Books: The Old Roman World

J >> John Lord >> The Old Roman World

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[Sidenote: Sparta.]

Sparta, of historic fame, was not magnificent except in public
buildings. It had a famous portico, the columns of which, of white
marble, represented the illustrious persons among the vanquished Medes.

[Sidenote: Olympia.]

Olympia, the holy city, was celebrated for its temple and its
consecrated garden, where stood some of the great masterpieces of
ancient, art, among them the famous statue of Jupiter, the work of
Pheidias,--an impersonation of majesty and power,--a work which
furnished models from which Michael Angelo drew his inspiration.

[Sidenote: Delphi.]

Delphi, another consecrated city, was enriched with the contributions of
all Greece, and was the seat of the Dorian religion. So rich were the
shrines of its oracle that Nero carried away from it five hundred
statues of bronze at one time.

[Sidenote: Greece enriches Rome.]

Such was Greece, every city of which was famous for art, or literature,
or commerce, or manufacture, or for deeds which live in history. It had
established a great empire in the East, but fell, like all other
conquering nations, from the luxury which conquest engendered. It was no
longer able to protect itself. Its phalanx, which resisted the shock of
the Persian hosts, yielded to the all-conquering legion. When Aemilius
Paulus marched up the Via Sacra with the spoils of the Macedonian
kingdom in his grand and brilliant triumph, he was preceded by two
hundred and fifty wagons containing pictures and statues, and three
thousand men, each carrying a vase of silver coin, and four hundred more
bearing crowns of gold. Yet this was but the commencement of the plunder
of Greece.

[Sidenote: Islands colonized by Greeks.]

And not merely Greece herself, but the islands which she had colonized
formed no slight addition to the glories of the empire. Rhodes was the
seat of a famous school for sculpture and painting, from which issued
the Laocoon and the Farnese Bull. It contained three thousand statues
and one hundred and six colossi, among them the famous statue of the
sun, one hundred and five feet high, one of the seven wonders of the
world, containing 3000 talents--more than 3,000,000 dollars. Its school
of rhetoric was so celebrated that Cicero resorted to it to perfect
himself in oratory.

[Sidenote: Asia Minor.]

[Sidenote: Its extent.]

[Sidenote: Cities.]

[Sidenote: Antioch.]

If we pass from Greece to Asia Minor and Syria, with their dependent
provinces, all of which were added to the empire by the victories of
Sulla and Pompey, we are still more impressed with the extent of the
Roman rule. Asia Minor, a vast peninsula between the Mediterranean,
Aegean, and Euxine seas, included several of the old monarchies of the
world. It extended from Ilium on the west to the banks of the Euphrates,
from the northern parts of Bithynia and Pontus to Syria and Cilicia,
nine hundred miles from east to west, and nearly three hundred from
north to south. It was the scene of some of the grandest conquests of
the oriental world, Babylonian, Persian, and Grecian. Syria embraced all
countries from the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean to the Arabian
deserts. No conquests of the Romans were attended with more eclat than
the subjection of these wealthy and populous sections of the oriental
world; and they introduced a boundless wealth and luxury into Italy. But
in spite of the sack of cities and the devastations of armies, the old
monarchy of the Seleucidae remained rich and grand. Both Syria and Asia
Minor could boast of large and flourishing cities, as well as every kind
of luxury and art. Antioch was the third city in the empire, the capital
of the Greek kings of Syria, and like Alexandria a monument of the
Macedonian age. It was built on a regular and magnificent plan, and
abounded in temples and monuments. Its most striking feature was a
street four miles in length, perfectly level, with double colonnades
through its whole length, built by Antiochus Epiphanes. In magnitude the
city was not much inferior to Paris at the present day, and covered more
land than Rome. It had its baths, its theatres and amphitheatres, its
fora, its museums, its aqueducts, its temples, and its palaces. It was
the most luxurious of all the cities of the East, and had a population
of three hundred thousand who were free. In the latter clays of the
empire it was famous as the scene of the labors of Chrysostom.

[Sidenote: Ephesus.]

Ephesus, one of the twelve of the Ionian cities in Asia, was the glory
of Lydia,--a sacred city of which the temple of Diana was the greatest
ornament. This famous temple was four times as large as the Parthenon,
and covered as much ground as Cologne Cathedral, and was two hundred and
twenty years in building. It had one hundred and twenty-eight columns
sixty feet high, of which thirty-six were carved, each contributed by a
king--the largest of all the Grecian temples, and probably the most
splendid. It was a city of great trade and wealth. Its theatre was the
largest in the world, six hundred and sixty feet in diameter, [Footnote:
Muller, _Anc. Art._] and capable of holding sixty thousand
spectators. Ephesus gave birth to Apelles the painter, and was the
metropolis of five hundred cities.

