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 THE CiESAItS. 
 
 PY 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY, 
 
 ACfHOR 0? 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF jiJV E.YGUSII OPIUM-EATER, ETC., ETC 
 
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 BOSTON: 
 TICK N OR AND FIELD S 
 
 M DCCC LX.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by 
 
 Ticknor and Fields, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District -^Ourt of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 - < . *■ * • ' • 

 
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 I ft 
 
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 FROM THE AUTHOR, TO THE AMERICAN LDUOR OF 
 HIS WORKS. 
 
 These papers I am anxious to put into the hands 
 of your house, and, so far as regards the U. S., of 
 your house exclusively ; not with any view to further 
 emolument, but as an acknowledgment of the services 
 which you have already rendered me ; namely, first, in 
 having brought together so widely scattered a collcc- 
 V tion — a difficulty which in my own hands by too 
 * painful an experience I had found from nervous de- 
 pression to be absolutely insurmountable ; secondly, 
 in having made me a participator in the pecuniary 
 profits of the American edition, without solicitation or 
 the shadow of any expectation on my part, without 
 any legal claim that I could plead, or equitable war- 
 rant in established usage, solely and merely upon your 
 own spontaneous motion. Some of these new papers, 
 I hope, will not be without their value in the eyes of 
 those who have taken an interest in the original scries. 
 But at all events, good or bad, they are now tendered 
 to the appropriation of your individual house, the 
 Messrs. Tickxor & Fields, according to the amplest 
 
 si extent of any power to. make such a transfer that 
 I may be found to possess by law or custom in 
 America. 
 
 ^j I wisli this transfer were likely to be of more value. 
 
 But the veriest trifle, interpreted by the spirit in which 
 I oiler it, may express my sense of the liberality 
 manifested throughout this transaction by your honor- 
 able house. 
 
 Ever believe me, my dear sir. 
 
 Your faithful and obliged, 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

 
 THE CAESARS. 
 
 The condition of the Roman Emperors has never 
 yet been fully appreciated ; nor has it been sufficiently 
 perceived in what respects it was absolutely unique. 
 There was but one Rome : no other city, as we are 
 satisfied by the collation of many facts, either of 
 ancient or modern times, has ever rivalled this as- 
 tonishing metropolis in the grandeur of magnitude ; 
 and not many — if we except the cities of Greece, 
 none at all — in the grandeur of architectural dis- 
 play. Speaking even of London, we ought in all 
 reason to say — the Nation of London, and not the 
 City of London ; but of Rome in her palmy days, 
 nothing less could be said in the naked severity of 
 logic. A million and a half of souls — that popu- 
 lation, apart from any other distinctions, is per se 
 for London, a justifying ground for such a classifi- 
 cation; a fortiori, then, will it belong to a city which 
 counted from one horn to the other of its mighty 
 suburbs not less than four millions of inhabitants l 
 at the very least, as we resolutely maintain after 
 reviewing all that has been written on that much
 
 10 THE C^ESAHS. 
 
 vexed theme, and very probably half as many more. 
 Republican Rome had her 'prerogative tribe ; the earth 
 has its prerogative city ; and that city was Rome. 
 
 As was the city, such was its prince — mysterious, 
 solitary, unique. Each was to the otber an adequate 
 counterpart, each reciprocally that perfect mirror 
 which reflected as it were in alia materia, those in- 
 communicable attributes of grandeur, that under the 
 same shape and denomination never upon this earth 
 were destined to be revived. Rome has not been re- 
 peated ; neither has Csesar. Ubi Ccesar, ibi Roma, 
 was a maxim of Roman jurisprudence. And the 
 same maxim may be translated into a wider mean- 
 ing ; in which it becomes true also for our historical 
 experience. Caesar and Rome have flourished and 
 expired together. The illimitable attributes of the 
 Roman prince, boundless and comprehensive as the 
 universal air, — like that also bright and apprehen- 
 sible to the most vagrant eye, yet in parts (and those 
 not far removed) unfathomable as outer darkness, 
 (for no chamber in a dungeon could shroud in more 
 impenetrable concealment a deed of murder than the 
 upper chambers of the air,) — these attributes, so 
 impressive to the imagination, and which all the 
 subtlety of the Roman 2 wit could as little fathom as 
 the fleets of Coesar could traverse the Polar basin, 
 or unlock the gates of the Pacific, arc best sym- 
 bolized, and find their most appropriate exponent, in
 
 Till. C.BSABS. 11 
 
 the illimitable city itself — that Rome, whose centre, 
 the Capitol, was immovable as Tcueriffe or Atlas, 
 but whose circumference was shadowy, uncertain, 
 restless, and advancing as the frontiers of her all- 
 conquering empire. It is false to say, that with 
 Caesar came the destruction of Roman greatness. 
 Peace, hollow rhetoricians ! Until Caesar came, Rome 
 was a minor ; by him, she attained her majority, and 
 fulfilled her destiny. Caius Julius, you say, de- 
 flowered the virgin purity of her civil liberties. 
 Doubtless, then, Rome had risen immaculate from 
 the arms of Sylla and of Marius. But, if it were 
 Caius Julius who deflowered Rome, if under him she 
 forfeited her dowery of civic purity, if to him she 
 first unloosed her maiden zone, then be it affirmed 
 boldly — that she reserved her greatest favors for 
 the noblest of her wooers, and we may plead the 
 justification of Falconbridge for his mother's trans- 
 gressions with the lion-hearted king — such a sin was 
 self-ennobled. Did Julius deflower Rome? Then, by 
 that consummation, he caused her to fulfil the func- 
 tions of her nature ; he compelled her to exchange the 
 imperfect and inchoate condition of a mere fcemhia for 
 the perfections of a mulier. And metaphor apart, 
 we maintain that Rome lost no liberties by the mighty 
 Julius. That which in tendency, and by the spirit of 
 her institutions ; that which, by her very corruptions 
 and abuses co-operating with her laws, Rome promised
 
 12 THE CESARS. 
 
 and involved in the germ ; even that, and nothing 
 less or different, did Rome unfold and accomplish 
 under this Julian violence. The rape [if such it were] 
 of Caesar, her final Romulus, completed for Rome that 
 which the rape under Romulus, her earliest Caesar, 
 had prosperously begun. And thus by one godlike 
 man was a nation-city matured ; and from the ever- 
 lasting and nameless 3 city was a man produced — 
 capable of taming her indomitable nature, and of 
 forcing her to immolate her wild virginity to the state 
 best fitted for the destined ' Mother of empires.' 
 Peace, then, rhetoricians, false threnodists of false 
 liberty ! hollow chanters over the ashes of a hollow 
 republic ! Without Caesar, we affirm a thousand times 
 that there would have been no perfect Rome ; and, 
 but for Rome, there could have been no such man as 
 Caesar. 
 
 Both, then, were immortal ; each worthy of each, 
 and the Cui viget nihil simile aul secundum of the 
 poet, was as true of one as of the other. For, if by 
 comparison with Rome other cities were but villages, 
 with even more propriety it may be asserted, that after 
 the Roman Caesars all modern kings, kesars, or empe- 
 rors, are mere phantoms of royalty. The Caesar of 
 Western Rome — he only of all earthly potentates, 
 past or to come, could be said to reign as a monarch, 
 that is, as a solitary king. He was not the greatest 
 of princes, simply because there was no other but him-
 
 THE r.i.s.vitg. 13 
 
 self. There were doubtless a few outlying rulers, of 
 unknown names and titles upon the margins of his 
 empire, there were tributary lieutenants and barbarous 
 reguli, the obscure vassals of his sceptre, whose hom- 
 age was offered on the lowest step of his throne, and 
 scarcely known to him but as objects of disdain. But 
 these feudatories could no more break the unity of his 
 empire, which embraced the whole <\ l /^u lr ', i — the total 
 habitable world as then known to geography, or recog- 
 nized by the muse of History — than at this day the 
 British empire on the sea can be brought into question 
 or made conditional, because some chief of Owyhee 
 or Tongataboo should proclaim a momentary indepen- 
 dence of the British trident, or should even offer a 
 transient outrage to her sovereign flag. Such a tem- 
 pestas in matula might raise a brief uproar in his little 
 native archipelago, but too feeble to reach the shores 
 of Europe by an echo — or to ascend by so much as 
 an infantine susurrus to the cars of the British Xeptune. 
 Parthia, it is true, might pretend to the dignity of an 
 empire. But her sovereigns, though sitting in the seat 
 of the great king, (d famiii ;,) were no longer the rulers 
 of a vast and polished nation. They were regarded as 
 barbarians — potent only by their standing army, not 
 upon the larger basis of civic strength ; and, even under 
 this limitation, they were supposed to owe more to the 
 circumstances of their position — their climate, their 
 remoteness, and their inaccessibility except through
 
 14 THE CiESARS. 
 
 arid and sultry deserts — than to intrinsic resources, 
 such as could he permanently relied on in a serious 
 trial of strength between the two powers. The kings 
 of Parthia, therefore, were far enough from being 
 regarded in the light of antagonistic forces to the 
 majesty of Rome. And, these withdrawn from the 
 comparison, who else was there — what prince, what 
 king, what potentate of any denomination, to break the 
 universal calm, that through centuries continued to 
 lave, as with the quiet undulations of summer lakes, 
 the sacred footsteps of the Coesarean throne ? The 
 Byzantine court which, merely as the inheritor of 
 some fragments from that august throne, was drunk 
 with excess of pride, surrounded itself with elaborate 
 expressions of grandeur beyond what mortal eyes 
 were supposed able to sustain. 
 
 These fastidious, and sometimes fantastic ceremo- 
 nies, originally devised as the very extremities of 
 an ti- barbarism, were often themselves but too nearly 
 allied in spirit to the barbaresque in taste. In reality, 
 some parts of the Byzantine court ritual were arranged 
 in the same spirit as that of China or the Burman em- 
 pire ; or fashioned by anticipation, as one might think, 
 on the practice of that Oriental Cham, who daily 
 proclaims by sound of trumpet to the kings in the 
 four corners of the earth — that they, having dutifully 
 awaited the close of his dinner, may now with his 
 royal license go to their own.
 
 tin; CJESAB8. 15 
 
 From such vestiges of derivative grandeur, propa- 
 gated to ages so remote from itself, and sustained by 
 manners so different from the spirit of her own, — 
 we may faintly measure the strength of the original 
 impulse given to the feelings of men by the sacred 
 majesty of the Roman throne. How potent must that 
 splendor bare been, whose mere reflection shot rays 
 upon a distant crown, under another heaven, and 
 across the wilderness of fourteen centuries ! Splen- 
 dor, thus transmitted, thus sustained, and thus imper- 
 ishable, argues a transcendent in the basis of radical 
 power. Broad and deep must those foundations have 
 been laid, which could support an ' arch of empire ' 
 rising to tbat giddy altitude — an altitude which suf- 
 ficed to bring it within the ken of posterity to the 
 sixtieth generation. 
 
 Power is measured by resistance. Upon such a 
 scale, if it were applied with skill, the relations of 
 greatness in Rome to the greatest of all that has gone 
 before her, and has yet come after her, would first be 
 adequately revealed. The youngest reader will know 
 that the grandest forms in which the collective might 
 of the human race has manifested itself, are the four 
 monarchies. Four times have the distributive forces 
 of nations gathered themselves, under the strong com- 
 pression of the sword, into mighty aggregates — de- 
 nominated Universal Empires, or Monarchies. These 
 are noticed in the Holy Scriptures; and it is upon
 
 16 THE CJSSARS. 
 
 their warrant that men have supposed no fifth mon- 
 archy or universal empire possible in an earthly sense ; 
 but that, whenever such an empire arises, it will have 
 Christ for its head ; in other words, that no fifth 
 monorchia can take place until Christianity shall have 
 swallowed up all other forms of religion, and shall 
 have gathered the whole family of man into one fold 
 under one all-conquering Shepherd. Hence 4 the fa- 
 natics of 1650, who proclaimed Jesus for their king, 
 and who did sincerely anticipate his near advent in 
 great power, and under some personal manifestation, 
 were usually styled Fifth- Monarchists. 
 
 However, waiving the question (interesting enough 
 in itself) — Whether upon earthly principles a fifth 
 universal empire could by possibility arise in the 
 present condition of knowledge for man individually, 
 and of organization for man in general — this question 
 waived, and confining ourselves to the comparison of 
 those four monarchies which actually have existed, — 
 of the Assyrian or earliest, we may remark, that it 
 found men in no state of cohesion. This cause, which 
 came in aid of its first foundation, would probably con- 
 tinue ; and would diminish the intensity of the power 
 in the same proportion as it promoted its extension. 
 This monarchy would be absolute only by the personal 
 presence of the monarch ; elsewhere, from mere defect 
 of organization, it would and must betray the total 
 imperfections of an elementary state, and of a first
 
 THE C.ESAUS. 17 
 
 experiment. More by the weakness inherent in such 
 a constitution, than by its own strength, did the 
 Persian spear prevail against the Assyrian. Two 
 centuries revolved, seven or eight generations, when 
 Alexander found himself in the same position as Cyrus 
 for building a third monarchy, and aided by the self- 
 same vices of luxurious effeminacy in his enemy, con- 
 fronted with the self-same virtues of enterprise and 
 hardihood in his compatriot soldiers. The native 
 Persians, in the earliest and very limited import of that 
 name, were a poor and hardy race of mountaineers. 
 So were the men of Macedon ; and neither one tribe 
 nor the other found any adequate resistance in the 
 luxurious occupants of Babylonia. We may add with 
 respect to these two earliest monarchies, that the As- 
 syrian was undefined with regard to space, and the 
 Persian fugitive with regard to time. But for the 
 third — the Grecian or Macedonian — we know that 
 the arts of civility, and of civil organization, had made 
 great progress before the Roman strength was measured 
 against it. In Macedon, in Achaia, in Syria, in Asia 
 Minor, in Egypt, — everywhere the members of this 
 Empire have begun to knit ; the cohesion was far 
 closer, the development of their resources more com- 
 plete ; the resistance therefore by many hundred de- 
 grees more formidable : consequently, by the fairest 
 inference, the power in that proportion greater which 
 laid the foundation of this last great monarchy. It is 
 2
 
 18 THE C.ESARS. 
 
 probable, indeed, both a priori, and upon the evidence 
 of various facts which have survived, that each of the 
 four great empires successively triumphed over an 
 antagonist, barbarous in comparison of itself, and each 
 by and through that very superiority in the arts and 
 policy of civilization. 
 
 Rome, therefore, which came last in the succession, 
 and swallowed up the three great powers that had 
 seriatim cast the human race into one mould, and had 
 brought them under the unity of a single will, entered 
 by inheritance upon all that its predecessors in that 
 career had appropriated, but in a condition of far 
 ampler development. Estimated merely by longitude 
 and latitude, the territory of the Roman empire was 
 the finest by much that has ever fallen under a single 
 sceptre. Amongst modern empires, doubtless, the 
 Spanish of the sixteenth century, and the British of 
 the present, cannot but be admired as prodigious 
 growths out of so small a stem. In that view they 
 will be endless monuments in attestation of the mar- 
 vels which are lodged in civilization. But considered 
 in and for itself, and with no reference to the propor- 
 tion of the creating forces, each of these empires has 
 the great defect of being disjointed, and even insus- 
 ceptible of perfect union. It is in fact no vinculum of 
 social organization which held them together, but the 
 ideal vinculum of a common fealty, and of submission 
 to the same sceptre. This is not like the tie of man-
 
 THE C.2ESABB. 19 
 
 n is, operative even where it is not perceived, but like 
 the distinctions of geography — existing to-day, for- 
 gotten to-morrow — and abolished by a stroke of the 
 pen, or a trick of diplomacy. Russia, again, a mighty 
 empire as respects the simple grandeur of magnitude, 
 builds her power upon sterility, She has it in her 
 power to seduce an invading foe into vast circles oi 
 starvation, of which the radii measure a thousand 
 leagues. Frost and snow are confederates of her 
 strength. She is strong by her very weakness. But 
 Rome laid a belt about the Mediterranean of a thou- 
 sand miles in breadth ; and within that zone she com- 
 prehended not only all the great cities of the ancient 
 world, but so perfectly did she lay the garden of the 
 world in every climate, and for every mode of natural 
 wealth, within her own ring-fence, that since that era 
 no land, no part and parcel of the Roman empire, has 
 ever risen into strength and opulence, except where 
 unusual artificial industry has availed to counteract 
 the tendencies of nature. So entirely had Rome en- 
 grossed whatsoever was rich by the mere bounty of 
 native endowment. 
 
 Vast, therefore, unexampled, immeasurable, was the 
 basis of natural power upon which the Roman throne 
 reposed. The military force which put Rome in pos- 
 session of this inordinate power, was certainly in some 
 respects artificial; but the power itself was natural, 
 and not subject to the ebbs and flows which attend the
 
 20 THE C.ESAUS. 
 
 commercial empires of our days, (for all are in part 
 commercial.) The depression, the reverses, of Rome, 
 were confined to one shape — famine ; terrific shape, 
 douhtless, hut one which levies its penalty of suffering 
 not by elaborate processes that do not exhaust their 
 total cycle in less than long periods of years. Fortu- 
 nately for those who survive, no arrears of misery are 
 allowed by this scourge of ancient days ; 5 the total 
 penalty is paid down at once. As respected the hand 
 of man, Rome slept for ages in absolute security. She 
 could suffer only by the wrath of Providence ; and, so 
 long as she continued to be Rome, for many a genera- 
 tion she only of all the monarchies has feared no 
 
 mortal hand, 6 
 
 ' God and his Son except, 
 
 Created thing naught valued she nor shunned. ' 
 
 That the possessor and wielder of such enormous 
 power — power alike admirable for its extent, for its 
 intensity, and for its consecration from all counter- 
 forces which could restrain it, or endander it — should 
 be regarded as sharing in the attributes of supernatural 
 beings, is no more than might naturally be expected. 
 All other known power in human hands has either 
 been extensive, but wanting in intensity — or intense, 
 but wanting in extent — or, thirdly, liable to perma- 
 nent control and hazard from some antagonist power 
 commensurate with itself. But the Roman power, in 
 its centuries of grandeur, involved every mode of
 
 THE CJE8AB8. 21 
 
 strength, witli absolute Immunity from all kinds and 
 
 degrees of weakness. It ought not, therefore, to surprise 
 us that the emperor, as the depositary of this charmed 
 power, should have been looked upon as a sacred per- 
 son, and the imperial family considered as a ' divina 
 domus.' It is an error to regard this as excess of 
 adulation, or as built originally upon hypocrisy. Un- 
 doubtedly the expressions of this feeling are sometimes 
 gross and overcharged, as we find them in the very 
 greatest of the Roman poets : for example, it shocks 
 us to find a fine writer, in anticipating the future can- 
 onization of liis patron, and his enstalment amongst 
 the heavenly hosts, begging him to keep his distance 
 warily from this or that constellation, and to be cau- 
 tious of throwing his weight into either hemisphere, 
 until the scale of proportions were accurately adjusted. 
 These doubtless arc passages degrading alike to the 
 poet and his subject. But why ? Not because they 
 ascribe to. the emperor a sanctity which he had not in 
 the minds of men universally, or which even to the 
 writer's feeling was exaggerated, but because it was ex- 
 pressed coarsely, and as a physical power : now, every- 
 thing physical is measurable by weight, motion, and 
 resistance ; and is therefore definite. But the very es- 
 sence of whatsoever is supernatural lies in the indefinite. 
 That power, therefore, with which the minds of men 
 invested the emperor, was vulgarized by this coarse 
 translation into the region of physics. Else it is evi-
 
 22 THE CiESAttS. 
 
 dent, that any power which, hy standing ahove all 
 human control, occupies the next relation to superhu- 
 man modes of authority, must be invested by all 
 minds alike with some dim and undefined relation to 
 the sanctities of the next world. Thus, for instance, 
 the Pope, as the father of Catholic Christendom, could 
 not but be viewed with awe by any Christian of deep 
 feeling, as standing in some relation to the true and 
 unseen Father of the spiritual body. Nay, considering 
 that even false religions, as those of Pagan mythology, 
 have probably never been utterly stripped of all ves- 
 tige of truth, but that every such mode of error has 
 perhaps been designed as a process, and adapted by 
 Providence to the case of those who were capable oi 
 admitting no more perfect shape of truth ; even the 
 heads of such superstitions (the Dalai Lama, for in- 
 stance) may not unreasonably be presumed as within 
 the cognizance and special protection of Heaven. 
 Much more may this be supposed of him to whose care 
 was confided the weightier part of the human race ; 
 who had it in his power to promote or to suspend the 
 progress of human improvement ; and of whom, and 
 the motions of whose will, the very prophets of Judea 
 took cognizance. No nation, and no king, was utterly 
 divorced from the councils of God. Palestine, as a 
 central chamber of God's administration, stood in 
 some relation to all. It has been remarked, as a mys- 
 terious and significant fact, that the founders of the
 
 THE CJESABS 23 
 
 great empires all had some connection, more or less, 
 with the temple of Jerusalem. Mclancthon even ob- 
 serves it in his Sketch of Universal History, as worthy 
 of notice — that Pompey died, as it were, within sight 
 of that very temple which he had polluted. Let us 
 not suppose that Paganism, or Pagan nations, were 
 therefore excluded from the concern and tender inter- 
 est of Heaven. They also had their place allowed. 
 And we may be sure that, amongst them, the Roman 
 emperor, as the great accountant for the happiness of 
 more men, and men more cultivated, than ever before 
 were intrusted to the motions of a single will, had a 
 special, singular, and mysterious relation to the secret 
 counsels of Heaven. 
 
 Even we, therefore, may lawfully attribute some 
 sanctity to the Roman emperor. That the Romans 
 did so with absolute sincerity is certain. The altars 
 of the emperor had a twofold consecration ; to violate 
 them, was the double crime of treason and heresy. In 
 his appearances of state and ceremony, the fire, the 
 sacred fire t io/.i ttvt, was carried in ceremonial solemnity 
 before him ; and every other circumstance of divine 
 worship attended the emperor in his lifetime. 7 
 
 To this view of the imperial character and relations 
 must be added one single circumstance, which in some 
 measure altered the whole for the individual who 
 happened to fill the office. The emperor dc facto 
 might be viewed under two aspects ; there was the
 
 24 THfi C.ESARS. 
 
 man, and there was the office. In his office he was 
 immortal and sacred : but as a question might still 
 be raised, by means of a mercenary army, as to the 
 claims of the particular individual who at any time 
 filled the office, the very sanctity and privilege of the 
 character with which he was clothed might actually be 
 turned against himself; and here it is, at this point, 
 that the character of Roman emperor became truly 
 and mysteriously awful. Gibbon has taken notice of 
 the extraordinary situation of a subject in the Roman 
 empire who should attempt to fly from the wrath of 
 the crown. Such was the ubiquity of the emperor 
 that this was absolutely hopeless. Except amongst 
 pathless deserts or barbarous nomads, it was impossi- 
 ble to find even a transient sanctuary from the imperial 
 pursuit. If he went down to the sea, there he met the 
 emperor : if he took the wings of the morning, and 
 fled to the uttermost parts of the earth, there also was 
 the emperor or his lieutenants. But the same omni- 
 presence of imperial anger and retribution which with- 
 ered the hopes of the poor humble prisoner, met and 
 confounded the emperor himself, when hurled from his 
 giddy elevation by some fortunate rival. All the king- 
 doms of the earth, to one in that situation, became but 
 so many wards of the same infinite prison. Flight, if 
 it were even successful for the moment, did but a little 
 retard his inevitable doom. And so evident was this, 
 that hardly in one instance did the fallen prince attempt
 
 TILE C3CSAIIS. 25 
 
 to fly, but passively met the death which was inevitable, 
 in the very spot where ruin had overtaken him. Nei- 
 ther was it possible even for a merciful conqueror to 
 show mercy ; for, in the presence of an army so mer- 
 cenary and factious, his own safety was but too deeply 
 involved in the extermination of rival pretenders to 
 the crown. 
 
 Such, amidst the sacred security and inviolability of 
 the office, was the hazardous tenure of the individual. 
 Nor did his dangers always arise from persons in the 
 rank of competitors and rivals. Sometimes it menaced 
 him in quarters which his eye had never penetrated, 
 and from enemies too obscure to have reached his ear. 
 By way of illustration we will cite a case fiom the life 
 of the Emperor Commodus, which is wild enough to 
 have furnished the plot of a romance — though as well 
 authenticated as any other passage in that reign. The 
 story is narrated by Hcrodian, and the circumstances 
 are these : — A slave of noble qualities, and of mag- 
 nificent person, having liberated himself from the 
 degradations of bondage, determined to avenge his 
 own wrongs by inflicting continual terror upon the 
 town and neighborhood which had witnessed his hu- 
 miliation. For this purpose he resorted to the woody 
 recesses of the province, (somewhere in the modern 
 Transylvania,) and, attracting to his wild encampment 
 as many fugitives as he could, by degrees he succeeded 
 in forming and training a very formidable troop of frce- 
 3
 
 26 THE C.ESARS. 
 
 booters. Partly from the energy of his own nature, 
 and partly from the neglect and remissness of the pro- 
 vincial magistrates, the robber captain rose from less to 
 more, until he had formed a little army, equal to the 
 task of assaulting fortified cities. In this stage of his 
 adventures, he encountered and defeated several of 
 the imperial officers commanding large detachments of 
 troops ; and at length grew of consequence sufficient to 
 draw upon himself the emperor's eye, and the honor of 
 his personal displeasure. In high wrath and disdain at 
 the insults offered to his eagles by this fugitive slave, 
 Commodus fulminated against him such an edict as left 
 him no hope of much longer escaping with impunity. 
 
 Public vengeance was now awakened ; the imperial 
 troops were marching from every quarter upon the 
 same centre ; and the slave became sensible that in a 
 very short space of time he must be surrounded and 
 destroyed. In this desperate situation he took a des- 
 perate resolution : he assembled his troops, laid before 
 them his plan, concerted the various steps for carrying 
 it into effect, and then dismissed them as independent 
 wanderers. So ends the first chapter of the tale. 
 
 The next opens in the passes of the AIjjs, whither 
 by various routes, of seven or eight hundred miles in 
 extent, these men had threaded their way in manifold 
 disguises through the very midst of the emperor's 
 camps. According to this man's gigantic enterprise, 
 in which the means were as audacious as the purpose,
 
 i ii i. i £s uas. 27 
 
 tin- conspirators were to rendezvous, and first to recog- 
 nize each other at the gates of Rome. From the Danube 
 to the Tilier did this hand of robbers severally pursue 
 their perilous routes through all the difficulties of the 
 mad and the jealousies of the military stations, sus- 
 tained by the mere thirst of vengeance — veng< ance 
 against that mighty foe whom they knew only by his 
 proclamations against themselves. Everything con- 
 tinued tn prosper; the conspirators met under the walls 
 of Rome ; the final details were arranged ; and those 
 also would have prospered but for a trifling accident. 
 The season was one of general carnival at Rome ; and, 
 by the help of those disguises which the license of this 
 festal time allowed, the murderers were to have pene- 
 trated as maskers to the emperor's retirement, when a 
 casual word or two awoke the suspicions of a sentinel. 
 One of the conspirators was arrested ; under the terror 
 and uncertainty of the moment he made much ampler 
 discoveries than were expected of him ; the other 
 accomplices were secured : and Commodus was deliv- 
 ered from the uplifted daggers of those who had sought 
 him by months of patient wanderings, pursued through 
 all the depths of the Illyrian forests, and the difficulties 
 of the Alpine passes. It is not easy to find words com- 
 mensurate to the energetic hardihood of a slave — who, 
 by way of answer and reprisal to an edict which con 
 signed him to persecution and death, determines to 
 cross Europe in quest of its author, though no less a
 
 28 IHE C^SARS. 
 
 person than the master of the world — to seek him out 
 in the inner recesses of his capital city and his private 
 palace — and there to lodge a dagger in his heart, as 
 the adequate reply to the imperial sentence of proscrip- 
 tion against himself. 
 
 Such, amidst his superhuman grandeur and cor.se- 
 crated powers of the Roman emperor's office, were the 
 extraordinary perils which menaced the individual, and 
 the peculiar frailties of his condition. Nor is it possi- 
 ble that these circumstances of violent opposition can 
 be better illustrated than in this tale of Herodian. 
 Whilst the emperor's mighty arms were stretched out 
 to arrest some potentate in the heart of Asia, a poor 
 slave is silently and stealthily creeping round the base 
 of the Alps, with the purpose of winning his way as a 
 murderer to the imperial bedchamber ; Csesar is watch- 
 ing some mighty rebel of the Orient, at a distance of 
 two thousand leagues, and he overlooks the dagger 
 which is at his own heart. In short, all the heights 
 and the depths which belong to man as aspirers, all the 
 contrasts of glory and meanness, the extremities of 
 what is highest and lowest in human possibility, — all 
 met in the situation of the Roman Caesars, and have 
 combined to make them the most interesting studies 
 which history has furnished. 
 
 This, as a general proposition, will be readily ad- 
 mitted. But meantime, it is remarkable that no field 
 has been less trodden than the private memorials of
 
 I III < 1 -\ LIS. 2 ( J 
 
 tliose very Caesars ; whilst at the same time it is equally 
 remarkable, in concurrence with that subject for won- 
 der, that precisely with the first of the Caesars com- 
 mences the first page of what in modern times we 
 understand by anecdotes. Suetonius is the earliest 
 writer in that department of biography ; so far as we 
 know, he may be held first to have devised it as a 
 mode of history. The six writers, whose sketches 
 arc collected under the general title of the Augustan 
 History, followed in the same track. Though full of 
 entertainment, and of the most curious researches, 
 they are all of them entirely unknown, except to a 
 few elaborate scholars. We purpose to collect from 
 these obscure but most interesting memorialists, a few 
 sketches and biographical portraits of these great 
 princes, whose public life is sometimes known, but 
 very rarely any part of their private and personal 
 history. Wc must, of course, commence with the 
 mighty founder of the Caesars. In his case wc cannot 
 expect so much of absolute novelty as in that of those 
 who succeed. But if, in this first instance, we are 
 forced to touch a little upon old things, we shall con- 
 fine ourselves as much as possible to those which are 
 susceptible of new aspects. For the whole gallery of 
 those who follow, we can undertake that the memorials 
 which we shall bring forward, may be looked upon as 
 belonging pretty much to what has hitherto been a 
 sealed book.
 
 30 THE C^KSAKS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The character of the first Csesar has perhaps never 
 been worse appreciated than by him who in one sense 
 described it best — that is, with most force and elo- 
 quence wherever he really did comprehend it. This 
 was Lucan, who has nowhere exhibited more brilliant 
 rhetoric, nor wandered more from the truth, than in 
 the contrasted portraits of Coesar and Pompey. The 
 famous line, ' Nil actum reputans si quid superesset 
 agendum] is a fine feature of the real character, finely 
 expressed. But if it had been Lucan's purpose (as 
 possibly, with a view to Pompey's benefit, in some 
 respects it was) utterly and extravagantly to falsify 
 the character of the great Dictator, by no single trait 
 could he more effectually have fulfilled that purpose, 
 nor in fewer words, than by this expressive passage, 
 ' Gaudensque viam fecisse ruind." 1 Such a trait would 
 be almost extravagant applied even to Marius, who 
 (though in many respects a perfect model of Roman 
 grandeur, massy, columnar, imperturbable, and more 
 perhaps than any one man recorded in history capable 
 of justifying the bold illustration of that character in 
 Horace, ' Sifractus illalatur orhis, impavidum ferient
 
 ill i; <■ ESAE8. 31 
 
 ruinee,) had, however, a ferocity in his character, and a 
 
 touch of the devil in him, very rarely united with the 
 Bame tranquil intrepidity. But for Caesar, the all- 
 accomplished statesman, the splendid orator, the man 
 of elegant habits and polished taste, the patron of the 
 fine arts in a degree transcending all examples of his 
 own or the previous age, and as a man of general 
 literature so much beyond his contemporaries, except 
 Cicero, that he looked down even upon the brilliant 
 Sylla as an illiterate person, — to class such a man 
 with the race of furious destroyers exulting in the 
 desolation-; they spread, is to err not by an individual 
 trait, but by the whole genus. The Attilas and the 
 Tamcrlancs, who rejoice in avowing themselves the 
 scourges of God, and the special instruments of his 
 wrath, have no one feature of affinity to the polished 
 and humane Caesar, and would as little have comprC' 
 hended his character, as he could have respected theirs. 
 Even Cato, the unworthy hero of Lucan, might have 
 suggested to him a little more truth in this instance, 
 by a celebrated remark which he made on the charac- 
 teristic distinction of Ca sar, in comparison with other 
 revolutionary disturbers ; for, whereas others had at- 
 tempted the overthrow of the state in a continued 
 paroxysm of fury, and in a state of mind resembling 
 the lunacy of intoxication, that Caesar, on the contrary, 
 among that whole class of civil disturbers, was the only 
 one who had come to the task in a temper of sobriety
 
 32 THE CAESARS. 
 
 and moderation, (unum accessisse sobrium ad rcmpuhli' 
 cam delendam.) 
 
 In reality, Lucan did not think as he wrote. He 
 had a purpose to serve ; and in an age when to act 
 like a freeman was no longer possible, he determined 
 at least to write in that character. It is probable, 
 also, that he wrote with a vindictive or malicious feel- 
 ing towards Xero ; and, as the single means he had for 
 gratifying that, resolved upon sacrificing the grandeur 
 of Csesar's character wherever it should be found pos- 
 sible. Meantime, in spite of himself, Lucan for ever 
 betrays his lurking consciousness of the truth. Nor 
 -are there any testimonies to Caesar's vast superiority 
 more memorably pointed, than those which are indi- 
 rectly and involuntarily extorted from this Catonic 
 poet, by the course of his narration. Never, for ex- 
 ample, was there within the same compass of words, a 
 more emphatic expression of Caesar's essential and 
 inseparable grandeur of thought, which could not be 
 disguised or be laid aside for an instant, than is found 
 in the three casual words — Indocilis privata loqui. 
 The very mould, it seems, by Lucan's confession, of 
 his trivial conversation was regal ; nor could he, even 
 to serve a purpose, abjure it for so much as a casual 
 purpose. The acts of Caesar speak also the same lan- 
 guage ; and as these arc less susceptible of a false 
 coloring than the features of a general character, we 
 find this poet of liberty, in the midst of one continu-
 
 Tin: CBSA.BS. 33 
 
 ous effort to distort the truth, and to dress up two 
 scenical heroes, forced by the mere necessities of his- 
 tory into a reluctant homage to Caesar's supremacy of 
 moral grandeur. 
 
 Of so great a man it must be interesting to know 
 all the well attested opinions which bear upon topics 
 of universal interest to human nature : as indeed no 
 others stood much chance of preservation, unless it 
 were from as minute and curious a collector of anec- 
 dotage as Suetonius. And, first, it would be gratifying 
 to know the opinion of Caesar, if he had any peculiar 
 to himself, on the great theme of Religion. It has 
 been held, indeed, that the constitution of his mind, 
 and the general cast of his character, indisposed him 
 to religious thoughts. Nay, it has been common to 
 class him amongst deliberate atheists ; and some well 
 known anecdotes arc current in books, which illustrate 
 his contempt for the vulgar class of auguries. In this, 
 however, he went no farther than Cicero, and other 
 great contemporaries, who assuredly were no atheists. 
 One mark perhaps of the wide interval which, in 
 Caesar's age, had begun to separate the Roman nobility 
 from the hungry and venal populace who were daily 
 put up to sale, and bought by the highest bidder, 
 manifested itself in the increasing disdain for the 
 tastes and ruling sympathies of the lowest vulgar. 
 No mob could be more abjectly servile than was that 
 of Rome to the superstition of portents, prodigies, and
 
 34 THE C£SAKS. 
 
 omens. Thus far, in common with his order, and in 
 this sense, Julius Caesar was naturally a despiser of 
 superstition. Mere strength of understanding would, 
 perhaps, have made him so in any age, and apart from 
 the circumstances of his personal history. This nat- 
 ural tendency in him would doubtless receive a 
 further bias in the same direction from the office of 
 Pontifex Maximus, which he held at an early stage of 
 his public career. This office, by letting him too much 
 behind the curtain, and exposing too entirely the base 
 machinery of ropes and pulleys, which sustained the 
 miserable jugglery played off upon the popular 
 credulity, impressed him perhaps even unduly with 
 contempt for those who could be its dupes. And we 
 may add, that Caesar was constitutionally, as well as 
 by accident of position, too much a man of the world, 
 had too powerful a leaning to the virtues of active life, 
 was governed by too partial a sympathy with the 
 whole class of active forces in human nature, as con- 
 tradistinguished from those which tend to contem- 
 plative purposes, under any circumstances, to have 
 become a profound believer, or a steadfast reposer of 
 his fears and anxieties, in religious influences. A man 
 of the world is but another designation for a man 
 indisposed to religious awe or contemplative enthu- 
 siasm. Still it is a doctrine which we cherish — that 
 grandeur of mind in any one department whatsoever, 
 supposing only that it exists in excess, disposes a man
 
 •I li !. « ES \ EtS. 35 
 
 to some degree of sympathy with all other grandeur, 
 
 however alien in its quality or different in its form. 
 Aiul upon this ground we presume the great Dictator 
 to have had an interest in religious themes by mere 
 compulsion of his own extraordinary elevation of 
 mind, after making the fullest allowance for the spe- 
 cial quality of that mind, which did certainly, to the 
 whole extent of its characteristics, tend entirely to 
 estrange him from such themes. "We find, accord- 
 ingly, that though siuccrely a d ispiser of superstition, 
 and with a frankness which must sometimes have b 
 hazardous in that age, Caesar was himself also super- 
 stitious. Xo man could have been otherwise who lived 
 and conversed with that generation of people. But if 
 superstitious, he was so after a mode of his own. In 
 his very infirmities Caesar manifested his greatness: 
 his very littlenesses were noble. 
 
 ' Nee licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre.' 
 That he placed some confidence in dreams, for in- 
 stance, is certain : because, had he slighted them 
 unreservedly, he would not have dwelt upon them 
 afterwards, or have troubled himself to recall their 
 circumstances. Here we trace bis human weakn 
 Yet again we are reminded that it was the weakness of 
 Caesar; for the dreams were noble in their imagery, 
 and Caesarean (so to speak) in their tone of moral 
 feeling. Thus, for example, the night before he was 
 assassinated, he dreamt at intervals that he was soar-
 
 36 THE CLESARS. 
 
 ing above tlic clouds on wings, and that lie placed his 
 hand within the right hand of Jove. It would seem 
 that perhaps some obscure and half-formed image 
 floated in his mind, of the eagle, as the king of birds ; 
 secondly, as the tutelary emblem under which his 
 conquering legions had so often obeyed his voice ; and, 
 thirdly, as the bird of Jove. To this triple relation of 
 the bird his dream covertly appears to point. And a 
 singular coincidence appears between this dream and 
 a little anecdote brought down to us, as having ac- 
 tually occurred in Rome about twenty-four hours 
 before his death. A little bird, which by some is rep- 
 resented as a very small kind of sparrow, but which, 
 both to the Greeks and the Romans, was known by a 
 name implying a regal station (probably from the am- 
 bitious courage which at times prompted it to attack 
 the eagle), was observed to direct its flight towards 
 the senate-house, consecrated by rompey, whilst a 
 crowd of other birds were seen to hang upon its flight 
 in close pursuit. What might be the object of the 
 chase, whether the little king himself, or a sprig of 
 laurel which he bore in his mouth, could not be deter- 
 mined. The whole train, pursuers and pursued, con- 
 tinued their flight towards Pompey's hall. Flight 
 and pursuit were there alike arrested ; the little king 
 was overtaken by his enemies, who fell upon him 
 as so many conspirators, and tore him limb from 
 limb.
 
 THE C.ESAKS. 37 
 
 If this anecdote were reported to Caesar, which is 
 not at all improbable, considering the earnestness with 
 which his friends labored to dissuade him from his 
 purpose of meeting the senate on the approaching 
 Ides of March, it is very little to be doubted that it 
 had a considerable effect upon his feelings, and that, 
 in fact, his own dream grew out of the impression 
 which it had made. This way of linking the two 
 anecdotes as cause and effect, would also bring a 
 third anecdote under the same nexus. We arc told 
 that Calpurnia, the last wife of Caesar, dreamed on the 
 same night, and to the same ominous result. The 
 circumstances of her dream arc less striking, because 
 less figurative ; but on that account its import was less 
 open to doubt : she dreamed, in fact, that after the 
 roof of their mansion had fallen in, her husband was 
 stabbed in her bosom. Laying all these omens to- 
 gether, Ccesar woidd have been more or less than 
 human had he continued utterly undepressed by them. 
 And if so much superstition as even this implies, must 
 be taken to argue some little weakness, on the other 
 hand let it not be forgotten, that this very weakness 
 does but the more illustrate the unusual force of mind, 
 and the heroic will, which obstinately laid aside these 
 concurring prefigurations of impending destruction ; 
 concurring, we say, amongst themselves — and con- 
 curring also with a prophecy of older date, which 
 was totally independent of them all. 
 
 1
 
 38 THE C.ESARS. 
 
 There is another and somewhat sublime story of the 
 same class, which belongs to the most interesting 
 moment of Caesar's life ; and those who are disposed 
 to explain all such tales upon physiological principles, 
 will find an easy solution of this, in particular, in the 
 exhaustion of body, and the intense anxiety which 
 must have debilitated even Caesar under the whole 
 circumstances of the case. On the ever memorable 
 night, when he had resolved to take the first step (and 
 in such a case the first step, as regarded the power of 
 retreating, was also the final step) which placed him 
 in arms against the state, it happened that his head- 
 quarters were at some distance from the little river 
 Rubicon, which formed the boundary of his province. 
 With his usual caution, that no news of his motions 
 might run before himself, on this night Caesar gave an 
 entertainment to his friends, in the midst of which he 
 slipped away unobserved, and with a small retinue 
 proceeded through the woods to the point of the river 
 at which he designed to cross. The night 8 was stormy, 
 and by the violence of the wind all the torches of his 
 escort were blown out, so that the whole party lost 
 their road, having probably at first intentionally devi- 
 ated from the main route, and wandered about through 
 the whole night, until the early dawn enabled them to 
 recover their true course. The light was still gray and 
 uncertain, as Caesar and his retinue rode down upon 
 the banks of the fatal river — to cross which with arms
 
 i in c .1 s \.ks. 39 
 
 in his hands, since the further bank lay within the ter- 
 ritory of the Republic, ipso facto, proclaimed any 
 
 Roman a rebel and a traitor. No man, the firmest or 
 the most obtuse, could be otherwise than deeply agi- 
 tated, when looking down upon this little brook — so 
 insignificant in itself, but invested by law with a sanc- 
 tity so awful, and so dire a consecration. The whole 
 course of future history, and the fate of every nation, 
 would ii icessarily be determined by the irretrievable 
 act of the next half hour. 
 
 In tli ise moments, and with this spectacle before 
 him, and contemplating these immeasurable conse- 
 quences consciously for the last time that could allow 
 him a retreat, — impressed also by the solemnity and 
 deep tranquillity of the silent dawn, whilst the exhaus- 
 tion of his night wanderings predisposed him to 
 nervous irritation, — Caesar, we may be sure, was 
 profoundly agitated. The wdrole elements of the 
 scene were almost sccnically disposed ; the law of 
 antagonism having perhaps never been employed with 
 so much effect : the little quiet brook presenting a 
 direct antithesis to its grand political character ; and 
 the innocent dawn, with its pure, untroubled repose, 
 contrasting potently, to a man of any intellectual sen- 
 sibility, with the long chaos of bloodshed, darkness 
 and anarchy, which was to take its rise from the 
 apparently trifling acts of this one morning. So pre- 
 pared, we need not much wonder at what followed
 
 -10 THE C2ESAE.S. 
 
 Caesar was yet lingering on the hither hank, when 
 suddenly, at a point not far distant from himself, an 
 apparition was descried in a sitting posture, and hold- 
 ing in its hand what seemed a flute. This phantom 
 was of unusual size, and of beauty more than human, 
 so far as its lineaments could he traced in the early 
 dawn. What is singular, however, in the story, on 
 any hypothesis which would explain it out of Caesar's 
 individual condition, is, that others saw it as well as he ; 
 both pastoral laborers, (who were present, probably in 
 the character of guides,) and some of the sentinels 
 stationed at the passage of the river. These men 
 fancied even that a strain of music issued from this 
 aerial flute. And some, both of the shepherds and 
 the Roman soldiers, who were bolder than the rest, 
 advanced towards the figure. Amongst this party, it 
 happened that there were a feAV Roman trumpeters. 
 From one of these, the phantom, rising as they ad- 
 vanced nearer, suddenly caught a trumpet, and blow- 
 ing through it a blast of superhuman strength, plunged 
 into the Rubicon, passed to the other bank, and disap- 
 peared in the dusky twilight of the dawn. Upon 
 which Caesar exclaimed : — It is finished — the die is 
 cast — let us follow whither the guiding portents from 
 Heaven, and the malice of our enemy, alike summon 
 us to go.' So saying, he crossed the river with im- 
 petuosity ; and, in a sudden rapture of passionate and 
 vindictive ambition, placed himself and his retinue
 
 THE CJE8AB8. 41 
 
 upon tlic Italian soil ; and, as if by inspiration from 
 Heaven, in one moment involved himself and his fol- 
 lowers in treason, raised the standard of revolt, put 
 his foot upon the neck of the invincible republic which 
 had humbled all the kings of the earth, and founded 
 an empire which was to last for a thousand and half 
 a thousand years. In what manner this spectral ap- 
 pearance was managed — whether Caesar were its 
 author, or its dupe — will remain unknown for ever. 
 But undoubtedly this was the first time that the 
 advanced guard of a victorious army was headed by 
 an apparition; and we may conjecture that it will 
 be the last. 9 
 
 In the mingled yarn of human life, tragedy is never 
 far asunder from farce ; and it is amusing to retrace in 
 immediate succession to this incident of epic dignity, 
 which has its only parallel by the w r ay in the case of 
 Vasco de Gama, (according to the narrative of Ca- 
 moens,) when met and confronted by a sea phantom 
 whilst attempting to double the Cape of Storms, 
 (Cape of Good Hope,) a ludicrous passage, in which 
 one felicitous blunder did Caesar a better service than 
 all the truths which Greece and Rome could have 
 furnished. In our own experience, we once witnessed 
 a blunder about as gross. The present Chancellor, in 
 his first electioneering contest with the Lowthers, upon 
 some occasion where he was recriminating upon the 
 other party, and complaining that stratagems^ which 
 4
 
 42 THE CJESARS. 
 
 they might practise with impunity, were denied to him 
 and his, happened to point the moral of his complaint, 
 by alleging the old adage, that one man might steal 
 a horse with more hope of indulgence than another 
 could look over the hedge. Whereupon, by benefit 
 of the universal mis-hearing in the outermost ring 
 of the audience, it became generally reported that 
 Lord Lowther had once been engaged in an affair of 
 horse stealing ; and that he, Henry Brougham, could 
 (had he pleased) have lodged an information against 
 him, seeing that he was then looking over the hedge. 
 And this charge naturally Avon the more credit, be- 
 cause it was notorious and past denying that his 
 lordship was a capital horseman, fond of horses, and 
 much connected with the turf. To this hour, there- 
 fore, amongst some worthy shepherds and others, it is 
 a received article of their creed, and (as they justly 
 observe in northern pronunciation) a shamful thing 
 to be told, that Lord Lowther was once a horse 
 stealer, and that he escaped lagging by reason of 
 Harry Brougham's pity for his tender years and hope- 
 ful looks. Not less was the blunder, which, on the 
 banks of the Rubicon, befriended Caesar. Imme- 
 diately after crossing, he harangued the troops whom 
 he had sent forward, and others who there met him 
 from the neighboring garrison of Ariminium. The 
 tribunes of the people, those great officers of the 
 democracy, corresponding by some of their functions
 
 THE CJESAKS. 43 
 
 to our House of Commons, men personally, and by 
 their position in the state, entirely in his interest, 
 and who, for his sake, had fled from home, there 
 and then he produced to the soldiery ; thus identified 
 his cause, and that of the soldiers, with the cause of 
 the people of Rome and of Roman liberty : and per- 
 haps with needless rhetoric attempted to conciliate 
 those who were by a thousand tics and by claims 
 innumerable, his own already ; for never yet has it 
 been found, that with the soldier, who, from youth 
 upwards, passes his life in camps, could the duties or 
 the interests of citizens survive those stronger and 
 more personal relations connecting him with his 
 military superior. In the course of this harangue, 
 Caesar often raised his left hand with Demosthenic 
 action, and once or twice he drew off the ring, which 
 every Roman gentleman — simply as such — wore as 
 the inseparable adjunct and symbol of his rank. By 
 this action he wished to give emphasis to the accom- 
 panying words, in which he protested, that, sooner 
 than fail in satisfying and doing justice to any the 
 least of those who heard him and followed his for- 
 tunes, he would be content to part with his own 
 birthright, and to forego his dearest claims. This 
 was what he really said ; but the outermost circles 
 of his auditors, who rather saw his gestures than 
 distinctly heard his words, carried off the notion, 
 (which they were careful everywhere to disperse
 
 44 THE C^SARS. 
 
 amongst the legions afterwards associated with them 
 in the same camps,) that Caesar had vowed never to 
 lay down his arms until he had obtained for every 
 man, the very meanest of those who heard him, the 
 rank, privileges and appointments of a Roman knight. 
 Here was a piece of sovereign good luck. Had he 
 really made such a promise, Caesar might have found 
 that he had laid himself under very embarrassing 
 obligations ; but, as the case stood, he had, through 
 all his following campaigns, the total benefit of such a 
 promise, and yet could always absolve himself from 
 the penalties of responsibility which it imposed, by 
 appealing to the evidence of those who happened to 
 stand in the first ranks of his audience. The blunder 
 was gross and palpable ; and yet, with the unreflecting 
 and dull-witted soldier, it did him service greater than 
 all the subtilties of all the schools could have accom- 
 plished, and a service which subsisted to the end of 
 the war. 
 
