Universalism: the merits

Terence is the earliest Roman writer to have addressed the idea of universal humanitas.⁵⁴ Cicero gives shape and substance to the notion,⁵⁵ especially in his classic definition of Italian patriotism as loyalty to both the common patria and one’s place of birth (Leg.

The idea of Universal Rome evolved gradually over the period from Augustus to the Antonines, as the emperors moved steadily towards the virtual abolition of the distinction between Italy and the provinces.⁵⁹ By about the mid-second century AD Rome was everywhere. Universal Rome was the communis patria, the common fatherland of almost the entire Mediterranean world. The multicultural impulse in which Rome always outstripped Greece was eloquently described by a Greek­speaking Roman in the mid-second century:

Most unique and marvellous of all is the grandeur of your citizenship. You have divided all the people of the empire—which means the whole world—into two classes. The more cultured, better born and more influential everywhere are Roman citizens; the rest are subordinates and subjects. The state is universal, with common laws [nomoi koinoi], magistrates who treat the governed not as foreigners but as their own people, and swift punishment for corrupt officials. That there were ever wars is now doubted; to most people they are mere legends.

(Aelius Aristides, Panegyric to Rome, 59-60, 63-71,

102 adapted)

Aristides’ message reached Edward Gibbon 1,600 years later and �The Golden Age of the Antonines’ was born.

The Roman global village was not built in a day. Augustus made peace one of the ideological pillars of his regime. The much-publicised erection of the Ara Pacis, the Altar of the Augustan Peace, in 13 BC signalled that war, and with it any extension of the empire’s existing boundaries, was no longer in favour as an instrument of national policy.⁶⁰ Clemency was even extended to defeated enemies, albeit in a qualified form.⁶¹ The policy of keeping the empire within its existing boundaries⁶² gave citizenship a certain scarcity value, a feeling of belonging to an exclusive club. Claudius took practical steps towards creating the conditions that fostered such sentiments,⁶³ but the most important thoughts on universalism in the first century were formulated by Seneca:

To worship the gods we must believe in them and in their maiestas—and in their goodness without which there is no maiestas. We must know that they preside over the universe [mundus], controlling all things and acting as guardians of the human race. But how are we to deal with men? We live in common, in a society which judges certain rights as common to the human race [iudicat aliquod esse commune ius generis humani], so much so that acts can be classed as wrong even when done to an enemy. Here is a rule of thumb for human relationships: everything that you see, both divine and human, is one, we are the parts of one great body. We are all blood relatives, created by nature from the same source and for the same purpose. She has endowed us with mutual love, sociability and helpfulness. Let us possess things in common, for our birth is common. Let this line be in our hearts and on our lips: Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.⁶⁴

The concluding quotation confirms, as already observed, that Terence indeed had universalism in mind when he wrote his famous line.

Elsewhere Seneca says that one need not repay a benefit received from someone who feeds on human blood, because he severs the bonds of human rights (juris humani societas).

In a notable passage Seneca encourages Nero to give practical effect to universalism:

The emperor’s reluctance to sign death warrants even for convicted criminals should be made known to all nations, both inside and outside the empire. It should have been announced at a gathering of all mankind, princes and kings should have sworn allegiance to Nero’s proclamation of the public innocence of the human race. His kindness [mansuetudo] will gradually be diffused throughout the empire.⁶⁵

Cicero, we recall, had also predicted the eventual triumph of humanitas throughout the world, though he did not expect it to happen in his time.⁶⁶

The Senecan tradition was exploited by Galba, who was called to rule by the consent of gods and men, by the consent of the human race (Tac. Hist. I 15.1, 30.2). The idea is prominent in the elder Pliny:

Italy, chosen by the gods to unite scattered empires, to make manners gentle, to foster uniformity of language, to give man humanitas—in short, to become throughout the world the single fatherland of all races. The welfare of mankind is due to the vast majesty of the Roman Peace; the gods gave Romans to humanity like a second sun.

(NH 3.39, 27.3)

The younger Pliny saw universalism as a powerful weapon in Trajan’s humanitarian armour:

You are the father of the human race and its protector and benefactor. When you became emperor you saved the empire. The protection and security of mankind depended, and continue to depend, on your safety. Speaking as consul on behalf of all humanity, I call on the gods, the governors and guardians of our empire. Good emperors are loved for their benefits to the human race as a whole rather than to individuals.⁶⁷

On the practical side the Antonine emperors gathered together the threads and put Universal Rome on a firm basis.

Hadrian reshaped and centralised the empire’s legal system⁷⁰ and made it a pliable instrument for the Romanisation of the Greeks. Roman law, as he sent it down to posterity, was well on the way to becoming the juristic lingua franca of the Mediterranean world.⁷¹ Hadrian’s policies were largely carried out by the jurist Salvius Julianus. He codified the praetor’s edict in the interests of centralisation; he rewrote the laws of Athens, adding a patina of Roman law to her traditional customs; and he laid down as an empire­wide criterion that if no solution to a problem was provided by customary law, â€?the law of the City of Rome, the capital of the world, should be consulted by all communities’.⁷² As already observed, Julian was in the forefront of the jurists who made humanitas a canon of interpretation. Nothing could so effectively stimulate an awareness of membership of the same club as the law, which nearly everyone’s daily affairs obliged them to consult. Aelius Aristides knew exactly what he was saying when he wrote about nomoi koinoi and magistrates who dispensed justice to subjects as if they were their own people.⁷³

Hadrian’s successors built on his foundations, but without contributing much in the way of innovations⁷⁴ until the Severan period, when a stroke of the emperor Caracalla’s pen conferred citizenship on all free inhabitants of the empire.⁷⁵ But by this time the distinction between Romans and non-Romans was largely academic.