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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Caesars, by Thomas de Quincey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Caesars
+
+Author: Thomas de Quincey
+
+
+Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6672]
+This file was first posted on January 12, 2003
+Last Updated: June 12, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAESARS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Anne Soulard, Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
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+
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+
+THE CAESARS.
+
+By Thomas De Quincey
+
+
+
+
+THE CAESARS.
+
+The condition of the Roman Emperors has never yet been fully
+appreciated; nor has it been sufficiently perceived in what respects it
+was absolutely unique. There was but one Rome: no other city, as we are
+satisfied by the collation of many facts, either of ancient or modern
+times, has ever rivalled this astonishing metropolis in the grandeur
+of magnitude; and not many--if we except the cities of Greece, none at
+all--in the grandeur of architectural display. Speaking even of London,
+we ought in all reason to say--the _Nation of London,_ and not the City
+of London; but of Rome in her palmy days, nothing less could be said
+in the naked severity of logic. A million and a half of souls--that
+population, apart from any other distinctions, is _per se_ for London a
+justifying ground for such a classification; _a fortiori_, then, will it
+belong to a city which counted from one horn to the other of its mighty
+suburbs not less than four millions of inhabitants [Footnote: Concerning
+this question--once so fervidly debated, yet so unprofitably for the
+final adjudication, and in some respects, we may add, so erroneously--on
+a future occasion.] at the very least, as we resolutely maintain after
+reviewing all that has been written on that much vexed theme, and very
+probably half as many more. Republican Rome had her _prerogative_ tribe;
+the earth has its _prerogative_ city; and that city was Rome.
+
+As was the city, such was its prince--mysterious, solitary, unique. Each
+was to the other an adequate counterpart, each reciprocally that
+perfect mirror which reflected, as it were _in alia materia,_ those
+incommunicable attributes of grandeur, that under the same shape and
+denomination never upon this earth were destined to be revived. Rome has
+not been repeated; neither has Caesar. _Ubi Caesar, ibi Roma_--was a maxim
+of Roman jurisprudence. And the same maxim may be translated into
+a wider meaning; in which it becomes true also for our historical
+experience. Caesar and Rome have flourished and expired together. The
+illimitable attributes of the Roman prince, boundless and comprehensive
+as the universal air,--like that also bright and apprehensible to the
+most vagrant eye, yet in parts (and those not far removed) unfathomable
+as outer darkness, (for no chamber in a dungeon could shroud in more
+impenetrable concealment a deed of murder than the upper chambers of the
+air,)--these attributes, so impressive to the imagination, and which all
+the subtlety of the Roman [Footnote: Or even of modern wit; witness the
+vain attempt of so many eminent sort, and illustrious _Antecessors_, to
+explain in self-consistency the differing functions of the Roman
+Caesar, and in what sense he was _legibus solutus_. The origin of this
+difficulty we shall soon understand.] wit could as little fathom as the
+fleets of Caesar could traverse the Polar basin, or unlock the gates
+of the Pacific, are best symbolized, and find their most appropriate
+exponent, in the illimitable city itself--that Rome, whose centre, the
+Capitol, was immovable as Teneriffe or Atlas, but whose circumference
+was shadowy, uncertain, restless, and advancing as the frontiers of
+her all-conquering empire. It is false to say, that with Caesar came the
+destruction of Roman greatness. Peace, hollow rhetoricians! Until Caesar
+came, Rome was a minor; by him, she attained her majority, and fulfilled
+her destiny. Caius Julius, you say, deflowered the virgin purity of her
+civil liberties. Doubtless, then, Rome had risen immaculate from the
+arms of Sylla and of Marius. But, if it were Caius Julius who deflowered
+Rome, if under him she forfeited her dowery of civic purity, if to him
+she first unloosed her maiden zone, then be it affirmed boldly--that she
+reserved her greatest favors for the noblest of her wooers, and we may
+plead the justification of Falconbridge for his mother's trangression
+with the lion-hearted king--such a sin was self-ennobled. Did Julius
+deflower Rome? Then, by that consummation, he caused her to fulfill the
+functions of her nature; he compelled her to exchange the imperfect and
+inchoate condition of a mere _faemina_ for the perfections of a _mulier_.
+And, metaphor apart, we maintain that Rome lost no liberties by
+the mighty Julius. That which in tendency, and by the spirit of
+her institutions--that which, by her very corruptions and abuses
+co-operating with her laws, Rome promised and involved in the germ--even
+that, and nothing less or different, did Rome unfold and accomplish
+under this Julian violence. The rape [if such it were] of Caesar, her
+final Romulus, completed for Rome that which the rape under Romulus, her
+earliest Caesar, had prosperously begun. And thus by one godlike man was
+a nation-city matured; and from the everlasting and nameless [Footnote:
+"_Nameless city_."--The true name of Rome it was a point of religion
+to conceal; and, in fact, it was never revealed.] city was a man
+produced--capable of taming her indomitable nature, and of forcing her
+to immolate her wild virginity to the state best fitted for the destined
+"Mother of empires." Peace, then, rhetoricians, false threnodists of
+false liberty! hollow chanters over the ashes of a hollow republic!
+Without Caesar, we affirm a thousand times that there would have been no
+perfect Rome; and, but for Rome, there could have been no such man as
+Caesar.
+
+Both then were immortal; each worthy of each. And the _Cui viget nihil
+simile aut secundum_ of the poet, was as true of one as of the other.
+For, if by comparison with Rome other cities were but villages, with
+even more propriety it may be asserted, that after the Roman Caesars all
+modern kings, kesars, or emperors, are mere phantoms of royalty. The
+Caesar of Western Rome--he only of all earthly potentates, past or to
+come, could be said to reign as a _monarch_, that is, as a solitary
+king. He was not the greatest of princes, simply because there was
+no other but himself. There were doubtless a few outlying rulers, of
+unknown names and titles upon the margins of his empire, there were
+tributary lieutenants and barbarous _reguli_, the obscure vassals of his
+sceptre, whose homage was offered on the lowest step of his throne, and
+scarcely known to him but as objects of disdain. But these feudatories
+could no more break the unity of his empire, which embraced the whole
+_oichomeni_;--the total habitable world as then known to geography, or
+recognised by the muse of History--than at this day the British empire
+on the sea can be brought into question or made conditional, because
+some chief of Owyhee or Tongataboo should proclaim a momentary
+independence of the British trident, or should even offer a transient
+outrage to her sovereign flag. Such a _tempestas in matula_ might raise
+a brief uproar in his little native archipelago, but too feeble to reach
+the shores of Europe by an echo--or to ascend by so much as an infantine
+_susurrus_ to the ears of the British Neptune. Parthia, it is true,
+might pretend to the dignity of an empire. But her sovereigns, though
+sitting in the seat of the great king, (_o basileus_,) were no longer
+the rulers of a vast and polished nation. They were regarded as
+barbarians--potent only by their standing army, not upon the larger
+basis of civic strength; and, even under this limitation, they were
+supposed to owe more to the circumstances of their position--their
+climate, their remoteness, and their inaccessibility except through
+arid and sultry deserts--than to intrinsic resources, such as could be
+permanently relied on in a serious trial of strength between the two
+powers. The kings of Parthia, therefore, were far enough from being
+regarded in the light of antagonist forces to the majesty of Rome. And,
+these withdrawn from the comparison, who else was there--what prince,
+what king, what potentate of any denomination, to break the universal
+calm, that through centuries continued to lave, as with the quiet
+undulations of summer lakes, the sacred footsteps of the Caesarean
+throne? The Byzantine court, which, merely as the inheritor of some
+fragments from that august throne, was drunk with excess of pride,
+surrounded itself with elaborate expressions of a grandeur beyond what
+mortal eyes were supposed able to sustain.
+
+These fastidious, and sometimes fantastic ceremonies, originally devised
+as the very extremities of anti-barbarism, were often themselves but too
+nearly allied in spirit to the barbaresque in taste. In reality, some
+parts of the Byzantine court ritual were arranged in the same spirit as
+that of China or the Birman empire; or fashioned by anticipation, as one
+might think, on the practice of that Oriental Cham, who daily proclaims
+by sound of trumpet to the kings in the four corners of the earth--that
+they, having dutifully awaited the close of _his_ dinner, may now with
+his royal license go to their own.
+
+From such vestiges of _derivative_ grandeur, propagated to ages so
+remote from itself, and sustained by manners so different from the
+spirit of her own,--we may faintly measure the strength of the original
+impulse given to the feelings of men by the _sacred_ majesty of the
+Roman throne. How potent must that splendor have been, whose mere
+reflection shot rays upon a distant crown, under another heaven, and
+across the wilderness of fourteen centuries! Splendor, thus transmitted,
+thus sustained, and thus imperishable, argues a transcendent in the
+basis of radical power. Broad and deep must those foundations have
+been laid, which could support an "arch of empire" rising to that giddy
+altitude--an altitude which sufficed to bring it within the ken of
+posterity to the sixtieth generation.
+
+Power is measured by resistance. Upon such a scale, if it were applied
+with skill, the _relations_ of greatness in Rome to the greatest of all
+that has gone before her, and has yet come after her, would first be
+adequately revealed. The youngest reader will know that the grandest
+forms in which the _collective_ might of the human race has manifested
+itself, are the four monarchies. Four times have the distributive forces
+of nations gathered themselves, under the strong compression of the
+sword, into mighty aggregates--denominated _Universal Empires_, or
+Monarchies. These are noticed in the Holy Scriptures; and it is upon
+_their_ warrant that men have supposed no fifth monarchy or universal
+empire possible in an earthly sense; but that, whenever such an empire
+arises, it will have Christ for its head; in other words, that no fifth
+_monarchia_ can take place until Christianity shall have swallowed up
+all other forms of religion, and shall have gathered the whole family
+of man into one fold under one all-conquering Shepherd. Hence [Footnote:
+This we mention, because a great error has been sometimes committed
+in exposing _their_ error, that consisted, not in supposing that for a
+fifth time men were to be gathered under one sceptre, and that sceptre
+wielded by Jesus Christ, but in supposing that this great era had then
+arrived, or that with no deeper moral revolution men could be fitted for
+that yoke.] the fanatics of 1650, who proclaimed Jesus for their king,
+and who did sincerely anticipate his near advent in great power,
+and under some personal manifestation, were usually styled
+_Fifth-Monarchists_.
+
+However, waiving the question (interesting enough in itself)--Whether
+upon earthly principles a fifth universal empire could by possibility
+arise in the present condition of knowledge for man individually, and
+of organization for man in general--this question waived, and confining
+ourselves to the comparison of those four monarchies which actually have
+existed,--of the Assyrian or earliest, we may remark, that it found
+men in no state of cohesion. This cause, which came in aid of its first
+foundation, would probably continue; and would diminish the _intensity_
+of the power in the same proportion as it promoted its _extension_. This
+monarchy would be absolute only by the personal presence of the monarch;
+elsewhere, from mere defect of organization, it would and must
+betray the total imperfections of an elementary state, and of a first
+experiment. More by the weakness inherent in such a constitution, than
+by its own strength, did the Persian spear prevail against the Assyrian.
+Two centuries revolved, seven or eight generations, when Alexander found
+himself in the same position as Cyrus for building a third monarchy,
+and aided by the selfsame vices of luxurious effeminacy in his enemy,
+confronted with the self-same virtues of enterprise and hardihood in
+his compatriot soldiers. The native Persians, in the earliest and very
+limited import of that name, were a poor and hardy race of mountaineers.
+So were the men of Macedon; and neither one tribe nor the other found
+any adequate resistance in the luxurious occupants of Babylonia. We may
+add, with respect to these two earliest monarchies, that the Assyrian
+was undefined with regard to space, and the Persian fugitive with regard
+to time. But for the third--the Grecian or Macedonian--we know that the
+arts of civility, and of civil organization, had made great progress
+before the Roman strength was measured against it. In Macedon, in
+Achaia, in Syria, in Asia Minor, in Egypt,--every where the members
+of this empire had begun to knit; the cohesion was far closer, the
+development of their resources more complete; the resistance therefore
+by many hundred degrees more formidable: consequently, by the fairest
+inference, the power in that proportion greater which laid the
+foundations of this last great monarchy. It is probable, indeed, both
+_a priori_, and upon the evidence of various facts which have survived,
+that each of the four great empires successively triumphed over an
+antagonist, barbarous in comparison of itself, and each _by_ and through
+that very superiority in the arts and policy of civilization.
+
+Rome, therefore, which came last in the succession, and swallowed up
+the three great powers that had _seriatim_ cast the human race into one
+mould, and had brought them under the unity of a single will, entered
+by inheritance upon all that its predecessors in that career had
+appropriated, but in a condition of far ampler development. Estimated
+merely by longitude and latitude, the territory of the Roman empire was
+the finest by much that has ever fallen under a single sceptre. Amongst
+modern empires, doubtless, the Spanish of the sixteenth century, and the
+British of the present, cannot but be admired as prodigious growths
+out of so small a stem. In that view they will be endless monuments
+in attestation of the marvels which are lodged in civilization. But
+considered in and for itself, and with no reference to the proportion of
+the creating forces, each of these empires has the great defect of being
+disjointed, and even insusceptible of perfect union. It is in fact no
+_vinculum_ of social organization which held them together, but the
+ideal _vinculum_ of a common fealty, and of submission to the same
+sceptre. This is not like the tie of manners, operative even where it is
+not perceived, but like the distinctions of geography--existing to-day,
+forgotten to-morrow--and abolished by a stroke of the pen, or a trick
+of diplomacy. Russia, again, a mighty empire, as respects the simple
+grandeur of magnitude, builds her power upon sterility. She has it in
+her power to seduce an invading foe into vast circles of starvation,
+of which the radii measure a thousand leagues. Frost and snow are
+confederates of her strength. She is strong by her very weakness. But
+Rome laid a belt about the Mediterranean of a thousand miles in breadth;
+and within that zone she comprehended not only all the great cities of
+the ancient world, but so perfectly did she lay the garden of the world
+in every climate, and for every mode of natural wealth, within her own
+ring-fence, that since that era no land, no part and parcel of the Roman
+empire, has ever risen into strength and opulence, except where unusual
+artificial industry has availed to counteract the tendencies of nature.
+So entirely had Rome engrossed whatsoever was rich by the mere bounty of
+native endowment.
+
+Vast, therefore, unexampled, immeasurable, was the basis of natural
+power upon which the Roman throne reposed. The military force which
+put Rome in possession of this inordinate power, was certainly in some
+respects artificial; but the power itself was natural, and not subject
+to the ebbs and flows which attend the commercial empires of our days,
+(for all are in part commercial.) The depression, the reverses, of Rome,
+were confined to one shape--famine; a terrific shape, doubtless, but one
+which levies its penalty of suffering, not by elaborate processes that
+do not exhaust their total cycle in less than long periods of years.
+Fortunately for those who survive, no arrears of misery are allowed by
+this scourge of ancient days; [Footnote: "_Of ancient days_."--For it
+is remarkable, and it serves to mark an indubitable progress of mankind,
+that, before the Christian era, famines were of frequent occurrence in
+countries the most civilized; afterwards they became rare, and latterly
+have entirely altered their character into occasional dearths.] the
+total penalty is paid down at once. As respected the hand of man, Rome
+slept for ages in absolute security. She could suffer only by the wrath
+of Providence; and, so long as she continued to be Rome, for many a
+generation she only of all the monarchies has feared no mortal hand
+[Footnote: Unless that hand were her own armed against herself; upon
+which topic there is a burst of noble eloquence in one of the ancient
+Panegyrici, when haranguing the Emperor Theodosius: "Thou, Rome! that,
+having once suffered by the madness of Cinna, and of the cruel Marius
+raging from banishment, and of Sylla, that won his wreath of prosperity
+from thy disasters, and of Caesar, compassionate to the dead, didst
+shudder at every blast of the trumpet filled by the breath of civil
+commotion,--thou, that, besides the wreck of thy soldiery perishing on
+either side, didst bewail, amongst thy spectacles of domestic woe, the
+luminaries of thy senate extinguished, the heads of thy consuls fixed
+upon a halberd, weeping for ages over thy self-slaughtered Catos, thy
+headless Ciceros (_truncosque Cicerones_), and unburied Pompeys;--to
+whom the party madness of thy own children had wrought in every age
+heavier woe than the Carthaginian thundering at thy gates, or the Gaul
+admitted within thy walls; on whom OEmathia, more fatal than the day
+of Allia,--Collina, more dismal than Cannae,--had inflicted such deep
+memorials of wounds, that, from bitter experience of thy own valor, no
+enemy was to thee so formidable as thyself;--thou, Rome! didst now for
+the first time behold a civil war issuing in a hallowed prosperity, a
+soldiery appeased, recovered Italy, and for thyself liberty established.
+Now first in thy long annals thou didst rest from a civil war in such
+a peace, that righteously, and with maternal tenderness, thou mightst
+claim for it the honors of a civic triumph."]
+
+  --"God and his Son except,
+  Created thing nought valued she nor shunned."
+
+That the possessor and wielder of such enormous power--power alike
+admirable for its extent, for its intensity, and for its consecration
+from all counterforces which could restrain it, or endanger it--should
+be regarded as sharing in the attributes of supernatural beings, is no
+more than might naturally be expected. All other known power in human
+hands has either been extensive, but wanting in intensity--or intense,
+but wanting in extent--or, thirdly, liable to permanent control and
+hazard from some antagonist power commensurate with itself. But the
+Roman power, in its centuries of grandeur, involved every mode of
+strength, with absolute immunity from all kinds and degrees of weakness.
+It ought not, therefore, to surprise us that the emperor, as the
+depositary of this charmed power, should have been looked upon as a
+_sacred_ person, and the imperial family considered a "_divina_ domus."
+It is an error to regard this as excess of adulation, or as built
+_originally_ upon hypocrisy. Undoubtedly the expressions of this
+feeling are sometimes gross and overcharged, as we find them in the very
+greatest of the Roman poets: for example, it shocks us to find a fine
+writer in anticipating the future canonization of his patron, and his
+instalment amongst the heavenly hosts, begging him to keep his distance
+warily from this or that constellation, and to be cautious of throwing
+his weight into either hemisphere, until the scale of proportions were
+accurately adjusted. These doubtless are passages degrading alike to the
+poet and his subject. But why? Not because they ascribe to the emperor a
+sanctity which he had not in the minds of men universally, or which even
+to the writer's feeling was exaggerated, but because it was expressed
+coarsely, and as a _physical_ power: now, every thing physical is
+measurable by weight, motion, and resistance; and is therefore
+definite. But the very essence of whatsoever is supernatural lies in the
+indefinite. That power, therefore, with which the minds of men invested
+the emperor, was vulgarized by this coarse translation into the region
+of physics. Else it is evident, that any power which, by standing above
+all human control, occupies the next relation to superhuman modes
+of authority, must be invested by all minds alike with some dim and
+undefined relation to the sanctities of the next world. Thus, for
+instance, the Pope, as the father of Catholic Christendom, could not
+_but_ be viewed with awe by any Christian of deep feeling, as standing
+in some relation to the true and unseen Father of the spiritual body.
+Nay, considering that even false religions, as those of Pagan mythology,
+have probably never been utterly stripped of all vestige of truth, but
+that every such mode of error has perhaps been designed as a process,
+and adapted by Providence to the case of those who were capable of
+admitting no more perfect shape of truth; even the heads of such
+superstitions (the Dalai Lama, for instance) may not unreasonably be
+presumed as within the cognizance and special protection of Heaven.
+Much more may this be supposed of him to whose care was confided the
+weightier part of the human race; who had it in his power to promote
+or to suspend the progress of human improvement; and of whom, and the
+motions of whose will, the very prophets of Judea took cognizance. No
+nation, and no king, was utterly divorced from the councils of God.
+Palestine, as a central chamber of God's administration, stood in some
+relation to all. It has been remarked, as a mysterious and significant
+fact, that the founders of the great empires all had some connection,
+more or less, with the temple of Jerusalem. Melancthon even observes
+it in his Sketch of Universal History, as worthy of notice--that
+Pompey died, as it were, within sight of that very temple which he
+had polluted. Let us not suppose that Paganism, or Pagan nations, were
+therefore excluded from the concern and tender interest of Heaven. They
+also had their place allowed. And we may be sure that, amongst them, the
+Roman emperor, as the great accountant for the happiness of more men,
+and men more cultivated, than ever before were intrusted to the motions
+of a single will, had a special, singular, and mysterious relation to
+the secret counsels of Heaven.
+
+Even we, therefore, may lawfully attribute some sanctity to the Roman
+emperor. That the Romans did so with absolute sincerity is certain. The
+altars of the emperor had a twofold consecration; to violate them, was
+the double crime of treason and heresy, In his appearances of state and
+ceremony, the fire, the sacred fire _epompeue_ was carried in ceremonial
+solemnity before him; and every other circumstance of divine worship
+attended the emperor in his lifetime. [Footnote: The fact is, that the
+emperor was more of a sacred and divine creature in his lifetime than
+after his death. His consecrated character as a living ruler was a
+truth; his canonization, a fiction of tenderness to his memory.]
+
+To this view of the imperial character and relations must be added one
+single circumstance, which in some measure altered the whole for the
+individual who happened to fill the office. The emperor _de facto_
+might be viewed under two aspects: there was the man, and there was
+the office. In his office he was immortal and sacred: but as a question
+might still be raised, by means of a mercenary army, as to the claims
+of the particular individual who at any time filled the office, the very
+sanctity and privilege of the character with which he was clothed might
+actually be turned against himself; and here it is, at this point, that
+the character of Roman emperor became truly and mysteriously awful.
+Gibbon has taken notice of the extraordinary situation of a subject in
+the Roman empire who should attempt to fly from the wrath of the crown.
+Such was the ubiquity of the emperor that this was absolutely hopeless.
+Except amongst pathless deserts or barbarous nomads, it was impossible
+to find even a transient sanctuary from the imperial pursuit. If he went
+down to the sea, there he met the emperor: if he took the wings of the
+morning, and fled to the uttermost parts of the earth, there also was
+the emperor or his lieutenants. But the same omnipresence of imperial
+anger and retribution which withered the hopes of the poor humble
+prisoner, met and confounded the emperor himself, when hurled from his
+giddy elevation by some fortunate rival. All the kingdoms of the earth,
+to one in that situation, became but so many wards of the same infinite
+prison. Flight, if it were even successful for the moment, did but a
+little retard his inevitable doom. And so evident was this, that hardly
+in one instance did the fallen prince _attempt_ to fly; but passively
+met the death which was inevitable, in the very spot where ruin had
+overtaken him. Neither was it possible even for a merciful conqueror to
+show mercy; for, in the presence of an army so mercenary and factious,
+his own safety was but too deeply involved in the extermination of rival
+pretenders to the crown.
+
+Such, amidst the sacred security and inviolability of the office, was
+the hazardous tenure of the individual. Nor did his dangers always arise
+from persons in the rank of competitors and rivals. Sometimes it menaced
+him in quarters which his eye had never penetrated, and from enemies too
+obscure to have reached his ear. By way of illustration we will cite a
+case from the life of the Emperor Commodus, which is wild enough to have
+furnished the plot of a romance--though as well authenticated as any
+other passage in that reign. The story is narrated by Herodian, and the
+circumstances are these: A slave of noble qualities, and of magnificent
+person, having liberated himself from the degradations of bondage,
+determined to avenge his own wrongs by inflicting continual terror upon
+the town and neighborhood which had witnessed his humiliation. For this
+purpose he resorted to the woody recesses of the province, (somewhere in
+the modern Transylvania,) and, attracting to his wild encampment as many
+fugitives as he could, by degrees he succeeded in forming and training a
+very formidable troop of freebooters. Partly from the energy of his own
+nature, and partly from the neglect and remissness of the provincial
+magistrates, the robber captain rose from less to more, until he had
+formed a little army, equal to the task of assaulting fortified cities.
+In this stage of his adventures, he encountered and defeated several
+of the imperial officers commanding large detachments of troops; and at
+length grew of consequence sufficient to draw upon himself the emperor's
+eye, and the honor of his personal displeasure. In high wrath and
+disdain at the insults offered to his eagles by this fugitive slave,
+Commodus fulminated against him such an edict as left him no hope of
+much longer escaping with impunity.
+
+Public vengeance was now awakened; the imperial troops were marching
+from every quarter upon the same centre; and the slave became sensible
+that in a very short space of time he must be surrounded and destroyed.
+In this desperate situation he took a desperate resolution: he assembled
+his troops, laid before them his plan, concerted the various steps
+for carrying it into effect, and then dismissed them as independent
+wanderers. So ends the first chapter of the tale.
+
+The next opens in the passes of the Alps, whither by various routes, of
+seven or eight hundred miles in extent, these men had threaded their
+way in manifold disguises through the very midst of the emperor's camps.
+According to this man's gigantic enterprise, in which the means were as
+audacious as the purpose, the conspirators were to rendezvous, and first
+to recognise each other at the gates of Rome. From the Danube to the
+Tiber did this band of robbers severally pursue their perilous routes
+through all the difficulties of the road and the jealousies of the
+military stations, sustained by the mere thirst of vengeance--vengeance
+against that mighty foe whom they knew only by his proclamations against
+themselves. Every thing continued to prosper; the conspirators met under
+the walls of Rome; the final details were arranged; and those also
+would have prospered but for a trifling accident. The season was one of
+general carnival at Rome; and, by the help of those disguises which
+the license of this festal time allowed, the murderers were to have
+penetrated as maskers to the emperor's retirement, when a casual word
+or two awoke the suspicions of a sentinel. One of the conspirators was
+arrested; under the terror and uncertainty of the moment, he made much
+ampler discoveries than were expected of him; the other accomplices were
+secured: and Commodus was delivered from the uplifted daggers of those
+who had sought him by months of patient wanderings, pursued through all
+the depths of the Illyrian forests, and the difficulties of the Alpine
+passes. It is not easy to find words commensurate to the energetic
+hardihood of a slave--who, by way of answer and reprisal to an edict
+which consigned him to persecution and death, determines to cross Europe
+in quest of its author, though no less a person than the master of the
+world--to seek him out in the inner recesses of his capital city and
+his private palace--and there to lodge a dagger in his heart, as the
+adequate reply to the imperial sentence of proscription against himself.
+
+Such, amidst his superhuman grandeur and consecrated powers of the
+Roman emperor's office, were the extraordinary perils which menaced
+the individual, and the peculiar frailties of his condition. Nor is it
+possible that these circumstances of violent opposition can be better
+illustrated than in this tale of Herodian. Whilst the emperor's mighty
+arms were stretched out to arrest some potentate in the heart of Asia,
+a poor slave is silently and stealthily creeping round the base of the
+Alps, with the purpose of winning his way as a murderer to the imperial
+bedchamber; Caesar is watching some mighty rebel of the Orient, at a
+distance of two thousand leagues, and he overlooks the dagger which is
+at his own heart. In short, all the heights and the depths which
+belong to man as aspirers, all the contrasts of glory and meanness, the
+extremities of what is his highest and lowest in human possibility,--all
+met in the situation of the Roman Caesars, and have combined to make them
+the most interesting studies which history has furnished.
+
+This, as a general proposition, will be readily admitted. But meantime,
+it is remarkable that no field has been less trodden than the private
+memorials of those very Caesars; whilst at the same time it is equally
+remarkable, in concurrence with that subject for wonder, that precisely
+with the first of the Caesars commences the first page of what in modern
+times we understand by anecdotes. Suetonius is the earliest writer in
+that department of biography; so far as we know, he may be held first
+to have devised it as a mode of history. The six writers, whose sketches
+are collected under the general title of the _Augustan History_,
+followed in the same track. Though full of entertainment, and of the
+most curious researches, they are all of them entirely unknown, except
+to a few elaborate scholars. We purpose to collect from these obscure,
+but most interesting memorialists, a few sketches and biographical
+portraits of these great princes, whose public life is sometimes known,
+but very rarely any part of their private and personal history. We must
+of course commence with the mighty founder of the Caesars. In his case
+we cannot expect so much of absolute novelty as in that of those who
+succeed. But if, in this first instance, we are forced to touch a little
+upon old things, we shall confine ourselves as much as possible to those
+which are susceptible of new aspects. For the whole gallery of those
+who follow, we can undertake that the memorials which we shall bring
+forward, may be looked upon as belonging pretty much to what has
+hitherto been a sealed book.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The character of the first Caesar has perhaps never been worse
+appreciated than by him who in one sense described it best--that is,
+with most force and eloquence wherever he really _did_ comprehend it.
+This was Lucan, who has nowhere exhibited more brilliant rhetoric, nor
+wandered more from the truth, than in the contrasted portraits of Caesar
+and Pompey. The famous line, "_Nil actum reputans si quid superesset
+agendum_," is a fine feature of the real character, finely expressed.
+But if it had been Lucan's purpose (as possibly, with a view to Pompey's
+benefit, in some respects it was) utterly and extravagantly to falsify
+the character of the great Dictator, by no single trait could he more
+effectually have fulfilled that purpose, nor in fewer words, than by
+this expressive passage, "_Gaudensque viam fecisse ruina_." Such a trait
+would be almost extravagant applied even to Marius, who (though in
+many respects a perfect model of Roman grandeur, massy, columnar,
+imperturbable, and more perhaps than any one man recorded in history
+capable of justifying the bold illustration of that character in Horace,
+"_Si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinae_") had, however, a
+ferocity in his character, and a touch of the devil in him, very
+rarely united with the same tranquil intrepidity. But for Caesar, the
+all-accomplished statesman, the splendid orator, the man of elegant
+habits and polished taste, the patron of the fine arts in a degree
+transcending all example of his own or the previous age, and as a man
+of general literature so much beyond his contemporaries, except Cicero,
+that he looked down even upon the brilliant Sylla as an illiterate
+person,--to class such a man with the race of furious destroyers
+exulting in the desolations they spread, is to err not by an individual
+trait, but by the whole genus. The Attilas and the Tamerlanes, who
+rejoice in avowing themselves the scourges of God, and the special
+instruments of his wrath, have no one feature of affinity to the
+polished and humane Caesar, and would as little have comprehended his
+character, as he could have respected theirs. Even Cato, the unworthy
+hero of Lucan, might have suggested to him a little more truth in this
+instance, by a celebrated remark which he made on the characteristic
+distinction of Caesar, in comparison with other revolutionary disturbers;
+for, whereas others had attempted the overthrow of the state in a
+continued paroxysm of fury, and in a state of mind resembling the lunacy
+of intoxication, that Caesar, on the contrary, among that whole class of
+civil disturbers, was the only one who had come to the task in a temper
+of sobriety and moderation, (_unum accessisse sobrium ad rempublicam
+delendam_.)
+
+In reality, Lucan did not think as he wrote. He had a purpose to serve;
+and in an age when to act like a freeman was no longer possible, he
+determined at least to write in that character. It is probable, also,
+that he wrote with a vindictive or a malicious feeling towards Nero;
+and, as the single means he had for gratifying _that_, resolved upon
+sacrificing the grandeur of Caesar's character wherever it should be
+found possible. Meantime, in spite of himself, Lucan for ever betrays
+his lurking consciousness of the truth. Nor are there any testimonies
+to Caesar's vast superiority more memorably pointed, than those which
+are indirectly and involuntarily extorted from this Catonic poet, by the
+course of his narration. Never, for example, was there within the same
+compass of words, a more emphatic expression of Caesar's essential and
+inseparable grandeur of thought, which could not be disguised or be
+laid aside for an instant, than is found in the three casual
+words--_Indocilis privata loqui_. The very mould, it seems, by Lucan's
+confession, of his trivial conversation was regal; nor could he, even to
+serve a purpose, abjure it for so much as a casual purpose. The acts of
+Caesar speak also the same language; and as these are less susceptible of
+a false coloring than the features of a general character, we find this
+poet of liberty, in the midst of one continuous effort to distort
+the truth, and to dress up two scenical heroes, forced by the mere
+necessities of history into a reluctant homage to Caesar's supremacy of
+moral grandeur.
+
+Of so great a man it must be interesting to know all the well attested
+opinions which bear upon topics of universal interest to human nature;
+as indeed no others stood much chance of preservation, unless it were
+from as minute and curious a collector of _anecdotage_ as Suetonius.
+And, first, it would be gratifying to know the opinion of Caesar, if he
+had any peculiar to himself, on the great theme of Religion. It has been
+held, indeed, that the constitution of his mind, and the general cast
+of his character, indisposed him to religious thoughts. Nay, it has been
+common to class him amongst deliberate atheists; and some well known
+anecdotes are current in books, which illustrate his contempt for the
+vulgar class of auguries. In this, however, he went no farther than
+Cicero, and other great contemporaries, who assuredly were no atheists.
+One mark perhaps of the wide interval which, in Caesar's age, had begun
+to separate the Roman nobility from the hungry and venal populace who
+were daily put up to sale, and bought by the highest bidder, manifested
+itself in the increasing disdain for the tastes and ruling sympathies of
+the lowest vulgar. No mob could be more abjectly servile than was that
+of Rome to the superstition of portents, prodigies, and omens. Thus far,
+in common with his order, and in this sense, Julius Caesar was naturally
+a despiser of superstition. Mere strength of understanding would,
+perhaps, have made him so in any age, and apart from the circumstances
+of his personal history. This natural tendency in him would doubtless
+receive a further bias in the same direction from the office of Pontifex
+Maximus, which he held at an early stage of his public career. This
+office, by letting him too much behind the curtain, and exposing too
+entirely the base machinery of ropes and pulleys, which sustained the
+miserable jugglery played off upon the popular credulity, impressed him
+perhaps even unduly with contempt for those who could be its dupes. And
+we may add--that Caesar was constitutionally, as well as by accident of
+position, too much a man of the world, had too powerful a leaning to the
+virtues of active life, was governed by too partial a sympathy with the
+whole class of _active_ forces in human nature, as contradistinguished
+from those which tend to contemplative purposes, under any
+circumstances, to have become a profound believer, or a steadfast
+reposer of his fears and anxieties, in religious influences. A man of
+the world is but another designation for a man indisposed to religious
+awe or contemplative enthusiasm. Still it is a doctrine which we
+cherish--that grandeur of mind in any one department whatsoever,
+supposing only that it exists in excess, disposes a man to some degree
+of sympathy with all other grandeur, however alien in its quality
+or different in its form. And upon this ground we presume the great
+Dictator to have had an interest in religious themes by mere compulsion
+of his own extraordinary elevation of mind, after making the fullest
+allowance for the special quality of that mind, which did certainly, to
+the whole extent of its characteristics, tend entirely to estrange him
+from such themes. We find, accordingly, that though sincerely a despiser
+of superstition, and with a frankness which must sometimes have been
+hazardous in that age, Caesar was himself also superstitious. No man
+could have been otherwise who lived and conversed with that generation
+and people. But if superstitious, he was so after a mode of his own.
+In his very infirmities Caesar manifested his greatness: his very
+littlenesses were noble.
+
+  "Nec licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre."
+
+That he placed some confidence in dreams, for instance, is certain:
+because, had he slighted them unreservedly, he would not have dwelt upon
+them afterwards, or have troubled himself to recall their circumstances.
+Here we trace his human weakness. Yet again we are reminded that it was
+the weakness of Caesar; for the dreams were noble in their imagery,
+and Caesarean (so to speak) in their tone of moral feeling. Thus, for
+example, the night before he was assassinated, he dreamt at intervals
+that he was soaring above the clouds on wings, and that he placed his
+hand within the right hand of Jove. It would seem that perhaps some
+obscure and half-formed image floated in his mind, of the eagle, as
+the king of birds; secondly, as the tutelary emblem under which his
+conquering legions had so often obeyed his voice; and, thirdly, as the
+bird of Jove. To this triple relation of the bird his dream covertly
+appears to point. And a singular coincidence appears between this dream
+and a little anecdote brought down to us, as having actually occurred in
+Rome about twenty-four hours before his death. A little bird, which by
+some is represented as a very small kind of sparrow, but which, both to
+the Greeks and the Romans, was known by a name implying a regal station
+(probably from the ambitious courage which at times prompted it to
+attack the eagle), was observed to direct its flight towards the
+senate-house, consecrated by Pompey, whilst a crowd of other birds were
+seen to hang upon its flight in close pursuit. What might be the object
+of the chase, whether the little king himself, or a sprig of laurel
+which he bore in his mouth, could not be determined. The whole train,
+pursuers and pursued, continued their flight towards Pompey's hall.
+Flight and pursuit were there alike arrested; the little king was
+overtaken by his enemies, who fell upon him as so many conspirators, and
+tore him limb from limb.
+
+If this anecdote were reported to Caesar, which is not at all improbable,
+considering the earnestness with which his friends labored to dissuade
+him from his purpose of meeting the senate on the approaching Ides of
+March, it is very little to be doubted that it had a considerable effect
+upon his feelings, and that, in fact, his own dream grew out of the
+impression which it had made. This way of linking the two anecdotes,
+as cause and effect, would also bring a third anecdote under the same
+_nexus_. We are told that Calpurnia, the last wife of Caesar, dreamed
+on the same night, and to the same ominous result. The circumstances
+of _her_ dream are less striking, because less figurative; but on that
+account its import was less open to doubt: she dreamed, in fact, that
+after the roof of their mansion had fallen in, her husband was stabbed
+in her bosom. Laying all these omens together, Caesar would have been
+more or less than human had he continued utterly undepressed by them.
+And if so much superstition as even this implies, must be taken to argue
+some little weakness, on the other hand let it not be forgotten, that
+this very weakness does but the more illustrate the unusual force of
+mind, and the heroic will, which obstinately laid aside these concurring
+prefigurations of impending destruction; concurring, we say, amongst
+themselves--and concurring also with a prophecy of older date, which was
+totally independent of them all.
+
+There is another and somewhat sublime story of the same class, which
+belongs to the most interesting moment of Caesar's life; and those who
+are disposed to explain all such tales upon physiological principles,
+will find an easy solution of this, in particular, in the exhaustion
+of body, and the intense anxiety which must have debilitated even Caesar
+under the whole circumstances of the case. On the ever memorable night
+when he had resolved to take the first step (and in such a case the
+first step, as regarded the power of retreating, was also the final
+step) which placed him in arms against the state, it happened that his
+headquarters were at some distance from the little river Rubicon, which
+formed the boundary of his province. With his usual caution, that no
+news of his motions might run before himself, on this night Caesar gave
+an entertainment to his friends, in the midst of which he slipped away
+unobserved, and with a small retinue proceeded through the woods to the
+point of the river at which he designed to cross. The night [Footnote:
+It is an interesting circumstance in the habits of the ancient Romans,
+that their journeys were pursued very much in the night-time, and by
+torchlight. Cicero, in one of his letters, speaks of passing through
+the towns of Italy by night, as a serviceable scheme for some political
+purpose, either of avoiding too much to publish his motions, or of
+evading the necessity (else perhaps not avoidable), of drawing out the
+party sentiments of the magistrates in the circumstances of honor or
+neglect with which they might choose to receive him. His words, however,
+imply that the practice was by no means an uncommon one. And, indeed,
+from some passages in writers of the Augustan era, it would seem that
+this custom was not confined to people of distinction, but was familiar
+to a class of travellers so low in rank as to be capable of abusing
+their opportunities of concealment for the infliction of wanton injury
+upon the woods and fences which bounded the margin, of the high-road.
+Under the cloud of night and solitude, the mischief-loving traveller
+was often in the habit of applying his torch to the withered boughs of
+woods, or to artificial hedges; and extensive ravages by fire, such as
+now happen, not unfrequently in the American woods, (but generally from
+carelessness in scattering the glowing embers of a fire, or even the
+ashes of a pipe,) were then occasionally the result of mere wantonness
+of mischief. Ovid accordingly notices, as one amongst the familiar
+images of daybreak, the half-burnt torch of the traveller; and,
+apparently, from the position which it holds in his description,
+where it is ranked with the most familiar of all circumstances in
+all countries,--that of the rural laborer going out to his morning
+tasks,--it must have been common indeed:
+
+  "Semiustamque facem vigilata nocte viator
+  Ponet; et ad solitum rusticus ibit opus."
+
+This occurs in the _Fasti_;--elsewhere he notices it for its danger:
+
+  "Ut facibus sepes ardent, cum forte viator
+  Vel nimis admovit, vel jam sub luce reliquit."
+
+He, however, we see, good-naturedly ascribes the danger to mere
+carelessness, in bringing the torch too near to the hedge, or tossing
+it away at daybreak. But Varro, a more matter-of-fact observer, does not
+disguise the plain truth, that these disasters were often the product of
+pure malicious frolic. For instance, in recommending a certain kind of
+quickset fence, he insists upon it, as one of its advantages, that it
+will not readily ignite under the torch of the mischievous wayfarer:
+"Naturale sepimentum," says he, "quod obseri solet virgultis aut spinis,
+_praetereuntis lascivi non metuet facem._" It is not easy to see the
+origin or advantage of this practice of nocturnal travelling (which must
+have considerably increased the hazards of a journey), excepting only in
+the heats of summer. It is probable, however, that men of high rank
+and public station may have introduced the practice by way of releasing
+corporate bodies in large towns from the burdensome ceremonies of public
+receptions; thus making a compromise between their own dignity and
+the convenience of the provincial public. Once introduced, and the
+arrangements upon the road for meeting the wants of travellers once
+adapted to such a practice, it would easily become universal. It is,
+however, very possible that mere horror of the heats of day-time may
+have been the original ground for it. The ancients appear to have shrunk
+from no hardship so trying and insufferable as that of heat. And in
+relation to that subject, it is interesting to observe the way in which
+the ordinary use of language has accommodated itself to that feeling.
+Our northern way of expressing effeminacy is derived chiefly from the
+hardships of cold. He that shrinks from the trials and rough experience
+of real life in any department, is described by the contemptuous prefix
+of _chimney-corner_, as if shrinking from the cold which he would
+meet on coming out into the open air amongst his fellow-men. Thus,
+a _chimney-corner_ politician, for a mere speculator or unpractical
+dreamer. But the very same indolent habit of aerial speculation, which
+courts no test of real life and practice, is described by the ancients
+under the term _umbraticus_, or seeking the cool shade, and shrinking
+from the heat. Thus, an _umbraticus doctor_ is one who has no practical
+solidity in his teaching. The fatigue and hardship of real life, in
+short, is represented by the ancients under the uniform image of heat,
+and by the moderns under that of cold.] was stormy, and by the violence
+of the wind all the torches of his escort were blown out, so that the
+whole party lost their road, having probably at first intentionally
+deviated from the main route, and wandered about through the whole
+night, until the early dawn enabled them to recover their true course.
+The light was still gray and uncertain, as Caesar and his retinue rode
+down upon the banks of the fatal river--to cross which with arms in his
+hands, since the further bank lay within the territory of the Republic,
+_ipso facto_ proclaimed any Roman a rebel and a traitor. No man, the
+firmest or the most obtuse, could be otherwise than deeply agitated,
+when looking down upon this little brook--so insignificant in
+itself, but invested by law with a sanctity so awful, and so dire a
+consecration. The whole course of future history, and the fate of every
+nation, would necessarily be determined by the irretrievable act of the
+next half hour.
+
+In these moments, and with this spectacle before him, and contemplating
+these immeasurable consequences consciously for the last time that
+could allow him a retreat,--impressed also by the solemnity and deep
+tranquillity of the silent dawn, whilst the exhaustion of his night
+wanderings predisposed him to nervous irritation,--Caesar, we may be
+sure, was profoundly agitated. The whole elements of the scene were
+almost scenically disposed; the law of antagonism having perhaps never
+been employed with so much effect: the little quiet brook presenting a
+direct, antithesis to its grand political character; and the innocent
+dawn, with its pure, untroubled repose, contrasting potently, to a
+man of any intellectual sensibility, with the long chaos of bloodshed,
+darkness, and anarchy, which was to take its rise from the apparently
+trifling acts of this one morning. So prepared, we need not much wonder
+at what followed. Caesar was yet lingering on the hither bank, when
+suddenly, at a point not far distant from himself, an apparition was
+descried in a sitting posture, and holding in its hand what seemed a
+flute. This phantom was of unusual size, and of beauty more than human,
+so far as its lineaments could be traced in the early dawn. What is
+singular, however, in the story, on any hypothesis which would explain
+it out of Caesar's individual condition, is, that others saw it as well
+as he; both pastoral laborers, (who were present, probably, in the
+character of guides,) and some of the sentinels stationed at the passage
+of the river. These men fancied even that a strain of music issued
+from this aerial flute. And some, both of the shepherds and the Roman
+soldiers, who were bolder than the rest, advanced towards the figure.
