obstinately for three years (B. C. 171-168); but his fate was
sealed at Pydna. He went as a prisoner to Rome; his kingdom
was broken into four small republics; the Achæan League was
stricken by the captivity of a thousand of its chief men; the
whole of Greece was humbled to submissiveness, though not yet
formally reduced to the state of a Roman province. That
followed some years later, when risings in Macedonia and
Achaia were punished by the extinction of the last semblance
of political independence in both (B. C. 148-146).
The Zenith of the Republic.
Rome now gripped the Mediterranean (the ocean of the then
civilized world) as with four fingers of a powerful hand: one
laid on Italy and all its islands, one on Macedonia and
Greece, one on Carthage, one on Spain, and the little finger
of her "protection" reaching over to the Lesser Asia. Little
more than half a century, since the day that Hannibal
threatened her own city gates, had sufficed to win this vast
dominion. But the losses of the Republic had been greater,
after all, than the gains; for the best energies of its
political constitution had been expended in the acquisition,
and the nobler qualities in its character had been touched
with the incurable taints of a licentious prosperity.
Beginning of Decline.
A century and a half had passed since the practical ending of
the struggle of plebeians with patricians for political and
agrarian rights. In theory and in form, the constitution
remained as democratic as it was made by the Licinian Laws of
367 B. C., and by the finishing touch of the Hortensian Law of
287 B. C. But in practical working it had reverted to the
aristocratic mode. A new aristocracy had risen out of the
plebeian ranks to reinforce the old patrician order. It was
composed of the families of men who had been raised to
distinction and ennobled by the holding of eminent offices,
and its spirit was no less jealous and exclusive than that of
the older high caste.
The Senate and the Mob.
Thus strengthened, the aristocracy had recovered its
ascendancy in Rome, and the Senate, which it controlled, had
become the supreme power in government. The amazing success of
the Republic during the last century just reviewed--its
successes in war, in diplomacy, and in all the sagacious
measures of policy by which its great dominion had been
won--are reasonably ascribed to this fact. For the Senate had
wielded the power of the state, in most emergencies, with
passionless deliberation and with unity and fixity of aim.
But it maintained its ascendancy by an increasing employment
of means which debased and corrupted all orders alike. The
people held powers which might paralyze the Senate at any
moment, if they chose to exercise them, through their
assemblies and their tribunes. They had seldom brought those
powers into play thus far, to interfere with the senatorial
government of the Republic, simply because they had been
bribed to abstain. The art of the politician in Rome, as
distinguished from the statesman, had already become
demagoguery. This could not well have been otherwise under the
peculiar constitution of the Roman citizenship. Of the
thirty-five tribes who made up the Roman people, legally
qualified to vote, only four were within the city. The
remaining thirty-one were "plebs urbana." There was no
delegated representation of this country populace--citizens
beyond the walls. To exercise their right of suffrage they
must be personally present at the meetings of the "comitia
tributa"--the tribal assemblies; and those of any tribe who
chanced to be in attendance at such a meeting might give a
vote which carried with it the weight of their whole tribe.
For questions were decided by the majority of tribal, not
individual, votes; and a very few members of a tribe might act
for and be the tribe, for all purposes of voting, on occasions
of the greatest possible importance. It is quite evident that
a democratic system of this nature gave wide opportunity for
corrupt "politics." There must have been, always, an
attraction for the baser sort among the rural plebs, drawing
them into the city, to enjoy the excitement of political
contests, and to partake of the flatteries and largesses which
began early to go with these. And circumstances had tended
strongly to increase this sinister sifting into Rome of the
most vagrant and least responsible of her citizens, to make
them practically the deputies and representatives of that
mighty sovereign which had risen in the world--the "Populus
Romanus." For there was no longer either thrift or dignity
possible in the pursuits of husbandry. The long Hannibalic War
had ruined the farming class in Italy by its ravages; but the
extensive conquests that followed it had been still more
ruinous to that class by several effects combined. Corn
supplies from the conquered provinces were poured into Rome at
cheapened prices; enormous fortunes, gathered in the same
provinces by officials, by farmers of taxes, by money-lenders,
and by traders, were largely invested in great estates,
absorbing the small farms of olden time; and, finally,
free-labor in agriculture was supplanted, more and more, by
the labor of slaves, which war and increasing wealth combined
to multiply in numbers. Thus the "plebs urbana" of Rome were a
depressed and, therefore, a degenerating class, and the same
circumstances that made them so impelled them towards the
city, to swell the mob which held its mighty sovereignty in
their hands.
{1000}
So far, a lavish amusement of this mob with free games, and
liberal bribes, had kept it generally submissive to the
senatorial government. But the more it was debased by such
methods, and its vagrancy encouraged, the more extravagant
gratuities of like kind it claimed. Hence a time could never
be far away when the aristocracy and the senate would lose
their control of the popular vote on which they had built
their governing power.
Agrarian Agitations.
But they invited the quicker coming of that time by their own
greediness in the employment of their power for selfish and
dishonest ends. They had practically recovered their monopoly
of the use of the public lands. The Licinian law, which
forbade any one person to occupy more than five hundred jugera
(about three hundred acres) of the public lands, had been made
a dead letter. The great tracts acquired in the Samnite wars,
and since, had remained undistributed, while the use and
profit of them were enjoyed, under one form of authority or
another, by rich capitalists and powerful nobles.
This evil, among many that waxed greater each year, caused the
deepest discontent, and provoked movements of reform which
soon passed by rapid stages into a revolution, and ended in
the fall of the Republic. The leader of the movement at its
beginning was Tiberius Gracchus, grandson of Scipio Africanus
on the side of his mother, Cornelia. Elected tribune in 133 B.
