The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

John Lord

• Publisher: Ozymandias Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781531291945
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The assassination of Cæsar was not immediately followed with the convulsions which we should naturally expect. The people were weary of war, and sighed for repose, and, moreover, were comparatively indifferent on whom the government fell, since their liberties were hopelessly prostrated. Only one thing was certain, that power would be usurped by some one, and most probably by the great chieftains who represented Cæsar's interests. The most powerful men in Rome at this time, were Marcus Antonius, the most able of Cæsar's lieutenants, the most constant of his friends, and the nearest of his relatives, although a man utterly unprincipled; Octavius, grandson of Julius, whom Cæsar adopted as his heir, a young man of nineteen; Lepidus, colleague consul with Cæsar, the head of the ancient family of the Lepidi, thirteen of whom had been honored with curule magistracies; Sextus Pompeius, son of Pompey; Brutus and Cassius, chief conspirators; Dolabella, a man of consular rank, and one of the profligate nobles of his time; Hirtia and Pansa, consuls; Piso, father-in-law of Cæsar, of a powerful family, which boasted of several consuls; and Cicero - still influential from his great weight of character. All these men were great nobles, and had filled the highest offices...

THE SIX CÆSARS OF THE JULIAN LINE

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WE HAVE ALLUDED TO THE centralization of political power in the person of Octavius. He simply retained all the great offices of State, and ruled, not so much by a new title, as he did as consul, tribune, censor, pontifex maximus, and chief of the Senate. But these offices were not at once bestowed.

His reign may be said to have commenced on the final defeat of his rivals, B.C. 29. Two years later, he received the title of Augustus, by which he is best known in history, although he was ordinarily called Cæsar. That proud name never lost its pre-eminence.

The first part of the reign was memorable for the organization of the State, and especially of the army; and also for the means he used to consolidate his empire. Augustus had no son, and but one daughter, although married three times. His first wife was Clodia, daughter of Clodius; his second was Scribonia, sister-in-law of Sextus Pompey; and the third was Livia Drusilla. The second wife was the mother of his daughter, Julia. This daughter was married to M. Claudius Marcellus, son of Marcellus and Octavia, the divorced wife of Antonius, and sister of Octavius. M. Claudius Marcellus thus married his cousin, but died two years afterward. It was to his honor that Augustus built the theatre of Marcellus.

On the death of Marcellus, Augustus married his daughter Julia to Agrippa, his prime minister and principal lieutenant. The issue of this marriage were three sons and two daughters. The sons died early. The youngest daughter, Agrippina, married Germanicus, and was the mother of the emperor Caligula. The marriage of Agrippina with Germanicus united the lines of Julia and Livia, the two last wives of Augustus, for Germanicus was the son of Drusus, the younger son of Livia by her first husband, Tiberius Claudius Nero. The eldest son of Livia, by Tiberius Claudius Nero, was the emperor Tiberius Nero, adopted by Augustus. Drusus married Antonia, the daughter of Antonius the triumvir, and was the father, not only of Germanicus, but of Claudius Drusus Cæsar, the fifth emperor. Another daughter of Antonius, also called Antonia, married L. Domitius Ahenobardus, whose son married Agrippina, the mother of Nero. Thus the descendants of Octavia and Antony became emperors, and were intertwined with the lines of Julia and Livia. The four successors of Augustus were all, in the male line, sprung from Livia’s first husband, and all, except Tiberius, traced their descent from the defeated triumvir. Only the first six of the twelve Cæsars had relationship with the Julian house.

I mention this genealogy to show the descent of the first six emperors from Julia, the sister of Julius Cæsar, and grandmother of Augustus. Although the first six emperors were elected, they all belonged to the Julian house, and were the heirs of the great Cæsar.

When the government was organized, Augustus left the care of his capital to Mæcenas, his minister of civil affairs and departed for Gaul, to restore order in that province, and build a series of fortifications to the Danube, to check the encroachments of barbarians. The region between the Danube and the Alps was peopled by various tribes, of different names, who gave perpetual trouble to the Romans; but they were now apparently subdued, and the waves of barbaric conquest were stayed for three hundred years. Vindelicea and Rhætia were added to the empire, in a single campaign, by Tiberius and Drusus, the sons of Livia—the emperor’s beloved wife. Agrippa returned shortly after from a successful war in the East, but sickened and died B.C.12. By his death Julia was again a widow, and was given in marriage to Tiberius, whom Augustus afterward adopted as his successor. Drusus, his brother, remained in Gaul, to complete the subjugation of the Celtic tribes, and to check the incursions of the Germans, who, from that time, were the most formidable enemies of Rome.

