Spreading Civilization in the West

Rome and the Provinces

The only dark spot that clouded the clear sky of Italy’s prosperity—apart from the system of slavery common to all ancient states—was the relative dependence of this prosperity on the exploitation of the provinces. If Italy itself paid no taxes, it was because the provinces were constantly subject to plunder and paid heavy dues. These provinces were the source of part of the wealth that had brought prosperity to the cities of Italy. Before Caesar, Rome treated the provinces exactly like conquered territory. All their inhabitants were subjects of Rome, and only some of them were considered Roman citizens. All the lands of the provinces belonged to the Roman state, and the imperial government left them in the possession of their owners while reserving the right to reclaim them. To reduce the likelihood of revolt, Rome divided the conquered country into small territories, forbade direct political communication between one province and another, and everywhere granted privileges to the merchant classes at the expense of the lower classes. “Divide and rule” was the secret of Roman governance.

Perhaps Cicero, when he bitterly criticized Verres and described the Mediterranean countries as ruined and desolate during the Republic, was exaggerating: “From this ocean to that ocean, all the provinces groan, all free men cry out, and all regions protest. From this ocean to that ocean, there is no place, even hidden and remote, that has not tasted the bitter flavor of greed and oppression.”

During the empire the provinces were treated more liberally, but this treatment was not out of generosity but rather calculation. Taxation was reduced to a tolerable level, local religions, languages, and customs were treated with greater respect, freedom of speech was permitted except for attacks on the emperor’s person, and local laws were preserved as long as they did not conflict with Rome’s interests and dominance. This wise flexibility led to the creation of various offices and privileges among the provinces and within each province that were beneficial to Rome. Some urban communities, such as Athens and Rhodes, were “free cities”; they paid no tribute, were not subject to the provincial governor, and managed their internal affairs, as long as they did not conflict with social order and peace, without Roman interference. Some old kingdoms, such as Numidia and Cappadocia, were allowed to keep their kings, but these kings were “vassals” of Rome, dependent on it for security and policy, and obligated to rush to its aid with manpower and necessary equipment whenever Rome wished. In the provinces, the governor (proconsul or propraetor) held legislative, executive, and judicial powers in his own person. This power was limited only by the free cities, the right of Roman citizens to appeal to the emperor, and financial oversight by the quaestor or provincial procurator. This almost absolute power opened the way to abuse; and although the lengthening of the governor’s term of office during the empire, the large salaries and allowances paid to them, and their financial responsibility to the emperor reduced abuse, letters from Pliny and some writings of Tacitus show that corruption and bribery were not lacking at the end of the first century.

The assessment and collection of taxes and dues was one of the first tasks of the governor and his assistants. During the empire, a census was taken in each province to determine the land tax and the wealth tax, which included animals and slaves. To encourage production, a fixed and stable share replaced the tithe. “Tax farmers” no longer collected these dues but gathered customs duties at the ports and also administered some state forests, mines, and public works. The provinces were expected to contribute a share for the golden crown of each new emperor, to pay the cost of administering the province, and in some cases to send large quantities of grain to Rome. The ancient custom of liturgy (paying the costs of public services), which survived in the Eastern Empire, also spread to the Western Empire. According to this custom the local government or the Roman government could “request” the wealthy to provide loans for war, ships for the fleet, places for public services, food for famine victims, or groups of singers for festivals.

Cicero, after he himself joined the circle of power, claimed that the taxes paid by the provinces were not enough to cover the costs of administration and defense; of course “defense” also included the suppression of revolts, and “administration” probably included the profits that made many Romans millionaires. We must accept the probability that any power that establishes security and order sends tax collectors to take more than the cost incurred. Despite all the dues, the dependent provinces prospered and flourished during the empire. The emperor and the Senate exercised closer supervision over the leaders and administrators of these provinces and severely punished those who overindulged in theft. The provinces’ overpayments eventually returned to them in the form of payments for goods; and ultimately the strengthening of industries in this way made the provinces stronger than Italy, which lived parasitically in a dangerous way. Plutarch said that the higher government should give the people two blessings above all: liberty and peace. He writes: “As for peace, there is no need to trouble our minds about it, for every kind of war has ended. As for liberty, we have as much liberty as the [Roman] government has given us; and perhaps having more liberty than this would not be to our advantage.”

Africa

Crete and Sardinia together counted as one province and were not considered part of Italian soil. Most of Crete was only a mountainous and desert land where the Romans hunted the natives’ dogs and sold them into slavery. Sardinia gave slaves, silver, copper, iron, and grain to Italy; and it had sixteen hundred kilometers of roads and an excellent port named Carales (modern Cagliari). Sicily had declined to the status of a purely agricultural province and was counted as one of Rome’s “great granaries.” Most of its cultivable land was subject to the system of vast estates and was devoted to stockbreeding. Sicily’s inhabitants were slaves so poor, hungry, and naked that every so often they revolted, fled, and formed bands of brigands. In Augustus’s time this island had about 750,000 inhabitants (in 1930 its population was 3,972). Of its sixty-five cities the most flourishing were Catania, Syracuse, Tauromenium (modern Taormina), Messina, Agrigentum, and Panormus (modern Palermo). Syracuse and Tauromenium had magnificent Greek theaters that are still used today. Despite Verres’s plunder, Syracuse had so many magnificent buildings, famous statues, and historical sights that professional tourist guides made a living from them. And Cicero considered it the most beautiful city in the world. Most wealthy urban families had a farm or garden in the suburbs, and all the villages of Sicily, like those of today, were fragrant with the abundance of fruit trees and vineyards.

