Roman literature reached perfection through Cicero and with him, even as
our own did through Lessing, and we may almost set down the year 680,
when Cicero was in the prime of his life, as the epoch in which it made
this step; the language shared likewise in this decisive advance.
However much there may be of the beautiful in earlier times, yet there
is always something wanting, even in Cicero’s first writings; but all
that was coarse and clumsy is now thrown off, and nothing remains but
the pure and polished language. With the greatest justice, the Latin of
Cicero has been acknowledged as the very best: it is, after all, the
language which was spoken by the well educated in his day, and had we
more of Cornelius Nepos than the _Vita Attici_, there again we should
also find Ciceronian latinity. As yet, Latin prose had been altogether
weak and unequal, being sometimes spun out, and sometimes cramped:
Cicero alone gave it its perfection. His influence also on his
contemporaries is incalculable: there is no doubt but that the finish of
Cæsar’s style is to be attributed to him and to his age.
There was then a host of distinguished writers and men of genius; and
though of some of them we know but little, they are not for that the
less eminent. I do not, however, mean to say that all who at that time
were remarkable in literature, are to be reckoned among the classical
writers; some of them, especially the older contemporaries of Cicero,
are quite in the spirit of the earlier age: thus among us, Winkelmann,
as to his style, belongs to the period before Lessing. So likewise
Varro, who for his immense learning and reading in Roman matters—in what
was Greek, this may not have been so great—had such a high renown, is,
in all that is left of him, not at all like one who lived in the same
age with Cicero: he is as strong a contrast to him as Mascov, Mosheim,
and Reimarus were to Lessing. Nigidius Figulus also was very likely a
writer of the same kind. The real bloom of Roman literature consisted of
men who were younger than Cicero, and whom he beheld springing up around
him. One of these was the orator M. Cælius Rufus, whom we may still
judge of even from his letters: his language was like that of Cicero for
excellence. Curio’s letters do not make the same impression upon me: yet
they are not of importance enough for one to be able to give a positive
opinion about them, and I would rather trust Cicero’s own judgment, who
assigns him a very high rank. C. Licinius Calvus, a contemporary of
both, was an orator and a poet as well: him also Cicero greatly
esteemed; and if Quintilian does not think favourably of him, Tacitus,
on the other hand, says that he really had talent as an orator.[30] He
died young. Sallust was considerably younger than Cicero, and of the
same age with Cælius, Calvus, and Curio: he went his own way, living in
the past, and the language and style of his contemporaries remained
foreign to him. As he was not conversant with the language as it was
spoken, it is no wonder that his style has quite a different air from
what we find in theirs: as an historian, he is all that one could wish.
That Priscian charges some of those men with archaisms, is nothing at
all against them.[31]
This was truly the age of the poets. Living at the same time, but not
quite of the same standing, were Lucretius, Catullus, and Calvus, the
rival of Catullus, the greatest poets of that day. Lucretius, whom men
have long tried to exclude from the poets altogether, is now at length
acknowledged in his high excellence as such; not but what, had he chosen
a more favourable theme than that wretched philosophical system, he
might have done far greater things. But the greatest poet Rome ever had,
is Catullus. He never strains after words or expressions: poetry flows
from his tongue, it is with him the very language which the impulse of
the moment brings out; every thought, every word of his, is the
expression of what he actually feels. He has the same perfections as the
Greek Lyric poets down to Sophocles, and is fully equal to them. Other
poets there were, who, though undoubtedly his inferiors, were still
eminent. If we had C. Helvius Cinna; if we had other poems than those
still extant of Valerius Cato (whose _Diræ_ are still very doubtful); if
we had Valgius,[32] and Ticida; we should read them with considerable
pleasure, we should acknowledge still more that the age was rich in
distinguished men, even though they were not equal to Catullus: and this
is certainly more than can be said of any other period. Poetry is now
becoming inured to the strict rules of metrical forms: the greater poems
are composed in hexameters; the smaller lyric pieces, in foreign or
Greek measures; and the old Latin forms are laid aside. The hexameter is
rightly constructed, and the _cæsuræ_ carefully observed: in trifles
only, the Roman poets of those times have some peculiarities to which
they take a fancy; as for instance, in the construction of the
pentameter. Dec. Laberius, the well known composer of mimes, no doubt
was very original: this sort of poetry consisted very much of
improvisation, being like the _Sermones_ of Horace. Furius Bibaculus was
very pleasing; Varro Atacinus, the translator of Apolonius Rhodius, is
by no means to be despised. Comedy had quite gone down, not even
mediocrities being mentioned.
This full bloom of poetry fades away at the time of Cæsar and Cicero’s
death, and a new generation takes the place of the old one. Few eloquent
men of that period survive; Asinius Pollio, for example, who when Cæsar
died, was about thirty-four years of age, and therefore had already
formed his mind. As a writer, however, he belongs to a somewhat later
date, after the war of Brundusium; for it was not till then that he had
completely retired from public life. From the fragments of him in Seneca
the father, we may gather that his style was very unequal, but that he
sometimes could write very well, especially when impelled by passion; as
he did with justice against the Pompeians, and with great injustice
against Cicero. His was a soured and embittered nature, without any
kindly feelings. Another skilful orator was Munatius Plancus. Hirtius
indeed still belongs to the former age, but is not the less excellent:
he is a most elegant writer, although his whole life was spent in the
midst of arms. Asinius Pollio is the connecting link between the two
generations (which might be called _proventus_,[33] φορά); just as
Lessing is between Klopstock, Winkelmann, Kant, Kästner, Gellert,
Cramer, on the one side, and Göthe, Voss, Friederich Leopold von
Stolberg on the other, not reacting upon those who were older than
himself, but paving the way for the rising generation. Thus Asinius
stands between the time of Cicero and Virgil; for the latter may indeed
be mentioned as his contemporary.
It is a very just remark, that it is incorrect to speak, as we do in
Germany, of the Augustean age; we ought only to call it the Augustan
age, Αὐγούστειοι being met with in Greek authors[34] only. Except in the
case of Livy, prose had entirely fallen off: besides him, there was only
Messalla, of whom, however, nothing is left to us. And the cause of this
lay in the state of things at that time, as is shown by Tacitus in his
excellent _Dialogus de Oratoribus_. Prose was in times of old always
developed by oratory; it was poor as soon as people ceased to speak in
public. For this, however, there was no more a free opportunity: the
_rostra_ were dumb, the _curia_ was hushed, and if there were still any
speeches, they were only λόγοι ἐπιδεικτικοί,—dismal signs of the times!
The only field therefore for prose was history, which was written by
Asinius Pollio and Livy: Valerius Messalla alone, who was much older
than Asinius, and about the same standing as Virgil, was of any
importance as an orator. It may also be that he was more remarkable for
his nobleness of mind and his personal excellence, than for
extraordinary talent.
To the first half of the reign of Augustus, belong the brilliant days
of Virgil and Horace, and of many other contemporaries of less
eminence. In Horace poetry is still lyric; but afterwards it loses
this character. It adapts itself more and more to the Greek; the old
licences of metre are altogether set aside, and the Greek being law in
everything, it is a mere translating of the Greek: it is Grecian
poetry in Latin words. The language—except in particular cases, for
the sake of embellishment,—carefully eschews every obsolete phrase,
and the written phraseology is in perfect harmony with the spoken one.
Though Virgil says _olli_, _aulai_, he never does so in the Bucolics
and Georgics, but in the Æneid; and that from the same grammatical
reasons which the Alexandrian writers had for their rules for the
Greek epic style.
Virgil was born on the fifteenth of October 682, and he died in 733, on
the twenty-second of September; Horace was born on the eighth of
December 687, and he died the twenty-seventh of November 744. We cannot
allow of the adoration with which the later Romans regarded Virgil: he
is wanting in that fertility and richness of invention which his theme
required. His Eclogues are far from being a happy imitation of
Theocritus, as they try to produce something on the Roman soil which
could not be there. Theocritus’ shepherds have sprung from true
Siculian, and not from Greek materials; they bear the stamp of genuine
nationality: Daphnis is a Sicilian hero. But when Virgil wishes to
transfer them to the sky of Lombardy, he places Greek names and Greek
peculiarities in a spot where they could not exist at all. More happy is
his didactic poem on husbandry: he keeps himself in a middle sphere, and
one cannot speak otherwise than in its praise. The whole of the Æneid,
from the beginning to the end, is a misconceived idea: but this does not
prevent its being full of beauties in its details; and it also displays
a learning from which the historian can never glean too much. No epic
poem can be successful, unless it be a lively, hearty narrative of some
achievement of which the whole story has become a kind of national
heir-loom. It is a silly remark of a still living historian, that an
epic poem would never tell with the people, unless the subject were
sufficiently old: if the events are such as every one knows, and as can
be made to receive a certain impress of originality without losing their
own distinguishing character, then they are fit for epic poetry, and for
the arts in general. This is the reason why subjects from Sacred History
are so well adapted for the historical painter: it is because the
beholder understands at once what the artist wants to represent, and is
able to bring to mind the whole of the associations with which the
picture is connected. Subjects from mythology are far more hazardous,
inasmuch indeed as the artist himself, and with him the many, are too
little acquainted with them, and they cannot therefore but seem somewhat
unmeaning: in ancient times, however, such mythological subjects were as
much household words among the people as the Sacred History is with us.
Generally known events in modern history would now be perfectly well
suited to be dealt with by the artist. So long as in a nation there be
legends which every body is sure to sing and know by heart, there will
always be something which one may choose as one thinks good, and pick
out as the subject for an epic poem. Thus the epos makes choice of a
single part, whilst the cyclic poem, on the other hand, takes in a whole
series of tales. Such is the wretched Pharsalia of Lucan. Virgil took a
Latin story, and dove-tailed it into Greek legends; whereas had he
wanted to have anything out of the Roman legends, he ought to have
treated it in the Italian style: this might indeed have been very
difficult, as that kind of knowledge was no longer general; but it would
have been the only means of making a poem with much life in it. Virgil
is one of the remarkable instances of the way in which a man can miss
his true calling. His was lyric poetry. The little poem on the _Villa
Syronis_ and the _Si mihi susceptum fuerit decurrere munus_, show that
he would have been a poet like Catullus, had he not made the mistake of
wishing to write nothing but Grecian-Latin poems. It is a pity that
posterity so much overrated the very work which was but a failure; yet
we may well account for it, as people were not able to compare it with
Homer, whom they did not know at all, and its extraordinary beauties had
their full effect. Nor was the superiority of Catullus acknowledged
until the end of the eighteenth century. The first who spoke without
prejudice about Virgil, was Jeremy Markland: amidst a terrible outcry,
as if he had committed high treason, he openly said what he thought. It
was certainly no affectation that Virgil wished to burn the Æneid; that
poem was the task of his life, and he had in his last moments a feeling
that it was a failure. I am glad that he did not do so; but still we
must in all things learn to keep our judgment free, and even then we
cannot but love and honour him. It may be that the tomb on Posilipo,
which during the whole of the middle ages was already shown as that of
Virgil,—yet I know not why,—is not his, and that the laurel on it may
have been replanted many a time; but notwithstanding, I have gone to see
it as a pilgrim, and the laurel branches which I also plucked off at his
grave, are dear to me as relics.
Venusia, the birthplace of Horace, was a Latin colony, founded between
the third Samnite war and that of Pyrrhus. This town, which had always
been true to the Romans, is mentioned by Appian (whose accounts of this
are very trustworthy) among those which revolted in the Social War: it
must therefore have lost its Latin character, and, like the other
peoples in those parts, have rather become Lucanian and Oscan in
feeling. Horace says, that he went to school with the sons of
centurions: this is a hint that Venusia must have been a military
colony, and in fact one of Sylla’s, which may be accounted for by that
rebellion. Moreover, when Horace wrote the second book of his
_Sermones_, a new military colony must have been established there; for
Ofellus, whom Horace when a boy had still seen well off, had had his
allotment of land given away to a soldier. Horace’s father was a
_libertinus_; the cognomen of Flaccus, if the father had it as well,
would prove that he was not of foreign, but of Italian race: his father
may indeed have been taken prisoner in the Social War, and sold for a
slave; for otherwise the children of freedmen have different names. The
father gave his son a very liberal education: when Brutus came to
Greece, Horace, who was twenty-two years old, was staying at Athens
whither his father had sent him. He with several other young Romans
entered the army, and, what was an immense honour for the son of a
freedman, was promoted by Brutus to be a tribune. This raised a good
deal of envy; but it shows him to have been a distinguished young man,
as there were at that time not more than six tribunes to every legion.
After the battle of Philippi, he made his escape like many others, and
was perhaps under the protection of Messalla; then he went to Rome,
where he was recommended to Mæcenas, who soon became exceedingly fond of
him, interesting himself for him even more than he did for Virgil: this
kindness of Mæcenas, Horace received with great gratitude. Mæcenas made
him a present of a small farm on the Sabine hills, where, as he had
indeed but few wants, he lived retired and happy: in his latter years
especially, he was almost always there. The life of Horace by Suetonius
is very interesting; and from this work, as well as from the poet’s own
writings, Wieland in his commentary, particularly on the Epistles, has
said many very fine things on his personal character and his position in
the world, and has cleared him of many a calumny: he has shown that
Horace deserves the reproach of being a flatterer far less in truth than
Virgil, as unfortunately we cannot help allowing. His praises are the
outpouring of a general feeling, which he very fairly shared with other
persons of his day. Wieland moreover points out how he tries to keep
himself from being dependent on Mæcenas, and to push the golden chains
aside as far as he could do so without seeming ungrateful. Augustus was
not at all pleased when Horace did not dedicate to him the first book of
the _Sermones_, and also when he wanted to have him for his secretary
and he declined it: he could not have hidden from himself, that Horace
was one of those who, notwithstanding all the good that he had done,
would not forget his former life, and always judged of him by it.
Wieland calls our attention to a letter of Augustus, in which he betrays
how much he felt Horace’s indifference, and says, _An vereris ne apud
posteros infame tibi sit quod videaris familiaris nobis esse?_ We can
hardly have the odes in chronological order: some of them were written
very early, perhaps even as far back as the time that he lived in
Athens: of many indeed it is impossible to give the exact date; and
though most of them were composed before the war of Actium, the first
three books were not published till afterwards. Some of the _Sermones_
also belong to a very early period: the earliest that we have of his, is
perhaps the banquet of Nasidienus, that is to say, Salvidienus,
according to the undoubtedly correct remark of the scholiast; just as
Malthinus stands for Mæcenas, so that the fictitious name has the same
quantity as the real one. Against a man who had become unfortunate,
Horace would not have written after his execution; and therefore the
poem must date soon after the battle of Philippi, 710. To the last years
of his life belong the fourth book of the Odes, and the second of the
Epistles.
Horace, as a poet, was once admired beyond all bounds; but for the last
thirty years or more, he has not had justice done to him. His imitations
from the Greeks are of wonderful beauty, and they have also much in them
which is his own. Yet for all that he has many faults. When searching
for an original expression, he sometimes contents himself with another
which is none of the most appropriate or the most terse: if one keeps
this remark well in mind, many of Bentley’s emendations fall to the
ground. Moreover he has two great failings. One is quite annoyed at his
misappreciation of the earlier writers; the times had quite changed, and
hence he took a dislike to many things because they were strange in his
day, more especially to archaisms. How he could have been blind to the
merits of Plautus, is quite inconceivable: the age to which he belonged
had wrought on him the same effects which difference of nationality has
on other men; many an expression may have quite gone down to the common
people, and thus have become vulgar, so that Horace was shocked by it.
