oubtless with disagreeable precision, the simple truth
that the sovereignty of the dependent states was merely a formal
one, and that any attempt to give life to the shadow must necessarily
lead to the destruction of the shadow itself. But the ruling
community deserves a censure more severe than that directed against
the ruled. It is no easy task for a man--any more than for a
state--to own to insignificance; it is the duty and right of the
ruler either to renounce his authority, or by the display of an
imposing material superiority to compel the ruled to resignation.
The Roman senate did neither. Invoked and importuned on all hands,
the senate interfered incessantly in the course of African, Hellenic,
Asiatic, and Egyptian affairs; but it did so after so inconstant
and loose a fashion, that its attempts to settle matters usually only
rendered the confusion worse. It was the epoch of commissions.
Commissioners of the senate were constantly going to Carthage and
Alexandria, to the Achaean diet, and to the courts of the rulers of
western Asia; they investigated, inhibited, reported, and yet
decisive steps were not unfrequently taken in the most important
matters without the knowledge, or against the wishes, of the senate.
It might happen that Cyprus, for instance, which the senate had
assigned to the kingdom of Cyrene, was nevertheless retained by Egypt;
that a Syrian prince ascended the throne of his ancestors under the
pretext that he had obtained a promise of it from the Romans, while
the senate had in fact expressly refused to give it to him, and he
himself had only escaped from Rome by breaking their interdict; that
even the open murder of a Roman commissioner, who under the orders of
the senate administered as guardian the government of Syria, passed
totally unpunished. The Asiatics were very well aware that they
were not in a position to resist the Roman legions; but they were
no less aware that the senate was but little inclined to give the
burgesses orders to march for the Euphrates or the Nile. Thus the
state of these remote countries resembled that of the schoolroom
when the teacher is absent or lax; and the government of Rome
deprived the nations at once of the blessings of freedom and of
the blessings of order. For the Romans themselves, moreover, this
state of matters was so far perilous that it to a certain extent left
their northern and eastern frontier exposed. In these quarters
kingdoms might be