Claudius, the conqueror of Britain, was in reality the ablest and best of the Claudian Cæsars who succeeded Augustus, but his wife Messalina, thirty-four years his junior, was a creature of shameless lust and remorseless cruelty. Valerius Asiaticus, a Gaul by birth but now the richest noble of his day, was in possession of the far-famed gardens of Lucullus. Messalina coveted the park and accused him to her husband, with the inevitable result. Asiaticus died like a gentleman. He took his usual exercise, he bathed and dined quite cheerfully, and then he opened his veins, “but not until he had inspected his funeral pyre and ordered its removal to another place, for fear that the smoke should injure the thick foliage of the trees.” So died this lover of gardens. Messalina’s sins grew more open, until at last she went through a public pantomime of marriage with one of her paramours, Silius, a consul-elect. The ceremony was performed before a number of witnesses duly invited. Claudius was at that time guided by the counsels of three Greek secretaries, and one of them determined to reveal the shameful truth to the emperor. Tacitus tells the story of her ruin in graphic language. She was celebrating the vintage feast in the gardens she had wickedly gained for herself. The presses were being trodden, the vats were overflowing, women girt with skins were dancing, as Bacchanals dance in their worship or their frenzy. Messalina with flowing hair shook the thyrsus, and Silius, at her side, crowned with ivy and wearing the buskin, moved his head in time with some lascivious chorus. One of the guests had climbed a tree in sport and reported a “hurricane from Ostia.” It was truer than he knew, for just then messengers began to arrive with news that Claudius was on his way from Ostia, coming with vengeance. The revels ceased, the revellers fled in all directions, and Messalina, left deserted, mounted a garden cart to proceed along the road to meet her husband. Her appeal failed, though Claudius would undoubtedly have relented but for the interference of the freedman Narcissus. After dinner, warmed with the wine, he bade some one go and tell “that poor creature” to come before him on the morrow to plead her cause. But Narcissus had already sent soldiers to her, and she was driven to suicide. “Claudius was still at the banquet when they told him that Messalina was dead, without mentioning whether it was by her own or another’s hand. Nor did he ask the question, but called for his cup and finished the repast as usual.”

Nero, too, in the pages of Suetonius appears so incredible in his wickedness that the exaggeration is obvious. Of his splendid new palace the Golden House we read: “The portico was so high that it could contain a colossal statue of himself a hundred and twenty feet in height; and the space it included was so vast that it had a triple colonnade, a mile in length, and a lake like a sea, surrounded with buildings that looked like a city. It had a park with cornfields, vineyards, pastures, and woods containing a vast number of animals of all kinds, wild and tame. Parts of it were entirely overlaid with gold, and incrusted with jewels and pearl. The supper-rooms were vaulted and the compartments of the ceilings, which were inlaid with ivory, were made to revolve and scatter flowers. They also contained pipes to shed scents upon the guests. The chief banqueting-room was circular and revolved perpetually day and night, according to the motion of the celestial bodies. The baths were supplied with water from the sea and the Albula.” At the dedication of this magnificent building, all that he said in praise of it was: “Now at last I have begun to live like a gentleman.” They charged Nero with the murder of all his relatives, and there is a grim sort of humour in the story of his frequent attempts upon his mother’s life. His grievance against her was that she was too strict. First, he deprived her of her bodyguard, and suborned people to harass her with lawsuits which drove her out of the city. In her retirement he set others to follow her about by land and sea with abuse and scurrilous language. Three times he attempted her life by poison, but finding she had previously rendered herself immune by the use of antidotes, he next designed machinery to make the floor above her bed-chamber collapse while she was asleep. When this failed he constructed a special coffin-ship, which could be made to fall in pieces, and then sent her a loving invitation to visit him at Baiæ, the Brighton of the Romans. The ships of her escort were likewise instructed to ram her by accident on the way home. He attended her to the vessel in a very cheerful spirit and kissed her bosom at parting with her. After which he sat up late at night waiting with great anxiety for the joyful news of her decease. But news arrived that the accident had miscarried, the dowager empress was swimming to shore. When her freedman came joyfully to narrate her escape, Nero pretended that the man had come to assassinate him and ordered her to be put to death. Suetonius adds “on good authority” that he went to view her corpse and criticised her blemishes to his followers, and then called for drink. After this he was haunted by her ghost.

