THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19009, 9 May 1924, Page 7

THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY.

THE CITY AND THE EMPIRE OF BOMB. • W.E.A. LECTURE. The subject at last Thursday’s W.E.A. lecture was an interpretation of the story of Rome —of its development from a little rather disreputable village into a mighty city, the capital of the most powerful and extensive Empire the world had ever kngwn; and then of its subsequent decay. In commencing, the lecturer (Mr. Ernest Mander) referred to the part that geographical conditions play in determining the course of history. There was nothing in Italy to correspond with the IN ilc in Egypt or the rivers of Mesopotamia—no seasonal flooding to dominate all the affairs of life and to sets its mark upon the character of civilisation. Again, : Ithough Italy had a distinct mountain-backbone, the country was not divided up—as Greece was—by a network of mountains and inreaching arms of the sea. Greece was naturally—geographically—a much-di-vided land; and its political divisions were the result of its geographical ones. Italy, on the other hand, was naturally, geographically, a single country. Another fact of importance was that, in the peninsula itself, there was not a single really good natural harbour. So, apart from the people o-f Venice and Genoa—who are not actually in the Italian peninsula at all—the peopl-3 of Italy were never likely to be, and never were, very much a’ sea-going peojfle.

A CROSS-BRED PEOPLE. At the dawn of history in Italy, about B.C. 1000—which is very late indeed in comparison with Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Aegean—we find the peninsula occupied by people of tlje Iberian or Mediterranean race, the same kind of brown-eyed swarthy folk whom we found in Egypt, at Sumei and Nippur, and in Crete and the Aegean. It seems that they were an offshoot of the early civilisation cent ring upon Crete; and in Italy we know them as Etruscans. They were moder atcly civilised—although, since we cannot decipher their writings, we know but little about them. However, it is certain that they were skilled workers in bronze: they built cities with mas sive walls, paved streets and underground drains; and they were, ap parently. in close touch with Egypt and with Crete.

A little later the Greeks—who, meanwhile, had come south and overwhelmed the early civilisation of the Aegean—began to establish colonics in They settled in Sicily, in the heel and toe of Italy, and around tho Bay of Naples. So the Greeks too made their contribution—a most important one to the making of the Roman people. Lastly, other tribes, closely* akin to the Greeks began to drift into Italy from the north. These were the Latin tribes, and their coming was anothei part of the great racial movement going on all over that part of the world | about that time—the spread of the , grey-eyed, fair-haired Aryans off the norther nplains. Tht historic Roman people was produced by the blending of all these three—Etruscais (Iberian Race), and the Greek and Latin (Aryan) stocks. BEGINNING OF ROME. The beginnings of the little fortified village on the banks of the Tiber river were (said the lecturer) very humbie indeed. The Etruscan tribes were on the north of the river, and the Latin tribes on the south; and at a ford across the river a small village grew up. At first it may have been simply a band of robbers, brigands, who waited there to plunder the people on both sides as they crossed the river to trade with one another.

Of course,- this village of brigands contained no women. So the first°incident we hear about in the story of Romo is a raid upon neighbouring people—the Sabines—for the purpose of capturing some women. The brigands got the women, and these were the mothers of Rome. This occurred somewhere about B.C. 700.

I or two hundred years the evolution of the people went on, until at last they had lost their old i ‘bad name”— as outcasts and brigands—and became a recognised community. By this time home was a market town, the centre of a prosperous farming district. During this early period the town was ruled by kings, the Tarquin family (but these were not Kings in the Oriental, or even the modern sense). In B.C. 510 the Tarquin kings became objectionable and were expelled from the town. They went to their own kinsmen, the Etruscans, and persuaded them to make war on Rome. The story of the attack is told in Macaulay’s “Horatius, ” the best known of his Lays of Ancient Rome.

The fighting between the Romans and their neighbours continued for years. But all these peoples were rapidly blending through intermarriage—rapidly becoming one people. A NATION OF SMALL FARMERS. The second phase in Roman historv extends from the oxpulsion of the Tarquin Kings B.C. 510, to the beginning of the first Punic War, B.C. 261. It is the story of internal, political struggles between the two classes of Roman citizen—the Patricians and the Plebians. The Government at first was entirely in the. hands of the patrician class; but gradually—after years of bitter struggle which, at times, almost disrupted the state—the ordinary 'citizens of the plebian class (farmers, shopkeepers and artizans) won a share iu the Government.

The institutions of government were Firstly a Senate, partly hereditary and partly nominated; secondly, two Consuls (like joint presidents of tho Republic); and thirdly, after the Pebians they won political power, two Tribunes elected by the people, with a nabsolute power of veto over the decision of the Senate.

