Cæsar’s conquests in Gaul were of course a subject of engrossing interest at Rome, and when the city enjoyed an interval of repose from the commotions caused by Clodius and Milo, nothing else was talked of. ‘Compared with this man,’ said Cicero, ‘what was Marius?’ and the saying was but an expression of the popular enthusiasm. Cæsar’s visits to Britain excited especial interest; and at first there were not wanting sceptics who maintained that there was no such island in existence, and that the alleged visit of Cæsar to that place of savages, where pearls were found in the rivers, was a mere hoax on the public. As, however, the period of Cæsar’s command drew near its close, and it became known that he aspired to a second consulship, the fears of the aristocratic party began to manifest themselves. ‘What may not this conqueror of Gaul do when he returns to Rome?’ was the saying of Cato, and others of the senators. ‘Accustomed during so many years to the large and roomy action of a camp, will he be able to submit again to civic trammels? Will he not rather treat us as if we were his subordinate officers—Roman laws as if they were savage customs—and our city itself as if it were a Gallic forest?’ Unfortunately, also, the Triumvirate no longer existed to support Cæsar’s interests. Crassus was dead; and Pompey—whose connection with Cæsar had been severed by the death of his wife, Cæsar’s beloved daughter Julia (B. C. 54)—had since gone over to the aristocratic party, to which he had formerly belonged, and whose policy was, upon the whole, more genial to his character. In B. C. 52, he enjoyed a third consulship, without a colleague, having been appointed by the senators as the man most likely to restore order to the distracted state; and during the following year, he lent his aid to those enemies of Cæsar who insisted that, ere he should be allowed to stand for the consulship, he should be obliged to resign his Gallic command, and resume his station as a private citizen, ready to meet any charges which might be brought against him. Cæsar did not want agents in Rome—some of them paid, some of them voluntary—to plead his cause; and through these he offered to resign his command, provided Pompey would do the same with regard to Spain. The proposal was not listened to; and a decree of the senate having been passed that Cæsar should disband his army against a certain day, under pain of being treated as a public enemy, his agents left the city, and hastened to his camp in Cisalpine Gaul (B. C. 50).
Cæsar did not delay a moment. Sending orders to his various legions distributed through Gaul to follow him as speedily as possible, he placed himself at the head of such forces as were with him at the instant, crossed the small stream called the Rubicon, which separated his province of Cisalpine Gaul from Italy, and advanced towards Rome, amid cheers of welcome from the populations which he passed through. Utterly bewildered by his unexpected arrival, the whole senatorial party, with Pompey at their head, abandoned Rome, and proceeded into the south of Italy, where they tried to raise forces. Cæsar pursued them, and drove them into Greece. Then hastening into Spain, he suppressed a rising Pompeian movement in that country. Returning to Rome with the title of Dictator, which had been bestowed on him during his absence, he passed various salutary measures for restoring order in Italy, and among them one conferring the Roman citizenship on the Cisalpine Gauls; then crossed over into Greece (B. C. 49) to give battle to Pompey, who had meanwhile assembled forces from all parts of the Roman dominion. At length the two armies met on the plain of Pharsalia in Thessaly (9th August B. C. 48), when Pompey sustained a complete defeat. Not long afterwards he was killed by the orders of Ptolemy, king of Egypt, when seeking to land on the coast of that country. Cæsar, who had used his victory with great moderation, arrived in Egypt soon after, and remained there several months, fascinated by Cleopatra, who was then at war with her brother Ptolemy.
Having settled the affairs of Egypt, Cæsar proceeded to Asia Minor, crushed an insurrection there headed by Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, and then (September, B. C. 47) returned to Italy. He remained there but a few months, setting out in the beginning of B. C. 46 for Africa, where the relics of the Pompeian party had taken refuge. These were soon defeated; and Cato, the most distinguished man among them, killed himself rather than to fall into his conqueror’s hands. Pompey’s two sons escaped to Spain, where they excited an insurrection, which, however, was soon suppressed.
EXTINCTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH—DICTATORSHIP AND DEATH OF CÆSAR—THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE—CIVIL WARS OF MARK ANTONY AND OCTAVIANUS.
