The Eighteen Christian Centuries

|A.D. 79.|

With Titus, whom the fond gratitude of his subjects named the Delight of the human race, a new age of happiness was about to open on the world; but all the old horrors of the Cæsars were revived and magnified when he was succeeded, after a reign of two years, by his brother, the savage and cowardly Domitian.

|A.D. 81.|

With the exception of the brief period between the years 70 and 81, the whole century was spent in suffering and inflicting pain. The worst excesses of Nero and Caligula were now imitated and surpassed. The bonds of society became rapidly loosened. As in a shipwreck, the law of self-preservation was the only rule. No man could rely upon his neighbour, or his friend, or his nearest of kin. There were spies in every house, and an executioner at every door. An unconsidered word maliciously reported, or an accusation entirely false, brought death to the rich and great. To the unhappy class of men who in other times are called the favourites of fortune, because they are born to the possession of great ancestral names and hereditary estates, there was no escape from the jealous and avaricious hatred of the Emperor. If a patrician of this description lived in the splendour befitting his rank—he was currying favour with the mob! If he lived retired—he was trying to gain reputation by a pretence of giving up the world! If he had great talents—he was dangerous to the state! If he was dull and stupid—oh! don’t believe it—he was only an imitative Brutus, concealing his deep designs under the semblance of fatuity! If a man of distinguished birth was rich, it was not a fitting condition for a subject—if he was poor, he was likely to be seduced into the wildest enterprises. So the prisons were filled by calumny and suspicion, and emptied by the executioner. A dreadful century this—the worst that ever entered into tale or history; for the memory of former glories and comparative freedom was still recent. A man who was sixty years old, in the midst of the terrors of Tiberius, had associated in his youth with the survivors of the Civil War, with men who had embraced Brutus and Cassius; he had seen the mild administration of Augustus, and perhaps had supped with Virgil and Horace in the house of Mæcenas. And now he was tortured till he named a slave or freedman of the Emperor his heir, and then executed to expedite the succession. There was a hideous jocularity in some of these imperial proceedings, which, however, was no laughing-matter at the time. When a senator was very wealthy, it was no unusual thing for Tiberius and his successors to create themselves the rich man’s nearest relations by a decree of the Senate. The person so honoured by this graft upon his family tree seldom survived the operation many days. The emperor took possession of the property as heir-at-law and next of kin; and mourned for his uncle or brother—as the case might be—with the most edifying decorum.

