Elements of Universal History

by different motives; and his feigned proposal of abdication was earnestly combated by his friends, who persuaded him to prolong his power during ten more years. To prove his disinterestedness, he shared the administration of the empire with the senate, leaving to it the fair provinces of Italy and Sicily: while he, by his deputies, governed the remainder. He assumed no unusual power; and yet, by the simple means of uniting all offices in his own person, he became entirely autocratical. Corresponding changes in the administration of the state ensued; and although the senate still remained the supreme council, there was another and more important one, composed of his particular friends, such as Mæcenas and Agrippa. Towards the end of his life, this body of men assumed the form of a modern cabinet (consistorium), being increased by the addition of fifteen senators, and one of each magisterial college. They were afterwards divided into three classes, having in their hands the entire government. The popular assemblies and elections still remained; but they were empty forms, the candidate nominated by the emperor never being rejected. Many salutary laws were enacted; the public edifices and roads were kept in good repair; a kind of police and night-watch were established; and communication between distant points was facilitated by the establishment of regular posts for the transmission of the imperial despatches. The finances remained nearly the same; there were, however, two treasuries, that of the prince (fiscus), the other of the senate (ærarium). Besides introducing a regular organisation into the army, Augustus divided and separated the twenty-five legions, paid them regularly, and compensated their toils by money instead of land. The term of service was also fixed, and the soldiers, instead of being turbulent and insolent, as in the civil wars, became docile and peaceable. The entire body was distributed along the frontiers in stationary camps; tranquillity was maintained in the interior by prætorian and urban cohorts. Two fleets, one at Ravenna, the other at Misenum, protected the commerce of the Mediterranean; forty vessels guarded the Euxine Sea, and armed boats secured the navigation of the Rhine and Danube.

3. TIBERIUS, A. D. 14-37.-The reign of Augustus appears in a more favourable light when contrasted with those of his nearest successors. Tiberius was fifty-six years old when he ascended the throne, professing great unwillingness to take upon him its important cares. The first victim of this despotic emperor was the young Agrippa Posthumus, in whom he feared a rival; and all restraint being now removed, the tyrant gave loose to his cruel and sensual passions. He soon afterwards retired from Rome to Campania, from whose luxurious retreats issued those blood-stained decrees which the senate was so ready to enregister; and we may read in Suetonius and Tacitus of the murders committed by this body, in compliance with the imperial edicts. Sejanus, com mander of the prætorian guards, and favourite of the monarch, dared to raise his thoughts to the highest station; and, to clear his way to the throne, got rid of all those whose claims were nearer than his own. Germanicus, the son of Drusus, was poisoned; his widow, Agrippina, was exiled to Pandataria, an island noted as the place of Julia's banishment; his eldest son, Nero, committed suicide to avoid the torture; and Drusus, the second son, perished of hunger in prison. But Tiberius suddenly awoke to the treachery of his minister, and he who had filled all Rome with mourning was surrendered to the popular fury. From this period the emperor, exasperated by the dangers with which he had been threatened, indulged in fresh cruelties. The wealthy inhabitants of Gaul, Spain, and Greece, were condemned to death for the merest trifles, that their riches might augment the royal treasures. His latter years were passed in scenes of infamous debauchery at Capreæ, and his death was hastened by the hands of a freedman, a. D. 37.

During this odious reign, JESUS CHRIST accomplished on the cross his divine mission; and then arose from Calvary that new and pure gospel which was destined to regenerate the world.

FOREIGN WARS.-Tiberius imitated the policy of Augustus by engaging in no wars unnecessarily. In Gaul, two revolts, the result of excessive taxation, were with difficulty subdued; while, in the East, the imperial ministers found safety in the troubles they excited among the tributary Persian states. Germany, however, in the days of Augustus, had been the scene of important military operations. The wife and infant son of Arminius (Hermann) had fallen into the hands of the Romans, to rescue whom all the neighbouring tribes rose in arms. Germanicus, eager to anticipate the terrible blow impending over his country, assumed the offensive, attacked and defeated several detached bodies of the enemy, and in the end had nearly gained a complete victory. A bloody campaign led to no decisive result; the Germans could make no permanent impression on the well-disciplined legions, and the Romans were compelled to retire by sea, when a fearful tempest destroyed a great part of the fleet and army. Shortly after this, Arminius, who has been praised by Tacitus as the liberator of Germany from the dominion of Rome when in the height of her power, was assassinated at the age of thirty seven, eleven years after his triumph over Varus.

