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THE HISTORIANS’ HISTORY OF THE WORLD

[Illustration: MOMMSEN]




                             THE HISTORIANS’
                                 HISTORY
                              OF THE WORLD

    A comprehensive narrative of the rise and development of nations
   as recorded by over two thousand of the great writers of all ages:
    edited, with the assistance of a distinguished board of advisers
                          and contributors, by

                       HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, LL.D.

                             [Illustration]

                         IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES

                    VOLUME VI--THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE

                           The Outlook Company
                                New York

                         The History Association
                                 London

                                  1904

                            COPYRIGHT, 1904,
                        BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

                         _All rights reserved._

                       Press of J. J. Little & Co.
                          Astor Place, New York




Contributors, and Editorial Revisers.


  Prof. Adolf Erman, University of Berlin.
  Prof. Joseph Halévy, College of France.
  Prof. Thomas K. Cheyne, Oxford University.
  Prof. Andrew C. McLaughlin, University of Michigan.
  Prof. David H. Müller, University of Vienna.
  Prof. Alfred Rambaud, University of Paris.

  Prof. Eduard Meyer, University of Berlin.
  Dr. James T. Shotwell, Columbia University.
  Prof. Theodor Nöldeke, University of Strasburg.
  Prof. Albert B. Hart, Harvard University.
  Dr. Paul Brönnle, Royal Asiatic Society.
  Dr. James Gairdner, C.B., London.

  Prof. Ulrich von Wilamowitz Möllendorff, University of Berlin.
  Prof. H. Marnali, University of Budapest.
  Dr. G. W. Botsford, Columbia University.
  Prof. Julius Wellhausen, University of Göttingen.
  Prof. Franz R. von Krones, University of Graz.
  Prof. Wilhelm Soltau, Zabern University.

  Prof. R. W. Rogers, Drew Theological Seminary.
  Prof. A. Vambéry, University of Budapest.
  Prof. Otto Hirschfeld, University of Berlin.
  Baron Bernardo di San Severino Quaranta, London.
  Prof. F. York Powell, Oxford University.
  Dr. John P. Peters, New York.

  Dr. S. Rappoport, School of Oriental Languages, Paris.
  Prof. Hermann Diels, University of Berlin.
  Prof. C. W. C. Oman, Oxford University.
  Prof. I. Goldziher, University of Vienna.
  Prof. E. C. Fleming, University of West Virginia.
  Prof. R. Koser, University of Berlin.




CONTENTS


                                VOLUME VI

                         THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE

                                                                      PAGE

  THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE: A SKETCH, by Dr. Otto Hirschfeld               1

                              INTRODUCTION

  THE SCOPE, THE SOURCES AND THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE HISTORY OF IMPERIAL
  ROME                                                                  15

                              CHAPTER XXIX

  THE EMPIRE AND THE PROVINCES (15 B.C.-14 A.D.)                        25

    Augustus makes Egypt his private province, 43. Administration
    of the provinces, 47. Army and navy under Augustus, 49.

                               CHAPTER XXX

  THE GERMAN PEOPLE AND THE EMPIRE (16 B.C.-19 A.D.)                    56

    The German War of Independence against Rome, 59. The battle
    of Teutoburg Forest, 64. The campaigns of Germanicus, 69.
    Victories of Germanicus, 71. Gruesome relics in Teutoburg
    Forest, 72. The return march, 72. Battling with Arminius, 74.
    Germanicus recalled to Rome, 76. End of Marboduus and Arminius,
    76.

                              CHAPTER XXXI

  THE AGE OF AUGUSTUS: ASPECTS OF ITS CIVILISATION (30 B.C.-14 A.D.)    78

    Empire is peace, 78. Comparison between Augustus and Napoleon
    III, 80. The Roman Empire compared with modern England, 84. The
    Roman constitution, 86. Augustus named imperator for life, 87.
    The imperator named Princeps Senatus and Pontifex Maximus, 88.
    Tightening the reins of power, 90. Panem et Circenses: Food
    and games, 91. Pauperising the masses, 92. Games: Gladiatorial
    contests, 94. Races and theatricals, 96. Novum seculum: The
    new birth for Rome, 97. Literature of the Golden Age, 101.
    Merivale’s estimate of Livy, 107. Livy as the artistic limner
    of the Roman people, 109. The spirit of the times, 112.

                              CHAPTER XXXII

  THE LAST YEARS OF AUGUSTUS (21 B.C.-14 A.D.)                         116

    The personal characteristics of Augustus, 120. A brief résumé
    of the character and influence of Augustus, 129.

                             CHAPTER XXXIII

  THE IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS OF AUGUSTUS: TIBERIUS, CALIGULA, AND
  CLAUDIUS (14-54 A.D.)                                                133

    Tiberius (Tiberius Claudius Nero Cæsar), 133. Expeditions
    of Germanicus; victory of Idistavisus, 134. Early years of
    successful government by Tiberius, 134. Death of Germanicus;
    external affairs, 136. Internal government, 142. Velleius
    Paterculus eulogises Tiberius, 148. The fall of Sejanus, 151.
    Tacitus describes the last days of Tiberius, 154. Suetonius
    characterises Tiberius, 156. Merivale’s estimate of Tiberius,
    157. The character of the times, 159. Caligula (Caius Julius
    Cæsar Caligula), 160. Suetonius describes Caligula, 163.
    Claudius (Tiberius Claudius Drusus Cæsar), 168. The misdeeds
    of Messallina described by Tacitus, 171. The intrigues of
    Agrippina, 176. Tacitus describes the murder of Claudius, 178.
    The character of Claudius, 179. The living Claudius eulogised
    by Seneca, 180. The dead Claudius satirised by Seneca, 181.

                              CHAPTER XXXIV

  NERO: LAST EMPEROR OF THE HOUSE OF CÆSAR (54-68 A.D.)                184

    Nero (Claudius Cæsar Drusus Germanicus), 184. Corbulo and
    the East, 186. The Roman province of Britain, 188. The war
    with Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, 190. Britain again a
    peaceful province, 193. Burrus and Seneca, 194. Octavia put
    to death, 196. The great fire at Rome; persecution of the
    Christians, 199. Conspiracy met by cruelty and persecution,
    202. Personal characteristics of Nero, according to Suetonius,
    206. Merivale’s estimate of Nero and his times, 208. Nero in
    Greece, 215. Nero’s return to Italy and triumphant entry into
    Rome, 218. Discontent in the provinces, 219. Galba is saluted
    imperator by his soldiers, 220. The death of Nero, 223.

                              CHAPTER XXXV

  GALBA, OTHO, VITELLIUS, AND THE THREE FLAVIANS (68-96 A.D.)          225

    Galba (Servius Sulpicius Galba), 225. Otho (M. Salvius Otho),
    226. Vitellius (Aulus Vitellius), 228. Vespasian (T. Flavius
    Sabinus Vespasianus), 231. Vespasian performs miracles and
    sees a vision, according to Tacitus, 232. Vespasian returns
    to Rome, 233. Titus continues the Jewish war, 234. Josephus
    describes the return of Titus and the triumph, 236. The empire
    in peace, 240. Banishment and death of Helvidius, 241. Sabinus
    and Epponina, 242. The character and end of Vespasian, 243. A
    classical estimate of Vespasian, 244. Personality of Vespasian,
    246. Titus (T. Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus II), 247. The
    destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, 250. Pliny’s account
    of the eruption, 253. Agricola in Britain, 255. The death of
    Titus, 255. Domitian (Titus Flavius Domitianus), 257. Suetonius
    on the death and character of Domitian, 261. A retrospective
    glance over the government of the first century of Empire, 262.

                              CHAPTER XXXVI

  THE FIVE GOOD EMPERORS: NERVA TO MARCUS AURELIUS (96-180 A.D.)       267

    Nerva (M. Cocceius Nerva), 267. Trajan (M. Ulpius Trajanus
    Crinitus), 268. The first Dacian war, 269. Trajan dictates
    terms to Decebalus, 271. The second Dacian war, 273. Oriental
    campaigns and death of Trajan, 274. The correspondence of
    Pliny and Trajan, 276. Trajan’s column, 277. Hadrian (P.
    Ælius Hadrianus), 280. The varied endowments of Hadrian, 281.
    Hadrian’s tours, 282. Hadrian as builder and administrative
    reformer, 284. Personal traits and last days of Hadrian, 286.
    Renan’s estimate of Hadrian, 288. Hadrian as patron of the
    arts, 289. Antoninus (Titus Aurelius Antoninus Pius), 290.
    Renan’s characterisation of Antoninus, 292. Marcus Aurelius (M.
    Ælius Aurelius Antoninus), 294. The plague and the death of
    Verus, 296. Border wars, 296. The revolt of Avidius, 299. An
    imperial tour and a triumph, 300. Last campaigns and death of
    Aurelius, 303. Merivale compares Aurelius and Alfred the Great,
    305. Gibbon’s estimate of Marcus Aurelius and of the age of the
    Antonines, 305.

                             CHAPTER XXXVII

  THE PAGAN CREEDS AND THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY                        307

    Stoicism and the Empire, 308. Christians and the Empire, 313.
    The Christian and the Jew, 315. Religious assemblies of the
    Christians, 317. Christianity and the law, 318. The infancy
    of the Church, 320. Persecutions under Nero, 321. Persecution
    under Trajan and the Antonines, 324.

                             CHAPTER XXXVIII

  ASPECTS OF CIVILISATION OF THE FIRST TWO CENTURIES OF THE EMPIRE     329

    The spirit of the times, 329. Manners and customs, 335.
    Suppers and banquets, 339. The circles, 342. Public readings,
    345. Libraries and book-making, 346. The ceremony of a Roman
    marriage, 349. The status of women, 352. Paternal authority
    and adoption: The slavery of children, 356. The institution of
    slavery, 359. Games and recreations, 367. The Roman theatre
    and amphitheatre, 370. Sheppard’s estimate of the gladiatorial
    contest, 375.

                              CHAPTER XXXIX

  A HALF CENTURY OF DECLINE: COMMODUS TO ALEXANDER SEVERUS
  (161-235 A.D.)                                                       377

    Commodus, 378. Cruelties and death of Commodus, 379. Pertinax
    (P. Helvius Pertinax), 382. Julianus (M. Didius Severus
    Julianus), 383. Severus (L. Septimius Severus), 385. Conquests
    of Severus, 387. Caracalla (M. Aurelius Antoninus Caracalla),
    391. Macrinus (M. Opilius Macrinus), 393. Elagabalus (Narius
    Avibus Bassianus), 395. Dion Cassius on the accession and reign
    of Elagabalus, 396. Alexander Severus (M. Aurelius Alexander
    Severus), 400. Renan’s characterisation of the period, 403.

                               CHAPTER XL

  CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED: THE SECOND HALF OF THE THIRD CENTURY
  OF EMPIRE (235-285 A.D.)                                             406

    Maximin (C. Julius Verus Maximinus), 408. Rival emperors and
    the death of Maximin, 409. Pupienus (M. Clodius Pupienus
    Maximus), Balbinus (D. Cælius Balbinus), and Gordian (M.
    Antonius Gordianus), 411. Philip (M. Julius Philippus),
    412. Decius (C. Messius Quintus Trajanus Decius), 413.
    Gallus (C. Vibius Trebonianus Gallus), 414. Æmilianus (C.
    Julius Æmilianus), 414. Valerian (P. Licinius Valerianus)
    and Gallienus (P. Licinius Gallienus), 415. Gallienus (P.
    Licinius Gallienus), 417. The thirty tyrants, 418. Claudius (M.
    Aurelius Claudius), 420. Aurelian (L. Domitius Aurelianus),
    421. Aurelian walls Rome and invades the East, 422. Zosimus
    describes the defeat of Zenobia, 423. The fall of Palmyra,
    424. Aurelian quells revolts; attempts reforms; is murdered,
    426. Tacitus (M. Claudius Tacitus), 427. Probus (M. Aurelius
    Probus), 428. The Isaurian robbers, 430. Carus, Numerianus and
    Carinus, 431.

                               CHAPTER XLI

  NEW HOPE FOR THE EMPIRE: THE AGE OF DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE
  (286-337 A.D.)                                                       433

    Diocletian appoints Maximian Co-Regent, 433. The fourfold
    division of power, 434. Diocletian persecutes the Christians,
    436. Abdication of Diocletian and Maximian; the two new Cæsars,
    437. Strife among the rulers, 438. Constantine wars with
    Maxentius, 439. Struggle between Constantine and Licinius, 442.
    The long truce between the emperors: Reforms of Constantine,
    445. Constantine and Licinius again at war, 447. Constantine
    besieges Byzantium, 448. Constantine, sole ruler, founds
    Constantinople, 450. The old metropolis and the new: Rome and
    Constantinople, 453. Character of Constantine the Great, 454.
    Constantine and Crispus, 457. The heirs of Constantine, 460.
    The aged Constantine and the Samaritans, 462. Last days of
    Constantine, 465.

                              CHAPTER XLII

  THE SUCCESSORS OF CONSTANTINE TO THE DEATH OF JULIAN (337-363 A.D.)  466

    War of the Brother Emperors, 469. Constantius and Magnentius,
    470. Constantius sole emperor, 472. The fate of Gallus, 476.
    Constantius and Julian, 477. The Quadian and Sarmatian
    wars, 478. Sapor’s invasion of Mesopotamia, 479. Julian in
    Gaul, 481. Julian repulses the Alamanni and the Franks, 483.
    Expedition beyond the Rhine, 485. Julian as civic ruler, 486.
    The jealousy of Constantius, 488. Julian acclaimed Augustus,
    491. Constantius versus Julian, 493. The death of Constantius;
    Julian sole emperor, 497. The religion of Julian, 498. Julian
    invades the East, 499. A battle by the Tigris, 503. The pursuit
    of Sapor, 505. Julian’s death, 508.

                              CHAPTER XLIII

  JOVIAN TO THEODOSIUS (363-395 A.D.)                                  510

    Election of Jovian (Flavius Claudius Jovianus), 510. Sapor
    assails the Romans, 511. The humiliation of the Romans, 512.
    Valentinian and Valens, 516. Invasion of the Goths in the
    East; battle of Hadrianopolis and death of Valens, 520. Valens
    marches against the Goths, 523. Theodosius named Augustus,
    525. Virtues of Theodosius, 528. Tumult in Antioch, 529. The
    sedition of Thessalonica, 531. Theodosius and Ambrose, 532.
    Last days of Theodosius, 534.

                              CHAPTER XLIV

  THE DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE (395-408 A.D.)                            535

    Arcadius and Honorius succeed Theodosius, 535. Alaric invades
    Greece, 543.

                               CHAPTER XLV

  THE GOTHS IN ITALY (408-423 A.D.)                                    550

    Alaric invades Italy, 550. Honorius retires to Ravenna; Attalus
    named Emperor, 556. Attalus deposed; Rome sacked by Alaric,
    559. Death of Alaric; succession of Atawulf, 564. Constantine
    and Gerontius; Constantius, 566.

                              CHAPTER XLVI

  THE HUNS AND THE VANDALS (423-455 A.D.)                              572

    The Gothic historian Jordanes on the battle of Châlons, 587.
    The invasion of Italy; the foundation of Venice, 591. The
    retreat of Attila, 592.

                              CHAPTER XLVII

  THE FALL OF ROME (430-476 A.D.)                                      598

    The Barbarian Emperor-makers, 610. A review of the Barbarian
    advance, 618. A fulfilled augury, 623. Breysig’s observations
    on the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, 623.

                               APPENDIX A

  HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF SOME LESSER NATIONS OF ASIA MINOR (283
  B.C.-17 A.D.)                                                        626

                               APPENDIX B

  THE ROMAN STATE AND THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH                       629

  BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS                      643

  A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ROMAN HISTORY                              645




[Illustration: ROMAN TROPHIES]




THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE: A SKETCH

WRITTEN SPECIALLY FOR THE PRESENT WORK

BY DR. OTTO HIRSCHFELD

Professor of Ancient History in the University of Berlin


The words “The Age of the Roman Empire is a period better abused than
known,” written by Theodor Mommsen half a century ago, no longer contain
a truth. To his own illuminative and epoch-making works we owe it, in
the first instance, that this period, so long unduly neglected and
depreciated, has come into the foreground of research within the last
decade or two, and has enchained the interest of the educated world
far beyond the narrow circle of professed scholars. Edward Gibbon, the
only great historian who had previously turned his attention to this
particular field, and whose genius built up the brilliant _Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire_ on the sure foundation laid ready to his
hand by the vast industry of the French scholar Le Nain de Tillemont,
chose to confine himself, as the title of his work declares, to giving
a description of the period of its decay. By so doing he did much to
confirm, though he did not originate, the idea that the whole epoch of
the Roman Empire must be regarded as a period of deterioration, and
that the utmost to which it can lay claim is an interest of somewhat
pathological character, as being the connecting-link between antique
and mediæval times, and between the pagan and the Christian world. And
when we look upon the picture sketched by that incomparable painter
of the earlier days of the empire, Tacitus, where scarcely a gleam of
light illumines the gloomy scene, we may well feel justified in the
opinion that the only office of this period is to set forth to us the
death-struggle of classical antiquity, and that no fresh fructifying
seeds could spring from this process of corruption.

And, as a matter of fact, it cannot be denied that even the best days
of the Empire can hardly with truth be spoken of as the prime of Rome.
There is a dearth of great names, such as abound in the history of Greece
and the early history of Rome. Julius Cæsar, the last truly imposing
figure among the Romans, does not belong to it; he laid the foundations
of this new world, but he was not destined to finish his work, and not
one of his successors came up to the standard of this great prototype.
Individual character falls into the background during the empire, even
the individuality of the Roman people; its history becomes the history
of the antique world, and an account of the period between the reigns of
Augustus and Constantine can, in its essence, be nothing other than the
history of the world for the first three centuries after Christ.


THE WEALTH OF ROMAN INSCRIPTIONS

It is easy to understand how Niebuhr, whose enthusiastic and lifelong
labours were devoted to the history of ancient Rome, should have coldly
turned aside from the period of imperial rule and cherished no desire to
carry his history beyond the fall of the republic. Certainly it would
be unjust to judge of his attitude towards the first-named period from
the brief lecture with which he concluded his lectures on Roman history,
but we shall nevertheless do no injustice to his undying merits by
maintaining that in his heart of hearts he felt no sympathy with it. For
it is not possible to conjure up a mental picture of the civilisation and
condition of the empire from the scanty and imperfect records of literary
tradition, a tradition that is not sufficient even for the first century,
and fails us almost completely with regard to the second, and even more
with regard to the third. Nothing can make up for this deficiency except
an exhaustive study of monuments, and, more especially, of inscriptions,
but this _Dis Manibus_ literature, as he was pleased to call it, was a
thing which Niebuhr, in spite of his many years of residence in Rome,
neither cared for nor understood. For this we can hardly blame him,
because, while the subject of coins had received admirable treatment at
the hands of Joseph Eckhel, the inscriptions were hardly accessible for
scientific purposes till long after Niebuhr’s death.

It is difficult for a later generation to realise the condition of
epigraphic research before the critical compilation of the _Corpus
inscriptionum Latinarum_ had put an end to the frightful state of things
that prevailed in this study, discredited as it was by all sorts of
forgeries. But when we see the insuperable difficulties with which a
scholar of the first rank, like Bartolommeo Borghesi, had to contend
in collecting and sifting the boundless abundance of materials for the
researches on the subject of the history of the empire, which he planned
on so vast a scale and carried through with such admirable acumen; when
we see how the chief work of his life came to nought for lack of any firm
standing-ground whatsoever, we can easily understand that Niebuhr should
have preferred not to venture on such dangerous ground.

From every part of the earth where Roman feet have trod, these direct
witnesses to the past arise from the grave in almost disquieting
abundance: the inexhaustible soil of Rome and its immediate vicinity has
already yielded more than thirty-five thousand stones; we possess more
than thirty thousand from other parts of Italy; and the number of those
bestowed upon us by Africa, which was not opened up to research until the
last century, is hardly smaller. Again, the Illyrian provinces, Dalmatia
first and foremost, but Roumania, Bulgaria, and Servia, all in their
degree, and even Bosnia, almost unknown ground till a short time ago,
have become rich mines of discovery in our own days, thanks to increased
facilities of communication and to the civilisation which has made its
way into those countries.

There is, no doubt, much chaff that has attained to an unmerited
longevity in these stone archives, much that we would willingly let
go by the board. But one thing is certain: that only out of these
materials--which of late have been singularly supplemented by the masses
of papyri discovered in Egypt--can a history of the Roman Empire be
constructed; and that any one who addresses himself to the solution of a
problem of this kind without exact knowledge of them, though he were as
great a man as Leopold von Ranke, must fall far short of the goal within
reach. What can be done with such materials has been shown by Mommsen in
the masterly description of the provinces from the time of Cæsar to the
reign of Diocletian, given in the fifth volume of his _History of Rome_,
a volume which not only forms a worthy sequel to those which preceded it,
but in many respects marks an advance upon them, and makes us all the
more painfully aware of the gap which we dare scarcely hope to see filled
by his master hand.


THE MEANING OF IMPERIAL ROMAN HISTORY

What is the secret of the vivid interest which the Roman Empire awakens
even in the minds of those who feel little drawn towards the study of
antiquity? It is, in the first place, undoubtedly because this period
is in many respects more modern in character than any other of ancient
times; far more so than the Byzantine Empire or the Middle Ages. It is a
period of transition, in which vast revolutions came about in politics
and religion and the seed of a new civilisation was sown. Its true
significance is not to be found in the creation of a world-wide empire.
Republican Rome had already subdued the East in her inexorable advance;
Macedonia and Greece, Syria, Asia, Africa, and, finally, Egypt, had
fallen into her hands before the setting up of the imperial throne.

In the West, again, Spain and the south of Gaul had long been Roman when
Julius Cæsar started on the campaign which decided the future of Europe,
and pushed the Roman frontier forward from the Rhone to the Rhine. The
sway of Rome already extended over all the coasts of the Mediterranean,
and the accessions made to her dominions during the period of imperial
rule were comparatively insignificant. The Danubian and Alpine provinces
were won for the Roman Empire by Augustus, Britain was conquered by
Claudius, Dacia and Arabia by Trajan, beside the conquests which his
successor immediately relinquished. Germania and the kingdom of Parthia
permanently withstood the Roman onset, and the construction of the Upper
Germanic and Rætian _Limes_ by Domitian was an official recognition of
the invincibility of the Germanic barbarians. The counsel of resignation,
given by Augustus to his successors out of the fulness of his own bitter
experience, warning them to keep the empire within its natural frontiers,
_i.e._, the Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates, was practically followed by
them, and Hadrian did unquestionably right in breaking altogether with
his predecessor’s policy of expansion and refusing to expose the waning
might of the empire to a continuous struggle to which it was no longer
equal.

The great work of the empire, therefore, was not to conquer a world
but to weld one into an organic whole, to foster civilisation where it
existed and to be the instrument of Græco-Roman civilisation amongst the
almost absolutely uncivilised nations admitted into the _Orbis Romanus_:
and up to a certain point it actually accomplished this pacific mission,
which proceeded with hardly a pause even under the worst of tyrants. Its
task, however, varied greatly in various parts of its world-wide field.

In the East, permeated with Greek culture, though by no means
denationalised, the Romans scarcely made an attempt to enter into
competition with this superior civilising agency, and, except as the
medium of expression of the Roman magistrates, the Roman language played
a very subordinate part there.

The art and literature which flourished in this soil during the days
of empire are, with insignificant exceptions, as Greek in form and
substance as in the preceding centuries. In the great centres of culture
in the East, in Antioch and Alexandria, the Roman government and the
Roman army have left visible traces, but there is nothing to lead us
to suppose that they profoundly affected, far less metamorphosed, the
Græco-Oriental character of those cities. Ephesus, the capital of Asia
and the seat of the Roman government, was no more Romanised than Ancyra
or Pergamus. The only exception is Berytus, “the Latin island in the
sea of Oriental Hellenism”; there, in the Colonia Julia Augusta Felix,
where the colonists were Roman legionaries, grew up the famous school
of jurisprudence, where Ulpian, the great jurist of Syrian descent,
may have had his training; a school which ministered abundant material
to the editors of the Codex Theodosianus, and whence professors were
summoned by Justinian to co-operate with him in the compilation of the
code which cast Roman law into its final shape. In general, the Roman
Empire received much from the East both of good and evil, but gave it
practically no fresh intellectual impulse; its chief contribution to
Græco-Oriental civilisation was the establishment of order, the guarantee
of personal safety, and the advancement of material prosperity.


ROMAN INFLUENCE IN THE WEST

The case was very different in the West, where Rome was called upon to
accomplish a great civilising mission, and where the ground had been
prepared for her in very few places by an indigenous civilisation. In the
south of Gaul, indeed, the Greek colony of Massilia had for six centuries
been spreading the Greek language and character, Greek coinage and
customs, by means of its factories, which extended as far as to Spain,
and a home had thus been won for Hellenism on this favoured coast, as in
southern Italy. Cæsar, with the far-seeing policy that no sentimental
considerations were suffered to confuse, was the first to break the
dominion of the Greek city, which had so long been in close alliance with
Rome, and so to point the way to the systematic Romanisation of southern
Gaul.

The Phœnician and Iberian civilisation of Africa and Spain was even less
capable of withstanding the irresistible advance of Rome. The names of
cities and individuals have indeed survived there as witnesses to the
past, and the Phœnician language held its ground in private life for
centuries, but the Roman language and Roman customs made a conquest of
both Africa and Spain in the course of the period of imperial rule. The
same holds good, and in the same degree, of Dalmatia and Noricum, less
decidedly of Rætia and the Alpine provinces. In Mœsia, where a vigorous
Greek civilisation had made itself at home in the trading stations on the
Black Sea, the process of Romanisation was not completely successful,
and in the northeastern parts of Pannonia it was never seriously taken
in hand. But even Dacia, though occupied at so late a date, and though
the colonists settled there after the extermination or expulsion of
its previous inhabitants were not Italians, but settlers from the most
diverse parts of the Roman Empire, was permeated with Roman civilisation
to an extent which is positively astonishing under the circumstances.

In Britain alone the Romanising process proved altogether futile, in
spite of the exertions of Agricola, and the country remained permanently
a great military camp, in which the development of town life never
advanced beyond the rudimentary stage. Even in Gaul, which had been
conquered by Cæsar, it proceeded with varying success in the various
parts of the country, making most headway in Aquitaine, though not
till late, and less even in middle Gaul, where the Roman colony of
Lugdunum, the metropolis of the three Gallic provinces, alone reflected
the image of Rome in the north. But even at Augustodunum (Autun), which
was a centre of learning in the early days of the empire no less than
at the point of transition from the third century to the fourth, Roman
civilisation reached the lower ranks of the population as little as
in other parts of Gaul. Moreover, in the Gallic provinces, which were
conquered by Cæsar but not organised by his far-seeing political genius,
the old civitates and pagi were not superseded, as in the Narbonensis, by
the Italian municipal system, and the Celtic language did not wholly die
out in middle Gaul till the time of the Franks.

The civilisation of western Belgica was even more meagre; while in
the eastern portions of the country, in the fertile valleys of the
Moselle and Saar, thickly studded with villas, we come upon a curious
mixed Gallico-Roman civilisation of which the graceful descriptions of
Ausonius and the lifelike sculptures of the Igel column, and the Neumagen
bas-relief afford us a lively picture.

Trèves, above all, bears witness to the vigour of Roman civilisation in
these parts, though it did not attain its full development until the
fourth century. The Romanising of Gaul would no doubt have proceeded far
more energetically had not the country been emptied of Roman troops from
the time it was conquered. The immense efficacy of the Roman legions as
agents of civilisation has been demonstrated--even more clearly than on
the Danube--on the banks of the Rhine, where the Roman civilisation which
centred about the great camp-cities struck deep root, although it had not
strength to survive the fierce storms of the wandering nations which have
since raged over that region.

The value of the Roman work of civilisation was most profoundly realised
by those who witnessed it in their own country, and no writer has given
more eloquent expression to this feeling than a late Gallic poet in the
verses in which he extols the blessings of Roman rule:

    “Fecisti patriam diversis gentibus unam:
    Profuit invitis, te dominante, capi;
    Cumque offers victis propria consortia juris,
    Urbem fecisti, quod prius Orbis erat.”

But what Rome did for these countries was repaid her a hundred-fold.
No country took so prominent a part in the literature of the empire
as Spain. She gave birth to the two Senecas, to Lucan, Martial, and
Quintilian (not to speak of lesser men): that is to say to the originator
of modern prose and the champion of Ciceronian classicism. From Africa
come the versatile Apuleius and the pedantic Fronto, as well as the
eloquent apologists of Christianity, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine.
Gaul early exercised a strong influence on the development of rhetoric,
and in the latter days of the empire became a seat of Roman poetic art
and study. Even more striking is the fact that Spain and Africa gave
birth to Trajan, Hadrian, and Septimius Severus, men who, widely as they
differed in character and purpose, were the principal factors in the
evolution of the empire.


CONSTRUCTIVE FORCES OF THE EMPIRE

Had the age of the empire been merely a period of decay, it certainly
would not have had the strength to accomplish a work of civilisation
which is practically operative in Latin countries to this day. And as
a matter of fact, nothing can be less correct than such an assertion,
witnessing, as it does, to a very slight acquaintance with the period in
question. Rather must we say that republican Rome would not have been
equal to the task; a new empire had to arise, upon a fresh basis, stable
at home and strong abroad, assuring and guaranteeing legal protection
and security throughout the world, in order to accomplish this pacific
mission. The Roman body politic was in the throes of dissolution; in a
peaceful reign of half a century Augustus created it anew, and if his
work does not bear the stamp of genius, if we cannot exonerate it from
the charge of a certain incompleteness, yet with slight modifications it
held the Roman empire together for three centuries, and stood the test of
practical working. Had Julius Cæsar lived longer, had he been destined
to see the realisation of his great projects, he would no doubt have
built up a work of greater genius and more homogeneous character, but it
is an open question whether it would have proved equally lasting after
the death of its creator. Great men make the history of the world, and
determine the course of events, but the potent and arbitrary personality,
which would fain conjure present and future to serve its will, imposes
fetters on the course of subsequent development which later generations
cannot and will not endure.

Augustus gave Rome a new system of government--an imperial system. The
old Roman constitution, originally intended for a city, admirable as it
was, could no longer serve as the basis of a state that had become a
world-wide empire; it had, moreover, been completely shattered in the
conflicts of the last century of the republic. To restore the republic
was impossible, its obsequies had been celebrated on the fields of
Pharsalia and Philippi. After the battle of Actium, which merely decided
whether the name of the emperor should be Antonius or Octavian, and,
possibly, whether the centre of the new empire should lie in the East or
the West, the only question which could arise was that of the form, not
of the essential character, of the new creation.

There can be no doubt that Julius Cæsar would have ascended the throne of
Rome as absolute imperator after his return from the Parthian expedition,
and Octavian as well had it in his power to claim sovereignty without
limitation of any kind, for the whole army and fleet were under his
command; but he rested content with a more modest title and took the
reins of government, not as imperator but as princeps. He did not found a
monarchy but a diarchy, as it has been aptly styled, in which the power
was to be permanently divided between the emperor and the senate. It was
a compromise with the old republic, a voluntary constitutional limitation
of the sovereign prerogative by which all the rights pertaining to the
people and the senate--legislation no less than legal jurisdiction, the
right of coinage no less than the levy of taxation, the disposal of the
revenue and expenditure of the state, and finally (after the accession of
Tiberius and ostensibly in compliance with a clause in the testamentary
dispositions of Augustus), the appointment of magistrates--were to
appertain, under well-defined rules, in part to the princeps and in part
to the senate. The empire was to be elective, as the old Roman monarchy
had been; the nomination to the throne was to proceed from the senate,
but on the other hand the supreme command of the army and fleet was
vested in the emperor in virtue of his proconsular authority, which
extended over all parts of the empire outside the limits of the city of
Rome. The legions were quartered in the provinces under his jurisdiction,
while in those governed by the senate, with a few exceptions which soon
ceased to be, all that the governors had at their disposal was a very
moderate force of auxiliary troops.

[Illustration: ROMAN TROPHIES]

We have no reason to doubt the honesty of Augustus’ intentions, but it
is obvious that all the prerogatives of the senate insured it a fair
share in the government only so long as the sovereign chose to respect
them. The reign of terror under his successors sufficed to set in the
most glaring light the absolute impotence of the senate when opposed to
a despot, and overturned the neatly balanced system of Augustus. It is
easier, we cannot but confess, to blame the author of this system and to
demonstrate its impracticability than to put a better in its place. For
can it be supposed that if Augustus had set up an absolute monarchy such
as Cæsar contemplated, the Romans would have been spared the tyranny of a
Caligula or a Nero? Again, if Augustus had handed over to the senate even
a share in the command of the army, would the empire have been so much as
possible, or would he not immediately have conjured up the demon of civil
war? Nor was the co-operation of the senate in the government altogether
a failure; it proved salutary under emperors such as Nerva and his
successors. The history of all ages goes to prove that chartered rights
are of no avail against despots, and what guarantee is there in modern
monarchies for the maintenance of a constitution confirmed by oath,
except the conscience of the sovereign, and, even more, the steadfast
will of the nation, which will endure no curtailment of its rights?


UNFULFILLED POSSIBILITIES

But the Roman nation existed no more, and in the senate under the empire
a Cineas would now have seen, not a council of kings, but, like the
emperor Tiberius, an assemblage of men prepared to brook any form of
servitude. If it had been possible to give legal representation to the
Roman citizens in Italy and the romanised provinces, the system devised
by Augustus might have been destined to enjoy a longer lease of life.
The emperor Claudius, who had some sensible ideas intermingled with his
follies, would have admitted Gauls of noble birth to the senate, as
Julius Cæsar had done. We can read in Tacitus of the vehement opposition
with which this proposal was received by the senators, who would not
hear of any diminution of their exclusive class privileges; and even
the Spaniard Seneca has nothing but angry scorn for the defunct emperor
who wanted to make the whole world a present of the rights of Roman
citizenship and “to see all Greeks, Gauls, Spaniards, and Britons, in the
toga.”

And yet this would have been the only way to infuse fresh sap into
the decaying organism, to maintain the vital forces of the senate,
to establish the government of the empire on a broader basis, and to
bind the nations which had been subdued by the sword to the empire
with indissoluble ties. It is true that by the so-called _jus Latii_
which Vespasian bestowed upon the whole of Spain as a testimony to the
Romanisation of the country, the magistrates, and after the second
century the town-councillors, of such cities as did not enjoy full rights
of citizenship, were admitted to the ranks of Roman citizens, a very
sensible measure, though of benefit to a limited circle only, by which
the best elements of provincial society became Roman citizens.

Full rights of citizenship were also bestowed on the peregrine soldiers
when they entered the oriental legions, and on the Vigiles at Rome, and
the soldiers of the fleet and auxiliary forces on their discharge. But
from the reign of Antoninus Pius onwards this important privilege was not
accorded, as before, to the children of these soldiers, but churlishly
confined, with few exceptions, to the men themselves; and the bestowal
consequently lost its virtue as an agency for the assimilation of the
population of the empire; and when, two hundred years after the death
of Augustus, the son of the emperor Septimius Severus, who himself
had broken with all the national traditions of Rome, granted Roman
citizenship to all subjects of the empire, as we are informed (though by
authorities which greatly exaggerate the scope of the measure), it was
no longer felt as a political privilege but as the outcome of a greedy
financial policy.


REFORMS OF AUGUSTUS

The reorganisation of the government by Augustus, open to criticism
as it is in many respects, was a blessing to the Roman Empire. The
view which prevailed under the republic, that the provinces had been
conquered only to be sucked dry by senators and knights, governors and
tax-farmers, in league or in rivalry of greed (we have one example out
of hundreds in Verres, condemned to immortality by the eloquence of
Cicero), this view was laid aside with the advent of the empire, and even
if extortion did not wholly cease in the senatorial provinces, yet the
provincial administration of the first two centuries A.D. is infinitely
superior to the systematic spoliation of the republic. The governors are
no longer masters armed with absolute authority, constrained to extort
money as fast as possible from the provincials committed to their charge
in order to meet debts contracted by their own extravagance and, more
especially, by that bribery of the populace which was indispensable to
their advancement. They are officials under strict control, drawing
from the government salaries fully sufficient to their needs. It was
a measure imperatively called for by the altered circumstances of the
time and fraught with most important consequences to create, as Augustus
did, a class of salaried imperial officials and definitively break with
the high-minded but wrong-headed principle of the republic by which
the higher posts were bestowed as honorary appointments, and none but
subordinate officials were paid, thus branding the latter with the stigma
of servitude.

It is true that the cautious reformer adopted into his new system
of government the old names and the offices which had come down
from republican times, with the exception of the censorship and the
dictatorship, which last had long been obsolete. But these were intended
from the outset to lead but a phantom existence and to take no part in
the great task of imperial administration. Augustus drew his own body of
officials from the knightly class, and under the unpretentious titles of
procurator and præfect practically committed the whole administration of
the empire to their hands, reserving, apart from certain distinguished
sinecures in Rome and Italy for the senators the præfecture of the city,
all the great governorships except Egypt, and the highest commands in the
army. The handsome salaries--varying in the later days of the empire from
£600 to £3,600 ($3,000 to $18,000)--and the great influence attached to
the procuratorial career, which opened the way to the lofty positions of
præfect of Egypt and commander of the prætorian guards at Rome, rendered
the service very desirable and highly esteemed.

While the high-born magistrates of the republic entered upon their one
year’s tenure of office without any training whatsoever, and were, of
course, obliged to rely upon the knowledge and trustworthiness of the
permanent staff of clerks, recorders and cashiers in their department,
there grew up under the empire a professional class of government
officials who, schooled by years of experience and continuance in
office and supported by a numerous staff recruited from the imperial
freedmen and slaves, were in a position to cope with the requirements of
a world-wide empire. These procurators, some as governors-in-chief of
the smaller imperial provinces, some as assistants to the governors of
the greater, watched over the interests of the public exchequer and the
emperor’s private property, or looked after the imperial buildings and
aqueducts, the imperial games, the mint, the corn supply of Rome and the
alimentary institutions, the legacies left to the emperors, their castles
and demesnes in Italy and abroad--in short, everything that fell within
the vast and ever widening sphere of imperial government. Meanwhile the
exchequer of the senate dwindled and dwindled, till it finally came to be
merely the exchequer of the city of Rome.


_Taxation Reforms_

The government department which underwent the most important change was
that of taxation. And there, again, Augustus with the co-operation of his
loyal colleague and friend Agrippa carried out the decisive reform which
stood the test of time till at least the middle of the second century
in spite of mismanagement and the exactions of despots, and secured the
prosperity of the empire during that period. While the indirect taxes,
the _vectigalia_, continued in the main to be levied on the easy but (for
the state and still more for its subjects) unprofitable plan of farming
them out to companies of publicans, which had come down from republican
days--though the publicans were now placed under the strict supervision
of the imperial procurators--the _tributa_, which was assessed according
to a fixed scale partly in money and partly in kind, the poll-tax and
the land-tax were thenceforth levied directly by government officials,
and the extortionate tax-farmers were finally banished from this most
important branch of the public service.

A necessary condition of such a reform was an accurate knowledge of the
empire and its taxable capacity. The census of the whole world did not
take place at one and the same time, as the apostle Luke supposed, but
the census of Palestine which he records certainly formed part of the
survey of the Roman Empire which was gradually proceeded with in the
early days of imperial rule, and by which the extent of the country,
the nature of the soil, and the number and social position of its
inhabitants, were ascertained as a basis for taxation and recruiting. In
an inscription found at Berytus an officer records that by the command
of Quirinus, who as governor of Syria took the census of Palestine
mentioned by St. Luke, he had ascertained the number of citizens in
Apamea in Syria; and numbers of his comrades must in like manner have
been employed on this troublesome business in every part of the empire.

According to these statistics the land-tax and the poll-tax, the chief
sources of revenue in the empire, were assessed. The latter affected
only those who did not possess full rights of citizenship and was always
regarded as a mark of subjection in consequence; the burden of the former
fell upon all land in the provinces unless by the _jus Italicum_, which
was most sparingly conferred, it was placed on the same footing as the
soil of Italy, which was exempted from the tax. But even Italian soil
ultimately lost its immunity from taxation; and the introduction of the
land tax into Italy, which formed part of Diocletian’s reform in this
department, marks the reduction of this country, privileged above all
others in the constitution of Augustus, to the level of the provinces.

Unfortunately taxation in the early days of the empire is one of the
most obscure of subjects, as our sources of information yield nothing
much until the reign of Diocletian. But the great discoveries of papyri
and quantities of receipt-shards (the so-called _ostraca_) recently made
in Egypt have already thrown some light upon the widely extended and
complicated administration of the country, and we may hope for further
instruction from the land of the Ptolemies, which exercised a stronger
influence than any other upon the administration of the Roman Empire.

We might say much more concerning the reforms by which Augustus and
his successors transformed the character of the whole empire; of the
organisation of the standing army practically created by Cæsar, which
in manifold formations compassed about the motley population of the
universal empire of Rome with a firm bond; of the imperial coinage which
made the denarius and the Roman gold piece legal tender throughout the
Roman world and either did away with local coinage or restricted it to
private circulation in the place where it was struck (with the sole
exception of Egypt, which occupied a peculiar position in this as in
other respects); of the institution of an imperial post, which, though
it served almost exclusively the purposes of the magistrates and was
long a heavy burden on the provincials, is nevertheless a landmark in
the history of international communication; of the opening up of remote
provinces by the extended network of roads, on the milestones of which
nearly all the emperors since Augustus inscribed their names, especially
Trajan, Hadrian, Severus, and Caracalla; of the alimentary institutions
originated by Nerva (one of the few government institutions for the
public welfare in ancient times), which were intended to subserve both
the maintenance of the citizen class and the furtherance of agriculture
in Italy. We should gladly dwell upon the further development of Roman
law by the council of state organised by Hadrian, after Augustus the
greatest reformer on the imperial throne, and on the redaction of the
_edictum perpetuum_ carried out at his command by Salvius Julianus, whose
full name and career we have but recently learned from an inscription
found in Africa, which paved the way for a common law for the whole
empire and prepared the great age of jurisprudence at the beginning
of the third century, when the springs of creative power in art and
literature were almost wholly dried up. But within the narrow limits of
this brief survey we must refrain from this, as from a description of
the prosperity and decline of the highly developed municipal life of the
period, and a sketch of the history of the empire at home and abroad,
and of its intellectual life. One question, however, cannot be left
altogether without answer--the question of the attitude of the imperial
government towards alien religions, and, above all, towards Christianity.
A detailed examination of the position of Christianity in the Roman
Empire by the authority best qualified to speak on the subject[1] will be
found in another part of this work, and I can therefore confine myself in
this place to a brief notice.


THE EMPIRE AND THE PAGAN CREED

Paganism is essentially tolerant, and the Romans always extended a
full measure of this toleration to the religions of the nations they
conquered. The early custom of transferring to Rome the tutelary divinity
of any conquered city in the vicinity is a practical expression of the
view that any addition to the Roman pantheon (which had begun to grow
into a Græco-Roman pantheon by the admittance of Apollo and the Sibyls
and had actually been such since the war with Hannibal) must be regarded
simply as an addition to the divine patrons of Rome. In the main this
view was adhered to under the empire, although Augustus formulated more
definitely the idea of a Roman state religion and closed the circle
of gods to whom worship was due on the part of the state. But we have
evidence of the spirit of tolerance and the capacity for assimilation
characteristic of the age in the wide dissemination of the Egyptian cults
of Isis and Serapis, especially in the upper ranks of society, and still
more in the worship--deep rooted among the masses and spread abroad over
the greatest part of the earth--of the Persian Mithras, whom Diocletian
and his co-regents praised in the great Danubian camp of Caruntum as
the patron of their dominion. Even the Phœnician gods of Africa and the
Celtic gods of Gaul and the Danube provinces were allowed to survive by
identification with Roman divinities of a somewhat similar character, and
in the outlandish surnames bestowed upon the latter; although the names
of the great Celtic divinities disappear from the monuments--a matter in
which the government undoubtedly had a hand. So many barbarians, says
Lucian the scoffer, have made their way into Olympus that they have
ousted the old gods from their places, and ambrosia and nectar have
become scanty by reason of the crowd of topers; and he makes Zeus resolve
upon a thorough clearance, in order unrelentingly to thrust forth from
Olympus all who could not prove their title to that divine abode, even
though they had a great temple on earth and there enjoyed divine honours.

In view of the lengths to which the Romans carried the principle of
giving free course to every religion within the empire so long as its
professors did not come into conflict with the government officials or
tend to form hotbeds of political intrigue, such as were the schools of
the Druids, how did it come to pass that the Christian religion, and to
a less extent the Jewish religion also, were assailed as hostile and
dangerous to the state?

It is the collision between monotheism and polytheism, between the
worship of God and--from the Jewish and Christian point of view--the
worship of idols. The great crime which Tacitus lays to the charge of the
Jews, that which brought upon the Christian the imputation of atheism,
was contempt for the gods, _i.e._, the gods of the Roman state. And this
denial was not only aimed at the gods of the Roman pantheon; it applied
in equal measure to the emperor-god, to whom all subjects of the empire,
whatever other religion they professed, were bound to erect altars and
temples in the capitals of the provinces, and everywhere do sacrifice;
who, conjointly with and above all other gods, in both East and West,
demanded that supreme veneration which constituted the touch-stone of
loyalty. To refuse this was necessarily regarded as high treason, as
_crimen læsæ majestatis_, and prosecuted as such. It is true that the
monotheistic Jews, after the destruction of their national independence,
were allowed by law to exercise their own religion on condition of paying
the temple dues in future to the Capitoline Jupiter, and penalties
were attached only to conversion to the Jewish religion, especially in
the case of Roman citizens. But it is evident that they very skilfully
contrived to avoid an open rupture with the worship of the emperor no
less than with the national religion of Rome; for history has no record
of Jewish martyrs who suffered death for their faith under the empire.

[Illustration: ROMAN TROPHIES]


THE EMPIRE AND CHRISTIANITY

It was otherwise with Christianity; from the outset, and more
particularly after the ministry of Paul, the great Apostle of the
Gentiles, which determined the whole course of its subsequent
development, it had come forward as a universal religion, circumscribed
by no limitations of nationality and gaining proselytes throughout the
whole world, an _ecclesia militans_, resolved to break down all barriers
set up by human power and the rulers of this world in order to bear the
new faith to victory. Here no lasting compromise was possible. After
the reign of Trajan he who did not deny the faith and adore the pagan
gods and the image of the emperor had to pay the penalty of an obduracy
incomprehensible to the Roman magistrates, by death as a traitor.
Singularly enough, it was this emperor, so averse to persecution and
self-deification, who outlawed Christianity in the Roman Empire by the
verdict that the Christians should not be hunted out, but, when informed
against and convicted, should be punished unless they renounced their
faith; and most of his successors--though not without exceptions, among
whom Hadrian, Severus Alexander, and Philip must be numbered--adopted
the same line. It may be that even then they had a presage of the danger
to the Roman state that would arise from this international religion
which had originated in the East, which declared all men, even slaves,
to be equal before God, and was in its essence socialistic; at least
it is difficult to explain on any other grounds the profound hatred to
which Tacitus, the greatest intellect of his time, gives vent in his
description of the prosecution of Christians under Nero.

As a matter of fact the spread of Christianity in Asia had by that time
attained considerable proportions, as is evident from the report sent by
Pliny to Trajan and from other records; and as early as the reign of
Domitian it had made its way in Rome even to the steps of the throne. But
there was certainly no man then living who would have thought it possible
that this despised religion of the poor was destined to conquer the
world-wide empire, and this disdain is the only explanation we can find
for the fact that the first general persecution of the Christians--for
the local outbreaks of persecution under Marcus Aurelius, Severus,
and Maximinus, confined as they were to a narrow circle, cannot be so
called--did not take place until about the middle of the third century.
Tertullian may have described too grandiloquently the enormous advance of
Christianity throughout the empire; it is nevertheless beyond controversy
that by the beginning of the third century it had become a power which
serious-minded rulers, solicitous for the maintenance of a national
empire, might well imagine that their duty to their country required them
to extirpate with fire and sword. In this spirit Decius waged war against
Christianity, and so did Diocletian, who assumed the surname of Jovius,
after the supreme divinity of Rome, as patron of the national paganism.
But it was a hopeless struggle; only ten years later Constantine made his
peace with the Christian church by the Milan edict of toleration, and
shortly before his death he received baptism.

With Constantine the history of ancient Rome comes to an end; the
transference of the capital to Byzantium was the outward visible sign
that the Roman Empire was no more. The process of dissolution had long
been at work; symptoms thereof come to light as early as the first
century, and are frightfully apparent under the weak emperor Marcus,
whose melancholy _Contemplations_ breathe the utter hopelessness of a
world scourged by war and pestilence. The real dissolution of the Roman
world, however, did not take place until the middle of the third century.
The empire, assailed by barbarians and rent asunder by internal feuds,
became the sport of ambitious generals who in Gaul, Mœsia, and Pannonia,
placed themselves at the head of their barbarian troops; the time of
the so-called Thirty Tyrants witnesses the speedy disintegration of the
recently united West.


INEVITABLE DECAY

Nor could the strong emperors from the Danubian provinces check the
process of decay. Poverty fell upon the cities of Italy and the
provinces, whose material prosperity and patriotic devotion had been the
most pleasing pictures offered by the good days of the Roman Empire;
seats in the town council and municipal offices, once passionately
striven after as the goal of civic ambition, as the election placards at
Pompeii testify, now found no candidates because upon their occupants
rested the responsibility of raising taxes it was impossible to pay; the
way was paved for the compulsory hereditary tenure of posts and trades
indispensable to the government. Agriculture was ruined, and documents
dating from the third century and the end of the second, which have
been recently brought to light in parts of the empire remote from one
another, describe with affecting laments the want and hardships endured
by colonists and small landholders in the vast imperial demesnes. The
currency was debased, silver coins had depreciated to mere tokens,
salaries had to be paid for the most part in kind, public credit was
destroyed.

The desolation of the land, no longer tilled in consequence of the
uncertainty of possession amidst disorders within and without; a steady
decrease of the population of Italy and the provinces from the end of
the second century onwards; famine, and a prodigious rise in the cost
of all the necessaries of life, which it was a hopeless undertaking to
check by any imperial regulation of prices, are the sign-manual of the
time. The army, from which Italians had long since disappeared, liberally
interspersed with barbarian elements and no longer held together by any
interest in the empire and in an emperor who was never the same for long
together, was no longer capable of coping with the Goths and Alamanni
who ravaged the Roman provinces in all directions; the right bank of the
Rhine and the Limes Germanicus and Limes Ræticus, laboriously erected
and fortified with ramparts and castellae, fell a prey to the Germans in
the middle of the third century. A Roman emperor meets a shameful death
in captivity among the Parthians; Dacia, Trajan’s hard-won conquest,
has to be abandoned and its inhabitants, who were spared by the enemy,
transplanted to the southern bank of the Danube.

Towards the end of the third century the cities in Gaul were surrounded
with substantial walls, Rome itself had to be fortified against
the attacks of the barbarians, and was once more provided with a
circumvallation, as in the days of hoary antiquity, by one of the most
vigorous of her rulers. Diocletian ceased to make the Eternal City his
capital, and realised in practice the idea of division into an Oriental
and Occidental world which had stirred the minds of men three centuries
before. His successor put a final end to the Roman Empire; but all he had
to do was to bury the dead.


FOOTNOTES

[1] [See Professor Harnack’s article on Church and State on page 629.]

[Illustration: ROMAN TROPHIES]




[Illustration]




BOOK II

THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE




_INTRODUCTION_

THE SCOPE, THE SOURCES, AND THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE HISTORY OF ROME UNDER
THE EMPERORS


Professor Hirschfeld has pointed out that there is a general
misconception as to the true meaning of later Roman history and that the
time of the Roman Empire is, in reality, by no means exclusively a period
of decline. In point of fact, there were long periods of imperial history
when the glory of Rome, as measured by its seeming material prosperity,
by the splendour of its conquests, and the wide range of its domination,
was at its height. But two prominent factors, among others, have served
to befog the view in considering this period. In the first place, the
fact that the form of government is held to have changed from the
republican to the monarchial system with the accession of Augustus, has
led to a prejudice for or against the age on the part of a good share of
writers who have considered the subject. In the second place the invasion
of Christianity during the decline of the empire has introduced a feature
even more prejudicial to candid discussion.

Yet, broadly considered, neither of these elements should have had much
weight for the historian. In the modern sense of the word the Roman
commonwealth was never a democracy. From first to last, a chief share
of its population consisted of slaves and of the residents of subject
states. There was, indeed, a semblance of representative government; but
this, it must be remembered, was continued under the empire. Indeed, it
cannot be too often pointed out that the accession to power of Augustus
and his immediate successors did not nominally imply a marked change of
government. We shall have occasion to point out again and again that the
“emperor” was not a royal ruler in the modern sense of the word. The very
fact that the right of hereditary succession was never recognised,--such
succession being accomplished rather by subterfuge than as a legal
usage,--in itself shows a sharp line of demarcation between the alleged
royal houses of the Roman Empire and the rulers of actual monarchies. In
a word, the Roman Empire occupied an altogether anomalous position, and
the power which the imperator gradually usurped, through which he came
finally to have all the influence of a royal despot, was attained through
such gradual and subtle advances that contemporary observers scarcely
realised the transition through which they were passing. We shall see
that the senate still holds its nominal power, and that year by year for
centuries to come, consuls are elected as the nominal government leaders.

Nevertheless, it is commonly held that posterity has made no mistake in
fixing upon the date of the accession of Augustus as a turning-point in
the history of the Roman commonwealth. However fully the old forms may
have been held to, it is only now that the people in effect submit to
a permanent dictator. The office of dictator, as such, had indeed been
abolished on the motion of Mark Antony; but the cæsars managed, under
cover of old names and with the ostensible observance of old laws, to
usurp dictatorial power. There was an actual, even if not a nominal,
change of government. This change of government, however, did not
coincide with any sudden decline in Roman power. On the contrary, as
just intimated, the Roman influence under the early cæsars reached out
to its widest influence and attained its maximum importance. Certainly,
the epochs which by common consent are known as the golden and the silver
ages of Roman literature--the time, that is to say, of Augustus and his
immediate successors--cannot well be thought of as periods of great
national degeneration. And again the time of the five good emperors has
by common consent of the historians been looked on as among the happiest
periods of Roman history. In a word the first two centuries of Roman
imperial history are by no means to be considered as constituting an
epoch of steady decline. That a decline set in after the death of Marcus
Aurelius, some causes of which were operative much earlier, is, however,
equally little in question. Looking over the whole sweep of later Roman
history it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that the empire was
doomed almost from the day of its inception, notwithstanding its early
period of power. But when one attempts to point out the elements that
were operative as causes of this seemingly predestined overthrow, one
enters at once upon dangerous and debatable ground. At the very outset,
as already intimated, the prejudices of the historian are enlisted _pro_
or _con_ by the question of the influence of Christianity as a factor in
accelerating or retarding the decay of Rome’s greatness.

Critics have never tired of hurling diatribes at Gibbon, because his
studies led him to the conclusion that Christianity was a detrimental
force in its bearing on the Roman Empire. Yet many more recent
authorities have been led to the same conclusion, and it is difficult
to say why this estimate need cause umbrage to anyone, whatever his
religious prejudices. The Roman commonwealth was a body politic which,
following the course of all human institutions, must sooner or later
have been overthrown. In the broader view it does not seem greatly to
matter whether or not Christianity contributed to this result. That the
Christians were an inharmonious element in the state can hardly be in
question. As such, they cannot well be supposed to have contributed to
communal progress. But there were obvious sources of disruption which
seem so much more important that one may well be excused for doubting
whether the influence of the early Christians in this connection was more
than infinitesimal for good or evil. Without attempting a comprehensive
view of the subject--which, indeed, would be quite impossible within
present spacial limits--it is sufficient to point out such pervading
influences as the prevalence of slavery, the growing wealth of the few
and the almost universal pauperism of the many fostered by the paternal
government, and the decrease of population, particularly among the best
classes, as abnormal elements in a body politic, the influence of which
sooner or later must make themselves felt disastrously.

Perhaps as important as any of these internal elements of dissolution was
that ever-present and ever-developing external menace, the growing power
of the barbarian nations. The position of any nation in the historical
scale always depends largely upon the relative positions of its neighbour
states. Rome early subjugated the other Italian states and then in turn,
Sicily, Carthage, and Greece. She held a dominating influence over the
nations of the Orient; or, at least, if they held their ground on their
own territory, she made it impossible for them to think of invading
Europe. Meantime, at the north and west there were no civilised nations
to enter into competition with her, much less to dispute her supremacy.
For some centuries the peoples of northern Europe could be regarded by
Rome only as more or less productive barbarians, interesting solely in
proportion as they were sufficiently productive to be worth robbing. But
as time went on these northern peoples learned rapidly through contact
with the civilisation of Rome. They were, in fact, people who were far
removed from barbarism in the modern acceptance of the term. It is
possible (the question is still in doubt) that they were of common stock
with the Romans; and if their residence in a relatively inhospitable
clime had retarded their progress towards advanced civilisation, it had
not taken from them the racial potentialities of rapid development under
more favourable influences; while, at the same time, the very harshness
of their environment had developed in them a vigour of constitution, a
tenacity of purpose, and a fearless audacity of mind that were to make
them presently most dangerous rivals. It was during the later days of
the commonwealth and the earlier days of the empire that these rugged
northern peoples were receiving their lessons in Roman civilisation--that
is to say, in the art of war, with its attendant sequels of pillage and
plundering.[2] Those were hard lessons which the legions of the cæsars
gave to the peoples of the north, but their recipients proved apt pupils.
Even in the time of Augustus a German host in the Teutoberg Forest
retaliated upon the hosts of Varus in a manner that must have brought
Rome to a startling realisation of hitherto unsuspected possibilities of
disaster.

It has been pointed out that the one hope for the regeneration of Rome
under these conditions lay in the possibility of incorporating the
various ethnic elements of its wide territories into one harmonious
whole. In other words, could Rome in the early day have seen the
desirability--as here and there a far-sighted statesman did perhaps
see--of granting Roman citizenship to the large-bodied and fertile-minded
races of the north, removing thus a prominent barrier to racial
intermingling, the result might have been something quite different. We
have noted again and again that it is the mixed races that build the
great civilisations and crowd forward on the road of human progress.
The Roman of the early day had the blood of many races in his veins,
but twenty-five or thirty generations of rather close inbreeding had
produced a race which eminently needed new blood from without. Yet the
whole theory of Roman citizenship set its face against the introduction
of this revivifying element. The new blood made itself felt presently, to
be sure, and the armies came to be recruited from the provinces. After
a time it came to pass that the leaders--the emperors even--were no
longer Romans in the old sense of the word. They came from Spain, from
Illyricum, and from Asia Minor. Finally the tide of influence swept so
strongly in the direction of Illyricum that the seat of Roman influence
was transferred to the East, and the Roman Empire entered a new phase
of existence. The regeneration was effected, in a measure, by the
civilisation of the new Rome in the East; but this was the development of
an offspring state rather than the regeneration of the old commonwealth
itself. Then in the West the northern barbarians, grown stronger and
stronger, came down at last in successive hordes and made themselves
masters of Italy, including Rome itself. With their coming and their
final conquests the history of old Rome as a world empire terminates.

It is the sweep of events of the five hundred years from the accession
of Augustus the first emperor to the overthrow of Romulus Augustulus
the last emperor that we have to follow in the present volume. Let us
consider in a few words the sources that have preserved the record of
this most interesting sequence of events.

[Illustration]


THE SOURCES OF IMPERIAL HISTORY

Reference has already been made to the importance of the monumental
inscriptions. For the imperial history these assumed proportions not at
all matched by the earlier periods. It was customary for the emperors to
issue edicts that were widely copied throughout the provinces, and, owing
to the relative recency of these inscriptions a great number of them have
been preserved.

As a rule, these inscriptions have only incidental importance in the way
of fixing dates or establishing details as to the economic history. On
the other hand, such a tablet as the Monumentum Ancyranum gives important
information as to the life of Augustus, and such pictorial presentations
as occur on the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius are of the utmost
importance in reproducing the life-history of the period. For mere
matters of chronology--having also wider implications on occasion--the
large series of coins and medals is of inestimable importance. Without
these various inscriptions, as has been said, many details of imperial
history now perfectly established must have remained insoluble.

Nevertheless, after giving full credit to the inscriptions as sources of
history, the fact remains that for most of the important incidents that
go to make up the story, and for practically all the picturesque details
of political history, the manuscripts are still our chief sources. The
authors whose works have come down to us are relatively few in number,
and may be briefly listed here in a few words. For the earliest imperial
period we have the master historian Tacitus, the biographer Suetonius,
the courtier Velleius Paterculus, and the statesman Dion Cassius. As
auxiliary sources the writings of Martial, Valerius Maximus, Pliny, and
the _Jewish Wars_ of Josephus are to be mentioned. For the middle period
of imperial history Dion Cassius and Herodian, supplemented by Aurelius
Victor and the other epitomators, and by the so-called Augustan histories
or biographies, are our chief sources. After they fail us, Zosimus and
Ammianus Marcellinus have the field practically to themselves, gaps
in their work being supplied, as before, by the outline histories.
Details as to these writers will be furnished, as usual, in our general
bibliography.

[Illustration]


THE FIRST CENTURY OF EMPIRE: AUGUSTUS TO NERO (30 B.C.-68 A.D.)

29. Temple of Janus closed for the third time. 28. Senate reduced in
numbers. 27. Octavian lays down his powers; is given the proconsular
imperium for ten years, and made commander-in-chief of all the forces
with the right of levying troops, and making war and peace. He receives
the title of Augustus. Provinces divided into senatorial (where no
army was required) and imperial where troops were maintained. 23.
Proconsular imperium conferred on Augustus with possession of the
tribunicia potestas. 20. War against the Parthian king, Phraates.
Tigranes reinstated in his kingdom of Armenia. 19. Cantabri and Astures
(in Spain) subdued. 15. Rætia and Noricum subjugated by Drusus and
Tiberius and included among the Roman provinces. 12-9. Campaigns of
Drusus in Germany and subjugation of Pannonia by Tiberius. 4 B.C. Birth
of Jesus. 4 A.D. Augustus adopts his stepson Tiberius. 9. Illyricum,
having rebelled, is reduced by Tiberius. Arminius, the chief of the
Cherusci, a German tribe, annihilates a Roman army under Quintilius
Varus. 14. =Tiberius=, emperor. Germanicus, nephew of Tiberius, quells
the revolted legions on the Rhine and makes war on the German tribe of
the Marsi. 15. Germanicus invades Germany a second time and captures
the wife of Arminius (Hermann). 16. Battle of the Campus Idistavisus.
Arminius defeated by Germanicus. 17. Recall and death of Germanicus. 23.
Prætorian cohorts collected into one camp outside Rome on the suggestion
of Sejanus, who now exercises great influence over Tiberius. 31. Sejanus
put to death with many of his friends. 37. =Caligula= succeeds Tiberius.
41. Murder of Caligula. =Claudius= succeeds. 42. Mauretania becomes a
Roman province. 43-47. Britain subdued by Plautius and Vespasian. 43.
Lycia becomes a province. 44. Judea becomes a province. 54. Claudius
poisoned by his wife Agrippina and succeeded by her son =Nero=. 55. Nero
poisons his step-brother Britannicus. 58. Domitius Corbulo sent against
the Parthians and Armenians. 59. Agrippina murdered by Nero’s orders. 61.
Suetonius Paulinus represses the revolt of Boadicea in Britain. 62. Nero
murders his wife Octavia. 63. Parthians and Armenians renew the war. The
Parthians finally sue for peace. The king of Armenia acknowledges his
vassalage to Rome. 64. Destruction of great part of Rome by fire, said to
have been started by Nero’s command, but attributed by him to the Jews
and Christians. First persecution of the Christians. 65. Piso conspires
against Nero. The plot is discovered. 66. First Jewish War. Vespasian
sent to conduct it. 68. Gaul and Spain revolt against Nero, who commits
suicide.

[Illustration]


THE SECOND CENTURY OF EMPIRE: GALBA TO MARCUS AURELIUS (68-180 A.D.)

68. =Galba=, =Otho=, and =Vitellius= succeed each other as emperors.
69. =Vespasian=, the first Flavian emperor, proclaimed by the soldiers.
Vitellius put to death. The aristocratic body purified and replenished.
Official worship restored. Public works executed. Reforms in the army
and the finances, and the administration generally. Batavian revolt
under Claudius Civilis. 70. Fall of Jerusalem. Batavian revolt quelled
by Cerealis. 71. Cerealis becomes governor of Britain. 78. Agricola
begins his campaigns in Britain. 79. =Titus=, the second Flavian emperor.
Pompeii and Herculaneum destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius. 80.
Agricola reaches the Solway Firth. 81. =Domitian=, the third Flavian
emperor. 83. War with the Chatti. 84. Caledonians under Galgacus defeated
by Agricola, who completes the conquest of Britain. 86. Dacian invasion
of Mœsia. 87. Dacians defeat a Roman army. 90. Peace with the Dacians.
93. Antonius Saturninus, governor of upper Germany, revolts. The
rebellion is put down and his papers are destroyed. Domitian executes
the supposed accomplices of Saturninus and begins a series of cruelties.
Philosophers expelled from Rome. Persecutions of Jews and Christians. 96.
=Nerva= succeeds on the murder of Domitian, and introduces a policy of
mildness. 98. =Trajan=, emperor. 101-102. Dacians attacked and overthrown
by Trajan. 106. Dacians finally subdued by Trajan. Their country becomes
a Roman province. 114. Parthian War undertaken to prevent the Parthian
king from securing the Armenian crown to his family. 116. Parthian War
ends with the incorporation of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria amongst
the Roman provinces. Trajan dies on his return. Many public works were
executed in this reign. 117. =Hadrian=, emperor. He abandons Trajan’s
recent conquests. 118. Mœsia invaded by the Sarmatians and Roxolani.
Hadrian concludes peace with the Roxolani. The Sarmatian War continues
for a long time. 120-127. Hadrian makes a tour through the provinces.
121. Hadrian’s wall built in Britain. 132. _Edictum perpetuum_, or
compilation of the edictal laws of the prætors. 132-135. Second Jewish
War, beginning with the revolt of Simon Bar Kosiba. Many buildings
were erected in Hadrian’s reign. 138. =Antoninus Pius=, emperor. He
promotes the internal prosperity of the empire, and protects it against
foreign attacks. 139. British revolt suppressed by Lollius Urbicus.
Wall of Antoninus (Graham’s Dyke) built. 161. =Marcus Aurelius= and
=Lucius Verus=, joint emperors. 162-165. Parthian War. It terminates
in the restoration of Armenia to its lawful sovereign and the cession
of Mesopotamia to Rome. 163. Christian persecution. 166. A barbarian
coalition of the Marcomanni and other tribes threatens the empire. Both
emperors take the field against them. 169. Lucius Verus dies. 174.
Victory over the Quadi. Miracle of the Thundering Legion. 175. Avidius
Cassius proclaims himself emperor, and makes himself master of all Asia
within Mount Taurus. He is assassinated. 178. War with the Marcomanni
renewed.

[Illustration]


THE THIRD CENTURY OF EMPIRE: COMMODUS TO CLAUDIUS II (180-270 A.D.)

180. =Commodus.= Peace concluded with the barbarians. 183. Lucilla,
Commodus’ sister, conspires against him. In punishing this conspiracy
he begins his career of cruelty. 193. =Pertinax= made emperor on the
murder of Commodus. He attempts to restore discipline and is murdered
in his turn. =Didius Julianus= buys the empire of the prætorians. The
legions in Syria, Illyricum, and Britain each proclaim a rival emperor.
=L. Septimius Severus= marches on Rome. Murder of Julianus. Severus
recognised in Rome. 194. Battle of Issus. Severus defeats his rival
Pescennius Niger. 196. Byzantium taken by Severus. Clodius Albinus
made emperor by the army in Gaul. 197. Battle of Lugdunum. Clodius
defeated. 198. Parthian War. 202. Christian persecution. 208. Caledonia
overrun by Severus, who loses many of his men. 210. Wall of Severus in
Britain completed. 211. =Caracalla=, emperor. Alexandrians massacred.
212. =Geta=, co-ruler and brother of Caracalla, murdered by him. Wars
in Dacia and on the Rhine. 217. =Macrinus=, emperor. 218. =Elagabalus=
(=Heliogabalus=) made emperor by the soldiers. Defeat and execution
of Macrinus. Julia Mæsa and Julia Soæmias, grandmother and mother of
Elagabalus, rule. 222. =Severus Alexander=, emperor. 231. Persian
War. 235. =Maximinus Thrax=, emperor. 236. Invasion of Germany. 237.
=Gordianus I= and =II= proclaimed emperors in Africa. Defeat and death of
the Gordiani. 238. =Pupienus Maximus=, =Cælius Balbinus=, and =Gordianus
III=. Maximinus Thrax, Pupienus, and Balbinus killed. 242. Sapor, king of
Persia, defeated by Gordianus III. 244. =Philip=, the Arabian, murders
and succeeds Gordianus. 249. =Decius= made emperor by the Mœsian and
Pannonian legions. Battle of Verona. Philip defeated and slain. 250.
Christian persecution. Bishops of Rome, Antioch, and Jerusalem martyred.
Battle of Abricium. Decius defeated and slain by the Goths. 251. =Gallus=
and =Hostilianus=, emperors. 252. Pestilence throughout the greater part
of the empire. This lasted fifteen years. 253. =Æmilianus=, emperor.
254. =Valerianus=, emperor. The Goths and Burgundians invade Mœsia and
Pannonia. The Franks appear in Gaul. 259. Sapor invades Syria and takes
Antioch. Valerian drives him back but is captured and enslaved. 260.
=Gallienus=, Valerian’s son and co-ruler, sole emperor. Ingenuus and
Regalianus proclaimed emperors. Odenathus of Palmyra drives the Persians
back. 261. Macrianus, Valens, and Calpurnius Piso proclaimed emperors.
262. Aureolus proclaimed emperor. The Persians capture Antioch. 264.
Odenathus declared Augustus. 265. Postumus repels the Gauls. 267. Death
of Odenathus, succeeded by his wife Zenobia. Death of Postumus. Tetricus
assumes the empire in Gaul. Age of the Thirty Tyrants. 268. Gallienus
slain by the machinations of Aureolus. =Claudius II=, emperor. 269.
Battle of Naissus in Dardania. Claudius defeats the Goths with great
slaughter. Zenobia invades Egypt.

[Illustration]


THE FOURTH CENTURY OF EMPIRE: AURELIAN TO THEODOSIUS (270-395 A.D.)

270. =Aurelian=, called _Restitutor Orbis_, becomes emperor. He defeats
the Goths and makes peace with them. Alamanni invade Umbria and are
defeated by Aurelian in three engagements. 273. Palmyra and its
queen Zenobia taken by Aurelian. Egypt revolts and is subdued. 274.
=Tetricus=, who had maintained himself as emperor in Gaul, Britain, and
Spain, defeated at Châlons. 275. =Tacitus=, emperor. 276. =Probus= and
=Florian=, emperors. They clear Gaul of its German invaders and pursue
them across the Rhine. 282. =Carus=, emperor. Sarmatians defeated.
Persian expedition. 284. =Diocletian=, emperor. He makes Nicomedia in
Bithynia his capital. 285. =Maximian=, joint emperor for administration
of the West. 293. =Constantius Chlorus= and =Galerius= named cæsars.
296. Constantius recovers Britain. Revolt of Egypt suppressed by
Diocletian. Battle of Carrhæ. Galerius defeated by the Persians. 297.
=Galerius= defeats the Persians and makes a treaty securing Mesopotamia
to the Romans. 298. Constantius defeats the Alamanni at Langres. 303.
Christian persecution. 305. Abdication of Diocletian and Maximian.
=Constantius= and =Galerius=, emperors. 306. =Constantine the Great=
succeeds his father Constantius in the rule of Spain, Gaul, and
Britain. =Maxentius= emperor at Rome. =Maximian= resumes the purple.
=Licinius= made emperor. 310. Maximian executed by Constantine. 312.
Defeat and death of Maxentius. 313. Edict of Milan issued by Licinius
and Constantine, inaugurating religious toleration. 314. War between
Licinius and Constantine. 323. Battles of Hadrianopolis and Chalcedon.
Defeat of Licinius. 324. Licinius executed. Constantine sole ruler.
325. First general council at Nicæa. 330. Byzantium, or Constantinople,
becomes the capital of the empire. 337. =Constantine II=, =Constans=,
and =Constantius II= divide the empire. 340. Battle of Aquileia between
Constantine II and Constans. Death of Constantine II. His dominions
fall to Constans. 350. Death of Constans. Revolt of Magnentius. 353.
Constantius II sole emperor. 357. Battle of Argentoratum (Strasburg);
Julian defeats the Alamanni. 361. =Julian, “the Apostate,”= emperor.
362. Edict granting general toleration. 363. Persian War. Julian is
victorious at Ctesiphon, and in other battles, but is at last obliged
to retreat and is killed. =Jovian= emperor. He makes peace with the
Persians, resigning five districts beyond the Tigris. He places
Christianity on an equality with other religions. 364. =Valentinianus
I= and =Valens=, emperors. 367. =Gratianus= emperor for the West. 374.
War with the Quadi. 375. =Valentinian II= reigns conjointly with Gratian
on the death of Valentinian I. 376. Huns and Alans attack the eastern
Goths. Valens permits the Goths to settle in Thrace. 378. Goths threaten
Constantinople. Battle of Hadrianopolis. Goths defeat the Romans with
great slaughter. Death of Valens. 379. =Theodosius the Great=, emperor of
the East. 380. Theodosius becomes a Christian. He successfully continues
the war against the Goths and makes a treaty with them which is followed
by their establishment in Thrace, Phrygia, and Lydia, and the enrolment
of large numbers in the army of the Eastern Empire. 383. =Clemens
Maximus= revolts against Gratian, who is captured and put to death. 387.
Maximus makes himself master of Italy. Theodosius restores Valentinian
II, and puts Maximus to death. 390. Massacre of the inhabitants of
Thessalonica by order of Theodosius in revenge for the murder of
officials. 392. Valentinian II murdered. =Eugenius= emperor of the West.
394. Theodosius defeats Eugenius and becomes the last emperor of the
whole Roman world. 395. Death of Theodosius. =Arcadius= becomes emperor
of the East and =Honorius= of the West.

[Illustration]


THE WESTERN DOMINIONS IN THE FIFTH CENTURY OF EMPIRE (395-476 A.D.)

395. At death of Theodosius the division of the empire becomes permanent.
=Honorius=, aged eleven, rules over the western portion, with Stilicho
as regent. Alaric ravages Thrace. Stilicho proceeds against him. 396.
Second expedition of Stilicho. Alaric escapes into Epirus, and Stilicho
returns to Italy. 397. Revolt of Gildo in Africa, causing scarcity of
food in Rome. He is defeated, and kills himself the following year.
403. Battle of Pollentia ends invasion of Italy by Alaric, begun the
previous year. Retreat of Alaric. 405. Radagaisus with an army of
200,000, composed of Celts, Germans, Sarmatians, and Gauls, invades
Italy. Successfully opposed by Stilicho. Capture and death of Radagaisus.
His army destroyed. 406. The Vandals enter Gaul. 407. Revolt of the
army in Britain. Constantine declared emperor; makes himself master of
the whole of Gaul as far as the Alps. 408. Murder of Stilicho. Alaric
besieges Rome, but retires on payment of money. 409. Alaric, besieging
Rome, has Attalus proclaimed emperor. Revolt of Gerontius in Spain; he
proclaims Maximus emperor. Vandals invade Spain. 410. Alaric takes Rome
and plunders it. Death of Alaric. Succeeded by Atawulf. 411. War between
the usurpers, Constantine and Gerontius. Constantius leads the imperial
forces against the two rebels. Death of Constantine and Gerontius.
412. Jovinus proclaimed emperor in Gaul. Peace between Honorius and
Atawulf. 413. Atawulf slays Jovinus. Heraclianus invades Italy, but is
slain. 415. Death of Atawulf in Spain. Succeeded by Wallia, who, the
following year, makes peace with Honorius. 418. Subjection of Spain by
the Goths after two years’ war. Death of Wallia. Succeeded by Theodoric
I. Aquitania ceded to the Goths. 419. The Suevi and Vandals war in
Spain. 421. Constantius declared augustus, but he is not accepted. 423.
Death of Honorius. 424. John or Joannes seizes the western division.
425. =Valentinian III=, nephew of Honorius, declared augustus. Defeat
and death of the usurper Joannes. Attack on the Goths in Gaul. 428.
War in Gaul continued. The Vandal king, Gunderic, dies, and Genseric
succeeds. 429. Genseric crosses into Africa, on invitation of Boniface,
who has been several years in revolt. 431. War of Boniface with Vandals
ended with capture of Hippo. The Vandals are masters of a large part of
Africa. 432. War between Boniface and Aëtius. Death of Boniface. 434.
Attila becomes king of the Huns. It is said that Honoria, sister of
Valentinian, in disgrace at court, invites him to attack Italy. 435.
Peace with Genseric. War with the Burgundians and Goths in Gaul. 436.
Theodoric besieges Narbo. 437. The war in Gaul continues. Valentinian
marries daughter of Theodosius II. 439. Theodoric defeats Litorius at
Tolosa. Peace with the Goths. 440. Genseric invades Sicily. 444. Attila
murders his brother, Bleda, and succeeds to the full authority. 446. The
Vandals devastate Roman dominions in Spain. The Britons ask aid against
the Saxons. 448. The Suevi ravage Roman dominions in Spain. 451. Attila
invades Gaul. He is defeated at Châlons by Aëtius and Theodoric. Death of
Theodoric, who is succeeded by his son, Torismond. 452. Attila invades
Italy. Siege and capture of Aquileia. Attila retires to Gaul. Death
of Torismond, succeeded by Theodoric II. Leo, bishop of Rome, goes as
ambassador to Attila. 453. Death of Attila. His army is scattered. 455.
Murder of Valentinian by Petronius Maximus. =Maximus= declared emperor.
He marries the widow of Valentinian, who calls Genseric to her aid.
Murder of Maximus as he is preparing to fly from the Vandal. =Avitus=
proclaimed emperor in Gaul by Theodoric II. He is recognised by Marcian
at Constantinople. 457. =Majorian= made emperor by Ricimer, who, the
previous year, has deposed Avitus. 458. Majorian proceeds against the
Vandals and Gauls. 459. Peace between Majorian and Theodoric II, who has
been defeated. 460. Roman fleet destroyed by Genseric at Carthagena.
Peace between Majorian and Genseric. 461. Deposition and murder of
Majorian by Ricimer. Elevation of =Severus=. 462. Vandals ravage Italy.
463. Theodoric II attempts to gain possession of Gaul. Is defeated, but
rules over a large portion of Spain. 465. Death of Severus. No emperor
is appointed, Ricimer keeping power in his own hands. 466. Murder of
Theodoric II by his brother, Euric, who succeeds him. 467. =Anthemius=
appointed emperor by Leo of Constantinople, at Ricimer’s request. 470.
Euric takes Arelate and Massilia, and defeats the Britons. Execution
of the patrician Romanus, who aspires to the empire. 472. War between
Ricimer and Anthemius. Ricimer declares =Olybrius= emperor, and puts
Anthemius to death. Death of Ricimer. Death of Olybrius. 473. =Glycerius=
proclaimed emperor. The Ostrogoths prepare to invade the empire. 474.
Leo sends =Julius Nepos= to reign in the West. Glycerius deposed. Euric
occupies Arverna. Peace between Euric and Nepos. 475. Orestes drives
out Nepos and proclaims his own son, =Romulus Augustulus=, emperor.
476. Odoacer invades Italy. Romulus Augustulus deposed, and Odoacer
acknowledged king of Italy.

The Byzantine Emperor Zeno confers the title of patrician upon Odoacer,
who rules a nominal vicar. “There was thus,” says Bryce, “legally no
extinction of the Western Empire at all, but only a reunion of East and
West.”


FOOTNOTES

[2] This must not be construed as implying that such were the only
lessons of Roman civilisation. See p. 4 _et seq._




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XXIX. THE EMPIRE AND THE PROVINCES


When Augustus entered upon secure possession of absolute power, the
Roman Empire included the fairest and most famous lands on the face of
the globe and all the civilised peoples of the ancient world found a
place in its ample bosom. It extended from the ocean on the west to the
Euphrates, from the Danube and the Rhine to the cataracts of the Nile
and the deserts of Africa and Arabia. And although, in the first decades
of imperial rule, a few tribes within its huge circumference had not
completely assimilated the system of Roman civilisation and law; although
in the Alps and Pyrenees, on the lower Danube and in the inaccessible
gorges of the Taurus some warlike races retained their savage freedom
and did not stoop their necks to the rods and axes of Rome, the mighty
mistress of the world--they offered but a futile defiance, better fitted
to assert and exercise the martial vigour of the legions than to inspire
the masters of the world with dread or set bounds to their dominion.

The wars which Augustus or his legates waged in the Cantabrian Mountains
of northwestern Spain, in the Alps and the wooded hills of Dalmatia,
merely served to consolidate the empire and strengthen its frontiers,
and gave the imperial ruler an opportunity of renewing the martial feats
and triumphs of the republic. The Spanish mountaineers were transplanted
to the plains and constrained to conduct themselves peaceably. Deprived
of their savage liberty, they accustomed themselves to agriculture
and social life; and the Spanish cities, endowed with privileges and
connected by highroads, soon became seats of Roman culture and spheres
of active influence in trade and commerce. The products of the soil, the
largess of the sea, the fruits of industry--oil and wine, honey and wax,
wool and salt fish--were exported in large quantities from the ports
of Spain and filled the seaboard cities with wealth. The fierce and
predatory tribes of the Alpine range, from Savoy and Piedmont to Istria,
were again and again smitten with the edge of the sword and forced to
submit; the newly founded military colony of Augusta Prætoria (Aosta),
in the country of the Salassians and at the junction of the Graian and
Pennine Alps, served thenceforward as a bulwark to the Roman possessions
in northwest Italy, after the stubbornness of the hardy mountaineers had
been broken by the carrying off of such men as were capable of bearing
arms to the slave market at Eporedia (Ivrea).

[Sidenote: [15 B.C.-7 A.D.]]

In the year 15 B.C. the free races of Rætia, Vindelicia, and Noricum were
conquered, from the Lake of Constance and the Valley of the Inn to the
Adriatic; and Tiberius led his legions from Gaul to the sources of the
Rhine, there to join hands with Drusus, the vigorous youth for whom was
reserved the honour of “ushering in the last hour of the liberty of the
mountains,” and who was then advancing from the south. A single campaign
sufficed to destroy forevermore the freedom of these disconnected
tribes, who had no national ties to unite them into a political entity.
A trophy on the southern slope of the mountain rampart proclaimed
to posterity that under the leadership and auspices of Augustus
four-and-forty nations, all mentioned by name, had been vanquished and
subjugated by the sword of Rome. The transportation of the most vigorous
elements of the population to foreign parts, the construction of Alpine
roads, the erection of fortresses and castella, and the founding of
military colonies (amongst which Augusta Vindelicorum, the present
Augsburg, and Regina Castra, the modern Ratisbon, quickly took the first
rank), secured these conquests and won fresh territory for the dominion
of Rome; so that in a short time all the land between the Danube and the
Alps was included in the provincial dominions of the Roman Empire.

At the same time the great stretch of country from Istria to Macedonia
and from the Adriatic to the Save was won for the empire; what had
hitherto been the maritime province of Illyricum was not only augmented
by the addition of the territory of the Iapydes (Iapodes) and Dalmatians,
but a station and magazine was established on the lower Danube by the
conquest of the Pannonian town of Siscia at the confluence of the Colapis
(Kulpa) and Save. In vain did the Iapydes defend their capital with the
courage of desperation; the emperor himself, though wounded in the thigh
and in both arms, prosecuted the attack until all men capable of bearing
arms had fallen in the fray, and the women, old men, and children had
perished either in the flames of the burning town or by their own hands.
In a very short time strong fortified lines were drawn through Pannonia
and Mœsia to the southern bank of the river, and presently a continuous
chain of fortresses under the charge of six legions prepared the way
for the acquisition of fresh provinces, and warded off the raids of the
northern barbarians.

The Thracian principalities south of the Hæmus sank into a more and
more dependent position. In the reign of Tiberius, Cotys, a gentle and
amiable prince, was murdered by his cruel uncle Rhescuporis. The widow
appealed to Rome, whereupon the perpetrator of the crime was deposed by
a decree of the senate, and the country divided between the sons of the
two kings. Under these circumstances the sovereignty of Rome struck ever
deeper root, till at length the last shadow of liberty and independence
vanished and the whole of Thrace was gathered into the ample bosom of the
world-empire.

The attempts at revolt made by the Pannonians and Dalmatians in the years
12 and 11 B.C. were savagely suppressed by Agrippa, and after his death
by his successor Tiberius. The deportation of the men capable of bearing
arms into slavery and the disarmament of the remainder re-established
quiet and submission for a long while. But the love of liberty was not
quelled in this warlike race. Infuriated by the extortions of Rome,
who--in the words of one of their leaders--sent “not shepherds and dogs,
but wolves, to tend the flocks,” and at the enlistment of their gallant
sons for service in foreign parts, the Dalmatians and Pannonians again
drew the sword in the year 6 A.D. to free themselves from the burdens of
taxation and military service.

The rebellion spread rapidly through the whole country; enterprising
leaders, two of whom bore the name of Bato, marched upon the Roman
fortresses of Sirmium and Salona, ravaging the land as they went, while
others harassed Macedonia with a large army. A bold troop of armed men
threatened to invade Italy by way of Tergeste (Trieste); a disquieting
agitation was abroad among the fierce Dalmatian and Sarmatian horsemen
of the grassy steppes beyond the Danube; Roman traders were robbed
and murdered. The alarm which took possession of the capital at these
woeful tidings, and the military activity aroused throughout all Italy,
sufficiently prove that Rome did not underestimate the danger that
menaced her from the East. Discharged veterans were again enrolled in the
legions, a slave tax was imposed to defray the cost of the war, peace was
concluded with Marboduus, the prince of the Marcomanni, whom the Romans
were on the point of attacking.

This devastating war, according to Suetonius the most terrible since the
Punic Wars, lasted for three years [7-9 A.D.]. Tiberius and his nephew
Germanicus, the son of Drusus, marched through the length and breadth of
Dalmatia and Pannonia--now tempting the fortune of war, now treading the
paths of treachery, and fostering discord by negotiations. After many
sanguinary battles Bato came to terms with the Romans for the surrender
of the impregnable mountain stronghold of Anderium, not far from Salona,
and went with his family to Ravenna, where Tiberius granted him a liberal
allowance to the end of his days, in recompense for his desertion of his
country’s cause.

The fortress of Arduba, built on a steep height and protected by a
turbulent river, held out longer; the most determined of the insurgents
had thrown themselves into it, together with a large number of deserters.
But its hour at length drew nigh. After the flower of the garrison,
having made a sortie, had fallen in a sanguinary fight at close quarters,
the survivors set fire to their homes and, with their wives and children,
sought death in the flames or in the foaming torrent. The other towns
then surrendered at discretion, and mute obedience settled once more on
all the land between the Adriatic and the lower Danube. But the country
was waste and inhabitants were few in the blood-sodden fields. The great
river from source to mouth soon formed the northern boundary of the
empire. The Thracian principalities were merged into the province of
Mœsia.

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

In Asiatic countries, too, there were many conflicts to be endured, many
complications to be unravelled, before the states and nations west of
the Euphrates bowed in awe and submission to the supremacy of Rome. The
order of things established by Pompey had indeed remained valid in law
down to the days of Augustus, but great changes had taken place in the
various states in consequence of the civil wars. The republicans Brutus
and Cassius, no less than the triumvirs Antony and Octavian, had requited
the friendly or hostile sentiments of princes, towns, and provinces with
rewards or penalties, had given or taken away privileges and dominion,
had bestowed or withdrawn their countenance according to merit or liking.
When Augustus appeared in the East, ten years after the battle of Actium,
native kingdoms, temporal principalities and hierarchies, free cities,
and other territorial divisions, occupying a more or less dependent
position towards Rome and bound to render her military service, still
existed, as in former times, side by side with the four Roman provinces
of Asia, Bithynia, Cilicia, and Syria. Many of these were deprived of
their previous status on various pretexts, and swallowed up in the
congeries of Roman provinces.

Thus, after the death of that able factionary Amyntas, the general and
successor of Deiotarus, Augustus created the province of Galatia out
of the major part of his possessions, adding to it first Lycaonia, and
later, after the death of Deiotarus Philadelphus, the grandson of the
famous Galatian king, the inland region of Paphlagonia. The Pontic
kingdom, together with Lesser Armenia, Colchis, and the seaboard towns of
Pharnacia and Trapezus, were ruled under favour of Antony and Octavian,
by the brave and prudent Polemon as the “friend and ally of the Roman
people,” and to these dominions he added the kingdom of the Bosporus,
the heritage of his wife Dynamis. After his death, his widow Pythodoris
bestowed her hand upon King Archelaus of Cappadocia, who likewise owed
his kingdom to the favour of Antony and Octavian and to his devotion to
Rome.

By this means the two kingdoms were united, and formed an excellent
barrier against the eastern barbarians. But this new creation was not
destined to last. Lesser Armenia and Cappadocia were merged into the
province of Cappadocia as early as the reign of Tiberius, after Archelaus
had died at Rome of fear at the charges brought against him in the senate
by the emperor, whose displeasure he had incurred, and the hieratic
principality of Comana was added to the same province. Under the rule of
Rome the ancient cities rose to great wealth and magnificence, especially
Nicomedia in Bithynia and Cæsarea in Cappadocia. Dioscurias and the
myth-haunted region about the Phasis became the centre of a far-reaching
commercial activity, the market of the world. There Roman merchants
bought wool and furs from northern lands, and precious stones, seric
(silken) garments, and luxuries from the far East.

Augustus and his successors endeavoured in like manner to unite the
disjointed provinces of southern Asia Minor and to range them under
the Roman provincial system. The confederacy of Lycia maintained its
existence and liberty for some decades longer as a “ruin of antique
times,” and Antony and Octavian exerted themselves to the best of
their ability to stanch the wounds which Brutus had inflicted. But
the confederacy, its prosperity shattered and its bonds loosened by
internal discords, was so far past recovery that its conversion into
a Roman province in the reign of Claudius seemed a boon. The province
of Cilicia was augmented by the addition of Pisidia and the island of
Cyprus. A Roman garrison was set to guard the “Cilician Gates” leading
to Syria, and Augustus committed to some native dependent princes the
work of conquering the robber tribes which dwelt in savage freedom
in the mountains and gorges of the Taurus and Amanus. These were not
incorporated into the actual dominions of Rome till the reign of
Vespasian.

After the battle of Actium, Syria with her subordinate provinces reverted
to her old position, which had been temporarily disturbed by the Parthian
invasions and the donations of Antony to Cleopatra and her children.
Four legions provided for internal tranquillity and security against
the neighbour races to the south and east. The northern mountain region
of Commagene, with the town of Samosata, the last relic of the Seleucid
empire, remained in possession of an independent prince for some time
longer, and at his death it was annexed to the province of Syria. A like
fate befell the district of Judea, which the Romans had long treated with
peculiar favour, for the Julian family was at all times well disposed
towards the Jews. After the death of King Herod, who had contrived to
gain and retain the favour and confidence of the emperor and Agrippa,
his son-in-law and general, by flatteries, presents, and services, the
kingdom of Judea, convulsed by party hatreds and dissensions, was also
merged, as we have seen, into the Roman world-empire. As a Roman province
it was put under the rule of a procurator, who, though nominally under
the control of the governor of Syria at Antioch, exercised most of
the prerogatives that pertained to proconsuls and proprætors in other
countries, in particular the power of inflicting capital punishment.
Judea was nevertheless for a long while the “spoiled darling of Rome”;
the people of God remained in possession of their faith, their laws, and
their nationality; they were exempted from military service and enjoyed
many rights and privileges in all countries.

The procurator (agent) for Judea resided at Cæsarea, the new port which
Herod had founded, and which rose rapidly to commercial prosperity under
Roman rule. Many foreigners settled there under the protection of the
Roman garrison, which had its headquarters in the seat of government. The
governor was subject in all military matters to the proconsul of Syria,
in so far that the latter was bound to come to his assistance in war if
appealed to. The inconsiderable garrison at Cæsarea and the small force
encamped at Jerusalem were only just sufficient to maintain tranquillity
and order in time of peace. At festivals, when great crowds gathered
together in Jerusalem, the governor himself went to the Holy City with an
army, and “probably disposed of a good deal of business in the supreme
judicature and other matters which had been deferred till then.” He then
resided in the prætorium, near the Antonia. He gave judgment from a lofty
judgment seat set up in a portico adorned with beautiful marble. The
trials took place in an inner court. The army had another camp in Samaria.

[Illustration: AUGUSTUS

(From a cameo)]

Though the Jewish nation had more liberty to manage its domestic
concerns under Roman rule than under the Herods, it found small relief
from the burden of taxes and customs. The Romans exacted a property tax
(a poll tax and ground rate), a duty on houses, market produce, and
many other imposts. The temple tax, on the other hand (assessed at two
drachmæ), was regarded as a voluntary rate and collected by priestly
officials, the Romans not concerning themselves about it. A general
census which Augustus caused to be made by P. Sulpicius Quirinus, knight
and proconsul, after he had taken possession of the country (about 10
A.D.), with a view to finding out how much the country could annually
yield to the revenue in proportion to its population, the acreage under
cultivation, and other circumstances, was the first thing that gave deep
offence to the orthodox among the Jews.

The small dominions which Augustus and his family left to be administered
as vassal states by the Herod family--such as the northeastern district
with the old town of Paneas, first ruled by the upright and able Herod
Philip, who expanded Paneas into the great city of Cæsarea (Philippi);
and Galilee and Perea, the heritage of the subtle and greedy tetrarch
Antipas, (commonly called Herod) the fulsome flatterer of the Romans, and
founder of the cities of Sepphoris (Diocæsarea) and Tiberias--were merged
into the Roman world-empire some decades later by the failure of heirs
to the subject dynasty. On a journey to Jerusalem the last-named prince,
Antipas, the Herod of the Gospels, became enamoured of Herodias, the
beautiful wife of his half-brother Philip, herself a member of the Herod
family, and prevailed upon her to leave her husband and bestow her hand
upon himself.

This criminal marriage bore evil fruit for the tetrarch. His former wife
fled to her father, the Arab prince of Petra, and urged him on to make
war upon her faithless husband, who allowed himself to be led in all
things by Herodias, and heeded the sullen disaffection of his people
as little as the open rebukes of the preacher of repentance, John the
Baptist. In the reign of Caligula, Antipas was deprived of his kingdom
on the indictment of his cousin and brother-in-law Herod Agrippa, and
banished with his wife, Herodias, to Gaul, where they both died. Under
the emperor Claudius, however, Herod Agrippa, grandson of Herod the
Great, who had been brought up at Rome, again gained dominion over Judea
and Samaria, and maintained his authority for three years (41-44). An
adventurer and soldier of fortune, and a favourite and flatterer of the
Cæsars by turns, he was smitten with a horrible disease while looking
on at the games in the circus, shortly after a persecution of the
Christians, and succumbed to it in a few days.

The deserts in the southeast of the province of Syria were inhabited
by free Arab tribes, which from the earliest times had led a roving
and predatory life. Augustus acted as Pompey had done before him; he
concluded a treaty and alliance with Malchus of Petra, the Nabatæan
prince and successor to Aretas, and with the chieftain Iamblichus of
Emesa, whose father, another Iamblichus, had been executed by Antony,
guaranteeing to them the possession of their paternal inheritance on
condition that they should ward off the predatory incursions of the
sons of the desert. An attempt made by Ælius Gallus, governor of Egypt,
to subjugate Arabia Felix in the year 24 ended miserably. The glare of
the sun and the perils of the climate soon scared the invaders away and
protected the natives from the Roman swords. The general of the Nabatæan
prince, who had conducted the desert campaign, paid for his supposed
treason with his life; but the disloyalty of the servant was not laid to
his master’s charge.

Rome had still an affair of honour to settle with the Parthians; the
day of Carrhæ was not yet requited and the blood of Crassus and his
comrades cried for vengeance. Augustus nevertheless cherished no desire
to expose himself and his legions to the darts of the iron horsemen.
In this instance fortune again proved his ally. Parthia and Armenia,
which at that time stood in intimate relations with one another, were
distracted with quarrels over the succession. Tigranes, son of the
unhappy Artavasdes, appealed for Roman aid against Artaxias, the nominee
of the Parthian king. Tiberius invaded Armenia with an army, and bestowed
the throne on the protégé of Rome, Artaxias having been slain by the
natives at the general’s coming (20 B.C.). This catastrophe filled the
Parthian king with apprehensions that the Romans might declare for the
pretender Tiridates, and procure for himself a like fate with Artaxias.
He therefore complied with the demands of Augustus and restored the Roman
ensigns and the prisoners who had been detained in the far East ever
since the disaster of Carrhæ. The emperor celebrated the restoration
of the eagles by a sacrificial feast, as if it had been a victory, and
dedicated a temple to Mars the Avenger.

But Armenia attained to no lasting tranquillity; at one time it was
dominated by Roman influence, at another the Parthians gained the upper
hand; kings were installed and exiled, quarrels for the throne and party
feuds filled the land. Under Nero, the Parthian king Vologeses I set his
brother Tiridates on the throne of Armenia, and thus fanned the embers of
war between the Romans and Parthians to a blaze.

The perfidious Armenians themselves supplied occasions of strife by
invoking the aid of Rome on the one hand to save themselves from falling
completely under the sway of their eastern neighbour, and favouring the
Parthians on the other, lest they should be oppressed by Rome. In local
situation and similarity of manners they were, as Tacitus observes, more
closely akin to the Parthians, with whom they intermarried freely; and
were inclined to servitude by reason of their ignorance of liberty. At
this time Domitius Corbulo won great renown and revived the terror of
the Roman arms, even under the vilest of the emperors. Having restored
discipline among the legions, he victoriously invaded the mountain
country, took its principal towns, Artaxata and Tigranocerta, and set
up a certain Tigranes as a Roman claimant to the throne and a rival to
the Parthian pretender (58 B.C.). Tigranes and his successor, a scion of
the Herod family, held their ground for five years by the aid of Rome;
then the Parthians regained the ascendency and again bestowed the throne
on their own candidate Tiridates, Cæsennius Pætus, Corbulo’s successor,
being powerless to prevent this revolution. But when Corbulo himself
advanced once more into Armenia with his army the Parthians despaired of
being able to hold their own in defiance of Rome. They therefore effected
a compromise. In an interview with Corbulo, Tiridates consented to lay
down his royal fillet before the emperor’s image and to receive it back
from his hand at Rome. From that time forward the peace of the Eastern
provinces long remained undisturbed.

In the province of Asia little alteration was made in the existing state
of things, the privileges of certain cities were increased or curtailed
according to the position they had taken up during the civil wars, and
restrictions were imposed on the right of sanctuary of the Ephesian
Diana, which had made the city a harbourage for criminals. The fresh
vigour which Augustus infused into the disordered commonwealth produced
a splendid aftermath of prosperity in the ancient seats of civilisation.
Under the sway of order, that “bounteous daughter of heaven,” the
peaceful arts rose to fresh glory, and in the first century of the
empire the province of Asia contained five hundred populous cities. From
the Greek islands the Romans imported articles of luxury and sensuous
enjoyment; Parian and Phrygian marbles for their gorgeous buildings; the
wine of Chios, the sea fish of Rhodes, and the game of Asia Minor for
their epicurean banquets. Ephesus and Apamea were the marts and emporiums
for the produce and artistic productions of the East. Thence the Roman
merchant brought his fine Babylonian tissues, his Arabian and Persian
incense and ointments, his robes of Tyrian purple. In the island of Cos
were made the fine female garments which displayed rather than concealed
the limbs, the “Coan robes” against which Seneca so vehemently inveighs.

The provinces of Achaia and Macedonia underwent no great change; they had
both long since grown accustomed to the Roman rule, and though the former
(which embraced the territory of ancient Greece up to the Cambunian and
Ceraunian mountains and the islands of the Ægean Sea) had not, like the
latter, renounced all interest in political life, but had sided with
one party or the other in the wars of the Roman despots, the Romans
of those days were too ardent admirers of Greek culture to visit the
transgressions of individuals upon the mother of humane studies as Sulla
had done. Cæsar, Antony, and Augustus forgot with equal magnanimity the
support which Pompey and Brutus had found amongst the fickle Hellenes,
and requited their misdeeds with benefits. Augustus, however, tempered
the full flood of favour which Antony had outpoured upon Athens, by
emancipating the island of Samos, where he had several times made a
long stay. But great as was the consideration extended to Hellas, her
vital force was broken; she had lost the capacity of rising to healthy
political life.

Augustus devoted the closest attention to his adoptive father’s Celtic
conquests and his own acquisitions on the Nile. The wide region of
Gaul, on the far side of the Alps, received its first stable provincial
organisation at his hands. Cæsar, its conqueror, had not had time
to secure and consolidate what his sword had won by a permanent
organisation; the old system of local divisions was still in force,
taxation was unequal and arbitrary. Augustus put an end to this lax
condition of things; in an assembly of the most distinguished chiefs
and elders at Narbo he defined afresh the divisions of the country, and
at the same time undertook a census of the inhabitants and their landed
property, with a view to a more equitable distribution of the public
burdens.

Three new provinces were added to the old provincial territory, which
last bore from that time forth the name of Narbonensian Gaul. They
were Aquitania, from the Pyrenees and Cevennes to the Loire; Gallia
Lugdunensis, between the Loire, Seine, and Marne, and extending to
Lugdunum on the east; and Belgica, the great northern tract, in
which the Sequani and Helvetii were also included. The new towns of
the Rhone--Vienna, Lugdunum, Augustodunum (Autun), and Burdigala
(Bordeaux)--soon vied with the old province in wealth, commercial
activity, and culture, with Massilia, Nemausus, Arelate, and Narbo.
Lugdunum (Lyons), whither the military roads led from every side, rose
to great importance. At the point where the Araris (Saone) mingles
with the Rhodanus the Gallic tribes erected a magnificent memorial and
temple to the emperor Augustus, and the anniversary of its dedication
was thenceforth kept as a national holiday, with musical and gymnastic
entertainments.

In the north, Augusta Trevirorum (Trèves) became the centre of Roman
civilisation; under the benediction of peace agriculture, industry,
and prosperity arose on all sides. The country on the left bank of the
Rhine, inhabited for the most part by German tribes, was placed under
a separate military administration under the name of Upper and Lower
Germania. To guard the Rhenish frontier from the warlike Germans, strong
permanent camps and bulwarks were erected along the river, and the army
of occupation was gradually raised to eight legions. Then began the
building of cities on the banks of the beautiful frontier river. Cologne
was specially favoured by exemption from taxes and other privileges.

Augustus devoted the same care and circumspection to the ordering of
his possessions beyond the Mediterranean. The territory of Carthage and
the kingdom of Numidia, formerly divided into two proconsulates, were
now united to form the province of “Africa.” This was bordered on the
west by the independent kingdom of Mauretania, which Augustus after some
hesitation bestowed upon Juba, a loyal and devoted subject prince, till
the time came for its incorporation into the world-empire in the reign of
Claudius. To the east of the great Syrtis the fertile region of Cyrene
stretched right to the borders of Egypt, and was combined with Crete to
form a second province.

If Augustus left these two provinces to be administered by the senate, he
kept his own grasp all the more firmly upon the province of Egypt, which
extended from the oasis of the desert to the Arabian Gulf, and from the
river delta to the rocky mountains of Syene. A military advanced post in
Ethiopia was withdrawn at a later time, for it was no part of Augustus’
scheme to enlarge the borders of the empire. The emperor regarded Egypt
as his own special domain and watched over it jealously. No senator was
allowed to travel through the country without his express permission;
the administration and the supreme command of a very considerable army
of occupation were in the hands of a trustworthy man who possessed his
full confidence. The care which Augustus bestowed upon agriculture,
irrigation, and trade was well repaid by the fertility of the country and
its advantageous situation. In the first period of Roman dominion Egypt
attained a height of prosperity which threw the years of the Pharaohs and
Ptolemies into the shade.

Egypt not only became the granary of the hungry populace of the
capital, but its fine garments of linen and cotton were highly prized
commodities, even as they had been in the remote past; while the passion
for scribbling which possessed the Romans made the papyrus leaf an
important article of export. Moreover Alexandria was the emporium and
mart for both Indian and Arabian wares, for delicate fabrics of cotton,
from the ordinary calico to the most valuable tissues which constituted
the costliest dress of Roman women and were even the chosen wear of
effeminate men. These last were called Seric robes, and were made from a
product of the silkworm, the genesis and local habitation of which was
shrouded in mysterious obscurity all through antique times.

More than a hundred Roman merchantmen sailed yearly from the Red Sea to
the west coast of India and the Persian Gulf, to procure in their native
places the treasures of the tropics and the costly wares of eastern
lands and seas--spices and drugs, incense and myrrh, odorous ointments
and dyestuffs, ivory, precious stones, pearls, and other articles of
luxury--to sell at a great profit in Rome and Baiæ and the splendid seats
of the nobility. The Seric (Chinese), Indian, and Arabian commodities
which annually found their way through Alexandria to Italy are said to
have amounted in value to over £1,440,000 or $7,200,000. But this great
prosperity redounded less to the advantage of the natives than of the
ruling race.

The oppressive system of taxation introduced by the Ptolemies was still
in force, and became so intolerable in course of time that the people
repeatedly had desperate recourse to violent remedies, thus merely
increasing their own misery and helping the province forward on the
road to poverty, decay, and desolation. The succeeding emperors were
constantly under the necessity of carrying on campaigns in the Nile
region, on account of the mischief done by the bucoles or cattle-herds,
those numerous robber bands which dwelt in the impenetrable reed-swamps
on the middle arm of the Nile, keeping their women and children safe on
small barges and themselves undertaking hostile raids on the neighbouring
districts, in defiance of all forms of civil order.

In all this regulation and organisation we can plainly trace the plan of
a sagacious ruler, who intended to put an end to the lax conditions that
prevailed under the republic, with its exactions and arbitrary dealings,
to check offences against property, and to mould the state into a durable
monarchical form. What Cæsar had begun in times of violent agitation and
party strife, his more fortunate successor accomplished on a magnificent
scale under more peaceful circumstances. Protected from oppression and
ill treatment by laws and ordinances, the provinces rose to renewed
prosperity; many of them like Gaul, Spain, and the Alpine tribes now
entered for the first time upon a political and civilised existence
worthy of the name.

The Hellenic states could not struggle to the height of their former
greatness under the iron hand of Rome, but the fault lay chiefly in
the weakness they had brought upon themselves before the days of Roman
supremacy by their suicidal fury. Their part in history was played out,
and they slowly perished of the wounds inflicted by their own hands.
“It was beyond the power of Rome to renew the youth and creative energy
of intellect in the Greek races,” says Hœck, “but what she had to give
she gave. She preserved Anterior Asia from the worst of fates, that of
falling a prey to the eastern barbarians; she saved the aftermath of
Hellenic culture, and procured for this nation, as for others, a pleasant
private life in the evening of its ancient historic existence.”

By judicious regulation and admirable administration the monarchy healed
the wounds which the free commonwealth had inflicted upon the subject
countries. “The time was gone by when the right of the victor brought
an endless train of the vanquished to the capital and when Rome took
for her own the most glorious works of foreign art, the creations of a
nobler age and race.” The requisitions and imposts were not small, the
land tax and property tax, the poll tax and other subsidies, levied from
the provincials in the senatorial provinces by quæstors for the _ærarium_
or state treasury, in the Cæsarian provinces by procurators for the
imperial privy purse and military exchequer. Under the empire as under
the republic the mines and the port and frontier duties were claimed by
the government. And the obligation of military service was occasionally
burdensome. Yet all these drawbacks were far more than counterbalanced by
the state of order and equity which Augustus endeavoured to establish in
all parts. The proconsuls and procurators were appointed either by the
absolute authority of the emperor or with the concurrence of the senate,
were responsible to the former for their conduct in office, and had fixed
salaries and allowances for equipment and travelling expenses.

The orderly business departments opposed a barrier against encroachments
and arbitrary dealings on the part of governors or their legates and
minor officers, and provided the appeal to the imperial tribunal as a
protective measure. The civil and military supremacy of the emperor
kept provincial officials within bounds. It became customary to commute
payments in kind (tenths of grain, fifths of the vintage and oil harvest)
into payments in money based on average prices and a moderate estimate;
the burden of military service and taxation was mitigated by means of the
exemption accorded to particular districts and communities, by security
from devastating wars and hostile incursions, and by the fact that the
leading positions and military honours were open to all.

Augustus laid the foundation of the great system of roads, which
connected the provinces with one another and with imperial Rome. Military
roads, the construction and extent of which fill us with admiration
to this day, gave facilities for traffic in all directions. They were
adorned with milestones, all of which took their start from the golden
milestone which Augustus himself had set up in the midst of the Forum,
and provided with stations (mutationes) and hostelries (mansiones),
the former for changes of couriers or horses and conveyances,--for
the military roads were also used for the state post organised by the
emperor,--the latter for accommodation at night. Means of transit by
water were also increased, and distance ceased to form a gulf of
separation. Armies could move with great rapidity from any part of
the empire to any destination, and the emperor’s commands could be
transmitted to the remotest regions. Daily journals carried the news of
what occurred at Rome in the briefest possible time to all quarters of
the world; Rome was the centre of the empire and the heart of the body
politic.

The careful scheme of colonisation which Augustus undertook after the
example of Cæsar and carried out on an immense scale, and which was
also pursued by succeeding emperors, contributed above all things to
disseminate Roman culture, speech, and jurisprudence, and to impress
a uniform character upon the whole of the great empire. The results
of imperial colonisation were in the highest degree beneficial. For
while in barbarous lands they sowed in virgin soil the seeds of a noble
civilisation and a workable system of law and political organisation,
they infused fresh vigour into old and moribund civilisations and
furnished them with stable political and judicial institutions; thus
supplying the men of the toga who were dispersed all over the whole
empire with a centre and fulcrum for their commercial and industrial
activity. At the same time they offered the emperor the most satisfactory
means of providing for his discharged legionaries and establishing
settlements of impoverished Romans and Italians.