Whatever Sicily lost during Roman domination, Africa gained. This continent gradually became Rome’s emergency granary and in this respect replaced Sicily. In return, Roman soldiers, colonists, merchants, and engineers made it incredibly prosperous. No doubt the new conquerors found some cultivated areas upon their arrival. Between the mountains that rise against the Mediterranean and the Atlas range that closes off the African desert, there was a semi-tropical valley watered by the river Bagradas (modern Medjerda) and the two months of annual rainfall, sufficient to make fertile the agriculture that Mago had patiently begun and Masinissa had followed and strengthened. But Rome improved and developed what it found. Roman engineers built dams on the rivers that flowed down from the southern hills. These dams stored the surplus waters of the rainy season and released them into irrigation canals during the hot months when the streams dried up. Rome did not demand heavier taxes than the tribal chiefs had previously imposed, while its legions and fortifications better protected the native inhabitants against the raids of nomads descending from the mountains. Kilometer by kilometer new lands were prepared for agriculture or settlement from the desert or untilled ground. This valley produced so much olive oil that when the Arabs came there in the seventh century A.D., they were astonished to see that they could travel from Tripoli to Tangier without leaving the shade of olive trees. The number of cities and towns increased, their architecture was beautified, and literature acquired a new resonance. The ruins of forums, temples, aqueducts, and Roman theaters in the now deserted and dry lands are evidence of the extent and wealth of Roman Africa. These farmlands declined and turned into sand, of course not because of climate change but because of a change of government—from a government that provided economic security, order, and discipline to one that allowed chaos and neglect to ruin the roads, aqueducts, and canals.

The vanguard of this prosperity and development was the revived city of Carthage. After the Battle of Actium, Augustus paid attention to the postponed plan of Gaius Gracchus and Caesar and sent some of his soldiers, whom he wished to reward for their loyalty and victories by granting them land, as colonists to Carthage. The geographical advantages of this land, its excellent harbor, the fertile delta of the Bagradas, and the suitable roads that Roman engineers had built or repaired caused Carthage to wrest the region’s market, imports, and exports from Utica. A century after its refounding, Carthage had become the largest city of the western provinces. Wealthy merchants and landowners built houses in the historic settlement of Byrsa and villas in its flowery and verdant suburbs, while peasants, driven from their land by competition from large landowners, joined the growing horde of proletarians and slaves who lived in cellars and whose black poverty prepared them to accept the egalitarian teachings of Christianity. Houses rose to six or seven stories, public buildings gleamed with marble, and numerous statues in the beautiful Greek style stood in the streets and squares. Temples were rebuilt for Carthage’s old gods, and until the second century A.D. living children were sacrificed to Melqart. The inhabitants of Carthage rivaled the Romans in their excessive fondness for luxury goods, cosmetics, jewelry, dyed hair, chariot racing, and gladiatorial contests. Among the city’s spectacular buildings were the large public baths that Marcus Aurelius had donated to Carthage. Carthage also had lecture halls, schools of rhetoric, philosophy, medicine, and law. After Athens and Alexandria, Carthage was the third university city. Apuleius and Tertullian learned everything there, and Saint Augustine was astonished at the debauchery and immorality of Carthage’s students; the best amusement of these students was to suddenly enter the lecture room and drive out the teacher and his pupils.

Carthage was the center of a province called “Africa,” which is now eastern Tunisia. South of this province, the prosperity of trade had adorned the eastern coast with cities that were regaining their ancient prosperity after twelve centuries only to be struck by the calamity of war in our age. These cities were: Hadrumetum (modern Sousse), Leptis Minor, Thapsus, and Tacapae (modern Gabes). Farther east, along the Mediterranean, lay a region that, because it was formed by the union of three cities, was called “Tripolis” (three cities). These cities were: Oea (modern Tripoli), founded by the Phoenicians in 900 B.C.; Sabratha and Leptis Magna (modern Leptis), in the latter of which Emperor Septimius Severus was born (A.D. 146); he built a basilica and a public bath there whose ruins today astonish tourists and warriors. Paved roads used by camel caravans connected these ports with the inland cities. Among them were Sufetula, now a village containing the remains of a great Roman temple; Thysdrus (El Djem), which had a sixty-thousand-seat amphitheater; and Thugga (Dougga), whose ruined theater with its beautiful Corinthian columns tells of the wealth and taste of its citizens.

North of Carthage lay the old and fierce rival city of Utica. The fact that in 46 B.C. three hundred Roman bankers and wholesale merchants had branches there is itself an indication of this city’s great wealth at that time. Its territory extended northward to Hippo Diarrhytus (modern Bizerte); from there a road ran along the western coast to Hippo Regius (Bône), which later became the episcopal center of Saint Augustine. South and inland lay Cirta (modern Constantine), the capital of the province of Numidia. To the west, as far as Mogadore (modern Mogador), lay Tamugadi (Timgad), which with its paved streets adorned with numerous columns, covered sewers, a beautiful triumphal arch, a forum, a senate building, a basilica, temples, baths, a theater, a library, and many private houses is almost as well preserved as Pompeii. On the pavement of the forum a chessboard is carved with the words: “Hunting, bathing, playing and amusement and laughter—this is life.” Tamugadi was founded around A.D. 117 by the Third Legion, the only army protecting the African provinces. Around A.D. 123 this legion chose a more permanent headquarters a few kilometers west of it and built the city of Lambaesis (Lambèse). The soldiers there formed families and settled down, and from then on they spent more time in their homes than in camp; nevertheless even their “praetorium” (guardhouse) was a vast decorated building whose bath, like all other Roman baths in Africa, was excellent. The soldiers helped outside the camp in building a Capitol, temples, triumphal arches, and an amphitheater where scenes of combat and death could somewhat relieve the monotony of their calm life.

That a single legion could alone protect all of North Africa from the raids of the central tribes was due to the existence of a network of roads built for military use but actually used for trade. These roads connected Carthage with the Atlantic and the desert with the Mediterranean. The main road westward ran from Cirta to Caesarea, the capital of Mauretania (Morocco). There a king named Juba II familiarized the Moors (from whom the old and new name of this province is taken) with civilization. This king was the son of Juba I, who had died at Thapsus. He had been taken to Rome as a child to celebrate Caesar’s victory; there he was pardoned and favored, educated, and became one of the greatest scholars of his age. Augustus appointed him king of Mauretania and ordered him to spread the classical culture that he himself had laboriously acquired among his people. Juba II succeeded in this during his long forty-eight-year reign. His subjects were astonished how a man could both write books and rule so well. His son and successor was brought to Rome, where Caligula killed him by starvation. Claudius annexed this province to his realm and divided it into two provinces: Caesarian Mauretania and Tingitanian Mauretania, named after its capital Tingis (modern Tangier).

