Part 5

So stands the story. The Gallic freedman observed, and understood, and was forgotten; posterity, instead, has had to wonder over the profound wisdom of the Roman aristocrat, who understood nothing. Moreover, if in 14 B.C. Licinius had to make an effort to persuade the surprised and diffident Augustus that Gaul was a province of great future, it is clear that Gaul must already have begun to grow rich by itself without the Roman government's having done anything to promote its progress.

From what hidden sources sprang forth this new wealth of Gaul? All the documents that we possess authorise us to respond that Gaul--to begin from the time of Augustus--was able to grow rich quickly, because the events following the Roman conquest turned and disposed the general conditions of the Empire in its favour. Gaul then, as France now, was endowed with several requisites essential to its becoming a nation of great economic development: a land very fertile; a population dense for the times, intelligent, wide-awake, active; a climate that, even though it seemed to Greeks and Romans cold and foggy, was better suited to intense activity than the warm and sunny climate of the South; and finally,--a supreme advantage in ancient civilisation,--it was everywhere intersected, as by a network of canals, by navigable rivers. In ancient times transport by land was very expensive; water was the natural and economic vehicle of commerce: therefore civilisation was able to enter with commerce into the interior of continents only by way of the rivers, which, as one might say, were to a certain extent the railroads of the ancient world.

To these advantageous conditions, which, being physical, existed before the Roman conquest, the conquest added some others: it broke down the political barrier that previously cut off these convenient means of penetration, the rivers; it suppressed the wars between the Gallic tribes, the privileges, the tyrannies, the tolls, the monopolies; it saved the enormous resources that were previously wasted in these constant drains; it put again the hoe, the spade, the tools of the artisan, into hands that had before been wielding the sword; and finally, it consolidated (and this was perhaps the most important effect) the jurisdiction of property. When Cæsar invaded Gaul, the great landowners still cultivated cereals and textile plants but little; they put the greater part of their fortune into cattle, exactly because in that regime of continual war and revolution lands easily kept changing proprietors. Furthermore, the more frequent contact with Rome acquainted the Gauls with Roman agriculture and its abler methods, with Latin life and its studied order.

By the combination of all these causes, population and production increased rapidly. The gain in population was so considerable that the ancients themselves noticed it. Strabo (Bk. 4, ch. i, §2) observes that the Gallic women are fecund mothers and excellent nurses. With the population, wealth increased on all sides, in agriculture as in industry and in trade.

The new and more stable jurisdiction of the landed proprietary generated another most important effect; it promoted rapidly the cultivation of cereals and textile plants, of wheat and flax. "All Gaul produces much wheat," says Strabo, and we read his notice without surprise, because we know that France is, even to-day, the region of Europe most fertile in cereals. There is no reason to suppose that it must have been barren of them twenty centuries ago. Other documentary evidence, particularly inscriptions, confirms Strabo, informing us that, especially in the second century, Rome bought the customary grain to feed the metropolis not only in Egypt, but also in Gaul. In short, Gaul seems to have been the sole region of Europe fertile enough to be able to export grain, to have been for Rome a kind of Canada or Middle West of the time, set not beyond oceans but beyond the Alps.

The cultivation of flax, to the ancient world what cotton is to-day, progressed rapidly in Gaul along with that of wheat, so that Gaul was early able to rival Egypt also in this respect. That Gaul and Egypt should have so much in common at the same time, was something so interesting and seemed so strange that Pliny himself wrote:

Flax is sowed only in sandy places and after a single ploughing. Perhaps Egypt may be pardoned for sowing it, because with it she buys the merchandise of India and Arabia. But, look you!--even Gaul is famous for this plant. What matters it, if huge mountains shut away the sea; if on the ocean side it has for confines what is called emptiness? Notwithstanding that, Gaul cultivates flax like Egypt: the Cadurci, the Caleti, the Ruteni, the Biturigi, the Morini, who are considered tribes of the ends of the earth ... but what am I saying? All Gaul makes sails,--till the enemies beyond the Rhine imitate them, and the linen is more beautiful to the eyes than are their women.

These descriptions show Gaul to be one of the new countries, like the Argentine Republic or the United States, in which the land has still almost its natural pristine fecundity and brings forth a marvellous abundance of plants that clothe and nourish man. We know that in Gaul under the Empire there were immense fortunes in land in face of which the fortunes of wealthy Italian proprietors shrink like the fortunes of Europe when compared with the great ranch fortunes of the Argentine Republic or the United States. Twenty years ago they began to excavate in France the ruins of the great Gallo-Roman villas: these are constructed on the plan of the Italian villa, decorated in the same way, but are much larger, more sumptuous, more sightly; one feels in them the pride of a new people which has adopted the Latin civilisation, but has infused into that, derived from the wealth of their land, a spirit of grandeur and of luxury that poorer and older Latins did not know, exactly as to-day the Americans infuse a spirit of greater magnitude and boldness into so many things that they take from timid, old Europe. Perhaps there was also in this Gallic luxury, as in the American, a bit of ostentation, intended to humiliate the masters remaining poorer and more modest.

