Idaho, with the coöperation of that state.[29] The advantages which the
Roman plan has over our ordinary method of settling a new region are
apparent at once.
A discussion of this feature of the policy which the Romans followed
in a newly acquired territory naturally leads us to speak of their
attitude toward native communities. Lord Cromer remarks that the Roman
provinces did not have self-government. It is true that Spain and Gaul
did not have their own legislatures and chief magistrates, but the real
administrative units with which Rome dealt in making her arrangements
were the city-states of Spain and Gaul, and they had a large measure
of self-government conferred on them by their charters. In a province
like Spain one finds communities in all the different stages of
advancement from the position of a dependent village to a free city or
a Roman colony, and one may well ask if the Roman system was not a more
practical one than ours. We treat Porto Rico, for instance, as a unit.
All the villages or cities in the island are put on the same legal
basis, no matter what the state of civilization of the different towns
may be. The Romans would have granted the full rights of citizenship to
one or two of them, and advanced the others from their more lowly state
as they became more civilized and prosperous. In this way they held
before native communities a prize which those communities were always
eager to attain, and from the first century of our era we find one town
after another advancing to a fuller enjoyment of civic rights. The
same policy was applied to individuals. Roman citizenship was often
granted to selected persons in a community. Such a grant identified the
interests of these provincial leaders with those of Rome, and enlisted
their support for the Roman régime.
The agencies which the Empire used so successfully in Romanizing the
provinces, that is to say the establishment of law and order, the
retention of local self-government, the liberal grants of citizenship
to qualified individuals and cities, the development of a good civil
service, the building of roads, the construction of public works, the
introduction of the Latin language and of Roman law, and the unifying
influence in the later period of the Church, engendered a feeling of
solidarity throughout the Western World, which was one of the most
valuable legacies handed down by the Romans to later times. Even
Claudian, the last important Roman poet, writing after the crushing
defeat of Valens by the barbarians at Adrianople, saw clearly that, in
spite of all the disasters which had overtaken Rome, the sense of unity
still persisted throughout the Western World. He writes in sorrow of
the goddess, Roma:
“H_er voice is weak, and slow her steps; her
eyes_
D_eep sunk within; her cheeks are gone;
her arms_
A_re shrivelled up with wasting leanness_,”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account