History for ready reference, Volume 2, El Dorado to Greaves

obstinately for three years (B. C. 171-168); but his fate was sealed at Pydna. He went as a prisoner to Rome; his kingdom was broken into four small republics; the Achæan League was stricken by the captivity of a thousand of its chief men; the whole of Greece was humbled to submissiveness, though not yet formally reduced to the state of a Roman province. That followed some years later, when risings in Macedonia and Achaia were punished by the extinction of the last semblance of political independence in both (B. C. 148-146). The Zenith of the Republic. Rome now gripped the Mediterranean (the ocean of the then civilized world) as with four fingers of a powerful hand: one laid on Italy and all its islands, one on Macedonia and Greece, one on Carthage, one on Spain, and the little finger of her protection reaching over to the Lesser Asia. Little more than half a century, since the day that Hannibal threatened her own city gates, had sufficed to win this vast dominion. But the losses of the Republic had been greater, after all, than the gains; for the best energies of its political constitution had been expended in the acquisition, and the nobler qualities in its character had been touched with the incurable taints of a licentious prosperity. Beginning of Decline. A century and a half had passed since the practical ending of the struggle of plebeians with patricians for political and agrarian rights. In theory and in form, the constitution remained as democratic as it was made by the Licinian Laws of 367 B. C., and by the finishing touch of the Hortensian Law of 287 B. C. But in practical working it had reverted to the aristocratic mode. A new aristocracy had risen out of the plebeian ranks to reinforce the old patrician order. It was composed of the families of men who had been raised to distinction and ennobled by the holding of eminent offices, and its spirit was no less jealous and exclusive than that of the older high caste. The Senate and the Mob. Thus strengthened, the aristocracy had recovered its ascendancy in Rome, and the Senate, which it controlled, had become the supreme power in government. The amazing success of the Republic during the last century just reviewed--its successes in war, in diplomacy, and in all the sagacious measures of policy by which its great dominion had been won--are reasonably ascribed to this fact. For the Senate had wielded the power of the state, in most emergencies, with passionless deliberation and with unity and fixity of aim. But it maintained its ascendancy by an increasing employment of means which debased and corrupted all orders alike. The people held powers which might paralyze the Senate at any moment, if they chose to exercise them, through their assemblies and their tribunes. They had seldom brought those powers into play thus far, to interfere with the senatorial government of the Republic, simply because they had been bribed to abstain. The art of the politician in Rome, as distinguished from the statesman, had already become demagoguery. This could not well have been otherwise under the peculiar constitution of the Roman citizenship. Of the thirty-five tribes who made up the Roman people, legally qualified to vote, only four were within the city. The remaining thirty-one were plebs urbana. There was no delegated representation of this country populace--citizens beyond the walls. To exercise their right of suffrage they must be personally present at the meetings of the comitia tributa --the tribal assemblies; and those of any tribe who chanced to be in attendance at such a meeting might give a vote which carried with it the weight of their whole tribe. For questions were decided by the majority of tribal, not individual, votes; and a very few members of a tribe might act for and be the tribe, for all purposes of voting, on occasions of the greatest possible importance. It is quite evident that a democratic system of this nature gave wide opportunity for corrupt politics. There must have been, always, an attraction for the baser sort among the rural plebs, drawing them into the city, to enjoy the excitement of political contests, and to partake of the flatteries and largesses which began early to go with these. And circumstances had tended strongly to increase this sinister sifting into Rome of the most vagrant and least responsible of her citizens, to make them practically the deputies and representatives of that mighty sovereign which had risen in the world--the Populus Romanus. For there was no longer either thrift or dignity possible in the pursuits of husbandry. The long Hannibalic War had ruined the farming class in Italy by its ravages; but the extensive conquests that followed it had been still more ruinous to that class by several effects combined. Corn supplies from the conquered provinces were poured into Rome at cheapened prices; enormous fortunes, gathered in the same provinces by officials, by farmers of taxes, by money-lenders, and by traders, were largely invested in great estates, absorbing the small farms of olden time; and, finally, free-labor in agriculture was supplanted, more and more, by the labor of slaves, which war and increasing wealth combined to multiply in numbers. Thus the plebs urbana of Rome were a depressed and, therefore, a degenerating class, and the same circumstances that made them so impelled them towards the city, to swell the mob which held its mighty sovereignty in their hands. {1000} So far, a lavish amusement of this mob with free games, and liberal bribes, had kept it generally submissive to the senatorial government. But the more it was debased by such methods, and its vagrancy encouraged, the more extravagant gratuities of like kind it claimed. Hence a time could never be far away when the aristocracy and the senate would lose their control of the popular vote on which they had built their governing power. Agrarian Agitations. But they invited the quicker coming of that time by their own greediness in the employment of their power for selfish and dishonest ends. They had practically recovered their monopoly of the use of the public lands. The Licinian law, which forbade any one person to occupy more than five hundred jugera (about three hundred acres) of the public lands, had been made a dead letter. The great tracts acquired in the Samnite wars, and since, had remained undistributed, while the use and profit of them were enjoyed, under one form of authority or another, by rich capitalists and powerful nobles. This evil, among many that waxed greater each year, caused the deepest discontent, and provoked movements of reform which soon passed by rapid stages into a revolution, and ended in the fall of the