he shame of his conduct,
they rose and put him down; Roman Gaul and Germany and Spain and
the East did. Here is a curious indication: Galba, Otho, and
Vitellius, who made such a sorry thing of the two years (68 and
69) they shared in the Principate, had each done well as a
provincial governor. In the provinces, then, the Tiberian
tradition of honest efficient government suffered not much, if
any, interruption. The fact that Rome itself stood the nine
years of Nero's criminal insanity,--and even, so far as the mob
was concerned, liked it (for his grave was long kept strewn with
flowers)--shows what a people can fall to, that the Crest-Wave
had first made rotten, and then left soulless.

By the beginning of 70, things were comfortably in the hands of
Vespasian, another provincial governor; under whom, and his son
Titus after him, there were twelve years of dignified government;
and seven more of the same, and then seven or eight of tyranny,
under his second son, Domitian. Against the first two of these
Flavians nothing is to be said except that the rise of their
house to the Principate was by caprice of the soldiery.
Vespasian was an honest Sabine, fond of retiring to his native
farm; he brought in much good provincial blood with him into
Roman society.--Then in 96 came a revolution which placed the
aged senator Nerva on the throne; who set before himself the
definite policy--as it was intended he should--of replacing
personal caprice by legality and constitutionalism as the
instrument of government. He reigned two years, and left the
empire to Trajan; who was strong enough as a general to hold his
position, and as a statesman, to establish the principles of
Nerva. And so things began to expand again; and a new strength
became evident, the like of which had not been seen since (at
least) the death of Tiberius.

Octavian returned to Rome, sole Master of the world, in B.C. 29.
A half-cycle on from that brings us to 36 A.D., the year before
Tiberius died: that half-cycle was one, for the Empire all of
it, and for Rome most of it, of bright daylight. The next
half-cycle ends in 101, in the third year of Trajan: a time,
for the most part, of decline, of twilight. You will notice
that the Han day lasted the full thirteen decades before twilight
came; the Roman, but six decades and a half.

We ought to understand just how far this second Roman half-cycle
was an age of decline: just how much darkneww suffused t