This feeling may have been much increased by his disgust at those who
made a ridiculous parade of quaintness, playing the same farce as the
exaggerated admirers of the middle ages among us. And besides this,
painful is the impression which is made upon us by the irony of Horace’s
Epicurean philosophy, owing to which he, in fact, looks upon everything
as a folly, and tries to sneer at everything, treating what is most
venerable with irreverence: this becomes at last a bad habit with him.
Yet there is excuse for this in the age in which he lived; in better
times, it would not have been thus. One sees in him a mild and quiet
man, who in truth was always constrained and reserved; the wild,
reckless Catullus, with his loud laugh, and his loud wailings, comes
more home to our hearts: the same tone which there is in Horace may also
have been that of Menander, and the latest Athenian comedy. Horace did
not choose to let his heart bleed, and thus he puts us indeed into a
sadder frame of mind. When a real good is lost for the people, one
should not deaden the feelings to it, and try to make the world
thoughtless; but one should carry the grief for it within one’s breast,
and let it have free course, yet without cherishing or artificially
fostering it. “He who has lost a real good,” says Friederick Leopold Von
Stolberg, “has often much left to him, if he retains the consciousness
of what he has lost.” Horace with all this is still ever noble and
amiable: he has only misunderstood an unhappy age. He lived nearly to
his fifty-seventh year.
Of the same standing as Horace was Tibullus an _Eques Romanus_: he was
one of those whose fortune had somewhat suffered in those stormy times.
The year of his birth is unknown to us: from an epigram which is
ascribed to Domitius Marsus (_Te quoque Virgilio comitem non æqua,
Tibulle_, &c.), we merely gather that he died soon after Virgil. Yet
there is some doubt about that epigram: the way in which Horace
addresses Tibullus, seems to bespeak a contemporary. Of Tibullus, the
first two books are not to be doubted; but the third cannot possibly be
his, although the name of the author can hardly be Lygdamus: for it may
only be substituted for the right one, as being of the same quantity.
Thus it is also with the names of women: that of the mistress of
Propertius, whom he calls Cynthia, was Hostia; that of Tibullus’ Delia,
was Plania. Owing to party spirit, people will not admit the truth of
Voss’s remark, that in the third book there is quite a different
metrical character, and also quite another turn of expression: he who
does not see this, is in my opinion no judge of questions either of
grammar or of metre. A distich has been rejected as spurious because it
clashes with the chronology of Tibullus: the poet of the third book was
born, like Ovid, in 709, under the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa, as
he says himself:—
Natalem primo nostrum videre parentes,
Cum cecidit fato consul uterque pari.
These verses cannot be struck out. The fourth book is just as little
Tibullus’ own: the panegyric on Messalla is the production of some poor
fellow who was in want of a patron, and certainly not that of a knight.
Both books, the third and the fourth, are by authors who are inferior to
Tibullus. The smaller poems which bear the names of Sulpicia and
Cerinthus, may be Tibullus’ own; but they are almost too good to be his:
there is too much strength and boldness in them. To me, Tibullus is an
unpleasing poet: this womanish and maudlin grief, this unantique
sentimentality, are mistaken tones of Mimnermus, which to me are
unbearable; and above all, in a Roman.
Somewhat older perhaps than Horace was Cornelius Gallus, a man of rank
who had also tried his fortune in war, and whom Augustus had appointed
governor of Egypt, in which post indeed he behaved shamefully. He must,
however, have had his amiable qualities, as Virgil was so fond of him,
and introduced his praise in the fourth book of the Georgics: it was to
replace it, that the poet had afterwards to put in the episode of
Aristæus. Having been convicted of very disgraceful things, Gallus put
an end to his own life. He had translated Euphorion, and written
elegies, of which, however, one line only remains. He must have been a
distinguished poet, though what goes under his name, all but a few
fragments, is not genuine. If he is called _durior_, this perhaps
implies that he had the old language and versification of Catullus and
Lucretius, which Quinctilian might indeed have found harsh.
One who also lived at the same time as these men, was Varius. Of him we
have unfortunately but a few verses; the ancients, however, ranked him
with Virgil and Horace among the great poets of that age; he was
especially renowned for his tragedy of Thyestes. This is a very unhappy
subject; and I am afraid that there was a good deal of rant in that
piece, and that it stood in the same relation to Greek tragedy as the
Æneid to the Iliad. The tragic poets of that age in all likelihood no
longer had before them the old Athenian tragedy, like Pacuvius and
Attius, but the Alexandrian; for what was called the Pleias, was
certainly something quite different from the old tragic poets. One may
get an idea of it from Seneca, whose pieces are certainly not of Roman
home-growth, but evidently formed after foreign models: his lyrical part
is limited to anapæsts, and very rarely contains quite simple strophes
of four lines. If I had the choice, I would rather have Varius’ poem _De
Morte_ than his tragedy.
This was the noble group of the poets of that age, such as seldom have
met together in this world. These poets Augustus found living when he
made himself master of the state; they have passed the shortest part of
their lives under his rule. But now a second generation arose, which is
really to be called the Augustan. It begins with Propertius, whose poems
are evidently imitations from the Alexandrian school; whereas Horace
kept to the older lyric style, although Virgil already begins to follow
somewhat in the track of the poets of Alexandria and Pergamus.
Propertius must have been born about 700. He was a native of Umbria, and
his youth was about the time of the assignments of land: it was his
ambition to be the Roman Callimachus or Philetas.
Much greater than he,—in fact, of all the Roman poets whose works have
come down to us, by far the most poetical after Catullus,—was Ovid, born
in 709. Virgil is evidently disheartened by his lot; Horace’s mind was
painfully distracted in another way, as he fondly loved Brutus;
Tibullus, with his feeling heart, was weighed down by evil times;
Propertius was so affected by the early loss of his property, that free
enjoyment of life and perfect ease never returned to him: but as for
Catullus, on the other hand, the unbounded freedom of his humour sprang
from the independence of his fortune. His father must have been one of
the most eminent men in his province; he was a guest-friend of Cæsar.
Ovid was born with one of the most happy dispositions that heaven can
give, at a time when the troubles of the Perusian war could only reach
him in his cradle; he was in his thirteenth year when Cæsar Octavianus
conquered at Actium: thus his lightheartedness and cheerfulness arose
from the circumstances of the age in which he lived. On this we are all
of us dependent: my own tone of mind is quite different from what it
would have been had I been born thirty years sooner or later. Ovid was a
young man of rank and wealth at Sulmo, who began the world adorned with
every gift of mind and body: a greater facility no man could have, and
in this respect, he is among the very first poets. In Schiller’s poems,
one may every where remark his struggle with the forms of verse, and the
toil with which he worked; whilst in Goethe’s early productions,
everything is as if written off-hand. The Greek lyric poets also are
never far-fetched; it is as if they could express themselves only in the
way in which they did, and in none other: Horace, unlike them, is
plodding, and it is but seldom that anything, as it were, bubbles out of
him. In Ovid, all comes fresh from the heart: his faults, which also run
through his poetry, are well known. The cause of his misfortune is a
riddle which no human sagacity will ever be able to make out; and the
endless stories which have been spread about it are but so many
absurdities. The utter depression of his mind during his abode in Tomi
has been turned into a reproach against him; but I am rather struck with
admiration, that in this dreadful exile among barbarians, his freshness
and liveliness forsook him so little.
