Part 16

The whole of the country between the Rhine, the Westerwald, and the Elbe, was about the year 760 brought under the rule of Rome: the Chauci, who dwelt in East-Friesland and Oldenburg, and the other inhabitants of the marshes were quite as much subdued as the Bructeri and Cherusci in Westphalia Proper. Quintilius Varus, who was of an old and illustrious patrician house, and an able general, but had made himself notorious for his shameful rapacity, quite thought himself the governor of nations which only recked fear and force. For him Arminius—whom we generally call Hermann, but whose name was probably not this, but Armin—laid a trap most cleverly. As things then stood, it was very difficult for the Germans who had no towns, to make head against the Romans: the German cavalry was superior to that which the Romans had of their own; but the Gaulish cavalry, which had the advantage of better horses, and of more complete armour, thenceforth constituted the flower of the Roman army, in which it had such a preponderance, that the terms which belonged to the cavalry service, were almost all of them of Celtic origin: so paramount was Gallic influence on discipline! Cunning against tyranny is all fair; so that I cannot blame Arminius in the least for what he did: the Germans had been most unjustly made war upon by the Romans, whom they could not possibly meet with open force. Arminius had in many Roman campaigns served with German cavalry, and very likely had distinguished himself in the Pannonian war: he was a perfect master of the Latin tongue, had the Roman franchise, and the rank of a knight; and, by dint of the greatest perseverance, he, as well as his fellow conspirators, had gained the unbounded, and even childlike confidence of Varus. Varus had made for himself a stationary camp, where, as in a Roman province, he held a court of justice which was a means for enriching himself; like the law-courts of the oppressive high bailiffs in Switzerland. The Roman soldiers were wont to purchase leave of absence and discharge, as was formerly the custom in the German army; for just as it was in France before the revolution, they then only got part of their pay: thus there might have been many of them roving about the country. There seemed to be the most profound peace, and the Germans made Varus believe that they felt indeed quite happy in their growing civilization; but when he was thus off his guard, and a great part of the soldiers gone perhaps away on furlough, some tribes in Lower Saxony revolted, as it had been arranged; so that Varus was got to draw near those countries. The conspirators persuaded him to turn off from the highways (_limites_) which led from the Rhine to the Lippe, and through Westphalia as far as the Weser;—these were straight roads cut through the woods, not yet paved indeed, but laid with logs; and when he had ventured sufficiently deep into the impassable forests, the insurrection broke out on all sides. He then tried to get back to the _limes_, and above all, no doubt, to the chief Roman stronghold in that part of the country, Aliso on the Lippe, in the neighbourhood of Hamm. The spot where Arminius routed Varus is no more to be ascertained: the only sensible way of tracing it, is to find out the direction in which the roads may have been laid down from the principal posts; yet even thus much cannot be made out, as the difficulties were every where pretty nearly the same: we might, however, perhaps take Cologne as such a starting point. It is infinitely harder to give an opinion on this subject, than on Hannibal’s passage across the Alps. On the first day, Varus was attacked on all sides; he lost a good deal of baggage, and with much trouble entrenched himself in a strong position for the night. The following day, he continued his march; but his columns were already seized with panic, so that in the evening when they wanted to pitch their camp, they were scarcely able to make head against the enemy’s attack: Varus and several of his chief officers, overcome by their despair, now put an end to their lives, dreading the account which they would have to give. It was then perhaps that Numonius Vala—very likely the one to whom Horace addresses one of his Epistles[38]—and three _alæ_ separated themselves from the infantry, and tried to cut their way out; but they also were overpowered, as they deserved to be for having deserted their own comrades. On the third day, the whole army was annihilated; three legions and as many _alæ_ (the cavalry attached to a legion), together with ten cohorts, were cut to pieces: a legion consisted of six thousand foot, and three thousand horse. The Germans took an awful vengeance upon their oppressors, in which there was moreover a great deal of superstition, many of them being sacrificed to the gods.

Of this victory the Germans, owing to their want of union, could not make the use which would have been desirable, and which Armin wished. It is true that very many Roman forts were taken and destroyed, and much besides may have been done, as the Romans have undoubtedly left many disasters untold; yet notwithstanding all this, Nonius Asprenas kept the left banks of the Rhine with two legions: the everlasting lamentable dismemberment of Germany, checked in this case also its progress, although its peoples tried to rise. Cædicius held out in Aliso, until at last he found an opportunity, when the Germans were dispersed, of fighting his way out with the rest of his brave men to the Rhine, where he stopped the advance of the enemy. Owing to the victory not being followed up on the side of the Germans, Germanicus was afterwards enabled to wreak his vengeance in his unhallowed expeditions.

