ARNOLD ON ROMAN PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION.* Ma. ARNOLD has been fortunate
in the subject assigned for his essay. The fact of the government of the civilised world for half a millennium as the provinces of an empire seated and centred in an Italian town, is the leading fact in secular history. To the Empire of Rome, all ancient history converges ; from it, all modern history diverges again. Whatever the dividing-line which we may choose to part the one from the other, it must be coincident with some marked event in the history of the Roman Empire. The system on which this vast dominion was organ- ised and administered, the strength and the weakness of its governing authorities, the blessings and curses which it brought in its train,—all these attract and repay the most earnest atten- tion of the student. It might seem, indeed, that the subject had long ago been exhausted, and that any gleanings which had dropped from the hand or escaped the eye of Gibbon, bad been garnered by the learned diligence and set forth with the ornate eloquence of Merivale. But this is by no means wholly the case, especially with one of the most important branches of the inquiry. Not only for the prosperity of the provinces under the Roman rule, but even more for the future of the nations which in time were to grow out of them, the nature of the privileges left to the municipal communities, and the manner in which these were organised, were matters of the highest importance. Now, the highly interesting inscriptions dis- covered, especially in Spain, within the last thirty years, have thrown a flood of light on the internal constitution of these provincial towns. Thanks mainly to these, we can see how active and prosperous was their life, and how large the share of self-government by freely elected magistrates allowed them by their imperial masters,—a privilege which, more than anything else, enabled them to hold up the torch of civilisation, not, indeed, unwavering or undimmed, but still never wholly quenched in the tide of advancing barbarism. The great epigraphic collections published in the last few years by scholars like Brambach, Renier, Mommsen, Hubner, Waddington, and not a few others, furnish many hints which serve to give com- pleteness and life to our conceptions of the system as a whole, and to throw light upon many a difficult problem. Hence Mr. Arnold has been fortunate also in the authorities which he has been able to use. The most valuable and exhaustive work by Marquardt appeared in its rewritten and much expanded form in time for Mr. Arnold to avail himself of the stores accumulated there. But he has evidently not contented himself with reproducing at second hand Marquardt's facts and conclusions, but has worked diligently at the original sources, supplemented by the most recent French and German authorities. His essay is, therefore, one of real value, not, indeed, adding largely to the knowledge of scholars, but collecting much .material hitherto scattered about, and stating in a clear style and with sound judgment the bearing of the facts on the general question of the nature of the Roman adminis- tration. It will serve as a very useful handbook to a student " getting up " his Tacitus or Pliny, and ought to find favour among a larger circle from its general historical interest. There are a few slips (some of them showing that philology is not Mr. Arnold's strong point), which ought to be removed in a second edition; and more misprints than we expect from a work issued from the Oxford Press. But on the whole, it strikes us as, in point of vigour and literary power, quite up to the high standard which some of its brilliant predecessors have taught us to expect from the Arnold Essay, while its extent of research assures to it a character of more permanent value than most can be said to enjoy.
In his general survey of the origin and character of the Roman Empire, Mr. Arnold does not fail to point out here and
• The Roman System of Provincial Administration, to Me Accession of Constantine. Being the Arnold Prize Essay for 1879. By W. T. Arnold, B.A. London: Mac- millan and Co. 1879.
there the close analogy which it bears, in spite of many and important differences, with our own rule in India. The resem- blances are mainly to be found in three points,—the system of
"client princes ;" the respect for native beliefs and institutions, wherever they did not interfere with the absolute rule of the governing class; and the internal peace and order secured, as compared with the tribal quarrels and the internecine quarrels which had usually preceded the conquest. On the ground of these, we may defend the rule of Rome, as we do that of England. Here Mr. Arnold with good-sense steers between the extreme views of the Positivist school, on the one hand, and those of Mr. Goldwin Smith and Mr. Freeman, on the other. " From Mummius to Augustus," writes this last scholar, " the Roman city stands as the living mistress of the dead world ; and from Augustus to Theodoric the mistress becomes as lifeless as her subjects. The -extension of equal rights to all the subjects of' a common master
was, after all, a very poor substitute for national independence, • or for full federal or municipal freedom." On the latter part of this extract, Mr. Arnold has some just remarks :—
" Ideally, no doubt, it would be a very poor substitute, but prac- tically, and as a matter of fact, was it a substitute for anything of the sort ? Where was the national independence which Rome destroyed ? In Macedonia, perhaps, alone of all her conquests. There was no nation, we have seen, in Spain, none in Gaul, none in Britain, none in Asia Minor. It is impossible not to lament the extinction of Mace- donia, but it must, at the same time, be remembered that Rome had not provoked the struggle, and it may be questioned whether the Macedonian Government had enough vitality left, if quite exempt from Roman interference, to defend its subjects from the perpetual encroachments of the Barbarians, as Rome defended them. If, then, the Roman rule did not, in the great majority of cases, destroy national independence,' there being none to destroy, still less did it destroy municipal freedom.' It is plain matter of fact that where they found municipal arrangements existing, the Romans let them alone, and even encouraged them ; and where they did not exist, they made it their first object to introduce them. The amount of inde- pendence enjoyed by these towns was considerable, and all the evid- ence goes to prove that the life that went on in them was a busy and active one, that their elections aroused a genuine political interest, and that their magistrates were conversant with affairs, and trained by the experience of public life. The municipal arrangements, though terribly perverted by Constantine and his successors, were, on the whole, both successful and permanent ; and when, after the cloud of barbarism was passing away, the 'Free Towns' begin to appear in Europe, we may regard them as no new growth, but as derived, more or less directly, from the provincial municipia of the Empire."
