Part 24 (1/2)
CHAPTER XXIV
THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT
THE TWELVE CaeSARS
=The Emperor.=--In the new regime absolute authority was lodged in a single man; he was called the emperor (imperator--the commander). In himself alone he exercised all those functions which the ancient magistrates distributed among themselves: he presided over the Senate; he levied and commanded all the armies; he drew up the lists of senators, knights, and people; he levied taxes; he was supreme judge; he was pontifex maximus; he had the power of the tribunes. And to indicate that this authority made him a superhuman being, it was decreed that he should bear a religious surname: Augustus (the venerable).
The empire was not established by a radical revolution. The name of the republic was not suppressed and for more than three centuries the standards of the soldiers continued to bear the initials S.P.Q.R.
(senate and people of Rome). The emperor's power was granted to him for life instead of for one year, as with the old magistrates. The emperor was the only and lifelong magistrate of the republic. In him the Roman people was incarnate; this is why he was absolute.
=Apotheosis of the Emperor.=--As long as the emperor lived he was sole master of the empire, since the Roman people had conveyed all its power to him. But at his death the Senate in the name of the people reviewed his life and pa.s.sed judgment upon it. If he were condemned, all the acts which he had made were nullified, his statues thrown down, and his name effaced from the monuments.[145] If, on the contrary, his acts were ratified (which almost always occurred), the Senate at the same time decreed that the deceased emperor should be elevated to the rank of the G.o.ds. The majority of the emperors, therefore, became G.o.ds after their death. Temples were raised to them and priests appointed to render them wors.h.i.+p. Throughout the empire there were temples dedicated to the G.o.d Augustus and to the G.o.ddess Roma, and persons are known who performed the functions of flamen (priest) of the divine Claudius, or of the divine Vespasian. This practice of deifying the dead emperor was called Apotheosis. The word is Greek; the custom probably came from the Greeks of the Orient.
=The Senate and the People.=--The Roman Senate remained what it had always been--the a.s.sembly of the richest and most eminent personages of the empire. To be a senator was still an eagerly desired honor; in speaking of a great family one would say, ”a senatorial family.” But the Senate, respected as it was, was now powerless, because the emperor could dispense with it. It was still the most distinguished body in the state, but it was no longer the master of the government.
The emperor often pretended to consult it, but he was not bound by its advice.
The people had lost all its power since the a.s.semblies (the Comitia) were suppressed in the reign of Tiberius. The population of 2,000,000 souls crowded into Rome was composed only of some thousands of great lords with their slaves and a mob of paupers. Already the state had a.s.sumed the burden of feeding the latter; the emperors continued to distribute grain to them, and supplemented this with donations of money (the congiarium). Augustus thus donated $140 apiece in nine different distributions, and Nero $50 in three. At the same time to amuse this populace shows were presented. The number of days regularly appointed for the shows under the republic had already amounted to 66 in the year; it had increased in a century and a half, under Marcus Aurelius, to 135, and in the fourth century to 175 (without counting supplementary days). These spectacles continued each day from sunrise to sunset; the spectators ate their lunch in their places. This was a means used by the emperors for the occupation of the crowd. ”It is for your advantage, Caesar,” said an actor to Augustus, ”that the people engage itself with us.” It was also a means for securing popularity.
The worst emperors were among the most popular; Nero was adored for his magnificent spectacles; the people refused to believe that he was dead, and for thirty years they awaited his return.[146]
The mult.i.tude of Rome no longer sought to govern; it required only to be amused and fed: in the forceful expression of Juvenal--to be provided with bread and the games of the circus (panem et circenses).
=The Praetorians.=--Under the republic a general was prohibited from leading his army into the city of Rome. The emperor, chief of all the armies, had at Rome his military escort (praetorium), a body of about 10,000 men quartered in the interior of the city. The praetorians, recruited among the veterans, received high pay and frequent donatives. Relying on these soldiers, the emperor had nothing to fear from malcontents in Rome. But the danger came from the praetorians themselves; as they had the power they believed they had free rein, and their chief, the praetorian prefect, was sometimes stronger than the emperor.
=The Freedmen of the Emperor.=--Ever since the monarchy had superseded the republic, there was no other magistrate than the emperor. All the business of the empire of 80,000,000 people originated with him. For this crus.h.i.+ng task he required a.s.sistants. He found them, not among the men of great family whom he mistrusted, but among the slaves of whom he felt sure. The secretaries, the men of trust, the ministers of the emperor were his freedmen, the majority of them foreigners from Greece or the Orient, pliant people, adepts in flattery, inventiveness, and loquacity. Often the emperor, wearied with serious matters, gave the government into their hands, and, as occurs in absolute monarchies, instead of aiding their master, they supplemented him. Pallas and Narcissus, the freedmen of Claudius, distributed offices and p.r.o.nounced judgments; Helius, Nero's freedman, had knights and senators executed without even consulting his master. Of all the freedmen Pallas was the most powerful, the richest, and the most insolent; he gave his orders to his underlings only by signs or in writing. Nothing so outraged the old n.o.ble families of Rome as this. ”The princes,” said a Roman writer, ”are the masters of citizens and the slaves of their freedmen.” Among the scandals with which the emperors were reproached, one of the gravest was governing Roman citizens by former slaves.
