In his personal habits and demeanor Augustus carefully dis tinguished between the Imperator and the Princeps. He pro tected his personal dignity by withdrawing from the familiarity with which Cæsar had allowed himself to address his legionaries. The conqueror of the Gauls had deigned to call his veterans by the name of "comrades," but Augustus spoke of them as his "soldiers" only. But amid the magnificence displayed around him, which he thought fit to encourage in his nobles, his own manners were remarkable for their simplicity. His mansion on the Palatine Hill was moderate in size and ornament. His dress was that of a plain senator, and he let it be known that it was woven by the hands of Livia herself and the maidens in her apartment. He traversed the streets as a private citizen, with no more than the ordinary retinue of slaves and clients, courteously addressing the acquaintances he encountered, taking them by the hand or leaning on their shoulders, allowing himself to be summoned as a witness in their suits, and attending at their houses on occasions of domestic interest. At table he was sober and decorous; he was generally the last to approach and the earliest to quit the board. His guests were few in number, and chosen for the most part for their social qualities. If some ribald stories were current respecting his private habits, they referred perhaps to the looseness of his early years, or obtained little real credit. Augustus was especially fortunate in the services of the poets he attracted to his court and to his person. Horace taught his contemporaries to acquiesce in the new régime securely and contentedly, while Virgil kindled their imagination, and shed over the empire of the Cæsars the halo of a legendary antiquity. The Æneid persuaded the choicest spirits in Rome that the upstart plebeian Octavius was a direct descendant of the goddess Venus, and no unworthy rival of Hercules and Bacchus. And along with these, the greatest geniuses of Roman poetry, many lesser singers urged their countrymen to remember in their prayers the restorer of order, the creator of universal felicity. In the temples on days of public service, around their own hearths on every ordinary occasion, they were invited to thank the gods for all their prosperity, and with the gods themselves to join the hallowed names of Troy, of Anchises and Æneas, the patrons of the Julian race. And when they rose from the evening meal, the last duty of the day was to call with a modest libation for a blessing on themselves and on Cæsar, "the Father of his country." This title was, indeed, the proudest any Roman could obtain; and this the citizens had long bestowed in private on their hero and patron, when at last the Senate took up the voice of the nation and conferred it upon him with due solemnity. The act, indeed, was not sanctioned by

CHAP. LII.

DIVISION OF THE PROVINCES.

421

any formal decree; it seemed more fitting to give it the appearance of spontaneous acclamation. Valerius Messala, one of the noblest of the order, was deputed to offer the title in the name of the Senate and the people. "Conscript fathers," replied the emperor, with tears, "my wishes are now fulfilled, my vows are accomplished. I have nothing more to ask of the Immortals, but that I may retain to my dying day the unanimous approval you now bestow upon me."

CHAPTER LII.

Division of the provinces between the emperor and the Senate.-Military organization of the empire. The naval stations.-The finances.-Extent and population.-Population of the city.-Agrippa and Mæcenas.-Military operations under Augustus; his reduction of the Cantabri.-Britain not attempted.-Elius Gallus in Arabia.-Augustus in the East.-The standards of Crassus recovered from the Parthians.-Celebration of Secular games.—Augustus in Gaul.—Operations against the Pannonians, the Dalmatians, and the Germans on the Rhine.-Defeat of Lollius.—Crafty policy of Licinus.-Reduction of the Alpine tribes.

ITALY, the centre of the empire-now made to comprise the whole peninsula, from the Alps to the strait of Messina-was divided into eleven regions, and placed under the direct control of the prætor in the city. The rest of the Roman dominion was apportioned, as has been said, between the emperor and the Senate. The Imperial provinces were the Tarraconensis and Lusitania, in Spain; the whole of Gaul beyond the Alps divided into several commands, including the Upper and Lower Germanies, as they were called, or the districts bordering upon the Rhine; Pannonia and Macedonia; Colesyria and Phoenicia; Cilicia, Cyprus, and Egypt. To the Senate were assigned Bætica, Numidia, Africa, Cyrenaica, and the great islands off the coast of Italy, Achaia, and Asia. Dalmatia and Illyricum, at first given to the Senate, were soon afterwards taken by the emperor in exchange for the Narbonensis and Cyprus. Before the end of his career Augustus made a peaceable acquisition of Palestine, annexing it for a time to the empire, which then extended over every coast and island of the Mediterranean, excepting only the independent kingdom of Mauritania. In some quarters, as in Gaul, Spain, and Pannonia, the sway of Rome penetrated some hundreds of miles into the interior of the continent; but for the most part the regions remote from the great inland sea, the highway of international traf

fic, were wholly barbarous. Gaul and Thrace were little better than vast forests; only a small portion of their soil was as yet subjected to cultivation. The great cities of the empire, the marts of human industry and emporia of commerce, were almost universally seated on the coasts, or on the banks of navigable rivers. The civilization of Greece and Rome occupied, in its best days, a mere fringe on the borders of the Mediterranean; and when the Romans boasted of having subdued the world, they really confined their views to the countries washed by those inland waters.

The entire possession of this central basin afforded easy access to every province throughout its vast extent; and the facility thus given to communication between them, when the police of the seas was vigilantly enforced, developed their capabilities simultaneously, and bound them all together by the chain of a common interest. No empire was ever more favorably circumstanced than the Roman for the advancement of its national prosperity, and for the interchange of sentiment between all its members. So completely was peace the common interest of the inhabitants of all its inland shores, that the Mediterranean provinces were left almost wholly without military garrisons; every state and town could be trusted to maintain its own police, and keep watch over the behavior of all the rest. Italy and Rome itself were left almost destitute of regular defenders; the emperor confided his own personal safety to a few scattered cohorts of prætorians or body-guards; it was not till the reign of his next successor that these battalions were first collected together in a camp at the gates of the city. Their numbers at no time exceeded 10,000 or 20,000. The legions which constituted the standing army of the empire were relegated to the frontiers, or to distant and turbulent provinces. Three of these divisions, each a little army in itself, were stationed in the Spanish peninsula. The banks of the Rhine were guarded by as many as eight; two were quartered in Africa, two in Egypt, four occupied the Eastern frontier on the line of the Euphrates, four more were posted on the Danube, and finally two were held in reserve in Dalmatia, within easy reach of Rome itself, if their presence should at any time be demanded there. The full complement of cach of these twenty-five legions was 6100 foot and 720 horse, and this continued, with occasional variations, to be their strength for a period of 300 years. The cohorts of which cach legion consisted were ten in number, besides its squadrons of horse. They were recruited generally from the rugged regions beyond Italy, at first, indeed, among the genuine citizens of Rome in the provinces, but this restriction was not long maintained. The inhabitants of the peninsula began now to claim exemption from legionary service altogether, and were

CHAP. LII.

NAVY AND FINANCES.

423

enlisted in the prætorian bands only. Numerous battalions of auxiliaries were levied from the most warlike of the subject populations, arrayed and armed according to their native usage, and attached to each legionary division. Their numbers no doubt fluctuated considerably; but it is generally computed that they equalled those of the legionaries, and we may thus assign a force of 340,000 men for the entire armies of the empire, exclusive of the cohorts in the capital.

Augustus seems to have been the first to appoint a regular and permanent naval force. The Romans had, indeed, established their maritime supremacy on various occasions. They had put down the rivalry of the Carthaginians, they had outnumbered the fleets of Greece and the Grecian islands, they had seized the ships and ports of Phoenicia and Egypt. They had suppressed the pirates of the Eastern Mediterranean, and destroyed the power of Sextus Pompeius. Agrippa had proved himself an able commander by sea, and he had taken pains to secure his victories by the establishment of an admirable harbor on the coast of Campania. It was by his advice, no doubt, that the emperor maintained three powerful armaments-at Misenum, at Ravenna, and at Forum Julii, or Fréjus, in Gaul. We do not, indeed, hear that these flotillas were ever called into requisition in regular warfare; but they kept the police of the seas, deterred the pirates from any renewal of activity, secured the free transmission of grain from the provinces to Rome, and convoyed the vessels which brought tribute in money from the East and the West.

The sources of public revenue were, indeed, numerous and varied. The public domain, reserved in ancient times to the state after each successive contest, had now been generally divided among the citizens, or remitted to their subjects; the tribute, or land-tax, originally imposed upon citizens and subjects alike, had been remitted to the soil of Italy since the conquest of Macedonia; but this contribution was still levied throughout the provinces, in money or in kind, and the capitation tax pressed alike upon every inhabitant of the Roman dominions. Mines and quarries, fisheries and salt-works, were generally public property farmed for the state. Tolls and customs were exacted on every road and in every city; and most of the objects of personal propperty, both dead and live stock, including slaves, paid a duty in proportion to their value. Augustus imposed a rate of one twentieth on legacies, but this mild experiment in direct taxation. caused considerable murmurs. The great corn-growing countries of Egypt and Africa made a special contribution of grain for the supply of Rome and Italy. The largesses, both of victuals and money, to the people, which had been an occasional boon from

the early times of the republic, were henceforth conferred regu larly and systematically; and there was no more fatal error in the policy of the empire-though it was neither invented by the emperors, nor could they relieve themselves from it-than the taxation of industry in the provinces to maintain idle arrogance at home.

When Augustus had consolidated under his sway the regions between the Rhine, the Danube, the Euphrates, and Mount Atlas, the empire reached almost the farthest limits that it ever permanently retained. The conquest of Britain had not yet been seriously undertaken. The population this vast region now embraced may be computed at somewhat less than 100,000,000; but we may fairly suppose that, under the general reign of peace and domestic prosperity which long prevailed, the number continued to increase for at least another century. With regard to the question of the population of the great city-" the head and mistress of nations"

there is doubtless room for much discussion. The extent of the site of Rome, the number of houses-at least as recorded at a much later period-and the numbers of the citizens to whom Augustus granted the customary largess, offer various and not easily reconcilable data. It may suffice here to reckon it roughly at 700,000, and to add that it continued also to increase perhaps even after the general population of the empire had begun to decline, though it may never have much, if at all, exceeded 1,000,000. It is probable that both Antioch and Alexandria approached nearly, if not quite, to the same amount.

One of the chief cares of the new ruler was the embellishment of this capital. He erected many temples and public buildings himself, and he stimulated his great nobles to follow his example. In this, as in other objects, he was ably seconded by his friend Agrippa, who, after exhibiting so much valor and conduct in his behalf, distinguished himself not less by the loyalty with which, having secured beyond dispute the second place in the commonwealth, he abstained from aiming at the first. In the year 731 (B.C. 23), when Augustus was prostrated by a fever from which he seemed little likely to recover, it was to Agrippa that he handed his ring-a hint, as it was generally deemed, that it was on him he would most desire that the empire should be conferred. To Agrippa he himself intrusted, on his recovery, an extensive command throughout the Eastern provinces, which made him almost an equal, and a possible rival to himself.

Augustus was further supported for many years by the tact and prudence of C. Cilnius Mæcenas. This man had administered for him the government of Italy during his struggle with Antonius. He continued to be his chief adviser in the settlement of his af