Chapter 32 Chapter XXIX The Roman Empire and its Relationship to Culture

The Roman Empire has influenced cultural history in more or less different ways. First: the direct influence of Rome on Hellenistic thought.This aspect is less important and not far-reaching. Second: the influence of Greece and the East on the western half of the Roman Empire.This aspect is deep and long-lasting, because it includes Christianity. Third: the important part played by the long peace of Rome in spreading culture and accustoming men to the idea of ​​a single civilization associated with a single government. Fourth: Hellenistic civilization spread to Muslims, and from Muslims to Western Europe.

Before examining these influences, a brief overview of political history will be instructive.Alexander's conquests did not touch the western Mediterranean, which was dominated by two powerful city-states, Carthage and Syracuse, at the beginning of the third century BC.During the First and Second Punic Wars (264-261 and 218-201 BC), Rome conquered Syracuse and reduced Carthage to insignificance.In the second century B.C. Rome conquered the Macedonian states—Egypt existed as a vassal state almost uninterruptedly until the death of Cleopatra (30 B.C.).Spain was conquered incidentally in the war against Hannibal; France was conquered by Caesar in the middle of the first century BC, and England was conquered about a hundred years later.The borders of the Roman Empire at its peak were the Rhine and Danube in Europe, the Euphrates in Asia, and the great desert in North Africa.

Roman imperialism is perhaps best expressed in North Africa, (the importance of North Africa in the history of Christianity is that it is the home of St. Cyprian and St. Augustine,) where there is a large barren area before and after Rome, But by this time it became a fertile area and sustained many populous cities.From the accession of Augustus (30 BC) to the turmoil in the third century AD, the Roman Empire was generally stable and peaceful during the two hundred years. At the same time, the institutions of the Roman state underwent important developments.At first Rome was a small city-state, not unlike those in Greece, especially those like Sparta; and it did not depend on foreign trade.The king, like the Greek king in Homer's time, had long since been replaced by an aristocratic republic.While the aristocratic element embodied in the Senate was still strong, it gradually increased the democratic element; the result of this compromise has been described by the Stoic Paniteius (Polybius and Cicero) all repeat his views) as an ideal combination of the three elements of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy.But the conquest disturbed this extremely precarious balance; it brought new and great wealth to the senators, and to a lesser extent also to the upper middle class, known as the "knights."Agriculture in Italy had been in the hands of small peasants, who cultivated it with their own and family labor; but it had now become the province of the great estates of the Roman nobility, who used slave labor to grow grapes and olives.As a result, the Senate, which disregarded the interests of the country and the happiness of its subjects, and only knew shamelessness in order to get rich personally, became in fact omnipotent.

The democratic movement launched by the Gracchi brothers in the second half of the second century BC led to a series of civil wars; the last-as was common in Greece-was the establishment of the "tyranny".It seems astonishing that developments which had been limited to tiny areas in Greece should now be repeated on such a large scale.Julius Caesar's heir and adopted son, Augustus, reigned from 30 B.C. to A.D. 14 and finally put an end to internal strife and (with a few exceptions) foreign conquests.For the first time since the beginning of Greek civilization, the ancient world enjoyed peace and security.

Two things destroyed the Greek political system: the first was the absolute sovereignty of each city-state, and the second was the brutal and bloody struggle between rich and poor within most of the city-states.After the conquest of Carthage and the Hellenistic nations, the former cause no longer troubled the world, for effective resistance to Rome was no longer possible.But the second reason still persists.In a civil war, one general could declare himself a soldier of the Senate, while another declared himself a soldier of the people.Victory goes to the man who can buy soldiers at the highest price.Soldiers wanted not just money and plunder, but bounty land; so that every civil war ended with the formal decree of many landowners who had been nominal tenants of the state, to make way for the victor's soldiers. bit.The cost of waging war was paid for by executing the rich and confiscating their property.This disastrous system was not easily brought to an end; but in the end, to everyone's surprise, Augustus' victory was so complete that no contender could challenge the power he claimed up.

