I. CONQUEST OF THE LATINS AND ITALIANS (304-282 B.C.)…

I. CONQUEST OF THE LATINS AND ITALIANS (304-282 B.C.)

WARS WITH THE GAULS.--The increased vigor produced by the adjustment of the conflict of classes manifested itself in a series of minor wars. The Romans were now able to face the Gauls, who had permanently planted themselves in Northern Italy. Against them they waged four wars in succession, the last of which ended in a signal victory for the Roman side (367-349). Wars with the Etruscan cities brought the whole of Southern Etruria under Roman rule (358-351).

FIRST SAMNITE WAR.--The neighbor that was the hardest for the Romans to conquer was the nation of Samnites, who lived among the Apennines of Central Italy, east of Latium. The conflict with this tough tribe lasted, with intermissions, for fifty years.

The immediate occasion of the struggle was the appeal of Capua--a Greek city in Campania in which Samnites had before settled--for help against their kinsmen in the mountains (343). This prayer the Romans granted when Capua had placed itself under their sway. In the first battle, the Romans under Valerius Corvus won the day. A second Roman army was rescued from imminent danger by the heroism of the elder Decius Mus, and a Roman victory followed. After a third victory at Suessula, the Romans, on account of the threatening attitude of their Latin confederates, made peace. The Samnites, too, were involved in a war with Tarentum, a Greek city on the eastern coast.

WAR WITH THE LATINS.--The Latins were not disposed to recognize Rome any longer as the head of the league. They demanded perfect equality and an equal share of the Roman public offices (340). In a battle near Vesuvius, the plebeian consul, Decius Mus, having devoted himself to death for his country, rode into the thickest ranks of the enemy, and perished, having secured victory for the Roman army. Before the battle, the patrician consul, Titus Manlius, punished his son with death for presuming to undertake, without orders, a military exploit, in which, however, he had succeeded. After a second victory of Manlius at Trifanum, the Latins were subdued (340), the league was broken up, and most of the cities were made subject to Rome, acquiring citizenship without the right of suffrage; but they were forbidden to trade or to intermarry with one another. Some became Roman colonies.

Several had to cede lands, which were apportioned among Roman citizens. The beaks (rostra) of the old ships of Antium ornamented the Roman forum. Colonies of Roman citizens were settled in the district of the Volscii and in Campania. This was an example of the Roman method of separating vanquished places from one another, and of inclosing as in a net conquered territories.

SECOND SAMNITE WAR.--The establishment by the Romans of the military colony of Fregellae, in connection with other encroachments, brought on the second Samnite war, which lasted for twenty-two years. The prize of the contest was really the dominion over Italy. A great misfortune befell the Roman arms in 321. The incautious consuls, Veturinus and Postumius, allowed themselves to be surrounded in the Caudine Pass, where they were compelled to capitulate, swear to a treaty of peace, and give up six hundred Roman knights as hostages. The whole Roman army was compelled to pass under the yoke. The Roman Senate refused to sanction the treaty, and gave up the consuls, at their own request, in fetters to the Samnites. The Samnites refused to receive them, spared the hostages, and began the war anew. The Roman consuls, Papirius Cursor and Fabius Maximus, gained a victory at Capua, drove the Samnites out of Campania, and reconquered Fregellae. A great military road, the Appian Way, the remains of which may still be seen, was built from Rome to Capua (312).

The Etruscan cities joined in the war against Rome. All Etruria was in arms to overcome the advancing power of the Romans. The coalition was broken by the great defeat of the Etrurians at the Vadimonian Lake, in 310. The Samnites had their numerous allies; but the obstinate valor of the Romans, who were discouraged by no reverses, triumphed. The capture of Bovianum, the capital of the Samnite league (305), ended the war. The Samnites sued for peace. The old treaties were renewed. In the course of this protracted struggle, various Roman colonies were established, and military roads were constructed.

THIRD SAMNITE WAR.--Peace was not of long continuance. The Samnites once more armed themselves for a desperate conflict, having on their side the Etruscans, the Umbrians, and the Gauls (300). The Italian peoples, which had been at war with one another, joined hands in this contest against the common enemy. A decisive battle was fought at Sentinum,--where Decius Mus the younger, following his father's example, devoted himself to death,--resulting in the defeat of the Samnites, and of their allies (295). Soon after, the Samnite general, Pontius, fell into the hands of the Romans. The Samnites kept up the contest for several years. But in 290 they found that they could hold out no longer. The Romans secured themselves by fortresses and by colonies, the most important of which was that of Venusia, at the boundary of Samnium, Apulia, and Lucania, where they placed twenty thousand colonists.

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II. WAR WITH PYRRHUS AND UNION OF ITALY (282-264 B.C.)

TARENTUM AND PYRRHUS.--The Samnites were overcome. The Greeks and Romans were now to come into closer intercourse with one another,--an intercourse destined to be so momentous in its effect on each of the two kindred races, and, through their joint influence, on the whole subsequent course of European history. Alexander the Great had died too soon to permit him to engage in any plan of conquest in the West. In the wars of his successors the Romans had stood aloof. Now they were brought into conflict with a Greek monarch, Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who was a relative of Alexander, and had married into the royal family of Egypt. He was a man of fascinating person and address, a brilliant and famous soldier, but adventurous, and lacking the coolness and prudence requisite to carry out his project of building up an Hellenic Empire in the western Mediterranean. In the war against the Samnite coalition, the Lucanians had rendered decisive support to the Romans. This was one reason why Tarentum, the rich and prosperous Dorian city on the Tarentine Gulf, had been a spectator of the contest in which it had abundant occasion to feel a deep interest. Rome had given up to the Lucanians the non-Dorian Greek cities in that region. But when they sought to subdue Thurii, and the Thurines besought the help of Rome, offering to submit themselves to her, the Romans warned the Lucanians to desist. This led to another combination against Rome, in which they took part. A Roman army was destroyed by the Senonian Gauls. In consequence of this, the Romans slaughtered, or drove out of Umbria, this people, and, gaining other decisive victories, put their garrisons into Locri, Crotona, and Thurii. The Romans were already masters of Central Italy. Only the Greek cities on the south remained for them to conquer. It was high time for Tarentum to bestir itself. It was from the side of Tarentum that the immediate provocation came. The Tarentines were listening to a play in the theater as ten Roman ships came into the harbor. Under a sudden impulse of wrath, a mob attacked them, and destroyed five of them. Even then the Romans were in no haste to engage in hostilities. The Tarentines themselves were divided as to the policy best to be pursued. But the war-party had the more voices. An embassy was dispatched to solicit the help of Pyrrhus. At Tarentum an embassy from Rome was treated with contempt. Pyrrhus came over with a large army. He obliged the Tarentines themselves to arm, and to join his forces.

EVENTS OF THE WAR.--The Romans were fully alive to the peril, and prepared to meet it. Even the proletarians, who were not liable to military service, were enrolled. The first great battle took place at Heraclea, near the little river Siris (280 B.C.). Then the Roman cohort and the Macedonian phalanx met for the first time. It was a collision of trained mercenary troops with the citizen soldiery of Rome. It was a struggle between the Greek and the Roman for the ascendency. The confusion caused by the elephants of Pyrrhus, an encounter with which was something new and strange to the Romans, turned the tide in his favor. "A few more such victories," said Pyrrhus, "and I am ruined." He desired peace, and sent Cineas as a messenger to the Senate. But Appius Claudius, who had been consul and censor, and was now old and blind, begged them not to make peace as long as there was an enemy in Italy. Cineas reported that he found the Senate "an assembly of kings." In the next year, the two armies, each with its allies numbering seventy thousand men, met at Asculum (279). After a bloody conflict, Pyrrhus remained in possession of the field, but with an enormous loss of men. The Syracusans in Sicily, who had been hard pressed by the Carthaginians, now called upon him to aid them. He was not reluctant to leave Italy. The Romans captured all the cities on the south coast, except Tarentum and Rhegium. After two years' absence, Pyrrhus returned to Italy. His fleet, on the passage from Sicily, was defeated by the Carthaginians. At Beneventum, he was completely vanquished by the Romans, who captured thirteen hundred prisoners and four elephants. Pyrrhus returned to Epirus; and, after his death (272), Milon, who commanded the garrison left by him in Tarentum, surrendered the city and fortress. The Tarentines agreed to deliver up their ships and arms, and to demolish their walls. One after another of the resisting tribes yielded to the Romans, ceding portions of their territory, and receiving Roman colonies. In 266, the Roman sway was established over the whole peninsula proper, from the Rubicon and the Macra to the southern extremity of Calabria.

CITIZENSHIP.--In order to understand Roman history, it is necessary to have a clear idea of the Roman system in respect to citizenship. All burgesses of Rome enjoyed the same rights. These were both Public and Private. The private rights of a Roman citizen were (1) the power of legal marriage with the families of all other citizens; (2) the power of making legal purchases and sales, and of holding property; and (3) the right to bequeath and inherit property. The public rights were, (1) the power of voting wherever a citizen was permitted to vote; (2) the power of being elected to all offices.

CONQUERED TOWNS.--"The Roman dominion in Italy was a dominion of a city over cities." With regard to conquered towns, there were, (i) Municipal cities (municipia) the inhabitants of which, when they visited Rome, could exercise all the rights of citizens. (2) Municipal cities which had the private, but not the public, rights of citizenship. Some of them chose their own municipal officers, and some did not. (3) Latin Colonies, as they were called. Lands ceded by conquered places were divided among poor Roman citizens, who constituted the ruling class in the communities to which they were transplanted. In the Latin colonies, the citizens had given up their public rights as citizens. (4) Towns of a lower class, called Praefectures. In these, the principal magistrate was the Prefect, who was appointed by the Praetor (Praeter Urbanus) at Rome.

THE ALLIES (Socii).--These were a more favored class of cities. They had their relation to Rome defined by treaty. Generally they appointed their own magistrates, but were bound, as were all subject cities, to furnish auxiliary troops for Rome.

THE LATIN FRANCHISE.--This was the privilege which was first given to the cities of Latium and then to inhabitants of other places. It was the power, on complying with certain conditions, of gaining full citizenship, and thus of taking part in elections at Rome.

ROMAN COLONIES.--The Roman Colony (which is not to be confounded with the Latin Colony referred to above) was a small body of Roman citizens, transplanted, with their families, to a spot selected by the government. They formed a military station. To them lands taken from the native inhabitants were given. They constituted the ruling class in the community where they were established. Their government was modeled after the government at Rome. They retained their rights as Roman burgesses, which they could exercise whenever they were in that city. By means of these colonies, planted in places wisely chosen, Italy was kept in subjection. The colonies were connected together by roads. The Appian Way, from Rome to Capua, was built in the midst of the conflict with Samnium. It was made of large, square stones, laid on a platform of sand and mortar. In later times the Roman Empire was traversed in all directions by similar roads.

PERIOD III. THE PUNIC WARS: TO THE CONQUEST OF CARTHAGE AND OF THE GREEK STATES. (264-146 B.C.)

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I. THE FIRST AND SECOND PUNIC WABS (264-202 B.C.)

THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.--By dint of obstinacy, and hard fighting through long centuries, the Romans had united under them all Italy, or all of what was then known as Italy. It was natural that they should look abroad. The rival power in the West was the great commercial city of Carthage. The jealousy between Rome and Carthage had slumbered so long as they were threatened by the invasion of Pyrrhus, which was dangerous to both. Sicily, from its situation, could hardly fail to furnish the occasion of a conflict. The Mamertines, a set of Campanian pirates, had captured Messana. They were attacked by Hiero II., king of Syracuse. A part of them besought help of the Romans, and a part applied to the Carthaginians. The gravity of the question, whether Rome should enter on an untried path, the end of which no man could foresee, caused hesitation. The assemblies voted to grant the request. The Romans had begun as early as 311 to create a fleet. The ships which they now used, however, were mostly furnished by their South Italian allies. They crossed the channel, and drove out the Carthaginian garrison from Messana. The Carthaginians declared war (264). Hiero was gained over to the side of the Romans; and after a bloody conflict, with heavy losses to both armies, the city of Agrigentum was captured by the Romans. The Romans were novices on the sea, where the Carthaginians were supreme. Successful on the land, the former were beaten in naval encounters. One of the most characteristic proofs of the energy of the Romans is their creation of a fleet, at this epoch, to match that of their sea-faring enemies. Using, it is said, for a model, a Carthaginian vessel wrecked on the shore of Italy, they constructed quinqueremes, vessels with five banks of oars, furnished with bridges to drop on the decks of the hostile ships,--thus giving to a sea-fight a resemblance to a combat on land. At first, as might be expected, the Romans were defeated; but in 260, under the consul Caius Duilius, they won their first naval victory at Mylae, west of Messana. The Roman Senate decided to invade Africa. A fleet of three hundred and thirty vessels sailed under the command of the consul M. Atilius Regulus, which was met by a Carthaginian fleet at Ecnomus, on the south coast of Sicily. The Carthaginians were completely vanquished. The Romans landed at Clupea, to the east of Carthage, and ravaged the adjacent district. There Regulus remained with half the army, fifteen thousand men. The Carthaginians sued for peace; but when he required them to surrender all their ships of war except one, and to come into a dependent relation to Rome, they spurned the proposal. Re-enforcing themselves with mercenaries from Greece under the command of the Spartan, Xanthippus, they overpowered and captured Regulus in a battle at Tunis (255). A Roman fleet, sent to Clupea for the rescue of the troops, on the return voyage lost three-fourths of its ships in a storm. The Carthaginians, under Hasdrubal, resumed hostilities in Sicily. He was defeated by the consul Caecilius Metellus, at Panormus, who included among his captures one hundred elephants (251). The story of the embassy of Regulus to Rome with the Carthaginian offer of peace, of his advising the Senate not to accept it, of his voluntary return according to a promise, and of his cruel death at the hands of his captors, is probably an invention of a later time. The hopes of the Romans, in consequence of their success at Panormus, revived; but two years later, under Appius Claudius at Drepanum, they were defeated on sea and on land. Once more their naval force was prostrated. Warfare was now carried forward on land, where, in the south of Sicily, the Carthaginian leader, Hamilcar Barca, maintained himself against Roman attacks for six years, and sent out privateers to harass the coasts of Italy. Finally, at Rome, there was an outburst of patriotic enthusiasm. Rich men gave liberally, and treasures of the temples were devoted to the building of a new fleet. This fleet, under command of C. Lutatius Catulus, gained a decisive victory over the Carthaginian Hanno, at the Aegatian Islands, opposite Lilybaeum (241). The Carthaginians were forced to conclude peace, and to make large concessions. They gave up all claim to Italy and to the neighboring small islands. They were to pay an indemnity, equal to four million dollars, in ten years. The western part of Sicily was now constituted a province, the first of the Roman provinces.

CONQUEST OF CISALPINE GUAL.--The Carthaginians were for some time busy at home in putting down a revolt of mercenary troops, whose wages they refused to pay in full. The Romans snatched the occasion to extort a cession of the island of Sardinia (238), which they subsequently united with Corsica in one province. They entered, about ten years later (229-228), upon an important and successful war against the Illyrian pirates, whose depredations on the coasts of the Adriatic and Ionian seas were very daring and destructive. The Greek cities which the pirates held were surrendered. The sway of the Romans in the Adriatic was secured, and their supremacy in Corcyra, Epidamnus, and other important places. The next contest was a terrific one with the Cisalpine Gauls, who were stirred up by the founding of Roman military colonies on the Adriatic, and by other proceedings of Rome. They called in the help of transalpine Gauls, and entered Etruria, on their way to Rome, with an army of seventy thousand men. They met the Roman armies near Telamon, south of the mouth of the Umbro, but were routed, with a loss of forty thousand men slain, and ten thousand men prisoners (225). The Romans marched northward, crossed the Po, and subdued the most powerful of the Gallic tribes, the Insubrians (223). Other victories in the following year reduced the whole of upper Italy, with Mediolanum (Milan) the capital of the Insubrians, under Roman rule. Fortresses were founded as usual, and the great Flaminian and Aemilian roads connected that region with the capital. Later, Cisalpine Gaul became a Roman province.

CARTHAGINIANS IN SPAIN.--Meantime Carthage endeavored in Southern Spain to make up for its losses. The old tribes, the Celtiberians and Lusitanians in the central and western districts, and the Cantabrians and Basques in the north, brave as they were, were too much divided by tribal feuds to make an effectual resistance. The national party at Carthage, which wished for war, had able leaders in Hamilcar and his three sons. By the military skill of Hamilcar, and of Hasdrubal his son-in-law, the Carthaginians built up a flourishing dominion on the south and east coasts. The Romans watched the growth of the Carthaginian power there with discontent, and compelled Hasdrubal to declare in a treaty that the Ebro should be the limit of Carthaginian conquests (226). At the same time Rome made a protective alliance with Saguntum, a rich and powerful trading-city on the south of that river. Hasdrubal was murdered in 221; and the son of Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal, who was then only twenty-eight years old, was chosen by the army to be their general. He laid hold of a pretext for beginning an attack upon Saguntum, which he took after a stout resistance, prolonged for eight months (219). The demand of a Roman embassy at Carthage--that Hannibal should be delivered up--being refused, Rome declared war.

When the Carthaginian Council hesitated at the proposal of the Roman embassy, their spokesman, Quintus Fabius, said that he carried in his bosom peace or war: they might chose either. They answered, "We take what you give us;" whereupon the Roman opened his toga, saying, "I give you war!" The Carthaginians shouted, "So let it be!"

THE SECOND PUNIC WAR.--When the treaty of Catulus was made (241), all patriots at Carthage felt that it was only a truce. They must have seen that Rome would never be satisfied with any thing short of the abject submission of so detested and dangerous a rival. There was a peace party, an oligarchy, at Carthage; and it was their selfishness which ultimately brought ruin upon the state. But the party which saw that the only safety was in aggressive action found a military leader in Hannibal,--a leader not surpassed, and perhaps not equaled, by any other general of ancient or modern times. He combined skill with daring, and had such a command over men, that under the heaviest reverses his influence was not broken. If he was cruel, it is doubtful whether he went beyond the practices sanctioned by the international law of the time and by Roman example. When a boy nine years old, at his father's request he had sworn upon the altar never to be the friend of the Roman people. That father he saw fall in battle at his side. The oath he kept, for Rome never had a more unyielding or a more powerful enemy.

