August 22, 2022

37.THE TEACHING OF JESUS | A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD | H. G. WELLS

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD
BY
H. G. WELLS

37.THE TEACHING OF JESUS


It was while Augustus Cæsar, the first of the Emperors, was reigning in Rome that Jesus who is the Christ of Christianity was born in Judea. In his name a religion was to arise which was destined to become the official religion of the entire Roman Empire.

Now it is on the whole more convenient to keep history and theology apart. A large proportion of the Christian world believes that Jesus was an incarnation of that God of all the Earth whom the Jews first recognized. The historian, if he is to remain historian, can neither accept nor deny that interpretation. Materially Jesus appeared in the likeness of a man, and it is as a man that the historian must deal with him.

He appeared in Judea in the reign of Tiberius Cæsar. He was a prophet.

He preached after the fashion of the preceding Jewish prophets. He

was a man of about thirty, and we are in the profoundest ignorance of

his manner of life before his preaching began.

Our only direct sources of information about the life and teaching of

Jesus are the four Gospels. All four agree in giving us a picture of a

very definite personality. One is obliged to say, “Here was a man.

This could not have been invented.”

But just as the personality of Gautama Buddha has been distorted and

obscured by the stiff squatting figure, the gilded idol of later

Buddhism, so one feels that the lean and strenuous personality of Jesus

is much wronged by the unreality and conventionality that a mistaken

reverence has imposed upon his figure in modern Christian art. Jesus

was a penniless teacher, who wandered about the dusty sun-bit country

of Judea, living upon casual gifts of food; yet he is always

represented clean, combed and sleek, in spotless raiment, erect and

with something motionless about him as though he was gliding through

the air. This alone has made him unreal and incredible to many people

who cannot distinguish the core of the story from the ornamental and

unwise additions of the unintelligently devout.

We are left, if we do strip this record of these difficult accessories,

with the figure of a being, very human, very earnest and passionate,

capable of swift anger, and teaching a new and simple and profound

doctrine—namely, the universal loving Fatherhood of God and the coming

of the Kingdom of Heaven. He was clearly a person—to use a common

phrase—of intense personal magnetism. He attracted followers and

filled them with love and courage. Weak and ailing people were

heartened and healed by his presence. Yet he was probably of a

delicate physique, because of the swiftness with which he died under

the pains of crucifixion. There is a tradition that he fainted when,

according to the custom, he was made to bear his cross to the place of

execution. He went about the country for three years spreading his

doctrine and then he came to Jerusalem and was accused of trying to set

up a strange kingdom in Judea; he was tried upon this charge, and

crucified together with two thieves. Long before these two were dead

his sufferings were over.

The doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, which was the main teaching of

Jesus, is certainly one of the most revolutionary doctrines that ever

stirred and changed human thought. It is small wonder if the world of

that time failed to grasp its full significance, and recoiled in dismay

from even a half apprehension of its tremendous challenges to the

established habits and institutions of mankind. For the doctrine of

the Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus seems to have preached it, was no less

than a bold and uncompromising demand for a complete change and

cleansing of the life of our struggling race, an utter cleansing,

without and within. To the gospels the reader must go for all that is

preserved of this tremendous teaching; here we are only concerned with

the jar of its impact upon established ideas.

The Jews were persuaded that God, the one God of the whole world, was a

righteous god, but they also thought of him as a trading god who had

made a bargain with their Father Abraham about them, a very good

bargain indeed for them, to bring them at last to predominance in the

earth. With dismay and anger they heard Jesus sweeping away their dear

securities. God, he taught, was no bargainer; there were no chosen

people and no favourites in the Kingdom of Heaven. God was the loving

father of all life, as incapable of showing favour as the universal

sun. And all men were brothers—sinners alike and beloved sons alike—of

this divine father. In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus cast

scorn upon that natural tendency we all obey, to glorify our own people

and to minimize the righteousness of other creeds and other races. In

the parable of the labourers he thrust aside the obstinate claim of the

Jews to have a special claim upon God. All whom God takes into the

kingdom, he taught, God serves alike; there is no distinction in his

treatment, because there is no measure to his bounty. From all

moreover, as the parable of the buried talent witnesses, and as the

incident of the widow’s mite enforces, he demands the utmost. There are

no privileges, no rebates and no excuses in the Kingdom of Heaven.

