ufficient to direct alone the politics of an immense empire, which
required, in addition to the sagacity of the administrator and the
ingenuity of the legislator, the resoluteness of the warrior and the
man of action.

The State rapidly fell into a stupor. In Germany, where it was
necessary to proceed to the ordering of the province, everything was
suspended; the people, apparently subdued, were not bound to pay any
tribute, and were left to govern themselves solely and entirely
by their own laws--a strange anomaly in the history of the Roman
conquests, which only the departure of Tiberius can explain. At such
a distance, when he was no longer counselled by Tiberius who so well
understood German affairs, Augustus trusted no other assistants,
fearing lack of zeal and intelligence; distrusting himself also, he
dared initiate nothing in the conquered province. The Senate, inert
as usual, gave it not a thought. So Germany remained an uncertainty,
neither a province nor independent, for fifteen years, a fact wherein
is perhaps to be found the real cause of the catastrophe of Varus,
which ruined the whole German policy of Rome.

Furthermore, in Pannonia and Dalmatia, when it was known that the most
valiant general of Rome was in disgrace at Rodi, the malcontents took
fresh courage, reopened an agitation that could but terminate in
a revolt, much more dangerous than any preceding. In the Orient,
Palestine arose in 4 B.C., on the death of Herod the Great, against
his son, Archelaus, and against the Hellenised monarchy, demanding
to be made a Roman province like Syria, and a frightful civil war
illumined with its sinister glare the cradle of Jesus. The governor
of Syria, Quintilius Varus, threw himself into Judea and succeeded in
crushing the revolt; but Augustus, unable to bring himself either to
give full satisfaction to the Hebrew people or to execute entirely the
testament of Herod, decided as usual on a compromise: he divided
the ancient kingdom of Herod the Great among three of his sons, and
changed Archelaus's title of king to the more modest one of ethnarch.
Then new difficulties arose with the Empire of the Parthians. In
short, vaguely, in every part of the Empire and beyond its borders,
there began to grow the sense that Rome was again weakening; a sense
of doubt due to the decadence of the spirit of tradition and of the
party representing it; to the new spirit of the new generation; and
finally, to the absence of Ti