But besides giving the general likeness of a period, it is necessary to individualize it still further by introducing, in the background of the picture, some incident by which it is peculiarly known, as we find Nelson generally represented with Trafalgar going on at the horizon, and Wellington sitting thoughtful on horseback in the foreground of the fire of Waterloo. Now, there cannot be a more distinguishing mark than a certain great military achievement which happened in the year 70 of this century, and is brought home to us, not only as a great historical event in itself, but as the commencement of a new era in human affairs, and the completion of a long line of threats and prophecies. This was the capture and destruction of Jerusalem. The accounts given us of this siege transcend in horror all other records of human sorrow. It was at the great annual feast of the Passover, when Jews from all parts of the world flocked to the capital of their nation to worship in the Temple, which to them was the earthly dwelling-place of Jehovah. The time was come, and they did not know it, when God was to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. More than a million strangers were resident within the walls. There was no room in house or hall for so vast a multitude; so they bivouacked in the streets, and lay thick as leaves in the courts of the holy place. Suddenly the Roman trumpets blew. The Jews became inspired with fanatical hatred of the enemy, and insane confidence that some miracle would be wrought for their deliverance. They deliberated, and chose for their leaders the wildest and most enthusiastic of the crowd. They refused the offers of mercy and reconciliation made to them by Titus. They sent back insulting messages to the Roman general, and stood expectant on the walls to see the idolatrous legions smitten by lightning or swallowed up by an earthquake. But Titus advanced his forces and hemmed in the countless multitude of men, and women, and children—few able to resist, but all requiring to be fed. Famine and pestilence came on; but still the mad fanatics of the Temple determined to persevere. They occasionally opened a gate and rushed out with the cry of “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!” and were slaughtered by the unpitying hatred of the Roman soldiers. Their cruelty to their prisoners, when they succeeded in carrying off a few of their enemies, was great; but the patience of Titus at last gave way, and he soon bettered the instruction they gave him in pitilessness and blood. He drew a line of circumvallation closer round the city, and intercepted every supply; when deserters came over, he crucified them all round the trenches; when the worn-out people came forth, imploring to be suffered to pass through his ranks, he drove them back, that they might increase the scarcity by their lives, or the pestilence by adding to the heaps of unburied dead. Dissensions were raging all this time among the defenders themselves. They fought in the streets, in the houses, and heaped the floor and outcourts of the Temple with thousands of the slain. There was no help either from heaven or earth; eleven hundred thousand people had died of plague and the sword; and the rest were doomed to perish by more lingering torments. Nearest relations—sisters, brothers, fathers, wives—all forgot the ties of natural affection under this great necessity, and fought for a handful of meal, or the possession of some reptile’s body if they were lucky enough to trace it to its hiding-place; and at last—the crown of all horrors—the daughter of Eleazer killed her own child and converted it into food. The measure of man’s wrong and Heaven’s vengeance was now full. The daily sacrifice ceased to be offered; voices were audible to the popular ear uttering in the Holy of Holies, “Let us go hence.” The Romans rushed on—climbed over the neglected walls—forced their way into the upper Temple, and the gore flowed in streams so rapid and so deep that it seemed like a purple river! Large conduits had been made for the rapid conveyance away of the blood of bulls and goats offered in sacrifice; they all became choked now with the blood of the slaughtered people. At last the city was taken; the inhabitants were either dead or dying. Many were crushed as they lay expiring in the great tramplings of the triumphant Romans; many were recovered by food and shelter, and sold into slavery. The Temple and walls were levelled with the ground, and not one stone was left upon another. The plough passed over where palace and tower had been, and the Jewish dispensation was brought to a close.

History in ancient days was as exclusive as the court newsman in ours, and never published the movements of anybody below a senator or a consul. All the Browns and Smiths were left out of consideration; and yet to us who live in the days when those families—with the Joneses and Robinsons—form the great majority both in number and influence, it would be very interesting to have any certain intelligence of their predecessors during the first furies of the Empire. We have but faint descriptions even of the aristocracy, but what we hear of them shows, more clearly than any thing else, the frightful effect on morals and manliness of so uncontrolled a power as was vested in the Cæsars, and teaches us that the worst of despotisms is that which is established by the unholy union of the dregs of the population and the ruling power, against the peace and happiness and security of the middle class. You see how this combination of tyrant and mob succeeded in crushing all the layers of society which lay between them, till there were left only two agencies in all the world—the Emperor on his throne, and the millions fed by his bounty. The hereditary nobility—the safest bulwark of a people and least dangerous support of a throne—were extirpated before the end of the century, and impartiality makes us confess that they fell by their own fault. As if the restraints of shame had been thrown off with the last hope of liberty, the whole population broke forth into the most incredible licentiousness. If the luxury of Lucullus had offended the common sense of propriety in the later days of the republic, there were numbers now who looked back upon his feasts as paltry entertainments, and on the wealth of Crœsus as poverty. The last of the Pompeys, in the time of Caligula, had estates so vast, that navigable rivers larger than the Thames performed the whole of their course from their fountain-head to the sea without leaving his domain. There were spendthrifts in the time of Tiberius who lavished thousands of pounds upon a supper. The pillage of the world had fallen into the hands of a few favoured families, and their example had introduced a prodigality and ostentation unheard of before. No one who regarded appearances travelled anywhere without a troop of Numidian horsemen, and outriders to clear the way. He was followed by a train of mules and sumpter-horses loaded with his vases of crystal—his richly-carved cups and dishes of silver and gold. But this profusion had its natural result in debt and degradation. The patricians who had been rivals of the imperial splendour became dependants on the imperial gifts; and the grandson of the conqueror of a kingdom, or the proconsul of the half of Asia, sold his ancestral palace, lived for a while on the contemptuous bounty of his master, and sank in the next generation into the nameless mass. Others, more skilful, preserved or improved their fortunes while they rioted in expense. By threats or promises, they prevailed on the less powerful to constitute them their heirs; they traded on the strength, or talents, or the beauty of their slaves, and lent money at such usurious interest that the borrower tried in vain to escape the shackles of the law, and ended by becoming the bondsman of the kind-hearted gentleman who had induced him to accept the loan.

