GRICE E CANTONI: LITERAE HUMANIORES

 UC-NRLF      770     GIFT F  JANE K.SATHER         The Study of  Ancient History in Oxford     A LECTURE   DELIVERED TO UNDERGRADUATES READING FOR   THE LITERAE HUMANIORES SCHOOL   MAY 1912     BY   F. HAVERFIELD   CAMDEN PROFESSOR     Price One Shilling net     HENRY FROWDE  OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS   LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE   1912     The Study of  Ancient History in Oxford     A LECTURE   DELIVERED TO UNDERGRADUATES READING FOR   THE LITERAE HUMANIORES SCHOOL   MAY 1912     BY   F. HAVERFIELD   CAMDEN PROFESSOR     HENRY FROWDE  OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS   LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE   1912     OXFORD : HORACE HART  PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY     NOTE   LECTURES are seldom published singly unless they  have been read on ceremonial occasions to general  audiences and their style and subject are suitable  thereto. The present lecture is not of that kind. It  was delivered to undergraduates beginning the study of  ancient history in Oxford ; its purpose is to set out in  plain words the main features of that study. It aims at  emphasizing three points, first, the need well known  to all but realized by few of chronology and still more  of geography, as geography is now understood, in any  study of history ; secondly, the character of the Oxford  ancient history course as a study of short periods based  on a close reading of the original authorities; and  thirdly, the relation between Greek and Roman history,  which by their very differences supplement each other  to an extent which learners and even teachers do not  always see. At the end I have said a word about the  connexion between this course and the training of  future researchers. Some of my colleagues, who read  the lecture in typescript, tell me that, if published, it  would help their pupils and interest others elsewhere  who have to do with the study of Roman history.   H.     280040     THE STUDY OF  ANCIENT HISTORY IN OXFORD   i. I had once a pupil who began his Oxford course  by reading for Classical Honour Moderations. Reasons  which I have forgotten made him change his plans after  a term or so : he took up Pass Moderations instead and  I had to teach him for that examination. He was very  confident that he could surmount the Pass hedges with  complete ease, but I had soon to tell him that the work  he had done for Honours would lead him straight to  a heavy fall. He could translate his books, or most  parts of them. He had no idea whatever of getting up  their contents, and when one asked him the usual  question, ' Who did what when ? ', he was beaten.   The difference which my pupil found to exist between  Pass and Honour Moderations is almost exactly the  difference which, even after recent changes, still divides  Honour Moderations from Literae Humaniores. This  difference is not so much (as the language of our Oxford  Statutes might suggest) a contrast between Classical  Literature on the one hand and Ancient History and  General Philosophy on the other. It is rather a variety  of the old difference between Aoyoy and e'pyoz/, between  the language which is the form, and the facts, which are  the contents. I am told that in reading for Honour  Moderations a man learns how to translate Cicero and     6 THE STUDY OF   to imitate his style : I know by my own experience that  he does not always learn what Cicero said or thought  or recorded. He can scramble through any page of the  Verrines that he is confronted with; he cannot repro-  duce the matter of it for any purpose whatever, and if  you ask him in detail what Verres did, the chances are  that he does not know.   In reading for Greats a man goes almost to the other  extreme. Whether he can translate Cicero into good  English, becomes a subsidiary question. What he has  to know and what, I think, in general he does know, is  what Cicero records. He may not know it with all the  refinements and shades of meaning that an accurate  scholar would detect, but he does get a sound general  idea of Cicero's meaning. His danger now is that he  will neglect the form. He is bidden to compose essays  on various topics of philosophy or history, one or two  a week. These essays are only too often ayamV/zara e?  rb irapaxpfjpa, agonized efforts at the eleventh hour, and  even if they rise superior to such human frailty and are  the mature result of long and deliberate reading, both  teachers and taught tend to set more value on their  contents than on their form. Sixty or eighty years ago  the Literae Humaniores School was considered to give  a special training in lucidity of language and in logical  arrangement of matter. That has gone into the back-  ground. Of the three great intellectual excellences  which this School might develop, powerful thought and  profound knowledge and clear style, the third now  counts as least. It is not a good result but it is a  natural one in a course which is so closely connected  with facts.   2. For facts are the first need of the student of     ANCIENT HISTORY IN OXFORD 7   history. He must know ' who did what when '. Indeed,  if he knows the facts in the order which they occurred,  he can often reconstruct and interpret the history for  himself. There is a vast deal more value in dates than  the most early Victorian schoolmistress ever suggested  to her classes. Half the mistakes and misunderstand-  ings in our current notions of history arise from some  belief that events happened at other than their actual  dates. Much, for example, has been written about the  causes of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and  among these causes the depopulation of Italy and of the  Roman Provinces has been quoted as one of the most  important. But when one comes to examine the facts,  it appears that a great deal that is urged under this head  is a transference to the Empire of an agrarian evil which  belonged to the Republican period and which probably  lasted only for three or four generations. Those who  hold this evil responsible for the fall of the Empire  three hundred years later, start with a chronological  blunder, and naturally do not reach even a plausible  solution of their problem.   