The famous story of his death is told with a little restraint, and the latter part of it is not incredible. When the first bad news came of the revolt of Vindex with the legions of Gaul, Nero summoned his privy council and held a hasty consultation with them about the crisis, but spent the rest of the day in showing them a hydraulic organ and discoursing upon the intricacies of the invention. Then he composed a skit upon the rebels, and prepared a pathetic speech which was to make the mutineers return to his allegiance in tears. He sat down to compose the songs of triumph which should be sung upon that occasion. In preparing his expedition his first thought was to provide carriages for the band: he equipped all his concubines as Amazons with battle-axes and bucklers. But when he heard of the revolt of the Spanish army under Galba also, he fell into a temper and tore the dispatch to pieces. He broke his precious cups and put up a dose of Locusta’s poison in a golden box. He ordered the prætorian guard to rally round him, but they only quoted Vergil to him:

At midnight he awoke and found that the guards had deserted his bedside. Even his bedding and his golden box of poison had been stolen. So he stumbled out into the night as if he would throw himself into the Tiber. But a few faithful slaves came to him and a freedman offered him his country villa for a refuge, and Nero rode thither in a shabby disguise. An earthquake shook the ground and a flash of lightning darted in his face; he heard the soldiers in the prætorian camp shouting for Galba. Skulking among bushes and briers, he crawled on all fours to a wretched outhouse of his freedman’s villa. There he ordered them to dig a grave and line it with scraps of marble. The water and wood for his obsequies were prepared, while he uttered the famous words “qualis artifex pereo!” either meaning “What an artist the world is losing!” or (more probably) “What an artistic death!” A dispatch came to announce that he had been declared a public enemy by the senate, and was to be punished according to the ancient custom of the Romans. He asked what sort of death that meant, and was informed that the criminal was generally stripped naked and scourged to death with his head in a pillory. Then he took up daggers and tried the points, but still he dared not die. He begged one of his attendants to give him the example. At last he heard the horsemen coming, quoted a line of the Iliad very appropriately, and drove, with the help of his secretary, a dagger into his throat.

Now, even of this, three-quarters is pure rhetoric. For example, it was impossible that Nero should have heard the soldiers in the Esquiline Camp from the road which he took to his servant’s villa. The details are the invention of malice, or the attempt of a literary artist to improve his story. Even Suetonius admits that the populace continued to deck Nero’s tomb with spring and summer flowers, that they dressed up his image and placed it on the rostra as if he were still alive, and that a pretender, who arose in his name twenty years later, was received with acclamation among the Parthians.

Having made this concession to the literary tradition which can be shown to be very largely fiction, we may now endeavour to gather up the fragments of history and briefly trace the progress of the Empire during its first century. First, as to its geographical growth; although Augustus had bequeathed in his testament the advice not to enlarge the frontiers of the Empire, and Tiberius had observed the precept, yet conquest still remained an object of ambition in the heart of every emperor who sought military renown or fresh sources of revenue. Britain, the declined legacy of Julius, was obviously beckoning the Romans. Diplomatic relations with the many kings of that island had always been frequent, and it was found that Britain was an inconvenient neighbour for a rapidly Romanising Gaul. There was a continual coming and going across the water, for there were kindred peoples on each side. Especially, it was the last refuge of the anti-Roman force of Druidism, a religion which was already declining and was suppressed by Claudius in Gaul. That this was so is shown by the forward movement of the Romans in the direction of Anglesey. The details of the conquest of Britain are, in spite of voluminous discussions, by no means certain. Aulus Plautius Silvanus with four legions, and with the future emperor Vespasian as one of his brigadiers, defeated Cymbeline and ten other kings of South Britain, crossed the Thames and conquered Colchester (Camulodunum), which became a Roman colonia and the centre of government. This was in A.D. 43, and Claudius himself spent a fortnight in our island in order to receive the honours of victory. The conquest was not too easily achieved, for there were five great battles in which the emperor, though absent, received the titles of victory. Plautius himself seems to have reached the line of the Trent and Severn. Ostorius Scapula, his successor, was mainly occupied in subduing the Silures of the Welsh mountains, and in the conquest of the elusive prince Caradoc. The mercy shown to that defeated hero proves that the Romans had advanced in humanity since the days of Jugurtha. The two succeeding legates made no fresh advance, but Suetonius Paulinus in A.D. 59-61 established Chester as his western camp. While he was engaged in the conquest of Anglesey, leaving only the ninth legion to hold the conquered province, there broke out the great rebellion under the heroic Boudicca. There never has been a quarrel in this island which has not had money as its root. It was not so much the oppressive nature of the tribute as the vexatious methods of the Roman financiers, who still as in republican days swarmed in the wake of eagles, that stirred the Iceni and their queen into revolt. Camulodunum, Verulamium, and Londinium were taken and sacked and there was an immense slaughter of Roman civilians and Romanised Britons. But vengeance followed: no barbarians could stand against the strategy and discipline of the legions.