The news of the disaster of Varus came like a thunderbolt on Augustus, who was one of those men who are given to fear the worst. At Rome it was thought that the Germans would cross the river, and destroy the legions on the Lower Rhine, and that the Gauls would also take up arms and unite with the Germans; so that a war in the Alps seemed near at hand. No doubt Augustus expected also that Marbod would rise; but the latter, who had here an opportunity of gaining eternal glory, shamefully kept quiet, for which he afterwards ended his days a prisoner at Ravenna. Augustus wished to make a general levy; yet he met with great difficulty, owing to the inconceivable aversion to military service which had all at once arisen among the Italians: in Marius’ times one might have raised as many legions as one wanted. Fathers maimed the hands of their children, to make them unfit for service; soldiers were taken from the lowest ranks of society; attempts were made to enlist freedmen; patrons were induced to emancipate strong slaves on condition of their entering the army: whereas formerly slaves were punished with death, if they presumed to take unto themselves the honour of military service. Tiberius had orders to set out in all haste for Gaul: Nonius Asprenas has the merit of having checked the tide; Tiberius went on with the work. Afterwards, Germanicus, the son of Drusus, was sent in his stead, who at once took measures for an offensive war. But Augustus did not live to see it.

Augustus was now full of days, but his health had very much improved: he had in fact, during the last third of his life, little or no illness at all. Thus he had gently become an old man, and was quite under the thraldom of his wife, who grew worse as she grew older, and shut out from all access to him every one who was not subservient to her. Towards her own son Drusus, she may indeed have had the feelings of a step-mother; to Germanicus at least she bore a deadly hatred. Germanicus and Agrippina were patterns of domestic excellence; their married life, at a time when every trace of the virtues of home had been lost, when elsewhere marriage was merely a bond of indifference, and often even of hatred, was most remarkably beautiful:—it was because Germanicus was fondly attached to his wife and his children, that he became an object of hatred to his grandmother. Livia did not at all like Tiberius’ own son Drusus, as he was too friendly with his adopted brother Germanicus, though otherwise he had quite the character of his father. Augustus passed the last years of his life in the consciousness of being enthralled: he was unhappy in more than one respect, and in this life already he had to suffer for many of his misdeeds; the overthrow of Varus put him utterly beside himself. Tiberius was going to Illyricum, and Augustus wished to meet him at Beneventum: he had passed several summers at Capreæ in the bay of Naples, the most paradise-like spot in the world, thus to recover from his cares and troubles, while the mildness of the climate would prolong his life. Here he fell sick, and was brought to Nola where he died on the 19th of August 765, fourteen years after the birth of Christ. The Romans laid a great stress on his having died the self-same day as that on which he had got the consulship for the first time by force; and on his having had as many consulates as Marius and Valerius Corvus together: to take any such things, is silly. He died as sure in the possession of his rule as any king who was born to a throne, and he gave his ring to Tiberius, who already had the tribunician power: no sensible man could doubt that the latter would now take the government upon himself.

The corpse was buried with almost godlike honours. From Nola to Bovillæ, the decurions of the towns bore it on their shoulders; and the _equites Romani_, from Bovillæ to the city itself. Tiberius and his son Drusus spoke the funeral orations from the _rostra vetera_ and _nova_, near the Curia Julia; and afterwards too, all such orations, and the proclamations of the emperors, were delivered from the new _rostra_.

The extent of the Roman empire when Augustus died, was as follows. He had once entertained the idea of conquering Britain; but he had given it up. The empire, however, was not bounded by the Rhine, but Holland and the adjoining Frisian countries were at that time under the power of the Romans; farther to the south indeed, as far as the Lake of Constance, the Rhine really formed the boundary, which from thence ran along the Danube to Lower Mœsia. But here the Romans were not masters of the river’s banks, as the Sarmatians often crossed it: the frontier was more to the south; Tomi (Kustendji) actually lay outside of the contiguous Roman empire. The so-called wall of Trajan,—it improperly bears that name,—along the old branch of the Danube, the salt water near Peuce, was very likely now built by Augustus; the country north of it, the Sarmatians overran without resistance: in Trajan’s days, even Moldavia and Wallachia, nay the whole range of land to the Dniester was subject to the Roman sway. In Asia, Cappadocia was still a kingdom under Roman supremacy; Armenia likewise in some measure acknowledged the _majestas populi Romani_; the Parthians had very much abated of their pride, and there were hostages of theirs among the Romans, whilst the standards of Crassus had been given back by Phraates; it is of this that Virgil and Horace speak: in a certain sense therefore, the dominion of Rome extended to the borders of India. The real boundary, however, in the East was the Euphrates: Syria, Egypt, Libya, and old Africa were Roman; and the eastern part of the Numidian coast, which had Cirta for its capital, was a Roman province. The Numidian kingdom had been overthrown by Cæsar; but the learned Juba had by way of compensation been presented by Augustus with western Algiers and Morocco, the realms of Bocchus. The rule of the Romans reached beyond Fezzan; they might easily have come as far as the negro countries. Those negro states on the rivers in the interior of Africa, may at different times have acknowledged Rome’s supremacy,—at least by embassies and tributes: we know of a caravan-road to Fezzan and Cydamus; the Garamantes are the inhabitants of Garama in Fezzan; (here there is a mistake in d’Anville’s map;) a short time ago, Roman ruins and inscriptions were found there by Ouseley. Once, the Romans had made an expedition against the Blemmyans in Dongola with success; another, under Ælius Gallus, against Yemen on the Arabian coast, was an utter failure.

