Page images
PDF
EPUB

to prevent the republic being subjected to an Egyptian. He proceeded to Greece with eight legions and five cohorts, and he had a fleet of 250 ships. His principal officer was M. Agrippa, a man of experience and ability. The engagement took place off the cape of Actium in Epirus. Cleopatra was there, and set the example of flight. She was followed by Antonius: the rout was total. Octavianus exercised clemency, and the greater part of the hostile army surrendered. He pursued the love-sick Antonius to Egypt, who, on a false report of the death of Cleopatra, threw himself on his sword; and the Egyptian queen, having in vain essayed her arts on the cold calculating Octavianus, sooner than be led in chains to adorn the triumph of the victor, and glut the eyes of the populace of Rome with the sight of the daughter and the last of the Ptolemies preceding the chariot of the adopted son of him who had done homage to her charms, gave herself voluntary death by the bite of an asp, or the prick of a poisoned needle. Egypt, in the 295th year from the death of Alexander the Great, became a Roman province.

In the same year, the 479th from the establishment B. c. of the republic, the 724th from the building of the city, 29. was Cæsar Octavianus, now styled Augustus, invested with all the power heretofore exercised by the consuls and tribunes of the people. He was a monarch, without appearing such. Every tenth year he affected to lay down and again receive his extraordinary powers from the senate and people. His sway was mild and beneficent; stately edifices rose to adorn the city; public spectacles and abundance of food satisfied the people; peace was enjoyed by all the empire. The memory of the republic was nearly obliterated; old men only retained a recollection of its worst period, and shuddered as they called to mind the horrors of the civil wars, and the blood-traced tables of proscription. The reign of Augustus was halcyon days after those storms; but, unhappily for Rome, this state was of no long and steady duration. The government was one of power, not of law;

it was a despotism; and soon, beneath the tyranny and caprice of the emperors, even the turbulence of the latter days of the republic was looked back to with a sigh of regret.

CHAP. IX.

ROME AN EMPIRE.

Emperors of the Cæsarian Family.

AMONG the titles of Augustus was that of Imperator, whence emperor, a word derived from the ancient language of Italy*, and signifying general of an army. It was retained by his successors, as was also that of Cæsar, his family name.

The empire over which Augustus now ruled extended, in Europe, to the ocean, the Rhine, and the Danube; in Asia, to the Euphrates; in Africa, to Æthiopia and the sandy deserts. Its population was estimated at 120 millions. Satisfied with this extent of dominion, Augustus sought not himself to extend it, and advised his successors to be guided by his example. He therefore abstained from wars, except such on the frontiers as were deemed necessary to keep up the skill and discipline of the legions, and inspire the barbarians with a salutary dread of Rome. In these slight wars the imperial arms were usually successful: one memorable defeat alone is reA. D. corded: the legions of Varus were cut to pieces by the 10. German leader, Herman, or Arminius. The prætorian

guards, afterwards so fatal to the empire, were instituted by Augustus to protect his person, and to crush the first germs of rebellion. But he dispersed them through Italy, and they knew not then their own strength.

The temple of Janus, to close which in time of peace had been a ceremony in use from the origin of the state,

* Embratur is the term in the Samnite language.

was three times closed during the reign of this pacific prince. The arts and sciences which adorn peace were warmly patronised by him and his minister the accomplished Mecænas. The house of Augustus, for he dwelt not in a palace, was the resort of the poet and the scholar. The monarch himself was a writer, and he enjoyed the felicity, rare in his station, of possessing friends. By the people he was adored as a god.

Yet the happiness of Augustus was not without alloy. He could not, though he might seek to palliate by the plea of necessity, efface the recollection of the proscription-tables of his younger days, and the base surrender of his friend the virtuous Cicero. The defeat of Varus haunted his dreams by night. He had no male issue to succeed him; he had to mourn over the untimely death of the promising youth Marcellus and of the valiant Drusus; and the profligacy of his daughter Julia, and the insatiable ambition of his wife Livia, embittered his declining days. Augustus died at Nola in Campania, in the 76th year of his age, having governed Rome with absolute sway during forty-four years.

In the year of Rome 753, while the world was enjoying peace under Augustus, and the "fulness of time" was come, it pleased the Almighty to send forth his Son Jesus Christ, as the announcer of a religion more pure and holy than any he had yet given to man. To relate the circumstances of the life and death of the Son of God (with which every reader must be supposed familiar) would be here superfluous. His religion, though persecuted, gradually spread over the Roman world. happily, it is in its corrupted state that it becomes a prominent object in history.

Un

Tiberius, the son of Livia, and step-son of Augustus, was appointed by him to succeed. This prince was now in his 55th year. All the bad qualities of his predecessor were united in him; his good ones were absent. A dark and crooked policy characterised all his acts: the establishment of perfect despotism, the abolition of all forms of the republic, was his object. Restrained at

A D. 11.

14.

first by fear of the noble Germanicus, when that check A.D. was removed by death, not without suspicion of poison, 19. he gave a loose to all his cruel and sensual propensities. In his later years, he retired to the island of Caprea in the bay of Naples, where he wallowed in every species of beastly and sensual gratification. His cruelties at Rome were meantime directed by his minister Sejanus, until, grown suspected by his master, he was by his order put to death. Tiberius dying left the world to a mon

37.

ster still more ferocious than himself.

Caius Caligula, the son of Germanicus, and grandnephew of Tiberius, displayed tyranny in its most appalling form. His reign commenced with mildness; but at the end of the first year, after a violent fit of illness, which, perhaps, disordered his intellect, a cruelty, the most absurd and capricious that can be conceived, commenced. While he meditated raising his horse to the consulship, and fed him out of gold, he slaughtered the noblest men of Rome without mercy, drove men in herds before the judgment-seat to receive sentence of death, and hunted the spectators of a public show into the waters of the Tiber. Four years the empire groaned beneath the cruelty of this frantic savage. At length the dagger of Chæreas delivered the world of him.

On the death of Caius, the senate, detesting the tyranny 41. of the Cæsars, deliberated on restoring the republic, and abolishing the imperial power. But ere two days had elapsed, they had to learn, to their mortification, that there was now in existence a power greater than theirs or that of the emperors. Tiberius had collected the prætorian guards, a body of 10,000 men, from the quarters in which the policy of Augustus had kept them dispersed; and, under pretext of relieving Italy and of improving their discipline, had fixed them in a stronglyfortified camp on the Viminal and Quirinal hills. The guards now first exhibited their power: they proclaimed Claudius, the weak-minded brother of Caius, emperor, and the senate received with submission their feeble ruler. Not naturally bloody, yet the instrument of women and freedmen, the annals of his reign exhibi⭑

thirty-five senators and three hundred knights falling by the hand of the executioner during the thirteen years that he filled the throne. Claudius was poisoned, to

A. D.

make room for his successor. Domitius Nero was the son of Agrippina, and pupil of 54. Seneca. The first five years of his reign were mild and just. But his furious passions soon grew impatient of restraint. He put to death his mother, his brother, his tutor; set fire to the city, charged the Christians with the crime, and began the persecution of that sect. He prostituted the dignity of his station, and the majesty of Rome, by appearing as a singer on the public stage. The patience of mankind could no longer endure this combination of cruelty, insult, debauchery, and meanness: several conspiracies were formed against him, but without success; the tyrant discovering them in time. At length Galba was declared emperor, and Nero by the senate pronounced a public enemy, and sentenced to death more majorum, which sentence he avoided by a voluntary death. Yet, vile as he was, there were those who loved his memory, and raised monuments to the monster who had perpetrated so many crimes. It is not undeserving of notice, that within a century after the death of Cato, the senate, which once gave laws to the world, was convoked on the solemn occasions of the marriage of Nero with two of his own sex. can the greatest institutions be degraded!

Emperors chosen by the Army.

So utterly

age,

Galba, a man of honourable birth and advanced was raised to the throne by the army which he commanded in Spain. The senate confirmed the choice of the army; but he sought to restrain the prætorians, and he atoned for his boldness with his life.

68.

Otho, the partaker of the guilty pleasures of Nero, 69. was placed on the throne by the party which murdered Galba. The army of the Rhine had meantime proclaimed their general Vitellius. Otho, though a volup

« PreviousContinue »