From August B. C. 48, when he defeated Pompey at Pharsalia, till March B. C. 44, when he was assassinated, Julius Cæsar was supreme master of the Roman world. Senate and people vied with each other in conferring dignities upon him; and all the great offices and titles recognized by the Roman constitution—as consul, dictator, censor, tribune, etc.—were concentrated in his person, while he exercised the virtual patronage of almost all the rest. In short, the Commonwealth may be said to have ceased when he defeated Pompey; and had he lived long enough, there is no doubt that he would have fully established the Empire. It was not so much, however, in organic changes of the constitution, as in practical reforms of vast moment, that Cæsar exercised the enormous power which had been placed in his hands. Besides the various measures of reform which he actually carried into effect during his dictatorship, among which his famous reform of the Calendar deserves especial mention, there were innumerable schemes which he had projected for himself, and some of which he would probably have executed, had his life not been cut short. To extend the Roman dominion in the East; to drain the Pontine marshes; to cut through the Isthmus of Corinth; to prepare a complete map of the Roman Empire; to draw up a new digest of Roman law; to establish public libraries in the metropolis—such were a few of the designs which this great man entertained at the time when the conspiracy was formed which led to his assassination. At the head of this plot, which consisted of about sixty persons of note, were Brutus and Cassius, both men of the highest abilities, and esteemed by Cæsar; and the former at least actuated by motives of the purest character. The immediate occasion of the conspiracy was the rumor that Cæsar intended to accept the title of king, which some of his adherents were pressing upon him. When the plot was matured (B. C. 44) it was resolved that Cæsar should be assassinated in the senate-house on the ides (the 15) of March, on which day it was understood a motion was to be brought forward by some of his friends for appointing him king of Italy. ‘Upon the first onset,’ says Plutarch, ‘those who were not privy to the design were astonished, and their horror of the action was so great, that they durst not fly, nor assist Cæsar, nor so much as speak a word. But those who came prepared for the business enclosed him on every side, with their naked daggers in their hands, and which way soever he turned he met with blows, and saw their swords leveled at his face and eyes. Brutus gave him one stab in the groin. Some say that he fought and resisted all the rest, and moved from one place to another calling for help; but when he saw Brutus’s sword drawn, he covered his face with his robe, and quietly surrendered himself, till he was pushed, either by chance or design, to the pedestal on which Pompey’s statue stood, which by that means was much stained with his blood: so that Pompey himself may seem to have had his share in the revenge of his former enemy, who fell at his feet, and breathed out his soul through the multitude of his wounds; for they say he received three-and-twenty.’
The assassination of Cæsar has justly been pronounced ‘the most stupid action that ever the Romans committed.’ The later ages of the republic had been one continued scene of violence and anarchy; and not until Cæsar had risen to the chief power in the state was there a restoration of order and efficient government. His assassination plunged the Roman dominions into new and complicated civil wars. On the one side were the conspirators with Brutus and Cassius at their head, bent on the futile project of throwing back the Empire into the condition of a republic. On the other were Mark Antony, an able and valiant officer of Cæsar’s; Lepidus, another officer of less distinguished abilities; and Marcus Octavius, a young man of eighteen, Cæsar’s grandnephew, and who, as his uncle’s heir, now assumed the name of Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus. These three united themselves into a triumvirate (November B. C. 44) for avenging Cæsar’s death, and settling the affairs of the republic. After making themselves masters of Italy, and putting to death by wholesale proscription all those citizens whose views they suspected, among others the great and amiable Cicero, they pursued the conspirators into Greece. At length, in the autumn of B. C. 42, two great battles were fought at Philippi in Macedonia between the republican forces and those of the triumvirate. The former were defeated; Cassius caused himself to be slain, Brutus committed suicide, and the triumvirs thus remained masters of the Roman world. They divided it among them: Antony assuming the government of the East, Lepidus obtaining Africa, and Octavianus returning to Italy, master of the countries adjacent to that peninsula. Each continued to govern his share for some time independently; but a quarrel ensuing between Octavianus and Lepidus, the latter was deprived of his power, and obliged to retire into private life. The Empire was now divided between Antony and Octavianus, the former master of the East, the latter of the West. At length, however, political and private reasons led to a rupture between the two potentates (B. C. 33). The rash and pleasure-loving Antony, who had been caught in the toils of Cleopatra, the licentious queen of Egypt, and therefore one of his subject sovereigns as master of the East, was no match for the cunning, abstemious, and remorseless Octavianus. Defeated at the battle of Actium (2d September B. C. 31), he fled with Cleopatra to Egypt, where, being hard pressed by Octavianus, they both died by their own hands. Octavianus thus remained sole master (B. C. 30) of the great Empire which Julius Cæsar had prepared for him; and under the new name of Augustus, he continued to wield the sovereignty during the long period of forty-four years (B. C. 30-A. D. 14). During these forty-four years, the various races and nations which so many centuries of conquest had connected together, became consolidated into that historic entity—‘The Roman Empire.’
CONDITION OF THE EMPIRE UNDER AUGUSTUS.
