[0] TO ROME. [197] It is customary for travelers by sea and land to make vows, in accordance with their various whims. A poet has jokingly told us to vow "golden-horned frankincense." For my trip here by land and sea I made this vow, gentlemen, which is not unrefined, out of tune, or unprofessional: "If I arrive safely, I will deliver a public address to the city." I could not vow a speech worthy of the city; it would really call for an additional and perhaps a greater vow, to be able to handle such a speech as would match so titanic a city. But I promised to speak as best I can, since there are others who make what is worthy of them worthy of the gods too. [198] If you gentlemen who live in this metropolis share any concern for the fulfilment of my vow, lend a hand to this rash scheme. Let me at the very beginning of my eulogy be able to say that here a person will instantly meet the kind of men who instantly impart to him culture, wit, and the power of speaking on subjects beyond his range, Even if (to quote Euripides) he was unskilled before. The city is and will be celebrated by all, but they make her smaller than if they kept silent. By silence you cannot make her either greater or less than she is; she remains unmarred in men's estimation. But words do the opposite of what they intend. They praise, but do not give an exact view of the thing admired. Now if a painter through the medium of art tries to show us a beautiful and universally admired figure, but falIs short, surely everyone will say, "Instead of painting, better let us see the object itself; don't show us an inferior copy." It is the same, I think, with this city. A speech suppresses most of her wonders; and its effect seems to me almost as if a man who wanted to report the size of an army (like Xerxes), which utterly amazed him, were to say that he saw ten or twenty thousand soldiers, and such-and-such a number of cavalry — not mentioning in his amazement even a tiny part of the whole. This — before you — is the first proof that no power of words can be altogether adequate. Far from being able to talk adequately about Rome, one cannot even get an adequate view. It really takes an all-seeing Argus, or rather the all-seeing god that rules her. For what man could accurately take in so many hill-tops comprised under the name of one city, so many tracts of plain built up, so much land enclosed? [199] From what vantage-point could he look? Homer said of the snow that it pours down and covers "The tops of lofty hills and utmost sea-cliffs, Meadows in bloom, and mankind's fertile acres; On the gray sea it pours, on coves and shores". So does this city: she covers the utmost sea-cliffs, she covers the land in between, she stretches down to the sea, where the trading-post of all mankind, the distribution center for the produce of the earth is located. Wherever you may be in Rome, you are equally in the thick of it; there is no open space. Furthermore, Rome does not spread merely over the surface. She is far and away above my comparison, and goes up toweringly into the air. Her height should be likened not to snowbanks but rather to actual cliffs. Just as a man who far outdoes his fellows in size and strength is not content unless he lifts up and carries others on top of him, so Rome is not content with occupying so much ground, but lifts up other Romes of equal size on top of her and carries them in storeys. So she is rightly named; this layout is Strength indeed. If someone would take her apart neatly and set the now elevated cities down on the ground side by side, I think all of Italy that is now open would be filled up and would form one continuous city, extending to the Ionian sea. Perhaps even now I have not adequately demonstrated the magnitude of Rome. The eye is a better witness. Of other places you can say, "Here it stops"; but not of Rome. The size of the city of Athens, it was said, was twice as big as her power called for, while the size of Sparta would look much smaller than her power. I deprecate the foul sound of the comparison. No one can say this immense city [200] has not acquired the power that befits such size. If you look at the whole empire, you can {no longer} marvel at the city, to think that a tiny part rules all of the earth. But if you see the city herself — the bounds of the city — you can marvel no longer that the whole world is ruled by a city of this size. A certain writer, speaking about Asia, said that one man ruled all the territory traversed by the sun. The statement was untrue, unless he meant to exclude all of Africa and Europe from the sunrise and sunset. But now it has come true: the whole traverse of the sun is your property; your territory is what the sun traverses. Your empire does not end at coastal cliffs, at Swallow Rocks and Blue Rocks, or at one day's journey on horseback to the sea. You are not kings within boundaries assigned to you. No one else tells you how far your power is to extend. No, like a girdle about the waist of the world, and likewise of your dominions, stretches the sea. Toward it the continents slope far and wide, supplying you with an endless flow of goods. From everywhere, land and sea, comes all that the seasons bring forth, all that is produced by each country, by rivers, lakes, and the skills of Greeks and foreigners. Anyone who wants to see all there products must either tour the whole world or else come to this city and look at them. Not one thing raised or manufactured by any nation but is always here — in surplus. Every season, with each new harvest, so many freighters arrive here with cargoes from all over that the city is like an amalgamated warehouse of the world. You can see so much merchandise from India, or if you wish from Arabia Felix, that you will guess the trees over there remain permanently stripped and the people must come here to ask for some of their own goods back, whenever they need anything. [201] Clothing from Babylon and the luxuries of the barbarian lands beyond arrive in much greater quantity and more easily than if one were to ferry a cargo from Naxos or Cythnos to Athens. Egypt, Sicily, and the civilized part of Africa are your farms. The arrival and departure of ships never ceases. I can hardly believe that the sea — let alone the harbor — is big enough to hold them. Just as Hesiod said that at the ends of the Ocean is a common channel where all water has a single source and destination, so there is a common channel to Rome, and everything meets here — trade, sea-faring, agriculture, metallurgy, all the arts that are and all that have been, everything engendered or sprung from the soil. Anything not seen here was and is non-existent. It is not easy to decide whether your city surpasses all cities that exist, more than your empire surpasses all empires that ever existed. After a discourse upon so much that is of great consequence, I blush at the impression I shall convey of paying uncalled-for attention now to a barbarian empire or a Greek regime. You will think I am doing the opposite of the Aeolic poets. Whenever they wanted to disparage anything contemporary, they would compare it with some grandeur and glory of