Ancient Rome and the British Empire

Since the medieval era, European states have commonly figured themselves through comparison with the ancient Roman Empire, with for instance the English Revolution of the 17^th century being justified in large part through reference to Roman concepts of liberty (Kumar, p. 77, Skinner). By the beginning of the 20^th century Britain had itself amassed an enormous empire, covering a quarter of the world’s population (Bradley, p. 127). In the words of Macaulay, ‘a handful of adventurers from a small island in the Atlantic now governed distant lands which had never been touched by Trajan, or Alexander’, and which had until recently been ‘merely the subject of fable to the nations of Europe’ (Mantena, p. 63-64). In Macaulay’s view Britain had in fact surpassed Rome, yet Rome remained an important aspect of the British imagination. This essay will look at some of the different ways Rome was drawn upon in conceptualising Britain’s national identity and empire during its imperial period, particularly from 1800 onwards.

ROME AND ELITE BRITISH LIFE

Classical Greek and Roman literature was a key part of elite British life during the imperial period. Knowledge of the classics was important for achieving positions of influence, with Latin and Greek for instance being a crucial part of civil service exams (Bowen, p. 276). The classics were central to elite education, both at Britain’s top public schools (Eton, Rugby, Harrow, and Shrewsbury were the most prestigious, and had overwhelmingly classical curriculum), and at Oxford and Cambridge universities (Turner, p. 63, Eastlake, p. 18-19). British schooling in the Victorian period has been described as a two-pronged approach, with a combination of sport and vigorous training in the classical languages thought to instil in boys the requisite qualities for service to nation and empire (Eastlake, p. 41, Vandiver, p. 36-37). Love of country was frequently connected to love of school; during WWI the death of a public school boy in battle might be figured as a sacrifice on behalf of his Alma Mater, and the sweetness of death on behalf of both school and country is a common theme (Vandiver, p. 69-71). This ideology of service and sacrifice was not merely superficial rhetoric. Public school graduates ‘volunteered almost to a man for service in the trenches, and they suffered disproportionately high casualty rates (ibid, p. 33-34). Over 1/5 of the Old Etonians who served died in the war, a much higher rate than the 118 per 1,000 for Britain and Ireland overall (ibid, p. 35).

An idealised version of classical culture, characterised by purity, chivalry, and patriotism, was presented as something for English schoolboys to aspire to, although Vandiver argues that such concepts were anachronistic ones to apply to ancient Greece and Rome (Vandiver, p. 44). In Mackail’s introduction to a Greek anthology he edited, he describes Greek culture and literature as pure and noble, and coming ‘more directly than any other face to face with the truth of things’ (ibid). Reading, and in particular reading the classics, was regarded as part of the process of boys becoming men, and this is reflected in schoolboy fiction of the era (Eastlake, p. 18, p. 21-23). In books such as Tom Brown’s Schooldays ‘Latin is both the process through which boys become men, and the designator of that manliness’, while senior male figures are often constructed as Caesar-like figures (ibid, p. 18). In general, literature was regarded as crucial in the formation of young minds, with certain low-brow literature thought to produce immorality, while the right literature would produce virtue and manliness (ibid, p. 21-23) As Kipling describes in Stalky and Co., ‘a child’s world, and the codes through which he might interact with others, are being continually formed through language absorbed by reading’ (ibid, p. 23-24). In this sense the ‘Man of Letters’ could be powerful, ‘feeding back into that cycle of reading and writing by which elite Victorian boys became men, and thereby asserting the continued power of his own values’ (ibid, p. 49). Habermas calls writing ‘a medium of domination and social power’ (ibid).

Shared schoolroom experiences, including the shared knowledge of classical Greek and Roman literature, helped to create a sense of solidarity and identity among elite Victorian men; ‘Rome was deeply ingrained in the male psyche’ (ibid, p. 21). For British elites the classics were a kind of ‘bond of intellectual communion’, and served as ‘a frame of cultural reference for discussion and debate’ (Turner, p. 63). Later, in the 1960s, Enoch Powell would refer to his Rome in his infamous anti-immigration speech; ‘Like the Roman, I seem to see the Tiber foaming with much blood’ (Powell). While intellectual debates in Britain may not have always reflected what was practiced on the ground in the imperial periphery, we should note that there was a strong connection between political and intellectual life. ‘The relatively small educated British elite…was largely coterminous with the social and political elite’ (Turner, p. 63). Politicians such as William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli were in contact with scholars, and important scholars like Macaulay and John Stuart Mill were members of Parliament (Kumar, p. 84). Winston Churchill would read Edward Gibbon’s Roman history; his father had liked Gibbon and memorised long passages while at Oxford (Rogers and Hingley, p. 207). We can imagine, then, the example of ancient Rome having some influence on how the empire was governed.