So again in smaller problems. The critics of the  Roman Emperor Claudius, the ancient parallel (as is  generally said) to our English James I, usually omit to  notice what sorts of events occurred in what parts of his  reign. As it happens, dates show that he, or maybe  his ministers, began with an active and excellent policy.  They boldly faced foreign frontier questions which had  been neglected or mismanaged by their immediate  predecessors. They took steps to amalgamate the  Empire by Romanizing the provincials. They carried  out numerous and useful public works. Dates also  show that after some six or seven years of good     8 THE STUDY OF   administration they fell intelligibly enough into evil  ways. We might indeed apply to Claudius the idea of  a quinquennium of five years' wise rule which is usually  ascribed to Nero. And curiously enough, if we go to  the bottom of the facts about Nero, we find that the  outset of his rule was marked by no want of unwisdom  and crime and that the notion of a happy first five years  is a modern misinterpretation of an ancient writer who  meant something quite different. Begin history there-  fore with the plain task of knowing dates and facts.  Write them out large if you will, and stick them up over  your bed and your bath.   3. There is another simple-seeming subject which  students of history, and above all of ancient history,  must not neglect. I have mentioned the old question,  ' who did what when ? ' There is an equally important  question, 'who did what where?' It is no good study-  ing history, and above all ancient history, without  studying geography, and geography of the right sort.  The subject is, of course, held in little honour even at  some Universities. The University of Cambridge lately  issued a small series of maps to illustrate an elaborate  work on mediaeval history. On the first, or it may be  the second, of these maps, London is shown to be  33^ miles from York and 43^ miles from Paris, while the  sea passage from Dover to Calais is about 4 miles long.  This is, no doubt, an exceptional view of the world. But  our ordinary attitude to geography is little more satis-  factory. Very often, when we admit the subject at all,  we confine it to lists of place-names and of political  boundaries, which are mere abstractions and convey  nothing definite to the average student. Or else, under  the title of geography, we bring in the important, but     ANCIENT HISTORY IN OXFORD 9   quite distinct study, of the topography of battle-fields,  a study which is not really geographical, which is  specialist in character, and which is suited properly to  those who are particularly interested in the details of  ancient tactics and strategy. If we are to make any-  thing of geography, we must get beyond this. We  must treat it as the science which tells us about the  influence (in the widest sense) of the surface of the  earth on the men who dwelt upon it.   In the earlier ages of mankind this influence was  enormous. It was far greater than it is in the present  day : it was greater even than in the Middle Ages. In  the youth of the world, in the days which we are still  apt to picture to ourselves as the ages of innocence and  unconstrained simplicity and pastoral happiness, man-  kind lived in fear. He knew he was weak, weak alike  in his conflict with nature and his conflict with the  violence of other men. Whenever he advanced a little  in civilization, in wealth, in comfort, he was beset by  terror lest hostile outside forces should break in and  destroy him and his civilization together. If he looked  back over preceding ages, he found one long tale of  wreckage, of nations that went down whole to a disas-  trous death, of towns stormed at midnight and destroyed  utterly before dawn, of unquenchable plagues, of con-  suming famines. These evils came from many causes.  But among the causes the character of the earth's sur-  face is by no means the least potent, though it may not  seem the most obvious. Man had not then learnt to  tunnel through mountains and traverse the worst and  widest seas, and thus ride superior to the great barriers  which nature has set between human intercourse. Nor  had he acquired that coherence of political government     io THE STUDY OF   and social system which can sometimes defy moun-  tains or seas and successfully battle with pestilence  and hunger. He was ruled by his geographical  environment.   The form in which this environment affected him was  very definite. It was the broad features of the earth's  surface which then especially influenced mankind that  is, the general distribution of hills and of plains, of moun-  tain heights and mountain passes, of river valleys and of  gorges breaking these valleys up, of harbours and rocky  coasts, of trade winds which brought or failed to bring  rain. All the simple and general physical conditions  which affect comparatively large areas in a more or less  uniform way, were felt to the full by the Greek and  Roman world. Illustrations of their influence are strewn  broadcast over the shores of the Mediterranean.   That sea itself provides perhaps as good an example  as any. To-day it is a sea that belongs to many nations ;  one dominant power in it is not even a Mediterranean  state. Under the Roman Empire, it was the basis of  one state whose capital lay in its centre and whose  provinces lay all around it like a ring-fence. The cause  is to be found in geography. The Mediterranean is  not merely, as its name implies, a sea in the middle of  the land : it has more notable features. Though it is the  largest of all inland seas, it is also the most uniform.  