To the Roman mind it was unbecoming to a free gentleman to be asked to pay taxes in a free country. They held that a tributum was only for slaves to pay. Moreover it was one of the limitations of the power of Augustus that he had no constitutional right to impose taxation on Italy. Twice indeed he proposed to inflict a property-tax on Roman citizens. In A.D. 4 and 13 he took a census of all properties above £2000 as a preliminary measure, but on the second occasion at least it is explained by the historian as a shrewd stroke of diplomacy to make people acquiesce in the existing death-duties. The serious financial embarrassment of these years was caused by the expense of the gratuities paid to time-expired soldiers. The soldier’s daily pay of about sixpence was only pocket-money, he had always expected a farm on his discharge. Under Augustus this allowance of land was commuted for a bounty of about £125 for the legionary, or £185 for the prætorian guard. Of course, with a service of over twenty years and constant fighting, the number of veterans discharged each year must have fallen considerably below the 20,000 recruits enrolled, but still it was a heavy expense. In some cases the veterans were retained under the colours and in some cases land in new countries was still given. But this burden led to the establishment of a new military chest in A.D. 6. This was filled in the first instance by a donation of nearly two millions from Augustus and Tiberius, but it was maintained by two indirect taxes which fell upon the Roman citizens—very much to their annoyance. One was a tax of one per cent. on all objects bought and sold, the other a five per cent. tax on legacies. The latter was not imposed purely for revenue. It was intended, along with other laws, to discourage celibacy, since it only fell upon those who died without heirs of kin. What appears to be a distinct tax is another upon the sale of slaves.

The other large head of expenditure was that of the Roman corn-supply. Two hundred thousand people received free corn and the rest of the citizens always expected to buy it very cheaply. Most of this corn came from Egypt and Sicily as taxation paid in kind. The control of the supply was in the hands of a new department, cura annonæ, but owing to its mismanagement there were several periods of famine, on which occasions either Augustus himself or some member of his family had to step in and put things straight.

The general expenses of administering the Empire were not as great as modern analogies would lead us to suppose. No doubt the imperial legates and procurators received wages out of the imperial fiscus. It is commonly stated that all provincial magistrates now received a fixed salary instead of being left to plunder the provincials. The truth is that the higher magistrates of Rome never had received and did not for a long time yet receive a salary. But they had always claimed an allowance for their travelling expenses technically called “mule and tent money,” and this had been fixed on a generous scale which really amounted in practice to a salary. The only change was that instead of allowing these fees to be subject to contract on the regular contract system of the republican treasury, the governors now received a fixed grant calculated according to the necessary scale of expenses in the various provinces. For the provinces an immense saving was effected in this manner but it must have been more expensive to the central treasury.

The finances of the provinces were gradually brought into order and arranged with consummate skill. The little information that we possess tends to show that nowhere was the Augustan reformation more beneficent or more brilliantly successful. In Gaul the land-tax and property-tax were fixed in 26 on a fairly high scale, it is true, but the development of commerce and agriculture fostered by the Romans made their incidence a light burden in comparison with the rapidly increasing wealth of the province. By this time the state had accepted the theory of tribute which the Roman lawyers had developed upon false principles. Tribute was now regarded, not as a commutation of the liability to military service, which was its real origin, but as a rent paid to Rome for the continued enjoyment of lands which had passed to her by right of conquest. The tribute was everywhere reassessed upon a new valuation systematically conducted. Generally it represented a tithe of the corn harvest and 20 per cent. of liquid products, such as oil and wine. In the senatorial provinces the old system of tax-farming by contractors survived for a time, but in his own provinces Augustus instituted an imperial board of revenue administered by Roman knights or Greek slaves and freedmen as his fiscal procurators. We have, indeed, three known cases of embezzlement by native agents. One, Eros, had advertised his insolent rapacity in Egypt by purchasing a celebrated fighting quail for an immense sum of money, and then cooking it for his dinner. Another, Licinius, a native Gaul set to collect taxes in his own country, disarmed Cæsar’s wrath like the servant in the parable by showing rooms full of silver and gold, which he professed to have stored up in his master’s interest. In this case it is zealous extortion which is charged against him. One of his methods was to extort fourteen months’ taxes in the year by pointing out to the innocent natives that since December was by its very name the tenth month, they had two more monthly contributions to pay before the end of the year. A paymaster, also a slave, who died in Tiberius’s reign, was notorious for the retinue of fourteen persons who attended him on his travels. He had his private cooks and physicians. But these are isolated cases. On the whole it is clear that the provinces were rejoicing at their deliverance from the oppression of the Republic. They were always anxious to be transferred from the senate to Cæsar. If the tax-gatherer was still at their door, he was now a man under independent authority with a master who would listen to petitions and appeals. Moreover, they now had a government which assisted them to pay by intelligently developing their resources.

