Nationalism and Culture (67 page)

unified national state, which directed all its forces to reducing every manifestation of social life to the dead level of its political purposes. "Hellenism" was merely a substitute for a culture which could flourish only in freedom j it was the triumph of the uncreative exploiter over the creative spirit of the Greek city.

Most historiographers honor Alexander as the great disseminator of Hellenic culture over the enormous territories of his kingdom. But they overlook the fact that he, unmindful of his own victory over the Persian military power, fell, in thought and action, ever more under the spell of Persian notions of dominion and set himself to the task of transplanting these to Europe. Grote is entirely right when in his History of Greece he maintains that Alexander did not make Persia Grecian, but Greece Persian, thus strangling forever the further development of its culture j yes, that his actual purpose was to convert Hellas into a satrapy, as the Romans later made it into a province of their world realm. Under his rule and that of his successors the springs of the ancient Grecian culture dried up. For a long time men fed on its abundance, but it developed no new products. National-political unity sounded the death-knell of Hellenic culture.

THE PREHISTORY OF ROME. THE ETRUSCANS. THE FOUNDING OF THE CITY OF ROME. PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS. ROME AS MILITARY AND POLITICAL CENTER. CONQUEST AS A PRINCIPLE OF STATE. THE NATURE OF THE ROMAN STATE. DICTATORSHIP AND CAESARISM. FROM NATIONAL-POLITICAL UNITY TO WORLD DOMINION. RELIGION IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. ROME AND CULTURE. THE STRUGGLE OF "GENUINE ROMANISM" AGAINST THE HELLENIC SPIRIT. CATO AND SOCRATES. INVASION BY GRECIAN CULTURE. A PEOPLE OF IMITATORS. ART IN ROxME. CONTEMPT FOR LABOR. LITERATURE AS STATE-PURPOSE. THE THEATER IN ROxME AND IN ATHENS. THE "GOLDEN AGE." THE AENEID OF VIRGIL. THE COMPLAINT OF HORACE. PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE IN ROME. CONQUEST AS A MONETARY TRANSACTION. ROME AS WORLD VAMPIRE. CONCERNING THE DECLINE OF ROME. INCREASING INFLUENCE OF MILITARY LEADERS. SOLDIERY AND PEASANTRY. ROMAN LAW. THE PROLETARIAT. SLAVE UPRISINGS. CHARACTERLESSNESS AND SLAVERY ON PRINCIPLE. CAESARISM AND PRETORIANISM. DEGENERATION AND CHRISTIANITY. THE END OF THE EMPIRE.

WHENEVER we speak of Greece we also think of Rome, an association of ideas that is established in our school days. Our concept of "classic antiquity" embraces Greeks and Romans as peoples of the same cultural circle i we speak of a "Graeco-Roman culture period" and associate with this the idea of profound inner connections which never existed, never could have existed. It is true that we were told of certain characters distinguishing the Greeks from the Romans. Against the cheerful independence of the Greeks we were shown the stern sense of duty of the Romans J "Roman virtue" wrapped in its coarse toga served us in some measure as antithesis to the frank joy of living of Hellas. Above all, however, the schools praised the highly developed political sense of the Romans, which enabled them to forge the whole Italian peninsula into a firm political unity, a thing the Greeks could never accomplish in their own country. And all this was so presented to us as to convey with certainty the impression that Romanism was merely a necessary extension of the Grecian conception of life which, in a sense, it merely carried to its

conclusion. Without doubt there were connections between the Hellenic and the Roman culture, but these were of a purely superficial nature and had not the slightest relation to the peculiar modes of thought or the intellectual and cultural aspirations of the two peoples. Even if there were available proofs of the view that the Greeks and the Romans are to be regarded as descendants of the same people (one which in prehistoric times had its dwelling in the Middle Danube Basin and of whom they say one part wandered into the Balkans while the other forced its way into the Apennine peninsula), this still would be no proof of the interdependence of the Greek and the Roman cultures. The very wide difference in the social development of the two peoples would in that event merely show that different environments had influenced decisively the hereditary characteristics of the Greeks and the Romans and forced the course of their social life into different paths.

