as the most enlightened nations of our own time about the principles of industrial justice, and also about the art of legislative expression. In reference to the laws relating to women and slaves some remarks will be made in Chapter XXXIII.

SEC. 482. Later Emperors.—Augustus was succeeded in 14 A. D. by his stepson, Tiberius, who reigned twentythree years, and died at the age of seventy-nine, after he had shirked the toil and worry of the imperial office in his last years. He was a capable man, and in the earlier portion of his reign he worked hard to apply and develop the policy of his predecessor, in the interest of order and peace. For the purpose of having a military force within easy reach and ready for prompt action in any emergency, he established near Rome a small standing army known as the Prætorian Guard, which, in later times, exercised a most pernicious influence on the government by deposing and choosing emperors, dictating terms to them, and making the throne an article of merchandise to be sold to the highest bidder.

After Tiberius, the reigns of Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius filled a period of thirty-two inglorious and disgraceful years. These six emperors all died by violence.

In 70 A. D. Vespasian, an able and good man, became emperor, and when he died, his son Titus, equally good and able, succeeded him. The reigns of the two made up only eleven years. After Titus came his brother Domitian, who was weak and wicked. He occupied the throne for fifteen years, and died by assassination. After him came the five good emperors, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, whose reigns filled the space of eighty-four years, and who are the most re

markable cluster of wise and just monarchs that ever occupied the same throne in continuous succession. Gibbon says, “If a man were called upon to fix a period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus;" and he adds that the reigns of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius are distinguished above all others by the fact that in them "the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government."

Titus inherited the throne legitimately from his father in 79, Domitian from his brother in 81, and Commodus from his father in 180 A. D. Of seventeen sovereigns who held the throne in more than two centuries after the foundation of the empire, only three had inherited it from a father or brother. There was a remarkable scarcity of sons in the imperial families. Between 185 and 300 A. D. the throne was transmitted not by blood but by military favor.

Several of the emperors had admitted considerable numbers of free subjects to full citizenship, but Caracalla, who ascended the throne in 211 A. D., admitted all. Every extension of this political privilege reduced the importance of the capital, the influence of which was further diminished by the increasing prosperity of the provinces, while Italy and Sicily, divided into great estates occupied by slaves, remained nearly stationary. Gaul, Spain, Roman Asia, and Roman Africa became superior to Italy and Sicily in industry, wealth, literary activity, and military power. The frontiers supplied the armies, the generals, and the emperors.

When Diocletian became emperor, in 284 A. D., he saw

that he could not reside in Rome with advantage to the empire. He must be nearer to the Persian and the Danubian frontiers, which were then the chief scenes of danger. An experienced soldier, confident in his own powers of control, and having three subordinates whom he could trust, he shared the imperial dignity with them, and divided the empire into four divisions, with a resident master in each, so that no province should be beyond the direct observation of a competent ruler.

In the reign of Augustus, Jesus of Nazareth was born, and in that of Tiberius he was crucified. We hear of Christians at Rome in the reign of Nero, when they became the victims of persecution, to which they were exposed at intervals for nearly two centuries and a half. The rise of Christianity is the subject of another chapter.

SEC. 483. Cities under Rome.-When they became subject to Rome, nearly all the Italian, Sicilian, Greek, Phoenician, and Carthaginian cities had republican institutions, which were not overthrown, though in many cases modified by aristocratic changes. A local nobility, supposed to be favorable to the interests of the imperial authority, had control of the local administration, with power to elect the magistrates, and the councilors, though in some cities the latter officials included all those who had served their terms in the chief executive offices, of which there were two, of equal authority, called in the Latin cities duumvirates. Under the duumvirs were two ædiles, who had charge of the streets, markets, and public buildings, and exercised judicial powers in petty criminal cases. In the larger cities there were two quæstors, whose functions included charge of the city finances.

The subject cities generally were required to contribute a certain sum annually to the imperial treasury, and

the local officials were made responsible for the payment. But as the wealth and population of some provinces declined very seriously in the IInd and IIIrd centuries of our era, the collection of the amounts previously exacted became difficult or impossible; and magistrates and councilors, to avoid trouble, resigned their offices, and migrated to new homes. To prevent such evasions laws were enacted; the office once accepted or imposed could not be abandoned; in some instances it was made hereditary; and the city councilor was attached to his city as a serf to the land of his master. Every city had its defensive wall; and every person who had a share in the government must have his residence within the wall. The jurisdiction of the city might extend to a considerable adjacent district. The empire was an aggregation of little republics, each exercising power nearly absolute in its local affairs, though the emperors could interfere in such matters if they saw fit.

Because of their fortifications, their wealth, the number and intelligence of their inhabitants, and their control over the roads, the cities were of great military value, and were systematically favored by the emperors. Nearly as much indulgence was shown to the cities of the Greeks in the east as to those of the Latins in the west. In some cities, as in Alexandria and Antioch, the Jews were allowed to be subject to their own officers, and this was considered a decided advantage; and many persons of other nationalities became converted to the Jewish religion for the purpose of being under the jurisdiction of the Jewish judges.1

SEC. 484. Provinces.-In the year 300 A. D., with which, so far at least as Europe and Africa are concerned, this volume terminates, Italy had lost control of the empire

Save in

and had ceased to furnish men for the army. name, Rome was no longer the capital. The chief centers of military, industrial, and intellectual activity were not the central regions of Italy and Greece, but the peripheral provinces of Spain, Gaul, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and Carthage.

A linguistic line divided the empire into two main divisions. In Italy, Carthage, the regions to the west of them, and the provinces in the basin of the Danube, Latin predominated and afterwards became almost the exclusive tongue; in the other provinces, Greek was the speech of the schools and of commerce, and, except in Armenia and the basin of the Euphrates, was steadily encroaching on the barbarian languages, among the common people. The government fostered the Greek in the east and the Latin in the west. The two were treated as the sister tongues of Roman civilization.

The region between the Rhine and the Elbe, after having been subject to Augustus for twenty years, had recovered and maintained its independence, with the exception of a triangle at the mouth of the Rhine. That belonged to the province of Lower Germania, which included all of what is now Belgium and part of the Prussian Rhine province, as far south as Cologne; and the province of Upper Germania included a portion of the Prussian Rhine province, all of the Bavarian Palatinate, all of Alsace, and part of France near Besançon. A considerable region on the west bank of the Rhine was considered Teutonic rather than Celtic when captured by the Romans. Dacia, including the districts now known as Moldavia and Bessarabia, north of the Danube near its mouth, after having been subject to Rome for a century and a half, in which time it was well Latinized, had been