But Gaul was a nation not only rich in fertilest agriculture; side by side with that, progressed its industry. This, according to my notion, is one of the vital points in ancient history. Under the Roman domination, Gaul was not restricted to the better cultivation of its productive soil; but alone among the peoples of the Occident, became, as we might now say, an industrial nation, that manufactured not only by and for itself, but like Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, sold also to other peoples of the Empire and outside of its own boundaries; in a word, exported. The more frequent contact with the Orient better acquainted the Gauls with the beautiful objects made by the artisans of Laodicea, of Tyre, of Sidon; and the clever genius of the Celt, always apt in industry, drew from them incentive to create a Gallic industry, partly imitative, partly original, and to seek a large clientèle for these industries in Italy, in Spain, beyond the Rhine, among the Germans, in the Danube provinces. This is proved by a number of important passages in Pliny, confirmed by inscriptions and archæological discoveries.

Pliny has already told us that the Gauls manufactured many linen sails; we know also that they made not only rough sails, but also fine linen for clothing, which had a wide market. There have been found in the Orient numerous fragments of an inscription containing the famous edict of Diocletian on maximum sale prices allowed, an inscription of value to us for its nomenclature of ancient fabrics. In this nomenclature is mentioned the birrus of Laodicea, an imitation of the birrus of the Nervii, which was a very fine linen cloth, worn by ladies of fashion. Laodicea was one of the most ancient centres of Oriental textile fabrics; the Nervii were one of the most remote of the Gallic peoples, living--the coincidence is noteworthy--about where Flanders is now. If at Laodicea they made at the end of the third century an imitation of Nervian linen, that means that the Nervii had succeeded in manufacturing and finding market for cloth so desirable as to rouse the Laodiceans, competing for trade, to imitate it. What proof more persuasive that during the early centuries of the Empire the Gauls greatly improved their industries and widened their markets?

They had mastered weaving, but they did not stop there; they invented new methods of dyeing, using vegetable dyes instead of the customary animal colours of the Orient. Pliny says:

The Gaul imitates with herbs all colours, including Tyrian purple; they do not seek the mollusk on the sea bottom; they run no risk of being devoured by sea monsters; they do not exploit the anchorless deep to multiply the attractions of the courtesan, or to increase the powers of the seducer of another's wife. They gather the herbs like cereals, standing on the dry ground; although the colour that they derive does not bear washing. Luxury could thus be gratified with greater show at the cost of fewer dangers.

It is clear, then, according to Pliny, at one time, it was believed that the competition of Gallic dyers might have ruined the Oriental, and would have done so, had the tenacity of their vegetable colouring equalled its beauty. In another passage Pliny tells us that these Gallic stuffs were used especially by the slaves and the populace.

The wool industry made no less progress in Gaul than weaving and dyeing. From numerous passages in Juvenal and Martial it appears that the woollen clothing worn by the populace of Rome in the second century was woven in Gaul, particularly in the districts to-day known as Arras, Langres, Saintonge. Pliny attributes to the Gauls the invention of a wool, that, soaked in acid, became incombustible, and was used to make mattresses.

Glass-making was another art carried from the East across the Mediterranean into Gaul. Still another industry, metallurgy, after weaving, contributed greatly to enrich Gaul. Undoubtedly even before the Roman conquest, Gaul worked gold mines; it seems, however, that silver mines remained untouched until about the time of Augustus. At any rate, the discovery of some deposits of gold and silver then gave a spur to several flourishing industries; jewelry-making, and--an original Gallic industry of much importance--silver-plating and tinning. Here is another extract from Pliny, from which you will see that in those times they already made in France "Christofle" silver-plate:

They cover [writes Pliny] the copper with tin in such a way that it is difficult to distinguish it from silver. It is a Gallic invention. Later they began to do the same thing with silver, silver-plating especially the ornaments of horses and carriages. The merit of the invention belongs to the Biturigi, and the industry was developed in the city of Alesia. After the same fashion there has been spread everywhere a foolish profusion of objects not only silver-, but gold-plated. All that is called cultus, elegance!

We might almost say that Gallic industry did to the old industries of the ancient world what German wares have done compared with older and more aristocratic products of France, of England, popularising objects of luxury for the many and the merely well-to-do.

