The Provinces of the Roman Empire 43

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 43

Chinese silk was certainly already at an early period sold regularly

to the West, but, as it would appear, exclusively by the land-route,

and through the medium partly of the Indians of Barygaza, partly and

chiefly of the Parthians; the Silk-people or the Seres (from the

Chinese name of silk Sr) of the Occidentals were the inhabitants of

the Tarim-basin to the north-west of Thibet, whither the Chinese

brought their silk, and the Parthian intermediaries jealously guarded

the traffic thither. By sea, certainly, individual mariners reached

accidentally or by way of exploration at least to the east coast of

Further India and perhaps still farther; the port of Cattigara known

to the Romans at the beginning of the second century A.D. was one of

the Chinese coast-towns, perhaps Hang-chow-foo at the mouth of the

Yang-tse-kiang. The report of the Chinese annals that in A.D. 166

an embassy of the emperor Antun of Ta-(that is Great) Tsin (Rome)

landed in Ji-nan (Tonkin), and thence by the land-route arrived at the

capital Lo-yang (or Ho-nan-foo on the middle Hoang-ho) to the emperor

Hwan-ti, may warrantably be referred to Rome and to Marcus Antoninus.

This event, however, and what the Chinese authorities mention as to

a similar appearance of the Romans in their country in the course of

the third century, can hardly be understood of public missions, since

as to these Roman statements would hardly have been wanting; but

possibly individual captains may have passed with the Chinese court

as messengers of their government. These connections had perceptible

consequences only in so far as the earlier tales regarding the

procuring of silk gradually gave way to better knowledge.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XIII.

 

THE AFRICAN PROVINCES.

 

 

[Sidenote: North Africa and the Berber stock.]

 

North Africa, in a physical and ethnographic point of view, stands by

itself like an island. Nature has isolated it on all sides, partly by

the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea, partly by the widely-extended

shore, incapable of cultivation, of the Great Syrtis below the modern

Fezzan, and, in connection therewith, by the desert, likewise closed

against cultivation, which shuts off the steppe-land and the oases of

the Sahara to the south. Ethnographically the population of this wide

region forms a great family of peoples, distinguished most sharply

from the Blacks of the south, but likewise strictly separated from the

Egyptians, although perhaps with these there may once have subsisted

a primeval fellowship. They call themselves in the Riff near Tangier

Amâzigh, in the Sahara Imôshagh, and the same name meets us, referred

to particular tribes, on several occasions among the Greeks and Romans,

thus as Maxyes at the founding of Carthage (ii. 8) {ii. 7.}, as Mazices

in the Roman period at different places of the Mauretanian north

coast; the similar designation that has remained with the scattered

remnants proves that this great people has once had a consciousness,

and has permanently retained the impression, of the relationship of

its members. To the peoples who came into contact with them this

relationship was far from clear; the diversities which prevail among

their several parts are not merely at the present day glaring, after in

the past thousands of years the mixture with the neighbouring peoples,

particularly the Negroes in the south and the Arabs in the north,

has had its effect upon them, but certainly were as considerable even

before these foreign influences as their extension in space demands.

A universally valid __EXPRESSION__ for the nation as such is wanting in

all other idioms; even where the name goes beyond the designation of

stock,[275] it yet does not describe the circle as a whole. That of

Libyans, which the Egyptians, and after their precedent the Greeks use,

belongs originally to the most easterly tribes coming into contact

with Egypt, and has always remained specially pertaining to those of

the eastern half. That of Nomades, of Greek origin, expresses in the

first instance only the absence of settlement, and then in its Roman

transformation as Numidians, has become associated with that territory

which king Massinissa united under his sway. That of Mauri, of native

origin, and current among the later Greeks as well as the Romans, is

restricted to the western parts of the land, and continues in use for

the kingdoms here formed and the Roman provinces that have proceeded

from them. The tribes of the south are comprehended under the name of

the Gaetulians, which, however, the stricter use of language limits to

the region on the Atlantic Ocean to the south of Mauretania. We are

accustomed to designate the nation by the name of Berbers, which the

Arabs apply to the northern tribes.

 

[Sidenote: Type.]

 

As to their type they stand far nearer to the Indo-Germanic than

to the Semitic, and form even at the present day, when since the

invasion of Islam North Africa has fallen to the Semitic race, the

sharpest contrast to the Arabs. It is not without warrant that

various geographers of antiquity have refused to let Africa pass at

all as a third continent, but have attached Egypt to Asia and the

Berber territory to Europe. As the plants and animals of northern

Africa correspond in the main to those of the opposite south-European

coast, so the type of man, where it has been preserved unmixed,

points altogether to the north:--the fair hair and the blue eyes of a

considerable portion, the tall stature, the slender but powerfully knit

form, the prevailing monogamy and respect for the position of woman,

the lively and emotional temperament, the inclination to settled life,

the community founded on the full equality in rights among the grown-up

men, which in the usual confederation of several communities affords

also the basis for the formation of a state.[276] To strictly political

development and to full civilisation this nation, hemmed round by

Negroes, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, at no time attained;

it must have approximated to it under the government of Massinissa.

The alphabet, derived independently from the Phoenician, of which

the Berbers made use under Roman rule, and which those of the Sahara

still use at the present day, as well as the feeling which, as we have

observed, they once had of common national relationship, may probably

be referred to the great Numidian king and his descendants, whom the

later generations worshipped as gods.[277] In spite of all invasions

they have maintained their original territory to a considerable

extent; in Morocco now about two-thirds, in Algiers about half of the

inhabitants are reckoned of Berber descent.

