William Bodham Donne

“ Then did Roman soldiers rush forward like men who had to drive a Vologeses or Pacorus from the ancestral throne of the Arsacidæ, not as though they were hastening to murder their aged and defenceless emperor. In all the terror of their arms, and at the full speed of their horses, they burst into the Forum, thrusting aside the crowd and trampling on the senate. Neither the sight of the Capitol, nor the sanctity of the overhanging temples, could deter them from committing a crime which any one succeeding to power must avenge. ”

“ Did the fame that Cicero won by eloquence compensate him for the tragic end to which his orations against Marcus Antonius brought him? Believe me, my excellent friends, had it been your lot to live under the old republic, you would have been as famous, and perhaps as much harassed by anxiety and envy, as the orators you so much admire; and had it been their lot to live in these piping times of peace, the heroes of the bar would have acquiesced in the tranquillity we enjoy. It may not be easy—it may be impossible—for us to attain a great and splendid reputation as orators ”

“ Had the coalition of Germans and Gauls been sound and sincere, had the authors and leaders of it added to their enthusiasm the steady and sagacious temper of the warriors and statesmen who had made Rome the mistress of the world, it is difficult to see how the empire could have survived, bleeding and faint as it was at the time from a fierce civil conflict of about eighteen months. ”

“ A Roman mob was always ready to cry, "A bas les aristocrats!" and a London or Parisian one is always ready to do the like. Among the earliest and certainly the most conspicuous victims struck down by Sejanus, was Drusus, the emperor's only son. But the direct heir to the purple was beyond the informer's shaft: and the prince-imperial was murdered by the aid of his young wife Livia, whom an adulterous connection had previously brought into the snares of the ambitious minister. It was against the widow of Germanicus, her sons, and their adherents, that he first let slip his bloodhounds. ”

“ Never has the power of Rome been more depressed. In the winter quarters of the legions there is nothing but property to plunder and a few old men. Only dare to look up, and cease to tremble at the empty names of legions. For we have a vast force of horse and foot; we have the Germans our kinsmen; we have Gaul bent on the same objects. ”

“ Whatever we loved, whatever we admired in Agricola, survives, and will survive in the hearts of men, in the succession of the ages, in the fame that waits on noble deeds. Over many, indeed, of those who have gone before, as over the inglorious and ignoble, the waves of oblivion will roll; Agricola, made known to posterity by history and tradition, will live for ever. ”

“ After referring to the sufferings already endured at Roman hands by every tribe of Britons, to the cruelty, rapacity, and lust of their oppressors, Galgacus proceeds to hint that there is a worm in the bud of the unwieldly empire.
"Do you suppose," he is made to say, "that the Romans will be as brave in war as they are licentious in peace? To our strifes and discords they owe their fame, and they turn the errors of an enemy to the renown of their own army—an army which, composed as it is of every variety of nations, is held together by success, and will be broken up by disaster. ”

“ There was scarcely a man in Rome who did not seem, by the voice of fame and the wishes of the people, designed for the sovereign power, rather than the very person whom Fate cherished in obscurity in order to make him, at a future period, master of the Roman world." [1]
Yet Claudius, in intention, was not among the bad Cæsars. Had he met with honest friends, and had he not been misguided by his freedmen and his wives, Messalina and the younger Agrippina, his rule might have been happy for his subjects and creditable to himself. ”

“ Græcinus was a distinguished orator and philosopher, but these good gifts excited the envy of Caius Cæsar, who took the first convenient opportunity of getting rid of him. His mother, Julia Procilla, was a matron of the old Roman stamp. Under her wise and watchful guardianship, Agricola imbibed in early youth the virtues which he practised in mature years. In a period notorious for extravagance and excess of every description—vices that extended even to learning and philosophy—Julia kept always in view the wholesome doctrine of "a golden mean." ”

“ The Latin poets are far more civil, and doubtless more just, than the historian on this important point. The yellow hair and blue eyes of their German female captives excited the admiration of the young men of Rome, and the envy of both old and young women. Some of our English readers may be surprised, and perhaps will be glad to be told that the auburn tresses of the Germans fetched a high price in the Roman market; and that the locks which belonged by birth to the wife or daughter of a Teutonic warrior or herdsman, often belonged by purchase to some dark-haired Cynthia, or Lesbia, or Clodia. ”

