The Beginnings of Rome

The Julio-Claudian Line.

Augustus founded a dynasty which occupied the throne for more than half a 'century after his death. The first and by far the ablest of its members was Tiberius (A.D. He was undoubtedly a capable and vigor ous ruler, who enforced justice in the government of the prov inces, maintained the integrity of the frontiers and husbanded the finances of the empire, but he became intensely unpopular in Roman society, and was painted as a cruel and odious tyrant. His successor, Gaius (A.D. 37-41), generally known as Caligula, was the slave of his wild caprices and uncontrolled passions, which issued in manifest insanity. He was followed by his uncle, Claudius (A.D. 41-54), whose personal uncouthness made him an object of derision to his contemporaries, but who was by no means devoid of statesmanlike faculties. His reign left an abiding mark on the history of the empire, for he carried forward its develop ment on the lines intended by Augustus. Client-states were absorbed, southern Britain was conquered, the romanization of the West received a powerful impulse, public wogrks were exe cuted in Rome and Italy, and the organization of the imperial bureaucracy made rapid strides. Nero (A.D. 54-68), the last of the Julio-Claudian line, has been handed down to posterity as the incarnation of monstrous vice and fantastic luxury. But his wild excesses scarcely affected the prosperity of the empire at large ; the provinces were well governed, and the war with Parthia led to a compromise in the matter of Armenia which secured peace for half a century.

The Antonine Empire.—The fall of Nero and the extinction of the "progeny of the Caesars" was followed by a war of suc cession which revealed the military basis of the principate and the weakness of the tie connecting the emperor with Rome. Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian represented in turn the legions of Spain, the household troops, the army of the Rhine, and a coalition of the armies of the Danube and the Euphrates ; and all except Otho were already de facto emperors when they entered Rome. The final survivor in the struggle, Vespasian (A.D. 69-79), was a an of comparatively humble origin, and as the principate ceased to possess the prestige of high descent it became imperatively necessary to remove, as far as possible, the anomalies of the office and to give it a legitimate and permanent form. Thus we find an elaborate and formal system of titles substituted for the personal names of the Julio-Claudian emperors, an increasing tendency to insist on the inherent prerogatives of the principate (such as the censorial power), and an attempt to invest Caesarism with an hereditary character, either by natural descent or by adoption, while the worship of the Divi, or deified Caesars, was made the symbol of its continuity and legitimacy. The dynasty of Vespasian and his sons (Titus, A.D. 79-81, Do mitian, A.D. 81-96) became extinct on the murder of the last named, whose high-handed treatment of the senate earned him the name of a tyrant ; his successor, Nerva (A.D. 96-98), opened the series of "adoptive" emperors (Trajan, A.D. 98-117, Hadrian, 117-138, Antoninus Pius, 138-161, Marcus Aurelius 161-18o) under whose rule the empire enjoyed a period of internal tran quillity and good government. Its boundaries were extended by the subjugation of northern Britain by Agricola, A.D. 78-84 (see BRITAIN : Roman), by the annexation of the districts included in the angle of the Rhine and Danube under the Flavian emperors, and by the conquest of Dacia (the modern Transylvania) under Trajan (completed in A.D. o6). Trajan also annexed Arabia Petraea and in his closing years invaded Parthia and formed prov inces of Armenia, Mesopotamia and Assyria ; but these conquests were surrendered by his successor, Hadrian, who set himself to the task of consolidating the empire and perfecting its defences. To him is due the system of permanent lignites or frontier fortifica tions, such as the wall which protected northern Britain and the palisade which replaced the chain of forts established by the Plavian emperors from the Rhine to the Danube. The construction

of these defences showed that the limit of expansion had been reached, and under M. Aurelius the tide began to turn. A great part of his reign was occupied with wars against the Marcomanni, Quadi, Sarmatians, etc., whose irruptions seriously threatened the security of Italy. Henceforth Rome never ceased to be on the defensive.

Within the frontiers the levelling and unifying process com menced by Augustus had steadily proceeded. A tolerably uniform provincial system covered the whole area of the empire. The client-states had one by one been reconstituted as provinces, and even the government of Italy had been in many respects assimi lated to the provincial type. The municipal system had spread widely; the period from Vespasian to Aurelius witnessed the elevation to municipal rank of an immense number of com munities, not only in the old provinces of the West, in Africa, Spain and Gaul, but in the newer provinces of the North, and along the line of the northern frontier; and everywhere under the influence of the central imperial authority there was an increasing uniformity in the form of the local constitutions, framed and granted as they all were by imperial edict. Throughout the empire again the extension of the Roman franchise was preparing the way for the final act by which Caracalla assimilated the legal status of all free-born inhabitants of the empire, and in the west and north this was preceded and accompanied by the complete romanizing of the people in language and civilization. Yet, in spite of the internal tranquillity and the good government which have made the age of the Antonines famous, we can detect signs of weak ness. It was in this period that the centralization of authority in the hands of the princeps was completed; the "dual control" established by Augustus, which had been unreal enough in the ist century, was now, though not formally abolished, systematically ignored in practice. The senate ceased to be an instrument of government, and became an imperial peerage, largely composed of men not qualified by election to the quaestorship but directly ennobled by the emperor. The restricted sphere of administration left by Augustus to the old magistracies was still further narrowed; their jurisdiction, for example, tended to pass into the hands of the Greek officers appointed by Caesar—the prefect of the city and the prefect of the guards. The complete organization of Caesar's own administrative service, and its recognition as a state bureaucracy, was chiefly the work of Hadrian, who took the secretaryships out of the hands of freedmen and entrusted them to procurators of equestrian rank. All these changes, inevitable, and in some degree beneficial, as they were, brought with them the attendant evils of excessive centralization. Though these were hardly felt while the central authority was wielded by vigorous rulers, yet even under Trajan, Hadrian and the Antonines we notice a failure of strength in the empire as a whole, and a corresponding increase of pressure on the imperial Government itself. The reforms of Augustus had given free play to powers still fresh and vigorous. The ceaseless labours of Hadrian were directed mainly to the careful husbanding of such strength as still remained, or to attempts at reviving it by the sheer force of imperial authority. Among the symptoms of incipient decline were the growing depopulation, especially of the central districts of the empire, the constant financial difficulties, the deterioration in character of the local governments in the provincial com munities, and the increasing reluctance exhibited by all classes to undertake the now onerous burden of municipal office.