The influence of Rome on the thought of British elites can be seen during the First World War. During the war, we see Roman references appearing frequently, including in private trench diaries (Eastlake, p. 224). As mentioned earlier, elite schools had, through the classics, aimed to prepare their pupils for service to nation and empire, and in these diaries the idea of duty and the beauty of sacrifice is a narrative that emerges frequently, and is connected to the Roman parallel (ibid, p. 225). Classical references were used to describe the valour of British soldiers in the First World War, with for example Macaulay’s poem about Horatius Colces holding the Sublician Bridge against the Etruscans being drawn upon (ibid, p. 226). Such classical references even occur in the diaries of working-class and middle-class soldiers, demonstrating that ancient Rome permeated British culture in general, not just elite circles (ibid). There is much evidence of the awareness soldiers of all ranks had of at least some classical references. Trench journals/regimental magazines that soldiers produced are one rich source of such evidence (Vandiver, p. 104). Classical references in these publications demonstrate that soldiers of all classes were assumed to have a degree of classical knowledge (ibid).

Horatius at the Bridge

Looking back on the First World War from the 21^st century, we may see it as a time when the European empires were about to end, but at the time this would not necessarily have been obvious at all. Britain’s empire had expanded rapidly in the late 19^th century, and actually reached its zenith after WWI, with the League of Nations Mandates in the Middle East and acquisitions from a defeated Germany in Africa (Kumar, p. 78). We can easily imagine these soldiers thinking of themselves as part of an empire which would, like Rome’s, last many centuries, having no intimation of the liberal world order which would emerge after 1945. Vandiver speaks about how modern, liberal, attitudes can lead to anachronistic perceptions of how events such as WWI were actually experienced. While the subsequently celebrated ‘war poets’ like Wilfred Owen wrote about the futility of war, in reality much of the poetry published during WWI was pro-war, and unironically embraced classical views about glory, honour, etc. (Vandiver, p. 2-5). ‘Unironic words about duty, glory, and honour may be unhearable for many modern readers’, but this was not the case in the early 20^th century (ibid, p. 3). J. M. Winter has argued against the notion of WWI as the inauguration of modernism, saying that ‘traditional values’-classical, romantic, and religious images/ideas in elite and popular culture-remained important throughout and after the war’ (ibid, p. 8-9). Faced with a kind of war never seen before, British poets still relied on traditional/classical modes of expression (ibid, p. 9). One of the most famous poems in the early days of the war, to use one example, was Julian Grenfell’s ‘Into Battle’, which takes a very Homeric view of war (ibid, p. 184). Grenfell emphasizes the glory gained by death in battle; his ambition is ‘essentially the same as the ambitions of Hector or Beowulf’ (ibid, p. 177).

ROME AND BRITISH NATIONAL IDENTITY

Thus, ancient Rome and the Latin language was clearly a significant part of elite (and even to an extent non-elite) British identity. Yet identifying with Rome might arguably seem problematic for a people like the British. The Romans conquered Britain (or at least, what would become England), and given that they neither substantially contributed to modern British DNA, nor (as is the case with France, Spain, etc.) gave the modern British their language, they simply appear as foreign occupiers. An interesting text to look at here is Agricola by the Roman historian Tacitus, which covers the rule of an early Roman governor in Britain (Tacitus, Agricola). Agricola was arguably the earliest extended discussion of the British character, and was the subject of a great deal of attention in Victorian and Edwardian Britain (Bradley, p. 126). The book does not in fact straightforwardly endorse the Roman conquest; the Britons put up a strong resistance, and articulate their opposition to Rome (ibid, p. 124). Despite being a foreign conqueror, Agricola was often seen as a kind of founding father of British national identity, because Romanisation had played an important role in the development of the country (ibid, p. 131). Thus, the modern British nation has been identified both with the conquering Romans and the native Britons (ibid, p, 136-37). Britons like Boadicea who resisted the Romans could be presented as heroes (Vandrei), but, alternatively, the ancient Britons could be presented as savages who needed to be civilised by Roman rule, and for this reason the likes of Agricola could be lauded (Bradley, p. 133, Mantena, p. 61). Between 1820 and 1940 at least 15 British school and university editions of Agricola were produced, and 10 different translations (Bradley, p. 143). In Fletcher and Kipling’s children’s book A History of England, the Romans are praised for introducing the rule of law, roads, and so on, and it is said to be a shame that Agricola never reached Ireland (which remains a ‘spoilt child’) (ibid, p. 155). One WWI-era poem reflects this notion of the Romans being a part of British identity, describing the Roman legions who occupied Britain still watching over ‘the land they love so well’ (Vandiver, p. 25).

Agricola

Of course, in discussing British national identity during this period, we have to mention the Anglo-Saxon migration of the post-Roman period, which has at times been thought to have contributed the vast majority of modern English ancestry, and at the very least was the origin of the English language. Barczewski’s paper identifies two different traditions of national identity in 19^th century England: one based on notions of racial hybridity, and one based on notions of Anglo-Saxon purity, with the modern English basically just descended from the Germanic migrants who arrived in the post-Roman period (Barczewski). In the later 19^th century, according to Barczewski, there was a shift from the idea of racial hybridity (i.e. a union between Celtic and Saxon peoples) towards a more exclusively Anglo-Saxonist conception of English identity (Barczewski, p. 201-202). Peter Heather describes the 19^th century view as being that Germanic immigrants had in England ‘more or less entirely displaced the indigenous Romano-British population of Celtic origin, driving any survivors westwards into Wales, Devon, and Cornwall’ (Heather, p. 267).

