CHAPTER VII.

THE SECOND PERIOD OF ROMAN HISTORY:-EXTENDING FROM THE CONQUESTS OF GREECE AND CARTHAGE TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA.

ANALYSIS. 1. Character of the First Period of Roman History. POLITICAL CHARACTER OF THE CLOSING PERIOD OF THE REPUBLIC.-2. Character of the events known as the "Dissensions of the Gracchi." Increasing political power of the wealthy.-3. Effects of the wealth flowing in from the conquered provinces. The collectors of taxes. General political corruption.-4. The elections in the times of Marius, and Sylla, &c. Growing degeneracy of the consuls, tribunes, and senate.-5. The downward tendency arrested by the Empire.

6. MORAL AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE. General demoralization in the times of the civil wars. Depravity of the city populace.-7. Changes observable in the country. Neglect of Agriculture. Public donations to the poor.

8. ROMAN LITERATURE. The Golden Age of Roman Literature. General prevalence of the Latin language. Grecian teachers. Philosophy.-9. Cicero's influence. Obstacles to the cultivation of oratory. Historians. Poets. Character of Roman poetry, and of Roman literature generally.

10. THE ARTS. Public buildings, architecture, &c.--11. No superior native artists. Passion for works of art. Roman amateurs, &c.

12. Other nations during the closing period of the Roman Republic. History of Judea. The birth of the Saviour.-13. THE HISTORICAL PROPHECIES.-14. Early prophetic declarations. -15. The most important of these. Nebuchadnezzar's dreams, and Daniel's visions. Their interpretation.-15. The First Kingdom :-the Babylonian.-17. The Second Kingdom :-the MedoPersian.-18. The Third Kingdom :-the Macedo-Grecian.-19. The Fourth Kingdom-the Roman Dominion.-10. The Fifth Kingdom :-the Kingdom of the Most High.-21. Supposed prophetic references to Papal Rome.-22. Prophecies relating to the Jews. The Reformation. -23. The eleventh chapter of Daniel. Bishop Newton and Dr. Hales.--24. Prophecies relating to the Messiah.-25. Magnitude and importance of the subject of the Prophecies.

I.

1. The first period of Roman history is marked by a long-continued and eventually successful struggle of the plebeian commonalty, against a patrician aristocracy, for protection, prerogative, and power; a struggle in which the Roman people were divided by supposed distinctions of birth, and in which separate orders of men contended for general principles, but with little partiality for individual interests, or jealousy of personal distinctions. The second period of Roman history, extending from the conquests of Greece and Carthage to the Christian era, is marked by the appearance of new parties, which take the place of the old ones,-in which the old distinctions founded on pretensions of birth disappear, and an aristocracy of wealth gathers to itself all the honors and emoluments of office,

POLITICAL CHARACTER

OF THE CLOSING PERIOD

OF THE REPUBLIC.

giving rise to the contests of individuals for power, and the formation of separate political factions, and leading, eventually, to the establishment of a monarchy on the ruins of the republic.

2. The revolution by which the constitution of the republic was overthrown, received its first development in the failure of the noble attempt of the Gracchi to restore to society a middle class of citizens which might serve as an adjusting balance to the evils arising from the usurpations of the rich, and the growing debasement and venality of the poor. The failure of that attempt widened the breach between the two classes, although as yet the people scarcely perceived that two classes existed, as by the various mutations of wealth the citizens were constantly passing from one to the other. Yet in the latter period of the republic few but the wealthy, or those befriended by them, could rise to political distinction, because few others could command the influence of those who directed the suffrages of the populace.

3. The immense wealth that flowed in from the conquered prov inces became, in its collection and disbursement, a powerful engine of corruption. Cicero, in his orations against Verres, the prætorian governor of Sicily, draws a faithful picture of what most of the governors of provinces were in his time; and he asserts that the rob bery, plunder, and extortion of which they were guilty, and which were often connived at by their superiors, were more desolating in their effects than the march of a conquering army. As there was a host of officers required to collect the tribute of the conquered provinces, which was let out to the highest bidders, and as great fortunes were often made by the cruelty, oppression, and fraud, of the collectors, such offices were eagerly coveted, and were bestowed as the rewards of political patronage. Hence the most influential and ener getic among the poor, who aspired to become leaders, looked for escape from immediate evils to the possibility of sudden acquisitions of wealth by the attainment of a subordinate post in the government of some petty province or city, instead of directing their efforts to reform the laws and correct the perversions of justice; while the mass of the populace was led away by the allurements held out by factious demagogues, who first labored to corrupt those whom they meant afterwards to enslave.

4. In the times of Márius, and Sylla, Cæsar, Crassus, and Pompey, the elections, which were often scenes of tumult and riot, were carried by open and undisguised bribery: in the public assemblies free dis

cussion gave place to violence: the tribunes, elected originally as the guardians of the people's rights, losing all zeal for the public good in the strife for personal aggrandizement, either became the leaders of factions, or sold their influence to those who could pay them the highest the consulship became the reward of military usurpers; and even the senate, once so dignified and virtuous as to be regarded by the people with almost sacred awe, sunk low in political and moral debasement by its servile dependence upon the will of the popular leaders.

