M. AMEDEE THIERRY'S NOUVEAUX REC ITS DE L'IIISTOIRE ROMAINE *
IF the thanks of mankind are due to historians whose mind, like Gibbon's, Guizot's, or Mommsen's, is able to grasp a great subject and follow it up through the ages, making, as it were, their own a whole vast tract of the past life of the human race, they are only less so to those who, confining themselves within briefer limits as to time take a particular epoch for especial field of study, and gradually reproduce for us all the various aspects of its individual life. Such appears to have been of late years the course adopted by M. Am6dee Thierry, although the list of his historical works includes some, such as his two on the History of Gaul, or his Tableau * Nouveaux Recite de tHistoire Romaine aye Quatreeme et Cialuilote Sticks. Pet M. An.d_ea ThienT, Senatettr at Metobre de l'Institut. PArls: Didier et we. 1835. de PEmpire Remain, which spread over more extended periods of time. Yet all three works fit in remarkably with the task which he seems now to have settled down to,—of exhibiting to us in full detail those two seemingly dark centuries, the fourth and fifth of our era, full of ruins, and yet really instinct with life, whose very death-groans are, as it were, but the cries of a birth-travail. The Histoire des Gaulois, followed by the Histoire de la Garde sous PAd- ministration Romaine, forms a monograph which unrolls before us the full development of the greatest of Western countries, under what may be called the older barbarism of the pre-Roman period, under Roman civilization, and amidst the flood of the later bar- barians. The Tableau de PEmpire Romain, one of the most sub- stantial historical works of contemporary literature, and from which the Imperial Life of acesor seems to have borrowed all its ideas, to exaggerate or distort them according to preconceived Cresarian theory,—sets before us in turn the development of the Roman imperial polity-from a central point of view; so that by the time we have read these three works we know the later Roman world in all its breadth, from centre to circumference. Then come the group of works which specially shoiv forth to us the breaking up of that world,—it would seem at fist' sight into dead fragments, into almost impalpable 'powder,'—and yet in reality into masses of living matter, loose, shapeless, semi-fluid at first, like those creatures which lie at the very outskirts of animated nature, yet with tendencies of their own to form and organization, and out of which are gradually to be developed the politics. of the modern world. To thie group 'belong the' Recits de I' Iii.stoire Romaine art Cinguieme Slick, the Nouveaux Ricits now under notice, the further series of the same now publiating (like the two former ones). in the Revue' des Deux - Mondes, and lastly,--althou'gh thia work in turn projects over into -far more modern times,—the author's masterpiece, his Histoire d'Attila, de sea FlIt et de sea Sue- cesseurs. it is difficult to believe until one has read these 'works, how deep en interest attaches* itself to- this gloomy period of the world's life, when exhibited to us by one who thoroughly understands it, and who is able to bring it out in its reality.
The velume before us deals 'mainly with that phase of the history of the Roman Empire when the Sovereign falls into the background of the political picture, and, as in modern times, the foreground is occupied by the. minister. About three-fourths of the volume are devoted to the three leading miniaters of the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth centuries, Rufinus and Eutropius in the East, Stilicho in the West, the remainder being mainly taken up with that great event which really domi- nates the century— the piege and sack of Rome by Marie (411), For there can be no greater mistake than to .suppose that the turning-points of history are the deaths of individual men, how- ever great. Even the bloodiest battles take less hold of the minds, of mankind than those material triumphs, which consist of the
seizure, the sack, the destruction of some city or stronghold which has been the centre or seeming Palladium of a nation's life. The
destruction of Jerusalem by Titus is the true apogee of power of
imperial Rome, as well as the dividing line of the history of the Christian Church. The sack of Rome by Alaric is the real death-
blow to the Roman Empire, the destruction'ef the prestige of the
Roman name, the announcement to the whole world that the barbarians of the North have triumphed. The taking of Jeru- salem by the Crusaders is the real 'constitution of a Christendom.
