The date of the founding of the city of Rome is given as 753 B.C. But at that time Rome could scarcely have been more than a savage little village of shepherds or herdsmen. None the less, it was a village of brave, active men, and it grew gradually into a town, fortified in the seven hills by the bank of the Tiber. Surrounding it were hostile races, hostile cities bigger than itself. But the Romans knew how to stick to one another, and they made headway. Gradually Rome became the leader of the towns and peoples in the wide plain of Latium, which surrounded her. She was head of the Latin League.
After the year 500 B.C. we can be fairly certain of Roman history. At that time Rome was a republic. It had now no king, and no nobles, dukes or counts or lords, as we know them. Yet it was divided into two classes, the upper and lower — patrician who were rich and proud, and plebeian who were poor. These two classes held great meetings, to decide what was to be done, and to choose leaders. The chief men in Rome were the two consuls, who were elected in the council of the people, to hold office for one year only.
So we see in the beginning the difference between the Romans and the people of Britain and Gaul. The Britons and the Gauls were subject to chieftains, who said ‘ Come,’ and the people came; ‘ Go,’ and they went. But in Rome each citizen was free to come and go as he pleased. Only he must abide by the laws that he himself had helped to make. To be a Roman citizen, in the days of the real greatness of Rome, was to be a proud, free man, subject to no master, a fearless supporter of the laws of freedom.
By the year 275 B.C. Rome was mistress of Italy, south of the Po. The peninsula of Italy lies in the centre of the Mediterranean; the city of Rome lies in the centre of the peninsula; and the Mediterranean, as its very name says, was the centre of the world at that time. So that Rome held a great position of advantage: she was the very centre and hub of the world of that day. And soon the whole world turned upon that hub.
Gradually Rome extended her dominion. In 242 B.C. she took Sicily, her first overseas possession. Then she defeated Carthage in North Africa; then Macedonia, in the Balkan Peninsula; then Greece, then Spain, and so on, till all the lands of the Mediterranean were under her power. In the year 61 B.C. Pompey the Great returned from the East. He had been as far as the Euphrates, had defeated the Persian Mithridates, who fled to the Crimea, and Syria was added to Rome. In the year 58 B.C. Julius Caesar marched north to Gaul, and across from Gaul he came to Britain. By Gaul we mean the land now occupied by France, stretching from the Mediterranean to the Rhine.
We see the empire spreading west, south, east, and north, under the Roman armies. The empire was won by the armies, and it must be kept by the armies. The wonderful thing is that it was kept, and governed from the one central city of Rome, by the great citizens of Rome.
The Roman Empire is the most wonderful the world has ever known: not because of its size, but because of its strange unity and singleness. The world will surely never again see such a wonder. And the Romans achieved this by their power for holding together and working together in one purpose; they kept their empire by making roads immediately, and by establishing permanent military and civil colonies; they maintained their greatness because of their natural love of justice. There was at the bottom of every Roman heart a passion for simple, actual truth: even the trial of Jesus shows us this. They loved to feel they rested upon the plain truth of facts. Individually, they might be vain and unscrupulous. But in their social acts, in that which concerned justice and the freedom of a man, they had always this strange and beautiful craving for fairness between man and man, for justice between a man and the State, for the whole truth in any question under dispute. Even whilst the emperors and governors were the most cruel or foolish of men, still, as a rule, they could see what was true or right, though they did not choose to act upon it.
But an empire which is established on military power must at length be governed by one man, even as an army must be under the supreme command of one general: for a military empire is in truth a great army. The Romans struggled to keep their freedom, the splendid freedom of a Roman citizen, a civilian. But as the empire extended, more and more men had been admitted to the citizenship, men of every nation and country. St. Paul, as we know, was a Roman citizen. How could these millions of citizens meet in council to decide questions of peace or war, and to elect their great consuls? And therefore, since men had not discovered how to choose their own representative by vote, the bulk of the citizens were not represented: they were dumb, they had no say.
