HE WHO PURSUES HIS READING from Caesar’s death into the period of the Empire, cannot fail to be struck by a change which becomes more and more decided as he goes onwards. It is not so much the history of Rome that he is studying, as the history of the civilised world; the history, that is, of the various dependencies of Rome, and of their relations to the central authority. Even when following the lead of a conservative historian like Tacitus, whose political horizon was not much wider than that of Cicero, we feel this change in some degree. But it is only fully realised when we pass beyond Tacitus to the reigns of Hadrian and the Antonines, and when we have learned to appreciate the immense value of the fresh material that the collection of inscriptions has of recent years placed within our reach, enabling us to recognise in the life and institutions of the provinces the really essential facts in the history of the Empire.
It is when we have learnt this lesson that we begin to understand the full force of Caesar’s work, and his place in the history of the world. We seem to have passed out of the close atmosphere of a great town, where our view was on every side shut in, and where the chatter of cliques and pedants was continually misleading us, into a wide and open country, and a freer and fresher air. We feel the bracing effect, just as we believe Caesar to have felt it during those nine years of strengthening discipline in Gaul. Whether we study the government of the Empire, or its law, its religion, its society, its army, we feel that a great change has taken place, and that even if it be a change which in some ways, as for example in art and literature, has lowered the level of human effort, it is yet one which has raised the mass of mankind in material well-being, and has made them the constituent body of a great protective political union. And more than this, it has even brought within their reach a simple and universal doctrine of right and wrong; a rule of conduct based on beliefs and hopes, for which the older world, which knew no such union, could not, so far as we can guess, have ever found a place. Under the Empire art and literature slowly decay, with the decay of that civic or national life in which they seem best to flourish; but in the imperial unity room is found for other influences more suited to the needs of the age and of more universal efficacy...
It is when we have learnt this lesson that we begin to understand the full force of Caesar’s work, and his place in the history of the world. We seem to have passed out of the close atmosphere of a great town, where our view was on every side shut in, and where the chatter of cliques and pedants was continually misleading us, into a wide and open country, and a freer and fresher air. We feel the bracing effect, just as we believe Caesar to have felt it during those nine years of strengthening discipline in Gaul. Whether we study the government of the Empire, or its law, its religion, its society, its army, we feel that a great change has taken place, and that even if it be a change which in some ways, as for example in art and literature, has lowered the level of human effort, it is yet one which has raised the mass of mankind in material well-being, and has made them the constituent body of a great protective political union. And more than this, it has even brought within their reach a simple and universal doctrine of right and wrong; a rule of conduct based on beliefs and hopes, for which the older world, which knew no such union, could not, so far as we can guess, have ever found a place. Under the Empire art and literature slowly decay, with the decay of that civic or national life in which they seem best to flourish; but in the imperial unity room is found for other influences more suited to the needs of the age and of more universal efficacy...
