captives slaves that he had purchased and disguised as Germans. While however he was thus triumphing for imaginary conquests, real ones had been achieved in Britain by Cn. Julius Agricola, to whom Vespasian had committed the affairs of that island (80). He had conquered the country as far as the firths of Clyde and Forth, and (85) defeated the Caledonians in a great battle at the foot of the Grampians. Domitian, though inwardly grieved, affected great joy at the success of Agricola; he caused triumphal honours, a statue, and so forth to be decreed him by the senate, and gave out that he intended appointing him to the government of Syria; but when Agricola returned to Rome, he received him with coldness, and never employed him again*.

The country on the left bank of the lower Danube, the modern Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia was at this time inhabited by a portion of the Sarmatian or Slavonian race named the Ďacians, and remarkable for their valour. The extension of the Roman frontier to the Danube in the time of Augustus, had caused occasional collisions with this martial race†; but no war of any magnitude had occurred till the present reign. The prince of the Dacians at this time, named Decebalus, was one of those energetic characters often to be found among barbarous tribes, to whom nature has given all the elements of greatness, but fortune has assigned a narrow and inglorious stage for their exhibition. It was probably the desire of military glory and of plunder, rather than fear of the avarice of Domitian, the only cause assigned ‡, that made Decebalus at this time (86) set at nought the treaties subsisting with the Romans, and lead his martial hordes over the Danube. The troops that opposed them were routed and cut to pieces; the garrisons and castles were taken, and apprehensions were entertained for the winter-quarters of the legions §. The danger seemed so imminent, that the general wish was manifested for the conduct of the war being committed to Agricola; and the imperial freedmen, some from good, others from evil motives, urged their master to compliance. But his jealousy of that illustrious man was invincible; and he resolved to superintend the war in person.

* See the Life of Agricola by his son-in-law Tacitus. + "Occidit Daci Cotisonis agmen."

Hor. Carm. iii. 8. 18. Vir. Geor. ii. 497. M. Antonius asserted that Augustus had promised his daughter Julia in marriage to Cotison. Suet. Oct. 63.

Jornandes De Reb. Goth. 13.

Tac. Agric. 41.

Domitian proceeded to Illyria, where he was met by Dacian deputies with proposals of peace, on condition of a capitationtax of two oboles a head being paid to Decebalus. The emperor forthwith ordered Cornelius Fuscus, the governor of Illyria, to lead his army over the Danube, and chastise the insolent barbarians. Fuscus passed the river by a bridge of boats; he gained some advantages over the enemy, but his army was finally defeated and himself slain*. Domitian, who had returned to Rome, hastened back to the seat of war; but instead of heading his troops, he stopped in a town of Mosia, where he gave himself up to his usual pleasures, leaving the conduct of the war to his generals, who, though they met with some reverses, were in general successful; and Decebalus was reduced to the necessity of suing for Domitian refused to grant it; but shortly after having sustained a defeat from the Marcomans, whom he wished to punish for not having assisted him against the Dacians, he sent to offer peace to Decebalus. The Dacian was not in a condition to refuse it, but he would seem to have dictated the terms; and in effect an annual tribute was henceforth paid to him by the Roman emperort. Domitian, however, triumphed for the Dacians and Marcomans, though he paid tribute to the former, and had been defeated by the latter ‡.

peace.

During the Dacian war (88), L. Antonius, who commanded in Upper Germany, having been grossly insulted by the em peror, formed an alliance with the people named the Alemans, and caused himself to be proclaimed emperor. But L. Maximus marched against him, and the Alemans, having been prevented from coming to his aid by the rising of the Rhine, he was defeated and slain. Maximus wisely and humanely burned all his papers, but that did not prevent the tyrant from putting many persons to death as concerned in the revolt.

A war against the Sarmatians, who had cut to pieces a Roman legion, is placed by the chronologists in the year 94. Domitian conducted it in person, after his usual manner; but instead of triumphing, he contented himself with suspending a laurel-crown in the Capitol. This is the last foreign transaction of his reign.

* Juvenal, Sat. iv. 111, 112; Mart. vi. 76.

Dion, lxvii. 7; lxviii. 6.

There is great confusion respecting the duration of the Dacian war. Eusebius makes it end in the year 90, and places the triumph of Domitian in the following year. See Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs.

After the first three or four years of his reign, the evil qualities of Domitian displayed themselves more and more every day. By nature a coward, his fears increased by his belief in the follies of astrology, rendered him cruel, and the want brought on by his extravagance made him rapacious. Informers flourished anew, as in the days of Nero; and the blind Catullus*, Messalinus, Metius Carus, and Bebius Massa, and others of the like stamp, preyed continually on the lives and fortunes of all men of rank and worth. Among the victims of the incipient cruelty of Domitian were the following: Metius Pomposianus, on account of his horoscope, and because he had in his chamber a map of the world, carried about him speeches of kings and génerals out of Livy, and called his slaves Mago and Hannibal; Salvius Coccianus, for celebrating the birthday of his uncle Otho; Sallustius Lucullus, for having given his name to a new kind of lance; the sophist Maternus, for a declamation against tyrants; and Ælius Lamia (whose wife the emperor had taken from him), for some jokes he had made in the time of Titus.