The taking of Constantinople by Mob ammed II. marks, on the contrary, the .downfall of that very idea of a Christendom as a
political entity, the substitution for it of that international policy of modern times which may be swayed by, but is no longer contained in, Christianity. Or, again, to come to more modern times and to special instances, the real overthrow of royalty in France is not the execution of Louis XVI, but the taking of the Bastille; the real destruction of the First Empire was not on the field of Waterloo, but in the occupation of Paris
by the allies; just as the occupation of Richmond, not the defeat or surrender of Lee, has been within 'the present year the true
overthrow of the Southern Confederacy. Events like these may often be logically but mere results,—terms in a fixed series, easy fruits of a victory already won. Yet they are in fact the palpable embodiments of a triumph, which would be incomplete and even doubtful without them ; they sink deep into the minds of the masses by the weight of material evidence which they carry with them. Man dies and disappears, but the ruined stems of a city, its spoils carried away into distant lands, speak for themselves for many generations.
Speaking indeed broadly, it may be said that the fall of Rome is the subject of the whole of M. Thierry's ,Nouveaux Welts, as the extinction of the Western Roman Empire was that of the earlier volume of Itecits, and it is probable that a more careful study of the period is precisely that which has led the writer him- self back to the earlier event, as being immeasurably the more im- portant of the two, although in fact often overlooked beside the other by the distant modern student. For the story of the three ministers is in fact but that of the three men whose policy pro- tracts or hastens the fall of Rome from within, whilst the story of the Gothic King, so essentially mixed up with theirs, is that of the man whom they stop or help on his way from without to that great overthrow,—an overthrow, be it observed, not really of his own seeking. M. Thierry brings out very clearly the fact that Alaric was not, like the later Attila, a mere barbaric destroyer ; that his ambition was not to extinguish the Roman Empire, but to substitute his own power for that of the C.sars, to reconstitute a " Romanity"--suCh is the term of the period—for his own be- hoof and that of his people ; and the dramatic, the almost poignant interest of the narrative lies precisely in the slow drawing on of the Gothic King, in spite of himself, as by an unseen hand, to the dread catastrophe.
M. Thierry's sympathies are, however, visibly all with Alaric's great rival, Stilicho, whose worst crimes meet with no more con- demnation from him than they did from his contemporary pane- gyrist, Clauthan. It must be admitted that when carefully studied few personages in history are more remarkable than this Romanized Vandal, who for many years set himself across the very course and current of the age, dammed back with his genius the flood- tide of barbarism, and actually on the eve of the utter overthrow of the Roman power shed around it such a sun.eb glow of world- wide glory as seemed to contemporaries almost the dawn of a new day. It is but a few weeks since the remains of Richborough were described in the Spectator, and it has been thought that the last touch of Roman hands may have been bestowed upon Rutu- pium at the time when, as commemorated by Claudian, Stilicho caused the whole British coast to be fortified against Saxon pirates ; whilst indeed, on the other hand, the withdrawal by Stilicho from Northern Britain for his campaign in Greece against .Alaric of the legion which kept out the Picts and Scots was per- haps the main blow to the Norman dominion in our island. So closely is our own history connected with that of the great Vandal.
M. Thierry has made in his work a most effective and often excellent use of Clauclian. Perhaps, however, he will allow a critic to observe that he seems rather too apt to take the poet's images for actual facts ; and again, that in adopting M. Trognon's generally faithful translation of the last great Pagan, he has sometimes too easily surrendered his own good judgment. A moment's reflection would thus have suggested to him that in the passage-
" Armenim vibratis crinibus aim Ilerbida collectae facili velamina nodo," translated, "Les escadrons armeniens aux cheveux crepus, aux robes couleur d'herbe," &c., there is both a misprint and a probable mis- take,—crepu for crêpe, curled with an iron, a use of the verb vibrare which is established by Virgil ; whilst " herbida velandna" would seem to be not grass-green garments, but garments made of that cotton for which Armenia remained celebrated till the days of Marco Polo,—flowing robes gathered in a loose knot.
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