Finally, if any one hesitated to trust fully these very important passages in Pliny, he would be quite convinced by reading the great work of Dechelette. This author, studying with Carthusian patience and the ablest critical acumen the Gallic ceramics to be found scattered among the museums, has demonstrated most commendably that in the first century of the Empire many manufactories of ceramics were opened and flourished in Gaul, especially in the valley of the Allier, and that they sold their vases in Spain, in the Danube regions, to the Germans, and in Italy.

Dechelette has proved that many ceramics found among the ruins of Pompeii, now admired in the museums of Pompeii and Naples, were made in Gaul,--discoveries most noteworthy, which, in connection with the extracts from Pliny, disclose in essence that real Roman Gaul whose sumptuous relics but half tell the tale of its wealth.

This tremendous development of Gaul was without doubt an effect of the Roman conquest; but an effect that neither Cæsar, nor any other man of his times had foreseen or willed, but which Augustus was first to recognise in the winter of 15-14 B.C., and to which, astute man that he was, he gave heed as he ought; that is, not as due his own merit, but as an unexpected piece of good fortune. I have already said that one of the greatest cares of Augustus, as soon as the civil wars were finished, was to reorganise the finances of the Empire; that to find new entries for the treasury, he had turned his attention in 27 B.C. to the province conquered by his father, regarding it merely from the common point of view, as poor and of little worth like the other European territories. Then, at a stroke, he realised that that territory so lightly valued, was producing grain like Egypt, linen like Egypt; that the arts of civilisation for which Egypt was so rich and famous were beginning to prosper there! Augustus was not the man to let slip so tremendous a piece of good luck. Until then he had hesitated, like one who seeks his way; in that winter from 15-14 B.C., he found finally the grand climax of his career, to make Gaul the Egypt of the West, the province of the greatest revenues in Europe. From that time on to the end of his life, he did not move from Europe; he lived between Italy and Gaul. Like him, Tiberius, Drusus, all the men of his family, devoted all their efforts to Gaul, to consolidating Roman dominion there, to advancing its progress, to increasing the revenues, to making it actually the Occidental Egypt. From Velleius we learn that under Tiberius Gaul rendered to the Empire as much as did Egypt, and that Gaul and Egypt were considered alike the two richest imperial provinces.

As a political interest had at first impelled Cæsar to annex Gaul, an immediate financial interest urged Augustus to continue the work, to take care of the new province. Then the historic law that I have already enunciated to you, the law by which the efforts of men result far differently from that which they had intended, was verified anew by Augustus also, and in a new form. He had created his Gallic policy to augment the revenues of the Empire; the consequences of this fiscal policy, necessity-inspired, were greater than he and his friends ever dreamed. The winter of 15-14 B.C. is a notable date in the story of Latin civilisation, for then the destiny of the Empire was irrevocably settled; the Roman Empire will be made up of two parts, the Oriental and the Occidental, each part sufficiently strong to withstand being overcome by the other; it will be neither an Asiatic, nor a Celtic-Latin, but a mixed Empire: between both parts, Italy will rule for two centuries more, and Rome, an immense city, at once Oriental and Latin, will keep the metropolitan crown won from the enfeebled East, and dominate the immature barbarian West.

Speaking of Cleopatra, I have shown you how great was the Oriental peril that threatened in the last century of the Republic to wipe out Rome. What miraculous force saved it? Gaul. Suppose that the army of Cæsar had been exterminated at Alesia; suppose that Rome, discouraged, had abandoned its Gallic enterprise as it had done with Persia, after the disaster of Crassus and the failure of Antony; or suppose that Gaul had been a poor province, sterile and unpopulous, like many a Danube district; Rome could not have held out long as the seat of imperial government, just as to-day the capital of the Russian Empire could not maintain itself at Vladivostok or Harbin. It would have been necessary to move the metropolis to a richer and more populous region. That Gaul grew rich and was Romanised, changed the state of things. When Rome possessed beyond the Alps in Europe a province as large and as full of resources as Egypt; when there was the same interest in defending it as in defending Egypt, Italy was well placed to govern both. The Egypt of the Occident counterbalanced the Egypt of the Orient, and Rome, half way between, was the natural and necessary metropolis of the wide-spread Empire. Gaul alone, revived, so to speak, the Empire in the West and prevented the European provinces--even Italy itself--from becoming dead limbs safely amputable from the Oriental body. Gaul upheld Italy and Rome in Europe for three centuries longer; Gaul stopped it on the way to the Asiatic conquests run through by Alexander. Had it not been for Gaul, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt would have formed the real Empire of Rome, and Italy would have been lost in it: without Gaul, the Orientalised Empire would have tried to conquer Persia and probably succeeded in doing so, abandoning the poor and unproductive lands of the untamed Occident. In short, Gaul created in the Roman Empire that duality between East and West which gives shape to all the history of our civilisation; it kept the artificial form of the Empire, circular about an island sea; it inspired the Empire with that double self-contradictory spirit, Latin and Oriental, at once its strength and its weakness.

