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

by George Park Fisher

PERIOD V. THE IMPERIAL MONARCHY: TO THE MIGRATIONS OF THE TEUTONIC TRIBES (375 A.D.).

CHAPTER I. THE REIGN OF AUGUSTUS.

AUGUSTUS AS A RULER.—The long-continued, sanguinary civil wars made peace welcome. Augustus knew how to conceal his love of power under a mild exterior, and to organize the monarchy with a nominal adherence to republican forms. The controlling magistracies, except the censorship, were transferred to him. As Imperator, he had unlimited command over the military forces, and was at the head of a standing army of three hundred and forty thousand men. To him it belonged to decide on peace and war. The Senate became the real legislative body, issuing senatus-consulta. There was also a sort of "cabinet council" chosen by him from its members. The authority of the Tribunes belonged to him, and thus the popular assemblies became more and more a nullity. "The Senate was made up of his creatures; the people were won by bread and games; the army was fettered to him by means of booty and gifts." While the forms of a free state remained, all the functions of authority were exercised by the ruler.

STATE OF THE EMPIRE.—(1) Its Extent. The Roman Empire extended from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, a distance of more than three thousand miles, and from the Danube and the English Channel—later, from the friths of Scotland—to the cataracts of the Nile and the African desert. Its population was somewhere from eighty millions to one hundred and twenty millions. It was composed of the East and the West, a distinction that was not simply geographical, but included deeper characteristic differences. (2) The Provinces. The provinces were divided (27 B.C.) into the proconsular, ruled by the Senate, and the imperial, ruled by the legates of Augustus. His authority, however, was everywhere supreme. Over all the empire extended the system of Roman law, the rights and immunities of which belonged to Roman citizens everywhere. (3) The Two Languages. It was a Romano-Hellenic monarchy. Local dialects remained; but the Greek language was the language of commerce, and of polite intercourse in all places. The Greek tongue and Hellenic culture were the common property of the nations. The Latin was prevalent west of the Adriatic. It was adopted in Africa, Spain, Gaul, and in other provinces. It was the language of courts and of the camp. (4) Journeys and Trade. The Roman territory was covered with a net-work of magnificent roads. Journeys for purposes of trade and from motives of curiosity were common. Religious pilgrimages to famous shrines were frequent. The safety and peace which followed upon the civil wars stimulated traffic and intercourse between the different regions united under the imperial government.

LITERATURE.—The Augustan period was the golden age of Roman literature. Literary works were topics of conversation in social circles. Libraries were collected by the rich. The shops of booksellers were places of resort for cultivated people. There were active and liberal patrons of poets and of other men of letters. Such patrons were Maecenas, Horace's friend, and Augustus himself. Then favors were repaid by praises and flattery, as we see in the verses of Horace, Virgil, and especially of Ovid. The lectures of grammarians and rhetoricians, of philosophers and physicians, were largely attended. Literary societies were formed. Periodicals and bulletins were published, in which the proceedings of the Senate and of the courts were recorded. The business of scribes—copyists of manuscripts—engaged a vast number of persons.

WRITINGS OF CICERO.—Cicero (106-43), in his philosophic writings, reproduces the thoughts and speculations of the Greek sages, in the manner of a cultivated and appreciative student. His speeches and his epistles, especially those to his friend, Atticus, lift the veil, as it were, and afford us most interesting glimpses of the civil and social life of the Romans of that day.

THE POETS.—One of the most original of the Latin poets is Lucretius (95-51 B.C.), whose poem "On the Nature of Things" is an effort to dispel superstitious fear by inculcating the Epicurean doctrine that the world is self-made through the movement and concussion of atoms, and that the gods leave it to care for itself. A contemporary of Lucretius, and a poet of equal merit, but in an altogether different vein, is Catullus. He is chiefly noted for his lyrics. Virgil (70-19 B.C.), in the Aeneid, has produced a genuine Roman epic, although his dependence on Homer is obvious throughout, and in the Bucolics, and in particular in the Georgics, where he shows most originality, has made himself immortal as a pastoral poet. Horace (65-8 B.C.), like most of the Roman authors, in many of his poems is inspired by his Greek models, but, in his Satires and Poetic Epistles, expresses the character of his own genius. His "Odes," for their beauty and melody and the variety of their topics, rank among the best of all productions of their kind. Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18), in his chief work, the Metamorphoses, handled the mythical tales of the Greeks, and, in his poems on Love, likewise introduced many Grecian tales. He was much influenced by the Alexandrian poets.

THE HISTORIANS.—In historical composition, most of the Roman authors had Greek patterns before their eyes. Nevertheless, Livy (59 B.C.-A.D. 17), thirty-five of the one hundred and forty-two books of whose "Annals" have been preserved, and Sallust, to whom we are indebted for narratives of the conspiracy of Cataline and of the Jugurthine war, are far from being servile copyists. The simple and lucid but graceful style of the Commentaries of Caesar makes this work an example of the purest Latin prose.

LAW WRITERS.—In one department, that of jurisprudence, the Romans were eminently original. The writings of the great jurists were simple and severe, and free from the rhetorical traits which Roman authors in other departments borrowed from the Greeks.

OTHER AUTHORS.—Among other eminent authors of this period are the great Roman antiquary Varro (116-27 B.C.); the elegiac poets, Tibullus and Propertius; Phaedrus, the Roman Aesop; the historian, Cornelius Nepos; and the Greek historical writers of that day, Diodore of Sicily and Dionysius of Halicarnassus; also Strabo, the Greek geographer (64 B.C.-A.D. 24).