CHAPTER XXIX. THE EMPIRE AND THE PROVINCES

When Augustus entered upon secure possession of absolute power, the

Roman Empire included the fairest and most famous lands on the face of

the globe and all the civilised peoples of the ancient world found a

place in its ample bosom. It extended from the ocean on the west to the

Euphrates, from the Danube and the Rhine to the cataracts of the Nile

and the deserts of Africa and Arabia. And although, in the first decades

of imperial rule, a few tribes within its huge circumference had not

completely assimilated the system of Roman civilisation and law; although

in the Alps and Pyrenees, on the lower Danube and in the inaccessible

gorges of the Taurus some warlike races retained their savage freedom

and did not stoop their necks to the rods and axes of Rome, the mighty

mistress of the world--they offered but a futile defiance, better fitted

to assert and exercise the martial vigour of the legions than to inspire

the masters of the world with dread or set bounds to their dominion.

The wars which Augustus or his legates waged in the Cantabrian Mountains

of northwestern Spain, in the Alps and the wooded hills of Dalmatia,

merely served to consolidate the empire and strengthen its frontiers,

and gave the imperial ruler an opportunity of renewing the martial feats

and triumphs of the republic. The Spanish mountaineers were transplanted

to the plains and constrained to conduct themselves peaceably. Deprived

of their savage liberty, they accustomed themselves to agriculture

and social life; and the Spanish cities, endowed with privileges and

connected by highroads, soon became seats of Roman culture and spheres

of active influence in trade and commerce. The products of the soil, the

largess of the sea, the fruits of industry--oil and wine, honey and wax,

wool and salt fish--were exported in large quantities from the ports

of Spain and filled the seaboard cities with wealth. The fierce and

predatory tribes of the Alpine range, from Savoy and Piedmont to Istria,

were again and again smitten with the edge of the sword and forced to

submit; the newly founded military colony of Augusta Prætoria (Aosta),

in the country of the Salassians and at the junction of the Graian and

Pennine Alps, served thenceforward as a bulwark to the Roman possessions

in northwest Italy, after the stubbornness of the hardy mountaineers had

been broken by the carrying off of such men as were capable of bearing

arms to the slave market at Eporedia (Ivrea).

[Sidenote: [15 B.C.-7 A.D.]]

In the year 15 B.C. the free races of Rætia, Vindelicia, and Noricum were

conquered, from the Lake of Constance and the Valley of the Inn to the

Adriatic; and Tiberius led his legions from Gaul to the sources of the

Rhine, there to join hands with Drusus, the vigorous youth for whom was

reserved the honour of “ushering in the last hour of the liberty of the

mountains,” and who was then advancing from the south. A single campaign

sufficed to destroy forevermore the freedom of these disconnected

tribes, who had no national ties to unite them into a political entity.

A trophy on the southern slope of the mountain rampart proclaimed

to posterity that under the leadership and auspices of Augustus

four-and-forty nations, all mentioned by name, had been vanquished and

subjugated by the sword of Rome. The transportation of the most vigorous

elements of the population to foreign parts, the construction of Alpine

roads, the erection of fortresses and castella, and the founding of

military colonies (amongst which Augusta Vindelicorum, the present

Augsburg, and Regina Castra, the modern Ratisbon, quickly took the first

rank), secured these conquests and won fresh territory for the dominion

of Rome; so that in a short time all the land between the Danube and the

Alps was included in the provincial dominions of the Roman Empire.

At the same time the great stretch of country from Istria to Macedonia

and from the Adriatic to the Save was won for the empire; what had

hitherto been the maritime province of Illyricum was not only augmented

by the addition of the territory of the Iapydes (Iapodes) and Dalmatians,

but a station and magazine was established on the lower Danube by the

conquest of the Pannonian town of Siscia at the confluence of the Colapis

(Kulpa) and Save. In vain did the Iapydes defend their capital with the

courage of desperation; the emperor himself, though wounded in the thigh

and in both arms, prosecuted the attack until all men capable of bearing

arms had fallen in the fray, and the women, old men, and children had

perished either in the flames of the burning town or by their own hands.

In a very short time strong fortified lines were drawn through Pannonia

and Mœsia to the southern bank of the river, and presently a continuous

chain of fortresses under the charge of six legions prepared the way

for the acquisition of fresh provinces, and warded off the raids of the

northern barbarians.

The Thracian principalities south of the Hæmus sank into a more and

more dependent position. In the reign of Tiberius, Cotys, a gentle and

amiable prince, was murdered by his cruel uncle Rhescuporis. The widow

appealed to Rome, whereupon the perpetrator of the crime was deposed by

a decree of the senate, and the country divided between the sons of the

two kings. Under these circumstances the sovereignty of Rome struck ever

deeper root, till at length the last shadow of liberty and independence

vanished and the whole of Thrace was gathered into the ample bosom of the

world-empire.

The attempts at revolt made by the Pannonians and Dalmatians in the years

12 and 11 B.C. were savagely suppressed by Agrippa, and after his death

by his successor Tiberius. The deportation of the men capable of bearing

arms into slavery and the disarmament of the remainder re-established

quiet and submission for a long while. But the love of liberty was not

quelled in this warlike race. Infuriated by the extortions of Rome,

who--in the words of one of their leaders--sent “not shepherds and dogs,

but wolves, to tend the flocks,” and at the enlistment of their gallant

sons for service in foreign parts, the Dalmatians and Pannonians again

drew the sword in the year 6 A.D. to free themselves from the burdens of

taxation and military service.

The rebellion spread rapidly through the whole country; enterprising

leaders, two of whom bore the name of Bato, marched upon the Roman

fortresses of Sirmium and Salona, ravaging the land as they went, while

others harassed Macedonia with a large army. A bold troop of armed men

threatened to invade Italy by way of Tergeste (Trieste); a disquieting

agitation was abroad among the fierce Dalmatian and Sarmatian horsemen

of the grassy steppes beyond the Danube; Roman traders were robbed

and murdered. The alarm which took possession of the capital at these

woeful tidings, and the military activity aroused throughout all Italy,

sufficiently prove that Rome did not underestimate the danger that

menaced her from the East. Discharged veterans were again enrolled in the

legions, a slave tax was imposed to defray the cost of the war, peace was

concluded with Marboduus, the prince of the Marcomanni, whom the Romans

were on the point of attacking.

This devastating war, according to Suetonius the most terrible since the

Punic Wars, lasted for three years [7-9 A.D.]. Tiberius and his nephew

Germanicus, the son of Drusus, marched through the length and breadth of

Dalmatia and Pannonia--now tempting the fortune of war, now treading the

paths of treachery, and fostering discord by negotiations. After many

sanguinary battles Bato came to terms with the Romans for the surrender

of the impregnable mountain stronghold of Anderium, not far from Salona,

and went with his family to Ravenna, where Tiberius granted him a liberal

allowance to the end of his days, in recompense for his desertion of his

country’s cause.

The fortress of Arduba, built on a steep height and protected by a

turbulent river, held out longer; the most determined of the insurgents

had thrown themselves into it, together with a large number of deserters.

But its hour at length drew nigh. After the flower of the garrison,

having made a sortie, had fallen in a sanguinary fight at close quarters,

the survivors set fire to their homes and, with their wives and children,

sought death in the flames or in the foaming torrent. The other towns

then surrendered at discretion, and mute obedience settled once more on

all the land between the Adriatic and the lower Danube. But the country

was waste and inhabitants were few in the blood-sodden fields. The great

river from source to mouth soon formed the northern boundary of the

empire. The Thracian principalities were merged into the province of

Mœsia.

[Sidenote: [30 B.C.-14 A.D.]]

In Asiatic countries, too, there were many conflicts to be endured, many

complications to be unravelled, before the states and nations west of

the Euphrates bowed in awe and submission to the supremacy of Rome. The

order of things established by Pompey had indeed remained valid in law

down to the days of Augustus, but great changes had taken place in the

various states in consequence of the civil wars. The republicans Brutus

and Cassius, no less than the triumvirs Antony and Octavian, had requited

the friendly or hostile sentiments of princes, towns, and provinces with

rewards or penalties, had given or taken away privileges and dominion,

had bestowed or withdrawn their countenance according to merit or liking.

When Augustus appeared in the East, ten years after the battle of Actium,

native kingdoms, temporal principalities and hierarchies, free cities,

and other territorial divisions, occupying a more or less dependent

position towards Rome and bound to render her military service, still

existed, as in former times, side by side with the four Roman provinces

of Asia, Bithynia, Cilicia, and Syria. Many of these were deprived of

their previous status on various pretexts, and swallowed up in the

congeries of Roman provinces.

Thus, after the death of that able factionary Amyntas, the general and

successor of Deiotarus, Augustus created the province of Galatia out

of the major part of his possessions, adding to it first Lycaonia, and

later, after the death of Deiotarus Philadelphus, the grandson of the

famous Galatian king, the inland region of Paphlagonia. The Pontic

kingdom, together with Lesser Armenia, Colchis, and the seaboard towns of

Pharnacia and Trapezus, were ruled under favour of Antony and Octavian,

by the brave and prudent Polemon as the “friend and ally of the Roman

people,” and to these dominions he added the kingdom of the Bosporus,

the heritage of his wife Dynamis. After his death, his widow Pythodoris

bestowed her hand upon King Archelaus of Cappadocia, who likewise owed

his kingdom to the favour of Antony and Octavian and to his devotion to

Rome.

By this means the two kingdoms were united, and formed an excellent

barrier against the eastern barbarians. But this new creation was not

destined to last. Lesser Armenia and Cappadocia were merged into the

province of Cappadocia as early as the reign of Tiberius, after Archelaus

had died at Rome of fear at the charges brought against him in the senate

by the emperor, whose displeasure he had incurred, and the hieratic

principality of Comana was added to the same province. Under the rule of

Rome the ancient cities rose to great wealth and magnificence, especially

Nicomedia in Bithynia and Cæsarea in Cappadocia. Dioscurias and the

myth-haunted region about the Phasis became the centre of a far-reaching

commercial activity, the market of the world. There Roman merchants

bought wool and furs from northern lands, and precious stones, seric

(silken) garments, and luxuries from the far East.

Augustus and his successors endeavoured in like manner to unite the

disjointed provinces of southern Asia Minor and to range them under

the Roman provincial system. The confederacy of Lycia maintained its

existence and liberty for some decades longer as a “ruin of antique

times,” and Antony and Octavian exerted themselves to the best of

their ability to stanch the wounds which Brutus had inflicted. But

the confederacy, its prosperity shattered and its bonds loosened by

internal discords, was so far past recovery that its conversion into

a Roman province in the reign of Claudius seemed a boon. The province

of Cilicia was augmented by the addition of Pisidia and the island of

Cyprus. A Roman garrison was set to guard the “Cilician Gates” leading

to Syria, and Augustus committed to some native dependent princes the

work of conquering the robber tribes which dwelt in savage freedom

in the mountains and gorges of the Taurus and Amanus. These were not

incorporated into the actual dominions of Rome till the reign of

Vespasian.