+Amongst this party, it happened that there were a few Roman trumpeters.
+From one of these, the phantom, rising as they advanced nearer, suddenly
+caught a trumpet, and blowing through it a blast of superhuman strength,
+plunged into the Rubicon, passed to the other bank, and disappeared
+in the dusky twilight of the dawn. Upon which Caesar exclaimed:--"It is
+finished--the die is cast--let us follow whither the guiding portents
+from Heaven, and the malice of our enemy, alike summon us to go." So
+saying, he crossed the river with impetuosity; and, in a sudden rapture
+of passionate and vindictive ambition, placed himself and his retinue
+upon the Italian soil; and, as if by inspiration from Heaven, in
+one moment involved himself and his followers in treason, raised
+the standard of revolt, put his foot upon the neck of the invincible
+republic which had humbled all the kings of the earth, and founded an
+empire which was to last for a thousand and half a thousand years. In
+what manner this spectral appearance was managed--whether Caesar were its
+author, or its dupe--will remain unknown for ever. But undoubtedly this
+was the first time that the advanced guard of a victorious army was
+headed by an apparition; and we may conjecture that it will be the last.
+[Footnote: According to Suetonius, the circumstances of this memorable
+night were as follows:--As soon as the decisive intelligence was
+received, that the intrigues of his enemies had prevailed at Rome, and
+that the interposition of the popular magistrates (the tribunes) was
+set aside, Caesar sent forward the troops, who were then at his
+head-quarters, but in as private a manner as possible. He himself, by
+way of masque, (_per dissimulationem_,) attended a public spectacle,
+gave an audience to an architect who wished to lay before him a plan
+for a school of gladiators which Caesar designed to build, and finally
+presented himself at a banquet, which was very numerously attended. From
+this, about sunset, he set forward in a carriage, drawn by mules, and
+with a small escort (_modico comitatu_.) Losing his road, which was the
+most private he could find (_occultissimum_), he quitted his carriage
+and proceeded on foot. At dawn he met with a guide; after which followed
+the above incidents.]
+
+In the mingled yarn of human life, tragedy is never far asunder from
+farce; and it is amusing to retrace in immediate succession to this
+incident of epic dignity, which has its only parallel by the way in the
+case of Vasco de Gama, (according to the narrative of Camoens,) when met
+and confronted by a sea phantom, whilst attempting to double the Cape
+of Storms, (Cape of Good Hope,) a ludicrous passage, in which one
+felicitous blunder did Caesar a better service than all the truths which
+Greece and Rome could have furnished. In our own experience, we once
+witnessed a blunder about as gross. The present Chancellor, in his first
+electioneering contest with the Lowthers, upon some occasion where he
+was recriminating upon the other party, and complaining that stratagems,
+which _they_ might practise with impunity, were denied to him and his,
+happened to point the moral of his complaint, by alleging the old adage,
+that one man might steal a horse with more hope of indulgence than
+another could look over the hedge. Whereupon, by benefit of the
+universal mishearing in the outermost ring of the audience, it became
+generally reported that Lord Lowther had once been engaged in an affair
+of horse stealing; and that he, Henry Brougham, could (had he pleased)
+have lodged an information against him, seeing that he was then looking
+over the hedge. And this charge naturally won the more credit, because
+it was notorious and past denying that his lordship was a capital
+horseman, fond of horses, and much connected with the turf. To this
+hour, therefore, amongst some worthy shepherds and others, it is a
+received article of their creed, and (as they justly observe in northern
+pronunciation,) a _sham_ful thing to be told, that Lord Lowther was
+once a horse stealer, and that he escaped _lagging_ by reason of Harry
+Brougham's pity for his tender years and hopeful looks. Not less was
+the blunder which, on the banks of the Rubicon, befriended Caesar.
+Immediately after crossing, he harangued the troops whom he had sent
+forward, and others who there met him from the neighboring garrison
+of Ariminium. The tribunes of the people, those great officers of the
+democracy, corresponding by some of their functions to our House of
+Commons, men personally, and by their position in the state, entirely in
+his interest, and who, for his sake, had fled from home, there and then
+he produced to the soldiery; thus identified his cause, and that of the
+soldiers, with the cause of the people of Rome and of Roman liberty; and
+perhaps with needless rhetoric attempted to conciliate those who were
+by a thousand ties and by claims innumerable, his own already; for never
+yet has it been found, that with the soldier, who, from youth upwards,
+passes his life in camps, could the duties or the interests of citizens
+survive those stronger and more personal relations connecting him with
+his military superior. In the course of this harangue, Caesar often
+raised his left hand with Demosthenic action, and once or twice he drew
+off the ring, which every Roman gentleman--simply _as_ such--wore as the
+inseparable adjunct and symbol of his rank. By this action he wished to
+give emphasis to the accompanying words, in which he protested, that,
+sooner than fail in satisfying and doing justice to any the least of
+those who heard him and followed his fortunes, he would be content to
+part with his own birthright, and to forego his dearest claims. This
+was what he really said; but the outermost circle of his auditors, who
+rather saw his gestures than distinctly heard his words, carried off
+the notion, (which they were careful every where to disperse amongst the
+legions afterwards associated with them in the same camps,) that Caesar
+had vowed never to lay down his arms until he had obtained for every
+man, the very meanest of those who heard him, the rank, privileges and
+appointments of a Roman knight. Here was a piece of sovereign good luck.
+Had he really made such a promise, Caesar might have found that he had
+laid himself under very embarrassing obligations; but, as the case
+stood, he had, through all his following campaigns, the total benefit of
+such a promise, and yet could always absolve himself from the penalties
+of responsibility which it imposed, by appealing to the evidence of
+those who happened to stand in the first ranks of his audience. The
+blunder was gross and palpable; and yet, with the unreflecting and
+dull-witted soldier, it did him service greater than all the subtilties
+of all the schools could have accomplished, and a service which
+subsisted to the end of the war.
+
+Great as Caesar was by the benefit of his original nature, there can--be
+no doubt that he, like others, owed something to circumstances; and
+perhaps, amongst these which were most favorable to the premature
+development of great self-dependence, we must reckon the early death
+of his father. It is, or it is not, according to the nature of men, an
+advantage to be orphaned at an early age. Perhaps utter orphanage is
+rarely or never such: but to lose a father betimes profits a strong mind
+greatly. To Caesar it was a prodigious benefit that he lost his father
+when not much more than fifteen. Perhaps it was an advantage also to his
+father that he died thus early. Had he stayed a year longer, he would
+have seen himself despised, baffled, and made ridiculous. For where, let
+us ask, in any age, was the father capable of adequately sustaining that
+relation to the unique Caius Julius--to him, in the appropriate language
+of Shakspeare,
+
+  "The foremost man of all this world?"
+
+And, in this fine and Caesarean line, "this world" is to be understood
+not of the order of co-existences merely, but also of the order of
+successions; he was the foremost man not only of his contemporaries, but
+also of men generally--of all that ever should come after him, or should
+sit on thrones under the denominations of Czars, Kesars, or Caesars of
+the Bosphorus and the Danube; of all in every age that should inherit
+his supremacy of mind, or should subject to themselves the generations
+of ordinary men by qualities analogous to his. Of this infinite
+superiority some part must be ascribed to his early emancipation from
+paternal control. There are very many cases in which, simply from
+considerations of sex, a female cannot stand forward as the head of
+a family, or as its suitable representative. If they are even ladies
+paramount, and in situations of command, they are also women. The staff
+of authority does not annihilate their sex; and scruples of female
+delicacy interfere for ever to unnerve and emasculate in their hands the
+sceptre however otherwise potent. Hence we see, in noble families,
+the merest boys put forward to represent the family dignity, as fitter
+supporters of that burden than their mature mothers. And of Caesar's
+mother, though little is recorded, and that little incidentally, this
+much at least, we learn--that, if she looked down upon him with maternal
+pride and delight, she looked up to him with female ambition as the
+re-edifier of her husband's honors, with reverence as to a column of
+the Roman grandeur, and with fear and feminine anxieties as to one
+whose aspiring spirit carried him but too prematurely into the fields
+of adventurous honor. One slight and evanescent sketch of the relations
+which subsisted between Caesar and his mother, caught from the wrecks of
+time, is preserved both by Plutarch and Suetonius. We see in the
+early dawn the young patrician standing upon the steps of his paternal
+portico, his mother with her arms wreathed about his neck, looking up to
+his noble countenance, sometimes drawing auguries of hope from features
+so fitted for command, sometimes boding an early blight to promises so
+prematurely magnificent. That she had something of her son's aspiring
+character, or that he presumed so much in a mother of his, we learn from
+the few words which survive of their conversation. He addressed to her
+no language that could tranquillize her fears. On the contrary, to any
+but a Roman mother his valedictory words, taken in connection with the
+known determination of his character, were of a nature to consummate her
+depression, as they tended to confirm the very worst of her fears. He
+was then going to stand his chance in a popular election for an office
+of dignity, and to launch himself upon the storms of the Campus Martius.
+At that period, besides other and more ordinary dangers, the bands of
+gladiators, kept in the pay of the more ambitious amongst the Roman
+nobles, gave a popular tone of ferocity and of personal risk to the
+course of such contests; and either to forestall the victory of an
+antagonist, or to avenge their own defeat, it was not at all impossible
+that a body of incensed competitors might intercept his final triumph
+by assassination. For this danger, however, he had no leisure in his
+thoughts of consolation; the sole danger which _he_ contemplated, or
+supposed his mother to contemplate, was the danger of defeat, and for
+that he reserved his consolations. He bade her fear nothing; for that
+without doubt he would return with victory, and with the ensigns of the
+dignity he sought, or would return a corpse.
+
+Early indeed did Caesar's trials commence; and it is probable, that, had
+not the death of his father, by throwing him prematurely upon his
+own resources, prematurely developed the masculine features of his
+character, forcing him whilst yet a boy under the discipline of civil
+conflict and the yoke of practical life, even _his_ energies would have
+been insufficient to sustain them. His age is not exactly ascertained,
+but it is past a doubt that he had not reached his twentieth year when
+he had the hardihood to engage in a struggle with Sylla, then Dictator,
+and exercising the immoderate powers of that office with the license
+and the severity which history has made so memorable. He had neither
+any distinct grounds of hope, nor any eminent example at that time, to
+countenance him in this struggle--which yet he pushed on in the most
+uncompromising style, and to the utmost verge of defiance. The subject
+of the contrast gives it a further interest. It was the youthful wife
+of the youthful Caesar who stood under the shadow of the great Dictator's
+displeasure; not personally, but politically, on account of her
+connections: and her it was, Cornelia, the daughter of a man who had
+been four times consul, that Caesar was required to divorce: but
+he spurned the haughty mandate, and carried his determination to a
+triumphant issue, notwithstanding his life was at stake, and at one time
+saved only by shifting his place of concealment every night; and this
+young lady it was who afterwards became the mother of his only daughter.
+Both mother and daughter, it is remarkable, perished prematurely, and at
+critical periods of Caesar's life; for it is probable enough that these
+irreparable wounds to Caesar's domestic affections threw him with more
+exclusiveness of devotion upon the fascinations of glory and ambition
+than might have happened under a happier condition of his private life.
+That Caesar should have escaped destruction in this unequal contest with
+an enemy then wielding the whole thunders of the state, is somewhat
+surprising; and historians have sought their solution of the mystery in
+the powerful intercessions of the vestal virgins, and several others
+of high rank amongst the connections of his great house. These may have
+done something; but it is due to Sylla, who had a sympathy with every
+thing truly noble, to suppose him struck with powerful admiration
+for the audacity of the young patrician, standing out in such severe
+solitude among so many examples of timid concession; and that to this
+magnanimous feeling in the Dictator, much of his indulgence was due. In
+fact, according to some accounts, it was not Sylla, but the creatures
+of Sylla (_adjutores_), who pursued Caesar. We know, at all events, that
+Sylla formed a right estimate of Caesar's character, and that, from
+the complexion of his conduct in this one instance, he drew his famous
+prophecy of his future destiny; bidding his friends beware of that
+slipshod boy, "for that in him lay couchant many a Marius." A grander
+testimony to the awe which Caesar inspired, or from one who knew better
+the qualities of that man by whom he measured him, cannot be imagined.
+
+It is not our intention, or consistent with our plan, to pursue this
+great man through the whole circumstances of his romantic career; though
+it is certain that many parts of his life require investigation much
+keener than has ever been applied to them, and that many might easily be
+placed in a new light. Indeed, the whole of this most momentous section
+of ancient history ought to be recomposed with the critical scepticism
+of a Niebuhr, and the same comprehensive collation of authorities. In
+reality it is the hinge upon which turned the future destiny of the
+whole earth, and having therefore a common relation to all modern
+nations whatsoever, should naturally have been cultivated with the zeal
+which belongs to a personal concern. In general, the anecdotes which
+express most vividly the splendid character of the first Caesar, are
+those which illustrate his defiance of danger in extremity,--the
+prodigious energy and rapidity of his decisions and motions in the
+field; the skill with which he penetrated the designs of his enemies,
+and the exemplary speed with which he provided a remedy for disasters;
+the extraordinary presence of mind which he showed in turning adverse
+omens to his own advantage, as when, upon stumbling in coming on shore,
+(which was esteemed a capital omen of evil,) he transfigured as it
+were in one instant its whole meaning by exclaiming, "Thus do I take
+possession of thee, oh Africa!" in that way giving to an accident the
+semblance of a symbolic purpose; the grandeur of fortitude with which he
+faced the whole extent of a calamity when palliation could do no good,
+"non negando, minuendove, sed insuper amplificando, _ementiendoque_;"
+as when, upon finding his soldiery alarmed at the approach of Juba, with
+forces really great, but exaggerated by their terrors, he addressed them
+in a military harangue to the following effect: "Know that within a few
+days the king will come up with us, bringing with him sixty thousand
+legionaries, thirty thousand cavalry, one hundred thousand light troops,
+besides three hundred elephants. Such being the case, let me hear no
+more of conjectures and opinions, for you have now my warrant for the
+fact, whose information is past doubting. Therefore, be satisfied;
+otherwise, I will put every man of you on board some crazy old fleet,
+and whistle you down the tide--no matter under what winds, no matter
+towards what shore." Finally, we might seek for the _characteristic_
+anecdotes of Caesar in his unexampled liberalities and contempt of money.
+[Footnote: Middleton's Life of Cicero, which still continues to be the
+most readable digest of these affairs, is feeble and contradictory. He
+discovers that Caesar was no general! And the single merit which his work
+was supposed to possess, viz. the better and more critical arrangement
+of Cicero's Letters, in respect to their chronology, has of late years
+been detected as a robbery from the celebrated Bellenden, of James the
+First's time.]
+
+Upon this last topic it is the just remark of Casaubon, that some
+instances of Caesar's munificence have been thought apocryphal, or to
+rest upon false readings, simply from ignorance of the heroic scale upon
+which the Roman splendors of that age proceeded. A forum which Caesar
+built out of the products of his last campaign, by way of a present
+to the Roman people, cost him--for the ground merely on which it
+stood--nearly eight hundred thousand pounds. To the _citizens_ of Rome
+(perhaps 300,000 persons) he presented, in one _congiary_, about two
+guineas and a half a head. To his army, in one _donation_, upon the
+termination of the civil war, he gave a sum which allowed about two
+hundred pounds a man to the infantry, and four hundred to the cavalry.
+It is true that the legionary troops were then much reduced by the sword
+of the enemy, and by the tremendous hardships of their last campaigns.
+In this, however, he did perhaps no more than repay a debt. For it is
+an instance of military attachment, beyond all that Wallenstein or any
+commander, the most beloved amongst his troops, has ever experienced,
+that, on the breaking out of the civil war, not only did the centurions
+of every legion severally maintain a horse soldier, but even the
+privates volunteered to serve without pay--and (what might seem
+impossible) without their daily rations. This was accomplished by
+subscriptions amongst themselves, the more opulent undertaking for the
+maintenance of the needy. Their disinterested love for Caesar appeared in
+another and more difficult illustration: it was a traditionary anecdote
+in Rome, that the majority of those amongst Caesar's troops, who had the
+misfortune to fall into the enemy's hands, refused to accept their lives
+under the condition of serving against _him_.
+
+In connection with this subject of his extraordinary munificence,
+there is one aspect of Caesar's life which has suffered much from the
+misrepresentations of historians, and that is--the vast pecuniary
+embarrassments under which he labored, until the profits of war had
+turned the scale even more prodigiously in his favor. At one time of his
+life, when appointed to a foreign office, so numerous and so clamorous
+were his creditors, that he could not have left Rome on his public
+duties, had not Crassus come forward with assistance in money, or by
+promises, to the amount of nearly two hundred thousand pounds. And at
+another, he was accustomed to amuse himself with computing how much
+money it would require to make him worth exactly nothing (_i. e._ simply
+to clear him of debts); this, by one account, amounted to upwards of two
+millions sterling. Now the error of historians has been--to represent
+these debts as the original ground of his ambition and his revolutionary
+projects, as though the desperate condition of his private affairs had
+suggested a civil war to his calculations as the best or only mode of
+redressing it. But, on the contrary, his debts were the product of
+his ambition, and contracted from first to last in the service of his
+political intrigues, for raising and maintaining a powerful body of
+partisans, both in Rome and elsewhere. Whosoever indeed will take the
+trouble to investigate the progress of Caesar's ambition, from such
+materials as even yet remain, may satisfy himself that the scheme of
+revolutionizing the Republic, and placing himself at its head, was no
+growth of accident or circumstances; above all, that it did not arise
+upon any so petty and indirect an occasion as that of his debts; but
+that his debts were in their very first origin purely ministerial to his
+ambition; and that his revolutionary plans were at all periods of his
+life a direct and foremost object. In this there was in reality no want
+of patriotism; it had become evident to every body that Rome, under its
+present constitution, must fall; and the sole question was--by whom?
+Even Pompey, not by nature of an aspiring turn, and prompted to his
+ambitious course undoubtedly by circumstances and the friends who
+besieged him, was in the habit of saying, "Sylla potuit, ego non
+potero?" And the fact was, that if, from the death of Sylla, Rome
+recovered some transient show of constitutional integrity, that happened
+not by any lingering virtue that remained in her republican forms, but
+entirely through the equilibrium and mechanical counterpoise of rival
+factions.
+
+In a case, therefore, where no benefit of choice was allowed to Rome as
+to the thing, but only as to the person--where a revolution was certain,
+and the point left open to doubt simply by whom that revolution should
+be accomplished--Caesar had (to say the least) the same right to enter
+the arena in the character of candidate as could belong to any one of
+his rivals. And that he _did_ enter that arena constructively, and by
+secret design, from his very earliest manhood, may be gathered from
+this--that he suffered no openings towards a revolution, provided they
+had any hope in them, to escape his participation. It is familiarly
+known that he was engaged pretty deeply in the conspiracy of Catiline,
+[Footnote: Suetonius, speaking of this conspiracy, says, that Caesar was
+_nominatos inter socios Catilinae_, which has been erroneously understood
+to mean that he was _talked of_ as an accomplice; but in fact, as
+Casaubon first pointed out, _nominatus_ is a technical term of the Roman
+jurisprudence, and means that he was formally denounced.] and that he
+incurred considerable risk on that occasion; but it is less known, and
+has indeed escaped the notice of historians generally, that he was
+a party to at least two other conspiracies. There was even a fourth,
+meditated by Crassus, which Caesar so far encouraged as to undertake a
+journey to Rome from a very distant quarter, merely with a view to such
+chances as it might offer to him; but as it did not, upon examination,
+seem to him a very promising scheme, he judged it best to look coldly
+upon it, or not to embark in it by any personal co-operation. Upon these
+and other facts we build our inference--that the scheme of a revolution
+was the one great purpose of Caesar, from his first entrance upon public
+life. Nor does it appear that he cared much by whom it was undertaken,
+provided only there seemed to be any sufficient resources for carrying
+it through, and for sustaining the first collision with the regular
+forces of the existing government. He relied, it seems, on his own
+personal superiority for raising him to the head of affairs eventually,
+let who would take the nominal lead at first. To the same result, it
+will be found, tended the vast stream of Caesar's liberalities. From the
+senator downwards to the lowest _faex Romuli_, he had a hired body of
+dependents, both in and out of Rome, equal in numbers to a nation. In
+the provinces, and in distant kingdoms, he pursued the same schemes.
+Every where he had a body of mercenary partisans; kings are known to
+have taken his pay. And it is remarkable that even in his character of
+commander in chief, where the number of legions allowed to him for the
+accomplishment of his mission raised him for a number of years above all
+fear of coercion or control, he persevered steadily in the same plan of
+providing for the day when he might need assistance, not from the state,
+but _against_ the state. For amongst the private anecdotes which came
+to light under the researches made into his history after his death, was
+this--that, soon after his first entrance upon his government in Gaul,
+he had raised, equipped, disciplined, and maintained, from his own
+private funds, a legion amounting, perhaps, to six or seven thousand
+men, who were bound by no sacrament of military obedience to the state,
+nor owed fealty to any auspices except those of Caesar. This legion, from
+the fashion of their crested helmets, which resembled the crested heads
+of a small bird of the lark species, received the popular name of
+the _Alauda_ (or Lark) legion. And very singular it was that Cato,
+or Marcellus, or some amongst those enemies of Caesar, who watched his
+conduct during the period of his Gaulish command with the vigilance of
+rancorous malice, should not have come to the knowledge of this fact;
+in which case we may be sure that it would have been denounced to the
+senate.
+
+Such, then, for its purpose and its uniform motive, was the sagacious
+munificence of Caesar. Apart from this motive, and considered in and for
+itself, and simply with a reference to the splendid forms which it often
+assumed, this munificence would furnish the materials for a volume. The
+public entertainments of Caesar, his spectacles and shows, his naumachiae,
+and the pomps of his unrivalled triumphs, (the closing triumphs of the
+Republic,) were severally the finest of their kind which had then been
+brought forward. Sea-fights were exhibited upon the grandest scale,
+according to every known variety of nautical equipment and mode of
+conflict, upon a vast lake formed artificially for that express purpose.
+Mimic land-fights were conducted, in which all the circumstances of real
+war were so faithfully rehearsed, that even elephants "indorsed with
+towers," twenty on each side, took part in the combat. Dramas
+were represented in every known language, (_per omnium linguarum
+histriones_.) And hence [that is, from the conciliatory feeling thus
+expressed towards the various tribes of foreigners resident in
+Rome] some have derived an explanation of what is else a mysterious
+circumstance amongst the ceremonial observances at Caesar's funeral--that
+all people of foreign nations then residing at Rome, distinguished
+themselves by the conspicuous share which they took in the public
+mourning; and that, beyond all other foreigners, the Jews for night
+after night kept watch and ward about the emperor's grave. Never before,
+according to traditions which lasted through several generations in
+Rome, had there been so vast a conflux of the human race congregated to
+any one centre, on any one attraction of business or of pleasure, as to
+Rome, on occasion of these spectacles exhibited by Caesar.
+
+In our days, the greatest occasional gatherings of the human race are
+in India, especially at the great fair of the _Hurdwar_, in the northern
+part of Hindostan; a confluence of many millions is sometimes seen at
+that spot, brought together under the mixed influences of devotion and
+commercial business, and dispersed as rapidly as they had been convoked.
+Some such spectacle of nations crowding upon nations, and some such
+Babylonian confusion of dresses, complexions, languages, and jargons,
+was then witnessed at Rome. Accommodations within doors, and under roofs
+of houses, or of temples, was altogether impossible. Myriads encamped
+along the streets, and along the high-roads in the vicinity of Rome.
+Myriads of myriads lay stretched on the ground, without even the slight
+protection of tents, in a vast circuit about the city. Multitudes of
+men, even senators, and others of the highest rank, were trampled to
+death in the crowds. And the whole family of man seemed at that time
+gathered together at the bidding of the great Dictator. But these, or
+any other themes connected with the public life of Caesar, we notice
+only in those circumstances which have been overlooked, or partially
+represented by historians. Let us now, in conclusion, bring forward,
+from the obscurity in which they have hitherto lurked, the anecdotes
+which describe the habits of his private life, his tastes, and personal
+peculiarities.
+
+In person, he was tall, fair, and of limbs distinguished for their
+elegant proportions and gracility. His eyes were black and piercing.
+These circumstances continued to be long remembered, and no doubt were
+constantly recalled to the eyes of all persons in the imperial palaces,
+by pictures, busts, and statues; for we find the same description of his
+personal appearance three centuries afterwards, in a work of the
+Emperor Julian's. He was a most accomplished horseman, and a master
+(_peritissimus_) in the use of arms. But, notwithstanding his skill in
+horsemanship, it seems that, when he accompanied his army on marches, he
+walked oftener than he rode; no doubt, with a view to the benefit of his
+example, and to express that sympathy with his soldiers which gained him
+their hearts so entirely. On other occasions, when travelling apart from
+his army, he seems more frequently to have rode in a carriage than on
+horseback. His purpose, in making this preference, must have been with
+a view to the transport of luggage. The carriage which he generally
+used was a _rheda_, a sort of gig, or rather curricle, for it was
+a four-wheeled carriage, and adapted (as we find from the imperial
+regulations for the public carriages, &c.) to the conveyance of about
+half a ton. The mere personal baggage which Caesar carried with him, was
+probably considerable, for he was a man of the most elegant habits, and
+in all parts of his life sedulously attentive to elegance of personal
+appearance. The length of journeys which he accomplished within a given
+time, appears even to us at this day, and might well therefore appear to
+his contemporaries, truly astonishing. A distance of one hundred miles
+was no extraordinary day's journey for him in a _rheda_, such as we have
+described it. So elegant were his habits, and so constant his demand
+for the luxurious accommodations of polished life, as it then existed in
+Rome, that he is said to have carried with him, as indispensable parts
+of his personal baggage, the little lozenges and squares of ivory, and
+other costly materials, which were wanted for the tessellated flooring
+of his tent. Habits such as these will easily account for his travelling
+in a carriage rather than on horseback.
+
+The courtesy and obliging disposition of Caesar were notorious, and both
+were illustrated in some anecdotes which survived for generations
+in Rome. Dining on one occasion at a table, where the servants had
+inadvertently, for salad-oil, furnished some sort of coarse lamp-oil,
+Caesar would not allow the rest of the company to point out the mistake
+to their host, for fear of shocking him too much by exposing the
+mistake. At another time, whilst halting at a little _cabaret_, when
+one of his retinue was suddenly taken ill, Caesar resigned to his use
+the sole bed which the house afforded. Incidents, as trifling as these,
+express the urbanity of Caesar's nature; and, hence, one is the more
+surprised to find the alienation of the senate charged, in no trifling
+degree, upon a failure in point of courtesy. Caesar neglected to rise
+from his seat, on their approaching him in a body with an address of
+congratulation. It is said, and we can believe it, that he gave deeper
+offence by this one defect in a matter of ceremonial observance, than
+by all his substantial attacks upon their privileges. What we find it
+difficult to believe, however, is not that result from the offence, but
+the possibility of the offence itself, from one so little arrogant as
+Caesar, and so entirely a man of the world. He was told of the disgust
+which he had given, and we are bound to believe his apology, in which
+he charged it upon sickness, which would not at the moment allow him to
+maintain a standing attitude. Certainly the whole tenor of his life was
+not courteous only, but kind; and, to his enemies, merciful in a
+degree which implied so much more magnanimity than men in general could
+understand, that by many it was put down to the account of weakness.
+
+Weakness, however, there was none in Caius Caesar; and, that there might
+be none, it was fortunate that conspiracy should have cut him off in the
+full vigor of his faculties, in the very meridian of his glory, and on
+the brink of completing a series of gigantic achievements. Amongst these
+are numbered--a digest of the entire body of laws, even then become
+unwieldy and oppressive; the establishment of vast and comprehensive
+public libraries, Greek as well as Latin; the chastisement of Dacia; the
+conquest of Parthia; and the cutting a ship canal through the Isthmus
+of Corinth. The reformation of the calendar he had already accomplished.
+And of all his projects it may be said, that they were equally patriotic
+in their purpose, and colossal in their proportions.
+
+As an orator, Caesar's merit was so eminent, that, according to the
+general belief, had he found time to cultivate this department of
+civil exertion, the precise supremacy of Cicero would have been made
+questionable, or the honors would have been divided. Cicero himself
+was of that opinion; and on different occasions applied the epithet
+_Splendidus_ to Caesar, as though in some exclusive sense, or with a
+peculiar emphasis, due to him. His taste was much simpler, chaster, and
+disinclined to the _florid_ and ornamental, than that of Cicero. So far
+he would, in that condition of the Roman culture and feeling, have been
+less acceptable to the public; but, on the other hand, he would have
+compensated this disadvantage by much more of natural and Demosthenic
+fervor.
+
+In literature, the merits of Caesar are familiar to most readers. Under
+the modest title of _Commentaries_, he meant to offer the records of his
+Gallic and British campaigns, simply as notes, or memoranda, afterwards
+to be worked up by regular historians; but, as Cicero observes, their
+merit was such in the eyes of the discerning, that all judicious writers
+shrank from the attempt to alter them. In another instance of his
+literary labors, he showed a very just sense of true dignity. Rightly
+conceiving that every thing patriotic was dignified, and that to
+illustrate or polish his native language, was a service of real
+patriotism, he composed a work on the grammar and orthoepy of the Latin
+language. Cicero and himself were the only Romans of distinction in
+that age, who applied themselves with true patriotism to the task of
+purifying and ennobling their mother tongue. Both were aware of the
+transcendent quality of the Grecian literature; but that splendor did
+not depress their hopes of raising their own to something of the same
+level. As respected the natural wealth of the two languages, it was
+the private opinion of Cicero, that the Latin had the advantage; and if
+Caesar did not accompany him to that length, he yet felt that it was but
+the more necessary to draw forth any single advantage which it really
+had. [Footnote: Caesar had the merit of being the first person to propose
+the daily publication of the acts and votes of the senate. In the form
+of public and official dispatches, he made also some useful innovations;
+and it may be mentioned, for the curiosity of the incident, that the
+cipher which he used in his correspondence, was the following very
+simple one:--For every letter of the alphabet he substituted that which
+stood fourth removed from it in the order of succession. Thus, for A, he
+used D; for D, G, and so on.]
+
+Was Caesar, upon the whole, the greatest of men? Dr. Beattie once
+observed, that if that question were left to be collected from the
+suffrages already expressed in books, and scattered throughout the
+literature of all nations, the scale would be found to have turned
+prodigiously in Caesar's favor, as against any single competitor; and
+there is no doubt whatsoever, that even amongst his own countrymen, and
+his own contemporaries, the same verdict would have been returned, had
+it been collected upon the famous principle of Themistocles, that _he_
+should be reputed the first, whom the greatest number of rival voices
+had pronounced the second.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The situation of the Second Caesar, at the crisis of the great Dictator's
+assassination, was so hazardous and delicate, as to confer interest upon
+a character not otherwise attractive. To many, we know it was positively
+repulsive, and in the very highest degree. In particular, it is recorded
+of Sir William Jones, that he regarded this emperor with feelings of
+abhorrence so _personal_ and deadly, as to refuse him his customary
+titular honors whenever he had occasion to mention him by name. Yet
+it was the whole Roman people that conferred upon him his title of
+_Augustus_. But Sir William, ascribing no force to the acts of a people
+who had sunk so low as to exult in their chains, and to decorate with
+honors the very instruments of their own vassalage, would not recognise
+this popular creation, and spoke of him always by his family name
+of Octavius. The flattery of the populace, by the way, must, in this
+instance, have been doubly acceptable to the emperor, first, for what it
+gave, and secondly, for what it concealed. Of his grand-uncle, the first
+Caesar, a tradition survives--that of all the distinctions created in his
+favor, either by the senate or the people, he put most value upon
+the laurel crown which was voted to him after his last campaigns--a
+beautiful and conspicuous memorial to every eye of his great public
+acts, and at the same time an overshadowing veil of his one sole
+personal defect. This laurel diadem at once proclaimed his civic
+grandeur, and concealed his baldness, a defect which was more mortifying
+to a Roman than it would be to ourselves, from the peculiar theory which
+then prevailed as to its probable origin. A gratitude of the same mixed
+quality must naturally have been felt by the Second Caesar for his title
+of _Augustus_, which, whilst it illustrated his public character by
+the highest expression of majesty, set apart and sequestrated to public
+functions, had also the agreeable effect of withdrawing from the general
+remembrance his obscure descent. For the Octavian house [_gens_] had
+in neither of its branches risen to any great splendor of civic
+distinction, and in his own, to little or none. The same titular
+decoration, therefore, so offensive to the celebrated Whig, was, in the
+eyes of Augustus, at once a trophy of public merit, a monument of public
+gratitude, and an effectual obliteration of his own natal obscurity.
+
+But, if merely odious to men of Sir William's principles, to others the
+character of Augustus, in relation to the circumstances which surrounded
+him, was not without its appropriate interest. He was summoned in early
+youth, and without warning, to face a crisis of tremendous hazard, being
+at the same time himself a man of no very great constitutional courage;
+perhaps he was even a coward. And this we say without meaning to adopt
+as gospel truths all the party reproaches of Anthony. Certainly he was
+utterly unfurnished by nature with those endowments which seemed to be
+indispensable in a successor to the power of the great Dictator. But
+exactly in these deficiencies, and in certain accidents unfavorable to
+his ambition, lay his security. He had been adopted by his grand-uncle,
+Julius. That adoption made him, to all intents and purposes of law, the
+son of his great patron; and doubtless, in a short time, this adoption
+would have been applied to more extensive uses, and as a station of
+vantage for introducing him to the public favor. From the inheritance
+of the Julian estates and family honors, he would have been trained to
+mount, as from a stepping-stone, to the inheritance of the Julian power
+and political station; and the Roman people would have been familiarized
+to regard him in that character. But, luckily for himself, the
+finishing, or ceremonial acts, were yet wanting in this process--the
+political heirship was inchoate and imperfect. Tacitly understood,
+indeed, it was; but, had it been formally proposed and ratified, there
+cannot be a doubt that the young Octavius would have been pointed out
+to the vengeance of the patriots, and included in the scheme of the
+conspirators, as a fellow-victim with his nominal father; and would have
+been cut off too suddenly to benefit by that reaction of popular
+feeling which saved the partisans of the Dictator, by separating the
+conspirators, and obliging them, without loss of time, to look to their
+own safety. It was by this fortunate accident that the young heir and
+adopted son of the first Caesar not only escaped assassination, but was
+enabled to postpone indefinitely the final and military struggle for the
+vacant seat of empire, and in the mean time to maintain a coequal rank
+with the leaders in the state, by those arts and resources in which he
+was superior to his competitors. His place in the favor of Caius Julius
+was of power sufficient to give him a share in any triumvirate which
+could be formed; but, wanting the formality of a regular introduction to
+the people, and the ratification of their acceptance, that place was
+not sufficient to raise him permanently into the perilous and invidious
+station of absolute supremacy which he afterwards occupied. The
+_felicity_ of Augustus was often vaunted by antiquity, (with whom
+success was not so much a test of merit as itself a merit of the highest
+quality,) and in no instance was this felicity more conspicuous than
+in the first act of his entrance upon the political scene. No doubt
+his friends and enemies alike thought of him, at the moment of Caesar's
+assassination, as we now think of a young man heir-elect to some person
+of immense wealth, cut off by a sudden death before he has had time to
+ratify a will in execution of his purposes. Yet in fact the case was far
+otherwise. Brought forward distinctly as the successor of Caesar's
+power, had he even, by some favorable accident of absence from Rome, or
+otherwise, escaped being involved in that great man's fate, he would at
+all events have been thrown upon the instant necessity of defending his
+supreme station by arms. To have left it unasserted, when once
+solemnly created in his favor by a reversionary title, would have been
+deliberately to resign it. This would have been a confession of weakness
+liable to no disguise, and ruinous to any subsequent pretensions. Yet,
+without preparation of means, with no development of resources nor
+growth of circumstances, an appeal to arms would, in his case, have been
+of very doubtful issue. His true weapons, for a long period, were the
+arts of vigilance and dissimulation. Cultivating these, he was enabled
+to prepare for a contest which, undertaken prematurely, must have ruined
+him, and to raise himself to a station of even military pre-eminence
+to those who naturally, and by circumstances, were originally every way
+superior to himself.
+
+The qualities in which he really excelled, the gifts of intrigue,
+patience, long-suffering, dissimulation, and tortuous fraud, were thus
+brought into play, and allowed their full value. Such qualities
+had every chance of prevailing in the long run, against the noble
+carelessness and the impetuosity of the passionate Anthony--and they
+_did_ prevail. Always on the watch to lay hold of those opportunities
+which the generous negligence of his rival was but too frequently
+throwing in his way--unless by the sudden reverses of war and the
+accidents of battle, which as much as possible, and as long as possible,
+he declined--there could be little question in any man's mind, that
+eventually he would win his way to a solitary throne, by a policy so
+full of caution and subtlety. He was sure to risk nothing which could be
+had on easier terms; and nothing, unless for a great overbalance of gain
+in prospect; to lose nothing which he had once gained; and in no case to
+miss an advantage, or sacrifice an opportunity, by any consideration
+of generosity. No modern insurance office but would have guaranteed an
+event depending upon the final success of Augustus, on terms far below
+those which they must in prudence have exacted from the fiery and
+adventurous Anthony. Each was an ideal in his own class. But Augustus,
+having finally triumphed, has met with more than justice from succeeding
+ages. Even Lord Bacon says, that, by comparison with Julius Caesar, he
+was "_non tam impar quam dispar_," surely a most extravagant encomium,
+applied to whomsoever. On the other hand, Anthony, amongst the most
+signal misfortunes of his life, might number it, that Cicero, the great
+dispenser of immortality, in whose hands (more perhaps than in any one
+man's of any age) were the vials of good and evil fame, should happen to
+have been his bitter and persevering enemy. It is, however, some balance
+to this, that Shakspeare had a just conception of the original grandeur
+which lay beneath that wild tempestuous nature presented by Anthony to
+the eye of the undiscriminating world. It is to the honor of Shakspeare,
+that he should have been able to discern the true coloring of this most
+original character, under the smoke and tarnish of antiquity. It is no
+less to the honor of the great triumvir, that a strength of coloring
+should survive in his character, capable of baffling the wrongs and
+ravages of time. Neither is it to be thought strange that a character
+should have been misunderstood and falsely appreciated for nearly
+two thousand years. It happens not uncommonly, especially amongst an
+unimaginative people like the Romans, that the characters of men are
+ciphers and enigmas to their own age, and are first read and interpreted
+by a far distant posterity. Stars are supposed to exist, whose light has
+been travelling for many thousands of years without having yet reached
+our system; and the eyes are yet unborn upon which their earliest
+rays will fall. Men like Mark Anthony, with minds of chaotic
+composition--light conflicting with darkness, proportions of colossal
+grandeur disfigured by unsymmetrical arrangement, the angelic in close
+neighborhood with the brutal--are first read in their true meaning by an
+age learned in the philosophy of the human heart. Of this philosophy the
+Romans had, by the necessities of education and domestic discipline not
+less than by original constitution of mind, the very narrowest visual
+range. In no literature whatsoever are so few tolerable notices to
+be found of any great truths in Psychology. Nor could this have been
+otherwise amongst a people who tried every thing by the standard
+of _social_ value; never seeking for a canon of excellence, in man
+considered abstractedly in and for himself, and as having an independent
+value--but always and exclusively in man as a gregarious being, and
+designed for social uses and functions. Not man in his own peculiar
+nature, but man in his relations to other men, was the station from
+which the Roman speculators took up their philosophy of human nature.
+Tried by such standard, Mark Anthony would be found wanting. As a
+citizen, he was irretrievably licentious, and therefore there needed
+not the bitter personal feud, which circumstances had generated between
+them, to account for the _acharnement_ with which Cicero pursued him.
+Had Anthony been his friend even, or his near kinsman, Cicero must still
+have been his public enemy. And not merely for his vices; for even
+the grander features of his character, his towering ambition, his
+magnanimity, and the fascinations of his popular qualities,--were
+all, in the circumstances of those times, and in _his_ position, of a
+tendency dangerously uncivic.
+
+So remarkable was the opposition, at all points, between the second
+Caesar and his rival, that whereas Anthony even in his virtues seemed
+dangerous to the state, Octavius gave a civic coloring to his most
+indifferent actions, and, with a Machiavelian policy, observed a
+scrupulous regard to the forms of the Republic, after every fragment
+of the republican institutions, the privileges of the republican
+magistrates, and the functions of the great popular officers, had been
+absorbed into his own autocracy. Even in the most prosperous days of the
+Roman State, when the democratic forces balanced, and were balanced
+by, those of the aristocracy, it was far from being a general or common
+praise, that a man was of a civic turn of mind, _animo civili_. Yet this
+praise did Augustus affect, and in reality attain, at a time when the
+very object of all civic feeling was absolutely extinct; so much are
+men governed by words. Suetonius assures us, that many evidences were
+current even to his times of this popular disposition (_civilitas_) in
+the emperor; and that it survived every experience of servile adulation
+in the Roman populace, and all the effects of long familiarity with
+irresponsible power in himself. Such a moderation of feeling, we are
+almost obliged to consider as a genuine and unaffected expression of his
+real nature; for, as an artifice of policy, it had soon lost its uses.
+And it is worthy of notice, that with the army he laid aside those
+popular manners as soon as possible, addressing them as _milites_, not
+(_according_ to his earlier practice) as _commilitones_. It concerned
+his own security, to be jealous of encroachments on his power. But of
+his rank, and the honors which accompanied it, he seems to have been
+uniformly careless. Thus, he would never leave a town or enter it by
+daylight, unless some higher rule of policy obliged him to do so; by
+which means he evaded a ceremonial of public honor which was burdensome
+to all the parties concerned in it. Sometimes, however, we find that
+men, careless of honors in their own persons, are glad to see them
+settling upon their family and immediate connections. But here again
+Augustus showed the sincerity of his moderation. For upon one occasion,
+when the whole audience in the Roman theatre had risen upon the entrance
+of his two adopted sons, at that time not seventeen years old, he
+was highly displeased, and even thought it necessary to publish
+his displeasure in a separate edict. It is another, and a striking
+illustration of his humility, that he willingly accepted of public
+appointments, and sedulously discharged the duties attached to them, in
+conjunction with colleagues who had been chosen with little regard to
+his personal partialities. In the debates of the senate, he showed the
+same equanimity; suffering himself patiently to be contradicted, and
+even with circumstances of studied incivility. In the public elections,
+he gave his vote like any private citizen; and, when he happened to be
+a candidate himself, he canvassed the electors with the same earnestness
+of personal application, as any other candidate with the least possible
+title to public favor from present power or past services. But, perhaps
+by no expressions of his civic spirit did Augustus so much conciliate
+men's minds, as by the readiness with which he participated in their
+social pleasures, and by the uniform severity with which he refused
+to apply his influence in any way which could disturb the pure
+administration of justice. The Roman juries (_judices_ they were
+called), were very corrupt; and easily swayed to an unconscientious
+verdict, by the appearance in court of any great man on behalf of one of
+the parties interested: nor was such an interference with the course
+of private justice any ways injurious to the great man's character. The
+wrong which he promoted did but the more forcibly proclaim the warmth
+and fidelity of his friendships. So much the more generally was the
+uprightness of the emperor appreciated, who would neither tamper with
+justice himself, nor countenance any motion in that direction, though it
+were to serve his very dearest friend, either by his personal presence,
+or by the use of his name. And, as if it had been a trifle merely to
+forbear, and to show his regard to justice in this negative way, he even
+allowed himself to be summoned as a witness on trials, and showed no
+anger when his own evidence was overborne by stronger on the other side.
+This disinterested love of justice, and an integrity, so rare in the
+great men of Rome, could not but command the reverence of the people.