 Great as Csesar was by the benefit of his original 
 nature, there can be no doubt that he, like others, 
 owed something to circumstances ; and, perhaps, 
 amongst those which were most favorable to the pre- 
 mature development of great self-dependence, Ave 
 must reckon the early death of his father. It is, or 
 it is not, according to the nature of men, an advan- 
 tage to be orphaned at an early age. Perhaps utter 
 orphanage is rarely or never such : but to lose a father
 
 THE CjESAES. 45 
 
 betimes profits a strong mind greatly. To Caesar it 
 was a prodigious benefit tbat be lost bis father when 
 not much more than fifteen. Perhaps it was an ad- 
 vantage also to bis father that be died thus early. 
 Had be stayed a year longer, be would have seen 
 nimsclf despised, battled, and made ridiculous. For 
 where, let us ask, in any age, was the father capable 
 of adequately sustaining tbat relation to the unique 
 Caius Julius — to him, in the appropriate language 
 
 of Shakspeare, 
 
 ' The foremost man of all this world ? ' 
 
 And, in this fine and Ceesarean line, ' this world' is 
 to be understood not of the order of co-existences 
 merely, but also of the order of successions ; he was 
 the foremost man not only of his contemporaries, but 
 also of men generally — of all that ever should come 
 after him, or should sit on thrones under the denomi- 
 nations of Czars, Kesars, or Caesars of the Bosphorus 
 and the Danube ; of all in every age tbat should 
 inherit his supremacy of mind, or should subject to 
 themselves the generations of ordinary men by quali- 
 ties analogous to his. Of this infinite superiority 
 some part must be ascribed to his early emancipation 
 from paternal control. There are very many cases in 
 which, simply from considerations of sex, a female 
 cannot stand forward as the head of a family, or as its 
 suitable representative. If their arc even ladies para- 
 mount, and in situations of command, they are also
 
 46 THE CJESAES. 
 
 women. The staff of authority does not annihilate 
 their sex ; and scruples of female delicacy interfere 
 for ever to unnerve and emasculate in their hands the 
 sceptre however otherwise potent. Hence we see, in 
 nohlc families, the merest boys put forward to repre- 
 sent the family dignity, as fitter supporters of that 
 burden than their mature mothers. And of Caesar'a 
 mother, though little is recorded, and that little inci- 
 dentally, this much, at least, we learn — that, if she 
 looked down upon him with maternal pride and de- 
 light, she looked up to him with female ambition as 
 the re-edifier of her husband's honors, with reverence 
 as to a column of the Roman grandeur, and with fear 
 and feminine anxieties as to one whose aspiring spirit 
 carried him but too prematurely into the fields of 
 adventurous honor. One slight and evanescent sketch 
 of the relations which subsisted between Caesar and 
 his mother, caught from the wrecks of time, is pre- 
 served both by Plutarch and Suetonius. Wc see in 
 the early dawn the young patrician standing upon the 
 steps of his paternal portico, his mother with her arms 
 wreathed about his neck, looking up to his noble 
 countenance, sometimes drawing auguries of hope 
 from features so fitted for command, sometimes boding 
 an early blight to promises so prematurely magnifi- 
 cent. That she had something of her son's aspiring 
 character, or that he presumed so much in a mother 
 of his, we learn from the few words which survive of
 
 THE C.ESARS. 47 
 
 their conversation. He addressed to Ucr no language 
 that could tranquillize her fears. On the contrary, to 
 any but a Roman mother his valedictory words, taken 
 in connection with the known determination of his 
 character, were of a nature to consummate her de- 
 pression, as they tended to confirm the very worst of 
 her fears. He was then going to stand his chance in 
 a popular election for an office of dignity, and to 
 launch himself upon the storms of the Campus Mar- 
 tius. At that period, besides other and more ordinary 
 dangers, the bands of gladiators, kept in the pay of 
 the more ambitious amongst the Roman nobles, gave 
 a popular tone of ferocity and of personal risk to the 
 course of such contests ; and either to forestall the 
 victory of an antagonist, or to avenge their own defeat, 
 it was not at all impossible that a body of incensed 
 competitors might intercept his final triumph by assas- 
 sination. For this danger, however, he had no leisure 
 in his thoughts of consolation ; the sole danger which 
 he contemplated, or supposed his mother to contem- 
 plate, was the danger of defeat, and for that he re- 
 served his consolations. He bade her fear nothing ; 
 for that without doubt he would return with victory, 
 and with the ensigns of the dignity he sought, or 
 would return a corpse. 
 
 Early, indeed, did Caesar's trials commence : and it 
 is probable, that, had not the death of his i'athei, 
 by throwing him prematurely upon his own resources,
 
 48 THE CJESARS. 
 
 prematurely developed the masculine features of his 
 character, forcing him whilst yet a hoy under the 
 discipline of civil conflict and the yoke of practical life, 
 even Ms energies would have heen insufficient to 
 sustain them. His age is not exactly ascertained, 
 hut it is past a douht that he had not reached his 
 twentieth year when he had the hardihood to engage 
 in a struggle with Sylla, then Dictator, and exercising 
 the immoderate powers of that office with the license 
 and the severity which history has made so memorable. 
 He had neither any distinct grounds of hope, nor any 
 eminent example at that time, to countenance him 
 in this struggle — which yet he pushed on in the most 
 uncompromising style, and to the utmost verge of 
 defiance. The subject of the contrast gives it a fur- 
 ther interest. It was the youthful wife of the youthful 
 Csesar who stood under the shadow of the great 
 Dictator's displeasure ; not personally, but politically, 
 on account of her connections ; and her it was, Cor- 
 nelia, the daughter of a man who had been four times 
 consul, that Csesar was required to divorce ; but he 
 spurned the haughty mandate, and carried his deter- 
 mination to a triumphant issue, notwithstanding his 
 life was at stake, and at one time saved only by 
 shifting his place of concealment every night ; and 
 this young lady it was who afterwards became the 
 mother of his only daughter. Both mother and 
 daughter, it is remarkable, perished prematurely, and
 
 TI1K I ESAB8. I'J 
 
 at critical periods of Caesar's life; fur it is probable 
 enough that these irreparable wounds to Caesar's do- 
 mestic affections threw him with more exclusivenesa 
 
 of devotion upon the fascinations of glory and ambition 
 than might have happened under a happier condition 
 of his private life. That Caesar should have escaped 
 destruction in this unequal contest with an enemy then 
 wielding the whole thunders of the state, is somewhat 
 surprising ; and historians have sought their solution 
 of the mystery in the powerful intercessions of the 
 vestal virgins, and several others of high rank amongst 
 the connections of his great house. These may have 
 done something ; but it is due to Sylla, who had 
 a sympathy with everything truly noble, to suppose 
 him struck with powerful admiration for the audacity 
 of the young patrician, standing out in such severe 
 solitude among so many examples of timid concession; 
 and that to this magnanimous feeling in the Dictator, 
 much of his indulgence was due. In fact, according 
 to some accounts, it was not Sylla, but the creatures of 
 Sylla [adjutores), who pursued Caesar. We know, 
 at all events, that Sylla formed a right estimate of 
 CaDsar's character, and that, from the complexion of 
 his conduct in this one instance, he drew his famous 
 prophecy of his future destiny ; bidding his friends 
 beware of that slipshod hoy, • for that in him lay 
 couchant many a Marius.' A grander testimony to 
 the awe which Caesar inspired, or from one who knew 
 5
 
 50 THE CXSAKS. 
 
 better the qualities of that man by whom he measured 
 him, cannot be imagined. 
 
 It is not our intention, or consistent with our plan, 
 to pursue this great man through the whole circum- 
 stances of his romantic career ; though it is certain 
 that many parts of his life require investigation much 
 keener than has ever been applied to them, and that 
 many might easily be placed in a new light. Indeed, 
 the whole of this most momentous section of ancient 
 history ought to be recomposed with the critical scep- 
 ticism of a Niebuhr, and the same comprehensive 
 collation of authorities. In reality it is the hinge upon 
 which turned the future destiny of the whole earth ; 
 and having thei*efore a common relation to all modern 
 nations whatsoever, should naturally have been culti- 
 vated with the zeal which belongs to a personal con- 
 cern. In general, the anecdotes which express most 
 vividly the splendid character of the first Caesar, are 
 those which illustrate his defiance of danger in ex- 
 tremity ; the prodigious energy and rapidity of his 
 decisions and motions in the field ; the skill with 
 which he penetrated the designs of his enemies, and 
 the exemplary speed with which he provided a remedy 
 for disasters ; the extraordinary presence of mind 
 which he showed in turning adverse omens to his own 
 advantage, as when, upon stumbling in coming on 
 shore, (which was esteemed a capital omen of evil,) 
 he transfigured as it were in one instant its whole
 
 i li i. ( fiSAE8. 51 
 
 meaning by exclaiming, ' Thus do I take posses- 
 sion of thee, oh Africa ! ' in that way giving to an 
 accident the semblance of a symbolic purpose ; the 
 grandeur of fortitude with which he faced the whole 
 extent of a calamity when palliation could do no good, 
 ' non negando, minuendove, sed insupcr amplificando, 
 ementiendoque ; ' as when, upon finding his soldiery 
 alarmed at the approach of Juba, with forces really 
 great, but exaggerated by their terrors, he addressed 
 them in a military harangue to the following effect : 
 ' Know that within a few days the king will come up 
 with us, bringing with him sixty thousand legionaries, 
 thirty thousand cavalry, one hundred thousand light 
 troops, besides three hundred elephants. Such being 
 the case, let me hear no more of conjectures and 
 opinions, for you have now my warrant for the fact, 
 whose information is past doubting. Therefore, be 
 satisfied ; otherwise, I will put every man of you on 
 board some crazy old fleet, and whistle you down the 
 tide — no matter under what winds, no matter towards 
 what shore.' Finally, we might seek for the char- 
 acter ist ir anecdotes of Caesar in his unexampled liber- 
 alities and contempt of money. 10 
 
 Upon this last topic it is the just remark of 
 Casaubon, that some instances of Caesar's munificence 
 have been thought apocryphal, or to rest upon false 
 readings, simply from ignorance of the heroic scale 
 upon which the Roman splendors of that age pro-
 
 52 THE C.ESARS. 
 
 ceecled. A forum which C;csar built out of the pro- 
 ducts of his last campaign, by way of a present to the 
 Roman people, cost him — for the ground merely on 
 which it stood — nearly eight hundred thousand 
 pounds. To the citizens of Rome (perhaps 300,000 
 persons) he presented, in one congiary, about two 
 guineas and a half a head. To his army, in one 
 donation, upon the termination of the civil war, he 
 gave a sum which allowed about two hundred pounds 
 a man to the infantry, and four hundred to the cavalry. 
 It is true that the legionary troops were then much 
 reduced by the sword of the enemy, and by the 
 tremendous hardships of their last campaigns. In this, 
 however, he did perhaps no more than repay a debt. 
 For it is an instance of military attachment, beyond all 
 that Wallenstein or any commander, the most beloved 
 amongst his troops, has ever experienced, that, on the 
 breaking out of the civil war, not only did the cen- 
 turions of every legion severally maintain a horse 
 soldier, but even the privates volunteered to serve 
 without pay — and (what might seem impossible) with- 
 out their daily rations. This was accomplished by 
 subscriptions amongst themselves, the more opulent 
 undertaking for the maintenance of the needy. Their 
 disinterested love for Caesar appeared in another and 
 more difficult illustration ; it was a traditionary anec- 
 dote in Rome, that the majority of those amongst 
 Caesar's troops, who had the misfortune to fall into the
 
 Tin: cxsAus. 53 
 
 enemy's hands, refused to accept their lives under the 
 condition of serving against //////. 
 
 In connection with this suhject of his extraordinary 
 -munificence, there is one aspect of Caesar's life which 
 has suffered much from the misrepresentations of his- 
 torians, and that is — the vast pecuniary embarrass- 
 ments under which he labored, until the profits of war 
 had turned the scale even more prodigiously in his 
 favor. At one time of his life, when appointed to a 
 foreign office, so numerous and so clamorous were his 
 creditors, that he could not have left Rome on his 
 public duties, had not Crassus come forward with 
 assistance in money, or by promises, to the amount of 
 nearly two hundred thousand pounds. And at another, 
 he was accustomed to amuse himself with computing 
 how much money it would require to make him worth 
 exactly nothing (i. e. simply to clear him of debts) ; 
 this, by one account, amounted to upwards of twe 
 millions sterling. Now the error of historians has 
 been — to represent these debts as the original ground 
 of his ambition and his revolutionary projects, as though 
 the desperate condition of his private affairs had sug- 
 gested a civil war to his calculations as the best 01 
 only mode of redressing it. But, on the contrary, his 
 debts were the product of his ambition, and contracted 
 from first to last in the service of his political intrigues, 
 for raising and maintaining a powerful body of par- 
 tisans, both in Rome and elsewhere. Whosoever,
 
 54 THE CiESATtS. 
 
 indeed, will take the trouble to investigate the progress 
 of Csesar's ambition, from such materials as even yet 
 remain, may satisfy himself that the scheme of rev- 
 olutionizing the Republic, and placing himself at its 
 head, was no growth of accident or circumstances ; 
 above all, that it did not arise upon any so petty and 
 indirect an occasion as that of his debts ; but that 
 his debts were in their very first origin purely min- 
 isterial to his ambition ; and that his revolutionary 
 plans were at all periods of his life a direct and fore- 
 most object. In this there was in reality no want of 
 patriotism ; it had become evident to every-body that 
 Rome, under its present constitution, must fall : and 
 the sole question was — by whom ? Even Pompey, 
 not by nature of an aspiring turn, and prompted to his 
 ambitious course undoubtedly by circumstances and 
 the friends who besieged him, was in the habit of say- 
 ing, ' Sylla potuit, ego non potcro ? ' And the fact 
 was, that if, from the death of Sylla, Rome recovered 
 some transient show of constitutional integrity, that 
 happened not by any lingering virtue that remained in 
 her republican forms, but entirely through the equi- 
 librium and mechanical counterpoise of rival factions. 
 In a case, therefore, where no benefit of choice was 
 allowed to Rome as to the thing, but only as to the 
 person — where a revolution was certain, and the point 
 left open to doubt simply by whom that revolution 
 should be accomplished — Csesar had (to say the least)
 
 THE CMSXVLS. 55 
 
 the same right to enter the arena in the character of 
 candidate as could belong to any one of his rivals. 
 And that he did enter that arena constructively, and 
 hy secret design, from his very earliest manhood, may 
 he gathered from this — that he suffered no openings 
 towards a revolution, provided they had any hope 
 in them, to escape his participation. It is familiarly 
 known that he was engaged pretty deeply in the con- 
 spiracy of Catiline, 11 and that he incurred considerable 
 risk on that occasion ; but it is less known, and has 
 indeed escaped the notice of historians generally, that 
 he was a party to at least two other conspiracies. 
 There was even a fourth meditated by Crassus, which 
 Caesar so far encouraged as to undertake a journey to 
 Rome from a very distant quarter, merely with a view 
 to such chances as it might offer to him ; but as it did 
 not, upon examination, seem to him a very promising 
 scheme, he judged it best to look coldly upon it, or not 
 to embark in it by any personal co-operation. Upon 
 these and other facts we build our inference — that the 
 scheme of a revolution was the one great purpose of 
 Caesar, from his first entrance upon public life. Nor 
 docs it appear that he cared much by whom it was 
 undertaken, provided only there seemed to be any 
 sufficient resources for carrying it through, and for 
 sustaining the first collision with the regular forces of 
 the existing government. He relied, it seems, on his 
 own personal superiority for raising him to the head of
 
 56 THE CAESARS. 
 
 affairs eventually, let who would take the nominal lead 
 at first. To the same result, it will be found, tended 
 the vast stream of Caesar's liberalities. From the 
 senator downwards to the lowest fax Romuli, he had 
 a hired body of dependents, both in and out of Rome, 
 equal in numbers to a nation. In the provinces, and 
 in distant kingdoms, he pursued the same schemes. 
 Everywhere he had a body of mercenary partisans ; 
 kings are known to have taken his pay. And it is 
 remarkable that even in his character of commander-in- 
 chief, where the number of legions allowed to him for 
 the accomplishment of his mission raised him for a 
 number of years above all fear of coercion or control, 
 he persevered steadily in the same plan of providing 
 for the day when he might need assistance, not from 
 the state, but against the state. For amongst the 
 private anecdotes which came to light under the re- 
 searches made into his history after his death, was 
 this — that, soon after his first entrance upon his gov- 
 ernment in Gaul, he had raised, equipped, disciplined, 
 and maintained from his own private funds, a legion 
 amounting, perhaps, to six or seven thousand men, 
 who were bound by no sacrament of military obedience 
 to the state, nor owed fealty to any auspices except 
 those of Caesar. This legion, from the fashion of their 
 crested helmets, which resembled the crested heads of 
 a small bird of the lark species, received the popular 
 name of the Alauda (or Lark) legion. And very sin-
 
 Till. I .F.SARS. 57 
 
 gular it was (lml Cat >, or Marcellus, or some amongst 
 those enemies of Caesar, who watched his conduct 
 during the period of his Gaulish command with the 
 vigilance of rancorous malice, should not have come to 
 the knowledge of this fact ; in which case we may be 
 sure that it would have been denounced to the senate. 
 Such, then, for its purpose and its uniform motive, 
 was the sagacious munificence of Caesar. Apart from 
 this motive, and considered in and for itself, and sim- 
 ply with a reference to the splendid forms which it 
 q assumed, this munificence would furnish the 
 materials for a volume. The public entertainments of 
 Caesar, his spectacles and shows, his naumachne, and 
 the pomps of his unrivalled triumphs, (the closing tri- 
 umphs of the Republic,) were severally the finest of 
 their kind which had then been brought forward. 
 Sea-fights were exhibited upon the grandest scale, ac- 
 cording to every known variety of nautical equipment 
 and mode of conflict, upon a vast lake formed artifici- 
 ally for that express purpose. Mimic land-fights were 
 conducted, in which all the circumstances of real war 
 were so faithfully rehearsed, that even elephants ' in- 
 dorsed with towers,' twenty on each side, took part in 
 the combat. Dramas were represented in every known 
 language, {per omnium linguarum histriones.) And 
 hence [that is, from the conciliatory feeling thus ex- 
 pressed towards the various tribes of foreigners i 
 dent in Rome] some have derived an explanation of
 
 58 the cjEsxna. 
 
 what is else a mysterious circumstance amongst the 
 ceremonial observances at Caesar's funeral — that all 
 people of foreign nations then residing at Rome, dis- 
 tinguished themselves hy the conspicuous share which 
 they took in the public mourning; and that, beyond 
 all other foreigners, the Jews for night after night kept 
 watch and ward about the emperor's grave. Never 
 before, according to traditions which lasted through 
 several generations in Rome, had there been so vast a 
 conflux of the human race congregated to any one 
 centre, on any one attraction of business or of pleasure, 
 as to Rome on occasion of these spectacles exhibited 
 by Caesar. 
 
 In our days, the greatest occasional gatherings of 
 the human race are in India, especially at the great 
 fair of the Hurdwar, in the northern part of Hindos- 
 tan ; a confluence of many millions is sometimes seen 
 at that spot, brought together under the mixed influ- 
 ences of devotion and commercial business, and dis- 
 persed as rapidly as they had been convoked. Some 
 such spectacle of nations crowding upon nations, and 
 some such Babylonian confusion of dresses, complex- 
 ions, languages, and jargons, was then witnessed at 
 Rome. Accommodations within doors, and under 
 roofs of houses, or of temples, was altogether impos- 
 sible. Myriads encamped along the streets, and along 
 the high-roads in the vicinity of Rome. Myriads of 
 myriads lay stretched on the ground, without even the
 
 THE CJESA.B9. 59 
 
 slight protection of tents, in a vast circuit about the 
 city. Multitudes of men, even senators, and others 
 of the highest rank, were trampled to death in the 
 crowds. And the whole family of man seemed at that 
 time gathered together at the bidding of the great 
 Dictator. But these, or any other themes connected 
 with the public life of Caesar, we notice only in those 
 circumstances which have been overlooked, or partially 
 represented by historians. Let us now, in conclusion, 
 bring forward, from the obscurity in which they have 
 hitherto lurked, the anecdotes which describe the 
 habits of his private life, his tastes, and personal 
 peculiarities. 
 
 In person, he was tall, fair, and of limbs distin- 
 guished for their elegant proportions and gracility. 
 His eyes were black and piercing. These circum- 
 stances continued to be long remembered, and no 
 doubt were constantly recalled to the eyes of all per- 
 sons in the imperial palaces, by pictures, busts, and 
 statues ; for we find the same description of his per- 
 sonal appearance three centuries afterwards, in a work 
 of the Emperor Julian's. He was a most accomplished 
 horseman, and a master { peril issimns) in the use of 
 arms. But notwithstanding his skill and horseman- 
 ship, it seems that, when he accompanied his army on 
 marches, he walked oftcner than he rode ; no doubt, 
 with a view to the benefit of his example, and to 
 express that sympathy with his soldiers which gained
 
 60 THE CiESARS. 
 
 him their hearts so entirely. On other occasions, 
 when travelling apart from his army, he seems more 
 frequently to have rode in a carriage than on horse- 
 hack. His purpose, in making this preference, must 
 have been with a view to the transport of luggage. 
 The carriage which he generally used was a rheda, a 
 sort of gig, or rather curricle, for it was a four-wheeled 
 carriage, and adapted (as we find from the imperial 
 regulations for the public carriages, &c.) to the con- 
 veyance of about half a ton. The mere personal 
 baggage which Csesar carried with him, was probably 
 considerable, for he was a man of the most elegant 
 habits, and in all parts of his life sedulously attentive 
 to elegance of personal appearance. The length of 
 journeys which he accomplished within a given time, 
 appears even to us at this day, and might well there- 
 fore appear to his contemporaries, truly astonishing. 
 A distance of one hundred miles was no extraordinary 
 day's journey for him in a rheda, such as we have 
 described it. So elegant were his habits, and so con- 
 stant his demand for the luxurious accommodations of 
 polished life, as it then existed in Rome, that he is 
 said to have carried with him, as indispensable parts of 
 his personal baggage, the little lozenges and squares 
 of ivory, and other costly materials, which were want- 
 ed for the tessellated flooring of his tent. Habits such 
 as these will easily account for his travelling in a car- 
 riage rather than on horseback.
 
 Til!, i .1 > \RS. CI 
 
 The courtesy and obliging disposition of CffiSai were 
 notorious, and both were illustrated in sonic anecdotes 
 which survived for generations in Home. Dining on 
 one occasion at a table, where the servants had inad- 
 vertently, for salad-oil, furnished some sort of coarse 
 lamp-oil, Caesar would not allow the rest of the com- 
 pany to point out the mistake to their host, for fear of 
 shocking him too much by exposing the mistake. At 
 another time, whilst halting at a little cabaret, when 
 one of his retinue was suddenly taken ill, Caesar 
 resigned to his use the sole bed which the house 
 afforded. Incidents as trifling as these, express the 
 urbanity of ( ';esar"s nature: and, hence, one is more 
 surprised to find the alienation of the senate charged, 
 in no trifling degree, upon a failure in point of cour- 
 tesy. Ccesar neglected to rise from his seat on their 
 approaching him in a body with an address of congrat- 
 ulation. It is said, and we can believe it, that he gave 
 deeper offence by this one defect in a matter of cere- 
 monial observance, than by all his substantial attacks 
 upon their privileges. What we find it difficult to 
 believe, however, is not that result from the offence, 
 but the possibility of the offence itself, from one so 
 little arrogant as Ca>sar, and so entirely a man of the 
 world. He was told of the disgust which he had 
 given, and we are bound to believe his apology, in 
 which he charged it upon sickness, which would not 
 at the moment allow him to maintain a standing atti-
 
 62 THE CiESARS. 
 
 tude. Certainly the whole tenor of his life was not 
 courteous only, but kind ; and, to his enemies, merci- 
 ful in a degree which implied so much more magnani- 
 mity than men in general could understand, that by 
 many it was put down to the account of weakness. 
 
 Weakness, however, there was none in Caius Csesar : 
 and, that there might be none, it was fortunate that 
 conspiracy should have cut him off in the full vigor of 
 his faculties, in the very meridian of his glory, and on 
 the brink of completing a scries of gigantic achieve- 
 ments. Amongst these are numbered — a digest of 
 the entire body of the laws, even then become un- 
 wieldy and oppressive ; the establishment of vast and 
 comprehensive public libraries, Greek as well as Latin ; 
 the chastisement of Dacia ; the conquest of Parthia ; 
 and the cutting a ship canal through the Isthmus of 
 Corinth. The reformation of the calendar he had 
 already accomplished. And of all his projects it may 
 be said that they were equally patriotic in their pur- 
 pose, and colossal in their proportions. 
 
 As an orator, Caesar's merit was so eminent, that, 
 according to the general belief, had he found time to 
 cultivate this department of civil exertion, the precise 
 supremacy of Cicero would have been made question- 
 able, or the honors would have been divided. Cicero 
 himself was of that opinion ; and on different occasions 
 applied the epithet Splendidus to Caesar, as though in 
 some exclusive sense, or with a peculiar emphasis, due
 
 Tin; CjESABS. 63 
 
 to him. His taste was much simpler, chaster, a 
 
 disinclined to the jlorid and ornamental, than that of 
 Cicero. So far he would, in that condition of the 
 Roman culture and feeling, have been less acccptahlc 
 to the public ; but, on the other hand, he would have 
 compensated this disadvantage by much more of natu- 
 ral and Demosthenic fervor. 
 
 In literature, the merits of Caesar are familiar to 
 most readers. Under the modest title of Commen- 
 taries, he meant to offer the records of his Gallic and 
 British campaigns, simply as notes, or memoranda, 
 afterwards to be worked up by regular historians ; hut, 
 as Cicero observes, their merit was such in the eyes of 
 the discerning, that all judicious writers shrank from 
 the attempt to alter them. In another instance of his 
 literary labors, he showed a very just sense of true 
 dignity. Rightly conceiving that everything patriotic 
 was dignified, and that to illustrate or polish his native 
 language, was a service of real patriotism, he composed 
 a work on the grammar and orthoepy of the Latin 
 language. Cicero and himself were the only Romans 
 of distinction in that age, who applied themselves with 
 true patriotism to the task of purifying and ennobling 
 their mother tongue. Both were aware of the tran- 
 scendent quality of the Grecian literature ; but that 
 splendor did not depress their hopes of raising their 
 own to something of the same level. As respected 
 the natural wealth of the two languages, it was the
 
 G4 THE CAESARS. 
 
 private opinion of Cicero, that the Latin had the ad- 
 vantage ; and if Caesar did not accompany him to that 
 length, he yet felt that it was hut the more necessary 
 to draw forth any single advantage which it really 
 had. ] 2 
 
 Was Caesar, upon the whole, the greatest of men? 
 Dr. Bcattie once observed, that if that question were 
 left to be collected from the suffrages already express- 
 ed in books, and scattered throughout the literature 
 of all nations, the scale would be found to have turned 
 prodigiously in Ca?sar's favor, as against any single 
 competitor ; and there is no doubt whatsoever, that 
 even amongst his own countrymen, and his own con- 
 temporaries, the same verdict would have been re- 
 turned, had it been collected upon the famous principle 
 of Themistocles, that he should be reputed the first, 
 whom the greatest number of rival voices had pro- 
 nounced the second.
 
 Tin; i '.v.saks. 6fi 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The situation of the Second Caesar, at the crisis of 
 the great Dictator's assassination, was so hazardous 
 and delicate, as to confer interest upon a character 
 not otherwise attractive. To many we know it was 
 positively repulsive, and in the very highest degree. 
 In particular, it is recorded of Sir William Jones, that 
 he regarded this emperor with feelings of abhorrence 
 so personal and deadly, as to refuse him his customary 
 titular honors whenever he had occasion to mention 
 him by name. Yet it was the whole Roman people 
 that conferred upon him his title of Augustus. But 
 Sir William, ascribing no force to the acts of a people 
 who had sunk so low as to exult in their chains, and 
 to decorate with honors the very instruments of their 
 own vassalage, would not recognize this popular cre- 
 ation, and spoke of him always by his family name 
 of Octavius. The flattery of the populace, by the 
 way, must, in this instance, have been doubly accept- 
 able to the emperor, first, for what it gave, and 
 secondly, for what it concealed. Of his grand-uncle 
 the first Caesar, a tradition survives — that of all the 
 distinctions created in his favor, either by the senate 
 or the people, he put most value upon the laurel 
 6
 
 G6 THE C^SAKS. 
 
 crown which was voted to him after his last campaigns 
 — a beautiful and conspicuous memorial to every eye 
 of his great public acts, and at the same time an 
 overshadowing veil of his one sole personal defect. 
 Tins laurel diadem at once proclaimed his civic gran- 
 deur, and concealed his baldness, a defect which was 
 more mortifying to a Roman than it would be to 
 ourselves from the peculiar theory which then pre- 
 vailed as to its probable origin. A gratitude of the 
 same mixed quality must naturally have been felt by 
 the Second Caesar for his title of Augustus, which, 
 whilst it illustrated his public character by the highest 
 expression of majesty, set apart and sequestrated to 
 public functions, had also the agreeable effect of with- 
 drawing from the general remembrance his obscure 
 descent. For the Octavian house [_ge?is~] had in 
 neither of its branches risen to any great splendor 
 of civic distinction, and in his own, to little or none. 
 The same titular decoration, therefore, so offensive to 
 the celebrated Whig, was, in the eyes of Augustus, at 
 once a trophy of public merit, a monument of public 
 gratitude, and an effectual obliteration of his own natal 
 obscuritv. 
 
 But, if merely odious to men of Sir William's prin- 
 ciples, to others the character of Augustus, in relation 
 to the circumstances which surrounded him, was not 
 without its appropriate interest. He was summoned 
 in early youth, and without warning, to face a crisis
 
 THE C.KS.VRS. G7 
 
 of tremendous hazard, being at the same time himself 
 a man of no very great constitutional courage ; perhaps 
 he was even a coward. And this we say without 
 meaning to adopt as gospel truths all the party re- 
 proaches of Anthony. Certainly he was utterly unfur- 
 nished by nature with those endowments which seem d 
 to be indispensable in a successor to the power of the 
 great Dictator. But exactly in these deficiencies, and 
 in certain accidents unfavorable to his ambition, lay 
 his security. He had been adopted by his grand* 
 uncle, Julius. That adoption made him, to all intents 
 and purposes of law, the son of his great patron ; and 
 doubtless, in a short time, this adoption would have 
 been applied 10 more extensive uses, and as a station 
 of vantage for introducing him to the public favor. 
 From the inheritance of the Julian estates and family 
 honors, he would have been trained to mount, as from 
 a stepping-stone, to the inheritance of the Julian 
 power and political station ; and the Roman people 
 would have been familiarized to regard him in that 
 character. But, luckily for himself, the finishing, or 
 ceremonial acts, were yet wanting in this process — 
 the political heirship was inchoate and imperfect. 
 Tacitly understood, indeed, it was ; but had it been 
 formally proposed and ratified, there cannot be a doubt 
 that the young Octavius would have been pointed out 
 to the vengeance of the patriots, and included in the 
 scheme of the conspirators, as a fellow-victim with his
 
 68 THE C.ES.VRS. 
 
 nominal father; and would have been cut off too sud- 
 denly to benefit by that re-action of popular feeling 
 which saved the partisans of the Dictator, by separat- 
 ing the conspirators, and obliging tbem, without loss 
 of time, to look to their own safety. It was by this 
 fortunate accident that the young heir and adopted son 
 of the first Caesar not only escaped assassination, but 
 was enabled to postpone indefinitely the final and 
 military struggle for the vacant seat of empire, and 
 in the meantime to maintain a coequal rank with the 
 leaders in the state, by those arts and resources in 
 which he was superior to his competitors. His place 
 in the favor of Caius Julius was of power sufficient to 
 give him a share in any triumvirate which could be 
 formed ; but, wanting the formality of a regular intro- 
 duction to the people, and the ratification of their 
 acceptance, that place was not sufficient to raise him 
 permanently into the perilous and invidious station of 
 absolute supremacy which he afterwards occupied. 
 The felicity of Augustus was often vaunted by an- 
 tiquity, (with whom success was not so much a test 
 of merit as itself a merit of the highest quality,) and 
 in no instance was this felicity more conspicuous than 
 in the first act of his entrance upon the political scene. 
 No doubt his friends and enemies alike thought of 
 him, at the moment of Caesar's assassination, as we 
 now think of a young man heir-elect to some person 
 of immense wealth, cut off by a sudden death before
 
 THE C^ISARS. 69 
 
 he has had time to ratify a will in execution of his 
 purposes. Yet in fact the ease was far others 
 Brought forward distinctly as the successor of Caesar's 
 power, had he even, by some favorable accident of 
 absence from Rome, or otherwise, escaped being in- 
 volved in that great man's fate, he would at all events 
 have been thrown upon the instant necessity of de- 
 fending his supreme station by arms. To have left it 
 unasserted, when once solemnly created in his favor 
 by a reversionary title, would have been deliberately 
 to resign it. This would have been a confession of 
 weakness liable to no disguise, and ruinous to any 
 subsequent pretensions. Yet, without preparation of 
 means, with no development of resources nor growth 
 of circumstances, an appeal to arms would, in his case, 
 have been of very doubtful issue. His true weapons, 
 for a long period, were the arts of vigilance and dis- 
 simulation. Cultivating these, he was enabled to pre- 
 pare for a contest which, undertaken prematurely, must 
 have ruined him, and to raise himself to a station of 
 even military preeminence to those who naturally, and 
 by circumstances, were originally every way superior 
 to himself. 
 
 The qualities in which he really excelled, the gifts 
 of intrigue, patience, long suffering, dissimulation, and 
 tortuous fraud, were thus brought into play, and 
 allowed their full value. Such qualities had every 
 chance of prevailing in the long run, against the noble
 
 70 THE C^SABS. 
 
 carelessness and the impetuosity of the passionate 
 Anthony — and they did prevail. Always on the 
 watch to lay hold of those opportunities which the 
 generous negligence of his rival was but too frequently 
 throwing in his way — unless by the sudden reverses 
 of war and the accidents of battle, which as much as 
 possible, and as long as possible, he declined — there 
 could be little question in any man's mind, that 
 eventually he would win his way to a solitary throne, 
 by a policy so full of caution and subtlety. He was 
 sure to risk nothing which could be had on easier 
 terms ; and nothing unless for a great overbalance of 
 gain in prospect ; to lose nothing which he had once 
 gained ; and in no case to miss an advantage, or sacri- 
 fice an opportunity, by any consideration of gene- 
 rosity. No modern insurance office but would have 
 guaranteed an event depending upon the final success 
 of Augustus, on terms far below those which they 
 must in prudence have exacted from the fiery and 
 adventurous Anthony. Each was an ideal in his own 
 class. But Augustus, having finally triumphed, has 
 met with more than justice from succeeding ages. 
 Even Lord Bacon says, that, by compai'ison with 
 Julius Caesar, he was ' non tarn irnpar quam dispar,' 
 surely a most extravagant encomium, applied to whom- 
 soever. On the other hand, Anthony, amongst the 
 most signal misfortunes of his life, might number it, 
 that Cicero, the great dispenser of immortality, in
 
 Tin; OE8AB8. 71 
 
 whose hands (more perhaps than in any one man's of 
 any age) were the vials of good and evil fame, should 
 happen to have heen his hitter and persevering enemy. 
 It is, however, some halance to this, that Shakspeare 
 had a just conception of the original grandeur which 
 lay hencath that wild tempestuous nature presented by 
 Anthony to the eye of the ^discriminating world. It 
 is to the honor of Shakspeare that he should have been 
 able to discern the true coloring of this most original 
 character under the smoke and tarnish of antiquity. 
 It is no less to the honor of the great triumvir, that a 
 strength of coloring should survive in his character, 
 capable of baffling the wrongs and ravages of time. 
 Neither is it to be thought strange that a character 
 should have been misunderstood and falsely appreciated 
 for nearly two thousand years. It happens not uncom- 
 monly, especially amongst an unimaginative people, 
 like the Romans, that the characters of men are 
 ciphers and enigmas to their own age, and are first 
 read and interpreted by a far distant posterity. Stars 
 arc supposed to exist, whose light has been travelling 
 for many thousands of years without having yet 
 reached our system ; and the eyes are yet unborn 
 upon which their earliest rays will fall. Men like 
 Mark Anthony, with minds of chaotic composition — 
 light conflicting with darkness, proportions of colossal 
 grandeur disfigured by unsymmetrical arrangement, 
 the angelic in close neighborhood with the brutal — are
 
 72 THE C^SARS. 
 
 first read in their true meaning by an age learned in 
 the philosophy of the human heart. Of this philosophy 
 the Romans had, by the necessities of education and 
 domestic discipline, not less than by original constitu- 
 tion of mind, the very narrowest visual range. In no 
 literature whatsoever are so few tolerable notices to be 
 found of any great truths in Psychology. Nor could 
 this have been otherwise amongst a people who tried 
 everything by the standard of social value ; never 
 seeking for a canon of excellence, in man considered 
 abstractedly in and for himself, and as having an 
 independent value — but always and exclusively in 
 man as a gregarious being, and designed for social uses 
 and functions. Not man in his own peculiar nature, 
 but man in his relations to other men, was the station 
 from which the Roman speculators took up their 
 philosophy of human nature. Tried by such standard, 
 Mark Anthony would be found wanting. As a citizen, 
 he was irretrievably licentious, and therefore there 
 needed not the bitter personal feud, which circum- 
 stances had generated between them, to account for 
 the acharnement with which Cicero pursued him. Had 
 Anthony been his friend even, or his near kinsman, 
 Cicero must still have been his public enamy. And 
 not merely for his vices ; for even the grander features 
 of his character, his towering ambition, his magna- 
 nimity, and the fascinations of his popular qualities, — 
 were all, in the circumstances of those times, and in 
 his position, of a tendency dangerously uncivic.
 
 i II E I J5SAB9. 73 
 
 So remarkable was the opposition, at all points, be- 
 between the second Caesar and his rival, that whereas 
 
 Anthony even in his virtues seemed dangerous to the 
 state, Octavius gave a civic coloring to his most indiffer- 
 ent actions, and, with a Machiavelian policy, observed 
 a scrupulous regard to the forms of the Republic, after 
 every fragment of the republican institutions, the privi- 
 leges of the republican magistrates, and the functions 
 of the great popular officers, had been absorbed into 
 his own autocracy. Even in the most prosperous 
 days of the Roman State, when the democratic forces 
 balanced, and were balanced by, those of the aristoc- 
 racy, it was far from being a general or common 
 praise, that a man was of a civic turn of mind, animo 
 ririli. Yet this praise did Augustus affect, and in 
 reality attain, at a time when the very object of all 
 civic feeling was absolutely extinct; so much are men 
 governed by words. Suetonius assures us, that many 
 evidences were current even to his times of this popu- 
 lar disposition (civili/as) in the emperor ; and that it 
 survived every experience of servile adulation in the 
 Roman populace, and all the effects of long familiarity 
 with irresponsible power in himself. Such a modera- 
 tion of feeling, we arc almost obliged to consider as a 
 genuine and unaffected expression of his real nature ; 
 for, as an artifice of policy, it had soon lost its uses. 
 And it is worthy of notice, that with the army he laid 
 aside those popular manners as soon as possible, 
 7
 
 74 THE CJESARS. 
 
 addressing them as milites, not (according to his ear- 
 lier practice) as commilitones. It concerned his own 
 security, to he jealous of encroachments on his power. 
 But of his rank, and the honors which accompanied it, 
 he seems to have been uniformly careless. Thus, he 
 would never leave a town or enter it by daylight, 
 unless some higher rule of policy obliged him to do so ; 
 by which means he evaded a ceremonial of public 
 honor which was burdensome to all the parties con- 
 cerned in it. Sometimes, however, we find that men, 
 careless of honors in their own persons, are glad to 
 see them settling upon their family and immediate 
 connections. But here again Augustus showed the 
 sincerity of his moderation. For upon one occasion, 
 when the whole audience in the Roman theatre had 
 risen upon the entrance of his two adopted sons, 
 at that time not seventeen years old, he was highly 
 displeased, and even thought it necessary to publish 
 his displeasure in a separate edict. It is another, and 
 a striking illustration of his humility, that he willingly 
 accepted of public appointments, and sedulously dis- 
 charged the duties attached to them, in conjunction 
 with colleagues who had been chosen with little regard 
 to his personal partialities. In the debates of the 
 senate, he showed the same equanimity ; suffering 
 himself patiently to be contradicted, and even with 
 circumstances of studied incivility. In the public 
 elections, he gave his vote like any private citizen ;
 
 TIIK C.SSAB8. 75 
 
 and, when he happened to be a candidate himself, he 
 canvassed the electors with the same earnestness of 
 personal application, as any other candidate with the 
 least possible title to public favor from present power 
 or past services. But, perhaps by no expressions of 
 his civic spirit did Augustus so much conciliate men's 
 minds, as by the readiness with which he participated 
 in their social pleasures, and by the uniform severity 
 with which he refused to apply his influence in any way 
 which could disturb the pure administration of justice. 
 The Roman juries (judices they were called), were 
 very corrupt ; and easily swayed to an unconscientious 
 verdict, by the appearance in court of any great man 
 on behalf of one of the parties interested ; nor was 
 such an interference with the course of private justice 
 any ways injurious to the great man's character. The 
 wrong wdiich he promoted did but the more forcibly 
 proclaim the warmth and fidelity of his friendships. 
 So much the more generally was the uprightness of 
 the emperor appreciated, who would neither tamper 
 with justice himself nor countenance any motion in 
 that direction, though it were to serve his wry dearest 
 friend, cither by his personal presence, or by the use 
 of his name. And, as if it had been a trifle merely to 
 forbear, and to show his regard to justice in this nega- 
 tive way, he even allowed himself to be summoned as 
 a witness on trials, and showed no anger when his own 
 evidence was overhorne by stronger on the other side.
 
 76 THK CAESARS. 
 
 This disinterested love of justice, and an integrity, so 
 rare in the great men of Rome, could not hut com- 
 mand the reverence of the people. But their affection, 
 doubtless, was more conciliated by the freedom with 
 which the emperor accepted invitations from all quar- 
 ters, and shared continually in the festal pleasures of 
 his subjects. This practice, however, he discontinued, 
 or narrowed, as he advanced in years. Suetonius, 
 who, as a true anecdote-monger, would solve every 
 thing, and account for every change by some definite 
 incident, charges this alteration in the emperor's con- 
 descensions upon one particular party at a wedding 
 feast, where the crowd incommoded him much by their 
 pressure and heat. But, doubtless, it happened to 
 Augustus as to other men ; his spirits failed, and his 
 powers of supporting fatigue or bustle, as years stole 
 upon him. Changes, coming by insensible steps, and 
 not willingly acknowledged, for some time escape 
 notice ; until some sudden shock reminds a man for- 
 cibly to do that which he has long meditated in an 
 irresolute way. The marriage banquet may have been 
 the particular occasion from which Augustus stepped 
 into the habits of old age, but certainly not the cause 
 of so entire a revolution in his mode of living. 
 
 It might seem to throw some doubt, if not upon the 
 fact, yet at least upon the sincerity, of his civistn, that 
 undoubtedly Augustus cultivated his kingly connec- 
 tions with considerable anxiety. It may have been
 
 TIIK CJE3AE3. 77 
 
 upon motives merely political thai he kepi at Rome the> 
 children of nearly all the kings then known us allies or 
 vassals of the Roman power: a curious fact, and not 
 generally known. In Ins own palace were reared a 
 number of youthful princes ; and they were educated 
 jointly with his own children. It is also upon record, 
 tkat in many instances the fathers of these princes 
 spontaneously repaired to Rome, and there assuming 
 the Roman dress — as an expression of reverence to 
 the majesty of the omnipotent State — did personal 
 ' suit and service ' [more clientum) to Augustus. It is 
 an anecdote of not less curiosity, that a whole ' college' 
 of kings subscribed money for a temple at Athens, to 
 be dedicated in the name of Augustus. Throughout 
 his life, indeed, this emperor paid a marked attention 
 to all royal houses then known to Rome, as occu- 
 pying the thrones upon the vast margin of the empire. 
 It is true that in part this attention might be interpreted 
 as given politically to so many lieutenants, wielding a 
 remote or inaccessible power for the benefit of Rome. 
 And the children of these kings might be regarded as 
 hostages, ostensibly entertained for the sake of educa- 
 tion, but really as pledges for their parents' fidelity, 
 and also with a view to the large reversionary advan- 
 tages which might be expected to arise upon the 1>. 
 of so early and affectionate a connection. But it is not 
 the less true, that, at one period of his life, Augustus 
 did certainly meditate some closer personal connection
 
 7o THE CiESARS. 
 
 with tlie royal families of the earth. He speculated, 
 undoubtedly, on a marriage for himself -with some 
 barbarous princess, and at one time designed his daugh- 
 ter Julia as a wife for Cotiso, the king of the Getae. 
 Superstition perhaps disturbed the one scheme, and 
 policy the other. He married, as is well known, for 
 his final wife, and the partner of his life through its 
 whole triumphant stage, Livia Drusilla ; compelling her 
 husband, Tiberius Xero, to divorce her, notwithstand- 
 ing she was then six months advanced in pregnancy. 
 With this lady, who was distinguished for her beauty, 
 it is certain that he was deeply in love ; and that might 
 be sufficient to account for the marriage. It is equally 
 certain, however, upon the concurring evidence of in- 
 dependent writers, that this connection had an oracu- 
 lar sanction — not to say suggestion ; a circumstance 
 which was long remembered, and was afterwards noticed 
 by the Christian poet Prudentius : 
 
 ' Idque Deiim sortes et Apollinis antra dederunt 
 Consilium : nunquam melius nam credere tsedas 
 Responsum est, quam cum prtegnans nova nupta jugatur.' 
 
 His daughter Julia had been promised by turns, and 
 always upon reasons of state, to a whole muster-roll 
 of suitors ; first of all, to a son of Mark Anthony ; 
 secondly, to the barbarous king ; thirdly, to her first 
 cousin — that Marcellus, the son of Octavia, only sister 
 to Augustus, whose early death, in the midst of great 
 expectations, Virgil has so beautifully introduced into
 
 THK C.ES.VRS. 7 ( J 
 
 tVie vision of Roman grandeurs as yet unborn, which 
 ./Eneas beholds in the shades; fourthly, she was pro- 
 mised ''and this time the promise was kept) to the 
 fortunate soldier, Agrippa, whose low birth was not 
 permitted to obscure his military merits. By him she 
 had a family of children, upon whom, if upon any in 
 this world the wrath of Providence seems to have 
 rested ; for, excepting one, and in spite of all the 
 favors that earth and heaven could unite to shower 
 upon them, all came to an early, a violent, and an 
 infamous end. Fifthly, upon the death of Agrippa, 
 and again upon motives of policy, and in atrocious 
 contempt of all the tics that nature and the human 
 heart and human laws have hallowed, she was prom- 
 ised, (if that word may be applied to the violent 
 obtrusion upon a man's bed of one who was doubly a 
 curse — first, for what she brought, and, secondly, for 
 what she took away,) and given to Tiberius, the future 
 emperor. Upon the whole, as far as we can at this 
 day make out the connection of a man's acts and 
 purposes, which, even to his own age, were never 
 entirely cleared up, it is probable that, so long as the 
 triumvirate survived, and so long as the condition of 
 Roman power or intrigues, and the distribution of Ro- 
 man influence, were such as to leave a possibility that 
 any new triumvirate should arise — so long Augustus 
 was secretly meditating a retreat for himself at some 
 barbarous court, against any sudden reverse of fortune
 
 80 THE CAESARS. 
 
 by means of a domestic connection, which should give 
 him the claim of a kinsman. Such a court, however 
 unable to make head against the collective power of 
 Rome, might yet present a front of resistance to any 
 single partisan who should happen to acquire a brief 
 ascendancy ; or, at the worst, as a merely defensive 
 power, might offer a retreat, secure in distance, and 
 difficult of access ; or might be available as a means 
 of delay for recovering from some else fatal defeat. It 
 is certain that Augustus viewed Egypt with jealousy 
 as a province, which might be turned to account in 
 some such way by any inspiring insurgent. And it 
 must have often struck him as a remarkable circum- 
 stance, which by good luck had turned out entirely 
 to the advantage of his own family, but which might 
 as readily have had an opposite result, that the three 
 decisive battles of Pharsalia, of Thapsus, and of 
 Munda, in which the empire of the world was three 
 times over staked as the prize, had severally brought 
 upon the defeated leaders a ruin which was total, 
 absolute, and final. One hour had seen the whole 
 fabric of their aspiring fortunes demolished ; and no 
 resource was left to them but either in suicide, (which, 
 accordingly even Caesar had meditated at one stage 
 of the battle of Munda, when it seemed to be going 
 against him,) or in the mercy of the victor. 
 
 That a victor in a hundred fights should in his 
 hundred-and-first, 13 as in his first, risk the loss of that
 
 •I ii E I S8AB8. Si 
 
 particular battle, is inseparable from the condition of 
 man, and the uncertainty of human means; but that 
 the loss of this one battle should be equally fatal and 
 irrecoverable with the loss of his first, that it should 
 leave him with means no more cemented, and re- 
 sources no better matured for retarding his fall, and 
 throwing a long succession of hindrances in the way 
 of his conqueror, argues some essential defect of sys- 
 tem. Under our modern policy, military power — 
 though it may be the growth of one man's life — soon 
 takes root; a succession of campaigns is required for 
 its extirpation ; and it revolves backwards to its final 
 extinction through all the stages by which originally 
 it grew. On the Roman system this was mainly 
 impossible from the solitariness of the Roman power ; 
 co-rival nations who might balance the victorious 
 party, there were absolutely none ; and all the under- 
 lings hastened to make their peace, whilst peace was 
 yet open to them, on the known terms of absolute 
 treachery to their former master, and instant surrender 
 to the victor of the hour. For this capital defect in 
 the tenure of Roman power, no matter in whose hands 
 deposited, there was no absolute remedy. Many a 
 sleepless night, during the perilous game which he 
 played with Anthony, must have familiarized Octavius 
 with that view of the risk, which to some ext nl was 
 inseparable from his position as the leader in such a 
 struggle carried on in such an empire. In this di-
 
 82 the cj:saiis. 
 
 lemma, struck with the extreme necessity of applying 
 some palliation to the case, we have no doubt that 
 Augustus would devise the scheme of laying some 
 distant king under such obligations to fidelity as would 
 suffice to stand the first shock of misfortune. Such a 
 person would have power enough of a direct military 
 kind, to face the storm at its outbreak. He would 
 have power of another kind in his distance. He would 
 be sustained by the courage of hope, as a kinsman 
 having a contingent interest in a kinsman's prosperity. 
 And, finally, he would be sustained by the courage of 
 despair, as one who never could expect to be trusted 
 by the opposite party. In the worst case, such a 
 prince would always offer a breathing time and a 
 respite to his friends, were it only by his remoteness, 
 and if not the means of rallying, yet at least the time 
 for rallying, more especially as the escape to his fron- 
 tier would be easy to one who had long forecast it. 
 We can hardly doubt that Augustus meditated such 
 schemes ; that he laid them aside only as his power 
 began to cement and to knit together after the battle 
 of Actium ; and that the memory and the prudential 
 tradition of this plan survived in the imperial family so 
 long as itself survived. Amongst other anecdotes of 
 the same tendency, two are recorded of Nero, the 
 emperor in whom expired the line of the original 
 Caesars, which strengthen us in a belief of what is 
 otherwise in itself so probable. Xero, in his first
 
 Tin: 0-S9 LUS. 83 
 
 distractions, upon receiving the fatal tidings of the 
 revolt in Gaul, when reviewing all possible plans of 
 escape from the impending clanger, thought at intervals 
 of throwing himself on the protection of the barbarous 
 King Vologesus. And twenty years afterwards, when 
 the Pseudo-Nero appeared, he found a strenuous cham- 
 pion and protector in the King of the Parthians. Pos- 
 sibly, had an opportunity offered for searching the 
 Parthian chancery, some treaty would have been found 
 binding the kings of Parthia, from the age of Augustus 
 through some generations downwards, in requital of 
 services there specified, or of treasures lodged, to 
 secure a perpetual asylum to the prosperity of the 
 Julian family. 
 
