign of incurable
+decay; that is why they called it "corruption of customs," and so
+lamented it. To-day, on the contrary, it appears to us a universal
+beneficent process of transformation; so true is this that we call
+"progress" many facts which the ancients attributed to "corruption."
+It were useless to expand too much in examples; enough to cite a few.
+In the third ode of the first book, in which he so tenderly salutes
+the departing Virgil, Horace covers with invective, as an evil-doer
+and the corrupter of the human race, that impious being who invented
+the ship, which causes man, created for the land, to walk across
+waters. Who would to-day dare repeat those maledictions against the
+bold builders who construct the magnificent trans-Atlantic liners on
+which, in a dozen days from Genoa, one lands in Boston or New York?
+"Coelum ipsum petimus stultitia," exclaims Horace--that is to say, in
+anticipation he considered the Wright brothers crazy.
+
+Who, save some man of erudition, has knowledge to-day of sumptuary
+laws? We should laugh them all down with one Homeric guffaw, if to-day
+it entered somebody's head to propose a law that forbade fair ladies
+to spend more than a certain sum on their clothes, or numbered the
+hats they might wear; or that regulated dinners of ceremony, fixing
+the number of courses, the variety of wines, and the total expense; or
+that prohibited labouring men and women from wearing certain stuffs
+or certain objects that were wont to be found only upon the persons
+of people of wealth and leisure. And yet laws of this tenor were
+compiled, published, observed, up to two centuries ago, without any
+one's finding it absurd. The historic force that, as riches increase,
+impels the new generations to desire new satisfactions, new pleasures,
+operated then as to-day; only then men were inclined to consider it as
+a new kind of ominous disease that needed checking. To-day men regard
+that constant transformation either as beneficent, or at least as such
+a matter of course that almost no one heeds it; just as no one notices
+the alternations of day and night, or the change of seasons. On the
+contrary, we have little by little become so confident of the goodness
+of this force that drives the coming generation on into the unknown
+future, that society, European, American, among other liberties has
+won in the nineteenth century, full and entire, a liberty that the
+ancients did not know--freedom in vice.
+
+To the Romans it appeared most natural that the state should survey
+private habits, should spy out what a citizen, particularly a citizen
+belonging to the ruling classes, did within domestic walls--should see
+whether he became intoxicated, whether he were a gourmand, whether
+he contracted debts, spending much or little, whether he betrayed his
+wife. The age of Augustus was cultured, civilised, liberal, and in
+many things resembled our own; yet on this point the dominating ideas
+were so different from ours, that at one time Augustus was forced
+by public opinion to propose a law on adultery by which all Roman
+citizens of both sexes guilty of this crime were condemned to exile
+and the confiscation of half their substance, and there was given
+to any citizen the right to accuse the guilty. Could you imagine it
+possible to-day, even for a few weeks, to establish this regime of
+terror in the kingdom of Amor? But the ancients were always inclined
+to consider as exceedingly dangerous for the upper classes that
+relaxing of customs which always follows periods of rapid enrichment,
+of great gain in comforts; behind his own walls to-day, every one is
+free to indulge himself as he will, to the confines of crime.
+
+How can we explain this important difference in judging one of the
+essential phenomena of historic life? Has this phenomenon changed
+nature, and from bad, by some miracle, become good? Or are we wiser
+than our forefathers, judging with experience what they could hardly
+comprehend? There is no doubt that the Latin writers, particularly
+Horace and Livy, were so severe in condemning this progressive
+movement of wants because of unconscious political solicitude, because
+intellectual men expressed the opinions, sentiments, and also the
+prejudices of historic aristocracy, and this detested the progress of
+_ambitio, avaritia, luxuria_, because they undermined the dominance of
+its class. On the other hand, it is certain that in the modern
+world every increase of consumption, every waste, every vice, seems
+permissible, indeed almost meritorious, because men of industry and
+trade, the employees in industries--that is, all the people that
+gain by the diffusion of luxuries, by the spread of vices or new
+wants--have acquired, thanks above all to democratic institutions, and
+to the progress of cities, an immense political power that in times
+past they lacked. If, for example, in Europe the beer-makers and
+distillers of alcohol were not more powerful in the electoral field
+than the philosophers and academicians, governments would more easily
+recognise that the masses should not be allowed to poison themselves
+or future generations by chronic drunkenness.
+
+Between these two extremes of exaggeration, inspired by a
+self-interest easy to discover, is there not a true middle way that we
+can deduce from the study of Roman history and from the observation of
+contemporary life?
+
+In the pessimism with which the ancients regarded progress as
+corruption, there was a basis of truth, just as there is a principle
+of error in the too serene optimism with which we consider corruption
+as progress. This force that pushes the new generations on to the
+future, at once creates and destroys; its destructive energy is
+specially felt in ages like Cæsar's in ancient Rome and ours in
+the modern world, in which facility in the accumulation of wealth
+over-excites desires and ambitions in all classes. They are the times
+in which personal egoism--what to-day we call individualism--usurps
+a place above all that represents in society the interest of the
+species: national duty, the self-abnegation of each for the sake
+of the common good. Then these vices and defects become always
+more common: intellectual agitation, the weakening of the spirit
+of tradition, the general relaxation of discipline, the loss of
+authority, ethical confusion and disorder. At the same time that
+certain moral sentiments refine themselves, certain individualisms
+grow fiercer. The government may no longer represent the ideas, the
+aspirations, the energetic will of a small oligarchy; it must make
+itself more yielding and gracious at the same time that it is becoming
+more contradictory and discordant. Family discipline is relaxed;
+the new generations shake off early the influence of the past; the
+sentiment of honour and the rigour of moral, religious, and political
+principles are weakened by a spirit of utility and expediency by
+which, more or less openly, confessing it or dissimulating, men always
+seek to do, not that which is right and decorous, but that which is
+utilitarian. The civic spirit tends to die out; the number of persons
+capable of suffering, or even of working, disinterestedly for the
+common good, for the future, diminishes; children are not wanted; men
+prefer to live in accord with those in power, ignoring their vices,
+rather than openly opposing them. Public events do not interest unless
+they include a personal advantage.
+
+This is the state of mind that is now diffusing itself throughout
+Europe; the same state of mind that, with the documents at hand, I
+have found in the age of Cæsar and Augustus, and seen progressively
+diffusing itself throughout ancient Italy. The likeness is so great
+that we re-find in those far-away times, especially in the upper
+classes, exactly that restless condition that we define by the word
+"nervousness." Horace speaks of this state of mind, which we consider
+peculiar to ourselves, and describes it, by felicitous image, as
+_strenua inertia_--strenuous inertia,--agitation vain and ineffective,
+always wanting something new, but not really knowing what, desiring
+most ardently yet speedily tiring of a desire gratified. Now it
+is clear that if these vices spread too much, if they are not
+complemented by an increase of material resources, of knowledge, of
+sufficient population, they can lead a nation rapidly to ruin. We do
+not feel very keenly the fear of this danger--the European-American
+civilisation is so rich, has at its disposal so much knowledge, so
+many men, so many instrumentalities, has cut off for itself such a
+measureless part of the globe, that it can afford to look unafraid
+into the future. The abyss is so far away that only a few philosophers
+barely descry it in the gray mist of distant years. But the ancient
+world--so much poorer, smaller, weaker--felt that it could not
+squander as we do, and saw the abyss near at hand.
+
+To-day men and women waste fabulous wealth in luxury; that is, they
+spend not to satisfy some reasonable need, but to show to others of
+their kind how rich they are, or, further, to make others believe them
+richer than they are. If these resources were everywhere saved as they
+are in France, the progress of the world would be quicker, and the
+new countries would more easily find in Europe and in themselves
+the capital necessary for their development. At all events, our age
+develops fast, and notwithstanding all this waste, abounds in a plenty
+that is enough to keep men from fearing the growth of this wanton
+luxury and from planning to restrain it by laws. In the ancient world,
+on the other hand, the wealthy classes and the state had only to
+abandon themselves a little too much to the prodigality that for us
+has become almost a regular thing, when suddenly means were wanting to
+meet the most essential needs of social life. Tacitus has summarised
+an interesting discourse of Tiberius, in which the famous emperor
+censures the ladies of Rome in terms cold, incisive, and succinct,
+because they spend too much money on pearls and diamonds. "Our money,"
+said Tiberius, "goes away to India and we are in want of the precious
+metals to carry on the military administration; we have to give up
+the defence of the frontiers." According to the opinion of an
+administrator so sagacious and a general so valiant as Tiberius, in
+the richest period of the Roman Empire, a lady of Rome could not buy
+pearls and diamonds without directly weakening the defence of the
+frontiers. Indulgence in the luxury of jewels looked almost like high
+treason.
+
+Similar observations might be made on another grave question--the
+increase of population. One of the most serious effects of
+individualism that accompanies the increase of civilisation and
+wealth, is the decrease of the birth-rate. France, which knows how to
+temper its luxury, which gives to other peoples an example of saving
+means for the future, has on the other hand given the example of
+egoism in the family, lowering the birth-rate. England, for a long
+time so fecund, seems to follow France. The more uniformly settled and
+well-to-do parts of the North American Union, the Eastern States and
+New England, are even more sterile than France. However, no one of
+these nations suffers to-day from the small increase of population;
+there are yet so many poor and fecund peoples that they can easily
+fill the gaps. In the ancient world this was not the case; population
+was always and everywhere so scanty that if for some reason it
+diminished but slightly, the states could not get on, finding
+themselves at the mercy of what they called a "famine of men," a
+malady more serious and troublesome than over-population. In the Roman
+Empire the Occidental provinces finally fell into the hands of the
+barbarians, chiefly because the Græco-Latin civilisation sterilised
+the family, reducing the population incurably. No wonder that the
+ancients applied the term "corruption" to a momentum of desires which,
+although increasing culture and the refinements of living, easily
+menaced the sources of the nation's physical existence.
+
+There is, then, a more general conclusion to draw from this
+experience. It is not by chance, nor the unaccountable caprice of
+a few ancient writers, that we possess so many small facts on the
+development of luxury and the transformation of customs in ancient
+Rome; that, for example, among the records of great wars, of
+diplomatic missions, of catastrophes political and economic, we find
+given the date when the art of fattening fowls was imported into
+Italy. The little facts are not so unworthy of the majesty of Roman
+history as one at first might think. Everything is bound together in
+the life of a nation, and nothing without importance; the humblest
+acts, most personal and deepest hidden in the _penetralia_ of the
+home, that no one sees, none knows, have an effect, immediate or
+remote, on the common life of the nation. There is, between these
+small, insignificant facts and the wars, the revolutions, the
+tremendous political and social events that bewilder men, a tie, often
+invisible to most people, yet nevertheless indestructible.
+
+Nothing in the world is without import: what women spend for
+their toilet, the resistance that men make from day to day to the
+temptations of the commonest pleasures, the new and petty needs
+that insinuate themselves unconsciously into the habits of all; the
+reading, the conversations, the impressions, even the most fugacious
+that pass in our spirit--all these things, little and innumerable,
+that no historian registers, have contributed to produce this
+revolution, that war, this catastrophe, that political overturn, which
+men wonder at and study as a prodigy.
+
+The causes of how many apparently mysterious historical events would
+be more clearly and profoundly known, of how many periods would the
+spirit be better understood, did we only possess the private records
+of the families that make up the ruling classes! Every deed we do in
+the intimacy of the home reacts on the whole of our environment.
+With our every act we assume a responsibility toward the nation and
+posterity, the sanction for which, near or far away, is in events.
+This justifies, at least in part, the ancient conception by which the
+state had the right to exercise vigilance over its citizens, their
+private acts, customs, pleasures, vices, caprices. This vigilance, the
+laws that regulated it, the moral and political teachings that brought
+pressure to bear in the exercise of these laws, tended above all to
+charge upon the individual man the social responsibility of his single
+acts; to remind him that in the things most personal, aside from the
+individual pain or pleasure, there was an interest, a good or an evil,
+in common.
+
+Modern men--and it is a revolution greater than that finished in
+political form in the nineteenth century--have been freed from these
+bonds, from these obligations. Indeed, modern civilisation has made
+it a duty for each one to spend, to enjoy, to waste as much as he can,
+without any disturbing thought as to the ultimate consequences of
+what he does. The world is so rich, population grows so rapidly,
+civilisation is armed with so much knowledge in its struggle against
+the barbarian and against nature, that to-day we are able to laugh at
+the timid prudence of our forefathers, who had, as it were, a fear
+of wealth, of pleasure, of love; we can boast in the pride of triumph
+that we are the first who dare in the midst of a conquered world, to
+enjoy--enjoy without scruple, without restriction--all the good things
+life offers to the strong.
+
+But who knows? Perhaps this felicitous moment will not last forever;
+perhaps one day will see men, grown more numerous, feel the need
+of the ancient wisdom and prudence. It is at least permitted the
+philosopher and the historian to ask if this magnificent but unbridled
+freedom which we enjoy suits all times, and not only those in which
+nations coming into being can find a small dower in their cradle as
+you have done--three millions of square miles of land!
+
+
+
+The History and Legend of Antony and Cleopatra
+
+
+In the history of Rome figures of women are rare, because only men
+dominated there, imposing everywhere the brute force, the roughness,
+and the egoism that lie at the base of their nature: they honoured the
+_mater familias_ because she bore children and kept the slaves
+from stealing the flour from the bin and drinking the wine from the
+_amphore_ on the sly. They despised the woman who made of her beauty
+and vivacity an adornment of social life, a prize sought after and
+disputed by the men. However, in this virile history there does
+appear, on a sudden, the figure of a woman, strange and wonderful, a
+kind of living Venus. Plutarch thus describes the arrival of Cleopatra
+at Tarsus and her first meeting with Antony:
+
+    She was sailing tranquilly along the Cydnus, on a bark with a
+    golden stern, with sails of purple and oars of silver, and the
+    dip of the oars was rhythmed to the sound of flutes, blending
+    with music of lyres. She herself, the Queen, wondrously
+    clad as Venus is pictured, was lying under an awning gold
+    embroidered. Boys dressed as Cupids stood at her side, gently
+    waving fans to refresh her; her maidens, every one beautiful
+    and clad as a Naiad or a Grace, directed the boat, some at
+    the rudder, others at the ropes. Both banks of the stream were
+    sweet with the perfumes burning on the vessel.
+
+Posterity is yet dazzled by this ship, refulgent with purple and
+gold and melodious with flutes and lyres. If we are spellbound by
+Plutarch's description, it does not seem strange to us that Antony
+should be--he who could not only behold in person that wonderful
+Venus, but could dine with her _tête-a-tête_, in a splendour of
+torches indescribable. Surely this is a setting in no wise improbable
+for the beginning of the famous romance of the love of Antony and
+Cleopatra, and its development as probable as its beginning; the
+follies committed by Antony for the seductive Queen of the Orient,
+the divorce of Octavia, the war for love of Cleopatra, kindled in the
+whole Empire, and the miserable catastrophe. Are there not to be seen
+in recent centuries many men of power putting their greatness to risk
+and sometimes to ruin for love of a woman? Are not the love letters
+of great statesmen--for instance, those of Mirabeau and
+of Gambetta--admitted to the semi-official part of modern
+history-writing? And so also Antony could love a queen and, like so
+many modern statesmen, commit follies for her. A French critic of my
+book, burning his ships behind him, has said that Antony was a Roman
+_Boulanger_.
+
+The romance pleases: art takes it as subject and re-takes it; but that
+does not keep off the brutal hands of criticism. Before all, it should
+be observed that moderns feel and interpret the romance of Antony
+and Cleopatra in a way very different from that of the ancients. From
+Shakespeare to De Heredia and Henri Houssaye, artists and historians
+have described with sympathy, even almost idealised, this passion that
+throws away in a lightning flash every human greatness, to pursue
+the mantle of a fleeing woman; they find in the follies of Antony
+something profoundly human that moves them, fascinates them, and makes
+them indulgent. To the ancients, on the contrary, the _amours_ of
+Antony and Cleopatra were but a dishonourable degeneration of the
+passion. They have no excuse for the man whom love for a woman
+impelled to desert in battle, to abandon soldiers, friends, relatives,
+to conspire against the greatness of Rome.
+
+This very same difference of interpretation recurs in the history of
+the _amours_ of Cæsar. Modern writers regard what the ancients tell
+us of the numerous loves--real or imaginary--of Cæsar, as almost a
+new laurel with which to decorate his figure. On the contrary, the
+ancients recounted and spread abroad, and perhaps in part invented,
+these storiettes of gallantry for quite opposite reasons--as source of
+dishonour, to discredit him, to demonstrate that Cæsar was effeminate,
+that he could not give guarantee of knowing how to lead the armies
+and to fulfil the virile and arduous duties that awaited every eminent
+Roman. There is in our way of thinking a vein of romanticism wanting
+in the ancient mind. We see in love a certain forgetfulness of
+ourselves, a certain blindness of egoism and the more material
+passions, a kind of power of self-abnegation, which, inasmuch as it is
+unconscious, confers a certain nobility and dignity; therefore we are
+indulgent to mistakes and follies committed for the sake of passion,
+while the ancients were very severe. We pardon with a certain
+compassion the man who for love of a woman has not hesitated to bury
+himself under the ruin of his own greatness; the ancients, on the
+contrary, considered him the most dangerous and despicable of the
+insane.
+
+Criticism has not contented itself with re-giving to the ancient
+romance the significance it had for those that made it and the
+public that first read it. Archaeologists have discovered upon
+coins portraits of Cleopatra, and now critics have confronted these
+portraits with the poetic descriptions given by Roman historians and
+have found the descriptions generously fanciful: in the portraits we
+do not see the countenance of a Venus, delicate, gracious, smiling,
+nor even the fine and sensuous beauty of a Marquise de Pompadour, but
+a face fleshy and, as the French would say, _bouffie_; the nose,
+a powerful aquiline; the face of a woman on in years, ambitious,
+imperious, one which recalls that of Maria Theresa. It will be said
+that judgments as to beauty are personal; that Antony, who saw her
+alive, could decide better than we who see her portraits half effaced
+by the centuries; that the attractive power of a woman emanates not
+only from corporal beauty, but also--and yet more--from her spirit.
+The taste of Cleopatra, her vivacity, her cleverness, her exquisite
+art in conversation, is vaunted by all.
+
+Perhaps, however, Cleopatra, beautiful or ugly, is of little
+consequence; when one studies the history of her relations with
+Antony, there is small place, and that but toward the end, for the
+passion of love. It will be easy to persuade you of this if you follow
+the simple chronological exposition of facts I shall give you. Antony
+makes the acquaintance of Cleopatra at Tarsus toward the end of 41
+B.C., passes the winter of 41-40 with her at Alexandria; leaves her in
+the spring of 40 and stays away from her more than three years, till
+the autumn of 37. There is no proof that during this time Antony
+sighed for the Queen of Egypt as a lover far away; on the contrary, he
+attends, with alacrity worthy of praise, to preparing the conquest of
+Persia, to putting into execution the great design conceived by Cæsar,
+the plan of war that Antony had come upon among the papers of the
+Dictator the evening of the fifteenth of March, 44 B.C. All order
+social and political, the army, the state, public finance, wealth
+private and public, is going to pieces around him. The triumvirate
+power, built up on the uncertain foundation of these ruins, is
+tottering; Antony realises that only a great external success can
+give to him and his party the authority and the money necessary to
+establish a solid government, and resolves to enter into possession of
+the political legacy of his teacher and patron, taking up its central
+idea, the conquest of Persia.
+
+The difficulties are grave. Soldiers are not wanting, but money. The
+revolution has ruined the Empire and Italy; all the reserve funds have
+been dissipated; the finances of the state are in such straits that
+not even the soldiers can be paid punctually and the legions every now
+and then claim their dues by revolt. Antony is not discouraged. The
+historians, however antagonistic to him, describe him as exceedingly
+busy in those four years, extracting from all parts of the Empire that
+bit of money still in circulation. Then at one stroke, in the second
+half of 37, when, preparations finished, it is time to put hand to the
+execution, the ancient historians without in any way explaining to us
+this sudden act, most unforeseen, make him depart for Antioch to meet
+Cleopatra, who has been invited by him to join him. For what reason
+does Antony after three years, all of a sudden, re-join Cleopatra?
+The secret of the story of Antony and Cleopatra lies entirely in this
+question.
+
+Plutarch says that Antony went to Antioch borne by the fiery and
+untamed courser of his own spirit; in other words, because passion
+was already beginning to make him lose common sense. Not finding other
+explanations in the ancient writers, posterity has accepted this,
+which was simple enough; but about a century ago an erudite Frenchman,
+Letronne, studying certain coins, and comparing with them certain
+passages in ancient historians, until then remaining obscure, was able
+to demonstrate that in 36 B.C., at Antioch, Antony married Cleopatra
+with all the dynastic ceremonies of Egypt, and that thereupon Antony
+became King of Egypt, although he did not dare assume the title.
+
+The explanation of Letronne, which is founded on official documents
+and coins, is without doubt more dependable than that of Plutarch,
+which is reducible to an imaginative metaphor; and the discovery
+of Letronne, concluding that concatenation of facts that I have set
+forth, finally persuades me to affirm that not a passion of love,
+suddenly re-awakened, led Antony in the second half of 37 B.C. to
+Antioch to meet the Queen of Egypt, but a political scheme well
+thought out. Antony wanted Egypt and not the beautiful person of
+its queen; he meant by this dynastic marriage to establish the Roman
+protectorate in the valley of the Nile, and to be able to dispose,
+for the Persian campaign, of the treasures of the Kingdom of the
+Ptolemies. At that time, after the plunderings of other regions of
+the Orient by the politicians of Rome, there was but one state rich
+in reserves of precious metals, Egypt. Since, little by little, the
+economic crisis of the Roman Empire was aggravating, the Roman polity
+had to gravitate perforce toward Egypt, as toward the country capable
+of providing Rome with the capital necessary to continue its policy in
+every part of the Empire.
+
+Cæsar already understood this; his mysterious and obscure connection
+with Cleopatra had certainly for ultimate motive and reason this
+political necessity; and Antony, in marrying Cleopatra, probably only
+applied more or less shrewdly the ideas that Cæsar had originated in
+the refulgent crepuscle of his tempestuous career. You will ask me
+why Antony, if he had need of the valley of the Nile, recurred to this
+strange expedient of a marriage, instead of conquering the kingdom,
+and why Cleopatra bemeaned herself to marry the triumvir. The reply
+is not difficult to him who knows the history of Rome. There was
+a long-standing tradition in Roman policy to exploit Egypt but
+to respect its independence; it may be, because the country was
+considered more difficult to govern than in truth it was, or because
+there existed for this most ancient land, the seat of all the most
+refined arts, the most learned schools, the choicest industries,
+exceedingly rich and highly civilised, a regard that somewhat
+resembles what France imposes on the world to-day. Finally, it may be
+because it was held that if Egypt were annexed, its influence on Italy
+would be too much in the ascendent, and the traditions of the old
+Roman life would be conclusively overwhelmed by the invasion of the
+customs, the ideas, the refinements--in a word, by the corruptions
+of Egypt. Antony, who was set in the idea of repeating in Persia
+the adventure of Alexander the Great, did not dare bring about an
+annexation which would have been severely judged in Italy and which
+he, like the others, thought more dangerous than in reality it was.
+On the other hand, with a dynastic marriage, he was able to secure for
+himself all the advantages of effective possession, without running
+the risks of annexation; so he resolved upon this artifice, which,
+I repeat, had probably been imagined by Cæsar. As to Cleopatra, her
+government was menaced by a strong internal opposition, the causes for
+which are ill known; marrying Antony, she gathered about her throne,
+to protect it, formidable guards, the Roman legions.
+
+To sum up, the romance of Antony and Cleopatra covers, at least in its
+beginnings, a political treaty. With the marriage, Cleopatra seeks
+to steady her wavering power; Antony, to place the valley of the Nile
+under the Roman protectorate. How then was the famous romance born?
+The actual history of Antony and Cleopatra is one of the most tragic
+episodes of a struggle that lacerated the Roman Empire for four
+centuries, until it finally destroyed it, the struggle between Orient
+and Occident. During the age of Cæsar, little by little, without any
+one's realising it at first, there arose and fulfilled itself a fact
+of the gravest importance; that is, the eastern part of the Empire had
+grown out of proportion: first, from the conquest of the Pontus, made
+by Lucullus, who had added immense territory in Asia Minor; then by
+Pompey's conquest of Syria, and the protectorate extended by him over
+all Palestine and a considerable part of Arabia. These new districts
+were not only enormous in extension; they were also populous, wealthy,
+fertile, celebrated for ancient culture; they held the busiest
+industrial cities, the best cultivated regions of the ancient world,
+the most famous seats of arts, letters, science, therefore their
+annexation, made rapidly in few years, could but trouble the already
+unstable equilibrium of the Empire. Italy was then, compared with
+these provinces, a poor and barbarous land; because southern Italy was
+ruined by the wars of preceding epochs, and northern Italy, naturally
+the wealthier part, was still crude and in the beginning of its
+development. The other western provinces nearer Italy were poorer and
+less civilised than Italy, except Gallia Narbonensis and certain parts
+of southern Spain. So that Rome, the capital of the Empire, came to
+find itself far from the richest and most populous regions, among
+territories poor and despoiled, on the frontiers of barbarism--in such
+a situation as the Russian Empire might find itself to-day if it had a
+capital at Vladivostok or Kharbin. You know that during the last years
+of the life of Cæsar it was rumoured several times that the Dictator
+wished to remove the capital of the Empire; it was said, to Alexandria
+in Egypt, to Ilium in the district where Troy arose. It is impossible
+to judge whether these reports were true or merely invented by enemies
+of Cæsar to damage him; at any rate, true or false, they show that
+public opinion was beginning to concern itself with the "Eastern
+peril"; that is, with the danger that the seat of empire must be
+shifted toward the Orient and the too ample Asiatic and African
+territory, and that Italy be one day uncrowned of her metropolitan
+predominance, conquered by so many wars. Such hear-says must have
+seemed, even if not true, the more likely, because, in his last two
+years, Cæsar planned the conquest of Persia. Now the natural basis of
+operations for the conquest of Persia was to be found, not in Italy,
+but in Asia Minor, and if Persia had been conquered, it would not have
+been possible to govern in Rome an empire so immeasurably enlarged
+in the Orient. Everything therefore induces to the belief that this
+question was at least discussed in the coterie of the friends of
+Cæsar; and it was a serious question, because in it the traditions,
+the aspirations, the interests of Italy were in irreconcilable
+conflict with a supreme necessity of state which one day or other
+would impose itself, if some unforeseen event did not intervene to
+solve it.
+
+In the light of these considerations, the conduct of Antony becomes
+very clear. The marriage at Antioch, by which he places Egypt under
+the Roman protectorate, is the decisive act of a policy that looks
+to transporting the centre of his government toward the Orient, to be
+able to accomplish more securely the conquest of Persia. Antony, the
+heir of Cæsar, the man who held the papers of the Dictator, who knew
+his hidden thoughts, who wished to complete the plans cut off by his
+death, proposes to conquer Persia; to conquer Persia, he must rely on
+the Oriental provinces that were the natural basis of operations for
+the great enterprise; among these, Antony must support himself above
+all on Egypt, the richest and most civilised and most able to supply
+him with the necessary funds, of which he was quite in want. Therefore
+he married the Cleopatra whom, it was said at Rome, Cæsar himself had
+wished to marry--with whom, at any rate, Cæsar had much dallied and
+intrigued. Does not this juxtaposition of facts seem luminous to you?
+In 36 B.C., Antony marries Cleopatra, as a few years before he had
+married Octavia, the sister of the future Augustus, for political
+reasons--in order to be able to dispose of the political subsidies and
+finances of Egypt, for the conquest of Persia. The conquest of Persia
+is the ultimate motive of all his policy, the supreme explanation of
+his every act.
+
+However, little by little, this move, made on both sides from
+considerations of political interest, altered its character under the
+action of events, of time, through the personal influence of Antony
+and Cleopatra upon each other, and above all, the power that Cleopatra
+acquired over Antony: here is truly the most important part of all
+this story. Those who have read my history know that I have recounted
+hardly any of the anecdotes, more or less odd or entertaining,
+with which ancient writers describe the intimate life of Antony and
+Cleopatra, because it is impossible to discriminate in them the part
+that is fact from that which was invented or exaggerated by political
+enmity. In history the difficulty of recognising the truth gradually
+increases as one passes from political to private life; because in
+politics the acts of men and of parties are always bound together by
+either causes or effects of which a certain number is always exactly
+known; private life, on the other hand, is, as it were, isolated and
+secret, almost invariably impenetrable. What a great man of state does
+in his own house, his valet knows better than the historians of later
+times.
+
+If for these reasons I have thought it prudent not to accept in my
+work the stories and anecdotes that the ancients recount of Antony and
+Cleopatra, without indeed risking to declare them false, it is, on the
+contrary, not possible to deny that Cleopatra gradually acquired great
+ascendency over the mind of Antony. The circumstance is of itself
+highly probable. That Cleopatra was perhaps a Venus, as the ancients
+say, or that she was provided with but a mediocre beauty, as declare
+the portraits, matters little: it is, however, certain that she was
+a woman of great cleverness and culture; as woman and queen of
+the richest and most civilised realm of the ancient world, she was
+mistress of all those arts of pleasure, of luxury, of elegance,
+that are the most delicate and intoxicating fruit of all mature
+civilisations. Cleopatra might refigure, in the ancient world, the
+wealthiest, most elegant, and cultured Parisian lady in the world of
+to-day.
+
+Antony, on the other hand, was the descendant of a family of that
+Roman nobility which still preserved much rustic roughness in tastes,
+ideas, habits; he grew up in times in which the children were
+still given Spartan training; he came to Egypt from a nation which,
+notwithstanding its military and diplomatic triumphs, could be
+considered, compared with Egypt, only poor, rude, and barbarous. Upon
+this intelligent man, eager for enjoyment, who had, like other
+noble Romans, already begun to taste the charms of intellectual
+civilisation, it was not Cleopatra alone that made the keenest of
+impressions, but all Egypt, the wonderful city of Alexandria, the
+sumptuous palace of the Ptolemies--all that refined, elegant splendour
+of which he found himself at one stroke the master. What was there
+at Rome to compare with Alexandria?--Rome, in spite of its imperial
+power, abandoned to a fearful disorder by the disregard of factions,
+encumbered with ruin, its streets narrow and wretched, provided as
+yet with but a single _forum_, narrow and plain, the sole impressive
+monument of which was the theatre of Pompey; Rome, where the life was
+yet crude, and objects of luxury so rare that they had to be brought
+from the distant Orient? At Alexandria, instead, the Paris of the
+ancient world, were to be found all the best and most beautiful things
+of the earth. There was a sumptuosity of public edifices that the
+ancients never tire of extolling--the quay seven _stadia_ long,
+the lighthouse famous all over the Mediterranean, the marvellous
+zoölogical garden, the Museum, the Gymnasium, innumerable temples, the
+unending palace of the Ptolemies. There was an abundance, unheard of
+for those times, of objects of luxury--rugs, glass, stuffs, papyruses,
+jewels, artistic pottery--because they made all these things at
+Alexandria. There was an abundance, greater than elsewhere, of silk,
+of perfumes, of gems, of all the things imported from the extreme
+East, because through Alexandria passed one of the most frequented
+routes of Indo-Chinese commerce. There, too, were innumerable artists,
+writers, philosophers, and _savants_; society life and intellectual
+life alike fervid; continuous movement to and fro of traffic,
+continual passing of rare and curious things; countless amusements;
+life, more than elsewhere, safe--at least so it was believed--because
+at Alexandria were the great schools of medicine and the great
+scientific physicians.
+
+If other Italians who landed in Alexandria were dazzled by so many
+splendours, Antony ought to have been blinded; _he_ entered Alexandria
+as King. He who was born at Rome in the small and simple house of an
+impoverished noble family who had been brought up with Latin parsimony
+to eat frugally, to drink wine only on festival occasions, to wear
+the same clothes a long time, to be served by a single slave--this man
+found himself lord of the immense palace of the Ptolemies, where
+the kitchens alone were a hundred times larger than the house of his
+fathers at Rome; where there were gathered for his pleasure the most
+precious treasures and the most marvellous collections of works of
+art; where there were trains of servants at his command, and every
+wish could be immediately gratified. It is therefore not necessary to
+suppose that Antony was foolishly enamoured of the Queen of Egypt, to
+understand the change that took place in him after their marriage, as
+he tasted the inimitable life of Alexandria, that elegance, that ease,
+that wealth, that pomp without equal.
+
+A man of action, grown in simplicity, toughened by a rude life, he
+was all at once carried into the midst of the subtlest and most highly
+developed civilisation of the ancient world and given the greatest
+facilities to enjoy and abuse it that ever man had: as might have been
+expected, he was intoxicated; he contracted an almost insane passion
+for such a life; he adored Egypt with such ardour as to forget for it
+the nation of his birth and the modest home of his boyhood. And then
+began the great tragedy of his life, a tragedy not love-inspired, but
+political. As the hold of Egypt strengthened on his mind, Cleopatra
+tried to persuade him not to conquer Persia, but to accept openly
+the kingdom of Egypt, to found with her and with their children a new
+dynasty, and to create a great new Egyptian Empire, adding to Egypt
+the better part of the provinces that Rome possessed in Africa and in
+Asia, abandoning Italy and the provinces of the West forever to their
+destiny.
+
+Cleopatra had thought to snatch from Rome its Oriental Empire by the
+arm of Antony, in that immense disorder of revolution; to reconstruct
+the great Empire of Egypt, placing at its head the first general of
+the time, creating an army of Roman legionaries with the gold of the
+Ptolemies; to make Egypt and its dynasty the prime potentate of Africa
+and Asia, transferring to Alexandria the political and diplomatic
+control of the finest parts of the Mediterranean world.
+
+As the move failed, men have deemed it folly and stupidity; but he who
+knows how easy it is to be wise after events, will judge this confused
+policy of Cleopatra less curtly. At any rate, it is certain that her
+scheme failed more because of its own inconsistencies than through the
+vigour and ability with which Rome tried to thwart it; it is certain
+that in the execution of the plan, Antony felt first in himself
+the tragic discord between Orient and Occident that was so long to
+lacerate the Empire; and of that tragic discord he was the first
+victim. An enthusiastic admirer of Egypt, an ardent Hellenist, he is
+lured by his great ambition to be king of Egypt, to renew the famous
+line of the Ptolemies, to continue in the East the glory and the
+traditions of Alexander the Great: but the far-away voice of his
+fatherland still sounds in his ear; he recalls the city of his birth,
+the Senate in which he rose so many times to speak, the _Forum_ of his
+orations, the Comitia that elected him to magistracies; Octavia, the
+gentlewoman he had wedded with the sacred rites of Latin monogamy; the
+friends and soldiers with whom he had fought through so many countries
+in so many wars; the foundation principles at home that ruled the
+family, the state, morality, public and private.
+
+Cleopatra's scheme, viewed from Alexandria, was an heroic undertaking,
+almost divine, that might have lifted him and his scions to the
+delights of Olympus; seen from Rome, by his childhood's friends,
+by his comrades in arms, by that people of Italy who still so much
+admired him, it was the shocking crime of faithlessness to his
+country; we call it high treason. Therefore he hesitates long,
+doubting most of all whether he can keep for the new Egyptian Empire
+the Roman legions, made up largely of Italians, all commanded by
+Italian officers. He does not know how to oppose a resolute _No_ to
+the insistences of Cleopatra and loose himself from the fatal bond
+that keeps him near her; he can not go back to live in Italy after
+having dwelt as king in Alexandria. Moreover, he does not dare declare
+his intentions to his Roman friends, fearing they will scatter; to the
+soldiers, fearing they will revolt; to Italy, fearing her judgment of
+him as a traitor; and so, little by little, he entangles himself
+in the crooked policy, full of prevarications, of expedients, of
+subterfuges, of one mistake upon another, that leads him to Actium.
+
+I think I have shown that Antony succumbed in the famous war not
+because, mad with love, he abandoned the command in the midst of the
+battle, but because his armies revolted and abandoned him when they
+understood what he had not dared declare to them openly: that he
+meant to dismember the Empire of Rome to create the new Empire of
+Alexandria. The future Augustus conquered at Actium without effort,
+merely because the national sentiment of the soldiery, outraged by the
+unforeseen revelation of Antony's treason, turned against the man who
+wanted to aggrandise Cleopatra at the expense of his own country.
+
+And then the victorious party, the party of Augustus, created the
+story of Antony and Cleopatra that has so entertained posterity; this
+story is but a popular explanation--in part imaginatively exaggerated
+and fantastic--of the Eastern peril that menaced Rome, of both its
+political phase and its moral. According to the story that Horace has
+put into such charming verse, Cleopatra wished to conquer Italy, to
+enslave Rome, to destroy the Capitol; but Cleopatra alone could not
+have accomplished so difficult a task; she must have seduced Antony,
+made him forget his duty to his wife, to his legitimate children,
+to the Republic, the soldiery, his native land,--all the duties
+that Latin morals inculcated into the minds of the great, and that
+a shameless Egyptian woman, rendered perverse by all the arts of the
+Orient, had blotted out in his soul; therefore Antony's tragic
+fate should serve as a solemn warning to distrust the voluptuous
+seductions, of which Cleopatra symbolised the elegant and fatal
+depravity. The story was magnified, coloured, diffused, not because it
+was beautiful and romantic, but because it served the interests of the
+political _coterie_ that gained definite control of the government
+on the ruin of Antony. At Actium, the future Augustus did not fight a
+real war, he only passively watched the power of the adversary go
+to pieces, destroyed by its own internal contradictions. He did not
+decide to conquer Egypt until the public opinion of Italy, enraged
+against Antony and Cleopatra, required this vengeance with such
+insistence that he had to satisfy it.
+
+If Augustus was not a man too quick in action, he was, instead, keenly
+intelligent in comprehending the situation created by the catastrophe
+of Antony in Italy, where already, for a decade of years, public
+spirit, frightened by revolution, was anxious to return to the ways
+of the past, to the historic sources of the national life. Augustus
+understood that he ought to stand before Italy, disgusted as it
+was with long-continued dissension and eager to retrace the way
+of national tradition, as the embodiment of all the virtues his
+contemporaries set in opposition to eastern "corruption,"--simplicity,
+severity of private habits, rigid monogamy, the anti-feministic
+spirit, the purely virile idea of the state. Naturally, the exaltation
+of these virtues required the portrayal in his rival of Actium, as
+far as possible, the opposite defects; therefore the efforts of his
+friends, like Horace, to colour the story of Antony and Cleopatra,
+which should magnify to the Italians the idea of the danger from
+which Augustus had saved them at Actium; which was meant to serve as a
+barrier against the invading Oriental "corruption," that "corruption"
+the essence of which I have already analysed.
+
+In a certain sense, the legend of Antony and Cleopatra is chiefly an
+antifeminist legend, intended to reinforce in the state the power of
+the masculine principle, to demonstrate how dangerous it may be to
+leave to women the government of public affairs, or follow their
+counsel in political business.
+
+The people believed the legend; posterity has believed it. Two years
+ago when I published in the _Revue de Paris_ an article in which I
+demonstrated, by obvious arguments, the incongruities and absurdities
+of the legend, and tried to retrace through it the half-effaced lines
+of the truth, everybody was amazed. From one end of Europe to the
+other, the papers résuméd the conclusions of my study as an astounding
+revelation. An illustrious French statesman, a man of the finest
+culture in historical study, Joseph Reinach, said to me:
+
+    After your article I have re-read Dion and Plutarch. It is
+    indeed singular that for twenty centuries men have read and
+    reread those pages without any one's realising how confused
+    and absurd their accounts are.
+
+It seems to be a law of human psychology that almost all historic
+personages, from Minos to Mazzini, from Judas to Charlotte Corday,
+from Xerxes to Napoleon, are imaginary personages; some transfigured
+into demigods, by admiration and success; the others debased by hate
+and failure. In reality, the former were often uglier, the latter more
+attractive than tradition has pictured them, because men in general
+are neither too good nor too bad, neither too intelligent nor
+too stupid. In conclusion, historic tradition is full of deformed
+caricatures and ideal transfigurations; because, when they are dead,
+the impression of their political contemporaries still serves the ends
+of parties, states, nations, institutions. Can this man exalt in a
+people the consciousness of its own power, of its own energy, of
+its own value? Lo, then they make a god of him, as of Napoleon or
+Bismarck. Can this other serve to feed in the mass, odium and scorn
+of another party, of a government, of an order of things that it is
+desirable to injure? Then they make a monster of him, as happened in
+Rome to Tiberius, in France to Napoleon III, in Italy to all who for
+one motive or another opposed the unification of Italy.
+
+It is true that after a time the interests that have coloured
+certain figures with certain hues and shades disappear; but then the
+reputation, good or bad, of a personage is already made; his name is
+stamped on the memory of posterity with an adjective,--the great, the
+wise, the wicked, the cruel, the rapacious,--and there is no human
+force that can dissever name from adjective. Some far-away historian,
+studying all the documents, examining the sequence of events, will
+confute the tradition in learned books; but his work not only will not
+succeed in persuading the ignorant multitude, but must also contend
+against the multiplied objections offered by the instinctive
+incredulity of people of culture.
+
+You will say to me, "What is the use of writing history? Why spend so
+much effort to correct the errors in which people will persist just
+as if the histories were never written?" I reply that I do not believe
+that the office of history is to give to men who have guided the great
+human events a posthumous justice. It is already work serious enough
+for every generation to give a little justice to the living,
+rather than occupy itself rendering it to the dead, who indeed, in
+contradistinction from the living, have no need of it. The study of
+history, the rectification of stories of the past, ought to serve
+another and practical end; that is, train the men who govern
+nations to discern more clearly than may be possible from their own
+environment the truth underlying the legends. As I have already said,
+passions, interests, present historic personages in a thousand forms
+when they are alive, transfiguring not only the persons themselves,
+but events the most diverse, the character of institutions, the
+conditions of nations.
+
+It is generally believed that legends are found only at the dawn
+of history, in the poetic period; that is a great mistake; the
+legend--the legend that deceives, that deforms, that misdirects--is
+everywhere, in all ages, in the present as in the past--in the present
+even more than in the past, because it is the consequence of certain
+universal forms of thought and of sentiment. To-day, just as ten or
+twenty centuries ago, interests and passions dominate events, alter
+them and distort them, creating about them veritable romances, more
+or less probable. The present, which appears to all to be the same
+reality, is instead, for most people, only a huge legend, traversed by
+contemporaries stirred by the most widely differing sentiments.
+
+However the mass may content itself with this legend, throbbing
+with hate and love, with hope and the fear of its own self-created
+phantoms, those who guide and govern the masses ought to try to divine
+the truth, as far as they can. A great man of state is distinguished
+from a mediocre by his greater ability to divine the real in his world
+of action beneath its superfice of confused legends; by his greater
+ability to discriminate in everything what is true from what is merely
+apparently true, in the prestige of states and institutions, in the
+forces of parties, in the energy attributed to certain men, in the
+purposes claimed by parties and men, often different from their
+real designs. To do that, some natural disposition is necessary, a
+liveliness of intuition that must come with birth; but this faculty
+can be refined and trained by a practical knowledge of men, by
+experience in things, and by the study of history. In the ages dead,
+when the interests that created their legends have disappeared, we
+can discover how those great popular delusions, which are one of the
+greatest forces of history, are made and how they work. We may thus
+fortify the spirit to withstand the cheating illusions that surround
+us, coming from every part of the vast modern world, in which so
+many interests dispute dominion over thoughts and will. In this sense
+alone, I believe that history may teach, not the multitude, which will
+never learn anything from it, but, impelled by the same passions,
+will always repeat the same errors and the same foolishnesses; but
+the chosen few, who, charged with directing the game of history, have
+concern in knowing as well as they can its inner law. Taken in this
+way, history may be a great teacher, in its every page, every line,
+and the study of the legend of Antony and Cleopatra may itself even
+serve to prepare the spirit of a diplomat, who must treat between
+state and state the complicated economic and political affairs of
+the modern world. And so, in conclusion, history and life interchange
+mutual services; life teaches history, and history, life; observing
+the present, we help ourselves to know the past, and from the study of
+the past we can return to our present the better tempered and prepared
+to observe and comprehend it. In present and in past, history can form
+a kind of wisdom set apart, in a certain sense aristocratic, above
+what the masses know, at least as to the universal laws that govern
+the life of nations.
+
+
+
+The Development of Gaul
+
+
+In estimating distant historical events, one is often the victim of
+an error of perspective; that is, one is disposed to consider as the
+outcome of a pre-established plan of human wisdom what is the final
+result, quite unforeseen, of causes that acted beyond the foresight of
+contemporaries. At the distance of centuries, turning back to consider
+the past, we can easily find out that the efforts of one or two
+generations have produced certain effects on the actual condition of
+the world; and then we conclude that those generations meant to
+reach that result. On the contrary, men almost always face the future
+proposing to themselves impossible ends; notwithstanding which, their
+efforts, accumulating, destroying, interweaving, bring into being
+consequences that no one had foreseen or planned, the novelty or
+importance of which often only future generations realise. Columbus,
+who, fixed in the idea of reaching India by sailing west, finds
+America on his way and does not recognise it at once but is persuaded
+that he has landed in India, symbolises the lot of man in history.
+
+Of this phenomenon, which is to me a fundamental law of history,
+there is a classic example in the story of Rome: the conquest of Gaul.
+Without doubt, one of the greatest works of Rome was the conquest and
+Romanisation of Gaul: indeed that conquest and Romanisation of Gaul
+is the beginning of European civilisation; for before the Græco-Latin
+civilisation reached the Rhine over the ways opened by the Roman
+sword, the continent of Europe had centres of civilisation on
+the coast or in its projecting extremities, like Italy, Bætica,
+Narbonensis; but the interior was still entirely in the power of a
+turbulent and restless barbarism, like the African continent to-day.
+Moreover, what Rome created in Asia and Africa was almost entirely
+destroyed by ages following; on the contrary, Rome yet lives in
+France, to which it gave its language, its spirit, and the traditions
+of its thought. Exactly for this reason it is particularly important
+to explain how such an outcome was brought about, and by what historic
+forces. From the propensity to consider every great historical
+event as wholly a masterpiece of human genius, many historians have
+attributed also this accomplishment to a prodigious, well-nigh divine
+wisdom on the part of the Romans, and Julius Cæsar is regarded as
+a demigod who had fixed his gaze upon the far, far distant future.
+However, it is not difficult, studying the ancient documents with
+critical spirit, to persuade oneself that even if Cæsar was a man of
+genius, he was not a god; that from beginning to end, the real story
+of the conquest of Gaul is very different from the commonly accepted
+version.
+
+I hope to demonstrate that Cæsar threw himself into the midst of
+Gallic affairs, impelled by slight incidents of internal politics,
+not only without giving any thought whatever to the future destiny
+of Gaul, but without even knowing well the conditions existing there.
+Gaul was then for all Romans a barbarous region, poor, gloomy, full
+of swamps and forests in which there would be much fighting and little
+booty: no one was thinking then of having Roman territory cross the
+Alps; everyone was infatuated by the story of Alexander the Great,
+dreaming only of conquering like him all the rich and civilised
+Orient; everyone, even Cæsar. Only a sequence of political accidents
+pushed him in spite of himself into Gaul.
+
+In 62 B.C., Pompey had returned from the Orient, where he had finished
+the conquest of Pontus, begun by Lucullus, and annexed Syria. On his
+return, the conservative party, irritated against him because he had
+gone over to the opposite side, and having been given something to
+think of by the prestige that the policy of expansion was winning
+for the popular party, had succeeded by many intrigues in keeping
+the Senate from ratifying what he had done in the East. This internal
+struggle closed the Orient for several years to the adventurous
+initiatives of the political imperialists; for as long as the
+administration of Pompey remained unapproved, it was impossible to
+think of undertaking new enterprises or conquests in Asia and Africa;
+and therefore, of necessity, Roman politics, burning for conquest and
+adventure, had to turn to another part of Europe.
+
+The letters of Cicero prove to us that Cæsar was not the first to
+think that Rome, having its hands tied for the moment in the East,
+ought to interfere in the affairs of Gaul. The man who first had the
+idea of a Gallic policy was Quintus Metellus Celerus, husband of the
+famous Clodia, and consul the year before Cæsar. Taking advantage of
+certain disturbances arisen in Gaul from the constant wars between the
+differing parts, Metellus had persuaded the Senate to authorise him to
+make war on the Helvetians. At the beginning of the year 59, that is,
+the year in which Cæsar was consul, Metellus was already preparing
+to depart for the war in Gaul, when suddenly he died; and then Cæsar,
+profiting by the interest in Rome for Gallic affairs, had the mission
+previously entrusted to Metellus given to himself and took up both
+Metellus's office and his plan. Here you see at the beginning of this
+story the first accident,--the death of Metellus. An historian curious
+of nice and unanswerable questions might ask himself what would have
+been the history of the world if Metellus had not died. Certainly Rome
+would have been occupied with Gallic concerns a year sooner and by
+a different man; Cæsar would probably have had to seek elsewhere a
+brilliant proconsulship and things Gallic would have for ever escaped
+his energy.
+
+However it be, charged with the affairs of Gaul accidentally and
+unexpectedly, Cæsar went there without well knowing the condition of
+it, and, in fact, as I think I proved in a long appendix published in
+the French and English editions of my work, he began his Gallic policy
+with a serious mistake; that is, attacking the Helvetians. A superior
+mind, Cæsar was not long in finding his bearings in the midst of the
+tremendous confusion he found in Gaul; but for this, there is no need
+to think that he carried out in the Gallic policy vast schemes, long
+meditated: he worked, instead, as the uncertain changes of Roman
+politics imposed. I believe that there is but one way to understand
+and reasonably explain the policy pursued by Cæsar in Gaul, his sudden
+moves, his zigzags, his audacities, his mistakes; that is, to study
+it from Rome, to keep always in mind the internal changes, the party
+struggle, in which he was involved at Rome. In short, Gaul was for
+Cæsar only a means to operate on the internal politics of Rome, of
+which he made use from day to day, as the immediate interest of the
+passing hour seemed to require.
+
+I cite a single example, but the most significant. Cæsar declared Gaul
+a Roman province and annexed it to the Empire toward the end of
+57 B.C.; that is, at the end of his second year as proconsul,
+unexpectedly, with no warning act to intimate such vigorous intent,--a
+surprise; and why? Look to Rome and you will understand. In 57 B.C.,
+the democratic party, demoralised by discords, upset by the popular
+agitation to recall Cicero from unjust exile, discredited by scandals,
+especially the Egyptian scandals, seemed on the point of going to
+pieces. Cæsar understood that there was but one way to stop this
+ruin: to stun public opinion and all Italy with some highly audacious
+surprise. The surprise was the annexation of Gaul. Declaring Gaul a
+Roman province after the victory over the Belgæ, he convinced Rome
+that he had in two years overcome all Gallic adversaries. And so, the
+conquest of Gaul--this event that was to open a new era, this event,
+the effects of which still endure--was, at the beginning in the mind
+that conceived and executed it, nothing but a bold political expedient
+in behalf of a party, to solve a situation compromised by manifold
+errors.
+
+But you will ask me: how from so tiny a seed could ever grow so mighty
+a tree, covering with its branches so much of the earth? You know that
+at the close of the proconsulship in Gaul, there breaks out a great
+civil war; this lasts, with brief interruptions and pauses, until
+the battle of Actium. Only toward 30 B.C., is the tempest lulled, and
+during this time Gaul seems almost to disappear; the ancient writers
+hardly mention it, except from time to time for a moment to let us
+know that some unimportant revolt broke out, now here, now there, in
+the vast territory; that this or that general was sent to repress it.
+
+The civil wars ended, the government of Rome turns its attention to
+the provinces anew, but for another reason. Saint Jerome tells us that
+in 25 B.C., Augustus increased the tribute from the Gauls: we find
+no difficulty in getting at the reason of this fact. The thing most
+urgent after the re-establishment of peace was the re-arrangement of
+finance; that signified then, as always, an increase of imposts:
+but more could not be extorted from the Oriental provinces, already
+exhausted by so many wars and plunderings; therefore the idea to
+draw greater revenues from the European provinces of recent conquest,
+particularly from Gaul, which until then had paid so little. So
+you see a-forging one link after another in the chain: Cæsar for a
+political interest conquers Gaul; thirty years afterward Augustus goes
+there to seek new revenues for his balance-sheet; thence-forward
+there are always immediate needs that urge Roman politics into Gallic
+affairs: and so it is that little by little Roman politics become
+permanently involved, by a kind of concatenation, not by deliberate
+plan.
+
+We can easily follow the process. Augustus had left in Gaul to exact
+the new tribute, a former slave of Cæsar's, afterward liberated,--a
+Gaul or German whom Cæsar had captured as a child in one of his
+expeditions and later freed, because of his consummate administrative
+ability. It appears, however, that, for the Gauls at least, this
+ability was even too great. In a curious chapter Dion tells us that
+Licinius, this freedman, uniting the avarice of a barbarian to the
+pretences of a Roman, beat down everyone that seemed greater than he;
+oppressed all those who seemed to have more power; extorted enormous
+sums from all, were they to fill out the dues of his office, or to
+enrich himself and his family. His rascality was so stupendous that
+since the Gauls paid certain taxes every month, he increased to
+fourteen the number of the months, declaring that December, the last,
+was only the tenth; consequently it was necessary to count two more,
+one called Undecember and another, Duodecember.
+
+I would not guarantee this story true, since, when there is introduced
+into a nation a new and more burdensome system of taxes, there are
+always set in circulation tales of this kind about the rapacity of
+the persons charged with collecting them: but true or false, the tale
+shows that the Gauls were much irritated by the new tribute; indeed
+this irritation increased so much that in the winter from the year 15
+till the year 14 B.C., Augustus, having to remain in Gaul on account
+of certain serious complications, arisen in Germany, was obliged to
+give his attention to it during his stay. The prominent men of
+Gaul presented vigorous complaints to him against Licinius and his
+administration. Then there occurred an episode that, recounted three
+centuries later with a certain naïveté by Dion Cassius, has been
+overlooked by the historians, but which seems to me to be of prime
+interest in the history of the Latin world. Dion writes:
+
+    Augustus, not able to avoid blaming Licinius for the many
+    denunciations and revelations of the Gallic chiefs, sought in
+    other things to excuse him; he pretended not to know certain
+    facts, made believe not to accept others, being ashamed to
+    have placed such a procurator in Gaul. Licinius, however,
+    extricated himself from the danger by a decidedly original
+    expedient. When he realised that Augustus was displeased and
+    that he was running great risk of being punished, he conducted
+    that Prince to his house, and showing him his numerous
+    treasuries full of gold and silver, enormous piles of objects
+    made of precious metals, said:--"My lord, only for your good
+    and that of the Romans have I amassed all these riches. I
+    feared that the natives, fortified by such wealth, might
+    revolt, if I left them to them: therefore I have placed them
+    in safe-keeping for you and I give them to you." So, by his
+    pretext that he had thus broken the power of the barbarians
+    for the sake of Augustus, Licinius saved himself from danger.
+
+This incident has without doubt the smack of legend. Ought we
+therefore to conclude that it is wholly invented? No, because in
+history the distortions of the truth are much more numerous than
+are inventions. This page of Dion is important. It preserves for
+us, presented in a dramatic scene between Augustus and Licinius, the
+record of a very serious dispute carried on between the notable men of
+Gaul and Licinius, in the presence of Augustus. The Gauls complain of
+paying too many imposts: Licinius replies that Gaul is very rich;
+that it grows rich quickly and therefore it ought to pay as much as is
+demanded of it, and more. Not only did the freedman show rooms full of
+gold and silver to his lord; he showed him the great economic progress
+of Gaul, its marvellous future, the immense wealth concealed in
+its soil and in the genius of its inhabitants. In other words, this
+chapter of Dion makes us conclude that Rome--that is, the small
+oligarchy that was directing its politics--realised that the Gaul
+conquered by Cæsar, the Gaul that had always been considered as
+a country cold and sterile, was instead a magnificent province,
+naturally rich, from which they might get enormous treasure. This
+discovery was made in the winter of 15-14 B.C.; that is, forty-three
+years after Cæsar had added the province to the Empire; forty-three
+years after they had possessed without knowing what they possessed,
+like some _grand seigneur_ who unwittingly holds among the common
+things of his patrimony some priceless object, the value of which only
+an accident on a sudden reveals.
+
+This chapter of Dion allows us also to affirm that he who first
+realised the value of Gaul and opened the eyes of Augustus, was no
+great personage of the Roman aristocracy whose names are written in
+such lofty characters on the pages of history, whose images are yet
+found in marble and bronze among the museums of Europe; no one of
+those who ruled the Empire and therefore according to reason and
+justice had the responsibility of governing it well: it was, instead,
+an obscure freedman, whose ability the masters of the Empire scorned
+to exploit except as to-day a peasant uses the forces of his ox,
+hardly deigning to look at him and yet deeming all his labour but the
+owner's natural right.
+
+So stands the story. The Gallic freedman observed, and understood, and
+was forgotten; posterity, instead, has had to wonder over the profound
+wisdom of the Roman aristocrat, who understood nothing. Moreover, if
+in 14 B.C. Licinius had to make an effort to persuade the surprised
+and diffident Augustus that Gaul was a province of great future, it is
+clear that Gaul must already have begun to grow rich by itself without
+the Roman government's having done anything to promote its progress.
+
+From what hidden sources sprang forth this new wealth of Gaul? All the
+documents that we possess authorise us to respond that Gaul--to begin
+from the time of Augustus--was able to grow rich quickly, because the
+events following the Roman conquest turned and disposed the general
+conditions of the Empire in its favour. Gaul then, as France now, was
+endowed with several requisites essential to its becoming a nation of
+great economic development: a land very fertile; a population dense
+for the times, intelligent, wide-awake, active; a climate that, even
+though it seemed to Greeks and Romans cold and foggy, was better
+suited to intense activity than the warm and sunny climate of the
+South; and finally,--a supreme advantage in ancient civilisation,--it
+was everywhere intersected, as by a network of canals, by navigable
+rivers. In ancient times transport by land was very expensive;
+water was the natural and economic vehicle of commerce: therefore
+civilisation was able to enter with commerce into the interior of
+continents only by way of the rivers, which, as one might say, were to
+a certain extent the railroads of the ancient world.
+
+To these advantageous conditions, which, being physical, existed
+before the Roman conquest, the conquest added some others: it broke
+down the political barrier that previously cut off these convenient
+means of penetration, the rivers; it suppressed the wars between
+the Gallic tribes, the privileges, the tyrannies, the tolls, the
+monopolies; it saved the enormous resources that were previously
+wasted in these constant drains; it put again the hoe, the spade, the
+tools of the artisan, into hands that had before been wielding the
+sword; and finally, it consolidated (and this was perhaps the most
+important effect) the jurisdiction of property. When Cæsar invaded
+Gaul, the great landowners still cultivated cereals and textile plants
+but little; they put the greater part of their fortune into cattle,
+exactly because in that regime of continual war and revolution lands
+easily kept changing proprietors. Furthermore, the more frequent
+contact with Rome acquainted the Gauls with Roman agriculture and its
+abler methods, with Latin life and its studied order.
+
+By the combination of all these causes, population and production
+increased rapidly. The gain in population was so considerable that
+the ancients themselves noticed it. Strabo (Bk. 4, ch. i, §2) observes
+that the Gallic women are fecund mothers and excellent nurses. With
+the population, wealth increased on all sides, in agriculture as in
+industry and in trade.
+
+The new and more stable jurisdiction of the landed proprietary
+generated another most important effect; it promoted rapidly the
+cultivation of cereals and textile plants, of wheat and flax. "All
+Gaul produces much wheat," says Strabo, and we read his notice without
+surprise, because we know that France is, even to-day, the region of
+Europe most fertile in cereals. There is no reason to suppose that it
+must have been barren of them twenty centuries ago. Other documentary
+evidence, particularly inscriptions, confirms Strabo, informing us
+that, especially in the second century, Rome bought the customary
+grain to feed the metropolis not only in Egypt, but also in Gaul.
+In short, Gaul seems to have been the sole region of Europe fertile
+enough to be able to export grain, to have been for Rome a kind of
+Canada or Middle West of the time, set not beyond oceans but beyond
+the Alps.
+
+The cultivation of flax, to the ancient world what cotton is to-day,
+progressed rapidly in Gaul along with that of wheat, so that Gaul was
+early able to rival Egypt also in this respect. That Gaul and Egypt
+should have so much in common at the same time, was something so
+interesting and seemed so strange that Pliny himself wrote:
+
+    Flax is sowed only in sandy places and after a single
+    ploughing. Perhaps Egypt may be pardoned for sowing it,
+    because with it she buys the merchandise of India and Arabia.
+    But, look you!--even Gaul is famous for this plant. What
+    matters it, if huge mountains shut away the sea; if on the
+    ocean side it has for confines what is called emptiness?
+    Notwithstanding that, Gaul cultivates flax like Egypt: the
+    Cadurci, the Caleti, the Ruteni, the Biturigi, the Morini, who
+    are considered tribes of the ends of the earth ... but what am
+    I saying? All Gaul makes sails,--till the enemies beyond the
+    Rhine imitate them, and the linen is more beautiful to the
+    eyes than are their women.
+
+These descriptions show Gaul to be one of the new countries, like the
+Argentine Republic or the United States, in which the land has still
+almost its natural pristine fecundity and brings forth a marvellous
+abundance of plants that clothe and nourish man. We know that in Gaul
+under the Empire there were immense fortunes in land in face of which
+the fortunes of wealthy Italian proprietors shrink like the fortunes
+of Europe when compared with the great ranch fortunes of the Argentine
+Republic or the United States. Twenty years ago they began to excavate
+in France the ruins of the great Gallo-Roman villas: these are
+constructed on the plan of the Italian villa, decorated in the same
+way, but are much larger, more sumptuous, more sightly; one feels
+in them the pride of a new people which has adopted the Latin
+civilisation, but has infused into that, derived from the wealth of
+their land, a spirit of grandeur and of luxury that poorer and older
+Latins did not know, exactly as to-day the Americans infuse a spirit
+of greater magnitude and boldness into so many things that they take
+from timid, old Europe. Perhaps there was also in this Gallic luxury,
+as in the American, a bit of ostentation, intended to humiliate the
+masters remaining poorer and more modest.
+
+But Gaul was a nation not only rich in fertilest agriculture; side by
+side with that, progressed its industry. This, according to my
+notion, is one of the vital points in ancient history. Under the Roman
+domination, Gaul was not restricted to the better cultivation of its
+productive soil; but alone among the peoples of the Occident, became,
+as we might now say, an industrial nation, that manufactured not only
+by and for itself, but like Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, sold also to
+other peoples of the Empire and outside of its own boundaries; in
+a word, exported. The more frequent contact with the Orient better
+acquainted the Gauls with the beautiful objects made by the artisans
+of Laodicea, of Tyre, of Sidon; and the clever genius of the Celt,
+always apt in industry, drew from them incentive to create a Gallic
+industry, partly imitative, partly original, and to seek a large
+_clientèle_ for these industries in Italy, in Spain, beyond the Rhine,
+among the Germans, in the Danube provinces. This is proved by a
+number of important passages in Pliny, confirmed by inscriptions and
+archæological discoveries.
+
+Pliny has already told us that the Gauls manufactured many linen
+sails; we know also that they made not only rough sails, but also fine
+linen for clothing, which had a wide market. There have been found in
+the Orient numerous fragments of an inscription containing the famous
+edict of Diocletian on maximum sale prices allowed, an inscription
+of value to us for its nomenclature of ancient fabrics. In this
+nomenclature is mentioned the _birrus_ of Laodicea, an imitation of
+the _birrus_ of the Nervii, which was a very fine linen cloth, worn
+by ladies of fashion. Laodicea was one of the most ancient centres of
+Oriental textile fabrics; the Nervii were one of the most remote of
+the Gallic peoples, living--the coincidence is noteworthy--about where
+Flanders is now. If at Laodicea they made at the end of the third
+century an imitation of Nervian linen, that means that the Nervii had
+succeeded in manufacturing and finding market for cloth so desirable
+as to rouse the Laodiceans, competing for trade, to imitate it. What
+proof more persuasive that during the early centuries of the Empire
+the Gauls greatly improved their industries and widened their markets?
+
+They had mastered weaving, but they did not stop there; they invented
+new methods of dyeing, using vegetable dyes instead of the customary
+animal colours of the Orient. Pliny says:
+
+    The Gaul imitates with herbs all colours, including Tyrian
+    purple; they do not seek the mollusk on the sea bottom; they
+    run no risk of being devoured by sea monsters; they do not
+    exploit the anchorless deep to multiply the attractions of
+    the courtesan, or to increase the powers of the seducer of
+    another's wife. They gather the herbs like cereals, standing
+    on the dry ground; although the colour that they derive does
+    not bear washing. Luxury could thus be gratified with greater
+    show at the cost of fewer dangers.
+
+It is clear, then, according to Pliny, at one time, it was believed
+that the competition of Gallic dyers might have ruined the Oriental,
+and would have done so, had the tenacity of their vegetable colouring
+equalled its beauty. In another passage Pliny tells us that these
+Gallic stuffs were used especially by the slaves and the populace.
+
+The wool industry made no less progress in Gaul than weaving and
+dyeing. From numerous passages in Juvenal and Martial it appears
+that the woollen clothing worn by the populace of Rome in the second
+century was woven in Gaul, particularly in the districts to-day
+known as Arras, Langres, Saintonge. Pliny attributes to the Gauls the
+invention of a wool, that, soaked in acid, became incombustible, and
+was used to make mattresses.
+
+Glass-making was another art carried from the East across the
+Mediterranean into Gaul. Still another industry, metallurgy, after
+weaving, contributed greatly to enrich Gaul. Undoubtedly even before
+the Roman conquest, Gaul worked gold mines; it seems, however, that
+silver mines remained untouched until about the time of Augustus. At
+any rate, the discovery of some deposits of gold and silver then gave
+a spur to several flourishing industries; jewelry-making, and--an
+original Gallic industry of much importance--silver-plating and
+tinning. Here is another extract from Pliny, from which you will
+see that in those times they already made in France "Christofle"
+silver-plate:
+
+    They cover [writes Pliny] the copper with tin in such a way
+    that it is difficult to distinguish it from silver. It is a
+    Gallic invention. Later they began to do the same thing with
+    silver, silver-plating especially the ornaments of horses and
+    carriages. The merit of the invention belongs to the Biturigi,
+    and the industry was developed in the city of Alesia. After
+    the same fashion there has been spread everywhere a foolish
+    profusion of objects not only silver-, but gold-plated. All
+    that is called _cultus_, elegance!
