both among the soldiers and provincials, especially in the West, where the high-roads were infested by bodies of deserters. A private soldier, named Maternus, collected some of these bands. into a formidable force, which plundered the cities both of Gaul and Spain. Beset by the Roman troops, Maternus formed the bold design of sending his followers in small parties across the Alps, and raising an insurrection at Rome amidst the licence of the Megalesian feast of Cybele; but the plot was betrayed by an accomplice. Meanwhile Italy suffered from the continuance of the pestilence as well as from famine; and extraordinary supplies of corn were imported from Africa (A.D. 186). The domestic government, with the command of the Prætorians, was entrusted to Perennis, whom Dion extols as an able and blameless minister, while others represent him as a monster of cruelty and avarice. He was sacrificed by the emperor, according to the most probable account, to the jealousy fomented by a new favourite, named Cleander, who succeeded to his office (A.D. 185). This Phrygian, who had entered the imperial palace as a slave, and risen to favour by ministering to the emperor's vices, maintained his ascendancy for three years by gratifying the emperor with rich presents, and the people with splendid buildings and baths, out of the wealth accumulated by the open sale of public offices and of justice. At length in a tumult excited by a famine, the populace and urban cohorts, enraged at the blood shed in the streets by the prætorian cavalry, surrounded the palace, demanding the head of Cleander, whom Commodus sacrificed at the entreaties of his sister and his favourite concubine (A.D. 189). As for the emperor himself, his time was divided between private vices, of which it is a shame even to speak, and public exhibitions far more disgraceful than those of Nero; for, with the same morbid vanity, he had none of the spirit of an artist. The masters provided for him by his father had been unable to imbue his coarse nature either with learning or taste; and the proficiency in martial exercises, which might have gained deserved applause on the field of battle, was prostituted to senseless and cruel displays in the amphitheatre. Protecting his august person by a screen of net-work, he exhibited the skill he had acquired from the Parthian archers, slaying a hundred lions with a hundred darts, piercing the hides of the elephant and rhinoceros, and severing the neck of the ostrich with arrows tipped with a crescent-shaped blade. As the exterminator of savage beasts, he assumed the • Gibbon's note on these performances is worth transcribing, if only that the pre name and attributes of Hercules, and appeared in the arena in the character of the slayer of the Lernæan hydra. Wretches enclosed in painted cases ending in serpents' tails were battered to pieces by the club of the mock deity. Not content with these exploits, Commodus fought as a gladiator more than seven hundred times, if it could be called a fight, where the emperor was armed with the sword and mail of a secutor, against antagonists whose only weapons were of lead or tin. Always of course victorious, he seldom ventured to outrage the spectators by taking the life of his antagonist. To these traits of a Domitian and a Nero, Commodus added the blasphemous assumptions of a Caligula. Caius had invited the worship of such as chose to recognize his deity; but Commodus was the first emperor that dared to place on record the claim to divinity before death, surmounting his statues with the head of Hercules, and stamping the insignia of the god upon his coins. Like the worst of his predecessors, Commodus was addicted to the superstitions imported from every province of the empire; and he officiated as a priest at the orgies of Isis, Anubis, Serapis, and Mithra. Former emperors had made vain attempts to imitate the honours conferred upon Julius and Augustus by giving their names to single months of the year, but Commodus attempted to impose upon all twelve the bead-roll of the style and title, which of itself bears witness to an arrogance only comparable to that of the Syrian Seleucidæ :-Amazonius Invictus Felix Pius Lucius Elius Aurelius Commodus Augustus Herculeus Romanus Exsuperatorius! Nay, Rome itself was to be called Colonia Commodiana, the Senate, the people, and the armies were all to bear the same epithet, and the age blessed with such a deity upon earth was to be ever remembered as the Sæculum Aureum Commodianum. But this Golden Age was doomed to have a speedy end. sent generation may learn to value their every-day means of knowledge:-"Commodus killed a camelopardalis or giraffe, the tallest, the most gentle, and the most useless of the large quadrupeds. This singular animal, a native only