Montesquieu, Considerations on the Greatness and the Decline of the Romans (Part 1)

We should not take up the same idea of Rome in its beginnings which we give to the cities which we see today, unless it be one of those in Crimea, made for enclosing spoils, beasts, and the produce of the country. The ancient names of Rome’s principal cities correspond to this usage.

The city did not have the same streets, unless one called by that name the continuation of the paths which lead to them. Houses were located without order, and were very small; for the people, being always at work or in a public place, hardly kept themselves within their houses.

But the greatness of Rome soon appeared in its public buildings. The accomplishments which gave, and give even today, the highest idea of their power, were completed under the kings. They began from that point to construct their eternal city.

Il ne faut pas prendre de la ville de Rome, dans ses commencements, l’idée que nous donnent les villes que nous voyons aujourd’hui, à moins que ce ne soit de celles de la Crimée, faites pour renfermer le butin, les bestiaux et les fruits de la campagne. Les noms anciens des principaux lieux de Rome ont tous du rapport à cet usage.
La ville n’avait pas même de rues, si l’on n’appelle de ce nom la continuation des chemins qui y aboutissaient. Les maisons étaient placées sans ordre et très petites : car les hommes, toujours au travail ou dans la place publique, ne se tenaient guère dans les maisons.
Mais la grandeur de Rome parut bientôt dans ses édifices publics. Les ouvrages qui ont donné et qui donnent encore aujourd’hui la plus haute idée de sa puissance ont été faits sous les Rois On commençait déjà à bâtir la ville éternelle.
Romulus et ses successeurs furent presque toujours en guerre avec leurs voisins pour avoir des citoyens, des femmes ou des terres. Ils revenaient dans la ville avec les dépouilles des peuples vaincus : c’étaient des gerbes de blé et des troupeaux ; cela y causait une grande joie. Voilà l’origine des triomphes, qui furent dans la suite la principale cause des grandeurs où cette ville parvint.

Petrarch, Africa 9.10-31:

Ennius sat silently meditating on the deck, the constant witness to and companion in Scipio’s affairs. Scipio approached him and began in these pleasant words:

‘Will you never break your silence, o my sweet solace of my many labors? Speak, I beg you. For you can see my heart melting away from many cares. You’re accustomed to ease them with your pleasant speech. Just relax your face, loosen your expression, if highest Apollo gave you the talent which you excel in at your birth, if the crowd of the goddesses washed you as an infant submerged in the Castalian pool on sacred Helicon, led you to the high hills, and have you the pen, the voice, and the mind of a poet.’

Ennius raised his head at these words and spoke thus: ‘O young flower of Italy, certain pledge of divine offspring, why does it please you to be moved by my mouth, or why do you order me thus? Indeed, I was considering in my silent heart that no age will ever bring forth a greater work of outstanding virtue than the one which our happy age sees; no one will ever move anything great under his mind for whom an honest name does not sound among his great hopes, who will not, coming to the point, wish to recall the deeds of Scipio, who would not wish to see your face as a gift. The greater fame of the grave will remain for you after the grave, for Spite plucks away at mortal achievements. But Death consumes Envy and wards it off from the funeral busts. Your glory had already conquered this pest, and now it safely flees the ground, the diseases and malignant habits of people, through the lofty breezes, and bore itself as the equal to the gods.”

Puppe ducis media tacitus meditansque sedebat

Ennius, assiduus rerum testisque comesque;

Scipio quem tandem aggreditur verbisque benignis

Excitat incipiens: “Nunquamne silentia rumpes,

O michi multorum solamen dulce laborum?

Fare, precor; nam perpetuis tabentia curis

Pectora nostra vides. Placido sermone levare

Illa soles; faciesque modo, tantum ora resolve,

Si tibi nascenti, quo polles, summus Apollo

Ingenium celeste dedit, si turba dearum

Castalio infantem demersum gurgite lavit

Ex Elicone sacro, collesque eduxit in altos,

Et calamum et vocem tribuit mentemque poete.”

Ennius auditis caput extulit atque ita fatur:

“O flos Italie, iuvenis, stirpisque deorum

Certa fides, quid nunc nostro placet ore moveri,

Quidve iubes? Equidem tacito modo pectore mecum

Volvebam quod nulla ferent iam secula maius

Eximie virtutis opus, quam nostra quod etas

Leta videt, nullusque unquam sub mente movebit

Grande aliquid, cui non, magnas spes inter, honestum

Nomen in ore sonet, qui non venturus ad actum

Scipiade meminisse velit, pro munere vultus

Non cupiat vidisse tuos. Maiorque sepulcri

Post cineres te fama manet. Mortalia Livor

Carpit enim; at Mors Invidiam consumit et arcet

Ac procul a bustis abigit. Tua gloria pridem

Vicerat hanc pestem, iamque altas tuta per auras

Fugit humum morbosque hominum moresque malignos,

Seque parem tulit alma deis.

Montesquieu, Dissertation on Roman Politics in Religion (Part 14)

The political system which prevailed in the religion of the Romans developed itself more fully in their victories. If they had listened to superstition, they would have brought among the vanquished the gods of the victors; they would have overturned their temples; and, in establishing a new mode of worship, they would have imposed upon them a cruder servitude than before. Rome herself submitted to the gods of foreigners, and received them in her breast; and through this connection, the strongest which can exist among humans, she attached herself to people who regarded her more as the sanctuary of religion than as the mistress of the world.

But, in order to avoid multiplying the number of beings, the Romans, following the example of the Greeks, adroitly mixed the foreign gods among their own. If they found among their conquests a god who had some resemblance to one of those worshipped in Rome, they adopted it, as it were, in giving it the name of a Roman deity, and they accorded it, if I may use the expression, the rights of the bourgeoisie in their city. So, when they found some famous hero who had purged the land of some monster, or who subjugated some barbarous people, they gave him straightaway the name of Hercules. ‘We have pierced all the way to the Ocean,’ says Tacitus, ‘and we have found there the columns of Hercules: either because Hercules was there, or because we have attributed to this hero all of the deeds worthy of Herculean glory.’

Varro counted forty four of these defeaters of monsters; Cicero counted but six, twenty two Muses, five Suns, four Vulcans, five Mercuries, four Apollos, three Jupiters. Eusebius goes farther: he counts as many Jupiters as there were people.

The Romans, who had no other divinity than the genius of the Republic, paid no attention to the disorder and confusion which they introduced into mythology: the credulity of the people, which is always beyond ridicule and extravagance, made up for it all.

La politique qui régnait dans la religion des Romains se développa encore mieux dans leurs victoires. Si la superstition avait été écoutée, on aurait porté chez les vaincus les dieux des vainqueurs: on aurait renversé leurs temples ; et, en établissant un nouveau culte, on leur aurait imposé une servitude plus rude que la première. On fit mieux : Rome se soumit elle-même aux divinités étrangères, elle les reçut dans son sein ; et, par ce lien, le plus fort qui soit parmi les hommes, elle s’attacha des peuples qui la regardèrent plutôt comme le sanctuaire de la religion que comme la maîtresse du monde.

Mais, pour ne point multiplier les êtres, les Romains, à l’exemple des Grecs, confondirent adroitement les divinités étrangères avec les leurs : s’ils trouvaient dans leurs conquêtes un dieu qui eût du rapport à quelqu’un de ceux qu’on adorait à Rome, ils l’adoptaient, pour ainsi dire, en lui donnant le nom de la divinité romaine, et lui accordaient, si j’ose me servir de cette expression, le droit de bourgeoisie dans leur ville. Ainsi, lorsqu’ils trouvaient quelque héros fameux qui eût purgé la terre de quelque monstre, ou soumis quelque peuple barbare, ils lui donnaient aussitôt le nom d’Hercule. « Nous avons percé jusqu’à l’Océan, dit Tacite, et nous y avons trouvé les colonnes d’Hercule ; soit qu’Hercule y ait été, soit que nous ayons attribué à ce héros tous les faits dignes de sa gloire. »

Varron a compté quarante-quatre de ces dompteurs de monstres ; Cicéron n’en a compté que six, vingt-deux Muses, cinq Soleils, quatre Vulcains, cinq Mercures, quatre Apollons, trois Jupiters. Eusèbe va plus loin: il compte presque autant de Jupiters que de peuples.

Les Romains, qui n’avaient proprement d’autre divinité que le génie de la république, ne faisaient point d’attention au désordre et à la confusion qu’ils jetaient dans la mythologie : la crédulité des peuples, qui est toujours au-dessus du ridicule et de l’extravagant, réparait tout.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers – Aristippus (70)

“When someone proposed a riddle to Aristippus and asked him to solve it, Aristippus responded, ‘You idle fool, you want this solved, even though it offers us plenty of trouble in its unsolved state?’

He said that it was better to be a beggar than to be uneducated, for a beggar is lacking money, but the uneducated person is lacking humanity.

One time, when upbraided, he ran away. When someone pursued him, asking why he fled, he responded, ‘Because you have the power of talking trash, and I have the power of not listening.’

When someone said that he always saw philosophers at the doorways of the rich, Aristippus replied, ‘So too you always find doctors at the doorways of the sick. But one would not on that account choose rather to be sick than to be a doctor.”

Αἴνιγμά τινος αὐτῷ προτείναντος καὶ εἰπόντος, “λῦσον,” “τί, ὦ μάταιε,” ἔφη, “λῦσαι θέλεις ὃ καὶ δεδεμένον ἡμῖν πράγματα παρέχει;” ἄμεινον ἔφη ἐπαιτεῖν ἢ ἀπαίδευτον εἶναι· οἱ μὲν γὰρ χρημάτων, οἱ δ’ ἀνθρωπισμοῦ δέονται. λοιδορούμενός ποτε ἀνεχώρει· τοῦ δ’ ἐπιδιώκοντος εἰπόντος, “τί φεύγεις;”, “ὅτι,” φησί, “τοῦ μὲν κακῶς λέγειν σὺ τὴν ἐξουσίαν ἔχεις, τοῦ δὲ μὴ ἀκούειν ἐγώ.” εἰπόντος τινὸς ὡς ἀεὶ τοὺς φιλοσόφους βλέποι παρὰ ταῖς τῶν πλουσίων θύραις, “καὶ γὰρ οἱ ἰατροί,” φησί, “παρὰ ταῖς τῶν νοσούντων· ἀλλ’ οὐ παρὰ τοῦτό τις ἂν ἕλοιτο νοσεῖν ἢ ἰατρεύειν.”