James Smith Reid

“ 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. ”

“ When the revolution of 96 came, and Nerva replaced the murdered Domitian, Trajan had conferred upon him one of the most important posts in the empire, that of consular legate of Upper Germany. An officer whose nature, as the event showed, was interpenetrated with the spirit of legality was a fitting servant of a revolution whose aim it was to substitute legality for personal caprice as the dominant principle of affairs. The short reign of Nerva really did start the empire on a new career, which lasted more than three quarters of a century. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Trajan never lacked money to expend on great works of public utility; as a builder, he may fairly be compared with Augustus. His forum and its numerous appendages were constructed on a magnificent scale. Many regions of Italy and the provinces besides the city itself benefited by the care and munificence which the emperor bestowed on such public improvements. His attitude towards religion was, like that of Augustus, moderate and conservative. The famous letter to Pliny about the Christians is, according to Roman ideas, merciful and considerate. ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Years afterwards it was found that Drusus had fallen a victim to the treachery of his wife Livilla, who had joined her ambition to that of the emperor's minister of state Sejanus. When Drusus died, Tiberius nominated two of Agrippina's sons as his heirs. But Sejanus had grown strong by nursing the emperor's suspicions and dislike for the household of Germanicus, and the mother and the princes were imprisoned on a charge of crime. In his memoirs of his own life Tiberius declared that he killed Sejanus because he had discovered that he entertained a mad rage against the sons of Germanicus. ”

“ In 12 B.C. Agrippa, the great general of Augustus, to whom he may be almost said to have owed his throne, and who was its chief support, died at the age of fifty-one, leaving Julia, the emperor's only child, a widow. Agrippina, daughter of Agrippa by an earlier marriage, was wife of Tiberius, and had borne him a son, Drusus, afterwards father of Germanicus. Livia with great difficulty prevailed upon Augustus to replace Agrippa by Tiberius, who was compelled to exchange Agrippina for Julia, to his bitter grief. ”

“ But the most striking evidence of Trajan's solicitude for his people's welfare is found in his institution of the alimenta, whereby means were provided for the rearing of poor and orphan children in Italy. The method had been sketched out by Nerva, but its great development was due to Trajan. The moneys allotted by the emperor were in many cases supplemented by private benevolence. As a soldier, Trajan realized the need of men for the maintenance of the empire against the outer barbarians, and he preferred that these men should be of Italian birth. ”

“ Although the revolution of 494 gave the tribunes a foot hold in the constitution, it left them with no very definite resources against breaches of compact by the patricians. The traditional history of the tribunate from 494 to 451 B.C. is obscure, and, so far as details are concerned, nearly worthless; but there is a thread running through it which may well be truth. We hear of attacks by patricians on the newly won privileges, even of the assassination of a tribune, and of attempts on the part of the plebeians to bring patrician offenders to justice. ”

“ That the emperor had an honest and soldierly satisfaction in his own well-doing is clear; but, if he had had anything like the vanity of a Domitian, the senate, ever eager to outrun a ruler's taste for flattery, would never have kept within such moderate bounds.
Towards the end of 100, or early in 101, Trajan left Rome for the Danube. Pretexts for a Dacian war were not difficult to find. Although there was no lack of hard fighting, victory in this war depended largely on the work of the engineer. ”

“ Great importance was no doubt attached to the perfection of the lines of communication bearing on the limes. Among a people of road-makers, Trajan was one of the greatest, and we have definite evidence from inscriptions that some of the military roads in this region were constructed by him. The more secure control which the Romans now maintained over the territory within the limes tended to its rapid civilization, and the Roman influence, if not the Roman arms, soon began to affect powerfully the regions beyond. ”

“ Pompey, for example, when he went to the East, was not made proconsul of all the Eastern provinces, but he exercised in them a "pro consular authority " which was superior to that of the actual pro consuls, an authority which was the prototype of the imperial authority on its military side. Similarly the emperor, as civil governor, without being tribune, exercised powers of like quality with the powers of the tribune, though of superior force. ”

“ According to the general principle of the constitution, magistrates could forbid the acts of magistrates equal to or inferior to themselves. For this purpose the tribunes were deemed superior to all other officers. If a tribune exercised his veto no other tribune could annul it, for the vito could not be itself vetoed, but it was possible for another tribune to protect a definite individual from the consequences of disobedience. The number of the tribunes (ten) made it always possible that one might baulk the action of another, except at times when popular feeling was strongly roused. ”

“ Bostra and Petra were permanently occupied, and a great portion of the Nabathaean kingdom was constituted the Roman province of Arabia. Rome thus obtained mastery of the most important positions lying on the great trade routes from East to West. These changes could not but affect the relations of the Roman with the Parthian empire, and the affairs of Armenia be came in 114 the occasion of a war which has been described under PERSIA, vol. xviii. p. 603. Trajan's campaigns in the East ended in complete though brilliant failure. ”

“ At the end of the republic there were interregna of several mouths duration, when the tribunes held a position of more than usual importance. A tenure of the tribunate did not, until a comparatively late period (probably about the time of the Second Punic War) , confer a claim to a permanent seat in the senate. The candidates for the office were mainly young men of good family who were at the beginning of their political career, but the office was often filled by older men of ambition who were struggling upwards with few advantages. ”

“ The younger Trajan was rigor ously trained by his father, and deeply 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 either by luxury or educa tion, had come to the head of affairs since the days of Marius. The date of his birth was probably 53 A.D. His training was almost exclusively military, but his ex perience 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 temple of Diana and Ceres on the Aventine Hill became for a time to the plebeians what the temple of Saturn was to the patricians, their official centre and their record office. The insurgent leaders also pressed religion into their service in another way. 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 lives and property of those who offered them insult. ”

“ The opinion of Mommsen about the method of election is more plausible than the others. It was in accordance with the Roman spirit of order that the tribunes, in summoning their assemblies, should not ask the plebeians to come en masse as individuals, and vote by heads, but should organize their supporters in bands. The curia was certainly a territorial district, and the tribunes may have originally used it as the basis of their organization. If tribunes were elected by plebeians massed curiatim, such a meeting would easily be mistaken in later times for the comitia curiata. ”

“ Public security both in Italy and abroad was maintained by a strong hand, and commerce was stimulated by the improvement of communications. Jurisdiction both within and without the capital was on the whole exercised with steadiness and equity, and the laws of the empire were at many points improved. ”

“ Not only did the Romans stipulate to pay to Decebalus an annual subsidy, which he must have regarded as a tribute, but they agreed to supply him with engineers and craftsmen skilled in all kinds of construction, but particularly in the erection of fortifications and defensive works. ”

“ But it also demon strated 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. In his difficulties he took counsel with L. Licinius Sura, a lifelong friend of Trajan, and in October 97 he ascended the Capitol, and with all due solemnity proclaimed that he adopted Trajan as his son. The senate confirmed the choice, and acknowledged the emperor s adopted son as his successor. ”

“ Trajan, who narrowly escaped being killed, was forced to withdraw. A more alarming difficulty lay before him. Taking advantage of the absence of the emperor in the far East, and possibly by an understanding with the leaders of the rising in Armenia and the annexed portions of Parthia, the Jews all over the East had taken up arms at the same moment, and at a given signal. The massacres they committed were portentous. In Cyprus 240,000 men are said to have been put to death, and at Cyrene 220,000. ”

“ But, although modern readers of the ancient historians are apt to carry away the idea that the tribunate was an intensely political office, it is safe to say that the occasions on which tribunes found it possible to play a prominent part in politics were extremely few, even in the late republic. ”

“ But, as the army increased, the popular assembly insisted on having a voice in the appointments, and from 362 B.C. six tribunes were annually nominated by popular vote, while in 311 the number was raised to sixteen, and in 207 to twenty-four, at which figure it remained. The tribunes thus elected ranked as magistrates of the Roman people, and were designated tribuni militum a populo, while those who owed their office to the consuls bore the curious title of tribuni rufuli. ”