Thus the army had to take control, and the greatest men were the generals of the army. Pompey and Julius Caesar, two of the world’s greatest soldiers, were both consuls, prime ministers of the empire. The masters of the army became masters of the civil life as well. But in the year 50 B.C. the armies of the empire had two masters, Pompey in the east, Caesar in the west. The two fought for supremacy, and Caesar defeated Pompey, who was murdered in Egypt, to which land he had fled. Caesar was now alone master of the world. He was made absolute ruler of the empire. He sat in the senate on a golden throne, wearing the purple mantle of a general in his triumph. But the Romans would not have him named king. They hated the very thought of a king who would rule them. So Caesar took the title of Imperator — Emperor — which meant at that time master of the army.
Still the great Romans were angry. They did not want such an overlord. Even though they loved the great Julius, they could not bear that he should have permanent power over them, and over all free Romans. Rome must be governed by her citizens. Therefore, on the Ides of March, 44 B.C., the first and greatest citizens of Rome, led by Caius Cassius and Marcus Junius Brutus, murdered Caesar in the senate, by his golden throne.
It was terrible to good men like Brutus to have a share in such a thing. They did it for the freedom of their country. Yet they utterly failed. The young Caesar Octavianus became master of the world in the year 31 B.C., after defeating Mark Antony and Cleopatra in the battle of Actium. Octavian was the adopted son of Julius Caesar, and his full name was Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus. Later on he added the name of Augustus, by which he is now known. The period of the rule of Augustus is the greatest in Roman history — the Augustan age. During this age lived the greatest Roman writers and thinkers, the empire was prosperous and splendid. In the time of Augustus, also, Christ was born.
And Augustus had some of the beauty and noble gentleness of Christ. He was not like Julius Caesar, chiefly a fighter, a commander whom nothing could resist. He loved peace, and the happiness of the people. He carefully settled the government of the great empire. But, while he said that he restored the Republic, it turned out, as a matter of fact, that he had inaugurated that imperial form of government which was the first cause of the downfall of the empire. The rule of the one man made the rest of the citizens indifferent, irresponsible. They had no share in the empire; the Caesars and emperors swallowed up everything. So the citizens and great men began to care about their own little lives and nothing else. It is a free, proud people which keeps a nation alive. So that when the Romans ceased to feel themselves free and responsible, Rome became as it were flabby, a huge but flabby power.
Augustus died in the year 14 A.D. He had never heard of Jesus, who was one day to be executed in a distant province as an insignificant agitator and disturber of the peace. After Augustus come a string of Caesars famous for their extravagance and wickedness, which was not so terrible after all. When these Caesars came to the throne they took the name of Augustus, which thus became a title even higher than that of Emperor, for Augustus had had himself placed among the gods. Jupiter, Juno, Venus, Mars, Mercury, Augustus, all these gods had their temples and altars.
Augustus was followed by Tiberius, who first began to tyrannise over the Romans. He is supposed to have been very cruel. But the Romans themselves fawned before him, and betrayed one another to him. ‘ Oh! how anxious these people are to be slaves! ‘ Tiberius said bitterly. He died in 37 A.D. After him came the mad Caligula, who wanted to have the statue of himself, as a god, put into the temple of Jerusalem and worshipped there. He hated the tiresome, turbulent, rather cowardly people of Rome, and said: ‘ I wish they had only one head, so that I could cut it off at a blow.’ He was himself, however, soon murdered by an officer of the Praetorian Guard. In the year 54 Nero became emperor. He loved splendour, and built a gorgeous palace called the Golden House, where he gave astonishing feasts. Every one has heard the story that Rome, the enormous city, was set on fire at his bidding, so that he could enjoy, from his high grounds, a wonderful sight. Watching the sea of flames, which lasted for five or six days, he is said to have danced and sung with extravagant pleasure. Later the burnt quarters were built up again, and Nero said he found Rome a city of brick and wood, and left it a city of marble. At last his wild acts caused the leaders of the army to rise against him. He fled to a country house, and there he begged his faithful servant to kill him: which the man did, in grief and obedience. This was in the year 68.
