Seven Roman Statesmen of the Later Republic : The Gracchi. Sulla. Crassus. Cato. Pompey. Caesar

This history volume was published in 1902.From the Preface:There are several general histories of the decline and fall of the Roman Republic, dealing with its political and constitutional aspects. This little book is not a history, but a series of studies of the leading men of the century, intended to show the importance of the personal element in those miserable days of storm and stress. It is thus, I think, that their true meaning is best brought out. It is a pleasant duty to express the gratitude which I owe to my friend Mr. J. Wells, of Wadham College, for having been good enough to read through my proofs, and to make a great number of valuable suggestions, which I have done my best to carry out. I have also to thank the Authorities of the British Museum Coin-Room (and especially Mr. G. F. Hill) for the kindness with which they aided me in selecting the Roman coins for my three plates of illustrations. C. OMAN. Naples, April, 1902. Excerpts:The details of the sporadic and never-ending wars in Spain. Macedonia, and the Hellenic East, which cover the period B.C. 200-140, hide the unwritten history of the most important changes in the social and economic con- ditions of Italy. In B.C. 200 Rome was still in the main a city-state of the old type, though she had already begun to acquire important transmarine domains. She was still a self-supporting agricultural community, feeding herself on home-grown corn. Moreover, she might still be described as a narrow-minded purely Italian town, little affected as yet, either in blood or in thought, by external influences. The elder Cato, with all his hard practical common sense, his stolidity, his passion for the life of the farm, and his contempt for the foreigner, was the typical Roman of that generation. By the last years of his old age he had seen a new world grow up, and complained that he was living in a city which he no longer under- stood. ....................................................................................Tiberius-Gracchus is one of the most striking instances in history of the amount of evil that can be brought about by a thoroughly honest and well-meaning man, who is so entirely convinced of the righteousness of his own inten- tions and the wisdom of his own measures, that he is driven to regard any one who strives to hinder him as not only foolish but morally wicked. The type of exalted doctrinaire who exclaims that any constitutional check that hinders his plans must be swept away without further inquiry, that every political opponent is a bad man who must be crushed, has been known in many lands and many ages, from ancient Greece down to the France of the Revolution. But in Rome such a figure was an exception ; the stolid conservatism, the reverence for mos majorum, the dislike for abstract political specu- lation which marked the race, were against the develop- ment of such a frame of mind. The reformers of the past had been content to work slowly, to introduce changes by adding small rags and patches to the constitu- tion7~or by inventing transparent legal fictions, which gained the practical point, while leaving the theory of the law that they were attacking apparently untouched.Be sure to look for other history books by Charles Oman for your Kindle.