of danger--the North and East. To the north the fierce and warlike
barbarians of Germany had been checked indeed by Julius, but also
exasperated. Tribes more or less akin to them extended southwards
across the Danube and even to the Austrian Tyrol, where they were
little more than a week’s march from the gates of Rome. A strong
frontier policy was needed here. In the East there were the Parthians,
the only possible rival power to Rome. The Romans at Carrhæ noticed
that while the chiefs wore their hair parted and curled and their faces
painted in the Persian fashion, the warriors had the unkempt locks of
barbarian Thrace. It is likely enough that these Parthian bowmen had
come in round the shores of the Black Sea from Thrace or South Russia.
They had all the characteristics of northern nomads, but their kings
had a good deal of Hellenic culture. They could boast of a choice
collection of Roman eagles captured not only from Crassus at Carrhæ,
but from two armies sent against them by Antony. Thousands of Roman
prisoners were still working as slaves on the banks of the Euphrates.
The task of punishing them had been definitely laid upon Augustus as a
legacy from Julius, who had been slain at the moment when he was about
to undertake it himself. Moreover, the Romans felt the loss of those
standards very acutely, and not the least motive for their acquiescence
in monarchy had been the hope that a monarch would retrieve their
honour in this quarter. The earlier poems of Horace constantly express
hopes of vengeance.
The manner in which Augustus satisfied these ardent aspirations of
national pride is characteristic of him. Instead of the armies and
bloody battles which historians demand of their favourites, Augustus
achieved his object by luck and strategy. When he was organising the
affairs of the East in 29 B.C., after the conquest of Egypt, he had
left the Parthian question unsolved. For this, Mommsen takes him to
task, but there is little doubt that it would have been folly to
undertake a great and perilous war at that moment while the affairs
of Rome were still in disorder. Moreover the attitude of the army
compelled him to return home. Instead of fighting, he was content to
set up rival powers on the Parthian frontier. The Parthians hated their
king Phraates and there was a deposed rival in the field, Tiridates,
to whom Augustus now gave shelter in the province of Syria, hoping,
as indeed happened, that his presence in the neighbourhood would keep
Phraates civil. At the same time Augustus set up a buffer kingdom of
Lesser Armenia on the Parthian border and in the south strengthened and
reinstated Herod the Great. Four or five legions were left to guard
Syria.
In 23 B.C. it chanced that Tiridates had managed to kidnap the child
of Phraates and was keeping him in custody in the Roman province. It
is significant of the changed relations between Parthia and Rome that,
instead of marching into Syria to recover the child, Phraates sent an
embassy to Rome, whither also Tiridates came in person. Of course the
senate made the restoration of the child conditional upon the return
of the standards and prisoners. Phraates consented, but there was some
delay in carrying out the contract and this may have been secretly
arranged to enable Augustus to conduct the affair in a more striking
fashion. Augustus marched out with an army and at his mere approach
the standards and captives were given up with due formalities. It was
really a Roman triumph, almost as great as if it had been attained by
bloodshed, for all the world could see the humiliation of Parthia.
Augustus, that astute tactician, took care that the event should not
be allowed to lose its impressiveness for the mere lack of bloodshed.
The return of the standards was treated as a Roman triumph. They were
placed with every solemnity in the temple of Mars the Avenger. Coins
were struck representing the suppliant Parthian on his knees and the
same scene is depicted in relief on the centre of Cæsar’s breastplate
on the famous statue. The poets broke out into dutiful pæans.
nunc petit Armenius pacem, nunc porrigit arcum
Parthus eques timida captaque signa manu
cries Ovid. Vergil, after his manner, speaks of the Euphrates
flowing more quietly in future. The odes of Horace and the elegies
of Propertius contain similar loyal allusions. Ferrero, who regards
Augustus as a feeble trickster just as he regards Julius as a shabby
adventurer, has nothing but contempt for this episode. But seeing that
the Parthians were now utterly weakened by their internal feuds and
quite submissive to Rome it would have been folly to embark upon their
conquest. That they gave much trouble in the future is true enough, but
that might fairly be left for the future to deal with. Extermination
might have quieted them for ever, but Augustus had really no excuse for
making war upon them.
