Part 21

Domitian was a bad son and a bad brother, and there is no doubt of his having sought the life of his father and his brother; especially of the latter, who, however, never tried to avenge himself upon him, and even treated him with confidence. Domitian is one of those men, who are too lightly thought of because they are bad. What he is reproached with may be true, that he showed himself a coward in war; although this is still problematical: that his boundless vanity led to no corresponding achievements, is certain; his cruelty, his falseness, are beyond a doubt; yet for all that he ought not to be estimated too low. He was a very accomplished man, and of a decided talent for literature. Rutgertsius has already remarked, that the paraphrase of the _Phænomena_ of Aratus commonly ascribed to Germanicus, is by Domitian, who as emperor had taken the name of Cæsar Germanicus, as it was more illustrious than that of the Flavii. That it cannot have been the adopted son of Tiberius, is evident from the way in which the poet speaks of his father, whom he introduces as a ruler, and as one who had had the apotheosis. I believe that the poem was written in the time of Titus. It is very respectable as to its general composition, poor as the subject is. Moreover, although Quintilian may have said too much in what he tells us of Domitian, and this exaggeration may have been slavish and in the court-style of despotism; still he certainly would not from mere flattery have praised what was thoroughly worthless. Domitian had a taste for Roman literature, which has done good: he established the great endowment for rhetoricians which Quinctilian received, and he instituted the _Agon Capitolinus_ in which poets were crowned: Roman literature, therefore, took a fresh start in his time. Not to speak of Tacitus, who was then a youth, and of Pliny, the younger,—however little one may admire him,—who was growing up (many well educated people of his day wrote as well as he did); there is Statius belonging to that age, whose _Silvæ_ are among the most agreeable works of antiquity which are left to us, there is Juvenal, who was also one of the greatest minds, but who bore a deadly hatred to Domitian. We see from Domitian’s poem, that he was against the false taste of his times. He slighted Statius; yet for this we are not so much to accuse him of partiality, as to acknowledge the correctness of his judgment. Statius is great in his little poems, which are some of those genuine effusions which are tinged with the true spirit of the country: one enjoys them particularly, when one reads them in Italy. But his Thebais is a cold, laboured poem, quite bombastic and unbearable: it is the one with which he did not win the Capitoline prize.

As all wasteful prodigality had been rooted out under Vespasian, and Roman life had been brought back to frugality, the good consequences were lasting, and Domitian also kept in this path. He was by no means a spendthrift, being profuse only to the army, the pay of which he raised to four hundred and eighty denarii, and that, it seems, from cowardice: for this he tried to make up by lessening the number of the troops, which was not at all suited to the circumstances of the times. In the East indeed there was profound peace with the Parthians, weakness having manifested itself among them, as is always the case in Asia when states have reached a certain point of greatness: the Parthians, therefore, left the Romans unmolested, as long as these did not attack them. War was, however, waging on the northern frontier. Tacitus’ Agricola throws some light on this; it is one of the greatest masterpieces of biography which we have from antiquity. Agricola completed the conquest of Britain: he went beyond the two Firths against the Highland hills, and built a fleet with which he sailed round Scotland, and visited the Orkney islands. This is the brilliant military epoch of Domitian. To this circumnavigation of Scotland the statue of Oceanus seems to refer, which all through the middle ages lay at the entrance of the _Forum Martium_.[44] A statue of the Rhine likewise belongs to the time of Domitian.

In his earliest youth, in the days of the insurrection of Civilis, Domitian had been in Gaul; as emperor, he conducted a war against the Chatti in the country about the Mayne. Could one but rely here on the medals, and on the flatteries of Martial, he got the surname of Germanicus most rightfully; but the historians all agree in this, that with regard to those victories the nation was imposed upon. Yet even then the war may not have been without advantage to the Romans. Certain it is that the Germans on the right bank of the Rhine were not able to make head against their legions; nor is it to be wondered at: for an ill-trained militia could not stand its ground against the Romans, and moreover the unhallowed dissensions among the Germans were as mischievous as ever. War was likewise waged on the banks of the Austrian Danube, where nations such as the Marcomanni and the Sueves, of which we have heard nothing for a long space of time, again make their appearance feebly allied with Slavonic tribes; and indeed they showed themselves to be formidable.