EARLY IDEAL PORTRAIT, IN GILDED GLASS, OF JESUS CHRIST IN WHICH THE

TRADITIONAL BEARD IS NOT SHOWN

EARLY IDEAL PORTRAIT, IN GILDED GLASS, OF JESUS CHRIST IN WHICH THE

TRADITIONAL BEARD IS NOT SHOWN

But it is not only the intense tribal patriotism of the Jews that Jesus

outraged. They were a people of intense family loyalty, and he would

have swept away all the narrow and restrictive family affections in the

great flood of the love of God. The whole kingdom of Heaven was to be

the family of his followers. We are told that, “While he yet talked to

the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring

to speak with him. Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy

brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered

and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my

brethren? And he stretched forth his hands towards his disciples, and

said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the

will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and

sister, and mother.?

THE ROAD FROM NAZARETH TO TIBERIAS

THE ROAD FROM NAZARETH TO TIBERIAS

_Photo: Fannaway_

And not only did Jesus strike at patriotism and the bonds of family

loyalty in the name of God’s universal fatherhood and brotherhood of

all mankind, but it is clear that his teaching condemned all the

gradations of the economic system, all private wealth, and personal

advantages. All men belonged to the kingdom; all their possessions

belonged to the kingdom; the righteous life for all men, the only

righteous life, was the service of God’s will with all that we had,

with all that we were. Again and again he denounced private riches and

the reservation of any private life.

DAVID’S TOWER AND WALL OF JERUSALEM

DAVID’S TOWER AND WALL OF JERUSALEM

_Photo: Fannaway_

“And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and

kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may

inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, Why callest thou me good?

there is none good but one, that is God. Thou knowest the

commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not

bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother. And he

answered and said unto him, Master, all these things have I observed

from my youth. Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him,

One thing thou lackest; go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give

to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, take up

the cross, and follow me. And he was sad at that saying, and went away

grieved; for he had great possessions.

A STREET IN JERUSALEM

A STREET IN JERUSALEM

Along such a thoroughfare Christ carried his cross to the place of

execution

_Photo: Fannaway_

“And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly

shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God! And the

disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answered again, and

saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches

to enter into the Kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go

through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the

Kingdom of God.” 
Moreover, in his tremendous prophecy of this kingdom which was to make

all men one together in God, Jesus had small patience for the

bargaining righteousness of formal religion. Another large part of his

recorded utterances is aimed against the meticulous observance of the

rules of the pious career. “Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him,

Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders,

but eat bread with unwashen hands? He answered and said unto them,

Well hath Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written,

“This people honoureth me with their lips,

“But their heart is far from me.

“Howbeit in vain do they worship me,

“Teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

“For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men,

as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such things ye do. And

he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye

may keep your own tradition.” 

It was not merely a moral and a social revolution that Jesus

proclaimed; it is clear from a score of indications that his teaching

had a political bent of the plainest sort. It is true that he said his

kingdom was not of this world, that it was in the hearts of men and not

upon a throne; but it is equally clear that wherever and in what

measure his kingdom was set up in the hearts of men, the outer world

would be in that measure revolutionized and made new.

Whatever else the deafness and blindness of his hearers may have missed

in his utterances, it is plain they did not miss his resolve to

revolutionize the world. The whole tenor of the opposition to him and

the circumstances of his trial and execution show clearly that to his

contemporaries he seemed to propose plainly, and did propose plainly,

to change and fuse and enlarge all human life.

In view of what he plainly said, is it any wonder that all who were

rich and prosperous felt a horror of strange things, a swimming of

their world at his teaching? He was dragging out all the little

private reservations they had made from social service into the light

of a universal religious life. He was like some terrible moral

huntsman digging mankind out of the snug burrows in which they had

lived hitherto. In the white blaze of this kingdom of his there was to

be no property, no privilege, no pride and precedence; no motive indeed

and no reward but love. Is it any wonder that men were dazzled and

blinded and cried out against him? Even his disciples cried out when

he would not spare them the light. Is it any wonder that the priests

realized that between this man and themselves there was no choice but

that he or priestcraft should perish? Is it any wonder that the Roman

soldiers, confronted and amazed by something soaring over their

comprehension and threatening all their disciplines, should take refuge

in wild laughter, and crown him with thorns and robe him in purple and

make a mock Cæsar of him? For to take him seriously was to enter upon

a strange and alarming life, to abandon habits, to control instincts

and impulses, to essay an incredible happiness. . . .