Republic. The leader of the movement at its beginning was Tiberius Gracchus, grandson of Scipio Africanus on the side of his mother, Cornelia. Elected tribune in 133 B. C., he set himself to the dangerous task of rousing the people against senatorial usurpations, especially in the matter of the public domain. He only drew upon himself the hatred of the senate and its selfish supporters; he failed to rally a popular party that was strong enough for his protection, and his enemies slew him in the very midst of a meeting of the tribes. His brother Caius took up the perilous cause and won the office of tribune (B. C. 123) in avowed hostility to the senatorial government. He was driven to bid high for popular help, even when the measures which he strove to carry were most plainly for the welfare of the common people, and he may seem to modern eyes to have played the demagogue with some extravagance. But statesmanship and patriotism without demagoguery for their instrument or their weapon were hardly practicable, perhaps, in the Rome of those days, and it is not easy to find them clean-handed in any political leader of the last century of the Republic. The fall of Caius Gracchus was hastened by his attempt to extend the Roman franchise beyond the populus Romanus, to all the freemen of Italy. The mob in Rome was not pleased with such political generosity, and cooled in its admiration for the large-minded tribune. He lost his office and the personal protection it threw over him, and then he, like his brother, was slain (B. C. 121) in a melee. Jugurthine War. For ten years the senate, the nobility, and the capitalists (now beginning to take the name of the equestrian order), had mostly their own way again, and effaced the work of the Gracchi as completely as they could. Then came disgraceful troubles in Numidia which enraged the people and moved them to a new assertion of themselves. The Numidian king who helped Scipio to pull Carthage down had been a ward of Rome since that time. When he died, he left his kingdom to be governed jointly by two young sons and an older nephew. The latter, Jugurtha, put his cousins out of the way, took the kingdom to himself, and baffled attempts at Rome to call him to account, by heavy bribes. The corruption in the case became so flagrant that even the corrupted Roman populace revolted against it, and took the Numidian business into its own hands. War was declared against Jugurtha by popular vote, and, despite opposing action in the Senate, one Marius, an experienced soldier of humble birth, was elected consul and sent out to take command. Marius distinguished himself in the war much less than did one of his officers, Cornelius Sulla; but he bore the lion's share of glory when Jugurtha was taken captive and conveyed to Rome (B. C. 104). Marius was now the great hero of the hour, and events were preparing to lift him to the giddiest heights of popularity. Teutones and Cimbri. Hitherto, the barbarians of wild Europe whom the Romans had met were either the Aryan Celts, or the non-Aryan tribes found in northern Italy, Spain and Gaul. Now, for the first time, the armies of Rome were challenged by tribes of another grand division of the Aryan stock, coming out of the farther North. These were the Cimbri and the Teutones, wandering hordes of the great Teutonic or Germanic race which has occupied Western Europe north of the Rhine since the beginning of historic time. So far as we can know, these two were the first of the Germanic nations to migrate to the South. They came into collision with Rome in 113 B. C., when they were in Noricum, threatening the frontiers of her Italian dominion. Four years later they were in southern Gaul, where the Romans were now settling colonies and subduing the native Celts. Twice they had beaten the armies opposed to them; two years later they added a third to their victories; and in 105 B. C. they threw Rome into consternation by destroying two great armies on the Rhone. Italy seemed helpless against the invasion for which these terrible barbarians were now preparing, when Marius went against them. In the summer of 102 B. C. he annihilated the Teutones, near Aquæ Sextiæ (modern Aix), and in the following year he destroyed the invading Cimbri, on a bloody field in northern Italy, near modern Vercellæ. Marius. From these great victories, Marius went back to Rome, doubly and terribly clothed with power, by the devotion of a reckless army and the hero-worship of an unthinking mob. The state was at his mercy. A strong man in his place might have crushed the class-factions and accomplished the settlement which Cæsar made after half a century more of turbulence and shame. But Marius was ignorant, he was weak, and he became a mere blood-stained figure in the ruinous anarchy of his time. {1001} Optimates and Populares. The social and political state of the capital had grown rapidly worse. A middle-class in Roman society had practically disappeared. The two contending parties or factions, which had taken new names-- optimates and populares --were now divided almost solely by the line which separates rich from poor. If we said that 'optimates' signified the men who bribed and abused office under the banner of the Senate and its connections, and that 'populares' meant men who bribed and abused office with the interests of the people outside the Senatorial pale upon their lips, we might do injustice to many good men on both sides, but should hardly be slandering the parties (Beesly). There was a desperate conflict between the two in the year 100, B. C. and the Senate once more recovered its power for a brief term of years. The Social War. The enfranchisement of the so-called allies --the Latin and other subjects of Rome who were not citizens--was the burning question of the time. The attempt of Caius Gracchus to extend rights of citizenship to them had been renewed again and again, without success, and each failure had increased the bitter discontent of the Italian people. In 90 B. C. they drew together in a formidable confederation and rose in revolt. In the face of this great danger Rome sobered herself to action with old time wisdom and vigor. She yielded her full citizenship to all Italian freemen who had not taken arms, and then offered it to those who would lay their arms down. At the same time, she fought the insurrection with every army she could put into the field, and in two years it was at an end. Marius and his old lieutenant, Sulla, had been the principal commanders in this Social War, as it was named, and Sulla had distinguished himself most. The latter had now an army at his back and was a power in the state, and between the two military champions there arose a rivalry which produced the first of the Roman Civil