of the Claudian Cæsars who succeeded Augustus, but his wife Messalina,
thirty-four years his junior, was a creature of shameless lust and
remorseless cruelty. Valerius Asiaticus, a Gaul by birth but now the
richest noble of his day, was in possession of the far-famed gardens of
Lucullus. Messalina coveted the park and accused him to her husband,
with the inevitable result. Asiaticus died like a gentleman. He took
his usual exercise, he bathed and dined quite cheerfully, and then he
opened his veins, “but not until he had inspected his funeral pyre
and ordered its removal to another place, for fear that the smoke
should injure the thick foliage of the trees.” So died this lover
of gardens. Messalina’s sins grew more open, until at last she went
through a public pantomime of marriage with one of her paramours,
Silius, a consul-elect. The ceremony was performed before a number
of witnesses duly invited. Claudius was at that time guided by the
counsels of three Greek secretaries, and one of them determined to
reveal the shameful truth to the emperor. Tacitus tells the story of
her ruin in graphic language. She was celebrating the vintage feast in
the gardens she had wickedly gained for herself. The presses were being
trodden, the vats were overflowing, women girt with skins were dancing,
as Bacchanals dance in their worship or their frenzy. Messalina with
flowing hair shook the thyrsus, and Silius, at her side, crowned with
ivy and wearing the buskin, moved his head in time with some lascivious
chorus. One of the guests had climbed a tree in sport and reported
a “hurricane from Ostia.” It was truer than he knew, for just then
messengers began to arrive with news that Claudius was on his way from
Ostia, coming with vengeance. The revels ceased, the revellers fled in
all directions, and Messalina, left deserted, mounted a garden cart to
proceed along the road to meet her husband. Her appeal failed, though
Claudius would undoubtedly have relented but for the interference of
the freedman Narcissus. After dinner, warmed with the wine, he bade
some one go and tell “that poor creature” to come before him on the
morrow to plead her cause. But Narcissus had already sent soldiers to
her, and she was driven to suicide. “Claudius was still at the banquet
when they told him that Messalina was dead, without mentioning whether
it was by her own or another’s hand. Nor did he ask the question, but
called for his cup and finished the repast as usual.”
Nero, too, in the pages of Suetonius appears so incredible in his
wickedness that the exaggeration is obvious. Of his splendid new
palace the Golden House we read: “The portico was so high that it
could contain a colossal statue of himself a hundred and twenty feet
in height; and the space it included was so vast that it had a triple
colonnade, a mile in length, and a lake like a sea, surrounded with
buildings that looked like a city. It had a park with cornfields,
vineyards, pastures, and woods containing a vast number of animals of
all kinds, wild and tame. Parts of it were entirely overlaid with gold,
and incrusted with jewels and pearl. The supper-rooms were vaulted
and the compartments of the ceilings, which were inlaid with ivory,
were made to revolve and scatter flowers. They also contained pipes to
shed scents upon the guests. The chief banqueting-room was circular
and revolved perpetually day and night, according to the motion of the
celestial bodies. The baths were supplied with water from the sea and
the Albula.” At the dedication of this magnificent building, all that
he said in praise of it was: “Now at last I have begun to live like a
gentleman.” They charged Nero with the murder of all his relatives, and
there is a grim sort of humour in the story of his frequent attempts
upon his mother’s life. His grievance against her was that she was
too strict. First, he deprived her of her bodyguard, and suborned
people to harass her with lawsuits which drove her out of the city.
In her retirement he set others to follow her about by land and sea
with abuse and scurrilous language. Three times he attempted her life
by poison, but finding she had previously rendered herself immune by
the use of antidotes, he next designed machinery to make the floor
above her bed-chamber collapse while she was asleep. When this failed
he constructed a special coffin-ship, which could be made to fall in
pieces, and then sent her a loving invitation to visit him at Baiæ,
the Brighton of the Romans. The ships of her escort were likewise
instructed to ram her by accident on the way home. He attended her to
the vessel in a very cheerful spirit and kissed her bosom at parting
with her. After which he sat up late at night waiting with great
anxiety for the joyful news of her decease. But news arrived that the
accident had miscarried, the dowager empress was swimming to shore.