“ THE HISTORIAN.
There was a time when the works of Tacitus were far more familiar to English readers than they are now,—when sages like Bacon, and historians like Clarendon, drew from them moral and political adages, and appealed to them as manuals for statesmen. But in proportion as the power of the Crown in this country has diminished, and that of Parliament increased, the chronicler of ten Cæsars has ceased to be an oracle for our public men. He shares the fate of Cicero—he lives almost in name alone. ”

“ In this dreary silence we shudder, and speak in a whisper: all is dark and wrapt in mystery, doubtful and perplexing. Was Germanicus poisoned? Was Piso guilty? What urged him to his mad violence? Did the son of Tiberius die by poison,—Agrippina by the stroke of an assassin? All this was just as uncertain to Tacitus as to us."
And the doubts which hang over this reign increase when we turn from the pages of Tacitus to those of other writers, whether contemporaries of Tiberius or of a somewhat later period. ”

“ The admiration, the affection of Pliny for his friend, the deep feeling with which Tacitus narrates the life and death of Agricola, the evident pleasure exhibited by him when delineating characters eminent for virtue, forbid us to imagine him austere or morose. But there are people, amiable and calm in disposition, who, when they take a pen into their hand, display a stern and acrid temper, more especially if they have a grievance or a theory to expound. ”

“ But when the emperor united in his own person the various functions, civil and military, of the republic—when he was consul, prince of the senate, censor, proconsul-general, commander of the army, and tribune of the people—when he could legally as well as logically say, L'état, c'est moi—the law of majestas applied to his person alone, since he was the only representative of the nobles, the knights, the people, the legions, and the subjects of Rome. ”

“ The story of this German hero indeed belongs more to the annals of Augustus than to those of Tiberius, since it was in the earlier reign of the two that he achieved, by a combination of craft and valour, the destruction of Varus and his legions. Against Germanicus his success was far less signal, although by skilfully contrived movements and indomitable energy he baffled the invaders, seriously thinned their ranks, and more than once reduced the Roman general to straits which, but for the discipline of the legions, would a second time have lost Rome a general and an army. ”

“ Some few put a fearful meaning on these events, but in most there was a firm persuasion that in the ancient records of their priests was contained a prediction of how at this very time the East was to grow powerful, and rulers coming from Judæa were to acquire universal empire. These mysterious prophecies had pointed to Vespasian and Titus; but the common people, with the usual blindness of ambition, had interpreted these mighty destinies of themselves, and could not be brought even by disasters to believe the truth. ”

“ The purpose of the confederates was to throw off then and for ever the yoke of Rome,—to effect on a far grander scale what the Italians had attempted more than a century and half before, when they set up a new capital, Italica, and threatened to destroy the den of the Roman wolves. It was a hostile empire that the Germans aimed at,—a far more formidable one than the Parthian had ever been, or than the great Mithridates had ever imagined. Independent Germany would not supply the legions with recruits: independent Gaul would not pay into the Roman treasury bars of silver, or sesterces. ”

“ Gaul has always had its petty kingdoms and intestine wars, till you submitted to our authority. We, though so often provoked, have used the right of conquest to burden you only with the cost of maintaining peace. For the tranquillity of nations cannot be preserved without armies; armies cannot exist without pay; pay cannot be furnished without tribute: all else is common between us. You often command our legions. ”

“ It was said that Vitellius expressed a brutal pleasure at the spectacle. He called for bowls of wine—he circulated them freely among his suite and soldiers—he declared that "the corpse of an enemy smells always well, particularly that of a fellow-citizen." We will now leave him in Rome, where he was of course greeted by the shouts of the populace, the flattery of the upper classes, and innumerable applications for places and favours. Well had Tiberius said of his Roman subjects, that they were "born to be slaves." ”

“ In the imperfect fifth and in the sixth book of the 'Annals' the history of Tiberius is completed. It is little more than the chronicle of suspicions and fears, and consequently increasing cruelty. An emperor, designed by nature for great and salutary ends—some of which in the first nine years of his reign he carried out—gradually sank into a tyrant, who was at once miserable himself, and terrible to at least the higher order of his subjects. Not until after the death of Sejanus did he learn the real story of his son's death. ”