antiquity; they felt this would be the surest condemnation. I, on the contrary, have no other way to show the extent of your superiority than by a comparison with ancient trifles. For by your excellence, you have dwarfed all, even the colossal. I shall limit my remarks to the colossal, but you may find them laughable. [202] Let us consider the Persian empire, which was once highly extolled among the Greeks and accorded to its ruler the title of Great King. (Earlier empires were less important; I shall leave them out.) Let us visualize everything in order — the size of that empire, and what went on in it. Our comparison must show what use the Persians made of their acquisitions, and how they handled their subjects. First, the Mediterranean was then to their king just what the Atlantic Ocean now signifies to you. There was the boundary of his empire, so that the Ionians and Aeolians were at the edge of his territory. And when he, the king of all peoples "from East to West," tried once to cross over into Greece, the amazement he produced was equalled by the vastness of his down-fall. He showed off his splendor by the vast scale of his losses. Now the king who was so far from conquering Greece and held Ionia as a borderland falls short of your power not by a mere discus-throw or bow-shot, but by a good half of the earth, and the sea besides. Yet even within those boundaries he was not always really king. As the strength of Athens or the fortunes of Lacedaemon fluctuated, his kingdom would sometimes extend to Ionia, Aeolis, and the sea; later he would lose Ionia and the sea-frontier, and rule as far as Lydia, unable to look westward to the sea from the Blue Rocks. Just as in a children's game, he was king and stayed inland; then he would come down and beg people to let him rule. This was proved by the army of Agesilaus, which marched to Phrygia as if on home-ground, and before that by the Ten Thousand under Clearchus, who penetrated beyond the Euphrates as if on vacant ground. What the Persian kings got out of their empire was wittily expressed first by Oebares. When Cyrus complained of being too much on the move, Oebares is said to have replied, [203] "If you mean to go on ruling, you must without fall, whether you like it or not, travel constantly throughout the empire and keep an eye on your purse. Any part of it that you come to flattens down and touches the ground; when you move on, it springs back up, and flattens as you step on it again". Mere vagabond kings, like the nomadic Scythians except for traveling in carriages instead of carts; {mere nomad, wandering kings}. Because they felt uneasy and afraid to stay in one place, they would really squeeze their country like a purse; thus they would occupy first Babylon, then Susa, then Ecbatana. They did not know how to keep their subjects down; neither did they tend them like shepherds. It was indeed as though they doubted whether the empire was theirs. They did not look out for it as their own. They improved and enlarged neither the cities nor the countryside. Like men who have had a windfall, they squandered it shamefully, vilely. Their aim was to weaken their subjects to the utmost. They vied with one another in bloodshed : the next king would always have a field-day trying to outdo his predecessor. It was a contest, who could kill the most people, lay waste the most households and settlements, and break the most oaths? This is what they got out of their far-famed might — this, and all that kas been ordained by the law of nature to accompany it — hatred, plots hatched by those whom they exasperated so, revolts, civil war, continuous dissensions, and endless feuds. What they got out of ruling was more like a curse than a prayer fulfilled. Their subjects got out of it all that the subjects of such rulers are bound to get. I have practically stated it before. A child's beauty was terrifying to his parents, a wife's to her husband. [204] Not the greatest criminal but the greatest property-owner had to die. More cities were sacked and uprooted then, I might almost say, than are founded nowadays. It was safer to fight than to submit, for the Persian kings were easily beaten in battle, but when in control they were immeasurably brutal. Their servants they despised as slaves; free men they chastised as enemies. So they went on hating and being hated. Often they feared their subjects more than their foreign adversaries, and generally made war the arbiter. The reason was that they did not know how to govern, and the governed did not live up to their part either, for it is impossible to be a good subject when the rulers rule badly. Government was not yet distinguished from slave-driving; king was identical with master. So the Persians naturally did not get far, for the latter title will not go beyond a household; when it extends to states and peoples, it is easily overthrown. Next, Alexander conquered the biggest empire before yours, and swept over the world; but in reality he was more like a conqueror than a king. He had the same luck, it seems to me, as a private investor who boys up plenty of good land and dies before harvesting the crops from it. Alexander advanced over more of the earth than anyone else, crushed all resistance, and tasted every hardship to the full. But he was unable to organize his empire or finish his labors. He died in the middle of his career. You might say he won the most battles but ruled the least. He was an outstanding contender for royal power but got nothing commensurate with his genius and ability. If an athlete at the Olympic games were to beat his rivals but then died in the moment of victory [205] before he could set the wreath properly on his head, his misfortune would be much like Alexander's. Did Alexander leave any laws for the various countries? Did he institute any regular levies of taxes, troops, or skips? Did he run the government with any permanent apparatus to function automatically at stated intervals of time? Did he carry out any policies toward his subjects? He left behind only one feat, one memorial worthy of his talents — the city in Egypt named after him. He was doing you a favor when he founded it, so that you might have it and be in possession of the next largest city after yours. All in all, he broke the power of the Persians, but barely started to exercise it himself. When he died, the Macedonians at once split up into a million pieces, giving tangible proof that the empire was too much for them. They could no longer hold even Macedonia. Their lot was so hard that they had to abandon their own country for the sake of ruling abroad. They were more like outcasts than men fit to rule; and it was a kind of riddle that Macedonians rule, not in Macedonia, but each wherever he can. They garrisoned rather than governed their cities and provinces—mere refugee kings, not creatures of the Great King, but upstarts. Or (if I may call them that) they were like viceroys without a king. Shall we say this status of theirs was closer to buccaneering than to royalty? Now, however, the empire has boundaries too far-flung to be belittled, or even for the area within them to be defined by measurement. If