[Sidenote: Jerusalem.]

[Sidenote: The Temple.]

[Sidenote: The Acropolis.]

Jerusalem, so dear to Christians as the most sacred spot on earth,
inclosed by lofty walls and towers, not so beautiful or populous as in
the days of Solomon and David, was, before its destruction by Titus, one
of the finest cities of the East. Its royal palace, surrounded by a wall
thirty cubits high, with decorated towers at equal intervals, contained
enormous banqueting halls and chambers most profusely ornamented; and
this palace, magnificent beyond description, was connected with porticos
and gardens filled with statues and reservoirs of water. It occupied a
larger space than the present fortress, from the western edge of Mount
Zion to the present garden of the Armenian Convent. The Temple, so
famous, was small compared with the great wonders of Grecian
architecture, being only about one hundred and fifty feet by seventy;
but its front was covered with plates of gold, and some of the stones of
which it was composed were more than sixty feet in length and nine in
width. Its magnificence consisted in its decorations and the vast
quantity of gold and precious woods used in its varied ornaments, and
vessels of gold, so as to make it one of the most costly edifices ever
erected to the worship of God. The Acropolis, which was the fortress of
the Temple, combined the strength of a castle with the magnificence of a
palace, and was like a city in extent, towering seventy cubits above the
elevated rock upon which it was built. So strongly fortified was
Jerusalem, even in its latter days, that it took Titus five months, with
an army of one hundred thousand men, to subdue it; one of the most
memorable sieges on record. It probably would have held out against the
whole power of Rome, had not famine done more than battering rams.

[Sidenote: Damascus and other cities.]

Many other interesting cities might be mentioned both in Syria and Asia
Minor, which were centres of trade, or seats of philosophy, or homes of
art. Tarsus in Cilicia was a great mercantile city, to which strangers
from all parts resorted. Damascus, the oldest city in the world, and the
old capital of Syria, was both beautiful and rich. Laodicea was famous
for tapestries, Hierapolis for its iron wares, Cybara for its dyes,
Sardis for its wines, Smyrna for its beautiful monuments, Delos for its
slave-trade, Gyrene for its horses, Paphos for its temple of Venus, in
which were a hundred altars. Seleucia, on the Tigris, had a population
of four hundred thousand. Caesarea, founded by Herod the Great, and the
principal seat of government to the Roman prefects, had a harbor equal
in size to the renowned Piraeus, and was secured against the southwest
winds by a mole of such massive construction that the blocks of stone,
sunk under the water, were fifty feet in length and eighteen in width,
and nine in thickness. [Footnote: Josephus, _Ant_., xv.] The city
itself was constructed of polished stone, with an agora, a theatre, a
circus, a praetorium, and a temple to Caesar. Tyre, which had resisted for
seven months the armies of Alexander, remained to the fall of the empire
a great emporium of trade. It monopolized the manufacture of imperial
purple. Sidon was equally celebrated for its glass and embroidered
robes. The Sidonians cast glass mirrors, and imitated precious stones.
But the glory of both Tyre and Sidon was in ships, which visited all the
coasts of the Mediterranean, and even penetrated to Britain and India.

[Sidenote: Egypt.]

[Sidenote: Its ancient grandeur.]

[Sidenote: Glories of Egypt.]

[Sidenote: Thebes.]

