Xanten with summer quarters at the new Colonia which became Cologne.
Four legions of the Upper Army were stationed at the former, and four
of the Lower Army at the latter. In due course, we cannot say when,
these became the centres of two separate provinces. On the Danube there
were three legions in Pannonia, the great new Austrian province.
Along this frontier there was now a double line of Cæsarian provinces.
Rhætia and Noricum were conquered in 15 B.C. Then there were tedious
and unprofitable campaigns in the southern Swiss valleys as the result
of which a row of little Alpine prefectures was established. There
is still a fine monument to Augustus on the heights above Monaco
enumerating forty-six Alpine tribes made subject to Rome. It was
erected by the gratitude of the Italian farmers, for the Alpine tribes
had always scourged the plains. Roads were constructed here and there
over the Alps. The principal pass to Germany lay by way of Turin and
the St. Bernard with Augusta (Aosta) to guard it. In Pannonia the old
route from Aquilegia over the Julian Alps was restored and a new _Via
Claudia_ constructed up the valley of the Adige from Tridentum (Trent)
to Augusta (Augsburg). To round off the Danube frontier Mœsia or Mysia
was conquered quite at the beginning of the period and added as an
Imperial province, probably in A.D. 6, under a prefect. It stretched
along the south bank of the Danube, down to the Black Sea, and embraced
part of the Balkan high lands. Thus with strong legions posted in
permanent encampments all along the Rhine and Danube, Rome had now a
satisfactory northern frontier which only required guarding to keep
Rome and Italy in security.
Spain had never been entirely subjugated though it had been in the
possession of the Republic for nearly two centuries. Parts of it indeed
were almost as Roman as Rome. Gades and Corduba, for example, were
centres of learning and literature, soon to produce citizens of renown
in Lucan, Seneca, Martial, Quintilian, and an emperor in Trajan--a most
distinguished galaxy. But a great part of Spain was still in the hands
of wild and chivalrous barbarians. Particularly in the north-west the
Cantabrians and Asturians were a menace to the peaceful province. For
eight years and more the Romans continued to fight them with brief
intervals termed “victories.” Augustus himself came over in 26 B.C. and
directed operations comfortably from Tarraco. The leader of the rebels
was a hero-chief called Corocotta who so exasperated the Romans that
Augustus offered £10,000 for his capture. This sum the brigand earned
by walking into the Roman camp to surrender, and Augustus, charmed at
the idea, gave him his liberty as well as the reward. He married a
Roman wife and died a Roman citizen as Gaius Julius Caracuttus. Cæsar
himself fell seriously ill in the course of the long campaign. Both
sides increased in ferocity. The Romans crucified their prisoners and
the Spaniards mocked them from the cross. Finally Augustus had to send
for Agrippa to finish the business, which he did in 19 B.C. Now Spain
was really conquered for ever and even the northern highlanders laid
down their arms and accepted civilisation. Bætica, the southern part of
the peninsula, was given to the senate to govern, and the northern half
divided into the two imperial provinces, Tarraconensis and Lusitania,
the latter corresponding roughly to modern Portugal. In Spain also
altars were erected to Rome and Augustus. Roads radiated out from
Tarraco. Many towns were founded, such as Cæsar Augusta (Saragossa),
Augusta Emerita (Merida), Pax Julia (Beja), Legiones (Leon), Asturica
Augusta (Astorga). The Celtic religion and probably the very language
quickly became extinct. Even in the time of Augustus there were fifty
communities with full Roman citizenship. New mines were discovered
and vigorously worked, new industries, especially in metal, carefully
fostered.
