it so bravely that they were obliged to blockade it. When provisions ran short and no relief came, the garrison stole out on a dark night, and made their way, harassed by the attacks of the enemy, to Castra Vetera. Thither Asprenas, when the news of the disaster reached him, had hastened with his two legions, to hinder the Germans from crossing the Rhine.
The other danger was frustrated by the peculiar temper of Maroboduus himself. Arminius had triumphantly sent him the head of Varus as a token of his own amazing success, hoping to persuade him to join the confederacy against Rome. But the message was ineffectual. Maroboduus refused to link himself with the insurgents or to depart from his policy of neutrality.
When the news of the defeat reached Rome, Augustus met the emergency with spirit and energy. The citizens seemed indifferent to the crisis; many of them refused to place their names on the military roll; and the Emperor was obliged to resort to fines and threats of severer punishment. Troops hastily levied from the veterans and freedmen were sent with all speed to the Rhine; and the Germans, who served as an imperial bodyguard, were disarmed and driven forth from Rome. In the following year (10 A.D.) Tiberius assumed the command of the Rhine army, which was increased to light legions. Four of these were doubtless stationed at Moguntiacum and four at Vetera; and it was probably the Emperor’s intention that when the immediate crisis was past, the command of the Germanic armies should be divided between two generals. During the first year Tiberius seems to have been engaged in organizing the defence of the Rhine, restoring the confidence of the old legions, and establishing discipline among the new. In the next year, 11 A.D., he crossed the river, and spent the summer in Germany, but he does not seem to have ventured far into the country or to have attempted any hostile enterprise. He was accompanied by his nephew Germanicus, to whom proconsular powers had been granted. In the following year the duties of his consulship retained Germanicus at Rome, but in 13 A.D. he succeeded Tiberius in the sole command on the Rhine. During these years nothing was done against the Germans, though the state of war still continued; but Germanicus was not long content with inactivity. Upon him seemed to devolve the duty of restoring his father’s work, which had been so disastrously demolished, and he burned to do it. But his efforts to recover the lost dominion and reach the Albis once more must form the subject of another chapter.
SECT. IV. — THE DEATH OF AUGUSTUS
The slaughter of the Varian legions in the wilds of Germany tarnished the lustre of Roman arms, and cast a certain gloom over the last days of the Augustan age. The Emperor himself, now stricken in years, felt the blow painfully. He let his hair and beard grow long. It is said that he dashed his head against the walls of his chamber, crying, “Varus, Varus, give me back my legions!”. Every year he went into mourning on the anniversary of the defeat. He knew that his end must soon come, and he began to set his house in order. In 12A.D. he addressed a letter to the senate, in which he commended Germanicus to its protection, and commended the senate itself to the vigilance of Tiberius. In the following year he assumed once more the proconsular power for a period of ten years. At the same time (as has been recorded in Chapter IV.), Tiberius was raised to a position almost equal to that of the Emperor himself, and his son Drusus received the privilege of standing for the consulship in three years, without the preliminary step of the praetorship.
A census was held in 14 A.D., and after its completion Tiberius set out for Illyricum, where he was to resume the supreme command. Augustus accompanied him as far as Beneventum, but in returning to the Campanian coast was attacked by dysentery and died at Nola (August 19). Tiberius had been sent fur without delay, and came, perhaps in time to hear the parting words of his stepfather. There is no good reason to believe the insinuation that the Emperor’s death was caused or hastened by poison administered by Livia. Her son’s accession was sure, and Augustus was old and weak; so that it would hardly have been worthwhile to commit the crime.
Both contemporaries and posterity had good cause to regard Augustus as a benefactor; he had given them the gift of peace. They also esteemed him fortunate (felix); and his hood fortune became almost proverbial. Yet it has been truly remarked that luck was the one thing that failed him. Both points of view are true. He was unusually fortunate. When he entered upon his career as a competitor for power, his motives were probably as vulgar as those of his rivals; there is no reason to suppose that in the pursuit of ambition he had large views of political reform or an exalted ideal of statesmanhip. His actions throughout the Civil War indicate the shrewd, cool, and collected mind; they give no token of wide views, no promise of the future greatness. “But his intellect expanded with his fortunes, and his soul grew with his intellect”. When he came to be supreme ruler, he rose to the position; he learned to take a large view of the functions of the lord of the Roman world; and there was born in him a spirit of enthusiasm for the work which history set him to accomplish. He knew too how to bear his fortune with dignity. But he was unlucky when his fortune was most firmly established. It was not given to the founder of the Empire to leave a successor of his own blood; and, as we have seen, his endeavors to settle the succession were doomed to one bitter disappointment after another and led to domestic unhappiness. And it was not given to him to establish a secure frontier for the northern provinces of the Empire. The efforts in that direction, which were made under his auspice and seemed on the eve of being crowned with success, were undone by a stroke of bad luck. Yet, reviewing his whole career as a statesman and reflecting on all that he achieved, we may assuredly say that the Divine Augustus was fortunate with a measure of good fortune that is rarely bestowed on men who live out their life.
The written memorial of his own acts which Augustus composed before his death may be spoken of here. It has been incompletely preserved in a Latin inscription which covers the walls of the pronaos of a temple of Augustus at Ancyra. Owing to this accident it is generally known as the Monumentum Ancyranum, but its proper title was Res gestae divi Augusti. Fragments of the Greek text of the same work have also been found in Pisidia, and have helped scholars in restoring the sense, where the Latin fails. In this document the Emperor briefly describes his acts from his nineteenth to his seventy-seventh year, with remarkable dignity, reserve, and moderation. The great historical value of this memorial, composed by the founder of the empire himself, need hardly be pointed out.
An extract will give an idea of the way in which the great statesman wrote the brief chronicle of the history which he made.
“I extended the frontiers”, he says, “of all those provinces of the Roman people, on whose borders there were nations not subject to our empire. I pacified the provinces of the Gauls and the Spains, and Germany, from Gades to the mouth of the Albis. I reduced to a state of peace the Alps from the district which is nearest the Adriatic Sea to the Tuscan Sea, without wrongful aggressions on any nation. My fleet navigated the ocean from the mouth of the Rhine eastward as far the borders of the Cimbri, whither no Roman before ever passed either by land or sea; and the Cimbri, the Charydes, and the Semnonis and other German peoples of the same region sought the friendship of me and the Roman people. By my command and under my auspices two armies were sent, almost at the same time to Ethiopia and to Arabia, called Eudaemon [Felix], and very large forces of the enemies in both countries were cut to pieces in battle, and many towns taken. The invaders of Ethiopia advanced as far as the town of Nabata, very near Meroe. The army which invaded Arabia marched into the territory of the Sabaei, as far as the town of Mariba”.
Another work compiled by Augustus was the Breviarium Imperii, containing a short statement of all the resources of the Roman State, and including the number of the population of citizens, subjects, and allies. It was in fact a handbook to the statistics of the Roman Empire. At the end of this work he recorded his solemn advice to succeeding sovrans, not to attempt to extend the boundaries of the Empire.
Chapter X.
Rome Under Augustus — His Buildings
The Augustan age marks a new period in the history of the city of Rome. Augustus boasted that he found it a city of brick and left it a city of marble. For the change consisted not only in the large number of new buildings which were erected under his auspices, but in the material which was