When her freedman came joyfully to narrate her escape, Nero pretended
that the man had come to assassinate him and ordered her to be put to
death. Suetonius adds “on good authority” that he went to view her
corpse and criticised her blemishes to his followers, and then called
for drink. After this he was haunted by her ghost.
The famous story of his death is told with a little restraint, and
the latter part of it is not incredible. When the first bad news came
of the revolt of Vindex with the legions of Gaul, Nero summoned his
privy council and held a hasty consultation with them about the crisis,
but spent the rest of the day in showing them a hydraulic organ and
discoursing upon the intricacies of the invention. Then he composed a
skit upon the rebels, and prepared a pathetic speech which was to make
the mutineers return to his allegiance in tears. He sat down to compose
the songs of triumph which should be sung upon that occasion. In
preparing his expedition his first thought was to provide carriages for
the band: he equipped all his concubines as Amazons with battle-axes
and bucklers. But when he heard of the revolt of the Spanish army under
Galba also, he fell into a temper and tore the dispatch to pieces. He
broke his precious cups and put up a dose of Locusta’s poison in a
golden box. He ordered the prætorian guard to rally round him, but they
only quoted Vergil to him:
“Is death indeed so hard a lot?”
At midnight he awoke and found that the guards had deserted his
bedside. Even his bedding and his golden box of poison had been stolen.
So he stumbled out into the night as if he would throw himself into the
Tiber. But a few faithful slaves came to him and a freedman offered
him his country villa for a refuge, and Nero rode thither in a shabby
disguise. An earthquake shook the ground and a flash of lightning
darted in his face; he heard the soldiers in the prætorian camp
shouting for Galba. Skulking among bushes and briers, he crawled on all
fours to a wretched outhouse of his freedman’s villa. There he ordered
them to dig a grave and line it with scraps of marble. The water and
wood for his obsequies were prepared, while he uttered the famous words
“_qualis artifex pereo!_” either meaning “What an artist the world is
losing!” or (more probably) “What an artistic death!” A dispatch came
to announce that he had been declared a public enemy by the senate, and
was to be punished according to the ancient custom of the Romans. He
asked what sort of death that meant, and was informed that the criminal
was generally stripped naked and scourged to death with his head in a
pillory. Then he took up daggers and tried the points, but still he
dared not die. He begged one of his attendants to give him the example.
At last he heard the horsemen coming, quoted a line of the _Iliad_ very
appropriately, and drove, with the help of his secretary, a dagger into
his throat.
Now, even of this, three-quarters is pure rhetoric. For example, it was
impossible that Nero should have heard the soldiers in the Esquiline
Camp from the road which he took to his servant’s villa. The details
are the invention of malice, or the attempt of a literary artist to
improve his story. Even Suetonius admits that the populace continued
to deck Nero’s tomb with spring and summer flowers, that they dressed
up his image and placed it on the rostra as if he were still alive,
and that a pretender, who arose in his name twenty years later, was
received with acclamation among the Parthians.
