Miscellaneous; Study in Words : Speech, Language and Communications

The creation and administration of the Roman Empire, which was the largest and most permanent integrated socio-political unit of antiquity, are achievements of Viga and Perseverance, which set the Roman people apart from their contemporaries, as well as their predecessors. Pasterity for long looked with admiration at this Roman achievement, and frequently expressed a nostalgia for the unity which Rome gave to the Mediterranean world. Indeed, much of the roughly 1500 years after the disappearance of the Roman Empire appeared to be an attempt, weak and sometimes not too serious, to recreate the unity which Rome gave to the Western world in antiquity. This admiration of posterity, and the genuine achievements which the Romans realized, should not blind us however to the price which the Romans, as well as the people they subjected, had to pay for the benefits they received. The benefits are easy to identify, peace, both in the Italian Peninsula and in the conquered areas.

Orderly government, especially when the Empire was directed by capable emperors, and frequently even when the leadership was deficient in all respects. Economic unity, which made the Empire one large, generally free trade area. The fairest and most sophisticated system of law and law enforcement ever achieved in antiquity in an area so large. And finally, concluding the list of advantages and achievements of the Roman Empire, the cultural unity which this Empire made possible, which unity in turn made possible, the spread and absorption of the best Greek and Roman civilization had to offer. These are roughly the factors which explain why the Roman Empire endured so long, but it did not endure forever. Hence the search for weaknesses in order to explain its ultimate disintegration.

As we proceed with our account of the structure and functioning of the Empire, both its virtues and defect to be illustrated by reference to pertinent detail. For the moment we present in general terms, the other side of the kind are the weaknesses or defects. The most important and enduring weakness was inherent in the very imperial system which there is much reason to admire. And that weakness is the irresistible tendency for the Empire to expand. And when expansion was no longer possible, to hold on to the already acquired areas. And this desire to hold on and early to expand created a number of exhausting problems. Another weakness. The failure to solve the economic and social difficulties already evident in the period of the late republic, difficulties which became increasingly grave. The problem of orderless accession to the imperial throne, which is both a cause and effect of other problems.

A certain, almost inexplicable loss of nerve, of initiative, and sense of civic duty. And finally, in the list of weaknesses, a general degradation of the moral turn of the Empire, especially in the upper echelons of society, with its inevitable effect not only on the quality of leadership, but also on the lower classes, which became increasingly brutalized. This list of defects or weaknesses could be continued almost indefinitely. But the essential points agreed to by all authorities in the field have been made. And to go on further would in measure us in one of the most controversial problems of historical investigation, which is the problem of the decline and fall, as Gibbon called it, of the Roman Empire. Now, before we examine the grandeur and misery of this Empire through the medium of illustrative detail, it may be useful to define and clarify some terms were going to employ. The term Empire, or the capital E, is usually employed to refer to the period of Roman dominion in the Mediterranean world and Western Europe, dating from 27 BC to 476 AD.

Almost exactly 500 years. Now, these two dates, 27 BC and 476 AD, are somewhat arbitrary, especially the latter one. The first date, 27 BC, marks the accession of Octavian, commonly called Augustus, to a number of officers which made him the unquestioned ruler of Rome and all its possessions. The latter date, 476 AD, refers to the deposition of a meaningless claimant to the Roman imperial title. And ironically, this deposition occurred through the means of a German barbarian chieftain, so low had the Empire fallen. In fact, what we call the Roman Empire in the West, ceased to exist as a viable structure for about three quarters of a century before its usual terminal date of 476 AD.

Now, to return to the first date, 27 BC. This date has meaning, because it marks the end of genuine functioning Republican institutions, and it also marks the beginning of autocracy, a one-man rule. Hence, after 27 BC, one can no longer meaningfully refer to Republican Rome. Imperial Rome is more accurately descriptive, but this does not mean that the Empire began in 27 BC. As we noted in the preceding program, Republican Rome embarked on imperial conquests outside the Italian Peninsula after 265 BC, that is more than 238 years before Rome became commonly known Empire. Now, by 265 BC, Rome, having acquired effective control of the peninsula, began its contest with Carthage for the dominion of the Western and Central Mediterranean.