After the battle of Actium, Syria with her subordinate provinces reverted

to her old position, which had been temporarily disturbed by the Parthian

invasions and the donations of Antony to Cleopatra and her children.

Four legions provided for internal tranquillity and security against

the neighbour races to the south and east. The northern mountain region

of Commagene, with the town of Samosata, the last relic of the Seleucid

empire, remained in possession of an independent prince for some time

longer, and at his death it was annexed to the province of Syria. A like

fate befell the district of Judea, which the Romans had long treated with

peculiar favour, for the Julian family was at all times well disposed

towards the Jews. After the death of King Herod, who had contrived to

gain and retain the favour and confidence of the emperor and Agrippa,

his son-in-law and general, by flatteries, presents, and services, the

kingdom of Judea, convulsed by party hatreds and dissensions, was also

merged, as we have seen, into the Roman world-empire. As a Roman province

it was put under the rule of a procurator, who, though nominally under

the control of the governor of Syria at Antioch, exercised most of

the prerogatives that pertained to proconsuls and proprætors in other

countries, in particular the power of inflicting capital punishment.

Judea was nevertheless for a long while the “spoiled darling of Rome”;

the people of God remained in possession of their faith, their laws, and

their nationality; they were exempted from military service and enjoyed

many rights and privileges in all countries.

The procurator (agent) for Judea resided at Cæsarea, the new port which

Herod had founded, and which rose rapidly to commercial prosperity under

Roman rule. Many foreigners settled there under the protection of the

Roman garrison, which had its headquarters in the seat of government. The

governor was subject in all military matters to the proconsul of Syria,

in so far that the latter was bound to come to his assistance in war if

appealed to. The inconsiderable garrison at Cæsarea and the small force

encamped at Jerusalem were only just sufficient to maintain tranquillity

and order in time of peace. At festivals, when great crowds gathered

together in Jerusalem, the governor himself went to the Holy City with an

army, and “probably disposed of a good deal of business in the supreme

judicature and other matters which had been deferred till then.” He then

resided in the prætorium, near the Antonia. He gave judgment from a lofty

judgment seat set up in a portico adorned with beautiful marble. The

trials took place in an inner court. The army had another camp in Samaria.

[Illustration: AUGUSTUS

(From a cameo)]

Though the Jewish nation had more liberty to manage its domestic

concerns under Roman rule than under the Herods, it found small relief

from the burden of taxes and customs. The Romans exacted a property tax

(a poll tax and ground rate), a duty on houses, market produce, and

many other imposts. The temple tax, on the other hand (assessed at two

drachmæ), was regarded as a voluntary rate and collected by priestly

officials, the Romans not concerning themselves about it. A general

census which Augustus caused to be made by P. Sulpicius Quirinus, knight

and proconsul, after he had taken possession of the country (about 10

A.D.), with a view to finding out how much the country could annually

yield to the revenue in proportion to its population, the acreage under

cultivation, and other circumstances, was the first thing that gave deep

offence to the orthodox among the Jews.

The small dominions which Augustus and his family left to be administered

as vassal states by the Herod family--such as the northeastern district

with the old town of Paneas, first ruled by the upright and able Herod

Philip, who expanded Paneas into the great city of Cæsarea (Philippi);

and Galilee and Perea, the heritage of the subtle and greedy tetrarch

Antipas, (commonly called Herod) the fulsome flatterer of the Romans, and

founder of the cities of Sepphoris (Diocæsarea) and Tiberias--were merged

into the Roman world-empire some decades later by the failure of heirs

to the subject dynasty. On a journey to Jerusalem the last-named prince,

Antipas, the Herod of the Gospels, became enamoured of Herodias, the

beautiful wife of his half-brother Philip, herself a member of the Herod

family, and prevailed upon her to leave her husband and bestow her hand

upon himself.

This criminal marriage bore evil fruit for the tetrarch. His former wife

fled to her father, the Arab prince of Petra, and urged him on to make

war upon her faithless husband, who allowed himself to be led in all

things by Herodias, and heeded the sullen disaffection of his people

as little as the open rebukes of the preacher of repentance, John the

Baptist. In the reign of Caligula, Antipas was deprived of his kingdom

on the indictment of his cousin and brother-in-law Herod Agrippa, and

banished with his wife, Herodias, to Gaul, where they both died. Under

the emperor Claudius, however, Herod Agrippa, grandson of Herod the

Great, who had been brought up at Rome, again gained dominion over Judea

and Samaria, and maintained his authority for three years (41-44). An

adventurer and soldier of fortune, and a favourite and flatterer of the

Cæsars by turns, he was smitten with a horrible disease while looking

on at the games in the circus, shortly after a persecution of the

Christians, and succumbed to it in a few days.

The deserts in the southeast of the province of Syria were inhabited

by free Arab tribes, which from the earliest times had led a roving

and predatory life. Augustus acted as Pompey had done before him; he

concluded a treaty and alliance with Malchus of Petra, the Nabatæan

prince and successor to Aretas, and with the chieftain Iamblichus of

Emesa, whose father, another Iamblichus, had been executed by Antony,

guaranteeing to them the possession of their paternal inheritance on

condition that they should ward off the predatory incursions of the

sons of the desert. An attempt made by Ælius Gallus, governor of Egypt,

to subjugate Arabia Felix in the year 24 ended miserably. The glare of

the sun and the perils of the climate soon scared the invaders away and

protected the natives from the Roman swords. The general of the Nabatæan

prince, who had conducted the desert campaign, paid for his supposed

treason with his life; but the disloyalty of the servant was not laid to

his master’s charge.

Rome had still an affair of honour to settle with the Parthians; the

day of Carrhæ was not yet requited and the blood of Crassus and his

comrades cried for vengeance. Augustus nevertheless cherished no desire

to expose himself and his legions to the darts of the iron horsemen.

In this instance fortune again proved his ally. Parthia and Armenia,

which at that time stood in intimate relations with one another, were

distracted with quarrels over the succession. Tigranes, son of the

unhappy Artavasdes, appealed for Roman aid against Artaxias, the nominee

of the Parthian king. Tiberius invaded Armenia with an army, and bestowed

the throne on the protégé of Rome, Artaxias having been slain by the

natives at the general’s coming (20 B.C.). This catastrophe filled the

Parthian king with apprehensions that the Romans might declare for the

pretender Tiridates, and procure for himself a like fate with Artaxias.

He therefore complied with the demands of Augustus and restored the Roman

ensigns and the prisoners who had been detained in the far East ever

since the disaster of Carrhæ. The emperor celebrated the restoration

of the eagles by a sacrificial feast, as if it had been a victory, and

dedicated a temple to Mars the Avenger.

But Armenia attained to no lasting tranquillity; at one time it was

dominated by Roman influence, at another the Parthians gained the upper

hand; kings were installed and exiled, quarrels for the throne and party

feuds filled the land. Under Nero, the Parthian king Vologeses I set his

brother Tiridates on the throne of Armenia, and thus fanned the embers of

war between the Romans and Parthians to a blaze.

The perfidious Armenians themselves supplied occasions of strife by

invoking the aid of Rome on the one hand to save themselves from falling

completely under the sway of their eastern neighbour, and favouring the

Parthians on the other, lest they should be oppressed by Rome. In local

situation and similarity of manners they were, as Tacitus observes, more

closely akin to the Parthians, with whom they intermarried freely; and

were inclined to servitude by reason of their ignorance of liberty. At

this time Domitius Corbulo won great renown and revived the terror of

the Roman arms, even under the vilest of the emperors. Having restored

discipline among the legions, he victoriously invaded the mountain

country, took its principal towns, Artaxata and Tigranocerta, and set

up a certain Tigranes as a Roman claimant to the throne and a rival to

the Parthian pretender (58 B.C.). Tigranes and his successor, a scion of

the Herod family, held their ground for five years by the aid of Rome;

then the Parthians regained the ascendency and again bestowed the throne

on their own candidate Tiridates, Cæsennius Pætus, Corbulo’s successor,

being powerless to prevent this revolution. But when Corbulo himself

advanced once more into Armenia with his army the Parthians despaired of

being able to hold their own in defiance of Rome. They therefore effected

a compromise. In an interview with Corbulo, Tiridates consented to lay

down his royal fillet before the emperor’s image and to receive it back

from his hand at Rome. From that time forward the peace of the Eastern

provinces long remained undisturbed.

In the province of Asia little alteration was made in the existing state

of things, the privileges of certain cities were increased or curtailed

according to the position they had taken up during the civil wars, and

restrictions were imposed on the right of sanctuary of the Ephesian

Diana, which had made the city a harbourage for criminals. The fresh

vigour which Augustus infused into the disordered commonwealth produced

a splendid aftermath of prosperity in the ancient seats of civilisation.

Under the sway of order, that “bounteous daughter of heaven,” the

peaceful arts rose to fresh glory, and in the first century of the

empire the province of Asia contained five hundred populous cities. From

the Greek islands the Romans imported articles of luxury and sensuous

enjoyment; Parian and Phrygian marbles for their gorgeous buildings; the

wine of Chios, the sea fish of Rhodes, and the game of Asia Minor for

their epicurean banquets. Ephesus and Apamea were the marts and emporiums

for the produce and artistic productions of the East. Thence the Roman

merchant brought his fine Babylonian tissues, his Arabian and Persian

incense and ointments, his robes of Tyrian purple. In the island of Cos

were made the fine female garments which displayed rather than concealed

the limbs, the “Coan robes” against which Seneca so vehemently inveighs.

The provinces of Achaia and Macedonia underwent no great change; they had

both long since grown accustomed to the Roman rule, and though the former

(which embraced the territory of ancient Greece up to the Cambunian and

Ceraunian mountains and the islands of the Ægean Sea) had not, like the

latter, renounced all interest in political life, but had sided with

one party or the other in the wars of the Roman despots, the Romans

of those days were too ardent admirers of Greek culture to visit the

transgressions of individuals upon the mother of humane studies as Sulla

had done. Cæsar, Antony, and Augustus forgot with equal magnanimity the

support which Pompey and Brutus had found amongst the fickle Hellenes,

and requited their misdeeds with benefits. Augustus, however, tempered

the full flood of favour which Antony had outpoured upon Athens, by

emancipating the island of Samos, where he had several times made a

long stay. But great as was the consideration extended to Hellas, her

vital force was broken; she had lost the capacity of rising to healthy

political life.

