9

useful persuasion that, either in this or in a future life, the crime of perjury is most assuredly punished by the avenging gods. But, whilst they acknowledged the general advantages of religion, they were convinced that the various modes of worship contributed alike to the same salutary purposes; and that, in every country, the form of superstition which had received the sanction of time and experience was the best adapted to the climate and to its inhabitants. Avarice and taste very frequently despoiled the vanquished nations of the In the prov- elegant statues of their gods and the rich ornaments of their temples; but, in the exercise of the religion which they derived from their ancestors, they uniformly experienced the indulgence, and even protection, of the Roman conquerors. The province of Gaul seems, and indeed only seems, an exception to this universal toleration. Under the specious pretext of abolishing human sacrifices, the emperors Tiberius and Claudius suppressed the dangerous power of the Druids:" but the priests themselves, their gods, and their altars, subsisted in peaceful obscurity till the final destruction of paganism."

inces.

At Rome.

Rome, the capital of a great monarchy, was incessantly filled with subjects and strangers from every part of the world," who all introduced and enjoyed the favorite superstitions of their native country." Every city in the empire was justified in maintaining the purity of its ancient ceremonies; and the Roman senate, using the common privilege, sometimes interposed to check this inundation of foreign rites. The Egyptian superstition, of all the most contemptible and abject, was frequently prohibited; the temples of Serapis and Isis demolished, and their worshippers banish

9 Polybius, 1. vi. c. 56. Juvenal, Sat. xiii., laments that in his time this apprehension had lost much of its effect.

10 See the fate of Syracuse, Tarentum, Ambracia, Corinth, etc., the conduct of Verres, in Cicero (Actio ii. Orat. 4), and the usual practice of governors, in the eighth satire of Juvenal.

11 Sueton. in Claud. [25]-Plin. Hist. Nat. xxx. 1 [4].

12 Pelloutier, Histoire des Celtes, tom. vi. p. 230-252.

13 Seneca, Consolat. ad Helviam [c. 6], p. 74, edit. Lips.

14 Dionysius Halicarn. Antiquitat. Roman. 1. ii. [vol. i. p. 275, edit. Reiske].

ed from Rome and Italy." But the zeal of fanaticism prevailed over the cold and feeble efforts of policy. The exiles returned, the proselytes multiplied, the temples were restored with increasing splendor, and Isis and Serapis at length assumed their place among the Roman deities." Nor was this indulgence a departure from the old maxims of government. In the purest ages of the commonwealth, Cybele and Esculapius had been invited by solemn embassies ;" and it was customary to tempt the protectors of besieged cities by the promise of more distinguished honors than they possessed in their native country." Rome gradually became the common temple of her subjects; and the freedom of the city was bestowed on all the gods of mankind."

Freedom of Rome.

II. The narrow policy of preserving, without any foreign mixture, the pure blood of the ancient citizens, had checked the fortune and hastened the ruin of Athens and Sparta. The aspiring genius of Rome sacrificed vanity to ambition, and deemed it more prudent, as well as honorable, to adopt virtue and merit for her own whereso

a

15 In the year of Rome 701 the Temple of Isis and Serapis was demolished by the order of the senate (Dion Cassius, 1. xl. [c. 47] p. 252), and even by the hands of the consul (Valerius Maximus, 1, 3). After the death of Cæsar, it was restored at the public expense (Dion, 1. xlvii. [c. 15] p. 501). When Augustus was in Egypt he revered the majesty of Serapis (Dion, 1. li. [c. 16] p. 647); but in the Pomorium of Rome, and a mile round it, he prohibited the worship of the Egyptian gods (Dion, 1. liii. [c. 2] p. 697, 1. liv. [c. 6] p. 735). They remained, however, very fashionable under his reign (Ovid. de Art. Amand. 1. i. [v. 77]) and that of his successor, till the justice of Tiberius was provoked to some acts of severity. (See Tacit. Annal. ii. 85; Joseph. Antiquit. 1. xviii. c. 3.)

16 Tertullian, in Apologetic. c. 6, p. 74, edit. Havercamp. I am inclined to attribute their establishment to the devotion of the Flavian family.

17 See Livy, l. xi. [12] [Suppl.] and xxix. [11].

18 Macrob. Saturnalia, l. iii. c. 9. He gives us a form of evocation.

19 Minucius Felix, in Octavio, p. 54 [p. 52, Leyden ed. 1672]. Arnobius, 1. vi.

p. 115.

a Gibbon here blends into one, two events, distant a hundred and sixty-six years from each other. It was in the year of Rome 535 that the senate, having ordered the destruction of the temples of Isis and Serapis, no workman would lend his hand; and the consul, L. Æmilius Paulus, himself (Valer. Max. 1, 3) seized the axe, to give the first blow. Gibbon attributes this circumstance to the second demolition, which took place in the year 701, and which he considers as the first.-W.

23

ever they were found, among slaves or strangers, enemies or barbarians.20 During the most flourishing era of the Athenian commonwealth the number of citizens gradually decreased from about thirty" to twenty-one thousand." If, on the contrary, we study the growth of the Roman republic, we may discover that, notwithstanding the incessant demands of wars and colonies, the citizens, who, in the first census of Servius Tullius, amounted to no more than eighty-three thousand, were multiplied, before the commencement of the Social War, to the number of four hundred and sixty-three thousand men able to bear arms in the service of their country.' When the allies of Rome claimed an equal share of honors and privileges, the senate, indeed, preferred the chance of arms to an ignominious concession. The Samnites and the Lucanians paid the severe penalty of their rashness; but the rest of the Italian states, as they successively returned to their duty, were admitted into the bosom of the republic," and soon contributed to the ruin of public freedom. Under a democratical government the citizens exercise the powers of sovereignty; and those powers will be first abused, and afterwards lost, if they are committed to an unwieldy multitude. But when the popular assemblies had been suppressed by the administration of the emperors, the conquerors were distin

20 Tacit. Annal. xi. 24. The Orbis Romanus of the learned Spanheim is a complete history of the progressive admission of Latium, Italy, and the provinces, to the freedom of Rome.