When the wars with Carthage were concluded, in 146 BC, Republican Rome possessed an enormous overseas empire, which reached into the Eastern Mediterranean. But we still call it Republican Rome, because the basic institutions of the Roman State were still Republican, that is, power was exercised by elected leaders and representative assemblies. During the next century, the first century BC, the problems attendant to governing and enlarging Rome's imperial possessions, aggravated earlier political and economic problems, and occasioned bitter strife within Rome itself, leading to the creation of a personal autocratic rule by Julius Caesar. By 27 BC, and in the several subsequent years, Caesar's grand nevue and air, Octavian, having defeated his chief rival Anthony in a contest for Caesar's political inheritance, was vested by the Roman Senate and the Army, with a number of offices which made him actual supreme ruler of Rome and its possessions.

The Republic then had come to a constitutional or unconstitutional end. Hence, the period after 27 BC, to 476 AD, is called the Empire, which period is in turn divided for the sake of convenience into early and late Empire. Now, while Octavian, usually call Augustus, apparently wished to retain the fiction that the Republic still endured, a simple listing of the titles he enjoyed and powers he exercised, will reveal that the Republic was dead. Octavian was called Augustus, that is, the revered or consecrated one. He was also called Imperator, whence out to him Emperor, then meaning a victorious general or commander in chief.

He exercised the consular power, that is, the chief executive power. As Pro-Consul, he supervised the administration of the provinces of the Empire. He was tribune, and also pontifix maximus, that is, high priest of the state religion. Even a month of the year, August, was named after him, as had been done for his illustrious grand uncle, Julius Caesar. Undoubtedly, then, the powers and prerogatives of Augustus, were as monarchical as they would have been had he worn a crown, instead of the simple toga. He preferred to avoid the appearances of kingship, kingship was so at odds with Rome's republican traditions, and he even allowed the Senate to exercise some of its old powers of political patronage, always provided that the Senate remained obliging to Augustus. It must be said, however, that on the whole, Augustus exercised his enormous powers with restraint, and with beneficial results.

It cannot be argued that he destroyed republican institutions, because these institutions had ceased to function before Augustus' accession to imperial power. This fact, the republican institutions were, in fact, actually dead at the time of Augustus' accession, in part explains the ease with which Augustus was able to exercise undisputed control of the Roman state for 40 years, until his death in 14 AD. And the other part of the explanation involves Augustus' real gifts for government and his far-reaching reforms. Indeed, the best proof of his gifts as a ruler is found in his reforms. First, he ended the dangerous practice of allowing individuals to raise armies on behalf of the state, which practice had occasioned frequent civil wars, and instead made the raising and maintenance of the army an exclusive state function, that is a function of the emperor or commander-in-chief. Then, he fixed sites or locations for the garrisoning of troops on the outer or frontier fringes of the empire, making unnecessary the dangerous practice of dispatching legions from Italy whenever an emergency arose, thereby also freeing Italy from the undesirable presence of large-standing armies.

He systematized the bureaucracy or civil service by imposing standards of honesty and competence. And particularly with regard to provincial administration, he ended the evil practice of bestowing provincial governorships to former consuls as sineqers. Tax collection was made an exclusive function of the state, ending thereby another vicious practice, that of granting contracts to collect taxes to private individuals, one can easily imagine the extortion and irregularity in such an arrangement. Augustus also standardized the tax rates, and although there was a multitude of taxes, the burden does not appear to have been too excessive.

Augustus not only beautified the city of Rome, he said that he bursted rarely, that he found Rome a city of brick and left it of marble, but he also instituted regular police and fire protection services. He was proud also of his patronage of the arts and letters. And in retrospect, he would undoubtedly have been proud of the fact that the structure of empire helped direct, gave to the world under Rome's dominion 200 years without a major war, the famous Pax Romana, the Roman Peace. Augustus wrote so well that his four successes to the throne, who incidentally rose to that preeminence because of their dissent from him, clearly indicating a dynastic succession, these four successes, who on the whole were singularly inept, failed to shake the salinity of the empire. And this is a remarkable tribute to Augustus' endeavor, that not even a Caligula or a Nero could undo his work.

