By the second century C.E. the Roman Empire, now encompassing the Mediterranean basin and beyond, was in its glory days. With conquest largely completed, the pax Romana (Roman peace) generally prevailed and commerce flourished, as did the arts and literature. The empire enjoyed a century (96–180 C.E.) of autocratic but generally benevolent rule. In 155 C.E. a well-known scholar and orator from the city of Smyrna on the west coast of Anatolia (present-day Turkey) arrived for a visit to the imperial capital of Rome. He was Aelius Aristides (ca. 117–181 C.E.), a widely traveled Greek-speaking member of a wealthy landowning family whose members had been granted Roman citizenship several decades earlier. While in Rome, Aristides delivered to the imperial court and in front of the emperor, Antonius, a formal speech of praise and gratitude, known as a panegyric, celebrating the virtues and achievements of the Roman Empire.

AELIUS ARISTIDES

The Roman Oration

155 C.E.

A certain prose writer said about Asia that one man “rules all as far as is the course of the sun,” untruly, since he excluded all Africa and Europe from the sun’s rising and setting. [This refers to the Persian Empire.] But now it has turned out to be true that the course of the sun and your possessions are equal. . . . [N]or do you rule within fixed boundaries, nor does another prescribe the limits of your power. . . .

About the [Mediterranean] sea the continents [Africa, Asia, and Europe] lie . . . ever supplying you with products from those regions. Here is brought from every land and sea all the crops of the seasons and the produce of each land, river and lake, as well as the arts of the Greeks and barbarians. . . . So many merchant ships arrive here . . . that the city is like a factory common to the whole earth. It is possible to see so many cargoes from India and even from [southern] Arabia. . . . Your farmlands are Egypt, Sicily, and all of [North] Africa which is cultivated. The arrival and departure of ships never stops. . . .

Although your empire is so large and so great, it is much greater in its good order than in its circumference. . . . [Nor] are satraps° fighting against one another, as if they had no king; nor do some cities side with these and others with those. . . . But like the enclosure of a courtyard, cleansed of every disturbance, a circle encompasses your empire. . . . All everywhere are equally subjects. . . .

You are the only ones ever to rule over free men. . . . [Y]ou govern throughout the whole inhabited world as if in a single city. . . . You appoint governors . . . for the protection and care of their subjects, not to be their masters. . . . And here there is a great and fair equality between weak and powerful, obscure and famous, poor and rich and noble. . . . To excel the barbarians in wealth and power, while surpassing the Greeks in knowledge and moderation, seems to me to be an important matter. . . .

You have divided into two parts all the men of your empire . . . and everywhere you have made citizens all those who are the more accomplished, noble, and powerful people, even if they retain their native affinities, while the remainder you have made subjects and the governed. And neither does the sea nor a great expanse of intervening land keep one from being a citizen, nor here are Asia and Europe distinguished. But all lies open to all men. . . . There has been established a common democracy of the world, under one man, the best ruler and director. . . .

You have divided people into Romans [citizens] and non-Romans [subjects]. . . . [M]any in each city are citizens of yours . . . and some of them have not even seen this city. . . . There is no need of garrisons . . . , but the most important and powerful people in each place guard their countries for you. . . . Yet no envy walks in your empire. . . . [T]here has arisen a single harmonious government which has embraced all men. [Y]ou have established a form of government such as no one else of mankind has done. . . . Your government is like a mixture of all the constitutions [democracy, aristocracy, monarchy] without the inferior side of each. . . . Therefore whenever one considers the power of the people and how easily they attain all their wishes and requests, he will believe that it is a democracy. . . . But when he considers the Senate deliberating and holding office, he will believe there is no more perfect aristocracy than this. But when he has considered the overseer and president of all these [the emperor], he sees in this man the possessor of the most perfect monarchy, free of the evils of the tyrant and greater than the dignity of the king. . . .

And the whole inhabited world, as it were attending a national festival, has laid aside . . . the carrying of weapons and has turned . . . to adornments and all kinds of pleasures. . . . Everything is full of gymnasiums, fountains, gateways, temples, handicrafts, and schools . . . and a boundless number of games. . . . Now it is possible for both Greek and barbarian . . . to travel easily wherever he wishes. . . . [I]t is enough for his safety that he is a Roman or rather one of those under you.