AUGUSTUS AS EMPEROR Frontispiece UNDER CÆSARS’ SHADOW BY HENRY FRANCIS COLBY, D.D. Illustrated THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 440 FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK MCMXVIII Copyright, 1918, by The Neale Publishing Company Copyright, 1918, by The Neale Publishing Company...

Like ruler, like people! Kings and emperors are conspicuous specimens of the character of their times. They are centers around which revolve the prevailing tastes and passions of men. They also influence and control the minds of their subjects. If we would know the spirit of any period of history, we need only to fix our gaze upon the individuals in power at that time. If we would ascertain, therefore, what sort of a world it was into which Jesus Christ came; how impossible it was that He should

We read in the second chapter of Luke’s Gospel that “it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled.” The common version of the New Testament says, “taxed.” But the revised version, following more closely the original Greek, says, “enrolled.” It was what we call at the present day a registration, made in order that none should escape the subsequent taxation. The sacred narrative continues. “All went to enroll themselves, every

After Cæsar Augustus came Tiberius Cæsar. His father’s name was Tiberius Claudius Nero. His mother was the famous Livia Drusilla. She was afterward taken away from her husband to become the wife of the Emperor Augustus, with whom, as we have already shown, she shared the honors and power of his distinguished career. Tiberius and his full brother Drusus,—younger than himself,—became, therefore, the stepsons of Augustus. While still a youth Tiberius appeared in honor upon several occasions, and on

The third Roman emperor was Caligula. His real name was Caius. He was a son of Germanicus and Agrippina first, and a grandson of Drusus, who was a brother of the Emperor Tiberius. On his mother’s side he was a great-grandson of Augustus. Tiberius seems to have preferred him for his successor to Tiberius Gemellus, his own grandson. Caius was brought up chiefly in the royal court and was, as we have seen, in company with Tiberius in much of the luxurious dissipation of that monarch’s later days in

After Caligula’s death the Senate was convened in the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill,—not in the accustomed Curia or Senate House, because that bore the now hated name of Julian from the family to which the slain emperor belonged. The body first of all issued decrees denouncing the tyranny of Caligula and giving honor to the “restorers of public freedom,” as the assassins were called, and especially to the ringleader of these, Chærea. They also granted a remission of some of the most u

Lucius Domitius Nero, the next Roman emperor, was, as we have seen, the stepson of Claudius and the grandson of the famous Germanicus, who was a brother of Claudius. His mother was Agrippina II, the sister of Caligula. This Agrippina became the last wife of Claudius; but Nero was her son by her former husband, Lucius Domitius. The Domitian gens, or family, had been a famous one for several generations and the particular branch of it to which Nero’s father belonged, namely, the Ahenobarbi, or bra

In these brief reviews, which we have now made of the careers of the five great Cæsars of the New Testament period, we have caught many impressions of the dark character of that world into which Christ came and in which His kingdom had to make its first spiritual conquests. It was an age of vast wealth and power, but these were concentrated in the hands of a few. Enormous sums were spent on ostentatious displays, on epicurean feasts, and on sumptuous couches. The great masses of men were poor an