+
+We might almost say that Gallic industry did to the old industries of
+the ancient world what German wares have done compared with older and
+more aristocratic products of France, of England, popularising objects
+of luxury for the many and the merely well-to-do.
+
+Finally, if any one hesitated to trust fully these very important
+passages in Pliny, he would be quite convinced by reading the great
+work of Dechelette. This author, studying with Carthusian patience and
+the ablest critical acumen the Gallic ceramics to be found scattered
+among the museums, has demonstrated most commendably that in the first
+century of the Empire many manufactories of ceramics were opened and
+flourished in Gaul, especially in the valley of the Allier, and that
+they sold their vases in Spain, in the Danube regions, to the Germans,
+and in Italy.
+
+Dechelette has proved that many ceramics found among the ruins of
+Pompeii, now admired in the museums of Pompeii and Naples, were made
+in Gaul,--discoveries most noteworthy, which, in connection with the
+extracts from Pliny, disclose in essence that real Roman Gaul whose
+sumptuous relics but half tell the tale of its wealth.
+
+This tremendous development of Gaul was without doubt an effect of the
+Roman conquest; but an effect that neither Cæsar, nor any other man
+of his times had foreseen or willed, but which Augustus was first to
+recognise in the winter of 15-14 B.C., and to which, astute man that
+he was, he gave heed as he ought; that is, not as due his own merit,
+but as an unexpected piece of good fortune. I have already said that
+one of the greatest cares of Augustus, as soon as the civil wars were
+finished, was to reorganise the finances of the Empire; that to find
+new entries for the treasury, he had turned his attention in 27 B.C.
+to the province conquered by his father, regarding it merely from
+the common point of view, as poor and of little worth like the
+other European territories. Then, at a stroke, he realised that that
+territory so lightly valued, was producing grain like Egypt, linen
+like Egypt; that the arts of civilisation for which Egypt was so rich
+and famous were beginning to prosper there! Augustus was not the man
+to let slip so tremendous a piece of good luck. Until then he had
+hesitated, like one who seeks his way; in that winter from 15-14 B.C.,
+he found finally the grand climax of his career, to make Gaul the
+Egypt of the West, the province of the greatest revenues in Europe.
+From that time on to the end of his life, he did not move from Europe;
+he lived between Italy and Gaul. Like him, Tiberius, Drusus, all the
+men of his family, devoted all their efforts to Gaul, to consolidating
+Roman dominion there, to advancing its progress, to increasing the
+revenues, to making it actually the Occidental Egypt. From Velleius we
+learn that under Tiberius Gaul rendered to the Empire as much as did
+Egypt, and that Gaul and Egypt were considered alike the two richest
+imperial provinces.
+
+As a political interest had at first impelled Cæsar to annex Gaul, an
+immediate financial interest urged Augustus to continue the work,
+to take care of the new province. Then the historic law that I have
+already enunciated to you, the law by which the efforts of men result
+far differently from that which they had intended, was verified anew
+by Augustus also, and in a new form. He had created his Gallic policy
+to augment the revenues of the Empire; the consequences of this fiscal
+policy, necessity-inspired, were greater than he and his friends ever
+dreamed. The winter of 15-14 B.C. is a notable date in the story of
+Latin civilisation, for then the destiny of the Empire was irrevocably
+settled; the Roman Empire will be made up of two parts, the Oriental
+and the Occidental, each part sufficiently strong to withstand
+being overcome by the other; it will be neither an Asiatic, nor a
+Celtic-Latin, but a mixed Empire: between both parts, Italy will rule
+for two centuries more, and Rome, an immense city, at once Oriental
+and Latin, will keep the metropolitan crown won from the enfeebled
+East, and dominate the immature barbarian West.
+
+Speaking of Cleopatra, I have shown you how great was the Oriental
+peril that threatened in the last century of the Republic to wipe out
+Rome. What miraculous force saved it? Gaul. Suppose that the army of
+Cæsar had been exterminated at Alesia; suppose that Rome, discouraged,
+had abandoned its Gallic enterprise as it had done with Persia, after
+the disaster of Crassus and the failure of Antony; or suppose that
+Gaul had been a poor province, sterile and unpopulous, like many a
+Danube district; Rome could not have held out long as the seat of
+imperial government, just as to-day the capital of the Russian Empire
+could not maintain itself at Vladivostok or Harbin. It would have been
+necessary to move the metropolis to a richer and more populous region.
+That Gaul grew rich and was Romanised, changed the state of things.
+When Rome possessed beyond the Alps in Europe a province as large and
+as full of resources as Egypt; when there was the same interest in
+defending it as in defending Egypt, Italy was well placed to govern
+both. The Egypt of the Occident counterbalanced the Egypt of the
+Orient, and Rome, half way between, was the natural and necessary
+metropolis of the wide-spread Empire. Gaul alone, revived, so
+to speak, the Empire in the West and prevented the European
+provinces--even Italy itself--from becoming dead limbs safely
+amputable from the Oriental body. Gaul upheld Italy and Rome in Europe
+for three centuries longer; Gaul stopped it on the way to the Asiatic
+conquests run through by Alexander. Had it not been for Gaul, Asia
+Minor, Syria, and Egypt would have formed the real Empire of Rome,
+and Italy would have been lost in it: without Gaul, the Orientalised
+Empire would have tried to conquer Persia and probably succeeded in
+doing so, abandoning the poor and unproductive lands of the untamed
+Occident. In short, Gaul created in the Roman Empire that duality
+between East and West which gives shape to all the history of our
+civilisation; it kept the artificial form of the Empire, circular
+about an island sea; it inspired the Empire with that double
+self-contradictory spirit, Latin and Oriental, at once its strength
+and its weakness.
+
+Next time I will show you the continuation of this struggle of two
+minds, in a characteristic episode, the story of the Emperor Nero.
+Now, before closing, let me set before you briefly some general
+considerations drawn from the history of Roman Gaul which are
+applicable to universal history.
+
+From what I have told you, it follows that the fortunes of peoples and
+states depend in part on what might be called the historic situation
+of every age, the situation that is created by the general state of
+the world in every successive epoch and which no people or state can
+mould at its own pleasure. Without doubt, a nation will never conquer
+a noteworthy greatness if the men that compose it fail of a certain
+culture, a certain energy, a social _morale_ sufficiently vigorous;
+but though these qualities are necessary, they are not equally
+productive in all periods, but serve more or less, in different
+periods, according as general circumstances are disposed about a
+people. Gaul was fertile, and its people possessed before the conquest
+the qualities that they displayed later: and yet, as long as Gaul
+remained apart from the Empire, without continuous and numerous
+communications with the vast Mediterranean world; as long as it
+was split into so many petty rival states, occupied in serious wars
+against the Germanic tribes, its fertility remained hidden in the
+earth, and the ability of its inhabitants dissipated itself in
+devastating wars, instead of spending itself in fruitful effort. All
+that changed, and without any one's foresight or intent, when the
+Roman policy, urged by the internal forces that stirred the Republic,
+had destroyed that old order of things.
+
+The ancients understood that peoples, like individual men, can
+regulate their destiny only in part; that about us, above us, are
+forces complex and obscure, which we can hardly comprehend, which
+invest us, seize us, impel us whither we had not thought to go, now
+to shipwreck on the rocks of misadventure, now to the discovery of
+islands of happiness, or to find, like Columbus, an America on the
+way to India. The Greeks called this power; the Latins, Fortuna, and
+deified it; erected temples and made sacrifices to it; dedicated to
+it a cult, of which Augustus was a devotee, and which contained more
+secret wisdom of life than all the superb theories on human destiny
+conceived by European genius in the delirium of this quarter-hour of
+measureless might in which we are living. No, man is not the voluntary
+artificer of his whole destiny; fortune and misfortune, triumph and
+catastrophe, are never entirely proportioned to personal merit or
+blame; every generation finds the world organised in a certain order
+of interests, forces, traditions, relations, and as it enjoys the good
+that preceding generations have accomplished, so in part it expiates
+the errors they have committed; as it draws advantage from beneficent
+forces acting outside of it and independent of its merit, so it
+suffers from the sinister forces that it finds--even though blameless
+itself--acting through the great mass of the world, among men and
+their works. From this relation to the unseen follows a rule of wisdom
+that modern men, full of unbounded pride, and persuaded that they
+are the beginning and end of the universe, too often forget: we must
+indeed press on with all our powers to the accomplishment of a great
+task, for although our destiny is never entirely made by our own
+hands, there is no destiny on the earth for the lazy; but, since
+a part of what we are depends not on ourselves, but upon what the
+ancients called Fortune, we dare never be too much elated over
+success, nor abased by failure. The wheel of destiny turns by a
+mysterious law, alike for families and for peoples: those in high
+position may fall; those in low, may rise.
+
+Certainly Cæsar never suspected when he was fighting the Gauls, that
+the great-grandsons of the vanquished would live in villas modelled on
+the Roman, but more sumptuous; that the great Gallic nobles would have
+the satisfaction of parading before the people that conquered them a
+latinity more impressive and magnificent; and that some day the Gaul
+put by him to fire and sword would get the better, in empire, in
+wealth, in culture, of even Italy.
+
+
+
+Nero
+
+
+On the 13th of October of 54 A.D., when Emperor Claudius died, the
+Senate chose as his successor his adopted son, Nero, a young man of
+seventeen, fat and short-sighted, who had until then studied only
+music, singing, and drawing. This choice of a child-emperor, who
+lacked imperial qualities and suggested the child kings of Oriental
+monarchies, was a scandalous novelty in the constitutional history of
+Rome. The ancient historians, especially Tacitus, considered the event
+as the result of an intrigue, cleverly arranged by Nero's mother,
+Agrippina, a daughter of Germanicus and granddaughter of Agrippa, the
+builder of the Pantheon. According to these historians, Agrippina,
+a highly ambitious woman, induced Claudius to marry her after
+Messalina's death, although she was a widow and had a child, and as
+soon as she entered the emperor's mansion she began to open the way
+for the election of her son. In order to exclude Britannicus, the son
+of Messalina, from succession, she persuaded Claudius to adopt Nero;
+then, with the help of the two tutors of the young man, Seneca and
+Burrhus, created in the Senate and among the Prætorians, a party
+favourable to her son; no sooner did she feel that she could rely on
+the Senate and the Prætorians, than she poisoned Claudius.
+
+Too many difficulties prevent our accepting this version. To cite one
+of them will suffice: if Agrippina wished--as she surely did--that her
+son should succeed Claudius, she must also have wished that Claudius
+would live at least eight or ten years longer. As a great-grandson of
+Drusus, a grandson of Germanicus and the last descendant of his line,
+the only line in the whole family enjoying a real popularity, Nero was
+sure of election if he were of age at the death of Claudius. After the
+terrible scandal in which his mother had disappeared, Britannicus was
+no longer a competitor to be feared. There was only one danger for
+Nero, if Claudius should die too soon, the Senate might refuse to
+trust the Empire to a child.
+
+I believe that Claudius died of disease, probably, if we can judge
+from Tacitus's account, of gastroenteritis, and that Agrippina's
+coterie, surprised by this sudden death, which upset all their plans,
+decided to put through Nero's election in spite of his youth, in order
+to insure the power to the line of Drusus, which had so much sympathy
+among the masses. As a matter of fact, the admiration for Drusus
+and his family triumphed over all other considerations: Nero became
+emperor at seventeen; but when the election was over, Rome--again
+according to the tales of the ancient historians--saw a still
+greater scandal than his election. The young man--and this is
+credible--hastened to engage as his master the first zither-player
+of Rome, Terpnos; continued his study of singing; and bought statues,
+pictures, bronzes, beautiful slaves, while his mother seized the
+actual control of the State.
+
+Agrippina insisted on being kept informed of all affairs; directed
+the home and foreign policy; and if she did not reach the point of
+partaking in the sessions of the Senate, which would have been the
+supreme scandal, she called it to meet in her palace and, concealed
+behind a black curtain, listened to its discussions. In short, the
+Empire fell into the hands of a woman; Rome saw the evolution of
+customs, through which woman had for four centuries been freeing
+herself from her ancient slavery, suddenly a fact accomplished by
+her visible intervention in politics--the intervention that the great
+keepers of tradition, first among them Cato, had always decried as the
+most frightful cataclysm that could menace the city.
+
+This story is also the exaggeration of a simpler truth. Even if Nero
+had been a very serious young man, at his age he could not by himself
+have governed the Empire; it would have been necessary for him to
+serve a long apprenticeship and to listen to experienced counsellors.
+Burrhus and Seneca, his two teachers, were naturally destined to be
+his counsellors; but why should not his mother also have helped him?
+Like all the women of her family, Agrippina was of superior mind, of
+high culture, and, as Tacitus himself admits, led a most respectable
+life, at least to the time of her marriage with Claudius. Brought up,
+as she was, in that family which for eighty years had been governing
+the Empire, she was well informed about affairs of State. Is it
+possible to suppose that such a woman would shut herself up in her
+home to weave wool, when, with her talent, her energy, her experience,
+she could be of so much service to her son and to the State? We do not
+need to attribute to Agrippina a monstrous ambition, as does Tacitus,
+in order to explain how the Empire was ruled during the first two
+years, by Seneca, Burrhus, and Agrippina; it was a natural consequence
+of the situation created by the premature death of Claudius. Tacitus
+himself is forced to recognise that the government was excellent.
+
+Helping her son in the apprenticeship of the Empire, Agrippina did her
+duty; but during restless times when misunderstanding is almost a
+law of social life, it is often very dangerous to do one's duty. The
+period of Agrippina and Nero was full of confusion; though apparently
+quiet, Italy was deeply torn by the great struggle that gives the
+history of the Empire its marvellous character of actuality, the
+struggle between the old Roman military society and the intellectual
+civilisation of the Orient.
+
+The ancient aristocratic and military Roman society had had so great
+and world-wide a success, that the ideas, the institutions and the
+customs, that had made it a perfect model of State, considered as an
+organ of political and military domination, exercised a great prestige
+on the following generations. Even during the time of which we speak,
+every one was forced after eight years of peace, to admit that the
+Empire had been created by those ideas, those institutions and those
+customs; that for the sake of the Empire they must be maintained,
+and alike in family as in State, must be opposed all that forms
+the essence of intellectual civilisation; that is to say, all
+that develops personal selfishness at the expense of collective
+interest--luxury, idleness, pleasure, celibacy, feminism, and at
+the same time, all that develops personality and intelligence at the
+expense of tradition--liberty of women, independence of children,
+variety of personal tendencies, and the critical spirit in all forms.
+
+In spite of the resistance offered by traditions, peace and wealth
+favoured everywhere the diffusion of the intellectual civilisation of
+the Hellenised Orient. The woman now become free, and the intellectual
+man now become powerful, were the springs to set in motion this
+revolution. Under Claudius, in vain had they exiled Seneca, the
+brilliant philosopher and the peace-advocating humanitarian, who had
+diffused in high Roman society so many ideas and sentiments considered
+by the traditionalists pernicious to the force of the State; he had
+come back far more powerful, and ruled the Empire. Husbands, burdened
+by the excessive expenses, by the too frequent infidelities, by the
+tyrannical caprices of their wives, in vain regretted the good old
+time when husbands were absolute masters; the invading feminism
+weakened everywhere the strength of the aristocratic and military
+traditions.
+
+So contradiction was everywhere. The Republic had still its old
+aristocratic constitution, but the nobility was no longer spurred by
+that absorbing and exclusive passion for politics and war, which
+had been its power. Society life, pleasure, amateur philosophy
+and literature, mysticism, and, above all, sports, dissipated in a
+thousand directions its energy and activity. Too many young men
+were to be found in the nobility who, like Nero, preferred singing,
+dancing, and driving, to caring for their clients or enduring the
+troubles of public office.
+
+Augustus and Tiberius had done their utmost to strengthen the great
+Latin principle of parsimony in public and private life: in order to
+set a good example they had lived very simply; they had caused new
+sumptuary laws to be passed and tried to enforce the old ones;
+they had spent the State moneys, not for the keeping of artists and
+writers, nor for the building of monuments of useless size, but to
+build the great roads of the Empire, to strengthen the frontiers;
+they had made the public treasure into an aid fund for all suffering
+cities, stricken by earthquake, fire, or flood. And yet the Oriental
+influence, so favourable to unproductive and luxurious expenditure,
+gained ground steadily. The merchant of Syrian and Egyptian objects
+_de luxe_, in spite of the sumptuary laws, found a yearly increasing
+patronage in all the cities of Italy. The exactingness of the desire
+for public spectacles increased, even in secondary cities. The Italian
+people were losing their peasant's petty avarice and growing fond
+of things monumental and colossal, which was the great folly of the
+Orient. They found the monuments of Rome poor; everywhere, even in
+modest _municipia_, they demanded immense theatres, great temples,
+monumental basilicas, spacious forums, adorned with statues. In spite
+of the principles insisted upon with so much vigour by Augustus and
+Tiberius, public finances had, thanks to the weak Claudius and the
+extravagant Messalina, already gone through a period of great waste
+and disorder.
+
+These contradictions, and the psychological disorder that followed,
+explain the discords and struggles very soon raging around the young
+Emperor. The public began to feel shocked by the attention that
+Agrippina gave to State affairs, as by a new and this time intolerable
+scandal of feminism. Agrippina was not a feminist, as a matter of
+fact, but a traditionalist, proud of the glory of her family, attached
+to the ancient Roman ideas, desirous only of seeing her son develop
+into a new Germanicus, a second Drusus. Solely the necessity of
+helping Nero had led her to meddle with politics. But not in vain had
+Cato declaimed so loudly in Rome against women who pretend to govern
+states; not in vain had Augustus's domination been at least partly
+founded on the great antifeminist legend of Antony and Cleopatra,
+which represented the fall of the great Triumvir as the consequence of
+a woman's influence. The public, although willing to give all possible
+freedom to women in other things, still remained quite firm on this
+point: politics must remain the monopoly of man. So to the popular
+imagination, Agrippina soon became a sort of Roman Cleopatra. Many
+interests gathered quickly to reinforce this antifeminist reaction,
+which, although exaggerated, had its origin in sincere feeling.
+
+Agrippina, as a true descendant of Drusus, meant to prepare her son
+to rule the Empire according to the principles held by his great
+ancestors. Among these principles was to be counted not only
+the defence of Romanism and the maintenance of the aristocratic
+constitution, but also a wise economy in the management of finances.
+Agrippina is a good instance of that well-known fact--the British
+have noticed it more than once in India--that in public administration
+discreet and capable women keep, as a rule, the spirit of economy
+with which they manage the home. This is why, especially in despotic
+states, they rule better than men. Even before Claudius's death,
+Agrippina had vigorously opposed waste and plunder; it also appears
+that the reorganisation of finances after Messalina's death was due
+chiefly to her.
+
+The continuation under Nero of this severe régime displeased a great
+number of persons, who dreamed of seeing again the easy sway of
+Messalina. From the moment they were satisfied that Agrippina, like
+Augustus and Tiberius, would not allow the public money to be stolen,
+many people found her insistent interference in public affairs
+unbearable. In short, Agrippina became unpopular, and, as always
+happens, because of faults she did not have. A noble deed, which
+she was trying to accomplish in defence of tradition, definitively
+compromised her situation.
+
+Her son resembled neither Agrippina nor the great men of her family.
+He had a most indocile temperament, rebellious to tradition, in no
+sense Roman. Little by little, Agrippina saw the young Emperor develop
+into a precocious _debauché_, frightfully selfish, erratically vain,
+full of extravagant ideas, who, instead of setting the example of
+respect toward sumptuary laws, openly violated them all; and across
+whose mind from time to time flashed sinister lightnings of cruelty.
+Nero's youth--the fact is not surprising--did not resist the mortal
+seductions of immense power and immense riches; but Agrippina, the
+proud granddaughter of the conqueror of Germany, must have chafed
+at the idea of her son's preferring musical entertainments to the
+sessions of the Senate, singing lessons to the study of tactics and
+strategy.
+
+She applied herself, therefore, with all her energy to the work of
+tearing her son from his pleasures, and bringing about his return
+to the great traditions of his family. Nero resisted: the struggle
+between mother and son grew complicated; it excited the passion of the
+public, which felt that this conflict had a greater importance than
+any other family quarrel, that it was actually a struggle between
+traditional Romanism and Oriental customs. Unfortunately, every one
+sided with Nero: the sincere friends of tradition, because they did
+not want the rule of a woman, whoever she might be; those that longed
+for Messalina's times, because they saw personified in Agrippina the
+austere and inflexible spirit of the _gens Claudia_. The situation was
+soon without an issue. The accord of Agrippina with Seneca and Burrhus
+was troubled, because the two teachers of the young Emperor, under
+the impression of public malcontent, had somewhat withdrawn from her.
+Nero, who was sullen, cynical, and lazy, feared his mother too much to
+have the courage to oppose her openly, but he did not fear her enough
+to mend his ways. The mother, on her side, was set to do her duty to
+the end. Like all situations without an issue, this one was suddenly
+solved by an unexpected event.
+
+Insisting on wanting to make a Roman of this young _debauché_,
+Agrippina made him into a murderer. Nero, progressing from one caprice
+to another, finally imagined a great folly: to divorce Octavia and to
+raise to her place a beautiful freed-woman called Acte. According to
+one of the fundamental laws of the State, the great law of Augustus on
+marriage, which forbade marriages between senators and freedwomen, the
+union of Nero and Acte could be only a concubinage. Agrippina wanted
+to avoid this scandal; and, as Nero persisted in his idea, it seems
+that she actually thought of having him deposed and of securing the
+choice of Britannicus, a very serious young man, as his successor. A
+true Roman, Agrippina was ready to sacrifice her son for the sake of
+the Republic.
+
+The threat was, or appeared to be, so serious to Nero, that it made
+him step over the threshold of crime. One day during a great dinner
+to which he had been invited by Nero, Britannicus was suddenly seized
+with violent convulsions. "It is an attack of epilepsy," said Nero
+calmly, giving orders to his slaves to remove Britannicus and care
+for him. The young man died in a few hours and every one believed that
+Nero had poisoned him.
+
+This dastardly crime aroused at first a sense of horror and fright
+among the people, but the impression did not last long. In spite of
+all his faults, Nero was liked. In Rome they had respected Augustus
+and hated Tiberius; they had killed Caligula and jeered at Claudius;
+Nero seemed to be the first of the Roman Emperors who stood a chance
+of becoming popular. Contrary to Agrippina's ideas, it was his
+frivolity that pleased the great masses, because this frivolity
+corresponded to the slow but progressive decay of the old Roman
+virtues in them. They expected from Nero a less hard, less severe,
+less parsimonious government--in a word, a government less Roman than
+the rule of his predecessors, a government which, instead of force,
+glory, and wisdom, meant pleasure and ease.
+
+So it happened that many soon forgot the unfortunate Britannicus, and
+some even tried to justify Nero by invoking State necessity. Agrippina
+alone remained the object of the universal hatred, as the sole cause
+of so many misfortunes. Implacable enemies, concealed in the shadow,
+were subtly at work against her; they organised a campaign of absurd
+calumnies in the Court itself, and it is this campaign from which
+Tacitus drew his material.
+
+Some wretches finally dared even accuse her of conspiracy against
+the life of her son. Agrippina, refusing to plead for herself, still
+weathered the storm, because Nero was afraid of her, and though he
+tried to escape from her authority, did not dare to initiate any
+energetic move against her. To engage in a final struggle with so
+indomitable a woman, another woman was necessary. This woman was
+Poppæa Sabina, a very handsome and able dame of the great Roman
+nobility. Poppæa represented Oriental feminism in its most dangerous
+form: a woman completely demoralised by luxury, elegance, society
+life, and voluptuousness, who eluded all her duties toward the species
+in order to enjoy and make others enjoy her beauty.
+
+Corrupted as that age was, Poppæa was more corrupt. As soon as she
+observed the strong impression she had made on Nero, she conceived
+the plan of becoming his wife; her beauty would then be admired by the
+whole Empire, would be surrounded by a luxury for which the means of
+her husband were not sufficient, and with which no other Roman dame
+could compete. There was one obstacle--Agrippina.
+
+Agrippina protected Octavia, a true Roman woman, simple and honest:
+Agrippina would never consent to this absolutely unjustifiable
+divorce. To force Nero to a decisive move against his mother, Poppæa
+had her husband sent on some mission to Lusitania and became the
+mistress of the Emperor. From that point the situation changed.
+Dominated by Poppæa's influence, Nero found the courage to force
+Agrippina to abandon his palace and seek refuge in Antony's house; he
+took from her the privilege of Prætorian guards, which he himself
+had granted her; he reduced to a minimum the number and time of his
+visits, and carefully avoided being left alone with her. Agrippina's
+influence, to the general satisfaction, rapidly declined, while Nero
+gained every day in popularity. Agrippina, however, was too energetic
+a woman peaceably to resign herself: she began a violent campaign
+against the two adulterers, which deeply troubled the public. In Rome,
+where Augustus had promulgated his stern law against adultery; in
+Rome, where Augustus himself had been obliged to submit to his own
+law, when he exiled his daughter and his grand-daughter and almost
+exterminated the whole family; in Rome, a young man of twenty-two
+dared all but officially introduce adultery and polygamy into the
+Palatine! In her struggle against Nero, Agrippina once more stood on
+tradition: and Nero was afraid.
+
+Poppæa was probably the one who suggested to Nero the idea of killing
+Agrippina. The idea had been, as it were, floating in the air for
+a long time, because Agrippina was embarrassing to many persons and
+interests. It was chiefly the party that wanted to sack the imperial
+budget, to introduce the finance of great expenditure, which could not
+tolerate this clever and energetic woman, who was so faithful to
+the great traditions of Augustus and Tiberius, who could neither be
+frightened nor corrupted. One should not consider the assassination of
+Agrippina as a simple personal crime of Nero, as the result of his
+and Poppæa's quarrels with his mother. This crime, besides personal
+causes, had a political origin. Nero would never have dared commit
+such a misdeed, in the eyes of the Roman almost a sacrilege, if he had
+not been encouraged by Agrippina's unpopularity, by the violent hatred
+of so many against his mother.
+
+Nero hesitated long; he decided only when his freedman, Anicetus,
+the commander of the fleet, proposed a plan that seemed to guarantee
+secrecy for the crime: to have a ship built with a concealed trap. It
+was the spring of the year 59 A.D.; the Court had moved to Baiæ, on
+the Gulf of Naples. If Nero succeeded in getting his mother on board
+the vessel, Anicetus would take upon himself the task of burying
+quickly below the waves the secret of her death; the people who hated
+Agrippina would easily be satisfied with the explanations to be given
+them.
+
+Nero executed his part of the plan in perfect cold-blood. He made
+believe he had repented and was anxious for a reconciliation with his
+mother; he invited her to Baiæ and so profusely lavished kindnesses
+and amiabilities upon her, that Agrippina finally believed in his
+sincerity.
+
+After spending a few days at Baiæ, Agrippina decided to return to
+Antium; in a very happy frame of mind and full of hopes that her son
+would soon show himself to the world the man she had dreamed, the
+descendant of Drusus, she boarded one evening the fatal ship; Nero
+had escorted her thither and pressed her to his heart with the most
+demonstrative tenderness.
+
+A calm night diffused its starry shadows over the quiet sea, which
+with subdued murmur lulled in their sleep the great summer homes
+along the shore. The ship departed, carrying toward her sombre destiny
+Agrippina, absorbed in her smiling dreams. When the moment came and
+the wrecking machine was set to work, the vessel did not sink as fast
+as they had hoped: it listed, overturning people and things. Agrippina
+had time to understand the danger; with admirable presence of mind she
+jumped overboard and escaped by swimming, while, during the confusion
+on the boat, the hired murderers killed one of Agrippina's freedwomen,
+mistaking her for Agrippina herself. The ship finally sank; the
+murderers also took to the water; everything returned to its wonted
+calm; the starry night still diffused its silent shadows; the sea
+still cradled with subdued murmur the homes along the coast--all men
+slept except one.
+
+Within this one, Anxiety watched: a son was awaiting the news that
+his mother was dead, and that he was free to celebrate a criminal
+marriage. The escaped murderers soon brought the news so impatiently
+expected--but Nero's joy was short. At dawn, a freedman of Agrippina
+arrived at the Emperor's villa. Agrippina, picked up by a boat, had
+succeeded in reaching one of her villas near by; she sent the freedman
+to tell the Emperor about the accident and to assure him of her
+safety. Agrippina alive! It was like a thunderbolt to Nero, and he
+lost his head: he saw his mother hurrying on to Rome, denouncing
+the abominable attempt to Senate and people, rousing against him the
+Prætorian guard and the legions. Thoroughly frightened, he summoned
+Seneca and Burrhus and laid before them the terrible situation. It
+is easy to imagine the shock of the old preceptors. How could he
+risk such a grave imprudence? And yet there was no time to lose in
+reproaches. Nero begged for advice: Seneca and Burrhus were silent,
+but they, also frightened, asked of themselves what Agrippina would
+do. Would she not provoke a colossal scandal, which would ruin
+everything? An expedient, the same one, occurred to both of them:
+but so sinister was the idea that they dared not speak it. This time,
+however, both the philosopher and the general were deceived as well as
+Nero: Agrippina had guessed the truth and given up the struggle. What
+could she, a lone woman do against an Emperor who did not stop even
+at the plan of murdering his mother? She realised, during that awful
+night, that only one chance of safety was left to her--to ignore what
+had taken place; and she sent her freedman with the message that
+meant forgiveness. But fear kept Nero and his counsellors from
+understanding; and when they could easily have remedied the preceding
+mistake, they compromised all by a supreme error. Finally Seneca, the
+pacificator and humanitarian philosopher, thought he had found the way
+of making half-openly the only suggestion which seemed wise to him: he
+turned to Burrhus and asked what might happen, if an order were given
+the Prætorians to kill Nero's mother. Burrhus understood that his
+colleague, although the first to give the fatal advice, was trying
+to shift upon him the much more serious responsibility of carrying it
+out; since, if they reached the decision of having Agrippina disposed
+of by the Prætorians, no one but he, the commander of the guard, could
+utter the order. He therefore protested with the greatest energy that
+the Prætorians would never lay murderous hands on the daughter of
+Germanicus. Then he added cogitatively that, if it were thought
+necessary, Anicetus and his sailors could finish the work already
+begun. Thus Burrhus gave the same advice as Seneca, but he, like his
+colleague, meant to pass on to some one else the task of execution. He
+chose better than Seneca: Anicetus, if Agrippina lived, ran a serious
+risk of becoming the scapegoat of all this affair. In fact, as soon as
+Nero gave his assent, Anicetus and a few sailors hastened to the villa
+of Agrippina and stabbed her.
+
+The crime was abominable. Nero and his circle were so awed by it that
+they attempted to make the people believe that Agrippina had
+committed suicide, when her conspiracy against her son's life had been
+discovered. This was the official version of Agrippina's death,
+sent by Nero to the Senate. But this audacious mystification had no
+success. The public divined the truth, and roused by the voice of
+their age-long instincts, they cried out that the Emperor no less than
+any peasant of Italy must revere his father and his mother. Through a
+sudden turn of public feeling, Agrippina, who had been so much hated
+during her life, became the object of a kind of popular veneration;
+Nero, on the other hand, and Poppæa inspired a sentiment of profound
+horror.
+
+If Nero had found the living Agrippina unbearable, he soon realised
+that his dead mother was much more to be feared. In fact, scared as he
+was by the popular agitation, not only had he temporarily to give up
+the plan of divorcing Octavia and marrying Poppæa, but felt obliged
+to stay several months at Baiæ, not daring to return to Rome. He was,
+however, no longer a child: he was twenty-three years old and had some
+talent. Men of intelligence and energy were also not wanting in his
+_entourage_. The first shock once over, the Emperor and his coterie
+rallied. The first impression had indeed been disastrous, but had
+brought about no irreparable consequences--the only consequences that
+count in politics. One could therefore hope that the public
+would gradually forget this murder as they had forgotten that of
+Britannicus. One only needed to help them forget. Nero resolved to
+give Italy and Rome the administrative revolution that had found in
+Agrippina so determined an opponent, the easy, splendid, generous
+government that seemed to suit the popular taste.
+
+He began by organising among the _jeunesse dorée_ of Rome the
+"festivals of youth." In these true demonstrations against the old
+aristocratic education, now in the house of one and then in the garden
+of another, the young patricians met under the Emperor's directions.
+They sang, recited, and danced, displaying all the tendencies that
+tradition held unworthy of a Roman nobleman. Later, Nero built in
+the Vatican fields a private stadium, where he amused himself with
+driving, and invited his friends to join him. He surrounded himself
+with poets, musicians, singers; enormously increased the budget
+of popular festivals; planned and started immense constructions;
+introduced into all parts of the administration a new spirit of
+carelessness and ease. Not only the sumptuary laws, but all laws
+commanding the fulfilment of human duties toward the species, such as
+the great laws of Augustus on marriage and adultery, were no longer
+applied; the surveillance of the Senate over the governors, that of
+the governors over the cities, slackened. In Rome, in all Italy, in
+the provinces, the treasuries of the Republic, the possessions and
+the funds of the cities, were robbed. In the midst of this unbridled
+plundering, which appeared to make every man rich quickly, and without
+work, a delirium of luxury and pleasure reigned: in Rome especially,
+people lived in a continuous orgy; the nobility answered in crowds
+the invitations of Nero; the Senate, the great houses, where the
+conquerors of the world had been born, swarmed with young athletes and
+drivers, who had no other ambition but that of adding the prize of a
+race to the war trophies of their ancestors; the imperial palace was
+invaded by a noisy horde of zitherists, actors, jockeys, athletes,
+among whom Burrhus and, still more, Seneca, were beginning to feel
+most ill at ease.
+
+Agrippina's death, even though it had yet deferred Nero's marrying
+Poppæa, had made possible the change in the government that a part of
+the people wished. We owe to this new principle the immense ruins of
+ancient Rome; but this fact does not authorise us to consider it a
+Roman principle: it was, instead, a principle of Oriental civilisation
+which had forced itself upon the Roman traditions after a long and
+painful effort. The revolution, however, had been long preparing and
+corresponded to the popular aspirations. It would, therefore, have
+redounded to the advantage of the Emperor, who had dared to break
+loose from a superannuated tradition, had not Agrippina's spectre
+still haunted Rome. To their honour be it said, the people of Rome and
+Italy had not yet become so corrupted by Oriental civilisation as to
+forget parricide in a few festivals.
+
+The party of tradition, though weakened, existed. They began a brave
+fight against Nero, using the assassination of Agrippina as the
+adverse party had exploited the antifeminist prejudices of the masses
+against Agrippina herself. They denounced the parricide to the people,
+in order to attack the champion of Orientalism and irritate against
+him the indifferent mass, which, not understanding the great struggle
+between the Orient and Rome, remained unstirred. Hoping the excitement
+of spirit had somewhat subsided, Nero had finally carried out his old
+plan of divorcing Octavia and marrying Poppæa; but the divorce caused
+great popular demonstrations in Rome in favour of the abused wife and
+against the intruder.
+
+Moreover, thanks to his extravagance, Nero made things very easy for
+his enemies, the defenders of tradition. His habits of dissipation
+exaggerated all the faults of his character, chiefly his morbid need
+of showing himself off, of defying the public, their prejudices, their
+opinions. It is difficult to discern how much is true and how much is
+false in the hideous stories of debauchery handed down to us by the
+ancient writers, particularly Suetonius.
+
+Although one might believe--and I believe it for my part--that there
+is a great deal of exaggeration in such tales, it is certain that
+Nero's personality played too conspicuous a part in his administrative
+revolution. Ready as the people were to admire a more generous and
+luxurious government than that of Augustus, Tiberius, and Claudius,
+they still liked to look to the chief of State as to a man of gravity
+and austerity, who let others amuse themselves, though he himself be
+bored. The vain and bizarre young man, who was always the guest of
+honour at his own _fêtes_, who never hesitated to satisfy his most
+extravagant caprices, who spent so much money to divert himself,
+shocked the last republican susceptibilities of Italy. The wise felt
+alarmed: with such expenses, would it not all end in bankruptcy?
+For all these causes, they soon began to reproach Nero for his
+prodigality, although the people enjoyed it, just as they had been
+malcontent with Tiberius for his parsimony. His caprices, ever
+stranger, little by little roused even that part of the public which
+was not fanatically attached to tradition. At that time Nero developed
+his foolish vanity of actor, his caprice for the theatre, which soon
+was to become an all-absorbing mania. The chief of the Empire, the
+heir of Julius Cæsar, dreamed of nothing else than descending from
+the height of human grandeur to the scene of a theatre, to experience
+before the public the sensations of those players whom the Roman
+nobility had always regarded as instruments of infamous pleasure!
+
+Disgusted with Nero's mismanagement and follies, Seneca took the death
+of Burrhus as an opportunity to retire. Then Nero, freed from the
+last person who still retained any influence over him, gave himself
+up entirely to the insane swirl of his caprices. He ended one day by
+presenting himself in the theatre of Naples. Naples was yet then a
+Greek city. Nero had chosen it for this reason; he was applauded with
+frenzy. But the Italians of the other cities protested: the chief of
+the Empire appearing in a theatre, his hand on the zither and not
+on the sword! Imagine what would be the impression if some day a
+sovereign went on the stage of the _folies Bergères_ as a "number" for
+a sleight-of-hand performance!
+
+Public attention, however, was turned from this immense scandal by a
+frightful calamity--the famous conflagration of Rome, which began the
+nineteenth of July of the year 64 and devastated almost all quarters
+of the city for ten days. What was the cause of the great disaster?
+This very obscure point has much interested historians, who have tried
+in vain to throw light on the subject. As far as I am concerned, I
+by no means exclude the hypothesis that the fire might have been
+accidental. But when they are crushed under the weight of a great
+misfortune, men always feel sure that they are the victims of human
+wickedness: a sad proof of their distrust in their fellow men. The
+plebs, reduced to utter misery by the disaster, began to murmur
+that mysterious people had been seen hurrying through the different
+quarters, kindling the fire and cumbering the work of help; these
+incendiaries must have been sent by some one in power--by whom?
+
+A strange rumour circulated: Nero himself had ordered the city to be
+burned, in order to enjoy a unique sight, to get an idea of the fire
+of Troy, to have the glory of rebuilding Rome on a more magnificent
+scale. The accusation seems to me absurd. Nero was a criminal, but he
+was not a fool to the point of provoking the wrath of the whole people
+for so light a motive, especially after Agrippina's death. Tacitus
+himself, in spite of his hatred of all Cæsar's family and his
+readiness to make them responsible for the most serious crimes, does
+not venture to express belief in this story--sufficient proof that
+he considers it absurd and unlikely. Nevertheless, the hatred that
+surrounded Nero and Poppæa made every one, not only among the ignorant
+populace, but also among the higher classes, accept it readily. It was
+soon the general opinion that Nero had accomplished what Brennus and
+Catiline's conspirators could not do. Was a more horrible monster ever
+seen? Parricide, actor, incendiary!
+
+The traditionalist party, the opposition, the unsatisfied, exploited
+without scruple this popular attitude, and Nero, responsible for a
+sufficient number of actual crimes, found himself accused also of
+an imaginary one. He was so frightened that he decided to give the
+clamouring people a victim, some one on whom Rome could avenge its
+sorrow. An inquiry into the causes of the conflagration was ordered.
+The inquest came to a strange conclusion. The fire had been started
+by a small religious sect, recently imported from the Orient, a
+sect whose name most people then learned for the first time: the
+Christians.
+
+How did the Roman authorities come to such a conclusion? That is one
+of the greatest mysteries of universal history, and no one will ever
+be able to clear it. If the explanation of the disaster as accepted by
+the people was absurd, the official explanation was still more so. The
+Christian community of Rome, the pretended volcano of civil hatred,
+which had poured forth the destructive fire over the great metropolis,
+was a small and peaceful congregation of pious idealists.
+
+A great and simple man, Paul of Tarsus, had taken up again among them
+the great work in which Augustus and Tiberius had failed: he aimed at
+the remaking of popular conscience, but used means until then unknown
+in the Græco-Latin civilisation. Not in the name of the ancestors, of
+the traditions, of ideals of political power, did he seek to persuade
+men to work, to refrain from vice, to live honestly and simply; but
+in the name of a single God, whom man had in the beginning offended
+through his pride, in the name of the Son of God, who had taken human
+form and volunteered to die as a criminal on the cross, to appease
+the Father's wrath against the rebellious creature. On the Græco-Roman
+idea of duty, Paul grafted the Christian idea of sin. Doubtless the
+new theology must have seemed at first obscure to Greeks and Romans;
+but Paul put into it that new spirit, mutual love, which the dry Latin
+soul had hardly ever known, and he vivified it with the example of an
+obscure life of sacrifice.
+
+Paul was born of a noble Hebrew family of Tarsus, and was a man of
+high culture. He had, to use a modern expression, simplified himself,
+renounced his position in a time when few could resist the passion for
+luxury, and taken up a trade for his living; with the scanty profit
+from his work as a tent-maker, alone and on foot he made measureless
+journeys through the Empire, everywhere preaching the redemption of
+man. Finally, after numberless adventures and perils, he had come to
+Rome and had, in the great city frenzied by the delirium of luxury and
+pleasure, repeated to the poor, who alone were willing to hear him:
+"Be chaste and pure, do not deceive each other, love one another, help
+one another, love God."
+
+If Nero had known the little society of pious idealists, he surely
+would have hated it, but for other motives than the imaginary
+accusations of his police. In this story St. Paul is exactly the
+antithesis of Nero. The latter represents the atrocious selfishness of
+rich, peaceful, highly civilised epochs; the former, the ardent moral
+idealism which tries to react against the cardinal vices of power and
+wealth through universal self-sacrifice and asceticism. Neither of
+these men is to be comprehended without the other, because the moral
+doctrine of Paul is partly a reaction against, the violent folly for
+which Nero stood the symbol; but it certainly was not philosophical
+considerations of this kind that led the Roman authorities to rage
+against the Christians. The problem, I repeat, is insoluble. However
+this may be, the Christians were declared responsible for the fire; a
+great number were taken into custody, sentenced to death, executed in
+different ways, during the festivals that Nero offered to the people
+to appease them. Possibly Paul himself was one of the victims of this
+persecution.
+
+This diversion, however, was of no use. The conflagration definitely
+ruined Nero. With the conflagration begins the third period of
+his life, which lasts four years. It is characterised by absurd
+exaggerations of all kinds, which hastened the inevitable catastrophe.
+One grandiose idea dominates it: the idea of building on the ruins a
+new Rome, immense and magnificent, a true metropolis for the Empire.
+In order to carry out this plan, Nero did not economise; he began to
+spend in it the moneys laid aside to pay the legions. The people of
+Italy, however, and even of Rome, which grew rich on these public
+expenditures, did not show themselves thankful for this immense
+architectural effort. Every one was sure that the new city would be
+worse than the old one!
+
+Nero himself, exasperated by this invincible hate, exhausted by his
+own excesses, lost what reason he had still left, and his government
+degenerated into a complete tyranny, suspicious, violent, and cruel.
+
+Piso's conspiracy caused him to order a massacre of patricians, which
+left terrible rancour in its wake; in an access of fury, he killed
+Poppæa; he began to imagine accusations against the richest men of the
+Empire, in order to confiscate their estates. His prodigality and the
+general carelessness had completely disorganised the finances of the
+Empire; he had to recur to all kinds of expedients to find money.
+Finally he undertook a great artistic tour in Greece--that province
+which had been the mother of arts--to play in its most celebrated
+theatres. This time indignation burst all bounds. The armies of Gaul
+and Spain, for a long time irregularly paid, led by their officers,
+revolted. This act of energy sufficed. On the 9th of June, 68 A.D.,
+abandoned by all the world, Nero was compelled to commit suicide.
+
+So the family of Julius Cæsar disappears from history. After so much
+greatness, genius, and wisdom, the fall may seem petty and almost
+laughable. It is absurd to lose the Empire for the pleasure of singing
+in a theatre. And yet, bizarre as the end may seem, it was not the
+result of the vices, the follies, and the crimes of Nero alone. In his
+way, Nero himself was, like all members of his family, the victim of
+the contradictory situation of his times.
+
+It has been repeated for centuries, that the foundation of monarchy
+was the great mission of Cæsar's family. I believe this to be a great
+mistake. The lot of the family would have been simple and easy, if it
+had been able to found a monarchy. The family of Cæsar had to solve
+another problem, much more difficult,--in fact insoluble; a problem
+that may be compared, from a certain point of view, to that which
+confronted the Bonapartes in the nineteenth century. The Bonapartes
+found old monarchical, legitimistic, theocratic Europe agitated by
+forces which, although making it impossible for the ancient regime
+to continue, were not yet able to establish a new society, entirely
+democratic, republican, and lay. The family of Cæsar found the
+opposite situation: an old military and aristocratic republic, which
+was changing into an intellectual and monarchical civilisation, based
+on equality, but opposing formidable resistance to the forces of
+transformation. In these situations the two families tried in all ways
+to reconcile things not to be conciliated, to realise the impossible:
+one, the popular monarchy and imperial democracy; the other, the
+monarchical republic and Orientalised Latinity. The contradiction
+was for both families the law of life, the cause of greatness; this
+explains why neither was ever willing to extricate itself from it, in
+spite of the advice of philosophers, the malcontent of the masses, the
+pressure of parties, and the evident dangers. This contradiction
+was also the fatality of both families, the cause of their ruin; it
+explains the shortness of their power, their restless existence, and
+the continuous catastrophes that opened the way to the final crash.
+
+Waterloo and Sedan, the exile of Julia and the tragic failure of
+Tiberius's government, all the misfortunes great and small which
+struck the two families, were always consequences of the insoluble
+contradiction they tried to solve. You have had a perfectly
+characteristic example of it in the brief story I have been telling
+you. Agrippina becomes an object of universal hatred and dies by
+assassination because she defends tradition; her son disregards
+tradition and, chiefly for this very reason, is finally forced to kill
+himself. Doubtless the fate of the Bonapartes is less tragic, because
+they, at least, escaped the infamous legend created by contemporary
+hatred against Cæsar's family, and artfully developed by the
+historians of successive generations. I hope to be able to prove
+in the continuation of my _Greatness and Decline of Rome_, that
+the history of Cæsar's family, as it has been told by Tacitus and
+Suetonius, is a sensational novel, a legend containing not much more
+truth than the legend of Atrides. The family of Cæsar, placed in the
+centre of the great struggle going on in Rome between the old Roman
+militarism, and the intellectual civilisation of the Orient,
+between nationalism and cosmopolitism, between Asiatic mysticism
+and traditional religion, between egoism over-excited by culture and
+wealth, and the supreme interests of the species, had to injure too
+many interests, to offend too many susceptibilities. The injured
+interests, the offended susceptibilities, revenged themselves through
+defaming legends.
+
+The case of Nero is particularly instructive. He was half insane and
+a veritable criminal: it would be absurd to attempt in his favour
+the historical rehabilitation to which other members of the family,
+Tiberius for instance, have a right. And yet it has not been enough
+for succeeding generations that he atoned for his follies and crimes
+by death and infamy. They have fallen upon his memory: they have
+overlooked that extenuating circumstance of considerable importance,
+his age when elected; they have gone so far as to make him into a
+unique monster, no longer human and even the Antichrist!
+
+Surely he first shed Christian blood; but if we consider the tendency
+he represented in Roman history, we can hardly classify him among the
+great enemies of Christianity. Unwittingly, Augustus and Tiberius were
+two great enemies of the Christian teachings, because they sought
+by all means to reinforce Roman tradition, and struggled
+against everything that would one day form the essence of
+Christianity--cosmopolitism, mysticism, the domination of intellectual
+people, the influence of the philosophical and metaphysical spirit
+on life. Nero, on the contrary, with his repeated efforts to
+spread Orientalism in Rome, and chiefly with his taste for art, was
+unconsciously a powerful collaborator of future Christian propaganda.
+We must not forget this: the masses in the Empire became Christian
+only because they had first been imbued with the Oriental spirit.
+
+Nero and St. Paul, the man that wished to enjoy all, and the man
+that suffered all, are in their time two extreme antitheses: with
+the passing of centuries, they become two collaborators. While one
+suffered hunger and persecution to preach the doctrine of redemption,
+the other called to Italy and to Rome, to amuse himself, the
+goldsmiths, weavers, sculptors, painters, architects, musicians, whom
+Rome had always rebuffed.
+
+Both disappeared, cut off by the violent current of their epoch;
+centuries went by: the name of the Emperor grew infamous, while that
+of the tent-maker radiated glory. In the midst of the immense disorder
+that accompanied the dissolution of the Roman Empire, as the bonds
+among men relaxed, and the human mind seemed to be incapable of
+reasoning and understanding, the disciples of the saint realised
+that the goldsmiths, weavers, sculptors, painters, architects, and
+musicians of the Emperor could collect the masses around the churches
+and make them patiently listen to what they could still comprehend of
+Paul's sublime morality. When you regard St. Mark or Notre Dame or any
+other stupendous cathedral of the Middle Ages, like museums for the
+work of art they hold, you see the luminous symbol of this paradoxical
+alliance between victim and executioner.
+
+Only through the alliance of Paul and Nero could the Church dominate
+the disorder of the Middle Ages, and, from antiquity to the modern
+world, carry through that formidable storm the essential principles
+from which our civilisation developed: a decisive proof that, if
+history in its details is a continuous strife, as a whole it is the
+inevitable final reconciliation of antagonistic forces, obtained in
+spite of the resistance of individuals and by sacrificing them.
+
+
+
+Julia and Tiberius
+
+
+"He walked with head bent and fixed, the face stern, a taciturn man
+exchanging no word with those about him.... Augustus realised these
+severe and haughty manners, and more than once tried to excuse them
+in the Senate and to the people, saying that they were defects of
+temperament, not signs of a sinister spirit."
+
+This is the picture that Suetonius gives us of Tiberius, the man
+who, in 9 B.C., after the death of Agrippa and Drusus, stood next to
+Augustus, his right hand and pre-established successor. At that time
+Augustus was fifty-four years old; not an old man, but he was ill and
+had presided over the Republic for twenty-one years. Many people must
+have asked themselves what would happen if Augustus should die,
+or should definitely retire to private life. The answer was not
+uncertain: since Rome was engaged in the conquest of Germany, the
+chief of the Empire and of the army ought to be a valiant general and
+a man of expert acquaintance with Germanic affairs. Tiberius was the
+first general of his time and knew Germany and the Germans better than
+any other Roman.
+
+The passage from Suetonius, just quoted, indicates that Tiberius was
+not altogether popular, yet it was the accepted opinion that Rome
+and Italy might well be content to rely upon so capable a general and
+diplomat, if Augustus failed. This attitude, however, changed when
+the death of Drusus entirely removed the alternative of choice between
+himself and Tiberius, and the latter, up to that time universally
+admired, began to be met, even among the nobility, by a strong
+opposition. How can this apparently inexplicable fact be made clear?
+The theory of corruption so dear to the ancients, which I have already
+explained, gives us the key to the mystery. Those who have been
+disposed to see in that theory merely a plaything of poets, orators,
+philosophers, will now realise that it had power enough to kill the
+person and destroy the family of the first citizen of the Empire. That
+kind of continuous fear of luxury, of amusements, of prodigality, on
+account of which the ancients called corruption so many things that
+we define as progress, was not a sentiment always equally alive in the
+mind of the multitude. The Romans, like ourselves, loved to live and
+to enjoy; this is so true that philosophers and legislators constantly
+took pains to remind them of the danger of allowing too much liberty
+to the appetites; but more effective than the counsels of philosophers
+and the threats of the law, great public calamities inspired in the
+masses, at least temporarily, a spirit of puritanism and austerity.
+Of this the consequences of the battle of Actium afforded noteworthy
+proof.
+
+Those who have read the fourth volume of _The Greatness and Decline of
+Rome_ may perhaps remember how I have described the conservative
+and traditionalist movement of the first decade of the government
+of Augustus. Frightened by the revolution, men's minds had reverted
+precipitously to the past. A new party, which one might call the
+traditionalist, had sought to re-establish the old-time order, in the
+state, in customs, in ideas; to combat the corruption of customs; and
+of this party Augustus had been the right arm. Indeed, to so great
+an extent had this party stirred up public spirit and prevailed upon
+those in power that in 18 B.C. it succeeded in passing some great
+social laws on luxury, on matrimony, on dress. With these laws, Rome
+proposed to remake, by terrible measures, the old, prolific, austere
+nobility of the aristocratic era. The _lex de maritandis_ _ordinibus_
+aimed with a thousand vexatious restrictions to constrain the nobility
+to marry and have children; the _lex sumptuaria_ studied to restrain
+extravagance; the _lex de adulteriis_ proclaimed martial law in the
+family, menacing an unfaithful wife and her accomplice with exile for
+life and the confiscation of half their substance; legislation of the
+harshest, this, which should scourge Rome to blood, to keep her from
+falling anew into the inveterate vices from which the civil wars were
+born.
+
+The impression of the civil wars could not last forever. In fact,
+in the decade that followed the promulgation of the social laws, the
+puritan fervour, which had up to that time heated all Italy, began
+to cool. Wealth increased; the confidence that order and peace were
+actually re-established, spread everywhere; the generation that had
+seen the civil wars, disappeared; peace and growing prosperity stirred
+in the next generation a desire for freedom and pleasure that would
+not endure the narrow traditionalism and the puritanism of the
+preceding generation; consequently also the laws of 18 B.C. became
+intolerable.
+
+To understand this change in public spirit which had such serious
+consequences, there is no better way than by studying the most
+celebrated writer of this new generation, Ovid, who represents it most
+admirably both in life and works. Ovid was born at Sulmona in 43 B.C.
+He was about the same age as Tiberius,--of a knight's family--that
+is, of the wealthy middle class. He was destined by his father to the
+study of oratory and jurisprudence, evidently to make a political man
+of him, a senator, a future consul or proconsul, and to contribute to
+the great national restoration that his generation proposed to itself
+and of which Augustus was architect, preparing a new family for the
+political aristocracy that was governing the Empire. Ovid's father
+had all the requirements demanded by law and custom: a considerable
+fortune, the half-nobility of the equestrian order, an intelligent
+son, the means to give him the necessary culture--a favourable
+combination of circumstances which was wholly undone by a bit of
+unforeseen contrariety, the son's invincible inclination for what his
+father called, with little respect, a "useless study," literature.
+The young man had indifferently studied oratory and law, gone to Rome,
+married, made friendships in the high society of the capital, been
+elected to the offices preceding the quæstorship; but when the time
+arrived for presenting himself as candidate for the quæstorship
+itself--that is, the time for beginning the true _curriculum_ of the
+magistracies, he had declared that he would rather be a great poet
+than a consul, and there was no persuading him farther on the long
+road opened to political ambitions.
+
+With the episode of Julia and Tiberius in mind, I have stated that
+Ovid's life epitomises the new generation, because it shows us
+in action the first of the forces that dissolved the aristocratic
+government and the nobility artificially reconstituted by Augustus
+at the close of the civil wars--intellectualism. The case of Ovid
+demonstrates that intellectual culture, literature, poetry, instead
+of being, for the Roman aristocracy, as in older times, a simple
+ornament, secondary to politics, had already a prime attraction for
+the man of genius; that even among the higher classes, devoted by
+tradition only to military and political life, there appeared, by the
+side of the leaders in war and politics, the professional literary
+man. The study of Ovid's work shows something even more noteworthy:
+that, profiting by the discords in the ruling class, these literary
+men feared no longer to express and to re-enforce the discontent,
+the bad feeling, the aversion, that the efforts of the State to
+re-establish a more vigorous social order was rousing in one part of
+the public.
+
+Ovid's first important work was the _Amores_, which was certainly out
+by the year 8 B.C. although in a different form from that in which
+we now have it. To understand what this book really was when it was
+published, one must remember that it was written, read, and what
+is more, _admired_, ten years after the promulgation of the _lex de
+maritandis ordinibus_ and of the _lex de adulteriis_; it should be
+read with what remains of the text of those laws in hand.
+
+We are astonished at the book, full of excitements to frivolity, to
+dissipation, to pleasure, to those very activities that appeared to
+the ancients to form the most dangerous part of the "corruption."
+Extravagances of a libertine poet? The single-handed revolt of a
+corrupt youth, which cannot be considered a sign of the times? No. If
+there had not been in the public at large, in the higher classes, in
+the new generation, a general sympathy with this poetry, subversive of
+the solemn Julian laws, Ovid would never have been recognised in the
+houses of the great, petted and admired by high society. The great
+social laws of Augustus, the publication of which had been celebrated
+by Horace in the _Carmen Seculare_, wounded too many interests,
+tormented too many selfishnesses, intercepted too many liberties.
+
+His revolutionary elegies had made Ovid famous, because these
+interests and these selfishnesses finally rebelled with the new
+generation, which had not seen the civil wars. Other incidents before
+and after the publication of the _Amores_ also show this reaction
+against the social laws. Therefore Augustus proposed about this time
+to abolish the provision of the _lex de maritandis ordinibus_ that
+excluded celibates from public spectacles; and by his personal
+intervention sought to put a check upon the scandalous trials for
+adultery that his law had originated--two acts that were so much
+admired by a part of the public that statues were erected to him by
+popular subscription.
+
+In short, this new movement of public opinion explains the opposition
+exerted from this time on against Tiberius and makes us understand how
+there arose the conflict in which this mysterious personage was to be
+entangled for the rest of his life, and to lose, by no fault of his
+own, so great a part of his reputation. I hope to prove that the
+Tiberius of Tacitus and Suetonius is a fantastic personality, the hero
+of a wretched and improbable romance, invented by party hatred;
+that Tiberius remained, as a German historian has defined it, an
+undecipherable enigma, simply because there has never been the will to
+recognise how much alive the aristocratic republican traditions
+still were, and what force they still exerted in the State and in the
+family.
+
+Tiberius was but an authentic Claudius--that is, a true descendant of
+one of the oldest, the proudest, the most aristocratic families of the
+Roman nobility, a man with all the good qualities and all the defects
+of the old Roman aristocracy, a man who regarded things and men with
+the eyes of a senator of the times of Scipio Africanus--a living
+anachronism, a fossil, if you will, from a by-gone age, in a world
+that wished to tolerate no more either the vices or the virtues of the
+old aristocracy. He thought that the Empire ought to be governed by a
+limited aristocracy of diplomats and warriors, rigidly authoritative,
+exclusively Roman, which should know how to check the general
+corrupting of customs, the current extravagance and dissipation,
+beginning its task by imposing upon itself an inexorable
+self-discipline. Even though he belonged to the generation of Ovid--to
+the generation that had not seen the civil wars--Tiberius, by
+singular exception, kept aloof from the undisciplined frivolity of his
+contemporaries. He desired the severe application of the social
+laws of the year 18, as of all the traditional norms of aristocratic
+discipline. His generation therefore soon found him an enemy,
+especially after Drusus's death seemed to leave neither doubt nor
+choice as to the successor of Augustus. From this contemporary
+attitude arises the tacit aversion in the midst of which, after the
+lapse of so many centuries, we still feel Tiberius living and working,
+an aversion which steadily grows even while he renders the most signal
+services to the Empire.
+
+There was between him and his generation irreconcilable discord.
+However, it is not likely that this blind and secret hatred alone
+could have seriously injured Tiberius, whose power and merits were so
+great, if it had not been considerably helped by incidents of various
+nature. The first and most important of these was the discord that had
+arisen, shortly after the death of Drusus, between Tiberius and his
+wife Julia, the daughter of Augustus and the widow of Agrippa.
+
+Tiberius had married her against his will in the year 11, after the
+death of Agrippa, by order of Augustus, and had at first tried to
+live in accord with her; the attempt was vain, and the spirits of the
+husband and wife were soon parted in fatal disagreement. "He lived at
+first," writes Suetonius, "in harmony with Julia; but soon grew cool
+toward her, and finally the estrangement reached such a point after
+the death of their boy born at Aquileia, that Tiberius lived in a
+separate apartment"--a separation, as we would call it, in "bed and
+board." What was the reason of this discord? No ancient historian has
+revealed it; however, we can guess with sufficient probability from
+what we know of the characters of the pair and the discord that
+divided Roman society. If Tiberius was not the monster of Capri, Julia
+was certainly not the miserable Bacchante of the scandalous Roman
+chronicle. Macrobius has pictured her in human lights and shadows, a
+probable image, describing her as a highly cultured woman, lavish
+in tastes and expenditure, fond of beautiful literature, of the
+fine arts, and of the company of handsome and elegant young men. She
+belonged to the new generation of which Ovid was spokesman and poet;
+while Tiberius represented archaic traditionalism, the spirit of a
+past generation.
+
+It is easy to understand how these two persons, incarnating the
+irreconcilable opposition of two epochs, two _morales_, two societies,
+of Roman militarism and of Oriental culture, could not live together.
+A man like Tiberius, severe, simple, who detested frivolous pleasures,
+caring more for war than for society life, could not live in peace
+with this beautiful and vivacious creature, who loved luxury,
+prodigality, brilliant company. It is not rash to suppose that
+the _lex sumptuaria_ of the year 18 was the first grave cause of
+disagreement. Julia, given, as Macrobius describes her, to profuse
+expenditure and pretentious elegance, could not take this law
+seriously; while it was the duty of Tiberius, who always protested by
+deed as by word against the barren pomp of the rich, to see that his
+wife serve as an example of simplicity to the other matrons of Rome.
+
+Very soon there occurred an accident, not uncommon in unfortunate
+marriages, but which for special reasons was, in the family of
+Tiberius, far more than wontedly dangerous. Tacitus tells us that
+after Julia was out of favour with Tiberius, she contracted a relation
+with an elegant young aristocrat, one Sempronius Gracchus, of the
+family of the famous tribunes. Accepting as true the affirmation of
+Tacitus, in itself likely, we can very well explain the behaviour and
+acts of Tiberius in these years. The misdoing of Julia offended
+not only the man and husband, but placed also the statesman, the
+representative of the traditionalist party, in the gravest perplexity.
+
+According to the _lex de adulteriis_, made by Augustus in the year
+18, the husband ought either to punish the unfaithful wife himself or
+denounce her to the prætor. Could he, Tiberius, provoke so frightful
+a scandal in the house of the "First Citizen of the Republic"; drive
+from Rome, defamed, the daughter of Augustus, the most noted lady of
+Rome, who had so many friends in all circles of its society? Suetonius
+speaks of the disgust of Tiberius for Julia, "_quam neque criminari
+aut demittere auderet_"--whom he dared neither incriminate nor
+repudiate. On the other hand, did not he, the intransigeant
+traditionalist, who kept continually reproving the nobility for their
+laxity in self-discipline, merit rebuke, for allowing this thing to
+go on, not applying the law? The difficulty was serious; the _lex de
+adulteriis_ began to be a torment to its creators. Unable to separate
+from, unwilling to live with, this woman who had traduced him and whom
+he despised, Tiberius was reduced to maintaining a merely apparent
+union to avoid the scandal of a trial and divorce.
+
+This proceeding, however, was an expedient in that condition of things
+both insufficient and dangerous. The discord between Tiberius and
+Julia put into the hands of the young nobility, up to that time
+unarmed, a terrible weapon against the illustrious general, who was,
+meanwhile, fighting the Germans. The young nobility, inimical to the
+social laws and to Tiberius, rallied about Julia, and the effects of
+this alliance were not slow in appearing. Julia had had five sons by
+Agrippa, of whom the eldest two, Caius and Lucius, had been adopted
+by Augustus. In the year 6 B.C., the eldest, Caius, reached the age of
+fourteen. He was therefore but a lad; notwithstanding his youth, there
+was suddenly brought forward the strange, almost incredible, proposal
+to make a law by which he might at once be elected consul for the year
+754 A.U.C, when he would be twenty years old.
+
+Who made this proposal? Augustus, if we believe Suetonius, out of
+excessive fondness for his adopted sons. Dion, on the contrary, tells
+these things differently. He says that from the beginning Augustus
+opposed the law, and so leads us to doubt that it was either proposed
+or desired by that Prince. The facts are that a party in Rome kept
+insisting till Augustus supported this law with his authority, and
+that from the first he was unwilling to be accessory to an election
+that overturned without reason every Roman constitutional right.
+
+Who then were these strange admirers of a child of fourteen, who to
+make him consul did not hesitate to do violence to tradition, to the
+laws, to good sense, and, finally, to the adoptive father? It was the
+opposition to Tiberius, the party of the young nobility and Julia, who
+were seeking a rule less severe, and, if not the abolition, at least
+the mitigated application of the great social laws. They aimed to put
+forward the young Caius, to set him early before public attention, to
+hasten his political career, in order to oppose a rival to Tiberius;
+to prepare another collaborator and successor of Augustus, to make
+Tiberius less indispensable and therefore less powerful.
+
+In brief, here was the hope of using against Tiberius at once the
+maternal pride and affection of Julia, the tenderness of Augustus, and
+the popularity of the name of Cæsar, which Caius carried. The people
+had never greatly loved the name of the Claudii, a haughty line of
+invincible aristocrats, always hard and overbearing with the poor,
+always opposed to the democratic party. The party against Tiberius
+hoped that when to a Claudius there should be opposed a Cæsar, the
+public spirit would revert to the dazzling splendour of the name.
+
+Now we understand why Augustus had at first objected. The privileges
+that he had caused to be conceded to Marcellus, to Drusus, to
+Tiberius, were all of less consequence than those demanded for
+Caius and had all been justified either by urgent needs of State, or
+services already rendered; but how could it be tolerated that without
+any reason, without the slightest necessity, there should be made
+consul a lad of fourteen, of whom it would be difficult to predict
+even whether he would become a man of common sense? Moreover Augustus
+could not so easily bring himself to offend Tiberius, who would not
+admit that the chief of the Republic should help his enemies offer him
+so great an affront. How could it be, that while he, amid fatigues
+and perils in cold and savage regions, was fighting the Germans and
+holding in subjection the European provinces, that _jeunesse dorée_
+of good-for-nothings, cynics, idlers, poets, which infested the new
+generation, was conniving with his wife to set against him a child
+of fourteen?--to gain, as it were, sanction from a law that the State
+would not be safe till by the side of this Claudius should be placed a
+Cæsar, beardless and inexpert, as if the name of the latter outweighed
+the genius and experience of the former? And Augustus, the head of the
+Republic, would he have tolerated such an outrage? Tiberius not only
+resisted the law but exacted the open disapproval of Augustus; in
+fact, at the beginning, Augustus stood out against it as Tiberius
+wished; but difficulties grew by the way and became grave.
