The Historians' History of the World 06 [The Early Roman Empire]

The abundant resources of the fertile valley of the Nile were united and almost doubled by a homogeneous and strictly centralised administrative body; Egypt was ruled by a scribbling bureaucracy of a kind up to that time unknown to the ancient world; and its inhabitants, though wholly unaccustomed to arms by long disuse, were none the less hard to rule. A great proportion of the fertile land was the private property of the prince, as it has been down to our own times; but this very proprietorship, coupled with the excitable temper of the populace of a great city like Alexandria, placed great obstacles in the way of regular government, and would have rendered it absolutely impossible had not a military been quartered in the country in sufficient strength to maintain order. The presence of several legions in Egypt was in itself enough to give the Cæsar reason for excluding senatorial government; and the Cæsars always strove with jealous care to keep men of the senatorial class away from Egypt, because the consequences of an attempt at rebellion there might well have been most serious.

Cæsar the dictator had in his time been confronted with the question as to whether he should permit the continuance of the independence of Egypt, already forfeit in fact; and the motive that finally made him decide in its favour (apart from his love for Cleopatra) was that the most formidable rival to Rome there would be her own representative. The reasons that led the dictator to maintain the political existence of Egypt likewise induced his son to maintain the old state of things under certain limitations. As a ruler and organiser the latter is distinguished by his regard for historic continuity.

[30 B.C.-14 A.D.]

Now in Egypt, with its fertile soil and dense population, a strong monarchic government is in a manner prescribed by the character and history of the country; as is demonstrated by the whole course of its development from the earliest beginnings of human civilisation down to the present day. Cæsar therefore desired to make no more alteration in the peculiar and intricate conditions of Egypt than was absolutely necessary, and to leave the rest as it was. The Cæsar merely stepped into the place of the kings of the Ptolemaic dynasty, and thus brought Egypt into connection with Rome by a kind of personal union.

The most important change was that the sovereign no longer resided at Alexandria but at Rome, and that the great offices of the Egyptian court, the chief master of the ceremonies, the grand master of the household, and the chief forester, were not filled by fresh appointments; though the scholars of the famous Museum of Alexandria enjoyed the same patronage and encouragement as before. At the head of this richly endowed institution was a priest, formerly appointed by the king and in future to be appointed by the Cæsar. The latter regarded himself as in every respect the successor of the Ptolemies, and caused the Egyptian priests to do him honour with the very ceremonial that had grown up under his predecessors. It is true that the Roman emperors did not habitually reside in Alexandria, but their viceroys had to assist at all the religious rites in which the Ptolemies had formerly taken part, for the new ruler was wise enough to introduce no alteration whatever in matters of religion. The ancient gods of Egypt, which had survived the dominion of the Greeks, continued to exist as before, in peaceful association with the gods of Greece. The Egyptian gods were naturally wroth at the fall of the monarchy; their statues turned a gloomy gaze upon their worshippers, Apis bellowed hideously and even shed tears. But Cæsar was not disconcerted; he did indeed decline in his own person to visit the Apis of Memphis on his journey through Egypt, but he did not put the least hindrance in the way of his worship by the Egyptians, still less did he dream of starting a propaganda in Egypt on behalf of the state religion of Rome.