Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/294

270 unlimited in the field, and the refractory soldier could be punished with instant death.

Such an education of obedience, stern and rude as it seems to us, was of infinite value to the Romans in the career for which they were marked out, for, as Mr. Bagehot has so emphatically put it, the people that can obey is the fittest to survive. And it would still have been of value, though alone it could not have been wholly adequate, even when Rome had passed beyond the limits of the City-State, and entered on new duties and responsibilities; just as our own public school education, though not highly intellectual for the majority of boys who pass through it, is yet a discipline excellently well suited to the needs of a great empire. For a people whose lot is to conquer and to rule, an education of the will and of the body is indispensable, though it is not all that is needed.

But by the time when stasis first began to be formidable at Rome, even this excellent training was no longer what it had been. Like so many other Roman institutions, the patria potestas survived, but had lost its old virtue; the form of it remained, but the spirit had vanished. The discipline of military life was also fast becoming weaker: the best generals of this age, such as Scipio the Younger, Metellus, and Marius, had as much trouble with their troops as with the enemy. And with the old education thus breaking down, Rome had to meet an entirely new set of responsibilities. The whole end of her existence had changed by the close of the sixth century, — to keep