Its climate is the same throughout its length and  breadth ; its coasts are equally habitable in almost every  quarter ; therefore, it easily attracts round it a more or  less uniform population and men move freely to and fro  upon it. It is no mere epigram that Algeria is the south  coast of Europe. Moreover, as modern strategists have  noted, it is dominated, as no other sea is, by the lands     ANCIENT HISTORY IN OXFORD n   which surround it and by the peninsulas and islands  which mark it. Therefore, it was singularly fitted to  form the basis of any Empire strong enough to control  so large an area. It aided the formation of the Roman  Empire. It determined parts of its constitution, notably  its semi-federal provincial system. It provided the unity  needful for its trade and language and intercourse. We  can mark the influence of this sea even in pre-Roman  politics. Though it was then divided up between  Greeks, Persians, Carthaginians, none of them were able  to hold a part of it without at least aspiring to extend  their sway over the whole. Only in the present day,  when political unions have become stronger and more  coherent, is it possible for geography to be put in the  background.   Let me give two more illustrations. To-day Italy  is a south-eastern power: she looks to Tripoli and  the Levant, she finds her outlets and she passes on  her traffic from Brindisi eastwards, and her sons are  scattered over the eastern Mediterranean. But geo-  graphically if I may repeat a saying which is trite but  nevertheless valuable ' Italy looks west and Greece  looks east', and in the Graeco-Roman world this fact  counted. Thanks to it, the earlier Roman Empire, the  Empire of Augustus and Claudius and Trajan, was  a west- European realm, and its greatest achievements  of conquest and of civilization lay in the western lands  which we still call Latin or Romance. That French  is spoken in France to-day is (if indirectly) a result of  geography. Once more, under the normal conditions  of to-day food is brought to our great towns from  considerable distances along railways or good roads.  We are not much troubled by geographical obstacles;     12 THE STUDY OF   we find human nature a much worse impediment, and  a strike hinders far more than any mountain or river.  In the ancient world as indeed in parts of the mediaeval  world when food was carried along ill-made roads in  / ill-made carts, towns were impossible unless food-stuffs  could be grown close by, and landed estates could not  be worked at a profit unless markets lay within easy  reach. Throughout, we see the Greeks and the Romans  face to face with an external nature which dominated  them as it does not dominate us. If they were not, like  the prehistoric races, living in ceaseless dread, they  were slaves to rudimentary difficulties. It is these  natural circumstances of geography that we cannot  omit from our study of ancient history. Hang up your  maps beside your tables of dates ; draw maps of your  own, and if you would remember them properly, measure  the distances upon them.   I venture to recommend this method of studying  geography along with history for a further reason. It  is the best way of studying geography itself which  ordinary students can use. The pure geographer too  often wishes to teach the facts of the earth's surface  as facts by themselves. He wishes, for instance, that  the student should know the whole configuration of  France, its mountains, rivers, geology, minerals, before  he proceeds to realize the effects of these various  features on the history of the world. That is all very  well for the specialist. But, as one who has taught  geography in Oxford for a good many years, I am  convinced that applied geography is far more easily  learnt by the ordinary man than this more theoretical  and abstract science. By applied geography I mean  the geography of a district studied in definite relation     ANCIENT HISTORY IN OXFORD 13   to its history, with definite recognition of which geo-  graphical features mattered in one age, and which in  another, and which in none at all. This method involves  that association of ideas, that learning of things in con-  nexion with other things, which is in truth the most  stimulating and helpful of all aids to knowledge. Here,  as elsewhere, the motto of the teacher should be o-vv  re 8v epxo/jLvc, not in the sense of the teacher marching  along with the taught, but of two kinds of knowledge  helping one another.   4. From these preliminaries of time and space I pass  to the actual study of ancient history in Oxford. The  chief characteristic of that study is its limitation to short  and strictly defined periods. Among these periods  several alternative choices are intentionally left open  to the student. In Greek history he may read, as most  men do, the Making of Greece and the Great Age of  the fifth century. Or he may combine the fifth century  with the story of Epaminondas and Demosthenes and  that curiously modern figure, Phocion, though, for some  reason, he will here find few companions in his studies.  In Roman history he may study the death-agony of the  Republic and the beginnings of the Empire under the  strange Julio-Claudian dynasty. Or he may confine  himself to the Empire and follow its fortunes till the  end of Trajan's wars. Or thirdly he may read though  few care to do so the tale of the conquest of Italy and  of Carthage, the days which formed the great age of  the Republic and the glory of the Senate. In any case  he is confined to one definite epoch of no excessive  length.   Secondly, he will read this epoch carefully with  many and certainly all the most important of the     14 THE STUDY OF   original literary authorities, and these he will read in  the original tongues. The study of a period of history  through the medium of translations is one which finds  no place, at least in theory, in our Oxford ancient  history. This is a point, perhaps, which deserves some  notice in passing. In the present condition of classical  studies there is a strong tendency for men not merely  to study ancient history but even to research, with a  very slight knowledge of the classical languages. In  the local archaeology of our own country this tendency  has existed for centuries, and' it has been usual to work  at Roman Britain without any knowledge at all of  Latin. Abroad, the tendency has been growing of late  years. I have had lately to write for a foreign publi-  cation a paper in Latin on some Roman inscriptions  and I have been a little surprised at the Ciceronian  words which the editor of the publication has pointed  out to me as too likely to puzzle present-day students  of Latin epigraphy. Now, it is probable that an educa-  tional course which studied Greek and Roman history  through translations might have a distinct, though  obviously a limited, educational value. But it is idle  to pretend to go beyond a somewhat elementary course  without knowing the ancient languages.   