many thoughtful historians have formed, in the following
strong words: "In the character of Cæsar the great contrasts
of existence meet and balance each other. He was of the
mightiest creative power, and yet of the most penetrating
judgment; of the highest energy of will and the highest
capacity of execution; filled with republican ideals, and at
the same time born to be king. He was 'the entire perfect
man'; and he was this because he was the entire and perfect
Roman." This may be nearly true if we ignore the moral side of
Cæsar's character. He was of too large a nature to do evil
things unnecessarily, and so he shines even morally in
comparison with many of his kind; but he had no scruples.
{1004}
After the Murder of Cæsar.
The murderers of Cæsar were not accepted by the people as the
patriots and "liberators" which they claimed to be, and they
were soon in flight from the city. Marcus Antonius, who had
been Cæsar's associate in the consulship, now naturally and
skilfully assumed the direction of affairs, and aspired to
gather the reins of imperial power into his own hands. But
rivals were ready to dispute with him the great prize of
ambition. Among them, it is probable that Antony gave little
heed at first to the young man, Caius Octavius, or Octavianus,
who was Cæsar's nephew, adopted son and heir; for Octavius was
less than nineteen years old, he was absent in Apollonia, and
he was little known. But the young Cæsar, coming boldly though
quietly to Rome, began to push his hereditary claims with a
patient craftiness and dexterity that were marvellous in one
so young.
The Second Triumvirate.
The contestants soon resorted to arms. The result of their
first indecisive encounter was a compromise and the formation
of a triumvirate, like that of Cæsar, Pompeius and Crassus.
This second triumvirate was made up of Antonius, Octavius, and
Lepidus, lately master of the horse in Cæsar's army. Unlike
the earlier coalition, it was vengeful and bloody-minded. Its
first act was a proscription, in the terrible manner of Sulla,
which filled Rome and Italy with murders, and with terror and
mourning. Cicero, the patriot and great orator, was among the
victims cut down.
After this general slaughter of their enemies at home,
Antonius and Octavius proceeded against Brutus and Cassius,
two of the assassins of Cæsar, who had gathered a large force
in Greece. They defeated them at Philippi, and both
"liberators" perished by their own hands. The triumvirs now
divided the empire between them, Antonius ruling the East,
Octavius the West, and Lepidus taking Africa--that is, the
Carthaginian province, which included neither Egypt nor
Numidia. Unhappily for Antonius, the queen of Egypt was among
his vassals, and she ensnared him. He gave himself up to
voluptuous dalliance with Cleopatra at Alexandria, while the
cool intriguer, Octavius, at Rome, worked unceasingly to
solidify and increase his power. After six years had passed,
the young Cæsar was ready to put Lepidus out of his way, which
he did mercifully, by sending him into exile. After five years
more, he launched his legions and his war galleys against
Antonius, with the full sanction of the Roman senate and
people. The sea-fight at Actium (B. C. 31) gave Octavius the
whole empire, and both Antonius and Cleopatra committed
suicide after flying to Egypt. The kingdom of the Ptolemies
was now extinguished and became a Roman province in due form.
Octavius (Augustus) Supreme.
Octavius was now more securely absolute as the ruler of Rome
and its great empire than Sulla or Julius Cæsar had been, and
he maintained that sovereignty without challenge for
forty-five years, until his death. He received from the Senate
the honorary title of "Augustus," by which he is most commonly
known. For official titles, he took none but those which had
belonged to the institutions of the Republic, and were
familiarly known. He was Imperator, as his uncle had been. He
was Princeps, or head of the Senate; he was Censor; he was
Tribune; he was Supreme Pontiff. All the great offices of the
Republic he kept alive, and ingeniously constructed his
sovereignty by uniting their powers in himself.
Organization of the Empire.
The historical position of Augustus, as the real founder of
the Roman Empire, is unique in its grandeur; and yet History
has dealt contemptuously, for the most part, with his name.
His character has been looked upon, to use the language of De
Quincey, as "positively repulsive, in the very highest
degree." "A cool head," wrote Gibbon of him, "an unfeeling
heart, and a cowardly disposition, prompted him, at the age of
nineteen, to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never
afterwards laid aside." And again: "His virtues, and even his
vices, were artificial; and according to the various dictates
of his interest, he was at first the enemy, and at last the
father, of the Roman world." Yet, how can we deny surpassing
high qualities of some description to a man who set the
shattered Roman Republic, with all its democratic bases broken
up, on a new--an imperial--foundation, so gently that it
suffered no further shock, and so solidly that it endured, in
whole or in part, for a millennium and a half?
In the reign of Augustus the Empire was consolidated and
organized; it was not much extended. The frontiers were
carried to the Danube, throughout, and the subjugation of
Spain was made complete. Augustus generally discouraged wars
of conquest. His ambitious stepsons, Drusus and Tiberius,
persuaded him into several expeditions beyond the Rhine,
against the restless German nations, which perpetually menaced
the borders of Gaul; but these gained no permanent footing in
the Teutonic territory. They led, on the contrary, to a
fearful disaster (A. D. 9), near the close of the reign of
Augustus, when three legions, under Varus, were destroyed in
the Teutoburg Forest by a great combination of the tribes,
planned and conducted by a young chieftain named Hermann, or
Arminius, who is the national hero of Germany to this day.
The policy of Drusus in strongly fortifying the northern
frontier against the Germans left marks which are
conspicuously visible at the present day. From the fifty
fortresses which he is said to have built along the line
sprang many important modern cities,--Basel, Strasburg, Worms,
Mainz, Bingen, Coblenz, Bonn, Cologne, and Leyden, among the
number. From similar forts on the Danubian frontier rose
Vienna, Regensburg and Passau.
Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.
Augustus died A. D. 11, and was succeeded in his honors, his
offices, and his powers, by his step-son, Tiberius Claudius
Nero, whom he had adopted. Tiberius, during most of his reign,
was a vigorous ruler, but a detestable man, unless his
subjects belied him, which some historians suspect. Another
attempt at the conquest of Germany was made by his nephew
Germanicus, son of Drusus; but the jealousy of the emperor
checked it, and Germanicus died soon after, believing that he
had been poisoned. A son of Germanicus, Caius, better known by
his nick-name of Caligula, succeeded to the throne on the
death of Tiberius (A. D. 37), and was the first of many
emperors to be crazed and made beast-like, in lust, cruelty
and senselessness, by the awful, unbounded power which passed
into their hands.
{1005}
The Empire bore his madness for three years, and then he was
murdered by his own guards. The Senate had thoughts now of
restoring the commonwealth, and debated the question for a
day; but the soldiers of the prætorian guard took it out of
their hands, and decided it, by proclaiming Tiberius Claudius
(A. D. 41), a brother of Germanicus, and uncle of the emperor
just slain. Claudius was weak of body and mind, but not
vicious, and his reign was distinctly one of improvement and
advance in the Empire. He began the conquest of Britain, which
the Romans had neglected since Cæsar's time, and he opened the
Senate to the provincials of Gaul. He had two wives of
infamous character, and the later one of these, Agrippina,
brought him a son, not his own, whom he adopted, and who
succeeded him (A.D. 54). This was Nero, of foul memory, who
was madman and monster in as sinister a combination as history
can show. During the reign of Nero, the spread of
Christianity, which had been silently making its way from
Judæa into all parts of the Empire, began to attract the
attention of men in public place, and the first persecution of
its disciples took place (A. D. 64). A great fire occurred in
Rome, which the hated emperor was believed to have caused; but
he found it convenient to accuse the Christians of the deed,
and large numbers of them were put to death in horrible ways.
Vespasian and his Sons.
Nero was tolerated for fourteen years, until the soldiers in
the provinces rose against him, and he committed suicide (A.
D. 68) to escape a worse death. Then followed a year of civil
war between rival emperors--Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and
Vespasian--proclaimed by different bodies of soldiers in
various parts of the Empire. The struggle ended in favor of
Vespasian, a rude, strong soldier, who purged the government,
disciplined the army, and brought society back toward simpler
and more decent ways. The great revolt of the Jews (A. D.
66-70) had broken out before he received the purple, and he
was commanding in Judæa when Nero fell. The siege, capture and
destruction of Jerusalem was accomplished by his son Titus. A
more formidable revolt in the West (A. D. 69) was begun the
Batavians, a German tribe which occupied part of the
Netherland territory, near the mouth of the Rhine. They were
joined by neighboring Gauls and by disaffected Roman
legionaries, and they received help from their German kindred
on the northern side of the Rhine. The revolt, led by a
chieftain named Civilis, who had served in the Roman army, was
overcome with extreme difficulty.
Vespasian was more than worthily succeeded (A. D. 79) by his
elder son, Titus, whose subjects so admired his many virtues
that he was called "the delight of the human race." His short
reign, however, was one of calamities: fire at Rome, a great
pestilence, and the frightful eruption of Vesuvius which
destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii. After Titus came his
younger brother Domitian (A. D. 81), who proved to be another
creature of the monstrous species that appeared so often in
the series of Roman emperors. The conquest of southern Britain
(modern England) was completed in his reign by an able
soldier, Agricola, who fought the Caledonians of the North,
but was recalled before subduing them. Domitian was murdered
by his own servants (A. D. 96), after a reign of fifteen
years.
Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian.
Rome and the Empire were happy at last in the choice that was
made of a sovereign to succeed the hateful son of Vespasian.
Not the soldiery, but the Senate, made the choice, and it fell
on one of their number, Cocceius Nerva, who was already an
aged man. He wore the purple but sixteen months, and his
single great distinction in Roman history is, that he
introduced to the imperial succession a line of the noblest
men who ever sat in the seat of the Cæsars. The first of these
was the soldier Trajan, whom Nerva adopted and associated with
himself in authority. When Nerva died (A. D. 97), his son by
adoption ascended the throne with no opposition. The new
Emperor was simple and plain in his habits and manners of
life; he was honest and open in all his dealings with men; he
was void of suspicion, and of malice and jealousy no less. He
gave careful attention to the business of state and was wise
in his administration of affairs, improving roads, encouraging
trade, helping agriculture, and developing the resources of the
Empire in very prudent and practical ways. But he was a
soldier, fond of war, and he unwisely reopened the career of
conquest which had been almost closed for the Empire since
Pompeius came back from the East. A threatening kingdom having
risen among the Dacians, in the country north of the lower
Danube--the Transylvania and Roumania of the present day--he
attacked and crushed it, in a series of vigorous campaigns (A.
D. 101-106), and annexed the whole territory to the dominion
of Rome. He then garrisoned and colonized the country, and
Romanized it so completely that it keeps the Roman name, and
its language to this day is of the Latin stock, though Goths,
Huns, Bulgarians and Slavs have swept it in successive
invasions, and held it among their conquests for centuries at
a time. In the East, he ravaged the territory of the Parthian
king, entered his capital and added Mesopotamia, Armenia, and
Arabia Petræa to the list of Roman provinces. But he died (A.
D. 117) little satisfied with the results of his eastern
campaigns.
His successor abandoned them, and none have doubted that he
did well; because the Empire was weakened by the new frontier
in Asia which Trajan gave it to defend. His Dacian conquests
were kept, but all beyond the Euphrates in the East were given
up. The successor who did this was Hadrian, a kinsman, whom
the Emperor adopted in his last hours. Until near the close of
his life, Hadrian ranked among the best of the emperors. Rome
saw little of him, and resented his incessant travels through
every part of his great realm. His manifest preference for
Athens, where he lingered longest, and which flourished anew
under his patronage, was still more displeasing to the ancient
capital. For the Emperor was a man of cultivation, fond of
literature, philosophy and art, though busy with the cares of
State. In his later years he was afflicted with a disease
which poisoned his nature by its torments, filled his mind
with dark suspicions, and made him fitfully tyrannical and
cruel. The event most notable in his generally peaceful and
prosperous reign was the renewed and final revolt of the Jews,
under Barchochebas, which resulted in their total expulsion
from Jerusalem, and its conversion into a heathen city, with a
Roman name.
{1006}
The Antonines.
Hadrian had adopted before his death (A. D. 138) a man of
blameless character, Titus Aurelius Antoninus, who received
from his subjects, when he became Emperor, the appellation
"Pius," to signify the dutiful reverence and kindliness of his
disposition. He justified the name of Antoninus Pius, by which
he is historically known, and his reign, though disturbed by
some troubles on the distant borders of the Empire, was happy
for his subjects in nearly all respects. "No great deeds are
told of him, save this, perhaps the greatest, that he secured
the love and happiness of those he ruled" (Capes).