It seemed an accident to the whole Roman world that the period of civil wars had come to an end, and all but a few senators rejoiced.It was a deep respite for everyone, that Rome under Augustus had at last achieved what the Greeks and Macedonians had vainly sought, and Rome had failed to achieve before Augustus stability and order.According to Rosdovtsev, Republican Rome brought to Greece "nothing new except poverty, bankruptcy, and the cessation of all independent political activities." During the reign of Augustus, It was a happy time for the Roman Empire.The administrative organization of each province has more or less taken care of the welfare of the residents, not just a purely predatory system.Augustus was not only officially deified after his death, but was also spontaneously considered a god in the cities of many provinces.The poets sang his praises, the merchant class found it convenient to have a general peace, and even the Senate, to which Augustus dealt with all semblance of respect, took the opportunity to pile honors and offices upon his head. superior.

But though the world is happy, some of the joy of life has been lost, because men have preferred safety to risk.In the early days, every free Greek had a chance to take risks; Philip and Alexander put an end to this state of affairs, and only the Macedonian kings enjoyed anarchic freedom in the Hellenistic world.The Greek world had lost its youth and had become a cynical or religious world.The hope of realizing ideals in earthly institutions vanishes, and even the best lose their zeal with it.Paradise to Socrates was a place where he could continue his arguments, but to philosophers after Alexander it was something quite different from their life on earth.

Later in Rome the same development took place, but in a less painful form.Rome was not conquered like Greece, but was, on the contrary, stimulated by successful imperialism.Throughout the period of the civil war it was the Romans who were responsible for the disorder.The Greeks did not find peace and order when they were subjugated to the Macedonians; but both the Greeks and the Romans, when they were subjugated to Augustus, gained peace and order.Augustus was a Roman to whom most Romans submitted willingly, not just because of his superior power; besides, he took pains to conceal the military base of his government , and make it subject to the decrees of the Senate.The flattery expressed by the Senate was undoubtedly insincere; but no one but the senators were humiliated by it.

The mood of the Romans is very similar to that of the French jeune hommerrange in the nineteenth century; (youth with a tidy life), they settled down in a rational marriage after going through a love adventure.This mood, though satisfying, is not creative.The great poets of the Augustan period were produced in more turbulent times; Horatio was exiled at Philippi, and his and Wegil's estates were confiscated and distributed to the victorious soldiers.Augustus, in order to secure the state, also tried more or less superficially to restore the ancient beliefs, and therefore had to adopt a rather hostile attitude towards free study.The Roman world began to become stereotyped, and this process continued through the emperors.

The original successors of Augustus indulged in appalling cruelty against the senators and would-be contenders for the purple robe.To some extent, the inhumanity of the period also spread to the provinces; but on the whole the administrative machinery created by Augustus continued to function well.A better period began with the accession of Trajan in AD 98 and lasted until the death of Marcus Aurelius in AD 180.The government of the Roman Empire during this period was as good as any despotism could possibly be.The third century, by contrast, was a disastrous period.Realizing its power, the army supported or deposed an emperor depending on money and whether they could promise not to fight for life, so the army no longer became an effective fighting force.Barbarians came from the north and east to invade and plunder Roman territories.The army was so preoccupied with self-interest and internal strife that it was powerless to resist.The whole financial system collapsed, as revenues had been greatly reduced, while expenditures had been greatly increased by futile wars and the buying of armies.In addition to war, plague also greatly reduced the population.It looked as if the Roman Empire was about to collapse.This outcome was averted by two capable men, Diocletian (286-305 A.D.) and Constantine, whose undisputed throne was from 312 to 337 A.D. up to the year.At this time the empire was divided into two parts, east and west, roughly equivalent to the two parts of Greek and Latin.Constantine established the capital of the Eastern Empire in Byzantium and gave it a new name Constantinople.Diocletian for a time changed the nature of the armies, and thereby restrained them; but since then the most combative forces have been composed of barbarians, chiefly Germans, and all high command positions are also open to them.This was obviously a dangerous approach, and it had its natural consequences at the beginning of the fifth century.The barbarians finally decided that it was better for them to fight for themselves than for their Roman masters.Yet it has served its purpose for more than a century.Diocletian's administrative reforms also had a short-term success, but ended in disaster as well.The Roman system allowed cities to have local self-governments and allowed local officials to collect taxes themselves. Only the total amount of taxes paid by each city was regulated by the central authority.This system has worked well in times of prosperity, but now, when the empire is exhausted, the required revenues are too great to be supplied without excessive extraction.Municipalities, personally responsible for collecting taxes, fled to avoid paying upwards.Diocletian forced well-to-do citizens to hold municipal office and made flight illegal.For the same motive, he converted the rural population into serfs, binding them to the land and prohibiting movement.This system was also preserved by later emperors.The most important measure of Constantine was the adoption of Christianity as the state religion, apparently because most of the soldiers were Christians.As a result of this measure, when the Germans destroyed the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, its prestige also led the Germans to accept Christianity, thus preserving for Western Europe those ancient civilizations that had been absorbed by the Church.

