The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

line for its southern frontier. The

oasis of Cyrene, with its fields of asafoetida, was a middle station

between the two. But still the history of Northern Africa and the history

of Egypt remain distinct. The Roman empire, though held together for a

time by strong and skilful hands, was divided by customs and modes of

thought arising out of language into the Greek and Latin worlds. In the

countries which had been civilised by the Romans Latin had been

introduced. In the countries which before the Roman conquest had been

conquered by Alexander, the Greek language maintained its ground.

Greece, Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and Cyrene belonged to

the Greek world; Italy Gaul, Spain, and Africa belonged to the Latin

world. Greek was never spoken in Roman Carthage except by a few

merchants and learned men. Latin was never spoken in Alexandria

except in the law courts and at Government House. Whenever there was

a partition of the empire Egypt was assigned to one emperor, Carthage to

the other. In the Church history of Africa the same phenomenon may be

observed. The Church of Africa was the daughter of the Church of

Rome, and was chiefly occupied with questions of discipline and law.

The Church of Egypt was essentially a Greek church; it was occupied

entirely with definitions of the undefinable and solutions of problems in

theology.

 

In one respect, however, the histories of Egypt and Africa are the same.

They were both of them cornfields, and both of them were ruined by the

Romans. In the early days of the empire there was a noble reform in

provincial affairs resembling that which Clive accomplished in British

India when he visited that country for the last time. There was then an

end to that tyrant of prey who under the republic had contrived in a few

years to extort an enormous fortune from his proconsulate, and who was

often accompanied by a wife more rapacious than himself; who returned

to Rome with herds of slaves and cargoes of bullion and of works of art.

Governors were appointed with fixed salaries; the Roman law was

everywhere introduced; vast sums of money were expended on the public

works.

 

Unhappily this did not last. Rome was devoured by a population of mean

whites, the result of foreign slavery, which invariably degrades labour.

This vast rabble was maintained by the state; rations of bread and oil

were served out to it every day. When the evil time came and the

exchequer was exhausted, the governors of Africa and Egypt were

required to send the usual quantity of grain all the same, and to obtain

their percentage as best they could. They were transformed into satraps

or pashas. The great landowners were accused of conspiracy, and their

estates escheated to the crown. The agriculturists were reduced to

serfdom. There might be a scarcity of food in Africa, but there must be

none in Rome. Every year were to be seen the huge ships lying in the

harbours of Alexandria and Carthage, and the mountains of corn piled

high upon the quays. When the seat of empire was transferred to the

Bosphorus the evil became greater still. Each province was forced to do

double work. There was now a populace in Constantinople which was

fed entirely by Egypt, and Africa supported the populace of Rome. While

the Egyptian fellah and the Moorish peasant were labouring in the fields,

the sturdy beggars of Byzantium and Rome were amusing themselves at

the circus or basking on marble in the sun.

 

But Africa was not only a plantation of corn and oil for their imperial

majesties the Italian lazzaroni. It also contained the preserves of Rome.

The lion was a royal beast; it was licensed to feed upon the flock of the

shepherds, and upon the shepherd himself if it preferred him. The

unfortunate Moor could not defend his life without a violation of the

game laws, which were quite as ferocious as the lion. It will easily be

imagined that the Roman rule was not agreeable to the native population.

They had fallen beneath a power compared with which that of the

Carthaginians was feeble and kind; which possessed the strength of

civilisation without its mercy. But when that power began to decline they

lifted up their heads and joined the foreign invaders as soon as they

appeared, as their fathers had joined the Romans in the ancient days.

 

These invaders were the Vandals, a tribe of Germans from the North who

had conquered Spain and who, now pouring over the Gibraltar Straits,

took Carthage and ruled there a hundred years. The Romans struggled

hard to regain their cornfileds, and the old duel of Rome and Carthage

was resumed. This time it was Carthage that was triumphant. It repelled

the Romans when they invaded Africa. It became a naval power, scoured

the Mediterranean, reconquered Sicily and Sardinia, plundered the

shores of Italy, and encamped beneath the mouldering walls of Rome.

The gates of the city were opened, and the bishop of Rome, attended by

his clergy, came forth in solemn procession to offer the submission of

Rome, and to pray for mercy to the churches and their captives.

Doubtless in that army of Germans and Moors by whom they were

received there were men of Phoenician descent who had read in history of

a similar scene. Rome was more fortunate than ancient Carthage: the city

was sacked, but it was not destroyed. Not long afterwards it was taken by

the Goths. Kings dressed in furs sat opposite each other on the thrones of

Carthage and of Rome.

