We might say much more concerning the reforms by which Augustus and his successors transformed the character of the whole empire; of the organisation of the standing army practically created by Cæsar, which in manifold formations compassed about the motley population of the universal empire of Rome with a firm bond; of the imperial coinage which made the denarius and the Roman gold piece legal tender throughout the Roman world and either did away with local coinage or restricted it to private circulation in the place where it was struck (with the sole exception of Egypt, which occupied a peculiar position in this as in other respects); of the institution of an imperial post, which, though it served almost exclusively the purposes of the magistrates and was long a heavy burden on the provincials, is nevertheless a landmark in the history of international communication; of the opening up of remote provinces by the extended network of roads, on the milestones of which nearly all the emperors since Augustus inscribed their names, especially Trajan, Hadrian, Severus, and Caracalla; of the alimentary institutions originated by Nerva (one of the few government institutions for the public welfare in ancient times), which were intended to subserve both the maintenance of the citizen class and the furtherance of agriculture in Italy. We should gladly dwell upon the further development of Roman law by the council of state organised by Hadrian, after Augustus the greatest reformer on the imperial throne, and on the redaction of the _edictum perpetuum_ carried out at his command by Salvius Julianus, whose full name and career we have but recently learned from an inscription found in Africa, which paved the way for a common law for the whole empire and prepared the great age of jurisprudence at the beginning of the third century, when the springs of creative power in art and literature were almost wholly dried up. But within the narrow limits of this brief survey we must refrain from this, as from a description of the prosperity and decline of the highly developed municipal life of the period, and a sketch of the history of the empire at home and abroad, and of its intellectual life. One question, however, cannot be left altogether without answer--the question of the attitude of the imperial government towards alien religions, and, above all, towards Christianity. A detailed examination of the position of Christianity in the Roman Empire by the authority best qualified to speak on the subject[1] will be found in another part of this work, and I can therefore confine myself in this place to a brief notice. THE EMPIRE AND THE PAGAN CREED