+
+Julia and her friends knew how to dispose public opinion ably in
+their own favour, to intrigue in the Senate, to exploit the increasing
+unpopularity of the social laws, of the spreading aversion to Tiberius
+and the admiration for other members of Augustus's family. The
+proposal to make Caius consul became in a short time so popular
+for one or another of these reasons, and as the symbol of a future
+government less severe and traditionalistic, that Augustus felt less
+and less able to withstand the current. On the other hand, to yield
+meant mortally to offend Tiberius. Finally, as was his wont, this
+astute politician thought to extricate himself from the difficulty by
+a transaction and an expedient. Dion, shortly after having said that
+Augustus finally yielded to the popular will, adds that, to make Caius
+more modest, he gave Tiberius the tribunician power for five years and
+charged him with subduing the revolt in Armenia. Augustus's idea is
+clear: he was trying to please everybody--the partisans of Caius Cæsar
+by not opposing the law, and Tiberius, by giving the most splendid
+compensation, making him his colleague in place of Agrippa.
+
+Unfortunately, Tiberius was not the man to accept this compensation.
+No honour could make up for the insult Augustus had done him, though
+yielding but in part to his enemies, because by so doing even Augustus
+had seemed to think it necessary to set him beside a lad of fourteen;
+he would go away; they might do as they pleased and charge Caius with
+directing the war in Germany. Indignant at the timid opportunism of
+Augustus, disgusted with the wife whom he could neither accuse nor
+repudiate, Tiberius demanded permission of Augustus to retire to
+Rodi to private life, saying that he was tired and in need of repose.
+Naturally Augustus was frightened, begged and pleaded with him to
+remain, sent his mother Livia to beseech him, but every effort was
+futile; Tiberius was obstinate, and finally, since Augustus did not
+permit his departure, he threatened to let himself die of hunger.
+Augustus still tried to stand firm; one day, two days, three days, he
+let him fast without giving the required consent. At the end of the
+fourth day, Augustus had to recognise that Tiberius had serious intent
+to kill himself, and yielded. The Senate granted him permission to
+depart; and Tiberius at once started for Ostia, "without saying a
+word," writes Suetonius, "to those who accompanied him, and kissing
+but a few."
+
+It would be impossible to decide whether this retaliation of
+Tiberius's self-love was equal to the offence; and perhaps it is
+useless to discuss the point. It is certain, however, that the
+consequences of the departure of Tiberius were weighty. The first
+result was that the party of the young nobility, the party averse to
+the laws of the year 18, found itself master of the field; perhaps
+because the opposing party lost with Tiberius its most authoritative
+leader; perhaps because Augustus, irritated against Tiberius, inclined
+still more toward the contrary party; perhaps because public opinion
+judged severely the departure of Tiberius, who, already little
+admired, became decidedly unpopular. Julia and her friends triumphed,
+and not content with having conquered, wished to domineer; shortly
+afterward they obtained the concession of the same privileges as those
+granted to Caius for his younger brother Lucius. At the same
+time, Augustus prepared to make Caius and Lucius his two future
+collaborators in place of Tiberius; Ovid set his hand to a book still
+more scandalous and subversive than the _Amores_, the _Ars Amandi_;
+public indulgence covered with its protection all those accused on
+grounds of the laws of the year 18; and finally, the two boys, Caius
+and Lucius, became popular, like great personages, all over
+Italy. There have been found in different cities of the peninsula
+inscriptions in their honour, one of which, very long and curious, is
+at Pisa; it is full of absurd eulogies of the two lads, who had as yet
+done nothing, good or bad. Italy must have been tired enough of a too
+conservative government, which had lasted twenty-five years, of an
+Empire reconquered by traditional ideas, if, in order to protest, it
+lionised the two young sons of Agrippa in ways that contradicted every
+idea and sentiment of Roman tradition.
+
+In conclusion, the departure of Tiberius, and the severe judgment the
+public gave it, still further weakened the conservative party, already
+for some years in decline, by a natural transformation of the public
+spirit. Perhaps the party of tradition would have been entirely spent,
+had not events soon reminded Rome that its spirit was the life of the
+military order. The departure of Tiberius, the man who represented
+this spirit, rapidly disorganised the army and the external policy
+of Rome. Up to that time Augustus had had beside him a powerful
+helper--first Agrippa, afterwards Tiberius; but then he found himself
+alone at the head of the Empire, a man already well on in years; and
+for the first time it appeared that this zealous bureaucrat, this
+fastidious administrator, this intellectual idler, who could do an
+enormous amount of work on condition that he be not forced to issue
+from his study and encounter currents of air too strong for him, was
+insufficient to direct alone the politics of an immense empire, which
+required, in addition to the sagacity of the administrator and the
+ingenuity of the legislator, the resoluteness of the warrior and the
+man of action.
+
+The State rapidly fell into a stupor. In Germany, where it was
+necessary to proceed to the ordering of the province, everything was
+suspended; the people, apparently subdued, were not bound to pay any
+tribute, and were left to govern themselves solely and entirely
+by their own laws--a strange anomaly in the history of the Roman
+conquests, which only the departure of Tiberius can explain. At such
+a distance, when he was no longer counselled by Tiberius who so well
+understood German affairs, Augustus trusted no other assistants,
+fearing lack of zeal and intelligence; distrusting himself also, he
+dared initiate nothing in the conquered province. The Senate, inert
+as usual, gave it not a thought. So Germany remained an uncertainty,
+neither a province nor independent, for fifteen years, a fact wherein
+is perhaps to be found the real cause of the catastrophe of Varus,
+which ruined the whole German policy of Rome.
+
+Furthermore, in Pannonia and Dalmatia, when it was known that the most
+valiant general of Rome was in disgrace at Rodi, the malcontents took
+fresh courage, reopened an agitation that could but terminate in
+a revolt, much more dangerous than any preceding. In the Orient,
+Palestine arose in 4 B.C., on the death of Herod the Great, against
+his son, Archelaus, and against the Hellenised monarchy, demanding
+to be made a Roman province like Syria, and a frightful civil war
+illumined with its sinister glare the cradle of Jesus. The governor
+of Syria, Quintilius Varus, threw himself into Judea and succeeded in
+crushing the revolt; but Augustus, unable to bring himself either to
+give full satisfaction to the Hebrew people or to execute entirely the
+testament of Herod, decided as usual on a compromise: he divided
+the ancient kingdom of Herod the Great among three of his sons, and
+changed Archelaus's title of king to the more modest one of ethnarch.
+Then new difficulties arose with the Empire of the Parthians. In
+short, vaguely, in every part of the Empire and beyond its borders,
+there began to grow the sense that Rome was again weakening; a sense
+of doubt due to the decadence of the spirit of tradition and of the
+party representing it; to the new spirit of the new generation; and
+finally, to the absence of Tiberius, the one capable general of the
+time, which gradually disorganised even the western armies, the best
+in the Empire.
+
+This dissolution of the State naturally fed in the traditionalist
+party the hope of reconquering. Tiberius had sincere friends and
+admirers, especially among the nobility, less numerous than those of
+Julia, but more serious, because his merits were real. Many people
+among the higher classes--even though, like Augustus, they considered
+the obduracy of Tiberius excessive--thought that Rome no more
+possessed so many examples of illustrious men as to be able to retire
+its best general at thirty-seven. Very soon there arose in the circles
+about Augustus, in the Senate, in the comitia, a bitter contention
+between Tiberius's friends and his enemies; this was really a struggle
+between the traditionalist party, which busied itself conserving,
+together with the traditions of the old Romanism, the military and
+political power of Rome, and the party of the young nobility, which,
+without heeding the external dangers, wished to impel habits, ideas,
+the public spirit, toward the freer, broader forms of the Oriental
+civilisation, even at the risk of dissolving the State and the army.
+Julia and Tiberius personify the two parties; between them stands
+Augustus, who ought to decide, and is more uncertain than ever.
+Theoretically Augustus always inclined more toward Tiberius, but from
+disgust at his departure, from solicitude for domestic peace, from
+his little sympathy with his step-son, he was driven to the opposite
+party.
+
+In this duel, what was the behaviour and the part of Livia, the mother
+of Tiberius? The ancient historians tell us nothing; it is, at all
+events, hardly probable that Livia remained an inactive witness of
+the long struggle waged to secure the return of Tiberius and his
+reinstatement in the brilliant position once his. Moreover, Suetonius
+says that during his entire stay at Rodi, Tiberius communicated with
+Augustus by means of Livia. At any rate, the party of Tiberius was
+not long in understanding that he could not re-enter Rome, as long as
+Julia was popular and most powerful there; that to reopen the gates of
+Rome to the husband, it was necessary to drive out the wife. This was
+a difficult enterprise, because Julia was upheld by the party already
+dominant; she had the affection of Augustus; she was the mother
+of Caius and Lucius Cæsar, the two hopes of the Republic, whose
+popularity covered her with a respect and a sympathy that made her
+almost invulnerable. Tiberius, instead, was unpopular. However, there
+is no undertaking impossible to party hate. Exasperated by the growing
+disfavour of public opinion, the party of Tiberius decided on a
+desperate expedient to which Tiberius himself would not have dared set
+hand; that is, since Julia had a paramour, to adopt against her the
+weapon supplied by the _lex Julia de adulteriis_, made by her father,
+and so provoke the terrible scandal that until then every one had
+avoided in fear.
+
+Unfortunately, we possess too few documents to write in detail the
+history of this dreadful episode; but everything becomes clear enough
+if one sees in the ruin of Julia a kind of terrible political and
+judicial blackmailing, tried by the friends of Tiberius to remove the
+chief obstacle to his return, and if one takes it that the friends
+of Tiberius succeeded in procuring proofs of the guilt of Julia and
+carried them to Augustus, not as to the head of the State, but to the
+father.
+
+Dion Cassius says that "Augustus finally, although tardily, came to
+recognise the misdeeds of his daughter," which signifies that at a
+given moment, Augustus could no longer feign ignorance of her sins,
+because the proofs were in the power of irreconcilable enemies, who
+would have refused to smother the scandal. These mortal enemies of
+Julia could have been no other than the friends of Tiberius. Julia had
+violated the law on adultery made by himself; Augustus could doubt it
+no more.
+
+To understand well the tragic situation in which Augustus was placed
+by these revelations, one must remember various things: first that
+the _lex de adulteriis_, proposed by Augustus himself, obliged the
+father--when the husband could not, or would not--to punish the guilty
+daughter, or to denounce her to the prætor, if he had not the courage
+to punish her himself; second, that this law arranged that if the
+father and the husband failed to fulfil their proper duty, any one
+whoever, the first comer, might in the name of public morals make
+the denunciation to the prætor and stand to accuse the woman and her
+accomplice. Tiberius, the husband, being absent at Rodi, he, Augustus,
+the father, must become the Nemesis of his daughter--must punish her
+or denounce her; if not, the friends of Tiberius could accuse her
+to the prætor, hale her before the quæstor, unveil to the public the
+shame of her private life.
+
+What should he do? Many a father had disdainfully refused to be the
+executioner of his own daughter, leaving to others the grim office of
+applying the _lex Julia_. Could he imitate such an example? He was the
+head of the Republic, the most powerful man of the Empire, the founder
+of a new political order; he could decide peace and war, govern the
+Senate at his pleasure, exalt or abase the powerful of the earth with
+a nod; and exactly for this reason he dared not evade the bitter task.
+He feared the envy, the moral and levelling prejudices of the middle
+classes, which needed every now and then to slaughter in the courts
+some one belonging to the upper classes, in order to delude themselves
+that justice is equal for all. To him had been granted the greatest
+privileges; but precisely on this account was it dangerous to try to
+cover his daughter with a privileged protection as prey too delicate
+for public attack. And then, if he himself gave the example of
+disobeying his law, who would observe it? The tremendous scandal would
+unnerve all the moral force of his legislation, which was the base
+of his prestige. The moment was terrible. Imagine this old man of
+sixty-two wearied by forty-four years of public life, embittered
+by the difficulties that sprang up about him, disquieted by the
+dissolution of State of which he was the impotent witness, finding
+himself all at once facing these alternatives--either destroy his
+daughter, or undo all the political work over which he had laboured
+for thirty years; and no temporising possible!
+
+Augustus was not a naturally cruel man, but before these alternatives
+his mind seems to have been for a moment convulsed by an access of
+grief and rage, the distant echo of which has come down to us. One
+moment, as Suetonius says, he had the idea of killing Julia. Then
+reason, pity, affection, gentler habits, prevailed. He did not give
+the sentence of death, but he was too practised a politician not
+to understand that she could not be saved; and as he had immolated
+Cicero, Lepidus, Antony, so he immolated her also to the necessity
+of preserving before Italy his prestige of severe legislator and
+impartial magistrate. To avoid the trial, he resolved to punish her
+himself with his power of _pater familias_ according to the _lex
+Julia_, exiling her to Pandataria and announcing the divorce to her
+in the name of Tiberius. He then despatched to the Senate a record of
+what he had done, and went away to the country, where he remained a
+long time, says Suetonius, seeing no one, the prey to profound grief.
+
+It seems that Julia's fall was a surprise to the public. In a day
+it learned that the highly popular daughter of Augustus had been
+condemned to exile by her father. This unexpected revelation let
+a storm loose in the metropolis. Even though there were not then
+published in Rome those vile newspapers, the pests of modern
+civilisation, that hunt their _soldi_ in the mud and slime of the
+basest human passions, the taste for scandalous revelations, the
+envy of genius and fortune, the pleasure of wreaking cruelty upon
+the unarmed, the low delight in pouring the basest feelings upon the
+honour of a woman abandoned by all--these passions animated minds
+then, as they do to-day; nor were there then wanting, more than
+now, wretches that profited by them, to gather money or satisfy bad
+instincts, without being able to dispose of a single, miserable
+sheet of paper. On every side delators sprang up, and an epidemic of
+slanders embittered Rome; every man who had name or wealth or some
+relation with the family of Augustus, ran the risk of being accused as
+a lover of Julia. Several youths of high society, frightened by these
+charges, committed suicide; others were condemned. About Julia
+were invented and spread the most atrocious calumnies, which formed
+thereafter the basis for the infamous legends that have remained
+in history attached to her name. The traditionalist party naturally
+abetted this furor of accusations and inventions, made to persuade the
+public that a fearful corruption was hidden among the upper classes
+and that to cure it fire and sword must be used without pity.
+
+The friends of Julia, the party of the young nobility, disconcerted at
+first by the explosion, did not delay to collect themselves and react;
+the populace of Rome made some great demonstrations in favour of Julia
+and demanded her pardon of Augustus. Many indeed, recognising that her
+punishment was legal, protested against the ferocity of her enemies,
+who had not hesitated to embitter with so terrible a scandal the old
+age of Augustus; protested against the mad folly of incrimination with
+which every part of Rome was possessed. Most people turned, the more
+envenomed, against Tiberius, attacking him with renewed fury as the
+cause of all the evil. He it was, they insisted, who had conceived the
+abominable scandal, willed it, imposed it upon Rome and the Empire!
+
+If Livia and the friends of Tiberius had thought to bring him in
+by the gate where Julia went out, they were not slow in recognising
+themselves deceived. The fall of Julia struck Tiberius on the rebound
+in his distant island. His unpopularity, already great, grew by all
+the disgust that the scandal about Julia had provoked, and became
+so formidable that one day about this time the inhabitants of Nimes
+overturned his statues. It was the beginning of the Christian era, but
+a dark silence brooded over the Palatine; the defamed Julia was making
+her hard way to Pandataria; Tiberius, discredited and detested, was
+wasting himself in inaction at Rodi; Augustus in his empty house,
+disgusted, distrustful, half paralysed by deep grief, would hear to
+no counsels of peace, of indulgence, of reconciliation. Tiberius and
+Julia were equally hateful to him, and as he did not allow himself
+to be moved by the friends of Julia, who did not cease to implore her
+pardon, so he resisted the friends of Tiberius, who tried to persuade
+him to reconciliation. What mattered it to him if the administration
+of the State fell to pieces on all sides; if Germans threatened
+revolt; if Rome had need of the courage, of the valour, of the
+experience of Tiberius?
+
+Tiberius from his retreat in Rodi kept every one in Rome afraid,
+beginning with Augustus. Too rich, too eager now for pleasures and
+comforts, Rome was almost disgusted with the virtues and the
+defects that had in fact created it, and which survived in
+Tiberius--aristocratic pride, the spirit of rigour in authority,
+military valour, simplicity. Peace had come, extending everywhere,
+with wealth, the desire for enjoyment, happiness, pleasure, freedom,
+loosening everywhere the firmest bonds of social discipline,
+persuading Rome to lay down the heavy armour it had worn for so many
+centuries.
+
+In this family quarrel, which comprises a struggle of everlasting
+tendencies, Julia represented the new spirit that will prevail,
+Tiberius, the old, destined to perish; but for the time being, both
+spirits, however opposed, were necessary; for peace did not expand its
+gifts in the Empire without the protection of the great armies
+that fought on the Rhine and on the Danube. If the spirit of peace
+refreshed Rome, Italy, the Provinces, only the old aristocratic and
+military spirit could keep the Germans on the Rhine. As in all great
+social conflicts, the two opposing parties were both, in a certain
+measure and each from its own point of view, right. Just for that
+reason, the equilibrium could be found only by a continual struggle
+in which men on one side and on the other were destined in turn to
+triumph or fall according to the moment; a struggle in which Augustus,
+fated to act the part of judge--that is, to recognise, with a final
+formal sanction, a sentence already pronounced by facts--had against
+his will in turn to condemn some and reward others.
+
+Julia will remain at Pandataria, and Tiberius will return to Rome
+when the danger on the Rhine becomes too threatening, yet without much
+lessening the conclusive vengeance of Julia. That will come in the
+long torment of the reign of Tiberius; in the infamy that will pursue
+him to posterity. After having been pitilessly hated and persecuted in
+life, this man and this woman, who had personified two social forces
+eternally at war with each other, will both fall in death into the
+same abyss of unmerited infamy: tragic spectacle and warning lesson on
+the vanity of human judgments!
+
+
+
+Wine in Roman History
+
+
+In history as it is generally written, there are to be seen only great
+personages and events, kings, emperors, generals, ministers, wars,
+revolutions, treaties. When one closes a huge volume of history,
+one knows why this state made a great war upon that; understands the
+political thinking, the strategic plans, the diplomatic agreements
+of the powerful, but would hardly be able to answer much more simple
+questions: how people ate and drank, how the warriors, politicians,
+diplomats, were clad, and in general how men lived at any particular
+time.
+
+History does not usually busy itself with little men and small facts,
+and is therefore often obscure, unprecise, vague, tiresome. I believe
+that if some day I deserve praise, it will be because I have tried
+to show that everything has value and importance; that all phenomena
+interweave, act, and react upon each other--economic changes and
+political revolutions, costumes, ideas, the family and the state,
+land-holding and cultivation. There are no insignificant events
+in history; for the great events, like revolutions and wars, are
+inevitably and indissolubly accompanied by an infinite number of
+slight changes, appearing in every part of a nation: if in life there
+are men without note, and if these make up the great majority of
+nations--that which is called the "mass"--there is no greater mistake
+than to believe they are extraneous to history, mere inert instruments
+in the hands of the oligarchies that govern. States and institutions
+rest on this nameless mass, as a building rests upon its foundations.
+
+I mean to show you now by a typical case the possible importance of
+these little facts, so neglected in history. I shall speak to you
+neither of proconsuls nor of emperors, neither of great conquests nor
+of famous laws, but of wine-dealers and vine-tenders, of the fortuned
+and famous plant that from wooded mountain-slopes, mirrored in the
+Black Sea, began its slow, triumphal spread around the globe to
+its twentieth century bivouac, California. I shall show you how the
+branches and tendrils of the plant of Bacchus are entwined about the
+history and the destiny of Rome.
+
+For many centuries the Romans were water-drinkers. Little wine was
+made in Italy, and that of inferior quality: commonly not even the
+rich were wont to drink it daily; many used it only as medicine during
+illness; women were never to take it. For a long time, any woman in
+Rome who used wine inspired a sense of repulsion, like that excited in
+Europe up to a short time ago by any woman who smoked. At the time
+of Polybius, that is, toward the middle of the second century B.C.,
+ladies were allowed to drink only a little _passum_,--a kind of sweet
+wine, or syrup, made of raisins. About the women too much given to the
+beverage of Dionysos, there were terrifying stories told. It was said,
+for instance, that Egnatius Mecenius beat his wife to death, because
+she secretly drank wine; and that Romulus absolved him (Pliny, _Nat.
+Hist._, bk. 14, ch. 13). It was told, on the word of Fabius Pictor,
+who mentioned it in his annals, that a Roman lady was condemned by
+the family tribunal to die of hunger, because she had stolen from
+her husband the keys of the wine-cellar. It was said the Greek judge
+Dionysius condemned to the loss of her dower a wife who, unknown to
+her husband, had drunk more than was good for her health: this story
+is one which shows that women began to be allowed the use of wine as a
+medicine. It was for a long time the vaunt of a true Roman to despise
+fine wines. For example, ancient historians tell of Cato that, when
+he returned in triumph from his proconsulship in Spain, he boasted
+of having drunk on the voyage the same wine as his rowers; which
+certainly was not, as we should say now, either Bordeaux or Champagne!
+
+Cato, it is true, was a queer fellow, who pleased himself by throwing
+in the face of the young nobility's incipient luxury a piece of almost
+brutal rudeness; but he exaggerated, not falsified, the ideas and the
+sentiments of Romanism. At that time, it was a thing unworthy of a
+Roman to be a practised admirer of fine wines and to show too great
+a propensity for them. Then not only was the vine little and ill
+cultivated in Italy, but that country almost refused to admit its
+ability to make fine wines with its grapes. As wines of luxury, only
+the Greek were then accredited and esteemed--and paid for, like French
+wines to-day; but, though admiring and paying well for them, the
+Romans, still diffident and saving, made very spare use of them.
+Lucullus, the famous conqueror of the Pontus, told how in his father's
+house--in the house, therefore, of a noble family--Greek wine was
+never served more than once, even at the most elegant dinners.
+Moreover, this must have been a common custom, because Pliny says,
+speaking of the beginning of the last century of the Republic, "Tanta
+vero vino græco gratia erat ut singulæ potiones in convitu darentur";
+that is, translating literally, "Greek wine was so prized that only
+single potions of it were given at a meal." You understand at once the
+significance of this phrase; Greek wine was served as to-day--at least
+on European tables--Champagne is served; it was too expensive to give
+in quantity.
+
+This condition of things began to change after Rome became a world
+power, went outside of Italy, interfered in the great affairs of the
+Mediterranean, and came into more immediate contact with Greece and
+the Orient. By a strange law of correlation, as the Roman Empire
+spread about the Mediterranean, the vineyard spread in Italy;
+gradually, as the world politics of Rome triumphed in Asia and Africa,
+the grape harvest grew more abundant in Italy, the consumption of
+wine increased, the quality was refined. The bond between the
+two phenomena--the progress of conquest and the progress of
+vine-growing--is not accidental, but organic, essential, intimate.
+As, little by little, the policy of expansion grew, wealth and culture
+increased in Rome; the spirit of tradition and of simplicity weakened;
+luxury spread, and with it the appetite for sensations, including that
+of the taste for intoxicating beverages.
+
+We have but to notice what happens about us in the modern world--when
+industry gains and wealth increases and cities grow, men drink more
+eagerly and riotously inebriating beverages--to understand
+what happened in Italy and in Rome, as gradually wars, tribute,
+blackmailing politics, pitiless usury, carried into the peninsula the
+spoils of the Mediterranean world, riches of the most numerous and
+varied forms. The old-time aversion to wine diminished; men and
+women, city-dwellers and countrymen, learned to drink it. The cities,
+particularly Rome, no longer confined themselves to slaking their
+thirst at the fountains; as the demand and the price for wine
+increased, the land-owners in Italy grew interested in offering the
+cup of Bacchus, and as they had invested capital in vineyards,
+they were drawn on by the same interest to excite ever the more the
+eagerness for wine among the multitude, and to perfect grape-culture
+and increase the crop, in imitation of the Greeks. The wars and
+military expeditions to the Orient not only carried many Italians,
+peasants and proprietors, into the midst of the most celebrated
+vineyards of the world, but also transported into Italy slaves and
+numerous Greek and Asiatic peasants who knew the best methods of
+cultivating the vine, and of making wines like the Greek, just as the
+peasants of Piedmont, of the _Veneto_, and of Sicily, have in the last
+twenty years developed grape-culture in Tunis and California.
+
+Pliny, who is so rich in valuable information on the agricultural and
+social advances of Italy, tells us that it opened its hills and plains
+to the triumphal entrance of Dionysus between 130 and 120 B.C., about
+the time that Rome entered into possession of the kingdom of Pergamus,
+the largest and richest part of Asia Minor, left to it by bequest
+of Attalus. Thenceforward, for a century and a half, the progress of
+grape-growing continued without interruption; every generation poured
+forth new capital to enlarge the inheritance of vineyards already
+grown and to plant new ones. As the crop increased, the effort was
+redoubled to widen the sale, to entice a greater number of people to
+drink, to put the Italian wines by the side of the Greek.
+
+At the distance of centuries, these vine-growing interests do not
+appear even in history; but they actually were a most important factor
+in the Roman policy, a force that helps us explain several main
+facts in the history of Rome. For example, vineyards were one of the
+foundations of the imperial authority in Italy. That political form
+which was called with Augustus the principality, and from which was
+evolved the monarchy, would not have been founded if in the last
+century of the Republic all Italy had not been covered with vineyards
+and olive orchards. The affirmation, put just so, may seem strange and
+paradoxical, but the truth of it will be easy to prove.
+
+The imperial authority was gradually consolidated, because, beginning
+with Augustus, it succeeded in pacifying Italy after a century of
+commotion and civil wars and of foreign invasions, to which the
+secular institutions of the Republic had not known how to oppose
+sufficient defence; so that, little by little, right or wrong, the
+authority of the _Princeps_, as supreme magistrate, and the power of
+the Julian-Claudian house, which the supreme magistrate had organised,
+seemed to the Italian multitude the stable foundation of peace
+and order. But why was Italy, beginning with the time of Cæsar, so
+desperately anxious for peace and order? It would be a mistake to see
+in this anxiety only the natural desire of a nation, worn by anarchy,
+for the conditions necessary to a common social existence. The
+contrast of two episodes will show you that during the age of Cæsar
+annoyance at disorder and intolerance of it had for a special reason
+increased in Italy. Toward the end of the third century B.C., Italy
+had borne on its soil for about seventeen years the presence of
+an army that went sacking and burning everywhere--the army of
+Hannibal--without losing composure, awaiting with patience the hour
+for torment to cease. A century and a half later, a Thracian slave,
+escaping from the chain-gang with some companions, overran the
+country,--and Italy was frightened, implored help, stretched out its
+arms to Rome more despairingly than it had ever done in all the years
+of Hannibal.
+
+What made Italy so fearful? Because in the time of Hannibal it had
+chiefly cultivated cereals and pastured cattle, while in the days of
+Spartacus a considerable part of its fortune was invested in vineyards
+and olive groves. In pastoral and grain regions the invasion of an
+army does relatively little damage; for the cattle can be driven in
+advance of the invader, and if grain fields are burned, the harvest of
+a year is lost but the capital is not destroyed. If, instead, an army
+cuts and burns olive orchards and vineyards, which are many years in
+growing, it destroys an immense accumulated capital. Spartacus was
+not a new Hannibal, he was something much more dangerous; he was a new
+species of _Phylloxera_ or of _Mosca olearia_ in the form of brigand
+bands that destroyed vines and olives, the accumulated capital of
+centuries. Whence, the emperor became gradually a tutelary deity of
+the vine and the olive, the fortune of Italy. It was he who stopped
+the barbarians still restless and turbulent on the frontiers of Italy,
+hardly over the borders; it was he who kept peace within the country
+between social orders and political parties; it was he who looked
+after the maintenance and guarding of the great highways of the
+peninsula, periodically clearing them of robbers and the evil-disposed
+that infested them; and the land-owners, who held their vineyards
+and olive groves more at heart than they did the great republican
+traditions, placed the image of the Emperor among those of their
+Lares, and venerated him as they had earlier revered the Senate.
+
+Still more curious is the influence that this development of Italian
+viticulture exercised on the political life of Rome; for example,
+in the barbarous provinces of Europe, wine was an instrument
+of Romanisation, the effectiveness of which has been too much
+disregarded. In Gaul, in Spain, in Helvetia, in the Danube provinces,
+Rome taught many things: law, war, construction of roads and cities,
+the Latin language and literature, the literature and art of
+Greece; more, it also taught to drink wine. Whoever has read the
+_Commentaries_ of Cæsar will recall that, on several occasions, he
+describes certain more barbarous peoples of Gaul as prohibiting the
+importation of wine because they feared they would unnerve and
+corrupt themselves by habitual drunkenness. Strabo tells us of a great
+Gæto-Thracian empire that a Gætic warrior, Borebiste by name, founded
+in the time of Augustus beyond the Danube, opposite Roman possessions;
+while this chieftain sought to take from Greek and Latin civilisation
+many useful things, he severely prohibited the importation of wine.
+This fact and others similar, which might be cited, show that these
+primitive folk, exactly like the Romans of more ancient times, feared
+the beverage which so easily intoxicates, exactly as in China all wise
+people have always feared opium as a national scourge, and so many in
+France would to-day prohibit the manufacture of absinthe.
+
+This hesitation and fear disappeared among the Gauls, after their
+country was annexed to the Empire; disappeared or was weakened among
+all the other peoples of the Danube and Rhine regions, and even in
+Germany, when they fell under Roman dominion; even also while they
+preserved independence, as little by little the Roman influence
+intensified in strength. By example, with the merchants, in
+literature, Rome poured out everywhere the ruddy and perfumed drink
+of Dionysos, and drove to the wilds and the villages, remote and poor,
+the national mead--the beverage of fermented barley akin to modern
+beer.
+
+The Italian proprietors who were enlarging their vineyards--especially
+those of the valley of the Po, where already at the time of Strabo the
+grape-crop was very abundant--soon learned that beyond the Alps lived
+numerous customers. Under Augustus, Arles was already a large market
+for wines, both Greek and Italian; during the same period, there
+passed through Aquileia and Leibach considerable trade in Italian wine
+with the Danube regions. In the Roman castles along the Rhine, among
+the multitudes of Italians who followed the armies, there was not
+wanting the wine-dealer who sought with his liquor to infuse into the
+torpid blood of the barbarian a ray of southern warmth. Everywhere
+the Roman influence conquered national traditions; wine reigned on the
+tables of the rich as the lordly beverage, and the more the Gauls, the
+Pannonians, the Dalmatians, drank, the more money Italian proprietors
+made from their vineyards.
+
+I have said that Rome diffused at once its wine and its literature:
+it also diffused its wine through its literature, a fact upon which
+I should like to dwell a moment, since it is odd and interesting
+for diverse reasons. We always make a mistake in judging the great
+literary works of the past. Two or three centuries after they were
+written, they serve only to bring a certain delight to the mind;
+consequently, we take for granted they were written only to bring us
+this delight. On the contrary, almost all literary works, even the
+greatest, had at first quite another office; they served to spread
+or to counteract among the author's contemporaries certain ideas and
+sentiments that the interests of certain directing forces favoured or
+opposed; indeed very often the authors were admired and remunerated
+far more for these services rendered to their contemporaries than for
+the lofty beauty of the literary works themselves.
+
+This is the case with the odes of Horace. To understand all that they
+meant to say to contemporaries, one must imagine Roman society as it
+was then, hardly out of a century of conquests and revolutions, in
+disorder, unbalanced, and still crude, notwithstanding the luxuries
+and refinements superficially imitated from the Orient; a society
+eager to enjoy, yet still ill educated to exercise upon itself that
+discipline of good taste, without which civilisation and its pleasures
+aggravate more than restrain the innate brutality of men. During the
+first period of peace, arrived after so great disturbance, that
+poetry so perfect in form, which analysed and described all the
+most exquisite delights of sense and soul, infused a new spirit of
+refinement into habits, and co-operated with laborious education
+in teaching even the stern conquerors of the world to enjoy all the
+pleasures of civilisation, alike literature and love, the luxury of
+the city and the restfulness of the villa, fraternal friendship and
+good cookery. It taught, too--this master poetry of the senses--to
+enjoy wine, to use the drink of Dionysos not to slake the thirst, but
+to colour, with an intoxication now soft, now strong, the most diverse
+emotions: the sadness of memories, the tendernesses of friendship, the
+transports of love, the warmth of the quiet house, when without the
+furious storm and the bitter cold stiffen the universe of nature.
+
+In the poetry of Horace, therefore, wine appears as a proteiform god,
+which penetrates not only the tissues of the body but also the inmost
+recesses of the mind and aids it in its every contingency, sad or
+gay. Wine consoles in ill fortune (i., 7), suffuses the senses with
+universal oblivion, frees from anxiety and the weariness of care,
+fills the empty hours, and warms away the chill of winter (i., 9). But
+the wine that has the power to infuse gentle forgetfulness into the
+veins, has also the contrasting power of rousing lyric fervour in the
+spirit, the fervour heroic, divining, mystic (iii., 2). Finally, wine
+is also a source of power and heroism, as well as of joy and sensuous
+delight; a principle of civilisation and of progress (ii., 14).
+
+I wish I could repeat to you all the Dionysic verse of this old poet
+from Venosa, whose subjects and motives, even though expressed in the
+choicest forms, may seem common and conventional in our time and to
+us, among whom for centuries the custom of drinking wine daily with
+meals has been a general habit. But these poems had a very different
+significance when they were written, in that society in which many did
+not dare drink wine commonly, considering it as a medicine, or as a
+beverage injurious to the health, or as a luxury dangerous to morals
+and the purse; in that time when entire nations, like Gaul, hesitated
+between the invitations of the ruddy vine-crowned Bacchus, come with
+his legions victorious, and the desperate supplications of Cervisia,
+the national mead, pale and fleeing to the forests. In those times and
+among those men, Horace with his dithyrambics affected not only the
+spirit but the will, uniting the subtle suggestion of his verses to
+all the other incentives and solicitations that on every side were
+persuading men to drink. He corroded the ancient Italian traditions,
+which opposed with such repugnance and so many fears the efforts of
+the vintners and the vineyard labourers to sell wine at a high price;
+in this way he rendered service to Italian viticulture.
+
+The books of Horace, while he was still living, became what we might
+call school text-books; that is, they were read by young students,
+which must have increased their influence on the mind. Imagine that
+to-day a great European poet should describe and extol in magnificent
+verses the sensuous delight of smoking opium; should deify, in a
+mythology rich in imagery, the inebriating virtues of this product.
+Imagine that the verses of this poet were read in the schools: you
+may then by comparison picture to yourself the action of the poems of
+Horace.
+
+The political and military triumph of Rome in the Mediterranean world
+signified therefore the world triumph of wine. So true is this, that
+in Europe and America to-day the sons of Rome drink wine as their
+national daily beverage. The Anglo-Saxons and Germans drink it in
+the same way as the Romans of the second century B.C., on formal
+occasions, or as a medicine. When you see at an European or American
+table the gold or the ruby of the fair liquor gleaming in the glasses,
+remember that this is another inheritance from the Roman Empire and
+an ultimate effect of the victories of Rome; that probably we should
+drink different beverages if Cæsar had been overcome at Alesia or
+if Mithridates had been able decisively to reconquer Asia Minor from
+Rome. It astonishes you to see between politics and enology, between
+the great historical events and the lot of a humble plant, so close a
+bond.
+
+I can show you another aspect of this phenomenon, even stranger and
+more philosophical. I have already said that at the beginning of the
+first century before Christ, although Italy had already planted many
+vineyards and gathered generous crops, Italian wines were still little
+sought after, while the contrary was true of the Greek. Pliny writes:
+
+    The wines of Italy were for long despised.... Foreign wines
+    had great vogue for some time even after the consulate of
+    Opimius [121 B.C.], and up to the times of our grandfathers,
+    although then Falernian was already discovered.
+
+In the second half of the last century of the Republic and the first
+half of the first century B.C., this condition of things changed;
+Italian wines rose to great fame and demand, and took from the Greek
+the pre-eminence they so long had held. Finally, this pre-eminence
+formed one of the spoils of world conquest, and that not one of the
+meagrest. Pliny, writing in the second half of the first century, says
+(bk. 14, ch. 11):
+
+    Among the eighty most celebrated qualities of wine made in all
+    the world, Italy makes about two thirds; therefore in this it
+    outdoes other peoples.
+
+The first wines that came into note seem to have been those of
+southern Italy, especially Falernian, and Julius Cæsar seems to have
+done much to make it known. Pliny tells us (bk. 14, ch. 15) that, in
+the great popular banquet offered to celebrate his triumph after his
+return from Egypt, he gave to every group of banqueters a cask of
+Chian and an _amphora_ of Falernian, and that in his third consulate
+he distributed four kinds of wine to the populace, Lesbian, Chian,
+Falernian, and Mamertine; two Greek qualities and two Italian. It is
+evident that he wished officially to recognise national wines as equal
+to the foreign, in favour of Italian vintners; so that Julius Cæsar,
+that universal man, has a place not only in the history of the great
+Italian conquests, but also in that of Italian viticulture.
+
+The wines of the valley of the Po were not long in making place for
+themselves after those of southern Italy. We know that Augustus drank
+only Rhetian wine; that is, of the Valtellina, one of the valleys
+famous also to-day for several delicious wines; we know that Livia
+drank Istrian wine.
+
+I have said that Italy exported much wine to Gaul, to the Danube
+regions, and to Germany; to this may be added another remark,
+both curious and interesting. _The Periplus of the Erytrian Sea_,
+attributed to Arrianus, a kind of practical manual of geography,
+compiled in the second century A.D., tells us that in that century
+Italian wine was exported as far as India; so far had its fame spread!
+There is no doubt that the wealth in the first and second century
+A.D., which flowed for every section of Italy, came in part from the
+nourishing vineyards planted upon its hills and plains; and that
+the Italians, who had gone to the Orient for reasons political and
+financial, had fallen upon yet greater fortune in contrabanding
+Bacchus from the superb vineyards of the Ægean islands, and
+transporting him to the hills of Italy; a new seat whereon the
+capricious god of the vine rested for two centuries, until he took
+again to wandering, and crossed the Alps.
+
+We may at this juncture ask ourselves if this enologic pre-eminence of
+Italy was the result only of a greater skill in cultivating the vine
+and pressing the grapes. I think not. It does not seem that Italy
+invented new methods of wine-making; it appears, instead, that it
+restricted itself to imitating what the Greeks had originated. On the
+other hand, it is certain, at least in northern and central Italy,
+that, although the vine grows, it does so less spontaneously and
+prosperously than in the Ægean islands, Greece, and Asia Minor,
+because the former regions are relatively too cold.
+
+The great fame of the Italian wines had another cause, a political:
+the world power and prestige of Rome. This psychological phenomenon
+is found in every age, among all peoples, and is one of the most
+important and essential in all history. What is beautiful and what is
+ugly? What is good and what is bad? What is true and what is false?
+In every period men must so distinguish between things, must adopt
+or repudiate certain ideas, practise or abandon certain habits, buy
+certain objects and refuse others; but one should not believe that
+all peoples make these discernments spontaneously, according to their
+natural inclination. It always happens that some nations succeed, by
+war, or money, or culture, in persuading the lesser peoples about them
+that they are superior; and strong in this admiration, they impose
+upon their susceptible neighbours, by a kind of continuous suggestion,
+their own ideas as the truest, their own customs as the noblest, their
+own arts as the most perfect.
+
+For this reason chiefly, wars have often distant and complicated
+repercussions on the habits, the ideas, the commerce of nations. War,
+to which so many philosophers would attribute a divine spirit, so
+many others a diabolic, appears to the historian as above all a
+means--allow me the phrase, a bit frivolous, but graphic--of noisy
+_réclame_, advertisement for a people; because, although a more
+civilised people may be conquered by one more barbarous, less
+cultured, less moral; although, also, the superiority in war may
+be relative, and men are not on the earth merely to give each other
+blows, but to work, to study, to know, to enjoy; yet the majority
+of men are easily convinced that he who has won in a war is in
+everything, or at least in many things, superior to him who has lost.
+So it happened, for example, after the late Franco-Prussian War, that
+not only the armies organised or reorganised after 1870 imitated even
+the German uniform, as they had earlier copied the French, but in
+politics, science, industry, even in art, everything German was more
+generously admired. Even the consumption of beer heavily increased
+in the wine countries, and under the protection of the Treaty of
+Frankfurt, the god Gambrinus has made some audacious sallies into the
+territories sacred to Dionysos.
+
+The same thing occurred in regard to wine in the ancient world. Athens
+and Alexander the Great had given to Greek wine the widest reputation,
+all the peoples of the Mediterranean world being persuaded that that
+was the best of all. Then the centre of power shifted to the west,
+toward the city built on the banks of the Tiber, and little by little
+as the power of Rome grew, the reputation of its wine increased, while
+that of Greece declined; until, finally, with world empire, Italy
+conquered pre-eminence in the wine market, and held it with the
+Empire; for while Italy was lord, Italian wine seemed most excellent
+and was paid for accordingly.
+
+This propensity of minor or subject peoples to imitate those dominant
+or more famous, is the greatest prize that rewards the pre-eminent
+for the fatigue necessary to conquer that place of honour; it is the
+reason why cultured and civilised nations ought naturally to seek
+to preserve a certain political, economic, and military supremacy,
+without which their intellectual superiority would weaken or at least
+lose a part of its value. The human multitude in the vast world are
+not yet so intelligent and refined as to prize that which is beautiful
+and grand for its own sake; and they are readily induced to admire as
+excellent what is but mediocre, if behind it there is a force to be
+feared or to impose it. Indeed, we may observe in the modern world a
+phenomenon analogous to that in historic Italy. What, in succeeding
+centuries, have been the changes in the enologic superiority conquered
+by Rome?
+
+Naturally I cannot recount the whole story, although it would be
+interesting; but will only observe that contemporary civilisation
+confirms the law by which predominance in the Latin world and the
+pre-eminence of wine are indissolubly bound together in history.
+
+Paris is the modern Rome, the metropolis of the Latin world. France
+continues, as far as can be done in modern times, the ancient sway of
+Rome, irradiating round so much of the globe, by commerce, literature,
+art, science, industry, dominance of political ideas, the influence
+of the Latin world, making tributaries to Latin culture of barbarous
+peoples, and nations too young for leadership or grown too old; and
+France has inherited the pre-eminence in wines, although it lies at
+the farthest confines of the vine-bearing zone, beyond which the tree
+of Bacchus refuses to live. Do you realise that in all the wide belt
+of earth where vineyards flourish, only the dry hills of Champagne
+ripen the delicious effervescent wine that refigures in modern
+civilisation--at least for those who are fond of wine--the nectar of
+the gods? And this, while effervescent wines are made in innumerable
+parts of the world and many are so good that one wonders if it were
+not possible for them, manufactured with care, placed in sightly
+bottles, and sold at as high a price as the most famous French
+Champagne, to dispute a part of the admiration that the devotees of
+Bacchus render to the French wine. Ah, they do not scintillate before
+the eyes of the world as symbols of gay intoxication like the others,
+for through those bottles passes no ray of the glory and prestige of
+France! An historian fond of paradoxes might affirm, and with great
+likelihood, what does not appear at first glance: that the great
+brands of French Champagne would not be sold so dear if the French
+Revolution had been suppressed by the European coalition, and if
+France, overcome in the terrible trial, had been enchained by the
+absolute monarchies of Europe like a dangerous beast. It would even
+be possible to declare that the reputation of Champagne is rooted, not
+only in the ground where the grapes are cultivated, and preserved in
+the vast cellars where the precious crops are stored, but in all
+the historic tradition of France, in all that which has given France
+worldly glory and power: the victorious wars, the distant conquests,
+the colonies, the literature, the art, the science, the money capital,
+and the spirit--cosmopolitan, expansive, dynamic--of its history.
+It would be possible to declare that it makes and pours into all the
+world its precious wine by that same virtue, intimate, national,
+and historic, by which it created the encyclopædia and made the
+Revolution, let Napoleon loose on Europe and founded the Empire,
+wrote so many famous books and built on the banks of the Seine the
+marvellous universal city, where all the forces of modern civilisation
+are gathered together and hold each other in equilibrium: aristocracy
+and democracy, the cosmopolite spirit and the spirit of nationality,
+money and science, war and fashion, art and religion. If France
+had not had its great history, Champagne would have remained an
+effervescing wine of modest household use that the peasants place
+every year in barrels for their own family consumption or to sell in
+the vicinity of the city of Rheims.
+
+
+
+Social Development of the Roman Empire.
+
+
+Augustus died the twenty-third of August of the year 14 A.D., saying
+to Livia, as she embraced him: "Adieu, Livia, remember our long life."
+Suetonius adds that, before dying, he had asked the friends who
+had come to salute him, if he seemed to them "_mimum vitæ commode
+transegisse"_--to have acted well his life's comedy. In this famous
+phrase many historians have seen a confession, an acknowledgment of
+the long rôle of deceit that the unsurpassable actor had played to
+his public. What a mistake! If Augustus did pronounce that famous
+sentence, he meant to say quite another thing. An erudite German has
+demonstrated with the help of many texts that the ancient writers,
+and especially the stoic philosophers, commonly compared life to a
+theatrical representation, divided into different acts and with an
+inevitable epilogue, death, without intending to say that it was a
+thing little serious or not true. They only meant that life is an
+action, which has a natural sequence from beginning to end, like a
+theatrical representation. There is then no need to translate the
+expression of Augustus "the play"--that is, the deceit--"is ended,"
+but rather "the drama"--the work committed by destiny--"is finished."
+
+The drama was ended, and what a drama! It is difficult to find in
+history a longer and more troubled career than that known by Augustus
+for nearly sixty years, from the far-away days when, young, handsome,
+full of ambition and daring, he had come to Rome, throwing himself
+head first into the frightful turmoil let loose by the murder of
+Cæsar, to that tranquil death, the death of a great wise man, in the
+midst of the _pax Romana_, now spread from end to end of the Empire!
+After so many tragic catastrophies had struck his class and his
+family, _Euthanasia_--the death of the happy--descended for the first
+time since the passing of Lucullus, to close the eyes of a great
+Roman.
+
+There is no better means of giving an idea of the mission of the Roman
+Empire in the world than to summarise the life and work of this famous
+personage. Augustus has been in our century somewhat the victim of
+Napoleon I. The extraordinary course of events at the beginning of
+the nineteenth century made so vivid an impression on succeeding
+generations, that for the whole of the century people have been able
+to admire only the great agitators, men whose lives are filled with
+storm and clamorous action. Compared with that of Napoleon or of
+Cæsar, the figure of Augustus is simple and colourless. The Roman
+peace, in the midst of which he died, was his work only very
+indirectly. Augustus had wearied his whole life in reorganising
+the finances and the army, in crushing the revolts of the European
+provinces, in defending the boundaries of the Rhine and the Danube,
+in making effective in Rome, as far as he could, the old aristocratic
+constitution. All intent on this service, a serious and difficult
+one, he never dreamed of regenerating the Empire by a powerful
+administration. Even if he had wished it, he would not have had the
+means--men and money.
+
+For the past century, the vastness and power of the administration
+that governed the Empire has been greatly admired. Without discussing
+many things possible on this point, it must be observed that this
+judgment does not apply to the times of Augustus and Tiberius, because
+then this administration did not exist. During the first fifty years
+of the Empire, the provinces were all governed, as under the Republic,
+by proconsuls or proprætors, each accompanied by a quæstor, a few
+subordinate officials, freedmen, friends, and slaves. A few dozen of
+men governed the provinces, as vast as states. Augustus added to this
+rudimentary administration but one organ, the procurator, chosen from
+freedmen or knights, charged with overseeing the collection of tribute
+and expenses; that is, caring for the interests, not of the provinces,
+but of Rome. Consequently, the government was weak and inactive in all
+the provinces.
+
+Whoever fancies the government of Rome modelled after the type of
+modern governments, invading, omnipotent, omnipresent, deceives
+himself. There were sent into the provinces nobles belonging to rich
+and noted families, who had therefore no need to rob the subjects
+too much; and these men ruled, making use of the laws, customs,
+institutions, families of nobles, of each place, exactly as England
+now does in many parts of its Empire. As in general these governors
+were not possessed of any great activity, they did not meddle much in
+the internal affairs of the subject peoples. To preserve the unity of
+the Empire and the supremacy of Italy against all enemies, within and
+without; to exploit reasonably this supremacy; for the rest, to let
+every people live as best pleased it: such was the policy of Augustus
+and of Tiberius, the policy of the first century A.D. In short, this
+was but the idea of the old aristocratic party, adapted to the new
+times.
+
+So the Roman Government gave itself little concern at this time for
+the provinces, nor did it build in them any considerable public work.
+It did not construct roads, nor canals, nor harbours, except when
+they were necessary to the metropolis; for example, Agrippa made
+the network of Gallic roads; Augustus opened the first three great
+highways that crossed the Alps. It would be a mistake to suppose that
+these important constructions were designed to favour the progress
+of Gallic commerce; they were strategic highways made to defend the
+Rhine. As gradually Gaul grew rich, Rome had to recognise that the
+weak garrisons, set apart in the year 27 for the defence of the Rhine
+and the Danube, were insufficient. It would have been necessary to
+increase the army, but the finances were in bad condition. Augustus
+then thought to base defence on the principle that the immense
+frontiers could not all be assailed at the same time, and therefore he
+constructed some great military roads across the Alps and Gaul, to be
+able to collect the soldiery rapidly from all parts of the Empire at
+any point menaced, on the Rhine or on the Danube.
+
+The imperial policy of Augustus and that of Tiberius, who applied the
+same principles with still greater vigour, was above all a negative
+policy. Accordingly, it could please only those denying as useful to
+progress another kind of men, the great agitators of the masses. Shall
+we therefore conclude that Augustus and Tiberius were useless? So
+doing, we should run the risk of misunderstanding all the history of
+the Roman conquest. By merely comprehending the value of the apparent
+inactivity of Augustus and Tiberius, one can understand the essence of
+the policy of world expansion initiated by the Roman aristocracy after
+the Second Punic War. At the beginning, this policy was pre-eminently
+destructive. Everywhere Rome either destroyed or weakened, not
+nations or peoples, but republics, monarchies, theocracies,
+principalities--that is, the political superstructures that framed the
+different states, great or small; everywhere it put in place of these
+superstructures the weak authority of its governors, of the Senate, of
+its own prestige; everywhere it left intact or gave greater freedom to
+the elementary forms of human association, the family, the tribe, the
+city.
+
+So for two centuries Rome continued in Orient and Occident to suppress
+bureaucracies, to dismiss or reduce armies, to close royal palaces,
+to limit the power of priestly castes or republican oligarchies,
+substituting for all these complicated organisations a proconsul
+with some dozens of vicegerent secretaries and attendants. The
+last enterprise of this policy, which I should be tempted to
+call "state-devouring," was the destruction of the dynasty of the
+Ptolemies, in Egypt. Without doubt, the suppression of so many
+states, continued for two centuries, could not be accomplished without
+terrible upheavals. It would be useless to repaint here the grim
+picture of the last century of the Republic; sufficient to say, the
+grandiosity of this convulsion has hindered most people from seeing
+that the state-devouring policy of Rome included in itself, by the
+side of the forces of dissolution, beneficent, creative forces, able
+to bring about a new birth. If this policy had not degenerated into
+an unbridled sacking, it could have effectuated everywhere notable
+economies in the expenses of government that were borne by the poorer
+classes, suppressing as it did so many armies, courts, bureaucracies,
+wars. It is clear that Rome would have been able to gather in on
+all sides, especially in the Orient, considerable tribute, merely
+by taking from the various peoples much less than the cost of their
+preceding monarchies and continuous wars. Moreover, Rome established
+with the conquests throughout the immense Empire what we would call
+a régime of free exchange; made neighbours of territories formerly
+separated by constant wars, unsafe communication, and international
+anarchy; and rendered possible the opening up of mines and forests
+hitherto inaccessible.
+
+The apparent inactivity of Augustus and Tiberius was simply the
+ultimate and most beneficent phase of the state-devouring policy of
+Rome, that in which, the destructive forces exhausted, the creative
+forces began to act. Augustus and Tiberius only prolonged indefinitely
+by means of expedients that mediocre order and that partial
+tranquillity re-established after Actium by the general weariness;
+but exactly for this reason were they so useful to the world. In
+this peace, in this mediocre order, the policy of expansion of Rome,
+finally rid of all the destructive forces, matured all the benefits
+inherent within it. Finally, after a frightful crisis, the world
+was able to enjoy a liberty and an autonomy such as it had never
+previously enjoyed and which perhaps it will never again in an equal
+degree of civilisation and in so great an extension.
+
+The Empire then covered Spain, France, Belgium, a part of Germany and
+Austria, Switzerland and Italy, the Balkanic countries, Greece, Asia
+Minor, Syria, Palestine, a part of Arabia, Egypt, and all northern
+Africa. I do not believe that the political _personnel_ that made up
+the central government of this enormous Empire ever comprised more
+than 2000 men. The army charged with defending so many territories
+numbered about 200,000 men--fewer than the present army of Italy
+alone. The effects of this order of things were soon to be seen; in
+all the Mediterranean basin there began a rapid and universal economic
+expansion, which, on a smaller scale, might remind one of what Europe
+and America have seen in the nineteenth century. New lands were
+cultivated, new mines opened, new wares manufactured, exports sent
+into regions formerly closed or unknown; and every new source of
+wealth, creating new riches, made labour and commerce progress.
+
+Foremost among all nations of the Empire, at the centre, Italy rapidly
+consolidated its fortune and its domination. After the mad plundering
+of the times of Cæsar, followed methodical exploiting. Italy attracted
+to itself by the power of political leadership the precious metals and
+wares of luxury from every part of the Empire; the largest quantity
+of these things passed through Rome, before being scattered throughout
+the peninsula in exchange for the agricultural and industrial products
+of Italy, consumed in the capital. Consequently the middle classes and
+many cities grew rich, especially the cities of the Campania, Pompeii,
+Herculaneum, Naples, Pozzuoli, through which passed all the trade
+between Italy and Egypt. In addition, Italy found an abundant source
+of income in the exportation of wine and oil.
+
+In short, having at last emerged from revolution, the peoples of Italy
+rallied around Rome and the imperial power, united and relatively
+content. At the same time, the provinces began among themselves, about
+Italy, a great interchange of merchandise, men, ideas, customs,
+across the Mediterranean. Rome and Italy were invaded by a crowd
+of Orientals, slaves, freedmen, merchants, artisans, _litterati_,
+artists, acrobats, poets, adventurers; and contemporaneously with Rome
+and Italy, the agricultural provinces of the West, especially those
+along the Danube. Rome did not conquer the barbarous provinces of
+Europe for itself alone; it conquered them also for the East, which,
+in Mesia, Dalmatia, Pannonia, among those barbarians growing civilised
+and eager to live in cities, found customers for their industries in
+articles of luxury, for their artists, teachers of literature, and
+propagandists of religion.
+
+We are therefore able to explain to ourselves why, beginning from the
+time of Augustus, all the industrial cities of the Orient--Pergamon,
+Laodicea, Ephesus, Ierapolis, Tyre, Sidon, Alexandria--entered upon
+an era of new and refulgent prosperity. Finally, we add the singular
+enriching of two nations, whose names return anew united for the last
+time, Egypt and Gaul. To all the numerous sources of Gallic wealth
+there is to be added yet another, the importance of which is easier
+to understand after what I have said on the development of the
+Empire. Pliny tells us that all Gaul wove linen sails. The progress of
+navigation, a consequence of the progress of commerce, much increased
+the demand for linen sail-cloth, something that explains the spread of
+flax cultivation in Gaul and the profit derived from it.
+
+As to Egypt, it not only found in the pacified empire new outlets for
+its old industries, but also succeeded in engaging a large part of the
+new commerce with the extreme Orient, which was at this time greatly
+on the increase. From India and China were imported pearls, diamonds,
+silk fabrics; for the use of these wares gained largely during
+this century, as it has done in recent times in Europe and America;
+perfumes were also imported, and rice, which served as a medicament
+and to prepare dishes of luxury.
+
+The unity of the Empire was due far more to this great economic
+development that began under Augustus than to the political action
+of the early emperors. Little by little, imperial interests became
+so numerous and so considerable that Rome saw the effort necessary
+to keep up the unity diminish. Everywhere, even in the most distant
+regions, powerful minorities formed that worked for Rome and against
+old separating, anti-uniting forces, against old traditions and local
+patriotism alike. The wealthy classes everywhere became in a special
+way wholly favourable to Rome. Therefore there is no more serious
+mistake than regarding the Roman Empire as the exclusive work of a
+government: it was in truth created by two diverse forces, operating
+one after the other--each in its own time, for both were necessary: a
+force of destruction--the state-devouring policy of Rome; a force of
+reconstruction--the economic unification. The annihilation of states,
+without which there would have been no economic unification, was the
+work of the government and the armies. It was the politicians of the
+Senate that destroyed so many states by wars and diplomatic intrigues;
+but the economic unification was made chiefly by the infinitely
+little--the peasant, the artisan, the educated man--the nameless many,
+that lived and worked and passed away, leaving hardly trace or record.
+These unknown that laboured, each seeking his own personal happiness,
+contributed to create the Empire as much as did the great statesmen
+and generals. For this reason I can never regard without a certain
+emotion the mutilated inscriptions in the museums, chance salvage from
+the great shipwreck of the ancient world, that have preserved the name
+of some land-owner, or merchant, or physician, or freedman. Lo!
+what remains of these generations of obscure workers, who were the
+indispensable collaborators of the great statesmen and diplomatists of
+Rome, and without whom the political world of Rome would have been but
+a gigantic enterprise of military brigandage!
+
+The great historic merit of Augustus and of Tiberius is that they
+presided over the passage from the destructive to the reorganising
+phase with their wise, prudent, apparently inactive policy. The
+transition, like all transitions, was difficult; the disintegrating
+forces were not yet exhausted; the upbuilding forces were still very
+weak; the world of the time was in unstable equilibrium, violent
+perturbations certainly yet possible. Without doubt, it is hard to say
+what would have happened if, instead of being governed by the policy
+of Augustus, the world had fallen into the hands of an adventurous
+oligarchy like that which gathered around Alexander the Great; but we
+can at least affirm that the sagacity and prudence of Augustus, which
+twenty centuries afterward appear as inactivity, did much to avoid
+such disturbances, the consequences of which, in a world so exhausted,
+would have been grave.
+
+Nor is it correct to believe that this policy was easy. Moderation
+and passivity, even when good for the governed, rust and waste away
+governments, which must always be doing something, even if it be only
+making mistakes. In fact, while supreme power usually brings return
+and much return to him who exercises it, especially in monarchies, it
+cost instead, and unjustly, to Augustus and Tiberius. Augustus had to
+offer to the monster, as Tiberius called the Empire, almost all his
+family, beginning with the beloved Julia, and had to spend for the
+state almost all his fortune. We know that although in the last twenty
+years of his life he received by many bequests a sum amounting to a
+billion and four hundred million sesterces, he left his heirs only one
+hundred and fifty million sesterces, all the rest having been spent by
+him for the Republic: this was the singular civil list of this curious
+monarch, who, instead of fleecing his subjects, spent for them almost
+all he had. It is vain to speak of Tiberius: the Empire cost him the
+only thing that perhaps he held dear, his fame. A philosophic history
+would be wrong in not recognising the grandeur of these sacrifices,
+which are the last glory of the Roman nobility. The old political
+spirit of the Roman nobility gave to Augustus and Tiberius the
+strength to make these sacrifices, and they probably saved ancient
+civilisation from a most difficult crisis.
+
+It may be observed that Augustus and Tiberius worked for the Empire
+and the future without realising it. Far from understanding that the
+economic progress of their time would unify the Empire better than
+could their laws and their legions, they feared it; they believed
+that it would everywhere diffuse "corruption," even in the armies,
+and therefore weaken the imperial power of resistance against the
+barbarians on the Rhine and the Danube. The German peril--the future
+had luminously to demonstrate it--was much less than Augustus and
+Tiberius believed. In other words, the first two emperors thought that
+the unity of the Empire would be maintained by a vigorous, solid army,
+while the economic progress, which spread "corruption," appeared to
+them to put it to risk.
+
+Exactly the opposite happened; the army continued to decay,
+notwithstanding the desperate efforts of Tiberius, while the inner
+force of economic interests held the countries well bound together.
+It is impossible to oppose this course of reasoning, in itself most
+accurate; but what conclusion is to be drawn from it? In the chaotic
+conflict of passions and interests that make up the world, the deeds
+of a man or a party are not useful in proportion to the objective
+truth of the ideas acted out, or to the success attained. Their
+usefulness depends upon the direction of the effort, on the ends it
+proposes, on the results it obtains. There are men and parties of whom
+one might say, they were right to be wrong, when chimerical ideas
+and mistakes have sustained their courage to carry out an effective
+effort; there are others, instead, of whom it might be said that they
+were wrong to be right, when their clear vision of present and past
+kept them from accomplishing some painful but necessary duty.
+
+Certainly the old Roman traditions were destined to be overwhelmed
+by the invasion of Oriental ideas and habits; but what might not
+have happened if every one had understood this from the very times of
+Augustus; if then no one had opposed the invasion of Orientalism; if
+mysticism and the monarchy of divine right had transformed Italy or
+the Empire within fifty years instead of three centuries? I should
+not at all hesitate to affirm that certain errors are in certain
+conjunctions much wiser than the corresponding verities. There is
+nothing more useful in life than resistance, though apparently futile,
+against social forces fated to perish, because these, struggling on to
+the very end, always succeed in imposing a part of themselves on the
+victorious power, and the result is always better than a complete
+and unantagonised victory of the opposing force. To the obstinate
+resistance with which republican principles combated Asiatic monarchy
+in Rome, we must even to-day render thanks for the fact that Europe
+was not condemned, like Asia, to carry the eternal yoke of semidivine
+absolutism, even in dynastic regimes. What social force destined to
+perish would still have power to struggle if it clearly foresaw its
+inevitable future dissolution; if it did not fortify itself a little
+with some deluding vision of its own future?
+
+Augustus and Tiberius were deceived. They wished to reanimate what was
+doomed; they feared what for the moment was not dangerous. They are
+the last representatives of the policy initiated by the Scipios and
+not the initiators of the policy that created the bureaucratic Empire
+of Diocletian: yet this is exactly their glory. They were right to
+be wrong; and they rendered to the Empire an immense service, for
+the very reason that the definite outcome of their efforts was
+diametrically opposed to the idea that animated them. But we need not
+dwell on this point. Such were the ideas of the two emperors and the
+results of their work; the true Empire, known to all, the monarchic,
+Asiaticised, bureaucratic Empire, grew out of this little-governed
+beginning that Augustus and Tiberius allowed to live in the freedom
+of the largest autonomy. How was it formed? This is the great problem
+that I shall try to solve in the sequence of my work. Naturally, I
+cannot now résumé all the ideas I mean to develop: I confine myself
+here to some of the simplest considerations, which seem to me surest.
+
+The picture of the Empire, so brilliant from the economic stand-point,
+is much less so from the intellectual: here we touch its great
+weakness. Destroying so many governments, especially in the Orient,
+Rome had at the same time decapitated the intellectual _élites_ of
+the ancient world; for the courts of the monarchies were the great
+firesides of mental activity. Rome had therefore, together with states
+and governments, destroyed scientific and literary institutions,
+centres of art, traditions of refinement, of taste, of æsthetic
+elegance. So everywhere, with the Roman domination, the practical
+spirit won above the philosophical and scientific, commerce over arts
+and letters, the middle classes over historic aristocracies. Already
+weakened by the overthrow of the most powerful Asiatic monarchies,
+these _élites_ received the final blow on the disappearance of their
+last protection, the dynasty of the Ptolemies in Egypt.
+
+When Augustus began to govern the Empire, the classes that represent
+tradition, culture the elevated and disinterested activities of the
+spirit, were everywhere extensive in number in wealth, in energy.
+It was not long before these ultimate remainders vanished under the
+alluvial overflow of the middle classes, swollen by the big economic
+gains of the first century. In this respect, the first and second
+centuries of the Christian era resemble our own time. In the whole
+Empire, alike in Rome, in Gaul, in Asia, there were old aristocratic
+families, rich and illustrious, but they were not the class of
+greatest power. Under them stood a middle class of merchants,
+land-owners, orators, jurists, professors, and other intellectual men,
+and this was so numerous, comfortable, and so potent as to cause all
+the great social forces, from government to industry, to abandon
+the old aristocracy and court it like a new mistress. Art, industry,
+literature, were vulgarised in those two centuries, as to-day in
+Europe and America, because they had to work mainly for this middle
+class which was much more numerous, and yet cruder than the ancient
+_élites_. It was the first era of the _cheap_, of vulgarisations, I
+was about to say of the _made in Germany_, that enters into
+history. There was invented the art of silver-plating, to give the
+_bourgeoisie_ at moderate prices the sweet illusion of possessing
+objects of silver; great thinkers disappeared; instead were multiplied
+manuals, treatises, encyclopaedias, professors that summarised and
+vulgarised. Philosophy gradually gave out, like all the higher forms
+of literature, and there began the reign of the declaimers and the
+sophists; that is, the lecture-givers, the lawyers, the journalists.
+In painting and sculpture, original schools were no more to be found,
+nor great names, but the number of statues and bas-reliefs increased
+infinitely. The paintings of Pompeii and many statues and marbles
+that are now admired in European museums are examples of this
+industrialised art, inexpensive, creating nothing original, but
+furnishing to families in comfortable circumstances passable copies of
+works of art--once a privilege only of kings.
+
+The imperial bureaucracy that was formed mainly in the second century
+was another effect of this enlargement of the middle classes. In the
+second century there came into vogue many humanitarian ideas, which
+have a certain resemblance to modern ones. There increased solicitude
+for the general well-being, for order, for justice, and this augmented
+the number of functionaries charged with insuring universal felicity
+by administrative means. The movement was supported by intellectual
+men of the middle classes, especially by jurists, who sought to put
+their studies to profit, getting from the government employments in
+which they might make use, well or ill, of their somewhat artificial
+aptitudes. If the aristocratic idea, personified by Augustus
+and Tiberius, delayed, it could not stop, the invasion of these
+bureaucratic locusts; the government showed itself constantly weaker
+with the intellectual classes. Little by little the whole Empire
+was bureaucratised; founded by an aristocracy exclusively Roman in
+statesmen and soldiers, it was finally governed by a cosmopolitan
+bureaucracy of men of brains: orators, _litterati_, lawyers.
+Therefore, to my thinking, they are wrong who believe that the
+imperial bureaucracy created the unity of the Empire; whereas, the
+formation of the imperial bureaucracy was one of the consequences of
+that natural unification, the chief reason for which should be sought
+in the great economic movement. The economic unification was first
+and was entire; then came the political unity, made by the imperial
+bureaucracy, which was less complete than the unifying of material
+interests.