The Roman Empire under Augustus consisted of Italy and the following countries governed as provinces:—In Europe, Sicily, Sardinia, and the other islands in the west of the Mediterranean, Gaul as far as the Rhine, Spain, Illyricum, Dalmatia, Pannonia, Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, and the islands of the Ægean; in Asia, all the countries between the Caspian Sea, the Parthian Empire, the Persian and Arabian Gulfs, the Mediterranean, and the Caucasus; and in Africa, Mauritania, Numidia, the ancient territory of Carthage, Cyrene, and Egypt. Within these limits there may have been included, in all, about 100,000,000 of human beings, of different races, complexions, languages, and degrees of civilization. Not less than one-half of the whole number must have been in a condition of slavery, and of the rest, only that small proportion who, under the envied name of Roman citizens, inhabited Italy, or were distributed, in official or other capacities, through the cities of the Empire, enjoyed political independence. These ‘citizens,’ diffused through the conquered countries, constituted the ingredient by which the whole was kept in union. Working backwards and forwards in the midst of the various populations in which they were thus planted, the Romans assimilated them gradually to each other, till Celts, Spaniards, Asiatics, etc., became more or less Romanized. This process of assimilation was much facilitated by the circumstance that, with the exception of Judea and other portions of the East, all the nations of the Roman Empire were polytheistic in their beliefs, so that there was no fundamental repugnance in this respect between the modes of thought of one nation and those of another. In fact, the Roman Empire may be defined as a compulsory assemblage of polytheistic nations, in order that Christianity might operate over a large surface at once of that polytheism which it was to destroy and supersede. In the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Augustus, and while that prince was ruling with undisturbed sway over 100,000,000 of fellow-polytheists, there took place in that small monotheistic corner of his dominions which lay on the southern border of the Levant, an event, the importance of which the wisest of the Romans could not have foreseen. This was the birth, in an obscure Jewish town, of Jesus Christ. From that town, and from that obscure corner of the vast Roman Empire, was to proceed an influence which was to overspread the polytheistic nations, eat out or dissolve into itself all existing creeds and philosophies, and renovate the thoughts, the habits, the whole constitution of mankind. Waiting for this influence, the various nations—Celts, Greeks, Spaniards, etc.,—were submitted to the preliminary pressure of Roman institutions, modifying, and in some cases changing, their native characters. The eastern half of the Empire, however, had been too thoroughly impregnated with the Greek element to yield easily to the new pressure; and accordingly while the Latin language spread among the barbarians of the west, Greek still continued to be the language of the East. This demarcation between the western or Latin-speaking and the eastern or Greek-speaking portions of the Empire became exceedingly important afterwards.
Of this vast empire Rome was the metropolis, now a city of innumerable streets and buildings, and containing, it is calculated, a population of about two millions and a half. From Rome roads branched out in all directions leading to the other towns of Italy, and passing through the villa-studded estates of the rich Roman citizens. From the coasts of Italy, the Mediterranean afforded an easy access to the various provinces, by whose industry the metropolis and Italy itself were in a great measure supported. The provinces themselves were traversed by roads connecting town with town, and laying all parts of the Empire open to the civil and military functionaries of government. Usually residing at Rome, the will of the emperor vibrated through a hierarchy of intermediate functionaries, so as to be felt throughout the whole of his vast dominions. In effect, this will was absolute. In Augustus, as in Julius Cæsar, all the great offices of state, which had so long subsisted as mutual checks upon each other, were united, so as to confer on him power of the most unlimited description. The senate still met, but only as a judicial body in cases of treason, or legislatively to pass the decrees which Augustus had previously matured with a few private counselors; and the comitia were still held, but only to elect candidates already nominated by the emperor. In this system of absolute dominion in the hands of a single individual, the Romans cheerfully acquiesced, partly from experience of the superior nature of the government thus exercised to the wretched anarchy from which they had escaped, and partly in consequence of the hopelessness of revolt against a man who had the entire military force of the Empire at his disposal. In Rome and Italy, the public peace was preserved by the prætorian cohorts—bodies of soldiers of tried valor, to whom Augustus gave double pay. Throughout the provinces, the people were kept in check by the regular troops, who were accumulated, however, principally in the frontier provinces of the Empire, where they might both maintain tranquillity among the recently-conquered populations, and resist the attacks of the barbarian races beyond. The provinces where military force was required, Augustus retained in his own hands, administering them through legates appointed by himself, usually for several years; the others he intrusted to the senate, who named governors for a single year.
The cities of the Empire were the centres of Roman influence. It was in them that the Roman citizens were congregated, that schools were established, and that the various agencies of civilization operated most uniformly. In the rustic populations of the provinces, the national individuality was preserved with the national language. It was part of the policy of Augustus to found cities in the choicest situations in the provinces; and so rapid was the spread of the Roman civilization during his reign, that Roman writers and orators of note began to be produced even in remote parts of the Empire. The Greek language and literature began also to penetrate the provinces of the west, and to find students among the Celts and Spaniards.