Next time I will show you the continuation of this struggle of two minds, in a characteristic episode, the story of the Emperor Nero. Now, before closing, let me set before you briefly some general considerations drawn from the history of Roman Gaul which are applicable to universal history.

From what I have told you, it follows that the fortunes of peoples and states depend in part on what might be called the historic situation of every age, the situation that is created by the general state of the world in every successive epoch and which no people or state can mould at its own pleasure. Without doubt, a nation will never conquer a noteworthy greatness if the men that compose it fail of a certain culture, a certain energy, a social morale sufficiently vigorous; but though these qualities are necessary, they are not equally productive in all periods, but serve more or less, in different periods, according as general circumstances are disposed about a people. Gaul was fertile, and its people possessed before the conquest the qualities that they displayed later: and yet, as long as Gaul remained apart from the Empire, without continuous and numerous communications with the vast Mediterranean world; as long as it was split into so many petty rival states, occupied in serious wars against the Germanic tribes, its fertility remained hidden in the earth, and the ability of its inhabitants dissipated itself in devastating wars, instead of spending itself in fruitful effort. All that changed, and without any one's foresight or intent, when the Roman policy, urged by the internal forces that stirred the Republic, had destroyed that old order of things.

The ancients understood that peoples, like individual men, can regulate their destiny only in part; that about us, above us, are forces complex and obscure, which we can hardly comprehend, which invest us, seize us, impel us whither we had not thought to go, now to shipwreck on the rocks of misadventure, now to the discovery of islands of happiness, or to find, like Columbus, an America on the way to India. The Greeks called this power; the Latins, Fortuna, and deified it; erected temples and made sacrifices to it; dedicated to it a cult, of which Augustus was a devotee, and which contained more secret wisdom of life than all the superb theories on human destiny conceived by European genius in the delirium of this quarter-hour of measureless might in which we are living. No, man is not the voluntary artificer of his whole destiny; fortune and misfortune, triumph and catastrophe, are never entirely proportioned to personal merit or blame; every generation finds the world organised in a certain order of interests, forces, traditions, relations, and as it enjoys the good that preceding generations have accomplished, so in part it expiates the errors they have committed; as it draws advantage from beneficent forces acting outside of it and independent of its merit, so it suffers from the sinister forces that it finds--even though blameless itself--acting through the great mass of the world, among men and their works. From this relation to the unseen follows a rule of wisdom that modern men, full of unbounded pride, and persuaded that they are the beginning and end of the universe, too often forget: we must indeed press on with all our powers to the accomplishment of a great task, for although our destiny is never entirely made by our own hands, there is no destiny on the earth for the lazy; but, since a part of what we are depends not on ourselves, but upon what the ancients called Fortune, we dare never be too much elated over success, nor abased by failure. The wheel of destiny turns by a mysterious law, alike for families and for peoples: those in high position may fall; those in low, may rise.

Certainly Cæsar never suspected when he was fighting the Gauls, that the great-grandsons of the vanquished would live in villas modelled on the Roman, but more sumptuous; that the great Gallic nobles would have the satisfaction of parading before the people that conquered them a latinity more impressive and magnificent; and that some day the Gaul put by him to fire and sword would get the better, in empire, in wealth, in culture, of even Italy.

Nero

On the 13th of October of 54 A.D., when Emperor Claudius died, the Senate chose as his successor his adopted son, Nero, a young man of seventeen, fat and short-sighted, who had until then studied only music, singing, and drawing. This choice of a child-emperor, who lacked imperial qualities and suggested the child kings of Oriental monarchies, was a scandalous novelty in the constitutional history of Rome. The ancient historians, especially Tacitus, considered the event as the result of an intrigue, cleverly arranged by Nero's mother, Agrippina, a daughter of Germanicus and granddaughter of Agrippa, the builder of the Pantheon. According to these historians, Agrippina, a highly ambitious woman, induced Claudius to marry her after Messalina's death, although she was a widow and had a child, and as soon as she entered the emperor's mansion she began to open the way for the election of her son. In order to exclude Britannicus, the son of Messalina, from succession, she persuaded Claudius to adopt Nero; then, with the help of the two tutors of the young man, Seneca and Burrhus, created in the Senate and among the Prætorians, a party favourable to her son; no sooner did she feel that she could rely on the Senate and the Prætorians, than she poisoned Claudius.