 The cruelties of Augustus were perhaps equal in 
 atrocity to any which are recorded ; and the equivocal 
 apology for those acts (one which might as well be 
 used to aggravate as to palliate the case) is, that they 
 were not prompted by a ferocious nature, but by cal- 
 culating policy. He once actually slaughtered upon 
 an altar a large body of his prisoners : and such was 
 the contempt with which he was regarded by some of 
 that number, that, when led out to death, they saluted 
 their other proscribcr. Anthony, with military honors, 
 acknowledging merit even in an enemy, but Augustus 
 they passed with scornful silence, or with loud re- 
 proaches. Too certainly no man has ever contended 
 for empire with unsullied conscience, or laid pure
 
 84 THE C2ESARS. 
 
 hands upon the ark of so magnificent a prize. Every 
 friend to Augustus must have wished that the twelve 
 years of his struggle might for ever be blotted out from 
 human remembrance. During the forty- two years of 
 his prosperity and his triumph, being above fear, he 
 showed the natural lenity of his temper. 
 
 That prosperity, in a public sense, has been rarely 
 equalled ; but far different was his fate, and memorable 
 was the contrast, within the circuit of his own family. 
 This lord of the universe groaned as often as the ladies 
 of his house, his daughter and grand-daughter, were 
 mentioned. The shame which he felt on their account, 
 led him even to unnatural designs, and to wishes not 
 less so ; for at one time he entertained a plan for 
 putting the elder Julia to death — and at another, upon 
 hearing that Phoebe (one of the female slaves in his 
 household) had hanged herself, he exclaimed audibly, 
 — ' Would that I had been the father of Phoebe ! ' It 
 must, however, be granted, that in this miserable affair 
 he behaved with very little of his usual discretion. In 
 the first paroxysms of his rage, on discovering his 
 daughter's criminal conduct, he made a communication 
 of the whole to the senate. That body could do noth- 
 ing in such a matter, cither by act or by suggestion ; 
 and in a short time, as everybody could have foreseen, 
 he himself repented of his own want of self-command. 
 Upon the whole, it cannot be denied, that, according 
 to the remark of Jeremy Taylor, of all the men signally
 
 i in. i .i.-\ 85 
 
 decorated by history, Augustus Caesar is that one who 
 exemplifies, in the most emphatic terms, the mixed 
 tenor of human life, and the cquitahlc distribution, 
 even on this earth, of good and evil fortune. He made 
 himself muster of the world, and against the most for- 
 midable competitors ; his power was absolute, from the 
 rising to the setting sun ; and yet in his own house, 
 where the peasant who does the humblest chares, 
 claims an undisputed authority, he was baffled, dishon- 
 ored, and made ridiculous. He was loved by nobody ; 
 and if, at the moment of his death, he desired his 
 friends to dismiss him from this world by the common 
 expression of sccnical applause, (vos plaudite /) in that 
 valedictory injunction he expressed inadvertently the 
 true value of his own long life, which, in strict candor, 
 may be pronounced one continued series of histrionic 
 efforts, and of excellent acting, adapted to selfish 
 ends.
 
 86 THE C^SARS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 / 
 The next three emperors, Caligula, Claudius, and 
 
 Nero, were the last princes who had any connection 
 by blood H with the Julian house. In Nero, the sixth 
 emperor, expired the last of the Caesars, who was such 
 in reality. These three were also the first in that long 
 line of monsters, who, at different times, under the title 
 of Caesars, dishonored humanity more memorably, than 
 was possible, except in the cases of those (if any such 
 can be named) who have abused the same enormous 
 powers in times of the same civility, and in defiance of 
 the same general illumination. Rut for them it is a 
 fact, that some crimes, which now stain the page of 
 history, would have been accounted fabulous dreams 
 of impure romancers, taxing their extravagant imagi- 
 nations to create combinations of wickedness more 
 hideous than civilized men would tolerate, and more 
 unnatural than the human heart could conceive. Let 
 us, by way of example, take a short chapter from the 
 diabolical life of Caligula : — In what way did he treat 
 his nearest and tenderest female connections ? His 
 mother had been tortured and murdered by another 
 tyrant almost as fiendish as himself. She was happily 
 removed from his cruelty. Disdaining, however, to
 
 xiil c-esabs. 87 
 
 acknowledge any connection with the blood of so ob- 
 scure a man as Agrippa, he publicly gave out that his 
 mother was indeed the daughter of Julia, but by an 
 incestuous commerce with her father Augustus. His 
 three sisters he debauched. One die J, and her he 
 canoniz id ; the other two lie prostituted to the has -t 
 of his own attendants. Of his wives, it would be hard 
 to say whether they were first sought and won with 
 more circumstances of injury and outrage, or dismissed 
 with more insult and levity. The one whom he treat- 
 ed best, and with most profession of love, and who 
 commonly rode by his side, equipped with spear and 
 shield, to his military inspections and reviews of the 
 soldiery, though not particularly beautiful, was exhib- 
 ited to his friends at banquets in a state of absolute 
 nudity. His motive for treating her with so much 
 kindness, was, probably that she brought him a 
 daughter ; and her he acknowledged as his own child, 
 from the (arlv brutality with which she attacked the 
 eves and cheeks of other infants who were presented 
 to her as play-fellows. Hence it would appear that 
 he was aware of his own ferocity, and treated it as a 
 jest. The levity, indeed, which he mingled with his 
 worst and most inhuman acts, and the slightness of 
 the occasions upon which he delighted to hang his most 
 memorable atrocit gravated their impression at 
 
 the time, and must have contributed greatly to sharpen 
 the sword of vengeance. His palace happ in id to be
 
 88 THE CAESARS. 
 
 contiguous to the circus. Some scats, it seems, were 
 open indiscriminately to the public ; consequently, the 
 only way in which they could be appropriated, was by 
 taking possession of them as early as the midnight pre- 
 ceding any great exhibitions. Once, when it happened 
 that his sleep was disturbed by such an occasion, he 
 sent in soldiers to eject them; and with orders so rig- 
 orous, as it appeared by the event, that in this singular 
 tumult, twenty Roman knights, and as many mothers 
 of families, were cudgelled to death upon the spot, to 
 say nothing of what the reporter calls 'innumeram 
 turbam cetcram.' 
 
 But this is a trifle to another anecdote reported by 
 the same authority : — On some occasion it happened 
 that a dearth prevailed, either generally of cattle, or of 
 such cattle as were used for feeding the wild beasts 
 reserved for the bloody exhibitions of the amphitheatre. 
 Food could be had, and perhaps at no very exorbitant 
 price, but on terms somewhat higher than the ordinary 
 market price. A slight excuse served with Caligula 
 for acts the most monstrous. Instantly repairing to 
 the public jails, and causing all the prisoners to pass in 
 review before him (custodiarum scriem recognoscens), 
 he pointed to two bald-headed men, and ordered that 
 the whole file of intermediate persons should be 
 marched off to the dens of the wild beasts : ' Tell 
 them off,' said he, 'from the bald man to the bald 
 man.' Yet these were prisoners committed, not for
 
 Till, i E8A as. 89 
 
 punishment, but trial. Nor, had it heen otherwise, 
 were the charges against them equal, but running 
 through every gradation of guilt. But the elogia, or 
 records of their commitment, he would not so much as 
 look at. With such inordinate capacities for cruelty, 
 we cannot wonder that he should in his common con- 
 versation have deplored the tameness and insipidity of 
 his own times and reign, as likely to be marked by no 
 wide-spreading calamity. ' Augustus,' said he, ' was 
 happy ; for in his reign occurred the slaughter of 
 Varus and his legions. Tiberius was happy ; for in his 
 occurred that glorious fall of the great amphitheatre 
 at Fidenoe. But for me — alas ! alas ! ' And then he 
 would pray earnestly for fire or slaughter — pestilence 
 or famine. Famine indeed was to some extent in his 
 own power ; and accordingly, as far as his courage 
 would carry him, he did occasionally try that mode of 
 tragedy upon the people of Rome, by shutting up the 
 public granaries against them. As he blended his 
 mirth and a truculent sense of the humorous with his 
 cruelties, we cannot wonder that he shoidd soon blend 
 his cruelties with his ordinary festivities, and that his 
 daily banquets would soon become insipid without them. 
 Hence he required a daily supply of executions in his 
 own halls and banqueting rooms ; nor was a dinner 
 held to be complete without such a dessert. Artists 
 were sought out who had dexterity and strength enough 
 to do what Lucan somewhere calls ensrm rotarr. that 
 8
 
 90 THE CJ.SAHS. 
 
 is, to cut off a human head -with one whirl of the 
 sword. Even this became insipid, as wanting one 
 main element of misery to the sufferer, and an indis- 
 pensable condiment to the jaded palate of the con- 
 noisseur, viz., a lingering duration. As a pleasant 
 variety, therefore, the tormentors were introduced with 
 their various instruments of torture ; and many a 
 dismal tragedy in that mode of human suffering was 
 conducted in the sacred presence during the emperor's 
 hours of amiable relaxation. 
 
 The result of these horrid indulgences was exactly 
 what we might suppose, that even such scenes ceased 
 to irritate the languid appetite, and yet that without 
 them life was not endurable. Jaded and exhausted as 
 the sense of pleasure had become in Caligula, still it 
 could be roused into any activity by nothing short of 
 these murderous luxuries. Hence, it seems, that he 
 was continually tampering and dallying with the 
 thought of murder ; and like the old Parisian jeweller 
 Cardillac, in Louis XIV.'s time, who was stung with 
 a perpetual lust for murdering the possessors of fine 
 diamonds — not so much for the value of the prize (of 
 which he never hoped to make any use), as from an 
 unconquerable desire of precipitating himself into the 
 difficulties and hazards of the murder, — Caligula 
 never failed to experience (and sometimes even to 
 acknowledge) a secret temptation to any murder which 
 seemed either more than usually abominable, or more
 
 THE CJESAH8. 91 
 
 than usually difficult. Thus, when the two consuls 
 were seated at his table, he burst out into sudden and 
 profuse laughter ; and upon their courteously requi 
 ing to know what witty and admirable conceit might 
 be the occasion of the imperial mirth, he frankly 
 owned to them, and doubtless he did not improve their 
 appetites by this confession, that in fact he was laugh- 
 ing, and that he could not but laugh, (and then the 
 monster laughed immoderately again,) at the pleasant 
 thought of seeing them both headless, and that with so 
 little trouble to himself, [uno suo uuto,) he could have 
 both their throats cut. No doubt he was continually 
 balancing the arguments for and against such little 
 escapades ; nor had any person a reason for security 
 in the extraordinary obligations, whether of hospitality 
 or of religious vows, which seemed to lay him under 
 some peculiar restraints in that case above all others ; 
 for such circumstances of peculiarity, by which the 
 murder would be stamped with unusual atrocity, were 
 but the more likely to make its fascinations irresistible. 
 Hence he dallied with the thoughts of murdering her 
 whom he loved best, and indeed exclusively — his wife 
 Ciesonia ; and whilst fondling her, and toying playfully 
 with her polished throat, he was distracted (as he half 
 insinuated to her) between the desire of caressing it, 
 which might be often repeated, and that of cutting it, 
 which could be gratified but once. 
 
 Nero (for as to Claudius, he came too late to the
 
 92 THE C.ESARS. 
 
 throne to indulge any propensities of this nature with 
 so little discretion) was but a variety of the same 
 species. He also was an amateur, and an enthusiastic 
 amateur of murder. But as this taste, in the most 
 ingenious hands, is limited and monotonous in its modes 
 of manifestation, it would be tedious to run through the 
 long Suetonian roll-call of his peccadilloes in this way. 
 One only we shall cite, to illustrate the amorous delight 
 with which he pursued any murder which happened to 
 be seasoned highly to his taste by enormous atrocity, 
 and by almost unconquerable difficulty. It would 
 really be pleasant, were it not for the revolting consid- 
 eration of the persons concerned, and their relation to 
 each other, to watch the tortuous pursuit of the hunter, 
 and the doubles of the game, in this obstinate chase. 
 For certain reasons of state, as Nero attempted to 
 persuade himself, but in reality because no other crime 
 had the same attractions of unnatural horror about it, 
 he resolved to murder his mother Agrippina. This 
 being settled, the next thing was to arrange the mode 
 and the tools. Naturally enough, according to the 
 custom then prevalent in Rome, he first attempted the 
 thing by poison. The poison failed ; for Agrippina, 
 anticipating tricks of this kind, had armed her consti- 
 tution against them, like Mithridates ; and daily took 
 potent antidotes and prophylactics. Or else (which is 
 more probable) the emperor's agent in such purposes, 
 fearing his sudden repentance and remorse on first
 
 THE CAESARS. 93 
 
 hearing of his mother's death, or possibly even witness- 
 ing her agonies, had composed a poison of inferior 
 strength. This had certainly occurred in the ease of 
 Britannicus, who had thrown off with ease the first 
 dose administered to him by Nero. Upon which he 
 had summoned to his presence the woman employed 
 in the affair, and compelling her by threats to mingle a 
 more powerful potion in his own presence, had tried it 
 successively vipon different animals, until he was satis- 
 fied with its effects ; after which, immediately inviting 
 Britannicus to a banquet, he had finally dispatched 
 him. On Agrippina, however, no changes in the 
 poison, whether of kind or strength, had any effect : 
 so that, after various trials, this mode of murder was 
 abandoned, and the emperor addressed himself to other 
 plans. The first of these was some curious mechanical 
 device, by which a false ceiling was to have been sus- 
 pended by bolts above her bed ; and in the middle of 
 the night, the bolt being suddenly drawn, a vast weight 
 would have descended with a ruinous destruction to all 
 below. This scheme, however, taking air from the 
 indiscretion of some amongst the accomplices, reached 
 the cars of Agrippina : upon which the old lady looked 
 about her too sharply to leave much hope in that 
 scheme : so that also was abandoned. Next, he con- 
 ceived the idea of an artificial ship, which, at the touch 
 of a few springs, might fall to pieces in deep water. 
 Such a ship was prepared, and stationed at a suitable
 
 94 THE CESARS. 
 
 point. But the main difficulty remained, which was to 
 persuade the old lady to go on hoard. Not that she 
 knew in this case who had hcen the ship-builder, for 
 that would have ruined all ; but it seems that she took 
 it ill to he hunted in this murderous spirit ; and was 
 out of humor with her son ; besides, that any proposal 
 coming from him, though previously indifferent to her, 
 would have instantly become suspected. To meet this 
 difficulty a sort of reconciliation was proposed, and a 
 very affectionate message sent, which had the effect of 
 throwing Agrippina off her guard, and seduced her to 
 Baioe for the purpose of joining the emperor's party at 
 a great banquet held in commemoration of a solemn 
 festival. She came by water in a sort of light frigate, 
 and was to return in the same way. Meantime Nero 
 tampered with the commander of her vessel, and pre- 
 vailed upon him to wreck it. What was to be done ? 
 The great lady was anxious to return to Rome, and no 
 proper conveyance was at hand. Suddenly it was 
 suggested, as if by chance, that a ship of the empe- 
 ror's, new and properly equipped, was moored at a 
 neighboring station. This was readily accepted by 
 Agrippina : the emperor accompanied her to the place 
 of embarkation, took a most tender leave of her, and 
 saw her set sail. It was necessary that the vessel 
 should get into deep water before the experiment could 
 be made ; and with the utmost agitation this pious son 
 awaited news of the result. Suddenly a messenger
 
 i ii i i xsa as. 95 
 
 rushed breathless into his presence, and horrified him 
 bv the joyful information that his august mother had 
 met with an alarming accident ; but, by the blessing of 
 Heaven, had escaped safe and sound, and was now on 
 her road to mingle congratulations with her affectionate 
 son. The ship, it seems, had done its office ; the 
 mechanism had played admirably ; but who can pro- 
 vide for everything ? The old lady, it turned out, 
 could swim like a duck ; and the whole result had been 
 to refresh her with a little sea-bathing. Here was 
 worshipful intelligence. Could any man's temper be 
 expected to stand such continued sieges ? Money, and 
 trouble, and infinite contrivance, wasted upon one old 
 woman, who absolutely would not, upon any terms, be 
 murdered ! Provoking it certainly was ; .and of a man 
 like Nero it could not be expected that he should any 
 longer dissemble his disgust, or put up with such 
 repeated affronts. He rushed upon his simple con- 
 gratulating friend, swore that he had come to murder 
 him, and as nobody could have suborned him but 
 Agrippina, he ordered her off to instant execution. 
 And, unquestionably, if people will not be murdered 
 quietly and in a civil way, they must expect that such 
 forbearance is not to continue for ever ; and obviously 
 have themselves only to blame for any harshness or 
 violence which they may have rendered necessary. 
 
 It is singular, and shocking at the same time, to 
 mention, that, for this atrocity. Nero did absolutely
 
 96 THE C^SARS. 
 
 receive solemn congratulations from all orders of men. 
 With such evidences of base servility in the public 
 mind, and of the utter corruption which they had sus- 
 tained in their elementary feelings, it is the less aston- 
 ishing that he should have made other experiments 
 upon the public patience, which seem expressly de- 
 signed to try how much it would support. Whether 
 he were really the author of the desolating fire which 
 consumed Rome for six days 15 and seven nights, and 
 drove the mass of the people into the tombs and sep- 
 ulchres for shelter, is yet a matter of some doubt. 
 But one great presumption against it, founded on its 
 desperate imprudence, as attacking the people in their 
 primary comforts, is considerably weakened by the 
 enormous servility of the Romans in the case just 
 stated : they who could volunteer congratulations to a 
 son for butchering his mother, (no matter on what 
 pretended suspicions,) might reasonably be supposed 
 incapable of any resistance which required courage 
 even in a case of self-defence, or of just revenge. 
 The direct reasons, however, for implicating him in 
 this affair, seem at present insufficient. He was dis- 
 pleased, it seems, with the irregularity and unsightli- 
 ness of the antique buildings, and also with the streets, 
 as too narrow and winding, (angustiis Jlcxurisque 
 vicorum.) But in this he did but express what was no 
 doubt the common judgment of all his contemporaries, 
 who had seen the beautiful cities of Greece and Asia
 
 l SS i.i 8AB8. 97 
 
 Minor. The Rome of that time was in many parts 
 built of wood; and there is much probability that it 
 must ha o a picturesque city, and in parts almost 
 
 grotesque. But it is remarkable, and a fact which we 
 have nowhere seen noticed, that the ancients, whether 
 Greeks or Romans, had no eye for the picturesque ; 
 nay, that it was a .sense utterly unawakened amongst 
 them ; and that the very eonccption of the picturesque, 
 as of a thing distinct from the beautiful, is not once 
 alluded to through the whole course of ancient lite- 
 rature, nor would it have been intelligible to any 
 ancient critic ; so that, whatever attraction for the eye 
 might exist in the Rome of that day, there is little 
 doubt that it was of a kind to be felt only by modern 
 spectators. Mere dissatisfaction with its external ap- 
 pearance, which must have been a pretty general 
 sentiment, argued, therefore, no necessary purpose of 
 roying it. Certainly it would be weightier ground 
 of suspicion, if it were really true that some of his 
 ats were detected on the premises of different 
 .tors in the act of applying combustibles to their 
 mansions. But this story wears a very fabulous air. 
 For wii the private dwellings of great men, 
 
 where any intruder was sure of attracting notice, when 
 the same effect and with the same deadly results, 
 mighl have been attained quietly and secretly in so 
 many of the humble Roman ccenacula ? 
 
 The great los.s on this memorable occasion was in 
 ft
 
 98 THE CESARS. 
 
 the heraldic and ancestral honors of the city. His- 
 toric Rome then went to wreck for ever. Then per- 
 ished the domus priscorum ducum hostilibus adhuc 
 spoliis adornatce ; the ' rostral ' palace ; the mansion of 
 the Pompeys ; the Blenheims and the Strathfieldsays 
 of the Scipios, the Marcelli, the Panlli, and the Csesars ; 
 then perished the aged trophies from Carthage and 
 from Gaul ; and, in short, as the historian sums up 
 the lamentable desolation, ' quidquid visendum atque 
 memorabih ex antiquitate duraverat.' And this of 
 itself might lead one to suspect the emperor's hand 
 as the original agent ; for by no one act was it possible 
 so entirely and so suddenly to wean the people from 
 their old republican recollections, and in one week to 
 obliterate the memorials of their popular forces, and 
 the trophies of many ages. The old people of Rome 
 were gone ; their characteristic dress even was gone ; 
 for already in the time of Augustus they had laid aside 
 the toga, and assumed the cheaper and scantier 
 poznula, so that the eye sought in vain for Virgil's 
 ' Ronianus rerum dominos gentemque togatam." 1 
 Why then, after all the constituents of Roman 
 grandeur had passed away, should their historical 
 trophies survive, recalling to them the scenes of 
 departed heroism, in which they had no personal 
 property, and suggesting to them vain hopes, which 
 for them were never to be other than chimeras ? 
 Even in that sense, therefore, and as a great deposi-
 
 1 11 I. C<£SA.B8. 99 
 
 tory of heart-stirring historical remembrances, Romo 
 was profitably destroyed ; and in any otber sense, 
 wbether for health or for the conveniences of polished 
 life, or for architectural magnificence, there never 
 was a doubt that the Roman people gained infinitely 
 by this conflagration. For, like London, it arose from 
 its ashes with a splendor proportioned to its vast ex- 
 pansion of wealth and population ; and marhlc took the 
 place of wood. For the moment, however, this event 
 must have been felt by the people as an overwhelming 
 calamity. And it serves to illustrate the passive en- 
 durance and timidity of the popular temper, and to 
 what extent it might be provoked with impunity, that 
 in this state of general irritation and effervescence, 
 Nero absolutely forbade them to meddle with the 
 ruins of their own dwellings — taking that charge upon 
 himself, with a view to the vast wealth which he anti- 
 cipated from sifting the rubbish. And, as if that mode 
 of plunder were not sufficient, he exacted compulsory 
 contributions to the rebuilding of the city so indis- 
 criminately, as to press heavily npon all men's finan- 
 : and thus, in the public account which universally 
 imputed the fire to him, he was viewed as a twofold 
 robber, who sought to heal one calamity by the inflic- 
 tion of another and a greater. 
 
 The monotony of wickedness and outrage becomes 
 at length fatiguing to the coarsest and most callous 
 senses ; and the historian, even, who caters professedly
 
 100 THE C^SARS. 
 
 for the taste which feeds upon the monstrous and the 
 hyperbolical, is glad at length to escape from the long 
 evolution of his insane atrocities, to the striking and 
 truly scenical catastrophe of retribution which overtook 
 them, and avenged the wrongs of an insulted world. 
 Perhaps history contains no more impressive scenes 
 than those in which the justice of Providence at length 
 arrested the monstrous career of Nero. 
 
 It was at Naples, and by a remarkable fatality, on 
 the very anniversary of his mother's murder, that he 
 received the first intelligence of the revolt in Gaul 
 under the Propraetor Vindex. This news for about a 
 week he treated with levity ; and, like Henry VII. of 
 England, who was nettled, not so much at being pro- 
 claimed a rebel, as because he was described under 
 the slighting denomination of ' one Henry Tidder or 
 Tudor,' he complained bitterly that Vindex had men- 
 tioned him by his family name of iEnobarbus, rather 
 than his assumed one of Nero. But much more keenly 
 he resented the insulting description of himself as a 
 ' miserable harper,' appealing to all about him whether 
 they had ever known a better, and offering to stake 
 the truth of all the other charges against himself upon 
 the accuracy of this in particular. So little even in 
 this instance was be alive to the true point of the 
 insult ; not thinking it any disgrace that a Roman 
 emperor should be chiefly known to the world in the 
 character of a harper, but only if he should happen
 
 Tin; Cfi8AB8. 101 
 
 to be a bad one. Even in those days, however, im- 
 perfect as were the means of travelling, rebellion 
 moved somewhat too rapidly to allow any long inter- 
 val of security so light-minded as this. One courier 
 followed upon the heels of another, until he felt the 
 necessity for leaving Naples ; and he returned to 
 Rome, as the historian says, prcelrepidus ; by which 
 word, however, according to its genuine classical 
 acceptation, we apprehend is not meant that he was 
 highly alarmed, but only that he was in a great hurry. 
 That he was not yet under any real alarm (for he 
 trusted in certain prophecies, which, like those made 
 to the Scottish tyrant ' kept the promise to the ear, 
 but broke it to the sense,') is pretty evident from his 
 conduct on reaching the capitol. For, without any 
 appeal to the senate or the people, but sending out a 
 few summonses to some men of rank, he held a hasty 
 council, which he speedily dismissed, and occupied 
 the rest of the day with experiments on certain musi- 
 cal instruments of recent invention, in which the 
 keys were moved by hydraulic contrivances. He had 
 come to Rome, it appeared, merely from a sense of 
 decorum. 
 
 Suddenly, however, arrived news, which fell upon 
 him with the force of a thunderbolt, that the revolt 
 had extended to the Spanish provinces, and was head- 
 ed by Galba. He fainted upon hearing this ; and 
 falling to the ground, lay for a long time lifeless, as
 
 102 THE CJESXUS. 
 
 it seemed, and speechless. Upon coming to himself 
 again, he tore his robe, struck his forehead, and ex- 
 claimed aloud — that for him all was over. In this 
 agony of mind, it strikes across the utter darkness of 
 the scene with the sense of a sudden and cheering 
 flash, recalling to us the possible goodness and fidelity 
 of human nature — when we read that one humble 
 creature adhered to him, and, according to her slender 
 means, gave him consolation during these trying mo- 
 ments ; this was the woman who had tended his infant 
 years ; and she now recalled to his remembrance such 
 instances of former princes in adversity, as appeared 
 fitted to sustain his drooping spirits. It seems, how- 
 ever, that, according to the general course of violent 
 emotions, the rebound of high sjnrits was in proportion 
 to his first despondency. He omitted nothing of his 
 usual luxury or self-indulgence, and he even found 
 spirits for going incognito to the theatre, where he took 
 sufficient interest in the public performances, to send 
 a message to a favorite actor. At times, even in this 
 hopeless situation, his native ferocity returned upon 
 him, and he was believed to have framed plans for 
 removing all his enemies at once — the leaders of the 
 rebellion, by appointing successors to their offices, 
 and secretly sending assassins to dispatch their per- 
 sons ; the senate, by poison at a great banquet ; the 
 Gaulish provinces, by delivering them up for pillage 
 to the army ; the city, by again setting it on fire,
 
 THE CXSABS. 103 
 
 whilst, at the same time, a vast number of wild leasts 
 was to have been turned loose upon the unarmed 
 populace — for the double purpose of destroying them, 
 and of distracting their attention from the fire. But, 
 as the mood of his frenzy changed, these sanguinary 
 schemes were abandoned, (not, however, under any 
 feelings of remorse, but from mere despair of effecting 
 them,) and on the same day, hut after a luxurious din- 
 ner, the imperial monster grew bland and pathetic in 
 his ideas ; he would proceed to the rebellious army ; 
 he would present himself unarmed to their view ; and 
 would recall them to their duty by the mere spectacle 
 of his tears. Upon the pathos with which he would 
 wit}) he was resolved to rely entirely. And having 
 received the guilty to his mercy without distinction, 
 upon the following day he would unite his joy with 
 their joy, and would chant hymns of victory {epinicia) 
 
 — ' which by the way,' said he, suddenly, breaking 
 off to his favorite pursuits, ' it is necessary that I 
 should immediately compose.' This caprice vanished 
 like the rest ; and he made an effort to enlist the 
 slaves and citizens into his service, and to raise by 
 extortion a large military chest. But in the midst of 
 these vascillating purposes fresh tidings surprised him 
 
 — other armies had revolted, and the rebellion was 
 spreading contagiously. This consummation of his 
 alarms reached him at dinner ; and the expressions of 
 his angry fears took even a scenical air ; he tore the
 
 104 THE CiESATtS. 
 
 dispatches, upset the table, and dashed to pieces upon 
 the ground two crystal beakers — which had a high 
 value as works of art, even in the Aurea Domus, from 
 the sculptures which adorned them. 
 
 He now prepared for flight ; and sending forward 
 commissioners to prepare the fleet at Ostia for his 
 reception, he tampered with such officers of the army 
 as were at hand, to prevail upon them to accompany 
 his retreat. But all showed themselves indisposed to 
 such schemes, and some flatly refused. Upon which 
 he turned to other counsels ; sometimes meditating a 
 flight to the King of Parthia, or even to throw himself 
 on the mercy of Galba ; sometimes inclining rather 
 to the plan of venturing into the forum in mourning 
 apparel, begging pardon for his past offences, and, as 
 a last resource, entreating that he might receive the 
 appointment of Egyptian prefect. This plan, however, 
 he hesitated to adopt, from some apprehension that 
 he should be torn to pieces in his road to the forum ; 
 and, at all events, he concluded to postpone it to the 
 following day. Meantime events were now hurrying 
 to their catastrophe, which for ever anticipated that 
 intention. His hours were numbered, and the closing 
 scene was at hand. 
 
 In the middle of the night he was aroused from 
 slumber with the intelligence that the military guard, 
 who did duty at the palace, had all quitted their posts. 
 Upon this the unhappy prince leaped from his couch,
 
 Tin; 0£3ABS. 105 
 
 never again to taste the luxury of sleep, and dispatched 
 
 messengers to liis friends. Xo answers were returned ; 
 and upon that he went personally with a small retinue 
 to their hotels. Hut he found their doors everywhere 
 closed; and all his importunities could not avail to 
 extort an answer. Sadly and .slowly he returned to 
 his own bedchamber ; but there again he found fresh 
 instances of desertion, which had occurred during his 
 short absence ; the pages of his bedchamber had fled, 
 carrying with them the coverlids of trie imperial bed, 
 which were probably inwrought with gold, and even a 
 golden box, in which Nero had on the preceding day 
 deposited poison prepared against the last extremity. 
 Wounded to the heart by this general desertion, and 
 perhaps by some special case of ingratitude, such as 
 would probably enough be signalized in the flight of 
 his personal favorites, he called for a gladiator of the 
 household to come and dispatch him. But none ap- 
 pearing — 'What!' said he, 'have I neither friend nor 
 foe? ' I so saying, he ran towards the Tiber, with 
 
 the purpose of drowning himself. But that paroxysm, 
 like all the rest, proved transient; and he expressed a 
 wish for some hiding-place, or momentary asylum, 
 in which he might collect his unsettled spirits, and 
 fortify his wandering resolution. Such a retreat was 
 offered him by bis libertus Phaon, in his own rural 
 villa, about four miles distant from Rome. The otter 
 was accepted; and the emperor, without further pre-
 
 106 THE C^SARS. 
 
 paration than that of throwing over his person a short 
 mantle of a dusky hue, and enveloping his head and 
 face in a handkerchief, mounted his horse, and left 
 Rome with four attendants. It was still night, but 
 probably verging towards the early dawn; and even 
 at that hour the imperial party met some travellers 
 on their way to Rome (coming up no doubt,! 6 on law 
 business) — who said, as they passed, ' These men are 
 certainly in chase of Nero.' Two other incidents, of 
 an interesting nature, arc recorded of this short but 
 memorable ride : at one point of the road the shouts 
 of the soldiery assailed their ears from the neighbor- 
 ing encampment of Galba. They were probably then 
 getting under arms for their final march to take pos- 
 session of the palace. At another point, an accident 
 occurred of a more unfortunate kind, but so natural 
 and so well circumstantiated, that it serves to verify 
 the whole narrative ; a dead body was lying on the 
 road, at which the emperor's horse started so violently 
 as nearly to dismount his rider, and under the diffi- 
 culty of the moment compelled him to withdraw the 
 hand which held up the handkerchief, and suddenly ta 
 expose his features. Precisely at this critical moment 
 it happened that an old half-pay officer passed, recog- 
 nized the emperor, and saluted him. Perhaps it war. 
 with some purpose of applying a remedy to this unfor- 
 tunate rencontre, that the party dismounted at a point 
 where several roads met, and turned their horses adrift
 
 THE OSSA.BS. 107 
 
 to graze at will amongst the furze and brambles. 
 
 Their own purpose was, to make their way to the hack 
 of the villa; but, to accomplish that, it was necessary 
 
 that they should first cross a plantation of reeds, from 
 the peculiar state of which they found themselves 
 obliged to cover successively each space upon which 
 they trode with parts of their dress, in order to gain 
 any supportable footing. In this way, and contending 
 with such hardships, they reached at length the postern 
 side of the villa. Here wc must suppose that there 
 was no regular ingress; for, after waiting until an 
 entrance was pierced, it seems that the emperor could 
 avail himself of it in no more dignified posture, than 
 hy creeping through the hole on his hands and feet, 
 (quadrupes per angustias receptus.) 
 
 Xow, then, after such anxiety, alarm, and hardship, 
 Nero had reached a quiet rural asylum. But for the 
 unfortunate occurrence of his horse's alarm with the 
 passing of the soldier, he might perhaps have counted 
 on a respite of a day or two in this nois (less and 
 ire abode. Eat what a habitation for him who 
 was yet ruler of the world in the eye of law, and 
 even (/'■ facto was s i, had any fatal accident befallen 
 his aged competitor ! The room in which (as the one 
 m ist removed from notice and suspicion) he had 
 secreted himself, was a cella, or little sleeping closet 
 of a slave, furnished only with a miserable pallet and 
 a coarse rug. Here lav th ! founder and possessor of
 
 108 THE CJESAKS. 
 
 the Golden House, too happy if lie might hope for the 
 peaceable possession even of this miserable crypt. 
 But that, he knew too well, was impossible. A rival 
 pretender to the empire was like the plague of fire — as 
 dangerous in the shape of a single spark left unextin- 
 guished, as in that of a prosperous conflagration. Bat 
 a few brief sands yet remained to run in the emperor's 
 hour-glass ; much variety of degradation or suffering 
 seemed scarcely within the possibilities of his situation, 
 or within the compass of the time. Yet, as though 
 Providence had decreed that his humiliation should 
 pass through every shape, and speak by every expression 
 which came home to his understanding, or was intelli- 
 gible to his senses, even in these few moments he was 
 attacked by hunger and thirst. No other bread could 
 be obtained (or, perhaps, if the emperor's presence 
 were concealed from the household, it was not safe to 
 raise suspicion by calling for better) than that which 
 was ordinarily given to slaves, coarse, black, and, to a 
 palate so luxurious, doubtless disgusting. This accord- 
 ingly he rejected; but a litle tepid water he drank. 
 After which, with the haste of one who fears that he 
 may be prematurely interrupted, but otherwise, with 
 all the reluctance which we may imagine, and which 
 his streaming tears proclaimed, he addressed himself 
 to the last labor in which he supposed himself to have 
 any interest on this earth — that of digging a grave. 
 Measuring a space adjusted to the proportions of his
 
 THE C2ESA.B.S. 109 
 
 person, he inquired anxiously for any loose fragments 
 of marble, such as might suffice to line it. He re- 
 quested also to be furnished with wood and water, as 
 the materials for the last sepulchral rites. And these 
 labors were accompanied, or continually interrupted by 
 tears and lamentations, or by passionate ejaculations on 
 the blindness of fortune, in suffering so divine an artist 
 to be thus violently snatched away, and on the calami- 
 tous fate of musical science, which then stood on the 
 brink of so dire an eclipse. In these moments he was 
 most truly in an agony, according to the original mean- 
 ing of that word ; for the conflict was great between 
 two master principles of his nature: on the one hand, 
 he clung with the weakness of a girl to life, even in 
 that miserable shape to which it had now sunk ; and 
 like the poor malefactor, with whose last struggles 
 Prior has so atrociously amused himself, ' he often took 
 leave, but was loath to depart.' Yet, on the other 
 hand, to resign his life very speedily, seemed his only 
 chance for escaping the contumelies, perhaps the 
 tortures of his enemies : and, above all other consid- 
 erations, for making sure of a burial, and possibly of 
 burial rites ; to want which, in the judgment of the 
 ancients, was the last consummation of misery. Thus 
 occupied, and thus distracted — sternly attracted to the 
 grave by his creed, hideously repelled by infirmity of 
 nature — he was suddenly interrupted by a courier 
 with letters for the master of the house; letters, and
 
 110 THE C^SARS. 
 
 from Rome ! What was their import ? That was 
 soon told — briefly that Nero was adjudged to be a 
 public enemy by the senate, and that official orders 
 were issued for apprehending him, in order that he 
 might be brought to condign punishment according to 
 the method of ancient precedent. Ancient precedent ! 
 more majorem ! And how was that ? eagerly de- 
 manded the emperor. He was answered — that the 
 state criminal in such cases was first stripped naked, 
 then impaled as it were between the prongs of a pitch- 
 fork, and in that condition scourged to. death. Horror- 
 struck with this account, he drew forth two poniards, 
 or short swords, tried their edges, and then, in utter 
 imbecility of purpose, returned them to their scabbards, 
 alleging that the destined moment had not yet arrived. 
 Then he called upon Sporus, the imfamous partner in 
 his former excesses, to commence the funeral anthem. 
 Others, again, he besought to lead the way in dying, 
 and to sustain him by the spectacle of their example. 
 But this purpose also he dismissed in the very moment 
 of utterance ; and turning away despairingly, he apos- 
 trophized himself in words reproachful or animating, 
 now taxing his nature with infirmity of purpose, now 
 calling on himself by name, with adjurations to re- 
 member his dignity, and to act worthy of his supreme 
 station : uv notiru Niovnt, cried he, ov nninti • v>\<ptiv Sit lv 
 Totg roiovrotg • aye, sysiQe atavroi i. e. 'Fie, fie, then, 
 
 Nero ! such a season calls for perfect self-possession. 
 Up, then, and rouse thyself to action.'
 
 Till. :.1.\\KS. Ill 
 
 Tims, and in similar efforts to master the weakness 
 
 of his reluctant nature — weakness which would ex- 
 tort pity from the severest minds, were it not from the 
 odious connection which in him it had with cruelty the 
 most merciless — did this unhappy prince, jam non 
 salutis spem sed exilii solatium quarens, consume the 
 flying moments, until at length his ears caught the 
 fatal sounds or echoes from a body of horsemen riding 
 up to the villa. These were the officers charged with 
 his arrest ; and if he should fall into their hands alive, 
 he knew that his last chance was over for liberating 
 himself, by a Roman death, from the burthen of igno- 
 minious life, and from a lingering torture. He paused 
 from his restless motions, listened attentively, then 
 repeated a line from Homer — 
 
 • / /mi u' vMtv.iodwr aft (pt y.iv:iui Hal a fla/./.ti ' 
 
 (The resounding tread of swift-footed horses rever- 
 berates upon my cars) ; — then under some momentary 
 impulse of courage, gained perhaps by figuring to him- 
 self the bloody populace rioting upon his mangled 
 body, yet even then needing the auxiliary hand and 
 vicarious courage of his private secretary, the feeble- 
 hearted prince stabbed himself in the throat. The 
 wound, however, was not such as to cause instant 
 death. He was still breathing, and not quite speech- 
 less, when the centurion who commanded the party 
 entered the closet ; and to this officer who uttered a 
 few hollow words of encouragement, he was still able
 
 112 THE C.ESARS. 
 
 to make a brief reply. But in the very effort of 
 speaking he expired, and with an expression of horror 
 impressed upon his stiffened features, which communi- 
 cated a sympathetic horror to all beholders. 
 
 Such was the too memorable tragedy which closed 
 for ever the brilliant line of the Julian family, and 
 translated the august title of Caesar from its original 
 purpose as a proper name to that of an official desig- 
 nation. It is the most striking instance upon record 
 of a dramatic and extreme vengeance overtaking ex- 
 treme guilt : for, as Nero had exhausted the utmost 
 possibilities of crime, so it may be affirmed that he 
 drank off the cup of suffering to the very extremity 
 of what his peculiar nature allowed. And in no life 
 of so short a duration, have there ever been crowded 
 equal extremities of gorgeous prosperity and abject 
 infamy. It may be added, as another striking illustra- 
 tion of the rapid mutability and revolutionary excesses 
 which belonged to what has been properly called the 
 Roman stratocracy then disposing of the world, that 
 Avithin no very great succession of weeks that same 
 victorious rebel, the Emperor Galba, at whose feet 
 Nero had been self-immolated, was laid a murdered 
 corpse in the same identical cell which had witnessed 
 the lingering agonies of his unhappy victim. This 
 was the act of an emancipated slave, anxious, by a 
 vindictive insult to the remains of one prince, to place 
 on record his gratitude to another. ' So runs the
 
 THE CMBARB. 113 
 
 world away ! ' And in this striking way is retribu- 
 tion sometimes dispensed. 
 
 In the sixth Csesar terminated the Julian line. The 
 three next princes in the succession were personally 
 uninteresting ; and with a slight reserve in favor of 
 Otho, whose motives for committing suicide (if truly 
 reported) argue great nobility of mind, 17 were even 
 brutal in the tenor of their lives and monstrous ; 
 besides that the extreme brevity of their several reigns 
 (all three, taken conjunctly, having held the supreme 
 power for no more than twelve months and twenty 
 days) dismisses them from all effectual station or right 
 to a separate notice in the line of Caesars. Coming 
 to the tenth in the succession, Vespasian, and his two 
 sons, Titus and Domitian, who make up the list of 
 the twelve Caesars, as they are usually called, we find 
 matter for deeper political meditation and subjects of 
 curious research. But these emperors would be more 
 properly classed with the five who succeeded them — 
 Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines ; after 
 whom comes the young ruffian, Commodus, another 
 Caligula or Nero, from whose short and infamous 
 reign Gibbon takes up his tale of the decline of the 
 empire. And this classification would probably have 
 prevailed, had not the very curious work of Suetonius, 
 whose own life and period of observation determined 
 the series and cycle of his subjects, led to a different 
 distribution. But as it is evident that, in the suc- 
 10
 
 114 THE OSSABS. 
 
 cession of the first twelve Caesars, trie six latter have 
 no connection whatever by descent, collaterally, or 
 otherwise, with the six first, it would be a more 
 logical distribution to combine them according to the 
 fortunes of the state itself, and the succession of its 
 prosperity through the several stages of splendor, 
 declension, revival, and final decay. Under this ar- 
 rangement, the first seventeen would belong to the 
 first stage : Commodus would open the second ; 
 Aurelian down to Constantine or Julian would fill the 
 third : and Jovian to Augustulus would bring up the 
 melancholy rear. Meantime it will be proper, after 
 thus briefly throwing our eyes over the monstrous 
 atrocities of the early Caesars, to spend a few lines in 
 examining their origin, and the circumstances which 
 favored their growth. For a mere hunter after hidden 
 or forgotten singularities ; a lover on their own ac- 
 count of all strange perversities and freaks of nature, 
 whether in action, taste, or opinion : for a collector 
 and amateur of misgrowths and abortions ; for a Sue- 
 tonius, in short, it may be quite enough to state and 
 to arrange his cabinet of specimens from the marvel- 
 lous in human nature. But certainlv in modern times, 
 any historian, however little affecting the praise of a 
 philosophic investigator, would feel himself called 
 upon to remove a little the taint of the miraculous 
 and preternatural which adheres to such anecdotes, 
 by entering into the psychological grounds of their
 
 Tin; CJE3A.B . 115 
 
 possibility ; whether lying in any peculiarly vicious 
 education, early familiarity with bad models, corrupt- 
 ing associations, or other plausible key to effects, which, 
 taken separately, and out of their natural connection 
 with their explanatory causes, arc apt rather to startle 
 and revolt the feelings of sober thinkers. Except, 
 perhaps, in some chapters of Italian history, as, for 
 example, among the most profligate of the Papal 
 houses, and amongst some of the Florentine princes, 
 we find hardly any parallel to the atrocities of Calig- 
 ula and Xero ; nor indeed was Tiberius much (if at 
 all) behind them, though otherwise so wary and cau- 
 tious in his conduct. The same tenor of licentiousness 
 beyond the needs of the individual, the same craving 
 after the marvellous and the stupendous in guilt, is 
 continually emerging in succeeding emperors — in 
 Vitcllius, in Domitian, in Commodus, in Caracalla — 
 everywhere, in short, where it was not overruled by- 
 one of two causes, cither by original goodness of 
 nature too powerful to be mastered by ordinary seduc- 
 tions, (and in some cases removed from their influence 
 by an early apprenticeship to camps,) or by the terrors 
 of an exemplary ruin immediately preceding. For 
 such a determinate tendency to the enormous and the 
 anomalous, sufficient causes must exist. What were 
 they r 
 
 In the first place, wc may obs tvc that the people 
 of Rome in that age were generally more corrupt by
 
 116 THE C^SARS. 
 
 many degrees than has been usually supposed possi- 
 ble. The effect of revolutionary times, to relax all 
 modes of moral obligation, and to unsettle the moral 
 sense, has been well and philosophically stated by Mr. 
 Coleridge ; but that would hardly account for the utter 
 licentiousness and depravity of Imperial Rome. Look- 
 ing back to Republican Rome, and considering the 
 state of public morals but fifty years before the em- 
 perors, we can with difficulty believe that the descend- 
 ants of a people so severe in their habits could thus 
 rapidly degenerate, and that a populace, once so hardy 
 and masculine, should assume the manners which we 
 might expect in the debauchees of Daphne (the in- 
 famous suburb of Antioch) or of Canopus, into which 
 settled the very lees and dregs of the vicious Alexan- 
 dria. Such extreme changes would falsify all that we 
 know of human nature ; we might, a priori, pronounce 
 them impossible ; and in fact, upon searching history, 
 we find other modes of solving the difficulty. In 
 reality, the citizens of Rome were at this time a new 
 race, bimight together from every quarter of the world, 
 but especially from Asia. So vast a proportion of 
 the ancient citizens had been cut off by the sword, 
 and partly to conceal this waste of population, but 
 much more by way of cheaply requiting services, or 
 of showing favor, or of acquiring influence, slaves 
 had been emancipated in such great multitudes, and 
 afterwards invested with all the rights of citizens,
 
 TIIE CJESARS. 117 
 
 that. In a single generation, Rome became almost 
 transmuted into a baser metal ; the progeny of tl 
 whom the last generation had purchased from the 
 slave merchants. These people derived their stock 
 chiefly from Cappadocia, Pontus, &c, and the other 
 populous regions of Asia Minor ; and hence the taint 
 of Asiatic luxury and depravity, which was so con- 
 spicuous to all the Romans of the old republican 
 severity. Juvenal is to be understood more literally 
 than is sometimes supposed, when he complains that 
 long before his time the Orontes (that river which 
 washed the infamous capital of Syria) had mingled 
 its impure waters with those of the Tiber. And a 
 little before him, Lucan speaks with mere historic 
 gravity when he says — 
 
 ' Vivnnt Galatoeque Syrique 
 
 Cappadoces, Gallique, extremique orbis Iberi, 
 Avmcnii, Cilices : nam post civilia bclla 
 Hie Populus Eomanus erit.' 18 
 
 Probably in the time of Xero, not one man in six 
 was of pure Roman descent. 19 And the consequences 
 were suitable. Scarcely a family has come down to 
 our knowledge that could not in one generation enu- 
 merate a long catalogue of divorces within its own 
 contracted circle. Every man had married a series 
 of wives ; every woman a scries of husbands. Even 
 in the palace of Augustus, who wished to be viewed 
 as an exemplar or ideal model of domestic purity,
 
 118 THE C^SAHS. 
 
 every principal member of his family was tainted in 
 that way ; himself in a manner and a degree infamous 
 even at that time. 20 For the first 400 years of Rome, 
 not one divorce had been granted or asked, although 
 the statute which allowed of this indulgence had 
 always been in force. But in the age succeeding to 
 the civil wars, men and women ' married,' says one 
 author, ' with a view to divorce, and divorced in order 
 to marry. Many of these changes happened within 
 the year, especially if the lady had a large fortune, 
 which always went with her and procured her choice 
 of transient husbands.' And, ' can one imagine,' 
 asks the same writer, ' that the fair one who changed 
 her husband every quarter, strictly kept her matri- 
 monial faith all the three months r ' Thus the very 
 fountain of all the ' household charities ' and house- 
 hold virtues was polluted. And after that we need 
 little wonder at the assassinations, poisonings, and 
 forging of wills, which then laid waste the domestic 
 life of the Romans. 
 