The most important war under Domitian, was that against the Dacians, the same race as the ancient Getæ, who as early as Alexander’s time had driven the Scythian tribes before them. Since Diceneus (in the reign of Augustus) the great Dacian monarchy in Transylvania, and very likely almost the whole of Wallachia and part of Moldavia and the Banat, had arisen. They were rich, owing to their mines; and we see from the column of Trajan, that they were not at all looked upon as barbarians, but that they were even held in higher esteem than the Germans: they had fortified towns and wooden houses, such as are still common in the Tyrol. Their king Decebalus was a man of much greatness of character, and worthy of ruling his nation in such critical circumstances. They had a well organized constitution, and an aristocracy, who by way of distinction wore either caps or long hair: they were withal a brave and free people. Since the days of Augustus, they had often threatened the Roman frontier; and as soon as Rome felt weak, they burst into Mœsia: to Pannonia, perhaps, they did not come; for the country between the Theiss and the Danube was nothing but deep marshes. Lower down, towards Pressburg, it was inhabited partly by Gallic, and partly by German tribes. Of Domitian’s Dacian wars, we have but very confused accounts; Xiphilinus and Zonaras entirely pass over the details. We know thus much, that once at least the Romans suffered a great defeat, and that the Dacians overran Mœsia. But such wars, even when successfully carried on, always in the long run became dangerous to these peoples; and therefore Decebalus concluded a peace in a form which seems to us humiliating. This does not, however, prove much, as such was the general custom in wars against the Romans. Domitian could now take the name of Dacicus, and, after his great losses, return in triumph to Rome.

From the time of this campaign, Domitian’s cruelty displayed itself more and more. Before this, some individuals had already been put to death either on suspicion, or because he hated them; an insurrection also had broken out under L. Antonius Saturninus in _Germania Superior_, that is to say, Alsace and Suabia, as far as the _limites_: these districts were covered with Roman troops, and Saturninus had himself proclaimed emperor by them, but was conquered by L. Appius Maximus, and paid for it with his life. Domitian’s cruelty was within the bounds of human nature, being different from that of Caligula and Nero. Caligula was mad, and Nero very nearly so; they were downright brutes, and their cruelty, to use an expression of Aristotle’s, was παρὰ φύσιν: to characters like these, the rules of morality do not apply; they are degenerate specimens of humanity. Domitian’s cruelty was that of a thoroughly bad man; it sprang from human passions, from envy, malice, and the mere love of mischief: avarice there was none in it, as this is rather an eastern vice. In the senate, at that time, there were men who were worthy of being the friends of Agricola and Tacitus: Herennius Senecio had written the life of Helvidius Priscus; Arulenus Rusticus, that of Pætus Thrasea; and their writings displayed much warmth of heart. Maternus and others were likewise authors, though perhaps not altogether free from declamation; but literature had now again some reality in it, and it was that very reality which gave offence to the tyrant. Then arose the horrible class of the informers, the description of which is one of the most interesting things in Pliny’s letters: they were a very different set from the _delatores_ of Tiberius’ reign. These men are justly abhorred in a moral point of view; but they were men of intellect, and some of them of no common talent. The great mass was in the days of Tiberius much worse than it was now; and so it was, of course, with the victims: for though the women, as we learn from Juvenal, were still thoroughly depraved, the men, owing to the length of their training in the school of hardship, had become better and more energetic. Domitian was even present at the _delationes_: the informers were ingenious, well-bred persons, who lived in good society, and also turned their talents against equally distinguished, but noble-minded people. The time was awful; it passed, as Tacitus says, in silent dread: the impression which it made on a great mind, is incomparably described in the introduction of the Agricola and in the _Historiæ_.

## Particularly fearful were the three last years of Domitian. Had his rage

been only directed against the better men, he might have lived longer; but he also turned it against the bad and fierce ones, against Prætorian officers and his own wife Domitia, who had offended him, and whom he had offended. Then was the conspiracy formed against him, and he was stabbed by the officers of his guards.

He had built the _Forum Palladium_ near the _Forum Augustum_, and established government offices and courts of Justice there: part of the wall and the hall are still preserved as monuments of that age. He also erected many other magnificent buildings.

M. COCCEIUS NERVA. M. ULPIUS TRAJANUS.

The histories of Nerva and of Trajan are some of those which are comparatively the most imperfectly known to us, although these two emperors have so gladdened the hearts of the Romans by their rule, and theirs was an age of the best Roman literature, an age of which moreover so many other monuments are come down to us. Tacitus evidently has not described this period: he says that he had kept it for when he was old; to excuse himself for not writing contemporary history, as he could certainly not have praised it unconditionally. Trajan himself has written memoirs, especially of the events of the Dacian war; but no author of any note has dwelt upon this important history.

