Empire and Communications

by Harold Adams Innis

  The success of Roman arms in extending the territory of the republic created problems of government. Wars and alliances left Rome as mistress of Italy by 260 B.C. War with Carthage from 265 to 241 B.C. was followed by the acquisition of Sicily and the Lipari Islands. From 236 to 219 B.C. Carthage extended her territory to include Spain, but conflict with Rome after 218 B.C. again brought defeat and the drastic reductions of the treaty of 202 B.C. The third Punic war after 153 B.C. ended in the destruction of Carthage. War with Carthage involved conflict with Hellenistic kingdoms. Assisted by the fleets of Pergamum and Rhodes, and with the support of Greek cities, Rome declared war on Macedonia in 200 B.C. and compelled withdrawal from Greece, Thrace, and Asia Minor. After the outbreak of rebellion in 171 B.C. the Macedonian kingdom was extinguished in 168 B.C., and the position of Rhodes was weakened in 166 B.C. when Rome in the interest of Athens declared Delos a free port. Opposition to Rome among the Greek cities was followed by drastic measures including the destruction of Corinth in 146 B.C. The dominance of trading communities on the Mediterranean came to an end.

  Rome became concerned with the task of Eastern empires. Philip and Alexander had developed efficient instruments of war and rapidly overran the city-states and built a Macedonian empire with control over the sea, the Persian empire, and territory as far east as India. Through deification of the ruler Alexander had established cohesion in a single cosmopolis which joined the eastern Mediterranean with western Asia and transcended cities, tribes, and nations. ‘Man as a political animal, a fraction of the polis or self-governing city had ended with Aristotle, with Alexander begins man as an individual’ (A. J. Carlyle). The problems of separatist tendencies in earlier empires immediately emerged and after Alexander's death four dynasties were established, the Seleucids controlling roughly the former Persian empire, the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Antigonids in Macedonia, and the Attalids in Pergamum.

  The impact of Greek culture in these kingdoms varied with their respective traditions. The Seleucids inheriting the problems of the Persian empire attempted to dominate Persian, Babylonian, and Hebrew religions, but the concept of the Greek city-state made slight impression. The kingdom collapsed and left legacies of bitter memories of resistance to persecution. Monarchies without the cement of nationality and religion and depending on force and solution of dynastic problems were insecure.

  The Ptolemies inherited the problems of empire in Egypt. To offset the influence of the powerful priestly class at Thebes a new capital was built and a new centre for a monopoly of knowledge was established at Alexandria. A new god Serapis, probably the only god successfully made by man, was deliberately created. The Serapeum became to the Egyptian cult what the temple had been to the religion of Israel.[138] Politics ‘changed the government of heaven when changing that of earth’ (Cumont). The cursive style of Egyptian writing was abbreviated in business and private correspondence in a popular or demotic style. The crucial position of Egyptian script was destroyed. Introduction of Greek script was probably accompanied by displacement of the brush by the reed (Phragmites aegypteia). Thicker than the brush, it was cut to a point and split to form a pen. Easy access to supplies of papyrus facilitated development of the Alexandrian library. By 285 B.C. the library established by Ptolemy I had 20,000 manuscripts, and by the middle of the first century 700,000, while a smaller library established by Ptolemy II in the Serapeum possibly for duplicates had 42,800.[139] The library was accompanied by the university. Scholars established texts and the authenticity of classical works.[140] The Iliad and the Odyssey through the work of Aristarchus were made into a sort of vulgate by 150 B.C., eventually to come under the ‘fatal glamour of false knowledge diffused by the printed text’ (Gilbert Murray). The Hebrew scriptures were translated and edited, the Laws under Ptolemy II probably between 283 and 246 B.C., Isaiah and Jeremiah between 170 and 132 B.C., the Prophets and Psalms by the latter date, and Ecclesiastes about 100 B.C. Alexandria brought the philosophical or religious ideas of East and West, of India, Palestine, Persia, and Greece to a focus. The Pythagorean system combined influences of philosophy and religion and supported the identification of Osiris and Dionysus. Personified reason or the Logos as the rational part of the soul with an existence above the daemons had emerged as a second god by 350 B.C. An idea of definite conversion or of abiding change in the individual mind had appeared. In the museum science became the spiritual continuation of the work of Aristotle. Ptolemaic systemization left its stamp on geography and astronomy. Geometry was developed by Euclid about 300 B.C. to the point that it probably hindered the invention of a system of numerical notation. Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 B.C.) discovered that the sun was far larger than the earth and regarded the geocentric theory as impossible. The power of the written tradition made the Alexandrine age one of ‘erudition and criticism’,[141] of specialists rather than poets and scholars. The Alexandrine man was ‘a librarian and corrector of proofs and who, pitiable wretch, goes blind from the dust of books and printers' errors’ (Nietzsche). Collectomania and large libraries accompanied taste and respectability.[142] Aesthetic opinions were crystallized and the dilettante appeared. Literature was divorced from life, thought from action, poetry from philosophy. In the Argonautica Apollonius in his revolt against Callimachus protested that a great book was a great evil.[143] Astrology proved stronger than astronomy. Geography began in science and ended in literature. Strabo's geography has been described as the swan song of Hellenism.