 2. A second source of the universal depravity was 
 the growing inefficacy of the public religion ; and this 
 arose from its disproportion and inadequacy to the 
 intellectual advances of the nation. Religion, in its 
 very etymology, has been held to imply a religatio, 
 that is, a reiterated or secondary obligation of morals ; 
 a sanction supplementary to that of the conscience. 
 Now, for a rude and uncultivated people, the Pagan
 
 TIIK C.-ES.VTIS. 119 
 
 mythology might not he too gross to discharge the 
 main functions of a useful religion. So long as the 
 understanding could submit to the fahles of the Pagan 
 creed, so long it was possible that the hopes and fears 
 built upon thai creed might he practically efficient on 
 men's lives and intentions. But when the foundation 
 gave way, the whole superstructure of necessity fell 
 to the ground. Those who were ohliged to reject the 
 ridiculous legends^ which invested the whole of their 
 Pantheon, together with the fahulous adjudgcrs of 
 future punishments, could not hut dismiss the punish- 
 ments, which were, in fact, as laughable, and as 
 obviously the fictions of human ingenuity, as their 
 dispensers. In short, the civilized part of the world 
 in those days lay in this dreadful condition ; their 
 intellect had far outgrown their religion ; the dispro- 
 portions between the two were at length become mon- 
 strous ; and as yet no purer or more elevated faith 
 was prepared for their acceptance. The case was as 
 shocking as if, witli our present intellectual needs, 
 we should be unhappy enough to have no creed on 
 which to rest the burden of our final hopes and fears, 
 of our moral obligations, and of our consolations in 
 misery, except the fairy mythology of our nurses. The 
 condition of a people so situated, of a people under 
 the calamity of having outgrown its religious faith, 
 has never been sufficiently considered. It is probable 
 that such a condition has never existed before or since
 
 120 THE CJESAKS. 
 
 that era of' the world. The consequences to Rome 
 were — that the reasoning and disputatious part of 
 her population took refuge from the painful state of 
 doubt in Atheism ; amongst the thoughtless and irre- 
 flcctive the consequences were chiefly felt in their 
 morals, which were thus sapped in their foundation. 
 
 3. A third cause, which from the first had exercised 
 a most baleful influence upon the arts and upon litera- 
 ture in Rome, had by this time matured its disastrous 
 tendencies towards the extinction of the moral sensibil- 
 ities. This was the circus, and the whole machinery, 
 form and substance, of the Circensian shows. Why 
 had tragedy no existence as a part of the Roman 
 literature ? Because — and that was a reason which 
 would have sufficed to stifle all the dramatic genius 
 of Greece and England — there was too much tragedy 
 in the shape of gross reality, almost daily before their 
 eyes. The amphitheatre extinguished the theatre. 
 How was it possible that the fine and intellectual 
 griefs of the drama should win their way to hearts 
 seared and rendered callous by the continual exhibi- 
 tion of scenes the most hideous, in which human 
 blood was poured out like water, and a human life 
 sacrificed at any moment either to caprice in the 
 populace, or to a strife of rivalry between the ayes 
 and the noes, or as the penalty for any trifling instance 
 of awkwardness in the performer himself? Even the 
 more innocent exhibitions, in which brutes only were
 
 THE C.ESARS. 121 
 
 the sufferers, could not but be mortal to all the finer 
 sensibilities. Five thousand wild animals, torn from 
 their native abodes in the wilderness or forest, were 
 often turned out to be hunted, or for mutual slaughter, 
 in the course of a single exhibition of this nature ; 
 and it sometimes happened, (a fact which of itself 
 proclaims the course of the public propensities.) that 
 the person at whose expense the shows were exhibited, 
 by way of paying special court to the people and 
 meriting their favor, in the way most conspicuously 
 open to him, issued orders that all, without a solitary 
 exception, should be slaughtered. He made it known, 
 as the very highest gratification which the case allowed, 
 that (in the language of our modern auctioneers) the 
 whole, ' without reserve,' should perish before their 
 eyes. Even such spectacles must have hardened the 
 heart and blunted the more delicate sensibilities ; but 
 these would soon cease to stimulate the pampered 
 and exhausted sense. From the combats of tigers or 
 leopards, in which the passions could only be gathered 
 indirectly, and by way of inference from the motions, 
 the transition must have been almost inevitable to 
 those of men, whose nobler and more varied passions 
 spoke directly, and by the intelligible language of the 
 eye, to human spectators ; and from the frequent con- 
 templation of these authorized murders, in which a 
 whole people, women 01 as much as men, and children 
 
 intermingled with both, looked on with leisurely indif- 
 11
 
 122 THE C^SARS. 
 
 ference, with anxious expectation, or with rapturous 
 delight, whilst below them were passing the direct 
 sufferings of humanity, and not seldom its dying 
 pangs, it was impossible to expect a result different 
 from that which did in fact take place, — universal 
 hardness of heart, obdurate depravity, and a twofold 
 degradation of human nature, which acted simultane- 
 ously upon the two pillars of morality, (which are 
 otherwise not often assailed together,) of natural sen- 
 sibility in the first place, and in the second, of consci- 
 entious principle. 
 
 4. But these were circumstances which applied to 
 the whole population indiscriminately. Superadded 
 to these, in the case of the emperor, and affecting 
 Mm exclusively, was this prodigious disadvantage — 
 that ancient reverence for the immediate witnesses 
 of his actions, and for the people and senate who 
 would under other circumstances have exercised the 
 old functions of the censor, was, as to the emperor, 
 pretty nearly obliterated. The very title of imperator, 
 from which we have derived our modern one of 
 emperor, proclaims the nature of the government, and 
 the tenure of that office. It was purely a government 
 by the sword, or permanent stratocracy, having a 
 movable head. Never was there a people who inquired 
 so impertinently as the Romans into the domestic 
 conduct of each private citizen. No rank escaped 
 this jealous vigilance ; and private liberty, even in the
 
 THE CiESARS. 123 
 
 most indifferent circumstances of taste or expense, 
 was sacrificed to this inquisitorial rigor of surveillance, 
 exercised on behalf of the state, sometimes by errone- 
 ous patriotism, too often by malice in disguise. To 
 this spirit th" highest public officers were obliged to 
 bow ; the consuls, not less than others. And even 
 the occasional dictator, if by law irresponsible, acted 
 nevertheless as one who knew that any change which 
 depressed his party might eventually abrogate his 
 privilege. For the first time in the person of an 
 imperator was seen a supreme autocrat, who had vir- 
 tually and effectively all the irresponsibility which the 
 law assi »ned, and the origin of his office presumed. 
 Satisfied to know that he possessed such power, Au- 
 gustus, as much from natural taste as policy, was glad 
 to dissemble it, and by every means to withdraw it 
 from public notice. But he had passed his youth as 
 citizen of a republic ; and in the state of transition to 
 autocracy, in his office of triumvir, had experimentally 
 known the perils of rivalship, and the pains of foreign 
 control, too feelingly to provoke unnecessarily any 
 sleeping embers of the republican spirit. Tiberius, 
 though familiar from his infancy with the servile 
 homage of a court, was yet modified by the popular 
 temper of Augustus : and he came late to the throne. 
 Caligula was the first prince on whom the entire effect 
 of his political situation was allowed to operate ; and 
 the natural results were seen — he was the first abso-
 
 124 THE C.ESARS. 
 
 lute monster. He must early have seen trie reali- 
 ties of his position, and from what quarter it was that 
 any cloud could arise to menace his security. To 
 the senate or people any respect which he might think 
 proper to pay, must have heen imputed by all parties 
 to the lingering superstitions of custom, to involuntary 
 habit, to court dissimulation, or to the decencies of 
 external form, and the prescriptive reverence of ancient 
 names. But neither senate nor people could enforce 
 their claims, whatever they might happen to be. 
 Their sanction and ratifying vote might be worth 
 having, as consecrating what was already secure, and 
 conciliating the scruples of the weak to the absolute 
 decision of the strong. But their resistance, as an 
 original movement, was so wholly without hope, that 
 they were never weak enough to threaten it. 
 
 The army was the true successor to their places, 
 being the ultimate depository of power. Yet, as the 
 army was necessarily subdivided, as the shifting cir- 
 cumstances upon every frontier were continually 
 varying the strength of the several divisions as to 
 numbers and state of discipline, one part might be 
 balanced against the other by an imperator standing 
 in the centre of the whole. The rigor of the military 
 sacramentum, or oath of allegiance, made it dangerous 
 to offer the first overtures to rebellion ; and the money, 
 which the soldiers were continually depositing in the 
 bank, placed at the foot of their military standards, if
 
 THE CiF.SAttS. 125 
 
 sometimes turned against the emperor, was also 
 liable to be sequestrated in his favor. There were 
 then, in fact, two great forces in the government 
 acting in and by each other — the Stratocracy, and 
 the Autocracy. Each needed the other ; each stood 
 in awe of each. But, as regarded all other forces 
 in the empire, constitutional or irregular, popular or 
 senatorial, neither had anything to fear. Under any 
 ordinary circumstances, therefore, considering the 
 hazards of a rebellion, the emperor was substantially 
 liberated from all control. Vexations or outrages 
 upon the populace were not such to the army. It 
 was but rarely that the soldier participated in the 
 emotions of the citizen. And thus, being effectually 
 without check, the most vicious of the Caesars went 
 on without fear, presuming upon the weakness of one 
 part of his subjects, and the indifference of the other, 
 until he was tempted onwards to atrocities, which 
 armed against him the common feelings of human 
 nature, and all mankind, as it were, rose in a body 
 with one voice, and apparently with one heart, united 
 by mere force of indignant sympathy, to put him 
 down, and 'abate' him as a monster. Eat, until he 
 brought matters to this extremity, Caesar had no cause 
 to fear. Xor was it at all certain, in any one 
 instance, where this exemplary chastisement overtook 
 him, that the apparent unanimity of the actors went 
 further than the practical conclusion of 'abating'
 
 126 THE C.ESARS. 
 
 the imperial nuisance, or that their indignation had 
 settled upon the same offences. In general, the army 
 measured the guilt by the public scandal, rather than 
 by its moral atrocity ; and Ctesar suffered perhaps in 
 every case, not so much because he had violated his 
 duties, as because he had dishonored his office. 
 
 It is, therefore, in the total absence of the checks 
 which have almost universally existed to control other 
 despots, under some indirect shape, even where none 
 was provided by the laws, that we must seek for the 
 main peculiarity affecting the condition of the Roman 
 Caesar, which peculiarity it was, superadded to the 
 other three, that finally made those three operative in 
 their fullest extent. It is in the perfection of the 
 stratocracy that we must look for the key to the 
 excesses of the autocrat. Even in the bloody des- 
 potisms of the Barbary States, there has always 
 existed in the religious prejudices of the people, which 
 could not be violated with safety, one check more 
 upon the caprices of the despot than was found at 
 Rome. Upon the whole, therefore, what affects us 
 on the first reading as a prodigy or anomaly in the 
 frantic outrages of the early Csesars — falls within the 
 natural bounds of intelligible human nature, when 
 we state the case considerately. Surrounded by a 
 population which had not only gone through a most 
 vicious and corrupting discipline, and had been utterly 
 ruined by the license of revolutionary times, and the
 
 THE i-.ESARS. 127 
 
 bloodiest proscriptions, but bad even boon extensively 
 changed in its very elements, and from the descend- 
 ants of Romulus bad been transmuted into an Asiatic 
 mob: — starting from this point, and considering as 
 the second feature of the case, that this transfigured 
 people, morally so degenerate, were carried, however, 
 by the progress of civilization, to a certain intellectual 
 altitude, which the popular religion had not strength 
 to ascend — but from inherent disproportion remained 
 at the base of the general civilization, incapable of 
 accompanying the other elements in their advance; — 
 thirdly, that this polished condition of society, which 
 should naturally with the evils of a luxurious repose 
 have counted upon its pacific benefits, had yet, by 
 means of its circus and its gladiatorial contests, applied 
 a constant irritation, and a system of provocations to 
 the appetites for blood, such as in all other nations are 
 connected with the rudest stages of society, and with 
 the most barbarous modes of warfare, nor even in such 
 circumstances, without many palliatives wanting to 
 the spectators of the circus; — combining these con- 
 siderations, we have already a key to the enormities 
 and hideous excesses of the Roman Impcrator. The 
 hot blood which excites, and the adventurous courage 
 which accompanies, the excesses of sanguinary warfare, 
 presuppose a condition of the moral nature not to be 
 compared for malignity and baleful tendency to the 
 cool and cowardly spirit of amateurship, in which the
 
 128 THE C^ESAKS. 
 
 Roman (perhaps an effeminate Asiatic) sat looking 
 down upon the bravest of men, (Thracians or other 
 Europeans,) mangling each other for his recreation. 
 "When, lastly, from such a population, and thus disci- 
 plined from his nursery days, we suppose the case of 
 one individual selected, privileged, and raised to a 
 conscious irresponsibility, except at the bar of one 
 extra-judicial tribunal, not easily irritated, and noto- 
 riously to be propitiated by other means than those of 
 upright or impartial conduct, we lay together the 
 elements of a situation too trying for poor human 
 nature, and fitted only to the faculties of an angel or 
 a demon ; of an angel, if we suppose him to resist its 
 full temptations ; of a demon, if we suppose him to use 
 its total opportunities. Thus interpreted and solved, 
 Caligula and Nero become ordinary men. 
 
 But, finally, what if, after all, the worst of the 
 Caesars, and those in particular, were entitled to the 
 benefit of a still shorter and more conclusive apology ? 
 What if, in a true medical sense, they were insane? 
 It is certain that a vein of madness ran in the family ; 
 and anecdotes are recorded of the three worst, which 
 go far to establish it as a fact, and others which would 
 imply it as symptoms — preceding or accompanying. 
 As belonging to the former class, take the following 
 story : At midnight an elderly gentleman suddenly 
 sends round a message to a select party of noblemen, 
 rouses them out of bed, and summons them instantly
 
 THE i S3ASS. 129 
 
 to his palace. Trembling for their lives from the 
 Buddenness of the summons, and from the unsi as- 
 sailable hour, and scarcely doubting that by some 
 anonymous delator they have been implicated as 
 parties to a conspiracy, they hurry to the palace — 
 arc received in portentous silence by the ushers and 
 pages in attendance — arc conducted to a saloon, 
 where [as in everywhere else) the silence of night 
 prevails, united with the silence of fear and whispering 
 expectation. All are seated — all look at each other 
 in ominous anxiety. Which is accuser: Which is 
 the accused? On whom shall their suspicions settle 
 — on whom their pity? All are silent — almost 
 speechless — and even the current of their thoughts is 
 frost-bound by fear. Suddenly the sound of a fiddle 
 or a viol is caught from a distance — it swells upon 
 the ear — steps approach — and in another moment 
 in rushes the elderly gentleman, grave and gloomy 
 as his audience, but capering about in a frenzy of 
 excitement. For half an hour he continues to perform 
 all possible evolutions of caprioles, pirouettes, and 
 r extravagant feats of activity, accompanying 
 himself on the fiddle; and, at length, not having 
 once looked at his guests, the elderly gentleman 
 whirls out of the room in the same transport of 
 emotion with which he entered it; the panic-struck 
 visitors are requested by a slave to consider themselves 
 d: they retire; resume their couches: —
 
 130 THE CJESARS. 
 
 the nocturnal pageant has ' dislimned ' and vanished; 
 and on the following morning, were it not for their 
 concurring testimonies, all would he disposed to take 
 this interruption of their sleep for one of its most 
 fantastic dreams. The elderly gentleman who fig- 
 ured in this delirious pas sail — who was he ? He 
 was Tiberius Ciesar, king of kings, and lord of the 
 terraqueous globe. Would a British jury demand 
 better evidence than this of a disturbed intellect in 
 any formal process de lunatico inquirendo ? For 
 Caligula, again, the evidence of symptoms is still 
 plainer. He knew his own defect ; and proposed 
 going through a course of hellebore. Sleeplessness, 
 one of the commonest indications of lunacy, haunted 
 him in an excess rarely recorded. 22 The same, or 
 similar facts, might be brought forward on behalf of 
 Nero. And thus these unfortunate princes, who have 
 so long (and with so little investigation of their cases) 
 passed for monsters or for demoniac counterfeits of 
 men, would at length be brought back within the fold 
 of humanity, as objects rather of pity than of abhor- 
 rence, would be reconciled to our indulgent feelings, 
 and, at the same time, made intelligible to our under- 
 standings.
 
 TI1K CJES.VRS. 
 
 131 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The five Caesars who succeeded immediately to the 
 first twelve, were, in as high a sense as their office 
 allowed, patriots. Hadrian is perhaps the first of all 
 whom circumstances permitted to show his patiotism 
 without fear. It illustrates at one and the same 
 moment a trait in this emperor's character, and in the 
 Roman habits, that he acquired much reputation for 
 hardiness by walking bareheaded. ' Never, on any 
 occasion," says one of his memorialists (Dio), 'neither 
 in summer heat nor in winter's cold, did he cover his 
 head ; hut, as well in the Celtic snows as in Egyptian 
 heats, he went about bareheaded/ This anecdote 
 could not fail to win the especial admiration of Isaac 
 Casauhon, who lived in an age when men believed a 
 hat no less indispensahlc to the head, even within 
 doors, than shoes or stockings to the feet. His aston- 
 ishment on the occasion is thus expressed : ' Tan turn 
 est >, aoxtjois ■• ' such and so mighty is the force of habit 
 and daily use. And then he goes on to ask — ' Quis 
 hodic nudum caput radiis solis, aut omnia perurenti 
 frigori, ausit cxponere : ' Yet we ourselves and our 
 illustrious friend, Christopher North, have walked for 
 twenty years amongst our British lakes and mountains
 
 132 THE C.ESAKS. 
 
 hatless, and amidst both snow and rain, such as Ro- 
 mans did not often experience. We were naked, and 
 yet not ashamed. Nor in this arc we altogether singu- 
 lar. But, says Casaubon, the Romans went farther; 
 for they walked about the streets of Rome 23 bare- 
 headed, and never assumed a hat or a cap, a fzlasus or 
 a galcrus, a Macedonian causia, or a pileus, whether 
 Thessalian, Arcadian or Laconic, unless when tbey 
 entered upon a journey. Nay, some there were, as 
 Masinissa and Julius Caesar, who declined even on 
 such an occasion to cover their heads. Perhaps in 
 imitation of these celebrated leaders, Hadrian adopted 
 the same practice, but not with the same result ; for to 
 him, either from age or constitution, this very custom 
 proved the original occasion of his last illness. 
 
 Imitation, indeed, was a general principle of action 
 with Hadrian, and the key to much of his public 
 conduct ; and allowably enough, considering the ex- 
 emplary lives (in a public sense) of some who had 
 preceded him, and the singular anxiety with which he 
 distinguished between the lights and shadows of their 
 examples. He imitated the great Dictator, Julius, in 
 his vigilance of inspection into the civil, not less than 
 the martial police of his times, shaping his new regu- 
 lations to meet abuses as they arose, and strenuously 
 maintaining the old ones in vigorous operation. As 
 respected the army, this was matter of peculiar praise, 
 because peculiarly disinterested ; for his foreign policy
 
 a ii 1: CSSABS. 133 
 
 was pacific; 24 he made no new conquests: and he 
 
 retired from the old ones of Trojan, where they could 
 not have been maintained without disproportionate 
 bloodshed, or a jealousy beyond the value of the stake. 
 In this point of his administration he took Augustus 
 for his model ; as again in his care of the army, in his 
 occasional bounties, and in his paternal solicitude for 
 their comforts, he looked rather to the example of Julius. 
 Him also lie imitated in his affability and in his ambi- 
 tious courtesies ; one instance of which, as blending 
 an artifice of political subtlety and simulation with a 
 remarkable exertion of memory, it may be well to 
 mention. The custom was, in canvassing the citizens 
 of Rome, that the candidate should address every voter 
 by his name ; it was a fiction of republican etiquette, 
 that every man participating in the political privileges 
 of the State must be personally known to public aspi- 
 rants. But, as this was supposed to be, in a literal 
 sense, impossible to all men with the ordinary endow- 
 ments of memory, in order to reconcile the pretensions 
 of republican hauteur with the necessities of human 
 weakness, a custom had grown up of relying upon 
 a class of men called nomenclators, whose express 
 business and profession it was to make themselves 
 acquainted with the person and name of every citizen. 
 One of tin ise people accompanied every candidate, and 
 quietly whispered into his ear the name of each voter 
 as he came in sight. Few, indeed, were they who
 
 134 THE CJESARS. 
 
 could dispense with, the services of such an assessor ; 
 for the office imposed a twofold memory, that of 
 names and of persons ; and to estimate the immensity 
 of the effort, we must recollect that the number of 
 voters often far exceed one quarter of a million. 
 The very same trial of memory he undertook with 
 respect to his own army, in this instance recalling the 
 well known feat of Mithridates. And throughout his 
 life he did not once forget the face or name of any 
 veteran soldier whom he had ever occasion to notice, 
 no matter under what remote climate, or under what 
 difference of circumstances. Wonderful is the effect 
 upon soldiers of such enduring and separate remem- 
 brance, which operates always as the most touching 
 kind of personal flattery, and which, in every age of 
 the world, since the social sensibilities of men have 
 been much developed, military commanders are found 
 to have played upon as the most effectual chord in the 
 great system which they modulated ; some few, by a 
 rare endowment of nature ; others, as Napoleon Bona- 
 parte, by elaborate mimicries of pantomimic art. 25 
 
 Other modes he had of winning affection from the 
 army ; in particular that, so often practised before and 
 since, of accommodating himself to the strictest ritual 
 of martial discipline and castrensian life. He slept in 
 the open air, or, if he used a tent (papilio), it was 
 open at the sides. He ate the ordinary rations of 
 cheese, bacon, &c. ; he used no other drink than that
 
 ini: CJ-SA.BS. 135 
 
 composition of vinegar and water, known by the name 
 oiposca, which formed the sole beverage allowed in the 
 Roman camps. He joined personally in the periodical 
 exercises of the army — those even which were trying 
 to the most vigorous youth and health : marching, for 
 example, on stated occasions, twenty English miles 
 without intermission, in full armor and completely 
 accoutred. Luxury of every kind he not only inter- 
 dicted to the soldier by severe ordinances, himself 
 enforcing their execution, but discountenanced it 
 (though elsewhere splendid and even gorgeous in his 
 personal habits) by Ins own continual example. In 
 dress, for instance, he sternly banished the purple and 
 gold embroideries, the jewelled arms, and the floating 
 draperies, so little in accordance with the severe char- 
 acter of ' war in jinicinc/. , ~ 6 Hardly would he allow 
 himself an ivory hilt to his sabre. The same severe 
 proscription he extended to every sort of furniture, or 
 decorations of art, which sheltered even in the bosom 
 of camps tlmse habits of effeminate luxury — so apt in 
 all greai empii teal by imperceptible steps from 
 
 the voluptuous palace to the soldier's tent — following 
 in the equipage of great leading officers, or of subal- 
 terns highly connected. There was at that time a 
 practice prevailing, in the great standing camps on the 
 several frontiers and at all the military stations, of re- 
 newing as much as possible the image of distant Rome 
 by the erection of long colonnades and piazzas —
 
 136 the cj:sars. 
 
 single, double, or triple ; of crypts, or subterranean 27 
 saloons, (and sometimes subterranean galleries and 
 corridors,) for evading the sultry noontides of July and 
 August ; of verdant cloisters or arcades, with roofs 
 high over-arched, constructed entirely out of flexile 
 shrubs, box-myrtle, and others, trained and trimmed in 
 regular forms ; besides endless other applications of the 
 topiary ^ art, which in those days (like the needlework 
 of Miss Linwood in ours), though no more than a 
 mechanic craft, in some measure realized the effects of 
 a fine art by the perfect skill of its execution. All 
 these modes of luxury, with a policy that had the more 
 merit as it thwarted his own private inclinations, did 
 Hadrian peremptorily abolish ; perhaps amongst other 
 more obvious purposes, seeking to intercept the earliest 
 buddings of those local attachments which are as inju- 
 rious to the martial character and the proper pursuits 
 of men whose vocation obliges them to consider them- 
 selves eternally under marching orders, as they are 
 propitious to all the best interests of society in connec- 
 tion with the feelings of civic life. 
 
 We dwell upon this prince not without reason in 
 this particular ; for, amongst the Caesars, Hadrian 
 stands forward in high relief as a reformer of the army. 
 Well and truly might it be said of him — that, post 
 Casarem Octavianum labantem disciplinam, incurid 
 superiorum principum, ipse retinuit. Not content 
 with the cleansing and purgations we have mentioned,
 
 THE CiESARS. 137 
 
 he placed upon a new footing the whole tenure, duties, 
 and pledges of military offices. 20 It cannot much sur- 
 prise us that this department of the puhlic service 
 should gradually have gone to ruin or decay. Under 
 the scimte and people, under the auspices of those 
 awful symbols — letters more significant and ominous 
 than ever before had troubled the eyes of man, except 
 upon Belshazzar's wall — S. P. Q. R., the officers of 
 the Roman army had been kept true to their duties, 
 and vigilant by emulation and a healthy ambition. 
 But, when the ripeness of corruption had by dissolving 
 the body of the State brought out of its ashes a new 
 mode of life, and had recast the aristocratic republic, 
 by aid of its democratic elements then suddenly vic- 
 torious, into a pure autocracy — whatever might be 
 the advantages in other respects of this great change, 
 in one point it had certainly injured the public service, 
 by throwing the higher military appointments, all in 
 fact which conferred any authority, into the channels 
 of court favor — and by consequence into a mercenary 
 disposal. Bach successive emperor had been too 
 anxious for his own immediate security, to find leisure 
 for the remoter interests of the empire : all looked to 
 the army, as it were, for their own immediate security 
 against competitors, without venturing to tamper with 
 its constitution, to risk popularity by reforming abuses, 
 to balance present interest against a remote one, or to 
 cultivate the public welfare at the hazard of their own : 
 12
 
 138 THE C^SARS. 
 
 contented with obtaining that, they left the internal 
 arrangements of so formidable a body in the state to 
 which circumstances had brought it, and to which 
 naturally the views of all existing beneficiaries had 
 gradually adjusted themselves. What these might be, 
 and to what further results they might tend, was a 
 matter of moment doubtless to the empire. But the 
 empire was strong ; if its motive energy was decaying, 
 its vis inertia was for ages enormous, and could stand 
 up against assaults repeated for many ages : whilst the 
 emperor was in the beginning of his authority weak, 
 and pledged by instant interest, no less than by express 
 promises, to the support of that body whose favor had 
 substantially supported himself. Hadrian was the first 
 who turned his attention effectually in that direction ; 
 w r hether it were that he first was struck with the 
 tendency of the abuses, or that he valued the hazard 
 less which he incurred in correcting them, or that 
 having no successor of his own blood, he had a less 
 personal and affecting interest at stake in setting this 
 hazard at defiance. Hitherto, the highest regimental 
 rank, that of tribune, had been disposed of in two 
 ways, either civilly upon popular favor and election, or 
 upon the express recommendation of the soldiery. This 
 custom had prevailed under the republic, and the force 
 of habit had availed to propagate that practice under a 
 new mode of government. But now were introduced 
 new regulations : the tribune was selected for his mili-
 
 XII i: 0JE8AB8. 139 
 
 tary qualities and experience : none was appointed to 
 this important office, 'nisi harbd phnd.' The cen- 
 turion's truncheon, 30 again, was given to no man, 
 • nisi robusto ct bo?ice fam<z! The arms and military 
 appointments (supellectilis) were revised ; the register 
 of names was duly called over ; and none suffered to 
 remain in the camps who was either above or below 
 the military age. The same vigilance and jealousy 
 were extended to the great stationary stores and reposi- 
 tories of biscuit, vinegar, and other equipments for the 
 soldiery. All things were in constant readiness in the 
 capital and the provinces, in the garrisons and camps, 
 abroad and at home, to meet the outbreak of a foreign 
 war or a domestic sedition. Whatever were the ser- 
 vice, it could by no possibility find Hadrian unprepared. 
 And he first, in fact, of all the Caesars, restored to its 
 ancient republican standard, as reformed and perfected 
 by Nanus, the old martial discipline of the Scipios and 
 the Paulli — that discipline, to which, more than to any 
 physical superiority of her soldiery, Rome had been 
 indebted for her conquest of the earth ; and which had 
 inevitably decayed in the long series of wars growing 
 out of personal ambition. From the days of Marius, 
 every great leader had sacrificed to the necessities of 
 courting favor from the troops, as much as was possible 
 of the hardships incident to actual service, and as much 
 as he dared of the once rigorous discipline. Hadrian 
 first found himself in circumstances, or was the first
 
 140 THE C.ESARS. 
 
 who had courage enough to decline a momentary 
 interest in favor of a greater in reversion ; and a per- 
 sonal object which was transient, in favor of a State 
 one continually revolving. 
 
 For a prince, with no children of his own, it is in 
 any case a task of peculiar delicacy to select a suc- 
 cessor. In the Roman empire the difficulties were 
 much aggravated. The interests of the State were, in 
 the first place, to he consulted ; for a mighty burthen 
 of responsibility rested upon the emperor in the most 
 personal sense. Duties of every kind fell to his station, 
 which, from the peculiar constitution of the govern- 
 ment, and from circumstances rooted in the very origin 
 of the imperatorial office, could not be devolved upon 
 a council. Council there was none, nor could be 
 recognized as such in the State machinery. The em- 
 peror, himself a sacred and sequestered creature, might 
 be supposed to enjoy the secret tutelage of the Supreme 
 Deity ; but a council, composed of subordinate and 
 responsible agents, could not. Again, the auspices of 
 the emperor, and his edicts, apart even from any celes- 
 tial or supernatural inspiration, simply as emanations 
 of his own divine character, had a value and a conse- 
 cration which could never belong to those of a 
 council — or to those even which had been sullied by 
 the breath of any less august reviser. The emperor, 
 therefore, or — as with a view to his solitary and 
 unique character we ought to call him — in the original
 
 THE CAESARS. Ml 
 
 unrepresentable term, the imperator, could not delegate 
 his duties, or execute them in any avowed form hy 
 proxies or representative.-;. He was himself the great 
 fountain of law — of honor — of preferment — of civil 
 and political regulations. He was the fountain also of 
 good and evil fame. He was the great chancellor, or 
 supreme dispenser of equity to all climates, nations, 
 languages, of his mighty dominions, which connected 
 the turbaned races of the Orient, and those who sat 
 in the gates of the rising sun, with the islands of the 
 West, and the unfathomed depths of the mysterious 
 Scandinavia. He was the universal guardian of the 
 public and private interests which composed the great 
 edifice of the social system as then existing amongst 
 his subjects. Above all, and out of his own private 
 purse, he supported the heraldries of his dominions — 
 the peerage, senatorial or praetorian, and the great 
 gentry or chivalry of the Equitcs. These were classes 
 who would have been dishonored by the censorship 
 of a less august comptroller. And for the classes 
 below these, — by how much they were lower and 
 more remote from his ocular superintendence, — by 
 so much the more were they linked to him in a 
 connection of absolute dependence. Caesar it was who 
 provided their daily food, Caesar who provided their 
 pleasures and relaxations. He chartered the fleets 
 which brought grain to the Tiber — he bespoke the 
 Sardinian granaries while yet unformed — and the
 
 142 THE C^SARS. 
 
 harvests of the Nile while yet unsown. Not the con- 
 nection between a mother and her unborn infant is 
 more intimate and vital, than that which subsisted 
 between the mighty populace of the Roman capitol 
 and their paternal emperor. They drew their nutri- 
 ment from him ; they lived and were happy by sym- 
 pathy with the motions of his will ; to him also the 
 arts, the knowledge, and the literature of the empire 
 looked for support. To him the armies looked for 
 their laurels, and the eagles in every clime turned 
 their aspiring eyes, waiting to bend their flight accord- 
 ing to the signal of his Jovian nod. And all these 
 vast functions and ministrations arose partly as a 
 natural effect, but partly also they were a cause of 
 the emperor's own divinity. He was capable of ser- 
 vices so exalted, because he also was held a god, and 
 had his own altars, his own incense, his own worship 
 and priests. And that was the cause, and that was the 
 result of his bearing, on his own shoulders, a burthen 
 so mighty and Atlantean. 
 
 Yet, if in this view it was needful to have a man 
 of talent, on the other hand there was reason to dread 
 a man of talents too adventurous, too aspiring, or 
 too intriguing. His situation, as Caesar, or Crown 
 Prince, flung into his hands a power of fomenting 
 conspiracies, and of concealing them until the very 
 moment of explosion, which made him an object of 
 almost exclusive terror to his principal, the Caesar
 
 in i; i'.i.vars. 1 13 
 
 Augustus. His situation again, aa an heii voluntarily 
 adopted, made him the proper object of public affection 
 and caresses, which became peculiarly embarrassing to 
 one who bad, perhaps, soon found reasons for suspect- 
 ing, fearing, and bating him beyond all other m sn. 
 
 The young nobleman, whom Hadrian adopted by 
 his earliest choice, was Lucius Aurelius Verus, the son 
 of Cejonius Commodus. These names were borne 
 also by the son ; but, after his adoption into the JElian 
 family, he was generally known by the appellation of 
 iElius Verus. The scandal of those times imputed his 
 adoption to the worst motives. ' Adriano,' says one 
 author, ' («/ malevoli loquuntur) acceptior forma quam 
 moribus.' And thus much undoubtedly there is to 
 countenance so shocking an insinuation, that very little 
 is recorded of the young prince hut such anecdotes as 
 illustrate his excessive luxury and effeminate dedica- 
 tion to pleasure. Still it is our private opinion, that 
 11 i Irian's real motives have been misrepresented ; that 
 he sought in the young man's extraordinary beauty — 
 [for he was, says Spartian, pulchritudinis regici] — a 
 plausible pretext that should be sufficient to explain 
 and to countenance his preference, whilst under his 
 provisional adoption he was enabled to postpone the 
 definitive choice of an imperator elect, until his own 
 more advanced age might diminish the motives for 
 intriguing against himself. It was, therefore, a mere 
 ad interim adoption ; for it is certain, however we
 
 1 44 THE CAESARS. 
 
 may choose to explain that fact, that Hadrian foresaw 
 and calculated on the early death of JElius. This 
 prophetic knowledge may have heen grounded on a 
 private familiarity with some constitutional infirmity 
 affecting his daily health, or with some habits of life 
 incompatible with longevity, or with both combined. 
 It is pretended that this distinguished mark of favor 
 was conferred in fulfilment of a direct contract on the 
 emperor's part, as the price of favors, such as the 
 Latin reader will easily understand from the strong 
 expression of Spartian above cited. But it is far 
 more probable that Hadrian relied on this admirable 
 beauty, and allowed it so much weight, as the readiest 
 and most intelligible justification to the multitude, of a 
 choice which thus offered to their homage a public 
 favorite — and to the nobility, of so invidious a prefer- 
 ence, which placed one of their own number far above 
 the level of his natural rivals. The necessities of the 
 moment were thus satisfied without present or future 
 danger ; — as respected the future, he knew or believed 
 that Verus was marked out for early death ; and would 
 often say, in a strain of compliment somewhat dispro- 
 portionate, applying to him the Virgilian lines on the 
 hopeful and lamented Marcellus, 
 
 ' Ostendeut terris hunc tautum fata, nerjue ultra 
 Esse sinent.' 
 
 And, at the same time, to countenance the belief that 
 
 he had been disappointed, he would affect to sigh,
 
 1 BE C i SABS. 145 
 
 exclaiming — 'Ah ! that I should thus fruitlessly have 
 
 squandered a sum of three 31 millions sterling ! ' for so 
 much had been distributed in largesses to the people 
 and the army on the occasion of his inauguration. 
 Meantime, as resp icted the present, the qualities of the 
 young man were amply fitted to sustain a Roman pop- 
 ularity ; for, in addition to his extreme and statuesque 
 beauty of person, he was (in the report of one who did 
 not wish to color his character advantageously) ' manor 
 familia sua, comptus, decorus, oris venerandi, cloquen- 
 tia celsioris, versu facilis, in republicd etiam non 
 inutllis.' a as a military officer, he bad a respect- 
 
 able n - character ; as an orator he was more than 
 resp table ; and in other qualifications less interesting 
 to the populace, he had that happy mediocrity of merit 
 which was best fitted for his delicate and difficult 
 situation — sufficient to do credit to the emperor's 
 preference — sufficient to sustain the popular regard, 
 but not brilliant enough to throw his patron into the 
 shade. For the rest bis vices were of a nature not 
 gn atly or necessarily to interfere with his public 
 duties, and emphatically such as met with the readiest 
 indulgence from the Roman laxity of morals. Some 
 few instances, indeed, are noticed of cruelty: but there 
 is reason to think that it was merely by accident, and 
 as an indireel resull of other purposes,, that he ever 
 allowed himself in such manifestations of irresponsible 
 power — not as gratifying any harsh impulses of his 
 13
 
 146 THE C&SARS. 
 
 native character. The most remarkable neglect of 
 humanity with which he has been taxed, occurred in 
 the treatment of his couriers ; these were the bearers 
 of news and official dispatches, at that time fulfilling 
 the functions of the modern post ; and it must be 
 remembered that as yet they were not slaves, (as after- 
 wards by the reformation of Alexander Severus,) tut 
 free citizens. They had been already dressed in a 
 particular livery or uniform, and possibly they might 
 wear some symbolical badges of their profession ; but 
 the new Caesar chose to dress them altogether in 
 character as winged Cupids, affixing literal wings to 
 their shoulders, and facetiously distinguishing them 
 by the names of the four cardinal winds, (Boreas, 
 Aquilo, Notus, &c.) and others as levanters or hurri- 
 canes, (Circius, &c.) Thus far he did no more than 
 indulge a blameless fancy ; but in his anxiety that his 
 runners should emulate their patron winds, and do 
 credit to the names which he had assigned them, he is 
 said to have exacted a degree of speed inconsistent 
 with any merciful regard for their bodily powers. 33 
 But these were, after all, perhaps, mere improvements 
 of malice upon some solitary incident. The true stain 
 upon his memory, and one which is open to no doubt 
 whatever, is excessive and extravagant luxury — ex- 
 cessive in degree, extravagant and even ludicrous in 
 its forms. For example, he constructed a sort of bed 
 or sofa — protected from insects by an awning of net-
 
 THE CJESAB8. 1 J 7 
 
 work composed of lilies, delicately fabricated into the 
 proper meshes, &c, and the couches composed wholly 
 of rose-leaves ; and even of these, not without an ex- 
 quisite preparation; for the white parts of the leaves, 
 as coarsi i- and harsher to the touch, (possibly, also, as 
 less odorous,) were scrupulously rejected. Here he 
 Lay indolently stretched amongst favorite ladies, 
 
 'And like a naked Indian slept himself away.' 
 II had also tables composed of the same delicate 
 material — prepared and purified in the same elaborate 
 way — and to these were adapted seats in the fashion 
 of sofas (accubationes), corresponding in their mate- 
 rials, and in their mode of preparation. He was also 
 an expert performer, and even an original inventor, in 
 the art of cookery : and one dish of his discovery, 
 which, from its four component parts, obtained the 
 name of tetrapharmacum, was so far from owing its 
 celebrity to its royal birth, that it maintained its place 
 on Hadrian's table to the time of his death. These, 
 however, were mere fopperies or pardonable extrava- 
 gances in one so young and so exalted ; 'quae, etsi 
 non decora,' as tin- his! >rian observes, ' non tamen ad 
 perniciem publicam prompta sunt.' A graver mode 
 of licentiousness app and in his connections with 
 women. He made no secret of his lawless amours ; 
 and to his own wife, on her expostulating with him on 
 his aberrations in this respect, he replied — that ' wife' 
 was a designation of rank and official dignity, not of
 
 148 THE CiESAKS. 
 
 tenderness and affection, or implying any claim of love 
 on either side ; upon which distinction he begged that 
 she would mind her own affairs, and leave him to pur- 
 sue such as he might himself be involved in by his 
 sensibility to female charms. 
 
 However, he and all his errors, his ' regal beauty,' 
 his princely pomps, and his authorized hopes, were 
 suddenly swallowed up by the inexorable grave ; and 
 he would have passed away like an exhalation, and 
 leaving no remembrance of himself more durable than 
 his own beds of rose-leaves, and his reticulated cano- 
 pies of lilies, had it not been that Hadrian filled the 
 world with images of his perfect fawn-like beauty in 
 the shape of colossal statues, and raised temples even 
 to his memory in various cities. This Caesar, therefore, 
 dying thus prematurely, never tasted of empire ; and 
 his name would have had but a doubtful title to a place 
 in the imperatorial roll, had it not been recalled to a 
 second chance for the sacred honors in the person of his 
 son — whom it was the pleasure of Hadrian, by way of 
 testifying his affection for the father, to associate in the 
 order of succession with the philosophic Marcus Aure- 
 lius Antoninus. This fact, and the certainty that to 
 the second iElius Verus he gave his own daughter in 
 marriage, rather than to his associate Caesar Marcus 
 Aurelius, make it evident that his regret for the elder 
 Verus was unaffected and deep ; and they overthrow 
 effectually the common report of historians — that he
 
 THE CjESABS. 149 
 
 repented of his earliest choice, as of one that had been 
 disappointed not by the decrees of fate, but by the 
 violent defect of merit in its object. On the contrary, 
 he prefaced his inauguration of this junior Caesar by 
 the following tender words — Let us confound the 
 rapine of the grave, and let the empire possess amongst 
 her rulers a s icond Jdius Verus. 
 
 ' Diis aliter visum csl:' the blood of the ^Elian 
 family was not privileged to ascend or aspire: it gra- 
 vitated violently to extinction ; and this junior Verus 
 is supposed to have been as much indebted to his as- 
 lor on the throne for shielding his obscure vices, and 
 drawing over his defects the ample draperies of the 
 imperatorial robe, as he was to Hadrian, his grand- 
 father by fiction of law', for his adoption into the 
 reigning family, and his consecration as one of the 
 Caesars. He, says one historian, shed no ray of light 
 or illustration upon the imperial house, except by one 
 solitary quality. This bears a harsh sound; but it has 
 the effect of a sudden redemption for his memory, 
 when we learn — that this solitary quality, in virtue of 
 which ho claimed a natural affinity to the sacred house, 
 and challenged a natural interest in the purple, was the 
 very princely one of — a merciful disposition. 
 
 The two Antonines fix an era in the imperial history ; 
 for they were both eminent models of wise and good 
 rulers : and some would say, that they fixed a crisis ; 
 for with their successor commenced, in the populai
 
 150 THE C^SARS. 
 
 belief, the decline of the empire. That at least is the 
 doctrine of Gibbon ; but perhaps it would not be found 
 altogether able to sustain itself against a closer and 
 philosophic examination of the true elements involved 
 in the idea of declension as applied to political bodies. 
 Be that as it may, however, and waiving any interest 
 which might happen to invest the Antonines as the last 
 princes who kept up the empire to its original level, 
 both of them had enough of merit to challenge a 
 separate notice in their personal characters, and apart 
 from the accidents of their position. 
 
 The elder of the two, who is usually distinguished 
 by the title of Pius, is thus described by one of his 
 biographers : — ' He was externally of remarkable 
 beauty ; eminent for his moral character, full of benign 
 dispositions, noble, with a countenance of a most gentle 
 expression, intellectually of singular endowments, pos- 
 sessing an elegant style of eloquence, distinguished for 
 his literature, generally temperate, an earnest lover of 
 agricultural pursuits, mild in his deportment, bountiful 
 in the use of his own, but a stern respecter of the rights 
 of others ; and, finally, he was all this without osten- 
 tation, and with a constant regard to the proportions 
 of cases, and to the demands of time and place.' His 
 bounty displayed itself in a way, which may be worth 
 mentioning, as at once illustrating the age, and the 
 prudence with which he controlled the most generous 
 of his impulses : — ' Fctnus trientarium,' says the
 
 Tin; CjESABS. 151 
 
 historian, * lu>c est minimis usuris exercuit, ul palri- 
 monio suo plurimos ad j in- a ret.' The meaning of 
 which is this: — la Rome, the customary interest for 
 money was what was called centesimce usurce; that is, 
 the hundredth part, or one per cent. But, as this 
 expressed not the annual, hut the monthly interest, the 
 true rate was, in fact, twelve per cent. ; and that is the 
 meaning of centesima usurce. Nor could money he 
 obtained anywhere on better terms than these ; and, 
 moreover, this one per cent, was exacted rigorously as 
 the monthly day came round, no arrears being suffered 
 to lie over. Under these circumstances, it was a pro- 
 digious service to lend money at a diminished rate, and 
 one which furnished many men with the means of 
 saving themselves from ruin. Pius, then, by way of 
 extending his aid as far as possible, reduced the 
 monthly rate of his loans to one-third per cent., which 
 made the annual interest the very moderate one of four 
 per cent. The channels, which public spirit had as 
 yet opened to the beneficence of the opulent, were few 
 indeed : charity and munificence languished, or they 
 were abused, or they were inefficiently directed, simply 
 through defects in the structure of society. Social 
 organization, for its large development, demanded the 
 agency of newspapers, (together with many other forms 
 of assistance from the press,) of banks, of public car- 
 riages on an extensive scale, besides infinite other 
 inventions or establishments not yet created — which
 
 152 THE CJESARS. 
 
 support and powerfully re-act upon that same progress 
 of society which originally gave birth to themselves. 
 All things considered, in the Home of that day, where 
 all munificence confined itself to the direct largesses of 
 a few leading necessaries of life, — a great step was 
 taken, and the best step, in this lending of money at 
 a low interest, towards a more refined and beneficial 
 mode of charity. 
 
 In his public character, he was perhaps the most 
 patriotic of Roman emperors, and the purest from all 
 taint of corrupt or indirect ends. Peculation, embez- 
 zlement or misapplication of the public funds, were 
 universally corrected ; provincial oppressors were ex- 
 posed and defeated : the taxes and tributes were dimin- 
 ished ; and the public expenses were thrown as much 
 as possible upon the public estates, and in some in- 
 stances upon his own private estates. So far, indeed, 
 did Pius stretch his sympathy with the poorer classes 
 of his subjects, that on this account chiefly he resided 
 permanently in the capital — alleging in excuse, partly 
 that he thus stationed himself in the very centre of his 
 mighty empire, to which all couriers could come by 
 the shortest radii, but chiefly that he thus spared the 
 provincialists those burdens which must else have 
 alighted upon them ; ' for,' said he, ' even the slen- 
 derest retinue of a Roman emperor is burthensome to 
 the whole line of its progress.' His tenderness and 
 consideration, indeed, were extended to all classes, and
 
 Tin; CJESAB8. 158 
 
 all relations <>f Ins subjects ; even to those who stood 
 in the shadow of his public displeasure as State delin- 
 quents, or as the most atrocious criminals. To the 
 
 children of great treasury defaulters, he returned the 
 confiscated estates of their fathers, deducting only v. hat 
 might repair the public loss. And so resolutely did 
 he refuse to shed the blood of any in the senatorial 
 order, to whom he conceived himself more especially 
 bound in paternal ties, that even a parricide, whom the 
 laws would not suffer to live, was simply exposed upon 
 a desert island. 
 
 Little, indeed, did Tins want of being a perfect 
 Christian, in heart and in practice. Yet all this display 
 of goodness and merciful indulgence, nay, all his 
 munificence, would have availed him little with the 
 people at large, had he neglected to furnish shows 
 and exhibitions in the arena of suitable magnificence. 
 Luckily for his reputation, he exceeded the general 
 standard of imperial splendor not less as the patron of 
 the amphitheatre than in his more important functions. 
 It is recorded of him — that in one missio he sent for- 
 ward on the arena a hundred lions. Nor was he less 
 distinguished by the rarity of the wild animals which he 
 exhibited than by their number. There were elephants, 
 there were crocodiles, there were hippopotami at one 
 time upon the stage : there was also the rhim . and 
 
 the still rarer crocuta or corocolta, with a few slrepsik- 
 erotcs. Some of these were matched in duels, some in
 
 154 THE CJE.SX3.S. 
 
 general battles with tigers ; in fact, there was no species 
 of wild animal throughout the deserts and sandy Zaarras 
 of Africa, the infinite steppes of Asia, or the lawny 
 iv cesses and dim forests of then sylvan Europe, 34 no 
 species known to natural history, (and some even of 
 which naturalists have lost sight,) which the Emperor 
 Pius did not produce to his Roman subjects on his cere- 
 monious pomps. And in another point he carried his 
 splendors to a point which set the seal to his liberality. 
 In the phrase of modern auctioneers, he gave up the 
 wild beasts to slaughter ' without reserve.' It was the 
 custom, in ordinary cases, so far to consider the enor- 
 mous cost of these far-fetched rarities as to preserve 
 for future occasions those which escaped the arrows of 
 the populace, or survived the bloody combats in which 
 they were engaged. Thus, out of the overflowings of 
 one great exhibition, would be found materials for 
 another. But Pius would not allow of these reserva- 
 tions. All were given up unreservedly to the savage 
 purposes of the spectators; land and sea were ran- 
 sacked ; the sanctuaries of the torrid zone were vio- 
 lated ; columns of the army were put in motion — and 
 all for the transient effect of crowning an extra hour 
 with hecatombs of forest blood, each separate minute 
 of which had cost a king's ransom. 
 
