Page:The municipalites of the Roman empire (IA municipalitesofr00reidrich).pdf/21

The darkness which brooded over municipal life in the Roman age was not dispelled until the explorer had won for the scholar the records which the innumerable neglected sites of ancient settlements had effectually concealed. The passion entertained by the men of ancient days for recording everything that honoured them on enduring monuments of stone or bronze, has preserved for our time a precious inheritance, on which we are now entering. Inscriptions and other memorials, from every region of the Roman dominions, have been already unearthed in number almost beyond counting, and more are being disclosed daily. These have been and are being eagerly studies by a host of scholars. Already the gain to our knowledge of the ancient world under Roman rule has been immense. Daylight has been let in on vast tracts in the provincial life of the empire, of which hardly a pale reflexion is presented to us in literature. The book scholar who for the first time makes a study of the fascinating graffiti which have been unearthed at Pompeii, for example, feels as if scales had fallen from his eyes. But here, as ever, a price has had to be paid for progress. The task of portraying the Roman empire in its entire history has become titanic, and it is scarcely possible to conceive that a future Gibbon will arise, able to cope with it, and to draw and tint the vast picture by his single genius. That Colossus, who bestrid the ancient Roman world, Theodor Mommsen, was and will remain the last man whose capacity and knowledge were equal to so great an enterprise. And even that limited section of the picture with which we are now concerned, the municipal side of the mighty imperial fabric, already needs for its perfection a mastery of detail which could only by the fruit of a life's devotion. All I can hope to do is to illustrate the importance of the subject by presenting a few of the chief deductions which may be made from a survey of the development of the Roman empire regarded as an organisation based upon a federation of municipalities forming an aggregate of civil communities enjoying a greater or less measure of autonomy, and having certain

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