Passing the reigns of the feeble Nerva, the martial Trajan, and the peaceful Hadrian, we arrive at a brilliant age in the imperial history, the age of Antonines, extending from A.D. 138 to 180, a space of about forty years. Literature and the arts of peace revived under their benign influence.
After the death of Marcus Aurelius, A.D. 180, there follows a whole century of disorder, profligacy, conspiracy and assassination. The army assumes the absolute disposal of the imperial crown, which is even sold at public auction to the highest bidder. Within the last fifty years of the time, nearly fifty emperors are successively proclaimed, and deposed or murdered.—In the year 284, Diocletian began to reign, and attempted a new system of administration.
Ten special persecutions of Christians are recorded and described, the first under Nero, A.D. 64, and the last under Diocletian, commencing A.D. 303, and continuing ten years, unto A.D. 313. But, notwithstanding these repeated efforts to hinder the progress of Christianity, it was spread during this period throughout the whole Roman Empire.
ROME IN THE AUGUSTAN
PERIOD
When Augustus Cæsar at the age of thirty-six became master of the Roman world, there was no open establishment of a monarchical government. On the contrary, most of the old republican forms were kept up; but they were mere forms. The Senate still sat, but it did little more than vote what Augustus wished; the people still met in their assemblies and elected consuls and magistrates, but only such persons were elected as had been proposed or recommended by the Emperor. Augustus, however, assumed nothing of the outward pomp of a monarch: he was satisfied with the substance of supreme rule.
THE THREE CIVILIZATIONS WITHIN
THE EMPIRE
Within the circuit of the Roman dominion there were what we may call three civilizations: the Latin, the Greek, and the Oriental. Latin civilization took in the countries from the Atlantic Ocean to the Adriatic; Greek civilization, from the Adriatic to Mount Taurus; Oriental civilization, the lands beyond to the Euphrates.
The Latin.—The area of Latin civilization embraced the peninsula of Italy (its native seat) and all western Europe, where the Romans appeared not only as a conquering but also as a civilizing people. Thus in the three provinces of Spain (Hispania), in the four provinces of Transalpine Gaul (corresponding nearly with the modern France), as well as in the North African provinces, especially Carthage (which was restored by Cæsar as a Roman colony), the Latin language took firm root, and the manners and customs, and indeed the whole civilization, of those lands became Roman.
The Greek.—Greek civilization was spread over Greece and all those parts of Europe and Asia that had been Hellenized by Grecian colonists or by the Macedonian conquerors. In manners, customs, language, and culture these lands remained Greek, while politically they were Roman.
The Oriental.—Oriental civilization was diffused over the Eastern provinces, especially Egypt and Syria. These countries had, under the rule of Alexander’s successors, become to some degree Hellenized; but this influence was on the whole superficial. The peoples of those Oriental lands had never given up their own languages or religious ideas or ways of thinking. Now these peoples, it should be said, did not become Latinized either,—they did not adopt the language and civilization of Rome.