The public treasury of the senate was no longer entrusted to mere quæstors. Augustus at first instituted prefects for this also. But the dearth of administrative capacity at Rome compelled him to transfer the charge to the prætors. However, he kept an eye upon its administration himself, as is shown by the fact that when he died he left to the state an account of the condition of the treasury.

It is still too early to speak of a definite system of division between the public “ærarium” and the emperor’s private “fiscus.” But the budget of the senate would include:

The budget of the fiscus would include:

The Provinces

Turning now to a rapid survey of the Roman world from a geographical point of view we shall see the work of restoration and repair, proceeding with the same methodical thoroughness which makes this regime one of the most beneficent in the history of civilisation. We have already seen something of the provincial system as it was reorganised in 27 B.C. The provinces which fell to the share of the senate were these:

• Asia.
• Africa.
• Gallia Narbonensis (transferred to the senate in 22 B.C.)
• Hispania Bætica.
• Crete with the Cyrenaica.
• Macedonia with Achaia.
• Bithynia with Pontus.
• Cyprus (also transferred to the senate in 22 B.C.).
• Dalmatia (until the revolt of 11 B.C.).
• Sardinia with Corsica.
• Sicily.

These were governed by annual magistrates, chosen by lot from a list selected by the senate—the first two by proconsuls of consular rank, the others also by governors termed proconsuls but actually only of prætorian rank, that is, ex-prætors. Africa was the only one of these provinces which contained troops and the senatorial governors went out in civilian dress as administrators only. Cæsar’s provinces were:

• Spain.
• Gaul.
• Syria with Cilicia and, until 22 B.C., Cyprus.

To these were gradually added:

• Germania.
• Illyricum, including Dalmatia and Pannonia.
• Galatia, including Lycaonia, Pamphylia, Pisidia, and part of Cilicia, with Paphlagonia added in 5 B.C.

These were all governed by legates of Cæsar, commonly chosen from the ranks of the senate, with the title of proprætor. They held office for as long as Cæsar desired, and were provided with a staff, chosen by him, of trained financiers. In addition to these, other districts under prefects were gradually accumulated:

• Egypt.
• Mœsia and Triballia.
• Alpes Cottiæ.
• Alpes Maritimæ.

And others again under procurators:

• Judæa (after A.D. 6).
• Rhætia.
• Noricum.

Further, there were a large number of “allied” or “client” kingdoms and republics:

And the allied states:

• Lycia.
• Athens, Sparta, Rhodes, and other Greek cities.

In his own provinces Cæsar was supreme in all things; he had the right of making peace, war, and alliance, without consulting the senate. Though he governed through legates or procurators, the Roman law had always granted a right of appeal from a lower magistrate to his superior. This was the source of Paul’s “appeal unto Cæsar” from the procurator of Judæa. In the senatorial provinces his imperium, which had been specially defined as “superior” (maius), gave him precedence when he was actually present. And we have many cases of his interference in senatorial provinces. Cæsar’s legates, such as Agrippa, Tiberius, and Gaius, constantly act as overlords in Asia, though a decree of the senate is required for this. We hear of Augustus founding colonies in Sicily. Moreover, the princeps had sole authority over the army, and for any military operations it would be necessary to borrow troops of him.