The tyranny of Domitian at length passed all bounds. Tacitus describes the senate-house as infested by soldiery; consulars slaughtered, women of the highest rank banished; the isles filled with exiles, the racks dyed with their blood; slaves and freedmen corrupted to give false evidence against their masters; nobility, wealth, honours, above all virtue, the sure causes of ruin; rewards lavished on informers and accusers; all the vices and all the virtues called into action.

At this time Helvidius, the son of Helvidius Priscus, was put to death for having made an interlude on the emperor's divorce, of which the characters were Paris and Ænone; and Herennius Senecio, for having written the life of Helvidius Priscus. A panegyric on Thrasea and Helvidius was also fatal to its author Junius Rusticus, a stoic; and Hermogenes of Tarsus, from some supposed allusions in his history, was put to death, and the booksellers that sold it were crucified. After the condemnation of Rusticus all the philosophers were banished from Italy.

Like Nero, whom he resembled in some points, Domitian was capricious in his cruelty. When at the shows, which followed his triumph, a tempest of rain came on, he would not allow any one to quit the place and seek shelter. He himself also remained, but he had several cloaks, and changed them *Juvenal, Sat. iv. 113 seq. Agric. 45. Hist. i. 2, 3.

as they became wet. Many of the spectators died in consequence of colds and fevers. To console them he invited them to a public supper, which lasted all through the night. He gave the senate and knights also a curious supper at the same time. The room in which he received them was made perfectly black; the seats were black; by each stood a monumental pillar with the name of the guest on it, and a sepulchral lamp; naked slaves, blackened to resemble spectres, came in and danced a horrid measure around them, and then each seated himself at the feet of a guest; the funeral-meats were then brought in black vessels. All sat quaking in silence; Domitian alone spoke, and his discourse was of death. At length he dismissed them, but at the porch, instead of their own attendants, they found strange ones, with chairs and sedans to convey them to their houses. When they were at home and began to respire freely, word came to each that one was come from the emperor; terror returned, but it was agreeably dispelled by finding that the pillar, which was silver, the supper utensils of valuable materials, and the slave who had played the ghost, were arrived as presents from the palace.

Domitian exhibited about this time a specimen of political œconomy by no means despicable, were not the evil which he proposed to amend already beyond remedy. Wine proving very plentiful and corn very scarce in Italy, he issued an edict (92), forbidding any new vineyards to be planted in Italy, and ordering one half of those in the provinces to be cut down. This edict, it may readily be supposed, was but partially carried into effect.

The year of Domitian's triumph was also distinguished by the death of Cornelia, the eldest of the Vestals, accused of breach of chastity. She was buried alive, in the ancient manner, and underwent her cruel fate with the greatest constancy and dignity. She does not appear to have had a fair trial, and many strongly doubted of her guilt*.

The emperor, so rigorous in punishing breach of chastity in others, was as usual indulgent to himself on this head. His brother Titus had wished him to put away Domitia and marry his daughter Julia: he refused; yet when Julia was married to another, he seduced her; and when her father and husband were dead, he cohabited openly with her, and is said to have caused her death, by giving her drugs to procure abortion†. Plin. Ep. iv. 11.

Suet. Dom. 22. Juvenal, Sat. ii. 32.

As for Domitia, he divorced her on account of an intrigue with Paris the actor, whom he put to death; but he took her back soon after, pretending a willingness to gratify the desire of the people.

Domitian met with the usual fate of tyrants; he perished by a conspiracy. It is said that he kept under his pillow a list of those whom he intended to put to death, and that one day, as he was sleeping, a favourite little boy, who was in the room, carried it away. Domitia, meeting the child, took it from him, and, to her surprise, found her own name in it, along with those of Norbanus and Petronius, the prefects of the prætorians, Parthenius, the chamberlain, and some others. She immediately informed those concerned, and they resolved to anticipate the tyrant.

The emperor had lately put to death his cousin Clemens, one of whose freedmen, named Stephanus, who acted as steward to his wife Domitilla, being accused of malversation in his office, engaged in the conspiracy, and being a strong man, undertook the task of killing the tyrant. It was arranged that the attack should be made on him in his chamber, and Parthenius removed the sword which was usually under his pillow. Stephanus for some days previously had his arm bandaged, as if hurt, in order to be able to conceal a dagger; and on the 18th of September (96), when Domitian, after sitting in judgement, retired to his chamber to repose, before going into the bath, Parthenius presented Stephanus to him as one who could inform him of a conspiracy. While he was reading the paper handed to him Stephanus struck him in the belly. He called out to a slave to reach him the sword that was under his pillow, but it was gone; others of the conspirators then rushed in, and the tyrant was despatched with seven wounds. He was in the forty-fifth year of his age and the fifteenth of his reign.

The reigns of the Flavian family, and of their immediate successors, may be regarded as the last period of Roman literature. It exhibits more perhaps the decline of taste, than of

* Dion (lxvii.) says that he had heard it. Suetonius does not seem to have known it. We shall find the same told of Commodus. The circumstance is by no means improbable; it was a list of this kind that caused the death of Aga Mohammed, the king of Persia, in 1796.