his house to the dignity of national solemnities. When he repressed the encroachments of the freedmen, and caused false pretenders to the franchise to be capitally punished, and again when he withdrew the liberty which Caius had allowed to slaves of giving evidence against their masters, he consulted principles of Roman law to which the citizens attached considerable importance. It was not in the interests of humanity, but of a jealous and inquisitorial policy, that such indulgence had been granted to the slaves, and under the system of society at Rome it gave occasion to intolerable licence. The justice indeed of Claudius was little tempered with mercy. Under his reign more parricides, it was said, were adjudged to the ancient punishment of the sack than in all the ages that had elapsed before it. Nevertheless, one of his enactments at least remains to show that his views with respect to the servile population were milder and more enlightened than those of previous legislators. He ordained that the sick slaves whom their masters abandoned or exposed in the temple of Esculapius should, if they recovered, obtain their freedom; but if, as it may be feared was too often the case, they ridded themselves of these miserable dependants directly by death, he boldly declared that they should be held guilty of murder. We may hope that this sole recorded instance of his consideration for that degraded caste was in fact only a single specimen of a more extensive legislation.2 CHAP. XLIX. construc V. In the construction of enormous works of V. Material 1 Suet. Claud. 34.; Senec. de Clem. i. 23. 2 Suet. Claud. 25.: Quod si quis necare mallet quem quam ex ponere, cædis crimine teneri. Comp. Dion, lx. 13, 29. XLIX. tions of Claudius. CHAP. magnificence or utility the Romans beheld the most flattering reflection of their own greatness. The undertakings of Claudius were not unworthy of the colossal age of material creations; yet they were not the mere fantastic conceptions of turgid pride and unlimited power. The vast aqueduct begun, as we have seen, by Caius, was completed, after several years' labour, by his successor, from whom it derived the name of Claudian, by which it was thenceforth distinguished. This channel secured for the city the purest and most abundant of all its supplies of water, and enriched the populace with the cheapest and most cherished of all its luxuries. The charges which have been made against Caius, of having withdrawn first the vessels, and afterwards the carts and waggons of Italy from their ordinary employment in the conveyance of corn and necessaries to the population, and of having left Rome at his death with no more than seven or eight days' consumption of grain in store, though involving probably considerable misrepresentation, seem, nevertheless, to have been grounded on the real imminence of the scarcity which broke out more than once, and lasted for several years, during the government of his successor. It must be considered among the difficulties with which the feeble old man had to contend, and it may serve to enhance our idea of the merits of his laborious administration, that he received from the reckless tyrant before him the legacy of empty granaries, as well as an exhausted treasury.1 It is 1 Aurel. Victor, de Cæsar. 4.; Senec. de brev. vit. 18.; C. Cæsar decedebat.... septem aut octo dierum cibaria superesse. CHAP. not impossible that the ready acquiescence of the XLIX. senate in the choice of the prætorians was determined by the appalling prospect of a famine in the city, a popular riot, and a servile insurrection; and the republicans of the day may well have consented to waive their speculative principles in favour of an emperor, at a moment when the tribes and centuries of antiquity would have demanded the creation of a dictator. It has been seen that the Alexandrian corn ships always came to anchor at Puteoli, more than a hundred miles from the place of their cargo's destination. Such was the want of harbours or secure roadsteads along the surf-vexed strand of Latium, that it was only the smaller coasting vessels of Gaul or Spain that could venture to run to land at any nearer point. The mouth of the Tiber had become nearly choked up by the accumulation of sand, and the few vessels that now sought the quays of Ostia were generally obliged to ride at anchor in the offing. The Roman engineers despaired of clearing and keeping open a passage in the main stream of the river; but they now, under the direction of Claudius, resorted to the plan of cutting a new channel from the right bank, a little above the deserted harbour, and constructing an artificial haven, with the aid of two moles advanced into the sea. The entrance was illuminated by a light-house; and from henceforth, as long as science and industry survived in the capital of the world, the vessels which supplied it with its first necessary could come by day or by night to a safe and convenient anchorage, and transfer their freight to the barges, to be propelled CHAP. XLIX. Romanus, or new harbour at Ostia. against the descending current by the labour of men or horses. To this haven was given the The Portus name of Portus Romanus or Portus Augusti, to distinguish it from the now neglected establishment of Ostia. Claudius himself deserves the entire credit of this bold and salutary undertaking; for he persisted in it in spite of the remonstrances of his timid engineers, and of the vast outlay which it required. Its necessity was speedily shown; for in the eleventh year of his principate the empire was visited by a scarcity, which seems to have followed on the failure of the crops throughout the provinces, and redoubled exertions were required to save the capital from famine. The city was in an uproar; the multitude surrounded the emperor in the Forum, and assailed him with the most violent gestures. The precautions of Augustus on similar occasions, with the expulsion of foreigners from the city, were again resorted to. It was evident that the importation of grain into Rome required to be more carefully systematized than had been done hitherto; and the completion of a harbour to which corn could be brought at all seasons of the year, was wisely followed by a measure to encourage 1 Suet. Claud. 20.; Dion, lx. 11.; Plin. Hist. Nat. ix. 5., xvi. 76. § 2. An immense vessel, which Caius had constructed to convey an obelisk from Alexandria to Rome, was sunk to form the foundation of the mole. 2 Four famines are specially mentioned as occurring in this reign: -1. at Rome in the first and second year; 2. in Judea in the fourth ; 3. in Greece in the ninth; 4. at Rome in the eleventh. Brotier on Tac. Ann. xii. 43. Comp. Suet. Claud. 18.; Joseph. Antiq. Jud. xx. 2. 5.; Act. Apost. xi. 28. the construction of ships of greater magnitude than had usually been employed in the trade. Another undertaking, though its object was merely of local utility, deserves to be recorded for its magnitude. The Marsians had represented to Augustus the disasters to which their country was liable from the swelling of the waters of the lake Fucinus, a basin among their mountains in the heart of Italy, nearly thirty miles in circumference, which receives the drainage of several valleys, but has no apparent natural outlet. Among the limestone hills which encircle it there are probably subterranean clefts through which, as in other regions of similar formation, some portion of its waters drains away; but, if such be the case, they are not capable of expansion with the increase of volume within, and in seasons of unusual wet the level of the lake rose to the lips of its crater, submerging a great extent of valuable land. The tunnel by which the superfluous waters of the Alban lake, a much smaller reservoir, are carried off to this day was a work of the early Republic. But this emissary is little more than a mile in length, while the perforation required for the Fucinus, which Augustus had not the courage to undertake, was not less than three. But Claudius was not deterred by difficulties which labour and a vast expenditure could surmount. He did not, perhaps, stop to calculate with accuracy the real utility of the work. He commanded it to be done, and his command was executed; but it occupied thirty thousand men for eleven years, an amount of labour which no doubt might have been more CHAP. XLIX. The emislake Fuci sary of the nus. |