In these African cities there were schools of all kinds, open to rich and poor alike. Even shorthand courses are mentioned in these cities, and Juvenal calls Africa “the nursing mother of advocates.” This land in this period produced one great writer and one second-rate writer—Apuleius and Fronto; African literature only reached the height of flourishing that made it the pioneer of world literature in the Christian period. Lucius Apuleius was a strange and original personality, and the “variety and fluctuation” of his character went even further than Montaigne’s. He was born in Madaura to a noble family (A.D. 124), studied in that city and then in Carthage and Athens, spent his large inheritance recklessly, traveled from city to city, shifted from one belief to another, experienced the secrets of various religions, dabbled in magic, wrote many works on various subjects from theology to dentistry, lectured on religion and philosophy in Rome and elsewhere, returned to Africa again, and in Tripoli married a woman whose wealth and age far exceeded his own. The friends and claimants to the widow’s inheritance tried to break up this marriage and accused him of having bewitched the aforementioned widow with magic. Apuleius defended himself in court with a defense speech that has reached us in a novel prose. He won both the case and his bride, but people still considered him a magician, and even the godless descendants of these people later tried to diminish Christ by mentioning Apuleius’s miracles. Apuleius spent the rest of his life in Madaura and Carthage, devoting himself to law, medicine, literature, and rhetoric. Most of his writings were on scientific and philosophical subjects. In his birthplace a monument was erected in his honor with the title “Platonic philosopher.” If he returned to the world, he would perhaps be saddened that he is remembered only for The Golden Ass.

This book is similar to Petronius’s Satyricon, and even stranger than it. This book, whose original title is The Eleven Books of Metamorphoses, is an amusing elaboration of a story told by Lucius of Patras about a man who turns into a donkey, and it contains a disconnected series of various adventures and side events spiced with magic, horror, immoral expressions, and a popular piety. Lucius, the hero of the story, speaks of his wanderings in Thessaly, his pleasures with various women, and the magic he felt everywhere around him.

As soon as night passed and another day dawned, I woke up and jumped out of bed, half dazed and in fact eager to encounter and become familiar with wonderful things. … There was nothing I saw that I believed to be what it really was, but everything seemed to me to have changed shape by the power of magic, so much so that I thought the stones at my feet were men who had turned into that form, and the birds whose chirping I heard, the trees, and the flowing waters seemed to me not real but to have taken on these wings, leaves and fruit, and springs. Moreover I thought that statues and images might come to life in a few moments, walls might begin to speak, oxen and other animals might open their mouths and give astonishing news, and suddenly revelation might descend from heaven and from the sun’s rays.

Lucius, now ready for any adventure, rubs a magic oil on himself and with all his being wishes to turn into a bird, but when he rubs the oil on himself he turns completely into a donkey. From then on, the story describes the miseries of a donkey who “has human sense and feeling.” His only consolation is “ears so long that he can hear anything, even if it is very far away.” He is told that if he finds a rose and eats it he will return to human form. After undergoing many changes in “donkeyhood,” he succeeds in this. Disgusted with life, he first turns to philosophy and then to religion, composes a thanksgiving hymn for Isis that greatly resembles a Christian’s prayer to the Virgin Mary, shaves his head, is admitted to the third order of Isis’s initiates, and paves the way for his return to earth by revealing a vision in which Osiris, “the greatest of the gods,” commands him to return to his place and practice advocacy.

Few books contain so much nonsense, yet few books present it so pleasantly. Apuleius tries all styles and succeeds in each. He has a great fondness for adorning words with puns and rhymes and uses colloquial beautiful expressions, archaic language, affectionate diminutives, and rhythmic and occasionally poetic prose. In his writings the warmth of Eastern coloring is mixed with Eastern mysticism and sensual pleasure. Apuleius perhaps wanted to say, based on his own experience, that surrendering oneself to bodily pleasures is an intoxicating substance that turns man into an animal, and that only through the rose of wisdom and piety can one regain human nature. His mastery lies in describing the accidental stories that have reached his sharp and perceptive ears. For example, an old woman comforts a kidnapped girl by telling the story of Psyche and Cupid and how the son of Venus fell in love with a beautiful girl and gave her all joys except the pleasure of seeing him, aroused his mother’s ruthless jealousy, and finally everything ended happily in heaven. Despite the many experiments, no artist’s pen has told this mythological love story better than this white-haired old woman.

Spain

From Tangier, as we pass through the straits, we step from one of Rome’s latest dependent provinces into one of its oldest. Spain, this strategic region at the entrance to the Mediterranean, this land blessed and cursed with precious metals that stained its soil with the blood of greed, with mountain ranges that made communication, gathering, and unity difficult in it, has experienced the full fever of life from the time when artists of the old Stone Age drew the shapes of humped bison on the walls of the Altamira caves until the disordered present age. For three thousand years the Spaniards have been a proud and quarrelsome people, thin and sturdy, brave and pious, passionate and stubborn, content and moody, frugal and hospitable, courteous and steadfast. They easily took offense and more easily gave their hearts to affection. When the Romans came to this land, they found a population that even then had a strange variety: Iberians from Africa (?), Ligurians from Italy, Celts from Gaul, and on top of all these a layer of Carthaginians. If we can believe the words of these conquerors of Spain, almost all the pre-Roman Spaniards were barbarians, some of whom lived in houses in the cities, while others lived in small settlements in humble huts or caves, slept on the ground, and washed their teeth with stale urine. The men wore black cloaks and the women “long cloaks and dresses of bright colors.” Strabo adds with a reproachful tone: “In some places women dance mixed with men and hand in hand.”