The foundations of this great empire were not hastily or carelessly laid. Although of feeble constitution and by nature a man of peace, Augustus spent the first half of his long reign more abroad than at home, in fighting rebels and organising or reforming with unwearied energy. To this part of his work we are unable to devote sufficient attention through lack of material. The ancient historians prefer to record small victories over barbarian tribes, or the petty gossip of the Roman streets, while they have little to say about the tireless administration which in one generation transformed the Roman world from a horrible chaos into that scene of peace and prosperity shown to us in the pages of Strabo and Pliny. So while our eyes are fixed upon the sins and follies of Roman emperors and courtiers, until we get an impression of rotten tyranny conducted according to the caprice of monsters and fools, all the time the greater part of Europe was advancing in peace to a state of general culture and civilisation such as it had never known before, and such as it never knew again until the nineteenth century. A casual glance over the inscriptions of a provincial town probably gives us a truer impression than all the rhetoric of the historians. In Pompeii, for example, a small and unimportant suburb of Naples which scarcely comes into the view of history, we see a busy and useful municipal life carried on in absolute security. There were the ten councillors (decuriones), who corresponded to the Roman senate, and there were two local consuls bearing the title of “duumviri.” In most cases a small municipality would have its “patronus” also, a local squire, perhaps, who in some measure corresponded to the princeps, and who would represent the interests of the town at Rome, or with the Roman prætor. His main business, however, was to equip his town with baths, temples, and colonnades, or to provide it with public banquets. For the rich freedmen, in whose hands was much of the trade of the place, Augustus had provided the new office of Seviri Augustales, which we have already described. There were no rates, for private munificence took their place. There was no direct taxation in Italy, and the indirect taxes were inconsiderable. Internal trade was free. The obligation to military service was so widely distributed that it fell very lightly on Italy, and the natives accordingly became less and less warlike. All the Italian peoples were now Roman citizens. Trade was greatly assisted by the improvement of communications which took place during this period. The care of roads properly devolved upon the senate, but as they showed their usual incompetence in this department the princeps had to step in and organise a special Board of Roads with a curator for each of the trunk lines of communication. Augustus also established an imperial post with a system of stages and relays, which lasted on until the coming of railways. The vehicles and horses were maintained by the roadside communities, and imperial messengers who carried a diploma or passport were allowed to travel express by this means. The great road to Rimini, the Flaminian Way, was the first to be repaired, and Augustus adorned its terminal city with a handsome marble bridge[44] and triumphal arch, possibly as a compensation for the trouble which he himself had inflicted upon the town during the civil wars. Flourishing historic cities like Turin and Brescia owe their origin to colonies founded by Augustus. Towns like Perugia which had been almost destroyed in the civil wars now grew up again and flourished. In all, Augustus founded twenty-eight colonies in Italy, and supplied 90,000 veterans of the civil wars with land which he had bought and paid for. That the sea was now safe for trade and fishery must have meant a great deal to the coast towns. Augustus himself wrote an account of the condition of Italy, and Pliny confesses to using it as his authority. In all the long and important history of Italy it is doubtful whether she has ever enjoyed such peace and prosperity as began for her in the reign of Augustus.

A broad view of foreign politics showed Augustus two vital points of danger—the North and East. To the north the fierce and warlike barbarians of Germany had been checked indeed by Julius, but also exasperated. Tribes more or less akin to them extended southwards across the Danube and even to the Austrian Tyrol, where they were little more than a week’s march from the gates of Rome. A strong frontier policy was needed here. In the East there were the Parthians, the only possible rival power to Rome. The Romans at Carrhæ noticed that while the chiefs wore their hair parted and curled and their faces painted in the Persian fashion, the warriors had the unkempt locks of barbarian Thrace. It is likely enough that these Parthian bowmen had come in round the shores of the Black Sea from Thrace or South Russia. They had all the characteristics of northern nomads, but their kings had a good deal of Hellenic culture. They could boast of a choice collection of Roman eagles captured not only from Crassus at Carrhæ, but from two armies sent against them by Antony. Thousands of Roman prisoners were still working as slaves on the banks of the Euphrates. The task of punishing them had been definitely laid upon Augustus as a legacy from Julius, who had been slain at the moment when he was about to undertake it himself. Moreover, the Romans felt the loss of those standards very acutely, and not the least motive for their acquiescence in monarchy had been the hope that a monarch would retrieve their honour in this quarter. The earlier poems of Horace constantly express hopes of vengeance.