Having made this concession to the literary tradition which can be
shown to be very largely fiction, we may now endeavour to gather up
the fragments of history and briefly trace the progress of the Empire
during its first century. First, as to its geographical growth;
although Augustus had bequeathed in his testament the advice not to
enlarge the frontiers of the Empire, and Tiberius had observed the
precept, yet conquest still remained an object of ambition in the
heart of every emperor who sought military renown or fresh sources
of revenue. Britain, the declined legacy of Julius, was obviously
beckoning the Romans. Diplomatic relations with the many kings of
that island had always been frequent, and it was found that Britain
was an inconvenient neighbour for a rapidly Romanising Gaul. There
was a continual coming and going across the water, for there were
kindred peoples on each side. Especially, it was the last refuge
of the anti-Roman force of Druidism, a religion which was already
declining and was suppressed by Claudius in Gaul. That this was so
is shown by the forward movement of the Romans in the direction of
Anglesey. The details of the conquest of Britain are, in spite of
voluminous discussions, by no means certain. Aulus Plautius Silvanus
with four legions, and with the future emperor Vespasian as one of his
brigadiers, defeated Cymbeline and ten other kings of South Britain,
crossed the Thames and conquered Colchester (Camulodunum), which
became a Roman _colonia_ and the centre of government. This was in
A.D. 43, and Claudius himself spent a fortnight in our island in order
to receive the honours of victory. The conquest was not too easily
achieved, for there were five great battles in which the emperor,
though absent, received the titles of victory. Plautius himself seems
to have reached the line of the Trent and Severn. Ostorius Scapula, his
successor, was mainly occupied in subduing the Silures of the Welsh
mountains, and in the conquest of the elusive prince Caradoc. The mercy
shown to that defeated hero proves that the Romans had advanced in
humanity since the days of Jugurtha. The two succeeding legates made
no fresh advance, but Suetonius Paulinus in A.D. 59-61 established
Chester as his western camp. While he was engaged in the conquest of
Anglesey, leaving only the ninth legion to hold the conquered province,
there broke out the great rebellion under the heroic Boudicca. There
never has been a quarrel in this island which has not had money as its
root. It was not so much the oppressive nature of the tribute as the
vexatious methods of the Roman financiers, who still as in republican
days swarmed in the wake of eagles, that stirred the Iceni and their
queen into revolt. Camulodunum, Verulamium, and Londinium were taken
and sacked and there was an immense slaughter of Roman civilians and
Romanised Britons. But vengeance followed: no barbarians could stand
against the strategy and discipline of the legions.
Succeeding governors were mainly content to pacify and civilise the
island.
One of the extraordinarily pungent chapters of Tacitus shows us the
Roman method of empire-building in Britain. “The following winter,”
he says of A.D. 79, “was spent in useful statecraft. To make a people
which was scattered and barbarous, and therefore prone to warfare, grow
accustomed to peace and quietness by way of their pleasures, Agricola
used to persuade them by private exhortations and public assistance
to build temples, forums, and houses, with praise for the eager and
admonitions for the laggard. Thus they could not help embarking on the
rivalry for honour. Now he began to instruct the sons of chieftains in
the liberal arts, to extol the natural abilities of the Britons above
the studious habits of Gaul, so that those who lately rejected even
the Roman language now became zealous for oratory. So even our dress
came into esteem, and the toga was commonly worn. The next step was
towards the attractions of our vices, lounging in colonnades, baths,
and refined dinner-parties. They were too ignorant to see that what
they call civilisation was really a form of slavery.” There is no doubt
that the Britons took as readily as their Gallic cousins to the Roman
civilisation. Many of them took Roman names and became Roman citizens.
They learnt the pleasures of the bath and the amphitheatre, their mines
were exploited, arts and industries were introduced, agriculture was
improved. The Druids hid themselves away in the unconquered fastnesses
of Wales or crossed over to the Hibernian island which the Romans never
had leisure to conquer. Meanwhile the Britons were learning to worship
the obsolete gods of Rome, and presently the Eastern deities who came
in their train.
It was the father-in-law of Tacitus, Julius Agricola, who conquered,
or at least defeated, the northern tribes of England. Among the
powerful Brigantes he established a garrison at York (Eburacum),
which eventually became the most important of all the Roman centres.
He advanced into Scotland also, and inflicted a bloody defeat upon
the wild Caledonians. But Scotland remained unconquered, as did the
neighbouring island upon which also Agricola had cast his ambitious
eyes. The Roman army was wanted elsewhere, and the Emperor Domitian
declined to assist any further adventures. Little more of our island’s
story is recorded until the travelling Emperor Hadrian came out to
visit us in A.D. 122. He saw that the wild north was only to be won by
a gradual advance with more or less peaceful penetration northwards.
The system of fortified frontiers was already established on the Rhine
and Danube, and Hadrian drew his finger across the seventy miles
between Bowness and Wallsend. Across this space, where the Tyne and
Solway almost overlap, the Roman lines ran straight over hill and dale,
and there they are to this day as a silent proof of the greatness of
the Roman people.[63] This was more than a frontier: it was a vast
elongated camp which looked south as well as north and frowned alike
upon the Brigantes and the Caledonians. It was pierced at intervals by
fortified gates and great roads ran northwards through it. On the north
there was first a ditch, and then a stone wall broad enough for two or
three men to walk abreast along it and nearly twenty feet high. Behind
this, in a space of about 140 yards wide runs a road connecting a chain
of fourteen large camps, some of which grew into towns. Southward again
was the quadruple rampart of earth, a mound, a dyke, and then a double
mound. This immense labour, though it is small in comparison with Roman
works elsewhere, was achieved not by British slaves, but by Roman
soldiers, some of whom were Britons, some Spaniards, and some Germans.
