the body of ideas, of literary and artistic tastes was communicable to men who had not themselves lived under those conditions. Before the end of the fourth century it had leavened Macedonia and followed Alexander's flag to the ends of the earth; and long after the conqueror's death the ruling powers from the Balkans to the Indus continued to be Greek in speech and mind. Then Rome, the real successor of Alexander, having itself taken all the mental and artistic culture it possesses from the Greeks, steps in to maintain the supremacy of Greek civilization in the east. Hellenism, however, had still to pay the price. The law of ancient history was inexorable: a large state must be a monarchic state. Rome in becoming a world-power became a monarchy. Thus, thanks to despotic kings-first Macedonian, and then Roman - Hellenism is carried far beyond its original borders: the vessel is broken and the long-secreted elixir is poured out for the nations. And the old leaven is still working. "What we call the Western spirit in our own day is really Hellenism reincarnate. . . . All through the chaos the seeds of the old culture were carefully nursed. . . . Men at the Renaissance took up the thoughts of the Greeks again where they had dropped them." "The civilization which perished from India with the extinction of the Greek kings has come back again in the person of the British official." But Hellenism has as yet had very little time to show do" say, in Manchuria !

what it can

We have tried to summarize this chapter because it gives the author's key-note; and, for a translator of Eschylus, his point of view is sufficiently modern. The second chapter, on the "Physical Environment, in a way recalls Ernst Curtius, as does the painstaking topography of the whole work; yet we miss Curtius's vivid autopsy. Following these general chapters, the author proceeds to narrate "the series of events that led up to the virtual conquest of the whole heritage of Alexander by Seleucus" (Chaps. III.-VI.); next he traces the history of his successors down to the assassination of Seleucus III., in so far as that history is concerned with Asia Minor (Chaps. VII.-X.); and then takes each of the other provinces-Syria, Babylonia, Iran, India—in turn to see what can be gleaned of its life under these Hellenistic kings (Chaps. XI.-XIV.). The plan is hardly an ideal one, though we cannot quarrel with Mr. Bevan for not constructing an orderly history out of the scraps at his command; but one may wonder that, having picked up the dropped stitches, he does not seize the moment of Seleucus's fate leaving his empire apparently in the throes of dissolution — to bring his first volume to a close, instead of running on a chapter on the "First Years of Antiochus III."

Thus the second volume would gain a completeness and unity impossible in the first. There is the long reign of Antiochus the Greattwenty years of incessant fighting that wins back well-nigh all that his father and grandfather had lost, until Rome takes a hand, and a decade later the hundred years' struggle of the house of Seleucus for Asia Minor ends with the practical annihilation of the king's army by Scipio at

Magnesia (190 B. C.); and the empire, which had almost been the empire of Alexander, shrinks to a kingdom of Syria (Chaps. XV.-XXI.). Henceforth, the plot has but a single thread, and that is cut short when Pompey appears as conqueror in Syria to settle its affairs in the name of Rome, and the kingdom of the house of Seleucus is come to an utter end (64 B. C.). But not the house; the kings of Commagene boasted its blood, and one of them without a throne but still calling himself king, though he had been a Roman consul and was then an Athenian citizen, enrolled in the deme of Besa set up at Athens as late as 115 A.D. the well-known monument of Philopappos.

Reckoning from "the year of the Greeks" (312 B. C.) — when young Seleucus, whom we have seen slipping out of Babylon four years earlier and riding for his life with fifty horsemen to Egypt, routs Demetrius at Gaza and reëstablishes himself as master in the house of Nebuchadnezzar - until Philip II., and with him the house of Seleucus, finally disappears (56 B. C.), the era of the Seleucids comprises more than a quarter-millennium, and the fortunes of the house touch every height and every depth. Here is room and verge for the historian; and, withal, temptation to let fancy range where fact is not forthcoming. But Mr. Bevan is no romancer: he frankly tells us when the light goes out, and yet from point to point he holds fast his clue. Thus to illustrate at once his frankness and his force:

