Chapter X: Part 10

Such was imperial Rome, in all the internal relations of life, and amid all the trophies and praises which resulted from universal conquest,--a sad, gloomy, dismal picture, which fills us with disgust as well as melancholy. If any one deems it an exaggeration, he has only to read Saint Paul's first chapter in his epistle to the Romans. I cannot understand the enthusiasm of Gibbon for such a people, or for such an empire,--a grinding and resistless imperial despotism, a sensual and proud aristocracy, a debased and ignorant populace, enormously disproportionate conditions of fortune, slavery flourishing to a state unprecedented in the world's history, women the victims and the toys of men, lax sentiments of public and private morality, a whole people given over to demoralizing sports and spectacles, pleasure the master passion of the people, money the mainspring of society, a universal indulgence in all the vices which lead to violence and prepare the way for the total eclipse of the glory of man. Of what value was the cultivation of Nature, or a splendid material civilization, or great armies, or an unrivalled jurisprudence, or the triumph of energy and skill, when the moral health was completely undermined? A world therefore as fair and glorious as our own must needs crumble away. There were no powerful conservative forces; the poison had descended to the extremities of the social system. A corrupt body must die when vitality has fled. The soul was gone; principle, patriotism, virtue, had all passed away. The barbarians were advancing to conquer and desolate; there was no power to resist them but enervated and timid legions, with the accumulated vices of all the nations of the earth, which they had been learning for four hundred years. Society must needs resolve itself into its original elements when men would not make sacrifices, and so few belonged to their country. The machine was sure to break up at the first great shock. No State could stand with such an accumulation of wrongs, with such complicated and fatal diseases eating out the vitals of the empire. No form of civilization, however brilliant and lauded, could arrest decay and ruin when public and private virtue had fled. The house was built upon the sand.

The army might rally under able generals, in view of the approaching catastrophe; philosophy might console the days of a few indignant citizens; good Emperors might attempt to raise barriers against corruption,--still, nothing, according to natural laws, could save the empire. Even Christianity could not arrest the ruin. It had converted thousands, and had sowed the seeds of future and better civilizations. It was sent, however, not to save a decayed and demoralized empire, but the world itself. Not until the Germanic barbarians, with their nobler elements of character, had taken possession of the seats of the old civilization, were the real triumphs of Christianity seen. Had the Roman empire continued longer, Christianity might have become still more corrupted; in the prevailing degeneracy it certainly could not save what was not worth preserving. The strong grasp which Rome had laid upon the splendors of all the ancient Pagan Civilizations was to be relaxed. Antiquity had lived out its life. The empire of the Caesars was doomed. Retributive justice must march on in its majestic course. The empire had accomplished its mission; the time came for it to die. The Sibylline oracle must needs be fulfilled: "O haughty Rome, the divine chastisement shall come upon thee; fire shall consume thee; thy wealth shall perish; foxes and wolves shall dwell among thy ruins: and then what land that thou hast enslaved shall be thy ally, and which of thy gods shall save thee? For there shall be confusion over the face of the whole earth, and the fall of cities shall come."

* * * * *

AUTHORITIES.

Mr. Merivale has written fully on the condition of the empire. Gibbon has occasional paragraphs which show the condition of Roman society. Lyman's Life of the Emperors should be read, and also DeQuincey's Lives of the Caesars. See also Niebuhr, Arnold, Mommsen, and Curtius, though these writers have chiefly confined themselves to republican Rome. But if one would get the truest and most vivid description, he must read the Roman poets, especially Juvenal and Martial. The work of Petronius is too indecent to be read. Ammianus Marcellinus gives us some striking pictures of the later Romans. Suetonius, in his lives of the Caesars, furnishes many facts. Becker's Gallus is a fine description of Roman habits and customs. Lucian does not describe Roman manners, but he aims his sarcasm at the hollowness of Roman life, as do the great satirists generally. These can all be had in translations.