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

by George Park Fisher

DOMITIAN (A.D. 81-96).—Domitian, the younger brother of Titus, succeeded him. By nature autocratic, he refused to share the government with the senate, as Augustus had planned. In order the more completely to control this body he assumed the censorship for life. In the latter part of his reign Domitian, like Tiberius, was gloomy and suspicious, and committed many acts of tyranny. He was killed by the freedmen of his own palace (A.D. 96). His war with the Dacians on the Danube had been concluded by the dubious stipulation to pay them an annual tribute as a reward for abstaining from predatory incursions into Moesia (A.D. 90). For the first time, Rome purchased peace of her enemies. Domitian was guilty of persecuting the Christians, among whom, it is now known, was included at least one member of his own family, his niece, Flavia Domatilla, who was also allied to him by marriage. The epistle of Clement of Rome, the oldest extant Christian writing after the Apostles, refers to the barbarities inflicted upon Christian disciples by this tyrant.

NERVA (A.D. 96-98).—The Senate now took the initiative, and placed on the throne one of their own number, Nerva, an old man of mild and virtuous character. The administration was in every point in contrast with the preceding. But the best thing Nerva did was to provide for the curbing of the prætorians by appointing, with the concurrence of the Senate, a most competent man to be his colleague and successor.

TRAJAN (A.D. 98-117).—Trajan was a native of Spain, and had been brought up in the camp. He belongs among the very best of the Roman emperors. He upheld the ancient laws and institutions of the state. He provided for the impartial administration of justice. He restored freedom of speech in the Senate. He founded schools, and establishments for the care of orphans, facilitated commerce by building new roads, bridges, and havens, and adorned Rome with a public library, and with a new and magnificent forum, or market-place, where "Trajan's Column" was placed by Senate and people as a monument of his victories and services.

He relished the society of literary men like the historian Tacitus. He was an intimate friend of Pliny (the younger), whose correspondence while he was governor of Bithynia throws much light upon the emperor's character and policy. Trajan's own manner of life was simple, and free from luxury. To the people he furnished lavishly the diversions which they coveted. He made an aggressive war against the Dacians on the Danube, and constituted a new province of Dacia. He carried his arms into the Parthian territory; and three new provinces—Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria—were the fruit of his campaign in the East. In a letter to Pliny, he defined the policy to be pursued towards Christians, who had become very numerous in the region where Pliny governed. The effect of the emperor's rescript was to place Christianity among the religions under the ban of the law. This decision was long in force, and guided the policy of future emperors towards the new faith. HADRIAN (A.D. 117-138).—Trajan was succeeded by Hadrian, a lover of peace,—a cultivated man, with extraordinary taste in the fine arts, and their generous patron. He was diligent and full of vigor in the transaction of public business. Although genial and affable, his temper was not so even as that of Trajan; and he was guilty of occasional acts of cruelty. He spent the larger portion of his reign in traveling through his dominions, personally attending to the wants and condition of his subjects. He constructed great works in different portions of the empire: in Rome, his Mausoleum (now the Castle of St. Angelo), and his grand temple of Rome and Venus. He began the wall connecting the Scottish friths. A fresh revolt broke out among the Jews (A.D. 131), under a fanatic named Bar-Cocaba, which was suppressed in 135. Jerusalem was razed to the ground; and the Jewish rites were forbidden within the new city of Ælia Capitolina, which the emperor founded on its site. This gave a finishing blow to the Jewish and Judaizing types of Christianity within the limits of the Church.

ANTONINUS PIUS (A.D. 138-161).—Antoninus Pius was the adopted son and successor of Hadrian. He was one of the noblest of princes, a man of almost blameless life. His reign was an era of peace, the golden age in the imperial history. He fostered learning, was generous without being prodigal, was firm yet patient and indulgent, and watched over the interests of his subjects with the care of a father. It is a sign of the happiness of his reign that it does not afford startling occurrences to the narrator.

MARCUS AURELIUS (A.D. 161-180).—Hardly less eminent for his virtues was the next in the succession of sovereigns, Marcus Aurelius (161-180). "A sage upon the throne," he combined a love of learning with the moral vigor and energy of the old Roman character, and with the self-government and serenity of the Stoic school, of the tenets of which he was a noble exemplar as well as a deeply interesting expounder. A philosopher was now on the throne; and his reign gives some countenance to the doctrine of Plato, that the world could be well governed only when philosophers should be kings, or kings philosophers. He endured with patience the grievous faults of his wife Faustina, and of his brother by adoption, and co-regent, Lucius Verus. He protected the eastern frontier against Parthia. In the war with the Marcomanni, he drove the German tribes back over the Danube, and gained a signal victory over the Quadi in their own land. His great object was to strike terror into the barbarian enemies of the empire on the north, and prevent future incursions. Although victorious in many of his battles, he failed to accomplish this result. The danger from barbarian invasion increased with the lapse of time. Before his work was finished, Marcus Aurelius died at Vindobona (Vienna), in March, 180. During his reign, there was persecution of Christians. Especially the churches of Lyons and Vienne have left a record of their sufferings. The virtuous emperors, who were strenuous in their exertions to maintain the old laws and customs, were apt to be more severe in their treatment of Christians, whom they ignorantly regarded as a mischievous sect, than were those emperors who were men of looser principles.

STATE OF MORALS.—The Roman Empire, in the declining days of heathenism, presented the spectacle of a flourishing civilization in contrast with extreme moral degeneracy. Rich and populous cities; stately palaces; beautiful works of art—as vases, statues, carved altars—on every hand; bridges and aqueducts, and noble highways, binding land to land; institutions of education in the provincial cities as well as in Rome; a thriving trade and commerce; a rapid spread of the Roman language, of the Roman legal system, and Roman culture and manners over the subject countries,—these are among the signs and fruits of civilization. But with all this outward prosperity and elegance, there was a growing sensuality, a decay of manly feeling, a disregard of the sanctity of the marriage tie, an insatiable hunger for wealth and for the pleasures of sense. One of the most corrupting features in the social condition was slavery. Every Roman of moderate means aspired to own at least a few slaves. Some owned from ten to twenty thousand, mostly field-hands. Many householders possessed as many as five hundred. Horace gives it as a sign of the simplicity of his life as a bachelor, that he is waited on at table by only three slaves. Slave-holding among the Romans brought in temptations to all sorts of brutality and vice. It brought a poisonous atmosphere into every household. Nothing more clearly illustrates the moral degradation of this period than the character of the sports in which people of all ranks delighted. The most attractive theatrical performances came to be comedies, from the Greek and Latin plays of the same order, where scenes were introduced from the licentious stories of the Greek mythology. But the Pantomime, which was often of an unchaste and even obscene character, gradually usurped the place of every other exhibition on the stage. The chief amusements of the people of all classes were the Circus and the Arena. In the Circus, before hundreds of thousands of spectators, nobles of ancient lineage competed in the chariot race. Gladiatorial games, which had first taken place at funerals, and in honor of deceased friends, acquired an almost incredible popularity. At the games instituted by Augustus, ten thousand men joined in these bloody combats. In the festivals under the auspices of Trajan, in A.D. 106, eleven thousand tame and wild animals were slain. Not satisfied with seeing pairs of men engage in mortal conflict, the Romans were eager to witness bloodshed on a larger scale. The emperors provided actual battles between hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of men, which were beheld by countless spectators. On an artificial lake in Cæsar's garden, Augustus gave a sea-fight in which three thousand soldiers were engaged. The effect of these brutal spectacles of agony and death was inevitably to harden the heart.

LITERATURE.—If the sanguinary fights in the arena excited little or no condemnation, the prevalence of various other sorts of immorality, at variance with the practice of better days, could not fail to call out different forms of censure.

One of these forms of protest was through the satirical poets. Of these caustic writers, Persius (34-62) is obscure and of a moderate degree of merit. Juvenal (about 55-135), on the contrary, is spirited and full of force. Martial (43-101), a Spaniard by birth, was the author of numerous short poems of a pithy and pointed character, called epigrammata. All these poets, if we make proper discount for the exaggeration of satire, are very instructive as to the manners and morals of their time. Lucian (120-200), who wrote in Greek, the best known of whose works are his "Dialogues," touched with his broad humor a great many of the superstitions and follies of the day.

The popular teachers in the imperial time were the rhetoricians, analogous to the Greek Sophists,—teachers of rhetoric and eloquence,—one of whom, Quintilian (who was born about 40, and died about 118), was the first to receive from the public treasury a regular salary, and had among his pupils the younger Pliny and the two grand-nephews of Domitian. The influence of the mania for rhetoric was more and more to impart an artificial character to literature and art. The epic poems of such writers as Lucan and Statitis are to a large extent imitations; although Lucan's principal poem, "Pharsalia," gives evidence of poetic talent. Where there was so little productive genius, it was natural that grammarians and commentators should abound. There was one great writer, the historian Tacitus (about 54-117), who towers above his contemporaries, and in vigor and conciseness has seldom been equaled. The elder Pliny (23-79), whose curiosity to witness the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 cost him his life, was a famous observer and author in natural history. His nephew, the younger Pliny, the friend of Trajan, has left to us ten books of "Epistles," which present an agreeable picture of the life and thoughts of a cultivated Roman gentleman. The philosopher Seneca, with the exception of Marcus Aurelius, the most eminent expositor of the Roman Stoic school, was a voluminous author. No ancient heathen writer has uttered so many thoughts and precepts which bear a resemblance to teachings of the New Testament.