The manner in which Augustus satisfied these ardent aspirations of national pride is characteristic of him. Instead of the armies and bloody battles which historians demand of their favourites, Augustus achieved his object by luck and strategy. When he was organising the affairs of the East in 29 B.C., after the conquest of Egypt, he had left the Parthian question unsolved. For this, Mommsen takes him to task, but there is little doubt that it would have been folly to undertake a great and perilous war at that moment while the affairs of Rome were still in disorder. Moreover the attitude of the army compelled him to return home. Instead of fighting, he was content to set up rival powers on the Parthian frontier. The Parthians hated their king Phraates and there was a deposed rival in the field, Tiridates, to whom Augustus now gave shelter in the province of Syria, hoping, as indeed happened, that his presence in the neighbourhood would keep Phraates civil. At the same time Augustus set up a buffer kingdom of Lesser Armenia on the Parthian border and in the south strengthened and reinstated Herod the Great. Four or five legions were left to guard Syria.

In 23 B.C. it chanced that Tiridates had managed to kidnap the child of Phraates and was keeping him in custody in the Roman province. It is significant of the changed relations between Parthia and Rome that, instead of marching into Syria to recover the child, Phraates sent an embassy to Rome, whither also Tiridates came in person. Of course the senate made the restoration of the child conditional upon the return of the standards and prisoners. Phraates consented, but there was some delay in carrying out the contract and this may have been secretly arranged to enable Augustus to conduct the affair in a more striking fashion. Augustus marched out with an army and at his mere approach the standards and captives were given up with due formalities. It was really a Roman triumph, almost as great as if it had been attained by bloodshed, for all the world could see the humiliation of Parthia. Augustus, that astute tactician, took care that the event should not be allowed to lose its impressiveness for the mere lack of bloodshed. The return of the standards was treated as a Roman triumph. They were placed with every solemnity in the temple of Mars the Avenger. Coins were struck representing the suppliant Parthian on his knees and the same scene is depicted in relief on the centre of Cæsar’s breastplate on the famous statue. The poets broke out into dutiful pæans.

cries Ovid. Vergil, after his manner, speaks of the Euphrates flowing more quietly in future. The odes of Horace and the elegies of Propertius contain similar loyal allusions. Ferrero, who regards Augustus as a feeble trickster just as he regards Julius as a shabby adventurer, has nothing but contempt for this episode. But seeing that the Parthians were now utterly weakened by their internal feuds and quite submissive to Rome it would have been folly to embark upon their conquest. That they gave much trouble in the future is true enough, but that might fairly be left for the future to deal with. Extermination might have quieted them for ever, but Augustus had really no excuse for making war upon them.

On the same visit to the East a still more elaborate system of buffer states forming a double semicircle round Parthia was organised. Armenia yielded to Rome and received at the hands of Tiberius a new king who had been educated at Rome. Augustus himself explains that although he might have made Armenia into a Roman province he preferred to follow the example of “our ancestors” and give the crown to a native king. Augustus never pretended to be a world-conqueror. Similarly Media Atropatene received a new king of Roman education, so did Commagene and Emesa. These formed the outer ring of buffer states.

The central state behind them was Galatia, an arid highland district inhabited by the descendants of those Gauls who had burst into the Greek world under Brennus. Though they had acquired some tincture of Greek civilisation and had a capital of some importance at Ancyra, they still spoke the Gaulish language and were still a warlike race. For these reasons, on the death of their king, Augustus preferred to turn their country into a province. To the north was the very friendly kingdom of Polemo in Pontus, and to the south other friendly princedoms as well as the Roman provinces of Cilicia, Syria, and Cyprus.

For all this elaborate bulwark, the Parthian question was not really settled. They continued to exercise an undue influence in Armenia, and in A.D. 1 there was another solemn mission to the East and a conference between Phraates the Parthian king and Gaius the grandson of Augustus. Once more the Parthian professed submission, and once more the court poets struck their obsequious lyres. When Phraates died, his uncle Orodes who succeeded ruled with such cruelty that he was assassinated. Thereupon the Parthians sent to Rome for a king and Augustus gave them a nephew of the murdered tyrant, a youth also of Roman education. We note this proceeding as common in the foreign policy of Augustus. He must have had something like a school for young barbarian princes at Rome, but whether the lessons that they learnt in Roman society were altogether salutary is doubtful.

