# On Roman History

## GA 51 — 19 July 1904, Berlin

We have seen that about eight hundred years before the beginning of our era an empire spread out from Rome, which originally took its origin from a kind of priestly kingship; how this priestly kingship then passed through about two and a half centuries into a republic. Then we see the Roman state spreading through five centuries over the whole world then under consideration. So we see about seven hundred years before Christ's birth in Rome a king ruling, who is clothed at the same time with the highest priestly dignity of that time. This office has been preserved. The bearer of it, to whom the royal dignity belonged in the older times, before there were secular kings in Rome, was called Pontifex Maximus. So we see a Pontifex Maximus standing at the head of the Roman state, in the rise of this state. We then see how the dignity of the Pontifex Maximus is gradually lowered, so that only the priestly forms remain to him. We see that the Rex, the king still exists, but is actually only a shadow of the original personality. Now we see the republic expanding more and more and in the time when Christianity is founded in the East, we see in Rome again a personality having all authority, all power in his hands in the emperor Augustus. He finds it appropriate, necessary at that time, to have conferred upon him, among other offices of the Republic, the dignity of Pontifex Maximus. Thus, at the beginning of our era in Rome, we again have the Pontifex Maximus with the supreme power. But this is a Pontifex Maximus, a high priest, whose power is not based on the priesthood, but whose power is based solely on his temporal power.

And we see a few centuries, about five hundred years later, this worldly power of the Roman ruler completely destroyed. But instead we see again a Pontifex Maximus, a high priest, a Roman bishop, the later pope, who again bears the dignity of the Pontifex Maximus. And about the year 800 A.D., the prince who is most mentioned, who ruled over those who overthrew the secular Pontifex Maximus in Rome, received the secular royal crown from this Pontifex Maximus. He completely subjugated the secular rule to the priestly rule, to the priestly power. And now begins the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire.

So we see a transformation taking place in history. We see that the only thing that has remained, that has continued, is the dignity of the chief priest in Rome. All around, changes of a world-historically drastic importance have taken place, which one must also look at from a higher point of view in order to understand them completely.

We will have to ask ourselves above all: how did this change take place at the time in which we are now, in which Christianity took its beginning, that is, at the beginning of our era? How did it come about, on the one hand, that a worldly ruler had complete dominion over the world of that time, and that this immense power was completely destroyed a short time later? that the people on whom this power was based ceased to play a role, to be a power? How is it that five hundred years after the beginning of our era the Roman emperorship was destroyed, and that in Rome the Roman priest sat as a prince, with as much power over souls as the Roman emperor, the Caesar, once had in worldly relations?

There are two great currents that bring this about, two currents of such importance and significance as few have in history. On the one hand, it is the spread of Christianity from the East, and on the other hand, it is the wandering wars of the Germanic tribes. The Roman Empire is threatened from two sides: in spiritual relation from the East and in worldly relation from the North. Everything that used to make up the greatness of the Roman Empire was no longer there in a certain respect. But something else was there. The outer forms of this Roman empire had remained. What had remained was that which constituted the actual significance of this Roman Empire, that which originally determined the greatness of the Roman world empire. The Roman thinking, the Roman world view with regard to the external institutions had remained. We shall see to what degree these were preserved. It is true that all former content had been driven out of this empire. But the mere form, the outer dress had remained. And poured into this form was something else, namely Christianity, which now appears in the same forms as Roman emperorship. That on which the rule of the Romans was based had been destroyed by the Nordic peoples. This is a peculiar story, because at least as much of the Roman empire has remained as has perished. And what has remained of it is told by the history of the Catholic Church, what has remained of it is told by what we can experience every day. Go into a courtroom and see how people are accused, defended and how justice is done. That is Roman law. This law was created in Rome and still exists today. We live in institutions that are completely permeated by the views of this Roman Empire. Everything that we still think about legal, property and ownership relationships, about family relationships and so on, can be traced back to the old Roman Empire, even though the people from whom all this emerged lost its external power and importance in world history five hundred years after the birth of Christ.

