“ It was still regarded by the men of ancient name and blood as the true head or heart of the empire, rather than the upstart Claudius or Domitius, who might wear the purple and wield the sword. To the men of words and phrases the emperor was still an accident,—the senate was an eternal fact,—at a time when rhetoric might make revolutions, though it could not regenerate society. To them it was still the symbol of liberty, at a time when liberty and Cæsar were regarded as two gladiators sword in hand, pitted against each other in mortal combat. ”

“ In the want and hunger of others it is himself that each of us pities. To help the unfortunate is to deserve well of things human. What! if I had fed a stranger for the sake of this universal fraternity which unites all mortals under the common father of nature, would it not have been a good action to have saved a soul about to perish, had pity on humanity, and thrown, as it were, a propitiatory offering to fortune while adoring the divinity in the thought of our common lot? Humanity has been in all ages and amongst all nations the greatest and most sacred mystery. ”

“ What matters it more than in name that Spain and Gaul and Pannonia and Syria and Egypt acknowledge the sway of the city on the Tiber? The reply is that it matters everything; for these outlying provinces supply the life-blood of the empire. From these wide dominions all roads, as the saying has it, lead to Rome; and every road is worn deep with the weight of tribute. The legions that we have seen distributed all about the wide frontier were not placed there primarily to fight, but to exact tribute as the price of peace. ”

“ Judging, from the testimony of my past life, that I deserved to reign, you have placed me on the throne. It is now my duty to consult the safety and interest of the republic. The weight of the universe is undoubtedly too great for the hands of a feeble mortal. I am conscious of the limits of my abilities, and the uncertainty of my life; and far from declining, I am anxious to solicit, the assistance of a worthy colleague. But, where discord may be fatal, the choice of a faithful friend requires mature and serious deliberation. ”

“ There still remained in the general customs, even beyond Rome, something cruel, either as a relic of ancient habits, everywhere equally sanguinary, or through the special influence of Roman austerity. But there was improvement in that respect. What sweet and pure sentiment, what an impression of melancholy tenderness there is in the writings of Virgil and of Tibullus! The world was taking shape and losing its ancient rigour, acquiring freedom and moral sensibility. Principles of humanity spread everywhere; equality and abstract ideas of the rights of man were loudly preached by stoicism. ”

“ The last century had filled the imperial capital with multitudes of foreigners, attracted from curiosity as much as from motives of business to the renowned emporium of the wonders of the world, who added to the number of idlers and loungers in the streets of Rome; men of strange costumes and figures and, when they spoke, of speech still stranger, who, while they gazed around them with awe and admiration, became themselves each a centre of remark to a crowd of wondering citizens. ”

“ Stay not, oh stay not, gentle sisters; he shall transcend the limits of human life; he shall be like me in face, like me in beauty; neither in song nor in eloquence behind me. He shall restore a blissful age to wearied men, and break again the long silence of the Laws. Yes, as when Lucifer drives the stars before him, and morning dissipates the clouds, the bright sun gazes on the world, and starts his chariot on its daily race,—so Cæsar breaks upon the earth ”

“ In the one class was abandonment of public life, shame, despair, and suicide; the intolerable evils of the time drove men not to religious consolations, but to a restless inquiry into the future, or a vain attempt to lull the sense of the present in philosophic apathy: the other rushed headlong, hour by hour, to the baths, shows, and largesses, or shouted at the heels of the idol of the moment, or sighed and perhaps murmured at his loss, and speedily resigned itself to oblivion of the fitful emotion of the day. ”

“ Fortune, which had stood by Augustus faithfully throughout his public career and had led him by many thorny paths to the summit of earthly glory, deserted him in his private life and in his domestic circle. Hatred and envy, fanned by female passions, ranged his court in two hostile factions, which employed against each other all the weapons of intrigue and all the arts of treachery and dissimulation, and scared peace and harmony away from the apartments of the imperial palace. ”

“ In this horrid picture was represented an emperor, unawed by example or the calamities surrounding him, giving way to unexampled debaucheries; a raging pestilence spreading terror and desolation through all the parts of the western world; earthquakes, famines, and inundations, such as had never before happened; the products of the earth, throughout all Italy, devoured by locusts; all the barbarous nations surrounding the empire, the Germans, the Sarmatians, the Quadi, and Marcomanni, taking advantage of its various calamities, and making their eruptions even into Italy itself. ”

“ From the point of view of the world’s history, then, Augustus appears as a far greater figure than Napoleon III. Antiquity spoke, we speak yet to-day, of the Age of Augustus with reason, and this is an honour that weighs more than the name of Great; a man gives his name to his time only when he has really stamped that time with his image, opening up new roads, not only to his own nation but to the history of his time. ”

“ If Julian could now revisit the capital of France, he might converse with men of science and genius, capable of understanding and of instructing a disciple of the Greeks; he might excuse the lively and graceful follies of a nation, whose martial spirit has never been enervated by the indulgence of luxury, and he must applaud the perfection of that inestimable art, which softens and refines and embellishes the intercourse of social life. ”

“ Rome, in her fallen days, without virtue, without faith, without trust in her gods or in herself, loved, believed in, deified one idol still—Homicide. The butcheries of the amphitheatre exerted a charm upon the minds of men, for which literature, art, philosophy, religion, and the simple enjoyments of domestic life were flung aside. ”

“ Before he could reflect on the danger of his situation, Gainas gave the signal of death; a daring and forward soldier plunged his sword into the breast of the guilty prefect, and Rufinus fell, groaned, and expired at the feet of the affrighted emperor. If the agonies of a moment could expiate the crimes of a whole life, or if the outrages inflicted on a breathless corpse could be the object of pity, our humanity might perhaps be affected by the horrid circumstances which accompanied the murder of Rufinus. ”

“ In every town they have made for themselves a city of their own choosing, a society separate and apart, of which, they say, God himself is the founder, which they call their church, and to which they dedicate all their attention and their zeal. The service of their church is the sole thing which moves them. The duties it imposes are, in their eyes, the only essential and necessary duties.
The prince, their country, the public good, civilisation, Roman splendour, are to them merely resounding names or vain idols. The church is their country, their city, and their camp. ”

“ But the death-agonies of the wild animals of the desert were too tame a spectacle to satisfy the Roman thirst for blood. It was when man strove with man, and when all that human strength and skill, increased by elaborate training and taxed to the uttermost, could do, was put forth before their unrelenting eyes, that the transport of their sanguinary enthusiasm was at its height. ”

“ Victorious over all his rivals and all the enemies of Rome, Aurelian celebrated a triumph with unusual magnificence. Wild beasts of various kinds, troops of gladiators, and bands of captives of many nations opened the procession. Tetricus and his son walked, clad in the Gallic habit; Zenobia also moved on foot covered with jewels and bound with golden chains, which were borne up by slaves. The splendid cars of Odenathus and Zenobia, and one the gift of the Persian king to the emperor, preceded the chariot drawn by four stags, once the car of a Gothic king, in which Aurelian himself rode. ”

“ You need no telling as to the flimsiness of Roman defence, or how, not a wound, but a speck of dust merely lays them low. Be your old selves, and, while they are punctiliously peddling away at formations and shield-locking, charge with your unflinching courage, laugh at their ‘formations.’ On against Visigoth and down with the Alans! There lies speedy victory for us, and there the struggle lies. Sunder the sinew and the limbs collapse; hack the bones and the body falls!
“Huns of mine! Rouse your rage, and let your fury swell as of old! ”

“ Even if five million pounds were spent on the army and navy, if the distributions of corn to the poor of the city swallowed a few millions more, and the salaries of the imperial officials in Rome and the provinces and the police expenditure disposed of no inconsiderable sum, the surplus was none the less sufficient to provide for the erection of magnificent buildings, to cover the empire with a network of highroads, to satisfy the popular love of spectacles by gorgeous entertainments, and to rejoice the hearts of citizens and soldiers with gifts and feasts. ”