Wars. Marius and Sulla. A troublesome war in the East had been forced upon the Romans by aggressions of Mithridates, King of Pontus. Both Marius and Sulla aspired to the command. Sulla obtained election to the consulship in 88 B. C. and was named for the coveted place. But Marius succeeded in getting the appointment annulled by a popular assembly and himself chosen instead for the Eastern command. Sulla, personally imperilled by popular tumults, fled to his legions, put himself at their head, and marched back to Rome--the first among her generals to turn her arms against herself. There was no effective resistance; Marius fled; both Senate and people were submissive to the dictates of the consul who had become master of the city. He made the tribes decree their own political extinction, resuscitating the comitia centuriata; he reorganized the Senate by adding three hundred to its members and vindicating the right to sanction legislation; conducted the consular elections, exacting from L. Cornelius Cinna, the newly elected consul, a solemn oath that he would observe the new regulations, and securing the election of Cn. Octavius in his own interest, and then, like 'a countryman who had just shaken the lice off his coat,' to use his own figure, he turned to do his great work in the East. (Horton). Sulla went to Greece, which was in revolt and in alliance with Mithridates, and conducted there a brilliant, ruthless campaign for three years (B. C. 87-84), until he had restored Roman authority in the peninsula, and forced the King of Pontus to surrender all his conquests in Asia Minor. Until this task was finished, he gave no heed to what his enemies did at Rome; though the struggle there between Sullans and Marians had gone fiercely and bloodily on, and his own partisans had been beaten in the fight. The consul Octavius, who was in Bulla's interest, had first driven the consul Cinna out of the city, after slaying 10,000 of his faction. Cinna's cause was taken up by the new Italian citizens; he was joined by the exiled Marius, and these two returned together, with an army which the Senate and the party of Sulla were unable to resist. Marius came back with a burning heart and with savage intentions of revenge. A horrible massacre of his opponents ensued, which went on unchecked for five days, and was continued more deliberately for several months, until Marius died, at the beginning of the year 86 B. C. Then Cinna ruled absolutely at Rome for three years, supported in the main by the newly-made citizens; while the provinces generally remained under the control of the party of the optimates. In 83 B. C. Sulla, having finished with carefulness his work in the East, came back into Italy, with 40,000 veterans to attend his steps. He had been outlawed and deprived of his command, by the faction governing at the capital; but its decrees had no effect and troubled him little. Cinna had been killed by his own troops, even before Bulla's landing at Brundisium. Several important leaders and soldiers on the Marian side, such as Pompeius, then a young general, and Crassus, the millionaire, went over to Sulla's camp. One of the consuls of the year saw his troops follow their example, in a body; the other consul was beaten and driven into Capua. Sulla wintered in Campania, and the next spring he pressed forward to Rome, fighting a decisive battle with Marius the younger on the way, and took possession of the city; but not in time to prevent a massacre of senators by the resentful mob. Sulla's Dictatorship. Before that year closed, the whole of Italy had been subdued, the final battle being fought with the Marians and Italians at the Colline Gate, and Sulla again possessed power supreme. He placed it beyond dispute by a deliberate extermination of his opponents, more merciless than the Marian massacre had been. They were proscribed by name, in placarded lists, and rewards paid to those who killed them; while their property was confiscated, and became the source of vast fortunes to Sulla's supporters, and of lands for distribution to his veterans. When this terror had paralyzed all resistance to his rule, the Dictator (for he had taken that title) undertook a complete reconstruction of the constitution, aiming at a permanent restoration of senatorial ascendancy and a curbing of the powers which the people, in their assemblies, and the magistrates who especially represented them, had gained during the preceding century. He remodelled, moreover, the judicial system, and some of his reforms were undoubtedly good, though they did not prove enduring. When he had fashioned the state to his liking, this extraordinary usurper quietly abdicated his dictatorial office (B. C. 80) and retired to private life, undisturbed until his death (B. C. 78). {1002} After Sulla. The system he had established did not save Rome from renewed distractions and disorder after Sulla died. There was no longer a practical question between Senate and people--between the few and the many in government. The question now, since the legionaries held their swords prepared to be flung into the scale, was what one should again gather the powers of government into his hands, as Sulla had done. The Great Game and the Players. The history of the next thirty years--the last generation of republican Rome--is a sad and sinister but thrilling chronicle of the strifes and intrigues, the machinations and corruptions, of a stupendous and wicked game in politics that was played, against one another and against the Republic, by a few daring, unscrupulous players, with the empire of the civilized world for the stake between them. There were more than a few who aspired; there were only three players who entered really as principals into the game. These were Pompeius, called the Great, since he extinguished the Marian faction in Sicily and in Spain; Crassus, whose wealth gave him power, and who acquired some military pretensions besides, by taking the field against a formidable insurrection of slaves (B. C. 73-71); and Julius Cæsar, a young patrician, but nephew of Marius by marriage, who assiduously strengthened that connection with the party of the people, and who began, very soon after Sulla's death, to draw attention to himself as a rising power in the politics of the day. There were two other men, Cicero and the younger Cato, who bore a nobler and greater because less selfish part in the contest of that fateful time. Both were blind to the impossibility of restoring the old order of things, with a dominant Senate, a free but well guided populace, and a simply ordered social state; but their blindness was heroic and high-souled. Pompeius in the East. Of the three strong rivals for the vacant dictatorial chair which waited to be