HANNIBAL IN ITALY.--In the summer of 218, Hannibal crossed the Ebro, conquered the peoples between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, and, leaving his brother Hasdrubal in Spain, pushed into Gaul with an army of fifty thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and thirty-seven elephants. He crossed the swift Rhone in the face of the Gauls who disputed the passage, and then made his memorable march over the Alps, probably by the way now known as the Little St. Bernard pass. Through ice and snow, climbing over crags and circling abysses, amid perpetual conflicts with the rough mountaineers who rolled stones down on the toiling soldiers, the army made its terrible journey into Northern Italy. Fifteen days were occupied in the passage. Half the troops, with all the draught-animals and beasts of burden, perished on the way. The Cisalpine Gauls welcomed Hannibal as a deliverer. No sooner had the valiant consul, Cornelius Scipio, been defeated in a cavalry battle on the Ticinus, a northern branch of the Po (218), and, severely wounded, retreated to Placentia, and his rash colleague, Sempronius, been defeated with great loss in a second battle on the Trebia, than the Gauls joined Hannibal, and reinforced him with sixty thousand troops inured to war. Hannibal, by marching through the swampy district of the Arno, where he himself lost an eye, flanked the defensive position of the Romans. The consul Flaminius was decoyed into a narrow pass; and, in the battle of Lake Trasumenus (217), his army of thirty thousand men was slaughtered or made prisoners. The consul himself was killed. All Etruria was lost. The way seemed open to Rome; but, supported by the Latins and Italians, the Romans did not quail, or lower their mien of stern defiance. They appointed a leading patrician, Quintus Fabius Maximus, dictator. Hannibal, not being able to surprise and capture the fortress of Spoletium, preferred to march towards the sea-coast, and thence south into Apulia. His purpose was to open communication with Carthage, and to gain over to his support the eastern tribes of Italy. Fabius, the Delayer (Cunctator), as he was called, followed and watched his enemy, inflicting what injuries he could, but avoiding a pitched battle. The Roman populace were impatient of the cautious, but wise and effective, policy of Fabius. In the following year (216) the consulship was given to L. Aemilius Paulus--who was chosen by the upper class, the Optimates--and C. Terentius Varro, who was elected by the popular party for the purpose of taking the offensive. Varro precipitated a battle at Cannae, in Apulia, where the Romans suffered the most terrible defeat they had ever experienced. At the lowest computation, they lost forty thousand foot and three thousand horse, with the consul Aemilius Paulus, and eighty men of senatorial rank. No such calamity since the capture of Rome by the Gauls had ever occurred. The Roman Senate did not lose heart. They limited the time of mourning for the dead to thirty days. They refused to admit to the city the ambassadors of Hannibal, who came for the exchange of prisoners. With lofty resolve they ordered a levy of all who could bear arms, including boys and even slaves. They put into their hands weapons from the temples, spoils of former victories. They thanked Varro that he had not despaired of the Republic. Some of the Italian allies went over to Hannibal. But all the Latin cities and all the Roman colonies remained loyal. The allies of Rome did not fall away as did the allies of Athens after the Syracusan disaster. It has been thought, that, if Hannibal had followed up the victory at Cannae by marching at once on the capital, the Roman power might have been overthrown. What might then have been the subsequent course of European history? Even the Roman school-boys, according to Juvenal, discussed the question whether he did not make a mistake in not attacking Rome. But it is quite doubtful whether he could have taken the city, or, even if he had taken it, whether his success would then have been complete. He took the wiser step of getting into his hands Capua, the second city in Italy. He may have hoped to seize a Campanian port, where he could disembark reinforcements "which his great victories had wrung from the opposition at home." Hannibal judged it best to go into winter-quarters at Capua, where his army was in a measure enervated by pleasure and vice. Carthage made an alliance with Philip V. of Macedonia, and with Hiero of Syracuse. But fortune turned in favor of the Romans. At Nola, Hannibal was repulsed by Marcellus (215); and, since he could obtain no substantial help from home, he was obliged to act on the defensive. Marcellus crossed into Sicily, and, after a siege of three years, captured Syracuse, which had been aided in its defense by the philosopher Archimedes. Capua, in 211, surrendered to the Romans, and was visited with a fearful chastisement. Hannibal's Italian allies forsook him, and his only reliance was on his brother in Spain. For a long time, the two brothers, Publius and Cnaeus Scipio, maintained there the Roman cause successfully; but they were defeated and slain (212).

SCIPIO: ZAMA.--Publius Cornelius Scipio, son of one and nephew of the other Scipio just named, a young man twenty-five years old, and a popular favorite, took the command, and gained important successes; but he could not keep Hasdrubal from going to his brother's assistance in Italy. The Romans, however, were able to prevent a junction of his force with that of Hannibal; and Hasdrubal was vanquished and slain by them in the battle of Sena Gallica, near the little river Metaurus (207). Scipio expelled the Carthaginians from Spain, and, having returned to Rome, was made consul (205). His plan was to invade Africa. He landed on the coast, and was joined by Masinissa, the king of Numidia, who had been driven from his throne by Syphax, the ally of Carthage. The defeat of the Carthaginians, and the danger of Carthage itself, led to the recall of Hannibal, who was defeated, in 202, by Scipio in the decisive battle of Zama. Carthage made peace, giving up all her Spanish possessions and islands in the Mediterranean, handing over the kingdom of Syphax to Masinissa, and agreeing to pay a yearly tribute equal to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, for fifty years, to destroy all their ships of war but ten, and to make no war without the consent of the Romans (201). Scipio Africanus, as he was termed, came back in triumph to Rome. The complete subjugation of Upper Italy followed (200-191).

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II. CONQUEST OF MACEDONIA: THE THIRD PUNIC WAR: THE DESTRUCTION OF CORINTH (202-146 B.C.)

PHILIP V.: ANTIOCHUS III.--The Romans were now dominant in the West. They were strong on the sea, as on the land. Within fifty years Rome likewise became the dominant power in the East. Philip V. of Macedon had made an alliance with Hannibal, but had furnished him no valuable aid. The Senate maintained that a body of Macedonian mercenaries had fought against the Romans at Zama. Rhodes and Athens, together with King Attalus of Pergamon, sought for help against Philip. The Romans were joined by the Ætolians, and afterwards by the Achaians. In 197, the consul T. Quintius Flamininus defeated him at the battle of Cynoscephalæ in Thessaly, and imposed upon him such conditions of peace as left him powerless against the interests of Rome. At the Isthmian games, amid great rejoicing, Flamininus declared the Greek states independent. When they found that their freedom was more nominal than real, and involved a virtual subjection to Rome, the Ætolians took up arms, and obtained the support of Antiochus III., king of Syria. Another grievance laid at the door of this king was the reception by him of Hannibal, a fugitive from Carthage, whose advice, however, as to the conduct of the war, Antiochus had not the wisdom to follow. In 190 he was vanquished by a Roman army at Magnesia, under L. Cornelius Scipio, with whom was present, as an adviser, Scipio Africanus. He was forced to give up all his Asiatic possessions as far as the Taurus mountains. The territory thus obtained, the Romans divided among their allies, Pergamon and Rhodes. About seven years later (183), Hannibal, who had taken refuge at the court of Prusias, king of Bithynia, finding that he was to be betrayed, took poison and died. The ingratitude of his country, or of the ruling party in it, did not move him to relax his exertions against Rome. He continued until his death to be her most formidable antagonist, exerting in exile an effective influence in the East to create combinations against her.

PERSEUS.--Philip V. laid a plan to avenge himself on the Romans, and regain his lost Macedonian territory. Perseus, his son, followed in the same path, having slain his brother Demetrius, who was a friend of Rome. The war broke out in 171. For several campaigns the management of the Roman generals was ill-judged; but at last L. Æmilius Paulus, son of the consul who fell at Cannæ, routed the Macedonians at the battle of Pydna. Immense spoils were brought to Rome by the conqueror. Perseus himself, who had sat on the throne of Alexander, adorned the consul's triumphal procession through the streets of Rome. The cantons of Greece, where there was nothing but continual strife and endless confusion, were subjected to Roman influence. One thousand Achaians of distinction, among them the historian Polybius, were carried to Italy, and kept under surveillance for many years. The imperious spirit of Rome, and the deference accorded to her, is illustrated in the interview of C. Popilius Lænas, who delivered to Antiochus IV. of Syria a letter of the Senate, directing him to retire from before Alexandria. When that monarch replied that he would confer with his counselors on the matter, the haughty Roman drew a circle round him on the ground, and bade him decide before he should cross that line. Antiochus said that he would do as the Senate ordered.

THE THIRD PUNIC WAR.--The treaty with Carthage had bound that city hand and foot. Against the encroachments of Masinissa, the Carthaginians could do nothing; but at length they were driven to take up arms to repel them. This act the Romans pronounced a breach of the treaty (149). That stern old Roman, who in his youth had served against Hannibal, M. Porcius Cato, had been unceasing in his exhortation to destroy Carthage. He was in the habit of ending his speeches with the saying, "But I am of opinion that Carthage should be destroyed." The Roman armies landed at Utica. Their hard demands, which included the surrender of war-ships and weapons, were complied with. But when the Carthaginians were required to abandon their city, and to make a new settlement ten miles distant, they rose in a fury of patriotic wrath. The women cut off their hair to make bowstrings. Day and night the people worked, in forging weapons and in building a new fleet in the inner harbor. The Romans were repulsed; but P. Scipio Æmilianus, the adopted son of the first Scipio Africanus, shut in the city by land and by sea, and, in 146, captured and destroyed it. Its defenders fought from street to street, and from house to house. Only a tenth part of the inhabitants were left alive. These were sold into slavery. Carthage was set on fire, and almost entirely consumed. The fire burned for seventeen days. The remains of the Carthaginian wall, when excavated in recent times, "were found to be covered with a layer of ashes from four to five feet deep, filled with half-charred pieces of wood, fragments of iron, and projectiles." Scipio would have preserved the city, but the Senate was inexorable. With the historian Polybius at his side, the Roman commander, as he looked down on the horrors of the conflagration, sorrowfully repeated the lines of Homer,--

"The day shall come when sacred Troy shall be leveled with the plain, And Priam and the people of that good warrior slain."

"Assyria," he is said to have exclaimed, "had fallen, and Persia and Macedon. Carthage was burning: Rome's day might come next." Carthage was converted into a Roman province under the name of Africa.

DESTRUCTION OF CORINTH.--The atrocious crime of the destruction of Carthage was more than matched by the contemporaneous destruction of Corinth. Another rising in Macedonia resulted, in 146, in the conversion of that ancient kingdom into a Roman province. The return to Greece of three hundred Achaian exiles who had been detained in Italy for sixteen years, strengthened the anti-Roman party in Greece, and helped to bring on war with the Achaian league. In 146, after the battle of Leucopetra, Corinth was occupied by the consul L. Mummius. The men were put to the sword; the women and children were sold at auction into slavery; all treasures, all pictures, and other works of art, were carried off to Rome, and the city was consigned to the flames. The other Greek cities were mildly treated, but placed under the governor of Macedonia, and obliged to pay tribute to Rome. At a later date Greece became a Roman province under the name of Achaia.

THE PROVINCES.--At this epoch, there were eight provinces,--Sicily (241), Sardinia (238) and Corsica, two provinces in Spain (205), Cisalpine Gaul, Illyricum (168), Africa (146), Macedonia (146), and Achaia. The first four were governed by Prætors. Later, however, the judicial functions of the praetors kept them in Rome. At the end of the year, the prætor, on laying down his office at home, went as proprætor to rule a province. But where there was war or other grave disturbances, the province was assigned to a consul in office, or to a proconsul, who was either the consul of the preceding year, or an ex-consul, or an ex-prætor who was appointed proconsul. The provinces were generally organized by the conquering general and a senatorial commission. Some cities retained their municipal government. These were the "free cities." The taxes were farmed out to collectors called publicans, who were commonly of the equestrian order. The last military dictator was appointed in 216. In times of great danger, dictatorial power was given to a consul.

LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY.--The intercourse of the Romans with the Greeks opened to the former a new world of art, literature, and philosophy, and a knowledge of other habits and modes of life. There were those who regarded the Greek authors and artists with sympathy, and showed an intelligent enthusiasm for the products of Greek genius. Under the patronage of the Scipios, Roman poets wrote in imitation of Greek models. Such were Plautus (who died in 184), and the less original, but more refined, Terence (185-159), who had been the slave of a senator. Ennius (239-169), a Calabrian Greek, wrote epics, and also tragedies and comedies. Him the later Romans regarded as the father of their literature. The beginnings of historical writing--which go beyond mere chronicles and family histories--appear, as in the lost work on Roman history by M. Portias Cato (Cato the Censor, 234-149). The great historian of this period, however, was the Greek Polybius. The Greek philosophy was introduced, in spite of the vigorous opposition of such austere conservatives as Cato. Panaetius (185-112), the Stoic from Rhodes, had a cordial reception at Rome. The Stoic teaching was adapted to the Roman mind. The Platonic philosophy was brought in by Carneades. This was frequently more acceptable to orators and statesmen. Along with the Stoic, the Epicurean school found adherents. Cato--who, although a historian and an orator, was, in theory and practice, a rigid man, with the simple ways of the old time--procured the banishment of_ Carneades_, together with Critolaus the Peripatetic, and the Stoic Diogenes. The schools of oratory he caused to be shut up. He did what he could to prevent the introduction of the healing art, as it was practiced by the Greeks. He preferred the old-fashioned domestic remedies.

THE STATE OF MORALS.--If the opposition of the Conservatives to Greek letters and philosophy was unreasonable, as it certainly proved futile, there was abundant ground for alarm and regret at the changes that were going on in morals and in ways of living. The conquest of Greece and of the East brought an amazing increase of wealth. Rome plundered the countries which she conquered. The optimates, the leading families, who held the chief offices in the state and in the army, grew very rich from the booty which they gained. They left their small dwellings for stately palaces, which they decorated with works of art, gained by the pillage of nations. They built villas in the country, with extensive grounds and beautiful gardens. Even women, released from the former strict subordination of the wife to her husband, indulged lavishly in finery, and plunged into gaieties inconsistent with the household virtues. The optimates, in order to enrich themselves further, often resorted to extortion of various sorts. In order to curry favor with the people, and thereby to get their votes, they stooped to flattery, and to demagogical arts which the earlier Romans would have despised. They provided games, at great expense, for the entertainment of the populace. In the room of the invigorating and of the intellectual contests, which had been in vogue among the Greeks, the Romans acquired an increasing relish for bloody gladiatorial fights of men with wild beasts, and of men against one another. Slaves multiplied to an enormous extent: "as cheap as a Sardinian" was a proverb. The race of plain farmers dwindled away. The trade in slaves became a flourishing branch of business. Field-hands toiled in fetters, and were often branded to prevent escape. If slaves ran away, and were caught, they might be crucified. If a householder were killed by a slave, all the slaves in his house might be put to death. As at Athens, the testimony of slaves was given under torture. Hatred to the master on the part of the slave was a thing of course. "As many enemies as slaves," was a common saying.

NUMANTIAN WAR.--The intolerable oppression of the provinces occasionally provoked resistance. It was in Spain that the Romans found it most difficult to quell the spirit of freedom. The Lusitanians in the territory now called Portugal, under a gallant chieftain, Viriathus, maintained for nine years a war in which they were mostly successful, and were finally worsted only in consequence of the perfidious assassination of their leader (149-140). The Celtiberians, whose principal city, Numantia, was on the upper Douro, kept up their resistance with equal valor for ten years (143-133). On one occasion a Roman army of twenty thousand men was saved from destruction by engagements which the Senate, as after the surrender at the Caudine Forks, repudiated. In 133, after a siege of eighteen months, Numantia was taken by Scipio Africanus Æmilianus. It was hunger that compelled the surrender; and the noblest inhabitants set fire to the town, and slew themselves, to avoid falling into the hands of the enemy.

PERGAMON.--More subservience the Romans found in the East. In the same year that the desperate resistance of the Numantians was overcome, Attalus III., king of Pergamon, an ally of Rome, whose sovereignty extended over the greater part of Asia Minor, left his kingdom and all his treasures, by will, to the Roman people. There was a feeble struggle on the part of the expectant heir, but the Romans formed the larger part of the kingdom into a province. Phrygia Major they detached, and gave to Mithridates IV., king of Pontus, who had helped them in this last brief contest.

PERIOD IV. THE ERA OF REVOLUTION AND OF THE CIVIL WARS. (146-31 B.C.)

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I. THE GRACCHI: THE FIRST MITHRIDATIC WAR: MARIUS AND SULLA (146-78 B.C.)

CONDITION OF ROME.--We come now to an era of internal strife. The Romans were to turn their arms against one another: Yet it is remarkable that the march of foreign conquest still went on. It was by conquests abroad that the foremost leaders in the civil wars rose to the position which enabled them to get control in the government at home. The power of the Senate had been more and more exalted. Foreign affairs were mainly at its disposal. The increase in the number of voters in the comitia, and their motley character, made it more easy for the aristocracy to manage them. Elections were carried by the influence of largesses and by the exhibition of games. Practically the chief officers were limited to a clique, composed of rich families of both patrician and plebeian origin, which was diminishing in number, while the numbers of the lower class were rapidly growing larger. The gulf between the poor and the rich was constantly widening. The last Italian colony was sent out in 177 B.C., and the lands of Italy were all taken up. Slaves furnished labor at the cost of their bare subsistence. It was hard for a poor man to gain a living. Had the Licinian Laws (p. 137) been carried out, the situation would have been different. The public lands were occupied by the members of some forty or fifty aristocratic families, and by a certain number of wealthy Italians. A great proletariate--a needy and disaffected lower class--was growing up, which boded no good to the state.

TIBERIUS GRACCHUS.--This condition of things moved Tiberius Gracchus, the son of Cornelia, who was the daughter of the great Scipio Africanus, to bring forward his Agrarian Laws. The effect of them would have been to limit the amount of the public domain which any one man could hold, and to divide portions of it among poor citizens. In spite of the bitter opposition of the nobility, these laws were passed (133). But Gracchus had been obliged to persuade the people to turn a tribune, who resisted their passage, out of office, which was an unconstitutional act. In order to carry out the laws, he would have to be re-elected tribune. But the optimates, led by the consul Scipio Nasica, had been still more infuriated by other proposals of Gracchus. They raised a mob, and slew him, with three hundred of his followers. This gave the democratic leaders a temporary advantage; but violent measures on their own side turned the current again the other way, and proceedings under the laws were quashed.

CAIUS GRACCHUS.--The laws of Caius Gracchus, the brother of Tiberius, were of a more sweeping character. He caused measures to be passed, and colonies to be sent out, by decrees of the people, without any action of the Senate. He renewed the agrarian law. He caused a law to be passed for selling corn for less than the cost, to all citizens who should apply for it. He also caused it to be ordained, that juries should be taken from the knights, the equites, instead of the Senate. These were composed of rich men. The tendency of the law would be to make the equestrian order distinct, and thus to divide the aristocracy. The proposal (122), which was not passed, to extend the franchise to the Latins, and perhaps to the Italians, cost him his popularity, although the measure was just. The Senate gave its support to a rival tribune, M. Livius Drusus, who outbid Gracchus in the contest for popular favor. In 121 Gracchus was not made tribune. In the disorder that followed, he, with several hundred of his followers, was killed by the optimates. Before long most of his enactments were reversed. The law for the cheap sale of corn, the most unwise of his measures, continued.

THE JUGURTHINE WAR.--An interval of tranquility followed. But the corruption of the ruling class was illustrated in connection with the Jugurthine war. Jugurtha, the adopted son of the king of Numidia, the ally of Rome, wishing the whole kingdom for himself, killed one of the sons of the late king, and made war upon the other, who applied to the Romans for help. The commission sent out by the Senate was bribed by Jugurtha. Not until he took the city of Cirta, and put to death the remaining brother, with all his army, was he summoned to Rome. There, too, his money availed to secure him impunity, although he caused a Numidian prince to be murdered in Rome itself. When the Romans finally entered on the war with Jugurtha, he bribed the generals, so that little was effected. The indignation of the people was raised to such a pitch that they would not leave the direction of the war in the hands of Quintus Metellus, whom the Senate had sent out, and who defeated Jugurtha (108), but insisted on giving the chief command to one of his subordinate officers, Caius Marius (107), the son of a peasant, wild and rough in his manners, but of extraordinary talents as a soldier. He brought the war to an end. Jugurtha was delivered up by the prince with whom he had taken refuge to L. Cornelius Sulla, one of the generals under Marius, and in 105, with his two sons, marched in chains before the triumphal car of Marius through the streets of Rome. Marius was now the leader of the popular party, and the most influential man in Rome.

