IE ROMAN FATE 
 
 AN ESSAY IN INTERPRETATION 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
 BY 
 
 W E HEITLAND MA 
 
 tAMBRIDGE 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 o 
 
 1922 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 AN ESSAY IN INTERPRETATION 
 
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
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 LONDON : FETTER LANE, E.G. 4 
 
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THE ROMAMi 
 
 AN ESSAY IN INTERPRETATION 
 
 BY 
 W E HEITLAND MA 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 1922 
 
1FIXKTB& XM OBJBAT 
 
THE following three papers are an attempt to 
 account for the course of Roman history in its 
 main outlines, with criticism of some striking theories 
 recently applied. That I have not treated the subject 
 exhaustively I am well aware. Also that insistence on 
 points that seem to me vital has led me into tiresome 
 repetitions. But I do not see how to avoid this. On 
 the other hand, I have abstained from elaborate notes. 
 The three papers are 
 
 I. Elements of strength in large states. The career 
 of Rome considered from (a) political and (b) economic 
 points of view. 
 
 II. Recent applications of anthropological and bio- 
 logical Science to the interpretation of human history. 
 
 III. Roman history reviewed from this scientific 
 point of view. The tragedy of misfits. 
 
 The would-be interpreter walks among pitfalls. Yet 
 interpretation is necessary, and correctors of error are 
 at hand. 
 
 W E H 
 
 May 1922. 
 
 490249 
 
The following three works are directly referred to 
 in these pages, and are cited by the authors' names. 
 
 1 i ) National welfare and national decay, by William 
 M c Dougall FRS, Professor of Psychology in Harvard 
 University. London 1921. 
 
 (2) Biological fact and the structure of society (the 
 Herbert Spencer Lecture), by W Bateson, MA, FRS. 
 Oxford 1912. 
 
 (3) An economic history of Rome to the end of the 
 Republic, by Tenney Frank, Professor of Latin in the 
 Johns Hopkins University. Baltimore 1920. 
 
 Other books are cited by quotations illustrating my 
 point of view in this or that matter. But my con- 
 clusions were reached independently, before I had 
 consulted these books. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 i 
 
 THE growth and decay and dissolution of a great empire 
 is a process that must arrest the attention of all who take 
 an interest in the fortunes of the human race. And, so 
 far as the history of mankind has yet been unrolled, there 
 is no more striking phenomenon than the wonderful story 
 of Rome. It has been said that into Rome the ancient 
 world (the Mediterranean world) was absorbed, and out 
 of Rome modern Europe was evolved. For not only 
 are a number of European states descended from pro- 
 vinces of the Roman empire: the influence of Rome 
 affected lands that never formed part of that empire, 
 and are not popularly classed as 'Latin' countries. 
 Moreover, the invisible hand of Rome is on us still in 
 Law Religion and traditions, and European expansion 
 has carried her influence far beyond the seas. 
 
 It is therefore natural that in a thoughtful age, when 
 men are busy investigating present problems and curious 
 in studying the past, convinced that no effect is without 
 a cause, the story of Rome should engage attention. 
 The why and wherefore of the great course of events, 
 from the small beginnings on the Tiber to the vast 
 aggregate ruled by Trajan, and so to the stagnation 
 and shrinkage of the decline and fall, is a fascinating 
 question. Many answers have been given, and good 
 answers, setting forth the causes of Rome's rise and the 
 
ID THE : ROMAN FATE 
 
 causes of her fall. I am not now to attempt to add to 
 these particular explanations, but to ask whether we 
 cannot detect certain main causes operating steadily 
 through the course of centuries, expressing themselves 
 from time to time in differences of detail, but remaining 
 all the time fundamentally the same. My aim is to re- 
 duce the sound particular explanations to a simplified 
 form, and if possible to extract therefrom something in 
 the nature of a generalized conclusion, valid as a state- 
 ment of conditions applicable to humanity at large and 
 not confined solely to the history of Rome. 
 
 This may seem a large and over-bold undertaking, 
 and perhaps the first thing necessary is to see clearly 
 what it amounts to. Let me start by inquiring whether 
 it may not be possible to discern certain great and un- 
 mistakable elements of strength in political societies, 
 the presence of which promotes growth and well-being, 
 while their loss or absence entails stagnation and decay. 
 No distinction between ancient and modern is to the 
 point here. It is a question of what experience teaches 
 us, and the most modern societies have behind them 
 the longest range of historical experience. The lessons 
 I propose to extract are very simple ; but it is the 
 application of platitudes, not the platitudes themselves, 
 that seem to me not devoid of interest. ' 
 
 As it will be necessary to use the term State in the 
 Importance course of this inquiry, it is necessary to say 
 of scale something by way of definition. For in 
 
 dealing with the history of Rome we are constantly in 
 danger of confusion arising from expressions that seem 
 precise while they are really ambiguous. And the most 
 important distinction is one based on consideration of 
 
THE ROMAN FATE n 
 
 size. Difference of scale soon produces a difference in 
 kind. In the course of ages this truth has gradually 
 received recognition in the development of representa- 
 tive systems. But in ancient times no such solution of 
 the problem of government was reached. Leaving aside 
 mere tribal units, not combined as yet into any union 
 worthy the name of State, we find only two kinds of 
 states (a) a city with its territory, (6) great empires. In 
 the former, power rests with those who are in the full 
 exclusive sense the citizens, whether they are many or 
 few in proportion to the population of the state. Their 
 franchise is a definite thing, to which privileges and 
 obligations are attached: its duties must be performed 
 and its rights exercised by each citizen in person. Ad- 
 mission of aliens, resident or non-resident, to the civic 
 franchise is normally rare, the civic bond being normally 
 hereditary and religious in character. Under such con- 
 ditions, states were inevitably small in area and lacking 
 in numerical strength. As a system of political associa- 
 tion, this plan was unsuited to survive, and in the end 
 it failed. On the other hand, great empires built up by 
 conquest rose and fell. But the overthrow of one empire 
 by the superior force of another did not mean the ex- 
 tinction of a great self-conscious unit. Rather it was 
 the transfer of so much human and territorial resources 
 from the control of one autocrat to the control of another. 
 The empire-units tended to grow larger and larger. 
 Free Greeks might beat back the aggression of Darius 
 and Xerxes : but their victories hardly shook the ill- knit 
 fabric of the inorganic Persian monarchy. The Great 
 Kings bided their time, and in the end profited by the 
 internal antipathies of free Hellas. When the Mace- 
 
12 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 donian directed the resources of a controlled Hellas 
 against Persia, he did, and could do, no more than 
 extend the system of great imperial units. Henceforth 
 . the large state, however ill organized, is the unit with a 
 future before it: the small state, however well organized, 
 is an anachronism. In the recognition of this fact, and 
 in attention to the difficulties created by the rise of scale 
 in political units, will be found a great part of the in- 
 terest of the history of Rome. 
 
 Speaking then only of states large enough to render 
 Types of ft manifestly impossible for their citizens to 
 large states take a direct part in the work of govern- 
 ment, we may distinguish three main types existing in 
 modern times. We may then try to discover what 
 elements of moral strength are common to them all, 
 and in the process may perhaps find useful material, 
 applicable in criticism of the complicated case of Rome. 
 
 The Unitary state may be defined as one in which 
 the parts are merely subdivisions of the whole, not 
 components, but subordinates. France, unified by sup- 
 pression of the old component Provinces, and cut up 
 into Departments, is the obvious instance of such a 
 state. Its essential feature is not the centralized supreme 
 government (which existed long before 1789) but the 
 abolition of local privileges and customary rights and 
 the establishment of uniformity and equality. 
 
 The Federal state arises from the union of units 
 already in being, which are strictly component parts. 
 The first step in its formation is a combination of 
 territorially independent units, each surrendering some 
 portion of its sovranty for the common good. The 
 union may grow by the adhesion of other sovran units, 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 13 
 
 each adding new territory. Or, if the original union 
 possesses or acquires unoccupied territory, it may de- 
 velope new members within its own boundaries. In any 
 case, the position of a member within the union depends 
 on definite conditions determined by voluntary agree- 
 ment and expressed in constitutional law. Now it is 
 impossible from the first to secure that all members of 
 such a voluntary union shall be equal in population and 
 resources, and the problem arises, how to recognize the 
 claim of the several members to equality as units, while 
 making equitable allowance for the superiority of some 
 members to others as furnishing a larger share of the 
 joint power and importance of the whole. The solution 
 of this problem was found in America by the device 
 of a Congress of two Houses representing the two 
 principles: a plan which has stood grave shocks and 
 has made the United States the accepted model of 
 Federalism. 
 
 By the side of this model we may see, and must not 
 ignore, a scheme of what I venture to call Pseudo- 
 Federalism. It is that of Germany, formed under the 
 late Empire, and continuing under the present Republic. 
 It is in effect the union of unequal component parts, 
 former states, which retain traces of their past inde- 
 pendent (or virtually independent) sovranty. But the 
 vital fact is that one leading state does effectually 
 control the whole, partly by its own strength, partly by 
 the support of its satellites among the lesser states. 
 This combination of Federalism and Hegemony may 
 or may not prove stable in the long run. At present it 
 seems to rest on the material advantages of 'scientific' 
 administration, of which individual citizens are on the 
 
14 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 whole convinced. Whether this conviction will prove 
 strong enough to defy the assaults of classes and parties, 
 industrial or political, it is not yet possible to guess. The 
 German union, a reaction against obsolete 'Particu- 
 larism,' but effected by force, is a contrast to the 
 American union in both framework and origin. But 
 that it means the asserted existence of a solid German 
 nation appears no longer open to doubt. 
 
 A third clearly marked type is presented in the 
 Conglomerate State, if I may coin the expression for 
 convenience sake. The term is meant to imply that a 
 political unit of large area has been formed by conquest 
 or dynastic succession or by any means other than 
 voluntary adhesion. Acquiescent submission to a central 
 authority is the outward sign of such union. But the 
 parts have this, and only this, in common. Separated 
 from each other by differences of character, often by 
 geographical position, they can only be taught to 
 combine individual local self-consciousness with common 
 mutual sympathy by a patient and intelligent govern- 
 ment, able and willing to work slowly and continuously 
 towards a definite end. Now the central government 
 of such a state is almost inevitably autocratic in form 
 at the outset and so long as the period of territorial 
 expansion lasts. Cohesion and unity of direction are 
 the only available means of guaranteeing the strength 
 needed for a career of expansion. Hence the need of 
 an Emperor : and, as a succession of competent em- 
 perors is precarious and in practice soon broken, the 
 /"necessary development of Bureaucracy, the shadow of 
 V Autocracy. But the same human frailty that denies 
 mankind a succession of wise autocrats is sooner or 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 15 
 
 later fatal to a bureaucratic system. Efficiency itself 
 may produce a temporary contentment, and content- 
 ment in turn may breed stagnation ; abuses soon flourish 
 in a stagnant system, and whatever has been gained by 
 mechanical order is speedily lost. I do not think we 
 can point to a single case of a bureaucratic government 
 functioning as a successful reformer or sincerely and 
 intelligently leading the peoples crudely incorporated 
 in a Conglomerate state into the ways of true cohesion 
 and sympathy. Certainly not that of imperial Russia. 
 A power mighty for aggression under the Tsars, we 
 now know that she was all the while rotting at the core, 
 as corruption spread and vitiated the governmental 
 machine. Hence failure and revolution, the end of 
 which is not yet. But the revolution under Lenin is to 
 be rightly viewed as the sequel of the premature revo- 
 lution under Peter the Great. 
 
 It will hardly be denied that the chief element of 
 
 strength in these, and indeed in all, com- 
 
 . 8 . . . r , . Solidarity 
 
 mumties is their solidarity. In proportion 
 
 as this shews itself in a living loyalty and cooperation 
 on the part of all citizens, the more effective is this 
 strength. Even a mere acquiescent subordination counts 
 for something, as it did in Russia. A docile satisfaction 
 with their system, and pride in its achievements, gave 
 steadiness to German patriotism. A belief that their 
 government is a protector of the interests of the 
 humblest citizen reinforces the sentimental patriotism 
 of France. American self-confidence and pride needs 
 no comment. But the difference between active and 
 passive patriotism shews itself very clearly when a 
 state is subjected to a great strain. We have just seen 
 
16 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 France stand and Russia fall. Germany, after an 
 astounding exhibition of power, is not disorganized so 
 far by defeat as to be effectually paralysed : it seems 
 that she carries on her former ambitions behind a veil. 
 Meanwhile the United States Government, with their 
 people at their back, feel competent to devise a policy 
 for the whole world. 
 
 Nor is it less clear that, in order to make this 
 Need of solidarity real and this cooperation effective, 
 organ of the citizens of a state must have some 
 expression practical means of expressing their will. 
 For without their consent the consciousness of common 
 interest and a common duty cannot be lasting : and a 
 mere temporary agreement is no sufficient guarantee of 
 continued strength. A Representative system, the organ 
 developed by modern states, serves the purpose fairly 
 well : the more perfect the representation, the less it is 
 a sham, the more effectually it does so. Counting of 
 heads is indeed a crude procedure, and unwise decisions 
 do and will sometimes result. But on the whole the 
 plan is a success, in particular as a preventive of revo- 
 lution and civil war. To know for certain that they are 
 in a minority is a cooling influence on even the most 
 ardent fanatics, however strongly they may be convinced 
 of their infallibility. These considerations do not ex- 
 haust the question. A popular vote may record a 
 judgment, valid for the time, on a proposal duly sub- 
 mitted to it. This decides what is or is not at present 
 'practical politics/ But popular assemblies, whether 
 primary or electoral, are not capable of calm and 
 reasoned initiative. They need something on which to 
 pass judgment, and this something is found in the 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 17 
 
 competing programmes of political parties. To place 
 a given party in power insures the promotion, for a 
 longer or shorter period, of measures of a certain 
 tendency. This arrangement meets an obvious need, 
 providing a body charged with the responsibility of 
 normal initiative, without suppressing the action of 
 individual representatives. Thus the electorate in a 
 modern state is sure of having a policy on which to 
 pass its final judgment by a majority-vote. Thus 
 peaceful reform is made possible. That the striking 
 contrast between the complete representative system of 
 the United States and the sham-system of Russia in 
 recent years illustrates the above remarks, is hardly in 
 need of words. 
 
