Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ... m THE TRIAL OF PISO IV T EARLY a century had passed since the trial of ' Verres, and more than eighty years since the trial of Clodius. The quarrels of the Roman aristocracy, which had given birth to those two extraordinary and sensational trials, had kindled the spark of two dreadful civil wars, in the course of which the Empire had narrowly escaped complete dissolution. Gradually, however, order had been re-established. From the midst of the discords of the aristocracy, one family had emerged and succeeded in acquiring preponderating influence: the family of the Caesars. First, Augustus for forty-two years, and, for the three years succeeding his death, his stepson and adopted son Tiberius, had governed the State as principes, or life-presidents, accumulating in their own hands powers of the most diverse kinds--the supreme command of the legions, the presidency of the Senate, the high-priesthood, the surveillance of the most important provinces--and at the same time making every effort to keep the ancient machinery of republican government working with as little friction as possible under such widely different conditions and in control of an empire of so much vaster extent. No law had laid it down that this power should be hereditary; but the force of circumstances--the exhaustion of the ancient nobility, the weakness of the Senate, the dying out of all the parties and all the powerful cabals which for centuries had bulked so large in the Republic--made of this family, little by little, the mistress of the Empire's destinies. If, however, the violent disputes of parties no longer raged in the Senate; if blows were no longer exchanged in the Forum when the election of the magistrates or the discussion of the laws was toward; if the...