THE CIMBRI AND TEUTONES.--The power of Marius was augmented by his victories over the Cimbri and the Teutones. These were hordes of barbarians who appeared in the Alpine regions, the Cimbri being either Celts, or, like the Teutones, Germans. The Cimbri crossed the Alps in 113, and defeated a Roman consul. They turned westward towards the Rhine, traversed Gaul in different directions, defeating through a series of years the Roman armies that were sent against them. These defeats the democratic leaders ascribed, not without reason, to the corrupt management of the aristocratic party. In 103 the Cimbri and the Teutones arranged for a combined attack on Italy. Marius was made consul; and in order to meet this threatened invasion, which justly excited the greatest anxiety, he was chosen to this office five times in succession (104-100). Having repulsed the attack of the barbarians on his camp, he defeated them in two great battles, the first at Aquce Sextice (Aix in Provence) in 102, and the second at Vercellce, in Upper Italy, in 101. These successes, which really saved Rome, made Marius for the time the idol of the popular party.

THE ARMY.--At about this time a great change took place in the constitution of the army. The occupation of a soldier had become a trade. Besides the levy of citizens, there was established a recruiting system, which drew into the ranks the idle and lazy, and a system of re-inforcements, by which cavalry and light-armed troops were taken from subject and vassal states. Thus there arose a military class, distinct, as it had not been of old, from the civil orders, and ready to act separately when its own interest or the ambition of favorite leaders might prompt.

SATURNINUS.--Marius lacked the judgment and the firmness required by a statesman, especially in troublous times. When Saturninus and Glaucia brought forward a series of measures of a radical character in behalf of the democratic cause, and the consul Metellus, who opposed them, was obliged to go into voluntary exile, Marius, growing ashamed of the factious and violent proceedings of the popular party, was partially won over to the support of the Senate. When C. Memmius, candidate for consul, was killed with bludgeons by the mob of Saturninus and Glaucia, and there was fighting in the forum and the streets, he helped to put down these reckless innovators (99). But his want of hearty cooperation with either party made him hated by both. Metellus was recalled from banishment. Marius went to Asia, and visited the court of Mithridates.

THE MURDER OF DRUSUS.--Nearly ten years of comparative quiet ensued. The long continued complaints of the Italians found at last a voice in the measures of M. Livius Drusus, a tribune, who, in 91, proposed that they should have the right of citizenship. Two other propositions, one referring to the relations of the Equites and the Senate, and the other for a new division of lands, had been accepted by the people, but were by the Senate declared null. Before Drusus could bring forward the law respecting Italian citizenship, he was assassinated. Neither Senate nor people was favorable to this righteous measure.

THE ITALIAN OR SOCIAL WAR (90-88 B.C.).--The murder of Drusus was the signal for an insurrection of the Italian communities. They organized for themselves a federal republic. The peril occasioned by this great revolt reconciled for the moment the contending parties at Rome. In the North, where Marius fought, the Romans were generally successful: in the South, the allies were at first superior; but in 89, in spite of Sulla's bold forays, they were worsted. But it was by policy, more than by arms, that the Romans subdued this dangerous revolt. They promised full citizenship to those who had not taken part in the war, and to those who would at once cease to take part in it (90). Finally, when it was plain that Rome was too strong to be overcome, the conflict was ended by granting to the allies all that they had ever claimed (89). Rome had now made ALL ITALY (south of Cisalpine Gaul), except the Samnites and Lucanians, EQUAL WITH HERSELF. But Italy had been ravaged by desolating war: the number of small proprietors was more than ever diminished, and the army and the generals were becoming the predominant force in the affairs of the state.

WAR WITH MITHRIDATES.--Mithridates, king of Pontus, in the north-east of Asia Minor, was as ardent an enemy of the Romans as Hannibal had been. With the help of his son-in-law Tigranes, king of Armenia, he had subdued the neighboring kings in alliance with Rome. The Asiatic states, who were ruled by the Romans, were impatient of the oppression under which they groaned. When checked by the Romans, Mithridates had paused for a while, and then had resumed again his enterprise of conquest. In 88 the Grecian cities of Asia joined him; and, in obedience to his brutal order, all the Italians within their walls, not lelss than eighty thousand in number, but possibly almost double that number, were put to death in one day. The whole dominion of the Romans in the East was in jeopardy.

MARIUS AND SULLA.--Sulla was elected consul in 88, and was on the point of departing for Asia. He was a soldier of marked talents, a representative of the aristocratic party, and was more cool and consistent in his public conduct than Marius. Marius desired the command against Mithridates for himself. P. Sulpicius, one of his adherents, brought forward a revolutionary law for incorporating the Italians and freedmen among the thirty-five tribes. The populace, under the guidance of the leaders of the Marian faction, voted to take away the command from Sulla, and to give it to Marius. Sulla refused to submit, and marched his army to Rome. It was impossible to resist him. Sulpicius was killed in his flight. Marius escaped from Italy, and, intending to go to Africa, was landed at Minturnae. To escape pursuit, he had to stand up to the chin in a marsh. He was put in prison, and a Gaulish slave was sent to kill him. But when he saw the flashing eyes of the old general, and heard him cry, "Fellow, darest thou kill Caius Marius?" he dropped his sword, and ran. Marius crossed to Africa. Messengers who were sent to warn him to go away, found him sitting among the ruins of Carthage.

THE MARIANS IN ROME.--Sulla restored the authority of the Senate. During Sulla's absence, Cinna, the consul of the popular party, sought to revive the laws of Sulpicius by violent means (87). Driven out of the city, he came back with an army which he had gathered in Campania, and with old Marius, who had returned from Africa. He now took vengeance on the leaders of the Optimates. For five days the gates were closed, and every noble who was specially obnoxious, and had not escaped, was killed by Marius, who marched through the streets at the head of a body of soldiers. In 86 Marius and Cinna were made consuls. Sulla was declared to be deposed. Marius, who was now more than seventy years old, died (86). The fever of revenge, and the apprehension of what might follow on Sulla's return, drove sleep from his eyelids. A brave soldier, he was incompetent to play the part of a statesman. He went to his grave with the curse of all parties resting upon him.

RETURN OF SULLA.--Sulla refused to do any thing against his adversaries at home, or for the help of the fugitive nobles who appealed to him, until the cause of the country was secure abroad. He captured Athens in 86, defeated Archelaus, the general of Mithridates, in a great battle at Chaeronea; and, by this and subsequent victories, he forced Mithridates to conclude peace, who agreed to evacuate the Roman province of Asia, to restore all his conquests, surrender eighty ships of war, and pay three thousand talents (84). Sulla's hands were now free. In 83 he landed at Brundisium. He was joined by Cneius Pompeius, then twenty-three years old, with a troop of volunteers. Sulla did not wish to fight the Italians. He issued a proclamation, therefore, giving them the assurance that their rights would not be impaired. This pledge had the desired effect. The army of the Consuls largely outnumbered his own. Sulla lingered in South Italy to make good his position there. The Samnites joined the Marians, and moved upon Rome with the intent to destroy it. They were defeated before they could enter the city. The Marians in Spain were defeated afterwards, as were the same party in Sicily and Africa by Pompeius.

CRUELTY OF SULLA.--The cruelty of Sulla, after his victory, was more direful than Rome had ever witnessed. It appeared to spring from no heat of passion, but was cold and shameless. After a few days, there was a massacre of four thousand prisoners in the Circus. Their shrieks and groans were heard in the neighboring Temple of Bellona, where Sulla was in consultation with the Senate. Many thousands--not far from three thousand in Rome alone--were proscribed and murdered, and the property of all on these lists of the condemned was confiscated.

THE LAWS OF SULLA.--In his character as Dictator, Sulla remade the constitution, striking out the popular elements to a great extent, and concentrating authority in the Senate. The Tribunes were stripped of most of their power. The Senate alone could propose laws. In the Senate, the places in the juries were given back (p. 154). Besides these and other like changes, the right of suffrage was bestowed on ten thousand emancipated slaves; while Italians and others, who had been on the Marian side, were deprived of it. In the year 80 B.C., Sulla caused himself to be elected Consul. The next year he retired from office to his country estate, and gave himself up to amusements and sensual pleasure. A part of his time--for he was not without a taste for literature--he devoted to the writing of his memoirs, which, however, have not come down to us. He died in 78.

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II. POMPEIUS AND THE EAST: TO THE DEATH OF CRASSUS (78-53 B.C.)

WAR WITH SERTORIUS.--Not many years after _Sulla's _death, his reforms were annulled. This was largely through the agency of Cneius Pompeius, who had supported Sulla, but was not a uniform or consistent adherent of the aristocratic party. He did not belong to an old family, but had so distinguished himself that Sulla gave him a triumph. Later he rose to still higher distinction by his conduct of the war against Sertorius in Spain, a brave and able man of the Marian party, who was supported there for a long time by a union of Spaniards and Romans. Not until jealousy arose among his officers, and Sertorius was assassinated, was the formidable rebellion put down (72).

THE GLADIATORIAL WAR.--Pompeius had the opportunity still further to distinguish himself on his way back from Spain. A gladiator, Spartacus, started a revolt among his companions. He called about him slaves and outlaws until with an army of one hundred thousand men he defeated the Roman generals, and threatened Rome itself. For two years they ravaged Italy at their will. They were vanquished by Marcus Crassus in 71, in two battles, in the last of which Spartacus fell. The remnant of them, a body of five thousand men, who had nearly reached the Alps, were annihilated by Pompeius.

POMPEIUS: CRASSUS: CICERO.--Crassus was a man of great wealth and of much shrewdness. Pompeius was bland and dignified in his ways, a valiant, though sometimes over-cautious, general. These two men, in 70 B.C., became consuls. They had resolved to throw themselves for support on the middle class at Rome. Pompeius, sustained by his colleague, secured the abrogation of some of the essential changes made by Sulla. The Tribunes received back their powers, and the independence of the Assembly of the Tribes was restored. The absolute power of the Senate over the law-courts was taken away. These measures were carried in spite of the resistance of that body. Pompeius was aided by the great advocate, Marcus Tullius Cicero. He was born at Arpinum in 106 B.C., of an equestrian family. He had been a diligent student of law and politics, and also of the Greek philosophy, and aspired to distinction in civil life. He studied rhetoric under Molo, first at Rome and then at Rhodes, during a period of absence from Italy, which continued about two years. On his return (in 77 B.C.), he resumed legal practice. Cicero was a man of extraordinary and various talents, and a patriot, sincerely attached to the republican constitution. He was humane and sensitive, and much more a man of peace than his eminent contemporaries. His foibles, the chief of which was the love of praise, were on the surface; and, if he lacked some of the robust qualities of the great Roman leaders of that day, he was likewise free from some of their sins. The captivating oratory of Cicero found a field for its exercise in the impeachment of Verres, whose rapacity, as Roman governor of Sicily, had fairly desolated that wealthy province. Cicero showed such vigor in the prosecution that Verres was driven into exile. This event weakened the senatorial oligarchy, and helped Pompeius in his contest with it.

WAR WITH THE PIRATES.--In 69 B.C., Pompeius retired from office; but, two years later, he assumed command in the war against the pirates. These had taken possession of creeks and valleys in Western Cilicia and Pamphylia, and had numerous fleets. Not confining their depredations to the sea, they plundered the coasts of Italy, and stopped the grain-ships on which Rome depended for food. Pompeius undertook to exterminate this piratical community. By the Gabinian Law, he was clothed with more power than had ever been committed to an individual. He was to have absolute command over the Mediterranean and its coasts for fifty miles inland. He used this unlimited authority for war purposes alone, and, in three months, completely accomplished the work assigned him. He captured three thousand vessels, and put to death ten thousand men. Twenty thousand captives he settled in the interior of Cilicia.

POMPEIUS IN THE EAST.--The success of Pompeius was the prelude to a wider extension of his power and his popularity. After the return of Sulla from the East, another Mithridatic War (83-81), the second in the series, had ended in the same terms of peace that had been agreed upon before (p. 157). In 74 the contest began anew against Mithridates, and Tigranes of Armenia, his son-in-law. For a number of years Lucullus, the Roman commander, was successful; but finally Mithridates regained what he had lost, and kept up his aggressive course. In 66 B.C., on a motion that was supported by Cicero, but opposed by the aristocratic party in the Senate, Pompeius was made commander in the East for an indefinite term. So extensive powers had never before been committed to a Roman. He drove Mithridates out of Pontus into Armenia. Tigranes laid his crown at the feet of the Roman general, and was permitted to retain Armenia. Mithridates fled beyond the Caucasus, and, in 63 B.C., committed suicide. Pompeius overthrew the Syrian kingdom of the Seleucidae. He entered Judaea, captured Jerusalem from Aristobulus the reigning prince, and placed his brother Hyrcanus on the throne, who became tributary to Rome. Pompeius with his officers entered the sanctuary of the temple, and was surprised to find there neither image nor statue. He established in the Roman territories in Asia the two provinces, Pontus and Syria, and re-organized the province of Cilicia. Several kingdoms he allowed to remain under Roman protection. After this unexampled exercise of power and responsibility as the disposer of kingdoms, he slowly returned to Italy, dismissed his army at Brundisium, and entered the capital as a private citizen, where, in 61 B.C., he enjoyed a magnificent triumph that lasted for two days.

THE ROMAN TRIUMPH.--The most coveted reward of a victorious general was a triumph. It was granted by a vote of the Senate and according to certain rules, some of which, however, were often relaxed. The general must have held the office of dictator, consul, or praetor; at least five thousand of the enemy must have been slain in a single battle; the war must have been against public foes, etc. The general, with his army, remained without the city until the triumph had been decreed by the Senate, which also assembled without the walls to deliberate on the question. The pageant itself, in later times, was of the most splendid character. It consisted of a procession which entered the "Triumphal Gate," and passed through the Via Sacra, up the Capitoline Hill to the Temple of Jupiter, where sacrifices were offered. In front were the Senate, headed by the magistrates. Then came a body of trumpeters, who immediately preceded the long trains of carriages and frames which displayed the spoils of conquest, including statues, pictures, gorgeous apparel, gold and silver, and whatever else had been borne away from the conquered people. Pictures of the country traversed or conquered, and models of cities and forts, were exhibited. Behind the spoils came flute-players, and these were followed by elephants and other strange animals. Next were the arms and insignia of the hostile leaders; and after them marched the leaders themselves and their kindred, and all the captives of less rank, in fetters. The crowns and other tributes voluntarily given to the general by Roman allies next appeared, and then the central figure of the procession, the imperator himself, standing in a chariot drawn by four horses, clad in a robe embroidered with gold, and a flowered tunic, in his right hand a bough of laurel and in his left a scepter, with a wreath of laurel on his brow, and a slave standing behind, and holding a crown over his head. Behind him in the procession were his family, then the mounted equites and the whole body of the infantry, their spears adorned with laurels, making the air ring with their shouts and songs. Meantime the temples were open, and incense was burned to the gods; buildings were decorated with festal garlands; the population, in holiday dress, thronged the steps of the public buildings and stages erected to command a view, and in every place where a sight of the pageant could be obtained. As the procession climbed the Capitoline Hill, some of the captives of rank were taken into the adjoining Mamertine prison, and barbarously put to death. In the lower chamber of that ancient dungeon, which the traveler still visits, Jugurtha and many other conquered enemies perished. After the sacrifices had been offered, the imperator sat down to a public feast with his friends in the temple, and was then escorted home by a crowd of citizens.

The ovation was a lesser triumph. The general entered the city on foot, and the ceremonies were of a much inferior cast.

CONSPIRACY OF CATILINE.--Meanwhile at Rome, the state had been endangered by the combination of democrats and anarchists in the conspiracy of Catiline. The well-contrived plot of this audacious and profligate man was detected and crushed by the vigilance and energy of the consul Cicero, whose four speeches on the subject, two to the Senate and two to the people, are among the most celebrated of all his orations. Catiline was forced to fly from Rome; and several of his prominent accomplices were put to death by the advice of Cato (the younger), the leader of the Senatorial party, and by the vote of the Senate. This was done without asking for the verdict of the people, and for this reason was not warranted by the law; but it was declared to be needful for the salvation of the state. The next year Catiline was killed in battle, and his force dispersed by the army of the Senate. A turn of party feeling afterwards exiled Cicero for departing from the law in the execution of the conspirators.

JULIUS CAESAR.--Another person strong enough to be the rival of Pompeius was now on the stage of action. This was Caius Julius Caesar, who proved himself to be, on the whole, the foremost man of the ancient Roman world. Caesar's talents were versatile, but in nothing was he weak or superficial. He was great as a general, a statesman, an orator, and an author. With as much power of personal command over men as Hannibal had possessed, he was likewise an agreeable companion of men of letters and in general society. Every thing he did he appeared to do with ease. By his family connections he was naturally designated as the leader of the popular, Marian party. He was the nephew of Marius and the son-in-law of Cinna. Sulla had spared his life, although he had courageously refused to obey the dictator's command to put away his wife; but he had been obliged to quit Rome. At the funeral of Julia, the widow of Marius, he had been bold enough to exhibit the bust of that hero,--an act that involved risk, but pleased the multitude. He was suspected of being privy to Catiline's plot, and in the Senate spoke against the execution of his confederates. In 65 he was elected Aedile, but his profuse expenditures in providing games plunged him heavily in debt; so that it was only by advances made to him by Crassus that he was able, after being praetor, to go to Spain (in 61), where, as propraetor, he first acquired military distinction. Prior to his sojourn in Spain, by his bold political conduct, in opposition to the Senate, and on the democratic side, he had made himself a favorite of the people.

THE FIRST TRIUMVIRATE.--Pompeius was distrusted and feared by the Senate; but, on seeing that he took no measures to seize on power at Rome, they proceeded to thwart his wishes, and denied the expected allotments of land to his troops. The circumstances led to the formation of the first Triumvirate, which was an informal alliance between Pompeius, Caesar, and Crassus, against the Senatorial oligarchy, and for the protection and furtherance of their own interests. Caesar became consul in 59 B.C. He gave his daughter Julia in marriage to Pompeius. Gaul, both Cisalpine, and Transalpine (Gallia Narbonensis), was given to Caesar to govern for five years. Cato was sent off to take possession of the kingdom of Cyprus. Cicero, who was midway between the two parties, was exiled on motion of the radical tribune, Clodius. But the independent and violent proceedings of this demagogue led Pompeius to co-operate more with the Senate. Cicero was recalled (57 B.C.). A jealousy, fomented by the Senate, sprang up between Pompeius and Crassus. By Caesar's efforts, a better understanding was brought about between the triumvirs, and it was agreed that his own proconsulship should be prolonged for a second term of five years. Pompeius received the Spains, and Crassus, who was avaricious, was made proconsul of Syria, and commander of the armies in the Oriental provinces. In an expedition against the Parthians in 53, he perished.

CAESAR IN GAUL.--The campaigns of Caesar in Gaul covered a period of eight years. An admirable narrative of them is presented by himself in his Commentaries.