* * * * *
This brief and imperfect sketch of the Roman Empire, as it took shape
under the all-seeing eye of Augustus, should indicate, more than all
the triumphs she won in battle, more, even, than the story of the
Punic Wars, the real “Grandeur that was Rome.” The true greatness
of the Roman lies in his indomitable energy and his practical good
sense, not to be obscured by the surface of rhetorical culture which
had come to overlay it in these latter generations. Now that Rome had
at last secured for herself a reasonably secure and sensible form of
government, she was able to exercise her natural capacity for affairs
and to play the part which destiny had assigned to her of propagating
civilisation throughout Europe. If the historians would allow us, we
should gladly turn away from the wars and proscriptions to study the
quiet useful work which she was performing now and henceforth in every
corner of her empire. The motive was, no doubt, self-interest, but it
was that broad and far-seeing selfishness which in the realm of public
affairs is the nearest approach to altruism. The Republic that sucked
the blood of her provinces is detestable to all right-thinking men.
The autocracy that cleared out the canals in Egypt, planted flax and
encouraged pottery in Gaul, irrigated Africa and taught agriculture to
the Moorish nomads, set the wild Iberians to mining and weaving, built
aqueducts and roads everywhere, established a postal system and policed
land and sea so effectively that a man might fare from York to Palmyra,
or from Trier to Morocco “with his bosom full of gold,” may be tyranny
governing in its own interests, but it is an institution for which the
world has every reason to be grateful.
V
AUGUSTAN ROME
Pater argentarius, ego Corinthiarius.
_Anonymous satire on Augustus quoted by_ SUETONIUS
Throughout his great task of repairing a world which had fallen to
pieces, Augustus was by no means ignorant of the fact that it is the
“spirit that maketh alive.” Indeed it was his constant endeavour to
alter facts without changing their names. He was well aware that Sulla
had failed miserably when he tossed the Romans a constitution and left
nothing but an oath to support it. To adjust frontiers and organise new
provinces with the help of his trusty and invincible little legionaries
was probably the pleasantest and the easiest part of Cæsar’s task. To
reform the ancient imperial city with her centuries of proud and brutal
tradition was equally essential, but it was desperate work. For the
Empire of Augustus was born into the world suffering from degeneration
of the heart. The nobility, upon which everything that was great and
glorious in Roman history depended, was morally corrupt, intellectually
inert, spiritually void, and even physically decrepit and sterile. The
civil wars and proscriptions had systematically pruned away all that
was virile and spirited in its ranks. The trimmers and nonentities had
survived. The women, long since deprived of the iron control which had
kept them in order under the old system of the Roman family, dominated
society with an influence that was generally evil. The Roman boudoir
with its throng of slaves and parasites was not only profligate, but
it had already begun to produce the type of murderous intriguers which
we meet more prominently in the Messalinas and Faustinas of imperial
history. But as there were virtuous exceptions like Octavia and
Agrippina among the women, so there were among the men a few nobles
of probity and honour who had somehow, probably by hiding themselves
away on their country estates, survived all the conflicts of the past
generation. But these, who read Roman history in the same light as
Livy, were lovers of the old regime, suspicious and bitterly jealous of
the new. We have seen that one of the first official acts of Augustus
was to restore the patriciate. But it is easier to make peers than
patricians, and we may be sure that there was little love between the
old aristocracy and the new. Augustus himself, though the “son of the
god Julius” and descended through his mother from Venus and Anchises,
was on the father’s side only just respectable. By nature and instinct,
however, he was an aristocrat. All his life long he strove to win
over the aristocracy to the support of his regime. But he failed, and
failed disastrously. Whence throughout the history of the Empire we
have in existence more or less prominently a conservative opposition
of old nobles, genuine or spurious, sometimes plotting manfully and
dying nobly, but more often sneering and writing in secret against the
emperors.
But most of the old aristocracy lacked the spirit to oppose Augustus.
The few plots which came to light were contemptible affairs. Some of
the nobles came down to the senate and devoted their intellects to the
choice of a new _cognomen_ for the new Cæsar, or vied with one another
in proposing fresh titles of honour for him. But they soon discovered
that flattery was not very lucrative in the face of their chilly and
statuesque master. Politics at Rome had lost their savour when there
was no chance of blood to follow. The noble senators had to be coerced
into attending at the curia; they devoted their gifts to drawing-room
battles, they collected _objets de luxe_, they wrote bad verses and
sometimes bad histories, and they practised all the vices. They had no
religion and very little philosophy. Above all the old Roman family
upon which the piers of Roman society had rested was now in ruins. To
be the husband of one wife from marriage to death was, so far as the
records go, a rare exception. This was no innovation of the Empire. For
a century or more men had changed their wives every few years for the
sake of a fortune or a political alliance.
Augustus set before himself, as one of the most important phases of
his task of regeneration, the moral purification of this society. He
had provided the provinces with a new religion which involved a new
social organisation. But the cloak of republicanism in which he had
chosen to drape his autocracy forbade him to make himself a god in
Rome. On the contrary he steadily forbade extravagant flattery. He was
not even to be called “dominus.” It is true that the mayors of the
new boroughs into which he divided Rome were allowed to set up altars
to the Lares and Genius of Augustus.[47] Outside the city throughout
Italy there were temples to Augustus and priests in his service. As
usual it was a mere quibble when he declined divine honours in Rome.
Vergil had plainly called him a god at the very moment when he was
dyeing his hands in Roman blood. Julius Cæsar had been formally deified
and Augustus regularly styled himself “divi filius.” The title of
“augustus” itself carried the notion of transcendent power. Thus the
emperor stood on the threshold of heaven, at any rate for the poorer
classes, even in Rome itself. But for the aristocracy something else
was needed: it is of little profit to claim divinity in a society of
atheists. For Roman society, as typified by Ovid, the gods were little
more than a literary convention, and it would do a respectable man
little credit to be enrolled in their company.
For the reformation of Roman society Augustus had recourse to three
methods--legislation, culture, and example. The legislation consisted
of a whole series of laws solemnly passed through senate and comitia
in the years 18 and 17 B.C. To give them additional sanctity they
were called Julian laws. There was one enacting heavier penalties
for adultery, another permitting marriage between citizens and
freedwomen, designed to meet the circumstance that men outnumbered
women in the ranks of the aristocracy. There were also sumptuary laws
to curb extravagance. There were laws imposing penalties on celibacy
and discouraging the fortune-hunters who lay in wait for the rich
bachelor’s legacies. Fiscal privileges were granted to the fathers
of families, and Augustus himself went down to the house and read
the senate an old speech of Metellus on the increase of population.
Unfortunately the emperor himself had not set a good example in the
matter of parentage. He had had three wives but only one child, a
daughter. Still he exhibited himself in the theatre in the capacity
of a father by collecting the children of Germanicus about his knees.
Of course legislation proved quite helpless in the matter, besides
arousing a good deal of ill-feeling which was chiefly displayed in the
ranks of the knights.
Augustus was in a very difficult position when it came to setting an
example. The principal evils which his social code was designed to
remedy were the prevalence of adultery, the frequency of divorce,
voluntary celibacy and formal marriages contracted without intention
of producing offspring, and finally, as a consequence of celibacy,
the prevalence of a regular profession of fortune-hunting. There was
scarcely one of these necessary reforms to which Cæsar himself came
with clean hands. He had begun his matrimonial career by repudiating
his young betrothed; he had then married an immature virgin, and
divorced her for political reasons before the marriage was consummated;
in the third place he had married Scribonia, who had already had two
husbands, and whose son was already a man at the time of her marriage
to Augustus. She was many years older than he, and the marriage was
intended to secure a reconciliation with Sextus Pompeius. This third
matrimonial venture was terminated in a manner which shocked even
Roman society. On the very day when Scribonia became a mother by him,
Augustus put her away charging her with immorality, though he kept
her infant Julia as his own and only child. He had been fascinated,
it seems, by the fair face and brilliant abilities of Livia Drusilla.
Livia was of the highest ancestry in Rome, a descendant of Appius
Claudius, and attached by adoption to another very noble family, the
Livii. Also she had married another scion of the illustrious Claudian
house, the proudest in Rome, and at the age of fifteen had become the
mother of Tiberius. Her father had chosen the losing side at Philippi,
and committed suicide after the battle. Her husband, Claudius Nero,
had taken arms against Augustus--or Octavian, as he then was--in the
Perusine War, and his life was forfeited. His beautiful wife sued the
conqueror for mercy, and mercy was granted upon conditions. Nero was
compelled not only to divorce his wife, but to act the part of a father
and give her away in marriage to Augustus. She was then not only the
mother of Tiberius, but just about to become the mother of Drusus, who
was born in the house of Augustus three months after the marriage.
This, then, was the model family on the Palatine which was to set an
example to the Roman aristocracy--a daughter whose mother had been
divorced on the day of her birth, a mother who had been sold by her
husband, and two stepsons whose father had been divorced. The sequel
scarcely improved matters. Julia grew up and was married first to the
boy Marcellus, then to Agrippa, by whom she had a large family, and
when Agrippa died, Tiberius was forced to put away his wife, Agrippa’s
daughter Vipsania, whom he really loved, and marry the widow Julia,
whose immorality he knew and detested. At last the profligacy of
Julia grew so open and notorious that Augustus was informed of it and
compelled to banish her in company with her mother Scribonia, who had
survived to see her shame. Later on a second Julia, the daughter of the
first, suffered a precisely similar fate.
As for Livia the empress, if we choose to call her by that title,
there is no doubt that she was a singularly beautiful and clever
woman, who managed to retain the affections of Augustus for over forty
years--in itself a remarkable feat in Roman society. History records
in her favour many acts of royal mercy and charity. She seconded her
husband’s efforts at reform, and established a powerful ascendancy
over him and over Tiberius. There is no whisper against her chastity
when once she entered the household of Augustus. But on the other
hand there are very serious charges of crime made by contemporaries
and recorded by Tacitus, charges which are supported by the strongest
circumstantial evidence. The suspicion is that she was fighting all
her life long without remorse or scruple for the succession of her son
Tiberius. Augustus did not intend to be succeeded by a Claudius. This
he showed again and again in the most public manner. His aim, as soon
as he knew that he was destined to leave no male offspring of his own
body, was to leave the succession in the sacred Julian line, the family
descended from Venus, the house of the star. But that could only be
secured through the female line. His first choice was the brilliant
young Marcellus, son of his sister Octavia. Marcellus, who had been
the first husband of Julia, died of a mysterious complaint just as he
came of age. Then Augustus married Julia to Agrippa, and two of her
sons, Gaius and Lucius, were next chosen for the succession. They grew
up and came of age. Just as they were beginning public life, Tiberius
having been banished to make way for them, they too died in the same
year, Lucius on board ship as he was sailing to Marseilles, Gaius as
the sequel to an assassin’s blow given him in Armenia. In the first
case we have no details. In the second, Gaius was recovering from his
wound, but he turned aside to an obscure town on the southern coast
of Asia Minor, refused the warship which had been sent to convey
him home, and begged to be allowed to live there in obscurity. The
circumstance is full of suspicion and mystery. Moreover, before his
rivals were dead Tiberius had word, from a well-informed prophet, of
their approaching decease, and returned to Rome. He himself, living in
banishment, must be acquitted of active complicity in the crime. Julia
was banished to a lonely island. Her third son was also put out of
sight for no crime but sulkiness and grumbling against his stepmother.
Deprived of all his hopes, Augustus with very marked reluctance
adopted Tiberius, but in his old age he still cherished the idea of a
reconciliation with Julia’s third son, Agrippa Postumus, and actually
visited in secret the remote island where he was interned. But as soon
as Augustus was dead--and his death was carefully concealed as long as
possible--Agrippa Postumus was murdered, and this time we have direct
evidence that the crime was Livia’s. This sort of domestic intrigue,
marked by hideous murders, is one of the blackest features of imperial
history at Rome. It arose very largely from the illegitimate character
of the imperial throne, and the absence of any legalised system of
succession.
Nevertheless, out of these unpromising materials Augustus endeavoured
to organise a model Roman family of the old style. Livia and Julia were
set to work at spinning and weaving. Augustus would wear no cloaks
but of their making. Julia was solemnly counselled never to do or say
anything which she would be ashamed to write in her diary. Once when
she built a palace for herself Augustus had it demolished. The house
on the Palatine was of the simplest character, with a humble portico
of the local tufa from Alba and no decorated pavements. In food and
drink he was most abstemious, and indeed the prodigious industry of
his life left little time for banquets. A slice of bread made from
inferior flour, with a relish of pickled fish or dates or olives, often
served him for the day. He never drank more than a pint of wine. He
slept winter and summer in the same room, and spent most of the year in
the city, unless he was travelling. His favourite country seat was on
the island of Capri where he could be sure of freedom. His pleasures
were simple and almost childish. He liked a little mild gambling, he
was fond of playing knuckle-bones with little slave-boys. He attended
the circus as a matter of duty and was very strict in enforcing
decency of behaviour there. He set his face against changes of fashion
and insisted that Roman citizens should wear the old-fashioned toga
in public. All his instincts seem to have been for simplicity and
clemency. He never permitted a freedman to appear at his dinner-table,
but when a slave of his once pushed his master into the way of a
charging wild boar in order to shield himself Augustus dismissed the
matter with a joke. On the other hand, when the tutor and servants of
Gaius showed themselves tyrannical and overbearing to the provincials
after their young master’s death, Cæsar had them drowned like rats.
Towards personal abuse of himself he was singularly indifferent. It
remains difficult to visualise the character of Augustus. Originally he
was a typical Roman, as callous towards bloodshed and suffering as the
rest of them and quite unscrupulous in his progress towards power. But
when he had attained it he had the greatness of mind to perceive that
his work of repair could only be done by setting an example of virtuous
living and moderation. Self-control was perhaps his most powerful
quality.
Twice his self-command broke down. Once when he heard of the defeat of
Varus in Germany with the loss of his three legions, and again when
some one, probably Livia, revealed to him the scandal concerning Julia.
Apart from the blow to his honour as a man, it was the undoing of all
his measures for reform and the open publication of their futility.
“Her orgies,” men said, “had been conducted upon the very _rostra_
whence her father’s laws against adultery had been proclaimed.” Her
accomplices included the flower of the old aristocracy, a Scipio and
a Gracchus. Augustus hid himself from the sight of men, banished his
daughter to a remote island and officially informed the senate by
letter of her disgrace. He was heard to cry out that he envied the
father of Phœbe, one of Julia’s slaves who had hanged herself when the
scandal went abroad. He quoted a Greek verse:
“O that I had been unwedded and died without a child,”
and he spoke of his wicked daughter as the cancer of his life.
Legislation was obviously futile, and example had broken down. It
was only from within that Roman society could be reformed, only by
supplying a spiritual influence which could counteract the materialism
and immorality of the day. Augustus had tried in the provinces to
raise up a new religion of loyalty and patriotism centred round the
altar “to Rome and Augustus.” But that was obviously impossible in
Rome itself. The only inspiring motive--in addition to Stoicism which
could never be a popular creed--had been, for the last two or three
centuries, patriotism, the worship of the sacred city and her glorious
destinies. But even that had been shattered by the civil wars. Augustus
now set himself deliberately to the task of creating a new Rome and a
new Roman culture. He himself, like most of the nobles of his day, had
received a Greek education. It was what we should call a good classical
education in philosophy, literature, and rhetoric. Besides that he had
been initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries at Athens, and they were
probably the most powerful source of inspiration in the Mediterranean
world, for even eclectics like Cicero admitted that they carried with
them a hope of immortality. Augustus was himself deeply imbued with
Greek culture and like most Roman nobles had dabbled in literature.
Thus it is not surprising that the type of civilisation which he
fostered in the new Rome was quite as much Greek as Italian. The age
of Augustus was in fact the culmination of Græco-Roman culture alike
in arts and letters because the fusion between the two races was now
complete.