The Historians' History of the World 06

Theatrical performances are mentioned in the emperor’s enumeration, but recede very much into the background as being quite commonplace; they were mainly the affair of newly elected officials, but Augustus himself had plays acted in all sorts of places—the Forum, the Amphitheatre, and even on temporary stages in the streets and squares of the capital, in every language spoken in Rome, Latin and Greek being of course the chief. Every play-giver desired to offer the populace something quite unique. The dictator had even allowed a Roman knight to appear on the stage, and his son followed his example until it was interdicted by a decree of the senate.

Augustus purposely abstained from increasing the number of ordinary and regular festivals to any great extent. The Secular games, of which we shall speak presently, naturally do not come under this head, as do the district games, associated with the new subdivision of the capital. We have already mentioned the games commemorative of the victory of Actium; the martial games were added later in commemoration of the solemn dedication of the magnificent temple of Mars in 2 B.C.

To the innovations of the empire also belong the votive games for the return of the emperor from Gaul and Spain in the years 13 B.C. and 7 B.C.; also votive games for the welfare of Augustus which were arranged every four years by the great colleges of priests in compliance with a decree of the senate.

The example of Rome soon found imitators in the capitals of the provinces; sometimes it was the emperor himself who instituted games there, sometimes prominent citizens who had received or hoped to receive some post of honour. The number of games held in honour of Augustus was very great, especially in the Greek cities. In Naples the imperial games were celebrated in the same fashion as the Olympic games, in commemoration of the visit of Augustus in the year 14 A.D.

NOVUM SECULUM—THE NEW BIRTH FOR ROME

Even as in the life of the individual there are often moments when he remembers with grief and yearning the golden days of childhood, so in the development of nations there are periods when the best minds of the nation dream of a past golden age, in which both the crime and the progress which have come to pass in the course of historical development were unknown. The farther the nation is from a primitive condition and the more strongly its members feel the drawbacks of civilisation, the brighter are the colours in which they paint the innocent joys of an earlier state of things to which violence and rapine were as yet strangers.

The generation which had grown to manhood during the civil wars had of necessity accustomed itself to horrors which are spared to those who grow up in times of order. All the more vividly did they dream of a happy and primitive age in the distant past; for none feels a greater enthusiasm for peace than those who have had to endure the evils of war.

Since the battle of Actium the civil wars were happily at an end; for nearly half a generation Rome had enjoyed the blessings of peace and the new constitution which Augustus had given her. The emperor had often announced his resolve to retire into private life, but had always allowed himself to be persuaded not to carry it out because the welfare of the state forbade it; he alone seemed to guarantee peace and safety, his rule seemed inseparable from domestic tranquillity, and the man who desired the one could not but desire the other. The emperor strove to keep this single idea in fresh variations constantly in mind among the Romans, and those honours pleased him best which gave public expression to this feeling. The senate, on the emperor’s return had dedicated the altar of the imperial peace. The poets, each after his fashion, sang the praises of peace and order:

“Fealty, peace itself, and honour, and the ancient

Moral awe, the long-forgotten virtue,

Now dares to return, it approaches, its horn

Full of blessing.”

There was, however, a danger that the rising generation might soon come to accept the benefits of peace as a matter of course, without definitely realising to whom they owed these blessings, and it was therefore desirable to keep in remembrance among the emperor’s contemporaries the difference between the unquiet past and the blissful present, and to give official recognition to the fact that the period of civil war was over and that a century of peace and prosperity had taken its place.

Such turning-points imply an invitation to take a backward glance and to reckon the sum of development up to this point. So had a poet done at the end of the previous century:

“How fair, O man, with thy palm-branches

Standest thou in the century’s decline,” etc.

The Rome of the period was also to take a backward glance.