THE GAULS.--The Gauls were Celts. The Celts were spread over the most of Gaul, over Britain and the north of Italy. In Gaul, there were three general divisions of people, each subdivided into tribes. These were the Belgae, the Galli, and the Aquitani, the last of whom, however, were not Celts, but, like the Iberians in Spain, belonged to a pre-Celtic race. The Helvetii and Vindelici were in Switzerland. The Celts of Gaul had attained to a considerable degree of civilization. Their gods were the various objects of nature personified. Their divinities are described by Caesar as corresponding in their functions to the gods of Rome. Their priests were the Druids, a close corporation, but not hereditary. They not only conducted worship: they were the lawgivers, judges, and physicians of the people. They possessed a mysterious doctrine, which they taught to the initiated. They held a great yearly assembly for the trial of causes. The Bards stood in connection with the Druidical order. In worship, human sacrifices were offered in large numbers, the victims being prisoners, slaves, criminals, etc. There were temples, but thick groves were the favorite seats of worship. Caesar says that the Gauls were strongly addicted to religious observances. In their character they are described as brave and impetuous in an onset, but as lacking persistency.

The Celts in Britain were less civilized than their kinsfolk across the channel. But in their customs and religious beliefs and usages, they were similar to them. They probably came over from Gaul.

CONQUEST OF GAUL.--The first victory of Caesar was in conflict with the Helvetii, who had invaded Gaul, and whom he drove back to their homes in the Alps. The Gallic tribes applied to him for help against the Germans, who had been led over the Rhine by Ariovistus, chief of the Suevi. Him Caesar forced to return to the other side of the river. The Gallic tribes, fearing the power of Caesar, stirred up the Belgae, the most warlike of all the Gauls. These Csesar subdued, and also, with less difficulty, conquered the other nations of Gaul. Twice, in conflict with the Germans, he crossed the Rhine near Bonn and Andernach (55 and 53 B.C.). Twice, also (55 and 54 B.C.), he landed in Britain. On the second expedition he crossed the Thames. In 52 there was a general insurrection of the Gauls under Vercingetorix, a brave chieftain, to conquer whom required all of Caesar's strength and skill. The result of eight years of hard and successful warfare was the subjugation of all Gaul from the Rhine to the Pyrenees. The Celts were subdued, and steps taken which resulted in their civilization. A barrier was placed in the way of the advance of the Germans, which availed for this end during several centuries. By his successes in Gaul, Csesar acquired a fame as a general, which partly eclipsed the glory previously gained by Pompeius in the East. He became, also, the leader of veteran legions who were devoted to his interests.

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III. POMPEIUS AND CAESAR: THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE

THE CIVIL WAR.--The rupture between Pompeius and Caesar brought on another civil war, and subverted the Roman republic. They were virtually regents. The triumvirs had arranged with one another for the partition of power. The death of Crassus took away a link of connection which had united the two survivors. The death of Julia, the beautiful daughter of Caesar, in 54 B.C., had previously dissolved another tie. Pompeius contrived to remain in Rome, and to govern Spain by legates. Each of the two rivals had his active and valiant partisans in the city. The spoils of Gaul were sent to be expended in the erection of costly buildings, and in providing entertainments for the populace. To Pompey, in turn, Rome owed the construction of the first stone theater, which was dedicated with unprecedented show and splendor. Bloody conflicts between armed bands of adherents of the two leaders were of daily occurrence. Clodius, an adherent of Caesar and a reckless partisan, was slain by Milo, in a conflict on the Appian Way. The Senate and the republicans, of whom Cato was the chief, in order to curb the populace, and out of enmity to Caesar, allied themselves with Pompeius. It was determined to prevent him from standing as a candidate for the consulship, unless he should lay down his command, and come to Rome. He offered to resign his military power if Pompeius would do the same. This was refused. Finally he was directed to give up his command in Gaul before the expiration of the time which had been set for the termination of it. This order, if carried into effect, would have reduced him to the rank of a private citizen, and have left him at the mercy of his enemies. The tribunes, including his devoted supporter, Marcus Antonius, in vain interposed the veto, and fled from the city. Caesar determined to disobey the order of the Senate. His legions--two had been withdrawn on the false pretext of needing them for the Parthian war--clung to him, with the exception of one able officer, T. Labienus. Caesar acted with great promptitude. He crossed the Rubicon, the boundary of the Gallic Cisalpine province, before Pompeius--who had declared, that with a stamp of his foot he could call up armed men from the ground--had made adequate preparations to meet him. The strength of Pompeius was mainly in the East, the scene of his former glory; and he was, perhaps, not unwilling to retire to that region, taking with him the throng of aristocratic leaders, who fled precipitately on learning of the approach of Caesar. Pompeius sailed from Brundisium to Epirus. Cicero, who had ardently desired an accommodation between the rivals, was in an agony of doubt as to what course it was right and best for him to take, since he saw reason to dread the triumph of either side. Reluctantly he decided to cast in his lot with the Senate and its newly gained champion.

PHARSALUS: THAPSUS: MUNDA.--Caesar gained the advantage of securing the state treasure which Pompeius had unaccountably left behind him, and was able to establish his power in Italy. Before pursuing Pompeius, he marched through Gaul into Spain (49 B.C.), conquered the Pompeian forces at Ilerda, and secured his hold upon that country. He then crossed the Adriatic, He encountered Pompeius, who could not manage his imprudent officers, on the plain of Pharsalus (48 B.C.), where the senatorial army was completely overthrown. Pompeius sailed for Egypt; but, just as he was landing, he was treacherously assassinated. His head was sent to Caesar, who wept at the spectacle, and punished the murderers. Caesar gained friends everywhere by the exercise of a judicious clemency, which accorded with his natural disposition. He next went to Egypt. There he was met by Cleopatra, whose dazzling beauty captivated him. She reigned in conjunction with her younger brother, who, according to the Egyptian usage, was nominally her husband. The Egyptians were roused against Caesar, and, on one occasion, he saved his life by swimming; but he finally defeated and destroyed the Egyptian army. At Zela, in Pontus, he met and vanquished Pharnaces, the revolted son of Mithridates, and sent the laconic message, "Veni, vidi, vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered). Early in 46 he landed in Africa, and, at Thapsus, annihilated the republican forces in that region. A most powerful combination was made against him in Spain, including some of his old officers and legionaries, and the two sons of Pompeius. But in the hard-fought battle at Munda (March, 45 B.C.), when Caesar was himself in great personal danger, he was, as usual, triumphant.

CAESAR AS A CIVILIAN.--Marvelous as the career of Caesar as a general was, his merit as a civilian outstrips even his distinction as a soldier. He saw that the world could no longer be governed by the Roman rabble, and that monarchy was the only alternative. He ruled under the forms of the old constitution, taking the post of dictator and censor for life, and absorbing in himself the other principal republican offices. The whole tendency of his measures, which were mostly of a very wholesome character, was not only to remedy abuses of administration, but to found a system of orderly administration in which Rome should be not the sole mistress, but simply the capital, of the world-wide community which had been subjected to her authority.

THE GOVERNMENT OF CAESAR.--Caesar made the Senate an advisory body. He increased the number of senators, bringing in provincials as well as Roman citizens. He gave full citizenship to all the Transpadane Gauls, and to numerous communities in Transalpine Gaul, in Spain, and elsewhere. He established a wide-spread colonization, thus planting his veterans in different places abroad, and lessening the number of proletarians in Italy. He rebuilt Carthage and Corinth. He re-organized the army, and the civil administration in the provinces. In the space of five years, while he was busy in important wars, he originated numerous governmental measures of the utmost value.

THE MOTIVES OF CAESAR.--The designs of Caesar and of his party are to be distinguished from what they actually accomplished. Caesar was not impelled by a desire to improve the government of the provinces, in taking up arms against the Senate. Nor did he owe his success to the support of provincials; although, in common with the rest of the democratic party at Rome, he was glad to have them for allies. The custom had grown up of virtually giving to eminent generals, absolute power for extended intervals. This was done, for example, in the case of Marius, on the occasion of the invasion of the Cimbrians and Teutones. In such exigencies, it was found necessary to create what was equivalent to a military dictatorship. The idea of military rule became familiar. The revolution made by Caesar was achieved by military organization, and was a measure of personal self-defense on his part. Being raised to the supreme power, he sought to rule according to the wise and liberal ideas which were suggested by the actual condition of the world, and the undesirableness of a continued domination of a single city, with such a populace as that of Rome. Before he could carry out his large schemes, he was cut down.

ASSASSINATION OF CAESAR.--Caesar was tired of staying in Rome, and was proposing to undertake an expedition against the Parthians. Neither his clemency nor the necessity and the merits of the government sustained by him, availed to shield him against the machinations of enemies. The aristocratic party detested his policy. He was suspected of aiming at the title, as well as the power, of a king. A conspiracy made up of numerous senators who secretly hated him, of other individuals influenced by personal spite, and of republican visionaries like Cassius and Junius Brutus, who gloried in what they considered tyrannicide, assaulted him on the ides of March (March 15, 44 B.C.) in the hall of Pompeius, whither he had come to a session of the Senate. He received twenty-three wounds, one of which, at least, was fatal, and fell, uttering, a tradition said, a word of gentle reproach to Brutus, one who had been counted a special friend. Cicero had acquiesced in the new government, and eulogized Caesar and his administration. But even he expressed his satisfaction at the event which left the republic without a master. An amnesty to those who slew Caesar was advocated by him, and decreed by the Senate.

THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE.--The Senate gave to the leading conspirators provinces; to Decimus Brutus, Cisalpine Gaul. But at Rome there was quickly a re-action of popular wrath against the enemies of Csesar, which was skillfully fomented by Marcus Antonius in the address which he made to the people over his dead body, pierced with so many wounds. The people voted to give Cisalpine Gaul to Antonius, and he set out to take it from Decimus Brutus by force of arms. Cicero delivered a famous series of harangues against Antonius, called the Philippics. Antonius, being defeated, fled to Lepidus, the governor of Transalpine Gaul. Octavius, the grand-nephew and adopted son of Caesar, a youth of eighteen, now became prominent, and at first was supported by the Senate in the hope of balancing the power of Antonius. But in October, 43, Octavianus (as he was henceforward called), Antonius, and Lepidus together formed a second triumvirate, which became legal, by the ratification of the people, for the period of five years. A proscription for the destruction of the enemies of the three contracting parties was a part of this alliance. A great number were put to death, among them Cicero, a sacrifice to the vengeance of Antonius. War against the republicans was the necessary consequence. At Philippi in Thrace, in the year 42, Antonius and Octavianus defeated Brutus and Cassius, both of whom committed suicide. Porcia, the wife of Brutus, and the daughter of Cato, on hearing of her husband's death, put an end to her own life. Many other adherents of the republic followed the example of their leaders. The victors divided the world between themselves, Antonius taking the east, Octavianus the west, while to the weak and avaricious Lepidus, Africa was assigned; but he was soon deprived of his share by Octavianus.

CIVIL WAR: ACTIUM.--Antonius was enamoured of Cleopatra, and, following her to Egypt, gave himself up to luxury and sensual gratification. Civil war between Octavianus and the followers of Antonius in Italy (40, 41 B.C.) was followed by the marriage of Octavia, the sister of Octavianus, to Antonius. But after a succession of disputes between the two regents, there was a final breach. Antonius (35) went so far as to give Roman territories to the sons of Cleopatra, and to send to Octavia papers of divorce. The Senate, at the instigation of Octavianus, deprived his unworthy colleague of all his powers. War was declared against Cleopatra. East and West were arrayed in arms against one another. The conflict was determined by the naval victory of _Octavianus_at Actium (Sept. 2, 31 B.C.). Before the battle was decided, Cleopatra fled, and was followed by Antonius. When the latter approached Alexandria, Antonius, deceived by the false report that Cleopatra had destroyed herself, threw himself upon his sword and died. Cleopatra, finding herself unable to fascinate the conqueror, but believing that he meant that she should adorn his public triumph at Rome, poisoned herself (30). Egypt was made into a Roman province. The month Sextilis, on which _Octavianus_returned to Rome, received in honor of him the name of "August," from "Augustus," the "venerated" or "illustrious," the name given him in 27 B.C. by the Roman people and Senate. He celebrated three triumphs; and, for the third time since the city was founded, the Temple of Janus was closed.

PERIOD V. THE IMPERIAL MONARCHY: TO THE MIGRATIONS OF THE TEUTONIC TRIBES (375 A.D.).

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I. THE REIGN OF AUGUSTUS

AUGUSTUS AS A RULER.--The long-continued, sanguinary civil wars made peace welcome. Augustus knew how to conceal his love of power under a mild exterior, and to organize the monarchy with a nominal adherence to republican forms. The controlling magistracies, except the censorship, were transferred to him. As Imperator, he had unlimited command over the military forces, and was at the head of a standing army of three hundred and forty thousand men. To him it belonged to decide on peace and war. The Senate became the real legislative body, issuing senatus-consulta. There was also a sort of "cabinet council" chosen by him from its members. The authority of the Tribunes belonged to him, and thus the popular assemblies became more and more a nullity. "The Senate was made up of his creatures; the people were won by bread and games; the army was fettered to him by means of booty and gifts." While the forms of a free state remained, all the functions of authority were exercised by the ruler.

STATE OF THE EMPIRE.--(1) Its Extent. The Roman Empire extended from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, a distance of more than three thousand miles, and from the Danube and the English Channel--later, from the friths of Scotland--to the cataracts of the Nile and the African desert. Its population was somewhere from eighty millions to one hundred and twenty millions. It was composed of the East and the West, a distinction that was not simply geographical, but included deeper characteristic differences. (2) The Provinces. The provinces were divided (27 B.C.) into the proconsular, ruled by the Senate, and the imperial, ruled by the legates of Augustus. His authority, however, was everywhere supreme. Over all the empire extended the system of Roman law, the rights and immunities of which belonged to Roman citizens everywhere. (3) The Two Languages. It was a Romano-Hellenic monarchy. Local dialects remained; but the Greek language was the language of commerce, and of polite intercourse in all places. The Greek tongue and Hellenic culture were the common property of the nations. The Latin was prevalent west of the Adriatic. It was adopted in Africa, Spain, Gaul, and in other provinces. It was the language of courts and of the camp. (4) Journeys and Trade. The Roman territory was covered with a net-work of magnificent roads. Journeys for purposes of trade and from motives of curiosity were common. Religious pilgrimages to famous shrines were frequent. The safety and peace which followed upon the civil wars stimulated traffic and intercourse between the different regions united under the imperial government.

LITERATURE.--The Augustan period was the golden age of Roman literature. Literary works were topics of conversation in social circles. Libraries were collected by the rich. The shops of booksellers were places of resort for cultivated people. There were active and liberal patrons of poets and of other men of letters. Such patrons were Maecenas, Horace's friend, and Augustus himself. Then favors were repaid by praises and flattery, as we see in the verses of Horace, Virgil, and especially of Ovid. The lectures of grammarians and rhetoricians, of philosophers and physicians, were largely attended. Literary societies were formed. Periodicals and bulletins were published, in which the proceedings of the Senate and of the courts were recorded. The business of scribes--copyists of manuscripts--engaged a vast number of persons.

WRITINGS OF CICERO.--Cicero (106-43), in his philosophic writings, reproduces the thoughts and speculations of the Greek sages, in the manner of a cultivated and appreciative student. His speeches and his epistles, especially those to his friend, Atticus, lift the veil, as it were, and afford us most interesting glimpses of the civil and social life of the Romans of that day.

THE POETS.--One of the most original of the Latin poets is Lucretius (95-51 B.C.), whose poem "On the Nature of Things" is an effort to dispel superstitious fear by inculcating the Epicurean doctrine that the world is self-made through the movement and concussion of atoms, and that the gods leave it to care for itself. A contemporary of Lucretius, and a poet of equal merit, but in an altogether different vein, is Catullus. He is chiefly noted for his lyrics. Virgil (70-19 B.C.), in the Aeneid, has produced a genuine Roman epic, although his dependence on Homer is obvious throughout, and in the Bucolics, and in particular in the Georgics, where he shows most originality, has made himself immortal as a pastoral poet. Horace (65-8 B.C.), like most of the Roman authors, in many of his poems is inspired by his Greek models, but, in his Satires and Poetic Epistles, expresses the character of his own genius. His "Odes," for their beauty and melody and the variety of their topics, rank among the best of all productions of their kind. Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18), in his chief work, the Metamorphoses, handled the mythical tales of the Greeks, and, in his poems on Love, likewise introduced many Grecian tales. He was much influenced by the Alexandrian poets.

THE HISTORIANS.--In historical composition, most of the Roman authors had Greek patterns before their eyes. Nevertheless, Livy (59 B.C.-A.D. 17), thirty-five of the one hundred and forty-two books of whose "Annals" have been preserved, and Sallust, to whom we are indebted for narratives of the conspiracy of Cataline and of the Jugurthine war, are far from being servile copyists. The simple and lucid but graceful style of the Commentaries of Caesar makes this work an example of the purest Latin prose.

LAW WRITERS.--In one department, that of jurisprudence, the Romans were eminently original. The writings of the great jurists were simple and severe, and free from the rhetorical traits which Roman authors in other departments borrowed from the Greeks.

OTHER AUTHORS.--Among other eminent authors of this period are the great Roman antiquary Varro (116-27 B.C.); the elegiac poets, Tibullus and Propertius; Phaedrus, the Roman Aesop; the historian, Cornelius Nepos; and the Greek historical writers of that day, Diodore of Sicily and Dionysius of Halicarnassus; also Strabo, the Greek geographer (64 B.C.-A.D. 24).

THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY.

THE JEWS AND THEIR DISPERSION.--There were three ancient peoples, each of which fulfilled an office of its own in history. The Greeks were the intellectual people, the Romans were founders in law and politics: from the Hebrews the true religion was to spring. At the epoch of the birth of Jesus, the Hebrews, like the Greeks and Romans, were scattered abroad, and mingled with all other nations. Wherever they went they carried their pure monotheism, and built their synagogues for instruction in the law and for common worship. In the region of Babylon, a multitude of Jews had remained after the captivity. Two out of the five sections of Alexandria were occupied by them. At Antioch in Syria, the other great meeting-place of peoples of diverse origin and religion, they were very numerous. In the cities of Asia Minor, of Greece and Macedonia, in Illyricum and in Rome, they were planted in large numbers. Jewish merchants went wherever there was room for profitable trade. Generally regarded with aversion on account of their religious exclusiveness, they nevertheless made so many proselytes that the Roman philosopher, Seneca, said of them, "The conquered have given laws to the conquerors." Prophecy had inspired the Jews with an abiding and fervent expectation of the ultimate conquest of heathenism, and prevalence of their faith. If the hope of a temporal Messiah to free them from the Roman yoke, and to lead them to an external victory and dominion, burned in the hearts of most, there were some of a more spiritual mind and of deeper aspirations, who looked for One who should minister to the soul, and bring in a reign of holiness and peace.

PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY AMONG THE HEATHEN.--In the heathen world, there was not wanting a preparation for such a Deliverer. The union of all the nations in the Roman Empire had lessened the mutual antipathy of peoples, melted down barriers of feeling as well as of intercourse, and weakened the pride of race. An indistinct sense of a common humanity had entered the breasts of men. Writers, like Cicero, talked of a great community, a single society of gods and men. The Stoic philosophy had made this idea familiar. Mankind, it was said, formed one city. Along with this conception, precepts were uttered in favor of forbearance and fraternal kindness between man and man. In religion, there was a drift towards monotheism. The old mythological religion was decaying, and traditional beliefs as to divine things were dissolving. Many minds were yearning for something to fill the void,--for a more substantial ground of rest and of hope. They longed for a goal on which their aspirations might center, and to which their exertions might tend. The burden of sin and of suffering that rested on the common mass excited at least a vague yearning for deliverance. The Roman Empire, with all its treasures and its glory, failed to satisfy the hearts of men. The dreams of philosophy could not be realized on the basis of ancient society, where the state was every thing, and where no higher, more comprehensive and more enduring kingdom could spring into being.

CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES.--Four years before the date assigned for the beginning of the Christian era, Jesus was born. Herod, a tyrannical king, servile in his attitude toward the Romans, and subject to them, was then ruling over the Jews in Palestine. But, when Jesus began his public ministry, the kingship had been abolished, and Judaea was governed by the procurator, Pontius Pilate (A.D. 26). Jesus announced himself as the Messiah, the founder of a kingdom "not of this world;" the members of which were to be brethren, having God for their Father. He taught in a tone of authority, yet with "a sweet reasonableness;" and his wonderful teaching was accompanied with marvelous works of power and mercy, as "he went about doing good." He attached to himself twelve disciples, among whom Peter, and the two brothers James and John, were the men of most mark. These had listened to the preaching of John, the prophet of the wilderness, by whom Jesus had been recognized as the Christ who was to come. The ministry of the Christ produced a wide-spread excitement, and a deep impression upon humble and truth-loving souls. But his rebuke of the ruling class, the Pharisees, for their formalism, pretended sanctity, self-seeking, and enslavement to tradition, excited in them rancorous enmity. His disappointment of the popular desire for a political Messiah chilled the enthusiasm of the multitude, many of whom had heard him gladly. After about three years, he was betrayed by one of his followers, Judas Iscariot; was accused of heterodoxy and blasphemy before the Jewish Sanhedrim; the consent of Pilate to his death was extorted by a charge of treason based on the title of "king," which he had not refused; and he was crucified between two malefactors. Not many days elapsed before his disciples rallied from their despondency, and boldly and unitedly declared, before magistrates and people, that he had manifested himself to them in bodily form, in a series of interviews at definite places and times. They proclaimed his continued though invisible reign, his perpetual presence with them, and his future advent in power. In his name, and on the ground of his death, they preached the forgiveness of sins to all who should believe in him, and enter on a life of Christian obedience. In the year 33 or 34, the death of Stephen, the first martyr, at the hands of a Jewish mob, for a time dispersed the church at Jerusalem, and was one step towards the admission of the Gentiles to the privileges of the new faith. But the chief agent in effecting this result, and in thus giving to Christianity its universal character and mission, was the Apostle Paul, a converted Pharisee. Antioch in Syria became the cradle of the Gentile branch of the church, and of the missions to the heathen, in which Paul was the leader; while Peter was efficient in spreading the gospel among the Jews in Palestine and beyond its borders. By Paul numerous churches were founded in the course of three extended missionary journeys, which led him beyond Asia into Macedonia, Greece, and Illyricum. By him the gospel was preached from Jerusalem to Rome, where he died as a martyr under Nero in 67 or 68. Not far from the same time, according to a credible tradition, Peter, also, was put to death at Rome. The preachers of the Christian faith pursued their work with a fearless and untiring spirit, and met the malignant persecution of the Jews and the fanatical assaults of the heathen with patient endurance and with prayer for the pardon and enlightenment of their persecutors.

THE VICTORY OF THE GERMANS.--Augustus avoided war when he could. His aim was to defend the frontiers of the empire rather than to extend them. The Parthians were prevailed on to return of their own accord the standards and prisoners taken from the army of Crassus. But in Germany, Drusus, the brave step-son of Augustus, made four campaigns on the east of the Rhine, as far as the Weser and the Elbe. On his way back from the Elbe, a fall from his horse terminated his life (9 B.C.). His brother, Tiberius, managed to establish the Roman power over a part of the Germanic tribes on the right bank of the river (4 B.C.) Long before (27 B.C.) the western shore of the river had been formed into two provinces, Upper and Lower Germany. An incapable and incautious general, Quintilius Varus, excited the freedom-loving Germans to revolt under the brave chief of the Cherusci, Arminius (or Hermann). Three Roman legions were annihilated in the Teutoburg forest, Varus taking his own life. The civil and military chiefs who were taken captive, the Germans slew as a sacrifice to their gods. The rest of the prisoners were made slaves. "Many a Roman from an equestrian or a senatorial house grew old in the service of a German farmer, as a servant in the house, or in tending cattle without." There in the forest of Teutoburg the Germans practically won their independence. On hearing the bad news, Augustus, for several days, could only exclaim, "Varus! give me back my legions!" After the death of Augustus, in his seventy-sixth year, the noble son of Drusus, Germanicus, conducted three expeditions against Arminius (A.D. 14-16), obtained a victory over him, and took his wife prisoner, who died in captivity; but the Romans permanently held only the left bank of the Rhine.

ROMAN LIFE.--Various particulars characteristic of Roman ways have been, or will be, incidentally referred to. A few special statements may be given in this place. The Romans, like the Greeks, built a town round a height (or capitol) where was a stronghold (arx), a place of refuge. Here temples were erected. The forum, or market-place, was near by, where the courts sat, and where the people came together to transact business. The dwellings were on the sides of the hill, or on the plain beneath. The streets were narrow. The exterior of the houses was plain. They were of brick, generally covered with stucco, and whitewashed. Glass was too costly to be much used: hence the openings in the walls were few. When the space became valuable, as in Rome, the houses were built high. The chief room in the house was the atrium, which, in earlier times, was not only the common room but also the bedroom of the family. In the primitive dwellings it had been the only room. A passage led from it through a door-way into the street. In front and on both sides were apartments, and in the rear a walled court, or garden. Large houses had several inclosed courts. Rich men and nobles built magnificent palaces. The walls of Roman dwellings within were decorated with fresco-paintings, some of which at Pompeii are left in all their freshness. Round the dinner-table were couches, on which those who partook of the meal reclined. In other rooms chairs were plentifully supplied. Lamps were very numerous and of beautiful design, but the wick was so small that they gave but little light. There was little furniture in the atrium. Statues stood round the walls of this room, if the house were one of the better sort, and in open presses on the walls were the images or masks of the distinguished ancestors of the family. At a funeral of a member of the household they were worn in the procession by persons representing the deceased progenitors.

DRESS.--The principal material of a Roman's dress was woolen cloth. The main article of wearing apparel for a man was the toga, thrown over the shoulders, and brought in folds round the waist in a way to leave the right arm free. Under it was a tunic. At the age of about seventeen, the boy publicly laid aside the toga with a purple hem, and put on the white toga, the token of citizenship. Women wore a long tunic girded about the waist, with a tunic and a close-fitting vest beneath. Except on a journey or in an open theater, as a protection from the sun, neither men nor women wore any covering on the head. Women, when they walked abroad, wore veils which did not cover the face. The color and form of the shoes varied with the rank of the individual, and were significant of it. In the house, sandals were used.

ORDER OF OCCUPATIONS.--The interval from sunrise to sunset was divided into twelve hours. The seventh hour of the day began at noon. At the third hour, there was usually a light meal, which was followed by business, or visits of friendship. The wealthy Roman was followed about the city by a throng of clients, who called on him with their morning greeting before he rose, and received their gift of food or money. At noon came the prandium, or more substantial breakfast. This was followed by a short sleep, in the case of those who were at leisure to take it. Then came games and physical exercise of various sorts. A favorite recreation, both for young and old, was ball-games. Exercise was succeeded by the bath, for which the Romans from the later times of the republic had a remarkable fondness. In private houses the bathing conveniences were luxurious. The emperors built magnificent bath-houses, which included gymnasia, and sometimes libraries. What is now called the Turkish bath was very much in vogue. Dinner, or the cena, the principal meal, was about midway between noon and sunset. The fork was not used at the table, but only in carving; but spoons, and sometimes, it would appear, knives, were used by the host and his guests. The food was so carved that it was usually taken with the fingers. At the table, the toga was exchanged for a lighter garment, and sandals were laid aside. The beverage was wine mixed with water. At banquets of the rich, after the dessert of fruit and cakes had been taken, there was, in later times, the convivium, or social "drinking-bout." Under the empire, this became often a scene of indecent revelry. The Roman dinner-table was not so likely as a Greek repast to be enlivened by flashes of intellect and of wit, or by music furnished by the guests. Musicians were more commonly hired performers, as were also the dancers. The Romans enjoyed games of chance. Playing with dice, and gambling along with it, became common.

MARRIAGE AND THE HOUSEHOLD.--There were two kinds of marriage. By one the wife passed entirely out of the hands (manus) of the father into the hands of the husband, or under his control. There was frequently a religious rite (confarreatio); but, when this did not take place, the other customary ceremonies were essentially the same. At the betrothal the prospective bride was frequently presented with a ring, and with some more valuable gift, by the man whom she was to marry. In the household, notwithstanding the supreme authority of the husband, the wife had an honored position and an active influence. The children were, in law, the property of the father. Their lives were at his disposal. The mother had charge of their early training. The father took the principal charge of the young boy, taught him athletic exercises, and took him to the forum with him. Schools began to exist in the early period. Boys and girls studied together. The pedagogue was the servant who accompanied the child to school, and conducted him home. Greek was studied. The law of the Twelve Tables was committed to memory. Virgil and Horace became school-books, along with Cicero and earlier writers. In the later republican period, Greeks took the business of teaching largely into their hands. There were flourishing schools of rhetoric managed both by Greek and by Latin teachers. Young Romans who could afford to do so went to Athens and other cities in the East for their university training.

SLAVES.--Town-slaves were found in the richer families in great numbers (p. 152). They were not only employed in menial occupations: they were clerks, copyists, sculptors, architects, etc., as well as actors and singers. The work of the farm-slaves was harder. They were shut up in the night in large barracks, made partly under ground, into which was admitted but little light or air. They often worked in chains. In town and country both, the unlimited power of the master led to great severity and cruelty in the treatment of slaves. Women as well as men were often guilty of brutal harshness. Females as well as males were the sufferers. The town-slave, however, might be favored by his master: he might be allowed to save money of his own, and might, perhaps, buy his freedom, or receive it as a gift. During the holidays of the Saturnalia, slaves were allowed unusual privileges and pleasures. The freedmen could become citizens, and were then eligible to any office.

MAGISTRATES.--A Roman who sought office went round soliciting votes. This was called ambitio (from ambire, to go round), whence is derived the English word ambition. He presented himself in public places in a toga specially whitened, and was hence called a candidate (from candida, meaning white). He sought to get support by providing shows and games. The voting was by ballot. Magistrates had their seats of honor, which were made in a particular shape. In the different forms used in the trial of causes, there was one general practice,--the magistrate laid down the law, and referred the judgment as to the facts in the case to an umpire, either an individual or a special court.

THE JULIAN IMPERIAL HOUSE.

C. JULIUS CÆSAR, m. Aurelia. | +--C. JULIUS CÆSAR. | +--Julia, m. M. Atius Balbus. | +--Atia, m. C. Octavius. | +--C. Octavius (adopted as son by the will of Julius) became C. JULIUS CÆSAR OCTAVIANUS AUGUSTUS, m. 2, Scribonia; | +--Julia m. 2, M. Vipsanius Agrippa. | +--Agrippina, | m. Germanicus. | | | +--CAIUS (Caligula), | | m. Cæsonia, | | | | | +--Julia Drusilla. | | | +--Agrippina, | m. Cn. Domitius. | | | +--L. DOMITIUS NERO, | m. Poppæa Sabina. | | | +--Claudia Augusta. | +--Julia, m. Æmilius Paulus. | +--Æmilia Lepida, m. 1, CLAUDIUS; 2, Junius Silanus. | +--Junia Calvina, m. VITELLIUS.

3, Livia. | +--TIBERIUS (adopted as son by Augustus).

THE CLAUDIAN IMPERIAL HOUSE.

TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS NERO. m. Livia Drusilla (afterwards wife of AUGUSTUS). | +--TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS NERO. | +--Drusus Claudius Nero, m. Antonia, daughter of the Triumvir and niece of Augustus. | +--Germanicus, | m. Agrippina. | +--TI. CLAUDIUS DRUSUS, m. 5, Valeria Messalina. | +--Octavia, | m. NERO. | +--Britannicus. | +--By adoption, NERO.

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II. THE EMPERORS OF THE AUGUSTAN HOUSE

TIBERIUS.--During the long reign of the prudent Augustus, there was peace within the borders of the empire. He said of himself, that he "found Rome of brick, and left it of marble." This change may be taken as a symbol of the growth of material prosperity in the Roman dominions. But in his private relations, the emperor was less fortunate. His daughter Julia, a woman of brilliant talents, disgraced him by her immorality, and he was obliged to banish her. Her two elder sons died when they were young. The empire devolved on his adopted step-son Tiberius (14-37), who endeavored to continue the same conservative policy. Tiberius was at first alarmed by mutinies among the troops in Pannonia and on the Rhine. The army of the Rhine urged Germanicus, the emperor's adopted son and probable successor, to lead it to Rome, promising to place him on the throne, but Germanicus succeeded in quieting the disturbance. As there were during this reign no great wars, Tiberius was able to devote himself more exclusively to the civil administration. He transferred from the popular assembly to the Senate the right of choosing the magistrates, emphasizing in this way the dual system that Augustus had created. The rights of the Senate he appeared scrupulously to respect. For the more effective government of the city of Rome he established there a permanent prefecture and brought together in a camp before the Viminal gate the nine prætorian cohorts. Unhappily this Prætorian Guard, which might serve to overawe the city mobs, might also interfere in the affairs of government. Indeed, a little later it had to be counted with in the choice of emperors. The notorious Sejanus was prefect during a large part of this reign, and acquired so completely the confidence of Tiberius that he began to plot his overthrow. He had already caused Drusus, the son of Tiberius, to be poisoned in order to remove one obstacle. Finally the emperor discovered his plots and caused him to be arrested and put to death (31). For several years Tiberius had been living in retirement on the island of Capreæ. There his enemies represented him as given over to debauchery, while the lives of Roman citizens were never safe from his suspicions or from the accusations of the delators, men who presented formal charges of crime, there being no public prosecutors. Earlier in his reign Tiberius had shown a serious purpose to improve the administration of justice, but with the lapse of years he became distrustful and cruel. He had, moreover, changed the law of treason so that to write or speak slightingly of the emperor was interpreted as conspiracy to bring the commonwealth into contempt and was punished with death. Although he was justly hated by the Roman nobles, in the provinces he was respected because he sought to protect them against extortion and to foster their general interests. He died in the year 37 at the age of seventy-eight.

CALIGULA.--There was no law for the regulation of the succession. But the Senate, the prætorians, and the people united in calling to the throne Caius, the son of Germanicus (37-41). This ruler, called Caligula, at first mild and generous in his doings, soon rushed into such excesses of savage cruelty and monstrous vice that he was thought to be half-deranged. He was fond of seeing with his own eyes the infliction of tortures. His wild extravagance in the matter of public games and in building drained the resources of the empire. After four years, this madman was cut down by two of his guards whom he had grievously insulted.

CLAUDIUS.--Claudius, the uncle and successor of Caligula, and the son of Drusus and Antonia, was not bad, but weak. He was a student and a recluse in his habits. His favorites and nearest connections were unprincipled. The depravity of his wife, Messalina, was such that he did right in sanctioning her death. The immoral and ambitious Agrippina, whom he next married, had an influence less malign. But she was unfaithful to her husband; and this fact, together with the fear she felt that Nero, her son by her first marriage, would be excluded from the throne, impelled her to the crime of taking the life of Claudius by poison.

NERO.--Nero reigned from 54 to 68. He was the grandson of Germanicus, and had been the pupil of the philosopher Seneca, and of Burrus, an excellent man, the captain of the Prætorian Guard. The first five years of Nero's reign were honorably distinguished from the portion of it that followed. When a warrant for the execution of a criminal was brought to him, he regretted that he had ever learned to write. His first great crime was the poisoning of Britannicus, the son of Claudius. Nero became enamored of a fierce and ambitious woman, Poppæa Sabina. On the basis of false charges, he took the life of his wife, Octavia, the daughter of Claudius (A.D. 62). His criminal mother, Agrippina, after various previous attempts made by him to destroy her, was dispatched by his command (A.D. 59). His unbridled cruelty and jealousy moved him to order Seneca, one of the men to whom he owed most, to commit suicide. He came forward as a musician, and nothing delighted him so much as the applause rendered to his musical performances. He recited his own poems, and was stung with jealousy when he found himself outdone by Lucan. His eagerness to figure as a charioteer prompted him, early in his reign, to construct a circus in his own grounds on the Vatican, where he could exhibit his skill as a coachman to a throng of delighted spectators. At length he appeared, lyre in hand, on the stage before the populace. Senators of high descent, and matrons of noble family, were induced by his example and commands to come forward in public as dancers and play-actors. The public treasure he squandered in expensive shows, and in the lavish distribution of presents in connection with them.

THE CHRISTIANS.--Nero has the undesirable distinction of being the first of the emperors to persecute the Christians. In A.D. 64 a great fire broke out at Rome, which laid a third of the city in ashes. He was suspected of having kindled it; and, in order to divert suspicion from himself, he charged the crime upon the Christians, who were obnoxious, Tacitus tells us, on account of their "hatred of the human race." Their withdrawal from customary amusements and festivals, which involved immorality or heathen rites, naturally gave rise to this accusation of cynical misanthropy. A great number were put to death, "and in their deaths they were made subjects of sport; for they were covered with the hides of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire to, and, when day declined, were burned to serve for nocturnal lights." At length a feeling of compassion arose among the people for the victims of this wanton ferocity. Prior to this time, while the Christians were confounded with the Jews as one of their sects, they had been more protected than persecuted by the Roman authorities. Now that they were recognized as a distinct body,--the adherents of a new religion not identified with any particular nation, but seeking to spread itself everywhere,--they fell under the condemnation of Roman law, and were exposed to the hostility of magistrates, as well as to the wrath of the fanatical populace.

Nero was a great builder. The ground which had been burnt over in the fire he laid out in regular streets, leaving open spaces, and limiting the height of the houses. But a large area he reserved for his "Golden House," which, with its lakes and shady groves, stretched over the ground on which the Coliseum afterwards stood, and as far as the Esquiline.