Like so many of the emperors, Antoninus had no son of his own;
but even before he came to the throne, and at the request of
Hadrian, he had adopted a young lad who won the heart of the
late Emperor while still a child. The family name of this son
by adoption was Verus, and he was of Spanish descent; the name
which he took, in his new relationship, was Marcus Aurelius
Antoninus. It is unquestionably the most illustrious name in
the whole imperial line, from Augustus to the last
Constantine, and made so, not so much by deeds as by
character. He gave the world the solitary example of a
philosopher upon the throne. There have been a few--a very
few--surpassingly good men in kingly places; but there has
never been another whose soul was lifted to so serene a height
above the sovereignty of his station. Unlimited power tempted
no form of selfishness in him; he saw nothing in his imperial
exaltation but the duties which it imposed. His mind was
meditative, and inclined him to the studious life; but he
compelled himself to be a man of vigor and activity in
affairs. He disliked war; but he spent years of his life in
camp on the frontiers; because it fell to his lot to encounter
the first great onset of the barbarian nations of the north,
which never ceased from that time to beat against the barriers
of the Empire until they had broken them down. His struggle
was on the line of the Danube, with the tribes of the
Marcomanni, the Quadi, the Vandals, and others of less
formidable power. He held them back, but the resources of the
Empire were overstrained and weakened lastingly by the effort.
For the first time, too, there were colonies of barbarians
brought into the Empire, from beyond its lines, to be settled
for the supply of soldiers to the armies of Rome: It was a
dangerous sign of Roman decay and a fatal policy to begin. The
decline of the great world-power was, in truth, already well
advanced, and the century of good emperors which ended when
Marcus Aurelius died (A. D. 180), only retarded, and did not
arrest, the progress of mortal maladies in the state.
From Commodus to Caracalla.
The best of emperors was followed on the throne by a son,
Commodus, who went mad, like Nero and Caligula, with the
drunkenness of power, and who was killed (A. D. 192) by his
own servants, after a reign of twelve years. The soldiers of
the prætorian guard now took upon themselves the making of
emperors, and placed two upon the throne--first, Pertinax, an
aged senator, whom they murdered the next year, and then
Didius Julianus, likewise a senator, to whom, as the highest
bidder, they sold the purple. Again, as after Nero's death,
the armies on the frontiers put forward, each, a rival
claimant, and there was war between the competitors. The
victor who became sovereign was Septimius Severus (A. D.
194-211), who had been in command on the Danube. He was an
able soldier, and waged war with success against the Parthians
in the East, and with the Caledonians in Britain, which latter
he could not subdue. Of his two sons, the elder, nicknamed
Caracalla (A. D. 211-217), killed his brother with his own
hands, and tortured the Roman world with his brutalities for
six years, when he fell under the stroke of an assassin. The
reign of this foul beast brought one striking change to the
Empire. An imperial edict wiped away the last distinction
between Romans and Provincials, giving citizenship to every
free inhabitant of the Empire. "Rome from this date became
constitutionally an empire, and ceased to be merely a
municipality. The city had become the world, or, viewed from
the other side, the world had become 'the City'" (Merivale).
Anarchy and Decay.
The period of sixty-seven years from the murder of Caracalla
to the accession of Diocletian--when a great constitutional
change occurred--demands little space in a sketch like this.
The weakening of the Empire by causes inherent in its social
and political structure,--the chief among which were the
deadly influence of its system of slavery and the paralyzing
effects of its autocracy,--went on at an increasing rate,
while disorder grew nearly to the pitch of anarchy, complete.
There were twenty-two emperors in the term, which scarcely
exceeded that of two generations of men. Nineteen of these
were taken from the throne by violent deaths, through mutiny
or murder, while one fell in battle, and another was held
captive in Persia till he died. Only five among these
twenty-two ephemeral lords of the world,--namely Alexander
Severus, Decius (who was a vigorous soldier and ruler, but who
persecuted the Christians with exceptional cruelty), Claudius,
Aurelian, and Probus,--can be credited with any personal
weight or worth in the history of the time; and they held
power too briefly to make any notable mark.