+
+After the material unity, after the political, there should have been
+formed the moral and intellectual; but at this point, the forces of
+Rome gave way. Rome had gathered under its sceptre too many races,
+too many kinds of culture, religions too diverse; its spirit was too
+exclusively political, administrative, and judicial; it could not
+therefore conciliate the ideas, assimilate the customs, weld the
+sentiments, unify the religions, by its laws and decrees. To this
+end was necessary the power of ideas, of doctrines, of beliefs that
+officials of administration could neither create nor propagate. The
+work was to be accomplished outside of, and in part against, the
+government. It is the work of Christianity.
+
+Many have asked me how I shall consider Christianity in the sequence
+of my work. In brief, I may say that I shall follow a different method
+from that which its historians have taken up to this time: they have
+studied especially how there was formed that part of Christianity
+which yet lives and is the soul of it, namely, the religious doctrine.
+On this account, they generally separate its history from the history
+of the Empire, making of it the principal argument, considering the
+history of Roman society as subordinate to it and therefore only an
+appendix. I propose to reverse the study, taking Christianity as a
+chapter, important but separate, in the history of the Empire. If
+for three centuries Christianity has been gradually returning to its
+origin, that is, becoming purely a religion and a moral teaching,
+for some centuries in the ancient world it was a thing much more
+complicated; a government and an administration that willed not only
+to regulate the relations between man and God, but to govern the
+intellectual, social, moral, political, and economic life of the
+people! The historian ought to explain how this new Empire--for it was
+indeed a new Empire--was formed in Rome and upon its ruins: this is a
+problem much more intricate than at first appears.
+
+It has been said and often repeated that the Church was in the Middle
+Ages in Europe the continuation of the Roman Empire, that the Pope is
+yet the real successor of the Emperor in Rome. In fact he carries one
+of the Emperor's titles, _Pontifex maximus_. The observation is just,
+but it should not make us forget that the Christian Empire, so to call
+it, and the Roman Empire, were between themselves as radically
+opposed as two forces that created the one and the other; politics and
+intellectuality. The diplomatists, the generals, the legislators of
+Rome created by political means, by wars, treaties, laws, a grand
+economic and political unity, which they consolidated, quite giving
+up the formation of a large intellectual and moral unity. The
+intellectual men, who formed the most powerful nucleus of the Church
+after the fourth century, took up again the Roman idea of unity and of
+empire; but they transferred it from matter to mind, from the concrete
+world of economic and political interests, to the world of ideas
+and beliefs. They tried to re-do, by pen and word, the work of the
+Scipios, of Lucullus, and of Cæsar, to conquer the world, not indeed
+invading it with armies, but spreading a new faith, creating a new
+morality, a new metaphysics which must gather up within themselves
+the intellectual activities of Græco-Latin culture, from history to
+science, from law to philosophy.
+
+The Church of the Middle Ages was therefore the most splendid edifice
+that the intellectual classes have so far created. The power of this
+empire of men of letters increased, as little by little the other
+empire, that of the generals and diplomats, declined. Christianity saw
+with indifference the Roman Empire decay; indeed, when it could,
+it helped on the disintegration and was one of the causes of that
+political and economic pulverising which everywhere succeeded the
+great Roman unity. Political and economic unity on the one hand,
+moral and intellectual on the other, seem in the history of European
+civilisation things opposite and irreconcilable; when one is formed,
+the other is undone. As the Roman Empire had found in intellectual
+and moral disunion a means of preserving more easily the economic and
+political unity, the Church broke to pieces the political and economic
+unity of the ancient world to make, and for a long time preserve, its
+own moral and intellectual oneness.
+
+I shall make an effort, above all, to explain the origin, the
+development, and the consequences of this contradiction, because I
+believe that explaining this clears one of the weightiest and most
+important points in all the history of our civilisation; in truth,
+this contradiction seems to be the immortal soul of it. For instance:
+in time, Augustus is twenty centuries away from us, but mentally
+and morally he is, instead, much nearer, because for the last four
+centuries Europe has been returning to Rome--that is, striving to
+remake a great political and economic unity at the expense of the
+intellectual and moral. In this fact particularly, lies the immense
+historic importance of what is called the classic renaissance. It
+indicates the beginning of an historic reversion that corresponds
+in the opposite direction to what occurred in the third and fourth
+centuries of the Christian era. The classic renaissance freed anew
+the scientific spirit of the ancients from mediæval metaphysics and
+therefore created the sciences; rediscovered some basic political
+and juridical ideas of the ancient world, among them that of the
+indivisibility of the State, which destroyed the foundations of
+feudalism and of all the political orders of the Middle Ages; and gave
+a great impetus to the struggle against the political domination of
+the Church and toward the formation of the great states. France and
+England have been in the lead, and for two centuries Europe has
+been wearying itself imitating them. After the movement of political
+unification followed the economic. Look about you: what do you see?
+A world that looks more like the Roman Empire than it does the Middle
+Ages; it is a world of great states whose dominating classes have
+almost all the essential ideas of Græco-Latin civilisation; each,
+seeking to better its own conditions, is forced to establish between
+itself and the others the strictest economic relations and to bind
+into the system of common interests also barbarous countries and those
+of differing civilisation. But how? By scrupulously respecting all the
+intellectual and moral diversities of men. What matters it if a people
+be Roman Catholic or Protestant, Mohammedan or Buddhist, monarchic or
+republican, provided it buys, sells, takes part in the economic unity
+of the modern world? This is the policy of contemporary states and was
+the policy of the Roman Empire. It has often been observed that in the
+modern world, so well administered, there is an intellectual and moral
+diversity greater than that during the fearful anarchy of the Middle
+Ages, when all the lettered classes had a single language, the Latin,
+and the lower classes held, on certain fundamental questions, the same
+ideas--those taught by the Church. A correct observation, this, but
+one from which there is no need to draw too many conclusions; since in
+our history the material unity and the ideal are naturally exclusive.
+
+We are returning, in a vaster world, to the condition of the Roman
+Empire at its beginning; to an immense economic unity, which,
+notwithstanding the aberrations of protectionism, is grander and
+firmer than all its predecessors; to a political unity not so great,
+yet considerable, because even if peace be not eternal, it is at least
+the normal condition of the European states; to an indifference for
+every effort put forth to establish moral and ideal uniformity
+among the nations, great and small, that share in this political and
+economic unity. This is why we understand Augustus and his times much
+more readily than we do the times of Charlemagne, even though from the
+latter we possess a greater number of documents; this is why we can
+write a history of Augustus and rectify so many mistakes made about
+him by preceding generations. It has often happened to me to find, _à
+propos_ of the volumes written on Augustus, that my contradiction of
+tradition creates a kind of instinctive diffidence. Many say: "Yes,
+this book is interesting; but is it possible that for twenty centuries
+everybody has been mistaken?--that it was necessary to wait till 1908
+to understand what occurred in the year 8?" But those twenty centuries
+reduce themselves, as far as regards the possibility of understanding
+Augustus, to little more than a hundred years. Since Augustus was the
+last representative of a world that was disappearing, his figure soon
+became obscure and enigmatic. Tacitus and Suetonius saw him already
+enveloped in the mist of that new spirit which for so many centuries
+was to conceal from human eyes the wonderful spectacle of the pagan
+world. Then the mist became a fog and grew denser, until Augustus
+disappeared, or was but a formless shadow. Centuries passed by; the
+fog began to withdraw before the returning sun of the ancient culture;
+his figure reappeared. Fifty years ago, the obscurity cleared quite
+away; the figure stands in plain view with outlines well defined. I
+believe that the history I have written is more like the truth than
+those preceding it, but I do not consider myself on that account
+a wonder-worker. I know I have been able to correct many preceding
+errors, because I was the first to look attentively when the moment to
+see and understand arrived.
+
+
+
+Roman History in Modern Education.
+
+
+When I announced my intention to write a new history of Rome, many
+people manifested a sense of astonishment similar to what they would
+have felt had I said that I meant to retire to a monastery. Was it to
+be believed that the hurrying modern age, which bends all its energies
+toward the future, would find time to look back, even for a moment, at
+that past so far away? That my attempt was rash was the common
+opinion not only of friends and critics, but also of publishers, who
+everywhere at first showed themselves skeptical and hesitating. They
+all said that the public was quite out of touch with Roman affairs. On
+the contrary, facts have demonstrated that also in this age, in aspect
+so eager for things modern, people of culture are willing to give
+attention to the events and personages of ancient Rome.
+
+The thing appears strange and bizarre, as is natural, to those who had
+not considered it possible; consequently, few have seen how simple
+and clear is its explanation. To those who showed surprise that the
+history of Rome could become fashionable in Paris salons, I have
+always replied: My history has had its fortune because it was the
+history of Rome. Written with the same method and in the same style,
+a history of Venice, or Florence, or England, would not have had the
+same lot. One must not forget that the story of Rome occupies in the
+intellectual world a privileged place. Not only is it studied in all
+the schools of the civilised world; not only do nearly all states
+spend money to bring to light all the documentary evidence that
+the earth still conceals; but while all other histories are studied
+fitfully, that of Rome is, so to speak, remade every fifty years,
+and whoever arrives at the right time to do the making can gain a
+reputation broader than that given to most historians.
+
+There is, so to speak, in the history of Rome an eternal youth,
+and for the mind in what is commonly called European-American
+civilisation, it holds a peculiar attraction. From what deep sources
+springs this perennial youth? In what consists this particular force
+of attraction and renewal? It seems to me that the chief reason
+for the eternal fascination of the history of Rome is this, that it
+includes, as in a miniature drawn with simple lines, well defined,
+all the essential phenomena of social life; so that every age is
+able there to find its own image, its gravest problems, its intensest
+passions, its most pressing interests, its keenest struggles;
+therefore Roman history is forever modern, because every new age has
+only to choose that part which most resembles it, to find its own
+self.
+
+In the intellectual history of the nineteenth century this leading
+phenomenon of our culture is clearly evident. If any one asked me why,
+during the past century, Roman history has proved so interesting, I
+should not hesitate to reply, "Because Europeans and Americans
+find, there more than elsewhere what has been the greatest political
+upheaval of the hundred years that followed the French Revolution--the
+struggle between monarchy and republic." From the fervid admiration
+for the Roman Republic which animated the men of the French Revolution
+to the unmeasured Cæsarian apologies of Duruy and of Mommsen, from
+the ardent cult of Brutus to the detailed studies on the Roman
+administration of the first two centuries, all historians have studied
+and regarded Roman history mainly from the point of view of the
+struggle between the two principles that yet to-day rend in incurable
+discord the mind of old Europe and from which you have emerged
+fortunate! You are free, in a new world; you have ended the combat
+between the Latin principle of the impersonal state and the Oriental
+principle of the dynastic state; between the state conceived as the
+thing of all, belonging to every one and therefore of no one, and the
+state personified in a family of an origin higher and nobler than
+the common in which all authority derives from some hero-founder by
+a mysterious virtue unaccountable to reason and human philosophy; you
+have done with the conflict between the human state, simple, without
+pomp, without dramatic symbols--the republic as we men of the
+twentieth century understand it, and as you Americans conceive and
+practise it--and the monarchy of divine right, vainglorious, full of
+ceremonies and etiquette, despotic in internal constitution, which
+still exists in Europe under more or less spurious forms. Now it is
+easy to explain how, in an age in which the contest between these two
+conceptions and these two forms of the State was so warm, the history
+of Rome should so stir the mind.
+
+In no other history do these two political forms meet each other in a
+more irreconcilable opposition of characters in extreme. The Republic,
+as Rome had founded it, was so impersonal that, in contrast with
+modern more democratic republics, it had not even a fixed
+bureaucracy, and all the public functions were exercised by
+elective magistrates--even the executive--from public works to the
+police-system. In the ancient monarchy which the Orient had created,
+the dynastic principle was so strong that the State was considered
+by inherent right the personal property of the sovereign, who might
+expand it, contract it, divide it among his sons and relatives,
+bequeathing his kingdom and his subjects as a land-owner disposes of
+his estate and his cattle. Furthermore, although to-day the sovereigns
+of Europe are pleased to treat quite familiarly with the good Lord,
+the rulers in the Orient were held to be gods in their own right.
+
+Whence it is easy to understand how terrible must have been the
+struggle between the two principles so antagonistic, from the time
+when in the Empire, immeasurable and complicated, the institutions of
+the Republic proved inadequate to govern so many diverse peoples and
+territories so vast. The Romans kept on, as at first, rebelling at
+the idea of placing a man-god at the head of the State, themselves to
+become, when finally masters of the world, the slaves of a dynasty.
+The conflict between the two principles lasted a century, from Cæsar
+to Nero, filled the story of Rome with hideous tragedies, but ended
+with the truce of a glorious compromise; for Rome succeeded in putting
+into the monarchic constitution of empire some essentially republican
+ideas, among others, the idea of the indivisibility of the State. Not
+only Augustus and his family, but also the Flavians and the Antonines,
+never thought that the Empire belonged to them, that they might
+dispose of it like private property; on the contrary, they regarded it
+as an eternal and indivisible holding of the Roman people which they,
+as representatives of the _populus_, were charged to administer.
+
+It is therefore easy, as I have said, to explain how, as never
+before, the history of Rome was looked upon as a great war between the
+monarchy and the republic. Indeed, the problem of the republic and
+the monarchy, always present to the minds of writers of the nineteenth
+century, has been perhaps the chief reason for the gravest mistakes
+committed by Roman historiography during this period--mistakes I have
+sought to correct. For example, the republicans have pinned their
+faith to all the absurd tales told by Suetonius and Tacitus about the
+family of the Cæsars, through preconceived hate for the monarchy; and
+the monarchists have exaggerated out of measure the felicity of the
+first two centuries of the Empire, to prove that the provinces lived
+happy under the monarchic administration as never before or after.
+Mommsen has fashioned an impossible Cæsar, almost making of that great
+demagogue a literary anticipation of Bismarck.
+
+Little by little, however, as the contest between republic and
+monarchy gradually spent itself in Europe, in the last twenty-five
+years of the nineteenth century, the interest for histories of Rome
+conceived and written in this spirit, declined. The real reason why
+Mommsen and Duruy are to-day so little read, why at the beginning of
+the twentieth century Roman history no longer stirs enthusiasm through
+their books is, above all, this: that readers no longer find in those
+pages what corresponds directly to living reality. Therefore it was to
+be believed that Roman history had grown old and out of date; whereas,
+merely one of its perishing and deciduous forms had grown old, not the
+soul of it, which is eternally living and young. So true is this, that
+a writer had only to consider the old story from new points of view,
+for Cæsar and Antony, Lucullus and Pompey, Augustus and the laws of
+the year 18 B.C., to become subjects of fashionable conversation in
+Parisian drawing-rooms, in the most refined intellectual centre of the
+world.
+
+It has never been difficult for me to realise that contemporary
+Europe and America, the Europe and America of railroads, industries,
+monstrous swift-growing cities, might find present in ancient Rome a
+part of their own very souls, restless, turbulent, greedy. In the Rome
+of the days of Cæsar, huge, agitated, seething with freedmen, slaves,
+artisans come from everywhere, crowded with enormous tenement-houses,
+run through from morning till night by a mad throng, eager for
+amusements and distractions; in that Rome where there jostled together
+an unnumbered population, uprooted from land, from family, from native
+country, and where from the press of so many men there fermented all
+the propelling energies of history and all the forces that destroy
+morality and life--vice and intellectuality, the imperialistic policy,
+deadly epidemics; in that changeable Rome, here splendid, there
+squalid; now magnanimous, and now brutal; full of grandeurs, replete
+with horrors; in that great city all the huge modern metropolises are
+easily refound, Paris and New York, Buenos Ayres and London, Melbourne
+and Berlin. Rome created the word that denotes this marvellous and
+monstrous phenomenon, of history, the enormous city, the deceitful
+source of life and death--_urbs_--_the city_. Whence it is not strange
+that the countless _urbes_ which the grand economic progress of the
+nineteenth century has caused to rise in every part of Europe and
+America look to Rome as their eldest sister and their dean.
+
+Furthermore, into the history of Rome, the historic aristocracy of
+Europe may look as into the mirror of their own destiny, as everywhere
+they try to retain wealth and power, playing in the stock-exchange,
+marrying the daughters of millionaire brewers, giving themselves
+to commerce; a nobility that resorts, in the effort to preserve
+its prestige over the middle classes, to the expedients of the most
+reckless demagogy. Sulla, Lucullus, Pompey, Crassus, Antony, Cæsar,
+exemplify in stupendous types the aristocracy that seeks to conserve
+riches and power by audaciously employing the forces that menace its
+own destruction.
+
+Several critics of my work, particularly the French, have observed
+that the policy of expansion made by Rome in the times of Cæsar, as
+I have described it, resembles closely the craze for imperialism that
+about ten years ago agitated England. It is true, for imperialism in
+the time of Cæsar was what has existed for the last half century in
+England--a means of which one part of the historic aristocracy availed
+itself to keep power and renew decaying prestige, satisfying material
+interests and flattering with intoxications of vanity the pride of
+the masses. So, too, the contesting parties in France--the socialist,
+which represents the labouring classes; the radical, which represents
+the middle classes; the progressive and the monarchic, which represent
+the wealthy burghers and the aristocracy--may discover some of their
+passions, their doings, their invectives, in the political warfare
+that troubled the age of Cæsar; in those scandals, those judicial
+trials, in that furor of pamphlets and discourses. This is so true,
+that in consequence my book met a singular fate in France; that of
+being adopted by each party as an argument in its own favour. Drumont
+made use of it to demonstrate to France what befalls a country when it
+allows its national spirit to be corrupted by foreign influx, seeking
+to persuade his fellow-citizens that the Jews in France do the same
+work of intellectual and moral dissolution that the Orientals brought
+about in Rome. Radical writers, like André Maurel, have sought
+arguments in my work to combat the colonial and imperialistic policy.
+The imperialists also, like Pinon, have looked for arguments to
+support their stand-point. Was I not merely demonstrating that the
+policy of expansion is a kind of universal and constant law, which
+periodically actualises itself through the working of the same forces,
+in the same ways?
+
+It is not to be thought that the age of Cæsar, so disturbed, so
+stormy, is our only mirror in the story of Rome. When I write the
+account of the imperial society of the first and second centuries, our
+own time will be able to recognise even more of itself, to see what
+must be the future of Europe and America, if for a century or two they
+have no profound political and social upheavals. In that great _pax
+Romana_ lasting two centuries, we may study with special facility
+a phenomenon to be found in all rich civilisations cultured and
+relatively at peace--the phenomenon to me the most important in
+contemporary European life, the feminising of all social life; that
+is, the victory of the feminine over the masculine spirit. Do not
+fancy that the feminists, the problems and the disputes they excite in
+modern society, are something quite new and peculiar to us; these are
+only special forms of a phenomenon more general, the growing influence
+that woman exercises on society, as civilisation, culture, and wealth
+steadily increase. Here, too, the history of Rome is luminously clear.
+In it we see evolving that vast contest between the feminine spirit
+and the masculine, which is one of the essential phenomena in all
+human history. We see the masculine spirit--the spirit of domination,
+of force, of mastery, of daring--ruling complete, when the small
+community had to fight its first hard battles against nature and men.
+The father commanded then as monarch in his family; the woman was
+without right, liberty, personality; had but to obey, to bear
+children and rear them. But success, power, wealth, greater security,
+imperceptibly loosened the narrow bondage of the first struggles; then
+the feminine spirit--the spirit of freedom, of pleasure, of art, of
+revolt against tradition--gradually acquired strength, and began bit
+by bit to undermine at its bases the stern masculine rule.
+
+The hard conflict of two centuries is sown with tragedies and
+catastrophes. Supported by tradition, exasperated by the ever bolder
+revolts of woman, the masculine spirit every now and then went mad;
+and brutally tore away her costly jewels and tried to deny her soft
+raiment and rare perfumes; and when she had already grown accustomed
+to appearing in the world and shining there, he willed to drive her
+back into the house, and put beside her there on guard the fieriest
+threats of law. Sometimes, despairing, he filled Rome with his
+laments; protested that the liberty of the woman cost the man too
+dear; cried out that the bills of the dressmaker and the jeweller
+would send Rome, the Empire, the world, to ruin. In vain, with wealth,
+in a civilisation full of Oriental influences, woman grew strong,
+rose, and invaded all society, until in the vast Empire of the first
+and second centuries, at the climax of her power, with beauty,
+love, luxury, culture, prodigality, and mysticism she dominated
+and dissolved a society which in the refinements of wealth and
+intellectuality had lost the sharp virtues of the pioneer.
+
+It is unnecessary to dilate further on this point; it will be better
+rather to dwell a moment on the causes and the effects of this
+singular phenomenon. The history of Rome has been and can be so rich,
+so manifold, so universal, because in its long record ancient Rome
+gathered up into itself, welded, fused, the most diverse elements of
+social life, from all peoples and all regions with which it came into
+contact. It knew continued war and interrupted peace for centuries.
+It held united under its vast sway, states decrepit with the oldest
+of civilisations, and peoples hardly out of primitive barbarism.
+It exploited with avidity the intelligence, the laboriousness, the
+science of the former; the physical force, the war-valour and the
+daring of the latter; it absorbed the vices, the habits, the ideas of
+the Hellenised Orient, and transfused them in the untamed Occident.
+Taking men, ideas, money, everywhere and from every people, it
+created first an empire, then a literature, an architecture, an
+administration, and a new religion, that were the most tremendous
+synthesis of the ancient world. So the Roman world turned out vaster
+and more complex than the Greek, although never assuming proportions
+exceeding the power of the human mind; and as it grew, it kept that
+precious quality, wanting in the Greek, unity; hence, the lucid
+clearness of Roman history. There is everything in it, and everything
+radiates from one centre, so that comprehension is easy. Without doubt
+it would be rash to declare that the history of Rome alone may serve
+as the outline of universal history. It is quite likely that there
+may be found another history that possesses the same two qualities
+for which that of Rome is so notable--universality and unity--but one
+thing we may affirm: up to this time the history of Rome alone has
+fulfilled this office of universal compendium, which explains how it
+has always been studied by the learned and lettered of every part of
+the civilised European-American world, and how in modern intellectual
+life it is the history universal and cosmopolitan _par excellence_.
+This condition of things has a much greater practical importance than
+is supposed. Indeed it would be a serious mistake to believe that
+cosmopolitan catholicity is an ideal dower purely of Roman history,
+for which all the sons of Rome may congratulate themselves as of a
+thing doing honour only to their stirp. This universality forms part,
+I should say, of the material patrimony of all the Latin stock; we may
+number it in the historic inventory of all the good things the sons of
+Rome possess and of all their reasonable hopes for the future.
+
+This affirmation may at first appear to you paradoxical, strange, and
+obscure, but I think a short exposition will suffice to clear it. The
+universality of the history of Rome, the ease of finding in it models
+in miniature of all our life will have this effect, that classical
+studies remain the educational foundation of the intelligent classes
+in all European-American civilisation. These studies may be reformed;
+they may be as they ought, restricted to a smaller number of persons;
+but if it is not desired--as of course it cannot be--that in the
+future all men be purely technical capacities and merely living
+machines to create material riches; if, on the contrary, it is desired
+that in every nation the chosen few that govern have a philosophical
+consciousness of universal life, no means is better suited to instil
+this philosophic consciousness than the study of ancient Rome, its
+history, its civilisation, its laws, its politics, its art, and its
+religions, exactly because Rome is the completest and most lucid
+synthesis of universal life.
+
+Classical studies are one of the most powerful means of intellectual
+and moral influence on the Anglo-Saxon and German civilisations that
+the Latins possess, representing under modern conditions, for the
+Latin nations, a kind of intellectual entail inherited from their
+ancestors. The young Germans and Englishmen who study Greek and Latin,
+who translate Cicero or construe Horace, assimilate the Latin spirit,
+are brought ideally and morally nearer to us, are prepared without
+knowing it to receive our intellectual and social influence in other
+fields, are made in greater or less degree to resemble us. Indeed,
+it can be said, that, material interests apart, Rome is still in the
+mental field the strongest bond that holds together the most diverse
+peoples of Europe; that it unites the French, the English, the
+Germans, in an ideal identity which overcomes in part the diversity in
+speech, in traditions, in geographical situation, and in history. If
+common classical studies did not make kindred spirits of the upper
+classes in England, France, and Germany, the Rhine and the Channel
+would divide three nations mentally so different as to be impenetrable
+each to another.
+
+Therefore the cosmopolitan universality of Roman history is a kind
+of common good which the Latin races ought to defend with all
+their might, having care that no other history usurp its place in
+contemporary culture; that it remain the typical outline, the ideal
+model of universal history in the education of coming generations. The
+Latin civilised world has need that every now and then an historian
+arise to reanimate the history of Rome, in order to maintain its
+continued supremacy in the education of the intelligent; to prevent
+other histories from usurping this pre-eminence.
+
+It is useless to cherish illusions as to the task: its accomplishment
+has become much more arduous than it was fifty years ago; perhaps
+because the masses have acquired greater power in every part of the
+European-American world, and democracy advances more or less rapidly,
+invading everything--the democracy of the technical man, the
+merchant, the workman, the well-to-do burgher, all of whom easily
+hold themselves aloof from a culture in itself aristocratic. The
+accomplishment will become always more and more arduous; for Roman
+studies, feeling the new generations becoming estranged from them,
+have for the last twenty-five years tended to take refuge in the
+tranquil cloisters of learning, of archaeology, in the discreet
+concourse of a few wise men, who voluntarily flee the noises of the
+world, Fatal thought! Ancient Rome ought to live daily in the mind
+of the new social classes that lead onward; ought to irradiate its
+immortal light on the new worlds that arise from the deeps of the
+modern age, on pain of undergoing a new destruction more calamitous
+than that caused by the hordes of Alaric. The day when the history of
+Rome and its monuments may be but material for erudition to put into
+the museums by the side of the bricks of the palace of Khorsabad, the
+cuneiform inscriptions, and the statues of the kings of Assyria, Latin
+civilisation will be overwhelmed by a fatal catastrophe.
+
+To hinder the extinction of the great light of Rome in the world, to
+prolong indefinitely this ideal survival, which is the continuation of
+its material Empire, destroyed centuries ago, there is but one way--to
+renew historic studies of Rome, and to maintain intact their universal
+value which forms part of common culture. This is what I have tried
+to do, seeking to lead back to Roman history the many minds estranged
+from it, distracted by so many cares and anxieties and present
+questionings, and to fulfil a solemn duty to my fatherland and the
+grand traditions of Latin culture. If other histories can grow old, it
+is indeed the more needful, exactly because it serves to educate new
+generations, to reanimate Roman history, incorporating in it the new
+facts constantly discovered by archæological effort, infusing it
+with a larger and stronger philosophical spirit, carrying into it the
+matured experience of the world, which learns not only by studying but
+also by living.
+
+I do not hesitate to say that every half-century there opens among
+civilised peoples a contest to find the new conception of Roman
+history, which, suited to the changed needs, may revivify classical
+studies; a competition followed by no despicable prize, the
+intellectual influence that a people may exercise on other peoples by
+means of these studies. To win in this contest we must never forget,
+as too many of us have done in the past thirty years, that a man can
+rule and refashion the world from the depths of a library, but only
+on condition that he does not immure himself there; that, while the
+physical sciences propose to understand matter in order to transform
+it, historico-philosophical discipline has for its end action upon the
+mind and the will; that philosophical ideas and historic teachings
+are but seeds shut up to themselves unless they enter the soil of the
+universal intellectual life.
+
+No: the time-stained marbles of Rome must not end beside
+cuneiform-inscribed bricks or Egyptian mummies, in the vast dead
+sections of archæological halls; they must serve to pave for our feet
+the way that leads to the future. Therefore nothing could have been
+pleasanter or more grateful to me, after receiving the invitation
+tendered me by the _Collège de France_, and that from South America,
+than to accept the invitation of the First Citizen of the United
+States to visit this world which is being formed. In Paris, that
+wonderful metropolis of the Latin world, I had the joy, the highest
+reward for my long, hard labour, to show to the incredulous how much
+alive the supposedly dead history of Rome still is, when on those
+unforgettable days so cosmopolite a public gathered from every part of
+the city in the small plain hall of the old and august edifice. Coming
+into your midst, I feel that the history of Rome lives not only in the
+interest with which you have followed these lectures, but also, even
+if in part without clear cognisance, in things here, in the life you
+lead, in what you accomplish. The heritage of Rome is, for the peoples
+of America still more than for those of Europe, an heredity not purely
+artistic and literary, but political and social, which exercises the
+most beneficent influence on your history. In a certain sense it might
+be said that America is to-day politically, more than Europe, the true
+heir of Rome; that the new world is nearer--by apparent paradox--to
+ancient Rome than is Europe. Among the most important facts, however
+little noticed, in the history of the nineteenth century, I should
+number this: that the Republic, the human state considered as the
+common property of all--the great political creation of ancient
+Rome--is reborn here in America, after having died out in Europe. The
+Latin seed, lying buried for so many centuries beneath the ruins of
+the ancient world, like the grains of wheat buried in Egyptian tombs,
+transported from the other side of the ocean, has sprung up in the
+land that Columbus discovered. If there had been no Rome; if Rome
+had wholly perished in the great barbarian catastrophe; if in the
+Renaissance there had not been found among the ruins of the ancient
+world, together with beautiful Greek statues and manuscripts, this
+great political idea, there would to-day be no Republic in North
+America. With the word would probably have perished also the idea and
+the thing; and there is no assurance that men would have been able so
+easily and so well to rediscover it by their own effort.
+
+I am a student and not a flatterer. I therefore confess to you
+frankly, ending these lectures, that I do not belong to that number
+of Europeans who most enthusiastically admire things American. I think
+that Americans in general, in North America as in South, so readily
+recognise in themselves a sufficient number of virtues, that we
+Europeans hardly need help them in the belief, easy and agreeable
+to all, that they stand first in the world. Having come from an
+old society, which has a long historical experience, the most vivid
+impression made upon me in the two Americas has been just that
+of entering into a society provided with but meagre historical
+experience, which therefore easily deludes itself, mistaking for signs
+of heroic energy and proofs of a finished superiority, the passing
+advantages of an order chiefly economic, which come from the singular
+economic condition of the world. In a word, I do not believe that
+you are superior to Europe in as many things as you think; but a
+superiority I do recognise, great and, for me at least, indisputable,
+in the political institutions with which you govern yourselves. The
+Republic, which you have made to live again, here in this new land, is
+the true political form worthy of a civilised people, because the
+only one that is rational and plastic; while the monarchy, the form
+of government yet ruling so many parts of Europe, is a mixture of
+mysticism and barbarity, which European interests seek in vain to
+justify with sophistries unworthy the high grade of culture to which
+the Continent has attained. To search out the reasons why the old
+Oriental monarchy holds on so tenaciously in Europe, still threatening
+the future, would be useless here; certain it is that, when you
+meet any European other than a Frenchman or a Swiss, you can feel
+yourselves as superior to him in political institutions as the Roman
+_civis_ in the times of the Republic felt himself above the Asiatic
+slave of absolute monarchy. This superiority--never forget it!--you
+owe to Rome; for its possession, be grateful to the city that has
+encircled you with such glory, by infusing so tenacious a life into
+the "_Respublica_."
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+  Acrobats, the great number of, 218
+  Acte, the beautiful, 114
+  Actium,
+    the mistakes of Antony at, 60;
+    the peace after, 216
+  _Ægean_ Islands, the vineyards of the, 200
+  Agriculture in Gaul, the extent of, 84
+  Agrippa,
+    the builder of the Pantheon, 103;
+    the successor of, 165
+  Agrippina,
+    the power of, 103;
+    the love of the Republic of, 114;
+    miraculous escape of, 120;
+    death of, 122
+  Alaric, the destruction caused by, 258
+  Alcohol, the distillers of, 26
+  Alesia,
+    the city of, 91, 94;
+    the battle at, 197
+  Alexander the Great, mentioned, 48
+  Alexandria, the position of, 15
+  Allier, the valley of the, 92
+  Alps,
+    the peoples beyond the, 20;
+    the fear of crossing the, 73
+  _Ambitio_ of the ancients, the, 14
+  America, the discovery of,
+  _Amor_, the kingdom of, 25
+  _Amores_, the, by Ovid, 151
+  _Amours_, the, of Antony, 41
+  _Amphore_, the wine of the, 39
+  Ancient Rome, corruption in, 3 _ff_
+  Anglo-Saxons, traits of the, 197
+  Anicetus, the diabolical plan of, 119
+  Antony,
+    the history of, 37 _ff_;
+    the love of, 40;
+    meets Cleopatra, 44;
+    the bewilderment of, 57
+  Antifeminist reaction, the, 111
+  Antioch,
+    the departure for, 45;
+    the marriage at, 51
+  Antium, the return to, 119
+  Antonines, the power of the, 246
+  Aquileia, son of Julia born at, 155;
+    the trade in, 192
+  Arabia, part of, annexed, 49
+  Archæological discoveries, the effect of, 259
+  Archæologists, the discoveries of, 43
+  Archelaus, the revolt against, 166
+  Architectural effort at Rome, 134
+  Argentine Republic, the mention of, 86
+  Arles, a large market for wines, 192
+  Armenia, the revolt in, 161
+  Arras, the district of, 90
+  Arrianus, the work of, 199
+  _Ars Armandi_, the, by Ovid, 163
+  Artists, the numerous, of the East, 55
+  Asia Minor, the addition to the Empire of, 49
+  Asiatic civilisation, 17
+  Athens, the influence of, 202
+  Atrides, the legend of, 138
+  Attalus, King, 16; the bequest of, 187
+  Augustus, the age of, 25
+  Augustus Cæsar, lectures on, 3;
+    the wise laws of, 158;
+    troubles of, 176;
+    the death of, 209
+  _Avaritia_, the complaint of the, 14
+
+  B
+
+  Bacchante, a miserable, 155
+  Bacchus, the plant of, 182
+  Bætica, civilisation in, 72
+  Baiæ, the Court at, 119
+  Banquets, the, of ancient Rome, 7
+  Barbarian, the struggle against the, 34
+  Barbarism, the primitive, 254
+  Belgæ, the victory over the, 77
+  Beverages, in Roman history, 181 _ff_;
+    the growing use of, 186
+  _Birrus_ of Laodicea, the, 88
+  Bismarck, mentioned, 64; compared to Cæsar, 247
+  Biturigi, the, a tribe of Gaul, 86
+  Black Sea, the country around, 182
+  Borebiste, a Gætic warrior, 191
+  _Boulanger_, a Roman, 41
+  Brennus, the conspirator, 130
+  Britannicus, the exclusion of, 103; the death of, 115
+  Brutus, the cult of, 243
+  Buddhist, the position of the, 236
+  Burrhus, the political work of, 104
+
+  C
+
+  Cadurci, a tribe of Gaul, 86
+  Cæsar, Caius, adopted by Augustus, 158;
+    the political position of, 160
+  Cæsar, Julius, the wisdom of, 72; mistakes of, 75
+  Cæsar, Lucius, adopted by Augustus, 158,
+    the popularity of, 164
+  Cæsars, the palaces of the, 7
+  Caleti, the, a tribe of Gaul, 86
+  California, grape-culture in, 187
+  Caligula, the death of, 115
+  Calumnies, the, about Julia, 174
+  Campania, the cities of, 218
+  Canals, the construction of, 213
+  Capri, the monster of, 155
+  _Carmen Seculare_, the, by Horace, 151
+  Carthusian, the patience of the, 91
+  Castles, the Roman, on the Rhine, 192
+  Catiline, the conspiracies of, 130
+  Cato, the love of tradition of, 105;
+    as a wine drinker, 184
+  Celt, the genius of the, 88
+  Cereals, the growth of, in Gaul, 85
+  Cervisia, the supplications of, 196
+  Champagne, the reputation of, 206
+  Chian, a cask of, for a banquet, 199
+  Christianity, the work and spreading of, 231 _ff_
+  Christians, the, in the time of Nero, 131
+  "Christofle," the making of, in Gaul, 91
+  Church, the position of the, 232
+  Cicero, the letters of, 74;
+    the  influence of, 172
+  Civil wars, the impression of the, 148
+  _Civis_, the Roman, 264
+  Classic renaissance, the, 235
+  Claudii, the haughty line of the, 159
+  Claudius, Emperor, the death of, 103
+  Cleopatra, the legend of, 37 _ff_;
+    described, 40;
+    policy, of, 58
+  Clodia, the famous, 74
+  Collège de France, the, 3, 260
+  Columbus, mentioned, 71
+  _Comitia_, the election of the, 58
+  _Commentaries_, the, of Cæsar, 191
+  Conflagration, the, of Rome, 129
+  Corday, Charlotte, 63
+  Corruption of customs, the, 3
+  Costumes of Rome, the, 181
+  Cradle of Jesus, the, 166
+  Crassus, the demagogy of, 249
+  Cultivation, in Rome, 181
+  _Cultus_, a Gallic term, 91
+  Cydnus, the river, 39
+
+  D
+
+  Dalmatia, the malcontents at, 166
+  Danube provinces, the, 88, 91
+  Dechelette, the great work of, 91
+  Diamonds, the importation of, 220
+  Diocletian, the edict of, 88
+  Dion Cassius, the historian, 63, 80
+  Dionysius, the Greek judge, 183
+  Dionysos, the beverage of, 183
+  Dithyrambics, the, of Horace, 196
+  Drusus, mentioned, 93;
+    the exalted position of, 104
+  Duodecember, a fourteenth month, 79
+  Duruy, the apologies of, 243
+  Dynasty of Egypt, the, 215
+
+  E
+
+  "Eastern peril," the, 50
+  Economic strength, the, of Rome, 224
+  Economic unity, the, of the world, 236
+  Education, the laborious, 194
+  Egnatius Mecenius, the story of, 183
+  Egypt, the conquest of, 16, 46
+  Elagabalus, the splendour of, 6, 8
+  Elegies, the revolutionary, of Ovid, 152
+  Empire, the extent of the, 217
+  Ephesus, the city of, 219
+  _Euthanasia_, the death of the happy, 210
+  External policy, the, of Rome, 164
+
+  F
+
+  Fabius Pictor, the word of, 183
+  Falernian, the discovery of, 198
+  "First Citizen of the Republic," the, 157
+  Feminism, the increase of, in Rome, 108
+  "Festivals of Youth," the, at Rome, 124
+  Flavians, the power of the, 246
+  Flax, the cultivation of, 85
+  _Folies Bergères_, the, mentioned, 129
+  _Fortuna_, the, of the Romans 98
+  Forum, the impressive monument of the, 55
+  Franco-Prussian War, the, 202
+  Frankfurt, the treaty of, 202
+  Freedmen, the position of, 212
+  French Revolution, the, 205
+  Frontiers, the strengthening of the, 109
+
+  G
+
+  Gætic warrior, the rule of a, 191
+  Gæto-Thracian, the great empire of, 191
+  Gallia Narbonensis, the position of, 50
+  Gallic,
+    affairs, the midst of, 73;
+    roads, the network of, 213
+  Gallo-Roman villas, the, 87
+  Gambetta, the love letters of, 40
+  Gambrinus, the god, 202
+  Gaul,
+    the development of, 20, 69 _ff_.;
+    conquest of, 72;
+    the annexation of, 77;
+    the wealth of, 83
+  Gauls,
+    the irritation of the, 79;
+    the genius of the, 81
+  Genoa, the situation of, 23
+  German historians, the work of, 152
+  Germanicus, the historical importance of, 103
+  Germany, conditions in, 79, 165;
+    policy toward Rome, 166
+  Glass-making in Gaul, 90
+  Government, the, at Rome, 213
+  Governors, the position of the, 312
+  Gracchi, the struggle of the, 17
+  Græco-Latin civilisation, the, 72,235
+  Grape-culture, the spread of, 186
+  Grape harvest, the abundance of the, 185
+  _Greatness and Decline of Rome_, the, 10
+  Greece, the contact of Rome with, 185
+  Greek wines in Rome, 8
+  Gymnasium, the, at Alexandria, 55
+
+  H
+
+  Hannibal, the army of, 189
+  Harbours, the building of, 213
+  Hebrew people, the position of the, 166
+  Hellenist, an ardent, 58
+  Helvetia, customs in, 191
+  Helvetians, the, 74;
+    the attack on the, 75
+  Herculaneum, the city of, 218
+  Heritage of Rome, the, 261
+  Herod the Great, the death of, 166
+  History, as considered by Ferrero, 65
+  Horace, the invectives of, 23
+  Houssaye, Henri, mentioned, 41
+
+  I
+
+  Ides, the days of the, 9
+  Ierapolis, the prosperity of, 219
+  Ilium, the district of Troy, 50
+  India, the precious metals of, 30;
+    wine exported to, 200
+  Indo-Chinese, the commerce of the, 55
+  Inscriptions, the story left by the, 221
+  Istrian wine, the favourite of Livia, 199
+
+  J
+
+  Jerome, Saint, the story of, 78
+  _Jeunesse dorée_, the, of Rome, 124
+  Jewelry making in Gaul, 90
+  Jewels as a luxury, 31
+  Jews in France, the, 250
+  Jove, the temple of, 19
+  Judas, the mention of, 63
+  Judea, the revolt at, 166
+  Julia, the exile of, 137;
+    the episode of, 150;
+    discord with, 154;
+    unfaithfulness of, 157;
+    the accusation of, 170;
+    the fate of, 177
+  Julian, the laws of, 151
+  Julian-Claudian house, the power of the, 188
+  Jurisdiction of property, the, in Gaul, 84
+  Jurists, the influence of, 230
+  Juvenal, passages from, 90
+
+  K
+
+  Kalends, the days of the, 9
+  Karbin, mentioned, 50
+  Khorsabad, the palace of, 259
+  Knights, the social position of the, 212
+  Ladies, the, of Rome, 30
+  Langres, the district of, 90
+  Laodicea,
+    the _birrus_ of, 88;
+    the city of, 219
+  Lares, the veneration of the, 190
+  Latin morals, the severity of, 61
+  Latin spirit, the similarity of the, 256
+  Laws of Julian, the, 151
+  Legislative reforms, the, 21
+  Leibach, the trade through, 192
+  Lepidus mentioned, 172
+  Letronne, the researches of, 45
+  _Lex de adulteriis_, the, 148
+  _Lex de maritandis ordinibus_, the, 147
+  _Lex Julia de adulteriis_, the, 169
+  _Lex sumptuaria_, the, 148
+  Libertine poet, a, in the year 8 B.C., 151
+  Licinius, the characteristics of, 79
+  Linen, the manufacture of, 219
+  _Litterati_, the many, 218
+  Livia,
+    the mother of Tiberius, 162;
+    the position of, 168
+  Livia, the House of, 7
+  Livy, the point of view of, 3
+  Lollia Paulina, the fame of, 9
+  Lucullus,
+    the rising power of, 18;
+    wine used by, 184
+  Lusitania, a mission to, 117
+  _Luxuria_, the desire of, 14
+  Luxury,
+    of Rome, 125;
+    spread of, 186
+
+  M
+
+  Macrobius, the writings of, 155
+  Mamertine, a kind of wine, 199
+  Mania, the all absorbing, of Nero, 128
+  Marcellus, the privileges accorded, 160
+  Marius, the revolution of, 18
+  Martial, passages from, 90
+  "Mass," the so-called, 182
+  _Mater familias_, the honour of, 39
+  Maurel, André, the writings of, 251
+  Mazzini, the great, 63
+  Mediterranean world, the vast, 97
+  Merchandise, the great interchange of, 218
+  Mesia, the metropolis of, 219
+  Messalina, the death of, 103
+  Middle Ages, the cathedrals of the, 140
+  Military power, the weakening of the, at Rome, 167
+  Military Republic, the, 136
+  Military triumph, the, of Rome, 197
+  Minos, the historic, 63
+  Mirabeau, the love letters of, 40
+  Mithridates, defeat of, 19;
+    the conquests of, 197
+  Mohammedan, the position of the, 236
+  Mommsen, the apologies of, 243
+  _Morales_, the two, at Rome, 155
+  Morini, the, a tribe in Gaul, 86
+  _Mosca olearia_, a new species of, 190
+  _Municipia_, the splendour of the, 110
+  Museum, the, at Alexandria, 55
+  Mythology, the imagination of, 197
+
+  N
+
+  Naiads, the maidens of Cleopatra dressed as, 40
+  Naples, the ruins of, 92;
+    the city of, 218
+  Naples, the Gulf of, 119
+  Napoleon I., mentioned, 63, 210
+  _Natural History_, the, by Pliny, 183
+  Nero, Emperor, 96,
+    elected, 103;
+    frivolity of, 105;
+    debauches of, 114;
+    the cowardice of, 121;
+    careless government of, 125;
+    St. Paul contrasted with, 133;
+    the suicide of, 135
+  Newspapers, the fortunate lack of, in Rome, 173
+  Nile, the Roman protectorate in the valley of the, 46
+  Nimes, the inhabitants of, 175
+  Nones, the days of the, 9
+  Notre Dame, the cathedral of, 140
+  Nuptial banquets, the cost of, 9
+
+  O
+
+  Octavia, divorce of, 40;
+    the wife of Nero, 124, 127
+  Oil, the exportation of, 218
+  Oligarchy, the, at Rome, 81
+  Olive groves, the wealth of the, 189
+  Olympus, the delights of, 59
+  Opimius, the consulate of, 198
+  Orient, the metropolises of the, 15
+  Oriental Empire, the, of Rome, 57
+  Oriental state, the conquest of an, 15
+  Orientalism, the invasion of, 225
+  Ostia, Tiberius starts for, 163
+  Ovid, the representatives of, 149;
+    the work of, 150
+
+  P
+
+  Paintings, of Pompeii, the, 229
+  Palatine, a journey to the, 7;
+    polygamy in, 118
+  Palestine, the annexation of, 49;
+    uprising in, 166
+  Pandataria, Julia, exiled to, 172, 177
+  Pannonia, the malcontents at, 166
+  Pannonians, the customs of the, 193
+  Pantheon, the, mentioned, 103
+  Parthians, the Empire of the, 167
+  _Passum_, as a drink, 183
+  _Pater familias_, the power of the, 172
+  Paul of Tarsus, a great and simple man, 131;
+    the persecution of, 134
+  _Pax Romana_, the, 4;
+    the extent of the, 210
+  Pearls, the importation of, 30, 220
+  _Penetralia_, the, of the home, 32
+  Pergamon, the city, 219
+  Pergamus, the kingdom of, 16, 187
+  _Periplus of the Erytrian Sea_, the, a manual, 199
+  Persia, the conquest of, 44
+  Philosophers, the many, 209
+  Philosophy, the ancient, of Rome, 233
+  _Phylloxera_, a new species of, 190
+  Piedmont, the peasants of, 187
+  Pinon, the imperialist, 251
+  Pisa, inscriptions at, 164
+  Piso, the conspiracy of, 135
+  Plutarch, description of, 39
+  Po, the valley of the, 192
+  Poetry, the, of Horace, 195
+  Poets, the position of, 9 B.C., 146
+  Political barrier, the, between Gaul and Rome, 84
+  Political events, the, of Rome, 33
+  Political _personnel_, the, of Rome, 217
+  Polybius, the period of, 183
+  Pompadour, the Marquise de, mentioned, 43
+  Pompeii, the ruins of, 92;
+    the city of, 218
+  Pompey, the conquests of, 19;
+    the theatre of, 55
+  _Pontifex maximus_, the title of, 232
+  Pontus, salted fish from the, 8
+  Poppæa Sabina, the skill of, 116;
+    death of, 137
+  _Populus_, the representatives of the, 246
+  Pozzuoli, the city of, 218
+  Prætor, the office of the, 157
+  Precious metals, the distribution of, 218
+  Prætorian guards, the, 117
+  Prætorians, the influence of the, 104
+  Princeps, the authority of the, 188
+  Proconsuls, the, of Rome, 182
+  Procurator, the origin of the office of, 212
+  Proprietors, the government of the, 211
+  Prosperity, the growing, 148
+  Protestant, the present position of the, 236
+  Provinces, the peace in the, 176
+  Ptolemies, the, at Alexandria, 19
+  Ptolemies, the kingdom of the, 46
+  Public finance, the lack of, 144
+  Punic War, the Second, 3, 214
+
+  Q
+
+  Quæstor, the office of the, 211
+  Quintilius Varus, the governor of Syria, 166
+  Quintus Metullus Celerus, the consul, 74
+
+  R
+
+  Reinach, Joseph, the historian, 63
+  Republic, the last century of the, 14, 198
+  _Respublica_, the glory of the, 264
+  _Revue de Paris_, the, 63
+  Rheims, the vicinity of the city of, 206
+  Rhetian wine, the preference for, 199
+  Rhine, the river, 72
+  Roads, the construction of, 213
+  Rodi, Tiberius to go to, 162
+  Roman Catholic, the position of the, 236
+  Roman Empire, the dissolution of the, 140, 210
+  Roman history in modern education, 239
+  Roman nobility, the, 54
+  Roman protectorate, the, 46
+  Roman society, the dissolution of, 5
+  Romanism, the defence of, 111
+  Rome, in the beginning, 5
+  Romulus as a lawmaker, 183
+  Royal palaces, the closing of, 215
+  Ruteni, the, a tribe of Gaul, 86
+
+  S
+
+  Saint Mark, the wonder of, 140
+  Saintonge, the district of, 90
+  Savants, the, of the East, 55
+  Scipio Africanus, the work of, 153
+  Scipios, the policy of the, 226
+  Second Punic War, the, 3,214
+  Seine, the banks of the, 206
+  Sempronius Gracchus, a famous tribune, 56
+  Senate,
+    the Roman, 103;
+    sessions of the, 105
+  Seneca, the political work of, 104
+  Sesterces, the value of the Roman, 223
+  Sicily, the peasants of, 187
+  Sidon,
+    the artisans of, 88;
+    the city of, 219
+  Silk, the importation of, 220
+  Silver-plating, the art of, 228
+  Slaves, the abundance of, in Rome, 15
+  Slaves, the position of, 212
+  Social development, the, of the Roman Empire, 207 _ff_
+  Social laws, the, 148, 153
+  Socialists, the invectives of the, 250
+  _Soldi_, the hunt for, 173
+  Spain, the pro-consulship of, 184
+  Spartacus, the days of, 189
+  Stadium, the erection of the, at Rome, 125
+  State, the supervision of the, 24
+  Statues, the erection of, 152
+  Strabo, observations of, 85
+  _Strenua inertia_, the, 29
+  Suetonius, the ancient writer, 127
+  Sulla, the revolution of, 18
+  Sulmona, the birth of Ovid at, 149
+  Summer homes, the, at Naples, 120
+  Syria,
+    the annexation of, 73;
+    the conquest of, 16
+
+  T
+
+  Tacitus, the opinion of, 30, 152
+  Tarsus, Cleopatra at, 39
+  Terpnos, a zither-player, 105
+  Textile plants, in Gaul, 85
+  Theatres, the great demand for, 110
+  Theresa, Maria, mentioned, 43
+  Thracian slave, the escape of a, 189
+  Tiber, the banks of the, 203
+  Tiberius,
+    a great general, 7, 30, 93, 109, 145;
+    the life of, 153;
+    difficulties of, 157;
+    suggested retirement of, 162
+  Traditions, aristocratic, 153
+  Tributes, the,
+    imposed on the vanquished, 15;
+    collection of, 212
+  Triumvir, the fall of the great, 111
+  Troy, the ancient city of, 50
+  Tunis, grape-culture at, 187
+  Tyranny, the, at Rome, 135
+  Tyre, the prosperity of, 88, 219
+  Tyrian purple, the, 89
+
+  U
+
+  Undecember, a thirteenth month, 79
+  _Urbs_, the meaning of, 249
+  Usury, the pitiless, 186
+
+  V
+
+  Vladivostok, mentioned, 50
+  Villa, the luxury of a Roman, 194
+  Valtellina, the valley of the, 199
+  Varus, the catastrophe of, 166
+  Vatican field, the stadium in the, 124
+  Velleius, the report of, 93
+  Veneto, the peasants of the, 187
+  Venosa, an old poet from, 195
+  Venus, Cleopatra compared to, 39
+  Vices, the extent of, 27
+  Villas, the, of Gaul, 99
+  Vine-tenders, the, of Rome, 182
+  Vineyards, the destruction of the, 390
+  Virgil, the fame of, 23
+  Viticulture, the, of Italy, 196
+
+  W
+
+  Wine, in Roman history, 179 _ff_;
+    an inferior variety made in Italy, 182;
+    as a medicine, 183
+  Wine-dealers, the, of Rome, 182
+  Women of to-day and yesterday, 29
+  Wool industry, the, of Gaul, 90
+
+  X
+
+  Xerxes, the fame of, 63
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Characters and events of Roman History
+by Guglielmo Ferrero
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMAN HISTORY ***
+
+***** This file should be named 13208-8.txt or 13208-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/2/0/13208/
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, S.R.Ellison and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/old/13208-8.zip b/old/13208-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3595cb0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/13208-8.zip
diff --git a/old/13208.txt b/old/13208.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ba367c7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/13208.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6084 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Characters and events of Roman History
+by Guglielmo Ferrero
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Characters and events of Roman History
+
+Author: Guglielmo Ferrero
+
+Release Date: August 17, 2004 [EBook #13208]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMAN HISTORY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, S.R.Ellison and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+    CHARACTERS AND EVENTS OF ROMAN HISTORY
+
+            FROM CAESAR TO NERO
+
+
+        THE LOWELL LECTURES OF 1908
+
+                   BY
+
+         GUGLIELMO FERRERO, LITT.D.
+
+                AUTHOR OF
+
+  "THE GREATNESS AND DECLINE OF ROME," ETC.
+
+               TRANSLATED BY
+
+           FRANCES LANCE FERRERO
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  The Chautauqua Press
+
+  CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK
+
+  [Copyright deleted]
+
+  By G.P. Putnam's Sons
+
+     Fifth Printing
+
+  The Chautauqua Print Shop
+
+       Chautauqua, N.Y.
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In the spring of 1906, the College de France invited me to deliver,
+during November of that year, a course of lectures on Roman history.
+I accepted, giving a resume, in eight lectures, of the history of the
+government of Augustus from the end of the civil wars to his death;
+that is, a resume of the matter contained in the fourth and fifth
+volumes of the English edition of my work, _The Greatness and Decline
+of Rome_.
+
+Following these lectures came a request from M. Emilio Mitre, Editor
+of the chief newspaper of the Argentine Republic, the _Nacion_, and
+one from the _Academia Brazileira de Lettras_ of Rio de Janeiro, to
+deliver a course of lectures in the Argentine and Brazilian capitals.
+I gave to the South American course a more general character than
+that delivered in Paris, introducing arguments which would interest a
+public having a less specialized knowledge of history than the public
+I had addressed in Paris.
+
+When President Roosevelt did me the honour to invite me to visit the
+United States and Prof. Abbott Lawrence Lowell asked me to deliver a
+course at the Lowell Institute in Boston, I selected material from the
+two previous courses of lectures, moulding it into the group that was
+given in Boston in November-December, 1908. These lectures were later
+read at Columbia University in New York, and at the University of
+Chicago in Chicago. Certain of them were delivered elsewhere--before
+the American Philosophical Society and at the University of
+Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, at Harvard University in Cambridge, and
+at Cornell University in Ithaca.
+
+Such is the record of the book now presented to the public at large.
+It is a work necessarily made up of detached studies, which, however,
+are bound together by a central, unifying thought; so that the reading
+of them may prove useful and pleasant even to those who have already
+read my _Greatness and Decline of Rome_.
+
+The first lecture, "The Theory of Corruption in Roman History," sums
+up the fundamental idea of my conception of the history of Rome. The
+essential phenomenon upon which all the political, social, and moral
+crises of Rome depend is the transformation of customs produced by the
+augmentation of wealth, of expenditure, and of needs,--a phenomenon,
+therefore, of psychological order, and one common in contemporary
+life. This lecture should show that my work does not belong among
+those written after the method of economic materialism, for I hold
+that the fundamental force in history is psychologic and not economic.
+
+The three following lectures, "The History and Legend of Antony and
+Cleopatra," "The Development of Gaul," and "Nero," seem to concern
+themselves with very different subjects. On the contrary, they present
+three different aspects of the one, identical problem--the struggle
+between the Occident and the Orient--a problem that Rome succeeded in
+solving as no European civilisation has since been able to do, making
+the countries of the Mediterranean Basin share a common life, in
+peace. How Rome succeeded in accomplishing this union of Orient and
+Occident is one of the points of greatest interest in its history. The
+first of these three lectures, "Antony and Cleopatra," shows how
+Rome repulsed the last offensive movement of the Orient against
+the Occident; the second, "The Development of Gaul," shows the
+establishing of equilibrium between the two parts of the Empire; the
+third, "Nero," shows how the Orient, beaten upon fields of battle and
+in diplomatic action, took its revenge in the domain of Roman ideas,
+morals, and social life.
+
+The fifth lecture, "Julia and Tiberius," illustrates, by one of the
+most tragic episodes of Roman history, the terrible struggle between
+Roman ideals and habits and those of the Graeco-Asiatic civilisation.
+The sixth lecture, "The Development of the Empire," summarises in a
+few pages views to be developed in detail in that part of my work yet
+to be written.
+
+I have said that not all history can be explained by economic forces
+and factors, but this does not prevent me from regarding economic
+phenomena as also of high importance. The seventh lecture, "Wine in
+Roman History," is an essay after the plan in accordance with which,
+it seems to me, economic phenomena should be treated.
+
+The last lecture deals with a subject that perhaps does not, properly
+speaking, belong to Roman history, but upon which an historian of Rome
+ought to touch sooner or later; I mean the role which Rome can still
+play in the education of the upper classes. It is a subject important
+not only to the historian of Rome, but to all those who are interested
+in the future of culture and civilisation. The more specialisation
+in technical labour increases, the greater becomes the necessity of
+giving the superior classes a general education, which can prepare
+specialists to understand each other and to act together in all
+matters of common interest. To imagine a society composed exclusively
+of doctors, engineers, chemists, merchants, manufacturers, is
+impossible. Every one must also be a citizen and a man in sympathy
+with the common conscience. I have, therefore, endeavoured to show
+in this eighth lecture what services Rome and its great intellectual
+tradition can render to modern civilisation in the field of education.
+
+These lectures naturally cannot do more than make known ideas in
+general form; it would be too much to expect in them the precision
+of detail, the regard for method, and the use of frequent notes,
+citations, and references to authorities or documents, that belong
+to my larger work on Rome; but they are published partly because I
+consider it useful to popularise Roman history, and partly because
+some of the pleasantest of memories attach to them. Their origin, the
+course on Augustus given at the College de France, which proved one of
+the happiest occasions of my life, and their development, leading
+to my travels in the two Americas, have given me experiences of the
+greatest interest and pleasure.
+
+I am glad of the opportunity here to thank all those who have
+contributed to make the sojourn of my wife and myself in the United
+States delightful. I must thank all my friends at once; for to name
+each one separately, I should need, as a Latin poet says, "a hundred
+mouths and a hundred tongues."
+
+GUGLIELMO FERRERO.
+
+TURIN, February 22, 1909.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  "CORRUPTION" IN ANCIENT ROME, AND ITS
+    COUNTERPART IN MODERN HISTORY .........   1
+  THE HISTORY AND LEGEND OF ANTONY AND
+    CLEOPATRA .............................  37
+  THE DEVELOPMENT OF GAUL .................  69
+  NERO .................................... 101
+  JULIA AND TIBERIUS ...................... 143
+  WINE IN ROMAN HISTORY ................... 179
+  SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE .. 207
+  ROMAN HISTORY IN MODERN EDUCATION ....... 239
+  INDEX ................................... 265
+
+
+
+"Corruption" in Ancient Rome And Its Counterpart in Modern History
+
+
+Two years ago in Paris, while giving a course of lectures on Augustus
+at the College de France, I happened to say to an illustrious
+historian, a member of the French Academy, who was complimenting me:
+"But I have not remade Roman history, as many admirers think. On
+the contrary, it might be said, in a certain sense, that I have only
+returned to the old way. I have retaken the point of view of Livy;
+like Livy, gathering the events of the story of Rome around that
+phenomenon which the ancients called the 'corruption' of customs--a
+novelty twenty centuries old!"
+
+Spoken with a smile and in jest, these words nevertheless were more
+serious than the tone in which they were uttered. All those who know
+Latin history and literature, even superficially, remember with
+what insistence and with how many diverse modulations of tone are
+reiterated the laments on the corruption of customs, on the luxury,
+the ambition, the avarice, that invaded Rome after the Second Punic
+War. Sallust, Cicero, Livy, Horace, Virgil, are full of affliction
+because Rome is destined to dissipate itself in an incurable
+corruption; whence we see, then in Rome, as to-day in France, wealth,
+power, culture, glory, draw in their train--grim but inseparable
+comrade!--a pessimism that times poorer, cruder, more troubled, had
+not known. In the very moment in which the empire was ordering itself,
+civil wars ended; in that solemn _Pax Romana_ which was to have
+endured so many ages, in the very moment in which the heart should
+have opened itself to hope and to joy, Horace describes, in three
+fine, terrible verses, four successive generations, each corrupting
+Rome, which grew ever the worse, ever the more perverse and
+evil-disposed:
+
+  Aetas parentum, peior avis, tulit
+  Nos nequiores, mox daturos
+  Progeniem vitiosiorem.
+
+"Our fathers were worse than our grandsires; we have deteriorated from
+our fathers; our sons will cause _us_ to be lamented." This is the
+dark philosophy that a sovereign spirit like Horace derived from the
+incredible triumph of Rome in the world. At his side, Livy, the great
+writer who was to teach all future generations the story of the city,
+puts the same hopeless philosophy at the base of his wonderful work:
+
+    Rome was originally, when it was poor and small, a unique
+    example of austere virtue; then it corrupted, it spoiled, it
+    rotted itself by all the vices; so, little by little, we have
+    been brought into the present condition in which we are able
+    neither to tolerate the evils from which we suffer, nor the
+    remedies we need to cure them.
+
+The same dark thought, expressed in a thousand forms, is found in
+almost every one of the Latin writers.
+
+This theory has misled and impeded my predecessors in different ways:
+some, considering that the writers bewail the unavoidable dissolution
+of Roman society at the very time when Rome was most powerful, most
+cultured, richest, have judged conventional, rhetorical, literary,
+these invectives against corruption, these praises of ancient
+simplicity, and therefore have held them of no value in the history of
+Rome. Such critics have not reflected that this conception is
+found, not only in the literature, but also in the politics and the
+legislation; that Roman history is full, not only of invectives in
+prose and verse, but of laws and administrative provisions against
+_luxuria, ambitio, avaritia_--a sign that these laments were not
+merely a foolishness of writers, or, as we say to-day, stuff for
+newspaper articles. Other critics, instead, taking account of these
+laws and administrative provisions, have accepted the ancient theory
+of Roman corruption without reckoning that they were describing as
+undone by an irreparable dissolution, a nation that not only had
+conquered, but was to govern for ages, an immense empire. In this
+conception of corruption there is a contradiction that conceals a
+great universal problem.
+
+Stimulated by this contradiction, and by the desire of solving it, to
+study more attentively the facts cited by the ancients as examples of
+corruption, I have looked about to see if in the contemporary world
+I could not find some things that resembled it, and so make myself
+understand it. The prospect seemed difficult, because modern men are
+persuaded that they are models of all the virtues. Who could think to
+find in them even traces of the famous Roman corruption? In the modern
+world to-day are the abominable orgies carried on for which the Rome
+of the Caesars was notorious? Are there to-day Neros and Elagabaluses?
+He who studies the ancient sources, however, with but a little of the
+critical spirit, is easily convinced that we have made for ourselves
+out of the much-famed corruption and Roman luxury a notion highly
+romantic and exaggerated. We need not delude ourselves: Rome, even in
+the times of its greatest splendour, was poor in comparison with the
+modern world; even in the second century after Christ, when it stood
+as metropolis at the head of an immense empire, Rome was smaller,
+less wealthy, less imposing, than a great metropolis of Europe or
+of America. Some sumptuous public edifices, beautiful private
+houses--that is all the splendour of the metropolis of the empire.
+He who goes to the Palatine may to-day refigure for himself, from the
+so-called House of Livia, the house of a rich Roman family of the
+time of Augustus, and convince himself that a well-to-do middle-class
+family would hardly occupy such a house to-day.
+
+Moreover, the palaces of the Caesars on the Palatine are a grandiose
+ruin that stirs the artist and makes the philosopher think; but if
+one sets himself to measure them, to conjecture from the remains the
+proportions of the entire edifices, he does not conjure up buildings
+that rival large modern constructions. The palace of Tiberius, for
+example, rose above a street only two metres wide--less than seven
+feet,--an alley like those where to-day in Italian cities live only
+the most miserable inhabitants. We have pictured to ourselves
+the imperial banquets of ancient Rome as functions of unheard of
+splendour; if Nero or Elagabalus could come to life and see the
+dining-room of a great hotel in Paris or New York--resplendent with
+light, with crystal, with silver,--he would admire it as far more
+beautiful than the halls in which he gave his imperial feasts. Think
+how poor were the ancients in artificial light! They had few wines;
+they knew neither tea nor coffee nor cocoa; neither tobacco, nor the
+innumerable _liqueurs_ of which we make use; in face of our habits,
+they were always Spartan, even when they wasted, because they lacked
+the means to squander.
+
+The ancient writers often lament the universal tendency to physical
+self-indulgence, but among the facts they cite to prove this dismal
+vice, many would seem to us innocent enough. It was judged by them
+a scandalous proof of gluttony and as insensate luxury, that at a
+certain period there should be fetched from as far as the Pontus,
+certain sausages and certain salted fish that were, it appears, very
+good; and that there should be introduced into Italy from Greece the
+delicate art of fattening fowls. Even to drink Greek wines seemed for
+a long time at Rome the caprice of an almost crazy luxury. As late
+as 18 B.C., Augustus made a sumptuary law that forbade spending for
+banquets on work-days more than two hundred sesterces (ten dollars);
+allowed three hundred sesterces (fifteen dollars) for the days of the
+Kalends, the Ides, and the Nones; and one thousand sesterces (fifty
+dollars) for nuptial banquets. It is clear, then, that the lords
+of the world banqueted in state at an expense that to us would seem
+modest indeed. And the women of ancient times, accused so sharply by
+the men of ruining them by their foolish extravagances, would cut a
+poor figure for elegant ostentation in comparison with modern dames
+of fashion. For example, silk, even in the most prosperous times, was
+considered a stuff, as we should say, for millionaires; only a few
+very rich women wore it; and, moreover, moralists detested it, because
+it revealed too clearly the form of the body. Lollia Paulina passed
+into history because she possessed jewels worth several million
+francs: there are to-day too many Lollia Paulinas for any one of them
+to hope to buy immortality at so cheap a rate.
