SPAIN UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE4 "SPAIN in ancient times was
the Eldorado of Rome, and it is always interesting to compare the Roman fashion of exploiting it with Spain's methods towards her own colonies at a later
• The Mechanics of Law gating. Br Courtenay Ebert, G.C.B. Oxford: at 'the University Prem. [611.-not.] • •
Spain under the &MGM B11107.0, By E. S. Boncliiar. Oxford : B. LI, [54: not] • time. At first under the Empire the wise policy of Augustus seemed to give hope of educating on truly national lines a people believed to number some six millions, or a quarter of the present population of Spain and Portugal. The Spaniard has ever loved his own town or village, and this local patriotism was allowed full expression in Roman administration., Sefior Altainim calls the first centuries of the Empire Spain's golden age. But, later, the province came to be regarded chiefly as a source of tribute. 1dr. Bouchier in this careful little study notes the." immense army of new officials." "All semblance of popular election of magistrates vanished. . . . The once flourishing trade corporations were seized on by the State. ... Agricultural land, so far as it was worked at all, was owned chiefly by officials and cultivated by slaves." Municipal life decayed, and the opportunity of constituting a Spanish nation in Spain was lost, as it was again in the fifteenth century, when local autonomy was too ruthlessly repressed. Civiliza- tion in Spain was accordingly confined to a minority. Mr. Bouchier remarks that each literary movement there, after receiving the first impulse from Rome, Provence, France, or Italy, "reaches rapid maturity, and decays almost as rapidly. from an exhaustion of ideas which the orators or poets vainly try to conceal by cleverness of language, or by over- refinement and subtlety of thought." The exhaustion or over-refinement of ideas has been due to the completely artificial position of literatere in Spain. It has been like a feather falling in a vacuum. Spanish authors under the Empire were read not in Spain but at Rome, and in modern times they are read exclusively in one or two, large towns. It was the same with architecture. "The Spaniards do not seem to have possessed much architectural originality. In no province did the Romans succeed in establishing more thoroughly the style which they had formed from the union of the Italian and the Greek, and in none did it last so far into the Middle Ages." It was imposed from without, and a national style was given no scope for development. So in religion the Spanish pagans were in an overwhelming majority. There were many bishops and- deacons, but it is doubtful whether they had large congregations. The position of the Church much resembled that of modern Spanish politics— many leaders and few followers. But the Romans did make a serious attempt to fuse and develop the Spanish people, and only the breaking up of the Empire prevented its success. The lists of authorities given at the end of each chapter of this book are deficient. For instance, Lafuente's history is included, but no mention is made of Don Rafael Altamim's far more scientific HultOria de Espana y de la Civilisacids Espanola (4 vols., 1900-10).
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