Nero did succeed, however, in ending the Augustan dynasty, and when another emperor, a capable one, this patient, had the misfortune of being succeeded by incapable sons, the problem of dynastic inheritance became acute. It was solved temporarily by Nerva, a lawyer who had acquired a reputation for honesty, and who was chosen emperor by the Senate in 96 AD. Now, Nerva, perceiving the faults of succession based purely on the accident of birth without regard to competence and character, found the device of adopting a man of proven ability as his heir. He chose Trajan, a good choice, and Trajan, as well as his two successes, continued the process of adoption. Whereupon, or between 98 and 180 AD, Rome experienced the rule of four remarkably able emperors, the last of whom was Marcus Aurelius.

Marcus Aurelius, a stoic philosopher, author of a book entitled Meditations, appeared to be the realization of Plato's helps, the philosopher King. He was a benevolent and capable ruler, genuinely concerned with the welfare of the law classes, and determined to humanize the empire. But with his death, the problem of succession was renewed, because ironically the philosophical emperor was unable to resist his attachment to his own son, Komodius, to whose faults he was most blind, and whom he chose to succeed him, rather than continue the successful practice of adopting and training a competent heir. Marcus Aurelius' paternal weakness proved to be a disaster for the empire.

For the son, Komodius, was unworthy both of his father and of the imperial power. The discontinuation of the practice of adoptive succession, and the increased reliance of the emperors on the armed forces to acquire and retain power, began to make a shambles of the imperial administration. There ensued a period of military anarchy, 235 to 284 AD, during which the army made and unmade 26 emperors in less than 50 years, only one of whom died a natural death. In this era of chaos, the German barbarian tribes, pressing upon the empire along the Rhine-Danube frontier, threatened to break through, and might have done so, had not been for a number of wide-reaching reforms associated with the Emperor Diocletian and his immediate successes. Now, before we proceed to these Diocletian reforms, let us see how the empire was governed during the two centuries of the Pax Romana, roughly first and second centuries AD.

In order, better to understand the problems faced by Diocletian and how he tried to meet them. We have already referred to Rome's striking characteristic of flexibility in the administration of the areas it conquered during the years of the expanding republic. The empire continued the practices established during the republic, influenced especially by the reforms of Augustus. Now, just what was the extent of the empire its height during the first and second centuries AD? It stretched from the Atlantic to the Eastern Mediterranean, and included, using modern terms, Spain, France, England, but not Scotland or Ireland, Germany, West of the Rhine, Switzerland, Central Europe, South of the Danube, much of modern Romania, modern Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian coast, and all of North Africa from Egypt to the Atlantic.

Such an enormous area included people ranging in culture from highly sophisticated Egyptians and Greeks to barbaric Britons. Some areas such as Greece, Spain, and Gal had been in the empire for centuries and were highly Romanized. Other areas, particularly along the Rhine and Danube, were recently acquired and populated by barbarians. From these two factors, level of culture and the recency of acquisition, were derived the differences in the administration of the areas of the empire. Therefore, military rule for the frontier areas are joining barbarian tribes, and a high degree of autonomy, or self-government for Spain and Gal. Egypt, for instance, retained its traditional autocracy, and the autocratic power now exercised by a Roman emperor, and the Greek city-states enjoyed some measure of self-government through to their traditions. Now, in the areas where there had been few aboriginal political traditions, and only small, settled districts before the Roman conquest, such as Gal and Spain, rum introduced the city-state unit, a small area with a prominent city or town, and a surrounding countryside, governed by local notables.

The empire was, therefore, on the whole, centralised in authority and de-centralised in administration, and the key to effective administration was a body of well-trained civil servants, usually recruited from the provinces, under the immediate authority of provincial governors, and ultimately responsible to the emperor. So long as the emperor's subjects paid their taxes to the imperial treasury, supplied recruits for the army, and paid token veneration to the emperor, they were left pretty much to their local customs and practices. So far from being a rigid monolithic unit, the empire at its best was an elastic and varied structure, with a body of laws and legal procedures forever admired by posterity as the greatest legacy Rome bequeathed to mankind.