We have described the spread of Rome over the globe, we have seen how from this then center of the world Rome extended its dominion into all known countries then under consideration. But we have also seen on what actually the possibility was based that Rome became so powerful. We have gradually seen the Roman people in its whole development, and we have seen that with a certain necessity from the whole arrangement and the whole character of this people, the kind developed, how this people founded its world domination. At the same time we have seen how the decline of the Roman world dominion had to come out of this very way, and this is so closely connected with the origin that we have to use the same thoughts that we used when we spoke of the origin. We have seen that the Roman landed property, acquired in immense greed, had to increase the wealth immeasurably, and on the other hand had to produce a poverty, likewise increased immeasurably, so that we see luxury and wealth on the one side and discontent on the other side.

We have also seen on what all that was based, by which Rome became great. We have seen what it meant to be a Roman citizen. We need to get into that mindset. We have seen how the cives, the Roman citizens, had their interest in the state, how every Roman citizen felt called to have a say, to participate, how the voice of the individual came into consideration. This is expressed in the way Rome was governed, how all the offices were conceived in such a way that the power to govern was in the hands of the entire citizenry. Those who administered the empire during the republican period of the Romans were nothing other than administrators of civic power. They were entrusted, for a period of one year, but also for other periods, with what constituted the importance of their office. A Roman citizen never thought otherwise than that what the praetor did was actually for his benefit and that the praetor did it only as his representative. The Roman considered the consul, the quaestor, the praetor as a substitute. And on what was this based? It was based on the fact that the shortest possible election periods were introduced, so that basically no one ever held an office for a long time. There was nothing other than trust between those who were elected and those who voted. There could be no mistrust between a ruling personality and the people. Incidents could occur during the brief reign of a Tribune, but on the whole this government was entirely based on trust. It was a delegated power, and the Roman understood that. He understood what it meant that he was the master and that the other, to whom the power of government was delegated, conducted it only by proxy. This is evident from the way the Roman was the member of a legal people. Only in later times it became somewhat different. Try to ask an educated person today - he may even be very educated - what is the legal difference between the term "property" and the term "possession". These are two terms that come from Roman law. I am convinced you can go far and wide, even among people who have studied a lot, and they will hardly be able to tell you the difference. If you had asked a Roman peasant, he would certainly have known the difference between possession and ownership. Just as the Ten Commandments were learned in the Middle Ages, so every Roman boy learned the twelve tables of the law in school. The Romans were a people of law, and. in flesh and blood the law went over to them.

Now the Roman rule extended over immense areas and many provinces. You can imagine that such a state structure can only hold together in the way we have come to know it, as long as it does not exceed a certain size. But at the moment when the many provinces were conquered, this could no longer be so. The difference between the original Roman state and the provinces appeared. The Roman citizenship was denied to the provinces. The provinces have no rights, they are subjugated. This goes hand in hand with the other stages of development, with the expansion of large-scale landownership and the related problems of inheritance. It goes hand in hand with the emergence of an enormous proletariat. The proliferation of the proletariat is connected with the fact that the old army of citizens was gradually transformed into an army of mercenary troops recruited by individual leaders such as Marius and so on. Thus we see that next to the old Roman citizen a kind of military power developed, which is docile to the one who can just win the favor of this military power. We further see that people like Gracchus are trying to stop the fall of the Roman Empire by creating a kind of middle party. I have already described the Gracchian movement to you. Now it is still important that the younger Gracchus wanted to create a middle party. - This party was to consist of people who had been senators and had left. So it was a kind of knighthood. It was this knighthood that had been enmityed by the proletarians.

