HISTORY OF ROME.

INTRODUCTION.

I HAVE undertaken the History of Rome, and shall commence with that dark period of remote antiquity, in which industrious research, aided by the feeble light of late and doubtful traditions, can scarcely discern any prominent features of ancient Italy. I would trace it down to the times, in which a second night has covered, with an almost equally impenetrable veil, all that we beheld originating and acquiring maturity during the long course of ages, and sinking again into ruin and desolation.

This History is generally known in its great outlines, and to many persons directly through the classic works of the Roman Historians, so far at least as they have furnished us with an account of the most brilliant or important epochs of republican and imperial Rome. If we had these works in a perfect state; if we possessed, in Livy and Tacitus, a connected history from the foundation of the city to the time of Nerva, it would be both vain and injudicious to attempt a narrative of the occurrences which these historians had already detailed; because we never can

attain their elegance of style, and besides the historical instruction which they convey, nothing could be better calculated to form the mind in youth, and preserve it in maturer age, or furnish better rules for the guidance of life, amidst the many barbarous influences of our foreign and adopted modes of thinking and manners, than such a history embracing an extent of 850 years. We should only require for the earlier periods a critical detection of the falsehoods, a separation of the interspersed fables from what is historically credible. Without appearing presumptuously to emulate those ancient masters, we might sketch in simple outlines the constitution and the developement of particular periods in which Livy has either left us without information or only leads us astray. But since these works exist only in a mutilated state, and are silent respecting epochs, which probably surpass, in importance of events, those which they have traced in such vivid colours-since the histories which modern writers have given us of these periods are unsatisfactory and often erroneous, it seemed proper to facilitate the knowledge of Roman history by a course of lectures devoted to that subject. It might be doubted whether a connected history was preferable to one merely confined to those periods in which Livy and Tacitus fail us. I have determined upon the former, in the confidence that none of my hearers or readers will be tempted to consider as useless the study of the classical historians of Rome, when he has obtained an idea of the events which they narrate, and also in the hope of facilitating and promoting that study.

Much of what is recorded by the Romans in the annals of their nation, must be excluded by the moderns from the mass of events in which this history surpasses that of any other people. Being compelled to make a selection, and to adopt some rule for limitation, I shall not touch upon incidents or characters which, without any intrinsic greatness or important consequences, are merely preserved in lifeless memorials; although perfect information is indispensable to the learned, and many a barren desert contains springs, which sooner or later the scholar may succeed in discovering. It shall be my object on the contrary, to give a critical view of the history chiefly of the first five centuries; not influenced by fanciful speculations, but in the sobriety of research, -not putting forward the mere results of criticism, which serve only to establish fallacious opinions, but the researches themselves in their full extent. I shall endeavour to detect those original principles of the ancient Roman state and people, which have long been buried or obscured, and are frequently unknown to the historians of antiquity whose works we possess. I shall adhere to strict justice in awarding praise or censure, admiration or abhorrence, in cases where partiality has given birth to misrepresentation, and this again has engendered, after the lapse of many centuries, erroneous judgments. I shall describe the extension of the empire, the developement of the constitution, the frame of government, the habits and manners as they are discoverable from time to time. I shall give a nearer insight into the characters and acts of those men who were

powerful agents of good or evil in their respective times, or rendered themselves in any way conspicuous above their contemporaries. I shall minutely detail the events of war where they do not exhibit a successive uniformity, and give, at the same time, to the full extent of our authentic information, an accurate and distinct description of those nations which the extending sphere of the Roman dominion gradually comprised. I shall also consider in its principal epochs the literature of those authors whose works are either extant, or have been partially lost to posterity.

When the mind of Sallust, having settled into calmness, reflected on the many bitter sufferings which he had endured in the service of the state, he determined to retire from public life; and resuming his favourite studies, undertook to relate particular occurrences in the Roman History. The Latin language being but little read by the inhabitants of Greece or Western Europe, he found it necessary to inform his fellow-citizens, that the exploits of the Romans were in no wise thrown into the shade by those of the Greeks'. Polybius had ineffectually attempted, about a century before, to impress the Greeks with a conviction that the greatness of Rome exceeded any thing recorded in earlier history, and that not exclusively nor pre-eminently in the extent of her dominions. But the Greeks, even if unprejudiced by a deep detestation of their foreign rulers, could set little value on a history deficient in that vivacity and

Sallustius in Catilin. c. 4.

energy of eloquent narrative with which the deeds of their forefathers were decorated; and without which the most eventful history on record can no more be fully appreciated than a lyric poem without the accompaniment of music. This was the natural result of the lively and versatile temperament of their minds entirely bent on the pursuit of the beautiful. But it is remarkable, that among the literary public at Rome, whose favour Sallust was desirous to cultivate, however high the pride of national character, similar prejudices prevailed respecting the greatness of their ancestors. Yet, strange as this may appear, it is not difficult to be accounted for; and indeed Sallust has furnished the solution in the quiet consciousness that the Romans themselves would soon contemplate their history in another light. Rome had, at that time, no readable historian in her own language, excepting Cato3, whose Ancient History must have had all the attractive energy of our best old chroniclers. The majority, indeed, may have been tame and spiritless; but even the more simple and meritorious writers could not furnish enjoyment, because the literary men of Rome were educated altogether through the medium of Grecian learning; nor did they cultivate this in the sublimity of the Classic writers, but in the glitter and tinsel of a degenerated trifling literature at that time fashionable amongst the Greeks, with whom they mingled as with their living models and superiors, and hence they had utterly lost the taste for

' Vide Cicero de Legibus, I. c. 2. 3., where Cato himself does not escape the general censure.