BOOKS.
HERIVALE98 HISTORY OF THE ROILLNS UNDER THE EMPIRE--VOLITMES IV. AND V.* character of Mr. Merivale's History of the Romans under the Empire is already fixed by three previous volumes, in which he has narrated the events of the life of the great. Julius and his suc- cessor up to the battle of Actium, which put a final stop to the civil wars, and handed over the fortunes of the Roman world to the wisdom and the folly, the virtues and the vices, of a single un- disputed will. The fourth volume completes the sketch of the Imperial system as founded and administered by Augustus ; narrates the leading events, foreign and domestic, of his princi- pate ; and concludes with three chapters, admirable for the abundance of their facts and the effective mode of presenting them, on the Roman Empire—the great cities of the Empire, in- cluding a minute and highly interesting account of the topo- graphy and inhabitants of Rome—and the life of Roman society, with a sketch of the principal authors of the Augustan age. The fifth volume narrates the reigns of Tiberius, Coins, and Clau- dius, concluding with the accession of Nero. Considering the ne- cessarily disquisitional character of ancient history in this as in most of its periods, arising from the defective nature of our inform- ation, and the large use that must be made of conjectural resto- ration, aided by analogy and widely-scattered allusion, we think that Mr. Merivale has succeeded wonderfully well in giving us a nar- rative at once animated and critical, in furnishing us at the same time with results that may be depended on, with conjectures that may be entertained with probability, and with the evidence and grounds on which these differing degrees of certainty are founded. His volumes are a continued judicious commentary on the his- torians of the time, whose remains have come down to us, while the narrative is never inconveniently impeded by those purely scholastic discussions which belong properly to the notes illus- trating editions of the ancient classics. But the volumes have a merit quite distinct from that of the learned and accurate commentator upon ancient authors, differing from one another in their accounts of the same transactions, in their judgments on the same men, or concurring onlyin a manifest partiality and prejudiced distortion of the simple truth. Mr. Merivale has brought to the investigation of his authorities .a fine sense of the shades of human character, a subtile perception of the influence that circumstances exercise upon the changing phases of the same character at different periods of life under an altered aspect of fortune. The three Caesars who succeeded Augustus, and to some degree the great Princeps himself, furnish ample scope for the exercise and illustration of this faculty, so desirable in the historian who would give a deep human interest to the leading figures of his canvass, and is not content to paint pure monsters, or to describe even such exceptional beings as Roman Emperors " in coarse black and white." And closely connected with this faculty of looking on his characters as real.. men, of like passions, weaknesses and strengths, with other men, is the utter abstinence in Mr. Merivale from seeking to make Roman history a tableau vivant of the prejudices and theories of contemporary politics, though his mind is evidently stored with the facts ofrecent experience, and the system of the past becomes to him intelligible partly by the light reflected upon it through our fuller knowledge of analogous phenomena in recent history. We. should say that we never read a book in which a more complete, abstinence from partisanship was shown, in connexion with a very real sympathy with thehuman aspect of the scenes he has to record: He is not a. political theorist, making thelloman Empire the theme gf fallacious inductions intended as a comment on modern times, but a true historian, letting his facts tell, as they emphatically do tell, their own story, and impress their own moral. And that moral very plainly. is, not that the Imperial system was the ideal of human society, or an instrument towards that ideal, but the only form of government which had, through the vices of the governing classes, of the Republic, become possible ; that- these same vices continued, even during the reigns of the worst and maddest Emperors, to make them worse than they were by nature and inclination ; and that, even with all its drawbacks oft monstrous wickedness in the highest place, and monstrous mean,. ness in places next the highest, the Roman Imperial administra, tion was a blessing and a deliverance for the provinces compared with the Popular and Senatorial government which preceded it. And if an ancient story must be held incomplete without its modern application, we can find none written more legibly upon Roman history than this, that national character gives all their poem, • neat value to constitutional forms, and that the spirit of self- sacrifice and the sense of right are necessary supports of public liberty and national prosperity. A society which for ages trained its nobles to aim at the prizes of public life mainly by conquest abroad and faction at- home, by spoliation of the provinces and la .wasoato a continually deteriorating citymob--a society 'which had lost its faith in its old gods without losing its ignorance and superstition, which had lost its domestic virtue and family disei- plme without gaining refinement and elevation of sentiment, which had parted even with its soldierly hardihood and courage without developing these into industrial 'civilization,—such a so- ciety was destined to perish, and could hardly have found nobler executioners than Julius and Augustus Caesar.