The territory assigned to the eastern half of the Roman Empire developed differently.Although the territory of the Eastern Roman Empire was constantly shrinking (except for the temporary conquest of Justinian in the sixth century), it existed until Constantinople was deceived by the Turks in 1453.However, the former Roman provinces in the east, including Africa and Spain in the west, became the Muslim world.The Arabs, unlike the Germans, rejected the religions of the peoples they conquered, but accepted the civilizations of them.The civilization of the Eastern Roman Empire was Greek rather than Latin, so it was the Arabs who preserved Greek literature and all remaining Greek civilizations that were opposed to Latin civilization from the seventh to the eleventh centuries.From the eleventh century onwards, first through the influence of the Moors, the Western world gradually recovered her lost Greek heritage. I now turn to four ways in which the Roman Empire contributed to cultural history. Ⅰ.The Direct Influence of Rome on Greek Thought It began with two men in the second century BC, the historian Polybius and the Stoic philosopher Panethius.The natural attitude of the Greeks towards the Romans was one of contempt mingled with fear; the Greeks considered themselves more civilized but politically weaker.If the Romans were more successful in politics, it only shows that politics is a dishonorable business.The average Greek of the second century B.C. was pleasure-loving, quick-witted, business-minded, and fearless about everything.Yet there are also those who are capable of philosophy.Some of them—especially skeptics, such as Carneades—go so far as to allow cleverness to overthrow seriousness.Some, like the Epicureans or some Stoics, retreated entirely into quiet private life.But there were also a few, whose vision was deeper than Aristotle had shown Alexander, and who recognized that Rome was great because it possessed certain virtues that the Greeks lacked. The historian Polybius was born in Agatha around 200 BC. He was sent to Rome as a prisoner, but after arriving in Rome, he was fortunate to be a friend of the young Sepio. Little Sepio has experienced many battles.It was rare for a Greek to know Latin, though most educated Romans knew Greek; yet what happened to Polybius made him proficient in Latin.He wrote the History of the Punic Wars, which had enabled Rome to conquer the world, for the benefit of the Greeks.When he wrote, his admiration for the Roman system was outdated; but before his time, the Roman system was more stable and stable than the ever-changing system of most Greek city-states. efficiency.The Romans were naturally glad to read his histories; but it is doubtful whether the Greeks were so. Panethius, the Stoic, we have already talked about in the previous chapter.He is a friend of Polybius and, like Polybius, a protege of Seppio the Younger.During Seppio's lifetime he visited Rome several times, but after Seppio's death in 129 B.C. he remained at Athens as the leader of the Stoics.Rome was still full of the hope associated with the opportunities for political activity that Greece had lost.The doctrine of Panethius is thus more political than that of the earlier Stoics, and less like that of the Cynics.Perhaps the admiration of the educated Romans for Plato influenced him to abandon the dogmatic narrowness of his pre-Stoics.Thus Stoicism, in the broader form given by him and his successor Posidonius, powerfully impressed the more serious Romans. Although the later Epictetus was a Greek, he lived in Rome for most of his life.Rome provided him with most of his illustrations; he often exhorted wise men not to tremble before the emperor.We know about Epictetus's influence on Marcus Aurelius, but his influence on the Greeks is more difficult to explore. Plutarch (c. 46-120 AD), in his Lives of Notable Men of Greco-Romans, traced the character development of the most prominent men of both countries.He spent considerable time in Rome and was revered by the emperors Hadrian and Trajan.In addition to his "Biography of Famous Men", he also wrote countless works on philosophy, religion, morality and natural history.His "Lives of Famous Men" obviously tried to reconcile Greece and Rome in people's minds. On the whole, with the exceptions mentioned above, Rome did nothing more than destroy the Greek-speaking part of the empire.Both thought and art decayed.Until the end of the second century A.D., life for the well-to-do was pleasant and comfortable; there were few thrills to strain the mind, and few opportunities for great achievement.Recognized schools of philosophy—the Platonic Academy, the Peripatetics, the Epicureans, and the Stoics—all survived until 529 A.D. when they were dethroned by Justinian the Great (out of