tained a population which was made up of three classes — citizens of the town, inhabitants of the country, and slaves; and such political power as belonged to the people appears to have been in the hands of the first class only.
178 GEANDEUE AND DECADENCE [bakeb.
Such communities — ^whether Eoman or Grecian — althougli bearing the name of republics, were much less republican, iu fact, than are the monarchies of our present Europe; and, when their institutions are placed in comparison with those of the United States, it is seen that they can only be regarded as rudi- mentary forms of free government.
It is true that the Koman republic became progres- sively more liberal in its internal polity from the time of the expulsion of the kings to the time of its sub- version. The ever-renewed contest between the popu- lar and the patrician parties went, in the main, some- what in favor of the former; and, as the conquests of Eome extended, she gradually admitted the neighbor- ing peoples of Italy to the privileges of citizenship. But, at the close of the republic, we would probably not be far out of the way in supposing that the pro- vincials, without any power in the enactment of Eoman laws, were twice as numerous as the citizens, and that the slaves were equally as numerous as both; in other words, that at the period of the greatest liberality in her constitution not more than one sixth of all the subjects of republican Home had so much as a theo- retical right to participate in the governing power. Of course there are no direct and precise statistics upon which to base such a supposition; but, in view of the census which was taken by the Emperor Clau- dius, within less than a century after the fall of the repubhc. Gibbon concludes that the above proportions BOTE.] OF THE ROMANS. 179 will probably express the relative magnitudes of the three classes of persons in question at the time of that emperor; and there is reason to believe that the proportions of these classes did not greatly differ dur- ing the last age of the republic and the first of the empire.
The fact is, that republican government, in any- thing like the sense in which it is realized in our own country, was an impossibility in ancient times. Such government is so much an affair of superior social ability on the part of the people, and the masses of mankind in all the ancient states were so ignorant and incompetent to self-rule, that it resulted, as a necessary consequence, that the best form of re- public which they were anywhere capable of was cor- respondingly low.'
' Livy, Book I, ch. 43; Arnold's Hist, of Rome, ch. v; Aristotle's Politics, Book II, ch. xl; Anthon's Clas. Die, Table X. — Y. Roman Moneys, articles Carthago, Athence, Argos, and authorities there cited; and Gibbon's Rome, ch, ii.
-j^gQ GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE [montesqpieu.
CHAPTEE IX.
TWO CAUSES OF THE EUIN OF EOME.
"Whilst the domination of Eome was limited to Italy, the republic could easily maintain itself. Every soldier was equally a citizen; each of the consuls levied an army; and the remaining citizens went to war in their turn under him who succeeded. The number of troops not being excessive, care was taken to receive only such men into the military service as possessed a sufficiency of property to cause them to feel an interest in the preservation of the city.' The senate, having a near view of the conduct of the generals, was thus enabled to restrain them from all thought of doing anything contrary to their duty.
' The freedmen, and those who were called capiie censi — inasmuch as they possessed very little property, and paid only a capitation tax — were not at first enrolled in the infantry service, except on urgent occasions. Servius Tullius had placed them in the sixth class, and soldiers were taken from the first fiive only. But Marius, preparing for the war against Jugurtha, enrolled all sorts of men indifferently. Miliiea sa-ibere, says Sallust, non more majorum^ neque dassilrus^ sed uti cujtt^que libido erat^ capite censos ^to-osi/Mf. {De Bella Jugurth.) It should be observed that, in the division by tribes, those who were in the four tribes of the city were nearly the same as those who, in the division by centuries, were in- cluded in the sixth class.
CHAP. IX.] OF THE ROMANS. 181 But, when the arms of the republic were carried beyond the Alps and the sea, the soldiers, who had to be left during many campaigns in the countries which were subdued, gradually lost the spirit of Ro- man citizens; and the generals — who disposed of armies and kingdoms — feeling their power, would no longer obey.
It was then that the legionaries began to recog- nize their general only — to found aU their hopes upon him — and to see the city at a greater distance. They 'ceased to be soldiers of the republic, and came to be soldiers of Marius, of Sylla, of Pompey, and of Csesar. Home could no longer know whether he who was at the head of an army in a province was her general or her enemy.
So long as the Eonian people were corrupted by their tribunes only — upon whom they could confer no power which was not limited to the city — the senate could effectually defend itself; for this body acted with constant steadiness of purpose, whilst the populace passed incessantly from the extreme of fury to the extreme of weakness. But, when the people became able to give to their favorites a formidable power abroad, all the wisdom of the senate was ren- dered futile, and the republic was lost.