• d 'History of the Boman under the Empire. By:Charles Merirale, B.D, late Fellow of St, John's College, Cambridge. Volumes IV. and V. Published, by. ,Longman and Co. We have spoken of Mr. Merivale's success in tracing the in- fluence of circumstances upon the development of character. Few men ever experienced this influence more fully than Augus- tus; and it is admirably described in the passage which concludes the historian's narrative of his reign.
4‘ The history of the Emperors will afford us abundant materials for esti- mating the strain upon the heart and brain of the fatal possession of un- limited power. Some men it puffs up and intoxicates with pride, as we have seen was the case with the bold and magnanimous Clesar; others, of vehement and ill-regulated passions, it may drive to raging madness ; some it crazes with fear, others it fevers with sensual indulgence ; others again, whose intellects are weak, though their natures are susceptible and kindly, itmay reduce to absolute imbecility. But there is still another class of cha- racters, self-poised and harmoniously developed, in whom it breeds a genu- ine enthusiasm, a sfinn assurance of their own mission, a perfect reliance upon their own destiny, which sanctifies to them all their means t and im- bues them with a full conviction that their might is right, eternal and im- mutable. At the close of his long career, Augustus could look back upon the horrors in which it had commenced without blenching. He had made peace with himself; to whom alone he felt himself responsible; neither God nor man, in his view, had any claim upon him. The nations had not pro- claimed him a deity in vain ; he had seemed to himself to grow up to the full proportions they ascribed to him. Such enthusiasm, it may be argued, can hardly exist without at least some rational foundation. The self-reli- ance of Augustus wasjustified by his success. He had resolved to raise himself to power, and he had succeeded. He had vowed to restore the mo- ral features of the Republic, and in this too he had, at least outwardly, suc- ceeded. While, however, the lassitude of the Romans, and their disgust at the excesses of the times, had been the main elements of his success, another and more vulgar agent, one which it might seem to need no genius to wield, had been hardly less efficacious ; and this was simply his command of money. Throughout his long reign, Augustus was enabled to maintain a system of profuse liberality, partly by strict economy and moderation in his own habits, but more by the vast resources he had derived from his conquests. He was anxious to keep the springs of this abundance ever flowing, and be found means to engage the wealthiest of his subjects to feed them with gifts and legacies. The people were content to barter their freedom for shows and largesses, to accept forums and temples in place of conquests ; and while their ruler directed his sumptuary laws against the magnificence of the nobles, because it threw a shade over the economy which his own necessities required,' he cherished the most luxurious tastes among the people, and strained every nerve to satiate them with the appliances of indolent enjoy- ment, with baths and banquets, with galleries and libraries, with popular amusements and religious solemnities.
" Yet the secret of his power escaped perhaps the eyes of Augustus him- self, blinded as they doubtless were by the fumes of national incense. Cool, shrewd, and subtle, the youth of nineteen had suffered neither interest nor vanity to warp the correctness of his judgments. The accomplishment of his designs was marred by no wandering imaginations. His struggle for power was supported by no belief in a great destiny, but simply by observa- tion of circumstances, and a close calculation of his means. As he was a man of no absorbing ;ages or fervid impulses, so he was also free from all illusions. The story that he made his illicit amours subservient to his policy, whether or not it be strictly true, represents correctly the man's real character. The young Octavius commenced his career as a narrow-minded aspirant for material power. But his intellect expanded with his fortunes, and his soul grew with his intellect. The Emperor was not less magnani- mous than he was magnificent. "With the world at his feet, he began to conceive the real grandeur of his position ; he learnt to comprehend the manifold variety of the interests subjected to him ; he rose to a sense of the awful mission imposed upon him. He became the greatest of Stoic philo- sophers, inspired with the strongest enthusiasm, and impressed the most deeply with a consciousness of divinity within him. He acknowledged, not less than a Cato or a Brutus, that the man-god must suffer as well as act divinely; and though his human weakness still allowed some meannesses and trivialities to creep to light, his self-possession both in triumphs and reverses, in joys and in sorrows, was consistently dignified and imposing."