But greater than Tyre, or Antioch, or any eastern city, was Alexandria,
the capital of Egypt, which was one of the last provinces added to the
empire. Egypt alone was a mighty monarchy--the oldest which history
commemorates, august in records and memories. What pride, what pomp,
what glory are associated with the land of the Pharaohs, with its mighty
river reaching to the centre of a great continent, flowing thousands of
miles to the sea, irrigating and enriching the most fertile valley of
the world! What noble and populous cities arose upon its banks three
thousand years before Roman power was felt! What enduring monuments
remain of a its ancient very ancient yet extinct civilization! What
successive races of conquerors have triumphed in the granite palaces of
Thebes and Memphis! Old, sacred, rich, populous, and learned, Egypt
becomes a province of the Roman empire. The sceptre of three hundred
kings passes from Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, to Augustus
Caesar, the conqueror at Actium; and six millions of different races,
once the most civilized on the earth, are amalgamated with the other
races and peoples which compose the universal monarchy. At one time the
military force of Egypt is said to have amounted to seven hundred
thousand men, in the period of its greatest prosperity. The annual
revenues of this state under the Ptolemies amounted to about 17,000,000
dollars in gold and silver, beside the produce of the earth. A single
feast cost Philadelphus more than half a million of pounds sterling, and
he had accumulated treasures to the amount of 740,000 talents, or about
860,000,000 dollars. [Footnote: Napoleon, _Life of Caesar_.] What
European monarch ever possessed such a sum? The kings of Egypt were
richer in the gold and silver they could command than Louis XIV., in the
proudest hour of his life. What monarchs ever reigned with more absolute
power than the kings of this ancient seat of learning and art! The
foundation of Thebes goes back to the mythical period of Egyptian
history, and it covered as much ground as Rome or Paris, equally the
centre of religion, of trade, of manufactures, and of government,--the
sacerdotal capital of all who worshiped Ammon from Pelusium to Axume,
from the Red Sea to the Oases of Libya. The palaces of Thebes, though
ruins two thousand years ago as they are ruins now, were the largest and
probably the most magnificent ever erected by the hand of man. What must
be thought of a palace whose central hall was eighty feet in height,
three hundred and twenty-five feet in length, and one hundred and
seventy-nine in breadth; the roof of which was supported by one hundred
and thirty-four columns, eleven feet in diameter and seventy-six feet in
height, with their pedestals; and where the cornices of the finest
marble were inlaid with ivory moldings or sheathed with beaten gold! But
I do not now refer to the glories of Egypt under Sesostris or Rameses,
but to what they were when Alexandria was the capital of the country,--
what it was under the Roman domination.

[Sidenote: Extent and population of Alexandria.]

[Sidenote: Library.]

[Sidenote: Public buildings.]

[Sidenote: Commerce.]

The ground-plan of this great city was traced by Alexander himself, but
it was not completed until the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. It
continued to receive embellishments from nearly every monarch of the
Lagian line. Its circumference was about fifteen miles; the streets were
regular, and crossed one another at right angles, and were wide enough
to admit both carriages and foot passengers. The harbor was large enough
to admit the largest fleet ever constructed; its walls and gates were
constructed with all the skill and strength known to antiquity; its
population numbered six hundred thousand, and all nations were
represented in its crowded streets. The wealth of the city may be
inferred from the fact that in one year 6250 talents, or more than
6,000,000 dollars, were paid to the public treasury for port dues. The
library was the largest in the world, and numbered over seven hundred
thousand volumes, and this was connected with a museum, a menagerie, a
botanical garden, and various halls for lectures, altogether forming the
most famous university in the empire. The inhabitants were chiefly
Greek, and had all their cultivated tastes and mercantile thrift. In a
commercial point of view it was the most important in the empire, and
its ships whitened every sea. Alexandria was of remarkable beauty, and
was called by Ammianus _Vertex omnium civitatum_. Its dry
atmosphere preserved for centuries the sharp outlines and gay colors of
its buildings, some of which were remarkably imposing. The Mausoleum of
the Ptolemies, the High Court of justice, the Stadium, the Gymnasium,
the Palaestra, the Amphitheatre, and the Temple of the Caesars, all called
out the admiration of travelers. The Emporium far surpassed the quays of
the Tiber. But the most imposing structure was the Exchange, to which,
for eight hundred years, all the nations sent their representatives. It
was commerce which made Alexandria so rich and beautiful, for which it
was more distinguished than both Tyre and Carthage. Unlike most
commercial cities, it was intellectual, and its schools of poetry,
mathematics, medicine, philosophy, and theology were more renowned than
even those of Athens during the third and fourth centuries. For wealth,
population, intelligence, and art, it was the second city of the world.
It would be a great capital in these times.

[Sidenote: Power of the empire seated in the western provinces.]

Such were Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and Africa, all of which had
been great empires, but all of which were incorporated with the Roman in
less than two hundred years after Italy succumbed to the fortunate city
on the Tiber. But these old and venerated monarchies, with their
dependent states and provinces, though imposing and majestic, did not
compose the vital part of the empire of the Caesars. It was those new
provinces which were rescued from the barbarians, chiefly Celts, where
the life of the empire centred. It was Spain, Gaul, Britain, and
Illyricum, countries which now compose the most powerful European
monarchies, which the more truly show the strength of the Roman world.
And these countries were added last, and were not fully incorporated
with the empire until imperial power had culminated in the Antonines.
From a comparative wilderness, Spain and Gaul especially became populous
and flourishing states, dotted with cities, and instructed in all the
departments of Roman art and science. From these provinces the armies
were recruited, the schools were filled, and even the great generals and
emperors were furnished. These provinces embraced nearly the whole of
modern Europe.

[Sidenote: Spain.]

[Sidenote: Its provinces.]

[Sidenote: Productions.]