This Oxford course has been made the subject of  many criticisms. We are told that history is one and  indivisible, and that fragments cut out of their context  not only lose their educational value but become  meaningless. We are told secondly that it is absurd to  omit all the momentous occurrences which lie outside  our limited areas. We are told also that by confining  students to one or even two periods we prevent them  from acquiring a variety of distinct interests and dis-     ANCIENT HISTORY IN OXFORD 15   cussing their various periods together and widening their  respective outlooks. Of the first of these I shall say some-  thing in a moment. The other two in my judgement  amount to very little. It is quite true that our system  omits a great deal. But there are after all only two ways  of learning. You can learn a little of many things or you  can learn much of one thing. Unless you are a genius  or a reformer you cannot learn a great deal about  many things. All education is in a sense selective.  Here, as so often, much good may be done by the free  lance. He prevents our selections from being clogged  by pedantry. In the end, however, there must be  selection. Lastly, the third criticism, that the use of  limited periods limits the total width of interest and  discussion among the body of students, does not I  believe apply in the very least to our own system with  its alternative periods and its extraordinary range of  general knowledge.   Moreover, I am clear that, if a limitation of periods  has its evils, it has also solid merits. It has been  generally the English tradition to prefer the plan of  learning much about one subject to that of learning  a little about many, and the warning Cave hominem  unius libri used often to be quoted by Oxford scholars  of forty or fifty years ago. It is a good maxim. For it  does not simply warn us against the tortoise who hides  in his shell ; it points out that the dangerous enemy is  he who knows one subject with exceeding thoroughness,  who controls one weapon with absolute mastery and  precision. The student who really works out one short  period of history, knows one part at least of the ways  of human nature. It is impossible to over-rate the  practical value of such a bit of accurate knowledge     16 THE STUDY OF   of how men move and think and act. Moreover, as  educationalists are constantly and rightly observing,  the power of thoroughly getting up a limited subject,  the complete mastery of all the relevant details, is  a very valuable power in actual life. It may be obtained  in other ways than through a brief period of ancient  history; it could not be gained by a study of ancient  history at large.   5. Ancient History is singularly suited to this method  of the intensive culture of a small plot. If the period  chosen be not very long or very ill-chosen, it is here  possible to combine the following advantages. First,  we can bring the student into touch with periods of the  highest importance, periods which are full of the most  diverse interests and which allow the most different  minds to expand on political or constitutional or economic  or geographical or military problems. Secondly, we let  him come to close quarters with the great mass of the  original authorities, whether written or unwritten, so  that he can compare the account of any event or  problem which is given him by Grote, or Bury, or his  own tutor, with the actual evidence on which it ought  to be based. Thirdly, he can work at historical writings  written in the great style and really worth reading as  literature. There is no part of mediaeval or modern  history of which all this can be said with complete  truth. There we have to face multitudes of charters,  family papers, legal documents, broadsides, which are  far too vast a chaos for a student to overhaul in the  course of his University career, and to compare with  the conclusions based on them. There, too, our authori-  ties are for the most part not even literature by courtesy.  When we ask for original authorities, we are given not     ANCIENT HISTORY IN OXFORD 17   a Gibbon but a mass of matter which has no value save  as the husk, too often the tasteless husk, outside a grain  of fact. In ancient history, when all is said and done,  when the longest list of ' books to read ' has been made  out that the most conscientious tutor can devise, the  total will not exceed the powers of a reasonable student.  You will find, indeed, when it comes to lists of ' books  to read', that the philosophical teachers, not the historical  teachers, will go to the greatest length.   6. I have only one criticism of my own to make : our  limited period does ignore the unity of history. We  ought to do something for a view of history as a whole.  Let me quote a historian who is not, I fear, as much  admired in Oxford as he used to be, the late Mr. E. A.  Freeman. He was a writer of the old school, on the  one hand much too fond of battles, sensations, emotions,  and even rhetoric, and on the other hand much too  dependent on written sources and too cold to the charms  of archaeology. Perhaps his true greatness lay in the  realism with which he taught some of the greater  general historical ideas even though he hammered  them home with a wearying emphasis. One such idea  of his was the unity of history, on which I will quote  one of his utterances :   We are learning that European history, from its first  glimmerings to our own day, is one unbroken drama,  no part of which can be rightly understood without  reference to the other parts which come before it and  after it. We are learning that of this great drama  Rome is the centre, the point to which all roads lead  and from which all roads lead no less. The world of  independent Greece stands on one side of it ; the world  of modern Europe stands on another. But the history  alike of the great centre itself and of its satellites on  either side, can never be fully grasped except from   c     i8 THE STUDY OF   a point of view wide enough to take in the whole  group and to mark the relations of each of its members  to the centre and to one another.   