From 2000 B.C., the inhabitants of southeastern Spain, the region of Tartessus or in Phoenician “Tarshish,” had developed a type of bronze industry whose products were sold throughout the Mediterranean world. Thus in Tartessus, in the sixth century B.C., a literature and art grew and developed that claimed a six-thousand-year history. From this period only a few crude statues and one strange multicolored bust of baked clay, the Lady of Elche, remain. The latter was carved from Greek models with the strength and softness of the Celtic style. The Phoenicians began to exploit Spain’s mines around 1000 B.C. and took Cadiz (Gades) and Malaga around 800 B.C. and built great temples there. Then around 500 B.C., Greek colonists settled along the northeastern coast. At about the same time, the Carthaginians, who had come at the invitation of their Phoenician relatives to help suppress a revolt, conquered Tartessus and all of southern and eastern Spain. The rapid exploitation of the peninsula’s resources by the Carthaginians in the interval between the First and Second Punic Wars drew the Romans’ greedy eyes to the resources of this country, which they then called “Iberia,” and finally the Romans, in retaliation for Hannibal’s entry into Italian soil, opened part of Spain with the Scipios. The disunited tribes fought stubbornly for their independence; women killed their children so they would not fall into Roman hands; and native prisoners sang their war songs while dying on the cross. The conquest of Spain took two centuries, but when it ended it turned out that this conquest was more fundamental than the conquest of most provinces. The Gracchi brothers, Caesar, and Augustus adopted a policy of kindness and attention instead of the harsh policy of the Republican period, which brought good and lasting results. The Romanization of society progressed rapidly, the Latin language became common and adapted to local conditions, the country’s economy developed and prospered, and soon Spain produced poets, philosophers, senators, and emperors for Rome.

Spain from the time of Seneca to the reign of Marcus Aurelius was the main pillar of the Roman Empire’s economy. Spain’s mines, after enriching Tyre and then Carthage, now enriched Rome. Spain had for Italy the same aspect that Mexico and Peru later had for Spain. Gold, silver, copper, tin, iron, and lead were extracted with modern completeness. In Riotinto one can still see the Roman wells dug deep into hard quartz stone and the slag of metals of that period, whose copper content is astonishingly low. Slaves and prisoners constantly worked in these mines and in many cases months passed without them seeing the sun. Large metalworking industries arose near the mines. Meanwhile, Spain’s soil, despite its mountainous and untilled parts, produced esparto grass whose fibers were used for making ropes, cords, baskets, beds, and comfortable shoes, fed fine sheep that gave rise to a famous wool industry, and gave the ancient world the best olives, oil, and wine. The rivers Guadalquivir, Tagus, Ebro, and smaller rivers completed the network of Roman roads for transporting Spain’s products to its countless ports and cities.

In fact, in Spain as elsewhere, the most remarkable and prominent result of Roman administration was the increase in the number and expansion of cities. In the province of Baetica (Andalusia) the cities of Carteia (Algeciras), Munda, Malaca, Italica (birthplace of Trajan and Hadrian), Corduba (Cordova), Hispalis (Seville), and Gades arose. Corduba, founded in 152 B.C., was a literary center famous for its schools of rhetoric. Lucan, the Senecas, and the apostle Paul’s companion Gallio were born in this city. This tradition of learning survived even in the dark Middle Ages and made Corduba the most cultured city in Europe at that time. But Gades was the most populous of Spain’s cities and famous for its wealth. This city lay at the mouth of the Guadalquivir and dominated Atlantic trade with western Africa, Spain, Gaul, and Britain, and owed a small part of its fame to its young and seductive dancers.

Rome knew Portugal as the province of Lusitania, and Lisbon as Olisipo. In Norba Caesarina, which the Arabs later called Conimbriga (bridge), Trajan’s engineers built the most complete surviving Roman bridge over the Tagus. Over the massive arches of this bridge, each thirty meters wide and sixty meters high, a four-lane busy road still passes. The capital of Lusitania was Emerita (Mérida), which boasted of several temples, three aqueducts, a circus, a theater, a naval basin, and a bridge more than eight hundred meters long. Farther east, in the province of Tarraconensis, the city of Segovia still uses drinking water brought by a Trajanic aqueduct. North of Segovia lay Toletum (Toledo), famous in the Roman period for its iron products. On the eastern coast, the great city of Nova Carthago or Carthago Nova (Cartagena) was a wealthy city with its mines, fisheries, and trade. In the middle of the Mediterranean lay the Balearic Islands, which had ancient and flourishing cities such as Palma and Pollentia. Turning north along the coast of Valentia, Tarraco (Tarragona), Barcino (Barcelona), and right under the Pyrenees the ancient Greek city of Emporiae. And finally if a traveler rounded the eastern end of the mountain range by boat, he would find himself in the province of Gaul.

Gaul

In ages when ships had little draft, even ocean-going vessels could sail the Rhône from Marseilles to Lyon. Small boats could continue this route as far as fifty kilometers up the upper Rhine; and goods, after a short transfer in the plain, could again be carried by water routes through a hundred cities and a thousand villages to the North Sea. Similar narrow land routes connected the Rhône to the Saône, the Loire and the Atlantic, the Aude to the Garonne and to Bordeaux, and the Saône to the Seine and to the English Channel. Trade followed these water routes and created cities at their meeting points. France, like Egypt, arose from the blessing of its rivers.

French civilization began thirty thousand years before Christ with Aurignacian man, for, as the caves of Montignac show, this land even in that ancient time had artists who could give life to colors and lines. France, after passing through the hunting and pastoral life of the Old Stone Age, entered the settled and agricultural life of the Neolithic Age around twelve thousand years before Christ and then, after a long ten-thousand-year period, entered the Bronze Age. Around 900 B.C. a new race, “Alpine” and with round heads, began to penetrate this land from Germany. This race spread from France to Britain and Ireland and also southward into Spain. These “Celts” brought with them the Hallstatt Iron Age civilization from Austria. In 500 B.C., through Switzerland, they introduced the advanced technique of iron extraction from “La Tène” into this land. When Rome became aware of Gaul, it called it Celtica, and only in Caesar’s time did this name change to Gallia (Gaul).

