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DOMITIAN, as a matter of course, succeeded to the throne as the partner of his brother; and violent was the contrast between him and his predecessor. Titus, reared in the rough school of a provincial camp, and thus rising to the highest command; a great warrior, and yet guiltless of his country's blood; sociable and generous and accessible, almost to a fault; and nobly devoting himself to sustain his father's interests, while he shared his fame. Domitian, growing up uncared for, in ignorance and penury-his mother dying in his childhood, his father absent or engaged-so naturally cruel, that he even persecuted the flies, and made a solitude of his chamber; his temper so solitary and morose, that even when he gave the imperial banquets prescribed by custom, they were joyless and hurried, irksome both to the host and the guests; whilst so meanly jealous of his father's and brother's fame, that he sought to snatch away their laurels, by his intrigues against them living, and by detracting from their

fame when dead. This mean jealousy caused his recal of his famous general Agricola from his successful British campaign, which carried the Roman eagles into the stormy wilds of Caledonia; and it also impelled him to rival them, during the two first years of his reign, in diligent attention to business, and in purchasing popularity by raising the pay of the soldiers, and lavishing largesses and shows upon the populace. He even attempted to eclipse their glory in the arts of war as well as of peace, and in his third year placed himself at the head of the army of the Rhine. But this campaign was a mere summer promenade, in which the enemy resorted to their old tactics of retreat before the redoutable Roman legions, until they might be enfeebled by sickness or famine. Returned to Rome, he claimed a triumph, and assumed the name of Germanicus. The mob applauded whilst he showered on them from his triumphal car heaps of lottery-tickets and largesses; the soldiers, gratified with an addition to their pay, shouted behind him as he entered the city, and shook their formidable weapons; the poets chanted their elaborate compliments; here and there only a whisper, or an anonymous epigram affixed to a statue, hinted that the victory was a lie, the show an imposture, the long train of captives bought or borrowed for the occasion, and that the glittering spoils were the furniture of his own palaces. His notorious cowardice on the Rhine quickly involved him in a war with the Dacians, a formidable German tribe on the left bank of the lower Danube, who, under the command of their brave king Decabulus, crossed the frontiers, and for the first time in the annals of the Empire, successfully invaded the Roman dominions. Domitian himself took the field, but left the real command to his legates, while safe in a distant city he ascribed the victories to himself and the defeats to his generals. The result was, his setting the pernicious precedent of obtaining

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peace, not with steel, but gold, in direct defiance of the old Roman usage. So the northern barbarians returned to their wilds, proudly boasting of their victories and of the annual tribute by which the timid Emperor had bribed them to retire. The already half-empty treasury was now drained; all idea of reducing the army was abandoned as impolitic and dangerous; and Domitian betook himself to proscriptions and confiscations for supplying his extravagances. The reign of terror began again in Rome, and the Senate shuddered at the apparition of a new Nero or Caligula; but the people witnessed with indifference the commotion and panic of the great, while they applauded the gladiatorial games and Capitoline shows, and feasted on their share of the spoils of the most illustrious families, whom Domitian's legions of spies and informers daily added to the list of the proscribed. A still deeper gloom thickened around the tyrant, and in dire alarm for his power and his life, he saw an enemy in every man of distinction in the city or the camps, and the career that yet remained to him became one long paroxysm of terrified ferocity.

History reveals to us the strange fact, that the very vilest of mankind are generally the most superstitious. So Domitian, now, though stained with abominable crimes with which I cannot defile my pages, exhibited himself as the most zealous and devout Supreme Pontiff of Ancient Romanism, and a reformer of the morals of his subjects. He began by ordering an inquisition to be held on the character of the Vestal Virgins, which ended in the condemnation of two of the most distinguished to destroy themselves with their own hands. He sat as Grand Inquisitor on the case of a third, the beautiful Cornelia, whose story is so touchingly told by Pliny. She was condemned to be buried alive, with a crust of bread and a cruise of water, and so left, forsooth, to the

Most stern was

mercy of the Great Mother of the Gods!' this Supreme Pontiff's punishment of every disrespect of the gods. When one of his own favourites used a piece of marble belonging to a temple as a monument over his child, he affected righteous indignation, caused the tomb to be torn up, and the body thrown into the sea. Although only fortyone years had elapsed since Claudius had celebrated the great centenary secular games, Domitian distinguished his pontificate by a repetition of them with surpassing splendour. But in his restoration of Jupiter's temple on the Capitoline, he far outstripped all the rulers of Rome that ever went before or followed him. The gilding of the bronze tiles with which it was covered was his gift; and the estimate, including the gilding of the bases and capitals of the pillars, and of the innumerable statues which crowded the temple, exceeded £2,500,000! The gilded roof of the Capitoline temple continued for many centuries to be a conspicuous ornament of Rome, and contributed to give her the name of the Golden City,' which she retained late into the middle ages.

The canonization of Domitian's father and brother, made it easy to enrol himself amongst the gods, especially as no other Emperor had succeeded to an actual father and brother; so this abominable tyrant, even while yet alive, was permitted to challenge divine honours, by the vague superstitious feelings of the people, and to throng the city with images of himself. Of all these effigies, the most magnificent was his equestrian colossal statue in gilt bronze, erected in the centre of the Forum. Planted on a lofty pedestal, from which his head seemed to pierce the sky, and shining down upon the glowing roofs of halls and temples, he sate with his right hand advanced in the attitude of command, and bearing in his left a figure of Minerva, his sword reposing peacefully in

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his scabbard, while his prancing war-horse trampled on the forehead of a figure representing the conquered Rhine. And so he allowed victims to be slaughtered before his statues, and the mob of the theatre hailed him and the Empresseven when he took her back after the divorce which so scandalized most corrupt Rome-as our Lord and our Lady. He even suffered himself, as a pope did in after times, to be styled 'Our Lord God!' And he caused an unfortunate citizen who complained of his unjust partiality in the Coliseum, to be seized and thrown to the wild beasts, for blasphemy against God! As the Supreme Pontiff of Rome, he affected great indignation against the Jews and Christians for their efforts to convert Romans to their own faith. On this charge he put to death his own first cousin, Flavius Clemens, the pupil of Quintillian, and destined heir of the throne; and banished his niece Domitilla to the desolate island of Pandataria-now called Santa Maria -on the Neapolitan coast.

The most interesting case in this persecution is that recorded of the final result of the inquiries instituted by Vespasian, and continued by his son, into all claims on the succession from the royal house of David. So strong still was the general expectation of the appearance of a prince, born in Judea, destined to the empire of the world. The grandsons of the Apostle Jude, 'the brother of our Lord,' were at length discovered as the sole surviving claimants to the throne of David. They were summoned before Domitian, who asked whether they were descended from David? When they confessed it, he anxiously inquired, 'What were their means?' They declared that they possessed little more than 9,000 Roman pence (about £300), with twenty-four acres of land; and showed him their hands, hard with daily toil, in token of the simple industry by which they gained their living. Once more the Emperor asked the nature of CHRIST's kingdom,

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