Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul | Page 5

on exploration,
from slaves who had been acquired by war or purchase, or from traders
such as those who made their way to the Baltic in quest of amber, or to
Arabia, Ethiopia, and India in quest of precious metals, jewels, ivory,
perfumes, and fabrics.
There had indeed been sundry attempts to annex still more of the world.
Roman armies had crossed the Rhine and had twice fought their way to
the Elbe; but it became apparent to the shrewd Augustus and Tiberius
that the country could not be held, and the Rhine was for the present
accepted as the most natural and practical frontier. In the East the
attempts permanently to annex Armenia, or a portion of Parthia, had so
far proved but nominal or almost entirely vain.
On the Upper Euphrates at this date there was a sort of
acknowledgment of vague dependence on Rome, but the empire had
acquired nothing more solid. Forty years before our date a Roman
expedition had penetrated into South-west Arabia, of which the wealth
was extravagantly over-estimated, but it had met with complete failure.
Into Ethiopia a punitive campaign had been made against Queen
Candace, and a loose suzerainty was claimed over her kingdom, but the
Roman frontier still stopped short at Elephantine. Over the territories of
the semi-Greek semi-Scythian settlements to the north of the Black Sea
Rome exercised a protectorate, which was for obvious reasons not
unwelcome to those concerned. Along or near the eastern frontier she
well understood the policy of the "buffer state," and, within her own
borders in those parts, was ready to make tools of petty kings, whose
own ambitions would both assist her against external foes and relieve
her of administrative trouble.
At no time did the Roman Empire possess so natural or scientific a
frontier as at this, when it was bounded by the Rhine, the Danube, the
Black Sea, the Euphrates, the Desert, and the Atlantic. The only

exception, it will be perceived, was in Britain, but the Roman idea there
also was to annex the whole island, a feat which was never
accomplished. Two generations after our chosen date Rome had
conquered as far as the Firths of Clyde and Forth; it had crossed the
Southern Rhine, and annexed the south-west corner of Germany,
approximately from Cologne to Ratisbon; it had passed the Danube,
and secured and settled Dacia, which is roughly the modern Roumania;
and it had pushed its power somewhat further into the East. But it had
not thereby increased either its strength or its stability.
At the period then with which we are to deal, the Roman Empire
included the countries now known as Holland, Belgium, France, Spain
and Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, the southern half of the Austrian
Empire, Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine, Egypt,
Tripoli and Tunis, Algeria, Morocco, and also the southern two-thirds
of England. Within these borders there prevailed that greatest blessing
of the Roman rule, the _pax Romana_, or "Roman peace." Whatever
defects may be found in the Roman administration, on whatever
abstract grounds the existence of such an empire may be impugned, it
cannot be questioned that for at least two centuries the whole of this
vast region enjoyed a general reign of peace and security such as it
never knew before and has never known since. That peace meant also
social and industrial prosperity and development. It meant an immense
increase in settled population and in manufactures, and an immense
advance--particularly in the West--in civilised manners and intellectual
interests.
Peoples and tribes which had been at perpetual war among themselves
or with some neighbour were reduced to quietude. Communities which
had been liable to sudden invasion and to all manner of arbitrary
changes in their conditions of life, in their burdens of taxation, and
even in their personal freedom, now knew exactly where they stood,
and, for the most part, perceived that they stood in a much more
tolerable and a distinctly more assured position than before. If there
must sometimes be it would be the Roman tyrant, and he, as we shall
find, affected them but little. All irresponsible local tyrannies, whether
of kings or parties, were abolished.

On the high seas within the empire you might voyage with no fear
whatever of pirates. If you looked for pirates you must look beyond the
Roman sphere to the Indian Ocean. There might also be a few to be
found in the Black Sea. On the high road you might travel from
Jerusalem to Rome, and from Rome to Cologne or Cadiz, with no fear
of any enemy except such banditti and footpads as the central or local
government could not always manage to put down. On the whole there
was nearly everywhere a clear recognition of the advantages conferred
by the empire.