. The
provinces were governed by salaried officials, whose conduct was
seriously investigated. The hideous extortions and cruelties of the
governors sent out in the earlier days of the Republic almost
disappeared. This milder rule seemed happy in the contrast. An emperor
might be a brute at home, but his personal cruelties could scarce spread
over an entire world. Money for even the hugest extravagances of only
one man, the provinces could supply. At first they scarce felt the
drain.

For two entire centuries after Augustus had assumed power, the world
flourished and apparently prospered under the "Roman peace." The ruins
of Pompeii, the tale of its destruction, show how well and how lazily
the upper classes and even the masses lived.[1] The legions were scarce
needed except for petty wars along the frontier. The defeat inflicted by
the German barbarians was avenged, and the northern wilderness seems to
have come very near to sharing the fate of Gaul.[2] But the long
campaigns were costly and apparently valueless. No taxes flowed into the
treasury from the poor half-subjugated savages; and the emperor Tiberius
contemptuously declared that he would leave them to fight among
themselves. Another frontier strife completed the subjugation of Spain.
Another added Britain to the Empire. Another made temporary conquest
over Dacia and extended the Asian boundary. There were minor revolts in
Gaul.

Then the Jews, roused to sudden religious frenzy and believing
themselves invincible, burst into rebellion.[3] Titus stormed their
capital and burned their Temple. But the lesson was wasted on the
stubborn, fanatical race, and sixty years later they flared out again.
Roman relentlessness was roused to its fullest rage, and accomplished
against them the destruction of prophecy. Their cities were razed to the
ground, and the poor remnant of the race were scattered abroad. Yet,
apparently imperishable, refusing to be merged with other men, they
remained a people though without a country. They became what they are
to-day, a nation of wanderers.[4]

One other tumult, more central and in that sense more serious, intruded
on the Roman system. Just a century after the rise of Augustus, the
tyrannies of his successor Nero became so unbearable that even his own
senate turned against him; and he was slain, without having appointed a
successor. The purely military character of the Empire was at once
revealed. Different armies each upheld their