we set out from what was the western boundary of the Persian empire, then the part of your empire west of that is much larger than the whole of theirs. Nothing escapes you — city, province, port, or district — unless you have rejected some for uselessness. The Red Sea, the Cataracts of the Nile, and Lake Maeotis, which formerly had the aura of being at the ends of the earth, are no more than fence-posts for this city. [206] Some writers used to suspect that the Ocean did not exist at all and did not flow around the earth, but that poets had invented the name and brought it into poetry for effect. You, however, have thrown so much light on the Ocean that the island in it has not escaped you either. Extensive and sizable as the empire is, perfect policing does much more than territorial boundaries to make it great. For there are no Mysians, Sacae, Pisidians, or others usurping territory in the midst of the empire, whether by forcible invasion or unsuppressed revolt. Nothing here is called "imperial territory" while really belonging to anyone able to hold it. There are no satraps fighting one another as though they had no king; no cities lining up on one side or the other, or garrisons being introduced into some cities and expelled from others. Like a well swept and fenced-in front yard, . . . the whole world speaks in unison, more distinctly than a chorus; and so well does it harmonize under this director-in-chief that it joins in praying this empire may last for all time. {All everywhere are ruled equally}. The mountain people are lowlier — in their submissiveness — than the inhabitants of the most exposed plains. The owners and occupants of rich plains are your peasants. Continent and island are no longer separate. Like one continuous country and one race, all the world quietly obeys. Everything is carried out by command or nod, and it is simpler than touching a string. If a need arises, the thing has only to be decided on, and it is done. The governors assigned to cities and provinces govern their various subjects; but among themselves and in relation to one another, all of them alike are governed. You might say that they are above the governed in being the exemplars of correct subordination; for all of them have been instilled with such dread of the supreme governor, the chief executive. [207] They are convinced that he knows what they are doing better than they know it themselves. They fear and respect him more than any slave could fear his master standing over him personally and giving orders. None of them are so proud that they can sit still if they so much as hear his name. They leap up, praise him, bow, and utter a double prayer, to the gods on behalf of him, and to him on their own behalf. If they feel the slightest doubt about their subjects lawsuits, public or private, or whether petitions should be granted, they immediately send to him and ask what to do, and they wait for a signal from him, like a chorus from its director. No need for him to wear himself out making the rounds of the whole empire, or to be in one place after another adjusting the affairs of each people whenever he sets foot in their country. Instead, he can very easily sit and manage the whole world by letters, which are practically no sooner written than delivered, as if flown in by birds. I shall now say what above all deserves admiration, wonder, and gratitude in word and deed. While your empire is so large and you rule it with so much statesmanship and authority, the following is by far your greatest triumph, and one quite peculiar to you: You are the only ones ever to rule over freemen. You do not give Caria over to Tissaphernes, Phrygia to Pharnabazus, Egypt to someone else. You do not present a province to so-and-so, like a household of slaves to obey someone who is not free himself. Your state is administered like a single city, and you choose governors for the whole world as if it were one city holding an election. They are to protect and care for the governed, not to be their masters. One governor makes way for another when his term expires; and so far from claiming that the province belongs to him, he will hardly stay on till his successor takes over. [208] Just as cases are appealed from a district court to a jury, imperial officials have to answer to an appellate tribunal, where they are no safer from an adverse verdict than the appellants. You might say that people are now ruled by the legate only as much as they please. Is not this better than any democracy? Under democracy, once a man's case is decided in his town, he cannot take it elsewhere or to other judges; he must be content with that verdict, unless it is some small town that has to call in outside judges. . . . {Under the Roman Empire, neither the plaintif nor the defendant need submit to an unjust decision.} Another great judge remains from whom justice is never hidden. At that bar there is profound and impressive equity between small and great, obscure and eminent, poor and rich, noble and common. The line from Hesiod applies to this judge and ruler: For him, it is easy to strengthen, and easy to chastise the strong, whichever way justice may direct, like a breeze on a ship's sails, which does not favor and convoy the rich more than the poor, but impartially helps whoever comes its way. Now I shall turn to Greek history, since I have reached that point in my speech. I am ashamed and afraid that I shall give the impression of triviality. However, as I said a while ago, I shall not set this forth as as comparison of equals to equals; I am forced by lack of other illustrations to use what there is. Furthermore, it would be silly for us to admire and call attention to this very point — that no other glories can be found equal or nearly equal to yours, which blot them all out — if we were nevertheless to put of making a contrast until we could refer to something equally glorious. I think we ought not to put it off, for Rome would not be so admirable if we could name anything like it. [209] I am also not unaware that the Greek achievement will look even pettier than the Persian, which I have just appraised, in extent of empire and dignity of state. But to outdo the barbarians in wealth and power, while surpassing the Greeks in wisdom and moderation, seems to me a great feat, more brilliant than any other, and fulfilling the ideal standard. I am going to say how large the Greek world was and what they did with it. If I show that they were incapable of preserving something much smaller than the Persian empire, it is obvious how this will add to your acclaim. The Athenians and the Lacedaemonians did everything for the sake of empire and supremacy. For them, power meant, to sail the sea, rule the Cyclades, control the Thracian littoral, Thermopylae, the Hellespont, Coryphasium. That was power. What happened to them was virtually as if someone that wished to subdue a person were to get hold of nails and fingertips instead of the whole body, and then thought, "I have just what I wanted," Similarly, Athens and Lacedaemon, which wanted supremacy, got their haul of tiny islands, capes facing the sea, coves, and the like. They