Augustus devoted the closest attention to his adoptive father’s Celtic

conquests and his own acquisitions on the Nile. The wide region of

Gaul, on the far side of the Alps, received its first stable provincial

organisation at his hands. Cæsar, its conqueror, had not had time

to secure and consolidate what his sword had won by a permanent

organisation; the old system of local divisions was still in force,

taxation was unequal and arbitrary. Augustus put an end to this lax

condition of things; in an assembly of the most distinguished chiefs

and elders at Narbo he defined afresh the divisions of the country, and

at the same time undertook a census of the inhabitants and their landed

property, with a view to a more equitable distribution of the public

burdens.

Three new provinces were added to the old provincial territory, which

last bore from that time forth the name of Narbonensian Gaul. They

were Aquitania, from the Pyrenees and Cevennes to the Loire; Gallia

Lugdunensis, between the Loire, Seine, and Marne, and extending to

Lugdunum on the east; and Belgica, the great northern tract, in

which the Sequani and Helvetii were also included. The new towns of

the Rhone--Vienna, Lugdunum, Augustodunum (Autun), and Burdigala

(Bordeaux)--soon vied with the old province in wealth, commercial

activity, and culture, with Massilia, Nemausus, Arelate, and Narbo.

Lugdunum (Lyons), whither the military roads led from every side, rose

to great importance. At the point where the Araris (Saone) mingles

with the Rhodanus the Gallic tribes erected a magnificent memorial and

temple to the emperor Augustus, and the anniversary of its dedication

was thenceforth kept as a national holiday, with musical and gymnastic

entertainments.

In the north, Augusta Trevirorum (Trèves) became the centre of Roman

civilisation; under the benediction of peace agriculture, industry,

and prosperity arose on all sides. The country on the left bank of the

Rhine, inhabited for the most part by German tribes, was placed under

a separate military administration under the name of Upper and Lower

Germania. To guard the Rhenish frontier from the warlike Germans, strong

permanent camps and bulwarks were erected along the river, and the army

of occupation was gradually raised to eight legions. Then began the

building of cities on the banks of the beautiful frontier river. Cologne

was specially favoured by exemption from taxes and other privileges.

Augustus devoted the same care and circumspection to the ordering of

his possessions beyond the Mediterranean. The territory of Carthage and

the kingdom of Numidia, formerly divided into two proconsulates, were

now united to form the province of “Africa.” This was bordered on the

west by the independent kingdom of Mauretania, which Augustus after some

hesitation bestowed upon Juba, a loyal and devoted subject prince, till

the time came for its incorporation into the world-empire in the reign of

Claudius. To the east of the great Syrtis the fertile region of Cyrene

stretched right to the borders of Egypt, and was combined with Crete to

form a second province.

If Augustus left these two provinces to be administered by the senate, he

kept his own grasp all the more firmly upon the province of Egypt, which

extended from the oasis of the desert to the Arabian Gulf, and from the

river delta to the rocky mountains of Syene. A military advanced post in

Ethiopia was withdrawn at a later time, for it was no part of Augustus’

scheme to enlarge the borders of the empire. The emperor regarded Egypt

as his own special domain and watched over it jealously. No senator was

allowed to travel through the country without his express permission;

the administration and the supreme command of a very considerable army

of occupation were in the hands of a trustworthy man who possessed his

full confidence. The care which Augustus bestowed upon agriculture,

irrigation, and trade was well repaid by the fertility of the country and

its advantageous situation. In the first period of Roman dominion Egypt

attained a height of prosperity which threw the years of the Pharaohs and

Ptolemies into the shade.

Egypt not only became the granary of the hungry populace of the

capital, but its fine garments of linen and cotton were highly prized

commodities, even as they had been in the remote past; while the passion

for scribbling which possessed the Romans made the papyrus leaf an

important article of export. Moreover Alexandria was the emporium and

mart for both Indian and Arabian wares, for delicate fabrics of cotton,

from the ordinary calico to the most valuable tissues which constituted

the costliest dress of Roman women and were even the chosen wear of

effeminate men. These last were called Seric robes, and were made from a

product of the silkworm, the genesis and local habitation of which was

shrouded in mysterious obscurity all through antique times.

More than a hundred Roman merchantmen sailed yearly from the Red Sea to

the west coast of India and the Persian Gulf, to procure in their native

places the treasures of the tropics and the costly wares of eastern

lands and seas--spices and drugs, incense and myrrh, odorous ointments

and dyestuffs, ivory, precious stones, pearls, and other articles of

luxury--to sell at a great profit in Rome and Baiæ and the splendid seats

of the nobility. The Seric (Chinese), Indian, and Arabian commodities

which annually found their way through Alexandria to Italy are said to

have amounted in value to over £1,440,000 or $7,200,000. But this great

prosperity redounded less to the advantage of the natives than of the

ruling race.

The oppressive system of taxation introduced by the Ptolemies was still

in force, and became so intolerable in course of time that the people

repeatedly had desperate recourse to violent remedies, thus merely

increasing their own misery and helping the province forward on the

road to poverty, decay, and desolation. The succeeding emperors were

constantly under the necessity of carrying on campaigns in the Nile

region, on account of the mischief done by the bucoles or cattle-herds,

those numerous robber bands which dwelt in the impenetrable reed-swamps

on the middle arm of the Nile, keeping their women and children safe on

small barges and themselves undertaking hostile raids on the neighbouring

districts, in defiance of all forms of civil order.

In all this regulation and organisation we can plainly trace the plan of

a sagacious ruler, who intended to put an end to the lax conditions that

prevailed under the republic, with its exactions and arbitrary dealings,

to check offences against property, and to mould the state into a durable

monarchical form. What Cæsar had begun in times of violent agitation and

party strife, his more fortunate successor accomplished on a magnificent

scale under more peaceful circumstances. Protected from oppression and

ill treatment by laws and ordinances, the provinces rose to renewed

prosperity; many of them like Gaul, Spain, and the Alpine tribes now

entered for the first time upon a political and civilised existence

worthy of the name.

The Hellenic states could not struggle to the height of their former

greatness under the iron hand of Rome, but the fault lay chiefly in

the weakness they had brought upon themselves before the days of Roman

supremacy by their suicidal fury. Their part in history was played out,

and they slowly perished of the wounds inflicted by their own hands.

“It was beyond the power of Rome to renew the youth and creative energy

of intellect in the Greek races,” says Hœck, “but what she had to give

she gave. She preserved Anterior Asia from the worst of fates, that of

falling a prey to the eastern barbarians; she saved the aftermath of

Hellenic culture, and procured for this nation, as for others, a pleasant

private life in the evening of its ancient historic existence.”

By judicious regulation and admirable administration the monarchy healed

the wounds which the free commonwealth had inflicted upon the subject

countries. “The time was gone by when the right of the victor brought

an endless train of the vanquished to the capital and when Rome took

for her own the most glorious works of foreign art, the creations of a

nobler age and race.” The requisitions and imposts were not small, the

land tax and property tax, the poll tax and other subsidies, levied from

the provincials in the senatorial provinces by quæstors for the _ærarium_

or state treasury, in the Cæsarian provinces by procurators for the

imperial privy purse and military exchequer. Under the empire as under

the republic the mines and the port and frontier duties were claimed by

the government. And the obligation of military service was occasionally

burdensome. Yet all these drawbacks were far more than counterbalanced by

the state of order and equity which Augustus endeavoured to establish in

all parts. The proconsuls and procurators were appointed either by the

absolute authority of the emperor or with the concurrence of the senate,

were responsible to the former for their conduct in office, and had fixed

salaries and allowances for equipment and travelling expenses.

The orderly business departments opposed a barrier against encroachments

and arbitrary dealings on the part of governors or their legates and

minor officers, and provided the appeal to the imperial tribunal as a

protective measure. The civil and military supremacy of the emperor

kept provincial officials within bounds. It became customary to commute

payments in kind (tenths of grain, fifths of the vintage and oil harvest)

into payments in money based on average prices and a moderate estimate;

the burden of military service and taxation was mitigated by means of the

exemption accorded to particular districts and communities, by security

from devastating wars and hostile incursions, and by the fact that the

leading positions and military honours were open to all.

Augustus laid the foundation of the great system of roads, which

connected the provinces with one another and with imperial Rome. Military

roads, the construction and extent of which fill us with admiration

to this day, gave facilities for traffic in all directions. They were

adorned with milestones, all of which took their start from the golden

milestone which Augustus himself had set up in the midst of the Forum,

and provided with stations (mutationes) and hostelries (mansiones),

the former for changes of couriers or horses and conveyances,--for

the military roads were also used for the state post organised by the

emperor,--the latter for accommodation at night. Means of transit by

water were also increased, and distance ceased to form a gulf of

separation. Armies could move with great rapidity from any part of

the empire to any destination, and the emperor’s commands could be

transmitted to the remotest regions. Daily journals carried the news of

what occurred at Rome in the briefest possible time to all quarters of

the world; Rome was the centre of the empire and the heart of the body

politic.

The careful scheme of colonisation which Augustus undertook after the

example of Cæsar and carried out on an immense scale, and which was

also pursued by succeeding emperors, contributed above all things to

disseminate Roman culture, speech, and jurisprudence, and to impress

a uniform character upon the whole of the great empire. The results

of imperial colonisation were in the highest degree beneficial. For

while in barbarous lands they sowed in virgin soil the seeds of a noble

civilisation and a workable system of law and political organisation,

they infused fresh vigour into old and moribund civilisations and

furnished them with stable political and judicial institutions; thus

supplying the men of the toga who were dispersed all over the whole

empire with a centre and fulcrum for their commercial and industrial

activity. At the same time they offered the emperor the most satisfactory

means of providing for his discharged legionaries and establishing

settlements of impoverished Romans and Italians.

To add a greater attraction to this emigration beyond sea the colonies

were as a rule endowed with the full rights of Roman citizenship, and

rendered capable of a free and dignified political existence. They were

exempted from the jurisdiction of the local governor, they elected their

own town council and magistrates in common assembly, their suits were

decided according to Roman law, and in short the colony was a Rome in

miniature, a daughter plantation, where the language, religion, customs,

and social habits of the mother city grew up in wholesome soil, and the

various elements of the population united under the ægis of equality of

political and civil rights to form a single municipal community.

If the foreign element preponderated in any provincial town, or if, for

other reasons, it was undesirable or impracticable to rank it among

Roman colonial cities, it was admitted to the status of a _municipium_.

These latter possessed the rights of Roman citizenship and were assigned

to a _tribus_ like the colonies, but they differed from them in their

municipal and magisterial system and sought justice according to their

local laws and legal formulæ and not according to Roman institutions.

They were free cities in which few Romans lived, if any. As a rule their

constitution was based on that of the Italian municipal organisation. In

every province there were municipia of this character, and in organising

them local tradition was treated with the utmost consideration. They

promoted the civilisation of the natives, disposed them favourably

towards Roman institutions, and familiarised them with Roman life.