The colonists drove out some of the native groups and settled themselves as independent tribes whose names still appear in the names of the cities they founded. Caesar says the people of Gaul were tall, muscular, and strong. They wore their long blond hair combed back over their shoulders to fall on their necks. Some of them had beards and many had thick mustaches that covered their lips. They had brought from the East, perhaps from the ancient Iranians, the custom of wearing short trousers and had added to it multicolored embroidered tunics and striped cloaks. They were very fond of jewelry, and in war—even if they had no covering—they adorned themselves with gold ornaments. They greatly loved meat, beer, and fine wine, and if we can trust Appian, they were “by nature gluttonous and wine-loving.” Strabo describes them as “simple and bold, boastful … unbearable in victory and self-abandoned in defeat.” But it is not always an advantage for enemies to take up the pen. Posidonius was startled to see that the people of Gaul hung the severed heads of their enemies from their horses’ necks. They were easily provoked and engaged in disputes and quarrels; and sometimes just for amusement in their festivals they fought to the death in single combat. Caesar says: “They were equal to us in bravery and warlike zeal.” Ammianus Marcellinus describes them thus:

They are fit for military service at every age. Their old men go to war with courage equal to that of a man in the spring of life. … The truth is that a foreign group is no match for one Gaul, even if he calls a woman stronger and bolder than himself to help, especially when this woman thrusts forward her neck, grinds her teeth, waves her large arms, and rains blows and curses on a man’s head like catapult balls.

The people of Gaul believed in various gods. Now these gods are deader than to be offended by their anonymity. Hope for a pleasant life after death was so strong in them that, according to Caesar, their bravery stemmed largely from this belief. On the strength of this belief Valerius Maximus says that some lent money so they could receive it back in paradise; and Posidonius claimed to have seen Gauls who, in funeral and burial ceremonies, wrote letters to their friends in the other world and threw them on the pyre meant for burning the body so the deceased could deliver it to the said friend. The opinion of the Gauls on these Roman stories must be worth hearing. A priestly class, the Druids, held all educational matters in their hands and with special power cultivated religious belief in minds. These priests led elaborate rites that were often held in sacred groves rather than temples, and for pleasing the gods they sacrificed those condemned to death for crime; this custom seems barbaric to those who have not seen execution by electric chair. The Druids were the only cultured and perhaps literate people of Gaul. They wrote hymns, poems, and historical reports; they studied “the stars and their movements, the dimensions of the universe and the earth, and the order of nature,” and made a usable calendar. The duty of judgment also fell to them and they had great influence in the courts of tribal kings. Gaul before Roman domination, like the Middle Ages, had a political feudalism covered by religious government.

Gaul in the reign of these kings and priests, in the fourth century B.C., reached the height of its power. With the fertility of the “La Tène” technique population increased; and the result was a series of wars for land. Around 400 B.C., the Celts, who now held most of central Europe in addition to Gaul, conquered Britain, Spain, and northern Italy. In 390 B.C. they invaded southward toward Rome. In 278 B.C. they plundered Delphi and took Phrygia. A century later their power declined; part of this decline resulted from the weakening effects of wealth and the spread of Greek morals among them, and part from particularism and political fragmentation. Just the opposite of medieval France where kings broke the power of the barons and created a single united country, during the century before Caesar the lords of the villages broke the power of the kings and left Gaul more fragmented than before. The Celtic front retreated everywhere except in Ireland. The people of Carthage subdued the Celts in Spain, the Romans drove them out of Italy, in Germany and southern Gaul the Cimbri and Teutons brought them under their yoke. In 125 B.C., the Romans, eager to dominate the road to Spain, conquered southern Gaul and turned it into a Roman province. In 58 B.C., the leaders of Gaul appealed to Caesar to help them repel the Germanic invasion. Caesar accepted this invitation and set his own reward.

Caesar and Augustus organized Gaul into four provinces: Gallia Narbonensis in the south, which the Romans knew as Provincia and we now call Provence, and which at that time was essentially Hellenistic in culture because of its Greek colonies on the Mediterranean coast; Aquitania in the southwest, whose population was mostly Iberian; Gallia Lugdunensis in the center, where the Celts predominated; and Belgica in the northeast, where the Germans predominated. Rome recognized and supported these racial divisions to prevent any united revolt by them. Tribal areas were preserved as administrative districts. Judges were chosen from among the landowners, and Rome ensured their loyalty to itself by supporting them against the lower classes. The title of Roman citizenship was a reward given to the most loyal and useful inhabitants of Gaul. A provincial assembly composed of representatives of the districts met every year in Lyon. This assembly first cautiously limited itself to performing the rites of worshiping Augustus. But soon it sent petitions to the Roman governors, then began making recommendations, and after that issuing formal requests. Judicial administration was taken from the Druids and they themselves were suppressed, and France also submitted to Roman law. For nearly a century Gaul peacefully submitted to the new yoke. In A.D. 68 and then in 71 revolts suddenly broke out under the leadership of Vindex and Civilis, but the people gave little support to these movements and love of liberty gave way to reluctance to forgo prosperity and security, and calm took its place.

Gaul in the period of the “Roman peace” became one of the richest regions of the empire. Rome was astonished at the wealth of some of the Gallic nobles who entered the Senate during Claudius’s reign, and a century later Florus contrasts Gaul’s flourishing economy with Italy’s decline. Forests were cleared, marshes drained, agriculture improved to the point that mechanical reaping devices were used, and vines and olive trees were planted everywhere. Pliny and Columella praised the wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux in the same first century A.D. There were vast estates cultivated by serfs and slaves whose owners were lords who can be considered the forerunners of the feudal lords of the Middle Ages, but there were also many small proprietors, and the distribution of wealth in ancient Gaul, just like modern France, was fairer than in almost any other civilized country. The progress of industry was especially rapid. Around A.D. 200, the potters and ironworkers of Gaul were taking the German and Western markets from Italy’s grasp; the weavers of Gaul had the largest textile trade in the empire; and the factories of Lyon produced not only commercial glass but also excellent artistic glassware. Industrial techniques were passed from fathers to sons and formed a valuable part of the classical heritage. Roman engineers built or improved more than 20,000 kilometers of roads that served transport and trade.