wore themselves out struggling for the sea. To dream of supremacy was more within their power than to attain it. Yet on occasion, as if by lot, both cities had their turn at the head of Greece. Neither could maintain its rank for a single generation (so to speak), or without odium. They won a proverbial Cadmean victory in their struggles for supremacy. Either side seemed to object to the other always absorbing all the hatred, and insisted on having its share. The Greeks were so disaffected by one Lacedaemonian commander that in their mutiny against the Lacedaemonians they were singularly willing to find themselves another set of rulers. They entrusted themselves to the Athenians, but not much time elapsed before they regretted it. They could not bear the excessive tribute, nor the grafters on top of that, who took their money on pretence of tribute. [210] They were dragged away every year to stand trial in Athens for their own internal afairs. They had landlords from Athens set over them; and besides the tribute, Athens would send out ships to forage for additional money, whenever needed. Furthermore, they were not allowed to keep their citadels in their own hands, and they were at the mercy of responsible and irresponsible Athenian politicians alike. They were forced, often during religious celebrations and festivals, to serve in campaigns that Athens had not been forced to undertake. To state it simply, they got nothing from her patronage important enough to warrant putting up with all this. Disgusted therefore with Athens, most of them went over once more to the Lacedaemonians, the same way as previously they had deserted the Lacedaemonians for the Athenians. And once more they were double-crossed the same way. The Lacedaemonians had proclaimed that they were going to war against Athens for the freedom of Greece. They thereby rallied most of the Greeks to their side. But once they had torn down the walls of Athens and made themselves all-powerful masters of the situation, they then went way beyond the Athenians. In all Greek cities, they set up dictatorships, which they innocuously labeled "Boards of Ten." They overthrew one despotism, the Athenian, and replaced it with a multitude of despotisms of their own, which mistreated their subjects from headquarters not in Athens or Sparta, but permanently established right on the spot — a net, so to speak, over each city. If at the beginning of the war the Lacedaemonians had proclaimed to the Greeks, "We will fight the Athenians in order to do you more and greater harm than they did, and to prove that what you got from them was freedom," they could not have kept their word any better. They were promptly defeated by a lone exile, deserted by the Thebans, hated by the Corinthians. The sea was full of Spartan governors driven out for misgovernment by the cities where they had been installed and had maintained a regime untrue to their title. [211] Their crimes, and the hatred which Greece consequently felt toward them, strengthened the Thebans, who conquered them at the battle of Leuctra. But no sooner were the Lacedaemonians out of the way than nobody could bear the Thebans either, after their one victory. It showed people that they were better off with the Cadmea still subject to the Lacedaemonians than triumphant over them — so hated were the Thebans. Unlike that incredible character who wrote Tricaranus, I have not composed this as a general indictment of the Greeks. May such a bitter necessity never come! But I do wish to prove that before you nobody could ever have known how to rule. Otherwise, it would have been familiar to the Greeks, who enormously surpassed the rest of mankind in wisdom. It is, however, your discovery, and an importation everywhere else. What has been said about the Athenians would, I fear, be true of all the Greeks, if you were to apply it to them: they were superlatively good at resisting rulers, at overcoming Persians, Lydians, and riches, at enduring hardships; but when it came to ruling, they too were still untrained, and they falled in the attempt. First, in subordinate cities they would post garrisons that were presumably not always outnumbered by the inhabitants of each place where they were posted. They made even the cities not yet garrisoned suspect them of doing everything by force and violence. Two results followed: they could not hold the cities securely, and on top of it they were hated. They got the thorns of empire instead of the fruits of empire. Their imperialism was shaky, but the infamy of imperialism was constant. Then what would happen next? By dispersing and fragmenting their forces, they would become weaker at home, too few to save their own country because they were trying to hold someone else's. Then they could not send an expeditionary force that would outnumber those whom they wanted to rule; nor did they leave themselves enough to be an even match on the defensive. [212] They were inferior abroad and inferior at home. The expansion of their empire put them in a quandary, for in the end they would be without the wherewithal to hold on to it. Thus they were after the opposite of what they needed. Success was a hardship for them, almost a curse; fallure was a relief — they had less to fear. Instead of rulers, they seemed no different from scattered outcasts, struggling for the sake of struggling. As soon as they finished, the whole structure would collapse before they knew it. As the poets say, down it went, to the same point as before. It was furthermore not to their advantage for their subjects to be either strong or weak. If strong, they would plot revoit; if weak, they would be helpless against invasion and useless as allies. Their relations with their subjects were like a game where you keep pulling people forward with one hand and dragging them back with the other. They did not know what to do with them. They apparently wanted them to be and not to be. While manipulating and driving their subjects, they themselves could not tell what they were after. The most absurd and illogical part of it was that in case of revolt they would force the rest of their subjects, who had the same action in mind, to march against the rebels. They might just as well have begged those very rebels, "Please march against us." They did not realize they were leading against the rebels men who were on the rebels' side. It was surely not wise for them, against their own interests, to give their subjects the idea of fighting zealously for someone else. Here too they accomplished the opposite of their desire and their advantage. They wanted to win the rebels over; instead they made rebels of those who would have remained loyal. They taught them. "If you are loyal, we can use you against one another. But if you all join in revolt, you will surely be free, for in the long run you will leave us no forces with which to overcome you." [213] They did themselves more harm than their disloyal allies did them, for each allied city seceded by itself, while the ruling city by its actions initiated a general revolt. Thus they did not yet have a system of empire, and did not go after it intelligently. Little as