of the interior parts of Africa, has not been seen in Europe since the revival of letters; and though M. de Buffon has endeavoured to describe, he has not ventured to delineate the giraffe." Milman observes that "Gibbon is mistaken, as a giraffe was presented to Lorenzo de' Medici, either by the sultan of Egypt or the king of Tunis." The wall-paintings at Pompeii have made us familiar with the curious combat between the Retiarius (Net-bearer) and Secutor (Pursuer). The latter, armed with a sword, and protected by armour, pursued the former, who carried a net and trident, and fled, watching for the opportunity to catch his net over his formidable antago nist, who then became helpless, and awaited his fate from the decision of the spectators. The strange epithet, which leads off the above list of the imperial titles, was assumed by Commodus as a compliment to his favourite mistress Marcia, whom he was fond of beholding arrayed in the dress of an Amazon. For the occasion of celebrating its application to the first month of the new year, Commodus had prepared a spectacle, the most ridiculous and degrading that had ever been exhibited at Rome. He had resolved to put to death the consuls elect, and to assume the consulship himself, marching from the palace to the Capitol in the armour of a secutor, followed by a retinue from the schools of gladiators. Marcia herself, with the prætorian prefect Lætus and the chamberlain Eclectus, attempted to dissuade him from such a mockery of the most august solemnities of the state; but Commodus drove them from his presence, and placed their names at the head of a list of victims doomed to death. The tablets were found by a favourite child in the room to which the emperor had retired for his siesta, and carried in sport to Marcia, who at once communicated the discovery to Lætus and Eclectus. That same evening, the last of the year 192, Marcia presented a poisoned cup of wine to Commodus on his return, wearied and thirsty, from the amphitheatre. As she watched beside his restless couch, fear and impatience prompted more speedy measures, and she called in a celebrated wrestler, named Narcissus, who strangled the emperor in his sleep, in the thirty-second year of his age, and the thirteenth of his reign. "Such was the fate," says Gibbon, "of the son of Marcus, and so easy was it to destroy a hated tyrant, who by the artificial powers of government, had oppressed, during thirteen years, so many millions of subjects, each of whom was equal to their master in personal strength and personal abilities." The body was secretly removed from the palace, and it was given out that the emperor had died from apoplexy. All classes, except the prætorian guards, received the news with enthusiastic joy, and it was only the moderation of the virtuous Pertinax, who was now suddenly called to the purple, that withstood the popular demand, that the tyrant's corpse should be dragged through the streets and flung into the Tiber. He was buried in the mausoleum of Hadrian; and thus the line of the Antonines ended by a fate strikingly resembling the extinction of the Flavian race in the person of Domitian. The Senate set the brand of infamy on the memory of the last Antoninus. The brightest century in the annals of the Roman world closed in disaster and disgrace; the hopes raised by the virtues of five successive emperors were extinguished; the purple, after one last attempt made by the Senate to uphold its dignity, became again the soldiers' prize; and the empire was finally launched on the headlong slope of rapid decline leading down to inevitable ruin. Such is the epoch marked by the last day of the year 192. The period from the accession of Nerva to the fall of Commodus was singularly adapted to cultivate those forms of literature, in which, while we miss the creative genius inspired by political liberty and by the sense of having untrodden paths to strike out, we may derive much pleasure and profit from the fruits of learning and meditation, derived from the accumulated wisdom of ages, and fostered by generous and magnanimous princes. In Tacitus and Juvenal, indeed, we see originality prompted to effort by an indignant sense of the vices and sufferings of their age, and vehemently using the opportunity, which the advent of a better time afforded them, for the free utterance of their indignation. But, for the most part, the writers of this period, Greek as well as Roman, are content to descant upon the greatness of the empire, or to elaborate the learning of an age of universities and schools of rhetoric. This so-called Silver Age of the literature of the empire, though deeply interesting to the scholar, demands but a passing notice from the historian, nor does our space permit us to criticize the style or