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 Another Random Document on
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suitable medium which prevented Propertius from being in the front rank of
the world’s poets.
Ovid, “this incorrigibly immoral but inexpressibly graceful poet,” as Mr.
Cruttwell called him, is a far more interesting personality. I think he may
fairly be called the wickedest writer on the world’s bookshelves. Others
may be wicked through ignorance, or by accident, or out of high animal
spirits, but Ovid is immoral on principle, a conscientious and industrious
perverter. His greatest work, “The Art of Loving,” is quite frankly a guide
to adultery, the precepts it contains being perfectly practical and evidently
based on expert knowledge. In his Amores, Metamorphoses, and Fasti he
took for his field the domain of religion and exhibited celestial sin in the
most captivating light. We have already seen how the loves of the gods
came to take their place in the Olympian mythology, and how thinking
pagans like Plato regarded them. To such men they were already relics of
barbarism, but Ovid draws them out into the light again, gilds them with his
wit and makes them altogether charming for the Roman drawing-room. The
strange and uncouth old ritual of Italian nature-worship is piquantly dressed
out for the up-to-date blasphemer. Nobody who had read Ovid could
possibly worship Jupiter any

FIG 1 FIG 2
THE CAPITOL THE DECUMANUS MAXIMUS
AND TRAJAN’S ARCH
Plate LXIV TIMGAD
more. It was all done with consummate art and unblushing impudence.
When the sad Niobe is bereft of her seven fair children by the arrows of the
jealous gods, our poet, ingeniously parodying Vergil, observes:

heu quantum hæc Niobe, Niobe distabat ab illa.

In telling the dreadful tragedy whereby the Greeks had explained the sorrow
of Philomela, the nightingale, our poet cheerfully describes the slaughter of
the children, adding:

pars inde cauis exultat aënis,

pars ueribus stridunt.

And so he moves from one lovely myth to another, preserving them indeed
for our archæologists, but delicately with the breath of his profanity defiling
them for ever.
Now Ovid is far more typical of the civilisation of his day than either
Vergil or Horace. For Ovid was a Roman noble, rich and gifted, who in
earlier days would have passed creditably from one high office to another in
the state, humorously plundering a province or two, gracefully collecting
objects of art in Asia and possibly losing a battle or two through negligence.
He actually started on a public career as a brilliant barrister, and enjoyed the
ancient office of decemvir stlitibus iudicandis, something like our Masters
in Chancery. But the Roman drawing-rooms soon swallowed him up in
their silken entanglements, and he spent the greater part of his life
whispering his poisonous little pentameters to ladies like Julia. Of course a
single poet with Ovid’s sinister gifts was doing far more to corrupt Rome
than all the Julian legislation could do to reform it, and we may fairly
conclude that Ovid with his attacks on the traditional Roman morality and
religion, together with effeminate bards like Tibullus who sang of the
horrors of war, were more than undoing the patriotic work of Vergil and
Horace. The plain fact is that though you may hire writers you cannot
purchase the spirit of a people, and so Augustus and Mæcenas found, to the
great misfortune of the Roman Empire. They failed in their attempt to
capture literature. Oppression failed even more signally than corruption.
Henceforth all the literary talent of Rome is on the opposition side. Lucan
extols republicanism, Tacitus assails the emperors with satirical history,
Petronius pillories Nero with satirical romance, Juvenal with satirical
poetry. Only the younger Pliny is loyal, and to be praised by Pliny is a very
doubtful recommendation. Roman literature had imbibed the republican
ideals from its Greek foster-mother. The schoolmasters of Rome continued
to teach their pupils to declaim against tyrants.
But Ovid himself was not permitted to flourish in his wickedness. A
sudden decree from Cæsar Augustus fell upon him like a thunderbolt. He
was banished for ever and bidden to betake himself to Tomi, on the Black
Sea, near the mouth of the Danube. From that inhospitable region he
continued to pour forth elegiacs, Epistles and Tristia, wherein he protests
his innocence, recants anything and everything he has ever said, and
bewails the horrors of arctic existence among the barbarians. The actual
cause of his banishment is one of the most piquant mysteries in literary
history. He has seen something which he ought not to have seen: his eyes
have destroyed him. It is fairly clear that his banishment synchronised with
the banishment of the younger Julia, and we may well believe that the old
emperor, shocked and horrified by this second scandal in his own house,
attributed it to the corrupting influence of that singer of gilded sins. The
banishment was certainly well merited and the only pity is that it came too
late to effect its purpose. The unmanly tone of the Tristia, the effeminate
appeals to everybody in Rome including a hitherto forgotten wife, reveal
Ovid in his true character. It is a little strange that generations of British
youth have been trained not only in the study but even in the imitation of
this author.
 Plate LXV. POMPEII: THERMOPOLION, STREET OF ABUNDANCE