+But their affection, doubtless, was more conciliated by the freedom with
+which the emperor accepted invitations from all quarters, and shared
+continually in the festal pleasures of his subjects. This practice,
+however, he discontinued, or narrowed, as he advanced in years.
+Suetonius, who, as a true anecdote-monger, would solve every thing,
+and account for every change by some definite incident, charges this
+alteration in the emperor's condescensions upon one particular party at
+a wedding feast, where the crowd incommoded him much by their pressure
+and heat. But, doubtless, it happened to Augustus as to other men; his
+spirits failed, and his powers of supporting fatigue or bustle, as years
+stole upon him. Changes, coming by insensible steps, and not willingly
+acknowledged, for some time escape notice; until some sudden shock
+reminds a man forcibly to do that which he has long meditated in an
+irresolute way. The marriage banquet may have been the particular
+occasion from which Augustus stepped into the habits of old age, but
+certainly not the cause of so entire a revolution in his mode of living.
+
+It might seem to throw some doubt, if not upon the fact, yet at
+least upon the sincerity, of his _civism_, that undoubtedly Augustus
+cultivated his kingly connections with considerable anxiety. It may have
+been upon motives merely political that he kept at Rome the children of
+nearly all the kings then known as allies or vassals of the Roman power:
+a curious fact, and not generally known. In his own palace were reared a
+number of youthful princes; and they were educated jointly with his own
+children. It is also upon record, that in many instances the fathers
+of these princes spontaneously repaired to Rome, and there assuming
+the Roman dress--as an expression of reverence to the majesty of the
+omnipotent State--did personal 'suit and service' (_more clientum_)
+to Augustus. It is an anecdote of not less curiosity, that a whole
+'college' of kings subscribed money for a temple at Athens, to be
+dedicated in the name of Augustus. Throughout his life, indeed, this
+emperor paid a marked attention to all the royal houses then known to
+Rome, as occupying the thrones upon the vast margin of the empire. It
+is true that in part this attention might be interpreted as given
+politically to so many lieutenants, wielding a remote or inaccessible
+power for the benefit of Rome. And the children of these kings might be
+regarded as hostages, ostensibly entertained for the sake of education,
+but really as pledges for their parents' fidelity, and also with a view
+to the large reversionary advantages which might be expected to arise
+upon the basis of so early and affectionate a connection. But it is not
+the less true, that, at one period of his life, Augustus did certainly
+meditate some closer personal connection with the royal families of the
+earth. He speculated, undoubtedly, on a marriage for himself with some
+barbarous princess, and at one time designed his daughter Julia as a
+wife for Cotiso, the king of the Getae. Superstition perhaps disturbed
+the one scheme, and policy the other. He married, as is well known, for
+his final wife, and the partner of his life through its whole triumphant
+stage, Livia Drusilla; compelling her husband, Tiberius Nero, to divorce
+her, notwithstanding she was then six months advanced in pregnancy. With
+this lady, who was distinguished for her beauty, it is certain that
+he was deeply in love; and that might be sufficient to account for the
+marriage. It is equally certain, however, upon the concurring
+evidence of independent writers, that this connection had an oracular
+sanction--not to say, suggestion; a circumstance _which was long
+remembered_, and was afterwards noticed by the Christian poet
+Prudentius:
+
+  "Idque Deum sortes et Apollinis antra dederunt
+  Consilium: nunquam melius nam caedere taedas
+  Responsum est, quam cum praegnans nova nupta jugatur."
+
+His daughter Julia had been promised by turns, and always upon reasons
+of state, to a whole muster-roll of suitors; first of all, to a son of
+Mark Anthony; secondly, to the barbarous king; thirdly, to her first
+cousin--that Marcellus, the son of Octavia, only sister to Augustus,
+whose early death, in the midst of great expectations, Virgil has so
+beautifully introduced into the vision of Roman grandeurs as yet unborn,
+which AEneas beholds in the shades; fourthly, she was promised (and this
+time the promise was kept) to the fortunate soldier, Agrippa, whose low
+birth was not permitted to obscure his military merits. By him she had
+a family of children, upon whom, if upon any in this world, the wrath of
+Providence seems to have rested; for, excepting one, and in spite of all
+the favors that earth and heaven could unite to shower upon them, all
+came to an early, a violent, and an infamous end. Fifthly, upon the
+death of Agrippa, and again upon motives of policy, and in atrocious
+contempt of all the ties that nature and the human heart and human laws
+have hallowed, she was promised, (if that word may be applied to the
+violent obtrusion upon a man's bed of one who was doubly a curse--first,
+for what she brought, and, secondly, for what she took away,) and given
+to Tiberius, the future emperor. Upon the whole, as far as we can at
+this day make out the connection of a man's acts and purposes, which,
+even to his own age, were never entirely cleared up, it is probable
+that, so long as the triumvirate survived, and so long as the condition
+of Roman power or intrigues, and the distribution of Roman influence,
+were such as to leave a possibility that any new triumvirate should
+arise--so long Augustus was secretly meditating a retreat for himself at
+some barbarous court, against any sudden reverse of fortune, by means
+of a domestic connection, which should give him the claim of a kinsman.
+Such a court, however unable to make head against the collective power
+of Rome, might yet present a front of resistance to any single partisan
+who should happen to acquire a brief ascendancy; or, at the worst, as a
+merely defensive power, might offer a retreat, secure in distance,
+and difficult access; or might be available as a means of delay for
+recovering from some else fatal defeat. It is certain that Augustus
+viewed Egypt with jealousy as a province, which might be turned to
+account in some such way by any aspiring insurgent. And it must have
+often struck him as a remarkable circumstance, which by good luck had
+turned out entirely to the advantage of his own family, but which might
+as readily have had an opposite result, that the three decisive battles
+of Pharsalia, of Thapsus, and of Munda, in which the empire of the world
+was three times over staked as the prize, had severally brought upon the
+defeated leaders a ruin which was total, absolute, and final. One hour
+had seen the whole fabric of their aspiring fortunes demolished; and no
+resource was left to them but either in suicide, (which, accordingly,
+even Caesar had meditated at one stage of the battle of Munda, when it
+seemed to be going against him,) or in the mercy of the victor.
+
+That a victor in a hundred fights should in his hundred-and-first,
+
+[Footnote:
+
+  "The painful warrior, famoused for fight,
+  After a thousand victories once foil'd,
+  Is from the book of honor razed quite,
+  And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd."
+                   _Shakespeare's Sonnets._]
+
+as in his first, risk the loss of that particular battle, is inseparable
+from the condition of man, and the uncertainty of human means; but that
+the loss of this one battle should be equally fatal and irrecoverable
+with the loss of his first, that it should leave him with means no more
+cemented, and resources no better matured for retarding his fall, and
+throwing a long succession of hindrances in the way of his conqueror,
+argues some essential defect of system. Under our modern policy,
+military power--though it may be the growth of one man's life--soon
+takes root; a succession of campaigns is required for its extirpation;
+and it revolves backwards to its final extinction through all the
+stages by which originally it grew. On the Roman system this was mainly
+impossible from the solitariness of the Roman power; co-rival nations
+who might balance the victorious party, there were absolutely none; and
+all the underlings hastened to make their peace, whilst peace was yet
+open to them, on the known terms of absolute treachery to their former
+master, and instant surrender to the victor of the hour. For this
+capital defect in the tenure of Roman power, no matter in whose hands
+deposited, there was no absolute remedy. Many a sleepless night, during
+the perilous game which he played with Anthony, must have familiarized
+Octavius with that view of the risk, which to some extent was
+inseparable from his position as the leader in such a struggle carried
+on in such an empire. In this dilemma, struck with the extreme necessity
+of applying some palliation to the case, we have no doubt that
+Augustus would devise the scheme of laying some distant king under such
+obligations to fidelity as would suffice to stand the first shock of
+misfortune. Such a person would have power enough, of a direct military
+kind, to face the storm at its outbreak. He would have power of another
+kind in his distance. He would be sustained by the courage of hope, as
+a kinsman having a contingent interest in a kinsman's prosperity. And,
+finally, he would be sustained by the courage of despair, as one who
+never could expect to be trusted by the opposite party. In the worst
+case, such a prince would always offer a breathing time and a respite to
+his friends, were it only by his remoteness, and if not the _means_ of
+rallying, yet at least the _time_ for rallying, more especially as the
+escape to his frontier would be easy to one who had long forecast it. We
+can hardly doubt that Augustus meditated such schemes; that he laid them
+aside only as his power began to cement and to knit together after the
+battle of Actium; and that the memory and the prudential tradition of
+this plan survived in the imperial family so long as itself survived.
+Amongst other anecdotes of the same tendency, two are recorded of Nero,
+the emperor in whom expired the line of the original Caesars, which
+strengthen us in a belief of what is otherwise in itself so probable.
+Nero, in his first distractions, upon receiving the fatal tidings of
+the revolt in Gaul, when reviewing all possible plans of escape from
+the impending danger, thought at intervals of throwing himself on the
+protection of the barbarous King Vologesus. And twenty years afterwards,
+when the Pseudo-Nero appeared, he found a strenuous champion and
+protector in the king of the Parthians. Possibly, had an opportunity
+offered for searching the Parthian chancery, some treaty would have been
+found binding the kings of Parthia, from the age of Augustus through
+some generations downwards, in requital of services there specified, or
+of treasures lodged, to secure a perpetual asylum to the prosperity of
+the Julian family.
+
+The cruelties of Augustus were perhaps equal in atrocity to any which
+are recorded; and the equivocal apology for those acts (one which might
+as well be used to aggravate as to palliate the case) is, that they were
+not prompted by a ferocious nature, but by calculating policy. He once
+actually slaughtered upon an altar, a large body of his prisoners; and
+such was the contempt with which he was regarded by some of that number,
+that, when led out to death, they saluted their other proscriber,
+Anthony, with military honors, acknowledging merit even in an enemy, but
+Augustus they passed with scornful silence, or with loud reproaches.
+Too certainly no man has ever contended for empire with unsullied
+conscience, or laid pure hands upon the ark of so magnificent a prize.
+Every friend to Augustus must have wished that the twelve years of his
+struggle might for ever be blotted out from human remembrance. During
+the forty-two years of his prosperity and his triumph, being above fear,
+he showed the natural lenity of his temper.
+
+That prosperity, in a public sense, has been rarely equalled; but far
+different was his fate, and memorable was the contrast, within the
+circuit of his own family. This lord of the universe groaned as often
+as the ladies of his house, his daughter and grand-daughter, were
+mentioned. The shame which he felt on their account, led him even
+to unnatural designs, and to wishes not less so; for at one time he
+entertained a plan for putting the elder Julia to death--and at another,
+upon hearing that Phoebe (one of the female slaves in his household) had
+hanged herself, he exclaimed audibly,--"Would that I had been the father
+of Phoebe!" It must, however, be granted, that in this miserable affair
+he behaved with very little of his usual discretion. In the first
+paroxysms of his rage, on discovering his daughter's criminal conduct,
+he made a communication of the whole to the senate. That body could do
+nothing in such a matter, either by act or by suggestion; and in a short
+time, as every body could have foreseen, he himself repented of his
+own want of self-command. Upon the whole, it cannot be denied, that,
+according to the remark of Jeremy Taylor, of all the men signally
+decorated by history, Augustus Caesar is that one who exemplifies, in the
+most emphatic terms, the mixed tenor of human life, and the equitable
+distribution, even on this earth, of good and evil fortune. He
+made himself master of the world, and against the most formidable
+competitors; his power was absolute, from the rising to the setting
+sun; and yet in his own house, where the peasant who does the humblest
+chares, claims an undisputed authority, he was baffled, dishonored, and
+made ridiculous. He was loved by nobody; and if, at the moment of his
+death, he desired his friends to dismiss him from this world by the
+common expression of scenical applause, (_vos plaudite!_) in that
+valedictory injunction he expressed inadvertently the true value of his
+own long life, which, in strict candor, may be pronounced one continued
+series of histrionic efforts, and of excellent acting, adapted to
+selfish ends.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+The three next emperors, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, were the last
+princes who had any connection by blood [Footnote: And this was entirely
+by the female side. The family descent of the first six Caesars is so
+intricate, that it is rarely understood accurately; so that it may be
+well to state it briefly. Augustus was grand nephew to Julius Caesar,
+being the son of his sister's daughter. He was also, by adoption, the
+_son_ of Julius. He himself had one child only, viz. the infamous Julia,
+who was brought him by his second wife Scribonia; and through this
+Julia it was that the three princes, who succeeded to Tiberius, claimed
+relationship to Augustus. On that emperor's last marriage with Livia, he
+adopted the two sons whom she had borne to her divorced husband. These
+two noblemen, who stood in no degree of consanguinity whatever to
+Augustus, were Tiberius and Drusus. Tiberius left no children; but
+Drusus, the younger of the two brothers, by his marriage with the
+younger Antonia, (daughter of Mark Anthony,) had the celebrated
+Germanicus, and Claudius, (afterwards emperor.) Germanicus, though
+adopted by his uncle Tiberius, and destined to the empire, died
+prematurely. But, like Banquo, though he wore no crown, he left
+descendants who did. For, by his marriage with Agrippina, a daughter of
+Julia's by Agrippa, (and therefore grand-daughter of Augustus,) he had
+a large family, of whom one son became the Emperor Caligula; and one
+of the daughters, Agrippina the younger, by her marriage with a Roman
+nobleman, became the mother of the Emperor Nero. Hence it appears that
+Tiberius was uncle to Claudius, Claudius was uncle to Caligula, Caligula
+was uncle to Nero. But it is observable, that Nero and Caligula stood
+in another degree of consanguinity to each other through their
+grandmothers, who were both daughters of Mark Anthony the triumvir; for
+the elder Antonia married the grandfather of Nero; the younger Antonia
+(as we have stated, above) married Drusus, the grandfather of Caligula;
+and again, by these two ladies, they were connected not only with
+each other, but also with the Julian house, for the two Antonias were
+daughters of Mark Anthony by Octavia, sister to Augustus.] with the
+Julian house. In Nero, the sixth emperor, expired the last of the
+Caesars, who was such in reality. These three were also the first in
+that long line of monsters, who, at different times, under the title of
+Caesars, dishonored humanity more memorably, than was possible, except in
+the cases of those (if any such can be named) who have abused the same
+enormous powers in times of the same civility, and in defiance of the
+same general illumination. But for them it is a fact, than some crimes,
+which now stain the page of history, would have been accounted fabulous
+dreams of impure romancers, taxing their extravagant imaginations to
+create combinations of wickedness more hideous than civilized men would
+tolerate, and more unnatural than the human heart could conceive. Let
+us, by way of example, take a short chapter from the diabolic life of
+Caligula: In what way did he treat his nearest and tenderest female
+connections? His mother had been tortured and murdered by another tyrant
+almost as fiendish as himself. She was happily removed from his cruelty.
+Disdaining, however, to acknowledge any connection with the blood of
+so obscure a man as Agrippa, he publicly gave out that his mother was
+indeed the daughter of Julia, but by an incestuous commerce with her
+father Augustus. His three sisters he debauched. One died, and her
+he canonized; the other two he prostituted to the basest of his own
+attendants. Of his wives, it would be hard to say whether they were
+first sought and won with more circumstances of injury and outrage, or
+dismissed with more insult and levity. The one whom he treated best,
+and with most profession of love, and who commonly rode by his side,
+equipped with spear and shield, to his military inspections and reviews
+of the soldiery, though not particularly beautiful, was exhibited to
+his friends at banquets in a state of absolute nudity. His motive for
+treating her with so much kindness, was probably that she brought him
+a daughter; and her he acknowledged as his own child, from the early
+brutality with which she attacked the eyes and cheeks of other infants
+who were presented to her as play-fellows. Hence it would appear that
+he was aware of his own ferocity, and treated it as a jest. The levity,
+indeed, which he mingled with his worst and most inhuman acts, and the
+slightness of the occasions upon which he delighted to hang his most
+memorable atrocities, aggravated their impression at the time, and must
+have contributed greatly to sharpen the sword of vengeance. His palace
+happened to be contiguous to the circus. Some seats, it seems, were open
+indiscriminately to the public; consequently, the only way in which they
+could be appropriated, was by taking possession of them as early as the
+midnight preceding any great exhibitions. Once, when it happened that
+his sleep was disturbed by such an occasion, he sent in soldiers to
+eject them; and with orders so rigorous, as it appeared by the event,
+that in this singular tumult, twenty Roman knights, and as many mothers
+of families, were cudgelled to death upon the spot, to say nothing of
+what the reporter calls "innumeram turbam ceteram."
+
+But this is a trifle to another anecdote reported by the same
+authority:--On some occasion it happened that a dearth prevailed, either
+generally of cattle, or of such cattle as were used for feeding the wild
+beasts reserved for the bloody exhibitions of the amphitheatre. Food
+could be had, and perhaps at no very exorbitant price, but on terms
+somewhat higher than the ordinary market price. A slight excuse served
+with Caligula for acts the most monstrous. Instantly repairing to the
+public jails, and causing all the prisoners to pass in review before him
+(_custodiarum seriem recognoscens_), he pointed to two bald-headed
+men, and ordered that the whole file of intermediate persons should be
+marched off to the dens of the wild beasts: "Tell them off," said he,
+"from the bald man to the bald man." Yet these were prisoners committed,
+not for punishment, but trial. Nor, had it been otherwise, were the
+charges against them equal, but running through every gradation of
+guilt. But the _elogia_ or records of their commitment, he would not so
+much as look at. With such inordinate capacities for cruelty, we cannot
+wonder that he should in his common conversation have deplored the
+tameness and insipidity of his own times and reign, as likely to be
+marked by no wide-spreading calamity." Augustus," said he, "was happy;
+for in his reign occurred the slaughter of Varus and his legions.
+Tiberius was happy; for in his occurred that glorious fall of the great
+amphitheatre at Fidenae. But for me--alas! alas!" And then he would pray
+earnestly for fire or slaughter--pestilence or famine. Famine indeed was
+to some extent in his own power; and accordingly, as far as his courage
+would carry him, he did occasionally try that mode of tragedy upon the
+people of Rome, by shutting up the public granaries against them. As
+he blended his mirth and a truculent sense of the humorous with his
+cruelties, we cannot wonder that he should soon blend his cruelties with
+his ordinary festivities, and that his daily banquets would soon become
+insipid without them. Hence he required a daily supply of executions in
+his own halls and banqueting rooms; nor was a dinner held to be complete
+without such a dessert. Artists were sought out who had dexterity and
+strength enough to do what Lucan somewhere calls _ensem rotare_, that
+is, to cut off a human head with one whirl of the sword. Even this
+became insipid, as wanting one main element of misery to the sufferer,
+and an indispensable condiment to the jaded palate of the connoisseur,
+viz., a lingering duration. As a pleasant variety, therefore, the
+tormentors were introduced with their various instruments of torture;
+and many a dismal tragedy in that mode of human suffering was conducted
+in the sacred presence during the emperor's hours of amiable relaxation.
+
+The result of these horrid indulgences was exactly what we might
+suppose, that even such scenes ceased to irritate the languid appetite,
+and yet that without them life was not endurable. Jaded and exhausted as
+the sense of pleasure had become in Caligula, still it could be roused
+into any activity by nothing short of these murderous luxuries. Hence,
+it seems, that he was continually tampering and dallying with the
+thought of murder; and like the old Parisian jeweller Cardillac, in
+Louis XIV.'s time, who was stung with a perpetual lust for murdering the
+possessors of fine diamonds--not so much for the value of the prize (of
+which he never hoped to make any use), as from an unconquerable desire
+of precipitating himself into the difficulties and hazards of the
+murder,--Caligula never failed to experience (and sometimes even to
+acknowledge) a secret temptation to any murder which seemed either more
+than usually abominable, or more than usually difficult. Thus, when
+the two consuls were seated at his table, he burst out into sudden and
+profuse laughter; and, upon their courteously requesting to know what
+witty and admirable conceit might be the occasion of the imperial
+mirth, he frankly owned to them, and doubtless he did not improve their
+appetites by this confession, that in fact he was laughing, and that he
+could not but laugh, (and then the monster laughed immoderately again,)
+at the pleasant thought of seeing them both headless, and that with so
+little trouble to himself, (_uno suo nutu_,) he could have both their
+throats cut. No doubt he was continually balancing the arguments for and
+against such little escapades; nor had any person a reason for security
+in the extraordinary obligations, whether of hospitality or of religious
+vows, which seemed to lay him under some peculiar restraints in that
+case above all others; for such circumstances of peculiarity, by which
+the murder would be stamped with unusual atrocity, were but the more
+likely to make its fascinations irresistible. Hence he dallied with
+the thoughts of murdering her whom he loved best, and indeed
+exclusively--his wife Caesonia; and whilst fondling her, and toying
+playfully with her polished throat, he was distracted (as he half
+insinuated to her) between the desire of caressing it, which might be
+often repeated, and that of cutting it, which could be gratified but
+once.
+
+Nero (for as to Claudius, he came too late to the throne to indulge any
+propensities of this nature with so little discretion) was but a variety
+of the same species. He also was an amateur, and an enthusiastic amateur
+of murder. But as this taste, in the most ingenious hands, is limited
+and monotonous in its modes of manifestation, it would be tedious to run
+through the long Suetonian roll-call of his peccadilloes in this way.
+One only we shall cite, to illustrate the amorous delight with which he
+pursued any murder which happened to be seasoned highly to his taste
+by enormous atrocity, and by almost unconquerable difficulty. It would
+really be pleasant, were it not for the revolting consideration of
+the persons concerned, and their relation to each other, to watch the
+tortuous pursuit of the hunter, and the doubles of the game, in this
+obstinate chase. For certain reasons of state, as Nero attempted to
+persuade himself, but in reality because no other crime had the same
+attractions of unnatural horror about it, he resolved to murder his
+mother Agrippina. This being settled, the next thing was to arrange
+the mode and the tools. Naturally enough, according to the custom then
+prevalent in Rome, he first attempted the thing by poison. The poison
+failed: for Agrippina, anticipating tricks of this kind, had armed
+her constitution against them, like Mithridates; and daily took potent
+antidotes and prophylactics. Or else (which is more probable) the
+emperor's agent in such purposes, fearing his sudden repentance and
+remorse on first hearing of his mother's death, or possibly even
+witnessing her agonies, had composed a poison of inferior strength. This
+had certainly occurred in the case of Britannicus, who had thrown off
+with ease the first dose administered to him by Nero. Upon which he
+had summoned to his presence the woman employed in the affair, and
+compelling her by threats to mingle a more powerful potion in his own
+presence, had tried it successively upon different animals, until he
+was satisfied with its effects; after which, immediately inviting
+Britannicus to a banquet, he had finally dispatched him. On Agrippina,
+however, no changes in the poison, whether of kind or strength, had
+any effect; so that, after various trials, this mode of murder was
+abandoned, and the emperor addressed himself to other plans. The first
+of these was some curious mechanical device, by which a false ceiling
+was to have been suspended by bolts above her bed; and in the middle
+of the night, the bolt being suddenly drawn, a vast weight would have
+descended with a ruinous destruction to all below. This scheme, however,
+taking air from the indiscretion of some amongst the accomplices,
+reached the ears of Agrippina; upon which the old lady looked about
+her too sharply to leave much hope in that scheme: so _that_ also was
+abandoned. Next, he conceived the idea of an artificial ship, which, at
+the touch of a few springs, might fall to pieces in deep water. Such
+a ship was prepared, and stationed at a suitable point. But the main
+difficulty remained, which was to persuade the old lady to go on board.
+Not that she knew in this case _who_ had been the ship-builder, for that
+would have ruined all; but it seems that she took it ill to be hunted in
+this murderous spirit, and was out of humor with her son; besides, that
+any proposal coming from him, though previously indifferent to her,
+would have instantly become suspected. To meet this difficulty, a sort
+of reconciliation was proposed, and a very affectionate message sent,
+which had the effect of throwing Agrippina off her guard, and seduced
+her to Baiae for the purpose of joining the emperor's party at a great
+banquet held in commemoration of a solemn festival. She came by water
+in a sort of light frigate, and was to return in the same way. Meantime
+Nero tampered with the commander of her vessel, and prevailed upon him
+to wreck it. What was to be done? The great lady was anxious to
+return to Rome, and no proper conveyance was at hand. Suddenly it
+was suggested, as if by chance, that a ship of the emperor's, new and
+properly equipped, was moored at a neighboring station. This was readily
+accepted by Agrippina: the emperor accompanied her to the place of
+embarkation, took a most tender leave of her, and saw her set sail.
+It was necessary that the vessel should get into deep water before the
+experiment could be made; and with the utmost agitation this pious son
+awaited news of the result. Suddenly a messenger rushed breathless
+into his presence, and horrified him by the joyful information that his
+august mother had met with an alarming accident; but, by the blessing
+of Heaven, had escaped safe and sound, and was now on her road to mingle
+congratulations with her affectionate son. The ship, it seems, had done
+its office; the mechanism had played admirably; but who can provide for
+every thing? The old lady, it turned out, could swim like a duck; and
+the whole result had been to refresh her with a little sea-bathing. Here
+was worshipful intelligence. Could any man's temper be expected to stand
+such continued sieges? Money, and trouble, and infinite contrivance,
+wasted upon one old woman, who absolutely would not, upon any terms, be
+murdered! Provoking it certainly was; and of a man like Nero it could
+not be expected that he should any longer dissemble his disgust, or put
+up with such repeated affronts. He rushed upon his simple congratulating
+friend, swore that he had come to murder him, and as nobody could have
+suborned him but Agrippina, he ordered her off to instant execution.
+And, unquestionably, if people will not be murdered quietly and in a
+civil way, they must expect that such forbearance is not to continue for
+ever; and obviously have themselves only to blame for any harshness or
+violence which they may have rendered necessary.
+
+It is singular, and shocking at the same time, to mention, that, for
+this atrocity, Nero did absolutely receive solemn congratulations from
+all orders of men. With such evidences of base servility in the public
+mind, and of the utter corruption which they had sustained in their
+elementary feelings, it is the less astonishing that he should have
+made other experiments upon the public patience, which seem expressly
+designed to try how much it would support. Whether he were really the
+author of the desolating fire which consumed Rome for six [Footnote:
+But a memorial stone, in its inscription, makes the time longer: "Quando
+urbs per novem dies arsit Neronianis temporibus."] days and seven
+nights, and drove the mass of the people into the tombs and sepulchres
+for shelter, is yet a matter of some doubt. But one great presumption
+against it, founded on its desperate imprudence, as attacking the people
+in their primary comforts, is considerably weakened by the enormous
+servility of the Romans in the case just stated: they who could
+volunteer congratulations to a son for butchering his mother, (no matter
+on what pretended suspicions,) might reasonably be supposed incapable of
+any resistance which required courage even in a case of self-defence,
+or of just revenge. The direct reasons, however, for implicating him in
+this affair, seem at present insufficient. He was displeased, it seems,
+with the irregularity and unsightliness of the antique buildings,
+and also with the streets, as too narrow and winding, (_angustiis
+flexurisque vicorum_.) But in this he did but express what was no
+doubt the common judgment of all his contemporaries, who had seen the
+beautiful cities of Greece and Asia Minor. The Rome of that time was
+in many parts built of wood; and there is much probability that it must
+have been a _picturesque_ city, and in parts almost grotesque. But it
+is remarkable, and a fact which we have nowhere seen noticed, that the
+ancients, whether Greeks or Romans, had no eye for the picturesque; nay,
+that it was a sense utterly unawakened amongst them; and that the
+very conception of the picturesque, as of a thing distinct from the
+beautiful, is not once alluded to through the whole course of ancient
+literature, nor would it have been intelligible to any ancient critic;
+so that, whatever attraction for the eye might exist in the Rome of
+that day, there is little doubt that it was of a kind to be felt only
+by modern spectators. Mere dissatisfaction with its external appearance,
+which must have been a pretty general sentiment, argued, therefore, no
+necessary purpose of destroying it. Certainly it would be a weightier
+ground of suspicion, if it were really true, that some of his agents
+were detected on the premises of different senators in the act of
+applying combustibles to their mansions. But this story wears a very
+fabulous air. For why resort to the private dwellings of great men,
+where any intruder was sure of attracting notice, when the same effect,
+and with the same deadly results, might have been attained quietly and
+secretly in so many of the humble Roman _coenacula_?
+
+The great loss on this memorable occasion was in the heraldic and
+ancestral honors of the city. Historic Rome then went to wreck for
+ever. Then perished the _domus priscorum ducum hostilibus adhuc spoliis
+adornatae_; the "rostral" palace; the mansion of the Pompeys; the
+Blenheims and the Strathfieldsays of the Scipios, the Marcelli, the
+Paulli, and the Caesars; then perished the aged trophies from Carthage
+and from Gaul; and, in short, as the historian sums up the lamentable
+desolation, "_quidquid visendum atque memorabile ex antiquitate
+duraverat_." And this of itself might lead one to suspect the emperor's
+hand as the original agent; for by no one act was it possible so
+entirely and so suddenly to wean the people from their old republican
+recollections, and in one week to obliterate the memorials of their
+popular forces, and the trophies of many ages. The old people of Rome
+were gone; their characteristic dress even was gone; for already in the
+time of Augustus they had laid aside the _toga_, and assumed the cheaper
+and scantier _paenula_, so that the eye sought in vain for Virgil's
+
+  "Romanes rerum dominos gentemque _togatam_."
+
+Why, then, after all the constituents of Roman grandeur had passed away,
+should their historical trophies survive, recalling to them the scenes
+of departed heroism, in which they had no personal property, and
+suggesting to them vain hopes, which for them were never to be other
+than chimeras? Even in that sense, therefore, and as a great depository
+of heart-stirring historical remembrances, Rome was profitably
+destroyed; and in any other sense, whether for health or for the
+conveniences of polished life, or for architectural magnificence,
+there never was a doubt that the Roman people gained infinitely by this
+conflagration. For, like London, it arose from its ashes with a splendor
+proportioned to its vast expansion of wealth and population; and marble
+took the place of wood. For the moment, however, this event must have
+been felt by the people as an overwhelming calamity. And it serves to
+illustrate the passive endurance and timidity of the popular temper, and
+to what extent it might be provoked with impunity, that in this state
+of general irritation and effervescence, Nero absolutely forbade them
+to meddle with the ruins of their own dwellings--taking that charge
+upon himself, with a view to the vast wealth which he anticipated
+from sifting the rubbish. And, as if that mode of plunder were not
+sufficient, he exacted compulsory contributions to the rebuilding of the
+city so indiscriminately, as to press heavily upon all men's finances;
+and thus, in the public account which universally imputed the fire to
+him, he was viewed as a twofold robber, who sought to heal one calamity
+by the infliction of another and a greater.
+
+The monotony of wickedness and outrage becomes at length fatiguing
+to the coarsest and most callous senses; and the historian, even, who
+caters professedly for the taste which feeds upon the monstrous and the
+hyperbolical, is glad at length to escape from the long evolution of
+his insane atrocities, to the striking and truly scenical catastrophe of
+retribution which overtook them, and avenged the wrongs of an insulted
+world. Perhaps history contains no more impressive scenes than those in
+which the justice of Providence at length arrested the monstrous career
+of Nero.
+
+It was at Naples, and, by a remarkable fatality, on the very anniversary
+of his mother's murder, that he received the first intelligence of the
+revolt in Gaul under the Propraetor Vindex. This news for about a week he
+treated with levity; and, like Henry VII. of England, who was nettled,
+not so much at being proclaimed a rebel, as because he was described
+under the slighting denomination of "one Henry Tidder or Tudor," he
+complained bitterly that Vindex had mentioned him by his family name of
+AEnobarbus, rather than his assumed one of Nero. But much more keenly he
+resented the insulting description of himself as a "miserable harper,"
+appealing to all about him whether they had ever known a better, and
+offering to stake the truth of all the other charges against himself
+upon the accuracy of this in particular. So little even in this instance
+was he alive to the true point of the insult; not thinking it any
+disgrace that a Roman emperor should be chiefly known to the world in
+the character of a harper, but only if he should happen to be a bad one.
+Even in those days, however, imperfect as were the means of travelling,
+rebellion moved somewhat too rapidly to allow any long interval of
+security so light-minded as this. One courier followed upon the heels of
+another, until he felt the necessity for leaving Naples; and he returned
+to Rome, as the historian says, _praetrepidus_; by which word, however,
+according to its genuine classical acceptation, we apprehend is not
+meant that he was highly alarmed, but only that he was in a great hurry.
+That he was not yet under any real alarm (for he trusted in certain
+prophecies, which, like those made to the Scottish tyrant "kept the
+promise to the ear, but broke it to the sense,") is pretty evident,
+from his conduct on reaching the capitol. For, without any appeal to
+the senate or the people, but sending out a few summonses to some men of
+rank, he held a hasty council, which he speedily dismissed, and occupied
+the rest of the day with experiments on certain musical instruments
+of recent invention, in which the keys were moved by hydraulic
+contrivances. He had come to Rome, it appeared, merely from a sense of
+decorum.
+
+Suddenly, however, arrived news, which fell upon him with the force of a
+thunderbolt, that the revolt had extended to the Spanish provinces, and
+was headed by Galba. He fainted upon hearing this; and falling to the
+ground, lay for a long time lifeless, as it seemed, and speechless.
+Upon coming to himself again, he tore his robe, struck his forehead, and
+exclaimed aloud--that for him all was over. In this agony of mind,
+it strikes across the utter darkness of the scene with the sense of a
+sudden and cheering flash, recalling to us the possible goodness and
+fidelity of human nature--when we read that one humble creature adhered
+to him, and, according to her slender means, gave him consolation during
+these trying moments; this was the woman who had tended his infant
+years; and she now recalled to his remembrance such instances of
+former princes in adversity, as appeared fitted to sustain his drooping
+spirits. It seems, however, that, according to the general course of
+violent emotions, the rebound of high spirits was in proportion to
+his first despondency. He omitted nothing of his usual luxury or
+self-indulgence, and he even found spirits for going _incognito_ to the
+theatre, where he took sufficient interest in the public performances,
+to send a message to a favorite actor. At times, even in this hopeless
+situation, his native ferocity returned upon him, and he was believed to
+have framed plans for removing all his enemies at once--the leaders of
+the rebellion, by appointing successors to their offices, and secretly
+sending assassins to dispatch their persons; the senate, by poison at a
+great banquet; the Gaulish provinces, by delivering them up for pillage
+to the army; the city, by again setting it on fire, whilst, at the same
+time, a vast number of wild beasts was to have been turned loose upon
+the unarmed populace--for the double purpose of destroying them, and
+of distracting their attention from the fire. But, as the mood of his
+frenzy changed, these sanguinary schemes were abandoned, (not, however,
+under any feelings of remorse, but from mere despair of effecting them,)
+and on the same day, but after a luxurious dinner, the imperial monster
+grew bland and pathetic in his ideas; he would proceed to the rebellious
+army; he would present himself unarmed to their view; and would recall
+them to their duty by the mere spectacle of his tears. Upon the pathos
+with which he would weep he was resolved to rely entirely. And having
+received the guilty to his mercy without distinction, upon the following
+day he would unite _his_ joy with _their_ joy, and would chant hymns of
+victory (_epinicia_)--"which by the way," said he, suddenly, breaking
+off to his favorite pursuits, "it is necessary that I should immediately
+compose." This caprice vanished like the rest; and he made an effort
+to enlist the slaves and citizens into his service, and to raise by
+extortion a large military chest. But in the midst of these vascillating
+purposes fresh tidings surprised him--other armies had revolted, and the
+rebellion was spreading contagiously. This consummation of his alarms
+reached him at dinner; and the expressions of his angry fears took even
+a scenical air; he tore the dispatches, upset the table, and dashed to
+pieces upon the ground two crystal beakers--which had a high value
+as works of art, even in the _Aurea Domus_, from the sculptures which
+adorned them.
+
+He now prepared for flight; and, sending forward commissioners to
+prepare the fleet at Ostia for his reception, he tampered with such
+officers of the army as were at hand, to prevail upon them to accompany
+his retreat. But all showed themselves indisposed to such schemes, and
+some flatly refused. Upon which he turned to other counsels; sometimes
+meditating a flight to the King of Parthia, or even to throw himself on
+the mercy of Galba; sometimes inclining rather to the plan of venturing
+into the forum in mourning apparel, begging pardon for his past
+offences, and, as a last resource, entreating that he might receive the
+appointment of Egyptian prefect. This plan, however, he hesitated to
+adopt, from some apprehension that he should be torn to pieces in his
+road to the forum; and, at all events, he concluded to postpone it
+to the following day. Meantime events were now hurrying to their
+catastrophe, which for ever anticipated that intention. His hours were
+numbered, and the closing scene was at hand.
+
+In the middle of the night he was aroused from slumber with the
+intelligence that the military guard, who did duty at the palace, had
+all quited their posts. Upon this the unhappy prince leaped from
+his couch, never again to taste the luxury of sleep, and dispatched
+messengers to his friends. No answers were returned; and upon that he
+went personally with a small retinue to their hotels. But he found their
+doors every where closed; and all his importunities could not avail to
+extort an answer. Sadly and slowly he returned to his own bedchamber;
+but there again he found fresh instances of desertion, which had
+occurred during his short absence; the pages of his bedchamber had
+fled, carrying with them the coverlids of the imperial bed, which were
+probably inwrought with gold, and even a golden box, in which Nero
+had on the preceding day deposited poison prepared against the last
+extremity. Wounded to the heart by this general desertion, and perhaps
+by some special case of ingratitude, such as would probably enough be
+signalized in the flight of his personal favorites, he called for
+a gladiator of the household to come and dispatch him. But none
+appearing,--"What!" said he, "have I neither friend nor foe?" And so
+saying, he ran towards the Tiber, with the purpose of drowning himself.
+But that paroxysm, like all the rest, proved transient; and he expressed
+a wish for some hiding-place, or momentary asylum, in which he might
+collect his unsettled spirits, and fortify his wandering resolution.
+Such a retreat was offered to him by his _libertus_ Phaon, in his own
+rural villa, about four miles distant from Rome. The offer was accepted;
+and the emperor, without further preparation than that of throwing over
+his person a short mantle of a dusky hue, and enveloping his head and
+face in a handkerchief, mounted his horse, and left Rome with four
+attendants. It was still night, but probably verging towards the early
+dawn; and even at that hour the imperial party met some travellers on
+their way to Rome (coming up, no doubt, [Footnote: At this early hour,
+witnesses, sureties, &c., and all concerned in the law courts, came up
+to Rome from villas, country towns, &c. But no ordinary call existed
+to summon travellers in the opposite direction; which accounts for the
+comment of the travellers on the errand of Nero and his attendants.]
+on law business)--who said, as they passed, "These men are certainly
+in chase of Nero." Two other incidents, of an interesting nature, are
+recorded of this short but memorable ride; at one point of the road,
+the shouts of the soldiery assailed their ears from the neighboring
+encampment of Galba. They were probably then getting under arms for
+their final march to take possession of the palace. At another point, an
+accident occurred of a more unfortunate kind, but so natural and so well
+circumstantiated, that it serves to verify the whole narrative; a dead
+body was lying on the road, at which the emperor's horse started so
+violently as nearly to dismount his rider, and under the difficulty
+of the moment compelled him to withdraw the hand which held up the
+handkerchief, and suddenly to expose his features. Precisely at this
+critical moment it happened that an old half-pay officer passed,
+recognised the emperor, and saluted him. Perhaps it was with some
+purpose of applying a remedy to this unfortunate rencontre, that the
+party dismounted at a point where several roads met, and turned their
+horses adrift to graze at will amongst the furze and brambles. Their
+own purpose was, to make their way to the back of the villa; but,
+to accomplish that, it was necessary that they should first cross
+a plantation of reeds, from the peculiar state of which they found
+themselves obliged to cover successively each space upon which they
+trode with parts of their dress, in order to gain any supportable
+footing. In this way, and contending with such hardships, they reached
+at length the postern side of the villa. Here we must suppose that
+there was no regular ingress; for, after waiting until an entrance was
+pierced, it seems that the emperor could avail himself of it in no more
+dignified posture, than by creeping through the hole on his hands and
+feet, (_quadrupes per angustias receptus_.)
+
+Now, then, after such anxiety, alarm, and hardship, Nero had reached a
+quiet rural asylum. But for the unfortunate concurrence of his horse's
+alarm with the passing of the soldier, he might perhaps have counted on
+a respite of a day or two in this noiseless and obscure abode. But what
+a habitation for him who was yet ruler of the world in the eye of law,
+and even _de facto_ was so, had any fatal accident befallen his aged
+competitor! The room in which (as the one most removed from notice and
+suspicion) he had secreted himself, was a cella, or little sleeping
+closet of a slave, furnished only with a miserable pallet and a coarse
+rug. Here lay the founder and possessor of the Golden House, too happy
+if he might hope for the peaceable possession even of this miserable
+crypt. But that, he knew too well, was impossible. A rival pretender to
+the empire was like the plague of fire--as dangerous in the shape of
+a single spark left unextinguished, as in that of a prosperous
+conflagration. But a few brief sands yet remained to run in the
+emperor's hour-glass; much variety of degradation or suffering seemed
+scarcely within the possibilities of his situation, or within the
+compass of the time. Yet, as though Providence had decreed that
+his humiliation should pass through every shape, and speak by every
+expression which came home to his understanding, or was intelligible
+to his senses, even in these few moments he was attacked by hunger and
+thirst. No other bread could be obtained (or, perhaps, if the emperor's
+presence were concealed from the household, it was not safe to raise
+suspicion by calling for better) than that which was ordinarily given
+to slaves, coarse, black, and, to a palate so luxurious, doubtless
+disgusting. This accordingly he rejected; but a little tepid water
+he drank. After which, with the haste of one who fears that he may be
+prematurely interrupted, but otherwise, with all the reluctance which
+we may imagine, and which his streaming tears proclaimed, he addressed
+himself to the last labor in which he supposed himself to have any
+interest on this earth--that of digging a grave. Measuring a space
+adjusted to the proportions of his person, he inquired anxiously for
+any loose fragments of marble, such as might suffice to line it. He
+requested also to be furnished with wood and water, as the materials
+for the last sepulchral rites. And these labors were accompanied, or
+continually interrupted by tears and lamentations, or by passionate
+ejaculations on the blindness of fortune, in suffering so divine an
+artist to be thus violently snatched away, and on the calamitous fate of
+musical science, which then stood on the brink of so dire an eclipse. In
+these moments he was most truly in an _agony_, according to the original
+meaning of that word; for the conflict was great between two master
+principles of his nature: on the one hand, he clung with the weakness of
+a girl to life, even in that miserable shape to which it had now sunk;
+and like the poor malefactor, with whose last struggles Prior has so
+atrociously amused himself, "he often took leave, but was loath to
+depart." Yet, on the other hand, to resign his life very speedily,
+seemed his only chance for escaping the contumelies, perhaps the
+tortures, of his enemies; and, above all other considerations, for
+making sure of a burial, and possibly of burial rites; to want which, in
+the judgment of the ancients, was the last consummation of misery. Thus
+occupied, and thus distracted--sternly attracted to the grave by his
+creed, hideously repelled by infirmity of nature--he was suddenly
+interrupted by a courier with letters for the master of the house;
+letters, and from Rome! What was their import? That was soon
+told--briefly that Nero was adjudged to be a public enemy by the senate,
+and that official orders were issued for apprehending him, in order that
+he might be brought to condign punishment according to the method of
+ancient precedent. Ancient precedent! _more majorum!_ And how was that?
+eagerly demanded the emperor. He was answered--that the state criminal
+in such cases was first stripped naked, then impaled as it were between
+the prongs of a pitchfork, and in that condition scourged to death.
+Horror-struck with this account, he drew forth two poniards, or short
+swords, tried their edges, and then, in utter imbecility of purpose,
+returned them to their scabbards, alleging that the destined moment had
+not yet arrived. Then he called upon Sporus, the infamous partner in
+his former excesses, to commence the funeral anthem. Others, again, he
+besought to lead the way in dying, and to sustain him by the spectacle
+of their example. But this purpose also he dismissed in the very moment
+of utterance; and turning away despairingly, he apostrophized himself in
+words reproachful or animating, now taxing his nature with infirmity of
+purpose, now calling on himself by name, with adjurations to remember
+his dignity, and to act worthy of his supreme station: _ou prepei
+Neroni_, cried he, _ou prepeu naephein dei en tois toidaetois ale, eleire
+seauton_--i.e. "Fie, fie, then Nero! such a season calls for perfect
+self-possession. Up, then, and rouse thyself to action."