To add a greater attraction to this emigration beyond sea the colonies
were as a rule endowed with the full rights of Roman citizenship, and
rendered capable of a free and dignified political existence. They were
exempted from the jurisdiction of the local governor, they elected their
own town council and magistrates in common assembly, their suits were
decided according to Roman law, and in short the colony was a Rome in
miniature, a daughter plantation, where the language, religion, customs,
and social habits of the mother city grew up in wholesome soil, and the
various elements of the population united under the ægis of equality of
political and civil rights to form a single municipal community.

If the foreign element preponderated in any provincial town, or if, for
other reasons, it was undesirable or impracticable to rank it among
Roman colonial cities, it was admitted to the status of a _municipium_.
These latter possessed the rights of Roman citizenship and were assigned
to a _tribus_ like the colonies, but they differed from them in their
municipal and magisterial system and sought justice according to their
local laws and legal formulæ and not according to Roman institutions.
They were free cities in which few Romans lived, if any. As a rule their
constitution was based on that of the Italian municipal organisation. In
every province there were municipia of this character, and in organising
them local tradition was treated with the utmost consideration. They
promoted the civilisation of the natives, disposed them favourably
towards Roman institutions, and familiarised them with Roman life.

Everywhere imperial Rome was sedulous to transmit to the provinces
the organisation, constitution, and legal system which had been
perfected in Italy through the course of centuries, and to gain over
the various communities by granting them a privileged position before
the law, exempting them from the jurisdiction of the local governor,
or lightening the burden of taxation. In Spain, Gaul, and other less
civilised countries she endeavoured to bind the several communities
to their allegiance to Rome by enrolling them among the municipia, or
exempting them from the land tax by the bestowal of the _jus Italicum_,
or by admitting them under the “Latin law” which insured to the communal
magistrates the honorary freedom of the dominant city and conferred
on such communities the rights of ownership over the soil, freedom of
commerce and autonomous municipal administration. On the other hand, the
Greek cities in Hellas, which prized highly the glorious names of liberty
and autonomy even after they had long become empty sounds, were won over
by being elevated to the rank of “free cities,” a distinction flattering
to their national vanity, which privileged them to manage their own
municipal affairs, to elect their own magistrates, and to maintain their
national laws and judicial procedure, while it relieved them of the
burden of maintaining garrisons and having soldiers billeted upon them
and secured to them the right of coinage and the ownership of the soil.

Thus were the provinces compassed about with a network of varying
conditions, which linked them to Rome by every kind of tie. Even if the
old policy of “_divide et impera_” lay at the bottom of this diversity of
legal status, better conditions being held out as the reward of loyalty,
devotion, and service to the supreme government, as a means of attaching
the influential and ambitious to the Roman interest, yet this provincial
organisation was a logical outcome of the political and juridical system
developed under the republic.

The Roman government did not aim at uniformity or centralisation.
Augustus and his immediate successors merely transferred to their
provincial dominions the typical organisation evolved by the senate
for the races and communities of Italy, and the relations of the
various communities with Rome were ordered according to their conduct
and loyalty by contracts and concessions. Every grade of political
rank was represented, from the full rights of Roman citizenship in the
colonies and municipia to the Italian and Latin law of the emancipated
communes and the status of the subject cities, which last were
under the jurisdiction of the local governor in all public affairs,
whether administrative or judicial. Even these retained a shadow
of self-government and independence in the right of electing their
civic magistrates, subject to certain restrictions, in the unhindered
continuance of religious and communal associations, and the ownership of
municipal property.

Thus in all parts of the provinces we come upon evidences of revived
prosperity, a well-ordered state of things in legal matters, and a
society animated by interests of commerce, industry, and art. Where
writers are mute, the splendid monuments of architecture, the remains
of temples and public halls, theatres and amphitheatres, baths and
aqueducts, bear witness with no uncertain voice.

It was otherwise in the capital and in Italy. Here also the monarchy
succeeded to the heritage of the republic, but found a condition of
social disorder past remedy. Agrarian distress and conflict, which
had been at work since the days of the Gracchi, consumed the vigour,
prosperity, and vital spirits of the races of middle and lower Italy. The
civil wars with their proscriptions and confiscations, the settlement of
brutalised soldiers, unfit for agriculture and the labours of peace, in
the most beautiful and fertile regions, the cultivation of the fields
by hordes of slaves, and the absorption of large districts into private
estates or _latifundia_, had almost annihilated the free peasant class
of earlier times and had filled the peninsula with an alien population,
bound to the soil by no ties of affection or association, linked by no
natural piety to the paternal roof or the inherited acres. The honest,
industrious, and thrifty peasantry of primitive times had vanished,
the ownership of the soil had passed, in part, into the hands of the
rich, who transformed the arable land into parks and gardens, groves and
fish-ponds, for the adornment of their country-seats, or who, from greed
of gain, used them as pasture for their flocks and herds, or as vineyards
and olive gardens, with a view to the trade in wool, wine, or oil; in
part, they had been assigned to veterans as a recompense for military
service. In the places where free peasant families had led a quiet life
in numerous villages and homesteads, and had cultivated their cornfields
with assiduous industry, might now be seen the dungeon-like lodgings of
purchased slaves or the half-ruinous dwellings of foreign legionaries,
who reluctantly and sullenly applied themselves to unfamiliar labours and
cares.

To add to the general wretchedness, numerous robber bands infested the
country, and constituted a danger to liberty, life, and property. In
the fair and fruitful valley of the Po alone, but recently incorporated
into the Roman body politic, prosperity and security prevailed amidst
settled conditions, and trade and industry flourished in populous cities.
Patavium, Cremona, Placentia, and Parma provided Italy with woollen cloth
and carpets, and supplied the army with salt meat.

The state of things in the capital was no more satisfactory. More
than half of the inhabitants--estimated at this time at about two
millions--belonged to the slave class, and were dispersed in the houses
and villas of the wealthy, where they performed the various offices
indispensable in a great household. These included not merely the tasks
and services which fall to the share of domestics and menials among
ourselves, but such functions as in modern times are left to artisans;
such as the making of clothes, the preparation of food-stuffs, building,
and the manufacture of household utensils. This multitude of slaves
ministered to the luxury and ease of the senatorial or knightly families.
The number of the latter can at no time have amounted to more than ten
thousand, and many of them, in all likelihood, did not possess much
more than the fortune required by law--1,200,000 sesterces [£6,912 or
$34,560] for a senator, and the third part of this sum for a member of
the knightly class.

[Illustration: STATUE OF AUGUSTUS IN THE VATICAN]

The whole body of the population then remaining (some 1,200,000 souls)
consisted of the free inhabitants of the metropolis, most of whom lived
from hand to mouth without any definite means of support. Of these a
large proportion were aliens and freedmen. Almost the only occupations
open to them were retail trading and traffic in the necessaries of daily
life, or posts as subordinate clerks and officials; for most trades and
manufactures were carried on by slaves for their masters’ profit, while
wholesale trade and financial affairs were almost entirely in the hands
of knights and revenue farmers, who frequently took up their abode in the
large provincial cities for this purpose. Consequently, great as were
the riches which poured into the metropolis every year from all quarters
under heaven, there was no well-to-do middle class, the groundwork of
every healthy political society; the influx of wealth only increased the
luxuries and enjoyments of the aristocratic class, the gulf between the
senatorial and knightly nobility and the populace of the capital was
nowhere bridged over, nor was there any transition or compromise between
the palaces of ostentatious and gormandising luxury and the hovels of the
poverty-stricken and starving masses.

The dying republic had suffered under this incongruity, and whatever
efforts Augustus might make to mitigate the evil, it was too deep-seated
to be radically cured. The number of citizens who had to be maintained
by regular donations of provisions from the public storehouses and by
charitable gifts amounted to half a million, and yet this aid was but an
inadequate makeshift; many of those disqualified to receive it were in no
better case. There were thousands of free Romans who had no shelter but
the public halls and colonnades of the temples, whose hopes were set upon
the luck of the next minute, whose cares did not extend beyond the coming
morrow.

The distress was the less capable of remedy because, under the most
galling circumstances, the free Roman cherished the proud consciousness
that he was a member of the ruling race, and was withheld by his innate
pride of nationality and hereditary prejudice from the humble tasks
which furnished the alien, the freedman, and the slave with a tolerable
livelihood and occasionally with wealth. He felt it less disgraceful to
starve or live upon alms and gifts than to labour with his hands; he
scorned the physical toils of agriculture and handicraft, and the trouble
of serving another; but he had no scruples about begging for his living,
and regarded the distributions of corn and the popular entertainments as
no more than his due. The free beggar looked haughtily upon the bedizened
slave, whose alms he took as he would have taken the fruit of the
woodland tree or the draught from a spring. The easy life of the capital
attracted needy and indolent persons from all parts of Italy to Rome, the
city swarmed with beggars and vagrants, with idlers and proletarians, who
all claimed their maintenance from the state.

Augustus, like Cæsar before him, strove to remedy these evils to the
best of his power. To reduce the hungry rabble in the capital he devised
methods of emigration to the colonies and established settlements on
property purchased out of the public funds; he restricted the number of
recipients of corn by a careful scrutiny of the material circumstances
of the applicants and by the exclusion of all aliens, non-citizens, and
abusers of the public bounty. But all these restrictions were palliatives
merely; the sources of misery were not stopped. The provisioning of
the capital with cheap corn was one of the most onerous duties of the
government. That he might more directly control the regular supply
from the “grain provinces” of Sicily, Africa, and Egypt, Augustus
caused the office of “cereal prefect,” which Pompey had once held, to
be conferred upon himself, and then appointed a permanent bureau to
manage and superintend the importation of corn, the markets, and the
public storehouses from which the indigent populace monthly drew their
fixed allowance on presentation of a counter. In times of scarcity and
want, such as not unfrequently occurred, the distributions were made
on a larger scale, and every joyful or propitious event was a welcome
opportunity for the emperor to purchase the favour of the populace with
gifts and pecuniary donations.

Augustus devoted the same attention to other parts of the Italian
peninsula. He endeavoured to recover waste districts for agriculture
and industry by establishing settlements, and made use of rewards and
privileges as inducements and incitements to energy. He cleared the
country of robber bands by squadrons and armed watchmen, protected the
coast towns from pirates, and by a careful examination of slave-tenements
(_ergastula_) set at liberty all freeborn persons who had been kidnapped
and sold into slavery by these roving gangs. With the establishment of
the monarchy, Italy, like the provinces, entered upon a new life, and
there also the restoration of security and order brought vigour and
prosperity into being. The twenty-eight colonies which Augustus peopled,
partly with veterans, and partly with Roman and Italian settlers of the
poorer class, were furnished with a suitable legal and political status.
Their municipal constitution was modelled on that of Rome, and served
in its turn as a model for the other municipia and prefectures of the
peninsula. Beside their local rights of citizenship they all possessed
the _civitas_ or freedom of Rome; they all had the right of electing
their officers and chief magistrates (_decuriones_) in the assembly of
the people, the autonomous administration of communal property, freedom
of worship according to their hereditary ritual and solemnities, and
their own judicature according to Roman law; and any burgess removing
to Rome ranked in all things on the same footing as the old freemen of
the capital. The differences of legal status which at first prevailed
gradually disappeared under the empire; all provincial towns occupied
the same relative position towards the capital, and approximated to each
other by degrees in their individual organisation and administration.

Everywhere we come upon a college of decuriones or civic
magistrates,--composed of a greater or lesser number of members
elected from among the wealthiest citizens or supplemented from the
government departments of the city,--which gradually absorbed all
authority and constituted the supreme governing body of the municipium,
under the presidency of two or four chief magistrates (_duumviri_
or _quatuorviri_). In the prefecture cities the control of the
administration and judicature was vested in a prefect annually appointed
by Rome, under whom a number of elective municipal officers managed the
current affairs of the city. The magistracies of all provincial towns
were modelled, both as to titles and departments, upon those of the
capital. The heads of the decuriones exercised jointly the functions
of consuls and prætors, and were attended in public by lictors with
fasces; the public revenue and expenditure was controlled by quæstors,
ædiles superintended the markets and retail trades and were responsible
for the town police; censors kept the lists of burgesses and the census
records. In questions of criminal law, however, the decisive sentence was
usually pronounced at Rome. The imperial court of appeal was the court of
highest instance for the whole empire. In upper Italy, which Cæsar had
been the first to transfer from the position of a province to that of an
integral part of the Roman state and jurisdiction, the administration of
justice in civil affairs--left in older municipalities to the municipal
courts--was subject to considerable restriction.

The rigid rule of the monarchy and the exact organisation and strict
supervision of the municipal authorities obviated the danger of revolts
and serious disturbances among the populace, and Italy (the capital and
its vicinity only excepted) was clear of garrisons. The naval forces
stationed at Ravenna and Misenum served to protect the coast and maritime
towns, and in the hour of danger a sufficient army could always be
summoned from Dalmatia and Pannonia. The imperial guard of prætorians (of
which three cohorts consisting of one thousand men apiece were quartered
in Rome, and the other six in the neighbouring towns) was mainly
composed of Italians. It shared with a German and Batavian troop of horse
the duty of guarding the palace and the sacred person of the monarch.

It is in the nature of every monarchical system of government to bring
all conditions into congruity, to smooth over the diversities which
prevail among its subjects, and to impress the stamp of uniformity upon
the whole state. This was the case in the organisation of both provinces
and municipalities, for in spite of modifications of legal status they
were all cut upon the same pattern and organised according to definite
classes. The same thing took place in financial affairs and taxation.
During the republican period Rome and Italy had enjoyed a privileged
position, and foreign countries had been exploited for the advantage
of the dominant race. The principate, on the contrary, endeavoured to
bring about an equalisation of duties and contributions as well as of
privileges. The customs dues, which formerly applied only to subject
countries, were extended to Italy under the monarchy, part of the
proceeds being allotted to the public revenue and part to the Italian
municipalities; the property tax, from which Italy had been exempt in the
later days of the republic, was likewise introduced throughout the empire
on the basis of the census or rating of property; an excise duty was
levied for the fiscus (imperial privy purse) upon all articles imported
into Italy for sale, amounting to one per cent. of the price, and two or
even four per cent. in the case of slaves; the twentieth part of every
inheritance which did not fall by right to the next of kin had to be paid
into the military treasury, and a tax was imposed on the manumission of
slaves.

If the revenues of the state were increased by these means under
the empire the improvement was mainly due to sounder financial
administration, to the abolition of revenue farming for the regular land
tax and property tax in subject countries, and to the strict control
exercised over the tax-gatherers; and according to Gibbon’s estimate the
annual revenue secured must have amounted to at least fifteen to twenty
million pounds sterling [$75,000,000 to $100,000,000]. Even if five
million pounds were spent on the army and navy, if the distributions
of corn to the poor of the city swallowed a few millions more, and the
salaries of the imperial officials in Rome and the provinces and the
police expenditure disposed of no inconsiderable sum, the surplus was
none the less sufficient to provide for the erection of magnificent
buildings, to cover the empire with a network of highroads, to satisfy
the popular love of spectacles by gorgeous entertainments, and to rejoice
the hearts of citizens and soldiers with gifts and feasts.

The public buildings and pleasure grounds, the splendid private houses
and villas, with which the republic had begun to adorn the capital and
its environs, grew from year to year, and became ever vaster and more
elaborate. The Forum of Augustus, with the temple of Mars the Avenger,
the sanctuary of Jupiter Tonans on the lower slope of the Capitoline
Hill, the white marble temple of Apollo on the Palatine, the temple of
Quirinus on the Quirinal Hill, and others of the same character, were
among the most splendid edifices in the city. Magnificent colonnades
perpetuated the names of the wife, sister, and grandsons of Augustus; the
number of temples restored by him is estimated at eighty-two.

The imperator’s example was imitated by his wealthy and powerful friends;
Agrippa, whose services to the health and cleanliness of the city in
the construction of the huge vaulted sewers (cloaca) have already
been mentioned, perpetuated his name by a succession of magnificent
gardens for the use and embellishment of Rome. He had two new aqueducts
constructed, and he repaired the older ones that had fallen into
decay; so that no town in the world had such an abundant supply of
pure spring-water as ancient Rome, an advantage which the city enjoys
to this day. He completed and adorned the Septa Julia which Cæsar had
begun on the Field of Mars, for public assemblies and entertainments,
and surrounded the space with three colossal and splendid edifices--the
portico of Neptune, the Baths, and the Pantheon, the magnificent circular
building in honour of Jupiter the Avenger and of Venus and Mars, the
ancestors of the Julian family. Beams of bronze supported the domed
roof with its gilded tiles, the walls and floor were lined and paved
with marble. Even now the church of S. Maria Rotunda is among the most
remarkable buildings of the city. The Diribitorium--the most spacious
building ever constructed under one roof--where the populace received
their corn allowance and voting tablets and the soldiery their pay, was
the work of Agrippa.

Such was the constitution of the world-wide empire over which Augustus
ruled as an absolute monarch with unlimited powers for forty-four
years after the day of Actium. The frontier provinces were protected
by standing armies, the members of which, collected from all countries
and nationalities, had forsworn their native land and national spirit,
and obeyed no orders but those of their military lord; the coasts
were guarded by a well-manned fleet. On the Rhine eight legions (each
consisting of 6100 foot and 726 horse) quartered in permanent camps,
formed a strong bulwark against the Germans and kept Gaul under control;
Spain was garrisoned by three legions; two were quartered in Africa,
and an equal number watched over the safety of Egypt. Four legions
maintained the supremacy of Rome in Syria and on the Euphrates; the
Danubian provinces were guarded by six legions distributed through Mœsia,
Pannonia, and Dalmatia. The eastern frontier being thus sufficiently
protected by an army of occupation of 50,000 men, the banks of the
Danube by a similar force of 70,000, and the Rhine district by 100,000;
the fleets stationed in the harbours of Misenum, Ravenna, Forum Julii
(Fréjus) and elsewhere kept the islands and maritime states under control
and insured protection and security for commerce and traffic.

[Illustration: ROMAN EMPEROR IN THE DRESS OF A GENERAL

(Based on De Montfaucon)]

A regular system of tolls and taxes brought the public revenue into
good condition and filled the ærarium and fiscus; a vigilant police
force and fire brigade, which Augustus distributed through the fourteen
divisions of the capital, maintained tranquillity and order, protected
life and property from evil-disposed and malicious persons, and curbed
the outbreak of savage passions. Huge aqueducts, solidly constructed
roads, stately buildings, temples and halls, aroused the admiration of
contemporaries as of posterity. On the Field of Mars there arose a new
and splendid city, composed of temples and halls, of public buildings
for government purposes and for the amusements of the people, which
excelled the glory of the City of the Seven Hills, “unique in character,
unsurpassed in ancient or modern times,” so that Augustus could boast
that he had found a city of brick and should leave a city of marble. In
the provinces the improved government and administration of justice bred
a condition of wealth and outward prosperity.

But with all these advantages imperial Rome suffered from grave moral
defects. The love of liberty, the common patriotic sentiment, the
vigour, and martial virtue of the republican period, were gone; in ease,
tranquillity, and enervating pleasure, the arm of the citizen grew
feeble, and the self-respect and manly pride of earlier days degenerated
into servility and grovelling adulation. The city swarmed with foreign
soldiers of fortune and with enriched freedmen. The old seats of culture
in the East sent forth not scholars and artists only, but ministers of
luxury, gluttony, and voluptuousness. Together with a few wholesome
elements, all the evils and defects of human society flowed together here
and preyed upon the scanty remnant of the old Roman morality and virtue.
Rome became the meeting place of all nations on the face of the earth.
Interest in public affairs grew steadily feebler since the offices and
dignities had become empty honours void of power. The senators had often
to be constrained by penalties to attend the sessions of the senate,
although the latter had been reduced to two principal meetings a month;
the office of ædile was shunned as a burden until the state took it upon
itself to defray the cost of the public entertainments; candidates for
the tribunate had often to be put forward by the emperor. The citizens
were not ashamed to enrol themselves in the list of paupers and to share
in the public distributions of corn and alms; nay, rather than apply
themselves to any honest calling, many Romans, especially of the knightly
class, preferred to take service for board and wages with the purveyors
of gladiatorial combats, and to hazard their lives in a brutal popular
amusement which gained ground steadily from that time forward, exercising
an effect all the more demoralising on the minds of men, and rousing and
stimulating their licentious instincts all the more keenly because the
verdict of life or death was given by the humour of the crowd, at whose
signal the victor spared or transfixed his prostrate opponent; a right
of appeal even more inhuman than the old custom that the duel should end
with the death of one of the combatants.

The degeneration of morals and the decay of domestic virtue kept pace
with the passion for brutal spectacles. Strenuously as the emperor strove
to raise the standard of family life and to curb immoderate expenditure
on dress and food and the growing license of women by sumptuary and moral
edicts, to enforce legal marriage and the procreation of legitimate
offspring as a duty and honour by legal ordinances and curtailment of
privileges, to render divorce difficult and to check the rampant vice of
adultery, the state of indolent celibacy and the excesses of both sexes
in connection with it spread more and more, in the upper classes out of
liking for a licentious life and forbidden pleasures, in the lower from
poverty and laziness. The corruption of morals, checked but ineffectually
by Augustus, made rapid strides after his death; above all, when the
rulers themselves tore away the veil which still shrouded shameful living
under the first principate. But even Augustus could never disclaim his
origin from Venus Aphrodite, the ancestress of the family of Julius.[b]


AUGUSTUS MAKES EGYPT HIS PRIVATE PROVINCE

[Sidenote: [30 B.C.]]

The day of Egyptian independence was over as a matter of course. Cæsar
needed the country, with its corn and its riches, for his scheme of
reorganisation.

The city of Rome capitulated to the grain fleet of the Nile and sold her
ancient liberty for a supply of daily bread, and the price at least was
paid her. By the Cæsar Egypt had been conquered and under the rule of the
Cæsar she remained, like all countries which Cæsar was the first to unite
with the Roman Empire.

It is obvious that a conquered province cannot at once be placed on
exactly the same footing as older parts of the empire; a transition
period is almost always necessary; but Egypt never took quite the same
position as other subject countries. Before the partition of the empire
into senatorial and imperial provinces was effected, Egypt had come
to occupy a unique position with regard to the emperor; and after the
partition the ties which bound it to him became even closer. Among the
imperial provinces there was none more intimately related to the emperor
than this, which surpassed all others in importance. Egypt was of much
the same consequence to the Roman Empire as India is to the England of
to-day.

The wise yet strict government of a foreign power may be a blessing
to any country in comparison with the tyranny and extravagance of its
native sultans; but the foreign rulers profit even more by it, and are
therefore always striving to keep the rich country, with a population
ignorant alike of war and politics, in a state of political tutelage, to
perpetuate the gulf between the dominant and subject races, and to render
all interference on the part of rivals impossible. In a word, they keep
their most important province as the apple of their eye.

Nature and history assuredly conspired to give the country an exceptional
position. Without being an island it possessed the advantages of an
insular position; for it was bounded on two sides by the sea and on the
other two by the desert or barbarous tribes whose raids and predatory
incursions might incommode the province but could never become a menace
to the existence of the empire. Thus the Egyptians could hardly be drawn
into the political broils of the continent so long as they confined
themselves within their natural frontiers; and for this reason the third
Ptolemy Euergetes acted wisely when of his own free will he restored his
conquests to Seleucus king of Syria. His military situation had nothing
to lose by such a step, for Egypt proper was easy to defend and difficult
to attack, and was accessible to a land force only by way of Pelusium.
On the other hand any power that established itself in the country found
there such an abundance of resources as was offered by hardly any other
country of ancient times.

The fecundity of Egypt has passed into a proverb; even in a season of
moderate harvests great quantities of corn could be exported every year,
and after the country had been conquered by the Romans the grain tribute
of Egypt was absolutely necessary for the sustenance of the capital.
Whoever held Egypt could procure a famine in Rome and Italy at his
pleasure; and for that reason pretenders of later times always secured
Egypt first and then Italy. The wealth of the country was increased by
commerce and trade, and it was therefore densely populated, even more so
than at the present day.

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.

[Sidenote: [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.

The position of the various classes of the population also remained
what it had become in the course of historic development. The native
Egyptians, the original lords of the soil, remained in the subjection
to which they had been reduced by the conquests of the Persians and
Macedonians; they constituted the population of the country districts
and country towns, and had neither political organisation nor political
rights. The foreign conqueror naturally had no inducement to give the
vanquished rights that had been denied them by their own kings. Egypt was
to be a province absolutely dependent upon himself, and that would have
been impossible if the Roman element in Egypt had grown so strong and
had so far intermingled with the natives that the sovereign was forced
to take it into account. The Egyptian proper was therefore on principle
precluded from acquiring the rights of Roman citizenship. For example, an
Egyptian of ancient days could no more act on a Roman jury than a Bedouin
could nowadays be elected to the English parliament. In later times this
prohibition was occasionally evaded by first conferring the freedom of
Alexandria upon the native and then admitting him to Roman citizenship as
an Alexandrian. On the other hand the material condition of the Egyptian
population improved under the judicious rule of the Cæsars.

The mechanism of government, administration, and taxation had been
admirably organised through centuries of practice; it naturally
discharged its functions as well under the new sovereign as under the
old, and consequently became the type of the technics of imperial
administration. In this respect the republic had left the empire much
to do. The Romans were the first to appoint officers in the level land
who had more to do than collect the taxes. Their epistrateges of upper,
lower, and middle Egypt, their nomarchs and ethnarchs, had of course only
a circumscribed sphere of action, but they saw to the maintenance of law
and order and probably decided simple lawsuits among the natives.

Among the Egyptians, unlike the Hellenes, we find a simple division into
nomes instead of a municipal organisation; and like many provincial
cities under the Roman Empire, these nomes were allowed to strike
their own coins, though only with a Greek superscription. A collective
organisation was, however, denied to the natives. In the latter days of
Augustus the various provinces of the Roman Empire had diets of their
own, invested with very modest political rights; Egypt alone never had a
provincial diet, in token that it was not really a province at all but
was regarded as a great demesne of the sovereign.

Next above the Egyptians was the Græco-Macedonian population, which
was practically if not entirely concentrated in Alexandria, and was
separated from the natives by a great gulf. As members of the same race
as the Egyptian kings the Greeks of Alexandria enjoyed political rights
and communal autonomy; and these they retained in the main under the
Romans. In like manner their language remained the official language of
Egypt under the empire, Roman officials addressed Greeks and Egyptians
in Greek; only in the Latin garrison of Alexandria, Latin was naturally
predominant.

The Greeks of Alexandria possessed their own municipal officers, their
high priest, chief magistrate, town-clerk, and chief of police; but on
the other hand a genuine town council was denied them. The few other
Greek cities in Egypt were similarly organised.

The whole province, with its population of Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans,
was committed by the Cæsar to a viceroy, who, though belonging only to
the knightly class, ranked on an equality with the senatorial proconsuls
in virtue of his position as the confidant and representative of the
emperor, and surpassed them in authority in virtue of his command over
the legions, although he lacked the insignia of this authority. C.
Cornelius Gallus, famous as a poet and proven as a general and personal
enemy of Antonius, was the first to be made viceroy of the new province;
and on the whole he justified the confidence reposed in him by his
master, for he succeeded in repressing with great vigour some local
attempts at rebellion among the inhabitants of Heroöpolis and the Thebaid.

His subordinates, like himself, were men of no rank higher than
knighthood and were the personal servants of Cæsar; the mechanism of
government remained the same as had been perfected under the Ptolemies,
only from this time forward the Greeks were superseded by the Romans.
Among the higher offices were those of chief magistrate, administrator
of the chest of the dominion of Egypt, prefect of Alexandria, or of
certain districts in the capital; and one procurator fari Alexandriæ was
certainly chosen from among the ranks of freedmen.

The taxes were no less high than before, but Cæsar saw to it that Egypt
was placed in a position to pay her taxes every year. He had all the
Nile canals, which had got choked or dried up under previous rulers,
thoroughly cleansed and repaired by his soldiers; he completed the canal
system where it required completion; and the beneficial results of these
necessary measures were very soon apparent. The famous statue of the
Nile is surrounded by sixteen _putti_, as a symbol that the river must
rise sixteen cubits if Egypt is to hope for an abundant harvest; if it
only rises half that height it means dearth and famine in the land.
But after the restoration of the canal system under Augustus a rise of
twelve cubits indicated a good harvest as early as the governorship of
Petronius, and if the rise was only eight, it did not necessarily mean a
bad one. In one of the latter years of Augustus the Nile must have risen
to an extraordinary height, if we may trust the mutilated records of the
Nilometer at Elephantine--probably twenty-four cubits.

[Illustration: ROMAN CATAPULT]

The soldiers of Augustus were also employed in making roads and
constructing cisterns at various places. Coptos is the point to which
most of the roads which connect the Nile Valley with the Red Sea
converge. Here an interesting inscription has recently been discovered,
dating probably from the last years of the reign of Augustus, and bearing
a long list of the names of the soldiers who had made cisterns at various
points along these roads and laid out a fortified camp where they met.

The Indian trade rose rapidly to prosperity under Augustus. As early as
the time when Strabo journeyed through Egypt he saw at the most diverse
spots signs that the country was beginning to recover from the ruinous
consequences of the system of government pursued by the last Ptolemies.
In the latter years of Cleopatra’s reign barely twenty ships had ventured
to put out from the Red Sea; under the rule of Augustus there was a
stately fleet of Indiamen, which engaged in the African and Indian trade
with great success, and brought in a substantial profit to the Egyptian
government, which not only exacted import duties but afterwards charged
a considerable export duty upon Indian goods. But it is hardly possible
to estimate, even approximately, the revenue which Augustus drew from his
newly acquired province.[c]


ADMINISTRATION OF THE PROVINCES

An explanation should be given of the general principles which were
followed by the Romans in the administration of subject lands. The
consecutive pursuit of these principles secured the result that provinces
originally disparate in every particular, through the influence of
Roman administration, were made into a single whole which was not only
externally symmetrical but also internally harmonious--a whole in which
the various nationalities with their political, civil, and social
idiosyncrasies more or less disappear.

The word “provincia” is much older than those conquests outside Italy
which we have hitherto designated with the name of provinces; it requires
particular explanation. So long as the kingdom existed in Rome, the king
was the sole exerciser of the imperium, that is to say, of unlimited
military and judicial power. But with the beginning of the republic it
was transferred to two consuls, from 367 B.C. it was in the hands of
one prætor, from 247 B.C. in the hands of a second prætor; it therefore
became necessary to define the limits of a power that was practically
unbounded and was the appanage to each of these officials, to establish
a definite sphere of action for each of them, the official designation
of which is “provincia.” By provincia then we understand the area of
activity specially assigned by law or by a _senatus consultum_ or
also by lot or accord to a consul or prætor, the area within which
he exercises his imperium. In this sense we say _consulibus Ligures
provincia decernitur_, and in this sense we call the office of the prætor
urbanus _provincia urbana_ and that of the prætor peregrinus _provincia
peregrina_. No provincia is assigned to offices which do not possess
imperium, for where there is mention of the provinces of the quæstors the
provinces of the consul or of the prætor are meant to whom the quæstor
acts as a subordinate official.

After the occupation of Sicily and Sardinia in the year 227 B.C.
four prætors were appointed instead of two and the imperium was also
geographically so marked out that in the newly defined districts two
prætors received military and judicial powers, that is to say the old
consular imperium, simultaneously, this moreover being shared by the
remaining prætors and later on by the proconsuls and proprætors. From
this time forward provincia becomes the designation for a governorship
across seas and means first, in the abstract sense, command in a country
outside Italy, secondly, in a concrete sense, the country subjected to
the governor itself.

All provincial land is however distinguished from Italic land by the fact
that it is subject to tribute, that is pays either vectigal or tributum;
for at all events from the time of the Gracchi it is a recognised
political maxim that property in a provincial dependency has passed to
the Roman people, the original owners retaining only a right of user;
so that the province is a _prædium populi Romani_ whose revenues pour
into the state exchequer. Accordingly one may define the province as an
administered district of the Roman Empire, geographically marked out,
committed to the control of a permanent higher official and subject to
taxation. The obligation to pay taxes is so important a feature in the
conception of the province that the historians, in treating of every
country actually subordinated and made subject to taxes by the Romans,
include it with the provinces, even if it was not yet incorporated in the
Roman system of administration; and the dynasties in Cilicia and Syria
although not directly subject to governors, are regarded as an integral
part of the empire on account of their obligation to pay duty.

The organisation of the province at the time of the republic was directed
upon instruction from the senate by the victorious general himself
with the subsidiary aid of a commission of ten senators appointed
by the senate for this object. The fundamental law of the province
thus established (lex provinciæ) determined the character of the
administration from that time forward, laws affecting private relations
being adopted partly through Roman laws and partly through the edicts
of the governor. The duties of the commission were concerned with the
following points: First, there was a fresh parcelling out of the whole
province into definite districts of administration with one of the larger
towns, where such were available, for a centre; of such town dioceses
there were about sixty-eight in Sicily, sixty-four in the three Gauls,
forty-four in Asia, eleven in the Ora Pontica, the part of Bithynia that
became a province in 63 B.C., six in Pontus Polemoniacus, twenty-three in
Lycia, seventeen in Syria, five in Cyrene. The magistrates and the senate
of these towns, although appointed for the affairs of their commune, are
at the same time of use to the government in taking over the gathering in
of taxes in the district assigned to them.

For the purposes of jurisdiction the territorial divisions according to
towns are reunited to form larger parishes of jurisdiction _conventus_,
διοικήσεις, in the chief places of which the governor goes through the
regular days of jurisdiction (assizes). Finally the religious festivals,
associations in which the inhabitants of the provinces unite from time to
time, take place in the favoured towns to which we allude. In provinces
that were poor in towns instead of town dioceses we have country
circuits. Here a policy was observed of breaking asunder the original
connections of one people with another, so far as was found necessary, by
dissolution of the existing state unities and by an arbitrary division
and grouping of neighbourhoods; in some cases it was even found well to
abolish the commercium between the single states, which had the effect
of making it more difficult for the provincials to alienate their real
estate and caused Roman landholders to emigrate into the province and
concentrate in their hands large landed estates. Favoured towns had
their area widened by the incorporation of towns and spots which thereby
lost their separate existence; in this way the communes entrusted to
the Romans were raised and enlarged and the rebellions completely
annihilated. Mountainous and desert lands which yielded nothing valuable
and were difficult to administer were left in the midst of the province
under their native despots until, often after a long time, it was held
safe to place these parts, too, directly under the governor.

The boundaries of the territories once established, the next step was to
regulate their political and financial position. Towns conquered by force
of arms were destroyed, their lands included in Roman domains and leased
out to men of private enterprise by the censors at Rome in exchange for
a proportion of the produce raised. Where royal domains were found, as
in Syracuse, Macedonia, Pergamus, Bithynia, and Cyrene, they were taken
possession of as _ager publicus Romani_ in the same way, and their
working population was united into village communities in the manner used
for the district of Capua after 211 B.C. Such communes, on the other
hand, as had submitted by surrender without offering extreme resistance
certainly yielded to the unbounded power of the victor (as was embodied
in the terms of surrender), town and country, men, women and children,
rivers, ports, and their holy possessions; but as a rule the citizens and
their families were allowed to remain in possession of their liberty and
their private fortunes and to the town was left its territory and its
town rights. In return for this on all the farm lands whether of private
persons or of the town was laid a natural impost (vectigal) or else a
hard and fast tax (tributum, stipendium) and where advantageous, also a
Roman toll (portorium).

This then is the class of _civitates vectigales_ or _stipendiariæ_ in
which the majority of provincial towns are to be reckoned, and which
are to be contrasted with a small number of particularly privileged
communities, those for instance who had been guaranteed their freedom on
the score of earlier alliances or well-attested fidelity, and secondly
those which the Romans themselves had constituted as Roman colonies or
municipia. Altogether then there are three main divisions of communities
included within the provinces: towns with free native constitutions,
towns substantially subject, and towns with Roman constitutions.[d]


ARMY AND NAVY UNDER AUGUSTUS

The higher career of an officer (militia equestris) was open to every
Roman citizen possessed of the rank and fortune of a knight or senator.
All young knights were not bound to serve, but every man who was
ambitious of public career had to fulfil the obligations of military
service for five years; after which he was given the command of a cohort
or served as a military tribune. Hitherto there had been no separation
between military and civil office as far as the upper classes were
concerned, and it was the emperor’s intention that there should be none
henceforth, otherwise the aristocracy would have almost given up going
into the army. We cannot tell with certainty how these young aristocrats
who entered the army as officers acquired the necessary technical
knowledge, or whether they had to undergo any kind of apprenticeship.

The senator was excluded from the army on principle; the knight on the
contrary was bound to render military service if he hoped to serve the
state in peace or war. His promotion was, of course, in the emperor’s
hands. In the time of the republic the people did not make all the
appointments, but they had twenty-four posts to dispose of; in the reign
of Augustus these _tribuni militum a populo_ were still elected by the
people, but this emperor, who had deprived the senate of all means
of influencing the army, also took from the people their practically
obsolete privilege of electing officers, and about the time of his death
the title of tribunus militum a populo ceases to appear in inscriptions.

In republican times the supreme command in war had been one of the
official duties of the elective magistrates; but under the empire it
became the duty and privilege of the imperator, who was represented by
his legates in the several divisions of the army. Under Augustus each
legion had a legatus legionis, so called to distinguish him from the
governors of the imperial provinces (legati provinciæ). The officers of
the imperial army were divided according to their social rank in the
senatorial and knightly classes.

Many peculiarities of the army system of Augustus lose much of their
singularity in the eyes of the modern observer by a comparison with
corresponding conditions at the present time. The English army is the
only contemporary force which can be compared with the Roman army under
the empire.

In both nations the first duty of the army is not to defend the country,
which is secured from the danger of invasion by its isolated situation,
but to keep the provinces under control. Accordingly the country of the
ruling race, Italy in the one case, England and Scotland in the other,
has only insignificant garrisons of professional soldiers, who hardly
suffice to supplement the police at need; while the bulk of the army
is scattered all over the globe, wherever the interests of the ruling
race appear to be imperilled. The troops are nowhere stationed in larger
numbers than is absolutely necessary, because as a matter of fact their
numbers are totally inadequate, and every serious incident shows that the
aims of the state bear no proportion to its military resources.

The parallel is peculiarly apt in the non-enforcement of universal
military service and the consequent lack of a sufficient reserve. The
latter would be too heavy a financial burden for the state, as it has
to treat its mercenary troops with consideration and grant them large
donations of money. The England of to-day pays the bounty money on
enlistment; imperial Rome bestowed considerable sums of money on her
soldiers on their discharge.

The Roman soldiers were employed on peaceful tasks which were but
remotely connected with the military uses of an army, in the same
way as English soldiers nowadays. It has already been mentioned that
Augustus had roads, canals, cisterns, and public buildings constructed
by his legions. The demands made upon the English army in this respect
do not go quite so far, but in the island of Corfu any one who drives
from the capital to Palæocastrizza may see a bronze tablet let into the
face of the rock to perpetuate the memory of the English regiment which
constructed this difficult bit of road.

Led by young aristocrats more or less ignorant of the service when they
enter it, both the Roman and English armies have generally attained the
objects set before them and made up for the lack of organisation by the
energy and capacity of their members.

As the Romans induced subject communities and states to furnish them with
auxiliary troops, so England has enlisted Indian regiments officered by
Englishmen, which are recruited only from among the warlike races such as
the brave mountaineers of the Himalayas, the effeminate inhabitants of
Bengal being scarcely represented amongst the Sepoys. This is in exact
accordance with the principles on which Augustus acted in the formation
of his auxiliary troops. Of course the military resources of those
princes who still retained a show of independence were likewise at the
disposal of the ruling power if the imperial troops had to be spared or
were not sufficient to quell local disturbances.[c]

The permanent institution of the emperor’s proconsular authority
naturally led to the perpetuation of the military establishment, or in
modern phrase the standing army of the empire. Originally the legions
had been raised for special services, and disbanded at the conclusion
of each campaign. When the wars of the republic came to be waged at a
greater distance from the city, and against the regular armies of Greek
or Asiatic potentates, the proconsular levies were enrolled for the whole
period of the contest in hand. In ancient times Rome secured every petty
conquest by planting in the centre of each conquered territory a colony
of her own citizens; but when her enemies became more numerous and her
frontiers more extensive, it was necessary to maintain her communications
in every quarter by military posts, and the establishment of permanent
garrisons. The troops once enlisted for the war could no longer be
discharged on the restoration of peace. The return of their imperator to
the enjoyment of his laurels in the city only brought another imperator,
whose laurels were yet to be acquired, to the legions of the Rhone and
the Euphrates. The great armies of the provinces were transferred, with
the plate and furniture of the prætorium, the baggage and materials of
the camp, from each proconsul to his successor.

The legions came to be distinguished by numbers, indicating the order of
enlistment in the eastern or western division of the empire respectively,
or by special designations of honour, such as the martia, or the
victrix. With their names or numbers the particular history of each was
duly recorded, and some of them became noted perhaps for a peculiar
character and physiognomy of their own. The principle of permanence thus
established to his hand, Augustus carried it out systematically, and
extended it from the provinces to Rome itself. He instituted a special
service for the protection of his own person, in imitation of the select
battalion which kept watch round the imperator’s tent. These prætorian
guards were gratified with double pay, amounting to two denarii daily,
and the prospect of discharge at the end of twelve years, while the term
of service for the legionaries was fixed at sixteen. They were recruited
from Latium, Etruria, Umbria, and the old Roman colonies of central
Italy exclusively. They were regarded accordingly as a force peculiarly
national, nor when reminded of this distinction were they insensible of
the compliment. But the emperor did not entrust his security to these
Italian troops only. Besides the prætorian cohorts he kept about his
person a corps of picked veterans from the legions, a few hundred in
number, together with a battalion of German foot soldiers and a squadron
of Batavian horse. Cæsar had employed these barbarians, distinguished for
their personal strength and courage, on the wings of his own armies, and
his successor may have placed this confidence in them on account of their
tried fidelity. In addition, however, to these household troops, the
whole number of which did not exceed five or six thousand, Augustus first
introduced a regular garrison into the city, consisting of four cohorts
of fifteen hundred men each, which were also levied exclusively in Italy.
He established no permanent camp or fortress to overawe the capital.
The soldiers were billeted on the inhabitants or lodged in the public
edifices; they were always at hand to repress tumults and preserve the
peace of the city, when the stores of grain ran low and the prevalence
of tempests on the coast menaced it with prolonged scarcity. But the
ordinary police of the streets was maintained by an urban guard, named
_vigiles_ or the watch, seven hundred of whom sufficed for the service.
The whole armed force of every description employed in the city might
amount to twelve or fifteen thousand men.

Augustus disbanded the unruly multitudes who had crowded into the
service of the great military chieftains of the civil wars. He strained
every nerve to gorge them with the largesses for which alone they
would forego the periodical plunder of unoffending cities, in which
their leaders had been compelled to indulge them. But while they were
reposing upon their estates, or rioting with their profuse gratuities, he
speedily remodelled his military establishment, and equipped a force of
twenty-five legions for the defence of the empire. He fixed a reasonable
scale of pay for every armed man in his service, from the rank and
file of the cohorts to the “lieutenant of the emperor with proconsular
rank.” The proconsular armies were maintained and paid by the machinery
of the proconsular government in the provinces; so that the emperor,
without being ostensibly the paymaster of the legions, did in fact,
through his lieutenants, hold the purse upon which they depended. We
have seen how incompetent we are to state the salary of the provincial
governor; nor can we estimate the pay of the various grades of officers.
We only know that the simple legionary received one denarius daily, a
sum which may equal eightpence half-penny of English money. A part of
this sum was stopped for his arms, implements, and accoutrements; but
he retained perhaps a larger proportion of it than the pocket money
of the British private, and the simple luxuries of the wine shop were
cheap and accessible. Marriage was strongly discouraged, and generally
forbidden in the Roman ranks, and the soldier’s allowance was perhaps
chiefly expended in averting the blows of the centurion’s vine-staff, and
buying occasional exemption from the fatigues of drill and camp duty. If
we are justified in drawing an inference from the proportion observed
in a military largess in the time of Cæsar, we may conjecture that the
centurion received double, and the tribunes four times, the pay of the
legionary.

The full complement of each of the twenty-five legions was 6100 foot,
and 726 horse; and this continued with occasional variations, to be the
strength of the legion for a period of four hundred years. The cohorts
were ten in number; and the first, to which the defence of the eagle and
the emperor’s image was consigned, was nearly double the strength of
the others. These brigades became permanently attached to their distant
quarters: in later times the same three legions occupied the province
of Britain for two or more centuries. They were recruited ordinarily
from the countries beyond Italy; in the first instance, from the Roman
citizens in the provinces. But even while the rights of citizenship were
extended, this restriction was gradually relaxed; and instead of being
the requisite qualification for admission to the ranks, the freedom of
the city was often bestowed on the veteran upon his discharge. Numerous
battalions of auxiliaries, differently arrayed and equipped from the
legionaries themselves, continued to be levied throughout the most
warlike dependencies of the empire, and attached to each legionary
division. It is generally computed that this force equalled in number
that of the legions themselves, and thus we arrive at a total of 340,000
men, for the entire armies of the Roman Empire, exclusive of the
battalions maintained in Rome itself.

Augustus may be regarded as the founder of the naval power of the great
military republic. She had exerted indeed her accustomed vigour on more
than one occasion in equipping powerful fleets, in transporting military
armaments, and sweeping marauders from the seas; but the establishment of
a permanent maritime force, as one arm of the imperial government, was
reserved for the same hand which was destined to fix the peace of the
empire on a firm and lasting basis. While the influence of Rome extended
over every creek and harbour of the Mediterranean, she had no rival
to fear on the more distant coasts of the Atlantic Ocean or the Indian
Ocean. But experience had shown that the germ of a great naval power
still continued to exist in the inveterate habits of piracy, fostered
throughout the inland seas by centuries of political commotion. The
Cilician corsairs had distressed the commerce and insulted the officers
of the republic; the armaments of Sextus had taken a bolder flight and
menaced even the city with famine; a conjuncture might not be distant
when the commander of these predatory flotillas would dispute the empire
itself with the imperator of the Roman armies. Augustus provided against
the hazard of such an encounter by equipping three powerful fleets. One
of these he stationed at Ravenna on the upper, a second at Misenum on the
lower sea, a third at Forum Julii (Fréjus) on the coast of Gaul. The two
former squadrons amounted to 250 galleys each, the third to about half
that number. Besides these armaments he posted a smaller flotilla on the
Euxine, and established naval stations on the great frontier rivers, the
Euphrates, the Danube, and the Rhine.[e]

[Illustration: ROMAN SHIP WITH SCALING LADDER, FOR ATTACKING A SEA WALL]

It was only to be expected that the victor of Actium should not neglect
the fleet, to which he owed everything, to the same extent as the
republic had done; and as matter of fact he made a permanent navy the
counterpart of his standing army. Up to that time Rome had only fitted
out a fleet, or caused her allies to fit it out, for some definite
purpose, and had dismissed it at the conclusion of the war. Augustus
realised that a change must be made in this respect now that the whole
coast of the Mediterranean was Roman and the sea had become the centre of
the empire.

His first care was to construct the requisite naval ports. The Adriatic
coast of Italy is not rich in harbours, even leaving naval ports out
of the question. Brundusium was too much of a trading mart to come
into consideration as a possible naval station for the empire; while
Ravenna, farther to the north, near the delta of the Po, appeared to
answer the end the emperor had in view. The place was easy to defend on
account of the marshes about it; the harbour, though none of the best,
was capable of improvement; and by means of the imperial canal (Fossa
Augusta) Augustus secured a communication between his new naval station
and the southern mouth of the Po. This was an advantage as far as the
provisioning of the forces was concerned, for the produce of the fertile
basin of the Po could thus be shipped direct to Ravenna; on the other
hand it probably accelerated the silting up of the harbour. The whole
scheme seems to have been put in hand shortly after the battle of Actium,
for we meet with what appears to be a reference to these works in the
writings of Valgius Rufus in the first years of the empire.

During the civil wars the fleet had used the Julian harbour on the west
coast of Italy, but its inconvenient entrance and deficient anchorage
unfitted it for a regular naval station. It was therefore abandoned in
favour of the neighbouring harbour of Misenum, which surpassed even that
of Ravenna in importance.

From both stations small bodies of men used to be detached to Rome to
protect the emperor and the capital. The marines naturally did not find
much to do at Rome; when the emperor arranged a sea fight (naumachia) he
counted, of course, upon their co-operation, at other times they were
deputed to spread the awnings at the entertainments given to the people.

Of less importance and probably of briefer duration was a similar work of
Augustus on the coast of Gaul. Forum Julii (Fréjus) was raised by him to
the rank of a naval station soon after the battle of Actium, and may have
attained a certain degree of importance during the Cantabrian War; in the
latter days of the empire we find no mention of any such naval port.

In Spain itself Augustus thought that he could dispense with a naval
station on the Mediterranean coast, and he never dreamed of commanding
the ocean. A naval base in the vicinity of Lisbon would have materially
contributed to the conquest of the Asturians and Cantabrians, but only on
condition that the Roman warships had been adapted to ocean navigation.
The oared galleys of ancient days would hardly have proved seaworthy in
the Atlantic. In the Spanish War a Roman fleet occasionally appears in
the Bay of Biscay, but it was probably composed of transports from the
neighbouring harbours of Gaul. Under Drusus and Germanicus the Rhine
flotilla occasionally ventured out into the North Sea, but its constant
mishaps soon frightened it out of risking farther hazards.

The emperor devoted some attention to his Mediterranean fleet, but far
less than he bestowed on the army. In his summary Augustus makes frequent
mention of his legions, while he rarely mentions the fleet to which he
owed the victory of Actium. The army stood in quite a different relation
to the princeps than was occupied by the navy. In the _Monumentum
Ancyranum_ the emperor invariably speaks of his navy: it is never styled
the navy of the Roman people. The legions, on the contrary, belonged,
in theory at least, to the state. The crews of the fleet and their
officers were the personal servants of the princeps. The sailors, up to
the grade of captain of a trireme, were slaves or freedmen, and were
reckoned in law as belonging to the household of the emperor; and even
the naval prefects, though free men, were not of Roman birth. Such were
A. Castricius Myrio, and Sext. Aulienus, who worked his way up from the
ranks to be a centurion and was then promoted to the rank of knight. An
admiral of the imperial fleet (præfectus classis) ranked on the same
footing with the imperial tax-collectors; a fact which speaks volumes
for the position of the navy which had made Augustus an absolute monarch.

Augustus seems to have neglected the navy, especially in the latter years
of his reign, from motives of economy. In the war with the Dalmatian
rebels we hear nothing of the intervention of the Ravenna fleet when Bato
was harassing the Adriatic shores as far as to Apollonia. The fact that
the fleet at Misenum was in an equally melancholy state is proved by the
insecurity of Sardinian waters, which was so great that no senator dared
to land on the island; and it had to be administered by the emperor’s
officers instead of by a regular governor.[c]

[Illustration: A LICTOR]




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XXX. THE GERMAN PEOPLE AND THE EMPIRE


Next to the Greeks and Romans, the German people are the most important
branch of the Indo-Germanic race; for in mediæval and modern times they
exercised the same influence on humanity and its civilisation as the
Græco-Latin branch did in antiquity.

The name “German,” by which they are designated in the writings of the
Romans, cannot be satisfactorily explained with regard to its derivation
and significance. Formerly it was thought to be derived partly from the
old German word _ger_--that is, spear--partly from _wehre_ (defence) and
partly from the word _wirre_ (disorder), which passed into the French
language under the form of _guerre_, so that on the whole it had much
the same signification as warrior; but all these derivations are so
opposed to the etymological laws of the language, that they are no longer
admitted by any German philologists. Some learned men have tried to
connect the name “German” with the old German word _erman_, _hermann_,
_irman_, _irmin_, the true meaning of which can no longer be ascertained;
others were of opinion that it was not a native name at all, but given
to the Germans by the Romans; for in the Latin language there is a word
_germanus_, which means brother or countryman, which could, it has been
thought, be so twisted and turned about that it received the sense of
a Roman designation of the German people. Again it was thought to be
derived from a Celtic word which designated the Germans as “criers,” on
account of the terrifying war cry with which they entered into battle.
Scholars do not agree as to the derivation of the name _Deutsch_ which
first appeared in the tenth century after Christ, although that it is of
Germanic origin is beyond doubt. According to the one conjecture it is
derived from the old German word _diutan_, that is, to point out or to
explain, and signifies those who speak the same language; according to
another, the Gothic word _thiuda_, that is, people, is the true root of
the word _Deutsch_, and originally this had the signification of “people
of the same nation.”

The term _Teuton_ which is often used in poetry instead of the word
_Deutsch_, was only the name of an individual tribe, and this practice
has its origin in the fact that the ancient Romans sometimes applied the
name of Teuton to the other German races.

From the earliest times which are open to research, the German
peoples already consisted of two principal races--the Scandinavian or
northerners, and the true Germans in the strict sense of the word.
From the earliest times the former had lived beyond the Baltic, and
the latter on the mainland of central Europe. The two races are still
distinguishable from each other by their various dialects, those of the
peoples of each branch being more closely allied to one another, than to
those of the other branch.

Each race was divided into many different tribes, which the Romans
designated by special names; the distinction between them was not
maintained, but in consequence of the migrations which they undertook
during the time of the Roman Empire, the individual nations became
separated and by new union formed new nations.

In this manner arose the Alamanni, Franks, Hessians, Thuringians,
Bavarians, and others. One of the three races, the Goths, disappeared
entirely in these national movements; towards the end of the period
of antiquity they went for the most part to Spain and upper Italy,
intermingled with the non-Germanic races there, and in consequence
assumed Roman characteristics.

Only a very few Germanic people such as the Frisians have remained
in their original seats. Therefore it will be more to the purpose to
describe the locality of the peoples named when they are mentioned
individually in the course of the narrative. In the olden times the
frontiers of the German land were the Vistula, the Danube, the North
Sea, and the Baltic. Of the external conditions, the character and
morals of the Germanic peoples, detailed accounts are given in the works
of the Roman historians, of which the following are the most worthy
of attention. With regard to their physique the Germans especially
astonished the Romans, in that they were very tall and had blue eyes
and reddish golden hair. They were also famed for their great physical
strength and the endurance with which they were able to bear all
exertions and privations, hunger and great cold, although they stood heat
badly.

The land was only cultivated in places, the greater part being covered
by forests and marshes. The dwellings were isolated so that there were
no villages or towns, but each person lived in the centre of his fields.
The occupations of the Germans were agriculture, cattle raising, hunting,
and war. The two former were carried on by slaves or serfs, who either
did the work as menials or were apportioned certain fields which they
managed and for which they paid their masters a fixed yearly tribute of
corn, cattle, and linen. When he was not at war or hunting, the warrior
passed the time in lounging, eating, drinking, and playing; for like all
fighting and at the same time uncivilised nations they loved the change
from the exertion of strife and hunting to complete inactivity. Banquets
and orgies were their favourite entertainments, but nevertheless their
food and drink was very simple. As a rule the former consisted of wild
fruit, meat, and milk, the latter of a kind of barley beer; only some of
the nations living on the frontier had wine which they bought from their
neighbours.

The Germans loved drinking to excess. The Roman historian Tacitus says:
“To drink night and day continuously is no shame for them, and if
one would accede to their desires in this, they would be more easily
conquered by this vice than by arms.” It is said that they were so
passionately devoted to dice playing that often when all was lost the
German staked his own personal liberty. Their clothing was very simple
and coarse--a kind of mantle which simply consisted of the fur of some
animal killed in hunting was for the most part the only bodily covering.

Their weapons formed the principal adornment of the men and were
therefore worn at all assemblies. Young men were not allowed to wear them
until the national assembly had declared them fit to do so. A shield and
a spear were the principal weapons for fighting at close quarters as well
as at a distance; on the other hand a coat of mail and a helmet were only
very seldom assumed by the Germans. For a man to leave his shield behind
him in battle, was with them, as with the Spartans, a terrible disgrace,
and resulted in the warrior to whom this had happened being excluded
from the national assembly and public sacrifices; many avoided this
indignity by committing suicide. In war some of the Germans were mounted,
although their chief strength lay in their infantry.

The Romans praise the ancient Germans for all those moral qualities which
are characteristic of every brave nation in a half-civilised condition,
such as bravery and hospitality. The Germans seem to have early
distinguished themselves from other nations by three merits: polygamy
was never one of their customs; they set a high value on the virtue of
chastity; they distinguished themselves by their fidelity and devotion
towards those whom they had chosen as leaders.

The high position which women occupied amongst them as compared with
other barbarians was also characteristic. The wife was not treated as a
slave; and amongst all German nations, maidens were considered better
hostages for a treaty than men, as in the former case they considered
themselves more bound to keep their word. The female sex was very highly
honoured; many women--as, for example, the Veleda living in Vespasian’s
time--played the part of alrunas, that is to say omniscients or
prophetesses, an important rôle, and these prophetesses exercised a great
influence over the counsels and decisions of their people.

The administration was not exactly democratic, except among the Frisians;
even in the times when the people and every individual still took part
in the government, we often find traces of the later free monarchy. The
Germans had elected leaders in war and a chief appointed for life, who in
peace had to manage their affairs with limited authority. All the freemen
constituted the national assembly, which deliberated on and decided all
general questions, determined on the life or death of a criminal, and
selected the presidents for the tribunals of the individual cantons.

The national assemblies were held on certain days either at the new or
the full moon; with the Frank nation generally only once a year and
that in March and, later on, in May. There were certain nobles who, as
a rule, though not always, were chosen in preference to others, and who
deliberated on and decided the less important affairs among themselves;
whether they obtained this position on account of their birth or their
personal distinction must remain undecided.

The king was chosen from among them and was not the lord, as is usual
with the leaders of warlike semi-barbarous races, but the representative
of his tribe, and was therefore not only chosen for his bravery but for
his distinction. The army consisted of all the freemen. Besides this
so-called _heerbann_ (militia), at times when no war was being carried
on by the whole tribe, individual bodies of troops were formed, who
attached themselves to a brave leader for some special undertakings. They
constituted his following, and fought under his leadership for fame and
booty. The greater the following of a noble, the greater the influence
which he held in the national assembly.

Justice was carried out by a chosen judge who was called “graf” (count),
from the word _grau_--grey, _i.e._, the eldest, and who had a number of
householders as assistants. Punishments were considered as compensations,
and decided according to that principle; even murder was atoned for by
the judge deciding the damages to be paid to the relations of the person
slain.

The Romans only give us very superficial information concerning the
religion of the ancient Germans. That they acknowledged many gods is
about all we can determine with certainty. If, as is generally done,
the legends of the ancient Scandinavians written in the Middle Ages are
added to the Roman reports, two detailed accounts are obtained concerning
the gods and myths of the Germans; but it is very doubtful if the older
inhabitants of Germany proper, who alone are spoken of in the Roman
histories, had one and the same faith and worship as the Scandinavians.

According to the usual theory, the principal god of the Germans was Woden
or Odin; as the god ruling over all, the “All-father”; and as the founder
of the German race he was called Tuisko. Next to him came his elder sons,
the god of thunder, Thonar or Thor, whose memory is still preserved in
the word Thursday, and the god of war, Tyr or Tir from whose name the
word Tuesday is derived. Woden’s wife and the goddess of marriage was
Freia, to whom Friday was dedicated. Another wife of Woden was Hertha, or
the goddess of the earth. Besides these the Scandinavians honoured the
god of poetry, Bragi; Balder, the hero of the gods distinguished for his
beauty; the goddess of youth, Iduna; the Norns or goddesses of fate and
other divinities.

The Scandinavians had just as many poetical myths concerning the life
and fate of the gods as the ancient Greeks. Besides the gods, they
believed in two unseen worlds of giants and dwarfs. They also believed
in immortality, and depicted the life after death in their own fashion.
For example, they thought that those who fell in battle lived in the
palace of Valhalla with Woden, and spent their time fighting, hunting,
and drinking, and at their banquets were attended by the Valkyries, or
goddesses of battle, who spun the web of the battle with terrible songs.

The Romans tell us more about the worship and the priests of the Germans
living in Germany than about their gods. The German priests were held
in great respect, but they did not form a special class like the Druids
or the priests of the Gauls. Their singers, like those of the Gauls,
were not priests but poets and singers of battle songs. The Germans had
no images of their gods, and they did not honour them in temples but in
sacred groves in which the priests offered up sacrifices for the people.
Among the victims there were captive foes. The will of the gods and the
future were interpreted in different manners, preferably by the neighing
of sacred white horses which were kept in the groves of the gods.

If we turn back from this general observation of the Germanic nations
to their wars with Augustus, we find the Romans in hostile contact with
them on the Rhine and the Danube. Since the time of Cæsar some German
tribes--of which the Ubii in the region of Cologne and the Vangiones,
Tribocci, and Nemetes between Schlettstadt and Oppenheim, were the most
important--had settled on the left bank of the Rhine and had begun to
adopt Roman customs.[b]


THE GERMAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE AGAINST ROME

Augustus had no liking for war; he was wont to say that laurels were
beautiful but barren, and it was his glory and pride that during his
reign the Temple of Janus at Rome was repeatedly closed, and that the
Parthians voluntarily restored the ensigns and prisoners captured
from the army of Crassus. His mind was not set on the augmentation
and extension of the empire but upon the founding and consolidation
of monarchical institutions, his wars in Spain and the Alpine regions
were undertaken for the purpose of protecting and safeguarding the
frontiers of the empire, and the war in Dalmatia and Pannonia was purely
defensive. On the Rhine alone he indulged in schemes of conquest; there
Cæsar’s Gallic campaigns were to be continued, and the martial honours of
the Julian race and name enhanced.

[Sidenote: [16-11 B.C.]]

As long as Gaul was not completely tranquillised, and stubborn tribes
defended their hereditary liberties in the Alpine valleys, the Germans
were treated with consideration. The imperator Augustus even confided the
safety of his person and of the Capitol to a German troop of horse, as
the divine Julius had done before him, and Vipsanius Agrippa settled the
Ubii, who were hard pressed by the Suevi, on the left bank of the Rhine
and founded the “Agrippine Colony,” the parent city of Cologne. Even the
attack made by the eastern dwellers on the lower Rhine on the camp of M.
Lollius, who had made an inroad into their territory because they had
seized and crucified some Roman spies, went unpunished. But when the new
division of Gaul into provinces had been accomplished, and the Alpine
districts had been reduced to submission to the sway of Rome, Drusus the
gallant and daring stepson of Augustus conceived the project of extending
the borders of the empire beyond the Rhine and advancing further along
the road which the great Cæsar had trodden.

After providing for the protection of the river by strongly fortifying
the ancient confederate towns from Basel (Augusta Rauracorum) to Cologne
(Colonia Agrippina)--to wit, Strasburg (Argentoratum), Speyer, Worms,
Mainz, Bonn, etc., and creating fresh bulwarks and _points d’appui_ both
for defence and attack by founding the “Old Camp” (Castra Vetera) where
Xanten now stands, and other castella, he next attempted to secure the
northern districts. He induced the Batavians, who inhabited the marshy
lowlands from the Rhine and Vaal to the North Sea, and their neighbours
on the east, the Frisians, who occupied the seacoast as far as the Ems,
to enter into friendship and alliance with the Romans; and then, by
constructing a navigable canal which bears the name of “Drusus-Furt” to
this day, he connected the lower course of the Rhine by means of the
Yssel with the inland lake of Flevo, which at that time communicated
with the sea by a navigable river of the same name, but which has since
been widened out by the floods into an open bay, the Zuyder Zee. He then
sailed into the German ocean with the fleet built on the Rhine, and,
skirting the Frisian coast, came to the mouth of the Ems, where the
legions fought some skirmishes with the Bructeri and Chauci. The fleet
was here exposed to a great danger, for the ebb of the tide drew the
waters of the channel away from the ships and left them high and dry.
They were only saved from destruction by the aid of the Frisians who
had accompanied the Romans by land with an army. When the incoming tide
floated the ships once more Drusus returned to Batavia.

The hardihood of the enterprise, unsuccessful as it was, seems to have
alarmed the Germans. The tribes between the Rhine and Weser therefore
entered into an alliance for the defence of their country against the
enemy who menaced it. The Chatti refused to join this league, and their
neighbours the Sugambri consequently went to war with them, just as
Drusus, who had spent the winter in Rome, reappeared on the Rhine and
crossed the boundary stream at the “Old Standing Camp” (at Xanten).
He subjugated the Usipetes, and having made a bridge over the Lupia
(Lippe), he traversed unopposed the country of the Sigambri, which was
denuded of its fighting men, and attacked the Cherusci on the left bank
of the Weser. Scarcity of provisions and the approach of winter forced
him, however, to retreat. On his return march the Germans attacked him
fiercely on all sides. Pent in a narrow gorge and hard beset, he and his
army would have been irretrievably lost had not the Germans, thinking the
enemy already vanquished, ventured upon the final massacre with savage
eagerness and without any order or method. The victory of which they
thought themselves certain passed over to Roman strategy. The Germans
were beaten and had to look on while the Romans built the castellum of
Aliso which they garrisoned and used as a _point d’appui_ for later
undertakings. The emperor refused the title of imperator, by which the
army hailed their general, but granted his victorious son an ovation and
triumphal honours.

[Illustration: DRUSUS

(From a bronze in the Louvre Museum)]

[Sidenote: [11-9 B.C.]]

To secure a strong base for his campaigns of conquest Drusus, after a
personal interview with his imperial father, had great fortifications
constructed the next year on the German river. The banks of the Rhine
were lined with more than fifty castella, of which the most important,
situated opposite the standing camp of Mogontiacum (Mainz), grew into a
town in course of time; Bonn was connected by a bridge with the right
bank of the royal stream, the high angle between the Rhine, the Main,
and the Lahn was guarded by a series of lines on the Taunus which still
proclaim their first framer in their name of “Drususgraben.” They formed
the basis of that great frontier rampart which in later days divided
Roman territory from free Germania.

After these preparations Drusus undertook his third campaign against
middle Germany. Assisted by the warlike Nervii and other Gallic
auxiliaries and allied with the Frisians, who supplied him with
necessaries, the bold leader advanced northeastwards along the
right bank of the Main, defeated the Chatti in a sanguinary pitched
battle, penetrated across the Werra and through the Hercynian forest
(Thüringerwald) into the country of the Cherusci, and reached the western
bank of the Elbe, passing through tracts which no Roman had ever trod,
to tribes which had never heard the Roman name. Dion repeats a legend of
how, when Drusus was preparing to cross this distant stream, he was met
by a woman of superhuman stature, who addressed him in Latin, saying:
“Whither, O Drusus, thou insatiable one? It is not allotted to thee by
fate to see all this; turn back, already thou standest at the term of
thy life and of thy deeds!” He hastened back on account of the approach
of winter, but he was never to see the Rhine again. He died on the way
back; of sickness according to some, according to others from the results
of a fracture of the leg caused by the fall of his horse. He died in the
thirtieth year of his age, in the arms of his brother Tiberius, who had
hastened to meet him. His body was borne with great pomp and mourning
through Gaul and Italy to Rome, where it was committed to a funeral pyre
on the Field of Mars and the ashes interred in the imperial vault. An
altar in the neighbourhood of the Lippe, a statue in military attire,
together with an empty sepulchral monument at Mainz (the remains of which
are said still to be preserved in the “Eichelstein”) around which the
legions every year celebrated the anniversary of his death with funeral
games, and a triumphal arch on the Appian way, were intended to preserve
for all time the memory of the brave and beloved prince who was the first
of all the Romans to press forward to the Elbe. The title of “Germanicus”
Conqueror of the Germans, which Augustus had bestowed upon him, passed
over to his son.

[Sidenote: [9 B.C.-5 A.D.]]

The place of the heroic Drusus was taken by his brother Tiberius. The
latter, in accordance with his character, chose the paths of cunning,
treachery, and prudent negotiation, and by these means gained more than
his knightly brother had won by force of arms. It was through his agency
that the German tribes, including even the Sugambri who had at first
refused, sent a number of distinguished chiefs with proposals of peace
to the emperor when he was staying in Gaul. In defiance of honour and
justice they were arrested and carried in custody to Gallic cities, where
they took their own lives. By this perfidious deed the Romans gained
their end. Tiberius took advantage of the consternation of the Germans to
lead his legions straight over the Rhine. At variance among themselves
and deprived of their chiefs and leaders, the German tribes could
offer no permanent resistance to the invader. Victoriously the general
traversed the devastated districts, and by the might of his legions
and the terror of the Roman name succeeded in making the inhabitants
bow amazed and hopeless to superior might (though not till after forty
thousand of them, Sugambri for the most part, had been carried away and
settled on the left side of the beautiful river). A Roman governorship
was then established between Rhine and Weser.

The events of the next few years are shrouded in obscurity. The triumph
that Tiberius celebrated for his German victory was likewise the
beginning of the imperial displeasure which kept him for seven years
at Rhodes. During this period rumour is silent on German affairs; one
campaign only is mentioned, that of Domitius Ahenobarbus, a haughty,
arrogant, and overbearing man. He crossed the Elbe, the eastern bank of
which he adorned with an altar to Augustus; assigned dwelling-places
in south Germany, between the Main and Danube, to the German tribe of
the Hermunduri; and began the construction of the “long bridges,” those
causeways of piles between the Rhine and Weser, which were to facilitate
the junction of the legions across the bogs and marshes which abounded
in that insecure ground. Both Domitius and his successor Vinicius
won triumphal honours by their exploits, but we have no information
concerning the particulars of their achievements. The fact that Augustus
expressly forbade the crossing of the Elbe would seem to indicate that up
to that time such enterprises had been unsuccessful.

At Rome it was resolved to have recourse to the old and tried methods of
craft, subornation, and treachery, instead of to the force of arms; and
that master of guile, Tiberius, accordingly betook himself to the Rhine,
accompanied by the servile flatterer, Velleius Paterculus, at that time
leader of the cavalry. In pompous bombast the latter vaunts the exploits
of his hero, that he may at the same time gather some of the beams of
this glory about his own head. In two campaigns the tribes between
Weser and Elbe were subjugated, the gigantic Chauci, and the Longobards
“savage with more than German savagery,” and the fleet meanwhile sailed
along the coast of the North Sea and joined hands with the land forces.

[Sidenote: [5-9 A.D.]]

But in spite of these vaunted achievements Roman dominion struck no
root in those parts; their ancient freedom suffered but a temporary
eclipse and quickly returned when once the legions were withdrawn.
The adroit prince was all the more successful in binding the tribes
between the Rhine and Weser to Rome. The strength of the army,--which
had permanent bases at Xanten and Aliso,--and the arts of subornation,
cunning, and treachery, which Tiberius employed with masterly skill,
did not fail of effect upon the divided and contentious Germans. Roman
influence established itself more and more strongly, especially when
Sentius Saturninus, an upright and able man who combined the austerity
of a strict commander with the genial manners of a consummate statesman,
occupied the post of Roman governor. He was able to win over the
simple and primitive people to appreciate the manners and advantages
of civilised life by displaying to them in an attractive form “the
superiority of Roman ways and arts.” The Germans began to “realise their
own rudeness,” and to take pleasure in “a world of strict order, rigid
law, and manifold arts and enjoyments.” The standing camps of the army
became markets where foreign merchants offered the wares of the south for
sale, where the children of nature made the acquaintance of the charm
and sweetness of a wealthy civilisation. A brisk traffic familiarised
the natives with Roman speech and manners, Roman law met with increasing
recognition and regard, German youths already fought in the Roman ranks
and prided themselves on their foreign weapons and their rights as
Roman citizens. The characteristics of German nationality would have
been gravely compromised if the Romans had succeeded in extending their
dominion across the Rhine and the Danube, if the German princes, such as
Arminius and Marboduus, whom they enticed into their service had remained
loyal and devoted to them. But they had now to learn that the love of
liberty and the fatherland was not yet extinct.

Marboduus, chief of the Marcomanni, a powerful tribe belonging to the
Suevian confederation, which was entrusted with the charge of the
frontier southwards from the Main, was sprung of a noble race and
possessed a strong frame and a bold spirit. As a young man he had won
the favour of Augustus during a two years’ stay in Rome, and had so
thoroughly assimilated foreign culture “that the Romans could scarcely
recognise the barbarian in him.” About the time that Drusus bore the
Roman eagles to the Elbe Marboduus returned to his native land, well
versed in Roman strategy and politics.

At the head of his own people he conceived the bold plan of leading the
Marcomanni away from their settlements on the Rhine in the perilous
neighbourhood of Rome, and winning a safe home for them farther east. By
force or treaty he gained possession of the mountain-girt land of the
Boii (Bojenheim or Bohemia), and made this “mighty stronghold of nature”
the centre of a tribal confederacy which was to be extended to the
northern bank of the Danube, and to impose a limit on the expansion of
the world-empire of Rome. With a valiant army practised in Roman tactics
at his disposal, and surrounded, like the imperator, with a bodyguard,
Marboduus was able in a few years to make the Marcomannian league a power
in the land, and to inspire the Romans with justifiable apprehension.
For however the wary and prudent prince might at first demonstrate in
his outward behaviour his friendship and devotion to Rome, whatever
facilities for access to his country and traffic with his people he might
give to the Roman merchants and traders, yet his self-confidence grew
with the consciousness of power, and from his bearing and determined tone
it was manifest that he was aware of the position he held. His kingdom
soon became the refuge of all the persecuted and disaffected.

At Rome it was felt impossible to look on passively at the growing power
of the Marcomannian state on the Danube. A simultaneous attack from east
and west was to work its destruction. While Tiberius was assembling a
large force at Carnuntum to proceed up-stream, Sentius Saturninus was to
advance from the country of the Chatti by way of the Hercynian forest.
This well-concerted scheme was, however, destined never to be executed.
The revolt of the Pannonian tribes obliged Tiberius to lead his legions
to the lower Danube, and Augustus hastened to keep the Marcomannian
chieftain fast among his mountains by a peace on favourable terms, lest
he should increase the impending danger on the Adriatic by joining the
enemy. We have already spoken of the terrible war by which the country
along the lower Danube was at once conquered and reduced to a desert.
When Germanicus brought to Rome the news of the victorious issue of the
three years’ conflict, a mood of unbounded jubilation took possession
of the capital. The people vied with one another in celebrating these
triumphant achievements with festal banquets and monuments. But the
holiday was quickly transformed into a day of mourning, the thanksgivings
into anxious prayers, when the terrible news of the disasters in Germany
smote upon the bustle of the city like a bolt from the blue.[c]


THE BATTLE OF TEUTOBURG FOREST

[Sidenote: [9 A.D.]]

It has already been mentioned that, in the years 4 and 5 A.D., Tiberius
had achieved some successes in northwest Germany. According to Velleius
these successes consisted in the subjugation of the Caninefates,
Hattuarii, and Bructeri, and in the voluntary submission of the Chauci
and, more especially, of the Cherusci. It has also been observed that,
from what Velleius says we can form no clear conception of the relations
between these tribes and Rome, though from the different terms which he
employs in speaking of the two groups it seems probable that the Cherusci
and a part of the tribe of the Chauci occupied the position of allies,
and had pledged themselves to act as auxiliaries. Strabo also says τὰ
τρία τάγματα παραστονδηθέντα ἀπώέτο ἐξ ἐνέδρας.

[Illustration: EARLY GERMAN WEAPONS]

The warlike tastes of the Germans may have facilitated their acceptance
of such a position, for large bodies of them often entered the service
of belligerent nations in the train of young and martial leaders of
noble birth. Possibly the relation was similar to that which subsisted
between the Swiss and the French at the end of the Middle Ages. Certain
it is that Arminius had served in the Roman armies at the head of his
countrymen, and, like his brother, had won distinction in several
campaigns. The Bructeri, on the other hand, must have been to a certain
extent in subjection, and thus have had painful experiences of the Roman
art of government, in its system of taxation as well as in judicial
procedure and recruiting. Varus in particular (as is evident from the
whole description of his government given by Velleius and Dion) was
over hasty in his attempts at “romanising” the Germans during the summer
he spent in their territory at the head of his army. If (as Dion says
and we may well assume) a strong party, in which the nobles formed a
prominent element, had in the first instance submitted reluctantly to
Roman domination, their exasperation now spread to a wider circle and the
effects of Varus’ ill-judged measures extended beyond their borders to
the Cherusci, their neighbours on the east.

The Romans had probably come in large numbers into the territory of the
latter tribe also, and had practically treated their allies as subjects,
assuming a peremptory tone towards them and perhaps even indulging in
acts of violence. It is also possible that they had established advanced
posts there before the year 9. Their own experience and the fate of the
Bructeri must have taught the Cherusci, especially those of high rank,
what fate was in store for them, and have incited them to take the
resolution of annihilating Roman dominion in Germany. Hence it appears
that the nobles of the Bructeri and Cherusci arrived at an understanding
to the effect that Varus should be induced by the friendly reception
accorded to him by the heads of the Cheruscan nobility when he came
amongst the Bructeri to pitch his summer camp among the Cherusci, farther
on in the interior of Germany than usual and nearer to the Weser. When
he had been lulled into absolute security by the peaceful behaviour of
the inhabitants and by amicable intercourse with the nobles, the revolt
against Rome was to be set on foot and the Roman army annihilated.
Whether they at the same time conceived the plan of allowing a remote
tribe to commence the rebellion, so as to oblige Varus to go in one
particular direction to subdue it, we cannot tell, but Arminius, who was
minutely acquainted with the strategy of the Romans, must certainly have
been aware--as is shown by the tactics he employed in the year 15--that
they could not be successfully attacked in camp, but only on the march
over difficult ground. It is also possible that the original design was
to choose the return march of the Romans to the Rhine, but that the
conspirators found it impossible to wait so long after once the Roman
party, with Segestes at its head, had received some vague information
concerning their intentions; and they were therefore constrained to have
recourse to some other means in order to induce Varus to break up his
summer camp earlier than he had intended. But the question is of no great
consequence.

[Illustration: EARLY GERMAN WEAPONS]

In any case the scheme was successful, for Varus abandoned himself to
reckless unconcern, deceived less by the peaceful submission of the
people and by intercourse with the nobles, whom he frequently welcomed
at his table, than by the fact that suitors positively crowded to demand
justice of him. There is probably some connection between the endeavours
of the princes to convince him that the Germans acquiesced voluntarily in
the Roman order and the fact that they asked him for troops to maintain
general tranquillity. Thus it came about that he rudely rebuffed those
who, suspecting treachery behind the German show of amity, advised him to
be on his guard, and that in spite of frequent warnings on the part of
Segestes, moreover, he detached small divisions of his troops to convoy
the transport. Presently the news came that a remote tribe or province
had risen against the Romans. This had been done at the instigation of
the conspirators, in order that Varus might proceed from his camp in a
particular direction.

It would be of the highest importance if we could gather from our
authorities an approximate idea of who the rebels were or where they
dwelt; as it is, we are left to conjecture. We have seen which tribes
besides the Cherusci were subdued by Tiberius: the Caninefates,
Hattuarii, Bructeri, and Chauci. The first two need not be considered,
as they lived too near to the Rhine and were thus too completely within
the sphere of Roman dominion. There then remain only the Bructeri and
Chauci; and as the latter tribe was subsequently in possession of an
eagle belonging to one of the legions of Varus, and therefore must have
taken part in the battle, the ἄπωθεν οἰκοῦντες of Dion would seem more
appropriate to them than to the Bructeri.

But it does not greatly matter in favour of which we decide. One of the
two tribes that dwelt to the southwest of the Cherusci (the Marsi and
Chatti) may certainly be left out of account; for the last-named, as has
already been explained, were in no way dependent upon Rome. Of the Marsi
we may conclude that they took part in the struggle, as they too captured
an eagle, but we do not hear that they had been subject to Rome, and if
they had retired into the interior of Germany to preserve their liberties
they would not have been attacked by Tiberius in the years 4 and 5; for
his attention at that time was evidently fixed upon the northwest. And
it is plain that Varus made no attempt at a wider extension of Roman
dominion. It is just possible that it may have been a Cheruscan tribe in
the northwest or southwest; but it is on the whole more likely that the
revolt was started by a people who occupied a dependent position towards
Rome. It would therefore be in the interest of Arminius to display the
loyalty of his own tribe. But, whatever the race that revolted, the day
of departure from camp was fixed.

[Illustration: ARMINIUS]

To avoid rousing the suspicions of Varus the princes proposed to assist
him and promised to join him with their forces along his line of march,
which was exactly determined by the situation of the rebellious province
and agreed upon between him and the Cheruscan princes. The conspirators
had thus a pretext for issuing their own summons to arms without giving
umbrage to the Romans dispersed throughout the country at military
stations, and it is even possible that they induced Varus to send forth
the command to all quarters. They themselves stayed with him, not only
to sustain him in his unconcern, but also to watch him and to be at hand
if the plot should happen to be betrayed to him by the Roman party. For
this was no imaginary danger.

The evening before the start, while Varus was entertaining the princes
of the Cherusci at his table, Segestes came forward and openly charged
Arminius and his adherents with conspiracy, demanding the arrest of
Arminius and the ringleaders of the plot, and offering to be put in
fetters himself as a proof of the truth of his accusation. Varus turned
a deaf ear to these disclosures, probably because the notorious enmity
between Segestes and Arminius made him doubt the good faith of the
accuser, and the start took place next morning.

The conspirators now took leave of Varus on the pretext of putting
themselves at the head of their forces and bringing them to join him; but
in reality these forces were already stationed in readiness along the
route which Varus would have to take. In addition to this, word must have
been sent even to the Marsi and Chauci to hasten with their levies to a
particular point. Orders were then given for a general massacre of the
isolated Roman garrisons.

It has frequently been observed that the revolt cannot have been
represented to Varus as very serious; otherwise the carelessness of his
dispositions on the march is absolutely incomprehensible. The crowd of
women and children who were in the camp and accompanied the army proves
either that he intended to pitch his summer camp for a longer or shorter
period in the rebellious province after he had subdued it, or that if he
meant to send them back to the Rhine their return would not involve a
very circuitous journey.

Meanwhile the long array, marching in imperfect order and hampered by
enormous quantities of baggage, had got entangled in difficult paths
that led uphill and downhill through the thick forest, and while they
were engaged in toilsomely improving the road by felling trees, making
bridges, etc., very wet weather set in with a storm so violent that
branches were torn from the huge trees and hurled down upon the marching
men beneath. The ground became slippery, and the difficulty of getting
along amidst the roots and trunks of trees was doubled; and in this
precarious plight the army found itself suddenly assailed on all sides by
Germans. At this juncture, when he realised the treachery of the Germans,
Varus can hardly have come to any other resolution than to escape from a
tract of country so dangerous by taking the shortest road to the Rhine,
where he would be able to deploy his forces and checkmate the enemy.

It has been asserted that he could most easily have accomplished this by
returning to his summer camp, from which a properly constructed military
road must certainly have led to his winter quarters on the Rhine. But who
can tell whether Varus did not reflect that to go back by the way he had
come would involve too great hardship and loss, while a diversion of his
line of march to the river might be effected with no greater danger and
might even offer his army a more easily attainable condition of safety?
Nor need we lose sight of the possibility that he arrived at a wrong
decision.

Thus the march was continued with heavy loss, the straggling order
avenging itself by making organised resistance impossible. Nevertheless,
the army pitched its camp as best it could in the evening; though it
must have been hard to find a suitable spot in the wooded hill-country.
Here they decided to burn or abandon their useless baggage and to carry
nothing with them but what was absolutely necessary; and so proceeded on
their march in better order next day.

They came to a clearing where it was evident that they could keep the
enemy at a respectful distance; but the road presently led into the
forest again, and the Germans were about them immediately, inflicting
sanguinary losses. The Romans defended themselves, but the narrowness of
a defile into which the army got so cramped that it could not deploy,
while on the other hand a charge of mingled horse and foot miscarried
through the crowding of both arms in the dense forest. To add to their
distress the rain and tempest set in anew; they could barely keep their
feet, to say nothing of pressing forwards, and the drenched weapons of
the Romans could not be employed to advantage against a light-armed foe
equally swift to retreat or to attack. Moreover, the numbers of the enemy
increased, for those who had hitherto cautiously held back now flocked to
secure a share of the spoils; and if the Marsi were not already included
in the compact we may suppose that they appeared at this juncture and
captured the eagle which was afterwards found in their possession.

The case was desperate, and Varus had not courage to die in battle rather
than by his own hand. The report of his death crippled the last remains
of vigorous resistance in his army, though they did not neglect to bury
his body at once. Whether the cavalry under Numonius Vala now attempted
to flee or whether they had already fled we cannot tell; neither do we
know whether the legates were still alive or had already fallen. At
the last the two camp prefects seem to have taken command, L. Eggius
first, and afterwards, when he had fallen in a last desperate attempt to
break through, Ceionius. It was the latter who presently entered into
negotiations with the Germans for the surrender of what was left of the
army.

Velleius[e] states that Ceionius entered into negotiations after the
greater part of the army had perished in the fight. When he had submitted
there ensued the scenes of vengeance reported by Florus.[f] These do not
here concern us, but it is a matter of greater interest that there was
only one of the Roman castella in Germany which the Germans were unable
to take. This was Aliso, whither some fugitives succeeded in escaping.
Here the primipilar C. Cæditus assumed the chief command, and defended it
in the hope of relief until hunger forced the garrison to an attempt at
flight in which the strongest at least were successful.[d]

Terrible was the vengeance which the Germans took for the wrong done
to their liberties. Many distinguished Romans, colonels and captains,
bled on the altars of the gods; attorneys and judges were put to death
by torture; the heads of many of the fallen were affixed as trophies to
the trees round the battle-field; and those who escaped with life found
themselves condemned to dishonourable slavery. “Many a Roman of knightly
or senatorial birth grew old as a hind or shepherd to some German
peasant.”

Vengeance did not even respect the dead. The corpse of Varus, which his
soldiers had piously buried, was torn from its grave and the severed
head sent as a trophy to Marboduus, who subsequently delivered it up to
the emperor at Rome. So perished miserably this splendid army of nearly
fifty thousand men. Well might Augustus bewail himself at the news of the
disaster in the Teutoburg forest and cry aloud in his despair: “Varus,
give me back my legions!” Many families of long descent had to mourn the
loss of kinsmen or connections. The feasts and games stopped, the German
bodyguard was dismissed to the islands, Rome, usually so noisy, was still
and dumb. Sentinels patrolled the streets at night, vows to the gods and
recruiting on a great scale gave evidence of the dread that was in men’s
hearts. They feared that the terrible days of the Cimbrians and Teutons
might come again.

[Sidenote: [9-14 A.D.]]

The conquest of the Roman castella between the Rhine and the Visurgis
followed close on the heels of the defeat of Varus. Aliso held out
longest; thither the Romans had carried their women and children and
there the scattered and fugitive remnants of the army had taken refuge.
When their provisions came to an end the besieged tried to slip through
the sentries of the besiegers under cover of a stormy night. But only
the armed men succeeded in cutting their way through to the Rhine,
the greater number of the helpless fell into the hands of the victors
and shared the fate of other prisoners, and the fortress of Aliso was
destroyed. Asprenas, who was guarding the bank of the Rhine with his
two legions lest the revolt should spread to the excitable Gauls, was
powerless to lay the tempest. Thus was Roman supremacy broken down on the
right bank of the Rhine.

The dwellers on the north coast, the Chauci, Frisii, and some other
tribes, alone adhered to the alliance with Rome. Tiberius, who had
hastened up with his freshly enlisted troops, confined his efforts to
the strengthening and safeguarding of the Rhine frontier and to watching
over Gaul, and deferred to the future his revenge for the tarnished glory
of the Roman arms. He did, indeed, cross the Rhine next year to show the
Germans that the might of Rome was still unbroken; but he did not go far
from the river bank, and the strict discipline which he observed and
the hard camp life which he imposed on the legions and enforced by his
own example, bore witness that the Romans were alive to the danger that
menaced their dominion from the Germans and had learned a lesson from
bitter experience.

However much Velleius[e] may vaunt his hero, when the commander left
the Rhine in the year 12 to celebrate at Rome his triumph over pacified
Germany, he could boast of no achievement which obliterated the disgrace
inflicted in the Teutoburg forest. This was left for his nephew
Germanicus, the gallant son of Drusus, on whom the governorship of Gaul
and the supreme command over all the military forces on the Rhine was
conferred after the withdrawal of Tiberius. [Tiberius had, nevertheless,
proved himself an able commander.]


THE CAMPAIGNS OF GERMANICUS[3]

About the time that Augustus departed this life at Nola, Germanicus was
startled by the news that a mutiny had broken out among the soldiers at
the “Old Camp” (Vetera). The change of monarchs and the mourning feasts
which were the consequence had interrupted military exercises, discipline
had grown slack, and the minds of the soldiery were filled and inflamed
with all sorts of hopes and desires. Hence threatening agitations and
mutinies took place almost simultaneously among the Pannonian and German
legions. Germanicus hurried to the lower Rhine from Gaul, where he had
been busy with the taxation, to find there a refractory army which had
cast away all bonds of obedience and discipline, which complained of its
long and arduous service, demanded higher pay and presents of money,
offered the sovereignty to him with boisterous clamour, and maltreated
at the altars the emissaries of the senate who brought the news of the
change of government. The commander-in-chief succeeded in restoring
quiet and order, though with great difficulty, and not until a schism
had arisen among the rioters themselves and the ringleaders and most
audacious spirits had been hideously murdered by their fellow soldiers.

[Illustration: ROMAN EMPEROR IN THE DRESS OF A GENERAL

(After De Montfaucon)]

The Illyrian revolt was put down by Drusus, the emperor’s son. To expiate
the crimes they had committed the German legions demanded to be led
against the enemy; they believed that there was no way of appeasing the
spirits of their murdered brothers in arms but by covering their own
guilty breasts with honourable wounds. And Germanicus willingly gratified
their lust of battle by a campaign in the regions beyond the Rhine.

Germanicus was one of the last heroic figures of decadent Rome. He was
in the prime of life and combined all physical and mental excellencies
with the virtues of a valiant warrior. Noble in figure and bearing,
versed in the highest Greek culture of the age, famed as an orator and
as a poet, and endowed with admirable qualities of mind and heart, he
was the darling of the legions and the people. They honoured in him the
son of Drusus, whose noble likeness he was; the husband of the admirable
Agrippina, granddaughter of Augustus, who had borne him a number of
blooming children; the descendant of the triumvir Antony, whose daughter
his mother Octavia had been. And if his achievements in Pannonia and
Dalmatia had gained him the confidence and devotion of his comrades at
arms, the kindliness of his nature and an address in which affability was
mingled with dignity and majesty won him the hearts of all men. When he
went in disguise, as Tacitus tells, through the lines of the camp to spy
out the temper of the army, he heard enthusiastic praise of himself from
every tent, and when he came to the city he was always surrounded by a
throng of friends and dependents of all ranks. Tiberius had adopted him
in deference to the wishes of Augustus, but the talents and excellencies
of the youthful hero inspired the gloomy soul of the emperor with envy
and suspicion. [So at least Tacitus assures us. But possibly that
writer’s tendency to invent, or make partisan use of evil motives, may
have falsified the facts. Some historians believe that Tiberius trusted
Germanicus to the end.]

The people had expected that Drusus would restore political liberty,
and they cherished similar hopes of his son. The revolt of the Ubii had
its deepest root in the belief of the legions that Germanicus would not
tolerate the rule of another, and no matter how many proofs of loyalty
and devotion the latter might give, they were not enough to exorcise
the phantoms in his uncle’s distrustful soul. He seemed perpetually to
hear the address of the legions to their beloved general: “If Germanicus
desired supreme power, they were at his disposal”; and in his nephew’s
kindly and liberal nature he could see nothing but an intention to smooth
his path to sovereignty.

Germanicus undertook his campaign against the country beyond the Rhine
under favourable circumstances. After their victory over Varus the
Germans had abandoned themselves to careless security, their tribal
confederacy grew lax, their chieftains quarrelled. Segestes, full of
rancour and envy against Arminius of old, was even more wroth with the
Cheruscan prince now that the latter had abducted his daughter Thusnelda
and had taken the willing girl to wife.


_Victories of Germanicus_

The first campaign, which Germanicus with his legions and auxiliaries
began in the autumn of the same year, was consequently crowned with
success. On a star-lit night he attacked the Marsi as they were
celebrating a religious solemnity with joyous banquets, and having
craftily surrounded them massacred them without pity, destroyed a
sanctuary which they held in high reverence, and wasted their territory
for ten miles with fire and sword. Enraged at this treacherous attack,
the Bructeri, Tubantes, and Usipetes flew to arms and vigorously attacked
the retreating Romans. But thanks to admirable leading and wary valour
they reached their winter quarters on the Rhine without serious loss.
Next year Germanicus invaded the land of the Chatti from Mogontiacum,
burned Mattium their capital, and wasted the country. He then rescued
Segestes, who, being besieged by Arminius, had appealed to the Romans
for succour, carried Thusnelda (whom her perfidious father had snatched
away from her husband and delivered over to the enemy) into captivity,
and sent the son of Segestes, Segimund by name--who, though a priest of
the Ubii, had once torn the sacred fillet and fought for freedom at his
country’s call in the Teutoburg forest--under a strong escort to Gaul.
Thusnelda, inspired by the spirit of her husband rather than of her
father, followed the victor, not humbled to tears, not with entreaties,
but with a proud look, her hands folded on her breast, thinking of the
son she bore beneath her heart and who should be born to servitude.

[Sidenote: [15 A.D.]]

Full of rage and fury at this domestic disgrace, Arminius flew through
the territory of the Cherusci and summoned all the people to revenge upon
the Romans, who were not ashamed to wage war by treachery and against
helpless women. He succeeded in combining the Cherusci and several
neighbouring tribes into a great armed confederacy, and induced his uncle
Inguiomer, who ruled over the region near the Teutoburg forest, to join
the league. Germanicus met this new danger with courage and discretion.
While he himself with four legions went down the dyke of Drusus and the
Flevo Lacus by ship as his father Drusus had once done, and sailed along
the coast, his legate Cæcina marched through the country of the Bructeri,
and Pedo, leader of the cavalry, through that of the Frisians. The three
divisions of the army reunited on the banks of the Ems and, reinforced
by the conquered Chauci, marched, bearing hideous devastation with them,
towards the Luppia, where they visited the battle-field in the Teutoburg
forest and paid the last honours to the bones of the fallen.


_Gruesome Relics in Teutoburg Forest_

When the army came into the vicinity of the Teutoburg forest, says
Tacitus, a longing came over Cæsar to pay the last duties to the fallen
warriors and their general; the whole army, mindful of their friends and
kindred, of the disasters of war and the lot of mankind, was seized with
tenderness and compassion. After Cæcina had been sent forward to spy out
the ravines of the forest and to lay bridges and causeways across the
swampy bogland and treacherous fields, the whole army entered the place
of mourning, terrible alike to sight and memory.

The camps of Varus were still standing; by the contracted wall of
circumvallation it could be seen that they had sheltered but the remnant
of the army. The bones of the fallen were bleaching on the battle-field,
here in heaps, there scattered, according as an attempt had been made
at flight or resistance; among the human bodies lay broken weapons and
the skeletons of horses; hollow skulls stared down from the tree trunks;
and in the groves close at hand could be seen the altars at which the
tribunes and centurions had been slaughtered to the gods. Some who had
escaped from the fight or from captivity pointed out the places where the
legates had fallen, where Varus had received his first wound and where he
had thrust the sword into his breast; where Arminius had addressed the
multitude, where the prisoners had been strung up, where the eagles had
been taken and flouted.

The army, filled with mingled grief and wrath, buried the bones of the
three legions six years after their defeat, and no man knew whose remains
he was covering with earth, whether those of a brother or a stranger.
Cæsar himself laid the first sod of a tumulus, the last gift to the
departed, a witness of sympathetic grief to those present. Tiberius,
however, disapproved of the interment of the bodies, either thinking that
the soldiers would be cast down and discouraged by the terrible sight, or
suspecting that in this act the general was courting the favour of the
army and of the people.


_The Return March_

After a skirmish with Arminius, in which the Roman cavalry suffered great
loss in the swampy bottom of the wood, Germanicus set out on his return
march. While he himself with his legions sailed from the mouth of the
Amisia along the coast the way he had come, accompanied by the crippled
cavalry on land, Cæcina, an experienced warrior who had seen forty
campaigns, marched with the bulk of the army on the left of the Luppia
towards the Rhine over the long causeway which Domitius had once laid
across the bog land.

This plan of operations brought the Romans into great straits. The
causeway of piles was interrupted in many places, and the forty cohorts
which Cæcina led over the slippery ground, hemmed in by impassable
ravines and morasses, surrounded by the Germans and distraught by
constant attacks, were in danger of succumbing to the fate of Varus.
Exhausted and covered with wounds in the unequal struggle by day, they
were alarmed and terrified at night by the wild war songs of the enemy
encamped on the higher ground; imagination presented to their overwrought
minds the hideous images of death which they had seen in the Teutoburg
forest. In his dreams Cæcina saw the bloody figure of Quintilius Varus
rise from the marsh and beckon him. They had lost their baggage in two
days of fruitless fighting, and with exhausted strength saw certain
destruction staring them in the face.

Then the Germans in the insolence of triumph and the wary Cæcina in
his superior military skill wrought them an unexpected deliverance. A
premature assault upon the hostile camp, attempted by the Germans against
the advice of Arminius and at the instigation of Inguiomer, was driven
back by a sudden charge of the Romans. Inguiomer left the field severely
wounded and the Germans withdrew into the mountains in disorder, pursued
by the enemy. Cæcina then led his legions rapidly to the Rhine. But
rumours of disaster had outstripped them; men believed that the army
was already annihilated, and in imagination saw the enemy rushing upon
themselves. They were in the act of making preparations to destroy the
bridges about Vetera when Agrippina hurried thither and prevented the
cowardly deed. And when the army arrived this heroic woman, standing like
a general at the head of the bridge, welcomed it with friendly greetings,
nursed the wounded, and bestowed gifts on those who had been plundered.

[Illustration: A ROMAN EMPEROR

(After De Montfaucon)]

Germanicus arrived soon after with his troops, likewise preceded by
rumours of disaster. And in truth they too had passed through great
dangers. Owing to the shallowness of the water only two legions could
be put on board; the legate Vitellius was to lead the rest along the
margin of the sea. But this latter body was overtaken by the tide, which
rose breast-high around the soldiers and put an end to all order; waves
and eddies carried men and beasts away; draught cattle, baggage, and
corpses drifted hither and thither in the water. They escaped destruction
narrowly and with heavy loss. Germanicus and Agrippina exerted themselves
to the utmost to make them forget their sorrows and hardships by
condescension and kindly encouragement, by attention and rewards; and
Gaul, Spain, and Italy vied with one another in the effort to make good
their losses in arms, horses, and money.

Moved rather by apprehension at the growing love and devotion of the
legions for their general and his family than by annoyance at the mishaps
of the German expedition, the emperor resolved to recall Germanicus
from the Rhine and despatch him to the East. This circumstance made the
general all the more anxious to bring to a glorious issue the war in
Germany which he regarded himself as bound in honour to terminate. A
fleet of a thousand ships, with flat bottoms adapted for the ebb and
flow, well manned and abundantly provisioned, was collected in the
Batavian islands. In these he voyaged with eight legions to the mouth of
the Amisia and then marched by land to the Visurgis, on whose right bank
the Germans were posted under the command of Arminius.

A brother of the Cheruscan chieftain was serving in the Roman army and
had been rewarded for his military services in Pannonia and for the loss
of an eye with pay and badges of honour. Arminius asked and obtained
an interview with him; but warmly as he exhorted him in his own name
and their mother’s to take the part of their beloved country and to
fight for their hereditary freedom and native gods, his words recoiled
without effect from the breast of the misguided and degenerate man. If
the Visurgis had not flowed between these dissimilar brothers they would
have come to blows. Thus even in the earliest times Germany exhibits the
spectacle of fraternal strife and national disunion.

Next day Germanicus led his army across the river. The Batavian cavalry,
which preceded the main body, was enticed by a feint of flight on the
part of the Cherusci into a plain encircled by wooded heights, where the
majority of them, including their gallant leader Cariobald, succumbed
to the blows of the enemy. Soon afterwards battle took place in a plain
called by Tacitus Idistavisus, that stretched from the Visurgis to the
range of hills that bordered it.


_Battling with Arminius_

Before the fight began both leaders endeavoured to inflame the ardour of
their warriors, Germanicus trying to rid his men of their dread of the
unequal combat on wooded ground and of the lofty stature and savage looks
of their adversaries, and insisting on the superiority of their armour
over the wretched weapons of the other side--their shields of wood and
wickerwork, their short spears and sticks hardened in the fire; Arminius
reminding the Germans of former victories, and then asking whether any
choice was left to them save to maintain their freedom or die before
slavery overtook them.

But bravely as the Germans advanced to the fray, victory favoured the
tactics of the legions directed by the military genius and resolute
generalship of Cæsar Germanicus. In vain Arminius strove to rally the
fight by bold rushes and cheers, the Cheruscan column was shattered
against the advance of the auxiliary troops, Gauls, Ræti, and Vindelici;
wounded and with his face disfigured with blood to evade recognition, the
German prince escaped to the mountains by the strength of his war horse.
Inguiomer also saved himself by the same artifice and the fleetness of
his steed. The rest were cut down. Many who attempted to swim across the
Visurgis met their death from the missiles of the enemy, the violence of
the stream, the hurrying crowd behind them or the yielding bank in front.
Some who hid themselves in the tops and branches of lofty oaks were shot
by the archers or killed by the felling of the trees. The slaughter
lasted far on into the night, for two miles the ground was strewn thick
with corpses. The Romans hailed Germanicus as imperator and erected on
the battle-field a stately trophy with the names of the conquered tribes
upon it.

The Germans had succumbed before the superior might of Rome, but their
spirit was unbroken; the erection of the trophy on their territory and
soil inflamed them with wrath and vengeance. High and low, young and old,
flew to arms and, led by Inguiomer and the wounded Arminius, set upon the
Roman army. Thus a second battle took place a few days later two miles to
the east of the scene of the first, near a wide dam which the Angrivarii
had thrown up as a barrier against the Cherusci.

It was a terrible battle. The Germans, sheltered by the rampart, offered
a desperate resistance, and when they were at length forced to give
ground by the slingers and archers, they ranged themselves afresh in a
wood, where they had a swamp in their rear, and the struggle was renewed
with unabated vehemence until night separated the combatants. The Germans
were at a disadvantage on account of the cramped space and their sorry
armour; “their unhelmeted heads, their unprotected breasts, were exposed
to the sword thrusts of the mailed Roman soldiers.” They nevertheless
fought with marvellous valour. Inguiomer flew to and fro in the ranks,
exhorting them to stand fast; Germanicus also took off his helmet that he
might be recognised of all men and spurred on his troops with orders to
cut down all assailants.

The Roman victory was not decisive, although a stately trophy proclaimed
that the legions of the emperor Tiberius had conquered the tribes between
the Rhine and Albis. That same summer Germanicus led his army back
without making any provision for maintaining his mastery of the country.
Some legions reached the Rhine by land, the general himself marched with
the rest to the Amisia to re-embark there. But the fleet had scarcely
reached the open sea when a violent tempest arose, lashing the waves
to fury. The ships, driven far out to sea, were dashed upon rocks and
cliffs or cast away on hidden shoals. Horses, beasts of burden, baggage,
and even weapons, were cast overboard to lighten the ships and keep them
afloat. Many went to the bottom, others were wrecked on remote islands
where the soldiers sustained life in uninhabited regions upon the flesh
of horses washed up by the sea. Germanicus’ ship was driven on the coast
of the Chauci. There he stood day and night upon a jutting crag, and
watched in dismay the tumult of nature, laying the blame of this horrible
mishap upon himself. His comrades could hardly restrain him from seeking
death in the breakers.

At length the wind went down and the sailors succeeded, by the help of
such oars as were left and outstretched garments for sails, in getting
the less damaged of the ships into the mouth of the Rhine. Of those who
were driven out to sea and shipwrecked many were picked up by boats
sent out in search of them, many more were ransomed from German and
British tribes. [Germanicus himself looked after the destitute men and
contributed to their wants from his purse.] Those who reached home
told marvellous tales of eddies and whirlpools, or sea monsters and
two-natured beasts, conjured up by their own terror and distress.

To neutralise the bad impression likely to be produced on the Germans
and the neighbouring Gauls by the news of these mishaps and to show
that the dominion of Rome on the Rhine was still unimpaired, Germanicus
undertook the same autumn another campaign beyond the Rhine. Silius his
legate invaded the land of the Chatti while he himself marched with a
great army of horse and foot against the Marsi. The only spoil which the
Romans reaped from this unworthy incursion was one of the eagles lost in
the defeat of Varus. A banished prince of the latter tribe, who had come
as a fugitive to the Romans, betrayed to them the spot where it had been
buried in a grove. Germanicus is also said to have recovered one in his
first campaign.


GERMANICUS RECALLED TO ROME

[Sidenote: [16-18 A.D.]]

This was the end of the Roman war in North Germany. In the midst of great
schemes for a fresh campaign against the Germans, which the emperor’s
brave son regarded as the glorious task of his life, he was recalled by
a letter from Tiberius to the effect there had been enough of success
and disaster; and he was to come home for the triumph the emperor had
designed in acknowledgment of his exploits. Now that the honour of the
Roman arms had been vindicated and enough done for Rome’s vengeance, the
Cherusci and the other rebellious tribes of Germany might be safely left
to their own dissensions. In vain did Germanicus beg the emperor to grant
him but one year more, promising that by then he would bring the war
to a glorious end. The answer came that he was to return to assume the
consulate; if it were necessary to continue the war his brother Drusus
might win laurels and the fame of a commander on the Rhine.

Germanicus obeyed. In the following year he celebrated at Rome his
triumph over the German tribes, in which the ensigns and weapons which
had been captured or recovered were carried through the gaily decorated
streets of the city, together with pictures of rivers, mountains, and
battles in Germany. In front of the gorgeous triumphal car in which
the stately imperator sat enthroned, surrounded by his five blooming
children, marched many men, women, and children of high rank, captive
and in fetters. Among them was Thusnelda, the wife of Arminius, and her
son Thumelicus, whom she had borne in captivity. Both died in slavery
in a foreign land. From the obscure hint given by Tacitus that the son
of Arminius grew up at Ravenna and was reserved for a shameful fate,
modern inquirers and poets have concluded that the boy was brought up as
a gladiator. According to Strabo, Segimund, the brother of Thusnelda,
and his cousin Sisithacus, with his princely consort Rhamis, were of the
train in the chains of slavery. But Segestes stood in a place of honour
and looked down upon the holiday of the Romans and the misery of his
children. It was his reward for betraying his country.


END OF MARBODUUS AND ARMINIUS

The spirit of internecine discord to which Tiberius had handed the Romans
over soon came to light. The Low German league of the Cherusci in the
northwest engaged in a war with the league of the Marcomanni in the
southeast. It may be that Arminius, proud of his achievements, aimed at
the military command of the whole nation and thus come into conflict with
Marboduus the wary and ambitious Marcomannian prince, who had maintained
a neutral attitude throughout the war of the Romans and Germans. The
chieftains seem to have favoured Marboduus, the tribes Arminius; at least
we find Inguiomer, uncle of Arminius, on the side of the Marcomanni,
while on the other hand the Langobardi and Senones settled on the banks
of the Albis were in league with Arminius. In the third year after the
withdrawal of Germanicus the quarrel between the two confederacies came
to a sanguinary decision. The battle was probably fought on the Sala, and
ended in the retreat of Marboduus to Boihemum (Bohemia).

[Illustration: THUSNELDA AT THE TRIUMPH OF GERMANICUS]

Of the later history we know nothing, though we can gather from
subsequent events that the schism continued to exist, that German
blood was shed to no purpose by German hands, and that the weakness
bred of discord gave the Romans an opportunity of harassing the
country of the Germans again from the south. Marboduus, enfeebled by
attacks from without and desertions within, turned to Tiberius for
help, but the latter preferred to foster the dissensions and to let
the stately political fabric Marboduus had built up perish of its own
disorganisation. The German duke was induced to cross the Danube and
appeal for the assistance of the Cæsar Drusus, who had a standing camp
farther down the stream. The latter delayed him so long with promises and
negotiations that the German army, seduced by factionaries and agitators,
deserted its commander, and left him no choice but self-inflicted death
or surrender to the Romans. He chose to live rather than to perish
gloriously. He was carried to Ravenna, where he lived for eighteen years
on the allowance granted him by the hereditary enemy of his country.
Colonies of soldiers were settled in Moravia.

A like fate befell Catualda, prince of the Gothi, who had been the
principal agent of the fall of Marboduus, but was driven away by the
Hermunduri when he attempted to take his place. The Romans harboured the
fugitive, who fled to their protection, and assigned him a residence at
Forum Julii in Gaul.

[Sidenote: [18-19 A.D.]]

The soldiers of Marboduus who were settled in Moravia had Vannius set
over them as king by the Romans. Popular with the people at first, he
enriched his kingdom by plunder and tribute; but presently, weakened
by a hostile party in his own land, succumbed to the attacks of his
enemies the Hermunduri and Lygii (in Silesia). Defeated after honourable
fight in a pitched battle, he fled wounded to the Romans, who assigned
dwelling-places to him and his following in Pannonia. His two nephews,
who had been the prime agents of his fall, shared his abandoned kingdom
and secured Roman protection by faithful loyalty and devotion to the
ruling race. Thus by artifice and stratagem and by the dissensions of her
enemies, Rome gained more than by the force of arms.

Arminius met his end about the same time. We have no information
concerning the death of the hero beyond the brief words with which
Tacitus[g] concludes the second book of his _Annals_: “Arminius, striving
after royal power after the withdrawal of the Romans and the banishment
of Marboduus, had his fellow countrymen’s love of liberty against him;
and while, attacked in arms, he was fighting with varying fortune, he
fell by the treachery of his kinsmen. Incontestably he was the deliverer
of Germany. He did not, like other kings and commanders, fight the Roman
nation in its weakness, but at the period of its greatest strength. Not
invariably fortunate in battle, he remained unconquered in war. He had
accomplished thirty-seven years of life and twelve of military command.
He is still sung of by the barbarian tribes. To the annals of the Greeks
he is unknown, for they admire nothing that is not their own; among the
Romans also he is not sufficiently honoured, for we extol the old and
disregard the new.” A splendid tribute from an alien but noble pen, which
honoured virtue and greatness of soul even in an enemy.[c]


FOOTNOTES

[3] [The remaining events of the German campaigns belong to the epoch
of Augustus’ successor, Tiberius; but they are presented here in the
interests of an unbroken narrative, and a finished picture.]




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XXXI. THE AGE OF AUGUSTUS--ASPECTS OF ITS CIVILISATION


EMPIRE IS PEACE

    “Then battles o’er the world shall cease,
    Harsh times shall mellow into peace:
    Then Vesta, Faith, Quirinus, joined
    With brother Remus rule mankind:
    Grim iron bolt and massy bar
    Shall close the dreadful gates of War.”--VIRGIL.

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

Peace was the price for which Rome consented to the supremacy of
Augustus; his successors, too, really followed a policy of peace. There
was not a complete absence of conquests either in the reign of Augustus
or of those who came after him, as for instance Trajan. But these
predatory wars were chiefly directed to the defence and protection of
the older possessions. If we compare the conquests of the republic in
five centuries with those of the empire in four we shall clearly see how
the republic hastened from one conquest to another, while the object of
the empire was to preserve and fortify itself. “Empire is peace”--this
watchword, so often abused, was truly expressive of the work of Augustus
in battles both at home and abroad.

Cæsar had made war of necessity. His was not the nature of the warrior
prince; on the contrary it was as the prince of peace that he loved
to be celebrated. When the civil war had come to an end the army was
considerably reduced and the superfluous legions were simply discharged.
Cæsar had often suffered, and others had suffered more than he, from the
insolence and unbridled passions of an army which felt itself master of
the situation; the termination of the civil wars was to put an end to
all this. From henceforward he no more addressed his troops as comrades
but simply as soldiers, and allowed the princes of his house to use no
other manner of address. The bodyguard of foreign mercenaries hitherto
maintained by him was discharged and replaced by home troops.

The joy at the termination of the civil wars was universal and in nearly
every case genuine. Exceptional circumstances and wars at home as well as
abroad had gone to make up the history of the past twenty years; during
this time a generation had grown up whose only knowledge of lasting peace
was derived from hearsay, as if from the all but silent notes of some
legend sung in a better day now long past. Those who within the last
decade had saved or won anything were eager to rejoice in it. All panted
for peace, with no less sincerity than exhausted Europe after the wars
between 1790 and 1815, and all were ready to greet as lord of the world
the victor who should restore this golden age.

This general yearning for peace found expression in the shutting of
the doors of Janus, which was decreed by the senate in order to give a
visible proof that the period of war was at an end (_Æneid_ VII, 607):

    “Two gates there stand of War--’twas so
    Our fathers named them long ago--
    The war god’s terrors round them spread
    An atmosphere of sacred dread.
    A hundred bolts the entrance guard,
    And Janus there keeps watch and ward.”

Any one who chanced to be in France when the Prussian War closed and
heard the bells ringing out peace from the church towers will not easily
underrate the impressiveness of this symbolism.

Cæsar indeed attached all the greater importance to the decree of the
senate ordering the doors of Janus to be shut, in that the senate had
rarely gone to such lengths. Two centuries had passed since the last
occasion in which the temple of Janus was closed. When the First Punic
War with all its losses and changing fortunes had finally been concluded
to the advantage of Rome, exhausted as she was, she had yet joyfully
permitted the performance of these ancient ceremonies which were supposed
to date back to King Numa. To this precedent the senate had recourse when
in 29 B.C. it ordered the closing of the temple of Janus. The proceeding
would have been most impressive had the threefold triumph been terminated
with this symbol of peace. This, however, was not in the power of the
senate to grant, for its decree had probably been passed at the beginning
of the year; there was danger in delay, for the sudden outbreak of a
border war or a rebellion might make its performance impossible.

To be accurate we must admit that there was not an absolute cessation
of warfare; for the Romans had still to contend with the natives on the
German border and in Spain at a time like this in which all resistance
had to be broken. But little account was made of such trifles, so great
was the promise expected from the impression that the closing of the
temple of Janus would create.

Even Cicero, so tell the later accounts at all events, seems to have
recognised in the young Caius Octavius, who had been born during his
consulate, the man who would put an end to the civil wars; later on, when
the Sicilian war had been concluded, a statue was reared to Cæsar with an
inscription to him as prince of peace; now at last after the battle of
Actium the dream was to turn into reality. What was so yearningly hoped
for was pointed out in the premonitions of the gods; even the trophies
of victory turned into weapons for peace. Bees made their nests in the
trophies taken at the battle of Actium (_Anthol. Palat._ VI, 236):

    “Here brazen beaks, the galley’s harness, lie,
    Trophies of Actium’s famed victory,
    But bees have built within the hollow arms,
    With honey filled, and blithe with buzzing swarms;
    Emblem of Cæsar’s sway, that, calm and wise,
    Culls fruits of peace from arms of enemies.”

The whole world was refreshed, and breathed as if a great load had been
lifted from its shoulders. The Asiatic towns in particular offered thanks
to the peace-bringer in their inflated hyperbolical fashion which was
nevertheless genuine and heartfelt. Halicarnassus celebrated him as
“father of the fatherland,” and as “saviour of the whole race of man,
whose wisdom has not only satisfied but also exceeded the prayers of
all; for peace reigns over land and water, and the states flourish in
righteousness, harmony, and well-being. All the good waxes full ripe and
turns to fruit.” In a decree of the town Apamea we read that Cæsar was
born for the salvation of the whole world; so his birthday may rightly be
termed the beginning of life and of existence.

We may see how general and how hearty was the rejoicing over the
restoration of peace throughout the world from the fact that Pax and
Irene now became names not only of slaves and freedmen of the imperial
house, but also of members of other distinguished families. From the
agnomen Pax was even formed a surname Paxsæus.

Trade and industry revived and prosperity increased from the time when
the armed peace and the civil wars had come to an end. The whole earth in
all its compass experienced once more, after long distress, the blessings
of enduring peace, and did honour to the prince of peace, conveying
thanks for this new fortune by the erection of temples and altars to the
glory of the imperial peace. On the Greek and Latin coins of this period
too we see the goddess of peace; in Asia Minor for example on the coins
of Cos and Nicomedia. Even the veterans of the emperor stamped on their
colonial coins PA--CIS with the picture of the goddess of peace bearing
the features of Livia or Julia. On other coins the emperor is celebrated
both as prince of peace and of liberty; the later ones speak even of an
eternal peace. One of the Spanish veteran colonies introduced even the
name of Pax Julia; on their coins we see enthroned a fully draped female
figure holding a horn of plenty in her left hand and a herald’s staff in
her right.

This official worship of peace was continued throughout the whole reign
of the emperor. One of the greatest honours devised by the senate and
accepted by the emperor was the state-directed dedication of an altar
of peace in the year 13 B.C. To-day we may still see on fine reliefs of
the time of Augustus the group of peoples, in garments of ceremony and
crowned with laurels, confronting the ruler on his return home. These
provide us with the best picture of the national scenes in the streets of
the capital when men were expecting the triple triumph of Cæsar.

    “To thy blest altar, Peace, our song must tend
    This day, the second ere the month will end;
    Come, crowned with laurels from the Actian Bay,
    And mildly deign here to prolong thy stay.
    Without a foe we for no triumphs care,
    Thou to our chiefs more glorious art than war.”


COMPARISON BETWEEN AUGUSTUS AND NAPOLEON III

Altogether there is a striking resemblance between these two rulers and
their times, although Napoleon III cannot be compared with Augustus so
far as their offices are concerned. On their first appearance on the
scene both were underrated by their opponents and laughed at on account
of their youth or their lack of understanding: Cicero joked about “the
boy”; Victor Hugo mocked at Napoleon the little. Both lived in periods
when their nation was stirred to the innermost depths by civil war and
revolution, in the confusion of which practically all landed property
had changed owners; in Italy through the proscriptions of the triumvirs
and the distribution of land to the veterans, in France through the
confiscation of the property of the clergy, through the sale of estates
of the nobility, combined with the mismanagement of the _assignats_ in
the first revolution, while there was fear of fresh changes through some
future social revolution.

The man who offered present occupiers guarantees for their occupation and
against the return of the previous confusion was honoured as the saviour
of society; upon him the nation poured its thanks for the economic
revival of the country and for increasing well-being during a long
succession of peaceful years.

Upon this firm basis was reared the throne of the new rulers, neither
of whom claimed to be a legitimate monarch. Both had with more or less
right acquired a dictatorial power which they understood how to wield
throughout many years, until at length a moment came when they made up
their minds to a partial renunciation of authority. This was the critical
moment that decided the fate of the rulers and their work, for everything
depended on the choice of the moment and the extent of the concessions.
Here the penetrating vision and the statesmanlike ability of Augustus are
seen to surpassing advantage, while Napoleon, who only made up his mind
after long hesitation, took his hand from the tiller reluctantly, only
to see very speedily with what scant success his ship battled against
the overpowering torrent and was driven helplessly nearer and nearer the
destruction that threatened it.

The rule of Augustus as well as that of Napoleon III was a tyranny in
the good sense of the word; neither the one nor the other lacked the
drop of democratic oil with which the ruler was anointed. Both wanted
to be assured that their high place was secure only because of its
necessity to the state. Again and again Augustus restored his power (to
all appearances at least) to the senate, to receive it again, but only
for a definite number of years; and even in the case of Napoleon III, it
was a polite official fiction that his power had been delegated to him by
the nation in the first year of his reign and was even in his last year
confirmed by a plebiscite.

If they challenged a crisis of this kind, both held the reins of
government firmly in their hands, nor did any one seriously believe that
they would have allowed this power to be wrested from them by a vote
unfavourable to them. That the Roman senate and the French people were
repeatedly confronted with this crisis, shows clearly what value those
rulers attached to this right. Both rulers had thrust aside the higher
classes of society which had hitherto guided the state in its course, in
order to derive their support from the broad masses of the lower classes
and the army. The immense presents made by Augustus to his soldiers and
to the population of his chief town prove that in the well-being and
content of this very class he rightly recognised the real support of his
institutions. In similar fashion Napoleon III took pre-eminent care for
the material welfare of France, which reached an unprecedented level
under his rule.

Neither ruler confined his liberality to what was absolutely necessary;
they also lent support to art and science in remarkable ways.
Architecture is an art for monarchs, and architecture was the art of
Augustus and of Napoleon III. Modern Paris is really the work of Napoleon
III, and so, too, it was the boast of Augustus that he had taken over
Rome a city of bricks but had left it a city of marble. In the literary
efforts of their times both rulers took at least the share of dilettanti.
Each of them, in order to neglect no part of his inheritance, not only
collected the literary relics of his uncle but also defended in writing
his actions as emperor. Without mentioning the smaller literary essays
of either, we may note that Augustus sought to defend himself in his
memoirs, while Napoleon III in his history of Julius Cæsar sought far
less to write the history of Cæsar than to defend the principle of
Cæsarism.

[Illustration: A ROMAN TRIPOD]

The worship of the uncle to whose popularity they owed the crown--in
the one case the worship of the dictator, in the other that of Napoleon
I--impresses its character on the reign of both rulers. In particular,
the military glory of these two great generals was exploited by their
nephews in a variety of ways. Neither Augustus nor Napoleon III were
really soldiers; but they needed for their rule a powerful effective
army, which they would have found far greater difficulty in bending to
their ends had they not had the memories of a great past to help them.
Both succeeded in creating a fighting army, the pride of the nation,
which they knew how to use when it was really necessary, but without
taking any real pleasure in fighting and hazard, such as was felt by
Julius Cæsar and Napoleon I. The successes they loved best were not
those won in war but those due to threats of war and to diplomacy. The
war against the Parthians, the hereditary foes of Rome, was certainly a
portion of the legacy left by the dictator; but Augustus hesitated long
before beginning this really dangerous war, until good fortune played the
lost standards into his hands. Military honour was hereby satisfied and
the noisy rejoicing of his fellow-soldiers now relieved him of the duty
of making war upon the redoubtable enemy.

In the same way Napoleon III loved to increase his reputation in Europe
and in his army by conducting wars which, even if they ended badly, could
not shake his throne nor France itself. A war over the boundaries of the
Rhine was as popular in France as a Parthian war under Augustus, but
also as dangerous. For this reason Napoleon III made several attempts to
attain the fruits of such a war by peaceable means and only proceeded
to a declaration of war when he had convinced himself that there was no
prospect of success in such attempts.

In a word, then as now the statesman succeeded the general, the prince
of peace the warrior prince, nor did the former despise military glory;
only he preferred to decorate himself with the laurels plucked from his
uncle’s wreath. Augustus, no less than Napoleon III, reckoned it as of
the very essence of the services he did to the world that he had put an
end to the period of warfare at home and abroad. Just as Napoleon III,
in the character of saviour of society, pronounced the dictum,“_L’Empire
c’est la paix_,” so Augustus caused himself to be celebrated as the
restorer of order and liberty, whose privilege it was thrice to shut the
doors of Janus and to inaugurate a new era of things.

Neither was a man of genius, both were practical and astute to no common
degree; they were cool political calculators who had early learned to
conduct their own policies and to judge all circumstances from the
practical point of view. If they sought an end they did not shrink
from the means to accomplish it; as a parallel to the misdeeds of the
triumvirs we have every right to quote the measures under Napoleon III by
which the president was raised to an emperor. Later in their career both
avoided acts of violence as far as possible, and in the face of outspoken
public opinion, the symptoms of which they studied zealously, both made
concessions even in the teeth of their own better convictions, for they
were astute enough to know that their supremacy could not depend on might
alone.

Possessed as they were of power they sought also to conciliate and
fortify the conservative elements of the state. Those who bore old and
famous names were treated with just such a preference in the bestowal
of external honours by Augustus as in later times by Napoleon, whose
endeavour was to adorn his new imperial nobility with the fairest names
of old feudal France.

As he succeeded in reconciling the old nobility to some extent with the
new order of things, so Napoleon understood how to conclude peace with
the church, a peace which he bought and preserved at considerable cost.
In a similar way Augustus, who took upon himself the dignity of a high
priest, attempted to reanimate national traditions and the religion of
the past and to reorganise the priesthoods.

The similarity of the two rulers is obvious and has been frequently
referred to. That it should until now have been less recognised than
it ought, is, perhaps, due to the fact that the characters of the
two were after all fundamentally different. One might almost say the
similarity lay in the circumstances of the times, the dissimilarity in
the characters of the persons; and the more we harp on the former the
clearer appears the latter. Napoleon remained all his life what Augustus
never was, a dreamer and a conspirator. According to the version of De
Tocqueville, Napoleon knew no hard and fast boundary between dreaming
and thinking; this may have been the result of his moping youth with its
conspiracies, his imprisonment, and his fantastic designs which never
were realised but by the most extraordinary strokes of luck. Augustus, on
the other hand, never had time to devote to dreamy imaginings. When he
was still almost a boy, he had thrown himself on his own initiative into
the struggle of parties, and from the beginning he had to summon all the
powers of his mind to aid him in the struggle against opponents maturer
than himself; so it is that later when power was his he never dreamed
but always thought. Moreover, Augustus was never a conspirator. He
obtained power early and wielded it recklessly. He both loathed and found
superfluous that covert toying with designs and intrigues which shunned
the public eye until they suddenly burst into publicity with éclat, such
as Napoleon loved.

Augustus enjoyed the great advantage of still being teachable when he
came into the actual possession of power, and of being formed into a
statesman by the circumstances themselves; Napoleon, on the other hand,
was much older when he came to the throne; in his best years he was
forging schemes to attain an apparently unattainable goal. He was laughed
at as a nurser of fancies until he became emperor; small wonder then that
the emperor’s plans remained fanciful and singular and that, as a ruler,
he lacked the gift which distinguished Augustus in so high a degree--the
gift of judging soberly what was attainable, or what was necessary. As
emperor, Napoleon could never quite forget the adventurous designs of his
youth. Place at the disposal of such a man the whole machinery of power
in modern France, and perhaps he will be able to carry out plans that a
careful observer would pronounce to be impossible of execution, but the
reaction is bound to come, and it did not fail to do so here.

It is true that there were greater difficulties in reorganising France
than Augustus encountered, so that the position of Augustus was more
favourable and more secure. In spite of his confident address Napoleon
felt his weakness, and upon him lay the burden of justifying himself by
success that was externally visible; his object was to surprise and to
dazzle his people, or at the very least to keep them occupied, and he was
thus misled into taking many a false and many a critical step which a
true statesman, like Augustus, would have at once condemned.

But all his internal mistakes and difficulties were not enough to upset
the second empire. The catastrophe was brought about by Napoleon having
an enemy from outside, an enemy far more formidable than those outside
enemies who might have declared war upon Augustus. Napoleon fully
realised the danger that threatened him from this quarter; yet he was
helplessly engulfed in the whirlpool that was destined to swallow him and
his work with him.

From the point of view of the world’s history, then, Augustus appears as
a far greater figure than Napoleon III. Antiquity spoke, we speak yet
to-day, of the Age of Augustus with reason, and this is an honour that
weighs more than the name of Great; a man gives his name to his time
only when he has really stamped that time with his image, opening up new
roads, not only to his own nation but to the history of his time. Such
an honour then implies permanent achievement in the widest sense; no
impartial historian, then, will ever speak of the Age of Napoleon III.

The French Empire was shattered while its founder was yet alive, and
when it fell, its inner hollowness, its rotten foundations, lay exposed,
so that the whole appeared no more than an adventurous episode in
the history of France. The work of Augustus, on the other hand, was
indispensable to the world’s history; it outlived its founder, and lasted
with some modification to the end of antiquity. Succeeding generations
saw in Augustus the ideal prince, and hailed each newly chosen emperor
with the invocation: “Be thou happier than Augustus, better than Trajan.”


THE ROMAN EMPIRE COMPARED WITH MODERN ENGLAND

Of all the empires of later times Great Britain is the only one that
can really be compared with the Roman Empire, for its constitution
has been developed in quite a different way from that of continental
states, and has preserved a much greater diversity by reason of that
conservative spirit which the English share with the Romans. True, in
our own century much has changed; for the old aristocratic England has
become democratised; many a resemblance of England to the Roman Empire,
which even to-day may be detected, appears in a much clearer light if we
cast our glance back to the conditions of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.

This is the case, for instance, with the position of parliament. As the
ancient state recognised in theory a diarchia of the emperor and the
senate, so, too, the English parliament at the close of the seventeenth
century ranged itself, at least for all practical purposes, on the side
of the sovereign power; and it was only a jealous watchfulness lest the
power of the chief ruler might become too great, that saved the English
parliament from the fate of the Roman senate. The critical battle
between the two constitutional powers was fought at the end of the
seventeenth century, when William of Orange, like Augustus in ancient
Rome before him, made an attempt to dovetail a standing army into the
frame of the constitution. But the English parliament resisted every
attempt in this direction with stubborn obstinacy. Moreover the powerful
nobility at home, and the energetic merchants and officials spread all
over the world, correspond in the England of to-day to the aristocrats,
the merchants and the officials of ancient Rome, just as great wealth on
the one side is conditional with great poverty on the other.

The _latifundia_ of ancient Italy may in dimensions have been about equal
to the gross landed estates of the English aristocracy, but with slaves
to work them in antiquity they had a far more desolating effect, even
though we must admit that owing to the villas and parks laid out for the
great in England, a portion of the free peasantry are thrust out of their
plot of ground and England has had to turn for the means of life, etc.,
to the foreigner.

[Illustration: ROMAN MATRON

(From a statue in the Capitol)]

Also the difference of political rights between the full citizen with
full rights and the slave without any rights at all was as marked in
England a hundred years ago as it was in Rome. The relations between the
Roman and the Latin citizens might then have justly borne comparison with
the conflicting elements furnished by Englishmen and Scotchmen, which
to-day are ever growing less and less; but even to-day the Irish on the
one hand, with their reluctance to obey, and the English colonies on
the other, with their successful diffusion of the English language and
English national feeling abroad, reflect most faithfully the picture of
ancient Rome.

But above all, England belongs to the few modern states which still
possess provinces in the antique sense of the word. The constitution
of modern India, with its multiform variety, is the only one of
our time that may be set side by side with the constitution of the
subject territories of the Romans. In India, as in the latter, the
contrasts--religious, ethnographical, and social--are great and very
often immediate; by the side of an old and highly developed civilisation
we find the simplest conditions of mountain or fisher folk, over whose
heads a history of a thousand years has passed without leaving a trace.
Again, the political situation of single portions of the country is
as multiform as possible: Ceylon, for example, with its separate
administration and its separate rights, forms a part of England, while
the main continent is only directly or indirectly governed by English
officials; its constitution, as in the ancient Roman Empire, defies
juristic or political definition in a variety of ways. Only one portion
of the country is directly subject to its foreign conquerors; in all
the others has been preserved--often to the good luck of the nation--a
remnant of the earlier national independence.

As in ancient Rome, England to-day allows the existence of native
princes, great and small, who lighten for her the burden of rule and
administration; and she permits them to tyrannise over their subjects
and extort treasure from them if they fail in their duty to the empire,
just as did the sultans of previous centuries. The real power is, for
all this, in the hands of the English resident who is set to watch over
them. If the evils of local misrule become too great, or the times are
ripe for annexation, a stroke of the pen is enough to do away with
the whole majesty of a local prince. England is not wont to meet with
serious resistance in such a case, any more than did the Romans when they
declared that any particular one of their tributary princes had ceased to
reign.

Again, the position of the ruling nation in the very midst of the ruled
is, in modern times, just what it was in the days of antiquity. The man
who goes to India, whether as a merchant, an official, or a soldier, does
so with the fixed intention of returning home as soon as his financial
position allows of his doing so. Considering the immense disparity in
numbers between rulers and ruled, the power of the single officials and
people in command must naturally be very considerable. The viceroy of
India may well be compared with a Roman proconsul; the range of his power
is great, but by a time limit it is sought to forestall an abuse of it.
Even after the reforms of Augustus, the means of control were inadequate
in ancient times, just as they were in England a century ago. To-day it
may be taken as the rule for the higher class of English officials to
return home from India with clean hands.

Whether this parallel between the Roman Empire of antiquity and the
England of to-day is to the credit of the latter or a subject for
reproach, whether it will endure, or whether the modern conditions will
develop on similar lines, are questions into which we have not here to
inquire; it is enough to have indicated the parallel phenomena in the two
great empires.[b]


THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION

The sanguinary civil wars with their appalling catastrophes had crippled
the might of Rome; the staunchest and most faithful champions of
republican principles lay mouldering on the coast of Thapsus or the plain
of Philippi; the free state that had erstwhile been called into being by
the elder Brutus had passed away--the reality on the day of Pharsalia,
the ideal through the desperate deed of the younger Brutus.

The struggle between democracy and monarchy had come to an end, political
passions were silenced, the existing generation yearned for peace and
quiet; the aristocrats that they might take their fill of the pleasures
and enjoyments placed at their command by ample means, by culture, art,
and learning, the multitude that they might pass the fleeting hours in
comfortable leisure, remote from political agitations and warlike toils,
their desires limited to the “bread and games” (panem et circenses) which
the ruling powers were sedulous to provide for them in liberal measure.

Under these circumstances it was not difficult for the adroit
Octavian--who combined great ability and capacity for rule with
gentleness, moderation, and perseverance, and was able to disguise his
fiery ambition and pride of place under the homely manners of a plain
citizen and a show of submission to law and traditional custom--to enter
fully upon the heritage of the great Cæsar and convert the republic
into a monarchy. But Octavian, warned by the tragic end of his adoptive
father, went very cautiously and circumspectly to work. Instead of
assuming all at once the fullness of royal power and dignity with which
Cæsar had been invested at the time of his death, his son followed
his example in the gradual absorption of a divided authority, and
thus retraced the slow and circuitous route which led, with pauses and
intervals, to absolute dominion. He so far yielded to the antiquated
prejudices of the people as to abstain from calling himself “king,” he
indignantly refused to be addressed by the title of “lord,” and would not
even accept the perpetual dictatorship. Nor did he try like Cæsar to gain
the insignia of royalty by indirect means; he retained the republican
names, forms, and magistracies, and was himself styled “Cæsar.” But he
so contrived that by degrees all offices and powers were conferred upon
him by the senate and the people, and thus concealed a monarchy under the
veil of the republic. He prized the substance, not the appearance, of
power. He willingly resigned the pomp of rule so long as he might rule
indeed.


AUGUSTUS NAMED IMPERATOR FOR LIFE

To preserve the figment of free election and voluntary delegation
of power, and to allow weaklings and obstinate republicans to blind
themselves to the true state of affairs, Octavian from time to time
went through the farce of a voluntary resignation of the supreme power
and a reconferment of it by the senate, a sham which passed on to his
immediate successors. It was first gone through in the case of the
important office of Imperator, originally a temporary appointment, which
Cæsar had charged with new meaning as the symbol of absolute military
authority. This title, which Octavian had long borne in the fullness of
meaning imparted to it by his imperial uncle, was conferred upon him
for life by the senate in the year 27, after a dissembling speech in
which he declared that he was willing to resign his high office into the
hands of the senate and retire into private life. He was then appointed
to the supreme command of all the military forces of the empire for the
term of his natural life and to the office of supreme governor of the
provinces which was associated with it. The limitation which he imposed
upon himself by promising that he would only undertake to hold this
high office for ten years and exercise proconsular sway only over those
provinces in which the presence of legionaries was required to maintain
order and tranquillity, and would leave the others, which were accustomed
to render obedience and were not menaced by enemies from without, to be
governed by the senate, was a mere blind; for in ten years it was certain
that his absolute rule would have struck such deep root that there
could be no further question of dismissal or resignation, and--since no
province whether near or far from the capital could altogether dispense
with garrisons, and all officers and subordinate commanders were under
the commander-in-chief--all governorships were under the control of the
imperial proconsul.

Thus the entire dominion of Rome was “encompassed with the net of his
military authority”; all victories and conquests were ascribed to Cæsar,
and he alone henceforth was entitled to Triumphs. It was therefore
nothing but a form when some time later the senate, now completely
disarmed, delegated to the imperator its proconsular power in the
senatorial provinces also for the term of his natural life, and subjected
all consuls to his authority. The complaisant senators at the same time
conferred upon Octavian the title of “Augustus” or “consecrated” which
he bore thenceforward. By virtue of the imperium the emperor commanded
through his deputies some twenty-three or twenty-five legions dispersed
over the whole empire; at Rome his person was guarded by nine cohorts
of bodyguards (the prætorian guards) whose loyalty and devotion were
enhanced by double pay and liberal gifts of money on their discharge,
some of them being lodged in one wing of his palace and others quartered
upon the citizens in Rome and the neighbourhood. Contrary to law and
traditional usage he was allowed to wear military attire and sword, the
symbols of dominion, within the walls of the city; and the laurel bushes
in front of his dwelling and the oaken garland on the gable proclaimed
the fortunate conqueror of his enemies and the magnanimous deliverer of
the citizens.


THE IMPERATOR NAMED PRINCEPS SENATUS AND PONTIFEX MAXIMUS

The senate itself had already been reduced to a position of dependence.
Cæsar had treated the fathers of the city with scant consideration;
he and the triumvirs after him had filled the curia with their own
creatures, regardless of dignity, rank, or merit. This body had
consequently sunk low in the respect and confidence of the people.
Augustus endeavoured to rescue it from degradation and contempt and to
give fresh consequence to its members. By virtue of the censorial power
vested in himself as “master of morals” (præfectus morum) he undertook,
in concert with his colleague Agrippa, a purification of the senate.
Nearly two hundred senators were as considerately as possible induced to
withdraw and were replaced by worthy men devoted to the new order. He
then had the title of princeps senatus bestowed upon himself, and by that
means got the direction of the debates and voting entirely into his own
hands or those of his representative.

The end Augustus had in view in this process of purification, which was
subsequently several times repeated, was to raise the senate, whose
numbers were now limited to six hundred, into the representative body of
the nation and, by extending its functions and reorganising its share in
the legislation, government, and administration of justice, to rule the
nation through it; to raise himself from being the head of the senate to
being the head of the people, and, by sharing with them the sovereign
prerogatives, to delegate to them a part of the responsibility. The right
of electing officials was left to the comitia centuriata and comitia
tributa, but as the magistrates had simply to carry out the emperor’s
orders their position was a subordinate one and their functions were
limited; and it was consequently a mere simplification of the political
organisation, when in process of time the popular assemblies were
degraded into a mockery [they had long been little more than that] and
the officials were appointed directly by the emperor or the senate.

Without any outside co-operation Augustus had already committed the
charge of Rome and of Italy to trustworthy hands by furnishing the
prefect of the city with extensive powers and appointing him his
delegate and representative, and by instituting, in the prefecture of
the prætorium, a military command over the troops stationed in Rome
and Italy. These two life appointments bore in themselves the germ of
the future military despotism and most seriously infringed the outward
character of the free state, which Augustus maintained in everything
else. At the same time he had himself empowered to fill up the ranks of
the patricians, grievously thinned in the civil wars, by the admission
of fresh members; a privilege the exercise of which made the nobility of
ancient Rome entirely dependent upon the emperor and obscured the lustre
of birth.

He nevertheless treated tradition and ancient custom with great
reverence. He endeavoured by acts of favour to win over to his side
such of the great families as had survived the stormy days of the
recent period, he revived their family cults and obsolete religious
observances, and where there was need he enabled them to live in a manner
befitting their station by liberal subsidies. He was anxious to glorify
his new throne with the lustre of the olden days that still clung about
the old name.

But it was not only the patrician class which Augustus endeavoured
to preserve; the ancient class distinctions among the citizens were
respected as far as possible. The senators, raised in public esteem by
the expulsion of unworthy members, wore even under the principate the
broad purple hem as a mark of their rank; they had special seats reserved
for them in the theatres, and received from Augustus the privilege that
the crimes of senators could only be judged by the senate itself. They
could contract legal marriages with none but freeborn persons. In like
manner the knightly class was purged of unworthy elements and maintained
as a distinct order with a fixed income and recognised privileges. As
in republican times, the younger members served as a _guarda nobile_,
being mounted on chargers provided by the state in the field and in
the gorgeous processions on civic festivals. The knights were eligible
for all curule offices and military appointments, so that the order
became the nursery for the military and civil service as well as for the
senate. Augustus chose his provincial procurators and tax-collectors by
preference from among them. The emperor endeavoured to preserve even the
free burgesses from the admixture of alien elements as far as possible,
and to this end imposed restrictions and limitations on the manumission
of slaves.

[Illustration: ROMAN DOOR-KNOCKER]

As commander-in-chief of all the military forces, and head of the senate,
Augustus was master and ruler of the state; but one important element
of the power which Cæsar had wielded was still lacking--the tribunician
authority. This also was conferred upon him for life by the senate and
people in the year 23, in the general rejoicings at his recovery from an
illness, and because he had appointed L. Sestius, the friend and comrade
of M. Brutus, to a share in the consulate.

The office of tribune bore a sacred character in the eyes of the Romans.
The most glorious deeds of the nation as a whole in the palmy days of
the republic were associated with the tribunate of the people; the plebs
regarded it as the palladium of their liberties and legal status; from
the days of Coriolanus down to the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey,
the broils of political factions had raged around this magistracy of
the people. Its solemn bestowal upon Augustus therefore supplied him
with a religious consecration; by this alone a sacred and indissoluble
bond was knit between the people and the supreme head of the state; the
prince (princeps) was recognised as the protector of the people, and
the magistracy of the popular community was transferred to its ruler.
The rights of protection and intercession inherent in the tribunate
were then expanded into an imperial prerogative of appeal and pardon
and extended to the whole empire. In civil and criminal cases alike, an
appeal to the emperor’s judgment-seat might be made from all tribunals
and all parts of the empire, and thus the highest judicial authority in
the whole sphere of government was committed into the hands of Augustus.
The clemency and humanity for which he was famous caused these appeals
to the imperial court to exceed all measure. Special courts of appeal
had soon to be erected in the city and in the provinces, in the one case
under the presidency of the prefect of the city, in the other under
special consular authorities to whom the emperor delegated his judicial
supremacy. By this means not only was an imperial court of appeal, such
as Cæsar had attempted to introduce, established throughout the empire as
the supreme tribunal, which gradually drew before itself all important
suits after judgment had been pronounced in the prætorian or senatorial
courts, but a far-reaching prerogative of mercy became a recognised
attribute of the imperator’s power, a prerogative that could pour forth
its cornucopia upon free and unfree, citizen and provincial. “Every
temple, every shrine of the emperor in Italy or the provinces was a
sheltering asylum, his statues and portraits became wonder-working images
of deliverance, which paralysed the arm of justice or revenge.”

At the altars of the emperor even slaves found protection against
harshness or inhumanity on the part of their masters. Augustus so highly
prized the bestowal of this protective office of Tribune of the people,
that he even had the day (27th of June, 23 B.C.) recorded on coins and
monuments as the beginning of his reign. Three years later the imperial
power received its consummation in the grant of the consular authority
to Augustus for the term of his life, with the right to nominate his
colleagues or representatives and to propose them for election, and with
an extension of the right of issuing legal ordinances (edicts). From that
time forward he took his seat in the senate upon a curule chair placed at
a higher level between the two consuls.

By these means all political power was concentrated in his person, and
when, soon after, the office of pontifex maximus fell vacant by the
death of Lepidus, Augustus had this dignity also conferred upon himself,
and thus combined the authority of high priest with supreme political
power. In virtue of this office the care of the state religion and public
worship, the interrogation of the oracular books and the interpretation
of their utterances, the appointments to priestly offices and even the
choice of vestals, devolved upon the emperor. And as through the fulness
of his consular and imperatorial power he exercised the highest judicial
authority over the army and in all cases affecting the safety of the
state, so as supreme pontifex he had the right of deciding upon all
violations of religion and transgressions of the priesthood.


TIGHTENING THE REINS OF POWER

This union of the hierarchic with the temporal power completed the
skilfully constructed edifice of the principate. By this means the whole
executive and judicial authority in matters spiritual and temporal, human
and divine, was placed in the hands of the emperor, and if for a while
the people retained the show of legislative power it was a mere shadow of
the ancient sovereignty of the people, since the legal tradition which
gave magisterial edicts the force of law during the magistrate’s tenure
of office reduced every other kind of legislative authority to an empty
form when all official power was centred in a person who held office for
life.

The imperial decrees were legally valid throughout the empire. They
formed the nucleus and basis of the “constitution” which in process of
time ranked on an equality with the comitial laws. The wise moderation
of Augustus--which induced him to ask the opinion or approval of the
senate in all decrees concerning peace and war and withheld him from
exercising the power of life and death which he possessed over senators
and citizens in an offensive manner, and led him to treat traditional
forms with reverential observance--conduced greatly to the establishment
and preservation of the legislative authority of the emperor.

“Thus,” says Hoeck,[d] “the constitution of the young empire was a
monarchy in which the rights of sovereignty were shared between the
nation and its head.

“No law or election could be carried through in opposition to the express
will of the emperor, because he could invalidate by his tribunician veto
every assertion of magisterial or popular authority; on the other hand,
according to law, his will was not sufficient to ensure the acceptance of
a candidate or of a statute, since the emperor had no right to command
either the senate or the people. Nevertheless this reciprocal limitation
and supplementation of the supreme political authority existed in theory
only, not in fact. For where the legal competence of the emperor came
to an end its place was taken by a power of which the constitution took
no cognisance, but which held all political affairs in the embrace
of its mighty arm. This was the effective sovereignty of Augustus,
outflanking and controlling all other authority, which broke down the
bulwarks erected against absolute government and opened the way for the
despotism of his successors. The senate was composed of his creatures,
the populace was won over by bread and games, the army attached to him by
booty and presents; and thus he had in the curia an obedient instrument
of his schemes; the comitia were the echo of his will, and the legions
gladly fulfilled the commands he gave. The senate and people might enjoy
meanwhile the ancient forms of a free state; they were but vain shadows
when the supreme head was minded to accomplish his win.”[e]


PANEM ET CIRCENSES--FOOD AND GAMES

The sustenance of Rome with which the emperors charged themselves may
be regarded in the light of compensation for the political rights of
which the imperial government robbed the Romans. The emperor was not the
war-lord of the Roman Empire who, as such, felt this duty incumbent upon
him; he was rather the most powerful person in the capital, who exerted
himself to win the favour of its populace, as the prominent personages of
republican times had done.

The custom of occasional distributions by Romans and aliens was a very
old one, and had existed ever since the lower classes gained an influence
in politics through the elections; but these distributions of corn did
not become the rule until the first century B.C., and they became a
political danger when they attracted the poverty-stricken rabble of the
whole of Italy to Rome, to be maintained there by the state. At the time
of Julius Cæsar, in the year 46, there were more than three hundred
thousand recipients of corn at Rome, though they were presently reduced
to half that number by improved organisation and by the founding of
colonies beyond sea by the dictator. This number was not to be exceeded;
only the gaps which occurred in the course of nature were to be filled
up.

But in the civil wars after Cæsar’s death the old abuses had crept
in again, and about the time of the birth of Christ the number had
already risen to two hundred thousand. Augustus was by no means blind
to the evil; he really wished to abolish the regular distributions of
corn altogether, for, besides costing enormous sums every year, they
demoralised the people and undermined the prospects of agriculture in
Italy. On this subject the emperor writes that he had made an attempt to
abolish the public distributions of grains in perpetuity, but had not
dared to carry it through, as he knew for certain that after his time
it would be re-established by the ambition of others. Moreover, he soon
realised that he could not let this most effective means of ensuring
popularity in the capital pass out of his hands, nor suffer private
individuals to gain a formidable following in this fashion. Later he
tried to strike the just mean, and to meet both the complaints of the
farmers and corn dealers and the wishes of the populace. The question
involved was the regular distribution of corn to the mob and the adoption
of exceptional measures, when the price of grain in the capital had
risen to an unnatural or intolerable figure. No man who wished to be
the first in Rome could afford to shirk this costly obligation. If so
strict an economist as Augustus was prepared to bear the enormous cost of
these metropolitan distributions we need ask for no surer proof that he
regarded them as necessary.


_Pauperising the Masses_

[Illustration: ROMAN DICE]

In the year 44 Cæsar, as dictator, had delegated the charge of the supply
of corn for the capital to two cereal ædiles appointed for the purpose;
but even they proved unequal to the gigantic task imposed upon them.
Recourse was therefore had to extraordinary commissioners, who bore the
title of curatores. A later emperor, Tiberius, at the commencement of his
official career had an admirable opportunity of making himself popular
in Rome when he undertook the cereal quæstorship at Ostia in 23. But the
very next year a grievous famine again prevailed in Rome, and, as in the
old days of Pompey, extraordinary measures seemed imperatively called
for. All eyes were turned to the emperor, the only man who, by his money
resources and the Egyptian tribute of grain, was in a position to deal
with the scarcity. He was offered absolute dictatorial authority coupled
with the responsibility of provisioning the capital. He accepted the
latter only, and his measures were so vigorous and effectual that in a
few days the price of corn fell to its usual level.

The emperor exercised his official functions through two senatorial
representatives. A new magistracy was erected consisting of two curatores
who had discharged the duties of the prætorship and thus were already
members of the senate. They received an accession both as to numbers and
dignity; after 18 we find four curatores, later six, and in the last
years, 6 and 7; they were required to be of consular rank. It is in the
highest degree probable that younger officials acted with or under these
curatores at the extraordinary distributions.

At length, after these tentative experiments, Augustus in his last years
took heart to attempt a definite solution of this important problem.
Out of consideration for the senate he had up to that time employed
senatorial representatives in the provisioning of the capital which he
had undertaken at his own expense. They were now superseded by imperial
servants. The _præfecti annonæ_ were of knightly rank and really regarded
this important office as a profession. C. Turranius, who had previously
governed Egypt, devoted himself to this task, to which he had been called
by the confidence of Augustus, with such zeal that dismissal was to him
equivalent to death, and Caligula reinvested him with his accustomed
functions, which he continued to discharge almost up to the ninetieth
year of his age.

From this time forward the cereal prefects were amongst the most
important of imperial officers, since the tranquillity of the capital
depended on the due discharge of their functions. They commanded an army
of subordinate officials and servants, for the imperial grain fleets
which brought corn, oil, etc., from the provinces to Ostia and Puteoli
were under their management. In both these places they had extensive
storehouses with a great staff of accountants, clerks, and cashiers; then
another great army of storehouse managers, workmen employed in measuring
the corn and carrying the sacks, of waggoners, and lastly, of watermen
who brought the corn to Rome, where it was deposited for the most part in
the Sempronian _horrea_ which dated back to the time of the Gracchi, or
in the newly erected Agrippian, Lollian, Galbian, and other _horrea_. The
distribution took place every month in the Minucian portico on the Field
of Mars. Here there were forty-five doorways (ostia) for distribution,
and the people had to prove their right to receive the corn by means of
counters marked with the number of the particular doorway and the day of
the month.

[Illustration: ROMAN JACKSTONES]

An attempt which the emperor made to have the corn distributed every
four months instead of every month met with scant approval and was soon
abandoned. The Roman populace had grown thoroughly accustomed to the
notion that its maintenance was the business of the state and would have
liked nothing better than to have the emperor give them drink as well
as food. Whenever wine grew dear they addressed complaints to him. But
Augustus calmly replied that since the aqueducts of Agrippa had been
completed no one in Rome need suffer thirst. Augustus had organised the
maintenance of Rome on a large and liberal scale, but that which had
formerly been a free-will offering became in his reign an eleemosynary
institution.

Besides these regular monthly distributions there were special
distributions in money and in kind on extraordinary occasions, which
exhibit the emperor’s magnificent liberality. He has left the record
of them in the _Monumentum Ancyranum_.[e] “To the Roman people, man by
man, I caused three hundred sesterces to be paid in accordance with the
testament of my father; in my own name I gave four hundred sesterces
out of the spoils of war in my fifth consulate; and again in my tenth
consulate I caused provisions to the value of four hundred sesterces per
man to be distributed man by man out of my own means; and in my eleventh
consulate I made twelve distributions of grain which I had purchased
with my private means; and in my twelfth year of office as tribune I for
the third time made a gift of four hundred sesterces man by man. These
distributions were never made to less than 250,000 persons.

“In my eighteenth year of my office as tribune and my twelfth consulate
I presented sixty denarii to 320,000 persons of the population of
the capital man by man. In my thirteenth year of consular office I
distributed sixty denarii apiece to the people who received the state
corn, amounting to something over two hundred thousand persons.”

Taking these gifts in connection with similar expenses for lands and
rewards for the veterans, for the imperial contributions to the state
treasury and the provision of the military revenue, the colossal sum of
six hundred million denarii mentioned in the appendix to the _Monumentum
Ancyranum_ as given by Augustus to the Roman citizens does not seem at
all exaggerated; and as these distributions were spread over a period of
not quite sixty years, we must assign to each year a sum of not less than
ten million denarii.

These sums, though dispensed of the imperial bounty, were taken by the
people as their right in exchange for their lost liberty. Augustus was
well aware that hunger is wont to be one of the mightiest, if not the
mightiest, of revolutionary forces.


_Games; Gladiatorial Contests_

In the matter of subsistence the southerner is more modest in his demands
than northern nations are; in the matter of excitement and amusement he
makes greater claims. These Augustus also provided for liberally. The
large scale and elaborate arrangement of the Roman games was in part
the outcome of the simple idea of giving the people a compensation for
their lack of influence in politics and of diverting their attention.
In most cases where a nation is weary of politics it concentrates its
attention upon private life, and the great ones of the theatre thrust
statesmen and party leaders into the background. The emperor’s shows
excelled everything that had ever been before in frequency, variety, and
splendour; and so great was the interest taken in them by all classes
that at great festivals and games the emperor was obliged to post
sentinels to guard the vacant city from robbers and housebreakers.

The Actian games, celebrated at Rome every four years, were particularly
magnificent. The first time (28) Augustus and Agrippa themselves managed
the festivities and offered the populace spectacles of the most varied
character. First a race ridden by boys and men of the highest families;
then gymnastic contests in a wooden _stadium_ which the emperor had
caused to be set up on the Field of Mars; while at the end prisoners of
war were forced to exhibit to the people the spectacle of a mortal combat
of gladiators. In later times the highest priestly colleges in Rome took
charge of these games in rotation.

In his detailed narrative Augustus assigns the first place to the combats
of gladiators, which he exhibited sometimes in his own name and sometimes
in the names of his sons and grandsons; and in eight battles of this sort
some ten thousand gladiators were engaged. Women were not absolutely
excluded from among the spectators, but they were only allowed to watch
the bloodshed from the topmost places. Augustus also abrogated the
inhuman custom that none but the victors might leave the arena alive.

He endeavoured to check the excessive fondness for these cruel sports
by forbidding officials to give gladiatorial shows instead of the usual
theatrical or circus performances when they entered upon office, as
had been done, for example, by the ædiles of the plebs in the year
42. Certain members of the aristocracy who were notorious for their
bloodthirsty tastes, like Domitius Ahenobarbus, were first privately
admonished, and, when that proved of no avail, their cruel gladiatorial
fights were prohibited by an imperial edict.

Large troops of gladiators constituted a grave menace to the public
peace, as had been proved, not only by the Gladiators’ War, but in the
case of the gladiators of Decimus Brutus and M. Antonius. Accordingly
in the year 22 an edict appeared to the effect that combats of
gladiators were only to be arranged with the permission of the senate
and not oftener than twice a year, and at the same time the number of
contesting pairs was limited to sixty. Of course this did not diminish
the popularity of these combats nor the interest of the populace in the
combatants. It was an event when two veterans, each of whom had often
conquered and slain his opponent, were at last pitted against each other
for the decisive combat, or when a well-known gladiator had fought his
way through and proceeded to hang up his victorious weapons in the temple
of Hercules.

[Illustration: ROMAN GLADIATOR]

In later days the emperor Tiberius scorned to make himself popular
by these means. But as the passion of the people for gladiatorial
exhibitions did not wane they became a matter of private speculation. A
freedman of small means erected a wooden amphitheatre for his shows at
Fidenæ, but it was so badly built that it collapsed beneath the crowds of
spectators who had flocked thither, most of them from Rome. After this
accident the senate decreed that no one should give such performances
unless he could prove that he was possessed of a certain fortune.

Wrestling matches of the sort so popular among the Greeks were not
altogether unknown, but were only arranged three times by Augustus in
the course of his long reign. Wooden stages were erected on the Field
of Mars, and the most famous athletes were invited to Rome. Glycon of
Pergamus, whose unconquered fist was celebrated not by his epitaph alone
but also by Horace, was probably of the number.

The emperor followed these contests with peculiar interest. The Greeks
had perfected boxing according to all the rules of the science; in Italy,
on the other hand, it had retained more of its indigenous character.
Augustus was in the habit of occasionally allowing the champions of the
two nations to measure their strength against one another, but personally
he was on the side of the Latin boxers, whether more or less schooled.
When a harmless street fight broke out in any part of Rome, the emperor
used to delight in the mighty blows which his countrymen dealt.

The emperor strove, though without lasting success, to keep women aloof
from the brutal boxing matches. If the populace wanted to see boxers he
yielded to their wishes, but he appointed the early morning hours for the
contest and forbade women to go to the theatre before ten o’clock in the
morning.

More popular still were the wild-beast hunts, of which Augustus arranged
six-and-twenty, in which thirty-five hundred African lions and other
wild animals were slain. Great was the difficulty of capturing and
transporting these rare and dangerous animals; but greater still, it
may be, the amount of care and money expended on the elaboration of the
scenery. The Spaniards regard their bull-fights as a direct continuation
of the wild-beast shows of antiquity; the splendour of the _mise en
scène_ has survived to modern days, but the demands made by an ancient
public in the matter of decoration and machinery were incomparably
greater. In most cases gladiators were obliged to fight the dangerous
animals, but occasionally criminals fell victims to them. Strabo, for
example, saw the dreaded robber chieftain, Selurus, “the son of Etna,”
hurled from a lofty scaffold that suddenly collapsed beneath him into the
arena at Rome, where he fell straight into the lion’s cage that had been
placed below.

The bloody battles of the gladiators on land found a counterpart in
a tremendous sea fight which Augustus, following the example of the
dictator, arranged quite close to Rome in the year 2. He caused a lake
to be dug in the plain between the slopes of Janiculum and the bank of
the Tiber, eighteen hundred feet long by twelve hundred wide, on which
thirty large warships and many smaller ones, manned by three thousand (or
possibly six thousand) gladiators, represented a sea fight of the time of
the Persian wars. Ovid describes the gorgeous spectacle as an eye-witness:

    “Then when Cæsar of late showed forth to the people
    Ships of Persia and Athens, a type of the terrible sea fight,
    Hither came youths from the two seas and hither came maidens,
    And to the capital flocked all that dwelt in the earth.”

The lake was not supplied with water from the neighbouring Tiber, but
Augustus built a special aqueduct (Aqua Augusta Alsietina) which brought
water from the Alsietine and Sabatine lakes (Lago di Martignano and L. de
Bracciano) to the Janiculum. The Romans were so spoiled by the beautiful
spring-water of their aqueducts that Augustus never thought of carrying
the water of these two lakes right across to the city on the other
bank of the river, but the work was so substantial that it outlasted
its original purpose. The emperor allowed the possessors of fields and
gardens in the vicinity to make use of the water, which was not to be
compared with that of the other aqueducts in the city.

The lake formed the centre of a little wood which the emperor presented
to the Roman people in the name of his grandsons Lucius and Caius.
Although he never arranged another sea fight on this lake, it was not
filled up but was used by other emperors for maritime spectacles, in
accordance with its original purpose.


_Races and Theatricals_

The ordinary performances in the theatre and circus, such as officials
were required to arrange when they took office, were arranged by Augustus
four times in his own name and twenty-three times in the names of other
persons. Races in the circus, in particular, had been in vogue from very
old times and enjoyed a high degree of popularity. It is true that the
enthusiasm of the people did not reach the culminating point till the
latter days of the empire, but the germ and rudiment was there even in
republican times, and the age of Augustus did its fair share towards
developing it. Epitaphs were not yet composed on the victors, like the
τοὺς σοὺς ἀγῶνας αἰὼν λαλησει of subsequent centuries, but the interest
and enthusiasm were spreading to wider circles. The prizes which rewarded
the winners of the various races were valuable, and an exact record was
kept of the first, second, and third prizes carried off by a famous
charioteer in different years. There were originally only two parties in
the circus, the whites and the reds, but the greens and the blues appear
to have been added by the time of Augustus; or so it seems probable from
inscriptions which, though they bear no date, yet form part of a large
find of this period.

Even private individuals (_e.g._, a relative of the famous jurist Ateius
Capito) were beginning to keep racing stables with a numerous staff.
His slaves and freedmen formed a life-insurance association in which
Vipsanius Agrippa also insured his servants of the same class. The Trojan
riding matches which the sons of aristocratic families, including that
of the emperor, repeatedly exhibited under Augustus have already been
mentioned.

Theatrical performances are mentioned in the emperor’s enumeration, but
recede very much into the background as being quite commonplace; they
were mainly the affair of newly elected officials, but Augustus himself
had plays acted in all sorts of places--the Forum, the Amphitheatre, and
even on temporary stages in the streets and squares of the capital, in
every language spoken in Rome, Latin and Greek being of course the chief.
Every play-giver desired to offer the populace something quite unique.
The dictator had even allowed a Roman knight to appear on the stage, and
his son followed his example until it was interdicted by a decree of the
senate.

Augustus purposely abstained from increasing the number of ordinary and
regular festivals to any great extent. The _Secular_ games, of which
we shall speak presently, naturally do not come under this head, as do
the district games, associated with the new subdivision of the capital.
We have already mentioned the games commemorative of the victory of
Actium; the martial games were added later in commemoration of the solemn
dedication of the magnificent temple of Mars in 2 B.C.

To the innovations of the empire also belong the votive games for the
return of the emperor from Gaul and Spain in the years 13 B.C. and 7
B.C.; also votive games for the welfare of Augustus which were arranged
every four years by the great colleges of priests in compliance with a
decree of the senate.

The example of Rome soon found imitators in the capitals of the
provinces; sometimes it was the emperor himself who instituted games
there, sometimes prominent citizens who had received or hoped to receive
some post of honour. The number of games held in honour of Augustus
was very great, especially in the Greek cities. In Naples the imperial
games were celebrated in the same fashion as the Olympic games, in
commemoration of the visit of Augustus in the year 14 A.D.


NOVUM SECULUM--THE NEW BIRTH FOR ROME

Even as in the life of the individual there are often moments when he
remembers with grief and yearning the golden days of childhood, so in
the development of nations there are periods when the best minds of the
nation dream of a past golden age, in which both the crime and the
progress which have come to pass in the course of historical development
were unknown. The farther the nation is from a primitive condition
and the more strongly its members feel the drawbacks of civilisation,
the brighter are the colours in which they paint the innocent joys of
an earlier state of things to which violence and rapine were as yet
strangers.

The generation which had grown to manhood during the civil wars had of
necessity accustomed itself to horrors which are spared to those who grow
up in times of order. All the more vividly did they dream of a happy and
primitive age in the distant past; for none feels a greater enthusiasm
for peace than those who have had to endure the evils of war.

Since the battle of Actium the civil wars were happily at an end; for
nearly half a generation Rome had enjoyed the blessings of peace and the
new constitution which Augustus had given her. The emperor had often
announced his resolve to retire into private life, but had always allowed
himself to be persuaded not to carry it out because the welfare of the
state forbade it; he alone seemed to guarantee peace and safety, his rule
seemed inseparable from domestic tranquillity, and the man who desired
the one could not but desire the other. The emperor strove to keep this
single idea in fresh variations constantly in mind among the Romans,
and those honours pleased him best which gave public expression to this
feeling. The senate, on the emperor’s return had dedicated the altar of
the imperial peace. The poets, each after his fashion, sang the praises
of peace and order:

    “Fealty, peace itself, and honour, and the ancient
    Moral awe, the long-forgotten virtue,
    Now dares to return, it approaches, its horn
    Full of blessing.”

There was, however, a danger that the rising generation might soon come
to accept the benefits of peace as a matter of course, without definitely
realising to whom they owed these blessings, and it was therefore
desirable to keep in remembrance among the emperor’s contemporaries the
difference between the unquiet past and the blissful present, and to give
official recognition to the fact that the period of civil war was over
and that a century of peace and prosperity had taken its place.

Such turning-points imply an invitation to take a backward glance and to
reckon the sum of development up to this point. So had a poet done at the
end of the previous century:

    “How fair, O man, with thy palm-branches
    Standest thou in the century’s decline,” etc.

The Rome of the period was also to take a backward glance.

As the senate had solemnly marked the end of the wars by closing the
temple of Janus, so Augustus desired to mark the end of the period of
reorganisation and reconstitution by an imposing symbolical act. Even
the ordinary Roman census was not a mere counting up of the people; it
was a reconstitution of the ranks of Roman citizenship, and if this
tedious and toilsome preparatory labour were to attain legal validity,
it must find its ratification and consummation in a final act in which
the whole nation should be purified with the most solemn religious rites
and commended to the propitious gods for the future. Similarly Augustus
had been at work since the year 29 on a reorganisation of Rome, which was
finally declared complete in the year 17 by a mighty lustrum, the Secular
Festival.

The idea, and probably the name, of the _seculum_ is not Roman but
Etruscan; at least, up to the present time no one has succeeded in
discovering any plausible Roman etymology for the word. The seculum
is probably of Etruscan origin, like the other elements of chronology
among the Romans. This devout nation, which understood as no other did
how to inquire into and interpret the will of the gods, fancied that it
had learned that the deity did not merely declare to men the ordinary
divisions of time into months and years by the path and the varying
appearance of moon and sun, but that apart from these there were longer
periods in the life of nations which the gods had appointed, and of
which they revealed the beginning and the end to the generations of
men by manifest tokens. Such a period is that in which one generation
dies out and a new one arises, and it therefore extends from the birth
to the death of a man who may be taken as the representative of his
generation. When the last man died who was born at the beginning of the
first seculum, then the second began; and, as the duration of human life
seldom exceeds the hundredth year, a new seculum commonly commenced
at the end of this period. It did not, however, of necessity last for
exactly a hundred years; on the contrary, there had been one of 123
years in length, another of 118, etc.; but the Etruscans reckoned their
seculum approximately at 100 years. When therefore the miraculous signs
ensued, mortals realised that in the counsels of the gods the end was at
hand, and hastened to propitiate the omens by sacrifices and games. In
misfortune, men learned to take special heed of the omens of the gods,
for they longed for the opportunity of concluding the unfavourable period
and beginning a new one, free from ill-fortune and evil presage.

[Illustration: STATUE OF A VICTORIOUS DRIVER IN THE GAMES OF THE CIRCUS

(In the Vatican)]

This grand wisdom of the Etruscans, which looked beyond the limits of
human life, made a profound impression on their pupils, the Romans, and
was transferred to Rome with the rest of the augural discipline. The
family of the Valerii is said to have been the one to introduce this cult
into Rome, for themselves alone in the first instance, and not as yet in
the name of the state. One of the ancestors of this family, it was said,
had come to Rome from his home in the land of the Sabines to propitiate
the evil omens which disturbed him there. He came down the Tiber with
his sick children till he reached the vicinity of Rome, and there, where
the Field of Mars is narrowest, near the bank of the Tiber, was formerly
a spot noted for volcanic phenomena, hot springs, and subterranean
fire--the so-called Tarentum. The sick children were cured by the water
of the neighbouring spring, and twenty feet below the surface of the
ground the father found a primitive altar to the infernal gods, to
whom he gave thanks for the miraculous cure by sacrifices, games, and
_lectisternia_. A descendant of his is said to have been one P. Valerius
Publicola, who, as consul in the first year of the republic (509)
repeated these games of his family cult in the name and for the welfare
of the state of Rome. It was essential to the secular theory of later
generations that so important an epoch as the end of the monarchy and the
beginning of the republic should have been marked by public secular games.

The next secular games were also said to have been celebrated by
another Valerius, who was consul in the year 449, after the fall of the
decemvirs; and about a hundred years later the third secular games had
to be celebrated, which, according to the records of the quindecemviri,
was again done by a consul of the house of the Valerii in the year 346,
though no one else knows anything about such a celebration and it was
not counted in the series of republican secular games. For according to
Valerius Antias, the third secular games were celebrated in the year
249, at the time of the First Punic War; and the fourth--whether they
were held in the year 149 or 146--mark the end of that memorable period.
For a theory had taken shape among Roman antiquaries and historical
students, of whose number was even a man of the erudition of Varro, that
the seculum must always be a hundred years long, and for the sake of
this theory the games, which on contemporary authority were held in the
year 146, were put three years earlier. A hundred years later Varro’s
authority on all such matters was at its zenith, and it sufficed to fix
the next celebration for the year 49. “But instead of the celebration
came the end; for this was the year at the beginning of which Cæsar
crossed the Rubicon, and with that began the mortal agony of the
republic. What commenced was not a new seculum for the republic, but a
new order of things.” (Mommsen in _Die Nation_, 1891.)

The civil wars which ensued and seemed to develop one out of another
in endless sequence, might, perhaps, have stifled the hope of peace in
Italy, but not the longing for it. An iron age had dawned instead of the
golden.

The dictator did in truth seem to succeed in exorcising the demons of
discord and discontent. But this hope proved illusory on the ides of
March. Soon afterwards the star of the Julii was seen at Rome, and
seemed, as was at first hoped, to be the long-desired divine token that
was to inaugurate a better time. An Etruscan _haruspex_ proclaimed to the
assembled people that the ninth seculum (according to the Etruscans) was
coming to an end and the tenth beginning.

But the augur died immediately after; a sign that his words were not
indeed false but premature, according to the will of the gods. Nowhere
did any likelihood of permanent amelioration present itself, but the
yearning remained and hardly ever found stronger expression than in the
wretched years that followed the murder of Cæsar. It was strengthened
by Sibylline oracles, which were privately circulated and kept faith in
the happy future alive. Since the oracle could not lie, it was, perhaps,
nothing but miscalculations and vain hopes of men, in the year 49, which
had anticipated too soon the dawn of a new age; and perhaps the seculum
should be reckoned at 110 years and not 100--it takes but little to
revive hope. In the year 43 no less a person than Varro announced to the
anxious world of his day that this was the correct estimate; 440 years
after the first celebration the fourth Roman seculum was declining to its
close, and then a new birth would usher in the new age. But Rome still
hoped in vain. Misery increased, and with it the excitement spread into
the widest circles. In the year 40 Asinius Pollio was consul, a man of
honourable character and highly educated, who endeavoured to avoid the
arbitrary usurpations of other rulers. In the circumstances of the time,
not the boldest imagination ventured to dream that he might bring back
the golden age. But Asinius was at that time expecting the birth of a
son; perhaps this son was destined by fate to do so; and a contemporary
poet greets the coming deliverer with the most ardent longings. In later
days Virgil, with better reasons, fixed his hopes and desires upon the
emperor.

The opportunity of holding secular games in the latter half of the last
century before Christ had thus passed by unused, and it was a very
difficult matter to prove that Augustus was entitled to hold such a
celebration. This hard and thankless task fell to the share of the famous
jurist Ateius Capito, who acquitted himself skilfully enough to make the
will of his master possible in theory. The chronology of Roman history
has suffered violence at many hands before and after the time of Ateius
Capito, but hardly ever more than at the time of the secular games of
Augustus.

A comet, so readily connected by the popular imagination with the
end of the world, appears to have decided the old question as to the
turning-point of the longed-for cosmic period. It might indeed seem as
though the gods themselves had declared their will; for at the beginning
of the year 17 an extraordinarily bright comet was visible at Rome, with
a long tail pointing from south to north. This was of course the star of
the Julian gens, which Rome had not seen since the terrible year of 44.
That which the youthful Cæsar had then undertaken with almost superhuman
courage for the sake of avenging his father was now finished, and the age
of strife was over. At that time the red glow of the comet had portended
blood and civil wars; the second appearance of the Julian star, after the
expiation of the crime, was a sign that the beginning of the new age was
close at hand.

The memoirs of the emperor show what great stress he laid upon the
appearance of the star of the year 44, and the coins of the empire
struck soon after 17 testify to the impression made upon him and his
contemporaries by the supposed return of the star of the Julian gens. It
was greeted as the long-desired and manifest divine sign of the end of
the iron age and the commencement of the golden.

Hence we see that the appearance of the star only gave the decision in
the last resort. That which had long been in the air, that which was
perhaps already beginning to evaporate, suddenly condensed into tangible
shape under the influence of this divine manifestation; Augustus resolved
not to let the moment pass unused, but to celebrate the long-expected
fifth secular games, which were associated with the hope of a new birth
for Rome.[b]


LITERATURE OF THE GOLDEN AGE

With the formation of the monarchy coincides a second revival of
Roman literature, which can only be partly attributed to the new
administration, as the leaders were born under the republic and grew
up amidst the struggles for the monarchy. This period does not differ
so much from the literature of the period of free government as might
seem at first sight. For that peculiarly characteristic penetration by
the Greek spirit which extended even to that manifestation of it which
was least worthy of imitation, namely the Alexandrian, had been already
in existence, and the refined elaboration of the language for poetical
purposes, its charm and lightness, its beauty and merit, are already
perceptible in the time of Terence, though in a very different fashion.

The great revolution which was taking place before their eyes had a far
less disastrous effect on the poets of this time than might have been
expected, and if the lamentations of the civil war are heard everywhere,
it is, nevertheless, rather the ideas of universal peace and the
greatness of the Roman power which determine the pervading key-note.
It is true that if we look for the originality, power, and simplicity
which are so irresistible in Greek literature, we shall be very much
disappointed; for they are no more to be found in the literary creations
than in the political. And for these defects the number of productions
can offer no amends. The thought of writing for a large public, the
entire Latin West, must have had an inspiring effect on an author, as
it of course decided the whole conception and direction of literary
compositions; the provinces took a more and more active share in them; on
the other hand, in this field a kind of substitute was offered for the
lack of political activity; it was a matter of course that authorship was
harmless and accommodated itself to the ruling system, or else entered
into a dangerous opposition to it. Partisan writing existed during the
active political struggles of Rome even under the republic; but now
sunshine and light were too unequally divided, and the frankness which
was forbidden during the lifetime of the rulers indemnified itself after
their death by bitterness and calumny.

The really higher styles of poetry, such as drama and epic, entirely
died out. It was not as if this had been caused by the change in the
government, for even in the time of the republic little originality or
creative power had been shown in these directions. All that was now
produced was borrowed entirely from the past. Rhetoric, metrics, and
careful diction were all that could be added to it, and a beautiful,
refined, and elegant form became the criterion according to which the age
judged both literary and artistic productions. It was to such matters
as these that the attention of the judges who decided concerning the
admission of the poets into the national library was mainly directed.

We have no adequate information regarding the dramatic poetry of the
Augustan period, for everything which won the applause of contemporaries
has been lost. What has been preserved to us from this period, namely
the tragedies handed down to us under the name of Seneca, has all the
faults which a depraved taste brings with it; sensational plots and
scenes based on sensual and sentimental emotions; figures without life,
but of many words and speeches; a treatment without knowledge of dramatic
technicalities; and yet withal a harmony of words and verses, highly
polished versification and diction, and the whole magnificent apparatus
belonging to the schools of rhetoric in periods, antitheses, similes,
and plays upon words. It is decidedly to the credit of the lower classes
if they turned away from these dramas, leaving them to the lifeless
declamatory exercises of the so-called educated classes, and in so far
as the taste for the drama still existed, preferred to amuse themselves
with a simpler entertainment and the familiar pieces of the older poets,
which had long ceased to be sufficiently refined and elegant for people
of cultivation.

Nor did the epic produce anything really great. Virgil (P. Vergilius
Maro, born on the 15th of October, 70 B.C., died the 22nd of September,
19 B.C.) did indeed make an attempt to create a national epic in
the _Æneid_. But it is no more genuine than its fundamental idea of
connecting the founder of the new empire with the father of Italian
civilisation. Virgil studied under the Alexandrians and all that was to
be learned he learned. He created the language and the verse structure
which remained the standard for many centuries, so long as and wherever
Latin poetry was cultivated. The form is throughout noble, and the poet
was thoroughly acquainted with Homer and the Greek epic poets, nor is it
without taste that he, as a man of learning, has drawn on this treasure;
his ideas are pure and noble and he had learned to know his country and
the legends of his forefathers better than many before or any after him,
so that a certain national colouring is to be found in his work. But
there was one thing which he did not possess; the creative genius which
divines rightly in the choice of subject and arranges and treats its
material with a light but master hand; as the subject was ill-chosen, so
the poet never felt any hearty enthusiasm for it; everything has been
thought out and very coldly and soberly thought out; beautiful pictures
and striking comparisons are indeed presented; but they are sentimental
and studied, and often look strange in their setting.

In the first place the hero is no hero, and the Roman patricians of even
the time of the Scipios would have been revolted by this weakling who
is feeble and sentimental like the poet himself, and not much more than
a puppet in the hands of his divine mother. Such a weak figure gives no
opportunity for strength in the treatment, which is accordingly languid,
and the twelve cantos are spun out with monotonous tedium, so that to
every one acquainted with Homer the reading of them is a mere task to
be got through somehow. And if, from the standpoint of learning, the
language and verses seem irreproachable, classical, and even worthy
of imitation, all pleasure in them is lost by the fact that we are
continually aware of the trouble and labour which they cost the poet.

It is characteristic of the times that Virgil possessed a canonical
consideration with high and low, and poets and prose writers vied with
one another to steal from him. From this fact we may guess the rest, and
the loss in this field which has been recorded can have been no great one.

But how rapidly literature declined at the end of the period is clearly
shown by the epic of M. Annæus Lucanus, the _Pharsalia_. This poem was
produced in the reign of Nero, and it is difficult to decide whether the
choice of subject or his treatment of it deserves the greater censure.
The hero of the poem is Pompey, the Pompey of the civil wars, a figure
so little poetical that a more unfortunate selection could scarcely have
been made; with the utmost poetical license even without any anxiety to
keep to the facts there was nothing to be made of the subject. That the
civil wars in themselves might be capable of being made the subject of
an epic is indisputable; it is equally indisputable that this could be
done only by a poetic talent of the first order. But even Lucan could
do it in his way, though he is no poet but a scholar of the school of
the rhetoricians and the Stoa. As in the school of rhetorics the energy
of the scholar signalised and exhausted itself in individual feats of
ingenuity, so the poem is divided into a number of scenes without much
connection, but distinguished by a soaring imagination, sounding verses,
and pompous tirades, and of course with many learned accessories,
without which neither a great nor a small poem was conceivable in that
period. Besides this haste, uneasiness, and want of discretion are
everywhere apparent, and these, too, belong to the time. On the whole
it may be said that this poetry is a true reflection of the society in
which it originated, and if we had epics by Seneca they might probably
resemble those of his nephew. Of such models there could not fail to be
imitations; the attempts even extended to the schools, and the editing
of the _Iliad_ may well have been the work of industrious scholars, who
knew something of Greek and had learned to imitate their _Virgil_.

Virgil had already directed his attention to the didactic poem, and
the _Georgics_ are in their way his best creation. Didactic poetry is
not approached with the same expectation as in the case of the higher
kinds of poetry, and it is scarcely possible to draw the line between
instruction and amusement. When the existence of this monstrosity has
once been justified it must be allowed a certain amount of free play.
Virgil had here the great advantage of dealing with a subject in which
he was really interested and into whose treatment he put his whole
heart. A deep feeling for nature and really genuine human sympathy
with the subject, which are precisely what is nowhere to be perceived
in the _Æneid_, occasionally break forth in the poem on agriculture.
An artificial shepherd’s life, much like the idyls of the eighteenth
century, is delineated in the _Eclogues_, and its unreality is only
surpassed by Calpurnius, an imitator of the age of Nero.

Whilst the didactic poem proper received no further attention worth
noting during this period, the elegy was successfully dealt with. In
Albius Tibullus (54-19 B.C.) it even acquired a characteristic, one
might almost say more national form than is the case with its other
representatives.

In his elegies, Tibullus is as essentially free from the Greek influence
as is conceivable in an age which was steeped in Hellenism; he treated
the few themes, which are to be found in his poems, entirely from the
human standpoint, and it is only by this means that he tries to affect
the reader. The sameness which is easily produced in such works--love and
sentimental sorrows are constantly recurring--he has successfully avoided
by an extraordinary elegance and charm of treatment. The reader willingly
follows the dreamy thought of the poet without blaming him for having
led him rather into a world of dreams than into one of living and strong
feeling.

The productions of S. Propertius (49-15 B.C.) are already much inferior.
He also had true feeling, and the thoughts which it awakened in him are
for the greater part not borrowed from his models. But it is overloaded
with the learned accessories of Alexandrian learning, and the deep
feelings of the poet are unduly thrust into the background by blatant
mythological embellishments.

Far more splendid and brilliant is the talent of Ovid (P. Ovidius Naso,
43 B.C.-17 A.D.) who cultivated a wonderful borderland between didactic
and elegiac poetry. But all his poems have one trait in common, although
the _Metamorphoses_ and _Fasti_ may differ from the amatory poems, the
_Tristia_ and the _Heroides_; they, for the first time, display in a more
and more decided fashion the arts of the schools of the rhetoricians.

Ovid was a talented poet, to whom verses and thoughts came rapidly and
without difficulty, but he was entirely wanting in depth of feeling. Even
the poems, which came most from his heart, those laments which he sang
in his banishment at inhospitable Tomi, scarcely arouse true sympathy,
for the intrinsic unreality from which the poetry of Ovid suffers even
here forces itself upon the reader. He recognised the conditions of
the new monarchy unreservedly, and no poet is so well qualified as he
to give us a picture of the views and manner of thought of the circle
which surrounded the imperial house. Sensuality and pleasure are the
scarlet threads which run through the Ovidian poems, and the pain which
tortures him in banishment is entirely the effect of being shut out
from the luxurious way of life which prevailed in those circles whose
conversations and intrigues were the very life of his poetry.

The satire also, that most characteristic production of the national
spirit of Rome, was now cultivated in a fashion partly original by
Horace (Q. Horatius Flaccus, born on the 8th of December, 65 B.C.,
died on the 27th of November, 6 B.C.). Deep feeling or an effective
comprehension of the times, its weaknesses and duties, would be sought
for in vain, for the salons of the Augustan period no longer possessed
these qualities, and it is a picture of the conversations of the salons
that has been bequeathed to us in the Horatian satires. Some gossip of
a higher or lower order, for the most part in a seemly though piquant
form which seldom becomes real malice, forms the subject-matter of all
the poems which have come down to us. The poet rises to a higher level
in the didactic epistles, of which those of the second book, with their
exhortations to the study of Greek models and their tasteful and striking
æsthetic reflections, belong to the chief productions of the time; and in
ripeness and clearness of judgment, careful polish and clear arrangement,
they leave all others far behind them. Greatly inferior to the satires
are the partly satirical _Epodes_, in which the personal element is too
prominent, and in which the poet betrays great want of self-restraint and
taste.

After Horace, the satire, such as he conceived it, found no imitator;
the period which followed brought with it too many conflicts to allow
mildness and tolerance to find a place. The preaching of morals is
carried into the domain of poetry; A. Persius Flaccus, the only
representative of this class of writing, gives us a very poor idea of
the age if it really regarded him as a satirist; but we are scarcely
justified in drawing this conclusion, since at the most he met with
approbation only from the ranks of the opposition. It is the same taste,
which Lucan represents, transferred to the satire; the arrogance and
self-sufficiency of an adept belonging to a circle of noble stoics, who
had scarcely got beyond the scholar’s bench, hollow pathos, rhetorical
ornamentation, versified expoundings of the stoic popular morality.
Persius lacked practically all the attributes of a poet. A mediocre
performance which might be reckoned as a satire was the _Translation
into the Society of Gourds of the deified Claudius_ (_Divi Claudius
Apokolokyntosis_), a petty, revengeful pamphlet against the unfortunate
prince, prepared moreover after his death. The dazzling wit with which
the poet strikes at gods and men might have elicited approval in his own
day; but the reader’s uppermost feeling will always be that this satire
sprang from miserable cowardice and perfidious flattery.

The only really intellectual work of a satirical character that this
period produced was the satires of Petronius, written in the reign of
Nero. No other work so clearly bears the stamp of its time. At least
the poor philosophy, which most of the poets have collected from their
philosophical compendiums and their rhetorical exercises, has no part
in this work, although the laboured and superficial culture of the time
clings to its author throughout. The source of his wisdom is life. To
him, man is the crown of creation, and he has studied him in all phases
and degrees; what exists beside man has only interest for him inasmuch
as it can serve to beautify human life and make it agreeable. Happiness
and enjoyment are the watchword of the whole work, not in the coarsely
material sense such as it is embodied in Trimalchio and his fellows,
but a life which, while it is seasoned with all material joys, is also
ennobled by all the contributions of art and cultivation. A rich and
varied experience of life gives this work its great value; the age is
reflected even to the most minute niceties of its language. Inventive
power, description of detail, humour, and a fine irony, as well as an
uncommonly skilful treatment, secure for some parts of these satires
the praise of a master work; and if the frivolous and lascivious tone
did not always bring us back to the court of Nero and the doings of the
time, we might think that in this we had before us a model of the best
age. Especially characteristic is the fine understanding of Greek art
and culture, and the enthusiasm for Latin poetry, which expresses itself
partly by means of a peculiar skill in versification and brilliancy of
colouring, partly in bitter mockery of the affectations of contemporary
poets and their dull, spiritless, and senseless exaggerations. The poet
always preserves elegance and purity of language; when he goes out of
his way to attain it, his good taste preserves him from errors, and that
same taste also disclosed to him the cause and effect of the decline of
rhetoric.

Only one quality is wanting in Petronius; like the Casanova literature
of our own and the preceding century, his work has no moral purpose.
Æsop’s fables were now also put into Latin, for Phædrus, often without
a complete understanding of the original, in somewhat clumsy verses
and with feeble wit, arranged the Greek fables for school and home use
amongst the Romans. The satirical point of the different pieces is now
almost entirely incomprehensible to us in our ignorance of conditions in
the city of Rome.

The lyric proper was far the most popular form of poetry under the
empire; for every one thought himself called upon to write songs and
occasional verses. We gain some notion of this style of poetry from
Horace. In his poems he chronicles the political measures of Augustus as
well as the love affairs and social doings of himself and his friends.
But whilst in the accounts of the latter it is frequently impossible to
decide how much is fact, how much poetry, and, at times, imitation of
his Greek models,--since so little true life beats through them,--in the
former there is something at least which is in harmony with its subject.
The poet has a firm and strong feeling for the greatness and honour of
Rome, if perhaps he does not always see it in the true light; this gives
some of his poems a colouring of truth and of a deep, sincere feeling.

Dependence on the Greeks of the best age could scarcely have been
greater; in diction and versification he is most careful; but that subtle
relation between the language and the sense, which was indispensable
in the Greek models, has been abandoned; tricks of versification have
determined the form and expression more frequently than poetic impulse
and spontaneous feeling.

But that all poetic creation and feeling were not entirely wanting to
the age is shown by the numerous small poetic productions found on
tombstones. Here true human feeling still revealed itself, and found an
expression which speaks to the heart and is often deeply affecting. It
is the same with the smaller poems in the Latin anthology; of course
the ideas are not great and imposing any more than were the occasions
which gave rise to them. But this much may be gathered from them, that
the language of poetry could still appeal to the heart, and purity and
correctness were still adhered to. Of the spread of poetic activity
we can scarcely form too vast an idea; the study of poetry was now an
essential part of education, and since Asinius Pollio had introduced the
custom of public readings, there was an audience for every individual
aspirant. And if the decline of the art of poetry was to be brought
about, this impulse would have effected it more surely than the
principate whose influence on the decline of the art may be only too
easily and willingly overestimated.

With the empire there came a change in the writing of history, inasmuch
as freedom of thought and judgment was limited by the despotic rule,
and the door was flung open to flattery and calumny; and in individual
reigns it might have been dangerous to relate the history of the republic
or of former emperors. But these circumstances alone cannot explain the
insignificance of historical writing any more than the removal of the
centre of politics to the imperial cabinet.

The Romans have really never possessed histories in the true sense of
the term, and consequently there was at this period no room for any
considerable damage to that species of composition. T. Livius (59 B.C.-17
A.D.) affords distinct evidence of this. In his own time he received
unqualified admiration and in subsequent ages his name sheltered itself
behind that of history; in the later days of the empire his prestige
continually increased, and finally almost the only works in Latin dealing
with the period of the republic and the triumvirate, and the beginnings
of the Augustan era, are transcripts and excerpts from his writings.
Augustus offered no exception to the opinion of the day; although he
called him a Pompeian, he not only granted him all conceivable freedom,
but on all occasions testified his personal esteem for him. And yet Livy
is no historian. He undertook the formidable task of writing a complete
history of the Roman state up to his time, but in consequence of its
formidable compass the work was necessarily unsuccessful, as older works
were often wanting, and Livy had not the ability to turn the existing
material to account.

Every Roman historian had great difficulties to encounter with regard
to the period of antiquity, and this extended more or less to the time
of Sulla. Down to a certain period, patriotism required adherence to a
traditional form which could not stand investigation; for other epochs
the Greeks, especially Polybius, had formed a conception which had
acquired a canonical value. Only critical judgment and a general scheme
of treatment on a grand scale could have been effective; but Livy was not
the man for this.

To him history was another name for the arranging of annalistic reports
which he put together; the most obvious contradictions were rejected, and
a certain system introduced into the chronology and adhered to as far as
might be without too great scrupulousness; where he had older authors
of merit, such as Polybius, to draw upon, his work was benefited; where
this was not the case, he did not scruple to combine accounts essentially
contradictory. He considered his principal office to be delineation, not
arrangement, investigation, and criticism, and the rhetorical elaboration
made up, in the eyes of the reader, for the want of exactness and a
definite conception.[f]


MERIVALE’S ESTIMATE OF LIVY

It was in the schools of rhetoric, we may believe, that Livy learned that
indifference to historical accuracy, that sacrifice of the substance to
the form of truth, which has cast so fatal a shade over the lustre of his
immortal work. As a friend of the ancient oligarchy, and an aristocrat
in prejudices and temper, it seems improbable that he would have carried
his Roman history down to his own times, had he not submitted to throw
a veil over his sentiments, and made his book such as Augustus himself
might sanction for the perusal of his subjects. The emperor, indeed, is
said to have called him a Pompeian, and to have complained of the colours
in which he portrayed the men of the opposite side; but this could only
have been in jest; the favour in which he was held by the courtiers of
the empire, and his being suffered to assist the studies of the young
prince, Claudius Germanicus, show that he was not seriously regarded as
a disaffected politician. The scorn which Livy heaps on the tribunes and
demagogues, and his ignorant contempt for the plebs, evince the leaning
of his mind to the side of the nobility. But these are obviously the
views of the rhetorician rather than of the historian; and Augustus,
tribune and demagogue as he was, could distinguish between the hollow
commonplaces of a perverted education and the stern judgment of a genuine
conviction. The loss of all the latter portions of this extensive work
must be deplored for the number of facts it has swept into oblivion;
but the facts would have been valuable rather from the inferences which
modern science might deduce from them, than from the light in which
the author would himself have placed them. Livy, taking the pen in
middle life, and continuing to pour forth his volumes in interminable
succession, perhaps to the end of his long career,--for born in the year
59 B.C., he died in 17 A.D.,--left it still apparently unfinished, at the
close of his hundred and forty-second book, and with the demise of Drusus
Germanicus.[4] It may be conjectured that the latter portions of the work
were overtaken by the garrulity of old age, and were suffered to fall
into oblivion from their want of political or literary value.

It is in the earlier books, however, that the spirit of Livy found the
sphere most congenial to it; the first and third decades, containing the
early history of the kings and consuls, and again the grand epic of the
war with Hannibal, have always retained their pre-eminence in general
esteem as the noblest specimens of narration. The greatest minds of Rome
at this period seemed to have kindled with inspiration from the genius
of the founder of the empire; and of these Livy at least appears to have
conceived unconsciously the idea of attaching his countrymen to the
early records of their city, by encircling it with a halo of poetical
associations. The imagination of the Romans of that age was inflamed by
the conservative reaction which sought to throw a bridge over the chaos
of the last century, and revive the sense of national continuity.

The thanks the race of Romulus owed to Livy, for making them acquainted
with their ancestors and proud of their descent, were akin to those which
Englishmen acknowledge to the historical dramas of Shakspeare. He took
the dry chronicles, in which alone their first affairs were written, drew
forth from them the poetic life of half-forgotten traditions, and clothed
it again in forms of ideal beauty. His narrative, glowing in all the
colours of imagination and fancy, is just as faithful to its authorities
as the dramatised histories of the English bard to theirs; indeed, the
myths of Romulus and Tarquin cannot lie farther from the truth of facts
than the tragedies of Lear and Cymbeline; and when he begins to tread the
domain of sober history, his painted Hannibals and Scipios approach as
nearly to the men themselves as the Richards and Henrys of our own mighty
master.

The charms of Livy’s style became the happy conjunction of circumstances
under which he wrote, and combined with it to give him that pre-eminence
among Roman historians which he never afterwards lost. Events and
characters of deepest interest became immutably fixed in the lines in
which he had represented them. Henceforth every Roman received from
Livy his first youthful impressions of his country’s career, which thus
became graven forever in the mind of the nation. It was in vain that the
inaccuracy of these relations, and in many cases their direct falsehood,
were pointed out by the votaries of truth, or by jealous and unsuccessful
rivals; henceforth it was treason to the majesty of Rome to doubt that
Porsenna was driven in confusion from her walls, or that the spoils of
the Capitol were wrested again from the triumphant legions of Brennus.[g]

Such are the estimates placed upon the work of Livy by those who view
him from the coldly analytical standpoint of the technical historian.
But we must not leave the greatest writer of Latin prose without seeking
a more sympathetic interpretation of his influence. Let us turn to
the estimate of one who was himself an historian kindred in spirit to
Livy--one who approached history from the standpoint of the artist and
humanitarian,--M. Taine. Here is his estimate of


LIVY AS THE ARTISTIC LIMNER OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE

There are three ways of representing character [says Taine]: the author
may stop to think and compose a portrait, in a philosophical style, as
Thucydides does; one may paint people by their actions, a method followed
by Tacitus and the poets; or he may portray them by exposing their
opinions in speeches; this is Livy’s and the orator’s talent.

The finest of all his portraits is that of the Roman people. Each
speech, each oratorical narrative revises and perfects it, and it is
easily seen that Livy has not taken it from the ancient authors but
that it is entirely his own. In the combat of Horatius Cocles, what
pride and what vigour! It is not likely that the Romans in one year had
become such unruly republicans. But how well the fable is hidden under
a noble passion! Throwing towards the chiefs of the Etruscans savage
and threatening glances, sometimes provoking them one after another,
sometimes insulting them collectively.“Slaves of insolent kings,
forgetting your own liberty, you come to attack that of others!” If this
passage is theatrical, it is grand, and eloquence nobly adorns “the
beginning of this liberty.”

Dionysius makes Mucius an ingenious Greek, who terrifies good Porsenna
and saves himself by a stratagem with a double result. In Livy Mucius is
a hero. “Seized by the guards and brought before the king’s court, even
then, in the midst of such dangers, he was more to be feared than to be
frightened. ‘I am a Roman citizen,’ he said, ‘I am called C. Mucius,
enemy. I wished to kill an enemy, and I am as ready to die as to kill. A
Roman can dare all and suffer all. I am but the first to bring against
thee their courage; behind me is a long train of men who seek the same
honour. Prepare thyself if thou wilt, for the struggle. At each hour,
thou wilt fight for life and thou wilt have a dagger and an enemy in the
vestibule of thy palace. We young men declare this kind of war against
thee. Fear neither army nor combat, this affair is between each of us and
thee alone.’

“The king, at the same time excited by anger and terrified by fear,
ordered him to be surrounded by flames, if he did not at once explain
these ambiguous threats of conspiracy. ‘Look,’ said Mucius, ‘in order to
understand what a small thing the body is to those who behold a great
glory.’ He put his hand in a brasier lighted for the sacrifice, and left
it there, as if unconscious of the pain.” In Dionysius, Clœlia asks the
guards permission to bathe, requests them to withdraw a little whilst
she disrobes herself, and then quietly crosses the Tiber. In reading the
inventions of clever poltroonery, one respects Livy for having written as
a Roman.

It is pride and not interest which makes the Roman people revolt against
a master. See in what manner Cincinnatus judges tyranny. Does Livy
forget that he lived under Augustus? When Melius was stretched out on
the market-place, “He has been justly killed,” says the dictator; “a man
should not be treated as a citizen, who, born of a free people, in the
centre of privileges and laws, conceived the hope of ruling, knowing that
kings had been driven from that city; that the same year, the king’s
nephews, sons of the consul who liberated the country, being denounced
for having plotted to re-establish kings, had been beheaded with an axe
by their father; and that the Consul Tarquinus Collatinus, in hatred of
his very name, had been obliged to leave his magistracy to go into exile.”

All these arguments are derived from the dignity of the Roman people,
issue of the gods, exultant master-elect of the world, whose high
self-esteem is its dominating passion. This people kills a tyrant, not
in the cause of justice, but in order that it may become a tyrant itself
for love of empire. This need of commanding is so natural to the Romans
that it seems to them to be a divine right. When the Latins, who for
over two hundred years made up half of the army and achieved half the
victories, claimed the equal rights they deserved, the Roman people were
as indignant as if it were sacrilege. The consul frankly says that if the
Roman senators were mad enough to obey a man of Setia, he would come,
sword in hand, into the senate, and that he would kill every Latin he saw
in the curia with his own hand. Then turning towards Jupiter’s statue, he
cries: “Listen to these crimes, Jupiter, hear them, Right and Justice!
Foreign consuls, a foreign senate, inaugurated in Jupiter’s temple,
thyself captive and oppressed, that is what thou wouldst see.”

This sublime insolence proves that these men had souls worthy of kings. A
government like a man has its own personality. One feels in the orations
of Demosthenes the generous indignation and eloquent pain of an artistic
and philosophical people, which appeals to the gods and to men against
brutal strength, envelops itself in its own glory before falling. The
decrees of the Roman senate are the verdicts of a judge who overwhelms
the heart by his imperious hardness before crushing the enemy with his
armies.

When Popilius, tracing a circle around the king of Syria, ordered him to
answer him before stepping over it, he did nothing very extraordinary.
All the Romans treated foreigners as subjects.

From this public and private pride, born with the foundation of Rome,
nourished by a succession of victories and by habitual domination, there
resulted a particular kind of courage. The Romans do not fight through an
outburst of bravery and of imagination, as the Athenians, or for the need
of action and activity like the barbarians, but by maxims of pride and
obstinacy. Their defeats are admirable. At Lake Trasimenus, battalions of
soldiers charge through the victorious army by which they are surrounded.
At Cannæ, ranged in a circle, fifty thousand men die to the last man,
those in front ceaselessly falling and those behind taking their place.

The Romans fight for honour and duty, incapable of yielding, because the
heart of men revolts against the slightest approach and appearance of
pardon, because humiliation is worse than ruin, because it is better to
lose everything than to yield an inch. That is why Rome becomes prouder
in reverse and only consents to treat in order to pardon, why she will
only suffer around her protégés, suppliants, and subjects, and “carries
her empire as far as the earth and her courage as high as the sky.” Pride
renders one calm. The man who aims at being worthy remains serious,
and the Romans without emotion or enthusiasm accomplished the greatest
results. Pride sanctifies the fatherland because the citizen gets from
it glory and ascendency, without which he cannot exist. Pride sacrifices
the family because it considers as weakness the affections on which it is
founded.

Livy shows in his speeches how simple, quiet, and deliberate
self-sacrifice is in Rome. Q. Fabius presided over the comitia; the
first hundred nominate his nephew Otacilius consul. He stops the voting
and coldly says, “We have tried thee, Otacilius, in lesser posts, and
thou certainly hast done nothing which justifies us giving thee more
important ones. For three reasons did we equip the fleet you commanded
this year; in order to lay the African coast, in order to protect the
shores of Italy, and above all that no reinforcements, food, or money
be sent through from Carthage to Hannibal. Name Otacilius consul, if he
has rendered to the state--I don’t say all these services, but a single
one. It matters more to thee, Otacilius, than to any one else that a
burden under which you would be crushed be not laid on your shoulders.
Herald, recall to the vote the century of the young men of Anio.” As
Otacilius cries out with rage that Fabius himself wishes to remain in the
consulship and throws himself upon him, the consul orders the lictors to
approach, and he informs Otacilius that, not having entered the city,
his arms and arrows have been carried on in advance. Fabius is so sure
of his disinterestedness that he does not fear appearing ambitious and
tyrannical, and the people judging the same, at once elect him consul.

The son of Manlius has fought against his father’s orders. He appears
with his spoil. Without saying a word to him, the father turns away and
orders the army to be assembled, and at once the following sentence,
“Since without respect for consular authority or paternal majesty, T.
Manlius, thou hast against orders, outside the ranks, fought the enemy,
and destroyed, as far as was in thy power, military discipline, upon
which until to-day Roman deeds have always stood; since thou hast forced
me to forget either the republic or myself and mine, let us rather
bear the penalty of the crime ourselves than that the republic pay so
heavily for our fault. We shall be a sad but salutary example to coming
generations. Without doubt, a father’s natural love and that proof of
courage deceived by empty glory move me in thy favour. But since it is
necessary by thy death to sanction the orders of the consuls or by thy
pardon forever to nullify them, I do not think if there runs a drop
of our blood in thy veins, that thou willst refuse to restore by thy
punishment military discipline, which has been overthrown by thy error.
Go, lictor, tie him to the stake.”

This argument, which ends like a thunderbolt, is terrible because it
is so sudden. Judge by this example to what an extent Roman zeal was
carried. In the soul of the magistrate there seemed to exist a permanent
tribunal which was ever ready to deliver judgment. They had no need to
raise themselves above their own level in order to attain self-denial; it
came naturally to them. In the same way the savages of America tranquilly
offered up their limbs for torture and by education, temperament, habit,
and nature mocked at what the martyrs with all their exaltation dared
hardly face.

The soothsayer having declared that the victorious army must lose its
general, Manlius and his brother general without any signs of emotion,
summon their officers on the eve of battle and agree that there, where
they saw the army give way, one or the other should sacrifice himself.

By pride of citizenship, Livy brings out the fine sides of this
character; by precision of oratory, he reveals the characteristic
features, for he is obliged to arrange his subject to suit his audience
and to touch Roman passions by Roman arguments. Consider in Camillus’
discourse, that religion which is really but a doctrine, so minutely and
carefully following the consecrated form, so attached to outward rites,
observing not the spirit but the letter which alone prevents the people
from emigrating to Veii. As it is political and local it attaches the
government and the citizen to the soil. “We have a town founded according
to omens and augurs in which there is not a corner where the gods and
their worship are not to be found. Our solemn sacrifices take place on
certain days. Will you forsake, Romans, all these private and public
gods? How little your actions resemble that of the young M. C. Fabius
whom the enemy watched with as much admiration as you, when, amongst
the Gallic javelins, coming down from the citadel he offered up on the
Quirinal the solemn sacrifice of the house of Fabia. The vestals can
only have one abode, one from which nothing can eject them except the
surrender of the town. Jupiter’s flamen cannot spend one night outside
Rome without crime. Would you make these Roman priests Veientine priests,
and would you abandon vestal virgins? Oh, Vesta! And the flamen living
in another country, shall he every night commit an impious act which the
republic must atone for with him? Here is the Capitol, where a human head
was once found, when the soothsayers said that here would be the head of
the world and the seat of the empire. Here are Vesta’s sacred fire, the
shields fallen from heaven, and, if you stay here, the gods all-merciful.”

One sees that the love of country is as much religious as it is
political; the gods live on the soil and are Romans; what must be the
strength of this sentiment which unites all others! In our days they are
separate. The town we live in, the religion we follow, and the country to
which we belong make up three distinct worlds, often unfriendly to each
other. Amongst the ancients, there was but one, the city. The family was
sacrificed to it; it made one with religion; the soul and thought of man
were absorbed in his country; and from every point of view, the citizen
alone was visible.


THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES

Let us try in a few words to sum up the philosophy of the epoch as it is
given by our contemporaries. We are not leaving Livy behind us by showing
how his work has been perfected. “Great queen,” said Bossuet, before
Henrietta Maria’s tomb, “I gratify your tenderest desires in praising
this great monarch, and your heart, dust though it is, awakes to hear
me.” Livy would not listen with indifference to the modern philosophers
who explain, perfect, and complete the history of his country. To act
with a personal interest in view, and consequently to organise the means
of so doing is the dominant trait in the history and genius of Rome.
Therefore its spirit is that of calculating reflection rather than of
poetical invention and philosophical speculation, and its character
consists of a reasoned will, not of feelings or affections.

From this arises that never-ending struggle with the unfruitfulness of a
naturally sterile land, that contempt for him who loses his patrimony,
the fame of him who increases it, economy, frugality, greed, avarice, the
spirit of chicanery, all the virtues and all the vices which generate and
preserve wealth, the tendency to regard property as a sacred trust, and
the boundary of a field as a limitation of divine origin, the protection
of lands and credit by severe laws, legal deeds drawn up in minute
and inviolable forms--in a word, every institution calculated for the
protection of acquired property.

In other countries the natural family, established on the basis of
a common origin, is ruled by the affections; but the Roman family,
absolutely civil, founded on a community of obedience and of rites, is
only the chattel and the property of the father, governed according
to his will, subordinate to the state, ever bequeathed by law in the
presence of the state, a kind of province in the hands of the father
which supplies soldiers for the public benefit.

Made up of different races, united by violence, the work of force and
will, and not of relationship and nature, the Roman state contained two
organised bodies, struggling regularly and legally, not through passion,
but through interest, and united under the best devised and organised
constitution that has ever been known. By the state’s systematic and
methodical mode of conquest for the sole object of preserving and
exploiting, military art was carried to the highest possible point, and
political skill and administrative talent united to bring together by
force the whole of the then known world into an empire organised by one
dominant city.

Roman policy consisted in turning the conquered nations into Roman
soldiers, and foreign princes and magistrates into Roman ministers,
thus strengthening the controlling power at the least possible expense.
Military art consisted in subjecting the bravest and strongest soldiers
to the strictest obedience, that is to say, in obtaining the greatest
amount of strength from the vast forces at command. All her wisdom was
exerted to increase her power and to spare herself. An institution
of will, a machine for conquest, a matter of organisation, the state
occupied all thought, absorbed all love, and claimed submission in every
act and institution.

The sway of personal interest and national egoism produces a contempt for
humanity. The human species, when unconquered, is looked upon as material
for conquest, conquered it is a prey to be made use of and abused. Slaves
are trampled upon with atrocious cruelty, entire nations are destroyed,
vanquished kings are led in triumph and put to death.

The gods are abstractions, and utterly without poetry, such as calm
reflection discerns in the humblest agricultural or domestic operations,
scourges adored through fear, foreign gods received into the temple
through interested motives as vanquished foes were received into the
city, and subject to the Jupiter of the Capitol as nations were to Rome.
The priests were laymen divided into classes, and officiated only under
the authority of the senate, which regulated all expiatory ceremonies
and alone, with the people, could make innovations. Worship consisted
of minute ceremonies, scrupulously observed because all poetical and
philosophical spirit which is the interpreter of symbols, was wanting;
dull, unilluminated reason attaching itself only to the letter. The
senate used religion as a political machine, and like all else it was but
an instrument of government.

In the world of art we find nothing indigenous, except family memoirs,
written in the interests of a race, dry chronicles drawn up for public
use, rituals, account books, collections of laws, books of moral sayings,
memoranda of political satires--in short, government documents, maxims
of conduct, and political essays.

Everything else is foreign, imported, or conquered. The theatre
originating in Etruria and in Greece was simply imitated and then
forsaken for bear fights which later became processions, magnificent in
weapons and ornaments, parades of triumph and war. Monuments of art were
pillaged in Greece, and in Cicero’s time were still despised; while in
poetry, there was no original fiction, no invention of characters. The
only things in which the national genius rivals the imitation of foreign
models are oratory,--the arm of the forum,--satire,--versified pleading
and instruction in morals,--and history, the record of political facts,
which, however, is at Rome only a collection of memoirs or an exercise
in oratory; and all these things are concerned with the practical
and with government. If Rome possessed poets, it was solely when her
particular genius gave way before a new movement. The only entertainments
she invented were triumphs and games in the circus, where victory was
continued by the humiliation and death of the vanquished, where the
spectator was the conqueror and assassin.

All scientific writings were translations. There were compilers
such as Varro and Pliny, imitators such as Cicero and Lucretius;
some small advance was made in agriculture, rhetoric, medicine, and
architecture--all applied sciences. In the place of metaphysics, the
clumsy physics of Epicurus and of the stoics were copied. The practical
side of philosophy was alone studied, moral philosophy, and that
with a purely practical object. The only strictly Roman science is
jurisprudence, and that is altogether practical and political. It is,
moreover, so long as it remains Roman, but a collection of dry formulæ, a
mere manual for lawyers and not a branch of science.

From the character of Roman genius springs its history. The family and
religion being subordinate to the state, art and science being null, or
entirely practical, and the state having no other object than to conquer
and to organise what it had conquered, Roman history is the history of
conquest and its effects.

The middle class was either ruined, or perished during the progress
of this great war. From the time of the Gracchi, besides a population
of poor people and freed slaves, there remained only a wealthy class,
wielding great power by reason of their immense riches, their command
of great armies, their control of taxation, and of the destinies of the
commonwealth in general. At first united but afterwards divided, at the
end of a century’s struggle one of these classes emerged victorious.
Thus power, founded by sheer force, passed to the armies, the embodiment
of force. In the meanwhile, the universe, depopulated and ruined by
conquest, by civil wars, by the pillage of the proconsuls, by the
demands of the imperial treasury, supplied no more soldiers. With the
fall of militarism, an oriental despotism, characterised by a cunning
administration, was founded. Through war and its results, conquerors and
conquered, nations and liberties, had all perished. Nothing remained in
force but a system of effete institutions under the caprice of a ruler
who was often hardly a man.

The ancient institution of the family disappeared under the influence of
Grecian ideas and oriental customs. The judicial dicta of lawyers and
prætors conflicted with the authority of the husband and father; civil
family ties became dissolved in excess of pleasures and love of conquest.
In spite of the laws of Augustus, marriages decreased, and were only
excuses for adultery and divorce. Mysticism, poverty, the discouragement
of the curials, added despair to the effects of debauchery and created a
contempt for life.

By these changes in domestic life and under the influence of foreign
philosophers, the Roman idea of property changed. First of all in the
hands of the father (mancipium), possessions next became a family
inheritance (dominium), and ended by belonging entirely to the individual
(proprietas). Though benefited in theory, in practice property ceased
to exist, because according to the law the emperor was master over
it, because the treasury took its fruits, because taxation, tyranny,
ignorance, and a growing depopulation rendered it sterile or reduced it
to nought.

The ancient religion assimilated with the religions of Greece and
the East, disappeared in the pantheon of the gods enlarged by dead
emperors, and there remained of it only official pomp and an excuse for
persecutions. The jealousy of despots, the degradation of servitude,
the loss of all interests and of all hope, the abuse of pleasures, the
downfall of Greece and of the East, extinguished all that was yet known
of art and science. The jurisconsults alone laid down a code of laws, the
last result of the spirit of organisation.

Thus, conquest, the fruit of Roman genius, destroyed both the genius of
peoples, and the peoples themselves; leaving behind it because it was
a system, a system of institutions on a dead foundation. But in this
debasement of every force and of every earthly hope, man took refuge
within himself. Helped by oriental mysticism, he discovered in a new
religion a new world.

This is what the modern philosophers have added to Livy. The criticism
commenced by him, renewed by Beaufort, nearly perfected by Niebuhr,
and the philosophy hidden under his eloquence, which was turned
by Machiavelli into a practical channel and is still imperfect in
Montesquieu, become each day more exact and more profound. The
corrections thus made honour those by whom they are made without lowering
those who suffer them. The first authors are the fathers of science,
and Livy alone has done more for Roman history than all those who have
desired to set him right.[i]


FOOTNOTES

[4] Niebuhr’s[h] remarks on the dates of Livy’s history (_Rom. Hist._
iv.) may be compared with the more common view given in Smith’s
Dictionary and elsewhere. I think the beginning of the work must be
placed in 29-24 B.C.; but adopting the idea that it was originally
divided into decades, the fact now demonstrated, that it reached to
a hundred and forty-second book, seems to show that it was not left
complete according to the author’s intentions. It is also well remarked
that the death of Drusus does not furnish a point of sufficient
importance for the termination of the great epic of Roman history. This
view is supported by the interesting statement of Pliny, that in one
of his latter books Livy had declared: Satis jam sibi gloriæ quæsitum;
et potuisse se desinere, nisi animus inquies pasceretur opere. (Plin.
_Hist. Nat._ præf.) A period of more than forty years thus devoted to the
elaboration of a single work is not unparalleled. Froissart was engaged
forty years upon his _Chronicles_.

[Illustration: ROMAN COMPASS

(In the British Museum)]




[Illustration: ROMAN DEATH MASK]




CHAPTER XXXII. THE LAST YEARS OF AUGUSTUS


Octavian divorced his first two wives, the daughter of Publ. Servilius,
to whom he had been married at eighteen, and Clodia, daughter of Antony’s
wife Fulvia by her first husband P. Clodius the triumvir, after a short
period of wedded life; and a year after she had borne him a daughter,
Julia by name, he put away his third wife Scribonia, being captivated by
the charms of Livia, the wife of Ti. Claudius Nero, who came into his
house as his fourth wife with the consent of her former husband. Her two
sons, Tiberius (born 42 B.C.) and Drusus, whom she brought into the world
three months after her union with Augustus, were brought up in the house
of their father Cl. Nero, but were received by Augustus into his own
house on the death of the former, who had appointed him their guardian.

The person who had the likeliest prospect of the succession seemed to
be M. Marcellus, the son of the emperor’s sister Octavia by her first
marriage. He was treated with the utmost distinction by Augustus, who
loaded him with honours in quick succession and married him at an early
age to his daughter Julia, to the great mortification of the haughty and
ambitious Livia, who, having borne no children to her imperial spouse,
desired to secure the first place after the monarch and the reversion of
the throne for her sons Tiberius and Drusus.

[Sidenote: [21 B.C.-2 A.D.]]

A second rival to the youthful Marcellus arose in the person of his own
brother-in-law Agrippa, the famous general to whom Augustus chiefly owed
his victories over Sext. Pompeius and Antony, and whom he himself had
encouraged to cherish the most daring hopes by high distinctions and
proofs of favour. When the enmity between Agrippa and Marcellus grew
too plainly manifest, the emperor despatched the former to Asia under
pretext of an honourable mission. But Agrippa, looking upon this as a
kind of banishment, ruled the province through his legate, while he
himself remained at Lesbos, his gaze riveted upon Rome. Fate intervened
to save Augustus from painful experience of the affronted pride of an
ambitious man. Marcellus died in the year 23, universally lamented by
the Roman people, whose darling he was. It was shrewdly suspected that
he had fallen a victim to the rancour and intrigues of Livia, who, by
birth a member of the Claudian family, had inherited all the pride and
jealous ambition of their old patrician blood. Augustus, dismayed by the
disturbances at Rome in the year 22, and the evidences of a conspiracy
against his life which then came to light, made haste to be reconciled
with Agrippa, and, by marrying him to Julia, assured him of the first
place after his own and the prospect of the succession. Octavia, the
emperor’s sister, moved by envy and jealousy of Livia, gladly agreed
to Agrippa’s divorce from her daughter Marcella, that so she might
thwart the ambitious schemes of the emperor’s consort. A few years later
Agrippa journeyed to the East, accompanied by Julia, to set in order the
complications and struggles for the throne which had arisen in various
districts from the Bosporus to Syria. His presence was a blessing to
the Asiatic provinces and dependent states; he reconciled the wrangling
members of the empire by admonitions and commands, and perpetuated the
name of his wife by founding on the site of the ancient and ruinous
seaport of Berytus the colony of Julia Felix, which was provided with a
garrison of two legions and became the centre of Roman dominion in Syria.
As Agrippa was returning to Italy after a stay of some years in the East,
he succumbed to sickness in the fifty-first year of his age. He died in
Campania in 12 B.C.

Augustus rendered the highest honours to the man to whom he owed so much,
and who had devoted himself as fully to the welfare of the state as to
the cause of his imperial friend. He had the body interred with the most
solemn obsequies in the imperial vault, himself delivering the funeral
oration, and not only made over the baths and gardens of Agrippa to the
city of Rome according to the wishes of the deceased, but distributed
considerable donations of money among the people in his name.

Livia now conceived fresh hopes for her sons. By her intrigues she
succeeded in procuring the divorce of Tiberius, her first-born, who
was at that time thirty years of age, from his wife, and his marriage
with the emperor’s widowed daughter, who had borne three sons to
Agrippa--Caius, Lucius, and Agrippa, and two daughters, Julia and
Agrippina. Augustus with difficulty suppressed his dislike of his
ambitious, overbearing, and sullen stepson.

Within a very few years the circle of friends which Augustus had gathered
about him had been sadly thinned by death. Agrippa, Octavia, Drusus,
and Mæcenas had sunk into the tomb within the space of four years (from
12 to 8 B.C.). Thus with declining age the emperor fixed his affections
all the more exclusively upon his two grandsons, Caius and Lucius, the
children of his daughter Julia and his friend Agrippa. He admitted them
by adoption into the Julian family, conferred the title of Cæsar upon
them, and had them brought up under his own eye; he even devoted part of
his own leisure to their instruction and education. They were his usual
companions at table, and were treated with such distinction that all
men regarded them as the future heirs of the empire. The populace and
the senate vied with each other in offering homage and adulation to the
imperial grandsons of Augustus, and they were loaded with fresh honours
and dignities every year.

But this brilliant position was fated to be the ruin of the young
princes. It not only filled their own hearts with presumption and
self-conceit; Livia and Tiberius turned eyes of envy and hatred upon the
favoured pair. When Augustus, who was not blind to their sentiments,
attempted to remove his stepson from the capital by giving him the
honourable task of conducting a campaign in Armenia, the latter declined
the proffered honour out of mortified pride, and begged leave to spend
some years in learned leisure in the island of Rhodes. The leave was
granted, and extended even beyond his desires. For seven years he stayed
in the Greek island; busy with philosophical and mathematical studies,
and observing the constellations in the night hours under the guidance
of Thrasyllus, to draw auguries for the future from their position. His
absence was at first associated with demonstrations of honour, through
the splendour of the tribunician office which Augustus had conferred on
him before his departure; but in course of time it assumed more and more
the character of an exile, and Julia took advantage of it to increase her
father’s aversion for the husband she abhorred.

Frivolous, vain, and wanton, the emperor’s daughter had caused him many
a heartache by the levity of her conduct and her fondness for amusement;
but she had always been able to propitiate his wrath and regain her
ascendency by her amiability, her talent for witty and delightful
conversation, her culture, and her art of delicate flattery. He shut
his eyes when she violated the outward propriety and decorum which he
endeavoured to diffuse over the private life of the imperial family, or
when she showed herself in public surrounded by a swarm of aristocratic
young men of lax morals. If he were annoyed at some too wanton attire
of hers, she would presently appear in the decorous garb of a Roman
matron and enliven her father by some jesting observation. The circle
of blooming grandchildren with which she had surrounded his throne, and
by which she seemed to have ensured his line in the possession of the
monarchy, inclined him to judge her leniently and to make allowances for
her.

But Livia’s intriguing temper found ways and means to destroy this bond
and to extinguish in the father’s heart the long-cherished belief in his
daughter’s innocence. She contrived to arouse in him the dark suspicion
that Julia was not only disgracing the honour of the imperial house
by a licentious way of life, but that she and her lovers had actually
conceived hostile designs against his person and the security of the
empire. For by this alone can we explain the harsh measures adopted by
Augustus, who had his daughter suddenly banished without trial to the
little island of Pandataria off the Campanian coast, and informed the
senate that through shameless wantonness she had so far erred as to make
the Forum and tribune the scene of nocturnal orgies and the witness of
her gallantries. Her accomplices, real or supposed, who were for the most
part opponents of Tiberius, shared the same fate of exile, or suffered
the penalty of death, like the gifted and cultured son of the triumvir,
Julus Antonius, eminent both as a statesman and a soldier. The sympathy
and compassion of the people accompanied the emperor’s daughter (then
thirty-eight years of age) into her place of punishment. Her guilt and
transgression were her portion in the life of a degenerate age and city
steeped in pleasures and vices, her penance was the outcome of the envy
and malignity of an intriguing stepmother.

Her life in exile, which was voluntarily shared by her mother Scribonia,
was rich in deeds of benevolence and charity. She died at Rhegium soon
after her father, full of sorrows and weary of life. The gifted and
eloquent Sempronius Gracchus, who had enjoyed her favour and love in
happier days and had consequently been banished to the African island
of Cercina, died about the same time by the hands of assassins sent by
Tiberius to despatch him; showing himself by his fortitude in death not
unworthy of the Sempronian name which in his life he had brought to shame.

[Sidenote: [1 B.C.-9 A.D.]]

With the banishment of Julia commenced that series of misfortunes
which ended by leaving the house of Augustus desolate and inflicted
deep wounds upon his paternal heart. In that same year her eldest son,
the eighteen-year-old Caius Cæsar, undertook a campaign in Asia at
the head of a considerable army, in order to reduce to submission the
Armenians--who had revolted from the dominion of Rome by the help of
the Parthians--and to chastise the refractory Arab tribes. Armed with
authority of the proconsular imperium over all the provinces of the
east, so that absolute power in matters military and civil rested in his
hands and all local governors were subject to his commands, the youthful
commander-in-chief crossed to Egypt by way of Samos, accompanied by M.
Lollius and other experienced and learned men whom Augustus had placed
about him as counsellors. Tiberius, who visited his stepson during his
stay on the island, was able to draw from the coolness of his reception
the conclusion that his own star was on the decline and that Caius Cæsar
was universally recognised and honoured as the heir to the empire. From
Egypt the expedition passed through Palestine to Syria. All men bowed
before the imperial youth who seemed destined to inherit the empire of
the world, and vied with one another in proffering homage, courting
favour, and bringing gifts. Access to the youthful imperator was
purchased of Lollius at a high price.

The enemies of Rome were struck with awe at this display of might and
majesty. The Nabatæans of Petra voluntarily returned to their previous
position of dependence, and in a personal interview with the Roman
commander-in-chief on an island in the Euphrates, Phraates, king of
Parthia, concluded a peace on terms dictated by this mighty ruler and
evacuated Armenia, which was then quickly conquered by the legions after
a faint resistance, and was again numbered among Roman dependencies.

Caius Cæsar then made ready to return home. Feeble of body and greatly
distressed by a wound received at the siege of the town of Artagera on
the Euphrates, he had no desire for more of the hardships and perils of
war; he longed for enjoyment and tranquillity rather than for honour and
military reputation. Both were denied him. Death overtook him at Lycia on
his homeward way. Before he died he received the mournful tidings that
his younger brother Lucius Cæsar had suddenly fallen a victim to sickness
eighteen months earlier, at Massilia, on an expedition into Spain.

With the death of the two Cæsars the hopes of Tiberius blossomed anew.
Hence it is not improbable that they died of poison, administered at
the criminal instigations of Livia. Even contemporaries nourished this
suspicion. The passionate nature of the empress, who shrank from no crime
however heinous, was well known, as was also the revengeful and spiteful
temper of her eldest son, who had returned to Rome shortly before the
death of Caius, and now did all he could to step into the vacant place.
The mother’s intrigues and the son’s flattering arts of dissimulation
did actually succeed to some extent in overcoming the emperor’s aversion
to his stepson. He received him into favour and graciously acceded to
Livia’s proud hopes and desires by adopting him and admitting him into
the Julian family. Julia, the granddaughter of Augustus, who resembled
her mother in beauty, in wit, as well as in levity and voluptuousness,
and the younger Agrippa (styled Postumus, because Julia had brought him
into the world after the death of her husband), a turbulent youth of
haughty and intractable disposition, rude manners, and violent passions,
were no formidable rivals to the artful Livia and her malevolent son.

When Agrippa’s outbreaks of fury were carried so far that neither the
emperor nor the empress were spared by them, the latter contrived that
the thoughtless and ungovernable youth, though adopted by Augustus at
the same time as Tiberius, should be kept under military supervision
in the little island of Planasia; where Tiberius had put him out of
the way in the first year of his reign by assassins despatched for the
purpose, alleging instruction left by the deceased emperor as his excuse.
The younger Julia was banished on the pretext of an illicit amour with
Decius Silanus, to a desolate island in the neighbourhood of Apulia, and
compelled to pass the rest of her days--twenty long years--in exile.

[Sidenote: [9-14 A.D.]]

Fortune, which had stood by Augustus faithfully throughout his public
career and had led him by many thorny paths to the summit of earthly
glory, deserted him in his private life and in his domestic circle.
Hatred and envy, fanned by female passions, ranged his court in two
hostile factions, which employed against each other all the weapons of
intrigue and all the arts of treachery and dissimulation, and scared
peace and harmony away from the apartments of the imperial palace.

Livia’s ambitious and passionate temper was so notorious that she was
actually suspected of having cut her husband’s days short by poison, lest
he should restore his grandson Agrippa, to whom he had been reconciled
in his island exile a little while before with tears and passionate
embraces, to his rights and honours. She was alone with the emperor
when death overtook him on a journey, at Nola in Lower Italy, in the
seventy-sixth year of his age; and by carefully guarding the house and
spreading false reports she concealed the fact of his decease until her
son, who for several years had been associated with his adoptive father
as coadjutor in the empire, could be summoned from Illyricum. Then the
world was startled by the double announcement that Augustus was dead and
that Tiberius had assumed the reins of power.

The gorgeous obsequies of his predecessor were the new emperor’s first
business. Escorted by the whole body of knights and senators, and
accompanied by women, bodyguards, and an innumerable multitude, the
corpse was borne to the Field of Mars and there committed to the flames.
When the ashes had been collected and interred in the imperial vault the
deceased was exalted to a place among the gods by a decree of the senate,
and a temple and ritual were assigned to him. Livia, known as Julia
Livia since her adoption into the Julian family, was to preside as high
priestess over the new college of priests devoted to the deified monarch.
She died in the year 29 A.D., at the advanced age of 86.[b]

It is extremely difficult to estimate the character of this celebrated
woman. Expression has been given above to various intimations which if
justified reveal her in the worst possible light. But it must not be
forgotten that evil-minded gossips were very busy in the early days
of the empire, and that intrigues and sinister motives of a doubtful
character darken the pages of Tacitus, our chief authority. Indeed it
is no exaggeration to say that Tacitus excels in the invention or the
partisan use of bad motives, and his great dramatic and satirical powers
give peculiar force to this unfair weapon. Tacitus can be relied on for
facts which were publicly known or recorded at the time, but he is far
from impartial. It may be, then, that an impartial estimate might soften
somewhat the harsh judgment which, thanks to Tacitus, most writers have
not hesitated to pass upon Livia. With this qualified estimate let us
turn from Livia to consider the character of her famous husband.[a]


THE PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF AUGUSTUS

We are indebted to C. Suetonius Tranquillus, who lived at Rome about the
close of the first century A.D., for most that we know of the personal
characteristics of Augustus, and of his immediate successors. Thanks to
him, we are enabled to gain a personal acquaintance, as it were, with the
Cæsars; which is very unusual with the great characters of antiquity in
general. The biographies of Plutarch and of Cornelius Nepos are about the
only other extensive repositories of information concerning the character
of celebrities as men rather than as mere historical personalities. We
turn now to Suetonius’ estimate of Augustus:

Augustus was slow in forming friendships, but when once they were
contracted, he maintained them with great constancy; not only rewarding
very handsomely the virtues and good services of his friends, but
bearing likewise with their faults and vices, provided that they were
of a venial kind. For amongst all his friends, we scarcely find any who
fell into disgrace with him, except Salvidienus Rufus, whom he raised
to the consulship, and Cornelius Gallus whom he made governor of Egypt,
both of them men of the lowest extraction. One of these, being engaged
in a design to excite a rebellion, he delivered up to the senate, that
he might be condemned; and the other, on account of his ungrateful and
malicious temper, he dismissed from his family and the provinces under
his government. But when Gallus, by the threats of his accusers, and the
votes of the senate against him, was driven to the desperate extremity of
laying violent hands upon himself, he commended indeed the attachment of
the senate, that had expressed so much indignation on his account; but he
shed tears, and lamented his unhappy condition, “that I alone,” said he,
“cannot be permitted to be angry with my friends to such a degree as I
think proper.” The rest of his friends continued during their whole lives
to make a distinguished figure in their several orders, both in power
and estate, notwithstanding some occasional incidents of a disagreeable
nature. For to say nothing of others, he would sometimes complain of
impatience in Agrippa, and of loquacity in Mæcenas: the former, from a
suspicion of a coolness in Augustus towards him, and because Marcellus
received greater marks of favour, having withdrawn himself from all
concern in the government, and retired to Mytilene; and the latter having
confidentially imparted to his wife Terentia the discovery of Murena’s
conspiracy. He likewise expected from his friends, both living and
dying, a mutual proof of their benevolence. For though he was far from
coveting their estates (as he never would accept of any legacy left him
by a stranger), yet he examined their last sentiments of him, expressed
in their wills, with an anxious attention; not being able to conceal his
chagrin, if they made but a slight, or no very honourable mention of him,
nor his joy on the other hand, if they expressed a grateful sense of his
favours and a hearty affection for him. And what was left him by such as
had children, he used to restore to the latter, either immediately, or if
they were under age, upon the day of their assuming the manly habit, or
of their marriage, with interest.

As a patron and master, his behaviour in general was mild and
conciliating; but when occasion required it, he could be severe. He
employed many of his freedmen in considerable posts about him, as
Licinius, Enceladus, and others. And when his slave Cosmus had reflected
bitterly upon him, he resented the injury no further than by putting him
in fetters. When his steward Diomedes, as they were walking together,
left him exposed to a wild boar, which came suddenly upon them, he chose
rather to charge him with cowardice than any ill design, and turned
an incident of no small hazard to his person into a jest, because it
had proceeded from no treachery. Proculus, who was one of his greatest
favourites amongst all his freedmen, he put to death, for maintaining
a criminal commerce with other men’s wives. He broke the legs of his
secretary Thallus, for taking a bribe of five hundred denarii to discover
the contents of a letter of his. And his son Caius’ tutor, and other
attendants, upon the occasion of his sickness and death behaving with
great insolence, and committing acts of rapaciousness, he tied great
weights about their necks and threw them into a river.

In his youth he lay under the infamy of various aspersions. Sextus
Pompeius reproached him as an effeminate fellow; and M. Antony, that
he had earned his adoption from his uncle by prostitution. L. Antony
likewise upbraids him with the same; and that he had, for a gratification
of three hundred thousand sesterces, submitted to A. Hirtius in the same
way, in Spain; adding, that he used to singe his legs with the flame of
nutshells, to make the hair become softer.

That he was guilty of various acts of adultery is not denied even by
his friends; but they allege in excuse for it that he engaged in those
intrigues not from lewdness but policy, to discover more easily the
designs of his enemies by their wives.

With respect to the charge of prostitution, he very easily refuted it
by the chastity of his life, at the very time when the imputation was
made, as well as ever after. His conduct likewise gave the lie to that
of a luxurious extravagance in his furniture, when, upon the taking of
Alexandria, he reserved for himself nothing of all the furniture of the
palace but a cup of porcelain; and soon after melted down all the golden
vessels, even such as were intended for common use. But he never could
discountenance the imputation of lewdness with women; being, as they
say, in the latter part of his life, much addicted to the deflowering of
virgins, who were procured for him from all parts, even by his own wife.
To the remarks concerning his gaming he paid not the smallest regard; but
played frankly and openly for his diversion, even when he was advanced
in years; and not only in the month of December, but at other times, and
upon all days, whether festivals or not. This evidently appears from a
letter under his own hand, in which he says, “I supped, my dear Tiberius,
with the same company. We had besides Vinicius, and Silvius the father.
We gamed like old fellows at supper, both yesterday and to-day. And as
any one threw upon the _tali_[5] aces or sixes, he put down for every
_talus_ a denarius; all which was gained by him who threw a Venus.”

In another letter he says: “We had, my dear Tiberius, a pleasant time of
it during the festival of Minerva: for we played every day, and kept the
gaming board warm. Your brother uttered many exclamations at a desperate
run of ill fortune; but recovering by degrees, and unexpectedly, he in
the end lost not much. I lost twenty thousand sesterces for my part;
but then I was profusely generous in my play, as I commonly am; for
had I insisted upon the stakes which I declined, or kept what I gave
away, I should have won above fifty thousand. But this I like better;
for my generosity will raise me to celestial glory.” In a letter to his
daughter, he writes thus: “I have sent you 250 denarii, which I gave to
every one of my guests; in case they were inclined at supper to divert
themselves with the _tali_, or at the game of even or odd.”

In other parts of his life, it is certain that he conducted himself
with great discretion, and was free from all suspicion of any vice. He
lived at first near the Roman Forum, above the Ringmaker’s Stairs, in a
house which had once been occupied by Calvus the orator. He afterwards
moved to the Palatine, where he resided in a small house belonging to
Hortensius, no way remarkable either in respect of accommodation or
ornament; the piazzas being but small, the pillars of Alban stone, and
the rooms without anything of marble or fine paving. He continued to use
the same bed chamber, both winter and summer, during forty years; for
though he was sensible that the city did not agree well with his health,
he nevertheless resided constantly in it through the winter.

If at any time he wished to be perfectly retired, and secure from
interruption, he shut himself up in an apartment in the top of his house,
which he called Syracuse, or Τεχνοφυον, or he went to some seat belonging
to his freedmen near the city. But when he was indisposed, he commonly
took up his residence in Mæcenas’ house. Of all the places of retirement
from the city, he chiefly frequented those upon the seacoast, and the
islands of Campania, or the towns near the city, as Lanuvium, Præneste,
and Tibur, where he often used to sit for the administration of justice,
in the porticos of Hercules’ temple. He had a particular aversion to
large and sumptuous palaces; and some that had been raised at a vast
expense by his granddaughter Julia he levelled with the ground. Those
of his own, which were far from being spacious, he adorned not so much
with statues and pictures as with walks and groves, and things which were
curious either for their antiquity or rarity; such as at Capreæ, the huge
limbs of sea monsters and wild beasts, which some affect to call the
bones of giants and the arms of old heroes.

His frugality in the furniture of his house appears even at this day,
from some beds and tables still extant; most of which are scarcely fit
for any genteel private family. It is reported that he never lay upon
a bed, but such as was low and meanly furnished. He seldom wore any
garment but what was made by the hands of his wife, sister, daughter,
and granddaughters. His togas were neither scanty nor full; nor the
_clavus_ of his tunic either remarkably broad or narrow. His shoes were a
little higher than common, to make him appear taller than he was. He had
always clothes and shoes, proper to go abroad in, ready by him in his bed
chamber, for any sudden occasion.

At his table, which was always plentiful and elegant, he constantly
entertained company; but was very scrupulous in the choice of them.
Valerius Messalla informs us that he never admitted any freedman to his
table, except Menas, after he had betrayed to him Pompey’s fleet, but not
until he had promoted him to the state of the freeborn. He writes himself
that he invited to his table a person in whose country house he lodged,
that had formerly been a spy to him. He often would come late to table,
and withdraw soon, so that the company began supper before his coming in
and continued at table after his departure. His entertainments consisted
of three dishes, or at most only six. But if the expense was moderate,
the complaisance with which he treated his company was extraordinary.
For such as were silent, or talked low, he excited to bear a part in the
common conversation; and ordered in music and stage-players and dancers
from the circus, and very often itinerant declaimers, to enliven the
company.

Festivals and solemn days of joy he usually celebrated in a very
expensive manner, but sometimes only in a jocular manner. In the
Saturnalia, or at any other time when the fancy took him, he would
distribute to his company clothes, gold, and silver; sometimes coins
of all sorts, even of the ancient kings of Rome and of other nations;
sometimes nothing but hair-cloth, sponges, peels, and pincers, and other
things of that kind, with obscure and ambiguous inscriptions upon them.
He used likewise to sell tickets of things of very unequal value, and
pictures with the back sides turned towards the company at table; and so,
by the unknown quality of the lot, disappoint or gratify the expectation
of the purchasers. This sort of traffic went round the whole company,
everyone being obliged to buy something, and to run the chance of loss or
gain with the rest.

He was a man of a little stomach (for I must not omit even this article),
and commonly used a plain diet. He was particularly fond of coarse bread,
small fishes, cheese made of cow’s milk, and green figs of that kind that
comes twice a year. He would eat before supper, at any time, and in any
place, when he had an appetite.

[Illustration: ROMAN GENERAL WEARING THE PALUDAMENTUM]

He was naturally extremely sparing in the use of wine. Cornelius Nepos
says that he used to drink only three times at supper in the camp at
Mutina; and when he indulged himself the most, he never exceeded a pint,
or if he did, he threw it up again. Of all wines, he gave the preference
to the Rhætic, but scarcely ever drank any in the daytime. Instead of
drinking, he used to take a piece of bread dipped in cold water, or a
slice of cucumber, or some leaves of lettuce, or a green sharp juicy
apple.

After a little food at noon, he used to take a nap with his clothes and
shoes on, his feet covered, and his hand held before his eyes. After
supper he commonly withdrew to a couch in his study, where he continued
late, until he had put down in his diary all or most of the remaining
transactions of the day, which he had not before registered. He would
then go to bed, but never slept above seven hours at most, and that not
without interruption; for he would wake three or four times in that
space. If he could not again fall asleep, as sometimes happened, he
would call for some person to read or tell stories to him, until sleep
supervened, which was usually protracted till after daybreak. He never
would lie awake in the dark without somebody to sit by him. Very early
rising was apt to disagree with him. On which account, if religious or
social duty obliged him to get up early, that he might guard as much as
possible against the inconvenience resulting from it, he used to lodge in
some apartment belonging to any of his domestics that was nearest the
place at which he was to give his attendance. If at any time a fit of
drowsiness seized him in passing along the streets, he would order the
chair to be set down, until he had taken a little sleep.

In person he was handsome and graceful, through all the stages of his
life. But he was careless of dress; and so little attentive to the
adjustment of his hair, that he usually had it done in great haste, by
several barbers at a time. He would sometimes clip, and sometimes shave
his beard; and during the operation would be either reading or writing.
His countenance, either when he spoke or held his tongue, was so calm
and serene, that a Gaul of the first rank declared amongst his friends
that he was so much mollified by it, as to be restrained from throwing
him down a precipice, in his passage over the Alps, upon being admitted
to approach him, under the pretext of speaking with him. His eyes were
clear and bright; and he was willing it should be thought that there
was something of a divine vigour in them. He was likewise not a little
pleased to see people, upon his looking steadfastly at them, lower their
countenances, as if the sun shone in their eyes. But in his old age, he
saw very imperfectly with his left eye. His teeth were thin set, small
and rough, his hair a little curled, and inclining to a yellow colour.
His eyebrows met; his ears were small, and he had an aquiline nose. His
complexion was betwixt brown and fair; his stature but low; though Julius
Marathus his freedman says he was five feet and nine inches in height.
This however was so much concealed by the just proportion of his limbs,
that it was only perceivable upon comparison with some taller person
standing by him.

From early youth he devoted himself with great diligence and application
to the study of eloquence, and the other liberal arts. In the war of
Mutina, notwithstanding the weighty affairs in which he was engaged,
he is said to have read, written, and declaimed every day. He never
addressed the senate, people, or soldiery but in a premeditated speech,
though he was not destitute of the talent of speaking extempore. And
lest his memory should fail him, as well as to prevent the loss of time
in getting his speeches by heart, he resolved to read them all. In his
intercourse with individuals, and even with his wife Livia, upon a
subject of importance, he had all he would say down in writing, lest,
if he spoke extempore, he should say more or less than was proper.
He delivered himself in a sweet and peculiar tone, in which he was
diligently instructed by a master. But when he had a cold, he sometimes
made use of a crier for the delivery of his speeches to the people.[c]

In his literary qualifications, without at all rivalling the attainments
of Cæsar, he was on a level with most Romans of distinction of his time;
and it is said that both in speaking and writing his style was eminent
for its perfect plainness and propriety. His speeches on any public
occasion were composed beforehand, and recited from memory; nay, so
careful was he not to commit himself by any inconsiderate expression,
that even when discussing any important subject with his own wife, he
wrote down what he had to say, and read it before her. Like his uncle, he
was strongly tinged with superstition; he was very much afraid of thunder
and lightning, and always carried about with him a sealskin, as a charm
against its power; notwithstanding which, in any severe storm, he was
accustomed to hide himself in a chamber in the centre of his house, to be
as much out of the way of it as possible; add to which, he was a great
observer of dreams, and of lucky and unlucky days.[d]

He neither slighted his own dreams, nor those of other people relating to
himself. At the battle of Philippi, though he had resolved not to stir
out of his tent, on account of being indisposed, yet, upon the occasion
of a dream which a friend of his had, he altered his resolution; and it
was fortunate for him that he did so; for the camp was taken, and his
couch, upon a supposition of his being in it, was pierced in several
parts, and cut to pieces. He had many frivolous silly dreams during
the spring; but in the other parts of the year, his dreams were less
frequent and more significative. Upon his frequently visiting a temple
in the Capitol, which he had dedicated to Thundering Jove, he dreamed
that Jupiter Capitolinus complained that his worshippers were taken from
him, and that upon this he replied he had only given him the Thunderer
for his porter. He therefore immediately hung the ceiling of the temple
round with little bells; because such commonly hung at the gates of great
houses. Upon occasion of a dream too, he always, on a certain day of the
year, begged an alms of the people, reaching out his hand to receive the
dole with which they presented him.

Some signs and omens he regarded as infallible. If in the morning his
shoe was put on wrong, or the left instead of the right, that was with
him a dismal presage. If, upon his setting out on a long journey by sea
or land, there happened to fall a mizzling rain he held it to be a good
sign of a speedy and happy return. He was much affected likewise with
anything out of the common course of nature. A palm tree, which chanced
to grow up betwixt some stones in the pavement before his house, he
transplanted into a court where the household gods were placed, and took
all possible care to make it thrive.

His death and his subsequent deification were said to have been intimated
by divers manifest prodigies. As he was finishing the census amidst a
great crowd of people in the Field of Mars, an eagle flew about him
several times, and then directed its course to a neighbouring temple,
where it sat down upon the name of Agrippa, and at the first letter.
Upon observing this, he ordered Tiberius to put up the vows, which it
is usual to make on such occasions, for the succeeding lustrum. For he
declared he would not meddle with what it was probable he should never
accomplish, though the tables were ready drawn for it. About that same
time, the first letter of his name, in an inscription upon a statue of
him, was struck out by lightning; which was interpreted as a presage
that he would live only a hundred days longer: which number the letter
C stands for, and that he would be placed amongst the gods; as Æsar,
which is the remaining part of the word Cæsar, signifies, in the Tuscan
language, a god. Being therefore about despatching Tiberius to Illyricum,
and designing to go with him as far as Beneventum, but being detained
by several persons who applied to him upon account of causes they had
depending, he cried out, which was afterwards regarded as an omen of
his death, “Not all the business that can occur shall detain me at Rome
one moment longer”; and setting out upon his journey, he went as far as
Astura; whence, contrary to his custom, he put to sea in the night time,
upon the occasion of a favourable wind.

His sickness was occasioned by diarrhoea; notwithstanding which, he
went round the coast of Campania and the adjacent islands, and spent
four days in that of Capreæ; where he gave himself up entirely to his
ease; behaving, at the same time, to those about him with the utmost
good nature and complaisance. As he happened to sail by the Bay of
Puteoli, the passengers and mariners aboard a ship of Alexandria just
then arrived, clad all in white, with crowns upon their heads, loaded
him with praises and joyful acclamations, crying out, “By you we live,
by you we sail, by you enjoy our liberty and our fortunes.” At which
being greatly pleased, he distributed to each of his friends that
attended him forty gold pieces, requiring from them an assurance by oath
not to employ the sum given them any other way than in the purchase of
Alexandrian goods. And during several days after, he distributed togæ and
pallia, upon condition that the Romans should use the Grecian, and the
Grecians the Roman dress and language. He likewise constantly attended
to see the boys perform their exercises, according to an ancient custom
still continued at Capreæ. He gave them likewise an entertainment in
his presence, and not only permitted but required from them the utmost
freedom in jesting, and scrambling for fruit, victuals, and other things
which he threw amongst them. In a word, he indulged himself in all the
ways of amusement he could contrive. Soon after, passing over to Naples,
though at that time greatly disordered by the frequent returns of his
disease, he continued a spectator to the end of some solemn games which
were performed every five years in honour of him, and came with Tiberius
to the place intended. But on his return, his disorder increasing, he
stopped at Nola, sent for Tiberius back again, and had a long discourse
with him in private; after which he gave no further attention to business
of any importance.

Upon the day of his death, he now and then inquired if there was any
disturbance in the town about him; and calling for a mirror, he ordered
his hair to be combed, and his falling cheeks to be adjusted. Then asking
his friends that were admitted into the room, “Do ye think that I have
acted my part in life well?” he immediately subjoined,

    Ἐι δὲ παν ἔχει καλως, τῳ παιγνίῳ
    Δότε κρότον, καὶ πάντες ὑμεῖς μετὰ χαρας κτυπήσατε.

    “If all be right, with joy your voices raise
    In loud applauses to the actor’s praise.”

After which, having dismissed them all, whilst he was inquiring of some
that were just come from Rome, concerning Drusus’ daughter who was in
a bad state of health, he expired amidst the kisses of Livia, and with
these words: “Livia, live mindful of our marriage, and farewell!” dying
a very easy death, and such as he himself had always wished for. For as
often as he heard that any person had died quickly and without pain, he
wished for himself and his friends the like ευθανασια (an easy death),
for that was the word he made use of. He discovered but one symptom
before his death of his being delirious, which was this: he was all on a
sudden much frightened, and complained that he was carried away by forty
men. But this was rather a presage, than any delirium; for precisely that
number of soldiers carried out his corpse.

He expired [Suetonius continues] in the same room in which his father
Octavius had died, when the two Sextuses, Pompeius and Apuleius, were
consuls, upon the fourteenth of the calends of September [Aug. 19 A.D.,
14 according to the revised calendar], at the ninth hour of the day,
wanting only five-and-thirty days of seventy-six years of age. His
remains were carried by the magistrates of the municipia[6] and colonies,
from Nola to Bovillæ, and in the night time because of the season of
the year. During the intervals, the body lay in some court, or great
temple, of each town. At Bovillæ it was met by the equestrian order
who carried it to the city, and deposited it in the porch of his own
house. The senate proceeded with so much zeal in the arrangement of his
funeral, and paying honour to his memory, that, amongst several other
proposals, some were for having the funeral procession made through the
triumphal gate, preceded by the image of Victory, which is in the senate
house, and the children of the first quality, of both sexes, singing the
funeral ditty. Others moved that on the day of the funeral they should
lay aside their gold rings, and wear rings of iron; and others, that his
bones should be collected by the priests of the superior orders. One
likewise proposed to transfer the name of Augustus to September, because
he was born in the latter, but died in the former. Another moved that
the whole period of time, from his birth to his death, should be called
the Augustan age, and be inserted in the calendar under that title.
But at last it was judged proper to be moderate in the honours to be
paid to his memory. Two funeral orations were pronounced in his praise,
one before the temple of Julius, by Tiberius; and the other before the
rostra, under the old shops, by Drusus, Tiberius’ son. The body was then
carried upon the shoulders of senators into the Field of Mars, and there
burned. A man of prætorian rank affirmed upon oath that he saw his spirit
ascend into heaven. The most distinguished persons of the equestrian
order, bare-footed, and with their tunics loose, gathered up his relics,
and deposited them in the mausoleum, which had been built in his sixth
consulship, betwixt the Flaminian way and the bank of the Tiber, at which
time likewise he gave the woods and walks about it for the use of the
people.

He had made a will a year and four months before his death, upon the
third of the nones of April, in the consulship of Lucius Plancus and
C. Silius. It consisted of two skins of parchment, written partly in
his hand, and partly by his freedmen Polybius and Hilarion. It had been
committed to the custody of the vestal virgins, by whom it was now
produced, with three other volumes, all sealed up as well as the will,
which were every one read in the senate. He appointed for his first
heirs, Tiberius for two thirds of his estate, and Livia for the other
third, whom he likewise desired to assume his name. The heirs substituted
in their room, in case of death, were Drusus, Tiberius’ son, for a third
part, and Germanicus with his three sons for the rest. Next to them were
his relations and several of his friends.

He left in legacies to the Roman people 40,000,000 sesterces; to the
tribes 3,500,000; to the guards 1000 each man; to the city battalions
500; and to the soldiers in the legions 300 each; which several sums he
ordered to be paid immediately after his death. For he had taken care
that the money should be ready in his exchequer. For the rest he ordered
different times of payment. In some of his bequests he went as far as
20,000 sesterces, for the payment of which he allowed a twelvemonth;
alleging for this procrastination the scantiness of his estate; and
declaring that not more than 150,000,000 sesterces would come to his
heirs: notwithstanding that during the twenty preceding years, he had
received in legacies from his friends, the sum of 1,400,000,000; almost
the whole of which, with his two paternal estates, and others that had
been left him, he expended upon the public.

He left order that the two Julias, his daughter and granddaughter,
should not be buried in his sepulchre. With regard to the three volumes
before mentioned, in one of them he gave orders about his funeral;
another contained a narrative of his actions, which he intended should
be inscribed on brass plates, and placed before his mausoleum; in the
third he had drawn up a concise account of the state of the empire; as
to the number of soldiers in pay, what money there was in the treasury,
exchequer, and arrears of taxes; to which are added the names of the
freedmen and slaves, from whom the several accounts might be taken.[c]


A BRIEF RÉSUMÉ OF THE CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF AUGUSTUS

It will be observed that Suetonius makes reference to brass plates,
which Augustus had had inscribed with a narrative of his actions, to
be placed before his mausoleum. It would appear that this biographical
inscription, or a kindred one, was widely copied on tablets placed in
the various temples dedicated to Augustus all over the empire. Fragments
of this duplicate inscription from various ruins have been preserved,
but by far the most complete one is that which was discovered in the
sixteenth century, on a marble slab in the wall of the temple at Ancyra
(the modern Angora) in Asia Minor; which, owing to the place of its
discovery, is known as the _Monumentum Ancyranum_. This inscription, to
which reference has already been made, supplies many important data as to
the life of Augustus. It has a peculiar interest, because, as has been
said, it is virtually autobiographical. In addition to the facts that it
tabulates, it therefore gives interesting glimpses into the character of
its author.[a]

In a well-known passage of this inscription Augustus reviews his
political career. In this review he does not begin with his adoption by
Julius Cæsar, but he starts from the fact that in his nineteenth year he
raised an army and saved the state on his own initiative and by his own
resources. As an emperor upon whom old age was creeping, he looked back
at the single landmarks of his rising career and saw the turning-point
which decided his later destiny in this acquisition of an army of his
own; according to him his political significance begins with the moment
in which he became the head of an army.

This right of exercising authority over the army, and indeed sole,
undisputed authority, Cæsar had wanted to be sure of preserving at any
cost for the future; this was the fundamental notion of his whole system,
if that can be called a system which was indeed only a practice. The
republic, too, could not do without its commanders, but it only left them
for a year, or at the most a year and a half, in office. The innovation
of the emperor’s time consisted in this, that the sole commander actually
kept his power for a lifetime, held it simultaneously with other powerful
offices, and even dared to exercise it in the capital itself.

In order to maintain his army, he had been permanently invested with
control of the important boundary provinces and with the permanent
garrisons of the legions; as also with the right to supervise the other
provinces, which were of course bound to supply their quota to the
imperial army.

The new ruler then had to have a domestic power which he could exercise
uncontrolled; he found it in the legions and the provinces, which, from
beginning to end, remained the sure foundation of the principatus. The
good will of the senate and of the people, who had formerly conducted
the government, was now but of second or third rate consideration to the
princeps; both senate and people were conquered and had to a large extent
lost their importance in the civil wars. In spite of this, every senator
who frankly recognised the new régime, and provided necessary assurances
in other ways, had been raised to the highest honours and treated, at
least externally, on an equal footing by the ruler.

As we have seen, Augustus preferred the modest title of Princeps,
although it could not be reckoned amongst official titles and only
implied the first man of the senate and of the citizens. As the ruler’s
rank as a citizen found expression in this title, so Augustus chose the
title of Imperator to indicate his military standing. Both were selected
with much ingenuity to promote the intentions of the new ruler. They were
meant to cover a new thing with an old name; for this reason he pitched
upon words in no way foreign to former times, which had remained totally
unstamped and were soon employed exclusively in the modern sense. This
it was to which the ruler attached quite particular weight, and this
characterises the man no less than his administration.

He let himself be guided by the senate in the year 29 B.C. as imperator,
but not in the sense in which so many victorious generals for centuries
past had been greeted for the period between the day of victory and
the triumph, after which the army was disbanded. What these generals
had enjoyed for a short period young Cæsar had wished to possess for a
lifetime: that is, the military supremacy of the Roman Empire. That is
why this title in the new monarchical sense comes, not at the end, but at
the commencement of the full name in the place of the citizen forename
which was set aside.

Rightly was the conferring of this name, even by the ancients, regarded
as the beginning of monarchy; rightly have the Middle Ages, rightly have
the thinkers of to-day, described the successors of the Roman ruler as
emperors. With this title Augustus wished to mark the transition from the
ancient to the modern spirit; for his achieved work lies essentially in
this, that he dovetailed into the constitution the notion of a permanent
commander-in-chief and a permanent army, such as had hitherto been
unknown to the republic.

The practical position of the princeps must always be clearly
distinguished from the theoretical. The new office of commander-in-chief
for the whole Roman Empire was analogous to the office of a republican
proconsul in a single province, who administered his country, commanded
his troops, with a possible right to supervise the neighbouring
districts. In the year 23 B.C., by way of addition, Augustus, who in the
course of his long reign was always more and more occupied in obscuring
the unconstitutional elements of his new position, had caused to be
conferred upon him a regular proconsular imperium, so as to be sure that
the exercise of his authority should also meet with recognition in the
senatorial provinces.

Although Cæsar was then pre-eminently an imperator, we should do him an
injustice were we to describe his achievement as a military despotism.
He was personally far too little a soldier and too much a statesman for
this form of government, even to suit his own taste. The army was there
only to make it possible for him in all important questions to carry out
his will; as a rule he kept within those constitutional limits which he
himself had reconstructed.

Whereas formerly the Absolutist development of the empire was assumed
without any further inquiry into its origin, we owe it to Mommsen to have
fixed his gaze on the difference between the times and to have hit the
note of the constitutional scheme in his systematic presentation, which
is certainly more important for the conception of Augustus than for his
practical illustration of it. Mommsen talks of the “juristic construction
of the principatus,” very rightly dwelling on the point that “Augustus’
principate is not a boundless authority, but a measured magistracy within
republican forms.” The right of legislating remained, in theory at least,
the same as in republican times. Co-operation was secured to the ruler
through his official power as a consul or later as a tribune.

Besides this, like every magistrate of former times, he could announce
his will to the people by edicts and acts; and that these expressions
received great consideration in view of his position and personal
authority need scarcely be said, especially from the time when senators
and officials were sworn on every New Year’s Day, not only to the laws
themselves, but also to the _Acta Cæsaris_. It does not follow from this
in any way that the princeps was superior to the laws; we must be careful
not to import the views of the Greek of a later period into the judicial
views of a regent like Augustus. Practically, of course, he found for
the most part a means of carrying out his will in a given case: but the
emperor never expressed such a doctrine as a fundamental principle of
jurisprudence. On the contrary the emperor was not empowered even to
suspend the prevailing law; under Augustus at any rate this remained the
privilege of the senate. He recognised it, too, without opposition; for
instance, in not publishing a gift to the people before he had requested
and received permission from the senate.

It was then a constitution full of contradictions, capable of
interpretation only by means of compromise, this constitution substituted
by the new ruler for the old republic, in order, beneath the garb of
republican form, to make the exercise of monarchical power possible.
Whether the student of systems called it a republic or a monarchy
troubled him little, although until his death he himself clung to the
fiction (and with a certain degree of truth) that he had restored the
ancient and legitimate constitution of the state.[7][e]

A most extraordinary man, then, was this foremost citizen of the new
Roman state. But nothing about him is more extraordinary than the view
regarding him that has been entertained by posterity. He has been almost
uniformly regarded as not a man of the very first capacity,--as an
opportunist rather than a creative leader. He held the world under the
sway of his will for almost half a century, and was never so autocratic
in his power, so securely fixed in his position, as at the hour of his
death. He found Rome brick and left it marble; he found the Roman state
an inchoate, wavering commonwealth, and left it a peerless empire. Yet
the world has denied him the title of “great”; is disposed to deny him
even the possession of genius.

Perhaps a partial explanation lies in the fact that we demand always a
certain theatrical quality in a man of genius. It has been suggested by
an eminent historian (Professor Sloane) that a great man has usually a
capacity for inordinate wickedness, as well as for consummate greatness.
Alexander loses control of himself on occasion, and in his frenzy kills
his friend. Hannibal spends his whole life under the spell of a sworn
hatred. Cæsar stops at nothing to attain his selfish ends. In modern
times your Frederick, your Napoleon, is not called great because of any
moral quality. Public taste seems to demand a rounded character in its
favoured heroes: it likes the piquant flavour of immorality. In every
direction your hero must be measured by other standards than ordinary
mortals.

But the life of Augustus is keyed to the tone of a passionless
moderation. He is all judgment, no emotion. Between the courses at
dinner he listlessly plays games that he may not be annoyed by the
persiflage of the jesters who are there to amuse his guests. And he plays
the game of life in the same fashion. One cannot imagine him excited,
enthusiastic, angry even. He might, indeed, commit a crime, but it
would be a carefully measured crime, dictated by policy: not a crime of
passion. Even in his liaisons, it was said of him that his chief ambition
was to learn the real sentiment of those about him through their wives,
rather than merely to gratify a personal appetite.

But it must not be forgotten that Augustus, had he not been such a man as
this, could not have accomplished the work he did. Had he been full of
enthusiasms he would have antagonised too many people; would have made
too many powerful enemies; would have invited the fate that befell the
man of genius whose nephew he was, and by whose good example he profited.
Yet, after all, the measure of capacity is success, and it seems a
grudging estimate which withholds the title of “great” from the man who
changed the entire complexion of the civilised world and put his stamp
indelibly upon the centuries.

But whether genius or not in the ordinary acceptance of that loosely
applied and somewhat ambiguous word, there is one regard in which
Augustus need fear comparison with no leader of any age: in practical
statecraft, judged by its result, he has no superior. In a pre-eminent
degree he was able to isolate himself from his environment; to visualise
the political situation; to see his fellow-men through the clear medium
of expediency, undistorted by any aberration of passion or of prejudice.
To the theatrical quality of personal vanity, from which Cæsar was by no
means free, Augustus was an entire stranger. Because he was master of
his own ambition, he came to be master of the world. If because of his
placid logicality, posterity has been disposed to speak slightingly of
his genius, the same quality won him at least an unchallenged position as
the most consummate master of practical politics.[a]


FOOTNOTES

[5] The Romans, at their feasts, during the intervals of drinking, often
played at dice, of which there were two kinds, the _tesseræ_ and _tali_.
The former had six sides, like the modern dice; the latter, four oblong
sides, for the two ends were not regarded. In playing, they used three
_tesseræ_ and four _tali_, which were all put into a box wider below than
above, and being shaken, were thrown out upon the gaming board or table.

[6] _Municipia_ were foreign towns which obtained the right of Roman
citizens, and were of different kinds. The _municipia_ used their own
laws and customs; nor were they obliged to receive the Roman laws unless
they chose them.

[7] [Modern historians have much to say of the “disguised monarchy” of
Augustus. But probably the Romans were not so blind as to the character
of the Augustan constitution as are now the historians. The government
was in reality a compromise between republic and monarchy--a compromise
made easy to the Romans by their habit of investing magistrates,
especially extraordinary magistrates, with vast powers. The republic
was for Rome and Italy, the monarchy for the provinces. This form of
government Mommsen aptly terms a dyarchy.]

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XXXIII. THE IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS OF AUGUSTUS: TIBERIUS, CALIGULA,
AND CLAUDIUS


TIBERIUS (TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS NERO CÆSAR), 14-37 A.D.

Tiberius came of that ambitious Claudian family which had enjoyed
twenty-eight consulates, five dictatorships, seven censorships, and
as many triumphs. The marriage of his mother Livia with Octavius, and
his adoption by Cæsar, had given him entrance into the house of Cæsar.
All commissions with which he was charged by his adoptive father were
carried out with activity and intelligence, and, at the time of the war
with Marbod, he saved the empire in a dangerous crisis. Since the death
of Agrippa, no general had been able to command such brilliant service.
He had fought in Spain and in the Alps, governed Gaul, given a king to
Armenia, subdued the Pannonians, conquered the Germans, transported
forty-six thousand barbarians into Belgium and resettled the empire after
the defeat of Varus. Such was the man to whom the death of Augustus gave
the throne.[8]

Respect for Augustus had kept ambitions silent, but Tiberius found
himself surrounded by republicans and more than this by candidates for
the throne.

Moreover the soldiers had already understood that on them rested the
security both of emperor and empire, and, as there were no more civil
wars to enrich them, successions to the throne must take their place.
Three Pannonian legions revolted, demanding one denarius per day,
discharge after sixteen years, and a fixed sum to be paid in camp on the
day they became veterans.

Tiberius sent Drusus, his son, and Sejanus, his prætorian prefect, to
them at the head of some of the forces remaining in Italy. An eclipse of
the moon helped to make the mutineers return to their duty.

On the Rhine there was a dangerous revolt. There were there seven
legions, divided into two camps, making the same demands. Four legions
killed their centurions. Germanicus, nephew of Tiberius, hastened to
them.[9] The rebels offered him the empire, but he refused. In his
vexation he had drawn his sword as if to kill himself. “Strike, then,”
cried the angry men; his friends snatched the sword from him. To appease
this dangerous sedition, he, acting on an imaginary letter from Tiberius,
granted everything, and doubled the legacy of Augustus. Gallic tribute,
all the general’s money, and that of his friends had to be put together
to pay all this.


EXPEDITIONS OF GERMANICUS; VICTORY OF IDISTAVISUS

[Sidenote: [14-19 A.D.]]

It became necessary to give these restless spirits something to do, so
their general led them against the enemy. In the country of the Marsi a
space of fifty miles was put to fire and sword. In the following spring
Germanicus passed the Rhine again, hoping to profit by the quarrels of
Arminius and Segestes--the one belonging to the national, the other to
the Roman party. He was only able to deliver Segestes, who was besieged
by his rival. The wife of the conqueror of Varus was taken captive.

The last Roman ravages and the complaints of Arminius exasperated the
Cherusci and a new league was formed. Germanicus went as far as the
Teutoburg forest to fight them. Whitening bones marked the spot where the
three legions had perished, and the soldiers buried the mutilated remains
which had waited six years for this last honour. However, the Germans
were nowhere to be found. Tired of pursuing an enemy who was not to be
caught, Germanicus stopped. He regained Ems and embarked on the fleet
which had brought him, whilst Cæcina regained the Rhine by the route of
the “long bridges.” Arminius had preceded him there, and the disaster of
Varus was on the point of being renewed, had not Cæcina happily been an
experienced captain. He gained a strong position where the Romans were
encamped and managed to reopen the Rhine route. Germanicus, surprised
by equinoctial gales, had himself been in danger, and a number of his
vessels had perished.

The barbarians having become singularly bold, a new expedition became
necessary. A thousand warships transported eight legions to the shores
of the Weser. The Germani ventured to await the Roman army on the plain
of Idistavisus. Discipline led them on; but a second action was a second
massacre. Varus was avenged. The victors returned to Gaul, half by
land, the others by sea. A tempest destroyed or dispersed some of their
vessels. On hearing this news, Germany trembled and rose, but Germanicus
dealt repeated blows, and the astounded barbarians allowed the legions to
regain their winter quarters.

There Germanicus found letters from Tiberius recalling him for a second
consulship and a triumph. The legions were doubtless, in the emperor’s
eyes, rather too much devoted to their leader. Germanicus obeyed and
returned.


EARLY YEARS OF SUCCESSFUL GOVERNMENT BY TIBERIUS

Tiberius governed mildly and with wisdom, refusing temples offered, and
discouraging, as a man who knew their value, base flatteries from the
senate. His life was that of a rich private person; his manner, if not
affable, at least polite. He rose to meet the consuls, consulted the
senate in everything, and accepted the lessons which a dying liberty
sometimes dared to offer. He never drew back from “a liberality which
had an honourable motive.” Yet he was strictly economical with regard to
finance, and if he took less trouble than Augustus to please the people
with continual shows, he was careful to guard against famine. One year
wheat was very dear. He did as we should do to-day, keeping the bread at
low prices for the people at the merchants’ expense. Without yielding to
his soldiers he kept them under austere discipline, although he had need
of them.

With regard to the provinces, he continued the policy of Augustus. If he
dare not absent himself from Rome to visit them, having neither a Mæcenas
nor an Agrippa on whom to rely in his absence, he at least sent them able
governors, avoided an increase of taxes, and relieved the misery where it
was greatest. Twelve Asiatic towns, ruined by earthquake, were exempted
from taxation for five years. Sardis, even worse off, received from him
ten million sesterces. Tiberius practised the advice he gave to his
provincial governors: “A good shepherd shears his sheep but does not flay
them.”

Thus the empire was wisely governed; but under this mild discipline
the nobles grew bolder. A plot was formed, but, being discovered in
time, was frustrated, and Libo, its author, killed himself. At home,
Tiberius had domestic troubles. Livia, accustomed to deference from her
husband, insisted on being listened to. Agrippina, Germanicus’ wife and
granddaughter of Augustus, boldly defied the mother of Tiberius, and
would not admit that the wife of Drusus had equal rights with herself.
These feminine rivalries divided the court and gave birth to hatreds
which were embittered by courtiers.

Tiberius had recalled Germanicus from the borders of the Rhine as much
to take him away from his legions as to leave himself free to follow
on that frontier the prudent policy of Augustus. He allowed Germanicus
to enter Rome in triumph, and shared with him the consulship for the
following year. Just then the Parthians became hostile. They had driven
away Vonones, the king imposed on them by Rome, and replaced him by the
Arsacid Artabanus: the two rivals seemed in danger of commencing open
hostilities. Moreover, Commagene and Cilicia, now some time without
kings, were full of trouble. Syria and Judea claimed a diminution of
taxes; “Germanicus alone,” said Tiberius, “can with his wisdom calm these
eastern agitations.”

A senatorial decree gave the young prince powers once held by Agrippa and
Caius Cæsar; that is, the government of the provinces beyond the sea,
with supreme authority over all the governors. As for Drusus, the son of
Tiberius, he set out for Pannonia, so as to watch over the movements of
the Suevi.

The task of Drusus was the most simple. He had only to promote or
instigate internal dissensions in Germany. Two powerful leagues had
been formed. In the north that of the Cherusci under Arminius and his
uncle Inguiomer; in the south the Marcomanni under Marbod. War broke
out between them. The action was a bloody one; Marbod, being conquered,
implored shelter in the empire. He was assigned a residence at Ravenna.
The power of the Marcomanni was destroyed; that of the Cherusci did not
survive Arminius, who was killed by his own family just as he was about,
it is said, to make himself king. The silent intrigues of the Romans
certainly had something to do with events which delivered them from two
redoubtable foes.

[Sidenote: [17-20 A.D.]]

In the East, Germanicus had equal successes. Everywhere he had given
justice and peace as the watchword of the new government. In Armenia, he
gave the crown to Zenon, son of the king of Pontus and a faithful vassal
of the empire. This prince had long since adopted Armenian customs.
Germanicus had made a wise choice and the whole nation applauded.
Cappadocia, whose old king had just died in Rome, was, like Commagene,
reduced to a province. In Syria, Germanicus concluded an alliance with
Artabanus, who only asked for the removal of his rival. In Thrace, one of
the two kings had killed the other. The assassin was sent to Alexandria
and, later on, put to death.

A more serious affair had begun the preceding year [17 A.D.] in Africa.
A Numidian, Tacfarinas, a deserter from the legions, had collected
and disciplined some troops and persuaded the Musulanii and Moors to
rise. The proconsul defeated him, and for this vigorous act, which gave
security to a fertile country, he received the distinction of a triumph.


DEATH OF GERMANICUS (19 A.D.); EXTERNAL AFFAIRS

At this prosperous moment Germanicus died, poisoned, it has been alleged,
by order of Tiberius. Yet could a man such as he, thoughtful, serious,
calculating, have committed such a senseless crime? The death of his
adopted son took away no rival. He knew him to be incapable of treason
and his death deprived him of a necessary support. The mystery is still
unsolved. The perpetrator of the crime was, it is said, Piso, a patrician
of a violent disposition, who had obtained the governorship of Syria
during the time that Germanicus was in the East. It was on his return
from a journey in Egypt, undertaken without permission and in defiance of
Tiberius, that Germanicus found that the arrangements he had adopted had
been interfered with by Piso.

Lively quarrels took place between them, and the insubordinate governor,
rather than yield, preferred to quit the province. The news that
Germanicus was seriously ill stopped him at Antioch. The prince becoming
better, Piso opposed the celebration of any fêtes in honour of the
event, and went on to Seleucia, where the report of an alarming relapse
made him stop again. Amongst Agrippina’s attendants there was mention
of poisoning, and emissaries from Piso who had come to report on the
progress of the malady, could show, it was said, by whose hand the blow
had been struck. Germanicus died. His body was burnt in the Forum at
Antioch, and Agrippina, having piously gathered the ashes, landed at
Brundusium, carrying the burial urn herself, and followed by an immense
crowd, all plunged in heart-breaking sorrow.

Piso received the news of Germanicus’ death with unseemly joy, and
immediately set off to return to his province. The legate and the
senators throughout Syria had conferred the governorship on one of
themselves. Piso did not recoil before the prospect of civil war.
Tiberius would not pardon him. Forced to embark, he returned to Italy,
where accusers awaited him. These wanted the emperor alone to judge his
cause. Now, had the emperor feared possible revelations he would have
accepted, but he sent the accusers back to the senate. He presided at
the trial, and the accused, says Tacitus, looked at him fearfully as he
sat there pitiless, calm, impassive, and impenetrable. This portrait of
Tiberius is the most faithful Tacitus has left.

Piso killed himself in his own house. The emperor rewarded the three
friends of Germanicus who had come as accusers, and asked for Nero, the
eldest of Germanicus’ sons, the honour of the quæstorship five years
before the regulation age, and married him to a daughter of Drusus. Later
on he begged the same favour for the second son of Germanicus.

[Illustration: TIBERIUS

(From a bust in the Vatican)]

[Sidenote: [20-24 A.D.]]

This long drama ended, Tiberius returned to the cares of government.
There were complaints of the too great severity of the Papia-Poppæan
law. He named fifteen commissioners to mitigate its demands. Some wanted
to extend his power with regard to the choice of governors; this he
refused. The limits of sanctuary were restricted, because this had caused
much disorder in provincial towns. Informers were also discouraged.
One of them denounced the senator Lentulus. Tiberius rose and said he
considered himself no longer worthy to live if Lentulus was his enemy. In
the provinces, he maintained good administration by skilful choice and
severity towards prevaricating officials. In Gaul there was a beginning
of revolt. Florus tried to provoke a rising of the Belgæ, but being
beaten and hemmed in in the wood of Arduenna, he killed himself. The
pretext urged for this rising was the burden of the tribute. The Æduan,
Sacrovir, caused still more alarm, by raising forty thousand men and
taking Augustodunum. Two of the Rhine legions fell on these badly armed
troops and horribly massacred them.

Tacfarinas had also reappeared in Africa. Encouraged by a first success,
he ventured to attack Thala, but was repulsed with loss. Then he changed
his tactics, divided his troops into small bands and carried on a
guerilla warfare. The emperor sent Blæsus, Sejanus’ uncle, to deal with
this indefatigable foe, and thanks to his activity, Tacfarinas was again
forced to flee, leaving his brother in the enemy’s hands.[b]

[It was not until two years later, 24 A.D., that Rome was finally rid of
this troublesome foe. By that time Tacfarinas had collected another large
force. P. Dolabella, the Roman governor, attacked it, and in his decisive
victory the Numidian leader was slain. Ptolemy, king of Mauretania, was
Dolabella’s ally.]

[Sidenote: [14-19 A.D.]]

Tiberius ruled the provinces on the whole in a Roman spirit, maintaining
the dignity of the empire for the most part intact from the centre to
the frontiers. The stability of the system, however rotten and decayed
at heart, might still be measured by the strength and solidity of its
outworks. At no period did the bulwarks of the Roman power appear more
secure and unassailable. The efforts of Drusus and his son to overpower
the Germani on their own soil had been stupendous; they had wielded
forces equal at least to those with which Cæsar had added Gaul to the
empire, and yet had not permanently advanced the eagles in any direction.
But, on the other hand, it was soon found that the Germani were only
formidable under the pressure of an attack. When the assault relaxed, the
power they had concentrated in resistance crumbled readily away. With the
death of Arminius all combined hostility to Rome ceased among them and
meanwhile the arts and manners of the south advanced incessantly among
them.

At the same time the long respite from military exactions allowed
the pursuits of ease and luxury to fructify within the limits of the
provinces. Gaul was no longer drained from year to year by the forced
requisitions of men and horses, of arms and stores, which had fed the
exhausting campaigns of Germanicus. Her ancient cities decked themselves
with splendid edifices, with schools and theatres, aqueducts and
temples. The camps on the Rhine and Danube were gradually transformed
into commercial stations, and became emporiums of traffic with the north
of Europe, where the fur and amber of the Hercynian forests and the
Baltic coast were exchanged for wine and oil or gold and silver, those
instruments of luxury which nature was supposed, in mercy or in anger,
to have denied to the German barbarians. Such a state of affairs allowed
the emperor to persist in his favourite plan of leaving the provincial
governors for years unchanged at their posts. Each succeeding proconsul
was no longer in a fever of haste to aggrandise himself by the plunder
or renown of a foray beyond the frontiers. The administration of the
provinces became a matter of ordinary routine; it lost its principal
charms in the eyes of the senators, who could at last with difficulty be
induced to exchange the brilliant pleasures of the capital, with all its
mortifications and perils, for the dull honours of a distant government.

Nor can I discover in general the justice of accusing Tiberius of
neglecting the safety of his remote possessions, which seem, on the
contrary, to have flourished securely in the armed peace of his august
empire. In Gaul the revolt of Sacrovir and his Belgian confederates was
effectually suppressed; the outbreak of the Frisians, though at some cost
of blood, seems to have been speedily quelled. Nor have we any distinct
confirmation of the assertion of Suetonius, that Tiberius suffered the
province to be ravaged with impunity by the Germani, which, if true, can
apply only to some transient violation of the frontiers.

Nor does the assertion of Tiberius’ indifference seem to be better
founded with regard to Mœsia. Tacitus steps frequently aside from his
domestic narrative to record the affairs of this region and the exploits
of the emperor’s lieutenants; while Appian makes special mention of the
conquest of Mœsia under Tiberius, and of the establishment of provincial
government in this quarter by his hand.[10] Sabinus, Pandus, and Labeo
seem to have held the command there successively during the first half
of this principate, and these men at least were not allowed to indulge
in indolence, for their exertions and victories are a theme to which the
historian repeatedly refers.

But the emptiness of these charges can be more clearly shown in the
case of the dependent kingdom of Armenia, which, according to the same
authority, Tiberius suffered to be seized by the Parthians, and wrested
from the patronage of the empire. It appears, on the contrary, from the
particular recital of Tacitus, that the bold occupation of this kingdom
by Artabanus was immediately resented by the emperor with the energy of
a younger man. Not only were the wild mountaineers of the Caucasus, the
Iberians and Albanians, invited to descend upon the intruders; not only
were the sons of Phraates released from their long detention at Rome,
and directed to present themselves on their native soil, and claim the
allegiance of their father’s subjects; but a Roman general, L. Vitellius,
a man of distinguished valour and experience, was deputed to lead the
forces of Asia and Syria against the enemy; and while it was hoped that a
vigorous demonstration would suffice to hurl him back from the territory
in dispute, instructions were not withheld, it would appear, to push
on if necessary, and smite the Parthians with the strong hand of the
empire. But these combinations proved speedily successful. Artabanus,
already detested by many of his most powerful subjects, was compelled to
descend from his throne, and take refuge in the far wilds of Hyrcania;
while Tiridates, the son of Phraates, was accepted in his room [35 A.D.].
The Roman army, which had crossed the Euphrates, returned victorious
without striking a blow, though, by a subsequent revolution, Artabanus
was not long afterwards restored, and admitted, upon giving the required
hostages, to the friendship of his lordly rivals [36 A.D.].

[Sidenote: [4 B.C.-37 A.D.]]

If Tiberius refrained from aggrandising his empire by fresh conquests, he
was not the less intent on consolidating the unwieldy mass by the gradual
incorporation of the dependent kingdoms enclosed within its limits. The
contests between two rival brothers, Cotys and Rhescuporis, in Thrace,
gave him a pretext for placing the fairest part of that country under
the control of a Roman officer, thus preparing the way for its ultimate
annexation. On the death of Archelaus, king of Cappadocia, in the year
17, his country was declared a Roman province, and subjected to the rule
of an imperial procurator. At the same period the frontier kingdom of
Commagene was added to the dominions of the republic under the government
of a prætor. Syria, the great stronghold of the Roman power in the East,
was still skirted by several tributary kingdoms or ethnarchies, such as
Chalcis, Emesa, Damascus, and Abilene; but the dependency of Judea, the
wealthiest and proudest of all these vassal states, was wrested in the
reign of Augustus from the dynasty to which it had been entrusted, and
was still subjected by his successor to the control of the proconsul at
Antioch.

Herod the Great, on his death-bed, had sent his seal, together with an
ample present, to Augustus, in token of the entire dependence upon Rome
in which he held his dominions [4 B.C.]. This act of vassalage procured
him, perhaps, the ratification of the disposition he had made of his
territories between Archelaus, Herod Antipas, and Philippus. To the
first was allotted the kingdom of Judea, including Samaria and Idumæa,
but with the loss of the cities of Gaza, Gadara, and Hippus, which
were now annexed to the government of Syria. To the second fell the
districts of Galilee to the west, and Peræa to the east of the Jordan;
while the Trachonitis, Auranitis, and Gaulonitis formed with Ituræa
the tetrarchy of Philip, extending northward to the desert borders of
Damascus. But the rival kinsmen were not satisfied with this division.
Archelaus and Antipas repaired to Rome to plead against one another; but
while they were urging their suits before the tribunal of the senate,
the provisional government which the Romans had established in Judea
was suddenly attacked on all sides by bodies of armed insurgents. Their
leaders, however, were not men of rank or commanding influence, and the
revolt was in no sense a national movement. It was speedily crushed
by Varus, then proconsul of Syria, the same who ten years afterwards
perished so miserably in Germany, and punished with the atrocious
severity too commonly employed in such cases. Archelaus, confirmed in his
sovereignty, continued to reign under these lamentable auspices in Judea.
His subjects, still mindful of the sons of their beloved Mariamne, never
regarded him with favour; and it has been mentioned how they complained
to Augustus of his tyranny, and obtained his removal from the throne. He
was finally sent into exile at Vienne in Gaul.

The fall of Archelaus left the throne of Judea and Samaria without a
direct claimant, and the emperor took the opportunity of attaching them
to the Roman dominions. This acquisition was placed under the general
administration of the proconsul of Syria, but governed more directly by
an imperial procurator, who took up his abode at Cæsarea Philippi. Of the
character of the new government we find no complaints even in the Jewish
writers whose accounts of this period have been preserved to us.

Both Augustus and his successor appear to have instructed their officers
to observe the same respect for the peculiar habits and prejudices of the
Jews which had reflected such lustre in their eyes upon the magnanimous
Agrippa; whatever may have been the ordinary severities of Roman
domination, it was not till the arrival of Pontius Pilate, about the
middle of the reign of Tiberius, that any special cause of grievance was
inflicted upon them. They complained that the new procurator commenced
his career with a grave and wanton insult. He entered Jerusalem with
standards flying, upon which, according to the usage of the time, the
image of the emperor was displayed. The old religious feeling of the Jews
against the representation of the human figure was roused to vehement
indignation; they remonstrated with the procurator, nor would they listen
to his excuse that the Romans had their customs as well as the Jews, and
that the removal of the emperor’s portrait from his ensigns by an officer
of his own might be regarded as a crime against the imperial majesty. But
if Tiberius was merely the creature of the delators in his own capital,
in the provinces he retained his good sense and independence. Perhaps
it was by a special authorisation from him that Pilate consented to
withdraw the obnoxious images. Nevertheless, the Jews, under the guidance
of their priests, continued to watch every act of his administration
with inveterate jealousy, and when he ventured to apply a portion of the
temple revenues to the construction of an aqueduct for the supply of
their city, broke out into violence which provoked him to severe measures
of repression.

It is probable that mutual exasperation led to further riots, followed
by sanguinary punishments; the government of Pilate was charged with
cruelty and exaction, and at last the provincials addressed themselves
to Vitellius, the governor of Syria. Nor were their expectations
disappointed. The proconsul required his procurator to quit the province,
and submit himself to the pleasure of the offended emperor. Tiberius,
indeed, was already dead before his arrival, but his successor attended
without delay to the representations of his lieutenant, and Pilate
was dismissed with ignominy to Vienna. From the confidence with which
Tiberius was appealed to on a matter of such remote concern, it would
seem that the vigilance of his control was not generally relaxed even in
the last moments of his life.

While Judea and Samaria were thus annexed to the Roman province, Galilee
and the outlying regions of Peræa and Ituræa were still suffered to
remain under their native rulers; and the dominions of the great Herod
became once more united transiently under a single sceptre at no distant
period. If, however, we consider the condition of the Jewish provincials
under the Roman fasces, we shall find reason to believe that it was far
from intolerable, and presented probably a change for the better from
the tyranny of their own regal dynasties.

[Illustration: ROMAN EMPRESS

(From a statue in the Capitol)]

Doubtless the national feeling, as far as it extended, was outraged
in its cherished prepossessions by the substitution of a foreign for
a native domination. The nobles and the priests, who preserved and
reflected this sentiment, and who suffered in consideration under foreign
sway, fostered the prejudices of the people to the utmost of their power,
excited their discontent, fanned the flame of sedition, and then betrayed
their unfortunate clients to the sword of relentless executioners.
It may be admitted that the fiscal exactions of the procurator were
more uniformly rigid than those of Herod, whose remission of a large
portion of his people’s taxes had gained him favour in the midst of his
atrocities. Yet the amount of freedom and security enjoyed by the Jews
under a Quirinus and a Pilate shows the general leniency of the Roman
government at this period, and may induce us to believe that the yoke of
the conquerors was on the whole a happy exchange for their subjects. The
warm descriptions of provincial felicity by the Jewish authority Philo,
may be coloured to suit a purpose, and it may be impossible to produce
any distinct facts to support this general conjecture. Yet indications
are not wanting in the writings of the Evangelists, which contain,
abstracted from their religious significance, the most interesting record
in existence of the social condition of antiquity,--for they alone of all
our ancient documents are the productions of men of the people,--to show
that the mass of the population of Judea was contented and comparatively
happy under the rule of the Roman procurator.

Such is the impression received from the representations of common life
in the scriptures of the New Testament. The instances they allege of
cruelty and injustice are drawn from the conduct of the Jews towards one
another, rather than of the foreigner towards the native. The scribe
and the Pharisee are held up to odium or contempt, not the minister of
police or the instrument of government. The Romans are regarded in them
as the protectors of the people against their domestic tyrants. The duty
of paying them tribute is urged as the proper price of the tranquillity
they maintain; their fiscal officers are spoken of with forbearance;
their soldiers are cited as examples of thoughtful toleration; the vice
of the provincial ruler is indifference and unbelief rather than wanton
violence; and the tribunal of the emperor himself is appealed to as the
last resort of injured innocence. The freedom of movement enjoyed by the
subjects of Rome, the permission so fully allowed them of passing, from
frontier to frontier, of assembling together for social and religious
objects, of flocking in crowds at the call of popular leaders, all
indicate a state of personal liberty which might be envied throughout
Europe at the present day.[f]


INTERNAL GOVERNMENT

During the earlier years of Tiberius’ sway, his administration was happy
for the state. Even Tacitus[d] draws a brilliant picture of it: “Public
matters and the more serious of those relating to private persons were
determined by the senate. In the distribution of honours, he took birth,
military service, and civil talent into consideration, so that it would
have been difficult to have made a better choice. As to laws, if one
excepts that of majesty, good use was made of them. For his private
affairs the prince chose most eminent men, some unknown to him except
by reputation, and the greater part grew old in service. He took care
that the provinces were not burdened with taxes. The prince’s domains in
Italy were not much extended. His slaves were not insolent, his freedmen
not many. Had he disputes with private persons, the law decided the
matter.”[b]

His plan was to possess the reality of power without exciting hatred or
envy by the useless display of the show of it. He therefore rejected the
titles that were offered him, such as that of Imperator, as a _prænomen_,
and that of Father of his Country; even that of Augustus, though
hereditary, he would only use in his letters to kings and dynasts; above
all he rejected that of Master (Dominus); he would only be called Cæsar,
or First of the Senate. This last (which we shall henceforth term Prince)
was his favourite title; he used to say, “I am the Master of my slaves,
the Imperator of the soldiers, and the Prince of the rest.” He would not
allow anything peculiar to be done in honour of his birthday, nor suffer
any one to swear by his fortune; neither would he permit the senate to
swear to his acts on New Year’s Day, or temples, or any other divine
honours, to be decreed him. He was affable and easy of approach; he took
no notice of libels and evil reports of which he was the object, while he
repelled flattery of every kind.

To the senate and the magistrates he preserved (at least in appearance)
all their pristine dignity and power. Every matter, great or small,
public or private, was laid before the senate. The debates were
apparently free, and the prince was often in the minority. He always
entered the senate house without any attendants, like an ordinary
senator; he reproved consulars in the command of armies for writing
to him instead of the senate; he treated the consuls with the utmost
respect, rising to them and making way for them. Ambassadors and deputies
were directed to apply to them as in the time of the republic. It was
only by his tribunician right of interceding that he exercised his power
in the senate. He used also to take his seat with the magistrates as they
were administering justice, and by his presence and authority gave a
check to the influence of the great in protecting the accused; by which
conduct of his, while justice gained, liberty, it was observed, suffered.

The public morals and the tranquillity of the city were also attended
to. A limit was set to the expenses of plays and public shows, and to
the salaries of the players, to whom the senators and knights were
forbidden to show marks of respect, by visiting them or attending them
in public. Profligacy had become so bold and shameless, that ladies were
known to have entered themselves in the list of professed courtesans
in order to escape the penalties of the law, and young men of family
to have voluntarily submitted to the mark of infamy in order to appear
with safety on the stage or the arena; both these infamous classes were
now subjected to the penalty of exile. Astrologers and fortune-tellers
were expelled the city; the rites and ceremonies of the Egyptian and
Judaic religions were suppressed. Guards were placed throughout Italy to
prevent highway robbery; and those refuges of villainy of all kinds, the
sanctuaries, were regulated in Greece and Asia.

Yet people were not deceived by all this apparent regard for liberty
and justice; for they saw, as they thought, from the very commencement,
the germs of tyranny, especially in the renewal of the law of treason
(majestas). In the time of the republic there was a law under this name,
by which any one who had diminished the greatness (majestas) of the Roman
people by betraying an army, exciting the plebs to sedition, or acting
wrongly in command, was subject to punishment. It applied to actions
alone; but Sulla extended it to speeches, and Augustus to writings
against not merely the state, but private individuals, on the occasion
of Cassius Severus having libelled several illustrious persons of both
sexes. Tiberius, who was angered by anonymous verses made on himself,
directed the prætor, when consulted by him on the subject, to give
judgment on the law of treason. As this law extended to words as well
as actions, it opened a wide field for mischief, and gave birth to the
vile brood of delators or public informers answering to the sycophants,
those pests of Athens in the days of her democratic despotism. This
evil commenced almost with the reign of Tiberius, in whose second year
two knights, Falonius and Rubrius, were accused, the one of associating
a player of infamous character with the worshippers of Augustus, and
of having sold with his gardens a statue of that prince, the other of
having sworn falsely by his divinity. Tiberius however would not allow
these absurd charges to be entertained. Soon after Granius Marcellus,
the prætor of Bithynia, was charged with treason by his quæstor, Cæpio
Crispinus, for having spoken evil of Tiberius, having placed his own
statue on a higher site than that of the Cæsars, and having cut the head
of Augustus off a statue to make room for that of Tiberius. This last
charge exasperated Tiberius, who declared that he would vote himself on
the matter; but a bold expression used by Cn. Piso brought him to reason,
and Marcellus was acquitted.

After the death of Germanicus, Tiberius acted with less restraint; for
his son Drusus did not possess the qualities suited to gain popularity,
and thus to control him. In fact, except his affection for his noble
adoptive brother, there was nothing in the character of Drusus to
esteem. He was addicted to intemperance, devoted to the sports of the
amphitheatre, and of so cruel a temper, that a peculiarly sharp kind of
sword was named from him drusian. Tiberius made him his colleague in
the consulate, and then obtained for him the tribunician power (22);
but Drusus was fated to no long enjoyment of the dignity and power thus
conferred on him. A fatal change was also to take place in the conduct
and government of Tiberius himself, of which we must now trace the origin.

Seius Strabo, who had been made one of the prefects of the prætorian
cohorts by Augustus, had a son, who, having been adopted by one of the
Ælian family, was named in the usual manner L. Ælius Sejanus. This
young man, who was born at Vulsinii in Tuscany, was at first attached
to the service of Caius Cæsar, after whose death he devoted himself to
Tiberius; and such was his consummate art, that this wily prince, dark
and mysterious to all others, was open and unreserved to him. Sejanus
equalled his master in the power of concealing his thoughts and designs;
he was daring and ambitious, and he possessed the requisite qualities for
attaining the eminence to which he aspired; for though proud he could
play the flatterer; he could and did assume a modest exterior, and he had
vigilance and industry, and a body capable of enduring any fatigue.

[Sidenote: [14-24 A.D.]]

When Drusus was sent to quell the mutiny of the Pannonian legions,
Sejanus, whom Tiberius had made colleague with his father Strabo in the
command of the prætorians, accompanied him as his governor and director.
Strabo was afterwards sent out to Egypt, and Sejanus was continued in
the sole command of the guards; he then represented to Tiberius how much
better it would be to have them collected into one camp instead of being
dispersed through the city and towns, as they would be less liable to
be corrupted, would be more orderly, and of greater efficiency if any
insurrection should occur. A fortified camp was therefore formed for
them near the Viminal Gate, and Sejanus then began to court the men, and
he appointed those on whom he could rely to be tribunes and centurions.
While thus securing the guards, he was equally assiduous to gain
partisans in the senate, and honours and provinces only came to those
who had acquired his favour by obsequiousness. In all these projects he
was unwittingly aided by Tiberius, who used publicly to style him “the
associate of his labours,” and even allowed his statues to be placed and
worshipped in temples and theatres, and among the ensigns of the legions.

Sejanus had in fact formed the daring project of destroying Tiberius
and his family, and seizing the supreme power. As besides Tiberius
and Drusus, who had two sons, there were a brother and three sons of
Germanicus living, he resolved, as the safer course, to remove them
gradually by art and treachery. He began with Drusus, against whom he
had a personal spite, as that violent youth had one time publicly given
him a blow in the face. In order to effect his purpose, he seduced his
wife Livia or Livilla, the sister of Germanicus; and then, by holding out
to her the prospect of a share in the imperial power, he induced her to
engage in the plan for the murder of her husband. Her physician Eudemus
was also taken into the plot, but it was some time before the associates
could finally determine what mode to adopt. At length a slow poison was
fixed on, which was administered to Drusus by a eunuch named Lygdus, and
he died apparently of disease (23). Tiberius, who while his son was lying
dead, had entered the senate house and addressed the members with his
usual composure, pronounced the funeral oration himself, and then turned
to business for consolation.

So far all had succeeded with Sejanus, and death carried off the younger
son of Drusus soon after his father; but Nero and Drusus, the two elder
sons of Germanicus, were now growing up, and the chastity of their mother
and the fidelity of those about them put poison out of the question. He
therefore adopted another course; and taking advantage of the high spirit
of Agrippina, and working on the jealousy of her which Augusta was known
to entertain, he managed so that both she and Livia should labour to
prejudice Tiberius against Agrippina by talking of the pride which she
took in her progeny, and the ambitious designs which she entertained. At
the same time he induced some of those about her to stimulate her haughty
spirit by their treacherous language. He further proposed to deprive her
of support by destroying those persons of influence who were attached
to her family, or the memory of her husband. With this view he selected
for his first victims C. Silius and Titius Sabinus, the friends of
Germanicus, and Silius’ wife, Sosia Galla, to whom Agrippina was strongly
attached, and who was therefore an object of dislike to Tiberius.
Omitting however Sabinus for the present, he caused the consul Visellius
Varro to accuse Silius of treason for having dissembled his knowledge of
the designs of Sacrovir, having disgraced his victory by his avarice,
and countenanced the acts of his wife. Having vainly asked for a delay
till his accuser should go out of office, and seeing that Tiberius was
determinedly hostile to him, Silius avoided a condemnation by a voluntary
death. His wife was banished; a portion of his property was confiscated,
but the remainder was left to his children.

[Sidenote: [24-25 A.D.]]

Urged by his own ambition, and by the importunity of Livia, Sejanus had
soon (25) the boldness to present a petition to Tiberius, praying to
be chosen by him for her husband. Tiberius took no offence; his reply
was kind, only stating the difficulties of the matter with respect to
Sejanus himself, but at the same time expressing the warmest friendship
for and confidence in him. Sejanus however was suspicious, and he began
to reflect that while Tiberius remained at Rome, many occasions might
present themselves to those who desired to undermine him in the mind
of that jealous prince; whereas, could he induce him to quit the city,
all access to him would be only through himself, all letters would be
conveyed by soldiers who were under his orders, and gradually, as the
prince advanced in years, all the affairs of the state would pass into
his hands. He therefore, by contrasting the noise and turbulence of Rome
with the solitude and tranquillity of the country, gradually sought to
bend him to his purpose, which he effected in the following year.

During this time the deadly charge of treason was brought against various
persons. The most remarkable case was that of A. Cremutius Cordus, the
historian. He had made a free remark on the conduct of Sejanus, and
accordingly two of that favourite’s clients were directed to accuse him
of treason, for having in his history called Cassius the last of the
Romans. Cremutius, when before the senate, observing the sternness of
Tiberius’ countenance, took at once the resolution of abandoning life,
and therefore spoke as follows:

“Fathers, my words are accused, so guiltless am I of acts; but not even
these are against the prince or the prince’s parent, whom the law of
treason embraces. I am said to have praised Brutus and Cassius, whose
deeds, while several have written, no one has mentioned without honour.
Titus Livius, who is pre-eminent for eloquence and fidelity, extolled
Pompeius with such praises, that Augustus used to call him a Pompeian;
nor was that any hindrance of their friendship. He nowhere calls Scipio,
Afranius, this very Cassius, this Brutus, robbers and parricides, which
names are now given them; he often speaks of them as distinguished men.
The writings of Asinius Pollio transmit an illustrious record of them;
Messala Corvinus used to call Cassius his general; and both of them
flourished in wealth and honours. To the book of Marcus Cicero, which
extolled Cato to the skies, what did the dictator Cæsar but reply in a
written speech as if before judges? The letters of Antonius, the speeches
of Brutus, contain imputations on Augustus which are false, and written
with great bitterness. The verses of Bibaculus and Catullus, which are
full of abuse of the Cæsars, are read; nay, the divine Julius himself,
the divine Augustus himself, both bore with them and let them remain; I
cannot well say whether more through moderation or wisdom; for what are
despised go out of mind; if you are angry with them their truth seems to
be acknowledged. I speak not of the Greeks, among whom not only liberty
but license was unpunished; or if any one did take notice, he avenged
himself on words by words. But there was the greatest freedom, and no
reproach, when speaking of those whom death had removed from enmity
or favour. Do I, in the cause of civil war, inflame the people by my
harangues while Brutus and Cassius are in arms, and occupying the plains
of Philippi? Or do they, who are now dead these seventy years, as they
are known by their images, which the conqueror did not destroy, retain
in like manner their share of memory in literary works? Posterity allots
his meed to every one; nor, should a condemnation fall on me, will there
be wanting those who will remember not only Brutus and Cassius, but also
me.”

[Sidenote: [25-27 A.D.]]

Having thus spoken, Cordus left the senate house, and returning to his
own abode starved himself to death. The senate decreed that the copies
of his work should be collected and burned by the ædiles; but some were
saved by his daughter Marcia, and were republished in the succeeding
reign.

[Illustration: ROMAN LAMP]

At length (26) Tiberius quitted Rome and went into Campania, under the
pretext of dedicating a temple to Jupiter at Capua, and one to Augustus
at Nola; but with the secret intention of never returning to the city.
Various causes, all perhaps true, are assigned for this resolution. The
suggestions of Sejanus were not without effect; he was grown thin, and
stooped; he was quite bald, and his face was full of blotches and ulcers,
to which he was obliged to have plasters constantly applied; and he may
therefore have sought, on this account, to retire from the public view.
It is further said that he wished to escape from the authority of his
mother, who seemed to consider herself entitled to share the power which
he had obtained through her exertions. [But whatever the exact motive
that actuated Tiberius, his withdrawal constituted a virtual desertion of
the capital, since he never returned.]

He was accompanied only by one senator, Cocceius Nerva, who was deeply
skilled in the laws, by Sejanus and another knight, and by some persons,
chiefly Greeks, who were versed in literature. A few days after he set
out an accident occurred, which was near being fatal to him, but proved
fortunate for Sejanus. As at one of his country-seats near Fundi, named
the Caverns (Speluncæ), he was, for the sake of the coolness, dining in
one of the natural caverns, whence the villa derived its appellation,
a great quantity of the stones, which formed its roof, fell down and
crushed some of the attendants to death. Sejanus threw himself over
Tiberius to protect him with his own body, and was found in that position
by the soldiers who came to their relief. This apparent proof of generous
self-devotion raised him higher than ever in the estimation of the prince.

While Tiberius was rambling from place to place in Campania (27), a
dreadful calamity occurred at Fidenæ, in consequence of the fall of a
temporary amphitheatre erected by a freedman named Atilius for giving
a show of gladiators; the number of the killed and maimed is said to
have been fifty thousand.[11] The conduct of the nobility at Rome on
this melancholy occasion showed that all virtue had not departed from
them; they threw open their houses for the sufferers, and supplied them
with medical attendance and remedies; so that, as the great historian
observes, the city wore the appearance of the Rome of the olden time,
when after battles the wounded were thus humanely treated. This calamity
was immediately followed by a tremendous fire on the Cælian Hill; but
Tiberius alleviated the evil by giving the inhabitants the amount of
their losses in money.

Having dedicated the temples, and rambled for some time through the towns
of Campania, Tiberius finally fixed on the islet of Capreæ [the modern
Capri] in the Bay of Naples as his permanent abode. This isle, which lay
at the short distance of three miles from the promontory of Surrentum,
was accessible only in one place; it enjoyed a mild temperature, and
commanded a most magnificent view of the bay of Naples and the lovely
region which encompassed it.[12] But the delicious retreat was speedily
converted by the aged prince into a den of infamy, such as has never
perhaps found its equal; his vicious practices, however, were covered by
the veil of secrecy, for he still lay under some restraint.

[Sidenote: [27-29 A.D.]]

When Tiberius left Rome, Sejanus renewed his machinations against
Agrippina and her children and friends. He directed his first efforts
against her eldest son Nero, whom he surrounded with spies; and as this
youth was married to a daughter of Livia, his wife was instructed by
her abandoned mother to note and report all his most secret words and
actions. Sejanus kept a faithful register of all he could learn in these
various ways, and regularly transmitted it to Tiberius. He also drew to
his side Nero’s younger brother Drusus, a youth of a fiery turbulent
temper, and who hated him because he was his mother’s favourite. It was
however Sejanus’ intention to destroy him also when he should have served
his purpose against Nero.

At this time also he made his final and fatal attack on Titius Sabinus,
whose crime was his attachment to the family of Germanicus. The bait of
the consulate, of which Sejanus alone could dispose, induced four men
of prætorian dignity to conspire his ruin. The plan proposed was that
one of them, named Latinius Latiaris, who had some knowledge of Sabinus,
should draw him into conversation, out of which a charge of treason
might be manufactured. The plot succeeded; Latiaris, by praising the
constancy of Sabinus in friendship, led him gradually on to speak as he
thought of Sejanus, and even of Tiberius. At length, under pretence of
having something of great importance to reveal, he brought him into a
chamber where the other three were concealed between the ceiling and the
roof. A charge of treason was therefore speedily concocted and forwarded
to Tiberius, from whom a letter came on New Year’s Day (28), plainly
intimating to the senate his desire of vengeance. This sufficed for that
obsequious body, and Sabinus was dragged forth and executed without delay.

In his letter of thanks to the senate, Tiberius talked of the danger he
was in, and of the plots of his enemies, evidently alluding to Agrippina
and Nero. These unfortunate persons lost their only remaining refuge
the following year (29) by the death of the prince’s mother, Julia
Augusta,[13] whose influence over her son, and regard for her own
descendants, had held Sejanus in restraint. This soon appeared by the
arrival of a letter from Tiberius, accusing Nero of unnatural practices,
and speaking of the arrogance of Agrippina; but while the senate were in
debate, the people surrounded the house, carrying the images of Agrippina
and Nero, and crying out that the letter was forged, and the prince
deceived. Nothing therefore was done on that day, and Sejanus took the
opportunity of irritating the mind of Tiberius, who wrote again to the
senate; but as in the letter he forbade their proceeding to extremes,
they passed a decree, declaring themselves prepared to avenge the prince,
were they not hindered by himself.

[Sidenote: [29-31 A.D.]]

Most unfortunately the admirable narrative of Tacitus fails us at
this point; and for the space of more than two years, and those the
most important of the reign of Tiberius, we are obliged to derive our
knowledge of events from the far inferior notices of Dion Cassius and
Suetonius. We are therefore unable to display the arts by which Sejanus
effected the ruin of Agrippina and her children, and can only learn that
she was relegated to the isle of Pandataria, where, while she gave vent
to her indignation, her eye was struck out by a centurion; and that Nero
was placed in the isle of Pontia, and forced to terminate his own life.
The further fate of Agrippina and Drusus we shall have to relate.

Sejanus now revelled in the enjoyment of power; every one feared him,
every one courted and flattered him. “In a word,” says Dion,[o] “he
seemed to be emperor, Tiberius merely the ruler of an island”; for while
the latter dwelt in solitude and apparently unthought of, the doors of
the former were thronged every morning with saluting crowds, and the
first men of Rome attended him on his way to the senate. His pride and
insolence, as is always the case with those who rise otherwise than by
merit, kept pace with his power, and men hated while they feared and
flattered him.[e]

Let us cite an instance of this fulsome flattery from the pages of the
contemporary chronicler, Velleius Paterculus, a Roman who had served nine
years as a soldier in Germany, and who had been military tribune and
afterwards quæstor and prætor. The panegyric with which Velleius closes
his _Epitome of Roman History_ eulogises Sejanus along with the emperor
himself, and his mother. This eulogium is worth transcribing at length
as it illustrates the contrast between contemporary estimates--be they
candid or hypocritical--and the judgment of posterity.[a]


VELLEIUS PATERCULUS EULOGISES TIBERIUS

[Sidenote: [14-37 A.D.]]

“It is seldom,” says Velleius, “that men who have arrived at eminence,
have not had powerful coadjutors in steering the course of their
fortunes; thus the two Scipios had the two Lælii, whom they set in every
respect on a level with themselves; thus the emperor Augustus had Marcus
Agrippa, and after him Statilius Taurus. The newness of these men’s
families proved no obstruction to their attainment of many consulships
and triumphs, and of sacerdotal offices in great numbers. For great
affairs demand great co-operators (in small matters, the smallness of
assistance does not mar the proceedings), and it is for the interest
of the public, that what is necessary for business should be eminent
in dignity, and that usefulness should be fortified with influence. In
conformity with these examples, Tiberius Cæsar has had, and still has,
Ælius Sejanus, a most excellent coadjutor in all the toils of government,
a man whose father was chief of the equestrian order, and who, on his
mother’s side is connected with some of the most illustrious and ancient
families, ennobled by high preferments; who has brothers, cousins, and an
uncle, of consular rank; who is remarkable for fidelity in the discharge
of his duties, and for ability to endure fatigue, the constitution of
his body corresponding with the vigour of his mind; a man of pleasing
gravity, and of unaffected cheerfulness; appearing, in the despatch of
business, like a man quite at ease; assuming nothing to himself, and
hence receiving every honour; always deeming himself inferior to other
men’s estimation of him; calm in looks and conversation, but in mind
indefatigably vigilant.

“In esteem for Sejanus’ virtues, the judgment of the public has long vied
with that of the prince. Nor is it at all new with the senate and people
of Rome, to consider the most meritorious as the most noble. The men of
old, before the First Punic War, three hundred years ago, exalted to
the summit of dignity T. Coruncanius, a man of no family, bestowing on
him, besides other honours, the office of chief pontiff; they promoted
Spurius Carvilius, a man of equestrian birth, and afterwards Marcus
Cato, another new man (not a native citizen, but born at Tusculum), as
well as Mummius Achaicus, to consulships, censorships, and triumphs.
And they who considered Caius Marius, a man of the most obscure origin,
as unquestionably the first in the Roman nation, before his sixth
consulship; who had so high an esteem for Marcus Tullius, that he could
obtain, almost by his sole recommendation, the highest offices for
whomsoever he chose; and who refused nothing to Asinius Pollio, which men
of the noblest birth had to obtain with infinite labour, were certainly
of opinion that he who possessed the greatest virtues was entitled to
the greatest honours. The natural imitation of other men’s examples led
Cæsar to make trial of Sejanus, and occasioned Sejanus to bear a share
of the burdens of the prince; and induced the senate and people of Rome
cheerfully to call to the guardianship of their safety him whom they saw
best qualified for the charge.

“Having exhibited a general view of the administration of Tiberius
Cæsar, let us now enumerate a few particulars respecting it. With what
wisdom did he bring to Rome Rhescuporis, the murderer of Cotys, his own
brother’s son, and partner in the kingdom, employing in that affair the
services of Pomponius Flaccus, a man of consular rank, naturally inclined
to all that is honourable, and by pure virtue always meriting fame, but
never eagerly pursuing it! With what solemnity as a senator and a judge,
not as a prince, does he hear causes in person! With what precepts did he
form the mind of his Germanicus, and train him in the rudiments of war in
his own camp, so that he afterwards hailed him the conqueror of Germany!
What honours did he heap on him in his youth, the magnificence of his
triumph corresponding to the grandeur of his exploits! How often has he
honoured the people with donations! How readily has he, when he could
do it with the sanction of the senate, supplied senators with property
suitable to their rank, neither encouraging extravagance, nor suffering
honourable poverty to be stripped of dignity! In what an honourable
style did he send his Germanicus to the transmarine provinces! With what
energy, employing Drusus as a minister and coadjutor in his plans, did
he force Marboduus, who was clinging to the soil of the kingdom which
he had possessed, to come forth, like a serpent concealed in the earth
(let me speak without offence to his majesty), by the salutary charms
of his counsels! How honourably, yet how far from negligently, does he
keep watch over him! How formidable a war, excited by the Gallic chief
Sacrovir and Julius Florus, did he suppress, and with such amazing
expedition and energy, that the Roman people learned that they were
conquerors, before they knew that they were at war, and the news of
victory outstripped the news of the danger! The African war too, perilous
as it was, and daily increasing in strength, was quickly terminated under
his auspices and direction.

[Illustration: ROMAN TRIPOD]

“What structures has he erected in his own name, and those of his family!
With what dutiful munificence, even exceeding belief, is he building a
temple to his father! With how laudable a generosity of disposition is he
repairing even the buildings of Cneius Pompey that were consumed by fire!
Whatever has been at any time conspicuously great, he regards as his own,
and under his protection. With what liberality has he at all times, and
particularly at the recent fire on the Cælian Mount, repaired the losses
of people of all conditions out of his own property! With what perfect
ease to the public does he manage the raising of troops, a business of
constant and extreme apprehension, without the consternation attendant
on a levy! If either nature allows us, or the humility of man may take
upon itself, to make a modest complaint of such things to the gods, what
has he deserved that, in the first place, Drusus Libo should form his
execrable plots; and, in the next, that Silius and Piso should follow his
example, one of whom he raised to dignity, the other he promoted? That I
may pass to greater matters (though he accounted even these very great),
what has he deserved, that he should lose his sons in their youth, or
his grandson by Drusus? But we have only spoken of causes for sorrow, we
must now come to occasions of shame. With what violent griefs, Marcus
Vinicius, has he felt his mind tortured in the last three years! How long
has his heart been consumed with affliction, and, what is most unhappy,
such as he was obliged to conceal, while he was compelled to grieve, and
to feel indignation and shame, at the conduct of his daughter-in-law and
his grandson! And the sorrows of this period have been aggravated by the
loss of his most excellent mother, a woman who resembled the gods more
than human beings; and whose power no man ever felt but in the relief of
distress or the conferring of honour.

“Let our book be concluded with a prayer. O Jupiter Capitolinus, O
Jupiter Stator! O Mars Gradivus, author of the Roman home! O Vesta,
guardian of the eternal fire! O all ye deities who have exalted the
present magnitude of the Roman Empire to a position of supremacy over
the world, guard, preserve, and protect, I entreat and conjure you,
in the name of the commonwealth, our present state, our present peace
(our present prince)! And when he shall have completed a long course on
earth, grant him successors to the remotest ages, and such as shall have
abilities to support the empire of the world as powerfully as we have
seen him support it!”[g]

These words of the fawning courtier require no comment, unless it be
to note that such are often the materials from which the historian is
supposed to extract truthful estimates of men and events. Fortunately,
in the present instance, the more trustworthy accounts of Tacitus and
Suetonius have also come down to us--the former, however, not quite
intact.


THE FALL OF SEJANUS

[Sidenote: [31 A.D.]]

Sejanus had thus ruled for more than three years at Rome with power
nearly absolute, when (31) Tiberius made him his colleague in the
consulate--an honour observed to be fatal to every one who had enjoyed
it. In fact the jealous tyrant, who had been fully informed of all his
actions and designs,[14] had secretly resolved on his death; but fear,
on account of Sejanus’ influence with the guards, and his uncertainty
of how the people might stand affected, prevented him from proceeding
openly against him. He therefore had recourse to artifice, in which he so
much delighted. At one time he would write to the senate, and describe
himself as so ill that his recovery was nearly hopeless; again that he
was in perfect health, and was about to return to Rome. He would now
praise Sejanus to the skies, and then speak most disparagingly of him;
he would honour some and disgrace others of his friends solely as such.
In this way both Sejanus himself and all others were kept in a state of
the utmost uncertainty. Tiberius further bestowed priesthoods on Sejanus
and his son, and proposed to marry his daughter to Drusus, the son of
Claudius, the brother of Germanicus; yet at the same time, when Sejanus
asked permission to go to Campania, he desired him to remain where he
was, as he himself would be coming to Rome immediately.

All this tended to keep Sejanus in a state of great perturbation; and
this was increased by the circumstance of Tiberius, when appointing the
young Caius to a priesthood, having not merely praised him, but spoken
of him in some sort as his successor in the monarchy. He would have
proceeded at once to action, were it not that the joy manifested by the
people on this occasion proved to him that he had only the soldiers to
rely on, and he hesitated to act with them alone. Tiberius then showed
favour to some of those to whom Sejanus was hostile. The senators easily
saw whither all this tended, and their neglect of Sejanus was now pretty
openly displayed.

Tiberius, having thus made trial of the senate and the people, and
finding he could rely on both, resolved to strike the long-meditated
blow. In order to take his victim more completely unawares, he gave
out that it was his intention to confer on him the tribunician power.
Meantime he gave to Nævius Sertorius Macro a secret commission to take
the command of the guards, made him the bearer of a letter to the senate,
and instructed him fully how to act. Macro entered Rome at night, and
communicated his instructions to the consul, C. Memmius Regulus (for his
colleague was a creature of Sejanus), and to Græcinus Laco, the commander
of the watchmen, and arranged with them the plan of action. Early in the
morning he went up to the temple of the Palatine Apollo, where the senate
was to sit that day, and meeting Sejanus, and finding him disturbed at
Tiberius having sent him no message, he whispered him that he had the
grant of the tribunician power for him. Sejanus then went in highly
elated; and Macro, showing his commission to the guards on duty, and
telling them that he had letters promising them a largess, sent them down
to their camp, and put the watchmen about the temple in their stead. He
then entered the temple, and having delivered the letter to the consuls,
immediately went out again, and leaving Laco to watch the progress of
events there, hastened down to the camp lest there should be a mutiny of
the guards.

The letter was long and ambiguous; it contained nothing direct against
Sejanus, but first treated of something else, then came to a little
complaint of him, then to some other matter, then it returned to him
again, and so on; it concluded by saying that two senators, who were
most devoted to Sejanus, ought to be punished, and himself be cast into
prison; for though Tiberius wished most ardently to have him executed, he
did not venture to order his death, fearing a rebellion. He even implored
them in the letter to send one of the consuls with a guard to conduct
him, now an old man and desolate, into their presence. We are further
told that such were his apprehensions, that he had given orders, in case
of a tumult, to release his grandson Drusus, who was in chains at Rome,
and put him at the head of those who remained faithful to his family; and
that he took his station on a lofty rock, watching for the signals that
were to be made, having ships ready to carry him to some of the legions
in case anything adverse should occur.

His precautions, however, were needless. Before the letter was read,
the senators, expecting to hear nothing but the praises of Sejanus and
the grant of the tribunician power, were loud in testifying their zeal
towards him; but as the reading proceeded their conduct sensibly altered;
their looks were no longer the same; even some of those who were sitting
near him rose and left their seats; the prætors and tribunes closed round
him lest he should rush out and try to raise the guards, as he certainly
would have done had not the letter been composed with such consummate
artifice. He was in fact so thunderstruck, that it was not till the
consul had called him the third time that he was able to reply. All then
joined in reviling and insulting him; he was conducted to the prison by
the consul and the other magistrates. As he passed along the populace
poured curses and abuse on him; they cast down his statues, cut the heads
off of them, and dragged them about the streets. The senate seeing this
disposition of the people, and finding that the guards remained quiet,
met in the afternoon in the temple of Concord, close to the prison, and
condemned him to death. He was executed without delay; his lifeless body
was flung down the Gemonian steps, and for three days it was exposed to
every insult from the populace; it was then cast into the Tiber. His
children also were put to death; his little daughter, who was to have
been the bride of the prince’s grand nephew, was so young and innocent,
that as they carried her to prison she kept asking what she had done,
and whither they were dragging her, adding that she would do so no more,
and that she might be whipped if naughty. Nay, by one of those odious
refinements of barbarity which trample on justice and humanity while
adhering to the letter of the law, because it was a thing unheard of for
a virgin to be capitally punished, the executioner was made to deflower
the child before he strangled her. Apicata, the divorced wife of Sejanus,
on hearing of the death of her children, and seeing afterwards their
lifeless bodies on the steps, went home; and having written to Tiberius a
full account of the true manner of the death of Drusus and of the guilt
of Livilla, put an end to herself. In consequence of this discovery
Livilla, and all who were concerned in that murder, were put to death.

The rage of the populace was also vented on the friends of Sejanus,
and many of them were slaughtered. The prætorian guards, too, enraged
at being suspected and at the watchmen being preferred to them, began
to burn and plunder houses. The senators were in a state of the utmost
perturbation, some trembling on account of their having paid court to
Sejanus, others, who had been accusers or witnesses, from not knowing how
their conduct might be taken. All however conspired in heaping insult on
the memory of the fallen favourite.

[Sidenote: [31-33 A.D.]]

Tiberius, now free from all apprehension, gave loose to his vengeance.
From his island-retreat he issued his orders, and the prison was filled
with the friends and creatures of Sejanus; the baleful pack of informers
was unkennelled, and their victims of both sexes were hunted to death.
Some were executed in prison; others were flung from the Capitol; the
lifeless remains were exposed to every kind of indignity, and then cast
into the river. Most however chose a voluntary death; for they thus not
only escaped insult and pain, but preserved their property for their
children.

In the following year (32) Tiberius ventured to leave his island, and
sail up the Tiber as far as Cæsar’s gardens; but suddenly, no one knew
why, he retreated again to his solitude, whence by letters he directed
the course of cruelty at Rome. The commencement of one was so remarkable
that historians have thought it deserving of a place in their works; it
ran thus: “What I shall write to you, P. C., or how I shall write, or
what I shall not write at this time, may the gods and goddesses destroy
me worse, than I daily feel myself perishing, if I know.” A knight named
M. Terentius at this time, when accused of the new crime of Sejanus’
friendship, had the courage to adopt a novel course of defence. He boldly
acknowledged the charge, but justified his conduct by saying that he
had only followed the example of the prince, whom it was their duty to
imitate. The senate acquitted him and punished his accusers with exile
or death, and Tiberius expressed himself well pleased at the decision.
But in the succeeding year (33) his cruelty, joined with avarice (a vice
new to him), broke out with redoubled violence. Tired of murdering in
detail, he ordered a general massacre of all who lay in prison on account
of their connection with Sejanus. Without distinction of age, sex, or
rank, they were slaughtered; their friends dared not to approach, or even
be seen to shed tears; and as their putrefying remains floated along the
Tiber, no one might venture to touch or to burn them.

The deaths of his grandson Drusus, and his daughter-in-law Agrippina,
were added to the atrocities of this year. The former perished by the
famine to which he was destined, after he had sustained life till the
ninth day by eating the stuffing of his bed. The tyrant then had the
shamelessness to cause to be read in the senate the diary which had been
kept of everything the unhappy youth had said or done for a course of
years, and of the indignities which he had endured from the slaves and
guards who were set about him. Agrippina had cherished hopes of meeting
with justice after the fall of Sejanus; but finding them frustrated, she
resolved to starve herself to death. Tiberius, when informed, ordered
food to be forced down her throat, but she finally accomplished her
purpose; he then endeavoured to defame her memory by charging her with
unchastity. As her death occurred on the same day as that of Sejanus
two years before, he directed it to be noted, and he took to himself
as a merit that he had not caused her to be strangled or cast down
the Gemonian steps. The obsequious senate returned him thanks for his
clemency, and decreed that on the 18th of October, the day of both their
deaths, an offering in gold should be made to Jupiter.

The Cæsarian family was now reduced to Claudius the brother and Caius
the son of Germanicus, and his three daughters, Agrippina, Drusilla,
and Livilla, (whom Tiberius had given in marriage respectively to Cn.
Domitius, L. Cassius, and M. Vinicius,) and Tiberius and Julia the
children of Drusus, which last had been married to her cousin Nero, and
now was given in marriage to Rubellius Blandus.

[Sidenote: [33-37 A.D.]]

From his very outset in life, Tiberius had been obliged more or less to
conceal his natural character. Augustus, Germanicus, Drusus, his mother,
had successively been a check on him; and even Sejanus, though the agent
of his cruelty, had been the cause of his lusts being restrained. But
now all barriers were removed; for Caius was so abject a slave to him,
that he modelled himself on his character and his words, only seeking to
conceal his own vices. He therefore now at length gave free course to
all his vicious propensities, and it almost chills the blood to read the
details of the horrid practices in which he indulged amidst the rocks of
Capreæ. Meantime there was no relaxation of his cruelty; Macro was as bad
as Sejanus, only more covertly; there was no lack of delators, and men of
rank perished daily.[e]


TACITUS DESCRIBES THE LAST DAYS OF TIBERIUS

[Sidenote: [37 A.D.]]

At Rome, meanwhile, were sown the seeds that were destined to yield a
harvest of blood after the decease of Tiberius. Lælius Balbus had charged
Acutia, sometime the wife of Publius Vitellius, with high treason; and,
as the senate was, after her condemnation, decreeing a reward to the
accuser, Junius Otho, tribune of the people, interposed his veto; hence
their mutual hate, and afterwards the exile of Otho. Then Albucilla,
infamous for her many amours, who had been married to Satrius Secundus,
the man who revealed the conspiracy of Sejanus, was impeached of impiety
towards the prince. In the charge were involved, as her accomplices and
her adulterers, Cneius Domitius, Vibius Marsus, and Lucius Arruntius.
Domitius was of noble descent. Marsus, too, was distinguished by the
ancient dignities of his house, and his own fame for learning. The
minutes, however, transmitted to the senate, imported, “that in the
examination of the witnesses, and torture of the slaves, Macro had
presided;” and as no letter came from the emperor against the accused, it
was suspected, that, while he was ill, and perhaps without his privity,
the accusations were in great measure forged, in consequence of the
notorious enmity of Macro to Arruntius.

Domitius therefore by preparing for his defence, and Marsus by seeming
determined to starve himself to death, protracted their lives. Arruntius,
to the importunity of his friends, urging him to try delays and evasions,
answered that the same measures were not honourable to all men alike: he
had lived long enough; his only regret was, that exposed on all sides to
derision and peril, he had submitted to bear thus far an old age loaded
with anxieties; long obnoxious to the malice of Sejanus, now of Macro,
always of some minion of power; not because he was guilty of any crime,
but because he was intolerant of the grossest iniquities. Grant that
the few and last days of Tiberius could be got over, yet how could he
escape all that he would have to endure under the youth who threatened to
succeed him? When the mind of Tiberius, a man of consummate experience,
underwent such a convulsion and transformation from the potent influence
of imperial power, was it likely that Caligula, who had scarce outgrown
his childhood, ignorant of everything, or nursed and trained up in the
worst, would follow a course more righteous under the guidance of Macro;
the same Macro, who, as the more expert villain, having been selected for
the task of crushing Sejanus, had brought the commonwealth to a state
of wretchedness the most abject, by his numerous atrocities? He had now
before him, he said, a prospect of slavery still more embittered; and
therefore it was that he withdrew at once from the horrors which had been
enacted, and those that impended.

While pouring forth these warnings with the intense emotion of a prophet,
he opened his veins. That Arruntius was wise in resorting to suicide the
following events will testify. Albucilla, after inflicting an ineffectual
wound upon herself, was by order of the senate dragged to prison. As to
the ministers of her lusts, it was decreed, “that Carsidius Sacerdos,
of prætorian rank, should be banished to an island; Pontius Fregellanus
expelled the senate; and that upon Lælius Balbus the same penalty be
inflicted.” The senators gave the latter judgment with feelings of joy,
as he was accounted a man of turbulent eloquence, and zealous in his
efforts against the innocent.

About the same time, Sextus Papinius, of a consular family, chose a
sudden and frightful end, by throwing himself down from an eminence.
The cause was ascribed to his mother, who, after many repulses, had,
by fondling and excitement, brought him into a situation from which he
could escape by death only. She was therefore accused in the senate;
and, though she embraced the knees of the fathers, and pleaded “the
natural tenderness of a mother’s grief, and the greater weakness of a
woman’s spirit under such a calamity,” with other motives of pity in the
same doleful strain, she was banished from Rome for ten years, till her
younger son was past the slippery period of youth.[15]

As for Tiberius, his body was now wasted and his strength exhausted, but
his dissimulation did not fail him. He exhibited the same inflexibility
of mind, the same energy in his looks and discourse; and even sometimes
by affected vivacity tried to hide his decaying strength, though too
manifest to be concealed. And after much shifting of places, he settled
at length at the promontory of Misenum, in a villa which Lucullus once
owned. There it was discovered that his end was approaching, in the
following manner: In his train was a physician, named Charicles, noted
in his profession, not indeed to prescribe for the prince in cases of
indisposition, but that he might have some one to consult if he thought
proper. Charicles, as if he were departing to attend to his own affairs,
and taking hold of his hand under pretence of taking leave, felt his
pulse. But he did not escape detection, for he instantly ordered the
entertainment to be renewed; whether incensed, and therefore the more
concealing his displeasure, is uncertain; but at table he continued
beyond his wont, as if to do honour to his friend on his departure.
Charicles, however, assured Macro that life was ebbing fast, and could
not outlast two days. Hence the whole court was in a bustle with
consultations, and expresses were despatched to the generals and armies.
On the seventeenth, before the calends of April, he was believed to have
finished his mortal career, having ceased to breathe; and Caligula, in
the midst of a great throng of persons, paying their congratulations,
was already going forth to make a solemn entrance on the sovereignty,
when suddenly a notice came, “that Tiberius had recovered his sight and
voice, and had called for some persons to give him food to restore him.”
The consternation was universal; the concourse about Caligula dispersed
in all directions, every man affecting sorrow or feigning ignorance;
he himself stood fixed in silence--fallen from the highest hopes, he
now expected the worst. Macro, undismayed, ordered the old man to be
smothered with a quantity of clothes, and the doorway to be cleared. Thus
expired Tiberius, in the seventy-eighth year of his age.[d]

This story of the last moments of Tiberius is questioned by Merivale,[f]
who comments on the fact that Tacitus, writing long after the event,
gives no authority for his version of the affair as just quoted, and
says: On the other hand, a contemporary of the event seems to describe
the old man’s death as simply natural. “Feeling himself sinking,” said
Seneca,[l] “Tiberius took off his ring, and held it for a little while,
as if about to present it to some one as an instrument of authority; but
he soon replaced it on his finger, and lay for a time without motion.
Then suddenly he called for his attendants, and when no one answered,
raised himself from his bed with failing strength, and immediately fell
lifeless beside it. This account was distorted by others into the denial
of necessary sustenance, and actual death by exhaustion, while some did
not scruple to affirm that Caius had caused the sick man to be poisoned.”


SUETONIUS CHARACTERISES TIBERIUS

Tiberius was in his person large and robust, of a stature somewhat above
the common size, broad in the shoulders and chest, and in his other
parts proportionable. He used his left hand more readily than his right;
and his joints were so strong that he would bore a fresh sound apple
through with his finger, and would wound the head of a boy, or even a
young man, with a fillip. He was of a fair complexion, and had his hair
so long behind that it covered his neck, which was observed to be a mark
of distinction affected by the family. He had a handsome face, but often
full of pimples. His eyes, which were large, had a wonderful faculty of
seeing in the night time, and in the dark, but for a short time only,
and immediately after awaking from sleep; for they soon grew dim again.
He walked with his neck stiff and unmoved, commonly with a frowning
countenance, being for the most part silent; when he spoke to those about
him it was very slowly, and generally accompanied by an effeminate motion
of his fingers. All those things being disagreeable, and expressive of
arrogance, Augustus remarked in him, and often endeavoured to excuse to
the senate and people, assuring them that “they were natural defects,
which proceeded from no viciousness of mind.” He enjoyed a good state of
health, and without any interruption, almost during the whole time of his
government; though, from the thirtieth year of his age he managed himself
in respect of his health according to his own discretion, without any
medical assistance.

In regard to the gods, and matters of religion, he discovered much
indifference; being greatly addicted to astrology, and full of a
persuasion that all things were governed by fate. Yet he was extremely
afraid of lightning, and in cloudy weather always wore a laurel crown on
his head; because an opinion prevails among many, that the leaf of that
tree is never touched by the lightning.

He applied himself with great diligence to the liberal arts, both Greek
and Latin. In his Latin style, he affected to imitate Messalla Corvinus,
a respectable old man, whose company he had much frequented in his youth.
But he rendered his style obscure by excess of affectation and niceness;
so that he was thought to talk better extempore, than in a premeditated
discourse. He composed likewise a lyric ode, under the title of _A
Lamentation upon the Death of L. Cæsar_, as also some Greek poems in
imitation of Euphorion, Rhianus, and Parthenius. These poets he greatly
admired, and set up their works and statues in the public libraries,
amongst the eminent authors of antiquity. On this account, most of the
learned men of the time vied with each other in publishing observations
upon them, which they addressed to him. What he chiefly attended to
was the knowledge of the fabulous history; and this he prosecuted with
a zeal that might justly be deemed ridiculous. For he used to try the
grammarians, a class of people which I have already observed he much
affected, with such questions as these: “Who was Hecuba’s mother? What
had been Achilles’ name amongst the young women? What song were the
Sirens used to sing?” And the first day that he entered the senate house,
after the death of Augustus, as if he intended to pay a respect both
to the memory of his father and the gods, in imitation of Minos upon
the death of his son, he made an offering of frankincense and wine, but
without any music.

Though he was ready and conversant with the Greek tongue, yet he did not
use it everywhere, but chiefly declined it in the senate house; insomuch
that having occasion to use the word _monopolium_ (monopoly), he first
begged pardon for being obliged to trouble the house with a foreign
word. And when in a decree of the senate, the word _emblema_ (emblem)
was read, he advised to have it changed, and that a Latin word should be
substituted in its room; or if no proper one could be found, to express
the thing in a circumlocutory manner. A soldier who was examined, as a
witness upon a trial, in Greek, he would not allow to make any answer but
in Latin.

The people rejoiced so much at his death, that, upon the first news of
it, they ran up and down the city, some crying out, “Away with Tiberius
into the Tiber”; others exclaiming, “May the earth, the common mother of
mankind, and the infernal gods, allow no place for the dead, but amongst
the wicked.” Others threatened his body with the hook and the _scalæ
gemoniæ_, their indignation at his former cruelty being increased by a
recent instance of the same kind. It had been provided by an act of the
senate, that the punishment of persons condemned to die should always
be deferred until the tenth day after the sentence. Now it happened
that the day on which the news of Tiberius’ death arrived, was the time
fixed by law for the execution of some persons that had been sentenced
to die. These poor creatures implored the protection of all about them;
but because Caius was not in town, and there was none else to whom
application could be made in their behalf, the men who were charged with
the care of their execution, from a dread of offending against that law,
strangled them, and threw them down the _scalæ gemoniæ_. This excited
in the minds of the people a still greater abhorrence of the tyrant’s
memory, since his cruelty subsisted even after his death. As soon as his
corpse began to move from Misenum, many cried out for its being carried
to Atella, and broiled there in the amphitheatre. It was however brought
to Rome, and burned with the usual ceremony.[c]


MERIVALE’S ESTIMATE OF TIBERIUS

Cæsar, the high-handed usurper, met an usurper’s death, by open violence
in the light of day. Augustus, after fifty years of the mildest and
most equitable rule the times admitted, sank at last by a slow and
painless decay into the arms of those dearest to him, amidst the
respectful sympathies of an admiring people. The end of Tiberius, whether
consummated by treachery or not, was shrouded in gloom and obscurity;
the chamber of mortality was agitated to the last by the intrigues and
fears of the dying man and his survivors. The fellow-countrymen of the
detested tyrant seem to have deemed it fitting that one whose life was to
them an enigma should perish by a mysterious death. It seems preferable
to represent him as a man whose character was sufficiently transparent,
the apparent inconsistencies in whose conduct, often exaggerated and
misrepresented, may generally be explained by the nature of his position,
and the political illusions with which he was required to encircle
himself. It is the character of the age in which he was placed, an age
of rapid though silent transition, rather than of the man himself, which
invests him with an historical interest. This is the point to which it
will be well to direct our attention, before letting the curtain drop
upon the personage with whom the forms of the republic perished, and the
despotism of the Cæsars finally dropped its mask.

[Illustration: EMPEROR IN MILITARY TUNIC

(From Trajan’s Column)]

The practice of delation, so rapidly developed under the rule of
Tiberius, introduced a new principle into the government of his day, and
marked it with features of its own. It is hardly possible to overrate
the effects of this practice upon the general complexion of the Roman
polity, nor is it easy to exaggerate the horror with which it came
to be regarded. It was an attempt to reconcile the despotism of the
monarch with the forms of a republic; to strengthen the sovereign power
by weakening its subjects; to govern the people by dividing them, by
destroying their means of combination among themselves, by generating
among them habits of mutual distrust and fear, and finally plunging them
into a state of political imbecility. It has been asserted that this
system was in fact the product of peculiar circumstances rather than
the creation of a deliberate will; nevertheless the chief of the state
was made, not unnaturally, to bear the whole responsibility of it, and
the disgust of the nobler spirits of Rome at the tyranny of spies and
informers was turned against the prince himself, in whose interest at
least, if not at whose instigation, their enormities were for the most
part perpetrated.

If we examine the authorities for the history of the reign we have
been reviewing, we shall find that those who were nearest to the times
themselves have generally treated Tiberius with the greatest indulgence.
Velleius Paterculus indeed, and Valerius Maximus, his contemporaries
and subjects, must be regarded as mere courtly panegyrists; but the
adulation of the one, though it jars on ears accustomed to the dignified
self-respect of the earlier Romans, is not more high-flown in language
and sentiment than what our own writers have addressed to the Georges,
and even the Charleses and Jameses, of the English monarchy; while
that of the other is chiefly offensive from the connection in which it
stands with the lessons of virtue and patriotism which his book was
specially designed to illustrate. The elder Seneca, the master of a
school of rhetoric, to which science his writings are devoted, makes no
mention of the emperor under whom he wrote; but his son, better known
as the statesman and philosopher, though he was under the temptation of
contrasting the austere and aged tyrant with the gay young prince to whom
he was himself attached, speaks of him with considerable moderation, and
ascribes the worst of his deeds to Sejanus and the delators rather than
to his own evil disposition.

In the pages of Philo[i] and Josephus,[h] the government of Tiberius is
represented as mild and equitable; it is not till we come to Suetonius
and Tacitus, in the third generation, that his enormities are blazoned
in the colours so painfully familiar to us.[16] It will suffice here
to remark that both these later writers belong to a period of strong
reaction against the Cæsarian despotism, when the senate was permitted
to raise its venerable head and assume a show, at least, of its old
imperial prerogatives; when the secret police of Rome was abolished,
delation firmly repressed, freedom of speech proclaimed by the voice of
the emperor himself, and the birthright of the Roman citizen respectfully
restored to him. There ensued a strong revulsion of feeling, not against
monarchy, which had then become an accepted institution, but against
the corruptions which had turned it into tyranny; and Tiberius, as the
reputed founder of the system of delation, bore the odium of all the
crimes of all the tyrants who had succeeded him. Tacitus admits that
the _affairs of Tiberius_ were misrepresented during his power by fear,
and after his death by spite; yet we cannot doubt that Tacitus himself
often yields to the bias of his detractors, while Suetonius is at best
indifferent to the truth. After all, a sober discretion must suspend
its belief regarding many of the circumstances above recorded, and
acknowledge that it is only through a treacherous and distorting haze
that we have scanned the features of this ill-omened principate.


THE CHARACTER OF THE TIMES

[Sidenote: [25-37 A.D.]]

Nevertheless, the terror which prevailed in the last years of Tiberius,
to whomsoever it is chiefly to be ascribed, exercised a baleful influence
over society at Rome, and shows by effects which are still discoverable
that it has been but little exaggerated. It has left permanent traces of
itself in the manifest decline and almost total extinction of literature
under its pressure. The Roman writers addressed only a small class
in the capital; to be popularly known in the provinces, to be read
generally throughout the Roman world, was a privilege reserved for few,
and anticipated perhaps rarely by any. Even in the capital the poet and
historian composed their works for a circle of a few thousand knights
and senators, for the friends and families of their own few hundreds of
acquaintances, whom they invited to encourage their efforts by attending
their recitations. The paralysis which benumbed the energies of the Roman
nobility at this crisis of terror and despair, extended naturally to the
organs of their sentiments and opinions. Not history and philosophy only
suffered an eclipse, but poetry also, which under Augustus had been the
true expression of the national feelings, became mute when the feelings
themselves could no longer be trusted with utterance. Cremutius was
subjected to persecution for pronouncing that Brutus and Cassius were
the last of the Romans. A tragedian was accused, and if accused, we may
presume, perhaps, that he was condemned for speaking evil of the king
of men, Agamemnon; and various authors were assailed, and their writings
sentenced to proscription, to whose recitations the last princeps had
himself listened with indulgence.

The poems which were tolerated were generally the most trifling, and
perhaps licentious in character. The sly irony of the fable, a style of
composition adopted by slaves, and imitated from the servile Orientals,
seems not unsuitable to these perilous times. The name of Phædrus belongs
in all probability to the Tiberian period, but it is curious that no
later writer for four centuries should have cared to notice him. Similar
or worse has been the fate of a more serious writer, Manilius, the author
of an elaborate poem on astronomy and its spurious sister astrology, a
theme of some danger under the circumstances of the times, but which he
has treated with irreproachable discretion; it is owing, perhaps, to the
disgrace under which the forbidden science fell that this innocent work
lapsed into entire oblivion, and has escaped the mention of any writer of
antiquity.

The deep gloom which settled upon the face of higher society at Rome
during the reign of Tiberius was heightened by its contrast with the
frivolous dissipation of the populace, who, though deprived of the
glitter of a brilliant court, and surrounded by signs of mourning
and humiliation among their natural leaders, not the less abandoned
themselves to the sensual enjoyments which alone they relished, and
rejoiced in their utter indifference to political principles, to parties,
and to men. When Sejanus fell, they clamoured with exultation over the
body of the traitor; nevertheless, had the goddess Nursia, says the
moralist, but favoured her Etruscan votary; had but the false intriguer
circumvented the guileless old man, on the instant they would have been
heard proclaiming Sejanus a Cæsar and an Augustus. In the one class was
abandonment of public life, shame, despair, and suicide; the intolerable
evils of the time drove men not to religious consolations, but to a
restless inquiry into the future, or a vain attempt to lull the sense
of the present in philosophic apathy: the other rushed headlong, hour
by hour, to the baths, shows, and largesses, or shouted at the heels of
the idol of the moment, or sighed and perhaps murmured at his loss, and
speedily resigned itself to oblivion of the fitful emotion of the day.

We must be careful notwithstanding to observe that both the shame and the
degradation were for the most part confined to the city and its vicinity,
which were oppressed by the shadow of the imperial despot.[f]


CALIGULA (CAIUS JULIUS CÆSAR CALIGULA), 37-41 A.D.

All Rome drew a deep breath at the great news. Macro’s adroitness and
the devotion of the Romans to the house of Germanicus induced the senate
to confer all the imperial prerogatives on the youthful Caligula. Thus
began one of the strangest and most terrible episodes in the history
of Rome. The dangerous defects and the baleful forces inherent in the
system created by the first two emperors were fated to come to light
with amazing rapidity in the course of this young Cæsar’s reign; a reign
which it is difficult for the historian to consider critically, because
one result of the wrath and contempt most justly evoked by his scandalous
misrule has been that of many of his sanguinary and foolish deeds no
record except a deliberate caricature has come down to us. The fervid
enthusiasm with which the capital hailed the son of Germanicus seemed at
first justified by the manner in which Caligula exercised the authority
which had now devolved upon him.

Impelled by nervous haste and violent passion in all things, whether good
or evil, and relying on neither minister nor favourite, he displayed a
restless energy of the type natural to a man of but moderate ability who
is wholly deficient in administrative training and incapable of exact
thought. His delight at the enthusiastic acclamations of the Roman people
inspired this singularly organised being with the best of resolutions; he
fully intended to make the Romans happy.

Thus he bore himself at first with modesty and good sense, especially
in his dealings with the senate. His liberality to the populace and
the soldiers, his pious reverence towards the dead, no less than his
consideration for the living members of his house, and the pardon of all
persons accused of offences of _majestas_, together with various liberal
ordinances, all conspired to produce a strong impression in his favour.
But what most roused the enthusiasm of all classes was that, casting
aside the niggardly economy of the emperor Tiberius, he shared freely
with them all in the festive humour of “games” of every kind.

For eight months he ruled in this fashion, and at the end of that time
his unbridled excesses brought on a dangerous malady, from which he
recovered much to the hurt of the Roman Empire and his own reputation.
Previous to this time he had lived as in a state of perpetual mental
intoxication, brought to a climax probably by the fulsome expressions
of popular concern during his illness. Whether the latter really had an
ill effect upon his mental faculties or not, the madness of which he
thenceforth gave manifest proofs is of a different type; a type to which
critical students of the history of imperial Rome have given the name of
megalomania or Cæsarian madness, and we meet with it in others besides
Caligula.

A man in this condition--sane enough to realise that as long as the
material basis of his power, the loyalty of the soldiery and the masses,
is unshaken, he will meet with no opposition in the gratification of
his maddest whims--may at any moment conceive the idea of testing the
validity of his omnipotence in any direction. It is a mere chance whether
this display of power is directed towards great or even reasonable
ends, or whether it issues in deeds of crime and horror. This is more
particularly the case when the monarch in question is the victim of
shattered nerves, the child of caprice, and the toy of every passing
impulse.

The premonitory signs of the evil to come manifested themselves soon
after the beginning of the year 38. Caligula, who chiefly delighted in
the company of charioteers, stage-players, and buffoons, began to make a
wanton exhibition of his despotic power, thus abruptly breaking with the
astute policy of his predecessors. And it was a despotism which ignored
the precepts of ancient Roman decorum, which, in sexual relations,
overstepped all bounds of law and modesty, nay, even of common decency.
To the wearisome admonitions of Macro, who exhorted him to act with some
degree of discretion, he replied by forcing both the general and his wife
to commit suicide.

Presently, however, the monarch having spent the vast riches of Tiberius
in the space of nine or ten months, and being possessed with a mania for
building as well as with a passion for games, became aware of a very
perceptible limit to his omnipotence. To relieve himself of his financial
embarrassments, he had recourse to the most sanguinary as well as to
the pettiest and most infamous measures. Capital charges, most of which
were decided before the emperor’s own tribunal, became more and more
numerous, partly to satisfy Caligula’s growing lust of blood, partly to
fill his coffers with the proceeds of confiscation. Trials for offences
of _majestas_ were revived as a matter of course (39 A.D.).

The money thus acquired was squandered again and again on objects that
could only be called colossal whims. Of these the most notorious was the
construction of the ephemeral bridge of boats between Puteoli and Baiæ,
across which he caused a substantial highway to be made, with aqueducts
and posting stations, after the model of the Appian way, for the sole
purpose of crossing it, surrounded by his guards, in the character of
triumphator, and celebrating this chaining of the ocean by a gorgeous
banquet.

His administration of imperial affairs was characterised by the same
whimsical caprice. Having restored for no good purpose the kingdom of
Commagene, he bestowed upon his friend and contemporary, M. Julius
Agrippa (or Herod Agrippa, born 11 B.C.), grandson of Herod the Great,
the greater part of his grandfather’s dominions, most of which had been
annexed to Syria under Augustus and Tiberius. On the other hand, he
summoned Ptolemy, king of Mauretania (from 23 B.C. onwards), to Rome in
the year 40, and there put him out of the way for the sake of his wealth.

Tradition represents all the scenes of Caligula’s visit to Gaul in
a light absolutely grotesque. [Some details from Suetonius will be
introduced presently.] The shout of triumph after a sortie across
the Rhine in which some of his Germanic guards were brought back as
sham prisoners, strikes the reader as wholly comic, but we note with
indignation that at Lyons Caligula continued the disgraceful system of
making money by capital sentences and criminal charges against persons
of rank, and recruited his finances by putting interesting and ancient
articles from the palace of the Cæsars at Rome up to public auction.

The collection of an army, estimated at some 250,000 men, in the ports
of the Morini on the Channel with a view to the conquest of Britain
remained nothing but an empty demonstration. It may have induced the
British chiefs to avert the danger by a formal act of homage and valuable
presents; but tradition represents Caligula as concluding this bloodless
expedition with a piece of buffoonery, and after bestowing costly gifts
on the soldiers, commanding them to pick up shells on the shore as
“spoils won from the ocean.”

When he returned to Rome, late in the summer of the year 40, his humour
assumed a more and more sinister character. He regarded his own person
as divine, though he loved to appear with the attributes of the various
gods and goddesses of the Græco-Roman Pantheon; and he now instituted a
college of priests in his own honour, and while heaping ignominy on the
most revered of ancient images of the gods, commanded that he himself
should be worshipped in temples set apart for the purpose throughout the
provinces.

In this attempt he met with serious resistance only from the orthodox
Jews. When P. Petronius, legate of Syria, received orders to set up a
colossal gilded statue of the emperor in the Holy of Holies at Jerusalem,
the wrath of the Jews rose to such a pitch that nothing but the sudden
death of Caligula prevented the outbreak of grave trouble throughout
Judea. By this time the tyrant’s popularity was declining even among
the masses at Rome, whom he had pampered with games and presents;
for he had lately begun to impose on the citizens of the capital a
series of burdensome taxes, which were exacted with the utmost rigour.
Nevertheless his fate did not overtake him till his conduct gave deep
offence to several of the officers of the prætorian guard. Then Cassius
Chærea, tribune of a prætorian cohort, headed a conspiracy, and aided by
Cornelius Sabinus and others slew the emperor in a corridor of the palace
on the 24th of January, 41 B.C.[m]


SUETONIUS DESCRIBES CALIGULA

For details of his brief but appalling career we cannot do better than
go to the fountain head--Suetonius. There is no other important ancient
source for this reign except Dion Cassius[j]; and modern research can
only interpret and criticise, without adding to the original records.[a]

He assumed a variety of titles, such as “Dutiful, the Son of the Camp,
the Father of the Armies, and the Greatest and the Best Cæsar.” Upon
hearing some kings, who came to the city to pay their respects to him,
contending amongst themselves at supper, about the nobleness of their
birth, he exclaimed, “Let there be but one prince, one king.” He was
strongly inclined to take a crown immediately, and to turn the imperial
dignity into the form of a kingdom; but being told that he far exceeded
the grandeur of kings and princes, he began to arrogate to himself a
divine majesty. He ordered all the images of the gods, that were famous
either for their beauty or the veneration paid them, amongst which was
that of Jupiter Olympius, to be brought from Greece, that he might take
the heads off, and put on his own. He carried on a part of the Palatine
as far as the Forum; and the temple of Castor and Pollux being converted
into a kind of porch to his house, he would often stand betwixt the two
brothers, and so present himself to be worshipped by all votaries, some
of whom saluted him by the name of Jupiter Latiaris. He ordered likewise
a temple and priests, and the most choice victims for his own godhead. In
his temple stood an image of gold, exactly of the same size as himself,
and which was every day dressed up in the same sort of garment as that
which he used. The most opulent persons in the city offered themselves
as candidates for the honour of being his priests, and purchased it
successively at an immense price. The victims were flamingoes, peacocks,
bustards, numidicæ, turkey-hens, and pheasant-hens, each sacrificed on
their respective days. In the night he used constantly to invite the
moon, when full, to his embraces. In the daytime he talked in private to
Jupiter Capitolinus, one while whispering to him, and another turning his
ear to him; sometimes he would talk aloud, and in railing language.

[Illustration: THE CLAUDIAN AQUEDUCT

(Begun by Caligula; finished by Claudius)]

He was unwilling to be thought or called the grandson of Agrippa, because
of the obscurity of his birth; and he was offended if any one, either in
prose or verse, ranked him amongst the Cæsars. He said his mother was
the fruit of an incestuous commerce, maintained by Augustus with his
daughter Julia. And not content with this vile reflection upon the memory
of Augustus, he forbade his victories at Actium, and upon the coast of
Sicily, to be celebrated as usual; affirming that they had been of the
most pernicious and fatal consequence to the Roman people. He called
his grandmother Livia Augusta “Ulysses in a woman’s dress,” and had the
indecency to reflect upon her in a letter to the senate, as of mean
birth, and descended, by the mother’s side, from a grandfather who was
only a member of the council of state at Fundi; whereas it is certain,
from authentic documents, that Aufidius Lingo held public offices at Rome.

His grandmother Antonia desiring a private conference with him, he denied
the request, unless Macro, commander of the guards, might be present. By
affronts of this kind, and ill usage, he was the occasion of her death;
but, as some think, not without giving her a dose of poison. He paid
not the smallest respect to her memory after her death; and gratified
himself at beholding, from his parlour, her funeral pile on fire. His
brother Tiberius, who had no expectation of any violence, he despatched,
by suddenly sending to him a military tribune for that purpose. He forced
Silanus his father-in-law to kill himself, by cutting his throat with
a razor. The pretext he alleged for these murders was, that the latter
had not followed him upon putting to sea in stormy weather, but stayed
behind with the view of seizing the city, if he should have been lost in
the voyage. The other, he said, smelt of an antidote, which he had taken
to prevent his being poisoned by him; whereas Silanus was only afraid
of being seasick, and of the trouble of the voyage; and Tiberius had
only made use of a medicine for a habitual cough, which was constantly
increasing upon him. As to his successor Claudius, he only saved him to
make sport with.

He lived in the habit of incest with all his sisters; when one of them,
Drusilla, was married to Cassius Longinus, a man of consular rank, he
took her from him, and kept her openly as his wife. In a fit of sickness,
he by his will appointed her heiress of his estate, and the empire
likewise. After her death, he ordered a public mourning for her; during
which it was capital for any person to laugh, use the bath, or sup with
parents, wife, or children. Being inconsolable under his affliction,
he went hastily, and in the night-time, from the city, going through
Campania to Syracuse; and then suddenly he returned without shaving
his beard, or trimming his hair all that time. Nor did he ever after,
in matters of the greatest importance, not even in the assemblies of
the people and soldiers, swear any otherwise, than “By the divinity of
Drusilla.”

He never but once in his life concerned himself with military affairs,
and then not deliberately, but in his journey to Mevania, to see the
grove and river of Clitumnus. Being put in mind of recruiting his company
of Batavians, which he had about him, he resolved upon an expedition
into Germany. Immediately he drew together several legions and auxiliary
forces from all quarters, and made everywhere new levies with the utmost
rigour. Laying in provisions of all kinds, beyond what had ever been done
upon the like occasion, he set out on his march; and pursued it with so
much haste and hurry sometimes, that the guards were obliged, contrary
to custom, to lay their standards upon the backs of horses or mules, and
so follow him. At other times, he would march with such slowness and
delicacy, that he would be carried in a chair by eight men; ordering the
roads to be swept by the people of the neighbouring towns, and sprinkled
with water to lay the dust.

Upon arriving in the camp, to show himself an active general, and severe
disciplinarian, he cashiered the lieutenant-generals that came up late
with the auxiliary forces from different parts. In reviewing the army, he
took their companies from most of the centurions of the first rank, who
had now served their legal time in the wars, and from some but a few days
before their time would have expired; alleging against them their great
age and infirmity; and railing at the covetous disposition of the rest of
them, he reduced the premiums due to such as had served out their time to
the sum of six thousand sesterces. Though he only received the submission
of Adminius, the son of Cinobelinus a British prince, who being forced
from his native country by his father, came over to him with a small
body of troops; yet, as if the whole island had been surrendered to him,
he despatched magnificent letters to Rome upon the occasion, ordering
the bearers to proceed in their chaise directly up to the Forum and the
senate house, and not to deliver the letters but to the consuls in the
temple of Mars, and in the presence of a full assembly of the senators.

[Illustration: ROMAN SOLDIER’S METHOD OF FORDING A RIVER, CARRYING HIS
ARMS AND CLOTHING ON HIS SHIELD]

Soon after this, there being a general tranquillity, he ordered a few
Germani of his guard to be carried over and concealed on the other side
of the Rhine, and word to be brought him after dinner, in a great hurry,
that an enemy was advancing. This being accordingly done, he immediately
posted away with his friends, and a party of the horse-guards, into the
adjoining wood, where lopping the branches of some trees, and dressing
them up in the manner of trophies, he returned by torchlight, upbraiding
those who did not follow him, with timorousness and cowardice; but
presented the companions and sharers of his victory with a new kind of
crown, and under a new name, with the representation of the sun, moon,
and stars upon them, which he called exploratoriæ. Again, some hostages
were by his order taken out of a school, and privately sent off; upon
notice of which he immediately rose from table, pursued them with the
horse, as if they had run away, and coming up with them, brought them
back in chains; proceeding to an extravagant pitch of ostentation
likewise in this military comedy. Upon again sitting down to table, when
some came to acquaint him that the army was all come in, he ordered them
to sit down as they were in their coats of mail, animating them in the
words of a well-known verse of Virgil.

In the meantime, he reprimanded the senate and people of Rome by a very
severe proclamation, “for revelling and frequenting the diversions of
the circus and theatre, and enjoying themselves in their country-houses,
whilst their emperor was fighting, and exposing his person to the
greatest dangers.”

At last, as if resolved to make an end of the war at once, drawing up his
army upon the shore of the ocean, with his ballistæ and other engines of
war, whilst nobody could imagine what he intended to do, on a sudden
he commanded them to gather up the sea shells, and fill their helmets,
and the laps of their coats with them, calling them, “the spoils of the
ocean due to the Capitol and the Palatine.” As a monument of his success,
he raised a high tower, upon which he ordered lights to be put in the
night-time, for the direction of ships at sea; and then promising the
soldiers a donative of a hundred denarii a man, as if he had surpassed
the most eminent examples of generosity, “Go your ways,” said he, “and be
merry; go and be rich.”

Upon his applying himself to make preparations for his triumph, besides
prisoners and those who had deserted from the barbarians, he picked out
the men of greatest stature in all Gaul, such as he said were fittest for
a triumph, with some of the most considerable persons in the province,
and reserved them to grace the solemnity; obliging them not only to dye
their hair of a yellowish colour, and let it grow long, but to learn the
German language, and assume the names commonly used in that country.
He ordered likewise the galley in which he had entered the ocean, to
be carried a great part of the way to Rome by land, and wrote to the
collectors of his revenue in the city, “to make proper preparations for
a triumph against his arrival, at as small expense as possible; but such
a one, however, as had never been seen before, since they had full power
and authority to seize the estates of all men whatever.”

In person, Caligula was tall, of a pale complexion, ill shaped, his neck
and legs very slender, his eyes and temples hollow, his forehead broad
and grim, his hair thin, and about the crown quite decayed. The other
parts of his body were much covered with hair. On this account, it was
reckoned a capital crime for any person to look down from above, as he
was passing by, or so much as to name a goat. His countenance, which was
naturally hideous and frightful, he purposely rendered more so, forming
it by a glass into the most horrible contortions. He was crazy both in
body and mind, being subject when a boy to the falling sickness. When he
arrived at the age of manhood, he would endure fatigue tolerably well,
yet so that occasionally he was liable to a faintness, during which he
remained incapable of any effort, even for his own preservation. He was
not insensible of the disorder of his mind, and sometimes had thoughts of
retiring to purge his brain. It was believed that his wife Cæsonia had
administered to him a love-potion which threw him into a frenzy. What
most of all disordered him was want of sleep, for he seldom had more than
three or four hours’ rest in a night; and even then he slept not soundly,
but disturbed by strange dreams; fancying one time that the ocean spoke
to him. Being therefore often weary with lying awake so great a part of
the night, he would one while sit upon the bed, and another while walk in
the longest porticos about his house, and now and then invoke and look
out for the approach of day.

In his clothes, shoes, and other parts of his dress, he neither followed
the usage of his country, his sex, nor indeed any fashion suitable to a
human creature. He would often appear abroad dressed in an embroidered
coat set with jewels, in a tunic with sleeves, and with bracelets upon
his arms; sometimes all in silks and habited like a woman; at other times
in the _crepidæ_ or buskins; sometimes in a sort of shoes used by the
meaner soldiers, or those of women, and commonly with a golden beard
fixed to his chin, holding in his hand a thunderbolt, a trident, or a
caduceus, marks of distinction belonging to the Gods only. Sometimes too
he appeared in the dress of Venus. He wore very commonly the triumphal
dress, even before his expedition, and sometimes the breast-plate of
Alexander the Great, taken out of the vault where his body lay.

In respect of the liberal sciences, he was little conversant in
philology, but applied himself with assiduity to the study of eloquence,
being indeed in point of enunciation sufficiently elegant and ready; and
these qualities appeared most conspicuous when he happened to be in a
passion. In speaking, his action was vehement, and his voice so strong
that he was heard at a great distance. When he was about to harangue, he
threatened “the sword of his lucubration.” He so much despised a soft
smooth style that he said Seneca, who was then much admired, “wrote
only boyish declamations,” and that “his language was nothing else but
sand without lime.” When pleaders were successful in a cause, he often
wrote answers to their speeches; and would exercise himself in composing
accusations or vindications of eminent persons that were impeached
before the senate; and according to his success he would exasperate or
assuage the situation of the party by his vote in the house; inviting the
equestrian order, by proclamation, to hear him.

He likewise applied himself with alacrity to the practice of several
other arts, as fencing, riding the chariot, singing, and dancing. In the
first of these, he practised with the weapons used in fighting; and drove
the chariot in circuses built in several places. He was so extremely
fond of singing and dancing that he could not refrain in the theatre
from singing with the tragedians, and imitating the gestures of the
actors, either in the way of approbation or correction. A _pervigilium_
which he had ordered the day upon which he was slain was thought to be
intended for no other reason than to take the opportunity afforded by
the licentiousness of such a season to make his first appearance upon
the stage. Sometimes he danced likewise in the night. Sending once,
in the second watch of the night, for three men of consular rank, who
were under great apprehensions from the message, he placed them by the
stage, and then all of a sudden came bursting out, with a loud noise of
flutes and _Scabella_, dressed in a pella and tunic reaching down to his
heels. Having danced out a song, he retired. Yet he who had acquired such
dexterity in other exercises, could never swim.

Those for whom he once conceived a regard he favoured even to madness.
He used to kiss Mnester, the pantomimic, publicly in the theatre; and
if any person made the least noise while he was dancing, he would order
him to be dragged out of his seat and scourged him with his own hand.
A Roman knight once making some bustle, he sent him, by a centurion,
an order to go forthwith down to Ostia, and carry a letter from him to
King Ptolemy in Mauretania. The letter was comprised in these words: “Do
neither good nor harm to the bearer.” He made some gladiators captains of
his German guards. He took from the gladiators called Mirmillones some
of their arms. One Columbus coming off with victory in a combat, but
being slightly wounded, he ordered some poison to be infused into the
wound, which he thence called _Columbinum_. For thus it certainly was put
down with his own hand amongst other poisons. He was so extravagantly
fond of the party of charioteers that rode in green, that he supped and
lodged for some time constantly in the stable where their horses were
kept. At a certain revel he made a present of two millions of sesterces
to one Cythicus a driver of a chariot. The day before the Circensian
games, he used by his soldiers to enjoin silence in the neighbourhood,
that the repose of his horse Incitatus might not be disturbed. For this
favourite animal, besides a marble stable, an ivory manger, scarlet body
clothes, and a bracelet of jewels, he appointed a house, with a retinue
of slaves, and fine furniture, for the reception of such as were invited
in the horse’s name to sup with him. It is even said that he designed to
have made him consul.[c]

Such is the picture of this lunatic as Suetonius vividly paints it.
For four years the world bore his furious madness without by sedition
protesting against such a saturnalia of power. “How I wish,” said the
monster,“that the Roman people had only one head, so I could strike it
off at a blow.” The senate, however, grew tired of finding him victims,
and finally, as already mentioned, a prætorian tribune, Chærea, strangled
him.

Chærea was a republican. He and his friends thought that, after such
a prince, monarchical government had been sufficiently judged by
experience. The occasion now seemed favourable for the senate to resume
the power. It did so, and for three days deemed a republic assured. But
this was reckoning without either soldiers or people.

At the time of Caligula’s murder, Claudius, his uncle, who was with him,
had hidden in an obscure corner. A soldier found and showed him to his
comrades. Claudius begged for life. “Be our emperor,” they answered, and
as he trembled and could not walk, they carried him to their camp, where
he regained sufficient courage to harangue the troops, promising them
money (donativum). It was the price of an empire he paid, an unfortunate
innovation which amongst the soldiers had passed into law.

The senators, abandoned little by little, themselves hastened to greet
the new master. Chærea was sentenced to death. “Do you know how to kill?”
he asked the soldier charged to execute him. “Your sword is not well
ground perhaps. That which I used for Caligula would be better.”


CLAUDIUS (TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS DRUSUS CÆSAR), 41-54 A.D.

Claudius, brother to Germanicus and grandson to Livia, through his father
Drusus the first, was then fifty years old. During his youth he had been
continually ill, and in the royal household every one had neglected the
poor child, not daring to show him either to the people or the soldiers.
At last his existence was almost forgotten and at forty-six he was not
even a senator. He consoled himself by study and writing a history of
the Etruscans and Carthaginians. Caligula, who named him consul, brought
him a little more into prominence; the soldiers’ whim did the rest.
They gave him the empire, but could not do away with the effects of his
upbringing, that timidity, irresolution, and want of self-dependence
which resulted most disastrously, so that he often did evil with the very
best intentions. In his reign the real rulers were his wife, Messallina,
whose name is one with all debauchery and even with most repulsive
coarseness, and his freedmen Polybius, Narcissus, and Pallas. [At least
they exercised an undue influence over him.]

Claudius began well. He revoked the acts of Caligula, had the Augustan
laws sworn to, and recalled the banished. Naturally kind-hearted, he
easily adopted the manners that had contributed to the popularity of the
first emperor. He visited his sick friends, consulting the consuls and
the senate as if he were quite dependent on their favour. He liked to
act as judge and often did it very well. Unfortunately, his undignified
bearing, his shaking head, stammering and often ridiculous speech made
him of very little account. He re-established the censorship and often
exercised it himself, but rather with the tastes of an antiquarian loving
old customs than with a sense of the real needs of the empire.

In spite of these oddities and weaknesses, this prince, without regarding
the examples of infamy and crime given by his surroundings, can hardly
be counted among the worst emperors. The freedmen whom long power had
not yet spoiled sought to justify their influence by good service,
and we find what we should hardly have expected--namely, several wise
measures with regard to slaves in the interior; against too greedy
advocates, usurers, and those banished from the provinces who flocked
to Rome, etc. Moreover, there were useful works: an aqueduct, a port at
Ostia, an attempt to drain Lake Fucinus, etc. In the provinces a liberal
administration and a firm foreign policy were crowned by success.

Augustus had wished to constitute a Roman minority in the midst of the
submissive nations which would prove a support to the government. But it
was to govern always in Rome’s interests. A futile effort, because he
was aiming at nothing less than arresting the course of the world, as
if the emperors could have continued an aristocracy against which they
had contended in the battles of Pharsalia, Thapsus, and Philippi. In his
will Augustus had advised a careful guarding of civic privilege, and in
the short space of thirty-four months, the number of citizens had nearly
doubled. Tiberius aided much in this increase. Claudius also contributed
largely, because he made the law of continuous extension and progressive
assimilation, which had made the fortune of the republic, a rule of
policy. He personally asked that the nobles of _Gallia Comata_, who had
long been citizens, should also assume Roman dignities and have a seat in
the senate.

[Illustration: THE EMPEROR CLAUDIUS

(From a bust in the Vatican)]

Only one religious provincial sect was persecuted under Claudius--that of
the Druids, because their priests refused the peace offered by Augustus
on condition of their uniting their gods to the Olympian deities.
Claudius tried, therefore, to abolish their worship, and punished with
death both priests and their adherents.[b]

In the interior parts of Britain, the natives, under the command of
Caractacus, maintained an obstinate resistance, and little progress was
made by the Roman arms, until Ostorius Scapula was sent over to prosecute
the war. He penetrated into the country of the Silures, a warlike tribe
who inhabited the banks of the Severn; and having defeated Caractacus in
a great battle, made him prisoner, and sent him to Rome (50 A.D.). The
fame of the British prince had by this time spread over the provinces of
Gaul and Italy; and upon his arrival in the Roman capital, the people
flocked from all quarters to behold him. The ceremonial of his entrance
was conducted with great solemnity. On a plain adjoining to the Roman
camp, the prætorian troops were drawn up in martial array; the emperor
and his court took their station in the front of the lines, and behind
them was ranged the whole body of the people. The procession commenced
with the different trophies which had been taken from the Britons during
the progress of the war. Next followed the brothers of the vanquished
prince, with his wife and daughter, in chains, expressing by their
supplicating looks and gestures the fears with which they were actuated.
But not so Caractacus himself. With a manly gait and an undaunted
countenance, he marched up to the tribunal, where the emperor was seated,
and addressed him in the following terms:

“If to my birth, and distinguished rank, I had added the virtues of
moderation, Rome had beheld me rather as a friend than a captive; and
you would not have rejected an alliance with a prince descended from
illustrious ancestors, and governing many nations. The reverse of my
fortune to you is glorious, and to me humiliating. I had arms, and men,
and horses; I possessed extraordinary riches; and can it be any wonder
that I was unwilling to lose them? Because Rome aspires to universal
dominion, must men therefore implicitly resign themselves to subjection?
I opposed for a long time the progress of your arms, and had I acted
otherwise, would either you have had the glory of conquest, or I of a
brave resistance? I am now in your power; if you are determined to take
revenge, my fate will soon be forgotten, and you will derive no honour
from the transaction. Preserve my life, and I shall remain to the latest
ages a monument of your clemency.”

Immediately upon this speech, Claudius granted him his liberty, as he did
likewise to the other royal captives. They all returned their thanks, in
a manner the most grateful to the emperor; and as soon as their chains
were taken off, walking towards Agrippina, who sat upon a bench at a
little distance, they repeated to her the same fervent declarations of
gratitude and esteem.

History has preserved no account of Caractacus after this period; but it
is probable that he returned in a short time to his own country, where
his former valour, and the magnanimity which he had displayed at Rome,
would continue to render him illustrious through life, even amidst the
irretrievable ruin of his fortunes.[c]

In Germany a successful expedition had restored to the Romans the last
of the eagles of Varus. But Claudius, practising on this side Tiberian
politics, busied himself particularly in taking up a strong position
on the Rhine and winning barbarian chiefs to the interests of Rome. He
succeeded so well that in 47 the Cherusci came to him, asking for a king.
Corbulo, the greatest general of this time, wanted to carry out the
plans of the first Drusus against the Germans. He subdued the Frisians
and attacked the Chauci. Claudius stayed his advance. “Happy were the
old Roman consuls!” said the ambitious general as he obeyed. In order
at least to occupy his soldiers he had a canal dug from the Meuse to
the Rhine, another leader made his men open the mines. Everywhere these
useful works were now demanded from the troops.

On the Danube peace was undisturbed. In Thrace various troubles made
Claudius intervene and reduce the country to a province. In the Bosporus,
a king deposed by him took arms, was conquered, and gave himself up. In
the East the emperor had the glory of reconquering Armenia and giving a
king to the Parthians. Unfortunately these successes did not continue;
the Roman candidate to the throne of the Arsacidæ was overthrown and for
some time Vologeses kept the Armenian crown on the head of his brother
Tiridates.

Lycia made bad use of her liberty, so Claudius took it away, and the
Jewish king, Agrippa, dying in 44, he united Palestine to the government
of Syria. In Africa, Suetonius Paulinus and Geta subdued the Moors, whose
country formed two provinces--the Mauretania Cæsariensis and Mauretania
Tingitana.

The emperor now lacked neither military nor political glory. Mauretania
and the half of Britain were conquered; the Germans coerced, the Bosporus
reduced to obedience; Thrace, Lycia, and Judea made provinces, and the
Parthian troubles long since smoothed over. Within the empire there was
growing prosperity; the army was well disciplined and its activity was
directed to the public welfare under the direction of generals grown old
in command. Certainly, results everywhere were sufficient to gratify the
pride of a prince. It is with regret that we have to turn to Rome to see
nobles whose only occupation was conspiracy or base flattery--and to that
imperial palace which was disgraced by a weak prince and his immoral
wife, the shameless Messallina.[b] The misdeeds of the latter will now
claim our attention. Let Tacitus draw her portrait:


THE MISDEEDS OF MESSALLINA DESCRIBED BY TACITUS

The facility of ordinary adulteries having produced satiety, Messallina
broke forth into unheard-of excesses; when even Silius, her paramour,
whether impelled by some fatal infatuation, or judging that the dangers
hanging over him were only to be averted by boldly confronting them,
urged that all disguises should now be renounced, for matters, he
said, were gone too far for them to wait for the death of the emperor;
blameless counsels were for the innocent, but in glaring guilt safety
must be sought in reckless daring. They were backed by accomplices who
dreaded the same doom. As for himself, he was single, childless, ready
to marry her, and to adopt Britannicus: to Messallina would still remain
her present power; with the addition of security, if they anticipated
Claudius; who, as he was unguarded against the approaches of stratagem,
so was he headstrong and impetuous when provoked to anger. These
suggestions were but coldly received by Messallina; from no love to her
husband; but lest Silius, when he had gained the sovereignty, should
scorn his adulteress; and the treason, which in his present perilous
predicament he approved, would then be estimated according to its real
desert. She, however, coveted the name of matrimony, from the greatness
of the infamy attaching to it; which, with those who are prodigal of
fame, forms the crowning gratification of depraved appetite. Nor stayed
she longer than till Claudius went to Ostia, to assist at a sacrifice;
when she celebrated her nuptials with Silius, with all the usual
solemnities.

I am aware [Tacitus continues] that it will appear fabulous that any
human beings should have exhibited such recklessness of consequences;
and that, in a city where everything was known and talked of, any one,
much more a consul elect, should have met the emperor’s wife, on a
stated day, in the presence of persons called in, to seal the deeds,
as for the purpose of procreation, and that she should have heard the
words of the augurs, entered the house of the husband, sacrificed to the
gods, sat down among the guests at the nuptial banquet, exchanged kisses
and embraces, and in fine passed the night in unrestrained conjugal
intercourse. But I would not dress up my narrative with fictions to give
it an air of marvel, rather than relate what has been stated to me or
written by my seniors.

The consequence was that the domestic circle of the prince was
horror-struck; especially those who had the chief sway, and who dreaded
the result, if the state of things should be changed, no longer confined
themselves to secret communications, but exclaimed with undisguised
indignation that while the emperor’s bedchamber was made the theatre for
a stage-player to dance upon, a reproach was indeed incurred, but the
immediate dissolution of the state was not now threatened: a young man
of noble rank, of fascinating person, mental vigour, and just entering
upon the consulship, was addressing himself to higher objects; nor was it
any enigma what remained to be done after such a marriage. It is true,
when they reflected on the stupidity of Claudius, his blind attachment to
his wife, and the many lives sacrificed to her fury, they were unable to
divest themselves of apprehensions; again, even the passive spirit of the
emperor revived their confidence; that, if they could first possess him
with the horrid blackness of her crimes, she might be despatched without
trial. But the danger turned upon this--that she might make a defence;
and that even if she confessed her guilt, the emperor might be deaf to
that evidence also.

But first it was deliberated by Callistus, whom, in relating the
assassination of Caligula, I have already mentioned; by Narcissus,
who plotted the murder of Appius; and by Pallas, then the reigning
favourite, whether, feigning ignorance of all other circumstances, they
should compel Messallina to break off her amour with Silius by secret
menaces; but they afterwards abandoned this project from fear lest they
should themselves be dragged to execution as culprits. Pallas was faint
hearted; and Callistus, a courtier in the last reign also, had learned by
experience that power was secured more effectually by wary measures than
by daring counsels. Narcissus persisted; with this difference only, that
he took care not to let fall a word by which she might know beforehand
the charge against her or her accuser; and watching all occasions, while
the emperor lingered at Ostia, he prevailed with two courtesans, who were
the chief mistresses of Claudius, to undertake the task of laying the
matter before him, by means of presents and promises, and by representing
to them in attractive colours that by the fall of his wife their own
influence would be increased.

Calpurnia therefore, for that was the name of the courtesan, upon the
first occasion of privacy, falling at the emperor’s feet, exclaimed, that
Messallina had married Silius; and at the same time asked Cleopatra,
who purposely attended to attest it, whether she had not found it to be
true. Claudius, upon a confirmation from Cleopatra, ordered Narcissus
to be called. He, when he came, begged pardon for his past conduct in
having concealed from the prince her adulteries while they were limited
to the Vectii and Plautii; nor meant he now, he said, to charge Silius
with adulteries; nor urge that he should restore the house, the slaves,
and the other decorations of imperial fortune: the adulterer might still
enjoy these; let him only break the nuptial tables, and restore the
emperor’s wife. “Know you, Cæsar, that you are in a state of divorce? In
the face of the people, and senate, and soldiery, Messallina has espoused
Silius; and unless you act with despatch, her husband is master of Rome.”

He then sent for his most confidential friends, particularly for
Turranius, superintendent of the stores; next for Lusius Geta, captain of
the prætorian guards; and inquired of them. As they avouched it, the rest
beset him with clamorous importunities, that he should forthwith proceed
to the camp, secure the prætorian cohorts, and consult his preservation
before his revenge. It is certain that Claudius was so confounded and
panic-stricken that he was incessantly asking whether he were still
emperor--whether Silius was still a private man.

As to Messallina, she never wallowed in greater voluptuousness; it
was then the middle of autumn, and in her house she exhibited a
representation of the vintage; the wine-presses were plied, the wine
vats flowed, and round them danced women begirt with skins, like
Bacchanalians at their sacrifices, or under the maddening inspiration
of their deity. She herself, with her hair loose and flowing, waved a
thyrsus; by her side Silius, crowned with ivy, and wearing buskins,
tossed his head about; while around them danced the wanton choir in
obstreperous revelry. It is reported that Vectius Valens, having in
a frolic climbed to an exceeding high tree, when asked what he saw,
answered, “A terrible storm from Ostia.”

[Illustration: MESSALLINA

(From a portrait bust)]

It was now no longer vague rumour; but messengers poured in on all sides
with tidings that Claudius, apprised of all, had approached, bent upon
instant vengeance. They separated; Messallina betook herself to the
gardens of Lucullus, and Silius, to dissemble his fear, resumed the
offices of the Forum. As the rest were slipping off different ways, the
centurions came up with them and bound them, some in the street, others
in lurking-places, according as each was found. Messallina, however,
though in her distress incapable of deliberation, formed the bold
resolution of meeting her husband, and presenting herself to his view--an
expedient which had often proved her protection. She likewise ordered
that Britannicus and Octavia should go forth and embrace their father;
and besought Vibidia, the oldest vestal, to intercede with the chief
pontiff, and earnestly importune his clemency. She herself meanwhile
traversed on foot the whole extent of the city, attended only by three
persons (so suddenly had her whole train forsaken her), and then, in a
cart employed to carry out dirt from the gardens, took the road to Ostia,
unpitied by anyone, as the deformity of her crimes overpowered every
feeling of the kind.

Claudius was in a state of no less trepidation; for he could not
implicitly rely on Geta, the captain of his guards--an equally fickle
instrument of fraud or honesty. Narcissus therefore, in concert with
those who entertained the same mistrust, assured the emperor, that there
was no other expedient to preserve him than the transferring the command
of his guards to one of his freedmen, for that day only; and offered
himself to undertake it. And, that Lucius Vitellius and Publius Largus
Cæcina might not on his way to the city prevail with Claudius to relent,
he desired to have a seat in the same vehicle, and took it.

It was afterwards currently reported that, while the emperor was giving
expression to the opposite feelings which agitated his breast, at one
time inveighing against the atrocities of his wife, and then at length
recurring to the recollection of conjugal intercourse and the tender
age of his children, Vitellius uttered nothing but “Oh! the villainy!
Oh! the treason!” Narcissus indeed pressed him to discard all ambiguity
of expression, and let them know his real sentiments; but he did not
therefore prevail upon him to give any other than indecisive answers,
and such as would admit of any interpretation which might be put upon
them; and his example was followed by Largus Cæcina. And now Messallina
was in sight, and importunately called on the emperor “to hear the
mother of Octavia and Britannicus,” when her accuser drowned her cries
with the story of Silius and the marriage, and delivered at the same
time to Claudius a memorial reciting all her whoredoms; to divert him
from beholding her. Soon after, as the emperor was entering Rome, it was
attempted to present to him his children by her; but Narcissus ordered
them to be taken away. He could not, however, prevent Vibidia from
insisting, with earnest remonstrances, that he would not deliver his
wife to destruction without a hearing; so that Narcissus was obliged to
assure her that the prince would hear Messallina, who should have full
opportunity of clearing herself; and advised the vestal to retire and
attend the solemnities of her goddess.

The silence of Claudius, while all this was going on, was matter of
astonishment. Vitellius seemed like one who was not in the secret:
the freedman controlled everything; by his command, the house of the
adulterer was opened, and the emperor escorted thither, where the first
thing he showed him was the statue of Silius, the father, in the porch,
though it had been decreed to be demolished by the senate; then that all
the articles belonging to the Neros and Drusi had now become the price
of dishonour. Thus incensed, and breaking forth into menaces, he led him
direct to the camp, where the soldiers being already assembled, by the
direction of Narcissus, he made them a short speech; for shame prevented
his giving utterance to his indignation, though he had just cause for it.

The soldiers then clamoured unremittingly and importunately that the
culprits should be tried and punished. Silius was placed before the
tribunal; he made no defence, he sought no delay, but begged only to be
despatched immediately. Illustrious Roman knights also, with similar
firmness of mind, were eager for a speedy death. He therefore commanded
Titius Proculus, assigned by Silius as a guard to Messallina; Vectius
Valens, who confessed his guilt, and offered to discover others, Pompeius
Ubicus and Saufellus Trogus, as accomplices, to be all dragged to
execution. On Decius Calpurnianus too, præfect of the watch; Sulpicius
Rufus, comptroller of the games; and Juncus Vergilianus, the senator, the
same punishment was inflicted.

Mnester alone caused some hesitation. He tore off his clothes and called
upon the emperor to behold upon his body the impressions of the lash;
to remember his own commands, obliging him to submit to the pleasure of
Messallina without reserve: others had been tempted to the iniquity by
great presents or aspiring hopes; but his offence was forced upon him.
Nor would any man have sooner perished had Silius gained the sovereignty.
These considerations affected Claudius, and strongly inclined him to
mercy; but his freedmen overruled him. They urged that after so many
illustrious sacrifices, he should by no means think of saving a player;
that in a crime of such enormity, it mattered not whether he had
committed it from choice or necessity. As little effect had the defence
even of Traulus Montanus, a youth of signal modesty and remarkably
handsome, summoned by Messallina to her bed without any solicitation
on his part, and in one night cast off; such was the wantonness with
which her passion was alike surfeited and inflamed. The lives of Suilius
Cæsoninus and Plautius Lateranus were spared; of the last, on account of
the noble exploits of his uncle: the other was protected by his vices, as
one who, in the late abominable society, had prostituted himself like a
woman.

Meanwhile Messallina was in the gardens of Lucullus, still striving to
prolong her life, and composing supplications to the prince, sometimes
in the language of hope, at others giving vent to rage and resentment,
so indomitable was her insolence even under the immediate prospect
of death. And had not Narcissus hastened her assassination, the doom
which he had prepared for her would have recoiled upon himself. For
Claudius, upon his return home, experienced a mitigation of his wrath,
from the effects of a sumptuous repast; and as soon as he became warm
with wine, he ordered them “to go and acquaint the miserable woman (for
this was the appellation which he is said to have used) that to-morrow
she should attend and plead her cause.” These words indicated that his
resentment was abating, his wonted affection returning; besides, if they
delayed, the effect of the following night, and the reminiscences which
the conjugal chamber might awaken in Claudius, were matter for alarm.
Narcissus therefore rushed forth, and directed the tribune and centurions
then attending upon duty to despatch the execution, for such, he said,
was the emperor’s command. With them he sent Euodus of the freedmen, as
a watch upon them, and to see his orders strictly fulfilled. Euodus flew
before them to the gardens, and found her lying along upon the earth;
her mother, Lepida, sitting by her side--who during her prosperity had
not lived in harmony with her, but, in this her extreme necessity, was
overcome by compassion for her, and now persuaded her not to wait for the
executioner: “the course of her life was run, and her only object now
should be to die becomingly.” But a mind sunk and corrupted by debauchery
retained no sense of honour; she was giving way to bootless tears and
lamentations when from the shock of the approaching party the door flew
open: the tribune stood in silence before her; but the freedman upbraided
her with many and insolent reproaches, characteristic of the slave.

Then for the first time she became deeply sensible of her condition, and
laying hold of the steel, applied it first to her throat, then to her
breast, with trembling and irresolute hand, when the tribune ran her
through. Her corpse was granted to her mother. Tidings were then carried
to Claudius that Messallina was no more, without distinguishing whether
by her own or another’s hand; neither did he inquire, but called for a
cup of wine, and proceeded in the usual ceremonies of the feast. Nor did
he, indeed, during the following days, manifest any symptom of disgust or
joy, of resentment or sorrow, nor, in short, of any human affection; not
when he beheld the accusers of his wife exulting at her death, not when
he looked upon her mourning children. The senate aided in effacing her
from his memory, by decreeing that from all public and private places
her name should be rased, and her images removed. To Narcissus were
decreed the decorations of the quæstorship; a very small reward indeed,
considering his towering elevation; for he was more influential than
Pallas and Callistus.[d]


THE INTRIGUES OF AGRIPPINA

[Sidenote: [48-49 A.D.]]

The freedmen now had the task of selecting another wife for their feeble
prince, who was not capable of leading a single life, and who was sure
to be governed by the successful candidate. The principal women in Rome
were ambitious for the honour of sharing the bed of the imperial idiot,
but the claims of all were forced to yield to those of Lollia Paulina,
the former wife of Caligula, Julia Agrippina the daughter of Germanicus,
and Ælia Petina, Claudius’ own divorced wife. The first was patronised
by Callistus, the second by Pallas, the last by Narcissus. Agrippina,
however, in consequence of her frequent access to her uncle, easily
triumphed over her rivals; the only difficulty that presented itself
was that of a marriage between uncle and niece being contrary to Roman
manners, and being even regarded as incestuous. This difficulty, however,
the compliant L. Vitellius, who was then censor, undertook to remove.
He addressed the senate, stating the necessity of a domestic partner
to a prince who had on him such weighty public cares. He then launched
forth in praise of Agrippina; as to the objection of the nearness of
kindred, such unions he said were practised among other nations, and
at one time first-cousins did not use to marry, while now they did so
commonly. The servile assembly outran the speaker in zeal; they rushed
out of the house, and a promiscuous rabble collected, shouting that such
was the wish of the Roman people. Claudius repaired to the senate house,
and caused a decree to be made legalising marriages between uncles and
nieces, and he then formally espoused Agrippina. Yet such was the light
in which the incestuous union was viewed that, corrupt as the Roman
character was become, only two persons were found to follow the imperial
example.

Agrippina also proposed to unite her son Domitius with Octavia the
daughter of Claudius; but here there was a difficulty also, for Octavia
was betrothed to L. Silanus. Again, however, she found a ready tool in
the base Vitellius, to whose son Julia Calvina, the sister of Silanus,
had been married. As the brother and sister indulged their affection
imprudently, though not improperly, the worthy censor took the occasion
to make a charge of incest against Silanus, and to strike him out of the
list of senators. Claudius then broke off the match, and Silanus put an
end to himself on the very day of Agrippina’s marriage. His sister was
banished, and Claudius ordered some ancient rites expiatory of incest to
be performed, unconscious of the application of them which would be made
to himself.

The woman, who had now obtained the government of Claudius and the Roman
Empire, was of a very different character from the abandoned Messallina.
The latter had nothing noble about her, she was the mere bondslave of
lust, and cruel and avaricious only for its gratification; but Agrippina
was a woman of superior mind, though utterly devoid of principle. In her,
lust was subservient to ambition; it was the desire of power or the fear
of death, and not wantonness, that made her submit to the incestuous
embraces of her brutal brother Caligula, and to be prostituted to the
companions of his vices. It was ambition and parental love that made
her now form an incestuous union with her uncle. To neither of her
husbands, Cn. Domitius or Crispus Passienus, does she appear to have been
voluntarily unfaithful. The bed of Claudius was, however, not fated to be
unpolluted; for as a means of advancing her views, Agrippina formed an
illicit connection with Pallas.

[Sidenote: [49-54 A.D.]]

The great object of Agrippina was to exclude Britannicus, and obtain the
succession for her own son Nero Domitius, now a boy of twelve years of
age. She therefore caused Octavia to be betrothed to him, and she had
the philosopher Seneca recalled from Corsica, whither he had been exiled
by the arts of Messallina, and committed to him the education of her
son, that he might be fitted for empire. In the following year Claudius,
yielding to her influence, adopted him.

[Illustration: RUINS OF THE AQUEDUCT OF CLAUDIUS]

In order to bring Nero forward, Agrippina caused him to assume the
virile toga before the usual age, and the servile senate desired of
Claudius that he might be consul at the age of twenty, and meantime be
elect with proconsular power without the city. A donative was given to
the soldiers, and a congiary (congiarium) to the people in his name.
At the Circensian games, given to gain the people, Nero appeared in
the triumphal habit; Britannicus in a simple _prætexta_. Every one who
showed any attachment to this poor youth was removed on one pretence or
another, and he was surrounded with the creatures of Agrippina. Finally,
as the two commanders of the guards were supposed to be attached to the
interests of the children of Messallina, she persuaded Claudius that
their discipline would be much improved if they were placed under one
commander. Accordingly those officers were removed, and the command was
given to Burrus Afranius, a man of high character for probity and of
great military reputation, and who knew to whom he was indebted for his
elevation.

The pride and haughtiness of Agrippina far transcended anything that Rome
had as yet witnessed in a woman. When the British prince Caractacus and
his family, whom P. Ostorius had sent captives to the emperor, were led
before him as he sat on his tribunal in the plain under the prætorian
camp, with all the troops drawn out, Agrippina appeared seated on another
tribunal, as the partner of his power. And again, when the letting off
of the Fucine Lake was celebrated with a naval combat, she presided with
him, habited in a military cloak of cloth of gold.

Agrippina at length grew weary of delay, or fearful of discovery.
Narcissus, who saw at what she was aiming, appeared resolved to exert all
his influence in favour of Britannicus; and Claudius himself, one day
when he was drunk, was heard to say that it was his fate to bear with
the infamy of his wives and then to punish it. He had also begun to show
peculiar marks of affection for Britannicus. She therefore resolved to
act without delay.[e]


TACITUS DESCRIBES THE MURDER OF CLAUDIUS

[Sidenote: [54 A.D.]]

Claudius was attacked with illness, and for the recovery of his health
had recourse to the soft air and salubrious waters of Sinuessa. It
was then that Agrippina, long since bent upon the impious deed, and
eagerly seizing the present occasion, well furnished too as she was
with wicked agents, deliberated upon the nature of the poison she would
use: whether, if it were sudden and instantaneous in its operation,
the desperate achievement would not be brought to light; if she chose
materials slow and consuming in their operation, whether Claudius, when
his end approached, and perhaps having discovered the treachery, would
not resume his affection for his son. Something of a subtle nature was
resolved upon, “such as would disorder his brain and require time to
kill.” An experienced artist in such preparations was chosen, her name
Locusta; lately condemned for poisoning, and long reserved as one of the
instruments of ambition. By this woman’s skill the poison was prepared;
to administer it was assigned to Halotus, one of the eunuchs, whose
office it was to serve up the emperor’s repasts, and prove the viands by
tasting them.

In fact, all the particulars of this transaction were soon afterwards
so thoroughly known that the writers of those times are able to recount
how the poison was poured into a dish of mushrooms, of which he was
particularly fond; but whether it was that his senses were stupefied, or
from the wine he had drunk, the effect of the poison was not immediately
perceived; at the same time a relaxation of the intestines seemed to
have been of service to him. Agrippina therefore became dismayed; but as
her life was at stake, she thought little of the odium of her present
proceedings, and called in the aid of Xenophon the physician, whom she
had already implicated in her guilty purposes. It is believed that he,
as if he purposed to assist Claudius in his efforts to vomit, put down
his throat a feather besmeared with deadly poison; not unaware that in
desperate villainies the attempt without the deed is perilous, while to
ensure the reward they must be done effectually at once.

The senate was in the meantime assembled, and the consuls and pontiffs
were offering vows for the recovery of the emperor, when, already dead,
he was covered with clothes and warm applications, to hide it till
matters were arranged for securing the empire to Nero. First there was
Agrippina, who, feigning to be overpowered with grief and anxiously
seeking for consolation, clasped Britannicus in her arms, called him
“the very model of his father,” and by various artifices withheld him
from leaving the chamber. She likewise detained Antonia and Octavia, his
sisters, and had closely guarded all the approaches to the palace: from
time to time too she gave out that the prince was on the mend, that the
soldiery might entertain hopes till the auspicious moment, predicted by
the calculations of the astrologers, should arrive.

At last, on the thirteenth day of October, at noon, the gates of the
palace were suddenly thrown open, and Nero, accompanied by Burrus, went
forth to the cohort, which, according to the custom of the army, was
keeping watch. There, upon a signal made by the præfect, he was received
with shouts of joy, and instantly put into a litter. It was reported that
there were some who hesitated, looking back anxiously, and frequently
asking where Britannicus was, but as no one came forward to oppose it,
they embraced the choice which was offered them. Thus Nero was borne
to the camp, where, after a speech suitable to the exigency, and the
promise of a largess equal to that of the late emperor his father, he was
saluted emperor. The voice of the soldiers was followed by the decrees
of the senate; nor was there any hesitation in the several provinces.
To Claudius were decreed divine honours, and his funeral obsequies were
solemnised with the same pomp as those of the deified Augustus; Agrippina
emulating the magnificence of her great-grandmother Livia. His will,
however, was not rehearsed, lest the preference of the son of his wife
to his own son might excite the minds of the people by its injustice and
baseness.[d]


THE CHARACTER OF CLAUDIUS

We meet with more than one instance in the imperial history of the
parents suffering for the sins of their children. We have already seen
how much reason there is to believe that the hatred of the Romans to
Tiberius disposed them readily to accept any calumny against Livia.
Tiberius himself was hated the more for the crimes of his successor
Caius; and there is ground to surmise that much of the odium which has
attached to Claudius is reflected from the horror with which Nero came
afterwards to be regarded. Thus did the Romans avenge themselves on the
authors of the principle of hereditary succession so long unknown to
their polity, and known at last so disadvantageously.

Of Claudius, at least, a feeling of compassion, if not of justice, may
incline us to pronounce with more indulgence than has usually been
accorded to him. He was an imitator, as we have seen, of Augustus,
but only as the silver age might parody the golden; for the manners
he sought to revive, and the sentiments he pretended to regenerate,
had not been blighted by the passing tempest of civil war, but were
naturally decaying from the over-ripeness of age. Nevertheless, it was
honourable to admire a noble model; there was some generosity even in
the attempt to rival the third founder of the state. Nor, in fact, does
any period of Roman history exhibit more outward signs of vigorous and
successful administration: none was more fertile in victories or produced
more gallant commanders or excellent soldiers; domestic affairs were
prosperously conducted; the laborious industry of the emperor himself
tired out all his ministers and assistants. The senate recovered some
portion of its authority, and, with authority, of courage and energy.

Claudius secured respect for letters, in an age of show and sensuality,
by his personal devotion to them. From some of the worst vices of his age
and class he was remarkably exempt. His gluttony, if we must believe
the stories told of it, was countenanced at least by many high examples;
his cruelty, or rather his callous insensibility, was the result of the
perverted training which made human suffering a sport to the master of
a single slave, as well as to the emperor on the throne; and it was
never aggravated at least by wanton caprice or ungovernable passion. The
contempt which has been thrown upon his character and understanding has
been generated, in a great degree, by the systematic fabrications of
which he has been made the victim. Though flattered with a lip-worship
which seems to our notions incredible, Claudius appears to have risen
personally above its intoxicating vapours; we know that, in one instance
at least, the fulsome adulation of a man, the most remarkable of his age
for eloquence and reputed wisdom, failed to turn the course whether of
his justice or his anger.


THE LIVING CLAUDIUS EULOGISED BY SENECA

The circumstances of this adulation, and of its disappointment, it is
due to the memory of Claudius to detail. We have no distinct account of
the cause of Seneca’s banishment, which is ascribed, by little better
than a guess, to the machinations of Messallina against the friends
and adherents of Julia. However this may be, we have seen with what
impatience the philosopher bore it. On the occasion of the death of a
brother of Polybius, he addressed a treatise from his place of exile to
the still powerful freedman, such as was styled a “consolation,” in which
he set forth all the arguments which wit and friendship could suggest
to alleviate his affliction and fortify his wisdom. After assuring him
of the solemn truth that all men are mortal, and reminding him that
this world itself, with all that it contains, is subject to the common
law of dissolution; that man is born to sorrow; that the dead can have
no pleasure in his grief; that his grief at the best is futile and
unprofitable; he diverts him with another topic which is meant to be
still more effectual. “The emperor,” he says, “is divine, and those
who are blessed by employment in his service, and have him ever before
their eyes, can retain no idle interest in human things; their happy
souls neither fear nor sorrow can enter; the divinity is with them and
around them. Me,” he declares, “this god has not overthrown; rather he
has supported when others supplanted me; he still suffers me to remain
for a monument of his providence and compassion. Whether my cause be
really good or bad, his justice will at last pronounce it good, or his
clemency will so regard it. Meanwhile, it is my comfort to behold his
pardons travelling through the world; even from the corner where I am
cast away his mercy has called forth many an exile before me. One day the
eyes of his compassion will alight on me also. Truly those thunderbolts
are just which the thunderstricken have themselves learned to adore. May
the immortals long indulge him to the world! May he rival the deeds of
Augustus and exceed his years! While still resident among us, may death
never cross his threshold! Distant be the day, and reserved for the tears
of our grandchildren, when his divine progenitors demand him for the
heavens which are his own.”

[Illustration: HADRIAN

(FROM THE STATUE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM)]

Such were the phrases, sonorous and unctuously polished, which Polybius
was doubtless expected to recite in the ears of the imperial pedant.
Standing high as he still did in the favour of Claudius and Messallina,
he had the means, and was perhaps not without the will, to recommend
them with all his interest, and intercede in the flatterer’s behalf.
Yet Claudius, it would seem, remained wholly unmoved by a worship more
vehement than Ovid’s, and enhanced still more by the unquestioned
reputation of its author. Whatever had been the motives of his sentence
against Seneca, it was not by flattery that he could be swayed to reverse
it. Surely, as far as we are competent to judge, we must think the better
both of his firmness and his sense. Shortly afterwards Polybius was
himself subverted by the caprice of Messallina; Messallina in her turn
was overthrown by Agrippina; and it was not till the sister of Julia had
gained the ascendant that Seneca obtained at her instance the grace he
had vainly solicited through the good offices of the freedman.


THE DEAD CLAUDIUS SATIRISED BY SENECA

But however little Claudius may have relied on the sincerity of this
brilliant phrase-monger, he could scarce have anticipated the revulsion
of sentiment to which so ardent a worshipper would not blush to give
utterance on his demise. It was natural of course that the returned exile
should attach himself to his benefactress; from her hands he had received
his honours, by her he was treated with a confidence which flattered him.
No doubt he was among the foremost of the courtiers who deserted the
setting to adore the rising luminary. Yet few, perhaps, could believe
that no sooner should Claudius be dead, ere yet the accents of official
flattery had died away which proclaimed him entered upon the divine
career of his ancestors, than the worshipper of the living emperor should
turn his deification into ridicule, and blast his name with a slander of
unparalleled ferocity. There is no more curious fragment of antiquity
than the _Vision of Judgment_ which Seneca has left us on the death and
deification of Claudius.

[Illustration: “SENECA”

(From a bust in the Naples Museum)]

The traveller who has visited modern Rome in the autumn season has
remarked the numbers of unwieldy and bloated gourds which sun their
speckled bellies before the doors, to form a favourite condiment to
the food of the poorer classes. When Claudius expired in the month of
October, his soul, according to the satirist, long lodged in the inflated
emptiness of his own swollen carcass, migrated by an easy transition
into a kindred pumpkin. The senate declared that he had become a god;
but Seneca knew that he was only transformed into a gourd. The senate
decreed his divinity, Seneca translated it into pumpkinity; and proceeded
to give a burlesque account of what may be supposed to have happened
in heaven on the appearance of the new aspirant to celestial honours.
A tall gray-haired figure has arrived halting at the gates of Olympus;
he mops and mows, and shakes his palsied head, and when asked whence
he comes and what is his business, mutters an uncouth jargon in reply
which none can understand. Jupiter sends Hercules to interrogate the
creature, for Hercules is a travelled god, and knows many languages; but
Hercules himself, bold and valiant as he is, shudders at the sight of a
strange unearthly monster, with the hoarse inarticulate moanings of a
seal or sea-calf. He fancied that he saw his thirteenth labour before
him. Presently, on a nearer view, he discovers that it is a sort of man.
Accordingly he takes courage to address him with a verse from Homer,
the common interpreter of gods and men; and Claudius, rejoicing at the
sound of Greek, and auguring that his own histories will be understood in
heaven, replies with an apt quotation.

To pass over various incidents which are next related, and the gibes of
the satirist on the Gaulish origin of Claudius, and his zeal in lavishing
the franchise on Gauls and other barbarians, we find the gods assembled
in conclave to deliberate on the pretensions of their unexpected visitor.
Certain of the deities rise in their places, and express themselves with
divers exquisite reasons in his favour; and his admission is about to be
carried with acclamation, when Augustus starts to his feet (for the first
time, as he calls them all to witness, since he became a god himself--for
Augustus in heaven is reserved and silent, and keeps strictly to his
own affairs), and recounts the crimes and horrors of his grandchild’s
career. He mentions the murder of his father-in-law Silanus, and his two
sons-in-law Silanus and Pompeius, and the father-in-law of his daughter,
and the mother-in-law of the same, of his wife Messallina, and of others
more than can be named.

The gods are struck with amazement and indignation. Claudius is repelled
from the threshold of Olympus, and led by Mercury to the shades below.
As he passes along the Via Sacra he witnesses the pageant of his own
obsequies, and then first apprehends the fact of his decease. He
hears the funeral dirge in which his actions are celebrated in most
grandiloquent sing-song, descending at last to the abruptest bathos. But
the satirist can strike a higher note; the advent of the ghost to the
infernal regions is described with a sublime irony. “Claudius is come!”
shout the spirits of the dead, and at once a vast multitude assemble
around him, exclaiming, with the chant of the priests of Apis, “We have
found him, we have found him; rejoice and be glad!”[17] Among them was
Silius the consul and Junius the prætor and Traulus and Trogus and
Cotta, Vectius, and Fabius, Roman knights, whom Narcissus had done to
death. Then came the freedmen Polybius and Myron, Harpocras, Amphæus,
and Pheronactes, whom Claudius had despatched to hell before him, that
he might have his ministers below. Next advanced Catonius and Rufus,
the prefects, and his friends Lusius and Pedo, and Lupus and Celer,
consulars, and finally a number of his own kindred, his wife and cousins
and son-in-law. “Friends everywhere!” simpered the fool; “pray how came
you all here?” “How came we here?” thundered Pompeius Pedo: “who sent us
here but thou, O murderer of all thy friends?” And thereupon the newcomer
is hurried away before the judgment seat of Æacus. An old boon companion
offers to plead for him; Æacus, most just of men, forbids, and condemns
the criminal, one side only heard. “As he hath done,” he exclaims, “so
shall he be done by.” The shades are astounded at the novelty of the
judgment; to Claudius it seems rather unjust than novel. Then the nature
of his punishment is considered. Some would relieve Tantalus or Ixion
from their torments and make the imperial culprit take their place; but
no, that would still leave him the hope of being himself in the course of
ages relieved. His pains must be never ending, still beginning; eternal
trifler and bungler that he was, he shall play for ever and ever with a
bottomless dice-box.

Such was the scorn which might be flung upon the head of a national
divinity, even though he were the adoptive father of the ruler of the
state; nor perhaps was the new and upstart deity much more cavalierly
treated than might sometimes be the lot of the established denizens of
Olympus. It is true that Nero at a later period thought fit to degrade
his parent from these excessive honours, and even demolished the
unfinished works of his temple on the Cælian Hill; but there is no reason
to suppose that Seneca reserved his spite until this catastrophe, or that
the prince evinced any marks of displeasure at the unrestrained laughter
with which doubtless his satire was greeted.

While the memory of the deceased emperor was thus ruthlessly torn
in pieces, the writer had been careful to exalt in terms the most
extravagant the anticipated glories of his successor; and the vain,
thoughtless heir perceived not that the mockery of his sire was the
deepest of insults to himself. Of the figure, accomplishments, and
character of Nero we shall speak more particularly hereafter; enough that
he was young, that he was not ungraceful in appearance, that he had some
talents, and, above all, the talent of exhibiting them.

With such qualifications the new occupant of a throne could never
want for flatterers. To sing them, the sage of the rugged countenance
mounts gaily on the wings of poetry, and sports in lines of mellifluous
mellowness, such as might grace the erotic lyre of the most callow
votary of the Muses. At last, he says, in mercy to his wretchedness, the
life-thread of the stolid Claudius had been severed by the fatal shears.
But Lachesis, at that moment, had taken in her hands another skein of
dazzling whiteness, and as it glided nimbly through her fingers, the
common wool of life was changed into a precious tissue--a golden age
untwined from the spindle. The sisters ply their work in gladness, and
glory in their blessed task; and far, far away stretches the glittering
thread, beyond the years of Nestor and Tithonus. Phœbus stands by their
side, and sings to them as they spin--Phœbus the god of song and the god
of prophecy. “Stay not, oh stay not, gentle sisters; he shall transcend
the limits of human life; he shall be like me in face, like me in beauty;
neither in song nor in eloquence behind me. He shall restore a blissful
age to wearied men, and break again the long silence of the Laws. Yes,
as when Lucifer drives the stars before him, and morning dissipates the
clouds, the bright sun gazes on the world, and starts his chariot on
its daily race,--so Cæsar breaks upon the earth; such is the Nero whom
Rome now beholds--beams his bright countenance with tempered rays, and
glistens his fair neck beneath its floating curls.”[f]


FOOTNOTES

[8] [It may be stated, once for all, that the view of Tiberius here
presented has not gone unchallenged. Tarver[n] in particular champions
the emperor against his ancient and modern detractors. It is urged that
Tiberius was really a sternly moral man, with a high standard of duty,
whose want of tact and sociability alone made him unpopular. His letters
and addresses to the senate are said to show great dignity and wisdom;
and it is claimed that from his youth up his habits were regular and
his life simple and frugal. All this may be true of the early years of
Tiberius, but the balance of opinion strongly supports the belief that in
his later years the emperor showed a different spirit. Perhaps disease or
senility may have produced the change.]

[9] [Full details of the German campaign have been given in Chapter XXX.
A brief résumé is given here for added clearness.]

[10] [Tacitus[d] however, speaks of the _legatus Mœsiæ_ A.D. 14, so it
would seem that Mœsia became a Roman province in the reign of Augustus.]

[11] [This is the number as stated by Tacitus; Suetonius says twenty
thousand.]

[12] Augustus was so taken with the charms of this island, that he gave
lands in exchange for it to the people of Naples to whom it belonged.
Dion,[j] LII, 43.

[13] Writers differ as to her age. Tacitus merely says _extrema ætate_.
Pliny[k] (XIV, 8) makes her eighty-two, Dion[j] (LVIII, 1) eighty-six
years old. This last seems to be the more correct, as her son Tiberius
was now seventy years of age.

[14] According to Josephus,[h] Antonia, the widow of his brother Drusus,
wrote him a full account of Sejanus’ proceedings, and sent it by a trusty
slave named Pallas.

[15] [In attempting clearly to comprehend the disturbances that attended
the later period of Tiberius, we must bear in mind that the republican
reaction against the empire was now at its height, and that severe
measures were doubtless necessary in crushing the movement. The adoption
of such measures does not necessarily imply that Tiberius had changed his
public policy: it was but natural that he should defend the principate to
the utmost of his ability. But such conditions reacted disastrously upon
the public morals, and fostered the hatred of the emperor.]

[16] [It must, however, be understood that Tacitus unquestionably based
his opinions upon contemporary accounts that have not come down to us, or
upon the verbal testimony of eye-witnesses. Tacitus was born only about
twenty years after the death of Tiberius. It would appear, however, that
the famous historian was led to adopt systematically the opinions, and
even the indignant gossip, of the emperor’s enemies.]

[17] Seneca, _Apocol._ 13. Claudius Cæsar venit … ἑυρήκαμεν, συγχαίρωμεν.
Great has been the success of this remarkable passage, which may possibly
have suggested the noble lines of Shakespeare (_Rich. III._ Act i. sc. 4):

    “Clarence is come, false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,
    That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury.”

It is more probable that Voltaire had it in his mind when he pronounced
on the fate of Constantine and Clovis; and more than one stanza of
Byron’s _Vision of Judgment_ is evidently suggested by it.




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XXXIV. NERO: LAST EMPEROR OF THE HOUSE OF CÆSAR


NERO CLAUDIUS CÆSAR DRUSUS GERMANICUS: 54-68 A.D.

[Sidenote: [54-59 A.D.]]

Brought up in a corrupt court, in the midst of his mother’s guilty
intrigues, Nero soon saw himself surrounded by flatterers apt at
eulogising all his follies and excusing all his crimes. He did not lack
understanding and knew what was right, but no care was taken to check
his vicious inclinations or his vanity with regard to his musical skill.
Yet for a long time after his death the first five years of his reign
were lauded (quinquennium Neronis) as the happiest of the empire. He did,
in fact, reduce taxation in the provinces, contend against luxury, and
assist poor senators with money, and bid fair to take Augustus as his
model. “Oh, that I had never learned to write!” he said one day when a
death-warrant was given him to sign. Another time when the senate was
addressing thanks to him he said, “Wait till I deserve them.” Seneca and
Burrus tried, and for some time with success, to restrain the stormy
passions of their pupil, but Agrippina’s ambition made them break
violently forth.

This imperious woman thought she was going to reign in her son’s name,
and desired to be present at senatorial deliberations. She was much
chagrined at having to content herself with listening behind a curtain.

One day when Nero was giving audience to some Armenian ambassadors she
advanced to take her place beside him and receive homage. But the prince
went to meet her and prevented what the Romans even then would have
regarded as an affront, the intervention of a woman in public affairs.
Leagued with the freedman Pallas, she hoped that nothing would take place
in the palace without her; but Seneca and Burrus, although her creatures,
were resolved to hinder the domination which had degraded Claudius.
Unfortunately, the two ministers, in spite of the austerity of their
lives and teaching, found no other way to combat her influence than by
fostering the prince’s passions. They allowed a number of young women
and dissolute men to gather round the prince. Among the former Agrippina
soon found a rival in the freedwoman Acte. She then changed her tone
and manner, but caresses were of no more avail than anger; and the two
ministers, in order to show her that her power was gone, disgraced the
freedman Pallas.

Then Agrippina broke out into open threats. She would reveal the whole
truth, take Britannicus to the prætorians, and return to its rightful
occupant the throne she had bestowed on an ungrateful son. Nero
forestalled her. On the first day of his reign he had put to death a
member of the imperial family, Silanus by name; the death of his adopted
brother cost him no more. Britannicus, who was only fourteen years old,
was poisoned at a banquet at Nero’s own table. Agrippina, alarmed by
this precocious cruelty, sought defenders for herself. She sounded the
soldiers, and paid graceful attentions to their leaders. Nero, no longer
keeping within bounds, assigned her a dwelling beyond the palace and
scarcely ever saw her. He even listened to an accusation against her and
forced her to answer questions from Seneca and Burrus. She did so, but
haughtily, and spoke harshly to her son, which did not help her to regain
the authority she had lost.

Having got rid of Agrippina, the two ministers governed for some years
with moderation and justice. Several condemnations taught the provincial
governors that their conduct was observed; several taxes were abolished
or reduced. Nero demanded that they should all be repealed. Unfortunately
love of pleasure now possessed him. Dissolute friends, vulgar _liaisons_,
a fatal taste for the theatre, corrupted him from day to day. Seneca
practised his good maxims too little for them to influence the young
emperor. Rome learned with astonishment that her prince ran about the
streets at night disguised as a slave, entering taverns and beating
belated folk at the risk of striking one stronger than himself. A senator
once returned his blows, and had the imprudence next day to apologise.
Nero, remembering the inviolability belonging to his office of tribune,
had him put to death. In the day he went to the theatre, giving trouble
to the custodians, encouraging applause and hissing, exciting tumult,
and taking pleasure in seeing the sovereign people break the benches
and engage in fights in which he himself joined, throwing missiles at a
venture from his elevated seat.

The virtuous sister of Britannicus could not be a fit wife for this
royal débauché. He carried off Poppæa Sabina from her husband Otho.
Poppæa’s ambition found an obstacle in Octavia, and one even stronger in
Agrippina, who was not distressed by her son’s criminal conduct, but was
much averse from seeing him under any influence but her own.

Irritated by her reproaches, Nero at last went so far as to give orders
for her death. Anicetus, commander of the fleet at Misenum, formed a
plot to assassinate the empress. On the pretext of a reconciliation she
was invited to go to Baiæ, and was put on a vessel so built as to part
asunder when out at sea. Agrippina saved herself by swimming and reached
the neighbouring coast, where she took refuge in her villa at the Lucrine
Lake. Nero caused her to be stabbed, and proclaimed that she had killed
herself after a freedman sent by her had been caught in an attempt to
kill him (59 A.D.). Such was the fate of this woman, a granddaughter of
Augustus, and sister, wife, and mother, to three emperors. But revengeful
furies pursued the parricide in spite of the congratulations which Burrus
was base enough to offer him in the name of the soldiers and the thanks
rendered to the gods in all parts of the city at Seneca’s suggestion.
He sought to stifle his remorse by plunging into gross and insensate
debauchery. His most unworthy follies date from this time. The Romans
blushed to see him driving a chariot in the arena and mounting the stage
to sing and play the lyre. We may imagine he stifled his conscience, but
not that he found rest. In Greece, he dared not enter the Eleusinian
temple of which the herald’s voice bid the impious and parricides
avaunt.[b]

During the last two proconsulates the prefecture of Syria had acquired
its greater extension. On the death of Herod Agrippa in 44, his kingdom
of Judea had been definitively annexed to the empire, and was subjected,
as once before, to an imperial procurator, who, while he derived his
fiscal and civil authority directly from the emperor, and acted in a
manner as his viceroy, was nevertheless placed under the military control
of the proconsul. Under court protection some of the Judean procurators,
especially the infamous Felix, the brother of Pallas, and his partner in
the favour of Claudius, had indulged in every excess, till the spirit
of revolt already roused by the threats of Caligula broke out in fierce
but desultory acts of violence. These indeed had been repressed with the
sternness of Rome, not unmingled with some features of barbarity peculiar
to the East. Nevertheless the government had resented the tyranny of
its own officers, which had caused this dangerous insubordination, and
Quadratus, the proconsul, had himself condemned from his tribunal the
indiscretion of the procurator Cumanus. While, however, the authority of
the Syrian proconsul was thus extended over the region of Palestine in
the south, a portion of his northern dependencies was taken from him, and
erected for a time into a separate prefecture.


CORBULO AND THE EAST

[Sidenote: [54-60 A.D.]]

In the year 54 the brave Domitius Corbulo, recalled from his German
command, was deputed to maintain the majesty of the empire in the face
of the Parthians, and defend Armenia from the intrigues or violence with
which they continued to menace it. The forces of Rome in the East were
now divided between Quadratus and Corbulo. To the proconsul of Syria
were left two legions with their auxiliaries, to the new commander were
assigned the other two, while the frontier tributaries were ordered
to serve in either camp, as the policy of the empire should require.
While such was the distribution of the troops, the territory itself was
divided by the line of the Taurus; Cappadocia, together with Galatia, was
entrusted to Corbulo, and constituted a separate province. Here he raised
the levies he required to replace the lazy veterans who had vitiated
the Syrian legions; and here, having further strengthened himself from
the German camps, this stern reviver of discipline prepared his men,
amidst the rocks and snows, to penetrate the fastnesses of Armenia, and
dislodge the Parthians from the gorges of Ararat and Elburz. Tiridates,
the Parthian pretender to the throne of Armenia, in vain opposed him with
arms and treachery.

The Romans advanced to the walls of Artaxata, which they stormed and
burned, an exploit the glory of which was usurped by Nero himself, the
senate voting supplications in his honour, and consecrating day after
day to the celebration of his victory, till Cassius ventured to demand
a limit to such ruinous profusion. The war however was still prolonged
through a second and a third campaign: the Hyrcanians on the banks of
the Caspian and Aral--so far-reaching was the machinery put in motion
by Corbulo--were encouraged to divert the Parthians from assisting
Tiridates; and communications were held with them by the route of the
Red Sea and the deserts of Baluchistan. At last the Armenian Tigranes,
long retained in custody at Rome, was placed by the proconsul on the
throne of his ancestors. Some portions of his patrimony, however, were
now attached to the sovereignties of Pontus and Cappadocia; a Roman
force was left in garrison at Tigranocerta, to support his precarious
power; and on the death of Quadratus, Corbulo, having achieved the most
brilliant successes in the East of any Roman since Pompey, claimed the
whole province of Syria, and the entire administration of affairs on the
Parthian frontier, as his legitimate reward.

[Sidenote: [60-66 A.D.]]

The union of these vast regions once more under a single ruler, so
contrary, as it would appear, to the emperor’s natural policy, was
extorted perhaps from the fears of Nero, not indeed by actual threats but
by the formidable attitude of his general. An emperor, still a youth,
who had seen no service himself, and had only caught at the shadows of
military renown cast on him by his lieutenants, may have felt misgivings
at the greatness of the real chiefs of his legions. It was from this
jealousy, perhaps, that the career of conquest in Britain was so suddenly
checked after the victory of Suetonius. The position indeed of Corbulo,
the successor of Agrippa and Germanicus, might seem beyond the emperor’s
reach. It could only be balanced by creating similar positions in other
quarters, and the empire was, in fact, at this moment virtually divided
among three or four great commanders, any one of whom was leader of
more numerous forces than could be mustered to oppose him at the seat
of government. Nero was well aware of his danger; but he had not the
courage to insist, on this occasion, on the division of Syria into two
prefectures. He took, as we shall see, a baser precaution, and already
perhaps contemplated the assassination of the lieutenant whom he dared
not control.

It was from Corbulo himself that the proposal came for at least a
temporary division. That gallant general, a man of antique devotion to
military principles, had no views of personal aggrandisement. When the
Parthians, again collecting their forces, made a simultaneous attack on
both Armenia and Syria, Corbulo declared that the double war required the
presence of two chiefs of equal authority. He desired that the province
beyond the Taurus should again be made a separate government. Assuming
in person the defence of the Syrian frontier with three legions, he
transferred Cappadocia and Galatia, with an equal force, to Cæsennius
Pætus, who repaid his generosity by reflecting on the presumed slowness
of his operations. But Pætus was as incapable as he was vain. Having
advanced into Armenia, he was shut up in one of its cities with two
legions, by a superior force, constrained to implore aid from Corbulo,
and at last, when the distance and difficulty of the way precluded the
possibility of succour, to capitulate ignominiously. Vologeses, king
of Parthia, refrained from proceeding to extremities, and treating
the humbled foe as his ancestor had treated Crassus. He pretended to
desire only a fair arrangement of the points in dispute between the
rival empires: and Pætus, having promised that pending this settlement
the legions should be withdrawn from Armenia, was suffered, though not
without grievous indignities, to march out of his captured stronghold,
and retire in haste within the frontiers. Arrived there, Corbulo treated
him with scornful forbearance; but the emperor recalled him from his
post, and the combined forces of the province were once more entrusted to
the only man capable of retrieving the disaster.

Corbulo penetrated into the heart of Armenia by the road which Lucullus
had formerly opened; but the enemy declined to encounter him. Even on the
spot of his ally’s recent triumphs, Tiridates bowed to the demands of the
proconsul, and consented to lay his diadem at the feet of the emperor’s
image, and go to Rome to receive it back from his hand. The claims of the
puppet Tigranes were eventually set aside, and while Tiridates did homage
for his kingdom to Nero, he was suffered to place himself really under
the protection of Vologeses.


THE ROMAN PROVINCE OF BRITAIN

[Sidenote: [61 A.D.]]

The limits of the Roman occupation at the close of the reign of Claudius
were much unsettled. The southern part of the island from the Stour
to the Exe and Severn formed a compact and organised province, from
which only the realm of Cogidubnus, retaining still the character of a
dependent sovereignty, is to be subtracted. Beyond the Stour, again, the
territory of the Iceni constituted another extraneous dependency. The
government of the province was administered from Camulodunum, as its
capital; and the whole country was overawed by the martial attitude of
the Conquering Colony there established. Already, perhaps, the city of
Londinium, though distinguished by no such honourable title, excelled
it as a place of commercial resort. The broad estuary of the Thames,
confronting the waters of the Scheldt and Maas, was favourably placed
for the exchange of British against Gaulish and German products; and
the hill on which the city stood, facing the southern sun and well
adapted for defence, is placed precisely at the spot where first the
river can be crossed conveniently. Swept east and west by the tidal
stream, and traversed north and south by the continuous British roads,
Londinium supplied the whole island with the luxuries of another zone,
just as Massilia had supplied Gaul. Hither led the ways which penetrated
Britain from the ports in the Channel, from Lymne, Richborough, and
Dover. From hence they diverged again to Camulodunum northeast, and to
Verulamium northwest, at the intersection of the chief national lines of
communication.

While the proprætor, who was governor-in-chief of the province,
was occupied on the frontier in military operations, the finances
were administered by a procurator; and whatever extortions he might
countenance, so slight was the apprehension of any formidable resistance
to them that not only the towns, now frequented by thousands of Roman
traders, were left unfortified, but the province itself was suffered to
remain almost entirely denuded of soldiers. The legions now permanently
quartered in Britain were four. Of these the Second, the same which under
the command of Vespasian had recently commanded the southwest, was now
perhaps stationed in the forts on the Severn and Avon, or advanced to
the encampment on the Usk, whence sprang the famous city of Caerleon,
the camp of the Legion. The Ninth was placed in guard over the Iceni,
whose fidelity was not beyond suspicion. We may conjecture that its
headquarters were established as far north as the Wash, where it might
dislocate any combinations these people should attempt to form with their
unsteady neighbours the Brigantes. The Twentieth would be required to
confront the Brigantes also on their western frontier, and to them we may
assign the position on the Deva or Dee, from which the ancient city of
Chester has derived its name, its site, and the foundations, at least,
of its venerable fortifications. There still remained another legion,
the Fourteenth; but neither was this held in reserve in the interior
of the province. The necessities of border warfare required its active
operations among the Welsh mountains, which it penetrated step by step,
and gradually worked its way towards the last asylum of the Druids in
Mona, or Anglesea.

The Gallic priesthood, proscribed in their own country, would naturally
fly for refuge to Britain: proscribed in Britain, wherever the power
of Rome extended, they retreated, inch by inch, and withdrew from the
massive shrines which still attest their influence on the southern
plains, to the sacred recesses of the little island, surrounded by
boiling tides and clothed with impenetrable thickets. In this gloomy
lair, secure apparently, though shorn of might and dignity, they still
persisted in the practice of their unholy superstition. They strove
perhaps, like the trembling priests of Mexico, to appease the gods, who
seemed to avert from them their faces, with more horrid sacrifices than
ever. Here they retained their places of assembly, their schools, and
their oracles; here was the asylum of the fugitives; here was the sacred
grove, the abode of the awful deity, which in the stillest noon of night
or day the priest himself scarce ventured to enter, lest he should rush
unwitting into the presence of its lord.

Didius had been satisfied with retaining the Roman acquisitions, and
had made no attempt to extend them; and his successor, Veranius, had
contented himself with some trifling incursions into the country of
the Silures. The death of Veranius prevented, perhaps, more important
operations. But he had exercised rigorous discipline in the camp, and
Suetonius Paullinus, who next took the command, found the legions well
equipped and well disposed, and the stations connected by military roads
across the whole breadth of the island. The rumours of the city marked
out this man as a rival to the gallant Corbulo, and great successes
were expected from the measures which he would be prompt in adopting.
Leaving the Second legion on the Usk to keep the Silures in check, and
the Twentieth on the Dee to watch the Brigantes, he joined the quarters
of the Fourteenth, now pushed as far as Segontium on the Menai straits.
He prepared a number of rafts or boats for the passage of the infantry;
the stream at low water was perhaps nearly fordable for cavalry, and the
trusty Batavians on his wings were accustomed to swim by the side of
their horses, clinging by the mane or bridle, across the waters, not less
wide and rapid, of their native Rhine. Still the traject must have been
perilous enough, even if unopposed. But now the farther bank was thronged
with the Britons in dense array, while between their ranks the women,
clad in black and with hair dishevelled, rushed about like furies with
flaming torches, and behind them were seen the Druids raising their hands
to heaven, imprecating curses on the daring invaders.

The Romans were so dismayed at the sight that, as they came to land, they
at first stood motionless to be struck down by every assailant. But this
panic lasted only for a moment. Recalled by the cries of their chiefs
to a sense of discipline, of duty, of danger, they closed their ranks,
advanced their standards, struck, broke, and trampled on the foe before
them, and applied his own torches to his machines and wagons. The rout
was complete; the fugitives, flung back by the sea, had no further place
of retreat. The island was seamed with Roman entrenchments, the groves
cut down or burned, and every trace speedily abolished of the foul rites
by which Hesus had been propitiated or the wall of Taranis consulted.

From this moment the Druids disappear from the page of history; they
were exterminated, we may believe, upon their own altars; for Suetonius
took no half measures. But whatever were his further designs for the
final pacification of the province, they were interrupted by the sudden
outbreak of a revolt in his rear. The Iceni, as has been said, had
submitted, after their great overthrow, to the yoke of the invaders:
their king, Prasutagus, had been allowed indeed to retain his nominal
sovereignty; but he was placed under the control of Roman officials;
his people were required to contribute to the Roman treasury: their
communities were incited to a profuse expenditure to which their
resources were unequal; while the exactions imposed on them were so heavy
that they were compelled to borrow largely, and entangle themselves in
the meshes of the Roman money lenders. The great capitalists of the
city, wealthy courtiers, and prosperous freedmen, advanced the sums
they called for at exorbitant interest; from year to year they found
themselves less able to meet their obligations, and mortgaged property
and person to their unrelenting creditors. Among the immediate causes
of the insurrection which followed, is mentioned the sudden calling in
by Seneca, the richest of philosophers, of the large investments he had
made, which he seemed in danger of losing altogether.

But the oppression of the Romans was not confined to these transactions.
Prasutagus, in the hope of propitiating the provincial government to
his family, had bequeathed his dominions to the republic. He expected
perhaps that his wife and his children, who were also females, if not
allowed to exercise even a nominal sovereignty after him, would at least
be treated in consequence with the respect due to their rank, and secured
in the enjoyment of ample means and consideration. This was the fairest
lot that remained to the families of the dependent chieftains, and the
Romans had not often grudged it them. But an insolent official, placed in
charge of these new acquisitions after the death of Prasutagus, forgot
in their instance what was due to the birth and even the sex of the
wretched princesses. He suspected them perhaps of secreting a portion
of their patrimony, and did not scruple to employ stripes to recover it
from the mother, while he surrendered her tender children to even worse
indignities.


_The War with Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni_

Boadicea, the widowed queen of the Iceni, was a woman of masculine
spirit. Far from succumbing under the cruelty of her tyrants and hiding
the shame of her family, she went forth into the public places, exhibited
the scars of her wounds and the fainting forms of her abused daughters,
and adjured her people to take a desperate revenge. The Iceni were stung
to frenzy at their sovereign’s wrongs, at their own humiliation. The
danger, the madness, of the attempt was considered by none for a moment.
They rose as one man; there was no power at hand to control them; the
Roman officials fled, or, if arrested, were slaughtered; and a vast
multitude, armed and unarmed, rolled southward to overwhelm and extirpate
the intruders. To the Colne, to the Thames, to the sea, the country lay
entirely open. The legions were all removed to a distance, the towns were
unenclosed, the Roman traders settled in them were untrained to arms.
Even the Claudian colony was undefended. The procurator, Catus Decianus,
was at the moment absent, and being pressed for succour, could send
no more than two hundred soldiers for its protection. Little reliance
could be placed on the strength of a few worn-out veterans: the natives,
however specious their assurances, were not unjustly distrusted, for
they too, like the Iceni, had suffered their share of insolence and
ill-treatment. The great temple of Claudius was a standing monument of
their humiliation; for its foundation their estates had been confiscated,
for its support their tribute was required, and they regarded the native
chiefs who had been enrolled in its service as victims or traitors.

Whatever alarm they might feel at the indiscriminate fury of the hordes
descending upon them, they smiled grimly at the panic which more justly
seized the Romans. The guilty objects of national vengeance discovered
the direst prodigies in every event around them. The wailings of their
women, the neighing of their horses, were interpreted as evil omens.
Their theatre was said to have resounded with uncouth noises; the
buildings of the colony had been seen inversely reflected in the waters
of their estuary; and on the ebbing of the tide ghastly remains of human
bodies had been discovered in the ooze. Above all, the statue of Victory,
erected to face the enemies of the republic, had turned its back to the
advancing barbarians and fallen prostrate before them. When the colonists
proposed to throw up hasty entrenchments they were dissuaded from the
work, or impeded in it by the natives, who persisted in declaring that
they had no cause for fear; it was not till the Iceni were actually in
sight, and the treachery of the Trinobantes no longer doubtful, that
they retreated tumultuously within the precincts of the temple, and
strengthened its slender defences to support a sudden attack till succour
could arrive. But the impetuosity of the assault overcame all resistance.
The stronghold was stormed on the second day, and all who had sought
refuge in it, armed and unarmed, given up to slaughter.

Meanwhile the report of this fearful movement had travelled far and wide
through the country. It reached Petilius Cerealis, the commander of the
Ninth legion, which we suppose to have been stationed near the Wash, and
he broke up promptly from his camp to hang on the rear of the insurgents.
It reached the Twentieth legion at Deva, which awaited the orders of
Suetonius himself, as soon as he should learn on the banks of the Menai
the perils in which the province was involved. The proprætor withdrew
the Fourteenth legion from the smoking groves of Mona, and urged it with
redoubled speed along the highway of Watling street, picking out the best
troops from the Twentieth as he rushed by, and summoning the Second from
Isca to join him in the south. But Pænius Postumus, who commanded this
latter division, neglected to obey his orders, and crouched in terror
behind his fortifications. The Iceni turned boldly upon Cerealis, who was
hanging close upon their heels, and routed his wearied battalions with
great slaughter. The infantry of the Ninth legion was cut to pieces, and
the cavalry alone escaped within their entrenchments. But the barbarians
had not skill nor patience to conduct the siege of a Roman camp. They
left the squadron of Cerealis unmolested, nor did they attempt to force
the scattered posts of the Romans around them. After giving Camulodunum
to the flames, they dispersed throughout the country, plundering and
destroying.

Suetonius, unappalled by the frightful accounts which thronged upon him,
held on his course steadfastly with his single legion, broke through the
scattered bands of the enemy, and reached Londinium without a check. This
place was crowded with Roman residents, crowded still more at this moment
with fugitives from the country towns and villas: but it was undefended
by walls, its population of traders was untrained to arms, and Suetonius
sternly determined to leave it, with all the wealth of the province which
it harboured, to the barbarians, rather than sacrifice his soldiers in a
vain attempt to save it. The policy of the Roman commander was to secure
his communications with Gaul: but he was resolved not to abandon the
country, nor surrender the detachments hemmed in at various points by the
general rising of the Britons.

The precise direction of his movements we can only conjecture. Had
he retired to the southern bank of the Thames, he would probably
have defended the passage of that river; or had the Britons crossed
it unresisted, the historians would not have failed to signalise so
important a success. But the situation of Camulodunum, enclosed in its
old British lines, and backed by the sea, would offer him a secure
retreat where he might defy attack and await reinforcements; and the
insurgents, after their recent triumphs, had abandoned their first
conquests to wreak their fury upon other seats of Roman civilisation.
While, therefore, the Iceni sacked and burned first Verulamium, and next
Londinium, Suetonius probably made a flank march towards Camulodunum, and
kept ahead of their pursuit, till he could choose his own position to
await their attack. In a valley between undulating hills, with woods in
the rear and the ramparts of the British oppidum not far perhaps on his
right flank, he had every advantage for marshalling his slender forces;
and these were increased in number more than in strength by the fugitives
capable of bearing arms, whom he had allowed to cling to his fortunes.
Ten thousand resolute men drew their swords for the Roman Empire in
Britain. The natives, many times their number, spread far and wide over
the open plain before them; but the narrow front of the Romans could be
assailed by only few battalions at once, and the wagons, which conveyed
their accumulated booty and bore their wives and children, thronged the
rear and cut off almost the possibility of retreat.

But flushed with victory, impatient for the slaughter, animated with
desperate resolution to die or conquer, the Britons cast no look or
thought behind them. Boadicea herself drove from rank to rank, from
nation to nation, with her daughters beside her, attesting the outrage
she had endured, the vengeance she had already taken, proclaiming the
gallant deeds of the queens before her, under whom British warriors
had so often triumphed, denouncing as intolerable the yoke of Roman
insolence, and declaring that whatever the men might determine, the women
would now be free or perish. The harangue of Suetonius, on the other
hand, was blunt and sarcastic. He told his men not to mind the multitudes
before them, nor the noise they made; there were more women among them
than men; as for their own numbers, let them remember that in all battles
a few good swordsmen really did the work; the half-armed and dastard
crowds before them would break and fly when they saw again the prowess of
the Roman primipiles.

Thus encouraged, the legionaries could with difficulty be restrained
to await the onset; and as soon as the assailants had exhausted their
missiles, bore down upon them in the wedge-shaped column which had so
often broken Greeks, Gauls, and Carthaginians. The auxiliaries followed
with no less impetuosity. The horsemen, lance in hand, pierced through
the ranks which still kept their ground. But a single charge was enough.
The Britons were in a moment shattered and routed. In another moment,
the Romans had reached the long circumvallation of wagons, among which
the fugitives were scrambling in dismay, slew the cattle and the women
without remorse, and traced with a line of corpses and carcasses the
limits of the British position. We may believe that the massacre was
enormous. The Romans declared that eighty thousand of their enemies
perished, while of their own force they lost only four hundred slain,
and about as many wounded. Boadicea put an end to her life by poison; we
could have wished to hear that the brave barbarian had fallen on a Roman
pike. Suetonius had won the greatest victory of the imperial history;
to complete his triumph, the coward, Postumus, who had shrunk from his
assistance, threw himself, in shame and mortification, on his own sword.

By this utter defeat the British insurrection was paralysed. Throughout
the remainder of the season the Romans kept the field; they received
reinforcements from the German camps, and their scattered cohorts were
gradually brought together in a force which overawed all resistance. The
revolted districts were chastised with fire and sword, and the systematic
devastation inflicted upon them, suffering as they already were from
the neglect of tillage during the brief intoxication of their success,
produced a famine which swept off the seeds of future insurrections. On
both sides a fearful amount of destruction had been committed. Amidst
the overthrow of the great cities of southern Britain, not less than
seventy thousand Roman colonists had perished. The work of twenty years
was in a moment undone. Far and wide every vestige of Roman civilisation
was trodden into the soil. At this day the workmen who dig through the
foundations of the Norman and the Saxon London, strike beneath them upon
the traces of a double Roman city, between which lies a mass of charred
and broken rubbish, attesting the conflagration of the terrible Boadicea.


_Britain again a Peaceful Province_

The temper of Suetonius, as may be supposed from what has been already
recorded of him, was stern and unbending, even beyond the ordinary type
of his nation. No other officer, perhaps, in the Roman armies could have
so turned disaster into victory, and recovered a province at a blow;
but it was not in his character to soothe the conquered, to conciliate
angry passions, to restore the charm of moral superiority. Classicianus,
who succeeded Catus as procurator, complained of him to the emperor, as
wishing to protract hostilities against the exasperated Britons, when
every end might be obtained by conciliation.

A freedman of the court, named Polycletus, was sent on the delicate
mission, to judge between the civil and the military chief, and to take
the measures most fitting for securing peace and obedience. Polycletus
brought with him a large force from Italy and Gaul, and was no less
surprised perhaps than the legions he commanded, to see himself at the
head of a Roman army. Even the barbarians, we are told, derided the
victorious warriors who bowed in submission to the orders of a bondman.
But Polycletus could make himself obeyed at least, if not respected.
The loss of a few vessels on the coast furnished him with a pretext for
removing Suetonius from his command, and transferring it to a consular,
Petronius Turpilianus, whose temper and policy inclined equally to peace.

From the lenity of this proprætor the happiest consequences evidently
ensued. The southern Britons acquiesced in the dominion of Rome, while
the northern were awed into deference to her superior influence. Her
manners, her arts, her commerce, penetrated far into regions yet
unconquered by the sword. Her establishments at Londinium, Verulamium,
and Camulodunum rose again from their ashes. Never was the peaceful
enterprise of her citizens more vigorous and elastic than at this period.
The luxuries of Italy and the provinces, rapidly increasing, required the
extension to the utmost of all her resources. Manufactures and commerce
were pushed forward with unexampled activity.

The products of Britain, rude as they were, consisting of raw materials
chiefly, were demanded with an insatiable appetite by the cities of Gaul
and Germany, and exchanged for arts and letters, which at least decked
her servitude with silken fetters. The best of the Roman commanders,--and
there were some, we may believe, among them both thoughtful and
humane,--while they acknowledged they had no right to conquer, yet
believed that their conquests were a blessing. The best of the native
chiefs--and some too of them may have wished for the real happiness of
their countrymen,--acknowledged, perhaps, that while freedom is the
noblest instrument of virtue, it only degrades the vicious to the lowest
depths of barbarism.[e]


BURRUS AND SENECA

[Sidenote: [59-62 A.D.]]

In Rome meanwhile the public evils grew daily more oppressive, and the
means of redress were decreasing. It was now that Burrus died (62 A.D.),
whether by poison or disease is uncertain; that it was disease was
inferred from the fact that, his throat gradually swelling internally
and the passage being closed up, he ceased to breathe. Many asserted
that, by the order of Nero, under colour of applying a remedy, his palate
was anointed with a poisonous drug, and that Burrus, having discovered
the treachery, when the prince came to visit him, turned his face and
eyes another way, and to his repeated inquiries about his health, made
no other answer than this: “I am well.” At Rome the sense of his loss
was deep and lasting, as well from the memory of his virtue as from
the spiritless simplicity of one of his successors, and the flaming
enormities and adulteries of the other. For Nero had created two captains
of the prætorian guards--namely, Fenius Rufus for his popularity, in
consequence of his administration of the public stores without deriving
any profit from it; and Sophonius Tigellinus, purely from partiality to
the inveterate lewdness and infamy of the man; and their influence was
according to their known manner of life. Tigellinus held greater sway
over the mind of Nero, and was admitted to share in his most secret
debaucheries; Rufus flourished in the good opinion of the people and
soldiery, which he found a denial to him with the emperor.

[Illustration: NERO

(From a bust in the Louvre Museum)]

The death of Burrus made an inroad upon the influence of Seneca; as good
counsels had no longer the same force now that one of the champions
of virtue was removed; and Nero naturally inclined to follow the more
depraved, who assailed Seneca with various imputations: that he had
already accumulated enormous wealth, far surpassing the measure of a
citizen, and was still increasing it; that he was alienating from the
emperor and diverting to himself the affections of the citizens; that
he sought to outdo the prince in the elegance of his gardens and the
splendour of his villas. They laid to his charge also that he claimed
a monopoly in the glory of eloquence; and that after Nero conceived
a passion for versifying, he had employed himself in it with unusual
assiduity; for, to the recreations of the prince he was an open
enemy--disparaged his vigour in the managing of horses, ridiculed his
vocal powers whenever he sang; with what view did he endeavour to effect
that in the whole republic nothing should go down which was not the
product of his ingenuity? Surely Nero was past weakness of childhood, and
arrived at the prime of youth; he ought now to discard his pedagogue,
furnished as he was with instructors the most accomplished, even his own
ancestors.

Seneca was not unapprised of the efforts of his calumniators, as they
were disclosed to him by such as retained some concern for the interests
of virtue; and as the emperor manifested daily more shyness towards him,
he besought an opportunity of speaking to him, and having obtained it,
thus began: “This is the fourteenth year, Cæsar, since I was summoned to
train you for your high destiny; and the eighth since your advancement to
the empire. During the intervening period, you have showered such honours
and riches upon me, that nothing is wanting to complete my felicity but
the capacity to use them with moderation. I shall quote great examples,
such as are adapted, not to my station and fortune, but to yours.
Augustus, from whom you are the fourth in descent, granted to Marcus
Agrippa leave to retreat to Mytilene, and to Caius Mæcenas he allowed,
even in Rome itself, a retirement as complete as in any foreign country;
the former his companion in the wars, the other long harassed at Rome
with manifold occupations and public cares; both received rewards ample
indeed, but proportioned to their services. For myself, what other claims
upon your munificence have I been able to advance, except my literary
attainments, nursed, so to speak, in the shades of retirement, and which
have been rendered famous, because I am believed to have assisted your
early years in the acquisition of learning; a glorious reward for such
a service! But you encompassed me with boundless favours, unnumbered
riches; so that when I ruminate upon my situation, as I often do, I
say to myself, Can it be that I, the son of a knight, the native of a
province, am ranked among the chief men of Rome? Has my upstart name
acquired splendour among the nobles of the land, and men who glory in a
long line of honoured ancestors? Where then is that philosophic spirit
which professed to be satisfied with scanty supplies? Is it employed in
adorning such gardens as these, in pacing majestically through these
suburban retreats? Does it abound in estates so extensive as these, and
in such immense sums put out at interest? One plea only occurs to my
thoughts; that it becomes not me to oppose your bounties.

“But both of us have now filled up our measure; you, of all that the
bounty of a prince could confer upon his friend; I, of all that a friend
could accept from the bounty of his prince. Every addition can only
furnish fresh materials for envy, which, indeed, like all other earthly
things, lies prostrate beneath your towering greatness, but weighs
heavily on me; I require assistance. Thus, in the same manner as, were I
weary and faint with the toils of warfare or a journey, I should implore
indulgence, so in this journey of life, old as I am, and unequal even to
the lightest cares, since I am unable longer to sustain the weight of
my own riches, I seek protection. Order your own stewards to undertake
the direction of my fortune, and to annex it to your own; nor shall I by
this plunge myself into poverty; but having surrendered those things by
whose splendour I am exposed to the assaults of envy, all the time which
is set apart for the care of gardens and villas I shall apply once more
to the cultivation of my mind. To you vigour remains more than enough,
and the possession of imperial power established during so many years.
We, your friends, who are more advanced in years, may take our turn of
repose. This, too, will redound to your glory, that you had elevated to
the highest posts those who could put up with a humble condition.”

To this speech, Nero replied much in this manner: “That I am able thus
on the moment to combat your studied reasonings, is the first benefit
which I acknowledge to have derived from you, who have taught me not
only to speak on subjects previously considered, but also to deliver my
sentiments extemporaneously. It is true, my direct ancestor Augustus
allowed Agrippa and Mæcenas to pass their time in retirement after their
toils, but at that period of life when his authority protected him,
whatever was the extent or nature of the concession he made to them; but
nevertheless he divested neither of them of the rewards he had conferred
upon them. They had earned them in war and civil perils; for in these
the earlier days of Augustus were occupied; nor would your sword or
your hands have been wanting had I been engaged in military affairs.
But what my existing circumstances required you rendered; you nursed my
childhood and directed my youth by your moral lessons, your counsel,
and your precepts; and the favours you have bestowed on me, will never
perish while life remains. Those you have received from me, your gardens,
capital, and country seats, are liable to the accidents of fortune; and
though they may appear of great extent, yet many men, by no means equal
to you in accomplishments, have enjoyed more. I am ashamed to instance
freedmen, who in point of riches cut a greater figure than you; and when
I consider this, I see occasion to blush that a man who holds the highest
place in my esteem, does not as yet transcend all others in the gifts of
fortune.

“But while you have attained maturity of years, and have yet vigour
enough for business and the enjoyment of the fruits of your toils, I am
only performing the early stages of the imperial career; unless perhaps
you deem less of yourself than Vitellius, who was thrice consul; and
think that I should fall short of Claudius. But my liberality is unable
to make up to you a fortune equal to that which Volusius amassed during
years of parsimony. If in any respect I deviate from the right path,
owing to the proneness to error natural to youth, you should rather
recall my wandering steps, and guide that strength which you have
adorned, by more intense efforts to assist me. It is not your moderation,
if you give back your wealth, nor your retirement, if you forsake
your prince, on which the tongues of all men will be employed; but my
rapaciousness, and the dread of my cruelty. But suppose your self-command
should form the great theme of public applause; still it will reflect
no honour upon the character of a wise man, to reap a harvest of
glory to himself from a proceeding by which he brings infamy upon his
friend.” To these words he added kisses and embraces; framed as he was
by nature, and trained by habit, to veil his rancour under the guise of
hollow compliments. Seneca presented his thanks; the universal close of
conferences with a sovereign; he changed, however, the methods of his
former state of power, put a stop to the conflux of visitors, avoided
a train of attendants, and seldom appeared in the streets of the city;
pretending that his health was in an unfavourable state, or that he was
detained at home by philosophical pursuits.


OCTAVIA PUT TO DEATH

[Sidenote: [62-64 A.D.]]

Nero, having received the decree of the senate, and perceiving that all
his villainies passed for acts of exemplary merit, rudely repudiated
his wife, Octavia, alleging “that she was barren,” and then espoused
Poppæa. This woman, who had been long the concubine of Nero, and, as her
adulterer and her husband, exercising absolute sway over him, suborned
one of Octavia’s domestics to accuse her of an amour with a slave.
Eucerus, a native of Alexandria, a skilful flute-player, was marked out
as the object of the charge; her maids were examined upon the rack, and
though some of them, overcome by the intensity of the torture, made
false admissions, the major part persisted in vindicating the purity of
their mistress. She was however put away in the first instance under the
specious formality of a legal divorce, and the house of Burrus, with the
estate of Plautus, ill-omened gift, were assigned to her; soon after she
was banished into Campania, and a guard of soldiers placed over her. This
led to frequent and undisguised complaints among the populace, who are
comparatively unrestrained by prudential motives, and from the mediocrity
of their circumstances are exposed to fewer dangers. They had an effect
upon Nero, who in consequence recalled Octavia from banishment, but
without the slightest misgiving at his atrocious villainy.

Forthwith the people went up to the Capitol in transport, and at length
poured forth unfeigned thanks to the gods. They threw down the statues
of Poppæa, carried those of Octavia upon their shoulders, wreathed them
with garlands, and placed them on the Forum and the temples. They even
went to offer the tribute of their applause to the prince; the prince was
made the object of their grateful adoration. And now they were filling
the palace with their crowd and clamour, when parties of soldiers were
sent out, who by beating them and threatening them with the sword,
terrified and dispersed them. Whatever was overthrown during the tumult
was restored, and the tokens of honour to Poppæa replaced. This woman,
ever prone to atrocities from the impulse of hatred, and now stimulated
by her fears also, lest either a more violent outbreak of popular
violence should take place, or Nero should succumb to the inclination
of the people, threw herself at his knees, and said therewith, “her
circumstances were not in that state that she should contend about her
marriage with him, though that object was dearer to her than life; but
her very life was placed in imminent jeopardy by the dependents and
slaves of Octavia, who calling themselves the people of Rome, had dared
to commit acts in time of peace which were seldom produced by war. But
those arms were taken up against the prince; they only wanted a leader,
and a civil commotion once excited, they would soon find one. Octavia
has only to leave Campania and come into the city; when at her nod, in
her absence, such tumults were raised. But if this were not the object,
what crime had she committed? Whom had she offended? Was it because
she was about to give a genuine offspring to the family of the Cæsars,
that the Roman people chose that the spawn of an Egyptian flute-player
should be palmed upon the imperial eminence? To sum up all, if that
step was essential to the public weal, he should call home his mistress
voluntarily rather than by compulsion, or consult his safety by a
righteous retribution. The first commotion had subsided under moderate
applications, but if they should despair of Octavia’s being the wife of
Nero, they would give her another husband.”

This artfully compound speech, adapted to excite fear and rage, at once
produced the desired effect, and terrified while it inflamed the imperial
hearer; but a suspicion resting only on the evidence of a slave, and
neutralised by the asseverations of the tortured maids, was not strong
enough for this purpose. It was therefore resolved that some person
should be found who would confess the guilty commerce, and who might also
be plausibly charged with the crime of rebellion. Anicetus was judged
a fitting instrument for this purpose; the same who had accomplished
the murder of his mother, and, as I have related, commanded the fleet
at Misenum; whom the emperor, after that horrid service, held in light
esteem, but afterwards in extraordinary detestation; for the ministers of
nefarious deeds seem in the eyes of their employers as living reproaches
of their iniquity. Him therefore Nero summoned; and told him that he
alone had saved the life of the prince from the dark devices of his
mother; an opportunity for a service of no less magnitude now presented
itself by relieving him from a wife who was his mortal enemy, nor was
there need of force or arms; he had only to admit adultery with Octavia.
He promised rewards, which he said must indeed be kept a secret for
the present, but of great value, and also a delightful retreat; but
threatened him with death, if he declined the task. Anicetus, from an
inherent perversity of principle, and a facility in crime produced by the
horrible transactions in which he had been already engaged, even exceeded
his orders in lying, and made confession of the adultery to the friends
of the prince, whom he had summoned as a council. He was then banished to
Sardinia, where he lived in exile, but not in poverty, and where he died
a natural death.

Now Nero in an edict stated that Octavia, in hopes of engaging the fleet
in her conspiracy, had corrupted Anicetus the admiral. And forgetting
that he had just before accused her of barrenness, he added, that in
guilty consciousness of her lust, she had produced abortion, and that
all these were clearly proved to him. And he confined her in the island
Pandataria. Never was there any exile who touched the hearts of the
beholders with deeper compassion; some there were who still remembered
to have seen Agrippina banished by Tiberius; the more recent sufferings
of Julia were likewise recalled to mind, confined there by Claudius:
but they had experienced some happiness, and the recollection of their
former splendour proved some alleviation of their present horrors. To
Octavia, in the first place, the day of her nuptials was in place of a
funeral day, being brought under a roof where she encountered nothing
but memorials of woe; her father cut off by poison, and soon afterwards
her brother; then a handmaid more influential than her mistress; Poppæa
wedded to her husband, only to bring destruction on his lawful wife--and
lastly, a crime laid to her charge more intolerable than death in any
shape.

And this young lady, in her twentieth year, thrown among centurions
and common soldiers, and already bereft of life under the presage of
impending woes, did not, however, as yet enjoy the repose of death. After
an interval of a few days she was ordered to die, when she protested,“she
was now a widow, and only the emperor’s sister”; appealed to the
Germanici, the common relatives of Nero and herself; and lastly invoked
the name of Agrippina, observing, “that had she lived, her marriage-state
would have been made wretched, but she would not have been doomed to
destruction.” She was then tied fast with bonds, and her veins opened
in every joint; and her death was accelerated by the vapour of a bath,
heated to the highest point. A deed of still more atrocious brutality
was added; her head was cut off and conveyed to the city for Poppæa to
see it. Offerings at the temples were decreed by the fathers on account
of these events; a circumstance which I have recorded in order that that
all those who shall read the calamities of those times, as they are
delivered by me or any other authors, may conclude by anticipation, that
as often as a banishment or a murder was perpetrated by the prince’s
orders, so often thanks were rendered to the gods; and those acts which
in former times were resorted to to distinguish prosperous occurrences,
were now made the tokens of public disasters. Still I will not suppress
the mention of any decree of the senate which is marked by unheard-of
adulation, or the extremity of abject servility.

Nero himself, to make it believed that he enjoyed himself nowhere so
much as at Rome, caused banquets to be prepared in the public places,
and used the whole city as his house. Remarkable above all others for
the display of luxury and the noise it made in the world was the feast
given by Tigellinus, which, (says Suetonius), I will describe by way
of specimen, that I may not have to repeat the instances of similar
prodigality. For this purpose, he built, in the lake of Agrippa, a raft
which supported the banquet, which was drawn to and fro by other vessels,
the vessels were striped with gold and ivory, and rowed by bands of
pathics, who were ranged according to their age, and accomplishments
in the science of debauchery. He had procured fowl and venison from
remote regions, with sea-fish even from the ocean; upon the margin of
the lake were erected brothels, filled with ladies of distinction;
over against them naked harlots were exposed to view; now, were beheld
obscene gestures and motions; and as soon as darkness came on, all the
neighbouring groves and circumjacent dwellings resounded with music, and
glared with lights. Nero wallowed in all sorts of defilements, lawful
and unlawful, and seemed to leave no atrocity which could add to his
pollution, till a few days afterwards he married, as a woman, one of this
contaminated herd, named Pythagoras, with all the solemnities of wedlock.
The Roman emperor put on the nuptial veil; the augurs, the portion, the
bridal bed, the nuptial torches, were all seen; in fine, everything
exposed to view which, even in a female, is covered by the night.


THE GREAT FIRE AT ROME; PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS

[Illustration: A CENTURION OFFICER]

[Sidenote: [64 A.D.]]

There followed a dreadful disaster; whether fortuitously, or by the
wicked contrivance of the prince, is not determined, for both are
asserted by historians; but of all the calamities which ever befell
this city from the rage of fire, this was the most terrible and severe.
It broke out in that part of the Circus which is contiguous to mounts
Palatine and Cælius; where, by reason of shops in which were kept such
goods as minister aliment to fire, the moment it commenced it acquired
strength, and being accelerated by the wind, it spread at once through
the whole extent of the Circus; for neither were the houses secured by
enclosures, nor the temples environed with walls, nor was there any other
obstacle to intercept its progress; but the flame, spreading every way
impetuously, invaded first the lower regions of the city, then mounted
to the higher; then again ravaging the lower, it baffled every effort to
extinguish it, by the rapidity of its destructive course, and from the
liability of the city to conflagration, in consequence of the narrow and
intricate alleys, and the irregularity of the streets in ancient Rome.
Add to this, the wailings of terrified women, the infirm condition of
the aged, and the helplessness of childhood; such as strove to provide
for themselves, and those who laboured to assist others; these dragging
the feeble, those waiting for them; some hurrying, others lingering;
altogether created a scene of universal confusion and embarrassment. And
while they looked back upon the danger in their rear, they often found
themselves beset before, and on their sides; or if they escaped into
the quarters adjoining, these too were already seized by the devouring
flames; even the parts which they believed remote and exempt, were found
to be in the same distress. At last, not knowing what to shun, or where
to seek sanctuary, they crowded the streets, and lay along in the open
fields. Some, from the loss of their whole substance, even the means of
their daily sustenance, others, from affection for their relatives, whom
they had not been able to snatch from the flames, suffered themselves to
perish in them, though they had opportunity to escape. Neither dared any
man offer to check the fire; so repeated were the menaces of many who
forbade to extinguish it; and because others openly threw firebrands,
with loud declarations that “they had one who authorised them”; whether
they did it that they might plunder with the less restraint, or in
consequence of orders given.

Nero, who was at that juncture sojourning at Antium, did not return
to the city till the fire approached that quarter of his house which
connected the palace with the gardens of Mæcenas; nor could it, however,
be prevented from devouring the house and palace, and everything
around. But for the relief of the people, thus destitute, and driven
from their dwellings, he opened the Field of Mars and the monumental
edifices erected by Agrippa, and even his own gardens. He likewise reared
temporary houses for the reception of the forlorn multitude, and from
Ostia and the neighbouring cities, were brought up the river household
necessaries; and the price of grain was reduced to three sesterces the
measure. All which proceedings, though of a popular character, were
thrown away, because a rumour had become universally current, that “at
the very time when the city was in flames, Nero, going on the stage of
his private theatre, sang, ‘The Destruction of Troy,’ assimilating the
present disaster to that catastrophe of ancient times.”

At length, on the sixth day, the conflagration was stayed at the foot of
Esquiline, by pulling down an immense quantity of buildings, so that an
open space, and, as it were, void air, might check the raging element by
breaking the continuity. But ere the consternation had subsided, the fire
broke out afresh, with no little violence, but in regions more spacious,
and therefore with less destruction of human life; but more extensive
havoc was made of the temples, and the porticoes dedicated to amusement.
This conflagration, too, was the subject of more censorious remark, as
it arose in the Æmilian possessions of Tigellinus; and Nero seemed to
aim at the glory of building a new city, and calling it by his own name;
for, of the fourteen sections into which Rome is divided, four were still
standing entire, three were levelled with the ground, and in the seven
others there remained only here and there a few remnants of houses,
shattered and half consumed.

Nero appropriated to his own purposes the ruins of his city, and founded
upon them a palace [the “Golden House”] in which the old-fashioned,
and, in those luxurious times, common ornaments of gold and precious
stones, were not so much the objects of attraction as lands and lakes;
in one part, woods like vast preserves; in another part, open spaces and
expansive prospects. The projectors and superintendents of this plan
were Severus and Celer, men of such ingenuity and daring enterprise
as to attempt to conquer by art the obstacles of nature, and fool
away the treasures of the prince; they had even undertaken to sink a
navigable canal from the lake Avernus to the mouth of the Tiber, over
an arid shore, or through opposing mountains: nor indeed does there
occur anything of a humid nature for supplying water, except the Pontine
marshes; the rest is either craggy rock or a parched soil; and had it
even been possible to break through these obstructions, the toil had
been intolerable, and disproportioned to the object. Nero, however, who
longed to achieve things that exceeded credibility, exerted all his might
to perforate the mountains adjoining to Avernus: and to this day there
remain traces of his abortive project.

But the rest of the old site not occupied by his palace was laid out,
not as after the Gallic fire, without discrimination and regularity, but
with the lines of streets measured out, broad spaces left for transit,
the height of the buildings limited, open areas left, and porticoes
added to protect the front of the clustered dwellings. These porticoes
Nero engaged to rear at his own expense, and then to deliver to each
proprietor the areas about them cleared. He moreover proposed rewards
proportioned to every man’s rank and private substance, and fixed a day
within which, if their houses, single or clustered, were finished, they
should receive them. He appointed the marshes of Ostia for a receptacle
of the rubbish, and that the vessels which had conveyed grain up the
Tiber should return laden with rubbish; that the buildings themselves
should be raised to a certain portion of their height without beams,
and arched with stone from the quarries of Gabii or Alba, that stone
being proof against fire; that over the water springs, which had been
improperly intercepted by private individuals, overseers should be
placed, to provide for their flowing in greater abundance, and in a
greater number of places, for the supply of the public; that every
housekeeper should have in his yard means for extinguishing fire;
neither should there be party walls, but every house should be enclosed
by its own walls. These regulations, which were favourably received, in
consideration of their utility, were also a source of beauty to the new
city; yet some there were who believed that the ancient form was more
conducive to health, as from the narrowness of the streets, and the
height of the buildings the rays of the sun were more excluded; whereas
now, the spacious breadth of the streets, without any shade to protect
it, was more intensely heated in warm weather.

Such were the provisions made by human counsels. The gods were next
addressed with expiations; and recourse had to the Sibyl’s books. By
admonition from them, to Vulcan, Ceres, and Proserpine supplicatory
sacrifices were made, and Juno was propitiated by the matrons, first in
the Capitol, then upon the nearest shore, where, by water drawn from
the sea, the temple and image of the goddess were besprinkled; and the
ceremony of placing the goddess in her sacred chair, and her vigil,
were celebrated by ladies who had husbands. But not all the relief that
could come from man, not all the bounties that the prince could bestow,
nor all the atonements which could be presented to the gods, availed
to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the
conflagration. Hence, to suppress the rumour, he falsely charged with the
guilt, and punished with the most exquisite tortures, the Christians, who
were hated for their enormities. Accordingly, first those were seized
who confessed they were Christians; next, on their information, a vast
multitude were convicted, not so much on the charge of burning the city,
as of hating the human race. And in their deaths they were also made
the subjects of sport, for they were covered with the hides of wild
beasts, and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire
to, and when day declined, burned to serve for nocturnal lights. Nero
offered his own gardens for that spectacle, and exhibited a Circensian
game, indiscriminately mingling with the common people in the habit
of a charioteer, or else standing in his chariot. Whence a feeling of
compassion arose towards the sufferers, because they seemed not to be cut
off for the public good, but victims to the ferocity of one man.[c]

In order to compensate for his prodigality in games and spectacles; to
cover the expense of his purposeless edifices, above all, of his golden
house; of his festivals, one of which cost four million sesterces for
perfume alone; his extravagance in furniture and in clothes, of which he
wore new ones each day, his distributions of bread, meat, game, clothes,
money, and even precious stones, among the populace in return for their
applause for his verses and singing; finally, I say, to compensate for
all this wild expenditure, he multiplied proscriptions and sentences
which carried with them the confiscation of property. Even office became
a source of revenue, for he only bestowed it on condition that he should
have a share in the profits. The provinces were thus again pillaged. It
was not for this they had so loudly saluted the establishment of the
empire, and they came within a measurable distance of its dissolution in
the last years of this reign.[b]


CONSPIRACY MET BY CRUELTY AND PERSECUTION

[Sidenote: [65 A.D.]]

Men, however, were grown weary of being the objects of the tyrannic
caprice of a profligate youth; and a widely extended conspiracy to remove
him and give the supreme power to C. Piso, a nobleman of many popular
qualities, was organised (65). Men of all ranks, civil and military, were
engaged in it,--senators, knights, tribunes, and centurions,--some, as is
usual, on public, some on private grounds. While they were yet undecided
where it were best to fall on Nero, a courtesan named Epicharis, who had
a knowledge (it is not known how obtained) of the plot, wearied of their
indecision, attempted to gain over the officers of the fleet at Misenum.
She made the first trial of an officer named Volusius Proculus, who had
been one of the agents in the murder of Agrippina, and who complained of
the ill return he had met with, and menaced revenge. She communicated to
him the fact of there being a conspiracy, and proposed to him to join in
it; but Proculus, hoping to gain a reward by this new service, went and
gave information to Nero. Epicharis was seized; but as she had mentioned
no names, and Proculus had no witnesses, nothing could be made of the
matter. She was, however, kept in prison.

The conspirators became alarmed; and lest they should be betrayed, they
resolved to delay acting no longer, but to fall on the tyrant at the
Circensian games. The plan arranged was that Plautius Lateranus, the
consul-elect, a man of great courage and bodily strength, should sue to
the emperor for relief to his family affairs, and in so doing should
grasp his knees and throw him down, and that then the officers should
despatch him with their swords. Meantime Piso should be waiting at the
adjacent temple of Ceres; and when Nero was no more, the prefect Fenius
Rufus and others should come and convey him to the camp.

Notwithstanding the number and variety of persons engaged in the
plot, the secret had been kept with wonderful fidelity. Accident,
however, revealed it as it was on the very eve of execution. Among the
conspirators was a senator named Flavius Scevinus, who, though dissolved
in luxury, was one of the most eager. He had insisted on having the
first part in the assassination, for which purpose he had provided a
dagger taken from a temple. The night before the attack was to be made
he gave this dagger to one of his freedmen, named Milichus, to grind and
sharpen. He at the same time sealed his will, giving freedom to some,
gifts to others of his slaves. He supped more luxuriously than usual,
and though he affected great cheerfulness, it was manifest from his air
that he had something of importance on his mind. He also directed his
freedman to prepare bandages for wounds. The freedman, who was either
already in the secret, or had his suspicions now excited, consulted
with his wife, and at her impulsion set off at daylight and revealed
his suspicions to Epaphroditus, one of Nero’s freedmen, by whom he was
conducted to the emperor. On his information Scevinus was arrested; but
he gave a plausible explanation of everything but the bandages, which he
positively denied. He might have escaped were it not that Milichus’ wife
suggested that Antonius Natalis had conversed a great deal with him in
secret of late, and that they were both intimate with Piso. Natalis was
then sent for; and as he and Scevinus did not agree in their accounts of
the conversation which they had, they were menaced with torture. Natalis’
courage gave way; he named Piso and Seneca. Scevinus, either through
weakness or thinking that all was known, named several others, among whom
were Annæus Lucanus the poet, the nephew of Seneca, Tullius Senecio, and
Afranius Quinctianus. These at first denied everything. At length, on the
promise of pardon, they discovered some of their nearest friends, Lucan
even naming his own mother Atilla.

Nero now called to mind the information of Proculus, and he ordered
Epicharis to be put to the torture. But no pain could overcome the
constancy of the heroic woman; and next day, as from her weak state she
was carried in a chair to undergo the torture anew, she contrived to
fasten her belt to the arched back of the chair, and thus to strangle
herself.

When the discovery was first made, some of the bolder spirits urged Piso
to hasten to the camp or to ascend the rostra, and endeavour to excite
the soldiers or the people to rise against Nero. But he had not energy
for such a course, and he lingered at home till his house was surrounded
by soldiers. He then opened his veins, leaving a will filled, for the
sake of his wife, a profligate woman, with the grossest adulation of
Nero. Lateranus died like a hero, with profound silence; and though the
tribune who presided at the execution was one of the conspirators, he
never reproached him.

But the object of Nero’s most deadly enmity was Seneca. All that was
against this illustrious man was that Natalis said that Piso had one
time sent him to Seneca, who was ill, to see how he was, and to complain
of his not admitting him, and that Seneca replied that it was for the
good of neither that they should meet frequently, but that his health
depended on Piso’s safety. The tribune Granius Silvanus (also one of the
conspirators) was sent to Seneca, who was now at his villa four miles
from Rome, to examine him respecting the conversation with Natalis.
He found him at table with his wife, Pompeia Paulina, and two of his
friends. Seneca’s account agreed with that of Natalis; his meaning, he
said, had been perfectly innocent. When the tribune made his report to
Nero and his privy council--Poppæa and Tigellinus--he was asked if Seneca
meditated a voluntary death. On his reply that he showed no signs of fear
or perturbation, he was ordered to go back and bid him die. Silvanus, it
is said, called on Fenius on his way and asked him if he should obey the
orders; but Fenius, with that want of spirit which was the ruin of them
all, bade him obey. Silvanus when he arrived sent in a centurion with the
fatal mandate.

Seneca calmly called for his will, but the centurion would not suffer him
to have it. He then told his friends that as he could not express his
sense of their merits in the way that he wished, he would leave them the
image of his life, to which, if they attended, they would obtain the fame
of virtue and of constancy in friendship. He checked their tears, showing
that nothing had occurred but what was to have been expected. Then
embracing his wife, he began to console and fortify her, but she declared
her resolution to die with him. Not displeased at her generous devotion,
and happy that one so dear to him should not remain exposed to injury and
misfortune, he gave a ready consent, and the veins in the arms of both
were opened. As Seneca, on account of his age, bled slowly, he caused
those of his legs and thighs to be opened also; and as he suffered very
much, he persuaded his wife to go into another room; and then calling
for amanuenses, he dictated a discourse which was afterward published.
Finding himself going very slowly, he asked his friend the physician,
Statius Annæus, for the hemlock juice which he had provided, and took it,
but it had no effect. He finally went into a warm bath, sprinkling as
he entered it the servants who were about him, and saying, “I pour this
liquor to Jove the Liberator.” The heat caused the blood to flow freely,
and his sufferings at length terminated. His body was burned without any
ceremony, according to the directions which he had given when at the
height of his prosperity.

Paulina did not die at this time; for Nero, who had no enmity against her
and wished to avoid the imputation of gratuitous cruelty, sent orders to
have her saved. She survived her husband a few years, her face and skin
remaining of a deadly paleness in consequence of her great loss of blood.

The military men did not remain undiscovered. Fenius Rufus died like a
coward; the tribunes and centurions, like soldiers. When one of them
named Subrius Flavius was asked by Nero what caused him to forget
his military oath: “I hated you,” said he, “and there was none of
the soldiers more faithful while you deserved to be loved. I began
to hate you when you became the murderer of your mother and wife, a
chariot-driver, a player, and an incendiary.” Nothing in the whole affair
cut Nero to the soul like this reply of the gallant soldier.

The consul Vestinus was not implicated by any in the conspiracy; but
Nero hated him; and as he was sitting at dinner with his friends,
some soldiers entered to say that their tribune wanted him. He arose,
went into a chamber, had his veins opened, entered a warm bath, and
died. Lucan when ordered to die had his veins also opened; when he
felt his extremities growing cold, he called to mind some verses of
his _Pharsalia_ which were applicable to his case, and died repeating
them. Senecio Quinctianus and Scevinus and many others died; several
were banished. Natalis, Milichus, and others were rewarded; offerings,
thanksgivings, and so forth were voted in abundance by the senate.

This obsequious body, however, sought to avert the disgrace of the lord
of the Roman world appearing on the stage at the approaching Quinquennial
games, by offering him the victory of song and the crown of eloquence.
But Nero said that there needed not the power nor the influence of the
senate, that he feared not his rivals, and relied on the equity of the
judges. He therefore sang on the stage, and when the people pressed him
to display all his acquirements, he came forth in the theatre, strictly
conforming to all the rules of his art, not sitting down when weary,
wiping his face in his robe, neither spitting nor blowing his nose, and
finally with bended knee and moving his hand, waited in counterfeit
terror for the sentence of the judges.

At the end of the games, he in a fit of anger gave Poppæa, who was
pregnant, a kick in the stomach, which caused her death. Instead of
burning her body, as was now the general custom, he had it embalmed
with the most costly spices and deposited in the monument of the Julian
family. He himself pronounced the funeral oration, in which he praised
her for her beauty, and for being the mother of a divine infant.

The remainder of the year was marked by the death or exile of several
illustrious persons, and by a pestilence which carried off great numbers
of all ranks and ages. “Of the knights and senators,” observes Tacitus,
“the deaths were less to be lamented; they anticipated, as it were, by
the common fate the cruelty of the prince.”

[Sidenote: [66 A.D.]]

The first deaths of the succeeding year (66) were those of P. Anteius,
whose crime was his wealth and the friendship of Agrippina; Ostorius
Scapula, who had distinguished himself in Britain; Annæus Mella, the
father of Lucan; Anicius Cerealis, Rufius Crispinus, and others. They
all died in the same manner, by opening their veins. The most remarkable
death was that of C. Petronius, a man whose elegance and taste in luxury
had recommended him to the special favour of Nero, who regarding him as
his “arbiter of elegance,” valued only that of which Petronius approved.
The envy of Tigellinus being thus excited, he bribed one of Petronius’
slaves to charge his master with being the friend of Scevinus. His death
followed, of course; the mode of it however was peculiar. He caused
his veins to be opened, then closed, then opened again, and so on. He
meantime went on conversing with his friends, not, like a Socrates or a
Seneca, on the immortality of the soul or the opinions of the wise, but
listening to light and wanton verses. He rewarded some of his slaves, he
had others flogged, he dined, he slept; he made, in short, his compulsive
death as like a natural one as possible. He did not, like others, pay
court to Nero or Tigellinus or the men in power, in his will, but he
wrote an account of the vices and crimes of the prince and court under
the names of flagitious men and women, and sent it sealed up to the
emperor. He broke his seal-ring, lest it might be used to the destruction
of innocent persons.

“After the slaughter of so many illustrious men,” says Tacitus, “Nero
at length sought to destroy virtue itself by killing Thraseas Pætus and
Bareas Soranus.” The former, a man of primitive Roman virtue, was hated
by him not merely for his worth, but because he had on various occasions
given public proof of his disapproval of his acts. Such were his going
out of the senate house when the decrees were made on account of the
murder of Agrippina, and his absence from the deification and funeral of
Poppæa. Further than his virtue, we know of no cause of enmity that Nero
could have against Soranus.

The accusers of Thraseas were Capito Cossutianus, whom he had made his
enemy by supporting the Cilician deputies who came to accuse him of
extortion, and Marcellus Eprius, a profligate man of eloquence. A Roman
knight named Ostorius Sabinus appeared as the accuser of Soranus. The
time selected for the destruction of these eminent men was that of the
arrival of the Parthian prince Tiridates, who was coming to Rome to
receive the diadem of Armenia, either in hopes that the domestic crime
would be shrouded by the foreign glory, or, more probably, to give the
Oriental an idea of the imperial power. Thraseas received an order not
to appear among those who went to meet the king; he wrote to Nero,
requiring to know with what he was charged, and asserting his ability to
clear himself if he got an opportunity. Nero in reply said that he would
convoke the senate. Thraseas then consulted with his friends, whether he
would go to the senate house, or expect his doom at home. Opinions were
as usual divided; he however did not go to the senate.

Next morning the temple in which the senate sat was surrounded with
soldiery. Cossutianus and Eprius appeared as the accusers of Thraseas,
his son-in-law Helvidius Priscus, Paconius Agrippinus, and Curtius
Montanus. The general charge against them was passive rather than active
disloyalty, Thraseas being held forth as the seducer and encourager of
the others. Ostorius then came forward and accused Soranus, who was
present, of friendship with Rubellius Plautus and of mal-conduct in
the government of Asia. He added that Servilia, the daughter of the
accused, had given money to fortune-tellers. Servilia was summoned. She
owned the truth, that she had sold her ornaments and given the money
to the soothsayers, but for no impious purpose, only to learn if her
father would escape. Witnesses were then called, and among them, to the
indignation of every virtuous man, appeared P. Egnatius, the client and
friend of Soranus, and a professor of the stoic philosophy, who now had
sold himself to destroy his benefactor by false testimony.

The accused were all condemned, of course; Thraseas, Soranus, and
Servilia to death, the others to exile. Of the circumstances of the
end of Soranus and his daughter, we are not informed. Thraseas having
prevented his wife Arria from following the example of her mother of the
same name, by entreating her not to deprive their daughter of her only
remaining support, caused his veins to be opened in the usual manner; and
as the blood spouted forth, he said to the quæstor who was present, “Let
us pour out to Jove the Liberator. Regard this, young man. May the gods
avert the omen; but you have been born in times when it is expedient to
fortify the mind by examples of constancy.” He died after suffering much
pain.[f]

Suetonius has left us an interesting picture of the personality of the
perverted being who was the cause of all this suffering.


PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF NERO, ACCORDING TO SUETONIUS

[Sidenote: [54-68 A.D.]]

In stature Nero was a little below the common size; his body spotted,
and of a disagreeable appearance; his hair inclined to yellow; his
countenance fair, rather than handsome; his eyes gray and dull, his
neck fat, his belly prominent, legs very slender, but his constitution
healthful. For, though extravagantly luxurious in his way of living,
he had, in the course of fourteen years, only three fits of sickness,
which were so slight, that he neither forbore the use of wine, nor made
any alteration in his usual diet. In his dress, and the care of his
person, he was so indecent, that he had his hair cut in rings one above
another; and when he was in Achaia, let it grow long behind; and appeared
abroad for the most part in the dress which he used at table, with a
handkerchief about his neck, his coat loose upon him, and without shoes.

He was entered, when a boy, in almost all the liberal sciences; but his
mother diverted him from the study of philosophy, as unsuitable to one
who was to be an emperor; and his master Seneca discouraged him from
reading the old orators, that he might keep him the longer in admiration
of himself. He was much addicted to poetry, and composed verses both with
pleasure and ease: nor did he, as some think, publish those of other
authors for his own. I have had in my hands some little pocket-books
of his, with some well-known verses, all of his own writing, and
written in such a manner, that it was very evident from the blotting and
interlining, that they had not been transcribed from a copy, nor dictated
by another, but written by the composer of them.

He had likewise a great taste for painting, and moulding of images, but
of all things an extravagant desire of popular applause, being a rival
of every man who was upon any account admired by the people. It was the
general belief, that, after the prizes he won by his performances upon
the stage, he would the next lustrum have entered amongst the wrestlers
at the Olympic games. For he was continually practising in that way; nor
did he attend in Greece that kind of solemnity any otherwise, than as the
judges used to do, sitting upon the ground in the Stadium. And if a pair
of wrestlers happened to get without the limits assigned them, he would
with his own hands bring them back into their proper place.

[Illustration: A NIGHT WATCHMAN OF ROME, SHOWING THE BELLS WORN ON HIS
JACKET]

Towards the end of his life, he made a public vow, that if he continued
in the peaceable enjoyment of the empire, he would, in the games which
he intended to give for his success against the insurgents, appear upon
the stage, to manage the water-organ, as also to play upon the flutes and
bagpipe, and upon the day concluding those diversions, would act his part
in a play, and dance to the story of Turnus in Virgil. And there are some
who say, that he put to death the player Paris as a dangerous rival.

He had an invincible desire, but capriciously directed, of rendering
himself famous through all succeeding ages. He therefore took from
several things and places their former appellations, and gave them new
names derived from his own. He called the month of April, too, Neroneus,
and had a design to change the name of Rome into that of Neropolis.

He thought there was no other use of riches and money than to squander
them away profusely; regarding all those as sordid wretches who kept
their expenses within due bounds; and extolling those as truly noble and
generous souls, who lavished away and wasted all before them. He never
wore the same garment twice. He would game for four hundred thousand
sesterces for every spot that came up upon the tali. He used to fish with
a golden net, drawn by silken cords of the finest scarlet colour. It is
said that he never travelled with less than a thousand carts attending
him with his baggage: the mules being all shod with silver, and their
drivers dressed in scarlet clothes of the finest wool; and a numerous
train of footmen, and Africans, with bracelets on their arms, and mounted
upon horses in splendid trappings.

He was a despiser of all religious worship, except that of the Syrian
goddess; but at last he regarded her so little that he spurned her, being
now engaged in another superstition, in which he invariably persisted.
For having received from some obscure plebeian a little image of a girl,
as a preservative against plots, and discovering a conspiracy immediately
after, he constantly worshipped, and with three sacrifices a day, his
imaginary protectress, as the greatest amongst the gods. He was likewise
desirous to have it thought that he had from the information of that
deity a knowledge of future events. A few months before he died, he
offered several sacrifices, to consult the entrails of the victims; but
could never obtain any favourable intimations from them.[d]


MERIVALE’S ESTIMATE OF NERO AND HIS TIMES

The youth who at the age of seventeen years had been called to govern
the civilised world, is represented in his busts and medals as handsome
in countenance, but, as Suetonius remarks, without grace or winningness
of expression. His hair was not the bright auburn of Apollo, the delight
of the Romans, to which it was so often likened, but yellowish or sandy;
his figure, though of middle stature, was ill-proportioned, the neck was
thick and sensual, the stomach prominent, the legs slender. His skin, it
is added, was blotched or pimpled; but this, it may be supposed, was the
effect of intemperance in his later years; his eyes were dark gray or
greenish, and their sight defective, which may account perhaps for the
scowl which seems to mark their expression. His health, notwithstanding
his excesses, continued good to the end, and it was only from anxious
concern for his voice that he wrapped his throat in kerchiefs, like
a confirmed valetudinarian. In his dress there was a mixture of
slovenliness and finery; in the arrangement of his cherished locks he was
exceedingly careful, piling them in tiers above the crown, and letting
them fall from thence over the shoulders, a fashion which was reputed
not less indecent, or at least effeminate, than the looseness of his
cincture, the bareness of his feet, and the lightness of the chamber-robe
in which he did not scruple to appear in public.

We may trace perhaps to the character of his master, and to the kind
of education he was likely to receive from him, the ardent love of
admiration, ill-directed as it was, which distinguished the pupil of
Seneca. To this constant anxiety to compete with rivals, and triumph over
them, however trifling the objects on which it was exercised, may be
ascribed the indifference Nero evidently felt to the title of divinity,
which in his inordinate vanity he might have been expected to claim. He
wanted to be admired as the first among men, not to be adored as a god.
He could not be Apollo, and contend at the same time for the prize of
the Pythian games; he could not be Hercules, and carry off the chaplet
at Nemea; he could not be Jupiter, and gain the victory at the great
contest of Olympia--distinctions on which his soul was bent from an early
period of his career, and which, as we shall see, he lived eventually to
achieve. His courtiers might, if they pleased, pronounce his likeness to
these or any other divinities; but to make him actually divine was to rob
him of the honours he so vehemently affected. The poets might predict
his apotheosis after death, and doubtless the verses in which Lucan, at
that time his friend and companion, challenged him to choose what godship
he would assume in heaven, and where he would fix his throne, imploring
him to take his seat in the middle of the universe, lest if he leaned
ever so little from the centre the world should be thrown by his august
weight from its eternal balance--such verses were doubtless accepted as
a fitting tribute to the germ of a divine existence hereafter to blossom
into flower. But the ardour with which Nero aspired to distinctions among
mortal men was itself a guarantee against his usurping the character of
the impassive godhead, which can neither enjoy a triumph nor suffer a
disgrace.

Nor again, though described by Tacitus as _lusting after the incredible_,
had Nero the same passion as Caligula for realising apparent
impossibilities to prove his superhuman power. He was not impelled in a
career of marvels by restless and aimless pride. Once removed from the
sphere of theatrical shows and contests, he had no higher notion of his
position than as enabling him to accumulate, to multiply, or to enlarge
the commonest objects of luxury. He never travelled, it is asserted, with
less than a thousand carriages in his train. His banquets were those of
the noble debauchees of the day on a still vaster scale of expense; in
the height of his extravagance, he would equip his actors with masks or
wands covered with genuine pearls; he would stake four hundred thousand
sesterces on a single cast of the dice; he bathed in unguents, and
stimulated his friends to expend four millions on the perfumes alone of a
single supper. His presents to favourites were sums of money many times
greater than had ever been given to favourites before; his buildings
were colonnades longer, halls wider, towers higher, than had been raised
by his predecessors. His projected canal from Puteoli to Rome would
only have been the longest of canals; the attempt he latterly made to
cut through the isthmus of Corinth was only a repetition of previous
attempts, neither better planned, nor more steadfastly persevered in.

In his schemes there was nothing new or original. Nero was devoid of
the imagination which throws an air of wild grandeur over the character
of Caligula. The notion that he burned Rome on purpose to have an
opportunity of rebuilding it more magnificently would have been more
applicable, as it seems to me, to his predecessor than to him. But within
the paltry sphere of his degraded taste he claimed to be pre-eminent. As
a mime or player he was not satisfied with any single class of parts,
or any one department of exhibition. After rivalling Apollo in song and
the Sun in charioteering, he aspired to display the courage and vigour
of Hercules, and a lion was duly prepared, drugged or fed to stupor,
to be strangled in his arms, or brained with a stroke of his club. He
acted, he sang, he played, he danced. He insisted on representing men and
heroes, gods and even goddesses. To affect the woman indeed, in dress,
voice, and gesture, was a transformation in which he took a childish
pleasure, restrained by no sense of dignity or decency. He adopted his
superstitions, as well as his garb and habits, from Syria, from his
Parthian and Armenian guests, or from the diviners and necromancers
of the credulous East. To the art of magic he devoted wealth, energy,
natural abilities, in short, all his resources; but Nature, says Pliny,
was too strong for him. His failure to divine the future, or raise the
spirits of the dead, was noted by the wise as a signal demonstration
of the futility of magical pretensions. For none of the accustomed
divinities of Rome did he evince any respect, nor for places consecrated
by the national religion; but he reverenced the Syrian Astarte, till in a
fit of vexation he renounced her protection, and insulted her image. At
last his sole object of veneration was a little figure of a girl, which
he always wore as a talisman about him, affecting to learn from it the
secrets of futurity.

Such were the miserable interests of this infatuated creature, the victim
of licentious indulgence, a child prematurely stunted both in mind and
body, surrounded on the throne not by generals and statesmen, but by
troops of slaves or freedmen, by players and dancers lost to all sense
of decency themselves, and seeking only their advancement at the expense
of their master and of mankind; surrendered by loose women to still
more despicable minions, and ruled by the most cruel and profligate of
ministers. Helius and Tigellinus, Doryphorus and Sporus, are among the
most hateful names of the imperial history; into the abominations of
their career it would be pollution merely to look. No wonder that, when
encircled by so loathsome a crew he saw the proud citizens prostrate at
his feet, he could exclaim that no prince before him had known the extent
of his power. But though at their patron’s command statues and arches
might rise in honour of these infamous companions, it may be said for the
credit of the people, that they received much less of lip-worship than
their predecessors, Sejanus, Pallas, and Narcissus.

There seems indeed to have risen, at least in the later years of this
principate, a marked separation between the court and the nobility; the
senators shrank from the presence of a man who so openly degraded his
name and lineage; they fled the contact of his dissolute associates;
they entered into widespread conspiracies against him, to which they
had never been provoked by the tyranny of his predecessors; and they
had the merit of incurring his petulant displeasure, with many a threat
to extinguish their order altogether, and give the provinces to his
knights and freedmen. “I hate you, Cæsar,” exclaimed the most refined
of his flatterers, “because you are a senator.” Accordingly this
emperor, notwithstanding the pomp and splendour of his shows and public
appearances, seems to have been left for the most part to the mercenary
attendance of his personal favourites, protected only by a troop of spies
and informers, and the vilest portion of the pampered populace, from the
general detestation of respectable citizens.[18]

The cruelties of Nero’s later years were the more fearful, perhaps, from
their apparent caprice. He had no politic object, such as may be ascribed
to Tiberius--of policy indeed he was incapable. Except that his murders
were commonly prompted by need or fear, and therefore fell oftenest on
the rich and powerful, it can hardly be said that one class suffered from
them more terribly than another.

Undoubtedly, however, the senate furnished the longest list of victims to
the tyrant’s barbarity. The greatest and noblest were the most exposed
to the prince’s evil eye, which lighted upon them equally at public
ceremonials and private receptions, and marked them for immolation
at every fresh burst of ill-humour. The proscriptions to which this
body was subjected under the four Claudian Cæsars reduced its numbers
considerably, more, indeed, it may be imagined, than was replaced by the
ordinary sources of replenishment. Claudius, among his other reforms,
sought to restore the balance by a special measure, and such was probably
the object of his revision of the senate, the last of the kind we read
of; but the decline must have been accelerated under Nero, without check
or counteraction. Nero, reckless equally of the past and future, felt
no anxiety to maintain the numbers of that historic assembly; and the
various causes, besides the emperor’s tyranny, which were always at work
to extinguish the oldest families, must have acted with terrible force on
the effete branches of the ancient aristocracy. But if its numbers were
reduced, no less were its employments also diminished.

Under the lax discipline of Nero and of Tigellinus appointments to office
abroad would be the prize of interest and favour, guided neither by
routine nor by discretion; at home the boards and commissions established
by Augustus would fall into disuse. Pensions and sinecures, though
such corruptions are not known to us at Rome by name, would doubtless
abound, but of real business there would be less and less. Intrigue and
peculation would flourish in a soil protected from the air of public
opinion, and the strong hand of central control.

The passive endurance which marked the conduct of the senate under the
imperial persecutions seems to bespeak a consciousness of its own guilt
towards the state, and it compounded for its monopoly of unquestioned
abuses by bowing to the yoke of a jealous and domineering master. We
discover in Seneca no reliance on the senate. He never speaks of it as a
living guardian of the virtues of Roman society. And yet, notwithstanding
this abandonment of its high prerogative, it still exercised a moral
power. Its mere title could awaken associations which thrilled from pulse
to pulse. It was still regarded by the men of ancient name and blood as
the true head or heart of the empire, rather than the upstart Claudius or
Domitius, who might wear the purple and wield the sword. To the men of
words and phrases the emperor was still an accident,--the senate was an
eternal fact,--at a time when rhetoric might make revolutions, though it
could not regenerate society. To them it was still the symbol of liberty,
at a time when liberty and Cæsar were regarded as two gladiators sword in
hand, pitted against each other in mortal combat. This venerable image of
its ancient majesty was preserved to it by the proscriptions themselves
by which it suffered; for as often as a murdered Scribonius or Pompeius
was replaced in the chairs of office by a Rubellius, a Lollius, or a
Vitellius, the principle of its vitality was in fact invigorated by the
infusion of new plebeian blood.

As fast indeed as the tyrant’s exigencies required the confiscation
of the great estates of nobles, and the overthrow of great families,
his caprice and favour were elevating new men from the inferior orders
to succeed to their distinctions, and to rival them in their vast
possessions. Nero never kept his money. All he robbed, all he extorted,
was squandered as abruptly as it was acquired, and shrewd Roman
money-makers were always waiting upon his necessities, and sweeping the
properties of his victims into their stores for a small part of their
value in specie. Of the vast sums amassed by the freedmen of Claudius and
his successors some records have been preserved to us; but the freedmen
were a class peculiarly obnoxious to remark, and it is probable that
knights and senators were at the same time, and by similar compliances,
raising fortunes not less enormous, who have escaped the designating
finger of history. Though the grinding processes to which the colossal
properties of the nobles were subjected must on the whole have broken
down the average amount of their revenues far below the rate at which it
figured under the republic and the first Cæsars, we must not suppose that
the current set all in one direction, or that the age of Claudius and
Nero was not also a period of great private accumulations. The wealth of
individuals and of the upper ranks at Rome generally reached perhaps its
greatest height at this culminating epoch.

Descending, however, from the high places of the Roman world, we find
beneath them a commonalty suffering also a social revolution, undergoing
a rapid transition, and presenting the elements of two rival classes, or
even hostile camps, in the bosom of the city. The clients and retainers
of the old nobility, whether freed or freeborn, still formed the pith
and marrow of the commonwealth; still leaning their humble tenements
against the great lords’ mansions, still respecting them as their patrons
and advisers, still attending their levees, and waiting for the daily
complement of the _sportula_ at their doors, they regarded them as the
real chiefs of the state, and held them equals of Cæsar himself. The
death or exile of their august protector might strike them with surprise
and indignation; but when they looked around and counted their numbers,
they felt their own insignificance, and quailed beneath the blow in
silence. They saw that there was growing up beside them a vast class
of patronless proletaries, the scum of the streets and lanes, slaves,
freedmen, foreigners, men of base trades and infamous employments, or
of ruined fortunes, who, having none but Cæsar himself to depend on,
threw the weight of their numbers in his scale, and earned his doles
and entertainments by lavish caresses, and deeds corresponding to their
promises. These have been called the lazzaroni of ancient Rome; in
idleness, indeed, and mendicancy they deserve the title; but they were
the paupers of a world-wide empire, and the crumbs on which they fed
fell from the tables of kings and princes. The wealth of millions of
subjects was lavished on these mendicant masters. For days together,
on the oft-recurring occasion of an imperial festival, valuables of
all kinds were thrown pell-mell among them, rare and costly birds were
lavished upon them by thousands, provisions of every kind, costly robes,
gold and silver, pearls and jewels, pictures, slaves and horses, and
even tamed wild beasts. At last, in the progress of this wild profusion,
ships, houses, and estates were bestowed by lottery on these waiters upon
Cæsar’s providence.

This extravagance was retained without relaxation throughout Nero’s
reign; had he paused in it for a moment the days of his power would
have been few. The rumour that he was about to quit Rome for the East
caused murmurs of discontent, and forced him to consult the gods, and
pretend to be deterred by signs of their displeasure from carrying his
design into effect. When at last, as we shall see, he actually visited
Greece, he left behind him a confidential minister, to keep the stream
of his liberality flowing, at whatever cost and by whatever measures of
spoliation. Absent or present, he flung to these pampered supporters
a portion of every confiscated fortune; the emperor and his people
hunted together, and the division of the prey was made apparently to
the satisfaction of both equally. Capricious as were the blows he dealt
around him, this class alone he took care never to offend, and even
the charge of firing the city fell lightly on the ears of the almost
houseless multitude, whose losses at least had been fully compensated by
plunder. The clients of the condemned nobles were kept effectually in
check by this hungry crowd, yelling over every carcass with the prospect
of a feast. Nero, in the height of his tyranny and alarm, had no need
to increase the number of his prætorians; the lazzaroni of Rome were
a bodyguard surrounding him in every public place, and watching the
entrances and exits at his palace gates.

Such were the chief distinctions of class at this period among the Roman
people, the so-called lords of mankind, and beyond them lay the great
world of the provincials, their subjects. But if these were subjects in
name, they were now become in fact the true Roman people; they alone
retained real freedom of action within the limits of the empire; they
were allowed to labour, and they enjoyed the bulk at least of the fruits
of industry; they rarely saw the hateful presence of the emperor, and
knew only by report the loathsome character of his courtiers and their
orgies. And if sometimes the thunderbolt might fall among them, it struck
only the highest eminences; the multitude was safe as it was innocent.
The extortion of the proconsul in the province was not to be compared
in wantonness or severity with the reckless pillage of the emperor in
the capital, nearer home. The petulance of a proconsul’s wife was hardly
tolerated abroad, while at home the prince’s worst atrocities were
stimulated by female cupidity. The taxation of the subject, if heavier in
some respects than that of the citizen, was at least tolerably regular;
the extraordinary demands which Nero made towards the rebuilding of Rome
were an exception to the routine of fiscal imposts. But, above all, the
provincials had changed place with their masters in being now the armed
force of the empire.

[Illustration: ROMAN CAVALRYMAN]

The citizen had almost ceased to wield the sword. Even the prætorians
were recruited from Italy, not from Rome herself; and among them
thousands were doubtless foreign born, the offscourings of the provinces,
who had thrown themselves on the shores of Italy to seek their fortunes
in a sphere abandoned by the indolence of their masters. The prætorian,
like the proletary of the city, was highly cherished by the emperor.
He had his rights and privileges which raised him above every other
military conscript. While the legionary served at ten _asses_ a day
for thirty or forty years, exposed to the risks of war, fatigue, and
climate, nor regained his liberty and safety till age had blanched
his hair and stiffened his limbs, the prætorian lived quietly at Rome
under the lax discipline of a stative camp; he enjoyed double pay, and
claimed dismissal after sixteen years’ service. He had his regular dole
of corn, his occasional largess, his extraordinary donative whenever
an opportunity had occurred to prove his fidelity. Tiberius, on the
fall of Sejanus, had given him 1000 _asses_; Claudius had paid for the
purple with a sum of 150,000,000 of sesterces; Nero had followed these
examples, and established them as the rule of the succession; on the
overthrow of Piso’s conspiracy he had requited his prætorians with 2000
sesterces apiece. Thus caressed, the favoured cohorts of the guard became
the firmest support of the prince, their creature, and under the sway of
military traditions, from which even they were not exempt, regarded their
oath of allegiance with strict fidelity. This fidelity, indeed, they
considered due to the imperator himself rather than to the senate and
people, whom they equally despised; they were satisfied with the power of
making the Cæsars, and as yet were far from conceiving in their minds the
idea of unmaking them again.

But far different was the case with the legions in the provinces. The
legionary was still less Roman than the prætorian. If to a great extent
the recruits for the frontier camps were still levied from the class
which possessed the nominal franchise of the city, yet these citizens
were themselves, for the most part, new-enfranchised provincials; they
had received Latin or Roman rights as a boon from the emperor, or perhaps
purchased them for the sake of their fiscal immunities. Romans in blood
or even Italians the legionaries no longer were. They were supported by
ample levies of auxiliaries, avowedly of foreign extraction, generally
transferred from their homes to a camp at a far distant station; Silures
and Brigantes to the Danube; Tungri and Suevi to the borders of Wales;
Iberians to the Euphrates; Numidians to the Rhine. Amidst the clang of
dissonant languages that resounded through the camp the Latin was the
least heard and understood.

Yet the word of command was still Roman, and the chief officers were
Roman also; the affections of this soldiery, long estranged from the
emperor and the senate, were attached to the tribune and the legatus;
and the murmurs of the nobles at home, which moved the sympathy of their
kinsmen on the frontier, met a deep response in the devotion of these
sons of the eagles to their accustomed leaders. The vast distance of the
great camps of the empire from one another, and the frequent change of
their officers, together with the motives of jealousy which the emperors
nourished between them, helped to prevent these legions from joining in
a common cause when disaffection menaced an outbreak in any particular
quarter. They made some partial attempts to supplant the prætorians by
carrying one of their own chiefs to power; but every endeavour of the
kind had been hitherto baffled by the want of concert among them. More
success was to attend the efforts in the near future.

In the year 63 A.D., Nero, we are told, was preparing to visit the East
in person. Some indeed asserted that his object was only to behold the
wonders of Egypt, and the interest of the citizens was just then directed
towards that mysterious region by the discoveries of an exploring party,
which had recently ascended the Nile nine hundred miles above Syene.
Others believed that he had no intention of proceeding beyond Greece; but
it seems probable that his views were really more extensive, and that he
contemplated throwing himself into the quarters of the Syrian legions,
and checking by his presence the ambition of the proconsul, perhaps
seizing an opportunity to overthrow him. But, whatever Nero’s project
may have been, it was frustrated, as we have seen, by the occurrence of
the fire at Rome. The affairs of the next three years have been already
related: the conspiracies which were concerted against the emperor at
home, his redoubled efforts to secure the favour of the populace, and his
cruel precaution of destroying every man of eminence who might become
the centre of fresh machinations to his prejudice. In the year 66 he at
last found leisure to execute his scheme of travel, so far, at least, as
to visit Greece; where he presented himself at the public spectacles,
and gratified his passion for dancing and singing before promiscuous
assemblages, with still less reserve than at home. All the states which
held musical contests had hastened, even before his arrival, to humour
him with the offer of their prizes, and Nero had received their envoys
with the highest honours, and invited them to his table. When one of
them begged him to give a specimen of his singing, and his skill was
rapturously applauded, he declared that the Greeks alone had ears, and
alone deserved the honour of hearing him.


NERO IN GREECE

[Sidenote: [66-68 A.D.]]

Nero remained in Greece to the beginning of the year 68. He was attended
by courtiers and court-followers of all descriptions, and many, it was
affirmed, of the chief nobility were invited to accompany him, that he
might slay them more securely at a distance from the city. However this
may be, the ministers of his luxury and panders to his vices formed the
most conspicuous portion of his escort; for he seems to have prosecuted
his enormities among the despised Greeks more shamelessly than ever.
The great ambition of the imperator, now following in the track of
Mummius, Flamininus, Agrippa, and Augustus, was to gain the distinction
of a Periodonicus, or victor in the whole circle of the games; for in
compliment to him, the contests which recurred in successive years at
Olympia, Nemea, Delphi, and Corinth were all to be enacted during his
residence in the country. Nor was this the only irregularity admitted. At
Olympia he demanded a musical contest, such as had never been practised
there before; at the isthmus he contended in tragedy and comedy, which
also was contrary to the local usage. The exertions of Nero were not
confined to playing, singing, and acting. He presented himself also as
a charioteer, nor was he ashamed to receive the prize even when he had
fallen with car and horses to the ground. Wherever he went he challenged
the most famous artists to contend with him, and extorted every prize
from every competitor. A Roman consular enacted the part of herald, and
proclaimed in the astonished ears of Greece, “Nero the Emperor is Victor,
and he crowns the People of Rome, and the World which is his own.”

The flattery of the Greeks deserved substantial acknowledgment, and
Nero was prepared to make a sacrifice for the purpose. He negotiated an
exchange of provinces for the senate, resigning the imperial prison-house
of Sardinia, and receiving in its place the prefecture of Achaia. He then
proclaimed, in the Forum at Corinth, the freedom and immunity of the
province, while he awarded to his judges the honour of Roman citizenship,
together with large presents in money. Another project ascribed to him,
magnificent and useful in itself, may have had no other object in his
mind than to render him famous in history; in almost any other human
being we should look for some worthier motive for it. This was the
cutting of the isthmus of Corinth, a measure often before proposed and
attempted but never achieved. The work was commenced, convicts were
condemned to labour upon it, and among them the learned stoic Musonius
Rufus, removed from Gyarus, whither he had been banished as an accomplice
in Piso’s conspiracy, was seen by another philosopher handling the spade
and pick-axe. But men of science from Egypt assured the emperor that, if
the work were effected, the waters of the Corinthian Gulf, being higher
than the Saronic, would submerge the island of Ægina, and after Nero’s
departure the design was promptly abandoned. The Romans regarded its
frustration as a judgment perhaps on his unnatural pride. In commencing
the work with a sacrifice, it had been remarked, as an instance of the
hatred he bore the senate, that he had prayed simply that it might turn
out well for the emperor and the people of Rome.

It is not impossible, however, that there may have been a politic motive
in this visit to Greece, such as has been suggested for the expedition
of Caius into Gaul. Fresh disturbances had broken out in Judea; the
cruelties of Gessius Florus had excited a sedition, which Cestius
Gallus advanced to Jerusalem from Antioch to repress. But here he had
encountered the people in arms, and had been suddenly overpowered
and slain. The Jews were elated with success and hopeless of pardon;
it was soon evident that the great war which must decide the fate of
their country, and with it of the Roman Empire in the East, so often
threatened, so long delayed, had commenced. But Corbulo was almost on the
spot; his legions were mighty, his name still mightier; such forces under
such a leader might be trusted to do the work of Rome thoroughly in any
quarter. Nevertheless the jealousy of the wretched prince prevailed over
all concern for the interests of his country. He trembled at the increase
of influence this new war might bring to his formidable proconsul. This
was the moment he chose for repairing in person to the threshold of his
province, and summoning the man he feared to attend upon him in Greece.
At the same time he ordered Vespasian, who had already distinguished
himself in the British war, but had acquired as yet no dangerous
pre-eminence, to take command of the forces destined for Palestine.
Corbulo must have known that he was superseded; he must have felt his
summons as a disgrace; he must have apprehended personal danger. Yet had
he known that every step he took westward was bringing him straight to
his doom, such was his fidelity as a soldier that he would have obeyed
without hesitation. No sooner had he arrived at Cenchreæ, the port of
Corinth, than he was met by emissaries from Nero bearing him the order
to despatch himself. Without murmur, he plunged a sword into his heart,
exclaiming as he struck the blow, “Rightly served!” [67 A.D.].

Nor was the gallant Corbulo the tyrant’s only victim. At the same time he
summoned two brothers, Rufus and Proculus, of the great Scribonian house,
who commanded in the two Germanies, to meet him in Greece, under pretence
of conferring with them on state affairs. The summons was in fact a
recall, and the pretence which accompanied it could hardly have deceived
them; yet they too obeyed with the same alacrity as Corbulo, and fell,
perhaps not unwittingly, into the same snare. Some specific charges were
laid against them; but no opportunity was given them of meeting them, nor
were they allowed to see the emperor. They killed themselves in despair.

Although, during his sojourn in Greece, Nero traversed the province in
every direction, it was observed that he refrained from visiting either
Athens or Sparta. With respect to the city of Lycurgus it was affirmed
merely that he kept aloof from it lest the austerity of its usages should
prove irksome to him; but he dared not enter the abode of the Erinyes,
from dread of their vengeance on his crimes. Another account said that
he was deterred from initiation into the mysteries of Eleusis, which
was denied, under direst imprecations, to the impious and impure. Of
these awful legends of Grecian antiquity but a faint and confused echo
resounded in Italy. To the Latin or the Sabine it little mattered whether
the murderer shrank from Athens or Eleusis, whether it was the avenging
Furies or the pure goddess of the mysteries before whom he trembled
to appear. Give but freedom to the people, they said, to declare what
they really think, and who so base as to hesitate between Seneca and
Nero--Nero, who more than once deserved the sack, the serpent, and the
ape, the instruments of death for parricide. True, Orestes by divine
command had slain his mother; but he at least avenged the death of a
father--Nero had assisted at the slaughter of Claudius; Orestes spared
at least his wife and sister--Nero had murdered both; Orestes had not
poisoned a kinsman--Nero had mingled aconite for many: above all, Orestes
had never sung upon the stage, nor chanted, like Nero, the fall of Ilium.
This it seems was the crown and climax of his crimes, the last and worst
of the indignities he heaped on Rome; this was the deed for which the
sword of the avenger was most fitly drawn. “For such,” exclaims Juvenal,
“forsooth, were the acts, such were the arts of our high-born prince,
proud to degrade himself on a foreign stage, and earn the paltry chaplets
of the Grecian games. Let him lay before the image of Domitius the mantle
of Thyestes, the mask of Antigone or Melanippe; let him hang his votive
lyre on the marble statue of Augustus.”

Beneath this veil of rhetoric lies a truth which it is the province
of history to remark. The Romans, from age to age, viewed their own
times in a very different light from that in which they have appeared
to posterity. The notion of Juvenal that the acting and singing of
Nero were in fact his most flagrant enormities was felt no doubt, even
in his own day, as a wild exaggeration; nevertheless it points to the
principle, then still in vigour, of the practical religion of antiquity,
the principle of faith in its social traditions. With cruelty and
oppression the Romans were so familiar that Nero’s atrocities in this
respect, so harrowing to our feelings, made little impression upon them;
but his desecration of their national manners, his abandonment of the
_mos majorum_, the usage of his ancestors, startled them like impiety or
sacrilege. They were not aware how far they had really drifted from the
habits of antiquity, how much of foreign poison they had admitted into
their veins. Theoretically they still held in sanctimonious horror the
customs of the stranger; foreign usages might be innocent, nay, laudable,
in their own place, but to introduce them into Rome was a monstrous
sin, a sin, not against the gods in whom they no longer believed, but
against the nation, in which they believed more intensely perhaps than
ever. The state or nation was itself gradually assuming in their eyes the
personality of a distinct divinity, in which all other divinities were
absorbed; the Hellenism which Nero vaunted was apostasy from the goddess
Roma.

[Illustration: ROMAN BRONZE KETTLE]

The Greeks on the other hand would regard, we may suppose, with more
indulgence the caprices of their imperial visitor; they were accustomed
to flatter, and in this instance there was some excuse for flattering a
humour so flattering to themselves. The miserable vices he paraded before
them were too like their own, at least in their period of corruption,
to elicit strong moral reprobation. Nevertheless, if we may credit
our accounts, he found more effectual means of disgusting them. The
imperial tyranny was always pursued, as by its shadow, by profuse and
fatal expenditure. It seemed unable to move without the attendance of a
crowd of harpies, ever demanding their prey with maw insatiable. Every
day required fresh plunder; every day proscriptions and confiscations
revealed the prince’s necessities, and if these for a moment slackened
for want of victims, his hands were laid on the monuments of art, on
every object on which money could be raised throughout the devoted land.
The temples as well as the dwellings and the forums of Greece were
ransacked again for the costliest and most cherished treasures, to be
sold by auction to the highest bidder, or redeemed at exorbitant prices
by their unhappy owners. Greece was powerless to resist, and her murmurs
were drowned in the acclamations of the hired applauders; but she felt
her wrongs deeply, and the pretended boon of freedom, accompanied by a
precarious immunity, was regarded perhaps as an insult rather than a
favour.

Rome at least, it might be hoped, would breathe again during the absence
of her hateful tormentor. But this, we are assured, was as far from her
as ever. Her condition had become even more miserable. The emperor had
given the government of Italy to a freedman named Helius, and this minion
exercised cruelty and rapine at his own caprice, not even deigning to
ask the prince’s pleasure beforehand on the executions and confiscations
he commanded. Yet Helius was not unfaithful to his master’s interests.
On the first symptoms of danger from discontent in the city or the
provinces, for such symptoms began at last to threaten, he urged him
to hasten back to the seat of government, and it was Nero’s obstinacy
alone that postponed his return for some months. “You admonish me, you
entreat me,” replied the infatuated wretch, “to present myself again at
Rome; nay, but you should rather dissuade me from returning, until I have
reaped my full harvest of laurels.” This harvest was not yet gathered in,
and the cries of the keeper of the city, already trembling for the fate
of the empire, were disregarded, while there yet remained a stadium to be
trodden, or a chaplet to be won, in Greece. At the commencement, however,
of the year 68 the aspect of affairs had become still more serious. Plots
for the subversion of the government were believed to be rife in the
armies of the West. The heads of administration at Rome knew not whom of
their officers in Gaul or Spain to trust. Deep gloom had settled down
on the upper classes in the capital; the temper of the populace itself,
so long the stay of Nero’s tyranny, was uncertain. Helius again urged
him to hasten his return. He crossed over to Greece to confer with him
in person. He repeated his instances with increasing fervour. At last,
when there seemed no more of fame or booty to be wrung from Greece,
Nero deigned to take ship, though the season of navigation had not yet
commenced, and urged his prow through stormy seas to the haven of Puteoli.


NERO’S RETURN TO ITALY AND TRIUMPHAL ENTRY INTO ROME

At Delphi he had consulted the oracle about his future fortunes, and had
been warned, we are told, against the seventy-third year, a response
which seemed to the youth of thirty to portend a great length of days,
but was found in the sequel to have another and a fatal signification.
Fortified, however, by this delusion, he had returned to Italy with
little anxiety, and when some of the precious objects that followed in
his train were lost by shipwreck, he vaunted in the plenitude of his
self-assurance that the fishes themselves would restore them. After
losing and again recovering both Britain and Armenia, his confidence in
his good fortune had become, it is said, unbounded. It was at Naples, he
remembered, that he had commenced his long course of artistic victories.
Now arrived at the height of his glory, he determined to celebrate his
successes by a triumphal entry into the Campanian capital, with a team
of milk-white horses. The walls were broken down to admit the chariot of
the Hieronicus, and the same extravagance was repeated when he entered
Antium, his native place, and the Albanum, his favourite residence,
and once more, when he presented himself before Rome. He drove in pomp
through the city, in the chariot in which Augustus had triumphed,
with the flutist Diodorus by his side, arrayed in a purple robe, and
a mantle blazing with golden stars, wearing on his head the Olympian
coronal, and waving the Pythian in his hand. He was preceded by a long
train of attendants bearing aloft his other chaplets and the titles of
all his victories; he was followed by his five thousand _augustani_,
with loud and measured acclamations, as the soldiers who shared his
glory. The procession passed through the Circus, some arches of which
were demolished to admit it, and thence to the Velabrum and the Forum,
skirting the base of the Palatine to the Porta Mugionis, the chief
ascent to the hill and the temple of Apollo on its summit. The sacrifice
of victims, the flinging of odours, and every other accompaniment of a
military triumph, were duly observed in this mock solemnity; the statues
of the emperor were decked with crowns and lyres; the citizens hailed
their hero with the titles of Nero-Apollo and Nero-Hercules, invoking
his divine voice, and pronouncing all who heard it blessed. The affair
was concluded by the striking of medals, on which Nero was represented,
to the shame and horror of all genuine patriots, in the garb of a
flute-player.


DISCONTENT IN THE PROVINCES

[Sidenote: [68 A.D.]]

But the hour of retribution was at hand. Notwithstanding the servile
flattery of the senate, and the triumphs and supplications it had
decreed, Nero felt uneasy at the murmurs no longer stifled, and the
undissembled gloom which now surrounded him in his capital, and withdrew
himself from Rome to the freer air of Campania. Meanwhile the discontent
repressed in the city was finding vent in the provinces, and the camps,
thronged as they were with kinsmen of the mocked and injured senators,
were brooding over projects of revenge. Among the most distinguished of
the officers who at this time held commands and enjoyed the confidence of
their soldiers, was Servius Sulpicius Galba, who for several years had
governed the Hither Spain. Connected with the first families of Rome,
and descended from many heroes of the camp and Forum, this man stood
high in public regard, and in the admiration of the emperors themselves,
for his courage, his skill, and his austerity. He had deserved well of
Caligula for the vigour with which, at a critical moment, he drew up
the reins of discipline in the Rhenish camps; still better of Claudius
for refusing the offer of his own soldiers to raise him to empire on
Caligula’s death. He had held command in Aquitania, and was for two years
proconsul of Africa; he had received the triumphal ornaments, and had
been admitted to the priestly colleges of the Titii, the Quindecemvirs,
and the Augustales. Full of years and honours, he had retired from public
employment through the first half of Nero’s principate, till summoned to
preside over the Tarraconensis. He exercised his powers with vigilance
and a harshness which perhaps was salutary, until the emperor’s growing
jealousy warned him to shroud his reputation under the veil of indolence
or even neglect, and thus he escaped the fate of Corbulo, and lived to
avenge it. Galba was in his seventy-third year. In his childhood he had
been brought, it was reported, with others of the young nobility, to
salute the aged Augustus; and the emperor, taking him playfully by the
cheek, had said, “And thou too, child, shalt one day taste our empire.”
Tiberius, it was added, had learned from the diviners the splendid
destiny that awaited his old age, but had remarked complacently that to
himself it could not matter. Nero, it seems, whom these prognostications
touched more nearly, either forgot, or was lulled to false security about
them.

Early in the winter of 68, while Nero was still absent in Greece, Galba
received overtures from C. Julius Vindex, prefect of the Farther Gaul,
for a simultaneous rising. Vindex was himself a Gallico-Roman, scion of
a royal house in Aquitania, adopted into the imperial gens; but while he
imbibed the pride of a Roman, he retained the impetuous spirit of his
ancestors; and the enormities of Nero, aggravated no doubt in his esteem
by his exactions in Gaul itself, roused his determination to overthrow
him without a view to personal aggrandisement. The time indeed was yet
far distant when a foreigner could even conceive the idea of gaining the
purple. But he fixed his eyes on Galba, as the ablest of the class from
which fortune could make an emperor, and it was with vexation that he
found the old chief too cautious to be driven headlong into a revolt, the
event of which might seem so doubtful.

Galba indeed had good reason to hesitate. Nero set a price on the head
of Vindex, whose designs were speedily revealed to him, and though the
forces of the Gaulish province were disposed to follow their chief, the
more powerful legions of lower Germany, under Virginius Rufus, were in
full march against them. The armies met at Vesontio, and there Vindex and
Virginius, at a private interview, agreed to conspire together, but their
troops could come to no such understanding; the Virginians attacked the
soldiers of Vindex, and almost cut them to pieces. Vindex thereupon, with
the haste and levity of his race, threw himself on his sword, and the
rebellion seemed for a moment to be crushed.


GALBA IS SALUTED IMPERATOR BY HIS SOLDIERS

But Galba had become alarmed for his own safety. He had received
communications from a rebel, all whose acts were well known to the
government. He had been urged to proclaim himself emperor, and no refusal
on his part could efface the crime of having been judged worthy of such a
distinction. Indeed, so at least he pretended, he had already intercepted
orders from Nero to take his life, and a plot for his assassination
was opportunely detected among a company of slaves presented him by a
freedman of the emperor. Thus impelled to provide for his own safety, he
called his troops together, and setting before them the images of the
tyrant’s noblest victims, harangued them on the state of public affairs.
The soldiers saluted him as imperator, but he would only allow himself to
be styled Legatus of the senate and the people. He proceeded, however,
at once to prorogue all civil business, and provide for immediate war
by raising forces, both legionary and auxiliary, from the youth of the
province. At the same time he convened the notables of the country, to
give perhaps a civil colour to his military enterprise. The Gallic and
Germanic legions, now reunited, after the death of Vindex, had offered
to raise Virginius to the purple; they conjured him to assume the
title of imperator, and inscribed on his busts the names of Cæsar and
Augustus. But he steadily refused the honours thrust upon him, erased
the obnoxious letters, and at length persuaded his admirers to leave the
decision of affairs to the authorities at home. He entered, however,
into communication with Galba, who had now, it seems, determined on the
attempt, and the news was bruited far and wide that Gaul and Spain had
revolted, and that the empire had passed irrevocably from the monster
Nero.

At once it appeared how many pretenders to power might exist in the bosom
of the provincial camps. The fatal secret of the empire, that a prince
might be created elsewhere than at Rome, so long undiscovered, so alien,
as was supposed, from the sentiments of the age, was revealed in more
than one quarter. Not in Gaul and Spain only, but in Africa and lower
Germany, the legions were ready to make an emperor of their own chief.
Clodius Macer in the one, Fonteius Capito in the other, were proclaimed
by the soldiers. At the same time Salvius Otho, Nero’s ancient favourite,
who was weary of his long oblivion on the shores of the Atlantic,
declared himself a supporter of Galba, and lent him his own slaves and
plate, to swell his retinue and increase his resources. The civil wars
had again begun.

[Illustration: ROMAN METHOD OF ATTACK FROM ABOVE]

Such was the march of disaffection, the first anticipations of which had
been revealed to Helius before the end of 66, and had induced him to urge
the emperor, first by letter and afterwards in person, to hasten home.
Nero, as we have seen, could not be persuaded to regard them seriously,
or postpone to their consideration his paltry gratifications and
amusements. After his return to Rome he had again quitted it for Naples
in March, 68, and it was on the 19th of that month, the anniversary of
Agrippina’s murder, while presiding at a gymnastic exhibition, that
he received the news of the revolt of Vindex. Still he treated the
announcement with contempt, and even expressed satisfaction at the
prospect of new confiscations. He witnessed the contests with unabated
interest, and retired from them to a banquet. Interrupted by fresh and
more alarming despatches, he resented them with petulant ill-humour;
for eight days he would neither issue orders nor be spoken to on the
subject. Finally arrived a manifesto from Vindex himself, which moved him
to send a message to the senate, requiring it to denounce the rebel as a
public enemy; but he excused himself from appearing in person, alleging
a cold or sore throat, which he must nurse for the conservation of his
voice. Nothing so much incensed him as Vindex calling him Ahenobarbus
instead of Nero, and disparaging his skill in singing. “Had they ever
heard a better performer?” he asked peevishly of all around him. He now
hurried trembling to Rome; but he was reassured, we are told, on the
way by noticing a sculpture which represented a Gallic soldier dragged
headlong by a Roman knight. Accordingly, with his usual levity, instead
of consulting in full senate, or haranguing on the state of affairs in
the Forum, he held a hasty conversation with a few only of his nobles,
and passed the day in explaining to them a new water-organ, on which he
proposed, he said, “with Vindex’s good leave,” to perform in public.
He completed and dedicated a temple to Poppæa: once more he celebrated
the games of the circus, once more he played and sang, and drove the
chariot. But it was for the last time. Vindex had fallen, but Galba,
it was now announced, had raised the standard of revolt. The rebel’s
property in Rome was immediately confiscated, to which he replied by
selling under the spear the emperor’s estates in Spain. The hour of
retribution, long delayed, was now swiftly advancing; courier after
courier was dashing through the gates, bringing news of the defection of
generals and legions. The revolt of Virginius was no longer doubtful.
At this intelligence the puny tyrant fainted; coming to himself he
tore his robes and smote his head, with pusillanimous wailings. To the
consolations of his nurse he replied, with the cries of an infant, “never
was such ill-fortune as his; other Cæsars had fallen by the sword, he
alone must lose the empire still living.” At last he recollected himself
sufficiently to summon troops from Illyricum for the defence of Italy;
but these, it was found, were in correspondence with the enemy. Another
resource, which served only to show to what straits he was driven, was
to land sailors from the fleet at Ostia, and form them into a legion.
Then he invoked the pampered populace to arise in his behalf, and dressed
up courtesans and dancers as Amazons to attend his march; next moment
he exclaimed that he would take ship for Alexandria, and there earn
subsistence by singing in the streets. Again he launched into invectives
against the magistrates abroad, threatening to recall and disgrace them
throughout his dominions; the provinces he would give up to pillage,
he would slay every Gaul in the city, he would massacre the senate, he
would let loose the lions on the populace, he would lay Rome in ashes.
Finally, the tyrant’s vein exhausted, he proposed in woman’s mood to meet
the rebels unarmed, trusting in his beauty, his tears, and the persuasive
tones of his voice, to win them to obedience.

[Illustration: A CENTURION OFFICER]

Meanwhile the excitement among the knights and senators at the prospect
of deliverance kept pace with the progress of revolt abroad. Portents
were occurring at their doors. Blood rained on the Alban Mount; the gates
of the Julian sepulchre burst open of their own accord. The Hundred Days
of Nero were drawing rapidly to a close. He had landed in Italy about the
end of February, and now at the beginning of June his cause had already
become hopeless. Galba, though steadfast in his resolution, had not yet
set his troops in motion; nevertheless, Nero was no longer safe in the
city. The people, at first indifferent, were now clamouring against him;
for there was a dearth of provisions, and a vessel, just arrived from
Alexandria, was found, to their disgust, to bear not grain, but fine sand
for the wrestlers in the amphitheatre. The prætorians had been seduced by
their prefect Nymphidius, to whom the camp was abandoned by the flight
of Tigellinus. Nero was left without advisers; the senators stood aloof;
of Helius, lately so powerful and energetic, we hear nothing. Terrified
by dreams, stung by ridicule or desertion, when his last hope of succour
was announced to have deceived him the wretched tyrant started from his
couch at supper, upset the tables, and dashed his choicest vessels to
the ground; then taking poison from Locusta and placing it in a golden
casket, he crossed from the palace to the Servilian gardens, and sent his
trustiest freedmen to secure a galley at Ostia. He conjured some tribunes
and centurions, with a handful of guards, to join his flight; but all
refused, and one blunter than the rest exclaimed tauntingly, “Is it then
so hard to die?”


THE DEATH OF NERO

At last at midnight, finding that even the sentinels had left their
posts, he sent or rushed himself to assemble his attendants. Every door
was closed; he knocked, but no answer came. Returning to his chamber,
he found the slaves fled, the furniture pillaged, the case of poison
removed. Not a guard, not a gladiator, was at hand, to pierce his
throat. “I have neither friend nor foe,” he exclaimed. He would have
thrown himself into the Tiber, but his courage failed him. He must have
time, he said, and repose to collect his spirits for suicide, and his
freedman Phaon at last offered him his villa in the suburbs, four miles
from the city. In undress and bare-footed, throwing a rough cloak over
his shoulders, and a kerchief across his face, he glided through the
doors, mounted a horse, and, attended by Sporus and three others, passed
the city gates with the dawn of the summer morning. The Nomentane road
led him beneath the wall of the prætorians, whom he might hear uttering
curses against him, and pledging vows to Galba; and the early travellers
from the country asked him, as they met, “What news of Nero?” or remarked
to one another, “These men are pursuing the tyrant.” Thunder and
lightning, and a shock of earthquake, added horror to the moment. Nero’s
horse started at a dead body on the roadside, the kerchief fell from his
face, and a prætorian passing by recognised and saluted him.

At the fourth milestone the party quitted the highway, alighted from
their horses, and scrambled on foot through a cane-brake, laying their
own cloaks to tread on, to the rear of the promised villa. Phaon now
desired Nero to crouch in a sand-pit hard by, while he contrived to open
the drain from the bathroom, and so admit him unperceived; but he vowed
he would not go alive, as he said, underground, and remained trembling
beneath the wall. Taking water from a puddle in his hand, “This,” he
said, “is the famous Drink of Nero.” At last a hole was made, through
which he crept on all fours into a narrow chamber of the house, and
there threw himself on a pallet. The coarse bread that was offered him
he could not eat, but swallowed a little tepid water. Still he lingered,
his companions urging him to seek refuge, without delay, from the insults
about to be heaped on him. He ordered them to dig a grave, and lay down
himself to give the measure; he desired them to collect bits of marble to
decorate his sepulchre, and prepare water to cleanse and wood to burn his
corpse, sighing meanwhile, and muttering, “What an artist to perish!”

Presently a slave of Phaon’s brought papers from Rome, which Nero
snatched from him, and read that the senate had proclaimed him an enemy,
and decreed his death, in the ancient fashion. He asked what that was;
and was informed that the culprit was stripped, his head placed in a
fork, and his body smitten with the stick till death. Terrified at this
announcement, he took two daggers from his bosom, tried their edge one
after the other, and again laid them down, alleging that the moment
was not yet arrived. Then he called on Sporus to commence his funeral
lamentations; then he implored some of the party to set him the example;
once and again he reproached himself with his own timidity. “Fie!
Nero, fie!” he muttered in Greek, “courage, man! come, rouse thee!”
Suddenly was heard the trampling of horsemen, sent to seize the culprit
alive. Then at last, with a verse of Homer hastily ejaculated, “Sound
of swift-footed steeds strikes on my ears,” he placed a weapon to his
breast, and the slave Epaphroditus drove it home.

The blow was scarcely struck, when the centurion rushed in, and,
thrusting his cloak against the wound, pretended he was come to help
him. The dying wretch could only murmur, “Too late,” and, “Is this your
fidelity?” and expired with a horrid stare on his countenance. He had
adjured his attendants to burn his body, and not let the foe bear off his
head, and this was now allowed him; the corpse was consumed with haste
and imperfectly, but at least without mutilation.

Nero perished on the 9th of June, 68 A.D., at the age of thirty years and
six months, in the fourteenth year of his principate. The child borne him
by Poppæa had died in infancy, and a subsequent marriage with Statilia
Messallina had proved unfruitful. The stock of the Julii, refreshed in
vain by grafts from the Octavii, the Claudii, and the Domitii, had been
reduced to his single person, and with Nero the adoptive race of the
great dictator was extinguished. The first of the Cæsars had married
four times, the second thrice, the third twice, the fourth thrice
again, the fifth six times, and lastly, the sixth thrice also. Of these
repeated unions, a large number had borne offspring, yet no descendants
of them survived. A few had lived to old age, many reached maturity,
some were cut off by early sickness, the end of others was premature and
mysterious; but a large proportion were victims of domestic jealousy and
politic assassination.

With Nero we bid farewell to the Cæsars, at the same time we bid farewell
to the state of things which the Cæsars created and maintained. We turn
over a page in Roman history. On the verge of a new epoch we would treat
with grave respect even the monster with whom the old epoch closes; we
may think it well that the corpse even of Nero was unmutilated; that he
was buried decently in the Domitian gardens on the Pincian; that though
the people evinced a thoughtless triumph at his death, as if it promised
them a freedom which they could neither use nor understand, some unknown
hands were found to strew flowers on his sepulchre, and the rival king of
Parthia adjured the senate to do honour to his memory.

Undoubtedly the Romans regarded with peculiar feeling the death of the
last of the Cæsars. Nero was cut off in early youth; he perished in
obscurity; he was entombed in a private sepulchre, with no manifestation
of national concern, such as had thrown a gleam of interest over the
least regretted of his predecessors. Yet these circumstances would
not have sufficed to impart a deep mystery to the event, without the
predisposition of the people to imagine that the dynasty which had ruled
them for four generations could not suddenly pass away, finally and
irrevocably. The idea that Nero still survived, and the expectation of
his return to power, continued long to linger among them. More than one
pretender arose to claim his empire, and twenty years later a false Nero
was protected by the Parthians, among whom he had taken refuge, and only
surrendered to the repeated and vehement demands of the Roman government.
This popular anticipation was the foundation, perhaps, of the common
persuasion of the Christians, that he should revisit the earth in the
character of Antichrist; and possibly that Jerusalem itself would be the
scene.[e]


FOOTNOTES

[18] [Apologists are not wanting who assert that it was chiefly Nero’s
contempt for Roman customs which alienated the “respectable citizens”;
that these citizens were really more brutal than Nero; and that the
emperor’s chief fault was criminal indulgence towards his courtiers,
rather than cruelty. Such views illustrate the curious oscillations of
historical criticism, to which we have so often had occasion to refer.
Even the most sympathetic and flattering view of Nero presents him as at
least reflecting the conditions of a society in some respects monstrous.]




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XXXV. GALBA, OTHO, VITELLIUS, AND THE THREE FLAVIANS (68-96 A.D.)


GALBA (SERVIUS SULPICIUS GALBA), 68-69 A.D.

The fall of Nero and the accession of Galba form an important epoch in
the history of the Roman Empire; for to the misfortune of a form of
government, on which everything depended on the ruler, his court, and
the bodyguard and guard of the emperor, a fresh evil was now added,
namely that the army became accustomed to mutiny, and obtained a
decisive influence on the choice of the emperor. Certainly Galba did not
accept the title of emperor, until it was legally assigned to him by a
deputation of the senate; but the example of mutiny had been given, the
army had in reality, and the senate, only in form, decided as to who
should occupy the throne, and the fate of the empire was from henceforth
made more and more dependent on the troops and their leaders.

At first however it appeared fortunate, that after the weak-minded
libertines, who for some time had been at the head of the states, the
government should fall into the hands of a veteran warrior who possessed
the love and confidence of his soldiers, and hated every kind of
indulgence and excess; but any advantages which might have arisen from
this were outweighed by the great age of the emperor and the weakness
consequent on it. Galba’s weakness was first perceived when he, who at
the time of Nero’s death was still in Gaul, had returned to Rome; he was
awaited with real eagerness.

Before the arrival of Galba, Nymphidius, who had accelerated the fall of
Nero, acted as absolute ruler. He prevented Tigellinus from participating
in the command of the prætorians, tried in every way to gain over the
people, saw the entire senate in his antechamber, and mixed himself up
with all the dealings of the latter with Galba. It then occurred to him
that he might trace his descent from Cæsar and thereby establish his
claim to the throne. But to his terror, he heard, from a messenger whom
he had sent to Galba, that Titus Vinius, one of Galba’s legates, held
absolute sway over the emperor, that he had named Cornelius Laco prefect
of the prætorians, instead of him, and that his rule would therefore be
at an end as soon as Galba entered Rome. He therefore resolved to venture
to extremes and to make the prætorians proclaim him emperor; they were
turned against him by one of his officers, and killed him as soon as he
appeared in their camp.

As soon as Galba arrived in Rome, he had all the friends of Nymphidius
put to death. These and a few other executions, added to Galba’s
dependence on Vinius, prepossessed no one in favour of the new ruler.
It was still more unfortunate that he had to refuse the guard sums of
money promised in his name by Nymphidius, and that on his entry into Rome
he saw himself obliged to have another troop of soldiers cut down, who
had gone against him and made violent demands. Galba was determined to
adopt a new course of government; but in this he overlooked the fact,
that an utterly corrupt people cannot be transformed at once, or lost
morality recalled by commands. With exaggerated severity and with a
parsimony which would have been despicable even in a private individual,
he attempted to reduce a town accustomed to imperial prodigality to its
former simplicity, discipline, and order, and thereby not only embittered
the feelings of all, but also made himself ridiculous.

[Sidenote: [68-69 A.D.]]

He was indolent and enfeebled by age [he was over seventy-two years old]
and depended on three favourites, who committed all sorts of severities
in his name and tried to make money by selling privileges and favours.
These favourites were Vinius, Laco, and Galba’s freedman, Icelus. For
this reason, from the beginning, everything pointed to a short duration
of his rulership, and dissatisfaction not only seized hold of the great
mass in Rome, who, as everywhere, loved pleasure and amusement more than
virtue or their country, but also of the different armies of the kingdom.
A few months after his accession the legions rose in upper Germany, and
demanded from the senate the appointment of a younger and more vigorous
emperor. Galba tried to stay the storm by immediately naming a young
man of good family and irreproachable character, Piso Licinianus, as
his co-regent and successor. Unfortunately, when presenting Piso to the
troops, he omitted, out of economy, to give presents to the soldiers, as
had been the custom on such occasions since the accession of Claudius;
and in his speech to the assembled army he publicly avowed that the
troops in Germany had refused him obedience. This made the soldiers
dissatisfied, and he thereby robbed himself of the advantages that Piso’s
nomination might otherwise have brought him.


OTHO (M. SALVIUS OTHO), 69 A.D.

Otho, who had gone to Rome with Galba, seized the opportunity of Galba’s
mistake to place himself on the throne. He had long solicited the favour
of the soldiers and people, had given away entire estates to individuals,
had, when Galba dined with him, given money to the emperor’s escort, and
Galba had overlooked all this, because one of his favourites, Vinius,
whose daughter Otho wished to marry, had come to a secret understanding
with the latter. Otho instituted a formal conspiracy, corrupted the
soldiers by gifts and promises, and had himself proclaimed emperor in a
camp of the prætorians, a few days after Piso’s appointment. He left the
camp at the head of the soldiers who had chosen him, entered the town,
killed Galba and his co-regent, and was acknowledged emperor by the
people and senate. This took place on the 15th of January of the year 69,
when Galba had only reigned seven months and a few days.

The new emperor only maintained his rule for three months. All the
provinces and armies swore allegiance to him after Galba’s death, only
the legions of the Rhine and Upper Germany denied him obedience. They
had already rebelled against Galba, and proclaimed the leader of the
troops on the lower Rhine, Aulus Vitellius, emperor, as they had not
been recompensed by Galba for the support they had given him against
Nero. This rival, although other legions declared for him, would not in
himself have been dangerous to Otho, as he had become so enervated by
self-indulgence that he was wanting in activity and energy as well as in
decision; but in Fabius Valens and Aulus Cæcina, he possessed two able
generals, who placed themselves at the head of the legions in his stead.

With the rebellious troops they crossed the Alps into upper Italy and
fell upon Otho, who had hastily collected as many soldiers as possible
and led them against the enemy. At first the generals of Vitellius were
the losers in a few small engagements, as mutual jealousy induced them
to act separately, but as soon as they concentrated themselves they were
far superior to their adversaries. Otho ought, therefore, to have done
everything to delay the crisis until the reinforcements which he was
expecting from the provinces of the Danube had arrived. He nevertheless
did the reverse, and throughout the entire war showed himself a worthy
comrade of Nero.

He had been the husband of the notorious Poppæa Sabina; had formerly
participated with his imperial friend in all kinds of pleasures, and had
indulged in so much dissipation that he had not only fallen deeply into
debt, but had also become enervated and incapable of any exertion. This
had already become apparent in the rebellion against Galba; for he had
lost all courage at the moment of action, and would have given the whole
thing up had not his fellow-conspirators compelled him to persist in his
designs. Besides he was no general. His troops, which for the greater
part consisted of prætorians and soldiers of Nero, clung to him with
devotion, and were eager to fight, but they did not trust their officers
and would no longer take orders from them. This determined him to bring
the fight to a speedy end, as he felt that at any moment he might be
deserted by his own people. In spite of this, as he had not been present
in the earlier smaller fights, so now he took no personal share in the
great battle which was to decide his own fate.

In the vicinity of Cremona, Cæcina and Valens fell on Otho’s army. It
was beaten, suffered considerable loss, and then the greater part went
over to the enemy. Otho’s cause was, nevertheless, by no means lost; for
the prætorians adhered steadfastly to him, the legions of the provinces
of the Danube were already on the march, and the entire East as well as
Africa was open to him. Only he was too indolent and effeminate to be
able to face continuous exertions and hardships, and from the example of
his beaten army he saw how ephemeral the devotion of his soldiers had
been. So he lost courage, and decided, in spite of the remonstrances and
requests of his friends, to put an end to his life. He stabbed himself
to the heart with a firmness rarely found in a voluptuary, and by this
action won for himself the reputation with posterity of having purchased
the peace of his country with his own life.

Historians have therefore praised him above his deserts, and placed
words in his mouth which stand in opposition to his life and principles.
For instance, he is reported to have said to his friends and relatives
who wished to restrain him from suicide: “Others have gained fame by
governing well; my fame, on the contrary, is to consist in my giving
up the government of the empire, rather than ruin it by my ambition.”
Those who recall the fact that Otho throughout his life lived and acted
according to the maxims of a Nero, will know how to divest this story of
all that gives his death the appearance of a grand and noble act; for
although it cannot be denied that Otho thereby put an end to the civil
war, and died in peace and quietness, nevertheless he was not guided by
courage or love of country, but by indolence and despair.

How little the sacrifice of his life cost a Roman at this period, and why
Otho’s death must be regarded in quite another light from that in which
a similar deed would be looked upon nowadays, is apparent from the fact
that some of his soldiers killed themselves at his funeral pile, not from
fear of the future, but that they might follow the glorious example of
their leader.


VITELLIUS (AULUS VITELLIUS), 69 A.D.

After Otho’s death, the Roman senate not only recognised Vitellius as
emperor, but determined publicly to thank the Germanic army for having
appointed him. Whilst his generals were fighting for his dominion,
Vitellius remained in Gaul, and after the victory made no haste to take
possession of the empire; he first enjoyed a period of repose at Lyons,
and then stopped at Cremona and Bologna to hold revels and to see the
gladiatorial displays. It was only in July (69), three months after
Otho’s death, that he entered Rome.

[Illustration: A ROMAN SLINGER]

With his accession, all the crimes and prodigalities of the government
of a Caligula, a Claudius, and a Nero were repeated, although he was
wanting neither in culture nor in better qualities. He had only attained
to consideration by his vices, and won over the soldiers in Germany by
his familiar bearing. A dull, slack, and withal cruel disposition, a
greediness which amounted to voraciousness, and a prodigality in which
he even surpassed Nero, were the soul of his existence and government.
Only thinking of pleasure and idle repose, even on the march to Rome, he
allowed his army to rob and plunder at will, and permitted all kinds of
excesses and insubordination. In Rome, freedmen, comedians, and revellers
were his most cherished companions, and he who knew how to prepare the
most voluptuous feast, rose in his favour.

In order to obtain money for his prodigalities, like Caligula and Nero,
he committed all sorts of inhuman cruelties. For example: he freed
himself from debt by having his creditors killed, and when one of them,
condemned to death, sought to obtain favour by making the emperor a
legacy, but unfortunately gave him a co-heir, Vitellius had the latter as
well as the former put out of the way, and took the wealth of both. His
revelries and prodigalities surpassed all realisation.

By the use of emetics he was enabled to take daily from three to four
principal meals. Once, for untold gold, he had marvellous dishes prepared
from the tongues of the rarest birds and other costly delicacies, and
at the celebration of his entry into Rome he took part in a banquet at
his brother’s house in which no less than two thousand rare fish and
seven thousand birds were served up. He gormandised so shamefully that,
during the short time of his reign, he is said to have squandered no less
than nine hundred million sesterces, and, as an historian of antiquity
asserts, the Roman Empire would finally have become too poor to defray
the expenses of the emperor’s table. Fortunately for the kingdom this did
not come to pass; for Vitellius was overthrown by his troops eight months
after his accession.

This second mutiny of the army within the course of a year started in
the legions who had come from the Danube to help Otho against Vitellius.
When on the way they heard of Otho’s death, they determined to choose a
new emperor, and some of them, who shortly before had served under the
valiant Titus Flavius Vespasian, directed the choice to their former
general who was then commanding in Syria. Scarcely had the news reached
the East, when first the governor of Egypt, then Mucianus [Roman governor
of Syria and general of four legions,] and afterwards Vespasian himself,
recognised this choice. One after another all the remaining armies
declared for Vespasian. Valens and Cæcina, the principal instruments in
the elevation of Vitellius, soon detached themselves from the latter,
and only the soldiers of the Germanic army, to whom Vitellius owed the
throne, remained true to their emperor. It was therefore no great effort
to overthrow the indolent libertine. Before Vespasian had embarked his
troops, his opponent was dethroned and deprived of his life.

The legions of the Danube under one of their generals, Antonius Primus,
broke into Italy; at Cremona they beat the troops of Vitellius and then
marched against the capital, which alone seemed resolved to defend the
tyrant. Antonius Primus wished to spare the town. Vitellius himself was
too cowardly to try to offer any powerful resistance, and as by chance a
brother of Vespasian, Flavius Sabinus, was town prefect of Rome, it was
easy to negotiate matters. The result was an agreement by which Vitellius
agreed to abdicate in a very ignominious fashion. Only the soldiers of
the emperor and all those who had taken part in his universal revels,
would hear nothing of an abdication of Vitellius, and without further
ceremony laid hands on Sabinus, to whom a great number of the senate,
the knights, and the town-guard had already sworn allegiance, on behalf
of his brother. Sabinus, with a small number of attendants, was obliged
to take to flight, and retired to the Capitol. His adversaries stormed
it, took Sabinus prisoner, killed his followers, and intentionally or by
chance occasioned a fire, by which the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter,
the most sacred building in Rome, was reduced to ashes, and some of the
historical records preserved there were destroyed.

In vain did Vitellius, by earnest entreaty, try to restrain the soldiers
from murdering Sabinus; he was killed in a terrible manner, whilst
Domitian, one of Vespasian’s sons, who had just fled to the Capitol, to
the misfortune of the empire escaped the wrath of the enemy. The rude
soldiers of Vitellius conducted themselves on this occasion with the same
savagery as the troops of Antonius Primus had shown a few weeks before,
when after their victory they had burned down the town of Cremona and
had ill treated its inhabitants in the most shocking manner. Vitellius
was quite innocent of what took place in Rome, for he would gladly have
submitted to any terms by which he might have saved his life. With this
object, immediately after the murder of Sabinus, he sent ambassadors to
Antonius Primus, and that his representations and requests might make the
more impression, he sent the vestal virgins with them.

But Antonius Primus refused any further negotiations, defeated the
populace and the soldiers of Vitellius in a bloody fight, which took
place partly before the walls and partly in the streets of the town,
and had the entire body of the conquered ruthlessly massacred. On this
occasion the deep moral depravity of the Roman people showed itself in a
revolting manner. The populace watched the fierce struggle between the
two barbarian armies as coldly as though the usual gladiatorial displays
had been taking place before them; they applauded first one side and then
the other, fetched those who fled from their victorious enemy out of
their hiding places, and gave them up to their adversaries to be killed.

No one was disturbed in his usual pleasures by the fight for the
empire; the baths, the taverns, and other public resorts were filled
with revellers and pleasure seekers, as at any other time, and, as the
historian Tacitus affirms, Rome presented the hideous spectacle of a
town whose inhabitants had abandoned themselves at once to all the
horrors of civil war and all the vices of a decadent nation. Vitellius
died as he had lived.[d] Seeing the city conquered, he was conveyed in
a litter, by a private way at the back of the palace, to his wife’s
house on Mount Aventine, with intent, if he could lie concealed during
the day, to fly for refuge to his brother and the cohorts at Tarracina.
Straightway, from his inherent fickleness, and the natural effects of
fright, since, as he dreaded everything, whatever course he adopted was
the least satisfactory, he returned to his palace, and found it empty and
desolate; even his meanest slaves having made their escape, or shunning
the presence of their master. The solitude and silence of the scene
alarmed him; he opened the doors of the apartments, and was horror-struck
to see all void and empty. Exhausted with this agonising state of doubt
and perplexity, and concealing himself in a wretched hiding place, he
was dragged forth by Placidus, the tribune of a cohort. With his hands
tied behind him, and his garment torn, he was conducted, a revolting
spectacle, through crowds insulting his distress, without a friend to
shed a tear over his misfortunes. The unseemliness of his end banished
all sympathy. Whether one of the Germanic soldiers who met him intended
for him the stroke he made, and if he did, whether from rage or to rescue
him the quicker from the mockery to which he was exposed; or whether he
aimed at the tribune, is uncertain; he cut off the ear of the tribune,
and was immediately despatched.[19]

Vitellius was pushed along, and with swords pointed at his throat, forced
to raise his head, and expose his countenance to insults: one while
they made him look at his statues tumbling to the ground; frequently to
the rostrum, or the spot where Galba perished, and lastly they drove
him to Gemoniæ, where the body of Flavius Sabinus had been thrown. One
expression of his was heard, that spoke a spirit not utterly fallen,
when to a tribune who had insulted him in his misery he observed, that
nevertheless he had been his emperor. He died soon after [Dec. 21] under
repeated wounds. The populace, with the same perversity of judgment
that had prompted them to honour him while living, assailed him with
indignities when dead.

[Illustration: THE DEATH OF VITELLIUS]

He was born at Luceria. He had completed his fifty-fourth year. He rose
to the consulship, to pontifical dignities, and a name and rank amongst
the most eminent citizens, without any personal merit; but obtained all
from the splendid reputation of his father. The men who conferred the
imperial dignity upon him did not so much as know him. By impotence and
sloth he gained the affections of the army, to a degree in which few have
attained them by worthy means. Frankness and generosity, however, he
possessed; qualities which, unless duly regulated, become the occasions
of ruin. He imagined that friendships could be cemented, not by a uniform
course of virtue, but by profuse liberality, and therefore earned them
rather than cultivated them. Doubtless the interest of the commonwealth
required the fall of Vitellius; but those who betrayed Vitellius to
Vespasian can claim no merit for their perfidy, since they had broken
faith with Galba.

The day now verged rapidly towards sunset, and on account of the
consternation of the magistrates and senators who secreted themselves by
withdrawing from the city or in the several houses of their clients, the
senate could not be convened. When all apprehension of hostile violence
had subsided Domitian came forth to the generals of his party, was
unanimously saluted with the title of Cæsar, and escorted by a numerous
body of soldiers, armed as they were, to his father’s house.[i]

Mucianus, who arrived in Rome the day after the murder of Vitellius,
took over the government in the name of Vespasian.[d] Mucianus has been
styled (by Duruy[n]) “the Mæcenas and the Agrippa of the new Augustus.”
In subsequent years he was treated almost as an equal by the emperor.
He at once took active measures to restore order, and he succeeded so
well that everything was peaceful when Vespasian himself finally entered
Rome.[a] In Vespasian, for the first time since the death of Augustus,
the Roman Empire again received a worthy and able ruler. He was a man who
not only, like Galba, hated flattery and joined integrity with experience
in warfare, but whose understanding and force of character were equal to
the circumstances of the hour.[d]


VESPASIAN (T. FLAVIUS SABINUS VESPASIANUS), 69-70 A.D.

[Sidenote: [69-70 A.D.]]

Vespasian was declared emperor, by the unanimous consent both of the
senate and the army, and dignified with all those titles which now
followed rather the power than the merit of those who were appointed
to govern. Messengers were despatched to him in Egypt, desiring his
return, and testifying the utmost desire for his government. But the
winter being dangerous for sailing, he deferred his voyage to a more
convenient season. Perhaps, also, the dissensions in other parts of
the empire retarded his return to Rome; for Claudius Civilis, in Lower
Germany, excited his countrymen to revolt, and destroyed the Roman
garrisons which were placed in different parts of that province. Yet,
to give his rebellion an air of justice, he caused his army to swear
allegiance to Vespasian, until he found himself in a condition to
throw off the mask. When he thought himself sufficiently powerful, he
disclaimed all submission to the Roman government, and having overcome
one or two of the lieutenants of the empire, and being joined by such of
the Romans as refused obedience to the new emperor, he boldly advanced
to give Cerealis, Vespasian’s general, battle. In the beginning of
this engagement he seemed successful, breaking the Roman legions, and
putting their cavalry to flight. But at length Cerealis, by his conduct,
turned the fate of the day, and not only routed the enemy, but took
and destroyed their camp. This engagement, however, was not decisive;
several others ensued with doubtful success. An accommodation, at length,
determined what arms could not effect. Civilis obtained peace for his
countrymen, and pardon for himself; for the Roman Empire was, at this
time, so torn by its own divisions, that the barbarous nations around
made incursions with impunity, and were sure of obtaining peace, whenever
they thought proper to demand it.

During the time of these commotions in Germany, the Sarmatians, a
barbarous nation to the northeast of the empire, suddenly passed the
river Ister, and marching into the Roman dominions with celerity and
fury, destroyed several garrisons, and an army under the command of
Fonteius Agrippa. However, they were driven back with some slaughter by
Rubrius Gallus, Vespasian’s lieutenant, into their native forests; where
several attempts were made to confine them, by garrisons and forts placed
along the confines of their country. But these hardy nations, having once
found their way into the empire, never after desisted from invading it at
every opportunity, till at length they overran and destroyed the glory of
Rome.

Vespasian continued some months at Alexandria in Egypt.[b] The
sober-minded Tacitus, most accurate and most trustworthy of Roman
historians, relates some incidents of this story of Vespasian in Egypt
which are worth repeating, if for nothing else, to illustrate the gap
between the writing of sober history in that day and in our own.[a]


VESPASIAN PERFORMS MIRACLES AND SEES A VISION, ACCORDING TO TACITUS

[Sidenote: [70 A.D.]]

During the months when Vespasian was waiting at Alexandria for the
periodical season of the summer winds, and a safe navigation [says
Tacitus], many miracles occurred, by which the favour of heaven and a
sort of bias in the powers above towards Vespasian were manifested. One
of the common people of Alexandria, known to have a disease in his eyes,
embraced the knees of the emperor, importuning with groans a remedy
for his blindness. In this he acted in compliance with the admonition
of the god Serapis, whom that nation, devoted to superstition, honours
above all other gods; and he prayed the emperor that he would deign to
sprinkle his cheeks and the balls of his eyes with the secretion of his
mouth. Another, who was diseased in the hand, at the instance of the same
god, entreated that he might be pressed by the foot and sole of Cæsar.
Vespasian at first ridiculed the request, and treated it with contempt;
but when they persisted, at one time he dreaded the imputation of
weakness, at another he was led to hope for success, by the supplications
of the men themselves, and the encouragements of his flatterers. Lastly,
he ordered that the opinion of physicians should be taken, as to whether
a blindness and lameness of these kinds could be got the better of by
human power. The physicians stated various points--that in the one the
power of vision was not wholly destroyed, and that it would be restored
if the obstacle was removed; in the other, that the joints which had
become diseased might be renovated, if a healing power were applied; such
peradventure was the pleasure of the gods, and the emperor was chosen to
perform their will. To sum up all, that the glory of accomplishing the
cure would be Cæsar’s, the ridicule of its failure would rest upon the
sufferers. Accordingly, under an impression that everything was within
the power of his fortune, and that after what had occurred nothing was
incredible, with a cheerful countenance himself, and while the multitude
that stood by waited the event in all the confidence of anticipated
success, Vespasian executed what was required of him. Immediately the
hand was restored to its functions, and the light of day shone again to
the blind. Persons who were present even now attest the truth of both
these transactions, when there is nothing to be gained by falsehood.

After this, Vespasian conceived a deeper desire to visit the sanctuary
of Serapis, in order to consult the god about affairs of the empire.
He ordered all persons to be excluded from the temple; and lo, when he
entered, and his thoughts were fixed on the deity, he perceived behind
him a man of principal note among the Egyptians, named Basilides, whom,
at that moment, he knew to be detained by illness at a distance of
several days’ journey from Alexandria. Vespasian inquired of the priests
whether Basilides that day had entered the temple. He asked of others
whom he met whether he was seen in the city. At length, from messengers
whom he despatched on horseback, he received certain intelligence,
that Basilides was at that instant of time eighty miles distant from
Alexandria. He then concluded that it was a divine vision, and deduced
the import of the response from the name of Basilides.[i]


VESPASIAN RETURNS TO ROME

[Illustration: VESPASIAN

(From a bust in the Vatican)]

Leaving Titus to prosecute the Jewish War, Vespasian set out for Rome.
His enthusiastic reception there is described by Josephus, who says:
“All men that were in Italy showed their respects to him in their minds,
before he came thither, as if he were already come, as esteeming the very
expectation they had of him to be his real presence on account of the
great desires they had to see him, and because the good will they bore
him was entirely free and unconstrained; for it was a desirable thing to
the senate, who well remembered the calamities they had undergone in the
late changes of their governors, to receive a governor who was adorned
with the gravity of old age, and with the highest skill in the actions of
war, whose advancement would be, as they knew, for nothing else but the
preservation of those that were to be governed.

“Moreover, the people had been so harassed by their civil miseries that
they were still more earnest for his coming immediately, as supposing
they should then be firmly delivered from their calamities, and believed
they should then recover their secure tranquillity and prosperity.
And for the soldiery, they had the principal regard to him, for they
were chiefly apprised of his great exploits in war; and since they had
experienced the want of skill and want of courage in other commanders,
they were very desirous to be freed from that great shame they had
undergone by their means and heartily wished to receive such a prince
as might be a security and an ornament to them; and as this good will
to Vespasian was universal, those that enjoyed any remarkable dignities
could not have patience enough to stay in Rome, but made haste to meet
him at a very great distance from it. Nay, indeed, none of the rest could
endure the delay of seeing him, but did all pour out of the city in such
crowds, and were so universally possessed with the opinion that it was
easier and better for them to go out than to stay there, that this was
the very first time that the city joyfully perceived itself almost empty
of its citizens; for those that stayed within were fewer than those that
went out. But as soon as the news was come that he was hard by, and those
that had met him at first related with what good humour he received
every one that came to him, then it was that the whole multitude that
had remained in the city, with their wives and children, came into the
road, and waited for him there; and for those whom he passed by, they
made all sorts of acclamations on account of the joy they had to see him,
and the pleasantness of his countenance, and styled him their benefactor
and saviour, and the only person who was worthy to be ruler of the city
of Rome. And now the city was like a temple, full of garlands and sweet
odours; nor was it easy for him to come to the royal palace for the
multitude of people that stood about him, where yet at last he performed
his sacrifices of thanksgivings to his household gods, for his safe
return to the city. The multitude did also betake themselves to feasting;
which feasts and drink-offerings they celebrated by their tribes, and
their families, and their neighbourhoods, and still prayed the gods to
grant that Vespasian, his sons, and all their posterity, might continue
in the Roman government for a very long time, and that his dominion might
be preserved from all opposition. And this was the manner in which Rome
so joyfully received Vespasian, and thence grew immediately into a state
of great prosperity.”[l]


TITUS CONTINUES THE JEWISH WAR

[Sidenote: [70-71 A.D.]]

In the meantime, Titus carried on the war against the Jews with
vigour.[20] This obstinate and infatuated people had long resolved to
resist the Roman power, vainly hoping to find protection from heaven.
Their own historian represents them as arrived at the highest pitch of
iniquity, while famines, earthquakes, and prodigies all conspired to
forewarn their approaching ruin. Nor was it sufficient that heaven and
earth seemed combined against them; they had the most bitter dissensions
among themselves, and were split into two parties, that robbed and
destroyed each other with impunity; still pillaging, and, at the same
time, boasting their zeal for the religion of their ancestors.

At the head of one of those parties was an incendiary whose name was
John. This fanatic affected sovereign power, and filled the whole city of
Jerusalem, and all the towns around, with tumult and pillage. In a short
time a new faction arose, headed by one Simon, who, gathering together
multitudes of robbers and murderers who had fled to the mountains,
attacked many cities and towns, and reduced all Idumæa into his power.
Jerusalem, at length, became the theatre in which these two demagogues
began to exercise their mutual animosity: John was possessed of the
temple, while Simon was admitted into the city, both equally enraged
against each other; while slaughter and devastation followed their
pretensions. Thus did a city, formerly celebrated for peace and unity,
become the seat of tumult and confusion.

It was in this miserable situation that Titus came to sit down before
it with his conquering army, and began his operations within about six
furlongs of the place. It was at the feast of the Passover, when the
place was filled with an infinite multitude of people, who had come
from all parts to celebrate that great solemnity, that Titus undertook
to besiege it. His presence produced a temporary reconciliation between
the contending factions within; so that they unanimously resolved to
oppose the common enemy first, and then decide their domestic quarrels
at a more convenient season. Their first sally, which was made with much
fury and resolution, put the Romans into great disorder, and obliged
them to abandon their camp and fly to the mountains. However, rallying
immediately after, the Jews were forced back into the city; while Titus,
in person, showed surprising instances of valour and conduct.

These advantages over the Romans only renewed in the besieged their
desires of private vengeance. A tumult ensued in the temple, in which
several of both parties were slain; and in this manner, upon every
remission from without, the factions of John and Simon violently raged
against each other within, agreeing only in their resolution to defend
the city against the Romans.

Jerusalem was strongly fortified by three walls on every side, except
where it was fenced by deep valleys. Titus began by battering down
the outward wall, which, after much fatigue and danger, he effected;
all the time showing the greatest clemency to the Jews, and offering
them repeated assurances of pardon. But this infatuated people refused
his proffered kindness with contempt, and imputed his humanity to his
fears. Five days after the commencement of the siege Titus broke through
the second wall; and though driven back by the besieged, he recovered
his ground, and made preparations for battering the third wall, which
was their last defence. But first he sent Josephus, their countryman,
into the city, to exhort them to yield, who, using all his eloquence
to persuade them, was only reviled with scoffs and reproaches. The
siege was now, therefore, carried on with greater vigour than before;
several batteries for engines were raised, which were no sooner built
than destroyed by the enemy. At length it was resolved in council to
surround the whole city with a trench, and thus prevent all relief and
succours from abroad. This, which was quickly executed, seemed no way
to intimidate the Jews. Though famine, and pestilence, its necessary
attendant, began now to make the most horrid ravages within the walls,
yet this desperate people still resolved to hold out. Though obliged
to live upon the most scanty and unwholesome food, though a bushel of
corn was sold for six hundred crowns, and the holes and the sewers were
ransacked for carcasses that had long since grown putrid, yet they were
not to be moved. The famine raged at last to such an excess, that a woman
of distinction in the city boiled her own child to eat it; which horrid
account coming to the ears of Titus, he declared that he would bury
so abominable a crime in the ruins of their state. He now, therefore,
cut down all the woods within a considerable distance of the city, and
causing more batteries to be raised, he at length battered down the wall,
and in five days entered the citadel by force. Thus reduced to the very
verge of ruin, the remaining Jews still deceived themselves with absurd
and false expectations, while many false prophets deluded the multitude,
declaring they should soon have assistance from God.

[Illustration: A ROMAN EMPRESS

(After Hope)]

The heat of the battle was now, therefore, gathered round the inner
wall of the temple, while the defendants desperately combated from the
top. Titus was willing to save this beautiful structure, but a soldier
casting a brand into some adjacent buildings, the fire communicated
to the temple, and, notwithstanding the utmost endeavours on both
sides, the whole edifice was quickly consumed. The sight of the temple
in ruins effectually served to damp the ardour of the Jews. They now
began to perceive that heaven had forsaken them, while their cries and
lamentations echoed from the adjacent mountains. Even those who were
almost expiring lifted up their dying eyes to bewail the loss of their
temple, which they valued more than life itself. The most resolute,
however, still endeavoured to defend the upper and stronger part of
the city, named Zion; but Titus, with his battering engines, soon made
himself entire master of the place. John and Simon were taken from the
vaults where they had concealed themselves; the former was condemned to
perpetual imprisonment, and the latter reserved to grace the conqueror’s
triumph. The greatest part of the populace were put to the sword, and
the city was entirely rased by the plough; so that, according to our
Saviour’s prophecy, not one stone remained upon another. Thus, after
a siege of six months, this noble city was totally destroyed, having
flourished, under the peculiar protection of heaven, about two thousand
years. The numbers who perished in this siege, according to Josephus,
amounted to above a million of souls, and the captives to almost a
hundred thousand. The temporal state of the Jews ended with their city;
while the wretched survivors were banished, sold, and dispersed into all
parts of the world.

Upon the taking of Jerusalem, his soldiers would have crowned Titus as
conqueror, but he modestly refused the honour, alleging that he was only
an instrument in the hand of heaven, that manifestly declared its wrath
against the Jews. At Rome, however, all men’s mouths were filled with the
praises of the conqueror, who had not only shown himself an excellent
general, but a courageous combatant.[b]

Let Josephus describe for us the return of Titus, and the magnificent
triumph that he celebrated with his father.


JOSEPHUS DESCRIBES THE RETURN OF TITUS, AND THE TRIUMPH

[Sidenote: [70 A.D.]]

Titus took the journey he intended into Egypt, and passed over the desert
very suddenly, and came to Alexandria, and took up a resolution to go
to Rome by sea. And as he was accompanied by two legions, he sent each
of them again to the places whence they had before come; the fifth he
sent to Mysia; and the fifteenth to Pannonia. As for the leaders of the
captives, Simon and John, with the other seven hundred men, whom he had
selected out of the rest as being eminently tall and handsome of body,
he gave order that they should be soon carried to Italy, as resolving to
produce them in his triumph. So when he had had a prosperous voyage to
his mind, the city of Rome behaved itself in his reception, and their
meeting him at a distance, as it did in the case of his father.

But what made the most splendid appearance in Titus’ opinion was when his
father met him, and received him; but still the multitude of the citizens
conceived the greatest joy when they saw them all three together,[21] as
they did at this time; nor were many days overpast when they determined
to have but one triumph, that should be common to both of them, on
account of the glorious exploits they had performed, although the senate
had decreed each of them a separate triumph by himself. So when notice
had been given beforehand of the day appointed for this pompous solemnity
to be made, on account of their victories, not one of the immense
multitude was left in the city, but everybody went out so far as to gain
only a station where they might stand, and left only such a passage as
was necessary for those that were to be seen to go along it.

Now all the soldiery marched out beforehand by companies, and in their
several ranks, under their several commanders, in the night time, and
were about the gates, not of the upper palaces, but those near the temple
of Isis; for there it was that the emperors had rested the foregoing
night. And as soon as ever it was day, Vespasian and Titus came out
crowned with laurel, and clothed in those ancient purple habits which
were proper to their family, and then went as far as Octavian’s Walks;
for there it was that the senate, and the principal rulers, and those
that had been recorded as of the equestrian order, waited for them.

Now a tribunal had been erected before the cloisters, and ivory chairs
had been set upon it, when they came and sat down upon them. Whereupon
the soldiery made an acclamation of joy to them immediately, and all gave
them attestations of their valour; while they were themselves without
their arms, and only in their silken garments, and crowned with laurel.
Then Vespasian accepted of these shouts of theirs; but while they were
still disposed to go on in such acclamations, he gave them a signal of
silence. And when everybody entirely held their peace, he stood up, and
covering the greatest part of his head with his cloak, he put up the
accustomed solemn prayers; the like prayers did Titus put up also; after
which prayers Vespasian made a short speech to all the people, and then
sent away the soldiers to a dinner prepared for them by the emperors.
Then did he retire to that gate which was called the Gate of the Pomp,
because pompous shows do always go through that gate; there it was that
they tasted some food, and when they had put on their triumphal garments,
and had offered sacrifices to the gods that were placed at the gate, they
sent the triumph forward, and marched through the theatres, that they
might be the more easily seen by the multitude.

It is impossible to describe the multitude of the shows as they deserve,
and the magnificence of them all; such indeed as a man could not easily
think of as performed either by the labour of workmen, or the variety
of riches, or the rarities of nature. For almost all such curiosities
as the most happy men ever get by piecemeal were here heaped one upon
another, and those both admirable and costly in their nature; and all
brought together on that day demonstrated the vastness of the dominions
of the Romans; for there was here to be seen a mighty quantity of
silver, and gold, and ivory, contrived into all sorts of things, and
did not appear as carried along in pompous show only, but, as a man may
say, running along like a river. Some parts were composed of the rarest
purple hangings, and so carried along; and others accurately represented
to the life what was embroidered by the arts of the Babylonians. There
were also precious stones that were transparent, some set in crowns of
gold, and some in other ouches, as the workmen pleased; and of these
such a vast number were brought, that we could not but thence learn how
vainly we imagined any of them to be rarities. The images of the gods
were also carried, being as well wonderful for their largeness, as made
very artificially, and with great skill of the workmen; nor were any of
these images of any other than very costly materials; and many species
of animals were brought, every one in their own natural ornaments. The
men also who brought every one of these shows were great multitudes, and
adorned with purple garments, all over interwoven with gold; those that
were chosen for carrying these pompous shows having also about them such
magnificent ornaments as were both extraordinary and surprising. Besides
these, one might see that even the great number of captives was not
unadorned, while the variety that was in their garments, and their fine
texture, concealed from the sight the deformity of their bodies.

But what afforded the greatest surprise of all was the structure of the
pageants that were borne along; for indeed he that met them could not but
be afraid that the bearers would not be able firmly enough to support
them, such was their magnitude; for many of them were so made that they
were on three or even four stories, one above another. The magnificence
also of their structure afforded one both pleasure and surprise; for
upon many of them were laid carpets of gold. There was also wrought gold
and ivory fastened about them all; and many resemblances of the war, and
those in several ways, and variety of contrivances, affording a most
lively portraiture of itself. For there was to be seen a happy country
laid waste, and entire squadrons of enemies slain; while some of them ran
away, and some were carried into captivity; with walls of great altitude
and magnitude overthrown, and ruined by machines; with the strongest
fortifications taken, and the walls of most populous cities upon the tops
of hills seized on, and an army pouring itself within the walls; as also
every place full of slaughter, and supplications of the enemies, when
they were no longer able to lift up their hands in way of opposition.
Fire also sent upon temples was here represented, and houses overthrown
and falling upon their owners; rivers also, after they came out of a
large and melancholy desert, ran down, not into a land cultivated, nor as
drink for men or for cattle, but through a land still on fire upon every
side; for the Jews related that such a thing they had undergone during
this war.

Now the workmanship of these representations was so magnificent and
lively in the construction of the things, that it exhibited what had been
done to such as did not see it, as if they had been there really present.
On the top of every one of these pageants was placed the commander of
the city that was taken, and the manner wherein he was taken. Moreover,
there followed those pageants a great number of ships; and for the other
spoils, they were carried in great plenty. But for those that were taken
in the temple of Jerusalem, they made the greatest figure of them all;
that is the golden table, of the weight of many talents; the candlestick
also, that was made of gold, though its construction were now changed
from that which we made use of: for its middle shaft was fixed upon a
basis, and the small branches were produced out of it to a great length,
having the likeness of a trident in their position, and had every one a
socket made of brass for a lamp at the tops of them. These lamps were in
number seven, and represented the dignity of the number seven among the
Jews; and, the last of all the spoils, was carried the Law of the Jews.

[Illustration: ROMAN TRIPOD CANDELABRUM]

After these spoils passed by a great many men, carrying the images of
Victory, whose structure was entirely either of ivory, or of gold. After
which Vespasian marched in the first place, and Titus followed him;
Domitian also rode along with them, and made a glorious appearance, and
rode on a horse that was worthy of admiration.

The last part of this pompous show was at the temple of Jupiter
Capitolinus, whither when they were come, they stood still; for it was
the Romans’ ancient custom to stay till somebody brought the news that
the general of the enemy was slain. This general was Simon, the son of
Giora, who had then been led in this triumph among the captives; a rope
had also been put upon his head, and he had been drawn into a proper
place in the Forum, and had withal been tormented by those that drew him
along; and the law of the Romans required that malefactors condemned to
die should be slain there. Accordingly, when it was related that there
was an end of him, and all the people had set up a shout for joy, they
then began to offer those sacrifices which they had consecrated, in the
prayers used in such solemnities; which when they had finished, they went
away to the palace.

And as for some of the spectators, the emperors entertained them at their
own feast; and for all the rest there were noble preparations made for
their feasting at home; for this was a festal day to the city of Rome,
as celebrated for the victory obtained by their army over their enemies,
for the end that was now put to their civil miseries, and for the
commencement of their hopes of future prosperity and happiness.

[Sidenote: [71 A.D.]]

After these triumphs were over, and after the affairs of the Romans were
settled on the surest foundations, Vespasian resolved to build a temple
to Peace, which he finished in so short a time, and in so glorious a
manner, as was beyond all human expectation and opinion. For he having
now by providence a vast quantity of wealth, besides what he had formerly
gained in his other exploits, he had this temple adorned with pictures
and statues; for in this temple were collected and deposited all such
rarities as men aforetime used to wander all over the habitable world to
see, when they had a desire to see them one after another. He also laid
up therein, as ensigns of his glory, those golden vessels and instruments
that were taken out of the Jewish temple. But still he gave order that
they should lay up their law, and the purple veils of the holy place, in
the royal palace itself, and keep them there.[l]


THE EMPIRE IN PEACE

[Sidenote: [69-79 A.D.]]

Vespasian, having thus given security and peace to the empire, resolved
to correct numberless abuses which had grown up under the tyranny of his
predecessors. To effect this with greater ease, he joined Titus with him
in the consulship and tribunitial power; and, in some measure admitted
him a partner in all the highest offices of the state. He began with
restraining the licentiousness of the army, and forcing them back to
their pristine discipline. Some military messengers desiring money to buy
shoes, he ordered them for the future to perform their journeys barefoot.
He was not less strict with regard to the senators and the knights. He
turned out such as were a disgrace to their station, and supplied their
places with the most worthy men he could find. He abridged the processes
that had been carried to an unreasonable length in the courts of justice.
He took care to rebuild such parts of the city as had suffered in the
late commotions; particularly the Capitol, which had been lately burned,
and which he now restored to more than former magnificence.

The other ruinous cities in the empire also shared his paternal care; he
improved such as were declining, adorned others, and built many anew. In
such acts as these he passed a long reign of clemency and moderation; so
that it is said no man suffered by an unjust or a severe decree during
his administration.[b]

The care of rebuilding the Capitol [says Tacitus] he committed to Lucius
Vestinus, a man of equestrian rank, but in credit and dignity among the
first men in Rome. The soothsayers, who were convened by him, advised
that the ruins of the former shrine should be removed to the marshes,
and a temple raised on the old foundation; for the gods would not permit
a change of the ancient form. On the eleventh day before the calends of
July, the sky being remarkably serene, the whole space devoted to the
sacred structure was encompassed with chaplets and garlands. Such of the
soldiers as had names of auspicious import entered within the enclosure,
with branches from trees emblematical of good fortune. Then the vestal
virgins in procession, with a band of boys and girls whose parents, male
and female, were still living, sprinkled the whole place with water
drawn from living fountains and rivers. Helvidius Priscus, the prætor,
preceded by Plautius Ælianus, the pontiff, after purifying the area by
sacrificing a swine, a sheep, and a bull, and replacing the entrails upon
the turf, invoked Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, and the tutelar deities of
the empire, praying that they would prosper the undertaking, and, with
divine power, carry to perfection a work begun by the piety of man; and
then Helvidius laid his hand upon the wreaths that bound the foundation
stone and were twined about the cords. At the same time, the magistrates,
the priests, the senators, the knights, and a number of citizens,
with simultaneous efforts, prompted by zeal and exultation, haled the
ponderous stone along. Contributions of gold and silver, and pieces of
other metals, the first that were taken from the mines, that had never
been melted in the furnace, but in their native state, were thrown upon
the foundations on all hands. The soothsayers enjoined that neither
stone nor gold which had been applied to other uses should profane the
building. Additional height was given to the edifice; this was the only
variation conceded by religion; and in point of magnificence it was
considered to be inferior to the former temple.[i]

Vespasian also began the construction of the great amphitheatre which,
under the name of the Colosseum, became the wonder of subsequent
generations, and which is still sufficiently preserved to excite the
admiration of every tourist. But this gigantic structure--seating about
eighty-five thousand people--was not completed until the reign of
Vespasian’s successor, Titus.


BANISHMENT AND DEATH OF HELVIDIUS

In his conduct of both private and public affairs, Vespasian appears
to have acted with temperate judgment.[a] There are, however, two
transactions which, it must be acknowledged, have left a stain upon
his memory. The first was the death of Helvidius Priscus; the other,
the heartless treatment of Epponina, wife of Sabinus. Helvidius,
excellent man, fell a sacrifice to his enemies, and, perhaps, to his
own intemperate conduct. Initiated early in the doctrines of the
stoic school, and confirmed in the pride of virtue by the example of
Pætus Thrasea, his father-in-law, he saw the arts by which Vespasian,
notwithstanding the rigour of his nature, courted popularity; and did
not scruple to say that liberty was more in danger from the artifices of
the new family, than from the vices of former emperors. In the senate he
spoke his mind with unbounded freedom.

[Illustration: THE COLOSSEUM]

Vespasian bore his opposition to the measures of government with patience
and silent dignity. He knew the virtues of the man, and retained a due
esteem for the memory of Thrasea. Willing, on that account, to live on
terms with Helvidius, he advised him to be, for the future, a silent
senator. The pride of a stoic spurned at the advice. Passive obedience
was so repugnant to his principles that he stood more firm in opposition.
Mucianus and Eprius Marcellus, who were the favourite ministers of the
emperor, were his enemies; and it is probable that, by their advice,
Vespasian was at length induced to let the proceedings of the senate take
their course. Helvidius was arraigned by the fathers, and ordered into
custody. He was soon after banished, and, in consequence of an order
despatched from Rome, put to death. It is said that Vespasian relented,
and sent a special messenger to respite execution; but the blow was
struck. Helvidius was, beyond all question, a determined republican. His
own imprudence provoked his fate; and this, perhaps, is what Tacitus had
in contemplation when he places the moderation of Agricola in contrast to
the violent spirit of others, who rush on certain destruction, without
being by their death of service to the public.

The case of Epponina was an instance of extreme rigour, or rather
cruelty. She was the wife of Julius Sabinus, a leading chief among the
Lingones. This man, Tacitus has told us, had the vanity to derive his
pedigree from Julius Cæsar, who, he said, during his wars in Gaul, was
struck with the beauty of his grandmother, and alleviated the toils of
the campaign in her embraces. Ambitious, bold, and enterprising, he
kindled the flame of rebellion among his countrymen, and, having resolved
to shake off the Roman yoke, marched at the head of a numerous army into
the territory of the Sequani, a people in alliance with Rome. This was
69 A.D. He hazarded a battle, and was defeated with great slaughter.
His rash-levied numbers were either cut to pieces or put to flight. He
himself escaped the general carnage. He fled for shelter to an obscure
cottage; and, in order to propagate a report that he destroyed himself,
set fire to his lurking-place.


SABINUS AND EPPONINA

By what artful stratagems he was able to conceal himself in caves and
dens, and, by the assistance of the faithful Epponina, to prolong his
life for nine years afterwards, cannot now be known from Tacitus.
The account which the great historian promised has perished with the
narrative of Vespasian’s reign. Plutarch relates the story as a proof
of conjugal fidelity. From that writer the following particulars may be
gleaned: Two faithful freedmen attended Sabinus to his cavern; one of
them, Martialis by name, returned to Epponina with a feigned account of
her husband’s death. His body, she was made to believe, was consumed in
the flames. In the vehemence of her grief she gave credit to the story.
In a few days she received intelligence by the same messenger that her
husband was safe in his lurking-place. She continued during the rest of
the day to act all the exteriors of grief, with joy at her heart, but
suppressed with care. In the dead of night she visited Sabinus. Before
the dawn of day she returned to her own house, and, for the space of
seven months, repeated her clandestine visits, supplying her husband’s
wants, and softening all his cares. At the end of that time she conceived
hopes of obtaining a free pardon; and having disguised her husband in
such a manner as to render a detection impossible, she accompanied him
on a long and painful journey to Rome. Finding there that she had been
deceived with visionary schemes, she marched back with Sabinus, and lived
with him in his den for nine years longer.

In the year 79 A.D. they were both discovered, and in chains conveyed to
Rome. Vespasian forgot his usual clemency. Sabinus was condemned, and
hurried to execution. Epponina was determined not to survive her husband.
She changed her supplicating tone, and, with a spirit unconquered even
in ruin, addressed Vespasian: “Death,” she said, “has no terror for me.
I have lived happier under ground, than you upon your throne. Bid your
assassins strike their blow; with joy I leave a world in which you can
play the tyrant.”

She was ordered for execution. Plutarch concludes with saying that during
Vespasian’s reign there was nothing to match the horror of this atrocious
deed; for which the vengeance of the gods fell upon Vespasian, and, in a
short time after, wrought the extirpation of his whole family.[j]


THE CHARACTER AND END OF VESPASIAN

[Sidenote: [69-79 A.D.]]

These, however, would seem to have been altogether exceptional instances
of cruelty. Anecdotes illustrating the opposite character are not
wanting. Thus: He caused the daughter of Vitellius, his avowed enemy, to
be married into a noble family; and he himself provided her a suitable
fortune. One of Nero’s servants coming to entreat pardon for having once
rudely thrust him out of the palace, and insulting him when in office,
Vespasian only took his revenge by serving him just in the same manner.
When any plots or conspiracies were formed against him, he disdained to
punish the guilty, saying that they deserved rather his contempt for
their ignorance than his resentment, as they seemed to envy him a dignity
of which he daily experienced the uneasiness. When he was seriously
advised to beware of Mettius Pomposianus, against whom there was strong
cause of suspicion, he raised him to the dignity of consul, adding that
the time would come when he must be sensible of so great a benefit.

His liberality in the encouragement of arts and learning was not less
than his clemency. He settled a constant salary of a hundred thousand
sesterces upon the teachers of rhetoric. He was particularly favourable
to Josephus, the Jewish historian. Quintilian, the orator, and Pliny, the
naturalist, flourished in his reign, and were highly esteemed by him. He
was no less an encourager of all other excellencies in art, and invited
the greatest masters and artificers from all parts of the world, making
them considerable presents as he found occasion.

Yet all his numerous acts of generosity and magnificence could not
preserve his character from the imputation of rapacity and avarice. He
revived many obsolete methods of taxation, and even bought and sold
commodities himself, in order to increase his fortune. He is charged
with advancing the most avaricious governors to the provinces, in order
to share their plunder on their return to Rome. He descended to some
very unusual and dishonourable imposts. But the avarice of princes is
generally a virtue when their own expenses are but few. The exchequer,
when Vespasian came to the throne, was so much exhausted that he informed
the senate that it would require a supply of 40,000,000,000, sesterces
[£300,000,000 or $1,500,000,000] to re-establish the commonwealth. This
necessity must naturally produce more numerous and heavy taxations
than the empire had hitherto experienced; but while the provinces
were thus obliged to contribute to the support of his power, he took
every precaution to provide for their safety, so that we find but two
insurrections in his reign.

In the fourth year of his reign Antiochus, king of Commagene, holding a
private correspondence with the Parthians, the declared enemies of Rome,
was taken prisoner in Cilicia, by Pætus the governor, and sent bound
to Rome. But Vespasian generously prevented all ill-treatment towards
him, by giving him a residence at Lacedæmon and allowing him a revenue
suitable to his dignity.

About the same time also, the Alani, a barbarous people, who lived
along the river Tanaïs, abandoned their barren wilds and invaded the
kingdom of Media. From thence passing like a torrent into Armenia, after
great ravages, they overthrew Tiridates, the king of that country,
with prodigious slaughter. Titus was at length sent to chastise their
insolence, and relieve a king that was in alliance with Rome. However,
the barbarians retired at the approach of the Roman army, laden with
plunder, being in some measure compelled to wait a more favourable
opportunity of renewing their irruptions.

But these incursions were as a transient storm, the effects of which were
soon repaired by the emperor’s moderation and assiduity. We are told that
he new-formed and established a thousand nations, which had scarcely
before amounted to two hundred. No provinces in the empire lay out of his
view and protection. He had, during his whole reign, a particular regard
to Britain; his generals, Petilius Cerealis and Julius Frontinus, brought
the greatest part of the island into subjection (70 A.D.), and Agricola,
who succeeded soon after (78 A.D.), completed what they had begun.

Such long and uninterrupted success no way increased this emperor’s
vanity. He ever seemed averse to those swelling titles which the senate
and people were constantly offering him. When the king of Parthia, in
one of his letters, styled himself king of kings, Vespasian in his
answer only called himself simply Flavius Vespasian. He was so far from
attempting to hide the meanness of his original that he frequently
mentioned it in company; and when some flatterers were for deriving his
pedigree from Hercules, he despised and derided the meanness of their
adulation. In this manner having reigned ten years, loved by his subjects
and deserving their affection, he was surprised with an indisposition
at Campania. Removing from thence to the city, and afterwards to a
country-seat near Rome, he was there taken with a flux, which brought him
to the last extremity. However, perceiving his end approaching, and as
he was just going to expire, he cried out that an emperor ought to die
standing; wherefore, raising himself upon his feet, he expired in the
hands of those that sustained him. (79 A.D.)

“He was a man,” says Pliny,[g] “in whom power made no alteration, except
in giving him the opportunity of doing good equal to his will.” He was
the second Roman emperor that died an unquestionably natural death; and
he was peaceably succeeded by Titus his son.[b]


A CLASSICAL ESTIMATE OF VESPASIAN

The only thing deservedly blamable in Vespasian’s character [says
Suetonius] was his love of money. For not satisfied with reviving
the imposts which had been dropped under Galba, he imposed new taxes
burdensome to the subjects, augmented the tribute of the provinces, and
doubled that of some. He likewise openly practised a sort of traffic
which would have been scandalous even in a person below the dignity of an
emperor, buying great quantities of goods, for the purpose of retailing
them again to advantage. Nay, he made no scruple of selling the great
offices of state to the candidates, and pardons likewise to persons under
prosecution, as well the innocent as the guilty. It is believed that
he advanced all the most rapacious amongst the procurators to higher
offices, with the view of squeezing them after they had acquired great
riches. He was commonly said, “to have made use of them as sponges,”
because he did, as one may say, wet them when dry and squeeze them when
wet. Some say that he was naturally extremely covetous, and that he was
upbraided with it by an old herdsman of his, who, upon the emperor’s
refusing to enfranchise him gratis, which at his advancement he humbly
petitioned for, cried out that the fox changed his hair, but not his
nature. There are some, on the other hand, of opinion that he was urged
to his rapacious proceedings by necessity, and the extreme poverty of the
treasury and exchequer, of which he publicly took notice in the beginning
of his reign; declaring that no less than forty thousand millions of
sesterces was necessary for the support of the government. This is the
more likely to be true of him, because he applied to the best purposes
what he procured by bad means.

His liberality to all ranks of people was particularly eminent. He made
up to several senators the estate required by law to qualify them for
that dignity, relieving likewise such men of consular rank as were poor,
with a yearly allowance of five hundred thousand sesterces; and rebuilt,
in a better manner than before, several cities in different parts of the
empire, which had been much damaged by earthquakes or fires.

He was a great encourager of learning and learned men. He first appointed
the Latin and Greek professors of rhetoric the yearly stipend of a
hundred thousand sesterces each out of the exchequer. He was likewise
extremely generous to such as excelled in poetry, or even the mechanic
arts, and particularly to one that brushed up the picture of Venus at
Cos, and another who repaired the Colossus. A mechanic offering to convey
some huge pillars into the capital at a small expense, he rewarded him
very handsomely for his invention, but would not accept of his service,
saying, “You must allow me to take care of the poor people.”

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE COLOSSEUM]

In the games celebrated at the revival of the stage in Marcellus’
theatre, he restored the old musical entertainments. He gave Apollinaris
the tragedian four hundred thousand sesterces; Terpnus and Diodorus the
harpers two hundred thousand; to some a hundred thousand; and the least
he gave to any of the performers was forty thousand, besides many golden
crowns. He had company constantly at his table, and entertained them in a
plentiful manner, on purpose to help the shambles. As in the Saturnalia
he made presents to the men at his table to carry away with them; so did
he to the women upon the calends of March; notwithstanding which he could
not wipe off the infamy of his former covetousness. The Alexandrians
called him constantly _Cybiosactes_; a name which had been given to one
of their kings who was sordidly covetous. Nay, at his funeral, Favo
the archmimic, representing his person, and imitating, as usual, his
behaviour both in speech and gesture, asked aloud of the procurators, how
much his funeral pomp would cost. And being answered “ten millions of
sesterces,” he cried out, that give him but a hundred thousand sesterces,
and they might throw his body into the Tiber, if they would.


_Personality of Vespasian_

He was broad set, strong limbed, and had the countenance of a person who
was straining. On this account, one of the buffoons at court, upon the
emperor’s desiring him “to say something merry upon him,” facetiously
answered, “I will, when you have done easing yourself.”

His method of life was commonly this: After he came to be emperor, he
used to rise very early, often before daybreak. Having read over his
letters, and the breviaries of all the offices about court, he ordered
his friends to be admitted; and whilst they were paying him their
compliments, he would put on his shoes and dress himself. Then, after the
despatch of such business as was brought before him, he rode out in his
chaise or chair; and, upon his return, laid himself down upon his couch
to sleep, accompanied by some of his concubines, of whom he had taken a
great number into his service upon the death of Cænis. After rising from
his couch, he entered the bath, and then went to supper. They say he
never was more easy or obliging than at that time; and therefore those
about him always seized that opportunity, when they had any favour to
request of him.

He chiefly affected wit upon his own shameful means of raising money, to
wipe off the odium by means of a little jocularity. One of his ministers,
who was much in his favour, requesting of him a stewardship for some
person, under pretence of being his brother; he put off the affair, but
sent for the person who was the candidate, and having squeezed out of
him as much money as he had agreed to give his solicitor, he appointed
him immediately to the place. The minister soon after renewing his
application, “You must,” said he, “make a brother of somebody else;
for he whom you took for yours is really mine.” Once upon a journey
suspecting that his mule driver had alighted to shoe his mules, only to
give time and opportunity to one that had a lawsuit depending to speak
to him, he asked him how much he had for shoeing, and would have a share
of the profit. Some deputies having come to acquaint him that a large
statue, which would cost a vast sum, was ordered to be erected for him at
the public charge, he bade them erect it immediately, showing them his
hand hollowed, and saying there was a base ready for it.[22]

Even when Vespasian was under the apprehensions and danger of death,
he would not forbear his jests. For when, amongst other prodigies,
the mausoleum of the Cæsars flew open on a sudden, and a blazing star
appeared in the heavens, one of the prodigies, he said, concerned Julia
Calvina, who was of the family of Augustus; and the other, the king of
the Parthians, who wore his hair long. And when his distemper first
seized him,“I suppose,” said he, “I am going to be a god.”


TITUS (T. FLAVIUS SABINUS VESPASIANUS II) 79-81 A.D.

[Sidenote: [79-81 A.D.]]

Titus, who had the same cognomen with his father, was [says Suetonius]
the darling and delight of mankind, (so much did he possess of happy
endowments, to conciliate the favour of all; and what is extremely
difficult indeed, after he came to be emperor; for before that period,
even during the reign of his father, he lay under the displeasure and
censure of the public). He was born upon the third of the calends of
January, in the year remarkable for the death of Caligula, near the
Septizonium, in a mean house, and a small dark chamber.

He was educated at court with Britannicus, instructed in the same parts
of literature, and under the same masters with him. During this time,
they say, that a physiognomist, being brought by Narcissus, the freedman
of Claudius, to inspect Britannicus, positively affirmed that he would
never come to be emperor, but that Titus, who stood by, would. They were
so familiar, that Titus being next him at table, is thought to have
tasted of the fatal potion which put an end to Britannicus’ life, and to
have contracted from it a distemper which remained with him a long time.
The remembrance of all these circumstances being fresh in his mind, he
erected a golden statue of him in the palace, dedicated to him another on
horseback, of ivory, and attended it in the Circensian procession.

He was, when a boy, remarkable for fine accomplishments both of body and
mind; and as he advanced in years, they became still more conspicuous.
He had a graceful person, combining an equal mixture of majesty and
sweetness; was very strong, though not tall, and somewhat big-bellied. He
was endowed with an excellent memory, and a capacity for all the arts of
peace and war; was a perfect master in the use of arms, and in riding the
great horse; very ready in the Latin and Greek tongues, as well in verse
as prose; and such was the facility he possessed in both, that he would
harangue and versify extempore. Nor was he unacquainted with music, but
would both sing and play upon the harp very finely, and with judgment.
I have likewise been informed by many, that he was remarkably quick in
the writing of shorthand, would in merriment and jest engage with his
secretaries in the imitation of any hands he saw, and often say, “that he
was admirably qualified for forgery.”

Upon the expiration of his quæstorship, he was made commander of a
legion, and took the two strong cities of Tarichea and Gamala in Judea;
and in a battle having his horse slain under him, he mounted another,
whose rider he was engaged with, and killed.

Soon after, when Galba came to be emperor, he was despatched away to
congratulate him upon the occasion, and turned the eyes of all people
upon him, wherever he came, it being the general opinion amongst them,
that the emperor had sent for him with a design to adopt him for his
son. But finding all things again in confusion, he turned back upon
the road; and going to consult the oracle of Venus at Paphos about his
voyage, he received assurances of obtaining the empire for himself. In
this prediction he was soon after confirmed; and being left to finish the
reduction of Judea, in the last assault upon Jerusalem, he slew seven
of the men that defended it, with just so many arrows, and took it upon
his daughter’s birthday. Upon this occasion, the soldiers expressed so
much joy and fondness for him, that, in their congratulation of him, they
unanimously saluted him by the title of emperor; and, upon his quitting
the province soon after, would needs have detained him, earnestly begging
of him, and that not without threats, “either to stay, or to take them
all with him.” This incident gave rise to a suspicion of his being
engaged in a design to rebel against his father, and claim for himself
the government of the East; and the suspicion increased, when, on his way
to Alexandria, he wore a diadem at the consecration of the ox Apis at
Memphis; which though he did only in compliance with an ancient religious
usage of the country, yet there were some who put a bad construction upon
it. Making therefore what haste he could into Italy, he arrived first at
Rhegium, and sailing thence in a merchant ship to Puteoli, went to Rome
with all possible expedition. Presenting himself unexpectedly to his
father, he said, by way of reflection upon the rashness of the reports
raised against him, “I am come, father, I am come.”

[Illustration: TITUS

(From a bust in the Vatican)]

From that time he constantly acted as partner with his father in the
government, and indeed as guardian of it. He triumphed with his father,
bore jointly with him the office of censor; and was, besides, his
colleague not only in the tribunitian authority, but seven consulships.
Taking upon himself the care and inspection of all offices, he dictated
letters, wrote proclamations in his father’s name, and pronounced his
speeches in the senate, in room of the quæstor. He likewise took upon
him the command of the guard, which before that time had never been
held by any but a Roman knight, and behaved with great haughtiness and
violence, taking off without scruple or delay all those of whom he was
most jealous, after he had secretly engaged people to disperse themselves
in the theatres and camp, and demand them as it were by general consent
to be delivered up to punishment. Amongst these he invited to supper A.
Cæcina, a man of consular rank, whom he ordered to be stabbed at his
departure, immediately after he had got out of the room. To this act he
was provoked by an imminent danger; for he had discovered a writing under
the hand of Cæcina, containing an account of a plot carried on amongst
the soldiery. By this means, though he provided indeed for the future
security of his family, yet for the present he so much incurred the
hatred of the people, that scarcely ever anyone came to the empire with a
more odious character, or was more universally disliked.

Besides his cruelty, he lay under the suspicion of luxury, because he
would continue his revels until midnight with the most riotous of his
acquaintance. Nor was he less suspected of excessive lewdness, because
of the swarms of favourites and eunuchs about him, and his well-known
intrigue with Queen Berenice, to whom he was likewise reported to have
promised marriage. He was supposed, besides, to be of a rapacious
disposition; for it is certain, that, in causes which came before his
father, he used to offer his interest to sale, and take bribes. In short,
people openly declared an unfavourable opinion of him, and said he would
prove another Nero. This prejudice however turned out in the end to his
advantage, and enhanced his praises not a little, because he was found
to possess no vicious propensities, but on the contrary the noblest
virtues. His entertainments were pleasant rather than extravagant; and
he chose such a set of friends, as the following princes acquiesced in
as necessary for them and the government. He sent away Berenice from
the city immediately, much against both their inclinations. Some of
his old favourites, though such adepts in dancing that they bore an
uncontrollable sway upon the stage, he was so far from treating with
any extraordinary kindness, that he would not so much as see them in
any public assembly of the people. He violated no private property; and
if ever man refrained from injustice, he did; nay he would not accept
of the allowable and customary contributions. Yet he was inferior to
none of the princes before him, in point of generosity. Having opened
his amphitheatre, and built some warm baths close by it with great
expedition, he entertained the people with a most magnificent public
diversion. He likewise exhibited a naval fight in the old naumachia,
besides a combat of gladiators; and in one day brought into the theatre
five thousand wild beasts of all kinds.

He was by nature extremely benevolent. For whereas the emperors after
Tiberius, according to the example he had set them, would not admit
the grants made by former princes to be valid, unless they received
their own sanction, he confirmed them all by one general proclamation,
without waiting until he should be addressed upon the subject. Of all who
expressed a desire of any favour, it was his constant practice to send
none away without hopes. And when his ministers insinuated to him, as if
he promised more than he could perform, he replied, “Nobody ought to go
away sad from an audience of his prince.” Once at supper, reflecting that
he had done nothing for any that day, he broke out into that memorable
and justly admired saying, “Friends, I have lost a day.”

He treated in particular the whole body of the people upon all occasions
with so much complaisance, that, upon promising them an entertainment
of gladiators, he declared, “He should manage it, not according to his
own fancy, but that of the spectators,” and did accordingly. He denied
them nothing, and very frankly encouraged them to ask what they pleased.
Being a favourer of the gladiators called Thraces, he would, as such,
frequently indulge a freedom with the people both in his words and
gestures, but always with the least violation either of his imperial
dignity or justice. To omit no occasion of acquiring popularity, he
would let the common people be admitted into his bath, even when he made
use of it himself. There happened in his reign some dreadful accidents,
as an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Campania, and a fire in Rome which
continued during three days and three nights, besides a plague, such as
was scarcely ever known before. Amidst these dismal calamities, he not
only discovered all the concern that might be expected from a prince,
but a paternal affection for his people; one while comforting them by
his proclamations, and another while assisting them as much as was
in his power. He chose by lot, from amongst the men of consular rank,
commissioners for the relief of Campania.

The estates of those who had perished by the eruption of Vesuvius,
and who had left no heirs, he applied to the repair of such cities as
had been damaged by that accident. In respect of the public buildings
destroyed in the fire of the city, he declared that nobody should be a
loser by them but himself. Accordingly, he applied all the ornaments
of his palaces to the decoration of the temples, and purposes of
public utility, and appointed several men of the equestrian order to
superintend the work. For the relief of the people during the plague,
he employed, in the way of sacrifice and medicine, all means both human
and divine. Amongst the calamities of the times, were informers, and
those who employed them; a tribe of miscreants who had grown up under
the license of former reigns. These he frequently ordered to be lashed
or well cudgeled in the Forum, and then, after he had obliged them to
pass through the amphitheatre as a public spectacle, commanded them to
be sold for slaves, or else banished them into some rocky islands. And
to discourage the like practices for the future, amongst other things,
he forbade anyone to be proceeded against upon several laws for the same
fact, and that the condition of persons deceased should, after a certain
number of years, be exempt from all inquiry.

Having avowed that he accepted the office of high priest for the purpose
of preserving his hands undefiled, he faithfully adhered to his promise.
For after that time he was neither directly nor indirectly concerned in
the death of any person, though he sometimes was sufficiently provoked.
He swore that he “would perish himself, rather than prove the destruction
of any man.” Two men of patrician quality being convicted of aspiring to
the empire, he only advised them to desist, saying, that sovereign power
was disposed of by fate, and promised them, that, if they had anything
else to desire of him, he would gratify them. Upon this incident, he
immediately sent messengers to the mother of one of them, that was at
a great distance, and concerned about her son, to satisfy her that he
was safe. Nay he not only invited them to sup with him, but next day,
at a show of gladiators, purposely placed them close by him; and when
the arms of the combatants were presented to him, he handed them to the
two associates. It is said likewise, that upon being informed of their
nativities, he assured them, that some great calamity would sometime
befall them, but from another hand, not his. Though his brother was
perpetually plotting against him, almost openly spiriting up the armies
to rebellion, and contriving to leave the court with the view of putting
himself at their head, yet he could not endure to put him to death. So
far was he from entertaining such a sentiment, that he would not so much
as banish him the court, nor treat him with less respect than before.
But from his first accession to the empire, he constantly declared him
his partner in it, and that he should be his successor; begging of
him sometimes in private with tears, to make him a return of the like
affection.[c]


THE DESTRUCTION OF POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM

[Sidenote: [79 A.D.]]

The reign of this excellent prince was marked by a series of public
calamities. He had reigned only two months when a tremendous volcanic
eruption, the first on record, from Mount Vesuvius spread dismay through
Italy. This mountain had hitherto formed the most beautiful feature in
the landscape of Campania, being clad with vines and other agreeable
trees and plants. Earthquakes had of late years been of frequent
occurrence; but on the 24th of August the summit of the mountain sent
forth a volume of flame, stones, and ashes which spread devastation far
and wide. The sky to the extent of many leagues was enveloped in the
gloom of night; the fine dust, it was asserted, was wafted even to Egypt
and Syria; and at Rome it rendered the sun invisible for many days. Men
and beasts, birds and fishes perished alike. The adjoining towns of
Pompeii and Herculaneum were overwhelmed by the earthquake which attended
the eruption, and their inhabitants destroyed. Among those who lost their
lives on this occasion was Pliny, the great naturalist. He commanded the
fleet at Misenum, and his curiosity leading him to proceed to Stabiæ to
view this convulsion of nature more closely, he was suffocated by the
pestilential air.[e]

Dion Cassius has left us a vivid picture of the memorable eruption
of Vesuvius: “The events which occurred in Campania,” he says, “were
calculated to arouse both fear and wonder; there, just as autumn was
approaching, a great fire suddenly broke out. Mount Vesuvius is near the
sea of Naples and contains a vast reservoir of fire. In former times the
whole mountain was of the same height and the fire came from its very
centre; for this is the only spot which is in combustion; the whole of
the outside is, even to this day, exempt from fire. For this reason,
since these portions still remain intact while those of the centre
crumbled away and fell into dust, the surrounding peaks preserve their
former elevation; while on another side the whole of the part ignited,
having been worn away by time, has fallen in, leaving a cavity which,
to compare small things with great, gives to the mountain the general
appearance of an amphitheatre. On the top are trees and vines in great
number, whilst the crater is the prey of fire and exhales smoke by day
and flame by night, so that it might be supposed perfumes of every kind
were being constantly burned within. This phenomenon is manifested
sometimes with more, sometimes with less intensity; at times even cinders
are thrown out when some great mass has fallen in and stones fly about,
driven by the violence of the wind. Noises and rumblings proceed from the
mountain, and it must be observed that the apertures of the crater, which
are some distance apart, are narrow and hidden.

“Such is Vesuvius, and these manifestations are repeated nearly every
year. But the prodigies which occurred in earlier days, though to those
who gave them continued attention they appeared more than ordinary, may,
even if we take them all together, be regarded as trivial in comparison
with the occurrences of this period. This is what actually happened. Men,
numerous and huge, of a height exceeding that of any human being and
such as the giants are depicted, were seen to wander day and night, now
on the mountain, now in the surrounding district and in the towns, and
sometimes even walking in the air. Then suddenly there came winds and
violent tremblings of the ground, so that the whole plain shuddered and
the crests of the mountains leaped. At the same time noises arose, some
subterranean, resembling thunder, others, coming from the ground, were
like bellowings; the sea roared, and the sky, in echo, answered to its
roarings. After this a fearful crash, like mountains hurtling against one
another, suddenly made itself heard; then first stones were thrown out
with such force that they reached the summit of the mountain; then huge
flames and thick smoke which darkened the air and entirely hid the sun as
in an eclipse.

[Illustration: COLUMNS OF THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER, ROME]

“Night succeeded to day and darkness to light; some fancied that the
giants were reawakening to life, for many phantoms in their likeness were
seen in the smoke and moreover a noise of trumpets was heard; others
thought that the whole world was about to be swallowed up in chaos or
in fire. Therefore some fled from their houses into the streets; others
from the streets into their houses, from the sea to the land and from the
land to the sea, devoured by fear and feeling that anything at a distance
was safer than their present condition. At the same time a prodigious
quantity of cinders was thrown up and filled the earth, the sea, and the
air; other scourges also descended indiscriminately upon mankind, on
the country and on the herds, destroyed the fishes and the birds, and
moreover engulfed two whole cities, Herculaneum and Pompeii, with all
the people who chanced to be seated in the theatre. Finally there was so
much dust that some of it penetrated as far as Africa, Syria, Egypt, and
even Rome itself; darkening the air above that city and covering the sun.
There it gave rise to a great panic which lasted several days, for none
knew what had happened and none could guess what it was; men fancied that
everything had been reversed, that the sun was about to disappear into
the earth and the earth to be shot up into the sky.

[Sidenote: [79-80 A.D.]]

“For the moment these ashes did no great harm to the Romans (it was
later on that they engendered a terrible contagious sickness), but the
year following, another fire, starting above ground, devoured a great
part of Rome while Titus was absent visiting the scene of the disasters
in Campania. The temples of Serapis and Isis, the Septa, the temple
of Neptune, the baths of Agrippa, the Pantheon, the Diribitorium, the
theatre of Balbus, the scena of Pompey’s theatre, the Porticus Octaviæ,
with the library, the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, with the adjacent
temples, were the prey of the flames. True is it that this misfortune
was due less to men than to the gods; for from what I have said all may
judge of the other losses. Titus sent two consulars into Campania to
establish colonies there and gave the inhabitants, besides other sums,
those which fell in from citizens dying without heirs; but he received
none either from individuals, or towns, or kings, in spite of many gifts
and promises on the part of many of them; however this did not prevent
his re-establishing everything from his own resources.”[f]

It will be observed that Dion writes from the standpoint of a Roman, and
with only incidental reference to the loss of Pompeii and Herculaneum,
which cities evidently had no very great contemporary importance. Yet,
as has been pointed out, the burial of these cities resulted in the
preservation of a mass of documents which, brought to light some eighteen
centuries later, furnishes such testimony to the manners and customs of
the time as is presented by no other evidence extant.


PLINY’S ACCOUNT OF THE ERUPTION

[Sidenote: [79 A.D.]]

Further details of the disaster at Pompeii are given by Pliny the
Younger[g] in two letters written to Tacitus, with the intention of
furnishing that historian with correct materials relative to the
event.[a] He says:

It appears that many and frequent shocks of earthquake had been felt for
some days previously; but as these were phenomena by no means uncommon
in Campania, extraordinary alarm was not excited by that circumstance,
until, about one o’clock in the afternoon of the 24th of August, a vast
and singular cloud was seen to elevate itself in the atmosphere. From
what mountain it proceeded was not readily discernible at Misenum, where
Pliny the elder (at that time) held the command of the Roman fleet. This
cloud continued arising in an uniform column of smoke, which varied in
brightness, and was dark and spotted, as it was more or less impregnated
with earth and cinders. Having attained an immense elevation, expanding
itself, it spread out horizontally, in form like the branches of the
pine, and precipitated the burning materials with which it was charged
upon the many beautiful but ill-fated towns which stood thick upon
this delightful coast. The extraordinary phenomenon now excited the
curiosity of Pliny, who ordered a vessel to be prepared for the purpose
of proceeding to a nearer inspection; but meeting some of the fugitives,
and learning its destructive effects, his curiosity was changed to
commiseration for the distressed, to whose succour he immediately
hastened.

On approaching Retina, the cinders falling hotter as well as in greater
quantity, mixed with pumice-stone, with black and broken pieces of
burning rock; the retreat and agitation of the sea driven backwards
by the convulsive motion of the earth, together with the disrupted
fragments hurled from the mountain on the shore, threatened destruction
to anything which attempted to advance. Pliny therefore ordered the ship
to be steered towards Stabiæ, where he found the alarm so great, that
his friend Pomponianus had already conveyed his more portable property
on board a vessel. The historian, less apprehensive, after partaking
of a meal with his friend, went to bed; but was, however, soon obliged
to remove, as, had he remained much longer, it was feared the falling
cinders would have prevented the possibility of forcing a way out of the
room. Still the town had not yet been materially affected, nor had the
ravages of this great operation of nature reached Misenum; but suddenly
broad refulgent expanses of fire burst from every part of Vesuvius,
and, shining with redoubled splendour through the gloom of night which
had come on, glared over a scene, now accompanied by the increased
horrors of a continued earthquake, which shaking the edifices from
their foundations, and precipitating their roofs upon the heads of the
affrighted beings who had thought to find shelter in them, threatened
universal desolation.

Driven from their homes, which no longer afforded security, the
unfortunate inhabitants sought refuge in the fields and open places,
covering their heads with pillows, to protect themselves from the
increasing fall of stones and volcanic matter, which accumulated in such
quantity, as to render it difficult to withdraw the feet from the mass,
after remaining still some minutes; but the continuance of internal
convulsion still persecuted them; their chariots agitated to and fro,
even propped with stones, were not to be kept steady; while, although now
day elsewhere, yet here most intense darkness was rendered more appalling
by the fitful gleams of torches, at intervals obscured by the transient
blaze of lightning.

Multitudes now crowded towards the beach, as the sea, it was imagined,
would afford certain means of retreat; but the boisterous agitation of
that element, alternately rolling on the shore, and thrown back by the
convulsive motion of the earth, leaving the marine animals upon the land
it retreated from, precluded every possibility of escape.

At length, preceded by a strong sulphurous stench, a black and dreadful
cloud, skirted on every side by forked lightning, burst into a train
of fire and igneous vapour, descended over the surface of the ocean,
and covered the whole bay of the crater, from the island of Capreæ
to the promontory of Misenum with its noxious exhalations; while the
thick smoke, accompanied by a slighter shower of ashes, rolled like a
torrent among the miserable and affrighted fugitives, who, in the utmost
consternation, increased their danger by pressing forward in crowds,
without an object, amidst darkness and desolation; now were heard the
shrieks of women, screams of children, clamours of men, all accusing
their fate, and imploring death, the deliverance they feared, with
outstretched hands to the gods, whom many thought about to be involved,
together with themselves, in the last eternal night.

Three days and nights were thus endured in all the anguish of suspense
and uncertainty; many were doubtless stifled by the mephitic vapour;
others spent with the toil of forcing their way through deep and almost
impassable roads, sank down to rise no more; while those who escaped,
spread the alarm, with all the circumstances of aggravation and horror
which their imaginations, under the influence of fear, suggested. At
length a gleam of light appeared, not of day, but fire; which, passing,
was succeeded by an intense darkness, with so heavy a shower of ashes,
that it became necessary to keep the feet in motion to avoid being fixed
and buried by the accumulation. On the fourth day the darkness by degrees
began to clear away, the real day appeared, the sun shining forth sickly
as in an eclipse; but all nature, to the weakened eyes, seemed changed;
for towns and fields had disappeared under one expanse of white ashes, or
were doubtfully marked, like the more prominent objects, after an alpine
fall of snow.

If such be the description of this most tremendous visitation, as it
affected Stabiæ and Misenum, comparatively distant from the source of
the calamity, what must have been the situation of the unfortunate
inhabitants of Pompeii, so near, of Herculaneum, within its focus? Must
we not conclude that, at the latter place at least, most of those not
overwhelmed by the torrents of stony mud which preceded others of flaming
lava, burying their city sixty feet under the new surface, were overtaken
by the showers of volcanic matter in the field, or drowned in attempting
to escape by sea, their last but hopeless resource, since it appears to
have received them to scarcely less certain destruction?

[Sidenote: [79-80 A.D.]]

The emperor Titus, whose great and good qualities here found every
opportunity for their display, immediately hastened to this scene of
affliction; appointed curatores, persons of consular dignity, to set
up the ruined buildings, and take charge of the effects of those who
perished without heirs, for the benefit of the surviving sufferers;
to whom he remitted all taxes, and afforded that relief the nature of
their circumstances required; personally encouraging the desponding, and
alleviating the miseries of the sufferers, until a calamity of an equally
melancholy description recalled him to the capital, where [as we have
just been told by Dion Cassius] a most destructive fire laying waste
nearly half the city, and raging three days without intermission, was
succeeded by a pestilence, which for some time is said to have carried
off ten thousand persons daily.[h]

[Illustration: THE RUINS OF POMPEII]


AGRICOLA IN BRITAIN

[Sidenote: [79 A.D.]]

It was in the time of Vespasian and Titus that the famous Agricola
campaigned in Britain. In his first summer there (78), he led his forces
into the country of the Ordovices, in whose mountain passes the war of
independence still lingered, drove the Britons across the Menai straits,
and pursued them into Anglesea, as Suetonius had done before him, by
boldly crossing the boiling current in the face of the enemy. The summer
of 79 saw him advance northward into the territory of the Brigantes, and
complete the organisation of the district, lately reduced, between the
Humber and Tyne. Struck perhaps with the natural defences of the line
from the Tyne to the Solway, where the island seems to have been broken,
as it were, in the middle and soldered unevenly together, he drew a
chain of forts from sea to sea, to protect the reclaimed subjects of the
southern valleys from the untamed barbarians who roamed the Cheviots and
the Pentlands.

To penetrate the stormy wilds of Caledonia, and track to their fastnesses
the hordes of savages, the Ottadini, Horesti, and Mæatæ, who flitted
among them, was an enterprise which promised no plunder and little glory.
The legions of Rome, with their expensive equipments, could not hope even
to support themselves on the bleak mountain sides, unclaimed by men and
abandoned by nature. His camps on the Tyne and Irthing were the magazines
from which Agricola’s supplies must wholly be drawn; the ordinary term
of a provincial prefecture was inadequate to a long, a distant, and
an aimless adventure. But Vespasian had yielded to the ardour of his
favourite lieutenant; ample means were furnished, and ample time was
allowed. In the third year of his command (80) Agricola pushed forward
along the eastern coast, and making good with roads and fortresses every
inch of his progress, reached, perhaps, the Firth of Forth. He had here
reached the point where the two seas are divided by an isthmus less than
forty miles in breadth. Here he repeated the operations of the preceding
winter, planting his camps and stations from hill to hill, and securing
a new belt of territory, ninety miles across, for Roman occupation.
The natives, scared at his presence and fleeing before him, were thus
thrust, in the language of Tacitus, as it were into another island. For
a moment the empire seemed to have found its northern limit. Agricola
rested through the next summer, occupied in the organisation of his
conquests, and employed his fifth year (82) also in strengthening his
position between the two isthmuses, and reducing the furthest corners
of the province, whence the existence of a new realm was betrayed to
him. The grassy plains of teeming Hibernia offered a fairer prey than
the gray mountains which frowned upon his fresh entrenchments, and all
their wealth, he was assured, might be secured by the valour of a single
legion. But other counsels prevailed; Agricola turned from the Mull of
Galloway, and Ireland was left to her fogs and feuds for eleven more
centuries.[k]


THE DEATH OF TITUS

[Sidenote: [79-81 A.D.]]

Meanwhile [says Suetonius], Titus was taken off by an untimely death,
more to the loss of mankind than himself. At the close of the public
diversions with which he entertained the people, he wept bitterly before
them all, and then went away for the country of the Sabines, very
melancholy, because a victim, when about to be sacrificed, had made
its escape, and loud thunder had been heard during a serene state of
the atmosphere. At the first stage on the road, he was seized with a
fever, and being carried thence in a sedan, they say that he put by the
curtains, and looked up to heaven, complaining heavily, that his life was
taken from him, though he had done nothing to deserve it; for there was
no action of his that he had occasion to repent of, but one. What that
was, he neither intimated himself, nor is it easy for any to conjecture.
Some imagine that he alluded to the unlawful familiarity which he had
formerly had with his brother’s wife. But Domitia solemnly denied it with
an oath; which she would never have done, had there been any truth in the
report; nay, she would certainly have boasted of it, as she was forward
enough to do in regard to all her shameful intrigues.

[Illustration: ARCH OF TITUS, ROME]

He died in the same villa where his father had done before him, upon the
ides of September; two years, two months, and twenty days after he had
succeeded his father; and in the one and fortieth year of his age. As
soon as the news of his death was published, all people mourned for him,
as for the loss of some near relation. The senate, before they could be
summoned by proclamation, drew together, and locking the doors of their
house at first, but afterwards opening them, gave him such thanks, and
heaped upon him such praises now he was dead, as they never had done
whilst he was alive and present amongst them.[c]

The reigns of Vespasian and Titus were marked by two important
circumstances. The monarchical form of government, for the first time
since the reign of Augustus, showed itself conducive to the culture,
morals, outward well-being, and comforts of life. Besides this, the great
unity of the Roman Empire, as one state, had its beginning under these
emperors, or in other words, from that time forward, little by little,
the provinces ceased to be subordinate parts of the body politic, in
which until now, with the exception of a few towns and individuals, only
the inhabitants of Italy had been citizens, and all others subjects.
The latter change was not only maintained after the death of Titus, but
spread itself later over all the empire. On the other hand, the benefits
conferred on the empire by the personal character of Vespasian and Titus
were only temporary; for the prevalent weakness, and instability of
opinion, and the lack of a definite and firmly established constitution,
made every bad ruler exercise a great personal influence, and his example
had a stronger effect on the life and morals of the people than his
administration. It would have been impossible even for the best ruler to
introduce a better organisation among a people, the great majority of
whom had already sunk too low, and who flattered and served every tyrant
and every vice, in order to enjoy themselves undisturbed. This was shown
immediately after the death of Titus, under the reign of his brother
Domitian.[d]


DOMITIAN (TITUS FLAVIUS DOMITIANUS), 81-96 A.D.

[Sidenote: [81-96 A.D.]]

Ere Titus had breathed his last, Domitian caused every one to abandon
him, and mounting his horse rode to the prætorian camp, and caused
himself to be saluted emperor by the soldiers. Like most bad emperors,
Domitian commenced his reign with popular actions, and a portion of
his good qualities adhered to him for some time.[23] Such were his
liberality (for no man was freer from avarice) and the strictness with
which he looked after the administration of justice, both at Rome and
in the provinces. His passion for building was extreme; not content
with restoring the Capitol, the Pantheon, and other edifices injured
or destroyed by the late conflagration, he built or repaired several
others; and on all, old and new alike, he inscribed his own name, without
noticing the original founder.

Domitian was of a moody, melancholy temper, and he loved to indulge in
solitude. His chief occupation when thus alone, we are told, was to catch
flies, and pierce them with a sharp writing-style; hence Vibius Crispus,
being asked one day if there was any one within with Cæsar, replied,
“No, not so much as a fly.” Among the better actions of the early years
of this prince, may be noticed the following. He strictly forbade the
abominable practice of making eunuchs, for which he deserves praise;
though it was said that his motive was not so much a love of justice as a
desire to depreciate the memory of his brother, who had a partiality for
these wretched beings. Domitian also at this time punished three vestals
who had broken their vows of chastity; but instead of burying them alive,
he allowed them to choose their mode of death.

In the hope of acquiring military glory, he undertook (83) an expedition
to Germany, under the pretence of chastising the Chatti. But he merely
crossed the Rhine, pillaged the friendly tribes and returned to celebrate
the triumph which the senate had decreed him. While, however, he was thus
triumphing for imaginary conquests, real ones continued to be achieved
in Britain by Cn. Julius Agricola, to whom, as we have seen, Vespasian
and Titus had committed the affairs of that island (78). He had conquered
the country as far as the firths of Clyde and Forth, and (83) defeated
the Caledonians in a great battle at the foot of the Grampians. Domitian,
though inwardly grieved, affected great joy at the success of Agricola;
he caused triumphal honours, a statue, and so forth to be decreed him
by the senate, and gave out that he intended appointing him to the
government of Syria; but when Agricola returned to Rome, after having
fully established the Roman power in Britain, Domitian received him with
coldness, and never employed him again.

The country on the left bank of the lower Danube, the modern
Transylvania, Wallachia, Moldavia was at this time inhabited by a portion
of the Sarmatian or Slavonian race named the Dacians, and remarkable for
their valour. The extension of the Roman frontier to the Danube in the
time of Augustus, had caused occasional collisions with this martial
race; but no war of any magnitude occurred till the present reign. The
prince of the Dacians at this time, named Decebalus, was one of those
energetic characters often to be found among barbarous tribes, to whom
nature has given all the elements of greatness, but fortune has assigned
a narrow and inglorious stage for their exhibition. It was probably the
desire of military glory and of plunder, rather than fear of the avarice
of Domitian, the only cause assigned, that made Decebalus at this time
(86) set at nought the treaties subsisting with the Romans, and lead
his martial hordes over the Danube. The troops that opposed them were
routed and cut to pieces; the garrisons and castles were taken, and
apprehensions were entertained for the winter quarters of the legions.
The danger seemed so imminent, that the general wish was manifested for
the conduct of the war being committed to Agricola; and the imperial
freedmen, some from good, others from evil motives, urged their master to
compliance. But his jealousy of that illustrious man was invincible, and
he resolved to superintend the war in person.

Domitian proceeded to Illyricum, where he was met by Dacian deputies
with proposals of peace, on condition of a capitation tax of two oboles
a head being paid to Decebalus. The emperor forthwith ordered Cornelius
Fuscus, the governor of Illyricum, to lead his army over the Danube, and
chastise the insolent barbarians. Fuscus passed the river by a bridge of
boats; he gained some advantages over the enemy, but his army was finally
defeated and himself slain. Domitian, who had returned to Rome, hastened
back to the seat of war; but instead of heading his troops, he stopped in
a town of Mœsia, where he gave himself up to his usual pleasures, leaving
the conduct of the war to his generals, who, though they met with some
reverses, were in general successful; and Decebalus was reduced to the
necessity of suing for peace. Domitian refused to grant it; but shortly
after, having sustained a defeat from the Marcomans whom he wished to
punish for not having assisted him against the Dacians, he sent to offer
peace to Decebalus. The Dacian was not in a condition to refuse it, but
he would seem to have dictated the terms; and in effect an annual tribute
was henceforth paid to him by the Roman emperor. Domitian, however,
triumphed for the Dacians and Marcomans, though he paid tribute to the
former, and had been defeated by the latter.

During the Dacian War (88), L. Antonius, who commanded in Upper Germany,
having been grossly insulted by the emperor, formed an alliance with the
Alamanni, and caused himself to be proclaimed emperor. But L. Maximus
marched against him, and the Alamanni, having been prevented from coming
to his aid by the rising of the Rhine, he was defeated and slain.

Maximus wisely and humanely burned all his papers, but that did not
prevent the tyrant from putting many persons to death as concerned in the
revolt.

A war against the Sarmatians, who had cut to pieces a Roman legion, is
placed by the chronologists in the year 93. Domitian conducted it in
person, after his usual manner; but instead of triumphing, he contented
himself with suspending a laurel crown in the Capitol. This is the last
foreign transaction of his reign.[e]

Domitian’s principal faults were an immoderate pride, boundless
prodigality, and a childish desire to distinguish himself. His
appearance, his voice, and, in short, his whole bearing betrayed a proud
and despotic nature. By his unrestrained prodigalities he was drawn into
avarice and rapacity, and his fear of intrigues made him cruel. Spoilt
by indulgences in early youth, as emperor he gave way to an unbridled
taste for public amusements, cruel sports, gladiatorial games, chariot
races, and a foolish passion for building. These extravagances entailed
a continual lack of money, which drove him to oppression and cruelty. At
the last, he hated and avoided mankind as Tiberius had done and became
insane like Caligula. He was not wanting in intellectual abilities; as
a young man he had made very good verses, had composed a poem on the
conquest of Jerusalem, and had written a better translation of the
poem of Aratus on the stars, than Cicero and Germanicus. As soon as he
succeeded to the throne, he considered it beneath his dignity to occupy
himself with intellectual things; from thenceforth he only studied
the records and journals of Tiberius, and left the composition of his
letters, ordinances, and speeches almost entirely to others.

The first part of his reign was better than might have been expected from
his character. In its early years he showed no avarice, but was inclined
to be generous and magnanimous. He issued some excellent ordinances,
checked the malpractices of complainants and calumniators, as well as the
publication of lampoons, punished partisan judges with great severity,
and kept the officials in order with such energy, that none of them
dared to neglect their duties either in Rome or the provinces; and as
the historian Suetonius puts it, somewhat too strongly, the magistrates
were never more just or incorruptible than in his reign. For this
reason, Domitian was from the beginning hated by the senate, which was
composed for the most part of high public officials, especially as he
showed himself in every respect far less favourably disposed towards the
aristocracy than Vespasian and Titus.

When Domitian observed how few friends he had in the senate and upper
classes, he tried to win the populace by rich donations, public
entertainments, and brilliant revels, and granted the soldiers such
a considerable rise in their pay, that he himself soon saw the
impossibility of meeting the great expense so incurred. He increased the
pay by one-fourth, and, since the finances of the state could not suffice
for such an expenditure, he tried to have recourse to a diminution of
the number of the troops; but had to give up the idea, for fear of
disturbances, mutinies in the army, and the exposure of the frontier to
the attacks of the barbarians. Domitian had not much to fear from the
hatred of the senate; for though Vespasian had cast out its unworthy
members and replaced them by men from the most distinguished families
of the whole empire, it was no better under Domitian than it had been
before.[24]

The great corruption of the Roman Empire of that time is manifest
from the fact that the changes instituted in the highest government
departments by the best among the emperors, were only of service so long
as a good and powerful ruler was at the head of the government. The very
senate, which Vespasian had tried to purify, submitted under Domitian to
every whim of the tyrant. It is impossible to say which was the greater,
the effrontery of the emperor or the baseness of the highest court of the
empire. Under two worthy successors of Domitian, the same senators again
proved themselves reasonable and dignified, not because the spirit of the
times had changed or that they themselves had become better, but because
the man who was at the head of the state powerfully influenced the senate
by his character, and so infused a better spirit into it.

It would be as wearisome for the historian as for the reader to enumerate
the prodigalities, eccentricities, and cruelties to which Domitian
abandoned himself more completely the longer he reigned. In his vanity he
declared himself a god like Caligula, caused sacrifices to be offered to
him, and introduced the custom of being styled “Our lord and god” in all
public ordinances and documents. He squandered immense sums on building,
instituted the most magnificent public games, and, like Tiberius and
Nero, was slave to all sorts of excesses. In order to obtain the money
he required, he caused many rich people to be robbed of their goods or
executed on every kind of pretext. Not avarice alone, but suspicion and
fear drove him to acts of despotism and cruelty.[d] Little by little
he gained, it was alleged, an actual taste for tormenting his victims.
It was said that he took delight in being present at the torture and
execution of prisoners, and that by a refinement of cruelty, he often
showed himself most friendly towards those persons whose death he
contemplated. But allowance must be made in all this for the exaggeration
of scandal-mongers. That he was severe in stamping out all opposition,
however, is not to be questioned.[a] His hatred of the senators was
inflamed by the discovery that many of them shared in the conspiracy of
Saturninus, a rebellious governor of northern Germany. From that time to
the end of his reign he was a terror to the nobility, as well as to the
stoics, whose teachings glorified conspiracy and “tyrannicide.”[m]

The citizens being defenceless, the senate without authority, the
soldiers as partial to Domitian as they had once been to Nero, and no one
except his confidants and servants daring to approach him, the tyrant
would probably never have been overthrown had he not, like Caligula,
made those around him fearful for their lives. His own wife, Domitia,
conspired with some of those persons who had to write down or execute his
cruel orders to destroy him. Chance once placed in the hands of Domitia
a list of the condemned on which the suspicious tyrant had written her
name. On the same list were the names of the two prefects of the guard,
Norbanus and Petronius, and of Parthenius, Domitian’s most trusted
chamberlain, and it was therefore easy for Domitia to bring about a
conspiracy against her husband. To carry it out was more difficult, for
Domitian possessed great bodily strength, and in his suspicion had taken
all sorts of precautions against such attempts. The tyrant was surprised
in his sleeping apartment, and slain after a desperate resistance. The
guards were so enraged at the murder of Domitian that his successor,
Nerva, could not protect the conspirators from their anger, and they were
cut to pieces by the soldiers after their execution had been in vain
demanded of the new emperor.

After Domitian’s death the senate gave full vent to its hatred of the
tyrant. The statue of the murdered emperor was immediately destroyed by
its orders, his triumphal arches overthrown, and his name effaced from
all public monuments. The government was handed over to the old senator
Cocceius Nerva, whom the conspirators had immediately proclaimed emperor
on Domitian’s death. It is most characteristic of those times that Nerva
was said to be raised to the throne, not so much on account of his
services to the state, but because, under Domitian, some astrologers
had said that the horoscope of this man pointed to his becoming emperor
at some future time.[25] It was universally believed that a celebrated
philosopher, Apollonius of Tyana, to whom supernatural powers were
ascribed, witnessed the murder of Domitian in the spirit at Ephesus
at the same time that it took place, and publicly announced it to the
people.[d]

Other superstitions concerning the death of Domitian, together with an
account of the personal characteristics and habits of living of the
emperor, and of the manner of his taking off, are given by Suetonius;
this biography being the concluding one in the famous work we have so
frequently quoted.[a]


SUETONIUS ON THE DEATH AND CHARACTER OF DOMITIAN

With respect to the contrivance and execution of Domitian’s death, [he
says] the common account is this. The conspirators being in some doubt
when and where they should attack him, whether while he was in the
bath, or at supper, Stephanus, a steward of Domitilla’s, then under a
prosecution for defrauding his mistress, offered them his advice and
assistance; and wrapping up his left arm, as if it was hurt, in wool
and bandages for some days, to prevent suspicion, at the very hour
appointed for the execution of the plot, he made use of this further
stratagem. He pretended to make a discovery of a plot, and being for
that reason admitted, he presented to the emperor a writing, which
whilst the latter was reading with the appearance of one astonished, he
stabbed him in the groin. But Domitian making resistance, Clodianus,
one of his chamberlains, Maximus a freedman of Parthenius’, Saturius a
superintendent of his bedchamber, with some gladiators, fell upon him,
and stabbed him in seven places. A boy that had the charge of the Lares
in his bedchamber, then in attendance as usual, when the transaction was
over, gave this further account of it; that he was ordered by Domitian,
upon receiving his first wound, to reach him a dagger which lay under
his bolster, and call in his servants; but that he found nothing at the
head of the bed, excepting the hilt of a poniard, and that all the doors
were secured; that the emperor in the meantime got hold of Stephanus, and
throwing him upon the ground, struggled a long time with him; one while
endeavouring to wrench his sword from him, another while, though his
fingers were miserably mangled, to pull out his eyes. He was slain upon
the 18th of the calends of September, in the forty-fifth year of his age,
and the fifteenth of his reign. His corpse was carried out upon a common
bier by the public bearers, and buried by his nurse Phyllis, on an estate
which had belonged to him by the Latin way, not far from Rome. But his
remains were afterwards privately conveyed into the temple of the Flavian
family, and mixed with the ashes of Julia, Titus’ daughter, whom the same
woman had likewise nursed.

He was of a tall stature, a modest countenance, and very ruddy; had
large eyes, but dim-sighted. His person was graceful, and in his youth
completely such, excepting only that his toes were bent somewhat inward.
He was at last disfigured by baldness, a fat belly, and the slenderness
of his legs, which were reduced by a long illness. He was so sensible how
much the modesty of his countenance recommended him, that he once made
this boast to the senate, “Thus far you have approved of my disposition
and countenance too.” He was so much concerned at his baldness, that he
took it as an affront upon himself, if any other person was upbraided
with it, either in jest or earnest.

He was so incapable of bearing fatigue, that he scarcely ever walked
about the city. In his expeditions and on a march, he seldom made use
of a horse, riding generally in a chair. He had no inclination for the
exercise of arms, but was fond of the bow. Many have seen him kill a
hundred wild beasts, of various kinds, at his seat near Alba, and strike
his arrows into their heads with such dexterity, that he would, at two
discharges of his bow, plant as it were a pair of horns upon them. He
would sometimes direct his arrows against the hand of a boy standing at a
distance, and expanded as a mark for him, with such exactness, that they
all passed betwixt his fingers without hurting him.

In the beginning of his reign, he laid aside the study of the liberal
sciences, though he took care to restore, at a vast expense, the
libraries which had been burned down, by collecting copies from all
parts, and sending scribes to Alexandria, either to copy or correct from
the repository of books at that place. Yet he never applied himself to
the reading of history or poetry, or to exercise his pen for his own
improvement. He read nothing but the commentaries and acts of Tiberius
Cæsar. His letters, speeches, and proclamations were all drawn up for him
by others, though he would talk speciously, and sometimes express himself
in sentiments worthy of notice. “I could wish,” said he once, “that I was
but as handsome as Mettius fancies himself to be.” And the head of one
whose hair was part yellow and part gray, he said “was snow sprinkled
with mead.”

He said “the condition of princes was very miserable, who were never
credited in the discovery of a plot, until they were murdered.” When
he had no business, he diverted himself at play, even upon days that
were not festivals, and in the morning. He entered the bath by noon,
and made a plentiful dinner, insomuch that he seldom ate more at supper
than a Matian apple, to which he added a small draught of wine, out
of a round-bellied jug which he used. He gave frequent and splendid
entertainments, but commonly in a hurry, for he never protracted them
beyond sunset and had no drinking repast after. For, until bed-time, he
did nothing else but walk by himself in private.

The people bore his death with much unconcern, but the soldiery with
great indignation, and immediately endeavoured to have him ranked amongst
the gods. Though ready to revenge his death, however, they wanted some
person to head them; but this they effected soon after, by resolutely
demanding the punishment of all those that had been concerned in his
assassination. On the other hand, the senate was so overjoyed, that they
assembled in all haste, and in a full house reviled his memory in the
most bitter terms; ordering ladders to be brought in, and his shields and
images to be pulled down before their eyes, and dashed in pieces upon the
spot against the ground; passing at the same time a decree to obliterate
his titles everywhere, and abolish all memory of him forever. A few
months before he was slain, a crow spoke in the Capitol these words, “All
things will be well.” Upon this prodigy, some person put the following
construction:

    “Nuper Tarpeio quæ sedit culmine cornix,
      ‘Est bene,’ non potuit dicere; dixit, ‘Erit.’”

    “The crow, which late on Tarpey one might see,
    Could not say, all was well, but said, ’twill be.”

They say likewise that Domitian dreamed he had a golden hump grow out of
the back of his neck, which he considered as a certain sign of happy days
for the empire after him. Such an auspicious change [concludes Suetonius]
shortly after happened, by the justice and moderation of the following
emperors.[c]


A RETROSPECTIVE GLANCE OVER THE GOVERNMENT OF THE FIRST CENTURY OF EMPIRE

[Sidenote: [30 B.C.-96 A.D.]]

In more senses than one the fall of the last of the Flavians marks
the termination of an epoch. As Suetonius intimates, the empire was
about to enter upon a period of better days. The century and a quarter
through which it had just passed had been one of stress and disaster. Of
the eleven emperors whose lives compassed the period, eight met with
violent deaths. Under these conditions there must have been a feeling
of uncertainty, of the instability of human affairs and human life,
permeating the very air. It was pre-eminently a time when might made
right, and except for the relatively brief periods when the good emperors
Vespasian and Titus were in power, there was scarcely a time when any day
might not logically enough be expected to bring forth a revolution. It
required but a dagger thrust or the administration of a poisoned morsel
of food to close a reign or a dynasty. And whether Nemesis came a few
years earlier or a few years later was largely a matter of chance, and in
most cases a matter of no great moment; since the new ruler was almost
certain to be as bad as the last.

As we consider this story of despotic reigns and tragic endings, the
first thought that comes to the mind is, Why was such a state of things
tolerated? Having put down such a man as Tiberius, why did the Romans
submit, even for a moment, to the rule of a Caligula? When such a
character as Claudius had been removed from the scene, why should the
stage be reset for a Nero? The answer is not hard to find. It is inherent
in the anomalous political condition of the empire and the still more
anomalous position of its ruler. The real fact is that the empire was
no empire at all in the modern sense; from which it follows that the
emperors had no such nominal position as the name of the title which we
give them conveys to modern ears.

True our modern word “emperor” is the lineal descendant of the word
“imperator”; just as “kaiser” and “czar” are the lineal descendants of
the word “cæsar.” But modern usage has greatly modified the significance
of these words; and in dealing with the history of the early Roman Empire
it must constantly be borne in mind that Cæsar was originally only the
family name of the great dictator and the first five imperators, having
at first no greater significance than any other patronymic; and that the
word “imperator” meant and originally implied nothing more than general
or commander-in-chief of the army.

It will be recalled that Augustus--shrewd, practical politician that
he was--ardently deprecated the use of any word implying “lord” or
“master” in connection with his name. He was the imperator of the army,
the princeps or leader of the senate, and the high pontiff (pontifex
maximus) of church and state. The practical powers which were either
previously associated with these offices or were gradually clustered
about them by the genius of Augustus, gave that astute leader all the
power in fact that any modern emperor possesses. But while exercising
such truly imperial functions, Augustus remained in theory an ordinary
citizen, all his offices subject to the mandate of the people. He lived
unostentatiously; conducted himself with the utmost deference towards
his fellow-citizens; kept his actions for the most part strictly within
the letter of the law--albeit himself promulgating the laws; and went
through, even for the fifth time, the form of being appointed to his high
office for a period of ten years.

He gained a hold on the affections of the people, as well as a dominating
influence over their affairs. They rejoiced to do him honour, conferring
on him not only the titles and dignities already mentioned, but the
specific title of Augustus, in addition. Yet it must not be for a moment
forgotten that no one of these titles conveyed to the mind of the Roman
people the impression that would have been conveyed by the word “king.”
Had Augustus even in his very heyday of power dared to assume that title,
it may well be doubted whether he would not have met the fate of his
illustrious uncle.

And if this was true of Augustus, it was equally true of his successors
in the first century. To be sure, they succeeded to power much as one
king succeeds another. Augustus chose Tiberius as his successor, and
Tiberius assumed the reins of power quite unopposed. But it must be
noted that in several cases, as in that of Tiberius and again when Nero
succeeded Claudius, the artful machinations employed to keep secret the
death of the imperator until his chosen successor could take steps to
fortify himself with army and senate, implied in themselves the somewhat
doubtful character of the title to succession.

In point of fact, there was no legal title to succession whatever.
Until the form of a choice by the senate had been gone through with,
the new imperator had no official status. There was no question of the
divine right of succession. Indeed, how little the majesty that doth
hedge a king availed to sanctify the persons of the early imperators, is
sufficiently evidenced in the record of their tragic endings. Regicide is
not unknown, to be sure, even in the most stable monarchies; but where
eight rulers out of eleven successive ones meet violent deaths, it is
evident that the alleged royal power has hardly the semblance of sanctity.

Meanwhile, the nominal form of government of the Roman people remained
the same as under the commonwealth. Ostensibly, the senate was still
supreme. Consuls were elected year by year, as before; and how widely the
imperial office differed from its modern counterpart is well evidenced by
the fact that the emperor was from time to time chosen consul, sharing
the dignity then with a fellow-citizen, who, theoretically, was his
official equal.

If such was the nominal position of the emperor, what then was the real
secret of his actual power? It rested, not on the tradition of kingship,
but on the simple basis of military leadership. “Imperator,” as has been
said, implied “commander of the legions”; and he who controlled the
legions, controlled the Roman Empire. That was the whole secret. There
is nothing occult or mysterious in it all. Rome’s position as mistress
of the world depended solely upon her army; therefore, the man who
controlled that army was master of the world. Hence it followed that when
the army chose an imperator,[26] be it a youthful Otho or a senescent
Galba, the senate had no option but to ratify that choice with its
approving ballot. If, as happened after Nero’s death, the army chanced
not to be a unit in its choice, different legions bringing forward each
a candidate, the senate must indeed make a decision, as for example,
between Vitellius and Vespasian, but it was the arbitrament of arms that
ratified the selection. That the senate preferred Vespasian to Vitellius
would have signified little in the final result, had not the army of the
Flavians proved the stronger.

In a word then, this Roman Empire of the first century, whatever its
nominal status, is a veritable military despotism: it is not merely the
imperator who is dependent upon the legions; the very nation itself is
no less dependent. The bounds of the empire extend from the Euphrates
to the westernmost promontory of Spain and from Egypt to Britain. About
this territory, embracing the major part of the civilised world, is drawn
an impregnable cordon of soldiers. Twenty-five legions make up this
_chevaux-de-frise_ of steel in the day of Tiberius. Eight legions are
stationed along the Rhine; three legions in Pannonia and two in Mœsia
along the Danube; four legions are marshalled in Syria, two in Egypt,
and one along the Mediterranean coast of Africa. Of the remaining five,
two are in Dalmatia and three in Spain. Almost four hundred thousand
men make up these legions. Under the successors of Augustus, Britain is
invaded, and made, like all the other frontiers, a camping-ground for
armies. A glance at the map will show how this great barrier of soldiers
circles the mighty empire. Remove that barrier and the empire of Rome
would shrink in a day from its world-wide boundaries to the little
peninsula of Italy, perhaps even to the narrow confines of the city of
Rome itself.

And why should it not be removed? What boots it to the citizen of Rome
that his name should be a word of terror to the uttermost nations of
the ancient world? What matters it more than in name that Spain and
Gaul and Pannonia and Syria and Egypt acknowledge the sway of the
city on the Tiber? The reply is that it matters everything; for these
outlying provinces supply the life-blood of the empire. From these wide
dominions all roads, as the saying has it, lead to Rome; and every road
is worn deep with the weight of tribute. The legions that we have seen
distributed all about the wide frontier were not placed there primarily
to fight, but to exact tribute as the price of peace. Fight they did, to
be sure; in one region or another they were always fighting. But this
warfare was kept up primarily by the enemies of the state; Rome herself
would seldom have taken the aggressive, had the people along her frontier
chosen to submit to her exactions. She demanded only money or its
equivalent; granted that, she was the friend and protector of all peoples
within her domain.[27]

And sooner or later most of these peoples found that it was better to
pay tribute peacefully than to fight and be plundered. Here and there
an obstinate people like the Jews held out for a time, but the almost
uniform result was that ultimately the might of the legions prevailed;
and then there followed indiscriminate pillage of everything worth
taking, to glorify the inevitable triumph of the Roman leader. The
description of the treasures that delighted the eyes of the people
of Rome when Titus and Vespasian triumphed after the destruction of
Jerusalem, is but a sample of what occurred again and again in evidence
of the prowess of Roman arms.

In the end, then, the provinces came to submit to the inevitable, however
sullenly, and they poured their wealth into the hands of Rome’s censors
to be passed on to the imperator, who deposited such portion as he chose
into the official coffers of the city. In the time of Augustus it is
estimated that the yearly tribute from the provinces amounted to from
fifteen to twenty millions of pounds (seventy-five to one hundred million
dollars). This was tribute proper, the literal price of peace. Nor was
this all. Rome was the centre of trade for all these provinces--the world
emporium where the merchant of Spain might barter with the merchant of
Syria, and where the produce of Gaul and Pannonia might be exchanged for
the produce of Egypt. All articles from whatever quarter were subject to
import duty; and all transactions of the market had to pay a percentage
for excise.

When all this is borne in mind it will appear how the imperator--at once
the commander of the legions and the keeper of the public purse--was
able to dictate the laws, controlling not merely the property, but the
lives of his fellow-citizens; for the power of gold was no less--perhaps
no greater--in antiquity than in our own day. We have seen what
practical use the imperator made of this trenchant weapon. We have seen
how the masses were pauperised; some hundreds of thousands of Roman
citizens receiving bread without price. The largesses of Augustus are
only comprehensible when one has fully grasped the position of the
imperator as mulctor of nations. So long as all the productive nations
of the world poured their earnings without equivalent into the imperial
treasury, so long the citizen of Rome might live in idle luxury, taking
no thought for a morrow, the needs of which were sure to be supplied by
a paternal government. Not merely sustenance but amusement is supplied.
Augustus sacrifices five thousand beasts in a single series of games;
a band of elephants competes with an army of gladiators. Even a naval
combat is arranged on an artificial lake near the city. And in the
later day this phase of practical politics is developed to even larger
proportions. Vespasian and Titus construct an amphitheatre--the famous
Colosseum--which seats eighty-five thousand spectators; and on a single
occasion Titus rejoices the people with a series of combats lasting
through a hundred days.

It is good to live in Imperial Rome--place of inexhaustible bounty, of
unceasing entertainment. There is no need to work, for slaves by tens
of thousands conduct all menial affairs. Indeed, there is no business
for the free man but pleasure--the bath, the banquet, the theatre, and
the gladiatorial games. Rome is a glorious city in this day. With her
renovated Forum, her new Capitol, her triumphal arches, her stupendous
Colosseum, she is a city of marvels. To her contemporary citizens it
seems that she is on a pinnacle of power and glory from which time itself
cannot shake her. Looking back from the standpoint of later knowledge it
is easy to moralise, easy to understand that decay was eating out the
heart of the nation, easy to realise that all this mock civilisation
rested above the crater of a volcano. But we may well believe that very
few contemporary citizens had the prevision to match our modern thought.

And, indeed, it must in fairness be admitted that the shield has another
side. However unstable the form of government, there is something in
material prosperity which up to a certain stage, makes for intellectual
eminence as well. And so in this first century of the Roman Empire there
was no dearth of great men. The golden age of literature was the time
of Augustus; the silver age was the time of his immediate successors.
The poets and philosophers have left us such names as Valerius Maximus,
Asinius Pollio, Seneca, Lucan, Valerius Flaccus, Martial, Quintilian, and
Statius. History and science were never more fully represented than in
the day of Paterculus, Mela, Quintus Curtius, Florus, Pliny, Josephus,
Suetonius, and Tacitus. A time which produced such men as these was not
wholly bad. Unfortunately no future century of Roman history will be able
to show us such another list.[a]


FOOTNOTES

[19] Dion relates this incident with a little variation. According to
him, the German soldier said, “I will give you the best assistance in my
power;” and thereupon he stabbed Vitellius, and despatched himself. Dio,
lib. LXV.

[20] [See Volume II, Ch. 14.]

[21] Vespasian and his two sons, Titus and Domitian.

[22] [All the gossip about the avarice of Vespasian seems to have
resulted (1) from his increased taxation, and (2) from his economy. Such
examples of humour as those here given were distorted into proofs of
avarice.]

[23] [Domitian is called “bad” partly because he opposed the senate.]

[24] [Or rather the improvement, though actual, was not at once manifest.]

[25] [The real reasons were probably (1) that he was a senator, and (2)
that his advanced age gave the ambitious an opportunity to intrigue for
the throne.]

[26] [Importance attached primarily to the suffrage of the prætorian
guards, who were stationed at or near Rome. The Roman populace itself had
also to be considered. The legions stationed at a distance might support
the prætorians, or might, on the other hand, bring forward their own
candidates, as we have seen.]

[27] [A most efficient protector, securing peace and good government. But
the submissive peoples lost all national and military spirit, so that
they were indisposed to protect themselves after the protection of the
empire was withdrawn.]




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XXXVI. THE FIVE GOOD EMPERORS: NERVA TO MARCUS AURELIUS (96-180
A.D.)

    Until philosophers are kings, and the princes of this world
    have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political
    greatness and wisdom meet in one, cities will never cease from
    ill--no, nor the human race, as I believe--and then only will
    our state have a possibility of life, and see the light of
    day. The truth is, that the state in which the rulers are most
    reluctant to govern is best and most quietly governed, and the
    state in which they are most willing is the worst.--PLATO.


NERVA (M. COCCEIUS NERVA), 96-98 A.D.

[Sidenote: [96-98 A.D.]]

The new emperor, who reigned less than two years (96-98), distinguished
himself as much by his mild and clement spirit, as his predecessor had
done by the opposite temper. He made it his principal task to concentrate
the whole government in the hands of the senate. He could not accomplish
this because it was necessary that the ruler should combine the qualities
of a capable and dreaded general, and Nerva’s reign shows how imperative
it was for the ruler of the empire to be a soldier and leader. Nerva
himself was only too soon convinced of the fact. The prætorians and
the Roman populace, dissatisfied with the government of an old and
serious-minded man, provoked disturbances throughout the whole of the
first year; they were specially irritated because Nerva, in order to
recoup the revenue, restricted the public games and sold the costly
vessels and collections which Domitian’s love of splendour had induced
him to make.

Nerva soon saw that he was menaced with Galba’s fate, that he was defied
and his office held in contempt. He therefore determined, like Galba,
to adopt an energetic man who stood high in public esteem as co-regent,
and was far happier in his choice than Galba had been. When anarchy had
reached its zenith in the capital, the emperor surprised the Roman people
by naming a successor, chosen not from the senate, but from the army, and
one who possessed the love of the soldiers in the highest degree. Ulpius
Trajan, on whom his choice fell, was then at the head of the legions of
the lower Rhine, and had not only distinguished himself by glorious deeds
in war, but in Rome had once been greeted by the people almost as a god
on account of his kingly form and heroic appearance. With the nomination
of Trajan the disturbances promptly ceased, and the proud prætorians
submitted without a murmur when the new co-regent ordered them to join
him in Germany and attached them to other legions there.[f]

Dion Cassius tells the story of Trajan’s accession as follows:

“Nerva, seeing that he was despised on account of his advanced age,
ascended to the Capitol and said in a loud voice: ‘May the thing be
fortunate and well-pleasing to the senate, and the Roman people as
well as to myself! I adopt M. Ulpius Trajan.’ After which he declared
him Cæsar in the senate and wrote to him with his own hand (Trajan was
commanding in Germany):

“‘May the Danubians expiate my tears under the stroke of thy darts.’

“Thus Trajan became Cæsar, and afterwards emperor, though Nerva had
relatives. But Nerva did not place his kindred before the good of the
state; although Trajan was a Spaniard and not an Italian or even the son
of an Italian, he was nevertheless adopted in spite of this, for to that
day no foreigner had been emperor of the Romans; Nerva thought that it
was a man’s merit, and not his country which was the important question.
He died after this adoption, having reigned one year, four months, and
nine days; he had lived sixty-five years, ten months, and ten days.

“Trajan before attaining to the empire had had the following dream: It
seemed to him that an old man clothed in the pretexta and adorned with
a crown, in the fashion in which the senate is represented, marked his
seal on him with a ring on the left side of the neck and then on the
right. When he had become emperor he wrote to the senate with his own
hand, saying amongst other things that he would not put to death nor
brand as infamous any worthy man; and these promises he confirmed with an
oath both at the time and subsequently. Having sent for Ælianus and the
prætorian guards who had risen against Nerva, as if with the intention of
making use of them, he rid himself of them. He had no sooner reached Rome
than he made several regulations for the reformation of the state and in
favour of worthy men, whom he treated with so much consideration that he
granted funds to the cities of Italy for the education of the children
whose benefactor he became. The first time that his wife Plotina entered
the palace, having reached the top of the steps and turning towards the
temple, she said, ‘Such as I enter, so I would depart.’ Throughout his
reign she conducted herself in such a manner that no reproach could be
made against her.”[g]


TRAJAN (M. ULPIUS TRAJANUS CRINITUS), 98-117 A.D.

[Sidenote: [98-101 A.D.]]

By birth, as just noted, Trajan was a Spaniard, although his father had
filled the office of consul in Rome. Not more than fifty years earlier
it would have been intolerable to the Romans to obey a foreigner; but in
Trajan’s time a man’s birthplace was no longer taken into consideration.
So greatly had opinions and circumstances altered in consequence of the
growing amalgamation of the empire into a single state.

Nerva died in the year after the appointment of his co-regent (Jan.,
98). The latter, who at the time of his accession was in the prime of
life, and reigned from 98-117, possessed all the qualities which the
spirit of the times, the existing state of things, and the welfare of
the empire required of a ruler. As a ruler he only committed a single
error, he tried to extend the borders of the empire by conquest, and thus
led the Romans once more along a path which they had abandoned since the
time of Augustus, to the great benefit of the state. Trajan combined a
lofty spirit with all the best qualities of a soldier. He had received a
military training, and had spent the greater part of his previous life
in camp; he was therefore lacking in conventional culture, the hardships
of military service had given him health and strength, while a simple
and hardy life had preserved the firmness and uprightness of his mind. By
his unvarying regard for law and justice, for equality and civil virtue,
for ancient custom, and for the reputation of the highest office in the
state, no less than by his choice of subordinates and friends (amongst
whom were two of the best writers of those days, Pliny the Younger and
Tacitus) Trajan showed how little culture and learning was necessary,
where such qualities existed, to enable a man worthily to take his place
at the head of the empire.

His administration was exemplary, he scorned the arbitrary exercise
of power, he let the law take its course, kept the departments of
legislation and administration apart, and protected the provinces with
a powerful hand against the oppression of officials. At his court
he organised all things as they had been under Vespasian and Titus.
Inspired by a ridiculous pride, Domitian had re-introduced the rigid
court ceremonial of the time of Claudius and Nero; Trajan banished all
ostentation and constraint from his environment and mode of life. He
treated the nobles, his daily companions, as friends, returned their
visits, expected them to come uninvited to his table, and granted free
access to his person to every citizen who wished to present a petition.

In his interest in science and education, and in architecture, military
roads, harbours, and other works of public utility, Trajan not only
followed in the footsteps of Vespasian, but he did a great deal more than
the latter. For instance, he opened a public library, which was called
the Ulpian, after his own name, and remained the most important in the
city of Rome during the whole of ancient times.


THE FIRST DACIAN WAR

[Sidenote: [101-103 A.D.]]

Nothing in the course of Trajan’s reign was of such great and
far-reaching consequence as his unfortunate and erroneous idea of
defending the empire by fresh conquests, and purifying morals by the
revival of military ambition. From early youth he had been trained as a
soldier and general; in his campaigns he had become acquainted with many
lands and nations; he was equal to all the hardships of military service,
and as emperor liked to share them with his soldiers; seldom mounting his
horse on the march, but going on foot like his men.

Three years after his accession he began his wars of conquest, the scene
of the first being Dacia on the lower Danube. As emperor he never thought
of attempts on Lower Germany, although he had acted there as governor and
general for ten years. The countries of the lower Danube, and after them
the East, seemed to him better suited to prove to the world his capacity
as a general. In Moldavia and Wallachia some immigrants of Thracian
descent, amongst whom the Dacians were the most important, had leagued
themselves together, some decades before, and with their combined forces
had attacked Roman Thrace. At the time when Vitellius and Vespasian
were disputing the throne, they had been repulsed by the troops of the
latter, on their way into upper Italy, by Thrace and Mœsia, and Fonteius
Agrippa, Vespasian’s general and vice-gerent, had established a number of
fortified camps on the Danube as a bulwark against them.

Under Domitian the tribes belonging to the Dacian league, with Decebalus
at their head, again invaded the Roman Empire. They destroyed some
fortresses, repulsed the Roman troops on several occasions, and wrought
fearful havoc. Domitian himself twice marched to the Danube, but his
troops were defeated in most engagements. Suspicious as he was, he dared
not entrust a capable man with the command of a considerable army,
although immediately after the recall of Agricola from Britain he had
a general who was in every respect qualified for such a struggle. The
Dacians therefore not only remained unpunished, but continued their
devastations, and Decebalus actually offered the Roman emperor terms
of peace on condition that he should be paid a sum of money annually.
Domitian agreed to these shameful terms, and the degenerate senate of
Rome granted him the honours of a triumph as conqueror of the Dacians.

Trajan pretermitted the payment of tribute, and the Dacians again invaded
Roman territory. He therefore betook himself to the Danube in person,
in order to undertake the conduct of the war against them (101). He
crossed the river, avenged the havoc wrought by the Dacians by far worse
devastations in their own land, and defeated the troops of the enemy
wherever they opposed him. In the third year of the war (103) the king
of the barbarians was compelled to submit and accept the terms of peace
dictated by Trajan.[f]

Xiphilinus[h] has preserved for us, from the works of Dion Cassius, some
interesting details of this campaign, with incidental sidelights on
Trajan’s character. Trajan was led to undertake the campaign, he tells
us, because he “bore in mind the conduct of the Dacians, was distressed
at the tribute which they received every year, and perceived that their
pride increased with their numbers. Decebalus was seized with terror at
the news of his march; and indeed he knew well enough that it was not
the Romans but Domitian whom he had previously conquered and that now he
would have to fight against the Romans, and against the emperor, Trajan.
For Trajan was distinguished in the highest degree by his justice, his
courage, and the simplicity of his manners. He had a strong body, (he was
forty-two years old when he succeeded to the empire; so that he supported
all fatigues as well as anyone,) and he had a vigorous mind, so that he
was exempt both from the impetuosity of youth and from the slowness of
age. Far from envying or belittling anyone he honoured all worthy men and
raised them to high positions; for he neither dreaded nor hated any one
of them. He gave no credit to calumnies and was in no way the slave of
anger. He abstained alike from laying his hands on the property of others
and from unjust murders.

“He spent much on war, much also on the works of peace; but the most
numerous and necessary items of expenditure had for their object the
repair of roads, harbours, and public buildings, while for none of
these works did he ever shed blood. There was naturally such vastness
in his conceptions and in his thoughts that having caused the Circus to
be raised from its ruins and rendered finer and more magnificent than
before, he set up an inscription stating that he had rebuilt it so that
it might contain the Roman people.

“He desired to make himself beloved by his conduct rather than to receive
honours. He brought mildness into his relations with the people and
dignity into his bearing towards the senate; he was beloved by all and
dreaded only by enemies. He took part in the hunts of the citizens, in
their festivals, their labours and their schemes, as well as in their
amusements; often he would even take the fourth seat in their litters,
and he did not fear to enter their houses without a guard. Without being
perfect in the science of eloquence he knew its methods and put them in
practice. There was nothing in which he did not excel. If he loved war
he contented himself with winning successes, crushing an implacable foe
and increasing his own states. For under him it never happened, as it so
often does in similar circumstances, that the soldiers gave rein to pride
and insolence, so great was his firmness in command. Thus it was without
reason that Decebalus feared him.


_Trajan Dictates Terms to Decebalus_

[Illustration: TRAJAN

(From a bust in the Capitol)]

[Sidenote: [103 A.D.]]

“During Trajan’s expedition against the Dacians, when he was near Tapes
where the barbarians were encamped, a large mushroom was brought to him,
on which it was written in Latin characters that the other allies and the
Burii conjured Trajan to turn back and conclude a peace. Nevertheless he
delivered a battle, in which he had a great number of his men wounded and
made great carnage amongst the enemy; when the bandages gave out, he did
not spare, it is said, his own clothing, but tore it in pieces; moreover
he caused an altar to be raised in honour of his soldiers who had been
slain in the battle, and had funeral sacrifices offered to them every
year. As he was endeavouring to reach the heights, carrying one hill
after another and in face of a thousand perils, he came to the residence
of the Dacian kings, whilst Lucius, who had attacked from another side,
made a great slaughter and took a great number of prisoners. Whereupon
Decebalus sent the emperor an embassy composed of the chiefs of the
Dacians and making petition to him through them, showed himself disposed
to treat with them under no matter what conditions.

“He was required to deliver up the machines, and the engines, to
surrender the deserters, to demolish his fortifications, to evacuate
the territories he had conquered and besides this to regard all those
who were enemies or friends to the Romans as his own; in spite of
himself he consented to these conditions, after having gone himself to
Trajan, falling on the ground before him and worshipping him. Decebalus’
ambassadors were introduced to the senate, where, having laid down their
arms they clasped their hands in the fashion of captives, pronounced
certain words and certain prayers and thus agreed to the peace and
resumed their arms. Trajan celebrated his triumph and was surnamed
Dacicus; he gave combats of gladiators in the theatre (for he took
pleasure in these combats), and caused the actors to reappear at the
theatre (for he loved one of them, Pylades), while none the less in his
character of a soldier he continued to watch over other business and
to administer justice; sometimes in the Forum of Augustus, sometimes
under the Porticus Livia, and often in other places as well, he gave
judgment from his tribunal. But when he was informed that Decebalus was
contravening several articles of the treaty, that he was laying up stores
of arms, receiving deserters and raising fortresses, that he was sending
embassies to his neighbours, and ravaging the countries of those who had
previously taken part against him and had seized on lands belonging to
the Iazyges, lands which Trajan afterwards refused to restore to them
when they demanded them of him again; then the senate for the second time
declared Decebalus to be the enemy of Rome and Trajan; also the second
time, undertook to make war against them in person and not through other
generals.

“Decebalus failed to win the victory by force, but he almost succeeded
in killing Trajan by craft and treason; he sent deserters to him in
Mœsia, who were charged to assassinate him, knowing that at that time, in
consideration of the necessities of the war, he received all who wished
to speak to him without distinction. But they could not accomplish this,
as one of them was arrested on suspicion and under the torture confessed
the whole plot.

“Longinus, who commanded a detachment of the Roman army, and whose
valour had been proved during the war, having suffered himself, at the
invitation of Decebalus, to be drawn into an interview with him, under
pretext that the latter would make his submission, Decebalus seized the
Roman and publicly interrogated him on the plans of Trajan; and when
Longinus refused to reveal anything, he retained him under a guard.
Decebalus then (sent an embassy to Trajan to demand that he should
abandon the country as far as the Ister, and that he should be reimbursed
for all the expenses of the war) on condition of restoring Longinus.
Trajan having given an undecided answer, the terms of which were intended
to show that his esteem for Longinus was neither small nor great, so that
he might neither lose him nor pay too dearly for his ransom, Decebalus
hesitated considering what he should do; and Longinus, for whom (his
freedman) had meantime procured poison, (promised the king to reconcile
him with Trajan, for he feared that if he suspected his intention he
would have him more closely guarded; then he wrote a petition to Trajan,
and charged the freedman to carry it in order to secure its safety. The
freedman, having therefore departed, Longinus) took (the poison during
the night) and died. (This being done), Decebalus demanded the freedman
of Trajan, promising to give in exchange the body of Longinus and ten
captives, and he also sent him the centurion taken with Longinus in the
hope that he would succeed in his design; from this centurion Trajan
learned all that had happened to Longinus. Nevertheless he did not send
him back nor did he restore the freedman, judging this man’s life of more
importance to the dignity of the empire than the burial of Longinus.”[g]

It is the modern verdict that in the conclusion of peace as well as
after it, the Roman emperor abused the right of conquest. He retained
possession of a part of the land of Dacia, established a Roman garrison
on the rapids of the Danube, between Orsowa and Gladowitza, which at a
later day bore the name of the “Iron Gates,” and threatened to seize the
mountain country of southwestern Transylvania. This naturally enraged the
Dacians and their king. Decebalus was by no means a mere barbarian; he
had allied himself with the Parthian king, the principal enemy of the
Romans in the far East, and had enlisted in his service many men who had
served in the Roman army and who organised his troops after the Roman
fashion. He had also brought a number of skilled workmen, partly by force
and partly by money payments, from the neighbouring Roman province to his
own country, to use their services in making instruments of peace and war.


THE SECOND DACIAN WAR

[Sidenote: [103-113 A.D.]]

According to his treaty with Trajan, he should have sent all such persons
back; and Trajan was all the more ready to make this circumstance the
pretext for another war, since Decebalus had attempted to ally himself
with some of the neighbouring tribes. The emperor began the second Dacian
war by building a stone bridge over the Danube, and thus manifested his
intention of extending the dominion of Rome beyond the river. This bridge
was erected three hours’ journey below the aforementioned gates, close to
the town of Czernetz at the present day. It was thirty-five hundred paces
long and provided with entrenchments at either end. The ruins of it are
still to be seen at low water.

The war in what is now Wallachia, the country to which Trajan gained
access by this bridge, offered many difficulties to the Roman army on
account of its many morasses, its heavy clay soil, and the large and
rapid rivers which traverse it. He therefore led his troops with great
caution; he made roads, diverted the course of rivers, and hunted the
Dacian king from forest to forest, and from swamp to swamp. At length
Decebalus felt himself unable to hold his own against the Romans, and
slew himself in order not to fall into the hands of the enemy. Trajan
made a Roman province of the conquered land, and determined to establish
as many colonies as possible in it, and to tame his barbarian subjects by
culture. (106 A.D.)

In the uncultivated but fertile plains of Wallachia, he settled a large
number of colonists from all parts of the Roman Empire, founded many
towns and villages, and made Roman culture so acceptable that Latin
became the dominant language of the country. By these means, however,
he provoked the barbarous tribes who then occupied Poland and Russia to
continual predatory attacks. Thrace and Mœsia, now Rumelia, Bulgaria,
and Servia, which lay to the south of the Danube, gained most; they were
protected from the barbarians by the new province beyond the Danube. A
number of new towns were founded there, and from that time they continued
to flourish.

The conquest of the Dacians and the attention it attracted throughout
the Roman Empire seemed to have affected the emperor’s hitherto modest
disposition, which had led him to devote himself to affairs of law and
government; for the manner in which he celebrated his victory in Rome,
as well as the oriental campaign which he subsequently undertook, were
not in keeping with the character of wise moderation and the absence of
excessive prodigality, which might have been expected of him, under the
circumstances. When he returned to Rome, he celebrated his victory by
magnificent architectural works and brilliant festivities. He erected a
monument commemorative of his victory, which still exists, the celebrated
Trajan column, 110 feet in height [to which we shall refer more at length
presently]. (113 A.D.)

Besides several buildings in Rome, he built triumphal arches at
Beneventum and other places, and made a road through the Pontine marshes
which combined the excellence and strength of the old military roads with
the conveniences of his own time. These undertakings were made in the old
Roman spirit, and did him as much honour as the many bridges and canals
which he built in different parts of the empire or the great military
road which extended from the Black Sea to the west coast. On the other
hand the feasts which he arranged in celebration of his victory recalled
the foolish prodigality of Caligula and Domitian, and added not a little
to the deterioration of morals. For 123 consecutive days he gave the
people public games and other revels, in which no less than ten thousand
gladiators took part, and eleven thousand wild animals were killed; so
that one of the best emperors did most to promote the unnatural and
inhuman pleasures of the degenerate inhabitants of Rome.

The Dacian conquest was not the sole triumph of Roman arms at this
period. In 106 Cornelius Palma, governor of Syria, attacked the
troublesome tribes inhabiting the ill-defined region between Damascus
and the Red Sea. There was one short but severe campaign, and Arabia
Petræa was added to the Roman province. The great caravan routes from the
Euphrates to the Red Sea were now safe.


ORIENTAL CAMPAIGNS AND DEATH OF TRAJAN

[Sidenote: [106-117 A.D.]]

Trajan’s oriental campaign was directed against the Parthians. Since the
time of Augustus, this people had suffered perpetually from quarrels over
the succession to the throne, and had often come into hostile contact
with the Romans, because both nations looked upon the kingdom of Armenia
as a dependency of theirs. The turbulent character of the Armenians and
the continual dissensions among the members of their ruling family made
the intervention of the two neighbouring states to some extent necessary.
In the frequent wars of the Romans and Parthians, no general had ever
distinguished himself as much as Domitius Corbulo, who had been sent by
Nero to Armenia so as to protect the inhabitants of this land against the
tyranny of their own king, no less than against the superior power of
the Parthians. He banished the Parthian prince Tiridates I, who had set
himself up as ruler of Armenia, and occupied the whole of the country.

Nero bestowed the government of Armenia on a descendant of the Herod
family, who then lived in Rome and had adopted the pagan religion. For
a whole year the latter was unable to maintain his ground against the
turbulent Armenians and Parthians, and Corbulo himself advised the
emperor to restore the banished Parthian prince on condition that he
should go to Rome, and do homage as a Roman vassal. To this Tiridates
consented; he received the kingdom of Armenia as a Roman fief, and
peace was restored for a time. After his death, the former scenes were
repeated; the throne of Armenia again became the subject of quarrels
between various princes, and the Parthians again intervened in the
affairs of the country.

In Trajan’s time a protégé of Parthia, Exedares by name, was seated on
the throne of Armenia, and the Parthian king, Chosroes, supported him
with an army quartered in the country. Trajan would not acknowledge
this king of Armenia; but as a matter of fact he cared far less for
the restoration of Roman ascendency in Armenia than for the chance of
winning glory as conqueror of the Parthians. In 106 he went to Asia with
a large army. On the way he received an embassy from the Parthian king,
who had disturbances in his own country to contend with, and who, for
this reason, made friendly advances to the Roman emperor. Trajan would
have nothing to say to his proposals, by reason of his greed of fame,
although Chosroes had removed Exedares from the throne of Armenia and
placed in his stead a Parthian prince, Parthamasiris, who was willing
to do homage to the Romans. Trajan banished the new ruler of Armenia
without much trouble, for the Parthians, engaged in internecine quarrels,
could not support him. The emperor therefore turned Armenia into a Roman
province, and subjected the petty dynasties between the Black Sea and the
Caspian. Their loyalty lasted no longer than the time the Roman army was
at hand. The subsequent enterprises of Trajan on his first expedition to
the East are not known to us in detail; we only know for certain that
he marched from Armenia to Mesopotamia, took some cities on the middle
Euphrates and Tigris and supported the king of Parthia against his
rebellious subjects.

Some time after, most probably in the year 114, Trajan undertook his
second Parthian campaign, on which he spent about three years, till
117. He conquered the famous Greek city of Seleucia, on the Tigris, and
Ctesiphon, the Parthian capital, made Assyria into a Roman province,
and advanced as far as Arabia, where some years before the empty desire
of fame had induced him to make conquests, through one of his generals,
which were as quickly lost as won. He then pushed on to the coasts of
the Persian Gulf. If we may believe the coins and fabulous histories
of that time, he even projected an Indian campaign, and caused a fleet
to be built for the purpose. This statement, like other ridiculous
exaggerations, is based on flattery and the circumstance that the Persian
Gulf was confounded with the Indian Ocean.

[Illustration: A ROMAN EMPEROR]

According to one of the coins, Trajan gave the Parthians a new king, but
this bestowal of the royal office meant no more than that he proclaimed
one of the many pretenders in Ctesiphon king; a sufficient reason for the
Parthians not to acknowledge the latter as their ruler. Trajan himself
reaped the fruits of an inconsiderate desire of conquest, which was most
prejudicial to the Roman Empire. Whilst he was at Shatt-el-Arab, all the
tribes and cities in his rear revolted, and he perceived too late that
the oriental nations were not so easy to subdue or to hold in allegiance
as the Dacians.

The Jews also rebelled, both in Palestine and in the cities of Syria,
Egypt, and other countries, because like the Christians they were
incessantly harassed and persecuted. Trajan was forced to send troops
against them, and at the same time renew the war against Assyria,
Seleucia, Edessa and other rebellious countries and cities. He fell sick
in consequence of the hardships of an unsuccessful campaign, which he
had undertaken in Arabia. In order to abandon the fruitless undertaking
without detriment to his reputation, he made the senate recall him to
Rome under a fictitious pretext. He handed over the army to his general
Hadrian, whom he had appointed governor of Syria, and went to Cilicia
intending to sail thence to Italy. Before he could embark, death overtook
him.[f]

In estimating the character of Trajan, we no longer have the guidance
of Suetonius. The only important classical writings recording the deeds
of this emperor are the somewhat fragmentary excerpts from Dion Cassius
as preserved by Xiphilinus, and the panegyric of the younger Pliny. The
latter, written and delivered in the year in which Pliny was consul, has
been pronounced, “a piece of courtly flattery for which the only excuse
which can be made is the cringing and fawning manner of the times.”
Pliny’s letters and despatches to Trajan on the other hand are full of
interest as valuable material for the historian.[a]


THE CORRESPONDENCE OF PLINY AND TRAJAN

[Sidenote: [104-117 A.D.]]

The despatch respecting the Christians, written from Bithynia, A.D.
104, and the emperor’s answer, are well worthy of transcription; both
because reference is so often made to them, and because they throw light
upon the marvellous and rapid propagation of the Gospel; the manners of
the early Christians; the treatment of which their constancy exposed
them, even under favourable circumstances; and the severe jealousy
with which even a governor of mild and gentle temper thought it his
duty to regard them. Pliny’s[j] letter to Trajan ran thus: “It is my
constant practice to refer to you all subjects on which I entertain
doubt. For who is better able to direct my hesitation or to instruct
my ignorance? I have never been present at the trials of Christians,
and therefore I do not know in what way, or to what extent, it is usual
to question or to punish them. I have also felt no small difficulty in
deciding whether age should make any difference, or whether those of the
tenderest and those of mature years should be treated alike; whether
pardon should be accorded to repentance, or whether, where a man has once
been a Christian, recantation should profit him; whether, if the name
of Christian does not imply criminality, still the crimes peculiarly
belonging to the name should be punished. Meanwhile, in the case of those
against whom informations have been laid before me, I have pursued the
following line of conduct. I have put to them, personally, the question
whether they were Christians. If they confessed, I interrogated them a
second and third time, and threatened them with punishment. If they still
persevered, I ordered their commitment; for I had no doubt whatever, that
whatever they confessed, at any rate dogged and inflexible obstinacy
deserved to be punished. There were others who displayed similar madness;
but, as they were Roman citizens, I ordered them to be sent back to the
city. Soon persecution itself, as is generally the case, caused the crime
to spread, and it appeared in new forms.

“An anonymous information was laid against a large number of persons, but
they deny that they are, or ever have been, Christians. As they invoked
the gods, repeating the form after me, and offered prayers, together
with incense and wine, to your image, which I had ordered to be brought,
together with those of the deities, and besides cursed Christ, whilst
those who are true Christians, it is said, cannot be compelled to do any
one of these things, I thought it right to set them at liberty. Others,
when accused by an informer, confessed that they were Christians, and
soon after denied the fact; they said they had been, but had ceased to
be, some three, some more, not a few even twenty years previously. All
these worshipped your image and those of the gods, and cursed Christ.
But they affirmed that the sum-total of their fault or their error was,
that they were accustomed to assemble on a fixed day before dawn, and
sing an antiphonal hymn to Christ as God; that they bound themselves by
an oath, not to the commission of any wickedness, but to abstain from
theft, robbery, and adultery; never to break a promise, or to deny a
deposit when it was demanded back. When these ceremonies were concluded,
it was their custom to depart, and again assemble together to take
food harmlessly and in common. That after my proclamation, in which,
in obedience to your command, I had forbidden associations, they had
desisted from this practice. For these reasons, I the more thought it
necessary to investigate the real truth, by putting to the torture two
maidens, who were called deaconesses; but I discovered nothing but a
perverse and excessive superstition.