Succeeding governors were mainly content to pacify and civilise the island.

One of the extraordinarily pungent chapters of Tacitus shows us the Roman method of empire-building in Britain. “The following winter,” he says of A.D. 79, “was spent in useful statecraft. To make a people which was scattered and barbarous, and therefore prone to warfare, grow accustomed to peace and quietness by way of their pleasures, Agricola used to persuade them by private exhortations and public assistance to build temples, forums, and houses, with praise for the eager and admonitions for the laggard. Thus they could not help embarking on the rivalry for honour. Now he began to instruct the sons of chieftains in the liberal arts, to extol the natural abilities of the Britons above the

studious habits of Gaul, so that those who lately rejected even the Roman language now became zealous for oratory. So even our dress came into esteem, and the toga was commonly worn. The next step was towards the attractions of our vices, lounging in colonnades, baths, and refined dinner-parties. They were too ignorant to see that what they call civilisation was really a form of slavery.” There is no doubt that the Britons took as readily as their Gallic cousins to the Roman civilisation. Many of them took Roman names and became Roman citizens. They learnt the pleasures of the bath and the amphitheatre, their mines were exploited, arts and industries were introduced, agriculture was improved. The Druids hid themselves away in the unconquered fastnesses of Wales or crossed over to the Hibernian island which the Romans never had leisure to conquer. Meanwhile the Britons were learning to worship the obsolete gods of Rome, and presently the Eastern deities who came in their train.

It was the father-in-law of Tacitus, Julius Agricola, who conquered, or at least defeated, the northern tribes of England. Among the powerful Brigantes he established a garrison at York (Eburacum), which eventually became the most important of all the Roman centres. He advanced into Scotland also, and inflicted a bloody defeat upon the wild Caledonians. But Scotland remained unconquered, as did the neighbouring island upon which also Agricola had cast his ambitious eyes. The Roman army was wanted elsewhere, and the Emperor Domitian declined to assist any further adventures. Little more of our island’s story is recorded until the travelling Emperor Hadrian came out to visit us in A.D. 122. He saw that the wild north was only to be won by a gradual advance with more or less peaceful penetration northwards. The system of fortified frontiers was already established on the Rhine and Danube, and Hadrian drew his finger across the seventy miles between Bowness and Wallsend. Across this space, where the Tyne and Solway almost overlap, the Roman lines ran straight over hill and dale, and there they are to this day as a silent proof of the greatness of the Roman people.[63] This was more than a frontier: it was a vast elongated camp which looked south as well as north and frowned alike upon the Brigantes and the Caledonians. It was pierced at intervals by fortified gates and great roads ran northwards through it. On the north there was first a ditch, and then a stone wall broad enough for two or three men to walk abreast along it and nearly twenty feet high. Behind this, in a space of about 140 yards wide runs a road connecting a chain of fourteen large camps, some of which grew into towns. Southward again was the quadruple rampart of earth, a mound, a dyke, and then a double mound. This immense labour, though it is small in comparison with Roman works elsewhere, was achieved not by British slaves, but by Roman soldiers, some of whom were Britons, some Spaniards, and some Germans. It was completed gradually under various emperors. There were detached forts both north and south of the wall of Hadrian. It was Antoninus Pius who made the next step twenty years later. The Antonine wall from the Forth to the Clyde is only about half as long and of inferior strength. There were camps even north of this, in Stirlingshire for example, and it is clear that the Romans intended to feel their way into the Highlands. But that was contrary to their fates.

Gaul meanwhile was becoming as civilised as Italy herself. Numbers of the Gauls who had acquired the Latin speech received the jus Latinum, which was almost equivalent to full citizenship. Claudius admitted the chiefs of the Ædui into the Roman senate, and part of the speech in which he did so is preserved on bronze tablets at Lyons. Twice in the course of the century there were interesting attempts to give political expression to the Gallic sense of nationality. The revolt of Vindex at the close of Nero’s reign was little more than a mutiny, but the projected “Empire of the Gauls,” which was set up during the confusion which followed the fall of Vitellius, came very near success. Jealousy between the Gauls and Germans wrecked it.