The phrase " imperium et libertas," not only never was uttered by any "eminent Roman," but never could have been uttered by any Roman, however obscure, and never could be supposed to have been uttered by a scholar who knew the meaning of the words. In this sense only they might have been made to convey some sense to his mind, by judicious and skilful paraphrase,—to explain the absolute lordship of the Roman Governor over the property, freedom, and life of the subject nations, to whom, in his condescension, he allowed a certain liberty of action in matters of games, processions, and sewage. If this be not the policy set forth in Lord Beacons- field's motto, it might perhaps have been better stated in English, which a master of phrases might possibly have made intelligible.
Mr. Arnold is, we think, not less successful in pointing out an important qualification to the assertion that the Empire of Rome was fatal to national life. "Those feelings," he writes, -" which are the presious part of national unity, the self-respect -which springs from the consciousness of being part of a great and powerful whole, the loyalty and patriotism it evokes, can exist apart from unity of place, or even of blood." The pro- vincials gained at least as much by having a wider sphere opened to them, in which no small number won the highest honours both in letters and in practical life, as they lost by the sacrifice of nominal independence. Of course, the actual change introduced into any province would depend very largely upon the degree to which it had been previously organ- ised. In Egypt, for instance, little or nothing needed to be done; in Gaul or Spain, the country had to be surveyed, roads made, cities built, and order and tranquillity substituted for anarchy and constant warfare. Hence conquest meant much more to some than it did to others ; but it would be hard to prove, in a single instance, that the bulk of the inhabitants of a province were the worse for subjection to Rome.
But there were two points in which the government of Rome bore the most striking contrast to our rule in India. In the first place, conquest meant to the Romans, as indeed to all the ancient nations, the power to impose a tribute upon the con- quered. The value of the Provinces to Rome was simply that money could be wrung out of them, to lighten the burdens of the conquerors, to maintain their armies, to feed their citizens, to furnish their games, and to fill the coffers of their nobles. We may now discuss whether this or that charge can fairly be thrown on the Indian Exchequer, but the indignation which fills a sensitive states- man of to-day, as he thinks of the Hindoo peasant taxed to maintain a " spirited " policy in Downing Street would have been quite unintelligible to the most enlightened of the Romans. The provincials were the stipendiarii, and it was right and proper, as Cicero argues, that they should pay the expenses of the government of their conquerors. In the second place, where tribute could not be levied from a poor and back- ward race, the blood-tax was claimed in its stead, and the flower of the youth was carried off to serve under the Roman eagles, usually in some distant province. These two taxes, of money and of men, were destined to drain away the life-blood of the Roman Empire, and to leave it an easy prey to the Barbarian ; though it may be open to question whether it was impoverish- ment or depopulation, the tax-gatherer or the centurion, which did most to weaken the strength of Rome, or rather, in what degree the two acted on each other to produce the fatal effect. Until of late, it has happily been a thing as unknown to English statesmanship to force others to fight our battles, as it has been to wring from them the money to pay for our aggressions. It would be an evil day, alike for our Empire and for our good-name, if the nation should give its approval, as it never has done as yet, to the obliteration of two of the chief distinctions between the greatest of Pagan and the greatest of Christian empires.
Our limits will not allow us to dwell on Mr. Arnold's clear and good sketch of the growth of the Roman dominions, and the policy of the different Emperors. The chapter on taxation, based, of course, mainly on Marquardt, is very complete ; that on the towns in the provinces, though admitting of expansion with advantage, is of especial interest, for reasons given above. It is to be regretted that Mr. Arnold has not been able to devote a separate chapter to the administration of justice. This subject is not, indeed, wholly omitted ; but the deep and permanent effects of the gradual extension of the Roman law over the provinces have proved of such historical importance, that the question well deserves fuller treatment. But the merits of the essay, as a whole, are such, that the author may fairly hope for the honours of a second edition. It will then be possible for it to be enlarged in several directions, and we may look forward to seeing it develope, like its brilliant predecessor, which is due to Mr. Bryce, into a complete text-book of the subject with which it deals. Meanwhile, we may congratulate Mr. Arnold on having produced an essay worthy of being associated with the memory of the great historian and scholar whose name he bears, and on having given proof that the literary power which has produced such rich fruits in the first generation, is not likely to fail in the second.
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