When we term the Golden Age of Roman literature “Augustan” we

ought to remember that it began long before Augustus and ended before his
death. Thus with all his patronage he may more justly be called the finisher
than the author of it. Of all the great writers, only Ovid, to whom the simple
life and bracing air of the Sarmatians afforded an unusual longevity,
outlived Augustus. Summing up the characteristics of the literature of this
day, we may say that courtliness and artificiality were its most prominent
characteristics. The freshness of Catullus, the stern conviction of Lucretius,
the fire of Cicero were extinct. Nearly all that was native in Roman letters
had perished; only the crispness of epigram, the bite of satire and the
dignified music of the language itself remained as the Italian heritage.
Greece had quite definitely triumphed over Rome. Technical excellence
continued, for this has always been the mark of “Augustan” periods. But the
well-meant efforts of the state to capture literature for its own service had
failed. The horrors of the civil war outweighed the glories of the new
regime and with all his benevolence the emperor could never outlive the
memory of his proscriptions. Literature never forgave the murder of Cicero
though the author of Thyestes might be loaded with treasure. Indeed the
widespread misery of those terrible days in 40 B.C. came home personally to
most of our middle-class writers. Vergil, Horace, Tibullus, and Propertius
had each and all received ineffaceable memories in the loss of their
patrimonies. It was little wonder that even though they sang of wars and
victories when “Cynthius plucked their ear” their natural instinct was to
compare Mars and Venus very much to the disadvantage of the former.
When we turn to consider the Art of the period, we must not forget to
carry with us the light that we have obtained from the study of its literature.
For Augustus and his assistants were attempting precisely similar ends in
both regions. With temples, baths, circuses, amphitheatres, colonnades,
libraries, and statues the new regime was to flourish its magnificence in the
eyes of the world and, above all, to dazzle the citizens of Rome, fill up the
emptiness of their lives, and make them forget, if it were possible, the
magnitude of their loss. Money was lavished upon this object by the
emperor and all his friends, and the building activity which transformed
Rome from a city of brick into a city of marble must have given work and
pay to vast numbers of the poor. But the magnificence has all perished, as
all magnificence must, and it is left for us by the study of a few ruined
monuments, a few statues and busts, an altar here, a cornice there, to
estimate the spirit of Rome in conformity with its literature.
Roman art supplied much of their inspiration to the artists of the
Renaissance. Michael Angelo and Raphael learnt their art by copying the
antiquities, and much of the Renaissance architecture was direct imitation
of the Augustan age. But with the birth of archæology as a science in the
nineteenth century, scholars became accustomed to leap straight over the
Roman era, or to regard it merely as a phase of the Hellenistic decline.
From that view, undoubtedly erroneous and unjust, there has latterly been
an attempt to escape. Wickhoff and Riegl, whose foremost interpreter in this
country is Mrs. Strong, have argued that Roman art has an existence per se,
not only possessing characteristic excellences of its own, but in many points
transcending the limits of Greek art. To such pioneers we owe a deep debt
of gratitude. They have undoubtedly drawn our attention to real merits and
real steps of progress in the art of the Romans. But on the whole they have
failed, as it seems to an onlooker, to prove their case. Partly it is in the long
run a question of taste. A convinced Romanist like Mrs. Strong displays for
our admiration many works of art which trained eyes, accustomed to Greek
and modern art, often refuse to admire. I would take as an instance the well-
known “Tellus Group,” a slab from the Augustan Altar of Peace,[49]
preserved in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence. To me it seems a laborious
composition, executed with care and skill, but wholly without inspiration or
imagination. It is purely conventional allegory. How would the designer of
an illuminated ticket for an agricultural exhibition depict Mother Earth? He
would design a group (would he not?) with a tall and richly bosomed lady
for his central figure, he would put
 Plate LXVI. POMPEII: MURAL PAINTING, STREET OF ABUNDANCE

two naked babes upon her lap, at her feet would be a cow and a sheep,
while the background would be filled with flowers and trees. The
cornucopia would occupy a prominent position. If he were asked to fill his
space with additional figures, he would throw in Air and Water, one on each
side, designed on the same plan. There would be little motive in the group,
little connection between the figures. The designer’s aim would be that the
spectator in a casual glance might observe the fitness of it all—Earth sitting
between Air and Water—note it, and pass on. This is just what the Roman
artist has done. He has earned his money. He has carved most skilfully and
diligently, he has introduced all the conventional emblems. He has drawn
his metaphor from stock. I cannot see that he has put any love or religion or
indeed faith of any kind into his work. The only thing my eye cares to dwell
upon is the absurdity of Air, who is riding (backwards) on a wholly
inadequate swan, pretending to form one of a group with the immovably
seated Earth. This then is the first point of criticism against the Romanists. I
have put it as a mere subjective impression, which involves simply a
question of taste. But in reality it is more. They are failing or have failed to
make out their case, chiefly because the critical world of art-lovers declines
to follow their expressions of enthusiasm, and can give reasons for its
refusal.
Secondly, we have a right to ask the apostles of Roman art what they
mean by their claims. How justly may we call works like the Altar of Peace,
[50] or even the Column of Trajan, “Roman Art”? Was any of it executed by
Roman artists? We have just read the true Roman attitude towards art in
Vergil’s scornful excudent alii. We may be sure that the Altar of Peace was
executed by Greeks. The only named sculptors of the period are Greeks.
This is indeed admitted, but then the Roman claim takes one of two forms,
(1) that work executed in the Roman Empire may be called Roman, which
is absurd, or (2) that apart from mere execution there are in the work certain
characteristic innovations which are due to Roman inspiration. The latter
claim is true, to some extent, and important.
Just as Mæcenas “plucked the ear” of the poets, and instructed them
when to sing or when to refrain from singing of kings and battles, so the
patron of art gave instructions to the Greek artists. It is clear enough what
instructions he gave. Like Cromwell he cried “Paint me as I am, warts and
all. Leave your idealism, your perfect profiles, your serene gods in the
tranquillity of Olympus, and depict men with the living emotions displayed
in frown and wrinkle.” That was excellent advice, no doubt, but he seems to
have gone further. He seems, like the good Dr. Primrose, to have demanded
value for his money by insisting upon so many portraits to the square yard
of surface to be decorated. Is not this the explanation of the crowded figures
in the new style of relief work, as exhibited at Rome from the Altar of
Peace to the Column of Trajan? In the friezes of the Mausoleum, the fourth-
century Greek sculptors had discovered the advantage of free spacing so
that each figure has a value of its own. The florid taste of the millionaire
Attalids of Pergamum had made a reactionary movement in the direction of
crowded and tangled forms. Now these Roman friezes carry the demand a
stage further. In these processions we have a compact mass of faces, each
admirably and no doubt faithfully portrayed, but ruining by their very
numbers the artistic success of the whole. The spectator is not to admire a
composition. As in Frith’s “Derby Day” he is to pick out a face here and
there and cry “That is Agrippa: that is Messalla: that is Germanicus.” In its
essence such a demand is not the mark of a people with any sense of art. On
the contrary it is the measure of their crudity and Philistinism. Nevertheless
this new demand enabled the versatile Greek genius to win for itself fresh
triumphs, especially in realistic portraiture and narrative relief-work.

FIG. 1. FIG 2.
THE EMPEROR DECIUS MARCUS AURELIUS
Plate LXVII.