It was no wonder these men were, or became, a little mad, for they were masters of a whole world, and they had the whole world at their feet, and all Rome cringing and squirming before them. We must remember Tiberius’ saying: ‘ Oh! how anxious these men are to be slaves!’ It was the greatest citizens of Rome itself that sent the emperors mad with pride and extravagance, by utterly sinking their lives down to the will of the master.
After Nero emperors were chosen and destroyed again in quick succession. From the year 14, when Augustus died, to the year 96, in which Domitian was murdered, ten emperors rose and fell. In Domitian’s time the conquest of Britain was accomplished, but the emperor was a base man, and he destroyed the great general Agricola out of jealousy.
Nero was the last of the true imperial line. After him, the succession depended not on birth but on chance, and the choice of the army. A victorious general, a notable citizen, might suddenly be raised to the throne. Later, even the sons of slaves or peasants or barbarians from Arabia or Hungary, were lifted up and invested with the imperial purple.
In the chaos and turmoil of the empire after Augustus, there was one splendid century, from 96 to 180, when Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius were emperors. This is called ‘ the Age of the Antonines.’ One great and noble ruler followed another, in succession. Within the empire there was peace and solid prosperity. The frontiers were established, the colonies grew rich and secure. Antoninus built the wall across Scotland, from Glasgow to Edinburgh. This was the northern boundary of the empire. And from this wall the Roman roads ran, with the single intervention of the Channel, straight and perfect to the other end of the empire, in Arabia or Mesopotamia. There were post-houses and milestones all the way; and the Romans kept the account of the miles: from the wall of Antoninus to York, 222 Roman miles; from York to London 227; to Sandwich 67; crossing to Boulogne 45; to Rheims 174; to Lyons 330; Milan 324; Rome 426; Brindisi 360; the crossing to Dyracchium, or Durazzo, 40; Byzantium 711; Anayra 283; Tarsus 301; Antioch 141; Tyre 252; Jerusalem 168. This makes 4080 Roman miles, which is 3740 English miles. So the Romans kept their itinerary.
This great empire remained solid owing to the excellence of the armies and of the magistrates. But it was too big. Once it was really established, it was bound to fall to pieces. And it fell naturally into two halves.
The old half of the empire was in Syria, Greece, North Africa; the new half was Gaul, Spain, Britain, and the countries of the Danube. The armies and the colonists of the empire of the west, Gaul, Britain, Spain, lived in northern countries, wild, cold in winter, peopled by fierce barbarians. But the colonists and armies of the eastern empire lived under burning suns, in ancient cities, older by far than Rome, and among a people delicate and luxurious. The great towns of the east, Smyrna, Ephesus, Antioch, were full of marble palaces and lovely temples whilst yet Rome was a rude little town. Alexandria in Egypt and Carthage in North Africa knew all the richness and delights of the Greeks and Phoenicians. And thus the millions of Romans in the East, living in a land of luxury and fruit, corn, pomegranates, dates, apricots, loved to be lazy, to dress in delicate clothes, to bathe and rub themselves with oil, to go to the theatre or the circus often, almost every day, to talk and feast and idle their lives away.
In the North it was different. There, men must watch and act. In the North there were fine Roman towns — Marseilles, Lyons, Treves, Vienna, York — many lovely cities. But here men could not idle their lives away. Here there was not any wine and oil, save what was carried from afar off. And here were the great fierce races of Germans near at hand, to keep one on the alert, or the savage Caledonians. Here the Roman legions had to contend with the bravest barbarians and the bitterest cold. They were not like the softer armies of the East, who fought the Persians in well-known, civilised warfare, under hot skies.
Thus, gradually, there came a silent falling asunder in the empire. After the year 180 a series of worthless emperors came to the throne. Rome itself became a centre of shame and degradation. The great armies were hardly ever in Italy. They were needed in Gaul, in Syria, in Africa. The generals and the veterans away on the frontiers came to despise the noisy, foolish citizens of Rome, and the Eternal City, Rome herself, Mistress of the World, became an object of contempt. She kept her useless emperors and courtiers, her useless, extravagant mass of inhabitants. But the real government, the real power, was always in the hands of the great, far-off, permanent armies, in Gaul, in the East, on the Danube, or in Britain.