[Sidenote: Its towns and cities.]

[Sidenote: Its commercial centres.]

Spain had been added to the empire after the destruction of Carthage,
but only after a bitter and protracted warfare. It was completed by the
reduction of Numantia, a city of the Celtiberians in the valley of the
Douro, and its siege is more famous than that of Carthage, having defied
for a long time the whole power of the empire, as Tyre did Alexander,
and Jerusalem the armies of Titus. It yielded to the genius of Scipio,
the conqueror of Africa, as La Rochelle, in later times, fell before
Richelieu, but not until famine had done its work. The civilization of
Spain was rapid after the fall of Numantia, and in the time of the
Antonines was one of the richest and most prized of the Roman provinces.
It embraced the whole peninsula, from the Pillars of Hercules to the
Pyrenees; and the warlike nations who composed it became completely
Latinized. It was divided into three provinces--Boetica, Lusitania, and
Tarraconensis--all governed by praetors, the last of whom had consular
power, and resided in Carthago Nova, on the Mediterranean. Under
Constantine, Spain, with its islands, was divided into seven provinces,
and stood out from the rest of the empire like a round bastion tower
from the walls of an old fortified town. This magnificent possession,
extending four hundred and sixty miles from north to south, and five
hundred and seventy from east to west, including, with the Balearic
Isles, 171,300 square miles, with a rich and fertile soil and
inexhaustible mineral resources, was worth more to the Romans than all
the conquests of Pompey and Sulla, since it furnished men for the
armies, and materials for a new civilization. It furnished corn, oil,
wine, fruits, pasturage, metals of all kinds, and precious stones.
Boetica was famed for its harvests, Lusitania for its flocks,
Tarraconensis for its timber, and the fields around Carthago Nova for
materials of which cordage was made. But the great value of the
peninsula to the eyes of the Romans was in its rich mines of gold,
silver, and other metals. The bulk of the population was Iberian. The
Celtic element was the next most prominent. There were six hundred and
ninety-three towns and cities in which justice was administered. New
Carthage, on the Mediterranean, had a magnificent harbor, was strongly
fortified, and was twenty stadia in circumference, was a great emporium
of trade, and was in the near vicinity of the richest silver mines of
Spain, which employed forty thousand men. Gades (New Cadiz), a
Phoenician colony, on the Atlantic Ocean, was another commercial centre,
and numbered five hundred Equites among the population, and was
immensely rich. Corduba, on the Boetis (Guadalquivir), the capital of
Boetica, was a populous city before the Roman conquest, and was second
only to Gades as a commercial mart. It was the birthplace of Seneca and
Lucan.

[Sidenote: Richness of Gaul.]

[Sidenote: Population and cities.]

[Sidenote: Splendor of Gaulish cities.]

Gaul, which was the first of Caesar's most brilliant conquests, and which
took him ten years to accomplish, was a still more extensive province.
It was inhabited chiefly by Celtic tribes, who, uniting with Germanic
nations, made a most obstinate defense. When incorporated with the
empire, Gaul became rapidly civilized. It was a splendid country,
extending from the Pyrenees to the Rhine, with a sea-coast of more than
six hundred miles, and separated from Italy by the Alps, having 200,000
square miles. Great rivers, as in Spain, favored an extensive commerce
with the interior, and on their banks were populous and beautiful
cities. Its large coast on both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic gave
it a communication with all the world. It produced corn, oil, and wine,
those great staples, in great abundance. It had a beautiful climate, and
a healthy and hardy population, warlike, courageous, and generous. Gaul
was a populous country even in Caesar's time, and possessed twelve
hundred towns and cities, some of which were of great importance.
Burdigala, now Bordeaux, the chief city of Aquitania, on the Garonne,
was famous for its schools of rhetoric and grammar. Massolia
(Marseilles), before the Punic wars was a strong fortified city, and was
largely engaged in commerce. Vienne, a city of the Allobroges, was
inclosed with lofty walls, and had an amphitheatre whose long diameter
was five hundred feet, and the aqueducts supplied the city with water.
Lugdunum (Lyons) on the Rhone, was a place of great trade, and was
filled with temples, theatres, palaces, and aqueducts. Nemausus (NOEmes)
had subject to it twenty-four villages, and from the monuments which
remain, must have been a city of considerable importance. Its
amphitheatre would seat seventeen thousand people; and its aqueduct
constructed of three successive tiers of arches, one hundred and fifty-
five feet high, eight hundred and seventy feet long, and fifty feet
wide, is still one of the finest monuments of antiquity, built of stone
without cement. It is still solid and strong, and gives us a vivid
conception of the magnificence of Roman masonry. Narbo (Narbonne) was
another commercial centre, adorned with public buildings which called
forth the admiration of ancient travelers. The modern cities of Treves,
Boulogne, Rheims, Chalons, Cologne, Metz, Dijon, Sens, Orleans,
Poictiers, Clermont, Rouen, Paris, Basil, Geneva, were all considerable
places under the Roman rule, and some were of great antiquity.

