'masque of heroes' or Livy's epic of seven centuries. The irresistible determination, the power of selfcontrol, the stolid puritanism, as well as the hardness and self-sufficiency of the native old Roman, were racial qualities, a part of the blood inheritance transmitted after centuries of hard-handed struggle had sifted out the unfit. In the old Roman noble that inheritance was not so diluted that his virtus did not quickly respond to the appeal of ancestral memories. It was not till the civil wars cut down the old race, emancipation and immigration mixed the blood, overmuch prosperity induced parasitism, that timehonored ideals went for nought. As we have said, the daily occupation with the political and diplomatic problems of state somewhat blinded the Roman noble to the economic point of view. He dealt with the intricacies of a hundred treaties made with free, allied, and tributary states; he must consider the state's relations with scores of tribes in every degree of civilization or barbarism all along the border; there were always provinces to keep satisfied, governors to appoint and supervise, armies to levy, shift, and direct. All these matters involved niceties of legal interpretation, of etiquette, position and honors. Engaged in these problems he grew legal-minded, and pompous, but he was hardly likely to become obsessed with the ideal of a business administration. That the Roman Senate never devoted half enough attention to economic questions is largely due to this preoccupation with diplomatic, political, and ceremonial concerns. Finally, the desire to conserve their own position and power, the auctoritas senatus, both for the sake of personal prestige and for the pecuniary advantages which the position entailed, taught the nobility to maintain a conservative régime. If, for instance, some individual consul advocated a war of expansion either for his own advantage or for that of any class, the Senate was likely to oppose him. The aristocracy had in fact learned early that, when a small citystate extended its boundaries too far, a large army was needed to hold the empire, and a popular leader of the army was a menace to aristocratic control. It would seem, therefore, that Rome was one of the states where the normal economic pressure generally met with strong counteracting forces. The laboring man could not reach the attention of the governing class, the industrial interests were weak and their value underrated. The farmers were so separated geographically that their interests failed to coincide, and the nobility were so preoccupied with purely administrative problems and so jealous of their own prestige that they gave little thought to economic measures. In general it must be said that the Roman economic problems were unusually simple. The gradual conquest of Italy and the provinces more than occupied the surplusage of capital and population so that there was no crying need for industry and commerce. The returns from the simple investments in land and in capitalistic enterprise sufficed to keep the people in prosperity and presently in flabby desuetude. The intricacies of our economic system, therefore, never threw their inordinate strain upon the government of Rome; and the charge that Livy and Tacitus wrote political history because they were 'economic-blind' misstates the case: they wrote as they did because they grasped clearly the essential facts of Roman society. However, when we have noted the reasons why economic pressure failed so often to affect the governing powers of Rome, it may be well to guard against a certain prevalent presentation of the reasons. I refer to the loose generality we often meet that economic pressure is more effective in politics at present than at Rome simply because industry has grown in bulk, and methods of transportation have quickened with the discovery of steam, coal, and steel. Now, if the preceding analysis is true, the phenomena treated depend not so much upon the absolute importance of capitalistic enterprise, as upon the relative ease with which that enterprise may gain control of the political machinery. Even in the ancient state with its slowmoving commerce and unorganized industries the interests of the shipper and producers could become paramount under favorable political and social conditions. And as an illustration of this I wish to show how the trade rivalry of Marseilles and Carthage led to international conflicts of world-wide importance. A few years ago a papyrus fragment of Sosylos came to light which showed that the fleet of Marseillesdirected by her own commanders and acting as a unit-carried off the honors in the naval battle of 217 which destroyed the Punic fleet. This important share of Marseilles in the war is passed over in characteristic silence by Livy, just as our popular histories used to disregard the part played by the French in the war of Independence. Even Polybius is so close to his Roman source, Fabius, that he fails to give this fact, though he does make a general statement, that Marseilles distinguished herself by her fidelity to Rome at all times, and especially during the Second Punic War. Now, when we look for the underlying meaning of the participation of Marseilles, we must remember that she was not a subject-ally like the Southern Greek cities, that her contingent was under her own command, and that she continued to be treated as an ally aequo foedere by Rome for a hundred years after this event. Her position at the beginning of the Second Punic War was that of an ally fighting in a common cause. I am strongly inclined to think that the grievances of Marseilles against Carthage, and the arguments and the schemes which Marseilles urged at Rome against Carthage had much more to do with stirring up the quarrel which led to the Second Punic War than we have supposed. On Marseilles and Carthage see Schulten, in the article Hispania, in Pauly-Wissowa; Niese, Griechische und Makedonische Staaten, 