Christian obstinacy). sex) closed.None of these schools, however, has shown any life since the time of Marcus Aurelius, except the Neoplatonic school of the third century A.D. (which we shall deal with in the next chapter); and these Man was hardly influenced by Rome at all.The Latin and Greek parts of the empire were increasingly diverging; knowledge of Greek had become a rarity in the western half, while Latin in the eastern half existed only in laws and armies since Constantine . Ⅱ.Greek and Eastern Influences on Rome There are two quite different things to consider here: the first, the influence of Hellenistic art, literature, and philosophy on the most educated Romans; and the second, the pervasiveness of non-Greek religions and superstitions throughout the Western world. (1) When the Romans first came into contact with the Greeks, they realized that they were relatively barbaric and rude.The Greeks were incomparably superior to them in many respects: in handicrafts, in agricultural technology; in all the knowledge necessary to a good official; in conversation and the arts of enjoying life; in art, literature, and aspects of philosophy.The only things the Romans were superior to were military technology and social solidarity.This relation of the Romans to the Greeks is very much like that of the Prussians to the French in 1814 and 1815; but the latter instance was only temporary, while the former lasted a long period. .After the Punic Wars, the young Romans had a feeling of admiration for the Greeks.They studied Greek, they imitated Greek architecture, they employed Greek sculptors.There were many gods in Rome who were also equated with the gods of Greece.The idea that the Romans originated at Troy was created in order to connect with the Homeric legend.Latin poets adopted Greek rhythms, Latin philosophers adopted Greek theories.In the end, Rome became a cultural parasite of Greece.The Romans created no art form, developed no thoughtful philosophy, and made no scientific inventions.They had built good roads, had systematic law codes, and efficient armies.But in everything else, they followed the Greek lead. The Hellenization of Rome produced a certain softness in manners, which old Cato detested.Up to the time of the Punic Wars, the Romans were a farming and herding people, with all the virtues and vices of the peasants: serious, industrious, vulgar, obstinate, and ignorant.Their family life has always been stable and firm, based on patriapotestas (patriarchy); women and youth are completely subordinate.But that all changed with a sudden influx of wealth.Small fields disappeared, gradually being replaced by large estates using slave labor and practicing new scientific methods of agriculture.A powerful merchant class arose, many of whom became rich through plunder, like the nabobs in England in the eighteenth century.Women, who had always been virtuous slaves, were free and dissolute; divorce became common; the rich stopped having children.The Greeks had undergone the same development centuries before, and the Greeks, by their precedent, encouraged what historians call immorality.But even in the most dissolute days of the Roman Empire, the average Roman still regarded Rome as a mainstay holding up a purer code of ethics against the corruption of Greece. The cultural influence of Greece on the Western Roman Empire has rapidly weakened since the third century AD, mainly due to the decline of the entire culture.There are many reasons for this, but one must be mentioned in particular.At the end of the Western Roman Empire, the government was more than ever a naked military despotism.Usually the army elects a successful general for emperor; but the army, including its highest officers, is not composed of educated Romans, but of semi-barbarians from the frontier. .These rough soldiers have no need for culture, and they regard the civilized citizen as a mere source of taxation.Private individuals are too poor to afford much education, and the state considers education unnecessary.Therefore, only a small number of exceptionally educated people in the West can read Greek. (2) On the contrary, non-Greek religions and superstitions gained more and more strongholds in the west.We have seen how Alexander's conquests introduced the beliefs of the Babylonians, Persians, and Egyptians to the Greek world.Likewise, the Roman conquests familiarized the western world with these doctrines, as well as Jewish and Christian ones.I shall come to the Jews and Christians later; for the present I shall limit myself only to the extent of pagan superstition. In Rome every sect and every prophet was represented, and sometimes supported, by the highest and ruling factions.Lucian, though in an age of frivolous faith, represented sound skepticism; and he