C., he set himself to the dangerous task of rousing the people
against senatorial usurpations, especially in the matter of
the public domain. He only drew upon himself the hatred of the
senate and its selfish supporters; he failed to rally a
popular party that was strong enough for his protection, and
his enemies slew him in the very midst of a meeting of the
tribes. His brother Caius took up the perilous cause and won
the office of tribune (B. C. 123) in avowed hostility to the
senatorial government. He was driven to bid high for popular
help, even when the measures which he strove to carry were
most plainly for the welfare of the common people, and he may
seem to modern eyes to have played the demagogue with some
extravagance. But statesmanship and patriotism without
demagoguery for their instrument or their weapon were hardly
practicable, perhaps, in the Rome of those days, and it is not
easy to find them clean-handed in any political leader of the
last century of the Republic. The fall of Caius Gracchus was
hastened by his attempt to extend the Roman franchise beyond
the "populus Romanus," to all the freemen of Italy. The mob in
Rome was not pleased with such political generosity, and
cooled in its admiration for the large-minded tribune. He lost
his office and the personal protection it threw over him, and
then he, like his brother, was slain (B. C. 121) in a melee.
Jugurthine War.
For ten years the senate, the nobility, and the capitalists
(now beginning to take the name of the equestrian order), had
mostly their own way again, and effaced the work of the
Gracchi as completely as they could. Then came disgraceful
troubles in Numidia which enraged the people and moved them to
a new assertion of themselves. The Numidian king who helped
Scipio to pull Carthage down had been a ward of Rome since
that time. When he died, he left his kingdom to be governed
jointly by two young sons and an older nephew. The latter,
Jugurtha, put his cousins out of the way, took the kingdom to
himself, and baffled attempts at Rome to call him to account,
by heavy bribes. The corruption in the case became so flagrant
that even the corrupted Roman populace revolted against it, and
took the Numidian business into its own hands. War was
declared against Jugurtha by popular vote, and, despite
opposing action in the Senate, one Marius, an experienced
soldier of humble birth, was elected consul and sent out to
take command. Marius distinguished himself in the war much
less than did one of his officers, Cornelius Sulla; but he
bore the lion's share of glory when Jugurtha was taken captive
and conveyed to Rome (B. C. 104). Marius was now the great
hero of the hour, and events were preparing to lift him to the
giddiest heights of popularity.
Teutones and Cimbri.
Hitherto, the barbarians of wild Europe whom the Romans had
met were either the Aryan Celts, or the non-Aryan tribes found
in northern Italy, Spain and Gaul. Now, for the first time,
the armies of Rome were challenged by tribes of another grand
division of the Aryan stock, coming out of the farther North.
These were the Cimbri and the Teutones, wandering hordes of
the great Teutonic or Germanic race which has occupied Western
Europe north of the Rhine since the beginning of historic
time. So far as we can know, these two were the first of the
Germanic nations to migrate to the South. They came into
collision with Rome in 113 B. C., when they were in Noricum,
threatening the frontiers of her Italian dominion. Four years
later they were in southern Gaul, where the Romans were now
settling colonies and subduing the native Celts. Twice they
had beaten the armies opposed to them; two years later they
added a third to their victories; and in 105 B. C. they threw
Rome into consternation by destroying two great armies on the
Rhone. Italy seemed helpless against the invasion for which
these terrible barbarians were now preparing, when Marius went
against them. In the summer of 102 B. C. he annihilated the
Teutones, near Aquæ Sextiæ (modern Aix), and in the following
year he destroyed the invading Cimbri, on a bloody field in
northern Italy, near modern Vercellæ.
Marius.
From these great victories, Marius went back to Rome, doubly
and terribly clothed with power, by the devotion of a reckless
army and the hero-worship of an unthinking mob. The state was
at his mercy. A strong man in his place might have crushed the
class-factions and accomplished the settlement which Cæsar
made after half a century more of turbulence and shame. But
Marius was ignorant, he was weak, and he became a mere
blood-stained figure in the ruinous anarchy of his time.
{1001}
Optimates and Populares.
The social and political state of the capital had grown
rapidly worse. A middle-class in Roman society had practically
disappeared. The two contending parties or factions, which had
taken new names--"optimates" and "populares"--were now
divided almost solely by the line which separates rich from
poor. "If we said that 'optimates' signified the men who
bribed and abused office under the banner of the Senate and
its connections, and that 'populares' meant men who bribed and
abused office with the interests of the people outside the
Senatorial pale upon their lips, we might do injustice to many
good men on both sides, but should hardly be slandering the
parties" (Beesly). There was a desperate conflict between the
two in the year 100, B. C. and the Senate once more recovered
its power for a brief term of years.
The Social War.
The enfranchisement of the so-called "allies"--the Latin and
other subjects of Rome who were not citizens--was the burning
question of the time. The attempt of Caius Gracchus to extend
rights of citizenship to them had been renewed again and
again, without success, and each failure had increased the
bitter discontent of the Italian people. In 90 B. C. they drew
together in a formidable confederation and rose in revolt. In
the face of this great danger Rome sobered herself to action
with old time wisdom and vigor. She yielded her full
citizenship to all Italian freemen who had not taken arms, and
then offered it to those who would lay their arms down. At the
same time, she fought the insurrection with every army she
could put into the field, and in two years it was at an end.
Marius and his old lieutenant, Sulla, had been the principal
commanders in this "Social War," as it was named, and Sulla
had distinguished himself most. The latter had now an army at
his back and was a power in the state, and between the two
military champions there arose a rivalry which produced the
first of the Roman Civil Wars.
Marius and Sulla.
A troublesome war in the East had been forced upon the Romans
by aggressions of Mithridates, King of Pontus. Both Marius and
Sulla aspired to the command. Sulla obtained election to the
consulship in 88 B. C. and was named for the coveted place.