 Yet these displays were alien to the nature of Pius ; 
 and even through the tyranny of custom, he had been 
 so little changed, that to the last he continued to turn
 
 THE CJE.SA.ViS. 155 
 
 aside, as often as tllC public ritual of his duty allowed 
 him, from these fierce spectacles to the gentler amuse- 
 ments of fishing and hunting. His taste and his affec- 
 tions naturally carried him to all domestic pleasures 
 
 of a quiet nature. A walk in a shrubbery or along a 
 piazza, enlivened with the conversation of a friend or 
 two, pleased him better than all the court festivals ; 
 and among festivals or anniversary celebrations, he 
 preferred thus.' which, like the harvest-home or feast 
 of the vintagers, whilst they sanctioned a total care- 
 - an 1 dismissal of public anxieties, were at the 
 same time colored by the innocent gayety which be- 
 longs to rural and to primitive manners. In person, 
 this emperor was tall and dignified [staturd cJerafd 
 decorus); but latterly he stooped; to remedy which 
 defect, that he might discharge his public part with 
 the more decorum, he wore stays. 35 Of his other per- 
 sonal habits little is recorded, except that, early in the 
 morning and just before receiving the compliments of 
 his friends and dependents (saltilatorcs), or what in 
 modern phrase would be called his levee, he took a 
 little plain bra! [partem siccum comedit), that is, 
 bread without condiments or accompaniments of any 
 kind, by way of breakfast. In no meal has luxury 
 advanced more upon the model of the ancients than 
 in this: the dinners (crn<<' of the Romans were even 
 more luxurious, and a thousand times more costly, 
 than our own; but their breakfasts were scandalously
 
 1.56 THE C.ESA.RS. 
 
 meagre ; and, with many men, breakfast was no pro- 
 fessed meal at all. Galen tells us that a little bread, 
 and at most a little seasoning of oil, honey, or dried 
 fruits, was the utmost breakfast which men generally 
 allowed themselves : some indeed drank wine after it, 
 but this was far from being a common practice. 30 
 
 The Emperor Pius died in his seventieth year. The 
 immediate occasion of his death was — not breakfast 
 nor ccena, but something of the kind. He had received 
 a present of Alpine cheese, and he ordered some for 
 supper. The trap for his life was baited with toasted 
 cheese. There is no reason to think that he ate im- 
 moderately; but that night he was ceased with indiges- 
 tion. Delirium followed ; during which it is singular 
 that his mind teemed with a class of imagery and of pas- 
 sions the most remote (as it might have been thought) 
 from the voluntary occupations of his thoughts. He 
 raved about the State, and about those kings with 
 whom he was displeased ; nor were his thoughts one 
 moment removed from the public service. Yet he was 
 the least ambitious of princes, and his reign was em- 
 phatically said to be bloodless. Finding his fever 
 increase, he became sensible that he was dying; and ho 
 ordered the golden statue of Prosperity, a household 
 symbol of empire, to be transferred from his own bed- 
 room to that of his successor. Once again, however, 
 for the last time, he gave the word to the officer of the 
 guard ; and, soon after, turning away his face to the
 
 THE I 1.37 
 
 wall against which his bed was placed, he passed out 
 of life in the verj gentlest sleep, i quasi dorm. 
 spiritum reddidit ; ' or, as a Greek author expresses it, 
 x«i' iau i no iv> uaXazunona). lie was one of those few 
 
 It 1 • 
 
 Roman emperors whom posterity truly honored with 
 the title of araifiaxos (or bloodless) ; sol usque omnium 
 prope principum prorsus sine civili sanguine et host Hi 
 vixit. In the whole tenor of his life and character he 
 was thought to resemble Nnma. And Pausanias, after 
 i 'narking on his title of /. ..- (or Pius), upon the 
 meaning and origin of which there arc several different 
 hypotheses, closes with this memorable tribute to his 
 pal Tiial qualities — <V<;', St <<i>,, x«l iu irofta to re Kvqb 
 tj,i(>oiTu cii xu i' s . ' xukvvfteros : bill, III 
 
 my opinion, he should also hear the name of Cyrus the 
 elder — being hailed as Father of the Human Race. 
 
 A thoughtful Roman would have been apt to ex- 
 claim. This is too good to last, upon finding so 
 admirable a ruler su< c ■ ided by one still more admira- 
 ble in the person of Marcus Aurelius. From the first 
 dawn of his infancy, this prince indicated, by his grave 
 deportment, the philosophic character of his mind ; and 
 at eleven years of age he professed himself a formal 
 devotee of philosophy in its strictest form, — assuming 
 the garb, and submitting to its most ascetic ordinances. 
 In particular, he slept upon the ground, and in other 
 respects he practised a Btyle of living the most simple 
 and remote from the habits of rich men [or, in his
 
 158 Tin: c^esars. 
 
 own words, to ?.nov xaxa tm diairar, y.al 710(jjjuj t£? n"/.e,Gi- 
 
 (f/S,s «/wj'Tc] ; though it is true that he himself ascribes 
 this simplicity of life to the influence of his mother, 
 and not to the premature assumption of the stoical 
 character. He pushed his austerities indeed to excess ; 
 for l)io mentions that in his boyish days he was re- 
 duced to great weakness by exercises too severe, and a 
 diet of too little nutriment. In fact, his whole heart 
 was set upon philosophic attainments, and perhaps upon 
 philosophic glory. All the great philosophers of his 
 own time, whether Stoic or Peripatetic, and amongst 
 them Sextus of Cheronaea, a nephew of Plutarch, were 
 retained as his instructors. There was none whom he 
 did not enrich ; and as many as were fitted by birth 
 and manners to fill important situations, he raised to 
 the highest offices in the State. Philosophy, however, 
 did not so much absorb his affections, but that he found 
 time to cultivate the fine arts (painting he both studied 
 and practised), and such gymnastic exercises as he 
 held consistent with his public dignity. Wrestling, 
 hunting, fowling, playing at cricket (jnlci), he admired 
 and patronized by personal participation. He tried his 
 powers even as a runner. But with these tasks, and 
 entering so critically, both as a connoisseur and as a 
 practising amateur, into such trials of skill, so little did 
 he relish the very same spectacles when connected 
 with the cruel exhibitions of the circus and amphithe- 
 atre, that it was not without some friendly violence on
 
 THE ca SAItS. 159 
 
 the part of those who could venture on such a liberty, 
 nor even thus, perhaps, without the necessities of his 
 
 official station, that he would be persuaded to visit either 
 one or the other. 37 In this he meditated no reflection 
 upon his father by adoption, the Emperor Pius (who 
 also, for aught we know, might secretly revolt from a 
 species of amusement which, as the prescriptive test of 
 munificence in the popular estimate, it was necessary 
 to support; ; on the contrary, he obeyed him with 
 the punctiliousness of a Roman obedience ; he watched 
 the very motions of his countenance ; and he waited so 
 continually upon his pleasure, that for thrcc-and-twenty 
 •s which thi j lived together, he is recorded to have 
 slept out of his father's palace only for two nights. 
 This rigor of filial duty illustrates a feature of Roman 
 life ; for such was the sanctity of law, that a father 
 created by legal fiction was in all respects treated with 
 the same veneration and affection, as a father who 
 claimed upon the most unquestioned footing of natural 
 right. Such, however, is the universal lascness of 
 courts, that even this scrupulous and minute attention 
 to his duties, did not protect Marcus from the injurious 
 insinuations of whisperers. There were not want : n»- 
 persons who endeavored to turn to account the general 
 circumstances in the situation of the Caesar, which 
 pointed him out to the jealousy of the emperor. But 
 these being no more than what adhere necessarily to 
 the case of every heir as such, and meeting fortunately
 
 160 THE CESARS. 
 
 with no more proncness to suspicion in the temper of 
 the Augustus than they did with countenance in the 
 conduct of the Caesar, made so little impression, that at 
 length these malicious efforts died away, from mere 
 defect of encouragement. 
 
 The most interesting political crisis hrthe reign of 
 Marcus was the war in Germany with the Marcomanni, 
 concurrently with pestilence in Rome. The agitation 
 of the public mind was intense ; and prophets arose, as 
 since under corresponding circumstances in Christian 
 countries, who announced the approaching dissolution 
 of the world. The purse of Marcus was open, as usual, 
 to the distresses of his subjects. But it was chiefly for 
 the expense of funerals that his aid was claimed. In 
 this way he alleviated the domestic calamities of his 
 capital, or expressed bis sympathy with the sufferers, 
 where alleviation was beyond his power ; whilst, by the 
 energy of his movements and his personal presence on 
 the Danube, he soon dissipated those anxieties of Home 
 which pointed in a foreign direction. The war, how- 
 ever, had been a dreadful one, and had excited such 
 just fears in the most experienced heads of the State, 
 that, happening in its outbreak to coincide with a Par- 
 thian war, it was skilfully protracted until the entire 
 thunders of Rome, and the undivided energies of her 
 supreme captains, could be concentrated upon this 
 single point. Both 36 ' emperors left Rome, and crossed 
 the Alps ; the war was thrown back upon its native
 
 1 II I. I .1 - VRS. 161 
 
 seats — Austria and the modern Hungary: great 
 battles were fought and won ; and peace, with conse- 
 quent relief and restoration to liberty, was reconquered 
 for many friendly nations, who had suffered under the 
 ravages of the Marcomanni, the Sarmatians, the Quadi, 
 and the Vandals ; whilst some of the hostile people 
 were nearly obliterated from the map, and their names 
 blotted out from the memory of men. 
 
 Since the days of Gaul as an independent power, no 
 war had so much alarmed the people of Rome ; and 
 their fear was justified by the difficulties and prodigious 
 efforts which accompanied its suppression. The public 
 treasury was exhausted ; loans were an engine of fiscal 
 policy, not then understood or perhaps practicable ; and 
 great distress was at hand for the State. In these 
 circumstances, Marcus adopted a wise (though it was 
 then esteemed a violent or desperate) remedy. Time 
 and excessive luxury had accumulated in the imperial 
 palaces and villas vast repositories of apparel, furniture, 
 jewels, pictures, and household utensils, valuable alike 
 for the materials and the workmanship. Many of these 
 articles were consecrated, by color or otherwise, to the 
 use of the sacred household ; and to have been found 
 in possession of them, or with the materials for making 
 them, would have entailed the penalties of treason. 
 All these stores were now brought out to open day, and 
 put up to public sale by auction, free license being first 
 granted to the bidders, whoever they might be, to use. 
 14
 
 162 THE CjESARS. 
 
 or otherwise to exercise the fullest rights of property 
 upon all they bought. The auction lasted for two 
 months. Every man was guaranteed in the peaceable 
 ownership of his purchases. And afterwards, when 
 the public distress had passed over, a still further in- 
 dulgence was extended to the purchasers. Notice was 
 given — that all who were dissatisfied with their pur- 
 chases, or who for other means might wish to recover 
 their cost, would receive back the purchase money, 
 upon returning the articles. Dinner services of gold 
 and crystal, murrhine vases, and even his wife's ward- 
 robe of silken robes interwoven with gold, all these, 
 and countless other articles, were accordingly returned, 
 and the full auction prices paid back ; or were not 
 returned, and no displeasure shown to those who pub- 
 licly displayed them as their own. Having gone so 
 far, overruled by the necessities of the public service, 
 in breaking down those legal barriers by which a pecu- 
 liar dress, furniture, equipage, &c, were appropriated 
 to the imperial house, as distinguished from the very 
 highest of the noble houses, Marcus had a sufficient 
 pretext for extending indefinitely the effect of the 
 dispensation then granted. Articles purchased at the 
 auction bore no characteristic marks to distinguish 
 them from others of the same form and texture : so 
 that a license to use any one article of the sacred 
 pattern, became necessarily a general license for all 
 others which resembled them. And thus, without
 
 THE C.ESARS. 163 
 
 abrogating tliu prejudices which protected the imperial 
 precedency, a body of sumptuary laws — the most 
 ruinous to the progress of manufacturing skill, M which 
 has ever been devised — were silently suspended. One 
 or two aspiring families might be offended by these 
 innovations, which meantime gave the pleasures of 
 enjoyment to thousands, and of hope to millions. 
 
 But these, though very noticeable relaxations of the 
 existing prerogative, were, as respected the temper 
 which dictated them, no mure than cvery-day manifes- 
 tations of the emperor's perpetual benignity. Fortu- 
 nately for .Marcus, the indestructible privilege of the 
 divina domus exalted it so unapproachably beyond all 
 competition, that no possible remissions of aulic rigor 
 could ever be misinterpreted ; fear there could be 
 none, lest such paternal indulgences should lose their 
 effect and acceptation as pure condescensions. They 
 could neither injure their author, who was otherwise 
 charmed and consecrated, from disrespect ; nor could 
 they suffer injury themselves by misconstruction, or 
 seem other than sincere, coming from a prince whose 
 entire life was one long series of acts expressing the 
 same affable spirit. Such, indeed, was the effect of 
 this uninterrupted benevolence in the emperor, that at 
 length all men, according to their several ages, hailed 
 him as their father, son, or brother. And when he 
 died, in the sixty-first year of his life (the 18th of his 
 reign), he was lamented with a corresponding pe-
 
 164 THE C^SARS. 
 
 culiarity in the public ceremonial, such, for instance, 
 as the studied interfusion of the senatorial body with 
 the populace, expressive of the levelling power of a 
 true and comprehensive grief; a peculiarity for which 
 no precedent was found, and which never afterwards 
 became a precedent for similar honors to the best of 
 his successors. 
 
 But malice has the divine privilege of ubiquity ; 
 and therefore it was that even this great model of 
 private and public virtue did not escape the foulest 
 libels : he was twice accused of murder ; once on the 
 person of a gladiator, with whom the empress is said 
 to have fallen in love ; and again, upon his associate 
 in the empire, who died in reality of an apopletic 
 seizure, on his return from the German campaign. 
 Neither of these atrocious fictions ever gained the 
 least hold of the public attention, so entirely were 
 they put down by the prima facie evidence of facts, 
 and of the emperor's notorious character. In fact his 
 faults, if he had any in his public life, were entirely 
 those of too much indulgence. In a few cases of 
 enormous guilt, it is recorded that he showed himself 
 inexorable. But, generally speaking, he was far 
 otherwise ; and, in particular, he carried his indul- 
 gence to his wife's vices to an access which drew upon 
 him the satirical notice of the stage. 
 
 The gladiators, and still more the sailors of that age, 
 were constantly to be seen plying naked, and Faustina
 
 tiik ojcsabs. 1G5 
 
 was Bhameless enough to take her station in places 
 which gave her the advantages of a leisurely review; 
 and she actually selected favorites from Loth classes 
 on the ground of a personal inspection. "With others 
 of greater rank she is said even to have been surprised 
 by her husband ; in particular with one called Tcrtul- 
 lus, at dinner.' 10 But to all remonstrances on this sub- 
 ject, Marcus is reported to have replied, ' Si uxorcm 
 dimittimus, reddamus ct dotcm ; ' mcaniug that, baving 
 received his right of succession to the empire simply 
 by his adoption into the family of Pius, his wife's 
 father, gratitude and filial duty obliged him to view any 
 dishonors emanating from his wife's conduct as joint 
 legacies with the splendors inherited from their com- 
 mon father ; in sbort, that he was not at liberty to 
 separate the rose from its thorns. However, the facts 
 are not sufficiently known to warrant us in criticizing 
 very severely his behavior on so trying an occasion. 
 It would be too much for human frailty, that absolutely 
 no stain should remain upon his memory. Possibly 
 the best use which can be made of such a fact is, in 
 the way of consolation to any unhappy man, whom his 
 wife may too liberally have endowed with honors of 
 this kind, by reminding him that he shares this dis- 
 tinction with the great philosophic emperor. The re- 
 flection upon this story by one of his biographers is 
 this — ' Such is the force of daily life in a good ruler, 
 so great the power of his sanctity, gentleness, and
 
 1G6 THE C.ESARS. 
 
 piety, that no breath of slander or invidious suggestion 
 from an acquaintance can avail to sully his memory. 
 In short, to Antonine, immutable as the heavens in 
 the tenor of his own life, and in the manifestations of 
 his own moral temper, and who was not by possibility 
 liable to any impulse or " shadow of turning " from 
 another man's suggestion, it was not eventually an 
 injury that he was dishonored by some of his connec- 
 tions ; on him, invulnerable in his own character, 
 neither a harlot for his wife, nor a gladiator for his 
 son, could inflict a wound. Then as now, oh sacred 
 lord Dioclcsian, he was reputed a God ; not as others 
 are reputed, but specially and in a peculiar sense, and 
 with a privilege to such worship from all men as you 
 yourself addressed to him — who often breathe a wish 
 to Heaven, that you were or could be such in life and 
 merciful disposition as was Marcus Aurelius." 
 
 What this encomiast says in a rhetorical tone was 
 literally true. Marcus was raised to divine honors, or 
 canonized 41 (as in Christian phrase we might express 
 it). That was a matter of course ; and, considering 
 with whom he shared such honors, they are of little 
 account in expressing the grief and veneration which 
 followed him. A circumstance more characteristic, 
 in the record of those observances which attested the 
 public feeling, is this — that he who at that time had 
 no bust, picture, or statue of Marcus in his house, was 
 looked upon as a profane and irreligious man. Finally,
 
 Tin: ( .1. LBS. 1G7 
 
 to do him honor not by testimonies of men's opinions 
 
 in his favor, hut by facts of his own life and conduct, 
 one memorable trophy there is amongst the moral dis- 
 tinctions of the philosophic Caesar, utterly unnoticed 
 hitherto by historians, hut which will hereafter ohtain 
 a conspicuous place in any perfect record of the steps 
 by which civilization has advanced, and human nature 
 has been exalted. It is this : Marcus Aurclius was the 
 first great military leader (and his civil office as su- 
 preme interpreter and creator of law consecrated his 
 example) who allowed rights indefeasible — rights un- 
 cancelled by his misfortune in the field, to the prisoner 
 of war. Others had been merciful and variously indul- 
 gent, upon their own discretion, and upon a random 
 impulse to some, or possibly to all of their prisoners ; 
 but this was cither in submission to the usage of that 
 particular war, or to special self-interest, or at most to 
 individual good feeling. Xone had allowed a prisoner 
 to challenge any forbearance as of right. But Marcus 
 Aurclius first resolutely maintained that certain inde- 
 structible rights adhered to every soldier, simply as a 
 man, which rights, capture by the sword, or any other 
 accident of war, could do nothing to shake or dimin- 
 ish. We have noticed other instances in which Marcus 
 Aurclius labored, at the risk of his popularity, to ele- 
 vate the condition of human nature. But those, 
 though equally expressing the goodness and loftiness 
 of bis nature, were by accident directed to a perishable
 
 168 THE C.T,SAHS. 
 
 institution, which time has swept away, and along with 
 it therefore his reformations. Here, however, is an 
 immortal act of goodness built upon an immortal basis ; 
 for so long as armies congregate, and the sword is the 
 arbiter of international quarrels, so long it will deserve 
 to be had in remembrance, that the first man who set 
 limits to the empire of wrong, and first translated 
 within the jurisdiction of man's moral nature that 
 state of Avar which had heretofore been consigned, by 
 principle no less than by practice, to anarchy, animal 
 violence, and brute force, was also the first philosopher 
 who sat upon a throne. 
 
 In this, as in his universal spirit of forgiveness, Ave 
 cannot but acknowledge a Christian by anticipation ; 
 nor can we hesitate to believe, that through one or 
 other of his many philosophic friends, 42 whose attention 
 Christianity was by that time powerful to attract, some 
 reflex images of Christian doctrines — some half-con- 
 scious perception of its perfect beauty — had flashed 
 upon his mind. And when we view him from this 
 distant age, as heading that shining array, the How- 
 ards and the Wilberforces, who have since then in a 
 practical sense hearkened to the sighs of ' all prisoners 
 and captives ' — we are ready to suppose him addressed 
 by the great Founder of Christianity, in the words of 
 Scripture, ' Verily, I say unto thee, Thou art not far 
 from the. kingdom of heaven? 
 
 As a supplement to the reign of Marcus Aurelius,
 
 ■mi; c/ks.vrs. 169 
 
 we ought to notice the rise of one great rebel, the sole 
 civil disturber of bis time, in Syria. This vvus Avidius 
 Cassius, whose descent from Cassius (the noted con- 
 spirator against the great Dictator, Julius) seems to 
 have suggested to him a wandering idea, and at length 
 a formal purpose of restoring the ancient republic. 
 Avidius was the commander-in-chief of the Oriental 
 army, whose head-quarters were then fixed at Antioch. 
 His native disposition, which inclined him to cruelty, 
 and his political views, made him, from his first 
 entrance upon office, a severe disciplinarian. The well 
 known enormities of the neighboring Daphne gave 
 him ample opportunities for the exercise of his harsh 
 propensities in reforming the dissolute soldiery. He 
 amputated heads, arms, feet, and hams : he turned out 
 his mutilated victims, as walking spectacles of warn- 
 ing; he burned them; he smoked them to death; and, 
 in one instance, he crucified a detachment of his army, 
 together with their centurions, for having, unauthor- 
 ized, gained a splendid victory, and captured a large 
 booty on the Danube. Upon this the soldiers mutinied 
 against him, in mere indignation at his tyranny. 
 However, he prosecuted bis purpose, and prevailed, by 
 his bold contempt of the danger which menaced him. 
 From the abuses in the army, he proceeded to attack 
 the abuses of the civil administration. But as these 
 were protected by the example of the great procon- 
 sular lieutenants and provincial governors, policy 
 15
 
 170 THE CAESARS. 
 
 obliged him to confine himself to verbal expressions of 
 anger ; until at length sensible that this impotent rail- 
 ing did but expose him to contempt, he resolved to arm 
 himself with the powers of radical reform, by open 
 rebellion. His ultimate purpose was the restoration of 
 the ancient republic, or, (as he himself expresses it in 
 an interesting letter which yet survives,) l ut in anti- 
 quum statum publico, forma reddatur ;' i. e. that the 
 constitution should be restored to its original condition. 
 And this must be effected by military violence and the 
 aid of the executioner — or, in his own words, multis 
 gladiis, multis elogiis, (by innumerable sabres, by 
 innumerable records of condemnation.) Against this 
 man Marcus Avas warned by his imperial colleague 
 Lucius Veriis, in a very remarkable letter. After 
 expressing his suspicions of him generally, the writer 
 goes on to say — ' I would you had him closely 
 watched. For he is a general disliker of us and of our 
 doings ; he is gathering together an enormous treasure, 
 and he makes an open jest of our literary pursuits. 
 You, for instance, he calls a philosophizing old woman, 
 and me a dissolute buffoon and scamp. Consider what 
 you would have done. For my part, I bear the fellow 
 no ill will ; but again I say, take care that he does not 
 do a mischief to yourself, or your children.' 
 
 Tbe answer of Marcus is noble and characteristic ; 
 ' I have read your letter, and I will confess to you 1 
 think it more scrupulously timid than becomes an
 
 THE C.LSAKS. 171 
 
 emperor, and timid in a way unsuited to the spirit of 
 our times. Consider this — if the empire is destined 
 to Cassius hy the decrees of Providence, in that case it 
 will not be in our power to put him to death, however 
 much we may desire to do so. You know your great- 
 grandfather's saying, — No prince ever killed his own 
 heir — no man, that is, ever yet prevailed against one 
 whom Providence had marked out as his successor. 
 On the other hand, if providence opposes him, then, 
 without any cruelty on our part, he will spontaneously 
 fall into Mime snare spread for him hy destiny. Be- 
 sides, wc cannot treat a man as under impeachment 
 whom nohody impeaches, and whom, hy your own 
 confession, the soldiers love. Then again, in cases of 
 high treason, even those criminals who are convicted 
 upon the clearest evidence, yet, as friendless and 
 deserted persons contending against the powerful, and 
 matched against those who are armed with the whole 
 authority of the State, seems to suffer some wrong. 
 You remember what your grandfather said : Wretched, 
 indeed, is the fate of princes, who then first ohtain 
 credit in any charges of conspiracy which they allege — 
 when they happen to seal the validity of their charges 
 against the plotters, by falling martyrs to the plot. 
 Domitian it was, in fact, who first uttered this truth ; 
 but I choose rather to place it under the authority of 
 Hadrian, because the sayings of tyrants, even when 
 they are true and happy, carry less weight with them
 
 172 THE CAESARS. 
 
 than naturally they ought. For Cassius, then, let him 
 keep his present temper and inclinations ; and the more 
 so — heing (as he is) a good General — austere in his 
 discipline, brave, and one whom the State cannot afford 
 to lose, For as to what you insinuate — that I ought 
 to provide for my children's interests, by putting this 
 man judicially out of the way, very frankly I say to 
 you — Perish my children, if Avidius shall deserve 
 more attachment than they, and if it shall prove salu- 
 tary to the State that Cassius should live rather than 
 the children of Marcus.' 
 
 This letter affords a singular illustration of fatalism, 
 such certainly as we might expect in a Stoic, but car- 
 ried even to a Turkish excess ; and not theoretically 
 professed only, but practically acted upon in a case of 
 capital hazard. That no prince ever killed his oion 
 successor, i. e. that it was in vain for a prince to put 
 conspirators to death, because, by the very possibility 
 of doing so, a demonstration is obtained that such 
 conspirators had never been destined to prosper, is as 
 condensed and striking an expression of fatalism as 
 ever has been devised. The rest of the letter is truly 
 noble, and breathes the very soul of careless magna- 
 nimity reposing upon conscious innocence. Meantime 
 Cassius increased in power and influence : his army 
 had become a most formidable engine of his ambition 
 through its restored discipline ; and his own authority 
 was sevenfold greater, because he had himself created
 
 THE C/ESARS. 173 
 
 that discipline in the face of unequalled temptations 
 hourly renewed and rooted in the very centre of his 
 head-quarters. ' Daphne, hy Orontes,' a suhurb of 
 Antioch, was infamous for its seductions ; and Dajj/tnic 
 luxury had become proverbial for expressing an excess 
 of voluptuousness, such as other places could not rival 
 by mere defect of means, and preparations elaborate 
 enough to sustain it in all its varieties of mode, or to 
 conceal it from public notice. In the very purlieus 
 of this great nest, or sty of sensuality, within sight and 
 touch of its pollutions, did he keep his army fiercely 
 reined up, daring and defying them, as it were, to taste 
 of the banquet whose very odor they inhaled. 
 
 Thus provided with the means, and improved instru- 
 ments, for executing his purposes, he broke out into 
 open rebellion ; and, though hostile to the pri/icipatus, 
 or personal supremacy of one man, he did not feel his 
 republican purism at all wounded by the style and title 
 of Impcrator, — that being a military term, and a mere 
 titular honor, which had co-existed with the severest 
 forms of republicanism. lmperator, then, he was 
 saluted and proclaimed ; and doubtless the writer of 
 the warning letter from Syria would now declare that 
 the sequel had justified the fears which Marcus had 
 thought so unbecoming to a Roman emperor. But 
 again Marcus would have said, ' Let us wait for tho 
 sequel of the sequel,' and that would have justified 
 him. It is often found by experience that men, who
 
 174 THE C^ESATCS. 
 
 have learned to reverence a person in authority chiefly 
 by his offices of correction applied to their own aberra- 
 tions, — who have known and feared him, in short, in 
 his character of reformer, — will be more than usually 
 inclined to desert him on his first movement in the 
 direction of wrong. Their obedience being founded 
 on fear, and fear being never wholly disconnected from 
 hatred, they naturally seize with eagerness upon the 
 first lawful pretext for disobedience : the luxury of 
 revenge is, in such a case, too potent, — a meritorious 
 disobedience too novel a temptation, — to have a 
 chance of being rejected. Never, indeed, does eri-ing 
 human nature look more abject than in the person of 
 a severe exactor of duty, who has immolated thousands 
 to the wrath of offended law, suddenly himself becom- 
 ing a capital offender, a glozing tempter in search of 
 accomplices, and in that character at once standing 
 before the meanest of his own dependents as a self- 
 deposed officer, liable to any man's arrest, and, ipso 
 facto, a suppliant for his own mercy. The stern and 
 haughty Cassius, who had so often tightened the cords 
 of discipline until they threatened to snap asunder, 
 now found, experimentally, the bitterness of these 
 obvious truths. The trembling sentinel now looked 
 insolently in his face ; the cowering legionary, with 
 whom ' to hear was to obey,' now mused or even 
 bandied words upon his orders ; the great lieutenants 
 of his office, who stood next to his own person in
 
 THE OJBSABS. 175 
 
 authority, were preparing fur revolt, open or secret, 
 as circumstances should prescribe ; not the accuser 
 only, but the very avenger, was upon his steps ; Neme- 
 sis, that Nemesis who once so closely adhered to the 
 name and fortunes of the lawful Caesar, turning against 
 every one of his assassins the edge of his own assassi- 
 nating sword, was already at his heels ; and in the 
 midst of a sudden prosperity, and its accompanying 
 shouts of gratulation, he heard the sullen knells of 
 approaching death. Antioch, it was true, the great Ro- 
 man capital of the Orient, bore him, for certain motives 
 of self-interest, peculiar good-will. But there was no 
 city of the world in which the Roman Caesar did not 
 reckon many liege-men and partisans. And the very 
 hands, which dressed his altars and crowned his Praeto- 
 rian pavilion, might not improbably in that same hour 
 put an edge upon the sabre which was to avenge the 
 injuries of the too indulgent and long suffering Anto- 
 ninus. Meantime, to give a color of patriotism to his 
 treason, Cassius alleged public motives ; in a letter, 
 which he wrote after asuming the purple, he says : 
 ' "Wretched empire, miserable state, which endures 
 these hungry blood-suckers battening on her vitals ! — 
 A worthy man, doubtless, is Marcus ; who, in his eager- 
 ness to be reputed clement, suffers those to live whose 
 conduct he himself abhors. Where is that L. Cassias, 
 whose name I vainly inherit ? "Where is that Marcus, 
 — not Aurelius, mark you, but Cato Censorius?
 
 176 THE CyESARS. 
 
 "Where the good old discipline of ancestral times, long 
 since indeed disused, hut now not so much as looked 
 after in our aspirations ? Marcus Antoninus is a 
 scholar ; he enacts the philosopher ; and he tries con- 
 clusions upon the four elements, and upon the nature 
 of the soul ; and he discourses most learnedly upon the 
 Honestum ; and concerning the Summum Bonum he is 
 unanswerable. Meanwhile, is he learned in the inter- 
 ests of the State ? Can he argue a point upon the public 
 economy ? You see what a host of sabres is required, 
 what a host of impeachments, sentences, executions, 
 before the commonwealth can reassume its ancient 
 integrity ! What ! shall I esteem as proconsuls, as 
 governors, those who for that end only deem themselves 
 invested with lieutenancies or great senatorial appoint- 
 ments, that they may gorge themselves with the provin- 
 cial luxuries and wealth ? No doubt you heard in 
 what way our friend the philosopher gave the place of 
 praetorian prefect to one who but three days before 
 was a bankrupt, — insolvent, by G — , and a beggar. 
 Be not you content: that same gentlemen is now as 
 rich as a prefect should be ; and has been so, I tell 
 you, any time these three days. And how, I pray you, 
 how — how, my good sir ? How, but out of the bowels 
 of the provinces, and the marrow of their bones ? But 
 no matter, let them be rich ; let them be blood-suckers ; 
 so much, God willing, shall they regorge into the 
 treasury of the empire. Let but Heaven smile upon
 
 i ii i: l 1>\RS. 177 
 
 our party, and the Cassiani shall return to the republic 
 its old impersonal supremacy.' 
 
 But Heaven did not smile ; nor did man. Rome 
 heard with bitter indignation of this old traitor's in- 
 gratitude, and his false mask of republican civism. 
 Excepting Marcus Aurclius himself, not one man but 
 thirsted for revenge. And that was soon obtained. 
 He and all his supporters, one after the other, rapidly 
 fell (as Marcus had predicted) into snares laid by the 
 officers who continued true to tbeir allegiance. Except 
 the family and household of Cassius, there remained in 
 a short time none for the vengeance of the Senate, or 
 for the mercy of the Emperor. In them centred the 
 last arrears of hope and fear, of chastisement or par- 
 don, depending upon this memorable revolt. And 
 about the disposal of their persons arose the final 
 question to which the case gave birth. The letters yet 
 remain in which the several parties interested gave 
 utterance to the passions which possessed them. Faus- 
 tina, the Empress, urged her husband with feminine 
 violence to adopt against his prisoners comprehensive 
 acts of vengeance. ' Xoli parccre hominibus,' savs 
 she, ' qui tibi non popcrcerunt ; et nee mihi nee filiis 
 nostris parccrcnt, si vicissent.' And elsewhere she 
 irritates his wrath against the army as accomplices for 
 the time, and as a body of men ' qui, nisi opprimuntur, 
 opprimunt.' We may be sure of the result. After 
 commending her zeal for her own family, he says,
 
 178 THE C.l^AES. 
 
 
 Ego vero ot ejus liberis parcara, ct genero, et uxori ; 
 et ad senatum scribam ne aut proscriptio gravior sit, 
 
 ant poena cvudelior ; ' adding that, had his counsels 
 prevailed, not even Cassius himself should have per- 
 ished. As to his relatives, ' Why,' he asks, ' should 
 I speak of pardon to them, who indeed have done no 
 wrong, and are hlamcless even in purpose ? ' Accord- 
 ingly, his letter. of intercession to the Senate protests, 
 that, so far from asking for further victims to the crime 
 of Avidius Cassius, would to God he could call back 
 from the dead many of those who had fallen! With 
 immense applause, and with turbulent acclamations, 
 the Senate granted all his requests ' in consideration of 
 his philosophy, of his long-sufTering, of his learning 
 and accomplishments, of his nobility, of his innocence.' 
 And until a monster arose who delighted in the blood 
 of the guiltless, it is recorded that the posterity of 
 Avidius Cassius lived in security, and were admitted 
 to honors and public distinctions by favor of him, 
 whose life and empire that memorable traitor had 
 sought to undermine under the favor of his guileless 
 master's too confiding magnanimity.
 
 THE CiESABS. 179 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Roman empire, and the Roman emperors, it 
 might naturally he supposed hy one who had not as 
 yet traversed that tremendous chapter in the history 
 of man, would he likely to present a separate and 
 almost equal interest. The empire, in the first place, 
 as the most magnificent monument of human power 
 which our planet has beheld, must for that single 
 reason, even though its records were otherwise of little 
 interest, fix upon itself the very keenest gaze from all 
 succeeding ages to the end of time. To trace the 
 fortunes and revolution of that unrivalled monarchy 
 over which the Roman eagle hrooded, to follow the 
 dilapidations of that aerial arch, which silently and 
 steadily through seven centuries ascended under the 
 colossal architecture of the children of Romulus, to 
 watch the unweaving of the golden anas, and step by 
 
 p to see paralysis stealing over the once perfect 
 cohesion of the republican creations, — cannot but in- 
 sure a severe, though melancholy delight. On its own 
 separate account, the decline of this throne-shattering 
 power must and will engage the foremost place 
 amongst all historical reviewers. The ' dislimning ' 
 and unmoulding of some mighty pageantry in the
 
 180 THE CAESARS. 
 
 heavens has its own appropriate grandeurs, no less 
 than the gathering of its cloudy pomps. The going 
 down of the sun is contemplated with no less awe 
 than his rising. Nor is any thing portentous in its 
 growth, which is not also portentous in the steps and 
 ' moments ' of its decay. Hence, in the second place, 
 we might presume a commensurate interest in the 
 characters and fortunes of the successive emperors. If 
 the empire challenged our first survey, the next would 
 seem due to the Caesars who guided its course ; to the 
 great ones who retarded, and to the had ones who 
 precipitated, its ruin. 
 
 Such might he the natural expectation of an inex- 
 perienced reader. But it is not so. The Caesars, 
 throughout their long line, are not interesting, neither 
 personally in themselves, nor derivatively from the 
 tragic events to which their history is attached. Their 
 whole interest lies in their situation — in the unap- 
 proachable altitude of their thrones. But considered 
 with a reference to their human qualities, scarcely one 
 in the whole series can be viewed with a human 
 interest apart from the circumstances of his position. 
 ' Pass like shadows, so depart ! ' The reason for this 
 defect of all personal variety of interest in these enor- 
 mous potentates, must be sought in the constitution cf 
 their power and the very necessities of their office. 
 Even the greatest among them, those who by way of 
 distinction were called the Great, as Constantino and
 
 THE CJESAE8. 1 Si 
 
 Theodosius, wore no I great, for they were not mag- 
 nanimous ; nor could they be so under their tenure of 
 power, which made it a duty to be suspicious, and, by 
 fastening upon all varieties of original temper one dire 
 necessity of bloodshed, extinguished under this monot- 
 onous cloud of cruel jealousy and everlasting panic 
 every characteristic feature of genial human nature, 
 that would else have emerged through so long a train 
 of princes. There is a remarkable story told of Aprip- 
 pina, that, upon some occasions, when a wizard an- 
 nounced to her, as truths which he had read in the 
 heavens, the two fatal necessities impending over her 
 son, — one that he should ascend to empire, the other 
 that he should murder herself, she replied in these 
 stern and memorable words — Occidat ditm imperet. 
 Upon which a continental writer comments thus : 
 4 Never before or since have three such words issued 
 from the lips of woman ; and in truth, one knows not 
 which most to abominate or admire — the aspiring 
 princess, or the loving mother. Meantime, in these 
 few words lies naked to the day, in its whole hideous 
 deformity, the very essence of Romanism and the 
 impcratorial power, and one might here consider the 
 mother of Nero as the impersonation of that monstrous 
 condition.' 
 
 This is true : Occidat dum imperet, was the watch- 
 word and very cognizance of the Roman imperator. 
 But almost equally it was his watchword — OccidatW
 
 182 THE C.ESARS. 
 
 dum imperet. Doing or suffering, the Csesars were 
 almost equally involved in bloodshed ; very few that 
 were not murderers, and nearly all were themselves 
 murdered. 
 
 The empire, then, must he regarded as the primary 
 object of our interest ; and it is in this way only that 
 any secondary interest arises for the emperors. Now, 
 with respect to the empire, the first question which 
 presents itself is, — Whence, that is, from what causes 
 and from what era, we are to date its decline ? Gib- 
 bon, as we all know, dates it from the reign of Com- 
 modus ; but certainly upon no sufficient, or even 
 plausible grounds. Our own opinion we shall state 
 boldly : the empire itself, from the very era of its 
 establishment, was one long decline of the Roman 
 power. A vast monarchy had been created and con- 
 solidated by the all-conquering instincts of a republic — 
 cradled and nursed in wars, and essentially warlike by 
 means of all its institutions 43 and by the habits of the 
 people. This monarchy had been of too slow a growth 
 — too gradual, and too much according to the regular 
 stages of nature herself in its development, to have any 
 chance of being other than well cemented : the cohe- 
 sion of its parts was intense ; seven centuries of growth 
 demand one or two at least for palpable decay ; and it 
 is only for harlequin empires like that of Napoleon, 
 run up with the rapidity of pantomime, to fall asunder 
 under the instant re-action of a few false moves in
 
 IHJB C-1.sa.KS. 183 
 
 politics, or a single unfortunate campaign. Hence it 
 \\.i<. ami from the prudence of Augustus acting through 
 a very long reign, sustained at no very distant interval 
 by the personal inspection and revisions of Hadrian, 
 that for some time the Roman power seemed to be 
 stationary. What else could be expected? The mere 
 strength of the impetus derived from the republican 
 institutions could not but propagate itself, and cause 
 even a motion in advance, for some time after those 
 institutions had themselves given way. And, besides, 
 the military institutions survived all others; and the 
 army continued very much the same in its discipline 
 and composition, long after Rome and all its civic in- 
 stitutions had bent before an utter revolution. It was 
 very possible even that emperors should have arisen 
 with martial propensities, and talents capable of mask- 
 ing, for many years, by specious but transitory con- 
 quests, the causes that were silently sapping the foun- 
 dations of Roman supremacy ; and thus by accidents of 
 personal character and taste, an empire might even 
 have expanded itself in appearance, which, by all its 
 permanent and real tendencies, was even then shrink- 
 ing within narrower limits, and travelling downwards 
 to dissolution. In reality one such emperor there was. 
 Trajan, whether by martial inclinations, or (as is 
 supposed by some) by dissatisfaction with his own 
 position at Rome, when brought into more immediate 
 connection with the senate, was driven into needless
 
 184 THE CAESARS. 
 
 war ; and lie achieved conquests in the direction of 
 Daeia as well as Parthia. But that these conquests 
 were not substantial, — that they were connected by 
 no true cement of cohesion with the existing empire, is 
 evident from the rapidity with which they were aban- 
 doned. In the next reign, the empire had already 
 recoiled within its former limits ; and in two reigns 
 further on, under Marcus Antoninus, though a prince 
 of elevated character and warlike in his policy, we find 
 such concessions of territory made to the Marcomanni 
 and others, as indicate too plainly the shrinking ener- 
 gies of a waning empire. In reality, if we consider 
 the polar opposition, in point of interest and situation, 
 between the great officers of the republic and the 
 Augustus or Caesar of the empire, we cannot fail to see 
 the immense effect which that difference must have 
 had upon the permanent spirit of conquest. Caesar was 
 either adopted or elected to a situation of infinite luxury 
 and enjoyment. He had no interests to secure by 
 fighting in person ; and he had a powerful interest in 
 preventing others from fighting ; since in that way only 
 he could raise up competitors to himself, and dangerous 
 seducers of the army. A consul, on the other hand, 
 or great lieutenant of the senate, had nothing to enjoy 
 or to hope for, when his term of office should have 
 expired, unless according to his success in creating 
 military fame and influence for himself. Those 
 Caesars who fought whilst the empire was or seemed to
 
 THE C.ESA.RS. 185 
 
 be stationary, as Trajan, did bo from personal taste. 
 Those who fought in after centuries, when the decay 
 became apparent, and dangers drew nearer, as Aure- 
 lian, did so from the necessities of fear ; and under 
 neither impulse were they likely to make durable 
 conquests. The spirit of conquest having therefore 
 departed at the very time when conquest would have 
 become more difficult even to the republican energies, 
 both from remoteness of ground and from the martial 
 character of the chief nations which stood beyond the 
 frontier, — it was a matter of necessity that with the 
 republican institutions should expire the whole principle 
 of territorial aggrandizement ; and that, if the empire 
 seemed to be stationary for some time after its estab- 
 lishment by Julius, and its final settlement by Augustus, 
 this was through no strength of its own, or inherent in 
 its own constitution, but through the continued action 
 of that strength which it had inherited from the repub- 
 lic. In a philosophical sense, therefore, it may be 
 affirmed, that the empire of the Caesars was always in 
 decline ; ceasing to go forward, it could not do other 
 than retrograde ; and even the first appearances of de- 
 cline can, with no propriety, be referred to the reign of 
 Commodus. His vices exposed him to public contempt 
 and assassination ; but neither one nor the other had 
 any effect upon the strength of the empire. Here, 
 therefore, is one just subject of complaint against 
 Gibbon, that he has dated the declension of the Roman 
 16
 
 186 THE CESARS. 
 
 power from a commencement arbitrarily assumed ; 
 another, and a heavier, is, that he has failed to notice 
 the steps and separate indications of decline as they 
 arose, — the moments (to speak in the language of 
 dynamics) through which the decline travelled onwards 
 to its consummation. It is also a grievous offence as 
 regards the true purposes of history, — and one which, 
 in a complete exposition of the imperial history, we 
 should have a right to insist on, — that Gibbon brings 
 forward only such facts as allow of a scenical treatment, 
 and seems everywhere, by the glancing style of his 
 allusions, to presuppose an acquaintance with that very 
 history which he undertakes to deliver. Our immedi- 
 ate purpose, however, is simply to characterize the 
 office of emperor, and to notice such events and changes 
 as operated for evil, and for a final effect of decay, upon 
 the Caesars or their empire. As the best means of 
 realizing it, we shall rapidly review the history of both, 
 premising that we confine ourselves to the true Caesars, 
 and the true empire of the West. 
 
 The first overt act of weakness — the first expres- 
 sion of conscious declension, as regarded the foreign 
 enemies of Rome, occurred in the reign of Hadrian ; 
 for it is a very different thing to forbear making con- 
 quests, and to renounce them when made. It is 
 possible, however, that the cession then made of 
 Mesopotamia and Armenia, however sure to be inter- 
 preted into the language of fear by the enemy, did
 
 THE OSSAB8. 187 
 
 not imply any such principle in this emperor. He 
 was of a civic and paternal spirit, and anxious for 
 the substantial welfare of the empire rather than its 
 ostentatious glory. The internal administration of 
 affairs had very much gone into neglect since the 
 times of Augustus ; and Hadrian was perhaps right in 
 supposing that he could effect more puhlic good by an 
 extensive progress through the empire, and by a per- 
 sonal correction of abuses, than by any military enter- 
 prise. It is, besides, asserted, that he received an 
 indemnity in money for the provinces beyond the 
 Euphrates. But still it remains true, that in his reign 
 the God Terminus made his first retrograde motion ; 
 and this emperor became naturally an object of public 
 obloquy at Rome, and his name fell under the super- 
 stitious ban of a fatal tradition connected with the 
 foundation of the capital. The two Antonines, Titus 
 and Marcus, who came next in succession, were truly 
 good and patriotic princes ; perhaps the only princes in 
 the whole series who combined the virtues of private 
 and of public life. In their reigns the frontier line was 
 maintained in its integrity, and at the expense of some 
 severe fighting under Marcus, who was a strenuous 
 general at the same time that he was a severe student. 
 It is, however, true, as we observed above, that, by 
 allowing a settlement within the Roman frontier to a 
 barbarous people, Marcus Auielius raised the first 
 ominous precedent in favor of those Gothic, Vandal,
 
 188 THE CvESAKS. 
 
 and Frankish hives, who were as yet hidden behind a 
 cloud of years. Homes had been obtained by Trans- 
 Danubian barbarians upon the sacred territory of Rome 
 and Caesar : that fact remained upon tradition : whilst 
 the terms upon which they had been obtained, how 
 much or how little connected with fear, necessarily 
 became liable to doubt and to oblivion. Here we pause 
 to remark, that the first twelve Caesars, together with 
 Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines, 
 making seventeen emperors, compose the first of four 
 nearly equal groups, who occupied the throne in suc- 
 cession until the extinction of the Western Empire. 
 And at this point be it observed, — that is, at the 
 termination of the first group, — we take leave of all 
 genuine virtue. In no one of the succeeding princes, 
 if we except Alexander Severus, do we meet with any 
 goodness of heart, or even amiablcness of manners. 
 The best of the future emperors, in a public sense, 
 were harsh and repulsive in private character. 
 
 The second group, as we have classed them, termi- 
 nating with Philip the Arab, commences with Commo- 
 dus. This unworthy prince, although the son of the 
 excellent Marcus Antoninus, turned out a monster of 
 debauchery. At the moment of his father's death, he 
 was present in person at the head- quarters of the army 
 on the Danube, and of necessity partook in many of 
 their hardships. This it was which furnished his evil 
 counsellors with their sole argument for urging his
 
 THE C2E8AE8. 189 
 
 departure to the capital. A council having been con- 
 vened, tlrr faction of court sycophants pressed upon 
 his attention the inclemency of the climate, contrasting 
 it with the genial skies and sunny fields of Italy ; and 
 the season, which happened to be winter, gave strength 
 to their representations. What! would the emperor 
 be content for ever to hew out the frozen water with an 
 axe before he could assuage his thirst ? And, again, 
 the total want of fruit-trees — did that recommend their 
 present station as a fit one for the imperial court ? 
 Commodus, ashamed to found his objections to the 
 station upon grounds so unsoldierly as these, affected 
 to be moved by political reasons: some great senatorial 
 house might take advantage of his distance from home, 
 — might seize the palace, fortify it, and raise levies in 
 Italy capable of sustaining its pretensions to the throne. 
 These arguments were combated by Pompeianus, who, 
 besides his personal weight as an officer, had married 
 the eldest sister of the young emperor. Shame pre- 
 vailed for the present with Commodus, and he dis- 
 missed the council with an assurance that he would 
 think farther of it. The sequel was easy to foresee. 
 Orders were soon issued for the departure of the court 
 to Rome, and the task of managing the barbarians of 
 Dacia was delegated to lieutenants. The system upon 
 which these officers executed their commission was a 
 mixed one of terror and persuasion. Some they defeat- 
 ed in battle ; and these were the majority ; for Herodian
 
 190 THE C^SARS. 
 
 says, nXtlgeg r<oi QaqflaQwv onXolg i/aomaavjo ; others they 
 bribed into peace by large sums of money.- And 
 no doubt this last article in the policy of Commodus 
 was that which led Gibbon to assign to this reign the 
 first rudiments of the Roman declension. But it should 
 be remembered, tbat, virtually, this policy was but the 
 further prosecution of that which had already been 
 adopted by .Marcus Aurelius. Concessions and temper- 
 aments of any sort or degree showed that the Pannonian 
 frontier was in too formidable a condition to be treated 
 with uncompromising rigor. To aliq^ivov dnovftsrog, pur- 
 chasing an immunity from all further anxiety, Commo- 
 dus (as the historian expresses it) nUvxa ISiSo r'u utruiuaa 
 — conceded all demands whatever. His journey to 
 Rome was one continued festival : and the whole 
 population of Rome turned out to welcome him. At 
 this period he was undoubtedly the darling of the 
 people : his personal beauty was splendid ; and he was 
 connected by blood with some of the greatest nobility. 
 Over this flattering scene of hope and triumph clouds 
 soon gathered ; with the mob, indeed, there is reason 
 to think that he continued a favorite to the last ; but 
 the respectable part of the citizens were speedily 
 disgusted with his self-degradation, and came to hate 
 him even more than ever or by any class he bad been 
 loved. The Roman pride never shows itself more 
 conspicuously throughout all history, than in the aliena- 
 tion of heart which inevitably followed any great and
 
 THE CjESAUS. 191 
 
 continued outrages upon liis own maj( -ly, committed 
 by their emperor. Cruelties the most atrocious, acts of 
 vengeance the most bloody, fatricide, parricide, all were 
 viewed with more toleration than oblivion of his own 
 inviolable sanctity. Hence we imagine the wrath with 
 which Rome would behold Commodus, under the eyes 
 of four hundred thousand spectators, making himself 
 a party to the contests of gladiators. In his earlier 
 exhibition as an archer, it is possible that his matchless 
 dexterity, and his unerring eye, would avail to mitigate 
 the censures : but when the Roman Imperator actually 
 descended to the arena in the garb and equipments of 
 a servile prize-fighter, and personally engaged in com- 
 bat with sucti antagonists, having previously submitted 
 to their training and discipline — the public indigna- 
 tion rose to a height, which spoke aloud the language 
 of encouragement to conspiracy and treason. These 
 were not wanting ; three memorable plots against his 
 life were defeated ; one of them (that of Maternus, the 
 robber) accompanied with romantic circumstances, 44 
 which we have narrated in an earlier paper of this 
 series. Another was set on foot by his eldest sister, 
 Lucilla ; nor did her close relationship protect her from 
 capital punishment. In that instance, the immediate 
 agent of her purposes, Quintianus, a young man, of 
 signal resolution and daring, who had attempted to stab 
 the emperor at the entrance of the amphitheatre, though 
 baffled in his purpose, uttered a word which rang con-
 
 192 THE CiESA'RS. 
 
 tinually in the ears of Commodus, and poisoned his 
 peace of mind for ever. His vengeance, perhaps, was 
 thus more effectually accomplished than if he had at 
 once dismissed his victim from life. ' The senate,' he 
 had said, ' send thee this through me : ' and hence- 
 forward the senate was the object of unslumbering 
 suspicions to the emperor. Yet the public suspicions 
 settled upon a different quarter ; and a very memorable 
 scene must have pointed his own in the same direction, 
 supposing that he had been previously blind to his 
 danger. 
 