For us a great cloud comes down upon the contest. History has mainly forgotten it. We can only see dim glints of armies that sweep over Western Asia, and are conscious of an imbroglio of involved wars. But we can understand the stupendous nature of that task which the house of Seleucus set itself to do to hold together under one scepter against all the forces which battered it, forces stronger than any by which the Achæmenian Empire had ever been assailed till the coming of Alexander, against all the elements of disruption which sapped it within, the huge fabric built up by Seleucus Nicator. It was a labour of Sisyphus. The Empire, a magnificent tour de force, had no natural vitality. Its history from the moment it misses the founder's hand is one of decline. It was a "sick man" from its birth. Its construction occupied the few glorious years of Seleucus Nicator, its dissolution the succeeding two and a quarter centuries. Partially restored again and again, it lapses almost immediately into new ruin. The restorations become less and less complete. But it does a great work in propagating and defending Hellenism in the East till the advent of Rome (I. 75ff.).

While candor and sobriety are the chief notes, and the resultant sketchiness and inequality of treatment make but dry reading, these pages are brightened by many a sunburst — as when our author tells over again Polybius's story of the betrayal of Achæus (which General Funston's biographer should not fail to read); or Demetrius's escape from Rome, after the same first-hand authority; or Antiochus's benevolent assimilation of the Jews"the little people" who had hitherto "dwelt separate in their hill country and, while wars rolled past them and king

AM. HIST. REV., VOL. VIII.-9.

doms clashed and changed, nursed the sacred fire and meditated on the Law of the Lord."

In the present state of knowledge, with literary sources mainly at second-hand and scrappy, while over most of the territory in question where the monumental sources lie buried the archeologist has not yet broken ground, no definitive history can be written; but Mr. Bevan has done good work in this fore-study of what must ultimately take its place as a notable chapter in the great history of Hellenism. Should the book ever come to a second edition, which is hardly probable, it would be the better for two or three "helps": first, a chronological table like that prefixed to Mahaffy's Greek Life and Thought; second, side-notes such as make Grote's History and many subsequent works doubly useful and usable; and third, some such digest and critique of authorities as Holm appends to his chapters. The three maps are fair and the plates excellent, presenting a fine series of Seleucid portrait-heads on forty-six coin types. J. IRVING MAnatt.

Augustus: The Life and Times of the Founder of the Roman Empire. By E. S. SHUCKBURGH. (London: T. Fisher Unwin. 1903. Pp. x, 318.)

Augustus Cæsar and the Organisation of the Empire of Rome. By JOHN B. FIRTH. [Heroes of the Nations.] (New York and London G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1903. Pp. xvi, 371.)

"AUGUSTUS," says Shuckburgh, "has been much less attractive to biographers than Iulius; perhaps because the soldier is more interesting. than the statesman; perhaps because the note of genius conspicuous in the Uncle was wanting in the Nephew." Firth, after remarking that to his knowledge no biography of Augustus had yet appeared in English, suggests that "the reason of this apparent neglect may be found in the circumstance that his character is one of the most puzzling in antiquity. The Emperor Julian compared him to a chameleon; Augustus himself signed his State papers with a ring bearing the device of a Sphinx. Both the man and his work remain 'a contradiction still '; theory and practice in his case persistently refuse to be reconciled; one can hardly feel quite sure at any given point in Augustus's life that one knows exactly what he had in mind." Perhaps a still better reason is that the biographer finds extremely little to add to the historian. Firth and Shuckburgh enter a field which has already been well cultivated; historians like Merivale, Schiller, Herzog, and Duruy, whose works include the reign of Augustus, have dealt creditably with the subject, and each in his own way has solved, or attempted to solve, the sphinx-riddle. In approaching these two recent biographies, therefore, we may look for little that is new; but we shall not be disappointed in expecting to find the old material put into a fresher and more convenient form.

The compass of the two works is nearly the same, Shuckburgh treating the subject with somewhat greater detail. After devoting a few pages

to the childhood and youth of Augustus, both writers proceed to narrate his public career in other words, to write the history of Rome during his lifetime. This treatment includes the condition of Rome and the Empire at the death of Julius Cæsar, the political struggles and the civil wars from 43 to 31 B. C., the organization of the imperial government, the provinces, the chief events of the reign of Augustus, his patronage of literature and religion, his family affairs, and his character. As little is known of his motives and feelings, the treatment must be to a great extent impersonal. Lacking therefore the essential feature of biography, a life of Augustus can hardly be more than a chapter from Roman history. For this condition of their subject, however, Firth and Shuckburgh are in no way responsible.