References to Roman texts such as Agricola or the Aeneid were used to articulate the hybrid kind of English national identity, i.e. not pure Anglo-Saxonism (Eastlake, p. 115). In the Aeneid, Aeneas combines his own Trojan bloodlines with those of the Latin peoples of Italy, which becomes the foundation of the Roman race (ibid, p. 116). Similarly, Tacitus’s Agricola gives a model of racial, or perhaps more accurately cultural, hybridity, because it presents the British leader Calgacus as an example of heroic masculinity alongside the Roman Agricola (ibid). As cultural heirs of the Roman empire and racial heirs of the Britons, or rather northern Europeans in general, Victorian readers of Agricola could identify with both sides (ibid, p. 117). This is the view presented, for instance, in Wilkie Collins’s 1850 novel Antonina (ibid, p. 118). The novel involves a romance between a Roman woman-Antonina-and a Gothic soldier-Hermanric-during the final days of the Roman empire, symbolic of a general Roman-Germanic union in the wake of collapse of Roman rule. It is suggested that this Romano-Germanic union would ultimately produce the British race, synthesising Roman military/administrative might with Teutonic fortitude, and creating an empire surpassing that of Rome (ibid, p. 126-27).

LIBERAL IMPERIALISM

Though it may seem counter-intuitive, one of the prominent receptions of ancient Rome during the British Empire was in support of liberal politics and a ‘liberal’ view of empire. One example here is Thomas Macaulay’s ‘Lays of Ancient Rome’ (1842), a popular series of poems which were largely about ‘the dividends of liberal reform’ in the ancient and modern worlds (Eastlake, p. 6). ‘According to the logic of the Lays, a great empire is the reward not only for the defence of one’s state against aggressors, [but also for] constitutional reform and the cultivation of valour and liberal masculine virtues among the nation’s men’ (Eastlake, p. 7). Horatius Cocles, in a speech, says ‘the great man helped the poor…the lands were fairly portioned’, reflecting Macaulay’s belief in progressive political reform (ibid, p. 7-8). For Macaulay, the British Empire, under Victorian reformers, was to be the heir of Roman freedom fighters like Horatius. (ibid, p. 8).

This use of Rome to support a ‘liberal’ position extended to the relationship between Britain and its colonies. In the liberal idea of empire, colonial subjects such as the Indians wilfully agreed to be ruled for their own improvement, and would ultimately achieve independence (Mantena, p. 66-67). This notion that India would eventually be given freedom was a genuine belief held by key British figures at the time, like Charles Trevelyan (ibid, p. 67). The liberal imperialist’s duty to improve and ‘Anglicise’ the empire was connected to the example of ancient Rome, which had Latinised and assimilated a variety of different peoples (Eastlake, p. 112-113). Britain’s own past as a subject of Rome ‘served as a…validation of this narrative of political and cultural submission as the route to advanced civilisation’ (ibid, p. 114, see also Mantena p. 58). Charles Trevelyan said ‘the Indians will, I hope, soon stand in the same position towards us in which we once stood to the Romans’, and referred here to Tacitus’s Agricola (ibid), p. 115). Of course, this ‘liberal’ view of empire was still predicated on the notion that other peoples were in some sense inferior. John Stuart Mill saw ‘barbarian’ peoples such as the Indians as being incapable of properly observing rules; ‘their minds are not capable’ (Pitts, p. 142-43).

The liberal ideology of empire has been described as declining in the later 19^th century, particularly after the 1857 Indian revolt (Mantena, p. 67, Taylor, p. 10). Many saw in the mutiny a refutation of liberal colonialism; Britain couldn’t transpose its liberal institutions in India like in, say, Australia, because India was made up of an entirely foreign people (Taylor, p. 10). An emphasis on liberal reform therefore gave way to an increasing emphasis on managing intransigence (Mantena, p. 67-68). ‘After 1857 radical and liberal opinion drew a much sharper distinction between a white liberal empire composed of self-governing settlement colonies and a non-European territorial empire, precariously dependent on the rule of imperial authority’ (Taylor, p. 12). This shift has been said to have caused a decline in the emphasis on Rome (Mantena, p. 67-68), however, as we shall see, the more aggressive imperialism of the later 19^th century could also be figured through Rome.

From the perspective of ‘liberal’ imperialism, Rome could also be an antitype rather than a prototype, which was for instance the view of Alexander Grant, and later Bertram Windle (Bradley, p. 148-49). In this view, the British Empire was more liberal and just than the Roman Empire, with the democratic principles of British society reducing the kind of abuse that occurred under the administration of the autocratic Romans (ibid). Lord Cromer argued that the Romans were more rapacious and corrupt, and that slavery was rampant (Reisz, p. 216). Brunt, writing in 1965 soon after the Empire had faded away, adopts a similar perspective. Though the East India Company was often corrupt, in the 19^th century there was a rise in moral standards in the administration of the Empire, linked perhaps to factors such as industrialisation and the Methodist/Evangelical movements (Brunt, p. 268-69). Though we do see for instance efforts to limit corruption during the time of Augustus, Brunt argues that we don’t see in ancient Rome any moral reformation comparable to what happened in Britain in the 19^th century (ibid, p. 269). Slavery, unchallenged in the ancient world, was stamped out by Britain, as were other inhumane practices such as the use of torture in legal proceedings in Egypt (ibid, p. 269-70). Brunt also notes that, though there may be some legitimate complaints about Britain i.e. hurting the native craft industry in India, the fact that British rule coincided with massive population growth undermines claims about Britain destroying India’s development (Marx himself saw British rule in India as a positive development which would promote political unity, private property, and industrialisation) (ibid, p. 279-80).