In the case of Germany, it looked for a time as if Tiberius, who, of course, had personal knowledge of the difficulties and advantages of further conquest, meant to break his stepfather’s precept and annex more territory. But probably the annual expeditions of Germanicus were not intended to be more than punitive and demonstrative. Blood enough was shed, and acres enough laid waste, to appease the unburied ghosts of Varus and his legions. But though the great battle of Idistavisus was hailed as a Roman victory, Arminius himself continually eluded the Romans and the legions were more than once in peril of ambush. When Tiberius cried halt, it was open to the critics to find a malevolent explanation in his jealousy of Germanicus, but it is much more likely to have been the deliberate policy of an emperor who had knowledge of Germany. Thus, although Arminius presently fell a victim to his own ambition, and perished by the dagger of a tyrannicide kinsman, he had done his work and saved the liberty of Germany. Henceforth the Romans confined themselves to the Rhine frontier, though they had posts and summer camps beyond it. By degrees the generals of the Upper and Lower Armies in Germany developed into governors of two German provinces, but Germany was unconquered. There was a great military road along the left bank of the Rhine joining the garrison towns where the legions were quartered. Mogontiacum (Mainz) and Vetera Castra (Xanten) remained as the head-quarters, until the latter was superseded by Cologne (Colonia Agrippinensis) founded under Claudius. Trier (Augusta Treverorum), another foundation of about the same date, grew into an important centre of Roman civilisation, as its majestic Roman gate[64] and fine amphitheatre still bear witness. Under Claudius also the great Via Claudia over the Brenner Pass was completed, and the canal joining the Maas to the Rhine. This was better work for Roman soldiers than slaughtering Chatti and Chauci in their native forests. The re-entrant angle of the Rhine and Danube about the Black Forest, where the rivers run small, was recognised as a danger-point. The barbarian Germans were accordingly cleared away to make room for a body of Gallic emigrants, who received lands on condition of paying a tithe of their produce as rent, and of undertaking their own defence. This was a new piece of frontier policy which was often imitated in later times.

It seems to have been the Flavian emperors, Vespasian and Domitian, who advanced a step farther. On the other side of the Rhine and beyond these Agri Decumates the Romans began to construct a line of forts and wooden watch-towers linked by a rampart of earth, and known as the Limes Trans-Rhenanus. This frontier of Upper Germany left the Rhine between Linz and Andernach, crossed the Lahn at Ems, and then turned eastwards north of Wiesbaden (Aquæ Mattiacæ) and Frankfort. After Saalburg it runs on a north-easterly curve to Gruningen, whence it turns south, and continues for more than 100 miles through Aschaffenburg and Worth to join the Rhætian limes at Lorch. From Lorch the Rhætian limes goes eastwards to join the Danube a few miles above Regensburg. At first perhaps it was little more than a police and customs limit, but it gradually grew into a formidable barrier behind which the Roman Empire rested in a too profound security. Trajan continued it. Hadrian strengthened it with a wall and palisade. Commodus further fortified and extended it. A similar bulwark ran along the Danube.

This policy of setting up immobile defences like the Great Wall of China is always a dangerous one. Useful at first and visibly strong, it tends to lull the defenders into a false security. The camps and forts grew into towns, the armies into peaceful citizens living with their wives and children and devoting themselves to trade and husbandry. Meanwhile the barbarians on the other side were growing stronger and learning the art of war as fast as the Romans were forgetting it.

After this the danger-point for the Empire shifted gradually eastwards down the Danube. Claudius had converted Thrace from an allied kingdom into a Roman province in A.D. 46. Much difficulty was caused by the Dacians, who lived just across the Danube on the north bank opposite the Roman province of Mœsia and in the modern Roumania. As the Danube was apt to become frozen in winter it ceased to offer a satisfactory frontier, so long as there were powerful enemies on the other side. At first the Romans tried the system of transplanting them, 50,000 under Augustus and 100,000 under Nero, and settling them in the province of Mœsia. But it was a stupid policy, for it meant constant intrigues between the free barbarians and their enslaved kinsfolk. Vespasian accordingly moved two legions down from Dalmatia to reinforce the two already stationed in Mœsia. But presently there arose an able and heroic king called Decebalus, who welded the Dacians into a compact and organised kingdom, and began to menace the security of the Empire. Like Marbod of Bohemia, he drilled his barbarians on the Roman model. In A.D. 85 he invaded Mœsia, won victories and did great damage. Domitian, called upon to face this peril, was content with inflicting a single defeat upon them and then accepting Decebalus as a client prince. He gave him Roman engineers and artillerymen, and even sent gifts of money which the barbarians were pleased to regard as tribute. This has been set down as cowardice, but it was certainly unwisdom in Domitian, for Decebalus grew stronger and more dangerous. It was left for Trajan, the greatest soldier of all the early emperors, to face this thorny problem in the two great Dacian Wars of 101 and 105 B.C. The whole war is depicted for us by pictures in stone. The spiral reliefs which cover the column of Trajan tell us, with far more detail than the narrative of Dio, the history of the two Dacian Wars. We see the embarkation of the Roman army, we see it on the march with its scouts in advance, we see the solemn purifications, sacrifices, and harangues which preceded battle. We see the battles themselves, in which the Romans with sword and pilum defeat the Dacians and their mail-clad Sarmatian cavalry. The great bridge built across the Danube at Viminacium by the Greek architect Apollodorus is faithfully depicted. We can watch the siege of the Dacian capital, Sarmizegethusa, and observe the construction of the siege-engines. Scenes of pathos are most graphically portrayed, the torturing of Roman prisoners by the barbarian women, the suicide of the Dacian chiefs by poison, and the death of the heroic Decebalus. At intervals throughout the story there appears and reappears the calm and stately figure of Trajan, steering his ship, sacrificing for victory, leading the march or the charge, haranguing his troops, directing the labour of engineering, consulting with his officers, or receiving the submission of the foe.[65]