Nerva was much beyond sixty, and a venerable consular and senator: how he came to be proclaimed, we know not. When proclaimed, he was gladly received by the senate, and the prætorians assented to the choice. He set forth the principles on which he would govern, and he remained true to them. But he was very cautious in making reforms: for being old, he did not venture to undertake much, or to give provocation to the prætorians; and therefore he punished so few of the informers who under Domitian had been a curse to mankind. This gave offence and disgust to many honourable men, while it raised the courage of many bad ones: the feeling of actual happiness was chilled by the consciousness that all these men were still alive and in office, and that they might one day again become dangerous. The consequence of this weakness of Nerva’s was, that those who wished to continue the time of Domitian, now used their influence in the senate to do anything they liked. Junius Mauricus therefore, when the death of an informer was talked of at a party at the emperor’s, said, “Yes, if he were still alive, nothing would be done to him; but he would be in company with us.”[45] The præfect Casperius called upon the soldiers to demand the murderers of Domitian from Nerva; and on his refusal they seized them by force, and two of them were most horribly ill-used: they then compelled Nerva to express his approval of it in the senate.[46] Nerva, feeling his own weakness, had recourse to the same means as Galba to strengthen himself in his old age: but he made a much more happy choice than the former had done,—he adopted Trajan.

Hispania Bœtica was by this time quite Latinized, and Latin only was spoken there, at least in the towns; just as West Prussia and Silesia are Germanized. Italica, in the neighbourhood of Seville, was one of the earliest settlements in those parts; it was founded by Roman soldiers of the Scipios, who chose to remain in a country in which they had lived a number of years, and got families by Spanish wives: the town, being constituted as a colony or a second-rate _municipium_, became very thriving. It was the birthplace of Trajan and Hadrian: Trajan’s family was one of the most distinguished there. M. Ulpius Trajanus was the son of a man of note: his father had in the reign of Nero already attained a high rank in the Roman army, and was much looked up to; the son became known and honoured even in the times of Domitian, which were so little favourable to the display of excellence. A happier choice Nerva could never have made; it was received with joy and respect by the Prætorians themselves. At that time, Trajan was in Rome; but he soon went to Germany where his head-quarters were at Cologne. Our knowledge of the affairs of Germany in those days is very scanty; the relations of that country with the Romans were still strikingly peaceful. The name of a place on the military road from the Main to Augsburg, _Aræ Flaviæ_, proves that (probably under Domitian) the Romans had already taken possession of this _sinus imperii_. Whether the rampart and ditch, which, beginning from the Westerwald, reached along the Lahn, the Taunus, and the Main, to the Altmühl, was or was not made at that time, the country was at all events subject to the Romans. Free German tribes were dwelling only in Franconia, the Upper Palatinate, Hesse, and Westphalia; Suevia, in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, was not yet under the Roman rule; the Frisian tribes were subdued under Tiberius, but they afterwards became free. In the days of Nerva, there was a little war in Suabia; of this the only trace is to be met with in an inscription which speaks of the _Victoria Suevica_. The boundaries of the several tribes are most distinctly given in the Germany of Tacitus, where we see how they did not interfere with each other.

Nerva, who reigned but one year and a half, died, A. D. 98, in his sixty-sixth year. The empire was so firmly settled, that Trajan, although absent in Cologne, could quietly step into the imperial dignity as if it were an inheritance: he did not come to Rome until the following year; but allegiance was yielded to him everywhere. He now soon showed his energy, as he laid hold upon the ruffians whom Nerva had spared: a few only atoned for their guilt with their lives, by far the greater part being exiled to the rocks of the Mediterranean. He took a still bolder step when he brought the Prætorians to account, who had had a share in the late misdeeds; and had the ringleaders executed. By this means, his rule was completely strengthened. His reforms were gentle, nor did they reach much beyond individuals: he reduced the taxes, especially taking off those which had been laid as a penalty on the provinces; and he must have got the finances into excellent order, as Hadrian after him was able to remit such immense sums. Whilst he thus lightened the burthens of the world, he had not only money for expensive wars, but also for the most costly works: he never was embarrassed for money. The details of the care which he took of the provinces, and also the principles of his administration, we may glean from the tenth book of Pliny’s Epistles: the good emperors checked the arbitrary rule of the governors by looking themselves into what was done. It was part of Trajan’s happiness, that his father, who was in a hale old age, still lived many years to see the successes of his son, and to have his heart gladdened by his glory: such fine family affection had never been seen in the Roman world before. He was married to an excellent wife in Plotina, who, however, did not bear him any children: the praise of this woman far outweighs those few anecdotes which look very like gossip. His sister Marciana was likewise most respectable, a true matron. And to these two ladies, a considerable improvement in the Roman manners is certainly owing: all the empresses, since Livia—with the exception of Vespasian’s wife, who as a freed woman could not indeed appear in society—had exercised a most baneful influence upon morals. The open shamelessness which was quite the fashion, was now put a stop to.