Characteristic of the present trend of opinion is the attitude of these two authors toward the revolution from Republic to Empire. Shuckburgh and Firth are in thorough sympathy with Julius Cæsar and his work; they have no love for the oligarchs, whose mismanagement made the revolution necessary. Though Cicero naturally suffers along with the oligarchs, he is a far better and abler man than he appears to be in Mommsen's history; he is "the great man" (Shuckburgh), "the patriot statesman — and with all his faults no Roman better deserved that honourable name" (Firth). Young Octavius falls heir to the sympathy for Julius felt by the biographers. They fully appreciate his ability and especially his inborn talent for intrigue; and they follow with admiration his early career, without attempting to make black white, or to deny or excuse his cruelty in the proscriptions of 43 B. C.

One of the most interesting and most extensively discussed subjects connected with Augustus is the character of his government. Whereas earlier writers had uniformly described the government of Augustus as "a monarchy disguised in republican forms," Mommsen declared it to have been a dyarchy — a division of authority between the Senate and the prince, and his view is now accepted by most scholars, who apply it with more or less consistency to the treatment of the early Empire. But Shuckburgh, after mentioning this view, insists that Augustus was really "a monarch, whose will was only limited by those forces of circumstance and sentiment to which the most autocratic of sovereigns have at times been forced to bow." Firth, following the present trend of thought, says of Augustus:

He

His great aim was to graft the Principate upon the Republic. did not wish to uproot the old tree and plant a new one; his desire was to furnish the old tree with a new branch, which should be the most vital of all its limbs. In the constitution were many magistracies; he added yet another. If it was one of extraordinary scope and power, the justification was that the times required it.

Though the magisterial powers of the prince were vast, the government was not for that reason a monarchy pure and simple. It was still a republic in the theory expressed by Augustus and accepted by the Senate; but in fact the term dyarchy aptly applies to it because of (1)

the division of the Roman world into Italy and the Empire, each with peculiar administrative principles and machinery; (2) the division of the Empire into senatorial provinces and imperial provinces; (3) the two treasuries; (4) the two sets of officials. But Firth supposes that the dyarchy fell at the accession of Tiberius, if not before, whereas writers generally continue it to Domitian or even to Aurelian. For the right understanding of this subject it is advantageous to separate the arbitrary acts of the emperors from the legitimate working of the constitution. This discrimination is necessary, especially as the period of the early Empire was one in which usurpation and tyranny were easy.

The final chapter of each book is devoted to the great enigma — the character and aims of Augustus. Firth minutely analyzes the first emperor's character; Shuckburgh, avoiding detail, finds space for a brief estimate of the intimate friends of Augustus. Firth, more ready than Shuckburgh to accept the gossip of Suetonius, discovers in the emperor a combination of loose morality and asceticism. Both authors, while bearing in mind the hypocrisy of his position, rightly appreciate the substantial nature of his achievements. Firth says in conclusion:

He knitted together the Roman world, east and west, into one great organisation of which the emperor stood as the supreme head. He set his legions upon the distant frontiers and their swords formed a wall of steel, within which commerce and peace might flourish. . . . Augustus started the Roman world on a new career. He made it realise its unity for the first time. That was his life-work, and its consequences remain to this day.

On the whole, Shuckburgh treats the subject more objectively, and is perhaps a little more careful in his statement of facts, though Firth's book will doubtless prove more interesting to the general reader. Both writers, however, are attractive as well as scholarly, and their works will certainly be helpful to all who are interested in Augustus and his age. GEORGE WILLIS BOTSFORD.

An Introduction to the History of Western Europe. By JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON, Professor of History in Columbia University. (Boston: Ginn and Company. 1903. Pp. x, 714.)

In the opinion of the writer this is the best manual of general European history which has yet appeared in English. And the reason for Professor Robinson's comparative success in the impossible task of compressing into seven hundred readable pages a clear account of the chief events and movements of European history from the barbarian invasions of the fifth century to the formation of the kingdom of Italy and the German Empire appears to be the consistent application to his task of two principles omission and emphasis. Mr. Robinson has proved the sincerity of the opinion expressed in his preface, that most elementary manuals of history mention too many men and too many facts, and has avoided producing a book which by expecting the student to learn too much runs the danger of teaching him nothing. The author's omissions