filled, Pompeius held by far the greater advantages. His fame as a soldier was already won; he had been a favorite of Fortune from the beginning of his career; everything had succeeded with him; everything was expected for him and expected from him. Even while the issues of the great struggle were pending, a wonderful opportunity for increasing his renown was opened to him. The disorders of the civil war had licensed a swarm of pirates, who fairly possessed the eastern Mediterranean and had nearly extirpated the maritime trade. Pompeius was sent against them (B. C. 67), with a commission that gave him almost unlimited powers, and within ninety days he had driven them from the sea. Then, before he had returned from this exploit, he was invested with supreme command in the entire East, where another troublesome war with Mithridates was going on. He harvested there all the laurels which belonged by better right to his predecessor, Lucullus, finding the power of Mithridates already broken down. From Pontus he passed into Armenia, and thence into Syria, easily subjugating both, and extinguishing the monarchy of the Seleucids. The Jews resisted him and he humbled them by the siege and conquest of their sacred city. Egypt was now the only Mediterranean state left outside the all-absorbing dominion of Rome; and even Egypt, by bequest of its late king, belonged to the Republic, though not yet claimed. The First Triumvirate. Pompeius came back to Rome in the spring of 61 B. C. so glorified by his successes that he might have seemed to be irresistible, whatever he should undertake. But, either through an honest patriotism or an overweening confidence, he had disbanded his army when he reached Italy, and he had committed himself to no party. He stood alone and aloof, with a great prestige, great ambitions, and no ability to use the one or realize the other. Before another year passed, he was glad to accept offers of a helping hand in politics from Cæsar, who had climbed the ladder of office rapidly within four or five years, spending vast sums of borrowed money to amuse the people with games, and distinguishing himself as a democratic champion. Cæsar, the far seeing calculator, discerned the enormous advantages that he might gain for himself by massing together the prestige of Pompeius, the wealth of Crassus and his own invincible genius, which was sure to be the master element in the combination. He brought the coalition about through a bargain which created what is known in history as the First Triumvirate, or supremacy of three. Cæsar in Gaul. Under the terms of the bargain, Cæsar was chosen consul for 59 B. C., and at the end of his term was given the governorship of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul, with command of three legions there, for five years. His grand aim was a military command--the leadership of an army--the prestige of a successful soldier. No sooner had he secured the command than fortune gave him opportunities for its use in the most striking way and with the most impressive results. The Celtic tribes of Gaul, north of the two small provinces which the Romans had already acquired on the Mediterranean coast, gave him pretexts or provocations (it mattered little to Cæsar which) for war with them, and in a series of remarkable campaigns, which all soldiers since have admired, he pushed the frontiers of the dominion of Rome to the ocean and the Rhine, and threatened the nations of Germany on the farther banks of that stream. The conquest of Gaul by Cæsar, says Mr. Freeman, is one of the most important events in the history of the world. It is in some sort the beginning of modern history, as it brought the old world of southern Europe, of which Rome was the head, into contact with the lands and nations which were to play the greatest part in later times--with Gaul, Germany, and Britain. From Gaul Cæsar crossed the channel to Britain in 55 B. C. and again in the following year, exacting tribute from the Celtic natives, but attempting no lodgment in the island. {1003} Meantime, while pursuing a career of conquest which excited the Roman world, Cæsar never lost touch with the capital and its seething politics. Each winter he repaired to Lucca, the point in his province which was nearest to Rome, and conferred there with his friends, who flocked to the rendezvous. He secured an extension of his term, to enable him to complete his plans, and year by year he grew more independent of the support of his colleagues in the triumvirate, while they weakened one another by their jealousies, and the Roman state was more hopelessly distracted by factious strife. End of the Triumvirate. The year after Cæsar's second invasion of Britain, Crassus, who had obtained the government of Syria, perished in a disastrous war with the Parthians, and the triumvirate was at an end. Disorder in Rome increased and Pompeius lacked energy or boldness to deal with it, though he seemed to be the one man present who might do so. He was made sole consul in 52 B. C.; he might have seized the dictatorship, with approval of many, but he waited for it to be offered to him, and the offer never came. He drew at last into close alliance with the party of the Optimates, and left the Populares to be won entirely to Cæsar's side. Civil War. Matters came to a crisis in 50 B. C., when the Senate passed an order removing Cæsar from his command and discharging his soldiers who had served their term. He came to Ravenna with a single legion and concerted measures with his friends. The issue involved is supposed to have been one of life or death to him, as well as of triumph or failure in his ambitions; for his enemies were malignant. His friends demanded that he be made consul, for his protection, before laying down his arms. The Senate answered by proclaiming him a public enemy if he failed to disband his troops with no delay. It was a declaration of war, and Cæsar accepted it. He marched his single legion across the Rubicon, which was the boundary of his province, and advanced towards Rome. Pompeius, with the forces he had gathered, retreated southward, and consuls, senators and nobles generally streamed after him. Cæsar followed them--turning aside from the city--and his force gathered numbers as he advanced. The Pompeians continued their flight and abandoned Italy, withdrawing to Epirus, planning to gather there the forces of the East and return with them. Cæsar now took possession of Rome and secured the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, from which it drew its supply of food. This done, he proceeded without delay to Spain, where seven legions strongly devoted to Pompeius were stationed. He overcame them in a single campaign, enlisted most of the veterans in his own service, and acquired a store of treasure. Before the year ended he was again in Rome, where the citizens had proclaimed him dictator. He held the dictatorship for eleven days, only, to legalize an election which made him consul, with a pliant associate. He reorganized the government, complete in all its branches, including a senate, partly composed of former members of the body who had remained or returned. Then (B. C. 48.