Everywhere imperial Rome was sedulous to transmit to the provinces

the organisation, constitution, and legal system which had been

perfected in Italy through the course of centuries, and to gain over

the various communities by granting them a privileged position before

the law, exempting them from the jurisdiction of the local governor,

or lightening the burden of taxation. In Spain, Gaul, and other less

civilised countries she endeavoured to bind the several communities

to their allegiance to Rome by enrolling them among the municipia, or

exempting them from the land tax by the bestowal of the _jus Italicum_,

or by admitting them under the “Latin law” which insured to the communal

magistrates the honorary freedom of the dominant city and conferred

on such communities the rights of ownership over the soil, freedom of

commerce and autonomous municipal administration. On the other hand, the

Greek cities in Hellas, which prized highly the glorious names of liberty

and autonomy even after they had long become empty sounds, were won over

by being elevated to the rank of “free cities,” a distinction flattering

to their national vanity, which privileged them to manage their own

municipal affairs, to elect their own magistrates, and to maintain their

national laws and judicial procedure, while it relieved them of the

burden of maintaining garrisons and having soldiers billeted upon them

and secured to them the right of coinage and the ownership of the soil.

Thus were the provinces compassed about with a network of varying

conditions, which linked them to Rome by every kind of tie. Even if the

old policy of “_divide et impera_” lay at the bottom of this diversity of

legal status, better conditions being held out as the reward of loyalty,

devotion, and service to the supreme government, as a means of attaching

the influential and ambitious to the Roman interest, yet this provincial

organisation was a logical outcome of the political and juridical system

developed under the republic.

The Roman government did not aim at uniformity or centralisation.

Augustus and his immediate successors merely transferred to their

provincial dominions the typical organisation evolved by the senate

for the races and communities of Italy, and the relations of the

various communities with Rome were ordered according to their conduct

and loyalty by contracts and concessions. Every grade of political

rank was represented, from the full rights of Roman citizenship in the

colonies and municipia to the Italian and Latin law of the emancipated

communes and the status of the subject cities, which last were

under the jurisdiction of the local governor in all public affairs,

whether administrative or judicial. Even these retained a shadow

of self-government and independence in the right of electing their

civic magistrates, subject to certain restrictions, in the unhindered

continuance of religious and communal associations, and the ownership of

municipal property.

Thus in all parts of the provinces we come upon evidences of revived

prosperity, a well-ordered state of things in legal matters, and a

society animated by interests of commerce, industry, and art. Where

writers are mute, the splendid monuments of architecture, the remains

of temples and public halls, theatres and amphitheatres, baths and

aqueducts, bear witness with no uncertain voice.

It was otherwise in the capital and in Italy. Here also the monarchy

succeeded to the heritage of the republic, but found a condition of

social disorder past remedy. Agrarian distress and conflict, which

had been at work since the days of the Gracchi, consumed the vigour,

prosperity, and vital spirits of the races of middle and lower Italy. The

civil wars with their proscriptions and confiscations, the settlement of

brutalised soldiers, unfit for agriculture and the labours of peace, in

the most beautiful and fertile regions, the cultivation of the fields

by hordes of slaves, and the absorption of large districts into private

estates or _latifundia_, had almost annihilated the free peasant class

of earlier times and had filled the peninsula with an alien population,

bound to the soil by no ties of affection or association, linked by no

natural piety to the paternal roof or the inherited acres. The honest,

industrious, and thrifty peasantry of primitive times had vanished,

the ownership of the soil had passed, in part, into the hands of the

rich, who transformed the arable land into parks and gardens, groves and

fish-ponds, for the adornment of their country-seats, or who, from greed

of gain, used them as pasture for their flocks and herds, or as vineyards

and olive gardens, with a view to the trade in wool, wine, or oil; in

part, they had been assigned to veterans as a recompense for military

service. In the places where free peasant families had led a quiet life

in numerous villages and homesteads, and had cultivated their cornfields

with assiduous industry, might now be seen the dungeon-like lodgings of

purchased slaves or the half-ruinous dwellings of foreign legionaries,

who reluctantly and sullenly applied themselves to unfamiliar labours and

cares.

To add to the general wretchedness, numerous robber bands infested the

country, and constituted a danger to liberty, life, and property. In

the fair and fruitful valley of the Po alone, but recently incorporated

into the Roman body politic, prosperity and security prevailed amidst

settled conditions, and trade and industry flourished in populous cities.

Patavium, Cremona, Placentia, and Parma provided Italy with woollen cloth

and carpets, and supplied the army with salt meat.

The state of things in the capital was no more satisfactory. More

than half of the inhabitants--estimated at this time at about two

millions--belonged to the slave class, and were dispersed in the houses

and villas of the wealthy, where they performed the various offices

indispensable in a great household. These included not merely the tasks

and services which fall to the share of domestics and menials among

ourselves, but such functions as in modern times are left to artisans;

such as the making of clothes, the preparation of food-stuffs, building,

and the manufacture of household utensils. This multitude of slaves

ministered to the luxury and ease of the senatorial or knightly families.

The number of the latter can at no time have amounted to more than ten

thousand, and many of them, in all likelihood, did not possess much

more than the fortune required by law--1,200,000 sesterces [£6,912 or

$34,560] for a senator, and the third part of this sum for a member of

the knightly class.

[Illustration: STATUE OF AUGUSTUS IN THE VATICAN]

The whole body of the population then remaining (some 1,200,000 souls)

consisted of the free inhabitants of the metropolis, most of whom lived

from hand to mouth without any definite means of support. Of these a

large proportion were aliens and freedmen. Almost the only occupations

open to them were retail trading and traffic in the necessaries of daily

life, or posts as subordinate clerks and officials; for most trades and

manufactures were carried on by slaves for their masters’ profit, while

wholesale trade and financial affairs were almost entirely in the hands

of knights and revenue farmers, who frequently took up their abode in the

large provincial cities for this purpose. Consequently, great as were

the riches which poured into the metropolis every year from all quarters

under heaven, there was no well-to-do middle class, the groundwork of

every healthy political society; the influx of wealth only increased the

luxuries and enjoyments of the aristocratic class, the gulf between the

senatorial and knightly nobility and the populace of the capital was

nowhere bridged over, nor was there any transition or compromise between

the palaces of ostentatious and gormandising luxury and the hovels of the

poverty-stricken and starving masses.

The dying republic had suffered under this incongruity, and whatever

efforts Augustus might make to mitigate the evil, it was too deep-seated

to be radically cured. The number of citizens who had to be maintained

by regular donations of provisions from the public storehouses and by

charitable gifts amounted to half a million, and yet this aid was but an

inadequate makeshift; many of those disqualified to receive it were in no

better case. There were thousands of free Romans who had no shelter but

the public halls and colonnades of the temples, whose hopes were set upon

the luck of the next minute, whose cares did not extend beyond the coming

morrow.

The distress was the less capable of remedy because, under the most

galling circumstances, the free Roman cherished the proud consciousness

that he was a member of the ruling race, and was withheld by his innate

pride of nationality and hereditary prejudice from the humble tasks

which furnished the alien, the freedman, and the slave with a tolerable

livelihood and occasionally with wealth. He felt it less disgraceful to

starve or live upon alms and gifts than to labour with his hands; he

scorned the physical toils of agriculture and handicraft, and the trouble

of serving another; but he had no scruples about begging for his living,

and regarded the distributions of corn and the popular entertainments as

no more than his due. The free beggar looked haughtily upon the bedizened

slave, whose alms he took as he would have taken the fruit of the

woodland tree or the draught from a spring. The easy life of the capital

attracted needy and indolent persons from all parts of Italy to Rome, the

city swarmed with beggars and vagrants, with idlers and proletarians, who

all claimed their maintenance from the state.

Augustus, like Cæsar before him, strove to remedy these evils to the

best of his power. To reduce the hungry rabble in the capital he devised

methods of emigration to the colonies and established settlements on

property purchased out of the public funds; he restricted the number of

recipients of corn by a careful scrutiny of the material circumstances

of the applicants and by the exclusion of all aliens, non-citizens, and

abusers of the public bounty. But all these restrictions were palliatives

merely; the sources of misery were not stopped. The provisioning of

the capital with cheap corn was one of the most onerous duties of the

government. That he might more directly control the regular supply

from the “grain provinces” of Sicily, Africa, and Egypt, Augustus

caused the office of “cereal prefect,” which Pompey had once held, to

be conferred upon himself, and then appointed a permanent bureau to

manage and superintend the importation of corn, the markets, and the

public storehouses from which the indigent populace monthly drew their

fixed allowance on presentation of a counter. In times of scarcity and

want, such as not unfrequently occurred, the distributions were made

on a larger scale, and every joyful or propitious event was a welcome

opportunity for the emperor to purchase the favour of the populace with

gifts and pecuniary donations.

Augustus devoted the same attention to other parts of the Italian

peninsula. He endeavoured to recover waste districts for agriculture

and industry by establishing settlements, and made use of rewards and

privileges as inducements and incitements to energy. He cleared the

country of robber bands by squadrons and armed watchmen, protected the

coast towns from pirates, and by a careful examination of slave-tenements

(_ergastula_) set at liberty all freeborn persons who had been kidnapped

and sold into slavery by these roving gangs. With the establishment of

the monarchy, Italy, like the provinces, entered upon a new life, and

there also the restoration of security and order brought vigour and

prosperity into being. The twenty-eight colonies which Augustus peopled,

partly with veterans, and partly with Roman and Italian settlers of the

poorer class, were furnished with a suitable legal and political status.

Their municipal constitution was modelled on that of Rome, and served

in its turn as a model for the other municipia and prefectures of the

peninsula. Beside their local rights of citizenship they all possessed

the _civitas_ or freedom of Rome; they all had the right of electing

their officers and chief magistrates (_decuriones_) in the assembly of

the people, the autonomous administration of communal property, freedom

of worship according to their hereditary ritual and solemnities, and

their own judicature according to Roman law; and any burgess removing

to Rome ranked in all things on the same footing as the old freemen of

the capital. The differences of legal status which at first prevailed

gradually disappeared under the empire; all provincial towns occupied

the same relative position towards the capital, and approximated to each

other by degrees in their individual organisation and administration.

Everywhere we come upon a college of decuriones or civic

magistrates,--composed of a greater or lesser number of members

elected from among the wealthiest citizens or supplemented from the

government departments of the city,--which gradually absorbed all

authority and constituted the supreme governing body of the municipium,

under the presidency of two or four chief magistrates (_duumviri_

or _quatuorviri_). In the prefecture cities the control of the

administration and judicature was vested in a prefect annually appointed

by Rome, under whom a number of elective municipal officers managed the

current affairs of the city. The magistracies of all provincial towns

were modelled, both as to titles and departments, upon those of the

capital. The heads of the decuriones exercised jointly the functions

of consuls and prætors, and were attended in public by lictors with

fasces; the public revenue and expenditure was controlled by quæstors,

ædiles superintended the markets and retail trades and were responsible

for the town police; censors kept the lists of burgesses and the census

records. In questions of criminal law, however, the decisive sentence was

usually pronounced at Rome. The imperial court of appeal was the court of

highest instance for the whole empire. In upper Italy, which Cæsar had

been the first to transfer from the position of a province to that of an

integral part of the Roman state and jurisdiction, the administration of

justice in civil affairs--left in older municipalities to the municipal

courts--was subject to considerable restriction.