1.489; Kahrstedt, Geschichte der Karthager, 3. The situation was as follows. Marseilles had during the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries flourished in bartering with Ligurians, Celts, and Iberians. Without attempting to found an empire she established trading posts on the Rhone as far as the Loire, on the Gallic coast, then on the Eastern coast of Spain all the way down almost to the straits. She needed only open ports, safe seas, and friendship with the tribes. The wares she produced were good enough and her market so near that she did not need to fear open competition in her natural field. Carthage was at the same time planting trading posts along North Africa, Southern Spain, and the islands of the Western sea, and so her traders came into confiict with those of Marseilles. But under a policy of open ports the Punic traders were at a disadvantage. The products of their home industries were inferior to those of Marseilles and could therefore not well stand open competition. They could draw upon Sicily, Southern Italy, and the East for equally good wares, and did so, but this generally involved an extra middleman's profit and a longer voyage. Hence it is that Punic traders always, when possible, advocated and pressed for a policy of mare clausum along Punic possessions. Eratosthenes tells us that the Carthaginians sank every foreign vessel that ventured to appear at the straits, and the Punic treaties which Polybius has recorded in his third book prove that Carthage succeeded in gaining recognition for her policy from states which did not care enough for commerce to protect it by force of arms. Marseilles, however, protested often and fought for her interests. Justinus (43.5) says that Marseilles often defeated the Carthaginians and imposed terms of peace. This would seem to mean that she compelled Carthage to recognize the seas of Eastern Spain as open. Now of course the Punic nobles who lived upon the returns of African estates worked by serfs were not always willing to fight in support of a policy advocated by the traders, but the nobility had suffered severely in the First Punic War and in the mutiny which followed, so that the democratic leaders, the Barcids, were free to carry out an aggressive policy in Spain in support of the interests of the commercial and industrial classes. Hamilear set out from the south of Spain to secure the Hinterland. By persuasion, gifts, and a show of force the Barcids won over tribe after tribe, always increasing and ⚫ training an army with which more reluctant tribes Of course the trade of the interior tribes was thus diverted from the Massiliot posts on the Eastern coast and directed southward to the Punic posts, and in time to new Punic posts opened nearby upon the Eastern coast. Even if the Barcids did not attempt to close the Greek ports at once, it was evident to Marseilles that her profits were at an end in Spain if Carthage secured all the Hinterland-and that presently her Gallic field would be invaded likewise. were won. Diodorus 20.8. For a mare clausum the Barcids seemed to be substituting an equally effective terra clausa. And the danger was harder to meet; for, with her fleet, Marseilles might possibly check an attack upon the coast towns by water, but she had practically no army with which to meet the forces working northward and crosscutting her trade routes. Now be it said at once, the Barcids aimed at far more than commercial interests. The great Hamilcar and his sons intended of course to build up an army and establish a source of recruits with which to avenge the personal and national disgrace of the preceding war, and this fact must not be obscured. But hatred needs fuel, and cannot burn on indefinitely, nor was the hatred of the Barcids for Rome so great that it could have won the support of the Carthaginian landlords to a new death struggle unless it found new fuel. It was this that Marseilles supplied while manoeuvering to protect the profits that she saw so definitely threatened by the Punic advance in Spain, and had it not been for Marseilles I see no reason for doubting that Rome and Carthage might have learned to live on tolerable terms. To But Marseilles, threatened as she was, and incapable of bringing any force against the advancing Punic army, had no recourse but to lay the grievance as effectively as possible before Rome. She could hardly have appealed to Rome's commercial interests; Rome's ruling class cared so little for such matters that they did not even demand open ports for themselves after the Second Punic War, not to mention the First. But the Massiliots could explain, and reiterate, and exaggerate the rumors that went in Spain that the Barcids were raising a larger army than was needed at home. They could and doubtless did harp upon the theme of a war of revenge. At any rate Rome was prodded into demanding a promise from Hasdrubal in 226 that he would not cross the Ebro in arms. this treaty Marseilles was doubtless a signatory; by it she saved at least two of her trading posts in Spain, Emporia and Rhode, and the routes of Northern Spain which might still tap the resources of Central Spain, while Rome established a point beyond which no vengeful Barcid could go with an army without serving a long-term notice that he was advancing upon Rome. The treaty was, then, of first importance to Marseilles, and, I doubt not, drawn up at her behest. If this interpretation of it is correct, we see that it was in no sense a definition of 'spheres of influence' between Rome and Carthage, and this helps to explain why Rome's alliance with Saguntum south of the Ebro was not considered by any of the ancients as an infraction of the Ebro treaty, as is sometimes held to-day. The Saguntian alliance was apparently a part of Marseilles's general policy. When Saguntum was frightened by the encroachment of Hannibal upon the rear, she of course found ready listeners at Marseilles, to whom the preservation of open ports