exhausted; the upbuilding forces were still very
weak; the world of the time was in unstable equilibrium, violent
perturbations certainly yet possible. Without doubt, it is hard to say
what would have happened if, instead of being governed by the policy
of Augustus, the world had fallen into the hands of an adventurous
oligarchy like that which gathered around Alexander the Great; but we
can at least affirm that the sagacity and prudence of Augustus, which
twenty centuries afterward appear as inactivity, did much to avoid
such disturbances, the consequences of which, in a world so exhausted,
would have been grave.

Nor is it correct to believe that this policy was easy. Moderation
and passivity, even when good for the governed, rust and waste away
governments, which must always be doing something, even if it be only
making mistakes. In fact, while supreme power usually brings return
and much return to him who exercises it, especially in monarchies, it
cost instead, and unjustly, to Augustus and Tiberius. Augustus had to
offer to the monster, as Tiberius called the Empire, almost all his
family, beginning with the beloved Julia, and had to spend for the
state almost all his fortune. We know that although in the last twenty
years of his life he received by many bequests a sum amounting to a
billion and four hundred million sesterces, he left his heirs only one
hundred and fifty million sesterces, all the rest having been spent by
him for the Republic: this was the singular civil list of this curious
monarch, who, instead of fleecing his subjects, spent for them almost
all he had. It is vain to speak of Tiberius: the Empire cost him the
only thing that perhaps he held dear, his fame. A philosophic history
would be wrong in not recognising the grandeur of these sacrifices,
which are the last glory of the Roman nobility. The old political
spirit of the Roman nobility gave to Augustus and Tiberius the
strength to make these sacrifices, and they probably saved ancient
civilisation from a most difficult crisis.

It may be observed that Augustus and Tiberius worked for the Empire
and the future without realising it. Far from understanding that the
economic progress of their time would unify the Empire better than
could their laws and their legions, they feared it; they believed
that it would everywhere diffuse "corruption," even in the armies,
and therefore weaken the imperial power of resistance against the
barbarians on the