John Charles Tarver

“ The real government of Rome was in the hands of the Senate, an assembly of nobles and capitalists, who shared between themselves the profits of the Roman conquests. Like all such assemblies, the senators had their good times and their bad; between the second and the third wars with Carthage they so conducted themselves as to impress the imagination of the civilized world; the successes of their armies, their fidelity to engagements, their comparative moderation in conquest, were the wonder of men ”

“ Tiberius himself had no motive for committing such a crime; only the perverse inconsistency of a Roman historian could be capable of attributing to the same man reluctance to accept power, and complicity in a crime whose object was to secure the undisturbed enjoyment of that power. Whoever was responsible for the death of Agrippa Postumus, Tiberius certainly was not; but Livia, the friend of Herod, whose life had been spent in pushing the fortunes of the Claudians, was not a woman to be frightened by the murder of an inconvenient aspirant. ”

“ The importance of slavery as a factor in the life of the ancients does not in fact depend so much upon its moral influence upon individuals as upon its political consequences, which were many and far-reaching in their effects.
The condition of slavery in the ancient world did not in itself involve the same measure of personal degradation with which it is associated in these days; it was only one of many inequalities recognized by society. If a slave could not appear in the law courts of Rome, no more could the resident alien, however rich, however noble in the city from which he came ”

“ If liberty means the sacred right of senatorial juries and powerful men to secure maladministration of justice by means of bribes and private influence, we can hardly blame Tiberius for “corrupting” such liberty, and may be excused for not seeing any excessive adulation in the remarks which Paterculus makes in reference to the same procedure, “Confidence in the Courts of Law was restored.” “With what dignity does he (Tiberius) attentively listen to cases as a senator and juryman, not as Princeps and Cæsar!” ”

“ As a general, as a statesman, Tiberius stands, if not in the first rank, then at the very top of the second, and he deserves this additional credit, that public life was distasteful to him, power had no attraction for him, and had he been at liberty to choose for himself he would have lived in seclusion, a student of literature and natural science. We see in him, in fact, the best type of Roman, the best example of that peculiar character by which Rome rose to be mistress of the world. ”

“ It is curious that Paterculus should confine the list of nameless admirers to members of the Senatorial and Equestrian Orders. If Julia had been merely a licentious woman, we should expect to find slaves and gladiators among the company of her lovers. Amorous intrigues in the atmosphere of Rome were apt to end in more dangerous conspiracies, and though the self-esteem of the pious and patriarchal Augustus must have been deeply wounded by his daughter’s guilt, the punishment of exile awarded to her, and of death to her gallants, strikes us as disproportionate. ”

“ Cousin Claudia was found guilty of the offence with which she was charged; but Agrippina persisted in her grievances. She fell into ill-health; Tiberius visited her; she received him at first in silence, then burst into floods of tears. She bewailed her loneliness, and begged him to find her a husband; she was still young, she said; marriage alone would relieve her from the contumelious position in which she found herself; there were plenty of men in the State who would not disdain to welcome the wife and children of Germanicus. ”

“ It was fortunate for the Empire that Tiberius failed in his attempt to restore the Senate, for no tyranny can be worse than that of the direct government of dependencies by an irresponsible debating society, divided into parties more or less organized, which intrigue abroad to further their interests at home, and the Senate itself showed a sounder political insight than the Emperor in refusing to assume responsibilities for which it was eminently unfit. ”

“ Till the Roman was sole umpire in the circle of the Mediterranean, war was in every respect a profitable investment, and a military career was the readiest path to political supremacy; not only did a Roman general return laden with spoil, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, but his conquests appealed to the imagination of his countrymen; everybody might be proud of generals and armies who had beaten the successors of Alexander ”

“ They were, however, only too willing to listen when cleverer men than themselves told them they had grievances. The fidelity of the most loyal troops and of the most trusted servants can seldom long resist the voice of the tempter, who deplores the injustice with281 which they are treated. The idlers of Rome, swept into the ranks from the street corners and the open air amusements of the great city, awoke from dreams of plunder and licence to the stern realities of the centurion’s stick and the heavy fatigue of a Roman camp. ”

“ The Death of Augustus In the hottest weather of the year 14 A.D., a hush fell upon the streets of old Rome, as the news rapidly circulated that her foremost citizen was dead, and that the man whose name had spelled peace and prosperity for the whole civilized world was no longer at the head of affairs. Few men were still living who could remember any rule but his; for forty-five years he had controlled without serious opposition the destinies of an Empire which stretched from the Euphrates to the English Channel ”

“ Conscious of the strictest rectitude of purpose, contemptuous of the judgment of the crowd, equally contemptuous of the small aims and narrow outlook of even the more cultivated Roman Senators, shrewd, practical and intellectual, but not emotional or sentimental, impatient of weakness, intolerant of smallness, Tiberius was not a man to attract sympathy, or to be appreciated beyond the narrow circle of a few intimates, who understood his real aspirations. ”

“ Men who were in earnest about anything found that they were in sympathy with Octavian; he could relax, and be charming in his relaxation, but with him, as with all great rulers, the line was rigidly drawn between business and amusement. He could even pardon a refusal to comply with his request for a personal favour; he invited Horace to leave the service of Mæcenas and become his private secretary; the poet refused, but did not in consequence lose the esteem of the Emperor. ”

“ Could we estimate all the pains of all the operatives in modern England, all the lives that are shortened, or rendered intolerable by disordered health, could we arrive at a clear understanding of all that is suffered by puddlers in iron foundries, by stokers on our great ships, by men and women employed in lead works, in brick works, in chemical works, in numberless other dangerous industries, we might well pause before condemning slavery as the one social condition predominantly productive of human suffering. ”

“ Now why did frugal living at one time prevail? Because every man imposed restraint on himself, because we were then the citizens of a single city; there was not even temptation for us when our dominion was confined to Italy. It was through our foreign victories that we learned to waste the property of others, by our civil wars to waste our own. And what a small thing it is to which our attention is called by the Ædiles! ”

“ If a capable man is assisted by a council, the general lines of policy are his, and not those of the council, whose advice practically amounts to little more than valuable suggestions on points of detail. The dream of professors and political pedants that a country is best governed by a debating society of selected wiseacres has a never-ending fascination, but it is a mere dream, and as soon as the ostensible government degenerates into a debating society the real work of governing is done by other agencies; the alternative is anarchy. ”

“ Not the least important consequence of the system was the admission of the Jews to a share in the control of administration; “they of Cæsar’s Household” were not domestic servants, but financial secretaries of considerable importance.
Slavery has been reproached with being responsible for the horrors of the arena, and a general indifference to the sanctity of human life; but this love of spectacular bloodshed, this indifference to the sufferings and death of human beings and animals, is by no means an exclusive feature of societies in which slavery is an accepted institution. ”

“ The generals of the Augustan age are hardly known to us. Few class Agrippa with the leading generals of the world, but the man who for the first time organized the navy of the Roman Empire, who maintained the organization of the army on such a footing that the enormous frontier was never without its defenders, who was himself never beaten in the field, and who trained a succession of capable officers to follow in his footsteps, was no mean general. ”

“ In fact the Revolution, which had broken the political power of the old Roman aristocracy, had been succeeded by a reaction in favour of great names and exalted lineages, which would have given the Senate a new lease of power had that body been capable of effective work. The History of Livy, the Fasti of Ovid, the later books of the Æneid, had all combined to throw a glamour over the great Roman families, and the new world of capable officials recruited from Italy and other parts of the Empire found itself despised at Rome by the futile descendants of legendary ancestors. ”

“ In the later days of the Republic a man could hardly become a great general without threatening the balance of the constitution; the death of Cæsar brought into prominence ambitious soldiers; it seemed that it was enough to be a successful leader of troops in order to enter upon the enjoyment of all things that ambitious men most covet; but to this kind of ambition Agrippa was superior; if he had a conscious ambition over and above the satisfaction of doing his work well, it was to make Octavian. ”

“ Tiberius is not the only statesman who has underestimated the damaging effects of unpopularity; within certain limits a statesman cannot afford to be unpopular, and impairs his own usefulness if he raises an irrational prejudice against himself. There are times and occasions when it is the duty of a statesman to face public opinion, and to persist in an unpopular policy, but it is never the duty of a statesman to excite personal animosity ”

“ We have seen other conquerors, and more brilliant feats of arms than any Roman general achieved, but we have not seen any other nation impress its language and its law upon the populations of so wide an area or so permanently. Alexander did much, but the effects of the conquests of Rome have been more lasting than those of the conquests of Alexander; except in Asia there is not a civilized people in the world which does not somewhere or other bear the impress of Rome, or cannot trace the pedigree of its religion and its law back to the Italian city. ”

“ It was this severity of temperament in Tiberius which Augustus endeavoured unsuccessfully to modify, himself a man naturally disposed to bask in the popular favour and genuinely enjoying the lighter side of life. We shall have to record pleasing instances of the benevolent and wise liberality of Tiberius on occasions of great distress, but the common herd is more ready to bestow its affections upon those who share its everyday amusements than upon those who provide relief for its exceptional tribulations ”

“ His character was without stain or reproach; the amours which are attributed to Julius Cæsar, and even to the saintly Augustus, are not attributed to him. The idle story that he went to Rhodes to indulge in odious vices was the fabrication of a later age, and was, as we have seen, absurd in itself. He had been a faithful and loving husband to his first wife, Vipsania; the licence of Julia had disgusted him; after his divorce from her he never thought of a fresh marriage, though still a young man. On his campaigns he had shown himself to be simple, and indeed severe, in his personal habits. ”

“ Cards were not yet invented, but dice were common. Wealthy young provincials, the sons of great but not ennobled capitalists, were as ready then as now to pay for admission to the highest social circles by dealing leniently with fair ladies whose affairs were involved by debts of honour, and some of them lost their heads and hearts over the business. Masquerading in the unlighted Roman streets after respectable people had gone to their early beds was not an infrequent amusement, and even ladies anticipated at Rome the licence of the Mohawk and Tityre Tu of Queen Anne’s reign in London. ”

“ Marius, Sulla, Pompeius, Cæsar himself imposed their will upon Rome, because they had the legions behind them; relying upon the force of organized armies, they were tempted to overlook all the other forces by which society is held together. An army is so convincing, so obvious, that men who can organize an army may well be excused in their blindness to the existence of any other power. Cæsar was the most enlightened of generals, and had a clearer appreciation of civilian problems than his predecessors, but even Cæsar relied ultimately upon the appeal to force ”

“ We ourselves are treading in the same path; we congratulate ourselves on the wisdom which made English soldiers of Highland clansmen and Irish rapparees, which has arrayed against Russia the tribes of the North-West frontier, which fights the barbarians of Central Africa with the trained barbarians of its coasts; but we too shall have to pay the price which the Roman paid, if we neglect the military training of the centre of the Empire, and allow its population to expand unexercised in arms, incapable of fighting. ”