[Illustration: Surrender of the Standards]
On the same visit to the East a still more elaborate system of buffer
states forming a double semicircle round Parthia was organised. Armenia
yielded to Rome and received at the hands of Tiberius a new king who
had been educated at Rome. Augustus himself explains that although he
might have made Armenia into a Roman province he preferred to follow
the example of “our ancestors” and give the crown to a native king.
Augustus never pretended to be a world-conqueror. Similarly Media
Atropatene received a new king of Roman education, so did Commagene and
Emesa. These formed the outer ring of buffer states.
The central state behind them was Galatia, an arid highland district
inhabited by the descendants of those Gauls who had burst into the
Greek world under Brennus. Though they had acquired some tincture of
Greek civilisation and had a capital of some importance at Ancyra,
they still spoke the Gaulish language and were still a warlike race.
For these reasons, on the death of their king, Augustus preferred to
turn their country into a province. To the north was the very friendly
kingdom of Polemo in Pontus, and to the south other friendly princedoms
as well as the Roman provinces of Cilicia, Syria, and Cyprus.
For all this elaborate bulwark, the Parthian question was not really
settled. They continued to exercise an undue influence in Armenia, and
in A.D. 1 there was another solemn mission to the East and a conference
between Phraates the Parthian king and Gaius the grandson of Augustus.
Once more the Parthian professed submission, and once more the court
poets struck their obsequious lyres. When Phraates died, his uncle
Orodes who succeeded ruled with such cruelty that he was assassinated.
Thereupon the Parthians sent to Rome for a king and Augustus gave them
a nephew of the murdered tyrant, a youth also of Roman education. We
note this proceeding as common in the foreign policy of Augustus. He
must have had something like a school for young barbarian princes at
Rome, but whether the lessons that they learnt in Roman society were
altogether salutary is doubtful.
Behind this wall the great provinces of Asia, Syria, and Bithynia were
wrapped in profound security. Here Greek culture continued to flourish
with periodical incursions of oriental religion and philosophy. In
every considerable town the Jews formed a great and growing section of
the population but even they were half Greek in their ways of life.
The country was rich and lazy and utterly unwarlike. Civilisation had
risen to a high pitch and it was probably this part of the world which
sent to Rome those artists who contributed to the revival of sculpture.
Pretty little epigrams in Greek elegiacs seem to have been their
principal literary accomplishment. These provinces have very little
history--happily for them--at this period. We know them best from the
Acts of the Apostles, where we get a glimpse of their superstitions,
their eagerness to embrace new religions. We see the fanaticism of
Ephesus with its magnificent temple of Diana and stately worship, a
religion of oriental character overlaid with Greek culture, and only
rivalled in its attractions by the Roman amphitheatre. For these people
as for the rest of the world Augustus had his policy. Since worship was
their instructive need and Euhemerism had accustomed them to worship
men, he set up an elaborate cult of himself, or rather, by a subtle
distinction without a difference, a cult of “the genius of Augustus.”
Temples were built to “Rome and Augustus” and an elaborate hierarchy
of “High Priests,” “Asiarchs,” and “Bithyniarchs,” which became the
highest social distinctions in the society of the day. This was his
method of securing the allegiance of nations devoted to religion and
flattery. Here in the near future was to be the field of that momentous
conflict between this State religion and Christianity, with other
oriental faiths, such as Mithraism, also claiming their proselytes.
As for old Greece, the Romans never denied their spiritual debt to her,
and accordingly they regarded Greece with something of the veneration
which a man feels for his university. Augustus himself had been
educated at Apollonia, he sent his heirs to various Greek cities for
their education. It would have seemed sacrilege to educated Romans to
put a legate in charge of Athens. Hence we find Greece enjoying quite
an exceptional position in the empire, indeed without exception the
freest and most favoured part of it. Towns such as Athens, Lacedæmon,
Thespiæ, Tanagra, Platæa, Delphi, and Olympia were free and almost
sovereign. Athens continued to coin her silver drachms with the old
design of Pallas and the owl, elected her own archons and generals,
held assemblies and even had a sort of empire extending over all
Attica, part of Bocotia and five islands of the Cyclades. One Julius
Nicanor, her “new Themistocles,” purchased the island of Salamis and
presented it to his city in the civilised manner of empire-building.