+
+I should reach the same conclusions if I could show you what the Roman
+writers really meant by corruption in their accounts of the relations
+between the sexes. It is not possible here to make critical analyses
+of texts and facts concerning this material, for reasons that you
+readily divine; but it would be easy to prove that also in this
+respect posterity has seen the evil much larger than it was.
+
+Why, then, did the ancient writers bewail luxury, inclination
+to pleasure, prodigality--things all comprised in the notorious
+"corruption"--in so much the livelier fashion than do moderns,
+although they lived in a world which, being poorer and more simple,
+could amuse itself, make display, and indulge in dissipation so much
+less than we do? This is one of the chief questions of Roman history,
+and I flatter myself not to have entirely wasted work in writing my
+book [1] above all, because I hope to have contributed a little,
+if not actually to solve this question, at least to illuminate it;
+because in so doing I believe I have found a kind of key that opens
+at the same time many mysteries in Roman history and in contemporary
+life. The ancient writers and moralists wrote so much of Roman
+corruption, because--nearer in this, as in so many other things, to
+the vivid actuality--they understood that wars, revolutions, the great
+spectacular events that are accomplished in sight of the world, do not
+form all the life of peoples; that these occurrences, on the contrary,
+are but the ultimate, exterior explanation, the external irradiation,
+or the final explosion of an internal force that is acting constantly
+in the family, in private habit, in the moral and intellectual
+disposition of the individual. They understood that all the changes,
+internal and external, in a nation, are bound together and in part
+depend on one very common fact, which is everlasting and universal,
+and which everybody may observe if he will but look about him--on the
+increase of wants, the enlargement of ideas, the shifting of habits,
+the advance of luxury, the increase of expense that is caused by every
+generation.
+
+[Footnote 1: _The Greatness and Decline of Rome_. 5 vols. New York and
+London.];
+
+Look around you to-day: in every family you may easily observe the
+same phenomenon. A man has been born in a certain social condition and
+has succeeded during his youth and vigour in adding to his original
+fortune. Little by little as he was growing rich, his needs and his
+luxuries increased. When a certain point was reached, he stopped. The
+men are few who can indefinitely augment their particular wants, or
+keep changing their habits throughout their lives, even after the
+disappearance of vigour and virile elasticity. The increase of wants
+and of luxury, the change of habits, continues, instead, in the new
+generation, in the children, who began to live in the ease which their
+fathers won after long effort and fatigue, and in maturer age; who, in
+short, started where the previous generation left off, and therefore
+wish to gain yet new enjoyments, different from and greater than
+those that they obtained without trouble through the efforts of the
+preceding generation. It is this little common drama, which we see
+re-enacted in every family and in which every one of us has been and
+will be an actor--to-day as a young radical who innovates customs,
+to-morrow as an old conservative, out-of-date and malcontent in the
+eyes of the young; a drama, petty and common, which no one longer
+regards, so frequent is it and so frivolous it seems, but which,
+instead, is one of the greatest motive forces in human history--in
+greater or less degree, under different forms, active in all times and
+operating everywhere. On account of it no generation can live quietly
+on the wealth gathered, with the ideas discovered by antecedent
+generations, but is constrained to create new ideas, to make new and
+greater wealth by all the means at its disposal--by war and conquest,
+by agriculture and industry, by religion and science. On account of
+it, families, classes, nations, that do not succeed in adding to
+their possessions, are destined to be impoverished, because, wants
+increasing, it is necessary, in order to satisfy them, to consume the
+accumulated capital, to make debts, and, little by little, to go to
+ruin. Because of this ambition, ever reborn, classes renew themselves
+in every nation. Opulent families after a few generations are
+gradually impoverished; they decay and disappear, and from the
+multitudinous poor arise new families, creating the new _elite_ which
+continues under differing forms the doings and traditions of the old.
+Because of this unrest, the earth is always stirred up by a fervour
+for deeds or adventure--attempts that take shape according to the
+age: now peoples make war on each other, now they rend themselves in
+revolutions, now they seek new lands, explore, conquer, exploit; again
+they perfect arts and industries, enlarge commerce, cultivate
+the earth with greater assiduity; and yet again, in the ages more
+laborious, like ours, they do all these things at the same time--an
+activity immense and continuous. But its motive force is always the
+need of the new generations, that, starting from the point at which
+their predecessors had arrived, desire to advance yet farther--to
+enjoy, to know, to possess yet more.
+
+The ancient writers understood this thoroughly: what they called
+"corruption" was but the change in customs and wants, proceeding from
+generation to generation, and in its essence the same as that which
+takes place about us to-day. The _avaritia_ of which they complained
+so much, was the greed and impatience to make money that we see to-day
+setting all classes beside themselves, from noble to day-labourer; the
+_ambitio_ that appeared to the ancients to animate so frantically
+even the classes that ought to have been most immune, was what we call
+_getting there_--the craze to rise at any cost to a condition higher
+than that in which one was born, which so many writers, moralists,
+statesmen, judge, rightly or wrongly, to be one of the most dangerous
+maladies of the modern world. _Luxuria_ was the desire to augment
+personal conveniences, luxuries, pleasures--the same passion that
+stirs Europe and America to-day from top to bottom, in city and
+country. Without doubt, wealth grew in ancient Rome and grows to-day;
+men were bent on making money in the last two centuries of the
+Republic, and to-day they rush headlong into the delirious struggle
+for gold; for reasons and motives, however, and with arms and
+accoutrements, far diverse.
+
+As I have already said, ancient civilisation was narrower, poorer,
+and more ignorant; it did not hold under its victorious foot the whole
+earth; it did not possess the formidable instruments with which we
+exploit the forces and the resources of nature: but the treasures of
+precious metals transported to Italy from conquered and subjugated
+countries; the lands, the mines, the forests, belonging to such
+countries, confiscated by Rome and given or rented to Italians; the
+tributes imposed on the vanquished, and the collection of them; the
+abundance of slaves,--all these then offered to the Romans and to the
+Italians so many occasions to grow rich quickly; just as the gigantic
+economic progress of the modern world offers similar opportunities
+to-day to all the peoples that, by geographical position, historical
+tradition, or vigorous culture and innate energy, know how to excel
+in industry, in agriculture, and in trade. Especially from the Second
+Punic War on, in all classes, there followed--anxious for a life more
+affluent and brilliant--generations the more incited to follow the
+examples that emanated from the great metropolises of the Orient,
+particularly Alexandria, which was for the Romans of the Republic what
+Paris is for us to-day. This movement, spontaneous, regular, natural,
+was every now and then violently accelerated by the conquest of
+a great Oriental state. One observes, after each one of the great
+annexations of Oriental lands, a more intense delirium of luxury and
+pleasure: the first time, after the acquisition of the kingdom of
+Pergamus, through a kind of contagion communicated by the sumptuous
+furniture of King Attalus, which was sold at auction and scattered
+among the wealthy houses of Italy to excite the still simple desires
+and the yet sluggish imaginations of the Italians; the second time,
+after the conquest of Pontus and of Syria, made by Lucullus and by
+Pompey; finally, the third time, after the conquest of Egypt made by
+Augustus, when the influence of that land--the France of the ancient
+world--so actively invaded Italy that no social force could longer
+resist it.
+
+In this way, partly by natural, gradual, almost imperceptible
+diffusion, partly by violent crises, we see the mania for luxury and
+the appetite for pleasure beginning, growing, becoming aggravated
+from generation to generation in all Roman society, for two centuries,
+changing the mentality and morality of the people; we see the
+institutions and public policy being altered; all Roman history
+a-making under the action of this force, formidable and immanent in
+the whole nation. It breaks down all obstacles confronting it--the
+forces of traditions, laws, institutions, interests of classes,
+opposition of parties, the efforts of thinking men. The historical
+aristocracy becomes impoverished and weak; before it rise to power the
+millionaires, the _parvenus_, the great capitalists, enriched in the
+provinces. A part of the nobility, after having long despised them,
+sets itself to fraternise with them, to marry their wealthy daughters,
+cause them to share power; seeks to prop with their millions the
+pre-eminence of its own rank, menaced by the discontent, the spirit
+of revolt, the growing pride, of the middle class. Meanwhile, another
+part of the aristocracy, either too haughty and ambitious, or too
+poor, scorns this alliance, puts itself at the head of the democratic
+party, foments in the middle classes the spirit of antagonism against
+the nobles and the rich, leads them to the assault on the citadels of
+aristocratic and democratic power. Hence the mad internal struggles
+that redden Rome with blood and complicate so tragically, especially
+after the Gracchi, the external polity. The increasing wants of
+the members of all classes, the debts that are their inevitable
+consequence, the universal longing, partly unsatisfied for lack of
+means, for the pleasures of the subtle Asiatic civilisations, infused
+into this whole history a demoniac frenzy that to-day, after so many
+centuries, fascinates and appals us.
+
+To satisfy their wants, to pay their debts, the classes now set
+upon each other, each to rob in turn the goods of the other, in
+the cruelest civil war that history records; now, tired of doing
+themselves evil, they unite and precipitate themselves on the world
+outside of Italy, to sack the wealth that its owners do not know
+how to defend. In the great revolutions of Marius and Sulla,
+the democratic party is the instrument with which a part of the
+debt-burdened middle classes seek to rehabilitate themselves by
+robbing the plutocracy and the aristocracy yet opulent; but Sulla
+reverses the situation, makes a coalition of aristocrats and the
+miserable of the populace, and re-establishes the fortunes of the
+nobility, despoiling the wealthy knights and a part of the middle
+classes--a terrible civil war that leaves in Italy a hate, a
+despondency, a distress, that seem at a certain moment as if they must
+weigh eternally on the spirit of the unhappy nation. When, lo! there
+appears the strongest man in the history of Rome, Lucullus, and drags
+Italy out of the despondency in which it crouched, leads it into the
+ways of the world, and persuades it that the best means of forgetting
+the losses and ruin undergone in the civil wars, is to recuperate
+on the riches of the cowardly Orientals. As little by little the
+treasures of Mithridates, conquered by Lucullus in the Orient, arrive
+in Italy, Italy begins anew to divert itself, to construct palaces
+and villas, to squander in luxury. Pompey, envious of the glory of
+Lucullus, follows his example, conquers Syria, sends new treasures to
+Italy, carries from the East the jewels of Mithridates, and displaying
+them in the temple of Jove, rouses a passion for gems in the Roman
+women; he also builds the first great stone theatre to rise in
+Rome. All the political men in Rome try to make money out of foreign
+countries: those who cannot, like the great, conquer an empire,
+confine themselves to blackmailing the countries and petty states that
+tremble before the shadow of Rome; the courts of the secondary kings
+of the Orient, the court of the Ptolemies at Alexandria,--all are
+invaded by a horde of insatiable senators and knights, who, menacing
+and promising, extort money to spend in Italy and foment the growing
+extravagance. The debts pile up, the political corruption overflows,
+scandals follow, the parties in Rome rend each other madly, though
+hail-fellow-well-met in the provinces to plunder subjects and vassals.
+In the midst of this vast disorder Caesar, the man of destiny, rises,
+and with varying fortune makes a way for himself until he beckons
+Italy to follow him, to find success and treasures in regions new--not
+in the rich and fabulous East, but beyond the Alps, in barbarous Gaul,
+bristling with fighters and forests.
+
+But this insane effort to prey on every part of the Empire finally
+tires Italy; quarrels over the division of spoils embitter friends;
+the immensity of the conquests, made in a few years of reckless
+enthusiasm, is alarming. Finally a new civil war breaks out, terrible
+and interminable, in which classes and families fall upon each other
+anew, to tear away in turn the spoils taken together abroad. Out of
+the tremendous discord rises at last the pacifier, Augustus, who is
+able gradually, by cleverness and infinite patience, to re-establish
+peace and order in the troubled empire. How?--why? Because the
+combination of events of the times allows him to use to ends of peace
+the same forces with which the preceding generations had fomented so
+much disorder--desires for ease, pleasure, culture, wealth growing
+with the generations making it. Thereupon begins in the whole Empire
+universal progress in agriculture, industry, trade, which, on a small
+scale, may be compared to what we to-day witness and share; a progress
+for which, then as now, the chief condition was peace. As soon as men
+realised that peace gives that greater wealth, those enjoyments more
+refined, that higher culture, which for a century they had sought by
+war, Italy became quiet; revolutionists became guardians and guards of
+order; there gathered about Augustus a coalition of social forces that
+tended to impose on the Empire, alike on the parts that wished it and
+those that did not, the _Pax Romana_.
+
+Now all this immense story that fills three centuries, that gathers
+within itself so many revolutions, so many legislative reforms, so
+many great men, so many events, tragic and glorious, this vast history
+that for so many centuries holds the interest of all cultured nations,
+and that, considered as a whole, seems almost a prodigy, you can, on
+the track of the old idea of "corruption," explain in its
+profoundest origins by one small fact, universal, common, of the very
+simplest--something that every one may observe in the limited circle
+of his own personal experience,--by that automatic increase of
+ambitions and desires, with every new generation, which prevents the
+human world from crystallising in one form, constrains it to continual
+changes in material make-up as well as in ideals and moral appearance.
+In other words, every new generation must, in order to satisfy that
+part of its aspirations which is peculiarly and entirely its own,
+alter, whether little or much, in one way or another, the condition
+of the world it entered at birth. We can then, in our personal
+experiences every day, verify the universal law of history--a law
+that can act with greater or less intensity, more or less rapidity,
+according to times and places, but that ceases to authenticate itself
+at no time and in no place.
+
+The United States is subject to that law to-day, as is old Europe,
+as will be future generations, and as past ages were. Moreover, to
+understand at bottom this phenomenon, which appears to me to be the
+soul of all history, it is well to add this consideration: It is
+evident that there is a capital difference between our judgment of
+this phenomenon and that of the ancients; to them it was a malevolent
+force of dissolution to which should be attributed all in Roman
+history that was sinister and dreadful, a sure sign of incurable
+decay; that is why they called it "corruption of customs," and so
+lamented it. To-day, on the contrary, it appears to us a universal
+beneficent process of transformation; so true is this that we call
+"progress" many facts which the ancients attributed to "corruption."
+It were useless to expand too much in examples; enough to cite a few.
+In the third ode of the first book, in which he so tenderly salutes
+the departing Virgil, Horace covers with invective, as an evil-doer
+and the corrupter of the human race, that impious being who invented
+the ship, which causes man, created for the land, to walk across
+waters. Who would to-day dare repeat those maledictions against the
+bold builders who construct the magnificent trans-Atlantic liners on
+which, in a dozen days from Genoa, one lands in Boston or New York?
+"Coelum ipsum petimus stultitia," exclaims Horace--that is to say, in
+anticipation he considered the Wright brothers crazy.
+
+Who, save some man of erudition, has knowledge to-day of sumptuary
+laws? We should laugh them all down with one Homeric guffaw, if to-day
+it entered somebody's head to propose a law that forbade fair ladies
+to spend more than a certain sum on their clothes, or numbered the
+hats they might wear; or that regulated dinners of ceremony, fixing
+the number of courses, the variety of wines, and the total expense; or
+that prohibited labouring men and women from wearing certain stuffs
+or certain objects that were wont to be found only upon the persons
+of people of wealth and leisure. And yet laws of this tenor were
+compiled, published, observed, up to two centuries ago, without any
+one's finding it absurd. The historic force that, as riches increase,
+impels the new generations to desire new satisfactions, new pleasures,
+operated then as to-day; only then men were inclined to consider it as
+a new kind of ominous disease that needed checking. To-day men regard
+that constant transformation either as beneficent, or at least as such
+a matter of course that almost no one heeds it; just as no one notices
+the alternations of day and night, or the change of seasons. On the
+contrary, we have little by little become so confident of the goodness
+of this force that drives the coming generation on into the unknown
+future, that society, European, American, among other liberties has
+won in the nineteenth century, full and entire, a liberty that the
+ancients did not know--freedom in vice.
+
+To the Romans it appeared most natural that the state should survey
+private habits, should spy out what a citizen, particularly a citizen
+belonging to the ruling classes, did within domestic walls--should see
+whether he became intoxicated, whether he were a gourmand, whether
+he contracted debts, spending much or little, whether he betrayed his
+wife. The age of Augustus was cultured, civilised, liberal, and in
+many things resembled our own; yet on this point the dominating ideas
+were so different from ours, that at one time Augustus was forced
+by public opinion to propose a law on adultery by which all Roman
+citizens of both sexes guilty of this crime were condemned to exile
+and the confiscation of half their substance, and there was given
+to any citizen the right to accuse the guilty. Could you imagine it
+possible to-day, even for a few weeks, to establish this regime of
+terror in the kingdom of Amor? But the ancients were always inclined
+to consider as exceedingly dangerous for the upper classes that
+relaxing of customs which always follows periods of rapid enrichment,
+of great gain in comforts; behind his own walls to-day, every one is
+free to indulge himself as he will, to the confines of crime.
+
+How can we explain this important difference in judging one of the
+essential phenomena of historic life? Has this phenomenon changed
+nature, and from bad, by some miracle, become good? Or are we wiser
+than our forefathers, judging with experience what they could hardly
+comprehend? There is no doubt that the Latin writers, particularly
+Horace and Livy, were so severe in condemning this progressive
+movement of wants because of unconscious political solicitude, because
+intellectual men expressed the opinions, sentiments, and also the
+prejudices of historic aristocracy, and this detested the progress of
+_ambitio, avaritia, luxuria_, because they undermined the dominance of
+its class. On the other hand, it is certain that in the modern
+world every increase of consumption, every waste, every vice, seems
+permissible, indeed almost meritorious, because men of industry and
+trade, the employees in industries--that is, all the people that
+gain by the diffusion of luxuries, by the spread of vices or new
+wants--have acquired, thanks above all to democratic institutions, and
+to the progress of cities, an immense political power that in times
+past they lacked. If, for example, in Europe the beer-makers and
+distillers of alcohol were not more powerful in the electoral field
+than the philosophers and academicians, governments would more easily
+recognise that the masses should not be allowed to poison themselves
+or future generations by chronic drunkenness.
+
+Between these two extremes of exaggeration, inspired by a
+self-interest easy to discover, is there not a true middle way that we
+can deduce from the study of Roman history and from the observation of
+contemporary life?
+
+In the pessimism with which the ancients regarded progress as
+corruption, there was a basis of truth, just as there is a principle
+of error in the too serene optimism with which we consider corruption
+as progress. This force that pushes the new generations on to the
+future, at once creates and destroys; its destructive energy is
+specially felt in ages like Caesar's in ancient Rome and ours in
+the modern world, in which facility in the accumulation of wealth
+over-excites desires and ambitions in all classes. They are the times
+in which personal egoism--what to-day we call individualism--usurps
+a place above all that represents in society the interest of the
+species: national duty, the self-abnegation of each for the sake
+of the common good. Then these vices and defects become always
+more common: intellectual agitation, the weakening of the spirit
+of tradition, the general relaxation of discipline, the loss of
+authority, ethical confusion and disorder. At the same time that
+certain moral sentiments refine themselves, certain individualisms
+grow fiercer. The government may no longer represent the ideas, the
+aspirations, the energetic will of a small oligarchy; it must make
+itself more yielding and gracious at the same time that it is becoming
+more contradictory and discordant. Family discipline is relaxed;
+the new generations shake off early the influence of the past; the
+sentiment of honour and the rigour of moral, religious, and political
+principles are weakened by a spirit of utility and expediency by
+which, more or less openly, confessing it or dissimulating, men always
+seek to do, not that which is right and decorous, but that which is
+utilitarian. The civic spirit tends to die out; the number of persons
+capable of suffering, or even of working, disinterestedly for the
+common good, for the future, diminishes; children are not wanted; men
+prefer to live in accord with those in power, ignoring their vices,
+rather than openly opposing them. Public events do not interest unless
+they include a personal advantage.
+
+This is the state of mind that is now diffusing itself throughout
+Europe; the same state of mind that, with the documents at hand, I
+have found in the age of Caesar and Augustus, and seen progressively
+diffusing itself throughout ancient Italy. The likeness is so great
+that we re-find in those far-away times, especially in the upper
+classes, exactly that restless condition that we define by the word
+"nervousness." Horace speaks of this state of mind, which we consider
+peculiar to ourselves, and describes it, by felicitous image, as
+_strenua inertia_--strenuous inertia,--agitation vain and ineffective,
+always wanting something new, but not really knowing what, desiring
+most ardently yet speedily tiring of a desire gratified. Now it
+is clear that if these vices spread too much, if they are not
+complemented by an increase of material resources, of knowledge, of
+sufficient population, they can lead a nation rapidly to ruin. We do
+not feel very keenly the fear of this danger--the European-American
+civilisation is so rich, has at its disposal so much knowledge, so
+many men, so many instrumentalities, has cut off for itself such a
+measureless part of the globe, that it can afford to look unafraid
+into the future. The abyss is so far away that only a few philosophers
+barely descry it in the gray mist of distant years. But the ancient
+world--so much poorer, smaller, weaker--felt that it could not
+squander as we do, and saw the abyss near at hand.
+
+To-day men and women waste fabulous wealth in luxury; that is, they
+spend not to satisfy some reasonable need, but to show to others of
+their kind how rich they are, or, further, to make others believe them
+richer than they are. If these resources were everywhere saved as they
+are in France, the progress of the world would be quicker, and the
+new countries would more easily find in Europe and in themselves
+the capital necessary for their development. At all events, our age
+develops fast, and notwithstanding all this waste, abounds in a plenty
+that is enough to keep men from fearing the growth of this wanton
+luxury and from planning to restrain it by laws. In the ancient world,
+on the other hand, the wealthy classes and the state had only to
+abandon themselves a little too much to the prodigality that for us
+has become almost a regular thing, when suddenly means were wanting to
+meet the most essential needs of social life. Tacitus has summarised
+an interesting discourse of Tiberius, in which the famous emperor
+censures the ladies of Rome in terms cold, incisive, and succinct,
+because they spend too much money on pearls and diamonds. "Our money,"
+said Tiberius, "goes away to India and we are in want of the precious
+metals to carry on the military administration; we have to give up
+the defence of the frontiers." According to the opinion of an
+administrator so sagacious and a general so valiant as Tiberius, in
+the richest period of the Roman Empire, a lady of Rome could not buy
+pearls and diamonds without directly weakening the defence of the
+frontiers. Indulgence in the luxury of jewels looked almost like high
+treason.
+
+Similar observations might be made on another grave question--the
+increase of population. One of the most serious effects of
+individualism that accompanies the increase of civilisation and
+wealth, is the decrease of the birth-rate. France, which knows how to
+temper its luxury, which gives to other peoples an example of saving
+means for the future, has on the other hand given the example of
+egoism in the family, lowering the birth-rate. England, for a long
+time so fecund, seems to follow France. The more uniformly settled and
+well-to-do parts of the North American Union, the Eastern States and
+New England, are even more sterile than France. However, no one of
+these nations suffers to-day from the small increase of population;
+there are yet so many poor and fecund peoples that they can easily
+fill the gaps. In the ancient world this was not the case; population
+was always and everywhere so scanty that if for some reason it
+diminished but slightly, the states could not get on, finding
+themselves at the mercy of what they called a "famine of men," a
+malady more serious and troublesome than over-population. In the Roman
+Empire the Occidental provinces finally fell into the hands of the
+barbarians, chiefly because the Graeco-Latin civilisation sterilised
+the family, reducing the population incurably. No wonder that the
+ancients applied the term "corruption" to a momentum of desires which,
+although increasing culture and the refinements of living, easily
+menaced the sources of the nation's physical existence.
+
+There is, then, a more general conclusion to draw from this
+experience. It is not by chance, nor the unaccountable caprice of
+a few ancient writers, that we possess so many small facts on the
+development of luxury and the transformation of customs in ancient
+Rome; that, for example, among the records of great wars, of
+diplomatic missions, of catastrophes political and economic, we find
+given the date when the art of fattening fowls was imported into
+Italy. The little facts are not so unworthy of the majesty of Roman
+history as one at first might think. Everything is bound together in
+the life of a nation, and nothing without importance; the humblest
+acts, most personal and deepest hidden in the _penetralia_ of the
+home, that no one sees, none knows, have an effect, immediate or
+remote, on the common life of the nation. There is, between these
+small, insignificant facts and the wars, the revolutions, the
+tremendous political and social events that bewilder men, a tie, often
+invisible to most people, yet nevertheless indestructible.
+
+Nothing in the world is without import: what women spend for
+their toilet, the resistance that men make from day to day to the
+temptations of the commonest pleasures, the new and petty needs
+that insinuate themselves unconsciously into the habits of all; the
+reading, the conversations, the impressions, even the most fugacious
+that pass in our spirit--all these things, little and innumerable,
+that no historian registers, have contributed to produce this
+revolution, that war, this catastrophe, that political overturn, which
+men wonder at and study as a prodigy.
+
+The causes of how many apparently mysterious historical events would
+be more clearly and profoundly known, of how many periods would the
+spirit be better understood, did we only possess the private records
+of the families that make up the ruling classes! Every deed we do in
+the intimacy of the home reacts on the whole of our environment.
+With our every act we assume a responsibility toward the nation and
+posterity, the sanction for which, near or far away, is in events.
+This justifies, at least in part, the ancient conception by which the
+state had the right to exercise vigilance over its citizens, their
+private acts, customs, pleasures, vices, caprices. This vigilance, the
+laws that regulated it, the moral and political teachings that brought
+pressure to bear in the exercise of these laws, tended above all to
+charge upon the individual man the social responsibility of his single
+acts; to remind him that in the things most personal, aside from the
+individual pain or pleasure, there was an interest, a good or an evil,
+in common.
+
+Modern men--and it is a revolution greater than that finished in
+political form in the nineteenth century--have been freed from these
+bonds, from these obligations. Indeed, modern civilisation has made
+it a duty for each one to spend, to enjoy, to waste as much as he can,
+without any disturbing thought as to the ultimate consequences of
+what he does. The world is so rich, population grows so rapidly,
+civilisation is armed with so much knowledge in its struggle against
+the barbarian and against nature, that to-day we are able to laugh at
+the timid prudence of our forefathers, who had, as it were, a fear
+of wealth, of pleasure, of love; we can boast in the pride of triumph
+that we are the first who dare in the midst of a conquered world, to
+enjoy--enjoy without scruple, without restriction--all the good things
+life offers to the strong.
+
+But who knows? Perhaps this felicitous moment will not last forever;
+perhaps one day will see men, grown more numerous, feel the need
+of the ancient wisdom and prudence. It is at least permitted the
+philosopher and the historian to ask if this magnificent but unbridled
+freedom which we enjoy suits all times, and not only those in which
+nations coming into being can find a small dower in their cradle as
+you have done--three millions of square miles of land!
+
+
+
+The History and Legend of Antony and Cleopatra
+
+
+In the history of Rome figures of women are rare, because only men
+dominated there, imposing everywhere the brute force, the roughness,
+and the egoism that lie at the base of their nature: they honoured the
+_mater familias_ because she bore children and kept the slaves
+from stealing the flour from the bin and drinking the wine from the
+_amphore_ on the sly. They despised the woman who made of her beauty
+and vivacity an adornment of social life, a prize sought after and
+disputed by the men. However, in this virile history there does
+appear, on a sudden, the figure of a woman, strange and wonderful, a
+kind of living Venus. Plutarch thus describes the arrival of Cleopatra
+at Tarsus and her first meeting with Antony:
+
+    She was sailing tranquilly along the Cydnus, on a bark with a
+    golden stern, with sails of purple and oars of silver, and the
+    dip of the oars was rhythmed to the sound of flutes, blending
+    with music of lyres. She herself, the Queen, wondrously
+    clad as Venus is pictured, was lying under an awning gold
+    embroidered. Boys dressed as Cupids stood at her side, gently
+    waving fans to refresh her; her maidens, every one beautiful
+    and clad as a Naiad or a Grace, directed the boat, some at
+    the rudder, others at the ropes. Both banks of the stream were
+    sweet with the perfumes burning on the vessel.
+
+Posterity is yet dazzled by this ship, refulgent with purple and
+gold and melodious with flutes and lyres. If we are spellbound by
+Plutarch's description, it does not seem strange to us that Antony
+should be--he who could not only behold in person that wonderful
+Venus, but could dine with her _tete-a-tete_, in a splendour of
+torches indescribable. Surely this is a setting in no wise improbable
+for the beginning of the famous romance of the love of Antony and
+Cleopatra, and its development as probable as its beginning; the
+follies committed by Antony for the seductive Queen of the Orient,
+the divorce of Octavia, the war for love of Cleopatra, kindled in the
+whole Empire, and the miserable catastrophe. Are there not to be seen
+in recent centuries many men of power putting their greatness to risk
+and sometimes to ruin for love of a woman? Are not the love letters
+of great statesmen--for instance, those of Mirabeau and
+of Gambetta--admitted to the semi-official part of modern
+history-writing? And so also Antony could love a queen and, like so
+many modern statesmen, commit follies for her. A French critic of my
+book, burning his ships behind him, has said that Antony was a Roman
+_Boulanger_.
+
+The romance pleases: art takes it as subject and re-takes it; but that
+does not keep off the brutal hands of criticism. Before all, it should
+be observed that moderns feel and interpret the romance of Antony
+and Cleopatra in a way very different from that of the ancients. From
+Shakespeare to De Heredia and Henri Houssaye, artists and historians
+have described with sympathy, even almost idealised, this passion that
+throws away in a lightning flash every human greatness, to pursue
+the mantle of a fleeing woman; they find in the follies of Antony
+something profoundly human that moves them, fascinates them, and makes
+them indulgent. To the ancients, on the contrary, the _amours_ of
+Antony and Cleopatra were but a dishonourable degeneration of the
+passion. They have no excuse for the man whom love for a woman
+impelled to desert in battle, to abandon soldiers, friends, relatives,
+to conspire against the greatness of Rome.
+
+This very same difference of interpretation recurs in the history of
+the _amours_ of Caesar. Modern writers regard what the ancients tell
+us of the numerous loves--real or imaginary--of Caesar, as almost a
+new laurel with which to decorate his figure. On the contrary, the
+ancients recounted and spread abroad, and perhaps in part invented,
+these storiettes of gallantry for quite opposite reasons--as source of
+dishonour, to discredit him, to demonstrate that Caesar was effeminate,
+that he could not give guarantee of knowing how to lead the armies
+and to fulfil the virile and arduous duties that awaited every eminent
+Roman. There is in our way of thinking a vein of romanticism wanting
+in the ancient mind. We see in love a certain forgetfulness of
+ourselves, a certain blindness of egoism and the more material
+passions, a kind of power of self-abnegation, which, inasmuch as it is
+unconscious, confers a certain nobility and dignity; therefore we are
+indulgent to mistakes and follies committed for the sake of passion,
+while the ancients were very severe. We pardon with a certain
+compassion the man who for love of a woman has not hesitated to bury
+himself under the ruin of his own greatness; the ancients, on the
+contrary, considered him the most dangerous and despicable of the
+insane.
+
+Criticism has not contented itself with re-giving to the ancient
+romance the significance it had for those that made it and the
+public that first read it. Archaeologists have discovered upon
+coins portraits of Cleopatra, and now critics have confronted these
+portraits with the poetic descriptions given by Roman historians and
+have found the descriptions generously fanciful: in the portraits we
+do not see the countenance of a Venus, delicate, gracious, smiling,
+nor even the fine and sensuous beauty of a Marquise de Pompadour, but
+a face fleshy and, as the French would say, _bouffie_; the nose,
+a powerful aquiline; the face of a woman on in years, ambitious,
+imperious, one which recalls that of Maria Theresa. It will be said
+that judgments as to beauty are personal; that Antony, who saw her
+alive, could decide better than we who see her portraits half effaced
+by the centuries; that the attractive power of a woman emanates not
+only from corporal beauty, but also--and yet more--from her spirit.
+The taste of Cleopatra, her vivacity, her cleverness, her exquisite
+art in conversation, is vaunted by all.
+
+Perhaps, however, Cleopatra, beautiful or ugly, is of little
+consequence; when one studies the history of her relations with
+Antony, there is small place, and that but toward the end, for the
+passion of love. It will be easy to persuade you of this if you follow
+the simple chronological exposition of facts I shall give you. Antony
+makes the acquaintance of Cleopatra at Tarsus toward the end of 41
+B.C., passes the winter of 41-40 with her at Alexandria; leaves her in
+the spring of 40 and stays away from her more than three years, till
+the autumn of 37. There is no proof that during this time Antony
+sighed for the Queen of Egypt as a lover far away; on the contrary, he
+attends, with alacrity worthy of praise, to preparing the conquest of
+Persia, to putting into execution the great design conceived by Caesar,
+the plan of war that Antony had come upon among the papers of the
+Dictator the evening of the fifteenth of March, 44 B.C. All order
+social and political, the army, the state, public finance, wealth
+private and public, is going to pieces around him. The triumvirate
+power, built up on the uncertain foundation of these ruins, is
+tottering; Antony realises that only a great external success can
+give to him and his party the authority and the money necessary to
+establish a solid government, and resolves to enter into possession of
+the political legacy of his teacher and patron, taking up its central
+idea, the conquest of Persia.
+
+The difficulties are grave. Soldiers are not wanting, but money. The
+revolution has ruined the Empire and Italy; all the reserve funds have
+been dissipated; the finances of the state are in such straits that
+not even the soldiers can be paid punctually and the legions every now
+and then claim their dues by revolt. Antony is not discouraged. The
+historians, however antagonistic to him, describe him as exceedingly
+busy in those four years, extracting from all parts of the Empire that
+bit of money still in circulation. Then at one stroke, in the second
+half of 37, when, preparations finished, it is time to put hand to the
+execution, the ancient historians without in any way explaining to us
+this sudden act, most unforeseen, make him depart for Antioch to meet
+Cleopatra, who has been invited by him to join him. For what reason
+does Antony after three years, all of a sudden, re-join Cleopatra?
+The secret of the story of Antony and Cleopatra lies entirely in this
+question.
+
+Plutarch says that Antony went to Antioch borne by the fiery and
+untamed courser of his own spirit; in other words, because passion
+was already beginning to make him lose common sense. Not finding other
+explanations in the ancient writers, posterity has accepted this,
+which was simple enough; but about a century ago an erudite Frenchman,
+Letronne, studying certain coins, and comparing with them certain
+passages in ancient historians, until then remaining obscure, was able
+to demonstrate that in 36 B.C., at Antioch, Antony married Cleopatra
+with all the dynastic ceremonies of Egypt, and that thereupon Antony
+became King of Egypt, although he did not dare assume the title.
+
+The explanation of Letronne, which is founded on official documents
+and coins, is without doubt more dependable than that of Plutarch,
+which is reducible to an imaginative metaphor; and the discovery
+of Letronne, concluding that concatenation of facts that I have set
+forth, finally persuades me to affirm that not a passion of love,
+suddenly re-awakened, led Antony in the second half of 37 B.C. to
+Antioch to meet the Queen of Egypt, but a political scheme well
+thought out. Antony wanted Egypt and not the beautiful person of
+its queen; he meant by this dynastic marriage to establish the Roman
+protectorate in the valley of the Nile, and to be able to dispose,
+for the Persian campaign, of the treasures of the Kingdom of the
+Ptolemies. At that time, after the plunderings of other regions of
+the Orient by the politicians of Rome, there was but one state rich
+in reserves of precious metals, Egypt. Since, little by little, the
+economic crisis of the Roman Empire was aggravating, the Roman polity
+had to gravitate perforce toward Egypt, as toward the country capable
+of providing Rome with the capital necessary to continue its policy in
+every part of the Empire.
+
+Caesar already understood this; his mysterious and obscure connection
+with Cleopatra had certainly for ultimate motive and reason this
+political necessity; and Antony, in marrying Cleopatra, probably only
+applied more or less shrewdly the ideas that Caesar had originated in
+the refulgent crepuscle of his tempestuous career. You will ask me
+why Antony, if he had need of the valley of the Nile, recurred to this
+strange expedient of a marriage, instead of conquering the kingdom,
+and why Cleopatra bemeaned herself to marry the triumvir. The reply
+is not difficult to him who knows the history of Rome. There was
+a long-standing tradition in Roman policy to exploit Egypt but
+to respect its independence; it may be, because the country was
+considered more difficult to govern than in truth it was, or because
+there existed for this most ancient land, the seat of all the most
+refined arts, the most learned schools, the choicest industries,
+exceedingly rich and highly civilised, a regard that somewhat
+resembles what France imposes on the world to-day. Finally, it may be
+because it was held that if Egypt were annexed, its influence on Italy
+would be too much in the ascendent, and the traditions of the old
+Roman life would be conclusively overwhelmed by the invasion of the
+customs, the ideas, the refinements--in a word, by the corruptions
+of Egypt. Antony, who was set in the idea of repeating in Persia
+the adventure of Alexander the Great, did not dare bring about an
+annexation which would have been severely judged in Italy and which
+he, like the others, thought more dangerous than in reality it was.
+On the other hand, with a dynastic marriage, he was able to secure for
+himself all the advantages of effective possession, without running
+the risks of annexation; so he resolved upon this artifice, which,
+I repeat, had probably been imagined by Caesar. As to Cleopatra, her
+government was menaced by a strong internal opposition, the causes for
+which are ill known; marrying Antony, she gathered about her throne,
+to protect it, formidable guards, the Roman legions.
+
+To sum up, the romance of Antony and Cleopatra covers, at least in its
+beginnings, a political treaty. With the marriage, Cleopatra seeks
+to steady her wavering power; Antony, to place the valley of the Nile
+under the Roman protectorate. How then was the famous romance born?
+The actual history of Antony and Cleopatra is one of the most tragic
+episodes of a struggle that lacerated the Roman Empire for four
+centuries, until it finally destroyed it, the struggle between Orient
+and Occident. During the age of Caesar, little by little, without any
+one's realising it at first, there arose and fulfilled itself a fact
+of the gravest importance; that is, the eastern part of the Empire had
+grown out of proportion: first, from the conquest of the Pontus, made
+by Lucullus, who had added immense territory in Asia Minor; then by
+Pompey's conquest of Syria, and the protectorate extended by him over
+all Palestine and a considerable part of Arabia. These new districts
+were not only enormous in extension; they were also populous, wealthy,
+fertile, celebrated for ancient culture; they held the busiest
+industrial cities, the best cultivated regions of the ancient world,
+the most famous seats of arts, letters, science, therefore their
+annexation, made rapidly in few years, could but trouble the already
+unstable equilibrium of the Empire. Italy was then, compared with
+these provinces, a poor and barbarous land; because southern Italy was
+ruined by the wars of preceding epochs, and northern Italy, naturally
+the wealthier part, was still crude and in the beginning of its
+development. The other western provinces nearer Italy were poorer and
+less civilised than Italy, except Gallia Narbonensis and certain parts
+of southern Spain. So that Rome, the capital of the Empire, came to
+find itself far from the richest and most populous regions, among
+territories poor and despoiled, on the frontiers of barbarism--in such
+a situation as the Russian Empire might find itself to-day if it had a
+capital at Vladivostok or Kharbin. You know that during the last years
+of the life of Caesar it was rumoured several times that the Dictator
+wished to remove the capital of the Empire; it was said, to Alexandria
+in Egypt, to Ilium in the district where Troy arose. It is impossible
+to judge whether these reports were true or merely invented by enemies
+of Caesar to damage him; at any rate, true or false, they show that
+public opinion was beginning to concern itself with the "Eastern
+peril"; that is, with the danger that the seat of empire must be
+shifted toward the Orient and the too ample Asiatic and African
+territory, and that Italy be one day uncrowned of her metropolitan
+predominance, conquered by so many wars. Such hear-says must have
+seemed, even if not true, the more likely, because, in his last two
+years, Caesar planned the conquest of Persia. Now the natural basis of
+operations for the conquest of Persia was to be found, not in Italy,
+but in Asia Minor, and if Persia had been conquered, it would not have
+been possible to govern in Rome an empire so immeasurably enlarged
+in the Orient. Everything therefore induces to the belief that this
+question was at least discussed in the coterie of the friends of
+Caesar; and it was a serious question, because in it the traditions,
+the aspirations, the interests of Italy were in irreconcilable
+conflict with a supreme necessity of state which one day or other
+would impose itself, if some unforeseen event did not intervene to
+solve it.
+
+In the light of these considerations, the conduct of Antony becomes
+very clear. The marriage at Antioch, by which he places Egypt under
+the Roman protectorate, is the decisive act of a policy that looks
+to transporting the centre of his government toward the Orient, to be
+able to accomplish more securely the conquest of Persia. Antony, the
+heir of Caesar, the man who held the papers of the Dictator, who knew
+his hidden thoughts, who wished to complete the plans cut off by his
+death, proposes to conquer Persia; to conquer Persia, he must rely on
+the Oriental provinces that were the natural basis of operations for
+the great enterprise; among these, Antony must support himself above
+all on Egypt, the richest and most civilised and most able to supply
+him with the necessary funds, of which he was quite in want. Therefore
+he married the Cleopatra whom, it was said at Rome, Caesar himself had
+wished to marry--with whom, at any rate, Caesar had much dallied and
+intrigued. Does not this juxtaposition of facts seem luminous to you?
+In 36 B.C., Antony marries Cleopatra, as a few years before he had
+married Octavia, the sister of the future Augustus, for political
+reasons--in order to be able to dispose of the political subsidies and
+finances of Egypt, for the conquest of Persia. The conquest of Persia
+is the ultimate motive of all his policy, the supreme explanation of
+his every act.
+
+However, little by little, this move, made on both sides from
+considerations of political interest, altered its character under the
+action of events, of time, through the personal influence of Antony
+and Cleopatra upon each other, and above all, the power that Cleopatra
+acquired over Antony: here is truly the most important part of all
+this story. Those who have read my history know that I have recounted
+hardly any of the anecdotes, more or less odd or entertaining,
+with which ancient writers describe the intimate life of Antony and
+Cleopatra, because it is impossible to discriminate in them the part
+that is fact from that which was invented or exaggerated by political
+enmity. In history the difficulty of recognising the truth gradually
+increases as one passes from political to private life; because in
+politics the acts of men and of parties are always bound together by
+either causes or effects of which a certain number is always exactly
+known; private life, on the other hand, is, as it were, isolated and
+secret, almost invariably impenetrable. What a great man of state does
+in his own house, his valet knows better than the historians of later
+times.
+
+If for these reasons I have thought it prudent not to accept in my
+work the stories and anecdotes that the ancients recount of Antony and
+Cleopatra, without indeed risking to declare them false, it is, on the
+contrary, not possible to deny that Cleopatra gradually acquired great
+ascendency over the mind of Antony. The circumstance is of itself
+highly probable. That Cleopatra was perhaps a Venus, as the ancients
+say, or that she was provided with but a mediocre beauty, as declare
+the portraits, matters little: it is, however, certain that she was
+a woman of great cleverness and culture; as woman and queen of
+the richest and most civilised realm of the ancient world, she was
+mistress of all those arts of pleasure, of luxury, of elegance,
+that are the most delicate and intoxicating fruit of all mature
+civilisations. Cleopatra might refigure, in the ancient world, the
+wealthiest, most elegant, and cultured Parisian lady in the world of
+to-day.
+
+Antony, on the other hand, was the descendant of a family of that
+Roman nobility which still preserved much rustic roughness in tastes,
+ideas, habits; he grew up in times in which the children were
+still given Spartan training; he came to Egypt from a nation which,
+notwithstanding its military and diplomatic triumphs, could be
+considered, compared with Egypt, only poor, rude, and barbarous. Upon
+this intelligent man, eager for enjoyment, who had, like other
+noble Romans, already begun to taste the charms of intellectual
+civilisation, it was not Cleopatra alone that made the keenest of
+impressions, but all Egypt, the wonderful city of Alexandria, the
+sumptuous palace of the Ptolemies--all that refined, elegant splendour
+of which he found himself at one stroke the master. What was there
+at Rome to compare with Alexandria?--Rome, in spite of its imperial
+power, abandoned to a fearful disorder by the disregard of factions,
+encumbered with ruin, its streets narrow and wretched, provided as
+yet with but a single _forum_, narrow and plain, the sole impressive
+monument of which was the theatre of Pompey; Rome, where the life was
+yet crude, and objects of luxury so rare that they had to be brought
+from the distant Orient? At Alexandria, instead, the Paris of the
+ancient world, were to be found all the best and most beautiful things
+of the earth. There was a sumptuosity of public edifices that the
+ancients never tire of extolling--the quay seven _stadia_ long,
+the lighthouse famous all over the Mediterranean, the marvellous
+zoological garden, the Museum, the Gymnasium, innumerable temples, the
+unending palace of the Ptolemies. There was an abundance, unheard of
+for those times, of objects of luxury--rugs, glass, stuffs, papyruses,
+jewels, artistic pottery--because they made all these things at
+Alexandria. There was an abundance, greater than elsewhere, of silk,
+of perfumes, of gems, of all the things imported from the extreme
+East, because through Alexandria passed one of the most frequented
+routes of Indo-Chinese commerce. There, too, were innumerable artists,
+writers, philosophers, and _savants_; society life and intellectual
+life alike fervid; continuous movement to and fro of traffic,
+continual passing of rare and curious things; countless amusements;
+life, more than elsewhere, safe--at least so it was believed--because
+at Alexandria were the great schools of medicine and the great
+scientific physicians.
+
+If other Italians who landed in Alexandria were dazzled by so many
+splendours, Antony ought to have been blinded; _he_ entered Alexandria
+as King. He who was born at Rome in the small and simple house of an
+impoverished noble family who had been brought up with Latin parsimony
+to eat frugally, to drink wine only on festival occasions, to wear
+the same clothes a long time, to be served by a single slave--this man
+found himself lord of the immense palace of the Ptolemies, where
+the kitchens alone were a hundred times larger than the house of his
+fathers at Rome; where there were gathered for his pleasure the most
+precious treasures and the most marvellous collections of works of
+art; where there were trains of servants at his command, and every
+wish could be immediately gratified. It is therefore not necessary to
+suppose that Antony was foolishly enamoured of the Queen of Egypt, to
+understand the change that took place in him after their marriage, as
+he tasted the inimitable life of Alexandria, that elegance, that ease,
+that wealth, that pomp without equal.
+
+A man of action, grown in simplicity, toughened by a rude life, he
+was all at once carried into the midst of the subtlest and most highly
+developed civilisation of the ancient world and given the greatest
+facilities to enjoy and abuse it that ever man had: as might have been
+expected, he was intoxicated; he contracted an almost insane passion
+for such a life; he adored Egypt with such ardour as to forget for it
+the nation of his birth and the modest home of his boyhood. And then
+began the great tragedy of his life, a tragedy not love-inspired, but
+political. As the hold of Egypt strengthened on his mind, Cleopatra
+tried to persuade him not to conquer Persia, but to accept openly
+the kingdom of Egypt, to found with her and with their children a new
+dynasty, and to create a great new Egyptian Empire, adding to Egypt
+the better part of the provinces that Rome possessed in Africa and in
+Asia, abandoning Italy and the provinces of the West forever to their
+destiny.
+
+Cleopatra had thought to snatch from Rome its Oriental Empire by the
+arm of Antony, in that immense disorder of revolution; to reconstruct
+the great Empire of Egypt, placing at its head the first general of
+the time, creating an army of Roman legionaries with the gold of the
+Ptolemies; to make Egypt and its dynasty the prime potentate of Africa
+and Asia, transferring to Alexandria the political and diplomatic
+control of the finest parts of the Mediterranean world.
+
+As the move failed, men have deemed it folly and stupidity; but he who
+knows how easy it is to be wise after events, will judge this confused
+policy of Cleopatra less curtly. At any rate, it is certain that her
+scheme failed more because of its own inconsistencies than through the
+vigour and ability with which Rome tried to thwart it; it is certain
+that in the execution of the plan, Antony felt first in himself
+the tragic discord between Orient and Occident that was so long to
+lacerate the Empire; and of that tragic discord he was the first
+victim. An enthusiastic admirer of Egypt, an ardent Hellenist, he is
+lured by his great ambition to be king of Egypt, to renew the famous
+line of the Ptolemies, to continue in the East the glory and the
+traditions of Alexander the Great: but the far-away voice of his
+fatherland still sounds in his ear; he recalls the city of his birth,
+the Senate in which he rose so many times to speak, the _Forum_ of his
+orations, the Comitia that elected him to magistracies; Octavia, the
+gentlewoman he had wedded with the sacred rites of Latin monogamy; the
+friends and soldiers with whom he had fought through so many countries
+in so many wars; the foundation principles at home that ruled the
+family, the state, morality, public and private.
+
+Cleopatra's scheme, viewed from Alexandria, was an heroic undertaking,
+almost divine, that might have lifted him and his scions to the
+delights of Olympus; seen from Rome, by his childhood's friends,
+by his comrades in arms, by that people of Italy who still so much
+admired him, it was the shocking crime of faithlessness to his
+country; we call it high treason. Therefore he hesitates long,
+doubting most of all whether he can keep for the new Egyptian Empire
+the Roman legions, made up largely of Italians, all commanded by
+Italian officers. He does not know how to oppose a resolute _No_ to
+the insistences of Cleopatra and loose himself from the fatal bond
+that keeps him near her; he can not go back to live in Italy after
+having dwelt as king in Alexandria. Moreover, he does not dare declare
+his intentions to his Roman friends, fearing they will scatter; to the
+soldiers, fearing they will revolt; to Italy, fearing her judgment of
+him as a traitor; and so, little by little, he entangles himself
+in the crooked policy, full of prevarications, of expedients, of
+subterfuges, of one mistake upon another, that leads him to Actium.
+
+I think I have shown that Antony succumbed in the famous war not
+because, mad with love, he abandoned the command in the midst of the
+battle, but because his armies revolted and abandoned him when they
+understood what he had not dared declare to them openly: that he
+meant to dismember the Empire of Rome to create the new Empire of
+Alexandria. The future Augustus conquered at Actium without effort,
+merely because the national sentiment of the soldiery, outraged by the
+unforeseen revelation of Antony's treason, turned against the man who
+wanted to aggrandise Cleopatra at the expense of his own country.
+
+And then the victorious party, the party of Augustus, created the
+story of Antony and Cleopatra that has so entertained posterity; this
+story is but a popular explanation--in part imaginatively exaggerated
+and fantastic--of the Eastern peril that menaced Rome, of both its
+political phase and its moral. According to the story that Horace has
+put into such charming verse, Cleopatra wished to conquer Italy, to
+enslave Rome, to destroy the Capitol; but Cleopatra alone could not
+have accomplished so difficult a task; she must have seduced Antony,
+made him forget his duty to his wife, to his legitimate children,
+to the Republic, the soldiery, his native land,--all the duties
+that Latin morals inculcated into the minds of the great, and that
+a shameless Egyptian woman, rendered perverse by all the arts of the
+Orient, had blotted out in his soul; therefore Antony's tragic
+fate should serve as a solemn warning to distrust the voluptuous
+seductions, of which Cleopatra symbolised the elegant and fatal
+depravity. The story was magnified, coloured, diffused, not because it
+was beautiful and romantic, but because it served the interests of the
+political _coterie_ that gained definite control of the government
+on the ruin of Antony. At Actium, the future Augustus did not fight a
+real war, he only passively watched the power of the adversary go
+to pieces, destroyed by its own internal contradictions. He did not
+decide to conquer Egypt until the public opinion of Italy, enraged
+against Antony and Cleopatra, required this vengeance with such
+insistence that he had to satisfy it.
+
+If Augustus was not a man too quick in action, he was, instead, keenly
+intelligent in comprehending the situation created by the catastrophe
+of Antony in Italy, where already, for a decade of years, public
+spirit, frightened by revolution, was anxious to return to the ways
+of the past, to the historic sources of the national life. Augustus
+understood that he ought to stand before Italy, disgusted as it
+was with long-continued dissension and eager to retrace the way
+of national tradition, as the embodiment of all the virtues his
+contemporaries set in opposition to eastern "corruption,"--simplicity,
+severity of private habits, rigid monogamy, the anti-feministic
+spirit, the purely virile idea of the state. Naturally, the exaltation
+of these virtues required the portrayal in his rival of Actium, as
+far as possible, the opposite defects; therefore the efforts of his
+friends, like Horace, to colour the story of Antony and Cleopatra,
+which should magnify to the Italians the idea of the danger from
+which Augustus had saved them at Actium; which was meant to serve as a
+barrier against the invading Oriental "corruption," that "corruption"
+the essence of which I have already analysed.
+
+In a certain sense, the legend of Antony and Cleopatra is chiefly an
+antifeminist legend, intended to reinforce in the state the power of
+the masculine principle, to demonstrate how dangerous it may be to
+leave to women the government of public affairs, or follow their
+counsel in political business.
+
+The people believed the legend; posterity has believed it. Two years
+ago when I published in the _Revue de Paris_ an article in which I
+demonstrated, by obvious arguments, the incongruities and absurdities
+of the legend, and tried to retrace through it the half-effaced lines
+of the truth, everybody was amazed. From one end of Europe to the
+other, the papers resumed the conclusions of my study as an astounding
+revelation. An illustrious French statesman, a man of the finest
+culture in historical study, Joseph Reinach, said to me:
+
+    After your article I have re-read Dion and Plutarch. It is
+    indeed singular that for twenty centuries men have read and
+    reread those pages without any one's realising how confused
+    and absurd their accounts are.
+
+It seems to be a law of human psychology that almost all historic
+personages, from Minos to Mazzini, from Judas to Charlotte Corday,
+from Xerxes to Napoleon, are imaginary personages; some transfigured
+into demigods, by admiration and success; the others debased by hate
+and failure. In reality, the former were often uglier, the latter more
+attractive than tradition has pictured them, because men in general
+are neither too good nor too bad, neither too intelligent nor
+too stupid. In conclusion, historic tradition is full of deformed
+caricatures and ideal transfigurations; because, when they are dead,
+the impression of their political contemporaries still serves the ends
+of parties, states, nations, institutions. Can this man exalt in a
+people the consciousness of its own power, of its own energy, of
+its own value? Lo, then they make a god of him, as of Napoleon or
+Bismarck. Can this other serve to feed in the mass, odium and scorn
+of another party, of a government, of an order of things that it is
+desirable to injure? Then they make a monster of him, as happened in
+Rome to Tiberius, in France to Napoleon III, in Italy to all who for
+one motive or another opposed the unification of Italy.
+
+It is true that after a time the interests that have coloured
+certain figures with certain hues and shades disappear; but then the
+reputation, good or bad, of a personage is already made; his name is
+stamped on the memory of posterity with an adjective,--the great, the
+wise, the wicked, the cruel, the rapacious,--and there is no human
+force that can dissever name from adjective. Some far-away historian,
+studying all the documents, examining the sequence of events, will
+confute the tradition in learned books; but his work not only will not
+succeed in persuading the ignorant multitude, but must also contend
+against the multiplied objections offered by the instinctive
+incredulity of people of culture.
+
+You will say to me, "What is the use of writing history? Why spend so
+much effort to correct the errors in which people will persist just
+as if the histories were never written?" I reply that I do not believe
+that the office of history is to give to men who have guided the great
+human events a posthumous justice. It is already work serious enough
+for every generation to give a little justice to the living,
+rather than occupy itself rendering it to the dead, who indeed, in
+contradistinction from the living, have no need of it. The study of
+history, the rectification of stories of the past, ought to serve
+another and practical end; that is, train the men who govern
+nations to discern more clearly than may be possible from their own
+environment the truth underlying the legends. As I have already said,
+passions, interests, present historic personages in a thousand forms
+when they are alive, transfiguring not only the persons themselves,
+but events the most diverse, the character of institutions, the
+conditions of nations.
+
+It is generally believed that legends are found only at the dawn
+of history, in the poetic period; that is a great mistake; the
+legend--the legend that deceives, that deforms, that misdirects--is
+everywhere, in all ages, in the present as in the past--in the present
+even more than in the past, because it is the consequence of certain
+universal forms of thought and of sentiment. To-day, just as ten or
+twenty centuries ago, interests and passions dominate events, alter
+them and distort them, creating about them veritable romances, more
+or less probable. The present, which appears to all to be the same
+reality, is instead, for most people, only a huge legend, traversed by
+contemporaries stirred by the most widely differing sentiments.
+
+However the mass may content itself with this legend, throbbing
+with hate and love, with hope and the fear of its own self-created
+phantoms, those who guide and govern the masses ought to try to divine
+the truth, as far as they can. A great man of state is distinguished
+from a mediocre by his greater ability to divine the real in his world
+of action beneath its superfice of confused legends; by his greater
+ability to discriminate in everything what is true from what is merely
+apparently true, in the prestige of states and institutions, in the
+forces of parties, in the energy attributed to certain men, in the
+purposes claimed by parties and men, often different from their
+real designs. To do that, some natural disposition is necessary, a
+liveliness of intuition that must come with birth; but this faculty
+can be refined and trained by a practical knowledge of men, by
+experience in things, and by the study of history. In the ages dead,
+when the interests that created their legends have disappeared, we
+can discover how those great popular delusions, which are one of the
+greatest forces of history, are made and how they work. We may thus
+fortify the spirit to withstand the cheating illusions that surround
+us, coming from every part of the vast modern world, in which so
+many interests dispute dominion over thoughts and will. In this sense
+alone, I believe that history may teach, not the multitude, which will
+never learn anything from it, but, impelled by the same passions,
+will always repeat the same errors and the same foolishnesses; but
+the chosen few, who, charged with directing the game of history, have
+concern in knowing as well as they can its inner law. Taken in this
+way, history may be a great teacher, in its every page, every line,
+and the study of the legend of Antony and Cleopatra may itself even
+serve to prepare the spirit of a diplomat, who must treat between
+state and state the complicated economic and political affairs of
+the modern world. And so, in conclusion, history and life interchange
+mutual services; life teaches history, and history, life; observing
+the present, we help ourselves to know the past, and from the study of
+the past we can return to our present the better tempered and prepared
+to observe and comprehend it. In present and in past, history can form
+a kind of wisdom set apart, in a certain sense aristocratic, above
+what the masses know, at least as to the universal laws that govern
+the life of nations.
+
+
+
+The Development of Gaul
+
+
+In estimating distant historical events, one is often the victim of
+an error of perspective; that is, one is disposed to consider as the
+outcome of a pre-established plan of human wisdom what is the final
+result, quite unforeseen, of causes that acted beyond the foresight of
+contemporaries. At the distance of centuries, turning back to consider
+the past, we can easily find out that the efforts of one or two
+generations have produced certain effects on the actual condition of
+the world; and then we conclude that those generations meant to
+reach that result. On the contrary, men almost always face the future
+proposing to themselves impossible ends; notwithstanding which, their
+efforts, accumulating, destroying, interweaving, bring into being
+consequences that no one had foreseen or planned, the novelty or
+importance of which often only future generations realise. Columbus,
+who, fixed in the idea of reaching India by sailing west, finds
+America on his way and does not recognise it at once but is persuaded
+that he has landed in India, symbolises the lot of man in history.
+
+Of this phenomenon, which is to me a fundamental law of history,
+there is a classic example in the story of Rome: the conquest of Gaul.
+Without doubt, one of the greatest works of Rome was the conquest and
+Romanisation of Gaul: indeed that conquest and Romanisation of Gaul
+is the beginning of European civilisation; for before the Graeco-Latin
+civilisation reached the Rhine over the ways opened by the Roman
+sword, the continent of Europe had centres of civilisation on
+the coast or in its projecting extremities, like Italy, Baetica,
+Narbonensis; but the interior was still entirely in the power of a
+turbulent and restless barbarism, like the African continent to-day.
+Moreover, what Rome created in Asia and Africa was almost entirely
+destroyed by ages following; on the contrary, Rome yet lives in
+France, to which it gave its language, its spirit, and the traditions
+of its thought. Exactly for this reason it is particularly important
+to explain how such an outcome was brought about, and by what historic
+forces. From the propensity to consider every great historical
+event as wholly a masterpiece of human genius, many historians have
+attributed also this accomplishment to a prodigious, well-nigh divine
+wisdom on the part of the Romans, and Julius Caesar is regarded as
+a demigod who had fixed his gaze upon the far, far distant future.
+However, it is not difficult, studying the ancient documents with
+critical spirit, to persuade oneself that even if Caesar was a man of
+genius, he was not a god; that from beginning to end, the real story
+of the conquest of Gaul is very different from the commonly accepted
+version.
+
+I hope to demonstrate that Caesar threw himself into the midst of
+Gallic affairs, impelled by slight incidents of internal politics,
+not only without giving any thought whatever to the future destiny
+of Gaul, but without even knowing well the conditions existing there.
+Gaul was then for all Romans a barbarous region, poor, gloomy, full
+of swamps and forests in which there would be much fighting and little
+booty: no one was thinking then of having Roman territory cross the
+Alps; everyone was infatuated by the story of Alexander the Great,
+dreaming only of conquering like him all the rich and civilised
+Orient; everyone, even Caesar. Only a sequence of political accidents
+pushed him in spite of himself into Gaul.
+
+In 62 B.C., Pompey had returned from the Orient, where he had finished
+the conquest of Pontus, begun by Lucullus, and annexed Syria. On his
+return, the conservative party, irritated against him because he had
+gone over to the opposite side, and having been given something to
+think of by the prestige that the policy of expansion was winning
+for the popular party, had succeeded by many intrigues in keeping
+the Senate from ratifying what he had done in the East. This internal
+struggle closed the Orient for several years to the adventurous
+initiatives of the political imperialists; for as long as the
+administration of Pompey remained unapproved, it was impossible to
+think of undertaking new enterprises or conquests in Asia and Africa;
+and therefore, of necessity, Roman politics, burning for conquest and
+adventure, had to turn to another part of Europe.
+
+The letters of Cicero prove to us that Caesar was not the first to
+think that Rome, having its hands tied for the moment in the East,
+ought to interfere in the affairs of Gaul. The man who first had the
+idea of a Gallic policy was Quintus Metellus Celerus, husband of the
+famous Clodia, and consul the year before Caesar. Taking advantage of
+certain disturbances arisen in Gaul from the constant wars between the
+differing parts, Metellus had persuaded the Senate to authorise him to
+make war on the Helvetians. At the beginning of the year 59, that is,
+the year in which Caesar was consul, Metellus was already preparing
+to depart for the war in Gaul, when suddenly he died; and then Caesar,
+profiting by the interest in Rome for Gallic affairs, had the mission
+previously entrusted to Metellus given to himself and took up both
+Metellus's office and his plan. Here you see at the beginning of this
+story the first accident,--the death of Metellus. An historian curious
+of nice and unanswerable questions might ask himself what would have
+been the history of the world if Metellus had not died. Certainly Rome
+would have been occupied with Gallic concerns a year sooner and by
+a different man; Caesar would probably have had to seek elsewhere a
+brilliant proconsulship and things Gallic would have for ever escaped
+his energy.
+
+However it be, charged with the affairs of Gaul accidentally and
+unexpectedly, Caesar went there without well knowing the condition of
+it, and, in fact, as I think I proved in a long appendix published in
+the French and English editions of my work, he began his Gallic policy
+with a serious mistake; that is, attacking the Helvetians. A superior
+mind, Caesar was not long in finding his bearings in the midst of the
+tremendous confusion he found in Gaul; but for this, there is no need
+to think that he carried out in the Gallic policy vast schemes, long
+meditated: he worked, instead, as the uncertain changes of Roman
+politics imposed. I believe that there is but one way to understand
+and reasonably explain the policy pursued by Caesar in Gaul, his sudden
+moves, his zigzags, his audacities, his mistakes; that is, to study
+it from Rome, to keep always in mind the internal changes, the party
+struggle, in which he was involved at Rome. In short, Gaul was for
+Caesar only a means to operate on the internal politics of Rome, of
+which he made use from day to day, as the immediate interest of the
+passing hour seemed to require.
+
+I cite a single example, but the most significant. Caesar declared Gaul
+a Roman province and annexed it to the Empire toward the end of
+57 B.C.; that is, at the end of his second year as proconsul,
+unexpectedly, with no warning act to intimate such vigorous intent,--a
+surprise; and why? Look to Rome and you will understand. In 57 B.C.,
+the democratic party, demoralised by discords, upset by the popular
+agitation to recall Cicero from unjust exile, discredited by scandals,
+especially the Egyptian scandals, seemed on the point of going to
+pieces. Caesar understood that there was but one way to stop this
+ruin: to stun public opinion and all Italy with some highly audacious
+surprise. The surprise was the annexation of Gaul. Declaring Gaul a
+Roman province after the victory over the Belgae, he convinced Rome
+that he had in two years overcome all Gallic adversaries. And so, the
+conquest of Gaul--this event that was to open a new era, this event,
+the effects of which still endure--was, at the beginning in the mind
+that conceived and executed it, nothing but a bold political expedient
+in behalf of a party, to solve a situation compromised by manifold
+errors.
+
+But you will ask me: how from so tiny a seed could ever grow so mighty
+a tree, covering with its branches so much of the earth? You know that
+at the close of the proconsulship in Gaul, there breaks out a great
+civil war; this lasts, with brief interruptions and pauses, until
+the battle of Actium. Only toward 30 B.C., is the tempest lulled, and
+during this time Gaul seems almost to disappear; the ancient writers
+hardly mention it, except from time to time for a moment to let us
+know that some unimportant revolt broke out, now here, now there, in
+the vast territory; that this or that general was sent to repress it.
+
+The civil wars ended, the government of Rome turns its attention to
+the provinces anew, but for another reason. Saint Jerome tells us that
+in 25 B.C., Augustus increased the tribute from the Gauls: we find
+no difficulty in getting at the reason of this fact. The thing most
+urgent after the re-establishment of peace was the re-arrangement of
+finance; that signified then, as always, an increase of imposts:
+but more could not be extorted from the Oriental provinces, already
+exhausted by so many wars and plunderings; therefore the idea to
+draw greater revenues from the European provinces of recent conquest,
+particularly from Gaul, which until then had paid so little. So
+you see a-forging one link after another in the chain: Caesar for a
+political interest conquers Gaul; thirty years afterward Augustus goes
+there to seek new revenues for his balance-sheet; thence-forward
+there are always immediate needs that urge Roman politics into Gallic
+affairs: and so it is that little by little Roman politics become
+permanently involved, by a kind of concatenation, not by deliberate
+plan.