 

The Emperor of the East sent the celebrated Belisarius against the

Carthaginian Vandals, who had become corrupted by luxury and whom

he speedily subdued. Thus Africa was restored to Rome, but it was a

Greek speaking Rome, and the citizens of Carthage still felt themselves to

be under foreign rule. Besides, the war had reduced the country to a

wilderness. One might travel for days without meeting a human being in

those fair coast lands which had once been filled with olive groves, and

vineyards, and fields of waving corn. The savage Berber tribes pressed

more and more fiercely on the cultivated territory which still remained. It

is probable that if the Arabs had not come the Moors would have driven

the Byzantines out of the land, or at least have forced them to remain as

prisoners behind their walls.

 

With the invasion of the Arabs the proper history of Africa begins. It is

now that we are able for the first time to leave the coasts of the

Mediterranean and the banks of the Nile, and to penetrate into that vast

and mysterious world of which the ancient geographers had but a faint

and incorrect idea.

 

It is evident enough from the facts which have been adduced in the

foregoing sketch that Egypt and Carthage contributed much to human

progress—Egypt by instructing Greece, Carthage by drawing forth Rome

to the conquest of the world.

 

But these countries did little for Africa itself. The ambition of Egypt was

with good reason turned towards Asia, that of Carthage towards Europe.

The influence of Carthage on the regions of the Niger was similar to that

of Egypt on the negro regions of the Nile. In each case it became the

fashion for the native chiefs to wear Egyptian linen or the Tyrian purple,

and to decorate their wives with beads which are often discovered by the

negroes of the present day in ancient and forgotten graves. Elephants

were hunted and gold pits were dug in Central Africa, that these luxuries

might be procured; but the chief article of export was the slave, and this

commodity was obtained by means of war. The negroes have often been

accused of rejecting the civilisation of the Egyptians and Carthaginians,

but they were never brought into contact with those people. The

intercourse between them was conducted by the intermediate Berber

tribes.

 

Those Berber tribes who inhabited the regions adjoining Egypt and

Cyrene appear to have been in some degree improved. But they were a

roving people, and civilisation can never ripen under tents. Something,

however, was accomplished among those who were settled in cities or the

regions of the coast. That the Berber race possesses a remarkable

capacity for culture has been amply proved. It is probable that Terence

was a Moor. It is certain that Juba, whose works have been unfortunately

lost, was of unmixed Berber blood. Reading and writing were common

among them, and they used a character of their own. When the Romans

took Carthage they gave the public library and archives to the Berber

chiefs. At one time it seemed as if Barbary was destined to become a

civilised province after the pattern of Spain and Gaul. Numidian princes

adopted the culture of the Greeks, and Juba was placed on his ancestral

throne that he might tame his wild subjects into Roman citizens. But this

movement soon perished, and the Moorish chiefs fell back into their

bandit life.

 

The African Church has obtained imperishable fame. In the days of

suffering it brought forth martyrs whose fiery ardour and serene

endurance have never been surpassed. In the days of victory it brought

forth minds by whose imperial writings thousands of cultivated men have

been enslaved. But this church was for the most part confined to the

walled cities on the coast, to the farming villages in which the Punic

speech was still preserved, and to a few Moorish tribes who lived under

Roman rule. In the days of St. Augustine Christianity was in its zenith,

and St. Augustine complains that there were hundreds of Berber chiefs

who had never heard the name of Christ. Even in Roman Africa the

triumph of Christianity was not complete. In Carthage itself Astarte and

Moloch were still adored, and a bare-footed monk could not show himself

in the streets without being pelted by the populace. At a later date the

Moorish tribes became an heretical and hostile sect; the religious

persecutions of the Arian Vandals were succeeded by the persecutions of

the Byzantine Greeks. Christianity was divided and almost dead when

the Arabs appeared, and the Church which had withstood ten imperial

persecutions succumbed to the tax which the conquerors imposed on “the

people of the book.”

 

The failure of Christianity in Africa was owing to the imperfection of the

Roman conquest. Their occupation was of a purely military kind, and it

did not embrace an extensive area. The Romans were entirely distinct

from the natives in manners and ideas. It was natural that the Berbers

should reject the religion of a people whose language they did not

understand, whose tyranny they detested, and whose power most of them

defied. But the Arabs were accustomed to deserts; they did not settle,

like the Romans and the Carthaginians, on the coast; they covered the

whole land; they penetrated into the recesses of the Atlas; they pursued

their enemies into the depths of the Sahara. But they also mingled

persuasion with force. They believed that the Berbers were Arabs like

themselves, and invited them as kinsmen to accept the mission of the

prophet. They married the daughters of the land; they gathered round

their standards the warriors whom they had defeated, and led them to the

glorious conquest of Spain. The two peoples became one; the language

and religion of the Arabs were accepted by the Moors.

 

With this event the biography of ancient Africa is closed, and the history

of Asiatic Africa begins. But I have in this work a twofold story to

unfold. I have to describe the Dark Continent: to show in what way it is

connected with universal history; what it has received and what it has

contributed to the development of man. And I have also to sketch in

broad outline