--January) he took up the pursuit of Pompeius and the Optimates. Crossing to Epirus, after some months of changeful fortune, he fought and won the decisive battle of Pharsalia. Pompeius, flying to Egypt, was murdered there. Cæsar, following, with a small force, was placed in great peril by a rising at Alexandria, but held his ground until assistance came. He then garrisoned Egypt with Roman troops and made the princess Cleopatra, who had captivated him by her charms, joint occupant of the throne with her younger brother. During his absence, affairs at Rome were again disturbed, and he was once more appointed dictator, as well as tribune for life. His presence restored order at once, and he was soon in readiness to attack the party of his enemies who had taken refuge in Africa. The battle of Thapsus, followed by the suicide of Cato and the surrender of Utica, practically finished the contest, though one more campaign was fought in Spain the following year. Cæsar Supreme. Cæsar was now master of the dominions of Rome, and as entirely a monarch as anyone of his imperial successors, who took his name, with the power which he caused it to symbolize, and called themselves Cæsars, and Imperators, as though the two titles were equivalent. Imperator was the title under which he chose to exercise his sovereignty. Other Roman generals had been Imperators before, but he was the first to be named Imperator for life, and the word (changed in our tongue to Emperor) took a meaning from that day more regal than Rex or King. That Cæsar, the Imperator, first of all Emperors, ever coveted the crown and title of an older-fashioned royalty, is not an easy thing to believe. Having settled his authority firmly, he gave his attention to the organization of the Empire (still Republic in name) and to the reforming of the evils which afflicted it. That he did this work with consummate judgment and success is the opinion of all who study his time. He gratified no resentments, executed no revenges, proscribed no enemies. All who submitted to his rule were safe; and it seems to be clear that the people in general were glad to be rescued by his rule from the old oligarchical and anarchical state. But some of Cæsar's own partisans were dissatisfied with the autocracy which they helped to create, or with the slenderness of their own parts in it. They conspired with surviving leaders of the Optimates, and Cæsar was assassinated by them, in the Senate chamber, on the 15th of March, B. C. 44. Professor Mommsen has expressed the estimate of Cæsar which many thoughtful historians have formed, in the following strong words: In the character of Cæsar the great contrasts of existence meet and balance each other. He was of the mightiest creative power, and yet of the most penetrating judgment; of the highest energy of will and the highest capacity of execution; filled with republican ideals, and at the same time born to be king. He was 'the entire perfect man'; and he was this because he was the entire and perfect Roman. This may be nearly true if we ignore the moral side of Cæsar's character. He was of too large a nature to do evil things unnecessarily, and so he shines even morally in comparison with many of his kind; but he had no scruples. {1004} After the Murder of Cæsar. The murderers of Cæsar were not accepted by the people as the patriots and liberators which they claimed to be, and they were soon in flight from the city. Marcus Antonius, who had been Cæsar's associate in the consulship, now naturally and skilfully assumed the direction of affairs, and aspired to gather the reins of imperial power into his own hands. But rivals were ready to dispute with him the great prize of ambition. Among them, it is probable that Antony gave little heed at first to the young man, Caius Octavius, or Octavianus, who was Cæsar's nephew, adopted son and heir; for Octavius was less than nineteen years old, he was absent in Apollonia, and he was little known. But the young Cæsar, coming boldly though quietly to Rome, began to push his hereditary claims with a patient craftiness and dexterity that were marvellous in one so young. The Second Triumvirate. The contestants soon resorted to arms. The result of their first indecisive encounter was a compromise and the formation of a triumvirate, like that of Cæsar, Pompeius and Crassus. This second triumvirate was made up of Antonius, Octavius, and Lepidus, lately master of the horse in Cæsar's army. Unlike the earlier coalition, it was vengeful and bloody-minded. Its first act was a proscription, in the terrible manner of Sulla, which filled Rome and Italy with murders, and with terror and mourning. Cicero, the patriot and great orator, was among the victims cut down. After this general slaughter of their enemies at home, Antonius and Octavius proceeded against Brutus and Cassius, two of the assassins of Cæsar, who had gathered a large force in Greece. They defeated them at Philippi, and both liberators perished by their own hands. The triumvirs now divided the empire between them, Antonius ruling the East, Octavius the West, and Lepidus taking Africa--that is, the Carthaginian province, which included neither Egypt nor Numidia. Unhappily for Antonius, the queen of Egypt was among his vassals, and she ensnared him. He gave himself up to voluptuous dalliance with Cleopatra at Alexandria, while the cool intriguer, Octavius, at Rome, worked unceasingly to solidify and increase his power. After six years had passed, the young Cæsar was ready to put Lepidus out of his way, which he did mercifully, by sending him into exile. After five years more, he launched his legions and his war galleys against Antonius, with the full sanction of the Roman senate and people. The sea-fight at Actium (B. C. 31) gave Octavius the whole empire, and both Antonius and Cleopatra committed suicide after flying to Egypt. The kingdom of the Ptolemies was now extinguished and became a Roman province in due form. Octavius (Augustus) Supreme. Octavius was now more securely absolute as the ruler of Rome and its great empire than Sulla or Julius Cæsar had been, and he maintained that sovereignty without challenge for forty-five years, until his death. He received from the Senate the honorary title of Augustus, by which he is most commonly known. For official titles, he took none but those