Part of the claim which Wickhoff and his followers make for the
originality of Roman art is based upon the belief that the limitations of
Greek art are not self-imposed; for example, that the Greeks did not know
how to express emotion in the plastic arts, that they could not make realistic
portraits, that through ignorance they never perceived the beauty of a stark
corpse, that Pheidias lacked the intelligence to find a dramatic centre for the
Parthenon frieze, and so forth. Such assumptions as these are easily
disproved. Greeks were capable of realism (witness the Ludovisi reliefs[51])
but they preferred to idealise. In portraying giants, barbarians, or slaves
they could express transient emotions, but for Greeks and gods in statuary
they deliberately preferred serenity. The Greeks sought to conceal their art
rather than to display it, as we have learnt from the discovery of the subtle
secrets of their architecture, and it is rash to assert of any principle of
craftsmanship that the Greeks did not know it. Many of the claims of Rome
to originality may be refuted by this consideration.
 What I believe to be the true statement of the case is this: Greek art did
not come to an end with the death of Praxiteles or the Roman conquest. Its
central impulse passed over from the impoverished mainland to the still
flourishing communities of the East, to Antioch on the Mæander where the
Aphrodite of Melos was produced, to Rhodes where the Laocoön was
carved, to Ephesus, and farther east still, even into Parthia and possibly
India. It was by no means stereotyped but still producing new forms to meet
fresh demands, as for sarcophagi in Sidon, or for paintings and mosaics in
Egypt. In the course of this period the art of the Greeks was much
influenced by the East. The Romans at first were content to take Greek art
as they found it. In the days of Mummius they were merely like rich
transatlantic collectors in search of beautiful, still more of precious and
unique, commodities. They had no doubt some slaves of their own working
in Rome at the arts and crafts. Some of these would be Greeks of inferior
birth and capacity reproducing old Greek work for the Roman market. But
some of them may well have been Italians, some Etruscans preserving the
old artistic traditions of their race. This “collecting” era lasted down to the
time of Augustus. We have seen it as late as Cicero and Atticus. There was
little demand for new creations in those days. Few temples were being built.
The artists were still scattered about the Levant. There was little to attract
them to Rome.
But when Augustus decided to build a new Rome of marble, founding or
restoring his eighty temples, with arches and theatres innumerable all over
the Empire, there must have been a great influx of artists from Greece and
Asia Minor. Now begins an art to which we may fairly apply the term
Græco-Roman in the sense that it was the work of Greek artists under
oriental influences supplying Roman demands. The new demands entailed
still further artistic developments; some of them, but not all, to be regarded
by those who view the history of art as a whole, as improvements. One
main effect of Roman conditions was that art largely ceased its service of
religion and became devoted to secular purposes. Thus the limitations of the
best Greek art, self-imposed as they were, now broke down. The effect is
seen especially in portraiture, where the Romans had a tradition of realism
resulting from the use of the death-mask in making wax images of the
illustrious deceased. Hence in the decoration of the great Altar of Peace at
Rome, the Greek artists, who would naturally have produced a frieze of
gods or idealised worshippers, were asked for portraits of the men of the
day. I think it is clear that enormous skill was devoted to the likenesses of
men and very little care to the gods. The composition of the whole was of
little account. A little later the demand for historical reliefs on arches and
columns was met by the development of quite new features in the art of
sculpture, namely, those spatial or tridimensional effects of perspective
which are so remarkable on the Trajan column.[52] This art seems to have
begun in Alexandrian times but Rome may claim the credit for its
development. It was necessary, if sculpture was to do that for

“Clytie”
which it was surely never intended—to tell a story. The Parthenon frieze
was religious ornament, the Trajan column is secular history. When the
Romans required ornament they were content with decoration merely and
the artists complied with the wonderful skill which they had probably learnt
in Asia. Never have there been such exquisite natural designs in wreaths
and festoons of flowers and fruit as in the sculpture of the Augustan age.[53]
It is the same with the art of the goldsmith, as we see in the wonderful
discoveries of silver made at Hildesheim and Bosco Reale[54] or in the great
imperial cameos wrought in sardonyx.[55] There was money and skill in
plenty. But what was lacking was a spirit to animate it.
If we could be sure of our ground in setting down realism as the Roman
contribution to the history of Art, it would be a great achievement for
Rome. Realism is undoubtedly a fine thing though idealism is a finer.
Unfortunately it seems that Hellenic art in the eastern centres was
developing realism, or at least illusionism, for itself on its own soil. On the
whole, in the controversy between the archæologists, Strzygowski, who
claims the East as the inspiring force in Roman days, seems to have the best
of it. The coins of Asia Minor present realistic portraiture quite distinct
from that which was native on Roman soil. Thus the exquisite festoons of
flowers, fruit, and birds, all botanically and anatomically correct to the last
feather or stamen, are probably the product of Greece and the East. But we
may well believe that the nature of the Roman patron’s demands assisted
this movement. The Roman, if we may judge by Pliny the Roman art-critic,
was just the man to insist that an apple should not resemble a pear or to
count the petals of a poppy. This sort of criticism affords excellent
discipline for the artist. The statues of the period, such as the Venus
Genetrix by Arcesilaus in the Louvre[56] and the Orestes and Electra group
by Stephanus at Naples, are not very interesting works. They are plainly
late-born issues of Greek sculpture, though in the latter there is an attempt
at expression which seems to be derived from the influence of portraiture.
The “Electra,” for example, has the same look in her eyes, a frowning look
as of one standing in strong sunlight, that we see in the portrait of Agrippa.
Portraiture had taught the sculptor of this day new secrets about the setting
of the human eye. They had learnt the effect produced by deepening the
hollow under the brow and by making the direction of the glance diverge
from that of the head and body. But much of this was a legacy from Scopas.
In little things like the hang of Electra’s robe there is visible degeneration.
Here, as in the Tellus Group, the contour of the bosom is made to support
the falling drapery, an unnatural and very unpleasing effect.
 The architecture of the period is distinguished by similar characteristics.
It is distinctly Græco-Roman with much of the subtle harmony of fine
Greek work lost. The temples are, on the whole, the least interesting part of
the work, for they are pale copies of Greek architecture not always very
artistically adapted. A good many of the ruined monuments of Rome to
which the pious traveller now directs his footsteps date from the Augustan
period. Many of the temples of the Republic were now rebuilt on the old
plan with more sumptuous materials, as, for example, the round shrine of
Mater Matuta,[57] commonly called the Temple of Hercules. Technical
innovations include the debasement of the Doric column by omitting those
subtle flutings which gave it all the grace whereby its strength was saved
from clumsiness, and by erecting it upon a pedestal. But the Romans
preferred the more exuberant Corinthian order with its florid capital of
acanthus foliage, a type which the Greeks had used very sparingly and
seldom externally. Again, the Romans had discovered improved methods of
construction which enabled them to use a wider span in roofing, but they
made no artistic advantage out of this fact. On the contrary, by dispensing
with the peristyle or surrounding colonnade they rendered the exterior of
their temples much less interesting.