=Despotism and Disorder.=--This regime had two great vices:
1. _Despotism._--The emperor was invested for life with a power unlimited, extravagant, and hardly conceivable; according to his fancy he disposed of persons and their property, condemned, confiscated, and executed without restraint. No inst.i.tution, no law fettered his will.
”The decree of the emperor has the force of law,” say the jurisconsults themselves. Rome recognized then the unlimited despotism that the tyrants had exercised in the Greek cities, no longer circ.u.mscribed within the borders of a single city, but gigantic as the empire itself. As in Greece some honorable tyrants had presented themselves, one sees in Rome some wise and honest monarchs (Augustus, Vespasian, t.i.tus). But few men had a head strong enough to resist vertigo when they saw themselves so elevated above other men. The majority of the emperors profited by their tremendous power only to make their names proverbial: Tiberius, Nero, Domitian by their cruelty, Vitellius by his gluttony, Claudius by his imbecility. One of them, Caligula, was a veritable fool; he had his horse made consul and himself wors.h.i.+pped as a G.o.d. The emperors persecuted the n.o.bles especially to keep them from conspiring against them, and the rich to confiscate their goods.
2. _Disorder._--This overweening authority was, moreover, very ill regulated; it resided entirely in the person of the emperor. When he was dead, everything was in question. It was well known that the world could not continue without a master, but no law nor usage determined who was to be this master. The Senate alone had the right of nominating the emperor, but almost always it would elect under pressure the one whom the preceding emperor had designated or the man who was pleasing to the soldiers.
After the death of Caligula, some praetorians who were sacking the palace discovered, concealed behind the tapestry, a poor man trembling with fear. This was a relative of Caligula; the praetorians made him emperor (it was the emperor Claudius). After the death of Nero, the Senate had elected Galba; the praetorians did not find him liberal enough and so they ma.s.sacred him to set up in his place Otho, a favorite of Nero. In their turn the soldiers on the frontier wished to make an emperor: the legions of the Rhine entered Italy, met the praetorians at Bedriac near Cremona, and overthrew them in so furious a battle that it lasted all night; then they compelled the Senate to elect Vitellius, their general, as emperor. During this time the army of Syria had elected its chief Vespasian, who in turn defeated Vitellius and was named in his place; thus in two years three emperors had been created and three overthrown by the soldiers. The new emperor often undid what his predecessor had done; imperial despotism had not even the advantage of being stable.
=The Twelve Caesars.=--This regime of oppression interrupted by violence endured for more than a century (31 B.C. to 96 A.D.).
The twelve emperors who came to the throne during this time are called the Twelve Caesars, although only the first six were of the family of Augustus. It is difficult to judge them equitably. Almost all of them persecuted the n.o.ble families of Rome of whom they were afraid, and it is the writers of these families that have made their reputation. But it is quite possible that in the provinces their government was mild and just, superior to that of the senators of the republic.
THE CENTURY OF THE ANTONINES
=The Antonines.=--The five emperors succeeding the twelve Caesars, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus, and Marcus Aurelius (96-180), have left a reputation for justice and wisdom. They were called the Antonines, though this name properly belongs only to the last two.
They were not descended from the old families of Rome; Trajan and Hadrian were Spaniards, Antoninus was born at Nimes in Gaul. They were not princes of imperial family, destined from their birth to rule.
Four emperors came to the throne without sons and so the empire could not be transmitted by inheritance. On each occasion the prince chose among his generals and his governors the man most capable of succeeding him; he adopted him as his son and sought his confirmation by the Senate. Thus there came to the empire only experienced men, who without confusion a.s.sumed the throne of their adoptive fathers.
=Government of the Antonines.=--This century of the Antonines was the calmest that the ancient world had ever known. Wars were relegated to the frontier of the empire. In the interior there were still military seditions, tyranny, and arbitrary condemnations. The Antonines held the army in check, organized a council of state of jurisconsults, established tribunals, and replaced the freedmen who had so long irritated the Romans under the twelve Caesars by regular functionaries taken from among the men of the second cla.s.s--that is, the knights.
The emperor was no longer a tyrant served by the soldiers; he was truly the first magistrate of the republic, using his authority only for the good of the citizens. The last two Antonines especially, Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius, honored the empire by their integrity.
Both lived simply, like ordinary men, although they were very rich, without anything that resembled a court or a palace, never giving the impression that they were masters. Marcus Aurelius consulted the Senate on all state business and regularly attended its sessions.