James Smith Reid

“ The younger Trajan was rigorously trained by him, and imbued with the same principles and tastes. He was a soldier born and bred. No better representative of the true old hardy Roman type, little softened by either luxury or education, had come to the head of affairs since the days of Marius. His training was almost exclusively military, but his experience as an officer gave him an acquaintance with almost every important province of the empire, which was of priceless value to him when he came to the throne. ”

“ The attitude of the writer towards paganism is remarkable The whole poem is intensely pagan, and is penetrated by the feeling that the world of literature and culture is and must remain pagan; that outside paganism lies a realm of barbarism. The poet wears an air of exalted superiority over the religious innovators of his day, and entertains a buoyant confidence that the future of the ancient gods of Rome will not belie their glorious past. ”

“ The work done by Trajan in the Danubian regions left a lasting mark upon their history. The emperor returned to the capital in 106, laden with captured treasure. His triumph outdid in splendour all those that went before it. Games are said to have been held continuously for four months. Ten thousand gladiators are said to have perished in the arena, and eleven thousand beasts were killed in the contests. Congratulatory embassies came from all lands, even from India. The grand and enduring monument of the Dacian wars is the noble pillar which still stands on the site of Trajan's forum at Rome. ”

“ The care expended by Tiberius on the provinces was unremitting. His favourite maxim was that a good shepherd should shear the flock and not flay it. When he died he left the subject peoples of the empire in a condition of prosperity such as they had never known before and never knew again. Soldiers, governors, and officials of all kinds were kept in wholesome dread of vengeance if they oppressed those beneath them or encouraged irregularity of any kind. Strict economy permitted light taxation and enabled the emperor to show generosity in periods of exceptional distress. ”

“ With respect to Sejanus, it is impossible to acquit Tiberius of blame. If he was deceived in his favourite he must have been willing to be deceived. He conferred on Sejanus a position as great as had been held by Agrippa during the reign of Augustus, and the minister was actually, and all but formally, joint emperor. ”

“ No period in the history of Latin literature is so barren as the reign of Severus. Many later periods—the age of Stilicho, for example—shine brilliantly by comparison. The only great Latin writers are the Christians Tertullian and Cyprian. The Greek literature of the period is richer, but not owing to any patronage of the emperor, except perhaps in the case of Dio Cassius, who', though no admirer of Severus, attributes to encouragement received from him the execution of the great historical work which has come down to our time. ”

“ Far different is the picture of political life impressed upon us by Rutilius. His voice is assuredly not that of a partisan of a discredited and overborne faction. We see by the aid of his poem a senate at Rome composed of past office-holders, the majority of whom were certainly pagan still. We discern a Christian section whose Christianity was political rather than religious, who were Romans first and Christians afterwards, whom a new breeze in politics might easily have wafted back to the old religion. Between these two sections the broad old Roman toleration reigns. ”

“ On the death of Drusus in the autumn of 9 B.C. Tiberius, whose reputation had hitherto been eclipsed by that of his brother, stepped into the position of the first soldier of the empire. The army, if it did not warmly admire Tiberius, entertained a loyal confidence in a leader who, as Velleius (the historian who served under him) tells us, always made the safety of his soldiers his first care. In the campaign of the year after Drusus's death Tiberius traversed all Germany between the Rhine and the Elbe, and met with slight opposition. ”

“ In the delineation of character our poet is neither very powerful nor very consistent. His imagination was too weak to realize the actors with distinctness and individuality. His Hannibal is evidently at the outset meant for an incarnation of cruelty and treachery, the embodiment of all that the vulgar Roman attached to the name “Punic.” But in the course of the poem the greatness of Hannibal is borne in upon the poet, and his feeling of it betrays itself in many touches. ”

“ The reconciliation of the empire with liberty, inaugurated, as Tacitus says, by Nerva, seemed now to be securely achieved. Trajan was absolutely open and simple, and lived with men at Rome as he had lived with his soldiers while on service. He realized the senate's ideal of the citizen ruler. The assurance that no senator should suffer was renewed by oath. All the old republican formalities were most punctiliously observed even those attendant on the emperor's election to the consulate, so far as they did not involve a restoration of the old order of voting at the comitia. ”

“ Who can forget “the immortal swiftness of Sallust,” or “the milky richness of Livy,” or how “Horace soars now and then, and is full of sweetness and grace, and in his varied forms and phrases is most fortunately bold”? ”

“ The social and moral reforms of Augustus were upheld and carried further. Such risings against the emperor's authority as occurred within the Roman domain were put down with no great difficulty. The foreign or rather the frontier policy was a policy of peace, and it was pursued with considerable success. With few exceptions the duties of the Roman forces on the borders were confined to watching the peoples on the other side while they destroyed each other. On the Rhine, at least, masterly inactivity achieved tranquillity which lasted for a long period. ”

“ A new body of household troops was enrolled and organized on different principles from the old. In face of the senate, as Dio tells us, Severus acted for the moment like “one of the good emperors in the olden days.” After a magnificent entry into the city he joined the senate in execrating the memory of Commodus, and in punishing the murderers of Pertinax, whom he honoured with splendid funeral rites. He also encouraged the senate topass a decree directing that any emperor or subordinate of an emperor who should put a senator to death should be treated as a public enemy. ”

“ In disciplinary matters no emperor since Augustus had been able to keep so strong a control over the troops. Pliny rightly praises Trajan as the lawgiver and the founder of discipline, and Vegetius classes Augustus, Trajan, and Hadrian together as restorers of the morale of the army. The confidence which existed between Trajan and his army finds expression in some of the coins of his reign. ”

“ The short reign of Nerva really did start the empire on a new career, which lasted more than three-quarters of a century. But it also demonstrated how impossible it was for any one to govern at all who had no claim, either personal or inherited, to the respect of the legions. Nerva saw that if he could not find an Augustus to control the army, the army would find another Domitian to trample the senate under foot. ”

“ No historian more frequently refutes himself. Suetonius was a biographer rather than an historian, and the ancient biographer was even less given to exhaustive inquiry than the ancient historian; moreover Suetonius was not gifted with great critical faculty, though he told the truth so far as he could see it. His Lives of the Twelve Caesars was written nearly at the time when Tacitus was composing the Annals, but was published a little later. Velleius Paterculus is by far the oldest authority for any part of Tiberius’s life. ”

“ They exhibit, better even than Pliny's well-known letters, the passion of the rich Roman for so constructing his country house that light, air, sun and leafage should subserve his luxury to the utmost, while scope was left for displaying all the resources of art which his wealth enabled him to command. ”

“ The principal authorities for the reign of Tiberius are Tacitus and Suetonius. The Annals of Tacitus were not published till nearly eighty years after the death of Tiberius. He rarely quotes an authority by name. In all probability he drew most largely from other historians who had preceded him; to some extent he availed himself of oral tradition; and of archives and original records he made some, but comparatively little, use. In his history of Tiberius two influences were at work, in almost equal strength : on the one hand he strives continually after fairness ”

“ His self-control rarely fails him; it stands the test of the horrors of war, and of Venus working her will on Hannibal at Capua. Only a few passages here and there betray the true silver Latin extravagance. In the avoidance of rhetorical artifice and epigrammatic antithesis Silius stands in marked contrast to Lucan, yet at times he can write with point. Regarded merely as a poet he may not deserve high praise; but, as he is a unique specimen and probably the best of a once numerous class, the preservation of his poem among the remains of Latin Literature is a fortunate accident. ”

“ The emperor now indicated clearly his expectation that Tiberius would be his principal successor. The two essential ingredients in the imperial authority—the proconsulare imperium and the tribunicia potestas—were conferred on Tiberius, and not on Agrippa, who was too young to receive them. Tiberius's career as a general now began anew. In two or three safe rather than brilliant campaigns he strengthened immensely the Roman hold on Germany, and established the winter camps of the legions in the interior, away from the Rhine. ”

“ The ancient traditions concerning the revolution are extremely confused and contradictory, and have caused endless discussions. The commonest story is that the masses assembled on the Sacred Mount bound themselves by a solemn oath to regard the persons of their tribunes and aediles as inviolable, and to treat as forfeited to Diana and Ceres, the plebeian divinities, the lives and property of those who offered them insult. That this purely plebeian oath was the real ultimate basis of the sanctity which attached to the tribunate during the whole time of its existence can hardly be believed. ”

“ In Gaul, Spain and Africa these pursuits were carried on with even greater energy than at Rome. The seeds of the existing culture, such as it was, bore richer fruit on the fresh soil of the western provinces than in the exhausted lands of Italy and the East. While Quintilian lived, men born in Spain dominated the Latin schools and the Latin literature, and he died just too soon to see the first provincial, also of Spanish origin, ascend the imperial throne. ”

“ Silius, however, had perfect poetic appreciation, with scarce a trace of poetic creativeness. No writer has ever been more correctly and more uniformly judged by contemporaries and by posterity alike. Only the shameless flatterer, Martial, ventured to call his friend a poet as great as Virgil. But the younger Pliny gently says that he wrote poems with greater diligence than talent, and that, when, according to the fashion of the time, he recited them to his friends, “he sometimes found out what men really thought of them.” It is indeed strange that the poem lived on. ”

“ The more threadbare the theme, and the more worn the machinery, the greater the need of genius. Two of the most rigid requirements of the ancient epic were abundant similes and abundant single combats. ”

“ To the world in general Ritschl was best known as a student of Plautus. He cleared away the accretions of ages, and by efforts of that real genius which goes hand in hand with labour, brought to light many of the true features of the original. It is infinitely to be regretted that Ritschl's results were never combined to form that monumental edition of Plautus of which he dreamed in his earlier life. Ritschl's examination of the Plautine MSS. was both laborious and brilliant, and greatly extended the knowledge of Plautus and of the ancient Latin drama. ”

“ As poet, Statius unquestionably shines in many respects when compared with most other post-Augustans. He was born with exceptional talent, and his poetic expression is, with all its faults, richer on the whole and less forced, more buoyant and more felicitous, than is to be found generally in the Silver Age of Latin poetry. Statius is at his best in his occasional verses, the Silvae, which have a character of their own, and in their best parts a charm of their own. ”