s of Julius Caesar as
devoted patriots, if not as glorious martyrs to the divine cause of
liberty.

[Illustration: OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS CAESAR

After a bust in the British Museum]

It is easier, perhaps, to describe the growth of Rome from the early
Kings to Augustus, than to account for the change from the Rome of the
Empire at the beginning of our era to the Rome of the Popes in the year
eight hundred. Probably the easiest and truest way of looking at the
transition is to regard it according to the periods of supremacy,
decadence and ultimate disappearance from Rome of the Roman Army. For
the Army made the Emperors, and the Emperors made the times. The great
military organization had in it the elements of long life, together with
all sudden and terrible possibilities. The Army made Tiberius, Caligula,
Claudius and Nero, the Julian Emperors; then destroyed Nero and set up
Vespasian after one or two experiments. The Army chose such men as
Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, and such monsters as Domitian and Commodus;
the Army conquered the world, held the world and gave the world to
whomsoever it pleased. The Army and the Emperor, each the other's tool,
governed Rome for good and ill, for ill and good, by fear and bounty and
largely by amusement, but ultimately to their own and Rome's
destruction.

For all the time the two great adversaries of the Empire, the spiritual
and material, the Christian and the men of the North, were gaining
strength and unity. Under Augustus, Christ was born. Under Augustus,
Hermann the German chieftain destroyed Varus and his legions. By sheer
strength and endurance, the Army widened and broadened the Empire,
forcing back the Northmen upon themselves like a spring that gathers
force by tension. Unnoticed, at first, Christianity quietly grew to
power. Between Christians and Northmen, the Empire of Rome went down at
last, leaving the Empire of Constantinople behind it.

The great change was wrought in about five hundred years, by the Empire,
from the City of the Republic to what had become the City of the Middle
Age; between the reign of Augustus, first Emperor, and the deposition of
the last Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, by Odoacer, Rome's hired
Pomeranian general.

In that time Rome was transubstantiated in all its elements, in
population, in language, in religion and in customs. To all intents and
purposes, the original Latin race utterly disappeared, and the Latin
tongue became the broken dial