The reason why free states are less durable than others is, that the calamities and the successes which fall to their lot nearly always cause them to lose their liberty; whilst, on the other hand, the successes 182 GEANDBUR AND DECADENCE [montesqtjieu.
and the calamities of despotic states equally confirm the servitude of their subjects. A wise republic should hazard nothing which exposes it either to good or to bad fortune. The sole good which it ought to aspire to is its own perpetuity.
If the grandeur of empire ruined the Koman re- public, the grandeur of the city ruined it none' the less.
Rome had subdued all nations with the assist- ance of the peoples of Italy, to whom, at diEEerent times, she had. extended divers privileges." Most of tjiese peoples did not at first set any great store upon the right of Eoman citizenship, and some of them preferred to retain their own usages.' But, when this right became that of universal sovereignty — when a man was nothing in the world if he was not a Roman citizen, and everything if he bore that title — the peoples of Italy resolved to perish or be- come Romans. ITot being able to attain their end by canvassing and by supplication, they resorted to arms. They revolted in aU that part of Italy which looks towards the Ionian sea; and other Roman al- lies proceeded to follow the example.* Obliged thus ' Jm Lata, jus italicum.
^ The Equians said in their assemblies: " Those who have been able to choose for themselves have preferred their own laws to the rights of the city of Rome, which last have been a necessary hardship for those who have been unable to defend themselves." Livy, Book XI, ch. 45. (a) (a) I presume that Book IX instead of XI is here meant. — Teanslatob.
■* The Asculans, the Marsians, the Vestinians, the Marrucinians, the Ferentinians, the Hirpiniana, the Pompoianians, the Venusians, the lapy- CHAP. IX.] OF THE EOMANS. 183 to contend against those who were, so to speak, the very hands by means of which she had enchained the universe, Rome was lost. She was about to be reduced to her walls. She conceded the right — so much coveted — first to such allies as had not yet ceased to be faithful;' and little by little she ex- tended it to all.
After this, Rome was no more a city whose people possessed the same spirit, the same love of liberty, and the same hatred of tyranny; in which jealousy of the power of the senate and the prerogatives of the great — ^mixed always with respect — was in reality nothing other than a love of equality. The peoples of Italy having become her citizens, each city imported into the great capital its own genius, its own particu- lar interests, and its own dependence upon some great protector.' The distracted city ceased to be an entire whole; and since its citizens were only such by a species of fiction, since they had no longer the same magiistrates, the same walls, the same gods, the same temples, and the same sepulchres for their dead, they no longer looked upon Rome with the same eyes, nor ■ ges, the Lucanians, the Samnites, and others. (Appian, The CivU War, Book I, ch. 39.)
' The Tuscans, the Umbrians, the Latins. This led some of the re- volted peoples to submit — and, as they also were made citizens, still others laid down their arms. Finally, the Samnites only remained, and they were exterminated.
^ Let one imagine to himself this monstrous head of the Italian na- tions which, by means of the suffrage of all, directed the rest of the world.
1^4: GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE [MONiKSQniEtj.
felt the same love of country. The Eoman sentiment was gone forever.'
Ambitious men caused the populations of entire cities and nations to congregate at Eome for the pur- pose of corrupting the suffrage, or of obtaining their votes for themselves. The assemblies were veritable conspiracies. A troop of seditious persons was called by the name of cornices. The authority of the peo- ple, their laws, themselves even, became chimerical things; and the anarchy was such that it could no longer be known whether the people had or had not adopted an ordinance.'
Historians constantly speak of the divisions which ruined Eome, not reflecting that these divisions were necessary, that they had always existed in the city, and that they ought always to have existed therein. It was solely the magnitude of the republic which produced the evil, by changing popular tumults into civil wars. It was inevitable that divisions should exist among the Eomans, and it was not to be ex- pected that those warriors who were so fierce, so auda- cious, and so terrible abroad, would be very moderate at home. To ask, in a free state, for men who are bold in war and timid in peace, is to desire impossible things; and, as a general rule, wherever we find all the peo- ple quiet in a state which has given to itself the name of republic, we may be assured that there is no liberty.
' See my iVofe at the end of this chapter. — Thanslatou. ' See the Letters of Ciccrc to Atticue, Book IV, Letter xviii.
