DEATHS OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.—Octavius pursued Antony to Egypt, where the latter, deserted by his army, and informed by a messenger from the false queen that she was dead, committed suicide. Cleopatra then sought to enslave Octavius with her charms; but, failing in this, and becoming convinced that he proposed to take her to Rome that she might there grace his triumph, she took her own life, being in the thirty-eighth year of her age. Tradition says that she effected her purpose by applying an asp to her arm. But it is really unknown in what way she killed herself.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
(From 31 B.C. to A.D. 180.)
REIGN OF AUGUSTUS CÆSAR (31 B.C. to A.D. 14).—The hundred years of strife which ended with the battle of Actium left the Roman republic, exhausted and helpless, in the hands of one wise enough and strong enough to remould its crumbling fragments in such a manner that the state, which seemed ready to fall to pieces, might prolong its existence for another five hundred years. It was a great work thus to create anew, as it were, out of anarchy and chaos, a political fabric that should exhibit such elements of perpetuity and strength. "The establishment of the Roman empire," says Merivale, "was, after all, the greatest political work that any human being ever wrought. The achievements of Alexander, of Cæsar, of Charlemagne, of Napoleon, are not to be compared with it for a moment."
The government which Octavius established was a monarchy in fact, but a republic in form. Mindful of the fate of Julius Cæsar, who fell because he gave the lovers of the republic reason to think that he coveted the title of king, Octavius carefully veiled his really absolute sovereignty under the forms of the old republican state. The Senate still existed; but so completely subjected were its members to the influence of the conqueror that the only function it really exercised was the conferring of honors and titles and abject flatteries upon its master. All the republican officials remained; but Octavius absorbed and exercised their chief powers and functions. He had the powers of consul, tribune, censor, and Pontifex Maximus. All the republican magistrates—the consuls, the tribunes, the prætors—were elected as usual; but they were simply the nominees and creatures of the emperor. They were the effigies and figure-heads to delude the people into believing that the republic still existed. Never did a people seem more content with the shadow after the loss of the substance.
[Illustration: AUGUSTUS.]
The Senate, acting under the inspiration of Octavius, withheld from him the title of king, which ever since the expulsion of the Tarquins, five centuries before this time, had been intolerable to the people; but they conferred upon him the titles of Imperator and Augustus, the latter having been hitherto sacred to the gods. The sixth month of the Roman year was called Augustus (whence our August) in his honor, an act in imitation of that by which the preceding month had been given the name of Julius in honor of Julius Cæsar.
The domains over which Augustus held sway were imperial in magnitude. They stretched from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, and upon the north were hemmed by the forests of Germany and the bleak steppes of Scythia, and were bordered on the south by the sands of the African desert and the dreary wastes of Arabia, which seemed the boundaries set by nature to dominion in those directions. Within these limits were crowded more than 100,000,000 people, embracing every conceivable condition and variety in race and culture, from the rough barbarians of Gaul to the refined voluptuary of the East.
Octavius was the first to moderate the ambition of the Romans, and to council them not to attempt to conquer any more of the world, but rather to devote their energies to the work of consolidating the domains already acquired. He saw the dangers that would attend any further extension of the boundaries of the state.
The reign of Augustus lasted forty-four years, from 31 B.C. to A.D. 14. It embraced the most splendid period of the annals of Rome. Under the patronage of the emperor, and that of his favorite minister Mæcenas, poets and writers flourished and made this the "golden age" of Latin literature. During this reign Virgil composed his immortal epic of the Æneid, and Horace his famous odes; while Livy wrote his inimitable history, and Ovid his Metamorphoses. Many who lamented the fall of the republic sought solace in the pursuit of letters; and in this they were encouraged by Augustus, as it gave occupation to many restless spirits that would otherwise have been engaged in political intrigues against his government.