The rigid rule of the monarchy and the exact organisation and strict

supervision of the municipal authorities obviated the danger of revolts

and serious disturbances among the populace, and Italy (the capital and

its vicinity only excepted) was clear of garrisons. The naval forces

stationed at Ravenna and Misenum served to protect the coast and maritime

towns, and in the hour of danger a sufficient army could always be

summoned from Dalmatia and Pannonia. The imperial guard of prætorians (of

which three cohorts consisting of one thousand men apiece were quartered

in Rome, and the other six in the neighbouring towns) was mainly

composed of Italians. It shared with a German and Batavian troop of horse

the duty of guarding the palace and the sacred person of the monarch.

It is in the nature of every monarchical system of government to bring

all conditions into congruity, to smooth over the diversities which

prevail among its subjects, and to impress the stamp of uniformity upon

the whole state. This was the case in the organisation of both provinces

and municipalities, for in spite of modifications of legal status they

were all cut upon the same pattern and organised according to definite

classes. The same thing took place in financial affairs and taxation.

During the republican period Rome and Italy had enjoyed a privileged

position, and foreign countries had been exploited for the advantage

of the dominant race. The principate, on the contrary, endeavoured to

bring about an equalisation of duties and contributions as well as of

privileges. The customs dues, which formerly applied only to subject

countries, were extended to Italy under the monarchy, part of the

proceeds being allotted to the public revenue and part to the Italian

municipalities; the property tax, from which Italy had been exempt in the

later days of the republic, was likewise introduced throughout the empire

on the basis of the census or rating of property; an excise duty was

levied for the fiscus (imperial privy purse) upon all articles imported

into Italy for sale, amounting to one per cent. of the price, and two or

even four per cent. in the case of slaves; the twentieth part of every

inheritance which did not fall by right to the next of kin had to be paid

into the military treasury, and a tax was imposed on the manumission of

slaves.

If the revenues of the state were increased by these means under

the empire the improvement was mainly due to sounder financial

administration, to the abolition of revenue farming for the regular land

tax and property tax in subject countries, and to the strict control

exercised over the tax-gatherers; and according to Gibbon’s estimate the

annual revenue secured must have amounted to at least fifteen to twenty

million pounds sterling [$75,000,000 to $100,000,000]. Even if five

million pounds were spent on the army and navy, if the distributions

of corn to the poor of the city swallowed a few millions more, and the

salaries of the imperial officials in Rome and the provinces and the

police expenditure disposed of no inconsiderable sum, the surplus was

none the less sufficient to provide for the erection of magnificent

buildings, to cover the empire with a network of highroads, to satisfy

the popular love of spectacles by gorgeous entertainments, and to rejoice

the hearts of citizens and soldiers with gifts and feasts.

The public buildings and pleasure grounds, the splendid private houses

and villas, with which the republic had begun to adorn the capital and

its environs, grew from year to year, and became ever vaster and more

elaborate. The Forum of Augustus, with the temple of Mars the Avenger,

the sanctuary of Jupiter Tonans on the lower slope of the Capitoline

Hill, the white marble temple of Apollo on the Palatine, the temple of

Quirinus on the Quirinal Hill, and others of the same character, were

among the most splendid edifices in the city. Magnificent colonnades

perpetuated the names of the wife, sister, and grandsons of Augustus; the

number of temples restored by him is estimated at eighty-two.

The imperator’s example was imitated by his wealthy and powerful friends;

Agrippa, whose services to the health and cleanliness of the city in

the construction of the huge vaulted sewers (cloaca) have already

been mentioned, perpetuated his name by a succession of magnificent

gardens for the use and embellishment of Rome. He had two new aqueducts

constructed, and he repaired the older ones that had fallen into

decay; so that no town in the world had such an abundant supply of

pure spring-water as ancient Rome, an advantage which the city enjoys

to this day. He completed and adorned the Septa Julia which Cæsar had

begun on the Field of Mars, for public assemblies and entertainments,

and surrounded the space with three colossal and splendid edifices--the

portico of Neptune, the Baths, and the Pantheon, the magnificent circular

building in honour of Jupiter the Avenger and of Venus and Mars, the

ancestors of the Julian family. Beams of bronze supported the domed

roof with its gilded tiles, the walls and floor were lined and paved

with marble. Even now the church of S. Maria Rotunda is among the most

remarkable buildings of the city. The Diribitorium--the most spacious

building ever constructed under one roof--where the populace received

their corn allowance and voting tablets and the soldiery their pay, was

the work of Agrippa.

Such was the constitution of the world-wide empire over which Augustus

ruled as an absolute monarch with unlimited powers for forty-four

years after the day of Actium. The frontier provinces were protected

by standing armies, the members of which, collected from all countries

and nationalities, had forsworn their native land and national spirit,

and obeyed no orders but those of their military lord; the coasts

were guarded by a well-manned fleet. On the Rhine eight legions (each

consisting of 6100 foot and 726 horse) quartered in permanent camps,

formed a strong bulwark against the Germans and kept Gaul under control;

Spain was garrisoned by three legions; two were quartered in Africa,

and an equal number watched over the safety of Egypt. Four legions

maintained the supremacy of Rome in Syria and on the Euphrates; the

Danubian provinces were guarded by six legions distributed through Mœsia,

Pannonia, and Dalmatia. The eastern frontier being thus sufficiently

protected by an army of occupation of 50,000 men, the banks of the

Danube by a similar force of 70,000, and the Rhine district by 100,000;

the fleets stationed in the harbours of Misenum, Ravenna, Forum Julii

(Fréjus) and elsewhere kept the islands and maritime states under control

and insured protection and security for commerce and traffic.

[Illustration: ROMAN EMPEROR IN THE DRESS OF A GENERAL

(Based on De Montfaucon)]

A regular system of tolls and taxes brought the public revenue into

good condition and filled the ærarium and fiscus; a vigilant police

force and fire brigade, which Augustus distributed through the fourteen

divisions of the capital, maintained tranquillity and order, protected

life and property from evil-disposed and malicious persons, and curbed

the outbreak of savage passions. Huge aqueducts, solidly constructed

roads, stately buildings, temples and halls, aroused the admiration of

contemporaries as of posterity. On the Field of Mars there arose a new

and splendid city, composed of temples and halls, of public buildings

for government purposes and for the amusements of the people, which

excelled the glory of the City of the Seven Hills, “unique in character,

unsurpassed in ancient or modern times,” so that Augustus could boast

that he had found a city of brick and should leave a city of marble. In

the provinces the improved government and administration of justice bred

a condition of wealth and outward prosperity.

But with all these advantages imperial Rome suffered from grave moral

defects. The love of liberty, the common patriotic sentiment, the

vigour, and martial virtue of the republican period, were gone; in ease,

tranquillity, and enervating pleasure, the arm of the citizen grew

feeble, and the self-respect and manly pride of earlier days degenerated

into servility and grovelling adulation. The city swarmed with foreign

soldiers of fortune and with enriched freedmen. The old seats of culture

in the East sent forth not scholars and artists only, but ministers of

luxury, gluttony, and voluptuousness. Together with a few wholesome

elements, all the evils and defects of human society flowed together here

and preyed upon the scanty remnant of the old Roman morality and virtue.

Rome became the meeting place of all nations on the face of the earth.

Interest in public affairs grew steadily feebler since the offices and

dignities had become empty honours void of power. The senators had often

to be constrained by penalties to attend the sessions of the senate,

although the latter had been reduced to two principal meetings a month;

the office of ædile was shunned as a burden until the state took it upon

itself to defray the cost of the public entertainments; candidates for

the tribunate had often to be put forward by the emperor. The citizens

were not ashamed to enrol themselves in the list of paupers and to share

in the public distributions of corn and alms; nay, rather than apply

themselves to any honest calling, many Romans, especially of the knightly

class, preferred to take service for board and wages with the purveyors

of gladiatorial combats, and to hazard their lives in a brutal popular

amusement which gained ground steadily from that time forward, exercising

an effect all the more demoralising on the minds of men, and rousing and

stimulating their licentious instincts all the more keenly because the

verdict of life or death was given by the humour of the crowd, at whose

signal the victor spared or transfixed his prostrate opponent; a right

of appeal even more inhuman than the old custom that the duel should end

with the death of one of the combatants.

The degeneration of morals and the decay of domestic virtue kept pace

with the passion for brutal spectacles. Strenuously as the emperor strove

to raise the standard of family life and to curb immoderate expenditure

on dress and food and the growing license of women by sumptuary and moral

edicts, to enforce legal marriage and the procreation of legitimate

offspring as a duty and honour by legal ordinances and curtailment of

privileges, to render divorce difficult and to check the rampant vice of

adultery, the state of indolent celibacy and the excesses of both sexes

in connection with it spread more and more, in the upper classes out of

liking for a licentious life and forbidden pleasures, in the lower from

poverty and laziness. The corruption of morals, checked but ineffectually

by Augustus, made rapid strides after his death; above all, when the

rulers themselves tore away the veil which still shrouded shameful living

under the first principate. But even Augustus could never disclaim his

origin from Venus Aphrodite, the ancestress of the family of Julius.[b]

AUGUSTUS MAKES EGYPT HIS PRIVATE PROVINCE

[Sidenote: [30 B.C.]]

The day of Egyptian independence was over as a matter of course. Cæsar

needed the country, with its corn and its riches, for his scheme of

reorganisation.

The city of Rome capitulated to the grain fleet of the Nile and sold her

ancient liberty for a supply of daily bread, and the price at least was

paid her. By the Cæsar Egypt had been conquered and under the rule of the

Cæsar she remained, like all countries which Cæsar was the first to unite

with the Roman Empire.

It is obvious that a conquered province cannot at once be placed on

exactly the same footing as older parts of the empire; a transition

period is almost always necessary; but Egypt never took quite the same

position as other subject countries. Before the partition of the empire

into senatorial and imperial provinces was effected, Egypt had come

to occupy a unique position with regard to the emperor; and after the

partition the ties which bound it to him became even closer. Among the

imperial provinces there was none more intimately related to the emperor

than this, which surpassed all others in importance. Egypt was of much

the same consequence to the Roman Empire as India is to the England of

to-day.

The wise yet strict government of a foreign power may be a blessing

to any country in comparison with the tyranny and extravagance of its

native sultans; but the foreign rulers profit even more by it, and are

therefore always striving to keep the rich country, with a population

ignorant alike of war and politics, in a state of political tutelage, to

perpetuate the gulf between the dominant and subject races, and to render

all interference on the part of rivals impossible. In a word, they keep

their most important province as the apple of their eye.

Nature and history assuredly conspired to give the country an exceptional

position. Without being an island it possessed the advantages of an

insular position; for it was bounded on two sides by the sea and on the

other two by the desert or barbarous tribes whose raids and predatory

incursions might incommode the province but could never become a menace

to the existence of the empire. Thus the Egyptians could hardly be drawn

into the political broils of the continent so long as they confined

themselves within their natural frontiers; and for this reason the third

Ptolemy Euergetes acted wisely when of his own free will he restored his

conquests to Seleucus king of Syria. His military situation had nothing

to lose by such a step, for Egypt proper was easy to defend and difficult

to attack, and was accessible to a land force only by way of Pelusium.

On the other hand any power that established itself in the country found

there such an abundance of resources as was offered by hardly any other

country of ancient times.

The fecundity of Egypt has passed into a proverb; even in a season of

moderate harvests great quantities of corn could be exported every year,

and after the country had been conquered by the Romans the grain tribute

of Egypt was absolutely necessary for the sustenance of the capital.

Whoever held Egypt could procure a famine in Rome and Italy at his

pleasure; and for that reason pretenders of later times always secured

Egypt first and then Italy. The wealth of the country was increased by

commerce and trade, and it was therefore densely populated, even more so

than at the present day.

The abundant resources of the fertile valley of the Nile were united and

almost doubled by a homogeneous and strictly centralised administrative

body; Egypt was ruled by a scribbling bureaucracy of a kind up to

that time unknown to the ancient world; and its inhabitants, though

wholly unaccustomed to arms by long disuse, were none the less hard to

rule. A great proportion of the fertile land was the private property

of the prince, as it has been down to our own times; but this very

proprietorship, coupled with the excitable temper of the populace of a

great city like Alexandria, placed great obstacles in the way of regular

government, and would have rendered it absolutely impossible had not a

military been quartered in the country in sufficient strength to maintain

order. The presence of several legions in Egypt was in itself enough to

give the Cæsar reason for excluding senatorial government; and the Cæsars

always strove with jealous care to keep men of the senatorial class away

from Egypt, because the consequences of an attempt at rebellion there

might well have been most serious.

Cæsar the dictator had in his time been confronted with the question

as to whether he should permit the continuance of the independence of

Egypt, already forfeit in fact; and the motive that finally made him

decide in its favour (apart from his love for Cleopatra) was that the

most formidable rival to Rome there would be her own representative. The

reasons that led the dictator to maintain the political existence of

Egypt likewise induced his son to maintain the old state of things under

certain limitations. As a ruler and organiser the latter is distinguished

by his regard for historic continuity.

[Sidenote: [30 B.C.-14 A.D.]]

Now in Egypt, with its fertile soil and dense population, a strong

monarchic government is in a manner prescribed by the character and

history of the country; as is demonstrated by the whole course of its

development from the earliest beginnings of human civilisation down to

the present day. Cæsar therefore desired to make no more alteration

in the peculiar and intricate conditions of Egypt than was absolutely

necessary, and to leave the rest as it was. The Cæsar merely stepped into

the place of the kings of the Ptolemaic dynasty, and thus brought Egypt

into connection with Rome by a kind of personal union.

The most important change was that the sovereign no longer resided at

Alexandria but at Rome, and that the great offices of the Egyptian

court, the chief master of the ceremonies, the grand master of the

household, and the chief forester, were not filled by fresh appointments;

though the scholars of the famous Museum of Alexandria enjoyed the same

patronage and encouragement as before. At the head of this richly endowed

institution was a priest, formerly appointed by the king and in future

to be appointed by the Cæsar. The latter regarded himself as in every

respect the successor of the Ptolemies, and caused the Egyptian priests

to do him honour with the very ceremonial that had grown up under his

predecessors. It is true that the Roman emperors did not habitually

reside in Alexandria, but their viceroys had to assist at all the

religious rites in which the Ptolemies had formerly taken part, for the

new ruler was wise enough to introduce no alteration whatever in matters

of religion. The ancient gods of Egypt, which had survived the dominion

of the Greeks, continued to exist as before, in peaceful association

with the gods of Greece. The Egyptian gods were naturally wroth at the

fall of the monarchy; their statues turned a gloomy gaze upon their

worshippers, Apis bellowed hideously and even shed tears. But Cæsar was

not disconcerted; he did indeed decline in his own person to visit the

Apis of Memphis on his journey through Egypt, but he did not put the

least hindrance in the way of his worship by the Egyptians, still less

did he dream of starting a propaganda in Egypt on behalf of the state

religion of Rome.

The position of the various classes of the population also remained

what it had become in the course of historic development. The native

Egyptians, the original lords of the soil, remained in the subjection

to which they had been reduced by the conquests of the Persians and

Macedonians; they constituted the population of the country districts

and country towns, and had neither political organisation nor political

rights. The foreign conqueror naturally had no inducement to give the

vanquished rights that had been denied them by their own kings. Egypt was

to be a province absolutely dependent upon himself, and that would have

been impossible if the Roman element in Egypt had grown so strong and

had so far intermingled with the natives that the sovereign was forced

to take it into account. The Egyptian proper was therefore on principle

precluded from acquiring the rights of Roman citizenship. For example, an

Egyptian of ancient days could no more act on a Roman jury than a Bedouin

could nowadays be elected to the English parliament. In later times this

prohibition was occasionally evaded by first conferring the freedom of

Alexandria upon the native and then admitting him to Roman citizenship as

an Alexandrian. On the other hand the material condition of the Egyptian

population improved under the judicious rule of the Cæsars.

The mechanism of government, administration, and taxation had been

admirably organised through centuries of practice; it naturally

discharged its functions as well under the new sovereign as under the

old, and consequently became the type of the technics of imperial

administration. In this respect the republic had left the empire much

to do. The Romans were the first to appoint officers in the level land

who had more to do than collect the taxes. Their epistrateges of upper,

lower, and middle Egypt, their nomarchs and ethnarchs, had of course only

a circumscribed sphere of action, but they saw to the maintenance of law

and order and probably decided simple lawsuits among the natives.

Among the Egyptians, unlike the Hellenes, we find a simple division into

nomes instead of a municipal organisation; and like many provincial

cities under the Roman Empire, these nomes were allowed to strike

their own coins, though only with a Greek superscription. A collective

organisation was, however, denied to the natives. In the latter days of

Augustus the various provinces of the Roman Empire had diets of their

own, invested with very modest political rights; Egypt alone never had a

provincial diet, in token that it was not really a province at all but

was regarded as a great demesne of the sovereign.

Next above the Egyptians was the Græco-Macedonian population, which

was practically if not entirely concentrated in Alexandria, and was

separated from the natives by a great gulf. As members of the same race

as the Egyptian kings the Greeks of Alexandria enjoyed political rights

and communal autonomy; and these they retained in the main under the

Romans. In like manner their language remained the official language of

Egypt under the empire, Roman officials addressed Greeks and Egyptians

in Greek; only in the Latin garrison of Alexandria, Latin was naturally

predominant.

The Greeks of Alexandria possessed their own municipal officers, their

high priest, chief magistrate, town-clerk, and chief of police; but on

the other hand a genuine town council was denied them. The few other

Greek cities in Egypt were similarly organised.

The whole province, with its population of Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans,

was committed by the Cæsar to a viceroy, who, though belonging only to

the knightly class, ranked on an equality with the senatorial proconsuls

in virtue of his position as the confidant and representative of the

emperor, and surpassed them in authority in virtue of his command over

the legions, although he lacked the insignia of this authority. C.

Cornelius Gallus, famous as a poet and proven as a general and personal

enemy of Antonius, was the first to be made viceroy of the new province;

and on the whole he justified the confidence reposed in him by his

master, for he succeeded in repressing with great vigour some local

attempts at rebellion among the inhabitants of Heroöpolis and the Thebaid.

His subordinates, like himself, were men of no rank higher than

knighthood and were the personal servants of Cæsar; the mechanism of

government remained the same as had been perfected under the Ptolemies,

only from this time forward the Greeks were superseded by the Romans.

Among the higher offices were those of chief magistrate, administrator

of the chest of the dominion of Egypt, prefect of Alexandria, or of

certain districts in the capital; and one procurator fari Alexandriæ was

certainly chosen from among the ranks of freedmen.

The taxes were no less high than before, but Cæsar saw to it that Egypt

was placed in a position to pay her taxes every year. He had all the

Nile canals, which had got choked or dried up under previous rulers,

thoroughly cleansed and repaired by his soldiers; he completed the canal

system where it required completion; and the beneficial results of these

necessary measures were very soon apparent. The famous statue of the

Nile is surrounded by sixteen _putti_, as a symbol that the river must

rise sixteen cubits if Egypt is to hope for an abundant harvest; if it

only rises half that height it means dearth and famine in the land.

But after the restoration of the canal system under Augustus a rise of

twelve cubits indicated a good harvest as early as the governorship of

Petronius, and if the rise was only eight, it did not necessarily mean a

bad one. In one of the latter years of Augustus the Nile must have risen

to an extraordinary height, if we may trust the mutilated records of the

Nilometer at Elephantine--probably twenty-four cubits.

[Illustration: ROMAN CATAPULT]

The soldiers of Augustus were also employed in making roads and

constructing cisterns at various places. Coptos is the point to which

most of the roads which connect the Nile Valley with the Red Sea

converge. Here an interesting inscription has recently been discovered,

dating probably from the last years of the reign of Augustus, and bearing

a long list of the names of the soldiers who had made cisterns at various

points along these roads and laid out a fortified camp where they met.

The Indian trade rose rapidly to prosperity under Augustus. As early as

the time when Strabo journeyed through Egypt he saw at the most diverse

spots signs that the country was beginning to recover from the ruinous

consequences of the system of government pursued by the last Ptolemies.

In the latter years of Cleopatra’s reign barely twenty ships had ventured

to put out from the Red Sea; under the rule of Augustus there was a

stately fleet of Indiamen, which engaged in the African and Indian trade

with great success, and brought in a substantial profit to the Egyptian

government, which not only exacted import duties but afterwards charged

a considerable export duty upon Indian goods. But it is hardly possible

to estimate, even approximately, the revenue which Augustus drew from his

newly acquired province.[c]

ADMINISTRATION OF THE PROVINCES

An explanation should be given of the general principles which were

followed by the Romans in the administration of subject lands. The

consecutive pursuit of these principles secured the result that provinces

originally disparate in every particular, through the influence of

Roman administration, were made into a single whole which was not only

externally symmetrical but also internally harmonious--a whole in which

the various nationalities with their political, civil, and social

idiosyncrasies more or less disappear.