which had belonged to the institutions of the Republic, and were familiarly known. He was Imperator, as his uncle had been. He was Princeps, or head of the Senate; he was Censor; he was Tribune; he was Supreme Pontiff. All the great offices of the Republic he kept alive, and ingeniously constructed his sovereignty by uniting their powers in himself. Organization of the Empire. The historical position of Augustus, as the real founder of the Roman Empire, is unique in its grandeur; and yet History has dealt contemptuously, for the most part, with his name. His character has been looked upon, to use the language of De Quincey, as positively repulsive, in the very highest degree. A cool head, wrote Gibbon of him, an unfeeling heart, and a cowardly disposition, prompted him, at the age of nineteen, to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never afterwards laid aside. And again: His virtues, and even his vices, were artificial; and according to the various dictates of his interest, he was at first the enemy, and at last the father, of the Roman world. Yet, how can we deny surpassing high qualities of some description to a man who set the shattered Roman Republic, with all its democratic bases broken up, on a new--an imperial--foundation, so gently that it suffered no further shock, and so solidly that it endured, in whole or in part, for a millennium and a half? In the reign of Augustus the Empire was consolidated and organized; it was not much extended. The frontiers were carried to the Danube, throughout, and the subjugation of Spain was made complete. Augustus generally discouraged wars of conquest. His ambitious stepsons, Drusus and Tiberius, persuaded him into several expeditions beyond the Rhine, against the restless German nations, which perpetually menaced the borders of Gaul; but these gained no permanent footing in the Teutonic territory. They led, on the contrary, to a fearful disaster (A. D. 9), near the close of the reign of Augustus, when three legions, under Varus, were destroyed in the Teutoburg Forest by a great combination of the tribes, planned and conducted by a young chieftain named Hermann, or Arminius, who is the national hero of Germany to this day. The policy of Drusus in strongly fortifying the northern frontier against the Germans left marks which are conspicuously visible at the present day. From the fifty fortresses which he is said to have built along the line sprang many important modern cities,--Basel, Strasburg, Worms, Mainz, Bingen, Coblenz, Bonn, Cologne, and Leyden, among the number. From similar forts on the Danubian frontier rose Vienna, Regensburg and Passau. Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. Augustus died A. D. 11, and was succeeded in his honors, his offices, and his powers, by his step-son, Tiberius Claudius Nero, whom he had adopted. Tiberius, during most of his reign, was a vigorous ruler, but a detestable man, unless his subjects belied him, which some historians suspect. Another attempt at the conquest of Germany was made by his nephew Germanicus, son of Drusus; but the jealousy of the emperor checked it, and Germanicus died soon after, believing that he had been poisoned. A son of Germanicus, Caius, better known by his nick-name of Caligula, succeeded to the throne on the death of Tiberius (A. D. 37), and was the first of many emperors to be crazed and made beast-like, in lust, cruelty and senselessness, by the awful, unbounded power which passed into their hands. {1005} The Empire bore his madness for three years, and then he was murdered by his own guards. The Senate had thoughts now of restoring the commonwealth, and debated the question for a day; but the soldiers of the prætorian guard took it out of their hands, and decided it, by proclaiming Tiberius Claudius (A. D. 41), a brother of Germanicus, and uncle of the emperor just slain. Claudius was weak of body and mind, but not vicious, and his reign was distinctly one of improvement and advance in the Empire. He began the conquest of Britain, which the Romans had neglected since Cæsar's time, and he opened the Senate to the provincials of Gaul. He had two wives of infamous character, and the later one of these, Agrippina, brought him a son, not his own, whom he adopted, and who succeeded him (A.D. 54). This was Nero, of foul memory, who was madman and monster in as sinister a combination as history can show. During the reign of Nero, the spread of Christianity, which had been silently making its way from Judæa into all parts of the Empire, began to attract the attention of men in public place, and the first persecution of its disciples took place (A. D. 64). A great fire occurred in Rome, which the hated emperor was believed to have caused; but he found it convenient to accuse the Christians of the deed, and large numbers of them were put to death in horrible ways. Vespasian and his Sons. Nero was tolerated for fourteen years, until the soldiers in the provinces rose against him, and he committed suicide (A. D. 68) to escape a worse death. Then followed a year of civil war between rival emperors--Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian--proclaimed by different bodies of soldiers in various parts of the Empire. The struggle ended in favor of Vespasian, a rude, strong soldier, who purged the government, disciplined the army, and brought society back toward simpler and more decent ways. The great revolt of the Jews (A. D. 66-70) had broken out before he received the purple, and he was commanding in Judæa when Nero fell. The siege, capture and destruction of Jerusalem was accomplished by his son Titus. A more formidable revolt in the West (A. D. 69) was begun the Batavians, a German tribe which occupied part of the Netherland territory, near the mouth of the Rhine. They were joined by neighboring Gauls and by disaffected Roman legionaries, and they received help from their German kindred on the northern side of the Rhine. The revolt, led by a chieftain named Civilis, who had served in the Roman army, was overcome with extreme difficulty. Vespasian was more than worthily succeeded (A. D. 79) by his elder son, Titus, whose subjects so admired his many virtues that he was called the delight of the human race. His short reign, however, was one of calamities: fire at Rome, a great pestilence, and the frightful eruption of Vesuvius which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii. After Titus came his younger brother Domitian (A. D. 81), who proved to be another creature of the monstrous species that appeared so often in the series of Roman emperors. The conquest of southern Britain (modern England) was completed in his reign by an able soldier, Agricola, who fought the Caledonians of the North, but was recalled before subduing them. Domitian was murdered by his own servants (A. D. 96), after a reign of fifteen years. Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian. Rome and the Empire were happy at last in the choice that was made of a sovereign to succeed the hateful son of Vespasian. Not the soldiery, but the Senate, made the choice, and it fell on one of their number, Cocceius Nerva, who was already an aged man. He wore the purple but sixteen months, and his single great distinction in Roman history is, that he introduced to the imperial succession a line of the noblest men who ever sat in the seat of the Cæsars. The first of these was the soldier Trajan, whom Nerva adopted and associated with himself in authority. When Nerva died (A. D. 97), his son by adoption ascended the throne with no opposition. The new Emperor was simple and plain in his habits and manners of life; he was honest and open in all his dealings with men; he was void of suspicion, and of malice and jealousy no less. He gave careful attention to the business of state and was wise in his administration of affairs, improving roads, encouraging trade, helping agriculture, and developing the resources of the Empire in very prudent and practical ways. But he was a soldier, fond of war, and he unwisely reopened the career of conquest which had been almost closed for the Empire since Pompeius came back from the East. A threatening kingdom having risen among the Dacians, in the country north of the lower Danube--the Transylvania and Roumania of the present day--he attacked and crushed it, in a series of vigorous campaigns (A. D. 101-106), and annexed the whole territory to the dominion of Rome. He then garrisoned and colonized the country, and Romanized it so completely that it keeps the Roman name, and its language to this day is of the Latin stock, though Goths, Huns, Bulgarians and Slavs have swept it in successive invasions, and held it among their conquests for centuries at a time. In the East, he ravaged the territory of the Parthian king, entered his capital and added Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Arabia Petræa to the list of Roman provinces. But he died (A. D. 117) little satisfied with the results of his eastern campaigns. His successor abandoned them, and none have doubted that he did well; because the Empire was weakened by the new frontier in Asia which Trajan gave it to defend. His Dacian conquests were kept, but all beyond the Euphrates in the East were given up. The successor who did this was Hadrian, a kinsman, whom the Emperor adopted in his last hours. Until near the close of his life, Hadrian ranked among the best of the emperors. Rome saw little of him, and resented his incessant travels through every part of his great realm. His manifest preference for Athens, where he lingered longest, and which flourished anew under his patronage, was still more displeasing to the ancient capital. For the Emperor was a man of cultivation, fond of literature, philosophy and art, though busy with the cares of State. In his later years he was afflicted with a disease which poisoned his nature by its torments, filled his mind with dark suspicions, and made him fitfully tyrannical and cruel. The event most notable in his generally peaceful and prosperous reign was the renewed and final revolt of the Jews, under Barchochebas, which resulted in their total expulsion from Jerusalem, and its conversion into a heathen city, with a Roman name. {1006} The Antonines. Hadrian had adopted before his death (A. D. 138) a man of blameless character, Titus Aurelius Antoninus, who received from his subjects, when he became Emperor, the appellation Pius, to signify the dutiful reverence and kindliness of his disposition. He justified the name of Antoninus Pius, by which he is historically known, and his reign, though disturbed by some troubles on the distant borders of the Empire, was happy for his subjects in nearly all respects. No great deeds are told of him, save this, perhaps the greatest, that he secured the love and happiness of those he ruled (Capes). Like so many of the emperors, Antoninus had no son of his own; but even before he came to the throne, and at the request of Hadrian, he had adopted a young lad who won the heart of the late Emperor while still a child. The family name of this son by adoption was Verus, and he was of Spanish descent; the name which he took, in his new relationship, was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. It is unquestionably the most illustrious name in the whole imperial line, from Augustus to the last Constantine, and made so, not so much by deeds as by character. He gave the world the solitary example of a philosopher upon the throne. There have been a few--a very few--surpassingly good men in kingly places; but there has never been another whose soul was lifted to so serene a height above the sovereignty of his station. Unlimited power tempted no form of selfishness in him; he saw nothing in his imperial exaltation but the duties which it imposed. His mind was meditative, and inclined him to the studious life; but he compelled himself to be a man of vigor and activity in affairs. He disliked war; but he spent years of his life in camp on the frontiers; because it fell to his lot to encounter the first great onset of the barbarian nations of the north, which never ceased from that time to beat against the barriers of the Empire until they had broken them down. His struggle was on the line of the Danube, with the tribes of the Marcomanni, the Quadi, the Vandals, and others of less formidable power. He held them back, but the resources of the Empire were overstrained and weakened lastingly by the effort. For the first time, too, there were colonies of barbarians brought into the Empire, from beyond its lines, to be settled for the supply of soldiers to the armies of Rome: It was a dangerous sign of Roman decay and a fatal policy to begin. The decline of the great world-power was, in truth, already well advanced, and the century of good emperors which ended when Marcus Aurelius died (A. D. 180), only retarded, and did not arrest, the progress of mortal maladies in the state. From Commodus to Caracalla. The best of emperors was followed on the throne by a son, Commodus, who went mad, like Nero and Caligula, with the drunkenness of power, and who was killed (A. D. 192) by his own servants, after a reign of twelve years. The soldiers of the prætorian guard now took upon themselves the making of emperors, and placed two upon the throne--first, Pertinax, an aged senator, whom they murdered the next year, and then Didius Julianus, likewise a senator, to whom, as the highest bidder, they sold the purple. Again, as after Nero's death, the