These are true words ; how can they be reconciled  with our limited periods ? It may occur to some that  we lecturers should prefix or add to our ordinary courses  some special hours on universal history. Time, however,  would hardly allow for more than eight or ten such  lectures ; the lectures themselves could hardly be other  than in some sense popular, and it is possible that they  would be better read in a book than delivered as a  dictation lesson. There is another remedy in each  man's hand who cares at all for the historical side of  his Schools' work. He can read what he likes of other  and later periods of history in such books as may suit  his own taste. Even on the lowest plane of motives  such reading would not be wasted. It may be less true  than it was, that Greats is concerned de rebus omnibus  et quibusdam aliis. But it is still true that there is very  little knowledge which does not at some point or other  help in the understanding of Greats' work. It is a  School in which a man can ' improve his class ' by not  reading directly for it.   7. Let me now pass to the two individual topics of  Greek and Roman History with which Oxford students  are concerned. People are apt to think that they are  just the same. The educational system which has  dominated Western Europe for the last three centuries  sets the Greek and Latin, language, literature, and history,  side by side, as subjects which may be studied and  taught by the same men and the same methods. Even  now it is supposed in some places of instruction, that  a man who is competent, perhaps extremely competent,     ANCIENT HISTORY IN OXFORD 19   to teach Greek History, will be equally competent to  teach any part of Roman History. But we are begin-  ning to learn that Greece and Italy are not the twins  which they seemed to our forefathers. We know that  the Greek and Latin languages stood in their origins  far apart ; that Latin, for example, comes nearer to  Celtic than to Greek ; and we shall have to recognize  something of the sort in reference to Greek and Roman  History. But here fortune favours us in a remarkable  and indeed quite undeserved fashion. For these two  subjects are in reality so dissimilar that their very  differences form a rare and splendid combination. Each  supplies what the other lacks. Together, they remedy  many of the evils which arise from the limitation of the  periods studied. They differ, firstly, in the character  of the original authorities for the two subjects and in  the different historical methods which the student is  constantly required to use. They differ, secondly, in  the actual events which they record and in the kinds  of lessons which they teach. The one shows us  character and the other genius. The one confronts  us with the city state, the other with the full range  of problems of a world empire. The one exhibits the  different forms of political development proper to the  brief life of Greece, the other the principles of constitu-  tional growth which was gradually unrolled in the long  history of Rome.   8. First, as to the authorities. Alike in his Greek  and in his Roman history, the Oxford learner has to  deal with a large part of the original authorities for  the periods which he is studying; he has to study  those periods with definite reference to the evidence  of the authorities, to appraise their general value and     20 THE STUDY OF   to criticize in detail the meaning of their various  assertions. But these authorities are by no means  uniform. On the contrary, those which he meets in  Greek History and those which he meets in Roman  History are startlingly unlike. The history of Greece,  at least during the great age of the fifth century,  depends on two first-rate historians, whose works have  reached us intact, and who form the predominant and  often the only authorities for the series of events which  they describe, Herodotus and Thucydides. Everything  else that we know of this age can be hung by way of  comment or criticism, foot-note or appendix, on their  narratives. The evidence of lesser writers, of geo-  graphical facts, of inscriptions or sculptures or pottery,  may be and often is very valuable, but it is always  subsidiary. This is especially true of Greek inscrip-  tions, which I mention here partly because I shall have  presently to say something of the very different character  of Roman inscriptions. By far the largest and the most  important sections of Greek inscriptions are lengthy  legal or financial or administrative documents, such as  in modern times would be engrossed on parchment or  printed on paper. They are, indeed, just like those  documents which the student of early English History  finds selected and edited for him by Bishop Stubbs.  There are, no doubt, other Greek inscriptions, such as  tombstones. But the epitaphs of Hellas can rarely be  dated ; they rarely belong to the historical periods  studied in Oxford, and they rarely say enough about  the careers or official positions of the dead, or of their  heirs and kinsfolk, to be used for historical inductions.  Like Stubbs* charters, therefore, Greek inscriptions are  best suited to provide the foot-notes and technical appen-     ANCIENT HISTORY IN OXFORD 21   dices to connected literary narratives. It is a curious  and a pleasant chance which has given us for a unique  period of history both admirable narratives and a copious  supply of supplementary inscriptions.   