Now something very special had happened in Rome at the time when the Caesar power was coming up. This knighthood was to form a power against the great landowners, against the so-called optimates. The old agrarian laws were to be renewed. No one should have more than five hundred acres of land, at most two hundred and fifty acres for adult sons, and at most one thousand acres. The other land was to be given to this middle class as smaller estates. In this way, it was believed that a middle class would be created between the large landowners and the proletariat. This failed, however, because the proletariat had become suspicious and because it did not want to tolerate a party between itself and the actual owners. In the end, the middle party also joined the Optimates. Thus we now have the proletariat on one side and a kind of party of order on the other. This has emerged in recent times. The republican power has passed very gradually, almost unnoticed, into the Caesarian power. Octavius, the Roman emperor, was himself a kind of republican ruler, and he gradually rose to - one cannot say - dignity, for quite by necessity this peculiar fullness of power of Octavius-Augustus emerged from the Roman conditions. He simply continued the old Roman conditions, had all the offices gradually transferred to him. And that he was able to fill these offices as a kind of autocrat came from the fact that the difference between the Roman conditions and those in the province outside had become so great. In the province, people had long since ruled in a kind of noblemanly way. The Roman citizens did not dislike this at all. They felt themselves to be Roman citizens, and they were not at all concerned that those outside in the province should have the same right as they. So they were satisfied with the fact that from Rome a kind of absolute governmental power developed over the province. In particular, the Roman autocrats had all the so-called proconsular powers in the provinces transferred to them. Thus it happened that the first consuls were rulers of their own kind and power. In Rome they knew how to maintain the power that had been transferred to them as in earlier times, and outside in the sense of holding the provinces to the state. Thus developed, one can say with agreement of the Roman citizenry, the Roman violence.

And then, during the Caesar period, came the following. It was actually so that by the absolute power in the provinces the Caesars had appropriated the entire tax institution and the entire military power. Therefore, they were able to draw enormous revenues from the provinces. Thus, in addition to the Roman state treasury, a kind of imperial treasury developed. And with the Octavian power, the Roman-Caesarian autocracy developed in the following way: It was the Roman citizens who agreed that everything that had to be done in the province could no longer be done with the Roman treasury. These were often things that had become necessary. But even these could no longer be paid from the state treasury. The income did not flow into the treasury, but into the treasury of the Caesars. And so it happened that the Caesars could raise themselves to a kind of benefactors. Thus the Caesarian authority and power developed, and all other offices had to sink down to a kind of shadow offices. From within, the Roman Caesar power conquered the power in the state. And so we understand that basically only the first emperors were true Romans. We understand that later, basically, there were not real Romans sitting on the chair of the Caesars, but people who had been elected in the provinces, and who, like Hadrıan and Caracalla, were able to seize power. From the periphery, Rome was fed to absolutism. Thus, by a kind of inner necessity of development, what had been distributed among the Roman citizens passed into the hands of an autocrat. It is now quite natural that the whole Roman system of law and concepts is transferred to the one inner center. What was formerly the responsibility of the Roman citizens is now the responsibility of individual officials, not only in the provinces but also in Rome itself.

There is something going on that one must understand if one wants to understand the times correctly. If we look back for a moment to Greece and to Rome in the time of the old kingship, we will see that everywhere a direct relationship between the rulers and the ruled is involved. Whether this relationship of trust was formed in this or that way, it was a natural relationship from the older times, from which we started in the last historical consideration, because they were recognized in this or that way by the governed, so that one believed in them. In principle it was like this. The one who ruled had to acquire certain qualities, especially in the older priestly states. There nobody believed in divine powers floating beyond the world. But one believed in a kind of divinization of man, because one looked for the principle of development in man. The priest-king in Rome was recognized only if he had acquired spiritual and moral qualities of the gods, if he had developed inwardly. It was possible to acquire this, it was possible to become a kind of divinized person who deserved veneration. It was not a relationship of subservience, it was trust. That's what everybody who knows things has to say. That was based on something that was always there in the heart, and it continued to plant itself in the Republic.