Behind this wall the great provinces of Asia, Syria, and Bithynia were wrapped in profound security. Here Greek culture continued to flourish with periodical incursions of oriental religion and philosophy. In every considerable town the Jews formed a great and growing section of the population but even they were half Greek in their ways of life. The country was rich and lazy and utterly unwarlike. Civilisation had risen to a high pitch and it was probably this part of the world which sent to Rome those artists who contributed to the revival of sculpture. Pretty little epigrams in Greek elegiacs seem to have been their principal literary accomplishment. These provinces have very little history—happily for them—at this period. We know them best from the Acts of the Apostles, where we get a glimpse of their superstitions, their eagerness to embrace new religions. We see the fanaticism of Ephesus with its magnificent temple of Diana and stately worship, a religion of oriental character overlaid with Greek culture, and only rivalled in its attractions by the Roman amphitheatre. For these people as for the rest of the world Augustus had his policy. Since worship was their instructive need and Euhemerism had accustomed them to worship men, he set up an elaborate cult of himself, or rather, by a subtle distinction without a difference, a cult of “the genius of Augustus.” Temples were built to “Rome and Augustus” and an elaborate hierarchy of “High Priests,” “Asiarchs,” and “Bithyniarchs,” which became the highest social distinctions in the society of the day. This was his method of securing the allegiance of nations devoted to religion and flattery. Here in the near future was to be the field of that momentous conflict between this State religion and Christianity, with other oriental faiths, such as Mithraism, also claiming their proselytes.

As for old Greece, the Romans never denied their spiritual debt to her, and accordingly they regarded Greece with something of the veneration which a man feels for his university. Augustus himself had been educated at Apollonia, he sent his heirs to various Greek cities for their education. It would have seemed sacrilege to educated Romans to put a legate in charge of Athens. Hence we find Greece enjoying quite an exceptional position in the empire, indeed without exception the freest and most favoured part of it. Towns such as Athens, Lacedæmon, Thespiæ, Tanagra, Platæa, Delphi, and Olympia were free and almost sovereign. Athens continued to coin her silver drachms with the old design of Pallas and the owl, elected her own archons and generals, held assemblies and even had a sort of empire extending over all Attica, part of Bocotia and five islands of the Cyclades. One Julius Nicanor, her “new Themistocles,” purchased the island of Salamis and presented it to his city in the civilised manner of empire-building. Sparta, too, though now shrunken to the size of a village, bore rule over Northern Laconia, while in the south there was a free confederacy to keep her in order. Beside these cities of ancient renown stood the new and splendid creation of Augustus—Nicopolis, the city of victory founded on the promontory of Actium in commemoration of the great victory of 31. Nicopolis had its great athletic festival like Olympia and ruled over a considerable territory. In addition to these free cities there were some Roman colonies. Corinth rose again from her ashes as an important commercial city founded by Julius Cæsar. Patras, on the Corinthian Gulf, a new foundation of Augustus, became one of the most important cities of Greece, as it is to-day. The rest of Southern Greece, consisting mainly of obscure villages, formed the new senatorial province of Achaia and was governed by a proconsul at Corinth. It was a poor unmilitary province. The northern part formed the senatorial province of Macedonia. Thessalonica and Apollonia were the principal centres of government and civilisation in this region. In Greece, as elsewhere, Augustus made it his aim to focus a national unity upon religion. The old Achæan league was revived as a religious gathering with Argos for its centre, and the Delphic Amphictyony, the oldest surviving institution in Europe, became the basis of a Panhellenic confederacy which met annually for religious purposes under Roman patronage, a sort of Eisteddfod combining religion with culture. It sacrificed to Cæsar, and here, too, we find a president called “Helladarch.” But although Greece had liberty and peace, something was amiss with her. Her shrunken population continued to decline. In Strabo’s Geography, Thebes is a mere village.