But Marius succeeded in getting the appointment annulled by a
popular assembly and himself chosen instead for the Eastern
command. Sulla, personally imperilled by popular tumults, fled
to his legions, put himself at their head, and marched back to
Rome--the first among her generals to turn her arms against
herself. There was no effective resistance; Marius fled; both
Senate and people were submissive to the dictates of the
consul who had become master of the city. He "made the tribes
decree their own political extinction, resuscitating the
comitia centuriata; he reorganized the Senate by adding three
hundred to its members and vindicating the right to sanction
legislation; conducted the consular elections, exacting from
L. Cornelius Cinna, the newly elected consul, a solemn oath
that he would observe the new regulations, and securing the
election of Cn. Octavius in his own interest, and then, like
'a countryman who had just shaken the lice off his coat,' to
use his own figure, he turned to do his great work in the
East."
(Horton).
Sulla went to Greece, which was in revolt and in alliance with
Mithridates, and conducted there a brilliant, ruthless
campaign for three years (B. C. 87-84), until he had restored
Roman authority in the peninsula, and forced the King of
Pontus to surrender all his conquests in Asia Minor. Until
this task was finished, he gave no heed to what his enemies
did at Rome; though the struggle there between "Sullans" and
"Marians" had gone fiercely and bloodily on, and his own
partisans had been beaten in the fight. The consul Octavius,
who was in Bulla's interest, had first driven the consul Cinna
out of the city, after slaying 10,000 of his faction. Cinna's
cause was taken up by the new Italian citizens; he was joined
by the exiled Marius, and these two returned together, with an
army which the Senate and the party of Sulla were unable to
resist. Marius came back with a burning heart and with savage
intentions of revenge. A horrible massacre of his opponents
ensued, which went on unchecked for five days, and was
continued more deliberately for several months, until Marius
died, at the beginning of the year 86 B. C. Then Cinna ruled
absolutely at Rome for three years, supported in the main by
the newly-made citizens; while the provinces generally
remained under the control of the party of the optimates. In
83 B. C. Sulla, having finished with carefulness his work in
the East, came back into Italy, with 40,000 veterans to attend
his steps. He had been outlawed and deprived of his command,
by the faction governing at the capital; but its decrees had
no effect and troubled him little. Cinna had been killed by
his own troops, even before Bulla's landing at Brundisium.
Several important leaders and soldiers on the Marian side,
such as Pompeius, then a young general, and Crassus, the
millionaire, went over to Sulla's camp. One of the consuls of
the year saw his troops follow their example, in a body; the
other consul was beaten and driven into Capua. Sulla wintered
in Campania, and the next spring he pressed forward to Rome,
fighting a decisive battle with Marius the younger on the way,
and took possession of the city; but not in time to prevent a
massacre of senators by the resentful mob.
Sulla's Dictatorship.
Before that year closed, the whole of Italy had been subdued,
the final battle being fought with the Marians and Italians at
the Colline Gate, and Sulla again possessed power supreme. He
placed it beyond dispute by a deliberate extermination of his
opponents, more merciless than the Marian massacre had been.
They were proscribed by name, in placarded lists, and rewards
paid to those who killed them; while their property was
confiscated, and became the source of vast fortunes to Sulla's
supporters, and of lands for distribution to his veterans.
When this terror had paralyzed all resistance to his rule, the
Dictator (for he had taken that title) undertook a complete
reconstruction of the constitution, aiming at a permanent
restoration of senatorial ascendancy and a curbing of the
powers which the people, in their assemblies, and the
magistrates who especially represented them, had gained during
the preceding century. He remodelled, moreover, the judicial
system, and some of his reforms were undoubtedly good, though
they did not prove enduring. When he had fashioned the state
to his liking, this extraordinary usurper quietly abdicated
his dictatorial office (B. C. 80) and retired to private life,
undisturbed until his death (B. C. 78).
{1002}
After Sulla.
The system he had established did not save Rome from renewed
distractions and disorder after Sulla died. There was no
longer a practical question between Senate and people--between
the few and the many in government. The question now, since
the legionaries held their swords prepared to be flung into
the scale, was what one should again gather the powers of
government into his hands, as Sulla had done.
The Great Game and the Players.
The history of the next thirty years--the last generation of
republican Rome--is a sad and sinister but thrilling chronicle
of the strifes and intrigues, the machinations and
corruptions, of a stupendous and wicked game in politics that
was played, against one another and against the Republic, by a
few daring, unscrupulous players, with the empire of the
civilized world for the stake between them. There were more
than a few who aspired; there were only three players who
entered really as principals into the game. These were
Pompeius, called "the Great," since he extinguished the Marian
faction in Sicily and in Spain; Crassus, whose wealth gave him
power, and who acquired some military pretensions besides, by
taking the field against a formidable insurrection of slaves
(B. C. 73-71); and Julius Cæsar, a young patrician, but nephew
of Marius by marriage, who assiduously strengthened that
connection with the party of the people, and who began, very
soon after Sulla's death, to draw attention to himself as a
rising power in the politics of the day. There were two other
men, Cicero and the younger Cato, who bore a nobler and
greater because less selfish part in the contest of that
fateful time. Both were blind to the impossibility of
restoring the old order of things, with a dominant Senate, a
free but well guided populace, and a simply ordered social
state; but their blindness was heroic and high-souled.
Pompeius in the East.