 

[Sidenote: Phoenician immigration.]

 

The immigration, to which all the coasts of the Mediterranean were

subjected in the earliest times, made North Africa Phoenician. To the

Phoenicians the natives had to give up the largest and best part of

the north coast; the Phoenicians withdrew all North Africa from Greek

civilisation. The Great Syrtis again forms the linguistic as well

as the political line of separation; as on the east the Pentapolis

of Cyrene belongs to the Greek circle, so on the west the Tripolis

(Tripoli) of Great-Leptis became and remained Phoenician. We have

formerly narrated how the Phoenicians after several hundred years of

struggle succumbed to the Romans. Here we have to give account of the

fortunes of Africa, after the Romans had occupied the Carthaginian

territory and had made the neighbouring regions dependent on them.

 

[Sidenote: The government of the Roman republic.]

 

The short-sightedness and narrow-mindedness--we may here say, the

perversity and brutality--of the foreign government of the Roman

republic had nowhere so full sway as in Africa. In southern Gaul,

and still more in Spain, the Roman government pursued at least a

consolidated extension of territory, and, half involuntarily, the

rudiments of Latinising; in the Greek East the foreign rule was

mitigated and often almost compensated by the power of Hellenism

forcing the hand even of hard policy. But as to this third continent

the old national hatred towards the Poeni seemed still to reach beyond

the grave of Hannibal’s native city. The Romans held fast the territory

which Carthage had possessed at its fall, but less in order to develop

it for their own benefit than to prevent its benefiting others, not

to awaken new life there, but to watch the dead body; it was fear and

envy, rather than ambition and covetousness, that created the province

of Africa. Under the republic it had not a history; the war with

Jugurtha was for Africa nothing but a lion-hunt, and its historical

significance lay in its connection with the republican party struggles.

The land was, as a matter of course, turned to full account by Roman

speculation; but neither might the destroyed great city rise up afresh,

nor might a neighbouring town develop into a similar prosperity; there

were here no standing camps as in Spain and Gaul; the Roman province,

with its narrow bounds, was on all sides surrounded by relatively

civilised territory of the dependent king of Numidia, who had helped

in the work of the destruction of Carthage, and now, as a reward

for it, received not so much the spoil as the task of protecting it

from the inroads of the wild hordes of the interior. That thereby a

political and military importance was given to this state, such as no

other client-state of Rome ever possessed, and that even on this side

the Roman policy, in order merely to banish the phantom of Carthage,

conjured up serious dangers, was shown by the share of Numidia in the

civil wars of Rome; never during all the internal crises of the empire

before or after did a client-prince play such a part as the last king

of Numidia in the war of the republicans against Caesar.

 

[Sidenote: Caesar’s African policy.]

 

All the more necessarily the state of things in Africa became

transformed by this decision of arms. In the other provinces, as a

consequence of the civil wars, there was a change of rule; in Africa

there was a change of system. The African possession of the Phoenicians

itself was not a proper dominion over Africa; it may be in some measure

compared with the dominion in Asia Minor of the Hellenes before

Alexander. Of this dominion the Romans had then taken over but a small

part, and of that part they had nipped the bud. Now Carthage arose

afresh, and, as if the soil had only been waiting for the seed, soon

flourished anew. The whole country lying behind--the great kingdom of

Numidia--became a Roman province, and the protection of the frontier

against the barbarians was undertaken by the Roman legionaries.

The kingdom of Mauretania became, in the first instance, a Roman

dependency, and soon also a part of the Roman empire. With the dictator

Caesar the civilising and Latinising of Africa took their place among

the tasks of the Roman government. Here we have to set forth how the

task was carried out, first as to the outward organisation, and then as

to the arrangements made and results achieved for the several districts.

 

[Sidenote: Extent of the Roman rule.]

 

Territorial sovereignty over the whole of North Africa had doubtless

already been claimed on the part of the Roman republic, perhaps as a

portion of the Carthaginian inheritance, perhaps because “our sea”

early became one of the fundamental ideas of the Roman commonwealth;

and, in so far, all its coasts were regarded by the Romans even of the

developed republic as their true property. Nor had this claim of Rome

ever been properly contested by the larger states of North Africa after

the destruction of Carthage; if in many places the neighbours did not

submit to the dominion, they were just as little obedient to their

local rulers. That the silver moneys of king Juba I. of Numidia and of

king Bogud of Mauretania were coined after the Roman standard, and the

Latin legend--little as it was suited to the relations of language and

of intercourse then subsisting in North Africa--was never absent from

them, was the direct recognition of the Roman supremacy, a consequence,

it may be presumed, of the new organisation of North Africa that in the

year 674 U.C. {80 B.C.} was accomplished by Pompeius. The generally

insignificant resistance which the Africans, apart from Carthage,

opposed to the Romans, came from the descendants of Massinissa; after

king Jugurtha, and later king Juba, were vanquished, the princes of the

western country submitted without more ado to the dependence required

of them. The arrangements which the emperors made were carried out

quite after the same way in the territory of the dependent princes as

in the immediate territory of Rome; it was the Roman government that

regulated the boundaries in all North Africa, and constituted Roman

communities at its discretion in the kingdom of Mauretania no less

than in the province of Numidia. We cannot therefore speak, in the

strict sense, of a Roman subjugation of North Africa. The Romans did

not conquer it like the Phoenicians or the French; but they ruled over

Numidia as over Mauretania, first as suzerains, then as successors of

the native governments. It is so much the more a question, whether

the notion of frontier admits of application to Africa in the usual sense.