The old Celtic settlements, which had developed and grown rich through this economic life, became the cities of Roman Gaul. In Aquitania, its capital Burdigala (Bordeaux) was one of the most active ports of the Atlantic; Limonum (Poitiers), Avaricum (Bourges), and Augustonemetum (Clermont-Ferrand) were already rich; the latter city paid 400,000 sesterces for a huge statue of Mercury to Zenodorus. The province of Gallia Narbonensis had so many cities that, according to Pliny, “it resembled Italy more than a province.” Its westernmost city was Tolosa (Toulouse), famous for its schools. Narbonne, the capital of this province, was in the first centuries A.D. the largest city of Gaul and the main port for exporting Gallic goods to Italy and Spain. Sidonius Apollinaris says: “This city has walls, promenades, taverns, triumphal arches, colonnades, a forum, a theater, temples, baths, markets, meadows, pools, a bridge, and the sea.” To the east of the province, on the Domitian road that connected Spain with Italy, lay the city of Nemausus (Nîmes). Its beautiful square house (“Maison Carrée”) was built by Augustus and the citizens in memory of Augustus’s grandsons, Lucius and Gaius Caesar; its inner colonnaded part is sadly sunk into the wall, but its independent Corinthian columns are among the most beautifully constructed Roman columns. Its twenty-thousand-seat amphitheater is still occasionally used as a stage for ancient plays.

The Roman aqueduct that brought drinking water to the city of “Nîmes” gradually turned into the bridge over the Gard River; today it is a huge ruin in the dry desert around the city, and its massive lower arches contrast beautifully with the row of small upper arches, and the whole is a monument to the art of Roman engineers.

Caesar founded the city of Arelate (Arles) in the east, beside the Mediterranean at the mouth of the Rhône, hoping it would take the place of rebellious Massalia as a shipbuilding center and port. Massalia (Marseilles), which was already an old city at the time of Caesar’s birth and remained so until his death, was Greek in language and culture. From this port Greek agriculture, horticulture, and viticulture, as well as their culture, entered Gaul, and above all it was from this port that western Europe exchanged its products with those of the ancient world. Massalia was one of the greatest university centers of the empire; especially its school of law made it famous. This port declined after Caesar, but it preserved its old position as a free city, independent of the provincial governor. A little farther east lay Forum Julii (Fréjus), Antipolis (Antibes), and Nicaea (Nice). The latter city was in the small province of Alpes-Maritimes. The traveler, going up the Rhône from Arelate, reached Avenio (Avignon) and Arausio (Orange); here from Augustus’s time a strong triumphal arch remains, and a very large Roman theater is still a witness to the performance of ancient plays.

The largest of the Gallic provinces was Gallia Lugdunensis, named after its capital Lugdunum (Lyon). This city, located at the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers and at the intersection of highways built by Agrippa, became the trading center of a rich region and the capital of all Gaul. Its ironworking, glassmaking, and ceramic industries supported a population of two hundred thousand in the first century A.D. To its north lay Cabillonum (Chalon-sur-Saône), Caesarodunum (Tours), Augustodunum (Autun), Cenabum (Orléans), and Lutetia (Paris). Emperor Julian writes: “I spent the winter in our beloved city of Lutetia—this is the title the people of Gaul give to the city of the Parisii, the small island in the middle of the river. … Fine wine is produced here.”

Almost all of Belgica, which included parts of modern France and Switzerland, was an agricultural land. Its industries were especially dependent on the rural palaces whose numerous remains indicate that their inhabitants led a lordly life full of comforts and luxuries. Augustus founded cities in this province whose modern names are Soissons, Saint-Quentin, Senlis, Beauvais, and Trier. The latter city, which was called Augusta Treverorum, had great strategic importance as the headquarters of the army defending the Rhine. In Diocletian’s time it replaced the city of Lyon as the capital of Gaul, and in the fifth century it was the largest Roman city north of the Alps. This city is still rich in remains of ancient monuments, among which one can mention the “Porta Nigra” among the Roman walls, the “Baths of Saint Barbara,” the “Tomb of the Secundinii family” in Igel, and the reliefs on the wall of the castle in Neumagen.

In these cities and around them, life slowly changes face and new elements of life with difficulty took the place of the old ones. The people of Gaul preserved their character and short clothes and kept their language for three centuries. It was in the sixth century that Latin, mainly because it was the language of the Roman Church’s liturgy, triumphed, but from that time it began to change and mix into French. In Gaul, Rome achieved its greatest victory in transmitting civilization. Great French historians, such as Camille Jullian and Fustel de Coulanges, believed that France would have had a better fate if it had not fallen into Roman hands; but a greater historian than they believed that the Roman conquest was the only alternative to Gaul’s conquest by the Germans. Mommsen says:

If Caesar had not conquered this land, the migration of peoples would have occurred four hundred years earlier than it did, that is, at a time when Italian civilization had not yet adapted to the environment in Gaul or on the Danube, in Africa or in Spain. Because that great Roman statesman, with sound judgment, saw the Germanic tribes as rivals and competitors of the Greek and Roman world and with a strong arm established the new offensive defense system with all its details and taught people to preserve the empire’s borders with the help of rivers and artificial ditches. … He gave Greek and Roman culture the necessary time to civilize the West.

The Rhine was the dividing line between classical civilization and primitive civilization. Gaul could not defend this border, but Rome did; and this is a fact that has determined the course of European history to this day.

Britain

Around 1200 B.C., a branch of the Celts crossed Gaul and settled in England where they found a mixed people of dark-haired men, perhaps Iberians, and blond Scandinavians. The newcomers overcame these natives, intermarried with them, and spread throughout England and Wales. Around 100 B.C. (since self-centered and short-sighted history only watches eventful centuries and deletes vigorous generations from its crowded memory) another branch of the Celts came from continental Europe and took southern and eastern Britain from their kinsmen. When Caesar came, he found the island inhabited by several independent tribes, each ruled by an ambitious king. He called all the inhabitants Britons, the name of one of the Gallic tribes living on the southern coast of the English Channel; believing that this tribe lived on both shores of the English Channel.

