outshone all other soldiers, so much did Cæsar excel all other generals, nay, other men of all times. In the wars carried on under his command, 1,192,000 of the enemy were slain. How many were slain in the civil wars he was reluctant to record. He fought fifty-two pitched battles; being the only general who exceeded Marcus Marcellinus, who fought thirty-nine. No one wrote more rapidly, no one read with greater facility; he was able to dictate four letters at one and the same time. So great was his excellence that those whom he conquered by his arms, he conquered yet more by his clemency.

Augustus, succeeding Julius Cæsar, obtained the empire of the whole world; and received tribute from Britain as well as from his other dominions, as Virgil remarks :

"Embroidered Britons lift the purple screen.' "" [

This he did in the forty-second year of his reign, when the true Light shone upon the world, and all kingdoms and islands, before over-shadowed with darkness, were taught that there is One only God, and saw the image of Him that created them. When Augustus had reigned fifty-five years and a half, he paid the debt of nature. Eutropius thus panegyrizes him : "Besides the civil wars, in which he was always victorious, Augustus subdued Armenia, Egypt, Galatia, Cantabria,

1 Geor. iii. 25. The sense is not very clear, and I have therefore rendered the words literally, in preference, to offering any gloss upon it. Dryden thus paraphrases it :—

"When the proud theatres disclose the scene

Which interwoven Britons seem to raise,

And show the triumphs which their shame displays."

Heyne conjectures that allusion is made to the curtain of the theatre on which were pictured, embroidered, or interwoven, the tall and gaunt forms of British captives, represented in the act of rising from the ground and lifting the curtain. However this may be, the quotation from the Georgics, which Henry of Huntingdon borrows from Nennius, fails of proving the subjection of the Britons in the time of Augustus. We find no authority for the statement, that this emperor received tribute from Britain, except a passage in the De Rebus Geticis of Jornandes, the Goth, a work of the sixth century, in which he made use of the now lost Ecclesiastical History of Cassiodorus, who was governor of Sicily in the same century-no authorities whatever against the silence of contemporary classical authors. Dion Cassius tells us, that Augustus came into Gaul with the intention of invading Britain, as the Britons refused to enter into a treaty with him, but was prevented by the revolt of some recently-subdued tribes of Gaul.

Dalmatia, Pannonia, Aquitania, Illyricum, Rhetium, the Vindelici, the Salassi, Pontus, and Cappadocia. He so completely reduced the Dacians and Germans, that he transported 400,000 captives of their race into Gaul, where he settled them on the further bank of the Rhine. The Persians gave him hostages, which they had never done before, restoring the standards taken from Crassus. He was mild and gracious, affable in spirit, and handsome in person; his eyes, particularly, were beautiful. Clement to his subjects, he so treated his friends that he almost raised them to a level with himself. He engaged in war with no nation but upon just grounds, esteeming triumphs founded upon unfounded pretences, worthless. He was so loved by foreign and even barbarous peoples, that in some instances their kings spontaneously came to Rome to do him homage; others, as Juba and Herod, founded cities to his honour. He devoted some part of every day to reading, writing, and elocution. He was sparing in his diet, patient of rebuke, and placable to conspirators. He found Rome built of bricks, he left it of marble."

Tiberius, the step-son of Augustus, succeeded him in the empire, which extended over Britain as well as the other kingdoms of the world'. He reigned twenty-three years.

1 There is no authority for the statement, that Britain formed part of the Roman Empire during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. It would be a bootless task to correct all Henry of Huntingdon's errors and misstatements, in some of which he copies Bede. [See notes to the Eccles. Hist., cc. iii. iv. in the present series.] We should not have noticed the present misstatement, but on account of a popular error which attributes the conquest of Britain to Julius Cæsar, and supposes that from his time the island, or some part of it, remained in subjection to the Romans. The facts are, that in his second and most successful expedition, Cæsar was not able, after much opposition and one signal defeat, to penetrate farther into the country than about eighty miles from his place of landing, near Walmer, to Verulam, or St. Albans, following for the most part the valley of the Thames, which river he crossed near Richmond. London and St. Albans were the only towns he reduced, and these he abandoned after a few months' occupation, withdrawing his whole army from the island, to which he never returned. The Britons recovered their independence, and continued unmolested under the government of their native kings and chiefs during the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula, though the latter menaced them with a fresh invasion, which ended in an idle and ridiculous parade. A

He was prudent and fortunate in war, and thus became worthy to be the successor of Augustus. In literature he was highly accomplished, but still more remarkable for eloquence, being happier in unpremeditated replies than in set speeches. He was charged with dissembling, inasmuch as he assumed indifference to those he really loved and courtesy to persons he disliked1.

Caius, surnamed Caligula, ruled the empire of the world about five years. Claudius, who succeeded him A.D. 622, and U.c. 798, visited Britain in the fourth year of his reign, and received the submission of some revolted tribes without recourse to arms. He added the Orkney Islands 3, already mentioned, to the empire, and, returning to Rome after an absence of six months, assumed for himself and his son the surname of Britannicus, which is given him by Juvenal:

"And show'd, Britannicus, to all that came,

The womb that bore thee."