CHAP. IX.] OP THE ROMANS. 185 That wliicli is called union in a body politic is a very equivocal tiling. A true union is one of har- mony, by which all the social elements of the state, however opposed to each other they may appear to be, concur in promoting the general good of society, just as the discords in music concur in producing the total accord. There may be union in a state — that is to say, a harmony from which results the welfare of the people, and which is the only true peace — ^where all appears to be a scene of confusion. Such a union of the different elements in a body politic may be compared to the union which pervades the universe, all the parts of which are eternally held together by the action of some and the reaction of others.
But amid the accord of Asiatic despotisms, as in- deed of all governments which are not moderate, there is always a real separation of the social elements. The laborer, the warrior, the merchant, the magis- trate, the noble, are not joined together, only in so far as some oppress the others without resistance. If there is union in such a state, it is not citizens who are united, but dead bodies buried close to each other.
It is true that the laws of Eome became powerless for the government of the republic, but it has always been seen that good laws, which have caused a small republic to become powerful, are afterwards a burden to the state which they have fostered into greatness; and this for the reason that these laws are such that j^gg GKANDEITR AND DECADENCE [montesquieu.
their natural effect is to produce a great people, but not to govern them.
There is much difference between good laws and suitable ones — ^between those which are calculated to enable a nation to render itseK master of others, and those which are adapted to maintain its power when once acquired."
There is at the present time a republic which is very little known ", and which, in secrecy and silence, constantly grows stronger. Should it ever attain that measure of greatness which its wisdom proposes, it is certain that it will change its laws; and this change wiU not be the work of the legislator, but of corrup- tion itself.
Eome was adapted to self-aggrandizement; and, for the attainment of that end, her laws were admi- rable. Thus, under whatever constitution the state had assumed — under the kings — ^under the aristocracy — under the popular form of government — she never ceased to prosecute difficult enterprises, and to prose- cute them to a successful issue. She was not wiser than all the other states of the earth for a day only, but continually. She sustained a small, a mediocre, ° We see by the manner in which Montesquieu states the distinction here talien — ^between the laws which are proper to the acquisition of em- pire by conquest and those which are fitted to govern it afterwards — as- signing to the one class the quality of " good," to the other the quality of " suitable " — that his genius was not wholly emancipated from the spirit of antiquity — a fact which shows itself several times in the course of this work. — Translatok.
'" The Canton of Bern.
CHAP. IX.] OF THE ROMANS. 1S7 and a great fortune, with the same superiority. She experienced no success of which she did not profit; she suffered no disaster which she did not turn to her service.
She lost her liberty for the reason that she accom- plished her work too soon."
" [We might add many particular incidents to the causes of the ruin of Kome. The rigorous exactions of the creditor upon the debtor class caused great and frequent revolts. The prodigious number of gladiators and slaves with whom Rome and Italy were surcharged led to frightful outbreaks, and even to bloody wars. Exhausted by so many foreign and civil wars, Rome created such great numbers of new citizens — either from reason or from the influence of faction — that, amidst the multitude of strangers whom she had naturalized, she could hardly recognize herself. The senate was filled with barbarians; the Roman blood became inter- mixed; the love of country by which Rome had elevated herself above all the nations of the earth was not natural to those citizens who came from abroad, and the rest of her citizens were corrupted by intermixing. Divi- sions increased with this prodigious increase of new citizens, and turbulent spirits found therein a new means for the promotion of disorder and for the prosecution of their enterprises.
Meantime, as a result of the luxury, the debauchery, and the idleness which were introduced, the number of the poor increased without limit. Those who found themselves ruined had no resource but sedition, and, in any case, they cared but little if all perished with them. Ambitious leaders and the rabble, who have nothing to lose, always love change'. These two sorts of citizens prevailed in Rome; and the middle class, which alone holds all steady in popular states, being the weakest, it was inevitable that the republic should fall. Bossuet, Disc, sur VHist. imiv., troisiSme partie, ch. vii.]
188 GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE [bakeb.
l^OTE BY THE TEANSLATOE.