+
+Thus, and in similar efforts to master the weakness of his reluctant
+nature--weakness which would extort pity from the severest minds, were
+it not from the odious connection which in him it had with cruelty
+the most merciless--did this unhappy prince, _jam non salutis spem sed
+exitii solatium quaerens_, consume the flying moments, until at length
+his ears caught the fatal sounds or echoes from a body of horsemen
+riding up to the villa. These were the officers charged with his arrest;
+and if he should fall into their hands alive, he knew that his last
+chance was over for liberating himself, by a Roman death, from the
+burthen of ignominious life, and from a lingering torture. He paused
+from his restless motions, listened attentively, then repeated a line
+from Homer--
+
+  Ippon m' ochupodon amphi chtupos ouata ballei
+
+(The resounding tread of swift-footed horses reverberates upon my
+ears);--then under some momentary impulse of courage, gained perhaps by
+figuring to himself the bloody populace rioting upon his mangled body,
+yet even then needing the auxiliary hand and vicarious courage of his
+private secretary, the feeble-hearted prince stabbed himself in the
+throat. The wound, however, was not such as to cause instant death. He
+was still breathing, and not quite speechless, when the centurion who
+commanded the party entered the closet; and to this officer, who uttered
+a few hollow words of encouragement, he was still able to make a brief
+reply. But in the very effort of speaking he expired, and with an
+expression of horror impressed upon his stiffened features, which
+communicated a sympathetic horror to all beholders.
+
+Such was the too memorable tragedy which closed for ever the brilliant
+line of the Julian family, and translated the august title of Caesar
+from its original purpose as a proper name to that of an official
+designation. It is the most striking instance upon record of a dramatic
+and extreme vengeance overtaking extreme guilt; for, as Nero had
+exhausted the utmost possibilities of crime, so it may be affirmed that
+he drank off the cup of suffering to the very extremity of what his
+peculiar nature allowed. And in no life of so short a duration, have
+there ever been crowded equal extremities of gorgeous prosperity and
+abject infamy. It may be added, as another striking illustration of the
+rapid mutability and revolutionary excesses which belonged to what
+has been properly called the Roman _stratocracy_ then disposing of
+the world, that within no very great succession of weeks that same
+victorious rebel, the Emperor Galba, at whose feet Nero had been
+self-immolated, was laid a murdered corpse in the same identical cell
+which had witnessed the lingering agonies of his unhappy victim. This
+was the act of an emancipated slave, anxious, by a vindictive insult to
+the remains of one prince, to place on record his gratitude to another.
+"So runs the world away!" And in this striking way is retribution
+sometimes dispensed.
+
+In the sixth Caesar terminated the Julian line. The three next princes in
+the succession were personally uninteresting; and, with a slight
+reserve in favor of Otho, whose motives for committing suicide (if truly
+reported) argue great nobility of mind, [Footnote: We may add that the
+unexampled public grief which followed the death of Otho, exceeding
+even that which followed the death of Germanicus, and causing several
+officers to commit suicide, implies some remarkable goodness in this
+Prince, and a very unusual power of conciliating attachment.] were
+even brutal in the tenor of their lives and monstrous; besides that the
+extreme brevity of their several reigns (all three, taken conjunctly,
+having held the supreme power for no more than twelve months and twenty
+days) dismisses them from all effectual station or right to a separate
+notice in the line of Caesars. Coming to the tenth in succession,
+Vespasian, and his two sons, Titus and Domitian, who make up the list of
+the twelve Caesars, as they are usually called, we find matter for
+deeper political meditation and subjects of curious research. But
+these emperors would be more properly classed with the five who succeed
+them--Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines; after whom comes
+the young ruffian, Commodus, another Caligula or Nero, from whose
+short and infamous reign Gibbon takes up his tale of the decline of the
+empire. And this classification would probably have prevailed, had
+not the very curious work of Suetonius, whose own life and period of
+observation determined the series and cycle of his subjects, led to a
+different distribution. But as it is evident that, in the succession of
+the first twelve Caesars, the six latter have no connection whatever by
+descent, collaterally, or otherwise, with the six first, it would be a
+more logical distribution to combine them according to the fortunes
+of the state itself, and the succession of its prosperity through the
+several stages of splendor, declension, revival, and final decay. Under
+this arrangement, the first seventeen would belong to the first stage;
+Commodus would open the second; Aurelian down to Constantine or Julian
+would fill the third; and Jovian to Augustulus would bring up the
+melancholy rear. Meantime it will be proper, after thus briefly throwing
+our eyes over the monstrous atrocities of the early Caesars, to spend a
+few lines in examining their origin, and the circumstances which favored
+their growth. For a mere hunter after hidden or forgotten singularities;
+a lover on their own account of all strange perversities and freaks
+of nature, whether in action, taste, or opinion; for a collector and
+amateur of misgrowths and abortions; for a Suetonius, in short, it may
+be quite enough to state and to arrange his cabinet of specimens from
+the marvellous in human nature. But certainly in modern times, any
+historian, however little affecting the praise of a philosophic
+investigator, would feel himself called upon to remove a little
+the taint of the miraculous and preternatural which adheres to
+such anecdotes, by entering into the psychological grounds of their
+possibility; whether lying in any peculiarly vicious education, early
+familiarity with bad models, corrupting associations, or other plausible
+key to effects, which, taken separately, and out of their natural
+connection with their explanatory causes, are apt rather to startle and
+revolt the feelings of sober thinkers. Except, perhaps, in some chapters
+of Italian history, as, for example, among the most profligate of the
+Papal houses, and amongst some of the Florentine princes, we find hardly
+any parallel to the atrocities of Caligula and Nero; nor indeed was
+Tiberius much (if at all) behind them, though otherwise so wary and
+cautious in his conduct. The same tenor of licentiousness beyond the
+needs of the individual, the same craving after the marvellous and the
+stupendous in guilt, is continually emerging in succeeding emperors--in
+Vitellius, in Domitian, in Commodus, in Caracalla--every where, in
+short, where it was not overruled by one of two causes, either by
+original goodness of nature too powerful to be mastered by ordinary
+seductions, (and in some cases removed from their influence by an
+early apprenticeship to camps,) or by the terrors of an exemplary ruin
+immediately preceding. For such a determinate tendency to the enormous
+and the anomalous, sufficient causes must exist. What were they?
+
+In the first place, we may observe that the people of Rome in that
+age were generally more corrupt by many degrees than has been usually
+supposed possible. The effect of revolutionary times, to relax all modes
+of moral obligation, and to unsettle the moral sense, has been well and
+philosophically stated by Mr. Coleridge; but that would hardly account
+for the utter licentiousness and depravity of Imperial Rome. Looking
+back to Republican Rome, and considering the state of public morals but
+fifty years before the emperors, we can with difficulty believe that
+the descendants of a people so severe in their habits could thus rapidly
+degenerate, and that a populace, once so hardy and masculine, should
+assume the manners which we might expect in the debauchees of Daphne
+(the infamous suburb of Antioch) or of Canopus, into which settled the
+very lees and dregs of the vicious Alexandria. Such extreme changes
+would falsify all that we know of human nature; we might _a priori_
+pronounce them impossible; and in fact, upon searching history, we find
+other modes of solving the difficulty. In reality, the citizens of Rome
+were at this time a new race, brought together from every quarter of
+the world, but especially from Asia. So vast a proportion of the ancient
+citizens had been cut off by the sword, and partly to conceal this waste
+of population, but much more by way of cheaply requiting services, or of
+showing favor, or of acquiring influence, slaves had been emancipated
+in such great multitudes, and afterwards invested with all the rights
+of citizens, that, in a single generation, Rome became almost transmuted
+into a baser metal; the progeny of those whom the last generation had
+purchased from the slave merchants. These people derived their stock
+chiefly from Cappadocia, Pontus, &c., and the other populous regions of
+Asia Minor; and hence the taint of Asiatic luxury and depravity, which
+was so conspicuous to all the Romans of the old republican severity.
+Juvenal is to be understood more literally than is sometimes supposed,
+when he complains that long before his time the Orontes (that river
+which washed the infamous capital of Syria) had mingled its impure
+waters with those of the Tiber. And a little before him, Lucan speaks
+with mere historic gravity when he says--
+
+  ------"Vivant Galataeque Syrique
+  Cappadoces, Gallique, extremique orbis Iberi,
+  Armenii, Cilices: _nam post civilia bella
+  Hic Populus Romanus erit_."
+
+[Footnote: Blackwell, in his Court of Augustus, vol. i. p. 382, when
+noticing these lines upon occasion of the murder of Cicero, in the final
+proscription under the last triumvirate, comments thus: "Those of the
+greatest and truly Roman spirit had been murdered in the field by
+Julius Caesar; the rest were now massacred in the city by his son and
+successors; in their room came Syrians, Cappadocians, Phrygians, and
+other enfranchised slaves from the conquered nations;"--"these in half
+a century had sunk so low, that Tiberius pronounced her very senators to
+be _homines ad sermtutem natos_, men born to be slaves."]
+
+Probably in the time of Nero, not one man in six was of pure Roman
+descent. [Footnote: Suetonius indeed pretends that Augustus, personally
+at least, struggled against this ruinous practice--thinking it a matter
+of the highest moment, "Sincerum atque ab omni colluvione peregrini et
+servilis sanguinis incorruptum servare populum." And Horace is ready
+with his flatteries on the same topic, lib. 3, Od. 6. But the facts
+are against them; for the question is not what Augustus did in his
+own person, (which at most could not operate very widely except by the
+example,) but what he permitted to be done. Now there was a practice
+familiar to those times; that when a congiary or any other popular
+liberality was announced, multitudes were enfranchised by avaricious
+masters in order to make them capable of the bounty, (as citizens,) and
+yet under the condition of transferring to their emancipators whatsoever
+they should receive; _ina ton daemosios d domenon siton lambanontes
+chata maena--pherosi tois dedochasi taen eleutherian_ says Dionysius of
+Halicarnassus, in order that after receiving the corn given publicly
+in every month, they might carry it to those who had bestowed upon them
+their freedom. In a case, then, where an extensive practice of this
+kind was exposed to Augustus, and publicly reproved by him, how did he
+proceed? Did he reject the new-made citizens? No; he contented himself
+with diminishing the proportion originally destined for each, so that
+the same absolute sum being distributed among a number increased by the
+whole amount of the new enrolments, of necessity the relative sum for
+each separately was so much less. But this was a remedy applied only
+to the pecuniary fraud as it would have affected himself. The permanent
+mischief to the state went unredressed.] And the consequences were
+suitable. Scarcely a family has come down to our knowledge that could
+not in one generation enumerate a long catalogue of divorces within its
+own contracted circle. Every man had married a series of wives; every
+woman a series of husbands. Even in the palace of Augustus, who wished
+to be viewed as an _exemplar_ or ideal model of domestic purity, every
+principal member of his family was tainted in that way; himself in a
+manner and a degree infamous even at that time. [Footnote: Part of the
+story is well known, but not the whole. Tiberius Nero, a promising young
+nobleman, had recently married a very splendid beauty. Unfortunately for
+him, at the marriage of Octavia (sister to Augustus) with Mark Anthony,
+he allowed his young wife, then about eighteen, to attend upon the
+bride. Augustus was deeply and suddenly fascinated by her charms, and
+without further scruple sent a message to Nero--intimating that he was
+in love with his wife, and would thank him to resign her. The other,
+thinking it vain, in those days of lawless proscription, to contest a
+point of this nature with one who commanded twelve legions, obeyed the
+requisition. Upon some motive, now unknown, he was persuaded even to
+degrade himself farther; for he actually officiated at the marriage
+in character of father, and gave away the young beauty to his rival,
+although at that time six months advanced in pregnancy by himself. These
+humiliating concessions were extorted from him, and yielded (probably
+at the instigation of friends) in order to save his life. In the sequel
+they had the very opposite result; for he died soon after, and it is
+reasonably supposed of grief and mortification. At the marriage feast,
+an incident occurred which threw the whole company into confusion: A
+little boy, roving from couch to couch among the guests, came at length
+to that in which Livia (the bride) was lying by the side of Augustus,
+on which he cried out aloud,--"Lady, what are you doing here? You
+are mistaken--this is not your husband--he is there," (pointing to
+Tiberius,) "go, go--rise, lady, and recline beside _him_."] For the
+first 400 years of Rome, not one divorce had been granted or asked,
+although the statute which allowed of this indulgence had always been
+in force. But in the age succeeding to the civil wars men and women
+"married," says one author, "with a view to divorce, and divorced
+in order to marry. Many of these changes happened within the year,
+especially if the lady had a large fortune, which always went with her,
+and procured her choice of transient husbands." And, "can one imagine,"
+asks the same writer, "that the fair one, who changed her husband every
+quarter, strictly kept her matrimonial faith all the three months?" Thus
+the very fountain of all the "household charities" and household
+virtues was polluted. And after that we need little wonder at the
+assassinations, poisonings, and forging of wills, which then laid waste
+the domestic life of the Romans.
+
+2. A second source of the universal depravity was the growing inefficacy
+of the public religion; and this arose from its disproportion and
+inadequacy to the intellectual advances of the nation. _Religion_, in
+its very etymology, has been held to imply a _religatio_, that is, a
+reiterated or secondary obligation of morals; a sanction supplementary
+to that of the conscience. Now, for a rude and uncultivated people, the
+Pagan mythology might not be too gross to discharge the main functions
+of a useful religion. So long as the understanding could submit to the
+fables of the Pagan creed, so long it was possible that the hopes and
+fears built upon that creed might be practically efficient on men's
+lives and intentions. But when the foundation gave way, the whole
+superstructure of necessity fell to the ground. Those who were obliged
+to reject the ridiculous legends which invested the whole of their
+Pantheon, together with the fabulous adjudgers of future punishments,
+could not but dismiss the punishments, which were, in fact, as
+laughable, and as obviously the fictions of human ingenuity, as their
+dispensers. In short, the civilized part of the world in those days
+lay in this dreadful condition; their intellect had far outgrown their
+religion; the disproportions between the two were at length become
+monstrous; and as yet no purer or more elevated faith was prepared
+for their acceptance. The case was as shocking as if, with our present
+intellectual needs, we should be unhappy enough to have no creed on
+which to rest the burden of our final hopes and fears, of our moral
+obligations, and of our consolations in misery, except the fairy
+mythology of our nurses. The condition of a people so situated, of a
+people under the calamity of having outgrown its religious faith, has
+never been sufficiently considered. It is probable that such a
+condition has never existed before or since that era of the world. The
+consequences to Rome were--that the reasoning and disputatious part of
+her population took refuge from the painful state of doubt in Atheism;
+amongst the thoughtless and irreflective the consequences were chiefly
+felt in their morals, which were thus sapped in their foundation.
+
+3. A third cause, which from the first had exercised a most baleful
+influence upon the arts and upon literature in Rome, had by this time
+matured its disastrous tendencies towards the extinction of the moral
+sensibilities. This was the circus, and the whole machinery, form and
+substance, of the Circensian shows. Why had tragedy no existence as a
+part of the Roman literature? Because--and _that_ was a reason which
+would have sufficed to stifle all the dramatic genius of Greece and
+England--there was too much tragedy in the shape of gross reality,
+almost daily before their eyes. The amphitheatre extinguished the
+theatre. How was it possible that the fine and intellectual griefs of
+the drama should win their way to hearts seared and rendered callous
+by the continual exhibition of scenes the most hideous, in which human
+blood was poured out like water, and a human life sacrificed at any
+moment either to caprice in the populace, or to a strife of rivalry
+between the _ayes_ and the _noes_, or as the penalty for any trifling
+instance of awkwardness in the performer himself? Even the more innocent
+exhibitions, in which brutes only were the sufferers, could not but be
+mortal to all the finer sensibilities. Five thousand wild animals, torn
+from their native abodes in the wilderness or forest, were often turned
+out to be hunted, or for mutual slaughter, in the course of a single
+exhibition of this nature; and it sometimes happened, (a fact which of
+itself proclaims the course of the public propensities,) that the person
+at whose expense the shows were exhibited, by way of paying special
+court to the people and meriting their favor, in the way most
+conspicuously open to him, issued orders that all, without a solitary
+exception, should be slaughtered. He made it known, as the very highest
+gratification which the case allowed, that (in the language of our
+modern auctioneers) the whole, "without reserve," should perish before
+their eyes. Even such spectacles must have hardened the heart, and
+blunted the more delicate sensibilities; but these would soon cease to
+stimulate the pampered and exhausted sense. From the combats of tigers
+or leopards, in which the passions could only be gathered indirectly,
+and by way of inference from the motions, the transition must have been
+almost inevitable to those of men, whose nobler and more varied passions
+spoke directly, and by the intelligible language of the eye, to human
+spectators; and from the frequent contemplation of these authorized
+murders, in which a whole people, women [Footnote: Augustus, indeed,
+strove to exclude the women from one part of the circension spectacles;
+and what was that? Simply from the sight of the _Athletae_, as being
+naked. But that they should witness the pangs of the dying gladiators,
+he deemed quite allowable. The smooth barbarian considered; that a
+license of the first sort offended against decorum, whilst the other
+violated only the sanctities of the human heart, and the whole sexual
+character of women. It is our opinion, that to the brutalizing effect of
+these exhibitions we are to ascribe not only the early extinction of the
+Roman drama, but generally the inferiority of Rome to Greece in every
+department of the fine arts. The fine temper of Roman sensibility, which
+no culture could have brought to the level of the Grecian, was
+thus dulled for _every_ application.] as much as men, and children
+intermingled with both, looked on with leisurely indifference, with
+anxious expectation, or with rapturous delight, whilst below them were
+passing the direct sufferings of humanity, and not seldom its dying
+pangs, it was impossible to expect a result different from that
+which did in fact take place,--universal hardness of heart, obdurate
+depravity, and a twofold degradation of human nature, which acted
+simultaneously upon the two pillars of morality, (which are otherwise
+not often assailed together,) of natural sensibility in the first place,
+and, in the second, of conscientious principle.
+
+4. But these were circumstances which applied to the whole population
+indiscriminately. Superadded to these, in the case of the emperor, and
+affecting _him_ exclusively, was this prodigious disadvantage--that
+ancient reverence for the immediate witnesses of his actions, and for
+the people and senate who would under other circumstances have exercised
+the old functions of the censor, was, as to the emperor, pretty nearly
+obliterated. The very title of _imperator_, from which we have derived
+our modern one of _emperor_, proclaims the nature of the government, and
+the tenure of that office. It was purely a government by the sword, or
+permanent _stratocracy_ having a movable head. Never was there a people
+who inquired so impertinently as the Romans into the domestic conduct
+of each private citizen. No rank escaped this jealous vigilance; and
+private liberty, even in the most indifferent circumstances of taste or
+expense, was sacrificed to this inquisitorial rigor of _surveillance_
+exercised on behalf of the State, sometimes by erroneous patriotism, too
+often by malice in disguise. To this spirit the highest public officers
+were obliged to bow; the consuls, not less than others. And even the
+occasional dictator, if by law irresponsible, acted nevertheless as one
+who knew that any change which depressed his party, might eventually
+abrogate his privilege. For the first time in the person of an imperator
+was seen a supreme autocrat, who had virtually and effectively all the
+irresponsibility which the law assigned, and the origin of his office
+presumed. Satisfied to know that he possessed such power, Augustus,
+as much from natural taste as policy, was glad to dissemble it, and by
+every means to withdraw it from public notice. But he had passed his
+youth as citizen of a republic; and in the state of transition to
+autocracy, in his office of triumvir, had experimentally known the
+perils of rivalship, and the pains of foreign control, too feelingly
+to provoke unnecessarily any sleeping embers of the republican spirit.
+Tiberius, though familiar from his infancy with the servile homage of a
+court, was yet modified by the popular temper of Augustus; and he came
+late to the throne. Caligula was the first prince on whom the entire
+effect of his political situation was allowed to operate; and the
+natural results were seen--he was the first absolute monster. He must
+early have seen the realities of his position, and from what quarter it
+was that any cloud could arise to menace his security. To the senate or
+people any respect which he might think proper to pay, must have been
+imputed by all parties to the lingering superstitions of custom, to
+involuntary habit, to court dissimulation, or to the decencies of
+external form, and the prescriptive reverence of ancient names. But
+neither senate nor people could enforce their claims, whatever they
+might happen to be. Their sanction and ratifying vote might be worth
+having, as consecrating what was already secure, and conciliating the
+scruples of the weak to the absolute decision of the strong. But their
+resistance, as an original movement, was so wholly without hope, that
+they were never weak enough to threaten it.
+
+The army was the true successor to their places, being the _ultimate_
+depository of power. Yet, as the army was necessarily subdivided, as the
+shifting circumstances upon every frontier were continually varying the
+strength of the several divisions as to numbers and state of discipline,
+one part might be balanced against the other by an imperator standing
+in the centre of the whole. The rigor of the military _sacramentum_, or
+oath of allegiance, made it dangerous to offer the first overtures to
+rebellion; and the money, which the soldiers were continually depositing
+in the bank, placed at the foot of their military standards, if
+sometimes turned against the emperor, was also liable to be sequestrated
+in his favor. There were then, in fact, two great forces in the
+government acting in and by each other--the Stratocracy, and the
+Autocracy. Each needed the other; each stood in awe of each. But, as
+regarded all other forces in the empire, constitutional or irregular,
+popular or senatorial, neither had any thing to fear. Under any ordinary
+circumstances, therefore, considering the hazards of a rebellion, the
+emperor was substantially liberated from all control. Vexations or
+outrages upon the populace were not such to the army. It was but rarely
+that the soldier participated in the emotions of the citizen. And thus,
+being effectually without check, the most vicious of the Caesars went on
+without fear, presuming upon the weakness of one part of his subjects,
+and the indifference of the other, until he was tempted onwards to
+atrocities, which armed against him the common feelings of human
+nature, and all mankind, as it were, rose in a body with one voice, and
+apparently with one heart, united by mere force of indignant sympathy,
+to put him down, and "abate" him as a monster. But, until he brought
+matters to this extremity, Caesar had no cause to fear. Nor was it at all
+certain, in any one instance, where this exemplary chastisement overtook
+him, that the apparent unanimity of the actors went further than the
+_practical_ conclusion of "abating" the imperial nuisance, or that their
+indignation had settled upon the same offences. In general the army
+measured the guilt by the public scandal, rather than by its moral
+atrocity; and Caesar suffered perhaps in every case, not so much because
+he had violated his duties, as because he had dishonored his office.
+
+It is, therefore, in the total absence of the checks which have almost
+universally existed to control other despots, under some indirect shape,
+even where none was provided by the laws, that we must seek for the
+main peculiarity affecting the condition of the Roman Caesar, which
+peculiarity it was, superadded to the other three, that finally made
+those three operative in their fullest extent. It is in the perfection
+of the stratocracy that we must look for the key to the excesses of the
+autocrat. Even in the bloody despotisms of the Barbary States, there has
+always existed in the religious prejudices of the people, which could
+not be violated with safety, one check more upon the caprices of the
+despot than was found at Rome. Upon the whole, therefore, what affects
+us on the first reading as a prodigy or anomaly in the frantic outrages
+of the early Caesars--falls within the natural bounds of intelligible
+human nature, when we state the case considerately. Surrounded by a
+population which had not only gone through a most vicious and corrupting
+discipline, and had been utterly ruined by the license of revolutionary
+times, and the bloodiest proscriptions, but had even been extensively
+changed in its very elements, and from the descendants of Romulus had
+been transmuted into an Asiatic mob;--starting from this point, and
+considering as the second feature of the case, that this transfigured
+people, _morally_ so degenerate, were carried, however, by the progress
+of civilization to a certain intellectual altitude, which the popular
+religion had not strength to ascend--but from inherent disproportion
+remained at the base of the general civilization, incapable of
+accompanying the other elements in their advance;--thirdly, that this
+polished condition of society, which should naturally with the evils of
+a luxurious repose have counted upon its pacific benefits, had yet, by
+means of its circus and its gladiatorial contests, applied a constant
+irritation, and a system of provocations to the appetites for blood,
+such as in all other nations are connected with the rudest stages of
+society, and with the most barbarous modes of warfare, nor even in such
+circumstances without many palliatives wanting to the spectators of the
+circus;--combining these considerations, we have already a key to the
+enormities and hideous excesses of the Roman Imperator. The hot blood
+which excites, and the adventurous courage which accompanies, the
+excesses of sanguinary warfare, presuppose a condition of the moral
+nature not to be compared for malignity and baleful tendency to the
+cool and cowardly spirit of amateurship, in which the Roman (perhaps
+an effeminate Asiatic) sat looking down upon the bravest of men,
+(Thracians, or other Europeans,) mangling each other for his recreation.
+When, lastly, from such a population, and thus disciplined from
+his nursery days, we suppose the case of one individual selected,
+privileged, and raised to a conscious irresponsibility, except at
+the bar of one extra-judicial tribunal, not easily irritated, and
+notoriously to be propitiated by other means than those of upright
+or impartial conduct, we lay together the elements of a situation too
+trying for poor human nature, and fitted only to the faculties of an
+angel or a demon; of an angel, if we suppose him to resist its
+full temptations; of a demon, if we suppose him to use its total
+opportunities. Thus interpreted and solved, Caligula and Nero become
+ordinary men.
+
+But, finally, what if, after all, the worst of the Caesars, and those
+in particular, were entitled to the benefit of a still shorter and more
+conclusive apology? What if, in a true medical sense, they were insane?
+It is certain that a vein of madness ran in the family; and anecdotes
+are recorded of the three worst, which go far to establish it as a fact,
+and others which would imply it as symptoms--preceding or accompanying.
+As belonging to the former class, take the following story: At midnight
+an elderly gentleman suddenly sends round a message to a select party
+of noblemen, rouses them out of bed, and summons them instantly to his
+palace. Trembling for their lives from the suddenness of the summons,
+and from the unseasonable hour, and scarcely doubting that by
+some anonymous _delator_ they have been implicated as parties to a
+conspiracy, they hurry to the palace--are received in portentous silence
+by the ushers and pages in attendance--are conducted to a saloon, where
+(as in every where else) the silence of night prevails, united with the
+silence of fear and whispering expectation. All are seated--all look at
+each other in ominous anxiety. Which is accuser? Which is the accused?
+On whom shall their suspicion settle--on whom their pity? All are
+silent--almost speechless--and even the current of their thoughts is
+frost-bound by fear. Suddenly the sound of a fiddle or a viol is caught
+from a distance--it swells upon the ear--steps approach--and in
+another moment in rushes the elderly gentleman, grave and gloomy as his
+audience, but capering about in a frenzy of excitement. For half an
+hour he continues to perform all possible evolutions of caprioles,
+pirouettes, and other extravagant feats of activity, accompanying
+himself on the fiddle; and, at length, not having once looked at
+his guests, the elderly gentleman whirls out of the room in the same
+transport of emotion with which he entered it; the panic-struck visitors
+are requested by a slave to consider themselves as dismissed: they
+retire; resume their couches:--the nocturnal pageant has "dislimned" and
+vanished; and on the following morning, were it not for their concurring
+testimonies, all would be disposed to take this interruption of their
+sleep for one of its most fantastic dreams. The elderly gentleman, who
+figured in this delirious _pas seul_--who was he? He was Tiberius Caesar,
+king of kings, and lord of the terraqueous globe. Would a British jury
+demand better evidence than this of a disturbed intellect in any formal
+process _de lunatico inquirendo_? For Caligula, again, the evidence of
+symptoms is still plainer. He knew his own defect; and purposed going
+through a course of hellebore. Sleeplessness, one of the commonest
+indications of lunacy, haunted him in an excess rarely recorded.
+[Footnote: No fiction of romance presents so awful a picture of the
+ideal tyrant as that of Caligula by Suetonius. His palace--radiant with
+purple and gold, but murder every where lurking beneath flowers; his
+smiles and echoing laughter--masking (yet hardly meant to mask) his
+foul treachery of heart; his hideous and tumultuous dreams--his baffled
+sleep--and his sleepless nights--compose the picture of an AEschylus.
+What a master's sketch lies in these few lines: "Incitabatur insomnio
+maxime; neque enim plus tribus horis nocturnis quiescebat; ac ne his
+placida quiete, at pavida miris rerum imaginibus: ut qui inter ceteras
+pelagi quondam speciem colloquentem secum videre visus sit. Ideoque
+magna parte noctis, vigilse cubandique tsedio, nunc toro residens, nunc
+per longissimas porticus vagus, invocare identidem atque exspectare
+lucem consueverat:"--i. e., But, above all, he was tormented with
+nervous irritation, by sleeplessness; for he enjoyed not more than three
+hours of nocturnal repose; nor these even in pure untroubled rest, but
+agitated by phantasmata of portentous augury; as, for example, upon
+one occasion he fancied that he saw the sea, under some definite
+impersonation, conversing with himself. Hence it was, and from this
+incapacity of sleeping, and from weariness of lying awake, that he had
+fallen into habits of ranging all the night long through the palace,
+sometimes throwing himself on a couch, sometimes wandering along the
+vast corridors, watching for the earliest dawn, and anxiously invoking
+its approach.] The same, or similar facts, might be brought forward on
+behalf of Nero. And thus these unfortunate princes, who have so long
+(and with so little investigation of their cases) passed for monsters or
+for demoniac counterfeits of men, would at length be brought back within
+the fold of humanity, as objects rather of pity than of abhorrence,
+would be reconciled to our indulgent feelings, and, at the same time,
+made intelligible to our understandings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+The five Caesars who succeeded immediately to the first twelve, were, in
+as high a sense as their office allowed, patriots. Hadrian is perhaps
+the first of all whom circumstances permitted to show his patriotism
+without fear. It illustrates at one and the same moment a trait in this
+emperor's character, and in the Roman habits, that he acquired
+much reputation for hardiness by walking bareheaded. "Never, on any
+occasion," says one of his memorialists (Dio,) "neither in summer heat
+nor in winter's cold, did he cover his head; but, as well in the Celtic
+snows as in Egyptian heats, he went about bareheaded." This anecdote
+could not fail to win the especial admiration of Isaac Casaubon, who
+lived in an age when men believed a hat no less indispensable to the
+head, even within doors, than shoes or stockings to the feet. His
+astonishment on the occasion is thus expressed: "Tantum est _hae
+aschaesis_:" such and so mighty is the force of habit and daily use. And
+then he goes on to ask--"Quis hodie nudum caput radiis solis, aut
+omnia perurenti frigori, ausit exponere?" Yet we ourselves, and our
+illustrious friend, Christopher North, have walked for twenty years
+amongst our British lakes and mountains hatless, and amidst both snow
+and rain, such as Romans did not often experience. We were naked, and
+yet not ashamed. Nor in this are we altogether singular. But, says
+Casaubon, the Romans went farther; for they walked about the streets
+of Rome [Footnote: And hence we may the better estimate the trial to a
+Roman's feelings in the personal deformity of baldness, connected with
+the Roman theory of its cause, for the exposure of it was perpetual.]
+bareheaded, and never assumed a hat or a cap, a _petasus_ or a
+_galerus_, a Macedonian _causia_, or a _pileus_, whether Thessalian,
+Arcadian, or Laconic, unless when they entered upon a journey. Nay, some
+there were, as Masinissa and Julius Caesar, who declined even on such an
+occasion to cover their heads. Perhaps in imitation of these celebrated
+leaders, Hadrian adopted the same practice, but not with the same
+result; for to him, either from age or constitution, this very custom
+proved the original occasion of his last illness.
+
+Imitation, indeed, was a general principle of action with Hadrian, and
+the key to much of his public conduct; and allowably enough, considering
+the exemplary lives (in a public sense) of some who had preceded him,
+and the singular anxiety with which he distinguished between the lights
+and shadows of their examples. He imitated the great Dictator, Julius,
+in his vigilance of inspection into the civil, not less than the martial
+police of his times, shaping his new regulations to meet abuses as they
+arose, and strenuously maintaining the old ones in vigorous operation.
+As respected the army, this was matter of peculiar praise, because
+peculiarly disinterested; for his foreign policy was pacific; [Footnote:
+"Expeditiones sub eo," says Spartian, "graves nullae fuerunt. Bella etiam
+silentio pene transacta." But he does not the less add, "A militibus,
+propter curam exercitus nimiam, multum amatus est."] he made no new
+conquests; and he retired from the old ones of Trajan, where they
+could not have been maintained without disproportionate bloodshed, or
+a jealousy beyond the value of the stake. In this point of his
+administration he took Augustus for his model; as again in his care of
+the army, in his occasional bounties, and in his paternal solicitude for
+their comforts, he looked rather to the example of Julius. Him also he
+imitated in his affability and in his ambitious courtesies; one instance
+of which, as blending an artifice of political subtlety and simulation
+with a remarkable exertion of memory, it may be well to mention. The
+custom was, in canvassing the citizens of Rome, that the candidate
+should address every voter by his name; it was a fiction of republican
+etiquette, that every man participating in the political privileges of
+the State must be personally known to public aspirants. But, as this
+was supposed to be, in a literal sense, impossible to all men with the
+ordinary endowments of memory, in order to reconcile the pretensions of
+republican hauteur with the necessities of human weakness, a custom had
+grown up of relying upon a class of men, called _nomenclators_, whose
+express business and profession it was to make themselves acquainted
+with the person and name of every citizen. One of these people
+accompanied every candidate, and quietly whispered into his ear the
+name of each voter as he came in sight. Few, indeed, were they who could
+dispense with the services of such an assessor; for the office imposed
+a twofold memory, that of names and of persons; and to estimate the
+immensity of the effort, we must recollect that the number of voters
+often far exceeded one quarter of a million. The very same trial of
+memory he undertook with respect to his own army, in this instance
+recalling the well known feat of Mithridates. And throughout his life he
+did not once forget the face or name of any veteran soldier whom he ever
+had occasion to notice, no matter under what remote climate, or under
+what difference of circumstances. Wonderful is the effect upon soldiers
+of such enduring and separate remembrance, which operates always as the
+most touching kind of personal flattery, and which, in every age of the
+world, since the social sensibilities of men have been much developed,
+military commanders are found to have played upon as the most effectual
+chord in the great system which they modulated; some few, by a rare
+endowment of nature; others, as Napoleon Bonaparte, by elaborate
+mimicries of pantomimic art. [Footnote: In the true spirit of Parisian
+mummery, Bonaparte caused letters to be written from the War-office,
+in his own name, to particular soldiers of high military reputation in
+every brigade, (whose private history he had previously caused to be
+investigated,) alluding circumstantially to the leading facts in their
+personal or family career; a furlough accompanied this letter, and they
+were requested to repair to Paris, where the emperor anxiously desired
+to see them. Thus was the paternal interest expressed, which their
+leader took in each man's fortunes; and the effect of every such letter,
+it was not doubted, would diffuse itself through ten thousand other
+men.]
+
+Other modes he had of winning affection from the army; in particular
+that, so often practised before and since, of accommodating himself
+to the strictest ritual of martial discipline and castrensian life. He
+slept in the open air, or, if he used a tent (papilio), it was open at
+the sides. He ate the ordinary rations of cheese, bacon, &c.; he used
+no other drink than that composition of vinegar and water, known by the
+name of _posca_, which formed the sole beverage allowed in the
+Roman camps. He joined personally in the periodical exercises of the
+army--those even which were trying to the most vigorous youth and
+health: marching, for example, on stated occasions, twenty English miles
+without intermission, in full armor and completely accoutred. Luxury of
+every kind he not only interdicted to the soldier by severe ordinances,
+himself enforcing their execution, but discountenanced it (though
+elsewhere splendid and even gorgeous in his personal habits) by his
+own continual example. In dress, for instance, he sternly banished
+the purple and gold embroideries, the jewelled arms, and the floating
+draperies so little in accordance with the-severe character of "_war
+in procinct_" [Footnote: "_War in procinct_"--a phrase of Milton's
+in Paradise Regained, which strikingly illustrates his love of Latin
+phraseology; for unless to a scholar, previously acquainted with the
+Latin phrase of _in procinctu_, it is so absolutely unintelligible as to
+interrupt the current of the feeling.] Hardly would he allow himself
+an ivory hilt to his sabre. The same severe proscription he extended to
+every sort of furniture, or decorations of art, which sheltered even
+in the bosom of camps those habits of effeminate luxury--so apt in all
+great empires to steal by imperceptible steps from the voluptuous
+palace to the soldier's tent--following in the equipage of great leading
+officers, or of subalterns highly connected. There was at that time
+a practice prevailing, in the great standing camps on the several
+frontiers and at all the military stations, of renewing as much as
+possible the image of distant Rome by the erection of long colonnades
+and piazzas--single, double, or triple; of crypts, or subterranean
+[Footnote: "_Crypts_"--these, which Spartian, in his life of Hadrian,
+denominates simply _cryptae_, are the same which, in the Roman
+jurisprudence, and in the architectural works of the Romans, yet
+surviving, are termed _hypogaea deambulationes, i. e._ subterranean
+parades. Vitruvius treats of this luxurious class of apartments in
+connection with the Apothecae, and other repositories or store-rooms,
+which were also in many cases under ground, for the same reason as our
+ice-houses, wine-cellars, &c. He (and from him Pliny and Apollonaris
+Sidonius), calls them _crypto-porticus_ (cloistral colonnades); and
+Ulpian calls them _refugia_ (sanctuaries, or places of refuge);
+St. Ambrose notices them under the name of _hypogaea_ and _umbrosa
+penetralia_, as the resorts of voluptuaries: _Luxuriosorum est_, says
+he, _hypogaea quaerere--captantium frigus aestivum_; and again he speaks of
+_desidiosi qui ignava sub terris agant otia_.] saloons, (and sometimes
+subterranean galleries and corridors,) for evading the sultry noontides
+of July and August; of verdant cloisters or arcades, with roofs high
+over-arched, constructed entirely out of flexile shrubs, box-myrtle,
+and others, trained and trimmed in regular forms; besides endless other
+applications of the _topiary_ [Footnote: "_The topiary art_"--so called,
+as Salmasius thinks, from _ropaeion, a rope_; because the process of
+construction was conducted chiefly by means of cords and strings. This
+art was much practised in the 17th century; and Casaubon describes one,
+which existed in his early days somewhere in the suburbs of Paris, on
+so elaborate a scale, that it represented Troy besieged, with the
+two hosts, their several leaders, and all other objects in their full
+proportion.] art, which in those days (like the needlework of Miss
+Linwood in ours), though no more than a mechanic craft, in some
+measure realized the effects of a fine art by the perfect skill of its
+execution. All these modes of luxury, with a policy that had the
+more merit as it thwarted his own private inclinations, did Hadrian
+peremptorily abolish; perhaps, amongst other more obvious purposes,
+seeking to intercept the earliest buddings of those local attachments
+which are as injurious to the martial character and the proper pursuits
+of men whose vocation obliges them to consider themselves eternally
+under marching orders, as they are propitious to all the best interests
+of society in connection with the feelings of civic life.
+
+We dwell upon this prince not without reason in this particular; for,
+amongst the Caesars, Hadrian stands forward in high relief as a reformer
+of the army. Well and truly might it be said of him--that, _post Caesarem
+Octavianum labantem disciplinam, incurid superiorum principum, ipse
+retinuit_. Not content with the cleansings and purgations we have
+mentioned, he placed upon a new footing the whole tenure, duties, and
+pledges, of military offices. [Footnote: Very remarkable it is, and a
+fact which speaks volumes as to the democratic constitution of the Roman
+army, in the midst of that aristocracy which enveloped its parent state
+in a civil sense, that although there was a name for a _common soldier_
+(or _sentinel_, as he was termed by our ancestors)--viz. _miles
+gregarius_, or _miles manipularis_--there was none for an _officer_;
+that is to say, each several rank of officers had a name; but there was
+no generalization to express the idea of an officer abstracted from
+its several species or classes.] It cannot much surprise us that this
+department of the public service should gradually have gone to ruin or
+decay. Under the senate and people, under the auspices of those awful
+symbols--letters more significant and ominous than ever before had
+troubled the eyes of man, except upon Belshazzar's wall--S.P.Q.R.,
+the officers of the Roman army had been kept true to their duties, and
+vigilant by emulation and a healthy ambition. But, when the ripeness of
+corruption had by dissolving the body of the State brought out of its
+ashes a new mode of life, and had recast the aristocratic republic, by
+aid of its democratic elements then suddenly victorious, into a pure
+autocracy--whatever might be the advantages in other respects of this
+great change, in one point it had certainly injured the public service,
+by throwing the higher military appointments, all in fact which
+conferred any authority, into the channels of court favor--and by
+consequence into a mercenary disposal. Each successive emperor had been
+too anxious for his own immediate security, to find leisure for the
+remoter interests of the empire: all looked to the army, as it were, for
+their own immediate security against competitors, without venturing to
+tamper with its constitution, to risk popularity by reforming abuses,
+to balance present interest against a remote one, or to cultivate the
+public welfare at the hazard of their own: contented with obtaining
+_that_, they left the internal arrangements of so formidable a body in
+the state to which circumstances had brought it, and to which naturally
+the views of all existing beneficiaries had gradually adjusted
+themselves. What these might be, and to what further results they might
+tend, was a matter of moment doubtless to the empire. But the empire
+was strong; if its motive energy was decaying, its _vis inertia_ was
+for ages enormous, and could stand up against assaults repeated for many
+ages: whilst the emperor was in the beginning of his authority weak, and
+pledged by instant interest, no less than by express promises, to the
+support of that body whose favor had substantially supported himself.
+Hadrian was the first who turned his attention effectually in that
+direction; whether it were that he first was struck with the tendency
+of the abuses, or that he valued the hazard less which he incurred in
+correcting them, or that, having no successor of his own blood, he had a
+less personal and affecting interest at stake in setting this hazard at
+defiance. Hitherto, the highest regimental rank, that of tribune, had
+been disposed of in two ways, either civilly upon popular favor and
+election, or upon the express recommendation of the soldiery. This
+custom had prevailed under the republic, and the force of habit had
+availed to propagate that practice under a new mode of government. But
+now were introduced new regulations: the tribune was selected for his
+military qualities and experience: none was appointed to this important
+office, "_nisi barba plena_" The centurion's truncheon, [Footnote:
+_Vitis_: and it deserves to be mentioned, that this staff, or cudgel,
+which was the official engine and cognizance of the Centurion's dignity,
+was meant expressly to be used in caning or cudgelling the inferior
+soldiers: "_propterea_ vitis in manum data," says Salmasius,
+"_verberando scilicet militi qui deliquisset_." We are no patrons
+of corporal chastisement, which, on the contrary, as the vilest of
+degradations, we abominate. The soldier, who does not feel himself
+dishonored by it, is already dishonored beyond hope or redemption.
+But still let this degradation not be imputed to the English army
+exclusively.] again, was given to no man, "_nisi robusto et bonae famae_."
+The arms and military appointments (_supellectilis_) were revised; the
+register of names was duly called over; and none suffered to remain
+in the camps who was either above or below the military age. The same
+vigilance and jealousy were extended to the great stationary stores and
+repositories of biscuit, vinegar, and other equipments for the soldiery.
+All things were in constant readiness in the capital and the provinces,
+in the garrisons and camps, abroad and at home, to meet the outbreak
+of a foreign war or a domestic sedition. Whatever were the service, it
+could by no possibility find Hadrian unprepared. And he first, in fact,
+of all the Caesars, restored to its ancient republican standard, as
+reformed and perfected by Marius, the old martial discipline of the
+Scipios and the Paulli--that discipline, to which, more than to any
+physical superiority of her soldiery, Rome had been indebted for her
+conquest of the earth; and which had inevitably decayed in the long
+series of wars growing out of personal ambition. From the days of
+Marius, every great leader had sacrificed to the necessities of courting
+favor from the troops, as much as was possible of the hardships
+incident to actual service, and as much as he dared of the once rigorous
+discipline. Hadrian first found himself in circumstances, or was the
+first who had courage enough to decline a momentary interest in favor
+of a greater in reversion; and a personal object which was transient, in
+favor of a state one continually revolving.
