Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Rome (Yesterday's Classics) (12 page)

For 320 years after the first victim had gasped out his life on the sand of the Flavian arena, the Colosseum remained the favourite gathering-place of the Roman mob, and its bloodthirsty shows the favourite pastimes. Even in Christian days, and in spite of many efforts to suppress the abomination, the gladiatorial shows still drew their thousands year by year to watch the dying agonies of men for whom Christ died. And then, one day in the reign of the Emperor Honorius, it fell out that an untutored Asiatic monk named Telemachus, visiting Rome, strayed into the great Amphitheatre. Appalled at the sight of the cruelties in which a Roman crowd found nothing but the keenest pleasure, he sprang into the arena and rushed with outstretched arms between the gladiators. The rude fighters jostled him aside, but he would not be denied, and still thrust himself between the drawn swords.

The wild beast in the Roman heart, never very difficult to awaken, was roused at once. Each member of the vast crowd seized the first missile that came to his hand. The rash monk was overwhelmed beneath a shower of stones from all quarters of the building, and perished where he stood. But his work was done. Scarcely had the last quiver of his broken body died away, when the crowd awoke to the realization of what an infamy had been committed. Hardened as the Romans were, they felt that they had slain a true man of God. Silently, with bowed heads and burdened consciences, they left that bloodstained and guilty house; and when Honorius issued an edict abolishing for ever the cruel sports of the Amphitheatre, they submitted without a murmur.

And now the home of all these horrors stands silent and deserted, the most tremendous ruin of old Rome, and perhaps the most significant also—a witness to all time of how power, and wealth, and enlightenment may only make human hearts more utterly merciless and cruel, unless they are controlled by a diviner spirit. If there has ever been a building on earth haunted by the Furies, surely it is the Colosseum!

N
OW
that we have come to the last chapter of our little book, and I have told you something of how Rome began, and grew, and won her freedom, how her armies were marshalled on land and her fleets at sea, how her citizens lived, and how they enjoyed themselves, I can imagine you still saying: "But you have not told us how it was that Rome became so great, and that a little Latin town came at last to rule the whole world." And, indeed, when I look over what I have written, I see that I have told you many things that are unpleasant about the Romans—their cruelty, their hardness, their luxury—but have said very little about the better side of their character. And yet that is the most important of all, for when a nation becomes great, it is never by ferocity, or falseness, but always by something in the nation that is good and sterling. So now I want to tell you in a few words what, so far as I can see, was the quality that brought the Romans to the front and kept them there for so long.

It was no wonderful and brilliant genius. That precious gift of Heaven belonged to the Greeks, not to the Romans, and because of it the story of Greece shines like a star through the darkness of the world's early days. Neither in thought, in poetry, nor in art, did Rome ever approach to anything within sight of the greatness of Greece. The torch of her best thinkers was lit at the fire of Greek thought, her dramatists were but bungling copyists of the Greek playwrights. As for her sculpture and painting, she either brought them wholesale from Greece, or had second-rate copies made within her own land of the great works that had made Greece for ever glorious.

Not even in her own particular sphere of war did she exhibit any very remarkable genius, until Julius Cæsar arose to teach the world what a Roman army was capable of when it had a born soldier to lead it. During all the hundreds of years that she made war, you can count on the fingers of one hand the captains of really outstanding merit whom she produced; and even the best of these, such as Scipio Africanus, the conqueror of Hannibal, have no claim to a place in the very first rank beside such giants as Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, and Napoleon. She produced some of the very worst generals who ever, I suppose, commanded on a battlefield, a few really good and capable soldiers, and a number of steady, average captains who knew the splendid weapon put into their hands and gave it a fair chance to do its work. The army did the rest, whenever it was not hampered by a fool. But I think there is nothing more remarkable in the story of Rome than the scarcity of real military genius in a race which lived by and for war alone.

No, the real secret of Rome's greatness lies not in any brilliancy of intellect, but in a quiet, homely virtue which was bred in every Roman from his very earliest days, which was fostered by every influence in his home life, encouraged by every public influence, demanded of him in his military training, and so continually presented as the natural and necessary thing that finally it became a part of his being, just as much as his hand, his brain, or his life-blood. That virtue was
discipline.
The first thing a Roman learned was to obey; the next was to regard his obedience as a necessary part in the working of the great machine which, in the State or on the battlefield, was perpetually working out the greatness and glory of the Eternal City; the third was to realize that his own individual life counted as nothing, if the duty of obedience claimed its sacrifice in the greater interests of the State.