The distractions of the time were made worse by a great number
of local "tyrants," as they were called--military adventurers
who rose in different parts of the Empire and established
themselves for a time in authority over some district, large
or small. In the reign of Gallienus (A. D. 260-268) there were
nineteen of these petty "imperators," and they were spoken of
as the "thirty tyrants." The more important of the "provincial
empires" thus created were those of Postumus, in Gaul, and of
Odenatus of Palmyra. The latter, under Zenobia; queen and
successor of Odenatus, became a really imposing monarchy,
until it was overthrown by Aurelian, A. D. 273.
{1007}
The Teutonic Nations.
The Germanic nations beyond the Rhine and the Danube had, by
this time, improved their organization, and many of the tribes
formerly separated and independent were now gathered into
powerful confederations. The most formidable of these leagues
in the West was that which acquired the common name of the
Franks, or Freemen, and which was made up of the peoples
occupying territory along the course of the Lower Rhine.
Another of nearly equal power, dominating the German side of
the Upper Rhine and the headwaters of the Danube, is believed
to have absorbed the tribes which had been known in the
previous century as Boii, Marcomanni, Quadi, and others. The
general name it received was that of the Alemanni. The
Alemanni were in intimate association with the Suevi, and
little is known of the distinction that existed between the
two. They had now begun to make incursions across the Rhine,
but were driven back in 238. Farther to the East, on the Lower
Danube, a still more dangerous horde was now threatening the
flanks of the Empire in its European domain. These were Goths,
a people akin, without doubt, to the Swedes, Norsemen and
Danes; but whence and when they made their way to the
neighborhood of the Black Sea is a question in dispute. It was
in the reign of Caracalla that the Romans became first aware
of their presence in the country since known as the Ukraine. A
few years later, when Alexander Severus was on the throne, they
began to make incursions into Dacia. During the reign of
Philip the Arabian (A. D. 244-249) they passed through Dacia,
crossed the Danube, and invaded Mœsia (modern Bulgaria). In
their next invasion (A. D. 251) they passed the Balkans,
defeated the Romans in two terrible battles, the last of which
cost the reigning Emperor, Decius, his life, and destroyed the
city of Philippopolis, with 100,000 of its people. But when, a
few years later, they attempted to take possession of even
Thrace and Macedonia, they were crushingly defeated by the
Emperor Claudius, whose successor Aurelian made peace by
surrendering to them the whole province of Dacia (A. D. 270),
where they settled, giving the Empire no disturbance for
nearly a hundred years. Before this occurred, the Goths,
having acquired the little kingdom of Bosporus (the modern
Crimea) had begun to launch a piratical navy, which plundered
the coast cities of Asia Minor and Greece, including Athens
itself.
On the Asiatic side of the Empire a new power, a revived and
regenerated Persian monarchy, had risen out of the ruins of
the Parthian kingdom, which it overthrew, and had begun
without delay to contest the rule of Rome in the East.
Diocletian.
Briefly described, this was the state and situation of the
Roman Empire when Diocletian, an able Illyrian soldier, came
to the throne (A. D. 284). His accession marks a new epoch.
"From this time," says Dean Merivale, "the old names of the
Republic, the consuls, the tribunes, and the Senate itself,
cease, even if still existing, to have any political
significance." "The empire of Rome is henceforth an Oriental
sovereignty." But the changes which Diocletian made in the
organization and administration of the Empire, if they did
weigh it down with a yet more crushing autocracy and
contribute to its exhaustion in the end, did also, for the
time, stop the wasting of its last energies, and gather them
in hand for potent use. It can hardly be doubted that he
lengthened the term of its career.
Finding that one man in the exercise of supreme sovereignty,
as absolute as he wished to make it, could not give sufficient
care to every part of the vast realm, he first associated one
Maximian with himself, on equal terms, as Emperor, or
Augustus, and six years later (A. D. 292) he selected two
others from among his generals and invested them with a
subordinate sovereignty, giving them the title of "Cæsars."
The arrangement appears to have worked satisfactorily while
Diocletian remained at the head of his imperial college. But
in 305 he wearied of the splendid burden that he bore, and
abdicated the throne, unwillingly followed by his associate,
Maximian. The two Cæsars, Constantius and Galerius, were then
advanced to the imperial rank, and two new Cæsars were named.
Jealousies, quarrels, and civil war were soon rending the
Empire again. The details are unimportant.
Constantine and Christianity.