The end of the two wars was that Dacia was annexed and became a province of the Empire. Here, as elsewhere, Trajan showed his contempt of natural frontiers. As a gallant soldier himself, he believed in the invincibility of the Roman arms, and preferred to put his trust in legions rather than in walls. For this he has been condemned by modern historians, but history is on his side. More than anything else it was reliance on natural frontiers and artificial ramparts, with the consequent loss of military instincts, which was to be the undoing of the Roman Empire.

On the eastern frontier it was for a long time a game of tug-of-war between Rome and Parthia, the rope being supplied by the kingdom of Armenia. The Augustan policy of filling the oriental thrones with princes trained at Rome was not a great success. You might learn bad lessons at court; you might even learn to know Rome without learning to love or fear her. The princes sent to Armenia or Parthia were unstable allies and the ordinary course of events was for the Romans to send out a king to Armenia and for the Parthians to depose him. Again it was left for Trajan to attack this problem in the old Roman fashion; when the usual submissive embassy arrived, Trajan answered, as a Metellus might have done, that he wanted deeds not words, and he led his army on. Trajan found the Eastern legions, whose headquarters were at Antioch, already civilianised and orientalised so that they had become useless for fighting. At this time there were four legions in Syria, one in Judæa and one in the new province of Cappadocia. The first task was to restore discipline and energy to these troops. Then, without bloodshed, in A.D. 115 Armenia was declared a province. Parthia, distracted by civil war, was overrun, its capital Ctesiphon easily taken by siege. Mesopotamia was made a province, and to Parthia was given a new king. The client kingdom of Adiabene became a third new province under the name of Assyria. This meant that the Tigris became the eastern frontier instead of the Euphrates. Unfortunately these conquests had been too easily achieved, largely through the temporary dissensions of the Parthians, who accordingly failed to experience the salutary discipline of real defeat. Trajan died on his way home, and Hadrian, who was more of a statesman than a warrior, reversed his predecessor’s policy. He surrendered the three new provinces and even acquiesced in the Parthians’ choice of a king of their own in place of the Roman nominee. The only new provinces of Trajan’s creation which Hadrian retained were Dacia and Arabia.

Although their military force was contemptible, their spiritual zeal made the Jews the most difficult people to govern in the whole empire. Worshipping their Jealous God with fierce ardour, they could not join in the Cæsar-worship which was the outward sign of loyalty and patriotism throughout the Roman world. Moreover the Semitic question had already begun to vex the soul of Europe. Throughout the East and especially in the trade centres such as Antioch, Alexandria, and Cyrene there were already large communities of Jews who lived on the usual terms of deep-rooted racial animosity with their neighbours. It is only fair to the Roman government to admit that it tried to conciliate its difficult subjects. Though the vanity of Caligula led him to accept the suggestion of erecting a colossal statue of him in the Temple at Jerusalem, yet when the philosopher Philo and his fellow-ambassadors came over to plead against the outrage the emperor good-humouredly remarked that if people refused to worship him it was more their misfortune than their fault. As a rule the Roman procurators who administered Galilee and Judæa were almost too tolerant of Jewish fanaticism. The Jews were exempt from military service: their Sabbaths were respected. A Roman soldier who tore a book of the law was put to death. It was useless to argue with such sects as the Zealots and Assassins. The Anti-Semite spirit broke out into massacres. In Cæsarea, Damascus, and elsewhere the Gentiles slew the Jews; in Alexandria and Cyrene the Jews slaughtered the Gentiles. In Jerusalem the Romans had to face violent discord between the rival factions, and naturally they sided with the more tolerant and moderate Sadducees against the stern Pharisees and the smaller sects of extremists. In A.D. 66 matters came to a crisis. A Roman garrison was attacked and destroyed: the army which came from Syria to avenge them was repulsed with slaughter. This occurred while the Emperor Nero was on one of his theatrical tours in Greece, and in the next year Vespasian was sent with an army of three legions and auxiliaries which increased its numbers to more than 50,000. During the death of Nero and the short reigns of his three successors, Vespasian was gradually subduing Palestine and driving the irreconcilables before him into Jerusalem. Vespasian himself became emperor and it was left to his son Titus to finish the tragedy.

The siege of Jerusalem (A.D. 70) was one of the most difficult tasks which the Romans ever had to face. In addition to its natural strength there were six lines of fortification to be overcome one by one, and each was defended with all the grim tenacity of which the Semite race is capable when it is on the defensive. Five months the great siege lasted, and at the end Jerusalem was a heap of ruins. Some of the temple treasures were saved for the Roman triumph, and the Arch of Titus still shows us the famous seven-branched golden candlestick being carried up to the temple of Capitoline Jove.[66] It is said that one million Jews perished in the siege and 100,000 more were sold into slavery. Jerusalem became merely the camp of the Tenth Legion. All Judæa became one province, and the scattered Jews were only allowed to keep their privileges on condition of registering their names and paying a fee of two denarii every year for their licence.

But this awful lesson had not quenched the fire of Jewish patriotism nor killed their hopes of an earthly Messiah who should restore the kingdom of David. Once again under Hadrian there was a Jewish rebellion stimulated by the fact that the emperor forbade the rite of circumcision and decreed the foundation of a Roman colony at Jerusalem with a temple to Jupiter on Mount Zion. The revolt was stamped out with merciless severity and the Jews were scattered for ever.

The only other noteworthy addition to the Roman Empire was Mauretania (Morocco), which was incorporated as a province by Caligula. The motive alleged was the emperor’s desire to possess himself of the treasures of Ptolemy, its king.

On the whole, then, we can see that the Roman Empire had almost reached its natural limits. It had seized as much as it could govern, and now, with the exception of the Parthian kingdom, all that lay outside its frontiers was naked barbarism. So the centre grew more and more unwarlike, while the legions had little to occupy their minds except the speculation whether their particular general had a chance of the purple. For this reason alone the Cæsars were loth to embark on conquests, unless like Trajan they were willing to neglect everything else and undertake the campaigns in person. A victorious general was always to be dreaded by his master.

The Principate

At first sight the position of the princeps, who was absolute lord of this world, is one of immense and terrible power. But earthly power has its natural limits in human weakness. The weak or wicked emperors were generally the servants of their favourites, male or female, or they lived under fear of the legions. Without their bureaux they were helpless, and the bureaux in the skilled hands of Roman knights or Greek freedmen were acquiring the real power. But it is astonishing how much actual work was done by the more conscientious Cæsars. In Pliny’s letters we see what minute details were referred by a provincial governor to his master and how minutely they were answered. The answers may be, and no doubt sometimes are, the composition of secretaries, but there is a personal note in them which often suggests the emperor’s own dictation. Probably Trajan was exceptionally industrious and Pliny exceptionally meticulous. Nevertheless it looks as if a strong emperor actually ruled this vast domain. It is one of the merits of despotism that the monarch’s power increases automatically with his virtues and capacity. A Caligula could not do so much harm: an Augustus, a Claudius, a Trajan, or a Hadrian might benefit millions of mankind. I think it is clear that they did so. The insane work of slaughter, which is all that interests the ordinary historian, had almost ceased. All over the world the markets were full, the workshops were noisy with hammers, the seas were thronged with ships, the great highways busy with travellers. Justice was strong and even-handed. Taxes were low and equitably assessed. For the most part men had liberty to go their own ways and worship their own gods. From the accession of

Augustus to the death of Antoninus Pius—and with a few intervals one might safely go further—the world was enjoying one of its golden periods of prosperity. It is unhistorical to look ahead and pronounce this happy world to be already doomed.

Yet, on the other hand, it is idle to deny the unsound spots in this imposing fabric of empire. The weakness was at the centre. The Roman aristocracy was gay and splendid, but not happy or secure. The ghost of the Republic still haunted her streets. To make a necessary repetition: if Augustus had been succeeded by a son as wise and tactful as himself, and if the throne had then passed to a third generation with the soldierly qualities of Trajan and the statesmanship of Diocletian, the Empire might have taken shape as a strong hereditary monarchy with a senate co-operating heartily, and an army obeying loyally. But that was not fated so. Tiberius was too proud to play the comedy as Augustus had done: instead he made enemies of the aristocracy and became suspicious and tyrannical. When they lampooned and abused him, he turned into a despot. Cremutius Cordus, the historian, was executed for calling Cassius “the last of the Romans.” At last Tiberius withdrew himself in gloomy despair and left the government in the hands of an unscrupulous intriguer, the knight Sejanus, who still further harried and alienated the nobles. It is hard to know the truth about Gaius, so palpably is his story written by satirists. He may have been mad. The adulation which surrounded the Cæsars was enough to turn the head of a vain youth. He was certainly extravagant and increased his unpopularity by taxes upon litigants and prostitutes. It was the officers of the prætorian guard who conspired to assassinate him.

Claudius was chosen by the bodyguard who had murdered his predecessor and he bought their allegiance with £120 apiece. He was the uncle of Caligula, but no process of adoption had lifted him into the royal house. Still he was the grandson of Livia and his assumption of the name “Cæsar” passed without comment. Claudius set Augustus before him as his model and in all things he was careful to return to republican precedents. He took the office of censor for the revision of the senate-roll. He increased the patriciate, encouraged the State religion and by personal attention improved the administration of justice. The cause of most of the trouble during the preceding reigns had been the practice of “delation.” Even under the Republic criminal prosecutions had been the easiest method of obtaining political notoriety. Tiberius and Gaius had added the motive of pecuniary gain. Claudius now repealed the obnoxious laws of treason, punished the laying of information and forbade slaves to give evidence against their masters. By the repeal of the treason laws Claudius had almost ceased to be a monarch, and he was careful to revive the old legislative processes of the republic. On the other hand, under Claudius the power of the bureaucracy was greatly increased, and the affairs of the Empire were principally conducted by the three powerful Greek secretaries.

On the death of Claudius—when the emperors died in their beds poison was invariably alleged—Nero succeeded almost as a matter of course. His mother Agrippina had secured his succession by having him raised to honour just as had been done for Tiberius by Augustus. He had already been styled “Prince of the Youth,” designated for the consulship and endowed with the proconsular power. There was, however, a possible rival in the young Britannicus, and Nero was chosen by the prætorian guard just as clearly as Claudius. During the first five years, when the young prince was engaged in enjoying himself under the guidance of the philosopher Seneca, the senate had nothing to fear, and the Roman state enjoyed its liberty, but when Tigellinus, the wicked prefect of the guard, gained his evil ascendancy over the mind of Nero there were some prosecutions of influential senators which made the whole senate tremble. Yet, even in these worst days of the worst of emperors, good administration proceeded. Nero himself made an interesting proposal for the abolition of customs in the Empire and, indeed, may fairly be called “The Father of Free Trade.” But the capitalist class succeeded in suppressing the proposal. The duties on corn were, however, reduced and the collection of taxes carefully regulated. Charges of extortion against tax-collectors were given precedence in the law courts, a measure of justice beyond anything that the modern state has attempted. It was much more the dancing and singing of the princeps than the extortions of Tigellinus and the judicial murders of noblemen which caused the unpopularity which brought Nero to his doom. Among the many who fell victims to the ferocity of Tigellinus—for Nero himself was probably harmless enough—were two genuine Republicans of the old school, men who were genuine believers in the Stoic faith and who kept the birthdays of Brutus and Cassius as annual feasts. It is probable that genuine opposition of this sort was far from rare among the aristocracy of the Empire. Writers like Lucan and Tacitus were evidently in sympathy with it, and though Thrasea Pætus and Barea Soranus are famous for the Stoic deaths they died, yet they were only two out of many who lived wholly on the memory of the Republic.

Nero’s fall was caused directly by the defection of the prætorian guards, whose allegiance had been bought in the name of Galba. Nero was the last member of the Julio-Claudian family, and at his death the last shadow of dynastic claim passed away. The succession of the principate became a mere scramble in which the strongest or the luckiest or the heaviest briber won the day. Pretenders sprang up against Galba, several of the armies put forward their generals as competitors for the throne; and Galba himself had not even enough generosity to pay the bribes by which he had secured his throne. Thus the year 69 was a year of incessant civil war. Galba was murdered in the streets of Rome; Otho was defeated in battle near Bedriacum and slain in his camp, Vitellius; the choice of the legions in Germany, reigned from April to December, when Rome was once more occupied by a citizen army. The legions of Syria, seeing that their fellow-soldiers of Spain and Germany had already made their generals into emperors, had determined to take a hand in the game, and now Vespasian came as the fourth Cæsar in the space of a single year.

It speaks well for the solidity of the imperial system as organised by Augustus that it survived the shock of such events as these. It proves that the system was everything and the man little or nothing.

The new Emperor Vespasian, who succeeded after all this turmoil, was different from his predecessors in that he had two grown-up sons ready to succeed him. It is said that Mucianus, a still more powerful Eastern general, had surrendered his claims because he was childless. If so, it was nobly and wisely done. Vespasian was able and willing to restore the machinery of the Augustan principate. He was himself frankly a humble Sabine with no claims of birth. He was firm but not oppressive towards the senate, and he kept control over the prætorian guard by appointing Titus, his son, to its command. He also established the succession beyond doubt by making Titus his consort. Vespasian and Titus were elected consuls year by year. Vespasian’s principal work was to restore the financial credit of the government. Unfortunately the two sons, Titus, and then Domitian, who followed him upon the throne and with him make up the “Flavian” dynasty, were scarcely worthy of their father. Titus was “the darling of the human race,” generous and mild to the senators, but too fond of his popularity to be a strong ruler, and Domitian was a genuine tyrant. With his autocratic system of rule he was naturally oppressive to the aristocracy, and his name is in consequence written on the pages of history as that of a monster of cruelty. Domitian certainly made constitutional changes which rendered the monarchy a more open fact. He took the consulship for ten years to come, he became censor and drew up the senate-roll to suit his fancy, he refused the usual request of the senators that the emperor should admit that he had no power to condemn a senator to death. Also he openly spurned the proud senators and permitted the servile modes of address which Augustus and other emperors had forbidden.

These high-handed proceedings made the senators hate and plot against him. Plots were followed by executions, and Domitian gradually became more and more tyrannical. More of the Stoic Republican party were executed, and the odious practice of delation came once more into vogue. At last there was a successful plot organised in the palace, and Domitian fell to the dagger.

With the three succeeding emperors, Nerva (96-98), Trajan (98-117), and Hadrian (117-138), we have a series of genuine constitutional rulers who show the system of the principate at its best. The excellent figure which these rulers cut on the page of history is not wholly unconnected with the fact that we have now passed beyond the region illuminated by the satire of Tacitus and the tittle-tattle of Suetonius. Their deeds speak for them. In Nerva we have the senate’s choice of a ruler, elderly, blameless, but decidedly weak. Had he not died in less than two years, he could easily have brought the throne of the Cæsars down to the ground. Knowing his own weakness, Nerva had adopted the foremost soldier of his day as his heir, and Trajan, beloved of the soldiers and ready to purchase the love of the Rome rabble, succeeded without a murmur. He spent most of his reign in the camp. In the camp he died, and the succession was by no means clear when Hadrian, a kinsman though a distant one, had the courage to seize and the luck to hold the imperial power. All these three emperors granted the senate’s claim that the emperor should not have the power to condemn a senator to death, and in some aspects the senate seemed to have regained much of its old independence. But Trajan was too masterful and Hadrian too ubiquitous to leave any real scope for senatorial initiative. It was really under these benevolent despots that the Dyarchy ceased to have any significance. As usual the benevolence of the despot was the most fatal enemy to liberty. Not only in Rome but even in the municipalities of Italy politics were ceasing to have any real meaning, and men of standing had to be coerced into taking part in the comedy. The bureaucracy of the imperial palace now governed the world, and the better it governed the more quickly did the life-blood of the Roman world run dry in its veins. We now find imperial “curators” and accountants going up and down the provinces to set their finances in order. Whenever there is trouble in any corner of the earth, an imperial “corrector” travels down from Rome by the admirable system of imperial posts to set it right. Where, of old, a local squire, the patronus of the municipality, would leave a charitable legacy for the maintenance and education of poor children, the state with its admirable system of “alimenta” was beginning to assume the responsibility. The state had its Development Fund which made loans on mortgage at very low interest, generally 5 but sometimes 2½ per cent., to small farmers, and the interest was applied to orphanages and the education of the poor. Nerva has the credit for introducing this splendid system of public charity and Hadrian developed it. It was Hadrian also who gave the finishing touches to the organisation of the civil service as a close bureaucracy entirely divorced from the military profession. This service was chiefly in the hands of the knights, and it ranged in a carefully graded hierarchy of officialdom down from the three principal Secretaries of State, the Finance Minister, the Chief Secretary, and the Minister of Petitions, down to the Fiscal Advocates who looked after local revenue. Though the Roman Empire is often represented as groaning under the weight of taxation, and no doubt the more extravagant emperors did amass heavy liabilities, yet Hadrian, who followed an emperor extravagant both in warfare and building, was able to remit about nine millions sterling of arrears due to the fisc. He also introduced a system of periodical reassessments and gave the fullest liberty for his tenants-in-chief to appeal against the collectors. Hadrian it was, also, who really introduced the system of installing a junior colleague in the Empire, a plan which Augustus had foreshadowed in his elevation of Tiberius.