Ancient Rome and Modern America: A Comparative Study of Morals and Manners
9781465666741
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The object of the essays collected in this volume, with the exception of three which recount three curious episodes in Roman history, is the investigation of the most important differences between the ancient world and the modern, between Europe and America; in what way and in what particulars the civilisations of the ancients and of Europe have been modified respectively by the course of centuries and by the passage of the Atlantic. The essays were printed in the first instance in a monthly publication—Hearst’s Magazine—for the perusal of the multitude of hasty readers who are content to skip from argument to argument, and they are now republished in book form for the benefit of those readers who may care to dwell on each argument with greater deliberation. This volume may be considered as the bridge which connects the Greatness and Decline of Rome with a third work which, under the title of Between the Old World and the New, will be published shortly in New York and London. A comparison between the ancient world and the modern, between Europe and America, suggested to a writer of ancient history by two long tours in the New World—such is the subject of this volume; and such is the subject of the further book which at an early date will again take up a number of the matters outlined in these papers and will submit these to more exhaustive consideration. But neither in this volume nor in its successor must the reader expect the comparison to resolve itself into a definite judgment; and if he imagines that he has discovered such a verdict, he may rest assured that he is mistaken. This book, and the other which will follow it, have been written with the express purpose of emphasising how vain it is to spend our time, as we do, passing judgment on the progress or decadence of the times, of nations, and of civilisations; of showing how easy it is to reverse all the reasonings by which, impelled by passions, interests, prejudices, or illusions, we strive now to exalt, now to abase ourselves by comparison with the ancients and by contrasting the inhabitants of one continent with those of another; of indicating what an easy and sure target irony and dialectic have in all the doctrines, opinions, and beliefs with which man endeavours to establish his by-no-means sure judgments—all the doctrines, including that of progress, at least in the sense in which progress is generally understood.