Trajan’s true bent was for war and for great works. This, as the empire was then situated, was by no means to be found fault with. Whilst he gave occupation to his subjects and his armies, he imparted a higher tone to the age in which he lived: if such a universal empire continues to have peace, torpor and stagnation must be the consequence. Trajan’s wars and victories were certainly beneficial to the Roman state; the only question was, Whither were they to lead?—There was no stopping short; and hence it may be seen, how wretched is such a dominion over the world.

The cause of his first war, was one which to Roman feelings appeared a just one. Domitian had made peace with Decebalus on condition of paying a tribute; this tribute Trajan would not pay, and Decebalus, conscious of his power, declared war, A. D. 101. His empire comprised Transylvania, the mountain districts of Moldavia and Wallachia, and perhaps also the plains of the latter country and of Upper Hungary; in the plains of Moldavia and Bessarabia he in all likelihood ruled over the Sarmatians: his frontiers cannot be accurately laid down. This mighty and strong country was inhabited by a most warlike, free, and civilized people, whose prince was a worthy match for Trajan. The war lasted for three years, until Trajan, by taking the capital, compelled Decebalus to conclude a peace, the terms of which are fully known to us from the pillar: the Roman prisoners and deserters were to be given up, and Decebalus had to pay a large war-contribution,—which was not hard for him to do, as Dacia was rich in silver,—and he was still left as an independent prince in his kingdom. Some years afterwards, the war broke out again. The peace was a very oppressive one; its heavy burthens were only felt after it was concluded, when the insolence of the Roman governors made matters unbearable; and as the Dacians repented of what they had done, Rome declared war once more. Decebalus fell; and in the second campaign, Dacia was made a province, which it continued to be down to the times of the Goths. In the heart of the country, a number of Roman colonies were established; one, for instance, in its capital, Zarmizegethusa, under the name of _Colonia Ulpia_; and also especially in Transylvania and the mountain districts of Moldavia and Wallachia: no traces of any are found in the plains. And so firmly did the Roman rule take root there, that to this day, after the most varied vicissitudes, the language spoken in Wallachia is but a corruption of Latin, although Rome was only mistress there for a hundred and fifty years. The Wallachs, however, spread further towards Pindus in Macedon, and into Greece and Epirus: they are a mysterious people. From the many ruins and inscriptions in it, one may see that Dacia was a very flourishing and civilized country.

There now followed some years of peace, which certainly did not make him happy. When therefore the Parthian king had deposed the king of Armenia, which was subject to the doubtful sovereignty of Rome and Parthia, and had raised a kinsman of his to the throne; Trajan, availing himself of the opportunity, took up arms, marched into Armenia, and received the homage of Parthamasiris, the king set up by the Parthians. With this he was satisfied, the king having come to his camp, and received back his kingdom from him as a fief, which it in truth may be called. But Trajan went on with the war. It is a pity that we do not know its history in detail: like the Dacian wars, it must have been rich indeed in great achievements, as nature opposed immense difficulties. Thus much seems clear, that Trajan took Armenia for the base of his operations, and penetrated towards the lower Tigris. There he reduced, not only Seleucia, but also Ctesiphon, the capital of the king of kings; and he came as far as the ocean, that is to say, the Persian Gulf. Here he either began to feel the difficulties in the way of his darling wish to conquer the whole of the Persian Empire; or it was with him as with many a great general who waged war for its own sake, finding pleasure in it, that he became tired of war, and thought that he should be able at any time to return to it. Thus it was with Napoleon, in whose case it saved the world. He was sometimes sick of war; and as he then wished to rest himself for some months in Paris, he would make peace, meaning to renew the war afterwards: he liked moreover to let people somewhat raise their heads once more, and then, when they had recovered their strength a little, to beat them again with so much the greater glory. Thus Trajan also felt induced to grant peace to the Parthians, after having given them Parthamaspates, one of their pretenders, for a king. The Parthians, as individuals, deserve but little of our esteem: they were barbarians, and they gained their civilization only from the Greek towns. Persia did not rise into eminence till it was ruled by Sassanides. At this time, the Parthians had vassal-kings in the different countries, and the king himself with his court travelled from one of these to the other, and was entertained by them: his proper residence was at Ctesiphon.