If these were the habits of the rich, how were the poor treated? The free and penniless citizens of the capital were degraded and gratified at the same time. The wealthy vied with each other in buying the favour of the mob by shows and other entertainments, by gifts of money and donations of food. But when these arts failed, and popularity could no longer be obtained by merely defraying the expense of a combat of gladiators, the descendants of the old patricians—of the men who had bought the land on which the Gauls were encamped outside the gates of Rome—went down into the arena themselves and fought for the public entertainment. Laws indeed were passed even in the reign of Tiberius, and renewed at intervals after that time, against this shameful degradation, and the stage was interdicted to all who were not previously declared infamous by sentence of a court. But all was in vain. Ladies of the highest rank, and the loftiest-born of the nobility, actually petitioned for a decree of defamation, that they might give themselves up undisturbed to their favourite amusement. This perhaps added a zest to their enjoyment, and rapturous applauses must have hailed the entrance of the beautiful grandchild of Anthony or Agrippa, in the character and drapery of a warlike amazon—the louder the applause and greater the admiration. Yet in order to gratify them with such a sight, she had descended to the level of the convict, and received the brand of qualifying disgrace from a legal tribunal. But the faint barrier of this useless prohibition was thrown down by the policy and example of Domitian. The emperor himself appeared in the arena, and all restraint was at an end. Rather, there was a fury of emulation to copy so great a model, and “Rome’s proud dames, whose garments swept the ground,” forgot more than ever their rank and sex, and were proud, like their lovers and brothers, not merely to mount the stage in the lascivious costume of nymph or dryad, but to descend into the blood-stained lists of the Coliseum and murder each other with sword and spear. There is something strangely horrible in this transaction, when we read that it occurred for the first time in celebration of the games of Flora—the goddess of flowers and gardens, who, in old times, was worshipped under the blossomed apple-trees in the little orchards surrounding each cottage within the walls, and was propitiated with children’s games and chaplets hung upon the boughs. But now the loveliest of the noble daughters of the city lay dead upon the trampled sand. What was the effect upon the populace of these extraordinary shows?

Always stern and cruel, the Roman was now never satisfied unless with the spectacle of death. Sometimes in the midst of a play or pantomime the fierce lust of blood would seize him, and he would cry out for a combat of gladiators or nobles, who instantly obeyed; and after the fight was over, and the corpses removed, the play would go on as if nothing had occurred. The banners of the empire still continued to bear the initial letters of the great words—the Senate and people of Rome. We have now, in this rapid survey, seen what both those great names have come to—the Senate crawling at the feet of the emperor, and the people living on charity and shows. The slaves fared worst of all, for they were despised by rich and poor. The sated voluptuary whose property they were sometimes found an excitement to his jaded spirits by having them tortured in his sight. They were allowed to die of starvation when they grew old, unless they were turned to use, as was done by one of their possessors, Vidius Pollio, who cast the fattest of his domestics into his fish-pond to feed his lampreys. The only other classes were the actors and musicians, the dwarfs and the philosophers. They contributed by their wit, or their uncouth shape, or their oracular sentences, to the amusement of their employers, and were safe. They were licensed characters, and could say what they chose, protected by the long-drawn countenance of the stoic, or the comic grimaces of the buffoon. So early as the time of Nero, the people he tyrannized and flattered were not less ruthless than himself. In his cruelty—in his vanity—in his frivolity, and his entire devotion to the gratification of his passions—he was a true representative of the men over whom he ruled. Emperor and subject had even then become fitted for each other, and flowers, we are credibly told by the historians, were hung for many years upon his tomb.

Humanity itself seemed to be sunk beyond the possibility of restoration; but we see now how necessary it was that our nature should reach its lowest point of depression to give full force to the great reaction which Christianity introduced. Men were slavishly bending at the footstool of a despot, trembling for life, bowed down by fear and misery, when suddenly it was reported that a great teacher had appeared for a while upon earth, and declared that all men were equal in the sight of God, for that God was the Father of all. The slave heard this in the intervals of his torture—the captive in his dungeon—the widow and the orphan. To the poor the gospel, or good news, was preached. It was this which made the trembling courtiers of the worst of the emperors slip out noiselessly from the palace, and hear from Paul of Tarsus or his disciples the new prospect that was opening on mankind. It spread quickly among those oppressed and hopeless multitudes. The subjection of the Roman empire—its misery and degradation—were only a means to an end. The harsher the laws of the tyrant, the more gracious seemed the words of Christ. The two masters were plainly set before them, which to choose. And who could hesitate? One said, “Tremble! suffer! die!” The other said, “Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest!”

SECOND CENTURY

Authors

Pliny the Younger, Plutarch, Suetonius, Juvenal, Arrian, Ælian, Ptolemy, (Geographer,) Appian, Epictetus, Pausanias, Galen, (Physician,) Athenæus, Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenæus, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, Clement Of Alexandria, Marcion, (Heretic.)

THE SECOND CENTURY

THE GOOD EMPERORS

In looking at the second century, we see a total difference in the expression, though the main features continue unchanged. There is still the central power at Rome, the same dependence everywhere else; but the central power is beneficent and wise. As if tired of the hereditary rule of succession which had ended in such a monster as Domitian, the world took refuge in a new system of appointing its chiefs, and perhaps thought it a recommendation of each successive emperor that he had no relationship to the last. We shall accordingly find that, after this period, the hereditary principle is excluded. It was remarked that, of the twelve first Cæsars, only two had died a natural death—for even in the case of Augustus the arts of the poisoner were suspected—and those two were Vespasian and Titus, men who had no claim to such an elevation in right of lofty birth. Birth, indeed, had ceased to be a recommendation. All the great names of the Republic had been carefully rooted out. Few people were inclined to boast of their ancestry when the proof of their pedigree acted as a sentence of death; for there was no surer passport to destruction in the times of the early emperors than a connection with the Julian line, or descent from a historic family. No one, therefore, took the trouble to inquire into the genealogy of Nerva, the old and generous man who succeeded the monster Domitian. |A.D. 96.|His nomination to the empire elevated him at once out of the sphere of these inquiries, for already the same superstitious reverence surrounded the name of Augustus which spreads its inviolable sanctity on the throne of Eastern monarchs. Whoever sits upon that, by whatever title, or however acquired, is the legitimate and unquestioned king. No rival, therefore, started up to contest the position either of Nerva himself, or of the stranger he nominated to succeed him. |A.D. 102.|Men bent in humble acquiescence when they knew, in the third year of this century, that their master was named Trajan,—that he was a Spaniard by birth, and the best general of Rome. For eighty years after that date the empire had rest. Life and property were comparatively secure, and society flowed on peaceably in deep and well-ascertained channels. A man might have been born at the end of the reign of Domitian, and die in extreme old age under the sway of the last of the Antonines, and never have known of insecurity or oppression—

 
“Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Could touch him farther!”
 

No wonder those agreeable years were considered by the fond gratitude of the time, and the unavailing regrets of succeeding generations, the golden age of man. Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus—these are still great names, and are everywhere recognised as the most wonderful succession of sovereigns the world has ever seen. They are still called the “Good Emperors,” the “Wise Rulers.”

