But come now; let me draw up their histories as it were in parallel columns, and you shall see the likeness clearly; you shall see also, presently, how prettily time and the laws that govern human incarnation played battledore and shuttlecock with the two: what a game of see-saw went on between the East and West.
From 300 to 250 B.C. there was an orgy of war in which old Feudal China passed away forever, and from which Ts'in emerged Mistress of the world. From 100 to 50 B. C. there was an orgy of war in which Republican Rome passed away forever, and out of which Caesar emerged World-Master. Caesar's triumph came just two centuries after Ts'in Shi Hwangti's accession; Kublai Khan the Turanian, who smashed China, came just about as much before Mohammed II the Turanian, who swept away the last remnant of Rome.
In the first cycles of the two there is a certain difference in procedure. In China, a dawn twilight of half a cycle, sixty-five years, from the fall of Chow to the Revival of Literature under the second Han, preceded the glorious age of the Western Hans. In Rome, the literary currents were flowing for about a half-cycle before the accession of Augustus: that half-cycle formed a dawn-twilight preceding the glories of the Augustan Age.
It was just when the reign of Han Wuti was drawing towards a sunset a little clouded,—you remember Ssema Ts'ien's strictures as to the national extravagance and its results,—that the Crest-Wave egos began to come in in Rome. Cicero, eldest of the lights of the great cycle of Latin literature, would have been about twenty when Han Wuti died in 86. We counted the first "day" of the Hans as lasting from 194 (the Revival of the Literature) to the death of Han Wuti's successor in 63; in which year, as we saw, Augustus was born. During the next twenty years the Crest-Wave was rolling more and more into Rome: where we get Julius Caesar's career of conquest;— it was a time filled with wine of restlessness, and, you may say, therewith 'drunk and disorderly.' Meanwhile (from 61 to 49) Han Suenti the Just was reigning in China. His "Troops of justice" became, after a while, accustomed to victory; but in defensive wars. Here it was a time of sanity and order, as contrasted with the disorder in Rome; of pause and reflexion compared with the action and extravagance of the preceding Chinese age. It was Confucian and ethical; no longer Taoist and daringly imaginative; Confucianism began to consolidate its position as the state system. So in England Puritan sobriety followed Elizabethanism. Han Wuti let nothing impede the ferment of his dreams: Han Suenti retrenched, and walked quietly and firmly. His virtues commanded the respect of Central Asia: the Tatars brought him their disputes for arbitration, and all the regions west of the Caspian sent him tribute. China forwent her restless and gigantic designs, and took to quietude and grave consideration.—So we may perhaps distribute the characteristics of these two decades thus between the three great centers of civilization: in China, the stillness that follows an apex time; in India, creation at its apex; in Rome, the confusion caused by the first influx of Crest-Wave Souls.
As Octavian rose to power, the House of Han declined. We hear of a gorging Vitellius on the throne in the thirties; then of several puppets and infants during the last quarter of the century; in A.D. 1, of the dynasty overthrown by a usurper, Mang Wang, who reigned until A.D. 25. Thus the heyday of Augustan Rome coincides with the darkest penumbra of China. Then Kwang-wuti, the eldest surviving Han prince, was reinstated; but until two years before the death of Tiberius, he had to spend his time fighting rebels. Now turn to Rome.
While Han Kwang-wuti was battling his way towards the restitution of Han glories, Tiberius, last of the Roman Crest-Wave Souls, was holding out grimly for the Gods until the cycle should have been completed, and he could say that his and their work was done. For sixty-five years he and his predecessor had been welding the empire into one: now, that labor had been so far accomplished that what dangerous times lay ahead could hardly imperil it. So far it had been a case of Initiate appointing Initiate to succeed him: Augustus, Tiberius;—but whom should Tiberius appoint? There was no one. The cycle was past, and for the present Rome was dead; and on the brink of that unfortunate place to which (they say) the wicked dead must go. Tiberius finally had had to banish Agrippina, her mischief having become too importunate. You remember she was the daughter of Julia and Agrippa, and Germanicus' widow. His patience with her had been marvelous. Once, at a public banquet, to do her honor he had picked a beautiful apple from the dish, and handed it to her: with a scowl and some ostentation, she gave it to the attendant behind her, as who should say: 'I know your designs; but you do not poison me this time'; all present understood her meaning well. Once, when he met her in the palace, and she passed him with some covert insult, he stopped, laid a hand on her shoulder, and said: "My little woman, it is no hurt to you that you do not reign." But his patience only encouraged her in her machinations; and at last he was compelled to banish her. Also to keep one of her sons in strictest confinement; of which the historians have made their for him discreditable tale: the truth is, it was an heroic effort on his part to break the boy of his vices by keeping him under close and continuous supervision. But that is more easily said than done, sometimes; and this Drusus presently died a madman. He then took the youngest son of Agrippina to live with him at Capri; that he, Tiberius, might personally do the best with him that was to be done; for he foresaw that this youth Caius would succeed him; his own grandson, Tiberius Gemellus, being much younger. He foresaw, too, that Caius, once on the throne, would murder Gemellus; which also happened. But there was nothing to be done. Had he named his grandson his successor, a strong regent would have been needed to carry things through until that successor's majority, and to hold the Empire against the partisans of Caius. There was no such strong man in sight; so, what had to come, had to come. Apres lui le deluge: Tiberius knew that. Le deluge was the four years' terror of the reign of Caius, known as Caligula; who, through no good will of his own, but simply by reason of his bloodthirsty mania, amply revenged the wrongs done his pedecessor. Karma put Caligula on the throne to punish Rome.
