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Page 14
An historian of the Empire says: "The character of Hadrian was in the
highest degree complex, and this presents to the student a series of
apparently unreconciled contrasts which have proved so hard for many
modern historians to resolve. A thorough soldier and yet the
inaugurator of a peace policy, a 'Greekling' as his Roman subjects
called him, and saturated with Hellenic ideas, and yet a lover of
Roman antiquity; a poet and an artist, but with a passion for
business and finance; a voluptuary determined to drain the cup of
human experience and, at the same time, a ruler who labored
strenuously for the well-being of his subjects; such were a few of the
diverse parts which Hadrian played."
It is evident that the difficulty with the historians who find these
unreconciled contrasts is that they try to treat Hadrian as an
"ancient" rather than as a modern. The enormously rich men who are at
present most in the public eye present the same contradictions.
Hadrian was a thorough man of the world. There was nothing venerable
about him, though much that was interesting and admirable.
Now what a man of the world is to a simple character like a saint or a
hero, that Rome has been to cities of the simpler sort. It has been a
city of the world. It has been cosmopolitan. "Urbs et orbis" suggests
the historic fact. The fortunes of the city have become inextricably
involved in the fortunes of the world.
A part of the confusion of the traveler comes from the fact that the
Roman city and the Roman world are not clearly distinguished one from
the other. The New Testament writer distinguishes between Jerusalem as
a geographical fact and Jerusalem as a spiritual ideal. There has
been, he says, a Jerusalem that belongs to the Jews, but there is also
Jerusalem which belongs to humanity, which is free, which is "the
mother of us all."
So there has been a local Rome with its local history. And there has
been the greater Rome that has impressed itself on the imagination of
the world. Since the destruction of Carthage the meaning of the word
"Roman" has been largely allegorical. It has stood for the successive
ideas of earthly power and spiritual authority.
Rome absorbed the glory of deeds done elsewhere. Battles were fought
in far-off Asia and Africa. But the battlefield did not become the
historic spot. The victor must bring his captives to Rome for his
triumph. Here the pomp of war could be seen, on a carefully arranged
stage, and before admiring thousands. It was the triumph rather than
the battle that was remembered. All the interest culminated at this
dramatic moment. Rome thus became, not the place where history was
made, but the place where it was celebrated. Here the trumpets of
fame perpetually sounded.
This process continued after the Empire of the C�sars passed away. The
continuity of Roman history has been psychological. Humanity has "held
a thought." Rome became a fixed idea. It exerted an hypnotic influence
over the barbarians who had overcome all else. The Holy Roman Empire
was a creation of the Germanic imagination, and yet it was a real
power. Many a hard-headed Teutonic monarch crossed the Alps at the
head of his army to demand a higher sanction for his own rule of
force. When he got himself crowned in the turbulent city on the Tiber
he felt that something very important had happened. Just how important
it was he did not fully realize till he was back among his own people
and saw how much impressed they were by his new dignities.
Hans Christian Andersen begins one of his stories with the assertion,
"You must know that the Emperor of China is a Chinaman and that all
whom he has about him are Chinamen also." The assertion is so logical
in form that we are inclined to accept it without question. Then we
remember that in Hans Christian Andersen's day, and for a long time
before, the Emperor of China was not a Chinaman and the great
grievance was that Chinamen were the very people he would not have
about him.
When we speak of the Roman Catholic Church, we jump at the conclusion
that it is the church of the Romans and that the people of Rome have
had the most to do with its extension. This theory has nothing to
recommend it but its extreme verbal simplicity. As a matter of fact,
Rome has never been noted for its pious zeal. Such warmth as it has
had has been imparted to it by the faithful who have been drawn from
other lands; as, according to some theorists, the sun's heat is kept
up by a continuous shower of meteors falling into it.
To-day, the Roman Church is more conscious of its strength in
Massachusetts than it is near the Vatican. At the period when the
Papacy was at its height, and kings and emperors trembled before it in
England and in Germany, the Popes had a precarious hold on their own
city. Rome was a religious capital rather than a religious centre. It
did not originate new movements. Missionaries of the faith have not
gone forth from it, as they went from Ireland. It is not in Rome that
we find the places where the saints received their spiritual
illuminations, and fought the good fight, and gathered their
disciples. Rome was the place to which they came for judgment, as Paul
did when he appealed to C�sar. Here heretics were condemned, and here
saints, long dead, were canonized. Neither the doctrines nor the
institutions of the Catholic Church originated here. Rome was the
mint, not the mine. That which received the Roman stamp passed current
throughout the world.
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