In contrast to the liberal imperialism of men like Trevelyan, Mill, and Macaulay, Roman imperialism was arguably much more ‘might makes right’. For example, Rudd argues that the imperial ideal articulated in the Aeneid is not that Rome was spreading civilisation to the world, but rather about conquest and glory as ideals in themselves (Rudd, p. 41). Aeneas’s battles are not depicted as struggles between good and evil; people on the Roman and the non-Roman side both do good things and bad things (ibid, p. 42-49). Brunt similarly argues that the Romans were to a larger extent than the British motivated by notions of military glory, pointing to for instance the practice of triumphs (Brunt, p. 268). We see, then, that although Rome was drawn upon to theorise a ‘liberal’ and benevolent imperialism, it could also be (perhaps more in line with our intuitive associations of Rome) an example of autocratic rule which was a contrast to the more liberal British empire.

RADICAL/FRENCH ASSOCIATIONS OF ROME

During this period in British history Rome could also have more politically radical associations. Around the early 19^th century, Eastlake argues, ancient Greece rose to prominence as a cultural ideal, precisely because Rome was too heavily associated with the politics of the French Revolution (Eastlake, p. 58). British parliamentarians in the 1830s shied away from making Roman references for this reason (ibid, p. 72). Whereas in the earlier 18^th century, writers had used the Roman Republic as an example of a moderate, mixed constitution, in the context of the American and then French Revolutions the Roman Republic came to represent something more radically democratic (Turner, p. 68-69). ‘For Robespierre and his contemporaries, it was the Roman Republic which best captured the spirit of the revolution (Eastlake, p. 59). The French Revolution drew heavily on Roman symbolism, as seen in for example the widespread identification with the Roman figure of Brutus as an anti-monarchic symbol (Baxter). Of course, with the rise of Napoleon, zealously revolutionary and anti-monarchy ideologies were treated warily, and Napoleon turned from Republican models towards Augustus and the Principate (Eastlake, p. 62).

A pro-Jacobin interpretation of the events of the French Revolution

Regarding this association of Rome with radical politics, we can also note that there were conservatives who used Rome as a cautionary tale about the dangers of revolution. The example of the Roman Republic could be drawn upon to argue that any reform would just result in more and more concessions, and ‘the entire prostration of rank and property at the feet of a Jacobin faction (Eastlake, p. 78-79).

ANTI-IMPERIALISM

While Roman examples could be drawn upon in support of radical politics, Rome was also, naturally, used as a negative example by anti-imperialists. Calgacus’s anti-imperial speech from Tacitus-‘they create a desert and call it peace’, was influential, and used to denounce, for instance, Kitchener’s severe military policy during the Boer War, or Britain’s military activities in Ireland in 1920 (Bradley, p. 140-41). John M. Robertson, writing Patriotism and Empire around the time of the Boer War, compared the British and Roman empires in socio-economic terms, in what would come to be the ‘Hobson-Lenin tradition’ (Betts, p. 157). He argued that empire was nothing more than plundering for the benefit of the moneyed classes (ibid). A common anti-imperialist argument was that an overseas empire threatened the existence of democracy within Britain itself. This is what J. A. Hobson argued in his study Imperialism in 1902, but Charles James Fox had argued the same thing in the 1790s (Taylor, p. 1). ‘Like many writers of the 1750s and in line with James Mill, the colonial reformers [of the 1830s/1840s] objected to the existence of a territorial empire on the grounds that it tended to enhance the power of the military and governing classes at home’ (ibid, p. 4). Rome was often cited here; ‘How were the liberties of Rome destroyed?’, noted Richard Henry while arguing about the danger a large standing army in India could pose to British democracy (ibid, p. 11). It should be noted, however, that these sorts of arguments did not always reflect wholesale anti-imperialism. Often there was support for a vision of empire involving self-governing British emigrants, alongside suspicion of an autocratic, military empire (ibid, p. 17).

Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel ‘The Ebb-Tide’ is another example of Rome being drawn upon to criticise contemporary empire, as explained by Largeaud-Ortega’s paper ‘How Literature May Make or Mar Empires’. As Largeaud-Ortega points out, ‘The Ebb-Tide’ mirror’s the Aeneid, Virgil’s famous text on the Roman Empire (Largeaud-Ortega, p. 561-62).