+
+We can easily follow the process. Augustus had left in Gaul to exact
+the new tribute, a former slave of Caesar's, afterward liberated,--a
+Gaul or German whom Caesar had captured as a child in one of his
+expeditions and later freed, because of his consummate administrative
+ability. It appears, however, that, for the Gauls at least, this
+ability was even too great. In a curious chapter Dion tells us that
+Licinius, this freedman, uniting the avarice of a barbarian to the
+pretences of a Roman, beat down everyone that seemed greater than he;
+oppressed all those who seemed to have more power; extorted enormous
+sums from all, were they to fill out the dues of his office, or to
+enrich himself and his family. His rascality was so stupendous that
+since the Gauls paid certain taxes every month, he increased to
+fourteen the number of the months, declaring that December, the last,
+was only the tenth; consequently it was necessary to count two more,
+one called Undecember and another, Duodecember.
+
+I would not guarantee this story true, since, when there is introduced
+into a nation a new and more burdensome system of taxes, there are
+always set in circulation tales of this kind about the rapacity of
+the persons charged with collecting them: but true or false, the tale
+shows that the Gauls were much irritated by the new tribute; indeed
+this irritation increased so much that in the winter from the year 15
+till the year 14 B.C., Augustus, having to remain in Gaul on account
+of certain serious complications, arisen in Germany, was obliged to
+give his attention to it during his stay. The prominent men of
+Gaul presented vigorous complaints to him against Licinius and his
+administration. Then there occurred an episode that, recounted three
+centuries later with a certain naivete by Dion Cassius, has been
+overlooked by the historians, but which seems to me to be of prime
+interest in the history of the Latin world. Dion writes:
+
+    Augustus, not able to avoid blaming Licinius for the many
+    denunciations and revelations of the Gallic chiefs, sought in
+    other things to excuse him; he pretended not to know certain
+    facts, made believe not to accept others, being ashamed to
+    have placed such a procurator in Gaul. Licinius, however,
+    extricated himself from the danger by a decidedly original
+    expedient. When he realised that Augustus was displeased and
+    that he was running great risk of being punished, he conducted
+    that Prince to his house, and showing him his numerous
+    treasuries full of gold and silver, enormous piles of objects
+    made of precious metals, said:--"My lord, only for your good
+    and that of the Romans have I amassed all these riches. I
+    feared that the natives, fortified by such wealth, might
+    revolt, if I left them to them: therefore I have placed them
+    in safe-keeping for you and I give them to you." So, by his
+    pretext that he had thus broken the power of the barbarians
+    for the sake of Augustus, Licinius saved himself from danger.
+
+This incident has without doubt the smack of legend. Ought we
+therefore to conclude that it is wholly invented? No, because in
+history the distortions of the truth are much more numerous than
+are inventions. This page of Dion is important. It preserves for
+us, presented in a dramatic scene between Augustus and Licinius, the
+record of a very serious dispute carried on between the notable men of
+Gaul and Licinius, in the presence of Augustus. The Gauls complain of
+paying too many imposts: Licinius replies that Gaul is very rich;
+that it grows rich quickly and therefore it ought to pay as much as is
+demanded of it, and more. Not only did the freedman show rooms full of
+gold and silver to his lord; he showed him the great economic progress
+of Gaul, its marvellous future, the immense wealth concealed in
+its soil and in the genius of its inhabitants. In other words, this
+chapter of Dion makes us conclude that Rome--that is, the small
+oligarchy that was directing its politics--realised that the Gaul
+conquered by Caesar, the Gaul that had always been considered as
+a country cold and sterile, was instead a magnificent province,
+naturally rich, from which they might get enormous treasure. This
+discovery was made in the winter of 15-14 B.C.; that is, forty-three
+years after Caesar had added the province to the Empire; forty-three
+years after they had possessed without knowing what they possessed,
+like some _grand seigneur_ who unwittingly holds among the common
+things of his patrimony some priceless object, the value of which only
+an accident on a sudden reveals.
+
+This chapter of Dion allows us also to affirm that he who first
+realised the value of Gaul and opened the eyes of Augustus, was no
+great personage of the Roman aristocracy whose names are written in
+such lofty characters on the pages of history, whose images are yet
+found in marble and bronze among the museums of Europe; no one of
+those who ruled the Empire and therefore according to reason and
+justice had the responsibility of governing it well: it was, instead,
+an obscure freedman, whose ability the masters of the Empire scorned
+to exploit except as to-day a peasant uses the forces of his ox,
+hardly deigning to look at him and yet deeming all his labour but the
+owner's natural right.
+
+So stands the story. The Gallic freedman observed, and understood, and
+was forgotten; posterity, instead, has had to wonder over the profound
+wisdom of the Roman aristocrat, who understood nothing. Moreover, if
+in 14 B.C. Licinius had to make an effort to persuade the surprised
+and diffident Augustus that Gaul was a province of great future, it is
+clear that Gaul must already have begun to grow rich by itself without
+the Roman government's having done anything to promote its progress.
+
+From what hidden sources sprang forth this new wealth of Gaul? All the
+documents that we possess authorise us to respond that Gaul--to begin
+from the time of Augustus--was able to grow rich quickly, because the
+events following the Roman conquest turned and disposed the general
+conditions of the Empire in its favour. Gaul then, as France now, was
+endowed with several requisites essential to its becoming a nation of
+great economic development: a land very fertile; a population dense
+for the times, intelligent, wide-awake, active; a climate that, even
+though it seemed to Greeks and Romans cold and foggy, was better
+suited to intense activity than the warm and sunny climate of the
+South; and finally,--a supreme advantage in ancient civilisation,--it
+was everywhere intersected, as by a network of canals, by navigable
+rivers. In ancient times transport by land was very expensive;
+water was the natural and economic vehicle of commerce: therefore
+civilisation was able to enter with commerce into the interior of
+continents only by way of the rivers, which, as one might say, were to
+a certain extent the railroads of the ancient world.
+
+To these advantageous conditions, which, being physical, existed
+before the Roman conquest, the conquest added some others: it broke
+down the political barrier that previously cut off these convenient
+means of penetration, the rivers; it suppressed the wars between
+the Gallic tribes, the privileges, the tyrannies, the tolls, the
+monopolies; it saved the enormous resources that were previously
+wasted in these constant drains; it put again the hoe, the spade, the
+tools of the artisan, into hands that had before been wielding the
+sword; and finally, it consolidated (and this was perhaps the most
+important effect) the jurisdiction of property. When Caesar invaded
+Gaul, the great landowners still cultivated cereals and textile plants
+but little; they put the greater part of their fortune into cattle,
+exactly because in that regime of continual war and revolution lands
+easily kept changing proprietors. Furthermore, the more frequent
+contact with Rome acquainted the Gauls with Roman agriculture and its
+abler methods, with Latin life and its studied order.
+
+By the combination of all these causes, population and production
+increased rapidly. The gain in population was so considerable that
+the ancients themselves noticed it. Strabo (Bk. 4, ch. i, Sec.2) observes
+that the Gallic women are fecund mothers and excellent nurses. With
+the population, wealth increased on all sides, in agriculture as in
+industry and in trade.
+
+The new and more stable jurisdiction of the landed proprietary
+generated another most important effect; it promoted rapidly the
+cultivation of cereals and textile plants, of wheat and flax. "All
+Gaul produces much wheat," says Strabo, and we read his notice without
+surprise, because we know that France is, even to-day, the region of
+Europe most fertile in cereals. There is no reason to suppose that it
+must have been barren of them twenty centuries ago. Other documentary
+evidence, particularly inscriptions, confirms Strabo, informing us
+that, especially in the second century, Rome bought the customary
+grain to feed the metropolis not only in Egypt, but also in Gaul.
+In short, Gaul seems to have been the sole region of Europe fertile
+enough to be able to export grain, to have been for Rome a kind of
+Canada or Middle West of the time, set not beyond oceans but beyond
+the Alps.
+
+The cultivation of flax, to the ancient world what cotton is to-day,
+progressed rapidly in Gaul along with that of wheat, so that Gaul was
+early able to rival Egypt also in this respect. That Gaul and Egypt
+should have so much in common at the same time, was something so
+interesting and seemed so strange that Pliny himself wrote:
+
+    Flax is sowed only in sandy places and after a single
+    ploughing. Perhaps Egypt may be pardoned for sowing it,
+    because with it she buys the merchandise of India and Arabia.
+    But, look you!--even Gaul is famous for this plant. What
+    matters it, if huge mountains shut away the sea; if on the
+    ocean side it has for confines what is called emptiness?
+    Notwithstanding that, Gaul cultivates flax like Egypt: the
+    Cadurci, the Caleti, the Ruteni, the Biturigi, the Morini, who
+    are considered tribes of the ends of the earth ... but what am
+    I saying? All Gaul makes sails,--till the enemies beyond the
+    Rhine imitate them, and the linen is more beautiful to the
+    eyes than are their women.
+
+These descriptions show Gaul to be one of the new countries, like the
+Argentine Republic or the United States, in which the land has still
+almost its natural pristine fecundity and brings forth a marvellous
+abundance of plants that clothe and nourish man. We know that in Gaul
+under the Empire there were immense fortunes in land in face of which
+the fortunes of wealthy Italian proprietors shrink like the fortunes
+of Europe when compared with the great ranch fortunes of the Argentine
+Republic or the United States. Twenty years ago they began to excavate
+in France the ruins of the great Gallo-Roman villas: these are
+constructed on the plan of the Italian villa, decorated in the same
+way, but are much larger, more sumptuous, more sightly; one feels
+in them the pride of a new people which has adopted the Latin
+civilisation, but has infused into that, derived from the wealth of
+their land, a spirit of grandeur and of luxury that poorer and older
+Latins did not know, exactly as to-day the Americans infuse a spirit
+of greater magnitude and boldness into so many things that they take
+from timid, old Europe. Perhaps there was also in this Gallic luxury,
+as in the American, a bit of ostentation, intended to humiliate the
+masters remaining poorer and more modest.
+
+But Gaul was a nation not only rich in fertilest agriculture; side by
+side with that, progressed its industry. This, according to my
+notion, is one of the vital points in ancient history. Under the Roman
+domination, Gaul was not restricted to the better cultivation of its
+productive soil; but alone among the peoples of the Occident, became,
+as we might now say, an industrial nation, that manufactured not only
+by and for itself, but like Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, sold also to
+other peoples of the Empire and outside of its own boundaries; in
+a word, exported. The more frequent contact with the Orient better
+acquainted the Gauls with the beautiful objects made by the artisans
+of Laodicea, of Tyre, of Sidon; and the clever genius of the Celt,
+always apt in industry, drew from them incentive to create a Gallic
+industry, partly imitative, partly original, and to seek a large
+_clientele_ for these industries in Italy, in Spain, beyond the Rhine,
+among the Germans, in the Danube provinces. This is proved by a
+number of important passages in Pliny, confirmed by inscriptions and
+archaeological discoveries.
+
+Pliny has already told us that the Gauls manufactured many linen
+sails; we know also that they made not only rough sails, but also fine
+linen for clothing, which had a wide market. There have been found in
+the Orient numerous fragments of an inscription containing the famous
+edict of Diocletian on maximum sale prices allowed, an inscription
+of value to us for its nomenclature of ancient fabrics. In this
+nomenclature is mentioned the _birrus_ of Laodicea, an imitation of
+the _birrus_ of the Nervii, which was a very fine linen cloth, worn
+by ladies of fashion. Laodicea was one of the most ancient centres of
+Oriental textile fabrics; the Nervii were one of the most remote of
+the Gallic peoples, living--the coincidence is noteworthy--about where
+Flanders is now. If at Laodicea they made at the end of the third
+century an imitation of Nervian linen, that means that the Nervii had
+succeeded in manufacturing and finding market for cloth so desirable
+as to rouse the Laodiceans, competing for trade, to imitate it. What
+proof more persuasive that during the early centuries of the Empire
+the Gauls greatly improved their industries and widened their markets?
+
+They had mastered weaving, but they did not stop there; they invented
+new methods of dyeing, using vegetable dyes instead of the customary
+animal colours of the Orient. Pliny says:
+
+    The Gaul imitates with herbs all colours, including Tyrian
+    purple; they do not seek the mollusk on the sea bottom; they
+    run no risk of being devoured by sea monsters; they do not
+    exploit the anchorless deep to multiply the attractions of
+    the courtesan, or to increase the powers of the seducer of
+    another's wife. They gather the herbs like cereals, standing
+    on the dry ground; although the colour that they derive does
+    not bear washing. Luxury could thus be gratified with greater
+    show at the cost of fewer dangers.
+
+It is clear, then, according to Pliny, at one time, it was believed
+that the competition of Gallic dyers might have ruined the Oriental,
+and would have done so, had the tenacity of their vegetable colouring
+equalled its beauty. In another passage Pliny tells us that these
+Gallic stuffs were used especially by the slaves and the populace.
+
+The wool industry made no less progress in Gaul than weaving and
+dyeing. From numerous passages in Juvenal and Martial it appears
+that the woollen clothing worn by the populace of Rome in the second
+century was woven in Gaul, particularly in the districts to-day
+known as Arras, Langres, Saintonge. Pliny attributes to the Gauls the
+invention of a wool, that, soaked in acid, became incombustible, and
+was used to make mattresses.
+
+Glass-making was another art carried from the East across the
+Mediterranean into Gaul. Still another industry, metallurgy, after
+weaving, contributed greatly to enrich Gaul. Undoubtedly even before
+the Roman conquest, Gaul worked gold mines; it seems, however, that
+silver mines remained untouched until about the time of Augustus. At
+any rate, the discovery of some deposits of gold and silver then gave
+a spur to several flourishing industries; jewelry-making, and--an
+original Gallic industry of much importance--silver-plating and
+tinning. Here is another extract from Pliny, from which you will
+see that in those times they already made in France "Christofle"
+silver-plate:
+
+    They cover [writes Pliny] the copper with tin in such a way
+    that it is difficult to distinguish it from silver. It is a
+    Gallic invention. Later they began to do the same thing with
+    silver, silver-plating especially the ornaments of horses and
+    carriages. The merit of the invention belongs to the Biturigi,
+    and the industry was developed in the city of Alesia. After
+    the same fashion there has been spread everywhere a foolish
+    profusion of objects not only silver-, but gold-plated. All
+    that is called _cultus_, elegance!
+
+We might almost say that Gallic industry did to the old industries of
+the ancient world what German wares have done compared with older and
+more aristocratic products of France, of England, popularising objects
+of luxury for the many and the merely well-to-do.
+
+Finally, if any one hesitated to trust fully these very important
+passages in Pliny, he would be quite convinced by reading the great
+work of Dechelette. This author, studying with Carthusian patience and
+the ablest critical acumen the Gallic ceramics to be found scattered
+among the museums, has demonstrated most commendably that in the first
+century of the Empire many manufactories of ceramics were opened and
+flourished in Gaul, especially in the valley of the Allier, and that
+they sold their vases in Spain, in the Danube regions, to the Germans,
+and in Italy.
+
+Dechelette has proved that many ceramics found among the ruins of
+Pompeii, now admired in the museums of Pompeii and Naples, were made
+in Gaul,--discoveries most noteworthy, which, in connection with the
+extracts from Pliny, disclose in essence that real Roman Gaul whose
+sumptuous relics but half tell the tale of its wealth.
+
+This tremendous development of Gaul was without doubt an effect of the
+Roman conquest; but an effect that neither Caesar, nor any other man
+of his times had foreseen or willed, but which Augustus was first to
+recognise in the winter of 15-14 B.C., and to which, astute man that
+he was, he gave heed as he ought; that is, not as due his own merit,
+but as an unexpected piece of good fortune. I have already said that
+one of the greatest cares of Augustus, as soon as the civil wars were
+finished, was to reorganise the finances of the Empire; that to find
+new entries for the treasury, he had turned his attention in 27 B.C.
+to the province conquered by his father, regarding it merely from
+the common point of view, as poor and of little worth like the
+other European territories. Then, at a stroke, he realised that that
+territory so lightly valued, was producing grain like Egypt, linen
+like Egypt; that the arts of civilisation for which Egypt was so rich
+and famous were beginning to prosper there! Augustus was not the man
+to let slip so tremendous a piece of good luck. Until then he had
+hesitated, like one who seeks his way; in that winter from 15-14 B.C.,
+he found finally the grand climax of his career, to make Gaul the
+Egypt of the West, the province of the greatest revenues in Europe.
+From that time on to the end of his life, he did not move from Europe;
+he lived between Italy and Gaul. Like him, Tiberius, Drusus, all the
+men of his family, devoted all their efforts to Gaul, to consolidating
+Roman dominion there, to advancing its progress, to increasing the
+revenues, to making it actually the Occidental Egypt. From Velleius we
+learn that under Tiberius Gaul rendered to the Empire as much as did
+Egypt, and that Gaul and Egypt were considered alike the two richest
+imperial provinces.
+
+As a political interest had at first impelled Caesar to annex Gaul, an
+immediate financial interest urged Augustus to continue the work,
+to take care of the new province. Then the historic law that I have
+already enunciated to you, the law by which the efforts of men result
+far differently from that which they had intended, was verified anew
+by Augustus also, and in a new form. He had created his Gallic policy
+to augment the revenues of the Empire; the consequences of this fiscal
+policy, necessity-inspired, were greater than he and his friends ever
+dreamed. The winter of 15-14 B.C. is a notable date in the story of
+Latin civilisation, for then the destiny of the Empire was irrevocably
+settled; the Roman Empire will be made up of two parts, the Oriental
+and the Occidental, each part sufficiently strong to withstand
+being overcome by the other; it will be neither an Asiatic, nor a
+Celtic-Latin, but a mixed Empire: between both parts, Italy will rule
+for two centuries more, and Rome, an immense city, at once Oriental
+and Latin, will keep the metropolitan crown won from the enfeebled
+East, and dominate the immature barbarian West.
+
+Speaking of Cleopatra, I have shown you how great was the Oriental
+peril that threatened in the last century of the Republic to wipe out
+Rome. What miraculous force saved it? Gaul. Suppose that the army of
+Caesar had been exterminated at Alesia; suppose that Rome, discouraged,
+had abandoned its Gallic enterprise as it had done with Persia, after
+the disaster of Crassus and the failure of Antony; or suppose that
+Gaul had been a poor province, sterile and unpopulous, like many a
+Danube district; Rome could not have held out long as the seat of
+imperial government, just as to-day the capital of the Russian Empire
+could not maintain itself at Vladivostok or Harbin. It would have been
+necessary to move the metropolis to a richer and more populous region.
+That Gaul grew rich and was Romanised, changed the state of things.
+When Rome possessed beyond the Alps in Europe a province as large and
+as full of resources as Egypt; when there was the same interest in
+defending it as in defending Egypt, Italy was well placed to govern
+both. The Egypt of the Occident counterbalanced the Egypt of the
+Orient, and Rome, half way between, was the natural and necessary
+metropolis of the wide-spread Empire. Gaul alone, revived, so
+to speak, the Empire in the West and prevented the European
+provinces--even Italy itself--from becoming dead limbs safely
+amputable from the Oriental body. Gaul upheld Italy and Rome in Europe
+for three centuries longer; Gaul stopped it on the way to the Asiatic
+conquests run through by Alexander. Had it not been for Gaul, Asia
+Minor, Syria, and Egypt would have formed the real Empire of Rome,
+and Italy would have been lost in it: without Gaul, the Orientalised
+Empire would have tried to conquer Persia and probably succeeded in
+doing so, abandoning the poor and unproductive lands of the untamed
+Occident. In short, Gaul created in the Roman Empire that duality
+between East and West which gives shape to all the history of our
+civilisation; it kept the artificial form of the Empire, circular
+about an island sea; it inspired the Empire with that double
+self-contradictory spirit, Latin and Oriental, at once its strength
+and its weakness.
+
+Next time I will show you the continuation of this struggle of two
+minds, in a characteristic episode, the story of the Emperor Nero.
+Now, before closing, let me set before you briefly some general
+considerations drawn from the history of Roman Gaul which are
+applicable to universal history.
+
+From what I have told you, it follows that the fortunes of peoples and
+states depend in part on what might be called the historic situation
+of every age, the situation that is created by the general state of
+the world in every successive epoch and which no people or state can
+mould at its own pleasure. Without doubt, a nation will never conquer
+a noteworthy greatness if the men that compose it fail of a certain
+culture, a certain energy, a social _morale_ sufficiently vigorous;
+but though these qualities are necessary, they are not equally
+productive in all periods, but serve more or less, in different
+periods, according as general circumstances are disposed about a
+people. Gaul was fertile, and its people possessed before the conquest
+the qualities that they displayed later: and yet, as long as Gaul
+remained apart from the Empire, without continuous and numerous
+communications with the vast Mediterranean world; as long as it
+was split into so many petty rival states, occupied in serious wars
+against the Germanic tribes, its fertility remained hidden in the
+earth, and the ability of its inhabitants dissipated itself in
+devastating wars, instead of spending itself in fruitful effort. All
+that changed, and without any one's foresight or intent, when the
+Roman policy, urged by the internal forces that stirred the Republic,
+had destroyed that old order of things.
+
+The ancients understood that peoples, like individual men, can
+regulate their destiny only in part; that about us, above us, are
+forces complex and obscure, which we can hardly comprehend, which
+invest us, seize us, impel us whither we had not thought to go, now
+to shipwreck on the rocks of misadventure, now to the discovery of
+islands of happiness, or to find, like Columbus, an America on the
+way to India. The Greeks called this power; the Latins, Fortuna, and
+deified it; erected temples and made sacrifices to it; dedicated to
+it a cult, of which Augustus was a devotee, and which contained more
+secret wisdom of life than all the superb theories on human destiny
+conceived by European genius in the delirium of this quarter-hour of
+measureless might in which we are living. No, man is not the voluntary
+artificer of his whole destiny; fortune and misfortune, triumph and
+catastrophe, are never entirely proportioned to personal merit or
+blame; every generation finds the world organised in a certain order
+of interests, forces, traditions, relations, and as it enjoys the good
+that preceding generations have accomplished, so in part it expiates
+the errors they have committed; as it draws advantage from beneficent
+forces acting outside of it and independent of its merit, so it
+suffers from the sinister forces that it finds--even though blameless
+itself--acting through the great mass of the world, among men and
+their works. From this relation to the unseen follows a rule of wisdom
+that modern men, full of unbounded pride, and persuaded that they
+are the beginning and end of the universe, too often forget: we must
+indeed press on with all our powers to the accomplishment of a great
+task, for although our destiny is never entirely made by our own
+hands, there is no destiny on the earth for the lazy; but, since
+a part of what we are depends not on ourselves, but upon what the
+ancients called Fortune, we dare never be too much elated over
+success, nor abased by failure. The wheel of destiny turns by a
+mysterious law, alike for families and for peoples: those in high
+position may fall; those in low, may rise.
+
+Certainly Caesar never suspected when he was fighting the Gauls, that
+the great-grandsons of the vanquished would live in villas modelled on
+the Roman, but more sumptuous; that the great Gallic nobles would have
+the satisfaction of parading before the people that conquered them a
+latinity more impressive and magnificent; and that some day the Gaul
+put by him to fire and sword would get the better, in empire, in
+wealth, in culture, of even Italy.
+
+
+
+Nero
+
+
+On the 13th of October of 54 A.D., when Emperor Claudius died, the
+Senate chose as his successor his adopted son, Nero, a young man of
+seventeen, fat and short-sighted, who had until then studied only
+music, singing, and drawing. This choice of a child-emperor, who
+lacked imperial qualities and suggested the child kings of Oriental
+monarchies, was a scandalous novelty in the constitutional history of
+Rome. The ancient historians, especially Tacitus, considered the event
+as the result of an intrigue, cleverly arranged by Nero's mother,
+Agrippina, a daughter of Germanicus and granddaughter of Agrippa, the
+builder of the Pantheon. According to these historians, Agrippina,
+a highly ambitious woman, induced Claudius to marry her after
+Messalina's death, although she was a widow and had a child, and as
+soon as she entered the emperor's mansion she began to open the way
+for the election of her son. In order to exclude Britannicus, the son
+of Messalina, from succession, she persuaded Claudius to adopt Nero;
+then, with the help of the two tutors of the young man, Seneca and
+Burrhus, created in the Senate and among the Praetorians, a party
+favourable to her son; no sooner did she feel that she could rely on
+the Senate and the Praetorians, than she poisoned Claudius.
+
+Too many difficulties prevent our accepting this version. To cite one
+of them will suffice: if Agrippina wished--as she surely did--that her
+son should succeed Claudius, she must also have wished that Claudius
+would live at least eight or ten years longer. As a great-grandson of
+Drusus, a grandson of Germanicus and the last descendant of his line,
+the only line in the whole family enjoying a real popularity, Nero was
+sure of election if he were of age at the death of Claudius. After the
+terrible scandal in which his mother had disappeared, Britannicus was
+no longer a competitor to be feared. There was only one danger for
+Nero, if Claudius should die too soon, the Senate might refuse to
+trust the Empire to a child.
+
+I believe that Claudius died of disease, probably, if we can judge
+from Tacitus's account, of gastroenteritis, and that Agrippina's
+coterie, surprised by this sudden death, which upset all their plans,
+decided to put through Nero's election in spite of his youth, in order
+to insure the power to the line of Drusus, which had so much sympathy
+among the masses. As a matter of fact, the admiration for Drusus
+and his family triumphed over all other considerations: Nero became
+emperor at seventeen; but when the election was over, Rome--again
+according to the tales of the ancient historians--saw a still
+greater scandal than his election. The young man--and this is
+credible--hastened to engage as his master the first zither-player
+of Rome, Terpnos; continued his study of singing; and bought statues,
+pictures, bronzes, beautiful slaves, while his mother seized the
+actual control of the State.
+
+Agrippina insisted on being kept informed of all affairs; directed
+the home and foreign policy; and if she did not reach the point of
+partaking in the sessions of the Senate, which would have been the
+supreme scandal, she called it to meet in her palace and, concealed
+behind a black curtain, listened to its discussions. In short, the
+Empire fell into the hands of a woman; Rome saw the evolution of
+customs, through which woman had for four centuries been freeing
+herself from her ancient slavery, suddenly a fact accomplished by
+her visible intervention in politics--the intervention that the great
+keepers of tradition, first among them Cato, had always decried as the
+most frightful cataclysm that could menace the city.
+
+This story is also the exaggeration of a simpler truth. Even if Nero
+had been a very serious young man, at his age he could not by himself
+have governed the Empire; it would have been necessary for him to
+serve a long apprenticeship and to listen to experienced counsellors.
+Burrhus and Seneca, his two teachers, were naturally destined to be
+his counsellors; but why should not his mother also have helped him?
+Like all the women of her family, Agrippina was of superior mind, of
+high culture, and, as Tacitus himself admits, led a most respectable
+life, at least to the time of her marriage with Claudius. Brought up,
+as she was, in that family which for eighty years had been governing
+the Empire, she was well informed about affairs of State. Is it
+possible to suppose that such a woman would shut herself up in her
+home to weave wool, when, with her talent, her energy, her experience,
+she could be of so much service to her son and to the State? We do not
+need to attribute to Agrippina a monstrous ambition, as does Tacitus,
+in order to explain how the Empire was ruled during the first two
+years, by Seneca, Burrhus, and Agrippina; it was a natural consequence
+of the situation created by the premature death of Claudius. Tacitus
+himself is forced to recognise that the government was excellent.
+
+Helping her son in the apprenticeship of the Empire, Agrippina did her
+duty; but during restless times when misunderstanding is almost a
+law of social life, it is often very dangerous to do one's duty. The
+period of Agrippina and Nero was full of confusion; though apparently
+quiet, Italy was deeply torn by the great struggle that gives the
+history of the Empire its marvellous character of actuality, the
+struggle between the old Roman military society and the intellectual
+civilisation of the Orient.
+
+The ancient aristocratic and military Roman society had had so great
+and world-wide a success, that the ideas, the institutions and the
+customs, that had made it a perfect model of State, considered as an
+organ of political and military domination, exercised a great prestige
+on the following generations. Even during the time of which we speak,
+every one was forced after eight years of peace, to admit that the
+Empire had been created by those ideas, those institutions and those
+customs; that for the sake of the Empire they must be maintained,
+and alike in family as in State, must be opposed all that forms
+the essence of intellectual civilisation; that is to say, all
+that develops personal selfishness at the expense of collective
+interest--luxury, idleness, pleasure, celibacy, feminism, and at
+the same time, all that develops personality and intelligence at the
+expense of tradition--liberty of women, independence of children,
+variety of personal tendencies, and the critical spirit in all forms.
+
+In spite of the resistance offered by traditions, peace and wealth
+favoured everywhere the diffusion of the intellectual civilisation of
+the Hellenised Orient. The woman now become free, and the intellectual
+man now become powerful, were the springs to set in motion this
+revolution. Under Claudius, in vain had they exiled Seneca, the
+brilliant philosopher and the peace-advocating humanitarian, who had
+diffused in high Roman society so many ideas and sentiments considered
+by the traditionalists pernicious to the force of the State; he had
+come back far more powerful, and ruled the Empire. Husbands, burdened
+by the excessive expenses, by the too frequent infidelities, by the
+tyrannical caprices of their wives, in vain regretted the good old
+time when husbands were absolute masters; the invading feminism
+weakened everywhere the strength of the aristocratic and military
+traditions.
+
+So contradiction was everywhere. The Republic had still its old
+aristocratic constitution, but the nobility was no longer spurred by
+that absorbing and exclusive passion for politics and war, which
+had been its power. Society life, pleasure, amateur philosophy
+and literature, mysticism, and, above all, sports, dissipated in a
+thousand directions its energy and activity. Too many young men
+were to be found in the nobility who, like Nero, preferred singing,
+dancing, and driving, to caring for their clients or enduring the
+troubles of public office.
+
+Augustus and Tiberius had done their utmost to strengthen the great
+Latin principle of parsimony in public and private life: in order to
+set a good example they had lived very simply; they had caused new
+sumptuary laws to be passed and tried to enforce the old ones;
+they had spent the State moneys, not for the keeping of artists and
+writers, nor for the building of monuments of useless size, but to
+build the great roads of the Empire, to strengthen the frontiers;
+they had made the public treasure into an aid fund for all suffering
+cities, stricken by earthquake, fire, or flood. And yet the Oriental
+influence, so favourable to unproductive and luxurious expenditure,
+gained ground steadily. The merchant of Syrian and Egyptian objects
+_de luxe_, in spite of the sumptuary laws, found a yearly increasing
+patronage in all the cities of Italy. The exactingness of the desire
+for public spectacles increased, even in secondary cities. The Italian
+people were losing their peasant's petty avarice and growing fond
+of things monumental and colossal, which was the great folly of the
+Orient. They found the monuments of Rome poor; everywhere, even in
+modest _municipia_, they demanded immense theatres, great temples,
+monumental basilicas, spacious forums, adorned with statues. In spite
+of the principles insisted upon with so much vigour by Augustus and
+Tiberius, public finances had, thanks to the weak Claudius and the
+extravagant Messalina, already gone through a period of great waste
+and disorder.
+
+These contradictions, and the psychological disorder that followed,
+explain the discords and struggles very soon raging around the young
+Emperor. The public began to feel shocked by the attention that
+Agrippina gave to State affairs, as by a new and this time intolerable
+scandal of feminism. Agrippina was not a feminist, as a matter of
+fact, but a traditionalist, proud of the glory of her family, attached
+to the ancient Roman ideas, desirous only of seeing her son develop
+into a new Germanicus, a second Drusus. Solely the necessity of
+helping Nero had led her to meddle with politics. But not in vain had
+Cato declaimed so loudly in Rome against women who pretend to govern
+states; not in vain had Augustus's domination been at least partly
+founded on the great antifeminist legend of Antony and Cleopatra,
+which represented the fall of the great Triumvir as the consequence of
+a woman's influence. The public, although willing to give all possible
+freedom to women in other things, still remained quite firm on this
+point: politics must remain the monopoly of man. So to the popular
+imagination, Agrippina soon became a sort of Roman Cleopatra. Many
+interests gathered quickly to reinforce this antifeminist reaction,
+which, although exaggerated, had its origin in sincere feeling.
+
+Agrippina, as a true descendant of Drusus, meant to prepare her son
+to rule the Empire according to the principles held by his great
+ancestors. Among these principles was to be counted not only
+the defence of Romanism and the maintenance of the aristocratic
+constitution, but also a wise economy in the management of finances.
+Agrippina is a good instance of that well-known fact--the British
+have noticed it more than once in India--that in public administration
+discreet and capable women keep, as a rule, the spirit of economy
+with which they manage the home. This is why, especially in despotic
+states, they rule better than men. Even before Claudius's death,
+Agrippina had vigorously opposed waste and plunder; it also appears
+that the reorganisation of finances after Messalina's death was due
+chiefly to her.
+
+The continuation under Nero of this severe regime displeased a great
+number of persons, who dreamed of seeing again the easy sway of
+Messalina. From the moment they were satisfied that Agrippina, like
+Augustus and Tiberius, would not allow the public money to be stolen,
+many people found her insistent interference in public affairs
+unbearable. In short, Agrippina became unpopular, and, as always
+happens, because of faults she did not have. A noble deed, which
+she was trying to accomplish in defence of tradition, definitively
+compromised her situation.
+
+Her son resembled neither Agrippina nor the great men of her family.
+He had a most indocile temperament, rebellious to tradition, in no
+sense Roman. Little by little, Agrippina saw the young Emperor develop
+into a precocious _debauche_, frightfully selfish, erratically vain,
+full of extravagant ideas, who, instead of setting the example of
+respect toward sumptuary laws, openly violated them all; and across
+whose mind from time to time flashed sinister lightnings of cruelty.
+Nero's youth--the fact is not surprising--did not resist the mortal
+seductions of immense power and immense riches; but Agrippina, the
+proud granddaughter of the conqueror of Germany, must have chafed
+at the idea of her son's preferring musical entertainments to the
+sessions of the Senate, singing lessons to the study of tactics and
+strategy.
+
+She applied herself, therefore, with all her energy to the work of
+tearing her son from his pleasures, and bringing about his return
+to the great traditions of his family. Nero resisted: the struggle
+between mother and son grew complicated; it excited the passion of the
+public, which felt that this conflict had a greater importance than
+any other family quarrel, that it was actually a struggle between
+traditional Romanism and Oriental customs. Unfortunately, every one
+sided with Nero: the sincere friends of tradition, because they did
+not want the rule of a woman, whoever she might be; those that longed
+for Messalina's times, because they saw personified in Agrippina the
+austere and inflexible spirit of the _gens Claudia_. The situation was
+soon without an issue. The accord of Agrippina with Seneca and Burrhus
+was troubled, because the two teachers of the young Emperor, under
+the impression of public malcontent, had somewhat withdrawn from her.
+Nero, who was sullen, cynical, and lazy, feared his mother too much to
+have the courage to oppose her openly, but he did not fear her enough
+to mend his ways. The mother, on her side, was set to do her duty to
+the end. Like all situations without an issue, this one was suddenly
+solved by an unexpected event.
+
+Insisting on wanting to make a Roman of this young _debauche_,
+Agrippina made him into a murderer. Nero, progressing from one caprice
+to another, finally imagined a great folly: to divorce Octavia and to
+raise to her place a beautiful freed-woman called Acte. According to
+one of the fundamental laws of the State, the great law of Augustus on
+marriage, which forbade marriages between senators and freedwomen, the
+union of Nero and Acte could be only a concubinage. Agrippina wanted
+to avoid this scandal; and, as Nero persisted in his idea, it seems
+that she actually thought of having him deposed and of securing the
+choice of Britannicus, a very serious young man, as his successor. A
+true Roman, Agrippina was ready to sacrifice her son for the sake of
+the Republic.
+
+The threat was, or appeared to be, so serious to Nero, that it made
+him step over the threshold of crime. One day during a great dinner
+to which he had been invited by Nero, Britannicus was suddenly seized
+with violent convulsions. "It is an attack of epilepsy," said Nero
+calmly, giving orders to his slaves to remove Britannicus and care
+for him. The young man died in a few hours and every one believed that
+Nero had poisoned him.
+
+This dastardly crime aroused at first a sense of horror and fright
+among the people, but the impression did not last long. In spite of
+all his faults, Nero was liked. In Rome they had respected Augustus
+and hated Tiberius; they had killed Caligula and jeered at Claudius;
+Nero seemed to be the first of the Roman Emperors who stood a chance
+of becoming popular. Contrary to Agrippina's ideas, it was his
+frivolity that pleased the great masses, because this frivolity
+corresponded to the slow but progressive decay of the old Roman
+virtues in them. They expected from Nero a less hard, less severe,
+less parsimonious government--in a word, a government less Roman than
+the rule of his predecessors, a government which, instead of force,
+glory, and wisdom, meant pleasure and ease.
+
+So it happened that many soon forgot the unfortunate Britannicus, and
+some even tried to justify Nero by invoking State necessity. Agrippina
+alone remained the object of the universal hatred, as the sole cause
+of so many misfortunes. Implacable enemies, concealed in the shadow,
+were subtly at work against her; they organised a campaign of absurd
+calumnies in the Court itself, and it is this campaign from which
+Tacitus drew his material.
+
+Some wretches finally dared even accuse her of conspiracy against
+the life of her son. Agrippina, refusing to plead for herself, still
+weathered the storm, because Nero was afraid of her, and though he
+tried to escape from her authority, did not dare to initiate any
+energetic move against her. To engage in a final struggle with so
+indomitable a woman, another woman was necessary. This woman was
+Poppaea Sabina, a very handsome and able dame of the great Roman
+nobility. Poppaea represented Oriental feminism in its most dangerous
+form: a woman completely demoralised by luxury, elegance, society
+life, and voluptuousness, who eluded all her duties toward the species
+in order to enjoy and make others enjoy her beauty.
+
+Corrupted as that age was, Poppaea was more corrupt. As soon as she
+observed the strong impression she had made on Nero, she conceived
+the plan of becoming his wife; her beauty would then be admired by the
+whole Empire, would be surrounded by a luxury for which the means of
+her husband were not sufficient, and with which no other Roman dame
+could compete. There was one obstacle--Agrippina.
+
+Agrippina protected Octavia, a true Roman woman, simple and honest:
+Agrippina would never consent to this absolutely unjustifiable
+divorce. To force Nero to a decisive move against his mother, Poppaea
+had her husband sent on some mission to Lusitania and became the
+mistress of the Emperor. From that point the situation changed.
+Dominated by Poppaea's influence, Nero found the courage to force
+Agrippina to abandon his palace and seek refuge in Antony's house; he
+took from her the privilege of Praetorian guards, which he himself
+had granted her; he reduced to a minimum the number and time of his
+visits, and carefully avoided being left alone with her. Agrippina's
+influence, to the general satisfaction, rapidly declined, while Nero
+gained every day in popularity. Agrippina, however, was too energetic
+a woman peaceably to resign herself: she began a violent campaign
+against the two adulterers, which deeply troubled the public. In Rome,
+where Augustus had promulgated his stern law against adultery; in
+Rome, where Augustus himself had been obliged to submit to his own
+law, when he exiled his daughter and his grand-daughter and almost
+exterminated the whole family; in Rome, a young man of twenty-two
+dared all but officially introduce adultery and polygamy into the
+Palatine! In her struggle against Nero, Agrippina once more stood on
+tradition: and Nero was afraid.
+
+Poppaea was probably the one who suggested to Nero the idea of killing
+Agrippina. The idea had been, as it were, floating in the air for
+a long time, because Agrippina was embarrassing to many persons and
+interests. It was chiefly the party that wanted to sack the imperial
+budget, to introduce the finance of great expenditure, which could not
+tolerate this clever and energetic woman, who was so faithful to
+the great traditions of Augustus and Tiberius, who could neither be
+frightened nor corrupted. One should not consider the assassination of
+Agrippina as a simple personal crime of Nero, as the result of his
+and Poppaea's quarrels with his mother. This crime, besides personal
+causes, had a political origin. Nero would never have dared commit
+such a misdeed, in the eyes of the Roman almost a sacrilege, if he had
+not been encouraged by Agrippina's unpopularity, by the violent hatred
+of so many against his mother.
+
+Nero hesitated long; he decided only when his freedman, Anicetus,
+the commander of the fleet, proposed a plan that seemed to guarantee
+secrecy for the crime: to have a ship built with a concealed trap. It
+was the spring of the year 59 A.D.; the Court had moved to Baiae, on
+the Gulf of Naples. If Nero succeeded in getting his mother on board
+the vessel, Anicetus would take upon himself the task of burying
+quickly below the waves the secret of her death; the people who hated
+Agrippina would easily be satisfied with the explanations to be given
+them.
+
+Nero executed his part of the plan in perfect cold-blood. He made
+believe he had repented and was anxious for a reconciliation with his
+mother; he invited her to Baiae and so profusely lavished kindnesses
+and amiabilities upon her, that Agrippina finally believed in his
+sincerity.
+
+After spending a few days at Baiae, Agrippina decided to return to
+Antium; in a very happy frame of mind and full of hopes that her son
+would soon show himself to the world the man she had dreamed, the
+descendant of Drusus, she boarded one evening the fatal ship; Nero
+had escorted her thither and pressed her to his heart with the most
+demonstrative tenderness.
+
+A calm night diffused its starry shadows over the quiet sea, which
+with subdued murmur lulled in their sleep the great summer homes
+along the shore. The ship departed, carrying toward her sombre destiny
+Agrippina, absorbed in her smiling dreams. When the moment came and
+the wrecking machine was set to work, the vessel did not sink as fast
+as they had hoped: it listed, overturning people and things. Agrippina
+had time to understand the danger; with admirable presence of mind she
+jumped overboard and escaped by swimming, while, during the confusion
+on the boat, the hired murderers killed one of Agrippina's freedwomen,
+mistaking her for Agrippina herself. The ship finally sank; the
+murderers also took to the water; everything returned to its wonted
+calm; the starry night still diffused its silent shadows; the sea
+still cradled with subdued murmur the homes along the coast--all men
+slept except one.
+
+Within this one, Anxiety watched: a son was awaiting the news that
+his mother was dead, and that he was free to celebrate a criminal
+marriage. The escaped murderers soon brought the news so impatiently
+expected--but Nero's joy was short. At dawn, a freedman of Agrippina
+arrived at the Emperor's villa. Agrippina, picked up by a boat, had
+succeeded in reaching one of her villas near by; she sent the freedman
+to tell the Emperor about the accident and to assure him of her
+safety. Agrippina alive! It was like a thunderbolt to Nero, and he
+lost his head: he saw his mother hurrying on to Rome, denouncing
+the abominable attempt to Senate and people, rousing against him the
+Praetorian guard and the legions. Thoroughly frightened, he summoned
+Seneca and Burrhus and laid before them the terrible situation. It
+is easy to imagine the shock of the old preceptors. How could he
+risk such a grave imprudence? And yet there was no time to lose in
+reproaches. Nero begged for advice: Seneca and Burrhus were silent,
+but they, also frightened, asked of themselves what Agrippina would
+do. Would she not provoke a colossal scandal, which would ruin
+everything? An expedient, the same one, occurred to both of them:
+but so sinister was the idea that they dared not speak it. This time,
+however, both the philosopher and the general were deceived as well as
+Nero: Agrippina had guessed the truth and given up the struggle. What
+could she, a lone woman do against an Emperor who did not stop even
+at the plan of murdering his mother? She realised, during that awful
+night, that only one chance of safety was left to her--to ignore what
+had taken place; and she sent her freedman with the message that
+meant forgiveness. But fear kept Nero and his counsellors from
+understanding; and when they could easily have remedied the preceding
+mistake, they compromised all by a supreme error. Finally Seneca, the
+pacificator and humanitarian philosopher, thought he had found the way
+of making half-openly the only suggestion which seemed wise to him: he
+turned to Burrhus and asked what might happen, if an order were given
+the Praetorians to kill Nero's mother. Burrhus understood that his
+colleague, although the first to give the fatal advice, was trying
+to shift upon him the much more serious responsibility of carrying it
+out; since, if they reached the decision of having Agrippina disposed
+of by the Praetorians, no one but he, the commander of the guard, could
+utter the order. He therefore protested with the greatest energy that
+the Praetorians would never lay murderous hands on the daughter of
+Germanicus. Then he added cogitatively that, if it were thought
+necessary, Anicetus and his sailors could finish the work already
+begun. Thus Burrhus gave the same advice as Seneca, but he, like his
+colleague, meant to pass on to some one else the task of execution. He
+chose better than Seneca: Anicetus, if Agrippina lived, ran a serious
+risk of becoming the scapegoat of all this affair. In fact, as soon as
+Nero gave his assent, Anicetus and a few sailors hastened to the villa
+of Agrippina and stabbed her.
+
+The crime was abominable. Nero and his circle were so awed by it that
+they attempted to make the people believe that Agrippina had
+committed suicide, when her conspiracy against her son's life had been
+discovered. This was the official version of Agrippina's death,
+sent by Nero to the Senate. But this audacious mystification had no
+success. The public divined the truth, and roused by the voice of
+their age-long instincts, they cried out that the Emperor no less than
+any peasant of Italy must revere his father and his mother. Through a
+sudden turn of public feeling, Agrippina, who had been so much hated
+during her life, became the object of a kind of popular veneration;
+Nero, on the other hand, and Poppaea inspired a sentiment of profound
+horror.
+
+If Nero had found the living Agrippina unbearable, he soon realised
+that his dead mother was much more to be feared. In fact, scared as he
+was by the popular agitation, not only had he temporarily to give up
+the plan of divorcing Octavia and marrying Poppaea, but felt obliged
+to stay several months at Baiae, not daring to return to Rome. He was,
+however, no longer a child: he was twenty-three years old and had some
+talent. Men of intelligence and energy were also not wanting in his
+_entourage_. The first shock once over, the Emperor and his coterie
+rallied. The first impression had indeed been disastrous, but had
+brought about no irreparable consequences--the only consequences that
+count in politics. One could therefore hope that the public
+would gradually forget this murder as they had forgotten that of
+Britannicus. One only needed to help them forget. Nero resolved to
+give Italy and Rome the administrative revolution that had found in
+Agrippina so determined an opponent, the easy, splendid, generous
+government that seemed to suit the popular taste.
+
+He began by organising among the _jeunesse doree_ of Rome the
+"festivals of youth." In these true demonstrations against the old
+aristocratic education, now in the house of one and then in the garden
+of another, the young patricians met under the Emperor's directions.
+They sang, recited, and danced, displaying all the tendencies that
+tradition held unworthy of a Roman nobleman. Later, Nero built in
+the Vatican fields a private stadium, where he amused himself with
+driving, and invited his friends to join him. He surrounded himself
+with poets, musicians, singers; enormously increased the budget
+of popular festivals; planned and started immense constructions;
+introduced into all parts of the administration a new spirit of
+carelessness and ease. Not only the sumptuary laws, but all laws
+commanding the fulfilment of human duties toward the species, such as
+the great laws of Augustus on marriage and adultery, were no longer
+applied; the surveillance of the Senate over the governors, that of
+the governors over the cities, slackened. In Rome, in all Italy, in
+the provinces, the treasuries of the Republic, the possessions and
+the funds of the cities, were robbed. In the midst of this unbridled
+plundering, which appeared to make every man rich quickly, and without
+work, a delirium of luxury and pleasure reigned: in Rome especially,
+people lived in a continuous orgy; the nobility answered in crowds
+the invitations of Nero; the Senate, the great houses, where the
+conquerors of the world had been born, swarmed with young athletes and
+drivers, who had no other ambition but that of adding the prize of a
+race to the war trophies of their ancestors; the imperial palace was
+invaded by a noisy horde of zitherists, actors, jockeys, athletes,
+among whom Burrhus and, still more, Seneca, were beginning to feel
+most ill at ease.
+
+Agrippina's death, even though it had yet deferred Nero's marrying
+Poppaea, had made possible the change in the government that a part of
+the people wished. We owe to this new principle the immense ruins of
+ancient Rome; but this fact does not authorise us to consider it a
+Roman principle: it was, instead, a principle of Oriental civilisation
+which had forced itself upon the Roman traditions after a long and
+painful effort. The revolution, however, had been long preparing and
+corresponded to the popular aspirations. It would, therefore, have
+redounded to the advantage of the Emperor, who had dared to break
+loose from a superannuated tradition, had not Agrippina's spectre
+still haunted Rome. To their honour be it said, the people of Rome and
+Italy had not yet become so corrupted by Oriental civilisation as to
+forget parricide in a few festivals.
+
+The party of tradition, though weakened, existed. They began a brave
+fight against Nero, using the assassination of Agrippina as the
+adverse party had exploited the antifeminist prejudices of the masses
+against Agrippina herself. They denounced the parricide to the people,
+in order to attack the champion of Orientalism and irritate against
+him the indifferent mass, which, not understanding the great struggle
+between the Orient and Rome, remained unstirred. Hoping the excitement
+of spirit had somewhat subsided, Nero had finally carried out his old
+plan of divorcing Octavia and marrying Poppaea; but the divorce caused
+great popular demonstrations in Rome in favour of the abused wife and
+against the intruder.
+
+Moreover, thanks to his extravagance, Nero made things very easy for
+his enemies, the defenders of tradition. His habits of dissipation
+exaggerated all the faults of his character, chiefly his morbid need
+of showing himself off, of defying the public, their prejudices, their
+opinions. It is difficult to discern how much is true and how much is
+false in the hideous stories of debauchery handed down to us by the
+ancient writers, particularly Suetonius.
+
+Although one might believe--and I believe it for my part--that there
+is a great deal of exaggeration in such tales, it is certain that
+Nero's personality played too conspicuous a part in his administrative
+revolution. Ready as the people were to admire a more generous and
+luxurious government than that of Augustus, Tiberius, and Claudius,
+they still liked to look to the chief of State as to a man of gravity
+and austerity, who let others amuse themselves, though he himself be
+bored. The vain and bizarre young man, who was always the guest of
+honour at his own _fetes_, who never hesitated to satisfy his most
+extravagant caprices, who spent so much money to divert himself,
+shocked the last republican susceptibilities of Italy. The wise felt
+alarmed: with such expenses, would it not all end in bankruptcy?
+For all these causes, they soon began to reproach Nero for his
+prodigality, although the people enjoyed it, just as they had been
+malcontent with Tiberius for his parsimony. His caprices, ever
+stranger, little by little roused even that part of the public which
+was not fanatically attached to tradition. At that time Nero developed
+his foolish vanity of actor, his caprice for the theatre, which soon
+was to become an all-absorbing mania. The chief of the Empire, the
+heir of Julius Caesar, dreamed of nothing else than descending from
+the height of human grandeur to the scene of a theatre, to experience
+before the public the sensations of those players whom the Roman
+nobility had always regarded as instruments of infamous pleasure!
+
+Disgusted with Nero's mismanagement and follies, Seneca took the death
+of Burrhus as an opportunity to retire. Then Nero, freed from the
+last person who still retained any influence over him, gave himself
+up entirely to the insane swirl of his caprices. He ended one day by
+presenting himself in the theatre of Naples. Naples was yet then a
+Greek city. Nero had chosen it for this reason; he was applauded with
+frenzy. But the Italians of the other cities protested: the chief of
+the Empire appearing in a theatre, his hand on the zither and not
+on the sword! Imagine what would be the impression if some day a
+sovereign went on the stage of the _folies Bergeres_ as a "number" for
+a sleight-of-hand performance!
+
+Public attention, however, was turned from this immense scandal by a
+frightful calamity--the famous conflagration of Rome, which began the
+nineteenth of July of the year 64 and devastated almost all quarters
+of the city for ten days. What was the cause of the great disaster?
+This very obscure point has much interested historians, who have tried
+in vain to throw light on the subject. As far as I am concerned, I
+by no means exclude the hypothesis that the fire might have been
+accidental. But when they are crushed under the weight of a great
+misfortune, men always feel sure that they are the victims of human
+wickedness: a sad proof of their distrust in their fellow men. The
+plebs, reduced to utter misery by the disaster, began to murmur
+that mysterious people had been seen hurrying through the different
+quarters, kindling the fire and cumbering the work of help; these
+incendiaries must have been sent by some one in power--by whom?
+
+A strange rumour circulated: Nero himself had ordered the city to be
+burned, in order to enjoy a unique sight, to get an idea of the fire
+of Troy, to have the glory of rebuilding Rome on a more magnificent
+scale. The accusation seems to me absurd. Nero was a criminal, but he
+was not a fool to the point of provoking the wrath of the whole people
+for so light a motive, especially after Agrippina's death. Tacitus
+himself, in spite of his hatred of all Caesar's family and his
+readiness to make them responsible for the most serious crimes, does
+not venture to express belief in this story--sufficient proof that
+he considers it absurd and unlikely. Nevertheless, the hatred that
+surrounded Nero and Poppaea made every one, not only among the ignorant
+populace, but also among the higher classes, accept it readily. It was
+soon the general opinion that Nero had accomplished what Brennus and
+Catiline's conspirators could not do. Was a more horrible monster ever
+seen? Parricide, actor, incendiary!
+
+The traditionalist party, the opposition, the unsatisfied, exploited
+without scruple this popular attitude, and Nero, responsible for a
+sufficient number of actual crimes, found himself accused also of
+an imaginary one. He was so frightened that he decided to give the
+clamouring people a victim, some one on whom Rome could avenge its
+sorrow. An inquiry into the causes of the conflagration was ordered.
+The inquest came to a strange conclusion. The fire had been started
+by a small religious sect, recently imported from the Orient, a
+sect whose name most people then learned for the first time: the
+Christians.
+
+How did the Roman authorities come to such a conclusion? That is one
+of the greatest mysteries of universal history, and no one will ever
+be able to clear it. If the explanation of the disaster as accepted by
+the people was absurd, the official explanation was still more so. The
+Christian community of Rome, the pretended volcano of civil hatred,
+which had poured forth the destructive fire over the great metropolis,
+was a small and peaceful congregation of pious idealists.
+
+A great and simple man, Paul of Tarsus, had taken up again among them
+the great work in which Augustus and Tiberius had failed: he aimed at
+the remaking of popular conscience, but used means until then unknown
+in the Graeco-Latin civilisation. Not in the name of the ancestors, of
+the traditions, of ideals of political power, did he seek to persuade
+men to work, to refrain from vice, to live honestly and simply; but
+in the name of a single God, whom man had in the beginning offended
+through his pride, in the name of the Son of God, who had taken human
+form and volunteered to die as a criminal on the cross, to appease
+the Father's wrath against the rebellious creature. On the Graeco-Roman
+idea of duty, Paul grafted the Christian idea of sin. Doubtless the
+new theology must have seemed at first obscure to Greeks and Romans;
+but Paul put into it that new spirit, mutual love, which the dry Latin
+soul had hardly ever known, and he vivified it with the example of an
+obscure life of sacrifice.
+
+Paul was born of a noble Hebrew family of Tarsus, and was a man of
+high culture. He had, to use a modern expression, simplified himself,
+renounced his position in a time when few could resist the passion for
+luxury, and taken up a trade for his living; with the scanty profit
+from his work as a tent-maker, alone and on foot he made measureless
+journeys through the Empire, everywhere preaching the redemption of
+man. Finally, after numberless adventures and perils, he had come to
+Rome and had, in the great city frenzied by the delirium of luxury and
+pleasure, repeated to the poor, who alone were willing to hear him:
+"Be chaste and pure, do not deceive each other, love one another, help
+one another, love God."
+
+If Nero had known the little society of pious idealists, he surely
+would have hated it, but for other motives than the imaginary
+accusations of his police. In this story St. Paul is exactly the
+antithesis of Nero. The latter represents the atrocious selfishness of
+rich, peaceful, highly civilised epochs; the former, the ardent moral
+idealism which tries to react against the cardinal vices of power and
+wealth through universal self-sacrifice and asceticism. Neither of
+these men is to be comprehended without the other, because the moral
+doctrine of Paul is partly a reaction against, the violent folly for
+which Nero stood the symbol; but it certainly was not philosophical
+considerations of this kind that led the Roman authorities to rage
+against the Christians. The problem, I repeat, is insoluble. However
+this may be, the Christians were declared responsible for the fire; a
+great number were taken into custody, sentenced to death, executed in
+different ways, during the festivals that Nero offered to the people
+to appease them. Possibly Paul himself was one of the victims of this
+persecution.
+
+This diversion, however, was of no use. The conflagration definitely
+ruined Nero. With the conflagration begins the third period of
+his life, which lasts four years. It is characterised by absurd
+exaggerations of all kinds, which hastened the inevitable catastrophe.
+One grandiose idea dominates it: the idea of building on the ruins a
+new Rome, immense and magnificent, a true metropolis for the Empire.
+In order to carry out this plan, Nero did not economise; he began to
+spend in it the moneys laid aside to pay the legions. The people of
+Italy, however, and even of Rome, which grew rich on these public
+expenditures, did not show themselves thankful for this immense
+architectural effort. Every one was sure that the new city would be
+worse than the old one!
+
+Nero himself, exasperated by this invincible hate, exhausted by his
+own excesses, lost what reason he had still left, and his government
+degenerated into a complete tyranny, suspicious, violent, and cruel.
+
+Piso's conspiracy caused him to order a massacre of patricians, which
+left terrible rancour in its wake; in an access of fury, he killed
+Poppaea; he began to imagine accusations against the richest men of the
+Empire, in order to confiscate their estates. His prodigality and the
+general carelessness had completely disorganised the finances of the
+Empire; he had to recur to all kinds of expedients to find money.
+Finally he undertook a great artistic tour in Greece--that province
+which had been the mother of arts--to play in its most celebrated
+theatres. This time indignation burst all bounds. The armies of Gaul
+and Spain, for a long time irregularly paid, led by their officers,
+revolted. This act of energy sufficed. On the 9th of June, 68 A.D.,
+abandoned by all the world, Nero was compelled to commit suicide.
+
+So the family of Julius Caesar disappears from history. After so much
+greatness, genius, and wisdom, the fall may seem petty and almost
+laughable. It is absurd to lose the Empire for the pleasure of singing
+in a theatre. And yet, bizarre as the end may seem, it was not the
+result of the vices, the follies, and the crimes of Nero alone. In his
+way, Nero himself was, like all members of his family, the victim of
+the contradictory situation of his times.
+
+It has been repeated for centuries, that the foundation of monarchy
+was the great mission of Caesar's family. I believe this to be a great
+mistake. The lot of the family would have been simple and easy, if it
+had been able to found a monarchy. The family of Caesar had to solve
+another problem, much more difficult,--in fact insoluble; a problem
+that may be compared, from a certain point of view, to that which
+confronted the Bonapartes in the nineteenth century. The Bonapartes
+found old monarchical, legitimistic, theocratic Europe agitated by
+forces which, although making it impossible for the ancient regime
+to continue, were not yet able to establish a new society, entirely
+democratic, republican, and lay. The family of Caesar found the
+opposite situation: an old military and aristocratic republic, which
+was changing into an intellectual and monarchical civilisation, based
+on equality, but opposing formidable resistance to the forces of
+transformation. In these situations the two families tried in all ways
+to reconcile things not to be conciliated, to realise the impossible:
+one, the popular monarchy and imperial democracy; the other, the
+monarchical republic and Orientalised Latinity. The contradiction
+was for both families the law of life, the cause of greatness; this
+explains why neither was ever willing to extricate itself from it, in
+spite of the advice of philosophers, the malcontent of the masses, the
+pressure of parties, and the evident dangers. This contradiction
+was also the fatality of both families, the cause of their ruin; it
+explains the shortness of their power, their restless existence, and
+the continuous catastrophes that opened the way to the final crash.
+
+Waterloo and Sedan, the exile of Julia and the tragic failure of
+Tiberius's government, all the misfortunes great and small which
+struck the two families, were always consequences of the insoluble
+contradiction they tried to solve. You have had a perfectly
+characteristic example of it in the brief story I have been telling
+you. Agrippina becomes an object of universal hatred and dies by
+assassination because she defends tradition; her son disregards
+tradition and, chiefly for this very reason, is finally forced to kill
+himself. Doubtless the fate of the Bonapartes is less tragic, because
+they, at least, escaped the infamous legend created by contemporary
+hatred against Caesar's family, and artfully developed by the
+historians of successive generations. I hope to be able to prove
+in the continuation of my _Greatness and Decline of Rome_, that
+the history of Caesar's family, as it has been told by Tacitus and
+Suetonius, is a sensational novel, a legend containing not much more
+truth than the legend of Atrides. The family of Caesar, placed in the
+centre of the great struggle going on in Rome between the old Roman
+militarism, and the intellectual civilisation of the Orient,
+between nationalism and cosmopolitism, between Asiatic mysticism
+and traditional religion, between egoism over-excited by culture and
+wealth, and the supreme interests of the species, had to injure too
+many interests, to offend too many susceptibilities. The injured
+interests, the offended susceptibilities, revenged themselves through
+defaming legends.
+
+The case of Nero is particularly instructive. He was half insane and
+a veritable criminal: it would be absurd to attempt in his favour
+the historical rehabilitation to which other members of the family,
+Tiberius for instance, have a right. And yet it has not been enough
+for succeeding generations that he atoned for his follies and crimes
+by death and infamy. They have fallen upon his memory: they have
+overlooked that extenuating circumstance of considerable importance,
+his age when elected; they have gone so far as to make him into a
+unique monster, no longer human and even the Antichrist!
+
+Surely he first shed Christian blood; but if we consider the tendency
+he represented in Roman history, we can hardly classify him among the
+great enemies of Christianity. Unwittingly, Augustus and Tiberius were
+two great enemies of the Christian teachings, because they sought
+by all means to reinforce Roman tradition, and struggled
+against everything that would one day form the essence of
+Christianity--cosmopolitism, mysticism, the domination of intellectual
+people, the influence of the philosophical and metaphysical spirit
+on life. Nero, on the contrary, with his repeated efforts to
+spread Orientalism in Rome, and chiefly with his taste for art, was
+unconsciously a powerful collaborator of future Christian propaganda.
+We must not forget this: the masses in the Empire became Christian
+only because they had first been imbued with the Oriental spirit.
+
+Nero and St. Paul, the man that wished to enjoy all, and the man
+that suffered all, are in their time two extreme antitheses: with
+the passing of centuries, they become two collaborators. While one
+suffered hunger and persecution to preach the doctrine of redemption,
+the other called to Italy and to Rome, to amuse himself, the
+goldsmiths, weavers, sculptors, painters, architects, musicians, whom
+Rome had always rebuffed.
+
+Both disappeared, cut off by the violent current of their epoch;
+centuries went by: the name of the Emperor grew infamous, while that
+of the tent-maker radiated glory. In the midst of the immense disorder
+that accompanied the dissolution of the Roman Empire, as the bonds
+among men relaxed, and the human mind seemed to be incapable of
+reasoning and understanding, the disciples of the saint realised
+that the goldsmiths, weavers, sculptors, painters, architects, and
+musicians of the Emperor could collect the masses around the churches
+and make them patiently listen to what they could still comprehend of
+Paul's sublime morality. When you regard St. Mark or Notre Dame or any
+other stupendous cathedral of the Middle Ages, like museums for the
+work of art they hold, you see the luminous symbol of this paradoxical
+alliance between victim and executioner.
+
+Only through the alliance of Paul and Nero could the Church dominate
+the disorder of the Middle Ages, and, from antiquity to the modern
+world, carry through that formidable storm the essential principles
+from which our civilisation developed: a decisive proof that, if
+history in its details is a continuous strife, as a whole it is the
+inevitable final reconciliation of antagonistic forces, obtained in
+spite of the resistance of individuals and by sacrificing them.
+
+
+
+Julia and Tiberius
+
+
+"He walked with head bent and fixed, the face stern, a taciturn man
+exchanging no word with those about him.... Augustus realised these
+severe and haughty manners, and more than once tried to excuse them
+in the Senate and to the people, saying that they were defects of
+temperament, not signs of a sinister spirit."
+
+This is the picture that Suetonius gives us of Tiberius, the man
+who, in 9 B.C., after the death of Agrippa and Drusus, stood next to
+Augustus, his right hand and pre-established successor. At that time
+Augustus was fifty-four years old; not an old man, but he was ill and
+had presided over the Republic for twenty-one years. Many people must
+have asked themselves what would happen if Augustus should die,
+or should definitely retire to private life. The answer was not
+uncertain: since Rome was engaged in the conquest of Germany, the
+chief of the Empire and of the army ought to be a valiant general and
+a man of expert acquaintance with Germanic affairs. Tiberius was the
+first general of his time and knew Germany and the Germans better than
+any other Roman.
+
+The passage from Suetonius, just quoted, indicates that Tiberius was
+not altogether popular, yet it was the accepted opinion that Rome
+and Italy might well be content to rely upon so capable a general and
+diplomat, if Augustus failed. This attitude, however, changed when
+the death of Drusus entirely removed the alternative of choice between
+himself and Tiberius, and the latter, up to that time universally
+admired, began to be met, even among the nobility, by a strong
+opposition. How can this apparently inexplicable fact be made clear?
+The theory of corruption so dear to the ancients, which I have already
+explained, gives us the key to the mystery. Those who have been
+disposed to see in that theory merely a plaything of poets, orators,
+philosophers, will now realise that it had power enough to kill the
+person and destroy the family of the first citizen of the Empire. That
+kind of continuous fear of luxury, of amusements, of prodigality, on
+account of which the ancients called corruption so many things that
+we define as progress, was not a sentiment always equally alive in the
+mind of the multitude. The Romans, like ourselves, loved to live and
+to enjoy; this is so true that philosophers and legislators constantly
+took pains to remind them of the danger of allowing too much liberty
+to the appetites; but more effective than the counsels of philosophers
+and the threats of the law, great public calamities inspired in the
+masses, at least temporarily, a spirit of puritanism and austerity.
+Of this the consequences of the battle of Actium afforded noteworthy
+proof.
+
+Those who have read the fourth volume of _The Greatness and Decline of
+Rome_ may perhaps remember how I have described the conservative
+and traditionalist movement of the first decade of the government
+of Augustus. Frightened by the revolution, men's minds had reverted
+precipitously to the past. A new party, which one might call the
+traditionalist, had sought to re-establish the old-time order, in the
+state, in customs, in ideas; to combat the corruption of customs; and
+of this party Augustus had been the right arm. Indeed, to so great
+an extent had this party stirred up public spirit and prevailed upon
+those in power that in 18 B.C. it succeeded in passing some great
+social laws on luxury, on matrimony, on dress. With these laws, Rome
+proposed to remake, by terrible measures, the old, prolific, austere
+nobility of the aristocratic era. The _lex de maritandis_ _ordinibus_
+aimed with a thousand vexatious restrictions to constrain the nobility
+to marry and have children; the _lex sumptuaria_ studied to restrain
+extravagance; the _lex de adulteriis_ proclaimed martial law in the
+family, menacing an unfaithful wife and her accomplice with exile for
+life and the confiscation of half their substance; legislation of the
+harshest, this, which should scourge Rome to blood, to keep her from
+falling anew into the inveterate vices from which the civil wars were
+born.