THE CITY OF ROME.--Ancient Rome was mostly built on the left bank of the Tiber. It spread from the Palatine, the seat of the original settlement, over six other hills; so that it became the "city of seven hills." All of them appeared higher than they do now. Of these hills the Capitoline was the citadel and the seat of the gods. In earlier days, from a part of the summit, the Tarpeian Rock, criminals were hurled. In time the hill became covered with public edifices, of which the grandest was the Temple of "Capitoline Jupiter." On the Palatine were eventually constructed the vast palaces of the emperors, the ruins of which have been uncovered in recent times. The walls of Servius Tullius encompassed the seven hills. The walls constructed by Aurelian (270-275 A.D.), Probus, and Honorius (402 A.D.), inclosed an area twelve miles in circumference. The streets were most of them narrow; and, to economize space, the houses were built very high. One of the finest, as well as most ancient, thoroughfares was the Via Sacra, which ran past the Coliseum, or the Flavian amphitheater, and under the Triumphal Arch of Titus, erected after the capture of Jerusalem, along the east of the Forum to the Capitol. There was a particular street in Rome where shoemakers and booksellers were congregated. The central part of the city was thronged, and noisy with cries of teamsters and of venders of all sorts of wares. The fora--one of which, the "Roman Forum," between the Capitoline and the Palatine, was the great center of Roman life--were open places paved, and surrounded with noble buildings,--temples, and basilicas, or halls of justice. The fora were either places for the transaction of public business, or they served the purpose of modern market-places. Among the public buildings of note were the vast colonnades, places of resort both for business and for recreation. The sewers, and especially the aqueducts, were structures of a stupendous character. Among the most imposing edifices in ancient Rome were the baths. Those built by Diocletian had room for three thousand bathers at once. In these establishments the beauty of the gardens and fountains without was on a level with the elegance of the interior furnishings, and with the attraction of the libraries, paintings, and sculptures, which added intellectual pleasure to the physical comfort for which, mainly, these gigantic buildings were constructed. Besides the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, there were many other temples, some of which were but little inferior to that majestic edifice.

The triumphal arches--as that of Titus, already mentioned, which was built of Pentelic marble--and the commemorative columns--as the Column of Trajan, which stood in the forum that bears his name--were among the architectural wonders of the ancient capital of the world. The plain, named of old the Campus Martius, on the north-west side of the city, and bordering on the Tiber, contained, among the buildings and pleasure-grounds by which it was covered, the Pantheon, and the magnificent mausoleum of Augustus. On the south-west of the Coelian Hill, the Appian Way turns to the south-east, and passes out of the Appian Gate. It is skirted for miles with sepulchral monuments of ancient Romans, of which the circular tomb of Metella Cæcilia is one of the most interesting. There are varying estimates of the population of ancient Rome. Probably the number of free inhabitants, in the early centuries of the empire, was not far from a million; and the slaves were probably almost as many.

DEATH OF NERO: GALBA.--Growing jealous of the legates who commanded armies on the frontiers, Nero determined to destroy them. They consequently revolted; and war between the troops of two of them issued in the death of Vindex, the general in Gaul. But Galba was deputed to carry on the contest; and Nero, being forsaken even by his creature, Tigellinus, and the prætorians, at last gained courage to call on a slave to dispatch him, and died (A.D. 68) at the age of thirty. The principal events out of Italy, during his reign, were the revolt of the Britons under the brave queen Boadicea (A.D. 61), and the suppression of it by Suetonius Paulinus; the war with the Parthians and Armenians, extending slightly the frontier of the empire; and the beginning of the Jewish war. Despite the corruption at Rome, her disciplined soldiers still maintained their superiority on the borders.

OTHO: VITELLIUS.--With the death of Nero, the Augustan family came to an end. Galba began the series of military emperors. A Roman of the old type, simple, severe, and parsimonious, he pleased nobody. The prætorians killed him, and elevated Otho, a profligate noble, to the throne; but he was obliged to contend with a rival aspirant, Vitellius, commander of the German legions, who defeated him, and became emperor A.D. 69. Vitellius was not only vicious, like his predecessor, but was cowardly and inefficient. The Syrian and Egyptian legions refused to obey so worthless a ruler, and proclaimed their commander, Flavius Vespasian, as emperor. As Vespasian's general, Antonius, approached Rome, Vitellius renounced the throne, and declared his readiness to retire to private life. His adherents withstood him; and, in the struggle that followed between the two parties in the city, the Capitoline Temple was burned. The Flavian army took Rome, and Vitellius was put to an ignominious death (A.D. 69).

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III. THE FLAVIANS AND THE ANTONINES

VESPASIAN: THE JEWISH WAR.--Vespasian, the first in the list of good emperors, restored discipline in the army and among the prætorians, instituted a reform in the finances, and erected the immense amphitheater now called the Coliseum, for the gladiatorial games. By his general, Cerealis, he put down the revolt in Germany and Eastern Gaul, and thus saved several provinces to the empire. Civilis, the leader of the rebellion, had aimed to establish an independent German principality on the west of the Rhine. Vespasian had begun the war with the Jews while Nero reigned (A.D. 66). The Romans had to face a most energetic resistance. Among the captives taken by them in Galilee was the Jewish historian, Josephus. At the end of A.D. 67, all Galilee was subdued. The fanatical, or popular, party, the Zealots, got the upper hand at Jerusalem. The city was torn with the strife of violent factions. In A.D. 70 commenced the memorable siege by Titus, the son of Vespasian, the details of which are given by Josephus. The fall of the city was attended with the conflagration of the temple. Although the estimate given by Josephus of the number that perished during the siege, which he places at eleven hundred thousand, is exaggerated, it is true that the destruction of life was immense. The inhabitants of the city who were not killed were sold as slaves. In Britain a most competent officer--Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus--was made governor in A.D. 78. He conquered the country as far north as the Tyne and the Solway, and built a line of forts across the isthmus between England and Scotland.

TITUS (A.D. 79-81).--Vespasian's firm and beneficent reign was followed by the accession of Titus, who had been previously associated by his father with himself in the imperial office. Titus was mild in temper, but voluptuous in his tastes, and prodigal in expenditures. One of the marked events of his short reign was the destruction of the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum by a great eruption of Vesuvius (A.D. 79). The uncovering of the streets and buildings of Pompeii in recent times has added much to our knowledge of ancient arts and customs. A terrible fire and destructive pestilence at Rome were regarded as sent by the gods, not on account of the sins of the emperor, but of the nation.

DOMITIAN (A.D. 81-96).--Domitian, the younger brother of Titus, succeeded him. By nature autocratic, he refused to share the government with the senate, as Augustus had planned. In order the more completely to control this body he assumed the censorship for life. In the latter part of his reign Domitian, like Tiberius, was gloomy and suspicious, and committed many acts of tyranny. He was killed by the freedmen of his own palace (A.D. 96). His war with the Dacians on the Danube had been concluded by the dubious stipulation to pay them an annual tribute as a reward for abstaining from predatory incursions into Moesia (A.D. 90). For the first time, Rome purchased peace of her enemies. Domitian was guilty of persecuting the Christians, among whom, it is now known, was included at least one member of his own family, his niece, Flavia Domatilla, who was also allied to him by marriage. The epistle of Clement of Rome, the oldest extant Christian writing after the Apostles, refers to the barbarities inflicted upon Christian disciples by this tyrant.

NERVA (A.D. 96-98).--The Senate now took the initiative, and placed on the throne one of their own number, Nerva, an old man of mild and virtuous character. The administration was in every point in contrast with the preceding. But the best thing Nerva did was to provide for the curbing of the prætorians by appointing, with the concurrence of the Senate, a most competent man to be his colleague and successor.

TRAJAN (A.D. 98-117).--Trajan was a native of Spain, and had been brought up in the camp. He belongs among the very best of the Roman emperors. He upheld the ancient laws and institutions of the state. He provided for the impartial administration of justice. He restored freedom of speech in the Senate. He founded schools, and establishments for the care of orphans, facilitated commerce by building new roads, bridges, and havens, and adorned Rome with a public library, and with a new and magnificent forum, or market-place, where "Trajan's Column" was placed by Senate and people as a monument of his victories and services.

He relished the society of literary men like the historian Tacitus. He was an intimate friend of Pliny (the younger), whose correspondence while he was governor of Bithynia throws much light upon the emperor's character and policy. Trajan's own manner of life was simple, and free from luxury. To the people he furnished lavishly the diversions which they coveted. He made an aggressive war against the Dacians on the Danube, and constituted a new province of Dacia. He carried his arms into the Parthian territory; and three new provinces--Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria--were the fruit of his campaign in the East. In a letter to Pliny, he defined the policy to be pursued towards Christians, who had become very numerous in the region where Pliny governed. The effect of the emperor's rescript was to place Christianity among the religions under the ban of the law. This decision was long in force, and guided the policy of future emperors towards the new faith. HADRIAN (A.D. 117-138).--Trajan was succeeded by Hadrian, a lover of peace,--a cultivated man, with extraordinary taste in the fine arts, and their generous patron. He was diligent and full of vigor in the transaction of public business. Although genial and affable, his temper was not so even as that of Trajan; and he was guilty of occasional acts of cruelty. He spent the larger portion of his reign in traveling through his dominions, personally attending to the wants and condition of his subjects. He constructed great works in different portions of the empire: in Rome, his Mausoleum (now the Castle of St. Angelo), and his grand temple of Rome and Venus. He began the wall connecting the Scottish friths. A fresh revolt broke out among the Jews (A.D. 131), under a fanatic named Bar-Cocaba, which was suppressed in 135. Jerusalem was razed to the ground; and the Jewish rites were forbidden within the new city of Ælia Capitolina, which the emperor founded on its site. This gave a finishing blow to the Jewish and Judaizing types of Christianity within the limits of the Church.

ANTONINUS PIUS (A.D. 138-161).--Antoninus Pius was the adopted son and successor of Hadrian. He was one of the noblest of princes, a man of almost blameless life. His reign was an era of peace, the golden age in the imperial history. He fostered learning, was generous without being prodigal, was firm yet patient and indulgent, and watched over the interests of his subjects with the care of a father. It is a sign of the happiness of his reign that it does not afford startling occurrences to the narrator.

MARCUS AURELIUS (A.D. 161-180).--Hardly less eminent for his virtues was the next in the succession of sovereigns, Marcus Aurelius (161-180). "A sage upon the throne," he combined a love of learning with the moral vigor and energy of the old Roman character, and with the self-government and serenity of the Stoic school, of the tenets of which he was a noble exemplar as well as a deeply interesting expounder. A philosopher was now on the throne; and his reign gives some countenance to the doctrine of Plato, that the world could be well governed only when philosophers should be kings, or kings philosophers. He endured with patience the grievous faults of his wife Faustina, and of his brother by adoption, and co-regent, Lucius Verus. He protected the eastern frontier against Parthia. In the war with the Marcomanni, he drove the German tribes back over the Danube, and gained a signal victory over the Quadi in their own land. His great object was to strike terror into the barbarian enemies of the empire on the north, and prevent future incursions. Although victorious in many of his battles, he failed to accomplish this result. The danger from barbarian invasion increased with the lapse of time. Before his work was finished, Marcus Aurelius died at Vindobona (Vienna), in March, 180. During his reign, there was persecution of Christians. Especially the churches of Lyons and Vienne have left a record of their sufferings. The virtuous emperors, who were strenuous in their exertions to maintain the old laws and customs, were apt to be more severe in their treatment of Christians, whom they ignorantly regarded as a mischievous sect, than were those emperors who were men of looser principles.

STATE OF MORALS.--The Roman Empire, in the declining days of heathenism, presented the spectacle of a flourishing civilization in contrast with extreme moral degeneracy. Rich and populous cities; stately palaces; beautiful works of art--as vases, statues, carved altars--on every hand; bridges and aqueducts, and noble highways, binding land to land; institutions of education in the provincial cities as well as in Rome; a thriving trade and commerce; a rapid spread of the Roman language, of the Roman legal system, and Roman culture and manners over the subject countries,--these are among the signs and fruits of civilization. But with all this outward prosperity and elegance, there was a growing sensuality, a decay of manly feeling, a disregard of the sanctity of the marriage tie, an insatiable hunger for wealth and for the pleasures of sense. One of the most corrupting features in the social condition was slavery. Every Roman of moderate means aspired to own at least a few slaves. Some owned from ten to twenty thousand, mostly field-hands. Many householders possessed as many as five hundred. Horace gives it as a sign of the simplicity of his life as a bachelor, that he is waited on at table by only three slaves. Slave-holding among the Romans brought in temptations to all sorts of brutality and vice. It brought a poisonous atmosphere into every household. Nothing more clearly illustrates the moral degradation of this period than the character of the sports in which people of all ranks delighted. The most attractive theatrical performances came to be comedies, from the Greek and Latin plays of the same order, where scenes were introduced from the licentious stories of the Greek mythology. But the Pantomime, which was often of an unchaste and even obscene character, gradually usurped the place of every other exhibition on the stage. The chief amusements of the people of all classes were the Circus and the Arena. In the Circus, before hundreds of thousands of spectators, nobles of ancient lineage competed in the chariot race. Gladiatorial games, which had first taken place at funerals, and in honor of deceased friends, acquired an almost incredible popularity. At the games instituted by Augustus, ten thousand men joined in these bloody combats. In the festivals under the auspices of Trajan, in A.D. 106, eleven thousand tame and wild animals were slain. Not satisfied with seeing pairs of men engage in mortal conflict, the Romans were eager to witness bloodshed on a larger scale. The emperors provided actual battles between hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of men, which were beheld by countless spectators. On an artificial lake in Cæsar's garden, Augustus gave a sea-fight in which three thousand soldiers were engaged. The effect of these brutal spectacles of agony and death was inevitably to harden the heart.

LITERATURE.--If the sanguinary fights in the arena excited little or no condemnation, the prevalence of various other sorts of immorality, at variance with the practice of better days, could not fail to call out different forms of censure.

One of these forms of protest was through the satirical poets. Of these caustic writers, Persius (34-62) is obscure and of a moderate degree of merit. Juvenal (about 55-135), on the contrary, is spirited and full of force. Martial (43-101), a Spaniard by birth, was the author of numerous short poems of a pithy and pointed character, called epigrammata. All these poets, if we make proper discount for the exaggeration of satire, are very instructive as to the manners and morals of their time. Lucian (120-200), who wrote in Greek, the best known of whose works are his "Dialogues," touched with his broad humor a great many of the superstitions and follies of the day.

The popular teachers in the imperial time were the rhetoricians, analogous to the Greek Sophists,--teachers of rhetoric and eloquence,--one of whom, Quintilian (who was born about 40, and died about 118), was the first to receive from the public treasury a regular salary, and had among his pupils the younger Pliny and the two grand-nephews of Domitian. The influence of the mania for rhetoric was more and more to impart an artificial character to literature and art. The epic poems of such writers as Lucan and Statitis are to a large extent imitations; although Lucan's principal poem, "Pharsalia," gives evidence of poetic talent. Where there was so little productive genius, it was natural that grammarians and commentators should abound. There was one great writer, the historian Tacitus (about 54-117), who towers above his contemporaries, and in vigor and conciseness has seldom been equaled. The elder Pliny (23-79), whose curiosity to witness the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 cost him his life, was a famous observer and author in natural history. His nephew, the younger Pliny, the friend of Trajan, has left to us ten books of "Epistles," which present an agreeable picture of the life and thoughts of a cultivated Roman gentleman. The philosopher Seneca, with the exception of Marcus Aurelius, the most eminent expositor of the Roman Stoic school, was a voluminous author. No ancient heathen writer has uttered so many thoughts and precepts which bear a resemblance to teachings of the New Testament.

The study that nourished most in this period is Jurisprudence. It is the classic era of the jurists. Persons versed in the law were preferred by the emperors for high offices. Men who would have been statesmen under the Republic, found a solace and delight in legal studies. Among the most learned jurists of this era, were Caius Papinian, and Ulpian. Of the Greek writers, one of the most important is Plutarch (about 50-120), whose "Lives," and "Essays" (or Moralia), are among the most delightful and instructive of all the works of antiquity. One of the noblest philosophical writers of that or of any other period is the Stoic Epictetus (50-c.120).

The two most popular systems of philosophy in the closing days of the Republic and the early period of the Empire, were the Stoic and the Epicurean. The severity of the Stoic doctrine was somewhat softened by its Roman teachers; but the rigorous self-control, the superiority to misfortune, and the contempt of death, which it recommended, found favor with noble Romans in dark days. Cato and other champions of the falling Republic were disciples of this school. Later, New Platonism, of a mystical and contemplative type, secured many adherents.

SKEPTICISM.--Long before the fall of the Republic, faith in the old mythology had begun to decline. This change followed upon an intimate contact of the Romans with the Greek religion. It was hastened by the familiarity acquired by the Romans with so great a variety of heathen systems. The decay of morality was attended with a spread of skepticism as regards the supernatural world altogether. In the course of the debate in the Roman Senate on the punishment of the confederates of Catiline, Julius Caesar opposed their execution, on the ground that death puts an end to consciousness, and thus to all suffering. It does not appear that in that body, where Cicero and Cato were present, any one disputed this tenet. Cicero in his philosophical essays advocates the doctrine of immortality by arguments, mostly gathered from Greek sources,--arguments some of which are of more and some of less weight. His correspondence, on the contrary, even in times of bereavement, affords no proof that this consoling truth had any practical hold upon his convictions.

SUPERSTITION.--The spread of skepticism was attended, as time went on, with a re-action to the other extreme of superstition. Magic and sorcery came into vogue. There was an eagerness to become acquainted with Oriental religious rites, and to pay homage to deities worshiped in the East with mysterious ceremonies. Another tendency strongly manifest was towards what is called syncretism, or a mingling of different religious systems. It was hoped that the truth might be found by combining beliefs drawn from many different quarters. This eclectic drift was signally manifest in religion as well as in philosophy.

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IV. THE EMPERORS MADE BY THE SOLDIERS: THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY

COMMODUS.--Rome had enjoyed good government for eighty-four years. This was owing to the fact that her sovereigns had been nominated to their office, instead of inheriting it. None of the emperors during this interval had male children. Marcus Aurelius made the mistake of associating with him in power his son Commodus, who was eighteen years old when his father died, and reigned alone from 180 to 192. He began his despicable career as sole ruler by buying peace of the Marcomanni and the Quadi. He turned out to be a detestable tyrant, who was likewise guilty of the worst personal vices. He was strangled in his bedroom by one of his concubines, Marcia, with the assistance of others, all of whom he was intending to kill. At this time the army, where there had been more energy and virtue than in any other class, began to decline in discipline. Society was growing more and more corrupt. It proves the inherent strength of the organization of the Roman Empire, that, amid all the causes of disintegration and decay, it lasted for two centuries longer.

I. EMPERORS MADE BY THE SOLDIERS.

We now enter upon a period of military license. The emperors are appointed by the soldiers. The rulers, when the soldiers fall out with them, are slain. In the course of ninety-two years, from 192 to 284, twenty-five emperors, with an average reign of less than four years for each, sat on the throne. Only two reigns exceeded ten years. Ten emperors perished by violence at the hands of the soldiers. A real advantage in this way of making emperors, was, that supreme power might thus devolve on able generals; but another, and a fatal result, was the demoralizing of the armies, by whose favor the rulers of the state were set up and pulled down.

TO ALEXANDER SEVERUS (A.D. 222).--The assassins of Commodus, with the assent of the praetorians, made a worthy senator, Pertinax, emperor; but his honesty and frugality, and his disposition to maintain discipline among the soldiers, caused them to murder him three months after his accession (193). It is said that they then sold the imperial office at auction to a rich senator, but the leaders of the armies in different regions refused their consent. Of these, Septimius Severus (193-211) made his way to the throne, and put down his rivals. The empire became a military despotism. A garrison of forty thousand troops, the prefect of whom was in power second only to the sovereign, took the place of the old prætorians. Severus was a good general. In a war against the Parthians, he captured Ctesiphon, their capital. Caracalla, his son (211-217), was a base tyrant. He was murdered by the prætorian prefect, Macrinus, who reigned for a short time (217-218), but perished in consequence of his attempts to reform the discipline of the army. Heliogabalus (218-222) was not more cruel than others had been, but his gross and shameless debauchery was without a precedent.

