Rome

by W. Warde Fowler

Now this younger Cæsar, nephew and adopted son of Julius, though not a great soldier or a hero in any sense, was yet one of those rare men who learn wisdom in adversity, and use it to overcome passion and violence in themselves and others. He came gradually to see that Italy and the world could not be rescued from misery and despair by war and strong government alone. He grasped the fact, which Sulla had missed, that the one thing wanting was loyalty—loyalty to himself and belief in his mission: loyalty to Rome and Italy, and belief in their mission in the world. Confidence in him, and in the destiny of Rome, might create in men’s minds a hope for the future, a new self-respect, almost a new faith. Divided and depressed as they were, he wanted to set new ideals before them, and to get them to help him loyally towards the realisation of those ideals. Economically, morally, religiously, Italy was to rise to new life in an era of peace and justice.

This may seem too grand an ideal for a man like Augustus Cæsar, who (as I have said) was no hero, and who certainly was no philosopher. But it is none the less true that he understood that “peace hath her victories no less renowned than war”: and that his own conviction, based, perhaps, on shrewd political reasonings, inspired his poets and historians to hail a new age of peace and prosperity. In one way or another they all fell in with his ideas. Their themes are the glory and beauty of Italy, the greatness of Rome, the divine power which had given her the right to rule the world, and the story of the way in which she had come to exercise that right. But as Virgil is the greatest figure in the group, so is his Æneid the greatest work in which those ideas are immortalised. The Roman Empire has vanished, the ancient city, which rose in fresh magnificence under Augustus, has crumbled away; but the Æneid remains the one enduring monument of that age of new hope.

It is said that Augustus himself suggested to the poet the subject of the Æneid. If so, it was characteristic of a man who used every chance of extending his own fame and influence without forcing them on the attention of his people. If a poem was to be written on the great theme of the revival of Rome and Italy, Augustus himself could not of course be the hero of it, nor even Julius: political and artistic feeling alike forbade. But a hero it must have, and he must be placed, not in the burning light of the politics of the day, but in the dim distance of the past. Such a hero was found in the mythical ancestor of the Julian family, Æneas, son of Venus and Anchises. A legend, familiar to educated Romans, told how this Trojan hero, whose personality appears in Homer, wandered over the seas after the fall of Troy, and landed at last in Italy; how he subdued the wild tribes then dwelling in Latium, brought peace and order and civilisation, and was under the hand of destiny the founder of the great career of Rome. His son Iulus, whose name the Julii believed themselves to bear, was in the legend the founder of the city from which Rome herself was founded; and thus the family of the Cæsars, the rescue of Italy from barbarism, and the foundation of the Eternal City, might all be brought into connexion with the story of Æneas the Trojan. Here, then, was the hero, the type of which the antitype was to be found in Augustus.

And this is how the Æneid became a great national and a great imperial poem. It created a national hero, and endowed him with the best characteristics of his race, and especially with that sense of duty which the Romans called pietas: this is why it became a great national poem. It connected him with the famous stories of Greece and of Troy, and made him prophetically the ancestor of the man who was rescuing the Empire from ruin: this is why it became a great imperial poem. The idea was a noble one, and Virgil rose to his subject. Though the Æneid has drawbacks which for a modern reader detract from the general effect, yet whenever the poet comes upon his great theme the tone is that of a full organ. Even in a translation, though he cannot feel the witchery of Virgil’s magic touch, the reader may recognise and welcome the recurrence of that great theme, and so learn how its treatment made the poem the world’s second great epic. It instantly took a firm hold on the Roman mind; it came to be looked on almost as a sacred book, loved and honoured as much by Christian Fathers as by pagan scholars. Italy has given the world two of the greatest poems ever written: the Æneid of Virgil, and the Divina Commedia of Dante, in which the younger poet took the imaginary figure of his predecessor as his guide and teacher in his travel through the scenes of the nether world.

But we must now leave poetry for fact and action, and try to gain some idea of that work of Augustus which laid the solid foundation of a new imperial system; a system of which we moderns not only see the relics still around us, but feel unconsciously the influence in many ways. Augustus had found time to discover, since the death of Julius, that the work to be done would fall mainly into two great departments: (1) Rome and Italy must be loyal, contented, and at peace; (2) the rest of the Empire must be governed justly and efficiently. To this we must add that the whole must contribute, each part in due proportion, to its own defence and government, both by paying taxes and by military service.

1. The city of Rome, with a population of perhaps half a million, of all races and degrees, had been a constant anxiety to Augustus so far, and had exercised far more power in the Empire than such a mixed and idle population was entitled to. He saw that this population must be well policed, and induced to keep itself in order as far as possible; that it must be made quite comfortable, run no risk of starvation, have confidence in the good-will of its gods, and enjoy plenty of amusement. Above all, it must believe in himself, in order to be loyal to his policy. When he returned to Rome after crushing Antony and Cleopatra, the Romans were already disposed to believe in him, and he did all he could to make them permanently and freely loyal. He divided the city into new sections for police purposes, and recruited corps of “watchmen” from the free population; he restored temples and priesthoods, erected many pleasant and convenient public buildings (thus incidentally giving plenty of employment), organised the supply of corn and of water, and encouraged public amusements by his own presence at them. He took care that no one should starve, or become so uncomfortable as to murmur or rebel.

But, on the other hand, he did not mean this motley population to continue to have undue influence on the affairs of the Empire. True, he gave them back their Free State (respublica), and you might see magistrates, Senate, and assemblies in the city, just as under the Republic. But the people of the city had henceforth little political power. The consuls and Senate were indeed far from idle, but the assemblies for election and legislation soon ceased to be realities. In elections no money was now to be gained by a vote, and in legislation the “people” were quite content with sanctioning the wisdom of Augustus and his advisers. At the beginning of the next reign it was possible to put nearly the whole of this business into the hands of the Senate, and the Roman people made no objection. Seeing that they were only a fraction of the free population of the Empire, it was as well that this should be so; the rest of the citizen body could not use their votes at a distance from Rome, and the Senate and the princeps[13] (as Augustus and his immediate successors were called) represented the interests of the Empire far better than the crowd of voters.

Of the work of Augustus in Italy we unluckily know very little, but what we do know shows that he worked on much the same principles as in the city. Italy was made safe and comfortable, and was now free from all warlike disturbance for a long period. Brigandage was suppressed: roads were repaired: agriculture and country life were encouraged in all possible ways. A book on agriculture written even in Augustus’s earlier years boasts of the prosperity of rural Italy, and Virgil’s poem on husbandry is full of the love and praise of Italian life and scenery. Here is a specimen—

“But no, not Medeland with its wealth of woods,

Fair Ganges, Hermus thick with golden silt,