36.RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE | A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD | H. G. WELLS

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD 
BY 
H. G. WELLS

36.RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 

The soul of man under that Latin and Greek empire of the first two centuries of the Christian era was a worried and frustrated soul. Compulsion and cruelty reigned; there were pride and display but little honour; little serenity or steadfast happiness. The unfortunate were despised and wretched; the fortunate were insecure and feverishly eager for gratifications. In a great number of cities life centred on the red excitement of the arena, where men and beasts fought and were tormented and slain. Amphitheatres are the most characteristic of Roman ruins.

Life went on in that key. The uneasiness of men’s hearts manifested

itself in profound religious unrest.

From the days when the Aryan hordes first broke in upon the ancient

civilizations, it was inevitable that the old gods of the temples and

priesthoods should suffer great adaptations or disappear. In the

course of hundreds of generations the agricultural peoples of the

brunette civilizations had shaped their lives and thoughts to the

temple-centred life. Observances and the fear of disturbed routines,

sacrifices and mysteries, dominated their minds. Their gods seem

monstrous and illogical to our modern minds because we belong to an

Aryanized world, but to these older peoples these deities had the

immediate conviction and vividness of things seen in an intense dream.

The conquest of one city state by another in Sumeria or early Egypt

meant a change or a renaming of gods or goddesses, but left the shape

and spirit of the worship intact. There was no change in its general

character. The figures in the dream changed, but the dream went on and

it was the same sort of dream. And the early Semitic conquerors were

sufficiently akin in spirit to the Sumerians to take over the religion

of the Mesopotamian civilization they subjugated without any profound

alteration. Egypt was never indeed subjugated to the extent of a

religious revolution. Under the Ptolemies and under the Cæsars, her

temples and altars and priesthoods remained essentially Egyptian.

So long as conquests went on between people of similar social and

religious habits it was possible to get over the clash between the god

of this temple and region and the god of that by a process of grouping

or assimilation. If the two gods were alike in character they were

identified. It was really the same god under another name, said the

priests and the people. This fusion of gods is called theocrasia; and

the age of the great conquests of the thousand years B.C. was an age of

theocrasia. Over wide areas the local gods were displaced by, or

rather they were swallowed up in, a general god. So that when at last

Hebrew prophets in Babylon proclaimed one God of Righteousness in all

the earth men’s minds were fully prepared for that idea.

But often the gods were too dissimilar for such an assimilation, and

then they were grouped together in some plausible relationship. A

female god - and the Ægean world before the coming of the Greek was

much addicted to Mother Gods—would be married to a male god, and an

animal god or a star god would be humanized and the animal or

astronomical aspect, the serpent or the sun or the star, made into an

ornament or a symbol. Or the god of a defeated people would become a

malignant antagonist to the brighter gods. The history of theology is

full of such adaptations, compromises and rationalizations of once

local gods.

As Egypt developed from city states into one united kingdom there was

much of this theocrasia. The chief god so to speak was Osiris, a

sacrificial harvest god of whom Pharaoh was supposed to be the earthly

incarnation. Osiris was represented as repeatedly dying and rising

again; he was not only the seed and the harvest but also by a natural

extension of thought the means of human immortality. Among his symbols

was the wide-winged scarabeus beetle which buries its eggs to rise

again, and also the effulgent sun which sets to rise. Later on he was

to be identified with Apis, the sacred bull. Associated with him was

the goddess Isis. Isis was also Hathor, a cow-goddess, and the

crescent moon and the Star of the sea. Osiris dies and she bears a

child, Horus, who is also a hawk-god and the dawn, and who grows to

become Osiris again. The effigies of Isis represent her as bearing the

infant Horus in her arms and standing on the crescent moon. These are

not logical relationships, but they were devised by the human mind

before the development of hard and systematic thinking and they have a

dream-like coherence. Beneath this triple group there are other and

darker Egyptian gods, bad gods, the dog-headed Anubis, black night and

the like, devourers, tempters, enemies of god and man.

MITHRAS SACRIFICING A BULL, ROMAN

MITHRAS SACRIFICING A BULL, ROMAN

_(In the British Museum)_

Every religious system does in the course of time fit itself to the

shape of the human soul, and there can be no doubt that out of these

illogical and even uncouth symbols, Egyptian people were able to

fashion for themselves ways of genuine devotion and consolation. The

desire for immortality was very strong in the Egyptian mind, and the

religious life of Egypt turned on that desire. The Egyptian religion

was an immortality religion as no other religion had ever been. As

Egypt went down under foreign conquerors and the Egyptian gods ceased

to have any satisfactory political significance, this craving for a

life of compensations here-after, intensified.