‘NEW IMPERIALISM’

As mentioned earlier, the second half of the 19^th century, after the 1857 Indian Mutiny, is often seen as a time when the British Empire shifted away from a liberal conception of imperialism. This shift is often referred to as the ‘New Imperialism’ (Eastlake, p. 128). Charles Grey Robertson’s 1891 Note on the New Imperialism expresses impatience with the more passive, commercial imperialism of previous generations, and advocates a more robust manliness and an aggressive expansionism; ‘where there is no growth there must be decay: the Empire must either advance or fall back’ (ibid, p. 133). Similarly, James Bryce noted that though the English started off in India as traders, ‘the men of the sword [have eclipsed] the men of the quill and the account book’ (ibid, p. 138). To turn again to schoolboy fiction, Kipling’s Stalky and Co. can be seen as promoting this sort of ‘New Imperialism’ to the younger generation (ibid, p. 29). New Imperialism was about expansionism and physical health and power, being disinterested in questions of abstract morality, and in Stalky and Co. we see violence accepted as a normal part of relations between the boys (ibid, p. 29-30). In the first story Stalky and his friends go through the countryside taking ‘no account of stiles or footpaths…and where they found a hedge, bursting through it’, foreshadowing imperial aggression (ibid, p. 30). It is interesting to note how this differs from the ‘muscular Christianity’ presented in Tom Brown’s Schooldays. Tom Brown is shown to reject his father’s ‘Regency-style’ masculinity, associated with drinking, gambling, and so on, in favour of a Christian manliness, reflecting attempts by educational reformers to ‘find a middle way between male combativeness and Evangelical Christian piety’ (ibid, p. 33). ‘New Imperialism’, however, involved perhaps a return to that ‘Regency-style manliness’; in addition to emphasising physical health and strength, it tended to de-emphasise questions of morality (ibid, p. 139). Charles Robertson characterised the New Imperialist as not being ‘gossipy’, about the private affairs of others (ibid, p. 139). For men who didn’t like Victorian conventions of domesticity, the colonies offered the change to explore alternatives, from concubinage to pederasty (ibid).

While we have seen that ‘liberal’ models of imperialism drew upon the ancient Roman example, it is not difficult to imagine how Rome could also be used as an example of a more aggressively masculine imperialism. Imperialists such as Cecil Rhodes were inspired by Rome; Rhodes liked Marcus Aurelius’s quote ‘remember always that you are a Roman’, and saw a resemblance between himself and busts of some of the Roman emperors (Betts, p. 151). Figures including Bryce and Cromer associated the model of aggressive, military, imperialism with ancient Rome, in contrast to the earlier, commercial, model which, as we shall see later, was associated with ancient Greece (Eastlake, p. 138). While Cicero had often been greatly admired, with the New Imperialism we start to see suggestions that he was a mere talker and not a man of action (ibid, p. 140). Caesar, frequently disparaged in the earlier part of the 19^th century, begins to be praised more often in this new period (ibid, p. 85-86).

“I’m Roman btw”-Cecil Rhodes

COMMERCIAL VERSUS MILITARY EMPIRE

A little earlier than the onset of ‘New Imperialism’, the British Empire had already undergone a shift. Between around the late 18^th and the mid-19^th century, the British Empire had been transformed from naval and commercial in character, for which comparisons to ancient Greece/Athens were most appropriate, to a military land-based empire which drew comparisons with Rome (Eastlake, p. 106). The 18^th century conception of the British Empire as ‘Protestant, commercial, maritime, and free’, in contrast to the Catholic, territorial and despotic empires of its Continental rivals, fit in with the Greek model. (Kumar, p. 87). The commercial, Greek, identity of the British Empire had been widely celebrated. In general, Enlightenment thinkers associated Rome with despotism and corruption, and Greece with liberty (ibid). Romantic poets such as Keats idolised Greece and especially Athens, and compared the creativity of the Greeks with a rigid and militaristic Rome, obsessed with order and discipline (ibid). Interestingly, in the era of ‘New Imperialism’, Lord Cromer makes a similar point but instead sides with the rigid Romans. Cromer’s 1910 ‘Ancient and Modern Imperialism’ contrasts ‘the undisciplined and idealistic Greek, with his sense of individuality’, to the ‘austere and practical Roman, who not only made the law’, but obeyed it’ (Eastlake, p. 137). It was the latter type who was suited to imperialism (ibid). Britain was said to be like Rome in that it was a pragmatic nation which focused on concrete problems like engineering (Betts, p. 153).

Despite the move towards a military, land-based, ‘Roman’ empire in the 19^th century, Turner has suggested that the 19^th century was in fact a time when Rome has heavily disfavoured by intellectuals, who preferred Greece. While between the 1690s and 1780s numerous Roman histories were published, between 1799 and 1902 there was no major study of the Roman Republic published in Britain (Turner, p. 62). Whereas Ciceronian political philosophy was suited to an aristocratic, hereditary republic, Greek political/ethical thought was more suitable for elite civic life in a liberal democracy, such as was emerging in Victorian Britain (Turner, p. 77-78). As Jowett described the true statesman in his commentary on the Gorgias, such a statesman is concerned with all citizens having an equal chance of health and development of moral/intellectual qualities (Turner, p. 78). Turner makes the interesting point that, because Rome was connected to the events of early Christianity (it was Roman paganism that Christianity had ultimately replaced), Roman thinkers could not be used in the service of Christian thought in the way that Greek thinkers were in Victorian Britain (i.e. Jowett presented Plato as a proto-Christian) (Turner, p. 78-79). ‘The very discontinuity between Greek and Victorian culture was very important…the Greeks unlike the Romans, had not sinned against the light’ (ibid, p. 79-80). Bowen similarly notes the prominence of Greece over Rome in British education in the 19^th century (Bowen, p. 175-176). However, rather than stressing the suitability of ancient Greek thought for a liberal democracy, he suggests almost the opposite: that Hellenism fortified a ruling class ideology, especially because of the mystifying nature of the Greek language. ‘The…purpose of arcane learning is to exercise domination over the uninitiated’ (Bowen, p. 183). In a time of increasing pressure to expand democracy, Bowen argues, texts like Plato’s Republic promoted the notion of a noble ruling class (ibid, p. 176).