Mr. Rudyard Kipling has put it in one sentence in the old engineer's song—

      "Now, a' together, hear them lift their lesson—theirs an' mine:

      Law, Orrder, Duty an' Restraint, Obedience, Discipline!"

The thing that made McAndrew's engines strong and smooth-running is the thing that made the Roman Empire, and kept its vast machine running for centuries. When discipline died out of the Roman character, the Empire fell.

Just think of the stories in which the Romans delighted. They are not stories of cleverness, like so many of the Greek legends; nor have they, generally, the beauty of those older tales, though they have a stern beauty of their own. They are all stories either of courage, like that of Horatius, of Scævola, who held his hand in the fire to show how vain it was to dream of tempting him to treachery, or of Cloelia, the maiden hostage who swam the Tiber; or else of devotion to the Fatherland, like that of Marcus Curtius, who leaped into the chasm in the Forum; or of stern obedience to the strict letter of the law, like that of Manlius, who sentenced his own son to death because he fought and slew an enemy against the army order which forbade such combats; or of self-restraint, as when the Senate went out to meet their beaten Consul Varro, after the ghastly slaughter of Cannæ, and, instead of reproaching him for his failure, publicly thanked him for that he had not despaired of the Republic.

Not even Hannibal could finally beat a nation which met its defeats in such a spirit; and you must remember that for long centuries that was the spirit of all Rome. It was expected, it was the natural thing, that a Roman should obey; that he should do his work, whatever it might be, with the highest degree of thoroughness and faithfulness; that he should, anywhere and at any time, be ready to die rather than yield a foot of ground that his city had set him to hold. And so Rome's armies, often beaten at the beginning of a war, always triumphed in the end; so the roads that she toilsomely drove across Europe still survive, and her bridges still stand above the streams that she bridled by them, defiant of storm and flood; so nothing short of modern high explosives will uproot the foundations of her ancient buildings. So, above all, she gave to all Europe the law by which she had bound and disciplined herself, and gave it with such thoroughness that the law codes of the nations to-day are mainly founded on the ancient laws of Rome.

To put it all in one sentence, Rome rose to command the world because she had first learned to obey. The great secret she has taught mankind is that all things are possible to a nation that has learned to order its strength in the interests of all, rather than in those of the individual. Indeed, it is a great and a worthy lesson, and cruel, hard, unsympathetic though the Roman often was, we owe him an endless debt of gratitude for this, that he not only tamed the rude ancient world and broke its barbarism, but laid, by his doctrine of discipline and his victorious devotion to it, the foundation of the modern State.

¹
Castel Sant' Angelo (The Tomb of the Emperor Hadrian) and St. Peter's in the background

²
Showing equipment of a Roman General of the early Empire

³
The villa described is that discovered at Bosco-reale, about two miles from Pompeii, and excavated in 1894-95. The silver vessels mentioned were found as stated, along with the skeleton of the lady of the house and those of two of her slaves, in the hall of the wine-presses, which had been prepared in haste as a room for her use. Publius Fannius Synistor is the name of the real owner of the villa, Maxima the name inscribed on some of the articles of the silver treasure.

⁴
The Peristyle court, lying between the Atrium and the garden proper.

⁵
The house described is really that known as the house of Pansa at Pompeii. It may be taken as fairly representative of the dwelling of a moderately well-to-do Roman.

⁶
Extreme left, pillars of Temple of Castor and Pollux. Centre, pillars of Temple of Saturn and Temple of Vespasian. Right, Arch of Septimius Severus. Between Temple of Castor and Pollux and Temple of Saturn, the remains of Basilica Julia

⁷
An old Italian Goddess of the Dawn. The temple is supposed by some to be that of Portunus, the God of Harbours

⁸
The most perfectly preserved of ancient Roman buildings. It bears the name of Agrippa, but the present building was erected by Hadrian. Probably the oldest dome in the world, as it is one of the most perfect

⁹
Now Castle and Bridge of St. Angelo

¹⁰
Opposite side to that shown in the colour plate. The Colosseum is seen through the Arch

¹¹
Exterior and Interior Views

¹²
Opened in 80 A.D. by the Emperor Titus with games lasting 100 days