What interest is attached to those Teutonic races who ultimately became the conquerors of the empire! They were more warlike, persevering, and hardy, than the Celts, who had been incorporated with the empire. Tacitus has painted their simple manners, their passionate love of independence, and their religious tendency of mind. They occupied those vast plains and forests which lay between the Rhine, the Danube, the Vistula, and the German Ocean. Under different names they invaded the Roman world—the Suevi, the Franks, the Alemanni, the Burgundians, the Lombards, the Goths, the Vandals; but had not, at the time of Augustus, made those vast combinations which threatened immediate danger. They were a pastoral people, with blue eyes, ruddy hair, and large stature, trained to cold, to heat, to exposure, and to fatigue. Their strength lay in their infantry, which was well armed, and their usual order of battle was in the form of a wedge. They were accompanied even in war with their wives and children, and their women had peculiar virtue and influence. They inspired that reverence which never passed away from the Germanic nations, producing in the Middle Ages the graces of chivalry. All these various tribes had the same peculiarities, among which reverence was one of the most marked. They were not idol worshipers, but worshiped God in the form of the sun, moon, and stars, and in the silence of their majestic groves. Odin was their great traditional hero, whom they made an object of idolatry. War was their great occupation, and the chase was their principal recreation and pleasure. Tacitus enumerates as many as fifty tribes of these brave warriors, who feared not death, and even gloried in their losses. The most powerful of these tribes, in the time of Augustus, was the confederation of the Suevi, occupying half of Germany, from the Danube to the Baltic. Of this confederation the Cauci were the most powerful, living on the banks of the Elbe, and obtaining a precarious living. In close connection with them were the Saxons and Longobardi (Long-beards). On the shores of the Baltic, between the Oder and the Vistula, were the Goths.

The arms of Cæsar and Augustus had as yet been only felt by the smaller tribes on the right bank of the Rhine, and these were assailed by Drusus, but only to secure his flank during the greater enterprise of sailing down the Rhine, to attack the people of the maritime plains. Great feats were performed by this able step-son of Augustus, who advanced as far as the Elbe, but was mortally injured by a fall from his horse. He lingered a month, and died, to the universal regret of the Romans, for he was the ablest general sent against the barbarians since Julius Cæsar, B.C. 9. The effect of his various campaigns was to check the inroads of the Germans for a century. It was at this time that the banks of the Rhine were studded by the forts which subsequently became those picturesque towns which now command the admiration of travelers.

After the death of Drusus, to whose memory a beautiful triumphal arch was erected, Tiberius was sent against the Germans, and after successful warfare, at the age of forty, obtained the permission of Augustus to retire to Rhodes, in order to improve his mind by the study of philosophy, or, as it is supposed by many historians, from jealousy of Caius and Lucius Cæsar, the children of Julia and Agrippa—those young princes to whom the throne of the world was apparently destined. At Rhodes, Tiberius, now the ablest man in the empire, for both Agrippa and Mæcenas were dead, lived in simple retirement for seven years. But the levities of Julia, to which Augustus could not be blind, compelled him to banish her—his only daughter—to the Campanian coast, where she died neglected and impoverished. The emperor was so indignant in view of her disgraceful conduct, that he excluded her from any inheritance. The premature death of her sons nearly broke the heart of their grandfather, bereft of the wise councils and pleasant society of his great ministers, and bending under the weight of the vast empire which he, as the heir of Cæsar, had received. The loss of his grandsons compelled the emperor to provide for his succession, and he turned his eyes to Tiberius, his step-son, who was then at Rhodes. He adopted him as his successor, and invested him with the tribunitian power. But, while he selected him as his heir, he also required him to adopt Germanicus, the son of his brother Drusus.

Another great man now appeared upon the stage, L. Domitius Ahenobardus, the son-in-law of Octavia and Antony, who was intrusted with the war against the Germanic tribes, and who was the first Roman general to cross the Elbe. He was the grandfather of Nero. But Tiberius was sent to supersede him, and following the plan of his brother Drusus, he sent a flotilla down the Rhine, with orders to ascend the Elbe, and meet his army at an appointed rendezvous, which was then regarded as a great military feat, in the face of such foes as the future conquerors of Rome. After this Tiberius was occupied in reconquering the wide region between the Adriatic and the Danube, known as Illyricum, which occupied him three years, A.D. 7-9. In this war he was assisted by his nephew and adopted son, Germanicus, whose brilliant career revived the hope which had centred in Drusus.