5. In this state of general corruption and degeneracy, while the victorious arms of the republic were rapidly extending the limits of the Roman dominion, Rome herself, a prey to intrigue and faction, was fast losing the power to control the mighty empire which she had gathered around her; and the republic was already breaking to pieces, when the downward tendency of affairs was arrested by the only remedy that could save degenerate Rome-the triumph of one of her military leaders over all his competitors, and the placing of supreme power in the hands of one individual. It was then that civil strife was hushed, peace restored, and the bonds of union renewed, under the sovereignty of Augustus. A monarchy was the greatest boon that Heaven could bestow upon the Roman people, as it was the only one which, in their degeneracy, they were fitted to enjoy.

II.

MORAL AND SOCIAL CON

THE PEOPLE.

6. The foregoing sketch of the political character of the Roman people in the last days of the republic, will convey some idea of their moral and social condition during the same period. General political corruption is inseparably connected with general depravity in private life; and accordingly we DITION OF find that the people who tolerated the butcheries of Márius and Sylla, and the proscriptions of Antony, Lepidus, and Octavius, were sunk in demoralization to an extreme degree. In the city of Rome, which had no efficient police until the time of Augustus, the regulations that were made to preserve the public safety and decency were violated with impunity; robbery, murder, perjury, forgery, and like crimes, were of every-day occurrence; a general licentiousness prevailed; the Roman nobles, avaricious and effeminate, and immersed in luxuries and sensual pleasures, gave themselves little concern about the public welfare so long as they could purchase security for the enjoyment of the fruit of their ex

tortions, while an ignorant and depraved populace was easily converted by its leaders, the hirelings of reckless aspirants to power, into ready instruments of violence and bloodshed.

7. Passing from the city to the country, we find that the numerous small but thrifty farmers of a former period had given place to large landed proprietors, whose estates were for the most part used as pastures, and tended by gangs of slaves. The late wars had reduced large districts almost to a wilderness state; and agriculture, once the pride and glory of the Roman people, had become so neglected that Italy, one of the most fertile countries of Europe, was dependent upon neighboring States, or on its provinces, for its annual supplies of corn. Donations of corn and meat were often made to the poor of the cities, and of Rome in particular, from the public treas ury; and sometimes these were given by wealthy private individuals, who added free. theatrical representations, games, and amusements, as the readiest mode of courting the favor of the populace.

ROMAN LITERATURE.

III.

8. In literature and the arts the Romans had made considerable progress since the conquest of Greece, but they seldom equalled the Grecian models, from which they almost universally copied; and, moreover, Roman literature, a plant of hot-bed culture rather than of natural growth, quickly reached its maturity, and was of correspondingly short duration. The golden age of Roman literature was embraced within a period of less than a single century-from the death of Sylla to that of Augustus. At this time the Latin language was understood, and generally spoken, throughout Italy and the neighboring islands, in most of Spain and in the south of Gaul,-countries that derived their civilization from the Romans; but the language of the eastern provin cials, in Greece and Asia, was never supplanted by it, although, throughout the Roman dominions, persons of rank and education thought it necessary to become acquainted with the Latin. On the other hand, Rome itself swarmed with Greek rhetoricians and philosophers, who gave instruction in the schools in their native tongue, while the sons of many of the Roman nobility were sent to Athens to complete their education under the ablest Grecian teachers. There were no distinct schools of philosophy peculiar to the Romans, nor was philosophy with them a favorite study until the time of Cicero, who first made his countrymen acquainted with the speculations of the Grecian sages.

9. Cicero, whose orations are the most perfect specimens of Latin prose composition extant, did more than any other man to bring the language to its perfection, and his younger cotemporaries who grew up around him received the stamp of his genius. But as oratory is best cultivated by free public speaking in popular assemblages, so when the Roman forum became silent, and political assemblages of the people were discouraged under the emperors, oratory lost its influence, and was neglected, and written prose composition declined with it. Among the historians of this age, the most prominent are Cæsar, who wrote Commentaries on his Gallic wars; Sallust, who wrote an account of the conspiracy of Catiline, and a history of the Jugurthine war; and Livy, the author of a voluminous history of his country, and who enjoys the reputation of being the greatest of Roman historians. Among poets may be mentioned the names of Catullus, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, who form a brilliant galaxy of poetic genius, and all of whom lived in the century immediately preceding the Christian era; but still their poetry is an imitation of the Greek, and in great part a translation of the Greek forms into Latin. On the whole, Roman literature bears throughout the clearest evidence of having been formed on Grecian models, except in the single department of prose composition as applied to oratory, in which Cicero shines as the greatest master the world has ever seen.

IV.

THE ARTS.

10. The public buildings of the Romans in the last age of the republic began to exhibit the influences of Grecian taste and art, which, however, were greatly extended under the reign of Augustus; and it was not altogether a vain boast of that monarch that he found Rome a city of bricks, and left it a city of marble. Augustus was the first who introduced among the Romans the use of marble in building; yet but few remains of the edifices of his time exist, and the architectural works for which Rome is so justly celebrated belong mostly to the first century after Christ, an era more than five hundred years later than the Grecian age of Pericles.

11. In the time of the republic, Rome produced no native artists of eminence, yet after the eastern conquests in Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, such a passion for works of art prevailed among the Romans as to lead to the most disgraceful robberies of statues, paintings, vases, and other movable articles of ornament, which were conveyed to Italy in great numbers; and not only were the public