Of the three strong rivals for the vacant dictatorial chair
which waited to be filled, Pompeius held by far the greater
advantages. His fame as a soldier was already won; he had been
a favorite of Fortune from the beginning of his career;
everything had succeeded with him; everything was expected for
him and expected from him. Even while the issues of the great
struggle were pending, a wonderful opportunity for increasing
his renown was opened to him. The disorders of the civil war
had licensed a swarm of pirates, who fairly possessed the
eastern Mediterranean and had nearly extirpated the maritime
trade. Pompeius was sent against them (B. C. 67), with a
commission that gave him almost unlimited powers, and within
ninety days he had driven them from the sea. Then, before he
had returned from this exploit, he was invested with supreme
command in the entire East, where another troublesome war with
Mithridates was going on. He harvested there all the laurels
which belonged by better right to his predecessor, Lucullus,
finding the power of Mithridates already broken down. From
Pontus he passed into Armenia, and thence into Syria, easily
subjugating both, and extinguishing the monarchy of the
Seleucids. The Jews resisted him and he humbled them by the
siege and conquest of their sacred city. Egypt was now the
only Mediterranean state left outside the all-absorbing
dominion of Rome; and even Egypt, by bequest of its late king,
belonged to the Republic, though not yet claimed.
The First Triumvirate.
Pompeius came back to Rome in the spring of 61 B. C. so
glorified by his successes that he might have seemed to be
irresistible, whatever he should undertake. But, either
through an honest patriotism or an overweening confidence, he
had disbanded his army when he reached Italy, and he had
committed himself to no party. He stood alone and aloof, with
a great prestige, great ambitions, and no ability to use the
one or realize the other. Before another year passed, he was
glad to accept offers of a helping hand in politics from
Cæsar, who had climbed the ladder of office rapidly within
four or five years, spending vast sums of borrowed money to
amuse the people with games, and distinguishing himself as a
democratic champion. Cæsar, the far seeing calculator,
discerned the enormous advantages that he might gain for
himself by massing together the prestige of Pompeius, the
wealth of Crassus and his own invincible genius, which was
sure to be the master element in the combination. He brought
the coalition about through a bargain which created what is
known in history as the First Triumvirate, or supremacy of
three.
Cæsar in Gaul.
Under the terms of the bargain, Cæsar was chosen consul for 59
B. C., and at the end of his term was given the governorship
of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul, with command of three
legions there, for five years. His grand aim was a military
command--the leadership of an army--the prestige of a
successful soldier. No sooner had he secured the command than
fortune gave him opportunities for its use in the most
striking way and with the most impressive results. The Celtic
tribes of Gaul, north of the two small provinces which the
Romans had already acquired on the Mediterranean coast, gave
him pretexts or provocations (it mattered little to Cæsar
which) for war with them, and in a series of remarkable
campaigns, which all soldiers since have admired, he pushed
the frontiers of the dominion of Rome to the ocean and the
Rhine, and threatened the nations of Germany on the farther
banks of that stream. "The conquest of Gaul by Cæsar," says
Mr. Freeman, "is one of the most important events in the
history of the world. It is in some sort the beginning of
modern history, as it brought the old world of southern
Europe, of which Rome was the head, into contact with the
lands and nations which were to play the greatest part in
later times--with Gaul, Germany, and Britain." From Gaul
Cæsar crossed the channel to Britain in 55 B. C. and again in
the following year, exacting tribute from the Celtic natives,
but attempting no lodgment in the island.
{1003}
Meantime, while pursuing a career of conquest which excited
the Roman world, Cæsar never lost touch with the capital and
its seething politics. Each winter he repaired to Lucca, the
point in his province which was nearest to Rome, and conferred
there with his friends, who flocked to the rendezvous. He
secured an extension of his term, to enable him to complete
his plans, and year by year he grew more independent of the
support of his colleagues in the triumvirate, while they
weakened one another by their jealousies, and the Roman state
was more hopelessly distracted by factious strife.
End of the Triumvirate.
The year after Cæsar's second invasion of Britain, Crassus,
who had obtained the government of Syria, perished in a
disastrous war with the Parthians, and the triumvirate was at
an end. Disorder in Rome increased and Pompeius lacked energy
or boldness to deal with it, though he seemed to be the one
man present who might do so. He was made sole consul in 52 B.
C.; he might have seized the dictatorship, with approval of
many, but he waited for it to be offered to him, and the offer
never came. He drew at last into close alliance with the party
of the Optimates, and left the Populares to be won entirely to
Cæsar's side.
Civil War.
Matters came to a crisis in 50 B. C., when the Senate passed
an order removing Cæsar from his command and discharging his
soldiers who had served their term. He came to Ravenna with a
single legion and concerted measures with his friends. The
issue involved is supposed to have been one of life or death
to him, as well as of triumph or failure in his ambitions; for
his enemies were malignant. His friends demanded that he be
made consul, for his protection, before laying down his arms.
The Senate answered by proclaiming him a public enemy if he
failed to disband his troops with no delay. It was a
declaration of war, and Cæsar accepted it. He marched his
single legion across the Rubicon, which was the boundary of
his province, and advanced towards Rome.
Pompeius, with the forces he had gathered, retreated
southward, and consuls, senators and nobles generally streamed
after him. Cæsar followed them--turning aside from the
city--and his force gathered numbers as he advanced. The
Pompeians continued their flight and abandoned Italy,
withdrawing to Epirus, planning to gather there the forces of
the East and return with them. Cæsar now took possession of
Rome and secured the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, from
which it drew its supply of food. This done, he proceeded
without delay to Spain, where seven legions strongly devoted
to Pompeius were stationed. He overcame them in a single
campaign, enlisted most of the veterans in his own service,
and acquired a store of treasure. Before the year ended he was
again in Rome, where the citizens had proclaimed him dictator. He
held the dictatorship for eleven days, only, to legalize an
election which made him consul, with a pliant associate. He
reorganized the government, complete in all its branches,
including a senate, partly composed of former members of the
body who had remained or returned. Then (B. C. 48.--January) he
took up the pursuit of Pompeius and the Optimates. Crossing to
Epirus, after some months of changeful fortune, he fought and
won the decisive battle of Pharsalia. Pompeius, flying to
Egypt, was murdered there. Cæsar, following, with a small
force, was placed in great peril by a rising at Alexandria,
but held his ground until assistance came. He then garrisoned
Egypt with Roman troops and made the princess Cleopatra, who
had captivated him by her charms, joint occupant of the throne
with her younger brother. During his absence, affairs at Rome
were again disturbed, and he was once more appointed dictator,
as well as tribune for life. His presence restored order at
once, and he was soon in readiness to attack the party of his
enemies who had taken refuge in Africa. The battle of Thapsus,
followed by the suicide of Cato and the surrender of Utica,
practically finished the contest, though one more campaign was
fought in Spain the following year.
