PROBLEMS IN ROMAN HISTORY 77 



as one on the Social Wars; we have quite incomplete expositions on 

 the civil wars or on the conditions of the Roman provinces during 

 the Republic. 



But I do not think I am too much of an optimist when I maintain 

 that the new view that we already have of the Greek world, and of 

 the improved comparison of law and of the institutions of other 

 people, will have the effect of giving us in the near future a new and 

 quite original history of the Roman Republic. 



The examination of those problems which are treated in the history 

 of the Empire is leading us apparently to entirely different results. 



The wonderful energy of Mommsen, the great compilation of 

 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, the activity of a great number of 

 learned men belonging to all nations who accepted Mommsen's 

 fundamental criteria, seems to have directed the problem of the 

 Empire to a definite solution. To the conception which, on the general 

 progress of the Empire, was given by that prominent scholar, is to 

 be added that of those writers who treated the history of the single 

 provinces. 



In regard to the technical side, the researches on the administra- 

 tive, financial, and military organizations, and on public cult, made 

 under the guidance of Marquardt and Hirschfeld, lead to precise 

 reconstructions which are perfect in many respects. 



It is true that the Roman world has not yet completed the bringing 

 to light of the epigraphic material hidden in the bowels of the earth or 

 dispersed over lands not yet explored by the historian. It is also true 

 that though papyri have increased in a great measure the knowledge 

 of private law, it may from one moment to another give us new and 

 important information also on public law. However, so far as we can 

 see, the general lines of Roman administration will not be much 

 modified. 



Nevertheless, all these previsions do not lead us to consider as 

 solved the problems concerning the political and social reorganization 

 of the Empire. Among modern writers, and especially among those 

 who have followed the ideas of Mommsen, the general tendency has 

 been to glorify the happiness and welfare of the Roman world. They 

 have based themselves on the existence of the colossal ruins scattered 

 in all the provinces, on the regularity and perfection of administra- 

 tive and military organizations, on the extension of commerce, and 

 on the enormous development of riches, rather than on literary texts 

 which do not seem always to help their thesis. 



The discordant voices of ancient authors are interpreted as inter- 

 ested protests and outbursts of political parties. The happiness of 

 the Roman Peace and of the Imperial government contrasts, they say, 

 with the hardness and rapacity of republican oligarchy; and the folly 

 and cruelty of princes is compensated by the upright provincial 



