NOUVELLES CROYANCES; LA PHILOSOPHIE CHANGE LES PRINCIPES ET LES RÈGLES DE LA POLITIQUE

On a vu dans ce qui précède comment le régime municipal s’était constitué chez les anciens. Une religion très-antique avait fondé, d'abord la famille, puis la cité; elle avait élabli d'abord le droit domestique et le gouvernement de la gens, ensuite les lois civiles et le gouvernement municipal. L’État était étroitement lié à la religion; il venait d'elle et se confondait avec elle. C'est pour cela que dans la cité primitive, toutes les institutions politiques avaient été des institutions religieuses, les fêtes des cérémonies du culte, les lois des formules sacrées, les rois etles magistrats des prêtres. C'est pour cela encore que la liberté individuelle avait été inconnue, et que I'liomme n'avait pas pu soustraire sa conscience elle-même à l'omnipoience de la cité. C'est pour cela enfin que l’État était resté borné aux limites d'une ville, et n'avait jamais pu francbir l'enceinte que ses dieux nationaux lui avaient tracée a l'origine. Chaque cité avait non-seulement son indépendance politique, mais aussi son culte et son code. La religion, le droit, le gouvernement, tout était municipal. La cité était la scule force vive; rien au-dessus, rien au-dcssous; ni unité nationale ni liberté individuelle.

ll nous reste à dire comment ce régime a disparu, c'est à-dire comment, le principe de l'association humaine élant changé, le gouvernement, la religion, le droit ont dépouillé ce caraetère municipal qu'ils avaienl eu dans l'antiquité.

La ruine du régime politique que la Grèce l'ltalic avaient créé, peut se rapporter à deux causes principales. L'une appartient à l'ordre des fails morauv et intellectuels, l'autre à l'ordre des faits matériels; la première est la transformation des croyances, la seconde est la conquête romaine.

LA RELIGION A ÉTÉ LE PRINCIPE CONSTITUTIF DE LA FAMILLE ANCIENNE.

Si nous nous transportuns par la pensée au milieu de ces anciennes générations d'hommes, nous trouvons dans chaque maison un autel et autour de cet autel la famille assemblée. Elle se réunit chaque matin pour adresser au foyer ses premières prières, chaque soir pour l'invoquer une dernière fois. Dans le courant du jour, elle se réunit encore auprès de lui pour le repas qu'elle se partage pieusement après la prière et la libation. Danstous ses actes religieux, elle chante en commun des hymnes que ses peres lui ont légués.

Hors de la maison, tout près, dans le champ voisin, il y a un tombeau. C'est la seconde demeure de cette famille. Là reposent en commun plusieurs générations d'ancêtres; la mort ne les a pas séparés. Ils restent groupés dans cette seconde existence, et continuent à former une famille indissoluble.

Entre la partie vivante et la partie morte de la famille, il n'y a que cette distance de quelques pas qui sépare la maison du tombeau. A certains jours, qui sont déterminés pour chacun par sa religion domestique, les vivants se réunissent auprès des ancêtres. Us leur portent le repas funèbre, leur versent le lait et le vin, déposent les gâteaux et les fruits, ou brûlent pour eux les chairs d'une victime. En échange de ces offrandes, ils réclament leur protection; ils les appellent leurs dieux, et leur demandent de rendre le champ fertile, la maison prospère, les cœurs vertueux.

When the suppression of the Cinnan revolution, which threatened the existence of the senate, rendered it possible for the restored senatorial government to devote the requisite attention to the internal and external security of the empire, various matters presented themselves, the settlement of which could not be postponed without injuring the most important interests and allowing present inconveniences to grow into future dangers. Apart from the very serious complications in Spain, it was absolutely necessary effectually to check the barbarians in Thrace and the regions of the Danube, whom Sulla on his march through Macedonia had only been able slightly to chastise (iii. 309), and to regulate, by military intervention, the disorderly state of things along the northern frontier of the Greek peninsula; thoroughly to suppress the bands of pirates infesting the seas everywhere, but especially the eastern waters; and to introduce better order into the unsettled relations of Asia Minor. The peace which Sulla had concluded in 670 with Mithra-dates, king of Pontus (iii. 308), and of which the treaty with Murena in 673 (iii. 345) was essentially a repetition, bore throughout the stamp of a provisional arrangement to meet the exigencies of the moment; and the relations of the Romans with Tigranes, king of Armenia, with whom they had de facto waged war, remained wholly untouched in this peace.