Turner does note that, by the Edwardian era, ‘Rome did begin to reassert itself over Greece with new appreciation appearing for empire, efficiency, and administration’ (Turner, p. 75). Contrary to the idealisation of Greek freedom, defenders of Rome and the Roman poet Virgil emphasised the benefits of empire (ibid, p. 73-74). Kumar also notes that in the later 19^th century Virgil, and Rome, returned to favour (Kumar, p. 93). Virgil, in the Aeneid, had compared Greece and Rome, saying that while others might make greater achievements in art and literature, Rome’s task was ‘to rule peoples with imperium and accustom them to peace’ (ibid). With the ‘New Imperialism’ of the late 19^th and early 20^th century, Rome, representing this strong imperial ideal, was increasingly looked to as a positive source of comparison (Betts, p. 149). The historian John R. Seeley said in 1883 that, though once Rome was dismissed as despotic, now it had been realized that ‘there are many other good things in politics besides liberty’, and Rome was looked at with more interest (ibid, p. 150). ‘The Pax Brittanica was extolled as a guarantee of order and stability in a world of jostling and expansionist nations’ (ibid, p. 153). In 1905, W. F. Moneypenny wrote that the term ‘Empire’ had replaced ‘Nation’; ‘power and dominion rather than freedom…are the ideas that appeal to the imagination of the masses (ibid).

Thus, it has been suggested that there was a shift from comparisons with Greece to comparisons with Rome, as the British Empire shifted from being more ‘commercial’ to more ‘military’ in character. However, this picture is perhaps somewhat complex. Though the emergence of the ‘military’ British empire has been traced to the turn of the 19^th century, the 19^th century has been described (i.e. by Turner) as a time in which British intellectuals turned away from Rome in favour of Greece. In this perspective it was only with the ‘New Imperialist’ era that a shift towards more positive receptions of Rome in British intellectual life occurred. Moreover, we also saw earlier the argument (from Brunt) that during the 19^th century the governance of the British empire became more, not less, humane, so perhaps the idea of ‘liberal imperialism’ being replaced by a more forceful imperialism from the mid-19^th century is somewhat complex as well.

LIBERTY VERSUS EMPIRE

This distinction between commercial and military empire was related to questions of liberty, and how it could be reconciled with imperialism. Writers since Machiavelli had connected empire with the loss of liberty (Turner, p. 66). Machiavelli argued that Roman expansion and increase in wealth following the victory over Carthage led to the collapse of republican liberty; increasing luxury undermined traditional virtues, and independent military commanders emerged (ibid). Montesquieu, in 1734, had made similar arguments. Once Rome expanded beyond Italy, soldiers began to identify with their commanders rather than the Republic (Armitage, p. 42-43). However, this conflict between liberty and empire was said to be resolved by distinguishing between empires of conquest, and commercial empires (Kumar, p. 80). We saw earlier that many Enlightenment and Romantic writers had associated Greece with liberty and Rome with despotism. In ‘Spirit of the Laws’, Montesquieu cited England’s empire as an example of liberty and imperialism existing together; like with the Greeks, England’s empire was based on trade rather than conquest. ‘Its empire was defended by its navy, not by a standing army, and navies were not a threat to…liberty (ibid, p. 81). Montesquieu wrote of being ‘cured of Machiavellianism’ (Armitage, p. 43).

Niccolo Machiavelli

Thus, the issue of liberty and empire was related to ancient Greece and Rome, with Rome perceived to have lost liberty as its empire expanded, and Britain arguably avoiding the same problems by instead conforming to the model of ancient Greek empires. Some, however, worried about Britain following in the footsteps of Rome, losing its liberty with the emergence of a large, territorial empire. We saw earlier that one major criticism of military imperialism, as opposed to commercial imperialism based on autonomous British emigrants, was it could threaten democracy at home, and that the example of Rome was pointed to here (Taylor, p. 11). During the leadership of Robert Walpole, the ‘country-party’ critique argued that things like the standing army and strong central executive authority were threatening liberty (Turner, p. 66).

