| | | The Principate, or Empire, | | | | Egypt becomes a Roman | established under Augustus| | | | province, 30. | (Octavian) in virtue of | | | | | the Imperium Proconsulare | | | | | (27) and Tribunicia | | | | | Potestas (23). The Empire | | | 1 | | organised. | 1 | | B.C.| | Cicero, Virgil Livy, Horace.| B.C.| +-----+--------------------------+-----------------------------+-----+ [Sidenote: The Birth of Christ] A tremendous event in itself, the reign of Augustus also witnessed one which has had a great influence on the history of the world--the birth of Christ. His ministry, to which perhaps the term event should be applied, was during the reign of the second Emperor, Tiberius. The new faith born on the soil of Judæa was to modify profoundly all the ideals, social and political as well as theological and personal, of the entire Western world; but for many years its adherents remained nothing more than a persecuted yet steadily growing sect; suspected and hated as anarchists rather than as misbelievers, in a world where the rankest and wildest superstitions lived side by side with a general intellectual scepticism. For four centuries the Imperial city ruled over nearly the whole known world. Beyond the Euphrates on the east, beyond the Rhine and the Danube, she could maintain no permanent footing; within her own borders it seemed as though her sway became a part of the natural order--so much so that when her power had passed away her very conquerors did her homage and took upon themselves titles as her officers. [Sidenote: Rome in her Decline] But the overthrow was yet a long way off. The reconstruction organised by Augustus and his Ministers was developed by able rulers--Tiberius, Trajan, Hadrian, the Antonines--during some two hundred years, in spite of intervals when a murderous tyranny or a feeble incompetence occupied the throne of the Cæsars. From the Pillars of Hercules to the river of Mesopotamia, northward as far as Britain, southward to the deserts of Africa, Roman civilisation, Roman law and justice, Roman military discipline, and Roman roads maintained the Roman peace. [Sidenote: Fall of Rome and Rise of Goths]