Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/330

 2/6 Outlines of Eiuvpcan History The army Great diver- sity of races included in the Empire might be made. Augustus adopted the policy of organizing and consolidating the Empire as he found it,. without mak- ing further conquests. In the east_his boundary thus^ ecam,e ihf- "pnpl^T-atpc; and in the Jiorttij he Danube __and the Rhin e. The angle made by the Rhine and the Danube was not a favor- able one for defense of the border (Fig. 1 1 4), and an effort was later made to push forward to the Elbe (see map of Roman Empire) ; but the Roman army was disastrously defeated by the barbarous German tribes and the attempt was abandoned. Thus the bulk of what we now call Germ aiBL_never wa s^coiLi^ quered by4h€-^E;0manSj_ and the speech of the German tribes was not Latinized like that of France and wSpain.-^ For the maintenance of these vast frontiers Augustus organ- ized an efficient standing army. Such was the extent of the ex- posed borders that the powers of the great Empire were later severely taxed to furnish enough troops for the purpose. Since the time of Marius the Italian farmers who made up the Roman army had been slowly giving way to professional soldiers having no home but the camp of the legion. Now the army was re- cruited from the provinces, and the soldier who entered the legion_r eceived citizenship in return for his service. Thus the fiction that the army was made up of citizens was maintained. The population of this vast Empire, which girdled the Medi- terranean, including France and England, was made up of the most diverse peoples and races. Egyptians, Arabs, Jews, Greeks, Italians, Gauls, Britons, Iberians (Spaniards) — all alike were under the sovereign rule of Rome. One great State embraced the nomad shepherds who spread their tents on the borders of the Sahara, the mountaineers in the fastnesses of Wales, and the citizens of Athens, Alexandria, and Rome, heirs to all the luxury and learning of the ages. Whether one lived in York or Jem- salem, Memphis or Vienna, he paid his taxes into the same 1 The vast hordes of Germans in the unconquered north remained a constant menace to the Roman Empire. They finally overwhelmed a large part of it and caused the downfall of the Roman Empire in the West (see below. Chapter XII).