 On a day of great solemnity, when Rome had as- 
 sembled her myriads in the amphitheatre, just at the 
 very moment when the nobles, the magistrates, the 
 priests, all, in short, that was venerable or conse- 
 crated in the State, with the Imperator in their centre, 
 had taken their seats, and were waiting for the opening 
 of the shows, a stranger, in the robe of a philosopher, 
 bearing a staff in his hand, (which also was the pro- 
 fessional ensign 45 of a philosopher,) stepped forward, 
 and, by the waving of his hand, challenged the atten- 
 tion of Commodus. Deep silence ensued : upon which, 
 in a few words, ominous to the ear as the handwriting 
 on the wall to the eye of Belshazzar, the stranger 
 unfolded to Commodus the instant peril which menaced 
 both his life and his throne, from his great servant Pe- 
 rennius. What personal purpose of benefit to himself 
 this stranger might have connected with his public
 
 TJIK CjESAKS. 193 
 
 warning, or by whom he might liave been suborned, 
 was never discovered ; for he was instantly arrested 
 by the agents of the great officer whom he had de- 
 nounced, dragged away to punishment, and put to a 
 cruel death. Commodus dissembled his panic for the 
 present ; but soon after, having received undeniable 
 proofs (aa is alleged) of the treason imputed to Peren- 
 nius, in the shape of a coin which had been struck by 
 his son, he caused the father to be assassinated ; and, 
 on the same day, by means of forged letters, before 
 this news could reach the son, who commanded the 
 Illyrian armies, he lured him also to destruction, under 
 the belief that he was obeying the summons of his 
 father to a private interview on the Italian frontier. 
 So perished those enemies, if enemies they really 
 were. But to these tragedies succeeded others far 
 more comprehensive in their mischief, and in more 
 continuous succession than is recorded upon any other 
 page of universal history. Rome was ravaged by a 
 pestilence — by a famine — by riots amounting to a 
 civil war — by a dreadful massacre of the unarmed 
 mob — by shocks of earthquake — and, finally, by a 
 fire which consumed the national bank, 46 and the most 
 sumptuous buildings of the city. To these horrors, 
 with a rapidity characteristic of the Roman depravity, 
 and possibly only under the most extensive demorali- 
 zation of the public mind, succeeded festivals of gor- 
 geous pomp, and amphitheatrical exhibitions, upon a 
 17
 
 194 THE CJESARS. 
 
 scale of grandeur absolutely unparalleled by all former 
 attempts. Then were beheld, and familiarized to the 
 eyes of the Roman mob — to children — and to women, 
 animals as yet known to us, says Herodian, only in 
 pictures. Whatever strange or rare animal could be 
 drawn from the depths of India, from Siam and Pegu, 
 or from the unvisited nooks of Ethiopia, were now 
 brought together as subjects for the archery of the 
 universal lord. 47 Invitations (and the invitations of 
 kings are commands) had been scattered on this occa- 
 sion profusely ; not, as heretofore, to individuals or to 
 families — but, as was in proportion to the occasion 
 where an emperor was the chief performer, to nations. 
 People were summoned by circles of longitude and 
 latitude to come and see [dtaouptvot a uyj nqortnov ^ts 
 iwQafiy.eoav fitjTt tjxtjxotioav — things that eye had not 
 seen nor ear heard of] the specious miracles of nature 
 brought together from arctic and from tropic deserts, 
 putting forth their strength, their speed, or their beauty, 
 and glorifying by their deaths the matchless hand of 
 the Roman king. There was beheld the lion from 
 Bilidulgerid, and the leopard from Hindostan — the 
 rein- deer from polar latitudes — the antelope from the 
 Zaara — and the lcigh, or gigantic stag, from Britain. 
 Thither came the buffalo and the bison, the white bull 
 of Northumberland and Galloway, the unicorn from 
 the regions of Nepaul or Thibet, the rhinoceros and 
 the river-horse from Senegal, with the elephant of
 
 the c;ksaks. 195 
 
 Ceylon or Siam. The ostrich and tlio camelcopard, 
 the wild ass and the /(bra, the chamois and the ibex 
 of Angora, — all brought their tributes of beauty or 
 deformity to these vast aceldamaa of Rome : their 
 savage voices ascended in tumultuous uproar to the 
 chambers of the capitol : a million of spectators sat 
 round them : standing in the centre was a single statu- 
 esque figure — the imperial sagittary, beautiful as an 
 Antinous, and majestic as a Jupiter, whose hand was 
 so steady and whose eye so true, that he was never 
 known to miss, and who, in this accomplishment at 
 least, was so absolute in his excellence, that, as we are 
 assured by a writer not disposed to flatter him, the 
 very foremost of the Parthian archers and of the Mau- 
 ritanian lancers \_Haqdvaaov ol Tofixqv ixqijievreg, xal Mav- 
 Quotwr of ixovrtttiv u<nzot~\ were not able to contend with 
 him. Juvenal, in a well known passage upon the dis- 
 proportionate endings of illustrious careers, drawing 
 one of his examples from Marius, says, that he ought, 
 for his own glory, and to make his end correspondent 
 to his life, to have died at the moment when he de- 
 scended from his triumphal chariot at the portals of 
 the capitol. And of Commodus, in like manner, it 
 may be affirmed, that, had lie died in the exercise of 
 his peculiar art, with a hecatomb of victims rendering 
 homage to his miraculous skill, by the regularity of 
 the files which they presented, as they lay stretched 
 out dying or dead upon the arena, — he would have
 
 196 THE C^SARS. 
 
 left a splendid and characteristic impression of him- 
 self upon that nation of spectators who had witnessed 
 his performance. He was the noblest artist in his 
 own profession that the world had seen — in archery 
 he was the Robin Hood of Rome ; he Avas in the very 
 meridian of his youth ; and he was the most beautiful 
 
 man of his Own times [tcov xa<)' savrov arSQwnuv y.uXlti 
 
 ivnQtntaTaro?']. He would therefore have looked the 
 part admirably of the dying gladiator ; and he would 
 have died in his natural vocation. But it was ordered 
 otherwise ; his death was destined to private malice, 
 and to an ignoble hand. And much obscurity still 
 rests upon the motives of the assassins, though its cir- 
 cumstances are reported with unusual minuteness of 
 detail. One thing is evident, that the public and 
 patriotic motives assigned by the perpetrators as the 
 remote causes of their conspiracy, cannot have been 
 the true ones. 
 
 The grave historian may sum up his character of 
 Commodus by saying that, however richly endowed 
 with natural gifts, he abused them all to bad purposes ; 
 that he derogated from his noble ancestors, and dis- 
 avowed the obligations of his illustrious name ; and, 
 as the climax of his offences, that he dishonored the 
 purple — ato/notg lirvrriStvfiaaiv — by the baseness of his 
 pursuits. All that is true, and more than that. But 
 these considerations were not of a nature to affect his 
 parasitical attendants very nearly or keenly. Yet the
 
 THE CJESARS. 197 
 
 story runs — that Marcia, his privileged mistress, deeply 
 affected hy the anticipation of some further outrages 
 upon his high dignity which he was then meditating, 
 had carried the importunity of her deprecations too far ; 
 that the irritated emperor had consequently inscribed 
 her name, in company with others, (whom he had 
 reason to tax with the same offence, or wjiom he sus- 
 pected of similar sentiments,) in his little black book, 
 or pocket souvenir of death ; that this book, being left 
 under the cushion of a sofa, had been conveyed into 
 the hands of Marcia by a little pet boy, called Philo- 
 Coinmodus, who was caressed equally by the emperor 
 and by Marcia ; that she had immediately called to her 
 aid, and to the participation of her plot, those who 
 participated in her danger ; and that the proximity of 
 their own intended fate had prescribed to them an 
 immediate attempt; the circumstances of which w r ere 
 these. At mid-day the emperor was accustomed to 
 bathe, and at the same time to take refreshments. On 
 this occasion, Marcia, agreeably to her custom, pre- 
 sented him with a goblet of wine medicated with 
 poison. Of this wine, having just returned from the 
 fatigues of the chase, Commodus drank freely, and 
 almost immediately fell into heavy slumbers ; from 
 which, however, he was soon aroused by deadly sick- 
 ness. That was a case which the conspirators had not 
 taken into their calculations ; and they now began to 
 fear that the violent vomiting which succeeded might
 
 198 THE C.ESA.RS. 
 
 throw off the poison. There was no time to be lost : 
 and the barbarous Marcia, who had so often slept in 
 the arms of the young emperor, was the person to 
 propose that he should now be strangled. A young 
 gladiator, named Narcissus, was therefore introduced 
 into the room; what passed is not known circumstan- 
 tially : but, .as the emperor was young and athletic, 
 though off his guard at the moment, and under the 
 disadvantage of sickness, and as he had himself been 
 regularly trained in the gladiatorial discipline, there 
 can be little doubt that the vile assassin would meet 
 with a desperate resistance. And thus, after all, there 
 is good reason to think that the emperor resigned his 
 life in the character of a dying gladiator. 48 
 
 So perished the eldest and sole surviving son of the 
 great Marcus Antoninus ; and the crown passed into 
 the momentary possession of two old men, who reigned 
 in succession each for a few weeks. The first of these 
 was Pertinax, an upright man, a good officer, and an 
 unseasonable reformer ; unseasonable for those times, 
 but more so for himself. Leetus, the ringleader in the 
 assassination of Commodus, had been at that time the 
 prsetorian prefect — an office which a German writer 
 considers as best represented to modern ideas by the 
 Turkish post of grand vizier. Needing a protector at 
 this moment, he naturally fixed his eyes upon Pertinax 
 — as then holding the powerful command of city pre- 
 fect (or governor of Home). Him therefore he recom-
 
 TIIK C.I BASS. 199 
 
 mended to the soldiery — that is, to the praetorian 
 cohorts. The soldiery had no particular objection to 
 the old general, if he and they could agree upon 
 terms ; his age being doubtless appreciated as a first- 
 rate recommendation, in a case where it insured a 
 speedy renewal of the lucrative bargain. 
 
 The only demur arose with Pertinax himself: he 
 had been leader of the troops in Britain, then superin- 
 tendent of the police in Rome, thirdly proconsul in 
 Africa, and finally consul and governor of Rome. In 
 these great official stations he stood near enough to the 
 throne to observe the dangers with which it was sur- 
 rounded ; and it is asserted that he declined the offered 
 dignity. But it is added, that, finding the choice 
 allowed him lay between immediate death 49 and ac- 
 ceptance, he closed with the proposals of the praetorian 
 cohorts, at the rate of about ninety-six pounds per 
 man ; which largess he paid by bringing to sale the 
 rich furniture of the last emperor. The danger which 
 usually threatened a Roman Caesar in such cases was 
 — lest he should not be able to fulfil his contract. 
 But in the case of Pertinax the danger began from the 
 moment when he had fulfilled it. Conceiving himself 
 to be now released from his dependency, he com- 
 menced his reforms, civil as well as military, with a 
 zeal which alarmed all those who had an interest in 
 maintaining the old abuses. To two great factions he 
 thus made himself especially obnoxious — to the prce-
 
 200 THE CiESARS. 
 
 torian cohorts, and to the courtiers under the last 
 reign. The connecting link between these two parties 
 was Lsetus, who belonged personally to the last, and 
 still retained his influence with the first. Possibly his 
 fears were alarmed ; but, at all events, his cupidity 
 was not satisfied. He conceived himself to have been 
 ill rewarded ; and, immediately resorting to the same 
 weapons which he had used against Commodus, he 
 stimulated the praetorian guards to murder the empe- 
 ror. Three hundred of them pressed into the palace : 
 Pertinax attempted to harangue them, and to vindicate 
 himself; but not being able to obtain a hearing, he 
 folded his robe about his head, called upon Jove the 
 Avenger, and was immediately dispatched. 
 
 The throne was again empty after a reign of about 
 eighty days ; and now came the memorable scandal of 
 putting up the empire to auction. There were two 
 bidders, Sulpicianus and Didius Julianus. The first, 
 however, at that time governor of Rome, lay under a 
 weight of suspicion, being the father-in-law of Per- 
 tinax, and likely enough to exact vengeance for his 
 murder. He was besides outbid by Julianus. Sulpi- 
 cian offered about one hundred and sixty pounds a 
 man to the guards ; his rival offered two hundred, and 
 assured them besides of immediate payment ; ' for,' 
 said he, ' I have the money at home, without need- 
 ing to raise it from the possessions of the crown.' 
 Upon this the empire was knocked down to the
 
 THE C.ESARS. 12 1 
 
 highest bidder. So shocking, however, was this ar- 
 rangement to the Roman pride, that the guards durst 
 not leave their new creation without military protec- 
 tion. The resentment of an unarmed mob, however, 
 soon ceased to be of foremost importance ; this resent- 
 ment extended rapidly to all the frontiers of the em- 
 pire, where the armies felt that the praetorian cohorts 
 had no exclusive title to give away the throne, and 
 their leaders felt, that, in a contest of this nature, their 
 own claims were incomparably superior to those of the 
 present occupant. Three great candidates therefore 
 started forward — Septimius Scvcrus, who commanded 
 the armies in lllyria, Pesccnnius Niger in Syria, and 
 Albinus in Britain. Scvcrus, as the nearest to Rome, 
 marched and possessed himself of that city. Ven- 
 geance followed upon all parties concerned in the late 
 murder. Julianus, unable to complete his bargain, had 
 already been put to death, as a deprecatory offering 
 to the approaching army. Severus himself inflicted 
 death upon Laetus, and dismissed the praetorian cohorts. 
 Thence marching against his Syrian rival, Niger, who 
 had formerly been his friend, and who was not want- 
 ing in military skill, he overthrew him in three great 
 battles. Niger fled to Antioch, the seat of his late 
 government, and was there decapitated. Meantime 
 Albinus, the British commander-in-chief, had already 
 been won over by the title of Caesar, or adopted heir 
 to the new Augustus. But the hollowness of this bribe
 
 202 THE CJESARS. 
 
 soon became apparent, and the two competitors met 
 to decide their pretensions at Lyons. In the great 
 battle which followed, Scverus fell from his horse, and 
 was at first supposed to be dead. But recovering, he 
 defeated his rival, who immediately committed suicide. 
 Sevcrus displayed his ferocious temper sufficiently by 
 sending the head of Albinus to Rome. Other expres- 
 sions of his natural character soon followed : lie sus- 
 pected strongly that Albinus had been favored by the 
 senate ; forty of that body, with their wives and chil- 
 dren, were immediately sacrificed to his wrath : but 
 he never forgave the rest, nor endured to live upon 
 terms of amity amongst them. Quitting Rome in dis- 
 gust, he employed himself first in making war upon the 
 Parthians, who had naturally, from situation, befriended 
 his Syrian rival. ' Their capital cities he overthrew ; 
 and afterwards, by way of employing his armies, made 
 war in Britain. At the city of York he died ; and to 
 his two sons, Geta and Caracalla, he bequeathed, as 
 his dying advice, a maxim of policy, which sufficiently 
 indicates the situation of the empire at that period ; it 
 was this — ' To enrich the soldiery at any price, and 
 to regard the rest of their subjects as so many ciphers.' 
 But, as a critical historian remarks, this was a short- 
 sighted and self-destroying policy ; since in no way is 
 the subsistence of the soldier made more insecure, 
 than by diminishing the general security of rights and 
 property to those who are not soldiers, from whom,
 
 THE C.ESARS. 203 
 
 after all, the funds must be sought, by which the 
 soldier himself is to be paid and nourished. The 
 two sons of Severus, whose bitter enmity is so memo- 
 rably put on record by their actions, travelled simul- 
 taneously to Koine; but so mistrustful of each other, 
 that at every stage the two princes took up their 
 quarters at different houses. Geta has obtained the 
 sympathy of historians, because he happened to be 
 the victim ; but there is reason to think, that each of 
 the brothers was conspiring against the other. The 
 weak credulity, rather than the conscious innocence, 
 of Geta, led to the catastrophe ; he presented himself 
 at a meeting with his brother in the presence of their 
 common mother, and was murdered by Caracalla in 
 his mother's arms. lie was, however, avenged ; the 
 horrors of that tragedy, and remorse for the twenty 
 thousand murders which had followed, never forsook 
 the guilty Caracalla. Quitting Rome, but pursued into 
 every region by the bloody image of his brother, the 
 emperor henceforward led a wandering life at the 
 head of his legions ; but never was there a better illus- 
 tration of the poet's maxim that 
 
 ' Remorse is as the mind in which it grows : 
 If that be gentle,' &c. 
 
 For the remorse of Caracalla put on no shape of 
 repentance. On the contrary, he carried anger and 
 oppression wherever he moved ; and protected him- 
 self from plots only by living in the very centre of a
 
 204 THE C.ESARS. 
 
 nomadic camp. Six years had passed away in this 
 manner, when a mere accident led to his assassination. 
 For the sake of security, the office of praetorian prefect 
 had heen divided hctween two commissioners, one for 
 military affairs, the other for civil. The latter of these 
 two officers was Opilius Macrinus. This man has, by 
 some historians, been supposed to have harbored no 
 bad intentions ; but, unfortunately, an astrologer had 
 foretold that he was destined to the throne. The 
 prophet was laid in irons at Rome, and letters were 
 dispatched to Caracalla, apprising him of the case. 
 These letters, as yet unopened, were transferred by 
 the emperor, then occupied in witnessing a race, to 
 Macrinus, who thus became acquainted with the whole 
 grounds of suspicion against himself, — grounds which, 
 to the jealousy of the emperor, he well knew would 
 appear substantial proofs. Upon this he resolved to 
 anticipate the emperor in the work of murder. The 
 head-quarters were then at Edessa ; and upon his 
 instigation, a disappointed centurion, named Martialis, 
 animated also by revenge for the death of his brother, 
 undertook to assassinate Caracalla. An opportunity 
 soon offered, on a visit which the prince made to the 
 celebrated temple of the moon at Carrha?. The attempt 
 was successful : the emperor perished ; but Martialis 
 paid the penalty of his crime in the same hour, being 
 shot by a Scythian archer of the body-guard. 
 
 Macrinus, after three days' interregnum, being
 
 mi. i v.-vvrs. 205 
 
 elected emperor, began his reign by purchasing a 
 peace from the Partbians. What the empire chiefly 
 needed at this moment, is evident from the next step 
 taken by this emperor. He labored to restore the 
 ancient discipline of the armies in all its rigor. He 
 was aware of the risk he ran in this attempt ; and that 
 he was so, is the best evidence of the strong necessity 
 which existed for reform. Perhaps, however, he might 
 have surmounted his difficulties and dangers, had he 
 met with no competitor round whose person the military 
 malcontents could rally. But such a competitor soon 
 arose ; and, to the astonishment of all the world, in the 
 person of a Syrian. The Emperor Scverus, on losing 
 his first wife, had resolved to strengthen the pretensions 
 of his family by a second marriage with some lady 
 having a regal ' genesis,' that is, whose horoscope 
 promised a regal destiny. Julia Domna, a native of 
 Syria, offered him this dowry, and she became the 
 mother of Geta. A sister of this Julia, called Moosa, 
 had, through two different daughters, two grandsons — 
 Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus. The mutineers 
 of the army rallied around the first of these ; a battle 
 was fought ; and Macrinus, with his son Diadumeni- 
 anus, whom he had adopted to the succession, Avere 
 captured and put to death. Heliogabalus succeeded, 
 and reigned in the monstrous manner which has ren- 
 dered his name infamous in history. In what way, 
 however, he lost the affections of the army, has never
 
 206 THE CAESARS. 
 
 been explained. His mother, Sooemias, the eldest 
 daughter of Moesa, had represented herself as the 
 concubine of Caracalla ; and Heliogabalus, being thus 
 accredited as the son of that emperor, whose memory 
 was dear to the soldiery, had enjoyed the full benefit 
 of that descent, nor can it be readily explained how he 
 came to lose it. 
 
 Here, in fact, we meet with an instance of that 
 dilemma which is so constantly occurring in the history 
 of the Caesars. If a prince is by temperament dis- 
 posed to severity of manners, and naturally seeks to 
 impress his own spirit upon the composition and disci- 
 pline of the army, we are sure to find that he was cut 
 off in his attempts by private assassination or by public 
 rebellion. On the other hand, if he wallows in sen- 
 suality, and is careless about all discipline, civil or 
 military, we then find as commonly that he loses the 
 esteem and affections of the army to some rival of 
 severer habits. And in the midst of such oscillations, 
 and with examples of such contradictory interpretation, 
 we cannot wonder that the Roman princes did not 
 oftener take warning by the misfortunes of their pre- 
 decessors. In the present instance, Alexander, the 
 cousin of Heliogabalus, without intrigues of his own, 
 and simply (as it appears) by the purity and sobriety 
 of his conduct, had alienated the affections of the army 
 from the reigning prince. Either jealousy or prudence 
 had led Heliogabalus to make an attempt upon his
 
 THE C.S8ABS. 207 
 
 rival's life; and this attempt had nearly cost him his 
 
 own through the mutiny which it caused. In a second 
 uproar, produced hy some fresh intrigues of the em- 
 peror against his cousin, the soldiers became unman- 
 ageable, and they refused to pause until they had 
 massacred Heliogabalus, together with his mother, and 
 raised his cousin Alexander to the throne. 
 
 The reforms of this prince, who reigned under the 
 name of Alexander Sevcrus, were extensive and search- 
 ing ; not only in his court, which he purged of all 
 notorious abuses, but throughout the economy of the 
 army. He cashiered, upon one occasion, an entire 
 legion ; he rcstoi-ed, as far as he was able, the ancient 
 discipline ; and, above all, he liberated the provinces 
 from military spoliation. ' Let the soldier,' said, he, 
 ' be contented with his pay ; and whatever more he 
 wants, let him obtain it by victory from the enemy, 
 not by pillage from his fellow-subject.' But whatever 
 might be the value or extent of his reforms in the 
 marching regiments, Alexander could not succeed in 
 binding the pru'torian guards to his yoke. Under the 
 guardianship of his mother Mammrca, the conduct of 
 state affairs had been submitted to a council of sixteen 
 persons, at the head of which stood the celebrated 
 Ulpian. To this minister the praetorians imputed the 
 reforms, and perhaps the whole spirit of reform ; for 
 they pursued him with a vengeance which is else hardly 
 to be explained. Many days was Ulpian protected by
 
 208 THE CiESARS. 
 
 the citizens of Rome, until the whole city was threat- 
 ened with conflagration ; he then fled to the palace of 
 the young emperor, who in vain attempted to save him 
 from his pursuers under the shelter of the imperial 
 purple. Ulpian was murdered before his eyes ; nor 
 was it found possible to punish the ringleader in this 
 foul conspiracy, until he had been removed by some- 
 thing like treachery to a remote government. 
 
 Meantime, a great revolution and change of dynasty 
 had been effected in Parthia ; the line of the Arsacidae 
 was terminated ; the Parthian empire was at an end ; 
 and the sceptre of Persia was restored under the new 
 race of the Sassanides. Artaxerxes, the first prince 
 of this race, sent an embassy of four hundred select 
 knights, enjoining the Roman emperor to content him- 
 self with Europe, and to leave Asia to the Persians. 
 In the event of a refusal, the ambassadors were in- 
 structed to offer a defiance to the Roman prince. Upon 
 such an insult, Alexander could not do less, with either 
 safety or dignity, than to prepare for war. It is prob- 
 able, indeed, that, by this expedition, which drew off 
 the minds of the soldiery from brooding upon the re- 
 forms which offended them, the life of Alexander was 
 prolonged. But the expedition itself was mismanaged, 
 or was unfortunate. This result, however, does not 
 seem chargeable upon Alexander. All the preparations 
 were admirable on the march, and up to the enemy's 
 frontier. The invasion it was, which, in a strategic
 
 tin; c.isAits. 209 
 
 sense, seems to have been ill combined. Three armies 
 were to have entered Persia simultaneously : one of 
 these, which was destined to act on a flank of the 
 general line, entangled itself in the marshy grounds 
 near Babylon, and was cut off by the archery of an 
 enemy whom it could not reach. The other wing, 
 acting upon ground impracticable for the manoeuvres 
 of the Persian cavalry, and supported by Chosroes the 
 king of Armenia, gave great trouble to Artaxerxes, 
 and, with adequate support from the other armies, 
 would doubtless have been victorious. But the central 
 army, under the conduct of Alexander in person, 
 discouraged by the destruction of one entire wing, 
 remained stationary in Mesopotamia throughout the 
 summer, and, at the close of the campaign, was with- 
 drawn to Antioch, re infectd. It has been observed 
 that great mystery hangs over the operations and issue 
 of this short war. Thus much, however, is evident, 
 that nothing but the previous exhaustion of the Persian 
 king saved the Roman armies from signal discomfiture ; 
 and even thus there is no ground for claiming a vic- 
 tory (as most historians do) to the Roman arms. Any 
 termination of the Persian war, however, whether 
 glorious or not, was likely to be personally injurious 
 to Alexander, by allowing leisure to the soldiery for 
 recurring to their grievances. Sensible, no doubt, of 
 this, Alexander was gratified by the occasion which 
 then arose for repressing the hostile movements of the 
 18
 
 210 THE C.ESARS. 
 
 Germans. He led his army off upon this expedition ; 
 hut their temper was gloomy and threatening ; and at 
 length, after reaching the seat of war, at Mentz, an 
 open mutiny hrokc out under the guidance of Maximin, 
 which terminated in the murder of the emperor and 
 his mother. By Herodian the discontents of the army 
 are referred to the ill management of the Persian 
 campaign, and the unpromising commencement of the 
 new war in Germany. But it seems probable that a 
 dissolute and wicked army, like that of Alexander, had 
 not murmured under the too little, but the too much 
 of military service ; not the buying a truce with gold 
 seems to have offended them, but the having led them 
 at all upon an enterprise of danger and hardship. 
 
 Maximin succeeded, whose feats of strength, when 
 he first courted the notice of the Emperor Severus, 
 have been described by Gibbon. He was at that 
 period a Thracian peasant ; since then he had risen 
 gradually to high offices ; but, according to historians, 
 he retained his Thracian brutality to the last. That 
 may have been true ; but one remark must be made 
 upon this occasion ; Maximin was especially opposed 
 to the senate ; and, wherever that was the case, no 
 justice was done to an emperor. Why it was that 
 Maximin would not ask for the confirmation of his 
 election from the senate, has never been explained ; it 
 is said that he anticipated a rejection. But, on the 
 other hand, it seems probable that the senate supposed
 
 THE CESARS. 211 
 
 its sanction to be despised. Nothing, apparently, but 
 this reciprocal reserve in making approaches to each 
 other, was the cause of all the bloodshed which fol- 
 lowed. The two Gordians, who commanded in Africa, 
 weie set up by the senate against the new emperor; 
 and the consternation of that body must have been 
 great, when these champions were immediately over- 
 thrown and killed. They did not, however, despair : 
 substituting the two governors of Rome, Pupienus and 
 Balbinus, and associating to them the younger Gor- 
 dian, they resolved to make a stand ; for the severities 
 of Maximin had by this time manifested that it was a 
 contest of extermination. Meantime, Maximin had 
 broken up from Sirmium, the capital of Pannonia, and 
 had advanced to Aquileia, — that famous fortress, 
 which in every invasion of Italy was the first object of 
 attack. The senate had set a price upon his head ; 
 but there was every probability that he would have 
 triumphed, had he not disgusted his army by immod- 
 erate severities. It was, however, but reasonable that 
 those, who would not support the strict but ecpiitable 
 discipline of the mild Alexander, should suffer under 
 the barbarous and capricious rigor of Maximin. That 
 rigor was his ruin : sunk and degraded as the senate 
 WBS, and now but the shadow of a mighty name, it 
 was found on this occasion to have long arms when 
 supported by the frenzy of its opponent. Whatever 
 might be the real weakness of this body, the rude
 
 212 THE CESARS. 
 
 soldiers yet felt a blind traditionary veneration for its 
 sanction, when prompting them as patriots to an act 
 which their own multiplied provocations had but too 
 much recommendod to their passions. A party entered 
 the tent of Maximin, and dispatched him with the same 
 unpitying haste which he had shown under similar 
 circumstances to the gentle-minded Alexander. Aqui- 
 leia opened her gates immediately, and thus made it 
 evident that the war had been personal to Maximin. 
 
 A scene followed within a short time which is in 
 the highest degree interesting. The senate, in creating 
 two emperors at once (for the boy Gordian was prob- 
 ably associated to them only by way of masking their 
 experiment), had made it evident that their purpose 
 was to restore the republic and its two consuls. This 
 was their meaning ; and the experiment had now been 
 twice repeated. The army saw through it ; as to the 
 double number of emperors, that was of little conse- 
 quence, farther than as it expressed their intention, viz. 
 by bringing back the consular government, to restore 
 the power of the senate, and to abrogate that of the 
 army. The praetorian troops, who were the most 
 deeply interested in preventing this revolution, watched 
 their opportunity, and attacked the two emperors in 
 the palace. The deadly feud, which had already 
 arisen between them, led each to suppose himself under 
 assault from the other. The mistake was not of long 
 duration. Carried into the streets of Rome, they were
 
 HIE C.*:SARS. L'13 
 
 both put to death, and treated with monstrous indigni- 
 ties. The young Gordian was adopted by the soldiery. 
 It seems odd that even thus far the guards should 
 sanction the choice of the senate, having the purposes 
 which they had ; but perhaps Gordian had recom- 
 mended himself to their favor in a degree which might 
 outweigh what they considered the original vice of his 
 appointment, and his youth promised them an imme- 
 diate impunity. This prince, however, like so many 
 of his predecessors soon came to an unhappy end. 
 Under the guardianship of the upright Misitheus, for 
 a time he prospered ; and preparations were made 
 upon a great scale for the energetic administration of 
 a Persian war. But Misitheus died, perhaps by poison, 
 in the course of the campaign ; and to him succeeded, 
 as praetorian prefect, an Arabian officer, called Philip. 
 The innocent boy, left without friends, was soon re- 
 moved by murder ; and a monument was afterwards 
 erected to his memory, at the junction of the Aboras 
 and the Euphrates. Great obscurity, however, clouds 
 this part of history ; nor is it so much as known in 
 what way the Persian war was conducted or termi- 
 nated. 
 
 Philip, having made himself emperor, celebrated, 
 upon his arrival in Rome, the secular games, in the 
 year 247 of the Christian era — that being the comple- 
 tion of a thousand years from the foundation of Pome. 
 But Nemesis was already on his steps. An insurrec-
 
 214 THE C.ESAES. 
 
 tion had broken out amongst the legions stationed in 
 Mcesia ; and they had raised to the purple some officer 
 of low rank. Philip, having occasion to notice this 
 affair in the senate, received for answer from Decius, 
 that probably, the pseudo-imperator would prove a 
 mere evanescent phantom. This conjecture was con- 
 firmed ; and Philip in consequence conceived a high 
 opinion of Decius, whom (as the insurrection still con- 
 tinued) he judged to be the fittest man for appeasing 
 it. Decius accordingly went, armed with the proper 
 authority. But on his arrival, he found himself 
 compelled by the insurgent army to choose between 
 empire and death. Thus constrained, he yielded to 
 the wishes of the troops ; and then hastening with a 
 vereran army into Italy, he fought the battle of 
 Verona, where Philip was defeated and killed, whilst 
 the son of Philip was murdered at Rome by the praeto- 
 rian guards. 
 
 With Philip, ends, according to our distribution, 
 the second series of the Caesars, comprehending 
 Commodus, Pertinax, Didius Julianus, Septimius, 
 Severus, Caracalla and Geta, Macrinus, Heliogabalus, 
 Alexander Severus, Maximin, the two Gordians, 
 Pupicnus and Balbinus, the third Gordian, and Philip 
 the Arab. 
 
 In looking back at this series of Caesars, we are 
 horror-struck at the blood-stained picture. Well might 
 a foreign writer, in reviewing the same succession,
 
 tin: CJB8A.E8. 215 
 
 declare, that it is like passing into a new world when 
 the transition is made from this chapter of the human 
 history to that of modern Europe. From Commodus 
 to Decius are sixteen names, which, spread through 
 a space of fifty-nine years, assign to each Ciesar a 
 reign of less than four years. And Casauhcn remarks, 
 that, in one period of 1G0 years, there were seventy 
 persons who assumed the Iloman purple ; which gives 
 to each not nnich more than two years. On the other 
 hand, in the history of France, we find that, through 
 a period of 1200 years, there have heen no more than 
 sixty-four kings : upon an average, therefore, each 
 king appears to have enjoyed a reign of nearly nine- 
 teen years. This vast difference in security is due to 
 two great principles, — that of primogeniture as be- 
 tween son and son, and of hereditary succession as 
 between a son and every other pretender. Well may 
 we hail the principle of hereditary right as realizing 
 the praise of Burke applied to chivalry, viz., that it is 
 ' the cheap defence of nations ; ' for the security which 
 is thus obtained, be it recollected, does not regard a 
 a small succession of princes, but the whole rights and 
 interests of social man : since the contests for the 
 rights of belligerent rivals do not respect themselves 
 only, hut very often spread ruin and proscription 
 amongst all orders of men. The principle of hered- 
 itary succession, says one writer, had it been a dis- 
 covery of any one individual, would deserve to be
 
 216 THE C^SARS. 
 
 considered as the very greatest ever made ; and he 
 adds acutely, in answer to the obvious, but shallow 
 objection to it (viz., its apparent assumption of equal 
 ability for reigning in father and son for ever), that it 
 is like the Copernican system of the heavenly bodies, 
 — contradictory to our sense and first impressions, but 
 true notwithstanding.
 
 THE C2ESA.RS. 217 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 To return, however, to our sketch of the Caesars. 
 At the head of the third series we place Decius. He 
 came to the throne at a moment of great puhlic embar- 
 rassment. The Goths were now beginning to press 
 southwards upon the empire. Dacia they had ravaged 
 for some time ; ' and here,' says a German writer, 
 ' observe the short-sightedness of the Emperor Trajan. 
 Had he left the Dacians in possession of their indepen- 
 dence, they would, under their native kings, have 
 made head against the Goths. But, being compelled 
 to assume the character of Roman citizens, they had 
 lost their warlike qualities.' From Dacia the Goths 
 had descended upon Mcesia ; and, passing the Danube, 
 they laid siege to Marcianopolis, a city built by Trajan 
 in honor of his sister. The inhabitants paid a heavy 
 ransom for their town ; and the Goths were persuaded 
 for the present to return home. But sooner than was 
 expected, they returned to Mcesia, under their king, 
 Kniva ; and they were already engaged in the siege of 
 Nicopolis, when Decius came in sight at the head of 
 the Roman army. The Goths retired, but it was to 
 Thrace ; and, in the conquest of Philippopolis, they 
 found an ample indemnity for their forced retreat and 
 19
 
 218 THE C^SARS. 
 
 disappointment. Decius pursued, but the king of the 
 Goths turned suddenly upon him ; the emperor was 
 obliged to fly ; the Roman camp was plundered ; 
 Philippopolis was taken by storm ; and its whole 
 population, reputed at more than a hundred thousand 
 souls, destroyed. 
 
 Such was the first great irruption of the barbarians 
 into the Roman territory : and panic was diffused on 
 the wings of the wind over the whole empire. Decius, 
 however, was firm, and made prodigious efforts to 
 restore the balance of power to its ancient condition. 
 For the moment he had some partial successes. He 
 cut off several detachments of Goths, on their road to 
 reinforce the enemy ; and he strengthened the for- 
 tresses and garrisons of the Danube. But his last 
 success was the means of his total ruin. He came up 
 with the Goths at Forum Terebronii, and, having sur- 
 rounded their position, their destruction seemed inevi- 
 table. A great battle ensued, and a mighty victory to 
 the Goths. Nothing is now known of the circum- 
 stances, except that the third line of the Romans was 
 entangled inextricably in a morass (as had happened 
 in the Persian expedition of Alexander). Decius 
 perished on this occasion — nor was it possible to find 
 his dead body. This great defeat naturally raised the 
 authority of the senate, in the same proportion as it 
 depressed that of the army ; and by the will of that 
 body, Hostilianus, a son of Decius, was raised to the
 
 T1IK C.I. SAKS. 219 
 
 empire ; and ostensibly on account of his youth, but 
 really with a view to their standing policy of restoring 
 the consulate, and the whole machinery of the republic, 
 Gallus, an experienced commander, was associated in 
 the empire. But no skill or experience could avail to 
 retrieve the sinking power of Home upon the lllyrian 
 frontier. The Roman army was disorganized, panic- 
 stricken, reduced to skeleton battalions. Without an 
 army, what could be done ? And thus it may really 
 have been no blame to Gallus, that he made a treaty 
 with the Goths more degrading than any previous act 
 in the long annals of Rome. By the terms of this 
 infamous bargain, they were allowed to carry off an 
 immense booty, amongst which was a long roll of 
 distinguished prisoners ; and Csesar himself it was — 
 not any lieutenant or agent that might have been after- 
 wards disavowed — who volunteered to purchase their 
 future absence by an annual tribute. The very army 
 which had brought their emperor into the necessity of 
 submitting to such abject concessions, were the first to 
 be offended with this natural result of their own failures. 
 Gallus \v;ts already ruined in public opinion, when fur- 
 ther accumulations arose to his disgrace. It was now 
 supposed to have been discovered, that the late dread- 
 ful defeat of Forum Terebronii was due to his bad 
 advice ; and, as the young Hostilianus happened to die 
 about this time of a contagious disorder, Gallus was 
 charged with his murder, liven a ray of prosperity
 
 220 THE C^SARS. 
 
 which just now gleamed upon the Roman arms, aggra- 
 vated the disgrace of Gallus, and was instantly made 
 the handle of his ruin. JEmilianus, the governor of 
 Mcesia and Pannonia, inflicted some check or defeat 
 upon the Goths ; and in the enthusiasm of sudden 
 pride, upon an occasion which contrasted so advan- 
 tageously for himself with the military conduct of 
 Decius and Gallus, the soldiers of his own legion raised 
 ^Emilianus to the purple. No time was to be lost. 
 Summoned by the troops, iEmilianus marched into 
 Italy ; and no sooner had he made his appearance 
 there, than the praetorian guards murdered the Emperor 
 Gallus and his son Volusianus, by way of confirming 
 the election of .<3Emilianus. The new emperor offered 
 to secure the frontiers, both in the east and on the 
 Danube, from the incursions of the barbarians. This 
 offer may be regarded as thrown out for the conciliation 
 of all classes in the empire. But to the senate in par- 
 ticular he addressed a message, which forcibly illus- 
 trates the political position of that body in those times. 
 iEmilianus proposed to resign the whole civil adminis- 
 tration into the hands of the senate, reserving to himself 
 the only unenviable burthen of the military interests. 
 His hope was, that in this way making himself in part 
 the creation of the senate, he might strengthen his title 
 against competitors at Rome, whilst the entire military 
 administration going on under his own eyes, exclusively 
 directed to that one object, would give him some chance
 
 THE C£SARS. 221 
 
 of defeating the hasty and tumultuary competitions so 
 apt to arise amongst the legions upon the frontier. We 
 notice the transaction chiefly as indicating the anoma- 
 lous situation of the senate. "Without power in a 
 proper sense, or no more, however, than the indirect 
 power of wealth, that ancient body retained an immense 
 auctoritas — that is, an influence built upon ancient 
 reputation, which, in their case, had the strength of a 
 religious superstition in all Italian minds. This influ- 
 ence the senators exerted with effect, whenever the 
 course of events had happened to reduce the power of 
 the army. And never did they make a more continu- 
 ous and sustained effort for retrieving their ancient 
 power and place, together with the whole system of 
 the republic, than during the period at which we are 
 now arrived. From the time of Maximin, in fact, to 
 the accession of Aurclian, the senate perpetually inter- 
 posed their credit and authority, like some Deus ex 
 machina in the dramatic art. And if this one fact were 
 all that had survived of the public annals at this period, 
 we might sufficiently collect the situation of the two 
 other parties in the empire — the army and the impe- 
 rator ; the weakness and precarious tenure of the one, 
 and the anarchy of the other. And hence it is that 
 we can explain the hatred borne to the senate by 
 vigorous emperors, such as Aurclian, succeeding to a 
 long course of weak and troubled reigns. Such an 
 emperor presumed in the senate, and not without
 
 222 THE CjESARS. 
 
 reason, the same spirit of domineering interference as 
 ready to manifest itself, upon any opportunity offered, 
 against himself, which, in his earlier days, he had 
 witnessed so repeatedly in successful operation upon 
 the fates and prospects of others. 
 
 The situation indeed of the world — that is to say, of 
 that great centre of civilization, which, running round 
 the Mediterranean in one continuous belt of great 
 breadth, still composed the Roman Empire, was at this 
 time most profoundly interesting. The crisis had 
 arrived. In the East, a new dynasty (the Sassanides) 
 had remoulded ancient elements into a new form, and 
 breathed a new life into an empire, which else was 
 gradually becoming crazy of age, and which, at any 
 rate, by losing its unity, must have lost its vigor as an 
 offensive power. Parthia was languishing and droop- 
 ing as an anti-Roman state, when the last of the Arsa- 
 cidse expired. A perfect Palingenesis was wrought 
 by the restorer of the Persian empire, which pretty 
 nearly re-occupied (and gloried in re-occupying) the 
 very area that had once composed the empire of Cyrus. 
 Even this Palingenesis might have terminated in a 
 divided empire : vigor might have been restored, but 
 in the shape of a polyarchy (such as the Saxons estab- 
 lished in England), rather than a monarchy ; and in 
 reality, at one moment that appeared to be a probable 
 event. Now, had this been the course of the revolu- 
 tion, an alliance with one of these kingdoms would
 
 THE C.3ESAKS. 223 
 
 have tended to balance the hostility of another (as was 
 in fact the case when Alexander Sevcrus saved himself 
 from the Persian power by a momentary alliance with 
 Armenia). Hut all the elements of disorder had in 
 that quarter re-combined themselves into severe unity : 
 and thus was Rome, upon her eastern frontier, laid 
 open to a new power of juvenile activity and vigor, 
 just at the period when the languor of the decaying 
 Parthian had allowed the Roman discipline to fall into 
 a corresponding declension. Such was the condition of 
 Rome upon her oriental frontier. 50 On the northern, 
 it was much worse. Precisely at the crisis of a great 
 revolution in Asia, which demanded in that quarter 
 more than the total strength of the empire, and threat- 
 ened to demand it for ages to come, did the Goths, 
 under their earliest denomination of Getce, with many 
 other associate tribes, begin to push with their horns 
 against the northern gates of the empire ; the whole 
 line of the Danube, and, pretty nearly about the 
 same time, of the Rhine, (upon which the tribes 
 from Swabia, Bavaria, and Franconia, were beginning 
 to descend,) now became insecure ; and these two 
 rivers ceased in effect to be the barriers of Rome. 
 Taking a middle point of time between the Parthian 
 revolution and the fatal overthrow of Forum Tcre- 
 bronii, we may fix upon the reign of Philip the Arab 
 [who naturalized himself in Rome by the appellation 
 of Marcus Julius] as the epoch from which the Roman
 
 224 THE C^ESAES. 
 
 empire, already sapped and undermined by changes 
 from within, began to give way, and to dilapidate from 
 without. And this reign dates itself in the series by 
 those ever-memorable secular or jubilee games, which 
 celebrated the completion of the thousandth year from 
 the foundation of Rome. 51 
 
 Resuming our sketch of the Imperial history, we 
 may remark the natural embarrassment which must 
 have possessed the senate, when two candidates for 
 the purple were equally earnest in appealing to them, 
 and their deliberate choice, as the best foundation for 
 a valid election. Scarcely had the ground been cleared 
 for iEmilianus by the murder of Gallus and his son, 
 when Valerian, a Roman senator, of such eminent 
 merit, and confessedly so much the foremost noble in 
 all the qualities essential to the very delicate and com- 
 prehensive functions of a Censor, 52 that Decius had 
 revived that office expressly in his behalf, entered Italy 
 at the head of the army from Gaul. He had been 
 summoned to his aid by the late emperor, Gallus ; but 
 arriving too late for his support, he determined to 
 avenge bim. Both JEmilianus and Valerian recognized 
 the authority of the senate, and professed to act under 
 that sanction ; but it was the soldiery who cut the knot, 
 as usual, by the sword. iEmilianus was encamped at 
 Spolcto ; but as the enemy drew near, his soldiers, 
 shrinking no doubt from a contest with veteran troops, 
 made their peace by murdering the new emperor, and
 
 THE CjKSARS. 225 
 
 Valerian was elected in his steael. The prince was 
 already an old man at the time of his election ; but he 
 lived long enough to look back upon the day of his 
 inauguration as the blackest in his life. Memorable 
 were the calamities which fell upon himself, and upon 
 the empire, during his reign. He began by associating 
 to himself his son Gallienus ; partly, perhaps, for his 
 own relief, party to indulge the senate in their steady 
 plan of dividing the imperial authority. The two 
 emperors undertook the military defence of the empire, 
 Gallienus proceeding to the German frontier, Valerian 
 to the eastern. Under Gallienus, the Franks began 
 first to make themselves heard of. Breaking into Gaul, 
 they passed through that country and Spain ; captured 
 Tarragona in their route ; crossed over to Africa, and 
 conquered Mauritania. At the same time, the Ale- 
 manni, who had been in motion since the time of Cara- 
 calla, broke into Lombardy, across the Rha?tian Alps. 
 The senate, left without aid from either emperors, were 
 obliged to make preparations for the common defence 
 against this host of barbarians. Luckily, the very 
 magnitude of the enemy's success, by overloading him 
 with booty, made it his interest to retire without fight- 
 ing ; and the degraded senate, hanging upon the traces 
 of their retiring footsteps, without fighting, or daring 
 to fight, claimed the honors of a victory. Even then, 
 however, they did more than was agreeable to the 
 jealousies of Gallienus, who, by an edict, publicly
 
 226 THE CJESARS. 
 
 rebuked their presumption, and forbade them in future 
 to appear amongst the legions, or to exercise any 
 military functions. He himself, meanwhile, could 
 devise no better way of providing for the public se- 
 curity, than by marrying the daughter of his chief 
 enemy, the king of the Marcomanni. On this side of 
 Europe, the barbarians were thus quieted for the pres- 
 ent ; but the Goths of the Ukraine, in three marauding 
 expeditions of unprecedented violence, ravaged the 
 wealthy regions of Asia Minor, as well as the islands 
 of the Archipelago : and at length, under the guidance 
 of deserters, landed in the port of the Pyraeus. Ad- 
 vancing from this point, after sacking Athens and the 
 chief cities of Greece, they marched upon Epirus, and 
 began to threaten Italy. But the defection at this crisis 
 of a conspicuous chieftain, and the burden of their 
 booty, made these wild marauders anxious to provide 
 for a safe retreat ; the imperial commanders in Mcesia 
 listened eagerly to their offers : and it set the seal to 
 the dishonors of the State, that, after having traversed 
 so vast a range of territory almost without resistance, 
 these blood-stained brigands were now suffered to re- 
 tire under the very guardianship of those whom they 
 had just visited with military execution. 
 
 Such were the terms upon which the Emperor 
 Gallienus purchased a brief respite from his haughty 
 enemies. For the moment, however, he did enjoy 
 security. Far otherwise was the destiny of his un-
 
 THE CAESARS. 227 
 
 happy father. Sapor now ruled in Persia ; the throne 
 of Armenia had vainly striven to maintain its inde- 
 pendency against his armies, and the daggers of his 
 hired assassins. This revolution, which so much en- 
 feebled the Roman means of war, exactly in that 
 proportion increased the necessity for it. War, and 
 that instantly, seemed to offer the only chance for 
 maintaining the Roman name or existence in Asia. 
 Canine and Xisibis, the two potent fortresses in Meso- 
 potamia, had fallen ; and the Persian arms were now 
 triumphant on both banks of the Euphrates. Valerian 
 was not of a character to look with indifference upon 
 such a scene, terminated by such a prospect ; prudence 
 and temerity, fear and confidence, all spoke a common 
 language in this great emergency ; and Valerian 
 marched towards the Euphrates with a fixed purpose 
 of driving the enemy beyond that river. By whose 
 mismanagement the records of history do not enable 
 us to say, some think of Macrianus, the praetorian 
 prefect, some of Valerian himself, but doubtless by the 
 treachery of guides co-operating with errors in the 
 general, the Roman army was entangled in marshy 
 grounds ; partial actions followed and skirmishes of 
 cavalry, in which the Unmans became direfully aware 
 of their situation ; retreat was cut off, to advance was 
 impossible ; and to fight was now found to be without 
 hope. In these circumstances, they offered to capitu- 
 late. But the haughty Sapor would hear of nothing
 
 228 THE CJESAKS. 
 
 but unconditional surrender ; and to that course the 
 unhappy emperor submitted. Various traditions 53 
 have been preserved by history concerning the fate of 
 Valerian ; all agree that he died in misery and captiv- 
 ity ; but some have circumstantiated this general state- 
 ment by features of excessive misery and degradation, 
 which possibly were added afterwards by scenical ro- 
 mancers, in order to heighten the interest of the tale, or 
 by ethical writers, in order to point and strengthen the 
 moral. Gallienus now ruled alone, except as regarded 
 the restless efforts of insurgents, thirty of whom are 
 said to have arisen in his single reign. This, however, 
 is probably an exaggeration. Nineteen such rebels 
 are mentioned by name : of whom the chief were Cal- 
 purnius Piso, a Roman senator ; Tetricus, a man of 
 rank who claimed a descent from Pompey, Crassus, 
 and even from Numa Pompilius, and maintained him- 
 self some time in Gaul and Spain ; Trebellianus, who 
 founded a republic of robbers in Isauria which survived 
 himself by centuries ; and Odenathus, the Syrian. 
 Others were mere Terra; fihi, or adventurers, who 
 flourished and decayed in a few days or weeks, of 
 whom the most remarkable was a working armorer 
 named Marius. Not one of the whole number event- 
 ually prospered, except Odenathus ; and he, though 
 originally a rebel, yet, in consideration of services 
 performed against Persia, was suffered to retain his 
 power, and to transmit his kingdom of Palmyra to his
 
 THE C.ESAR8. 229 
 
 widow Zenobia. He was even complimented with the 
 title of Augustas. All the rest perished. Their rise, 
 however, and local prosperity at so many different 
 points of the empire, showed the distracted condition 
 of the State, and its internal weakness. That again 
 proclaimed its external peril. No other cause had 
 called forth this diffusive spirit of insurrection than 
 the general consciousness, so fatally warranted, of the 
 debility which had emasculated the government, and 
 its incompetency to deal vigorously with the public 
 enemies. 54 The very granaries of Rome, Sicily and 
 Egypt, were the seats of continued distractions ; in 
 Alexandria, the second city of the empire, there was 
 even a civil war which lasted for twelve years. Weak- 
 ness, dissension and misery, were spread like a cloud 
 over the whole face of the empire. 
 