FIG. 1. FIG 2.
THE EMPEROR CARACALLA THE EMPEROR COMMODUS
 Plate LXVIII.

The principal surviving relics of Augustan temples are eight columns of the
Temple of Saturn[58] which still stand in the Forum at Rome. The
celebrated Pantheon[59] is now recognised to be a work of Hadrian’s time
though its plan probably repeats that of the temple erected on the site by
Agrippa. But the clearest picture of the ecclesiastical architecture of the day
is to be seen on the reliefs of the Altar of Peace, which reproduce the
appearance of actual temples with almost photographic exactitude. The
finest extant example is undoubtedly the temple at Nismes, known as the
Maison Carrée,[60] a graceful erection of this period which exhibits the
Corinthian style without undue extravagance.
As the Romans of this day had scarcely any trace of genuine religious
feeling it is not surprising that they had little of their own to contribute to
temple architecture except wealth and magnificence. But they were
naturally devoted to building and that was the favourite extravagance of the
rich. Nothing but a few pavements survives of all the handsome villas
which dotted the hill-sides at Tibur and Præneste, or lined the coast at Baiæ,
Naples, and Surrentum. But there are several secular buildings of Augustan
date in which we can see a handsome Græco-Roman style of architecture
wherein Greek columns and entablatures were used by Roman architects
chiefly as ornament. The Theatre of Marcellus,[61] built in 13 B.C., still
presents considerable remains, which though much defaced exhibit an
appearance of bygone splendour. The lower story is Doric, the second is
Ionic, and the third which has perished was probably in the Corinthian
style. We may judge its effective appearance from the copy of its elevation
which Michael Angelo produced in his design for the inner court of the
Farnese Palace at Rome.[62] The Renaissance learnt much of its architecture
from Augustan Rome and these very designs may be seen springing up
around us to-day in the banks and town-halls of London. Thus Augustan
Rome holds a supremacy for secular building even greater than Periclean
Athens achieved for temples. Where magnificence and solidity—and it may
be added cheapness—are the principal motives of construction, the Græco-
Roman style of the First Century B.C. is unmatched.
The most gorgeous of the architectural creations of Augustus was,
however, that Temple of Mars the Avenger which he set up in memory of
his triumph over Antony and his punishment of the conspirators. Round it
was a piazza (forum) adorned with imaginary portrait statues of all the
Roman heroes of history with biographical inscriptions on the bases. In all
the Augustan culture we see the impress of the prince’s own Græco-Roman
taste. It was all planned to achieve his object of dazzling the multitude and
yet gaining over to his side the highest intellect and taste of his day. His
own tastes were refined and fastidious: he hated extravagance and utility
was always before his eyes. “He read the classics in both tongues” says
Suetonius, “principally in order to find salutary precepts and examples for
public and private life. He would copy these out word for word and send
them to his servants or to the governors of armies and provinces or to the
magistrates of the city whenever they required his admonitions. He used to
read whole volumes to the Senate, and often publish them in an edict.” We
learn further that he always prepared his more important orations most
carefully, writing them down and keeping the manuscript close at hand.
This practice he followed even in his discourse with his wife. Augustan
culture has just this quality: it takes immense pains and succeeds by virtue
of them. It lacks a good deal in spontaneity but it makes up in excellence of
technique.

FIG. 1.
WARRIORS
 FIG. 2.
APOTHEOSIS OF ANTONINUA AND FAUSTINE
Plate LXIX. RELIEFS FROM THE BASE OF THE ANTONINE COLUMN
 VI

THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE

Ambitionem scriptoris facile auerseris,
obtrectatio et liuor pronis auribus accipiuntur
quippe adulationi fœdum crimen seruitutis,
malignitati falsa species libertatis inest.—
Tacitus.
N these words, pregnant and terse as ever, Tacitus gives us a key to the true
reading of imperial Roman history. “It is easy,” he says, “to discount the
self-interest of the historian and to reject his eulogies, but his malicious
criticisms are greedily swallowed. For flattery bears the odious stamp of
servility, while malignity wears the false disguise of independence.” Thus
out of his own mouth the foremost historian of the early Empire gives us
the right to read the literary sources in a spirit favourable to the emperors.
So when the historians describe Tiberius as a bloodthirsty tyrant who hid
himself away in the island of Capri, and there (at the age of seventy!) began
to devote himself to disgusting orgies of lust and cruelty, we shall prefer to
reject that story as absurd, and to regard Tiberius as a proud and reserved
aristocrat who found it impossible to tolerate the mixture of adulation and
spite with which he was treated by the other nobles of Rome, and withdrew
from the capital in order to escape it. When Gaius (Caligula) is represented
as a lunatic, we merely understand that he was unpopular; when we are told
that he made his horse a consul, we recognise a satirist’s humorous
exaggeration of his neglect of some noble family’s claims to that office;
when we read that he set his army to collect oyster shells on the coast of
Normandy, we only conclude that his surrender of the projected invasion of
Britain was a subject of ridicule in Rome. Claudius is described as a stupid
and clumsy pedant, deformed and inarticulate: in reality he seems to have
been a scholar with a leaning towards antiquarian and republican traditions.
Even in the case of Nero, the savage ferocity with which he is charged is
chiefly due to the fact that his hand lay heavy on the senators. He was
undoubtedly popular with the commons, and his real offence was to possess
more refinement and culture than was considered proper in a
Roman noble, to be too fond of Greeks and art and music.
Nevertheless it is impossible to write history in whitewash, and
the only safe method of dealing with a period like this is to
ignore the personalities on the throne of the Cæsars, and to
attempt a broad treatment of the general tendency of these
times.
But by neglecting the gossip and the personalities we do, I
fear, run the risk of missing much of the interest of the period,
and perhaps we lose an important part of the truth. We must not
allow ourselves to be wholly deprived of that impression of
purple and splendour which hangs about the Golden House of
Nero, nor to forget the taint of crime which clings to the
palaces of the Cæsars. The latter in particular is an essential
part of imperial history. As we have seen, this Empire founded
on compromise was and remained illegitimate. The succession
was always open to question; there was no law of heredity.
This fact was emphasised by the barrenness of the Roman
aristocracy. For a hundred years no prince had a son to succeed
him, so that the palace was always full of intrigue. Finally, the
wickedness of the women is one of the most sinister features of
the time. Though it was, indeed, no innovation of the Empire, it
now gains a terrible significance in the dynastic conflicts which
surrounded the throne. Every one of the early reigns is stained
with murders and fearful crimes in the palace. No doubt much
of this history is false and malicious. For example, it is by no
means likely that Germanicus was poisoned. There were
always scandal-mongers to hint at poison when any member of
the ruling house died of disease. But even with the most liberal
discount for exaggeration, the record is a black one. Let us
select two typical stories, in order to suggest the kind of satanic
halo which surrounds the imperial houses, as the ancient
historians depict them.
 Plate LXX. TWO VIEWS OF THE AQUEDUCT OF CLAUDIUS