It was completed gradually under various emperors. There were detached
forts both north and south of the wall of Hadrian. It was Antoninus
Pius who made the next step twenty years later. The Antonine wall from
the Forth to the Clyde is only about half as long and of inferior
strength. There were camps even north of this, in Stirlingshire for
example, and it is clear that the Romans intended to feel their way
into the Highlands. But that was contrary to their fates.
Gaul meanwhile was becoming as civilised as Italy herself. Numbers of
the Gauls who had acquired the Latin speech received the _jus Latinum_,
which was almost equivalent to full citizenship. Claudius admitted the
chiefs of the Ædui into the Roman senate, and part of the speech in
which he did so is preserved on bronze tablets at Lyons. Twice in the
course of the century there were interesting attempts to give political
expression to the Gallic sense of nationality. The revolt of Vindex
at the close of Nero’s reign was little more than a mutiny, but the
projected “Empire of the Gauls,” which was set up during the confusion
which followed the fall of Vitellius, came very near success. Jealousy
between the Gauls and Germans wrecked it.
In the case of Germany, it looked for a time as if Tiberius, who, of
course, had personal knowledge of the difficulties and advantages of
further conquest, meant to break his stepfather’s precept and annex
more territory. But probably the annual expeditions of Germanicus were
not intended to be more than punitive and demonstrative. Blood enough
was shed, and acres enough laid waste, to appease the unburied ghosts
of Varus and his legions. But though the great battle of Idistavisus
was hailed as a Roman victory, Arminius himself continually eluded the
Romans and the legions were more than once in peril of ambush. When
Tiberius cried halt, it was open to the critics to find a malevolent
explanation in his jealousy of Germanicus, but it is much more likely
to have been the deliberate policy of an emperor who had knowledge of
Germany. Thus, although Arminius presently fell a victim to his own
ambition, and perished by the dagger of a tyrannicide kinsman, he had
done his work and saved the liberty of Germany. Henceforth the Romans
confined themselves to the Rhine frontier, though they had posts and
summer camps beyond it. By degrees the generals of the Upper and Lower
Armies in Germany developed into governors of two German provinces, but
Germany was unconquered. There was a great military road along the left
bank of the Rhine joining the garrison towns where the legions were
quartered. Mogontiacum (Mainz) and Vetera Castra (Xanten) remained as
the head-quarters, until the latter was superseded by Cologne (Colonia
Agrippinensis) founded under Claudius. Trier (Augusta Treverorum),
another foundation of about the same date, grew into an important
centre of Roman civilisation, as its majestic Roman gate[64] and fine
amphitheatre still bear witness. Under Claudius also the great Via
Claudia over the Brenner Pass was completed, and the canal joining
the Maas to the Rhine. This was better work for Roman soldiers than
slaughtering Chatti and Chauci in their native forests. The re-entrant
angle of the Rhine and Danube about the Black Forest, where the rivers
run small, was recognised as a danger-point. The barbarian Germans were
accordingly cleared away to make room for a body of Gallic emigrants,
who received lands on condition of paying a tithe of their produce as
rent, and of undertaking their own defence. This was a new piece of
frontier policy which was often imitated in later times.
[Illustration: Roman _Limes_]
It seems to have been the Flavian emperors, Vespasian and Domitian,
who advanced a step farther. On the other side of the Rhine and beyond
these Agri Decumates the Romans began to construct a line of forts
and wooden watch-towers linked by a rampart of earth, and known as
the _Limes Trans-Rhenanus_. This frontier of Upper Germany left the
Rhine between Linz and Andernach, crossed the Lahn at Ems, and then
turned eastwards north of Wiesbaden (Aquæ Mattiacæ) and Frankfort.
After Saalburg it runs on a north-easterly curve to Gruningen,
whence it turns south, and continues for more than 100 miles through
Aschaffenburg and Worth to join the Rhætian _limes_ at Lorch. From
Lorch the Rhætian _limes_ goes eastwards to join the Danube a few miles
above Regensburg. At first perhaps it was little more than a police
and customs limit, but it gradually grew into a formidable barrier
behind which the Roman Empire rested in a too profound security.
Trajan continued it. Hadrian strengthened it with a wall and palisade.
Commodus further fortified and extended it. A similar bulwark ran
along the Danube. This policy of setting up immobile defences like
the Great Wall of China is always a dangerous one. Useful at first and
visibly strong, it tends to lull the defenders into a false security.
The camps and forts grew into towns, the armies into peaceful citizens
living with their wives and children and devoting themselves to trade
and husbandry. Meanwhile the barbarians on the other side were growing
stronger and learning the art of war as fast as the Romans were
forgetting it.
After this the danger-point for the Empire shifted gradually eastwards
down the Danube. Claudius had converted Thrace from an allied kingdom
into a Roman province in A.D. 46. Much difficulty was caused by the
Dacians, who lived just across the Danube on the north bank opposite
the Roman province of Mœsia and in the modern Roumania. As the Danube
was apt to become frozen in winter it ceased to offer a satisfactory
frontier, so long as there were powerful enemies on the other side. At
first the Romans tried the system of transplanting them, 50,000 under
Augustus and 100,000 under Nero, and settling them in the province of
Mœsia. But it was a stupid policy, for it meant constant intrigues
between the free barbarians and their enslaved kinsfolk. Vespasian
accordingly moved two legions down from Dalmatia to reinforce the two
already stationed in Mœsia. But presently there arose an able and
heroic king called Decebalus, who welded the Dacians into a compact and
organised kingdom, and began to menace the security of the Empire. Like
Marbod of Bohemia, he drilled his barbarians on the Roman model. In
A.D. 85 he invaded Mœsia, won victories and did great damage. Domitian,
called upon to face this peril, was content with inflicting a single
defeat upon them and then accepting Decebalus as a client prince. He
gave him Roman engineers and artillerymen, and even sent gifts of money
which the barbarians were pleased to regard as tribute. This has been
set down as cowardice, but it was certainly unwisdom in Domitian, for
Decebalus grew stronger and more dangerous. It was left for Trajan,
the greatest soldier of all the early emperors, to face this thorny
problem in the two great Dacian Wars of 101 and 105 B.C. The whole war
is depicted for us by pictures in stone. The spiral reliefs which cover
the column of Trajan tell us, with far more detail than the narrative
of Dio, the history of the two Dacian Wars. We see the embarkation of
the Roman army, we see it on the march with its scouts in advance, we
see the solemn purifications, sacrifices, and harangues which preceded
battle. We see the battles themselves, in which the Romans with sword
and _pilum_ defeat the Dacians and their mail-clad Sarmatian cavalry.
The great bridge built across the Danube at Viminacium by the Greek
architect Apollodorus is faithfully depicted. We can watch the siege
of the Dacian capital, Sarmizegethusa, and observe the construction of
the siege-engines. Scenes of pathos are most graphically portrayed, the
torturing of Roman prisoners by the barbarian women, the suicide of
the Dacian chiefs by poison, and the death of the heroic Decebalus. At
intervals throughout the story there appears and reappears the calm and
stately figure of Trajan, steering his ship, sacrificing for victory,
leading the march or the charge, haranguing his troops, directing the
labour of engineering, consulting with his officers, or receiving the
submission of the foe.[65]
The end of the two wars was that Dacia was annexed and became a
province of the Empire. Here, as elsewhere, Trajan showed his contempt
of natural frontiers. As a gallant soldier himself, he believed in the
invincibility of the Roman arms, and preferred to put his trust in
legions rather than in walls. For this he has been condemned by modern
historians, but history is on his side. More than anything else it
was reliance on natural frontiers and artificial ramparts, with the
consequent loss of military instincts, which was to be the undoing of
the Roman Empire.