Читать книгу Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading - George Park Fisher - Страница 64

PLACE OF ROME IN HISTORY.—Rome is the bridge which unites, while it separates, the ancient and the modern world. The history of Rome is the narrative of the building up of a single City, whose dominion gradually spread until it comprised all the countries about the Mediterranean, or what were then the civilized nations. "In this great empire was gathered up the sum total that remained of the religions, laws, customs, languages, letters, arts, and sciences of all the nations of antiquity which had successively held sway or predominance." Under the system of Roman government and Roman law they were combined in one ordered community. It was out of the wreck of the ancient Roman Empire that the modern European nations were formed. Their likeness to one another, their bond of fellowship, is due to the heritage of laws, customs, letters, religion, which they have received in common from Rome.

THE INHABITANTS OF ANCIENT ITALY.—Until a late period in Roman history, the Apennines, and not the Alps, were the northern boundary of Italy. The most of the region between the Alpine range and the Apennines, on both sides of the Po, was inhabited by Gauls, akin to the Celts of the same name north of the Alps. On the west of Gallia were the Ligurians, a rough people of unknown extraction. People thought to be of the same race as the Ligurians dwelt in Sardinia and in Corsica, and in a part of Sicily. On the east of Gallia were the Venetians, whose lineage is not ascertained. The Apennines branch off from the Alps in a southeasterly direction until they near the Adriatic, when they turn to the south, and descend to the extreme point of the peninsula, thus forming the backbone of Italy. On the west, in the central portion of the peninsula, is the hilly district called by the ancients, Etruria (now Tuscany), and the plains of Latium and Campania. What is now termed Campania, the district about Rome, is a part of ancient Latium. The Etrurians differed widely, both in appearance and in language, from the Romans. They were not improbably Aryans, but nothing more is known of their descent. In the east, in what is now Calabria, and in Apulia, there was another people, the Iapygians, whose origin is not certain, but who were not so far removed from the Greeks as from the Latins. The southern and south-eastern portions of the peninsula were the seat of the Greek settlements, and the country was early designated Great Greece. Leaving out the Etrurians, Iapygians, and Greeks, Italy, south of Gallia, was inhabited by nations allied to one another, and more remotely akin to the Greeks. These Italian nations were divided into an eastern and a western stock. The western stock, the Latins, whose home was in Latium, were much nearer of kin to the Greeks than were the eastern. The eastern stock comprised the Umbrians and the Oscans. It included the Sabines, Samnites, and Lucanians.

We are certain, that, "from the common cradle of peoples and languages, there issued a stock which embraced in common the ancestors of the Greeks and the Italians; that from this, at a subsequent period, the Italians branched off; and that these divided again into the western and eastern stocks, while, at a still later date, the eastern became subdivided into Umbrians and Oscans." (Mommsen's History of Rome, vol. i., p. 36.)

ITALY AND GREECE.—In two important points, Italy is geographically distinguished from Greece. The sea-coast of Italy is more uniform, not being broken by bays and harbors; and it is not cut up, like Greece, by chains of mountains, into small cantons. The Romans had not the same inducement to become a sea-faring people; there were fewer cities; there was an opportunity for closer and more extended leagues. It is remarkable that the outlets of Greece were towards the east; those of Italy towards the west. The two nations were thus averted from one another: they were, so to speak, back to back.

THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.—The Greeks and Romans, although sprung from a common ancestry, and preserving common features in their language, and to some extent in their religion, were very diverse in their natural traits. The Greeks had more genius: the Romans more stability. In art and letters the Romans had little originality. In these provinces they were copyists of the Greeks: they lacked ideality. They had, also, far less delicacy of perception, flexibility, and native refinement of manners. But they had more sobriety of character and more endurance. They were a disciplined people; and in their capacity for discipline lay the secret of their supremacy in arms and of their ability to give law to the world. If they produced a much less number of great men than the Greeks, there was more widely diffused among Roman citizens a conscious dignity and strength. The Roman was naturally grave: the fault of the Greek was levity. Versatility belonged to the Greek: virility to the Roman. Above all, the sense of right and of justice was stronger among the Romans. They had, in an eminent degree, the political instinct, the capacity for governing, and for building up a political system on a firm basis. This trait was connected with their innate reverence for authority, and their habit of obedience. The noblest product of the Latin mind is the Roman law, which is the foundation of almost all modern codes. With all their discernment of justice and love of order, the Romans, however, were too often hard and cruel. Their history is stained here and there with acts of unexampled atrocity. In private life, too, when the rigor of self-control gave way, they sunk into extremes of vulgar sensuality. If, compared with the Greeks, they stood morally at a greater height, they might fall to a lower depth.

THE ROMAN RELIGION.—The difference between the Greek and Roman mind was manifest in the sphere of religion. Before their separation from one another they had brought from the common hearthstone elements of worship which both retained. Jupiter, like Zeus, was the old Aryan god of the shining sky. But the Greek conception, even of the chief deity, differed from the Roman. When the Romans came into intercourse with the Greeks, they identified the Greek divinities with their own, and more and more appropriated the tales of the Greek mythology, linking them to their own deities. Of the early worship peculiar to the Romans, we know but little. But certain traits always belonged to the Roman religion. Their mood was too prosaic to invent a theogony, to originate stories of the births, loves, and romantic adventures of the gods, such as the Greek fancy devised. The Roman myths were heroic, not religious: they related to the deeds of valiant men. Their deities were, in the first place, much more abstract, less vividly conceived, less endowed with distinct personal characteristics. And, secondly, their service to the gods was more punctilious and methodical. It was regulated, down to the minutiæ, by fixed rules. Worship was according to law, was something due to the gods, and was discharged, like any other debt, exactly, and at the proper time. The Roman took advantage of technicalities in dealing with his gods: he was legal to the core. The word religion had the same root as obligation. It denoted the bondage or service owed by man to the gods in return for their protection and favor; and hence the anxiety, or scrupulous watchfulness against the omission of what is required to avert the displeasure of the powers above.

ORIGIN OF THE ROMANS.—The Romans attributed their origin to the mythical Æneas, who fled, with a band of fugitives, from the flames of Troy, and whose son, Ascanius, or Iulus, settled in Alba Longa, in Latium. What is known of the foundation of Rome is, that it was a settlement of Latin farmers and traders on the group of hills, seven in number, near the border of Latium, on the Tiber. It was the head of navigation for small vessels, and Rome was at first, it would seem, the trading-village for the exchange of the products of the farming-district in which it was placed. Such an outpost would be useful to guard Latium against the Etrurians across the river. Of the three townships, or clans, which united to form Rome—the Ramnes, the Tities, and the Luceres—the first and third were Latin. The second, which was Sabine, blended with the Roman element, as the language proves. The clans, or tribes, in Latium together formed a league, the central meeting-place of which was at first Alba Longa. There is some reason to think that the Sabines were from Cures near Rome. Certain it is that Rome, even at the outset, derived its strength from a combination of tribes.