Rome and the empire 271 



were to be solidly Romanized as a moral bulwark against barbarism. 

 But this duty could only be performed by a healthy and vigorous Italy, 

 and Italy 1 was not healthy and vigorous. Internal security left the 

 people free to go on in the same ways as they had now been following 

 for generations, and those ways, as we have seen, did not tend to the 

 revival of a free rural population. Country towns were not as yet in 

 manifest decay, but there were now no imperial politics, and municipal 

 politics, ever petty and self-regarding, offered no stimulus to arouse a 

 larger and common interest. Municipalities looked for benefactors, and 

 were still able to find them. In this period we meet with institutions 

 of a charitable kind, some even promoted by the imperial government, 

 for the benefit of orphans and children of the poor. This was a credit 

 to the humanity of the age, but surely a palliative of social ailments, 

 not a proof of sound condition. In Rome there was life, but it was 

 cosmopolitan life. Rome was the capital of the Roman world, not of 

 Italy. In the eyes of jealous patriots it seemed that what Rome herself 

 needed was a thorough Romanizing. It was not from the great wicked 

 city, thronged with adventurers 2 of every sort, largely Oriental Greeks, 

 and hordes of freedmen, that the better Roman influences could spread 

 abroad. Nor were the old Provinces, such as Spain and southern Gaul, 

 where Roman civilization had long been supreme, in a position to 

 assimilate 3 and Romanize the ruder border-lands by the Rhine and 

 Danube. They had no energies to spare: moreover, they too de- 

 pended on the central government, and the seat of that government 

 was Rome. 



Italy alone could have vitalized the empire by moral influence, cre- 

 ating in the vast fabric a spiritual unity, and making a great machine 

 into something more or less like a nation, that is, if she had been 

 qualified for acting such a part. But Italy had never been a nation 

 herself. The result of the great Italian war of 90 and 89 BC had been 

 to merge Italy in Rome, not Rome in Italy. Italians, now Romans, 

 henceforth shared the exploitation of the subject countries and the 

 hatred of oppressed peoples. But under the constitution of the Republic 

 politics became more of a farce the more the franchise was extended, and 

 the most obvious effect of Italian enfranchisement was to increase the 

 number of those who directly or indirectly made a living out of provincial 

 wrongs. The Provinces swarmed with bloodsuckers of every kind. The 

 establishment of the Empire at length did something to relieve the 

 sufferings of the Provinces. But it was found necessary to recognize 

 Italy as a privileged imperial land. In modern times such privilege 



1 Cf Nissen Italische Landeskunde vol II pp 128-30. 



2 A notable utterance on this topic is Seneca ad Helviam 6 2, 3. See Mayor's notes on 

 Juvenal in 58 foil. 



3 See Tacitus Germ 29 for interesting matter bearing on these points. 



