Ancient History in the Secondary School

WILLIAM FAIRLEY, Ph.D., Editor.

Choice of Material.

There remain to us but two of these studies of the Roman world; but two short months of school in which to cover tragic centuries of European development. A stern self-restraint in the choice of topics to be treated is necessary therefore, both for the articles and for the school. The welter of detail is all but overwhelming; and the teacher must select a few salient features of these eight centuries. For the present month we may consider what is worth while down to the so-called “fall of Rome.”

The Two Good Centuries.

From the time when the new empire settled down into peace under Augustus to the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 A.D. there came a period, when, as has been well said, the Mediterranean basin was probably more prosperous, more happy and better governed than at any time before or since. This is not always understood and accepted. The evil side of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, the turmoil under Galba and his two successors, have been unduly emphasized. Probably there has been too much “muck-raking” even by eminent historians. Under the worst of the rulers named it is to be remembered that tyranny and cruelty were almost totally confined to the capital and its cliques. The provinces were on the whole well administered, especially in comparison with the corruption of later republican times. Within this period, too, fall the Golden and the Silver Ages of Roman literature.

The Disastrous Third Century.

From Marcus Aurelius to Diocletian stretches an evil century. The rocks upon which Rome was finally to be shipwrecked began to show their heads. Government again became a prey instead of a service. The “barrack emperors”—“the thirty tyrants” cursed the imperial chair. The German barbarians began to press hard upon the borders of the empire. Pestilence, imported from the East, thinned the already weakened population. The army came to be almost wholly recruited, and in a large degree officered by Germans. It was almost as if Great Britain depended solely for her defense upon Hindoo troops, for lack of men and mettle among the English themselves. Then came the spasm of reform under Aurelian. And meantime the barbarians by scores of thousands at first, and soon by hundreds of thousands, came drifting down from the north and east. Their comings were quiet enough at the first. They simply moved in where Romans had largely died out. We might compare it in some ways to what would happen if our country should allow a free immigration of Orientals into our Pacific slope.

Reorganization.

The fourth century saw the great reforms under Diocletian and Constantine. The empire was reorganized and, for the time being, strengthened. But the new vigor was vicious in type. It was oriental despotism thinly disguised, as shown by the strange new garb of the emperors, no longer great generals and first citizens; and by the horde of office-holders with novel, high-sounding titles fitted to the various grades of the new bureaucracy.

A line of cleavage was developed by the establishment of the double capital and the joint emperors. East and West began to separate. The division was in part dictated by the difficulty of administering the vast empire from one center in a period when communication was incredibly slow as compared with our modern facilities of steam and electricity. And in this division was a double seed. From one kernel was to spring disaster for Italy and the West. From the other was to germinate the Eastern Empire, destined to be the fortunate and stupid conservator of culture and learning throughout the dark ages.

Christianity.

With the fourth century the Christian faith began to assert itself as never before. Its persecution, off and on, for three centuries, and its triumph need a little study. Why was it that the Roman system could tolerate the excesses of the licentious Eleusinian and Bacchic orgies and the foul superstitions of Egypt, but could find no charity for a pure and gentle faith? Because Christianity was itself righteously intolerant. Very early in the history of the empire it became the fashion and then the law that the genius of the emperor should be adored. To the already polytheistic citizen of the empire this was no added hardship. One god more made no difference to him, and the cynical Roman magistrate could not understand why the wretched Christian was so stubborn about a pinch of incense in honor of the emperor. It meant so little to him religiously—but everything to the Christian. And so the Christians died by thousands. Yet the persecuted faith spread apace, drawing into its fold of hope and inward peace the wayworn travelers upon the cruel road of life in those weary years. Then came the conversion of Constantine and the gradual disintegration of paganism. For a study of the brighter side of pagan life and a proof that the whole Roman world, as so often taught, was not thoroughly rotten, read Pater’s “Marius, the Epicurean,” and Dill’s “Roman life in the Fourth Century.”

The Barbarians.

It is surprising to the judicious what can be the effect of a word or phrase. Probably the term “barbarian” has caused as much confusion in the minds of young students of history as any other term. It signifies to him at least a semi-savage. Yet we know that to the Greek it meant only a non-Hellene. In the later Roman times it meant Goth or German. And yet, long before these people finally disrupted the Western Empire, they had ceased to be barbarian in any common conception of the term. If we substitute for the word migration the longer word immigration, it will give a better idea of their earlier comings, to which allusion has already been made. Humbler neighbors from without the pale, they slowly crept into the southern space and glow out of their crowded and unlovely north. With no ideas of conquest at first, but seeking betterment for themselves, as to-day come the peoples from the same Russia; or, pressed out of their own hunting grounds by the atrocious Hun, they poured steadily in. And long before they became a menace, most of them had become at least half civilized by contact with the finer south. Their men had many of them served in the Roman legions. And Christianity had early made way among them. And at length, when the weakness of the West made it an easy prey to their greater vigor, it was not as bands of whooping savages falling upon a peaceful white settlement that they came, but they simply took up the scepter of destiny which nerveless and unworthy hands had let fall. Emerton’s “Introduction to the Middle Ages,” and the early chapters of Adams’ “Civilization during the Middle Ages,” furnish the best of reading for topics like these just suggested.

The Fall of Rome.

There never was such a thing. That is putting it bluntly. But no contemporary historian uses such a phrase. It is another of the fables of history which need correction. To the Italian the sending of the imperial insignia from Rome to Constantinople meant no more than the Rhode Islander understood when Newport ceased to be one of the capitals of his State. There was no longer need for an emperor at Rome; that was all. The Goth who was in control there had been so for a generation, and considered himself just as good a subject of the emperor at Constantinople after the deposition of Augustus as he had been before.

In teaching children it will be hard to treat the subject in the way just indicated. Probably a little analysis of the causes of this “fall of Rome” will seem logically necessary. Some such outline as the following might be tolerated. But let the teacher bear in mind that no historian has yet succeeded in giving such a set of reasons for this fall as will satisfy any other historian. The child mind, however, is not critical, and may be helped by a catalogue of forces.

A. As political causes:

Failure to govern justly.

Growth of militarism.

Lack of home rule, and of representation.

The administrative division of the empire.

B. As social and economic causes:

Steady decline in population, resulting from vice, war, pestilence and Christian asceticism.

Slavery, as depicted in the preceding article, and now grown still more dreadful.

Taxation, so oppressive that a Christian writer says there were more collectors than payers of taxes.

C. As military causes:

The cessation of military service by Italians and the use of Germanic soldiers.

D. As moral and religious causes:

The vice fostered by a corrupt court.

The general decline of morals among a weakened and disheartened people.

Over against all these are to be set the numbers, the virility, the comparative freedom from civilized vices, of the sturdy barbarians; and most of all their capacity for absorbing the worthiest things among the people whom they conquered.