POWER OF THE PROVINCES: DISCORD.--In the reign of Caracalla is placed the Edict which gave the rights of citizenship to all the free inhabitants of the Roman Empire. The provinces had been steadily rising in power and influence. At Rome, among officials of the highest grade, as well as in the higher professions, there was a throng of provincials. The provinces were disposed to nominate emperors of their own. It was hard for the central authority to keep under control the frontier armies. To add to these sources of division, there was a growing jealousy between the East and West, owing to a difference in language, ideas, and interests. Persia was soon to threaten the empire on the East, and Gothic barbarians to invade its territories.

ALEXANDER SEVERUS: PERSIA.--Alexander Severus (222-235) was a man of pure morals, and sincerely disposed to remedy abuses and to govern well. But the evils were too great for the moderate degree of vigor with which he was endowed. The overthrow of the Parthian kingdom, in 226, created, in the New Persian Monarchy, a formidable enemy to Rome. Alexander did little more than check the advance of Persia. In a war against the Germans, he was slain by his own soldiers.

TO DECIUS (A.D. 249).--The fierce and brutal Maximin, who had excited the soldiers of Alexander Severus to mutiny, reigned from 235 to 238. The Senate roused itself to resist his advance into Italy; and he, and his son with him, were killed in his tent by his soldiers. Gordian (238-244) at least held the frontier against the attacks of the Persians. Philip, an Arabian, probably a Roman colonist, after reigning from 244 to 249, was supplanted by Decius, whom his rebellious Moesian and Pannonian soldiers raised to power.

DECIUS TO CLAUDIUS (A.D. 250-268).--The short reign of Decius was marked by the first general persecution of the Christian Church. During his reign, the Goths (A.D. 250) invaded the empire. They traversed Dacia, and crossed the Danube. They ravaged Moesia, and even made their way into Thrace. Decius was defeated by them in Moesia, and slain. The peril of the empire continually increased. The German tribes on the north, the Goths on the Lower Danube and the Euxine, and Persia in the east, arrayed themselves in hostility.

The reigns of Valerian (253-260) and of his associate and successor, Gallienus (260-268), were marked by continuous disaster. Numerous independent rulers--"the thirty tyrants"--established themselves, generally for a very short time, in different regions. In the East, one kingdom, the capital of which was Palmyra, and which had for a ruler Zenobia, the widow of its founder, lasted for ten years (264-273). The Goths occupied Dacia, and from the Cimmerian Bosphorus sent out their predatory expeditions in all directions, plundering cities, including Athens and Corinth, and carrying off immense booty to their homes south of the Danube. The Persians conquered Armenia, took Valerian prisoner, advanced into Syria, and burned Antioch.

TO DIOCLETIAN (A.D. 284).--It would seem as if the Roman empire was on the verge of dissolution. But a series of vigorous emperors--among them Claudius (268-270) and Aurelian (270-275)--quelled rebellion within its borders, and re-established its boundaries; although Aurelian gave up to the Goths Dacia, which had been of no benefit to the empire. Probus (276-282) was a prudent as well as valiant ruler. Carus (282-283) invaded Persia, captured Seleucia and Ctesiphon, and might, perhaps, have completed the conquest of the country, but for his death. Numerianus (283-284) was the last in the succession of rulers during this period of military control, of which the corruption of the army was the worst result.

II. THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY (TO A.D. 375).

DIOCLETIAN.--Once more the gigantic and weakened frame of the Roman Empire was invigorated by a change in the character of the chief rulers and in the method of government. Diocletian (284-305), one of a number of energetic emperors who were of Illyrian birth, first stripped the imperial office of its limitations, and converted it into an absolute monarchy. This new system was carried to its completion by Constantine. Diocletian took from the Senate what political jurisdiction was left to it. He abolished the difference between the treasury of the state and the private coffers of the prince. The precedence of Rome was taken away by making other great cities to be seats of government. There were to be two emperors under the title of Augustus, with two Caesars under them; and thus the empire was divided, for administrative purposes, into four parts. Maximian, the second Augustus, was to rule over Italy, Africa, and the islands, with Milan for his residence. Constantius Chlorus had the western provinces, --Spain, Gaul, and Britain. At Nicomedia, Diocletian, a man of imposing presence and of great talents as a statesman, exercised rule for twenty years with efficiency and success. The new system, if it involved the peril of strife among the regents, led to a more vigilant and efficient government in the different provinces, and provided for a peaceful succession to the throne. But the government came to resemble, in the omnipotence of the emperor, in the obsequious homage paid to him, and in the cringing manners of the court, an Oriental despotism. The old heathen religion was considered by conservative Romans to be an essential part of the imperial system, and indispensable to the unity of the empire. It was this view, in connection with other influences, which moved Diocletian, near the close of his reign, in 303, to set on foot a systematic persecution of the Christian Church, by a series of extremely severe and well-contrived measures, through which it was designed to extirpate the new religion. The last great persecution, in the reign of Decius, cruel though it had been, did not approach in severity this final effort to exterminate the disciples of the Christian faith, who had now become very numerous. Terrible sufferings were inflicted, but without avail. In 305 Diocletian, partly on account of a serious illness, formally abdicated, and obliged Maximian to do the same. Civil wars followed, until Constantine, the son of Constantius, gained the supremacy, first as joint ruler with Licinius, who governed in the East, and then, after a bloody struggle which began in A.D. 314, as sole master of the empire (A.D. 323).

CONSTANTINE (A.D. 306-337).--The career of Constantine was stained by acts of cruelty towards members of his own family. In the closing period of his life, he was less just and humane than in earlier days. The change which had taken place in the imperial system was signally manifest in his removal of the seat of government to CONSTANTINOPLE, which was built up by him, and named in his honor. Placed between Europe and Asia, on a tongue of land where it was protected from assault, it was admirably suited for a metropolis. But the change of capital involved dangers for the western portions of the empire, exposed as they were to the assaults of the barbarians. The changes in the government begun by Diocletian were completed by Constantine. The empire was divided, for purposes of government, into four prefectures, each of which was subdivided into dioceses. Constantine established, likewise, different classes of nobles, the type of modern systems of nobility. He organized the army afresh, under the Master of the Horse and Master of the Foot, each, however, commanding, in action, both infantry and cavalry, and each having under him dukes and counts. In short, the system of central and despotic administration, with subordinate rulers, which Diocletian began, was perfected by Constantine. Diocletian, in order to fortify the imperial power against the army, had shared his power with "a cabinet of emperors," which his genius enabled him to control. To prevent the breaking up of the empire through the system of viceroys thus created to preserve it, Constantine separated the civil authority from the military as regards the subordinate rulers, while both functions were united in himself. He still further exalted his throne by giving it even more of an Oriental character, by creating a multitude of officials, who were satellites of the sovereign, and by becoming the secular head and guardian of the Christian Church. The arrangements of his court, with its grades of officials, from the chamberlain downwards, were after the Oriental pattern.

THE DOWNFALL OF HEATHENISM.

PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY.--The failure of the grand attempt of Diocletian to exterminate Christianity was an indication of its coming triumph. Its progress had been gradual yet rapid, and, in its earlier stages especially, obscure. Of the labors of most of the apostles we know little. On the approach of the Jewish war (p. 180), the Apostle John, and other Christians with him, had repaired to Asia Minor. There, at Ephesus, this apostle lived until the reign of Trajan, and from that center exerted a wide influence, the traces of which are marked and various. The cities were the principal scenes of early missionary work. They were the "strategic points." In them it was easier for Christian preachers to gain a hearing, and in them they were exempt from the hindrance created by strange dialects. Wherever Christians went, even for purposes of trade or mechanical industry, they carried the seeds of the new doctrine. Even with regard to the churches of Alexandria and Carthage, which became so flourishing, and in the case of the church at Rome itself, we can not say how they were first planted. The exultant terms in which the ecclesiastical writers at the end, and even as early as the middle, of the second century speak of the increasing number of the converts, proves that the Christian cause was fast gaining ground. Its adherents were sometimes of the higher class, but mostly from the ranks of the poor.

PERSECUTIONS.--Persecution from the side of the heathen began among the populace. Always when fire, tempest, or plague occurred, they were ascribed to the wrath of the heathen gods at the desertion of their altars, and the cry was for Christian blood. But Christianity, from the time of Trajan, was an illegal religion. Magistrates might at any time require Christians to do homage to the emperor's bust, or to burn incense to the old divinities. To make a proselyte of a Roman citizen, or to meet in private companies for worship, was unlawful. The persecutions by public authority have been said to be ten; but this number is too small if all of them are reckoned, and too large if only those of wide extent are included. The constancy with which even young women and children sometimes endured the torture, excited wonder in the beholders. Among the more noted martyrs are Ignatius, bishop of Antioch (116); Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who had been a pupil of the Apostle John, and was put to death in 155; and Cyprian, the aged bishop of Carthage, one of the leading ecclesiastics of the time, who suffered under Valerian in 258.

THE CHURCH UNDER CONSTANTINE.--The accession of Constantine made Christianity the predominant religion in the Roman Empire. His conversion was gradual. More and more he came to rely for support in his conflicts with his rivals upon the God of the Christians. The sign of the cross, which he said that he beheld in the sky, and which led him to make the cross his standard, may have been an optical illusion occasioned partly by his own mental state at the moment, when, after prayer, he was standing at noon-day in the door of his tent. He remained, like many others in that day, not without relics of the old beliefs, as is seen from inscriptions on his coins, and other evidences. His own baptism he deferred until he was near his end, on account of the prevalent idea that all previous guilt is effaced in the baptismal water. The edict of unrestricted toleration was issued from Milan in 312. Constantine did not proscribe heathenism. He forbade immoral rites, and rites connected with magic and sorcery. But, with this exception, heathen worshipers were not molested. But the emperor gave his zealous personal countenance to the Christian cause, and marks of his favor to its adherents. By the privileges and immunities which he granted to the Church and its ministers, he did more than he would have been likely to effect by the use of severity against its adversaries. ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH.--The early Christian societies were little republics, at first under the supervision of the apostles. Their organization shaped itself partly after the model of the synagogue, and partly from the pattern of the civil communities and the voluntary associations about them. In the apostolic age a body of elders or bishops and a body of deacons in each church guided its affairs, while the members took an active part in the choice of their officers, and in the general direction of ecclesiastical proceedings. In the second century, when we get a distinct view of the churches after the obscure interval that follows the age of the apostles, we find that over the elders is a bishop, whose office grows in importance as the churches become larger, as the need of more compact organization is felt, and as the clergy become more and more distinct from the laity. The bishop of the city church acquires jurisdiction over the adjacent country churches. The bishop in the capital of each province comes to exercise a certain superintendence within the province. This is the metropolitan system. More and more the bishops of the great cities, especially Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, exercise a parallel supervision in larger divisions of the empire. This is the patriarchal system. As early as the closing part of the second century, the catholic or universal church presents itself before us, conceived of as a unity which is made such by the hierarchy of bishops, and by connection with the apostolic sees,--the churches founded by the apostles in person. As the apostles were thought of as having a head in Peter, the bishops of Rome, who were looked on as his successors, had accorded to them a precedence over other bishops. The grandeur of Rome, the strength of the church there, its services to other churches in the empire, especially in the West, together with many other considerations additional to its alleged historic relation to Peter and to Paul, gave to the Roman See, as time went on, a growing and acknowledged pre-eminence. The custom of holding synods helped to build up the unity of the Church, and to give power and dignity to its officials.

SECTS: THEOLOGY.--The Church from the beginning had to contend with opposing sects. There was a desire to amalgamate the Christian doctrine with other systems. On the Jewish side, the Ebionites clung to the Old Testament ritual observances, a part of them being bitterly hostile to the Apostle Paul, and another part, the Nazareans, not sharing this fanatical feeling, but still adhering to the Jewish ceremonies. On the other hand, the Gnostics introduced a dualism, and ascribed to the Demiurge--a second deity, either subordinate to the supreme God, or antagonistic to him--the origination of this world and of the Old Testament religion. They made a compound of Christianity, Judaism, and heathen religion and speculation, each Gnostic sect giving to one or the other of these ingredients the preponderance in the strange and often fantastic medley. The controversy with heathenism was prosecuted with the pen. Of the numerous defenses of Christianity, now addressed to heathen rulers and now to its opponents in private stations, the most remarkable work in the first three centuries was the writing of Origen--who was the most eminent of the teachers of theology at Alexandria--in reply to Celsus. Origen, after scholarly labors so vast as to earn for him the title of the Adamantine, died in 254, in consequence of his sufferings in the Diocletian persecution. Two defenses of the Christian faith, composed about the middle of the second century by Justin Martyr, are specially instructive as to the state of Christian opinion and the customs of the Church. The first great center of theological activity was Alexandria, where philosophy was studied in a liberal spirit. In the East, the questions relative to the divinity of Jesus and the relation of the divine to the human nature, engrossed attention. In the West, it was the practical aspects of theology, the doctrine of sin and of the deliverance of the will by grace, which were chiefly discussed. The Arian controversy grew out of the assertion by Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, that Jesus was the first-made of all beings, the instrument of the creation of all other beings, but himself a creature. The leader of the orthodox opposition to this opinion was the famous Alexandrian archdeacon, afterwards bishop, Athanasius. This debate it was which led to the assembling, under the auspices of Constantine, of the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325), the first of a series of General Councils, for the adjudication of doctrinal disputes, that were held in this and the following centuries. The Arian doctrine was condemned at Nicaea, and, after a long contest in the period subsequent, was finally determined to be heretical. In the West, the main controversy was that raised by Pelagius, respecting the power of the will, the native character of men, and the agency of God in their conversion. In this debate, Augustine (354-430), the most eminent theologian of the West, bishop of Hippo in North Africa, was the renowned champion of the doctrine of grace against what he considered an exaggerated assertion of free-will. Pelagianism was condemned in the West, and nominally in the East where views intermediate between the Pelagians and Augustinians commonly prevailed. The most eminent scholar contemporary with Augustine was Jerome, who died in 420, the author of the Latin version of the Scriptures, called the Vulgate. Preceding Augustine in North Africa, early in the third century, was Tertullian, a vigorous and fervid writer, who first made Latin the vehicle of theological discussion; and, a little later, Cyprian, whose works relate chiefly to church unity and hierarchical government, of which he was a devoted champion. Late in the second century, Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in Gaul, one of the most eminent ecclesiastics of that day, composed an elaborate work against the Gnostic heresies. Irenaeus had known Polycarp, a disciple of John the apostle.

CHRISTIAN LIFE.--Passing within the sphere of Christian life, there can be no doubt that Christianity exerted a power, of which there had been no experience before, in reforming the character and conduct of those even who had been addicted to crime and vice. The fraternal feeling of Christians for one another impressed the heathen about them as something new and singularly attractive. It expressed itself in unstinted charity for those in poverty, and in helpfulness for all sorts of distress. The church was a home for the weary and friendless. In the strong reaction against the sensuality of a dissolute society, ascetic tendencies appeared, which, in process of time, issued in monasticism. Anthony of Thebes, born about 250, was one of the earliest and most celebrated of the Anchorites, who chose a hermit life, and abjured all the luxuries of life and most of the comforts which belong to social existence. To the Anchorites succeeded the Caenobites, societies of monks who dwelt in a common habitation under fixed rules; and these were naturally followed by confederacies of such communities under one organization. The monastic vows were poverty, or the renunciation of property; celibacy, or abstinence from marriage; and obedience to the conventual superior. Sometimes in the early centuries great evils and abuses sprang up in connection with monastic life. For example, monks might become fanatical and violent. But they furnished numerous examples of sincere piety, and of unselfish and intrepid self-sacrifice for the welfare of others.

CHANGES IN WORSHIP.--As the Church grew in numbers and wealth, costly edifices were constructed for worship. The services within them became more elaborate. At length art was called in to adorn the Christian sanctuaries. Sculpture and painting were enlisted in the work of providing aids to devotion. Relics of saints and martyrs were cherished as sacred possessions. Religious observances were multiplied; and the Church, under the Christian emperors, with its array of clergy and of imposing ceremonies, assumed much of the stateliness and visible splendor that had belonged to the heathen system which it had supplanted.

LAST DAYS OF HEATHENISM.--When Christianity had become powerful, its disciples forgot the precepts of their Master, and sometimes persecuted the heathen. Christian mobs demolished the old temples. The great temple of Serapis in Alexandria was destroyed, and the statue of the god was broken in pieces. Theodosius I. (379-395) made the celebration of heathen rites a capital offense, and confiscated the property by which heathen worship had been supported. Arians, too, he persecuted, but with less harshness. The Eastern emperor, Justinian, suppressed the school of New Platonic philosophers at Athens, and banished the teachers (529). Heathenism lingered in remote districts, and was hence called paganism, or the religion of rustics. The last adherents of the ancient religion inhabited in the seventh century remote valleys of the Italian islands. The oracles were for ever dumb. The old divinities were never more to be invoked. But it was not by force that heathenism was extirpated. If it had not lost its vitality, it would have survived the penal laws against it. It perished by the expulsive energy of a better faith.

CAUSES OF THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY.--The causes of the spread and triumph of Christianity lie ultimately in the need which men feel of religion, especially in times of dread and distress, and in the intrinsic excellence which was felt to belong to Christianity. In the first and second centuries the dreary feeling engendered by the hollow skepticism that prevailed was favorable to the Christian cause. There was a void to be filled, and the gospel came to fill it. In the third century, when the progress of Christianity was specially rapid, there was a perceptible revival of religious feeling among the heathen; and this, too, operated to the advantage of the gospel. At least it must have done so in numerous instances. In that century the terrible plagues which desolated the empire, with the sufferings that sprung from wild anarchy and misgovernment, made the church a welcome asylum for the afflicted. In the first place, Christianity was a religion. It was neither a merely speculative nor a merely moral system. It took hold of the supernatural. Secondly, it presented to a corrupt society a moral ideal of spotless perfection. Thirdly, it offered, in the doctrine of the cross, a welcome solace,--consolation in life, with a sense of reconciliation, and the hope of everlasting good. Other causes, such as Gibbon enumerates, were operative. But these are themselves mostly effects or aspects of the gospel; or they were auxiliary, not principal, causes.

CHRISTIANITY AND LIBERTY.--The founders of Christianity had no thought of becoming the authors of a political revolution. They had a very different purpose in view. To overthrow the existing order of society would have been equally unwise and impracticable. What was needed was a new spirit of justice and of love. The virtues that were called for then were the passive virtues,--gentleness, forbearance, the calm endurance of ills of which there was no present remedy. The Christian spirit, therefore, did not evoke in the disciples of the new faith sentiments of liberty akin to those which had belonged to Greek and Roman heroes. Indirectly, however, Christianity brought into human society the germs of liberty. In the first place, while it enjoined absolute submission to rulers, it made an exception whenever their commands should require disobedience to God's law. This position involved the denial to the state of that absolute supremacy accorded to it by the ancients. The allegiance to the state became a qualified allegiance. Secondly, there arose within the state another community, which took into its hands, to a large extent, the regulation of social life. The boundaries of the two authorities might be indistinct, but there was a real division of control between them. It is true that tyranny might arise within the Christian organization itself: still, its very existence planted on the earth a principle of liberty, which was destined ultimately to work out the destruction of all tyranny, whether civil or religious. For the first time the rulers of the Roman world were faced by an opposition, meek yet too inflexible for all their power to overcome. This is the first stage in the history of modern liberty. The "heroic and invincible Athanasius" as Milton styles him, boldly confronted Constantine and his successors, and chose to spend twenty years of his life in voluntary or enforced exile rather than bow to their tyrannical decrees. Ambrose, the great archbishop of Milan, compelled the Emperor Theodosius--who, in a fit of anger had ordered a massacre at Thessalonica--to do penance before he could be admitted to the communion. Such occurrences indicate that the days of imperial omnipotence, even over unarmed subjects, were past.