Claudius, the conqueror of Britain, was in reality the ablest and best of
the Claudian Cæsars who succeeded Augustus, but his wife Messalina,
thirty-four years his junior, was a creature of shameless lust and remorseless
cruelty. Valerius Asiaticus, a Gaul by birth but now the richest noble of his
day, was in possession of the far-famed gardens of Lucullus. Messalina
coveted the park and accused him to her husband, with the inevitable result.
Asiaticus died like a gentleman. He took his usual exercise, he bathed and
dined quite cheerfully, and then he opened his veins, “but not until he had
inspected his funeral pyre and ordered its removal to another place, for fear
that the smoke should injure the thick foliage of the trees.” So died this
lover of gardens. Messalina’s sins grew more open, until at last she went
through a public pantomime of marriage with one of her paramours, Silius,
a consul-elect. The ceremony was performed before a number of witnesses
duly invited. Claudius was at that time guided by the counsels of three
Greek secretaries, and one of them determined to reveal the shameful truth
to the emperor. Tacitus tells the story of her ruin in graphic language. She
was celebrating the vintage feast in the gardens she had wickedly gained for
herself. The presses were being trodden, the vats were overflowing, women
girt with skins were dancing, as Bacchanals dance in their worship or their
frenzy. Messalina with flowing hair shook the thyrsus, and Silius, at her
side, crowned with ivy and wearing the buskin, moved his head in time with
some lascivious chorus. One of the guests had climbed a tree in sport and
reported a “hurricane from Ostia.” It was truer than he knew, for just then
messengers began to arrive with news that Claudius was on his way from
Ostia, coming with vengeance. The revels ceased, the revellers fled in all
directions, and Messalina, left deserted, mounted a garden cart to proceed
along the road to meet her husband. Her appeal failed, though Claudius
would undoubtedly have relented but for the interference of the freedman
Narcissus. After dinner, warmed with the wine, he bade some one go and
tell “that poor creature” to come before him on the morrow to plead her
cause. But Narcissus had already sent soldiers to her, and she was driven to
suicide. “Claudius was still at the banquet when they told him that
Messalina was dead, without mentioning whether it was by her own or
another’s hand. Nor did he ask the question, but called for his cup and
finished the repast as usual.”
Nero, too, in the pages of Suetonius appears so incredible in his
wickedness that the exaggeration is obvious. Of his splendid new palace the
Golden House we read: “The portico was so high that it could contain a
colossal statue of himself a hundred and twenty feet in height; and the space
it included was so vast that it had a triple colonnade, a mile in length, and a
lake like a sea, surrounded with buildings that looked like a city. It had a
park with cornfields, vineyards, pastures, and woods containing a vast
number of animals of all kinds, wild and tame. Parts of it were entirely
overlaid with gold, and incrusted with jewels and pearl. The supper-rooms
were vaulted and the compartments of the ceilings, which were inlaid with
ivory, were made to revolve and scatter flowers. They also contained pipes
to shed scents upon the guests. The chief banqueting-room was circular and
revolved perpetually day and night, according to the motion of the celestial
bodies. The baths were supplied with water from the sea and the Albula.” At
the dedication of this magnificent building, all that he said in praise of it
was: “Now at last I have begun to live like a gentleman.” They charged
Nero with the murder of all his relatives, and there is a grim sort of humour
in the story of his frequent attempts upon his mother’s life. His grievance
against her was that she was too strict. First, he deprived her of her
bodyguard, and suborned people to harass her with lawsuits which drove
her out of the city. In her retirement he set others to follow her about by
land and sea with abuse and scurrilous language. Three times he attempted
her life by poison, but finding she had previously rendered herself immune
by the use of antidotes, he next designed machinery to make the floor above
her bed-chamber collapse while she was asleep. When this failed he
constructed a special coffin-ship, which could be made to fall in pieces, and
then sent her a loving invitation to visit him at Baiæ, the Brighton of the
Romans. The ships of her escort were likewise instructed to ram her by
accident on the way home. He attended her to the vessel in a very cheerful
spirit and kissed her bosom at parting with her. After which he sat up late at
night waiting with great anxiety for the joyful news of her decease. But
news arrived that the accident had miscarried, the dowager empress was
swimming to shore. When her freedman came joyfully to narrate her
escape, Nero pretended that the man had come to assassinate him and
ordered her to be put to death. Suetonius adds “on good authority” that he
went to view her corpse and criticised her blemishes to his followers, and
then called for drink. After this he was haunted by her ghost.
The famous story of his death is told with a little restraint, and the latter
part of it is not incredible. When the first bad news came of the revolt of
Vindex with the legions of Gaul, Nero summoned his privy council and
held a hasty consultation with them about the crisis, but spent the rest of the
day in showing them a hydraulic organ and discoursing upon the intricacies
of the invention. Then he composed a skit upon the rebels, and prepared a
pathetic speech which was to make the mutineers return to his allegiance in
tears. He sat down to compose the songs of triumph which should be sung
upon that occasion. In preparing his expedition his first thought was to
provide carriages for the band: he equipped all his concubines as Amazons
with battle-axes and bucklers. But when he heard of the revolt of the
Spanish army under Galba also, he fell into a temper and tore the dispatch
to pieces. He broke his precious cups and put up a dose of Locusta’s poison
in a golden box. He ordered the prætorian guard to rally round him, but they
only quoted Vergil to him:
 “Is death indeed so hard a lot?”