tells an amusing story of a prophet and miracle-worker named Alexander the Pavragnian, The story is generally accepted to be roughly true.This man healed the sick, foretold the future, and blackmailed.His fame reached the ears of Marcus Aurelius, who was at that time fighting the Magmani on the Danube.The emperor asked him how to win the war; the answer was that if he threw two lions into the Danube, he would win a great victory.He heeded the counsel of the psychic, but it was the Magmani who won the great victory.Despite the blunder, Alexander's fame continued to grow.There was a Roman consul, Rutillianus, who asked him many things, and at last asked him to advise him on how to choose a wife.Alexander, like Andymion, had won the favor of the moon, and by her had a daughter, whom the oracle recommended to Rutilianus. "Rutilianu was now sixty years old, and he immediately obeyed the command of God; and when celebrating her wedding, he sacrificed a whole hundred cows to his heavenly mother-in-law." Biba Even more important is the story of Alexander the Phragnian, the throne of the Emperor Erogabalus or Heliogabalus (218-222 AD); , originally a priest of the Syrian sun god.On his slow journey from Syria to Rome, his portrait was first sent to the Senate as a gift. "He is represented in his priestly robes of silk and gold, woven of silk and gold, after the broad flaps of the Medes and Phoenicians, and on his head a towering crown of ancient Persian style, innumerable His collar and cuff chains were adorned with priceless gems. His brows were painted black and his cheeks painted an artificial rosy rosy. The deep senators sighed and acknowledged Rome's long After the harsh tyranny of his own people, now at last bows before the luxury of Oriental despotism." Supported by a large part of the army, he fanatically carried to Rome the practices of Eastern religion; The name of the sun god worshiped by the high priest of Aimesa.His mother, or grandmother, was the real ruler, however, and seeing that he had gone too far, deposed him in favor of her own nephew Alexander (222-235 AD), whose The Eastern tendency is less extreme.The mixture of various beliefs that may have existed at that time can also be explained from his private classroom.In this church he placed statues of Abraham, Orpheus, Apollo of Thiana, and Christ, among others. Mishraism originated in Persia and later became a fierce competitor of Christianity, especially in the second half of the third century AD.Successive emperors, desperately trying to control their armies, felt that religion could provide a much-needed stability; but it had to be a new religion, for the soldiers embraced new religions.This religion was introduced to Rome, and it appealed very well to soldiers.Mishra is the sun-god, but he is not so feeble as his Syrian companions; he is a god of war,--and the great war between good and evil has been in Persia since Zoroaster part of faith.Rosdovtsev once copied a relief sculpture worshiping Mishra found in an underground church in Heidenheim, Germany, and pointed out that there must be a large number of Mishra believers in the army, not only in the East And the West has it too. The adoption of Christianity by Constantine the Great was a political success, whereas previous attempts to introduce a new religion had failed; but from the point of view of the government, the previous attempts closely resembled Constantine's of.The probability of their success was alike due to the calamity and exhaustion of the Roman world.The traditional religions of Greece and Rome were suitable only for those who were interested in this world and who had hoped for earthly happiness.Asia, with its longer experience of bitter disappointment, has concocted more successful remedies in the form of hope in an afterlife; the consolation of Christianity is the most effective.But when Christianity became the state religion, it had already absorbed a lot from Greece, and it passed these elements along with Judaism to the descendants of the West. Ⅲ.Unity of government and culture We owe firstly to Alexander, and secondly to Rome, that many of the achievements of the great age of Greece have not been lost as much of that of the Minoans.If a Genghis Khan had risen in the fifth century BC, it would have wiped out all the important things in the Hellenistic world; Xerxes could have made Greek civilization far inferior to what he had been beaten back. what happened.Let us consider the period from Aeschylus to Plato: all that was accomplished in this period was accomplished by a few of the few inhabitants of the merchant city.These city-states later proved to be not very strong against foreign conquest; but by extraordinary luck, the Greek conquerors, the Macedonians and Romans, were lovers of