ISIS AND HORUS

ISIS AND HORUS

After the Greek conquest, the new city of Alexandria became the centre

of Egyptian religious life, and indeed of the religious life of the

whole Hellenic world. A great temple, the Serapeum, was set up by

Ptolemy I at which a sort of trinity of gods was worshipped. These were

Serapis (who was Osiris-Apis rechristened), Isis and Horus. These were

not regarded as separate gods but as three aspects of one god, and

Serapis was identified with the Greek Zeus, the Roman Jupiter and the

Persian sun-god. This worship spread wherever the Hellenic influence

extended, even into North India and Western China. The idea of

immortality, an immortality of compensations and consolation, was

eagerly received by a world in which the common life was hopelessly

wretched. Serapis was called “the saviour of souls.” “After death,”

said the hymns of that time, “we are still in the care of his

providence.” Isis attracted many devotees. Her images stood in her

temples, as Queen of Heaven, bearing the infant Horus in her arms.

Candles were burnt before her, votive offerings were made to her,

shaven priests consecrated to celibacy waited on her altar.

The rise of the Roman empire opened the western European world to this

growing cult. The temples of Serapis-Isis, the chanting of the priests

and the hope of immortal life, followed the Roman standards to Scotland

and Holland. But there were many rivals to the Serapis-Isis religion.

Prominent among these was Mithraism. This was a religion of Persian

origin, and it centred upon some now forgotten mysteries about Mithras

sacrificing a sacred and benevolent bull. Here we seem to have

something more primordial than the complicated and sophisticated

Serapis-Isis beliefs. We are carried back directly to the blood

sacrifices of the heliolithic stage in human culture. The bull upon

the Mithraic monuments always bleeds copiously from a wound in its

side, and from this blood springs new life. The votary to Mithraism

actually bathed in the blood of the sacrificial bull. At his

initiation he went beneath a scaffolding upon which a bull was killed

so that the blood could actually run down on him.

Both these religions, and the same is true of many other of the

numerous parallel cults that sought the allegiance of the slaves and

citizens under the earlier Roman emperors, are personal religions.

They aim at personal salvation and personal immortality. The older

religions were not personal like that; they were social. The older

fashion of divinity was god or goddess of the city first or of the

state, and only secondarily of the individual. The sacrifices were a

public and not a private function. They concerned collective practical

needs in this world in which we live. But the Greeks first and now the

Romans had pushed religion out of politics. Guided by the Egyptian

tradition religion had retreated to the other world.

BUST OF THE EMPEROR COMMODUS, A.D. 180-192

BUST OF THE EMPEROR COMMODUS, A.D. 180-192

Represented as the God Mithras, Roman, Circa A.D. 190

_(In the British Museum)_

These new private immortality religions took all the heart and emotion

out of the old state religions, but they did not actually replace them.

A typical city under the earlier Roman emperors would have a number of

temples to all sorts of gods. There might be a temple to Jupiter of

the Capitol, the great god of Rome, and there would probably be one to

the reigning Cæsar. For the Cæsars had learnt from the Pharaohs the

possibility of being gods. In such temples a cold and stately

political worship went on; one would go and make an offering and burn a

pinch of incense to show one’s loyalty. But it would be to the temple

of Isis, the dear Queen of Heaven, one would go with the burthen of

one’s private troubles for advice and relief. There might be local and

eccentric gods. Seville, for example, long affected the worship of the

old Carthaginian Venus. In a cave or an underground temple there would

certainly be an altar to Mithras, attended by legionaries and slaves.

And probably also there would be a synagogue where the Jews gathered to

read their Bible and uphold their faith in the unseen God of all the

Earth.

Sometimes there would be trouble with the Jews about the political side

of the state religion. They held that their God was a jealous God

intolerant of idolatry, and they would refuse to take part in the

public sacrifices to Cæsar. They would not even salute the Roman

standards for fear of idolatry.

In the East long before the time of Buddha there had been ascetics, men

and women who gave up most of the delights of life, who repudiated

marriage and property and sought spiritual powers and an escape from

the stresses and mortifications of the world in abstinence, pain and

solitude. Buddha himself set his face against ascetic extravagances,

but many of his disciples followed a monkish life of great severity.

