Lectures and Essays | Page 8

It seems probable that her hills were not only the
citadel but the general refuge of the lowlanders of those parts, when
forced to fly before the onslaught of the highlanders, who were
impelled by successive wars of migration to the plains. The Campagna
affords no stronghold or rallying point but those hills, which may have
received a population of fugitives like the islands of Venice. The city
may have drawn part of its population and some of its political
elements from this source. In this sense the story of the Asylum may
possibly represent a fact, though it has itself nothing to do with history.
Then, as to imperial organization and government. Superiority in these
would naturally flow from superiority in civilization, and in previous
political training, the first of which Rome derived from her
comparative wealth and from the mental characteristics of a city
population; the second she derived from the long struggle through
which the rights of the plebeians were equalized with those of the
patricians, and which again must have had its ultimate origin in
geographical circumstance bringing together different elements of
population. Cromwell was a politician and a religious leader before he
was a soldier; Napoleon was a soldier before he was a politician: to this
difference between the moulds in which their characters were cast may
be traced, in great measure, the difference of their conduct when in
power, Cromwell devoting himself to political and ecclesiastical reform,

while Napoleon used his supremacy chiefly as the means of gratifying
his lust for war. There is something analogous in the case of imperial
nations. Had the Roman, when he conquered the world been like the
Ottoman, like the Ottoman he would probably have remained. His thirst
for blood slaked, he would simply have proceeded to gratify his other
animal lusts; he would have destroyed or consumed everything,
produced nothing, delivered over the world to a plundering anarchy of
rapacious satraps, and when his sensuality had overpowered his
ferocity, he would have fallen in his turn before some horde whose
ferocity was fresh, and the round of war and havoc would have
commenced again. The Roman destroyed and consumed a good deal;
but he also produced not a little: he produced, among other things, first
in Italy, then in the world at large, the Peace of Rome indispensable to
civilization, and destined to be the germ and precursor of the Peace of
Humanity.
In two respects, however, the geographical circumstances of Rome
appear specially to have prepared her for the exercise of universal
empire. In the first place, her position was such as to bring her into
contact from the outset with a great variety of races. The cradle of her
dominion was a sort of ethnological microcosm. Latins, Etruscans,
Greeks, Campanians, with all the mountain races and the Gauls, make
up a school of the most diversified experience, which could not fail to
open the minds of the future masters of the world. How different was
this education from that of a people which is either isolated, like the
Egyptians, or comes into contact perhaps in the way of continual border
hostility with a single race! What the exact relations of Rome with
Etruria were in the earliest times we do not know, but evidently they
were close; while between the Roman and the Etruscan character the
difference appears to have been as wide as possible. The Roman was
pre-eminently practical and business- like, sober-minded, moral,
unmystical, unsacerdotal, much concerned with present duties and
interests, very little concerned about a future state of existence,
peculiarly averse from human sacrifices and from all wild and dark
superstitions. The Etruscan, as he has portrayed himself to us in his
tombs, seems to have been, in his later development at least, a mixture
of Sybaritism with a gloomy and almost Mexican religion, which
brooded over the terrors of the next world, and sought in the constant

practice of human sacrifice a relief from its superstitious fear. If the
Roman could tolerate the Etruscans, be merciful to them, and manage
them well, he was qualified to deal in a statesmanlike way with the
peculiarities of almost any race, except those whose fierce nationality
repelled all management whatever. In borrowing from the Etruscans
some of their theological lore and their system of divination, small as
the value of the things borrowed was, the Roman, perhaps, gave an
earnest of the receptiveness which led him afterwards, in his hour of
conquest, to bow to the intellectual ascendency of the conquered Greek,
and to become a propagator of Greek culture, though partly in a
Latinized form, more effectual than Alexander and his Orientalized
successors.
In the second place, the geographical circumstances of Rome,
combined with her character, would naturally lead to the foundation of
colonies