21 Herodotus, v. 97. It should seem, however, that he followed a large and popular estimation.

22 Athenæus, Deipnosophist. 1. vi. [c. 103] p. 272, edit. Casaubon. Meursius de Fortuna Atticâ, c. 4.a

23 See a very accurate collection of the numbers of each Lustrum in M. de Beaufort, République Romaine, 1. iv. ch. 4.b

24 Appian. de Bell. Civil. 1. i. [c. 53]. Velleius Paterculus, 1. ii. c. 15, 16, 17.

On the number of citizens in Athens, compare Bockh, Public Economy of Athens (English tr.), p. 45 seq. Fynes Clinton, Essay in Fasti Hellenici, vol. i. 381.-M.

All these questions are placed in an entirely new point of view by Niebuhr (Römische Geschichte, vol. i. p. 464). He rejects the census of Servius Tullius as unhistoric (vol. ii. p. 78 seq.), and he establishes the principle that the census comprehended all the confederate cities which had the right of Isopolity.-M.

Italy.

guished from the vanquished nations only as the first and most honorable order of subjects; and their increase, however rapid, was no longer exposed to the same dangers. Yet the wisest princes, who adopted the maxims of Augustus, guarded with the strictest care the dignity of the Roman name, and diffused the freedom of the city with a prudent liberality." Till the privileges of Romans had been progressively extended to all the inhabitants of the empire, an important distinction was preserved between Italy and the provinces. The former was esteemed the centre of public unity, and the firm basis of the constitution. Italy claimed the birth, or at least the residence, of the emperors and the senate.20 The estates of the Italians were exempt from taxes, their persons from the arbitrary jurisdiction of governors. Their municipal corporations, formed after the perfect model of the capital, were intrusted, under the immediate eye of the supreme power, with the execution of the laws. From the foot of the Alps to the extremity of Calabria all the natives of Italy were born citizens of Rome. Their partial distinctions were obliterated, and they insensibly coalesced into one great nation, united by language, manners, and civil institutions, and equal to the weight of a powerful empire. The republic gloried in her generous policy, and was frequently rewarded by the merit and services of her adopted sons. Had she always confined the distinction of Romans to the ancient families within the walls of the city, that immortal name would have been deprived of some of its noblest ornaments. Virgil was a native of Mantua;

a

25 Mæcenas had advised him to declare, by one edict, all his subjects citizens. But we may justly suspect that the historian Dion was the author of a counsel so much adapted to the practice of his own age, and so little to that of Augustus.

26 The senators were obliged to have one third of their own landed property in Italy. See Plin. l. vi. ep. 19. The qualification was reduced by Marcus to one fourth. Since the reign of Trajan, Italy had sunk nearer to the level of the provinces.

It may be doubted whether the municipal government of the cities was not the old Italian constitution rather than a transcript from that of Rome. The free government of the cities, observes Savigny, was the leading characteristic of Italy. Geschichte des Römischen Rechts, i. p. 16.-M.

Horace was inclined to doubt whether he should call himself an Apulian or a Lucanian: it was in Padua that an historian was found worthy to record the majestic series of Roman victories. The patriot family of the Catos emerged from Tusculum; and the little town of Arpinum claimed the double honor of producing Marius and Cicero, the former of whom deserved, after Romulus and Camillus, to be styled the Third Founder of Rome; and the latter, after saving his country from the designs of Catiline, enabled her to contend with Athens for the palm of eloquence.

The provinces.

27

28

The provinces of the empire (as they have been described in the preceding chapter) were destitute of any public force or constitutional freedom. In Etruria, in Greece,2 and in Gaul," it was the first care of the senate to dissolve those dangerous confederacies which taught mankind that, as the Roman arms prevailed by division, they might be resisted by union. Those princes, whom the ostentation of gratitude or generosity permitted for awhile to hold a precarious sceptre, were dismissed from their thrones as soon as they had performed their appointed task of fashioning to the yoke the vanquished nations. The free states and cities which had embraced the cause of Rome were rewarded with a nominal alliance, and insensibly sunk into real servitude. The public authority was everywhere exercised by the ministers of the senate and of the emperors, and that authority was absolute and without control. But the same salutary maxims of government, which had secured the peace and obedience of Italy, were extended to the most distant conquests. A nation of Romans was gradually formed in the provinces, by the double expedient of introducing colo

27 The first part of the Verona Illustrata of the Marquis Maffei gives the clearest and most comprehensive view of the state of Italy under the Cæsars."

28 See Pausanias, 1. vii. [c. 16]. The Romans condescended to restore the names of those assemblies, when they could no longer be dangerous.

29 They are frequently mentioned by Cæsar. The Abbé Dubos attempts, with very little success, to prove that the assemblies of Gaul were continued under the emperors. Histoire de l'Établissement de la Monarchie Françoise, 1. i. ch. 4.

& Compare Denina, Revol. d'Italia, 1. ii. ch. 6, p. 100, 4to edit.