should have found men who would have been at home in Greek or Carthaginian drawing-rooms, so to say; though the break-up of a forgotten civilization there had left the country in fragments and small warfares and disorder.  If you read the earliest Spanish accounts of their conquests in the new world, you cannot escape the feeling that, no such long ages ago, Spain was in touch with America; not so many centuries, say, before Hamilcar went to Spain.  Such accounts are no doubt unscientific; but may be the more intuitional and true and indicative for that.  When Augustus turned his eyes on Spain, Basque and Celtic chieftains in the northern mountains and along the shores of Biscay, the semi-decivilized membra disjecta of past civilizations, were always disposed to make trouble for the Roman south.  He could not have left them alone, except at the cost of keeping huge garrisons along the border, with perpetual alarms for the province.  So he went there in person, and began the work of conquering those mountains in B.C. 27.  It was a long and difficult war with hideous doings on both sides:  the Romans crucified the Spaniards, and the Spaniards jeered at them from their crosses.  This because Augustus was too sick to attend to things himself; half the time he was at death’s door.  Not till he could afford to take Agrippa from work elsewhere was any real progress made.  But at one point we see his own hand strike into it; and the incident is very instructive.

Spain had her Vercingetorix in one Corocotta, a Celt who kept all Roman efforts useless and all Roman commanders tantalized and nervous till a reward of fifty thousand dollars was offered for his capture.  Augustus, recovered a little, was in camp; and things were going ill with the Spainiards.  One day an important-looking Celt walked in, and demanded to see the Caesar upon business connected with the taking of Corocotta.  Led into the Caesar’s presence, he was asked what he wanted.—­“Fifty-thousand dollars,” said he; “I am Corocotta.”  Augustus laughed long and loud; shook hands with him heartily; paid him the money down, and gave him his liberty into the bargain; whereafter soon this Quijote espanol married a Roman wife, and as Caius Julius Corocottus “lived happily ever after.”  It was a change from the ‘generous’ Julius’ treatment of Vercingetorix; but that Rome profited by the precedent thus established, we may judge from Claudius’ treatment of the third Celtic hero who fell into Roman hands,—­Caradoc of Wales.

Spain was only one of the many places where the frontier had to be settled.  The empire was a nebulous affair; you could not say where it began and ended; and to bring all out of this nebulosity was one of the labors that awaited Augustus.  Even a Messenger of the Gods is limited by the conditions he finds in the world; and is as great as his age will allow him to be.  Though an absolute monarch, he cannot change human nature.  He must concentrate on