+
+For a prince, with no children of his own, it is in any case a task
+of peculiar delicacy to select a successor. In the Roman empire the
+difficulties were much aggravated. The interests of the State were, in
+the first place, to be consulted; for a mighty burthen of responsibility
+rested upon the emperor in the most personal sense. Duties of every
+kind fell to his station, which, from the peculiar constitution of the
+government, and from circumstances rooted in the very origin of the
+imperatorial office, could not be devolved upon a council. Council there
+was none, nor could be recognised as such in the State machinery. The
+emperor, himself a sacred and sequestered creature, might be supposed to
+enjoy the secret tutelage of the Supreme Deity; but a council, composed
+of subordinate and responsible agents, could _not_. Again, the auspices
+of the emperor, and his edicts, apart even from any celestial or
+supernatural inspiration, simply as emanations of his own divine
+character, had a value and a consecration which could never belong
+to those of a council--or to those even which had been sullied by the
+breath of any less august reviser. The emperor, therefore, or--as with
+a view to his solitary and unique character we ought to call him--in
+the original irrepresentable term, the imperator, could not delegate
+his duties, or execute them in any avowed form by proxies or
+representatives. He was himself the great fountain of law--of honor--of
+preferment--of civil and political regulations. He was the fountain also
+of good and evil fame. He was the great chancellor, or supreme dispenser
+of equity to all climates, nations, languages, of his mighty dominions,
+which connected the turbaned races of the Orient, and those who sat
+in the gates of the rising sun, with the islands of the West, and the
+unfathomed depths of the mysterious Scandinavia. He was the universal
+guardian of the public and private interests which composed the great
+edifice of the social system as then existing amongst his subjects.
+Above all, and out of his own private purse, he supported the heraldries
+of his dominions--the peerage, senatorial or praetorian, and the great
+gentry or chivalry of the Equites. These were classes who would have
+been dishonored by the censorship of a less august comptroller. And, for
+the classes below these,--by how much they were lower and more remote
+from his ocular superintendence,--by so much the more were they linked
+to him in a connection of absolute dependence. Caesar it was who provided
+their daily food, Caesar who provided their pleasures and relaxations.
+He chartered the fleets which brought grain to the Tiber--he bespoke the
+Sardinian granaries whilst yet unformed--and the harvests of the Nile
+whilst yet unsown. Not the connection between a mother and her unborn
+infant is more intimate and vital, than that which subsisted between the
+mighty populace of the Roman capital and their paternal emperor. They
+drew their nutriment from him; they lived and were happy by sympathy
+with the motions of his will; to him also the arts, the knowledge,
+and the literature of the empire looked for support. To him the armies
+looked for their laurels, and the eagles in every clime turned their
+aspiring eyes, waiting to bend their flight according to the signal of
+his Jovian nod. And all these vast functions and ministrations arose
+partly as a natural effect, but partly also they were a cause of the
+emperor's own divinity. He was capable of services so exalted, because
+he also was held a god, and had his own altars, his own incense, his own
+worship and priests. And that was the cause, and that was the result of
+his bearing, on his own shoulders, a burthen so mighty and Atlantean.
+
+Yet, if in this view it was needful to have a man of talent, on the
+other hand there was reason to dread a man of talents too adventurous,
+too aspiring, or too intriguing. His situation, as Caesar, or Crown
+Prince, flung into his hands a power of fomenting conspiracies, and of
+concealing them until the very moment of explosion, which made him an
+object of almost exclusive terror to his principal, the Caesar Augustus.
+His situation again, as an heir voluntarily adopted, made him the
+proper object of public affection and caresses, which became peculiarly
+embarrassing to one who had, perhaps, soon found reasons for suspecting,
+fearing, and hating him beyond all other men.
+
+The young nobleman, whom Hadrian adopted by his earliest choice, was
+Lucius Aurelius Verus, the son of Cejonius Commodus. These names were
+borne also by the son; but, after his adoption into the AElian family,
+he was generally known by the appellation of AElius Verus. The scandal of
+those times imputed his adoption to the worst motives. "_Adriano_," says
+one author, ("_ut malevoli loquuntur_) _acceptior forma quam moribus_"
+And thus much undoubtedly there is to countenance so shocking an
+insinuation, that very little is recorded of the young prince but such
+anecdotes as illustrate his excessive luxury and effeminate dedication
+to pleasure. Still it is our private opinion, that Hadrian's real
+motives have been misrepresented; that he sought in the young man's
+extraordinary beauty--[for he was, says Spartian, _pulchritudinis
+regiae_]--a plausible pretext that should be sufficient to explain and
+to countenance his preference, whilst under this provisional adoption
+he was enabled to postpone the definitive choice of an imperator
+elect, until his own more advanced age might diminish the motives for
+intriguing against himself. It was, therefore, a mere _ad interim_
+adoption; for it is certain, however we may choose to explain that fact,
+that Hadrian foresaw and calculated on the early death of AElius. This
+prophetic knowledge may have been grounded on a private familiarity with
+some constitutional infirmity affecting his daily health, or with some
+habits of life incompatible with longevity, or with both combined. It
+is pretended that this distinguished mark of favor was conferred in
+fulfilment of a direct contract on the emperor's part, as the price of
+favors such as the Latin reader will easily understand from the strong
+expression of Spartian above cited. But it is far more probable that
+Hadrian relied on this admirable beauty, and allowed it so much weight,
+as the readiest and most intelligible justification to the multitude,
+of a choice which thus offered to their homage a public favorite--and
+to the nobility, of so invidious a preference, which placed one of their
+own number far above the level of his natural rivals. The necessities
+of the moment were thus satisfied without present or future danger;--as
+respected the future, he knew or believed that Verus was marked out for
+early death; and would often say, in a strain of compliment somewhat
+disproportionate, applying to him the Virgilian lines on the hopeful and
+lamented Marcellus,
+
+  "Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata, neque ultra
+  Esse sinent."
+
+And, at the same time, to countenance the belief that he had been
+disappointed, he would affect to sigh, exclaiming--"Ah! that I should
+thus fruitlessly have squandered a sum of three [Footnote: In the
+original _ter millies_, which is not much above two millions and 150
+thousand pounds sterling; but it must be remembered that one third as
+much, in addition to this popular largess, had been given to the army.]
+millions sterling!" for so much had been distributed in largesses to the
+people and the army on the occasion of his inauguration. Meantime, as
+respected the present, the qualities of the young man were amply fitted
+to sustain a Roman popularity; for, in addition to his extreme and
+statuesque beauty of person, he was (in the report of one who did not
+wish to color his character advantageously) "_memor families suce,
+comptus, decorus, oris venerandi, eloquentice, celsioris, versufacilis,
+in republica etiam non inutilis_." Even as a military officer, he had
+a respectable [Footnote:--"nam bene gesti rebus, vel potius feliciter,
+etsi nori summi--medii tamen obtinuit ducis famam."] character; as an
+orator he was more than respectable; and in other qualifications less
+interesting to the populace, he had that happy mediocrity of merit which
+was best fitted for his delicate and difficult situation--sufficient to
+do credit to the emperor's preference--sufficient to sustain the popular
+regard, but not brilliant enough to throw his patron into the shade.
+For the rest, his vices were of a nature not greatly or necessarily to
+interfere with his public duties, and emphatically such as met with the
+readiest indulgence from the Roman laxity of morals. Some few instances,
+indeed, are noticed of cruelty; but there is reason to think that it was
+merely by accident, and as an indirect result of other purposes, that he
+ever allowed himself in such manifestations of irresponsible power--not
+as gratifying any harsh impulses of his native character. The most
+remarkable neglect of humanity with which he has been taxed, occurred
+in the treatment of his couriers; these were the bearers of news and
+official dispatches, at that time fulfilling the functions of the modern
+post; and it must be remembered that as yet they were not slaves, (as
+afterwards by the reformation of Alexander Severus,) but free citizens.
+They had been already dressed in a particular livery or uniform, and
+possibly they might wear some symbolical badges of their profession;
+but the new Caesar chose to dress them altogether in character as winged
+Cupids, affixing literal wings to their shoulders, and facetiously
+distinguishing them by the names of the four cardinal winds, (Boreas,
+Aquilo, Notus, &c.) and others as levanters or hurricanes, (Circius,
+&c.) Thus far he did no more than indulge a blameless fancy; but in
+his anxiety that his runners should emulate their patron winds, and
+do credit to the names which he had assigned them, he is said to have
+exacted a degree of speed inconsistent with any merciful regard for
+their bodily powers.[Footnote: This, however, is a point in which royal
+personages claim an old prescriptive right to be unreasonable in their
+exactions and some, even amongst the most humane of Christian princes,
+have erred as flagrantly as AElius Verus. George IV., we have understood,
+was generally escorted from Balkeith to Holyrood at a rate of twenty-two
+miles an hour. And of his father, the truly kind and paternal king, it
+is recorded by Miss Hawkins, (daughter of Sir J. Hawkins, the biographer
+of Johnson, &c.) that families who happened to have a son, brother,
+lover, &c. in the particular regiment of cavalry which furnished the
+escort for the day, used to suffer as much anxiety for the result as
+on the eve of a great battle.] But these were, after all, perhaps, mere
+improvements of malice upon some solitary incident. The true stain upon
+his memory, and one which is open to no doubt whatever, is excessive and
+extravagant luxury--excessive in degree, extravagant and even
+ludicrous in its forms. For example, he constructed a sort of bed or
+sofa--protected from insects by an awning of network composed of lilies,
+delicately fabricated into the proper meshes, &c., and the couches
+composed wholly of rose-leaves; and even of these, not without an
+exquisite preparation; for the white parts of the leaves, as coarser
+and harsher to the touch, (possibly, also, as less odorous,) were
+scrupulously rejected. Here he lay indolently stretched amongst favorite
+ladies,
+
+  "And like a naked Indian slept himself away."
+
+He had also tables composed of the same delicate material--prepared and
+purified in the same elaborate way--and to these were adapted seats in
+the fashion of sofas (_accubationes_,) corresponding in their materials,
+and in their mode of preparation. He was also an expert performer, and
+even an original inventor, in the art of cookery; and one dish of his
+discovery, which, from its four component parts, obtained the name
+of _tetrapharmacum_, was so far from owing its celebrity to its royal
+birth, that it maintained its place on Hadrian's table to the time
+of his death. These, however, were mere fopperies or pardonable
+extravagancies in one so young and so exalted; "quae, etsi non decora,"
+as the historian observes, "non tamen ad perniciem publicam prompta
+sunt." A graver mode of licentiousness appeared in his connections with
+women. He made no secret of his lawless amours; and to his own wife,
+on her expostulating with him on his aberrations in this respect, he
+replied--that "_wife_" was a designation of rank and official dignity,
+not of tenderness and affection, or implying any claim of love on either
+side; upon which distinction he begged that she would mind her own
+affairs, and leave him to pursue such as he might himself be involved in
+by his sensibility to female charms.
+
+However, he and all his errors, his "regal beauty," his princely pomps,
+and his authorized hopes, were suddenly swallowed up by the inexorable
+grave; and he would have passed away like an exhalation, and leaving no
+remembrance of himself more durable than his own beds of rose-leaves,
+and his reticulated canopies of lilies, had it not been that Hadrian
+filled the world with images of his perfect fawn-like beauty in the
+shape of colossal statues, and raised temples even to his memory in
+various cities. This Caesar, therefore, dying thus prematurely, never
+tasted of empire; and his name would have had but a doubtful title to
+a place in the imperatorial roll, had it not been recalled to a second
+chance for the sacred honors in the person of his son--whom it was the
+pleasure of Hadrian, by way of testifying his affection for the father,
+to associate in the order of succession with the philosophic Marcus
+Aurelius Antoninus. This fact, and the certainty that to the second
+Julius Verus he gave his own daughter in marriage, rather than to his
+associate Caesar Marcus Aurelius, make it evident that his regret for the
+elder Verus was unaffected and deep; and they overthrow effectually the
+common report of historians--that he repented of his earliest choice, as
+of one that had been disappointed not by the decrees of fate, but by the
+violent defect of merits in its object. On the contrary, he prefaced his
+inauguration of this junior Caesar by the following tender words--Let us
+confound the rapine of the grave, and let the empire possess amongst her
+rulers a second AElius Verus.
+
+"_Diis aliter visum est:_" the blood of the AElian family was not
+privileged to ascend or aspire: it gravitated violently to extinction;
+and this junior Verus is supposed to have been as much indebted to his
+assessor on the throne for shielding his obscure vices, and drawing over
+his defects the ample draperies of the imperatorial robe, as he was to
+Hadrian, his grandfather by fiction of law, for his adoption into the
+reigning family, and his consecration as one of the Caesars. He, says one
+historian, shed no ray of light or illustration upon the imperial house,
+except by one solitary quality. This bears a harsh sound; but it has the
+effect of a sudden redemption for his memory, when we learn--that this
+solitary quality, in virtue of which he claimed a natural affinity to
+the sacred house, and challenged a natural interest in the purple, was
+the very princely one of--a merciful disposition.
+
+The two Antonines fix an era in the imperial history; for they were both
+eminent models of wise and good rulers; and some would say, that they
+fixed a crisis; for with their successor commenced, in the popular
+belief, the decline of the empire. That at least is the doctrine of
+Gibbon; but perhaps it would not be found altogether able to sustain
+itself against a closer and philosophic examination of the true elements
+involved in the idea of declension as applied to political bodies. Be
+that as it may, however, and waiving any interest which might happen to
+invest the Antonines as the last princes who kept up the empire to its
+original level, both of them had enough of merit to challenge a separate
+notice in their personal characters, and apart from the accidents of
+their position.
+
+The elder of the two, who is usually distinguished by the title of
+_Pius_, is thus described by one of his biographers:--"He was externally
+of remarkable beauty; eminent for his moral character, full of benign
+dispositions, noble, with a countenance of a most gentle expression,
+intellectually of singular endowments, possessing an elegant style of
+eloquence, distinguished for his literature, generally temperate,
+an earnest lover of agricultural pursuits, mild in his deportment,
+bountiful in the use of his own, but a stern respecter of the rights of
+others; and, finally, he was all this without ostentation, and with a
+constant regard to the proportions of cases, and to the demands of time
+and place." His bounty displayed itself in a way, which may be worth
+mentioning, as at once illustrating the age, and the prudence with which
+he controlled the most generous of his impulses:--"_Finus trientarium_,"
+says the historian, "_hoc est minimis usuris exercuit, ut patrimonio
+suo plurimos adjuvaret_." The meaning of which is this:--in Rome, the
+customary interest for money was what was called _centesimae usurae_; that
+is, the hundredth part, or one per cent. But, as this expressed not the
+annual, but the _monthly_ interest, the true rate was, in fact, twelve
+per cent.; and that is the meaning of _centesimae usurae_. Nor could money
+be obtained any where on better terms than these; and, moreover, this
+one per cent, was exacted rigorously as the monthly day came round, no
+arrears being suffered to lie over. Under these circumstances, it was
+a prodigious service to lend money at a diminished rate, and one which
+furnished many men with the means of saving themselves from ruin.
+Pius then, by way of extending his aid as far as possible, reduced the
+monthly rate of his loans to one-third per cent., which made the annual
+interest the very moderate one of four per cent. The channels, which
+public spirit had as yet opened to the beneficence of the opulent, were
+few indeed: charity and munificence languished, or they were abused,
+or they were inefficiently directed, simply through defects in the
+structure of society. Social organization, for its large development,
+demanded the agency of newspapers, (together with many other forms
+of assistance from the press,) of banks, of public carriages on an
+extensive scale, besides infinite other inventions or establishments not
+yet created--which support and powerfully react upon that same progress
+of society which originally gave birth to themselves. All things
+considered, in the Rome of that day, where all munificence confined
+itself to the direct largesses of a few leading necessaries of life,--a
+great step was taken, and the best step, in this lending of money at a
+low interest, towards a more refined and beneficial mode of charity.
+
+In his public character, he was perhaps the most patriotic of Roman
+emperors, and the purest from all taint of corrupt or indirect ends.
+Peculation, embezzlement, or misapplication of the public funds, were
+universally corrected: provincial oppressors were exposed and defeated:
+the taxes and tributes were diminished; and the public expenses
+were thrown as much as possible upon the public estates, and in some
+instances upon his own private estates. So far, indeed, did Pius stretch
+his sympathy with the poorer classes of his subjects, that on this
+account chiefly he resided permanently in the capital--alleging in
+excuse, partly that he thus stationed himself in the very centre of his
+mighty empire, to which all couriers could come by the shortest radii,
+but chiefly that he thus spared the provincialists those burthens which
+must else have alighted upon them; "for," said he, "even the slenderest
+retinue of a Roman emperor is burthensome to the whole line of its
+progress." His tenderness and consideration, indeed, were extended to
+all classes, and all relations, of his subjects; even to those who stood
+in the shadow of his public displeasure as State delinquents, or as the
+most atrocious criminals. To the children of great treasury defaulters,
+he returned the confiscated estates of their fathers, deducting only
+what might repair the public loss. And so resolutely did he refuse to
+shed the blood of any in the senatorial order, to whom he conceived
+himself more especially bound in paternal ties, that even a parricide,
+whom the laws would not suffer to live, was simply exposed upon a desert
+island.
+
+Little indeed did Pius want of being a perfect Christian, in heart and
+in practice. Yet all this display of goodness and merciful indulgence,
+nay, all his munificence, would have availed him little with the people
+at large, had he neglected to furnish shows and exhibitions in the arena
+of suitable magnificence. Luckily for his reputation, he exceeded the
+general standard of imperial splendor not less as the patron of the
+amphitheatre than in his more important functions. It is recorded of
+him--that in one _missio_ he sent forward on the arena a hundred lions.
+Nor was he less distinguished by the rarity of the wild animals which
+he exhibited than by their number. There were elephants, there were
+crocodiles, there were hippopotami at one time upon the stage: there was
+also the rhinoceros, and the still rarer _crocuta_ or _corocotta_, with
+a few _strepsikerotes_. Some of these were matched in duels, some in
+general battles with tigers; in fact, there was no species of wild
+animal throughout the deserts and sandy Zaarras of Africa, the infinite
+_steppes_ of Asia, or the lawny recesses and dim forests of then
+sylvan Europe, [Footnote: And not impossibly of America; for it must
+be remembered that, when we speak of this quarter of the earth as yet
+undiscovered, we mean--to ourselves of the western climates; since as
+respects the eastern quarters of Asia, doubtless America was known
+there familiarly enough; and the high bounties of imperial Rome on rare
+animals, would sometimes perhaps propagate their influence even to those
+regions.] no species known to natural history, (and some even of which
+naturalists have lost sight,) which the Emperor Pius did not produce
+to his Roman subjects on his ceremonious pomps. And in another point he
+carried his splendors to a point which set the seal to his liberality.
+In the phrase of modern auctioneers, he gave up the wild beasts to
+slaughter "without reserve." It was the custom, in ordinary cases, so
+far to consider the enormous cost of these far-fetched rarities as to
+preserve for future occasions those which escaped the arrows of the
+populace, or survived the bloody combats in which they were engaged.
+Thus, out of the overflowings of one great exhibition, would be found
+materials for another. But Pius would not allow of these reservations.
+All were given up unreservedly to the savage purposes of the spectators;
+land and sea were ransacked; the sanctuaries of the torrid zone were
+violated; columns of the army were put in motion--and all for the
+transient effect of crowning an extra hour with hecatombs of forest
+blood, each separate minute of which had cost a king's ransom.
+
+Yet these displays were alien to the nature of Pius; and, even through
+the tyranny of custom, he had been so little changed, that to the last
+he continued to turn aside, as often as the public ritual of his duty
+allowed him, from these fierce spectacles to the gentler amusements of
+fishing and hunting. His taste and his affections naturally carried him
+to all domestic pleasures of a quiet nature. A walk in a shrubbery or
+along a piazza, enlivened with the conversation of a friend or two,
+pleased him better than all the court festivals; and among festivals,
+or anniversary celebrations, he preferred those which, like the
+harvest-home or feast of the vintagers, whilst they sanctioned a total
+carelessness and dismissal of public anxieties, were at the same time
+colored by the innocent gaiety which belongs to rural and to primitive
+manners. In person this emperor was tall and dignified (_statura elevata
+decorus;_) but latterly he stooped; to remedy which defect, that he
+might discharge his public part with the more decorum, he wore stays.
+[Footnote: In default of whalebone, one is curious to know of what they
+were made:--thin tablets of the linden-tree, it appears, were the best
+materials which the Augustus of that day could command.] Of his other
+personal habits little is recorded, except that, early in the morning,
+and just before receiving the compliments of his friends and dependents,
+(_salutatores_,) or what in modern phrase would be called his _levee_,
+he took a little plain bread, (_panem siccum comedit_,) that is, bread
+without condiments or accompaniments of any kind, by way of breakfast.
+In no meal has luxury advanced more upon the model of the ancients than
+in this: the dinners (_caenae_) of the Romans were even more luxurious,
+and a thousand times more costly, than our own; but their breakfasts
+were scandalously meagre; and, with many men, breakfast was no professed
+meal at all. Galen tells us that a little bread, and at most a little
+seasoning of oil, honey, or dried fruits, was the utmost breakfast which
+men generally allowed themselves: some indeed drank wine after it, but
+this was far from being a common practice. [Footnote: There is, however,
+a good deal of delusion prevalent on such subjects. In some English
+cavalry regiments, the custom is for the privates to take only one meal
+a day, which of course is dinner; and by some curious experiments it
+has appeared that such a mode of life is the healthiest. But at the same
+time, we have ascertained that the quantity of porter or substantial ale
+drunk in these regiments does virtually allow many meals, by comparison
+with the washy tea breakfasts of most Englishmen.]
+
+The Emperor Pius died in his seventieth year. The immediate occasion of
+his death was--not breakfast nor _caena_, but something of the kind. He
+had received a present of Alpine cheese, and he ordered some for supper.
+The trap for his life was baited with toasted cheese. There is no reason
+to think that he ate immoderately; but that night he was seized with
+indigestion. Delirium followed; during which it is singular that his
+mind teemed with a class of imagery and of passions the most remote
+(as it might have been thought) from the voluntary occupations of his
+thoughts. He raved about the State, and about those kings with whom he
+was displeased; nor were his thoughts one moment removed from the public
+service. Yet he was the least ambitious of princes, and his reign was
+emphatically said to be bloodless. Finding his fever increase, he
+became sensible that he was dying; and he ordered the golden statue of
+Prosperity, a household symbol of empire, to be transferred from his
+own bedroom to that of his successor. Once again, however, for the last
+time, he gave the word to the officer of the guard; and, soon after,
+turning away his face to the wall against which his bed was placed,
+he passed out of life in the very gentlest sleep, "_quasi dormiret,
+spiritum reddidit_;" or, as a Greek author expresses it, _kat iso hypno
+to malakotato_. He was one of those few Roman emperors whom posterity
+truly honored with the title of _anaimatos_ (or bloodless;) _solusque
+omnium prope principum prorsus sine civili sanguine et hostili vixit_.
+In the whole tenor of his life and character he was thought to resemble
+Numa. And Pausanias, after remarking on his title of _Eusebaes_ (or
+Pius), upon the meaning and origin of which there are several different
+hypotheses, closes with this memorable tribute to his paternal
+qualities--_doxae de emae, kai to onoma to te Kyros pheroito an tos
+presbyteros, Pater anthropon kalemenos_: _but, in my opinion, he should
+also bear the name of Cyrus the elder--being hailed as Father of the
+Human Race_.
+
+A thoughtful Roman would have been apt to exclaim, _This is too good
+to last_, upon finding so admirable a ruler succeeded by one still more
+admirable in the person of Marcus Aurelius. From the first dawn of his
+infancy this prince indicated, by his grave deportment, the philosophic
+character of his mind; and at eleven years of age he professed himself a
+formal devotee of philosophy in its strictest form,--assuming the garb,
+and submitting to its most ascetic ordinances. In particular, he slept
+upon the ground, and in other respects he practised a style of living
+the most simple and remote from the habits of rich men [or, in his
+own words, _tho lithon chatha taen diaitan, chai porro taes pleousiachaes
+hagogaes_]; though it is true that he himself ascribes this simplicity of
+life to the influence of his mother, and not to the premature assumption
+of the stoical character. He pushed his austerities indeed to excess;
+for Dio mentions that in his boyish days he was reduced to great
+weakness by exercises too severe, and a diet of too little nutriment. In
+fact, his whole heart was set upon philosophic attainments, and perhaps
+upon philosophic glory. All the great philosophers of his own time,
+whether Stoic or Peripatetic, and amongst them Sextus of Cheronaea, a
+nephew of Plutarch, were retained as his instructors. There was none
+whom he did not enrich; and as many as were fitted by birth and manners
+to fill important situations, he raised to the highest offices in the
+State. Philosophy, however, did not so much absorb his affections, but
+that he found time to cultivate the fine arts, (painting he both studied
+and practised,) and such gymnastic exercises as he held consistent with
+his public dignity. Wrestling, hunting, fowling, playing at cricket
+(_pila_), he admired and patronized by personal participation. He tried
+his powers even as a runner. But with these tasks, and entering so
+critically, both as a connoisseur and as a practising amateur, into such
+trials of skill, so little did he relish the very same spectacles, when
+connected with the cruel exhibitions of the circus and amphitheatre,
+that it was not without some friendly violence on the part of those who
+could venture on such a liberty, nor even thus, perhaps, without the
+necessities of his official station, that he would be persuaded to visit
+either one or the other.[Footnote: So much improvement had Christianity
+already accomplished in the feelings of men since the time of Augustus.
+That prince, in whose reign the founder of this ennobling religion was
+born, had delighted so much and indulged so freely in the spectacles of
+the amphitheatre, that Maecenas summoned him reproachfully to leave them,
+saying, "Surge tandem, carnifex."
+
+It is the remark of Capitoline, that "gladiatoria spectacula omnifariam
+temperavit; temperavit etiam scenicas donationes;"--he controlled in
+every possible way the gladiatorial spectacles; he controlled also the
+rates of allowance to the stage performers. In these latter reforms,
+which simply restrained the exorbitant salaries of a class dedicated to
+the public pleasures, and unprofitable to the state, Marcus may have
+had no farther view than that which is usually connected with sumptuary
+laws. But in the restraints upon the gladiators, it is impossible to
+believe that his highest purpose was not that of elevating human nature,
+and preparing the way for still higher regulations. As little can it
+be believed that this lofty conception, and the sense of a degradation
+entailed upon human nature itself, in the spectacle of human beings
+matched against each other like brute beasts, and pouring out their
+blood upon the arena as a libation to the caprices of a mob, could
+have been derived from any other source than the contagion of Christian
+standards and Christian sentiments, then beginning to pervade and
+ventilate the atmosphere of society in its higher and philosophic
+regions. Christianity, without expressly affirming, every where
+indirectly supposes and presumes the infinite value and dignity of man
+as a creature, exclusively concerned in a vast and mysterious economy
+of restoration to a state of moral beauty and power in some former age
+mysteriously forfeited. Equally interested in its benefits, joint heirs
+of its promises, all men, of every color, language, and rank, Gentile
+or Jew, were here first represented as in one sense (and that the most
+important) equal; in the eye of this religion, they were, by necessity
+of logic, equal, as equal participators in the ruin and the restoration.
+Here first, in any available sense, was communicated to the standard of
+human nature a vast and sudden elevation; and reasonable enough it is to
+suppose, that some obscure sense of this, some sympathy with the great
+changes for man then beginning to operate, would first of all reach the
+inquisitive students of philosophy, and chiefly those in high stations,
+who cultivated an intercourse with all the men of original genius
+throughout the civilized world. The Emperor Hadrian had already taken
+a solitary step in the improvement of human nature; and not, we may
+believe, without some sub-conscious influence received directly or
+indirectly from Christianity. So again, with respect to Marcus, it is
+hardly conceivable that he, a prince so indulgent and popular, could
+have thwarted, and violently gainsaid, a primary impulse of the Roman
+populace, without some adequate motive; and none _could_ be adequate
+which was not built upon some new and exalted views of human nature,
+with which these gladiatorial sacrifices were altogether at war. The
+reforms which Marcus introduced into these "crudelissima spectacula,"
+all having the common purpose of limiting their extent, were three.
+First, he set bounds to the extreme cost of these exhibitions; and
+this restriction of the cost covertly operated as a restriction of the
+practice. Secondly,--and this ordinance took effect whenever he was
+personally present, if not oftener,--he commanded, on great occasions,
+that these displays should be bloodless. Dion Cassius notices this fact
+in the following words:--"The Emperor Marcus was so far from taking
+delight in spectacles of bloodshed, that even the gladiators in Rome
+could not obtain his inspection of their contests, unless, like the
+wrestlers, they contended without imminent risk; for he never allowed
+them the use of sharpened weapons, but universally they fought before
+him with weapons previously blunted." Thirdly, he repealed the old and
+uniform regulation, which secured to the gladiators a perpetual immunity
+from military service. This necessarily diminished their available
+amount. Being now liable to serve their country usefully in the field
+of battle, whilst the concurrent limitation of the expenses in this
+direction prevented any proportionate increase of their numbers, they
+were so much the less disposable in aid of the public luxury. His
+fatherly care of all classes, and the universal benignity with which he
+attempted to raise the abject estimate and condition of even the lowest
+_Pariars_ in his vast empire, appears in another little anecdote,
+relating to a class of men equally with the gladiators given up to the
+service of luxury in a haughty and cruel populace. Attending one day at
+an exhibition of rope-dancing, one of the performers (a boy) fell and
+hurt himself; from which time the paternal emperor would never allow the
+rope-dancers to perform without mattrasses or feather-beds spread
+below, to mitigate the violence of their falls.] In this he meditated no
+reflection upon his father by adoption, the Emperor Pius, (who also, for
+aught we know, might secretly revolt from a species of amusement which,
+as the prescriptive test of munificence in the popular estimate, it
+was necessary to support;) on the contrary, he obeyed him with the
+punctiliousness of a Roman obedience; he watched the very motions of his
+countenance; and he waited so continually upon his pleasure, that for
+three-and-twenty years which they lived together, he is recorded to
+have slept out of his father's palace only for two nights. This rigor
+of filial duty illustrates a feature of Roman life; for such was the
+sanctity of law, that a father created by legal fiction was in all
+respects treated with the same veneration and affection, as a father
+who claimed upon the most unquestioned footing of natural right. Such,
+however, is the universal baseness of courts, that even this scrupulous
+and minute attention to his duties, did not protect Marcus from the
+injurious insinuations of whisperers. There were not wanting persons who
+endeavored to turn to account the general circumstances in the situation
+of the Caesar, which pointed him out to the jealousy of the emperor. But
+these being no more than what adhere necessarily to the case of every
+heir _as_ such, and meeting fortunately with no more proneness to
+suspicion in the temper of the Augustus than they did with countenance
+in the conduct of the Caesar, made so little impression, that at length
+these malicious efforts died away, from mere defect of encouragement.
+
+The most interesting political crisis in the reign of Marcus was the war
+in Germany with the Marcomanni, concurrently with pestilence in Rome.
+The agitation of the public mind was intense; and prophets arose, as
+since under corresponding circumstances in Christian countries, who
+announced the approaching dissolution of the world. The purse of Marcus
+was open, as usual, to the distresses of his subjects. But it was
+chiefly for the expense of funerals that his aid was claimed. In this
+way he alleviated the domestic calamities of his capital, or expressed
+his sympathy with the sufferers, where alleviation was beyond his power;
+whilst, by the energy of his movements and his personal presence on the
+Danube, he soon dissipated those anxieties of Rome which pointed in a
+foreign direction. The war, however, had been a dreadful one, and had
+excited such just fears in the most experienced heads of the State,
+that, happening in its outbreak to coincide with a Parthian war, it
+was skilfully protracted until the entire thunders of Rome, and the
+undivided energies of her supreme captains, could be concentrated upon
+this single point. Both [Footnote: Marcus had been associated, as Caesar
+and as emperor, with the son of the late beautiful Verus, who is usually
+mentioned by the same name.] emperors left Rome, and crossed the Alps;
+the war was thrown back upon its native seats--Austria and the modern
+Hungary: great battles were fought and won; and peace, with consequent
+relief and restoration to liberty, was reconquered for many friendly
+nations, who had suffered under the ravages of the Marcomanni, the
+Sarmatians, the Quadi, and the Vandals; whilst some of the hostile
+people were nearly obliterated from the map, and their names blotted out
+from the memory of men.
+
+Since the days of Gaul as an independent power, no war had so much
+alarmed the people of Rome; and their fear was justified by the
+difficulties and prodigious efforts which accompanied its suppression.
+The public treasury was exhausted; loans were an engine of fiscal
+policy, not then understood or perhaps practicable; and great distress
+was at hand for the State. In these circumstances, Marcus adopted a wise
+(though it was then esteemed a violent or desperate) remedy. Time and
+excessive luxury had accumulated in the imperial palaces and villas
+vast repositories of apparel, furniture, jewels, pictures, and household
+utensils, valuable alike for the materials and the workmanship. Many of
+these articles were consecrated, by color or otherwise, to the use of
+the _sacred_ household; and to have been found in possession of them, or
+with the materials for making them, would have entailed the penalties of
+treason. All these stores were now brought out to open day, and put
+up to public sale by auction, free license being first granted to the
+bidders, whoever they might be, to use, or otherwise to exercise the
+fullest rights of property upon all they bought. The auction lasted for
+two months. Every man was guaranteed in the peaceable ownership of his
+purchases. And afterwards, when the public distress had passed over,
+a still further indulgence was extended to the purchasers. Notice was
+given--that all who were dissatisfied with their purchases, or who for
+other means might wish to recover their cost, would receive back the
+purchase-money, upon returning the articles. Dinner-services of gold and
+crystal, murrhine vases, and even his wife's wardrobe of silken robes
+interwoven with gold, all these, and countless other articles were
+accordingly returned, and the full auction prices paid back; or were
+_not_ returned, and no displeasure shown to those who publicly displayed
+them as their own. Having gone so far, overruled by the necessities of
+the public service, in breaking down those legal barriers by which
+a peculiar dress, furniture, equipage, &c., were appropriated to the
+imperial house, as distinguished from the very highest of the noble
+houses, Marcus had a sufficient pretext for extending indefinitely
+the effect of the dispensation then granted. Articles purchased at the
+auction bore no characteristic marks to distinguish them from others of
+the same form and texture: so that a license to use any one article
+of the _sacred_ pattern, became necessarily a general license for all
+others which resembled them. And thus, without abrogating the prejudices
+which protected the imperial precedency, a body of sumptuary laws--the
+most ruinous to the progress of manufacturing skill, [Footnote: Because
+the most effectual extinguishers of all ambition applied in that
+direction; since the very excellence of any particular fabric was
+the surest pledge of its virtual suppression by means of its legal
+restriction (which followed inevitably) to the use of the imperial
+house.] which has ever been devised--were silently suspended. One or two
+aspiring families might be offended by these innovations, which meantime
+gave the pleasures of enjoyment to thousands, and of hope to millions.
+
+But these, though very noticeable relaxations of the existing
+prerogative, were, as respected the temper which dictated them, no
+more than everyday manifestations of the emperor's perpetual benignity.
+Fortunately for Marcus, the indestructible privilege of the _divina
+domus_ exalted it so unapproachably beyond all competition, that no
+possible remissions of aulic rigor could ever be misinterpreted; fear
+there could be none, lest such paternal indulgences should lose their
+effect and acceptation as pure condescensions. They could neither
+injure their author, who was otherwise charmed and consecrated, from
+disrespect; nor could they suffer injury themselves by misconstruction,
+or seem other than sincere, coming from a prince whose entire life
+was one long series of acts expressing the same affable spirit. Such,
+indeed, was the effect of this uninterrupted benevolence in the emperor,
+that at length all men, according to their several ages, hailed him as
+their father, son, or brother. And when he died, in the sixty-first
+year of his life (the 18th of his reign), he was lamented with a
+corresponding peculiarity in the public ceremonial, such, for instance,
+as the studied interfusion of the senatorial body with the populace,
+expressive of the levelling power of a true and comprehensive grief; a
+peculiarity for which no precedent was found, and which never afterwards
+became a precedent for similar honors to the best of his successors.
+
+But malice has the divine privilege of ubiquity; and therefore it was
+that even this great model of private and public virtue did not escape
+the foulest libels: he was twice accused of murder; once on the person
+of a gladiator, with whom the empress is said to have fallen in love;
+and again, upon his associate in the empire, who died in reality of an
+apoplectic seizure, on his return from the German campaign. Neither
+of these atrocious fictions ever gained the least hold of the public
+attention, so entirely were they put down by the _prima facie_ evidence
+of facts, and of the emperor's notorious character. In fact his faults,
+if he had any in his public life, were entirely those of too much
+indulgence. In a few cases of enormous guilt, it is recorded that
+he showed himself inexorable. But, generally speaking, he was far
+otherwise; and, in particular, he carried his indulgence to his wife's
+vices to an excess which drew upon him the satirical notice of the
+stage.
+
+The gladiators, and still more the sailors of that age, were constantly
+to be seen playing naked, and Faustina was shameless enough to take her
+station in places which gave her the advantages of a leisurely review;
+and she actually selected favorites from both classes on the ground of
+a personal inspection. With others of greater rank she is said even
+to have been surprised by her husband; in particular with one called
+Tertullus, at dinner. [Footnote: Upon which some _mimographus_ built an
+occasional notice of the scandal then floating on the public breath
+in the following terms: One of the actors having asked "_Who was the
+adulterous paramour?_" receives for answer, _Tullus_. Who? he asks
+again; and again for three times running he is answered, _Tullus_. But
+asking a fourth time, the rejoinder is, Jam dixi _ter Tullus_.] But to
+all remonstrances on this subject, Marcus is reported to have replied,
+"_Si uxorem dimittimus, reddamus et dotem;_" meaning that, having
+received his right of succession to the empire simply by his adoption
+into the family of Pius, his wife's father, gratitude and filial duty
+obliged him to view any dishonors emanating from his wife's conduct as
+joint legacies with the splendors inherited from their common father; in
+short, that he was not at liberty to separate the rose from its
+thorns. However, the facts are not sufficiently known to warrant us in
+criticising very severely his behavior on so trying an occasion.
+
+It would be too much for human frailty, that absolutely no stain should
+remain upon his memory. Possibly the best use which can be made of such
+a fact is, in the way of consolation to any unhappy man, whom his wife
+may too liberally have endowed with honors of this kind, by reminding
+him that he shares this distinction with the great philosophic emperor.
+The reflection upon this story by one of his biographers is this--"Such
+is the force of daily life in a good ruler, so great the power of his
+sanctity, gentleness, and piety, that no breath of slander or invidious
+suggestion from an acquaintance can avail to sully his memory. In short,
+to Antonine, immutable as the heavens in the tenor of his own life,
+and in the manifestations of his own moral temper, and who was not by
+possibility liable to any impulse or 'shadow of turning' from another
+man's suggestion, it was not eventually an injury that he was dishonored
+by some of his connections; on him, invulnerable in his own character,
+neither a harlot for his wife, nor a gladiator for his son, could
+inflict a wound. Then as now, oh sacred lord Diocletian, he was reputed
+a god; not as others are reputed, but specially and in a peculiar
+sense, and with a privilege to such worship from all men as you yourself
+addressed to him--who often breathe a wish to Heaven, that you were or
+could be such in life and merciful disposition as was Marcus Aurelius."
+
+What this encomiast says in a rhetorical tone was literally true. Marcus
+was raised to divine honors, or canonized [Footnote: In reality, if by
+_divus_ and _divine honors_ we understand a saint or spiritualized
+being having a right of intercession with the Supreme Deity, and by his
+temple, &c., if we understand a shrine attended by a priest to direct
+the prayers of his devotees, there is no such wide chasm between this
+pagan superstition and the adoration of saints in the Romish church, as
+at first sight appears. The fault is purely in the names: _divus_ and
+_templum_ are words too undistinguishing and generic.] (as in Christian
+phrase we might express it.) That was a matter of course; and,
+considering with whom he shared such honors, they are of little
+account in expressing the grief and veneration which followed him. A
+circumstance more characteristic, in the record of those observances
+which attested the public feeling, is this--that he who at that time had
+no bust, picture, or statue of Marcus in his house, was looked upon as a
+profane and irreligious man. Finally, to do him honor not by testimonies
+of men's opinions in his favor, but by facts of his own life and
+conduct, one memorable trophy there is amongst the moral distinctions
+of the philosophic Caesar, utterly unnoticed hitherto by historians, but
+which will hereafter obtain a conspicuous place in any perfect record of
+the steps by which civilization has advanced, and human nature has been
+exalted. It is this: Marcus Aurelius was the first great military
+leader (and his civil office as supreme interpreter and creator of
+law consecrated his example) who allowed rights indefeasible--rights
+uncancelled by his misfortune in the field, to the prisoner of war.
+Others had been merciful and variously indulgent, upon their own
+discretion, and upon a random impulse to some, or possibly to all of
+their prisoners; but this was either in submission to the usage of that
+particular war, or to special self-interest, or at most to individual
+good feeling. None had allowed a prisoner to challenge any forbearance
+as of right. But Marcus Aurelius first resolutely maintained that
+certain indestructible rights adhered to every soldier, simply as a man,
+which rights, capture by the sword, or any other accident of war, could
+do nothing to shake or to diminish. We have noticed other instances in
+which Marcus Aurelius labored, at the risk of his popularity, to elevate
+the condition of human nature. But those, though equally expressing the
+goodness and loftiness of his nature, were by accident directed to a
+perishable institution, which time has swept away, and along with
+it therefore his reformations. Here, however, is an immortal act of
+goodness built upon an immortal basis; for so long as armies congregate,
+and the sword is the arbiter of international quarrels, so long it will
+deserve to be had in remembrance, that the first man who set limits to
+the empire of wrong, and first translated within the jurisdiction
+of man's moral nature that state of war which had heretofore been
+consigned, by principle no less than by practice, to anarchy, animal
+violence, and brute force, was also the first philosopher who sat upon a
+throne.
+
+In this, and in his universal spirit of forgiveness, we cannot but
+acknowledge a Christian by anticipation; nor can we hesitate to believe,
+that through one or other of his many philosophic friends, [Footnote:
+Not long after this, Alexander Severus meditated a temple to Christ;
+upon which design Lampridius observes,--_Quod et Hadrianus cogitasse
+fertur;_ and, as Lampridius was himself a pagan, we believe him to have
+been right in his report, in spite of all which has been written by
+Casaubon and others, who maintain that these imperfect temples of
+Hadrian were left void of all images or idols,--not in respect to
+the Christian practice, but because he designed them eventually to be
+dedicated to himself. However, be this as it may, thus much appears on
+the face of the story,--that Christ and Christianity had by that time
+begun to challenge the imperial attention; and of this there is an
+indirect indication, as it has been interpreted, even in the memoir
+of Marcus himself. The passage is this: "Fama fuit sane quod sub
+philosophorum specie quidam rempublicam vexarent et privates." The
+_philosophi_, here mentioned by Capitoline, are by some supposed to be
+the Christians; and for many reasons we believe it; and we understand
+the molestations of the public services and of private individuals,
+here charged upon them, as a very natural reference to the Christian
+doctrines falsely understood. There is, by the way, a fine remark upon
+Christianity, made by an infidel philosopher of Germany, which suggests
+a remarkable feature in the merits of Marcus Aurelius. There were, as
+this German philosopher used to observe, two schemes of thinking amongst
+the ancients, which severally fulfilled the two functions of a sound
+philosophy, as respected the moral nature of man. One of these
+schemes presented us with a just ideal of moral excellence, a standard
+sufficiently exalted: this was the Stoic philosophy; and thus far its
+pretensions were unexceptionable and perfect. But unfortunately, whilst
+contemplating this pure ideal of man as he ought to be, the Stoic
+totally forgot the frail nature of man as he is; and by refusing all
+compromises and all condescensions to human infirmity, this philosophy
+of the Porch presented to us a brilliant prize and object for our
+efforts, but placed on an inaccessible height.