But in the way Roman law developed, it was capable of completely erasing this personal, living relationship of ruler and ruled. It was capable of replacing the personal abstract, thought relationship. If you could go back to those times of Rome, you would see that he who sat in judgment as praetor at Rome, even if he had the twelve table laws before him, he could still do something based on trust through personal insight. Something still depended there on the personality. That became quite different later. Later, the whole legal system gradually became a purely abstract system of thought. The only thing that mattered was to interpret the law according to its paragraphs by logical sharpness. The jurist should be a mere thinker, a merely logically trained man. Thinking was the only thing that mattered. Nothing of the immediate life should flow into it, nothing of the mind and nothing of personal influence. Only the letter was to be followed. And the law was interpreted more and more according to the letter. It was only officials who had to handle the letter outside in the provinces and later also in Rome. There it was a question of studying the paragraphs and to decide apart from every immediate life only by thoughts - and this went over to the sophistic thoughts. The whole way of thinking, which expressed itself in the administration and government, had assumed something, which treated the whole institutions like a calculating example. This you must hold fast, and then you will understand what it means to say that the whole Roman life had been transformed into a system of dogmas. The Roman state, which had created a law out of the free decision, out of the soul of the citizens, had gradually transformed it into dogmas. At the time of the emergence of Christianity, personal government was no longer considered, but only written law. It was a real dogma law. The Caesars could be taken here and there, all that mattered to them was to squeeze the whole state into a legal system that could be stretched tightly from a center point. The whole Roman state was gradually dogmatized. We see it divided into smaller areas headed by administrators of a juridical nature. These areas were again grouped together into dioceses. Thus we see the Roman state gradually taking on a form that we later see again in the division that the Catholic Church adopted. It was not Christianity that created these forms; this was done entirely according to the template of the Roman dogmatized state.

Christianity transplanted itself from the East into this state, with the whole appearance that you know now. Of course, we have to deal with personalities. But we cannot deal with individual Roman emperors. Basically, this history is also rather boring. It is perhaps sufficient if we mention Caligula - Commissar Boots. But one thing is important. We have to realize what became of or with the Roman culture. This Roman culture had something that will remind you of the culture of another time. I would like to describe to you a personality who is typical, representative, and who can be cited here for comparison, that is Lucian. He came from Asia and is introduced as a very special light. He tells us about himself in a remarkable work "The Dream". I mention this, not because it is a significant literary product, but because it can be considered a characteristic sign of the way of thinking of the Roman Empire of that time. Two female figures appeared to him in a dream, one was art, the other was education. Art demanded that he strive for hard work. The education demanded nothing of all this. He only needed to acquire a few tricks of the trade, how to persuade people as well as possible. And in ancient Rome, talking meant as much as writing newspapers does today. So he said to himself, why should I follow Phidias, why Homer? I'll remain a poor guy. He followed the second female figure and became an itinerant speaker, a speaker of a very peculiar kind, a speaker with no educational basis. In those days, education meant speaking to people without knowing anything, without having studied seriously, just as one writes in the newspaper today.

That's how he went out into the world. And now we see how he talks about religion and politics, how he appears as a personality of whom history reports nothing, but who was able to lift the speech in a conversation, as in an editorial, up to heaven. Everywhere he was active in this way. He came as far as France, was a personality without support, without inner content and substance. This was the nature of education in the great Roman Empire of that time. These were the educated. The one who had a core, like Apollonius, a contemporary of Lucian, could not come to any kind of considerable importance. It was quite impossible at that time. But the whole wide empire sighed. It was the discontent and immorality from which one suffered. I cannot describe to you the kind of amusements of a gruesome and immoral nature. A third of the year was spent in gladiatorial games, in bullfights or in shows of the most boisterous kind. And this spread more and more. On the one hand we have extreme luxury, and on the other hand we have poverty and misery that is indescribable.

Now you see how it came to this, how in this whole Roman empire an element gained more and more spreading, which differed from all others in that it had more seriousness, that it had a deeper content. That was Judaism. The Jews could be found everywhere in the Roman Empire at that time. It would be quite unhistorical if you wanted to believe that at that time the Jews were limited only to Palestine. In the whole of North Africa, in Rome and in France, everywhere you can find the Jews already at that time. Their religion was still much more substantial than what the education of the Roman time offered. It existed next to the currents of lower spirit. By the fact that the Romans came into all world, they spread also the cult, the sacrificial acts, the holy acts of the different provinces. In Rome one could see Persian, Arabian, Egyptian services. This resulted in a tremendous externalization.

In the Roman Caesar period religion came to such a degree of externalization that it cannot be compared with anything earlier. The priest of the older times was a kind of initiate, after he had previously overcome everything lower. Then he was also called a divinized personality. This was achieved in the various schools of different countries. As far as this dignity was exalted - it was one of the most sacred of antiquity - it was now lowered. It was so that the Roman Caesars were revered as so-called initiates, even divinely worshipped. Lucretia even attained divine veneration, because with her, prepared by external actions and training, an initiation had been accomplished.

