CHAPTER I

      THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE

      What caused the fall of the Roman Empire? The first reply that occurs to us is this: That the Romans were corrupt and enfeebled by corruption; the Barbarians, while rougher, were also stronger and less corrupt. When the latter had once crossed the Rhine and the Danube, their ultimate victory was assured; the Empire was bound to fall, new social conditions were bound to arise. But what had corrupted and weakened a people that had been for so many centuries a model of discipline, virtue, and strength—a people that had conquered the world? Its corruption was a consequence, not a cause, and was the first symptom of the decline that had already begun. The Empire that Livy had seen bending beneath the burden of its own greatness could not last for ever.

      The Empire had brought into being that moral and civil unity of the ancient world which was a necessary preliminary towards the formation of nationalities. Nationalities, in fact, can neither live nor thrive unless so closely inter-related as to feel themselves members of the same family. But their rise put an end to the existence of that ancient world which recognised the absolute predominance of one civilisation alone, outside of which were only barbarians. Therefore while, on the one hand, and seen from afar, the fall of the Empire may appear an extraordinary, an unexpected event; on the other we are positively moved to amazement by the length of its duration. In fact, under one or another form, we witness its posthumous survival throughout the Middle Ages. Later still, we see vain attempts made to restore it to life, first by Charles V. and then by Napoleon Buonaparte. The truth is that the unity of Europe and the diversity of the nations within its borders are two equally undeniable facts of which the vicissitudes of modern history are the results.

      Rome was a city—a commune that began by conquering and assimilating all neighbouring populations, and conquering Italy by their means, and, with Italy, in like manner mastered nearly the whole of the then known world. Naturally, however, the rule of one city over so vast a territory, over such diverse races, all subject to the same government, the same laws, and the same official language, encountered greater difficulties as it extended more widely. The assimilation of the Roman populations had proved comparatively easy, but Africa, Spain, Rhoetia, and Gaul opposed an increasingly obstinate resistance. Then fresh obstacles had to be faced in Asia Minor and in Greece, where the Romans encountered, for the first time, a higher civilisation than their own. After conquering the country by force of arms, they were conquered in their turn by the culture of Greece, and were obliged to fuse their own with it in order to spread both through the world. Thus, by the time the Empire reached to the Rhine and the Danube, it no longer possessed any real kernel of unity corresponding with its outer shell. The Empire was neither a state nor a nation; it was a compound of different races, held together by force and subject to the same civilisation. Beyond its frontiers stretched a very vast country, inhabited by militant barbaric tribes, who were pressing; to the front with the terrible rush of a river in flood.

      Roman society was deeply shaken by this state of things. First of all, the constitution of the army was fundamentally changed. But the army was the chief engine of conquest, chief basis of the Empire. Formerly, as Gibbon justly observed, the armies of the Republic consisted of owners and cultivators of the soil, who sat in public councils, voted the laws, and defended Rome by force of arms. The welfare of their country was bound up in their own welfare. A battle won was their fortune, a battle lost their personal ruin. All material and moral interests, consecrated by religion, combined to make them heroic soldiers and citizens, who, when war was over, returned quietly and modestly to their fields. Who could suppose that the inhabitants of Rhoetia, Spain, and the African coast would fight with the same faith and ardour in defence of a power to which they were often alien and hostile?

      These armies, sent to guard distant and ever-extended frontiers exposed to continual attack, necessarily became standing armies. The men of whom they were composed had been called away from their homes and their land, if they had any. This often remained untilled, while the owners were forced to serve in foreign parts as long as their strength lasted. Accordingly, to meet the pressing need and growing difficulty of obtaining fresh recruits, it was necessary to tempt them to take service by offering higher pay and additional privileges. Hence the custom of allowing even slaves to be enrolled, and especially barbarian slaves, who speedily formed the bulk of the Roman legions. In this manner war was reduced to a trade, and the strength of the army consisted in its discipline rather than its patriotism. Yet such was the force of its discipline, such the magic effect of the sacred names of Rome and the Empire on the minds of men, that even from all those incongruous elements was welded the formidable host that continued to do wonders for several centuries longer.

      The maintenance of this huge army in distant parts was an enormous expense. Consequently the country was more and more heavily taxed. Little by little the chief mission of the Curia and Decurions of the communes became that of squeezing more coin from the already impoverished people. As those magistrates were held responsible for the contributions demanded, even when the inhabitants were unable to pay them, official posts were no longer positions of honour to be eagerly sought, but burdens which every one tried to shirk, even by flight into voluntary exile. Thus private interest, formerly identical with the public good, was now opposed to it, which in all states of society is an unfailing symptom of moral decadence and weakness.

      Continual wars led to continual increase in the number of slaves. The leaders of armies as well as purveyors and governors of provinces amassed enormous fortunes. Wealthy men became always richer, poor men more impoverished and crushed down by usury. The latter were usually reduced to becoming dependants of rich landowners as tenants more or less attached to the soil, and paying rent for land that had been formerly their own property. This gave rise to a genuine social-agrarian question that became a considerable factor in promoting civil war and general decadence. The middle class being destroyed, there arose a class holding large estates—the so-called latifundia—men owning many tens of thousands of slaves, and possessing estates from thirty to forty square miles in extent—almost whole provinces, in short. A latifundium, or estate of this size, naturally tends to increase, by absorbing neighbouring bits of land and, establishing the system of cultivation on a large scale, also quickly exhausts the soil and diminishes its produce. Thus Italy could no longer feed either her inhabitants or her armies, for even the grain-supply from Sicily had decreased. Accordingly the country began to depend on Africa for its food stuffs, and ran the risk of starving for lack of help from that quarter.

      Throughout the vast territories of the Empire numerous cities were scattered, many of which were military or civilian colonies. These cities were organised on the pattern of the capital, having their own assemblies, magistrates, schools, baths and temples, aqueducts, barracks, and amphitheatres. They spread in a thousand different directions, from the central point—the Roman Forum—to the extreme limits of the Empire. Everywhere—and never more than five or six miles apart—were stations with a sufficient number of horses to maintain rapid communication with every part of the Empire. Country houses and farms were thinly sprinkled about the almost deserted rural districts, which were cultivated by slaves and tenants (both classes being nearly on the same footing), who went back to their cities and farmhouses at night. Trade, which was very limited, was also in the hands of slaves, of whom there was a multitude. Gibbon states that in Claudius’s reign the population of the Empire amounted to 120,000,000, of whom 60,000,000 were slaves. But although this estimate is open to doubt, it is an undeniable fact that revolts of the slaves more than once brought the Empire to the verge of destruction.

      An absolute sovereign was at the head of this complicated social fabric, and under him the army and the great landowners exercised a tyrannous rule. Before long, the army claimed the right of making, unmaking or, at least, of approving the Emperors, and when split into parties would proclaim several different men at the same time, thereby causing very serious, and often bloody, conflicts. The great landowners held the highest offices of the State, as by hereditary right, and were the chiefs of an enormous bureaucracy. They lived in the cities, together with a mob of slothful paupers, who could only be prevented from rioting and kept in good temper by abundant doles of corn, and plenty of public games and entertainments: panem et cir censes. When we also remember that in this vast, divided, and disorganised Empire, the same barbarian tribes who were actually threatening its frontiers, already supplied the majority of its soldiers and slaves, we shall easily understand that no power on earth could now avail to...