Character-painting is indeed Mr. Merivale's strong point ; not the antithetical arrangement of strongly-contrasted qualities, which Mr. Macaulay so much affects, and which gives to his por- traits an unreality for which no literary or rather rhetorical skill atones, but the art of seizing that central fact in a min's disposi- tion which explains all the contrasts and seeming inconsistencies of his outward life. Here are two companion-pictures ; the first of Caius, drawn from accounts of him handed down to us; the second of his uncle and successor Claudius, drawn from an inter- pretation of his numerous busts. Both are remarkably fine in execution, and are borne out by the acts of the men.
" Caius, now in the middle of his twenty-fifth year, was by nature more impressible than was usual with his hard and prosaic countrymen. The poetical and rhetorical exercises to which he had been directed, without the compensating influence of severer training, which had been unkindly with- held from him, had imparted perhaps a certain flaccidity to his character confirmed by the enervating voluptuousness in which he bad been steeped from his cradle. His constitution was weakly. In childhood he had been subject to fits; and though he outgrew this tendency, and learnt to bear fa- tigue of body, he was not unfrequently seized with sudden faintings. Early indulgence in every caprice, and premature dissipation, had strained his nerves and brain, till at last a temperament naturally excitable, and harassed by constant fever, seemed always to tremble on the verge of deli- rium. It was said of him, at least in his later years, that he never slept for more than three hours together. Through the weary darkness of the night he would toss in restless agitation on his bed, or pace with hurried and unequal strides the long resounding corridors, shouting impatiently for the dawn. His dreams were wild and terrible ; and in his waling visions his mind seemed ever on the stretch with the vastness of its shadowy images, in which he fancied he beheld the great Spirit of the Ocean, and engaged in converse with him. The might and majesty of the Caesarean empire, as of a Titan that defied the Gods, inflamed his perturbed imagination; his con- ceptions expanded like the welling visions of a dream and his grasp of ,power was a fitful struggle to realize a sick man's nightniare.
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"The opinion which is here given of this prince's character may possibly be influenced in some degree by the study of his countenance in the nume- rous. busts still existing of him, which represent it as one of the most inte- resting of the whole Imperial series. If his figure, as we are told, was tall, and when sitting appeared not ungraceful, his face, at least in repose, was eminently handsome. But it is impossible not to remark in it an expres- sion of pain and anxiety, which forcibly arrests our sympathy. It is the facie of an honest and well-meaning man, who feels himself unequal to the task imposed upon him. There is the look of perplexity in which he may
have pored over the mysteries of Etruscan lore, carried to the throne of the world, and engaged ia the deepest problems of finance and citizenship. There is the expression of fatigue both of the mind and body, which of midnight watches over books, varied with midnight carouses at the Im- perial table, and the fierce caresses of rival mistresses. There is the glance of fear, not of open enemies, but of pretended friends; the reminiscence of wanton blows, and the anticipation of the deadly potion. Above all, there is the anxious glance of dependence, which seems to cast about for a mode to imitate, for ministers to shape a policy, and for satellites to execute it The model Claudius found was the policy of the venerated Augustus ; but his ministers were the most profligate of women, and the most selfish of emancipated slaves. This imitation of the measures of the great founder of the empire is indeed the key to the whole public policy of the Claudian principate."
The condition of the provinces under the Imperial system is one of the most interesting questions for all who look upon his- tory as anything more than the biography of kings, statesmen, and generals. The following remarks on the state of Palestine under that government appear judicious, and are subject to the test of the common knowledge of the New Testament writings.