To that absorption of the old Eoman stock which is suggested hy Montesquieu, and more definitely re- ferred to by Bossuet, must be assigned a prominent place among the causes of the disappearance of the old Eoman spirit. De Gobineau, in his " Essay on the Inequality of the Human Eaces," attempts to generalize this cause, and to show that it is the leading principle presiding over the decline of na- tions. "Every human agglomeration," he says, "al- though protected by the most ingenious complication of social ties, contracts, at the very time of its for- mation, and conceals among the elements of its hfe, the principle of inevitable death...Yes, it is really in the very bosom of a social body that is found the cause of its dissolution. But what is that cause? Degeneracy, it has been answered; nations die when they are composed of elements which are degenerate. The answer is good, etymologically and in every manner. It only remains to define what must be understood by these words — degenerate nation. It is there that we make shipwreck...I think then, NOTE.] OF THE ROMANS. 189 that the word degenerate^ when applied to a people, ought to signify, and does signify, that the people in question no longer have the intrinsic value which they formerly possessed, for the reason that they no longer have in their veins the same blood — of which successive mixtures have gradually modified the value; in other words, that, while retaining the same name, the nation has not preserved the race of its found- ers; in short, that the man of decadence — he whom we call the degenerate man — is a different product, in an ethnical point of view, from the heroes of the great epochs. I am very wiUing to allow that he possesses something of their essence; but the more he degenerates, the more this something attenuates. The heterogeneous elements which henceforth pre- dominate in him compose a nationality which is wholly new, and very unfortunate in its originality. He is not related to those whom he still calls his fathers, except by a line very collateral. He will die out definitively, and his civilization with him, whenever the primordial ethnical element comes to be so subdivided and drowned by the influx of for- eign races that the power of this element is no longer adequate to the exercise of a sufficient in- fluence." ' The conception of De Gobineau must not, how- ever, be carried too far, nor be made — as he seems ' Essai sur Vlvigaleli des Races Humaines, Paris, 1853, torn, i, pp. 3, 38-40. See also Indigenous Races of the Earth, Phila., 1868, p. 214.
190 GEANDEUK AND DECADENCE [baker.
to do — exclusive. It is by no means universally true that "th§ man of decadence" differs ethnically from "the heroes of the great epochs." He has often been their lineal descendant, corrupted by the for- tune entailed upon him, or by other depressing causes. Such in a great measure was the case with the Eomans when they reached their period of de- cline. The considerable remnant of "the primordial ethnical element" had become thoroughly corrupt — a natural result of low culture combined with great for- tune and great power acquired by conquest. Whilst it is true, therefore, that the republic was abandoned to a great influx of strangers who lacked the Koman consciousness and feeling, and by admixture with whom the original stock was largely absorbed, it is none the less true that what remained of this stock had, to a very great extent, lost the Koman virtue — from causes having little or nothiag to do with for- eign admixture.
The question of the causes of Roman decline — that is, of the causes which led to the transition of the Koman state from the first of its two great life- phases to the second — naturally connects itseK with an historical determination of much rational value. In a work upon "-the Grandeur and Decadence of the Komans," complete accuracy of thought demands that a definite idea of the historical range of the one and the other of these terms should be presented; or, at least, that some certain criterion should be NOTE.] OF THE ROMANS. 191 pointed out by means of wMcli sucli an idea can be closely approximated.
At wbat time, tben, did the grandeur of the Ko- mans reach its acme, and their decadence begin? Some reasonably approximate answer to this question is indispensable to a truly rational conception of Ro- man history as a whole.
That quality of character which consists in up- rightness and fidelity on the part of the citizen in all his relations to the state of which he is a member is more comprehensive than patriotism, and may be fitly called civio virtue. This, therefore, appears to be the standard of comparison which we want.
If, then, we adopt the decay of civic virtue as the true criterion which marks the transition from grandeur to decadence among the Romans, and if, guided by this test, we should indicate the rise and decline of the Roman state by a curve, I conceive that it should be so drawn as to represent ascent dur- ing a period of about 650 years from the foundation of the city, and after that a continual descent for about 573 years — at the end of which time the "West- em Empire was extinguished.