Cæsar Supreme.
Cæsar was now master of the dominions of Rome, and as entirely
a monarch as anyone of his imperial successors, who took his
name, with the power which he caused it to symbolize, and
called themselves "Cæsars," and "Imperators," as though the
two titles were equivalent. "Imperator" was the title under
which he chose to exercise his sovereignty. Other Roman
generals had been Imperators before, but he was the first to
be named Imperator for life, and the word (changed in our
tongue to Emperor) took a meaning from that day more regal
than Rex or King. That Cæsar, the Imperator, first of all
Emperors, ever coveted the crown and title of an
older-fashioned royalty, is not an easy thing to believe.
Having settled his authority firmly, he gave his attention to
the organization of the Empire (still Republic in name) and to
the reforming of the evils which afflicted it. That he did
this work with consummate judgment and success is the opinion
of all who study his time. He gratified no resentments,
executed no revenges, proscribed no enemies. All who submitted
to his rule were safe; and it seems to be clear that the
people in general were glad to be rescued by his rule from the
old oligarchical and anarchical state. But some of Cæsar's own
partisans were dissatisfied with the autocracy which they
helped to create, or with the slenderness of their own parts
in it. They conspired with surviving leaders of the Optimates,
and Cæsar was assassinated by them, in the Senate chamber, on
the 15th of March, B. C. 44.
Professor Mommsen has expressed the estimate of Cæsar which
many thoughtful historians have formed, in the following
strong words: "In the character of Cæsar the great contrasts
of existence meet and balance each other. He was of the
mightiest creative power, and yet of the most penetrating
judgment; of the highest energy of will and the highest
capacity of execution; filled with republican ideals, and at
the same time born to be king. He was 'the entire perfect
man'; and he was this because he was the entire and perfect
Roman." This may be nearly true if we ignore the moral side of
Cæsar's character. He was of too large a nature to do evil
things unnecessarily, and so he shines even morally in
comparison with many of his kind; but he had no scruples.
{1004}
After the Murder of Cæsar.
The murderers of Cæsar were not accepted by the people as the
patriots and "liberators" which they claimed to be, and they
were soon in flight from the city. Marcus Antonius, who had
been Cæsar's associate in the consulship, now naturally and
skilfully assumed the direction of affairs, and aspired to
gather the reins of imperial power into his own hands. But
rivals were ready to dispute with him the great prize of
ambition. Among them, it is probable that Antony gave little
heed at first to the young man, Caius Octavius, or Octavianus,
who was Cæsar's nephew, adopted son and heir; for Octavius was
less than nineteen years old, he was absent in Apollonia, and
he was little known. But the young Cæsar, coming boldly though
quietly to Rome, began to push his hereditary claims with a
patient craftiness and dexterity that were marvellous in one
so young.
The Second Triumvirate.
The contestants soon resorted to arms. The result of their
first indecisive encounter was a compromise and the formation
of a triumvirate, like that of Cæsar, Pompeius and Crassus.
This second triumvirate was made up of Antonius, Octavius, and
Lepidus, lately master of the horse in Cæsar's army. Unlike
the earlier coalition, it was vengeful and bloody-minded. Its
first act was a proscription, in the terrible manner of Sulla,
which filled Rome and Italy with murders, and with terror and
mourning. Cicero, the patriot and great orator, was among the
victims cut down.
After this general slaughter of their enemies at home,
Antonius and Octavius proceeded against Brutus and Cassius,
two of the assassins of Cæsar, who had gathered a large force
in Greece. They defeated them at Philippi, and both
"liberators" perished by their own hands. The triumvirs now
divided the empire between them, Antonius ruling the East,
Octavius the West, and Lepidus taking Africa--that is, the
Carthaginian province, which included neither Egypt nor
Numidia. Unhappily for Antonius, the queen of Egypt was among
his vassals, and she ensnared him. He gave himself up to
voluptuous dalliance with Cleopatra at Alexandria, while the
cool intriguer, Octavius, at Rome, worked unceasingly to
solidify and increase his power. After six years had passed,
the young Cæsar was ready to put Lepidus out of his way, which
he did mercifully, by sending him into exile. After five years
more, he launched his legions and his war galleys against
Antonius, with the full sanction of the Roman senate and
people. The sea-fight at Actium (B. C. 31) gave Octavius the
whole empire, and both Antonius and Cleopatra committed
suicide after flying to Egypt. The kingdom of the Ptolemies
was now extinguished and became a Roman province in due form.
Octavius (Augustus) Supreme.
Octavius was now more securely absolute as the ruler of Rome
and its great empire than Sulla or Julius Cæsar had been, and
he maintained that sovereignty without challenge for
forty-five years, until his death. He received from the Senate
the honorary title of "Augustus," by which he is most commonly
known. For official titles, he took none but those which had
belonged to the institutions of the Republic, and were
familiarly known. He was Imperator, as his uncle had been. He
was Princeps, or head of the Senate; he was Censor; he was
Tribune; he was Supreme Pontiff. All the great offices of the
Republic he kept alive, and ingeniously constructed his
sovereignty by uniting their powers in himself.
