A Course which sets a New Standard

Outlines of European History

ROBINSON-BREASTED - BEARD

The two volumes which make up the Outlines of European History have been prepared to meet the need expressed in the Report of the Committee of Five urging a two-year course in general history for high schools. In placing emphasis throughout on the conditions and institutions most essential to au understanding of subsequent history, rather than on unrelated events, these books are in full accord with the new spirit in the teaching of history. Moreover, the authors' reputation for sound scholarship is international, and a guaranty of the entire fitness of these texts for class use.

Part I, by James Harvey Robinson, Columbia University, and James Henry Breasted, the University of Chicago, covers Oriental, classical, and mediaeval history to the beginning of the eighteenth century, and includes a wealth of original illustrative materialnotably several "pen etchings" of immense value to a proper understanding of the text. 730 pages, illustrated, $1.50.

Part II, by James Harvey Robinson and Charles A. Beard, Columbia University, covers European history from the eighteenth century to the present time, with emphasis on those movements and policies that have a direct, present-day significance. 555 pages, illustrated, $1.50.

"The Best Introductory Treatise in the English Language."

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY,

December 1, 1914.

GARNER'S POLITICAL SCIENCE is unquestionably the best introductory treatise in the English language, and is excelled only by few of the more advanced treatises on the subject. One especially pleasing characteristic is the author's wide acquaintance with the European literature on the subject. I was particularly interested in the chapter on the Origin of the State. I have gone over that ground in great detail myself and was glad to note that our views are substantially the same and that Prof. Garner had noted all the main stages in the development of the theory. On the other parts of the book I can speak with less authority, but it seems uniformly good throughout.

HARRY E. BARNES, Instructor, Department of Sociology.

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY

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Indispensable for Every History Teacher and Student

THE NEW

MAP OF EUROPE

By Herbert Adams Gibbons, Ph.D., Professor of History at Robert College, Constantinople. Author of "The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire."

Dr. Gibbons has been for years in close touch with the affairs of which he writes, and he has condensed the political history of Europe for the past ten years into this volume-showing the exact bearing of each crisis and incident from the Kaiser's famous visit to Morocco in 1905 up to the outbreak of hostilities in August, 1914.

It is vivid, personal, modern history, written with all the force and vivacity of powerful fiction. Six maps. 8vo, 412 pages. At all booksellers $2.00 net, postage 10 cents.

THE CENTURY CO., Publishers,

The fundamental work on this whole subject is Mommsen's "Römisches Staatsrecht," II, 2, 3d edition, 1887, pp. 743 ff. It has not been translated into English. It appears in French under the title, "Le droit public romain," Vol. 5, 1896. Its ideas are taken into account in every section of this article.

The old constitution of Rome, when strengthened and modified by an organic union between the senate and the first citizen of the republic, we call the principate. It was at once a new kind of government and the creator of a new administrative system-in both of which aspects it must be considered in this article.

Brought into being by Augustus in 27 B. C., the principate was changed profoundly by him four years later. Thereafter, during his lifetime, it was subjected to many minor alterations before being transmitted at his death (14 A. D.) to the scrupulous care of Tiberius, his personal as well as his political heir. In theory, this curious compromise between aristocracy and monarchy for the government of the republic continued to exist till the reign of Diocletian, when the monarch ceased to rule in virtue of a senatorial mandate and a popular election, and came to derive his authority simply from a nomination by his predecessor or a tumultuous acclamation by the army. Therewith the republican substructure was withdrawn definitely from the government. Long since the partnership formed by Augustus between the senate and the prince had been dissolved. By a series of apparently disconnected actions, the prince had squeezed first the senate as a corporation, and then its members individually, out of the business of government, so that the last real senatus consultum was passed in the reign of Septimus Severus (193211 A. D.); and in the reign of Gallienus (253-268 A. D.), the senators, to whom Augustus had reserved all high offices, were excluded specifically from the military administration of the state, and were set apart in the empire simply through the possession of fatal social and fiscal privileges. It is our purpose in this article to review this series of encroachments on aristocratic power; but we have also to notice, what is often confused with it, but is really something quite distinct, the corresponding series of steps by which the power of the prince was increased, first to 1016

Y. (RECAP)

the benefit, later to the detriment, and ultimately to the destruction, of the cities or municipalities of which the empire was composed. For motived, though it was, in a different set of causes, this triumph of central over local authority belongs properly to our theme, since every aggrandizement of the central government, being in fact a gain for the prince alone, disturbed the balance which Augustus had sought to create between the first citizen and the senate.

The

The theory of the principate, to resume, was abandoned only in Diocletian's time; the fundamental institutions of the principate were abandoned gradually in the preceding three hundred years. principate itself, however, as a system of government in which the prince took orders from the senate and people of Rome in domestic or Italian affairs, and enjoyed full discretion of action only in the group of provinces assigned to him, existed only in the mind, or, at most, in the practice of its founder; for from the outset the prince was given rights and powers, not more considerable than the situation demanded, but so extensive that his will was supreme in all matters, even in those in which the decision was reached ostensibly by the senate and people alone. To show that this was the case-that from the very beginning the conditions of which Augustus had to take account were more monarchical than he was himself-is the first task to which we have to give attention.

B. THE FIGHT OF AUGUSTUS FOR VENGEANCE AND FOR ITALY.

Firth, "Augustus Cæsar," 1903; Shuckburgh, “Augustus,” 1903; Ferrero, "The Greatness and Decline of Rome," Vols. III, IV and V, 1908-9; Gardthausen, "Augustus und seine Zeit," 1891-1904; Domaszewski, "Geschichte der römischen Kaiser," 1st edition, 1909.

The conditions which Augustus faced in 27 B. C. were partly the results of a long historical development, and partly of his own creating. The long historical development which tended to evolve the monarchy in Rome has been traced in a preceding article. Hence we may confine ourselves here to a consideration of Augustus's own share in laying the foundations of the principate.

Nearly four years before he took the matter in hand, as a consequence of his victory at Actium (31 B. C.), he had brought under his jurisdiction the eastern provinces of the Roman empire and had con