they had — mere borderlands and homesteads — through their inexperience and incapacity to ride they could not even keep that. They could neither treat vassal states kindly nor hold them by force. They were at once oppressive and weak. Finally they were left naked, like Aesop's jackdaw, to fight the whole world along. That which eluded all men (so to speak) in the past, was reserved for you alone to discover and perfect — and no wonder. Just as the arts in other spheres come to the fore when there is material for them, likewise when a most enormous empire with supreme power was built, with it the art of government was formulated and came into the world. Each was bolstered by the other. Because of the size of the empire, experience inevitably went along with it; and because you knew how to rule, the empire rightfully — and naturally expanded. Most noteworthy by far and most praiseworthy of all is {the grandeur of your conception of citizenship}. There is nothing on earth like it. You have divided all the people of the empire — when I say that, I mean the whole world — in two classes; and all the more cultured, virtuous, and able ones everywhere you have made into citizens and even nationals of Rome; the rest into vassals and subjects. Neither the sea nor any distance on land shuts a man out from citizenship. Asia and Europe are in this respect not separate. Everything lies open to everybody; and no one fit for office or responsibility is an alien. The constitution is a universal democracy under the one man that can ride and govern best. [214] All come as though to a public market-place where each will get fair measure. What a city is to its countryside and environs, this city is to the whole world. It is set up as the urban center, with the world for its country-side. You might say that all mankind lives on the outskirts of Rome, or in scattered country villages, and gets together at this one citadel. Rome has never said, "No more room!" Even as the earth's surface holds all men, so Rome takes them in from every country, like the sea welcoming the rivers. She also has this in common with the sea: It is not increased by rivers emptying into it; while they {pour in,} the sea is bound to keep within its dimensions. Rome too is so big that no increase is perceptible. Like someone that takes and puts things inside his clothes, Rome envelops everything. People go and come, but she is and looks the same size as before. Well, my train of thought carried me into that aside. As I was saying, in your grandeur you have reckoned your state on a grand scale. You have not made it a world's wonder by conceit, by letting nobody else share in it. No, your effort has been to give it the population it deserves. You have made the word "Roman" apply not to a city but to a whole nationality, — and at that, not one of all the nationalities there are but equal to all the rest. You have stopped classifying nationalities as Greek or barbarian, and have proclaimed a classification safe from ridicule, since you have produced a city-state more populous than the whole Greek race, so to speak. You have redivided mankind into Romans and non-Romans! So far have you extended your civic name. Under this classification, there are many in each town who are no less fellow-citizens of yours than of their own blood, though some of them have never seen this city. You have no need to garrison their citadels; [215] the biggest and most influential men everywhere keep watch over their own countries for you. You have a double hold upon those towns from right here and through the Roman citizens in each. No envy afflicts the empire. You have set an example free from envy yourselves, by throwing open all doors and enabling qualified men to play a ruler's part no less than a subject's. No hatred creeps in either, from those who fall to qualify. Since the state is universal and like one city, magistrates naturally treat the governed not as aliens but as their own. Besides, the state imparts to all the people security from the men in power over them. If those men presume to do anything irregular, your wrath and punishment will promptly catch up with them. So of course things as they are satisfy and benefit both poor and rich. No other way of life remains. There is one pattern of society, embracing all. Under you, what was formerly thought incapable of conjunction has been united, an empire at once strong and {humane, mild rule without oppression}. Towns are free of garrisons. Whole provinces are amply guarded by battalions and cavalry platoons, which are not stationed in force in the various cities of each people, but scattered through the countryside among a multitude of civilians, so that many provinces do not know where their garrison is. But if a city anywhere, through an overdose of bigness, has outgrown its capacity to behave itself, you do not withhold the men needed to take charge and safeguard it. All people are happier to send in their tribute to you than anyone would be to collect it for himself from others. Naturally, because to rule is not safe if one lacks ability, while to be ruled by one's superiors is the second best way, they say. By you, however, it has now been shown to be the first. Everyone clings tight to you and would no sooner see fit to break away than passengers would from their pilot. [216] Like bats in a cave clinging fast to one another and to rocks, all men adhere to you with much fear and caution lest anyone should drop away from this cluster. And sooner than desert you themselves, they would dread being deserted by you. Instead of quarreling over empire and primacy, through which all wars formerly broke out, some of your subjects, like water flowing noise-lessly, relax in the utmost delight, content to be released from troubles and miseries, and aware at last that they were engaged in aimless shadow-boxing. Others do not know or remember what territory they once ruled. The cities were, just as in the legend of the Pamphylian (or of Plato), already lying on the pyre because of the rivalry and tumult among them. But they accepted your leadership fully and in a flash revived. How they came to this, they cannot say. They know nothing, except to look with awe upon the present. They feel like people roused from sleep, who instead of the dreams they have just been seeing, suddenly wake up, look at this world, and take hold of themselves. Whether there ever were wars is now doubted ; most people hear of them in the category of vain legends. Whenever they have occurred somewhere along the frontiers, as is natural in a vast, measureless empire — through the madness of the Getae, the misfortune of the Africans, or the foul destiny of the Red Sea peoples, who cannot let well enough alone —then just like legends the wars passed by quickly, and so did talk of them. Such profound peace has come to you, although war is your hereditary profession! Yesterday's shoemakers and carpenters are not infantry and cavalrymen today. The man who was lately a farmer is not, as on the stage, recostumed as a soldier. Unlike a humble home where the same ones that cook keep house and make the beds, you have not mixed up