+
+The impression of the civil wars could not last forever. In fact,
+in the decade that followed the promulgation of the social laws, the
+puritan fervour, which had up to that time heated all Italy, began
+to cool. Wealth increased; the confidence that order and peace were
+actually re-established, spread everywhere; the generation that had
+seen the civil wars, disappeared; peace and growing prosperity stirred
+in the next generation a desire for freedom and pleasure that would
+not endure the narrow traditionalism and the puritanism of the
+preceding generation; consequently also the laws of 18 B.C. became
+intolerable.
+
+To understand this change in public spirit which had such serious
+consequences, there is no better way than by studying the most
+celebrated writer of this new generation, Ovid, who represents it most
+admirably both in life and works. Ovid was born at Sulmona in 43 B.C.
+He was about the same age as Tiberius,--of a knight's family--that
+is, of the wealthy middle class. He was destined by his father to the
+study of oratory and jurisprudence, evidently to make a political man
+of him, a senator, a future consul or proconsul, and to contribute to
+the great national restoration that his generation proposed to itself
+and of which Augustus was architect, preparing a new family for the
+political aristocracy that was governing the Empire. Ovid's father
+had all the requirements demanded by law and custom: a considerable
+fortune, the half-nobility of the equestrian order, an intelligent
+son, the means to give him the necessary culture--a favourable
+combination of circumstances which was wholly undone by a bit of
+unforeseen contrariety, the son's invincible inclination for what his
+father called, with little respect, a "useless study," literature.
+The young man had indifferently studied oratory and law, gone to Rome,
+married, made friendships in the high society of the capital, been
+elected to the offices preceding the quaestorship; but when the time
+arrived for presenting himself as candidate for the quaestorship
+itself--that is, the time for beginning the true _curriculum_ of the
+magistracies, he had declared that he would rather be a great poet
+than a consul, and there was no persuading him farther on the long
+road opened to political ambitions.
+
+With the episode of Julia and Tiberius in mind, I have stated that
+Ovid's life epitomises the new generation, because it shows us
+in action the first of the forces that dissolved the aristocratic
+government and the nobility artificially reconstituted by Augustus
+at the close of the civil wars--intellectualism. The case of Ovid
+demonstrates that intellectual culture, literature, poetry, instead
+of being, for the Roman aristocracy, as in older times, a simple
+ornament, secondary to politics, had already a prime attraction for
+the man of genius; that even among the higher classes, devoted by
+tradition only to military and political life, there appeared, by the
+side of the leaders in war and politics, the professional literary
+man. The study of Ovid's work shows something even more noteworthy:
+that, profiting by the discords in the ruling class, these literary
+men feared no longer to express and to re-enforce the discontent,
+the bad feeling, the aversion, that the efforts of the State to
+re-establish a more vigorous social order was rousing in one part of
+the public.
+
+Ovid's first important work was the _Amores_, which was certainly out
+by the year 8 B.C. although in a different form from that in which
+we now have it. To understand what this book really was when it was
+published, one must remember that it was written, read, and what
+is more, _admired_, ten years after the promulgation of the _lex de
+maritandis ordinibus_ and of the _lex de adulteriis_; it should be
+read with what remains of the text of those laws in hand.
+
+We are astonished at the book, full of excitements to frivolity, to
+dissipation, to pleasure, to those very activities that appeared to
+the ancients to form the most dangerous part of the "corruption."
+Extravagances of a libertine poet? The single-handed revolt of a
+corrupt youth, which cannot be considered a sign of the times? No. If
+there had not been in the public at large, in the higher classes, in
+the new generation, a general sympathy with this poetry, subversive of
+the solemn Julian laws, Ovid would never have been recognised in the
+houses of the great, petted and admired by high society. The great
+social laws of Augustus, the publication of which had been celebrated
+by Horace in the _Carmen Seculare_, wounded too many interests,
+tormented too many selfishnesses, intercepted too many liberties.
+
+His revolutionary elegies had made Ovid famous, because these
+interests and these selfishnesses finally rebelled with the new
+generation, which had not seen the civil wars. Other incidents before
+and after the publication of the _Amores_ also show this reaction
+against the social laws. Therefore Augustus proposed about this time
+to abolish the provision of the _lex de maritandis ordinibus_ that
+excluded celibates from public spectacles; and by his personal
+intervention sought to put a check upon the scandalous trials for
+adultery that his law had originated--two acts that were so much
+admired by a part of the public that statues were erected to him by
+popular subscription.
+
+In short, this new movement of public opinion explains the opposition
+exerted from this time on against Tiberius and makes us understand how
+there arose the conflict in which this mysterious personage was to be
+entangled for the rest of his life, and to lose, by no fault of his
+own, so great a part of his reputation. I hope to prove that the
+Tiberius of Tacitus and Suetonius is a fantastic personality, the hero
+of a wretched and improbable romance, invented by party hatred;
+that Tiberius remained, as a German historian has defined it, an
+undecipherable enigma, simply because there has never been the will to
+recognise how much alive the aristocratic republican traditions
+still were, and what force they still exerted in the State and in the
+family.
+
+Tiberius was but an authentic Claudius--that is, a true descendant of
+one of the oldest, the proudest, the most aristocratic families of the
+Roman nobility, a man with all the good qualities and all the defects
+of the old Roman aristocracy, a man who regarded things and men with
+the eyes of a senator of the times of Scipio Africanus--a living
+anachronism, a fossil, if you will, from a by-gone age, in a world
+that wished to tolerate no more either the vices or the virtues of the
+old aristocracy. He thought that the Empire ought to be governed by a
+limited aristocracy of diplomats and warriors, rigidly authoritative,
+exclusively Roman, which should know how to check the general
+corrupting of customs, the current extravagance and dissipation,
+beginning its task by imposing upon itself an inexorable
+self-discipline. Even though he belonged to the generation of Ovid--to
+the generation that had not seen the civil wars--Tiberius, by
+singular exception, kept aloof from the undisciplined frivolity of his
+contemporaries. He desired the severe application of the social
+laws of the year 18, as of all the traditional norms of aristocratic
+discipline. His generation therefore soon found him an enemy,
+especially after Drusus's death seemed to leave neither doubt nor
+choice as to the successor of Augustus. From this contemporary
+attitude arises the tacit aversion in the midst of which, after the
+lapse of so many centuries, we still feel Tiberius living and working,
+an aversion which steadily grows even while he renders the most signal
+services to the Empire.
+
+There was between him and his generation irreconcilable discord.
+However, it is not likely that this blind and secret hatred alone
+could have seriously injured Tiberius, whose power and merits were so
+great, if it had not been considerably helped by incidents of various
+nature. The first and most important of these was the discord that had
+arisen, shortly after the death of Drusus, between Tiberius and his
+wife Julia, the daughter of Augustus and the widow of Agrippa.
+
+Tiberius had married her against his will in the year 11, after the
+death of Agrippa, by order of Augustus, and had at first tried to
+live in accord with her; the attempt was vain, and the spirits of the
+husband and wife were soon parted in fatal disagreement. "He lived at
+first," writes Suetonius, "in harmony with Julia; but soon grew cool
+toward her, and finally the estrangement reached such a point after
+the death of their boy born at Aquileia, that Tiberius lived in a
+separate apartment"--a separation, as we would call it, in "bed and
+board." What was the reason of this discord? No ancient historian has
+revealed it; however, we can guess with sufficient probability from
+what we know of the characters of the pair and the discord that
+divided Roman society. If Tiberius was not the monster of Capri, Julia
+was certainly not the miserable Bacchante of the scandalous Roman
+chronicle. Macrobius has pictured her in human lights and shadows, a
+probable image, describing her as a highly cultured woman, lavish
+in tastes and expenditure, fond of beautiful literature, of the
+fine arts, and of the company of handsome and elegant young men. She
+belonged to the new generation of which Ovid was spokesman and poet;
+while Tiberius represented archaic traditionalism, the spirit of a
+past generation.
+
+It is easy to understand how these two persons, incarnating the
+irreconcilable opposition of two epochs, two _morales_, two societies,
+of Roman militarism and of Oriental culture, could not live together.
+A man like Tiberius, severe, simple, who detested frivolous pleasures,
+caring more for war than for society life, could not live in peace
+with this beautiful and vivacious creature, who loved luxury,
+prodigality, brilliant company. It is not rash to suppose that
+the _lex sumptuaria_ of the year 18 was the first grave cause of
+disagreement. Julia, given, as Macrobius describes her, to profuse
+expenditure and pretentious elegance, could not take this law
+seriously; while it was the duty of Tiberius, who always protested by
+deed as by word against the barren pomp of the rich, to see that his
+wife serve as an example of simplicity to the other matrons of Rome.
+
+Very soon there occurred an accident, not uncommon in unfortunate
+marriages, but which for special reasons was, in the family of
+Tiberius, far more than wontedly dangerous. Tacitus tells us that
+after Julia was out of favour with Tiberius, she contracted a relation
+with an elegant young aristocrat, one Sempronius Gracchus, of the
+family of the famous tribunes. Accepting as true the affirmation of
+Tacitus, in itself likely, we can very well explain the behaviour and
+acts of Tiberius in these years. The misdoing of Julia offended
+not only the man and husband, but placed also the statesman, the
+representative of the traditionalist party, in the gravest perplexity.
+
+According to the _lex de adulteriis_, made by Augustus in the year
+18, the husband ought either to punish the unfaithful wife himself or
+denounce her to the praetor. Could he, Tiberius, provoke so frightful
+a scandal in the house of the "First Citizen of the Republic"; drive
+from Rome, defamed, the daughter of Augustus, the most noted lady of
+Rome, who had so many friends in all circles of its society? Suetonius
+speaks of the disgust of Tiberius for Julia, "_quam neque criminari
+aut demittere auderet_"--whom he dared neither incriminate nor
+repudiate. On the other hand, did not he, the intransigeant
+traditionalist, who kept continually reproving the nobility for their
+laxity in self-discipline, merit rebuke, for allowing this thing to
+go on, not applying the law? The difficulty was serious; the _lex de
+adulteriis_ began to be a torment to its creators. Unable to separate
+from, unwilling to live with, this woman who had traduced him and whom
+he despised, Tiberius was reduced to maintaining a merely apparent
+union to avoid the scandal of a trial and divorce.
+
+This proceeding, however, was an expedient in that condition of things
+both insufficient and dangerous. The discord between Tiberius and
+Julia put into the hands of the young nobility, up to that time
+unarmed, a terrible weapon against the illustrious general, who was,
+meanwhile, fighting the Germans. The young nobility, inimical to the
+social laws and to Tiberius, rallied about Julia, and the effects of
+this alliance were not slow in appearing. Julia had had five sons by
+Agrippa, of whom the eldest two, Caius and Lucius, had been adopted
+by Augustus. In the year 6 B.C., the eldest, Caius, reached the age of
+fourteen. He was therefore but a lad; notwithstanding his youth, there
+was suddenly brought forward the strange, almost incredible, proposal
+to make a law by which he might at once be elected consul for the year
+754 A.U.C, when he would be twenty years old.
+
+Who made this proposal? Augustus, if we believe Suetonius, out of
+excessive fondness for his adopted sons. Dion, on the contrary, tells
+these things differently. He says that from the beginning Augustus
+opposed the law, and so leads us to doubt that it was either proposed
+or desired by that Prince. The facts are that a party in Rome kept
+insisting till Augustus supported this law with his authority, and
+that from the first he was unwilling to be accessory to an election
+that overturned without reason every Roman constitutional right.
+
+Who then were these strange admirers of a child of fourteen, who to
+make him consul did not hesitate to do violence to tradition, to the
+laws, to good sense, and, finally, to the adoptive father? It was the
+opposition to Tiberius, the party of the young nobility and Julia, who
+were seeking a rule less severe, and, if not the abolition, at least
+the mitigated application of the great social laws. They aimed to put
+forward the young Caius, to set him early before public attention, to
+hasten his political career, in order to oppose a rival to Tiberius;
+to prepare another collaborator and successor of Augustus, to make
+Tiberius less indispensable and therefore less powerful.
+
+In brief, here was the hope of using against Tiberius at once the
+maternal pride and affection of Julia, the tenderness of Augustus, and
+the popularity of the name of Caesar, which Caius carried. The people
+had never greatly loved the name of the Claudii, a haughty line of
+invincible aristocrats, always hard and overbearing with the poor,
+always opposed to the democratic party. The party against Tiberius
+hoped that when to a Claudius there should be opposed a Caesar, the
+public spirit would revert to the dazzling splendour of the name.
+
+Now we understand why Augustus had at first objected. The privileges
+that he had caused to be conceded to Marcellus, to Drusus, to
+Tiberius, were all of less consequence than those demanded for
+Caius and had all been justified either by urgent needs of State, or
+services already rendered; but how could it be tolerated that without
+any reason, without the slightest necessity, there should be made
+consul a lad of fourteen, of whom it would be difficult to predict
+even whether he would become a man of common sense? Moreover Augustus
+could not so easily bring himself to offend Tiberius, who would not
+admit that the chief of the Republic should help his enemies offer him
+so great an affront. How could it be, that while he, amid fatigues
+and perils in cold and savage regions, was fighting the Germans and
+holding in subjection the European provinces, that _jeunesse doree_
+of good-for-nothings, cynics, idlers, poets, which infested the new
+generation, was conniving with his wife to set against him a child
+of fourteen?--to gain, as it were, sanction from a law that the State
+would not be safe till by the side of this Claudius should be placed a
+Caesar, beardless and inexpert, as if the name of the latter outweighed
+the genius and experience of the former? And Augustus, the head of the
+Republic, would he have tolerated such an outrage? Tiberius not only
+resisted the law but exacted the open disapproval of Augustus; in
+fact, at the beginning, Augustus stood out against it as Tiberius
+wished; but difficulties grew by the way and became grave.
+
+Julia and her friends knew how to dispose public opinion ably in
+their own favour, to intrigue in the Senate, to exploit the increasing
+unpopularity of the social laws, of the spreading aversion to Tiberius
+and the admiration for other members of Augustus's family. The
+proposal to make Caius consul became in a short time so popular
+for one or another of these reasons, and as the symbol of a future
+government less severe and traditionalistic, that Augustus felt less
+and less able to withstand the current. On the other hand, to yield
+meant mortally to offend Tiberius. Finally, as was his wont, this
+astute politician thought to extricate himself from the difficulty by
+a transaction and an expedient. Dion, shortly after having said that
+Augustus finally yielded to the popular will, adds that, to make Caius
+more modest, he gave Tiberius the tribunician power for five years and
+charged him with subduing the revolt in Armenia. Augustus's idea is
+clear: he was trying to please everybody--the partisans of Caius Caesar
+by not opposing the law, and Tiberius, by giving the most splendid
+compensation, making him his colleague in place of Agrippa.
+
+Unfortunately, Tiberius was not the man to accept this compensation.
+No honour could make up for the insult Augustus had done him, though
+yielding but in part to his enemies, because by so doing even Augustus
+had seemed to think it necessary to set him beside a lad of fourteen;
+he would go away; they might do as they pleased and charge Caius with
+directing the war in Germany. Indignant at the timid opportunism of
+Augustus, disgusted with the wife whom he could neither accuse nor
+repudiate, Tiberius demanded permission of Augustus to retire to
+Rodi to private life, saying that he was tired and in need of repose.
+Naturally Augustus was frightened, begged and pleaded with him to
+remain, sent his mother Livia to beseech him, but every effort was
+futile; Tiberius was obstinate, and finally, since Augustus did not
+permit his departure, he threatened to let himself die of hunger.
+Augustus still tried to stand firm; one day, two days, three days, he
+let him fast without giving the required consent. At the end of the
+fourth day, Augustus had to recognise that Tiberius had serious intent
+to kill himself, and yielded. The Senate granted him permission to
+depart; and Tiberius at once started for Ostia, "without saying a
+word," writes Suetonius, "to those who accompanied him, and kissing
+but a few."
+
+It would be impossible to decide whether this retaliation of
+Tiberius's self-love was equal to the offence; and perhaps it is
+useless to discuss the point. It is certain, however, that the
+consequences of the departure of Tiberius were weighty. The first
+result was that the party of the young nobility, the party averse to
+the laws of the year 18, found itself master of the field; perhaps
+because the opposing party lost with Tiberius its most authoritative
+leader; perhaps because Augustus, irritated against Tiberius, inclined
+still more toward the contrary party; perhaps because public opinion
+judged severely the departure of Tiberius, who, already little
+admired, became decidedly unpopular. Julia and her friends triumphed,
+and not content with having conquered, wished to domineer; shortly
+afterward they obtained the concession of the same privileges as those
+granted to Caius for his younger brother Lucius. At the same
+time, Augustus prepared to make Caius and Lucius his two future
+collaborators in place of Tiberius; Ovid set his hand to a book still
+more scandalous and subversive than the _Amores_, the _Ars Amandi_;
+public indulgence covered with its protection all those accused on
+grounds of the laws of the year 18; and finally, the two boys, Caius
+and Lucius, became popular, like great personages, all over
+Italy. There have been found in different cities of the peninsula
+inscriptions in their honour, one of which, very long and curious, is
+at Pisa; it is full of absurd eulogies of the two lads, who had as yet
+done nothing, good or bad. Italy must have been tired enough of a too
+conservative government, which had lasted twenty-five years, of an
+Empire reconquered by traditional ideas, if, in order to protest, it
+lionised the two young sons of Agrippa in ways that contradicted every
+idea and sentiment of Roman tradition.
+
+In conclusion, the departure of Tiberius, and the severe judgment the
+public gave it, still further weakened the conservative party, already
+for some years in decline, by a natural transformation of the public
+spirit. Perhaps the party of tradition would have been entirely spent,
+had not events soon reminded Rome that its spirit was the life of the
+military order. The departure of Tiberius, the man who represented
+this spirit, rapidly disorganised the army and the external policy
+of Rome. Up to that time Augustus had had beside him a powerful
+helper--first Agrippa, afterwards Tiberius; but then he found himself
+alone at the head of the Empire, a man already well on in years; and
+for the first time it appeared that this zealous bureaucrat, this
+fastidious administrator, this intellectual idler, who could do an
+enormous amount of work on condition that he be not forced to issue
+from his study and encounter currents of air too strong for him, was
+insufficient to direct alone the politics of an immense empire, which
+required, in addition to the sagacity of the administrator and the
+ingenuity of the legislator, the resoluteness of the warrior and the
+man of action.
+
+The State rapidly fell into a stupor. In Germany, where it was
+necessary to proceed to the ordering of the province, everything was
+suspended; the people, apparently subdued, were not bound to pay any
+tribute, and were left to govern themselves solely and entirely
+by their own laws--a strange anomaly in the history of the Roman
+conquests, which only the departure of Tiberius can explain. At such
+a distance, when he was no longer counselled by Tiberius who so well
+understood German affairs, Augustus trusted no other assistants,
+fearing lack of zeal and intelligence; distrusting himself also, he
+dared initiate nothing in the conquered province. The Senate, inert
+as usual, gave it not a thought. So Germany remained an uncertainty,
+neither a province nor independent, for fifteen years, a fact wherein
+is perhaps to be found the real cause of the catastrophe of Varus,
+which ruined the whole German policy of Rome.
+
+Furthermore, in Pannonia and Dalmatia, when it was known that the most
+valiant general of Rome was in disgrace at Rodi, the malcontents took
+fresh courage, reopened an agitation that could but terminate in
+a revolt, much more dangerous than any preceding. In the Orient,
+Palestine arose in 4 B.C., on the death of Herod the Great, against
+his son, Archelaus, and against the Hellenised monarchy, demanding
+to be made a Roman province like Syria, and a frightful civil war
+illumined with its sinister glare the cradle of Jesus. The governor
+of Syria, Quintilius Varus, threw himself into Judea and succeeded in
+crushing the revolt; but Augustus, unable to bring himself either to
+give full satisfaction to the Hebrew people or to execute entirely the
+testament of Herod, decided as usual on a compromise: he divided
+the ancient kingdom of Herod the Great among three of his sons, and
+changed Archelaus's title of king to the more modest one of ethnarch.
+Then new difficulties arose with the Empire of the Parthians. In
+short, vaguely, in every part of the Empire and beyond its borders,
+there began to grow the sense that Rome was again weakening; a sense
+of doubt due to the decadence of the spirit of tradition and of the
+party representing it; to the new spirit of the new generation; and
+finally, to the absence of Tiberius, the one capable general of the
+time, which gradually disorganised even the western armies, the best
+in the Empire.
+
+This dissolution of the State naturally fed in the traditionalist
+party the hope of reconquering. Tiberius had sincere friends and
+admirers, especially among the nobility, less numerous than those of
+Julia, but more serious, because his merits were real. Many people
+among the higher classes--even though, like Augustus, they considered
+the obduracy of Tiberius excessive--thought that Rome no more
+possessed so many examples of illustrious men as to be able to retire
+its best general at thirty-seven. Very soon there arose in the circles
+about Augustus, in the Senate, in the comitia, a bitter contention
+between Tiberius's friends and his enemies; this was really a struggle
+between the traditionalist party, which busied itself conserving,
+together with the traditions of the old Romanism, the military and
+political power of Rome, and the party of the young nobility, which,
+without heeding the external dangers, wished to impel habits, ideas,
+the public spirit, toward the freer, broader forms of the Oriental
+civilisation, even at the risk of dissolving the State and the army.
+Julia and Tiberius personify the two parties; between them stands
+Augustus, who ought to decide, and is more uncertain than ever.
+Theoretically Augustus always inclined more toward Tiberius, but from
+disgust at his departure, from solicitude for domestic peace, from
+his little sympathy with his step-son, he was driven to the opposite
+party.
+
+In this duel, what was the behaviour and the part of Livia, the mother
+of Tiberius? The ancient historians tell us nothing; it is, at all
+events, hardly probable that Livia remained an inactive witness of
+the long struggle waged to secure the return of Tiberius and his
+reinstatement in the brilliant position once his. Moreover, Suetonius
+says that during his entire stay at Rodi, Tiberius communicated with
+Augustus by means of Livia. At any rate, the party of Tiberius was
+not long in understanding that he could not re-enter Rome, as long as
+Julia was popular and most powerful there; that to reopen the gates of
+Rome to the husband, it was necessary to drive out the wife. This was
+a difficult enterprise, because Julia was upheld by the party already
+dominant; she had the affection of Augustus; she was the mother
+of Caius and Lucius Caesar, the two hopes of the Republic, whose
+popularity covered her with a respect and a sympathy that made her
+almost invulnerable. Tiberius, instead, was unpopular. However, there
+is no undertaking impossible to party hate. Exasperated by the growing
+disfavour of public opinion, the party of Tiberius decided on a
+desperate expedient to which Tiberius himself would not have dared set
+hand; that is, since Julia had a paramour, to adopt against her the
+weapon supplied by the _lex Julia de adulteriis_, made by her father,
+and so provoke the terrible scandal that until then every one had
+avoided in fear.
+
+Unfortunately, we possess too few documents to write in detail the
+history of this dreadful episode; but everything becomes clear enough
+if one sees in the ruin of Julia a kind of terrible political and
+judicial blackmailing, tried by the friends of Tiberius to remove the
+chief obstacle to his return, and if one takes it that the friends
+of Tiberius succeeded in procuring proofs of the guilt of Julia and
+carried them to Augustus, not as to the head of the State, but to the
+father.
+
+Dion Cassius says that "Augustus finally, although tardily, came to
+recognise the misdeeds of his daughter," which signifies that at a
+given moment, Augustus could no longer feign ignorance of her sins,
+because the proofs were in the power of irreconcilable enemies, who
+would have refused to smother the scandal. These mortal enemies of
+Julia could have been no other than the friends of Tiberius. Julia had
+violated the law on adultery made by himself; Augustus could doubt it
+no more.
+
+To understand well the tragic situation in which Augustus was placed
+by these revelations, one must remember various things: first that
+the _lex de adulteriis_, proposed by Augustus himself, obliged the
+father--when the husband could not, or would not--to punish the guilty
+daughter, or to denounce her to the praetor, if he had not the courage
+to punish her himself; second, that this law arranged that if the
+father and the husband failed to fulfil their proper duty, any one
+whoever, the first comer, might in the name of public morals make
+the denunciation to the praetor and stand to accuse the woman and her
+accomplice. Tiberius, the husband, being absent at Rodi, he, Augustus,
+the father, must become the Nemesis of his daughter--must punish her
+or denounce her; if not, the friends of Tiberius could accuse her
+to the praetor, hale her before the quaestor, unveil to the public the
+shame of her private life.
+
+What should he do? Many a father had disdainfully refused to be the
+executioner of his own daughter, leaving to others the grim office of
+applying the _lex Julia_. Could he imitate such an example? He was the
+head of the Republic, the most powerful man of the Empire, the founder
+of a new political order; he could decide peace and war, govern the
+Senate at his pleasure, exalt or abase the powerful of the earth with
+a nod; and exactly for this reason he dared not evade the bitter task.
+He feared the envy, the moral and levelling prejudices of the middle
+classes, which needed every now and then to slaughter in the courts
+some one belonging to the upper classes, in order to delude themselves
+that justice is equal for all. To him had been granted the greatest
+privileges; but precisely on this account was it dangerous to try to
+cover his daughter with a privileged protection as prey too delicate
+for public attack. And then, if he himself gave the example of
+disobeying his law, who would observe it? The tremendous scandal would
+unnerve all the moral force of his legislation, which was the base
+of his prestige. The moment was terrible. Imagine this old man of
+sixty-two wearied by forty-four years of public life, embittered
+by the difficulties that sprang up about him, disquieted by the
+dissolution of State of which he was the impotent witness, finding
+himself all at once facing these alternatives--either destroy his
+daughter, or undo all the political work over which he had laboured
+for thirty years; and no temporising possible!
+
+Augustus was not a naturally cruel man, but before these alternatives
+his mind seems to have been for a moment convulsed by an access of
+grief and rage, the distant echo of which has come down to us. One
+moment, as Suetonius says, he had the idea of killing Julia. Then
+reason, pity, affection, gentler habits, prevailed. He did not give
+the sentence of death, but he was too practised a politician not
+to understand that she could not be saved; and as he had immolated
+Cicero, Lepidus, Antony, so he immolated her also to the necessity
+of preserving before Italy his prestige of severe legislator and
+impartial magistrate. To avoid the trial, he resolved to punish her
+himself with his power of _pater familias_ according to the _lex
+Julia_, exiling her to Pandataria and announcing the divorce to her
+in the name of Tiberius. He then despatched to the Senate a record of
+what he had done, and went away to the country, where he remained a
+long time, says Suetonius, seeing no one, the prey to profound grief.
+
+It seems that Julia's fall was a surprise to the public. In a day
+it learned that the highly popular daughter of Augustus had been
+condemned to exile by her father. This unexpected revelation let
+a storm loose in the metropolis. Even though there were not then
+published in Rome those vile newspapers, the pests of modern
+civilisation, that hunt their _soldi_ in the mud and slime of the
+basest human passions, the taste for scandalous revelations, the
+envy of genius and fortune, the pleasure of wreaking cruelty upon
+the unarmed, the low delight in pouring the basest feelings upon the
+honour of a woman abandoned by all--these passions animated minds
+then, as they do to-day; nor were there then wanting, more than
+now, wretches that profited by them, to gather money or satisfy bad
+instincts, without being able to dispose of a single, miserable
+sheet of paper. On every side delators sprang up, and an epidemic of
+slanders embittered Rome; every man who had name or wealth or some
+relation with the family of Augustus, ran the risk of being accused as
+a lover of Julia. Several youths of high society, frightened by these
+charges, committed suicide; others were condemned. About Julia
+were invented and spread the most atrocious calumnies, which formed
+thereafter the basis for the infamous legends that have remained
+in history attached to her name. The traditionalist party naturally
+abetted this furor of accusations and inventions, made to persuade the
+public that a fearful corruption was hidden among the upper classes
+and that to cure it fire and sword must be used without pity.
+
+The friends of Julia, the party of the young nobility, disconcerted at
+first by the explosion, did not delay to collect themselves and react;
+the populace of Rome made some great demonstrations in favour of Julia
+and demanded her pardon of Augustus. Many indeed, recognising that her
+punishment was legal, protested against the ferocity of her enemies,
+who had not hesitated to embitter with so terrible a scandal the old
+age of Augustus; protested against the mad folly of incrimination with
+which every part of Rome was possessed. Most people turned, the more
+envenomed, against Tiberius, attacking him with renewed fury as the
+cause of all the evil. He it was, they insisted, who had conceived the
+abominable scandal, willed it, imposed it upon Rome and the Empire!
+
+If Livia and the friends of Tiberius had thought to bring him in
+by the gate where Julia went out, they were not slow in recognising
+themselves deceived. The fall of Julia struck Tiberius on the rebound
+in his distant island. His unpopularity, already great, grew by all
+the disgust that the scandal about Julia had provoked, and became
+so formidable that one day about this time the inhabitants of Nimes
+overturned his statues. It was the beginning of the Christian era, but
+a dark silence brooded over the Palatine; the defamed Julia was making
+her hard way to Pandataria; Tiberius, discredited and detested, was
+wasting himself in inaction at Rodi; Augustus in his empty house,
+disgusted, distrustful, half paralysed by deep grief, would hear to
+no counsels of peace, of indulgence, of reconciliation. Tiberius and
+Julia were equally hateful to him, and as he did not allow himself
+to be moved by the friends of Julia, who did not cease to implore her
+pardon, so he resisted the friends of Tiberius, who tried to persuade
+him to reconciliation. What mattered it to him if the administration
+of the State fell to pieces on all sides; if Germans threatened
+revolt; if Rome had need of the courage, of the valour, of the
+experience of Tiberius?
+
+Tiberius from his retreat in Rodi kept every one in Rome afraid,
+beginning with Augustus. Too rich, too eager now for pleasures and
+comforts, Rome was almost disgusted with the virtues and the
+defects that had in fact created it, and which survived in
+Tiberius--aristocratic pride, the spirit of rigour in authority,
+military valour, simplicity. Peace had come, extending everywhere,
+with wealth, the desire for enjoyment, happiness, pleasure, freedom,
+loosening everywhere the firmest bonds of social discipline,
+persuading Rome to lay down the heavy armour it had worn for so many
+centuries.
+
+In this family quarrel, which comprises a struggle of everlasting
+tendencies, Julia represented the new spirit that will prevail,
+Tiberius, the old, destined to perish; but for the time being, both
+spirits, however opposed, were necessary; for peace did not expand its
+gifts in the Empire without the protection of the great armies
+that fought on the Rhine and on the Danube. If the spirit of peace
+refreshed Rome, Italy, the Provinces, only the old aristocratic and
+military spirit could keep the Germans on the Rhine. As in all great
+social conflicts, the two opposing parties were both, in a certain
+measure and each from its own point of view, right. Just for that
+reason, the equilibrium could be found only by a continual struggle
+in which men on one side and on the other were destined in turn to
+triumph or fall according to the moment; a struggle in which Augustus,
+fated to act the part of judge--that is, to recognise, with a final
+formal sanction, a sentence already pronounced by facts--had against
+his will in turn to condemn some and reward others.
+
+Julia will remain at Pandataria, and Tiberius will return to Rome
+when the danger on the Rhine becomes too threatening, yet without much
+lessening the conclusive vengeance of Julia. That will come in the
+long torment of the reign of Tiberius; in the infamy that will pursue
+him to posterity. After having been pitilessly hated and persecuted in
+life, this man and this woman, who had personified two social forces
+eternally at war with each other, will both fall in death into the
+same abyss of unmerited infamy: tragic spectacle and warning lesson on
+the vanity of human judgments!
+
+
+
+Wine in Roman History
+
+
+In history as it is generally written, there are to be seen only great
+personages and events, kings, emperors, generals, ministers, wars,
+revolutions, treaties. When one closes a huge volume of history,
+one knows why this state made a great war upon that; understands the
+political thinking, the strategic plans, the diplomatic agreements
+of the powerful, but would hardly be able to answer much more simple
+questions: how people ate and drank, how the warriors, politicians,
+diplomats, were clad, and in general how men lived at any particular
+time.
+
+History does not usually busy itself with little men and small facts,
+and is therefore often obscure, unprecise, vague, tiresome. I believe
+that if some day I deserve praise, it will be because I have tried
+to show that everything has value and importance; that all phenomena
+interweave, act, and react upon each other--economic changes and
+political revolutions, costumes, ideas, the family and the state,
+land-holding and cultivation. There are no insignificant events
+in history; for the great events, like revolutions and wars, are
+inevitably and indissolubly accompanied by an infinite number of
+slight changes, appearing in every part of a nation: if in life there
+are men without note, and if these make up the great majority of
+nations--that which is called the "mass"--there is no greater mistake
+than to believe they are extraneous to history, mere inert instruments
+in the hands of the oligarchies that govern. States and institutions
+rest on this nameless mass, as a building rests upon its foundations.
+
+I mean to show you now by a typical case the possible importance of
+these little facts, so neglected in history. I shall speak to you
+neither of proconsuls nor of emperors, neither of great conquests nor
+of famous laws, but of wine-dealers and vine-tenders, of the fortuned
+and famous plant that from wooded mountain-slopes, mirrored in the
+Black Sea, began its slow, triumphal spread around the globe to
+its twentieth century bivouac, California. I shall show you how the
+branches and tendrils of the plant of Bacchus are entwined about the
+history and the destiny of Rome.
+
+For many centuries the Romans were water-drinkers. Little wine was
+made in Italy, and that of inferior quality: commonly not even the
+rich were wont to drink it daily; many used it only as medicine during
+illness; women were never to take it. For a long time, any woman in
+Rome who used wine inspired a sense of repulsion, like that excited in
+Europe up to a short time ago by any woman who smoked. At the time
+of Polybius, that is, toward the middle of the second century B.C.,
+ladies were allowed to drink only a little _passum_,--a kind of sweet
+wine, or syrup, made of raisins. About the women too much given to the
+beverage of Dionysos, there were terrifying stories told. It was said,
+for instance, that Egnatius Mecenius beat his wife to death, because
+she secretly drank wine; and that Romulus absolved him (Pliny, _Nat.
+Hist._, bk. 14, ch. 13). It was told, on the word of Fabius Pictor,
+who mentioned it in his annals, that a Roman lady was condemned by
+the family tribunal to die of hunger, because she had stolen from
+her husband the keys of the wine-cellar. It was said the Greek judge
+Dionysius condemned to the loss of her dower a wife who, unknown to
+her husband, had drunk more than was good for her health: this story
+is one which shows that women began to be allowed the use of wine as a
+medicine. It was for a long time the vaunt of a true Roman to despise
+fine wines. For example, ancient historians tell of Cato that, when
+he returned in triumph from his proconsulship in Spain, he boasted
+of having drunk on the voyage the same wine as his rowers; which
+certainly was not, as we should say now, either Bordeaux or Champagne!
+
+Cato, it is true, was a queer fellow, who pleased himself by throwing
+in the face of the young nobility's incipient luxury a piece of almost
+brutal rudeness; but he exaggerated, not falsified, the ideas and the
+sentiments of Romanism. At that time, it was a thing unworthy of a
+Roman to be a practised admirer of fine wines and to show too great
+a propensity for them. Then not only was the vine little and ill
+cultivated in Italy, but that country almost refused to admit its
+ability to make fine wines with its grapes. As wines of luxury, only
+the Greek were then accredited and esteemed--and paid for, like French
+wines to-day; but, though admiring and paying well for them, the
+Romans, still diffident and saving, made very spare use of them.
+Lucullus, the famous conqueror of the Pontus, told how in his father's
+house--in the house, therefore, of a noble family--Greek wine was
+never served more than once, even at the most elegant dinners.
+Moreover, this must have been a common custom, because Pliny says,
+speaking of the beginning of the last century of the Republic, "Tanta
+vero vino graeco gratia erat ut singulae potiones in convitu darentur";
+that is, translating literally, "Greek wine was so prized that only
+single potions of it were given at a meal." You understand at once the
+significance of this phrase; Greek wine was served as to-day--at least
+on European tables--Champagne is served; it was too expensive to give
+in quantity.
+
+This condition of things began to change after Rome became a world
+power, went outside of Italy, interfered in the great affairs of the
+Mediterranean, and came into more immediate contact with Greece and
+the Orient. By a strange law of correlation, as the Roman Empire
+spread about the Mediterranean, the vineyard spread in Italy;
+gradually, as the world politics of Rome triumphed in Asia and Africa,
+the grape harvest grew more abundant in Italy, the consumption of
+wine increased, the quality was refined. The bond between the
+two phenomena--the progress of conquest and the progress of
+vine-growing--is not accidental, but organic, essential, intimate.
+As, little by little, the policy of expansion grew, wealth and culture
+increased in Rome; the spirit of tradition and of simplicity weakened;
+luxury spread, and with it the appetite for sensations, including that
+of the taste for intoxicating beverages.
+
+We have but to notice what happens about us in the modern world--when
+industry gains and wealth increases and cities grow, men drink more
+eagerly and riotously inebriating beverages--to understand
+what happened in Italy and in Rome, as gradually wars, tribute,
+blackmailing politics, pitiless usury, carried into the peninsula the
+spoils of the Mediterranean world, riches of the most numerous and
+varied forms. The old-time aversion to wine diminished; men and
+women, city-dwellers and countrymen, learned to drink it. The cities,
+particularly Rome, no longer confined themselves to slaking their
+thirst at the fountains; as the demand and the price for wine
+increased, the land-owners in Italy grew interested in offering the
+cup of Bacchus, and as they had invested capital in vineyards,
+they were drawn on by the same interest to excite ever the more the
+eagerness for wine among the multitude, and to perfect grape-culture
+and increase the crop, in imitation of the Greeks. The wars and
+military expeditions to the Orient not only carried many Italians,
+peasants and proprietors, into the midst of the most celebrated
+vineyards of the world, but also transported into Italy slaves and
+numerous Greek and Asiatic peasants who knew the best methods of
+cultivating the vine, and of making wines like the Greek, just as the
+peasants of Piedmont, of the _Veneto_, and of Sicily, have in the last
+twenty years developed grape-culture in Tunis and California.
+
+Pliny, who is so rich in valuable information on the agricultural and
+social advances of Italy, tells us that it opened its hills and plains
+to the triumphal entrance of Dionysus between 130 and 120 B.C., about
+the time that Rome entered into possession of the kingdom of Pergamus,
+the largest and richest part of Asia Minor, left to it by bequest
+of Attalus. Thenceforward, for a century and a half, the progress of
+grape-growing continued without interruption; every generation poured
+forth new capital to enlarge the inheritance of vineyards already
+grown and to plant new ones. As the crop increased, the effort was
+redoubled to widen the sale, to entice a greater number of people to
+drink, to put the Italian wines by the side of the Greek.
+
+At the distance of centuries, these vine-growing interests do not
+appear even in history; but they actually were a most important factor
+in the Roman policy, a force that helps us explain several main
+facts in the history of Rome. For example, vineyards were one of the
+foundations of the imperial authority in Italy. That political form
+which was called with Augustus the principality, and from which was
+evolved the monarchy, would not have been founded if in the last
+century of the Republic all Italy had not been covered with vineyards
+and olive orchards. The affirmation, put just so, may seem strange and
+paradoxical, but the truth of it will be easy to prove.
+
+The imperial authority was gradually consolidated, because, beginning
+with Augustus, it succeeded in pacifying Italy after a century of
+commotion and civil wars and of foreign invasions, to which the
+secular institutions of the Republic had not known how to oppose
+sufficient defence; so that, little by little, right or wrong, the
+authority of the _Princeps_, as supreme magistrate, and the power of
+the Julian-Claudian house, which the supreme magistrate had organised,
+seemed to the Italian multitude the stable foundation of peace
+and order. But why was Italy, beginning with the time of Caesar, so
+desperately anxious for peace and order? It would be a mistake to see
+in this anxiety only the natural desire of a nation, worn by anarchy,
+for the conditions necessary to a common social existence. The
+contrast of two episodes will show you that during the age of Caesar
+annoyance at disorder and intolerance of it had for a special reason
+increased in Italy. Toward the end of the third century B.C., Italy
+had borne on its soil for about seventeen years the presence of
+an army that went sacking and burning everywhere--the army of
+Hannibal--without losing composure, awaiting with patience the hour
+for torment to cease. A century and a half later, a Thracian slave,
+escaping from the chain-gang with some companions, overran the
+country,--and Italy was frightened, implored help, stretched out its
+arms to Rome more despairingly than it had ever done in all the years
+of Hannibal.
+
+What made Italy so fearful? Because in the time of Hannibal it had
+chiefly cultivated cereals and pastured cattle, while in the days of
+Spartacus a considerable part of its fortune was invested in vineyards
+and olive groves. In pastoral and grain regions the invasion of an
+army does relatively little damage; for the cattle can be driven in
+advance of the invader, and if grain fields are burned, the harvest of
+a year is lost but the capital is not destroyed. If, instead, an army
+cuts and burns olive orchards and vineyards, which are many years in
+growing, it destroys an immense accumulated capital. Spartacus was
+not a new Hannibal, he was something much more dangerous; he was a new
+species of _Phylloxera_ or of _Mosca olearia_ in the form of brigand
+bands that destroyed vines and olives, the accumulated capital of
+centuries. Whence, the emperor became gradually a tutelary deity of
+the vine and the olive, the fortune of Italy. It was he who stopped
+the barbarians still restless and turbulent on the frontiers of Italy,
+hardly over the borders; it was he who kept peace within the country
+between social orders and political parties; it was he who looked
+after the maintenance and guarding of the great highways of the
+peninsula, periodically clearing them of robbers and the evil-disposed
+that infested them; and the land-owners, who held their vineyards
+and olive groves more at heart than they did the great republican
+traditions, placed the image of the Emperor among those of their
+Lares, and venerated him as they had earlier revered the Senate.
+
+Still more curious is the influence that this development of Italian
+viticulture exercised on the political life of Rome; for example,
+in the barbarous provinces of Europe, wine was an instrument
+of Romanisation, the effectiveness of which has been too much
+disregarded. In Gaul, in Spain, in Helvetia, in the Danube provinces,
+Rome taught many things: law, war, construction of roads and cities,
+the Latin language and literature, the literature and art of
+Greece; more, it also taught to drink wine. Whoever has read the
+_Commentaries_ of Caesar will recall that, on several occasions, he
+describes certain more barbarous peoples of Gaul as prohibiting the
+importation of wine because they feared they would unnerve and
+corrupt themselves by habitual drunkenness. Strabo tells us of a great
+Gaeto-Thracian empire that a Gaetic warrior, Borebiste by name, founded
+in the time of Augustus beyond the Danube, opposite Roman possessions;
+while this chieftain sought to take from Greek and Latin civilisation
+many useful things, he severely prohibited the importation of wine.
+This fact and others similar, which might be cited, show that these
+primitive folk, exactly like the Romans of more ancient times, feared
+the beverage which so easily intoxicates, exactly as in China all wise
+people have always feared opium as a national scourge, and so many in
+France would to-day prohibit the manufacture of absinthe.
+
+This hesitation and fear disappeared among the Gauls, after their
+country was annexed to the Empire; disappeared or was weakened among
+all the other peoples of the Danube and Rhine regions, and even in
+Germany, when they fell under Roman dominion; even also while they
+preserved independence, as little by little the Roman influence
+intensified in strength. By example, with the merchants, in
+literature, Rome poured out everywhere the ruddy and perfumed drink
+of Dionysos, and drove to the wilds and the villages, remote and poor,
+the national mead--the beverage of fermented barley akin to modern
+beer.
+
+The Italian proprietors who were enlarging their vineyards--especially
+those of the valley of the Po, where already at the time of Strabo the
+grape-crop was very abundant--soon learned that beyond the Alps lived
+numerous customers. Under Augustus, Arles was already a large market
+for wines, both Greek and Italian; during the same period, there
+passed through Aquileia and Leibach considerable trade in Italian wine
+with the Danube regions. In the Roman castles along the Rhine, among
+the multitudes of Italians who followed the armies, there was not
+wanting the wine-dealer who sought with his liquor to infuse into the
+torpid blood of the barbarian a ray of southern warmth. Everywhere
+the Roman influence conquered national traditions; wine reigned on the
+tables of the rich as the lordly beverage, and the more the Gauls, the
+Pannonians, the Dalmatians, drank, the more money Italian proprietors
+made from their vineyards.
+
+I have said that Rome diffused at once its wine and its literature:
+it also diffused its wine through its literature, a fact upon which
+I should like to dwell a moment, since it is odd and interesting
+for diverse reasons. We always make a mistake in judging the great
+literary works of the past. Two or three centuries after they were
+written, they serve only to bring a certain delight to the mind;
+consequently, we take for granted they were written only to bring us
+this delight. On the contrary, almost all literary works, even the
+greatest, had at first quite another office; they served to spread
+or to counteract among the author's contemporaries certain ideas and
+sentiments that the interests of certain directing forces favoured or
+opposed; indeed very often the authors were admired and remunerated
+far more for these services rendered to their contemporaries than for
+the lofty beauty of the literary works themselves.
+
+This is the case with the odes of Horace. To understand all that they
+meant to say to contemporaries, one must imagine Roman society as it
+was then, hardly out of a century of conquests and revolutions, in
+disorder, unbalanced, and still crude, notwithstanding the luxuries
+and refinements superficially imitated from the Orient; a society
+eager to enjoy, yet still ill educated to exercise upon itself that
+discipline of good taste, without which civilisation and its pleasures
+aggravate more than restrain the innate brutality of men. During the
+first period of peace, arrived after so great disturbance, that
+poetry so perfect in form, which analysed and described all the
+most exquisite delights of sense and soul, infused a new spirit of
+refinement into habits, and co-operated with laborious education
+in teaching even the stern conquerors of the world to enjoy all the
+pleasures of civilisation, alike literature and love, the luxury of
+the city and the restfulness of the villa, fraternal friendship and
+good cookery. It taught, too--this master poetry of the senses--to
+enjoy wine, to use the drink of Dionysos not to slake the thirst, but
+to colour, with an intoxication now soft, now strong, the most diverse
+emotions: the sadness of memories, the tendernesses of friendship, the
+transports of love, the warmth of the quiet house, when without the
+furious storm and the bitter cold stiffen the universe of nature.
+
+In the poetry of Horace, therefore, wine appears as a proteiform god,
+which penetrates not only the tissues of the body but also the inmost
+recesses of the mind and aids it in its every contingency, sad or
+gay. Wine consoles in ill fortune (i., 7), suffuses the senses with
+universal oblivion, frees from anxiety and the weariness of care,
+fills the empty hours, and warms away the chill of winter (i., 9). But
+the wine that has the power to infuse gentle forgetfulness into the
+veins, has also the contrasting power of rousing lyric fervour in the
+spirit, the fervour heroic, divining, mystic (iii., 2). Finally, wine
+is also a source of power and heroism, as well as of joy and sensuous
+delight; a principle of civilisation and of progress (ii., 14).
+
+I wish I could repeat to you all the Dionysic verse of this old poet
+from Venosa, whose subjects and motives, even though expressed in the
+choicest forms, may seem common and conventional in our time and to
+us, among whom for centuries the custom of drinking wine daily with
+meals has been a general habit. But these poems had a very different
+significance when they were written, in that society in which many did
+not dare drink wine commonly, considering it as a medicine, or as a
+beverage injurious to the health, or as a luxury dangerous to morals
+and the purse; in that time when entire nations, like Gaul, hesitated
+between the invitations of the ruddy vine-crowned Bacchus, come with
+his legions victorious, and the desperate supplications of Cervisia,
+the national mead, pale and fleeing to the forests. In those times and
+among those men, Horace with his dithyrambics affected not only the
+spirit but the will, uniting the subtle suggestion of his verses to
+all the other incentives and solicitations that on every side were
+persuading men to drink. He corroded the ancient Italian traditions,
+which opposed with such repugnance and so many fears the efforts of
+the vintners and the vineyard labourers to sell wine at a high price;
+in this way he rendered service to Italian viticulture.
+
+The books of Horace, while he was still living, became what we might
+call school text-books; that is, they were read by young students,
+which must have increased their influence on the mind. Imagine that
+to-day a great European poet should describe and extol in magnificent
+verses the sensuous delight of smoking opium; should deify, in a
+mythology rich in imagery, the inebriating virtues of this product.
+Imagine that the verses of this poet were read in the schools: you
+may then by comparison picture to yourself the action of the poems of
+Horace.
+
+The political and military triumph of Rome in the Mediterranean world
+signified therefore the world triumph of wine. So true is this, that
+in Europe and America to-day the sons of Rome drink wine as their
+national daily beverage. The Anglo-Saxons and Germans drink it in
+the same way as the Romans of the second century B.C., on formal
+occasions, or as a medicine. When you see at an European or American
+table the gold or the ruby of the fair liquor gleaming in the glasses,
+remember that this is another inheritance from the Roman Empire and
+an ultimate effect of the victories of Rome; that probably we should
+drink different beverages if Caesar had been overcome at Alesia or
+if Mithridates had been able decisively to reconquer Asia Minor from
+Rome. It astonishes you to see between politics and enology, between
+the great historical events and the lot of a humble plant, so close a
+bond.
+
+I can show you another aspect of this phenomenon, even stranger and
+more philosophical. I have already said that at the beginning of the
+first century before Christ, although Italy had already planted many
+vineyards and gathered generous crops, Italian wines were still little
+sought after, while the contrary was true of the Greek. Pliny writes:
+
+    The wines of Italy were for long despised.... Foreign wines
+    had great vogue for some time even after the consulate of
+    Opimius [121 B.C.], and up to the times of our grandfathers,
+    although then Falernian was already discovered.
+
+In the second half of the last century of the Republic and the first
+half of the first century B.C., this condition of things changed;
+Italian wines rose to great fame and demand, and took from the Greek
+the pre-eminence they so long had held. Finally, this pre-eminence
+formed one of the spoils of world conquest, and that not one of the
+meagrest. Pliny, writing in the second half of the first century, says
+(bk. 14, ch. 11):
+
+    Among the eighty most celebrated qualities of wine made in all
+    the world, Italy makes about two thirds; therefore in this it
+    outdoes other peoples.
+
+The first wines that came into note seem to have been those of
+southern Italy, especially Falernian, and Julius Caesar seems to have
+done much to make it known. Pliny tells us (bk. 14, ch. 15) that, in
+the great popular banquet offered to celebrate his triumph after his
+return from Egypt, he gave to every group of banqueters a cask of
+Chian and an _amphora_ of Falernian, and that in his third consulate
+he distributed four kinds of wine to the populace, Lesbian, Chian,
+Falernian, and Mamertine; two Greek qualities and two Italian. It is
+evident that he wished officially to recognise national wines as equal
+to the foreign, in favour of Italian vintners; so that Julius Caesar,
+that universal man, has a place not only in the history of the great
+Italian conquests, but also in that of Italian viticulture.
+
+The wines of the valley of the Po were not long in making place for
+themselves after those of southern Italy. We know that Augustus drank
+only Rhetian wine; that is, of the Valtellina, one of the valleys
+famous also to-day for several delicious wines; we know that Livia
+drank Istrian wine.
+
+I have said that Italy exported much wine to Gaul, to the Danube
+regions, and to Germany; to this may be added another remark,
+both curious and interesting. _The Periplus of the Erytrian Sea_,
+attributed to Arrianus, a kind of practical manual of geography,
+compiled in the second century A.D., tells us that in that century
+Italian wine was exported as far as India; so far had its fame spread!
+There is no doubt that the wealth in the first and second century
+A.D., which flowed for every section of Italy, came in part from the
+nourishing vineyards planted upon its hills and plains; and that
+the Italians, who had gone to the Orient for reasons political and
+financial, had fallen upon yet greater fortune in contrabanding
+Bacchus from the superb vineyards of the AEgean islands, and
+transporting him to the hills of Italy; a new seat whereon the
+capricious god of the vine rested for two centuries, until he took
+again to wandering, and crossed the Alps.
+
+We may at this juncture ask ourselves if this enologic pre-eminence of
+Italy was the result only of a greater skill in cultivating the vine
+and pressing the grapes. I think not. It does not seem that Italy
+invented new methods of wine-making; it appears, instead, that it
+restricted itself to imitating what the Greeks had originated. On the
+other hand, it is certain, at least in northern and central Italy,
+that, although the vine grows, it does so less spontaneously and
+prosperously than in the AEgean islands, Greece, and Asia Minor,
+because the former regions are relatively too cold.
+
+The great fame of the Italian wines had another cause, a political:
+the world power and prestige of Rome. This psychological phenomenon
+is found in every age, among all peoples, and is one of the most
+important and essential in all history. What is beautiful and what is
+ugly? What is good and what is bad? What is true and what is false?
+In every period men must so distinguish between things, must adopt
+or repudiate certain ideas, practise or abandon certain habits, buy
+certain objects and refuse others; but one should not believe that
+all peoples make these discernments spontaneously, according to their
+natural inclination. It always happens that some nations succeed, by
+war, or money, or culture, in persuading the lesser peoples about them
+that they are superior; and strong in this admiration, they impose
+upon their susceptible neighbours, by a kind of continuous suggestion,
+their own ideas as the truest, their own customs as the noblest, their
+own arts as the most perfect.
+
+For this reason chiefly, wars have often distant and complicated
+repercussions on the habits, the ideas, the commerce of nations. War,
+to which so many philosophers would attribute a divine spirit, so
+many others a diabolic, appears to the historian as above all a
+means--allow me the phrase, a bit frivolous, but graphic--of noisy
+_reclame_, advertisement for a people; because, although a more
+civilised people may be conquered by one more barbarous, less
+cultured, less moral; although, also, the superiority in war may
+be relative, and men are not on the earth merely to give each other
+blows, but to work, to study, to know, to enjoy; yet the majority
+of men are easily convinced that he who has won in a war is in
+everything, or at least in many things, superior to him who has lost.
+So it happened, for example, after the late Franco-Prussian War, that
+not only the armies organised or reorganised after 1870 imitated even
+the German uniform, as they had earlier copied the French, but in
+politics, science, industry, even in art, everything German was more
+generously admired. Even the consumption of beer heavily increased
+in the wine countries, and under the protection of the Treaty of
+Frankfurt, the god Gambrinus has made some audacious sallies into the
+territories sacred to Dionysos.
+
+The same thing occurred in regard to wine in the ancient world. Athens
+and Alexander the Great had given to Greek wine the widest reputation,
+all the peoples of the Mediterranean world being persuaded that that
+was the best of all. Then the centre of power shifted to the west,
+toward the city built on the banks of the Tiber, and little by little
+as the power of Rome grew, the reputation of its wine increased, while
+that of Greece declined; until, finally, with world empire, Italy
+conquered pre-eminence in the wine market, and held it with the
+Empire; for while Italy was lord, Italian wine seemed most excellent
+and was paid for accordingly.
+
+This propensity of minor or subject peoples to imitate those dominant
+or more famous, is the greatest prize that rewards the pre-eminent
+for the fatigue necessary to conquer that place of honour; it is the
+reason why cultured and civilised nations ought naturally to seek
+to preserve a certain political, economic, and military supremacy,
+without which their intellectual superiority would weaken or at least
+lose a part of its value. The human multitude in the vast world are
+not yet so intelligent and refined as to prize that which is beautiful
+and grand for its own sake; and they are readily induced to admire as
+excellent what is but mediocre, if behind it there is a force to be
+feared or to impose it. Indeed, we may observe in the modern world a
+phenomenon analogous to that in historic Italy. What, in succeeding
+centuries, have been the changes in the enologic superiority conquered
+by Rome?
+
+Naturally I cannot recount the whole story, although it would be
+interesting; but will only observe that contemporary civilisation
+confirms the law by which predominance in the Latin world and the
+pre-eminence of wine are indissolubly bound together in history.
+
+Paris is the modern Rome, the metropolis of the Latin world. France
+continues, as far as can be done in modern times, the ancient sway of
+Rome, irradiating round so much of the globe, by commerce, literature,
+art, science, industry, dominance of political ideas, the influence
+of the Latin world, making tributaries to Latin culture of barbarous
+peoples, and nations too young for leadership or grown too old; and
+France has inherited the pre-eminence in wines, although it lies at
+the farthest confines of the vine-bearing zone, beyond which the tree
+of Bacchus refuses to live. Do you realise that in all the wide belt
+of earth where vineyards flourish, only the dry hills of Champagne
+ripen the delicious effervescent wine that refigures in modern
+civilisation--at least for those who are fond of wine--the nectar of
+the gods? And this, while effervescent wines are made in innumerable
+parts of the world and many are so good that one wonders if it were
+not possible for them, manufactured with care, placed in sightly
+bottles, and sold at as high a price as the most famous French
+Champagne, to dispute a part of the admiration that the devotees of
+Bacchus render to the French wine. Ah, they do not scintillate before
+the eyes of the world as symbols of gay intoxication like the others,
+for through those bottles passes no ray of the glory and prestige of
+France! An historian fond of paradoxes might affirm, and with great
+likelihood, what does not appear at first glance: that the great
+brands of French Champagne would not be sold so dear if the French
+Revolution had been suppressed by the European coalition, and if
+France, overcome in the terrible trial, had been enchained by the
+absolute monarchies of Europe like a dangerous beast. It would even
+be possible to declare that the reputation of Champagne is rooted, not
+only in the ground where the grapes are cultivated, and preserved in
+the vast cellars where the precious crops are stored, but in all
+the historic tradition of France, in all that which has given France
+worldly glory and power: the victorious wars, the distant conquests,
+the colonies, the literature, the art, the science, the money capital,
+and the spirit--cosmopolitan, expansive, dynamic--of its history.
+It would be possible to declare that it makes and pours into all the
+world its precious wine by that same virtue, intimate, national,
+and historic, by which it created the encyclopaedia and made the
+Revolution, let Napoleon loose on Europe and founded the Empire,
+wrote so many famous books and built on the banks of the Seine the
+marvellous universal city, where all the forces of modern civilisation
+are gathered together and hold each other in equilibrium: aristocracy
+and democracy, the cosmopolite spirit and the spirit of nationality,
+money and science, war and fashion, art and religion. If France
+had not had its great history, Champagne would have remained an
+effervescing wine of modest household use that the peasants place
+every year in barrels for their own family consumption or to sell in
+the vicinity of the city of Rheims.
+
+
+
+Social Development of the Roman Empire.
+
+
+Augustus died the twenty-third of August of the year 14 A.D., saying
+to Livia, as she embraced him: "Adieu, Livia, remember our long life."
+Suetonius adds that, before dying, he had asked the friends who
+had come to salute him, if he seemed to them "_mimum vitae commode
+transegisse"_--to have acted well his life's comedy. In this famous
+phrase many historians have seen a confession, an acknowledgment of
+the long role of deceit that the unsurpassable actor had played to
+his public. What a mistake! If Augustus did pronounce that famous
+sentence, he meant to say quite another thing. An erudite German has
+demonstrated with the help of many texts that the ancient writers,
+and especially the stoic philosophers, commonly compared life to a
+theatrical representation, divided into different acts and with an
+inevitable epilogue, death, without intending to say that it was a
+thing little serious or not true. They only meant that life is an
+action, which has a natural sequence from beginning to end, like a
+theatrical representation. There is then no need to translate the
+expression of Augustus "the play"--that is, the deceit--"is ended,"
+but rather "the drama"--the work committed by destiny--"is finished."
+
+The drama was ended, and what a drama! It is difficult to find in
+history a longer and more troubled career than that known by Augustus
+for nearly sixty years, from the far-away days when, young, handsome,
+full of ambition and daring, he had come to Rome, throwing himself
+head first into the frightful turmoil let loose by the murder of
+Caesar, to that tranquil death, the death of a great wise man, in the
+midst of the _pax Romana_, now spread from end to end of the Empire!
+After so many tragic catastrophies had struck his class and his
+family, _Euthanasia_--the death of the happy--descended for the first
+time since the passing of Lucullus, to close the eyes of a great
+Roman.
+
+There is no better means of giving an idea of the mission of the Roman
+Empire in the world than to summarise the life and work of this famous
+personage. Augustus has been in our century somewhat the victim of
+Napoleon I. The extraordinary course of events at the beginning of
+the nineteenth century made so vivid an impression on succeeding
+generations, that for the whole of the century people have been able
+to admire only the great agitators, men whose lives are filled with
+storm and clamorous action. Compared with that of Napoleon or of
+Caesar, the figure of Augustus is simple and colourless. The Roman
+peace, in the midst of which he died, was his work only very
+indirectly. Augustus had wearied his whole life in reorganising
+the finances and the army, in crushing the revolts of the European
+provinces, in defending the boundaries of the Rhine and the Danube,
+in making effective in Rome, as far as he could, the old aristocratic
+constitution. All intent on this service, a serious and difficult
+one, he never dreamed of regenerating the Empire by a powerful
+administration. Even if he had wished it, he would not have had the
+means--men and money.
+
+For the past century, the vastness and power of the administration
+that governed the Empire has been greatly admired. Without discussing
+many things possible on this point, it must be observed that this
+judgment does not apply to the times of Augustus and Tiberius, because
+then this administration did not exist. During the first fifty years
+of the Empire, the provinces were all governed, as under the Republic,
+by proconsuls or propraetors, each accompanied by a quaestor, a few
+subordinate officials, freedmen, friends, and slaves. A few dozen of
+men governed the provinces, as vast as states. Augustus added to this
+rudimentary administration but one organ, the procurator, chosen from
+freedmen or knights, charged with overseeing the collection of tribute
+and expenses; that is, caring for the interests, not of the provinces,
+but of Rome. Consequently, the government was weak and inactive in all
+the provinces.
+
+Whoever fancies the government of Rome modelled after the type of
+modern governments, invading, omnipotent, omnipresent, deceives
+himself. There were sent into the provinces nobles belonging to rich
+and noted families, who had therefore no need to rob the subjects
+too much; and these men ruled, making use of the laws, customs,
+institutions, families of nobles, of each place, exactly as England
+now does in many parts of its Empire. As in general these governors
+were not possessed of any great activity, they did not meddle much in
+the internal affairs of the subject peoples. To preserve the unity of
+the Empire and the supremacy of Italy against all enemies, within and
+without; to exploit reasonably this supremacy; for the rest, to let
+every people live as best pleased it: such was the policy of Augustus
+and of Tiberius, the policy of the first century A.D. In short, this
+was but the idea of the old aristocratic party, adapted to the new
+times.
+
+So the Roman Government gave itself little concern at this time for
+the provinces, nor did it build in them any considerable public work.
+It did not construct roads, nor canals, nor harbours, except when
+they were necessary to the metropolis; for example, Agrippa made
+the network of Gallic roads; Augustus opened the first three great
+highways that crossed the Alps. It would be a mistake to suppose that
+these important constructions were designed to favour the progress
+of Gallic commerce; they were strategic highways made to defend the
+Rhine. As gradually Gaul grew rich, Rome had to recognise that the
+weak garrisons, set apart in the year 27 for the defence of the Rhine
+and the Danube, were insufficient. It would have been necessary to
+increase the army, but the finances were in bad condition. Augustus
+then thought to base defence on the principle that the immense
+frontiers could not all be assailed at the same time, and therefore he
+constructed some great military roads across the Alps and Gaul, to be
+able to collect the soldiery rapidly from all parts of the Empire at
+any point menaced, on the Rhine or on the Danube.
+
+The imperial policy of Augustus and that of Tiberius, who applied the
+same principles with still greater vigour, was above all a negative
+policy. Accordingly, it could please only those denying as useful to
+progress another kind of men, the great agitators of the masses. Shall
+we therefore conclude that Augustus and Tiberius were useless? So
+doing, we should run the risk of misunderstanding all the history of
+the Roman conquest. By merely comprehending the value of the apparent
+inactivity of Augustus and Tiberius, one can understand the essence of
+the policy of world expansion initiated by the Roman aristocracy after
+the Second Punic War. At the beginning, this policy was pre-eminently
+destructive. Everywhere Rome either destroyed or weakened, not
+nations or peoples, but republics, monarchies, theocracies,
+principalities--that is, the political superstructures that framed the
+different states, great or small; everywhere it put in place of these
+superstructures the weak authority of its governors, of the Senate, of
+its own prestige; everywhere it left intact or gave greater freedom to
+the elementary forms of human association, the family, the tribe, the
+city.
+
+So for two centuries Rome continued in Orient and Occident to suppress
+bureaucracies, to dismiss or reduce armies, to close royal palaces,
+to limit the power of priestly castes or republican oligarchies,
+substituting for all these complicated organisations a proconsul
+with some dozens of vicegerent secretaries and attendants. The
+last enterprise of this policy, which I should be tempted to
+call "state-devouring," was the destruction of the dynasty of the
+Ptolemies, in Egypt. Without doubt, the suppression of so many
+states, continued for two centuries, could not be accomplished without
+terrible upheavals. It would be useless to repaint here the grim
+picture of the last century of the Republic; sufficient to say, the
+grandiosity of this convulsion has hindered most people from seeing
+that the state-devouring policy of Rome included in itself, by the
+side of the forces of dissolution, beneficent, creative forces, able
+to bring about a new birth. If this policy had not degenerated into
+an unbridled sacking, it could have effectuated everywhere notable
+economies in the expenses of government that were borne by the poorer
+classes, suppressing as it did so many armies, courts, bureaucracies,
+wars. It is clear that Rome would have been able to gather in on
+all sides, especially in the Orient, considerable tribute, merely
+by taking from the various peoples much less than the cost of their
+preceding monarchies and continuous wars. Moreover, Rome established
+with the conquests throughout the immense Empire what we would call
+a regime of free exchange; made neighbours of territories formerly
+separated by constant wars, unsafe communication, and international
+anarchy; and rendered possible the opening up of mines and forests
+hitherto inaccessible.
+
+The apparent inactivity of Augustus and Tiberius was simply the
+ultimate and most beneficent phase of the state-devouring policy of
+Rome, that in which, the destructive forces exhausted, the creative
+forces began to act. Augustus and Tiberius only prolonged indefinitely
+by means of expedients that mediocre order and that partial
+tranquillity re-established after Actium by the general weariness;
+but exactly for this reason were they so useful to the world. In
+this peace, in this mediocre order, the policy of expansion of Rome,
+finally rid of all the destructive forces, matured all the benefits
+inherent within it. Finally, after a frightful crisis, the world
+was able to enjoy a liberty and an autonomy such as it had never
+previously enjoyed and which perhaps it will never again in an equal
+degree of civilisation and in so great an extension.
+
+The Empire then covered Spain, France, Belgium, a part of Germany and
+Austria, Switzerland and Italy, the Balkanic countries, Greece, Asia
+Minor, Syria, Palestine, a part of Arabia, Egypt, and all northern
+Africa. I do not believe that the political _personnel_ that made up
+the central government of this enormous Empire ever comprised more
+than 2000 men. The army charged with defending so many territories
+numbered about 200,000 men--fewer than the present army of Italy
+alone. The effects of this order of things were soon to be seen; in
+all the Mediterranean basin there began a rapid and universal economic
+expansion, which, on a smaller scale, might remind one of what Europe
+and America have seen in the nineteenth century. New lands were
+cultivated, new mines opened, new wares manufactured, exports sent
+into regions formerly closed or unknown; and every new source of
+wealth, creating new riches, made labour and commerce progress.
