THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS. 



169 



parently a union of elements belonging to different 

 tribes, such as would compel them, for the preser- 

 vation of peace and the regulation of daily inter- 

 course, to adopt some common measure of right. 

 It must be a union, not a conquest of one tribe 

 by another, otherwise the conquering tribe would 

 of course keep its own customs, as the Spartans 

 did among the conquered people of Laconia. 

 Now it appears likely that these conditions were 

 exactly fulfilled by the primeval settlements on 

 the hills of Rome. The hills are either escarped 

 by Nature, or capable of easy escarpment, and 

 seem originally to have been little separate for- 

 tresses, by the union of which the city was ulti- 

 mately formed. That there were tribal differences 

 among the inhabitants of the different hills, is a 

 belief to which all traditions and all the evidence 

 of institutions point, whether we suppose the dif- 

 ference to have been great or not, and whatever 

 special theory we may form as to the origin of the 

 Roman people. If the germ of law, as distin- 

 guished from custom, was brought into existence 

 in this manner, it would be fostered and expand- 

 ed by the legislative exigencies of the political and 

 social concordat between the two orders, and also 

 by those arising out of the adjustment of relations 

 with other races, in the course of conquest and 

 colonization. 



Roman law had also, in common with Roman 

 morality, the advantage of being comparatively 

 free from the perverting influence of tribal super- 

 stition. 1 Roman morality was, in the main, a 

 rational rule of duty, the shortcomings and aber- 

 rations of which arose not from superstition, but 

 from narrowness of perception, peculiarity of 

 sphere, and the bias of national circumstance. 

 The auguries, which were so often used for the 

 purposes of political obstruction or intrigue, fall 

 under the head rather of trickery than of super- 

 stition. 



Roman law, in the same manner, was a rule 

 of expediency, rightly or wrongly conceived, with 

 comparatively little tincture of religion. In this 

 again we probably see the effect of a fusion of 

 tribes upon the tribal superstitions. " Rome," it 

 has been said, " had no mythology." This is 

 scarcely an overstatement ; and we do not ac- 

 count for the fact by saying that the Romans 

 were unimaginative, because it is not the creative 



1 From religious perversion Romfln law was emi- 

 nently free ; but it could not be free from perverting 

 influences of a social kind ; so that we ought to be cau- 

 tious, for instanc, in borrowing law on any subject 

 concerning the relations between the sexes from the 

 corrupt society of the Roman Empire. 



imagination that produces a mythology, but the 

 impression made by the objects and forces of 

 Nature on the minds of the forefathers of the 

 tribe. 



A more tenable explanation, at all events, is 

 that just suggested, the disintegration of mytholo- 

 gies by the mixture of tribes. A part of the Ro- 

 man religion — the worship of such abstractions 

 as Fides, Fortuna, Salus, Concordia, Bellona, Ter- 

 minus — even looks like a product of the intellect 

 posterior to the decay of the mythologies, which 

 we may be pretty sure were physical. It is no 

 doubt true that the formalities which were left 

 — hollow ceremonial, auguries, and priesthoods 

 which were given without scruple, like secular 

 offices, to the most profligate men of the world — 

 were worse than worthless in a religious point of 

 view. But historians who dwell on this fail to 

 see that the real essence of religion, a belief in 

 the power of duty and of righteousness, that be- 

 lief which afterward took the more definite form 

 of Roman Stoicism, had been detached by the 

 dissolution of the mythologies, and exerted its 

 force, such as that force was, independently of 

 the ceremonial, the sacred chickens, and the dis- 

 sipated high-priests. In this sense the tribute 

 paid by Polybius to the religious character of the 

 Romans is deserved ; they had a higher sense of 

 religious obligation than the Greeks ; they were 

 more likely than the Greeks, the Phoenicians, or 

 any of their other rivals, to swear and disappoint 

 not, though it were to their own hinderance : and 

 this they owed, as we conceive, not to an effort 

 of speculative intellect, which in an early stage 

 of society would be out of the question, but to 

 some happy conjunction of circumstances, such 

 as would be presented by a break-up of tribal 

 mythologies, combined with influences favorable 

 to the formation of strong habits of political and 

 social duty. Religious art was sacrificed ; that 

 was the exclusive heritage of the Greek ; but su- 

 perior morality was, on the whole, the heritage 

 of the Roman, and, if he produced no good tragedy 

 himself, he furnished characters for Shakespeare 

 and Corneille. 



Whatever set the Romans free, or compara- 

 tively free, from the tyranny of tribal religion, 

 may be considered as having in the same meas- 

 ure been the source of the tolerance which was 

 so indispensable a qualification for the exercise 

 of dominion over a polytheistic world. They 

 waged no war on " the gods of the nations," or 

 on the worshipers of those gods as such. They 

 did not set up golden images after the fashion of 

 Nebuchadnezzar. In early times they seem to 