 The last of the rebels who directed his rebellion 
 personally against Gallicnus was Aurcolus. Passing 
 the Rhsetian Alps, this leader sought out and defied the 
 emperor. ■ He was defeated, and retreated upon Milan ; 
 but Gallicnus, in pursuing him, was lured into an am- 
 buscade, and perished from the wound inflicted by an 
 archer. With his dying breath he is said to have 
 recommended Claudius to the favor of the senate ; and 
 at all events Claudius it was who succeeded. Scarcely 
 was the new emperor installed, before he was sum- 
 moned to a trial not only arduous in itself, but terrific 
 by the very name of the enemy. The Goths of the
 
 230 THE C.ESARS. 
 
 Ukraine, in a new armament of six thousand vessels, 
 had again descended by the Bosphorus into the south, 
 and had sat down before Thessalonica, the capital of 
 Macedonia. Claudius marched against them with the 
 determination to vindicate the Roman name and honor : 
 ' Know,' said he, writing to the senate, ' that 320,000 
 Goths have set foot upon the Roman soil. Should I 
 conquer them, your gratitude will be my reward. 
 Should I fall, do not forget who it is that I have suc- 
 ceeded ; and that the republic is exhausted.' No sooner 
 did the Goths hear of his approach, than, with trans- 
 ports of ferocious joy, they gave up the siege, and 
 hurried to annihilate the last pillar of the empire. The 
 mighty battle which ensued, neither party seeking to 
 evade it, took place at Naissus. At one time the 
 legions were giving way, when suddenly, by some 
 happy manoeuvre of the emperor, a Roman corps found 
 its way to the rear of the enemy. The Goths gave 
 way, and their defeat was total. According to most 
 accounts they left 50,000 dead upon the field. The 
 campaign still lingered, however, at other points, until 
 at last the emperor succeeded in driving back the relics 
 of the Gothic host into the fastnesses of the Balkan; 
 and there the greater part of them died of hunger and 
 pestilence. These great services performed, within 
 two years from his accession to the throne, by the 
 rarest of fates, the Emperor Claudius died in his bed 
 at Sirmium, the capital of Pannonia. His brother
 
 THE C£SA.B8. 2!il 
 
 Quintilius, who had a great command at Aquileia, im- 
 mediately resumed the purple ; hut his usurpation lasted 
 only seventeen days, for the last emperor, with a single 
 eye to the public good, had recommended Aurelian as 
 his successor, guided by his personal knowledge of that 
 general's strategic qualities. The army of the Danube 
 confirmed the appointment; and Quintilius committed 
 suicide. Aurelian was of the same harsh and forbid- 
 ding character as the Emperor Severus : he had, how- 
 ever, the qualities demanded by the times ; energetic 
 and not amiable princes were required by the exi- 
 gencies of the state. The hydra-headed Goths were 
 again in the field on the Illyrian quarter : Italy itself 
 was invaded by the Alemanni ; and Tctricus, the rebel, 
 still survived as a monument of the weakness of Gal- 
 lienus. All these enemies were speedily repressed, 
 or vanquished, by Aurelian. But it marks the real 
 declension of the empire, a declension which no per- 
 sonal vigor in the emperor was now sufficient to dis- 
 guise, that, even in the midst of victory, Aurelian 
 found it necessary to make a formal surrender, by 
 treaty, of that Dacia which Trajan had united with so 
 much ostentation to the empire. Europe was now 
 again in repose ; and Aurelian found himself at liberty 
 to apply his powers as a re-organizer and restorer to 
 the East. In that quarter of the world a marvellous 
 revolution had occurred. The little oasis of Palmyra, 
 from a Roman colony, had grown into the leading
 
 232 THE CJiSARS. 
 
 province of a great empire. This island of the desert, 
 together with Syria and Egypt, formed an independent 
 monarchy under the sceptre of Zenobia. 55 After two 
 battles lost in Syria, Zenobia retreated to Palmyra. 
 With great difficulty Aurelian pursued her ; and with 
 still greater difficulty he pressed the siege of Palmyra. 
 Zenobia looked for relief from Persia; but at that 
 moment Sapor died, and the Queen of Palmyra fled 
 upon a dromedary, but was pursued and captured. 
 Palmyra surrendered and was spared ; but unfortu- 
 nately, with a folly which marks the haughty spirit of 
 the place unfitted to brook submission, scarcely had 
 the conquering army retired when a tumult arose, and 
 the Roman garrison was slaughtered. Little knowledge 
 could those have had of Aurelian's character, who 
 tempted him to acts but too welcome to his cruel 
 nature by such an outrage as this. The news over- 
 took the emperor on the Hellespont. Instantly, without 
 pause, ' like Ate hot from hell,' Aurelian retraced 
 his steps — reached the guilty city — and consigned it, 
 with ail its population, to that utter destruction from 
 which it has never since risen. The energetic admin- 
 istration of Aurelian had now restored the empire — 
 not to its lost vigor, that was impossible — but to a 
 condition of repose. That was a condition more agree- 
 able to the empire than to the emperor. Peace w.as 
 hateful to Aurelian : and he sought for war, where it 
 could seldom be sought in vain, upon the Persian
 
 THE CJiSARS. 233 
 
 frontier. But he was not destined to reach the Eu- 
 phrates ; and it is worthy of notice, as a providential 
 ordinance, that his own unmerciful nature was the 
 ultimate cause of his fate. Anticipating the emperor's 
 severity in punishing some errors of his own, Mucassor, 
 a general officer, in whom Aureliau placed especial 
 confidence, assassinated him between Byzantium and 
 Heraclea. An interregnum of eight months succeeded, 
 during which there occurred a contest of a memorable 
 nature. Some historians have described it as strange 
 and surprising. To us, on the contrary, it seems that 
 no contest could be more natural. Heretofore the 
 great strife had been in what way to secure the re- 
 version or possession of that great dignity ; whereas 
 now the rivalship lay in declining it. But surely such 
 a competition had in it, under the circumstances of 
 the empire, little that can justly surprise us. Always 
 a post of danger, and so regularly closed by assassina- 
 tion, that in a course of two centuries there are hardly 
 to be found three or four cases of exception, the im- 
 peratorial dignity had now become burdened with 
 a public responsibility which exacted great military 
 talents, and imposed a perpetual and personal activity. 
 Formerly, if the emperor knew himself to be sur- 
 rounded with assassins, he might at least make his 
 throne, so long as he enjoyed it, the couch of a 
 voluptuary. The ' ave imperator ! " was then the 
 summons, if to the supremacy in passive danger, so 
 20
 
 234 THE C^SARS. 
 
 also to the supremacy in power, and honor, and 
 enjoyment. But now it was a summons to never- 
 ending tumults and alarms ; an injunction to that sor* 
 of vigilance without intermission, which, even from 
 the poor sentinel, is exacted only when on duty. Not 
 Rome, but the frontier ; not the aurea domus, but a 
 camp, was the imperial residence. Power and rank, 
 whilst in that residence, could be had in no larger 
 measure by Caesar as Caesar, than by the same indi- 
 vidual as a military commander-in-chief; and, as to 
 enjoyment, that for the Roman imperator was now 
 extinct. Rest there could be none for him. Battle 
 was the tenure by which he held his office ; and be- 
 yond the range of his trumpet's blare, his sceptre was 
 a broken reed. The office of Caesar at this time re- 
 sembled the situation (as it is sometimes described in 
 romances) of a knight who had achieved the favor of 
 some capricious lady, with the present possession of 
 her castle and ample domains, but which he holds 
 under the known and accepted condition of meeting 
 all challenges whatsoever offered at the gate by wan- 
 dering strangers, and also of jousting at any moment 
 with each and all amongst the inmates of the castle, 
 as often as a wish may arise to benefit by the chances 
 in disputing his supremacy. 
 
 It is a circumstance, moreover, to be noticed in the 
 aspect of the Roman monarchy at this period, that the 
 pressure of the evils we are now considering, applied
 
 Tin; OXSABS. 235 
 
 to this particular age of the empire beyond all others, 
 as being an age of transition from a greater to an 
 inferior power. Had the power been either greater or 
 conspicuously less, in that proportion would the pres- 
 sure have been easier, or none at all. Being greater, 
 for example, the danger would have been repelled to 
 a distance so great that mere remoteness would have 
 disarmed its terrors, or otherwise it would have been 
 violently overawed. Being less, on the other hand, 
 and less in an eminent degree, it would have disposed 
 all parties, as it did at an after period, to regular and 
 formal compromises in the shape of fixed annual trib- 
 utes. At present the policy of the barbarians along 
 the vast line of the northern frontier, was, to tease and 
 irritate the provinces which they were not entirely 
 able, or prudcntially unwilling, to dismember. Yet, as 
 the almost annual irruptions were at every, instant 
 ready to be converted into coup- de-mains upon Aquileia 
 — upon Verona — or even upon Rome itself, unless 
 vigorously curbed at the outset, — each emperor at this 
 period found himself under the necessity of standing in 
 the attitude of a champion or propugnator on the fron- 
 tier line of his territory — ready for all comers — and 
 with a pretty certain prospect of having one pitched 
 battle at the least to fight in every successive summer. 
 There were nations abroad at this epoch in Europe 
 who did not migrate occasionally, or occasionally pro- 
 ject themselves upon the civilized portion of the globe,
 
 236 THE C^ESAKS. 
 
 but who made it their steady regular occupation to do 
 so, and lived for no other purpose. For seven hundred 
 years the Roman Republic might be styled a republic 
 militant ; for about one century further it was an 
 empire triumphant ; and now, long retrograde, it had 
 reached that point at which again, but in a different 
 sense, it might be styled an empire militant. Originally 
 it had militated for glory and power ; now its militancy 
 was for mere existence. War was again the trade of 
 Rome, as it had been once before ; but in that earlier 
 period war had been its highest glory ; now it was its 
 dire necessity. 
 
 Under this analysis of the Roman condition, need we 
 wonder, with the crowd of unreflecting historians, that 
 the senate, at the era of Aurelian's death, should dis- 
 pute amongst each other — not as once, for the pos- 
 session of the sacred purple, but for the luxury and 
 safety of declining it? The sad pre-eminence was 
 finally imposed upon Tacitus, a senator who traced 
 his descent from the historian of that name, who had 
 reached an age of seventy-five years, and who pos- 
 sessed a fortune of three millions sterling. Vainly did 
 the agitated old senator open his lips to decline the 
 perilous honor ; five hundred voices insisted upon the 
 necessity of his compliance ; and thus, as a foreign 
 writer observes, was the descendant of him, whose 
 glory it had been to signalize himself as the hater of 
 despotism, under the absolute necessity of becoming, 
 in his own person, a despot.
 
 THE CiESAKS. 237 
 
 The aged senator then was compelled to be emperor, 
 and forced, in spite of his vehement reluctance, to quit 
 the comforts of a palace, which he was never to revisit, 
 for the hardships of a distant camp. His first act was 
 strikingly illustrative of the Roman condition, as we 
 have just described it. Aurelian had attempted to 
 disarm one set of enemies by turning the current of 
 their fury upon another. The Alani were in search 
 of plunder, and strongly disposed to obtain it from 
 Roman provinces. ' But no,' said Aurelian ; ' if you 
 do that I shall unchain my legions upon you. Be 
 better advised : keep those excellent dispositions of 
 mind, and that admirable taste for plunder, until you 
 come whither I will conduct you. Then discharge 
 your fury and welcome ; besides which, I will pay 
 you wages for your immediate abstinence ; and on the 
 other side the Euphrates you shall pay yourselves.' 
 Such was the outline of the contract ; and the Alani 
 had accordingly held themselves in readiness to accom- 
 pany Aurelian from Europe to his meditated Persian 
 campaign. Meantime, that emperor had perished by 
 treason ; and the Alani were still waiting for his suc- 
 cessor on the throne to complete his engagements with 
 themselves, as being of necessity the successor also 
 to his wars and to his responsibilities. It happened, 
 from the state of the empire, as we have sketched it 
 above, that Tacitus really did succeed to the military 
 plans of Aurelian. The Persian expedition was or-
 
 238 THE CJESARS. 
 
 dained to go forward ; and Tacitus began, as a pre- 
 liminary step in that expedition, to look about for bis 
 good allies tbe barbarians. "Where might they be, and 
 how employed ? Naturally, they had long been weary 
 of waiting. The Persian booty might be good after 
 its kind ; but it was far away ; and, en attendant, 
 Roman booty was doubtless good after its kind. And 
 so, throughout the provinces of Cappadocia, Pontus, 
 &c, as far as the eye could stretch, nothing was to be 
 seen but cities and villages in flames. The Roman 
 army hungered and thirsted to be unmuzzled and 
 slipped upon these false friends. But this, for the 
 present, Tacitus would not allow. He began by punc- 
 tually fulfilling all the terms of Aurelian's contract, — 
 a measure which barbarians inevitably construed into 
 the language of fear. But then came the retribution. 
 Having satisfied public justice, the emperor now 
 thought of vengeance ; he unchained his legions : a 
 brief space of time sufficed for a long course of ven- 
 geance : and through every outlet of Asia Minor the 
 Alani fled from the wrath of the Roman soldier. Here, 
 however, terminated the military labors of Tacitus : 
 he died at Tyana in Cappadocia, as some say, from 
 the effects of the climate of the Caucasus, co-operating 
 with irritations from the insolence of the soldiery : but, 
 as Zosimus and Zonoras expressly assure us, under the 
 murderous hands of his own troops. His brother 
 Florianus at first usurped the purple, by the aid of the
 
 thk cv.sa.us. 239 
 
 Illyrian army ; but the choice of other armies, after- 
 wards confirmed hy the senate, settled upon Probus, 
 a general already celebrated under Aurelian. Tbe 
 two competitors drew near to each other for the usual 
 decision by the sword, when the dastardly supporters 
 of Florian offered up their chosen prince as a sacrifice 
 to his antagonist. Probus, settled in his seat, addressed 
 himself to the regular business of those times, — to the 
 reduction of insurgent provinces, and the liberation 
 of others from hostile molestations. Isauria and Egypt 
 be visited in the character of a conqueror, Gaul in tbe 
 character of a deliverer. From the Gaulish provinces 
 he chased in succession the Franks, the Burgundians, 
 and the Lygians. He pursued the intruders far into 
 their German thickets ; and nine of the native German 
 princes came spontaneously into his camp, subscribed 
 such conditions as he thought fit to dictate, and com- 
 plied with his requisitions of tribute in horses and pro- 
 visions. This, however, is a delusive gleam of Roman 
 energy, little corresponding with the true condition of 
 the Roman power, and entirely due to the personal 
 qualities of Probus. Probus himself showed his sense 
 of the true state of affairs, by carrying a stone wall, 
 of considerable height, from the Danube to the Neckax. 
 He made various attempts also to effect a better distri- 
 bution of barbarous tribes, by dislocating their settle- 
 ments, and making extensive translations of their clans, 
 according to the circumstances of those times. These
 
 240 THE CJESATIS. 
 
 arrangements, however, suggested often by short- 
 sighted views, and carried iuto effect by mere violence, 
 were sometimes defeated visibly at the time, and, 
 doubtless, in very few cases accomplished the ends 
 proposed. In one instance, where a party of Franks 
 had been transported into the Asiatic province of Pon- 
 tus, as a column of defence against the intrusive Alani, 
 being determined to revisit their own country, they 
 swam the Hellespont, landed on the coasts of Asia 
 Minor and of Greece, plundered Syracuse, steered for 
 the Straits of Gibraltar, sailed along the shores of Spain 
 and Gaul, passing finally through the English Channel 
 and the German Ocean, right onwards to the Frisic 
 and Batavian coasts, where they exultingly rejoined 
 their exulting friends. Meantime, all the energy and 
 military skill of Probus could not save him from the 
 competition of various rivals. Indeed, it must then 
 have been felt, as by us who look back on those times 
 it is now felt, that, amidst so continued a series of brief 
 reigns, interrupted by murders, scarcely an idea 
 could arise answering to our modern ideas of treason 
 and usurpation. For the ideas of fealty and allegiance, 
 as to a sacred and anointed monarch, could have no 
 time tr> take root. Candidates for the purple must 
 have been viewed rather as military rivals than as 
 traitors to the reigning Coesar. And hence the reason 
 for the right resistance which was often experienced 
 by the seducers of armies. Probus, however, as acci-
 
 THE C.ESARS. 241 
 
 dent in his case ordered it, subdued all bis personal 
 opponents, — Saturninus in tbe East, Proculus and 
 Bonoses in Gaul. For tbese victories be triumpbed in 
 tbe year 281. But bis last bour was even then at 
 band. One point of his military discipline, which he 
 brought back from elder days, was, to suffer no idle- 
 ness in his camps. He it was who, by military labor, 
 transferred to Gaul and to Hungary the Italian vine, to 
 the great indignation of the Italian monopolist. The 
 culture of vineyards, the laying of military roads, the 
 draining of marshes, and similar labors, perpetually 
 employed the hands of his stubborn and contumacious 
 troops. On some work of this nature the army hap- 
 pened to be employed near Sirmium, and Probus was 
 looking on from a tower, when a sudden frenzy of 
 disobedience seized upon the men : a party of the 
 mutineers ran up to the emperor, and with a hundred 
 wounds laid him instantly dead. We are told by some 
 writers that the army was immediately seized with re- 
 morse for its own act ; which, if truly reported, rather 
 tends to confirm the image, otherwise impressed upon us 
 of the relations between tbe army and Ciesar, as pretty 
 closely corresponding with those between some fierce 
 wild beast and its keeper ; the keeper, if not uniformly 
 vigilant as an argus, is continually liable to fall a 
 sacrifice to the wild instincts of the brute, mastering 
 at intervals tbe reverence and fear under which it has 
 been habitually trained. In this case, both tbe murder- 
 21
 
 242 THE C.ESARS. 
 
 ing impulse and the remorse seem alike the effects of 
 a brute instinct, and to have arisen under no guidance 
 of rational purpose or reflection. The person who 
 profited by this murder was Cams, the captain of the 
 guard, a man of advanced years, and a soldier, both 
 by experience and by his propensities. He was pro- 
 claimed emperor by the army ; and on this occasion 
 there was no further reference to the senate, than by 
 a dry statement of the facts for its information. Troub- 
 ling himself little about the approbation of a body 
 not likely in any way to affect his purposes (which 
 were purely martial, and adapted to the tumultuous 
 state of the empire), Carus made immediate prepara- 
 tions for pursuing the Persian expedition, — so long 
 promised, and so often interrupted. Having provided 
 for the security of the Illyrian frontier by a bloody 
 victory over the Sarmatians, of whom we now hear 
 for the first time, Carus advanced towards the Eu- 
 phrates ; and from the summit of a mountain he point- 
 ed the eyes of his eager army upon the rich provinces 
 of the Persian empire. Varanes, the successor of 
 Artaxerxes, vainly endeavored to negotiate a peace. 
 From some unknown cause, the Persian armies were 
 not at this juncture disposable against Carus : it has 
 been conjectured by some writers that they were 
 engaged in an Indian war. Carus, it is certain, met 
 with little resistance. He insisted on having the Roman 
 supremacy acknowledged as a preliminary to any
 
 THE CJESARS. 243 
 
 treaty ; and, having threatened to make Persia as hare 
 as his own skull, he is supposed to have kept his word 
 with regard to Mesopotamia. The great cities of 
 siphon and Seleucia he took ; and vast expectations 
 were formed at Rome of the events which stood next 
 in succession, when, on Christmas day, 283, a sudden 
 and mysterious end overtook Carus and his victorious 
 advance. The story transmitted to Rome was, that 
 a great storm, and a sudden darkness, had surprised 
 the camp of Carus ; that the emperor, previously ill, 
 and reposing in his tent, was ohscured from sight ; that 
 at length a cry had arisen, — ' The emperor is dead ! ' 
 and that, at the same moment, the imperial tent had 
 taken fire. The fire was traced to the confusion of 
 his attendants ; and this confusion was imputed hy 
 themselves to grief for their master's death. In all 
 this it is easy to read pretty circumstantially a murder 
 committed on the emperor by corrupted servants, and 
 an attempt afterwards to conceal the indications of 
 murder by the ravages of fire. The report propagated 
 through the army, and at that time received with credit, 
 was, that Carus had been struck by lightning : and that 
 omen, according to the Roman interpretation, implied 
 a necessity of retiring from the expedition. So that, 
 apparently, the whole was a bloody intrigue, set on 
 foot for the purpose of counteracting the emperor's 
 resolution to prosecute the war. His son Numerian 
 succeeded to the rank of emperor by the choice of the
 
 244 THE C.ESA.RS. 
 
 army. But the mysterious faction of murderers were 
 still at work. After eight months' march from the 
 Tigris to the Thracian Bosphorus, the army halted at 
 Chalcedon. At this point of time a report arose sud- 
 denly, that the Emperor Numerian was dead. The 
 impatience of the soldiery would brook no uncertainty ; 
 they rushed to the spot ; satisfied themselves of the 
 fact; and, loudly denouncing as the murderer Aper, 
 the captain of the guard, committed him to custody, 
 and assigned to Dioclesian, whom at the same time 
 they invested with the supreme power, the duty of 
 investigating the case. Dioclesian acquitted himself 
 of this task in a very summary way, by passing his 
 sword through the captain before he could say a word 
 in his defence. It seems that Dioclesian, having been 
 promised the empire by a prophetess as soon as he 
 should have killed a wild boar [Aper], was anxious to 
 realize the omen. The whole proceeding has been 
 taxed with injustice so manifest, as not even to seek 
 a disguise. Meantime, it should be remembered that, 
 first, Aper, as the captain of the guard, was answer- 
 able for the emperor's safety ; secondly, that his 
 anxiety to profit by the emperor's murder was a sure 
 sign that he had participated in that act ; and, thirdly, 
 that the assent of the soldiery to the open and public 
 act of Dioclesian, implies a conviction on their part 
 of Aper's guilt. Here let us pause, having now 
 arrived at the fourth and last group of the Caesars, to
 
 the c.r.sARs. 245 
 
 notice the changes which had been wrought by time, 
 co-operating with political events, in the very nature 
 and constitution of the imperial office. 
 
 If it should unfortunately happen, that the palace of 
 the Vatican, with its thirteen thousand 56 chambers, 
 were to take fire — for a considerable space of time 
 the fire would be retarded by the mere enormity of 
 extent which it would have to traverse. But there 
 would come at length a critical moment, at which the 
 maximum of the retarding effect having been attained, 
 the bulk and volume of the flaming mass would thence- 
 forward assist the flames in the rapidity of their pro- 
 gress. Such was the effect upon the declension of the 
 Roman empire from the vast extent of its territory. 
 For a very long period that very extent, which finally 
 became the overwhelming cause of its ruin, served to 
 retard and to disguise it. A small encroachment, 
 made at any one point upon the integrity of the em- 
 pire was neither much regarded at Rome, nor perhaps 
 in and for itself much deserved to be regarded. But a 
 very narrow belt of enchroachments, made upon almost 
 every part of so enormous a circumference, was suffi- 
 cient of itself to compose something of an antagonist 
 force. And to these external dilapidations, we must 
 add the far more important dilapidations from within, 
 affecting all the institutions of the State, and all the 
 forces, whether moral or political, which had originally 
 raised it or maintained it. Causes which had been
 
 246 THE C^SARS. 
 
 latent in the public arrangements ever since the time 
 of Augustus, and had been silently preying upon its 
 vitals, had now reached a height which would no longer 
 brook concealment. The fire which had smouldered 
 through generations had broken out at length into an 
 open conflagration. Uproar and disorder, and the 
 anarchy of a superannuated empire, strong only to 
 punish and impotent to defend, were at this time con- 
 vulsing the provinces in every point of the compass. 
 Rome herself had been menaced repeatedly. And a 
 still more awful indication of the coming storm had 
 been felt far to the south of Rome. One long wave 
 of the great German deluge had stretched beyond the 
 Pyrenees and the Pillars of Hercules, to the very 
 soil of Ancient Carthage. Victorious banners were 
 already floating on the margin of the Great Desert, 
 and they were not the banners of Caesar. Some vig- 
 orous hand was demanded at this moment, or else the 
 funeral knell of Rome was on the point of sounding. 
 Indeed, there is every reason to believe that, had the 
 imbecile Carinus (the brother of Numerian) succeed- 
 ed to the command of the Roman armies at this 
 time, or any other than Dioclesian, the Empire of the 
 West would have fallen to pieces within the next ten 
 years. 
 
 Dioclesian was doubtless that man of iron whom 
 the times demanded ; and a foreign writer has gone so 
 far as to class him amongst the greatest of men, if he
 
 Tin: CJBSAB8. 247 
 
 were not even himself the greatest. But the position 
 of Dioclesian was remarkable beyond all precedent, 
 and was alone sufficient to prevent bis being the 
 greatest 'it' men, by making it necessary that he should 
 be the most selfish. For the case stood thus : If Rome 
 were in clanger, much more so was Caesar. If the 
 condition of the empire were such that hardly any 
 energy or any foresight was adequate to its defence, 
 for the emperor, on the other hand, there was scarcely 
 a possibility that he should escape destruction. The 
 chances were in an overbalance against the empire ; 
 but for the emperor there was no chance at all. He 
 shared in all the hazards of the empire ; and had 
 others so peculiarly pointed at himself, that his assas- 
 sination was now become as much a matter of certain 
 calculation, as seed time or harvest, summer or winter, 
 or any other revolution of the seasons. The problem, 
 therefore, for Dioclesian was a double one, — so to 
 provide for the defence and maintenance of the em- 
 pire, as simultaneously (and, if possible, through the 
 very same institution) to provide for the personal 
 security of Csesar. This problem he solved, in some 
 imperfect degree, by the only expedient perhaps open 
 to him in that despotism, and in those times. But it is 
 remarkable, that, by the revolution which he effected, 
 the office of Roman Imperator was completely altered, 
 and Caesar became henceforwarda an Oriental Sultan 
 or Padishah. Augustus, when moulding for his future
 
 248 THE CSSAKS. 
 
 purposes the form and constitution of that supremacj 
 -which he had obtained by inheritance and by arms, 
 proceeded with so much caution and prudence, that 
 even the style and title of his office was discussed in 
 council as a matter of the first moment. The principle 
 of his policy was to absorb into his own functions all 
 those high offices which conferred any real power to bal- 
 ance or to control his own. For this reason he appro- 
 priated the tribunitian power; because that was a 
 popular and representative office, which, as occasions 
 arose, would have given some opening to democratic 
 influences. But the consular office he left untouched ; 
 because all its power was transferred to the imperator, 
 by the entire command of the army, and by the new 
 organization of the provincial governments. 57 And in 
 all the rest of his arrangements, Augustus had pro- 
 ceeded on the principle of leaving as many openings 
 to civic influences, and impressing upon all his insti- 
 tutions as much of the old Roman character, as was 
 compatible with the real and substantial supremacy 
 established in the person of the emperor. Neither is 
 it at all certain, as regarded even this aspect of the 
 imperatorial office, that Augustus had the purpose, or 
 so much as the wish, to annihilate all collateral power, 
 and to invest the chief magistrate with absolute irre- 
 sponsibility. For himself, as called upon to restore a 
 shattered government, and out of the anarchy of civil 
 wars to recombine the elements of power into some
 
 THE CXSAUS. 249 
 
 shape better fitted for duration and, by consequence, 
 
 for insuring peace and protection to the world) than 
 the extinct republic, it might be reasonable to seek 
 such an irresponsibility. But, as regarded his succes- 
 sors, considering the great pains he took to discourage 
 all manifestations of princely arrogance, and to dcvcl- 
 ope, by education and example, the civic virtues of 
 patriotism and affability in their whole bearing towards 
 the people of Rome, there is reason to presume that he 
 wished to remove them from popular control, without, 
 therefore, removing them from popular influence. 
 
 Hence it was, and from this original precedent of 
 Augustus, aided by the constitution which he had given 
 to the office of imperator, that up to the era of Diocle- 
 sian, no prince had dared utterly to neglect the senate, 
 or the people of Rome. He might hate the senate, 
 like Sevcrus, or Aurclian ; he might even meditate 
 their extermination, like the brutal Maximin. But this 
 arose from any cause rather than from contempt. He 
 hated them precisely hecause he feared them, or be- 
 cause he paid them an involuntary tribute of supersti- 
 tious reverence, or because the malice of a tyrant 
 interpreted into a sort of treason the rival influence of 
 the senate over the minds of men. But, before Dio- 
 clesian, the undervaluing of the senate, or the harshest 
 treatment of that body, had arisen from views which 
 were jwrsonal to the individual Caesar. It was now 
 made to arise from the very constitution of the office
 
 250 THE C-ESARS. 
 
 and the mode of the appointment. To defend the 
 empire, it was the opinion of Dioclesian that a single 
 emperor was not sufficient. And it struck him, at the 
 same time, that by the very institution of a plurality of 
 emperors, which was now destined to secure the integ- 
 rity of the empire, ample provision might be made for 
 the personal security of each emperor. He carried his 
 plan into immediate execution, by appointing an asso- 
 ciate to his own rank of Augustus in the person of 
 Maximian — an experienced general ; whilst each of 
 them in effect multiplied his own office still farther by 
 severally appointing a Caesar, or hereditary prince. 
 And thus the very same partition of the public author- 
 ity, by means of a duality of emperors, to which the 
 senate had often resorted of late, as the best means of 
 restoring their own republican aristocracy, was now 
 adopted by Dioclesian as the simplest engine for over- 
 throwing finally the power of either senate or army to 
 interfere with the elective privilege. This he endeav- 
 ored to centre in the existing emperors ; and, at the 
 same moment, to discourage treason or usurpation 
 generally, whether in the party choosing or the party 
 chosen, by securing to each emperor, in the case of 
 his own assassination, an avenger in the person of his 
 surviving associate, as also in the persons of the two 
 Caesars, or adopted heirs and lieutenants. The asso- 
 ciate emperor, Maximian, together with the two Caesars 
 — Galerius appointed by himself, and Constantius
 
 
 i m: ( JESAK8. 251 
 
 Chlorus by Maximum — wer and tu himself by 
 
 of gratitude ; all owing their stations ultimately 
 to his own favor. And these tics he endeavored to 
 strengthen by other ties of affinity ; each of the 
 Augusti having given his daughter in marriage to his 
 own adopted Caesar. And thus it seemed scarcely 
 possible that an usurpation should be successful against 
 so firm a league of friends and relations. 
 
 The direct purposes of Dioclcsian were but imper- 
 il, tly attained ; # the internal peace of the empire lasted 
 only during his own reign ; and with his abdication of 
 the empire commenced the bloodiest civil wars which 
 has desolated the world since the contests of the great 
 triumvirate. But the collateral blow, which he medi- 
 tated against the authority of the senate, was entirely 
 successful. Never again had the senate any real influ- 
 ence on the fate of the world. And with the power 
 of the senate expired concurrently the weight and 
 influence of Rome. Dioclcsian is supposed never to 
 have seen Rome, except on the single occasion when 
 he entered it for the ceremonial purpose of a triumph. 
 Even for that purpose it ceased to be a city of resort ; 
 for Dioclesian's was the final triumph. And, lastly, 
 even as the chief city of the empire for business or 
 for pleasure, it ceased to claim the homage of man- 
 kind ; the Ca?sar was already born whose destiny it 
 was to cashier the metropolis of the world, and to 
 appoint her successor. This also may be regarded in
 
 252 THE C^SARS. 
 
 effect as the ordinance of Dioclesian ; for lie, by his 
 long residence at Nicomedia, expressed his opinion 
 pretty plainly, that Rome was not central enough to 
 perform the functions of a capital to so vast an empire ; 
 that this was one cause of the declension now become 
 so visible in the forces of the State ; and that some 
 city, not very far from the Hellespont or the .^Egean 
 Sea, would be a capital better adapted by position to 
 the exigencies of the times. 
 
 But the revolutions effected by Dioclesian did not 
 stop here. The simplicity of its republican origin had 
 so far affected the external character and expression 
 of the imperial office, that in the midst of luxury the 
 most unbounded, and spite of all other corruptions, a 
 majestic plainness of manners, deportment, and dress, 
 had still continued from generation to generation, char- 
 acteristic of the Roman impcrator in his intercourse 
 with his subjects. All this was now changed ; and 
 for the Roman was substituted the Persian dress, the 
 Persian style of household, a Persian court, and Per- 
 sian manners. A diadem, or tiara beset with pearls, 
 now encircled the temples of the Roman Augustus ; 
 his sandals were studded with pearls, as in the Persian 
 court ; and the other parts of his dress were in hai 
 mony with these. The prince was instructed no longer 
 to make himself familiar to the eyes of men. He 
 sequestered himself from his subjects in the recesses 
 of his palace. None, who sought him, could any
 
 THE CESARS. 253 
 
 longer gain easy admission to his presence. It was a 
 point of his new duties to be difficult of access ; and 
 they who were at length admitted to an audience, 
 found him surrounded by eunuchs, and were expected 
 to make their approaches by genuflexions, by servile 
 4 adorations,' and by real acts of worship as to a visible 
 god. 
 
 It is strange that a ritual of court ceremonies, so 
 elaborate and artificial as this, should first have been 
 introduced by a soldier, and a warlike soldier like 
 Dioclesian. This, however, is in part explained by his 
 education and long residence in Eastern countries. 
 But the same eastern training fell to the lot of Con- 
 stantinc, who was in effect his successor ; 58 and the 
 Oriental tone and standard established by these two 
 emperors, though disturbed a little by the plain and 
 military bearing of Julian, and one or two more em- 
 perors of the same breeding, finally re-established itself 
 with undisputed sway in the Byzantine court. 
 
 Meantime the institutions of Dioclesian, if they had 
 destroyed Rome and the senate as influences upon the 
 course of public affairs, and if they had destroyed the 
 Roman features of the Caesars, do, notwithstanding, 
 appear to have attained one of their purposes, in 
 limiting the extent of imperial murders. Travelling 
 through the brief list of the remaining Ca?sars, we 
 perceive a little more security for life; and hence the 
 successions are loss rapid. Constantino, who (like
 
 234 THE C.ESA.RS. 
 
 Aaron's rod) had swallowed up all liis competitors 
 seriatim, left the empire to his three sons ; and the 
 last of these most unwillingly to Julian. That prince's 
 Persian expedition, so much resembling in rashness 
 and presumption the Russian campaign of Xapoleon, 
 though so much below it in the scale of its tragic 
 results, led to the short reign of Jovian (or Jovinian), 
 which lasted only seven months. Upon his death 
 succeeded the house of Valentinian, 59 in whose de- 
 scendant, of the third generation, the empire, properly 
 speaking, expired. For the seven shadows who suc- 
 ceeded, from Avitus and Majorian to Julius Xepos and 
 Romulus Augustulus, were in no proper sense Roman 
 emperors, — they were not even emperors of the West, 
 — but had a limited kingdom in the Italian peninsula. 
 Valentinian the Third was, as we have said, the last 
 emperor of the West. 
 
 But, in a fuller and ampler sense, recurring to what 
 we have said of Dioclesian and the tenor of his great 
 revolutions, we may affirm that Probus and Cams were 
 the final representatives of the majesty of Rome: for 
 they reigned over the whole empire, not yet incapable 
 of sustaining its own unity ; and in them were still 
 preserved, not yet obliterated by oriental effeminacy, 
 those majestic features which reflected republican 
 consuls, and, through them, the senate and people of 
 Rome. That, which had offended Dioclesian in the 
 condition of the Roman emperors, was the grandest
 
 THE CJE8AB8. 255 
 
 feature of their dignity. It is true that the peril of 
 the office had become intolerable ; each Caesar sub- 
 mitted to his sad inauguration with a certainty, liable 
 even to hardly any disguise from the delusions of 
 youthful hope, that for him, within the boundless em- 
 pire which he governed, there was no coast of safety, 
 no shelter from the storm, no retreat, except the grave, 
 from the dagger of the assassin. Gibbon has described 
 the hopeless condition of one who should attempt to 
 fly from the wrath of the almost omnipresent emperor. 
 But this dire impossibility of escape was in the end 
 dreadfully retaliated upon the emperor ; persecutors 
 and traitors were found everywhere : and the vindic- 
 tive or the ambitious subject found himself as omni- 
 present as the jealous or the offended emperor. 
 
 The crown of the Caesars was therefore a crown of 
 thorns; and it must be admitted, that never in this 
 world have rank and power been purchased at so 
 awful a cost in tranquillity and peace of mind. The 
 steps of Caesar's throne were absulutcly saturated with 
 the blood of those who had possessed it : and so in- 
 exorable was that murderous fate which overhung that 
 gloomy eminence, that at length it demanded the spirit 
 of martyrdom in him who ventured to ascend it. In 
 these circumstances, some change was imperatively 
 demanded. Human nature was no longer equal to 
 the terrors which it was summoned to face. But the 
 changes of Dioclcsian transmuted that golden sceptre
 
 256 THE C^SARS. 
 
 into a base oriental alloy. They left nothing behind 
 of what had so much challenged the veneration of 
 man : for it was in the union of republican simplicity 
 with the irresponsibility of illimitable power — it was 
 in the antagonism between the merely human and ap- 
 proachable condition of Coosar as a man, and his divine 
 supremacy as a potentate and king of kings — that 
 the secret lay of his unrivalled grandeur. This per- 
 ished utterly under the reforming hands of Dioclcsian. 
 Caesar only it was that could be permitted to extinguish 
 Ceesar : and a Roman imperator it was who, by re- 
 modelling, did in affect abolish, by exorcising from its 
 foul terrors, did in effeat disenchant of its sanctity, that 
 imperatorial dignity, which having once perished, could 
 have no second existence, and which was undoubtedly 
 the sublimest incarnation of power, and a monument 
 the mightiest of greatness built by human hands, which 
 upon this planet has been suffered to appear.
 
 NOTES. 
 
 Note 1. Page 9. 
 Concerning this question — once so fervidly debated, yet so 
 unprofitable for the final adjudication, and in some respects, we 
 may add, so erroneously — on a future occasion. 
 
 Note 2. Page 10. 
 
 Or even of modern wit; witness the vain attempt of so many 
 eminent jcti, and illustrious Antecessors, to explain in self-con- 
 sistency the differing functions of the Roman Caesar, and in what 
 sense he was legibus solutus. The origin of this difficulty we 
 shall soon understand. 
 
 Note 3. Page 12. 
 
 * Nameless city.' — The true name of Rome it was a point of 
 religion to conceal; and, in fact, it was never revealed. 
 
 Note 4. Page 16. 
 
 This we mention, because a great error has been sometimes 
 committed in exposing their error, that consisted, not in suppos- 
 ing that for a fifth time men were to be gathered under one 
 sceptre, and that sceptre wielded by Jesus Christ, but in sup- 
 posing that this great era had then arrived, or that with no 
 deeper moral revolution men could be fitted for that yoke. 
 
 Note 5. Page 20. 
 
 * Of ancient /lays.' — For it is remarkable, and it serves to 
 mark an indubitable progress of mankind, that, before the Chris- 
 tian era, famines were of frequent occurrence in countries the 
 most civilized; afterwards tiny became rare, and latterly have 
 entirely altera! their character into occasional dearths. 
 
 22 [257]
 
 258 NOTES. 
 
 Note 6. Page 20. 
 Unless that hand wei*e her own armed against herself ; upon 
 which topic there is a burst of noble eloquence in one of the an- 
 cient Panegyrici, when haranguing the Emperor Theodosius : — 
 ' Thou, Rome ! that, having once suffered by the madness of China, 
 and of the cruel Marius raging from banishment, and of Sylla, 
 that won his wreath of prosperity from thy disasters, and of 
 Caesar, compassionate to the dead, didst shudder at every blast of 
 the trumpet filled by the breath of civil commotion, — thou, that, 
 besides the wreck of thy soldiery perishing on either side, didst 
 bewail, amongst thy spectacles of domestic woe, the luminaries of 
 thy senate extinguished, the heads of thy consuls fixed upon a 
 halberd, weeping for ages over thy self-slaughtered Catos, thy 
 headless Ciceros (truncosque Cicerones), and unburied Pompeys; 
 — to whom the party madness of thy own children had wrought 
 in every age heavier woe than the Carthaginian thundering at thy 
 gates, or the Gaul admitted within thy walls; on whom (Emathia, 
 more fatal than the day of Allia, — Collina, more dismal than 
 Cannae, — had inflicted such deep memorials of wounds, that, 
 from bitter experience of thy own valor, no enemy was to thee so 
 formidable as thyself; — thou, Rome ! didst now for the first time 
 behold a civil war issuing in a hallowed prosperity, a soldiery 
 appeased, recovered Italy, and for thyself liberty established. 
 Now first in thy long annals thou didst rest from a civil war in 
 such a peace, that righteously, and with maternal tenderness, 
 thou mightst claim for it the honors of a civic triumph.' 
 
 Note 7. Page 23. 
 The fact is, that the emperor was more of a sacred and divine 
 creature in his lifetime than after his death. His consecrated 
 character as a living ruler was a truth; his canonization, a 
 fiction of tenderness to his memory. 
 
 Note 8. Page 38. 
 
 It is an interesting circumstance in the habits of the ancient 
 Romans, that their journeys were pursued very much in the 
 night-time, and by torch-light. Cicero, in one of his letters, 
 speaks of passing through the towns of Italy by night, as a ser-
 
 NOTES. 259 
 
 viccable scheme for some political purpose, either of avoiding loo 
 much to publish his motions, or of evading the necessity (else 
 perhaps not avoidable), of drawing out the party sentiments of 
 the magistrates in the circumstances of honor or neglect with 
 which they might choose to receive him. His words, however, 
 imply that the practice was by no means an uncommon one. 
 And, indeed, from Borne passages in writers of the Augustan era, 
 it would seem that this custom was not confined to people of dis- 
 tinction, but was familiar to a class of travellers so low in rank 
 as to be capable of abusing their opportunities of concealment for 
 the infliction of wanton injury upon the woods and fences which 
 bounded the margin of the high-road. Under the cloud of night 
 aud solitude, the mischief-loving traveller was often in the habit 
 Of applying his torch to the withered boughs of woods, or to arti- 
 ficial hedges; and extensive ravages by fire, such as now happen 
 not unfrequently in the American woods, (but generally from 
 carelessness in scattering the glowing embers of a fire, or even 
 the asln-s of a pipe,) were then occasionally the result of mere 
 Wantonness of mischief. Ovid accordingly notice-, as one amongst 
 the familiar images of daybreak, the half-burnt torch of the trav- 
 eller; and, apparently, from the position which it holds in his 
 description, where it is ranked with the most familiar of all cir- 
 cumstances in all countries, — that of the rural laborer going out 
 to his morning bisks, — it must have been common indeed : 
 
 1 Semiustamque facem vigilata nocte viator 
 Ponet; et ad solitum rustieus ibit opus.' 
 
 This occurs in the Fasti; — elsewhere he notices it for its 
 danger : 
 
 ' Ut facibus sepes ardent, cum forte viator 
 Vel nimis admovit, veljam sub luce reliquhV 
 
 He, however, we sec, good-naturedly ascribes the danger to mere 
 
 carelessness, in bringing the torch t tear to the hedge, or tossing 
 
 it away at daybreak. But Varro, a more matter-of-fact observer, 
 does not disguise the plain truth, that these disasters were often 
 tin' product of pure malicious frolic. For instance, in recom- 
 mending a certain kind of quicksel fence, he insists upon it, as 
 one of its advantages, that it will not readily ignite under the
 
 200 NOTES. 
 
 torch of the mischievous wayfarer; * Naturale sepimentum,' sayg 
 he, ' quod obseri solet virgultis aut spinis, pratcreuntis lascivi 
 non metuet faccm.' It is not easy to see the origin or advantage 
 of this practice of nocturnal travelling (which must have consid- 
 erably increased the hazards of a journey), excepting only in the 
 heats of summer. It is probable, however, that men of high 
 rank and public station may have introduced the practice by way 
 of releasing corporate bodies in large towns from the burdensome 
 ceremonies of public receptions ; thus making a compromise 
 between their own dignity and the convenience of the provincial 
 public. Once introduced, and the arrangements upon the road 
 for meeting the wants of travellers once adapted to such a prac- 
 tice, it would easily become universal. It is, however, very pos- 
 sible that mere horror of the heats of day-time may have been the 
 original ground for it. The ancients appear to have shrunk from 
 no hardship so trying and insufferable as that of heat. And in 
 relation to that subject, it is interesting to observe the way in 
 which the ordinary use of language has accommodated itself to 
 that feeling. Our northern way of expressing effeminacy is de- 
 rived chiefly from the hardships of cold. He that shrinks from 
 the trials and rough experience of real life in any department, is 
 described by the contemptuous prefix of chimney-corner, as if 
 shrinking from the cold which he would meet on coming out into 
 the open air amongst his fellow-men. Thus, a chimney-corner 
 politician, for a mere speculator or unpractical dreamer. But 
 the very same indolent habit of aerial speculation, which courts 
 no test of real life and practice, is described by the ancients under 
 the term umbracticus, or seeking the cool shade, and shrinking 
 from the heat. Thus, an umbracticus doctor is one who has no 
 practical solidity in his teaching. The fatigue and hardship of 
 real life, in short, is represented by the ancients under the uni- 
 form image of heat, and by the moderns under that of cold. 
 
 Note 9. Page 41 
 
 According to Suetonius, the circumstances of this memorable 
 night were as follows : — As soon as the decisive intelligence was 
 received, that the intrigues of his enemies had prevailed at Rome, 
 and that the interposition of the popular magistrates (the trib- 
 unes) was set aside, Caesar sent forward the troops, who were
 
 NOTES. 261 
 
 then at his head-quarters, but in as private a manner as possible. 
 JIc himself, i>y way of masque (per dissimulationem), attended 
 
 a public spectacle, gave au audience to an architect who wished 
 to l:i\- before him a plan for a school of gladiators which Caesar 
 
 designed to build, and finally presented himself at a banquet, 
 which was very numerously attended. From this, about sunset, 
 lie set forward in a carriage, drawn by mules, and with a small 
 escort (modico comitate). Losing his road, which was the most 
 private he could find (occultissimuiu), he quitted his carriage 
 and proceeded on foot. At dawn he met with a guide; after 
 which followed the above Incidents. 
 
 Note 10. Page 61. 
 
 Middleton's Life of Cicero, which still continues to be the most 
 readable digest of these affairs, is feeble and contradictory. He 
 discovers that Caesar was no general ! And the single merit 
 which his work was supposed to possess, viz. the better and more 
 critical arrangement of Cicero's Letters, in respect to their 
 chronology, has of late years been detected as a robbery from the 
 celebrated liellenden, of James the First's time. 
 
 Note 11. Page 55. 
 Suetonius, speaking of this conspiracy, says, that Caesar was 
 nominates inter socios Catilinee, which has been erroneously 
 understood to mean that he was talked of as an accomplice; but 
 in fact, as Casaubon first pointed out, nominatus is a technical 
 term of the Roman jurisprudence, and means that he was for- 
 mally denounced. 
 
 Note 12. Page 64. 
 Ctesar had the merit of being the first person to propose the 
 daily publication of the acts and votes of the senate. In the form 
 of public and official despatches, he made also some useful innova- 
 tions; and it may be mentioned, for the curiosity of the incident, 
 that the cipher which ho used in his correspondence, was the 
 following very simple one : — For every letter of the alphabet he 
 substituted that which stood fourth removed from it in the order 
 of succession. Thus, for A, he used D; for D, G, and so on.
 
 262 NOTES. 
 
 Note 13. Page 80. 
 ' The painful warrior, famoused for fight, 
 After a thousand victories once foil'd, 
 Is from the book of honor razed quite, 
 
 And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd.' 
 
 Shaks2>eare , s Somiets 
 
 Note 14. Page 80. 
 And this was entirely by the female side. The family descent 
 6T the first six Ceesars is so intricate, that it is rarely understood 
 accurately; so that it may be well to state it briefly. Augustus 
 was grand nephew to Julius Coesar, being the son of his sister's 
 daughter. He was also, by adoption, the son of Julius. He 
 himself had one child only, viz. the infamous Julia, who was 
 brought him by his second wife Scribonia; and through this Julia 
 it was that the three princes, who succeeded to Tiberius, claimed 
 relationship to Augustus. On that emperor's last marriage with 
 Livia, he adopted the two sons whom she had borne to her di- 
 vorced husband. These two noblemen, who stood in no degree 
 of consanguinity whatever to Augustus, were Tiberius and Drusus. 
 Tiberius left no children; but Drusus, the younger of the two 
 brothers, by his marriage with the younger Antonia (daughter 
 of Mark Anthony), had the celebrated Germanicus, and Claudius 
 (afterwards emperor). Germanicus, though adopted by his 
 uncle Tiberius, and destined to the empire, died prematurely. 
 But, like Banquo, though he wore no crown, he left descendants 
 who did. For, by his marriage with Agrippina. a daughter of 
 Julia's by Agrippa (and therefore grand-daughter of Augustus), 
 he had a large family, of whom one son became the Emperor 
 Caligula; and one of the daughters, Agrippina the younger, by 
 her marriage with a Roman nobleman, became the mother of the 
 Emperor Nero. Hence it appears that Tiberius was uncle to 
 Claudius, Claudius was uncle to Caligula, Caligula wag uncle to 
 Nero. But it is observable, that Nero and Caligula stood in 
 another degree of consanguinity to each other through their 
 grandmothers, who were both daughters of Mark Anthony the 
 triumvir; for the elder Antonia mirried the grandfather of Nero; 
 the younger Antonia (as we have stated above) married Drusus,
 
 W0XE8. 2G3 
 
 the grandfather of Caligula; and again, by these two ladies, they 
 were connected not only with each other, but also with the Julian 
 bouse, for the two Antoniaa were daughters of Mark Anthony by 
 Octavia, Bister to Augustus. 
 
 Note 15. Page 96. 
 But a memorial stone, in its inscription, makes the time longer : 
 ' Quamlo urbs per novem dies arsit Neronianis temporibus.' 
 
 Note 1G. Page 10G. 
 At tliis early hour, witnesses, sureties, &c., ami all concerned 
 in the law courts, came up to Rome from villas, country towns, 
 &c. But no ordinary call existed to summon travellers in the 
 opposite direction; which accounts for the comment of the trav- 
 ellers on the errand of Nero and his attendants. 
 