At midnight he awoke and found that the guards had deserted his bedside.
Even his bedding and his golden box of poison had been stolen. So he
stumbled out into the night as if he would throw himself into the Tiber. But
a few faithful slaves came to him and a freedman offered him his country
villa for a refuge, and Nero rode thither in a shabby disguise. An earthquake
shook the ground and a flash of lightning darted in his face; he heard the
soldiers in the prætorian camp shouting for Galba. Skulking among bushes
and briers, he crawled on all fours to a wretched outhouse of his freedman’s
villa. There he ordered them to dig a grave and line it with scraps of marble.
The water and wood for his obsequies were prepared, while he uttered the
famous words “qualis artifex pereo!” either meaning “What an artist the
world is losing!” or (more probably) “What an artistic death!” A dispatch
came to announce that he had been declared a public enemy by the senate,
and was to be punished according to the ancient custom of the Romans. He
asked what sort of death that meant, and was informed that the criminal was
generally stripped naked and scourged to death with his head in a pillory.
Then he took up daggers and tried the points, but still he dared not die. He
begged one of his attendants to give him the example. At last he heard the
horsemen coming, quoted a line of the Iliad very appropriately, and drove,
with the help of his secretary, a dagger into his throat.
Now, even of this, three-quarters is pure rhetoric. For example, it was
impossible that Nero should have heard the soldiers in the Esquiline Camp
from the road which he took to his servant’s villa. The details are the
invention of malice, or the attempt of a literary artist to improve his story.
Even Suetonius admits that the populace continued to deck Nero’s tomb
with spring and summer flowers, that they dressed up his image and placed
it on the rostra as if he were still alive, and that a pretender, who arose in his
name twenty years later, was received with acclamation among the
Parthians.
 FIG. 1. FIG 2.
ARCH OF TITUS ARCH OF CONSTANTINE
Plate LXXI.

Having made this concession to the literary tradition which can be

shown to be very largely fiction, we may now endeavour to gather up the
fragments of history and briefly trace the progress of the Empire during its
first century. First, as to its geographical growth; although Augustus had
bequeathed in his testament the advice not to enlarge the frontiers of the
Empire, and Tiberius had observed the precept, yet conquest still remained
an object of ambition in the heart of every emperor who sought military
renown or fresh sources of revenue. Britain, the declined legacy of Julius,
was obviously beckoning the Romans. Diplomatic relations with the many
kings of that island had always been frequent, and it was found that Britain
was an inconvenient neighbour for a rapidly Romanising Gaul. There was a
continual coming and going across the water, for there were kindred
peoples on each side. Especially, it was the last refuge of the anti-Roman
force of Druidism, a religion which was already declining and was
suppressed by Claudius in Gaul. That this was so is shown by the forward
movement of the Romans in the direction of Anglesey. The details of the
conquest of Britain are, in spite of voluminous discussions, by no means
certain. Aulus Plautius Silvanus with four legions, and with the future
emperor Vespasian as one of his brigadiers, defeated Cymbeline and ten
other kings of South Britain, crossed the Thames and conquered Colchester
(Camulodunum), which became a Roman colonia and the centre of
government. This was in A.D. 43, and Claudius himself spent a fortnight in
our island in order to receive the honours of victory. The conquest was not
too easily achieved, for there were five great battles in which the emperor,
though absent, received the titles of victory. Plautius himself seems to have
reached the line of the Trent and Severn. Ostorius Scapula, his successor,
was mainly occupied in subduing the Silures of the Welsh mountains, and
in the conquest of the elusive prince Caradoc. The mercy shown to that
defeated hero proves that the Romans had advanced in humanity since the
days of Jugurtha. The two succeeding legates made no fresh advance, but
Suetonius Paulinus in A.D. 59-61 established Chester as his western camp.
While he was engaged in the conquest of Anglesey, leaving only the ninth
legion to hold the conquered province, there broke out the great rebellion
under the heroic Boudicca. There never has been a quarrel in this island
which has not had money as its root. It was not so much the oppressive
nature of the tribute as the vexatious methods of the Roman financiers, who
still as in republican days swarmed in the wake of eagles, that stirred the
Iceni and their queen into revolt. Camulodunum, Verulamium, and
Londinium were taken and sacked and there was an immense slaughter of
Roman civilians and Romanised Britons. But vengeance followed: no
barbarians could stand against the strategy and discipline of the legions.
Succeeding governors were mainly content to pacify and civilise the
island.
One of the extraordinarily pungent chapters of Tacitus shows us the
Roman method of empire-building in Britain. “The following winter,” he
says of A.D. 79, “was spent in useful statecraft. To make a people which was
scattered and barbarous, and therefore prone to warfare, grow accustomed
to peace and quietness by way of their pleasures, Agricola used to persuade
them by private exhortations and public assistance to build temples, forums,
and houses, with praise for the eager and admonitions for the laggard. Thus
they could not help embarking on the rivalry for honour. Now he began to
instruct the sons of chieftains in the liberal arts, to extol the natural abilities
of the Britons above the
 Plate LXXII. THE COLOSSEUM, ROME