One of his contemporaries was Cornelius Severus, of whom we have a
fragment which strengthens the opinion that had he lived longer, he
would have become an eminent epic poet, infinitely superior to Lucan.
Pedo Albinovanus must also have been distinguished. Whether he is the
author of the poem to Livia on the death of her son Drusus, seems not to
be so certain as is generally believed.
Livy was born in the consulship of Cæsar, 693, and lived to his
seventy-fifth, or seventy-seventh year;[35] he thus reached far into
Tiberius’ reign. I have already spoken of him before. History was the
only thing that one could then write in prose; eloquence had sunk into
wretched declamation, or mere lawyer’s pleading. He was fifty years of
age, or somewhat older, when he began to write his history. The
unfavourable opinion which Asinius Pollio gave of him, certainly arose
from party spirit, as the latter could not abide anything that was
Pompeian. Livy’s great fame, in which no one of his day has equalled
him, is all built upon his historical work; and this is the reason why
he is not once mentioned in Horace: very likely, he lived at first as a
teacher of rhetoric in complete retirement. A man came all the way from
Cadiz to Rome to see him.
In the literature of the Cæsarian period, I forgot to mention Dec.
Laberius, who was very distinguished and original as a writer of mimes.
If men like Laberius and P. Syrus acted their mimes themselves, these
were evidently a kind of improvisation, a description of poetry which
was akin to the _sermones_ of Horace, and partook very little of the
peculiarities of dramatic verse. P. Syrus also ranked very high. Comedy
had at that time quite gone off; we do not even meet with mediocrities.
Of tragedies, the Thyestes of Varius only is mentioned.—Valgius also
belongs still to the time of Virgil.
The political weakness of Greece in those days, before the might of
Rome, is not greater than the absolute nullity of Greek literature as
compared with the richness of the Roman one. The Greeks were then
nothing but rhetoricians and grammarians, though these certainly deserve
an honourable mention: of poems, there are none worth speaking of; even
of epigrammatic talent there never yet was such a dearth: only a few
wretched epigrams date from that age. Dionysius of Halicarnassus stands
alone as a man distinguished for sense and judgment: it is therefore not
to be wondered at, that the Romans in this respect also felt superior to
the Greeks; and they did not perhaps feel it as much as they should have
done. In the latter days of Augustus, literature again went down hill
most rapidly; and under Tiberius it had completely run itself out. Those
who were the leaders of taste, and brought on the silver era, were Greek
rhetoricians, mostly from the Levant. From old Greece, as far as I know,
Plutarch is for many centuries after Polybius the only writer of
eminence.
PRIVATE LIFE OF AUGUSTUS. AGRIPPA. MÆCENAS. FAMILY CONNEXIONS.
BUILDINGS.
The very many statues and busts which yet remain of Augustus, bear out
the statement of Suetonius, that he was an uncommonly fine man. His
_decora facies_ he still had even in his old age; we may trace the
likeness in his busts throughout the different periods of his life. He
is so beautiful that I very nearly got his bust; but his personal
character deterred me. He was however a remarkable man in every respect.
What he was reproached with by the ancients, was want of courage; but
this is an imputation which is easily made, especially if there is some
foundation for it after all; yet there were, on the other hand,
instances also in which he undeniably showed courage. In the war of
Philippi, there is indeed some ground for such a charge: at Mutina, he
perhaps was guilty of treachery; but in the Pompeian war, no reproach of
the kind attaches to him. He was a bad general, and had no more luck in
the field than he had in his domestic relations. His falseness and
cruelty, I have before described; yet he had also his good qualities: he
was a friend to his friends, and put up with many things from them;
which considering his pride, is very surprising: towards Agrippa and
Mæcenas, he was neither faithless nor unthankful. In his domestic
relations, he was regardless of character. He had at first been
betrothed to Antony’s stepdaughter Clodia, but the match was broken off;
then he married Scribonia, who bore him Julia of unhappy notoriety; and
then he put her away, and compelled Tib. Claudius Nero, who had once
been proscribed as a partisan of Brutus, and who was also one of the
best of the family of the Claudii, to give up to him Livia. Livia, whose
ambition and thirst of power for her own family knew no bounds, and who
shrank from no crime, had gradually gotten the most absolute sway over
Augustus. However much he sought to bring back purity of morals, he
himself was a thorough profligate; and this Livia winked at. They were
married to each other nearly fifty years; and the longer they lived
together, the greater became her power. She must have been wondrously
beautiful in her youth, and amazingly clever: for a long course of
years, she strove with quiet patience to get the dominion for her race;
and for this purpose she estranged Augustus from the whole of his
family. The only child she had borne him was still-born. So long as
Octavia, the half-sister of Augustus, and one of the most respectable of
the later Roman matrons, was alive and had prospects for her son
Marcellus, who was married to Julia, she herself seemed to have been
altogether set aside. But after the death of Marcellus, Agrippa became
more powerful than ever, though he had already gained such an
ascendancy, that Augustus, had he not loved him much, must have been
afraid of him; and now the emperor bound him to him by the marriage with
Julia, because he really feared him: Julia had by Marcellus one daughter
only. Agrippa was much older than Augustus, with whom he had been as a
sort of tutor in Apollonia; it is not unlikely that Cæsar had meant him
to accompany his nephew as _custos_ to the Parthian war, as was
generally done when the youthful Roman at seventeen first joined the
army: thus Lollius went with C. Cæsar. Before that time, nothing is
mentioned about him, nor can any one tell where he came from; in Cæsar’s
campaigns, he is not once named: he is said to have been _ignobili_,
even _humili loco natus_. He afterwards shows himself to have been an
experienced general. Augustus’ best time was that during which Agrippa’s
influence was paramount with him; that is to say, almost the whole
unbroken period from the battle of Actium to the death of Agrippa, whom
no one accuses of having had any share in the earlier crimes of his
pupil. It is he, above all men, who gave the state its form; he is, more
than Augustus, the author of the most useful institutions,—perhaps also
of some artful ones, but certainly of all that had any good in them.
Besides which, there was something grand about him. We have but one
building left of his, the Pantheon, which indeed is the finest relic of
ancient Rome. He had a genius for vast and magnificent works, for roads,
canals, aqueducts, baths: he so laid out the whole of the Campus
Martius, that Strabo is quite in ecstacies whilst describing it. In the
war against Pompey, he displayed tried ability: moreover, he then built
a fleet and the _portus Julius_. He was thrice consul, and openly laid
claim to the highest honours: for he looked upon them as his due, being
anything but cowed and daunted before Augustus. He died, I believe, in
740; Mæcenas in 744, in the same year as Horace.
The friendship of Augustus was shared with Agrippa by C. Cilnius
Mæcenas, of the illustrious Etruscan house of the Cilnii (_Etrusci
reges, reges atavi_):—it must have been a δυναστεία; the name is also
met with innumerable times on monuments at Arretium. This clan must have
had the Roman franchise even before the _lex Julia_; for as early as
Livius Drusus, a Mæcenas, as we are told by Cicero,[36] was already
among the _equites splendidissimi_. Horace seems to hint that the
forefathers of Mæcenas’ line, both on the father and mother’s side, had
been raised to the highest magistracy in the days of Etruscan freedom:—
“—_quod avus tibi maternus fuit atque paternus,
Olim qui magnis legionibus imperitarent_:”
in all likelihood, both of these branches belonged to Arretium: Mæcenas
himself was merely a Roman knight. With posterity, he has earned the
honour of having been a patron of the poets: we may rejoice that he
showed kindness to Horace and Virgil, without indeed troubling ourselves
about his motives for it, which we have no means of finding out. He was
a strange man, an epicurean in the very worst sense; and he unblushingly
avowed it, as he set up ease and comfort as the highest good in life. He
displayed a more than womanish love of life; for though in a wretchedly
broken state of health, he was glad to live, even in torture, if only
live he could (_vita dum superest, bene est_). There was also something
childish and trifling about him: he had a foppish delight in trinkets
and jewels, for which Augustus often laughed at him. To the latter, he
was a convenient friend and a most agreeable companion; and for all
honours he expressed an epicurean contempt, looking upon Agrippa’s love
of distinction as folly. Yet for all that, he may have cared not a
little for having influence; whenever Augustus consulted him, he got
very sensible advice. Once only he behaved in a manly way. When
Augustus, in the time of the triumvirate, or in that of the Perusian
war, was seated on his tribunal, and was pronouncing one sentence of
death after another, Mæcenas sent him a note with the words “Get up
then, you executioner!” This looks like a man whose heart is much better
than his philosophy.