occupations. Nor have you waited for men in other trades to enlist because of poverty, or left it to the enemy to call you to the colors. [217] I have discussed the nature of your policies and institutions concerned with the empire as a whole and its government. Now is the time to speak of your ingenuity in military matters, and the organization you have decreed for the army. Your wisdom in this too is amazing and has altogether no parallel. The Egyptians advanced to the point of segregating the soldiers, and got credit for a very wise device: they had the defenders of the country encamped apart from the civil population. (Likewise in many other ways, the Egyptians were — as people say — deemed wise beyond the rest of mankind.) Your understanding of the problem agrees with the Egyptians, but your actions do not. You have made a much finer and wiser division. Under their system, the various groups could not have equal shares in the state. For the soldiers, it was not equal or pleasant to be the only ones under perpetual discipline; they were worse off than the people living at case. Under your system, all have equality, but a separate setup for the military is feasible. Accordingly, the valor of the Greeks, the Egyptians, and whoever else might be named falls short of yours. And much as all may be inferior to you in weapons, they are still farther behind in sagacity. You decided that for men from your city to undergo the hardships of campaigning was no way to enjoy the empire and the happiness of the era. Aliens you could not trust; yet of necessity you had to have soldiers. So how did you go about it? You dug up a loyal army without troubling the citizens. What made it available to you was your planning for the whole empire and counting no one that is qualified and needed for any task an alien. Whom do you recruit and how? You go through every province and sift it [218] for men to perform this duty. When you have found them, you remove them from their country, and at the same time give them your city instead, so that henceforth they are ashamed to identify themselves with their original home. In making new citizens, you have also made soldiers. Thus, the men of your city do not serve, while the men in service are nonetheless citizens. The army alienates them from their city of origin, but on the same day they become citizens and defenders of yours. Everyone falls in with this; no city takes offense. You have asked for only so many from each as would neither burden the city supplying them nor be enough to form one full-sized homogeneous army. Therefore all cities think of the soldiers away on service with good will, as their boys; and no city individually has any forces of its own whatsoever. The soldiers shipped out look nowhere but to you, since the system is well devised for this sole purpose. You profit not a little from this innovation of recruiting the best qualified men from all over. You felt that if men with the best physique and superior build are picked out and trained for mere exhibitions and prizefights, then it is wrong that men destined for really great and serious prize-fights, deeds of combat, and for every victory which may be won for such an empire — that they should be an emergency militia, instead of the tallest and best qualified of all men being chosen well in advance and trained so that they will have the upper hand the moment they are in formation. They are screened and classified {by the board of offiicials,} and receive what I mentioned. They will not be inclined to resent the civilian sitting here in town, while they do not hold such privileges from the beginning. Instead, they will take their share of citizenship for a privilege. Having thus procured and indoctrinated them, you lead them to the frontiers of the empire, where you split them up and assign them different sectors to guard. [219] You have given care and thought to walls too, which deserve mention now. This city cannot be described as unwalled, in Spartan arrogance, or walled in such splendor as Babylon or any other city earlier or later that had over-elaborate walls. You have shown up the walls of Babylon for child's play and woman's work indeed. You felt that to surround the city itself with walls, as though you were hiding it or taking refuge from your subjects, would be ignoble and contrary to your whole attitude — like a master showing himself afraid of his own slaves. Yet you did not neglect walls. You surrounded the empire, not the city, with them. You built them as far away as possible; they are splendid and worthy of you. They can be seen by people within their compass; but whoever wants to see them will have a trip of months or years to reach them, starting out from the city. For beyond the outermost ring of settlement, you laid out another ring, more regular and defensible, just as in the fortification of a city. There you put up walls, built border towns in the various regions, filled them with settlers, provided artisans to serve them, and otherwise set them up handsomely. Imagine a ditch running all around a camp such that the perimeter of this enclosure is not ten leagues or twenty or a little more, but a figure that cannot be counted right off. All that lies between the settled part of Ethiopia and the Phasis over here, the Euphrates in inner Asia and the great island farthest to the west — all this may be called the ring and compass of the walls. But they are net built of asphalt and baked brick, nor do they stand gleaming with plaster. You do indeed have such walls in use everywhere — many, many of them — [220] also walls of stone joined and neat (like the wall of a house described by Homer), boundless in size and shining brighter than bronze. But that much greater and more august ring, at all points altogether unbreakable and indissoluble, far outshining all, steadfast as no other heretofore — that ring is the men who shield these walls and know no retreat. With all the weapons of war, they are joined to one another as firmly as Homer says the Myrmidons were, when he compares them to the wall I mentioned. Their helmets are so close together that no arrow can pass in between. Their shields, held above their heads, could support hanging racetracks so much sturdier than those put up in town that even men on horseback could ride over them. You will honestly say you see "a field of bronze" (as Euripides put it). The breastplates so impinge on one another that if a man in formation between two others were unarmed, their armor would meet in the middle and cover him. Their javelins fall thick as rain and blanket one another. Such is the chain that binds {the ring of frontier defenses and the guardian of the whole world}. Long ago, Darius with Artaphernes and Datis was able to catch one city on one island in a dragnet. But you keep the whole world in a dragnet (if one may use the word), by means of men that are at the same time citizens and foreign born. As I said, of all men you have chosen them, marched them off, and offered them hopes: "If you prove yourselves brave, you will not regret it. Instead of the supreme commander always being of patrician stock, with the second-in-command