It is easy, indeed, to be good in comparison with Nero, and wise in comparison with Claudius; but the effect of the example of those infamous tyrants made it doubly difficult to be either good or wise. The world had become so accustomed to oppression, that it seemed at first surprised at the change that had taken place. The emperors had to create a knowledge of justice before their just acts could be appreciated. The same opposition other men have experienced in introducing bad and cruel measures was roused by their introduction of wise and salutary laws. What! no more summary executions, nor forfeitures of fortunes, nor banishments to the Danube? All men equal before the dread tribunal of the imperial judge? The world was surely coming to an end, if the emperor did not now and then poison a senator, or stab his brother, or throw half a dozen courtiers to the beasts! It is likely enough that some of the younger Romans at first lamented those days of unlimited license and perpetual excitement; but in the course of time those wilder spirits must have died out, and the world gladly acquiesced in an existence of dull security and uninteresting peace. By the end of the reign of Trajan the records of the miseries of the last century must have been studied as curiosities—as historical students now look back on the extravagances and horrors of the French Revolution. Fortunately, men could not look forward to the times, more pitiable still, when their descendants should fall into greater sorrows than had been inflicted on mankind by the worst of the Cæsars, and they enjoyed their present immunity from suffering without any misgivings about the future. But a government which does every thing for a people renders it unable to do any thing for itself. The subject stood quietly by while the emperor filled all the offices of the State—guarded him, fed him, clothed him, treated him like a child, and reduced him at last to childlike dependence. An unjust proconsul, instead of being supported and encouraged in his exactions, was dismissed from his employment and forced to refund his ill-got gains,—the population, relieved from their oppressor, saw in his punishment the hand of an avenging Providence. The wakeful eye of the governor in Rome saw the hostile preparations of a tribe of barbarians beyond the Danube; and the legions, crossing the river, dispersed and subdued them before they had time to devastate the Roman fields. The peaceful colonist saw, in the suddenness of his deliverance, the foresight and benevolence of a divinity. No words were powerful enough to convey the sentiments of admiration awakened, by such vigour and goodness, in the breast of a luxurious and effeminate people; and accordingly, if we look a little closely into the personal attributes of the five good emperors, we shall see that some part of their glory is due to the exaggerations of love and gratitude.

Nerva reigned but sixteen months, and had no time to do more than display his kindness of disposition, and to name his successor. This was Trajan, a man who was not even a Roman by birth, but who was thought by his patron to have retained, in the distant province of Spain where he was born, the virtues which had disappeared in the centre and capital of the empire. The deficiency of Nerva’s character had been its softness and want of force. The stern vigilance of Trajan made ample amends. He was the best-known soldier of his time, and revived once more the terror of the Roman arms. He conquered wherever he appeared; but his warlike impetuosity led him too far. He trod in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, and advanced farther eastward than any of the Roman armies had previously done. But his victories were fruitless: he attached no new country permanently to the empire, and derives all his glory now from the excellence of his internal administration. He began his government by declaring himself as subordinate to the laws as the meanest of the people. His wife, Pompeia Plotina, was worthy of such a husband, and said, on mounting the steps of the palace, that she should descend them unaltered from what she was. The emperor visited his friends on terms of equality, and had the greatness of mind, generally deficient in absolute princes, to bestow his confidence on those who deserved it. Somebody, a member perhaps of the old police who had made such fortunes in the time of Domitian by alarming the tyrant with stories of plots and assassinations, told Trajan one day to beware of his minister, who intended to murder him on the first opportunity. “Come again, and tell me all particulars to-morrow,” said the emperor. In the mean time he went unbidden and supped with the accused. He was shaved by his barber—was attended for a mock illness by his surgeon—bathed in his bath—and ate his meat and drank his wine. On the following day the informer came. “Ah!” said Trajan, interrupting him in his accusation of Surenus, “if Surenus had wished to kill me, he would have done it last night.”

|A.D. 117.|

The emperor died when returning from a distant expedition in the East, and Pompeia declared that he had long designated Adrian as his successor. This evidence was believed, and Adrian, also a Spaniard by birth, and eminent as a military commander, began his reign. Trajan had been a general—a conqueror, and had extended for a time the boundaries of the Roman power. But Adrian believed the empire was large enough already. He withdrew the eagles from the half-subdued provinces, and contented himself with the natural limits which it was easy to defend. But within those limits his activity was unexampled. He journeyed from end to end of his immense domain, and for seventeen years never rested in one spot. News did not travel fast in those days—but the emperor did. Long before the inhabitants of Syria and Egypt heard that he had left Rome on an expedition to Britain, he had rushed through Gaul, crossed the Channel, inquired into the proceedings of the government officers at York, given orders for a wall to keep out the Caledonians, (an attempt which has proved utterly vain at all periods of English history, down to the present day,) and suddenly made his appearance among the bewildered dwellers in Ephesus or Carthage, to call tax-gatherers to order and to inspect the discipline of his troops. The master’s eye was everywhere, for nobody knew on what point it was fixed. And such a master no kingdom has been able to boast of since. His talents were universal. He read every thing and forgot nothing. He was a musician, a poet, a philosopher. He studied medicine and mineralogy, and plead causes like Cicero, and sang like a singer at the opera. Perhaps it is difficult to judge impartially of the qualities of a Roman emperor. One day he found fault on a point of grammar with a learned man of the name of Favorinus. Favorinus could have defended himself and justified his language, but continued silent. His friends said to him, “Why didn’t you answer the emperor’s objections?” “Do you think,” said the sensible grammarian, “I am going to enter into disputes with a man who commands thirty legions?” But the greatness of Adrian’s character is, that he did command those thirty legions. He was severe and just; and Roman discipline was never more exact. The result of this was shown on the grand scale only once during this reign, and that was in the case of the revolted Jews. We have seen the state to which their Temple at Jerusalem was reduced by Titus. Fifty years had now passed, and the passionate love of the people for their native land had congregated them once more within their renovated walls, and raised up another temple on the site of the old. They still expected the Messiah, for the Messiah to them represented vengeance upon the Romans and triumph over the world. An impostor of the name of Barcho-chebas led three hundred thousand of them into the field. They were mad with national hatred, and inspired with fanatical hope. It took three years of desperate effort to quell this sedition; and then Adrian had his revenge. The country was laid waste. Fifty towns and a thousand villages were sacked and burned. The population, once more nearly exhausted by war and famine, furnished slaves, which were sold all over the East. Jerusalem itself felt the conqueror’s hatred most. Its name was blotted out—it was called Ælia Capitolina; and, with ferocious mockery, over the gate of the new capital of Judea was affixed the statue of the unclean beast, the abomination of the Israelite. But nothing could keep the Jews from visiting the land of so many promises and so much glory. Whenever they had it in their power, they crept back from all quarters, if it were only to weep and die amid the ruins of their former power.

Trajan and Adrian had now made the world accustomed to justice in its rulers; and as far as regards their public conduct, this character is not to be denied. Yet in their private relations they were not so faultless. Trajan the great and good was a drunkard. To such a pitch did he carry this vice, that he gave orders that after a certain hour of the day none of his commands were to be obeyed. Adrian was worse: he was regardless of life; he put men to death for very small offences. An architect was asked how he liked a certain series of statues designed by the emperor and ranged in a sitting attitude round a temple which he had built. The architect was a humourist, not a courtier. “If the goddesses,” he said, “take it into their heads to rise, they will never be able to get out at the door.” A poor criticism, and not a good piece of wit, but not bad enough to justify his being beheaded; yet the answer cost the poor man his life. As Adrian grew older, he grew more reckless of the pain he gave. He had a brother-in-law ninety years of age, and there was a grandson of the old man aged eighteen. He had them both executed on proof or suspicion of a conspiracy. The popular feeling was revolted by the sight of the mingled blood of two sufferers so nearly related, at the opposite extremities of life. The old man, just before he died, protested his innocence, and uttered a revengeful prayer that Adrian might wish to die and find death impossible! This imprecation was fulfilled. The emperor was tortured with disease, and longed for deliverance in vain. He called round him his physicians, and priests, and sorcerers, but they could give him no relief. He begged his slaves to kill him, and stabbed himself with a dagger; but in spite of all he could not die. Lingering on, and with no cessation of his pain, he must have had sad thoughts of the past, and no pleasant anticipations of the future, if, as we learn from the verses attributed to him, he believed in a future state. His lines still remain, but are indebted to Pope, who paraphrased them, for their Christian spirit and lofty aspiration:—