As long as these two men and Drusus, the younger son of Livia, were
alive, even as Tacitus already remarks, Augustus’ government was really
praiseworthy; but after their death there was a change for the worse.
Augustus in his earlier years had very precarious health, and his life
was several times endangered by illness; one of these was in Gaul, and
another was that from which Antonius Musa recovered him by cold baths:
it was not until about his fiftieth year, that his health became better.
Long before this, whilst Marcellus was yet a child, and he himself still
very young, he had once, when he thought himself dying, given his ring
to Agrippa: in his will he had made no arrangements about the succession
to his throne. When Marcellus grew up, differences arose between him and
Agrippa. Velleius, who when he chooses to speak out, hits off many
characters with masterly touches, says of Agrippa, “_Parendi, sed uni,
scientissimus_.” To Augustus, he would submit himself; but against all
those who rose after him, he was very bitter, nor would he be the
servant of Marcellus who was much younger than himself: in all
likelihood, had Augustus died then, he would not have scrupled to put
Marcellus and the sons of Livia aside. Once Agrippa altogether withdrew
to Mitylene, where he would have nothing more to do with the affairs of
Rome; yet the way in which men paid their court to him in the east,
showed clearly that they all looked upon him as their future master. But
Marcellus died in his twenty-third year, and a great hope of the Roman
world seems to have died with him; Agrippa now incontestably stood in
the first place, and Augustus gave him in marriage his daughter Julia,
the widow of Marcellus. Yet though this alliance went far to secure the
succession for him and his sons, it very sadly embittered the last years
of his life, owing to the shameful depravity of his wife; for he kept it
secret from Augustus, who was very fond of his daughter. Agrippa died
before Augustus’ eyes were opened to Julia’s conduct, and left three
sons, one of whom was born after his death, and a daughter, Agrippina,
who afterwards became the wife of Germanicus. She had all the pride and
fine qualities of her father; she was an admirable woman, not unlike
Octavia. The two eldest sons, Caius and Lucius, Augustus adopted into
the family of the Cæsars, as he meant one of them, namely Caius, to
succeed him. Whilst these young men were growing up, Julia was married
to the eldest step-son of Augustus, Tiberius Claudius Nero. This young
man had quite the character of the Claudian race: he was uncommonly
proud of his high birth, and he held Augustus himself to be nothing
better than a municipal upstart from Velitræ, who had been adopted into
the Julian family; the _gens Julia_ he certainly looked upon as below
the _gens Claudia_, and therefore upon his marriage with Julia as a
match which was beneath him. Above all, he was deeply galled by the
infamous life of Julia, though for fear of Augustus, he did not dare to
complain of her. Being on bad terms with Augustus, he withdrew on some
pretext or other to Rhodes, by which indeed he left the field open for
Agrippa’s family. At Rhodes he lived for seven years, in the course of
which the profligate life of Julia was discovered, and Augustus now
treated her with unrelenting harshness: he had her transported to
Pandataria. (Drusus had already died in Germany, a year before his elder
brother went to Rhodes.) In vain did Tiberius repent of the rash step
which he had taken; Livia for a whole year was unable to bring about a
reconciliation, Augustus having been so much hurt by his going away that
he would not hear of him, nor see him, although he had asked for leave
to return. Augustus now employed L. and C. Cæsar in public business:
Lucius was sent to Gaul and Spain, to superintend the registration of
the land; Caius to Armenia. This Caius Cæsar, Velleius speaks of in such
a way, that, though to pay his court to Tiberius, he may have
represented some things as worse than they were, we may well believe
that he was good for nothing, and that the Roman empire would have been
as unhappy under him, as it was under Tiberius himself. In Armenia,
where he had executed Augustus’ commissions, he was treacherously
wounded by an Asiatic, who very likely was got to do it by the king of
the Parthians. From this wound he never could recover, and it was
generally thought by the ancients that it was poisoned by Livia: this is
perhaps nothing but prejudice; bus it is quite possible. Lucius had
already died before him, and it is pretty certain that it was _dolo
novercæ_. Tiberius, on his return after seven years, was completely
master of the field; and of Agrippa’s family, Agrippa Postumus and
Agrippina were all that was left: that the former of these might not be
altogether set aside, he adopted him together with Tiberius 754. From
that time, Tiberius was heir presumptive; and it was not long before he
got the _tribunicia potestas_: as for Agrippa Postumus, he was still a
boy, an insignificant fellow, who did not stand in the other’s way.
It is a well known boast of Augustus, that he had found Rome brick, and
had left it marble; and this was not saying too much: what is still left
of his buildings bears it out. He has built an immense deal, and stamped
upon Rome quite another character; his buildings were in a style of
extraordinary grandeur, which altogether ceases in the later ones, the
Colosseum alone excepted. There still remains what was formerly called
_Forum Nervæ_, but what Palladio in his day, and among the moderns Hirt,
have recognised as the _Forum Augustum_. The judicious Stefano Piali has
shown that the three colossal pillars which were formerly thought to
have been portions of the temple of Jupiter Stator, are of Augustus, and
belonged to the _Curia Julia_. The great wall round the _Forum
Augustum_, proves that at that time the old grand style was still
prevalent, which lasted until the reign of the emperor Claudius, and
first changed under that of Nero: thus people came to fancy that that
wall was of the age of the kings. By Augustus himself was built the
Mausoleum, the inside work of which still lasts indestructible; by
Agrippa in Augustus’ reign, the Gate of St. Lorenzo and the Pantheon,
besides the Theatre of Marcellus,—where the Palazzo Savelli is, in which
I used to live,—in the old massive Greek-Etruscan style which had long
been out of date in Greece: hard by is the Portico of Octavia, of which
the entrance is still standing. Whatever on the Palatine is said to be
of Augustus, is at best very problematical: of the temple of Apollo
there is nothing left. Augustus was the first to bring the Carrara
marble into use. A great number of high roads, both in Italy and in the
provinces, and very magnificent aqueducts were made by him; among
others, that of Narni, which indeed is built of brick. Notwithstanding
all these great buildings, and all this magnificence, no one felt
burthened, as the Romans paid scarcely any taxes but a few indirect
ones; and therefore it is no wonder that Augustus was exceedingly
popular. We must also take into the account the gloomy forebodings with
which men looked upon Tiberius: the words of Horace, _Divis orte bonis!_
came from his heart; people prayed in right earnest to Heaven for his
preservation.
WARLIKE ENTERPRISES OF AUGUSTUS. HIS DEATH. GENERAL SURVEY OF THE
EMPIRE.