“ His success in the healing of the lame and blind inspired Vespasian with a keen desire to visit the sanctuary of the god who had afforded him this opportunity for displaying a power, till then quite unsuspected by himself, and again a wonder was vouchsafed to a Cæsar in whom imagination was not a prevailing element, and who probably was content with the religion of the State and his Sabine forefathers. A deity so wise as Serapis must be able to give him sound advice about his own interests. He gave orders that, during his visit, all persons should be excluded from the temple. ”

“ For neither a servile senate nor a well-fee'd prætorian cohort would have ventured to proclaim the emancipated son of a slave, Cæsar. Claudius gave scarcely more offence to the nobles by conferring on Gauls the full privileges of Roman citizens, than he did by permitting his freedman Polybius to walk in a procession between the two consuls. The odium incurred by royal favorites in modern times—the David Rizzios, the Buckinghams, and others—will enable us to form some idea of the feelings of Rome towards Pallas and Narcissus. The arrogance of these "new men" was on a par with their wealth. ”

“ The Greek or Roman orator was always in some degree an actor also. Hortensius, Cicero's most formidable antagonist, was very particular as to the plaits in his gown and the arrangement of his hair; and Caius Gracchus modulated his voice by a sort of pitch-pipe sounded when he spoke in too high or too low a key by an attendant slave. "But such niceties," says Maternus, "are no longer observed. The very robe now worn at the bar has an air of meanness. It sits close to the person: it renders graceful gestures impossible. Again, the courts of judicature are unfavourable to the speaker in them. ”

“ As regards his fame, no step Tiberius ever took was more fatal to it than his retiring to Capri. It was a mystery which no one of his subjects could fathom; but it was also a mystery that invited the worst interpretations. In the days of the commonwealth, a tribune of the people had increased his popularity by instructing an architect so to build him a house on the Capitoline Hill, that all his fellow-citizens might at any moment be able to see what he was doing. It was a similar seclusion in his Alban villa that rendered Domitian more obnoxious than ever to all classes in Rome. ”

“ However, it was not the men only who were exposed to the chances of war. Women were commonly spectators of their husbands' prowess, and "tradition says that armies already wavering and giving way, have been rallied by women, who, with earnest entreaties and loud shrieks, and bared bosoms, vividly represented the horrors of captivity, which the Germans fear with such extreme dread on behalf of their women, that the strongest tie by which a state can be bound is the being required to give, among the number of hostages, maidens of noble birth." ”

“ The pride of the Roman people had rarely been more deeply gratified than when the news arrived that the Armenian king, Tiridates, had surrendered to Corbulo, and had laid down his diadem at the foot of Nero's statue, in the camp of his conqueror and in the presence of his own nobles. ”

“ Bearing in mind the historian's relation to Vespasian and Titus, the conquerors of Judæa, to whom he owed his first advancement in public life, his account of the origin, the religion, the manners and customs of the Jewish people, is inexplicable, and, indeed, considering his opportunities for informing himself on the subject, without any apparent excuse. It cannot have been for want of means of inquiry or materials for truth that he thus misrepresents this "peculiar people." ”

“ His life should he spared; a quiet retreat in Campania, the garden and the vineyard of Rome, with a large income, was proposed to and accepted by him.
But Rome had yet to drink the cup of woe to the dregs. Once more, as in the civil wars of the commonwealth, the city was to be sacked and the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter to he burnt. Terms were being drawn up for a peaceful surrender of the capital and the abdication of the emperor. Flavius Sabinus, the elder brother of Vespasian, had remained during all these revolutions in Rome, and new represented him. ”

“ A century has not elapsed since members of our House of Commmons wore small swords in St Stephen's Chapel; and the Teutonic legislators sat on their benches of turf armed. "Silence," we are told, was proclaimed by the priests, who, like "Mr Speaker," did not take part in the debate, but had the right of keeping order. "The king or the chief, according to age, birth, distinction in war or eloquence, is heard more because he has influence to persuade than because he has power to command." ”

“ He was deserted, if not actually betrayed, by his allies; with the usual fickleness of barbarians, their zeal soon cooled down: some thought they did enough for him if they helped him to win a battle or two; some that they did enough for themselves when they had plundered a Roman colony or camp. Soldiers who went to their homes, or turned to common brigandage when they pleased, were not fitted to contend long with the severely disciplined Roman legions; and as soon as Vespasian was able to pour division after division into the seat of war, the Batavian commonwealth ceased to exist. ”

