THE text-books of ancient History give the date 476 as the year in which Rome fell, because in that year the last emperor was driven off his throne. But Rome, which was not built in a day, took a long time falling. The process was so slow and so gradual that most Romans did not realise how their old world was coming to an end. They complained about the unrest of the times—they grumbled2 about the high prices of food and about the low wages of the workmen—they cursed the profiteers who had a monopoly of the grain and the wool and the gold coin. Occasionally they rebelled against an unusually rapacious3 governor. But the majority of the people during the first four centuries of our era ate and drank (whatever their purse allowed them to buy) and hated or loved (according to their nature) and went to the theatre (whenever there was a free show of fighting gladiators) or starved in the slums of the big cities, utterly4 ignorant of the fact that their empire had outlived its usefulness and was doomed5 to perish.
How could they realise the threatened danger? Rome made a fine showing of outward glory. Well-paved roads connected the different provinces, the imperial police were active and showed little tenderness for highwaymen. The frontier was closely guarded against the savage6 tribes who seemed to be occupying the waste lands of northern Europe. The whole world was paying tribute to the mighty7 city of Rome, and a score of able men were working day and night to undo8 the mistakes of the past and bring about a return to the happier conditions of the early Republic.
But the underlying9 causes of the decay of the State, of which I have told you in a former chapter, had not been removed and reform therefore was impossible.
Rome was, first and last and all the time, a city-state as Athens and Corinth had been city-states in ancient Hellas. It had been able to dominate the Italian peninsula. But Rome as the ruler of the entire civilised world was a political impossibility and could not endure. Her young men were killed in her endless wars. Her farmers were ruined by long military service and by taxation10. They either became professional beggars or hired themselves out to rich landowners who gave them board and lodging11 in exchange for their services and made them "serfs," those unfortunate human beings who are neither slaves nor freemen, but who have become part of the soil upon which they work, like so many cows, and the trees.
The Empire, the State, had become everything. The common citizen had dwindled12 down to less than nothing. As for the slaves, they had heard the words that were spoken by Paul. They had accepted the message of the humble13 carpenter of Nazareth. They did not rebel against their masters. On the contrary, they had been taught to be meek14 and they obeyed their superiors. But they had lost all interest in the affairs of this world which had proved such a miserable15 place of abode16. They were willing to fight the good fight that they might enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. But they were not willing to engage in warfare17 for the benefit of an ambitious emperor who aspired18 to glory by way of a foreign campaign in the land of the Parthians or the Numidians or the Scots.
And so conditions grew worse as the centuries went by. The first Emperors had continued the tradition of "leadership" which had given the old tribal19 chieftains such a hold upon their subjects. But the Emperors of the second and third centuries were Barrack-Emperors, professional soldiers, who existed by the grace of their body-guards, the so-called Praetorians. They succeeded each other with terrifying rapidity, murdering their way into the palace and being murdered out of it as soon as their successors had become rich enough to bribe20 the guards into a new rebellion.
Meanwhile the barbarians21 were hammering at the gates of the northern frontier. As there were no longer any native Roman armies to stop their progress, foreign mercenaries had to be hired to fight the invader22. As the foreign soldier happened to be of the same blood as his supposed enemy, he was apt to be quite lenient23 when he engaged in battle. Finally, by way of experiment, a few tribes were allowed to settle within the confines of the Empire. Others followed. Soon these tribes complained bitterly of the greedy Roman tax-gatherers, who took away their last penny. When they got no redress24 they marched to Rome and loudly demanded that they be heard.
This made Rome very uncomfortable as an Imperial residence. Constantine (who ruled from 323 to 337) looked for a new capital. He chose Byzantium, the gate-way for the commerce between Europe and Asia. The city was renamed Constantinople, and the court moved eastward25. When Constantine died, his two sons, for the sake of a more efficient administration, divided the Empire between them. The elder lived in Rome and ruled in the west. The younger stayed in Constantinople and was master of the east.
Then came the fourth century and the terrible visitation of the Huns, those mysterious Asiatic horsemen who for more than two centuries maintained themselves in Northern Europe and continued their career of bloodshed until they were defeated near Chalons-sur-Marne in France in the year 451. As soon as the Huns had reached the Danube they had begun to press hard upon the Goths. The Goths, in order to save themselves, were thereupon obliged to invade Rome. The Emperor Valens tried to stop them, but was killed near Adrianople in the year 378. Twenty-two years later, under their king, Alaric, these same West Goths marched westward26 and attacked Rome. They did not plunder27, and destroyed only a few palaces. Next came the Vandals, and showed less respect for the venerable traditions of the city. Then the Burgundians. Then the East Goths. Then the Alemanni. Then the Franks. There was no end to the invasions. Rome at last was at the mercy of every ambitious highway robber who could gather a few followers28.
In the year 402 the Emperor fled to Ravenna, which was a sea-port and strongly fortified29, and there, in the year 475, Odoacer, commander of a regiment30 of the German mercenaries, who wanted the farms of Italy to be divided among themselves, gently but effectively pushed Romulus Augustulus, the last of the emperors who ruled the western division, from his throne, and proclaimed himself Patriarch or ruler of Rome. The eastern Emperor, who was very busy with his own affairs, recognised him, and for ten years Odoacer ruled what was left of the western provinces.
A few years later, Theodoric, King of the East Goths, invaded the newly formed Patriciat, took Ravenna, murdered Odoacer at his own dinner table, and established a Gothic Kingdom amidst the ruins of the western part of the Empire. This Patriciate state did not last long. In the sixth century a motley crowd of Longobards and Saxons and Slavs and Avars invaded Italy, destroyed the Gothic kingdom, and established a new state of which Pavia became the capital.
Then at last the imperial city sank into a state of utter neglect and despair. The ancient palaces had been plundered31 time and again. The schools had been burned down. The teachers had been starved to death. The rich people had been thrown out of their villas32 which were now inhabited by evil-smelling and hairy barbarians. The roads had fallen into decay. The old bridges were gone and commerce had come to a standstill. Civilisation33—the product of thousands of years of patient labor34 on the part of Egyptians and Babylonians and Greeks and Romans, which had lifted man high above the most daring dreams of his earliest ancestors, threatened to perish from the western continent.
It is true that in the far east, Constantinople continued to be the centre of an Empire for another thousand years. But it hardly counted as a part of the European continent. Its interests lay in the east. It began to forget its western origin. Gradually the Roman language was given up for the Greek. The Roman alphabet was discarded and Roman law was written in Greek characters and explained by Greek judges. The Emperor became an Asiatic despot, worshipped as the god-like kings of Thebes had been worshipped in the valley of the Nile, three thousand years before. When missionaries35 of the Byzantine church looked for fresh fields of activity, they went eastward and carried the civilisation of Byzantium into the vast wilderness36 of Russia.
As for the west, it was left to the mercies of the Barbarians. For twelve generations, murder, war, arson37, plundering38 were the order of the day. One thing—and one thing alone—saved Europe from complete destruction, from a return to the days of cave-men and the hyena39.
This was the church—the flock of humble men and women who for many centuries had confessed themselves the followers of Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth, who had been killed that the mighty Roman Empire might be saved the trouble of a street-riot in a little city somewhere along the Syrian frontier.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
twilight
|
|
| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
grumbled
|
|
| 抱怨( grumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 发牢骚； 咕哝； 发哼声 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
rapacious
|
|
| adj.贪婪的，强夺的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
utterly
|
|
| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
doomed
|
|
| 命定的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
savage
|
|
| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
mighty
|
|
| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
undo
|
|
| vt.解开，松开；取消，撤销 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
underlying
|
|
| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
taxation
|
|
| n.征税，税收，税金 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
lodging
|
|
| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
dwindled
|
|
| v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
humble
|
|
| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
meek
|
|
| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
miserable
|
|
| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
abode
|
|
| n.住处，住所 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
warfare
|
|
| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
aspired
|
|
| v.渴望，追求( aspire的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
tribal
|
|
| adj.部族的，种族的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
bribe
|
|
| n.贿赂；v.向…行贿，买通 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
barbarians
|
|
| n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 )；外国人；粗野的人；无教养的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
invader
|
|
| n.侵略者，侵犯者，入侵者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
lenient
|
|
| adj.宽大的，仁慈的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
redress
|
|
| n.赔偿，救济，矫正；v.纠正，匡正，革除 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
eastward
|
|
| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
westward
|
|
| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
plunder
|
|
| vt.劫掠财物，掠夺；n.劫掠物，赃物；劫掠 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
followers
|
|
| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
fortified
|
|
| adj. 加强的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
regiment
|
|
| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
plundered
|
|
| 掠夺，抢劫( plunder的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
villas
|
|
| 别墅，公馆( villa的名词复数 )； （城郊）住宅 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
civilisation
|
|
| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
labor
|
|
| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
missionaries
|
|
| n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
wilderness
|
|
| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
arson
|
|
| n.纵火，放火 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
plundering
|
|
| 掠夺，抢劫( plunder的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
hyena
|
|
| n.土狼，鬣狗 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |