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.
事实上，一般罗马百姓对长期的无政府状态和混乱局势早已厌倦。只要新主人给他们一个平静生活的机会，只要不再听到时时传来的街头的暴动喧嚣声，他们才不在乎谁统治他们呢。渥大维给了他的臣民们40年和平的生活。他没有继续扩张领土的欲望 。公元9年，他对定居于欧洲西北荒野的条顿人发动了一场战争。结果他的将军尼禄和所有士兵在条顿堡森林全军覆没。从此，罗马人再未打算教化这些野蛮民族。
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.
他们把精力放在堆积如山的国内问题上，试图挽回局面，不过已经为时太晚。两个世纪的国内革命和对外战争使得年轻一代的优秀分子死伤殆尽。战争摧毁了自由 农民，使这个阶层归于消亡。由于大量引进奴隶劳动，自由民根本无法与大庄园主竞争。战争还使得城市变成了一个个蜂巢，里面栖居着大量贫苦而肮脏的破产农民。