  The oral tradition of Greece as it had crystallized in the writings of Plato and Aristotle had profound significance for Alexandria. Plato opposed the naturalistic cosmogonies of poets and physical philosophers with the support of internationalized monotheism spreading from Babylonia and Egypt. It has been suggested that belief in the divinity of the stars and acquaintance with the technique of mental repression in Egypt led Plato to state that governments must be free to lie. The inscription over Plato's Academy, ‘Let none enter who knows not geometry’, implied a neglect of physis and of the study of growth. Aristotle, a student of Plato probably from 367 to 347 B.C., left the Academy after Plato's death and eventually set up his Lyceum in 325 B.C. As an Ionian and the son of a doctor he became interested in biological sciences which implied a concern with observation rather than with system. Greek medicine had its significance in relation to ideals of health. It insisted on the principle that experience is the basis of all knowledge, emphasized exactness, and distinguished the real causes of illness and symptoms by taking them out of the sphere of moral law. ‘One must attend in medicine not primarily to plausible theories but to experience combined with reason.’[144] The biological sciences emphasized classification, which, in the words of Whitehead, stood half-way between the immediate concreteness of the individual theory and the complete abstractions of mathematical notions and involved an emphasis on logic. His system was provisional and open, and pointed to a striving toward totality of problems rather than finished knowledge. As a biologist rather than a physicist, he leaned toward a final cause. The science of natural knowledge was built up and set beside astronomy in the realm of philosophy. The dethronement of mathematics as a formative element created a breach between philosophy and science. Metaphysics surrendered to special sciences.

  Cheap subsidized supplies of papyrus became the basis for an extensive administrative system as well as large libraries. Ptolemy II built up a monopoly of papyrus following a decline in price from two drachmae for a roll in 333 B.C. to a drachma for several rolls in 296 B.C., in spite of a general rise in prices incidental to the flow of treasure from the East. After 279 B.C. a roll cost nearly two drachmae. Prices in Delos were two or three times those in Egypt following a policy of increasing efficiency in production and lowering prices in the home market by maintaining or increasing them in the foreign market by an export tax or a prohibition of exports.[145] The temple monopolies of the Pharaohs were continued in the monopoly system of the Ptolemies, who farmed their estates and filled their treasuries. ‘Compul
sion always leads to oppression and compulsion was the only recourse of a government that regarded itself as the sole ruling power in economic life.’ ‘Cumulation of offices, nepotism, control by various means of many offices, are well known phenomena in any decaying bureaucratic régime’ (Rostovtzeff). An Egyptian theocratic state compelled its conquerors to establish similar institutions designed to reduce its power.