Celtic Britain was essentially similar to Celtic Gaul in customs, language, and religion, but its civilization was less advanced. Britain entered the Iron Age about six centuries before Christ and three centuries after Gaul. Pytheas, the Massilian traveler who reached England via the Atlantic around 350 B.C., found the Cantii of Kent already advanced and flourishing in agriculture and trade. The land was fertile from abundant rains and had rich mines of iron, tin, and lead. In Caesar’s time, domestic industry was able to support a lively trade among the tribes themselves and with continental Europe, and coins were of bronze and gold. Caesar’s invasions of Britain were more experimental and reconnaissance; upon returning from there Caesar became certain of two things: first, that the tribes could not offer a united and coordinated resistance against the Romans, and second, that the island’s agricultural resources were sufficient to supply an invading army that would land there at the appropriate time. A century later, in A.D. 43, Claudius crossed the English Channel with forty thousand men. The armament, discipline, and skill of this army far exceeded what was necessary to confront the natives, and thus Britain in its turn became a Roman province. In A.D. 61, a queen of a British tribe, named Boudicca or Boadicea, raised a fiery revolt and her pretext was that Roman officers had abducted her two daughters, plundered the sanctuary of her tribe, and sold many free men of her land into slavery. While Paulinus, the Roman governor, was busy conquering the island of Mona, Boadicea’s army crushed the only legion that stood against it and rushed toward Londinium. Londinium, according to Tacitus, was then “the chief seat of merchants and a great center of trade.” The rebels killed all the Romans they found there or in Verulamium (St. Albans). Before Paulinus and his legions finished the work of the rebel force, seventy thousand Romans and their allies were killed. Boadicea fought heroically to the end with her two daughters on a chariot. At the end she poisoned herself and eighty thousand Britons were put to the sword.

Tacitus describes how his father-in-law, Agricola, who was governor of Britain from A.D. 78 to 84, spread civilization among “a bold, scattered, and warlike people” by establishing schools, promoting the Latin language, and encouraging cities and wealthy individuals to build temples, churches, and public baths. This historian says with a biting tongue: “Gradually the charm of luxury and pleasure affected the hearts of the Britons; baths, colonnades, and adorned banquets became common; and the new morals and customs, which in reality only made slavery sweeter, were called the way of civilized and cultured man by the credulous Britons.” Agricola, with swift campaigns, extended this way, and with it Roman rule, as far as the Clyde and Forth. A thirty-thousand-man army defeated a Scottish force and was about to advance further when Domitian recalled him. Hadrian from A.D. 122 to 127 built a wall one hundred kilometers long along the edge of the island of Britain, from the Solway Firth to the mouth of the Tyne, as a defensive barrier against the Scots, who unlike the Britons were not credulous. Twenty years after that, Lollius in his turn built farther north the “Antonine Wall” more than fifty kilometers long between the Clyde and the Forth. These fortifications preserved Britain for the Roman Empire for more than two centuries.

As Roman rule there became more stable, its leniency and tolerance increased. Cities were administered by local senates, assemblies, and judges, and villages, just like in Gaul, were entrusted to lords who were obedient to Rome. This civilization in terms of urbanization did not reach the level of Italy’s and in terms of wealth and richness did not reach the level of Gaul’s, but most British cities took shape through Roman encouragement and support. Four of them were Roman “colonies” and their free men had Roman citizenship: Camulodunum (Colchester), the first capital of Britain during Roman rule and the center of the provincial council; Lindum, whose new name Lincoln bears a sign of its old privilege; Eboracum (York), which had important military importance; and Glevum, which combined with the Saxon word “chester” meaning city and became Gloucester. Chester, Winchester, Dorchester, Chichester, Leicester, Silchester, and Manchester apparently came into existence during the two centuries of Roman rule. These were small cities, each with about six thousand inhabitants, but they had paved and drained streets, forums, basilicas, temples, and houses with stone foundations and tiled roofs.

Verulamium (Wroxeter) had a large basilica that seated six thousand people. In the public baths of this city, several hundred people could bathe at the same time. The hot springs of “Aquae Sulis” (the salty waters), now called “Bath,” were, as the surviving hot water pools show, once a popular resort. Londinium owed its economic and military importance to its location on the Thames and its excellent roads. Its population reached sixty thousand and it soon replaced Camulodunum as the capital of Britain.

Most houses in London during the Roman period were of brick and stone and in smaller cities of wood. The architecture of the houses was determined by the climate: a high sloping roof to allow rainwater and snow to flow; and many windows to allow even the slightest ray of sunlight to enter, for as Strabo says: “Even on clear days there is only three or four hours of sunshine.” But the interiors of the houses were in the Roman style: mosaic floors, large baths, walls full of paintings, and central heating (much more than was customary in Italy) by means of hot air pipes built into the walls and floors. Coal, extracted from surface seams, was used not only for heating houses but also in industrial processes such as smelting lead. Apparently the mines of ancient Britain were state property but leased to private contractors. Bath had a large iron weapons factory. And probably the production of pottery, earthenware, bricks, and tiles had also reached the factory stage; but other manufactures were made in homes and shops or in rural houses. Eight thousand kilometers of Roman roads and countless water routes were the arteries of lively internal trade. Foreign trade, unlike modern Britain’s custom, was devoted to exporting raw materials in exchange for manufactured goods.

How deeply did Roman civilization penetrate the life and spirit of the Britons during its four centuries of rule? Latin became the language of politics, law, literature, and the literate minority, but in the countryside and among many urban workers the Celtic language remained; even today in the province of Wales and on the Isle of Man the Celtic language has preserved its positions. Roman schools spread literacy in Britain and thus the English alphabet took the Roman form; and many Latin words also entered English speech. Temples were built for Roman gods, but the common people had their Celtic gods and festivals. Even in the cities, Rome could not strike deep roots. People with indifference submitted to a rule that brought them a blessed peace and such prosperity that the land of Britain saw nothing like it again until the Industrial Revolution.