The first foreign war which he waged, happened between the peace of
Brundusium and the battle of Actium. It was a campaign against the
Dalmatians, and he displayed in it considerable activity, and personal
courage, being wounded himself. The task of subduing these countries was
exceedingly difficult; but he broke the power of the Dalmatians who
dwelt on the coast. Soon after the battle of Actium, the Cantabrian war
began. Very nearly the same countries which afterwards held out against
the Moors, Biscay, Asturias, the north of Gallicia, and the confines of
Leon, held out also then. Augustus set himself the task of extending the
Roman empire as far as the sea, the Rhine, and the Danube. During the
first year, he was, partly by illness, and partly by business, kept in
Gaul, where he settled the affairs of the province; in Tarragona also,
he fell sick once more, and was thus delayed in his campaigns. We have
no details of these wars: Appian became tired here, and perhaps he did
not find them in any Greek writer. Augustus’ memoirs must have had very
little value, as hardly any notice is taken of them: he also tried
poetry; but as far as we may judge from his letters, he was a tasteless
and worthless writer. In the third year, the Asturians and Cantabrians
made their submission, and gave hostages. The Basques maintain that they
still have a poem on this war in their own language; and Wilhelm Von
Humboldt possesses a copy of it, which I only know from his
translation.[37] I hold it to be as little genuine as the poems of
Ossian; Humboldt is of a different opinion, yet he decides nothing. How
should anything have been preserved among the Cantabrians about this
war, which after all was of no importance whatever to them? On the
Moorish wars, which must have been much more important to them, nothing
whatever remains. Nowhere else, either among Germans or other nations,
have accounts of the Roman wars been preserved: when Wittekind of Corvey
wrote, all memory of them had entirely vanished, and this was certainly
the case there as well. The Cantabrians, goaded by the ill treatment of
the Roman governors, revolted again; thus it took some more campaigns
before they were altogether subdued. Augustus founded several
colonies,—Cæsar Augusta (Saragossa), Julia Emerita (Merida, down to the
Arabian times a first-rate town), Pax Augusta (Badajoz), Pax Julia
(Beja), Legio (Leon).
About the time of this war, Tiberius, who was no longer a youth, carried
on another in Dalmatia, which he reduced. Before that, a Roman governor
named Crassus, had already made war in Mœsia, and had driven back the
Sarmatians across the Danube, and extended the empire as far as that
river. Pannonia likewise had submitted during the Dalmatian campaign of
Tiberius.
It was between the Dalmatian and Cantabrian war, that Augustus shut the
temple of Janus: according to Suetonius, he seems to have closed it
thrice; yet this may have been a mistake. It had been done once before
in the Mythic age of Numa; and again, between the first and second Punic
wars, in the consulship of T. Manlius Torquatus, 517.
Augustus had before this already directed his attention to the Alpine
races, such as the Salassians and all the tribes of Rhætia in the widest
sense of the word,—even from the valley of Aosta, all through the Valais
and the Tyrol, as far as Noricum, which had a king, and kept under Roman
protection: they were mostly of Etruscan stock. It is my belief that the
abodes of the Rhætians did not reach at farthest beyond the valley of
the Upper Inn, whilst the Vindelicians dwelt on the northern slopes of
the Tyrolese Alps, from the valley of the Lower Inn to the Danube. These
last were of Liburnian race, as were also the Pannonians, who were
neither Illyrians nor Gauls, and were called Pæonians by the Greeks,
from whom we likewise learn that they had a language of their own. The
Helvetians had submitted since the days of Julius Cæsar; of the
subjugation of the Rhætians and Vindelicians under Drusus and Tiberius,
we know but very little: the accounts which we have of it, are very
vague and confused. Yet Von Hormayr has made up a romance from them,
wishing to prove that Italian and German Tyrol ought to hold together:
the notion is a correct one, but is not to be deduced by treating
history in this way; nor did he do any good by it. It is evident that
the war was carried on by the Romans according to a regular plan; and
that the attacks were made from Italy, and on the other side from the
Lake of Constance. The Romans everywhere penetrated by degrees through
the inmost recesses of the Alps, where at that time there were no
carriage roads, but only footpaths, as was likewise the case in the
middle ages; and they so completely reduced those tribes, that they
never made an attempt to raise their heads again. It was then that
Augustus founded in Vindelicia the city of Augsburg, a colony of
veterans, like all the colonies which he now established. At this time,
they began to let the veterans settle where they had been encamped in
war; and thus they gradually became peaceful citizens: afterwards their
sons were liable to military service on better terms. As for the exact
period when this new arrangement began, I do not think that any thing
can be found about it in the ancient writers. Owing to these conquests
in the Alps, there now arose the German wars in 740: now first the
Romans could act on the offensive in Germany. The Sigambri, it is true,
had made before that an inroad into the country beyond the Rhine, from
whence they were driven back, but without any permanent result. Until
then, the Romans had never reached farther than the Westerwald; new they
attacked the Germans from the Lower Rhine and from the Danube: that they
never came to the Upper Rhine, but went up no higher than the Lahn on
the Lower Rhine, shows that Swabia was not as yet a German country, and
that it was first made so by the Alemanni. These wars we would gladly
detail more fully; but unfortunately Dio Cassius is mutilated here. In
the Venetian manuscript, from which the rest are derived, the gaps have
been disguised to take in the buyers, and this has been copied in all
the others: the defective fragments discovered and edited by Morelli,
but which are not found in the common editions, give one a little light,
but only very little. In one of these campaigns, as Roth conjectures,
Domitius Ahenobarbus may for the first time have crossed the Elbe in
Bohemia; whereas formerly most of the expeditions were led from the
Lower Rhine against the Elbe. Their wars were carried on by Nero
Claudius Drusus (the younger brother of Tiberius), who made three
campaigns: he crossed the Weser, and penetrated towards the Elbe. He
reduced the Bructeri, the Sigambri who were then so renowned, the
Cherusci and other tribes: this is all that we know of his wars. Nor in
any of these accounts is there once the name of a locality given; for
the enemy had no towns, and the villages were swept away, and are not
mentioned by the Romans: the Germans did not possess any strong places
in which they could hold out, and their only protection was the
impassable nature of the country. Being unable to stand their ground
against regular tactics, they were almost always beaten by the Romans in
the field; whole districts were laid waste, the women and children
dragged away into slavery, and the men hunted down and killed like wild
beasts. Although Drusus is praised for his humanity,—and considering
that he was a Roman, justly so,—yet he was ἀλιτήριος against Germany,
and he may have done the people as much harm as Varus himself did. He
died in his camp, Tiberius being strongly suspected of having been the
instigator of his murder: but this after all may only have been believed
on account of the hatred which he had against the family of his brother,
especially against Germanicus. At most, Tiberius might have been afraid
lest Drusus should dream _de reddenda re publica_, a fine day-dream
which Germanicus really fostered. Drusus had a monument on the Rhine,
which for generations was held sacred both by Romans and foreigners:
where it was is now unknown.
After his death in 745, Tiberius took the command. But soon afterwards
followed his absence of seven years, during which little happened except
that the Bructeri defeated the legate M. Lollius, annihilated his
legion, and took his eagles. When Tiberius returned from Rhodes, his
stepfather bestowed upon him the command in Gaul, that he might complete
the conquest of Germany. Tiberius subdued the Sigambri, Bructeri, and
Cherusci, and penetrated as far as the Elbe: there he was joined by the
Roman fleet, which had either been equipped in the Ems, or had come from
the Rhine to the Ems. How far it went up the Elbe cannot be made out; it
may be that it got as far as Magdeburg, yet the Roman galleys were not
able, like steam-boats, to run against the stream. After these
campaigns, Tiberius again left Germany, as his predecessor had done, and
as many of his successors did after him. The Romans wished to crush the
Germans; but it did not seem worth their while to keep the country.
