ing to Rostovtseff, republican Rome had "introduced nothing new, except pauperization,
bankruptcy, and a stoppage of all independent political activity." *
The reign of Augustus was a period of happiness for the Roman Empire. The administration of
the provinces was at last organized with some regard to the welfare of the population, and not
on a purely predatory system. Augustus was not only officially deified after his death, but was
spontaneously regarded as a god in various provincial cities. Poets praised him, the commercial
classes found the universal peace convenient, and even the Senate, which he treated with all the
outward forms of respect, lost no opportunity of heaping honours and offices on his head.
But although the world was happy, some savour had gone out of life, since safety had been
preferred to adventure. In early times, every free Greek had had the opportunity of adventure;
Philip and Alexander put an end to this state of affairs, and in the Hellenistic world only
Macedonian dynasts enjoyed anarchic freedom. The Greek world lost its youth, and became
either cynical or religious. The hope of embodying ideals in earthly institutions faded, and with
it the best men lost their zest. Heaven, for Socrates, was a place where. he could go on arguing;
for philosophers after Alexander, it was something more different from their existence here
below.
In Rome, a similar development came later, and in a less painful form. Rome was not
conquered, as Greece was, but had, on the contrary, the stimulus of successful imperialism.
Throughout the period of the civil wars, it was Romans who were responsible for the disorders.
The Greeks had not secured peace and order by submitting to the Macedonians, whereas both
Greeks and Romans secured both by submitting to Augustus. Augustus was a Roman, to whom
most Romans submitted willingly, not only on account of his superior power; moreover he took
pains to disguise the military origin of his government, and to base it upon decrees of the
Senate. The adulation expressed by the Senate was, no doubt, largely insincere, but outside the
senatorial class no one felt humiliated.
The mood of the Romans was like that of a jeune homme rangé in nineteenth-century France,
who, after a life of amatory adventure,
* History of the Ancient World, Vol. II, p. 255.