LA PHRATRIE ET LA CURIE; LA TRIBU.

Nous n'avons présenté jusqu'ici et nous ne pouvons présenter encore aucune date. Dans l'histoire de ces sociétés antiques, les époques sont plus facilement marquées par la succession des idées et des institutions que par celles des années.

L’étude des anciennes règies du droit privé nous a fait entrevoir, par delà les temps qu'on appelle historiques, une période de siècles pendant lesquels la famille fut la seule forme de société. Cette famille pouvait alors contenir dans son large cadre plusieurs milliers d’êtres humains. Mais dans ces limites l'association humaine était encore trop étroite: trop étroite pour les besoins matériels, car il était difficile que cette famille se suffît en présence de toutes les chances de la vie; trop étroite aussi pour les besoins moraux de notre nature, car nous avons vu combien dans ce petit monde l'intelligence du divin était insuffisante et la morale incomplète.

La petitesse de cette société primitive répondait bien à la petitesse de l'idée qu'on s’était faite de la divinité. Chaque famille avait ses dieux, et l'homme ne concevait et n'adorait que des divinités domestiques. Mais il ne devait pas se contenter longtemps de ces dieux si fort au-dessous de ce que son intelligence peut atteindre. S'il lui fallait encore beaucoup de siècles pour arriver à se représenter Dieu comme un être unique, incomparable, infini, du moins il devait se rapprocher insensiblement de cet idéal en agrandissant d’âge en âge sa conception et en reculant peu â peu l'horizon dont la ligne sépare pour lui l‘Être divin des choses de la terre.

L'idée religieuse et la société humaine allaient done grandir en même temps.

When the course of history turns from the miserable monotony of the political selfishness, which fought its battles in the senate-house and in the streets of the capital, to matters of greater importance than the question whether the first monarch of Rome should be called Gnæus, Gaius or Marcus, we may well be allowed—on the threshold of an event, the effects of which still at the present day influence the destinies of the world—to look round us for a moment, and to indicate the point of view under which the conquest of what is now France by the Romans, and their first contact with the inhabitants of Germany and of Great Britain, are to be regarded in connexion with the general history of the world.

By virtue of the law, that a people which has grown into a state absorbs its neighbours who are in political nonage, and a civilized people absorbs its neighbours who are in intellectual nonage—by virtue of this law, which is as universally valid and as much a law of nature as the law of gravity—the Italian nation (the only one in antiquity which was able to combine a superior political development and a superior civilization, though it presented the latter only in an imperfect and external manner) was entitled to reduce to subjection the Greek states of the East which were ripe for destruction, and to dispossess the peoples of lower grades of culture in the West—Libyans, Iberians, Celts, Germans—by means of its settlers; just as England with equal right has in Asia reduced to subjection a civilization of rival standing but politically impotent, and in America and Australia has marked and ennobled, and still continues to mark and ennoble, extensive barbarian countries with the impress of its nationality.

