Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 49cided, and the Church both as a doctrine and aninstitution had gained the victory, when the edict oftoleration was published.We have already seen how poor and meagre a partPhilosophy ^fc- W played between the death of Julius Csesaiand the accession of Claudius. The political andsocial sphere in which it moved may be thus epitomised.Augustus reduced to peace the warring elementsof Roman political life. From the battlefieldof Actium, A.U.C. 723, which placed in his singlehands the destiny of the Roman world, to his deathin 767, a period of forty-four years, he watched overand maintained the equilibrium which he had created.Tiberius received from him the republic at the matureage of 55, and governed it in tranquillity for nearlytwenty-three years. The short madness of Caius succeeded,and when he was swept away in the year 794,Claudius inherited the supreme power over the vastconfederacy of nations subject to Rome, which nowfor seventy years had been welded into an imperialrepublic enjoying the benefits of a common civilisation.If, outside the walls of Rome, and beyond the interestsof the Roman nobility, we compare the state and conditionof all these nations as to the enjoyment of suchbenefits, during these seventy years, with their stateand condition during the century preceding the battleof Actium, it will be impossible to deny that they hadgreatly gained by the establishment of the imperialgovernment. In spite of individual abuses of power,the provinces as a rule were no longer used up as theprivate spoils of profligate nobles. They possessedinstead laws administered with equity, could developtheir commerce, and be secure of their wealth. IfAugustus could only have ensured successors like him-VOL. III. D