CHAPTER XV

TROUBLES IN THE EAST

We have seen that in the year 190 B.C. a new thing happened in Asia Minor--Roman legions appeared there for the first time in history. It was an appearance which was a sign of what was sure to come, that Rome, when it pleased her to do so, would conquer all that country. Conquer it all, and subdue it to her own power, in course of time she did. The last people that she succeeded in perfectly subduing were the Jews.

Judæa, at the date of the arrival in Asia of the legions, was held as a province of the kingdom of Syria by one of the dynasty of Seleucus.

Seleucus and his Court were, practically, Grecian. Antioch, the capital of Syria (several of the Seleucid kings were called Antiochus), was practically a Greek city. The influence of Greek thought began to flow into Judæa and Jerusalem more and more from Syria and the north, and we have seen already how it flowed in from Egypt and Alexandria. It brought in strange knowledge, strange speculations and, so far as the Greeks troubled themselves about religion, a strange religion. We have seen from of old how intensely the Jews were devoted to their own religion, and how they retained it in exile and in persecution. A very large number of them held to it fiercely now against all these new ideas that the Greeks were bringing in.

So, all through the hundred years that follow, the {204} story of the Jews is the story of a series of struggles for the mastery in Jerusalem between the party that favoured the Greek new ways and the party faithful to the old Jewish ways. The latter came to be called Pharisees and the former are represented by the Sadducees, as you read of them in the Bible.

Besides this cause of unrest, there was still constantly trouble between Syria and Egypt. The fact that both were overshadowed equally by the growing power of Rome did not prevent them quarrelling about their own claims in Palestine. And Judæa, as ever of old, lay between the two rivals. Judæa knew little peace in these days of the so-called _Pax Romana_.

[Sidenote: Fortitude of the Jews]

The insults which the national religion and laws suffered from the "Gentiles," as the Jews called the Greeks and all who were not of their own race and way of thinking, roused their great resentment. The fighting between the parties was fierce. There was one moment in the story when the Jews under those great fighters, the Maccabees, became really the strongest power, so long as Rome did not care to exert her power, in all that region--stronger than Syria, of which she had lately been a mere province. She had power as extensive as Solomon had wielded when king of Israel and Judah united. But it did not endure. The rivalry between the two parties within Judæa itself weakened her. At the date of Pompey's coming to Syria, about a hundred years later than the first coming of the legions, Judæa was again in subjection to Syria, and Syria herself was made into a Roman province. Judæa, like the rest of the world, turned her eyes to Rome as mistress of them all; but, of them all, the eyes of Judæa expressed, probably, the least obedience and submission, the strongest purpose of resistance.

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It is this strength of resistance that has made the Jews, in spite of all the calamities that they have continually had to endure all through the course of our story, still play such an active and large part in it. All read with reverence the same sacred Book. Even those Jews that had been scattered, and had settled far from Jerusalem, looked up to Jerusalem as their capital city. The Temple of their great God was there. They received and obeyed orders from there. They went up there to great feasts and religious ceremonies. There were very many Jews in the many Greek cities of Asia Minor, very many in Egypt, many in Cyprus and other islands, many in Greece itself. Although Judæa was a small subject state when Pompey saw it, and had an official appointed by Rome as its ruler, it was important to him to have the favour of the Jews on his side, just because they were so far and widely dispersed and could exercise influence in so many lands.

At first, in the struggle between Cæsar and Pompey, the favour of the Jews had been given to Pompey. Probably they were disposed to fight for the side that they thought most likely to win, so as to get some future favours for themselves in return. As a matter of fact, both Greeks and Romans were so little concerned with religious things that, except for insulting the Jewish customs by their indifference, they showed very little hostility to them.

When Cæsar went to Egypt he gave the Jews every opportunity of worshipping God in their own way and living their peculiar life in the manner that pleased them. The official appointed by Rome to govern Judæa at this time was Antipater, a native of the neighbouring land of Idumæa, and his son, who {206} succeeded him in the governorship, was called Herod, Herod the Great, who ruled, with the title of king (though he was only a king by leave of Rome, and king of a country paying tribute to Rome), until the year 4 B.C. We are just coming now to the Christian Era, as we call it. The years will then no longer grow fewer and fewer as they come to the year of the birth of Christ; but more and more as they mount up away from that date.

In the early days of the rule of Herod in Judæa, that is, about the year 40 B.C., there came a new danger on the land. Those Parthians, whom Julius Cæsar had defeated, swarmed back again, on their horses, across the Euphrates, and swept over a great part of the country. Herod implored the help of Rome, and not in vain; but Julius Cæsar was no longer the world's master then. He had been dead for several years.

You must, I am sure, remember that scene in the Senate-house in Rome--if you do not remember reading it in any history book you will have heard of it from Shakespeare's play of Julius Cæsar--how his best friends clustered round him, and the dearest of all gave him a fatal dagger-stroke. "_Et tu, Brute!_" he exclaimed, as even Brutus, his most intimate friend, dealt a death blow.

The assassins of Cæsar asserted that they did the foul deed for the good of the State, to rid Rome of the tyranny of the dictator. That may have been the real reason of some of them. Others may have been thinking of their own advantage and how they might advance if they put such a big man as Cæsar out of the way. But whatever their intentions were, the effect on the State was terrible.

The great orator, Cicero, had hopes that the {207} Republic might be restored, that the rule of one man might be ended and the good old days come back again. But the people in Rome were not such as they had been in those good old days when they followed the good old customs. It is no wonder that they had changed.

See what had happened. Rome had conquered the world. Masses of wealth from the conquered provinces had been brought to her and were constantly coming in. The rich men had their splendid houses and villas. They vied with each other in giving feasts and entertainments to the populace, in order to gain the votes of the people and to be elected to high positions, at home or abroad, in which they could make large fortunes by receiving bribes or by taxing the provinces. All their old ideas of what it was right to do had been upset by the Greek thought that prevailed through all the world that was at all educated. There was no respect for the laws, and they had no religion that made any difference to their conduct.

[Sidenote: Octavius and Antony]

Therefore, when Cæsar was killed, and his power to dictate and to make the laws obeyed went, at once there was terrible lawlessness, several parties in the city trying to get the power into their hands. Cæsar had been appointed dictator for life, but no arrangement had been made about what should happen at his death. So it went for the space of two years or so, and out of all the troubles of these two years we find a state of things coming about very like that which happened before, when Pompey and Cæsar were the two most powerful men--powerful, because each had legions willing to obey him. There was a third at that time, Crassus, powerful in his wealth. Two men now again came to the front, each with military forces at his back--Octavius and Antony. There was a third, of less {208} power, Lepidus. Pompey and Cæsar had been friends at first, and were joined together to rule the affairs of Rome. Afterwards they fell fighting, with the result that you know--the complete victory of Cæsar. Crassus had been killed, fighting in the East; and that was the end of that which was called the first Triumvirate.

Antony, the nephew and the friend of Cæsar, had designs of succeeding to his power, but almost at the outset he found Octavius, who was Cæsar's grand-nephew, opposing him. Antony had been Consul, with Cæsar, in 44 B.C. Now he had command of legions in the north of Italy, and when he went to take up that command he found Brutus, Cæsar's assassin, holding possession of a town called Mutina, which he refused to give up. Antony attacked him. The Senate took the side of Brutus and sent Octavius up in command of some of the legions to oppose Antony. Antony was defeated before the town that he was besieging, and fled.

He fled, but he still had his army. He was joined by Lepidus, who brought with him a strong army from the south. Octavius may have thought this combined force too formidable for him, but whatever his reason was he made friends with Antony, whom he had lately been fighting, and with Lepidus, and the Senate seems to have approved of their combination. Perhaps they were so strong that they had no choice, but were obliged to seem to approve. And so what is called the second Triumvirate came into existence.

Brutus and Cassius, who were trying to bring back the old republican ways of Government, still held out; but they were defeated at the famous battle of Philippi, and the Triumvirate had all power in the Roman world.

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They proceeded to map out that world in pieces, so that each should take his portion. To Lepidus, as perhaps the least important, was given Africa; to Antony went Egypt and the East. Octavius seems to have had the best of the bargain from the start, with the home legions and Italy, Greece and Spain, together with Gaul that Cæsar had conquered, for his own. Antony married Octavia, who was sister of Octavius; so it all looked a very good arrangement.

But just as trouble had crept in between the chief men of the first Triumvirate, so too with this second.

Antony was not a very prudent man, and Octavius was. Antony had the most troublesome frontier to defend, for to the east was that country of the Parthians who had come upon Judæa. Herod's appeal for help was heard by the Triumvirate. It was Antony's special task to deal with them; and, for the time being, he dealt with them successfully, though he did not march against them himself. But one of his generals took the field and drove them back over the Euphrates, whence they had come.

That was not by any means the end of these Parthians, however. We have seen how they fought--charging down on the legions, shooting a flight of arrows, then off again, and again coming back to perform the same manœuvres. Just as they did in each particular battle of a war, so they did in the war itself, as a whole. If the war went against them, away they went, over the Euphrates and as far east as the Romans cared to pursue. They must have known that the Romans would not go on pursuing for ever, farther and farther from their base. And the Parthians had all Asia to retreat into.

So they retreated, and left Judæa and Herod in {210} peace, but a very few years later they were making trouble again, and this time Antony himself led an army against them, into Parthia itself, and met with a disastrous defeat. And now Octavius, who had been making his own power very firm in Rome and Italy all this while, thought the time was come when he might declare war against Antony--his brother-in-law, and until lately his friend.

Antony had given him much cause. You will remember that Queen Cleopatra whom Cæsar had put on the Egyptian throne beside Ptolemy. Cæsar had fallen in love with her. Antony fell in love with her too. For her sake he divorced and sent back Octavia, his wife, to her brother, Octavius, at Rome. He assumed all the airs of an Eastern despotic ruler, with Cleopatra as his queen. A great many of his own people and friends and servants were disgusted by this. Probably the support that they had given him was not given very whole-heartedly. Certainly Octavius could easily find an excuse for making war on him, for Antony's ideas of government were not at all such as agreed with the Romans' idea of how government should be conducted by a Roman citizen.

The deciding battle between the two was a sea-fight off Actium. Cleopatra was there, but even she does not seem to have fought very bravely for Antony. She turned out of the fight before it was really decided, and fled, with her ships, to Egypt. Her flight probably did decide the result, and Antony, with such ships as could escape, went to Egypt after her. Octavius did not pursue them at once, but a year later he went to Egypt, and, rather than face his coming, Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide.

[Sidenote: Octavius victorious]

Several years before this, Octavius had dealt with {211} the other man of the Triumvirate, Lepidus. Lepidus, like Antony, seems to have acted just as if he wished Octavius to have a good excuse for getting rid of him, or of his power. He came to Sicily from Africa, apparently at Octavius' bidding; and when he tried, or was accused of trying, to gain possession of Sicily for himself, Octavius replied by defeating his forces, taking Lepidus himself to Italy, and, with more magnanimity than conquerors often show, allowing him to retain his high office of Pontifex Maximus.

He could well afford to be generous, for he was now Master of the World; master as not even his grand-uncle Cæsar, by whom he had been adopted as a son, had been world-master. Cæsar was assassinated in the very year following his election as dictator. Octavius put down his last rival, Antony, at Actium in 31 B.C., and his world-mastery endured until his death in 14 A.D.

I have said that Octavius was a very prudent man. He wished all the old forms of republican government to go on just as they had before. And so they did go on, but Octavius must have known, and everybody else must have known, that they went on just because he allowed them to do so, that he could stop them or alter them at any moment if he pleased, that the government was in form republican--government by persons elected by the people--but that it really was government by one man. And far better it should be so. The other way had been tried and had failed terribly; it had resulted in fearful lawlessness. Now the Pax Romana, that peace of the world under the controlling power of Rome, really did begin to be something like a real fact. It had been very much of a fiction up to now. Of course there were troubles on the frontier. {212} Those Parthians, who had defeated Antony, had to be dealt with; and they were dealt with, and that disgrace to the Roman arms was wiped out.

I am not sure that the most troublous spot in all the Empire of Rome was not that little kingdom of Judæa (sometimes it was a kingdom, under a petty king like Herod, but oftener it was under a Roman governor who had the title of procurator), which never seems to have been able to rest for long together.

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