We have already seen how wretched was the state of the affairs of Rome by land and sea in the East, when at the commencement of 687 Pompeius with an almost absolute plenitude of power undertook the conduct of the war against the pirates. He began by dividing the immense field committed to him into thirteen districts and assigning to each of these districts a lieutenant, for the purpose of equipping ships and men there, of searching the coasts, and of capturing piratical vessels or chasing them into the meshes of a colleague. He himself went with the best part of the ships of war that were available—among which on this occasion also those of Rhodes were distinguished—early in the year to sea, and swept in the first place the Sicilian, African, and Sardinian waters, with a view especially to reestablish the supply of grain from these provinces to Italy. His lieutenants meanwhile addressed themselves to the clearing of the Spanish and Gallic coasts. It was on this occasion that the consul Piso attempted from Rome to prevent the levies which Marcus Pomponius the legate of Pompeius instituted by virtue of the Grabinian law in the province of Narbo—an imprudent proceeding, to check which, and at the same time to keep the just indignation of the multitude against the consul within legal bounds, Pompeius temporarily reappeared in Rome (P. 108).

The commission for distributing the domains

Tiberius Gracchus was dead; but his two works, the distribution of land and the revolution, survived their author. In presence of the starving agricultural proletariate the senate might venture on a murder, but it could not avail itself of that murder to annul the Sempronian agrarian law; the law itself had been far more strengthened than shaken by the frantic outbreak of party fury. The party of the aristocracy friendly towards reform, which openly favoured the distribution of the domains—headed by Quintus Metellus, just about this time (623) censor, and Publius Scævola -in concert with the party of Scipio Æmilianus, which was at least not disinclined to reform, gained the upper hand for the time being even in the senate; and a decree of the senate expressly directed the triumvirs to begin their labours. According to the Sempronian law these were to be nominated annually by the community, and this was probably done; but from the nature of their task it was natural that the election should fall again and again on the same men, and new elections in the proper sense occurred only when a place became vacant through death.

Ferment in Italy

The state of suspense and uncertainty existing in Italy when Sulla took his departure for Greece in the beginning of 667 has been already described; the half-suppressed insurrection, the principal army under the more than half-usurped command of a general whose politics were very doubtful, the confusion and the manifold activity of intrigue in the capital. The victory of the oligarchy by force of arms had, in spite or because of its moderation, made various classes discontented. The capitalists, painfully affected by the blows of the most severe financial crisis which Home had yet witnessed, were indignant at the government on account of the law which it had issued as to interest, and on account of the Italian and Asiatic wars which it had not prevented. The insurgents, so far as they had laid down their arms, bewailed not only the disappointment of their proud hope that they would obtain equal rights with the ruling burgesses, but also the forfeiture of their venerable treaties and their new position as subjects utterly destitute of rights. The communities between the Alps and the Po were likewise discontented with the partial concessions made to them, and the new burgesses and freedmen were exasperated by the cancelling of the Sulpician laws. The populace of the city suffered amid the general distress, and found it intolerable that the government of the sabre was no longer disposed to acquiesce in the constitutional rule of the bludgeon.

Paramount ascendancy of Latinism Hellenism

Latinism

In the great struggle of the nationalities throughout the wide range of the Roman empire, the secondary nations seem at this period on the wane or disappearing. The most important of them all, the Phoenician, received through the destruction of Carthage a mortal wound from which it slowly bled to death. The districts of Italy, which had hitherto preserved their old language and manners, Etruria and Samnium, were not only visited by the heaviest blows of the Sullan reaction, but were compelled also by the political levelling of Italy to adopt the Latin language and customs in public intercourse, so that the old native languages were reduced to popular dialects which soon decayed. There no longer appears throughout the bounds of the Roman state any nationality entitled even to compete with the Roman and the Greek. On the other hand the Latin nationality was, as respected both the extent of its diffusion and the depth of its hold, in the most decided ascendant. As after the Social war any portion of Italian soil might belong to any Italian in full Roman ownership, and any god of an Italian temple might receive Roman gifts; as in all Italy with the exception of the region beyond the Po the Roman law thenceforth had exclusive authority superseding all other civic and local laws; so the Roman language at that time became the universal language of business, and soon likewise the universal language of civilized intercourse, in the whole peninsula from the Alps to the Sicilian Straits. But it no longer restricted itself to these natural limits.