Organization of the Empire.
The historical position of Augustus, as the real founder of
the Roman Empire, is unique in its grandeur; and yet History
has dealt contemptuously, for the most part, with his name.
His character has been looked upon, to use the language of De
Quincey, as "positively repulsive, in the very highest
degree." "A cool head," wrote Gibbon of him, "an unfeeling
heart, and a cowardly disposition, prompted him, at the age of
nineteen, to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never
afterwards laid aside." And again: "His virtues, and even his
vices, were artificial; and according to the various dictates
of his interest, he was at first the enemy, and at last the
father, of the Roman world." Yet, how can we deny surpassing
high qualities of some description to a man who set the
shattered Roman Republic, with all its democratic bases broken
up, on a new--an imperial--foundation, so gently that it
suffered no further shock, and so solidly that it endured, in
whole or in part, for a millennium and a half?
In the reign of Augustus the Empire was consolidated and
organized; it was not much extended. The frontiers were
carried to the Danube, throughout, and the subjugation of
Spain was made complete. Augustus generally discouraged wars
of conquest. His ambitious stepsons, Drusus and Tiberius,
persuaded him into several expeditions beyond the Rhine,
against the restless German nations, which perpetually menaced
the borders of Gaul; but these gained no permanent footing in
the Teutonic territory. They led, on the contrary, to a
fearful disaster (A. D. 9), near the close of the reign of
Augustus, when three legions, under Varus, were destroyed in
the Teutoburg Forest by a great combination of the tribes,
planned and conducted by a young chieftain named Hermann, or
Arminius, who is the national hero of Germany to this day.
The policy of Drusus in strongly fortifying the northern
frontier against the Germans left marks which are
conspicuously visible at the present day. From the fifty
fortresses which he is said to have built along the line
sprang many important modern cities,--Basel, Strasburg, Worms,
Mainz, Bingen, Coblenz, Bonn, Cologne, and Leyden, among the
number. From similar forts on the Danubian frontier rose
Vienna, Regensburg and Passau.
Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.
Augustus died A. D. 11, and was succeeded in his honors, his
offices, and his powers, by his step-son, Tiberius Claudius
Nero, whom he had adopted. Tiberius, during most of his reign,
was a vigorous ruler, but a detestable man, unless his
subjects belied him, which some historians suspect. Another
attempt at the conquest of Germany was made by his nephew
Germanicus, son of Drusus; but the jealousy of the emperor
checked it, and Germanicus died soon after, believing that he
had been poisoned. A son of Germanicus, Caius, better known by
his nick-name of Caligula, succeeded to the throne on the
death of Tiberius (A. D. 37), and was the first of many
emperors to be crazed and made beast-like, in lust, cruelty
and senselessness, by the awful, unbounded power which passed
into their hands.
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The Empire bore his madness for three years, and then he was
murdered by his own guards. The Senate had thoughts now of
restoring the commonwealth, and debated the question for a
day; but the soldiers of the prætorian guard took it out of
their hands, and decided it, by proclaiming Tiberius Claudius
(A. D. 41), a brother of Germanicus, and uncle of the emperor
just slain. Claudius was weak of body and mind, but not
vicious, and his reign was distinctly one of improvement and
advance in the Empire. He began the conquest of Britain, which
the Romans had neglected since Cæsar's time, and he opened the
Senate to the provincials of Gaul. He had two wives of
infamous character, and the later one of these, Agrippina,
brought him a son, not his own, whom he adopted, and who
succeeded him (A.D. 54). This was Nero, of foul memory, who
was madman and monster in as sinister a combination as history
can show. During the reign of Nero, the spread of
Christianity, which had been silently making its way from
Judæa into all parts of the Empire, began to attract the
attention of men in public place, and the first persecution of
its disciples took place (A. D. 64). A great fire occurred in
Rome, which the hated emperor was believed to have caused; but
he found it convenient to accuse the Christians of the deed,
and large numbers of them were put to death in horrible ways.
Vespasian and his Sons.
Nero was tolerated for fourteen years, until the soldiers in
the provinces rose against him, and he committed suicide (A.
D. 68) to escape a worse death. Then followed a year of civil
war between rival emperors--Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and
Vespasian--proclaimed by different bodies of soldiers in
various parts of the Empire. The struggle ended in favor of
Vespasian, a rude, strong soldier, who purged the government,
disciplined the army, and brought society back toward simpler
and more decent ways. The great revolt of the Jews (A. D.
66-70) had broken out before he received the purple, and he
was commanding in Judæa when Nero fell. The siege, capture and
destruction of Jerusalem was accomplished by his son Titus. A
more formidable revolt in the West (A. D. 69) was begun the
Batavians, a German tribe which occupied part of the
Netherland territory, near the mouth of the Rhine. They were
joined by neighboring Gauls and by disaffected Roman
legionaries, and they received help from their German kindred
on the northern side of the Rhine. The revolt, led by a
chieftain named Civilis, who had served in the Roman army, was
overcome with extreme difficulty.
Vespasian was more than worthily succeeded (A. D. 79) by his
elder son, Titus, whose subjects so admired his many virtues
that he was called "the delight of the human race." His short
reign, however, was one of calamities: fire at Rome, a great
pestilence, and the frightful eruption of Vesuvius which
destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii. After Titus came his
younger brother Domitian (A. D. 81), who proved to be another
creature of the monstrous species that appeared so often in
the series of Roman emperors. The conquest of southern Britain
(modern England) was completed in his reign by an able
soldier, Agricola, who fought the Caledonians of the North,
but was recalled before subduing them. Domitian was murdered
by his own servants (A. D. 96), after a reign of fifteen
years.
Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian.
Rome and the Empire were happy at last in the choice that was
made of a sovereign to succeed the hateful son of Vespasian.
Not the soldiery, but the Senate, made the choice, and it fell
on one of their number, Cocceius Nerva, who was already an
aged man. He wore the purple but sixteen months, and his
single great distinction in Roman history is, that he
introduced to the imperial succession a line of the noblest
men who ever sat in the seat of the Cæsars. The first of these
was the soldier Trajan, whom Nerva adopted and associated with
himself in authority. When Nerva died (A. D. 97), his son by
adoption ascended the throne with no opposition. The new
Emperor was simple and plain in his habits and manners of
life; he was honest and open in all his dealings with men; he
was void of suspicion, and of malice and jealousy no less. He
gave careful attention to the business of state and was wise
in his administration of affairs, improving roads, encouraging
trade, helping agriculture, and developing the resources of the
Empire in very prudent and practical ways. But he was a
soldier, fond of war, and he unwisely reopened the career of
conquest which had been almost closed for the Empire since
Pompeius came back from the East. A threatening kingdom having
risen among the Dacians, in the country north of the lower
Danube--the Transylvania and Roumania of the present day--he
attacked and crushed it, in a series of vigorous campaigns (A.
D. 101-106), and annexed the whole territory to the dominion
of Rome. He then garrisoned and colonized the country, and
Romanized it so completely that it keeps the Roman name, and
its language to this day is of the Latin stock, though Goths,
Huns, Bulgarians and Slavs have swept it in successive
invasions, and held it among their conquests for centuries at
a time. In the East, he ravaged the territory of the Parthian
king, entered his capital and added Mesopotamia, Armenia, and
Arabia Petræa to the list of Roman provinces. But he died (A.
D. 117) little satisfied with the results of his eastern
campaigns.
His successor abandoned them, and none have doubted that he
did well; because the Empire was weakened by the new frontier
in Asia which Trajan gave it to defend. His Dacian conquests
were kept, but all beyond the Euphrates in the East were given
up. The successor who did this was Hadrian, a kinsman, whom
the Emperor adopted in his last hours. Until near the close of
his life, Hadrian ranked among the best of the emperors. Rome
saw little of him, and resented his incessant travels through
every part of his great realm. His manifest preference for
Athens, where he lingered longest, and which flourished anew
under his patronage, was still more displeasing to the ancient
capital. For the Emperor was a man of cultivation, fond of
literature, philosophy and art, though busy with the cares of
State. In his later years he was afflicted with a disease
which poisoned his nature by its torments, filled his mind
with dark suspicions, and made him fitfully tyrannical and
cruel. The event most notable in his generally peaceful and
prosperous reign was the renewed and final revolt of the Jews,
under Barchochebas, which resulted in their total expulsion
from Jerusalem, and its conversion into a heathen city, with a
Roman name.
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The Antonines.
Hadrian had adopted before his death (A. D. 138) a man of
blameless character, Titus Aurelius Antoninus, who received
from his subjects, when he became Emperor, the appellation
"Pius," to signify the dutiful reverence and kindliness of his
disposition. He justified the name of Antoninus Pius, by which
he is historically known, and his reign, though disturbed by
some troubles on the distant borders of the Empire, was happy
for his subjects in nearly all respects. "No great deeds are
told of him, save this, perhaps the greatest, that he secured
the love and happiness of those he ruled" (Capes).
Like so many of the emperors, Antoninus had no son of his own;
but even before he came to the throne, and at the request of
Hadrian, he had adopted a young lad who won the heart of the
late Emperor while still a child. The family name of this son
by adoption was Verus, and he was of Spanish descent; the name
which he took, in his new relationship, was Marcus Aurelius
Antoninus. It is unquestionably the most illustrious name in
the whole imperial line, from Augustus to the last
Constantine, and made so, not so much by deeds as by
character. He gave the world the solitary example of a
philosopher upon the throne. There have been a few--a very
few--surpassingly good men in kingly places; but there has
never been another whose soul was lifted to so serene a height
above the sovereignty of his station. Unlimited power tempted
no form of selfishness in him; he saw nothing in his imperial
exaltation but the duties which it imposed. His mind was
meditative, and inclined him to the studious life; but he
compelled himself to be a man of vigor and activity in
affairs. He disliked war; but he spent years of his life in
camp on the frontiers; because it fell to his lot to encounter
the first great onset of the barbarian nations of the north,
which never ceased from that time to beat against the barriers
of the Empire until they had broken them down. His struggle
was on the line of the Danube, with the tribes of the
Marcomanni, the Quadi, the Vandals, and others of less
formidable power. He held them back, but the resources of the
Empire were overstrained and weakened lastingly by the effort.
For the first time, too, there were colonies of barbarians
brought into the Empire, from beyond its lines, to be settled
for the supply of soldiers to the armies of Rome: It was a
dangerous sign of Roman decay and a fatal policy to begin. The
decline of the great world-power was, in truth, already well
advanced, and the century of good emperors which ended when
Marcus Aurelius died (A. D. 180), only retarded, and did not
arrest, the progress of mortal maladies in the state.
From Commodus to Caracalla.
The best of emperors was followed on the throne by a son,
Commodus, who went mad, like Nero and Caligula, with the
drunkenness of power, and who was killed (A. D. 192) by his
own servants, after a reign of twelve years. The soldiers of
the prætorian guard now took upon themselves the making of
emperors, and placed two upon the throne--first, Pertinax, an
aged senator, whom they murdered the next year, and then
Didius Julianus, likewise a senator, to whom, as the highest
bidder, they sold the purple. Again, as after Nero's death,
the armies on the frontiers put forward, each, a rival
claimant, and there was war between the competitors. The
victor who became sovereign was Septimius Severus (A. D.
