Emperor of the Romans

“ For a brief period, Rome now enjoyed prosperity and peace; but the young emperor soon became proud, cruel and corrupt. He caused a temple to be erected to himself, and had his own image set in the place of Jupiter and the other deities. He often amused himself by putting innocent people to death; he attempted to famish Rome, and even wished that the Romans had one head, that he might strike it off at a blow! At last, weary of his cruelties, several persons formed a conspiracy and murdered him, A. D. 41. ”

“ PANEM ET CIRCENSES—FOOD AND GAMES
The sustenance of Rome with which the emperors charged themselves may be regarded in the light of compensation for the political rights of which the imperial government robbed the Romans. The emperor was not the war-lord of the Roman Empire who, as such, felt this duty incumbent upon him; he was rather the most powerful person in the capital, who exerted himself to win the favour of its populace, as the prominent personages of republican times had done. ”

“ For the former Emperor, even Cæsar Augustus, was now dead, and a new Emperor reigned in his stead, whose name was Tiberius, but he attained not unto the former Emperor in wisdom; wherefore the minds of many were unsettled, the common people fearing lest the Romans should take away their religion, and the Scribes fearing lest the common people should incense the Romans by fresh revolt, and so bring destruction on the nation. ”

“ And he has civilised the greater part of the world by means of Greek colonies, and so made it easier for the world to be governed by the Romans. For the Romans themselves not only belong to the Greek race, but also the sacred ordinances and the pious belief in the gods which they have established and maintain are, from beginning to end, Greek. And beside this they have established a constitution not inferior to that of any one of the best governed states, if indeed it be not superior to all others that have ever been put into practice. ”

“ They loved virtue. Nevertheless, they had nothing in common with the patricians of old who, having no other care than the fattening of their swine, and the performance of the sacred rites, conquered the world for the better administration of their farms. This nobility of the byre, instituted by Romulus and Remus, was long since extinct. The patrician families created by the divine Julius and by the Emperor Augustus, had passed away. Intelligent men from all the provinces of the Empire had stepped into their places. Romans in Rome, they were nowhere strangers. ”

“ The common voice do cry it shall be so. 140
[Romans.] Lucius, all hail! Rome's royal emperor!
Mar. [To Attendants.] Go, go into old Titus' sorrowful house,
And hither hale that misbelieving Moor,
To be adjudg'd some direful slaughtering death, 144
As punishment for his most wicked life.
[Exeunt Attendants.]
[Lucius, Marcus, and the Others descend.]
[Romans.] Lucius, all hail! Rome's gracious governor!
Luc. Thanks, gentle Romans: may I govern so,
To heal Rome's harms, and wipe away her woe! 148
But, gentle people, give me aim awhile,
For nature puts me to a heavy task. ”

“ The effect of a mere name, both in Rome and in the United States, has always been unduly great. The charge (even when entirely unsupported) that a Roman politician was aiming to make himself a king was generally sufficient to drive him from power; though the Romans finally calmly submitted to the rule of an absolute ruler under the new title of emperor. The efficiency of denunciation by calling names, instead of by argument, is known and made use of in American politics. ”

“ Under the Republic every election had appeared to the Romans who participated in it to be a rite for ascertaining what man would be most pleasing to the gods to fill the position in question. Under the Empire the selection of a new Emperor, whether a confirmation by the senate of the previous Emperor’s accredited heir, or an acclamation by the army of the soldiers’ favorite, appeared to the Romans as the determination of the gods’ preference for a particular individual as their chief partner. ”

“ By way of parallel, shall not those who live under the empire of the Romans, although they have never seen the emperor, but are far separated from him both by land and sea, know very well, as they experience his rule, who it is that possesses the principal power in the state? ”

“ So true it is that an emperor's word has more power than force of arms.
A.D. 118 (a.u. 871)
On coming to Rome he canceled debts owing to the imperial treasury and to the public treasury of the Romans, setting a limit of sixteen years, from which and as far back as which this provision was to be observed. On his own birthday he gave a spectacle to the people free of charge, and slaughtered numbers of wild beasts,--one hundred lions and a like number of lionesses biting the dust on this one occasion. ”

“ If during nearly a thousand years the Romans always came triumphant out of the severest trials and greatest perils, it is because there existed a general cause which made them always superior to their enemies, and which did not permit partial defeats and misfortunes to entail the fall of the empire. ”

“ The first Roman emperor whose name marks a golden era in history is said to have claimed as his greatest triumph that, having found Rome a city of sunburned brick, he should leave it a city of marble. ”

“ Under the most despotic days of the empire any Roman citizen might rise to any position of power or dignity under the emperor; nay, more than this, any subject of the Roman empire, no matter how low his origin or condition in society, might be thrust, by a lucky turn of the wheel of fortune, into the imperial purple itself. ”

“ Civil wars create an imperator, who, uniting in himself all the great offices of state, and sustained by the conquering legions, rules from East to West and from North to South, with absolute and undivided sovereignty. The Caesars reach the summit of human greatness and power, and the city of Romulus becomes the haughty mistress of the world. The emperor is worshiped as a deity, and the proud metropolis calls herself eternal. An empire is established by force of arms and by a uniform policy, such as this world has not seen before or since. ”

“ The huge amphitheatres of Rome and her provinces were built to satisfy the public desire for pageantry and sport; and, because life was held cheap, and for all his boasted civilization the Roman was often a savage at heart, he would spend his holidays watching the despised sect of Christians thrown to the lions, or hired gladiators fall in mortal struggle. ‘We, about to die, salute thee.’ With these words the victims of an emperor’s lust of bloodshed bent the knee before the imperial throne, and at Caesar’s nod passed to slay or be slain. ”