 Note 17. Page 113. 
 We may add that the unexampled public grief which followed 
 the death of Otho, exceeding even that which foil.. wed the death 
 of Germanicus, and causing several officers to commit suicide, 
 implies some remarkable goodness in this Prince, and a very 
 unusual power of conciliating attachment. 
 
 Note 18. Page 117. 
 Blackwell, in his Court of Augustus, vol. i. p. 382, when no- 
 ticing these lines, upon occasion of the murder of Cicero, in the 
 final proscription under the last triumvirate, comments thus : 
 ' Those of the greatest and truly Roman spirit had been murdered 
 in the field by Julius Ciesar : the rest were now massacred in the 
 city by his son and successors; in their room came Syrians, Cap- 
 padocians, Phrygians, and other enfranchised slaves from the 
 conquered nations; ' — « these in half a century had sunk so low, 
 that Tiberius pronounced her very senators to be homines ad 
 tervitutem itatus, men born to be slaves.' 
 
 Nik L9. Page 117. 
 Suetonius indeed pretends that Augustus, personally at least, 
 
 struggled against this ruinous practice — thinking it a matter of 
 
 the highest moment, ' Bincerum atque ab omni colluvione pere-
 
 264 NOTES. 
 
 grini et servilis sanguinis incorruptum scrvare poptdum.' And 
 Horace is ready with his flatteries on the same topic, lib. 3, Od. 6. 
 But the facts are against them; for the question is not what 
 Augustus did in his own person, (which at most could not operate 
 very widely except by the example,) but what he permitted 
 to be done. Now there was a practice familiar to those times : 
 that when a congiary or any other popular liberality was an- 
 nounced, multitudes were enfranchised by avaricious masters in 
 order to make them capable of the bounty (as citizens), and yet 
 under the condition of transferring to their emancipators what- 
 soever they should receive; ira ror d^tiootvig didofievov atror kau- 
 Sarorrec y.ara fitjva — (piQwot ton; Stfiuir.uxsi t>;v i).ti6iQiav, says 
 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in order that after receiving the corn 
 given publicly in every month, they might carry it to those who 
 had bestowed upon them their freedom. In a case, then, where 
 an extensive practice of this kind was exposed to Augustus, and 
 publicly reproved by him, how did he proceed ? Did he reject 
 the new-made citizens ? No; he contented himself with diminish- 
 ing the proportion originally destined for each, so that the same 
 absolute sum being distributed among a number increased by the 
 whole amount of the new enrolments, of necessity the relative 
 sum for each separately was so much less. But this was a rem- 
 edy applied only to the pecuniary fraud as it would have affected 
 himself. The permanent mischief to the state went unredressed. 
 
 Note 20. Page 118. 
 Part of the story is well known, but not the whole. Tiberius 
 Nero, a promising young nobleman, had recently married a very 
 splendid beauty. Unfortunately for him, at the marriage of 
 Octavia (sister to Augustus) with Mark Anthony, he allowed his 
 young wife, then about eighteen, to attend upon the bride. Au- 
 gustus was deeply and suddenly fascinated by her charms, and 
 without further scruple sent a message to Nero — intimating that 
 he was in love with his wife, and would thank him to resign her. 
 The other, thinking it vain, in those days of lawless proscription, 
 to contest a point of this nature with one who commanded twelve 
 legions, obeyed the requisition. Upon some motive, now un- 
 known, he was persuaded even to degrade himself farther; for he 
 actually officiated at the marriage in character of father, and
 
 
 NOTES. 265 
 
 gave away the young beauty to bis rival, although tit that time 
 6ix months advanced in pregnancy by himself. These humiliat- 
 ing concessions were extorted from him, and yielded (probably 
 at the instigation of friends) In order to save his life. In the 
 sequel thej had the very opposite result; for he died soon after, 
 and it is reasonably supposed of grief and mortification. At the 
 mai'j i, .hi incident occurred which threw the whole i 
 
 pany into confusicn : A little boy, roving from couch to c h 
 
 among the guests, came at length to that in which Livia (the 
 bride) was lying By the side of Augustus, on which he cried out 
 aloud, — ' Lady, what are you doing here? You are mistaken — 
 this is not your husband — he is there,' (pointing to Tiberius,) 
 ' go, go — rise, lady, an 1 recline beside him.'' 
 
 Note '21. Page 121. 
 Augustus, indeed, strove to exclude the women from one part 
 of the circension Spectacles; and what was that ? Simply from 
 the sight of the Athletes, as being naked. But that they should 
 witness the pangs of the dying gladiators, he deemed quite allow- 
 able. The smooth barbarian considered, that a license of the 
 first sort offended against decorum, whilst the other violated only 
 the sanctities of the human heart, and the whole sexual character 
 of women. It is our opinion, that to the brutalizing effect of 
 these exhibitions we arc to ascribe, not mily the early extinction 
 of the Roman drama, but generally the inferiority of Rome to 
 Greece in every department of the fine arts. The fine temper of 
 Roman sensibility, which no culture could have brought to the 
 level of the Grecian, was thus dulled for every application. 
 
 Note 22. Page 130. 
 No fiction of romance present- so awful a picture of the ideal 
 tyrant as that of Caligula by Suetonius. 1 lis palace — radiant 
 with purple and gold, but murder everywhere lurking beneath 
 flowers: his smiles and echoing laughter — masking (yet hardly 
 meant to mask) his foul treachery of heart; bis hideous and tu- 
 multuous dreams — his baffled sleep — and his aleepless nights — 
 compose the picture of an ASschylus. What a master's sketch 
 
 lies in these few lilies: ' Ineitahatur insomnio maxiiue; neque 
 eniin plus tribus horis noctornis quiescebat; ac ne his placida 
 23
 
 266 KOTES. 
 
 quiete, at pavida niiris reruni imaginibus; ut qui inter ceteras 
 pelagi quondam speciem colloquentem secum videre visas sit. 
 Ideoque magna parte noctis, vigilse cubandique tsedio, nunc toro 
 residens, nunc per longissimas porticus vagus, invocare identi- 
 dem at(|ue exspectare lucem consueverat : ' — i.e. ' But, above 
 all, he was tormented with nervous irritation, by sleeplessness ; 
 for he enjoyed not more than tbree hours of nocturnal repose ; 
 nor these even in pure untroubled rest, but agitated by phantas- 
 mata of portentous augury; as, for example, upon one occasion 
 he fancied that he saw the sea, under some definite impersona- 
 tion, conversing with himself. Hence it was, and from this in- 
 capacity of sleeping, and from weariness of lying awake, that he 
 had fallen into habits of ranging all the night long through the 
 palace, sometimes throwing himself on a couch, sometimes wan- 
 dering along the vast corridors, watching for the earliest dawn, 
 and anxiously invoking its approach. 
 
 Note 23. Page 132. 
 And hence we may the better estimate the trial to a Roman's 
 feelings in the personal deformity of baldness, connected with the 
 Roman theory of its cause, for the exposure of it was perpetual. 
 
 Note '24. Page 133. 
 
 * Expeditiones sub eo,' says Spartian, ' graves nulloe fuerunt. 
 Bella etiam silentio pene transacta.' But he does not the less 
 add, ' A militibus, propter curam exercitus nimiam, multum 
 amatus est.' 
 
 Note 25. Page 134. 
 In the true spirit of Parisian mummery, Bonaparte caused 
 letters to be written from the War-office, in his own name, to 
 particular soldiers of high military reputation in every brigade, 
 (whose private history he had previously caused to be investi- 
 gated,) alluding circumstantially to the leading facts in their 
 personal or family career; a furlough accompanied this letter, 
 and they were requested to repair to Paris, where the emperor 
 anxiously desired to see them. Thus was the paternal interest 
 expressed, which their leader took in each man's fortunes; and
 
 NOTES. 267 
 
 the effect of cL letter, it was nut doubted, would diftuso 
 
 itself through ten thousand other men. 
 
 Note2G. Page 185. 
 
 • War in product* — a phrase of Milton's in Paradise Re- 
 gained, which strikingly illustrates his love of Latin phraseology; 
 
 for unless to a scholar, previously acquainted with the Latin 
 phrase of in procinctn, it is so absolutely unintelligible as to 
 interrupt the current of the feeling. 
 
 Note 27. Page 136. 
 
 'Cry/its' — these, which Spartian, in his life of Hadrian, 
 denominates simply cryptte, are the same which, in the Roman 
 jurisprudence, and in the architectural works of the Romans, 
 yet surviving, are termed hyjiogau deambulationes, i. e. subter- 
 ranean parades. Vitruvius treats of this luxurious class of 
 apartments in connection with the Apolhecce, and other reposi- 
 tories or store-rooms, which were also in many cases under- 
 ground, (for the same reason as our ice-houses, wine-cellars, &c. 
 He (and from him Pliny and Apollonaris Sidonius) calls them 
 crypto-porticus (cloistral colonnades); and Ulpian calls them 
 refugia (sanctuaries, or places of refuge); St. Ambrose notices 
 them under the name of hypogtea and u mbrosa penetralia, as the 
 resorts of voluptuaries: Luxuriosorum est, says he, liyjiogaa 
 quterere — captantium frigus cestivum; and again lie speaks of 
 desidiosi qui ignava sub terris agaiit otia. 
 
 Note 28. Page 136. 
 
 * The topiary art' — so called, as Salmasius thinks, from 
 T07r/;iov, a rope; because the process of construction was con- 
 ducted Aiefly by mean- of cords and strings. This art was 
 much practised in the 17th century; and Casaubon describes one, 
 which existed in his early days somewhere in the suburbs of 
 Paris, on so elaborate a scale, that it represented Tiny besieged, 
 with the two hosts, their several leaders, and all other objects in 
 their full proportion.
 
 268 NOTES. 
 
 Note 20. Page 137. 
 Very remarkable it is, and a fact which speaks volumes as to 
 the democratic constitution of the Roman army, in the midst of 
 that aristocracy which enveloped its parent state in a civil sense, 
 that although there was a name for a common soldier (or senti- 
 nel, as he was termed by our ancestors) — viz. miles gregarivs, 
 or miles manipularis — there was none for an officer ; that is to 
 say, each several rank of officers had a name; but there was no 
 generalization to express the idea of an officer abstracted from 
 its several species or classes. 
 
 Note 30. Page 139. 
 
 Vitis : and it deserves to be mentioned, that this staff, or 
 cudgel, which was the official engine and cognizance of the Cen- 
 turion's dignity, was meant expressly to be used in caning or 
 cudgelling the inferior soldiers : ' Propterea vitis in nianum 
 data,' says Salmasius, * verberando scilicet militi qui deliquisset.' 
 We are no patrons of corporal chastisement, which, on the con- 
 trary, as the vilest of degradations, we abominate. The soldier, 
 who does not feel himself dishonored by it, is already dishonored 
 beyond hope or redemption. But still let this degradation not 
 be imputed to the English army exclusively. 
 
 Note 31. Page 145. 
 
 In the original ter millies, which is not much above two mil- 
 lions and one hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling; but 
 it must be remembered that one third as much, in addition to 
 this popular lai'gess, had been given to the army. 
 
 Note 32. Page 145. 
 
 ■ nam bene gesti rebus, vel potius feliciter, etsi non 
 
 summi — medii tamen obtinuit ducis famam.' 
 
 Note 33. Page 146. 
 
 This, however, is a point in which royal personages claim an 
 
 old prescriptive right to be unreasonable in their exactions ; and 
 
 some, even amongst the most humane of Christian princes, have 
 
 erred as flagrantly as JElius Verus. George IV. we have under-
 
 NOTES. 269 
 
 stood, was generally escorted from Dalkeith to Holyrood at a 
 rate of twenty-two miles an hour. And of hie father, the truly 
 kind and paternal king, it is recorded by Miss Hawkins, ('laugh- 
 ter of Sir J. Hawkins, the biographer of Johnson, >ve.) that 
 families \\h<> happened to have a son, brother, lover, &c. in the 
 particular regiment of cavalry which furnished the escort for the 
 day, used to sutler as much anxiety for the result as on the eve 
 of a great battle. 
 
 Note 34. Page 154. 
 And not impossibly of America ; for it must be remembered 
 that, when we speak of this quarter of the earth as yet undiscov- 
 ered, we mean — to ourselves of the western climates; since as 
 respects the eastern quarters of Asia, doubtless America was 
 known there familiarly enough; and the high bounties of imperial 
 Rome on rare animals, would sometimes perhaps propagate their 
 influence even to those regions. 
 
 Note 35. Page 155. 
 
 In default of whalebone, one is curious to know of what they 
 were made : — thin tablets of the linden-tree, it appears, were 
 the best materials which the Augustus of that day could com- 
 mand. 
 
 Note 30. Page 156. 
 There is, however, a good deal of delusion prevalent on such 
 subjects. In some English cavalry regiments, the custom is for 
 the privates to take only one meal a day, which of course is din- 
 ner; and by some curious experiments it has appeared that such 
 a mode of life is the healthiest. But at the same time we have 
 rtained that the quantity of porter or substantial ale drunk 
 in these regiments docs virtually allow many meals, by compar- 
 ison with the washy tea breakfasts of most Englishmen. 
 
 Note 37. Page 169. 
 
 So much improvement had Christianity already accomplished 
 
 in the feelings of men since the time of Augustus. That prince, 
 
 in whose reign the Founder of this ennobling religion was born, 
 
 had delighted so much and indulged so freely in the spectacles
 
 270 XOTES. 
 
 of the amphitheatre, that Maecenas summoned him reproachfully 
 to leave them, saying, ' Surge tandem, carnifex.' 
 
 It is the remark of Capituline, that ' gladiatoria spectacula 
 omnifariam temper avit; tempcravit etiam scenicas donationes ; ' 
 — he controlled in every possible way the gladiatorial specta- 
 cles ; he controlled also the rates of allowance to the stage per- 
 formers. In these latter reforms, which simply restrained the 
 exorbitant salaries of a class dedicated to the public pleasures, 
 and unprofitable to the State, Marcus may have had no farther 
 view than that which is usually connected with sumptuary laws. 
 But in the restraints upon the gladiators, it is impossible to 
 believe that his highest purpose was not that of elevating human 
 nature, and preparing the way for still higher regulations. As 
 little can it be believed that this lofty conception, and the sense 
 of a degradation entailed upon human nature itself, in the spec- 
 tacle of human beings matched against each other like brute 
 beasts, and pouring out their blood upon the arena as a libat : on 
 to the caprices of a mob, could have been derived from any other 
 source than the contagion of Christian standards and Christian 
 sentiments, then beginning to pervade and ventilate the 
 atmosphere of society in its higher and philosophic regions. 
 Christianity, without expressly affirming, everywhere indirectly 
 supposes and presumes the infinite value and dignity of man as a 
 creature, exclusively concerned in a vast and mysterious economy 
 of restoration to a state of moral beauty and power in some 
 former age mysteriously forfeited. Equally interested in its ben- 
 efits, joint heirs of its promises, all men, of every color, language, 
 and rank, Gentile or Jew, were here first represented as in one 
 sense (and that the most important) equal; in the eye of this 
 religion, they were, hy necessity of logic, equal, as equal partici- 
 pators in the ruin and the restoration. Here first, in any avail- 
 able sense, was communicated to the standard of human nature 
 a vast and sudden elevation; and reasonable enough it is to 
 suppose, that some obscure sense of this, some sympathy with the 
 great changes for man then beginnn to operate, would first of 
 all reach the inquisitive students of philosophy, and chiefly those 
 in high stations, who cultivated an intercourse with all the men 
 of original genius throughout the civilized world. The Emperor 
 Hadrian had already taken a solitary step in the improvement
 
 NOTES. 271 
 
 of human nature; and not, we may belie e, without some rab- 
 oonscious influence received directly or indirectly from Christian- 
 ity, in, with respect to Marcus, it is hardly conceivable 
 that he, a prince bo indulgent and popular, could have thwarted, 
 and v iolently gainsaid, a primary impulse of the Roman popo 
 without some adequate motive; and none could be adequate 
 which was not built upon some new and exalted views of human 
 nature, with which these gladiatorial Bacrifiees were altogether 
 at war. The reforms which Marcus introduced into these ' cru- 
 delissima spectacular all having the common purpose of limiting 
 their extent, were three. First, he Bet bounds to the extreme 
 cost of these exhibitions; and this restriction of the cost covertly 
 operated as a restriction of the practice. Secondly, — and this 
 ordinance to k effect whenever he was personally present, if not 
 oftener, — he commanded, on great occasions, that these displays 
 
 Bhould be bl Hess. Dion Cassius notices this fact in the fol- 
 
 lowing words : — 'The Emperor Marcus was bo far from taking 
 
 delight in spectacles of bl Ished, that even the gladiators in 
 
 If 6 could not obtain his inspection of their contests, unless, 
 
 like the wrestlers, they contended without imminent risk; for he 
 never allowed them the use of sharpened weapons, but univer- 
 sally they fought before him with weapons previously blunted.' 
 Thirdly, he repealed the old and uniform regulation, which 
 secured to the gladiators a perpetual immunity from military 
 service. This necessarily diminished their available amount. 
 Being now liable to serve their country usefully in the field of 
 battle, whilst the concurrent limitation of the expenses in this 
 direction prevented any proportionate increase of their numbers, 
 they were so much the less disposable in aid of the public luxury. 
 His fatherly care of all classes, and the universal benignity with 
 which he attempted to raise the abject estimate and condition of 
 even the lowest Pari, tit* in his vast empire, appears in another 
 little anecdote, relating to a class of men equally with the gladia- 
 tors given up to the service of luxury in a haughty and cruel 
 populace. Attending one day at an exhibition of rope-dancing, 
 one of the performers (a hoy) fell and hurt himself; from which 
 time the paternal emperor would never allow the rope-dancers to 
 perform without mattresses or feather-beds spread below, to 
 mitigate the violence of their falls.
 
 272 NOTES. 
 
 Note 38. Page 160. 
 Marcus had been associated, as Ciesar, and as emperor, with 
 the son of the late beautiful Verus, who is usually mentioned by 
 the same name. 
 
 Note 39. Page 163. 
 Because the most effectual extinguishers of all ambition applied 
 in that direction; since the very excellence of any particular 
 fabric was the surest pledge of its virtual suppression by means 
 of its legal restriction (which followed inevitably) to the use of 
 the imperial house. 
 
 Note 40. Page 165. 
 
 Upon which some mimographus built an occasional notice of 
 the scandal then floating on the public breath in the following 
 terms : One of the actors having asked ' Who was the adulterous 
 paramour 1 ' receives for answer, Tullus. Who ? he asks 
 again ; and again for three times running he is answered, 
 Tullus. But asking a fourth time, the rejoinder is, Jam dixi 
 ter Tullus. 
 
 Note 41. Page 166. 
 
 In reality, if by divus and divine honors we understand a saint 
 or spiritualized being having a right of intercession with the Su- 
 preme Deity, and by his temple, &c, if we understand a shrine 
 attended by a priest to direct the prayers of his devotees, there 
 is no such wide chasm between this pagan superstition and the 
 adoration of saints in the Romish church, as at first sight ap- 
 pears. The fault is purely in the names : divus and tcmplum are 
 words too undistinguishing and generic. 
 
 Note 42. Page 168. 
 Not long after this Alexander Severiis meditated a temple to 
 Christ; upon which design Lampridius observes, — Quod et 
 Hadrianus cogitasse fertur ; and, as Lampridius was himself a 
 pagan, we believe him to have been right in his report, in spite 
 of all which has been written by Casaubon and others, who 
 maintain that these imperfect temples of Hadrian were left void
 
 NOTES. 273 
 
 of nil images or idols, — not in reaped to the Christian practice, 
 but beo rase he designed them eventually to be dedicated to him- 
 self. However, be this as it may, thus much appears on the face 
 of the story, — that Christ and Christianity had by tint time 
 begun to challenge the imperial attention; and of this there is 
 au indirect indication, as it has been interpreted, even in the 
 memoir of Marcus himself. The passage is this : ' Fama fuit 
 Bane quod sub philosophorum specie quidam rempublicam vexa- 
 rent et privates. ' The philosojmi, here mentioned by Capitoline, 
 are by some supposed to be the Christians; and for many reasons 
 mi- believe it; and we understand the molestatii ns of the public 
 services and of private individuals, here charged upon them, as 
 a very natural reference to the Christian doctrines falsely under- 
 stood. There is, by the way, a fine remark upon Christianity, 
 made by an infidel philosopher of Germany, which suggests a 
 remarkable feature in the merits of Marcus Aurelius. There 
 weir, as this German philospher used to observe, two schemes 
 of thinking amongst the ancients, which severally fulfilled the 
 two functions of a sound philosophy as respected the moral nature 
 of man. One of these schemes presented us with a just ideal of 
 moral excellence, a standard sufficiently exalted ; this was tho 
 Stoic philosophy; and thus far its pretensions were unexception- 
 able and perfect. But unfortunately, whilst contemplating this 
 pure ideal of man as he ought to be, the Stoic totally forgot the 
 frail nature of man as he is; and by refusing all compromises 
 and all condescensions to human infirmity, this philosophy of the 
 Porch presented to us a brilliant prize and object for our efforts, 
 but placed on an inaccessible height. 
 
 On the other hand, there was a very different philosophy at 
 the very antagonist pole, — not blinding itself by abstractions too 
 elevated, submitting to what it finds, bending to the absolute 
 (acts and realities of man's nature, and affably adapting itself to 
 human imperfections. There was the philosophy of Epicurus; 
 and undoubtedly, as a beginning, and for the elementary pur- 
 pose of conciliating the affections of the pupil, it was well devised ; 
 but here the misfortune was, that the ideal, or maximum per- 
 fections, attainable by human nature, was pitched so low, that 
 the humility of its condescensions and the excellence of its means 
 were all to no purpose, as leading to nothing further. One
 
 274 NOTES- 
 
 mode presented a splendid end, but insulated, and with no means 
 fitted to a human aspirant for communicating with its splendors; 
 the other, an excellent road, but leading to no worthy or propor- 
 tionate end. Yet these, as regarded morals, were the best and 
 ultimate achievements of the pagan world. Now Christianity, 
 said he, is the synthesis of whatever is separately excellent in 
 either. It will abate as little as the haughtiest Stoicism of the 
 ideal which it contemjilates as the first postulate of true moral- 
 ity; the absolute holiness and purity which it demands are as 
 much raised above the poor performances of actual man, as the 
 absolute wisdom and impeccability of the Stoic. Yet, unlike the 
 Stoic scheme, Christianity is aware of the necessity, and provides 
 for it, that the means of appropriating this ideal perfection 
 should be such as are consistent with the nature of a most erring 
 and imperfect creature. Its motion is towards the divine, but 
 by and through the human. In fact, it offers the Stoic human- 
 ized in his scheme of means, and the Epicurean exalted in his 
 final objects. Nor is it possible to conceive a practicable scheme 
 of morals which should not rest upon such a synthesis of the two 
 elements as the Christian scheme presents ; nor any other mode 
 of fulfilling that demand than such a one as is there first brought 
 forward, viz., a double or Janus nature, which stands in an 
 equivocal relation, — to the divine nature by his actual perfec- 
 tions, to the human nature by his participation in the same 
 animal frailties and capacities of fleshly temptation. No other 
 vinculum could bind the two postulates together, of an absolute 
 perfection in the end proposed, and yet of utter imperfection in 
 the means for attaining it. 
 
 Such was the outline of this famous tribute by an unbelieving 
 philosopher to the merits of Christianity as a scheme of moral 
 discipline. Now, it must be remembered that Marcus Aurelius 
 was by profession a Stoic; and that generally, as a theoretical 
 philosopher, but still more as a Stoic philosopher, he might be 
 supposed incapable of descending from these airy altitudes of 
 speculation to the true needs, infirmities, and capacities of hu- 
 man nature. Yet strange it is, that he, of all the good emperors, 
 was the most thoroughly human and practical. In evidence of 
 which, one body of records is amply sufficient, which is, the very 
 extensive and wise reforms which he, beyond all the Coasars,
 
 NOTES. 275 
 
 executed in the existing laws. To all tlic exigencies of the times, 
 and to all the new necessities developed by the prog ess of 
 society, lio adjusted the old laws, or supplied uew ones. The 
 same praise, therefore, belongs to him, which the German phi- 
 losopher conceded to Christianity, of reconciling the aust< 
 ideal with the practical; and lunre another argument for pre- 
 suming him half baptized into the new faith. 
 
 Note 43. Page 182. 
 
 Amongst these institutions, none appear to us so remarkable, 
 or fitted to accomplish so prodigious a circle of purposes belong- 
 ing to the highest state policy, as the Roman method of coloniza- 
 tion. Colonics were, in effect, the great engine of Roman con- 
 quest; and the following are among a few of the great ends to 
 
 Which they were applied. First of all, how came it that the 
 early armies of Rome served, and served cheerfully, without 
 pay? Simply because all who were victorious knew that they 
 ■would receive their arrears in the fullest and amplest form upon 
 their fmal discharge, viz., in the shape of a colonial estate — 
 large enough to rear a family in comfort, and seated in the midst 
 of similar allotments, distributed to their old comrades in arms. 
 These lands were already, perhaps, in high cultivation, being 
 often taken from conquered tribes; but, if not, the new occu- 
 pants could rely for aid of every sort, for social intercourse, and 
 for all the offices of good neighborhood upon the surrounding 
 proprietors — who were sure to be persons in the same circum- 
 stances as themselves, and draughted from the same legion. 
 For be it remembered, that in the primitive ages of Rome, con- 
 cerning which it is that we are now speaking, entire legions — 
 privates and officers — were transferred in one body to the new 
 colony. ' Antiquitus,' says the learned Goesius, « deducebantur 
 Integra legiones, quibus porta victoria.' Neither was there 
 much waiting for this honorary gift. In later ages, it is true, 
 when such resources were less plentiful, and when regular pay 
 was given to the soldiery, it was the veteran only who obtained 
 this splendid provisi a; but in the earlier times, a single fortu- 
 nate campaign nol Beldom dismissed the young recruit to a life 
 of ea^' and honor. ' Multis legionibus,' says Hyginus, • contigit 
 bellum feliciter transigere, et ad laboriosam agriculture requiem
 
 276 xotes. 
 
 primo tyrocinii gradu purvenire. Nam cum signis et aquila et 
 primis ordiuibus et tribunia deducebantur.' Tacitus also notices 
 t'ais organization of the early colonies, and adds the reason of it, 
 and its happy effect, when contrasting it with the vicious ar- 
 rangements of the colonizing system in his own days. * Olim,' 
 says he, ' universal legiones deducebantur cum tribunis et cen- 
 turionibus, et siri cujusque ordinis militibus, ut consensu et 
 charitate republican efficerent.' Secondly, not only were the 
 troops in this way at a time when the public purse was unequal 
 to the expenditure of war — but this pay, being contingent on 
 the successful issue of the war, added the strength of self-interest 
 to that of patriotism in stimulating the soldier to extraordinary 
 efforts. Thirdly, not only did the soldier in this way reap his 
 pay, but also he reaped a reward (and that besides a trophy and 
 perpetual monument of his public services) , so munificent as to 
 constitute a permanent provision for a family; and accordingly 
 he was now encouraged, nay, enjoined, to marry. For here was 
 an hereditary landed estate equal to the liberal maintenance of 
 a family. And thus did a simple people, obeying its instinct of 
 conquest, not only discover, in its earliest days, the subtle prin- 
 ciple of Machiavel — Let war support war; but (which is far 
 more than Machiavel's view) they made each present war sup- 
 port many future wars — by making it support a new offset from 
 the population, bound to the mother city by indissoluble ties of 
 privilege and civic duties; and in many other ways they made 
 every war, by and through the colonizing system to which it 
 gave occasion, serviceable to future aggrandizement. War, man- 
 aged in this way, and with these results, became to Rome what 
 commerce or rural industry is to other countries, viz., the only 
 hopeful and general way for making a fortune. Fourthly, by 
 means of colonies it was that Rome delivered herself from her 
 surplus population. Prosperous and well-governed, the Roman 
 citizens of each generation outnumbered those of the generation 
 preceding. But the colonies provided outlets for these continual 
 accessions of people, and absorbed them faster than they could 
 arise.* And thus the great original sin of modern States, that 
 
 * And in this way we must explain the fact — that, in the 
 many successive numerations of the people continually noticed by
 
 NOTES. 277 
 
 heel of Achillea in which they arc all vulnerable, and which 
 (generally speaking) becomes more oppressive to the public pros- 
 perity as that prosperity happens to be greater, (for in poor 
 States and cinder despotic governments, this evil does not exist,) 
 that flagrant infirmity of our own country, G r whicb no states- 
 man has devised any commensurate remedy, was to ancient Home 
 ;l perpetual foundation and well-head of public strength and en- 
 larged resources. With us of modern times, when population 
 greatly outruns the demand tor labor, whether it be under the 
 stimulus of upright government, and just laws justly adminis- 
 tered, in combination with the manufacturing system (as in 
 England), or (as in Ireland) under the stimulus of idle habits, 
 cheap subsistence, and a low standard of comfort — we think it 
 much it' we can keep down insurrection by the bayonet and the 
 sabre. Luero ponarmts is our cry, if we can effect even thus 
 much; whereas Rome, in her simplest and pastoral days, con- 
 verted this menacing danger and standing opprobrium of modern 
 statesmanship to her own immense benefit. .Not satisfied merely 
 to have neutralized it. she drew from it the vital resources of her 
 martial aggrandizement. For, Fifthly, these colonies were in 
 two ways made the corner-stones of her martial policy : 1st, 
 They were looked to as nurseries of their armies; during one 
 generation the original colonists, already trained to military 
 habits, wen- themselves disposable for this purpose on any great 
 emergency; these men transmitted heroic traditions to their pos- 
 terity; and, at all events, a more robust population was always 
 at hand in agricultural colonies than could be had in the metrop- 
 olis. Cato the elder, and all the early writers, notice the quality 
 of such levies as being tor superior to those drawn from a popu- 
 lation of Bedentary habits. 2dly, The Italian colonies, one and 
 all, performed the functions which in our day are assigned to 
 garrisoned towns and frontier fortresses. In the earliest times 
 they discharged a still more critical service, by sometimes en- 
 
 Livy and others, we do not find that sort of multiplication which 
 we might have looked tor in a State so ably governed. The 
 truth is, that the continual surpluses had been carried off by the 
 oolonizing drain, before they could become noticeable or trouble- 
 some.
 
 278 NOTES. 
 
 tirely displacing a hostile population, and more often by dividing 
 it, and breaking its unity. In cases of desperate resistance to 
 the Roman arms, marked by frequent infraction of treaties, it 
 was usual to remove the offending population to a safer situa- 
 tion, separated from Rome by the Tiber; sometimes entirely to 
 disperse and scatter it. But, where these extremities were not 
 called for by expediency or the Roman maxims of justice, it was 
 judged sufficient to interpolate, as it were, the hostile people by 
 colonizations from Rome, which were completely organized * for 
 mutual aid, having officers of all ranks dispersed amongst them, 
 and for overawing the growth of insurrectionary movements 
 amongst their neighbors. Acting on this system, the Roman 
 colonies in some measure resembled the English Pale, as exist- 
 ing at one era in Ireland. This mode of service, it is true, be- 
 came obsolete in process of time, concurrently with the dangers 
 which it was shaped to meet; for the whole of Italy proper, 
 together with that part of Italy called Cisalpine Gaul, was at 
 length reduced to unity and obedience by the almighty republic. 
 But in forwarding that great end, and indispensable condition 
 towards all foreign warfare, no one military engine in the whole 
 armory of Rome availed so much as her Italian colonies. The 
 other use of these colonies, as frontier garrisons, or, at any rate, 
 as interposing between a foreign enemy and the gates of Rome, 
 they continued to perform long after their earlier uses had 
 passed away; and Cicero himself notices their value in this view. 
 ' Colonias,' says he [Oral, in RuUum], 'sic idoneis in locis 
 contra suspicionem periculi collacarunt, ut esse non oppida 
 Italiae sed propugnacula imperii viderentur.' Finally, the 
 colonies were the best means of promoting tillage, and the cul- 
 ture of vineyards. And though this service, as regarded the 
 Italian colonies, was greatly defeated in succeeding times by the 
 ruinous largesses of corn [frumentationes], and other vices of the 
 Roman policy after the vast revolution effected by universal 
 
 * That is indeed involved in the technical term of Deductio ; 
 for unless the ceremonies, religious and political, of inauguration 
 and organization, were duly complied with, the colony was not 
 entitled to be considered as deducta — that is, solemnly and cere- 
 monially transplanted from the metropolis.
 
 notes. 279 
 
 luxury, it is not the lose true that, left to themselves and their 
 natural tendency, the Roman colonies Would have yielded this 
 lasl benefit as certainly as any other. Large volumes exist, 
 illustrated by the Learning of Rigaltius, Salmasius, and Goesius, 
 upon the mere technical arrangements of the Roman colonies; 
 and whole libraries might be -written on these .same colonies, 
 idered as engines of exqui policy. 
 
 Note 44. Page 101- 
 
 On this occasion we may notice that the final execution of the 
 vengeance projected by Maternus, was reserved for a public fes- 
 tival, exactly corresponding to the modern carnival; ami from 
 an expression used by Herodian.it is plain that masquerading 
 had been an ancient practice in Home. 
 
 Note 45. Page 192. 
 See Casaubon's notes upon Theophrastus. 
 
 Note 46. Page 193. 
 
 Viz. the Temple of Peace; at that time the most magnificent 
 edifice in Rome. Temples, it is well known, were the places used 
 in ancient times as banks of deposit. For this function they 
 were admirably fitted by their inviolable sanctity. 
 
 Note 47. Page 104. 
 
 What a prodigious opportunity for the zoologist ! — And con- 
 sidering that these shows prevailed for five hundred years, during 
 all which period the amphitheatre gave bounties, as it were, to 
 the hunter and the fowler of every climate, and that, by means 
 of a stimulus so constantly applied, scarcely any animal, the 
 shyest, rarest, fiercest, escaped the demands of the arena, — no 
 one fact so much illustrates the inertia of the public mind in 
 days, and the indifference to all scientific pursuits, as that 
 no annotator should have risen to Pliny the elder — no rival to 
 the immortal tutor of Alexander.
 
 280 NOTES. 
 
 Note 48. Page 198. 
 It is worthy of notice, that, under any suspension of the im- 
 peratoriai power or office, the senate was the body to whom the 
 Roman mind even yet continued to turn. In this case, both to 
 color their crime with a show of public motives, and to interest 
 this great body in their own favor by associating them in their 
 own dangers, the conspirators pretended to have found a long 
 roll of senatorial names included in the same page of condemna- 
 tion with their own. A manifest fabrication. 
 
 Note 49. Page 199. 
 Historians have failed to remark the contradiction between 
 this statement and the allegation that Lsetus selected Pertinax 
 for the throne on a consideration of his ability to protect the 
 assassins of Commodus. 
 
 Note 50. Page 223. 
 And it is a striking illustration of the extent to which the rev- 
 olution had gone, that, previously to the Persian expedition of 
 the last Gordian, Antioch, the Roman capital of Syria, had been 
 occupied by the enemy. 
 
 Note 51. Page 224. 
 This Arab emperor reigned about five years; and the jubilee 
 celebration occurred in his second year. Another circumstance 
 gives importance to the Arabian, that, according to one tradition, 
 he was the first Christian emperor. If so, it is singular that one 
 of the bitterest persecutors of Christianity should have been his 
 immediate successor — Decius. 
 
 Note 52. Page 224. 
 It has proved a most difficult problem, in the hands of all 
 speculators upon the imperial history, to fathom the purposes, 
 or throw any light upon the purposes, of the Emperor Decius, in 
 attempting the revival of the ancient but necessarily obsolete 
 office of a public censorship. Either it was an act of pure verbal
 
 NOTES. 281 
 
 pedantry, or a mere titular decoratii o of honor, (as if a modern 
 prinoe Bhoold create a person Arch-Grand-Elector, with no ob- 
 jects assigned to his electing faculty,) or else, if it really meant 
 to revive the old duties of the censorship, and to assign the very 
 same field for the exercise of those duties, it must be viewed as 
 the very grossest practical anachronism that has ever been com- 
 mitted. We mean by an anachronism, hi common usage, that 
 sort of blunder when a man ascribes to one age the habits, cus- 
 toms, or generally the characteristics of another. This, however, 
 may be a mere lapse of memory, as to a matter of fact, and 
 implying nothing at all discreditable to the understanding, but 
 only that a man has shifted the boundaries of chronology a little 
 this way or that; as if, for example, a writer should speak of 
 printed books as existing at the day <>f Agincourt, or of artillery 
 as existing in the first Crusade, here would be an error, but a 
 venial one. A far worse kind of anachronism, though rarely 
 noticed as such, is where a writer ascribes sentiments and modes 
 of thought incapable of co-existing with the sort or the degree of 
 civilization then attained, or otherwise incompatible with the 
 structure of society in the age or the country assigned. For in- 
 stance, in Southey's Don Roderick there is a cast of sentiment in 
 the Gothic king's remorse and contrition of heart, which has 
 struck many readers as utterly unsuitable to the social and moral 
 development of that age, and redolent of modern methodism. 
 This, however, we mention only as an illustration, without wish- 
 ing to hazard an opinion upon the justice of that criticism. But 
 even such an anachronism is less startling and extravagant 
 when it is confined to an ideal representation of things, than 
 where it is practically embodied and brought into play amongst 
 the realities of life. What would be thought of a man who 
 should attempt, in 1833, to revive the ancient office of Fool, as it 
 existed down to the reign, suppose, of our Henry VIII. in Eng- 
 land ? Yet the error of the Emperor Deems was far greater, if he 
 did in sincerity and good faith believe that the Rome of his times 
 imenable to that license of unlimited correction, and of inter- 
 ference with private affairs, which republican freedom and sim- 
 plicity had once conceded to the censor. In reality, the ancient 
 censor, in some parts of his office, was neither more nor less than 
 a compendious legislator. Acts of attainder, divorce bills, &c, 
 24
 
 282 NOTES. 
 
 illustrates the case in England; they are cases of law, modified 
 to meet the case of an individual; and the censor, having a sort 
 of equity jurisdiction, was intrusted with discretionary powers for 
 reviewing, revising, and amending, pro re nata, whatever in the 
 private life of a Roman citizen seemed, to his experienced eye, 
 alien to the simplicity of an austere republic; whatever seemed 
 vicious or capable of becoming vicious, according to their rude 
 notions of political economy; and, generally, whatever touched 
 the interests of the commonwealth, though not falling within the 
 general province of legislation, either because it might appear 
 undignified in its circumstances, or too narrow in its range of 
 operation for a public anxiety, or because considerations of deli- 
 cacy and prudence might render it unfit for a public scrutiny. 
 Take one case, drawn from actual experience, as an illustration : 
 A Roman nobleman, under one of the early emperors, had 
 thought fit, by way of increasing his income, to retire into rural 
 lodgings, or into some small villa, whilst his splendid mansion 
 in Rome was let to a rich tenant. That a man who wore the 
 lacticlave, (which in practical eifect of splendor we may consider 
 equal to the ribbon and star of a modern order, ) should descend 
 to such a degrading method of raising money, was felt as a scan- 
 dal to the whole nobility.* Yet what could be done ? To have 
 
 * This feeling still exists in France. « One winter,' says the 
 author of The English Army in France, vol. ii. p. 106-7, 
 • our commanding officer's wife formed the project of hiring the 
 chateau during the absence of the owner ; but a more profound 
 insult could not have been offered to a Chevalier de St. Louis. 
 Hire his house ! What could these people take him for ? A 
 sordid wretch who would stoop to make money by such means ? 
 They ought to be ashamed of themselves. He could never respect 
 an Englishman again.' ' And yet,' adds the writer, ' this gen- 
 tleman ( had an officer been billeted there) would have sold him 
 a bottle of wine out of his cellar, or a billet of wood from his 
 stack, or an egg from his hen-house, at a profit of fifty per cent., 
 not only without scruple, but upon no other terms. It was as 
 common as ordering wine at a tavern, to call the servant of any 
 man's establishment where we happened to be quartered, and
 
 NOTES. 283 
 
 interfered with his conduct by an express law, would lie tc 
 infringe the Bacred rights of property, and to Bay, in effect, that 
 a in m should do< 'In what he would with his own. This would 
 have been a remedy far worse than the evil to which it was 
 applied; nor could it have been possible bo to Bhape the principle 
 of a law, as not to make it far more comprehensible than 
 desired. The senator's trespass was in a matter of decorum, 
 Irit the law would have trespassed on the first principles of 
 justice. Eere, then, was a case within the proper jurisdiction 
 of the censor; he took notice, in his public report, of the sena- 
 tor's error; or probably, before coming to that extremity, he 
 
 admonished him privately on the subject. Just as, in England, 
 had there been such an officer, he would have reproved those 
 men of rank who mounted the coach-box, who extended a public 
 patronage to the 'fancy,' or who rode their own horses at a 
 Such a reproof, however, unless it were made practically 
 operative, and were powerfully supported by the whole body of 
 the aristocracy, would recoil upon its author as a piece of imper- 
 tinence, and would soon be resented as an unwarrantable liberty 
 taken with private life; the censor would be kicked or challenged 
 to private combat, according to the taste of the parties aggrieved. 
 The office is clearly in this dilemma : if the censor is supported 
 
 demand an account of his cellar, as well as the price of the wine 
 we selected!' This feeling existed, and perhaps to the same 
 extent, two centuries ago, in England. Not only did the aris- 
 tocracy think it a degradation to act the part of landlord with 
 respect to their own houses, but also, except in select cases, to 
 act that of tenant. Thus, the first Lord Brooke (the famous 
 Fulke Greville), writing to inform his next neighbor, a woman 
 of rank, that the house she occupied hail been purchased by a 
 London citizen, confesses his fears that he shall in consequence 
 lose so valuable a neighbor; for, doubtless, he adds, your lady- 
 ship will not remain as tenant to ' such a fellow.' Ami yet the 
 
 man had notoriously held the office of I. or. I Mayor, which made 
 him, for the time. Right Honorable. The Italians of this clay 
 make no scruple to let off the whole, or even part, of their fine 
 mansions to strangers.
 
 284 NOTES. 
 
 by the State, then lie combines in his own person both legislative 
 and executive functions, and possesses a power which is fright- 
 fully irresponsible; if, on the other hand, he is left to such sup- 
 port as he can find in the prevailing spirit of manners, and the 
 old traditionary veneration for his sacred character, he stands 
 very much in the situation of a priesthood, which has great 
 power or none at all, according to the condition of a country in 
 moral and religious feeling, coupled with the more or less prim- 
 itive state of manners. How, then, with any rational prospect 
 of success, could Decius attempt the revival of an office depend- 
 ing so entirely on moral supports, in an age when all those sup- 
 ports were withdrawn ? The prevailing spirit of manners was 
 hardly fitted to sustain even a toleration of such an office ; and 
 as to the traditionary veneration for the sacred character, from 
 long disuse of its practical functions, tltut probably was altogether 
 extinct. If these considerations are plain and intelligible even 
 to us, by the men of that day they must have been felt with a 
 degree of force that could leave no room for doubt or speculation 
 on the matter. How was it, then, that the emperor only should 
 have been blind to such general light ? 
 
 In the absence of all other, even plausible, solutions of this 
 difficulty, we shall state our own theory of the matter. Decius, 
 as is evident from his fierce persecution of the Christians, was 
 not disposed to treat Christianity with indifference, under any 
 form which it might assume, or however masked. Yet there 
 were quarters in which it lurked not liable to the ordinary 
 modes of attack. Christianity was creeping up with inaudible 
 steps into high places — nay, into the very highest. The im- 
 mediate predecessor of Decius upon the throne, Philip the Arab, 
 was known to be a disciple of the new faith; and amongst the 
 nobles of Rome, through the females and the slaves, that faith 
 had spread its roots in every direction. Some secrecy, however, 
 attached to the profession of a religion so often proscribed. 
 Who should presume to tear away the mask which prudence or 
 timidity had taken up ? A delator, or professional informer, 
 was an infamous character. To deal with the noble and illus- 
 trious, the descendants of the Marcellt and the Gracchi, there 
 must be nothing less than a great state officer, supported by the 
 censor and the senate, having an unlimited privilege of scrutiny
 
 NOT I S. 28 ;*> 
 
 ami censure, authorized to inflict the brand of infamy for oflfi 
 not challenged by express law, and yet emanating from an elder 
 institution, familiar to the days of reputed liberty. Such an 
 officer was the censor; and such were the antichristian purp 
 of Decius in his revival 
 
 Note 03. Page 228. 
 
 Some of these traditions have been preserved, 'which repre- 
 sent Sapor as using his imperial captive for his stepping-stone, 
 or anabathrum, in mounting his horse. Others go farther, ami 
 pretend that Sapor actually flayed his unhappy prisoner while 
 yet alive. The temptation to these stories was perhaps found 
 in the craving fur the marvellous, ami in the desire to make 
 the contrast more striking between the two extremes in Vale- 
 rian's life. 
 
 Note 54. Page 2l>9. 
 
 Ami this incompetency was permanently increased by rebel- 
 lions that were brief ami fugitive : for each insurgent almost 
 necessarily maintained himself for the moment by spoliations 
 ami robberies which left lasting effects behind them; ami too 
 often he was tempted to ally himself with some foreign enemy 
 amongst the barbarians ; and perhaps to introduce him into the 
 heart of the empire. 
 
 Note 55. Page 232. 
 
 Zenobia is complimented by all historians for her magna- 
 nimity; but with no foundation in truth. Her first salutation 
 to Aurelian was a specimen of abject flattery; and her last 
 public words were evidences of the basest treachery in giving up 
 her generals, and her chief counsellor Longinus, to the vengeance 
 of the ungenerous enemy. 
 
 Note 50. Page 245. 
 
 ' Thirteen thousand chambers.' — The number of the chambers 
 in this prodigious palace is usually estimated at that amount. But 
 Lady Miller, who male particular inquiries on this subject,
 
 286 NOTES. 
 
 ascertained that the total amount, including cellars and closets, 
 capable of receiving a bed, was fifteen thousand. 
 
 Note 57. Page 248. 
 
 In no point of his policy was the cunning or the sagacity of 
 Augustus so much displayed, as in his treaty of partition with 
 the senate, which settled the distribution of the provinces, and 
 their future administration. Seeming to take upon himself all 
 the trouble and hazard, he did in effect appropriate all the 
 power, and left to the senate little more than trophies of show 
 and ornament. As a first step, all the greater provinces, as 
 Spain and Gaul, were subdivided into many smaller ones. This 
 done, Augustus proposed that the senate should preside over the 
 administration of those amongst them which were peaceably 
 settled, and which paid a regular tribute ; whilst all those which 
 were the seats of danger, — either as being exposed to hostile 
 inroads, or to internal commotions, — all, therefore, in fact, 
 which could justify the keeping up of a military force, he 
 assigned to himself. In virtue of this arrangement, the senate 
 possessed in Africa those provinces which had been formed out 
 of Carthage, Cyrene, and the kingdom of Numidia; in Europe, 
 the richest and most quiet part of Spain (Hispania Batica,) 
 with the large islands of Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and Crete, 
 and some districts of Greece; in Asia, the kingdoms of Pontus 
 and Bithynia, with that part of Asia Minor technically called 
 Asia; whilst, for his own share, Augustus retained Gaul, Syria, 
 the chief part of Spain, and Egypt, the granary of Rome ; 
 finally, all the military posts on the Euphrates, on the Danube, 
 or the Rhine. 
 
 Yet even the show T y concessions here made to the senate were 
 defeated by another political institution, settled at the same time. 
 It hail been agreed that the governors of provinces should be 
 appointed by the emperor and the senate jointly. But within 
 the senatorial jurisdiction, these governors, with the title of 
 Proconsuls, were to have no military power whatsoever; and 
 the appointments were good only for a single year. Whereas, in 
 the imperatorial provinces, where the governor bore the title of 
 Propra'tor, there was provision made for a military establish- 
 ment; and as to duration, the office -was regulated entirely by
 
 NOTES. 287 
 
 the emperor's pleasure. One other ordinance, on the 
 head, riveted the vassalage of the Benate. Bitherto, a great 
 source of the senate's power had been found in the uncontrolled 
 management of the provincial revenues ; hut at (his time, 
 Augustus so arranged that hranch of the administration, that, 
 throughout the senatorian or proconsular provinces, all I 
 were immediately paid into the ararium, or treasury of the £ 
 whilst the whole revenues of the proprsetorian (or imperatorial) 
 provinces, from this time forward, flowed iuto the Jiacua, or 
 private treasure of the individual emperor. 
 
 Note 68. Page 253. 
 
 On the abdication of Dioclesian and of Maximian, Galerius and 
 
 Constantius succeeded as the new Augusta. But Galerius, as 
 the inure immediate representative of Dioclesian, thought him- 
 self entitled to appoint both Caesars, — the Baza (or Maximus) 
 in Syria, Severus in Italy. Meantime, Constantine, the son of 
 Constantius, with difficulty obtaining permission from Galerius, 
 paid a visit to his father; upon whose death, which followed 
 soon after, Constantine came forward as a Csesar, under the 
 appointment of his father. Galerius submitted with a bad 
 grace; hut Maxentius, a reputed son of Maximian, was roused 
 by emulation with Constantine to assume the purple; and being 
 joined by his father, they jointly attacked and destroyed 
 Severus. Galerius, to revenge the death of his own CsBSar, 
 advanced towards Rome ; but being compelled to a disastrous 
 retreat, he resorted to the measure of associating another empe- 
 ror with himself, as a balance to his new enemies. This was 
 Licinius; and thus, at one time, there were six emperors, either 
 as Augusti or as Csesars. Galerius, however, dying, all the rest 
 were in succession destroyed by Constantine. 
 
 Note 69. Page 254. 
 Valentinian the First, who admitted hi- brother Valens to a 
 
 paitner-hiii in the empire, had, by his first wife, an elder son, 
 Gratian, who reigned and associated with himself Theodosius, 
 commonly called the Great. By his second wife he had Val- 
 entinian the Second, who, upon the death of his brother Gratian,
 
 238 NOTES. 
 
 was allowed to share the empire by Theodosius. Theodosius, by 
 his first wife, had two sons, — Arcadius, who afterwards reigned 
 in the east, and Honorius, whose western reign was so much 
 illustrated by Stilicho. By a second wife, daughter to Valen- 
 tinian the First, Theodosius had a daughter, (half-sister, there- 
 fore, to Honorius,) whose son was Valentinian the Third. 

 
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