The Barbarians

The decision of Augustus and Tiberius to refrain from conquering Germany is one of the pivotal and decisive events in European history. If Germany had also been conquered and Romanized like Gaul, almost all of Europe west of Russia would have had one organization, one government, one classical culture, and perhaps one language; and central Europe would have served as a shield against the eastern tribes whose pressure on Germany caused the Germanic invasions of Italy.

We call them Germans, but they themselves never gave themselves this name and no one knows when this word originated. The Germans in the classical period were a heterogeneous mixture of independent tribes that occupied Europe in the area between the Rhine and the Vistula, and between the Danube and the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Gradually over two centuries, from the time of Augustus to Marcus Aurelius, these tribes moved from tribal hunting and pastoral life into rural and agricultural life; but they were still so tribal that in a short time they exhausted the cultivated land and its harvest and then moved again to seize new cultivable lands by force of arms. If we accept Tacitus’s words, war for the Germans was like bread and water:

It is not characteristic of a German to plant the land and wait for the regular harvest of four seasons. It is much easier to persuade him to attack the enemy and receive honorable wounds in the field of battle. To obtain with the sweat of the brow what one can acquire at the price of one’s own blood is in the eyes of a German the principle of weak and lazy men and unworthy of a soldier.

The Roman historian, who laments the decadence of his nation amid luxury and peace, describes with the fervor of a moral preacher the warlike qualities of the Germans and the zeal of their women in urging their husbands to battle, which is often accompanied by fighting side by side with their men. Among them fleeing from the enemy was an eternal stain and in many cases led to suicide. Strabo describes the Germans as “wilder and taller than the people of Gaul” and Seneca, as if he had read Tacitus’s writings, reaches ominous conclusions: “To these powerful bodies, to these souls that know nothing of pleasures and luxury and wealth, teach only a little skill in tactics and discipline; then you (Romans) will never be able to face them unless you return to the virtues of your ancestors.”

According to Tacitus, these warriors in peacetime indulged in idleness. The men (apparently after hunting or harvesting) spent their time eating heavy meat dishes and drinking beer to excess, while women and children did the housework. The German man bought his wife from her father with a gift of domestic animals or weapons. He, with the approval of the tribal assembly, had the power of life and death over his wife and children. Nevertheless women were highly honored, often acted as judges in disputes between tribes, and had equal rights with men in divorce. Some tribal chiefs had several wives, but usually the normal German family was monogamous; and historians emphasize that the moral principles of marriage were based on high foundations. Adultery was very rare and its punishment was that the head of the adulterous woman was shaved and she was chased naked through the streets until she ran while being whipped. Every woman was free, if she wished, to have an abortion, but usually women bore many children. It was rarely seen that a married man had no children, so no man made a will, and it was as if family property passed from father to son from generation to generation.

The people were divided into four classes: (1) dependent men, some of whom were slaves and most of whom were serfs tied to the land and had to pay the landlord’s share of the produce; (2) freedmen, who were tenants with no tax exemption; (3) free men, who were landowners and warriors; (4) nobles, who were landowners who traced their lineage to the gods, but whose power was based on the importance of their inheritance and the number of their fully armed guards—“comites” (counts’ retainers). The tribal assembly was composed of nobles, guards, and free men. They came armed to the assembly, elected their chief or king, and approved or rejected the proposals presented by clashing their spears or with a general roar. Part of the second and third classes were active in handicrafts or metal industries, in which the Germans were particularly skilled. Lords and knights in feudal Germany belonged to the fourth class.

To this simple social organization a small cultural foundation was added. Religion in those days had just moved from the stage of worshiping nature to the stage of worshiping gods in human form. Tacitus names these gods Mars, Mercury, and Hercules—probably the same as Tiu (Tyr), Woden (Odin), and Donar (Thor). English speakers still unconsciously remember these three gods and Freya, the goddess of love, in the names of four days of the week. There was also a virgin goddess named “Hertha” (Mother Earth) whom a god from heaven made pregnant; and for every idea and every need there were various supernatural beings such as fairies, genies, goblins, and giants. For Woden humans, and for other gods fatter creatures were sacrificed. Worship was performed in the open air, in forests and groves, because the Germans considered it unreasonable to confine a spirit of nature in a space built by human hands. In Germany there was no powerful priestly group like the Druids of Gaul or Britain, but there were male and female monks who supervised the performance of religious rites, acted as judges in criminal cases, and foretold the unseen and the future from the movements and neighing of white horses. Here too, as in Gaul, bards sang the legends and history of their tribes in primitive poems. A small minority knew how to read and write. This minority adapted the Latin alphabet with changes into the Scandinavian alphabet. German art was also primitive, but they were skilled in goldsmithing.

When Rome withdrew its legions from Germany, it maintained control over the Rhine River and kept it under its dominance from its sources to its mouths and divided its magnificent valley into two provinces, Upper and Lower Germany. The latter included Holland and the Rhineland north of Cologne. Cologne, which was beautiful and rich and which the Romans called Colonia Agrippinensis, had been elevated to colonial status in A.D. 50 in honor of Nero’s mother, who was born there. Half a century later, this city was the wealthiest residential area along the Rhine. The province of Upper Germany extended along the Rhine River southward and included: Mogontiacum (Mainz), Aquae Aureliae (Baden-Baden), Argentoratum (Strasbourg), Augusta Rauricorum (Augst), and Vindonissa (Windisch). Almost all these cities were adorned with temples, basilicas, theaters, baths, and public statues. Many of the legionaries sent by Rome to protect the Rhine lived outside their camps, married Germanic girls, and when their term of service ended remained in that country as citizens. The Rhineland apparently had as dense a population during the Roman period as in any period before the nineteenth century.

Between the Rhine and the Danube, as we saw, Roman military engineers had built a fortified road with a fort every fifteen kilometers and a rampart four hundred and eighty kilometers long. This organization was useful to the Roman Empire for a century, but when the birth rate in Rome fell much lower than the birth rate in Germany these fortifications were no longer useful. Even weaker from the border point of view was the Danube River, which the ancients considered the longest river in the world. South of