Meanwhile Augustus, wearied with the cares of State, provoked by the scandals which his daughter occasioned, and irritated by plots against his life, began to relax his attention to business, and to grow morose. It was then that he banished Ovid, whoseTristia made a greater sensation than his immortal Metamorphoses. The disaster which befell Varus with a Roman army, in the forest of Teutoburg, near the river Lippe, when thirty thousand men were cut to pieces by the Germans under Arminius (Hermann), completed the humiliation of Augustus, for, in this defeat, he must have foreseen the future victories of the barbarians. All ideas of extending the empire beyond the Rhine were now visionary, and that river was henceforth to remain its boundary on the north. New levies were indeed dispatched to the Rhine, and Tiberius and Germanicus led the forces. But the princes returned to Rome without effecting important results.

Soon after, in the year A.D. 14, Augustus died in his seventy-seventh year, after a reign of forty-four years from the battle of Actium, and fifty from the triumvirate—one of the longest reigns in history, and one of the most successful. From his nineteenth year he was prominent on the stage of Roman public life. Under his auspices the empire reached the Elbe, and Egypt was added to its provinces. He planted colonies in every province, and received from the Parthians the captured standards of Crassus. His fleets navigated the Northern Ocean; his armies reduced the Pannonians and Illyrians. He added to the material glories of his capital, and sought to secure peace throughout the world. He was both munificent and magnificent, and held the reins of government with a firm hand. He was cultivated, unostentatious, and genial; but ambitious, and versed in all the arts of dissimulation and kingcraft. But he was a great monarch, and ruled with signal ability. After the battle of Actium, his wars were chiefly with the barbarians, and his greatest generals were members of the imperial family. That he could have reigned so long, in such an age, with so many enemies, is a proof of his wisdom and moderation, as well as of his good fortune. That he should have triumphed over such generals as Brutus, and Antonius, and Sextus—representing the old parties of the republic, is unquestionable evidence of transcendent ability. But his great merit was his capacity to rule, to organize, and to civilize. He is one of the best types of a sovereign ruler that the world has seen. It is nothing against him, that, in his latter years, there were popular discontents. Such generally happen at the close of all long reigns, as in the case of Solomon and Louis XIV. And yet, the closing years of his reign were melancholy, like those of the French monarch, in view of the extinction of literary glories, and the passing away of the great lights of the age, without the appearance of new stars to take their place. But this was not the fault of Augustus, whose intellect expanded with his fortunes, and whose magnanimity grew with his intellect—a man who comprehended his awful mission, and who discharged his trusts with dignity and self-reliance.

Tiberius Cæsar, the third of the Roman emperors, found no opposition to his elevation on the death of Augustus. He ascended the throne of the Roman world at the mature age of fifty-six, after having won great reputation both as a statesman and a general. He was probably the most capable man in the empire, and in spite of all his faults, the empire was never better administered than by him. His great misfortune and fault was the suspicion of his nature, which made him the saddest of mankind, and finally, a monster of cruelty.

Like Augustus, he veiled his power as emperor by assuming the old offices of the republic. A subservient Senate and people favored the consolidation of the new despotism to which the world was now accustomed, and with power, which it cheerfully acquiesced as the best government for the times. The last remnant of popular elections was abolished, and the Comitia was transferred from the Campus Martius to the Senate, who elected the candidate proposed by the emperor.

The first year of the accession of Tiberius was marked by mutinies in the legions, which were quelled by his nephew Germanicus, whose popularity was boundless, even as his feats had been heroic. This young prince, on whom the hopes of the empire rested, had married Agrippina, the daughter of Julia and Agrippa, and traced through his mother Antonia, and grandmother Octavia, a direct descent from Julia, the sister of the dictator. The blood of Antony also ran in his veins, as well as that of Livia. Hiswife was worthy of him, and was devotedly attached to him. By this marriage the lines of Julia and Livia were united; and by his descent from Antony the great parties of the revolution were silenced. He was equally the heir of Augustus and of Antonius, of Julia and of Livia; and of all the chiefs of Roman history no one has been painted in fairer colors. In natural ability, in military heroism, in the virtues of the heart, in exalted rank, he had no equal. As consul, general, and governor, he called forth universal admiration. His mind was also highly cultivated, and he excelled in Greek and Latin verse, while his condescending and courteous manners won both soldiers and citizens.