But this was entirely external. When Augustus had assumed the title Pontifex Maximus, he had outwardly assumed everything that had formerly been the inward sign of the priests. Because it had lost all connection with its origin, it had also lost all meaning and the right relationship.

This was the situation in Rome at the time when it received a complete renewal of its religious outlook from the East. A renewal of the religious view came, which we do not need to describe according to the content, because we are not presenting a history of religion, but a general history, but which we must describe according to the outer forms. Above all, a wisdom religion was transplanted. The first propagators of this Christian religion were indeed the most learned, the deepest and most significant men of that time. They had looked up to the founder of Christianity, from the whole ground of this learning. Read them: Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and so on, and you will see what they accomplished in wisdom in the scholarship of that time. They put all that at the service of this new idea. All they were trying to do was nothing other than a complete renewal of religious feeling, linked at the same time to a penetration of the whole human being.

Now imagine that while in Rome over there everything had become externality, all religiosity had been draped around Caesar like a cloak, and everything was talked about with admixture of mockery, as Lucian did, there the religious was to be renewed with renunciation of all worldliness, merely out of the innermost of man, of the human mind. And the religious is renewed in such a way that deeply disposed, most learned men are placed in the service of this idea. are placed at the service of this idea. It was so - this must not be misunderstood - that the people of the first Christianity were not people like the ordinary members of the masses of people, but they were the most clever ones of that time. This spread with lightning speed, because the whole religion had nothing of asceticism, nothing of otherworldliness about it. The people in the immediate everyday life took it up. Everything that had been perceived as Roman, everything that had led to luxury and well-being in Rome, was foreign to the core of this religion. You can see what was understood and grasped by the whole man, by the man of everyday life, through this confession, which spread with great speed, if you read the description of the Christian principle in Tertullian, who says: We Christians know nothing that is foreign to human life. We do not withdraw from everyday life, we want to bring something to man as he is everyday, we want to represent the world, we want to enjoy what is in the world. Only we do not want to know about the debaucheries of Rome.

And to show how these Christians lived together, where the Roman Empire had not yet destroyed the market dominions, I need only quote the words from the Acts of the Apostles, not as a sermon and not as an admonishing word: "But the multitude of the faithful were of one heart and one soul. Neither did anyone say of his goods that they were his, but all things were common to them . . . Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as had fields, or houses, sold them, and brought the money of the things sold, and laid it at the apostles' feet; and they gave to every man his necessities. But Joses, surnamed of the apostles Barnabas, of the family of a Levite of Cyprus, had an accker, and sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet." This is not a sermon, this is a description of what was intended, and in many cases realized. This was what was opposed to the Roman state life. That was one reason why Christianity was introduced with such speed. That is why Christianity so quickly entered the hearts of those who had nothing to hope for. Not only did they hear at that time that there was no dogma, it was the living word, the living action that they felt.

The one who spoke, spoke what he knew and had recognized as truth. He could say it today in one form and tomorrow in another. There was no established Christian dogma. It was the attitude, the inner life, that held this Christian community together. And that was what the first Christians preached. It was also why, in the early years of Christianity, people freely discussed the truth back and forth. There is no freer discussion, no freer debate than was present in the early days of this Christianity. There is only a little by little talk of a violence. The important thing to take into account, which then later leads to the rape, which leads to the emergence of the dogmatism of Christianity in the first place, is the fact that the Roman Empire was dogmatized. The whole Roman Empire was transformed into a dogma system. One could not conceive of anything other than matters of understanding, nothing other than stiff, abstract dogma. Thus it came about that the first Christians were persecuted, but that they grew more and more in importance, and that the Caesars, after Constantine's action, and the Constantines themselves, were forced to recognize the Christians. But how did they recognize them? They let them grow into the Roman state, into that which was filled with the dogma and temporal power that were founded in the Roman state. For this it had to put all its influence at the disposal of the Roman rulers; and the original division passed into the bishoprics and dioceses.

It is not to be wondered at that in 325 the Nicaean Council turned out as it just did. At that time, the two currents of Christianity were still opposed to each other in the presbyter Arius and Athanasıius, who was educated entirely in the Roman spirit. Arius believed in the gradual development of man. He saw it as unlimited; he called it divinization. Man can resemble God; that is true Arianism. This was opposed by the Roman dogmatist Athanasius, who said: "The divinity of Christ must be raised above all that is connected with humanity to the abstractness, the otherworldliness of the dogmatism that gradually developed in the Roman Empire. Thus, Arian Christianity turned into Athanasian Christianity, and the latter won. What was important for the Roman Caesar? Later, he himself converted to Christianity, but not to Athanasian Christianity, but to Arian Christianity. He knew, however, that Athanasianism could at least seemingly support the old Roman Empire. Christianity was to become a support of the Roman Empire; this was the important question that was decided in the beginning of the 4th century. At the same time, however, this was the period of world history when the Germanic tribes had become more and more powerful, and it was no longer of any use to support the old Roman Empire through transformation and remodeling; it was swept away by the Germanic tribes. We will talk about this next time, how the Germanic tribes overthrew the old Roman Empire.

Then we still want to show how the Roman Empire was still a power in the last death twitch. This was the task of transforming the doctrine of Christianity in such a way that this doctrine took on a political form and was suitable to be the carrier of a political system. Powerful was this idea, however, which at that time the leading Christianity knew how to take out of the original Christianity. Power was what it added to the Roman Caesar idea and the transformed Christianity. Power was. The political system was so powerful that when Germania destroyed this Roman Empire, when the Germanic land territory spread more and more, the so-called important ruler of the beginning Middle Ages, Charlemagne, received the imperial crown from the hands of the Pope, the Pontifex Maximus. Such were the effects when little remained of the old Roman Empire. You see how peculiarly the destinies of the world are interlinked, you see that we must know above all that we are dealing with a political power throughout the Middle Ages, because the Roman idea of the state flowed into the original Christianity. The actual Christianity was not inserted into the Roman idea of the state; and it was always the case that Christianity in monasticism rebelled against the political form of Christianity.

An idea is connected with it. It is an idea that is difficult to grasp because it was not based in the original Christianity at all. You will find nothing of monasticism in Christianity, because this kind of isolation, of withdrawal from the world, was completely foreign to it. To the one who took Christianity seriously, the form, the political form, was foreign. So, in order to lead the religion of Christianity, he withdrew to the monastery. Everything that has asserted itself as such associations, as monasticism, through the centuries - even if it degenerated, because the Catholic Church wanted to suppress every such attempt - that was a living outcry of Christianity against political power. Thus we have the development of power.

Now we still have to recognize what significance the Germanic element has in this time, to recognize what role Christianity plays in the Germanic element. We also still have to recognize what is developing out of the old Roman Empire and to see how this old Roman ruin is collapsing, but how something came out of it under which the peoples had to groan for a long time. It begins with the call for freedom and ends with the suppression of freedom. It is the call that everyone should respect each other as equals, and it ends with everyone being oppressed. It is strange that in our time historians have found themselves defending Caracalla because he gave the so-called equality to the whole Roman Empire. He, as one of the most insignificant and harmful Caesars, made those who were outside in the provinces equal to the Romans. But, he then oppressed them all together! This is the shape that the original Roman liberty took.

When we see that the destiny of freedom can be such, then we really gain from history what we can call a kind of education through history. Then we learn that there is a real rock, like Peter had, a rock based on the original founder, on which human development can really be built. This rock is and must be: human freedom and human dignity. These can be suppressed at times, so strongly suppressed, as it happened in the old Roman empire by the conditions, which can be compared with few. However, the education of man to freedom is given in history. This is an important fact, that when violence ruled in ancient Rome, in the summit, at the same time the foundation was submerged, and the whole structure collapsed, so that it must be said of freedom that, however deeply it is suppressed, to it and from it the true word applies:

> The old overthrows, time changes,  
> And new life blossoms from the ruins.