 Nor is it necessary to argue at length in support of 
 the view that even in electoral judgments intelligence 
 a fair degree of intelligence must be required and training 
 of electors. Even a sound view of their own several 
 interests is something, and we must not ask too much 
 of the ordinary voter. But Representation has this 
 advantage, that the representative has ' time to turn 
 round/ to become acquainted with the realities of the 
 situation, and conscious of responsibilities that are ever 
 subtly changing. Thus Representation operates as a 
 check on the inconsiderate vagaries of popular elector- 
 ates. If circumstances change, the intelligent repre- 
 sentative must in duty reconsider his pledges : still more 
 must the intelligent elector condone what may seem an 
 unauthorized liberty on the part of his representative. 
 An elastic harmony of this character is only possible in 
 a highly educated community. This point is well illus- 
 trated not only in the case of the United States, but in 
 
 H. 
 
i8 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 that of Germany, where the representative system was 
 clogged by rules artificially designed to lessen the 
 effective value of the votes of the poor. Yet so 
 thorough was the education provided by the expert 
 government for all, that no serious inconvenience arose. 
 Even now, in the hour of defeat, much of the effect of 
 this careful training evidently remains. 
 
 I have now set out in brief outline what I conceive 
 to be the chief elements of moral strength in great 
 modern states, in virtue of which the community is able 
 to make a good use of its resources and opportunities. 
 The presence of these affords at least some security 
 for justice and good administration at home and the 
 power to pursue a successful policy abroad. So long 
 as they remain unimpaired, their healthy functioning is 
 a means alike of wise conservatism and timely reform. 
 Looking back to the ancient world, I proceed to apply 
 these considerations to the case of Rome. 
 
 In Rome we have from first to last to deal with a 
 City as the vital centre to which all Roman 
 citizens by their franchise belong. It is very 
 hard for a modern man to grasp the full significance of 
 this fact. V 'Rome differed from other ancient cities in the 
 very important point of her treatment of aliens. Her 
 very origin seems to be connected with incorporations, 
 but tradition quite credibly records a long period during 
 which common citizenship did not imply equality of 
 privilege. That equality was at length reached, but 
 only after violent struggles, is probably true enough. 
 Also that equality in principle was never equality in 
 practice ; for a new privileged order, based on wealth 
 and influence, took the place of the old nobility of birth. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 19 
 
 ,No democracy of Greek type was formed in Rome. 
 Popular assemblies might be the depositaries of sovran 
 power. But they voted by groups 1 (and these numeri- 
 cally unequal), not in one mass, and under such 
 conditions as to render them normally ineffective (save 
 for elections) as organs of the general will. And the 
 expansion of Rome in Italy soon made them utterly 
 unreal. For all citizens must come to Rome in order 
 to vote in person, and distant residence made this im- 
 possible for busy men. That no solution of the difficulty 
 by some measure of a representative character should 
 have suggested itself to the Roman mind may seem 
 strange, when we remember that it had gone so far as 
 to admit aliens, even manumitted slaves, to citizenship. 
 In so doing it had to treat old scruples in a liberal 
 spirit. But it could not take the further step of pro- 
 viding that a citizen's voting power should not be in 
 practice nullified by distance. To explain this limitation 
 of view is not difficult, but would be out of place here. 
 What we are really concerned with is the fact that no | 
 means of ascertaining the will of the actual majority of 
 citizens was found in the Roman state, and that this 
 first necessity of popular government became less and 
 less practically possible in course of time. 
 
 Therefore we need not be surprised that popular 
 control never shaped the policy of Rome. No popular 
 The Assemblies only meeting regularly for control 
 election-business, were not capable of more than an 
 intermittent and capricious action in other matters. The 
 Magistrates, normally irresponsible during their year of 
 office, could very seldom be called to account afterwards 
 1 Each group had one vote. 
 
 2 2 
 
20 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 for misuse of their several shares of the once regal 
 power. Only under the pressure of some great excite- 
 ment 1 could the popular will act steadily for a while 
 and get something done. Tradition records the stubborn ; 
 perseverance, year after year, by which the Commons 
 extorted the concessions of the Licinian laws (367 B.C.). 1 
 But it is recorded as exceptional. Now surely there 
 was need of some state-organ to maintain the continuity 
 of policy without which Rome could never have risen 
 to become a dominant power in Italy. Such an organ 
 was found in the Senate, the most efficient political body 
 of the ancient world. It was always there, ready to sit 
 at the shortest notice, and could thus deal with urgent 
 business. As a body, it was permanent : the roll of its 
 members was only revised every five years, and a seat 
 in the House was usually held for life. The members 
 were generally men who had held public office, so that 
 whatever knowledge and experience was available for 
 service of the state was collected there. Naturally the 
 influence of the Senate grew. From being the advisen 
 of yearly magistrates it rose to be virtually their director.! 
 From being preparer of measures for the decision of the 
 Assemblies, and from being entrusted by them with 
 special powers in emergencies, it gradually assumed 
 functions not assigned to it by law, and during the great 
 period of Roman expansion it became the de facto guide 
 and ruler of the state. The control of public finance 
 inevitably rested with it, there being no other body at 
 all competent to discharge that important function. 
 
 1 ' In the Roman Republic it is not safe to infer that a great need 
 or a strong desire felt by a certain class or group eventually mani- 
 fested itself in a governmental act or law.' Tenney Frank, p. in. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 21 
 
 So long as the Senate remained a pure and patriotic 
 council of state, and the sovran Assemblies Failure of 
 generally acted in patriotic harmony with it, the Senate 
 the grave defects of the constitution might not render 
 it unworkable. But the expansion of Rome added to 
 the volume of affairs calling for continuous management, 
 and thus increased the patronage and power of the 
 Senate. The conquest and organization of Italy, 
 followed by the long struggle with Carthage, left the 
 Senate in possession of powers which it took over be- 
 cause there was no one else to claim them. The wider 
 foreign policy fell into their hands, and to the outside 
 world the Senate became more and more the repre- 
 sentative of Rome. With the acquisition of transmarine 
 dominions, ruled as official departments (provinciaeY, 
 came the power of appointment to honourable posts, 
 which soon became lucrative. Individual ambition and 
 greed developed fast under such temptations. The 
 standard of living rose and the race for wealth set in : 
 and the de facto power of the Senate was in the interest 
 of its members turned to account in granting oppor- 
 tunities of glory to be cheaply won, or of enrichment 
 at the cost of subject peoples. All these powers were 
 in strict law liable to be at any moment resumed by the 
 Assemblies as parts of the popular sovranty, which was 
 not openly challenged, but foiled in default of exercise. 
 Nevertheless they remained with the Senate, for the 
 interference of the Assembly on rare occasions was too 
 casual and capricious to have any lasting effect. When 
 
 1 As in the aggregation these were acquired piecemeal, so in the 
 dissolution they were lost piecemeal. Their connexion with Rome 
 was never vital. 
 
22 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 at last the period of revolution began, it was indeed 
 found possible to shake the Senate's power. It was 
 found impossible to establish any other civil authority 
 in its stead, and events proved that the only force 
 capable of ruling Rome was one possessed of the control 
 of armies. 
 
 Thus the latter days of the Republic were days of 
 Fall of the party violence and bloodshed. Action and 
 Republic reaction, fitful and futile, left the problems 
 of state unsolved and the state weaker, till Julius Caesar 
 took matters in hand and made an end of the ruinous 
 farce. It was high time that it was ended. As the 
 Roman people could not express its will, and As- 
 semblies were now normally mere gatherings of the 
 idle city mob, corruption and force were the only means 
 of influencing what passed for a popular vote. The 
 senatorial nobility used these means freely, spending 
 vast sums on bribery and shows, and not shrinking 
 from employing their hosts of slaves to intimidate 
 citizen adversaries. And the money needed to support 
 these and other forms of extravagance was not to be 
 found in Italy: it had to be sought in extortion abroad, 
 at the expense of Rome's provincial subjects and client 
 kings. The failure of the Gracchi 1 shewed that re- 
 formers could not rely on stable popular support in a 
 struggle with the Senate, interested in present abuses : 
 that the Senate, placed in power by the sword, could not 
 hold its ground, was made manifest in the break-down* 
 of the constitution of Sulla. In short, when the need 
 of reform was most urgent, it was also most hopelessly j 
 impossible. Things had gone so far that no single act 
 
 1 133 I2OBC. 2 78 70 BC. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 23 
 
 of legislation could be effectual, while steady patient 
 work was beyond the range of practical politics: con- 
 tinuous backing was nowhere to be found. 
 
 So ended the Republic. The germs of self-govern- 
 ment by the votes of citizens had been The Prin- 
 sterilized through the impossibility of ex- >*'* 
 pressing the popular will by direct voting in a state of 
 large territory. The great state council had succumbed 
 to temptation, and was rotten. The Augustan Empire 
 or Principate 1 succeeded as a necessity, veiling mon- 
 archic power, in essence military, under a great show 
 of popular forms. Its unreal make-believe was an in- 
 genious shift, but could not last. Bit by bit the disguise 
 dropped away. Government became more and more 
 bureaucratic in character. The civil wars of 69 AD 
 betrayed the secret that the basis of imperial power no 
 longer lay in the imperial capital. The centre of gravity 
 was to be found in the comparative strength of the 
 great frontier armies. Administration more and more 
 fell into the control of departmental experts, mostly 
 oriental Greek freedmen, and attempts to substitute 
 Roman knights for these clever men of business do 
 not appear to have changed materially the working of 
 the system. It had both the merits and the defects of 
 a machine, and the defects at least did not grow less 
 with time. For even the perfection of routine tends to 
 become a hindrance to salutary change. Moreover this 
 great central organization was operating in a vast area 
 of passive provinces, from which no healthy constitu- 
 tional stimulus could be received. The native peoples, 
 long deprived of the power of independent action, had 
 
 1 27 BC. 
 
24 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 lost the will. Accustomed to look to Rome for guidance 
 and orders, above all for their defence against outside 
 invaders, they were politically dead. Even the internal 
 differences of local communities were referred for settle- 
 ment to the Emperor; that is, normally to his depart- 
 mental ministers. The municipal system, by which the 
 provinces were divided into lesser units not all equal 
 in privilege, tended to promote particular interests. In 
 some parts of the empire local jealousies were extreme, 
 but the strong central power kept them in control for 
 an outwardly prosperous period of some 200 years. 
 No doubt evils were at work sapping the vitality of 
 the imperial body; but signs of decay attracted little 
 attention so long as the frontier armies were able to 
 hold at bay the foreign enemies and preserve inviolate 
 the Roman peace. 
 
 Then, in the third century AD, after 200 years of 
 The age of Roman Emperors, came a time of disasters 
 disaster within and without, in which the evils long 
 
 at work came to a head and the empire seemed to be 
 on the verge of complete dissolution. Wars followed 
 wars on the northern and eastern frontiers. Pretenders 
 headed rebellions in various parts of the empire. Pesti- 
 lence and famine carried off great numbers of the 
 people and lessened available resources. The northern 
 barbarians were stronger and more confident; and the 
 armies employed to keep them in check were now 
 largely composed of barbarian troops. The revival of 
 the Persian 1 monarchy led to a series of indecisive 
 campaigns. Most emperors of this period spent their 
 short terms of power at the head of armies in the field, 
 
 1 226 232 AD. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 25 
 
 and some were victims of the fickle soldiery who had 
 lately raised them to the throne. The devastation of 
 frontier provinces left the central government more 
 dependent on the resources of those hitherto undis- 
 turbed, such as Africa and Egypt. We may fairly 
 infer that these still flourishing lands had to bear an 
 increased share of the economic strain. That the em- 
 pire did not as a whole succumb under the pressure of 
 its manifold burdens, is a marvel. We can only account 
 for it to some extent by remarking that its external 
 enemies were not united, so that it was still possible to 
 make a stand against them in detail, and that their 
 military systems were on the whole inferior to that of 
 Rome. That the whole governmental fabric did not 
 irretrievably collapse, is even more marvellous. Evi- 
 dently an important page of internal history is lost. 
 But we have a few detailed facts enough to prove that 
 among the confusions and calamities of the age the 
 central administration did somehow continue in function. 
 It still received appeals from the provincial subjects 
 and gave judgment thereon. It could persecute the 
 Christian movement as being a challenge to imperial 
 unity expressed in the divinity of emperors. It could 
 intensify imperial uniformity by wholesale extension 
 of the Roman franchise in the famous ordinance 1 of 
 Caracalla. And it is above all things notable that 
 the earlier part of this period was the golden age 2 
 of Roman jurisprudence, in which Ulpian and other 
 great lawyers flourished and often occupied the posi- 
 
 1 212 AD. 
 
 2 In other words Law, being easily separable from politics, re- 
 mained the great achievement of Rome. 
 
26 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 tion of Praetorian Prefect, the head of the imperial 
 civil service. 
 
 But in the latter part of the period the change 
 The Empire really in progress became more manifest, 
 Orientalized the ruinous debasement of the currency was 
 a symptom of the prevalent exhaustion, and the efforts 
 of warrior emperors could not restore the empire's vital 
 , strength. A means of saving it for a time was found in 
 the open recognition of a tendency already long at work, 
 the transition to autocratic monarchy on an oriental 
 model. Ceremony, display, formalities of an elaborate 
 court, a graded hierarchy of official ministers, were 
 leading features of the system. An emperor, secluded 
 and almost unapproachable, issued his orders from 
 behind a screen of obsequious subordinates : his house- 
 hold, his acts and words, his person, all were styled 
 divine. To insure obedience and prevent rebellion, 
 civil and military posts of command were reduced in 
 scale and increased in number. These changes inevi- 
 tably led to an increased expenditure, and therefore to 
 an increase of the already crushing burden of taxation. 
 And this taxation, owing to the deplorable state of the 
 currency, was largely levied in kind. It was thus most 
 cruel just when the power of payment was at its lowest; 
 for in times of dearth a given quantity of corn repre- 
 sented a greater value. Such in outline was the new 
 model of government devised by Diocletian 1 and de- 
 veloped by Constantine. In order to satisfy competing 
 ambitions, and to provide more efficiently for defence, 
 the supreme authority was organized in four local 
 divisions, each with a departmental sovran. Provision 
 
 1 284305 AD. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 27 
 
 was made for retirements successions and fresh appoint- 
 ments, in fact for every contingency save the failure 
 of human nature under extreme temptation in cir- 
 cumstances of exceptional trial. So within 40 years 
 Constantine emerged from civil wars as sole 1 emperor. 
 True, the system did not at once die out, but another 
 70 years found Theodosius ruling 2 alone, after a stormy 
 period of warfare largely defensive in character, and 
 not permanently successful in repelling the barbarians, 
 who were now swarming over the frontiers and indeed 
 settling down in provinces of the empire. 
 
 After this last reunion we need not follow the political 
 fortunes of the Roman state, the permanent The Decline 
 division, the disintegration of the western summarized 
 half, occupied by barbarian invaders, and the continued 
 existence of the eastern half whose capital was the new 
 city of Constantine. It remains to sum up the lesson 
 conveyed by Roman history from my present point of 
 view. From first to last, from the small beginnings on 
 the Tiber to the time when she ruled by the Euphrates 
 and the Clyde, Rome never developed a political organ ! 
 capable at once of continuous action and peaceful reform. 
 Primary Assemblies, fitful and hampered, were never 
 a practical expression of the sovran people's will in a 
 growing state, and territorial expansion soon rendered 
 them ridiculous. The Senate was practical, but it was 
 ruined by succumbing to the temptations engendered 
 by its own success. Bloody revolution left the victorious 
 army supreme. But an army, able to destroy, cannot 
 create. It can only raise a chief to power, and this 
 enables or compels him to found a monarchy. No make- , 
 
 1 3 2 3337 AD. 2 3925 AD. 
 
28 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 believe disguises, however congenial to the Roman 
 mind, could dissemble the truth for long. Monarchy, so 
 far as our experience of human history goes, does not 
 easily escape the alternative of becoming either bureau- 
 cratic or constitutional : mere personal autocracy is too 
 toilsome, and breaks down through the insufficiency of 
 human powers. Now the material for constitutional 
 government had been destroyed at Rome by the course 
 of her history. So the real ruler had to rule through 
 Ministers, when he could find men suited to his purpose. 
 But Ministers both capable and loyal were not always 
 to be found, and Emperors were soon driven to transact 
 imperial business through the agency of dependents of 
 their own, men highly qualified but not of Roman origin. 
 And the bureaucratic organization once established 
 never died out. A great machine administered the 
 empire. The vagaries of Emperors seldom and slightly 
 interfered with its working. It tended to become more 
 and more mechanical, a system of fixed routine modified 
 by the corruptions of personal greed misusing the 
 opportunities of official power. To us it may stand as 
 a record, a confession that, whatever influence Roman 
 tradition and sentiments may have had on government 
 in past ages, such influence was now at an end. Stag- 
 nation and decay was the result. 
 
 From the political point of view let me turn for a 
 Economic moment to the economic. The early ex- 
 view pansion of Rome in Italy was in essence 
 
 an occupation, the work of the plough even more than 
 that of the sword. The settlement of farmer citizens as 
 owners and cultivators on confiscated lands gave solidity 
 to Roman advances, while a judicious treatment of 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 29 
 
 conquered neighbours on different scales of privilege 
 minimized its difficulties and dangers. From time to 
 time subject communities were admitted to Roman 
 citizenship. The effective strength of the fabric, based 
 on agriculture, was severely tested in wars with the 
 invading Gauls, with Pyrrhus, with Carthage, and 
 proved equal to the strain. But after the second Punic 
 war things never returned to their old course. A 'back- 
 to-the-land' policy was at best only partially successful, 
 and for this we may discern certain main reasons. These 
 reasons may be generalized as the vital but imperfectly 
 understood relations of capital and labour. To set small- 
 scale agriculture on its legs again, after the devastation 
 of much of the best arable lands of Italy, needed fresh 
 capital on easy terms ; and this capital was not to be 
 had. Men with money had learnt to profit by oppor- 
 tunities during the great war, and were not now disposed 
 to finance small farmers, even under the temptation of 
 lucrative usury practised with the aid of rigid law. 
 There were openings for business of a less piecemeal 
 character, and more tempting. Plenty of land was in 
 the market at low prices. Plenty of slaves were to be 
 bought, and no doubt fairly cheap. Contact with Car- 
 thage, and the spectacle of her remunerative and prob- 
 ably large-scale agriculture, scientifically managed 
 beyond the standard of Roman experience, opened the 
 greedy eyes of many. So two processes went on side 
 by side. Men with money were buying up land and 
 slaves, and forming large estates worked for profit by 
 slave labour. Small cultivating owners were not re- 
 turning to resume their interrupted occupation, or were 
 actually driven to abandon the holdings on which they 
 
30 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 had maintained themselves and reared their families. 
 Some of these men preferred a soldier's life and served 
 voluntarily in the subsequent wars. But many drifted 
 into Rome and increased the population of the city. 
 Rome was not a great industrial centre, and progressive 
 degradation followed. Eking out a precarious livelihood 
 by the sale of their votes and general dependence on 
 the bounty of the rich, they became a parasitic rabble. 
 Courted by candidates for office, their perquisites grew : 
 in time they were even fed by doles of corn provided 
 by the state below cost price. Now this degrading 
 process went on together with, indeed in connexion 
 with, the change in agriculture. The economic revolu- 
 tion could not be arrested by political action, because 
 political power was steadily passing into the hands of 
 the very men who profited by the new agricultural 
 system. Politics could not be purified, because the 
 remaining independent farmer citizens were not able to 
 appear at Rome time after time in continuous support 
 of measures for the public good. For we must not 
 forget that the districts in which agriculture was being 
 metamorphosed were chiefly if not wholly those easily 
 accessible from Rome, not the uplands in which a 
 scattered peasantry lived on. 
 
 For some 70 or 80 years the great change was at 
 Capitalism work before the capitalists won their final 
 and slavery triumph in nullifying 1 the efforts of the 
 Gracchi. It seems to have undergone some modification 
 in detail. Until the importation of corn from abroad 
 became a serious factor, cereal crops appear to have 
 been raised in considerable quantity by slave labour on 
 
 1 121 III BC. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 31 
 
 the latifundia. But it was soon found that on these 
 lines it was not possible to compete with Sicily and 
 Africa in the Roman market, where sea-transport 
 gave to foreign products, when bulky, a decisive ad- 
 vantage. Hence it was found advisable to devote 
 landed estates to the cultivation of the vine and olive. 
 And this department of agriculture implied a power of 
 waiting for tardy returns, another advantage to the 
 larger capitalist. It is probable that this change led to 
 a reduction in the average size of large holdings, the 
 new tillage being more intensive in character, needing 
 more technical skill in the direction, and being (in the 
 case of vines) largely carried on with use of the mattock 
 and the spade. This modification seems to have been 
 operative in the middle of the second century BC, the 
 time of the elder Cato. And there are signs that there 
 was then still available some supply of free wage-labour. 
 Such help was needed at seasons of special pressure, 
 for instance the harvesting of crops. Thus it was 
 possible to keep the costly slave-staff down to the 
 number required for the ordinary routine labour of the 
 estate. But it does not appear that any changes, abrupt 
 or gradual, favoured the return of the small farmer to 
 the land. After the battle of Pydna in 168 BC, which 
 finally placed the Mediterranean world at the feet of 
 Rome, the prospect open to Roman adventurers of 
 all sorts were immensely widened. Provinces were 
 being acquired, and further spheres of influence opened, 
 and every forward movement brought with it alluring 
 opportunities of gain. The next hundred years saw a 
 great rush of Roman citizens abroad eager to exploit 
 these openings. Some employed a temporary exile in 
 
32 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 gleaning the profits to be made by the legal or illegal 
 squeezing of Rome's subjects. Others settled down in 
 the Provinces or client kingdoms, and made fortunes 
 by commercial or financial activities. In any case the 
 power of Rome was at their back, and they used their 
 opportunities with little fear of restraint or resistance. 
 Extortion and usury were not the only means of enrich- 
 ment. A Roman citizen enjoyed the right of com- 
 mercium, that is of acquiring real property anywhere 
 within the Roman dominions. The non-Roman had no 
 such right valid in Italy. So bit by bit Roman emigrants 
 acquired valuable lands in the Provinces, which they 
 turned to account on the systems of cultivation in 
 vogue. In a later generation the large provincial 
 estates of Roman citizens were a very important 
 feature of the imperial whole. 
 
 The foundation of Roman cities in the Provinces 
 The Roman followed in due course, but the outflow of 
 Diaspora emigrant Romans, tempted by openings 
 abroad, began at once. A man could make a start on 
 a small scale, for instance by petty usury: the money- 
 lender was an ever-present figure in the civilization of 
 the time, and the favour of Roman officials guaranteed 
 him against bad debts. The thrifty usurer soon became 
 a substantial capitalist, and could choose whether to 
 continue his investments abroad or to return home with 
 the prestige of a man of property. And in Rome he 
 enjoyed ample opportunities for deriving a good income 
 from his capital. The system of undertaking state con- 
 tracts by companies formed for joint-stock enterprise 
 had received a vast extension owing to the current 
 method of state finance. Revenues were farmed out by 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 33 
 
 auction to the contractors who offered the largest lump 
 sum down and took the risk of profit or loss on their 
 collection. The growing volume of provincial dues 
 brought kito being a numerous class of investors, whose 
 speculations generally yielded a rich return. From 
 this class, known as the Knights \equites\> little real 
 sympathy with a disappearing peasantry could be looked 
 for. At first their main object was to wring concessions 
 from the Senate. So for a time popular leaders were 
 able to engage their support against the ruling nobility ; 
 but the selfish interests of capital guided their policy, 
 and eventually led them to combine with the senatorial 
 nobles as a solid party of property. When we remember 
 further that a principal department of commerce in the 
 latter days of the Republic was the slave-trade, in which 
 Roman financiers were deeply interested, we need not 
 wonder that efforts to restore free peasants to Italian 
 land were a failure. Indifference or open hostility of 
 capitalists effectually barred the way, even if the reform 
 had been possible on economic grounds. 
 
 So the system of great estates and slave labour lasted 
 on into the days of the Empire. It was Provincial 
 found to pay well in Provinces where large estates 
 blocks of land could be had at moderate prices, and 
 where soil and other circumstances were favourable. 
 Africa in particular was the scene of much enterprise 
 of the kind. Now vast territorial units of this sort surely 
 needed a very thorough organization, if the non-resident 1 
 owners were to preserve an effective control and secure 
 a regular income. And there is reason to think that 
 the organization was, at least in many cases, very com- 
 
 1 See for instance Tac ann xiv 22 5. 
 H - 3 
 
34 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 plete. So complete sometimes as to give to a great 
 latifundium the air of a small principality, in which the 
 private ordinances of the landlord were of far more 
 direct and daily efficiency than imperial laws. But by 
 emperors, concerned for their own security, the exercise 
 of such authority by a subject was naturally viewed with 
 suspicion. A decisive step was taken by Nero 1 , who 
 confiscated six estates of this class in Africa and thus 
 added about half of that Province to the imperial crown- 
 lands. These imperial domains, administered by a 
 central bureau in Rome, were already considerable, and 
 tended to increase, and were an important part of the 
 economic fabric of the empire. 
 
 Side by side with this process we must note another 
 
 . not less significant movement in Italy, and 
 
 probably elsewhere also. Letting of farms 
 
 to tenants was no new thing, but for various reasons 
 
 only to be guessed it does not seem to have been a 
 
 common practice. So long as slaves were plentiful, and 
 
 landlords resident in Rome at the centre of political life 
 
 were content to draw from their estates such income as 
 
 their managing stewards could furnish year by year, 
 
 there was little inducement to have dealings with free 
 
 tenants. Litigation was avoided, and with it the 
 
 necessity of employing qualified legal agents to spare 
 
 the landlords much trouble and worry. The Roman 
 
 Peace of the Empire lessened the supply of slaves, 
 
 while Rome as the political centre lost much of its 
 
 attraction for men who could no longer find free scope 
 
 for their ambition in the strife of politics. It has been 
 
 suggested 2 , I think rightly, that the combination of these 
 
 1 54 68 AD. a By M Weber, cited in my Agricola p 160. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 35 
 
 two influences led owners of land to reconsider their 
 policy from a strictly economic point of view. At all 
 events, whatever were the causes, we find indications 
 of a marked extension of the tenancy-system. That its 
 success depended on a sufficient supply of honest and 
 industrious tenants, steady and solvent, is obvious : and 
 it was the deficiency of such tenants that soon caused 
 trouble. Of the anxiety and losses of landlords we 
 have good evidence, and it has been reasonably said 1 
 that early in the second century AD they were often as 
 badly off as their tenants. Yet tenancies in some form 
 or other were, under pressure of circumstances, destined 
 to be the prevalent feature of the agricultural system. 
 We have ground for believing that in earlier times 
 
 the landlord had the upper hand in the 
 
 , . , . , . coloni 
 
 bargain, and that the tenant was very much 
 
 of a humble dependant, not in a position to refuse ser- 
 vices required of him by his lord. His chief fear would 
 be lest he should be turned out of his holding. In the 
 younger Pliny's time 2 the landlord was often the anxious 
 party, fearing that good tenants would not stay while 
 bad ones could not be got rid of without loss. Yet the 
 social prestige of landowning remained, upheld by 
 fashion. And estates in the Provinces seem to have 
 been remunerative. It was now a problem how to com- 
 bine two vital interests in such a way as to keep the 
 agricultural system at work. For the production of 
 food, always important, was now supremely urgent. 
 The first point was, how to keep the tenant-farmer 
 permanently attached to his holding, which could only 
 
 1 By H Bliimner, cited in my Agricola p 229. 
 
 2 End of first century AD. 
 
 3 
 
36 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 be attained by giving him a prospect of decent comfort 
 and prosperity. The second was, how to find room for 
 the employment of capital in this great industry. We 
 must not forget that imperial taxation in various forms 
 was a general burden on agriculture outside Italy, 
 and that it was an object so to collect the imposts as to 
 keep down outgoings and keep up the net return. Out 
 of the attempt to meet these requirements came a notable 
 development of tenancy-practice, at least on great estates 
 in the Provinces. A large unit of the kind was leased 
 to a man of capital as chief tenant, who ordinarily kept 
 in his own hands the principal or Home Farm, working 
 it by slave labour under a steward. The rest of the 
 estate was cultivated by small sub-tenants on terms 
 which seem to have at least approximated to a common 
 model. The chief tenant was responsible for the collec- 
 tion of imposts due from these sub-tenants as well as 
 for his own rent. His existence was thus a convenience 
 from the taxation point of view, and it was not un- 
 natural that he should be allowed considerable authority. 
 In particular it seems to have been the custom to give 
 him a claim to services of the sub-tenants in the form 
 of occasional labour (operae) on the Home Farm at 
 certain seasons of the year. The need of such help to 
 supplement the labour of his regular staff has been re- 
 ferred to above: it would seem that the arrangement 
 was now passing into a recognized usage. 
 
 Whether, as has been 1 suggested, this customary 
 
 Imperial scheme first came into use on the great 
 
 estates imperial crown-lands, or whether it began 
 
 earlier on the Provincial latifundia of private landlords,. 
 
 1 By the late Prof Pelham, cited in my Agricola p 385. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 37 
 
 we have hardly sufficient evidence to decide. Nor is 
 the decision of first-rate importance. It is fairly clear 
 that it was soon established on imperial estates and long 
 remained in working order. Its interest here is to be 
 found mainly in its observable tendency, judged by 
 taking the witness of inscriptions (of second and third 
 centuries) in connexion with well-known later effects. 
 That tenants-in-chief would try to get the most they 
 could out of their opportunities, and that their sub- 
 tenants would resist encroachments, was only to be 
 expected. So it was, and strict rules had to be issued 
 to regulate conflicting interests. These imperial ordin- 
 ances were intended to protect sub-tenants against 
 exaction of services beyond the fixed standard, and the 
 chief tenants against shirking and fraud. No doubt 
 the first object was the more important, for by this time 
 the question of food-supply was one of great urgency. 
 But the enactment of rules was easy: to keep them 
 steadily in force was difficult, owing to the corruption 
 of imperial agents. These could, and sometimes did, 
 connive at misdeeds of chief tenants, who were better 
 able to bribe them than were the sub-tenants. Appeals 
 from the latter to the central bureau at Rome were 
 troublesome, probably expensive, and not certain of 
 success. Success seems generally to have meant only 
 a solemn reenactment of the rules. If, as may have 
 happened, a corrupt official was removed, his successor 
 was soon subjected to the same temptations, and the 
 same weary round might begin again. In the confusion 
 and disasters of the third century this system of con- 
 tract-plus-checks cannot surely be supposed to have 
 worked with purity and beneficence. 
 
38 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 No wonder then that at the accession of Diocletian 
 
 The coloni ( 2 ^4 AD ) we ^ n< ^ t ^ ie sma ^ tenant farmer 
 of the later sunk into a semi-servile condition of de- 
 gmpire pendence. The term colonus was fast 
 
 putting on a new meaning. Starting from its original 
 sense of 'cultivator,' whether owner or not, it had 
 passed through a stage in which it connoted tenancy 
 without ownership, the product of a bargain between 
 two parties alike legally and economically free. The 
 course of events had first embarrassed the ordinary 
 landlord, and then gradually depressed the small tenant. 
 The legal freedom of the colonus was now so clogged, 
 and his economic position so dependent on the reten- 
 tion of a holding hampered by conditions liable to be 
 impaired by piecemeal encroachments, that he was no 
 longer his own master. To go was to starve, to stay 
 was to become a serf. It only remained to recognize 
 the situation by positive law, and the transition was 
 complete. This step was taken by Constantine. Hence- 
 forth to be a colonus signified attachment to a certain 
 plot of ground, together with which the farmer himself 
 was legally transferable. This act, however logical, was 
 really an act of despair. Stagnation in agriculture was 
 now consummated by law, and the frantic efforts of the 
 government to keep up or even extend cultivation 
 could not extricate the empire from the economic mess 
 into which it had drifted. 
 
 We can hardly shut our eyes to the conclusion that 
 Review of a potent cause of the decline and fall of 
 causes Rome is to be detected in the fatal absence 
 
 of any non-revolutionary means of reform. From first 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 39 
 
 to last (for we need not dwell on the details of collapse) 
 good intentions on the part of individuals were nugatory 
 for lack of any organ through which they could find 
 effect. Whatever hope there might have been in the 
 pure and clear expression of the popular judgment 
 (perhaps not much) perished with the decay of a citizen 
 peasantry; and the corruption of politics sterilized all 
 efforts at revival. The mechanical efficiency developed 
 under the Empire was no remedy. It only served to 
 conceal, and in some degree to retard, the decay of 
 vitality. The real Rome was past, virtually dead, long 
 before the monarchy became an oriental despotism. 
 The point on which I am trying to insist is this ; what- 
 ever particular evils tended to sap the vitality of the 
 Roman state, we must bear in mind that there was no 
 means of attempting to cure them by any effort of the 
 human will. To contemporaries in Rome, as in all 
 states in all ages, it was only the pressing evils of the 
 moment that drew their attention and called for redress. 
 A tranquil diagnosis, and a patient endeavour to remove 
 the deep-seated causes of trouble, were impossible. In 
 all states it is the strain felt by individuals that furnishes 
 the motive power for any attempted reform : and 
 individuals cannot wait. Therefore therapeutic measures 
 are inevitably crude. And, however well meant or even 
 well designed, they too cannot be instantaneous in effect. 
 Still, given time, the experience of some improvement 
 achieved may generate a readiness to wait awhile and 
 watch for opportunities of carrying reforms further bit 
 by bit, till at length a considerable result is attained. 
 But such progress, I repeat, is only possible under a 
 steady advance of public opinion able and willing to 
 
40 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 express itself freely in some regular and non-revolution- 
 ary manner. Modern practice, fairly successful in spite 
 of imperfections, supplies the needful machinery by 
 submitting programmes to electorates, who in turn 
 delegate the function of final judgment to representa- 
 tives who remain in session for considerable periods 
 and so enjoy the advantage of time to reach calm and 
 rational decisions. But in antiquity no such delegation 
 of responsibility was known. The voter was himself 
 an actual legislator. And there was no Ministry holding 
 office until turned out, and therefore no Opposition 
 bidding for office, putting forth rival 'platforms' for 
 mature consideration as competing schemes of party 
 policy. The normal procedure was a popular vote for 
 or against a particular measure proposed by this or 
 that individual. Personal interests and passions naturally 
 determined the result; which was, not to entrust the 
 guidance of policy to deputies representing the majority, 
 but to pass or reject a law by direct action of the voters 
 present. I need not comment on the working of such 
 a system in the little Greek democracies. Rome out- 
 grew the possibility of drawing the greater part of her 
 citizens to the Assemblies, and even in the Assemblies 
 themselves the numerical majority did not prevail. No 
 public opinion 1 , organized and consistent, could arise 
 among her widely scattered citizens. Popular sovranty 
 could only manifest itself in occasional assaults on the 
 one practical authority, the Senate: and the Senate, 
 whatever its merits, was not a body suited to undertake 
 reform. 
 
 1 * It is upon public opinion, moulded by tradition, that all free 
 governments must in the last resort rely.' Bryce, Studies, essay in, 
 vol i p 234. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 41 
 
 Therefore, if we detect evils undermining the strength 
 of the Roman state, and find no successful efforts to 
 remove them, we must surely make large allowance for 
 the defects of a political system under which the noblest 
 endeavours were doomed to almost certain failure. 
 
 II 
 
 At this point we are met by an old ghost that used to 
 
 haunt historians, which is becoming active 
 
 V c , 5 . Explana- 
 
 again in a new form, bo long as a pious tions of 
 
 resignation dominated whatever thought failure, old 
 
 , . . , . r . and new 
 
 humanity expended on itself, it was easy to 
 attribute the destinies of states and peoples to divine 
 ordinance. Mankind in their various groups had a pre- 
 ordained course to run. What that course was in any 
 case to be, they did not know : their duty was to face it, 
 and to be satisfied that the result was for the best. 
 Patriotic ingenuity noted the virtues to which successful 
 peoples might point as explanations of their own success, 
 and failing peoples deplored in retrospect the vices to 
 which they imputed their own failure. The story of 
 Rome illustrates both these phenomena. But in the 
 case of Rome (and not of Rome only) they appear in 
 a very simple form. Prosperity suggests confidence, 
 consciousness of decline insinuates despair. There is 
 no sincere belief in possible revival through the people's 
 united effort, for the people as a people, a living self- 
 conscious unit, does not exist. In the vast Roman 
 subject world patience means drifting under the fitful 
 guidance of remote rulers. And this helplessness is in 
 effect a practical fatalism, whether it turns its gaze to 
 
42 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 divine powers or yields to an impersonal Fate. It has 
 no belief in the power of man to control his own destiny : 
 once started on the downward path, he has only to go 
 on till he reaches the bottom. No wonder that this view 
 has found expression in the once fashionable doctrine, 
 that all states arid peoples have their day and are in 
 turn doomed to perish. This implies that the surviving 
 individuals are absorbed as inferior members into some 
 new unit or units, in the ranks of which they disappear. 
 The civilization to which they belonged is simply at an 
 end. 
 
 The new attitude towards this question of destiny is 
 Anthropo- influenced not by Religion but by Science. 
 bgy It is anthropological, proceeding by analysis 
 
 of human qualities and ascertaining their importance 
 and efficiency in producing and assuring human welfare. 
 Upkeep of beneficial qualities is obviously necessary, 
 and this consideration at once calls in the aid of Eugenics. 
 Eugenics is a branch of practical Biology. Hence we 
 now find the biologist claiming a share, and that no 
 small one, in solving the problems of human history. 
 And this cooperation is beyond all doubt a great gain. 
 It follows and tends to develope a change that has come 
 over historians 1 in modern times from the growth of 
 the ' idea of progress.' It is no longer assumed that 
 peoples simply grow old and die. That past civilizations 
 have failed, is evident. But is this a mere matter of 
 course? Must present civilizations pass on to the same 
 inevitable doom ? Have not mankind in the experience 
 of ages learnt enough 2 to enable them to avert so pitiful 
 
 1 See Prof J B Bury, The Idea of Progress, 1920. 
 
 2 M c Dougall p 28. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 43 
 
 an end? For, that they can by their own voluntary 
 action affect their own subsequent well-being, many 
 instances of successful measures unquestionably shew. 
 That the mere change of economic conditions 1 will not 
 of itself serve to account for the decay of old civilizations, 
 is a just inference from the known facts. Some other 
 and more universal cause must be found, if we are to 
 reach a sound theory. 
 
 The new inquirer 2 starts with the general proposition 
 that civilization depends on the quality of the human 
 stuff. If this be sound, organizations and institutions 
 are comparatively indifferent : healthy humanity will 
 make any system work sufficiently well. Civilizations 
 fail because they die off at the top. That is, the supply of 
 best members of a society, those whose leadership gave 
 to that society its healthy social and moral character, 
 fails. As they fail, the society gradually loses not only 
 its character but its recuperative power. At length the 
 decline becomes manifest to all : fatalistically recognized, 
 it leads to the old doctrine of inevitable decay. The 
 new doctrine meets the difficulty by maintaining that 
 failure of the upper strata was not a necessity, or at 
 least is no longer a necessity under modern conditions. 
 For we have learnt that the presence of these upper 
 strata is necessary, and that they can be reproduced : 
 what is needed now is only the will to reproduce them. 
 The upper and more efficient classes are therefore ex- 
 horted to multiply freely, while hints are thrown out 
 that a means of restricting the excessive multiplication 
 of the unfit must sooner or later be devised. Such 
 principles at once bring the practical eugenist into 
 1 M c Dougall p 33. 2 Prof W M c Dougall. 
 
44 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 collision with modern Democracy, fanatically hostile to 
 all that savours of inequality and privilege. Yet on his 
 own ground the anthropological sage is unanswerable. 
 His doctrine is clearly for the good of the human race 
 in coming ages. But coming ages have no votes. No 
 philanthropic autocrat exists with power and will to 
 enforce eugenic reform : persuasion is the only road to 
 any measure of constraint, and it will not be achieved 
 tomorrow. Meanwhile eugenic schemes need to be ex- 
 amined from all points of view. 
 
 To begin with a certainty, it is the wonderful results 
 recently attained by scientific breeding of animals and 
 plants that has set going these eugenic speculations. 
 And these results have been attained, necessarily, under 
 conditions of ingenious and absolute control. So long 
 as the doctrine of ' survival of the fittest ' was applied 
 to mankind in its crudest form, the new principles could 
 hardly get much of a hearing. A modernized fatalism 
 was in fact dominant : now it is challenged. The present 
 position is roughly this. Granted that to breed from 
 the best stocks would be the best thing for any people, 
 and perhaps the only available means of preventing its 
 degeneration and decay what next ? Well, first you 
 have to ascertain, beyond all possibility of reasonable 
 doubt, which are the best stocks. Then you have to 
 breed from these solely or at least predominantly; and 
 moreover to do this, starting without compulsory powers. 
 For in present fact compulsion of any kind must rest 
 on consent in some degree or form. Therefore, if 
 Eugenics is to be more than a genial speculation, it 
 must take into account the present mental moral and 
 physical conditions under which our people carry on 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 45 
 
 that common state-life which we call politics. No one 
 really believes that British citizens, whose past has made 
 them what they are, would at present grant compulsory 
 powers even to the most admired of philanthropic 
 eugenists. For crude equalitarian democracy bars the 
 way, and pessimistic lamentation and reproach is a 
 waste of time. But we may remind ourselves that 
 medical men sometimes attack a malady successfully by 
 an indirect treatment, when a more direct approach is 
 not possible. Now the anthropologist candidly admits 
 that under more comfortable conditions of life the less 
 fit and efficient strains do not multiply with such startling 
 rapidity. This seems to point to a practical and perhaps 
 acceptable means of checking excessive multiplication 
 at one end of the social scale : only downright 'defectives' 
 will need direct treatment in the public interest. 
 
