Identifier: grandeurthatwasr00stobrich (find matches)
Title: The grandeur that was Rome; a survey of Roman culture and civilisation:
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Stobart, J. C. (John Clarke), 1878-1933
Subjects:
Publisher: London, Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd
Contributing Library: Internet Archive
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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e accomplished it. The city-state idea, as a unit of patriotism, still flourished. But withthe great roads stretching like railways to the four cornersof the earth, and the imperial officers travelling along them,with the legions massed along the frontiers and men recruitedin Spain sent to serve in Britain, the sense of territory, fromwhich the modern state was to arise, began to develop itself. Imperial RomeIf the external history of the Empire has suffered by beingso largely in the hands of the opposition, the intimate life ofthe city has been still more distorted through being writtenfor us by satirists. The humorous or venomous descriptionsof Juvenal, Martial, and Petronius form our principal source ofinformation, and Pliny, who gives us a very different pictureof tranquil and cultivated leisure or of useful activity carried onin refined and elegant surroundings, has commonly been regardedas a remarkable exception. Yet the material remains are on278 s.w7^sr,:s;->?,.Tfr^»TTOr;^
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THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIREthe side of Pliny; and we owe a great debt to modern writers,like Dr. Dill, who have been able to emphasise this point.Romances such as those of Lytton, Melville, and Sienckewiczhave embroidered the theme of Juvenal, and everybody nowa-days has his vision of Imperial Rome based upon such fairy-tales. It is probably vain to attempt a refutation of the popularview which pictures the Roman of the Empire as exclusivelyspending his time in the amphitheatre watching the lionsdevour the Christians, except when he was supping on nightin-gales tongues from plates of gold. Moreover these things area not unimportant part of the truth. Imperial Rome remainedas bloody and brutal in its amusements as Republican Rome.In fact, as the emperors were not only richer than the oldsenators, but also much more carefully watched and bitterlylampooned, so the number of wild beasts slain at a venatio ofTrajan exceeded the slaughters exhibited by Pompeius. Doubt-less the imperial epicure

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