Obscure Greek cults practised similar disciplines even to the extent of

self-mutilation. Asceticism appeared in the Jewish communities of

Judea and Alexandria also in the first century B.C. Communities of men

abandoned the world and gave themselves to austerities and mystical

contemplation. Such was the sect of the Essenes. Throughout the first

and second centuries A.D. there was an almost world-wide resort to such

repudiations of life, a universal search for “salvation” from the

distresses of the time. The old sense of an established order, the old

confidence in priest and temple and law and custom, had gone. Amidst

the prevailing slavery, cruelty, fear, anxiety, waste, display and

hectic self-indulgence, went this epidemic of self- disgust and mental

insecurity, this agonized search for peace even at the price of

renunciation and voluntary suffering. This it was that filled the

Serapeum with weeping penitents and brought the converts into the gloom

and gore of the Mithraic cave.

35.THE COMMON MAN’S LIFE UNDER THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE | A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD | H. G. WELLS

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD 
BY 
H. G. WELLS

35.THE COMMON MAN’S LIFE UNDER THE EARLY  ROMAN EMPIRE 


Before we tell of how this Roman empire which was built up in the two centuries B.C., and which flourished in peace and security from the days of Augustus Cæsar onward for two centuries, fell into disorder and was broken up, it may be as well to devote some attention to the life of the ordinary people throughout this great realm. Our history has come down now to within 2000 years of our own time; and the life of the civilized people, both under the Peace of Rome and the Peace of the Han dynasty, was beginning to resemble more and more clearly the life of their civilized successors to-day.

In the western world coined money was now in common use; outside the

priestly world there were many people of independent means who were

neither officials of the government nor priests; people travelled about

more freely than they had ever done before, and there were high roads

and inns for them. Compared with the past, with the time before 500

B.C., life had become much more loose. Before that date civilized men

had been bound to a district or country, had been bound to a tradition

and lived within a very limited horizon; only the nomads traded and

travelled.

But neither the Roman Peace nor the Peace of the Han dynasty meant a

uniform civilization over the large areas they controlled. There were

very great local differences and great contrasts and inequalities of

culture between one district and another, just as there are to-day

under the British Peace in India. The Roman garrisons and colonies

were dotted here and there over this great space, worshipping Roman

gods and speaking the Latin language; but where there had been towns

and cities before the coming of the Romans, they went on, subordinated

indeed but managing their own affairs, and, for a time at least,

worshipping their own gods in their own fashion. Over Greece, Asia

Minor, Egypt and the Hellenized East generally, the Latin language

never prevailed. Greek ruled there invincibly. Saul of Tarsus, who

became the apostle Paul, was a Jew and a Roman citizen; but he spoke

and wrote Greek and not Hebrew. Even at the court of the Parthian

dynasty, which had overthrown the Greek Seleucids in Persia, and was

quite outside the Roman imperial boundaries, Greek was the fashionable

language. In some parts of Spain and in North Africa, the Carthaginian

language also held on for a long time in spite of the destruction of

Carthage. Such a town as Seville, which had been a prosperous city

long before the Roman name had been heard of, kept its Semitic goddess

and preserved its Semitic speech for generations, in spite of a colony

of Roman veterans at Italica a few miles away. Septimius Severus, who

was emperor from 193 to 211 A.D., spoke Carthaginian as his mother

speech. He learnt Latin later as a foreign tongue; and it is recorded

that his sister never learnt Latin and conducted her Roman household in

the Punic language.

A Gladiator (contemporary representation)

In such countries as Gaul and Britain and in provinces like Dacia (now

roughly Roumania) and Pannonia (Hungary south of the Danube), where

there were no pre-existing great cities and temples and cultures, the

Roman empire did however “Latinize.” It civilized these countries for

the first time. It created cities and towns where Latin was from the

first the dominant speech, and where Roman gods were served and Roman

customs and fashions followed. The Roumanian, Italian, French and

Spanish languages, all variations and modifications of Latin, remain to

remind us of this extension of Latin speech and customs. North-west

Africa also became at last largely Latin-speaking. Egypt, Greece and

the rest of the empire to the east were never Latinized. They remained

Egyptian and Greek in culture and spirit. And even in Rome, among

educated men, Greek was learnt as the language of a gentleman and Greek

literature and learning were very, properly preferred to Latin.

In this miscellaneous empire the ways of doing work and business were

naturally also very miscellaneous. The chief industry of the settled

world was still largely agriculture. We have told how in Italy the

sturdy free farmers who were the backbone of the early Roman republic

were replaced by estates worked by slave labour after the Punic wars.