Whilst the tribes about the Hartz, and in the Thuringian forest, had
their country invaded by the Romans, there existed in Bohemia the great
kingdom of Marbod, which is indeed a perplexing phenomenon: we read of a
large city in this realm, of an army of seventy thousand men, and of a
body guard. Moeser rightly observes, that one is not to believe the
Germans of those days to have been less civilized than the peasantry of
Westphalia and Lower Saxony are now; only they were wanting in the
refinement of those who live in towns:—their houses were certainly built
like the worse ones which we have; the dwellings of the princes were
very much the same as the buildings of the middle ages. Nothing is more
preposterous than to take them for rude savages, when they were merely
rough country people. Venantius Fortunatus, in his poem to Radagunda,
speaks of the fallen splendour of the kingdom of her house, and of the
bronze covered palaces of her forefathers, the Thuringian kings. There
were indeed some things different from what they are now: in winter, for
instance, they had certainly to burn candles by day, and when it rained
to shut up everything with boards, because they had no glass windows;
yet this was the case in Rome itself where there are houses of this kind
to this day. Marbod, however, must have really had a civilized kingdom.
He had immigrated with his Sueves into Bohemia, and subdued the Celtic
Boians there: his seventy thousand men betoken something feudal. Against
Marbod, Tiberius now armed himself; he meant to attack him on two sides,
himself advancing from Noricum and Vindelicia, and Sentius Saturninus
from the Rhine through Northern Germany, the Hercynian, and the
Thuringian Forests. The Romans made great preparations, laying down for
many miles, across the Dutch and Westphalian fens, large wooden
causeways and wooden bridges—the bridge over the Elbe near Hamburgh—of
which remains are found even to this day: the wood has stood exceedingly
well, except that it has become black in the bogs. It was then that the
consequences of the dissensions among the Germans began to show
themselves. The northern Germans did not trust Marbod, and were afraid
of losing by him their freedom, like the Marcomanni: these he had once
left in the lurch, and hence they were so broken down, that they could
not now come to his help. But whilst Tiberius was preparing himself for
the attack, Dalmatia and Pannonia revolted. During this insurrection
which lasted for three years, Marbod remained inactive: the Getæ also,
and the Dacians, who had formerly often crossed the Danube, and fallen
upon the Roman frontiers, now kept still, luckily for Rome, which
otherwise might have been brought into fearful trouble. Augustus, quite
appalled, trembled at the danger: it was reckoned that there were two
hundred thousand men able to bear arms among these tribes; two
Dalmatians, both of them called Bato, and a Pannonian, Pinnes, were
their leaders. Velleius, who served in this war, tells us of their high
state of civilization, especially of the Pannonians, nearly all of whom
had Roman manners and spoke Latin: they must have been very much akin to
the Romans, otherwise this would be hardly conceivable, as the Roman
dominion there was still so recent. In this war the rebels spread as far
as Macedonia, once driving back a Roman army which had come from Asia;
and it was only by the extraordinary bravery of their soldiers that the
Romans gained the victory after all. At last the nations fell out, and
one of the Batos treacherously gave up the Pannonian general Pinnes to
the Romans. The Pannonians were the first who submitted, and the Romans
seem to have granted them very favourable conditions. Tiberius was now
free to go against Marbod, who would have thus met with his punishment
for having kept aloof, had not another event taken place.
The whole of the country between the Rhine, the Westerwald, and the
Elbe, was about the year 760 brought under the rule of Rome: the Chauci,
who dwelt in East-Friesland and Oldenburg, and the other inhabitants of
the marshes were quite as much subdued as the Bructeri and Cherusci in
Westphalia Proper. Quintilius Varus, who was of an old and illustrious
patrician house, and an able general, but had made himself notorious for
his shameful rapacity, quite thought himself the governor of nations
which only recked fear and force. For him Arminius—whom we generally
call Hermann, but whose name was probably not this, but Armin—laid a
trap most cleverly. As things then stood, it was very difficult for the
Germans who had no towns, to make head against the Romans: the German
cavalry was superior to that which the Romans had of their own; but the
Gaulish cavalry, which had the advantage of better horses, and of more
complete armour, thenceforth constituted the flower of the Roman army,
in which it had such a preponderance, that the terms which belonged to
the cavalry service, were almost all of them of Celtic origin: so
paramount was Gallic influence on discipline! Cunning against tyranny is
all fair; so that I cannot blame Arminius in the least for what he did:
the Germans had been most unjustly made war upon by the Romans, whom
they could not possibly meet with open force. Arminius had in many Roman
campaigns served with German cavalry, and very likely had distinguished
himself in the Pannonian war: he was a perfect master of the Latin
tongue, had the Roman franchise, and the rank of a knight; and, by dint
of the greatest perseverance, he, as well as his fellow conspirators,
had gained the unbounded, and even childlike confidence of Varus. Varus
had made for himself a stationary camp, where, as in a Roman province,
he held a court of justice which was a means for enriching himself; like
the law-courts of the oppressive high bailiffs in Switzerland. The Roman
soldiers were wont to purchase leave of absence and discharge, as was
formerly the custom in the German army; for just as it was in France
before the revolution, they then only got part of their pay: thus there
might have been many of them roving about the country. There seemed to
be the most profound peace, and the Germans made Varus believe that they
felt indeed quite happy in their growing civilization; but when he was
thus off his guard, and a great part of the soldiers gone perhaps away
on furlough, some tribes in Lower Saxony revolted, as it had been
arranged; so that Varus was got to draw near those countries. The
conspirators persuaded him to turn off from the highways (_limites_)
which led from the Rhine to the Lippe, and through Westphalia as far as
the Weser;—these were straight roads cut through the woods, not yet
paved indeed, but laid with logs; and when he had ventured sufficiently
deep into the impassable forests, the insurrection broke out on all
sides. He then tried to get back to the _limes_, and above all, no
doubt, to the chief Roman stronghold in that part of the country, Aliso
on the Lippe, in the neighbourhood of Hamm. The spot where Arminius
routed Varus is no more to be ascertained: the only sensible way of
tracing it, is to find out the direction in which the roads may have
been laid down from the principal posts; yet even thus much cannot be
made out, as the difficulties were every where pretty nearly the same:
we might, however, perhaps take Cologne as such a starting point. It is
infinitely harder to give an opinion on this subject, than on Hannibal’s
passage across the Alps. On the first day, Varus was attacked on all
sides; he lost a good deal of baggage, and with much trouble entrenched
himself in a strong position for the night. The following day, he
continued his march; but his columns were already seized with panic, so
that in the evening when they wanted to pitch their camp, they were
scarcely able to make head against the enemy’s attack: Varus and several
of his chief officers, overcome by their despair, now put an end to
their lives, dreading the account which they would have to give. It was
then perhaps that Numonius Vala—very likely the one to whom Horace
addresses one of his Epistles[38]—and three _alæ_ separated themselves
from the infantry, and tried to cut their way out; but they also were
overpowered, as they deserved to be for having deserted their own
comrades. On the third day, the whole army was annihilated; three
legions and as many _alæ_ (the cavalry attached to a legion), together
with ten cohorts, were cut to pieces: a legion consisted of six thousand
foot, and three thousand horse. The Germans took an awful vengeance upon
their oppressors, in which there was moreover a great deal of
superstition, many of them being sacrificed to the gods.
Of this victory the Germans, owing to their want of union, could not
make the use which would have been desirable, and which Armin wished. It
is true that very many Roman forts were taken and destroyed, and much
besides may have been done, as the Romans have undoubtedly left many
disasters untold; yet notwithstanding all this, Nonius Asprenas kept the
left banks of the Rhine with two legions: the everlasting lamentable
dismemberment of Germany, checked in this case also its progress,
although its peoples tried to rise. Cædicius held out in Aliso, until at
last he found an opportunity, when the Germans were dispersed, of
fighting his way out with the rest of his brave men to the Rhine, where
he stopped the advance of the enemy. Owing to the victory not being
followed up on the side of the Germans, Germanicus was afterwards
enabled to wreak his vengeance in his unhallowed expeditions.