studious habits of Gaul, so that those who lately rejected even the Roman
language now became zealous for oratory. So even our dress came into
esteem, and the toga was commonly worn. The next step was towards the
attractions of our vices, lounging in colonnades, baths, and refined dinner-
parties. They were too ignorant to see that what they call civilisation was
really a form of slavery.” There is no doubt that the Britons took as readily
as their Gallic cousins to the Roman civilisation. Many of them took Roman
names and became Roman citizens. They learnt the pleasures of the bath
and the amphitheatre, their mines were exploited, arts and industries were
introduced, agriculture was improved. The Druids hid themselves away in
the unconquered fastnesses of Wales or crossed over to the Hibernian island
which the Romans never had leisure to conquer. Meanwhile the Britons
were learning to worship the obsolete gods of Rome, and presently the
Eastern deities who came in their train.
It was the father-in-law of Tacitus, Julius Agricola, who conquered, or at
least defeated, the northern tribes of England. Among the powerful
Brigantes he established a garrison at York (Eburacum), which eventually
became the most important of all the Roman centres. He advanced into
Scotland also, and inflicted a bloody defeat upon the wild Caledonians. But
Scotland remained unconquered, as did the neighbouring island upon which
also Agricola had cast his ambitious eyes. The Roman army was wanted
elsewhere, and the Emperor Domitian declined to assist any further
adventures. Little more of our island’s story is recorded until the travelling
Emperor Hadrian came out to visit us in A.D. 122. He saw that the wild
north was only to be won by a gradual advance with more or less peaceful
penetration northwards. The system of fortified frontiers was already
established on the Rhine and Danube, and Hadrian drew his finger across
the seventy miles between Bowness and Wallsend. Across this space, where
the Tyne and Solway almost overlap, the Roman lines ran straight over hill
and dale, and there they are to this day as a silent proof of the greatness of
the Roman people.[63] This was more than a frontier: it was a vast elongated
camp which looked south as well as north and frowned alike upon the
Brigantes and the Caledonians. It was pierced at intervals by fortified gates
and great roads ran northwards through it. On the north there was first a
ditch, and then a stone wall broad enough for two or three men to walk
abreast along it and nearly twenty feet high. Behind this, in a space of about
140 yards wide runs a road connecting a chain of fourteen large camps,
some of which grew into towns. Southward again was the quadruple
rampart of earth, a mound, a dyke, and then a double mound. This immense
labour, though it is small in comparison with Roman works elsewhere, was
achieved not by British slaves, but by Roman soldiers, some of whom were
Britons, some Spaniards, and some Germans. It was completed gradually
under various emperors. There were detached forts both north and south of
the wall of Hadrian. It was Antoninus Pius who made the next step twenty
years later. The Antonine wall from the Forth to the Clyde is only about half
as long and of inferior strength. There were camps even north of this, in
Stirlingshire for example, and it is clear that the Romans intended to feel
their way into the Highlands. But that was contrary to their fates.
Gaul meanwhile was becoming as civilised as Italy herself. Numbers of
the Gauls who had acquired the Latin speech received the jus Latinum,
which was almost equivalent to full citizenship. Claudius admitted the
chiefs of the Ædui into the Roman senate, and part of the speech in which
he did so is preserved on bronze tablets at Lyons. Twice in the course of the
century there were interesting attempts to give political expression to the
Gallic sense of nationality. The revolt of Vindex at the close of Nero’s reign
was little more than a mutiny, but the projected “Empire of the Gauls,”
which was set up during the confusion which followed the fall of Vitellius,
came very near success. Jealousy between the Gauls and Germans wrecked
it.

Plate LXXIII. THE COLUMN OF TRAJAN

In the case of Germany, it looked for a time as if Tiberius, who, of

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

Roman Limes

It seems to have been the Flavian emperors, Vespasian and Domitian,

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

Plate LXXIV. DETAIL OF THE ANTONINE COLUMN

This policy of setting up immobile defences like the Great Wall of China is
always a dangerous one. Useful at first and visibly strong, it tends to lull the
defenders into a false security. The camps and forts grew into towns, the
armies into peaceful citizens living with their wives and children and
devoting themselves to trade and husbandry. Meanwhile the barbarians on
the other side were growing stronger and learning the art of war as fast as
the Romans were forgetting it.
After this the danger-point for the Empire shifted gradually eastwards
down the Danube. Claudius had converted Thrace from an allied kingdom
into a Roman province in A.D. 46. Much difficulty was caused by the
Dacians, who lived just across the Danube on the north bank opposite the
Roman province of Mœsia and in the modern Roumania. As the Danube
was apt to become frozen in winter it ceased to offer a satisfactory frontier,
so long as there were powerful enemies on the other side. At first the
Romans tried the system of transplanting them, 50,000 under Augustus and
100,000 under Nero, and settling them in the province of Mœsia. But it was
a stupid policy, for it meant constant intrigues between the free barbarians
and their enslaved kinsfolk. Vespasian accordingly moved two legions
down from Dalmatia to reinforce the two already stationed in Mœsia. But
presently there arose an able and heroic king called Decebalus, who welded
the Dacians into a compact and organised kingdom, and began to menace
the security of the Empire. Like Marbod of Bohemia, he drilled his
barbarians on the Roman model. In A.D. 85 he invaded Mœsia, won
victories and did great damage. Domitian, called upon to face this peril, was
content with inflicting a single defeat upon them and then accepting
Decebalus as a client prince. He gave him Roman engineers and
artillerymen, and even sent gifts of money which the barbarians were
pleased to regard as tribute. This has been set down as cowardice, but it was
certainly unwisdom in Domitian, for Decebalus grew stronger and more
dangerous. It was left for Trajan, the greatest soldier of all the early
emperors, to face this thorny problem in the two great Dacian Wars of 101
and 105 B.C. The whole war is depicted for us by pictures in stone. The
spiral reliefs which cover the column of Trajan tell us, with far more detail
than the narrative of Dio, the history of the two Dacian Wars. We see the
embarkation of the Roman army, we see it on the march with its scouts in
advance, we see the solemn purifications, sacrifices, and harangues which
preceded battle. We see the battles themselves, in which the Romans with
sword and pilum defeat the Dacians and their mail-clad Sarmatian cavalry.
The great bridge built across the Danube at Viminacium by the Greek
architect Apollodorus is faithfully depicted. We can watch the siege of the
Dacian capital, Sarmizegethusa, and observe the construction of the siege-
engines. Scenes of pathos are most graphically portrayed, the torturing of
Roman prisoners by the barbarian women, the suicide of the Dacian chiefs
by poison, and the death of the heroic Decebalus. At intervals throughout
the story there appears and reappears the calm and stately figure of Trajan,
steering his ship, sacrificing for victory, leading the march or the charge,
haranguing his troops, directing the labour of engineering, consulting with
his officers, or receiving the submission of the foe.[65]
The end of the two wars was that Dacia was annexed and became a
province of the Empire. Here, as elsewhere, Trajan showed his contempt of
natural frontiers. As a gallant soldier himself, he believed in the
invincibility of the Roman arms, and preferred to put his trust in legions
rather than in walls. For this he has been condemned by modern historians,
but history is on his side. More than anything else it was reliance on natural
frontiers and artificial ramparts, with the consequent loss of military
instincts, which was to be the undoing of the Roman Empire.

FIG. 1. FIG 2.
THE “MONDRAGORE” ANTINOUS ANTINOUS (BRITISH MUSEUM)
Plate LXXV.