The Greek world had had very various methods of cultivation, from the

Arcadian plan, wherein every free citizen toiled with his own hands, to

Sparta, wherein it was a dishonour to work and where agricultural work

was done by a special slave class, the Helots. But that was ancient

history now, and over most of the Hellenized world the estate system

and slave-gangs had spread. The agricultural slaves were captives who

spoke many different languages so that they could not understand each

other, or they were born slaves; they had no solidarity to resist

oppression, no tradition of rights, no knowledge, for they could not

read nor write. Although they came to form a majority of the country

population they never made a successful insurrection. The insurrection

of Spartacus in the first century B.C. was an insurrection of the

special slaves who were trained for the gladiatorial combats. The

agricultural workers in Italy in the latter days of the Republic and

the early Empire suffered frightful indignities; they would be chained

at night to prevent escape or have half the head shaved to make it

difficult. They had no wives of their own; they could be outraged,

mutilated and killed by their masters. A master could sell his slave

to fight beasts in the arena. If a slave slew his master, all the

slaves in his household and not merely the murderer were crucified. In

some parts of Greece, in Athens notably, the lot of the slave was never

quite so frightful as this, but it was still detestable. To such a

population the barbarian invaders who presently broke through the

defensive line of the legions, came not as enemies but as liberators.

POMPEII

POMPEII

“Note the ruts in roadway worn by chariot wheels.”

The slave system had spread to most industries and to every sort of

work that could be done by gangs. Mines and metallurgical operations,

the rowing of galleys, road-making and big building operations were all

largely slave occupations. And almost all domestic service was

performed by slaves. There were poor free-men and there were freed-men

in the cities and upon the country side, working for themselves or even

working for wages. They were artizans, supervisors and so forth,

workers of a new money- paid class working in competition with slave

workers; but we do not know what proportion they made of the general

population. It probably varied widely in different places and at

different periods. And there were also many modifications of slavery,

from the slavery that was chained at night and driven with whips to the

farm or quarry, to the slave whose master found it advantageous to

leave him to cultivate his patch or work his craft and own his wife

like a free-man, provided he paid in a satisfactory quittance to his

owner.

There were armed slaves. At the opening of the period of the Punic

wars, in 264 B.C., the Etruscan sport of setting slaves to fight for

their lives was revived in Rome. It grew rapidly fashionable; and soon

every great Roman rich man kept a retinue of gladiators, who sometimes

fought in the arena but whose real business it was to act as his

bodyguard of bullies. And also there were learned slaves. The

conquests of the later Republic were among the highly civilized cities

of Greece, North Africa and Asia Minor; and they brought in many highly

educated captives. The tutor of a young Roman of good family was

usually a slave. A rich man would have a Greek slave as librarian, and

slave secretaries and learned men. He would keep his poet as he would

keep a performing dog. In this atmosphere of slavery the traditions of

modern literary criticism were evolved. The slaves still boast and

quarrel in our reviews. There were enterprising people who bought

intelligent boy slaves and had them educated for sale. Slaves were

trained as book copyists, as jewellers, and for endless skilled

callings.

THE COLISEUM, ROME

THE COLISEUM, ROME

_Photo: Underwood & Underwood_

INTERIOR OF THE COLISEUM AT IT APPEARS TO-DAY

INTERIOR OF THE COLISEUM AT IT APPEARS TO-DAY

But there were very considerable changes in the position of a slave

during the four hundred years between the opening days of conquest

under the republic of rich men and the days of disintegration that

followed the great pestilence. In the second century B.C. war-captives

were abundant, manners gross and brutal; the slave had no rights and

there was scarcely an outrage the reader can imagine that was not

practised upon slaves in those days. But already in the first century

A.D. there was a perceptible improvement in the attitude of the Roman

civilization towards slavery. Captives were not so abundant for one

thing, and slaves were dearer. And slave- owners began to realize that

the profit and comfort they got from their slaves increased with the

self-respect of these unfortunates. But also the moral tone of the

community was rising, and a sense of justice was becoming effective.

The higher mentality of Greece was qualifying the old Roman harshness.

Restrictions upon cruelty were made, a master might no longer sell his

slave to fight beasts, a slave was given property rights in what was

called his _peculium_, slaves were paid wages as an encouragement and

stimulus, a form of slave marriage was recognized. Very many forms of

agriculture do not lend themselves to gang working, or require gang

workers only at certain seasons. In regions where such conditions

prevailed the slave presently became a serf, paying his owner part of

his produce or working for him at certain seasons.