matter even of the leading writers. TACITUS, who wrote chiefly under Trajan, towers above all the rest. "He stands quite alone, and belongs to no school; he is one of the mighty minds which exercise a great influence upon their age, without being the creatures of it" (Niebuhr). His friend, the younger PLINY, has been well compared to the French writers of the eighteenth century for his elegant taste, his easy philosophy, and his irrepressible vanity. SUETONIUS, whom we are obliged to use as an authority side by side with Tacitus, marks the vast inferiority of the historians of the age to that one great genius, and their tendency to the biographical style. In the Greek, the same age was distinguished by the pure Attic orations of the Platonic philosophers, DION CHRYSOSTOM of Prusa in Bithynia, and the fascinating Parallel Biographies of Plutarch of Chæronea, and his less known Moral Writings, which are admirably characterized by Niebuhr:-" His excellent and amiable character must be felt by every one. It does not require, indeed, much discernment to see his faults as an historian and the weakness of his eclectic philosophy but we are indebted to him for our knowledge of an infinite variety of things; and, however much we may see and know his faults, yet we can read his works with the highest pleasure." : CHAPTER XL. THE RISE AND SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY, AND THE FALL "And in the days of these kings shall the GoD of Heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left (or delivered) to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.' Daniel ii., 44. "For thus saith the LORD OF HOSTS: Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; and I will shake all nations, and the Desire of all Nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD OF HOSTS."-Haggai ii., 6, 7. THE GENERAL DESIRE FOR THE UNION OF THE WORLD, PREPARED For, but not SATISFIED BY THE EMPIRE-EPOCH OF CHRISTIANITY-STATE OF THE HOLY LAND-REIGN OF HEROD THE GREAT-MASSACRE OF HIS OPPONENTS-PLOT AND CONDEMNATION OF ANTIPATERLAST ILLNESS OF HEROD-SEDITION AT JERUSALEM-BIRTH OF JESUS CHRISTARRIVAL OF THE MAGI-ALARM OF HEROD-MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS-EXECUTION OF ANTIPATER-DEATH OF HEROD-DIVISION OF HIS KINGDOM-ARCHELAUS, KING OF JUDEA-DEPOSED AND BANISHED ANTIPAS, TETRARCH OF GALILEE-THE TETRARCH PHILIP-HEROD AGRIPPA I.-HEROD AGRIFPA II.-STATE OF JUDEA UNDER THE EMPIRE THE PROCURATOR PONTIUS PILATE-HIS TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT-MISSION OF JOHN THE BAPTIST, AND MINISTRY OF JESUS CHRIST-ORIGIN OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, AND FAILURE OF THE JEWISH THE TWO STREAMS OF JEWISH HISTORY-THE DAY OF PENTECOST-THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH-THE APOSTLES AND THE SANHEDRIN- PHILIP AND SIMON MAGUS AT SAMARIA-MARTYRDOM OF STEPHEN, AND CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL-DEATH OF TIBERIUS-BANISHMENT OF PONTIUS PILATE-ARABIAN WAR-ARETAS TAKES DAMASCUS-PAUL ESCAPES TO JERUSALEM, AND RETURNS TO TARSUS CALIGULA AND AGRIPPA-TUMULT AT ALEXANDRIA-CLAIM OF CALIGULA ΤΟ DIVINE HONOURS RESISTED BY THE JEWS-HIS RECEPTION OF THE EMBASSY OF PHILOJUDÆUS -THE JEWS OF BABYLONIA-DEATH OF CALIGULA TOLERANT EDICTS OF CLAUDIUS - PEACE OF THE JEWISH CHURCHES CONVERSION OF CORNELIUS THE CHURCH AT ANTIOCH-BARNABAS AND PAUL AT JERUSALEM-JOURNEYS OF ST. PAUL -HIS VOYAGE TO ROME, FIRST IMPRISONMENT, AND ACQUITTAL-DOUBTFUL JOURNEY TO THE WEST-HIS FINAL IMPRISONMENT AND MARTYRDOM-JUDEA AGAIN UNDER PROCURATORS CUSPIUS FADUS-TIBERIUS ALEXANDER-VENTIDIUS CUMAOF NUS-ANTONIUS FELIX-PARCIUS FESTUS-ALBINUS-GESSIUS FLORUS-OMENS DISASTER-DISTURBANCES AT CESAREA-MASSACRE AT JERUSALEM-OUTBREAK OF THE REBELLION-ELEAZAR AND THE ZEALOTS-RISE AND DEATH OF MANAHEMMASSACRE OF ROMAN TROOPS-AND OF JEWS AT CÆSAREA, IN SYRIA, AND AT ALEXANDRIA-ADVANCE OF CESTIUS GALLUS-SIEGE OF JERUSALEM-RETREAT AND COMPLETE OVERTHROW OF CESTIUS-VESPASIAN TAKES THE COMMAND-PREPARATIONS OF THE JEWS-THE MODERATE AND ZEALOT PARTIES-THE HISTORIAN JOSEPHUSJOHN OF GISCHALA-CAPTURE OF JOTAPATA AND SURRENDER OF JOSEPHUS-HIS CHARACTER AS AN HISTORIAN-REFLECTIONS ON THE RESISTANCE OF THE JEWSSLAUGHTER OF THE SAMARITANS-DEVASTATION OF GALILEE, PERÆA, AND IDUMÆA -DEATH OF NERO-CONDITION OF JERUSALEM-THE ZEALOTS AND ASSASSINS THE IDUMEAN BANDITS-FATE OF ANTIPAS, ANANUS, AND ZACHARIAS THE SON OF BARUCH-TITUS SENT AGAINST JERUSALEM-SECESSION OF THE CHRISTIANS-THREE FACTIONS IN THE CITY-TITUS FORMS THE SIEGE-HIS NARROW ESCAPE-VIGOUR OF THE DEFENCE-HORRORS OF THE SIEGE-CAPTURE OF BEZETHA AND ANTONIABURNING OF THE TEMPLE AND DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM-FINAL JEWISH WAR UNDER HADRIAN-BUILDING OF ELIA CAPITOLINA-THE CHRISTIANS UNDER THE VOL. III. M M |