 It may be that judicious political action would do 
 much towards solving the problem from the lower end. 
 At the other end of the scale it could hardly give much 
 help ; and ' dying off at the top ' is perhaps the most 
 serious of all the dangers to which civilization is liable. 
 Any move towards abandonment of ' race-suicide ' on 
 the part of the upper (and presumed better) strains 
 must surely be voluntary. And here we are met by the 
 important admission 1 that civilization does impair human 
 qualities that are of value for its own maintenance. It 
 adds to the leisure at men's disposal, and tempts them 
 to misuse it. The evil consequences of such misuse are 
 plainly written 3 in the history of the past : nowhere, it 
 is said, more plainly than in the history of Rome. To 
 Rome I will presently return. Meanwhile we may ask, 
 1 M c Dougall p 40. 2 M c Dougall pp 37, 172. 
 
46 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 is not this pessimistic view of the tendency of civiliza- 
 tion virtually a return to old fatalism ? For the remedy 
 suggested or implied is nothing but an exhortation to 
 the upper strains of a community to be other than they 
 are. And past experience hardly justifies a simple hope 
 that the mere preaching of such a gospel would be 
 effectual. If there is to be a reasonable and quickening 
 hope of amendment, there must surely be a prospect of 
 finding in existing circumstances some means of making 
 a start. This at once brings us back into touch with 
 politics; for it implies that the machinery for public 
 action must be capable of being set in motion for the 
 public good, and that a free force of public opinion is 
 available to keep it at work. Now in some modern 
 states at least these necessary conditions exist in a re- 
 markable degree, particularly in the United States of 
 America. Herein we may find some antidote to 
 pessimism, though an observer writing from a near 
 view 1 does not at present seem to see much hope of 
 improvement in this matter of relative birth-rate. Still 
 he is not a voice crying in the wilderness. I would 
 only urge that the inquiry into the comparative value 
 of various strains of population may with advantage be 
 carried on for many years. In a country receiving great 
 numbers of alien immigrants such inquiry is confessedly 
 complicated by special difficulties, and the tests applied 
 are perhaps not always final. 
 
 Of the sincerity and high moral value of Professor 
 
 M c Dougall's campaign I entertain no doubt; 
 
 but I find it interesting to compare his 
 alarming utterance with that of an eminent biologist a 
 1 M c Dougall pp 162 3. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 47 
 
 few years earlier. To comment on Mr Bateson's views 
 in detail would be out of place here, nor am I competent 
 to undertake the task. But I cannot shirk reference to 
 one or two points. In this striking lecture, starting from 
 a pessimism inspired by the present outlook of existing 
 societies, the author is not content to acquiesce in a 
 mere fatalistic conclusion. He boldly lays down lines 
 on which a regenerative movement may be conducted, 
 distinguishing what is possible from what is impossible 
 in existing society. The principles involved are inti- 
 mately connected with an analogy between the corporal 
 and social organisms, which is very closely pressed and 
 serious. If this analogy be sound and final, the exact 
 definition of a few terms (such as element factor part] 
 in their social application would be a material help to 
 historical students. For this little work contains enough 1 
 to set any reader thinking; and, if social organisms are 
 to be a subject of study as 'scientific' as biology, the 
 inquirers will need an exact terminology for use. 
 
 Here also we find the man of Science no believer in 
 the wisdom of popular governments. Democracy and 
 all its works are anathema. One seems to catch the 
 thoughts of a modern Plato, without that touch of 
 opportunism which we might expect from a modern 
 Aristotle. For the object sought is after all eminently 
 a practical one, the welfare of mankind. Mankind there- 
 fore will have to be consulted sooner or later. You may, 
 perhaps justly, despise the masses and their ways: but 
 
 1 * Neither can we foresee the modes in which the scientific way 
 of looking at all questions may come ultimately to tinge and modify 
 men's habits of thought even in social and political matters.' Bryce, 
 Studies, essay iv, vol i p 309. 
 
48 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 where is the aristocratic or autocratic power to enable 
 you to dispense with them ? Let us not stand aloof from 
 ignoble politics to indulge a lofty pessimism. Let us 
 rather accept provisionally the doctrine 1 that 'the form 
 of a society, like that of an individual, is a consequence 
 of an evolutionary process.' Let us, in contemplating 
 the present, realize that 'to that process experimental 
 interference on an enormous scale is being applied' 
 through our legislative acts. Let us, noting that our 
 acts are causes not void of effect, see to it that they are 
 calculated to produce good effects. In other words, let 
 us recognize the duty of promoting reform by the only 
 available means. So^ once more we are back again to 
 politics. If we are to discard the exploded heresy that 
 education and general environment suffice to raise 
 superior beings from inferior strains, we must not dally, 
 but use the means at hand and strive to render those 
 means more and more effective by persistent use. To 
 descend into the battlefield of politics, a rude scrimmage 
 of jostling parties and confused ideas, may be very dis- 
 tasteful : but it is better, more human, than the aloofness 
 of the old Stoics. That our acts have consequences is 
 enough to give us assurance that it is too early to despair. 
 I am not suggesting that Mr Bateson's discourse 
 implies a despairing conclusion. On the contrary, his 
 warning 2 against hasty state interference based on in- 
 sufficient knowledge is in itself a sign of hope. But I 
 do think that, like that of some other men of Science, 
 his attitude towards democracy is hardly generous. If 
 mankind has so far moved on as to advance, not only 
 in knowledge, but in the will to turn that knowledge to 
 1 Bateson p 4. 2 Bateson pp 1214. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 49 
 
 account for the public benefit, how has this come about ? 
 Surely the great awakening of popular masses has had 
 something to do with it. As usual, cause and effect 
 work in alternation. The stimulus of growing knowledge 
 works slowly down from class to class. The 'curiosity' 
 of educated men, vividly recorded by Pepys and Evelyn, 
 issues at length in the demand of the modern hand- 
 workers for a larger share of knowledge and its fruits. 
 That some of their own class have achieved intellectual 
 distinction under hard conditions, they know. No wonder 
 then that they incline to crude theories of human equality, 
 and often fancy that only education and a more favour- 
 able environment are needed to make Jack as good as 
 his master. The man of Science knows better. He 
 knows (at present) that a physiological fallacy is involved, 
 that man's position in the universe depends 1 on his 
 heterogeneity, which is a 'condition of progress.' He 
 perceives class distinction to be essential, while demo- 
 cracy regards it as evil. He detects the incompatibility 
 of the ideals of socialism with those of democracy, and 
 helps us to clear up our notions by doing so. But he 
 hardly does justice to the service rendered by those 
 who have, however blindly, striven for illusory ' equal 
 rights' or 'equal opportunity.' Ignorant of the true 
 gospel of heredity, they did an imperfect work. Yet at 
 least they forged the only instrument strong enough to 
 do great things. And what is to be done must be great 
 and permanent. Truly is it said 2 that 'casual devotion 
 is no base on which to form a social system.' 
 
 1 Bateson pp 312. 2 Bateson p 27. 
 
 H. 
 
50 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 III 
 
 It is time to turn back and consider the story of Rome 
 The case of from the point of view of these anthropo- 
 Rome logical and biological doctrines. Roughly 
 
 stated, they assert that the Romans, after an early career 
 of success, failed in the end through a degeneration 
 which for some reason was allowed to run its course. 
 This is much as if we said they failed because, in the 
 given circumstances, they were what they were. To fit 
 the Roman case into this scientific scheme, we must 
 assume that a ruling or leading class controlled the state 
 in the days of its prosperity, that this class perished by 
 'race-suicide,' and that the ensuing decline was a result 
 of the preponderance of inferior elements of the popula- 
 tion in later periods. How far does our knowledge of 
 Roman history justify these assumptions? We must 
 bear in mind that our record, imperfect as it is and often 
 doubtful and meagre, carries us over more than 1000 
 years. To select and correlate particular phenomena 
 without careful attention to chronological order is surely 
 not a scientific process. Nor must we run any risk of 
 confusing success or prosperity with wide extent of 
 empire : it is the inner soundness, in short the prospec- 
 tive ability to meet the requirements of ever-changing 
 situations, that commands admiration. 
 
 That there was in early Rome a nobility of birth, 
 grouped on a clan-system, is agreed. Whatever their 
 origin, tradition credibly represents them as the original 
 citizens, practically the State. To share the privileges of 
 these 'men of descent' (patricii) was the aim of the Com- 
 mons or 'multitude' (plebes). After long struggles this 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 51 
 
 mixed free population gained legal and political equality. 
 Their leading men formed a new order of nobility, based 
 on tenure of office, and eventually coalesced with the 
 old patricians as a recognized Upper Class. The 'new 
 nobility' thus formed may be regarded as a blend of 
 efficient strains, an aristocracy of merit. On the whole 
 they appear to have carried on the government well. So 
 far as we can judge from our tradition, they were 
 genuinely 'Roman' in character : that is, they produced 
 no men of striking genius in peace or war, but plenty of 
 honest patriots, painstaking and competent, a type in- 
 spiring confidence and respect. It was to such leaders 
 that the Roman policy of alliances was due, and without 
 that judicious system of graded privilege Rome could 
 hardly have become the mistress of Italy. But we must 
 never lose sight of the fundamental difference between 
 Rome and her Italian rivals. Rome was a city unit of a 
 very peculiar kind. Expanding by incorporating neigh- 
 bour communities in her own body, a process to which < 
 antiquity offers no real parallel, she remained one city- 
 state. Thus accessions of population were immediate 
 increases of strength. Under the officers of a single 
 government, Roman forces could be mobilized quickly 
 and on a Roman model. This in an age of conflict gave 
 her a great advantage over adversaries more or less 
 loosely organized in leagues of towns or cantons, whose 
 prompt and effective action was often hindered by 
 divergent interests or jealousy. As she advanced, and 
 the efficiency of her system became more manifest, it 
 became easier also to win allies and generally to draw 
 the treaties of alliance in favour of Rome. The earlier 
 stages of this policy built up a power so solid and so 
 
 42 
 
52 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 elastic that even the Samnites and Pyrrhus could not 
 shake it in the later stages. But it was wielded by a 
 city government, a commonwealth (res publica) which, 
 while it avoided the risks inherent in personal monarchy, 
 depended for the support of its moral authority on the 
 free and steady cooperation of its citizens. Too much 
 s stress cannot be laid upon the centralization 1 of govern- 
 ment in the city whose franchise (civitas) Romans (far 
 or near) enjoyed. It was this that carried Rome foward 
 to dominion in her early days; this that, after a certain 
 stage was reached, broke down as an expression of the 
 citizens' will for the common good. 
 
 I have sketched on a former page the process by 
 which this political failure came about, and the Senate 
 gradually engrossed the real powers of government. 
 I have referred to the temptations under which the 
 senatorial nobility lost the virtues that were at first the 
 practical justification of their rule. But those virtues 
 did not die out suddenly. They saw Rome safe through 
 the struggle with Carthage, and we can hardly detect 
 a serious decline until the battle of Pydna (168 BC) had 
 made an end of Mediterranean rivalry. It is probably 
 true that after 200 BC frequent intercourse with the 
 Hellenized East brought unwholesome influences to 
 bear on the Roman upper class. But the opposition 
 V was sturdy, and I do not think we have ground for 
 dating the practice 2 of so-called 'race-suicide' from the 
 
 1 See Furneaux on Tac ann xm 489, xiv 17. (58 9 AD). Also 
 in 47 2. (21 AD). 
 
 2 There were signs of it, as we may see from the speech of Metellus 
 the censor of 131 BC. But this was the utterance of a strong Opposi- 
 tion partisan. See references in Wordsworth's Specimens p 631. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 53 
 
 second century BC. The seeds of evil were being sown, 
 no doubt. But in a period of ever widening opportunities 
 the nobles, greedy and grasping, were in some degree 
 saved from utter degeneracy by the stimulus of their 
 own ambitions. They were still on the whole a manly 
 crew, and they bore themselves bravely in the time of 
 civil wars and proscriptions. Once the Republic and 
 its revolutionary turmoil were ended, a very different 
 scene presents itself in Roman society. Of the real 
 aristocratic houses 1 few survived, and to recruit their 
 ranks by promoting financiers and other adventurers 
 was not to revive the old vigour which had so often 
 shewn itself in turbulence and disorder. Under a quiet 
 but irresistible suppression there was no room for free 
 political movement, good or evil. Tradition pointed to 
 public activity of some kind as the appropriate sphere 
 in which men of wealth and station should employ their 
 energies ; but to follow that tradition would now pro- 
 bably mean futile effort, not improbably personal danger. 
 Augustus the ' first citizen ' (princeps) might pose as the 
 genial restorer of the genuine Republic. But all men 
 knew by what methods he had attained a virtually 
 supreme power, and that merciful scruple had not been 
 one of them. 
 
 Now began in earnest the moral degradation of the 
 Roman upper classes 2 on which students of society are 
 only too inclined to dwell. The calm but despondent 
 
 1 See some statistics cited by Tenney Frank p 153 from an article 
 by Stech. 
 
 2 From endless references to the Roman nobles and their de- \/ 
 generacy I may select Tac ann in 55, 65, vi 4 (10), 7 (13), 10 (16), 
 26 (32), xm 18, 34, xiv 12, 14, 40, 47, 57, xv 35, 48. 
 