Concerning the primitive history of the Romans we know no more than about the early home of the Grecian tribes. With them, too, everything fades into the thick haze of mythological tradition. Famous authorities on Roman history (like, for example, Theodop Mommsen), even maintain that many of these legends, especially the myth of the founding of the city of Rome by the brothers Romulus and Remus, were invented much later with the conscious political purpose of giving a national Roman stamp to institutions taken over from the Etruscans and to delude the people into a belief in their community of descent. That the peninsula had already in prehistoric times been inundated repeatedly by Germanic and Celtic tribes cannot today be doubted j but in all probability immigrations from Africa and the Levant by the sea-route had also taken place, and this long before the colonization of Sicily and South Italy by the Phoenicians—and a few centuries later by the Greeks.

It is certain that the so-called Italic peoples did not belong to the original inhabitants of the peninsula, as was once widely accepted. The Italics were rather a people of Indo-Germanic origin which had crossed the Alps in prehistoric times and settled on the plains of the Po Valley. Later, driven out by the Etruscans, they withdrew to the middle and southern parts of the country, where they probably mixed with the Japygo-Messapians. The time of their entrance is veiled in utter darkness. On their arrival they encountered the Ligurians, who probably came from Asia Minor. Later the Ligurians completely vanished from the canvas j but their territories once extended over all the northern part of the peninsula, the Alps, Southern France, and as far as Northern Spain, where they mixed with the Iberians.

Among all the peoples, however, who played a part before the foundation of Rome and exerted very strong influence on the development of Roman civilization the Etruscans take first place. We are still altogether

uncertain about the origin of this remarkable people, since scientific research has not yet succeeded in deciphering their inscriptions. The Etruscan realm extended in early times from the extreme north clear to the banks of the Tiber, which was called by the ancients an Etruscan stream. Their control, undisturbed for centuries, was first broken by the growing power of the Romans. But even at the founding of Rome they still played an important part. Among the Roman kings Tarquinius Superbus was expressly designated as Etruscan, while Numa Pompilius and Ancus Marcius were called Sabines by the Roman historiographers.

Beyond doubt the great structures of ancient Rome, the cloaca maxima, the Capitoline temple, and so on, were erected by Etruscan engineers, for none of the Latin tribes were highly enough developed culturally to have accomplished such works. It is now generally accepted that the name Rome is of Etruscan origin and probably goes back to the tribe of the Ruma. In the semi-historical traditions of the Romans, moreover, the Etruscans are mentioned as one of the three aboriginal peoples to whom they ascribed the founding of the city. From all this it follows that the Romans proper enter history as an already mixed people, in whose veins circulated the blood of several races.

The immediate occurrences which led to the founding of the city of Rome lie wholly in the dark. Many historians are of the opinion that the founding of the city can be traced back to the ver sacrum^y the "sacred springtime," a widespread custom among the Latin tribes, in obedience to which the young men of twenty years of age left their old place of habitation to establish elsewhere a home of their own. Many cities arose through this custom, and it is not impossible that Rome owes its existence to it. It is also clear from the traditions that the Palatine Hill was the first settled, while the other six hills were added to the city only subsequently and were, in fact, held by difi-erent tribes. The merging of these settlements into the city of Rome followed much later, and we are not in a position to establish historically its immediate causes. Probably force played a considerable part in it, a view that gains credence from the ancient tradition that the tribal fathers of the city of Rome gathered about them all sorts of fugitives, to whom the young settlement offered an asylum. The legend of the rape of the Sabine women also indicates that the first colonists were no very pleasant neighbors.

Very little of the primitive history of the Romans is known to us, but that little shows clearly that they were a people of farmers and cattle-breeders. Their social life was based on the so-called gentile system. The separate family-clans gradually united with others into tribal organizations, from which in tiniC there proceeded a federation of tribes wTiich had bound themselves together into a union for defense and offense. The community out of which Rome later arose exhibited a political unity in

which—just as among the Greeks—along with the new political forms, strong remnants of the old gentile system survived for a long time. In general, the transformation from purely social union to political organization was accomplished only very gradually} in fact, about in the measure that the natural union of the old gentile system was loosened by the institution of private property, and the family achieved an influence which delivered all power into the hands of the head of the family. Thus the ancient customary law was more and more displaced by the enactments of the state, which gradually grew into the Roman law.

These inner transformations of course affected also the relations with neighboring communities. It is easily seen that with the rapid growth of the city its lands would soon become inadequate for the production of food stuffs to meet the needs of the inhabitants} thus the first hostilities with the neighbors may have arisen. So we have the first battles growing out of the desire to conquer the land of the neighboring communities and to make these subject to Rome. But the conquered territories must be held and must be safeguarded against uprisings of the old-population, and this could be accomplished only by a strong military organization, in the development of which the Roman state little by little completely sunk itself. There was built up a new system of outspokenly militaristic character. Formerly, responsibility for public affairs had rested on the popular assembly, the comitia curiata which was still made up after the pattern of the ancient gentile system, but already under Numa, the successor of Romulus, influences were at work which led to decisive alterations in the system and tended strongly to give it a purely political character. The preconditions for this transformation are to be looked for in those internal divisions of Roman society into classes which were already plainly noticeable under the earliest kings. It is sheer nonsense to try to see in patricians and plebeians members of two different races which held toward one another in some measure the relation of conquerors and conquered. The simple fact that some of the descendants of the same family might belong to the patricians and others to the plebeians disposes of this view. In reality we are here dealing with two different social statuses which grew out of the system of private property and of the inequality of economic conditions. In this view the patricians are to be regarded as the representatives of the big farmers while the plebeians were gathered from the ranks of the small farmers, who in consequence of the increasing inequality of possessions came ever more and more under the yoke of their rich fellow citizens.

The society of earliest Rome was divided into family-clans, each headed by a chieftain or king clothed with the powers at once of high priest and general. Beside the king there stood the council of the leading men of the clans, on whom rested the actual guidance of the affairs of the

community. Because of the close relation between the king and the leading men it was altogether natural that he should select his officials from their ranks. Because of the economic preponderance of the big farmers it resulted that they came gradually to hold all the important offices and used them to foster and build up their own interests and privileges, so that the poorer part of the population was brought more and more under their mastery. Out of this situation developed the first beginnings of a caste of nobility, which worked for the abolishment of the old gentile system so that the conquest of foreign territories might proceed more systematically. These undertakings were definitely begun under Numaj but it was not until the time of Servius Tullius that there occurred the great about-face by which Roman society acquired that unique political stamp. The city of Rome became the focus of all the surrounding and the conquered territories. In the place of the ancient institutions there arose a political-military structure based on five classes with unequally apportioned rights. The council of leading men was replaced by the Senate, in which only patricians had seat and voice, being thus raised to the status of a hereditary aristocracy. The different classes were divided into military centuries, kept always ready for service in war. In place of the old comilia curiata came the comilia centuriata corresponding to this new division. Each class had its separate centuries j their relative electoral weight was determined by their possessions.

There is no doubt that by this new division the people were shamefully cheated j still, because remnants of the old order were cunningly mixed with the new, most of them were unaware of it. Thus came into being that aristocratic-democratic state system, the internal organization of which was based on conquest and spoliation. The whole people was welded into an army and the government pursued with relentless persistence its aim of bringing the whole peninsula under Roman rule and forging it into a vast political unity. Only from this point of view can the relation between patricians and plebeians be rightly judged. It would be quite the reverse of the truth to try to see in the plebeians merely an oppressed class whose efforts were directed at the abolition of privilege and the establishment of a new economic order. They were not thinking of anything of the sort. Rather, their sole concern was to become participants in the privileges of the patricians and obtain an equal share of the spoils of war. There was no fundamental difference between the two ranksi they were equally obsessed by the "Roman spirit" j both were ready to make slaves and to oppress other peoplesj both strove for the same opportunities for exploitation.