Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

CHAPTER II. THE EMPERORS OF THE AUGUSTAN HOUSE.

TIBERIUS.—During the long reign of the prudent Augustus, there was peace within the borders of the empire. He said of himself, that he "found Rome of brick, and left it of marble." This change may be taken as a symbol of the growth of material prosperity in the Roman dominions. But in his private relations, the emperor was less fortunate. His daughter Julia, a woman of brilliant talents, disgraced him by her immorality, and he was obliged to banish her. Her two elder sons died when they were young. The empire devolved on his adopted step-son Tiberius (14-37), who endeavored to continue the same conservative policy. Tiberius was at first alarmed by mutinies among the troops in Pannonia and on the Rhine. The army of the Rhine urged Germanicus, the emperor's adopted son and probable successor, to lead it to Rome, promising to place him on the throne, but Germanicus succeeded in quieting the disturbance. As there were during this reign no great wars, Tiberius was able to devote himself more exclusively to the civil administration. He transferred from the popular assembly to the Senate the right of choosing the magistrates, emphasizing in this way the dual system that Augustus had created. The rights of the Senate he appeared scrupulously to respect. For the more effective government of the city of Rome he established there a permanent prefecture and brought together in a camp before the Viminal gate the nine prætorian cohorts. Unhappily this Prætorian Guard, which might serve to overawe the city mobs, might also interfere in the affairs of government. Indeed, a little later it had to be counted with in the choice of emperors. The notorious Sejanus was prefect during a large part of this reign, and acquired so completely the confidence of Tiberius that he began to plot his overthrow. He had already caused Drusus, the son of Tiberius, to be poisoned in order to remove one obstacle. Finally the emperor discovered his plots and caused him to be arrested and put to death (31). For several years Tiberius had been living in retirement on the island of Capreæ. There his enemies represented him as given over to debauchery, while the lives of Roman citizens were never safe from his suspicions or from the accusations of the delators, men who presented formal charges of crime, there being no public prosecutors. Earlier in his reign Tiberius had shown a serious purpose to improve the administration of justice, but with the lapse of years he became distrustful and cruel. He had, moreover, changed the law of treason so that to write or speak slightingly of the emperor was interpreted as conspiracy to bring the commonwealth into contempt and was punished with death. Although he was justly hated by the Roman nobles, in the provinces he was respected because he sought to protect them against extortion and to foster their general interests. He died in the year 37 at the age of seventy-eight.

CALIGULA.—There was no law for the regulation of the succession. But the Senate, the prætorians, and the people united in calling to the throne Caius, the son of Germanicus (37-41). This ruler, called Caligula, at first mild and generous in his doings, soon rushed into such excesses of savage cruelty and monstrous vice that he was thought to be half-deranged. He was fond of seeing with his own eyes the infliction of tortures. His wild extravagance in the matter of public games and in building drained the resources of the empire. After four years, this madman was cut down by two of his guards whom he had grievously insulted.

CLAUDIUS.—Claudius, the uncle and successor of Caligula, and the son of Drusus and Antonia, was not bad, but weak. He was a student and a recluse in his habits. His favorites and nearest connections were unprincipled. The depravity of his wife, Messalina, was such that he did right in sanctioning her death. The immoral and ambitious Agrippina, whom he next married, had an influence less malign. But she was unfaithful to her husband; and this fact, together with the fear she felt that Nero, her son by her first marriage, would be excluded from the throne, impelled her to the crime of taking the life of Claudius by poison.

NERO.—Nero reigned from 54 to 68. He was the grandson of Germanicus, and had been the pupil of the philosopher Seneca, and of Burrus, an excellent man, the captain of the Prætorian Guard. The first five years of Nero's reign were honorably distinguished from the portion of it that followed. When a warrant for the execution of a criminal was brought to him, he regretted that he had ever learned to write. His first great crime was the poisoning of Britannicus, the son of Claudius. Nero became enamored of a fierce and ambitious woman, Poppæa Sabina. On the basis of false charges, he took the life of his wife, Octavia, the daughter of Claudius (A.D. 62). His criminal mother, Agrippina, after various previous attempts made by him to destroy her, was dispatched by his command (A.D. 59). His unbridled cruelty and jealousy moved him to order Seneca, one of the men to whom he owed most, to commit suicide. He came forward as a musician, and nothing delighted him so much as the applause rendered to his musical performances. He recited his own poems, and was stung with jealousy when he found himself outdone by Lucan. His eagerness to figure as a charioteer prompted him, early in his reign, to construct a circus in his own grounds on the Vatican, where he could exhibit his skill as a coachman to a throng of delighted spectators. At length he appeared, lyre in hand, on the stage before the populace. Senators of high descent, and matrons of noble family, were induced by his example and commands to come forward in public as dancers and play-actors. The public treasure he squandered in expensive shows, and in the lavish distribution of presents in connection with them.

