Lectures and Essays | Page 2

given in the best form. The
political passages of Virgil, like some in Lucan and Juvenal, had a
grandeur entirely Roman with which neither Homer nor any other
Greek has anything to do. But historical criticism, without doing
injustice to the poetical aspect of the mystery, is bound to seek a
rational solution. Perhaps in seeking the solution we may in some
measure supply, or at least suggest the mode of supplying, a deficiency
which we venture to think is generally found in the first chapters of
histories. A national history, as it seems to us, ought to commence with
a survey of the country or locality, its geographical position, climate,
productions, and other physical circumstances as they bear on the
character of the people. We ought to be presented, in short, with a
complete description of the scene of the historic drama, as well as with
an account of the race to which the actors belong. In the early stages of
his development, at all events, man is mainly the creature of physical
circumstances; and by a systematic examination of physical
circumstances we may to some extent cast the horoscope of the infant
nation as it lies in the arms of Nature.
That the central position of Rome, in the long and narrow peninsula of
Italy, was highly favourable to her Italian dominion, and that the
situation of Italy was favourable to her dominion over the countries
surrounding the Mediterranean, has been often pointed out. But we
have yet to ask what launched Rome in her career of conquest, and still
more, what rendered that career so different from those of ordinary
conquerors? What caused the Empire of Rome to be so durable? What
gives it so high an organization? What made it so tolerable, and even in
some cases beneficent to her subjects? What enabled it to perform
services so important in preparing the way for a higher civilization?
About the only answer that we get to these questions is race. The

Romans, we are told, were by nature a peculiarly warlike race. "They
were the wolves of Italy," says Mr. Merivale, who may be taken to
represent fairly the state of opinion on this subject. We are presented in
short with the old fable of the Twins suckled by the She-wolf in a
slightly rationalized form. It was more likely to be true, if anything, in
its original form, for in mythology nothing is so irrational as
rationalization. That unfortunate She-wolf with her Twins has now
been long discarded by criticism as a historical figure; but she still
obtrudes herself as a symbolical legend into the first chapter of Roman
history, and continues to affect the historian's imagination and to give
him a wrong bias at the outset. Who knows whether the statue which
we possess is a real counterpart of the original? Who knows what the
meaning of the original statue was? If the group was of great antiquity,
we may be pretty sure that it was not political or historic, but religious;
for primaeval art is the handmaid of religion; historic representation
and political portraiture belong generally to a later age. We cannot tell
with certainty even that the original statue was Roman: it may have
been brought to Rome among the spoils of some conquered city, in
which case it would have no reference to Roman history at all. We
must banish it entirely from our minds, with all the associations and
impressions which cling to it, and we must do the same with regard to
the whole of that circle of legends woven out of misinterpreted
monuments or customs, with the embellishments of pure fancy, which
grouped itself round the apocryphal statues of the seven kings in the
Capitol, aptly compared by Arnold to the apocryphal portraits of the
early kings of Scotland in Holyrood and those of the mediaeval
founders of Oxford in the Bodleian. We must clear our minds
altogether of these fictions; they are not even ancient: they came into
existence at a time when the early history of Rome was viewed in the
deceptive light of her later achievements; when, under the influence of
altered circumstances, Roman sentiment had probably undergone a
considerable change; and when, consequently, the national imagination
no longer pointed true to anything primaeval.
Race, when tribal peculiarities are once formed, is a most important
feature in history; those who deny this and who seek to resolve
everything, even in advanced humanity, into the influence of external
circumstances or of some particular external circumstance, such as food,

are not less one-sided or less wide of the truth than those who employ
race as the universal solution. Who can doubt that between the English
and the French, between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differences
of character which