+
+On the other hand, there was a very different philosophy at the very
+antagonist pole,--not blinding itself by abstractions too elevated,
+submitting to what it finds, bending to the absolute facts and realities
+of man's nature, and affably adapting itself to human imperfections.
+This was the philosophy of Epicurus; and undoubtedly, as a beginning,
+and for the elementary purpose of conciliating the affections of the
+pupil, it was well devised; but here the misfortune was, that the ideal,
+or _maximum perfectionis_, attainable by human nature, was pitched so
+low, that the humility of its condescensions and the excellence of its
+means were all to no purpose, as leading to nothing further. One mode
+presented a splendid end, but insulated, and with no means fitted to
+a human aspirant for communicating with its splendors; the other, an
+excellent road, but leading to no worthy or proportionate end. Yet
+these, as regarded morals, were the best and ultimate achievements of
+the pagan world. Now Christianity, said he, is the synthesis of whatever
+is separately excellent in either. It will abate as little as the
+haughtiest Stoicism of the ideal which it contemplates as the first
+postulate of true morality; the absolute holiness and purity which it
+demands are as much raised above the poor performances of actual man,
+as the absolute wisdom and impeccability of the Stoic. Yet, unlike the
+Stoic scheme, Christianity is aware of the necessity, and provides for
+it, that the means of appropriating this ideal perfection should be
+such as are consistent with the nature of a most erring and imperfect
+creature. Its motion is _towards_ the divine, but _by_ and _through_ the
+human. In fact, it offers the Stoic humanized in his scheme of means,
+and the Epicurean exalted in his final objects. Nor is it possible to
+conceive a practicable scheme of morals which should not rest upon such
+a synthesis of the two elements as the Christian scheme presents; nor
+any other mode of fulfilling that demand than, such a one as is there
+first brought forward, viz., a double or Janus nature, which stands in
+an equivocal relation,--to the divine nature by his actual perfections,
+to the human nature by his participation in the same animal frailties
+and capacities of fleshly temptation. No other vinculum could bind the
+two postulates together, of an absolute perfection in the end proposed,
+and yet of utter imperfection in the means for attaining it.
+
+Such was the outline of this famous tribute by an unbelieving
+philosopher to the merits of Christianity as a scheme of moral
+discipline. Now, it must be remembered that Marcus Aurelius was by
+profession a Stoic; and that generally, as a theoretical philosopher,
+but still more as a Stoic philosopher, he might be supposed incapable of
+descending from these airy altitudes of speculation to the true needs,
+infirmities, and capacities of human nature. Yet strange it is, that he,
+of all the good emperors, was the most thoroughly human and practical.
+In evidence of which, one body of records is amply sufficient, which
+is, the very extensive and wise reforms which he, beyond all the Caesars,
+executed in the existing laws. To all the exigencies of the times, and
+to all the new necessities developed by the progress of society, he
+adjusted the old laws, or supplied new ones. The same praise, therefore,
+belongs to him, which the German philosopher conceded to Christianity,
+of reconciling the austerest ideal with the practical; and hence another
+argument for presuming him half baptized into the new faith.] whose
+attention Christianity was by that time powerful to attract, some reflex
+images of Christian doctrines--some half-conscious perception of its
+perfect beauty--had flashed upon his mind. And when we view him from
+this distant age, as heading that shining array, the Howards and the
+Wilberforces, who have since then in a practical sense hearkened to
+the sighs of "all prisoners and captives"--we are ready to suppose
+him addressed by the great Founder of Christianity, in the words of
+Scripture, "_Verily, I say unto thee, Thou art not far from the kingdom
+of heaven._"
+
+As a supplement to the reign of Marcus Aurelius, we ought to notice the
+rise of one great rebel, the sole civil disturber of his time, in
+Syria. This was Avidius Cassius, whose descent from Cassius (the noted
+conspirator against the great Dictator, Julius) seems to have suggested
+to him a wandering idea, and at length a formal purpose of restoring
+the ancient republic. Avidius was the commander-in-chief of the Oriental
+army, whose head-quarters were then fixed at Antioch. His native
+disposition, which inclined him to cruelty, and his political views,
+made him, from his first entrance upon office, a severe disciplinarian.
+The well known enormities of the neighboring Daphne gave him ample
+opportunities for the exercise of his harsh propensities in reforming
+the dissolute soldiery. He amputated heads, arms, feet, and hams: he
+turned out his mutilated victims, as walking spectacles of warning; he
+burned them; he smoked them to death; and, in one instance, he crucified
+a detachment of his army, together with their centurions, for having,
+unauthorized, gained a splendid victory, and captured a large booty
+on the Danube. Upon this the soldiers mutinied against him, in mere
+indignation at his tyranny. However, he prosecuted his purpose, and
+prevailed, by his bold contempt of the danger which menaced him. From
+the abuses in the army, he proceeded to attack the abuses of the civil
+administration. But as these were protected by the example of the great
+proconsular lieutenants and provincial governors, policy obliged him
+to confine himself to verbal expressions of anger; until at length,
+sensible that this impotent railing did but expose him to contempt,
+he resolved to arm himself with the powers of radical reform, by open
+rebellion. His ultimate purpose was the restoration of the ancient
+republic, or, (as he himself expresses it in an interesting letter,
+which yet survives,) "_ut in antiquum statum publica forma reddatur_;"
+_i.e._ that the constitution should be restored to its original
+condition. And this must be effected by military violence and the aid of
+the executioner--or, in his own words, _multis gladiis, multis elogiis_,
+(by innumerable sabres, by innumerable records of condemnation.) Against
+this man Marcus was warned by his imperial colleague Lucius Verus, in
+a very remarkable letter. After expressing his suspicions of him
+generally, the writer goes on to say--"I would you had him closely
+watched. For he is a general disliker of us and of our doings; he is
+gathering together an enormous treasure, and he makes an open jest of
+our literary pursuits. You, for instance, he calls a philosophizing old
+woman, and me a dissolute buffoon and scamp. Consider what you would
+have done. For my part, I bear the fellow no ill will; but again, I say,
+take care that he does not do a mischief to yourself, or your children."
+
+The answer of Marcus is noble and characteristic: "I have read your
+letter, and I will confess to you I think it more scrupulously timid
+than becomes an emperor, and timid in a way unsuited to the spirit of
+our times. Consider this--if the empire is destined to Cassius by the
+decrees of Providence, in that case it will not be in our power to
+put him to death, however much we may desire to do so. You know your
+great-grandfather's saying,--No prince ever killed his own heir--no man,
+that is, ever yet prevailed against one whom Providence had marked out
+as his successor. On the other hand, if Providence opposes him, then,
+without any cruelty on our part, he will spontaneously fall into some
+snare spread for him by destiny. Besides, we cannot treat a man as under
+impeachment whom nobody impeaches, and whom, by your own confession,
+the soldiers love. Then again, in cases of high treason, even those
+criminals who are convicted upon the clearest evidence, yet, as
+friendless and deserted persons contending against the powerful, and
+matched against those who are armed with the whole authority of the
+State, seem to suffer some wrong. You remember what your grandfather
+said--Wretched, indeed, is the fate of princes, who then first obtain
+credit in any charges of conspiracy which they allege--when they happen
+to seal the validity of their charges against the plotters, by falling
+martyrs to the plot. Domitian it was, in fact, who first uttered this
+truth; but I choose rather to place it under the authority of Hadrian,
+because the sayings of tyrants, even when they are true and happy, carry
+less weight with them than naturally they ought. For Cassius, then, let
+him keep his present temper and inclinations; and the more so--being (as
+he is) a good General--austere in his discipline, brave, and one whom
+the State cannot afford to lose. For as to what you insinuate--that
+I ought to provide for my children's interests, by putting this
+man judicially out of the way, very frankly I say to you--Perish my
+children, if Avidius shall deserve more attachment than they, and if it
+shall prove salutary to the State that Cassius should live rather than
+the children of Marcus."
+
+This letter affords a singular illustration of fatalism, such certainly
+as we might expect in a Stoic, but carried even to a Turkish excess; and
+not theoretically professed only, but practically acted upon in a case
+of capital hazard. _That no prince ever killed his own successor_, i.e.,
+that it was vain for a prince to put conspirators to death, because, by
+the very possibility of doing so, a demonstration is obtained that such
+conspirators had never been destined to prosper, is as condensed and
+striking an expression of fatalism as ever has been devised. The rest
+of the letter is truly noble, and breathes the very soul of careless
+magnanimity reposing upon conscious innocence. Meantime, Cassius
+increased in power and influence: his army had become a most formidable
+engine of his ambition through its restored discipline; and his own
+authority was sevenfold greater, because he had himself created that
+discipline in the face of unequalled temptations hourly renewed and
+rooted in the very centre of his head-quarters. "Daphne, by Orontes," a
+suburb of Antioch, was infamous for its seductions; and _Daphnic luxury_
+had become proverbial for expressing an excess of voluptuousness,
+such as other places could not rival by mere defect of means, and
+preparations elaborate enough to sustain it in all its varieties of
+mode, or to conceal it from public notice. In the very purlieus of
+this great nest, or sty of sensuality, within sight and touch of its
+pollutions, did he keep his army fiercely reined up, daring and defying
+them, as it were, to taste of the banquet whose very odor they inhaled.
+
+Thus provided with the means, and improved instruments, for executing
+his purposes, he broke out into open rebellion; and, though hostile to
+the _principatus_, or personal supremacy of one man, he did not feel
+his republican purism at all wounded by the style and title of
+_Imperator_,--that being a military term, and a mere titular honor,
+which had co-existed with the severest forms of republicanism.
+_Imperator_, then, he was saluted and proclaimed; and doubtless the
+writer of the warning letter from Syria would now declare that the
+sequel had justified the fears which Marcus had thought so unbecoming to
+a Roman emperor. But again Marcus would have said, "Let us wait for the
+sequel of the sequel," and that would have justified him. It is often
+found by experience that men, who have learned to reverence a person
+in authority chiefly by his offices of correction applied to their own
+aberrations,--who have known and feared him, in short, in his character
+of reformer,--will be more than usually inclined to desert him on his
+first movement in the direction of wrong. Their obedience being founded
+on fear, and fear being never wholly disconnected from hatred, they
+naturally seize with eagerness upon the first lawful pretext for
+disobedience; the luxury of revenge is, in such a case, too potent,--a
+meritorious disobedience too novel a temptation,--to have a chance of
+being rejected. Never, indeed, does erring human nature look more
+abject than in the person of a severe exactor of duty, who has immolated
+thousands to the wrath of offended law, suddenly himself becoming a
+capital offender, a glozing tempter in search of accomplices, and in
+that character at once standing before the meanest of his own dependents
+as a self-deposed officer, liable to any man's arrest, and, _ipso
+facto_, a suppliant for his own mercy. The stern and haughty Cassius,
+who had so often tightened the cords of discipline until they threatened
+to snap asunder, now found, experimentally, the bitterness of these
+obvious truths. The trembling sentinel now looked insolently in his
+face; the cowering legionary, with whom "to hear was to obey," now mused
+or even bandied words upon his orders; the great lieutenants of his
+office, who stood next to his own person in authority, were preparing
+for revolt, open or secret, as circumstances should prescribe; not the
+accuser only, but the very avenger, was upon his steps; Nemesis, that
+Nemesis who once so closely adhered to the name and fortunes of the
+lawful Caesar, turning against every one of his assassins the edge of his
+own assassinating sword, was already at his heels; and in the midst of a
+sudden prosperity, and its accompanying shouts of gratulation, he heard
+the sullen knells of approaching death. Antioch, it was true, the
+great Roman capital of the Orient, bore him, for certain motives of
+self-interest, peculiar good-will. But there was no city of the world in
+which the Roman Caesar did not reckon many liege-men and partisans.
+And the very hands, which dressed his altars and crowned his Praetorian
+pavilion, might not improbably in that same hour put an edge upon
+the sabre which was to avenge the injuries of the too indulgent and
+long-suffering Antoninus. Meantime, to give a color of patriotism to
+his treason, Cassius alleged public motives; in a letter, which he wrote
+after assuming the purple, he says: "Wretched empire, miserable state,
+which endures these hungry blood-suckers battening on her vitals!--A
+worthy man, doubtless, is Marcus; who, in his eagerness to be reputed
+clement, suffers those to live whose conduct he himself abhors. Where is
+that L. Cassius, whose name I vainly inherit? Where is that Marcus,--not
+Aurelius, mark you, but Cato Censorius? Where the good old discipline
+of ancestral times, long since indeed disused, but now not so much
+as looked after in our aspirations? Marcus Antoninus is a scholar; he
+enacts the philosopher; and he tries conclusions upon the four elements,
+and upon the nature of the soul; and he discourses learnedly upon
+the _Honestum_; and concerning the _Summum Bonum_ he is unanswerable.
+Meanwhile, is he learned in the interests of the State? Can he argue
+a point upon the public economy? You see what a host of sabres is
+required, what a host of impeachments, sentences, executions, before the
+commonwealth can reassume its ancient integrity! What! shall I esteem
+as proconsuls, as governors, those who for that end only deem themselves
+invested with lieutenancies or great senatorial appointments, that they
+may gorge themselves with the provincial luxuries and wealth? No doubt
+you heard in what way our friend the philosopher gave the place
+of praetorian prefect to one who but three days before was a
+bankrupt,--insolvent, by G--, and a beggar. Be not you content: that
+same gentleman is now as rich as a prefect should be; and has been so,
+I tell you, any time these three days. And how, I pray you, how--how, my
+good sir? How but out of the bowels of the provinces, and the marrow of
+their bones? But no matter, let them be rich; let them be blood-suckers;
+so much, God willing, shall they regorge into the treasury of the
+empire. Let but Heaven smile upon our party, and the Cassiani shall
+return to the republic its old impersonal supremacy."
+
+But Heaven did _not_ smile; nor did man. Rome heard with bitter
+indignation of this old traitor's ingratitude, and his false mask of
+republican civism. Excepting Marcus Aurelius himself, not one man
+but thirsted for revenge. And that was soon obtained. He and all his
+supporters, one after the other, rapidly fell (as Marcus had predicted)
+into snares laid by the officers who continued true to their allegiance.
+Except the family and household of Cassius, there remained in a short
+time none for the vengeance of the senate, or for the mercy of the
+emperor. In _them_ centred the last arrears of hope and fear, of
+chastisement or pardon, depending upon this memorable revolt. And about
+the disposal of their persons arose the final question to which the
+case gave birth. The letters yet remain in which the several parties
+interested gave utterance to the passions which possessed them.
+Faustina, the Empress, urged her husband with feminine violence to adopt
+against his prisoners comprehensive acts of vengeance. "Noli parcere
+hominibus," says she, "qui tibi non pepercerunt; et nec mihi nec filiis
+nostris parcerent, si vicissent." And elsewhere she irritates his wrath
+against the army as accomplices for the time, and as a body of men
+"qui, nisi opprimuntur, opprimunt." We may be sure of the result. After
+commending her zeal for her own family, he says, "Ego vero et ejus
+liberis parcam, et genero, et uxori; et ad senatum scribam ne aut
+proscriptio gravior sit, aut poena crudelior;" adding that, had his
+counsels prevailed, not even Cassius himself should have perished. As
+to his relatives, "Why," he asks, "should I speak of pardon to them,
+who indeed have done no wrong, and are blameless even in purpose?"
+Accordingly, his letter of intercession to the senate protests, that,
+so far from asking for further victims to the crime of Avidius Cassius,
+would to God he could call back from the dead many of those who had
+fallen! With immense applause, and with turbulent acclamations, the
+senate granted all his requests "in consideration of his philosophy,
+of his long-suffering, of his learning and accomplishments, of his
+nobility, of his innocence." And until a monster arose who delighted in
+the blood of the guiltless, it is recorded that the posterity of Avidius
+Cassius lived in security, and were admitted to honors and public
+distinctions by favor of him, whose life and empire that memorable
+traitor had sought to undermine under the favor of his guileless
+master's too confiding magnanimity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The Roman empire, and the Roman emperors, it might naturally be supposed
+by one who had not as yet traversed that tremendous chapter in the
+history of man, would be likely to present a separate and almost equal
+interest. The empire, in the first place, as the most magnificent
+monument of human power which our planet has beheld, must for that
+single reason, even though its records were otherwise of little
+interest, fix upon itself the very keenest gaze from all succeeding
+ages to the end of time. To trace the fortunes and revolutions of that
+unrivalled monarchy over which the Roman eagle brooded, to follow the
+dilapidations of that aerial arch, which silently and steadily through
+seven centuries ascended under the colossal architecture of the children
+of Romulus, to watch the unweaving of the golden arras, and step by
+step to see paralysis stealing over the once perfect cohesion of the
+republican creations,--cannot but insure a severe, though
+melancholy delight. On its own separate account, the decline of this
+throne-shattering power must and will engage the foremost place amongst
+all historical reviews. The "dislimning" and unmoulding of some mighty
+pageantry in the heavens has its own appropriate grandeurs, no less
+than the gathering of its cloudy pomps. The going down of the sun
+is contemplated with no less awe than his rising. Nor is any thing
+portentous in its growth, which is not also portentous in the steps and
+"moments" of its decay. Hence, in the second place, we might presume a
+commensurate interest in the characters and fortunes of the successive
+emperors. If the empire challenged our first survey, the next would seem
+due to the Caesars who guided its course; to the great ones who retarded,
+and to the bad ones who precipitated, its ruin.
+
+Such might be the natural expectation of an inexperienced reader. But
+it is _not_ so. The Caesars, throughout their long line, are not
+interesting, neither personally in themselves, nor derivatively from the
+tragic events to which their history is attached. Their whole interest
+lies in their situation--in the unapproachable altitude of their
+thrones. But, considered with a reference to their human qualities,
+scarcely one in the whole series can be viewed with a human interest
+apart from the circumstances of his position. "Pass like shadows, so
+depart!" The reason for this defect of all personal variety of interest
+in these enormous potentates, must be sought in the constitution of
+their power and the very necessities of their office. Even the greatest
+among them, those who by way of distinction were called _the Great_,
+as Constantine and Theodosius, were not great, for they were not
+magnanimous; nor could they be so under _their_ tenure of power, which
+made it a duty to be suspicious, and, by fastening upon all varieties of
+original temper one dire necessity of bloodshed, extinguished under
+this monotonous cloud of cruel jealousy and everlasting panic every
+characteristic feature of genial human nature, that would else have
+emerged through so long a train of princes. There is a remarkable story
+told of Agrippina, that, upon some occasion, when a wizard announced
+to her, as truths which he had read in the heavens, the two fatal
+necessities impending over her son,--one that he should ascend to
+empire, the other that he should murder herself, she replied in
+these stern and memorable words--_Occidat, dum imperet_. Upon which a
+continental writer comments thus: "Never before or since have three such
+words issued from the lips of woman; and in truth, one knows not which
+most to abominate or to admire--the aspiring princess, or the loving
+mother. Meantime, in these few words lies naked to the day, in its whole
+hideous deformity, the very essence of Romanism and the imperatorial
+power, and one might here consider the mother of Nero as the
+impersonation of that monstrous condition."
+
+This is true: _Occidat dum imperet_, was the watchword and very
+cognizance of the Roman imperator. But almost equally it was his
+watchword--_Occidatur dum imperet_. Doing or suffering, the Caesars were
+almost equally involved in bloodshed; very few that were not murderers,
+and nearly all were themselves murdered.
+
+The empire, then, must be regarded as the primary object of our
+interest; and it is in this way only that any secondary interest arises
+for the emperors. Now, with respect to the empire, the first question
+which presents itself is,--Whence, that is, from what causes and from
+what era, we are to date its decline? Gibbon, as we all know, dates it
+from the reign of Commodus; but certainly upon no sufficient, or even
+plausible grounds. Our own opinion we shall state boldly: the empire
+itself, from the very era of its establishment, was one long decline of
+the Roman power. A vast monarchy had been created and consolidated by
+the all-conquering instincts of a republic--cradled and nursed in wars,
+and essentially warlike by means of all its institutions [Footnote:
+Amongst these institutions, none appear to us so remarkable, or fitted
+to accomplish so prodigious a circle of purposes belonging to the
+highest state policy, as the Roman method of colonization. Colonies
+were, in effect, the great engine of Roman conquest; and the following
+are among a few of the great ends to which they were applied. First
+of all, how came it that the early armies of Rome served, and served
+cheerfully, without pay? Simply because all who were victorious knew
+that they would receive their arrears in the fullest and amplest
+form upon their final discharge, viz. in the shape of a colonial
+estate--large enough to rear a family in comfort, and seated in the
+midst of similar allotments, distributed to their old comrades in arms.
+These lands were already, perhaps, in high cultivation, being often
+taken from conquered tribes; but, if not, the new occupants could rely
+for aid of every sort, for social intercourse, and for all the offices
+of good neighborhood upon the surrounding proprietors--who were sure to
+be persons in the same circumstances as themselves, and draughted from
+the same legion. For be it remembered, that in the primitive ages
+of Rome, concerning which it is that we are now speaking, entire
+legions--privates and officers--were transferred in one body to the new
+colony. "Antiquitus," says the learned Goesius, "deducebantur integral
+legiones, quibus parta victoria." Neither was there much waiting for
+this honorary gift. In later ages, it is true, when such resources were
+less plentiful, and when regular pay was given to the soldiery, it
+was the veteran only who obtained this splendid provision; but in the
+earlier times, a single fortunate campaign not seldom dismissed the
+young recruit to a life of ease and honor. "Multis legionibus," says
+Hyginus, "contigit bellum feliciter transigere, et ad laboriosam
+agriculturae requiem _primo tyrocinii gradu_ pervenire. Nam cum signis
+et aquila et primis ordinibus et tribunis deducebantur." Tacitus also
+notices this organization of the early colonies, and adds the reason
+of it, and its happy effect, when contrasting it with the vicious
+arrangements of the colonizing system in his own days. "Olim," says he,
+"universae legiones deducebantur cum tribunis et centurionibus, et
+sui cujusque ordinis militibus, _ut consensu et charitate rempublicam
+efficerent_." _Secondly_, not only were the troops in this way paid at
+a time when the public purse was unequal to the expenditure of war--but
+this pay, being contingent on the successful issue of the war, added
+the strength of self-interest to that of patriotism in stimulating the
+soldier to extraordinary efforts. Thirdly, not only did the soldier in
+this way reap his pay, but also he reaped a reward, (and that besides a
+trophy and perpetual monument of his public services,) so munificent as
+to constitute a permanent provision for a family; and accordingly he
+was now encouraged, nay, enjoined, to marry. For here was an hereditary
+landed estate equal to the liberal maintenance of a family. And thus did
+a simple people, obeying its instinct of conquest, not only discover, in
+its earliest days, the subtle principle of Machiavel--_Let war support
+war_; but (which is far more than Machiavel's view) they made each
+present war support many future wars--by making it support a new offset
+from the population, bound to the mother city by indissoluble ties of
+privilege and civic duties; and in many other ways they made every
+war, by and through the colonizing system to which it gave occasion,
+serviceable to future aggrandizement. War, managed in this way, and
+with these results, became to Rome what commerce or rural industry is
+to other countries, viz. the only hopeful and general way for making
+a fortune. _Fourthly_, by means of colonies it was that Rome delivered
+herself from her surplus population. Prosperous and well-governed, the
+Roman citizens of each generation outnumbered those of the generation
+preceding. But the colonies provided outlets for these continual
+accessions of people, and absorbed them faster than they could arise.
+[Footnote: And in this way we must explain the fact--that, in the many
+successive numerations of the people continually noticed by Livy and
+others, we do not find that sort of multiplication which we might have
+looked for in a state so ably governed. The truth is, that the continual
+surpluses had been carried off by the colonizing drain, before they
+could become noticeable or troublesome.] And thus the great original
+sin of modern states, that heel of Achilles in which they are all
+vulnerable, and which (generally speaking) becomes more oppressive to
+the public prosperity as that prosperity happens to be greater (for in
+poor states and under despotic governments, this evil does not exist),
+that flagrant infirmity of our own country, for which no statesman
+has devised any commensurate remedy, was to ancient Rome a perpetual
+foundation and well-head of public strength and enlarged resources.
+With us of modern times, when population greatly outruns the demand for
+labor, whether it be under the stimulus of upright government, and just
+laws, justly administered, in combination with the manufacturing system
+(as in England,) or (as in Ireland) under the stimulus of idle habits,
+cheap subsistence, and a low standard of comfort--we think it much if we
+can keep down insurrection by the bayonet and the sabre. _Lucro ponamus_
+is our cry, if we can effect even thus much; whereas Rome, in her
+simplest and pastoral days, converted this menacing danger and standing
+opprobrium of modern statesmanship to her own immense benefit. Not
+satisfied merely to have neutralized it, she drew from it the vital
+resources of her martial aggrandizement. For, _Fifthly_, these colonies
+were in two ways made the corner-stones of her martial policy: 1st, They
+were looked to as nurseries of their armies; during one generation the
+original colonists, already trained to military habits, were themselves
+disposable for this purpose on any great emergency; these men
+transmitted heroic traditions to their posterity; and, at all events, a
+more robust population was always at hand in agricultural colonies
+than could be had in the metropolis. Cato the elder, and all the early
+writers, notice the quality of such levies as being far superior to
+those drawn from a population of sedentary habits. 2dly, The Italian
+colonies, one and all, performed the functions which in our day are
+assigned to garrisoned towns and frontier fortresses. In the earliest
+times they discharged a still more critical service, by sometimes
+entirely displacing a hostile population, and more often by dividing it
+and breaking its unity. In cases of desperate resistance to the Roman
+arms, marked by frequent infraction of treaties, it was usual to remove
+the offending population to a safer situation, separated from Rome by
+the Tiber; sometimes entirely to disperse and scatter it. But, where
+these extremities were not called for by expediency or the Roman maxims
+of justice, it was judged sufficient to _interpolate_, as it were,
+the hostile people by colonizations from Rome, which were completely
+organized [Footnote: That is indeed involved in the technical term
+of _Deductio_; for unless the ceremonies, religious and political, of
+inauguration and organization, were duly complied with, the colony
+was not entitled to be considered as _deducta_--that is, solemnly and
+ceremonially transplanted from the metropolis.] for mutual aid, having
+officers of all ranks dispersed amongst them, and for overawing the
+growth of insurrectionary movements amongst their neighbors. Acting on
+this system, the Roman colonies in some measure resembled the _English
+Pale_, as existing at one era in Ireland. This mode of service, it is
+true, became obsolete in process of time, concurrently with the dangers
+which it was shaped to meet; for the whole of Italy proper, together
+with that part of Italy called Cisalpine Gaul, was at length reduced
+to unity and obedience by the almighty republic. But in forwarding that
+great end, and indispensable condition towards all foreign warfare, no
+one military engine in the whole armory of Rome availed so much as
+her Italian colonies. The other use of these colonies, as frontier
+garrisons, or, at any rate, as interposing between a foreign enemy and
+the gates of Rome, they continued to perform long after their earlier
+uses had passed away; and Cicero himself notices their value in this
+view. "Colonias," says he [_Orat. in Rullum_], "sic idoneis in locis
+contra suspicionem periculi collocarunt, ut esse non oppida Italiae sed
+_propugnacula_ imperii viderentur." _Finally_, the colonies were the
+best means of promoting tillage, and the culture of vineyards. And
+though this service, as regarded the Italian colonies, was greatly
+defeated in succeeding times by the ruinous largesses of corn
+[_frumentationes_], and other vices of the Roman policy after the vast
+revolution effected by universal luxury, it is not the less true that,
+left to themselves and their natural tendency, the Roman colonies would
+have yielded this last benefit as certainly as any other. Large volumes
+exist, illustrated by the learning of Rigaltius, Salmatius, and Goesius,
+upon the mere technical arrangements of the Roman colonies. And whose
+libraries might be written on these same colonies considered as engines
+of exquisite state policy.] and by the habits of the people. This
+monarchy had been of too slow a growth--too gradual, and too much
+according to the regular stages of nature herself in its development, to
+have any chance of being other than well cemented; the cohesion of its
+parts was intense; seven centuries of growth demand one or two at least
+for palpable decay; and it is only for harlequin empires like that of
+Napoleon, run up with the rapidity of pantomime, to fall asunder under
+the instant reaction of a few false moves in politics, or a single
+unfortunate campaign. Hence it was, and from the prudence of Augustus
+acting through a very long reign, sustained at no very distant interval
+by the personal inspection and revisions of Hadrian, that for some time
+the Roman power seemed to be stationary. What else could be expected?
+The mere strength of the impetus derived from the republican
+institutions, could not but propagate itself, and cause even a motion
+in advance, for some time after those institutions had themselves given
+way. And besides the military institutions survived all others; and the
+army continued very much the same in its discipline and composition,
+long after Rome and all its civic institutions had bent before an utter
+revolution. It was very possible even that emperors should have arisen
+with martial propensities, and talents capable of masking, for many
+years, by specious but transitory conquests, the causes that were
+silently sapping the foundations of Roman supremacy; and thus by
+accidents of personal character and taste, an empire might even have
+expanded itself in appearance, which, by all its permanent and real
+tendencies, was even then shrinking within narrower limits, and
+travelling downwards to dissolution. In reality, one such emperor there
+was. Trajan, whether by martial inclinations, or (as is supposed by
+some) by dissatisfaction with his own position at Rome, when brought
+into more immediate connection with the senate, was driven into needless
+war; and he achieved conquests in the direction of Dacia as well as
+Parthia. But that these conquests were not substantial,--that they were
+connected by no true cement of cohesion with the existing empire, is
+evident from the rapidity with which they were abandoned. In the next
+reign, the empire had already recoiled within its former limits; and
+in two reigns further on, under Marcus Antoninus, though a prince of
+elevated character and warlike in his policy, we find such concessions
+of territory made to the Marcomanni and others, as indicate too plainly
+the shrinking energies of a waning empire. In reality, if we consider
+the polar opposition, in point of interest and situation, between the
+great officers of the republic and the Augustus or Caesar of the empire,
+we cannot fail to see the immense effect which that difference must have
+had upon the permanent spirit of conquest. Caesar was either adopted
+or elected to a situation of infinite luxury and enjoyment. He had
+no interests to secure by fighting in person: and he had a powerful
+interest in preventing others from fighting; since in that way only he
+could raise up competitors to himself, and dangerous seducers of the
+army. A consul, on the other hand, or great lieutenant of the senate,
+had nothing to enjoy or to hope for, when his term of office should have
+expired, unless according to his success in creating military fame and
+influence for himself. Those Caesars who fought whilst the empire was or
+seemed to be stationary, as Trajan, did so from personal taste. Those
+who fought in after centuries, when the decay became apparent, and
+dangers drew nearer, as Aurelian, did so from the necessities of fear;
+and under neither impulse were they likely to make durable conquests.
+The spirit of conquest having therefore departed at the very time
+when conquest would have become more difficult even to the republican
+energies, both from remoteness of ground and from the martial character
+of the chief nations which stood beyond the frontier,--it was a matter
+of necessity that with the republican institutions should expire the
+whole principle of territorial aggrandizement; and that, if the empire
+seemed to be stationary for some time after its establishment by Julius,
+and its final settlement by Augustus, this was through no strength of
+its own, or inherent in its own constitution, but through the continued
+action of that strength which it had inherited from the republic. In a
+philosophical sense, therefore, it may be affirmed, that the empire of
+the Caesars was _always_ in decline; ceasing to go forward, it could not
+do other than retrograde; and even the first _appearances_ of decline
+can, with no propriety, be referred to the reign of Commodus. His vices
+exposed him to public contempt and assassination; but neither one
+nor the other had any effect upon the strength of the empire. Here,
+therefore, is one just subject of complaint against Gibbon, that he has
+dated the declension of the Roman power from a commencement arbitrarily
+assumed; another, and a heavier, is, that he has failed to notice the
+steps and separate indications of decline as they arose,--the moments
+(to speak in the language of dynamics) through which the decline
+travelled onwards to its consummation. It is also a grievous offence
+as regards the true purposes of history,--and one which, in a complete
+exposition of the imperial history, we should have a right to insist
+on,--that Gibbon brings forward only such facts as allow of a scenical
+treatment, and seems every where, by the glancing style of his
+allusions, to presuppose an acquaintance with that very history which
+he undertakes to deliver. Our immediate purpose, however, is simply
+to characterize the office of emperor, and to notice such events and
+changes as operated for evil, and for a final effect of decay, upon
+the Caesars or their empire. As the best means of realizing it, we shall
+rapidly review the history of both, promising that we confine ourselves
+to the true Caesars, and the true empire, of the West.
+
+The first overt act of weakness,--the first expression of conscious
+declension, as regarded the foreign enemies of Rome, occurred in the
+reign of Hadrian; for it is a very different thing to forbear making
+conquests, and to renounce them when made. It is possible, however, that
+the cession then made of Mesopotamia and Armenia, however sure to be
+interpreted into the language of fear by the enemy, did not imply any
+such principle in this emperor. He was of a civic and paternal spirit,
+and anxious for the substantial welfare of the empire rather than its
+ostentatious glory. The internal administration of affairs had very much
+gone into neglect since the times of Augustus; and Hadrian was perhaps
+right in supposing that he could effect more public good by an extensive
+progress through the empire, and by a personal correction of abuses,
+than by any military enterprise. It is, besides, asserted, that he
+received an indemnity in money for the provinces beyond the Euphratus.
+But still it remains true, that in his reign the God Terminus made his
+first retrograde motion; and this emperor became naturally an object of
+public obloquy at Rome, and his name fell under the superstitious ban of
+a fatal tradition connected with the foundation of the capitol. The two
+Antonines, Titus and Marcus, who came next in succession, were truly
+good and patriotic princes; perhaps the only princes in the whole series
+who combined the virtues of private and of public life. In their reigns
+the frontier line was maintained in its integrity, and at the expense
+of some severe fighting under Marcus, who was a strenuous general at
+the same time that he was a severe student. It is, however, true, as we
+observed above, that, by allowing a settlement within the Roman
+frontier to a barbarous people, Marcus Aurelius raised the first ominous
+precedent in favor of those Gothic, Vandal, and Frankish hives, who
+were as yet hidden behind a cloud of years. Homes had been obtained by
+Trans-Danubian barbarians upon the sacred territory of Rome and Caesar:
+that fact remained upon tradition; whilst the terms upon which they had
+been obtained, how much or how little connected with fear, necessarily
+became liable to doubt and to oblivion. Here we pause to remark, that
+the first twelve Caesars, together with Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the
+two Antonines, making seventeen emperors, compose the first of four
+nearly equal groups, who occupied the throne in succession until
+the extinction of the Western Empire. And at this point be it
+observed,--that is, at the termination of the first group,--we take
+leave of all genuine virtue. In no one of the succeeding princes, if we
+except Alexander Severus, do we meet with any goodness of heart, or even
+amiableness of manners. The best of the future emperors, in a public
+sense, were harsh and repulsive in private character.
+
+The second group, as we have classed them, terminating with Philip the
+Arab, commences with Commodus. This unworthy prince, although the son of
+the excellent Marcus Antoninus, turned out a monster of debauchery.
+At the moment of his father's death, he was present in person at the
+head-quarters of the army on the Danube, and of necessity partook
+in many of their hardships. This it was which furnished his evil
+counsellors with their sole argument for urging his departure to the
+capital. A council having been convened, the faction of court sycophants
+pressed upon his attention the inclemency of the climate, contrasting it
+with the genial skies and sunny fields of Italy; and the season, which
+happened to be winter, gave strength to their representations. What!
+would the emperor be content for ever to hew out the frozen water with
+an axe before he could assuage his thirst? And, again, the total want of
+fruit-trees--did that recommend their present station as a fit one for
+the imperial court? Commodus, ashamed to found his objections to the
+station upon grounds so unsoldierly as these, affected to be moved by
+political reasons: some great senatorial house might take advantage of
+his distance from home,--might seize the palace, fortify it, and raise
+levies in Italy capable of sustaining its pretensions to the throne.
+These arguments were combated by Pompeianus, who, besides his personal
+weight as an officer, had married the eldest sister of the young
+emperor. Shame prevailed for the present with Commodus, and he dismissed
+the council with an assurance that he would think farther of it. The
+sequel was easy to foresee. Orders were soon issued for the departure of
+the court to Rome, and the task of managing the barbarians of Dacia, was
+delegated to lieutenants. The system upon which these officers executed
+their commission was a mixed one of terror and persuasion. Some they
+defeated in battle; and these were the majority; for Herodian says,
+_pleizous ton barbaron haplois echeirosanto_: Others they bribed into
+peace by large sums of money. And no doubt this last article in the
+policy of Commodus was that which led Gibbon to assign to this reign the
+first rudiments of the Roman declension. But it should be remembered,
+that, virtually, this policy was but the further prosecution of that
+which had already been adopted by Marcus Aurelius. Concessions and
+temperaments of any sort or degree showed that the Pannonian frontier
+was in too formidable a condition to be treated with uncompromising
+rigor. To _hamerimnon onoumenos_, purchasing an immunity from all
+further anxiety, Commodus (as the historian expresses it) _panta edidou
+ta aitoumena_--conceded all demands whatever. His journey to Rome was
+one continued festival: and the whole population of Rome turned out
+to welcome him. At this period he was undoubtedly the darling of the
+people: his personal beauty was splendid; and he was connected by blood
+with some of the greatest nobility. Over this flattering scene of hope
+and triumph clouds soon gathered: with the mob, indeed, there is reason
+to think that he continued a favorite to the last; but the respectable
+part of the citizens were speedily disgusted with his self-degradation,
+and came to hate him even more than ever or by any class he had been
+loved. The Roman pride never shows itself more conspicuously throughout
+all history, than in the alienation of heart which inevitably followed
+any great and continued outrages upon his own majesty, committed by
+their emperor. Cruelties the most atrocious, acts of vengeance the most
+bloody, fratricide, parricide, all were viewed with more toleration than
+oblivion of his own inviolable sanctity. Hence we imagine the wrath
+with which Rome would behold Commodus, under the eyes of four hundred
+thousand spectators, making himself a party to the contests of
+gladiators. In his earlier exhibitions as an archer, it is possible that
+his matchless dexterity, and his unerring eye, would avail to mitigate
+the censures: but when the Roman Imperator actually descended to
+the arena in the garb and equipments of a servile prize-fighter, and
+personally engaged in combat with such antagonists, having previously
+submitted to their training and discipline--the public indignation
+rose a to height, which spoke aloud the language of encouragement to
+conspiracy and treason. These were not wanting: three memorable plots
+against his life were defeated; one of them (that of Maternus, the
+robber) accompanied with romantic circumstances, [Footnote: On this
+occasion we may notice that the final execution of the vengeance
+projected by Maternus, was reserved for a public festival, exactly
+corresponding to the modern _carnival_; and from an expression used by
+Herodian, it is plain that masquerading had been an ancient practice
+in Rome.] which we have narrated in an earlier paper of this series.
+Another was set on foot by his eldest sister, Lucilla; nor did her close
+relationship protect her from capital punishment. In that instance,
+the immediate agent of her purposes, Quintianus, a young man, of signal
+resolution and daring, who had attempted to stab the emperor at the
+entrance of the amphitheatre, though baffled in his purpose, uttered a
+word which rang continually in the ears of Commodus, and poisoned
+his peace of mind for ever. His vengeance, perhaps, was thus more
+effectually accomplished than if he had at once dismissed his victim
+from life. "The senate," he had said, "sends thee this through me:" and
+henceforward the senate was the object of unslumbering suspicions to the
+emperor. Yet the public suspicions settled upon a different quarter; and
+a very memorable scene must have pointed his own in the same direction,
+supposing that he had previously been blind to his danger. On a day
+of great solemnity, when Rome had assembled her myriads in the
+amphitheatre, just at the very moment when the nobles, the magistrates,
+the priests, all, in short, that was venerable or consecrated in the
+State, with the Imperator in their centre, had taken their seats, and
+were waiting for the opening of the shows, a stranger, in the robe of
+a philosopher, bearing a staff in his hand, (which also was the
+professional ensign [Footnote: See Casaubon's notes upon Theophrastus.]
+of a philosopher,) stepped forward, and, by the waving of his hand,
+challenged the attention of Commodus. Deep silence ensued: upon which,
+in a few words, ominous to the ear as the handwriting on the wall to the
+eye of Belshazzar, the stranger unfolded to Commodus the instant peril
+which menaced both his life and his throne, from his great servant
+Perennius. What personal purpose of benefit to himself this stranger
+might have connected with his public warning, or by whom he might have
+been suborned, was never discovered; for he was instantly arrested by
+the agents of the great officer whom he had denounced, dragged away to
+punishment, and put to a cruel death. Commodus dissembled his panic for
+the present; but soon after, having received undeniable proofs (as is
+alleged) of the treason imputed to Perennius, in the shape of a
+coin which had been struck by his son, he caused the father to be
+assassinated; and, on the same day, by means of forged letters, before
+this news could reach the son, who commanded the Illyrian armies, he
+lured him also to destruction, under the belief that he was obeying the
+summons of his father to a private interview on the Italian frontier.
+So perished those enemies, if enemies they really were. But to these
+tragedies succeeded others far more comprehensive in their mischief, and
+in more continuous succession than is recorded upon any other page of
+universal history. Rome was ravaged by a pestilence--by a famine--by
+riots amounting to a civil war--by a dreadful massacre of the unarmed
+mob--by shocks of earthquake--and, finally, by a fire which consumed
+the national bank, [Footnote: Viz. the Temple of Peace; at that time the
+most magnificent edifice in Rome. Temples, it is well known, were the
+places used in ancient times as banks of deposit. For this function
+they were admirably fitted by their inviolable sanctity.] and the most
+sumptuous buildings of the city. To these horrors, with a rapidity
+characteristic of the Roman depravity, and possible only under the most
+extensive demoralization of the public mind, succeeded festivals of
+gorgeous pomp, and amphitheatrical exhibitions, upon a scale of grandeur
+absolutely unparalleled by all former attempts. Then were beheld, and
+familiarized to the eyes of the Roman mob--to children--and to women,
+animals as yet known to us, says Herodian, only in pictures. Whatever
+strange or rare animal could be drawn from the depths of India, from
+Siam and Pegu, or from the unvisited nooks of Ethiopia, were now brought
+together as subjects for the archery of the universal lord. [Footnote:
+What a prodigious opportunity for the zoologist!--And considering
+that these shows prevailed, for 500 years, during all which period the
+amphitheatre gave bounties, as it were, to the hunter and the fowler of
+every climate, and that, by means of a stimulus so constantly applied,
+scarcely any animal, the shyest, rarest, fiercest, escaped the demands
+of the arena,--no one fact so much illustrates the inertia of the public
+mind in those days, and the indifference to all scientific pursuits, as
+that no annotator should have risen to Pliny the elder--no rival to the
+immortal tutor of Alexander.] Invitations (and the invitations of kings
+are commands) had been scattered on this occasion profusely; not, as
+heretofore, to individuals or to families--but, as was in proportion
+to the occasion where an emperor was the chief performer, to nations.
+People were summoned by circles of longitude and latitude to come
+and see _theasumenoi ha mae proteron maete heormkesun maete
+aekaekoeisun_--things that eye had not seen nor ear heard of] the
+specious miracles of nature brought together from arctic and from tropic
+deserts, putting forth their strength, their speed, or their beauty, and
+glorifying by their deaths the matchless hand of the Roman king.
+There was beheld the lion from Bilidulgerid, and the leopard from
+Hindostan--the rein-deer from polar latitudes--the antelope from the
+Zaara--and the leigh, or gigantic stag, from Britain. Thither came the
+buffalo and the bison, the white bull of Northumberland and Galloway,
+the unicorn from the regions of Nepaul or Thibet, the rhinoceros and
+the river-horse from Senegal, with the elephant of Ceylon or Siam. The
+ostrich and the cameleopard, the wild ass and the zebra, the chamois and
+the ibex of Angora,--all brought their tributes of beauty or deformity
+to these vast aceldamas of Rome: their savage voices ascended in
+tumultuous uproar to the chambers of the capitol: a million of
+spectators sat round them: standing in the centre was a single
+statuesque figure--the imperial sagittary, beautiful as an Antinous, and
+majestic as a Jupiter, whose hand was so steady and whose eye so true,
+that he was never known to miss, and who, in this accomplishment at
+least, was so absolute in his excellence, that, as we are assured by a
+writer not disposed to flatter him, the very foremost of the Parthian
+archers and of the Mauritanian lancers [_Parthyaion oi toxichaes
+hachribentes, chai Mauresion oi hachontixein harizoi_] were not able
+to contend with him. Juvenal, in a well known passage upon the
+disproportionate endings of illustrious careers, drawing one of his
+examples from Marius, says, that he ought, for his own glory, and to
+make his end correspondent to his life, to have died at the moment when
+he descended from his triumphal chariot at the portals of the capitol.