4. CALIGULA, A. D. 37–41, began to reign with mildness, but a severe malady at the end of the first year disordered his intellect, after which his cruelty knew no bounds. His excesses can only be excused by supposing his mind to have been affe ted. He fancied himself at one time a male, at another time a female, deity; raised his wife and his horse to the consulate; and fed his wild beasts with the bodies of citizens and captives. A violent death freed Rome from this frantic

monster.

5. CLAUDIUS, A. D. 41-54.-The senate, immediately upon the demise of Caligula, began to deliberate on the choice of a successor, but the prætorians, amounting to 10,000 men, instituted as a body-guard by Augustus, and kept in various garrisons throughout Italy, now took advantage of their being collected in Rome, to proclaim the supremacy of the army. They elected Claudius, during whose impotent rule 35 senators and 300 knights fell by the hand of the executioner. He was quite a puppet under the management of his favourites Messalina andAgrippina, Pallas and Narcissus. In this reign, the conquest of South Britain was partly effected, A. D. 43.

The first act of Claudius' government was to publish a general amnesty, from which the murderers of his predecessor were alone excepted. He repealed all Caligula's edicts, showing the greatest deference for the senate and magistrates. He himself presided daily at the tribunal of justice, enacted many wise laws, annulled the cruel statutes against high-treason, diminished the taxes, checked usury, and encouraged marriage. It is not one of his smallest claims to the title of benefactor of his people, that he abolished in Gaul the blood-stained religion of the Druids. The principal inhabitants of that province were selected to fill the vacant seats in the senate-house, the censorship was re-established, the circumference of Rome enlarged, and a new port constructed at Ostia, for the reception of the African and Egyptian corn-vessels. But

the empire required the firm hand of a master, while Claudius was feeble and uxorious. His death by poison was effected by his second wife and an infamous sorceress Locusta, A. D. 54.

6. NERO, A. d. 54-68, reigned mildly five years, guided by the experience of Burrhus and Seneca, after which he was seized with a hereditary madness. He murdered his mother Agrippina, his brother, his tutor, and the poet Lucan. He set fire to Rome, and, while the city was burning, mounted a lofty tower, where, accompanying the words with the music of the harp, he sung his own poem on the fall of Troy. He appeared as a singer on the public stage, and contended as a herald or crier at Olympia. The people at last grew weary of his cruelty and debauchery; and he perished by the sword of his freedman. But his private vices were less dangerous to the state than his exactions in the provinces whence he drew the means of supporting his extravagance, and of keeping his subjects in a continual state of intoxication.* With him the Julian family became extinct; and in consequence of the disputed succession, four emperors arose in less than two years.

7. GALBA, A. D. 68, 69, was elected to the throne during Nero's life, but endeavouring to check the licentiousness of the army and prætorians who had raised him to so dangerous an eminence, he was murdered by the soldiers, after a reign of seven months.

8. OTHO, A. D. 69, who had plotted against the life of his predecessor, did not long enjoy the fruits of his treason. This companion of the early debaucheries of Nero had been sent, during that monarch's life, into the honourable banishment of the Spanish quætorship, in which office he gained over the army, by whom he was invested with the purple. But he was scarcely acknowledged at Rome before the legions of Germany elected a competitor. Supported only by the prætorians and an undisciplined crowd, he was defeated by Vitellius, his rival, and committed suicide, after reigning three months and five days.

