Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/93

Rh armed Sulla against Marius and Caesar against Pompeius. The heir of Caesar inherited the favour of the plebeians, and was bound to requite it by distinguished patronage. The plebeians were still the electors to the tribunate, and still regarded the tribunes as their protectors against the encroachments of the patricians represented by the senate. The tribunes had proved themselves most useful allies to Caesar, and might yet again array themselves in support of the faithful inheritor of his principles. The emperor pro posed to balance the consular potestas by assuming at the same time a tribunician potestas also. He thus endowed himself with the authority of the tribune for life, and assured the commons of the city and empire that he could at any time exercise the formidable veto upon the proceed ings of the consuls which had served them so well, even down to recent times. Thus did he become emperor indeed, the sovereign both of the nobles and the people in the city, as well as the commander of the army in the lield and in the provinces.

There remained yet another sovereign authority in the state, namely, that which the chief pontiff exercised over the affairs of religion. However much the religious sentiment had been weakened throughout the Eoman world, there was yet enough superstition left among the citizens to confer great and sometimes overwhelming influence upon the legitimate interpreter of divine things to the nation. The senate had exercised this power with great effect, as long as the appointment to the chief ponti- iicate rested with the patrician curias. Of late years, however, this important dignity had been thrown open to the commons also. Octavianus was well pleased to accept it on the nomination of the whole people combined. He allowed, indeed, his former colleague Lepidus to retain it unmolested during his lifetime, but upon his death he assumed himself the exalted position which he might hesitate to intrust to any other. With this last addition to his prerogatives the emperor might well be content. The name of king he had from the first utterly repudiated. The office of dictator approached too near to that of a king to be acceptable to a ruler, who studied to confine himself within the limits of the republican constitution. Yet there still lacked some general appellative which might reflect in a single word the full dignity and power resulting from the combination of so many honours and prerogatives. The emperor proposed at first, it is said, to assume the name of Romulus; but Romulus had been a king; and further, Romulus had been destroyed, according to the tradition, by the senate, just as Caesar had been in later times. Such associations were ominous. At last he fixed upon the epithet Augustus, a name which no man had borne before, and which, on the contrary, had been applied to things the most noble, most venerable, and most sacred. The rites of the gods were called august ; their temples were august. The word itself was derived from the holy auguries ; it was connected in meaning with the abstract term authority, and with all that increases and flourishes upon earth. The use of this glorious title could not fail to smooth the way to the general acceptance of the divine character of the mortal who was deemed worthy to bear it. The senate had just decreed the divinity of the defunct Caesar ; the courtiers were beginning now to insinuate that his successor, while yet alive, enjoyed an effluence from deity ; the poets were even suggesting that altars should be raised to him : and in the provinces, among the subjects of the state at least, temples to his divinity were actually rising, and the cult of Augustus was beginning to assume a name, a ritual, and a priesthood.

Augustus, as we may now call him, viewed all this with secret satisfaction. It was one of his first objects, indeed, to restore the outward show at least of reverence for divine things, and re-establish the old Roman religion on its firm political basis. It was easy to rebuild, or cause to be rebuilt, the fallen or dilapidated temples of the national gods. The nobles paid their court to their master by seconding his efforts in this direction. The Pantheon, the temple of all the gods, if such was its original destination, remains still as a monument of his minister Agrippa s munificence ; but Virgil would assure us that not less than three hundred &quot; grand &quot; temples were erected throughout the city. Perhaps, indeed, these were mostly the sacella or chapels of^the Lares, which are placed at the corners of the streets. Augustus took the sentiment of the people at a favourable moment. They were thoroughly sickened by the miseries of the civil wars ; they were ashamed of tha crimes for which the whole nation were more or less responsible ; they were eager to rush into any scheme of expiation and reparation that should be offered to them, and lend their hands to the material work of restoring at least the outward semblance of penitence for sin, and thankfulness for the mercy vouchsafed them. There can be no doubt that the conscience of the nation was awakened to a sense of the divine retribution under which they had suffered, but which had been at last averted under the blessed influence of the ruler whom they had at last chosen. The Romans had not lost their belief in a divine Providence, which oppressed them with anxiety and terror, however little they connected it with a sense of moral duty. The spirit of materialistic philosophy had, however, been rife among them, and during the past century the anti- religious dogmas of Epicurus had sapped the belief of the educated and literary classes. The patrician youth of Rome had been trained in the schools of Greece, and especially at Athens, or had been placed under the teaching of Greek instructors at home ; and of the three contending schools, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Academics, the second was that which had carried off far the greater number of disciples. The men of books or of speculative character might be generally Academics, and claim Cicero as their noblest leader; the men of imagination and deep religious fervour might follow, with Cato and Brutus, the teaching of the Stoics; but the practical men, the men of arts and arms and business, if they adhered to any school of thought at all, were almost all, like Caesar himself and his associates generally, addicted to the easy precepts and still laxer morality of Epicurus. This philosophy was noted for its utter denial of Providence and, for all practical objects, of divinity altogether. ]frone of these rival systems, whatever degrees of right sense and reason they might embrace respectively, could sanction any real belief in the still current mythology of the national worship, which was assailed and derided on all sides. Xevertheless, such was the pertinacious adherence of the Roman people to their ancient forms, especially where they had any connection with their national polity, that the outward ritual of their religion was still maintained, though a mere shadow of its former substance. Statesmen, indeed, had invented a formula for reconciling their actual unbelief with their outward profession. Varro had said, and the dictum was favourably accepted, that the ancient beliefs were to be upheld as a matter of public policy. Such, no doubt, was the principle on which Augustus, who _ was himself neither a believer nor a philosopher, but a politician only, proceeded, when he assumed the part of a restorer of the national religion. He touched, with great sagacity, a chord which vibrated to the heart of the people, who firmly believed that the destinies of the city were bound up with the due observance of the ancient rites, and statesmen looked on with decorous acquiescence at shows and ceremonies to which they attached no significance whatever. The world &quot; composes its countenance to the expression 