When we begin to realize how essentially this great Latin and

Greek-speaking Roman Empire of the first two centuries A.D. was a slave

state and how small was the minority who had any pride or freedom in

their lives, we lay our hands on the clues to its decay and collapse.

There was little of what we should call family life, few homes of

temperate living and active thought and study; schools and colleges

were few and far between. The free will and the free mind were nowhere

to be found. The great roads, the ruins of splendid buildings, the

tradition of law and power it left for the astonishment of succeeding

generations must not conceal from us that all its outer splendour was

built upon thwarted wills, stifled intelligence, and crippled and

perverted desires. And even the minority who lorded it over that wide

realm of subjugation and of restraint and forced labour were uneasy and

unhappy in their souls; art and literature, science and philosophy,

which are the fruits of free and happy minds, waned in that atmosphere.

There was much copying and imitation, an abundance of artistic

artificers, much slavish pedantry among the servile men of learning,

but the whole Roman empire in four centuries produced nothing to set

beside the bold and noble intellectual activities of the comparatively

little city of Athens during its one century of greatness. Athens

decayed under the Roman sceptre. The science of Alexandria decayed.

The spirit of man, it seemed, was decaying in those days.

34.BETWEEN ROME AND CHINA | A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD | H. G. WELLS

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD
BY
H. G. WELLS

34.BETWEEN ROME AND CHINA

The second and first centuries B.C. mark a new phase in the history of mankind. Mesopotamia and the eastern Mediterranean are no longer the centre of interest. Both Mesopotamia and Egypt were still fertile, populous and fairly prosperous, but they were no longer the dominant regions of the world. Power had drifted to the west and to the east.
Two great empires now dominated the world, this new Roman Empire and the renascent Empire of China. Rome extended its power to the Euphrates, but it was never able to get beyond that boundary. It was too remote. Beyond the Euphrates the former Persian and Indian dominions of the Seleucids fell under a number of new masters. China, now under the Han dynasty, which had replaced the Ts’in dynasty at the death of Shi-Hwang-ti, had extended its power across Tibet and over the high mountain passes of the Pamirs into western Turkestan. But there, too, it reached its extremes. Beyond was too far.

China at this time was the greatest, best organized and most civilized

political system in the world. It was superior in area and population

to the Roman Empire at its zenith. It was possible then for these two

vast systems to flourish in the same world at the same time in almost

complete ignorance of each other. The means of communication both by

sea and land was not yet sufficiently developed and organized for them

to come to a direct clash.

Yet they reacted upon each other in a very remarkable way, and their

influence upon the fate of the regions that lay between them, upon

central Asia and India, was profound. A certain amount of trade

trickled through, by camel caravans across Persia, for example, and by

coasting ships by way of India and the Red Sea. In 66 B.C. Roman

troops under Pompey followed in the footsteps of Alexander the Great,

and marched up the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea. In 102 A.D. a

Chinese expeditionary force under Pan Chau reached the Caspian, and

sent emissaries to report upon the power of Rome. But many centuries

were still to pass before definite knowledge and direct intercourse

were to link the great parallel worlds of Europe and Eastern Asia.

To the north of both these great empires were barbaric wildernesses.

What is now Germany was largely forest lands; the forests extended far

into Russia and made a home for the gigantic aurochs, a bull of almost

elephantine size. Then to the north of the great mountain masses of

Asia stretched a band of deserts, steppes and then forests and frozen

lands. In the eastward lap of the elevated part of Asia was the great

triangle of Manchuria. Large parts of these regions, stretching

between South Russia and Turkestan into Manchuria, were and are regions

of exceptional climatic insecurity. Their rainfall has varied greatly

in the course of a few centuries They are lands treacherous to man.

For years they will carry pasture and sustain cultivation, and then

will come an age of decline in humidity and a cycle of killing

droughts.

A CHINESE COVERED JAR OF GREEN-GLAZED EARTHENWARE

A CHINESE COVERED JAR OF GREEN-GLAZED EARTHENWARE

Han Dynasty (contemporary with the late Roman republic and early

Empire)

_(In the Victoria and Albert Museum)_

The western part of this barbaric north from the German forests to

South Russia and Turkestan and from Gothland to the Alps was the region

of origin of the Nordic peoples and of the Aryan speech. The eastern

steppes and deserts of Mongolia was the region of origin of the Hunnish

or Mongolian or Tartar or Turkish peoples—for all these several peoples

were akin in language, race, and way of life. And as the Nordic

peoples seem to have been continually overflowing their own borders and

pressing south upon the developing civilizations of Mesopotamia and the

Mediterranean coast, so the Hunnish tribes sent their surplus as

wanderers, raiders and conquerors into the settled regions of China.

Periods of plenty in the north would mean an increase in population

there; a shortage of grass, a spell of cattle disease, would drive the

hungry warlike tribesmen south.

For a time there were simultaneously two fairly effective Empires in

the world capable of holding back the barbarians and even forcing

forward the frontiers of the imperial peace. The thrust of the Han

empire from north China into Mongolia was strong and continuous. The

Chinese population welled up over the barrier of the Great Wall.

Behind the imperial frontier guards came the Chinese farmer with horse

and plough, ploughing up the grass lands and enclosing the winter

pasture. The Hunnish peoples raided and murdered the settlers, but the

Chinese punitive expeditions were too much for them. The nomads were

faced with the choice of settling down to the plough and becoming

Chinese tax-payers or shifting in search of fresh summer pastures.

Some took the former course and were absorbed. Some drifted

north-eastward and eastward over the mountain passes down into western

Turkestan.

VASE OF BRONZE FORM, UNGLAZED STONEWARE

VASE OF BRONZE FORM, UNGLAZED STONEWARE

Han Dynasty (B.C. 206 - A.D. 220)

_(In the Victoria and Albert Museum)_

This westward drive of the Mongolian horsemen was going on from 200

B.C. onward. It was producing a westward pressure upon the Aryan

tribes, and these again were pressing upon the Roman frontiers ready to

break through directly there was any weakness apparent. The Parthians,

who were apparently a Scythian people with some Mongolian admixture,

came down to the Euphrates by the first century B.C. They fought

against Pompey the Great in his eastern raid. They defeated and killed

Crassus. They replaced the Seleucid monarchy in Persia by a dynasty of

Parthian kings, the Arsacid dynasty.

CHINESE VESSEL IN BRONZE, IN FORM OF A GOOSE

CHINESE VESSEL IN BRONZE, IN FORM OF A GOOSE

Dating from before the time of Shi-Hwang-ti. Such a piece of work

indicates a high level of comfort and humour

_(In the Victoria and Albert Museum)_

But for a time the line of least resistance for hungry nomads lay

neither to the west nor the east but through central Asia and then

south-eastward through the Khyber Pass into India. It was India which

received the Mongolian drive in these centuries of Roman and Chinese

strength. A series of raiding conquerors poured down through the

Punjab into the great plains to loot and destroy. The empire of Asoka

was broken up, and for a time the history of India passes into

darkness. A certain Kushan dynasty founded by the “Indo- Scythians”—one

of the raiding peoples—ruled for a time over North India and maintained

a certain order. These invasions went on for several centuries. For a

large part of the fifth century A.D. India was afflicted by the

Ephthalites or White Huns, who levied tribute on the small Indian

princes and held India in terror. Every summer these Ephthalites

pastured in western Turkestan, every autumn they came down through the

passes to terrorize India.

In the second century A.D. a great misfortune came upon the Roman and

Chinese empires that probably weakened the resistance of both to

barbarian pressure. This was a pestilence of unexampled virulence. It

raged for eleven years in China and disorganized the social framework

profoundly. The Han dynasty fell, and a new age of division and

confusion began from which China did not fairly recover until the

seventh century A.D. with the coming of the great Tang dynasty.

The infection spread through Asia to Europe. It raged throughout the

Roman Empire from 164 to 180 A.D. It evidently weakened the Roman

imperial fabric very seriously. We begin to hear of depopulation in

the Roman provinces after this, and there was a marked deterioration in

the vigour and efficiency of government. At any rate we presently find

the frontier no longer invulnerable, but giving way first in this place

and then in that. A new Nordic people, the Goths, coming originally

from Gothland in Sweden, had migrated across Russia to the Volga region

and the shores of the Black Sea and taken to the sea and piracy. By

the end of the second century they may have begun to feel the westward

thrust of the Huns. In 247 they crossed the Danube in a great land

raid, and defeated and killed the Emperor Decius in a battle in what is

now Serbia. In 236 another Germanic people, the Franks, had broken

bounds upon the lower Rhine, and the Alemanni had poured into Alsace.

The legions in Gaul beat back their invaders, but the Goths in the

Balkan peninsula raided again and again. The province of Dacia vanished

from Roman history.

A chill had come to the pride and confidence of Rome. In 270-275 Rome,

which had been an open and secure city for three centuries, was

fortified by the Emperor Aurelian.