  The Attalids had shielded a number of cities from attacks by the Gauls and gradually increased the influence of Pergamum. To offset the influence of Alexandria, Eumenes II (197-159 B.C.) built up a library and encouraged a variety of scholarly studies in contrast with the verbal scholarship of Alexandria. Apollodorus probably left Egypt for Pergamum after the accession of Eurgetes II or about 146 B.C. As a result of the prohibition of exports of papyrus to Pergamum, Eumenes II encouraged the use of parchment,[146] by the establishment of a monopoly and of royal factories employing large numbers of slaves.[147] Cattle and hides were imported through Cyzicus from the Euxine. Pergamum was ‘in all probability the source of that renewal of Atticism to which we owe in great part the preservation of the masterpieces of Attic prose’ (Susemihl).[148] Its art reflected the influence of the meeting of civilization and barbarism, a conflict of good and evil, in the attempt at unfamiliar ways of expression.[149]

  The Antigonids gradually transformed the small city-states of Greece into municipalities. They captured Athens in 261 B.C. and maintained a garrison in the city to 229 B.C. They adopted an opportunistic policy toward the formation of leagues of cities. A league of twelve cities was dissolved by Antigonus Gonatas, but after 280 B.C. the Achaean league was formed and rapidly extended under Aratus. Antigonus Doson checked aggression from the Spartans by defeating them at Sellasia in 222 B.C. The Aetolian league expanded during a period of Macedonian weakness from about 311 to 245 B.C. The Achaean league was destroyed by Rome in 168 B.C.

  In spite of particularism common interests were developed throughout the Hellenistic period. ‘There are many cities but they are one Hellas.’ Hellenistic Greek as a common speech was developed from Attic. With supplies[150] of papyrus and parchment and the employment of educated slaves, books were produced on an unprecedented scale. Hellenistic capitals provided a large reading public. In the words of Tarn, a world empty of machines and full of slaves demanded easy material for reading. The great bulk of writing was represented by third-hand compendia of snippets and text-books, short cuts to knowledge, quantities of tragedies, and an active comedy of manners in Athens. Literary men wrote books about other books and became bibliophiles. Though rhetoric had emerged to serve the democracy of Sicily and was introduced at Arragas in 472 B.C. and at Syracuse in 466 B.C., it was brought to Athens by Gorgias only in 427 B.C. Probably in 378-377 B.C. laws were enacted requiring pleadings before the Athenian courts to be presented in writing, partly to save time and jury fees and partly to meet the demands of professional speech-writers. By the second century everything had been swamped by the growth of rhetoric. In philosophy in the schools of Athens constructive system building was replaced by elementary pedagogy. In the third century alien influences on staff and in student body increased. Detachment of the individual from politics after 300 B.C. necessitated a concern in philosophy with happiness, conduct, and ethics. Classical Greek philosophy became crystallized in writing and was superseded by philosophy which emphasized teaching. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was a hellenized Phoenician from Citrum in Cyprus and came to Athens about 320 B.C. Free from the prepossessions and prejudices of Greek political thought, Stoicism became a collection of doctrines and a religion to take the place of polytheism. They returned to Heraclitus in an emphasis on a single principle of life. ‘Right reason is the law of nature, the standard everywhere of what is just and right, unchangeable in its principles, binding on all men whether ruler or subjects, the law of God.’[151] Stoicism was over and above all cults authorized by the state. ‘It made man at home in the universe’ (Edwyn Bevan). All human beings had reason and a fundamental equality. ‘Before the law of nature all men have an equal status.’ Dogmatism followed the conclusion that power governing the universe was rational. The Cynics protested against the idealization of institutions of the city-state and poured contempt on popular religion and worship of material images of the Divine. ‘They were probably the purest monotheists that classical antiquity produced.’[152] Epicurus established a school, based on atomism and the writings of Democritus, at Athens in 307 B.C. He emphasized experience and natural philosophy in contrast with Plato's concern with mathematics and the priority of reason. He refused to recognize the gods of popular belief and denied the validity of popular superstition. To him the very fear of death, of which the great ones claimed to be free, lay at the root of civic ambition.

  The Olympian religion and the city-state were replaced by philosophy and science for the educated and by Eastern religions for the common man. Communication between those under the influence of philosophy and those under the influence of religions became increasingly difficult. Cultural division facilitated the development of a class structure. Division between Athens and Alexandria and Pergamum followed the increasing emphasis on the written tradition, weakened science and philosophy, and opened the way to religions from the East and force from Rome in the West.

