VOLUME III✦

PAGE

Famous painting of the head of Jesus Christ (page 23), By Gabriel Max. Frontispiece

_Queen Thusnelda, wife of Arminius, taken prisoner by the soldiers of the Roman general Germanicus_, 4 Painting by H. Koenig.

AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE

TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF

THE GREAT EVENTS

(THE PERIOD OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE)

CHARLES F. HORNE

So vast and wonderful a construction was the Roman world, so different from our own, that we are apt to imagine it as an arrangement far more deliberately planned, far more mechanically complete, than it appeared to its own inhabitants.

From a cursory glance, we may carry away wholly mistaken conceptions of its thought and purpose. Thus, for instance, the Roman Republic never assumed the definite design of conquering the world; its people had only the vaguest conception of whither the world might extend. They merely quarrelled with their neighbors, defeated and then annexed them.

At almost any time after Hannibal's death, Rome might have marched her legions, practically unopposed, over all the lands within her reach. Yet she permitted a century and a half to elapse ere Pompey asserted her sovereignty over Asia. It was left for Augustus to take the final step, and, by absorbing Egypt, make his country become in name what it had long been in fact, the ruler of the civilized world.

Thus, too, we think of Augustus as a kindly despot, supreme, and governed only by his own will. But his compatriots looked on him as simply the chief citizen of their republic. They considered that of their own free will, to escape the dangers of further civil war, they had chosen to confer upon one man, eminently "safe and sane," all the high offices whose holders had previously battled against one another. So Augustus was Emperor or Imperator, which meant no more than general of the armies of the Republic; he was Consul, or chief civil administrator of the Republic; he was Pontifex Maximus, high-priest of the Republic. He could have had more titles and offices still if he would have accepted them from an obsequious senate.

But the title of "king," so obnoxious to Roman taste, Augustus never sought, nor did his successors, who were in turn appointed to all his offices. For nearly three centuries after the one-man power had become absolute, Rome continued to call itself a republic, to go through forms of election and ceremonial, which grew ever more and more meaningless and trivial.

Augustus seems to have felt the tremendous weight of his position, and to have tried honestly to divide his authority. He invested the trembling senate with both power and responsibility. In theory, it became as influential as he. But the appointment of its members, and also the supreme control of the armies, remained always with the Imperator; and thus the senate continued in reality little better than a flickering shadow. Under the reign of a well-meaning emperor, it loomed large, and often dilated into a very valuable and honorable body. In the grip of a tyrant, it sank at once to its true aspect of helpless and obsequious submission.

THE "ROMAN PEACE"

To the outside world the reign of the emperors was welcome. The provinces were governed by salaried officials, whose conduct was seriously investigated. The hideous extortions and cruelties of the governors sent out in the earlier days of the Republic almost disappeared. This milder rule seemed happy in the contrast. An emperor might be a brute at home, but his personal cruelties could scarce spread over an entire world. Money for even the hugest extravagances of only one man, the provinces could supply. At first they scarce felt the drain.

For two entire centuries after Augustus had assumed power, the world flourished and apparently prospered under the "Roman peace." The ruins of Pompeii, the tale of its destruction, show how well and how lazily the upper classes and even the masses lived.[1] The legions were scarce needed except for petty wars along the frontier. The defeat inflicted by the German barbarians was avenged, and the northern wilderness seems to have come very near to sharing the fate of Gaul.[2] But the long campaigns were costly and apparently valueless. No taxes flowed into the treasury from the poor half-subjugated savages; and the emperor Tiberius contemptuously declared that he would leave them to fight among themselves. Another frontier strife completed the subjugation of Spain. Another added Britain to the Empire. Another made temporary conquest over Dacia and extended the Asian boundary. There were minor revolts in Gaul.

Then the Jews, roused to sudden religious frenzy and believing themselves invincible, burst into rebellion.[3] Titus stormed their capital and burned their Temple. But the lesson was wasted on the stubborn, fanatical race, and sixty years later they flared out again. Roman relentlessness was roused to its fullest rage, and accomplished against them the destruction of prophecy. Their cities were razed to the ground, and the poor remnant of the race were scattered abroad. Yet, apparently imperishable, refusing to be merged with other men, they remained a people though without a country. They became what they are to-day, a nation of wanderers.[4]

One other tumult, more central and in that sense more serious, intruded on the Roman system. Just a century after the rise of Augustus, the tyrannies of his successor Nero became so unbearable that even his own senate turned against him; and he was slain, without having appointed a successor. The purely military character of the Empire was at once revealed. Different armies each upheld their own general as emperor. The claimants attacked one another in turn, and the strongest won. The turmoil lasted for only a year or so, just long enough for the distant legions to gather around Rome; the bloodshed was nothing as compared to former ages; the helpless senate acquiesced in each new proclamation of each successful army; and the rest of the world, scarce even jarred in its daily course, flowed on as before.

On the whole, then, these two hundred years were one long period of peace. It was Augustus who for the first time in centuries closed the gates of the war-god's temple in Rome. He encouraged literature, and we have the "Augustan" age. He boasted that he found Rome built of bricks, and left it of marble. He and his successors did far more than that. They constructed roads extending from end to end of their domains. Communication became easy; a mail post was established; people began to travel for pleasure. The nations of the world intermingled freely, and discovered, for the first time on earth, that they were much alike. The universal brotherhood of man may be not even yet fully recognized and welcomed; but the first step toward its acknowledgment was taken under imperial Rome.

CHRISTIANITY

This brings us to a very solemn thought. Many earnest men have believed that they see a divine Providence running through the whole course of history, and nowhere more obvious than here. They point to the careers of both Greece and Rome as being a special preparation for the coming of the Christ. The mission of Greece, they tell us, was to arouse the mind of man, to make him capable of thought and sensitive to spiritual beauty; that of Rome was to teach him the value of law and peace, and yet more, to draw all men together, that all might have opportunity to hear the lessons of the new faith.

Certain it is that at any earlier date it would have seemed practically impossible for a religion to spread beyond a single people. Not only was communication between the nations faint and intermittent, but they were so savage, so suspicious of each other, that a wanderer had to meet them weapon in hand. He must have a ship to flee to or an army at his back. Now, however, under the restraint of Roman law, strangers met and passed without a blow. Latin, the tongue of law, was everywhere partly known. Greek was almost equally widespread as the language of art and culture.

The Hebrews, too, had done their share in the work of preparation. They had developed the religious sense, beyond any of the Aryan peoples. Their religion had become a part, the main part, of their daily lives. They believed it, not with the languid logic of the Romans, not with the sensuous pleasure of the Greeks, but fiercely, fervidly, with a passion that swept all reason to the winds.

Among them appeared the Christ, born in the days of Augustus, crucified in those of Tiberius.[5] His teaching was mainly the doctrine of love, which Buddha had announced five hundred years before, but which was new to the Roman world; and the promise of life beyond the grave, which many races had more or less believed in, but which never before had been made to carry a vision of such splendor and such glory. He also advocated non-resistance to enemies, a principle which the early Church obeyed, but which has found small favor among the masses of later Christians.