[Sidenote: Illyricum.]

Illyricum is not famous in Roman history, but was a very considerable
province, equal to the whole Austrian empire in our times, and was as
completely reclaimed from barbarism as Gaul or Spain. Both Jerome and
Diocletian were born in a little Dalmatian town.

[Sidenote: Cultivated face of nature.]

[Sidenote: Agricultural wealth.]

Nothing could surpass the countries which bordered on the Mediterranean
in all those things which give material prosperity. They were salubrious
in climate, fertile in soil, cultivated like a garden, abounding in
nearly all the fruits, vegetables, and grains now known to civilization.
The beautiful face of nature was the subject of universal panegyric to
the fall of the empire. There were no destructive wars. All the various
provinces were controlled by the central power which emanated from Rome.
There was scope for commerce, and all kinds of manufacturing skill.
Italy, Sicily, and Egypt were especially fertile. The latter country
furnished corn in countless quantities for the Roman market. Italy could
boast of fifty kinds of wine, and was covered with luxurious villas in
which were fish-ponds, preserves for game, wide olive groves and
vineyards, to say nothing of the farms which produced milk, cheese,
honey, and poultry. Syria was so prosperous that its inhabitants divided
their time between the field, the banquet, and the gymnasium, and
indulged in continual festivals. It was so rich that Antiochus III. was
able to furnish at one time a tribute of 15,000 talents, beside 540,000
measures of wheat. The luxury of Nineveh and Babylon was revived in the
Phoenician cities.

[Sidenote: Natural productions of the various provinces.]

Spain produced horses, mules, wool, oil, figs, wine, corn, honey, beer,
flax, linen, beside mines of copper, silver, gold, quicksilver, tin,
lead, and steel. Gaul was so cultivated that there was little waste
land, and produced the same fruits and vegetables as at the present
day. Its hams and sausages were much prized. Sicily was famous for
wheat, Sardinia for wool, Epirus for horses, Macedonia for goats,
Thessaly for oil, Boeotia for flax, Scythia for furs, and Greece for
honey. Almost all the flowers, herbs, and fruits that grow in European
gardens were known to the Romans--the apricot, the peach, the
pomegranate, the citron, the orange, the quince, the apple, the pear,
the plum, the cherry, the fig, the date, the olive. Martial speaks of
pepper, beans, pulp, lentils, barley, beets, lettuce, radishes, cabbage
sprouts, leeks, turnips, asparagus, mushrooms, truffles, as well as all
sorts of game and birds. [Footnote: Martial, B. 13.] In no age of the
world was agriculture more honored than before the fall of the empire.

[Sidenote: Roads.]

And all these provinces were connected with each other and with the
capital by magnificent roads, perfectly straight, and paved with large
blocks of stone. They were originally constructed for military purposes,
but were used by travelers, and on them posts were regularly
established. They crossed valleys upon arches, and penetrated mountains.
In Italy, especially, they were great works of art, and connected all
the provinces. Among the great roads which conveyed to Rome as a centre
were the Clodian and Cassian roads which passed through Etruria; the
Amerina and Flavinia through Umbria; the Via Valeria, which had its
terminus at Alternum on the Adriatic; the Via Latina, which, passing
through Latium and Campania, extended to the southern extremity of
Italy; the Via Appia also passed through Latium, Campania, Lucania,
Iapygia to Brundusium, on the Adriatic. Again, from the central terminus
at Milan, several lines passed through the gorges of the Alps, and
connected Italy with Lyons and Mayence on the one side, and with the
Tyrol and Danubian provinces on the other. Spain and southern Gaul were
connected by a grand road from Cadiz to Narbonne and Arles. Lyons was
another centre from which branched out military roads to Saintes,
Marseilles, Boulogne, and Mayence. In fact, the Roman legion could
traverse every province in the empire over these grandly built public
roads, as great and important in the second century as railroads are at
the present time. There was an uninterrupted communication from the Wall
of Antonius through York, London, Sandwich, Boulogne, Rheims, Lyons,
Milan, Rome, Brundusium, Dyrrachium, Byzantium, Ancyra, Tarsus, Antioch,
Tyre, Jerusalem--a distance of 3740 miles. And these roads were divided
by milestones, and houses for travelers erected every five or six miles.