194-211), who had been in command on the Danube. He was an
able soldier, and waged war with success against the Parthians
in the East, and with the Caledonians in Britain, which latter
he could not subdue. Of his two sons, the elder, nicknamed
Caracalla (A. D. 211-217), killed his brother with his own
hands, and tortured the Roman world with his brutalities for
six years, when he fell under the stroke of an assassin. The
reign of this foul beast brought one striking change to the
Empire. An imperial edict wiped away the last distinction
between Romans and Provincials, giving citizenship to every
free inhabitant of the Empire. "Rome from this date became
constitutionally an empire, and ceased to be merely a
municipality. The city had become the world, or, viewed from
the other side, the world had become 'the City'" (Merivale).
Anarchy and Decay.
The period of sixty-seven years from the murder of Caracalla
to the accession of Diocletian--when a great constitutional
change occurred--demands little space in a sketch like this.
The weakening of the Empire by causes inherent in its social
and political structure,--the chief among which were the
deadly influence of its system of slavery and the paralyzing
effects of its autocracy,--went on at an increasing rate,
while disorder grew nearly to the pitch of anarchy, complete.
There were twenty-two emperors in the term, which scarcely
exceeded that of two generations of men. Nineteen of these
were taken from the throne by violent deaths, through mutiny
or murder, while one fell in battle, and another was held
captive in Persia till he died. Only five among these
twenty-two ephemeral lords of the world,--namely Alexander
Severus, Decius (who was a vigorous soldier and ruler, but who
persecuted the Christians with exceptional cruelty), Claudius,
Aurelian, and Probus,--can be credited with any personal
weight or worth in the history of the time; and they held
power too briefly to make any notable mark.
The distractions of the time were made worse by a great number
of local "tyrants," as they were called--military adventurers
who rose in different parts of the Empire and established
themselves for a time in authority over some district, large
or small. In the reign of Gallienus (A. D. 260-268) there were
nineteen of these petty "imperators," and they were spoken of
as the "thirty tyrants." The more important of the "provincial
empires" thus created were those of Postumus, in Gaul, and of
Odenatus of Palmyra. The latter, under Zenobia; queen and
successor of Odenatus, became a really imposing monarchy,
until it was overthrown by Aurelian, A. D. 273.
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The Teutonic Nations.
The Germanic nations beyond the Rhine and the Danube had, by
this time, improved their organization, and many of the tribes
formerly separated and independent were now gathered into
powerful confederations. The most formidable of these leagues
in the West was that which acquired the common name of the
Franks, or Freemen, and which was made up of the peoples
occupying territory along the course of the Lower Rhine.
Another of nearly equal power, dominating the German side of
the Upper Rhine and the headwaters of the Danube, is believed
to have absorbed the tribes which had been known in the
previous century as Boii, Marcomanni, Quadi, and others. The
general name it received was that of the Alemanni. The
Alemanni were in intimate association with the Suevi, and
little is known of the distinction that existed between the
two. They had now begun to make incursions across the Rhine,
but were driven back in 238. Farther to the East, on the Lower
Danube, a still more dangerous horde was now threatening the
flanks of the Empire in its European domain. These were Goths,
a people akin, without doubt, to the Swedes, Norsemen and
Danes; but whence and when they made their way to the
neighborhood of the Black Sea is a question in dispute. It was
in the reign of Caracalla that the Romans became first aware
of their presence in the country since known as the Ukraine. A
few years later, when Alexander Severus was on the throne, they
began to make incursions into Dacia. During the reign of
Philip the Arabian (A. D. 244-249) they passed through Dacia,
crossed the Danube, and invaded Mœsia (modern Bulgaria). In
their next invasion (A. D. 251) they passed the Balkans,
defeated the Romans in two terrible battles, the last of which
cost the reigning Emperor, Decius, his life, and destroyed the
city of Philippopolis, with 100,000 of its people. But when, a
few years later, they attempted to take possession of even
Thrace and Macedonia, they were crushingly defeated by the
Emperor Claudius, whose successor Aurelian made peace by
surrendering to them the whole province of Dacia (A. D. 270),
where they settled, giving the Empire no disturbance for
nearly a hundred years. Before this occurred, the Goths,
having acquired the little kingdom of Bosporus (the modern
Crimea) had begun to launch a piratical navy, which plundered
the coast cities of Asia Minor and Greece, including Athens
itself.
On the Asiatic side of the Empire a new power, a revived and
regenerated Persian monarchy, had risen out of the ruins of
the Parthian kingdom, which it overthrew, and had begun
without delay to contest the rule of Rome in the East.
Diocletian.
Briefly described, this was the state and situation of the
Roman Empire when Diocletian, an able Illyrian soldier, came
to the throne (A. D. 284). His accession marks a new epoch.
"From this time," says Dean Merivale, "the old names of the
Republic, the consuls, the tribunes, and the Senate itself,
cease, even if still existing, to have any political
significance." "The empire of Rome is henceforth an Oriental
sovereignty." But the changes which Diocletian made in the
organization and administration of the Empire, if they did
weigh it down with a yet more crushing autocracy and
contribute to its exhaustion in the end, did also, for the
time, stop the wasting of its last energies, and gather them
in hand for potent use. It can hardly be doubted that he
lengthened the term of its career.
Finding that one man in the exercise of supreme sovereignty,
as absolute as he wished to make it, could not give sufficient
care to every part of the vast realm, he first associated one
Maximian with himself, on equal terms, as Emperor, or
Augustus, and six years later (A. D. 292) he selected two
others from among his generals and invested them with a
subordinate sovereignty, giving them the title of "Cæsars."
The arrangement appears to have worked satisfactorily while
Diocletian remained at the head of his imperial college. But