Turn now to Roman History. The Roman historian  has a different and more difficult task than his Greek  colleague. In the long roll of centuries which form  his subject, the literary narrative and the subsidiary  evidence are often defective and seldom united. Not  one single writer is at the same time a great writer and  contemporary and continuous. The Republic has been  described for us by authors who either, like Livy, wrote  long after most of the events which they describe, or  who lived at the time, like Cicero, but wrote no con-  tinuous history, while it is painfully true that most of  the ancient writers on the Republic have little claim  to be called good historians. Nor is this all. These  writers, good or bad, Polybius or Livy or Appian, are  very imperfectly preserved ; our stuff is fragmentary.  We have to deal with a mosaic that has been shaken in  pieces : we have to form our picture out of patchwork.  Nor, lastly, is there supplementary evidence to aid us.  Archaeology throws singularly little light upon the  history of the Republic. Excavations, like those of  Adolf Schulten at Numantia, have shed some light, and  there is no doubt more to come when Spain has been  better opened up : more also may perhaps be gleaned  some day from southern Gaul. But the Republic was  one of those states which mark the world, but not indi-  vidual sites, by their achievements. Such in Greece  was Sparta : and, as Thucydides saw long ago, the  history of such States must always lack archaeological  evidence.     22 THE STUDY OF   The Roman Empire was in many ways a new epoch.  It is natural that the authorities on which our knowledge  rests should be in some respects unlike those of the  Republic. Continuous literary narratives are still few,  and their value is not very great. Like many important  political organizations, the Roman Empire was only half  understood by the men who lived in and under it or  perhaps, as Kipling says of the English, those who  understood did not care to speak. Not even the greatest  of the Imperial historians, Tacitus, appreciated the state  which he served and described. He gives his readers,  for home politics, a backstairs view of court intrigues,  and, for foreign affairs, a row of picturesque or emotional  pictures of distant and difficult campaigns described  with a total absence of technical detail and a surfeit  of ethical or rhetorical colouring. All the real history  of the centuries of the Empire was ignored by almost  every one of those Romans or Romanized Greeks  who essayed to describe it. Moreover, this literary  material, like that of the Republic, is broken by all  manner of gaps. We have painfully to reconstruct our  narrative out of detached sentences and chance frag-  ments and waifs and strays from works which have  perished.   On the other hand and here the difference between  Republic and Empire comes out clearest the archaeo-  logical evidence for the Empire is extensive and extra-  ordinary. No state has left behind it such abundant and  instructive remains as the Roman Empire. Inscriptions  by hundreds of thousands, coins of all dates and mints,  ruins of fortresses, towns, country-houses, farms, roads,  supply the great gaps in the written record and correct  the great misunderstandings of those who wrote it. Most     ANCIENT HISTORY IN OXFORD 23   of this evidence has been uncovered in the last two  generations : the Empire, misdescribed by its own  Romans, has risen from the earth to vindicate itself  before us.   The largest part of this new material is supplied by  the inscriptions. A few of these are documents, such  as form the bulk of the Greek inscriptions which I have  mentioned already, and of those few some five or six at  least are perhaps of greater importance than any other in-  scription, Greek or Roman, that has yet been found. But  the great mass are not in themselves individually striking.  Their value depends not on any special merits of their  own, but on the extent to which they can be combined  with some hundreds of other similar inscriptions. If  Roman History is the record of extraordinary deeds  done by ordinary men, it is also a record of extraordinary  facts proved by the most ordinary and commonplace  evidence. The details directly commemorated in the  tombstones or the dedications or similar inscriptions  which come before us seldom matter much. It is no  great gain to learn that water was laid on to one fort  in one year and a granary rebuilt in another fort a  dozen years later. But if you tabulate some hundreds  or thousands of these inscriptions, they reveal secrets.   Take, for instance, the birth-places of the soldiers, which  are generally mentioned on their tombstones. Each by  itself is a trifle. It is quite unimportant that a man came  from Provence to die in Chester or from Asia Minor to  serve at York. But, taken together, these birth-places  tell us the whole relation of the imperial army to the  Roman Empire. We can see the state gradually drawing  its recruits from outer and yet outer rings of population.  We can see the provincials beginning to garrison their     24 THE STUDY OF   own provinces. We can see the growth of that barbariza-  tion which befell the Empire when it was compelled, in  its long struggle against its invaders, to enlist barbarians  against themselves. From similar evidence we can  deduce the size of each provincial army ; we can even  catalogue the regiments which composed it at various  dates and the fortresses which it occupied, and can trace  the strengthening or the decay of the system of frontier  defence. It is true, indeed, that inscriptions of this  character are not very easy for students to deal with.  