Under Cæsars' Shadow

by Henry Francis Colby

CHAPTER I
CÆSAR AUGUSTUS

We read in the second chapter of Luke’s Gospel that “it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled.” The common version of the New Testament says, “taxed.” But the revised version, following more closely the original Greek, says, “enrolled.” It was what we call at the present day a registration, made in order that none should escape the subsequent taxation.

The sacred narrative continues. “All went to enroll themselves, every one to his own city.” Dr. James Stalker remarks:

“This does not seem a very thrilling fact with which to begin the Christmas story; it seems, even, prosaic. But when the stern emperor’s edict went forth there was one young woman’s heart which thrilled with the keenest dread. That was the heart of Mary of Nazareth, called of God to be the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ. It meant for her a long hard journey of eighty miles, in the winter season, over the mountains and along the roughest paths; it meant that she must suffer pain and privation when she was frail in body and anxious in mind, and all because she could not escape going to Bethlehem to be enrolled. For she and her husband Joseph were both direct descendants of Israel’s best-beloved King, David, and must obey the law requiring people to go back to the city from which their family had first come and be enrolled and taxed there. So there was nothing for her but to set out on the difficult journey, this sweet and gentle maiden with her crown of supreme honor from God and her burden of human anxiety and pain.”

We can imagine one subject of the conversation between her and Joseph on the way. Their poverty and obscurity had hidden from public notice the fact of their lineage, so direct from David. But all the Jews were wont to preserve with great care everything pertaining to their genealogies, and it was especially the case with those whose certainty of Davidic descent gave them ground for hoping that the Messiah would appear in their own line. We may believe that Joseph took with him a copy of the official family records, those that Matthew and Luke have preserved for us, and that he pleased himself and Mary along the toilsome way with the thought that now their specially honorable descent would have to be in some measure publicly recognized. Cæsar Augustus himself had not so good a patent of nobility as had they. Although the dark shadow of that monarch was about to fall, by reason of this decree for enrollment, across the very beginning of the holy Child’s life, they were afterward to realize that God’s providence had been leading them and had caused human government to become an involuntary agent for bringing about the fulfillment of the prophecy that the Messiah should be born in Bethlehem.

Now who was this Cæsar Augustus, that is assumed to have had so great authority in the whole world that at his bidding a registration had to be taken in every part of it? He was no less than the first sole master of Rome’s united empire, one of the most conspicuous figures in the history of the human race.

He had ascended the throne as the climax of a series of very startling and tragic events. Julius Cæsar,—that man so wonderful alike for military genius, political sagacity, and literary skill, to whom first the Roman Senate gave the imposing title of Imperator, and who, if he had lived longer, would probably have become all that this title later grew to mean,—had been assassinated by a group of conspirators at Rome in the year 44 before the beginning of the Christian era. These assassins claimed that they were doing a great service to the state by delivering it from the schemes of so ambitious a man; but none can deny that jealousy was among the motives that impelled them to commit the bloody deed, which took place in the building in the Campus Martius where the Senate that year convened, adjoining the Theater of Pompey, and we are told that it was at the feet of great Pompey’s statue that Cæsar fell. Mark Antony, who had been his colleague in the consulship and in the control of the army, dramatically pronounced a funeral oration after Cæsar’s death from the rostra in the Forum and then endeavored to make himself the successor to Cæsar’s remarkable power and popularity.

But just then a new and strong competitor for the military and political leadership appeared in the person of a young man only nineteen years of age, who is the subject of this sketch.

The name of this young man was at that time Caius Octavius. He was the son of a Roman noble of the same name and of his wife Atia,—who was a niece of Julius Cæsar. They lived in a modest home on the Palatine Hill. Caius Octavius was also Julius Cæsar’s adopted son, and had been chiefly educated under his provision and direction. Moreover, Cæsar had designated him as his heir.

Caius Octavius proposed, therefore, now to become the great dictator’s successor and avenger. He assumed the longer name, Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus, and artfully secured,—first of all,—a pledge from a large part of the army to support and obey him. He found a great helper to his ambitions in the most distinguished statesman of that day, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. Marcus Tullius Cicero also welcomed Octavianus to Rome, especially as he saw in this young aspirant a rival to Mark Antony, whom Cicero intensely hated. Indeed, that famous orator made exciting speeches against Mark Antony, which greatly impaired the influence of that commander.