Sparta, too, though now shrunken to the size of a village, bore rule
over Northern Laconia, while in the south there was a free confederacy
to keep her in order. Beside these cities of ancient renown stood
the new and splendid creation of Augustus--Nicopolis, the city of
victory founded on the promontory of Actium in commemoration of the
great victory of 31. Nicopolis had its great athletic festival like
Olympia and ruled over a considerable territory. In addition to these
free cities there were some Roman colonies. Corinth rose again from
her ashes as an important commercial city founded by Julius Cæsar.
Patras, on the Corinthian Gulf, a new foundation of Augustus, became
one of the most important cities of Greece, as it is to-day. The rest
of Southern Greece, consisting mainly of obscure villages, formed the
new senatorial province of Achaia and was governed by a proconsul at
Corinth. It was a poor unmilitary province. The northern part formed
the senatorial province of Macedonia. Thessalonica and Apollonia were
the principal centres of government and civilisation in this region.
In Greece, as elsewhere, Augustus made it his aim to focus a national
unity upon religion. The old Achæan league was revived as a religious
gathering with Argos for its centre, and the Delphic Amphictyony,
the oldest surviving institution in Europe, became the basis of a
Panhellenic confederacy which met annually for religious purposes under
Roman patronage, a sort of Eisteddfod combining religion with culture.
It sacrificed to Cæsar, and here, too, we find a president called
“Helladarch.” But although Greece had liberty and peace, something
was amiss with her. Her shrunken population continued to decline. In
Strabo’s Geography, Thebes is a mere village.
Crossing the water we find that the newly conquered kingdom of Egypt
was the key to the whole position of Augustus. It was the wealth of
Egypt which had reconciled Rome to monarchy and it was by means of
that wealth that he continued to hold the allegiance of his subjects.
Like Greece it had an ancient civilisation which impressed the Romans
as something beyond their comprehension. Alexandria, in particular, as
the gateway to the wealth of Egypt, and as the greatest existing centre
of Greek culture, not to mention its huge population and commercial
advantages, seemed to the Romans a really dangerous rival. The fear
of that rivalry had been felt very acutely at Rome when news came of
the ambitious schemes of Cleopatra and the subservience of Antony.
Augustus was really heading something like a national crusade when he
declared war upon them. The same fears now actuated him in settling the
treatment of Egypt as a province. Though he writes “I added Egypt to
the Roman empire,” he treated it rather as an imperial domain under a
prefect or viceroy closely attached to his interests. Its first prefect
was Cornelius Gallus, a knight from the Gallic colony of Fréjus, a poet
himself and a friend of Vergil. Cornelius Gallus was in fact the hero
of the famous eclogue: _neget quis carmina Gallo?_ It was specially
ordained that no senator might visit Egypt without the express
permission of Cæsar. The native Egyptians were already overridden
by a Greek aristocracy dating from Alexander’s conquest. They had
no rights, and no nationality was designed for them as it had been
elsewhere. Augustus accepted the elaborate bureaucratic system which
he had found in existence when he came. The Greek aristocracy lived
almost exclusively in Alexandria, possessing a municipal constitution,
magistracy, and priesthood of their own. The _ecclesia_ was stopped
but otherwise there was no attempt to Romanise Egypt. The old Egyptian
worship of Isis and Osiris had conquered all its conquerors and
continued to make inroads even into Rome itself where Augustus was
forced to accept it as irresistible. All that had happened in Egypt
was that Augustus had taken the place of the Ptolemies in the official
religion. It was the motive of fear which led to the appointment of a
mere knight as viceroy, though he had three legions under his command.
The officials under him were knights or freedmen. The taxes remained
very heavy, as was necessary, but now the Egyptians were placed in a
better position to pay them. Even before the civil war was quite ended
in 29 B.C. Augustus had employed his soldiers to clear the canals and
raise the level of the dams which ensure the Egyptian harvests. This
process continued, and Egypt never had such prosperity again until
Lord Cromer came to resume the work of Augustus. The harvest depended
simply on the height to which the Nile rose. The ancient Nilometer at
Elephantine records that the Nile rose to an unprecedented height in
the latter days of Augustus. Formerly a level of eight ells had meant
famine, now it ensured a tolerable harvest. Another inscription found
at Coptos gives us the names of the Roman soldiers who built reservoirs
of water along the great roads. Then the trade with India along the Red
Sea first began to grow great. Whereas in the time of Cleopatra hardly
twenty ships sailed to India in a year, there was already in Strabo’s
day (about A.D. 18) a great fleet of Indiamen. Taxes on exports and
imports returned a huge revenue to the imperial purse.