Crossing the water we find that the newly conquered kingdom of Egypt was the key to the whole position of Augustus. It was the wealth of Egypt which had reconciled Rome to monarchy and it was by means of that wealth that he continued to hold the allegiance of his subjects. Like Greece it had an ancient civilisation which impressed the Romans as something beyond their comprehension. Alexandria, in particular, as the gateway to the wealth of Egypt, and as the greatest existing centre of Greek culture, not to mention its huge population and commercial advantages, seemed to the Romans a really dangerous rival. The fear of that rivalry had been felt very acutely at Rome when news came of the ambitious schemes of Cleopatra and the subservience of Antony. Augustus was really heading something like a national crusade when he declared war upon them. The same fears now actuated him in settling the treatment of Egypt as a province. Though he writes “I added Egypt to the Roman empire,” he treated it rather as an imperial domain under a prefect or viceroy closely attached to his interests. Its first prefect was Cornelius Gallus, a knight from the Gallic colony of Fréjus, a poet himself and a friend of Vergil. Cornelius Gallus was in fact the hero of the famous eclogue: neget quis carmina Gallo? It was specially ordained that no senator might visit Egypt without the express permission of Cæsar. The native Egyptians were already overridden by a Greek aristocracy dating from Alexander’s conquest. They had no rights, and no nationality was designed for them as it had been elsewhere. Augustus accepted the elaborate bureaucratic system which he had found in existence when he came. The Greek aristocracy lived almost exclusively in Alexandria, possessing a municipal constitution, magistracy, and priesthood of their own. The ecclesia was stopped but otherwise there was no attempt to Romanise Egypt. The old Egyptian worship of Isis and Osiris had conquered all its conquerors and continued to make inroads even into Rome itself where Augustus was forced to accept it as irresistible. All that had happened in Egypt was that Augustus had taken the place of the Ptolemies in the official religion. It was the motive of fear which led to the appointment of a mere knight as viceroy, though he had three legions under his command. The officials under him were knights or freedmen. The taxes remained very heavy, as was necessary, but now the Egyptians were placed in a better position to pay them. Even before the civil war was quite ended in 29 B.C. Augustus had employed his soldiers to clear the canals and raise the level of the dams which ensure the Egyptian harvests. This process continued, and Egypt never had such prosperity again until Lord Cromer came to resume the work of Augustus. The harvest depended simply on the height to which the Nile rose. The ancient Nilometer at Elephantine records that the Nile rose to an unprecedented height in the latter days of Augustus. Formerly a level of eight ells had meant famine, now it ensured a tolerable harvest. Another inscription found at Coptos gives us the names of the Roman soldiers who built reservoirs of water along the great roads. Then the trade with India along the Red Sea first began to grow great. Whereas in the time of Cleopatra hardly twenty ships sailed to India in a year, there was already in Strabo’s day (about A.D. 18) a great fleet of Indiamen. Taxes on exports and imports returned a huge revenue to the imperial purse.

The prefect who represented his master on the throne of the Ptolemies was in a difficult position. To Rome he was a mere servant, to the Egyptians something like a god. Against these flattering influences Gallus the poet had not strength to resist. He allowed statues to be erected to him and even had his own achievements engraved upon the pyramids. A traitorous friend reported these indiscretions at Rome. Augustus was content to recall him and forbid him to live in the provinces or to enter his presence. But the officious senate voted his condemnation to banishment, and confiscated all his property to Augustus, whereby Gallus was driven to suicide. Then Augustus was sorry and complained that it was hard not to be able to scold one’s friends like a private man. This was the first case of that disease known as delatio (informing) which was afterwards to become such a pest under the Empire. It is satisfactory to learn that the informer was very rudely treated in Roman society. From Egypt, as a base, expeditions were made in the time of Augustus to Arabia and the Soudan. Arabia Felix was to the Romans a kind of Eldorado of boundless wealth, as Horace writes to a friend who was joining the campaign. The Arabs brought their incense into the Syrian markets and already traded with India from Aden, but the national wealth of the country was exaggerated and its difficulties unknown. This expedition of 25 B.C., which was on a very large scale and included contingents from Judæa, was one of the few deliberate wars of conquest ever planned by Augustus. He learnt a lesson by its failure in the burning and trackless deserts. The other campaign against the black Æthiopians of the Soudan under their warlike but one-eyed queen Candace was more successful. Petronius the legate penetrated as far as the Second Cataract and sent a thousand prisoners to Rome, but Augustus seems to have been content to make the First Cataract his southern frontier.