For they have to be taken in unmanageable masses,  and they often involve remote problems of dating and  interpretation. But selections, such as those of Wil-  manns or Dessau, will help the learner through, and the  short courses on Roman Epigraphy which are now given  in Oxford will start him on his road.   9. I do not know whether I shall seem an unbending  conservative or a hopeless optimist or a liberal who  is trying to make the best of a bad business. But  the facts which I have just stated suggest to me that, in  respect of the training which they give x in historical  method, Greek and Roman History, as studied in Oxford,  fit into each other and supplement each other in a most  happy manner. . Almost every form of authority, the  first-rate narrative, the second-rate abridgement, the  stray fragment, the long legal document, the brief in-  scription of whatever kind, all the varieties of uninscribed  evidence, come before him in turn. He has to consider  and weigh these, and, whether he proposes in after life  to research in history or prefers the active business of  trade or politics, he will gain much by the criticism  which this task imposes on him. To survey many state-  ments made by fairly intelligent men, many accounts     ANCIENT HISTORY IN OXFORD 25   of complicated and obscure incidents, is to train the  judgement for practical life quite as much as for a  learned career. We talk somewhat professionally of  archaeological evidence. It is well to remember that,  if that evidence had happened to refer to the present,  instead of the past, we should call it economic and not  archaeological : so much of it refers to just the things  which engage the reader of an ordinary social pamphlet.   10. If Greek and Roman History thus supplement  each other in respect of historical methods, they do so  still more in respect of the historical problems of  political life and of human nature which they bring  before us. In one or the other of them we find most  of our modern difficulties somehow raised, and in many  cases one aspect is raised in Greek History, another in  Roman. In the first place, there is the contrast of  character and genius, which is really the twofold con-  trast of individualism as opposed to common action and  of intellect as opposed to practical common sense.  Greek History is a record of men who were extra-  ordinarily individual, extraordinarily clever, extraordi-  narily disunited. Our Oxford study of Greek History,  divorced as it is by chance or necessity from the study  of Greek poetical literature and of Greek art, lets us  forget how amazingly clever the Greeks were and the  place which intellect and language and writing played  in their world.   Roman History, on the other hand, is the record of  men who possessed little ability and little intellect, but  great force of character and great willingness to com-  bine for the good of their country to produce a result  which was not the work of any one of them. The  history of the Roman Republic in its best period, in   D     26 THE STUDY OF   the great age of the Punic wars, is in very truth ' a long  roll of extraordinary deeds done by ordinary men '.  This aspect of it is, of course, less prominent in the  later Republic, the period of revolution, than in the  greater epoch which we here so seldom study. But  it reappears with the Empire. Though the historians  of the Principate generally talk of nothing but the  Princeps, we can detect throughout a background of  hard-working, capable, probably rather stupid governors  and generals in the provinces. If any one wishes to  study the conflict of genius and character, that conflict  which a hundred years ago the English waged with  Napoleon, and to realize the defects of being clever and  the advantages of being stupid defects and advantages  which (I am bound to say) are overrated by the average  Englishman he will find this in his Greek and Roman  History. There are few lessons for guidance in practical  life and politics which are so valuable as an under-  standing of this simple-seeming subject.   Again, in respect of constitutional history, Greece  and Rome supplement one another in a useful way.  The history of Greece, and especially of Athens, is too  short to include a long and orderly constitutional  development. But it does teach a good deal about the  nature and value of those paper constitutions which are  in reality political rather than constitutional, but which  play their part more particularly in the acuter crises  of almost all ages. Rome, too, in the earlier part of  the death-agony of the Republic, in the generation  which began with the Gracchi and ended with -Sulla,  saw several of these pseudo-constitutions. But the  Athenian examples teach us most, if only because they  are the work of an intellectual race, which believed     ANCIENT HISTORY IN OXFORD 27   firmly in the value of things which could be written  down on paper.   Rome, on the other hand, shows that slow growth,  here a little and there a little, of constitutional life on  which true constitutional philosophy is based. Nowhere  can we find so near a parallel to our English constitu-  tion as meets us in the flexible order of the Roman  Republic and Empire. Nor is this all. Of most con-  stitutions, as of our own, we know the maturer years,  but not the details of the birth and infancy. But the  Roman Empire is, as it were, born before our eyes.  The cold unostentatious caution of Augustus may, no  doubt, have left his contemporaries a little doubtful  whether the old had really died and the new been born,  and the scanty records which have survived shed an  uncertain light. Yet the fact is plain, and the manner  in which it happened.   ii. And thirdly, Greek history sets forth the successes  and failures of small states and of ' municipal republics ',  while Rome exhibits the complex government of an  extensive Empire. For the present day the second  matters most. Perhaps the world will never see again  a dominion of city-states. The fate of the Polis was  sealed when Plato wrote his Politeia and called for  philosopher-kings. It was more decisively settled when  the Romans discovered that men could be at once  citizens of a nation and citizens of a town. The failures  of the mediaeval Republics of Italy and Germany to  maintain themselves against the stronger powers of  Emperors and Tyrants simply emphasized the result.  