The prefect who represented his master on the throne of the Ptolemies
was in a difficult position. To Rome he was a mere servant, to the
Egyptians something like a god. Against these flattering influences
Gallus the poet had not strength to resist. He allowed statues to be
erected to him and even had his own achievements engraved upon the
pyramids. A traitorous friend reported these indiscretions at Rome.
Augustus was content to recall him and forbid him to live in the
provinces or to enter his presence. But the officious senate voted
his condemnation to banishment, and confiscated all his property to
Augustus, whereby Gallus was driven to suicide. Then Augustus was
sorry and complained that it was hard not to be able to scold one’s
friends like a private man. This was the first case of that disease
known as _delatio_ (informing) which was afterwards to become such a
pest under the Empire. It is satisfactory to learn that the informer
was very rudely treated in Roman society. From Egypt, as a base,
expeditions were made in the time of Augustus to Arabia and the
Soudan. Arabia Felix was to the Romans a kind of Eldorado of boundless
wealth, as Horace writes to a friend who was joining the campaign.
The Arabs brought their incense into the Syrian markets and already
traded with India from Aden, but the national wealth of the country
was exaggerated and its difficulties unknown. This expedition of 25
B.C., which was on a very large scale and included contingents from
Judæa, was one of the few deliberate wars of conquest ever planned
by Augustus. He learnt a lesson by its failure in the burning and
trackless deserts. The other campaign against the black Æthiopians of
the Soudan under their warlike but one-eyed queen Candace was more
successful. Petronius the legate penetrated as far as the Second
Cataract and sent a thousand prisoners to Rome, but Augustus seems to
have been content to make the First Cataract his southern frontier.
The neighbouring client kingdom of Judæa is of importance not only
because the days of Augustus saw the birth of that Child in Bethlehem
who was destined to conquer Rome and through Rome the world, but
because its throne was occupied by the ablest and most remarkable man,
next to Augustus, in the whole Empire. Herod the Great, an Edomite Arab
by birth, had succeeded to the throne of the Maccabees in 37 B.C. He
was not only a daring warrior but a singularly skilful diplomat who was
always able to cover up his crimes by adroit flattery and a fascinating
manner. He was very successful in trimming between the rivals
throughout the civil wars and even shared the favours of Cleopatra
with his Roman masters. In these ways he increased his domains by
the addition of Gadara, Samaria, and the Philistine coast towns. In
compliment to Augustus he refounded Samaria with great splendour as the
Greek city of Sebaste and built Greek theatres, Roman amphitheatres,
and baths in Jerusalem itself. He even instituted quinquennial games
there, wherein naked athletes performed to the infinite disgust of the
Jews. He took his sons to Rome for their education and there he met
and fascinated both Augustus and Agrippa. He even persuaded Agrippa
to visit Jerusalem for the opening of his magnificent new temple in
15 B.C. Agrippa came and sacrificed a whole hecatomb to Jehovah to
the apparent delight of the people. Later on Herod made a grand tour
of Asia Minor, scattering lavish gifts everywhere and receiving
complimentary inscriptions in return. He succeeded in obtaining
valuable privileges for his fellow-Jews scattered abroad in those
regions. Henceforth they were not forced to render military service and
had special permission to keep the Sabbath.
In 9 and 8 B.C., however, he got into trouble with Augustus for
conducting a military expedition against the Arabs without permission.
This was the greatest offence that a client king could commit, and
Augustus declared that henceforth he would treat Herod not as a friend,
but as a subject. But in the next year a humble embassy was sent to
Rome with the historian Nicolaus as its spokesman. Herod received the
gracious permission to deal with his rebellious sons as he thought
fit, and accordingly strangled two of them. Herod’s family history is
a deplorable record of crimes and intrigues. He seems to have had ten
wives, and on his death in 4 B.C., he left three wills among which
Augustus had to decide. Seeing that Judæa was so rich and powerful
as to be a possible source of danger, he decided to split it up into
three. Then began a whole series of troubles, in the course of which
the Jews of Jerusalem actually attacked a Roman legion. In revenge the
legate of Syria, Quintilius Varus, crucified 2000 of the inhabitants.
In the final award Judæa fell to Archelaus, Galilee to Herod Antipas.
Ten years later, however, the infamous Archelaus was deposed at the
petition of his subjects, and Judæa was made subject to the province
of Syria with a procurator of its own. Herod Antipas continued to rule
his petty kingdom until about A.D. 34, when it also was united to the
province. He is the Herod whom Christ denounced as “that fox,” and he
is the Herod of Christ’s Judgment, when he happened to be at Jerusalem
on a visit to Pontius Pilatus, the Roman procurator. Pilate was a Roman
knight, but Felix, one of his successors, was only a freedman. The seat
of the Roman government was not at Jerusalem, but at Cæsarea, so that
the _prætorium_ in which the trial of Jesus took place must have been
the temporary head-quarters of Pilate in the palace built by Herod the
Great.
[Illustration]
The procurator only commanded auxiliary troops, and nearly all the
“Roman soldiers” mentioned in the Gospels must have been of Jewish
birth. As soon as it was a province, but not before, Judæa had to pay
tribute to Cæsar. Hence the existence of a “chief of the publicans”
like Zacchæus. As usual, the Romans preserved what they could of
native institutions, and the Sanhedrin continued to act as a national
council, so far as could be permitted. Thus it might try Jesus, but
it could not pronounce the death sentence. On the other hand, another
procurator, Festus, committed Paul to the Sanhedrin for judgment.
The fact is that the Jewish law was so peculiarly national that a
bewildered and well-intentioned Roman knight like Pilate might often
say “take ye Him and judge Him according to your law.” The Roman
government was so tolerant of the religion of its subjects that even
a Roman citizen who ventured to enter the Holy of Holies was punished
with death. The Jewish religion was expressly under Roman protection.
Agrippa, as we have seen, had sacrificed to Jehovah, but later on we
find Augustus commending his grandson Gaius for not having worshipped
Jehovah. As a matter of fact, with the spread of the newer forms of
Hellenic philosophy the religious feeling of the world, which had
long ago given up its faith in the Olympian mythology, was turning
more and more towards monotheism and a mystical system of ethics. The
higher Pharisaism, which Paul had learnt at the feet of Gamaliel, was
decidedly influenced by Stoicism. Hence the Jewish religion even before
its Christian development was extremely fascinating to the Roman mind,
and it had to be forbidden in the capital. Even at Jerusalem the Jews
were expected to sacrifice, not _to_ but _for_ “Cæsar and the Roman
People” every day. Augustus paid for this ritual out of his own pocket.
In deference to the feeling of the Jews, the coins struck for Judæa
bore no portrait of Cæsar, and even the standards, because they bore
portraits, were ordered not to be carried into the Holy City. It is
true that the silver denarius of Syria circulated in Judæa to some
extent, and it is of such a coin that Christ was speaking when He
asked: “Whose image and superscription is this?”
The province of Africa with Numidia was handed over to the senate as
peaceful in 27 B.C., and it was one of the only two Roman provinces
which Augustus never visited. Nominally it stretched from the boundary
of the kingdom of Mauretania at the river Ampsaga on the west to the
borders of the Cyrenaica on the east. But actually it consisted of the
islands of fertility on the Tunisian coast. Carthage had been colonised
by Julius Cæsar and was now refounded by Augustus. There was no inland
frontier. In the desert behind the mountains there still flourished
the wild Gætulian nomads who occasionally descended upon the peaceful
province and provided a Roman triumph. This was the reason why a legion
was still kept in Africa. The neighbouring kingdom of Mauretania was
assigned to an interesting young royal couple. The husband was Juba, a
descendant of Masinissa, who had been educated as a Roman, had served
in the Roman army and was so complete a Greek scholar that he wrote
among many other works a history of the Drama. The wife was a daughter
of Cleopatra by Antony, who had ridden in Cæsar’s triumph at Rome. Both
Mauretania and its eastern neighbour Numidia, which had been added to
the Roman province, now settled down to wealth and happiness under
the Roman rule. The splendid ruins which still survive indicate a
prosperity which has not as yet been completely recovered.