9. VITELLIUS, A. D. 69, trod in the steps of his patron Caligula. Although he gave himself up entirely to the pleasures of the table, he was severe toward his enemies. He was put to death while preparing to meet Vespasian, who had been proclaimed emperor by the Syrian army. Thus in the space of a single year, Rome had seen three monarchs elected by the respective armies of Italy, the Rhine, and Spain, and who all met with violent deaths.

10. VESPASIAN was declared emperor by the soldiers whom he was leading against the Jews, A. D. 69. This people, excited by false pro phets and oppressed by the severity of their governors, broke out into open revolt. In other parts of the empire the peace was similarly disturbed; blood was shed in the streets of Rome in civil tumult; the splendid temple of Jupiter on the Capitol was consumed by fire; Gaul was in rebellion; the frontiers were threatened by the Germans on the Rhine, and by the Parthians on the Euphrates. Vespasian restored peace to the world, and during nine years used his extensive power with

* It is a remarkable circumstance that Nero's memory was long cherished among the lower classes. During many years his tomb was decorated with flowers. His death was considered a fabrication, and no less than three false Neros appeared in the East. At the close of the third and fourth centuries, it was a popular belief that he would appear at the end of the world as Antichrist.

moderation. Under his orders the Jewish war was terminated; and his son Titus, whom he had left at the head of the army, utterly destroyed the people of Jerusalem after an obstinate resistance, and rased the city to the ground. A medal was struck commemorative of the event, bearing on one side a veiled female figure sitting under a palm-tree, with the inscription Judæa Capta. Vespasian died in the midst of many valuable reforms, and left the empire to the conqueror of the Jews.

11. Titus, a. D. 79-81, called The Delight of Mankind, from his amiable and generous disposition, enjoyed a reign of only two years, which was marked by calamities. He was compelled to quit Berenice, a Jewish princess whom he tenderly loved; a great part of Rome was consumed by fire; this was followed by a raging pestilence; and an eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried the towns of Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiæ beneath showers of ashes, August 24, A. D. 79.

12. DOMITIAN, A. D. 81-96, who succeeded his brother, manifested the disposition of Nero. He embellished the city with magnificent buildings, and engaged in useless and unsuccessful wars; South Britain was however subdued in his reign by Agricola, 85, whose death he is said to have occasioned. He banished literary men from Rome, degraded the senate, and persecuted all who were noble and good. He arrogated divine honours to himself, put to death many men of rank for the most trifling causes, and at last fell by an assassin's dagger, A. D. 96. Thus perished the last of the twelve Cæsars, of whom only four deserve the respect of posterity: Julius, Augustus, Vespasian, and Titus.

Gibbon thus characterizes the unworthy successors of Augustus:"Their unparalleled vices, and the splendid theatre on which they were acted, have saved them from oblivion. The dark, unrelenting Tiberius, the furious Caligula, the feeble Claudius, the profligate and cruel Nero, the beastly Vitellius, and the timid, inhuman Domitian, are condemned to everlasting infamy. During fourscore years (excepting only the short and doubtful respite of Vespasian's reign), Rome groaned beneath an unremitting tyranny, which exterminated the ancient families of the republic, and was fatal to almost every virtue and every talent that arose in that unhappy period."

JUDEA.

ARCHELAUS Succeeded to the throne on the death of his father Herod, 3 B. C., but his administration was so despotic and unpopular, that he was deposed and banished to Vienne in Gaul, A. D. 8, when Judæa became a Roman province, dependent on the prefecture of Syria, under the procurator Coponius. On one occasion this cruel monarch caused 3000 citizens to be massacred in the Temple. Pontius Pilate, who was governor from A. D. 26 to 36, was a man of stern and inflexible temper, utterly disregarding the religious feelings of the people. Twice he nearly caused a revolt by introducing into the city the Roman ensigns, on which were the images of the emperor, and by the consecration of the golden bucklers in the palace of Herod. The part which he took in the condemnation of our Lord is too well known to require comment. He was soon afterwards recalled, and banished to Vienne, where he is said to have perished by his own hand, A. D. 38.