Greece, and they did not take the land they conquered. to destroy things; as Xerxes or Carthage would have done.The fact that we are acquainted with the achievements of the Greeks in art, literature, philosophy, and science is due to the pacification created by Western conquerors who had the sobriety to praise the civilization they ruled, And do your best to preserve it. In some respects, political and ethical, Alexander and the Romans were the cause of a better philosophy--a philosophy better than any that the Greeks had preached in their free days.We have seen that the Stoics believed in the fraternity of mankind, and they did not confine their sympathy to the Greeks.Rome's long reign had accustomed people to the idea of ​​a single civilization under a single government.We. We. know that there are still many important parts of the world that do not belong to Rome, - especially India and China.But to the Romans it seemed that the rest of the Roman Empire were nothing more than lowly barbarian tribes who could be conquered whenever they wished.In the mind of the Romans, the Roman Empire was universal in essence and in concept.This idea was passed on to the Christian Church; so despite the Buddhists, Confucians, and (later) Mohammedans, the Christian Church remained "Catholic." Securus judioate orbister rarum (judge the world fearlessly) is a motto that the Christian Church has adopted from the late Stoics;Throughout the Middle Ages since the time of Charlemagne, the Christian Church and the Holy Roman Empire were conceptually universal, even though everyone knew they were not in fact.The idea of ​​a human family, of a Catholic Church, of a universal culture, of a cosmopolitan state, has haunted men's minds ever since it was nearly realized in Rome. The part played by Rome in this extension of the sphere of civilization was of the utmost importance.Much of northern Italy, Spain, France, and West Germany were civilized as a result of the conquest by force of the Roman legions.All these regions proved themselves capable of a high degree of culture, just as Rome itself did.In the last years of the Western Roman Empire, Gaul produced characters at least comparable to those of their contemporaries in other ancient civilizations.Just because Rome spread culture, barbarians caused only temporary obscurity, not permanent darkness.It may be said that the "quality" of civilization is no longer as good as the Athens of Pericles' time; but in a world of war and destruction, "quantity" is in the long run almost as important as "quality" and the "quantity" is due to Rome. IV.Muslims as bearers of Greek culture Followers of the Prophet Muhammad conquered Syria, Egypt, and North Africa in the seventh century; they conquered Spain the following century.Their victory was easy, with only light fighting.Nor were they fanatical, except perhaps in the first few years; Christians and Jews were fine as long as they paid tribute.The Arabs soon accepted the civilization of the Eastern Roman Empire, but they also had a hope of national prosperity, rather than a tiredness of national decline.Their scholars read and commented on the Greek.Aristotle's fame is largely due to them; in ancient times Aristotle was seldom mentioned, and was considered not to be compared with Plato. It will be instructive for us to examine some of the terms we have got from the Arabs—for example, algebra, alcohol, alchemy, alembic, alkali, azimuth, zenith, etc.With the exception of "alcohol"—a word that signifies not a drink but a chemically applied material—these words give a good picture of something we have from the Arabs. picture.Algebra was invented by the Greeks in Alexandria, but was later taken a step further by the Arabs. "Alchemy," "distiller," and "alkali" are all associated with attempts to convert base metals into gold, which the Arabs learned from the Greeks; philosophy. "Azimuth" and "Zenith" are astronomical terms, mainly used by the Arabs in astrology. But this etymological approach concealed what we had acquired from the Arabs in our knowledge of Greek philosophy; for when philosophy was revisited in Europe the terms needed were taken from Greek or Latin.The Arabs are superior philosophically as commentators than as creative thinkers.Their importance for us is that they alone (and not the Christians) are the direct heirs of those Greek traditions which survived only in the Eastern Roman Empire.In Spain, and to a lesser extent in Sicily, contact with Mohammedans made Aristotle known to the West; and Arabic numerals, algebra, and chemistry.It was from this contact that the Renaissance of learning in the eleventh century began and led to scholasticism.要到更晚得多的时候，从十三世纪以后，对希腊文的研究才使人能够直接去翻阅柏拉图与亚里士多德或者其他的古代希腊作家们的著作。但是假如阿拉伯人不曾保留下来这种传统的话，那末文艺复兴时代的人也许就不会感觉到复兴古典学术的获益会是那样地巨大了。