The reign was too short, even if Caligula had troubled his head with the provinces, for him to spoil the good work done in them during the preceding half-cycle. He did not so trouble his head; being too busy murdering the pillars of Roman society. Then a gentleman who had been spending the afternoon publicly kissing his slippers in the theater, experienced, as they say, a change of heart, and took thought to assassinate him on the way home; whereupon the Praetorians, let loose and having a thoroughly good time, happened on a poor old buffer of the royal house by the name of Claudius; and to show their sense of humor, made him emperor tout de suite. The senate took a high hand, and asserted its right to make those appointments; but Claudius and the Praetorians thought otherwise; and the senate, after blustering, had to crawl. They besought him to allow them the honor of appointing him.—what a difference the mere turn of a cycle had made: from Augustus bequeathing the Empire to Tiberius, ablest man to ablest man, and all with senatoral ratification; to the jocular appointment by undisciplined soldiery of a sad old laughingstock to succeed a raging maniac.
Claudius was a younger brother of Germanicus; therefore Tiberius' nephew, Caligula's uncle, and a brother-in-law to Agrippina. Mr. Baring-Gould says that somewhere deep in him was a noble nature that had never had a chance: that the soul of him was a jewel, set in the foolish lead of a most clownish personality. I do not know; certainly some great and fine things came from him; but whether they were motions of his own soul (if he had one), or whether the Gods for Rome's sake took advantage of his quite negative being, and prompted it to their own purposes, who can say?—Sitting down, and keeping still, and saying nothing, the old man could look rather fine, even majestic; one saw traces in him of the Claudian family dignity and beauty. But let hm walk a few paces, and you noted that his feet dragged and his knees knocked together, and that he had a paunch; and let him get interested in a conversation, and you heard that he first spluttered, and then roared. Physical wakness and mental backwardness had made him the despair of Augustus: he was the fool of the family, kept in the background, and noticed by none. Tiberius, in search of a successor, had never thought of him; had rather let things go to mad Caligula. He had never gone into society; never associated with men of his own rank; but chose his companions among small shopkeepers and the 'Arries and 'Arriets of Rome, who, 'tickled to death' at having a member of the reigning family to hobnob with them in their back-parlors, would refrain from making fun of his peculiatities. Caligula had enjoyed using him as a butt, and so had spared his life. He had never even learned to behave at table: and so, when he came to the throne, made a law that table-manners should no longer be incumbent on a Roman gentleman. All this is recorded of him; one would hardly believe it, but that his portraits bear it out.*
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* The accounts of Claudius and Nero are from The Tragedy of the
Caesars, by S. Baring-Gould.
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For all that he did well at first. He made himself popular with the mob, cracking poor homely jokes with them at which they laughed uproariously. He paid strict attention to business: made some excellent laws; wisely extended Roman citizenship among the subject peoples; undertook and pushed through useful public works. Rome was without a decent harbor: corn from Egypt had to be transshipped at sea and brought up the Tiber in lighters; which resulted in much inconvenience, and sometimes shortage of food in the city. Claudius went down to Ostia and looked about him; and ordered a harbor dredged out and built there on a large scale. The best engineers of the day said it was impossible to do, and would not pay if done. But the old fool stuck to his views and made them get to work; and they found it, though difficult and costly, quite practicable; and when finished, it solved the food problem triumphantly. This is by way of example.—Poor old fool! it was said he never forgot a kindness, or remembered an injury. He came soon, however, to be managed by various freedmen and rascals and wives; all to the end that aristocratic Rome should be well punished for its sins. One day when he was presiding in the law courts, someone cried out that he was an old fool,—which was very true.—and threw a large book at him that cut his face badly,—which was very unkind. And yet, all said, through him and through several fine and statesmanlike measures he put through, the work of Augustus and Tiberius in the empire at large was in many ways pushed forward: he did well by the provinces and the subject races, and carried on the grand homogenization of the world.