tion into the public councils. Inclined to peace by his temper
and situation, it was easy for him to discover that Rome, in her present
exalted situation, had much less to hope than to fear from the chance
of arms; and that, in the prosecution of remote wars, the undertaking
became every day more difficult, the event more doubtful, and the
possession more precarious, and less beneficial. The experience of
Augustus added weight to these salutary reflections, and effectually
convinced him that, by the prudent vigor of his counsels, it would be
easy to secure every concession which the safety or the dignity of Rome
might require from the most formidable barbarians. Instead of exposing
his person and his legions to the arrows of the Parthians, he obtained,
by an honorable treaty, the restitution of the standards and prisoners
which had been taken in the defeat of Crassus. [1]

[Footnote 1: Dion Cassius, (l. liv. p. 736,) with the annotations
of Reimar, who has collected all that Roman vanity has left upon the
subject. The marble of Ancyra, on which Augustus recorded his own
exploits, asserted that he compelled the Parthians to restore the
ensigns of Crassus.]

His generals, in the early part of his reign, attempted the reduction
of Ethiopia and Arabia Felix. They marched near a thousand miles to
the south of the tropic; but the heat of the climate soon repelled the
invaders, and protected the un-warlike natives of those sequestered
regions. [2] The northern countries of Europe scarcely deserved the
expense and labor of conquest. The forests and morasses of Germany were
filled with a hardy race of barbarians, who despised life when it was
separated from freedom; and though, on the first attack, they seemed to
yield to the weight of the Roman power, they soon, by a signal act
of despair, regained their independence, and reminded Augustus of the
vicissitude of fortune. [3] On the death of that emperor, his testament
was publicly read in the senate. He bequeathed, as a valuable legacy to
his successors, the advice of confining the empire within those limits
which nature seemed to have placed as its permanent bulwarks and
boundaries: on the west, the Atlantic Ocean; the Rhine and Danube on
the north; the Euphrates on the east; and towards the south, the sandy
deserts of Arabia and Africa. [4]

[Footnote 2: Strabo, (l. xvi. p. 780,) Pliny the elder, (Hist. Natur. l.
vi. c. 32, 35, [28, 29,]) and Dion Cassius, (l. liii. p. 723,