As a result of the wars of Cæsar in north-western Europe, in 58-51 B.C., what are now Switzerland, France, and Belgium were subdued and Britain was invaded. By Cæsar also Roman authority in Africa was consolidated across the entire length of the north of the continent. The conquests of Rome as a Republic were complete. The Mediterranean had become a "Roman lake."
The Empire Completed.
In 27 B.C. the purely Republican form of constitution was abolished, and the government of the Roman world was concentrated in the hands of an Emperor, the Cæsar Augustus of Luke 2.1. In his reign were fulfilled the prophecies foretelling the Birth of Christ. When the Prince of Peace was born in Bethlehem the din of strife was hushed throughout the empire, and Rome, under the restraining hand of God, ceased for a time its warring. By Augustus the northern territories of the empire were extended to practically the entire length of the Danube. The greater part of Britain became a province under Claudius. A later Emperor, Trajan, added, at the beginning of the second century A.D., the province of Dacia, covering what are now Transylvania and most of Roumania. Under Marcus Aurelius (161-180) a large part of Mesopotamia was finally annexed.
This completes the actual conquests of the Romans. We will now note certain characteristics of their method of subjugation, viewed in the light of Daniel's prophecy concerning the fourth kingdom, that, like iron, it would "break in pieces and crush."
The Crushing of the Nations.
The crushing process was evidenced in many ways, and especially by the establishment of a general system of slavery, which almost everywhere supplanted free labour. Slave-hunting and slave-dealing became a profession. To such an extent were they carried on at one period that certain provinces were well nigh depopulated. We are told that at the great slave-market in the island of Delos, off Greece, as many as ten thousand slaves were disembarked in the morning and bought up before the evening of the same day. Chained gangs worked under overseers and were confined in prison at night. To take an instance of the extreme rigour of the laws regulating the traffic, it is recorded by the historian Tacitus, that once, when the Prefect of Rome had been killed by one of his slaves, of whom he owned a vast number, the whole of his slaves, many of them women and children, were executed together, in accordance with an ancient law. That event took place about the time, apparently, at which the Apostle Paul arrived at Rome.
But not only were the nations ground down by slavery, the pages of Roman history abound in records of wholesale massacre and butchery. We may note, for instance, Luke's statement of Pilate's slaughter of Galilæans while they were sacrificing (Luke 13. 1). Records abound, too, of grossly burdensome taxation and financial exactions, in which the Romans outdid all tyrants that had preceded them. Usury flourished in the last century as it had never done before. Four per cent. per month was an ordinary exaction for a loan to a community. On one occasion a Roman banker, who had a claim on the municipality of Salamis, in Cyprus, kept its council blockaded until five of its members died of hunger.
By these methods the provinces of the empire were at one period reduced to a condition of unsurpassed misery. Nothing could more vividly describe the course of such a kingdom and the control exercised by it than the words of Daniel quoted above.