According to this view, the climax of the pe- riod of grandeur is reached about sixty years before Csesar overthrew the republic — whilst the final ca- tastrophe of the period of decadence comes at the close of the reign of Augustulus, a. d. 4Y6 or 479. The last sixty years of the republic are not thus pre- 192 GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE [bakeb.
fixed to the empire arbitrarily; they are connected as primary and secondary stages of decadence. Within these sixty years fall the Social War, the Civil Wars of Marius and Sylla, and the wholesale Proscriptions of the latter. When these great disorderly phenom- ena are studied in connection with the previous in- ternal contests which had constantly agitated the republic, they are seen to be of a totally different kind, and clearly to indicate the decline of civic vir- tue. For more than four centuries following the ex- pulsion of the Tarquins, there had been an inces- sant struggle between the aristocratic and the demo- cratic parties; but this struggle had generally been held within some tolerable limits of moderation; and even the seditions which took place in the time of the Gracchi — during the generation immediately pre- ceding the internal wars alluded to — although giving an unmistakable note of warning that a great change was impending in the state, were in themselves com- paratively small affairs. That change was realized in the convulsions which soon followed under Marius and Sylla. The old aristocratic and democratic par- ties, which, as just said, had agitated the state as far back as the time of the kings, but which, by their mutual forbearance, had hitherto been compatible with the existence of an imperfect republic, having now degenerated into mere factions, seeking each other's destruction by the sword, were become whoUy incompatible with a republican constitution for the NOTE.] OF THE ROMANS. 193 state. From the standpoint of these civil wars it is easy to foresee the approaching revolution in the gov- ernment. The average citizen of both the old par- ties having changed the character of a partisan for that of a factionist, the descent of the repiiblio into CcBsarism and the Empire was hut the adjustment of a lower form of government to the already lowered civic character of the Roman peojple.
Here, then, a few decades before the end of the repubKc, we detect the turning-point from grandeur to decay.!N^or is this view really invalidated by the facts — that the Koman literature continued to develop until the age of Augustus — that the Roman law may have gone on developing until the time of Alexander Severus — that the territorial area of the empire did not reach its maximum until the time of Trajan — and that the effective power of the Roman arms did not for a long time after the fall of the republic experience any sensible decline. These are facts; but it must be observed that all the elements of a decaying social system do not begin to decline, or even cease to develop, simultaneously. In the case of the Romans — and I presume they are but any instance of a general law in like circumstances — the civic character of the people became degenerate^ that is, the average citizen hecame corrupt in his re-\ lations to the state a considerable time before decline set in, and even before progress was arrested, in several important particulars. But, inasmuch as this 194 GRAJS^DEUR AND DECADENCE [eakkk.
civic declension, although accompanied for a time by certain kinds of progress, was fundamental to the state, and tended constantly and with accumulating efficiency to bring down the whole system, the era of its open commencement should be selected as the great critical period in the Eoman national life.
This conception becomes all the clearer in its reason when we recur to the causes which conducted the Romans to that turning-point in their destiny which I have indicated. These causes were mainly two — the great and sudden increase of wealth and power which attended the rapid Eastern expansion of the republic after the second Punic war, and the vast number of new citizens who, without pos- sessing the Roman feeling or the Roman traditions, had been incorporated into the governing body. Here we have the immediate sources of that civic demor- alization which first exploded in the wars of Marius and Sylla, and soon afterwards reached a fatal issue for the republic in those of Caesar and Pompey.
In connection with that ascending and descend- ing movement of Roman history viewed as a single phenomenon, the two great sections of which I have here undertaken to measure with some precision, there are three parallels which appear to be note- worthy.
First, at an early period in their rising career, the Romans threw off a lower and took on a higher form of goverament— they passed from the govern- NOTE.] OF THE ROMANS. 195 ment of the kings to the republic; at an early period ia their declension they threw off a higher and took on a lower — they passed from the republic to the empire.
Secondly, when their power commenced to grow, for a long time it grew very slowly; when it com- menced to decliae, for a long time it declined very slowly.
Thirdly, to the period of long, slow gro^^th, suc- ceeded a shorter period of rapid expansion to the zenith of their grandeur; to the period of long, slow decline, succeeded a shorter period of rapid declen- sion to the end of the empire.
These parallels are by no means accidental. The causal relation which exists between the character of a people and the character of their government de- termined the first; the very obstinate resistance which the Romans for a long time met with, and the enormous stored-up force of their political sys- tem when it reached its height and began to decline, explains the second; whilst the tendency of great acquired power — which is yet active and aggressive =— to make large and prompt additions to itself, and the equal tendency of accumulating weakness to find at length a point from which it passes speedily to its end, sufficiently accounts for the third.
If the principal conception embodied in this note is correct. Gibbon has omitted a very considerable part of the " Decline " of the Eoman Empire. He 196 GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE [bakek.