54 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 bitterness of Tacitus and the fierce rhetoric of Juvenal 
 hold the field, and literature has too often contented 
 itself with reproducing their pictures of foolish protests 
 and all-pervading depravity. We need not question the 
 main facts of this record. One-sided and exaggerated 
 it no doubt is, but on the whole true. Seneca, Lucan, 
 Petronius, even Columella and others, confirm it in 
 their several ways ; and the early stages of the process 
 did not escape the laughing censure of Horace. But 
 what really concerns us here is to account for the con- 
 temptuous and bitter tone of most of these utterances. 
 It is not only despair: it is often disappointment. 
 Indeed it must have been hard for a Roman observer, 
 Italian-born or not, to face the one sure conclusion from 
 contemporary facts. In a Rome confessedly the centre 
 of the civilized world, a Rome the focus of personal 
 ambitions, a Rome yearly increasing in material splen- 
 dour, was it easy to admit, and to acquiesce in the 
 admission, that the Roman People was dead ? Possession 
 of the coveted franchise of the city was a sentimental 
 link with a past in which the Roman citizen had counted 
 for something, and might by his own action possibly 
 count for a great deal. To a man of wealth and station, 
 this potential rise to eminence, even though never 
 realized, had been a comfortable feeling. And mean- 
 while he had been free to express his opinions in the 
 Senate and to give a vote according to his judgment, 
 right or wrong. The impotence of the individual 
 citizen, let him be ever so well qualified and sincere, 
 was now manifest. He must assent to the policy of one 
 at whose back were the standing armies or take the 
 consequences. Can we wonder that men who started 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 55 
 
 life with any self-respect often tried to avoid a servile 
 complaisance by standing aloof from public affairs ? 
 
 Now such voluntary retirement on the part of a 
 Roman noble left him with much time on his hands. 
 And a man with a large household of slaves and no 
 evident occupation might be, and sometimes was, up to 
 no good. Conspiracies did sometimes occur, and were 
 more often suspected, and the earlier emperors were 
 uneasy. The law of treason was extended, and in- 
 formers drove a thriving trade. But a spendthrift 
 debauchee apparently absorbed in his vices was not 
 likely to alarm the most nervous emperor. On the 
 other hand, the accumulation of a vast fortune might 
 provoke the greed of a bad one. Under all these in- 
 fluences many of the upper class lived for the passing 
 day and sank into depravity. For them the general 
 outlook was no encouragement to rear children, and 
 'race-suicide 1 became common. How far we should see 
 in this a grave calamity to Rome and Romans, is not 
 easy to determine. We cannot appraise with any ap- 
 proach to exactitude the social value of the upper class, 
 supposing them to have remained uncorrupted and 
 socially efficient. As patrons of the poorer class, a 
 mean parasitic rabble of cringing dependants, their 
 existence was surely no benefit: political value they 
 had none. 
 
 We must not however forget that there were others, 
 men of a different type. Men, that is, who took things 
 as they found them, and did not shrink from such 
 public service as the circumstances of the age required. 
 Accepting the Empire as a necessity, they saw open to 
 them a career of useful activity in one or other of the 
 
56 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 civil or military departments. The old disorder of the 
 Republic had to go, and there was a demand for com- 
 petent officials who should protect and administer the 
 empire. They must be content to work loyally under 
 a supreme ruler, and so on the whole they did. Varro, 
 the elder Pliny, Frontinus, are specimens of this type. 
 Two of these three were great students, all were 
 authors of solid works. Later, in Trajan's time, we 
 have the younger Pliny, also a literary man, employed 
 in special administrative duty. These men had laid 
 aside republican tradition and 'did their bit' as public 
 servants, a valuable asset of the imperial system. But 
 that such characters were numerous, or that they were 
 able to influence policy for the general good of society, 
 is hardly to be affirmed. The bureaucratic machinery, 
 mainly developed by the skill of oriental Greek freed- 
 men belonging to the household of an emperor, has 
 been referred to above. In the long run it prevailed, 
 and its technical perfection was a proof that the old 
 Roman principle, the sufficient competence of a Roman 
 citizen to discharge any public duty assigned him, was 
 at last abandoned. 
 
 So, all things considered, I cannot hold it satisfactorily 
 made out 1 that the decay of Rome should be classified 
 as a race-suicide. When we come upon phenomena of 
 the kind, Roman society was already thinned out in its 
 upper ranks, and living under conditions that remind 
 
 1 Something may be said for the effect of the decay of old re- 
 ligious motives for large families (Tenney Frank p 154). But Cato's 
 loan of his wife to Hortensius for breeding purposes indicates that 
 they were not extinct in the last days of the Republic, though dying 
 fast. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 57 
 
 us of captivity, in which some animals are loth to breed. 
 These conditions were the consequence of political 
 defects which had for centuries been neutralizing the 
 merits of the Romara people. It was a fatal defect, and 
 always will be a falfel defect, when the constitution of a 
 community is baswsm popular sovranty lacking means 
 of regular expresajjjjp. But if this defect had serious 
 results, paralysing the action of the popular will and 
 eventually corrupting the de facto administration of the 
 Senate, it is also true that the defect was itself the 
 result of human shortcoming. It was an effect that 
 became a cause. The early Romans found (or drifted 
 into) a way of expansion that soon led them to a point 
 at which a city-constitution was no longer adequate as 
 a machine of government. It became a hopeless tangle, 
 and from this tangle they were never able to extricate 
 themselves. To blame their early statesmen for not 
 having devised means by which the sovran people 
 might regularly bear a hand in their own good govern- 
 ment, would be absurd. The fact that in their given 
 circumstances they were what they were, is a fixed 
 point to start from. If our tradition is of any value, the 
 Roman People of (say) the fifth and sixth centuries BC 
 were in general a stolid and patient folk, caring more 
 for the assurance of their personal wellbeing than for 
 the pursuit of political ideals. The same temperamental 
 difference that made Roman seditions less violent than 
 those in the cities of Greece also tended to make them 
 defer, and if possible avoid, constitutional experiment. 
 We can now see that in extending her city franchise 
 far and wide early Rome attempted what could never 
 have been made to work as a regular system. But we 
 
58 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 must remember that the extension occurred bit by bit, 
 and so probably passed unregarded, or at least un- 
 resisted, by contemporaries. 
 
 The consequences of this policy, or rather drifting, 
 were inevitable. After proving that a great empire 
 could be built up without an Emperor, the Republic 
 
 - : shewed itself unable to rule and guide that empire in 
 the ways of prosperity and peace. Once rival ambitions 
 took to the sword as a weapon of civic debate, the 
 Free State was at an end. It only remained to find 
 the necessary Emperor. But the position of a ruler 
 stepping into power after the failure of the Republic 
 was far more difficult than it would have been if mon- 
 archy had been continuous. If the genuine relics of the 
 aristocracy, the real old noble houses, were few, they 
 were none the less inclined to set store by a social 
 preeminence now rare. And long centuries of tradition 
 sustained 1 their family pride. To them it was a cruel 
 blow, perhaps felt more severely after a short experience 
 than in the first stunning moment, that their pride was 
 henceforth not to be renewed in political action, and 
 must be fain to rest on memories. Losing the glow of 
 
 N effective public life in Rome, they could not but de- 
 generate. And it was not their fault that they had 
 been brought to such a pass. They were paying, as 
 successors do, for the shortcomings of their predecessors. 
 That they writhed under the yoke, and that emperors 
 found it no easy matter to keep them harmless and 
 loyal, is no wonder. After the death of Domitian in 
 
 1 Tenney Frank p 116, speaking of racial qualities, says 4 In the 
 old Roman noble that inheritance was not so diluted that his virtus 
 did not quickly respond to the appeal of ancestral memories.' 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 59 
 
 96 AD things took a better turn till the death of Marcus 
 Aurelius in 180. But by that time the senatorial nobles 
 were tamed, and had all grown up under the new 
 conditions, while the emperors were too firmly seated 
 to be nervous. There was a senatorial nobility for 
 centuries yet, ready to seize occasional opportunities 
 of overstepping the bounds of their normal servility: 
 but only the name connected them with the former 
 lords of Rome. 
 
 I may seem to be laying too much stress on the 
 depressing effect of exclusion from active . 
 political life. Perhaps I am. But let me withdrawal 
 point out that what galls a man is not the f r . om P ublic 
 abstinence from action but the inhibition of 
 the will to act. There will always be some who from 
 inertness or suspended judgment prefer to stand aside. 
 But to do so from conviction of the futility or danger of 
 taking an active part is a position that destroys self- 
 respect 1 and is apt to become downright maddening. 
 In such an atmosphere some of the highest natures are 
 likely to lose their balance. Some in despair will sink 
 into a life of dreary debauchery: others will make a 
 frantic bid for assertion of an obsolete freedom ; sure to 
 perish, but fain to perish with glory. These phenomena 
 were rife in Rome during the first century of the Empire. 
 That they were localized in Rome was because Rome 
 was the centre 2 of the civilized world. For an illustration 
 of much the same result, but not concentrated in one 
 place, we have not to look far. The Greeks of old 
 
 1 Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad. Eccl 7 7. - 
 
 2 Partly also because, owing to the wide control of the empire, 
 there was no safe and civilized resort open to voluntary exiles. 
 
60 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 Hellas, a more high-strung and gifted race than the so- 
 called 'Romans/ in the days of their glorious bloom 
 spent a great part of their energies in mutual destruction. 
 A sad pity, indeed. Yet the keen political life in the 
 little autonomous states was surely a most efficient 
 influence in preserving their vitality. Particularism, 
 though it prevented national union and ended in the 
 loss of Greek freedom, kept alive a particular patriotism 
 in the several states. A warm interest in the affairs of 
 their own city, though often unwisely shewn, was a 
 wholesome check on degeneration. The citizen had 
 some politics, especially 'foreign politics. Once a state 
 ceased to have a free hand in its own policy, especially 
 in its external relations, this public interest was gone. 
 Home politics tended to become a scramble, the poor 
 squeezing the rich, the rich looking outside to the 
 dominant Great Power for protection. The next stage, 
 when freedom of public action was clearly lost for good 
 and all, brings us to the Greece of which Polybius has 
 left us a distressing picture. Apathy, wantonness, race- 
 suicide in an acute form, are its main features. Nor 
 need we confine our view to ancient times. Perhaps 
 one of the merits of Representative institutions has 
 been that even in corruption they have kept open the 
 possibility that they might some day enable a common 
 citizen to give some expression to his views. 
 
 That the nature of man impels him to live in com- 
 munity, not merely as the result of bodily 
 needs, was first clearly discerned and stated 
 by Aristotle. Yet, though he also saw the weakness 
 entailed by Greek disunion, and was convinced of the 
 superior qualities of the Greek race, he does not appear 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 61 
 
 to have advocated any plan for securing their common 
 future through union. And in fact no Greek nation was 
 formed. To turn to Rome. Conquests and incorpora- 
 tions added to the mass of the Roman state, but created 
 nothing that can fairly be called a Roman nation. 
 Nations are not to be made by mere inclusion in this 
 or that political unit, not even when the peoples in- 
 cluded have considerable affinity in race and speech. 
 An assimilation has to take place, to produce the 
 necessary solidarity, the habit of looking at things from 
 the same point of view. Nearly all modern nations 1 
 illustrate this. And this assimilation takes effect most 
 readily and most vitally when the parties concerned are 
 on an equal footing or very nearly so. Hence we can, 
 without too imaginative straining of a dim record, detect 
 assimilative influence in the early period of Roman ex- 
 pansion in Italy. But we cannot trace it far. All Italy 
 did not even receive the Roman franchise until after 
 the great Italian war of 90 89 BC. And this did not 
 make an Italiaa nation: it enlarged a Roman political 
 unit, long after that unit had ceased to have any sound 
 political life of its own. It admitted Italian Allies to 
 share the Roman heritage, and that heritage was already 
 a vast foreign dominion. Those Italians who came to 
 the front in public life had openings hitherto denied 
 them, but their eyes were drawn to prospects of ad- 
 vantages abroad. Italy was merged in Rome, not Rome 
 in Italy: Rome was becoming more and more a cosmo- 
 politan centre: true national feeling in the peninsula 
 
 1 * The sentiment of Nationality, a sentiment comparatively weak 
 in the ancient world and in the Middle Ages.' Bryce, Studies, essay 
 iv, vol i p 268. 
 
62 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 could not develope in competition with the profitable 
 prestige of belonging to the imperial city. 
 
 This matter of assimilation is important from my 
 Assimila- point of view. It should be noted that, 
 tion and once Rome controlled a transmarine and 
 transalpine empire, her assimilative action, 
 where operative, was an influence from above. The 
 conquerors desired to carry on the exploitation of their 
 subjects in peace. Official policy and private enterprise 
 instinctively combined in pursuit of a common end. A 
 thin veener of civilization soon spread over southern 
 Gaul, and even refractory Spain was at last largely 
 Romanized. But in the time of the Republic the pro- 
 cess had not gone far, and was confined chiefly to the 
 few town centres from which Roman settlers carried on 
 trading and financial operations under protection of the 
 governors' courts. Enterprising traders pushed on in 
 advance of actual Roman annexation, and the move- 
 ment was extended 1 under the Empire. The civilization 
 thus propagated was not an old-fashioned Roman pro- 
 duct, but rather the cosmopolitan blend now prevailing 
 in Italy under the influence of ideas and habits imported 
 from Greece and the East. The Rome of Sulla and 
 Julius Caesar, of Cicero and Lucullus, was well able to 
 impress the rude peoples of the West with its superiority, 
 but the charm that made its civilization attractive to 
 barbarians was in no small degree due to its borrowed 
 elements. Rome was rather a carrier than a creator, 
 and the stream of subtle influence flowed on from East 
 to West. Now this Greek penetration was not the 
 
 1 Even to Ireland. Tac Agr 24. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 63 
 
 work of free and glorious Greece, but of 'Hellenistic* 
 Greeks, often only half-breeds, who came from cities 
 either founded by Alexander and his successors or 
 absorbed in their dominions. Favoured by kings who 
 knew how to value their capability and suppleness, 
 they throve and multiplied : and the qualities that 
 earned them this favour found a ready market in Rome 
 and Italy. I need not dwell on this familiar topic. For 
 my present purpose the important point is that these 
 Greeks came into Roman life almost entirely as depen- 
 dants, if not actual slaves. Their penetration of Roman 
 society was from below, and it was penetration indeed. 
 We can form some notion of its extension : of the depth 
 of its influence in modifying Roman character, only an 
 adventurous guess. How far the subtle assimilation 
 went, and whether its effects can be traced in any de- 
 finite way in the later fortunes of Rome, is a question 
 to which I have no answer beyond the usual gener- 
 alities. 
 
