Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/354

308 had the Roman people been engaged in war. It was in the midst of this happy reign, when profound peace prevailed throughout the civilized world, that Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea. The event was unheralded at Rome yet it was filled with profound significance, not only for the Roman empire, but for the world.

The latter years of the life of Augustus were clouded both by domestic bereavement and national disaster. His beloved nephew Marcellus, and his two grandsons Caius and Lucius, whom he purposed making his heirs, were all removed by death; and then, far away in the German forest, his general Varus, who had attempted to rule the freedom-loving Teutons as he had governed the abject Asiatics of the Eastern provinces, was surprised by the barbarians, led by their brave chief Hermann,—Arminius, as called by the Romans,—and his army destroyed almost to a man ( 9). Twenty thousand of the legionaries lay dead and unburied in the tangled woods and morasses of Germany.

The victory of Arminius over the Roman legions was an event of the greatest significance in the history of European civilization. Germany was almost overrun by the Roman army. The Teutonic tribes were on the point of being completely subjugated and Romanized, as had been the Celts of Gaul before them. Had this occurred, the entire history of Europe would have been changed; for the Germanic element is the one that has given shape and color to the important events of the last fifteen hundred years. Those barbarians, too, were our ancestors. Had Rome succeeded in exterminating or enslaving them, Britain, as Creasy says, would never have received the name of England, and the great English nation would never have had an existence.

In the year A.D.14, Augustus died, having reached the seventy-sixth year of his age. It was believed that his soul ascended visibly amidst the flames of the funeral pyre. By decree of the Senate divine worship was accorded to him, and temples were erected in his honor.

One of the most important of the acts of Augustus, in its