The neighbouring client kingdom of Judæa is of importance not only because the days of Augustus saw the birth of that Child in Bethlehem who was destined to conquer Rome and through Rome the world, but because its throne was occupied by the ablest and most remarkable man, next to Augustus, in the whole Empire. Herod the Great, an Edomite Arab by birth, had succeeded to the throne of the Maccabees in 37 B.C. He was not only a daring warrior but a singularly skilful diplomat who was always able to cover up his crimes by adroit flattery and a fascinating manner. He was very successful in trimming between the rivals throughout the civil wars and even shared the favours of Cleopatra with his Roman masters. In these ways he increased his domains by the addition of Gadara, Samaria, and the Philistine coast towns. In compliment to Augustus he refounded Samaria with great splendour as the Greek city of Sebaste and built Greek theatres, Roman amphitheatres, and baths in Jerusalem itself. He even instituted quinquennial games there, wherein naked athletes performed to the infinite disgust of the Jews. He took his sons to Rome for their education and there he met and fascinated both Augustus and Agrippa. He even persuaded Agrippa to visit Jerusalem for the opening of his magnificent new temple in 15 B.C. Agrippa came and sacrificed a whole hecatomb to Jehovah to the apparent delight of the people. Later on Herod made a grand tour of Asia Minor, scattering lavish gifts everywhere and receiving complimentary inscriptions in return. He succeeded in obtaining valuable privileges for his fellow-Jews scattered abroad in those regions. Henceforth they were not forced to render military service and had special permission to keep the Sabbath.

In 9 and 8 B.C., however, he got into trouble with Augustus for conducting a military expedition against the Arabs without permission. This was the greatest offence that a client king could commit, and Augustus declared that henceforth he would treat Herod not as a friend, but as a subject. But in the next year a humble embassy was sent to Rome with the historian Nicolaus as its spokesman. Herod received the gracious permission to deal with his rebellious sons as he thought fit, and accordingly strangled two of them. Herod’s family history is a deplorable record of crimes and intrigues. He seems to have had ten wives, and on his death in 4 B.C., he left three wills among which Augustus had to decide. Seeing that Judæa was so rich and powerful as to be a possible source of danger, he decided to split it up into three. Then began a whole series of troubles, in the course of which the Jews of Jerusalem actually attacked a Roman legion. In revenge the legate of Syria, Quintilius Varus, crucified 2000 of the inhabitants. In the final award Judæa fell to Archelaus, Galilee to Herod Antipas. Ten years later, however, the infamous Archelaus was deposed at the petition of his subjects, and Judæa was made subject to the province of Syria with a procurator of its own. Herod Antipas continued to rule his petty kingdom until about A.D. 34, when it also was united to the province. He is the Herod whom Christ denounced as “that fox,” and he is the Herod of Christ’s Judgment, when he happened to be at Jerusalem on a visit to Pontius Pilatus, the Roman procurator. Pilate was a Roman knight, but Felix, one of his successors, was only a freedman. The seat of the Roman government was not at Jerusalem, but at Cæsarea, so that the prætorium in which the trial of Jesus took place must have been the temporary head-quarters of Pilate in the palace built by Herod the Great.

The procurator only commanded auxiliary troops, and nearly all the “Roman soldiers” mentioned in the Gospels must have been of Jewish birth. As soon as it was a province, but not before, Judæa had to pay tribute to Cæsar. Hence the existence of a “chief of the publicans” like Zacchæus. As usual, the Romans preserved what they could of native institutions, and the Sanhedrin continued to act as a national council, so far as could be permitted. Thus it might try Jesus, but it could not pronounce the death sentence. On the other hand, another procurator, Festus, committed Paul to the Sanhedrin for judgment. The fact is that the Jewish law was so peculiarly national that a bewildered and well-intentioned Roman knight like Pilate might often say “take ye Him and judge Him according to your law.” The Roman government was so tolerant of the religion of its subjects that even a Roman citizen who ventured to enter the Holy of Holies was punished with death. The Jewish religion was expressly under Roman protection. Agrippa, as we have seen, had sacrificed to Jehovah, but later on we find Augustus commending his grandson Gaius for not having worshipped Jehovah. As a matter of fact, with the spread of the newer forms of Hellenic philosophy the religious feeling of the world, which had long ago given up its faith in the Olympian mythology, was turning more and more towards monotheism and a mystical system of ethics. The higher Pharisaism, which Paul had learnt at the feet of Gamaliel, was decidedly influenced by Stoicism. Hence the Jewish religion even before its Christian development was extremely fascinating to the Roman mind, and it had to be forbidden in the capital. Even at Jerusalem the Jews were expected to sacrifice, not to but for “Cæsar and the Roman People” every day. Augustus paid for this ritual out of his own pocket. In deference to the feeling of the Jews, the coins struck for Judæa bore no portrait of Cæsar, and even the standards, because they bore portraits, were ordered not to be carried into the Holy City. It is true that the silver denarius of Syria circulated in Judæa to some extent, and it is of such a coin that Christ was speaking when He asked: “Whose image and superscription is this?”