Thus, the empire at its best. But by the third century, it was far from its best. The moral tone of the early republic, or alleged to the early republic, was gone. There were several alarming indices, especially among the upper classes. Sexual morality was low, divorce common. There are said to have been 32,000 prostitutes in Rome alone by the beginning of the second century AD. Gladiatorial exhibitions became increasingly brutal, and bread and circuses became the traditional due granted to the city rabble. The agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing prosperity of the first two centuries of the Christian era are rapidly declined by the third century. Now, much of this earlier prosperity had been based on slave labor, the supplier which began to diminish by the third century.

And in as much as the stigma attached to manual labor persisted, associated as it was to slavery, free labor would not voluntarily fill the gap occasioned by the decline in the supply of slaves. Further, Italy had had for a long time an unfortunate and unfavorable balance of trade, causing a drain of precious metals, and frequent the basement of coinage, which in turn led to the disappearance of money from circulation and a paralysis of economic transactions. These are some of the problems, glaringly evident in the third century. Problems especially magnified by the military anarchy which lasted for about 50 years, between 235 to 284 AD. A collapse of the empire was probable at that juncture. Had it not been for the appearance of an army veteran, Diocletian whom the army raised to the imperial office.

Diocletian was born in Dalmatia, of humble origins, and rose in the army by its gifts. And when he became emperor, attempted to impose on the empire the same rigid discipline he imposed on his soldiers. His reforms were drastic, and although they delayed the collapse of the empire, these reforms probably made the eventual collapse more certain than ever. First, the fiction which had been maintained for 300 years, that the emperor was the servant of the senate, and the people was dispensed with, and a naked autocracy was imposed. Emperor worship, traces of which were apparent under Augustus, the revered one, and which had always been regarded as a civic or patriotic performance, now became more oriental in its pretensions. In the administration proper, the flexible balance between centralised authority and de-centralised administration was destroyed by putting all the provinces under the complete authority of imperial agents.

This practice involved such administrative burdens that the empire was divide into two parts, Western and Eastern, and even the nature of the army was altered by heavy recruiting from the Germanic tribes and other foreign elements. Italians, and people under long Roman rule, no longer willing or considered desirable to be recruits. As for the economy, the declaration attempted to halt the debasement of courage, of coinage, in which he partly succeeded. And in order to halt the paralyzing inflation, he issued in 301 AD a famous edict which fixed in detail maximums on prices and wages. Now, this edict was enforced with extraordinary severity, including the death penalty. Yet price and wage controls did not halt the inflation. They did encourage widespread black marketing.

The problems of governmental revenue and adequate manpower for industry and agriculture were attacked by diocletian with characteristic severity. Each city state in the provinces was assigned a fixed quota of taxes. If the quota was not paid, the local administrators or consulmen became personal liable. The effect of the administration was disastrous because it ruined the administration class. Equally disastrous in the long run was the policy of fixing farmers as well as persons in other essential occupations to the land or their trade in order thereby to assure productive activity and a supply of taxable income. Now, this freezing service peak of people into hereditary occupations proved to have in fact results that very opposite of those desired productivity declined as did tax revenue and society was stratified into a caste system. The total effect of the reforms of diocletian and his successes was that while in the short run they saved the empire from collapse in the long run they made the collapse certain.

And this total collapse became evident in the fifth century AD. The actual and final disintegration of the Roman Empire will be examined in a later program. For the moment it may be desirable to assess the lasting influence which this empire was to exercise on western civilization. The languages of the empire, Latin in the west and Greek in the east, became the vehicles for a cultural transmission which would have been difficult if not impossible without a nearly universal state through which to work. Both languages also influenced the linguistic developments of posterity. Roman lore and jurisprudence have been famous for their sophistication and equity. The Roman Empire provided the medium and sometimes the organization for the spread and solidification of Christianity.

And at its height the empire provided about 200 years of peace and stability unknown in such a large area before or after. The cultural achievements of this empire although not always up to Greek standards are impressive enough to warrant more detailed presentation. This detailed presentation will be the subject of the following program to be given by Professor Samuel Lemurman of the Queen's College Department of Classical Languages. Good afternoon.