During this period the whole people of Italy gradually became united under the leadership of Rome, and all the Italians were deemed to be Roman citizens. It was a nation of small farmers —farmers who would leave their ploughs and take down their swords when necessary, and go off to the wars. Then, when the war was over they would return to their farms. It was a simple peasantry—without any sort of cultural or intellectual life, of course!—but a simple, practical, serious, stolid; hard-working people. | was no gaiety, no sense of fun, in the make-up of these Romans; that

is one of the most striking facts about them, and serves to explain a good deal. These were not the days of Roman “greatness”—as we mis-uss that term to-day. But they were the days when the quality of the Roman people was at its best. They had no wealth, no power and no empire yet: they had no art and no intellectual life. But they were sturdy,, sensible, plain-living, hard-work-ing yeomen farmers, and this was the breed that was soon to dominate the world.

Most of the Romans were working farmers, each family having its own small holding. There was no idle class, either rich or poor. And at this period there was practically no slave class either—a very important fact to note.

OF EMPIRE. The next phase in the history of Rome (B.C. 264 to B.C. 46) is the Phase of Transition —the evolution of this nation of small farmers into a great military Empire. This began with the wars between Rome and Carthage. As a result of the first of these Punic Wars, Sicily was wrested from Carthage and made into the first subject province of Rome, the first instalment of Empire. After the second Punic war Spain was also taken from Carthage; and in the century that followed the Romans spread their Empire over Gaul (France), Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, and the whole of North Africa.

Four important changes resulted from this expansion of the Roman Empire.

In the first place it involved aoandoning method of raising armies. When the legions had to be away on the far frontiers of the Empire often years together, it was no longer pos sible for the farmers to leave their farms and turn soldiers for awhile, and then go back to their farms when the war was over. So there grew up an army of professional soldiers—a third party in the State; with interests quite distinct from those of the civil population. As a result of this, the leader of the legions gradually became the most powerful man in the Empire; and and so this Military Commander—with the legions at his back—was eventually able to become tho Emperor, the autocratic ruler of Rome. This was tho end of the Democratic State. Jplius Caesar (B.C. 46) was in fact, if not In name, the first of the Emperors.

The second change was the.introduction of Greek art, literature, manners and customs. Unfortunately, however, the influence of Alexandria was stronger than that of Athens; so it was not the dignified simplicity of the Athenians that became fashionable in Rome, but rather the luxury and extravagance and display of the vulgarised Greeks of Alexandria.

THE END OF THE SMALL FARMERS.

The third big change was due to the growth of a great slave class—prisoners of war brought home by the legions. This Jed to the extinction of the old yeomcn-farmers, the old free peasantry that had been the backbone of Italy. For, by what we should call to-day a. progress of aggregation, the small farmers were squeezed out, and large estates, worked by slave labour, grew up in their place. The old sturdy yeomen ceased to exist; their descen dants flocked to the cities—where again they found themselves unable to com pete with the new slave labour —and so they degenerated into an idle city mob of good-for-nothing loafers. The fourth change, too, was economic. The Empire became a vast organisation for collecting taxes and tribute from the subject peoples to support in idleness the citizens of Romo. The whole Roman people was living now on unearned income tribute wrung from the provinces. The whole Empire was kept at work to maintain in idleness the citizens of Rome—r-rich and poor alike. The rich lived in luxury, the poor were maintained by doles; but neither class was producing anything, and the morals of* the nations was ruined. Rich and poor alike were eating “The Bread of Idleness.”

THE EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE.

Between the times of Marcus Aurelis (A.D. 180) and Constantine (A.D. 323) the proportion of Romans—of tho old Roman stock—was steadily decreasing in the total population. Even in the legions now, men of Roman blood were rarely found; the legions were filled with men of the subject peoples and with fierce Teutonic tribesmen from beyond the frontier. Later on, this was true not only of the rank and file, but even of the commanders of the army. Teutonic tribes , the Franks and Goths and Vandals—were pressing over the frontier. to the East the hordes of Asiatic Huns were coming nearer and nearer. And fhey were met and resisted, not by Romans at all, but by men of their own race hired to fight for Rome. Constantine the Great (?) shifted his capital from Rome to Byzantium (Constantinople) to get farther away from the menace of the Teutonic tribes.

But in Byzantium the Romans adopted the Greek language and became practically Greeks themselves. During the years that followed even Rome herself ceased to be Roman in anything but her name. A Spaniard became Emperor: the armies were almost entirely Teutonic and Kelt-Iberian; aiid the inhabitants of Italy were a mixture of breeds drawn from half the world. When in the year 410 Alaric and his Goths (a Teutonic tribe) captured Rome, the original Roman people had long been practically extinct. So the Roman people simply lizzled out. They were not conquered, but rather ruined and destroyed by the effects of their own conquests. What actually happened was the gradual substition of other breeds for the old Roman breed in Rome and Italy itself. And the decay of the true Roman people can be clearly traced back to the introduction of slave labour, the process of landaggregation, and the resultant destruction of the old sturdy yeoman-farmer class that bad been the strength of Rome.