  Following success in the East, Rome came under the direct influence of Hellenism. ‘Captive Greece took captive her proud conqueror’ (Horace). About 272 B.C. Livius Andronicus[153] came to Rome. He translated the Odyssey and as the first Greek to write Latin became the founder of Latin literature. In 240 B.C. he introduced the drama to Rome following the demands of soldiers returning from Greek settlements in the south for tragedies and comedies at Roman festivals. In 249 B.C. a choir of virgins introduced the Greek choral lyric. The Greek new comedy of the fourth century was adapted to audiences accustomed to the dramatic technique of the tragic stage. By 200 B.C. Greek plays could be presented without serious alterations. Opposition to Greek culture favoured an emphasis on Latin prose which had been confined to blunt sentences adapted to the economy of stone writing in laws, treaties, and official records. Cato protested that Greek literature would be the ruin of Rome and in his polemics helped to lay the foundations for a dignified versatile language. In 161 B.C. the Senate empowered the praetor to expel all teachers of rhetoric and philosophy and in 154 B.C. expelled two disciples of Epicurus. The spread of Greek metaphysics and psychology was probably checked, but Greek teachers and grammarians enhanced the popularity of Hellenistic ideals in literature in the second half of the second century. In about 168 B.C. Crates of Mallos, the most distinguished scholar of the Pergamese school,[154] established the first school of grammar in Rome and reflected the erudition and discernment of Hellenistic literary criticism.

  Prose gained fresh power in attempts to meet problems of the Republic which followed a marked increase in wealth. Direct taxation was abolished by the Senate after 167 B.C. Large-scale farming and absentee ownership brought protests against the increased power of the Senate, particularly after revolt of the slaves in 139 B.C. The Gracchi were among the first to use the weapon of Greek rhetoric on behalf of the democratic cause. Gaius Gracchus increased the range of forensic prose and made it ‘vivid, clear, versatile and vibrant’ (Tenney Frank). Large numbers entered the political arena and speeches were given wider publicity through an enlarged circle of readers. Public speech moulded prose style. Over the long period from 500 to 100 B.C. harsh sounds had been eliminated and the Latin language reached maturity. In an edict of the censors of 92 B.C. Licinius Crassus attempted to discourage Latin schools of rhetoric, but its influence was evident in the development of prose as a finished product to its climax under Cicero. Broken speech was converted into a literary instrument with ‘concentration and surcharge, magnificent sonority and architectonic sentence building’. Written speech became almost the equal of oral speech. Following the models of Isocrates, Cicero dominated the history of belles-lettres in Europe. Latin became a philos
ophical language and his widely read books and compilations were vehicles for the spread of Stoicism.

  Epicureanism and Stoicism with a common ideal, ‘the complete emancipation of the soul from the yoke of passion and superstition’ (Asquith), were spread by living teachers and the spoken word to the disadvantage of Platonism and Aristotelianism. Lucretius, following Epicurus in the didactic verse of De rerum natura, attacked the spirit of cringing before the gods, the enslavement of the soul incidental to the belief in the beyond and the fear of death, the cruelties of sacrifice, signs and wonders, the mystification of seers and the interpreters of dreams. Stoicism proved more acceptable. It spread from Rhodes through the teachings of Chrysippus and Poseidonius, who taught Panaetius. The latter restated Stoic philosophy for assimilation by Romans of the aristocratic class and with Polybius in the third quarter of the second century introduced it to the circle of Scipio Amelianus. Through Cicero, who wrote that ‘a single copy of the Twelve Tables has greater weight and authority than all the philosophies of the world’ (De oratore), Stoicism received fresh support in its influence on Roman law. Stoic philosophy brought the ideas of the world state, natural justice, and universal citizenship in an ethical sense, which were independent and superior to the enactments of kings. The conception of natural law brought enlightened criticism to bear on custom, helped to destroy the religious and ceremonial character of law, promoted equality before the law, emphasized the factor of intent, and mitigated unreasoning harshness. It was ‘an ultimate principle of fitness with regard to the nature of man as a rational and social being, which is, or ought to be, the justification of every form of positive law’ (Pollock). The jus gentium began to be conceived as a law common to all mankind and equivalent to the law of nature. ‘We are servants of the law in order that we may be free’ (Cicero).