The Grandeur That Was Rome: a survey of Roman culture and civilisation

by J. C. Stobart

The Roman Empire at Its Fullest Extent

The foundations of this great empire were not hastily or carelessly laid. Although of feeble constitution and by nature a man of peace, Augustus spent the first half of his long reign more abroad than at home, in fighting rebels and organising or reforming with unwearied energy. To this part of his work we are unable to devote sufficient attention through lack of material. The ancient historians prefer to record small victories over barbarian tribes, or the petty gossip of the Roman streets, while they have little to say about the tireless administration which in one generation transformed the Roman world from a horrible chaos into that scene of peace and prosperity shown to us in the pages of Strabo and Pliny. So while our eyes are fixed upon the sins and follies of Roman emperors and courtiers, until we get an impression of rotten tyranny conducted according to the caprice of monsters and fools, all the time the greater part of Europe was advancing in peace to a state of general culture and civilisation such as it had never known before, and such as it never knew again until the nineteenth century. A casual glance over the inscriptions of a provincial town probably gives us a truer impression than all the rhetoric of the historians. In Pompeii, for example, a small and unimportant suburb of Naples which scarcely comes into the view of history, we see a busy and useful municipal life carried on in absolute security. There were the ten councillors (decuriones), who corresponded to the Roman senate, and there were two local consuls bearing the title of “duumviri.” In most cases a small municipality would have its “patronus” also, a local squire, perhaps, who in some measure corresponded to the princeps, and who would represent the interests of the town at Rome, or with the Roman prætor. His main business, however, was to equip his town with baths, temples, and colonnades, or to provide it with public banquets. For the rich freedmen, in whose hands was much of the trade of the place, Augustus had provided the new office of Seviri Augustales, which we have already described. There were no rates, for private munificence took their place. There was no direct taxation in Italy, and the indirect taxes were inconsiderable. Internal trade was free. The obligation to military service was so widely distributed that it fell very lightly on Italy, and the natives accordingly became less and less warlike. All the Italian peoples were now Roman citizens. Trade was greatly assisted by the improvement of communications which took place during this period. The care of roads properly devolved upon the senate, but as they showed their usual incompetence in this department the princeps had to step in and organise a special Board of Roads with a curator for each of the trunk lines of communication. Augustus also established an imperial post with a system of stages and relays, which lasted on until the coming of railways. The vehicles and horses were maintained by the roadside communities, and imperial messengers who carried a diploma or passport were allowed to travel express by this means. The great road to Rimini, the Flaminian Way, was the first to be repaired, and Augustus adorned its terminal city with a handsome marble bridge[44] and triumphal arch, possibly as a compensation for the trouble which he himself had inflicted upon the town during the civil wars. Flourishing historic cities like Turin and Brescia owe their origin to colonies founded by Augustus. Towns like Perugia which had been almost destroyed in the civil wars now grew up again and flourished. In all, Augustus founded twenty-eight colonies in Italy, and supplied 90,000 veterans of the civil wars with land which he had bought and paid for. That the sea was now safe for trade and fishery must have meant a great deal to the coast towns. Augustus himself wrote an account of the condition of Italy, and Pliny confesses to using it as his authority. In all the long and important history of Italy it is doubtful whether she has ever enjoyed such peace and prosperity as began for her in the reign of Augustus.

Plate XLV. PORCH AND INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON, ROME

A broad view of foreign politics showed Augustus two vital points of danger—the North and East. To the north the fierce and warlike barbarians of Germany had been checked indeed by Julius, but also exasperated. Tribes more or less akin to them extended southwards across the Danube and even to the Austrian Tyrol, where they were little more than a week’s march from the gates of Rome. A strong frontier policy was needed here. In the East there were the Parthians, the only possible rival power to Rome. The Romans at Carrhæ noticed that while the chiefs wore their hair parted and curled and their faces painted in the Persian fashion, the warriors had the unkempt locks of barbarian Thrace. It is likely enough that these Parthian bowmen had come in round the shores of the Black Sea from Thrace or South Russia. They had all the characteristics of northern nomads, but their kings had a good deal of Hellenic culture. They could boast of a choice collection of Roman eagles captured not only from Crassus at Carrhæ, but from two armies sent against them by Antony. Thousands of Roman prisoners were still working as slaves on the banks of the Euphrates. The task of punishing them had been definitely laid upon Augustus as a legacy from Julius, who had been slain at the moment when he was about to undertake it himself. Moreover, the Romans felt the loss of those standards very acutely, and not the least motive for their acquiescence in monarchy had been the hope that a monarch would retrieve their honour in this quarter. The earlier poems of Horace constantly express hopes of vengeance.

The manner in which Augustus satisfied these ardent aspirations of national pride is characteristic of him. Instead of the armies and bloody battles which historians demand of their favourites, Augustus achieved his object by luck and strategy. When he was organising the affairs of the East in 29 B.C., after the conquest of Egypt, he had left the Parthian question unsolved. For this, Mommsen takes him to task, but there is little doubt that it would have been folly to undertake a great and perilous war at that moment while the affairs of Rome were still in disorder. Moreover the attitude of the army compelled him to return home. Instead of fighting, he was content to set up rival powers on the Parthian frontier. The Parthians hated their king Phraates and there was a deposed rival in the field, Tiridates, to whom Augustus now gave shelter in the province of Syria, hoping, as indeed happened, that his presence in the neighbourhood would keep Phraates civil. At the same time Augustus set up a buffer kingdom of Lesser Armenia on the Parthian border and in the south strengthened and reinstated Herod the Great. Four or five legions were left to guard Syria.

In 23 B.C. it chanced that Tiridates had managed to kidnap the child of Phraates and was keeping him in custody in the Roman province. It is significant of the changed relations between Parthia and Rome that, instead of marching into Syria to recover the child, Phraates sent an embassy to Rome, whither also Tiridates came in person. Of course the senate made the restoration of the child conditional upon the return of the standards and prisoners. Phraates consented, but there was some delay in carrying out the contract and this may have been secretly arranged to enable Augustus to conduct the affair in a more striking fashion. Augustus marched out with an army and at his mere approach the standards and captives were given up with due formalities. It was really a Roman triumph, almost as great as if it had been attained by bloodshed, for all the world could see the humiliation of Parthia. Augustus, that astute tactician, took care that the event should not be allowed to lose its impressiveness for the mere lack of bloodshed. The return of the standards was treated as a Roman triumph. They were placed with every solemnity in the temple of Mars the Avenger. Coins were struck representing the suppliant Parthian on his knees and the same scene is depicted in relief on the centre of Cæsar’s breastplate on the famous statue. The poets broke out into dutiful pæans.