The word “provincia” is much older than those conquests outside Italy

which we have hitherto designated with the name of provinces; it requires

particular explanation. So long as the kingdom existed in Rome, the king

was the sole exerciser of the imperium, that is to say, of unlimited

military and judicial power. But with the beginning of the republic it

was transferred to two consuls, from 367 B.C. it was in the hands of

one prætor, from 247 B.C. in the hands of a second prætor; it therefore

became necessary to define the limits of a power that was practically

unbounded and was the appanage to each of these officials, to establish

a definite sphere of action for each of them, the official designation

of which is “provincia.” By provincia then we understand the area of

activity specially assigned by law or by a _senatus consultum_ or

also by lot or accord to a consul or prætor, the area within which

he exercises his imperium. In this sense we say _consulibus Ligures

provincia decernitur_, and in this sense we call the office of the prætor

urbanus _provincia urbana_ and that of the prætor peregrinus _provincia

peregrina_. No provincia is assigned to offices which do not possess

imperium, for where there is mention of the provinces of the quæstors the

provinces of the consul or of the prætor are meant to whom the quæstor

acts as a subordinate official.

After the occupation of Sicily and Sardinia in the year 227 B.C.

four prætors were appointed instead of two and the imperium was also

geographically so marked out that in the newly defined districts two

prætors received military and judicial powers, that is to say the old

consular imperium, simultaneously, this moreover being shared by the

remaining prætors and later on by the proconsuls and proprætors. From

this time forward provincia becomes the designation for a governorship

across seas and means first, in the abstract sense, command in a country

outside Italy, secondly, in a concrete sense, the country subjected to

the governor itself.

All provincial land is however distinguished from Italic land by the fact

that it is subject to tribute, that is pays either vectigal or tributum;

for at all events from the time of the Gracchi it is a recognised

political maxim that property in a provincial dependency has passed to

the Roman people, the original owners retaining only a right of user;

so that the province is a _prædium populi Romani_ whose revenues pour

into the state exchequer. Accordingly one may define the province as an

administered district of the Roman Empire, geographically marked out,

committed to the control of a permanent higher official and subject to

taxation. The obligation to pay taxes is so important a feature in the

conception of the province that the historians, in treating of every

country actually subordinated and made subject to taxes by the Romans,

include it with the provinces, even if it was not yet incorporated in the

Roman system of administration; and the dynasties in Cilicia and Syria

although not directly subject to governors, are regarded as an integral

part of the empire on account of their obligation to pay duty.

The organisation of the province at the time of the republic was directed

upon instruction from the senate by the victorious general himself

with the subsidiary aid of a commission of ten senators appointed

by the senate for this object. The fundamental law of the province

thus established (lex provinciæ) determined the character of the

administration from that time forward, laws affecting private relations

being adopted partly through Roman laws and partly through the edicts

of the governor. The duties of the commission were concerned with the

following points: First, there was a fresh parcelling out of the whole

province into definite districts of administration with one of the larger

towns, where such were available, for a centre; of such town dioceses

there were about sixty-eight in Sicily, sixty-four in the three Gauls,

forty-four in Asia, eleven in the Ora Pontica, the part of Bithynia that

became a province in 63 B.C., six in Pontus Polemoniacus, twenty-three in

Lycia, seventeen in Syria, five in Cyrene. The magistrates and the senate

of these towns, although appointed for the affairs of their commune, are

at the same time of use to the government in taking over the gathering in

of taxes in the district assigned to them.

For the purposes of jurisdiction the territorial divisions according to

towns are reunited to form larger parishes of jurisdiction _conventus_,

διοικήσεις, in the chief places of which the governor goes through the

regular days of jurisdiction (assizes). Finally the religious festivals,

associations in which the inhabitants of the provinces unite from time to

time, take place in the favoured towns to which we allude. In provinces

that were poor in towns instead of town dioceses we have country

circuits. Here a policy was observed of breaking asunder the original

connections of one people with another, so far as was found necessary, by

dissolution of the existing state unities and by an arbitrary division

and grouping of neighbourhoods; in some cases it was even found well to

abolish the commercium between the single states, which had the effect

of making it more difficult for the provincials to alienate their real

estate and caused Roman landholders to emigrate into the province and

concentrate in their hands large landed estates. Favoured towns had

their area widened by the incorporation of towns and spots which thereby

lost their separate existence; in this way the communes entrusted to

the Romans were raised and enlarged and the rebellions completely

annihilated. Mountainous and desert lands which yielded nothing valuable

and were difficult to administer were left in the midst of the province

under their native despots until, often after a long time, it was held

safe to place these parts, too, directly under the governor.

The boundaries of the territories once established, the next step was to

regulate their political and financial position. Towns conquered by force

of arms were destroyed, their lands included in Roman domains and leased

out to men of private enterprise by the censors at Rome in exchange for

a proportion of the produce raised. Where royal domains were found, as

in Syracuse, Macedonia, Pergamus, Bithynia, and Cyrene, they were taken

possession of as _ager publicus Romani_ in the same way, and their

working population was united into village communities in the manner used

for the district of Capua after 211 B.C. Such communes, on the other

hand, as had submitted by surrender without offering extreme resistance

certainly yielded to the unbounded power of the victor (as was embodied

in the terms of surrender), town and country, men, women and children,

rivers, ports, and their holy possessions; but as a rule the citizens and

their families were allowed to remain in possession of their liberty and

their private fortunes and to the town was left its territory and its

town rights. In return for this on all the farm lands whether of private

persons or of the town was laid a natural impost (vectigal) or else a

hard and fast tax (tributum, stipendium) and where advantageous, also a

Roman toll (portorium).

This then is the class of _civitates vectigales_ or _stipendiariæ_ in

which the majority of provincial towns are to be reckoned, and which

are to be contrasted with a small number of particularly privileged

communities, those for instance who had been guaranteed their freedom on

the score of earlier alliances or well-attested fidelity, and secondly

those which the Romans themselves had constituted as Roman colonies or

municipia. Altogether then there are three main divisions of communities

included within the provinces: towns with free native constitutions,

towns substantially subject, and towns with Roman constitutions.[d]

ARMY AND NAVY UNDER AUGUSTUS

The higher career of an officer (militia equestris) was open to every

Roman citizen possessed of the rank and fortune of a knight or senator.

All young knights were not bound to serve, but every man who was

ambitious of public career had to fulfil the obligations of military

service for five years; after which he was given the command of a cohort

or served as a military tribune. Hitherto there had been no separation

between military and civil office as far as the upper classes were

concerned, and it was the emperor’s intention that there should be none

henceforth, otherwise the aristocracy would have almost given up going

into the army. We cannot tell with certainty how these young aristocrats

who entered the army as officers acquired the necessary technical

knowledge, or whether they had to undergo any kind of apprenticeship.

The senator was excluded from the army on principle; the knight on the

contrary was bound to render military service if he hoped to serve the

state in peace or war. His promotion was, of course, in the emperor’s

hands. In the time of the republic the people did not make all the

appointments, but they had twenty-four posts to dispose of; in the reign

of Augustus these _tribuni militum a populo_ were still elected by the

people, but this emperor, who had deprived the senate of all means

of influencing the army, also took from the people their practically

obsolete privilege of electing officers, and about the time of his death

the title of tribunus militum a populo ceases to appear in inscriptions.

In republican times the supreme command in war had been one of the

official duties of the elective magistrates; but under the empire it

became the duty and privilege of the imperator, who was represented by

his legates in the several divisions of the army. Under Augustus each

legion had a legatus legionis, so called to distinguish him from the

governors of the imperial provinces (legati provinciæ). The officers of

the imperial army were divided according to their social rank in the

senatorial and knightly classes.

Many peculiarities of the army system of Augustus lose much of their

singularity in the eyes of the modern observer by a comparison with

corresponding conditions at the present time. The English army is the

only contemporary force which can be compared with the Roman army under

the empire.

In both nations the first duty of the army is not to defend the country,

which is secured from the danger of invasion by its isolated situation,

but to keep the provinces under control. Accordingly the country of the

ruling race, Italy in the one case, England and Scotland in the other,

has only insignificant garrisons of professional soldiers, who hardly

suffice to supplement the police at need; while the bulk of the army

is scattered all over the globe, wherever the interests of the ruling

race appear to be imperilled. The troops are nowhere stationed in larger

numbers than is absolutely necessary, because as a matter of fact their

numbers are totally inadequate, and every serious incident shows that the

aims of the state bear no proportion to its military resources.

The parallel is peculiarly apt in the non-enforcement of universal

military service and the consequent lack of a sufficient reserve. The

latter would be too heavy a financial burden for the state, as it has

to treat its mercenary troops with consideration and grant them large

donations of money. The England of to-day pays the bounty money on

enlistment; imperial Rome bestowed considerable sums of money on her

soldiers on their discharge.

The Roman soldiers were employed on peaceful tasks which were but

remotely connected with the military uses of an army, in the same

way as English soldiers nowadays. It has already been mentioned that

Augustus had roads, canals, cisterns, and public buildings constructed

by his legions. The demands made upon the English army in this respect

do not go quite so far, but in the island of Corfu any one who drives

from the capital to Palæocastrizza may see a bronze tablet let into the

face of the rock to perpetuate the memory of the English regiment which

constructed this difficult bit of road.

Led by young aristocrats more or less ignorant of the service when they

enter it, both the Roman and English armies have generally attained the

objects set before them and made up for the lack of organisation by the

energy and capacity of their members.

As the Romans induced subject communities and states to furnish them with

auxiliary troops, so England has enlisted Indian regiments officered by

Englishmen, which are recruited only from among the warlike races such as

the brave mountaineers of the Himalayas, the effeminate inhabitants of

Bengal being scarcely represented amongst the Sepoys. This is in exact

accordance with the principles on which Augustus acted in the formation

of his auxiliary troops. Of course the military resources of those

princes who still retained a show of independence were likewise at the

disposal of the ruling power if the imperial troops had to be spared or

were not sufficient to quell local disturbances.[c]

The permanent institution of the emperor’s proconsular authority

naturally led to the perpetuation of the military establishment, or in

modern phrase the standing army of the empire. Originally the legions

had been raised for special services, and disbanded at the conclusion

of each campaign. When the wars of the republic came to be waged at a

greater distance from the city, and against the regular armies of Greek

or Asiatic potentates, the proconsular levies were enrolled for the whole

period of the contest in hand. In ancient times Rome secured every petty

conquest by planting in the centre of each conquered territory a colony

of her own citizens; but when her enemies became more numerous and her

frontiers more extensive, it was necessary to maintain her communications

in every quarter by military posts, and the establishment of permanent

garrisons. The troops once enlisted for the war could no longer be

discharged on the restoration of peace. The return of their imperator to

the enjoyment of his laurels in the city only brought another imperator,

whose laurels were yet to be acquired, to the legions of the Rhone and

the Euphrates. The great armies of the provinces were transferred, with

the plate and furniture of the prætorium, the baggage and materials of

the camp, from each proconsul to his successor.

The legions came to be distinguished by numbers, indicating the order of

enlistment in the eastern or western division of the empire respectively,

or by special designations of honour, such as the martia, or the

victrix. With their names or numbers the particular history of each was

duly recorded, and some of them became noted perhaps for a peculiar

character and physiognomy of their own. The principle of permanence thus

established to his hand, Augustus carried it out systematically, and

extended it from the provinces to Rome itself. He instituted a special

service for the protection of his own person, in imitation of the select

battalion which kept watch round the imperator’s tent. These prætorian

guards were gratified with double pay, amounting to two denarii daily,

and the prospect of discharge at the end of twelve years, while the term

of service for the legionaries was fixed at sixteen. They were recruited

from Latium, Etruria, Umbria, and the old Roman colonies of central

Italy exclusively. They were regarded accordingly as a force peculiarly

national, nor when reminded of this distinction were they insensible of

the compliment. But the emperor did not entrust his security to these

Italian troops only. Besides the prætorian cohorts he kept about his

person a corps of picked veterans from the legions, a few hundred in

number, together with a battalion of German foot soldiers and a squadron

of Batavian horse. Cæsar had employed these barbarians, distinguished for

their personal strength and courage, on the wings of his own armies, and

his successor may have placed this confidence in them on account of their

tried fidelity. In addition, however, to these household troops, the

whole number of which did not exceed five or six thousand, Augustus first

introduced a regular garrison into the city, consisting of four cohorts

of fifteen hundred men each, which were also levied exclusively in Italy.

He established no permanent camp or fortress to overawe the capital.

The soldiers were billeted on the inhabitants or lodged in the public

edifices; they were always at hand to repress tumults and preserve the

peace of the city, when the stores of grain ran low and the prevalence

of tempests on the coast menaced it with prolonged scarcity. But the

ordinary police of the streets was maintained by an urban guard, named

_vigiles_ or the watch, seven hundred of whom sufficed for the service.

The whole armed force of every description employed in the city might

amount to twelve or fifteen thousand men.

Augustus disbanded the unruly multitudes who had crowded into the

service of the great military chieftains of the civil wars. He strained

every nerve to gorge them with the largesses for which alone they

would forego the periodical plunder of unoffending cities, in which

their leaders had been compelled to indulge them. But while they were

reposing upon their estates, or rioting with their profuse gratuities, he

speedily remodelled his military establishment, and equipped a force of

twenty-five legions for the defence of the empire. He fixed a reasonable

scale of pay for every armed man in his service, from the rank and

file of the cohorts to the “lieutenant of the emperor with proconsular

rank.” The proconsular armies were maintained and paid by the machinery

of the proconsular government in the provinces; so that the emperor,

without being ostensibly the paymaster of the legions, did in fact,

through his lieutenants, hold the purse upon which they depended. We

have seen how incompetent we are to state the salary of the provincial

governor; nor can we estimate the pay of the various grades of officers.

We only know that the simple legionary received one denarius daily, a

sum which may equal eightpence half-penny of English money. A part of

this sum was stopped for his arms, implements, and accoutrements; but

he retained perhaps a larger proportion of it than the pocket money

of the British private, and the simple luxuries of the wine shop were

cheap and accessible. Marriage was strongly discouraged, and generally

forbidden in the Roman ranks, and the soldier’s allowance was perhaps

chiefly expended in averting the blows of the centurion’s vine-staff, and

buying occasional exemption from the fatigues of drill and camp duty. If

we are justified in drawing an inference from the proportion observed

in a military largess in the time of Cæsar, we may conjecture that the

centurion received double, and the tribunes four times, the pay of the

legionary.

The full complement of each of the twenty-five legions was 6100 foot,

and 726 horse; and this continued with occasional variations, to be the

strength of the legion for a period of four hundred years. The cohorts

were ten in number; and the first, to which the defence of the eagle and

the emperor’s image was consigned, was nearly double the strength of

the others. These brigades became permanently attached to their distant

quarters: in later times the same three legions occupied the province

of Britain for two or more centuries. They were recruited ordinarily

from the countries beyond Italy; in the first instance, from the Roman

citizens in the provinces. But even while the rights of citizenship were

extended, this restriction was gradually relaxed; and instead of being

the requisite qualification for admission to the ranks, the freedom of

the city was often bestowed on the veteran upon his discharge. Numerous

battalions of auxiliaries, differently arrayed and equipped from the

legionaries themselves, continued to be levied throughout the most

warlike dependencies of the empire, and attached to each legionary

division. It is generally computed that this force equalled in number

that of the legions themselves, and thus we arrive at a total of 340,000

men, for the entire armies of the Roman Empire, exclusive of the

battalions maintained in Rome itself.

Augustus may be regarded as the founder of the naval power of the great

military republic. She had exerted indeed her accustomed vigour on more

than one occasion in equipping powerful fleets, in transporting military

armaments, and sweeping marauders from the seas; but the establishment of

a permanent maritime force, as one arm of the imperial government, was

reserved for the same hand which was destined to fix the peace of the

empire on a firm and lasting basis. While the influence of Rome extended

over every creek and harbour of the Mediterranean, she had no rival

to fear on the more distant coasts of the Atlantic Ocean or the Indian

Ocean. But experience had shown that the germ of a great naval power

still continued to exist in the inveterate habits of piracy, fostered

throughout the inland seas by centuries of political commotion. The

Cilician corsairs had distressed the commerce and insulted the officers

of the republic; the armaments of Sextus had taken a bolder flight and

menaced even the city with famine; a conjuncture might not be distant

when the commander of these predatory flotillas would dispute the empire

itself with the imperator of the Roman armies. Augustus provided against

the hazard of such an encounter by equipping three powerful fleets. One

of these he stationed at Ravenna on the upper, a second at Misenum on the

lower sea, a third at Forum Julii (Fréjus) on the coast of Gaul. The two

former squadrons amounted to 250 galleys each, the third to about half

that number. Besides these armaments he posted a smaller flotilla on the

Euxine, and established naval stations on the great frontier rivers, the

Euphrates, the Danube, and the Rhine.[e]

[Illustration: ROMAN SHIP WITH SCALING LADDER, FOR ATTACKING A SEA WALL]

It was only to be expected that the victor of Actium should not neglect

the fleet, to which he owed everything, to the same extent as the

republic had done; and as matter of fact he made a permanent navy the

counterpart of his standing army. Up to that time Rome had only fitted

out a fleet, or caused her allies to fit it out, for some definite

purpose, and had dismissed it at the conclusion of the war. Augustus

realised that a change must be made in this respect now that the whole

coast of the Mediterranean was Roman and the sea had become the centre of

the empire.

His first care was to construct the requisite naval ports. The Adriatic

coast of Italy is not rich in harbours, even leaving naval ports out

of the question. Brundusium was too much of a trading mart to come

into consideration as a possible naval station for the empire; while

Ravenna, farther to the north, near the delta of the Po, appeared to

answer the end the emperor had in view. The place was easy to defend on

account of the marshes about it; the harbour, though none of the best,

was capable of improvement; and by means of the imperial canal (Fossa

Augusta) Augustus secured a communication between his new naval station

and the southern mouth of the Po. This was an advantage as far as the

provisioning of the forces was concerned, for the produce of the fertile

basin of the Po could thus be shipped direct to Ravenna; on the other

hand it probably accelerated the silting up of the harbour. The whole

scheme seems to have been put in hand shortly after the battle of Actium,

for we meet with what appears to be a reference to these works in the

writings of Valgius Rufus in the first years of the empire.

During the civil wars the fleet had used the Julian harbour on the west

coast of Italy, but its inconvenient entrance and deficient anchorage

unfitted it for a regular naval station. It was therefore abandoned in

favour of the neighbouring harbour of Misenum, which surpassed even that

of Ravenna in importance.

From both stations small bodies of men used to be detached to Rome to

protect the emperor and the capital. The marines naturally did not find

much to do at Rome; when the emperor arranged a sea fight (naumachia) he

counted, of course, upon their co-operation, at other times they were

deputed to spread the awnings at the entertainments given to the people.

Of less importance and probably of briefer duration was a similar work of

Augustus on the coast of Gaul. Forum Julii (Fréjus) was raised by him to

the rank of a naval station soon after the battle of Actium, and may have

attained a certain degree of importance during the Cantabrian War; in the

latter days of the empire we find no mention of any such naval port.

In Spain itself Augustus thought that he could dispense with a naval

station on the Mediterranean coast, and he never dreamed of commanding

the ocean. A naval base in the vicinity of Lisbon would have materially

contributed to the conquest of the Asturians and Cantabrians, but only on

condition that the Roman warships had been adapted to ocean navigation.

The oared galleys of ancient days would hardly have proved seaworthy in

the Atlantic. In the Spanish War a Roman fleet occasionally appears in

the Bay of Biscay, but it was probably composed of transports from the

neighbouring harbours of Gaul. Under Drusus and Germanicus the Rhine

flotilla occasionally ventured out into the North Sea, but its constant

mishaps soon frightened it out of risking farther hazards.

The emperor devoted some attention to his Mediterranean fleet, but far

less than he bestowed on the army. In his summary Augustus makes frequent

mention of his legions, while he rarely mentions the fleet to which he

owed the victory of Actium. The army stood in quite a different relation

to the princeps than was occupied by the navy. In the _Monumentum

Ancyranum_ the emperor invariably speaks of his navy: it is never styled

the navy of the Roman people. The legions, on the contrary, belonged,

in theory at least, to the state. The crews of the fleet and their

officers were the personal servants of the princeps. The sailors, up to

the grade of captain of a trireme, were slaves or freedmen, and were

reckoned in law as belonging to the household of the emperor; and even

the naval prefects, though free men, were not of Roman birth. Such were

A. Castricius Myrio, and Sext. Aulienus, who worked his way up from the

ranks to be a centurion and was then promoted to the rank of knight. An

admiral of the imperial fleet (præfectus classis) ranked on the same

footing with the imperial tax-collectors; a fact which speaks volumes

for the position of the navy which had made Augustus an absolute monarch.

Augustus seems to have neglected the navy, especially in the latter years

of his reign, from motives of economy. In the war with the Dalmatian

rebels we hear nothing of the intervention of the Ravenna fleet when Bato

was harassing the Adriatic shores as far as to Apollonia. The fact that

the fleet at Misenum was in an equally melancholy state is proved by the

insecurity of Sardinian waters, which was so great that no senator dared

to land on the island; and it had to be administered by the emperor’s

officers instead of by a regular governor.[c]

[Illustration: A LICTOR]

[Illustration]