+And of Commodus, in like manner, it may be affirmed, that, had he
+died in the exercise of his peculiar art, with a hecatomb of victims
+rendering homage to his miraculous skill, by the regularity of the files
+which they presented, as they lay stretched out dying or dead upon the
+arena,--he would have left a splendid and a characteristic impression
+of himself upon that nation of spectators who had witnessed his
+performance. He was the noblest artist in his own profession that the
+world had seen--in archery he was the Robin Hood of Rome; he was in the
+very meridian of his youth; and he was the most beautiful man of his
+own times _Ton chath eauton hathropon challei euprepestatos_. He would
+therefore have looked the part admirably of the dying gladiator; and he
+would have died in his natural vocation. But it was ordered otherwise;
+his death was destined to private malice, and to an ignoble hand. And
+much obscurity still rests upon the motives of the assassins, though its
+circumstances are reported with unusual minuteness of detail. One
+thing is evident, that the public and patriotic motives assigned by the
+perpetrators as the remote causes of their conspiracy, cannot have been
+the true ones. The grave historian may sum up his character of Commodus
+by saying that, however richly endowed with natural gifts, he abused
+them all to bad purposes; that he derogated from his noble ancestors,
+and disavowed the obligations of his illustrious name; and, as the
+climax of his offences, that he dishonored the purple--_aischrois
+epitaedeumasin_--by the baseness of his pursuits. All that is true, and
+more than that. But these considerations were not of a nature to
+affect his parasitical attendants very nearly or keenly. Yet the story
+runs--that Marcia, his privileged mistress, deeply affected by the
+anticipation of some further outrages upon his high dignity which he
+was then meditating, had carried the importunity of her deprecations too
+far; that the irritated emperor had consequently inscribed her name, in
+company with others, (whom he had reason to tax with the same offence,
+or whom he suspected of similar sentiments,) in his little black book,
+or pocket souvenir of death; that this book, being left under the
+cushion of a sofa, had been conveyed into the hands of Marcia by a
+little pet boy, called Philo-Commodus, who was caressed equally by the
+emperor and by Marcia; that she had immediately called to her aid, and
+to the participation of her plot, those who participated in her danger;
+and that the proximity of their own intended fate had prescribed to them
+an immediate attempt; the circumstances of which were these. At mid-day
+the emperor was accustomed to bathe, and at the same time to take
+refreshments. On this occasion, Marcia, agreeably to her custom,
+presented him with a goblet of wine, medicated with poison. Of this
+wine, having just returned from the fatigues of the chase, Commodus
+drank freely, and almost immediately fell into heavy slumbers; from
+which, however, he was soon aroused by deadly sickness. That was a case
+which the conspirators had not taken into their calculations; and they
+now began to fear that the violent vomiting which succeeded might throw
+off the poison. There was no time to be lost; and the barbarous Marcia,
+who had so often slept in the arms of the young emperor, was the person
+to propose that he should now be strangled. A young gladiator, named
+Narcissus, was therefore introduced into the room; what passed is not
+known circumstantially; but, as the emperor was young and athletic,
+though off his guard at the moment, and under the disadvantage
+of sickness, and as he had himself been regularly trained in the
+gladiatorial discipline, there can be little doubt that the vile
+assassin would meet with a desperate resistance. And thus, after all,
+there is good reason to think that the emperor resigned his life in the
+character of a dying gladiator. [Footnote: It is worthy of notice, that,
+under any suspension of the imperatorial power or office, the senate
+was the body to whom the Roman mind even yet continued to turn. In this
+case, both to color their crime with a show of public motives, and to
+interest this great body in their own favor by associating them in their
+own dangers, the conspirators pretended to have found a long roll of
+senatorial names included in the same page of condemnation with their
+own. A manifest fabrication!]
+
+So perished the eldest and sole surviving son of the great Marcus
+Antoninus; and the crown passed into the momentary possession of two old
+men, who reigned in succession each for a few weeks. The first of
+these was Pertinax, an upright man, a good officer, and an unseasonable
+reformer; unseasonable for those times, but more so for himself. Laetus,
+the ringleader in the assassination of Commodus, had been at that time
+the praetorian prefect--an office which a German writer considers as best
+represented to modern ideas by the Turkish post of grand vizier.
+Needing a protector at this moment, he naturally fixed his eyes upon
+Pertinax--as then holding the powerful command of city prefect (or
+governor of Rome.) Him therefore he recommended to the soldiery--that
+is, to the praetorian cohorts. The soldiery had no particular objection
+to the old general, if he and they could agree upon terms; his age being
+doubtless appreciated as a first-rate recommendation, in a case where it
+insured a speedy renewal of the lucrative bargain.
+
+The only demur arose with Pertinax himself: he had been leader of the
+troops in Britain, then superintendent of the police in Rome, thirdly
+proconsul in Africa, and finally consul and governor of Rome. In these
+great official stations he stood near enough to the throne to observe
+the dangers with which it was surrounded; and it is asserted that he
+declined the offered dignity. But it is added, that, finding the choice
+allowed him lay between immediate death [Footnote: Historians have
+failed to remark the contradiction between this statement and
+the allegation that Laetus selected Pertinax for the throne on a
+consideration of his ability to protect the assassins of Commodus.] and
+acceptance, he closed with the proposals of the praetorian cohorts, at
+the rate of about ninety-six pounds per man; which largess he paid by
+bringing to sale the rich furniture of the last emperor. The danger
+which usually threatened a Roman Caesar in such cases was--lest he should
+not be able to fulfill his contract. But in the case of Pertinax the
+danger began from the moment when he _had_ fulfilled it. Conceiving
+himself to be now released from his dependency, he commenced his
+reforms, civil as well as military, with a zeal which alarmed all those
+who had an interest in maintaining the old abuses. To two great factions
+he thus made himself especially obnoxious--to the praetorian cohorts,
+and to the courtiers under the last reign. The connecting link between
+these two parties was Laetus, who belonged personally to the last, and
+still retained his influence with the first. Possibly his fears
+were alarmed; but, at all events, his cupidity was not satisfied. He
+conceived himself to have been ill rewarded; and, immediately resorting
+to the same weapons which he had used against Commodus, he stimulated
+the praetorian guards to murder the emperor. Three hundred of them
+pressed into the palace: Pertinax attempted to harangue them, and to
+vindicate himself; but not being able to obtain a hearing, he folded his
+robe about his head, called upon Jove the Avenger, and was immediately
+dispatched.
+
+The throne was again empty after a reign of about eighty days; and now
+came the memorable scandal of putting up the empire to auction. There
+were two bidders, Sulpicianus and Didius Julianus. The first, however,
+at that time governor of Rome, lay under a weight of suspicion, being
+the father-in-law of Pertinax, and likely enough to exact vengeance for
+his murder. He was besides outbid by Julianus. Sulpician offered about
+one hundred and sixty pounds a man to the guards; his rival offered two
+hundred, and assured them besides of immediate payment; "for," said
+he, "I have the money at home, without needing to raise it from the
+possessions of the crown." Upon this the empire was knocked down to the
+highest bidder. So shocking, however, was this arrangement to the
+Roman pride, that the guards durst not leave their new creation without
+military protection. The resentment of an unarmed mob, however, soon
+ceased to be of foremost importance; this resentment extended rapidly
+to all the frontiers of the empire, where the armies felt that the
+praetorian cohorts had no exclusive title to give away the throne, and
+their leaders felt, that, in a contest of this nature, their own claims
+were incomparably superior to those of the present occupant. Three great
+candidates therefore started forward--Septimius Severus, who commanded
+the armies in Illyria, Pescennius Niger in Syria, and Albinus in
+Britain. Severus, as the nearest to Rome, marched and possessed himself
+of that city. Vengeance followed upon all parties concerned in the late
+murder. Julianus, unable to complete his bargain, had already been put
+to death, as a deprecatory offering to the approaching army. Severus
+himself inflicted death upon Laetus, and dismissed the praetorian
+cohorts. Thence marching against his Syrian rival, Niger, who had
+formerly been his friend, and who was not wanting in military skill, he
+overthrew him in three great battles. Niger fled to Antioch, the seat
+of his late government, and was there decapitated. Meantime Albinus, the
+British commander-in-chief, had already been won over by the title of
+Caesar, or adopted heir to the new Augustus. But the hollowness of this
+bribe soon became apparent, and the two competitors met to decide their
+pretensions at Lyons. In the great battle which followed, Severus fell
+from his horse, and was at first supposed to be dead. But recovering, he
+defeated his rival, who immediately committed suicide. Severus displayed
+his ferocious temper sufficiently by sending the head of Albinus to
+Rome. Other expressions of his natural character soon followed: he
+suspected strongly that Albinus had been favored by the senate; forty of
+that body, with their wives and children, were immediately sacrificed to
+his wrath; but he never forgave the rest, nor endured to live upon terms
+of amity amongst them. Quitting Rome in disgust, he employed himself
+first in making war upon the Parthians, who had naturally, from
+situation, befriended his Syrian rival. Their capital cities he
+overthrew; and afterwards, by way of employing his armies, made war
+in Britain. At the city of York he died; and to his two sons, Geta and
+Caracalla, he bequeathed, as his dying advice, a maxim of policy, which
+sufficiently indicates the situation of the empire at that period; it
+was this--"To enrich the soldiery at any price, and to regard the rest
+of their subjects as so many ciphers." But, as a critical historian
+remarks, this was a shortsighted and self-destroying policy; since in
+no way is the subsistence of the soldier made more insecure, than by
+diminishing the general security of rights and property to those who are
+not soldiers, from whom, after all, the funds must be sought, by
+which the soldier himself is to be paid and nourished. The two sons
+of Severus, whose bitter enmity is so memorably put on record by their
+actions, travelled simultaneously to Rome; but so mistrustful of each
+other, that at every stage the two princes took up their quarters at
+different houses. Geta has obtained the sympathy of historians, because
+he happened to be the victim; but there is reason to think, that each
+of the brothers was conspiring against the other. The weak credulity,
+rather than the conscious innocence, of Geta, led to the catastrophe; he
+presented himself at a meeting with his brother in the presence of their
+common mother, and was murdered by Caracalla in his mother's arms. He
+was, however, avenged; the horrors of that tragedy, and remorse for the
+twenty thousand murders which had followed, never forsook the guilty
+Caracalla. Quitting Rome, but pursued into every region by the bloody
+image of his brother, the emperor henceforward led a wandering life at
+the head of his legions; but never was there a better illustration of
+the poet's maxim, that
+
+  'Remorse is as the mind in which it grows:
+  If _that_ be gentle,' &c.
+
+For the remorse of Caracalla put on no shape of repentance. On the
+contrary, he carried anger and oppression wherever he moved; and
+protected himself from plots only by living in the very centre of a
+nomadic camp. Six years had passed away in this manner, when a mere
+accident led to his assassination. For the sake of security, the office
+of praetorian prefect had been divided between two commissioners, one
+for military affairs, the other for civil. The latter of these two
+officers was Opilius Macrinus. This man has, by some historians, been
+supposed to have harbored no bad intentions; but, unfortunately, an
+astrologer had foretold that he was destined to the throne. The prophet
+was laid in irons at Rome, and letters were dispatched to Caracalla,
+apprizing him of the case. These letters, as yet unopened, were
+transferred by the emperor, then occupied in witnessing a race, to
+Macrinus, who thus became acquainted with the whole grounds of suspicion
+against himself,--grounds which, to the jealousy of the emperor, he
+well knew would appear substantial proofs. Upon this he resolved to
+anticipate the emperor in the work of murder. The head-quarters were
+then at Edessa; and upon his instigation, a disappointed centurion,
+named Martialis, animated also by revenge for the death of his brother,
+undertook to assassinate Caracalla. An opportunity soon offered, on
+a visit which the prince made to the celebrated temple of the moon at
+Carrhae. The attempt was successful: the emperor perished; but Martialis
+paid the penalty of his crime in the same hour, being shot by a Scythian
+archer of the body-guard.
+
+Macrinus, after three days' interregnum, being elected emperor, began
+his reign by purchasing a peace from the Parthians. What the empire
+chiefly needed at this moment, is evident from the next step taken by
+this emperor. He labored to restore the ancient discipline of the armies
+in all its rigor. He was aware of the risk he ran in this attempt; and
+that he _was_ so, is the best evidence of the strong necessity which
+existed for reform. Perhaps, however, he might have surmounted his
+difficulties and dangers, had he met with no competitor round whose
+person the military malcontents could rally. But such a competitor soon
+arose; and, to the astonishment of all the world, in the person of a
+Syrian. The Emperor Severus, on losing his first wife, had resolved to
+strengthen the pretensions of his family by a second marriage with some
+lady having a regal "genesis," that is, whose horoscope promised a regal
+destiny. Julia Domna, a native of Syria, offered him this dowry, and she
+became the mother of Geta. A sister of this Julia, called Moesa,
+had, through two different daughters, two grandsons--Heliogabalus and
+Alexander Severus. The mutineers of the army rallied round the first of
+these; a battle was fought; and Macrinus, with his son Diadumenianus,
+whom he had adopted to the succession, were captured and put to death.
+Heliogabalus succeeded, and reigned in the monstrous manner which has
+rendered his name infamous in history. In what way, however, he lost the
+affections of the army, has never been explained. His mother, Sooemias,
+the eldest daughter of Moesa, had represented herself as the concubine
+of Caracalla; and Heliogabalus, being thus accredited as the son of that
+emperor, whose memory was dear to the soldiery, had enjoyed the full
+benefit of that descent, nor can it be readily explained how he came to
+lose it.
+
+Here, in fact, we meet with an instance of that dilemma which is so
+constantly occurring in the history of the Caesars. If a prince is by
+temperament disposed to severity of manners, and naturally seeks to
+impress his own spirit upon the composition and discipline of the army,
+we are sure to find that he was cut off in his attempts by private
+assassination or by public rebellion. On the other hand, if he wallows
+in sensuality, and is careless about all discipline, civil or military,
+we then find as commonly that he loses the esteem and affections of
+the army to some rival of severer habits. And in the midst of such
+oscillations, and with examples of such contradictory interpretation, we
+cannot wonder that the Roman princes did not oftener take warning by the
+misfortunes of their predecessors. In the present instance, Alexander,
+the cousin of Heliogabalus, without intrigues of his own, and simply (as
+it appears) by the purity and sobriety of his conduct, had alienated
+the affections of the army from the reigning prince. Either jealousy or
+prudence had led Heliogabalus to make an attempt upon his rival's life;
+and this attempt had nearly cost him his own through the mutiny which
+it caused. In a second uproar, produced by some fresh intrigues of the
+emperor against his cousin, the soldiers became unmanageable, and they
+refused to pause until they had massacred Heliogabalus, together with
+his mother, and raised his cousin Alexander to the throne.
+
+The reforms of this prince, who reigned under the name of Alexander
+Severus, were extensive and searching; not only in his court, which he
+purged of all notorious abuses, but throughout the economy of the army.
+He cashiered, upon one occasion, an entire legion: he restored, as far
+as he was able, the ancient discipline; and, above all, he liberated
+the provinces from military spoliation. "Let the soldier," said he, "be
+contented with his pay; and whatever more he wants, let him obtain it
+by victory from the enemy, not by pillage from his fellow-subject." But
+whatever might be the value or extent of his reforms in the marching
+regiments, Alexander could not succeed in binding the praetorian guards
+to his yoke. Under the guardianship of his mother Mammaea, the conduct of
+state affairs had been submitted to a council of sixteen persons, at
+the head of which stood the celebrated Ulpian. To this minister the
+praetorians imputed the reforms, and perhaps the whole spirit of reform;
+for they pursued him with a vengeance which is else hardly to be
+explained. Many days was Ulpian protected by the citizens of Rome, until
+the whole city was threatened with conflagration; he then fled to the
+palace of the young emperor, who in vain attempted to save him from his
+pursuers under the shelter of the imperial purple. Ulpian was murdered
+before his eyes; nor was it found possible to punish the ringleader
+in this foul conspiracy, until he had been removed by something like
+treachery to a remote government.
+
+Meantime, a great revolution and change of dynasty had been effected in
+Parthia; the line of the Arsacidae was terminated; the Parthian empire
+was at an end; and the sceptre of Persia was restored under the new race
+of the Sassanides. Artaxerxes, the first prince of this race, sent an
+embassy of four hundred select knights, enjoining the Roman emperor to
+content himself with Europe, and to leave Asia to the Persians. In the
+event of a refusal, the ambassadors were instructed to offer a defiance
+to the Roman prince. Upon such an insult, Alexander could not do less,
+with either safety or dignity, than prepare for war. It is probable,
+indeed, that, by this expedition, which drew off the minds of the
+soldiery from brooding upon the reforms which offended them, the life
+of Alexander was prolonged. But the expedition itself was mismanaged,
+or was unfortunate. This result, however, does not seem chargeable upon
+Alexander. All the preparations were admirable on the march, and up to
+the enemy's frontier. The invasion it was, which, in a strategic sense,
+seems to have been ill combined. Three armies were to have entered
+Persia simultaneously: one of these, which was destined to act on a
+flank of the general line, entangled itself in the marshy grounds near
+Babylon, and was cut off by the archery of an enemy whom it could
+not reach. The other wing, acting upon ground impracticable for the
+manoeuvres of the Persian cavalry, and supported by Chosroes the king
+of Armenia, gave great trouble to Artaxerxes, and, with adequate support
+from the other armies, would doubtless have been victorious. But the
+central army, under the conduct of Alexander in person, discouraged by
+the destruction of one entire wing, remained stationary in Mesopotamia
+throughout the summer, and, at the close of the campaign, was withdrawn
+to Antioch, _re infecta_. It has been observed that great mystery hangs
+over the operations and issue of this short war. Thus much, however, is
+evident, that nothing but the previous exhaustion of the Persian king
+saved the Roman armies from signal discomfiture; and even thus there is
+no ground for claiming a victory (as most historians do) to the Roman
+arms. Any termination of the Persian war, however, whether glorious or
+not, was likely to be personally injurious to Alexander, by allowing
+leisure to the soldiery for recurring to their grievances. Sensible, no
+doubt, of this, Alexander was gratified by the occasion which then arose
+for repressing the hostile movements of the Germans. He led his army off
+upon this expedition; but their temper was gloomy and threatening; and
+at length, after reaching the seat of war, at Mentz, an open mutiny
+broke out under the guidance of Maximin, which terminated in the murder
+of the emperor and his mother. By Herodian the discontents of the army
+are referred to the ill management of the Persian campaign, and the
+unpromising commencement of the new war in Germany. But it seems
+probable that a dissolute and wicked army, like that of Alexander, had
+not murmured under the too little, but the too much of military service;
+not the buying a truce with gold seems to have offended them, but the
+having led them at all upon an enterprise of danger and hardship.
+
+Maximin succeeded, whose feats of strength, when he first courted the
+notice of the Emperor Severus, have been described by Gibbon. He was
+at that period a Thracian peasant; since then he had risen gradually
+to high offices; but, according to historians, he retained his Thracian
+brutality to the last. That may have been true; but one remark must be
+made upon this occasion: Maximin was especially opposed to the senate;
+and, wherever that was the case, no justice was done to an emperor. Why
+it was that Maximin would not ask for the confirmation of his
+election from the senate, has never been explained; it is said that he
+anticipated a rejection. But, on the other hand, it seems probable that
+the senate supposed its sanction to be despised. Nothing, apparently,
+but this reciprocal reserve in making approaches to each other, was
+the cause of all the bloodshed which followed. The two Gordians, who
+commanded in Africa, were set up by the senate against the new emperor;
+and the consternation of that body must have been great, when these
+champions were immediately overthrown and killed. They did not, however,
+despair: substituting the two governors of Rome, Pupienus and Balbinus,
+and associating to them the younger Gordian, they resolved to make a
+stand; for the severities of Maximin had by this time manifested that
+it was a contest of extermination. Meantime, Maximin had broken up from
+Sirmium, the capital of Pannonia, and had advanced to Aquileia,--that
+famous fortress, which in every invasion of Italy was the first object
+of attack. The senate had set a price upon his head; but there was every
+probability that he would have triumphed, had he not disgusted his army
+by immoderate severities. It was, however, but reasonable that those,
+who would not support the strict but equitable discipline of the mild
+Alexander, should suffer under the barbarous and capricious rigor of
+Maximin. That rigor was his ruin: sunk and degraded as the senate was,
+and now but the shadow of a mighty name, it was found on this occasion
+to have long arms when supported by the frenzy of its opponent. Whatever
+might be the real weakness of this body, the rude soldiers yet felt a
+blind traditionary veneration for its sanction, when prompting them as
+patriots to an act which their own multiplied provocations had but too
+much recommended to their passions. A party entered the tent of Maximin,
+and dispatched him with the same unpitying haste which he had shown
+under similar circumstances to the gentle-minded Alexander. Aquileia
+opened her gates immediately, and thus made it evident that the war had
+been personal to Maximin.
+
+A scene followed within a short time which is in the highest degree
+interesting. The senate, in creating two emperors at once (for the boy
+Gordian was probably associated to them only by way of masking their
+experiment), had made it evident that their purpose was to restore the
+republic and its two consuls. This was their meaning; and the experiment
+had now been twice repeated. The army saw through it: as to the double
+number of emperors, _that_ was of little consequence, farther than as
+it expressed their intention, viz. by bringing back the consular
+government, to restore the power of the senate, and to abrogate that of
+the army. The praetorian troops, who were the most deeply interested in
+preventing this revolution, watched their opportunity, and attacked the
+two emperors in the palace. The deadly feud, which had already arisen
+between them, led each to suppose himself under assault from the other.
+The mistake was not of long duration. Carried into the streets of Rome,
+they were both put to death, and treated with monstrous indignities. The
+young Gordian was adopted by the soldiery. It seems odd that even thus
+far the guards should sanction the choice of the senate, having the
+purposes which they had; but perhaps Gordian had recommended himself to
+their favor in a degree which might outweigh what they considered
+the original vice of his appointment, and his youth promised them
+an immediate impunity. This prince, however, like so many of his
+predecessors, soon came to an unhappy end. Under the guardianship of the
+upright Misitheus, for a time he prospered; and preparations were made
+upon a great scale for the energetic administration of a Persian war.
+But Misitheus died, perhaps by poison, in the course of the campaign;
+and to him succeeded, as praetorian prefect, an Arabian officer, called
+Philip. The innocent boy, left without friends, was soon removed by
+murder; and a monument was afterwards erected to his memory, at the
+junction of the Aboras and the Euphrates. Great obscurity, however,
+clouds this part of history; nor is it so much as known in what way the
+Persian war was conducted or terminated.
+
+Philip, having made himself emperor, celebrated, upon his arrival in
+Rome, the secular games, in the year 247 of the Christian era--that
+being the completion of a thousand years from the foundation of Rome.
+But Nemesis was already on his steps. An insurrection had broken out
+amongst the legions stationed in Moesia; and they had raised to the
+purple some officer of low rank. Philip, having occasion to notice this
+affair in the senate, received for answer from Decius, that probably the
+pseudo-imperator would prove a mere evanescent phantom. This conjecture
+was confirmed; and Philip in consequence conceived a high opinion of
+Decius, whom (as the insurrection still continued) he judged to be the
+fittest man for appeasing it. Decius accordingly went, armed with the
+proper authority. But on his arrival, he found himself compelled by the
+insurgent army to choose between empire and death. Thus constrained, he
+yielded to the wishes of the troops; and then hastening with a veteran
+army into Italy, he fought the battle of Verona, where Philip was
+defeated and killed, whilst the son of Philip was murdered at Rome by
+the praetorian guards.
+
+With Philip ends, according to our distribution, the second series of
+the Caesars, comprehending Commodus, Pertinax, Didius Julianus, Septimius
+Severus, Caracalla, and Geta, Macrinus, Heliogabalus, Alexander Severus,
+Maximin, the two Gordians, Pupienus and Balbinus, the third Gordian, and
+Philip the Arab.
+
+In looking back at this series of Caesars, we are horror-struck at the
+blood-stained picture. Well might a foreign writer, in reviewing the
+same succession, declare, that it is like passing into a new world when
+the transition is made from this chapter of the human history to that of
+modern Europe. From Commodus to Decius are sixteen names, which, spread
+through a space of 59 years, assign to each Caesar a reign of less than
+four years. And Casaubon remarks, that, in one period of 160 years,
+there were 70 persons who assumed the Roman purple; which gives to
+each not much more than two years. On the other hand, in the history of
+France, we find that, through a period of 1200 years, there have been
+no more than 64 kings: upon an average, therefore, each king appears to
+have enjoyed a reign of nearly nineteen years. This vast difference
+in security is due to two great principles,--that of primogeniture as
+between son and son, and of hereditary succession as between a son and
+every other pretender. Well may we hail the principle of hereditary
+right as realizing the praise of Burke applied to chivalry, viz., that
+it is "the cheap defence of nations;" for the security which is thus
+obtained, be it recollected, does not regard a small succession of
+princes, but the whole rights and interests of social man: since the
+contests for the rights of belligerent rivals do not respect themselves
+only, but very often spread ruin and proscription amongst all orders
+of men. The principle of hereditary succession, says one writer, had it
+been a discovery of any one individual, would deserve to be considered
+as the very greatest ever made; and he adds acutely, in answer to the
+obvious, but shallow objection to it (viz. its apparent assumption of
+equal ability for reigning in father and son for ever), that it is like
+the Copernican system of the heavenly bodies,--contradictory to our
+sense and first impressions, but true notwithstanding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+To return, however, to our sketch of the Caesars--at the head of the
+third series we place Decius. He came to the throne at a moment of great
+public embarrassment. The Goths were now beginning to press southwards
+upon the empire. Dacia they had ravaged for some time; "and here," says
+a German writer, "observe the shortsightedness of the Emperor Trajan."
+Had he left the Dacians in possession of their independence, they would,
+under their native kings, have made head against the Goths. But, being
+compelled to assume the character of Roman citizens, they had lost their
+warlike qualities. From Dacia the Goths had descended upon Moesia; and,
+passing the Danube, they laid siege to Marcianopolis, a city built by
+Trajan in honor of his sister. The inhabitants paid a heavy ransom for
+their town; and the Goths were persuaded for the present to return home.
+But sooner than was expected, they returned to Moesia, under their king,
+Kniva; and they were already engaged in the siege of Nicopolis, when
+Decius came in sight at the head of the Roman army. The Goths retired,
+but it was to Thrace; and, in the conquest of Philippopolis, they found
+an ample indemnity for their forced retreat and disappointment. Decius
+pursued, but the king of the Goths turned suddenly upon him; the emperor
+was obliged to fly; the Roman camp was plundered; Philippopolis was
+taken by storm; and its whole population, reputed at more than a hundred
+thousand souls, destroyed.
+
+Such was the first great irruption of the barbarians into the Roman
+territory: and panic was diffused on the wings of the winds over the
+whole empire. Decius, however, was firm, and made prodigious efforts to
+restore the balance of power to its ancient condition. For the moment he
+had some partial successes. He cut off several detachments of Goths, on
+their road to reinforce the enemy; and he strengthened the fortresses
+and garrisons of the Danube. But his last success was the means of his
+total ruin. He came up with the Goths at Forum Terebronii, and, having
+surrounded their position, their destruction seemed inevitable. A great
+battle ensued, and a mighty victory to the Goths. Nothing is now known
+of the circumstances, except that the third line of the Romans was
+entangled inextricably in a morass (as had happened in the Persian
+expedition of Alexander). Decius perished on this occasion--nor was it
+possible to find his dead body. This great defeat naturally raised the
+authority of the senate, in the same proportion as it depressed that of
+the army; and by the will of that body, Hostilianus, a son of Decius,
+was raised to the empire; and ostensibly on account of his youth, but
+really with a view to their standing policy of restoring the consulate,
+and the whole machinery of the republic, Gallus, an experienced
+commander, was associated in the empire. But no skill or experience
+could avail to retrieve the sinking power of Rome upon the Illyrian,
+frontier. The Roman army was disorganized, panic-stricken, reduced to
+skeleton battalions. Without an army, what could be done? And thus it
+may really have been no blame to Gallus, that he made a treaty with the
+Goths more degrading than any previous act in the long annals of Rome.
+By the terms of this infamous bargain, they were allowed to carry off an
+immense booty, amongst which was a long roll of distinguished prisoners;
+and Caesar himself it was--not any lieutenant or agent that might have
+been afterwards disavowed--who volunteered to purchase their future
+absence by an annual tribute. The very army which had brought their
+emperor into the necessity of submitting to such abject concessions,
+were the first to be offended with this natural result of their own
+failures. Gallus was already ruined in public opinion, when further
+accumulations arose to his disgrace. It was now supposed to have been
+discovered, that the late dreadful defeat of Forum Terebronii was due to
+his bad advice; and, as the young Hostilianus happened to die about this
+time of a contagious disorder, Gallus was charged with his murder.
+Even a ray of prosperity, which just now gleamed upon the Roman arms,
+aggravated the disgrace of Gallus, and was instantly made the handle of
+his ruin. AEmilianus, the governor of Moesia and Pannonia, inflicted some
+check or defeat upon the Goths; and in the enthusiasm of sudden pride,
+upon an occasion which contrasted so advantageously for himself with the
+military conduct of Decius and Gallus, the soldiers of his own legion
+raised AEmilianus to the purple. No time was to be lost. Summoned by
+the troops, AEmilianus marched into Italy; and no sooner had he made his
+appearance there, than the praetorian guards murdered the Emperor Gallus
+and his son Volusianus, by way of confirming the election of AEmilianus.
+The new emperor offered to secure the frontiers, both in the east and
+on the Danube, from the incursions of the barbarians. This offer may
+be regarded as thrown out for the conciliation of all classes in the
+empire. But to the senate in particular he addressed a message, which
+forcibly illustrates the political position of that body in those times.
+AEmilianus proposed to resign the whole civil administration into the
+hands of the senate, reserving to himself only the unenviable burthen of
+the military interests. His hope was, that in this way making himself in
+part the creation of the senate, he might strengthen his title against
+competitors at Rome, whilst the entire military administration going on
+under his own eyes, exclusively directed to that one object, would give
+him some chance of defeating the hasty and tumultuary competitions
+so apt to arise amongst the legions upon the frontier. We notice the
+transaction chiefly as indicating the anomalous situation of the senate.
+Without power in a proper sense, or no more, however, than the
+indirect power of wealth, that ancient body retained an immense
+_auctoritas_--that is, an influence built upon ancient reputation,
+which, in their case, had the strength of a religious superstition in
+all Italian minds. This influence the senators exerted with effect,
+whenever the course of events had happened to reduce the power of the
+army. And never did they make a more continuous and sustained effort for
+retrieving their ancient power and place, together with the whole system
+of the republic, than during the period at which we are now arrived.
+From the time of Maximin, in fact, to the accession of Aurelian, the
+senate perpetually interposed their credit and authority, like some
+_Deus ex machina_ in the dramatic art. And if this one fact were
+all that had survived of the public annals at this period, we might
+sufficiently collect the situation of the two other parties in the
+empire--the army and the imperator; the weakness and precarious tenure
+of the one, and the anarchy of the other. And hence it is that we can
+explain the hatred borne to the senate by vigorous emperors, such as
+Aurelian, succeeding to a long course of weak and troubled reigns. Such
+an emperor presumed in the senate, and not without reason, that same
+spirit of domineering interference as ready to manifest itself, upon any
+opportunity offered, against himself, which, in his earlier days, he
+had witnessed so repeatedly in successful operation upon the fates and
+prospects of others.
+
+The situation indeed of the world--that is to say, of that great
+centre of civilization, which, running round the Mediterranean in one
+continuous belt of great breadth, still composed the Roman Empire, was
+at this time most profoundly interesting. The crisis had arrived. In the
+East, a new dynasty (the Sassanides) had remoulded ancient elements
+into a new form, and breathed a new life into an empire, which else was
+gradually becoming crazy from age, and which, at any rate, by losing
+its unity, must have lost its vigor as an offensive power. Parthia was
+languishing and drooping as an anti-Roman state, when the last of the
+Arsacidae expired. A perfect _Palingenesis_ was wrought by the restorer
+of the Persian empire, which pretty nearly re-occupied (and gloried in
+re-occupying) the very area that had once composed the empire of Cyrus.
+Even this _Palingenesis_ might have terminated in a divided empire:
+vigor might have been restored, but in the shape of a polyarchy, (such
+as the Saxons established in England,) rather than a monarchy; and in
+reality, at one moment that appeared to be a probable event. Now, had
+this been the course of the revolution, an alliance with one of these
+kingdoms would have tended to balance the hostility of another (as was
+in fact the case when Alexander Severus saved himself from the Persian
+power by a momentary alliance with Armenia.) But all the elements of
+disorder had in that quarter re-combined themselves into severe unity:
+and thus was Rome, upon her eastern frontier, laid open to a new power
+of juvenile activity and vigor, just at the period when the languor of
+the decaying Parthian had allowed the Roman discipline to fall into
+a corresponding declension. Such was the condition of Rome upon her
+oriental frontier. [Footnote: And it is a striking illustration of the
+extent to which the revolution had gone, that, previously to the Persian
+expedition of the last Gordian, Antioch, the Roman capital of Syria,
+had been occupied by the enemy.] On the northern, it was much worse.
+Precisely at the crisis of a great revolution in Asia, which demanded in
+that quarter more than the total strength of the empire, and threatened
+to demand it for ages to come, did the Goths, under their earliest
+denomination of _Getae_ with many other associate tribes, begin to push
+with their horns against the northern gates of the empire: the whole
+line of the Danube, and, pretty nearly about the same time, of the
+Rhine, (upon which the tribes from Swabia, Bavaria, and Franconia, were
+beginning to descend,) now became insecure; and these two rivers ceased
+in effect to be the barriers of Rome. Taking a middle point of time
+between the Parthian revolution and the fatal overthrow of Forum
+Terebronii, we may fix upon the reign of Philip the Arab, [who
+naturalized himself in Rome by the appellation of Marcus Julius,] as
+the epoch from which the Roman empire, already sapped and undermined by
+changes from within, began to give way, and to dilapidate from without.
+And this reign dates itself in the series by those ever-memorable
+secular or jubilee games, which celebrated the completion of the
+thousandth year from the foundation of Rome. [Footnote: This Arab
+emperor reigned about five years; and the jubilee celebration occurred
+in his second year. Another circumstance gives importance to the
+Arabian, that, according to one tradition, he was the first Christian
+emperor. If so, it is singular that one of the bitterest persecutors of
+Christianity should have been his immediate successor--Decius.]
+
+Resuming our sketch of the Imperial history, we may remark the natural
+embarrassment which must have possessed the senate, when two candidates
+for the purple were equally earnest in appealing to them, and their
+deliberate choice, as the best foundation for a valid election. Scarcely
+had the ground been cleared for AEmilianus, by the murder of Gallus and
+his son, when Valerian, a Roman senator, of such eminent merit, and
+confessedly so much the foremost noble in all the qualities essential to
+the very delicate and comprehensive functions of a Censor, [Footnote:
+It has proved a most difficult problem, in the hands of all speculators
+upon the imperial history, to fathom the purposes, or throw any light
+upon the purposes, of the Emperor Decius, in attempting the revival
+of the ancient but necessarily obsolete office of a public censorship.
+Either it was an act of pure verbal pedantry, or a mere titular
+decoration of honor, (as if a modern prince should create a person
+Arch-Grand-Elector, with no objects assigned to his electing faculty,)
+or else, if it really meant to revive the old duties of the censorship,
+and to assign the very same field for the exercise of those duties, it
+must be viewed as the very grossest practical anachronism that has ever
+been committed. We mean by an anachronism, in common usage, that sort of
+blunder when a man ascribes to one age the habits, customs, or generally
+the characteristics of another. This, however, may be a mere lapse
+of memory, as to a matter of fact, and implying nothing at all
+discreditable to the understanding, but only that a man has shifted the
+boundaries of chronology a little this way or that; as if, for example,
+a writer should speak of printed books as existing at the day of
+Agincourt, or of artillery as existing in the first Crusade, here would
+be an error, but a venial one. A far worse kind of anachronism, though
+rarely noticed as such, is where a writer ascribes sentiments and modes
+of thought incapable of co-existing with the sort or the degree of
+civilization then attained, or otherwise incompatible with the structure
+of society in the age or the country assigned. For instance, in
+Southey's Don Roderick there is a cast of sentiment in the Gothic
+king's remorse and contrition of heart, which has struck many readers as
+utterly unsuitable to the social and moral development of that age,
+and redolent of modern methodism. This, however, we mention only as an
+illustration, without wishing to hazard an opinion upon the justice
+of that criticism. But even such an anachronism is less startling and
+extravagant when it is confined to an ideal representation of things,
+than where it is practically embodied and brought into play amongst the
+realities of life. What would be thought of a man who should attempt, in
+1833, to revive the ancient office of _Fool_, as it existed down to
+the reign, suppose, of our Henry VIII. in England? Yet the error of the
+Emperor Decius was far greater, if he did in sincerity and good faith
+believe that the Rome of his times was amenable to that license of
+unlimited correction, and of interference with private affairs, which
+republican freedom and simplicity had once conceded to the censor. In
+reality, the ancient censor, in some parts of his office, was neither
+more nor less than a compendious legislator. Acts of attainder, divorce
+bills, &c., illustrate the case in England; they are cases of law,
+modified to meet the case of an individual; and the censor, having a
+sort of equity jurisdiction, was intrusted with discretionary powers
+for reviewing, revising, and amending, _pro re nata_, whatever in the
+private life of a Roman citizen seemed, to his experienced eye, alien
+to the simplicity of an austere republic; whatever seemed vicious
+or capable of becoming vicious, according to their rude notions of
+political economy; and, generally, whatever touched the interests of
+the commonwealth, though not falling within the general province
+of legislation, either because it might appear undignified in its
+circumstances, or too narrow in its range of operation for a public
+anxiety, or because considerations of delicacy and prudence might
+render it unfit for a public scrutiny. Take one case, drawn from actual
+experience, as an illustration: A Roman nobleman, under one of the early
+emperors, had thought fit, by way of increasing his income, to retire
+into rural lodgings, or into some small villa, whilst his splendid
+mansion in Rome was let to a rich tenant. That a man, who wore the
+_laticlave_, (which in practical effect of splendor we may consider
+equal to the ribbon and star of a modern order,) should descend to such
+a degrading method of raising money, was felt as a scandal to the whole
+nobility. [Footnote: This feeling still exists in France. "One winter,"
+says the author of _The English Army in France_, vol. ii. p. 106-7,
+"our commanding officer's wife formed the project of hiring the chateau
+during the absence of the owner; but a more profound insult could not
+have been offered to a Chevalier de St. Louis. Hire his house! What
+could these people take him for? A sordid wretch who would stoop to make
+money by such means? They ought to be ashamed of themselves. He could
+never respect an Englishman again." "And yet," adds the writer, "this
+gentleman (had an officer been billeted there) would have _sold_ him a
+bottle of wine out of his cellar, or a billet of wood from his stack,
+or an egg from his hen-house, at a profit of fifty per cent., not only
+without scruple, but upon no other terms. It was as common as ordering
+wine at a tavern, to call the servant of any man's establishment where
+we happened to be quartered, and demand an account of the cellar, as
+well as the price of the wine we selected!" This feeling existed, and
+perhaps to the same extent, two centuries ago, in England. Not only did
+the aristocracy think it a degradation to act the part of landlord with
+respect to their own houses, but also, except in select cases, to
+act that of tenant. Thus, the first Lord Brooke, (the famous Fulke
+Greville,) writing to inform his next neighbor, a woman of rank, that
+the house she occupied had been purchased by a London citizen, confesses
+his fears that he shall in consequence lose so valuable a neighbor; for,
+doubtless, he adds, your ladyship will not remain as tenant to "such a
+fellow." And yet the man had notoriously held the office of Lord Mayor,
+which made him, for the time, _Right Honorable_. The Italians of this
+day make no scruple to let off the whole, or even part, of their fine
+mansions to strangers.]
+
+Yet what could be done? To have interfered with his conduct by an
+express law, would be to infringe the sacred rights of property, and
+to say, in effect, that a man should not do what he would with his own.
+This would have been a remedy far worse than the evil to which it was
+applied; nor could it have been possible so to shape the principle of
+a law, as not to make it far more comprehensive than was desired. The
+senator's trespass was in a matter of decorum; but the law would have
+trespassed on the first principles of justice. Here, then, was a case
+within the proper jurisdiction of the censor; he took notice, in his
+public report, of the senator's error; or probably, before coming to
+that extremity, he admonished him privately on the subject. Just as, in
+England, had there been such an officer, he would have reproved those
+men of rank who mounted the coach-box, who extended a public patronage
+to the "fancy," or who rode their own horses at a race. Such a reproof,
+however, unless it were made practically operative, and were powerfully
+supported by the whole body of the aristocracy, would recoil upon its
+author as a piece of impertinence, and would soon be resented as an
+unwarrantable liberty taken with private rights; the censor would be
+kicked, or challenged to private combat, according to the taste of the
+parties aggrieved. The office is clearly in this dilemma: if the censor
+is supported by the state, then he combines in his own person both
+legislative and executive functions, and possesses a power which is
+frightfully irresponsible; if, on the other hand, he is left to such
+support as he can find in the prevailing spirit of manners, and the old
+traditionary veneration for his sacred character, he stands very much
+in the situation of a priesthood, which has great power or none at all,
+according to the condition of a country in moral and religious feeling,
+coupled with the more or less primitive state of manners. How, then,
+with any rational prospect of success, could Decius attempt the revival
+of an office depending so entirely on moral supports, in an age when
+all those supports were withdrawn? The prevailing spirit of manners was
+hardly fitted to sustain even a toleration of such an office; and as to
+the traditionary veneration for the sacred character, from long disuse
+of its practical functions, that probably was altogether extinct. If
+these considerations are plain and intelligible even to us, by the men
+of that day they must have been felt with a degree of force that could
+leave no room for doubt or speculation on the matter. How was it, then,
+that the emperor only should have been blind to such general light?
+
+In the absence of all other, even plausible, solutions of this
+difficulty, we shall state our own theory of the matter. Decius, as is
+evident from his fierce persecution of the Christians, was not disposed
+to treat Christianity with indifference, under any form which it might
+assume, or however masked. Yet there were quarters in which it lurked
+not liable to the ordinary modes of attack. Christianity was creeping up
+with inaudible steps into high places,--nay, into the very highest. The
+immediate predecessor of Decius upon the throne, Philip the Arab, was
+known to be a disciple of the new faith; and amongst the nobles of Rome,
+through the females and the slaves, that faith had spread its roots in
+every direction. Some secrecy, however, attached to the profession of a
+religion so often proscribed. Who should presume to tear away the mask
+which prudence or timidity had taken up? A _delator_, or professional
+informer, was an infamous character. To deal with the noble and
+illustrious, the descendants of the Marcelli and the Gracchi, there must
+be nothing less than a great state officer, supported by the censor
+and the senate, having an unlimited privilege of scrutiny and censure,
+authorized to inflict the brand of infamy for offences not challenged
+by express law, and yet emanating from an elder institution, familiar
+to the days of reputed liberty. Such an officer was the censor; and such
+were the antichristian purposes of Decius in his revival.] that Decius
+had revived that office expressly in his behalf, entered Italy at the
+head of the army from Gaul. He had been summoned to his aid by the late
+emperor, Gallus; but, arriving too late for his support, he determined
+to avenge him. Both AEmilianus and Valerian recognised the authority of
+the senate, and professed to act under that sanction; but it was
+the soldiery who cut the knot, as usual, by the sword. AEmilianus was
+encamped at Spoleto; but as the enemy drew near, his soldiers, shrinking
+no doubt from a contest with veteran troops, made their peace by
+murdering the new emperor, and Valerian was elected in his stead. This
+prince was already an old man at the time of his election; but he
+lived long enough to look back upon the day of his inauguration as the
+blackest in his life. Memorable were the calamities which fell upon
+himself, and upon the empire, during his reign. He began by associating
+to himself his son Gallienus; partly, perhaps, for his own relief,
+partly to indulge the senate in their steady plan of dividing the
+imperial authority. The two emperors undertook the military defence of
+the empire, Gallienus proceeding to the German frontier, Valerian to
+the eastern. Under Gallienus, the Franks began first to make themselves
+heard of. Breaking into Gaul they passed through that country and Spain;
+captured Tarragona in their route; crossed over to Africa, and conquered
+Mauritania. At the same time, the Alemanni, who had been in motion since
+the time of Caracalla, broke into Lombardy, across the Rhaetian Alps.