armies on the frontiers put forward, each, a rival claimant, and there was war between the competitors. The victor who became sovereign was Septimius Severus (A. D. 194-211), who had been in command on the Danube. He was an able soldier, and waged war with success against the Parthians in the East, and with the Caledonians in Britain, which latter he could not subdue. Of his two sons, the elder, nicknamed Caracalla (A. D. 211-217), killed his brother with his own hands, and tortured the Roman world with his brutalities for six years, when he fell under the stroke of an assassin. The reign of this foul beast brought one striking change to the Empire. An imperial edict wiped away the last distinction between Romans and Provincials, giving citizenship to every free inhabitant of the Empire. Rome from this date became constitutionally an empire, and ceased to be merely a municipality. The city had become the world, or, viewed from the other side, the world had become 'the City' (Merivale). Anarchy and Decay. The period of sixty-seven years from the murder of Caracalla to the accession of Diocletian--when a great constitutional change occurred--demands little space in a sketch like this. The weakening of the Empire by causes inherent in its social and political structure,--the chief among which were the deadly influence of its system of slavery and the paralyzing effects of its autocracy,--went on at an increasing rate, while disorder grew nearly to the pitch of anarchy, complete. There were twenty-two emperors in the term, which scarcely exceeded that of two generations of men. Nineteen of these were taken from the throne by violent deaths, through mutiny or murder, while one fell in battle, and another was held captive in Persia till he died. Only five among these twenty-two ephemeral lords of the world,--namely Alexander Severus, Decius (who was a vigorous soldier and ruler, but who persecuted the Christians with exceptional cruelty), Claudius, Aurelian, and Probus,--can be credited with any personal weight or worth in the history of the time; and they held power too briefly to make any notable mark. The distractions of the time were made worse by a great number of local tyrants, as they were called--military adventurers who rose in different parts of the Empire and established themselves for a time in authority over some district, large or small. In the reign of Gallienus (A. D. 260-268) there were nineteen of these petty imperators, and they were spoken of as the thirty tyrants. The more important of the provincial empires thus created were those of Postumus, in Gaul, and of Odenatus of Palmyra. The latter, under Zenobia; queen and successor of Odenatus, became a really imposing monarchy, until it was overthrown by Aurelian, A. D. 273. {1007} The Teutonic Nations. The Germanic nations beyond the Rhine and the Danube had, by this time, improved their organization, and many of the tribes formerly separated and independent were now gathered into powerful confederations. The most formidable of these leagues in the West was that which acquired the common name of the Franks, or Freemen, and which was made up of the peoples occupying territory along the course of the Lower Rhine. Another of nearly equal power, dominating the German side of the Upper Rhine and the headwaters of the Danube, is believed to have absorbed the tribes which had been known in the previous century as Boii, Marcomanni, Quadi, and others. The general name it received was that of the Alemanni. The Alemanni were in intimate association with the Suevi, and little is known of the distinction that existed between the two. They had now begun to make incursions across the Rhine, but were driven back in 238. Farther to the East, on the Lower Danube, a still more dangerous horde was now threatening the flanks of the Empire in its European domain. These were Goths, a people akin, without doubt, to the Swedes, Norsemen and Danes; but whence and when they made their way to the neighborhood of the Black Sea is a question in dispute. It was in the reign of Caracalla that the Romans became first aware of their presence in the country since known as the Ukraine. A few years later, when Alexander Severus was on the throne, they began to make incursions into Dacia. During the reign of Philip the Arabian (A. D. 244-249) they passed through Dacia, crossed the Danube, and invaded Mœsia (modern Bulgaria). In their next invasion (A. D. 251) they passed the Balkans, defeated the Romans in two terrible battles, the last of which cost the reigning Emperor, Decius, his life, and destroyed the city of Philippopolis, with 100,000 of its people. But when, a few years later, they attempted to take possession of even Thrace and Macedonia, they were crushingly defeated by the Emperor Claudius, whose successor Aurelian made peace by surrendering to them the whole province of Dacia (A. D. 270), where they settled, giving the Empire no disturbance for nearly a hundred years. Before this occurred, the Goths, having acquired the little kingdom of Bosporus (the modern Crimea) had begun to launch a piratical navy, which plundered the coast cities of Asia Minor and Greece, including Athens itself. On the Asiatic side of the Empire a new power, a revived and regenerated Persian monarchy, had risen out of the ruins of the Parthian kingdom, which it overthrew, and had begun without delay to contest the rule of Rome in the East. Diocletian. Briefly described, this was the state and situation of the Roman Empire when Diocletian, an able Illyrian soldier, came to the throne (A. D. 284). His accession marks a new epoch. From this time, says Dean Merivale, the old names of the Republic, the consuls, the tribunes, and the Senate itself, cease, even if still existing, to have any political significance. The empire of Rome is henceforth an Oriental sovereignty. But the changes which Diocletian made in the organization and administration of the Empire, if they did weigh it down with a yet more crushing autocracy and contribute to its exhaustion in the end, did also, for the time, stop the wasting of its last energies, and gather them in hand for potent use. It can hardly be doubted that he lengthened the term of its career. Finding that one man in the exercise of supreme sovereignty, as absolute as he wished to make it, could not give sufficient care to every part of the vast realm, he first associated one Maximian with himself, on equal terms, as Emperor, or Augustus, and six years later (A. D. 292) he selected two others from among his generals and invested them with a subordinate sovereignty, giving them the title of Cæsars. The arrangement appears to have worked satisfactorily while Diocletian remained at the head of his imperial college. But