A history of Europe / by H.A.L. Fisher.

  • Fisher, H. A. L. (Herbert Albert Laurens), 1865-1940.
Date:
[1936]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A history of Europe / by H.A.L. Fisher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    104/1328 (page 84)
    the best virtues of the Italian country gentleman. But these A D. igj standards were not maintained. The elevation of Pertinax, who was the choice of the Praetorian Guard, set an evil example to every legionary camp on the frontier. The diadem became the prize of ambitious soldiers and its transmission the occasion of civil strife. The results were such as might be expected from a system under which military leaders chosen by distant troops and imposed by violence were suddenly called upon to undertake the greatest political responsibility in the world. The rulers of Rome in the third century were often bad and always insecure. Of the twenty-three Emperors who preceded Diocletian (a.d. 284), all but three died violent deaths. It was said of the wise Augustus that he left a solemn injunc¬ tion upon his successors to be content with the existing frontiers of the Empire. All experience, however, shows that nothing is so difficult as to arrest the enterprise of a people once infected with ideas of conquest and exploration. While Christ and His dis¬ ciples were preaching the gospel of renunciation, the Italians, animated by a spirit as far removed as possible from that of the Galilean, were pushing into new markets, developing new enterprises, exploring new lands, and clamouring for new con¬ quests. Claudius, the boorish, self-indulgent invalid, yielding to the exalted spirit of his times, began the serious conquest of . Britain and added Thrace, Mauretania, and Judea to the Roman provinces. Even under Nero, to whom nothing was serious save his own reputation as an actor and a vocalist, places so far distant as the flats of Anglesea and the highlands of Armenia were subjected by Roman arm?,^ To the Flavian Emperors belongs the credit of seizing the strategical importance of Vienna and of connecting the Danube with the Rhine by a chain of fortified posts. Nor was it until the later part of the second century, under the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the noblest of the Emperors, that the Roman guard at length gave way. In 161 a.d. a horde of bar¬ barians, the Marcomanni from Bohemia, the Quadi from Moravia, forcing the north-eastern barrier of Italy at its lowest and most vulnerable point, besieged Aquileia—a symptom of worse things to come, and a warning to the Italians that they could no longer count upon the Augustan peace. Meanwhile the Roman legions, defending the Imperial fron¬ tiers as they did during the two centuries which followed the