“ But whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind. The most odious parts of this edict were softened or repealed in the subsequent reigns; and even Constantine himself very frequently alleviated, by partial acts of mercy, the stern temper of his general institutions. Such, indeed, was the singular humour of that emperor, who showed himself as indulgent and even remiss in the execution of his laws, as he was severe and even cruel in the enacting of them. ”

“ In due course the man who has thus bargained for an empire pays the penalty of his ambition; then a turmoil ensues between the rival aspirants to the succession, which ends, naturally enough, with the death of all but one; he, Septimius Severus by name, gives to the empire a moment of relative tranquillity; and at last presents a spectacle hardly less strange than all the others,—the spectacle of a Roman emperor dying a natural death. We shall not see the like again for many a reign.
Following Severus come his two sons, Caracalla and Geta. ”

“ The consul frankly says that if the Roman senators were mad enough to obey a man of Setia, he would come, sword in hand, into the senate, and that he would kill every Latin he saw in the curia with his own hand. Then turning towards Jupiter’s statue, he cries: “Listen to these crimes, Jupiter, hear them, Right and Justice! Foreign consuls, a foreign senate, inaugurated in Jupiter’s temple, thyself captive and oppressed, that is what thou wouldst see.”
This sublime insolence proves that these men had souls worthy of kings. A government like a man has its own personality. ”

“ In the life of Augustus, we behold the tyrant of the republic converted, almost by imperceptible degrees, into the father of his country and of human kind. In that of Constantine we may contemplate a hero who had so long inspired his subjects with love and his enemies with terror degenerating into a cruel and dissolute monarch, corrupted by his fortune, or raised by conquest above the necessity of dissimulation. The general peace which he maintained during the last fourteen years of his reign was a period of apparent splendour rather than of real prosperity ”

“ The Roman ambassadors were introduced to the tent of Attila, as he lay encamped at the place where the slow-winding Mincius is lost in the foaming waves of the lake Benacus, and trampled, with the Scythian cavalry, the farms of Catullus and Virgil. The barbarian monarch listened with favourable, and even respectful, attention; and the deliverance of Italy was purchased by the immense ransom, or dowry, of the princess Honoria. The state of his army might facilitate the treaty and hasten his retreat. Their martial spirit was relaxed by the wealth and indolence of a warm climate. ”

“ What is most remarkable of all is that no ancient writer ever expressed, either as a far-away hope, or as a fugitive wish, or as an improbable hypothesis, the idea that slavery might one day be abolished. Whether favourable to slavery or not, no one so much as imagined that it could cease to be. Those even who complain of it with bitterness, who count up the dangers that it occasions and the annoyances to which it gives rise, those who say with Seneca: “How many starving animals, whose voracity we have to gratify! ”

“ But whatever Hadrian might have been as to his private character, his conduct as an emperor appears most admirable, as all his public transactions seem dictated by the soundest policy and the most disinterested wisdom. He was scarce settled on the throne, when several of the northern barbarians, the Alans, the Sarmatians, and the Dacians, began to make devastations on the empire. These hardy nations, who now found the way to conquer, by issuing from their forests, and then retiring upon the approach of a superior force opposing them, began to be truly formidable to Rome. ”

“ That is why Rome becomes prouder in reverse and only consents to treat in order to pardon, why she will only suffer around her protégés, suppliants, and subjects, and “carries her empire as far as the earth and her courage as high as the sky.” Pride renders one calm. The man who aims at being worthy remains serious, and the Romans without emotion or enthusiasm accomplished the greatest results. Pride sanctifies the fatherland because the citizen gets from it glory and ascendency, without which he cannot exist. ”

“ Such princes deserved the honour of restoring the republic, had the Romans of their day been capable of enjoying a rational freedom.
The labours of these monarchs were overpaid by the immense reward that inseparably waited on their success; by the honest pride of virtue, and by the exquisite delight of beholding the general happiness of which they were the authors. A just but melancholy reflection embittered, however, the noblest of human enjoyments. They must often have recollected the instability of a happiness which depended on the character of a single man. ”