WHITE VERSUS NON-WHITE EMPIRE

We have seen that Greece and Rome were used to model different kinds of empire, with the Greeks associated with freedom and the Romans associated with a stronger, more authoritarian imperial idea. This distinction relates also to a distinction between the ‘white’ and ‘non-white’ parts of the British Empire. Britain’s empire was divided into white colonies which had a large amount of liberty, and non-white colonies, primarily India, which were held by force like Roman provinces (Betts, p. 154-155). By 1855, the English-speaking colonies, except for those in South Africa, had been granted responsible government’ (Stembridge, p. 128). These white colonies conformed to the Greek model of colonisation, as described by Adam Smith; they were self-governed and considered by the mother country as ‘an emancipated child over whom she pretended to claim no direct authority or jurisdiction’ (Kumar, p. 84-85). Gladstone spoke in approving terms about ‘Greek colonisation’, involving colonies which were an ‘extension of [the] race’, and were granted autonomy, being tied together only be ‘affection’ and cultural similarities (ibid, p. 89-90). However, while in places such as Australia, or Canada, Britain was ruling over its ‘own people’(in the words of J. R. Seeley, white settlers in these places were ‘of our own blood, a mere extension of the English nationality into new lands’), in places such as India the British were ruling over people of a different ‘blood’ and ‘culture’ (Mantena, p. 59-60). With regards to these non-white colonies in India and Africa it was a ‘Roman’ model which would prevail (Kumar, p. 91). As an empire which had also covered a range of different peoples, ‘Rome provided the imperial framework to imagine the meeting of different cultures within a single political unit’ (Mantena, p. 60). According to James Bryce, the ‘despotic’ manner in which India was rules was necessary for governing ‘such a vast congeries of races, religions, and tongues’ (Betts, p. 155). This is the argument we saw earlier in the wake of the 1857 Indian mutiny: ‘After 1857 radical and liberal opinion drew a much sharper distinction between a white liberal empire composed of self-governing settlement colonies and a non-European territorial empire, precariously dependent on the rule of imperial authority’ (Taylor, p. 12). In 1909, the Earl of Cromer also noted the significance of the distinction between Britain’s white and non-white subjects. The great problem of the future, said Cromer, was ‘to what extent some 350 millions of British subjects, who are aliens to us in race, religion, manners, and customs, are to govern themselves, or are governed by us (Reisz, p. 211-212).

Kumar notes that the Greek model, which idealised the creation of autonomous (white) colonies, could in practice mean colonies were free to treat indigenous peoples as they liked, without the interference of the metropole. William Gladstone, an advocate of the Greek model, opposed intervention to protect indigenous people when he was on the House of Commons Select Committee on Aborigines in 1835-36 (Kumar, 82-83). Rome, on the other hand, could represent a more interventionist stance (ibid, p. 83). Moreover, Rome could represent the idea of a common imperial citizenship encompassing diverse peoples. Although the British Empire was not one of racial equality, there was a common idea that there would ultimately be equal citizenship throughout the Empire, just as there had been in the Roman Empire after AD 212 (ibid, p. 94). The ideal of imperial citizenship was ‘one of the central points of comparison between the British and Roman Empires’, and a favourite quotation was the poet Claudian’s statement that Rome ‘protected the human race with a common name…drawing together distant races with bonds of affection’ (ibid). While we have seen it argued that Britain was more liberal than Rome in a lot of respects, in terms of the management of ethnic diversity Rome was arguably more liberal. Non-white subjects had little place in the British government or military, while Rome lacked this kind of ‘colour bar’ (Brunt, p. 286-287). Of course, the lack of a ‘colour bar’ in Rome may have been related to the fact that the racial differences were much smaller; Italians and Syrians don’t differ in phenotype to that extent that Britons and Indians/Africans do (ibid, p. 287, Betts, p. 157).

Thus, while neither the Roman nor the British Empire was what we would today think of as ‘liberal’ in its management of diverse peoples, there is perhaps a sense in which ‘Rome’ stood for a kind multiculturalism, whereas ‘Greece’ stood for ethnic nationalism. We have seen that the ‘Greek model’ of colonisation was the outward extension of a racial/ethnic group, and as the next section will cover, ancient Greece was often drawn upon in theories of European beauty and supremacy. However, I don’t want to be too confident to in putting forward a ‘multicultural Rome versus nationalist Greece’ thesis; it’s something for me to explore further and others to comment on. At the very least, we can say that Rome was drawn upon as an example of the authoritarian form of rule necessary for governing a diverse empire, as opposed to the more liberal Greek model which was only possible among peoples of common culture and ‘blood’.  

ANCIENT GREECE AND RACIALISM

In addition to being a model for how to govern an empire of English racial kin, ancient Greece was frequently referenced in 19^th century theories of racial supremacy, with the ancient Greeks seen as an example of a superior race, like modern Westerners and in particular the British. It was commonly thought that the British were cultural heirs of classical Greece (Challis, p. 99-100). Moreover, many scholars argued that the British and other northern Europeans were in fact the racial kin of the ancient Greeks, moreso even than modern Greeks who weren’t necessarily the actual descendants of the ancient Hellenes (ibid). The influential racial theorist Robert Knox believed that the Greeks were a brief perfect mix of superior races from northern Europe who had migrated to Greece (ibid, p. 107). Greek sculpture was the only remaining evidence of this racial greatness, and a resemblance could be seen between the women represented in classical Greek sculpture and the ‘thoroughbred Saxon women of England, Holland, or Sweden’ (ibid). John Winckelman’s idealization of the ancient Greeks was very influential on racial theory (ibid, p. 97-98). Winckelman believed that ‘the absolute ideal of beauty was found in Greek art from 5^th century Athens, principally in work by Pheidas, the artist of Periclean democracy’ (ibid, p. 97). In fiction of the era Greek characters were often presented as paragons of virtue existing within a decadent and tyrannical Roman empire (Eastlake, p. 108).