The world will have to supply otherwise that intellectual  and artistic splendour which has been the finest fruit  of the city-states. But the administration of a great     28 THE STUDY OF   Empire concerns many men to-day and in a very vital  manner. Our age has not altogether solved the pro-  blems which Empires seem to raise by their very size  the gigantic assaults of plague and famine, the stubborn  resistance of ancient civilizations and nationalities to new  and foreign ideals, the weakness of far-flung frontiers ;  it can hardly find men enough who are fit to carry on  the routine of government in distant lands. The old  world was no better off. Too often, its Empires quickly  perished ; too often, they survived only through cruelty  and massacre and outrage. Rome alone did not wholly  fail. It kept its frontiers unbroken for centuries. It  spread its civilization harmoniously over western and  central Europe and northern Africa. It passed on the  classical culture to new races and to the modern world.  It embraced in its orderly rule the largest extent of  land which has ever enjoyed one peaceable and civilized  and lasting government. It was the greatest experiment  in Free Trade and Home Rule that the world has yet  beheld.   12. I have limited myself in the preceding remarks to  ordinary matters which come in the way of ordinary  students. I am well aware that we can add to the  Oxford ancient history course other and more delightful  vistas down the by-ways of folk-lore and religion, of  anthropology and geology. We can trace in Herodotus,  quite as plainly as in the Oedipus Tyrannus, that sub-  stratum of savagery which underlies all ancient and  most modern life, and which lay closer to the Greek,  despite his intellectual refinement, than to the less  humane but more disciplined Roman. We can plunge  into the labyrinths of 'Middle Minoan' and classify  'protos' from all the coasts of the Aegean and the     ANCIENT HISTORY IN '   Levant. We can trace from geological ages the growth  of the continents and seas and climates which made up  the background of the older Europe. These things are  full of interest, and for some minds they are both a relaxa-  tion and a stimulus. They are not, I fear, so well suited  to all of us. There is, indeed, enough in the nearer fields  of ancient history for any student to fill his time with  the more obvious subjects of politics and geography and  economics and archaeology. He may even, if he wishes,  find in his prescribed books an opportunity of beginning  to prepare himself for research. He cannot, indeed, as  in the Modern History School, offer as part of his degree  examination a dissertation on a subject chosen by him-  self, and I am not quite clear that, if he did, his thesis  would be worth very much. But his study of original  authorities may teach him not only how to weigh the  statements of men for practical purposes, but also to  note how history is built up out of such statements. He  can even carry his examination of original authorities  far enough to approach the region of independent work,  and to go through some of the processes which are  connected with the august name of the Seminar.   But, let me add, this historical course which gives  the man who wishes it a glimpse of what research  work means, is not, and cannot be, a full preparation for  it. For that a further training is indispensable, whether  it be in archaeology or in any other subject, and that  training cannot be included in the ordinary curriculum,  since it is only a tiny fraction of the whole body of  students which intends to, and is fit to, pass on to  research. The ordinary course lays the foundation of  general knowledge, without which it is useless to  attempt any advanced study. The advanced work     -30 THE STUDY OF   prepares a few competent men for original and inde-  pendent research, and the function of the Seminar  in Oxford would seem to be to train such men, if they  will stay here, after they have finished the ordinary  course. I had once a pupil, an American, who wished  to work for a ' research degree ' by offering a disserta-  tion on a subject in Roman History. He asked to be  allowed to attend two courses of my lectures, one a  general sketch of the early Empire, the other a some-  what more advanced treatment of Roman inscriptions.  After a while, he asked if- he might drop the latter  course ; he had, he said, already heard a good deal of  it in his own American University. When I replied  that in that case he had better drop the elementary  course also, he told me that this was mostly new to him.  It appeared, on inquiry, that his teachers had given  him no training in general Roman History ; they had  taken him through a series of important inscriptions,  had explained to him the persons and things which  happened to be mentioned therein, and had said nothing  of other persons and things which chanced not to be  mentioned. This is, of course, not a fair specimen of  University education in America. It is, unfortunately,  a rather good example of the mistakes often made by  those who are too eager to encourage advanced study.   I am told that I ought to conclude such a lecture as  this by practical hints on the way in which men should  1 read their books '. The one hint I care to give is to  attend to the matter and not only to the manner. There  are many devices which will help in this. It is, for  instance, an aid to some students to read their ancient  texts twice, in two different languages, first in the  originals and then in some translation, in English or     ANCIENT HISTORY IN 'OXFORD *''* :s ' '$''   French or German, using these translations not as  ' cribs ' but as continuous and (in a sense) independent  narratives. But different men work by different  methods, and it is not always easy to give sound  general advice. An individual teacher may aid indi-  vidual men by advice suited to them personally, and  his personality may inspire whole classes. But general  advice, a panacea for every learner, is a rather dan-  gerous thing. It is not, indeed, always much use to give  it. I remember a friend of mine who once attended  such a lecture as this. When I asked him what prac-  tical good he had got out of it, he told me that the  lecturer advised his hearers to buy pencils with blue  chalk at one end and red chalk at the other and to mark  their Herodotus in polychrome. He bought the pencil :  the day after his examinations were over, he found the  pencil still uncut.