In this year that grievous famine prevailed in Syria, which is recorded by St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles to have been predicted by Agabus. In the time of Claudius, Peter, the chief founder of our faith, became bishop of Rome, which see he filled for twenty five years, i. e. to the last year of Nero. Vespasian, commissioned by Claudius, went into Gaul, and afterwards to Britain, where he had thirty-two engagements with the enemy, reduced two very period, therefore, of nearly a century elapsed before the more successful invasion under the Emperor Claudius, from which the establishment of the Roman dominion in Britain dates.

1 Aurel. Victor.

2 The real date of the expedition of Plautius, under Claudius, was A.D. 44, U.C. 796. The same year upon his general's success, the Emperor himself crossed over to Britain, but only remained in the island sixteen days. This happened ninety-seven years after Caesar's abandonment of his enterprise. Bede says that "he was the only one either before or after Julius Cæsar, who had dared to land in the island," so that Henry of Huntingdon's story of the "revolted tribes seems to be pure invention..

3 This also is incorrect. The Orkneys were not reduced till the conquests of Agricola under Vespasian, and his successors reduced the northern parts of Britain to subjection.

4 Juv. Sat. vi. 124.

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powerful tribes, took twenty towns, and added the Isle of Wight to the empire. When Claudius had reigned thirteen years, he went the way of his fathers. His character is thus summed up: The administration of Claudius was generally moderate, though in some affairs he acted incautiously. Successful in war, he enlarged the empire; while in peace he was so gracious to his friends, that when Paulinus, a general of great eminence who had distinguished himself in Britain, celebrated his triumph, the emperor marched on his left hand as he ascended to the capitol."2

Nero, who reigned thirteen years and rather more than half, though he had been an active soldier in his youth, lapsed into sloth after he had obtained the empire. Hence, besides other injuries to the empire, he nearly lost Britain; for during his government two of the greatest cities in the island were sacked and ruined". Nero perished miserably the same year in which he slew Peter and Paul.

Vespasian, who destroyed Jerusalem, reigned nearly ten years. It was he who under Claudius was sent into Britain and reduced the Isle of Wight to the power of the Romans. This island extends from east to west about 30,000 paces; from north to south, twelve; and is distant in its eastern part six, and in its western twelve, miles from the southern coast of Britain. This great man erected a column of the height of 107 feet. The eulogium of Vespasian is thus

For Paulinus, who did not command in Britain till the time of Nero, read Plautius. By the victories of this general over Cunobeline, the southern regions of Britain were reduced to a Roman province. He was succeeded by Ostorius, the conqueror of Caradauc, or Caractacus as he was called by the Romans.

* The successes of Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, a British tribe, who were natives of Derbyshire, are here alluded to. She is said to have reduced to ashes London, Colchester, and Verulam, and to have massacred 70,000 of the Romans and their allies. We do not wonder at Henry of Huntingdon's imperfect acquaintance with the history of the Roman emperors; but it is surprising that he gives so confused an account, and collected such few incidents of their transactions in Britain. Now it was that Suetonius Paulinus commanded in Britain. He reduced Mona, and exterminated the Druids, and was ultimately successful in recovering the province after the losses in the time of Boadicea.

› Eutrop. vii. 8.

⚫ The short reigns of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, are not noticed.

faithfully given1: "He conducted his government with great moderation, but was inclined to avarice: not, indeed, that he raised money by unjust methods, and what he carefully collected he spent freely, being especially bountiful to those who were in need; so that it would be difficult to name any prince whose liberality was at once so great and so just. His clemency was such that he was not disposed to inflict severer punishment than exile even on those who were guilty of treason. He was conqueror of Judæa, Achaia, Lycia, Rhodes, Byzantium, Samos, Thrace, Cilicia, Comagene. Injuries and enmities he buried in oblivion; he bore patiently the invectives of lawyers and philosophers, and was courteous and affable to the senate, the people, and all the world."

Titus, his son, reigned two years and two months, a prince endowed with every virtue, so that he was called the idol and the darling of the human race. He built the amphitheatre of Rome, at the dedication of which five thousand wild animals were slain. His panegyric is of the highest order: "Eloquent as well as brave, of great moderation, he transacted the business of the law-courts in Latin, and wrote poems and tragedies in Greek. At the siege of Jerusalem, serving under his father, he struck down twelve of the foremost of the garrison, each with a single arrow. At Rome his government was so humane, that he scarcely inflicted punishment on any, pardoning those who were convicted of conspiracy against his person, and admitting them to the same familiarity as before; so great was his kindness and liberality, that when some of his friends blamed him for never denying any request, he replied, tha 'no one should depart sad from the presence of the em peror.' He was so much beloved for this singular gracious ness, and so severe was the public grief for his death, tha all lamented him as if each had lost a private friend. expired at a distance from Rome, and the senate receiving the intelligence late in the evening thronged into the senate house and paid such a tribute of praise and acknowledgmen to the memory of the deceased emperor, as they had neve offered to him when he was alive and among them."

i Eutrop. vii. 13.

2 Ibid. vii. 14.

H