from the next class below, and so on down the line, each man will get whatever he deserves, for good men are tested here not by words but by deeds." By conspicuous examples you have taught all of them to regard idleness as a misfortune [221] and to view active duty as a start toward getting their heart's desire, to be of one mind against the enemy but always at odds with one another for first place, and to be the only men that pray they will find people to fight against. Observing the training and coordination of the army, you will apply the words of Homer, that if the enemy outnumbered them ten to one, one man would promptly beat the ten of them and put them to rout. And looking at the replacement and recruiting program, you will turn your words and thoughts to the Egyptian who stood upon the walls of Thebes, in the sight of Cambyses ravaging the country and despoiling the temples, and held out a lump of earth and a cup of water from the Nile, signifying, "So long as you cannot carry off Egypt itself and the river Nile or drag them away as plunder, you have not got our wealth. If they remain, we will soon get back as much as you have taken; and never will Egypt's wealth run out." The same thought can be entertained and expressed about your army: as long as nobody can rip up the earth itself from its roots and leave it desolate, as long as the world must remain in place, there is no way for you to run out of military manpower. You will have all you want, flowing in from the entire world. When it comes to discipline, you have shown us all up for babes in the wood. Your officers and men are indoctrinated to observe discipline not only toward the enemy, but first toward one another that is, to live under orders day after day, with nobody ever leaving his post but every man knowing and keeping his place as in a permanent choir, the subordinate not begrudging seniority to his seniors but keeping a firm hand on those under him. I am sorry that others in the past, referring to the Lacedaemonians, should have said that almost their whole army was commanders of commanders. [222] The phrase ought to have been saved for you and first uttered in reference to you. He trotted it out too soon. Well, I guess the Lacedaemonian army was so small that no wonder they were all commanders. But your army is such a multitude of units and nationalities that it is not easy even to find out their names; and they are officers, beginning with the one who pervades and watches over all — provinces, cities, camps — and ending with one man in command of two or four. (I have left out everything in between.) The chain of command descends from the larger unit to the smaller like a thread unraveling, and thus passes along through one subordinate after another until the end. Is it not beyond all human organizing technique? It occurs to me to quote a line from Homer, with a slight alteration at the end: "Such the inside of Olympian Zeus's state". When so many are ruled by one, whose ministers and legates, while much inferior to him, are much superior to those in their charge and carry out everything quietly without fuss or disturbance, and when envy is gone and everything everywhere is full of justice and reverence, and the reward of virtue leaves nobody out, then does not this verse hold? I believe that you have also set up a city government here unlike that of any other people. It was formerly held that there are current three forms of government, two of which exist under a double name, depending on the qualities of those in power — tyranny and oligarchy, monarchy and aristocracy; the third is called democracy, and may be well or badly run. Cities have got one of these as choice or chance dictates in each case. Yours, however, is nothing of the sort; but like a blend of all governments, without the bad in each, this form of government has prevalled. Looking at the power of the people, [223] who easily get all they want and ask for, you would think Rome is a democracy, lacking nothing but the people's misdeeds. But viewing the senate, that deliberates and holds the magistracies, you would think there is no truer aristocracy than this. And look at the guardian and chief of them all, from whom the people obtain their wishes and the upper class has authority and influence. There you see the man with the most absolute sovranty, free of a tyrant's woes and more august than a king. It is no wonder that you alone have had such discernment and insight in external and in municipal affairs too, for you alone are ruler by nature, so to speak. The others, who ran things before you, were masters and slaves to one another in turn. They were bastard heirs to empire and went on shifting positions as in a ball-game: the Macedonians were slaves to the Persians, the Persians to the Medes, the Medes to the Syrians. But all people know you for rulers ever since they know you at all. As you were from the outset free and seem to have been born to rule, you have made good provision for everything bearing on that. You have framed a constitution made by no one heretofore, and have imposed an inviolable code and discipline upon all. Perhaps it would not be out of order for me now to express an idea that came to me way back and has often been struggling at the tip of my tongue but always got pushed ahead by the flow of speech. How much you surpass all in the size of the whole empire, {in self-restraint,} and in wisdom of government, has already been said. Now, I think, it would not be amiss to say also that whereas all pre-Roman kings that ruled the most territory ruled mere tribes, naked bodies as it were ... Were there ever so many cities, inland and maritime? Were they ever so thoroughly modernized? In the past could a person ever travel in such style, counting up the cities by the number of days on the road, [224] although at times even going past two or three of them in one day, like roadblocks? The upshot is that not only were former empires so inferior at the top, but also the peoples under their rule were none of them on a par, in numbers or caliber, with those same peoples under you. You may contrast the tribe of the past with the city there today. Indeed, it may be said that they were virtually kings of deserts and forts, while you alone govern cities. Now, under your tutelage, all the Greek cities emerge. All the monuments, works of art, and show-places in them mean glory for you, the same as a show-place in your suburbs. Seashore and interior are filled with cities, some founded and others enlarged under you and by you. Ionia, the great prize, is rid of garrisons and satraps, and stands out as a model of elegance to the world. By as much as she was formerly reputed to be ahead of other societies in taste and refinement, she now outstrips her old self. And in Egypt, Alexander's august and immense city has become an ornament of your supremacy, like a necklace or bracelet among the many other possessions of a rich woman. You steadfastly remember the Greeks with benevolence as old tutors. Your arm protects them; and prostrate as they are, you raise them up. The best of them, who were once rulers, you leave free and