+
+Foremost among all nations of the Empire, at the centre, Italy rapidly
+consolidated its fortune and its domination. After the mad plundering
+of the times of Caesar, followed methodical exploiting. Italy attracted
+to itself by the power of political leadership the precious metals and
+wares of luxury from every part of the Empire; the largest quantity
+of these things passed through Rome, before being scattered throughout
+the peninsula in exchange for the agricultural and industrial products
+of Italy, consumed in the capital. Consequently the middle classes and
+many cities grew rich, especially the cities of the Campania, Pompeii,
+Herculaneum, Naples, Pozzuoli, through which passed all the trade
+between Italy and Egypt. In addition, Italy found an abundant source
+of income in the exportation of wine and oil.
+
+In short, having at last emerged from revolution, the peoples of Italy
+rallied around Rome and the imperial power, united and relatively
+content. At the same time, the provinces began among themselves, about
+Italy, a great interchange of merchandise, men, ideas, customs,
+across the Mediterranean. Rome and Italy were invaded by a crowd
+of Orientals, slaves, freedmen, merchants, artisans, _litterati_,
+artists, acrobats, poets, adventurers; and contemporaneously with Rome
+and Italy, the agricultural provinces of the West, especially those
+along the Danube. Rome did not conquer the barbarous provinces of
+Europe for itself alone; it conquered them also for the East, which,
+in Mesia, Dalmatia, Pannonia, among those barbarians growing civilised
+and eager to live in cities, found customers for their industries in
+articles of luxury, for their artists, teachers of literature, and
+propagandists of religion.
+
+We are therefore able to explain to ourselves why, beginning from the
+time of Augustus, all the industrial cities of the Orient--Pergamon,
+Laodicea, Ephesus, Ierapolis, Tyre, Sidon, Alexandria--entered upon
+an era of new and refulgent prosperity. Finally, we add the singular
+enriching of two nations, whose names return anew united for the last
+time, Egypt and Gaul. To all the numerous sources of Gallic wealth
+there is to be added yet another, the importance of which is easier
+to understand after what I have said on the development of the
+Empire. Pliny tells us that all Gaul wove linen sails. The progress of
+navigation, a consequence of the progress of commerce, much increased
+the demand for linen sail-cloth, something that explains the spread of
+flax cultivation in Gaul and the profit derived from it.
+
+As to Egypt, it not only found in the pacified empire new outlets for
+its old industries, but also succeeded in engaging a large part of the
+new commerce with the extreme Orient, which was at this time greatly
+on the increase. From India and China were imported pearls, diamonds,
+silk fabrics; for the use of these wares gained largely during
+this century, as it has done in recent times in Europe and America;
+perfumes were also imported, and rice, which served as a medicament
+and to prepare dishes of luxury.
+
+The unity of the Empire was due far more to this great economic
+development that began under Augustus than to the political action
+of the early emperors. Little by little, imperial interests became
+so numerous and so considerable that Rome saw the effort necessary
+to keep up the unity diminish. Everywhere, even in the most distant
+regions, powerful minorities formed that worked for Rome and against
+old separating, anti-uniting forces, against old traditions and local
+patriotism alike. The wealthy classes everywhere became in a special
+way wholly favourable to Rome. Therefore there is no more serious
+mistake than regarding the Roman Empire as the exclusive work of a
+government: it was in truth created by two diverse forces, operating
+one after the other--each in its own time, for both were necessary: a
+force of destruction--the state-devouring policy of Rome; a force of
+reconstruction--the economic unification. The annihilation of states,
+without which there would have been no economic unification, was the
+work of the government and the armies. It was the politicians of the
+Senate that destroyed so many states by wars and diplomatic intrigues;
+but the economic unification was made chiefly by the infinitely
+little--the peasant, the artisan, the educated man--the nameless many,
+that lived and worked and passed away, leaving hardly trace or record.
+These unknown that laboured, each seeking his own personal happiness,
+contributed to create the Empire as much as did the great statesmen
+and generals. For this reason I can never regard without a certain
+emotion the mutilated inscriptions in the museums, chance salvage from
+the great shipwreck of the ancient world, that have preserved the name
+of some land-owner, or merchant, or physician, or freedman. Lo!
+what remains of these generations of obscure workers, who were the
+indispensable collaborators of the great statesmen and diplomatists of
+Rome, and without whom the political world of Rome would have been but
+a gigantic enterprise of military brigandage!
+
+The great historic merit of Augustus and of Tiberius is that they
+presided over the passage from the destructive to the reorganising
+phase with their wise, prudent, apparently inactive policy. The
+transition, like all transitions, was difficult; the disintegrating
+forces were not yet exhausted; the upbuilding forces were still very
+weak; the world of the time was in unstable equilibrium, violent
+perturbations certainly yet possible. Without doubt, it is hard to say
+what would have happened if, instead of being governed by the policy
+of Augustus, the world had fallen into the hands of an adventurous
+oligarchy like that which gathered around Alexander the Great; but we
+can at least affirm that the sagacity and prudence of Augustus, which
+twenty centuries afterward appear as inactivity, did much to avoid
+such disturbances, the consequences of which, in a world so exhausted,
+would have been grave.
+
+Nor is it correct to believe that this policy was easy. Moderation
+and passivity, even when good for the governed, rust and waste away
+governments, which must always be doing something, even if it be only
+making mistakes. In fact, while supreme power usually brings return
+and much return to him who exercises it, especially in monarchies, it
+cost instead, and unjustly, to Augustus and Tiberius. Augustus had to
+offer to the monster, as Tiberius called the Empire, almost all his
+family, beginning with the beloved Julia, and had to spend for the
+state almost all his fortune. We know that although in the last twenty
+years of his life he received by many bequests a sum amounting to a
+billion and four hundred million sesterces, he left his heirs only one
+hundred and fifty million sesterces, all the rest having been spent by
+him for the Republic: this was the singular civil list of this curious
+monarch, who, instead of fleecing his subjects, spent for them almost
+all he had. It is vain to speak of Tiberius: the Empire cost him the
+only thing that perhaps he held dear, his fame. A philosophic history
+would be wrong in not recognising the grandeur of these sacrifices,
+which are the last glory of the Roman nobility. The old political
+spirit of the Roman nobility gave to Augustus and Tiberius the
+strength to make these sacrifices, and they probably saved ancient
+civilisation from a most difficult crisis.
+
+It may be observed that Augustus and Tiberius worked for the Empire
+and the future without realising it. Far from understanding that the
+economic progress of their time would unify the Empire better than
+could their laws and their legions, they feared it; they believed
+that it would everywhere diffuse "corruption," even in the armies,
+and therefore weaken the imperial power of resistance against the
+barbarians on the Rhine and the Danube. The German peril--the future
+had luminously to demonstrate it--was much less than Augustus and
+Tiberius believed. In other words, the first two emperors thought that
+the unity of the Empire would be maintained by a vigorous, solid army,
+while the economic progress, which spread "corruption," appeared to
+them to put it to risk.
+
+Exactly the opposite happened; the army continued to decay,
+notwithstanding the desperate efforts of Tiberius, while the inner
+force of economic interests held the countries well bound together.
+It is impossible to oppose this course of reasoning, in itself most
+accurate; but what conclusion is to be drawn from it? In the chaotic
+conflict of passions and interests that make up the world, the deeds
+of a man or a party are not useful in proportion to the objective
+truth of the ideas acted out, or to the success attained. Their
+usefulness depends upon the direction of the effort, on the ends it
+proposes, on the results it obtains. There are men and parties of whom
+one might say, they were right to be wrong, when chimerical ideas
+and mistakes have sustained their courage to carry out an effective
+effort; there are others, instead, of whom it might be said that they
+were wrong to be right, when their clear vision of present and past
+kept them from accomplishing some painful but necessary duty.
+
+Certainly the old Roman traditions were destined to be overwhelmed
+by the invasion of Oriental ideas and habits; but what might not
+have happened if every one had understood this from the very times of
+Augustus; if then no one had opposed the invasion of Orientalism; if
+mysticism and the monarchy of divine right had transformed Italy or
+the Empire within fifty years instead of three centuries? I should
+not at all hesitate to affirm that certain errors are in certain
+conjunctions much wiser than the corresponding verities. There is
+nothing more useful in life than resistance, though apparently futile,
+against social forces fated to perish, because these, struggling on to
+the very end, always succeed in imposing a part of themselves on the
+victorious power, and the result is always better than a complete
+and unantagonised victory of the opposing force. To the obstinate
+resistance with which republican principles combated Asiatic monarchy
+in Rome, we must even to-day render thanks for the fact that Europe
+was not condemned, like Asia, to carry the eternal yoke of semidivine
+absolutism, even in dynastic regimes. What social force destined to
+perish would still have power to struggle if it clearly foresaw its
+inevitable future dissolution; if it did not fortify itself a little
+with some deluding vision of its own future?
+
+Augustus and Tiberius were deceived. They wished to reanimate what was
+doomed; they feared what for the moment was not dangerous. They are
+the last representatives of the policy initiated by the Scipios and
+not the initiators of the policy that created the bureaucratic Empire
+of Diocletian: yet this is exactly their glory. They were right to
+be wrong; and they rendered to the Empire an immense service, for
+the very reason that the definite outcome of their efforts was
+diametrically opposed to the idea that animated them. But we need not
+dwell on this point. Such were the ideas of the two emperors and the
+results of their work; the true Empire, known to all, the monarchic,
+Asiaticised, bureaucratic Empire, grew out of this little-governed
+beginning that Augustus and Tiberius allowed to live in the freedom
+of the largest autonomy. How was it formed? This is the great problem
+that I shall try to solve in the sequence of my work. Naturally, I
+cannot now resume all the ideas I mean to develop: I confine myself
+here to some of the simplest considerations, which seem to me surest.
+
+The picture of the Empire, so brilliant from the economic stand-point,
+is much less so from the intellectual: here we touch its great
+weakness. Destroying so many governments, especially in the Orient,
+Rome had at the same time decapitated the intellectual _elites_ of
+the ancient world; for the courts of the monarchies were the great
+firesides of mental activity. Rome had therefore, together with states
+and governments, destroyed scientific and literary institutions,
+centres of art, traditions of refinement, of taste, of aesthetic
+elegance. So everywhere, with the Roman domination, the practical
+spirit won above the philosophical and scientific, commerce over arts
+and letters, the middle classes over historic aristocracies. Already
+weakened by the overthrow of the most powerful Asiatic monarchies,
+these _elites_ received the final blow on the disappearance of their
+last protection, the dynasty of the Ptolemies in Egypt.
+
+When Augustus began to govern the Empire, the classes that represent
+tradition, culture the elevated and disinterested activities of the
+spirit, were everywhere extensive in number in wealth, in energy.
+It was not long before these ultimate remainders vanished under the
+alluvial overflow of the middle classes, swollen by the big economic
+gains of the first century. In this respect, the first and second
+centuries of the Christian era resemble our own time. In the whole
+Empire, alike in Rome, in Gaul, in Asia, there were old aristocratic
+families, rich and illustrious, but they were not the class of
+greatest power. Under them stood a middle class of merchants,
+land-owners, orators, jurists, professors, and other intellectual men,
+and this was so numerous, comfortable, and so potent as to cause all
+the great social forces, from government to industry, to abandon
+the old aristocracy and court it like a new mistress. Art, industry,
+literature, were vulgarised in those two centuries, as to-day in
+Europe and America, because they had to work mainly for this middle
+class which was much more numerous, and yet cruder than the ancient
+_elites_. It was the first era of the _cheap_, of vulgarisations, I
+was about to say of the _made in Germany_, that enters into
+history. There was invented the art of silver-plating, to give the
+_bourgeoisie_ at moderate prices the sweet illusion of possessing
+objects of silver; great thinkers disappeared; instead were multiplied
+manuals, treatises, encyclopaedias, professors that summarised and
+vulgarised. Philosophy gradually gave out, like all the higher forms
+of literature, and there began the reign of the declaimers and the
+sophists; that is, the lecture-givers, the lawyers, the journalists.
+In painting and sculpture, original schools were no more to be found,
+nor great names, but the number of statues and bas-reliefs increased
+infinitely. The paintings of Pompeii and many statues and marbles
+that are now admired in European museums are examples of this
+industrialised art, inexpensive, creating nothing original, but
+furnishing to families in comfortable circumstances passable copies of
+works of art--once a privilege only of kings.
+
+The imperial bureaucracy that was formed mainly in the second century
+was another effect of this enlargement of the middle classes. In the
+second century there came into vogue many humanitarian ideas, which
+have a certain resemblance to modern ones. There increased solicitude
+for the general well-being, for order, for justice, and this augmented
+the number of functionaries charged with insuring universal felicity
+by administrative means. The movement was supported by intellectual
+men of the middle classes, especially by jurists, who sought to put
+their studies to profit, getting from the government employments in
+which they might make use, well or ill, of their somewhat artificial
+aptitudes. If the aristocratic idea, personified by Augustus
+and Tiberius, delayed, it could not stop, the invasion of these
+bureaucratic locusts; the government showed itself constantly weaker
+with the intellectual classes. Little by little the whole Empire
+was bureaucratised; founded by an aristocracy exclusively Roman in
+statesmen and soldiers, it was finally governed by a cosmopolitan
+bureaucracy of men of brains: orators, _litterati_, lawyers.
+Therefore, to my thinking, they are wrong who believe that the
+imperial bureaucracy created the unity of the Empire; whereas, the
+formation of the imperial bureaucracy was one of the consequences of
+that natural unification, the chief reason for which should be sought
+in the great economic movement. The economic unification was first
+and was entire; then came the political unity, made by the imperial
+bureaucracy, which was less complete than the unifying of material
+interests.
+
+After the material unity, after the political, there should have been
+formed the moral and intellectual; but at this point, the forces of
+Rome gave way. Rome had gathered under its sceptre too many races,
+too many kinds of culture, religions too diverse; its spirit was too
+exclusively political, administrative, and judicial; it could not
+therefore conciliate the ideas, assimilate the customs, weld the
+sentiments, unify the religions, by its laws and decrees. To this
+end was necessary the power of ideas, of doctrines, of beliefs that
+officials of administration could neither create nor propagate. The
+work was to be accomplished outside of, and in part against, the
+government. It is the work of Christianity.
+
+Many have asked me how I shall consider Christianity in the sequence
+of my work. In brief, I may say that I shall follow a different method
+from that which its historians have taken up to this time: they have
+studied especially how there was formed that part of Christianity
+which yet lives and is the soul of it, namely, the religious doctrine.
+On this account, they generally separate its history from the history
+of the Empire, making of it the principal argument, considering the
+history of Roman society as subordinate to it and therefore only an
+appendix. I propose to reverse the study, taking Christianity as a
+chapter, important but separate, in the history of the Empire. If
+for three centuries Christianity has been gradually returning to its
+origin, that is, becoming purely a religion and a moral teaching,
+for some centuries in the ancient world it was a thing much more
+complicated; a government and an administration that willed not only
+to regulate the relations between man and God, but to govern the
+intellectual, social, moral, political, and economic life of the
+people! The historian ought to explain how this new Empire--for it was
+indeed a new Empire--was formed in Rome and upon its ruins: this is a
+problem much more intricate than at first appears.
+
+It has been said and often repeated that the Church was in the Middle
+Ages in Europe the continuation of the Roman Empire, that the Pope is
+yet the real successor of the Emperor in Rome. In fact he carries one
+of the Emperor's titles, _Pontifex maximus_. The observation is just,
+but it should not make us forget that the Christian Empire, so to call
+it, and the Roman Empire, were between themselves as radically
+opposed as two forces that created the one and the other; politics and
+intellectuality. The diplomatists, the generals, the legislators of
+Rome created by political means, by wars, treaties, laws, a grand
+economic and political unity, which they consolidated, quite giving
+up the formation of a large intellectual and moral unity. The
+intellectual men, who formed the most powerful nucleus of the Church
+after the fourth century, took up again the Roman idea of unity and of
+empire; but they transferred it from matter to mind, from the concrete
+world of economic and political interests, to the world of ideas
+and beliefs. They tried to re-do, by pen and word, the work of the
+Scipios, of Lucullus, and of Caesar, to conquer the world, not indeed
+invading it with armies, but spreading a new faith, creating a new
+morality, a new metaphysics which must gather up within themselves
+the intellectual activities of Graeco-Latin culture, from history to
+science, from law to philosophy.
+
+The Church of the Middle Ages was therefore the most splendid edifice
+that the intellectual classes have so far created. The power of this
+empire of men of letters increased, as little by little the other
+empire, that of the generals and diplomats, declined. Christianity saw
+with indifference the Roman Empire decay; indeed, when it could,
+it helped on the disintegration and was one of the causes of that
+political and economic pulverising which everywhere succeeded the
+great Roman unity. Political and economic unity on the one hand,
+moral and intellectual on the other, seem in the history of European
+civilisation things opposite and irreconcilable; when one is formed,
+the other is undone. As the Roman Empire had found in intellectual
+and moral disunion a means of preserving more easily the economic and
+political unity, the Church broke to pieces the political and economic
+unity of the ancient world to make, and for a long time preserve, its
+own moral and intellectual oneness.
+
+I shall make an effort, above all, to explain the origin, the
+development, and the consequences of this contradiction, because I
+believe that explaining this clears one of the weightiest and most
+important points in all the history of our civilisation; in truth,
+this contradiction seems to be the immortal soul of it. For instance:
+in time, Augustus is twenty centuries away from us, but mentally
+and morally he is, instead, much nearer, because for the last four
+centuries Europe has been returning to Rome--that is, striving to
+remake a great political and economic unity at the expense of the
+intellectual and moral. In this fact particularly, lies the immense
+historic importance of what is called the classic renaissance. It
+indicates the beginning of an historic reversion that corresponds
+in the opposite direction to what occurred in the third and fourth
+centuries of the Christian era. The classic renaissance freed anew
+the scientific spirit of the ancients from mediaeval metaphysics and
+therefore created the sciences; rediscovered some basic political
+and juridical ideas of the ancient world, among them that of the
+indivisibility of the State, which destroyed the foundations of
+feudalism and of all the political orders of the Middle Ages; and gave
+a great impetus to the struggle against the political domination of
+the Church and toward the formation of the great states. France and
+England have been in the lead, and for two centuries Europe has
+been wearying itself imitating them. After the movement of political
+unification followed the economic. Look about you: what do you see?
+A world that looks more like the Roman Empire than it does the Middle
+Ages; it is a world of great states whose dominating classes have
+almost all the essential ideas of Graeco-Latin civilisation; each,
+seeking to better its own conditions, is forced to establish between
+itself and the others the strictest economic relations and to bind
+into the system of common interests also barbarous countries and those
+of differing civilisation. But how? By scrupulously respecting all the
+intellectual and moral diversities of men. What matters it if a people
+be Roman Catholic or Protestant, Mohammedan or Buddhist, monarchic or
+republican, provided it buys, sells, takes part in the economic unity
+of the modern world? This is the policy of contemporary states and was
+the policy of the Roman Empire. It has often been observed that in the
+modern world, so well administered, there is an intellectual and moral
+diversity greater than that during the fearful anarchy of the Middle
+Ages, when all the lettered classes had a single language, the Latin,
+and the lower classes held, on certain fundamental questions, the same
+ideas--those taught by the Church. A correct observation, this, but
+one from which there is no need to draw too many conclusions; since in
+our history the material unity and the ideal are naturally exclusive.
+
+We are returning, in a vaster world, to the condition of the Roman
+Empire at its beginning; to an immense economic unity, which,
+notwithstanding the aberrations of protectionism, is grander and
+firmer than all its predecessors; to a political unity not so great,
+yet considerable, because even if peace be not eternal, it is at least
+the normal condition of the European states; to an indifference for
+every effort put forth to establish moral and ideal uniformity
+among the nations, great and small, that share in this political and
+economic unity. This is why we understand Augustus and his times much
+more readily than we do the times of Charlemagne, even though from the
+latter we possess a greater number of documents; this is why we can
+write a history of Augustus and rectify so many mistakes made about
+him by preceding generations. It has often happened to me to find, _a
+propos_ of the volumes written on Augustus, that my contradiction of
+tradition creates a kind of instinctive diffidence. Many say: "Yes,
+this book is interesting; but is it possible that for twenty centuries
+everybody has been mistaken?--that it was necessary to wait till 1908
+to understand what occurred in the year 8?" But those twenty centuries
+reduce themselves, as far as regards the possibility of understanding
+Augustus, to little more than a hundred years. Since Augustus was the
+last representative of a world that was disappearing, his figure soon
+became obscure and enigmatic. Tacitus and Suetonius saw him already
+enveloped in the mist of that new spirit which for so many centuries
+was to conceal from human eyes the wonderful spectacle of the pagan
+world. Then the mist became a fog and grew denser, until Augustus
+disappeared, or was but a formless shadow. Centuries passed by; the
+fog began to withdraw before the returning sun of the ancient culture;
+his figure reappeared. Fifty years ago, the obscurity cleared quite
+away; the figure stands in plain view with outlines well defined. I
+believe that the history I have written is more like the truth than
+those preceding it, but I do not consider myself on that account
+a wonder-worker. I know I have been able to correct many preceding
+errors, because I was the first to look attentively when the moment to
+see and understand arrived.
+
+
+
+Roman History in Modern Education.
+
+
+When I announced my intention to write a new history of Rome, many
+people manifested a sense of astonishment similar to what they would
+have felt had I said that I meant to retire to a monastery. Was it to
+be believed that the hurrying modern age, which bends all its energies
+toward the future, would find time to look back, even for a moment, at
+that past so far away? That my attempt was rash was the common
+opinion not only of friends and critics, but also of publishers, who
+everywhere at first showed themselves skeptical and hesitating. They
+all said that the public was quite out of touch with Roman affairs. On
+the contrary, facts have demonstrated that also in this age, in aspect
+so eager for things modern, people of culture are willing to give
+attention to the events and personages of ancient Rome.
+
+The thing appears strange and bizarre, as is natural, to those who had
+not considered it possible; consequently, few have seen how simple
+and clear is its explanation. To those who showed surprise that the
+history of Rome could become fashionable in Paris salons, I have
+always replied: My history has had its fortune because it was the
+history of Rome. Written with the same method and in the same style,
+a history of Venice, or Florence, or England, would not have had the
+same lot. One must not forget that the story of Rome occupies in the
+intellectual world a privileged place. Not only is it studied in all
+the schools of the civilised world; not only do nearly all states
+spend money to bring to light all the documentary evidence that
+the earth still conceals; but while all other histories are studied
+fitfully, that of Rome is, so to speak, remade every fifty years,
+and whoever arrives at the right time to do the making can gain a
+reputation broader than that given to most historians.
+
+There is, so to speak, in the history of Rome an eternal youth,
+and for the mind in what is commonly called European-American
+civilisation, it holds a peculiar attraction. From what deep sources
+springs this perennial youth? In what consists this particular force
+of attraction and renewal? It seems to me that the chief reason
+for the eternal fascination of the history of Rome is this, that it
+includes, as in a miniature drawn with simple lines, well defined,
+all the essential phenomena of social life; so that every age is
+able there to find its own image, its gravest problems, its intensest
+passions, its most pressing interests, its keenest struggles;
+therefore Roman history is forever modern, because every new age has
+only to choose that part which most resembles it, to find its own
+self.
+
+In the intellectual history of the nineteenth century this leading
+phenomenon of our culture is clearly evident. If any one asked me why,
+during the past century, Roman history has proved so interesting, I
+should not hesitate to reply, "Because Europeans and Americans
+find, there more than elsewhere what has been the greatest political
+upheaval of the hundred years that followed the French Revolution--the
+struggle between monarchy and republic." From the fervid admiration
+for the Roman Republic which animated the men of the French Revolution
+to the unmeasured Caesarian apologies of Duruy and of Mommsen, from
+the ardent cult of Brutus to the detailed studies on the Roman
+administration of the first two centuries, all historians have studied
+and regarded Roman history mainly from the point of view of the
+struggle between the two principles that yet to-day rend in incurable
+discord the mind of old Europe and from which you have emerged
+fortunate! You are free, in a new world; you have ended the combat
+between the Latin principle of the impersonal state and the Oriental
+principle of the dynastic state; between the state conceived as the
+thing of all, belonging to every one and therefore of no one, and the
+state personified in a family of an origin higher and nobler than
+the common in which all authority derives from some hero-founder by
+a mysterious virtue unaccountable to reason and human philosophy; you
+have done with the conflict between the human state, simple, without
+pomp, without dramatic symbols--the republic as we men of the
+twentieth century understand it, and as you Americans conceive and
+practise it--and the monarchy of divine right, vainglorious, full of
+ceremonies and etiquette, despotic in internal constitution, which
+still exists in Europe under more or less spurious forms. Now it is
+easy to explain how, in an age in which the contest between these two
+conceptions and these two forms of the State was so warm, the history
+of Rome should so stir the mind.
+
+In no other history do these two political forms meet each other in a
+more irreconcilable opposition of characters in extreme. The Republic,
+as Rome had founded it, was so impersonal that, in contrast with
+modern more democratic republics, it had not even a fixed
+bureaucracy, and all the public functions were exercised by
+elective magistrates--even the executive--from public works to the
+police-system. In the ancient monarchy which the Orient had created,
+the dynastic principle was so strong that the State was considered
+by inherent right the personal property of the sovereign, who might
+expand it, contract it, divide it among his sons and relatives,
+bequeathing his kingdom and his subjects as a land-owner disposes of
+his estate and his cattle. Furthermore, although to-day the sovereigns
+of Europe are pleased to treat quite familiarly with the good Lord,
+the rulers in the Orient were held to be gods in their own right.
+
+Whence it is easy to understand how terrible must have been the
+struggle between the two principles so antagonistic, from the time
+when in the Empire, immeasurable and complicated, the institutions of
+the Republic proved inadequate to govern so many diverse peoples and
+territories so vast. The Romans kept on, as at first, rebelling at
+the idea of placing a man-god at the head of the State, themselves to
+become, when finally masters of the world, the slaves of a dynasty.
+The conflict between the two principles lasted a century, from Caesar
+to Nero, filled the story of Rome with hideous tragedies, but ended
+with the truce of a glorious compromise; for Rome succeeded in putting
+into the monarchic constitution of empire some essentially republican
+ideas, among others, the idea of the indivisibility of the State. Not
+only Augustus and his family, but also the Flavians and the Antonines,
+never thought that the Empire belonged to them, that they might
+dispose of it like private property; on the contrary, they regarded it
+as an eternal and indivisible holding of the Roman people which they,
+as representatives of the _populus_, were charged to administer.
+
+It is therefore easy, as I have said, to explain how, as never
+before, the history of Rome was looked upon as a great war between the
+monarchy and the republic. Indeed, the problem of the republic and
+the monarchy, always present to the minds of writers of the nineteenth
+century, has been perhaps the chief reason for the gravest mistakes
+committed by Roman historiography during this period--mistakes I have
+sought to correct. For example, the republicans have pinned their
+faith to all the absurd tales told by Suetonius and Tacitus about the
+family of the Caesars, through preconceived hate for the monarchy; and
+the monarchists have exaggerated out of measure the felicity of the
+first two centuries of the Empire, to prove that the provinces lived
+happy under the monarchic administration as never before or after.
+Mommsen has fashioned an impossible Caesar, almost making of that great
+demagogue a literary anticipation of Bismarck.
+
+Little by little, however, as the contest between republic and
+monarchy gradually spent itself in Europe, in the last twenty-five
+years of the nineteenth century, the interest for histories of Rome
+conceived and written in this spirit, declined. The real reason why
+Mommsen and Duruy are to-day so little read, why at the beginning of
+the twentieth century Roman history no longer stirs enthusiasm through
+their books is, above all, this: that readers no longer find in those
+pages what corresponds directly to living reality. Therefore it was to
+be believed that Roman history had grown old and out of date; whereas,
+merely one of its perishing and deciduous forms had grown old, not the
+soul of it, which is eternally living and young. So true is this, that
+a writer had only to consider the old story from new points of view,
+for Caesar and Antony, Lucullus and Pompey, Augustus and the laws of
+the year 18 B.C., to become subjects of fashionable conversation in
+Parisian drawing-rooms, in the most refined intellectual centre of the
+world.
+
+It has never been difficult for me to realise that contemporary
+Europe and America, the Europe and America of railroads, industries,
+monstrous swift-growing cities, might find present in ancient Rome a
+part of their own very souls, restless, turbulent, greedy. In the Rome
+of the days of Caesar, huge, agitated, seething with freedmen, slaves,
+artisans come from everywhere, crowded with enormous tenement-houses,
+run through from morning till night by a mad throng, eager for
+amusements and distractions; in that Rome where there jostled together
+an unnumbered population, uprooted from land, from family, from native
+country, and where from the press of so many men there fermented all
+the propelling energies of history and all the forces that destroy
+morality and life--vice and intellectuality, the imperialistic policy,
+deadly epidemics; in that changeable Rome, here splendid, there
+squalid; now magnanimous, and now brutal; full of grandeurs, replete
+with horrors; in that great city all the huge modern metropolises are
+easily refound, Paris and New York, Buenos Ayres and London, Melbourne
+and Berlin. Rome created the word that denotes this marvellous and
+monstrous phenomenon, of history, the enormous city, the deceitful
+source of life and death--_urbs_--_the city_. Whence it is not strange
+that the countless _urbes_ which the grand economic progress of the
+nineteenth century has caused to rise in every part of Europe and
+America look to Rome as their eldest sister and their dean.
+
+Furthermore, into the history of Rome, the historic aristocracy of
+Europe may look as into the mirror of their own destiny, as everywhere
+they try to retain wealth and power, playing in the stock-exchange,
+marrying the daughters of millionaire brewers, giving themselves
+to commerce; a nobility that resorts, in the effort to preserve
+its prestige over the middle classes, to the expedients of the most
+reckless demagogy. Sulla, Lucullus, Pompey, Crassus, Antony, Caesar,
+exemplify in stupendous types the aristocracy that seeks to conserve
+riches and power by audaciously employing the forces that menace its
+own destruction.
+
+Several critics of my work, particularly the French, have observed
+that the policy of expansion made by Rome in the times of Caesar, as
+I have described it, resembles closely the craze for imperialism that
+about ten years ago agitated England. It is true, for imperialism in
+the time of Caesar was what has existed for the last half century in
+England--a means of which one part of the historic aristocracy availed
+itself to keep power and renew decaying prestige, satisfying material
+interests and flattering with intoxications of vanity the pride of
+the masses. So, too, the contesting parties in France--the socialist,
+which represents the labouring classes; the radical, which represents
+the middle classes; the progressive and the monarchic, which represent
+the wealthy burghers and the aristocracy--may discover some of their
+passions, their doings, their invectives, in the political warfare
+that troubled the age of Caesar; in those scandals, those judicial
+trials, in that furor of pamphlets and discourses. This is so true,
+that in consequence my book met a singular fate in France; that of
+being adopted by each party as an argument in its own favour. Drumont
+made use of it to demonstrate to France what befalls a country when it
+allows its national spirit to be corrupted by foreign influx, seeking
+to persuade his fellow-citizens that the Jews in France do the same
+work of intellectual and moral dissolution that the Orientals brought
+about in Rome. Radical writers, like Andre Maurel, have sought
+arguments in my work to combat the colonial and imperialistic policy.
+The imperialists also, like Pinon, have looked for arguments to
+support their stand-point. Was I not merely demonstrating that the
+policy of expansion is a kind of universal and constant law, which
+periodically actualises itself through the working of the same forces,
+in the same ways?
+
+It is not to be thought that the age of Caesar, so disturbed, so
+stormy, is our only mirror in the story of Rome. When I write the
+account of the imperial society of the first and second centuries, our
+own time will be able to recognise even more of itself, to see what
+must be the future of Europe and America, if for a century or two they
+have no profound political and social upheavals. In that great _pax
+Romana_ lasting two centuries, we may study with special facility
+a phenomenon to be found in all rich civilisations cultured and
+relatively at peace--the phenomenon to me the most important in
+contemporary European life, the feminising of all social life; that
+is, the victory of the feminine over the masculine spirit. Do not
+fancy that the feminists, the problems and the disputes they excite in
+modern society, are something quite new and peculiar to us; these are
+only special forms of a phenomenon more general, the growing influence
+that woman exercises on society, as civilisation, culture, and wealth
+steadily increase. Here, too, the history of Rome is luminously clear.
+In it we see evolving that vast contest between the feminine spirit
+and the masculine, which is one of the essential phenomena in all
+human history. We see the masculine spirit--the spirit of domination,
+of force, of mastery, of daring--ruling complete, when the small
+community had to fight its first hard battles against nature and men.
+The father commanded then as monarch in his family; the woman was
+without right, liberty, personality; had but to obey, to bear
+children and rear them. But success, power, wealth, greater security,
+imperceptibly loosened the narrow bondage of the first struggles; then
+the feminine spirit--the spirit of freedom, of pleasure, of art, of
+revolt against tradition--gradually acquired strength, and began bit
+by bit to undermine at its bases the stern masculine rule.
+
+The hard conflict of two centuries is sown with tragedies and
+catastrophes. Supported by tradition, exasperated by the ever bolder
+revolts of woman, the masculine spirit every now and then went mad;
+and brutally tore away her costly jewels and tried to deny her soft
+raiment and rare perfumes; and when she had already grown accustomed
+to appearing in the world and shining there, he willed to drive her
+back into the house, and put beside her there on guard the fieriest
+threats of law. Sometimes, despairing, he filled Rome with his
+laments; protested that the liberty of the woman cost the man too
+dear; cried out that the bills of the dressmaker and the jeweller
+would send Rome, the Empire, the world, to ruin. In vain, with wealth,
+in a civilisation full of Oriental influences, woman grew strong,
+rose, and invaded all society, until in the vast Empire of the first
+and second centuries, at the climax of her power, with beauty,
+love, luxury, culture, prodigality, and mysticism she dominated
+and dissolved a society which in the refinements of wealth and
+intellectuality had lost the sharp virtues of the pioneer.
+
+It is unnecessary to dilate further on this point; it will be better
+rather to dwell a moment on the causes and the effects of this
+singular phenomenon. The history of Rome has been and can be so rich,
+so manifold, so universal, because in its long record ancient Rome
+gathered up into itself, welded, fused, the most diverse elements of
+social life, from all peoples and all regions with which it came into
+contact. It knew continued war and interrupted peace for centuries.
+It held united under its vast sway, states decrepit with the oldest
+of civilisations, and peoples hardly out of primitive barbarism.
+It exploited with avidity the intelligence, the laboriousness, the
+science of the former; the physical force, the war-valour and the
+daring of the latter; it absorbed the vices, the habits, the ideas of
+the Hellenised Orient, and transfused them in the untamed Occident.
+Taking men, ideas, money, everywhere and from every people, it
+created first an empire, then a literature, an architecture, an
+administration, and a new religion, that were the most tremendous
+synthesis of the ancient world. So the Roman world turned out vaster
+and more complex than the Greek, although never assuming proportions
+exceeding the power of the human mind; and as it grew, it kept that
+precious quality, wanting in the Greek, unity; hence, the lucid
+clearness of Roman history. There is everything in it, and everything
+radiates from one centre, so that comprehension is easy. Without doubt
+it would be rash to declare that the history of Rome alone may serve
+as the outline of universal history. It is quite likely that there
+may be found another history that possesses the same two qualities
+for which that of Rome is so notable--universality and unity--but one
+thing we may affirm: up to this time the history of Rome alone has
+fulfilled this office of universal compendium, which explains how it
+has always been studied by the learned and lettered of every part of
+the civilised European-American world, and how in modern intellectual
+life it is the history universal and cosmopolitan _par excellence_.
+This condition of things has a much greater practical importance than
+is supposed. Indeed it would be a serious mistake to believe that
+cosmopolitan catholicity is an ideal dower purely of Roman history,
+for which all the sons of Rome may congratulate themselves as of a
+thing doing honour only to their stirp. This universality forms part,
+I should say, of the material patrimony of all the Latin stock; we may
+number it in the historic inventory of all the good things the sons of
+Rome possess and of all their reasonable hopes for the future.
+
+This affirmation may at first appear to you paradoxical, strange, and
+obscure, but I think a short exposition will suffice to clear it. The
+universality of the history of Rome, the ease of finding in it models
+in miniature of all our life will have this effect, that classical
+studies remain the educational foundation of the intelligent classes
+in all European-American civilisation. These studies may be reformed;
+they may be as they ought, restricted to a smaller number of persons;
+but if it is not desired--as of course it cannot be--that in the
+future all men be purely technical capacities and merely living
+machines to create material riches; if, on the contrary, it is desired
+that in every nation the chosen few that govern have a philosophical
+consciousness of universal life, no means is better suited to instil
+this philosophic consciousness than the study of ancient Rome, its
+history, its civilisation, its laws, its politics, its art, and its
+religions, exactly because Rome is the completest and most lucid
+synthesis of universal life.
+
+Classical studies are one of the most powerful means of intellectual
+and moral influence on the Anglo-Saxon and German civilisations that
+the Latins possess, representing under modern conditions, for the
+Latin nations, a kind of intellectual entail inherited from their
+ancestors. The young Germans and Englishmen who study Greek and Latin,
+who translate Cicero or construe Horace, assimilate the Latin spirit,
+are brought ideally and morally nearer to us, are prepared without
+knowing it to receive our intellectual and social influence in other
+fields, are made in greater or less degree to resemble us. Indeed,
+it can be said, that, material interests apart, Rome is still in the
+mental field the strongest bond that holds together the most diverse
+peoples of Europe; that it unites the French, the English, the
+Germans, in an ideal identity which overcomes in part the diversity in
+speech, in traditions, in geographical situation, and in history. If
+common classical studies did not make kindred spirits of the upper
+classes in England, France, and Germany, the Rhine and the Channel
+would divide three nations mentally so different as to be impenetrable
+each to another.
+
+Therefore the cosmopolitan universality of Roman history is a kind
+of common good which the Latin races ought to defend with all
+their might, having care that no other history usurp its place in
+contemporary culture; that it remain the typical outline, the ideal
+model of universal history in the education of coming generations. The
+Latin civilised world has need that every now and then an historian
+arise to reanimate the history of Rome, in order to maintain its
+continued supremacy in the education of the intelligent; to prevent
+other histories from usurping this pre-eminence.
+
+It is useless to cherish illusions as to the task: its accomplishment
+has become much more arduous than it was fifty years ago; perhaps
+because the masses have acquired greater power in every part of the
+European-American world, and democracy advances more or less rapidly,
+invading everything--the democracy of the technical man, the
+merchant, the workman, the well-to-do burgher, all of whom easily
+hold themselves aloof from a culture in itself aristocratic. The
+accomplishment will become always more and more arduous; for Roman
+studies, feeling the new generations becoming estranged from them,
+have for the last twenty-five years tended to take refuge in the
+tranquil cloisters of learning, of archaeology, in the discreet
+concourse of a few wise men, who voluntarily flee the noises of the
+world, Fatal thought! Ancient Rome ought to live daily in the mind
+of the new social classes that lead onward; ought to irradiate its
+immortal light on the new worlds that arise from the deeps of the
+modern age, on pain of undergoing a new destruction more calamitous
+than that caused by the hordes of Alaric. The day when the history of
+Rome and its monuments may be but material for erudition to put into
+the museums by the side of the bricks of the palace of Khorsabad, the
+cuneiform inscriptions, and the statues of the kings of Assyria, Latin
+civilisation will be overwhelmed by a fatal catastrophe.
+
+To hinder the extinction of the great light of Rome in the world, to
+prolong indefinitely this ideal survival, which is the continuation of
+its material Empire, destroyed centuries ago, there is but one way--to
+renew historic studies of Rome, and to maintain intact their universal
+value which forms part of common culture. This is what I have tried
+to do, seeking to lead back to Roman history the many minds estranged
+from it, distracted by so many cares and anxieties and present
+questionings, and to fulfil a solemn duty to my fatherland and the
+grand traditions of Latin culture. If other histories can grow old, it
+is indeed the more needful, exactly because it serves to educate new
+generations, to reanimate Roman history, incorporating in it the new
+facts constantly discovered by archaeological effort, infusing it
+with a larger and stronger philosophical spirit, carrying into it the
+matured experience of the world, which learns not only by studying but
+also by living.
+
+I do not hesitate to say that every half-century there opens among
+civilised peoples a contest to find the new conception of Roman
+history, which, suited to the changed needs, may revivify classical
+studies; a competition followed by no despicable prize, the
+intellectual influence that a people may exercise on other peoples by
+means of these studies. To win in this contest we must never forget,
+as too many of us have done in the past thirty years, that a man can
+rule and refashion the world from the depths of a library, but only
+on condition that he does not immure himself there; that, while the
+physical sciences propose to understand matter in order to transform
+it, historico-philosophical discipline has for its end action upon the
+mind and the will; that philosophical ideas and historic teachings
+are but seeds shut up to themselves unless they enter the soil of the
+universal intellectual life.
+
+No: the time-stained marbles of Rome must not end beside
+cuneiform-inscribed bricks or Egyptian mummies, in the vast dead
+sections of archaeological halls; they must serve to pave for our feet
+the way that leads to the future. Therefore nothing could have been
+pleasanter or more grateful to me, after receiving the invitation
+tendered me by the _College de France_, and that from South America,
+than to accept the invitation of the First Citizen of the United
+States to visit this world which is being formed. In Paris, that
+wonderful metropolis of the Latin world, I had the joy, the highest
+reward for my long, hard labour, to show to the incredulous how much
+alive the supposedly dead history of Rome still is, when on those
+unforgettable days so cosmopolite a public gathered from every part of
+the city in the small plain hall of the old and august edifice. Coming
+into your midst, I feel that the history of Rome lives not only in the
+interest with which you have followed these lectures, but also, even
+if in part without clear cognisance, in things here, in the life you
+lead, in what you accomplish. The heritage of Rome is, for the peoples
+of America still more than for those of Europe, an heredity not purely
+artistic and literary, but political and social, which exercises the
+most beneficent influence on your history. In a certain sense it might
+be said that America is to-day politically, more than Europe, the true
+heir of Rome; that the new world is nearer--by apparent paradox--to
+ancient Rome than is Europe. Among the most important facts, however
+little noticed, in the history of the nineteenth century, I should
+number this: that the Republic, the human state considered as the
+common property of all--the great political creation of ancient
+Rome--is reborn here in America, after having died out in Europe. The
+Latin seed, lying buried for so many centuries beneath the ruins of
+the ancient world, like the grains of wheat buried in Egyptian tombs,
+transported from the other side of the ocean, has sprung up in the
+land that Columbus discovered. If there had been no Rome; if Rome
+had wholly perished in the great barbarian catastrophe; if in the
+Renaissance there had not been found among the ruins of the ancient
+world, together with beautiful Greek statues and manuscripts, this
+great political idea, there would to-day be no Republic in North
+America. With the word would probably have perished also the idea and
+the thing; and there is no assurance that men would have been able so
+easily and so well to rediscover it by their own effort.
+
+I am a student and not a flatterer. I therefore confess to you
+frankly, ending these lectures, that I do not belong to that number
+of Europeans who most enthusiastically admire things American. I think
+that Americans in general, in North America as in South, so readily
+recognise in themselves a sufficient number of virtues, that we
+Europeans hardly need help them in the belief, easy and agreeable
+to all, that they stand first in the world. Having come from an
+old society, which has a long historical experience, the most vivid
+impression made upon me in the two Americas has been just that
+of entering into a society provided with but meagre historical
+experience, which therefore easily deludes itself, mistaking for signs
+of heroic energy and proofs of a finished superiority, the passing
+advantages of an order chiefly economic, which come from the singular
+economic condition of the world. In a word, I do not believe that
+you are superior to Europe in as many things as you think; but a
+superiority I do recognise, great and, for me at least, indisputable,
+in the political institutions with which you govern yourselves. The
+Republic, which you have made to live again, here in this new land, is
+the true political form worthy of a civilised people, because the
+only one that is rational and plastic; while the monarchy, the form
+of government yet ruling so many parts of Europe, is a mixture of
+mysticism and barbarity, which European interests seek in vain to
+justify with sophistries unworthy the high grade of culture to which
+the Continent has attained. To search out the reasons why the old
+Oriental monarchy holds on so tenaciously in Europe, still threatening
+the future, would be useless here; certain it is that, when you
+meet any European other than a Frenchman or a Swiss, you can feel
+yourselves as superior to him in political institutions as the Roman
+_civis_ in the times of the Republic felt himself above the Asiatic
+slave of absolute monarchy. This superiority--never forget it!--you
+owe to Rome; for its possession, be grateful to the city that has
+encircled you with such glory, by infusing so tenacious a life into
+the "_Respublica_."
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+  Acrobats, the great number of, 218
+  Acte, the beautiful, 114
+  Actium,
+    the mistakes of Antony at, 60;
+    the peace after, 216
+  _AEgean_ Islands, the vineyards of the, 200
+  Agriculture in Gaul, the extent of, 84
+  Agrippa,
+    the builder of the Pantheon, 103;
+    the successor of, 165
+  Agrippina,
+    the power of, 103;
+    the love of the Republic of, 114;
+    miraculous escape of, 120;
+    death of, 122
+  Alaric, the destruction caused by, 258
+  Alcohol, the distillers of, 26
+  Alesia,
+    the city of, 91, 94;
+    the battle at, 197
+  Alexander the Great, mentioned, 48
+  Alexandria, the position of, 15
+  Allier, the valley of the, 92
+  Alps,
+    the peoples beyond the, 20;
+    the fear of crossing the, 73
+  _Ambitio_ of the ancients, the, 14
+  America, the discovery of,
+  _Amor_, the kingdom of, 25
+  _Amores_, the, by Ovid, 151
+  _Amours_, the, of Antony, 41
+  _Amphore_, the wine of the, 39
+  Ancient Rome, corruption in, 3 _ff_
+  Anglo-Saxons, traits of the, 197
+  Anicetus, the diabolical plan of, 119
+  Antony,
+    the history of, 37 _ff_;
+    the love of, 40;
+    meets Cleopatra, 44;
+    the bewilderment of, 57
+  Antifeminist reaction, the, 111
+  Antioch,
+    the departure for, 45;
+    the marriage at, 51
+  Antium, the return to, 119
+  Antonines, the power of the, 246
+  Aquileia, son of Julia born at, 155;
+    the trade in, 192
+  Arabia, part of, annexed, 49
+  Archaeological discoveries, the effect of, 259
+  Archaeologists, the discoveries of, 43
+  Archelaus, the revolt against, 166
+  Architectural effort at Rome, 134
+  Argentine Republic, the mention of, 86
+  Arles, a large market for wines, 192
+  Armenia, the revolt in, 161
+  Arras, the district of, 90
+  Arrianus, the work of, 199
+  _Ars Armandi_, the, by Ovid, 163
+  Artists, the numerous, of the East, 55
+  Asia Minor, the addition to the Empire of, 49
+  Asiatic civilisation, 17
+  Athens, the influence of, 202
+  Atrides, the legend of, 138
+  Attalus, King, 16; the bequest of, 187
+  Augustus, the age of, 25
+  Augustus Caesar, lectures on, 3;
+    the wise laws of, 158;
+    troubles of, 176;
+    the death of, 209
+  _Avaritia_, the complaint of the, 14
+
+  B
+
+  Bacchante, a miserable, 155
+  Bacchus, the plant of, 182
+  Baetica, civilisation in, 72
+  Baiae, the Court at, 119
+  Banquets, the, of ancient Rome, 7
+  Barbarian, the struggle against the, 34
+  Barbarism, the primitive, 254
+  Belgae, the victory over the, 77
+  Beverages, in Roman history, 181 _ff_;
+    the growing use of, 186
+  _Birrus_ of Laodicea, the, 88
+  Bismarck, mentioned, 64; compared to Caesar, 247
+  Biturigi, the, a tribe of Gaul, 86
+  Black Sea, the country around, 182
+  Borebiste, a Gaetic warrior, 191
+  _Boulanger_, a Roman, 41
+  Brennus, the conspirator, 130
+  Britannicus, the exclusion of, 103; the death of, 115
+  Brutus, the cult of, 243
+  Buddhist, the position of the, 236
+  Burrhus, the political work of, 104
+
+  C
+
+  Cadurci, a tribe of Gaul, 86
+  Caesar, Caius, adopted by Augustus, 158;
+    the political position of, 160
+  Caesar, Julius, the wisdom of, 72; mistakes of, 75
+  Caesar, Lucius, adopted by Augustus, 158,
+    the popularity of, 164
+  Caesars, the palaces of the, 7
+  Caleti, the, a tribe of Gaul, 86
+  California, grape-culture in, 187
+  Caligula, the death of, 115
+  Calumnies, the, about Julia, 174
+  Campania, the cities of, 218
+  Canals, the construction of, 213
+  Capri, the monster of, 155
+  _Carmen Seculare_, the, by Horace, 151
+  Carthusian, the patience of the, 91
+  Castles, the Roman, on the Rhine, 192
+  Catiline, the conspiracies of, 130
+  Cato, the love of tradition of, 105;
+    as a wine drinker, 184
+  Celt, the genius of the, 88
+  Cereals, the growth of, in Gaul, 85
+  Cervisia, the supplications of, 196
+  Champagne, the reputation of, 206
+  Chian, a cask of, for a banquet, 199
+  Christianity, the work and spreading of, 231 _ff_
+  Christians, the, in the time of Nero, 131
+  "Christofle," the making of, in Gaul, 91
+  Church, the position of the, 232
+  Cicero, the letters of, 74;
+    the  influence of, 172
+  Civil wars, the impression of the, 148
+  _Civis_, the Roman, 264
+  Classic renaissance, the, 235
+  Claudii, the haughty line of the, 159
+  Claudius, Emperor, the death of, 103
+  Cleopatra, the legend of, 37 _ff_;
+    described, 40;
+    policy, of, 58
+  Clodia, the famous, 74
+  College de France, the, 3, 260
+  Columbus, mentioned, 71
+  _Comitia_, the election of the, 58
+  _Commentaries_, the, of Caesar, 191
+  Conflagration, the, of Rome, 129
+  Corday, Charlotte, 63
+  Corruption of customs, the, 3
+  Costumes of Rome, the, 181
+  Cradle of Jesus, the, 166
+  Crassus, the demagogy of, 249
+  Cultivation, in Rome, 181
+  _Cultus_, a Gallic term, 91
+  Cydnus, the river, 39
+
+  D
+
+  Dalmatia, the malcontents at, 166
+  Danube provinces, the, 88, 91
+  Dechelette, the great work of, 91
+  Diamonds, the importation of, 220
+  Diocletian, the edict of, 88
+  Dion Cassius, the historian, 63, 80
+  Dionysius, the Greek judge, 183
+  Dionysos, the beverage of, 183
+  Dithyrambics, the, of Horace, 196
+  Drusus, mentioned, 93;
+    the exalted position of, 104
+  Duodecember, a fourteenth month, 79
+  Duruy, the apologies of, 243
+  Dynasty of Egypt, the, 215
+
+  E
+
+  "Eastern peril," the, 50
+  Economic strength, the, of Rome, 224
+  Economic unity, the, of the world, 236
+  Education, the laborious, 194
+  Egnatius Mecenius, the story of, 183
+  Egypt, the conquest of, 16, 46
+  Elagabalus, the splendour of, 6, 8
+  Elegies, the revolutionary, of Ovid, 152
+  Empire, the extent of the, 217
+  Ephesus, the city of, 219
+  _Euthanasia_, the death of the happy, 210
+  External policy, the, of Rome, 164
+
+  F
+
+  Fabius Pictor, the word of, 183
+  Falernian, the discovery of, 198
+  "First Citizen of the Republic," the, 157
+  Feminism, the increase of, in Rome, 108
+  "Festivals of Youth," the, at Rome, 124
+  Flavians, the power of the, 246
+  Flax, the cultivation of, 85
+  _Folies Bergeres_, the, mentioned, 129
+  _Fortuna_, the, of the Romans 98
+  Forum, the impressive monument of the, 55
+  Franco-Prussian War, the, 202
+  Frankfurt, the treaty of, 202
+  Freedmen, the position of, 212
+  French Revolution, the, 205
+  Frontiers, the strengthening of the, 109
+
+  G
+
+  Gaetic warrior, the rule of a, 191
+  Gaeto-Thracian, the great empire of, 191
+  Gallia Narbonensis, the position of, 50
+  Gallic,
+    affairs, the midst of, 73;
+    roads, the network of, 213
+  Gallo-Roman villas, the, 87
+  Gambetta, the love letters of, 40
+  Gambrinus, the god, 202
+  Gaul,
+    the development of, 20, 69 _ff_.;
+    conquest of, 72;
+    the annexation of, 77;
+    the wealth of, 83
+  Gauls,
+    the irritation of the, 79;
+    the genius of the, 81
+  Genoa, the situation of, 23
+  German historians, the work of, 152
+  Germanicus, the historical importance of, 103
+  Germany, conditions in, 79, 165;
+    policy toward Rome, 166
+  Glass-making in Gaul, 90
+  Government, the, at Rome, 213
+  Governors, the position of the, 312
+  Gracchi, the struggle of the, 17
+  Graeco-Latin civilisation, the, 72,235
+  Grape-culture, the spread of, 186
+  Grape harvest, the abundance of the, 185
+  _Greatness and Decline of Rome_, the, 10
+  Greece, the contact of Rome with, 185
+  Greek wines in Rome, 8
+  Gymnasium, the, at Alexandria, 55
+
+  H
+
+  Hannibal, the army of, 189
+  Harbours, the building of, 213
+  Hebrew people, the position of the, 166
+  Hellenist, an ardent, 58
+  Helvetia, customs in, 191
+  Helvetians, the, 74;
+    the attack on the, 75
+  Herculaneum, the city of, 218
+  Heritage of Rome, the, 261
+  Herod the Great, the death of, 166
+  History, as considered by Ferrero, 65
+  Horace, the invectives of, 23
+  Houssaye, Henri, mentioned, 41
+
+  I
+
+  Ides, the days of the, 9
+  Ierapolis, the prosperity of, 219
+  Ilium, the district of Troy, 50
+  India, the precious metals of, 30;
+    wine exported to, 200
+  Indo-Chinese, the commerce of the, 55
+  Inscriptions, the story left by the, 221
+  Istrian wine, the favourite of Livia, 199
+
+  J
+
+  Jerome, Saint, the story of, 78
+  _Jeunesse doree_, the, of Rome, 124
+  Jewelry making in Gaul, 90
+  Jewels as a luxury, 31
+  Jews in France, the, 250
+  Jove, the temple of, 19
+  Judas, the mention of, 63
+  Judea, the revolt at, 166
+  Julia, the exile of, 137;
+    the episode of, 150;
+    discord with, 154;
+    unfaithfulness of, 157;
+    the accusation of, 170;
+    the fate of, 177
+  Julian, the laws of, 151
+  Julian-Claudian house, the power of the, 188
+  Jurisdiction of property, the, in Gaul, 84
+  Jurists, the influence of, 230
+  Juvenal, passages from, 90
+
+  K
+
+  Kalends, the days of the, 9
+  Karbin, mentioned, 50
+  Khorsabad, the palace of, 259
+  Knights, the social position of the, 212
+  Ladies, the, of Rome, 30
+  Langres, the district of, 90
+  Laodicea,
+    the _birrus_ of, 88;
+    the city of, 219
+  Lares, the veneration of the, 190
+  Latin morals, the severity of, 61
+  Latin spirit, the similarity of the, 256
+  Laws of Julian, the, 151
+  Legislative reforms, the, 21
+  Leibach, the trade through, 192
+  Lepidus mentioned, 172
+  Letronne, the researches of, 45
+  _Lex de adulteriis_, the, 148
+  _Lex de maritandis ordinibus_, the, 147
+  _Lex Julia de adulteriis_, the, 169
+  _Lex sumptuaria_, the, 148
+  Libertine poet, a, in the year 8 B.C., 151
+  Licinius, the characteristics of, 79
+  Linen, the manufacture of, 219
+  _Litterati_, the many, 218
+  Livia,
+    the mother of Tiberius, 162;
+    the position of, 168
+  Livia, the House of, 7
+  Livy, the point of view of, 3
+  Lollia Paulina, the fame of, 9
+  Lucullus,
+    the rising power of, 18;
+    wine used by, 184
+  Lusitania, a mission to, 117
+  _Luxuria_, the desire of, 14
+  Luxury,
+    of Rome, 125;
+    spread of, 186
+
+  M
+
+  Macrobius, the writings of, 155
+  Mamertine, a kind of wine, 199
+  Mania, the all absorbing, of Nero, 128
+  Marcellus, the privileges accorded, 160
+  Marius, the revolution of, 18
+  Martial, passages from, 90
+  "Mass," the so-called, 182
+  _Mater familias_, the honour of, 39
+  Maurel, Andre, the writings of, 251
+  Mazzini, the great, 63
+  Mediterranean world, the vast, 97
+  Merchandise, the great interchange of, 218
+  Mesia, the metropolis of, 219
+  Messalina, the death of, 103
+  Middle Ages, the cathedrals of the, 140
+  Military power, the weakening of the, at Rome, 167
+  Military Republic, the, 136
+  Military triumph, the, of Rome, 197
+  Minos, the historic, 63
+  Mirabeau, the love letters of, 40
+  Mithridates, defeat of, 19;
+    the conquests of, 197
+  Mohammedan, the position of the, 236
+  Mommsen, the apologies of, 243
+  _Morales_, the two, at Rome, 155
+  Morini, the, a tribe in Gaul, 86
+  _Mosca olearia_, a new species of, 190
+  _Municipia_, the splendour of the, 110
+  Museum, the, at Alexandria, 55
+  Mythology, the imagination of, 197
+
+  N
+
+  Naiads, the maidens of Cleopatra dressed as, 40
+  Naples, the ruins of, 92;
+    the city of, 218
+  Naples, the Gulf of, 119
+  Napoleon I., mentioned, 63, 210
+  _Natural History_, the, by Pliny, 183
+  Nero, Emperor, 96,
+    elected, 103;
+    frivolity of, 105;
+    debauches of, 114;
+    the cowardice of, 121;
+    careless government of, 125;
+    St. Paul contrasted with, 133;
+    the suicide of, 135
+  Newspapers, the fortunate lack of, in Rome, 173
+  Nile, the Roman protectorate in the valley of the, 46
+  Nimes, the inhabitants of, 175
+  Nones, the days of the, 9
+  Notre Dame, the cathedral of, 140
+  Nuptial banquets, the cost of, 9
+
+  O
+
+  Octavia, divorce of, 40;
+    the wife of Nero, 124, 127
+  Oil, the exportation of, 218
+  Oligarchy, the, at Rome, 81
+  Olive groves, the wealth of the, 189
+  Olympus, the delights of, 59
+  Opimius, the consulate of, 198
+  Orient, the metropolises of the, 15
+  Oriental Empire, the, of Rome, 57
+  Oriental state, the conquest of an, 15
+  Orientalism, the invasion of, 225
+  Ostia, Tiberius starts for, 163
+  Ovid, the representatives of, 149;
+    the work of, 150
+
+  P
+
+  Paintings, of Pompeii, the, 229
+  Palatine, a journey to the, 7;
+    polygamy in, 118
+  Palestine, the annexation of, 49;
+    uprising in, 166
+  Pandataria, Julia, exiled to, 172, 177
+  Pannonia, the malcontents at, 166
+  Pannonians, the customs of the, 193
+  Pantheon, the, mentioned, 103
+  Parthians, the Empire of the, 167
+  _Passum_, as a drink, 183
+  _Pater familias_, the power of the, 172
+  Paul of Tarsus, a great and simple man, 131;
+    the persecution of, 134
+  _Pax Romana_, the, 4;
+    the extent of the, 210
+  Pearls, the importation of, 30, 220
+  _Penetralia_, the, of the home, 32
+  Pergamon, the city, 219
+  Pergamus, the kingdom of, 16, 187
+  _Periplus of the Erytrian Sea_, the, a manual, 199
+  Persia, the conquest of, 44
+  Philosophers, the many, 209
+  Philosophy, the ancient, of Rome, 233
+  _Phylloxera_, a new species of, 190
+  Piedmont, the peasants of, 187
+  Pinon, the imperialist, 251
+  Pisa, inscriptions at, 164
+  Piso, the conspiracy of, 135
+  Plutarch, description of, 39
+  Po, the valley of the, 192
+  Poetry, the, of Horace, 195
+  Poets, the position of, 9 B.C., 146
+  Political barrier, the, between Gaul and Rome, 84
+  Political events, the, of Rome, 33
+  Political _personnel_, the, of Rome, 217
+  Polybius, the period of, 183
+  Pompadour, the Marquise de, mentioned, 43
+  Pompeii, the ruins of, 92;
+    the city of, 218
+  Pompey, the conquests of, 19;
+    the theatre of, 55
+  _Pontifex maximus_, the title of, 232
+  Pontus, salted fish from the, 8
+  Poppaea Sabina, the skill of, 116;
+    death of, 137
+  _Populus_, the representatives of the, 246
+  Pozzuoli, the city of, 218
+  Praetor, the office of the, 157
+  Precious metals, the distribution of, 218
+  Praetorian guards, the, 117
+  Praetorians, the influence of the, 104
+  Princeps, the authority of the, 188
+  Proconsuls, the, of Rome, 182
+  Procurator, the origin of the office of, 212
+  Proprietors, the government of the, 211
+  Prosperity, the growing, 148
+  Protestant, the present position of the, 236
+  Provinces, the peace in the, 176
+  Ptolemies, the, at Alexandria, 19
+  Ptolemies, the kingdom of the, 46
+  Public finance, the lack of, 144
+  Punic War, the Second, 3, 214
+
+  Q
+
+  Quaestor, the office of the, 211
+  Quintilius Varus, the governor of Syria, 166
+  Quintus Metullus Celerus, the consul, 74
+
+  R
+
+  Reinach, Joseph, the historian, 63
+  Republic, the last century of the, 14, 198
+  _Respublica_, the glory of the, 264
+  _Revue de Paris_, the, 63
+  Rheims, the vicinity of the city of, 206
+  Rhetian wine, the preference for, 199
+  Rhine, the river, 72
+  Roads, the construction of, 213
+  Rodi, Tiberius to go to, 162
+  Roman Catholic, the position of the, 236
+  Roman Empire, the dissolution of the, 140, 210
+  Roman history in modern education, 239
+  Roman nobility, the, 54
+  Roman protectorate, the, 46
+  Roman society, the dissolution of, 5
+  Romanism, the defence of, 111
+  Rome, in the beginning, 5
+  Romulus as a lawmaker, 183
+  Royal palaces, the closing of, 215
+  Ruteni, the, a tribe of Gaul, 86
+
+  S
+
+  Saint Mark, the wonder of, 140
+  Saintonge, the district of, 90
+  Savants, the, of the East, 55
+  Scipio Africanus, the work of, 153
+  Scipios, the policy of the, 226
+  Second Punic War, the, 3,214
+  Seine, the banks of the, 206
+  Sempronius Gracchus, a famous tribune, 56
+  Senate,
+    the Roman, 103;
+    sessions of the, 105
+  Seneca, the political work of, 104
+  Sesterces, the value of the Roman, 223
+  Sicily, the peasants of, 187
+  Sidon,
+    the artisans of, 88;
+    the city of, 219
+  Silk, the importation of, 220
+  Silver-plating, the art of, 228
+  Slaves, the abundance of, in Rome, 15
+  Slaves, the position of, 212
+  Social development, the, of the Roman Empire, 207 _ff_
+  Social laws, the, 148, 153
+  Socialists, the invectives of the, 250
+  _Soldi_, the hunt for, 173
+  Spain, the pro-consulship of, 184
+  Spartacus, the days of, 189
+  Stadium, the erection of the, at Rome, 125
+  State, the supervision of the, 24
+  Statues, the erection of, 152
+  Strabo, observations of, 85
+  _Strenua inertia_, the, 29
+  Suetonius, the ancient writer, 127
+  Sulla, the revolution of, 18
+  Sulmona, the birth of Ovid at, 149
+  Summer homes, the, at Naples, 120
+  Syria,
+    the annexation of, 73;
+    the conquest of, 16
+
+  T
+
+  Tacitus, the opinion of, 30, 152
+  Tarsus, Cleopatra at, 39
+  Terpnos, a zither-player, 105
+  Textile plants, in Gaul, 85
+  Theatres, the great demand for, 110
+  Theresa, Maria, mentioned, 43
+  Thracian slave, the escape of a, 189
+  Tiber, the banks of the, 203
+  Tiberius,
+    a great general, 7, 30, 93, 109, 145;
+    the life of, 153;
+    difficulties of, 157;
+    suggested retirement of, 162
+  Traditions, aristocratic, 153
+  Tributes, the,
+    imposed on the vanquished, 15;
+    collection of, 212
+  Triumvir, the fall of the great, 111
+  Troy, the ancient city of, 50
+  Tunis, grape-culture at, 187
+  Tyranny, the, at Rome, 135
+  Tyre, the prosperity of, 88, 219
+  Tyrian purple, the, 89
+
+  U
+
+  Undecember, a thirteenth month, 79
+  _Urbs_, the meaning of, 249
+  Usury, the pitiless, 186
+
+  V
+
+  Vladivostok, mentioned, 50
+  Villa, the luxury of a Roman, 194
+  Valtellina, the valley of the, 199
+  Varus, the catastrophe of, 166
+  Vatican field, the stadium in the, 124
+  Velleius, the report of, 93
+  Veneto, the peasants of the, 187
+  Venosa, an old poet from, 195
+  Venus, Cleopatra compared to, 39
+  Vices, the extent of, 27
+  Villas, the, of Gaul, 99
+  Vine-tenders, the, of Rome, 182
+  Vineyards, the destruction of the, 390
+  Virgil, the fame of, 23
+  Viticulture, the, of Italy, 196
+
+  W
+
+  Wine, in Roman history, 179 _ff_;
+    an inferior variety made in Italy, 182;
+    as a medicine, 183
+  Wine-dealers, the, of Rome, 182
+  Women of to-day and yesterday, 29
+  Wool industry, the, of Gaul, 90
+
+  X
+
+  Xerxes, the fame of, 63
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Characters and events of Roman History
+by Guglielmo Ferrero
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMAN HISTORY ***
+
+***** This file should be named 13208.txt or 13208.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/2/0/13208/
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, S.R.Ellison and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/old/13208.zip b/old/13208.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a745ecb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/13208.zip