 If I must hazard some suggestions, I would start 
 from a negative position. Old Roman civi- Municipal 
 lization and its influences had been narrow system 
 and hard, but at the back of it there was always a tacit 
 assumption that the citizen was an active member of 
 the state, a responsible man. True, the call of public 
 duties, such as military service, was frequent ; while 
 the opportunities of using public rights, such as voting, 
 were rare. Yet tradition said (and to dispute it is rash) 
 that the farmer-citizens of old did not shrink from loyal 
 self-sacrifice. The civilization and influences carried 
 by Roman arms and enterprise into western Europe 
 had at its back an assumption that a Roman citizen 
 
64 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 was superior 1 to the native population around him, and 
 entitled to a high standard of personal comfort and 
 security. For his security he looked to the imperial 
 government, in which he had no voice. His own politics, 
 such as they were, were only municipal, and his attitude 
 towards them was more and more regulated by his own 
 selfish interests. A wish to be popular led him at times 
 to acts of munificence or charity. And, so long as all 
 seemed secure, there was not much to ruffle a life of 
 ease and local dignity. But communities such as I 
 conceive these provincial cities to have been were surely 
 no nurseries 2 of Roman strength. From the military 
 point of view a walled city might serve as a base and a 
 depot, but it was almost certain to be a poor recruiting- 
 ground. It was rather a place to be defended than a 
 means of defence. Financially, it was a convenient 
 centre for collection of imperial taxes within a given 
 district. But it is not clear that many cities were im- 
 portant centres of production ; production, that is, of 
 goods destined for outside markets. Manufacturing on 
 any considerable scale almost inevitably meant employ- 
 ment of slave-labour, and the presence of many slaves 
 was hardly an unmixed benefit to a community. Muni- 
 cipal government was in the hands of the men of means, 
 
 1 See the extreme case of the colony Camulodunum, Tac ann 
 xiv 31 3. 
 
 2 1 cannot agree that these cities of the West were ' centers of 
 Roman civilization from which the Empire long drew heavily for 
 sturdy citizens.' (Tenney Frank p 273.) Of course literary men came 
 thence to Rome, especially from Spain. That Roman observers 
 understood what was the effect of the civilization propagated in the 
 West is clear from Tacitus Agr 21, n. In annals m 46, xi 18, he 
 notes the decay of military qualities in Gaul. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 65 
 
 and these, in the quiet times of the first two centuries 
 of the Empire, unsuspecting of future disturbance, 
 generally enjoyed luxury and ease. And all the while 
 the Barbarians beyond the frontiers were growing in 
 numbers. Their rude agriculture could not supply 
 enough food to satisfy them, and they envied (and 
 doubtless exaggerated) the plenty prevailing in Roman 
 lands. Sooner or later they would be tempted to win 
 a share of Roman abundance by the sword. How in 
 the end they broke the barriers and became masters of 
 Gaul and Spain, is a well-known story. Frontier armies 
 could not hold them at bay for ever, and the unmanned 
 and helpless provincials were no serious obstacle. 
 So the imperial fabric broke down in the West. Why? 
 
 No doubt from several cooperating causes. 
 
 r . The West 
 
 But I believe none of these was more gen- 
 eral and more effective than the artificial nature of the 
 civilization introduced under Roman rule. Essentially 
 urban, it was planted in countries whose native organ- 
 ization was tribal. Cities grew rather as Roman centres 
 than as developments of local economic activity. Bodies 
 of native population were urbanized and Romanized, 
 and the cities imitated Rome. And this at a time when 
 the social atmosphere of Rome was not a wholesome 
 model. Extension of the Roman franchise 1 to their 
 burghers could not add to their inner strength : it only 
 recorded the fact that so many more individuals were 
 admitted to the ranks of a community that was trying 
 
 1 That some even became Roman Senators, we know. Tacitus 
 ann in 55 notes their sobering influence in Rome. But that they 
 could influence the government I see no proof, and their parsimonia 
 was for their own profit. 
 
 H- 5 
 
66 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 to dissemble present nullity and servitude by thinking 
 itself a ruling people in fact by vainly recalling a 
 glorious past. No national inspiration could be derived 
 from Rome, and Rome had extinguished other possi- 
 bilities of national growth for so long as she remained 
 supreme. She had indeed divided her subjects and 
 ruled them by division. The ' Rome ' of the middle 
 and later Empire was a mechanical and lifeless supre- 
 macy, only kept going by the energy of occasional 
 emperors, using barbarian armies to repel barbarian 
 invaders. But this, as I have remarked above, was 
 largely the natural result of political defects which can 
 be traced back to the early days when Rome conquered 
 Italy. 
 
 Why do we not meet with the same phenomena in 
 
 the East? The answer to this is perhaps 
 
 The East < , . * f 
 
 clearer. In the East the establishment of 
 
 kingdoms had simplified the process of Roman conquest. 
 The overthrow of a King placed at the disposal of 
 Rome a large unit of territory, with a population already 
 used to arbitrary control and to transference from one 
 monarch to another. Urban civilization was ancient, 
 and may almost be called indigenous. Moreover the 
 East was, compared with the West, industrial: it pro- 
 duced much for export, and its financial position was 
 vastly stronger. Hence its ability to recover from the 
 ravages of wars, and even from the gross misgovern - 
 ment of Republican Rome. Hence in later days, when 
 the empire broke up in the West, the eastern part long 
 survived. Constantine had provided it with a capital 
 on a site far better than that of the old Rome, and the 
 absolute monarchy of the Constantinopolitan emperors 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 67 
 
 suited the peoples under their sway far better than had 
 ever been the case with the peoples of the West. For 
 centuries Asia Minor and Egypt remained preeminent 
 in the Roman world as lands the resources of which 
 were most fully developed, and from which it was 
 possible to draw material maintenance for a stable 
 government. Despite the assaults of Barbarians from 
 the North and the revived Persian monarchy on the 
 East, it only perished through the coming of the Turks. 
 The contrast is significant, and perhaps it is not un- 
 fair to draw from it a moral. It seems, at 
 
 .... . A moral 
 
 least as an illustration, to support the view 
 
 that political institutions are of supreme importance to 
 the peoples whose lot it is to live under them. 1 1 suggests 
 that they are in practice good or bad according as they 
 fit the subjects 1 the old story of the shoe. If the 
 Roman People, with many fine qualities, could not in- 
 vent a political system suited to develope on sound lines 
 the cruder and more backward portion of their conquests, 
 they had failed, and must therefore take the conse- 
 quences. They had achieved great things, but not the 
 one thing most necessary. To blame them is absurd : 
 you might as well twit them with not inventing the 
 telephone. But the fashionable admiration of Roman 
 imperialism seems to me overdrawn; that is, if we 
 regard a great imperial system as intended to promote 
 lasting vigour and happiness within its domain, and not 
 
 1 ' Hamilton remarks in one of his letters that he holds with 
 Montesquieu that a nation's form of government ought to be fitted 
 to it as a suit of clothes is fitted to its wearer. He would doubtless 
 have added that one cannot make sure of the fit until the suit has 
 been tried on.' Bryce, Studies, essay vi, vol. i p 397. 
 
 52 
 
68 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 merely to guard the frontiers. Faced with two problems, 
 Rome was fairly successful in adapting what she found 
 to hand in eastern lands : in the West she had to create 
 a new fabric, and the experiment was not really a 
 success. 
 
 I have been speaking of Roman race-failure, both 
 Case of as a phenomenon of the upper classes of 
 
 scattered Roman society in Rome, and also of the 
 Romans Romans scattered over the Roman world. 
 By these latter I mean Roman citizens by franchise. 
 They were not all of Italian descent, and extensions of 
 the franchise under the earlier emperors soon rendered 
 the blood-union insignificant, and established union by 
 civilization in its stead. This process, though in full 
 harmony with the earliest traditions of Rome, conveyed 
 no political power. But, if we begin to discuss race- 
 failure under the scientific patronage of biologists, surely 
 this wholesale blending of stocks presents to us a serious 
 difficulty. I see nothing ahead but a series of conjectures 
 based on small evidence. I can offer but a slight indirect 
 contribution towards a result which seems likely to re- 
 main a matter of various opinions. It is the question, 
 how far the settlement of Romans (Italians) abroad 
 was an effective means of disseminating the solid 
 qualities by which Rome had risen to greatness, that 
 I try to answer. Did the Provinces gain thereby in 
 vital strength, social, moral, economic ? The structure 
 of the imperial fabric forbids us to look for political 
 strength. What then of Roman emigration ? 
 
 It is admitted that Romans who settled in Greece 
 and the East soon became 'Hellenized'; that is, they 
 fell into the ways of the later Greek civilization, and 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 69 
 
 ceased to be an effectively Romanizing influence. It is 
 also pointed out that, in the earlier 1 days of Rome's 
 eastward advance, there is reason to think 2 that many 
 if not most of these emigrants came from the southern 
 parts of Italy, where much Greek was still spoken 
 and Greek habits had not died out. Such persons were 
 an useful link for business and administrative purposes 
 between East and West. As we know that the East 
 was never Romanized indeed it became further 
 Hellenized under Roman sway it is hardly necessary 
 to pursue this section of the subject further. It is not 
 in the East that we must seek the Roman causes of 
 Roman decline. 
 
 From such evidence as we have to guide us, I con- 
 clude that it was wholly directed to exploita- . 
 tion of Provincial resources for the benefit 
 of Roman or Italian individuals. I can detect no 
 sign of emigration of Italian labour seeking a Provincial 
 labour-market. If this conclusion be just, the move- 
 ment was strikingly different from that of modern 
 times, in which the emigration of labour plays an im- 
 portant part. That the Roman citizens resident in any 
 assize-district (conventus) were recognized as a superior 
 element of the local population, whose views had 
 weight with the Governor, and whom he employed at 
 need as jurors or as the nucleus of a military force, 
 does not point to a class of emigrant labourers. Vast 
 numbers found openings in financial or other business. 
 In some Provinces old soldiers settled down. But all 
 seem to have been directors of labour in some form 
 
 1 Say the second century BC. 
 
 2 See Tenney Frank pp 109, 155. 
 
70 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 or other, the labour of provincials or slaves. And that 
 the great majority of these settlers lived in the cities 
 does not appear to admit reasonable doubt. 
 
 The movement began with the formation of Pro- 
 vinces, and reached its height in the second and first 
 centuries BC. That is, it coincided with the period in 
 which the agricultural system of Italy was (in a large 
 part of the country) transformed. The absorption of 
 small holdings by large, and the failure of attempts to 
 evade the consequences by legislation to stay or reverse 
 the process, left numbers of men without any prospect 
 of success at home. Surely these did not all (though 
 many did) drift into Rome and add to urban pauperdom. 
 Those who went abroad were probably above the 
 average in vigour and enterprise ; a loss to Italy, but a 
 gain to the Provinces, if only they developed (without 
 exhausting) the local resources, and did not themselves 
 degenerate. There is no reason to think that they 
 were as a rule penniless men, and we may fairly assume 
 that they went out to better themselves. But, as I have 
 pointed out, they were tempted to achieve this at the 
 expense of the Provincials, and so they did. 
 
 Moreover they came from a country in which slavery 
 was more and more becoming the basis of civilization. 
 The enjoyment of ease and luxury, the fruit of wealth 
 wrung from servile labour, was becoming characteristic 
 of Romans in Italy. We can hardly suppose that in 
 such a social atmosphere the scrupulous Roman went 
 abroad in quest of a higher life of wholesome simplicity. 
 It is a more likely guess that in going he hoped to win 
 for himself similar comforts on a smaller scale. And 
 the soldier-settler too might well have hesitated on 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 71 
 
 discharge to return to Italy. There he would be nobody : 
 in the Province 1 he saw his way to become some- 
 body. Why not take a wife of the daughters of the 
 people, and settle down? Now it is to be imagined 
 that the first generation of these various settlers did 
 not at once lose their tough ' Roman ' character, what- 
 ever their occupations might be. We are therefore not 
 surprised when we come upon traces of their activity, 
 for instance even in the great civil war that ended the 
 Republic. Such men were numerous, particularly in 
 Cisalpine Gaul (the plain of the Po-country) whence 
 great armies were raised. But the Italian municipalities 
 were already so far effete as to disappoint the hopes of 
 Cicero and others who relied on their support in the 
 cause of the Republic. The propertied classes, who 
 controlled them, wanted freedom to work their will in 
 their own localities, and kept up relations with aristo- 
 crats in Rome. But for this freedom they were not 
 prepared to fight, and the civil war swept over them 
 without serious check. I believe that similar pheno- 
 mena occurred again later in the Provincial cities from 
 similar causes, the new Empire having created a sense 
 of organized security within the Roman borders. Feel- 
 ing safe, and having no imperial responsibility, they 
 lost consciousness of imperial duty. Roman citizens, 
 whether descendants of Roman settlers or enfranchised 
 natives and half-breeds, were numerous. Under the 
 early empire these Provincial Romans filled the ranks 
 of the legions. But as time went on the Roman element 
 was more and more superseded by alien recruits, granted 
 
 1 Under the later Empire the veterani or militts were a very im- 
 portant element of Provincial society. 
 
72 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 citizenship for the purpose; under the later Empire 
 they were nearly all of barbarian stock. Why was this ? 
 I think, because the * Roman ' stock was decaying, pro- 
 bably in numbers, certainly in the manly qualities needed 
 for retaining the ' Roman ' supremacy. This I attribute 
 to the effects of * Roman ' civilization on the Provincial 
 cities, effects arising from antecedent causes, and not 
 fairly to be treated as isolated facts. 
 
