Civil Service in Ancient Times
| Published date | 01 January 1927 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1927.tb02282.x |
| Date | 01 January 1927 |
Civil
Service in Ancient Times
The
Story
of
its
Evolution
By
the
Hoii.
J.
€I.
HOFMEYR
[An
A
ddrzss delivered
to
the Pretoria Regional
Group
of
the Institute
oj
Public
A
dministralion]
HAVE given as my subject
“
The Evolution of the Civil Service in
I
Ancient Times.”
It
would be possible in dealing with that subject to
make one’s range exceedingly wide. There were civilizations with care-
fully ordered systems
of
administration not merely hundreds, but
thousands of years before even the city-states of Greece and Rome came
into being. For con-
siderable though our knowledge is to-day
of
the administrative systems
of
ancient Egypt and Babylonia, even
of
the Hittites, yet that knowledge,
based as
it
is almost entirely on archaological material, has many
disconcerting gaps. Moreover, and this is a more important consideration,
those states have contributed very little to the growth of our modem
political ideals. While we can no longer commence the study
of
the
development of civilization or of art and culture with Greece, as our not
very remote ancestors did, but must
go
back to Egypt and Mesopotamia
and Crete and Asia Minor to get a proper undestanding
of
that develop-
ment, we can still, without any very great loss, neglect those early
civilizations in the study
of
political institutions.
It
is to the city-states
of the Greeks and the Romans, and no further, that we
go
back for
these notions
of
personal freedom, political fair-play, and the expression
of
the popular will which the modem state at least tries to make effective.
It was there that those ideas were given birth. We are still in the line
of an unbroken tradition. And
so
what
I
am setting out to do is to
show how in the ancient city-state men found the means to carry on the
administration of their
own
affairs, and how as there was evolved out
of
that city-state a great world-empire, there was in due course forged an
instrument
of
administration which may appropriately be described
as
a
Civil Service.
I
think
it
will
surprise
us
to
learn how long
it
took to
forge that instrument, how well
on
the whole men got on without
it,
and
how for
a
considerable period interests of great magnitude and extent
were directed with only
a
very rudimentary system of administration.
Perhaps it may prove to be
a
sobering thought to
us
administrative
officers of to-day.
With that civilization
I
do not intend to deal.
76
Civil
Service
in Ancient Times
Let me be more specific.
I
shall attempt first to show you how in
those early communities of the Greeks and Romans, where the ideas of
liberty and self-government first took shape, the work of administrating
the affairs of the state was carried on, and
I
shall speak more especially
of Athens as typical of that class
of
community. Then
I
shall
go
on to
describe how, when the city-state of Rome gradually grew until
it
became
a
great empire,
it
by a slow process of evolution soIved the problem
of
providing
for
the efficient administration of the vast interests which were
entrusted to it. And then perhaps
I
may be able to suggest to you how
this efficient system of administration, this truly Imperial Civil Service,
became too strong for the state which created it, and how it was by its
stifling local initiative and killing political freedom, the bureaucracy
made a big contribution towards the destruction of the Roman Empire,
And possibly that may suggest to us that an efficient Civil Service, though
a
good servant, may be a very bad master. May
I
say just one word
by way of introduction
?
This
is
a
subject in regard to which the available
information has increased tremendously in comparatively modem times.
I
go
out of my way to emphasize that because most people to-day think
that classical studies, unlike scientific studies, are stationary, that the
classic makes no advance in knowledge, that he buries himself in age-old
times, and chews over and over again the food which those who have gone
before have only too completely digested. The truth
is,
of course, that
there are branches of classical study which are as scientific and which
admit of as rapid extension in our knowledge as any science. My subject
of to-night partakes
of
that character, that
is
so
because the ancient
writers were not interested in the details of administration and therefore
the age-old times have little to tell
us
on that topic. The classical
historians were interested in the vices
of
the Roman Court, the villainies
of the Emperor, and the sufferings of the aristocracy, but of the much
more important question of how the affairs of the peoplewere administered
they have little to say. And
I
suppose, if the truth be told, we are still
the same to-day. Most people find many more absorbing subjects than
that of our
own
Civil Service. They are interested in
it
only when they
feel that the cost
of
maintaining
it
has become
too
great
a
strain on the
tax-payer. But to return,
it
is because of the reticence of our ancient
authorities on this subject that we have had to attempt to extend our
knowledge of ancient systems of administration by exploring other
sources of information. We have found such sources more especially
in the study of the inscriptions of all kinds which have been unearthed
in all parts of the ancient world, and are still being unearthed year after
year, forming a steadily increasing body of knowledge and infomation.
Of these inscriptions the most valuable for our present purpose have been
those engraved on tombstones, where it was customary to give
a
full
record of the deceased’s career.
It
may be that the student of two
77
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