One other tumult, more central and in that sense more serious, intruded on the Roman system. Just a century after the rise of Augustus, the tyrannies of his successor Nero became so unbearable that even his own senate turned against him; and he was slain, without having appointed a successor. The purely military character of the Empire was at once revealed. Different armies each upheld their own general as emperor. The claimants attacked one another in turn, and the strongest won. The turmoil lasted for only a year or so, just long enough for the distant legions to gather around Rome; the bloodshed was nothing as compared to former ages; the helpless senate acquiesced in each new proclamation of each successful army; and the rest of the world, scarce even jarred in its daily course, flowed on as before.
On the whole, then, these two hundred years were one long period of peace. It was Augustus who for the first time in centuries closed the gates of the war-god's temple in Rome. He encouraged literature, and we have the "Augustan" age. He boasted that he found Rome built of bricks, and left it of marble. He and his successors did far more than that. They constructed roads extending from end to end of their domains. Communication became easy; a mail post was established; people began to travel for pleasure. The nations of the world intermingled freely, and discovered, for the first time on earth, that they were much alike. The universal brotherhood of man may be not even yet fully recognized and welcomed; but the first step toward its acknowledgment was taken under imperial Rome.
This brings us to a very solemn thought. Many earnest men have believed that they see a divine Providence running through the whole course of history, and nowhere more obvious than here. They point to the careers of both Greece and Rome as being a special preparation for the coming of the Christ. The mission of Greece, they tell us, was to arouse the mind of man, to make him capable of thought and sensitive to spiritual beauty; that of Rome was to teach him the value of law and peace, and yet more, to draw all men together, that all might have opportunity to hear the lessons of the new faith.