Of such a man, twenty-nine years of age, Tiberius was naturally jealous, especially since, through his wife, Germanicus was allied with the Octavian family and through his mother, with the sister of the great Julius; and, therefore, had higher claims than he, on the principle of legitimacy. He was only the adopted son of Octavius, but Germanicus, through his mother Antonia, had the same ancestry as Octavius himself. Moreover, the cries of the legionaries, “Cæsar Germanicus will not endure to be a subject,” added to the fears of the emperor, that he would be supplanted. So he determined to send his nephew on distant and dangerous expeditions, against those barbarians who had defeated Varus.

Germanicus, no sooner than he had quelled the sedition in his camp, set out for Germany with eight legions and an equal number of auxiliaries. With this large force he crossed the Rhine, revisited the scene of the slaughter of Varus, and paid funeral honors to the remains of the fallen Romans. But the campaigns were barren of results, although attended with great expenses. No fortresses were erected to check the return of the barbarians from the places where they had been dislodged, and no roads were made to expedite future expeditions. Germanicus carried on war in savage and barbarous tracts, amid innumerable obstacles, which tasked his resources to the utmost. Tiberius was dissatisfied with these results, and vented his ill-humor in murmurs against his nephew. The Roman people were offended at this jealousy, and clamored for his recall. Germanicus, however, embarked on a third campaign, A.D. 15, with renewed forces, and confronted the Germans on the Weser, and crossed the river in the face of the enemy. There the Romans obtained a great victory over Arminius, leader of the barbaric hosts, who retreated beyond the Elbe. The great German confederacy was, for a time, dispersed. Germanicus himself retired to the banks of the Rhine—which became the final boundary of the empire on the side of Germany. The hero who had persevered against innumerable obstacles, in overcoming which the discipline and force of the Roman legions were never more apparent, not even under Julius Cæsar, was now recalled to Rome, and a triumph was given him, amid the wildest enthusiasm of the Roman people. The young hero was the great object of attraction, as he was borne along in his triumphal chariot, surrounded by the five male descendants of his union with Agrippina—his faithful and heroic wife. Tiberius, in the name of his adopted son, bestowed three hundred sesterces apiece upon all the citizens, and the Senate chose the popular favorite as consul for the ensuing year, in conjunction with the emperor himself.

Troubles in the East induced Tiberius to send Germanicus to Asia Minor, while Drusus was sent to Illyricum. This prince was the son of Tiberius by his first wife, Vipsania, and was the cousin of Germanicus. He was disgraced by the vices of debauchery and cruelty, and was finally poisoned by his wife, Livilla, at the instance of Sejanus. So long as Germanicus lived, the court was divided between the parties of Drusus and Germanicus, and Tiberius artfully held the balance of favor between them, taking care not to declare which should be his successor. But Drusus was, probably, the favorite of the emperor, although greatly inferior to the elder prince in every noble quality. Tiberius, in sending him to Illyricum, wished to remove him from the dissipations of the capital, and also, to place a man in that important post who should be loyal to his authority.

In appointing Germanicus to the chief command of the provinces beyond the Ægean, Tiberius also gave the province of Syria to Cnæus Piso, of the illustrious Calpurnian house, one of the proudest and most powerful of the Roman nobles. His wife, Plancina, was the favorite of Livia,—the empress-mother,—and he believed himself appointed to the government of Syria for the purpose of checking the ambitious designs which were imputed to Germanicus, while his wife was instructed to set up herself as a rival to Agrippina. The moment Piso quitted Italy, he began to thwart his superior, and to bring his authority into contempt. Yet he was treated by Germanicus with marked kindness. After visiting the famous cities of Greece, Germanicus marched to the frontiers of Armenia to settle its affairs with the empire—the direct object of his mission. He crowned a prince, called Zeno, as monarch of that country, reduced Cappadocia, and visited Egypt, apparently to examine the political affairs of the province, but really to study its antiquities, even as Scipio had visited Sicily in the heat of the Punic war. For thus going out of his way, he was rebuked by the emperor. He then retraced his steps, and shaped his course to Syria, where he found his regulations and appointments had been overruled by Piso, between whom and himself bitter altercations ensued. While in Syria, he fell sick and died, and his illness was attributed to poison administered by Piso, although there was little evidence to support the charge.

The death of Germanicus was received with great grief by the Roman people, and the general sorrow of the Roman world, and his praises were pronounced in every quarter. H...

Table of contents

• THE CIVIL WARS FOLLOWING THE DEATH OF CÆSAR.—ANTONIUS.—AUGUSTUS
• THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON THE ACCESSION OF AUGUSTUS
• THE SIX CÆSARS OF THE JULIAN LINE
• THE CLIMAX OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
• THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE
• THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE