History of Rome from the Earliest Times down to 476 AD | Page 5

was
thoroughly national and Roman. Ideas had been borrowed, and these
ideas certainly resulted in increased efficiency and therefore in
increased wealth. But the gross material of Hellenism, whether as
realised in intellectual ideas or (the prize that appealed more
immediately to the practical Roman with his concrete mind) in tangible
things, had not been seized as a whole as the reward of victory: and no
great attempt had been made in former ages to assimilate the one or to
enjoy the other. The nature of the material rewards which had been
secured by the epochs of Italian conquest had indeed made such
assimilation or enjoyment impossible. They would have been
practicable only in a state which possessed a fairly complete urban life;
and the effect of the wars which Rome waged with her neighbours in
the peninsula had been to make the life of the average citizen more
purely agricultural than it had been in the early Republic, perhaps even
in the epoch of the Kings. The course of a nation's political, social and
intellectual history is determined very largely by the methods which it
adopts for its own expansion at the inevitable moment when its original
limits are found to be too narrow to satisfy even the most modest needs
of a growing population. The method chosen will depend chiefly on
geographical circumstances and on the military characteristics of the
people which are indissolubly connected with these. When the city of
Old Greece began to feel the strength of its growing manhood, and the
developing hunger which was both the sign and the source of that
strength, it looked askance at the mountain line which cut it off from
the inland regions, it turned hopeful eyes on the sea that sparkled along
its coasts; it manned its ships and sent its restless youth to a new and
distant home which was but a replica of the old. The results of this
maritime adventure were the glories of urban life and the all-embracing

sweep of Hellenism. The progress of Roman enterprise had been very
different. Following the example of all conquering Italian peoples,[2]
and especially of the Sabellian invaders whose movements immediately
preceded their own, the Romans adopted the course of inland expansion,
and such urban unity as they had possessed was dissipated over the vast
tract of territory on which the legions were settled, or to which the
noble sent his armed retainers, nominally to keep the land as the public
domain of Rome, in reality to hold it for himself and his descendants.
At a given moment (which is as clearly marked in Roman as in
Hellenic history) the possibility of such expansion ceased, and the
necessity for its cessation was as fully exhibited in the policy of the
government as in the tastes of the people. No Latin colony had been
planted later than the year 181, no Roman colony later than 157,[3] and
the senate showed no inclination to renew schemes for the further
assignment of territory amongst the people. There were many reasons
for this indifference to colonial enterprise. In the first place, although
colonisation had always been a relief to the proletariate and one of the
means regularly adopted by those in power for assuaging its dangerous
discontent, yet the government had always regarded the social aspect of
this method of expansion as subservient to the strategic.[4] This
strategic motive no longer existed, and a short-sighted policy, which
looked to the present, not to the future, to men of the existing
generation and not to their sons, may easily have held that a colony,
which was not needed for the protection of the district in which it was
settled, injuriously affected the fighting-strength of Rome. The
maritime colonies which had been established from the end of the great
Latin war down to the close of the second struggle with Carthage
claimed, at least in many cases, exemption from military service,[5]
and a tradition of this kind tends to linger when its justification is a
thing of the past. But, even if such a view could be repudiated by the
government, it was certain that the levy became a more serious
business the greater the number of communities on which the recruiting
commander had to call, and it was equally manifest that the veteran
who had just been given an allotment on which to establish his
household gods might be inclined to give a tardy response to the call to
arms. The Latin colony seemed a still greater anachronism than the
military colony of citizens. The member of such a community, although

the state which he entered enjoyed large privileges of autonomy, ceased
to be a Roman citizen in respect to political rights, and even at a time
when self-government had been valued almost more than