評論
打印
If the truth be told, the average citizen was sick and tired of anarchy and disorder. He did not care who ruled him pro vided the new master gave him a chance to live quietly and without the noise of eternal street riots. Octavian assured his subjects forty years of peace. He had no desire to extend the frontiers of his domains, In the year 9 A.D. he had contemplated an invasion of the northwestern wilderness which was inhabited by the Teutons. But Varrus, his general, had been killed with all his men in the Teutoburg Woods, and after that the Romans made no further attempts to civilise these wild people.
事實上，一般羅馬百姓對長期的無政府狀態(tài)和混亂局勢早已厭倦。只要新主人給他們一個平靜生活的機會，只要不再聽到時時傳來的街頭的暴動喧囂聲，他們才不在乎誰統(tǒng)治他們呢。渥大維給了他的臣民們40年和平的生活。他沒有繼續(xù)擴張領(lǐng)土的欲望 。公元9年，他對定居于歐洲西北荒野的條頓人發(fā)動了一場戰(zhàn)爭。結(jié)果他的將軍尼祿和所有士兵在條頓堡森林全軍覆沒。從此，羅馬人再未打算教化這些野蠻民族。
They concentrated their efforts upon the gigantic problem of internal reform. But it was too late to do much good. Two centuries of revolution and foreign war had repeatedly killed the best men among the younger generations. It had ruined the class of the free farmers. It had introduced slave labor, against which no freeman could hope to compete. It had turned the cities into beehives inhabited by pauperized and unhealthy mobs of runaway peasants.
他們把精力放在堆積如山的國內(nèi)問題上，試圖挽回局面，不過已經(jīng)為時太晚。兩個世紀(jì)的國內(nèi)革命和對外戰(zhàn)爭使得年輕一代的優(yōu)秀分子死傷殆盡。戰(zhàn)爭摧毀了自由 農(nóng)民，使這個階層歸于消亡。由于大量引進奴隸勞動，自由民根本無法與大莊園主競爭。戰(zhàn)爭還使得城市變成了一個個蜂巢，里面棲居著大量貧苦而骯臟的破產(chǎn)農(nóng)民。