independent. The rest you guide with moderation, great forbearance, and devotion. The barbarians you discipline more or less gently, depending on the temper of each people. That makes sense, and rulers of men know their business no less well than horse-trainers. You have examined the tempers of those under you, and treat them accordingly. The whole world, as on a holiday, has changed its old costume — of iron — and gone in for finery and for all amusements without restraint. All other animosities between cities have ceased, but a single rivalry obsesses every one of them — [225] to show off a maximum of elegance and luxury. Every place is full of gymnasia, fountains, gateways, temples, shops, schools. A doctor might say the world has recovered like a patient and is back to normal. Gifts never stop flowing from you to the cities; and because of your impartial generosity to all, the leading beneficiaries cannot be determined. Cities shine in radiance and beauty, and the entire countryside is decked out like a pleasure-ground. Smoke over the plains, friendly and enemy beacons have vanished beyond land and sea, as if by a gust of wind. They have been replaced by each and every delightful sight, and an untold number of celebrations. Festivity, like a holy, unquenchable fire, never falls, but goes around from one place to the next, and is always somewhere, for it fits in with the universal prosperity. Only those outside your empire, if there are any, are fit to be pitied, for losing such blessings. You have most effectively proved what all people merely said — that the earth is the mother of all and the common fatherland of all. Greek and barbarian can now go readily wherever they please, with their property or without it. It is just like going from their own to their own country. The Cilician Gates and the narrow, sandy passes through Arabia to Egypt present no danger. Nor do impassable mountains, vast stretches of river, or inhospitable barbarian tribes. For safety, it is enough to be a Roman — or rather, one of your subjects. Homer's phrase, "The earth is shared by all", has been made a reality by you. You have surveyed the whole world, built bridges of all sorts across rivers, cut down mountains to make level ground, filled the deserts with hostels, and civilized it all with regularity and order. [226] I conceive life before you to have been the life people led before Triptolemus — rough, uncultured, hardly removed from savagery. The city of Athens inaugurated modern civilization, and it has been consolidated by you, who come second and (as the saying goes) are better than the first. No need now to write world guide-books or recount the customs of each race. You are universal guides for all men. You open all the gates of the world and enable those who so desire to see everything for themselves. You have passed universal laws for all, and abolished what used to make picturesque story-telling but was, if one stops to think about it, intolerable. You have established intermarriage and joined together the whole world like one household. Just as poets say that before the reign of Zeus everything was full of strife, chaos, and disorder, but when Zeus came to power, it all took shape, and the Titans departed to the nethermost abysses of the earth, expelled by him and the gods on his side — so one might appraise and evaluate the state of things before and under your rule. Before it, they were all mixed up topsy-turvy, drifting hither and yon. But with you in charge, turmoil and strife ceased, universal order and the bright light of life and society came in, laws were proclaimed, and the gods' altars acquired sanctity. Previously, men would lay waste the earth, as if castrating their parents; they did not gulp down children but slaughtered one another's and their own in internecine wars, even on holy ground. Now, however, general and manifest freedom from all fear is given to all — the earth itself and its inhabitants. It appears to me that they are wholly rid of oppression, [227] while getting many opportunities for good guidance, and that the gods with favoring eyes ratify your government of the empire and give you permanent possession of it. Zeus does because, as they say, you take excellent care of an excellent thing of his — the world; Hera too is honored, because marriages take place lawfully; Athena and Hephaestus, because the arts are honored; Dionysus and Demeter, because their crops are not violated; Posidon, because his sea is clear of battles and has come to have freighters instead of war-ships. The troop of Apollo, Artemis, and the Muses never stop gazing upon their retainers busy in the theaters. Hermes is not deprived of convocations and embassies, nor Aphrodite of fecundity and grace. Was there ever such a time for them? Have cities ever had a larger share? Also, the grace of Asclepius and the Egyptian gods has now reached its highest development among men. Not even Ares is dishonored by you. No danger that he will upset everything for being slighted, as at the banquet of the Lapiths. On the banks of the outermost rivers, he does his endless dance, but keeps his weapons unstained with blood. The all-seeing Helios has seen no violence or wrongdoing in your time, nothing of the sort that he saw so much of in the past; he naturally looks upon your empire with the greatest delight. Had Hesiod been as perfect a poet as Homer, had he been — like Homer — a seer not unaware of your future empire, and foreseen and prophesied it in his epic, I believe he would not have begun his genealogy as he did with the race of gold. Nor he had made that the beginning, would he have said — in the passage about the race of iron which comes last — that this would be its doom: "When men are born with gray hair on their temples". Instead, he would have said that the breed of iron men would perish upon the earth when your hegemony and empire was established. [228] To that epoch he would have assigned the return of Justice and Reverence to mankind, and he would have pitied those born before your time. Your magistracies are eternal. They were indeed founded by you and are always being strengthened. The present emperor, like a great athlete, vaults so high over his predecessors {his father} that it is not easy to express how high he is over the rest of us. You might say that truly justice and law are whatsoever he decrees. And is he not clearly ahead of the other emperors in having in the government more associates enough like him to be his own children than anyone had before him? My original aspiration was all-surpassing, to make my address equal to the greatness of the empire; and it would practically take time equal to the time of the empire — that is, all eternity. So I had better conclude my address, as authors of dithyrambs and paeans do, by adding a prayer. I call upon all gods and sons of gods to grant that this empire and this city may bloom forever and not cease until lumps of iron {float} upon the sea and trees cease to bloom in spring. And may the great ruler and his sons be well and deal out blessings to all. My rash scheme is fulfilled — whether badly or well, you may now pass judgment.