+The senate, left without aid from either emperor, were obliged to make
+preparations for the common defence against this host of barbarians.
+Luckily, the very magnitude of the enemy's success, by overloading him
+with booty, made it his interest to retire without fighting; and the
+degraded senate, hanging upon the traces of their retiring footsteps,
+without fighting, or daring to fight, claimed the honors of a victory.
+Even then, however, they did more than was agreeable to the jealousies
+of Gallienus, who, by an edict, publicly rebuked their presumption, and
+forbade them in future to appear amongst the legions, or to exercise any
+military functions. He himself, meanwhile, could devise no better way of
+providing for the public security, than by marrying the daughter of his
+chief enemy, the king of the Marcomanni. On this side of Europe, the
+barbarians were thus quieted for the present; but the Goths of the
+Ukraine, in three marauding expeditions of unprecedented violence,
+ravaged the wealthy regions of Asia Minor, as well as the islands of the
+Archipelago; and at length, under the guidance of deserters, landed in
+the port of the Pyraeus. Advancing from this point, after sacking Athens
+and the chief cities of Greece, they marched upon Epirus, and began
+to threaten Italy. But the defection at this crisis of a conspicuous
+chieftain, and the burden of their booty, made these wild marauders
+anxious to provide for a safe retreat; the imperial commanders in Moesia
+listened eagerly to their offers: and it set the seal to the dishonors
+of the state, that, after having traversed so vast a range of territory
+almost without resistance, these blood-stained brigands were now
+suffered to retire under the very guardianship of those whom they had
+just visited with military execution.
+
+Such were the terms upon which the Emperor Gallienus purchased a brief
+respite from his haughty enemies. For the moment, however, he _did_
+enjoy security. Far otherwise was the destiny of his unhappy father.
+Sapor now ruled in Persia; the throne of Armenia had vainly striven to
+maintain its independency against his armies, and the daggers of his
+hired assassins. This revolution, which so much enfeebled the Roman
+means of war, exactly in that proportion increased the necessity for it.
+War, and that instantly, seemed to offer the only chance for maintaining
+the Roman name or existence in Asia, Carrhae and Nisibis, the two potent
+fortresses in Mesopotamia, had fallen; and the Persian arms were
+now triumphant on both banks of the Euphrates. Valerian was not of a
+character to look with indifference upon such a scene, terminated by
+such a prospect; prudence and temerity, fear and confidence, all spoke
+a common language in this great emergency; and Valerian marched towards
+the Euphrates with a fixed purpose of driving the enemy beyond that
+river. By whose mismanagement the records of history do not enable us
+to say, some think of Macrianus, the praetorian prefect, some of Valerian
+himself, but doubtless by the treachery of guides co-operating with
+errors in the general, the Roman army was entangled in marshy grounds;
+partial actions followed, and skirmishes of cavalry, in which the Romans
+became direfully aware of their situation; retreat was cut off, to
+advance was impossible; and to fight was now found to be without hope.
+In these circumstances they offered to capitulate. But the haughty Sapor
+would hear of nothing but unconditional surrender; and to that course
+the unhappy emperor submitted. Various traditions [Footnote: Some of
+these traditions have been preserved, which represent Sapor as using his
+imperial captive for his stepping-stone, or _anabathrum_, in mounting
+his horse. Others go farther, and pretend that Sapor actually flayed his
+unhappy prisoner whilst yet alive. The temptation to these stories was
+perhaps found in the craving for the marvellous, and in the desire to
+make the contrast more striking between the two extremes in Valerian's
+life.] have been preserved by history concerning the fate of Valerian:
+all agree that he died in misery and captivity; but some have
+circumstantiated this general statement by features of excessive misery
+and degradation, which possibly were added afterwards by scenical
+romancers, in order to heighten the interest of the tale, or by ethical
+writers, in order to point and strengthen the moral. Gallienus now ruled
+alone, except as regarded the restless efforts of insurgents, thirty
+of whom are said to have arisen in his single reign. This, however, is
+probably an exaggeration. Nineteen such rebels are mentioned by name; of
+whom the chief were Calpurnius Piso, a Roman senator; Tetricus, a man
+of rank who claimed a descent from Pompey, Crassus, and even from
+Numa Pompilius, and maintained himself some time in Gaul and Spain;
+Trebellianus, who founded a republic of robbers in Isauria which
+survived himself by centuries; and Odenathus, the Syrian. Others were
+mere _Terra filii,_ or adventurers, who flourished and decayed in a few
+days or weeks, of whom the most remarkable was a working armorer
+named Marius. Not one of the whole number eventually prospered, except
+Odenathus; and he, though originally a rebel, yet, in consideration of
+services performed against Persia, was suffered to retain his power,
+and to transmit his kingdom of Palmyra to his widow Zenobia. He was even
+complimented with the title of Augustus. All the rest perished. Their
+rise, however, and local prosperity at so many different points of the
+empire, showed the distracted condition of the state, and its internal
+weakness. That again proclaimed its external peril. No other cause had
+called forth this diffusive spirit of insurrection than the general
+consciousness, so fatally warranted, of the debility which had
+emasculated the government, and its incompetency to deal vigorously with
+the public enemies. [Footnote: And this incompetency was _permanently_
+increased by rebellions that were brief and fugitive: for each insurgent
+almost necessarily maintained himself for the moment by spoliations and
+robberies which left lasting effects behind them; and too often he was
+tempted to ally himself with some foreign enemy amongst the barbarians,
+and perhaps to introduce him into the heart of the empire.] The very
+granaries of Rome, Sicily and Egypt, were the seats of continued
+distractions; in Alexandria, the second city of the empire, there was
+even a civil war which lasted for twelve years. Weakness, dissension,
+and misery were spread like a cloud over the whole face of the empire.
+
+The last of the rebels who directed his rebellion personally against
+Gallienus was Aureolus. Passing the Rhaetian Alps, this leader sought out
+and defied the emperor. He was defeated, and retreated upon Milan; but
+Gallienus, in pursuing him, was lured into an ambuscade, and perished
+from the wound inflicted by an archer. With his dying breath he is said
+to have recommended Claudius to the favor of the senate; and at all
+events Claudius it was who succeeded. Scarcely was the new emperor
+installed, before he was summoned to a trial not only arduous in itself,
+but terrific by the very name of the enemy. The Goths of the Ukraine,
+in a new armament of six thousand vessels, had again descended by the
+Bosphorus into the south, and had sat down before Thessalonica,
+the capitol of Macedonia. Claudius marched against them with the
+determination to vindicate the Roman name and honor: "Know," said he,
+writing to the senate, "that 320,000 Goths have set foot upon the Roman
+soil. Should I conquer them, your gratitude will be my reward. Should
+I fall, do not forget who it is that I have succeeded; and that the
+republic is exhausted." No sooner did the Goths hear of his approach,
+than, with transports of ferocious joy, they gave up the siege, and
+hurried to annihilate the last pillar of the empire. The mighty battle
+which ensued, neither party seeking to evade it, took place at Naissus.
+At one time the legions were giving way, when suddenly, by some happy
+manoeuvre of the emperor, a Roman corps found its way to the rear of the
+enemy. The Goths gave way, and their defeat was total. According to
+most accounts they left 50,000 dead upon the field. The campaign still
+lingered, however, at other points, until at last the emperor succeeded
+in driving back the relics of the Gothic host into the fastnesses of
+the Balkan; and there the greater part of them died of hunger and
+pestilence. These great services performed, within two years from his
+accession to the throne, by the rarest of fates the Emperor Claudius
+died in his bed at Sirmium, the capitol of Pannonia. His brother
+Quintilius who had a great command at Aquileia, immediately assumed
+the purple; but his usurpation lasted only seventeen days, for the last
+emperor, with a single eye to the public good, had recommended Aurelian
+as his successor, guided by his personal knowledge of that general's
+strategic qualities. The army of the Danube confirmed the appointment;
+and Quintilius committed suicide. Aurelian was of the same harsh and
+forbidding character as the Emperor Severus: he had, however, the
+qualities demanded by the times; energetic and not amiable princes were
+required by the exigences of the state. The hydra-headed Goths were
+again in the field on the Illyrian quarter: Italy itself was invaded by
+the Alemanni; and Tetricus, the rebel, still survived as a monument of
+the weakness of Gallienus. All these enemies were speedily repressed, or
+vanquished, by Aurelian. But it marks the real declension of the empire,
+a declension which no personal vigor in the emperor was now sufficient
+to disguise, that, even in the midst of victory, Aurelian found it
+necessary to make a formal surrender, by treaty, of that Dacia which
+Trajan had united with so much ostentation to the empire. Europe was
+now again in repose; and Aurelian found himself at liberty to apply his
+powers as a reorganizer and restorer to the East. In that quarter of the
+world a marvellous revolution had occurred. The little oasis of Palmyra,
+from a Roman colony, had grown into the leading province of a great
+empire. This island of the desert, together with Syria and Egypt, formed
+an independent monarchy under the sceptre of Zenobia. [Footnote: Zenobia
+is complimented by all historians for her magnanimity; but with no
+foundation in truth. Her first salutation to Aurelian was a specimen
+of abject flattery; and her last _public_ words were evidences of the
+basest treachery in giving up her generals, and her chief counsellor
+Longinus, to the vengeance of the ungenerous enemy.] After two battles
+lost in Syria, Zenobia retreated to Palmyra. With great difficulty
+Aurelian pursued her; and with still greater difficulty he pressed the
+siege of Palmyra. Zenobia looked for relief from Persia; but at that
+moment Sapor died, and the Queen of Palmyra fled upon a dromedary,
+but was pursued and captured. Palmyra surrendered and was spared; but
+unfortunately, with a folly which marks the haughty spirit of the place
+unfitted to brook submission, scarcely had the conquering army retired
+when a tumult arose, and the Roman garrison was slaughtered. Little
+knowledge could those have had of Aurelian's character, who tempted him
+to acts but too welcome to his cruel nature by such an outrage as this.
+The news overtook the emperor on the Hellespont. Instantly, without
+pause, "like Ate hot from hell," Aurelian retraced his steps--reached
+the guilty city--and consigned it, with all its population, to that
+utter destruction from which it has never since arisen. The energetic
+administration of Aurelian had now restored the empire--not to its lost
+vigor, that was impossible--but to a condition of repose. That was a
+condition more agreeable to the empire than to the emperor. Peace was
+hateful to Aurelian; and he sought for war, where it could seldom be
+sought in vain, upon the Persian frontier. But he was not destined
+to reach the Euphrates; and it is worthy of notice, as a providential
+ordinance, that his own unmerciful nature was the ultimate cause of his
+fate. Anticipating the emperor's severity in punishing some errors of
+his own, Mucassor, a general officer in whom Aurelian placed especial
+confidence, assassinated him between Byzantium and Heraclea. An
+interregnum of eight months succeeded, during which there occurred a
+contest of a memorable nature. Some historians have described it as
+strange and surprising. To us, on the contrary, it seems that no contest
+could be more natural. Heretofore the great strife had been in what way
+to secure the reversion or possession of that great dignity; whereas now
+the rivalship lay in declining it. But surely such a competition had
+in it, under the circumstances of the empire, little that can justly
+surprise us. Always a post of danger, and so regularly closed by
+assassination, that in a course of two centuries there are hardly to be
+found three or four cases of exception, the imperatorial dignity had
+now become burdened with a public responsibility which exacted great
+military talents, and imposed a perpetual and personal activity.
+Formerly, if the emperor knew himself to be surrounded with assassins,
+he might at least make his throne, so long as he enjoyed it, the couch
+of a voluptuary. The "_ave imperator!_" was then the summons, if to
+the supremacy in passive danger, so also to the supremacy in power, and
+honor, and enjoyment. But now it was a summons to never-ending
+tumults and alarms; an injunction to that sort of vigilance without
+intermission, which, even from the poor sentinel, is exacted only when
+on duty. Not Rome, but the frontier; not the _aurea domus,_ but a camp,
+was the imperial residence. Power and rank, whilst in that residence,
+could be had in no larger measure by Caesar _as_ Caesar, than by the
+same individual as a military commander-in-chief; and, as to enjoyment,
+_that_ for the Roman imperator was now extinct. Rest there could be none
+for him. Battle was the tenure by which he held his office; and beyond
+the range of his trumpet's blare, his sceptre was a broken reed. The
+office of Caesar at this time resembled the situation (as it is sometimes
+described in romances) of a knight who has achieved the favor of some
+capricious lady, with the present possession of her castle and ample
+domains, but which he holds under the known and accepted condition
+of meeting all challenges whatsoever offered at the gate by wandering
+strangers, and also of jousting at any moment with each and all amongst
+the inmates of the castle, as often as a wish may arise to benefit by
+the chances in disputing his supremacy.
+
+It is a circumstance, moreover, to be noticed in the aspect of the
+Roman monarchy at this period, that the pressure of the evils we are
+now considering, applied to this particular age of the empire beyond
+all others, as being an age of transition from a greater to an inferior
+power. Had the power been either greater or conspicuously less, in that
+proportion would the pressure have been easier, or none at all. Being
+greater, for example, the danger would have been repelled to a distance
+so great that mere remoteness would have disarmed its terrors, or
+otherwise it would have been violently overawed. Being less, on the
+other hand, and less in an eminent degree, it would have disposed all
+parties, as it did at an after period, to regular and formal compromises
+in the shape of fixed annual tributes. At present the policy of the
+barbarians along the vast line of the northern frontier, was, to
+tease and irritate the provinces which they were not entirely able,
+or prudentially unwilling, to dismember. Yet, as the almost
+annual irruptions were at every instant ready to be converted into
+_coup-de-mains_ upon Aquileia--upon Verona--or even upon Rome itself,
+unless vigorously curbed at the outset,--each emperor at this period
+found himself under the necessity of standing in the attitude of a
+champion or propugnator on the frontier line of his territory--ready
+for all comers--and with a pretty certain prospect of having one pitched
+battle at the least to fight in every successive summer. There were
+nations abroad at this epoch in Europe who did not migrate occasionally,
+or occasionally project themselves upon the civilized portion of the
+globe, but who made it their steady regular occupation to do so, and
+lived for no other purpose. For seven hundred years the Roman Republic
+might be styled a republic militant: for about one century further it
+was an empire triumphant; and now, long retrograde, it had reached that
+point at which again, but in a different sense, it might be styled an
+empire militant. Originally it had militated for glory and power; now
+its militancy was for mere existence. War was again the trade of Rome,
+as it had been once before: but in that earlier period war had been its
+highest glory now it was its dire necessity.
+
+Under this analysis of the Roman condition, need we wonder, with
+the crowd of unreflecting historians, that the senate, at the era of
+Aurelian's death, should dispute amongst each other--not, as once, for
+the possession of the sacred purple, but for the luxury and safety of
+declining it? The sad pre-eminence was finally imposed upon Tacitus, a
+senator who traced his descent from the historian of that name, who had
+reached an age of seventy--five years, and who possessed a fortune of
+three millions sterling. Vainly did the agitated old senator open his
+lips to decline the perilous honor; five hundred voices insisted upon
+the necessity of his compliance; and thus, as a foreign writer observes,
+was the descendant of him, whose glory it had been to signalize himself
+as the hater of despotism, under the absolute necessity of becoming, in
+his own person, a despot.
+
+The aged senator then was compelled to be emperor, and forced, in spite
+of his vehement reluctance, to quit the comforts of a palace, which he
+was never to revisit, for the hardships of a distant camp. His first
+act was strikingly illustrative of the Roman condition, as we have just
+described it. Aurelian had attempted to disarm one set of enemies by
+turning the current of their fury upon another. The Alani were in search
+of plunder, and strongly disposed to obtain it from Roman provinces.
+"But no," said Aurelian; "if you do that, I shall unchain my legions
+upon you. Be better advised: keep those excellent dispositions of mind,
+and that admirable taste for plunder, until you come whither I will
+conduct you. Then discharge your fury, and welcome; besides which, I
+will pay you wages for your immediate abstinence; and on the other side
+the Euphrates you shall pay yourselves." Such was the outline of the
+contract; and the Alans had accordingly held themselves in readiness
+to accompany Aurelian from Europe to his meditated Persian campaign.
+Meantime, that emperor had perished by treason; and the Alani were still
+waiting for his successor on the throne to complete his engagements with
+themselves, as being of necessity the successor also to his wars and to
+his responsibilities. It happened, from the state of the empire, as
+we have sketched it above, that Tacitus really _did_ succeed to the
+military plans of Aurelian. The Persian expedition was ordained to go
+forward; and Tacitus began, as a preliminary step in that expedition, to
+look about for his good allies the barbarians. Where might they be,
+and how employed? Naturally, they had long been weary of waiting. The
+Persian booty might be good after _its_ kind; but it was far away; and,
+_en attendant_, Roman booty was doubtless good after _its_ kind. And
+so, throughout the provinces of Cappadocia, Pontus, &c., far as the eye
+could stretch, nothing was to be seen but cities and villages in flames.
+The Roman army hungered and thirsted to be unmuzzled and slipped upon
+these false friends. But this, for the present, Tacitus would not
+allow. He began by punctually fulfilling all the terms of Aurelian's
+contract,--a measure which barbarians inevitably construed into the
+language of fear. But then came the retribution. Having satisfied public
+justice, the emperor now thought of vengeance: he unchained his legions:
+a brief space of time sufficed for a long course of vengeance: and
+through every outlet of Asia Minor the Alani fled from the wrath of the
+Roman soldier. Here, however, terminated the military labors of Tacitus:
+he died at Tyana in Cappadocia, as some say, from the effects of
+the climate of the Caucasus, co-operating with irritations from the
+insolence of the soldiery; but, as Zosimus and Zonaras expressly assure
+us, under the murderous hands of his own troops. His brother Florianus
+at first usurped the purple, by the aid of the Illyrian army; but the
+choice of other armies, afterwards confirmed by the senate, settled upon
+Probus, a general already celebrated under Aurelian. The two competitors
+drew near to each other for the usual decision by the sword, when the
+dastardly supporters of Florian offered up their chosen prince as a
+sacrifice to his antagonist. Probus, settled in his seat, addressed
+himself to the regular business of those times,--to the reduction
+of insurgent provinces, and the liberation of others from hostile
+molestations. Isauria and Egypt he visited in the character of a
+conqueror, Gaul in the character of a deliverer. From the Gaulish
+provinces he chased in succession the Franks, the Burgundians, and the
+Lygians. He pursued the intruders far into their German thickets; and
+nine of the native German princes came spontaneously into his camp,
+subscribed such conditions as he thought fit to dictate, and complied
+with his requisitions of tribute in horses and provisions. This,
+however, is a delusive gleam of Roman energy, little corresponding
+with the true condition of the Roman power, and entirely due to the
+_personal_ qualities of Probus. Probus himself showed his sense of the
+true state of affairs, by carrying a stone wall, of considerable height,
+from the Danube to the Neckar. He made various attempts also to effect
+a better distribution of barbarous tribes, by dislocating their
+settlements, and making extensive translations of their clans, according
+to the circumstances of those times. These arrangements, however,
+suggested often by short-sighted views, and carried into effect by mere
+violence, were sometimes defeated visibly at the time, and, doubtless,
+in very few cases accomplished the ends proposed. In one instance, where
+a party of Franks had been transported into the Asiatic province of
+Pontus, as a column of defence against the intrusive Alans, being
+determined to revisit their own country, they swam the Hellespont,
+landed on the coasts of Asia Minor and of Greece, plundered Syracuse,
+steered for the Straits of Gibraltar, sailed along the shores of Spain
+and Gaul, passing finally through the English Channel and the German
+Ocean, right onwards to the Frisic and Batavian coasts, where they
+exultingly rejoined their exulting friends. Meantime, all the energy
+and military skill of Probus could not save him from the competition of
+various rivals. Indeed, it must then have been felt, as by us who look
+back on those times it is now felt, that, amidst so continued a series
+of brief reigns, interrupted by murders, scarcely any idea could arise
+answering to our modern ideas of treason and usurpation. For the ideas
+of fealty and allegiance, as to a sacred and anointed monarch, could
+have no time to take root. Candidates for the purple must have been
+viewed rather as military rivals than as traitors to the reigning
+Caesar. And hence one reason for the slight resistance which was often
+experienced by the seducers of armies. Probus, however, as accident in
+his case ordered it, subdued all his personal opponents,--Saturninus in
+the East, Proculus and Bonoses in Gaul. For these victories he triumphed
+in the year 281. But his last hour was even then at hand. One point of
+his military discipline, which he brought back from elder days, was,
+to suffer no idleness in his camps. He it was who, by military labor,
+transferred to Gaul and to Hungary the Italian vine, to the great
+indignation of the Italian monopolist. The culture of vineyards, the
+laying of military roads, the draining of marshes, and similar labors,
+perpetually employed the hands of his stubborn and contumacious troops.
+On some work of this nature the army happened to be employed near
+Sirmium, and Probus was looking on from a tower, when a sudden frenzy of
+disobedience seized upon the men: a party of the mutineers ran up to the
+emperor, and with a hundred wounds laid him instantly dead. We are told
+by some writers that the army was immediately seized with remorse for
+its own act; which, if truly reported, rather tends to confirm the
+image, otherwise impressed upon us, of the relations between the army
+and Caesar as pretty closely corresponding with those between some fierce
+wild beast and its keeper; the keeper, if not uniformly vigilant as an
+Argus, is continually liable to fall a sacrifice to the wild instincts
+of the brute, mastering at intervals the reverence and fear under which
+it has been habitually trained. In this case, both the murdering impulse
+and the remorse seem alike the effects of a brute instinct, and to have
+arisen under no guidance of rational purpose or reflection. The person
+who profited by this murder was Carus, the captain of the guard, a
+man of advanced years, and a soldier, both by experience and by his
+propensities. He was proclaimed emperor by the army; and on this
+occasion there was no further reference to the senate, than by a dry
+statement of the facts for its information. Troubling himself little
+about the approbation of a body not likely in any way to affect his
+purposes (which were purely martial, and adapted to the tumultuous
+state of the empire), Carus made immediate preparations for pursuing the
+Persian expedition,--so long promised, and so often interrupted. Having
+provided for the security of the Illyrian frontier by a bloody victory
+over the Sarmatians, of whom we now hear for the first time, Carus
+advanced towards the Euphrates; and from the summit of a mountain
+he pointed the eyes of his eager army upon the rich provinces of the
+Persian empire. Varanes, the successor of Artaxerxes, vainly endeavored
+to negotiate a peace. From some unknown cause, the Persian armies were
+not at this juncture disposable against Carus: it has been conjectured
+by some writers that they were engaged in an Indian war. Carus, it is
+certain, met with little resistance. He insisted on having the Roman
+supremacy acknowledged as a preliminary to any treaty; and, having
+threatened to make Persia as bare as his own skull, he is supposed
+to have kept his word with regard to Mesopotamia. The great cities of
+Ctesiphon and Seleucia he took; and vast expectations were formed at
+Rome of the events which stood next in succession, when, on Christmas
+day, 283, a sudden and mysterious end overtook Carus and his victorious
+advance. The story transmitted to Rome was, that a great storm, and
+a sudden darkness, had surprised the camp of Carus; that the emperor,
+previously ill, and reposing in his tent, was obscured from sight; that
+at length a cry had arisen,--"The emperor is dead!" and that, at the
+same moment, the imperial tent had taken fire. The fire was traced
+to the confusion of his attendants; and this confusion was imputed by
+themselves to grief for their master's death. In all this it is easy
+to read pretty circumstantially a murder committed on the emperor by
+corrupted servants, and an attempt afterwards to conceal the indications
+of murder by the ravages of fire. The report propagated through the
+army, and at that time received with credit, was, that Carus had
+been struck by lightning: and that omen, according to the Roman
+interpretation, implied a necessity of retiring from the expedition. So
+that, apparently, the whole was a bloody intrigue, set on foot for the
+purpose of counteracting the emperor's resolution to prosecute the war.
+His son Numerian succeeded to the rank of emperor by the choice of the
+army. But the mysterious faction of murderers were still at work. After
+eight months' march from the Tigris to the Thracian Bosphorus, the army
+halted at Chalcedon. At this point of time a report arose suddenly,
+that the Emperor Numerian was dead. The impatience of the soldiery would
+brook no uncertainty: they rushed to the spot; satisfied themselves of
+the fact; and, loudly denouncing as the murderer Aper, the captain of
+the guard, committed him to custody, and assigned to Dioclesian, whom
+at the same time they invested with the supreme power, the duty of
+investigating the case. Dioclesian acquitted himself of this task in
+a very summary way, by passing his sword through the captain before he
+could say a word in his defence. It seems that Dioclesian, having been
+promised the empire by a prophetess as soon as he should have killed a
+wild boar [Aper], was anxious to realize the omen. The whole proceeding
+has been taxed with injustice so manifest, as not even to seek a
+disguise. Meantime, it should be remembered that, _first,_ Aper, as
+the captain of the guard, was answerable for the emperor's safety;
+_secondly,_ that his anxiety to profit by the emperor's murder was a
+sure sign that he had participated in that act; and, _thirdly,_ that the
+assent of the soldiery to the open and public act of Dioclesian, implies
+a conviction on their part of Aper's guilt. Here let us pause, having
+now arrived at the fourth and last group of the Caesars, to notice the
+changes which had been wrought by time, co-operating with political
+events, in the very nature and constitution of the imperial office.
+
+If it should unfortunately happen, that the palace of the Vatican, with
+its thirteen thousand [Footnote: "_Thirteen thousand chambers_."--The
+number of the chambers in this prodigious palace is usually estimated
+at that amount. But Lady Miller, who made particular inquiries on
+this subject, ascertained that the total amount, including cellars and
+closets, capable of receiving a bed, was fifteen thousand.] chambers,
+were to take fire--for a considerable space of time the fire would be
+retarded by the mere enormity of extent which it would have to traverse.
+But there would come at length a critical moment, at which the maximum
+of the retarding effect having been attained, the bulk and volume of the
+flaming mass would thenceforward assist the flames in the rapidity of
+their progress. Such was the effect upon the declension of the Roman
+empire from the vast extent of its territory. For a very long period
+that very extent, which finally became the overwhelming cause of its
+ruin, served to retard and to disguise it. A small encroachment, made
+at any one point upon the integrity of the empire, was neither much
+regarded at Rome, nor perhaps in and for itself much deserved to be
+regarded. But a very narrow belt of encroachments, made upon almost
+every part of so enormous a circumference, was sufficient of itself
+to compose something of an antagonist force. And to these external
+dilapidations, we must add the far more important dilapidations from
+within, affecting all the institutions of the State, and all the forces,
+whether moral or political, which had originally raised it or maintained
+it. Causes which had been latent in the public arrangements ever since
+the time of Augustus, and had been silently preying upon its vitals, had
+now reached a height which would no longer brook concealment. The fire
+which had smouldered through generations had broken out at length
+into an open conflagration. Uproar and disorder, and the anarchy of a
+superannuated empire, strong only to punish and impotent to defend, were
+at this time convulsing the provinces in every point of the compass.
+Rome herself had been menaced repeatedly. And a still more awful
+indication of the coming storm had been felt far to the south of Rome.
+One long wave of the great German deluge had stretched beyond the
+Pyrenees and the Pillars of Hercules, to the very soil of ancient
+Carthage. Victorious banners were already floating on the margin of the
+Great Desert, and they were not the banners of Caesar. Some vigorous hand
+was demanded at this moment, or else the funeral knell of Rome was on
+the point of sounding. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that,
+had the imbecile Carinus (the brother of Numerian) succeeded to the
+command of the Roman armies at this time, or any other than Dioclesian,
+the empire of the west would have fallen to pieces within the next ten
+years.
+
+Dioclesian was doubtless that man of iron whom the times demanded; and
+a foreign writer has gone so far as to class him amongst the greatest
+of men, if he were not even himself the greatest. But the position of
+Dioclesian was remarkable beyond all precedent, and was alone sufficient
+to prevent his being the greatest of men, by making it necessary that
+he should be the most selfish. For the case stood thus: If Rome were in
+danger, much more so was Caesar. If the condition of the empire were such
+that hardly any energy or any foresight was adequate to its defence, for
+the emperor, on the other hand, there was scarcely a possibility that
+he should escape destruction. The chances were in an overbalance against
+the empire; but for the emperor there was no chance at all. He shared in
+all the hazards of the empire; and had others so peculiarly pointed
+at himself, that his assassination was now become as much a matter of
+certain calculation, as seed-time or harvest, summer or winter, or any
+other revolution of the seasons. The problem, therefore, for Dioclesian
+was a double one,--so to provide for the defence and maintenance of
+the empire, as simultaneously (and, if possible, through the very same
+institution) to provide for the personal security of Caesar. This problem
+he solved, in some imperfect degree, by the only expedient perhaps open
+to him in that despotism, and in those times. But it is remarkable,
+that, by the revolution which he effected, the office of Roman Imperator
+was completely altered, and Caesar became henceforwards an Oriental
+Sultan or Padishah. Augustus, when moulding for his future purposes
+the form and constitution of that supremacy which he had obtained by
+inheritance and by arms, proceeded with so much caution and prudence,
+that even the style and title of his office was discussed in council as
+a matter of the first moment. The principle of his policy was to absorb
+into his own functions all those offices which conferred any real power
+to balance or to control his own. For this reason he appropriated the
+tribunitian power; because that was a popular and representative office,
+which, as occasions arose, would have given some opening to democratic
+influences. But the consular office he left untouched; because all its
+power was transferred to the imperator, by the entire command of
+the army, and by the new organization of the provincial governments.
+[Footnote: In no point of his policy was the cunning or the sagacity
+of Augustus so much displayed, as in his treaty of partition with the
+senate, which settled the distribution of the provinces, and their
+future administration. Seeming to take upon himself all the trouble
+and hazard, he did in effect appropriate all the power, and left to the
+senate little more than trophies of show and ornament. As a first step,
+all the greater provinces, as Spain and Gaul, were subdivided into
+many smaller ones. This done, Augustus proposed that the senate should
+preside over the administration of those amongst them which were
+peaceably settled, and which paid a regular tribute; whilst all those
+which were the seats of danger,--either as being exposed to hostile
+inroads, or to internal commotions,--all, therefore, in fact, _which
+could justify the keeping up of a military force,_ he assigned to
+himself. In virtue of this arrangement, the senate possessed in Africa
+those provinces which had been formed out of Carthage, Cyrene, and the
+kingdom of Numidia; in Europe, the richest and most quiet part of
+Spain _(Hispania Baetica),_ with the large islands of Sicily, Sardinia,
+Corsica, and Crete, and some districts of Greece; in Asia, the kingdoms
+of Pontus and Bithynia, with that part of Asia Minor technically called
+Asia; whilst, for his own share, Augustus retained Gaul, Syria, the
+chief part of Spain, and Egypt, the granary of Rome; finally, all the
+military posts on the Euphrates, on the Danube, or the Rhine.
+
+Yet even the showy concessions here made to the senate were defeated
+by another political institution, settled at the same time. It had
+been agreed that the governors of provinces should be appointed by the
+emperor and the senate jointly. But within the senatorian jurisdiction,
+these governors, with the title of _Proconsuls,_ were to have no
+military power whatsoever; and the appointments were good only for a
+single year. Whereas, in the imperatorial provinces, where the governor
+bore the title of _Propraetor,_ there was provision made for a military
+establishment; and as to duration, the office was regulated entirely by
+the emperor's pleasure. One other ordinance, on the same head, riveted
+the vassalage of the senate. Hitherto, a great source of the senate's
+power had been found in the uncontrolled management of the provincial
+revenues; but at this time, Augustus so arranged that branch of
+the administration, that, throughout the senatorian or proconsular
+provinces, all taxes were immediately paid into the _ararium_, or
+treasury of the state; whilst the whole revenues of the propraetorian
+(or imperatorial) provinces, from this time forward, flowed into the
+_fiscus_, or private treasure of the individual emperor.] And in all
+the rest of his arrangements, Augustus had proceeded on the principle
+of leaving as many openings to civic influences, and impressing upon all
+his institutions as much of the old Roman character, as was compatible
+with the real and substantial supremacy established in the person of the
+emperor. Neither is it at all certain, as regarded even this aspect of
+the imperatorial office, that Augustus had the purpose, or so much as
+the wish, to annihilate all collateral power, and to invest the chief
+magistrate with absolute irresponsibility. For himself, as called upon
+to restore a shattered government, and out of the anarchy of civil wars
+to recombine the elements of power into some shape better fitted for
+duration (and, by consequence, for insuring peace and protection to the
+world) than the extinct republic, it might be reasonable to seek such an
+irresponsibility. But, as regarded his successors, considering the great
+pains he took to discourage all manifestations of princely arrogance,
+and to develop, by education and example, the civic virtues of
+patriotism and affability in their whole bearing towards the people
+of Rome, there is reason to presume that he wished to remove them
+from popular control, without, therefore, removing them from popular
+influence.
+
+Hence it was, and from this original precedent of Augustus, aided by the
+constitution which he had given to the office of imperator, that up
+to the era of Dioclesian, no prince had dared utterly to neglect the
+senate, or the people of Rome. He might hate the senate, like Severus,
+or Aurelian; he might even meditate their extermination, like the brutal
+Maximin. But this arose from any cause rather than from contempt. He
+hated them precisely because he feared them, or because he paid them an
+involuntary tribute of superstitious reverence, or because the malice of
+a tyrant interpreted into a sort of treason the rival influence of the
+senate over the minds of men. But, before Dioclesian, the undervaluing
+of the senate, or the harshest treatment of that body, had arisen from
+views which were _personal_ to the individual Caesar. It was now made
+to arise from the very constitution of the office, and the mode of the
+appointment. To defend the empire, it was the opinion of Dioclesian
+that a single emperor was not sufficient. And it struck him, at the same
+time, that by the very institution of a plurality of emperors, which
+was now destined to secure the integrity of the empire, ample provision
+might be made for the personal security of each emperor. He carried his
+plan into immediate execution, by appointing an associate to his own
+rank of Augustus in the person of Maximian--an experienced general;
+whilst each of them in effect multiplied his own office still farther
+by severally appointing a Caesar, or hereditary prince. And thus the
+very same partition of the public authority, by means of a duality of
+emperors, to which the senate had often resorted of late, as the best
+means of restoring their own republican aristocracy, was now adopted by
+Dioclesian as the simplest engine for overthrowing finally the power of
+either senate or army to interfere with the elective privilege. This he
+endeavored to centre in the existing emperors; and, at the same moment,
+to discourage treason or usurpation generally, whether in the party
+choosing or the party chosen, by securing to each emperor, in the case
+of his own assassination, an avenger in the person of his surviving
+associate, as also in the persons of the two Caesars, or adopted heirs
+and lieutenants. The associate emperor, Maximian, together with the
+two Caesars--Galerius appointed by himself, and Constantius Chlorus by
+Maximian--were all bound to himself by ties of gratitude; all owing
+their stations ultimately to his own favor. And these ties he endeavored
+to strengthen by other ties of affinity; each of the Augusti having
+given his daughter in marriage to his own adopted Caesar. And thus it
+seemed scarcely possible that a usurpation should be successful against
+so firm a league of friends and relations.
+
+The direct purposes of Dioclesian were but imperfectly attained; the
+internal peace of the empire lasted only during his own reign; and with
+his abdication of the empire commenced the bloodiest civil wars which
+had desolated the world since the contests of the great triumvirate.
+But the collateral blow, which he meditated against the authority of
+the senate, was entirely successful. Never again had the senate any real
+influence on the fate of the world. And with the power of the senate
+expired concurrently the weight and influence of Rome. Dioclesian is
+supposed never to have seen Rome, except on the single occasion when
+he entered it for the ceremonial purpose of a triumph. Even for that
+purpose it ceased to be a city of resort; for Dioclesian's was the final
+triumph. And, lastly, even as the chief city of the empire for business
+or for pleasure, it ceased to claim the homage of mankind; the Caesar
+was already born whose destiny it was to cashier the metropolis of the
+world, and to appoint her successor. This also may be regarded in
+effect as the ordinance of Dioclesian; for he, by his long residence
+at Nicomedia, expressed his opinion pretty plainly, that Rome was not
+central enough to perform the functions of a capital to so vast an
+empire; that this was one cause of the declension now become so visible
+in the forces of the state; and that some city, not very far from the
+Hellespont or the Aegean Sea, would be a capital better adapted by
+position to the exigencies of the times.
+
+But the revolutions effected by Dioclesian did not stop here. The
+simplicity of its republican origin had so far affected the external
+character and expression of the imperial office, that in the midst
+of luxury the most unbounded, and spite of all other corruptions,
+a majestic plainness of manners, deportment, and dress, had still
+continued from generation to generation, characteristic of the Roman
+imperator in his intercourse with his subjects. All this was now
+changed; and for the Roman was substituted the Persian dress, the
+Persian style of household, a Persian court, and Persian manners, A
+diadem, or tiara beset with pearls, now encircled the temples of the
+Roman Augustus; his sandals were studded with pearls, as in the Persian
+court; and the other parts of his dress were in harmony with these. The
+prince was instructed no longer to make himself familiar to the eyes
+of men. He sequestered himself from his subjects in the recesses of his
+palace. None, who sought him, could any longer gain easy admission
+to his presence. It was a point of his new duties to be difficult of
+access; and they who were at length admitted to an audience, found him
+surrounded by eunuchs, and were expected to make their approaches by
+genuflexions, by servile "adorations," and by real acts of worship as to
+a visible god.
+
+It is strange that a ritual of court ceremonies, so elaborate and
+artificial as this, should first have been introduced by a soldier, and
+a warlike soldier like Dioclesian. This, however, is in part explained
+by his education and long residence in Eastern countries.
+
+But the same eastern training fell to the lot of Constantine, who was in
+effect his successor; [Footnote: On the abdication of Dioclesian and
+of Maximian, Galerius and Constantius succeeded as the new Augusti. But
+Galerius, as the more immediate representative of Dioclesian, thought
+himself entitled to appoint both Caesars,--the Daza (or Maximus) in
+Syria, Severus in Italy. Meantime, Constantine, the son of Constantius,
+with difficulty obtaining permission from Galerius, paid a visit to his
+father; upon whose death, which followed soon after, Constantine came
+forward as a Caesar, under the appointment of his father. Galerius
+submitted with a bad grace; but Maxentius, a reputed son of Maximian,
+was roused by emulation with Constantine to assume the purple; and
+being joined by his father, they jointly attacked and destroyed Severus.
+Galerius, to revenge the death of his own Caesar, advanced towards Rome;
+but being compelled to a disastrous retreat, he resorted to the measure
+of associating another emperor with himself, as a balance to his new
+enemies. This was Licinius; and thus, at one time, there were six
+emperors, either as Augusti or as Caesars. Galerius, however, dying, all
+the rest were in succession destroyed by Constantine.] and the Oriental
+tone and standard established by these two emperors, though disturbed a
+little by the plain and military bearing of Julian, and one or two
+more emperors of the same breeding, finally re-established itself with
+undisputed sway in the Byzantine court.
+
+Meantime the institutions of Dioclesian, if they had destroyed Rome and
+the senate as influences upon the course of public affairs, and if they
+had destroyed the Roman features of the Caesars, do, notwithstanding,
+appear to have attained one of their purposes, in limiting the extent
+of imperial murders. Travelling through the brief list of the remaining
+Caesars, we perceive a little more security for life; and hence the
+successions are less rapid. Constantine, who (like Aaron's rod) had
+swallowed up all his competitors _seriatim,_ left the empire to his
+three sons; and the last of these most unwillingly to Julian. That
+prince's Persian expedition, so much resembling in rashness and
+presumption the Russian campaign of Napoleon, though so much below it in
+the scale of its tragic results, led to the short reign of Jovian, (or
+Jovinian,) which lasted only seven months. Upon his death succeeded the
+house of Valentinian, [Footnote: Valentinian the First, who admitted his
+brother Valens to a partnership in the empire, had, by his first
+wife, an elder son, Gratian, who reigned and associated with himself
+Theodosius, commonly called the Great. By his second wife he had
+Valentinian the Second, who, upon the death of his brother Gratian,
+was allowed to share the empire by Theodosius. Theodosius, by his first
+wife, had two sons,--Arcadius, who afterwards reigned in the east, and
+Honorius, whose western reign was so much illustrated by Stilicho. By
+a second wife, daughter to Valentinian the First, Theodosius had
+a daughter, (half-sister, therefore, to Honorius,) whose son was
+Valentinian the Third.] in whose descendant, of the third generation,
+the empire, properly speaking, expired. For the seven shadows who
+succeeded, from Avitus and Majorian to Julius Nepos and Romulus
+Augustulus, were in no proper sense Roman emperors,--they were not
+even emperors of the West,--but had a limited kingdom in the Italian
+peninsula. Valentinian the Third was, as we have said, the last emperor
+of the West.
+
+But, in a fuller and ampler sense, recurring to what we have said of
+Dioclesian and the tenor of his great revolutions, we may affirm that
+Probus and Carus were the final representatives of the majesty of Rome:
+for they reigned over the whole empire, not yet incapable of sustaining
+its own unity; and in them were still preserved, not yet obliterated by
+oriental effeminacy, those majestic features which reflected republican
+consuls, and, through them, the senate and people of Rome. That, which
+had offended Dioclesian in the condition of the Roman emperors, was
+the grandest feature of their dignity. It is true that the peril of
+the office had become intolerable; each Caesar submitted to his sad
+inauguration with a certainty, liable even to hardly any disguise from
+the delusions of youthful hope, that for him, within the boundless
+empire which he governed, there was no coast of safety, no shelter
+from the storm, no retreat, except the grave, from the dagger of the
+assassin. Gibbon has described the hopeless condition of one who should
+attempt to fly from the wrath of the almost omnipresent emperor. But
+this dire impossibility of escape was in the end dreadfully retaliated
+upon the emperor; persecutors and traitors were found every where: and
+the vindictive or the ambitious subject found himself as omnipresent
+as the jealous or the offended emperor. The crown of the Caesars was
+therefore a crown of thorns; and it must be admitted, that never in
+this world have rank and power been purchased at so awful a cost
+in tranquillity and peace of mind. The steps of Caesar's throne were
+absolutely saturated with the blood of those who had possessed it:
+and so inexorable was that murderous fate which overhung that gloomy
+eminence, that at length it demanded the spirit of martyrdom in him
+who ventured to ascend it. In these circumstances, some change was
+imperatively demanded. Human nature was no longer equal to the terrors
+which it was summoned to face. But the changes of Dioclesian transmuted
+that golden sceptre into a base oriental alloy. They left nothing behind
+of what had so much challenged the veneration of man: for it was in the
+union of republican simplicity with the irresponsibility of illimitable
+power, it was in the antagonism between the merely human and
+approachable condition of Caesar as a man, and his divine supremacy as
+a potentate and king of kings--that the secret lay of his unrivalled
+grandeur. This perished utterly under the reforming hands of Dioclesian.
+Caesar only it was that could be permitted to extinguish Caesar: and a
+Roman imperator it was who, by remodelling, did in effect abolish,
+by exorcising from its foul terrors, did in effect disenchant of its
+sanctity, that imperatorial dignity, which having once perished, could
+have no second existence, and which was undoubtedly the sublimest
+incarnation of power, and a monument the mightiest of greatness built by
+human hands, which upon this planet has been suffered to appear.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Caesars, by Thomas de Quincey
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