The province of Africa with Numidia was handed over to the senate as peaceful in 27 B.C., and it was one of the only two Roman provinces which Augustus never visited. Nominally it stretched from the boundary of the kingdom of Mauretania at the river Ampsaga on the west to the borders of the Cyrenaica on the east. But actually it consisted of the islands of fertility on the Tunisian coast. Carthage had been colonised by Julius Cæsar and was now refounded by Augustus. There was no inland frontier. In the desert behind the mountains there still flourished the wild Gætulian nomads who occasionally descended upon the peaceful province and provided a Roman triumph. This was the reason why a legion was still kept in Africa. The neighbouring kingdom of Mauretania was assigned to an interesting young royal couple. The husband was Juba, a descendant of Masinissa, who had been educated as a Roman, had served in the Roman army and was so complete a Greek scholar that he wrote among many other works a history of the Drama. The wife was a daughter of Cleopatra by Antony, who had ridden in Cæsar’s triumph at Rome. Both Mauretania and its eastern neighbour Numidia, which had been added to the Roman province, now settled down to wealth and happiness under the Roman rule. The splendid ruins which still survive indicate a prosperity which has not as yet been completely recovered.

Cyrene, where the descendants of the Romans are now carving out a province for themselves, though geographically a part of the African continent, was historically regarded as a Greek island, and united in one province with Crete. It consisted of a group of five Greek cities with a large intermixture of Jews. Cyrene has no history in this period, but after the siege of Jerusalem there was a terrible outburst of Jewish fanaticism. Thousands of Roman citizens were tortured and slain.

Perhaps no country in the world has had such a chequered and miserable history as the pleasant island of Sicily with its rich volcanic soil. For four hundred years it had been mainly Greek. The eastern end, at least, had been scattered with important city-states which, under the leadership of Syracuse, had waged incessant conflict with the Carthaginian invaders in their western strongholds. We have seen how the Romans finally drove out the Semitic element and conquered the Greeks. During the latter part of republican history the island had been of vital importance to Rome as supplying through its tribute the chief part of the corn-supply. At the same time it had been cruelly exploited and oppressed by Roman governors like Verres. Then during the civil wars Sextus Pompeius had made it his head-quarters, and it had been laid under heavy contributions by both sides. Messina, its richest town, had been the scene of a sack and massacre. No country had more to hope from the Pax Augusta, and it now began to enjoy one of its brief periods of rest. Augustus spent the winter of 22 in Sicily at the beginning of his tour in Greece. He founded colonies at six famous cities of old. While he was in the island the Sicilians offered him a kind of round-robin of complaint against the extortion of his procurator. Augustus instantly dismissed the offender and replaced him by his own valued tutor, the philosopher Areus. It was thoroughly in accordance with his policy to put a Greek philosopher in charge of a Greek island.

So far we have been surveying the treatment of that part of the Roman world which was already quite civilised and mainly Greek. We now turn to the barbarian West and North, mainly consisting of newly conquered Cæsarian provinces. In these quarters, the nearer parts of Spain and the Narbonensian province of Gaul were the only regions which could be called civilised. As soon as the provisional settlement of 27 b.c. was effected Augustus hurried away to Gaul. It was generally thought that he was on his way to conquer Britain, for that was the second of the two tasks which Julius had left to his successor. Accordingly the loyal Horace dutifully prays: