262 The Republic. R O 
authors who adorned this epoch, that any further details in 
this place must necessarily be repetitions. We may remark, 
however, than in no other department of knowledge than the 
two just mentioned did the Romans make any import¬ 
ant progress. In regard to philosophy at least, their pre¬ 
tensions cannot be ranked very high. Of physical science 
they were altogether destitute. And of their most cele¬ 
brated writings, or what they dignified with the name of 
Moral Philosophy—those, for example, of Cicero—besides 
that they were only transfusions from the Greek, we should 
hardly, in the present day, allow that they were of the nature 
of science or philosophy at all. Though moral precepts are 
enforced with persuasive elegance, and practical questions 
of morals discussed in our Spectators and Ramblers, we are 
not accustomed to rank these popular productions among 
our works of philosophy. But, unless where he enters upon 
the trite and puerile questions,—whether the sum mam bonum 
consists in pleasure, or in the absence of pain,—whether it 
consists in virtue along with riches and pleasure, or in virtue 
alone;—or where he undertakes to prove that all opinions 
are doubtful, and that, with regard to the human mind, there 
is no such thing as truth or falsehood, frivolities which still 
less deserve the name of philosophy, and are of kin to those 
with which the human mind is uniformly caught in the in¬ 
fancy of civilization,—the writings of Cicero certainly ought 
not to be considered as of a higher cast than the serious 
papers in the Spectator, or the moral sermons of Blair. 
From the time of Augustus, it is universally allowed that 
literature, among the Romans, degenerated and declined. 
The causes of this, present an object of inquiry to which 
great attention has'been called, and from which the most 
important practical conclusions may be deduced. The 
great change which had taken place in the condition of the 
Romans, was the loss of liberty; and although their rude 
and ill constructed republic was a most imperfect instrument 
of government, the difference in the stateof the human mind, 
under a free and a despotic constitution, was prodigious. 
It is one of the most decisive experiments which has ever 
been made upon human nature; and upon the circumstances 
on which its degradation or its excellence really depend. 
The disadvantages under which the Romans laboured from the 
defective construction of their republican government, 
nourished in them many vices, and retarded their progress 
in improvement. But the despotism to which they after¬ 
wards submitted, speedily eradicated from their minds every 
amiable and respectable quality, and reduced them to almost 
the lowest, and most disgusting condition of human na¬ 
ture. Without this great experiment, it might have been 
deemed impossible, that a people who had once attained a 
high degree of civilization, could, without any external 
calamity, and merely by the vices of their government, sink 
back to a condition in many respects inferior to that of the 
barbarian ; a condition which, had it been described to us 
without any intimation of their former state, we should have 
regarded as one of the first removes from the savage life; 
displaying the ignorance, the falsehood, the sordid misery 
of the savage, without his manliness and constancy. The 
most instructive circumstance by* far in the history of the 
Greeks and Romans, and one of the most instructive which 
the annals of the human race present, is the contrast exhibited 
between the qualities which they displayed under an ill-re¬ 
gulated liberty, and the qualities engendered in them by 
despotism. 
Few words will here be sufficient for describing the decline 
and fall of literature under the horrid system of misrule to 
which the Roman world became subject, after the loss of the 
republican government. According to the natural order of 
things, the astonishing success which attended the literary 
efforts of the Augustan writers, ought to have excited the 
flame of ambition, and multiplied the candidates for fame. 
But the calamities of the tunes, calamities produced by the 
government alone, repressed the generous impulse; and not¬ 
withstanding the improved state of education, and the taste for 
reading and for literary pursuits which the Augustan age 
M E. The Empire. 
must have produced, the succeeding generations passed 
away with little addition to the stores of literature. The 
satires of Juvenal, and the historical writings of Tacitus, are 
perhaps the only productions which display any vigour of 
genius, or of thought, subsequent to the age of Horace and 
Livy. A sort of mental torpor seems to have conre upon 
the human race; every motive for exertion died away; and 
men took refuge in stupidity and indifference from the evils 
of the oppression which they had not manliness to shake off. 
It is curious enough, that even poetry, which seems more 
ready to flourish under unfavourable circumstances than any 
other branch of literature, gradually disappeared under the 
second barbarity of Roman despotism, and left nothing be¬ 
hind excepting some chronicles, for the most part contemp¬ 
tible, of passing events. Towards the latter period of the 
existence of Rome, her literature presented only tedious 
treatises on metaphysical theology, or conpilations and re¬ 
flexions on Jaw; the former class deservedly forgotten; the 
latter as deservedly memorable. 
III. The Roman Empire. 
The first war which engaged the attention of the Roman 
emperor, was that against the Cantabrians and Asturians, 
two Spanish nations, who had never yet yielded to the 
Roman power. In that war, the Romans met with a formi¬ 
dable resistance, and it was with great difficulty that they 
succeeded in subjugating these warlike nations. 
The reputation of Augustus, not only as a warrior, but 
as a legislator and statesman, had extended to the remotest 
kingdoms. Phrahates, king of Parthia, offered to enter 
into a treaty with him on his own terms; and Porus, king 
of India, sent to him three ambassadors, intrusted with a. 
letter in the Greek language, informing him that he held 
dominion over 600 kings, and that he valued so highly the 
friendship of Augustus, that he would meet him at any 
place he should appoint, and would assist him in any right 
cause. Of these three ambassadors, two died on the 
journey; the third, who was a Gymnosophist, and named 
Zarmar, met Augustus at Samos, and accompanying him to 
Athens, he there burnt himself in his presence. 
The Roman empire had now extended itself far beyond 
those limits which nature had assigned it. Rome, venerable 
from its antiquity, distinguished by its literature, by its arts, 
and by its arms, was indeed a powerful centre, capable of 
holding together, and of drawing into its vortex the most 
distant and scattered elements; but the equilibrium which it 
enjoyed was one of tottering stability, which one impulse 
might disturb, and which one irruption might for ever, 
destroy. That stable poise which tends to right itself when 
it is disturbed, and which can arise only in a state consoli¬ 
dated by common interests, and held together by the frame¬ 
work of equal laws, was unknown to Rome in her best 
days, and has perhaps been witnessed only as a phenomenon 
of modern legislation. The wide spread dominions of the 
Romans embraced many heterogeneous elements. Bounded 
by states little raised above savage life, frequent incursions 
were made into its remote provinces; and encouraged by 
success, the Germans in the north of Europe made a formi¬ 
dable irruption into Gaul. Though at first repulsed with 
loss, yet they had set the example of disobedience; and 
the Rhaeti, who lived near the Lake of Constance, entered 
Italy, laying waste every territory through which they 
passed, and putting man, woman, and child to the sword. 
Drusus, the second son of the empress Livia, was sent out 
against the invaders, and gained a complete victory over 
them; and the remnant of that army having been joined by 
the Vindelici and Norici, were reduced by Tiberius, 
Drusus’s elder brother, and yielded to the Roman power. 
In order to maintain these tribes in subjection, Augustus 
established two colonies in Vindelici, and constructed a 
road from thence into Noricum and Rhsetia. For the- 
defence of these colonies he built two cities, Drysomagus 
and Augusta Vindelicorum, now Nimeguen and Augsburg. 
Augustus was now raised to the spiritual honour of Pon- 
tifex 