The number of Roman citizens had very much increased in the western provinces, from which also the legions were principally recruited. There were in fact forty-seven legions, and a corresponding number of cohorts under arms. In Italy, there were only levies in cases of emergency; and, on the other hand, the army became more and more made up of the _auxilia_ and cohorts. Far more than nine-tenths of it were certainly new citizens. The franchise, however, was now of little worth; nor was it even always attended with exemption from taxes.

As a civil law-giver, Augustus aimed at a different object from what Cæsar did, who had wished to bring within bounds the wide range of the Roman laws and to have them worked up into one grand whole; just as Peel wants to do with the common law of England. This undertaking was very praiseworthy, however perilous and thankless a task it may be to make new codes of laws; but it is quite a different thing to bring the existing laws into harmony with each other. Augustus’ legislation, on the other, hand, was a new and arbitrary one. The _Lex Ælia Sentia_ is to be commended: in other enactments, he was wishing to struggle against the stream of custom and the monstrous immorality of the age. An aversion had sprung up against lawful wedlock, and the citizens lived in concubinage with their female slaves, whose children likewise became slaves, and mostly remained so; or at best, became freedmen: thus the free population had very considerably dwindled. One may say, that in the guilds of the different crafts, nineteen out of twenty were freedmen; this is shown by the names on the _alba_ found at Pompeii. Augustus was quite right in setting his face against such a state of things; but the way in which he did it in the _Lex Julia_ and the _Lex Pupia Poppæa_, was by most wretched make-shifts which only betrayed how helplessly he was striving against the stream: their definitions of honour, of the _jus trium liberorum_, and such like were of no use.[39]

TIBERIUS.

If in the latter part of the history of the republic, the end of an accomplished career still affords an interest, although a painful one; even this ceases in the subsequent history of the emperors, in which we no longer find any more of that which charmed us in the earlier times: it is the history of a huge, corrupted mass, wherein brute force alone has weight; and in which the doom of a hundred millions of men, and even more, rests with one individual, and with the few who are next about him. The western part of this world still keeps up a sort of unity, though a feeble one, in the language which is common to the educated classes, yet in the provinces degenerates into a jargon; in the east, the Greek nationality is again established. It was a state of things of which no power on earth was able to check the march: from the war with Hannibal, there is nothing but struggles to bring about a crisis; a hundred years later, even this ceases. There was henceforth but a play of mechanical powers, all those that had life in them had entirely vanished. Nature is no longer able to bring about a crisis: it is a dying away by inches; an undefined, but deadly disease was at work, which could not fail to bring on the end. For the history of the world, this period is very remarkable; but as the history of a nation and of a state, it is sad and cheerless. In its practical application, it is still more important than that of the republic; for it is indispensably necessary for all branches of learning, especially divinity and jurisprudence. It was not therefore without reason that people formerly bestowed so much care on the study of the history of the emperors: the knowledge of this indeed is but too much neglected. I can, however, only give a very slight sketch of it now.

The first part of the history of the emperors, we should have in the greatest masterpiece which perhaps antiquity has produced, had we the complete work of Tacitus, who has written it from the death of Augustus down to Trajan; first, the _Historiæ_, then the _Annales_, which reach from the death of Augustus to the accession of Galba. It is the general belief that the _annales_ ended with the sixteenth book; I have elsewhere recorded my own opinion as to this point: it is more likely that there were twenty books. As far as Tacitus will reach, it would be foolish to seek for another source; where he is wanting we must avail ourselves of Dio Cassius, who, however, is also somewhat mutilated here, and of Suetonius, who indeed is a most wretched help. His idea of writing the history of those times in biographies, is quite correct; but he was not able to carry it out: he did not know what he would be at; and therefore there is no keeping in his work, and he rambles from one thing to another. Tacitus, in his Tiberius, has before him an anterior history; but what work, is uncertain: perhaps it was that of the father of the philosopher Seneca, which in all likelihood was one of the best; or that of Servilius Nonianus. With regard to the personal character of Tiberius, there are excellent materials in Velleius Paterculus, one of the most ingenious writers, whatever may be thought of him in other respects: he has much of the mannerism of the French writers of the eighteenth century, with their affectation, and pretension to wit. Leaving the badness of the man out of the question, he has much experience, has seen a very great deal, and tells it well; wherever he has no motive for perverting truth, he is not only trustworthy but an excellent authority: his narrative is strikingly beautiful.