“ The already aged veteran was prudently living in retirement, when Nero appointed him to be his legate in Spain, and for eight years he governed that province with great ability. But he was in the hands of evil ministers, and resigned himself entirely to them, and these ministers were at variance with one another: on one point alone did they agree—that at Galba's age some provision ought to be promptly made for a successor. But their harmony extended only to the general principle that Galba could not live much longer, and that there was already a formidable rival in the field. ”

“ Nay, Tacitus even cannot help admiring their conception of the Deity, or some of their social practices. "It is a crime with them to kill a newly-born infant." It was not a crime at Rome. The Jews held "that the souls of all who perish in battle, or by the hands of the executioner, are immortal;" and in this faith they fought valiantly; they contemned death; they rejoiced in the number of their children. Of "the Deity, as one in essence, they have purely mental conceptions. They call those profane who make representations of God in human shape out of perishable materials. ”

“ Kept at the public expense in these same woods and groves are white horses, pure from the taint of earthly labour. These are yoked to a car, and accompanied by the priest and the king or chief of the tribe, who note their neighings and snortings. No species of augury is more trusted, not only by the people and the nobility, but also by the priests, who regard themselves as the ministers of the gods, and the horses as acquainted with their will. ”

“ The Gauls suffered severely, but not so much as Italy, from the presence of the Vitellians. The evils of war are terrible, but not so terrible, says the historian, as was the march of the German legions. The soldiers, dispersed through the municipal towns and colonies, were robbing and plundering and polluting every place with violence and lust. Everything, lawful or unlawful, they were ready to seize or to sell, sparing nothing, sacred or profane. Some persons under the soldiers' garb murdered their private enemies. ”

“ Although firmly convinced that the vast body of the empire could be effectively governed by one hand alone, he accepted a Cæsar as a necessity of the time. But to be resigned to a system of rule is one thing; to regard it with an eye of favour is another. Many who loved Cromwell little, served him well. It was no small recommendation of Trajan to Tacitus that, departing from the solemn injunction of Augustus not to extend the borders of the empire, he added to it provinces north of the Theiss and east of the Euphrates. ”

“ Can this be the man who has really conquered those warlike islanders, whom the mighty Julius left to their original freedom, and whom Claudius and his captains imperfectly subdued?" "The many," says Tacitus, "who commonly judge of great men by their external grandeur, after having seen and attentively surveyed him, asked the secret of a greatness which but few could explain." ”

“ The drift of the 'Annals' can hardly be mistaken: it is an elaborate protest against Cæsarianism: it is also, what Pliny's 'Panegyric' was directly, an indirect, encomium on Trajan. Nothing is more agreeable to the ears of a new dynasty than a picture of a former one drawn with the darkest colours. A golden age has come; an iron age has passed away.
"Tacitus," observes Dean Merivale, "constructs the history of the empire with reference to a dominant idea in his own mind." ”

“ Still, in their cups there seems to have been some discretion; for, says Tacitus,—
"It is at their feasts that they generally consult on the reconciliation of enemies, on the forming of matrimonial alliances, on the choice of chiefs, finally even on peace and war; for they think that at no time is the mind more open to simplicity of purpose or more warmed to noble aspirations. A race without either natural or acquired cunning, they disclose their hidden thoughts in the freedom of festivity. ”

“ From that date, with few dissenting voices, the historian has been the object of honour and applause. Bayle pronounced the 'Annals' and 'History' one of the grandest efforts of human intellect. That consummate scholar, Justus Lipsius, was so deeply versed in the books of Tacitus, that he offered to recite any passage with a dagger at his breast to be used against himself on a failure of memory. Politicians and philosophers, from the sixteenth century downwards, have regarded him as an oracle, in practical and speculative wisdom alike. ”

“ The morals of Roman Asia were even worse than the morals of the capital. The province itself was wealthy, and the inhabitants of it were regarded as fair prey for old or young gentlemen whose creditors were troublesome. Agricola, however, according to his biographer, did nothing to be ashamed of in his quæstorship.
He married, at Rome, Domitia Decidiana, a lady of illustrious birth. Their union was a very happy one. They had two children—a son, who died in his infancy, and a daughter, who was married to Tacitus. ”