 On one subject all writers are agreed, that the change 
 
 of human stock brought about by manu- 
 Freedmen . . r . . 
 
 mission of slaves was very great in the 
 
 Roman world. Freedmen and their descendants 
 abounded, and the manumitted slave became a citizen. 
 But it may be asked, why should this necessarily be a 
 degradation of the Roman stock ? Prisoners of war and 
 other rough labour-units would generally be used for 
 heavy rustic work, and it seems that these very seldom, 
 if ever, gained their freedom. It is to the cases of pro- 
 fessional or skilled workers and favoured domestics that 
 we must look for an answer. The answer surely is that the 
 failing ranks of true-born Romans needed to be recruited 
 from the manliest classes of mankind, high-spirited 
 beings; if possible, with good racial traditions. Now 
 manumissions normally added clever and supple beings 
 to the citizen body, and these additions did not bring 
 with them the qualities 2 most needed for the safety and 
 wellbeing of the empire. That slaves were more or less 
 a selected class, each one necessarily having some value, 
 
 1 See Tac ann xm 27 etc. 
 
 2 Tenney Frank pp 119 2 sees in the change of stock a main 
 cause of revolution through bloodshed superseding reform through 
 orderly compromise in the Republic. This seems to me too strong, 
 if true at all. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 73 
 
 while the native free citizen was just what he might 
 chance to be (no doubt in some cases worthless), was 
 of no avail. For slaves, particularly those who earned 
 freedom and left families, were chosen on principles 
 that gave little hope of producing by their enfranchise- 
 ment a manly and honourable class of ' Romans.' In 
 the decaying empire no phenomenon is more striking 
 than the growth of nervous legislation frantically 
 directed against abuses, law after law only serving to 
 prove evasion in the past, and destined to be evaded in 
 its turn. I do not think we do any injustice if we see 
 in this pitiful spectacle a result of the prevalence of 
 servile elements in the machinery of government, the 
 civil service of the Roman empire. No corrective in 
 the form of public opinion existed : each man accepted 
 the inevitable, only taking due precautions to save his 
 own skin. A Roman people, with Roman spirit and 
 traditions, was itself but a bare tradition of a distant 
 past. 
 
 That this sort of thing should continue, protected by 
 the sword of barbarian armies, was a tragic Corruption 
 absurdity, and nothing but the disunion of oftheRoman 
 barbarian enemies enabled it to go on so ***** 
 long. Surely the situation was the outcome of a long 
 series of causes, operative through many centuries, from 
 the days when the origins of Rome are wrapped in folds 
 of legend. In this series race-suicide takes its place, 
 first as an effect, then as a cause. However intense it 
 may have been in a given period, to appraise the im- 
 portance of its effect is peculiarly difficult. For we are 
 not justified in describing either the old Roman nobility 
 or the old Roman people in the mass as a pure stock. 
 
74 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 To do so is to disregard tradition without sufficient 
 authority. Incorporation of aliens meets us from the 
 first in Roman legends, and this practice is the more 
 credible as helping to illustrate and account for the 
 early expansion of the Roman state. No doubt the 
 incorporation of neighbouring peoples, some of them 
 kindred by blood, may at first have strengthened rather 
 than weakened ' Roman' qualities. But even of these 
 peoples some were not kindred, some but indirectly so. 
 Manumissions can hardly have had much dilutive effect 
 before the middle of the second century BC, perhaps not 
 till later. Once they became numerous, the effect was 
 great and irresistible. Year by year a mass of freedmen 
 became Romans. In soundness of body they may on 
 the average have been equal or even superior to the 
 native citizens. In moral equipment they started with 
 a disadvantage. Hitherto they had enjoyed no legal 
 freedom for the exercise of individual will : they still 
 owed services and deference to their former owners : 
 and they were no longer young. In freedmen's house- 
 holds a tradition of independence and virile duty could 
 not easily arise. Yet we have no reason to suppose 
 that the freedmen and their sons formed a refractory 
 element in political life, unable to blend harmoniously 
 with the native citizens. Under the Republic we hear 
 of efforts to restrict their voting-power. But the ground 
 alleged for this restriction was that they were too much 
 under the influence of their patrons, not that they were 
 in themselves bad citizens. And to keep them per- 
 manently in an inferior position was practically im- 
 possible, as their descendants were free-born, and the 
 marks of servile origin gradually died out. 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 75 
 
 That the Roman Plebs, steadily recruited on such 
 principles inherited from the past, was a mongrel rabble 
 under the Empire, quite useless for any rational political 
 purpose, is no wonder. But this did not matter much; 
 politics were at an end. That much the same conditions 
 prevailed in urban centres abroad, is at least probable. 
 But the municipalities were concerned only with their 
 local affairs; so this too was of no political importance. 
 Socially, all the Roman world inevitably suffered from 
 the lack of any national feeling, of any stimulus to 
 evoke independent judgment. Wealth was now the 
 only distinction between man and man. How to gain 
 it, to keep it, to make it go as far as possible, was the 
 remaining ambition ; and under Roman rule the wealthy 
 were everywhere in power and made full use of their 
 opportunities. Of such a state of things race-suicide (if 
 we can speak of race in this connexion) and legacy- 
 hunting were common phenomena. But they did not 
 appear suddenly out of nothing. They were effects of 
 the past. Of the palsied impotence that brought about 
 the fall of the empire they were contributory causes. 
 
 It is time to ask a question that cannot be shirked. 
 
 Why need anyone, looking from the his- 
 
 / , . * f . Race 
 
 tonan s point of view, be troubled by an 
 
 allegation that race-suicide was the cause of the Roman 
 decline and fall? Is there not evidence of the fact? 
 True, in a sense there is. That the Barbarians were 
 gaining on the 'Romans' owing to their much greater 
 fertility, no student of the Empire will deny. The 
 trouble arises from the word race, which in the mouths 
 of Men of Science has definite implications. Until we 
 are agreed as to the racial composition of Romans or 
 
76 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 of the Roman ruling class, and can fix some approximate 
 date as the time at which it can be held racially charac- 
 teristic, we are talking at large. For the purposes of 
 Science this will not do. And historians may well feel 
 uneasy. For it is certain that present interpretations of 
 past events not only affect later interpretations, but have 
 a disturbing influence on inquiry. If Roman history is 
 to be written as a racial problem, we must begin by 
 ascertaining clearly what we mean by the Roman race. 
 I venture to add a few words on some striking situa- 
 
 Somemodern ^ ons ^ t ^ ie P resent nioment. From wide 
 questions in differences of detail they cannot be offered 
 illustration ^ ana i ogous to tne Roman case. But they 
 
 may serve very well to illustrate the point of view from 
 which I have been considering the fortunes of Rome. 
 Is there in all human history a series of events more 
 clearly displaying the fatal consequences of initial 
 blunders than the past policy of England in Ireland? 
 I am not going to recount the dismal story. Suffice it 
 that mishandling of the religious question made it im- 
 possible to anglicize either the old native Irish or the 
 cross-breeds assimilated to them, while English policy, 
 wavering and half-hearted for some three or four hundred 
 years, has rested on the assumption that effective an- 
 glicizing was only a question of time. Measures have 
 followed measures, all more or less well-meant. And 
 now inevitable surrender to a pressure which time has 
 only matured to a higher pitch of organization serves 
 to confess a lamentable truth. The institutions set up 
 in Ireland have all along been a misfit. Conquest never 
 extinguished racial antipathy. Government, seldom 
 really efficient, was always irritating. Never subdued 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 77 
 
 in spirit, the mass of Irish never sank into the dull ac- 
 quiescent helplessness of Roman provincials. So now 
 in the twentieth century England has to withdraw from 
 an untenable position, and accept new relations the out- 
 come of which no man can forecast. 
 
 In the Irish case we are driven to hope that this 
 change of relations has not been made too late. In 
 those of India and Egypt we may be pardoned for 
 hoping that recent concessions are not premature. In 
 England it has taken us something like a thousand years 
 to reach our present capacity for working a popular 
 government. We are a slow people; but there are 
 grounds for thinking that popular government grows 
 best when it grows slowly. It implies experiment, and 
 procedure by experiment postulates time. Clever though 
 the educated Oriental may be, he has not at his back 
 the steady ing traditions of alternating success and failure, 
 that are the modern Englishman's heritage. Handed 
 down from generation to generation, these have so to 
 speak passed into the blood and have hitherto saved us 
 from stagnant decay and destructive revolution. Can 
 such an influence be artificially cultivated in a brief 
 period of years, or extemporized at will? The next 
 generation may perhaps see answers to these questions. 
 At present the glow of a warm-hearted policy brightens 
 the hopes of those who rely on the effect of generosity. 
 But good intentions have sometimes miscarried in the 
 past, and a political misfit may vitiate the best intentions 
 in the future. 
 
 Such considerations as these, and others not less 
 sincere, will no doubt be present to the minds of those 
 whose duty it is to decide issues of public importance. 
 
78 THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 I only offer them here as a sort of collateral justification 
 or excuse for the line I am taking in reference to the 
 failure of Rome. There was at one time a tendency to 
 exaggerate the influence of political institutions on the 
 welfare of mankind. Reaction ensued, and was neatly 
 summed up in the oft-quoted couplet of Pope. There 
 was a half-truth in either view. And nowadays anthro- 
 pology and biology come forward with new methods of 
 solving problems to the vital importance of which the 
 human race is just awaking. That this new learning is 
 destined to be of immense service to mankind, I do 
 not doubt. But it cannot escape the necessity of being 
 to some extent destructive : it has to clear the ground 
 by convicting History (as hitherto written) of insuf- 
 ficiency. Historians will have to sit at the feet of the 
 Man of Science, and apply profounder doctrines in their 
 criticism of human achievements and possibilities, past 
 as well as present. A harmony is needed, between 
 what has been a department of Literature and the 
 sacred ministry of Science. This does not imply the 
 extinction of History as Literature, but rather its ready 
 adoption of correctives, to check easy interpretation 
 and make writers take into account influences hitherto 
 undetected or ignored. But hasty conclusions are no 
 monopoly of the literary man. The man of Science too 
 may well move slowly outside the boundaries of his 
 own special province. 
 
 Take the matter of 'race-suicide.' On this subject 
 Race-suicide the warnings and predictions of men of 
 and Rome Science deserve the fullest attention and 
 respect. Translate these doctrines into criticism of the 
 past, and they need to be strictly questioned before 
 
THE ROMAN FATE 79 
 
 acceptance. There is a real danger lest a theory may 
 prevail because it offers an explanation of well-known 
 facts, and on that ground claims attention. But its 
 attractive simplicity may be partly due to imperfect 
 statement of the facts selected, partly to insufficient 
 recognition of other facts. For instance, we may find 
 evidence of 'race-suicide* in the Roman world (not in 
 Rome only). If we treat this phenomenon as a cause, 
 let us not view it as an isolated one. Surely peoples do 
 not wake up suddenly and vow to stop breeding. The 
 cause in question started as an effect of antecedent 
 causes, and no search will ever lead us back to a cause 
 undoubtedly original. Yet the search for causes is not 
 therefore unprofitable. Everything that helps us to a 
 better understanding of the past has a value in training 
 our eye for observation of the present. Historians may 
 (probably will) never bring what is called Political 
 Science up to the same level of exactitude as is required 
 of Chemistry or Physics. Too large a part of their 
 subject-matter is lost for ever; and, the further back 
 they go into the past, the greater in general is the per- 
 centage of loss. In the case of Rome, the very word 
 'race' raises questions of opinion, which can no longer 
 be finally settled by anything like proof. To define 
 what you mean by 'the Romans' is no easy task. In 
 different generations it would bear different shades of 
 connotation, and by the time you have travelled from 
 the elder Cato to Marcus Aurelius you are in an utterly 
 changed world. Look from the days of the Licinian 
 laws to the system of Diocletian, and you can hardly 
 use the term 'Romans' without an explanatory note. 
 When and where do we find evidence of a reasonably 
 
8o THE ROMAN FATE 
 
 pure upper 'strain' of Roman society, the failure of 
 which would sufficiently account for the decline of 
 Rome? Perhaps in the original Patricians, whoever 
 they were. But the history of those early days is a mist 
 of legend, and Patrician domination died out in the 
 fourth century BC. The mixed Nobility of the second 
 and first centuries BC were, unless they are grossly mis- 
 represented, a strange body to be considered indispens- 
 able to the welfare of any state. No, there is no 
 legitimate short cut 1 to a simple and scientific theory of 
 the causes of Roman decline. To pick out a generation 
 or two of the * upper' classes, and lay the blame on them, 
 is an arbitrary sentence, and as yet not proven. 
 
 The only means known to us of combating evil and 
 A general promoting good in a community with any 
 conclusion prospect of lasting success lies in the action 
 of the popular will cleanly freely and continuously ex- 
 pressed. This is Politics, to bear a part in which is a 
 citizen's duty. Rome is merely an extreme instance of 
 failure from lack of this means of regeneration. Perhaps 
 the failure would have occurred, even had the means 
 been available : but it was not there, and so could not 
 be tried. 
 
 This principle is true for all states in all ages, and 
 
 History, recording endless failures, is one long record 
 
 of this truth. To improve your citizens, and to interest 
 
 ^~them in their own real welfare, is the only course that 
 
 offers a possible means of avoiding the Roman fate. 
 
 1 W R Paterson, The Nemesis of nations (1907) p 325, well says 
 ' Rome decayed not from peculiar maladies, but from fundamental 
 causes that had been the ruin of other states.' 
 
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