THE CHRISTIANS.—Nero has the undesirable distinction of being the first of the emperors to persecute the Christians. In A.D. 64 a great fire broke out at Rome, which laid a third of the city in ashes. He was suspected of having kindled it; and, in order to divert suspicion from himself, he charged the crime upon the Christians, who were obnoxious, Tacitus tells us, on account of their "hatred of the human race." Their withdrawal from customary amusements and festivals, which involved immorality or heathen rites, naturally gave rise to this accusation of cynical misanthropy. A great number were put to death, "and in their deaths they were made subjects of sport; for they were covered with the hides of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire to, and, when day declined, were burned to serve for nocturnal lights." At length a feeling of compassion arose among the people for the victims of this wanton ferocity. Prior to this time, while the Christians were confounded with the Jews as one of their sects, they had been more protected than persecuted by the Roman authorities. Now that they were recognized as a distinct body,—the adherents of a new religion not identified with any particular nation, but seeking to spread itself everywhere,—they fell under the condemnation of Roman law, and were exposed to the hostility of magistrates, as well as to the wrath of the fanatical populace.

Nero was a great builder. The ground which had been burnt over in the fire he laid out in regular streets, leaving open spaces, and limiting the height of the houses. But a large area he reserved for his "Golden House," which, with its lakes and shady groves, stretched over the ground on which the Coliseum afterwards stood, and as far as the Esquiline.

THE CITY OF ROME.—Ancient Rome was mostly built on the left bank of the Tiber. It spread from the Palatine, the seat of the original settlement, over six other hills; so that it became the "city of seven hills." All of them appeared higher than they do now. Of these hills the Capitoline was the citadel and the seat of the gods. In earlier days, from a part of the summit, the Tarpeian Rock, criminals were hurled. In time the hill became covered with public edifices, of which the grandest was the Temple of "Capitoline Jupiter." On the Palatine were eventually constructed the vast palaces of the emperors, the ruins of which have been uncovered in recent times. The walls of Servius Tullius encompassed the seven hills. The walls constructed by Aurelian (270-275 A.D.), Probus, and Honorius (402 A.D.), inclosed an area twelve miles in circumference. The streets were most of them narrow; and, to economize space, the houses were built very high. One of the finest, as well as most ancient, thoroughfares was the Via Sacra, which ran past the Coliseum, or the Flavian amphitheater, and under the Triumphal Arch of Titus, erected after the capture of Jerusalem, along the east of the Forum to the Capitol. There was a particular street in Rome where shoemakers and booksellers were congregated. The central part of the city was thronged, and noisy with cries of teamsters and of venders of all sorts of wares. The fora—one of which, the "Roman Forum," between the Capitoline and the Palatine, was the great center of Roman life—were open places paved, and surrounded with noble buildings,—temples, and basilicas, or halls of justice. The fora were either places for the transaction of public business, or they served the purpose of modern market-places. Among the public buildings of note were the vast colonnades, places of resort both for business and for recreation. The sewers, and especially the aqueducts, were structures of a stupendous character. Among the most imposing edifices in ancient Rome were the baths. Those built by Diocletian had room for three thousand bathers at once. In these establishments the beauty of the gardens and fountains without was on a level with the elegance of the interior furnishings, and with the attraction of the libraries, paintings, and sculptures, which added intellectual pleasure to the physical comfort for which, mainly, these gigantic buildings were constructed. Besides the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, there were many other temples, some of which were but little inferior to that majestic edifice.

The triumphal arches—as that of Titus, already mentioned, which was built of Pentelic marble—and the commemorative columns—as the Column of Trajan, which stood in the forum that bears his name—were among the architectural wonders of the ancient capital of the world. The plain, named of old the Campus Martius, on the north-west side of the city, and bordering on the Tiber, contained, among the buildings and pleasure-grounds by which it was covered, the Pantheon, and the magnificent mausoleum of Augustus. On the south-west of the Coelian Hill, the Appian Way turns to the south-east, and passes out of the Appian Gate. It is skirted for miles with sepulchral monuments of ancient Romans, of which the circular tomb of Metella Cæcilia is one of the most interesting. There are varying estimates of the population of ancient Rome. Probably the number of free inhabitants, in the early centuries of the empire, was not far from a million; and the slaves were probably almost as many.

DEATH OF NERO: GALBA.—Growing jealous of the legates who commanded armies on the frontiers, Nero determined to destroy them. They consequently revolted; and war between the troops of two of them issued in the death of Vindex, the general in Gaul. But Galba was deputed to carry on the contest; and Nero, being forsaken even by his creature, Tigellinus, and the prætorians, at last gained courage to call on a slave to dispatch him, and died (A.D. 68) at the age of thirty. The principal events out of Italy, during his reign, were the revolt of the Britons under the brave queen Boadicea (A.D. 61), and the suppression of it by Suetonius Paulinus; the war with the Parthians and Armenians, extending slightly the frontier of the empire; and the beginning of the Jewish war. Despite the corruption at Rome, her disciplined soldiers still maintained their superiority on the borders.

OTHO: VITELLIUS.—With the death of Nero, the Augustan family came to an end. Galba began the series of military emperors. A Roman of the old type, simple, severe, and parsimonious, he pleased nobody. The prætorians killed him, and elevated Otho, a profligate noble, to the throne; but he was obliged to contend with a rival aspirant, Vitellius, commander of the German legions, who defeated him, and became emperor A.D. 69. Vitellius was not only vicious, like his predecessor, but was cowardly and inefficient. The Syrian and Egyptian legions refused to obey so worthless a ruler, and proclaimed their commander, Flavius Vespasian, as emperor. As Vespasian's general, Antonius, approached Rome, Vitellius renounced the throne, and declared his readiness to retire to private life. His adherents withstood him; and, in the struggle that followed between the two parties in the city, the Capitoline Temple was burned. The Flavian army took Rome, and Vitellius was put to an ignominious death (A.D. 69).