" If, however, we consider the condition of the Jewish provincials under the Roman fasces, we shall find reason to believe that it was far from in- tolerable, and presented probably a change for the better from the tyranny of their own regal dynasties. Doubtless the national feeling, as far as it extended, was outraged in its cherished prepossessions by the substitution of a foreign for a native domination. The nobles and the priests, who pre- served and reflected this sentiment, and who suffered in consideration under foreign sway, fostered the prejudices of the people to the utmost of their power, excited their discontent, fanned the flame of sedition, and then be- trayed their unfortunate clients to the sword of relentless executioners. It may be admitted that the fiscal exactions of the procurator were more uni- formly rigid than those of Herod, whose remission of a large portion of his people's taxes had gained him favour in the midst of his atrocities. Yet the amount of freedom and security enjoyed by the Jews under a Quirinius and a Pilate shows the general leniency of the Roman government at this period, and may induce us to believe that the yoke of the conquerors was on the whole a happy exchange for their subjects. The warm descriptions of provincial felicity by the Jewish authority Philo, which will be more par- ticularly referred to hereafter, may be coloured to suit a purpose, and it may be impossible to produce any distinct facts to support this general conjecture. Yet indications are not wanting in the writings of the Evangelists, which contain, abstracted from their religious significance, the most interesting re- cord in existence of the social condition of antiquity—for they alone of all our ancient documents are the productions of men of the people—to show that the mass of the population of Judea was contented and comparatively happy under the rule of the Roman procurator. Such is the impression I receive from the representations of common life in the Scriptures of the New Testament. The instances they allege of cruelty and injustice are drawn from the conduct of the Jews towards one another, rather than of the foreigner towards the native. The Scribe and the Pharisee are held up to- odium or contempt, not the minister of police or the instrument of govern- ment. The Romans are regarded in'them as the protectors of the people against their domestic tyrants. The duty of paying them tribute is urged as the proper price of the tranquillity they maintain ; their fiscal officers are spoken of with forbearance ; their soldiers are cited as examples of thoughtful toleration ; the vice of the provincial ruler is indifference and unbelief rather than wanton violence ; and the tribunal of the Emperor himself is appealed to as the last resort of injured innocence. The freedom of movement enjoyed by the subjects of Rome, the permission so fully al- lowed them of passing from town to town, from frontier to frontier, of as- sembling together for social and religious objects, of flocking in crowds into the city or the wilderness, at the call of popular leaders or preachers, all , indicate a state of personal liberty which might be envied throughout the continent of Europe at the present day."
Mr. Merivale entertains, as might be expected, the highest ad- miration for the literary genius of Tacitus the historian ; but he considers that his pictures of the Emperors Tiberius, Caius, and Claudius, are coloured with prejudice and party-spirit, as well as inaccurate from the difficulty that even then existed of obtaining information to be depended on. In fact, Mr. Merivale's opinion evidently, is, that our principal ancient authorities on these reigns were credulous, careless, and calumnious. We have not space to quote instances of his correction of these authorities, but we may state, by way of specimen, that he finds good reason for believing the current accounts of the notorious expeditions of Caius against Germany and Britain to contain gross caricatures of the real facts, which he conjectures were by no means so absurd. The famous marriage of Messalina with Sinus is also, by aid of a neglected hint furnished by the unconscious Suetomus, put into a new and far more plausible light. And so throughout, Mr. Merivale is ever putting his readers on their guard against giving implicit credence to the foul scandal of which the current history of that period so largely consists ; though even he is obliged to admit that the morals of the Roman aristocracy were sufficiently bad to render these stories perfectly credible if well attested.
We will conclude this notice of two important and most interest- ing volumes by a couple of remarks worth quoting apart from their connexion with the history.
" The great defect of the Romans at this period lay in their want of the true self-respect which is engendered by the consciousness of sober con- sistency. Bred in the speculative maxims of Greek and Roman Republican- ism, they passed their manhood either in unlearning the lessons of the schools, or in exaggerating them in a:pint of senseless defiance.
" It was his habit to provide for present exigencies by any artifice that offered itself, but to leave the more distant future to circumstances. I do not imagine that he had formed at this period any deliberate intention of thwarting the ambitious views of his favourite, or had destined any one of his own kindred to the succession. But he shrank with a selfish instinct from encouraging in any quarter hopes which might get beyond his control, and again he was alarmed at the consequences of too abruptly quashing them ; so that between the one apprehension and the other, his whole study was to keep the presumptions of those around him in a state of perpetual suspense. This was the Tiberian scheme of policy. Let those who describe Tiberius as a man of consummate ability and penetrating genius, repre- sent it, if they can, as something eminently deep and subtle : to me it seems to bear the impress of great moral infirmity, while its execution was as clumsy as its conception was feeble."
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