On the eastern frontier it was for a long time a game of tug-of-war

between Rome and Parthia, the rope being supplied by the kingdom of
Armenia. The Augustan policy of filling the oriental thrones with princes
trained at Rome was not a great success. You might learn bad lessons at
court; you might even learn to know Rome without learning to love or fear
her. The princes sent to Armenia or Parthia were unstable allies and the
ordinary course of events was for the Romans to send out a king to Armenia
and for the Parthians to depose him. Again it was left for Trajan to attack
this problem in the old Roman fashion; when the usual submissive embassy
arrived, Trajan answered, as a Metellus might have done, that he wanted
deeds not words, and he led his army on. Trajan found the Eastern legions,
whose headquarters were at Antioch, already civilianised and orientalised
so that they had become useless for fighting. At this time there were four
legions in Syria, one in Judæa and one in the new province of Cappadocia.
The first task was to restore discipline and energy to these troops. Then,
without bloodshed, in A.D. 115 Armenia was declared a province. Parthia,
distracted by civil war, was overrun, its capital Ctesiphon easily taken by
siege. Mesopotamia was made a province, and to Parthia was given a new
king. The client kingdom of Adiabene became a third new province under
the name of Assyria. This meant that the Tigris became the eastern frontier
instead of the Euphrates. Unfortunately these conquests had been too easily
achieved, largely through the temporary dissensions of the Parthians, who
accordingly failed to experience the salutary discipline of real defeat. Trajan
died on his way home, and Hadrian, who was more of a statesman than a
warrior, reversed his predecessor’s policy. He surrendered the three new
provinces and even acquiesced in the Parthians’ choice of a king of their
own in place of the Roman nominee. The only new provinces of Trajan’s
creation which Hadrian retained were Dacia and Arabia.
Although their military force was contemptible, their spiritual zeal made
the Jews the most difficult people to govern in the whole empire.
Worshipping their Jealous God with fierce ardour, they could not join in the
Cæsar-worship which was the outward sign of loyalty and patriotism
throughout the Roman world. Moreover the Semitic question had already
begun to vex the soul of Europe. Throughout the East and especially in the
trade centres such as Antioch, Alexandria, and Cyrene there were already
large communities of Jews who lived on the usual terms of deep-rooted
racial animosity with their neighbours. It is only fair to the Roman
government to admit that it tried to conciliate its difficult subjects. Though
the vanity of Caligula led him to accept the suggestion of erecting a colossal
statue of him in the Temple at Jerusalem, yet when the philosopher Philo
and his fellow-ambassadors came over to plead against the outrage the
emperor good-humouredly remarked that if people refused to worship him
it was more their misfortune than their fault. As a rule the Roman
procurators who administered Galilee and Judæa were almost too tolerant
of Jewish fanaticism. The Jews were exempt from military service: their
Sabbaths were respected. A Roman soldier who tore a book of the law was
put to death. It was useless to argue with such sects as the Zealots and
Assassins. The Anti-Semite spirit broke out into massacres. In Cæsarea,
Damascus, and elsewhere the Gentiles slew the Jews; in Alexandria and
Cyrene the Jews slaughtered the Gentiles. In Jerusalem the Romans had to
face violent discord between the rival factions, and naturally they sided
with the more tolerant and moderate Sadducees against the stern Pharisees
and the smaller sects of extremists. In A.D. 66 matters came to a crisis. A
Roman garrison was attacked and destroyed: the army which came from
Syria to avenge them was repulsed with slaughter. This occurred while the
Emperor Nero was on one of his theatrical tours in Greece, and in the next
year Vespasian was sent with an army of three legions and auxiliaries which
increased its numbers to more than 50,000. During the death of Nero and
the short reigns of his three successors, Vespasian was gradually subduing
Palestine and driving the irreconcilables before him into Jerusalem.
Vespasian himself became emperor and it was left to his son Titus to finish
the tragedy.
 Plate LXXVI. ANTINOUS: VILLA ALBANI RELIEF

The siege of Jerusalem (A.D. 70) was one of the most difficult tasks which
the Romans ever had to face. In addition to its natural strength there were
six lines of fortification to be overcome one by one, and each was defended
with all the grim tenacity of which the Semite race is capable when it is on
the defensive. Five months the great siege lasted, and at the end Jerusalem
was a heap of ruins. Some of the temple treasures were saved for the
Roman triumph, and the Arch of Titus still shows us the famous seven-
branched golden candlestick being carried up to the temple of Capitoline
Jove.[66] It is said that one million Jews perished in the siege and 100,000
more were sold into slavery. Jerusalem became merely the camp of the
Tenth Legion. All Judæa became one province, and the scattered Jews were
only allowed to keep their privileges on condition of registering their names
and paying a fee of two denarii every year for their licence.
But this awful lesson had not quenched the fire of Jewish patriotism nor
killed their hopes of an earthly Messiah who should restore the kingdom of
David. Once again under Hadrian there was a Jewish rebellion stimulated
by the fact that the emperor forbade the rite of circumcision and decreed the
foundation of a Roman colony at Jerusalem with a temple to Jupiter on
Mount Zion. The revolt was stamped out with merciless severity and the
Jews were scattered for ever.
The only other noteworthy addition to the Roman Empire was
Mauretania (Morocco), which was incorporated as a province by Caligula.
The motive alleged was the emperor’s desire to possess himself of the
treasures of Ptolemy, its king.
On the whole, then, we can see that the Roman Empire had almost
reached its natural limits. It had seized as much as it could govern, and now,
with the exception of the Parthian kingdom, all that lay outside its frontiers
was naked barbarism. So the centre grew more and more unwarlike, while
the legions had little to occupy their minds except the speculation whether
their particular general had a chance of the purple. For this reason alone the
Cæsars were loth to embark on conquests, unless like Trajan they were
willing to neglect everything else and undertake the campaigns in person. A
victorious general was always to be dreaded by his master.

The Principate
At first sight the position of the princeps, who was absolute lord of this
world, is one of immense and terrible power. But earthly power has its
natural limits in human weakness. The weak or wicked emperors were
generally the servants of their favourites, male or female, or they lived
under fear of the legions. Without their bureaux they were helpless, and the
bureaux in the skilled hands of Roman knights or Greek freedmen were
acquiring the real power. But it is astonishing how much actual work was
done by the more conscientious Cæsars. In Pliny’s letters we see what
minute details were referred by a provincial governor to his master and how
minutely they were answered. The answers may be, and no doubt
sometimes are, the composition of secretaries, but there is a personal note in
them which often suggests the emperor’s own dictation. Probably Trajan
was exceptionally industrious and Pliny exceptionally meticulous.
Nevertheless it looks as if a strong emperor actually ruled this vast domain.
It is one of the merits of despotism that the monarch’s power increases
automatically with his virtues and capacity. A Caligula could not do so
much harm: an Augustus, a Claudius, a Trajan, or a Hadrian might benefit
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