The news of the disaster of Varus came like a thunderbolt on Augustus,
who was one of those men who are given to fear the worst. At Rome it was
thought that the Germans would cross the river, and destroy the legions
on the Lower Rhine, and that the Gauls would also take up arms and unite
with the Germans; so that a war in the Alps seemed near at hand. No
doubt Augustus expected also that Marbod would rise; but the latter, who
had here an opportunity of gaining eternal glory, shamefully kept quiet,
for which he afterwards ended his days a prisoner at Ravenna. Augustus
wished to make a general levy; yet he met with great difficulty, owing
to the inconceivable aversion to military service which had all at once
arisen among the Italians: in Marius’ times one might have raised as
many legions as one wanted. Fathers maimed the hands of their children,
to make them unfit for service; soldiers were taken from the lowest
ranks of society; attempts were made to enlist freedmen; patrons were
induced to emancipate strong slaves on condition of their entering the
army: whereas formerly slaves were punished with death, if they presumed
to take unto themselves the honour of military service. Tiberius had
orders to set out in all haste for Gaul: Nonius Asprenas has the merit
of having checked the tide; Tiberius went on with the work. Afterwards,
Germanicus, the son of Drusus, was sent in his stead, who at once took
measures for an offensive war. But Augustus did not live to see it.
Augustus was now full of days, but his health had very much improved: he
had in fact, during the last third of his life, little or no illness at
all. Thus he had gently become an old man, and was quite under the
thraldom of his wife, who grew worse as she grew older, and shut out
from all access to him every one who was not subservient to her. Towards
her own son Drusus, she may indeed have had the feelings of a
step-mother; to Germanicus at least she bore a deadly hatred. Germanicus
and Agrippina were patterns of domestic excellence; their married life,
at a time when every trace of the virtues of home had been lost, when
elsewhere marriage was merely a bond of indifference, and often even of
hatred, was most remarkably beautiful:—it was because Germanicus was
fondly attached to his wife and his children, that he became an object
of hatred to his grandmother. Livia did not at all like Tiberius’ own
son Drusus, as he was too friendly with his adopted brother Germanicus,
though otherwise he had quite the character of his father. Augustus
passed the last years of his life in the consciousness of being
enthralled: he was unhappy in more than one respect, and in this life
already he had to suffer for many of his misdeeds; the overthrow of
Varus put him utterly beside himself. Tiberius was going to Illyricum,
and Augustus wished to meet him at Beneventum: he had passed several
summers at Capreæ in the bay of Naples, the most paradise-like spot in
the world, thus to recover from his cares and troubles, while the
mildness of the climate would prolong his life. Here he fell sick, and
was brought to Nola where he died on the 19th of August 765, fourteen
years after the birth of Christ. The Romans laid a great stress on his
having died the self-same day as that on which he had got the consulship
for the first time by force; and on his having had as many consulates as
Marius and Valerius Corvus together: to take any such things, is silly.
He died as sure in the possession of his rule as any king who was born
to a throne, and he gave his ring to Tiberius, who already had the
tribunician power: no sensible man could doubt that the latter would now
take the government upon himself.
The corpse was buried with almost godlike honours. From Nola to Bovillæ,
the decurions of the towns bore it on their shoulders; and the _equites
Romani_, from Bovillæ to the city itself. Tiberius and his son Drusus
spoke the funeral orations from the _rostra vetera_ and _nova_, near the
Curia Julia; and afterwards too, all such orations, and the
proclamations of the emperors, were delivered from the new _rostra_.
The extent of the Roman empire when Augustus died, was as follows. He
had once entertained the idea of conquering Britain; but he had given it
up. The empire, however, was not bounded by the Rhine, but Holland and
the adjoining Frisian countries were at that time under the power of the
Romans; farther to the south indeed, as far as the Lake of Constance,
the Rhine really formed the boundary, which from thence ran along the
Danube to Lower Mœsia. But here the Romans were not masters of the
river’s banks, as the Sarmatians often crossed it: the frontier was more
to the south; Tomi (Kustendji) actually lay outside of the contiguous
Roman empire. The so-called wall of Trajan,—it improperly bears that
name,—along the old branch of the Danube, the salt water near Peuce, was
very likely now built by Augustus; the country north of it, the
Sarmatians overran without resistance: in Trajan’s days, even Moldavia
and Wallachia, nay the whole range of land to the Dniester was subject
to the Roman sway. In Asia, Cappadocia was still a kingdom under Roman
supremacy; Armenia likewise in some measure acknowledged the _majestas
populi Romani_; the Parthians had very much abated of their pride, and
there were hostages of theirs among the Romans, whilst the standards of
Crassus had been given back by Phraates; it is of this that Virgil and
Horace speak: in a certain sense therefore, the dominion of Rome
extended to the borders of India. The real boundary, however, in the
East was the Euphrates: Syria, Egypt, Libya, and old Africa were Roman;
and the eastern part of the Numidian coast, which had Cirta for its
capital, was a Roman province. The Numidian kingdom had been overthrown
by Cæsar; but the learned Juba had by way of compensation been presented
by Augustus with western Algiers and Morocco, the realms of Bocchus. The
rule of the Romans reached beyond Fezzan; they might easily have come as
far as the negro countries. Those negro states on the rivers in the
interior of Africa, may at different times have acknowledged Rome’s
supremacy,—at least by embassies and tributes: we know of a caravan-road
to Fezzan and Cydamus; the Garamantes are the inhabitants of Garama in
Fezzan; (here there is a mistake in d’Anville’s map;) a short time ago,
Roman ruins and inscriptions were found there by Ouseley. Once, the
Romans had made an expedition against the Blemmyans in Dongola with
success; another, under Ælius Gallus, against Yemen on the Arabian
coast, was an utter failure.
The number of Roman citizens had very much increased in the western
provinces, from which also the legions were principally recruited. There
were in fact forty-seven legions, and a corresponding number of cohorts
under arms. In Italy, there were only levies in cases of emergency; and,
on the other hand, the army became more and more made up of the
_auxilia_ and cohorts. Far more than nine-tenths of it were certainly
new citizens. The franchise, however, was now of little worth; nor was
it even always attended with exemption from taxes.
As a civil law-giver, Augustus aimed at a different object from what
Cæsar did, who had wished to bring within bounds the wide range of the
Roman laws and to have them worked up into one grand whole; just as Peel
wants to do with the common law of England. This undertaking was very
praiseworthy, however perilous and thankless a task it may be to make
new codes of laws; but it is quite a different thing to bring the
existing laws into harmony with each other. Augustus’ legislation, on
the other, hand, was a new and arbitrary one. The _Lex Ælia Sentia_ is
to be commended: in other enactments, he was wishing to struggle against
the stream of custom and the monstrous immorality of the age. An
aversion had sprung up against lawful wedlock, and the citizens lived in
concubinage with their female slaves, whose children likewise became
slaves, and mostly remained so; or at best, became freedmen: thus the
free population had very considerably dwindled. One may say, that in the
guilds of the different crafts, nineteen out of twenty were freedmen;
this is shown by the names on the _alba_ found at Pompeii. Augustus was
quite right in setting his face against such a state of things; but the
way in which he did it in the _Lex Julia_ and the _Lex Pupia Poppæa_,
was by most wretched make-shifts which only betrayed how helplessly he
was striving against the stream: their definitions of honour, of the
_jus trium liberorum_, and such like were of no use.[39]