SUCCESSORS OF CONSTANTINE.--Constantine left his empire to his three unworthy sons. Constantine, the eldest, had the Western provinces for his share. He endeavored to wrest Italy from his brother Constans, but was slain at Aquileia (340). This event left Constans the master of the entire West. He took up his abode in Gaul, where he was slain by Magnentius, the leader of a mutinous body of soldiers (350). Constantius was at Edessa, engaged in war against the Persians. He marched westward, and routed Magnentius at Mursia, in Pannonia. This rival fled to Gaul, and was there attacked and destroyed. Gallus, the cousin of Constantius, was put to death for the murder of one of the emperor's officers (354). Julian, the brother of Gallus, was the sole remaining survivor of the family from which the emperor sprung. Constantius, under whom the whole empire was now for a few years (357-361) united, made a triumphal visit to Rome. He was the defender of the Arians, but he found it impossible to coerce the Roman Christians into the adoption of his opinion. The orthodox bishop whom he had banished, was restored. Constantius was succeeded by his cousin Julian (361-363), commonly called the Apostate. Fascinated by the heathen philosophy, and a secret convert to the old religion, he

THE IMPERIAL HOUSE OF CONSTANTINE.

CONSTANTIUS CHLORUS, m. 1, Helena; | +--CONSTANTINE I (the Great) m. 1, Minervina; 2, Fausta | +--CONSTANTINE II. | +--CONSTANTIUS II. | | | +--Constantia, | m. GRATIAN. | +--CONSTANS. | +--CONSTANTIA, m. | 1, Hannibalianus; | 2, GALLUS. | +--HELENA, m. JULIAN.

2, Theodora. | +--Constantius, m. | 1, Galla; | 2, Basilina. | | | +--GALLUS | | m. Constantia, widow of Hannibalianus. | | | +--JULIAN | m. Helena, daughter of Constantine I. | +--Constantia, m. LICINIUS.

proved that its vitality was gone, by his ineffectual exertions to rescue it, and restore its predominance. He was not without merits as a ruler. He looked out for the impartial administration of justice: he revived discipline and a military spirit in the army, and sought to infuse a better spirit into the civil administration. While he avoided cruel persecution, he directed all his personal efforts to the weakening of the Christian cause. Julian led an expedition against the Persians. He sailed down the Euphrates to Circesium, and thence proceeded into the interior of Persia. He repulsed the enemy, but was slain while engaged in the pursuit. The soldiers on the field of battle chose one of his officers, Jovian (363-364), who was a Christian, to be his successor. He conducted the retreat of the army. His reign lasted for only seven months. He showed no intolerance either towards Pagans or Arians, but he gave back to Christianity its former position. The army next chose Valentinian I. (364-375), the son of a Pannonian warrior, who associated with him, as emperor in the East, his brother Valens (364-378). Valens ruled from Constantinople. Valentinian fixed his court at Milan, and sometimes at Treves. He was an unlettered soldier, but strict and energetic in the government of the state, as well as of the army. His time was mostly spent in conflict with the barbarians on the northern frontiers. He carried forward this contest with vigor on the Rhine and on the Danube. He trained up his son Gratian to be his successor. The great event of the reign of Valens was the irruption of the Huns into Europe, and the consequent invasion of the Goths, by whom Valens was defeated and slain in 378. Several emperors followed, until, on the death of Theodosius I., (the Great) (395), the Roman Empire was divided. In 476, after successive invasions of barbarians had disorganized the western part of the Empire, the line of phantom emperors at Rome came to an end. The fourth century, in which these invasions--which overthrew the Western Empire, and transferred power to new races--occurred, forms the era of transition from ancient to mediaeval history.

LITERATURE.--The general works on Ancient History (p. 16). _On Roman History as a whole_: MERIVALE'S _General History of Rome_ (from 753 B.C. to A.D. 476: 1 vol.); DURUY, _History of Rome,_ etc. (8 vols., 410); Wägner, Rom, etc. (3 vols.); Allen, A Short Story of the Roman People; FREEMAN, Outlines of Roman History.

On the Roman Republic: MOMMSEN, The History of Rome (4 vols.); LIDDELL, A History of Rome, etc. (1 vol.); IHNE, The History of Rome (Eng. trans., 3 vols.); Michelet, History of the Roman Republic (1 vol., 12mo); Schwegler, Römishce Geschichte (4 vols); How and Leigh, _A History of Rome_; Shuckburgh, A History of Rome.

On the Roman Empire: MERIVALE, _History of the Romans under the Empire_ (7 vols ); Seeley, Roman Imperialism [three Lectures]; MOMMSEN, The Provinces (5th volume of his History, 1885); Bury, Students' Roman Empire; Bury, _Later Roman Empire_ (2 vols.).

On special periods: IHNE, Early Rome (1 vol.); T. Arnold, History of Rome (3 vols; reaches into the second Punic war); Long, The Decline of the Roman Republic (5 vols.); R. B. Smith, Rome and Carthage; MERIVALE, The Roman Triumvirates; T Arnold, History of the Later Roman Commonwealth (2 vols.); GIBBON, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Smith's edition); FINLAY, A History of Greece from the Conquest of the Romans to the Present Time (7 vols.); Dill, Roman Society (5th century).

Trollope, Life of Cicero (2 vols.); FORSYTH, _Life of Cicero_ (2 vols.); Middleton's Life of Cicero; Froude, Life of Caesar (1 vol.); Boissier, Ciceron et ses Amis (1 vol., 12mo).

Treatises: Taylor, Const, and Polit. History of Rome; KUHN, Verfassung d. Römischen Städte; GUHL AND KÖNER, _Life of the Greeks and Romans;_ Marquardt, _Handbuch d. Römischen Alterthümer_ (7 vols.); BECKER, Gallus (an archaeological novel); Abbott, Roman Political Institutions; Greenidge, Roman Public Life; Preston and Dodge, _Private Life of the Romans;_ Madvig, Verfassung und Verwaltung des Röm Staates (2 vols.); Lanciani (Ancient Rome, and others); Burn, _Rome and the Campagna;_ ZIEGLER, Das alte Rom; Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography; Smith and Cheatham's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities; FRIEDLÄNDER, Sittengeschichte Roms (2 vols.); Histories of Roman Literature by Simcox. Cruttwell, SCHMITZ, Teuffel. Mac-Kail, Fowler.

On Early Christianity: The Lives of Jesus, by NEANDER, WEISS, Farrar, Edersheim, Andrews. Neander's _Planting and Training of the Church_. Works on the Life of St. Paul, by CONYBEARE AND HOWSON, by Lewins, by Farrar. Fisher's _The Beginnings of Christianity;_ Pressensé, _Early Days of Christianity_. Church Histories of NEANDER, GIESELER, SCHAFF, Robertson, HASE, Kurtz, ALZOG. UHLHORN, _Christian Charity in the Ancient Church;_ Ramsay, _The Church and the Roman Empire, before 170 A.D._

Reber, History of Ancient Art; Wickoff, Roman Art; see Dictionaries, p. 122.

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Introduction

CHARACTER OF THE MIDDLE AGES.--The middle ages include the long interval between the first general irruption of the Teutonic nations towards the close of the fourth century, to the middle of the fifteenth century, when the modern era, with a distinctive character of its own, began. Two striking features are observed in the mediæval era. First, there was a mingling of the conquering Germanic nations with the peoples previously making up the Roman Empire, and a consequent effect produced upon both. The Teutonic tribes modified essentially the old society. On the other hand, there was a reaction of Roman civilization upon them. The conquered became the teachers and civilizers of the conquerors. Secondly, the Christian Church, which outlived the wreck of the empire, and was almost the sole remaining bond of social unity, not only educated the new nations, but regulated and guided them, to a large extent, in secular as well as religious affairs. Thus out of chaos, Christendom arose, a single homogeneous society of peoples. It was in the middle ages that the pontifical authority reached its full stature. The Holy See exercised the lofty function of arbiter among contending nations, and of leadership in great public movements, like the Crusades. Civil authority and ecclesiastical authority, emperors and popes, were engaged in a long conflict for predominance. Thus there are three elements which form the essential factors in Mediæval History,-the Barbarian element, the Roman element, with its law and civil polity, and with what was left of ancient arts and culture, and the Christian, or Ecclesiastical, element. As we approach the close of the mediæval era, a signal change occurs. The nations begin to acquire a more defined individuality; the superintendence of the church in civil affairs is more and more renounced or relinquished; there dawns a new era of invention and discovery, of culture and reform.

PERIOD I. FROM THE MIGRATIONS OF THE TEUTONIC TRIBES TO THE CARLOVINGIAN LINE OF FRANK RULERS. (A.D. 375-751.)

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I. CAUSES OF THE FALL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE: THE TEUTONIC CONFEDERACIES

GRADUAL OVERTHROW OF THE EMPIRE.--When we speak of the destruction of the Roman Empire by the barbarians, we must not imagine that it was sudden, as by an earthquake. It was gradual. Had the empire not been undermined from within, it would not have been overthrown from without. The Roman armies were recruited by bringing numerous barbarians into the ranks. At length whole tribes were suffered to form permanent settlements within the boundaries of the empire. A "king" with his entire tribe would engage to do military service in exchange for lands. More and more both the wealth and the weakness of Rome were exposed to the gaze of the Germanic nations. Their cupidity was aroused as their power increased. Meantime the barbarians were learning from their employers the art of war, and were gaining soldierly discipline. Their brave warriors rose to places of command. They made and unmade the rulers, and finally became rulers themselves. Another important circumstance is, that most of the Germanic tribes were converts to Christianity before they made their attacks and subverted the throne of the Cæsars. In fine, there was a long preparation for the great onset of the barbarian peoples in the fifth century.

CAUSES OF THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE.--But the success of the barbarian invasions presupposes an internal decay in the empire. It was one symptom of a conscious decline, that the conquering spirit was chilled, and the policy was adopted of fixing the limits of the Roman dominion at the Rhine and the Danube. Rome now stood on the defensive. The great service of the imperial government, for which it was most valued, was to protect the frontiers. This partly accounts for the consternation of Augustus, when, in the forests of Germany, the legions of Varus were destroyed (p. 172). The essential fact is, that Rome became unable to keep up the strength of its armies. First, there were lacking the men to fill up the legions. The civil wars had reduced the population in Italy and in other countries. The efforts of Augustus to encourage marriage by bounties proved of little avail. Secondly, the class of independent Italian yeomen, which had made up the bone and sinew of the Roman armies, passed away. Slavery supplanted free labor. Thirdly, in the third century terrible plagues swept over the empire. In 166 a frightful pestilence broke out, from which, according to Niebuhr, the ancient world never recovered. It was only the first in a series of like appalling visitations. Fourthly, the death of liberty carried after it a loss of the virtue, the virile energy, by which Rome had won her supremacy. Fifthly, the new imperial system, after Diocletian, effective as it was for maintaining an orderly administration, drained the resources of the people. The municipal government in each town was put into the hands of curiales, or the owners of a certain number of acres. They were made responsible for the taxes, which were levied in a gross amount upon the town. The fiscus, or financial administration of the empire, was so managed that the civil offices became an intolerable burden to those who held them. Yet it was a burden from which there was no escape. One result was, that, while slaves were often made coloni,--that is, tillers or tenants, sharing with the owner the profits of tillage,--and thus had their condition improved, many freeholders sank to the same grade, which was a kind of serfdom. When to the exhausting taxation by government, there were added the disposition of large proprietors to despoil the poorer class of landholders, and from time to time the predatory incursions of barbarians, the small supply of Roman legionaries is easily accounted for.

THREE RACES OF BARBARIANS.--While the empire, as regards the power of self-defense, was sinking, the barbarians were not only profiting by the military skill and experience of the Romans, but were forming military unions among their several tribes. In the East, there was one civilized kingdom, Persia, the successor of the Parthian kingdom, but not powerful enough to be a rival,--certainly not in an aggressive contest. But northward and northeast of the Roman boundaries, there stretched "a vague and unexplored waste of barbarism," "a vast, dimly-known chaos of numberless barbarous tongues and savage races." A commotion among these numerous tribes, the uncounted multitudes spreading far into the plain of Central Asia, had begun as early as the days of Julius Caesar. They were made up of three races,--the Teutons, or Germanic peoples; eastward of them, the Slavonians; and, farther beyond, the Asiatic Scythians. The Slavonians, an Aryan branch, like the Teutons, had their abodes in the space between Germany and the Volga. They were a pastoral and an agricultural race, of whose religion little is known. Their incursions and settlements belong to the sixth and seventh centuries, and to the history of the Eastern Empire.

TEUTONIC CONFEDERACIES.--Of the confederacies of German tribes, the Goths are first to be mentioned. In the third century they had spread over the immense territory between the Baltic and the Black seas. They were divided into the West Goths (Visigoths) and East Goths (Ostrogoths). Their force was augmented by the junction of kindred tribes. To the east of them, towards the Don, was a tribe of mixed race, the Alani. In the third century the Goths had made their terrible inroads into Mæsia and Thrace, and the brave emperor Decius had perished in the combat with them. They had pushed their marauding excursions as far as the coasts of Greece and Ionia. In the middle of the fourth century they were united, with their allied tribes, under the sovereignty of the East Gothic chieftain, Hermanric. A second league of Germanic peoples was the Alemanni, which included the formidable tribes called by Cæsar the Suevi, and who, after various incursions, had established themselves on the Upper Rhine, in what is now Baden, Würtemberg, and north-east in Switzerland, and in the region southward to the summits of the Alps. Their invasion of Italy in 255, when they poured through the passes of the Rhetian Alps, and penetrated as far as Ravenna, was repelled by Aurelian, afterwards emperor. A third confederacy was that of the Franks (or Freemen) on the Lower Rhine and the Weser. In North Germany, between the Elbe and the Rhine, were the Saxons. The Burgundians, between the Saxons and the Alemanni, made their way to the same river near Worms. East of the Franks and Saxons, were the valiant Lombards, who made their way southwards to the center of Europe, and finally to the Danube. The Frisians were situated on the shore of the North Sea and in the adjacent islands. North of the Saxons were the Danes and other peoples of Scandinavia,--Teutons all, but a separate branch of the Teutonic household. To bold and warlike tribes, now banded together, such as were the Franks and the Alemanni, the Rhine, with its line of Roman cities and fortresses, could form no permanent barrier. When they crossed it, they might be driven back; but this was only to renew their expeditions at the first favorable moment. The prey which they saw near by, and of which they dreamed in the distance, was too enticing. No more could the Danube fence off the thronging nations; all of whom had heard, and some of whom had beheld, the wealth and luxury of the civilized lands.

Beginning at the Euxine, and moving westward along the line of the Danube and the Rhine, we find, at the end of the fourth century, that the six most prominent names of Teutonic tribes are the Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Franks, Saxons, and Lombards. Over the vast plains to the south and west of the Caspian are spread the Huns, who belong to one branch of the Scythian or Turanian group of nations.

HABITS OF THE GERMANS.--We have notices of the Germans from Julius Caesar, the most full description of them in the Germania of Tacitus. They were tall and robust, and seemed to the Romans, who were of smaller stature, as giants. Tacitus speaks of their "fiercely blue eyes." They lived in huts made of wood, and containing the cattle as well as the family. They tilled the soil, but their favorite employments were war and the chase. Capable of cruelty, they were still of a kindly temper, and fond of feasts and social gatherings, where they were apt to indulge in excessive drinking and in gambling. They were brave, and not without a delicate sense of honor. Family ties were sacred. The women were chaste, and were companions of their husbands, although subject to them. Most of the people were freemen, who were land-owners, and carried arms. The nobles were those of higher birth, but with no special privileges. The freemen owned slaves, who were either criminals or persons who had lost their freedom in gaming or prisoners of war. There were also freedmen or leti, who held land of a superior. Many freedmen lived apart, but many were gathered in villages. The land about a village was originally held in common. Each village had a chief, and each collection of villages, or hundred, possessed a chief of high rank; and there was a "king," or head of the tribe. All these chieftains were elected by the freemen at assemblies periodically held. When the duke or general was chosen, he was raised on a shield on the shoulders of the men. The judges in the trial of causes sat, with assessors or jurymen around them, in the open air. But private injuries were avenged by the individual or by his family. One marked characteristic of the Germans was the habit of devoting themselves to the service of a military leader. They paid to him personal allegiance, and followed him in war. The Germans were, above all, distinguished by a strong sense of personal independence. If their mode of living resembled outwardly that of other savage races, yet in their free political life, and in the noble promise of their language even in its rudiments, the comparison does not hold. In their faithfulness, courage, and personal purity, they are emphatically contrasted with the generality of barbarous peoples.

RELIGION OF THE GERMANS.--We know more of the Scandinavian religion through the Eddas, the Iliad of the Northmen, than of the religion of the Germans; but the two religions were closely allied. Among the chief gods worshiped by the Germans were Woden, called "Odin" in the North, the highest divinity, the god of the air and of the sky, the giver of fruits and delighting in battle; Donar (Thor), the god of thunder and of the weather, armed with a hammer or thunderbolt; Thiu (Tyr), a god of war, answering to Mars; Fro (Freyr), god of love; and Frauwa (Freya), his sister. Particular days were set apart for their worship. Their names appear in the names of the days of the week,--Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Sunday is the day of the sun, and Monday the day of the moon. Saturday alone is a name of Latin origin. Among the minor beings in the German mythology were fairies, elves, giants, and dwarfs. There were festivals to the gods. Their images were preserved in groves. Lofty trees were held sacred to divinities. The oak and the red ash were consecrated to Donar. Sacrifices, and among them human sacrifices, were offered to the gods. Their will was ascertained by means of the lot, the neighing of wild horses, and the flight of birds. Priests were not without influence, but were not a professional class, and were never dominant. Valiant warriors at death were admitted into Walhalla (the hall of the slain), where they sat at banquet with the gods.

THE THEODOSIAN IMPERIAL HOUSE

THEODOSIUS | +--THEODOSIUS I (the Great), m., | 1, Flaccilla; | 2, Galla sister of Valentinian II | | | +--Grantianus | | | +--Pulcheria | | | +--ARCADIUS | | m. Eudoxia | | | | | +--THEODOSIUS II | | | m. Eudocia | | | | | | | +--Eudoxia | | | | m. VALENTINIAN III | | | | | | | +--Flaccilla | | | | | +--Pulcheria | | | m. MARCIAN | | | | | +--Three other daughters | | | +--HONORIUS | | m. Maria, daughter of Stilicho | | | +--Placidia m. | 1, Adolphus; | 2, CONSTANTIUS | | | +--VALENTINIAN III, | | m. Eudoxia. | | | | | +--Eudoxia, m. | | | 1, Palladius, son of MAXIMUS; | | | 2, Huneric, son of GENSERIC. | | | | | | | +--Ideric | | | | | +--Placidia | | m. OLYBRIUS | | | +--Honoria | +--Honorius | +--Serena, | m. Stilicho | | | +--Maria | +--Thermantia

[From Rawlinson's Manual of Ancient History.]

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