on the Spanish coast was of vital importance. Marseilles Here, then, is a fair illustration of how even in ancient society, with its slow-moving industry, trade-rivalry could beget serious political conflicts. It should also be noticed that Marseilles was more nearly an aristocracy than Rome, so that the precise form of the government is not necessarily the determining factor. The essential point is that at Marseilles the policies of state were directed by the men who were concerned in the producing and shipping. The governing aristocracy could hardly have been a land-holding class, since Marseilles had but little territory, and its imperial problems were of little importance, since it avoided expansion. The nobles apparently lived on the returns of commerce, and that is why Marseilles built docks, and watch towers on the coast, and trading posts on foreign shores, and fought Carthage for freedom of the seas. But it is also apparent to the student of Greek and Roman history that such control of state-policies by one class engaged chiefly in capitalistic enterprise was of relatively rare occurrence. Finally, a word about the general philosophy of the economic interpreter. No one will deny that there is a good scientific basis for his main contention, but his reading of human nature usually proves incomplete. The survival of the race does not of course rest wholly upon the self-centered instincts. The altruistic instincts are as old, as deep-seated and as necessary to survival as the egoistic ones; and, moreover, they are more productive of the superimposed layers of custom and folkways that constitute civilization. The human being is a social animal, which implies that, such as he is and has been for ages, he has enough sympathy, sense of justice, and altruism, and he has sloughed off enough of his combativeness, brutality, and selfishness to live in the horde. Add to this that, since men began to interchange ideas, all of society has expressed admiration for altruism and scorn for selfishness-naturally since society benefits by the former while it suffers from the latter. Civilization must by the very premises put a premium upon the social virtues. Ancient society-which after all is but a part of modern society, if we measure up the ages through which our instincts have developed-was wholly like our own in granting social rewards to justice and sympathy and in ostracizing greed and bumptiousness; in fact the race had for countless ages' done the same. This inevitable selection has always been tending to eliminate the unsocial, so that the social virtues, which procured a certain advantage to the possessor, have grown instinctive through the surer survival of the possessor. In this light, then, the acquisitive instinct looms less formidable in the general sum. The tendencies to win sympathy, to do the heroic deed, to sacrifice self somewhat for the group, to imitate those who stand high in public esteem-whatever the instincts may be called-are as deeply rooted and as vital a part of human nature as the impulse to get and to fight for self. If this is true, then it follows that the economic interpretation of history must be wholly inadequate. At any rate, since we cannot possibly invent a sicentific formula which will accurately reveal what specific rôle each instinct in human nature will play in a given circumstance, we must as historians continue to study cause and effect in their proper milieu with all possible patience. History produced deductively from the a priori premises that man is a hyena or an angel or anything else, and that he is the same under all social conditions, will obviously not be worth the paper it is written upon. A CONFERENCE OF COLLEGE LATIN A Conference of the Latin Departments of four Colleges, Mt. Holyoke, Smith, Vassar, and Wellesley, was held at Vassar College on November 3. Mt. Holyoke was represented by Professors Hoag, Taylor, and Waites; Smith, by Professors Brady, Gragg and McIlwain; Wellesley, by Professors Hawes, Walton and Fletcher; Vassar, by all the members of its Latin Department. The Conference was a consequence of correspondence about the report of the Commission of The College Entrance Examination Board dealing with the form of defining requirements in Latin for entrance to College; this report had raised specific objection to the New Plan of Admission recently adopted by the four Colleges mentioned above. When it was ascertained that these Colleges were in substantial agreement in their intention to continue the usual method of prescribing certain portions of the works of certain authors, it was suggested that a fuller agreement and a better understanding of the situation A few months ago Mr. C. W. Macfarlane, "Ex-Vice-President of the American Economic Association", published and gave wide circulation to a pamphlet entitled Some Observations on the Economic Interpretation of Early Roman History. Though he well-nigh disarms criticism by disclaiming first-hand acquaintance with the sources of Roman history, and shows such readiness to rely upon the deductive processes in history that it would be unfair to accept him as a representative economist, I should like to mention one or two points. In Chapter II, the criticism of my estimates of confiscated lands given in my Roman Imperialism, rests chiefly upon a failure to distinguish between ager Romanus and ager publicus. For instance, of the 750,000 acres of ager Romanus in Etruria (page 15), the greater part was not ager publicus at all. Much had been left to the native cives, and a large proportion belonged to colonies which I had already estimated in another total. Furthermore, I excluded the Gauls from my estimate (16) because the Senones of the ager Gallicus, who had burned Rome, were not treated by the Romans like Italians. Again, though I denied the adequacy of the economic interpretation, I was very far from saying "that material needs played no part" (13) in Rome's foreign policy. Even "deductive processes of thought" (1) should avoid the fallacy of the 'undisturbed middle'. The rest of the pamphlet is pretty well strewn with danger signals of the author's own hand to guard the reader from the pitfalls. might be reached more quickly and effectively by a Conference. The subject for discussion at the morning session was the Required or Freshman Latin course. A comparison of such courses in various Colleges in regard to the authors read was presented by Professor Brady, of Smith College, and in regard to Latin Composition by Professor Fletcher, of Wellesley College. During the discussion it was suggested that each College prepare two specimen courses-one for students who intend to go on with Latin and a second course for those who do not; in this way it might be possible to recognize more fully the claims of the latter class. The question of Honor Sections and the results of dividing large classes on a basis of scholarship was presented by Professor Palmer, of Vassar College, who gave an account of certain experiments attempted at Vassar. The afternoon session was devoted to the considera tion of Elective Courses, the discussion being opened by Professor Hawes, of Wellesley College. Various topics were taken up, such as whether courses should be planned for a semester or for a year, whether they should be based on individual authors or on literary periods, the need and the character of courses for teachers, the lecture method, especially in connection with general courses in Latin Literature, Rapid Reading, and Sight Reading. The question of Private Reading of authors was treated by Dr. Coulter, of Vassar College, who pointed out that the practice was not general in American Colleges. The propriety of counting such work towards the A.B. degree in the case of able students was discussed. At the evening session Professor Saunders, of Vassar College, compared the value of marks given at the Regents' examinations and those given by The College Entrance Examination Board. It was shown that the marks of the Board were a much more reliable basis for predicting the marks of the Freshman year. Professor Taylor, of Mt. Holyoke College, discussed the ThreeUnit Entrance Requirement for Latin, and Professor Walton, of Wellesley College, reported on the recent proposal of The College Entrance Examination Boardin regard to the definition of entrance requirements. A statement was finally drawn by the Conference setting forth the united opinion of the four Colleges; this statement will appear in their forthcoming catalogues as the preferred form of definition for the entrance requirements in Latin. The Conference was so far successful that the invitation of Professor Brady, of Smith College, to hold the next meeting at that College was accepted with alacrity by all present. The paper of the evening was read by Professor W. Max Müller, of the University of Pennsylvania, on New Material for the Inner History of the Ptolemaic Kingdom. This material consists of epigraphical discoveries made by Professor Müller in the Island of Philae, just before the 'Pearl of Egypt' was obliterated by the Assouan Dam. The material was obtained with much difficulty. As Professor Müller said: "Life there in summer on a temple roof, alone, was not exactly a vacation". On November I the temperature was still 130° F. in the shade. To add to the difficulties, the inscriptions are a palimpsest on stone, hieroglyphs over demotic. But "all the treasures of Philae were rescued". The inscriptions throw light on the dark period of Ptolemaic history known to Greek writers as the 'disturbance'. This is shown to have been a formidable and successful uprising, resulting in the establishment of a dynasty of real kings who reigned in Southern Egypt for 25 or 30 years, though the Ptolemies were always in full possession of the delta. These kings were ultimately crushed by Ptolemy V. The Ptolemaic dynasty had, however, received a severe lesson, and from the great 'disturbance' dates all the consideration shown by the Greeks to the Egyptian element of the popula tion. B. W. MITCHELL, Secretary. XENOPHON, ANABASIS 1.8.20 A friend of mine, who, so far as I know, had no training in Greek or Latin in School or College, but has worked on both languages by himself, has been troubled by the account given by Xenophon, Anabasis 1.8.20, of the man who, at the battle of Cunaxa, was caught by a chariot, 'scared out of his wits as if in a hippodrome'. The Persian chariots, Xenophon says, 'were swept, some of them through our enemies themselves, some through the lines of the Greeks, but empty of drivers. Every time the Greeks saw the chariots coming, they opened ranks. One man, however, κατελήφθη ὥσπερ ἐν ἱπποδρόμῳ ἐκπλαγείς. And yet they told us that not even this man was injured'. My friend asked, How could a man be caught in the hippodrome? He was thinking, I suspect, of the hippodrome in terms of modern life, or in terms of the Roman circus, that is he visualized the hippodrome as a course entirely enclosed, and therefore found it difficult to imagine how any one could be down upon the course. I find nothing in the editions to resolve his difficulty. It would be possible, of course, to suppose that Xenophon was thinking of an attendant, a servitor of the hippodrome, as caught off his guard. As a matter of fact, however, frequently the hippodrome in ancient times was only a level space, fitted out at the actual time of the races with proper turningposts, but not further. On this point see E. N. Gardiner, Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals. The situation, in the hippodrome, under such circumstances, was not at all like that in the circus at Rome, for example, but rather like that on Long Island when the Vanderbilt Cup Races are held there. If I remember correctly, a couple of years ago one or more persons were killed because effective measures had not been taken to prevent spectators from straying upon the course. С. К. |