“ The dual government of the prince and the senate which follows develops into the empire, and the emperor in time becomes the autocratic monarch. In this period of a thousand years from the seventh century before our era to the fourth century after it, we may see in the practical experiences of the [Pg 4] Roman people the points of strength and of weakness in an aristocracy, a plutocracy, a parliamentary government, a democratic empire, and an autocracy. We may also trace in the history of Rome the development of a city-state into a world-wide empire. ”

“ If such was the nominal position of the emperor, what then was the real secret of his actual power? It rested, not on the tradition of kingship, but on the simple basis of military leadership. “Imperator,” as has been said, implied “commander of the legions”; and he who controlled the legions, controlled the Roman Empire. That was the whole secret. There is nothing occult or mysterious in it all. Rome’s position as mistress of the world depended solely upon her army; therefore, the man who controlled that army was master of the world. ”

“ Hence he is one of the favorite characters of history. No Roman emperor was so revered and loved as he, and of no one have so many monuments been preserved. Everybody had his picture or statue in his house. He was more than venerated in his day, and his fame as a wise and good man has increased with the flight of ages.
This illustrious emperor did not belong to the family of the great Caesar. That family became extinct with Nero, the sixth emperor. Like Trajan and Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius derived his remote origin from Spain, although he was born in Rome. ”

“ The ignorant and servile vulgar must be blinded to attain to their proper good; they would not believe a maxim—they revere an oracle. The Emperor of Rome sways the vast and various tribes of earth, and harmonizes the conflicting and disunited elements; thence come peace, order, law, the blessings of life. Think you it is the man, the emperor, that thus sways?—no, it is the pomp, the awe, the majesty that surround him—these are his impostures, his delusions; our oracles and our divinations, our rites and our ceremonies, are the means of our sovereignty and the engines of our power. ”

“ Thus the Roman Nobles became in fact though not in law an hereditary caste of office-holding families. In their best days they had all the great qualities of an oligarchy—high spirit, steadiness of purpose, persistence under difficulties, trained sagacity in war, and diplomacy. The Nobility represented Rome in a stronger and loftier spirit than any popular organisation could have done, and the Romans were proud to follow its lead and to accept as their own the majestic policy which the Senate announced by word and deed. ”

“ He was finally presented by the senate with the lofty title of Augustus, which henceforth had a mysterious significance as the seal of imperial greatness, and his commands were obeyed without a murmur from the Tigris to the Tyne. But whilst in the enjoyment of this pre-eminence, the Roman emperor was unconscious that in a village of Judea, in the lowest rank of life, among the most contemned tribe of his dominions, his Master was born. |A.D. 1.|By this event the whole current of the world’s history was changed. The great became small and the small great. ”

“ JEneas is too plain for any Roman to mistake. The divinity which protects Rome is the Lord of heaven and earth and all that is therein. There is no God or Lord like unto Him. Blessed are the Romans who have this Lord for their God. The majesty of the Roman empire, now at the crowning summit of its progress, is the immediate efflux of this sovereign power, and the one ia for ever bound up with the other. If such was the doctrine sung by Virgil, surely none could be more grateful to Augustus, the sovereign ruler of an empire so guided and protected. ”

“ They trust every thing to the dignity of the Eternal City, and the watchfulness of the Emperor: for to this, his one idea of irresistible power equally for good or evil, the heart of the Roman was sure to turn. And for the eleven years of the reigns of Vespasian and Titus, the Roman did not appeal for protection against a foreign enemy in vain. Rome itself was compensated by shows and buildings—with a triumph and an arch—for the degradation in which it was held. But prætor and proconsul still pursued their course of oppressing [28] the lands committed to their defence ”

“ Giving his son, Ti'tus, the command of the army that was to lay siege to Jerusalem, he himself went forward, and was met many miles from Rome by all the senate, and the inhabitants, who gave the sincerest testimony of their joy, in having an emperor of such great and experienced virtue. 18. Nor did he in the least disappoint their expectations; as he showed himself equally assiduous in rewarding merit and pardoning his adversaries; in reforming the manners of the citizens, and setting them the best example in his own. ”

“ Augustus had accomplished his desire. Men were looking on Caesar as a success after all and not as a failure. The Di Manes of a murdered emperor had been profitably exchanged for the Divus Julius, and just as the gods had founded the old Rome of Romulus, so again it was a god who had laid the foundations of the empire over which his successor was ruling. ”

“ This, the highest and mightiest of all ambitions, one, too, that is perfectly logical, was attained by Augustus, emperor and pontiff, master of all the known world; and it is the glorious figure of Augustus, ever rising anew from among the ruins of ancient Rome, which has always haunted the popes; it is his blood which has pulsated in their veins.
But power had become divided into two parts amidst the crumbling of the Roman empire ”

“ The ambassadors of the most remote parts of the earth, of Æthiopia, Arabia, Persia, Bactriana, India, and China, all remarkable by their rich or singular dresses, displayed the fame and power of the Roman emperor, who exposed likewise to the public view the presents that he had received, and particularly a great number of crowns of gold, the offerings of grateful cities. The victories of Aurelian were attested by the long train of captives who reluctantly attended his triumph, Goths, Vandals, Sarmatians, Alemanni, Franks, Gauls, Syrians and Egyptians. ”

“ This conduct made him leave his province with a fair reputation; being rich himself, and having enriched his soldiers, and having received from them the honorable name of Imperator. There is a law among the Romans, that whoever desires the honor of a triumph must stay without the city and expect his answer. ”