authority. Keeping aloof from the Forum, without pomp or show, the emperor named to all posts, and was the head of the priests, of the senate, and of the people. He had established a prætorian guard of nine cohorts, each of 1000 men, later on notorious for its crimes in making and unmaking emperors, like the janissaries. The prefect of the city watched over its police, with 4500 men. Augustus was, in fact, the soul of that great body. He multiplied class distinctions, giving privileges to sons of senators, and he formed a distinct and privileged class under the equites, called the plebs urbana, burghers, in fact, having the right to furnish a fourth decury of judges. He divided the city into fourteen districts, and made differences even in the right of citizenship. He also drew a broad division between the quirites and the soldiers, forming two peoples, to be played one against the other.

The Roman people had but one cry: "Panem et circences !""Bread and the circus!" This cost only gold, and Augustus found it his interest to satisfy them. In his political will he enumerates complacently his gifts to the people: "I have given games in which 10,000 gladiators have fought, and I have furnished hunts for 3500 wild beasts. In one, only, of these hunts, 250 lions were killed." On another occasion he had a canal dug along the Tiber, and thirty galleys, with three or four banks of oars, and a greater number of small craft, manned by 3000 men without reckoning the rowers, gave to the public the representation of a naval engagement.

EMBELLISHMENT OF ROME.

There was another way of gaining over the public: this was to embellish Rome. Cæsar had given the example, and Augustus followed it.

Many persons helped him to embellish Rome. The Campus Martius, round which were grouped a great number of splendid constructions, formed a kind of new city, quite monumental in its character, having, instead of houses, temples, theatres, and porticoes. Agrippa, as able in the works of peace as in war, erected an immense number of splendid buildings, one of which still exists in a perfect state, the Pantheon (Sta. Maria Rotonda). The roads were carefully kept up and repaired, and the police was so active that all banditti disappeared from Italy.

Augustus strove to give work to the people, and to infuse more religion into them. He revised the Sibylline Books, and raised temples to new and beneficent gods, to restoring and

saving Fortune: to Peace, a goddess long neglected at Rome. He also raised statues to national heroes; to Pompey, opposite his theatre, under a marble arcade. Meanwhile, eloquence and poetry united their charms to bring back the degenerate Romans to the piety of their ancestors. Titus Livy related the glorious history of Rome in his majestic Latin, and Virgil showed them all the powers of heaven and earth assembled round their cradle, like the pontiffs of the past. These historians, seated near the ruined temples of their gods, called on the Roman people to return to the faith of their fathers. Who could resist their appeal? The influence of literature was too strong for it to produce no impression. Since the Forum had ceased to be a centre of gravitation, the Roman people had turned to the Muses. The libraries were now too small for the demands of the people. The public lectures of the orators and poets, and public libraries were multiplying. Asinius Pollio had founded the first in his Atrium libertatis, and Augustus had opened another in the temple of Apollo, built next door to his residence.

While letters were exerting their useful influence, the prince was doing his part. A great monument was erected to his glory in the famous law Pappia-Poppea, the principal work of Roman legislation since the law of the Twelve Tables, regulating not only marriage, but divorce, dowries, legacies, inheritance, etc.

Poetry, celebrating this wise and noble policy, proclaimed that, "Thanks to thee, O Cæsar, the ox moves freely in the pastures; Ceres and happy abundance make our country fertile; vessels sail fearlessly over the principal seas; and honesty starts even at suspicions."

Did Augustus accomplish all that the poets say of him? It is certain that during his government of forty-four years, ruling the state honestly and wisely, he restored public order, gave it more dignity, and, as far as he could, more virtue. But his hand was too feeble to stay general corruption. Other influences, the Cross from Judæa and the Germans from the North, were wanted to purify Rome. Jesus Christ was born in the twenty-seventh year of the reign of Augustus.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

AUGUSTAN LITERATURE.

THE great glory of the age of Augustus, next to Christianity

which rose in spite of it, is the Latin literature which ther flourished. But the term Augustan age has generally extended to all the great writers, from the first triumvirate to the death of this emperor, including Lucretius and Catullus, and Julius Cæsar, Cicero, and Sallust, a friend of Cæsar.

Sallust is far inferior to Cæsar as a citizen, and his writings lose much of their charm when it is remembered that the man whose style and thought are so correct, was a shameless plunderer when governor of Numidia. His works that have been preserved, are, the "Jugurthine War," and the "Conspiracy of Catiline.

Lucretius left a philosophic poem with erroneous principles of materialism, but beauties of style of the first order; Julius Cæsar, his "Commentaries," a model for the military historian and the Latinist; Catullus, elegies, in which he approaches Horace, but with a ruder Latin, a less harmonious verse, and less finished hand. All these writers precede Augustus; but we have, as his contemporaries, Titus Livy, Horace, and Virgil—the historian, the lyric, and the epic poet.

Titus Livy was born at Padua, B.C. 59, and was said to retain certain provincial expressions from his native country; he was highly honoured by Augustus, who confided to him the education of young Claudius, afterwards emperor, and died the year 18 or 19 of our era. He wrote an immense history of Rome, which, by the magnificence of its style, the imposing arrangement of the subject, the eloquence and elevation of the thoughts, has probably no equal in ancient literature. This work, which consisted of 142 books (whereof only thirty-three have come down to us), places him in the first rank of historians, between Herodotus and Thucydides, and Tacitus; his aristocratic tendencies have obtained for him the surname of Pompean.

Horace (who died B.C. 8)-the friend of Augustus and of Mæcenas, the epicurean of refined taste, loving ease too much to undertake a work of extensive compass-wrote satires, epistles, and odes, which have been imitated but never surpassed. Virgil, born near Mantua, described in his "Bucolics" the misfortunes. of Italy, given into the hands of the soldiers of the triumvirs. His father is supposed to be that Tityrus to whom Octavius leaves his hut, while Melibæus is obliged to give up his crops and his fruits to barbarous and impious soldiers. Virgil, in gratitude at first. to Octavius, thanks him in his eclogues, which savour a little too much of Theocritus, and too little of nature; but he soon recovered his originality, and produced one of the most perfect

poems existing in any language-the "Georgics." This poem is devoted to the celebration of agriculture, to restore to honour and peace, rural, laborious, and honest life, and to help Augustus in the task of pacifying Rome and the world. Later, he proceeded to celebrate Rome itself, to re-kindle patriotism almost extinct-and he gave to Latin literature a poem only inferior to the "Iliad," and that will be read eternally. Virgil died B.C. 19.

The elegiac were more numerous than the lyric poets. Lyric poetry lives on hope, elegy on regrets; at a time like the age of Augustus, elegy was in most repute. Catullus composed some elegies; Gallus (who died B.C. 26), Tibullus (who died B.c. 18), Propertius (who died B.C. 18), wrote a number of elegies. Ovid (died B.C. 17), always elegant and harmonious, gave a great charm to the old legends, which he collected in his "Fasti ;" his Metamorphoses" and "Tristia" are proofs of a fertile genius, but degenerate from the purity of good taste and sound principle.

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One branch of literature and that, perhaps, the highest in poetry, fell behind the rest in this age. Dramatic art had stood higher a generation or two before, in the time of Terence and Plautus. Under Augustus, comedy degenerated to pantomime, gestures supplanted words, and serious play gave way to the grotesque. The great actors, Roscius and Æsop, were replaced by buffoons, sometimes issued from the best families, including the imperial piper and harper, Nero. Seneca attempted in vain, in the reign of that emperor, to raise up dramatic art, in his pompous and frigid pieces.

As to eloquence, it was proscribed; the empire barred the rostrum against speeches; eloquence fell with the blow that smote freedom; the orators made way for stringers of words.

With regard to philosophy, it is well known that Rome had none of her own. All men of thought adopted either that of Epicurus or the more rigid system of Zeno. The loose doctrines of the former were well adapted to the contemporaries of Augustus; the doctrine of Zeno, incompatible with despotism, nourished republican pride and the love of liberty in the hearts of some old Romans. Indeed Stoicism raises up all that is great and noble in Paganism under the empire, and shines as a kind of fainter revelation of holiness and honesty, alongside the ever-increasing effulgence of the Christian Church.

The Stoics formed under the first emperors an opposition party in politics (including Thraseas, Helvidius Priscus, &c.), which was often decimated. Two of the most illustrious exponents of

the Stoical system stood at the opposite extremes of the social scale-Marcus Aurelius, the emperor, and Epictetus, the slave. Profound erudition had three representatives in the age of Augustus-Varro, Hyginus, and Flaccus.

Medical science was in great vogue at Rome, after the freedman Musa saved the life of Augustus in a serious malady, and Celsus wrote a work that obtained for him the appellation of the Roman Hippocrates.

Till the time of Augustus, law was not so much a science as a collection of acts. Jurisprudence was now regulated by Labeo, a grave and free republican, and by his rival, Capito, a more subtle character.

Many literary men of various merit appeared about this time, besides those above enumerated, and in different parts of the empire. Diodorus Siculus and Diodorus of Halicarnassus wrote history in Greek; and Strabo, the most noted geographer of the ancient world, composed his valuable work in the Hellenic tongue.

Art was not equal to literature in the age of Augustus. Art was cultivated by the Romans of the empire as well as by those of the republic, rather through fashion than through taste; and, with the exception of architecture, they left the practice of the arts to Greeks. The great works executed by Augustus, Claudius, Nero, and the Flavian emperors, gave occasion for the architects to show their abilities. Vitruvius wrote at this time a treatise, still extant, on the rules of this art. Painting, on the other hand, declined. The only name that has come down to us of that age, is Ludius, a landscape painter, who substituted fresco for encaustic. Statuary still held its ground, but showed mannerism and affectation; several fine statues that remain to us seem to be copies of ancient models executed under the first emperors.

Lastly, the emperors, for the most part, had a hand in composition; Germanicus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero ali wrote verses or prose.

CHAPTER XXXV.

ARMINIUS AND VARUS.

AND now loom grandly in the mists of the North, those colossal Germanic tribes that will soon have so much to say in Europe, that will be the avengers of nations and of humanity on the