DECLINE

Finally, we can mention the use of Rome as a negative model in the sense of stories about Roman decline being drawn upon to discuss the possibility of British decline. We saw earlier that, according to the likes of Machiavelli, the expansion of Rome’s empire, and the wealth and luxury that went along with this, undermined Roman virtue and patriotism. In 1899, Lord Walsingham wrote ‘take the people away from their natural breeding grounds…sapping their health and strength in cities…and the decay of their country becomes only a matter of time…ancient Rome has a lesson to teach (Eastlake, p. 174). 19^th century conservatives lamented the lack of wholesome entertainments in London, with things like the music hall regarded as degenerated forms of ‘the more muscular features of outdoor and manly excitement’ (ibid, p. 176-178). These sorts of depictions of weak and degenerate masculinity were especially associated with the Rome of Nero (ibid). The image of Nero presented by the surviving classical sources-in particular Tacitus’s Annals and Suetonius’s Twelve Caesars-is of tyranny and cruelty (Eastlake, p. 178). In addition to being blamed for various murders and the persecution of Christians, Nero represented a decadent sensuality, as shown by his interest in acting and music (ibid, p. 179).

The concern about weakening British masculinity can be seen in General Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys, published in 1908, which contains comparisons between the British and Roman empires (Rogers and Hingley, p. 202). A few years earlier, in 1905, a satirical pamphlet on The Decline and Fall of the British Empire was published (Reisz, p. 219). It was described as a Japanese schoolbook from 1905, and recounted how the British Empire, like the Roman Empire, had declined due to a loss of vigour. It had lost its ‘faith and pristine virility’ (ibid, p. 219-220). During WWI, Rupert Brooke’s ‘1914’ sonnets presented service as a way for young men to defy this decline, to ‘shake off the slothful degeneracy of [a] world grown old and cold and weary’ (Vandiver, p. 200). Brooke suggests that, by their glorious deaths, Britain’s fallen youths have reversed the pattern of human degeneration (Vandiver, p. 288). He recalls Hesiod’s topos of the lost Golden Age, but inverts the despairing prediction of human decline, saying that ‘Honour has come back’ (ibid). He also references Virgil’s ‘Fourth Eclogue’, when ‘the great order of centuries is reborn’ (ibid).

The notion of British imperial decline, along the lines of Rome, could also come from a more leftist, anti-imperialist perspective. For Hobson, the Roman Empire was fundamentally about importing slaves into Italy (Brunt, p. 270). This ruined the local peasantry through competition, and deprived Rome of native soldiers, forcing a reliance on provincial mercenaries whose disloyalty undermined the state (ibid). ‘As time went on, this moneyed oligarchy became an hereditary aristocracy, and withdrew from military and civil service, relying more and more upon hired foreigners: themselves sapped by luxury and idleness, and tainting by mixed servitude and licence the Roman populace, they so enfeebled the state as to destroy the physical and moral vitality required [to govern the empire]’ (Kumar, p. 95). He saw a similar process happening with Britain (ibid). John M. Robertson similarly argued that, because of its exploitative, parasitic nature, the British Empire, like the Roman Empire before it, was destined to decline and fall once its industry based on coal and iron was gone (Betts, p. 157). The notion that the Roman Republic was undermined by the wealth inequality that came with imperial expansion has also been attributed to Machiavelli (McCormick).

The 19th century did see, it should be noted, challenges to traditional narratives of Roman ‘decline’. Theodor Mommsen’s work on Rome shifted attention away from emperors like Nero and to life in the provinces, and in doing so he demonstrated that the Empire had actually enjoyed relative peace and prosperity during the period of supposed ‘decadence’ (Dowling, p. 595-96).

WILDE/DECADENT MOVEMENT

The ‘decadent’ movement, represented by writers such as Oscar Wilde, also offered a different perspective on figures like Nero and narratives of Roman decline. Decadents looked to the ideal of man as an artist, and so identified with extravagant figures such as Nero or Caligula, rather than viewing them only as negative figures (Eastlake, p. 206-208). Dowling says that decadent writers like Pater and Wilde ‘express a…paradoxical pleasure’ in the notion of being in a declined stage, in ‘finding oneself the last in a series’ (Dowley, p. 588). The decadent movement was pioneered by French writers like Gautier, whose Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) features a protagonist pursuing ideal beauty (ibid, p. 208-209). Here the ‘degenerate’ Roman emperors like Caligula and Nero represent the possibility of pursuing aesthetic pleasure outside of Judeo-Christian moral structures (ibid). ‘I too should like to bridge the sea and pave the waters. I have dreamed of setting towns on fire to light up my feasts’ (ibid). The decadent movement also promoted fluidity in gender and sexuality, and again here Nero was drawn upon; he was said to have, for instance, held a mock wedding ceremony in which he played the role of the bride (ibid).

Representation of Nero’s Rome

In 1895 Oscar Wilde was convicted of sodomy, and in the wake of this trial Nero’s public image, which had been rehabilitated to some extent in the preceding years, went back to a purely negative one in which he was associated with Roman decline (Eastlake, p. 217-219). Eastlake suggests that 20^th century representations of ‘decadent Rome’ in fact have their origins partly in this ‘masculinist and essentially homophobic reaction’ to the uses of Nero by the decadent movement in the late 19^th century (ibid, p. 219).

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