“I have therefore deferred taking cognizance of the matter until I had
consulted you. For it seemed to me a case requiring advice, especially
on account of the number of those in peril. For many of every age,
sex, and rank, are and will continue to be called in question. The
infection in fact has spread not only through the cities, but also
through the villages and open country; but it seems that its progress
can be arrested. At any rate, it is clear that the temples which were
almost deserted begin to be frequented; and solemn sacrifices, which had
been long intermitted, are again performed, and victims are being sold
everywhere, for which up to this time a purchaser could rarely be found.
It is therefore easy to conceive that crowds might be reclaimed if an
opportunity for repentance were given.”

To this letter Trajan replied:

“In sifting the cases of those who have been indicted on the charge of
Christianity, you have adopted, my dear Secundus, the right course of
proceeding; for no certain rule can be laid down which will meet all
cases. They must not be sought after, but if they are informed against
and convicted, they must be punished; with this proviso, however, that if
anyone denies that he is a Christian, and proves the point by offering
prayers to our deities, notwithstanding the suspicions under which he has
laboured, he shall be pardoned on his repentance. On no account should
any anonymous charge be attended to, for it would be the worst possible
precedent, and is inconsistent with the habits of our times.”[i]

Nothing perhaps could better illustrate the judicial and tolerant temper
of Trajan’s mind than this letter in reference to a class of people whom
the emperor could not possibly have contemplated without prejudice.


TRAJAN’S COLUMN

If literary remains dealing with history of the time of Trajan are
meagre, amends are made for the deficit by the sculptures and bas-reliefs
that ornament the Column of Trajan previously mentioned, which still
stands in an excellent state of preservation amidst the ruins of a forum.
This column of marble, now weathered to a bronze-like hue, is covered
throughout its entire height by a spiral column of figures representing
all manner of military operations. More than twenty-five hundred human
figures are said to be depicted, and all of these are executed with
lifelike fidelity. The bas-reliefs represent the expeditions of Trajan
against the Dacians.[a] The column is thus described by Burn:

[Sidenote: [103 A.D.]]

“The bas-relief” representing the first campaign against the Dacians
begins at the base by a representation of the banks of the Save, down
which the Roman army passed, and shows military storehouses, piles of
wood, stacks of hay, and wooden huts. Then follow forts with soldiers on
guard, and boats carrying barrels of provisions. The river god Danube
then appears and looks on with astonishment at the bridge of boats over
which the Roman army is passing. The baggage of the soldiers on the
march, tied to the top of the vallum or palisade which they carry, and
the different military standards, are very distinctly shown. Many of the
men are without covering on their heads, but some wear lions’ skins. The
emperor and his staff are then introduced. He is sitting upon a suggestus
or platform, and Lucius, the prætorian prefect, sits beside him. The
suovetaurilia, a grand sacrificial celebration, is the next scene, with
priests in the cinctus gabinus and trumpeters. After this the emperor is
seen making a speech to the army, and a little farther on the building of
a stone encampment enclosing huts is being carried on with great vigour,
and bridges are being thrown across a river, over which cavalry are
passing.

“A battle seems then to take place, and the heads of two enemies are
being brought to the emperor. The Dacian army with the dragon ensign
and the Dacian cap, the symbol of superior rank, seen upon the statues
of the Dacian prisoners on the Arch of Constantine, appears. Jupiter
gives the victory to the Romans, the Dacian camp is burned, and the
Dacians fly. Numerous representations of forts, boats, different kinds
of troops, skirmishes, and sieges follow, ending with the surrender of
Decebalus and the return of Trajan to Rome, where a great festival is
celebrated. The arrival at Rome, and the crowd of Romans going to meet
the great conqueror, are very vividly drawn. An immense number of bulls
for sacrifice, altars, camilli, and half-naked popæ are introduced into
the triumphal rejoicings, and the first campaign ends with the figure of
Trajan offering incense on the altar of Jupiter Capitolinus.

[Sidenote: [113 A.D.]]

“A somewhat similar series of scenes are represented in the sculptures
which depict the second campaign. Perhaps the most interesting is that of
the great bridge over the Danube, made of wood supported on stone piers,
the foundations of which may still be seen in the bed of the river.
Apollodorus, the architect of the Forum, designed this immense work,
which crossed the Danube at a spot where it is not less than 1300 yards
wide, near the village of Gieli. A permanent road into Dacia and secure
communications with his basis of operations having thus been secured,
Trajan gradually advanced from post to post, driving the Dacians into
the mountainous parts of the country. The sculptures represent a number
of skirmishes and assaults upon fortified places, but no regular pitched
battle. At last the ghastly spectacle of the head and hands of Decebalus
is exhibited on a board by two soldiers in front of the Prætorium. This
disgusting scene is followed by a representation of the storming of the
last strongholds of the enemy in the mountains, and a mournful procession
of fugitives carrying away their goods and driving their cattle into
exile forms the close of the sculptured history of the Dacian campaigns
of Trajan.

“In these curious bas-reliefs,” Burn continues, “we have a treasury of
information on the religion, the military science, the habits and dress
of the Romans of the empire far more valuable than ten thousand pages
of descriptive writing. The lover of Roman antiquities will learn more
by studying Fabretti’s engravings of these reliefs, or the casts at
the French Academy at Rome, and at the Kensington Museum, than by much
book-labour. The descriptions of Livy and Polybius, Cæsar and Tacitus,
receive life and movement and interest as we look at the actual figures
(oculis subjecta fidelibus) of the general and his staff; the Prætorian
guards marked by their belts over the left shoulder; the fierce-looking
standard-bearers and centurions with their heads covered by lions’ skins,
the shaggy manes of which stream down their backs; the rank and file
carrying enormous stakes; the master masons, sappers, and pioneers, with
their axes and crowbars; the lancers, heavy and light cavalry, and royal
chargers; the Sarmatian horsemen clothed, both riders and steeds, in
complete scale armour, and the Moorish cavalry, riding without reins.

“Bridges are constructed, Roman causeways laid, forts attacked with all
kinds of military engines; the charge of cavalry, the rout and confusion
of a defeated army, are all most vividly depicted. Trajan in person
traverses the ranks on foot, or mounts the suggestus and harangues his
men, or receives with simple dignity the submission of the enemy, or
marches with all the pomp of a Roman procession under the triumphal arch.
The soldier-like simplicity of the great military emperor is strikingly
portrayed. There is no silken tent, or richly decorated chariot, or
throne, or canopy of state to be seen. His colonel of the guards sits
beside him, as an equal, on the suggestus. In the midst of a battle the
emperor tears up his robe to bind the wounds of his soldiers; he is
present everywhere, wearing a sword and fighting in person. Nothing could
be more illustrative of the state of Roman affairs in that iron age, when
again, as in the olden times, a rough and unlettered warrior, fresh from
the camp, swayed the destinies of the empire.”[k]

[Illustration: A SOLDIER

(From Trajan’s Column)]

This Column of Trajan originally stood surrounded by buildings forming
a court only about forty feet square, the intention being apparently
that the figures should be viewed from the surrounding structures.
Notwithstanding this the sculptures are progressively larger toward the
top, the perspective effect when looking from below being obvious in the
artist’s mind. To-day the column stands in lonely grandeur in Trajan’s
Forum; discoloured and weather-worn, but otherwise little altered from
the original state except at the very top, where, incongruously enough, a
statue of St. Peter now takes the place of the colossal figure of Trajan
himself which once occupied the pedestal. Sixtus V placed the effigy of
the Christian there, the pagan image having been taken away some time
in the early Middle Ages. The substitution was a characteristic act of
piety, which could have been permitted only by an equally characteristic
lack of humour. But quite regardless of its incongruous apex, the column
remains as the most important historical document relating to military
customs of classical antiquity that has come down to us.[a]


HADRIAN (P. ÆLIUS HADRIANUS), 117-138 A.D.

[Sidenote: [117-118 A.D.]]

Hadrian was by descent a Spaniard, and of the same city where Trajan was
born. He was nephew to Trajan, and married to Sabina, his grand-niece.
When Trajan was adopted by Nerva, Hadrian was a tribune of the army
in Mœsia, and sent by the troops to congratulate the emperor on his
advancement. But his brother-in-law, who desired to have an opportunity
of congratulating Trajan himself, supplied Hadrian with a carriage that
broke down on the way. Hadrian, however, was resolved to lose no time,
so the story goes, and performed the rest of the journey on foot. This
assiduity was very pleasing. But the emperor was believed to dislike
Hadrian for several reasons. He was expensive, and involved in debt.
He was, besides, inconstant, capricious, and apt to envy another’s
reputation. These faults, in Trajan’s opinion, could not be compensated
either by Hadrian’s learning or his talents. His great skill in the
Greek and Latin languages, his intimate acquaintance with the laws of
his country and the philosophy of the times, were no inducements to
Trajan, who, being bred himself a soldier, desired to have a military
man to succeed him. For this reason it was that the dying emperor would
by no means appoint a successor; fearful, perhaps, of injuring his
great reputation, by adopting a person that was unworthy. His death,
therefore, was concealed for some time by Plotina, his wife, till Hadrian
had sounded the inclinations of the army, and found them firm in his
interests. They then produced a forged instrument, importing that Hadrian
was adopted to succeed in the empire. By this artifice he was elected by
all orders of the state, though absent from Rome, being then at Antioch,
as general of the forces in the East.[28]

Upon Hadrian’s election, his first care was to write to the senate,
excusing himself for assuming the empire without their previous
approbation; imputing it to the hasty zeal of the army, who rightly
judged that the senate ought not long to remain without a head. He then
began to pursue a course quite opposite to that of his predecessor,
taking every method of declining war, and promoting the arts of peace.
He was quite satisfied with preserving the ancient limits of the empire,
with the Euphrates as the boundary.

Having thus settled the affairs of the East, and leaving Severus governor
of Syria, he took his journey by land to Rome, sending the ashes of
Trajan thither by sea. Upon his approach to the city, he was informed
that a magnificent triumph was preparing for him; but this he modestly
declined, desiring that those honours might be paid to Trajan’s memory
which they had designed for him. In consequence of this command, a most
superb triumph was decreed, in which Trajan’s statue was carried as the
principal figure in the procession, it being remarked that he was the
only man that ever triumphed after he was dead.


THE VARIED ENDOWMENTS OF HADRIAN

It was not an easy task to appear with any lustre after an emperor
so loved and admired as Trajan; and yet the merits of his successor
seemed, in some measure, to console the people for their loss. Hadrian
was one of the most remarkable of the Roman emperors for the variety
of his endowments. He was highly skilful in all the exercises both of
body and mind. He composed with great beauty, both in prose and verse;
he pleaded at the bar, and was one of the best orators of his time. He
was deeply versed in the mathematics, and no less skilful in physic. In
drawing and painting, he was equal to the greatest masters; an excellent
musician, and sang to admiration. Besides these qualifications, he had
an astonishing memory; he knew the names of all his soldiers, though
ever so long absent. He could dictate to one, confer with another, and
write himself, all at the same time. He was remarkably expert in military
discipline; he was strong and very skilful in arms, both on horseback and
on foot, and frequently with his own hand killed wild boars, and even
lions, in hunting.

His moral virtues were not less than his accomplishments. Upon his first
exaltation, he forgave an infinite number of debts due to the exchequer,
remitting the large arrears to which the provinces were liable, and
burning the bonds and registers of them in the public Forum. He refused
to take the confiscated estates of condemned persons into his private
coffers, but ordered them to be placed in the public treasury. His
moderation and clemency appeared by pardoning the injuries which he had
received when he was yet but a private man. One day meeting a person who
had formerly been his most inveterate enemy, “My good friend,” cried he,
“you have escaped, for I am made emperor.” He had so great a veneration
for the senate, and was so careful of not introducing unworthy persons
into it, that he told the captain of his guard, when he made him senator,
that he had no honours in his gift equal to what he then bestowed. He
was affable to his friends, and gentle to persons of meaner stations; he
relieved their wants, and visited them in sickness; it being his constant
maxim, that he was an emperor, not for his own good, but for the benefit
of mankind.

These were his virtues, which were contrasted by a strange mixture of
vices; or, to say the truth, the wanted strength of mind to preserve his
general rectitude of character without deviation. Thus he is represented
as proud and vainglorious, envious and detractive, hasty and revengeful,
inquisitive into other men’s affairs, and often induced by sycophants
to acts of cruelty and injustice. He permitted the revival of the
persecution against the Christians, and showed many instances of a bad
disposition, which it was the whole study of his life to correct or to
conceal.

But whatever Hadrian might have been as to his private character,
his conduct as an emperor appears most admirable, as all his public
transactions seem dictated by the soundest policy and the most
disinterested wisdom. He was scarce settled on the throne, when several
of the northern barbarians, the Alans, the Sarmatians, and the Dacians,
began to make devastations on the empire. These hardy nations, who
now found the way to conquer, by issuing from their forests, and then
retiring upon the approach of a superior force opposing them, began to
be truly formidable to Rome. Hadrian had thoughts of contracting the
limits of the empire, by giving up some of the most remote and the least
defensible provinces; but in this he was overruled by his friends, who
wrongly imagined that an extensive frontier would tend to intimidate
an invading enemy. But though he complied with their remonstrances,
he broke down the bridge over the Danube, which his predecessor had
built, sensible that the same passage which was open to him, was equally
convenient to the incursions of his barbarous neighbours.

While he was employed in compelling these nations to submission, a
conspiracy was discovered, carried on among four persons of consular
dignity at home. These had agreed to kill him, either while he was
offering sacrifice, or while he was hunting. Their designs, however,
were timely discovered, and the conspirators put to death by order
of the senate. Hadrian took great pains to clear himself from the
imputation of having had any hand in their execution; he had sworn upon
his advancement, to put no senator to death, and he now declared that
the delinquents died without his permission. But in order entirely to
suppress the murmurs of the people upon this head, he distributed large
sums of money among them, and called off their attention from this act
of severity to magnificent shows, and the various diversions of the
amphitheatre.


HADRIAN’S TOURS

[Sidenote: [118-129 A.D.]]

Having stayed a short time at Rome, so as to see that all things were
regulated and established for the safety of the public, he prepared to
visit and take a view of his whole empire. It was one of his maxims,
that an emperor ought to imitate the sun, which diffuses warmth and
vigour over all parts of the earth. He therefore took with him a splendid
court and a considerable force, and entered the province of Gaul, where
he numbered all the inhabitants. From Gaul he went into Germany, from
thence to Holland, and then passed over into Britain. There, reforming
many abuses, and reconciling the natives to the Romans, for the better
security of the southern parts of the kingdom he built a wall of wood
and earth, extending from the river Eden in Cumberland to the Tyne in
Northumberland, to prevent the incursions of the Picts, and the other
barbarous nations to the north. From Britain, returning through Gaul,
he directed his journey to Spain, where he was received with great joy,
as being a native of that country. There, wintering in the city of
Tarraco, he called a meeting of the deputies from all the provinces, and
ordained many things for the benefit of the nation. Happening, while he
was in Spain, to walk in his garden, one of the servants of the house
ran furiously at him, with a drawn sword, to kill him; but the emperor
warding off the blow, and closing with him, quickly disarmed him; then
delivering him to his guards, he ordered that he might have a physician
to bleed him, considering the poor creature (which in fact he was) as a
madman. From Spain he returned to Rome.[b]

In April of 129 Hadrian undertook another long journey to the eastern
provinces of the empire, from which he did not return to take up his
residence on the Tiber until the year 134. In 129 he again made a long
stay in Athens, where he celebrated the consummation of a great work
which had been awaiting completion from times out of mind, and was now
intended to minister to the worship of Zeus, the glory of Athens, and the
vanity of the great Philhellenic emperor.

Of the many magnificent buildings which he erected for the adornment
of his favourite city, hardly anything is left except the ruins of the
most splendid of them all. Southeast of the acropolis there still stand
some huge columns of the Olympieum, begun long since by the Pisistratidæ
and now finished by Hadrian. It was a gigantic temple of Olympian Zeus,
occupying an area of fifty-nine thousand square feet. It was consecrated
in the autumn of 129, and one and the same priest presided there over
the worship of the Olympian Zeus and of the Philhellene emperor.

[Sidenote: [129-130 A.D.]]

Hadrian also laid out a fashionable residential quarter for Roman villas
on the southeast of the city, towards the Ilissus, which was adorned
with a stately gateway on the original boundary of ancient Athens, not
far from the peribolus of the Olympieum. His new Panhellenium, a temple
to the Panhellenic Zeus, was intended to serve as a centre for the new
national festival of the Panhellenia, instituted by him, and celebrated
for the first time in the autumn of the year 129; a festival in which
the Greeks of the mother-country and the colonies were equally entitled
to take part. Thus he hoped to substitute for the Delphic amphictyony,
which had passed into the limbo of shades, a fresh incentive to Greek
patriotism and religious sentiment, and to restore to Athens something of
the lustre of her old commanding position.

[Illustration: RUINS OF THE FORUM]

The emperor left Athens in March or April, 130, and proceeded to
Alexandria, a city which combined all the elements which charmed him as
a sovereign and an accomplished man of the world--the restless activity
of a vast commercial centre, the motley mixture of the most varied and
sharply defined national types in the empire, and lastly, the abundance
of scientific material and the high standard of learning, both in studies
purely Greek and in the applied and exact sciences. The only drawback
was the Alexandrine propensity to ill-natured witticisms, which were apt
to verge upon shameless insolence and to which even the person of the
emperor was by no means sacred.

When Hadrian’s favourite, Antinous, was drowned in the Nile at Besa
(probably on October 30, 130), having sought death of his own free will,
according to the story then generally received, in order to save the
emperor, whose life (so it was said) could only be preserved by the
voluntary sacrifice of another--Hadrian endeavoured to find comfort by
instituting a new form of worship, that of his lost minion. The art
and feeling of the antique world proved willing instruments of the
emperor’s will, and Antinous was immortalised in numerous statues,
more particularly in Greece. On the other hand, two of Hadrian’s
administrative measures provoked another fearful outbreak of Jewish fury
in Palestine.

[Sidenote: [131-138 A.D.]]

The founding of the new colony of Ælia Capitolina on the ruins
of Jerusalem and an imperial edict, really directed against the
objectionable custom of mutilation, and only construed by a mistake as
referring to the Jewish rite of circumcision, brought about a terrible
Jewish revolt (at the end of 131), which was vigorously seconded by the
Jews of the Dispersion. The rising, disregarded at first by the Romans,
and directed with the utmost energy by a priest, Eleazer of Modin, and
a warlike freebooter, Simon Bar Cocheba[29] (_i.e._, son of a star) by
name, resulted in a troublesome war, waged with horrible cruelty on both
sides, in which victory only fell to the Roman arms after the experienced
legate Sextus Julius Severus, came from Britain to take over the command.
It was not decided by a pitched battle; as before, one stronghold after
another had to be reduced, the last being Baeth-ter, not far from
Jerusalem (135 A.D.). Thenceforth and for long after the silence of the
grave settled upon Judea, or Syria Palestina, as it was now called. No
Jews might tread the holy places of Jerusalem on pain of death, and the
little country was garrisoned by two legions.


HADRIAN AS BUILDER AND ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMER

Hadrian came back to take up his residence at Rome in 134, and there
zealously took up the architectural labours of which imposing remains
are left to the present day. He had already adorned the heart of the
old city with the temple of Venus and Rome, which was dedicated on the
twenty-first of April, 128, and some vast undertakings were brought to
a conclusion in 135, 136, and the following years. We have a memorial
of him to this day in the huge mausoleum, which was diverted from
its purpose as a quiet sepulchre to become the citadel of the City
of the Seven Hills during the stormy times of the Middle Ages and
later centuries. On the right bank of the Tiber Hadrian built a new
mausoleum, where not only he and the members of his family but many of
his successors were buried. In order to connect this edifice (now known
as the Castle of St. Angelo) with the left bank of the river, he built
the splendid Ælian bridge (now Ponte St. Angelo) of blocks of travertin
stone. Lastly, the ruins of his Tiburtine villa, covering a circuit of
about eight miles, can still be traced.

Hadrian’s successors had every reason to regard with the utmost reverence
the many administrative reforms made by him in the course of his long
and prosperous reign. Though he did not pursue his predecessor’s policy
of conquest, he used every means to maintain the strength and efficiency
of the army; above all, he did not govern it by decrees issued from the
palace, but constantly appeared in the camps in person, and examined
all things with the eye of an expert. Military appointments were made
solely on consideration of personal capacity and genuine merit, and
various arrangements were made to augment the fighting power of the
army, all of which stood the test of practice. Hadrian’s army system,
and more particularly the drill introduced by him, proved so excellent
that Hadrian’s regulations formed the basis of military organisation as
late as the time of Constantine. The change which took place in strategy,
for instance, after the introduction of his reforms is of the highest
importance. Trajan had resorted to the ancient Roman practice with
telling effect.

But the scientific study of military tactics which had come into
existence in connection with Greek studies after the middle of the first
century B.C. and much costly experience won in conflict with barbarian
frontier tribes in Europe and with the horsemen of Asia had led to
changes in the old battle array. The cavalry were taught to practise all
the strategic movements of the Parthian, Armenian, Sarmatian, and Celtic
hordes. In order to spare the valuable infantry of the legions as much as
possible, auxiliary troops were more and more largely used in the first
line, and an order of battle was introduced which combined the advantages
of retaining the system of reserve divisions, promising speedier victory
over hordes of gallant barbarians, and making the struggle less deadly to
the Romans. The practice of early antique times--that of drawing up the
men in serried ranks, or “phalanxes,” was again systematically resorted
to. The van of the legion was no longer divided by vacant intervals. The
“phalanx” of the legion was eight men deep. By a skilful combination of
the various weapons in use, the soldiers of the first four files were
armed with the _pilum_, the four behind them with spears. A ninth file
consisted of auxiliaries aimed with arrows. The place of the cavalry and
artillery was on the wings and rear of the phalanx. Further still to the
rear was a reserve of picked troops, ready to help at every point where
help was needed.

Hadrian’s labours in the field of civil administration were even more
considerable. As a financier he was the best economist since Tiberius,
and once more showed what results a sound financial policy and wise
economy could create from the vast resources of the empire, both in the
sphere of production and in that of artistic and monumental creation.
At the same time he displayed great skill in introducing reforms into
every department of finance, removing numerous harsh regulations, and
in organising the affairs of the free peasants and tenant farmers on
the imperial and fiscal domains in Africa on more humane and economical
principles. He increased the revenue of the public treasury by
undertaking the direct management of many imperial estates, instead of
farming out the returns.

Nor was he less active in the sphere of jurisprudence. By his command all
the prætorian edicts, which till then had been arranged in chronological
order only, were collected into a systematic compilation in 131-132 B.C.
by the eminent jurist Salvius Julianus. In connection with this work
Hadrian caused the senate to issue a decree [Edictum Perpetuum] ordaining
that no magistrate in office should henceforth add fresh clauses to the
edict, but that necessary additions should be deduced by analogy from
the materials already existing or made by imperial “constitutions.”
Hadrian’s decisions in points concerning slavery are of interest, as
showing his humane disposition. Prominent among these was the abolition
of the cruel and cowardly system which enacted that where the master of a
house was found murdered all the slaves of the household should be put to
death. After Hadrian’s time only those slaves were examined who might be
supposed to have had a hand in the murder.

The monarchical tendency of the Roman diarchy and the levelling effect
of the empire became more and more distinctly marked under Hadrian. He
did more than any emperor before him to place the provincials on an equal
footing with the Roman citizens of Italy. Moreover, by conferring the
_jus Latinum_ on many cities, he paved the way for the extension of the
rights of Roman citizenship to the whole empire.

In Italy he appointed a number of _juridici_, with powers to deal
with bequests in trust, with the appointment of guardians, and with
disputes concerning the eligibility of candidates for the _decurionate_.
The power to deal with these questions was withdrawn, not from the
municipal authorities, but (except in specially important cases) from
the law-courts of the capital, before which suits of this sort had
hitherto been carried. Rome and its environs--comprising an area of 100
Roman miles, or 150 kilometres, within the competency of the chief of
police--of course remained under the jurisdiction of the tribunals of
the capital. But, on the other hand, the growing power of the imperial
officials in matters of criminal law becomes steadily more apparent,
and the competency of the chief of police and the prefect of the guard
is extended at the expense of the old courts of law. These two officers
represent the emperor more and more in the administration of criminal law
in Italy. Their departments were subsequently made separate, possibly
after the reign of Marcus Aurelius, certainly after that of Severus. Rome
and a space of 150 kilometres round it were under the jurisdiction of the
chief of police, Italy beyond these limits under that of the prefects of
the guard. The latter officers took on more and more of the character of
representative organs of the personal intervention of the emperor and
thus were bound to be eminent jurisconsults.

Another significant change introduced by Hadrian was to give stability
and definite form to the old institution of the _consilium_, which
consisted of friends and advisers convened by the emperors to assist
in their decisions at law. From this time forward the members of the
imperial _consilium_ appear as councillors duly appointed, with official
titles and salaries, who were probably appointed by the emperor after
consultation with the senate.

The business of the new council was jurisprudence in the widest sense
of the word, and it was therefore intended to consist in the main of
professional jurists and the prefects of the guard, together with the
chief officers of the court. Another reform introduced by Hadrian into
the administration at the same time was the rule that all the three great
offices at court should be occupied by members of the equestrian order.
The procurator _a rationibus_, or controller of the public treasury,
who was really financial minister, now took the first place among the
procurators both in rank and salary, and by degrees the inferior posts in
the financial department were converted into regular offices and filled
by knights. The imperial council was divided into a Greek and a Latin
department under separate chiefs. Finally, the department of petitions
and grievances was put into the hands of officials of knightly birth.[m]


PERSONAL TRAITS AND LAST DAYS OF HADRIAN

Hadrian is said to have taken great delight in disputing among the
learned men and the philosophers who attended him; nor were they less
careful in granting him that superiority he seemed so eagerly to affect.
Favorinus, a man of great reputation at court for philosophy, happening
one day to dispute with him upon some philosophical subject, acknowledged
himself to be overcome. His friends blamed him for thus giving up the
argument, when he might easily have pursued it with success. “How,”
replied Favorinus, who was probably a better courtier than philosopher,
“would you have me contend with a man who is master of thirty legions?”
Hadrian was so fond of literary fame, that we are told he wrote his own
life, and afterwards gave it to his servants to publish under their
names. But whatever might have been his weakness in aiming at universal
reputation, he was in no part of his reign remiss in attending to the
duties of his exalted station. He ordered the knights and senators never
to appear in public, but in the proper habits of their orders. He forbade
masters to kill their slaves, as had been before allowed; but ordained
that they should be tried by the laws enacted against capital offences.
A law so just, had he done nothing more, deserved to have insured his
reputation with posterity, and to have made him dear to mankind. He still
further extended the lenity of the laws to those unhappy men, who had
been long thought too mean for justice. If a master was found killed in
his house, he would not allow all his slaves to be put to the torture, as
formerly, but only such as might have perceived or prevented the murder.

[Illustration: RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF VENUS, ROME]

In such cares he consumed the greatest part of his time; but, at last
finding the duties of his station daily increasing, and his own strength
proportionally upon the decline, he resolved upon adopting a successor,
whose merits might deserve, and whose courage secure, his exaltation.
After many deliberations, he made choice of Lucius Commodus, whose bodily
infirmities rendered him unfit for a trust of such importance. Of this,
after some time, Hadrian seemed sensible, declaring, that he repented of
having chosen so feeble a successor, saying that he had leaned against
a mouldering wall. However, Commodus soon after dying, the emperor
immediately adopted Titus Antoninus, afterwards surnamed the Pius; but
previously obliged him to adopt two others, namely, Marcus Aurelius and
Lucius Verus, all of whom afterwards succeeded in the empire.

While he was thus careful in appointing a successor, his bodily
infirmities daily increased; and at length his pains becoming
insupportable, he vehemently desired that some of his attendants should
despatch him. Antoninus, however, would by no means permit any of his
domestics to be guilty of so great an impiety, but used all the arts
in his power to reconcile the emperor to sustain life. At one time he
produced a woman, who pretended that she was warned in a dream that he
should recover his health; at another, a man was brought from Pannonia,
who gave him the same assurances. Nevertheless, Hadrian’s pains increased
day by day. He frequently cried out, “How miserable a thing it is to seek
death, and not to find it!” He engaged one Mastor, partly by threats and
partly by entreaties, to promise to despatch him; but Mastor, instead of
obeying, consulted his own safety by flight; so that he who was master
of the lives of millions, was not able to dispose of his own. In this
deplorable exigence, he resolved on going to Baiæ, where the tortures
of his diseases increasing, they affected his understanding, so that he
gave orders that several persons should be put to death; which Antoninus,
according to his usual wisdom, never meant to obey. Continuing, for
some time, in these excruciating circumstances, the emperor was at last
resolved to observe no regimen, often saying, that kings died merely by
the multitude of their physicians. This conduct served to hasten that
death he seemed so ardently to desire, and it was probably joy upon its
approach which dictated the celebrated stanzas which are so well known,
in repeating which he expired.

    Animula, vagula, blandula,
    Hospes, comesque corporis,
    Quæ, nunc abibis in loca?
    Pallidula, rigida, nudula,
    Nec, ut soles, dabis jocos?

In this manner died Hadrian, in the sixty-second year of his age, after
a prosperous reign of twenty-one years and eleven months. His private
character seems to be a mixture of virtues and vices;[30] but, as a
prince, perhaps none of his predecessors showed more wisdom, or such
laudable assiduity. He was the first emperor who reduced the laws of the
empire into one standing code. Government received the greatest stability
from his counsels, and a tranquillity more lasting than could be expected
from such fierce neighbours abroad, and such a degenerate race of
citizens at home.[b]


RENAN’S ESTIMATE OF HADRIAN

[Sidenote: [134-138 A.D.]]

At the time of Hadrian’s return to Rome, in 134 A.D., Roman civilisation
had just exterminated Judaism, one of its most dangerous enemies, and
was triumphant. Everywhere there was peace and respect for the different
nations; the barbarians were apparently subjected, the mildest forms
of government had been introduced and were practised. Trajan had been
quite right in his belief that men can be governed and at the same time
treated with consideration. The idea of the state as not only tutelary
but beneficent was taking deep root. Hadrian’s private conduct might be
much blamed, his character was becoming perverted as his health gave way;
but the people did not notice it. Unprecedented splendour and comfort
surrounded everything like a brilliant aureole, disguising the weak
parts of the social organisation. Truth to say, these weak parts were
susceptible of correction. Progress was welcomed in everything. The stoic
philosophy penetrated legislation, introducing the idea of the rights of
man, of civil equality, of uniformity in the provincial administration.
The privileges of the Roman aristocracy were disappearing day by day. The
leaders of society believed in progress and toiled in its cause. They
were philosophers, philanthropists wishing without utopianism to bring
the freest possible application of reason into human affairs.

Hadrian enjoyed life and he had the right to do so. His inquisitive and
active mind gave birth to all kinds of fancies; and his taste was not
good enough to prevent him making mistakes. At the foot of the mountains
of Tibur he built a villa which resembled an album of his travels, a sort
of panorama of fame. It might have been described as the noisy, tawdry
fair of a dying nation. Everything was to be found there; imitation
Egyptian, imitation Greek, the Lyceum, the Academy, the Prytaneum, the
Pœcile, Canopus, the Alpheus, the valley of Tempe, the Elysian fields,
Tartarus; temples, libraries, theatres; a hippodrome, a naumachy, a
gymnasium, baths,--strange but attractive spot. For it is the last place
where enjoyment was to be found, where clever men fell asleep to the
empty sound of the “miserly Acheron.”[31]


_Hadrian as Patron of the Arts_

At Rome, the one thought of the fantastic emperor was that senseless
tomb, that immense mausoleum, where Babylon was put to shame, and
which, stripped of its treasures, became the citadel of papal Rome. His
buildings covered the world. The Athenæums he founded, the encouragement
he gave to letters and the fine arts, the liberties he accorded to
professors, rejoiced the hearts of all cultivated people. Unfortunately,
superstition, caprice, and cruelty mastered him more and more as
his physical strength decreased. He had built himself an Elysium to
disbelieve in, a hell to laugh at, a philosopher’s hall in which to jeer
at the philosophers, a Canopus in order to expose the impostures of the
priests and to remind himself of the mad festivals of Egypt, which had
so greatly amused him. Now everything seemed hollow and empty; nothing
interested him any longer. Perhaps some of the martyrdoms which took
place during his reign and for which it is not easy to assign a motive
may be attributed to the disorders and caprices of his last months.

Telesphorus was then the head of the Church of Rome; he died confessing
Christ and was numbered amongst the most glorious martyrs of the faith.
The death of the dilettante Cæsar was sad and undignified, for he was
animated by no really elevated moral sentiment. The world, nevertheless,
lost in him a mighty pillar. The Jews alone triumphed in the agony of his
last moments.

He cared sincerely for civilisation, and perfectly understood its
possibilities in his day. Ancient art and literature end with him. He was
the last emperor to believe in glory, as Ælius Verus was the last man who
knew how to appreciate the refinements of pleasure. Human affairs are so
frivolous that brilliancy and pomp must be allowed a part in them. No
world will hold together without these. Louis XIV knew this, and men have
lived and still live by the light of his copper-gilt sun. Hadrian, in his
own way, marks a climax, after which a rapid decline begins. Certainly,
from a moral standpoint, Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius far surpass him;
but under them the world becomes sad, loses its gaiety, puts on a cowl,
becomes Christian, while superstition increases.

The art of Hadrian, although it is cankered, still adheres to principles;
it is a skilful and learned art; then decadence sets in with irresistible
force. Ancient society realises that all is vanity, and on the day when
this discovery is made death is not far off. The two accomplished sages
who are to reign next are each in their several ways ascetics. Lucius
Verus and Faustina are to be the outcast survivors of ancient fashion.[d]


ANTONINUS (TITUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS PIUS), 138-161 A.D.

[Sidenote: [138-161 A.D.]]

The ancestors of Antoninus originally came from Nemausus (Nîmes); after
settling at Rome, they had filled the highest offices there. Antoninus
himself, distinguished by Hadrian, had received from that prince the
government of a portion of Italy, later on, the proconsulship of Asia,
and had finally been adopted by him on condition that he, in his turn,
should adopt Marcus Aurelius and Lucius, the son of Ælius Verus. During
his reign of twenty-three years (138-161) the empire enjoyed great
tranquillity, due as much to his virtues as to his moderation, and to
the able government of his predecessor, who had temporarily removed the
causes of disorder.

[Illustration: FAUSTINA, WIFE OF ANTONINUS PIUS

(From a statue in the Vatican)]

His renown extended so far that the princes of India, of Bactriana,
and Hyrcania chose him to arbitrate in their quarrels; his grateful
contemporaries gave him the beautiful title of “Father of the Human
Race.” He never appointed any but experienced and upright men to public
offices, and permitted them to hold their posts for life when he could
not replace them by others more able. A wise economy in financial
administration gave him the means of establishing useful institutions,
as, for example, two asylums where orphan girls were educated under the
protection of the Empress Faustina, and the appointments for learned
professors that he established not only in Rome, as Vespasian had done,
but in the large towns of the provinces.

He was able, also, to succour towns which had been stricken by any
plague, such as Rome, Antioch, Narbonne, and Rhodes, when devastated
by fire or earthquake. The wealth of a prince, he used to say, is
public felicity. He, himself, lived simply, accessible to all, and
ready to render justice to all complaints. Two conspiracies against him
were discovered; the two instigators alone perished. An _Apology for
Christianity_, composed by Justin, the philosopher, and presented to the
emperor, procured toleration and protection for the Christians, who were
already numerous in Rome and the provinces.

Antoninus engaged in no war, and did not even visit the provinces, which
were too peaceful and well governed to render his presence necessary.
His lieutenants, however, engaged in some battles, against the Moors
in Africa, and against the Alani and the Quadi on the Danube. The Lazæ
and the Armenians accepted the kings he installed. The Jews gave some
trouble, and the Britons attempted to destroy the wall of Hadrian.

An act that clearly shows the moderation of Antoninus is related by
Appian. At that time deputies came to Rome from the barbarians, with
a request to be received as subjects of the empire. This was refused
them. Such had been the policy of Augustus and Hadrian, and it had
had sufficiently good results in the well-being of a hundred millions
of men to justify Antoninus in following it. But peace also brought
forgetfulness of the martial valour of old. The legions, idle behind the
ramparts of their camp, no longer knew how to handle weapons, nor endure
fatigue; and all the severity of Avidius Cassius was required to root out
the effeminacy of the soldiers, particularly those in Syria, to wean them
from indulgence in “baths and the dangerous pleasures of Daphne, to tear
from their heads the flowers with which they crowned themselves at their
feasts.”[c]

In the beginning of his reign, he made it his particular study to promote
only the most deserving to employments; he moderated many imposts and
tributes, and commanded that all should be levied without partiality or
oppression. His liberality was such, that he even parted with all his
own private fortune, in relieving the distresses of the necessitous.
Against which, when Faustina, the empress, seemed to remonstrate, he
reprehended her folly, alleging, that as soon as he was possessed of
the empire, he quitted all private interests; and having nothing of his
own, all properly belonged to the public. He acted differently from his
predecessors with regard to travelling, and seldom left Rome, saying,
that he was unwilling to burden his subjects with ostentatious and
unnecessary expenses. By this frugal conduct, he was the better enabled
to suppress all the insurrections that happened during his reign, either
in Britain, in Dacia, or in Germany. Thus he was at once reverenced and
loved by mankind, being accounted rather a patron and a father to his
subjects, than a master and commander. Ambassadors were sent to him from
the remotest parts of Hyrcania, Bactria, and India, all offering him
their alliance and friendship; some desiring him to appoint them a king,
whom they seemed proud to obey. He showed not less paternal care towards
the oppressed Christians; in whose favour he declared, that if any should
proceed to disturb them, merely upon account of their religion, that such
should undergo the same punishment which was intended against the accused.

This clemency was attended with no less affability than freedom; but, at
the same time, he was upon his guard, that his indulgence to his friends
should not tempt them into insolence or oppression. He therefore took
care that his courtiers should not sell their favours, nor take any
gratuity from their suitors. In the time of a great famine in Rome, he
provided for the wants of the people, and maintained vast numbers with
bread and wine all the time of its continuance. When any of his subjects
attempted to inflame him with a passion for military glory, he would
answer, that he more desired the preservation of one subject, than the
destruction of a thousand enemies.

He was an eminent rewarder of learned men, to whom he gave large pensions
and great honours, drawing them from all parts of the world. Among the
rest he sent for Apollonius, the famous stoic philosopher, to instruct
his adopted son, Marcus Aurelius, whom he had previously married to his
daughter. Apollonius being arrived at Rome, the emperor desired his
attendance; but the other arrogantly answered, that it was the scholar’s
duty to wait upon the master, and not the master’s upon the scholar. To
this reply Antoninus only returned, with a smile, that it was surprising
how Apollonius, who made no difficulty of coming from Greece to Rome,
should think it so hard to walk from one part of Rome to another; and
immediately sent Marcus Aurelius to him. While the good emperor was thus
employed in making mankind happy, in directing their conduct by his own
example, or reproving their follies with the keenness of rebuke, he was
seized with a violent fever at Lorium, a pleasure house at some distance
from Rome; where, finding himself sensibly decaying, he ordered his
friends and principal officers to attend him. In their presence, he
confirmed the adoption of Marcus Aurelius, without once naming Lucius
Verus, who had been joined by Hadrian with him in the succession; then
commanding the golden statue of Fortune, which was always in the chamber
of the emperors, to be removed to that of his successor, he expired in
the seventy-fifth year of his age, after a prosperous reign of twenty-two
years and almost eight months.[b]


RENAN’S CHARACTERISATION OF ANTONINUS

Antoninus was a St. Louis in kindness and goodness, with far more
judgment and a broader mind. He is the most perfect sovereign who has
ever reigned.[32] He was even superior to Marcus Aurelius, since he
cannot be accused of weakness. To enumerate his good qualities would
be to enumerate the good qualities which may belong to an accomplished
man. All men hailed in him an incarnation of the mythical Numa
Pompilius. He was the most constitutional of sovereigns, besides being
simple and economical, occupied with good works and labours of public
utility, a stranger to excess, no great talker, and free from all
intellectual affectation. Through him philosophy became a genuine force;
the philosophers were everywhere liberally pensioned. He was himself
surrounded by ascetics and the general direction of the education of
Marcus Aurelius was his work.

Thus the world seemed to have reached an ideal state; wisdom reigned; the
world was governed for twenty-three years by a father; affectation and
false taste in literature died out; simplicity ruled; public instruction
was the object of earnest attention. The improvement was general;
excellent laws were passed, especially in favour of slaves; the relief of
suffering became a universal care. The preachers of moral philosophy were
even more successful than Dion Chrysostomus; the desire to win frivolous
applause was the peril they had to avoid. In the place of the cruel Roman
aristocracy a provincial aristocracy was springing up composed of honest
people, whose aim was the general good.

The similarity of these aspirations with those of Christianity was
striking. But a great difference separated the two schools and was to
make them enemies. By reason of its hope of an approaching end of the
world, its ill-concealed wish for the downfall of the ancient social
order, Christianity, in the midst of the beneficent empire of the
Antonines, was a subverter which had to be battled with. The Christian,
always pessimistic and inexhaustible in lugubrious prophecies, far from
aiding rational progress held it in contempt. Nearly all the Catholic
teachers regarded war between the empire and the church as necessary, as
the last act of the struggle between God and Satan; they boldly affirmed
that persecution would last to the end of all things. The idea of a
Christian empire, although it sometimes occurred to them, appeared a
contradiction and an impossibility.

Whilst the world was beginning to live again, the Jews and the Christians
insisted more than ever on wishing its last hour to approach. Already
the imposter Baruch had exhausted himself in vague announcements. The
Judeo-Christian sibyl all this time did not cease to thunder. The
ever-increasing splendour of Rome was a scandalous outrage to the divine
truth, to the prophets, to the saints. They also devoted themselves to
boldly denying the prosperity of the century. All natural scourges, which
continued to be fairly numerous, were held up as signs of implacable
wrath. The past and present earthquakes in Asia were taken advantage of
to inspire the most gloomy terrors. These calamities, according to the
fanatics, had only one cause--the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem.
Rome, the courtesan, had given herself up to a thousand lovers who had
intoxicated her; she was to become a slave in her turn. Italy, bleeding
from civil wars, would become a den of wild beasts. The new prophets
employed nearly the same figures to describe the downfall of Rome as the
seer of sixty-nine to depict his melancholy fury.

It is difficult for any society not to answer such attacks. The sibylline
books containing them, attributed to the pretended Hystaspes and
announcing the destruction of the empire, were condemned by the Roman
authorities, and those who possessed or read them were amenable to the
death penalty. Anxious searching into the future was a crime during the
imperial epoch; and indeed under this useless curiosity there was nearly
always hidden a desire for revolution and incitement to assassination.
Doubtless, it would have been more worthy of the wise emperor who
introduced so many humane reforms to despise unrestrained and aimless
fantasies and to repeal those harsh laws which Roman despotism made to
weigh so heavily on liberty of worship and liberty of association; but
evidently the idea occurred to none of those about him, any more than it
did to those about Marcus Aurelius.

Only the free thinker can be absolutely tolerant, and Antoninus observed
and scrupulously maintained the ceremonies of the Roman religion. The
policy of his predecessors in this respect had been unswerving. They
had seen in the Christians a secret and anti-social sect, which was
dreaming of the overthrow of the empire; and, like all those attached
to the ancient Roman principles, they thought it necessary to suppress
it. Special edicts were not needed for this; the laws against _cœtus
illiciti_ and _illicita collegia_ were numerous. The Christians came
under the action of these laws in the most regular manner. It must be
observed, firstly, that the true spirit of liberty as it is understood
to-day, was then not comprehended, and that Christianity, when it was in
power, did not practise it any better than the pagan emperors; secondly,
that the repeal of the law against illegal societies would probably have
been the ruin of the empire, which rested on the essential principle that
the state must admit into itself no society which differed from it. The
principle was bad, according to our ideas; it is at least certain that it
was the cornerstone of the Roman constitution.

The people would have thought the foundations of the empire shattered if
there had been any relaxation of the repressive laws which they held to
be essential to the soundness of the state. The Christians appeared to
understand this. Far from bearing any ill will to Antoninus personally,
they rather regarded him as having lightened their burden. A fact which
does infinite honour to this sovereign is that the principal advocate
of Christianity dared confidently to address him for the purpose of
obtaining the rectification of a legal position which he rightly thought
unjust and unseemly in such a happy reign. Others went further, and
doubtless during the first years of Marcus Aurelius various rescripts
were fabricated purporting to be addressed under the name Antoninus
to the Larissians, to the Thessalonians, to the Athenians, to all the
Greeks, and to the states of Asia; rescripts so favourable to the Church
that if Antoninus had really countersigned them he would have been very
inconsistent in not becoming a Christian. These documents only prove one
thing--namely, the opinion the Christians had preserved of the worthy
emperor.

Antoninus showed himself no less friendly towards the Jews now that they
no longer threatened the empire. The laws forbidding circumcision, which
had been the result of the revolt of Bar Kosiba, were repealed so far
as they were vexatious. The Jew could freely circumcise his sons, but
if he practised the operation on a non-Jew he was severely punished.
As to civil jurisdiction within the community, it appears only to have
been accorded to the Israelites later. Such was the severity of the
established legal order, such was the popular effervescence against
Christians, that even during this reign there were unhappily many
martyrs. Polycarp and Justin are the most illustrious; they were not
the only ones. Asia Minor was stained with the blood of many judicial
murders, all occasioned by revolts; we shall see Montanism born like a
hallucination from this intoxication of martyrdom.

In Rome the book of the pseudo Hermas will appear as if from a bath
of blood. The absorbing idea of martyrdom, with questions respecting
renegades or those who had shown any weakness, fill the entire book. On
every page Justin describes the Christians as victims who only wait for
death; their name alone, as in the time of Pliny, is a crime. “Jews and
pagans persecute us on all sides; they deprive us of our property, and
only allow us to live when they cannot do otherwise. They behead us,
crucify us, throw us to the beasts, torment us with chains, with fire,
with the most horrible tortures. But the more they make us suffer, the
more the numbers of the faithful increase. The vinedresser prunes his
vine to make it grow again, he removes those branches which have borne
fruit so that others stronger and more fruitful shall grow; the same
thing happens to God’s people, who are like a fertile vine, planted by
his hand and by that of our Saviour Jesus Christ.”[d]


MARCUS AURELIUS (M. ÆLIUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS), 161-180 A.D.

[Sidenote: [161-163 A.D.]]

Marcus Aurelius, though left sole successor to the throne, took Lucius
Verus as his associate and equal in governing the state. The two emperors
had scarce been settled on the throne when the empire seemed attacked
on every side from the barbarous nations by which it was surrounded.
The Chatti invaded Germany and Rætia, ravaging all with fire and sword;
but were, after some time, repelled by Victorinus. The Britons likewise
revolted, but were repressed by Califurnius. But the Parthians, under
their king Vologeses, made an irruption still more dreadful than either
of the former, destroying the Roman legions in Armenia; then entering
Syria, and driving out the Roman governor, and filling the whole country
with terror and confusion. In order to stop the progress of this
barbarous irruption, Verus himself went in person, being accompanied by
Aurelius part of the way, who did all in his power, both by giving him
advice and proper attendants, to correct or restrain his vices.

[Illustration: MARCVS AVRELIVS]

However, these precautions were fruitless; Verus soon grew weary of
all restraint; he neglected every admonition; and, thoughtless of
the urgency of his expedition, plunged himself into every kind of
debauchery. These excesses brought on a violent fever on his journey,
which his constitution was sufficiently strong to get over, but nothing
could correct his vicious inclinations. Upon his entering Antioch, he
resolved to give an indulgence to every appetite, without attending to
the fatigues of war. There, in one of its suburbs, which was called
Daphne, which, from the sweetness of the air, the beauty of its groves,
the richness of its gardens, and the freshness of its fountains, seemed
formed for pleasure, he rioted in excesses unknown even to the voluptuous
Greeks, leaving all the glory of the field to his lieutenants, who were
sent to repress the enemy. These, however, fought with great success:
Statius Priscus took Artaxata; Cassius put Vologeses to flight, took
Seleucia, plundered and burned Babylon and Ctesiphon, and demolished the
magnificent palace of the kings of Parthia. In a course of four years,
during which the war continued, the Romans entered far into the Parthian
country, and entirely subdued it; but upon their return their army was
wasted to less than half its former number by pestilence and famine.
However, this was no impediment to the vanity of Verus, who resolved to
enjoy the honours of a triumph so hardly earned by others. Wherefore,
having appointed a king over the Armenians, and finding the Parthians
entirely subdued, he assumed the titles of Armenicus and Parthicus; and
then returned to Rome to partake of a triumph with Aurelius, which was
accordingly solemnised with great pomp and splendour.

[Sidenote: [163-166 A.D.]]

During the course of this expedition, which continued for some years,
Aurelius was sedulously intent upon distributing justice and happiness
to his subjects at home. He first applied himself to the regulation of
public affairs, and to the correction of such faults as he found in the
laws and policy of the state. In this endeavour he showed a singular
respect for the senate, often permitting them to determine without
appeal; so that the commonwealth seemed in a manner once more revived
under his equitable administration. Besides, such was his application to
business that he often employed ten days together upon the same subject,
maturely considering it on all sides, and seldom departing from the
senate house till, night coming on, the assembly was dismissed by the
consul. But while thus gloriously occupied, he was daily mortified with
accounts of the enormities of his colleague, being repeatedly assured
of his vanity, lewdness, and extravagance. However, feigning himself
ignorant of these excesses, he judged marriage to be the best method of
reclaiming him; and therefore sent him his daughter Lucilla, a woman of
great beauty, whom Verus married at Antioch. But even this was found
ineffectual: Lucilla proved of a disposition very unlike her father; and
instead of correcting her husband’s extravagances, only contributed to
inflame them. Yet Aurelius still hoped that, upon the return of Verus
to Rome, his presence would keep him in awe, and that happiness would at
length be restored to the state. But in this also he was disappointed.
His return only seemed fatal to the empire; for his army carried back
the plague from Parthia, and disseminated the infection into all the
provinces through which it passed.


THE PLAGUE AND THE DEATH OF VERUS

[Sidenote: [166-169 A.D.]]

Nothing could exceed the miserable state of the empire shortly after
the return of Verus. In this horrid picture was represented an emperor,
unawed by example or the calamities surrounding him, giving way to
unexampled debaucheries; a raging pestilence spreading terror and
desolation through all the parts of the western world; earthquakes,
famines, and inundations, such as had never before happened; the products
of the earth, throughout all Italy, devoured by locusts; all the
barbarous nations surrounding the empire, the Germans, the Sarmatians,
the Quadi, and Marcomanni, taking advantage of its various calamities,
and making their eruptions even into Italy itself. The priests did all
they could to put a stop to the miseries of the state, by attempting to
appease the gods, vowing and offering numberless sacrifices, celebrating
all the sacred rites that had ever been known in Rome, and exhibiting the
solemnity called Lectisternia seven days together. To crown the whole,
these enthusiasts, not satisfied with the impending calamities, made
new ones, by ascribing the distresses of the state to the impieties of
the Christians alone; so that a violent persecution was soon raging in
all parts of the empire, in which Justin Martyr, St. Polycarp bishop of
Smyrna, and an infinite number of others suffered martyrdom.

In this scene of universal tumult, desolation, and distress, there was
nothing left but the virtues and the wisdom of one man alone to restore
tranquillity and bring back happiness to the empire. Aurelius began
his endeavours by marching against the Marcomanni and Quadi, taking
Verus with him, who reluctantly left the sensual delights of Rome for
the fatigues of a camp. They came up with the Marcomanni near the city
of Aquileia, and after a furious engagement routed their whole army;
then pursuing them across the Alps, overcame them in several contests
and at last, entirely defeating them, returned into Italy without any
considerable loss. As the winter was far advanced, Verus was determined
upon going from Aquileia to Rome, in which journey he was seized with
an apoplexy which put an end to his life, being thirty-nine years old,
having reigned in conjunction with Aurelius nine. Suspicion, which
ever attends the fate of princes, did not fail to ascribe his death to
different causes.[b] Some reports implicated the empress Faustina as
having poisoned him; others named Lucilla, the wife of Verus, who was
said to be jealous of her husband’s sister, Fabia. But all these rumours
lack authenticity; and so, for that matter, do the reports on which the
usual estimates of the life of Verus are based. Doubtless his vices were
exaggerated.[a]


BORDER WARS

[Sidenote: [169-174 A.D.]]

Aurelius, who had hitherto felt the fatigues of governing not only an
empire but an emperor, being now left to himself began to act with great
diligence and more vigour than ever. His first care was to marry his
daughter Lucilla once more, to Claudius Pompeianus, a man of moderate
fortune and humble station, but eminent for his honesty, courage, and
wisdom. He then left Rome to finish the war against the Marcomanni, who,
joining with the Quadi, the Sarmatians, the Vandals, and other barbarous
nations, renewed hostilities with unusual rage and devastation. They
had some time before attacked Vindex, prefect of the prætorian bands,
and in a general battle near the Danube destroyed no less than twenty
thousand of his men. They even pursued the Romans as far as Aquileia,
and would have taken the city, had not the emperor led his troops in
person to oppose them. Aurelius, having repulsed the enemy, continued
his endeavours to repress them from future inroads. He spent in this
laborious undertaking no less than five years, harassing these barbarous
nations, supporting the most dreadful fatigues, and supplying, by the
excess of his courage, the defects of a delicate constitution. The
stoic philosophy, in which he was bred, had taught him simplicity of
living, which served as an example to the whole army. The common soldier
could not murmur at any hardships he was put upon, when he saw the
emperor himself every hour undergoing greater austerities with cheerful
resignation. By this conduct Aurelius so wearied out the enemy with
repeated attacks, that he at last constrained them to accept of such
terms of peace as he thought fit to impose, and thus returned in triumph
to Rome.

Upon the emperor’s return to Rome, he began his usual endeavours to
benefit mankind by a further reformation of the internal policy of the
state. He ordered that no inquiry should be made after the fortune
of deceased persons who had been dead five years. He moderated the
public expenses, and lessened the number of shows and sports which were
exhibited in the amphitheatre. He particularly took the poor under his
protection; he found such pleasure in relieving their wants that he
considered his ability to supply the dictates of his compassion as one of
the greatest happinesses of his life. He laboured incessantly to restrain
the luxuries of the great, he prohibited the use of chariots and litters
to persons of inferior station, and endeavoured by all means to correct
the lewdness and disorders of women.

But his good endeavours were soon interrupted by a renewal of the former
wars. The barbarians no sooner perceived his army withdrawn, than they
took up arms once more, and renewed their ravages with greater fury
than before. They had now drawn over to their side all the nations from
Illyricum to the farthest parts of Gaul. Aurelius, therefore, again saw
himself surrounded with difficulties; his army had before been wasted
by the plague and frequent engagements, and his treasures entirely
exhausted. In order to remedy these inconveniences, he increased his
forces by enlisting slaves, gladiators, and the banditti of Dalmatia.

To raise money, he sold all the movables belonging to the empire and all
the rich furniture which had been deposited in the cabinets of Hadrian.
This sale, which continued for two months, produced so considerable a sum
as to defray all the expenses of the war. His next effort was to march
forwards, and cross the Danube by a bridge of boats.[b]

Dion Cassius[e] tells some most surprising stories about the campaign
that followed; and the picturesqueness of this narrative is heightened by
the emendations added to it by Xiphilinus,[h] to whose excerpts we owe
the preservation of the account. It is worth while to quote these authors
at some length, as their story well illustrates the character of the
material on which our reconstruction of the history of this period must
rest.[a]

“After having fought several important battles,” says Dion, “and exposed
himself to many dangers, Marcus Antoninus (Marcus Aurelius) subjugated
the Marcomanni and the Iazyges; he also carried on a great war against
the people called Quadi, in which, against his expectations, he was
victorious, or rather victory was bestowed upon him by a god. Indeed it
was divine interposition that saved the Romans from the dangers they were
in during this combat. Surrounded by the Quadi, who had all the advantage
of position, the Romans defended themselves valiantly with their shields;
presently the barbarians ceased hostilities in the hope that heat and
thirst would deliver their adversaries into their hands without the
trouble of further fighting; and took possession of all the places
around which they fortified to prevent the enemy from finding water, for
the Quadi were far superior in numbers. Now while the Romans, unable
either to offer combat or retreat and reduced to the last extremity by
wounds, fatigue, heat, and thirst, were standing helplessly at their
posts, clouds suddenly assembled in great number and rain descended in
floods--certainly not without divine intervention, since an Egyptian
mage, Arnulphis, who was with Marcus Antoninus, is said to have invoked
several genii, principally the aërial Mercury, by enchantment, and thanks
to them had brought down rain.”[e]

“This,” Xiphilinus comments, “is what Dion relates regarding this
matter; but he seems, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, to practise
deception. I incline to the belief that he does so voluntarily. And why
not, as a matter of fact? He knew that there existed a legion called the
Thundering Legion, which name was given it for no other reason than for
what came to pass in this war. To this legion was due the preservation
of the Roman army and the loss of that of the barbarians, and not to
the mage Arnulphis. Marcus Antoninus had a legion composed of soldiers
from Melitene, who all professed Christianity. During the battle the
chief of the prætorians had sought out Marcus Antoninus, who was in
great perplexity at the turn events were taking, fearing sorely for the
safety of the army, and represented to him, it is said, that there was
nothing the people called Christians could not obtain by their prayers,
and that among his forces was a troop composed wholly of followers of
that religion. Rejoiced at this news Marcus Antoninus demanded of these
soldiers that they should pray to their god, who, granting their petition
on the instant, sent lightning among the enemy and consoled the Romans
with rain. Struck by this wonderful success the emperor honoured the
Christians in an edict and named their legion the Thundering. It is
even asserted that a letter exists by Marcus Antoninus on this subject.
The pagans well know that the company was called the Thunderers, having
attested the fact themselves, but they reveal nothing of the occasion on
which the legion received the name.

“Dion adds that when the rain began to fall every soldier lifted his
head toward heaven to receive the water in his mouth; that afterwards
some held out their shields and others their helmets to catch the water,
and many gave their horses to drink. Being set upon at once by the
barbarians they drank and fought on the same spot, and several, being
wounded, swallowed blood mingled with the water in their helmets. All
being occupied in drinking, they would doubtless have been seriously
incommoded by this attack had not heavy hail and numerous thunderbolts
thrown consternation into the ranks of the enemy. Fire and water could
be seen to mingle as they left the heavens; some upon whom they fell
drank and were refreshed, but many were burned and perished. The fire
did not reach the Romans, but if it did by chance touch one of them it
was immediately extinguished; in the same manner the rain, instead of
comforting the barbarians, seemed merely to excite, like oil, the fire
with which they were being consumed, and all soaked with water as they
were they constantly sought more. Some barbarians inflicted wounds upon
themselves as though their blood had power to extinguish flames, while
many rushed over to the side of the Romans, hoping that there the water
might be salutary to them. Marcus Antoninus had compassion on them, and
for the seventh time he was proclaimed emperor by the soldiers. Although
not usually accepting this title until it had been bestowed upon him by
the senate, he made no demur on this occasion, holding that the honour
came from a god, and wrote to that effect to the senate. As for Faustina,
the title bestowed on her was Mother of the Camp.”[h]

Notwithstanding this victory, the war continued for some months longer;
but, after many violent conflicts, the barbarians sent to sue for peace.
The emperor imposed conditions upon them, more or less severe, as he
found them more or less disposed to revolt; being actually resolved to
divide their territories into provinces, and subject them to the Roman
Empire. However, a fresh rebellion called him to the defence of his
dominions at home.

[Illustration: STATUE OF MARCUS AURELIUS IN THE CAPITOL]


THE REVOLT OF AVIDIUS

[Sidenote: [174-175 A.D.]]

Avidius Cassius was one of the emperor’s favourite generals, and had been
chiefly instrumental in obtaining the Roman successes in Parthia. His
principal merit seemed to consist in his restoring the old discipline
and in pretending a violent regard for the commonwealth in its ancient
form. But, in fact, all his seeming regard for freedom was only to seize
upon the liberties of his country for his own aggrandisement. Wherefore,
finding his soldiers (for he was left with an army in the East) willing
to support his pretensions, he proclaimed himself emperor in Syria. One
of his chief artifices to procure popularity was his giving out that he
was descended from the famous Cassius, who had conspired against Cæsar;
and like him he pretended that his aims were for the re-establishment of
the commonwealth of Rome. He also caused it to be rumoured that Aurelius
was dead, and he affected to show the greatest respect for his memory.
By these pretences, he united a large body of men under his command, and
in a short time brought all the countries from Syria to Mount Taurus
under his subjection. These prosperous beginnings served to increase the
emperor’s activity, but not his apprehensions. He prepared to oppose him
without any marks of uneasiness for the event; telling his soldiers that
he could freely yield up his empire to Avidius, if it should be judged
conducive to the public good; for, as to his own part, the only fruits he
had from exaltation were incessant labour and fatigue.

“I am ready,” cried he, “to meet Avidius before the senate, and before
you; and to yield him up the empire, without the effusion of blood, or
striking a blow, if it shall be thought good for the people. But Avidius
will never submit to such a tribunal; he who has been faithless to his
benefactor can never rely upon any man’s professions. He will not even,
in case of being worsted, rely upon me. And yet, my fellow-soldiers, my
only fear is, and I speak it with the greatest sincerity, lest he should
put an end to his own life; or lest some, thinking to do me a service,
should hasten his death, the greatest hope that I have is to prove that I
can pardon the most outrageous offences; to make him my friend, even in
spite of his reluctance; and to show the world that civil wars themselves
can come to a happy issue.” In the meantime Avidius, who well knew that
desperate undertakings must have a speedy execution, endeavoured to draw
over Greece to his assistance; but the love which all mankind bore the
good emperor frustrated his expectations; he was unable to bring over
a single city to espouse his interests. This repulse seemed to turn
the scale of his former fortunes. His officers and soldiers began now
to regard him with contempt; so that they at last slew him, in less
than four months after their first revolt. His head was brought to the
emperor, who received it with regret, and ordered it an honourable
interment. The rest of the conspirators were treated with great lenity;
some few of them were banished, but recalled soon after. This clemency
was admired by some, and condemned by others; but the emperor little
regarded the murmurs or the applause of the multitude; guided only by the
goodness of his own disposition, he did what to him seemed right, content
and happy in self-approbation. When some took the liberty of blaming his
conduct, telling him that Avidius would not have been so generous had
he been conqueror, the emperor replied in this sublime manner: “I never
served the gods so ill, or reigned so irregularly, as to fear Avidius
could ever be conqueror.”


AN IMPERIAL TOUR AND A TRIUMPH

[Sidenote: [175-177 A.D.]]

Though Avidius was no more, yet Aurelius was sensible that he had still
some enemies remaining, whom he was willing to win over. He therefore
took a journey into the East, where, in all places, he at once charmed
them with his affability, raised their admiration by his clemency,
instructed them by precept, and improved them by his example. The better
to prevent such revolts for the future, he ordained that as Avidius was
a native of the country in which he rebelled, no person, for the time to
come, should command in the place where he was born. In this journey
the empress Faustina was unexpectedly seized with a violent distemper,
and died. She was a woman whose wanton life gave great scandal to the
dignity of her station; however, her passive husband either could not or
at least affected not to see her enormities, but willingly admitted the
ill-deserved honours which the senate importunately decreed to her memory.

On his way to Rome he visited Athens, where he conferred many honours on
the inhabitants, and established professors in all the sciences, with
munificent salaries for their ease. Upon landing in Italy he quitted his
soldier’s habit, as also did all his army, and made his entry into Rome
in the gown which was worn in peace. As he had been absent almost eight
years, he distributed to each citizen eight pieces of gold, and remitted
all the debts due to the treasury for sixty years past. At the same time
he nominated his son Commodus to succeed him in the empire, and made him
a partner in his triumphal entry at the close of 176.[b]

At this time the senate erected an equestrian statue of Marcus, of which
Merivale speaks in the following eloquent terms:

“Of all the Cæsars whose names are enshrined in the page of history, or
whose features are preserved to us in the repositories of art, one alone
seems still to haunt the eternal city in the place and the posture most
familiar to him in life. In the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius,
which crowns the platform of the Campidoglio, imperial Rome lives again.
Of all her consecrated sights it is to this that the classical pilgrim
should most devoutly repair; this of all the monuments of Roman antiquity
most justly challenges his veneration. For in this figure we behold an
emperor, of all the line the noblest and the dearest, such as he actually
appeared; we realise in one august exemplar the character and image of
the rulers of the world. We stand here face to face with a representative
of the Scipios and Cæsars, with a model of the heroes of Tacitus and
Livy. Our other Romans are effigies of the closet and the museum; this
alone is a man of the streets, the Forum, and the Capitol. Such special
prominence is well reserved, amidst the wreck of ages, for him whom
historians combine to honour as the worthiest of the Roman people.”[l]

Besides this, a group of monuments expressive of their homage was erected
in the Via Lata (a part of the Flaminian way) on the Field of Mars. The
dedicatory inscription and some bas-reliefs have come down to us from
a triumphal arch which was not destroyed until the year 1662; the most
important of them being some bas-reliefs representing the apotheosis of
Faustina. The marble column of Marcus Aurelius, in what is now the Piazza
Colonna, is still standing. It measures 29.55 metres in height, inclusive
of the base, capital, plinth and abacus, and consists of twenty-eight
blocks. A spiral staircase of 190 steps go up in the interior, and the
abacus was originally surmounted by a bronze statue of the emperor.
Round the shaft, as in Trajan’s column, runs a spiral band of reliefs,
containing twenty rows of figures one above the other, and representing
the wars of the Romans against the tribes of the Danube. In design and
execution, however, these sculptures, which were not finished until the
reign of the emperor’s successor, fall far short of the excellence of
the earlier work. The representation of motion is often exaggerated,
the outlines and draperies are harsh and clumsy, and the profile of the
relief is coarser than in Trajan’s column.

The statue was probably carried off by the Byzantine emperor, Constans
II, in the year 663 A.D. The column was struck by lightning in 1589, and
was restored by Pope Sixtus V, and surmounted by a statue of Paul the
apostle in gilded bronze. A temple of Marcus Aurelius probably stood to
the west of it, on what is now Monte Citorio.

[Sidenote: [177-180 A.D.]]

After his return to Rome Marcus Aurelius was once more at leisure to
prosecute zealously the affairs of peace, for which he had so great a
liking. The administration was admirable, its only defect being that the
mildness of the emperor’s disposition inclined him to laxity in dealing
with the governors of the senatorial provinces. Apart from certain
other matters (such as the matter of the Italian magistrates and the
judicial powers of the high imperial officials at Rome), the care of the
alimentary institution was the object of his peculiar interest. It is not
improbable (though open to question) that at this time he placed this
institution under the charge of a consular alimentary prefect specially
appointed. The work hitherto done by the district prefects was handed
over to the Italian magistrates, and the curators of the highways were
commissioned, on the one hand, to guard against exactions on the part of
customs officials, and on the other, to superintend the Italian grain
markets and arrange for the supply and sale of corn.

The serious financial straits in which the empire was involved during
the critical years of the war on the Danube were not without their
effect on the alimentary institution. The emperor had already allowed
the weight of the gold piece to fall to 7.3 gr. and the proportion of
alloy in the denarius to rise to 25 per cent.; and he seems now to have
found it necessary to call in from the landowners the capital set aside
for the support of the institution and to divert the interest to the
public treasury; a precedent which was hereafter to prove very injurious.
Nevertheless Marcus Aurelius was so able an economist that no later than
the year 176 he was able to relieve the burdens of the nation by the
remission of all debts and arrears due to the public treasury (for a
period of forty-six years). Meanwhile the population of the capital was
gratified by repeated donations of money and corn during the lean years.

The emperor endeavoured to modify the sanguinary character of the
gladiatorial shows by requiring the combatants to have buttons on their
foils, and the appointment of a prætor tutelaris was a proof of his
special care for interests of minors. Moreover, while following the
levelling policy of his two predecessors in the extension of Latin and
Roman citizenship to all parts of the empire, he was careful to lay
the foundation of a more accurate knowledge of the statistics of his
dominions.[m]

“Amid these records of gentleness and forbearance,” says Miss Zimmern,
“it seems strange to read that Marcus Aurelius permitted a cruel
persecution of the Christians. Among the victims of this reign were
Justin Martyr and Polycarp, and numbers suffered in a general persecution
of the churches at Lyons and Vienna. It must not, however, be forgotten
that the persecution was political rather than religious. Of the true
teaching of Christianity Marcus Aurelius knew little and cared less; but
its followers, in refusing to acknowledge a religion which included the
emperors among its deities, became rebels against the existing order of
things, and therein culpable.”[n]

The well-meant labours of Aurelius were interrupted by grievous
calamities. In Asia, earthquakes were a veritable scourge; and the year
178 in particular was marked by frightful destruction on the Ionian
coasts, especially at Samos, Chios, Miletus, and the magnificent city
of Smyrna. Liberal assistance was sent to the last-named place at the
entreaty of P. Ælius Aristides (born 117 or 129) of Adriani in Bithynia.

But the emperor’s gravest anxieties were for the future. The hand of
death had lain heavy on his family, nor was the heir-presumptive to the
throne a son likely to rejoice his father’s heart. Marcus Lucius Ælius
Aurelius Commodus Antoninus was born at Lanuvium on August 31, 161, and
invested with the title of Cæsar on October 12, 166. But the boy was
ill-endowed by nature, and the efforts of his father, and of the other
able men about him (such as Cornelius Fronto, and Galen, the famous
physician, who had lived in Rome from 169 onwards as his physician in
ordinary, and died about 200 A.D.) were unsuccessful in fitting him for
the duties of his high station. Commodus, though by no means free from
evil tendencies, was not exactly vicious, but he was stupid, timid,
lacking in initiative, and therefore likely to be swayed by his immediate
surroundings. This was not the kind of man the empire needed at this
juncture. Nevertheless, Marcus Aurelius could not summon up resolution
enough to exclude him from the succession. On the contrary, Commodus was
invested with tribunician authority in the year 177, and in order to
secure his succession he was called upon, thus early, to take his place
at his father’s side as augustus.


LAST CAMPAIGNS AND DEATH OF AURELIUS

The whole imperial power was only too soon to pass into the hands of this
sinister being. The middle Danube, where Pertinax had been in command
and had been succeeded, on his appointment to the governorship of Mœsia,
by the two Quintilii, was the centre of constant disorders. The German
tribes were inflamed afresh by the exaction of the hard conditions of
peace, and by the year 177 the flames of war had burst forth again. In
178 Marcus Aurelius was once more forced to take the field in person. He
therefore married his son to Crispina, daughter of the consular Caius
Bruttius Præsens (if, indeed, the marriage had not taken place in the
previous year), and set forth with him to the Danube on the fifth of
August.

The Danube provinces were at this time very strongly fortified, and
the river was extremely well guarded as far as Ratisbon on the west.
Its waters were navigated by a powerful fleet divided into squadrons
corresponding to the three principal harbours of Laureacum, Arelape
Comagenæ, and Carnuntum. The emperor had raised two legions to occupy
Noricum and Rætia. In Noricum the central point of the military
frontier was at Laureacum, and the highway of the Danube had now been
completed. The valleys and roads leading to the Danube were no less
strongly fortified than those which led to the Rhine. Above Laureacum
the forts of Lentia (on the Schlossberg of Linz) and Joviacum (Schlögen
near Haibach) commanded the surrounding country, and below the central
fortress the great road to Vindobona was guarded by the castellum of
Lacus Felicis (of which the wall may still be seen at Oehling on the
Url), which was capable of accommodating three cohorts, by Elegium (on
the crags of Wallsee), and by the fortified camp of Arelape at the mouth
of the Erlaf. Beyond these came the castle of Namare on the crags of
Melk, the castella of Trigisamum (Traismauer), Faviana (Mautern), and
Comagenæ (Tulln), and lastly of Citium (Zeiselmauer), at the foot of the
forest of Vindobona. The next section of the Pannonian Danube was even
more thoroughly protected. Vindobona was flanked by several forts, and
close to this strong fortress was Carnuntum, its main bulwark, a mighty
quadrangle close upon the steep bank of the river, raised far aloft above
the torrent stream and looking across its turbid waves and green islands
to the boundless stretches of the Marchfeld. The passage of the Danube
was guarded by a barbican (at Stopfenreut).

Of this fresh war on the Danube few records have come down to us. From
the outset it was more successful than the former campaign. One of the
most brilliant episodes was a great victory gained over the Germans,
after fearful carnage, at the end of the year 179, by Tarruntenus
Paternus, a notable jurist and scientific tactician, who was now in
command as _præfectus prætorio_. Fortune seemed to smile ever more
brightly on the Roman arms, when, as the evil genius of the empire
would have it, the admirable emperor died of the plague in the camp at
Vindobona, rightly appreciated and deeply mourned in death; deified and
vainly desired as the fortunes of the declining empire became more and
more gloomily overcast.[m]

“It seemed,” said the sympathetic Goldsmith,[b] “as if the whole glory
and prosperity of the Roman Empire died with Aurelius. From thenceforward
we are to behold a train of emperors either vicious or impotent, either
wilfully guilty or unable to assert the dignity of their station. We
are to behold an empire, grown too great, sinking by its own weight,
surrounded by barbarous and successful enemies without and torn by
ambitious and cruel factions within; the principles of the times wholly
corrupted; philosophy attempting to regulate the minds of men without
the aid of religion; and the warmth of patriotism entirely evaporated,
by being diffused in too wide a circle.” But a certain allowance must be
made for eulogistic exaggeration in such an estimate as this. It must
never be forgotten that a great empire changes slowly. All was not well
with the empire before Marcus Aurelius, and all was not ill with it
afterwards.[a]

The despondency which had seized on the gentle emperor’s spirits
is strongly marked in the circumstances of his last hours. While
anticipating his own decease with satisfaction, and even with eagerness,
he regarded himself as only a fellow-traveller on the common road of
life with all around him, and took leave of his friends as one who was
but just preceding them. If he regarded the condition of public affairs,
the prospect of his son succeeding him was not such as to console him;
for he could not hide from himself that Commodus was vicious, cruel, and
illiterate. The indulgence he had shown to his consort’s irregularities
might be pardoned by the state, to which they were of little moment;
but his weakness in leaving to his graceless offspring the command of a
world-wide empire must reflect more strongly on his memory.

He may have judged, indeed, that the danger to the state from a bad
prince was less than the danger from a disputed succession, especially
in the face of the disasters accumulating around it. On his death-bed
he warned his son not to underrate the peril from the barbarians,
who, if at the moment worsted and discouraged, would soon revive, and
return again to the assault with increasing vigour. And so he left the
laws of inheritance, as now ordinarily received, to take their course,
indicating his will that Commodus should succeed him by the simple form
of recommending him to the care of his officers and to the favour of the
immortal gods. On the seventh day of his illness he admitted none but his
unworthy son to his chamber, and after a few words dismissed him, covered
his head for sleep, and passed away alone and untended.

Born on the 20th of April, 121, and dying on the 17th of March, 180, he
had almost completed his fifty-ninth year. His career had been divided
into three nearly equal portions: the first, to his association in
the empire with Antoninus; the second, to his accession to complete
sovereignty; the third, from thence to his decease. The first was
the season of his general education, the second that of his training
for empire, in the last he exercised power uncontrolled. In each he
had acquitted himself well, in each he had gained himself love and
admiration; but the earlier periods were eminently prosperous and happy;
the crowning period was a time of trial, of peril, fatigue, distress, and
apprehension.


MERIVALE COMPARES AURELIUS AND ALFRED THE GREAT

Historical parallels between men of different times and circumstances
are very apt to mislead us, yet I cannot refrain from indicating the
comparison, which might be drawn with unusual precision, between the
wise, the virtuous, the much-suffering Aurelius, and England’s great and
good king Alfred. Both arrived early and unexpectedly to power; both
found their people harassed by the attacks of importunate enemies; they
assumed with firmness the attitude of resistance and defence, and gained
many victories in the field, though neither could fail to acknowledge the
unequal conditions of the struggle. Both found themselves at the head of
a weak and degenerate society whose hour of dissolution had well-nigh
struck. Nevertheless, they contended manfully in its behalf, and strove
to infuse their own gallant spirit into a people little worthy of their
championship.

But Aurelius and Alfred were not warriors only. They were men of
letters by natural predilection and early habit; they were legislators,
administrators, and philosophers, with this difference, that the first
came at the end of a long course of civilised government, the second
almost at its beginning; the first at the mournful close of one period
of mental speculation, the second at the fresh and hopeful commencement
of another. The one strove to elevate the character of his subjects by
the example of his own scrupulous self-examination; the other by precepts
of obedience to an external revelation. But both were, from their early
days, weak in body, and little fit to cope with the appalling fatigues of
their position; both, if I mistake not, were sick at heart, and felt that
their task was beyond their power, and quitted life prematurely, with
little reluctance.

In one respect, however, their lot was different. The fortunes of the
people of the English Alfred, after a brief and distant period of
obscuration, have ever increased in power and brightness, like the
sun ascending to its meridian. The decline of which Aurelius was the
melancholy witness was irremediable and final, and his pale solitary star
was the last apparent in the Roman firmament.[l]


GIBBON’S ESTIMATE OF MARCUS AURELIUS, AND OF THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES

[Sidenote: [161-180 A.D.]]

The virtue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was of a severe and laborious
kind. It was the well-earned harvest of many a learned conference, of
many a patient lecture, and many a midnight lucubration. At the age of
twelve years he embraced the rigid system of the stoics, which taught
him to submit his body to his mind, his passions to reason; to consider
virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil, all things external as
things indifferent. His meditations, composed in the tumult of a camp,
are still extant; and he even condescended to give lessons of philosophy,
in a more public manner than was perhaps consistent with the modesty
of a sage or the dignity of an emperor. But his life was the noblest
commentary on the precepts of Zeno. He was severe to himself, indulgent
to the imperfections of others, just and beneficent to all mankind. He
regretted that Avidius Cassius, who excited a rebellion in Syria, had
disappointed him by a voluntary death of the pleasure of converting an
enemy into a friend; and he justified the sincerity of that sentiment by
moderating the zeal of the senate against the adherents of the traitor.
War he detested, as the disgrace and calamity of human nature; but when
the necessity of a just defence called upon him to take up arms, he
readily exposed his person to eight winter campaigns on the frozen banks
of the Danube, the severity of which was at last fatal to the weakness of
his constitution. His memory was revered by a grateful posterity; and,
above a century after his death, many persons preserved the image of
Marcus Antoninus among those of their household gods.

If a man were called upon to fix the period in the history of the
world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and
prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which lapsed from the
death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.[33] The vast extent of
the Roman Empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of
virtue and wisdom. The armies were restrained by the firm but gentle hand
of four successive emperors, whose characters and authority commanded
involuntary respect. The forms of the civil administration were carefully
preserved by Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, who delighted in
the image of liberty, and were pleased with considering themselves as
the accountable ministers of the laws. Such princes deserved the honour
of restoring the republic, had the Romans of their day been capable of
enjoying a rational freedom.

The labours of these monarchs were overpaid by the immense reward that
inseparably waited on their success; by the honest pride of virtue, and
by the exquisite delight of beholding the general happiness of which they
were the authors. A just but melancholy reflection embittered, however,
the noblest of human enjoyments. They must often have recollected the
instability of a happiness which depended on the character of a single
man. The fatal moment was perhaps approaching when some licentious youth,
or some jealous tyrant, would abuse, to the destruction, that absolute
power which they had exerted for the benefit of their people. The ideal
restraints of the senate and the laws might serve to display the virtues,
but could never correct the vices, of the emperor. The military force was
a blind and irresistible instrument of oppression; and the corruption
of Roman manners would always supply flatterers eager to applaud, and
ministers prepared to serve, the fear or the avarice, the lust or the
cruelty, of their masters.[e]


FOOTNOTES

[28] [There are other accounts; some claiming that Trajan “loved Hadrian
as his son.”]

[29] [Simon’s real name was Bar Kosiba from the town Kosiba. “Son of
lies” was the interpretation given to his name after his failure.]

[30] [Nearly all the ancient historians of Rome were partisans of the
senate, as against the emperors. This circumstance chiefly accounts for
the unfavourable report of Hadrian’s last years which has come down to
us.]

[31] [Hadrian’s villa hardly deserves such sarcasm. It was a sort of
miniature, natural and architectural, of the Roman world,--a pleasant
artistic retreat for the emperor during his weary illness, and a monument
to his cosmopolitan character.]

[32] [Bury’s[n] estimate is different. He says: “Antoninus was hardly a
great statesman. The rest which the empire enjoyed under his auspices had
been rendered possible through Hadrian’s activity, and was not due to his
own exertions; on the other hand, he carried the policy of peace at any
price too far, and so entailed calamities on the state after his death.”]

[33] [This famous estimate of Gibbon’s has been seriously questioned.
About half of the inhabitants of the empire were slaves, and it is
scarcely in doubt that a great majority of the freemen were materially,
intellectually, and morally inferior to the average civilised man of
to-day. It must be recalled, however, that the condition of the masses
has greatly improved since the time of Gibbon.]




[Illustration: BULL PREPARED FOR SACRIFICE]




CHAPTER XXXVII. THE PAGAN CREEDS AND THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY

    If Marcus Aurelius could not save the world, who shall save
    it?--RENAN.


To whoever knows anything of human intelligence it is evident that a
revolution of consciences is outside and above the duties and the power
of a government. In their quality of high priest, the Cæsars desired
two contradictory things--to maintain the national cult, and to make
Rome the city of the gods, or a kind of universal pantheon. This was the
only reform and the only religious unity of which they could conceive.
Thus, little by little, all the gods of the conquered nations came to be
honoured at the Capitol. In spite of their distrust of Asiatic cults,
which were always connected with confraternities that gave them offence,
the Cæsars had their hands forced by popular superstitions, and all the
divinities of Asia and of Egypt took their places side by side with the
Greek and Roman gods.

This was certainly the unity the genius of Rome sought in everything;
but it was a coarse, factitious, material unity, whose least defect was
that all the polytheistic religions were disfigured and neutralised by
one another, without satisfying the religious sentiment of the people or
the intellect of the higher classes from henceforth too enlightened to
accept a too evident polytheism. Where was the faith, the sincerity of
adoration, and the life of the soul in this patched-up religion? And did
this, the worst kind of unity that Roman policy voluntarily admitted, put
an end to the fatal separation between philosophers and people, between
the head and the heart of society? Strange blindness of those who give
all to politics! The emperors, without knowing it and without wishing
it, ended by discrediting the ancient national belief by this confusion
of all religions, and yet what efforts did they not make to animate and
purify it?

We hardly believe in the faith of the cæsars; but we can understand that
they wished to preserve the ancient worship as a part of public order.
Thus we see Augustus (although he amused himself, in the most scandalous
orgies, by making a mock of the twelve great gods) devoutly rebuilding
the temples, celebrating religion and piety by the agency of Horace the
epicurean, honouring the vestals and the priests, burning thousands of
apocryphal sibylline books, and severely repressing the usurpations
of the Judaic and Egyptian worships, which were forbidden the city of
Rome. Tiberius amused the senate during long sittings by the examination
and consecration of the privileges of the ancient sanctuaries. Claudius
complained bitterly that the arts of Etruria had fallen into disuse
owing to the indifference of the patricians, and endeavoured to
revive superannuated studies for which he had a historian’s and an
archæologist’s passion. Domitian complied with the cruel requirements of
the old faith by burying unfortunate vestals alive. All showed themselves
zealous defenders of the gods and the empire, and there was reason to be
thankful when, recalling the words of Tiberius, that it is for the gods
alone to avenge their injuries, they refrained from sacrificing those
they feared to the sacrosanct majesty of their deified predecessors; or
abstained from making themselves persecutors of the new faith, which
embodied the principle of the moral and religious unity they vainly
sought for.

But their conduct did not show either sincere faith, or hypocrisy, or
weakness and infirmity of mind; it was purely political. They were
convinced that the people needed a religion. Then, what religion was
preferable to the one of which the senate had so cleverly availed itself,
and which had presided over the birth and growth of the Eternal City?
But, as if the gods were not yet sufficiently discredited, they were
obliged to share their sacred honours with the vilest and most execrable
of mortals. The apotheosis of the cæsars was the last insult inflicted
on the masters of Olympus. In truth it deceived neither the servile
worshippers nor those destined to be worshipped. Seneca and Juvenal were
doubtless not the only ones to laugh at men like Claudius, whom some poor
wretch had degraded to the rank of the gods, and we may suppose that the
other emperors would have had the good sense to admit, with Tiberius,
that they were but mortal men, not at all anxious to enjoy their false
divinity the other side of the grave.

But these scandalous consecrations had the drawback of confirming the
impious belief of the votaries of Evemerus, who, as it appears, were
very numerous at Rome, even from the time of the first of the Scipios.
On seeing, as Lucan says, the civil wars giving peers to the inhabitants
of heaven, and Rome tricking out shades with thunderbolts and shooting
stars and swearing by the shadows in the temples of the god, what could
men think, but that Jupiter and his fellows had the same title to our
adoration as Caligula and Tiberius? Claudius, the learned but imbecile
pupil of Titus Livius, was perhaps the only Roman who was devoted to
the gods of the empire. Politics saw in religion nothing but fraudulous
inventions to deceive and coerce the people; the philosophers either
professed atheism or, having formed higher and purer beliefs for
themselves, turned the ancient superstitions into ridicule; the ignorant
took refuge with the charlatans and foreign divinities.


STOICISM AND THE EMPIRE

Stoicism, according to its doctrines, was rather favourable than hostile
to the revolution represented by the empire, but the proud and free
sentiments it developed in the soul were necessarily contrary to tyranny,
which the worst cæsars confounded with the rights of power; to that
exaggeration of obedience, to that servility to which their subjects were
too much inclined and of which they were only too eager to make a false
duty or an infamous merit. The philosophers were therefore odious to all
that surrounded and was subservient to the early cæsars.

Their accusers flung vehement eloquence against them and persecuted in
them what they called the mimics of Brutus and Cato. The centurions
delighted in turning their wisdom to ridicule, whilst waiting to cut
their throats by order of their masters. Nero, Vespasian, and Domitian
did them the honour of driving them from Rome and from Italy. Agrippinus,
Rusticus, Thraseas, Helvidius Priscus, Seneca, Dion, Epictetus, and many
others expiated by exile or by death the glorious crime of not consenting
to slavery, and of displeasing imbecile tyrants, who aimed at stifling
even the conscience of the human species.

[Illustration: ROMAN CHAIR OF STATE]

Stoicism flourished in this struggle between intellect and brute force.
It became an ardent and vigorous faith, a kind of religion of great souls
with its followers and martyrs. This transformation is noticeable even in
the provinces, where there was less cause to murmur against the savage
tyranny of the emperors than to rejoice at the benefits of the empire and
of the Roman peace. It was because there also the people felt that they
were dependent, that these honours, these dignities, these appearances
of liberty, given to the conquered by policy as a consolation for their
servitude, were but a vain show made to amuse fools, and that an archon
or other native magistrate was of very little importance beside the
Roman procurator or even his centurion. Thrown back upon themselves,
by violence or the lack of interests, the souls of mankind studied the
inner life more earnestly, and the essential qualities of its virtue and
greatness.

Hence the new characteristics of stoicism--the preaching tone which took
the place of philosophical discussion, a science of life unknown until
then, and a peculiar art of disentangling the most obscure sophisms
of vice and weakness, but above all a stern tenderness for humanity.
The philosopher is no longer a logician who makes dissertations, nor a
fine speaker aiming at applause. He is a master who teaches, a public
censor charged with the care of consciences; God’s witness, who owes
men nothing but truth, or, if you prefer, a physician whose duty is to
touch boldly the sick or healthy parts of the soul, in order to cure or
to strengthen it. Deep and subtle arguments must not be expected from
these philosophers, but affectionate or severe counsels, remonstrances,
exhortations, and earnest entreaties for conversion to virtue and the
law of God. Listen to Epictetus[f] and judge whether it is a philosopher
or a believer and director of consciences who speaks: “My friend, you
would become a philosopher? Begin with exercising yourself at home and
in silence, spend time in observing your inclinations and your faults.
To begin with, give your whole care to remaining unknown. Philosophise
for a period only for yourself and not for others. Fruit ripens little by
little; you are also a divine plant. If you blossom before your time, the
winter will wither you. If you believe yourself somebody, you will only
be a madman amongst madmen. You will be killed by the cold, or rather you
are already dead even to the roots. Let yourself then ripen little by
little, according to nature. Why hasten? You cannot yet endure the air.
Give the root time to develop and the buds time to open one after the
other; then your nature will bear fruit of itself.”

“Labour then,” he says in another place, “to cure, to change yourself;
do not delay until to-morrow. If you say, to-morrow I will pay heed
to myself, know it is as if you should say, to-day I will be base,
shameless, cowardly, angry, cruel, and envious. Observe the evil you
allow yourself by this guilty indulgence. But if it is a good thing for
you to be converted and to watch attentively over your actions and your
will, how much more so it is to start to-day! If it is useful to-morrow,
to-day it is far more so. For by starting to-day, to-morrow you will
already be stronger, and will not be tempted to put off to a third day.”
This is the general tone of the philosophy of this period. Penetrating
and familiar in Epictetus, it is more pompous and vague in the
ex-rhetorician Dion Chrysostom,[g] more incisive, vehement, and varied in
Seneca,[h] more elevated and touching in Marcus Aurelius. But with all of
these we encounter pressing exhortations or lively remonstrances, and as
might be expected the remonstrance prevails. They believed, in fact, that
we are never, whatever our virtue, beyond the state of convalescence, and
that those who wish to be healthy and well, as Musonius Rufus said, must
live and behave toward themselves as if they were continually striving
to be cured. They also wished that men should quit their school sad and
discontented with themselves.

While the philosopher addresses these reprimands and exhortations to
others in order to convert them, he continually makes reference to
himself, and his words have often a familiarity and passion resembling
feeling and confession. Horace, Seneca, Epictetus, Euphrates,
habitually practised a genuine examination of their conscience, and
the _Meditations_ of Marcus Aurelius[i] are simply a monologue, in
which the wise emperor has set down his hopes and discouragements; he
continually speaks to console, to exhort, to rouse, to reproach, or to
approve himself. But as if the stoic who had imagined an ideal too great
and sublime had the bitter feeling that he could not attain it, without
ceasing he complains of himself and of his want of heart. “O my soul!”
he cries, “when wilt thou be good and simple, and always the same? When
wilt thou have tender good will to all men? When wilt thou be rich enough
of thyself to want for nothing? When, resigned to thy condition, wilt
thou take pleasure in all that is, persuaded that thou hast in thyself
all that thou needest, that all is well with thee, that there is nothing
that does not come to thee from the gods and that all that it has pleased
them to ordain or that they shall ordain can be but good for thee and in
general for the preservation of the world? When wilt thou have prepared
thyself to live with the gods and with man in such a manner that thou
mayst never complain of them and that they may no longer have anything to
blame in thine actions?”

Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius have a rough and familiar vividness in
their speech which shows with what energy of conviction and of faith
their souls were filled. Seneca, for whom stoicism was more a matter for
imagination and for wit, appears to have a less persuasive eloquence,
because he is himself less persuaded; but he has an incontestable
superiority in the censure of manners as well as in the extent and
variety of his experience. There is no vice, weakness, or eccentricity
that he has not found out, and even amongst our great French moralists I
know of no shrewder or more profound observer of the human heart.

But the severe reproof of vice is not everything; the philosopher is only
in truth “the messenger of God” to men when he knows how to console,
encourage, and support them in times of depression and of faltering, and
by generous and sympathetic pity to reawaken in their hearts the nearly
extinguished sense of their own dignity and strength. “Oh!” exclaims
Seneca, “this is not the time to amuse one’s self with many words.
Philosopher, those who summon you to go to them are the helpless and the
miserable. You should carry help to the shipwrecked, the captives, the
beggars, and the sick, to those whose heads are already on the block. You
have promised this. To all the fine speeches you can utter, the afflicted
and distressed answer but one thing: Help us! All stretch out their hands
towards you; it is from you that they implore help for their life lost
or on the verge of being lost. All their hope and resource is in you.
They implore you to rescue them from the abyss towards which they are
struggling and to throw the salutary light of truth before their erring
footsteps.” Suffering and tears had in fact instructed these masters
in human life, and the sad lessons of experience, without lessening
the pride of their courage, inspired them with that compassion for the
misery of others which had perhaps at first been wanting to the stoic
philanthropy:

    “Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco.”

Stoicism did not stop at the theory of universal justice or the equality
of men and of the unity of our kind; it added to it that of universal
charity. I shall not say that the stoics of the empire made innovations
on this point, nor that they introduced into the doctrine new ideas
or even simply original developments, which transformed philosophy by
extending it. I do not believe it, and I have found nothing in Seneca or
in Epictetus, either in the principles or in the results, that I have
not already found in the early stoicism. But it is probable that ideas
took a more practical form, that theories gave place to precepts and to
rules for conduct; that, whilst getting free from the severe and logical
machinery of discussion and taking the more effective form of eloquence,
the morality became more popular and efficacious; and finally by force
of constant repetition in the schools of the philosophers, in the
_basilicas_ of the orators, in the libraries where literary meetings were
held, in the gymnasia where the sophists made their displays, and even
in the public places of the large towns, where the cynics delivered the
finest maxims in the midst of their coarse but often striking invectives,
it ended by storming men’s intellects and taking entire possession of
them.

And it should be noticed that this morality is not at the struggling,
reasoning stage, like a truth which is feeling its way and is not sure of
itself, nor does it hover on the surface like those borrowed ideas that
come from no one knows where and which are welcomed from time to time
with curiosity, but which always remain strangers or passing novelties;
it dominates and takes hold of the intellect with that firm, full,
constant, insensible, and unquestionable possession which characterises
the inveterate supremacy of habit. Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius,
and Plutarch could not think or speak otherwise than as they did because
the philanthropic ideas of stoicism have become an integral and essential
part of their nature, or, to use an expression belonging to Marcus
Aurelius, because these ideas are from henceforth for every intellect the
air they are accustomed to breathe and which nourishes them.

According to the constant doctrine of the Stoa, it is impossible not to
perceive that the author of all things made us for one another and put
into our hearts the instinct of humanity. This principle had passed from
the discussions of the philosophers into the declamations of the orators,
into the verses of the poets, into the spirit of all the writers. “Is
there a better sentiment than compassion,” says Quintilian, “a sentiment
which has a deeper origin in the venerable and sacred principles of
nature? God, the author of mortal beings, wishes us to help one another
mutually, and in helping one another we are guaranteed against the
fickleness of fortune. It is not love nor charity, it is a foreseeing
and, I venture to say, a religious fear of the misfortunes which may
overtake us. In the want and hunger of others it is himself that each of
us pities. To help the unfortunate is to deserve well of things human.
What! if I had fed a stranger for the sake of this universal fraternity
which unites all mortals under the common father of nature, would it not
have been a good action to have saved a soul about to perish, had pity
on humanity, and thrown, as it were, a propitiatory offering to fortune
while adoring the divinity in the thought of our common lot? Humanity has
been in all ages and amongst all nations the greatest and most sacred
mystery.” Juvenal expresses the same thing in a more vivid and more
touching manner. “Nature, by giving us tears, avows that she has bestowed
feeling hearts on men; tears are the best part of our conscience.

“Nature makes us weep over the misfortunes of an afflicted friend, at
the sad countenance of an accused prisoner, at the dangers of a ward who
is the victim of a guardian’s frauds. It is by her ordinance that we
lament when we meet the coffin of a virgin carried off in the flower of
her youth, in seeing a little child shut in under the sod of the grave.
Where is the good man, the religious man, who sees the ills of others as
if they were strangers to him? This is what separates us from the herd
of speechless animals; thus we possess a saintly nature and we alone are
capable of divine things, having received from heaven conscience denied
to the brutes whose faces are turned earthward. At the origin of the
world, the common author of all beings gave to animals only life, whilst
we were given a reasonable soul, in order that mutual affection should
teach us to give and to expect from others assistance and help.”

To all appearance we are far indeed from Chrysippus and Zeno, but on
the contrary entirely imbued with stoicism. I shall continue to repeat
with Seneca and Montesquieu that there never existed a doctrine which,
beneath the most rigid austerity, was more benevolent and more humane.
It banished, I know, the weaknesses and the vain convulsions of pity,
but never did a stoic deny that those sympathetic instincts by which we
suffer for the woes of others and which move us to relieve them are good
and natural; it was never forbidden to follow reasonably these first
instincts of our nature and to practise all the deeds and even all the
refinements of compassion and of humanity.

If we knew how to despise false blessings, said stoicism, we should not
be continually at odds with one another, and aversion, unjust contempt,
slander, calumny, anger, hatred, vengeance would no longer have a place
in our hearts. The blessings we covet, being small and poor, cannot be
acquired by one save at the expense of another. But real blessings can
belong to one and all at the same time, and the more we divide them with
our fellows the more fully and securely do we possess them. Then our
real nature which is sociability can develop without any obstacle, and
instead of the ferocious passions which divide us, tolerance, indulgence,
and love, which reconcile and unite us with one another, are seen to
appear.[b]

Such were the doctrines that held sway when the new faith from the Old
Orient invaded the Roman world. Some aspects of that new faith in its
relations to the Roman environment must now claim our attention.


CHRISTIANS AND THE EMPIRE

[Illustration: THE PANTHEON]

If we seriously consider the purity of the Christian religion, the
sanctity of its moral precepts, and the innocent, as well as austere,
lives of the greater number of those who, during the first ages, embraced
the faith of the gospel, we should naturally suppose that so benevolent
a doctrine would have been received with due reverence, even by the
unbelieving world; that the learned and the polite, however they might
deride the miracles, would have esteemed the virtues of the new sect;
and that the magistrates, instead of persecuting, would have protected
an order of men who yielded the most passive obedience to the laws,
though they declined the active cares of war and government. If, on the
other hand, we recollect the universal toleration of polytheism, as it
was invariably maintained by the faith of the people, the incredulity of
philosophers, and the policy of the Roman senate and emperors, we are at
a loss to discover what new offence the Christians had committed, what
new provocation could exasperate the mild indifference of antiquity, and
what new motives could urge the Roman princes, who beheld without concern
a thousand forms of religion subsisting in peace under their gentle sway,
to inflict a severe punishment on any part of their subjects, who had
chosen for themselves a singular but an inoffensive mode of faith and
worship.

The religious policy of the ancient world seems to have assumed a more
stern and intolerant character, to oppose the progress of Christianity.
About fourscore years after the death of Christ, his innocent disciples
were punished with death by the sentence of a proconsul of the most
amiable and philosophic character, and according to the laws of
an emperor distinguished by the wisdom and justice of his general
administration. The apologies which were repeatedly addressed to the
successors of Trajan are filled with the most pathetic complaints that
the Christians, who obeyed the dictates and solicited the liberty of
conscience, were alone among all the subjects of the Roman Empire
excluded from the common benefits of their auspicious government. The
deaths of a few eminent martyrs have been recorded with care; and
from the time that Christianity was invested with the supreme power,
the governors of the Church have been no less diligently employed in
displaying the cruelty than in imitating the conduct of their pagan
adversaries.

The sectaries of a persecuted religion, depressed by fear, animated with
resentment, and perhaps heated by enthusiasm, are seldom in a proper
temper of mind calmly to investigate or candidly to appreciate the
motives of their enemies, which often escape the impartial and discerning
view even of those who are placed at a secure distance from the flames
of persecution.[34] A reason has been assigned for the conduct of the
emperors towards the primitive Christians, which may appear the more
specious and probable as it is drawn from the acknowledged genius of
polytheism. It has already been observed that the religious concord of
the world was principally supported by the implicit assent and reverence
which the nations of antiquity expressed for their respective traditions
and ceremonies. It might, therefore, be expected that they would unite
with indignation against any sect of people which should separate itself
from the communion of mankind, and, claiming the exclusive possession of
divine knowledge, should disdain every form of worship except its own
as impious and idolatrous. The rights of toleration were held by mutual
indulgence; they were justly forfeited by a refusal of the accustomed
tribute. As the payment of this tribute was inflexibly refused by the
Jews, and by them alone, the consideration of the treatment which they
experienced from the Roman magistrates will serve to explain how far
these speculations are justified by facts; and will lead us to discover
the true causes of the persecution of Christianity.

Without repeating what has been already mentioned of the reverence of
the Roman princes and governors for the temple of Jerusalem, we shall
only observe that the destruction of the temple and city was accompanied
and followed by every circumstance that could exasperate the minds of
the conquerors, and authorise religious persecution by the most specious
arguments of political justice and the public safety. From the reign of
Nero to that of Antoninus Pius, the Jews discovered a fierce impatience
of the dominion of Rome, which repeatedly broke out in the most furious
massacres and insurrections. Humanity is shocked at the recital of
the horrid cruelties which they committed in the cities of Egypt, of
Cyprus, and of Cyrene, where they dwelt in treacherous friendship with
the unsuspecting natives;[35] and we are tempted to applaud the severe
retaliation which was exercised by the arms of the legions against a race
of fanatics, whose dire and credulous superstition seemed to render them
the implacable enemies, not only of the Roman government, but of human
kind. The enthusiasm of the Jews was supported by the opinion that it
was unlawful for them to pay taxes to an idolatrous master; and by the
flattering promise which they derived from their ancient oracles that a
conquering Messiah would soon arise, destined to break their fetters and
to invest the favourites of heaven with the empire of the earth. It was
by announcing himself as their long-expected deliverer, and by calling
on all the descendants of Abraham to assert the hope of Israel, that the
famous Bar Kosiba collected a formidable army, with which he resisted
during two years the power of the emperor Hadrian.

Notwithstanding these repeated provocations, the resentment of the
Roman princes expired after the victory; nor were their apprehensions
continued beyond the period of war and danger. By the general indulgence
of polytheism, and by the mild temper of Antoninus Pius, the Jews
were restored to their ancient privileges, and once more obtained the
permission to circumcise their children, with the easy restraint that
they should never confer on any foreign proselyte that distinguishing
mark of the Hebrew race. The numerous remains of that people, though
they were still excluded from the precincts of Jerusalem, were permitted
to form and to maintain considerable establishments, both in Italy and
in the provinces, to acquire the freedom of Rome, to enjoy municipal
honours, and to obtain at the same time an exemption from the burdensome
and expensive offices of society. The moderation or the contempt of the
Romans gave a legal sanction to the form of ecclesiastical police which
was instituted by the vanquished sect. The patriarch, who had fixed his
residence at Tiberias, was empowered to appoint his subordinate ministers
and apostles, to exercise a domestic jurisdiction, and to receive from
his dispersed brethren an annual contribution. New synagogues were
frequently erected in the principal cities of the empire; and the
sabbaths, the fasts, and the festivals, which were either commanded
by the Mosaic law or enjoined by the traditions of the rabbis, were
celebrated in the most solemn and public manner. Such gentle treatment
insensibly assuaged the stern temper of the Jews. Awakened from their
dream of prophecy and conquest, they assumed the behaviour of peaceable
and industrious subjects. Their irreconcilable hatred of mankind,
instead of flaming out in acts of blood and violence, evaporated in
less dangerous gratifications. They embraced every opportunity of
over-reaching the idolaters in trade; and they pronounced secret and
ambiguous imprecations against the haughty kingdom of Edom.


THE CHRISTIAN AND THE JEW

Since the Jews, who rejected with abhorrence the deities adored by their
sovereign and by their fellow subjects, enjoyed however the free exercise
of their unsocial religion, there must have existed some other cause
which exposed the disciples of Christ to those severities from which the
posterity of Abraham was exempt. The difference between them is simple
and obvious; but, according to the sentiments of antiquity, it was of
the highest importance. The Jews were a nation; the Christians were a
sect; and, if it was natural for every community to respect the sacred
institutions of their neighbours, it was incumbent on them to persevere
in those of their ancestors. The voice of oracles, the precepts of
philosophers, and the authority of the laws, unanimously enforced this
national obligation. By their lofty claim of superior sanctity, the Jews
might provoke the polytheists to consider them as an odious and impure
race. By disdaining the intercourse of other nations, they might deserve
their contempt. The laws of Moses might be for the most part frivolous
or absurd; yet, since they had been received during many ages by a large
society, his followers were justified by the example of mankind; and it
was universally acknowledged that they had a right to practise what it
would have been criminal in them to neglect. But this principle, which
protected the Jewish synagogue, afforded not any favour or security
to the primitive Church. By embracing the faith of the gospel, the
Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable
offence. They dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated
the religious institutions of their country, and presumptuously despised
whatever their fathers had believed as true or had reverenced as sacred.
Nor was this apostasy (if we may use the expression) merely of a partial
or local kind; since the pious deserter who withdrew himself from the
temples of Egypt or Syria would equally disdain to seek an asylum in
those of Athens or Carthage. Every Christian rejected with contempt the
superstitions of his family, his city, and his province. The whole body
of Christians unanimously refused to hold any communion with the gods of
Rome, of the empire, and of mankind. It was in vain that the oppressed
believer asserted the inalienable rights of conscience and private
judgment. Though his situation might excite the pity, his arguments
could never reach the understanding, either of the philosophic or of the
believing part of the pagan world. To their apprehensions, it was no
less a matter of surprise that any individuals should entertain scruples
against complying with the established mode of worship than if they had
conceived a sudden abhorrence to the manners, the dress, or the language
of their native country.

[Illustration: BOWL USED IN RELIGIOUS SERVICES]

The surprise of the pagans was soon succeeded by resentment; and the most
pious of men were exposed to the unjust but dangerous imputations of
impiety. Malice and prejudice concurred in representing the Christians as
a society of atheists, who, by the most daring attack on the religious
constitution of the empire, had merited the severest animadversion of
the civil magistrate. They had separated themselves (they gloried in
the confession) from every mode of superstition which was received in
any part of the globe by the various temper of polytheism; but it was
not altogether so evident what deity, or what form of worship, they
had substituted for the gods and temples of antiquity. The pure and
sublime idea which they entertained of the Supreme Being escaped the
gross conception of the pagan multitude, who were at a loss to discover
a spiritual and solitary God, that was neither represented under any
corporeal figure or visible symbol, nor was adored with the accustomed
pomp of libations and festivals, of altars and sacrifices. The sages of
Greece and Rome, who had elevated their minds to the contemplation of
the existence and attributes of the First Cause, were induced by reason
or by vanity to reserve for themselves and their chosen disciples the
privilege of this philosophical devotion. They were far from admitting
the prejudices of mankind as the standard of truth, but they considered
them as flowing from the original disposition of human nature; and they
supposed that any popular mode of faith and worship which presumed to
disclaim the assistance of the senses would, in proportion as it receded
from superstition, find itself incapable of restraining the wanderings
of the fancy and the visions of fanaticism. The glance which men of wit
and learning condescended to cast on the Christian revelation served only
to confirm their hasty opinion, and to persuade them that the principle,
which they might have revered, of the divine unity, was defaced by the
wild enthusiasm and annihilated by the airy speculations of the new
sectaries. The author of a celebrated dialogue which has been attributed
to Lucian, whilst he affects to treat the mysterious subject of the
Trinity in a style of ridicule and contempt, betrays his own ignorance of
the weakness of human reason and of the inscrutable nature of the divine
perfections.

It might appear less surprising that the founder of Christianity should
not only be revered by his disciples as a sage and a prophet, but that
he should be adored as a god. The polytheists were disposed to adopt
every article of faith which seemed to offer any resemblance, however
distant or imperfect, with the popular mythology; and the legends of
Bacchus, of Hercules, and of Æsculapius, had, in some measure, prepared
their imagination for the appearance of the son of God under a human
form. But they were astonished that the Christians should abandon the
temples of those ancient heroes who, in the infancy of the world, had
invented arts, instituted laws, and vanquished the tyrants or monsters
who infested the earth, in order to choose for the exclusive object of
their religious worship an obscure teacher, who, in a recent age, and
among a barbarous people, had fallen a sacrifice either to the malice
of his own countrymen or to the jealousy of the Roman government. The
pagan multitude, reserving their gratitude for temporal benefits alone,
rejected the inestimable present of life and immortality which was
offered to mankind by Jesus of Nazareth. His mild constancy in the midst
of cruel and voluntary sufferings, his universal benevolence, and the
sublime simplicity of his actions and character, were insufficient, in
the opinion of those carnal men, to compensate for the want of fame,
of empire, and of success; and, whilst they refused to acknowledge his
stupendous triumph over the powers of darkness and of the grave, they
misrepresented, or they insulted, the equivocal birth, wandering life,
and ignominious death, of the divine author of Christianity.


RELIGIOUS ASSEMBLIES OF THE CHRISTIANS

The personal guilt which every Christian had contracted in thus
preferring his private sentiment to the national religion, was aggravated
in a very high degree by the number and union of the criminals. It is
well known, and has been already observed, that Roman policy viewed with
the utmost jealousy and distrust any association among its subjects; and
that the privileges of private corporations, though formed for the most
harmless or beneficial purposes, were bestowed with a very sparing hand.
The religious assemblies of the Christians who had separated themselves
from the public worship appeared of a much less innocent nature: they
were illegal in their principle, and in their consequences might become
dangerous; nor were the emperors conscious that they violated the laws of
justice when, for the peace of society, they prohibited those secret and
sometimes nocturnal meetings. The pious disobedience of the Christians
made their conduct, or perhaps their designs, appear in a much more
serious and criminal light; and the Roman princes, who might perhaps have
suffered themselves to be disarmed by a ready submission, deeming their
honour concerned in the execution of their commands, sometimes attempted,
by rigorous punishments, to subdue this independent spirit, which boldly
acknowledged an authority superior to that of the magistrate. The extent
and duration of this spiritual conspiracy seemed to render it every
day more deserving of his animadversion. We have already seen that the
active and successful zeal of the Christians had insensibly diffused them
through every province, and almost every city, of the empire. The new
converts seemed to renounce their family and country, that they might
connect themselves in an indissoluble band of union with a peculiar
society which everywhere assumed a different character from the rest
of mankind. Their gloomy and austere aspect, their abhorrence of the
common business and pleasures of life, and their frequent predictions of
impending calamities, inspired the pagans with the apprehension of some
danger which would arise from the new sect, the more alarming as it was
the more obscure. Whatever (says Pliny[j]) may be the principle of their
conduct, their inflexible obstinacy appeared deserving of punishment.

The precautions with which the disciples of Christ performed the offices
of religion were at first dictated by fear and necessity; but they were
continued from choice. By imitating the awful secrecy which reigned
in the Eleusinian mysteries, the Christians had flattered themselves
that they should render their sacred institutions more respectable
in the eyes of the pagan world. But the event, as it often happens
to the operations of subtle policy, deceived their wishes and their
expectations. It was concluded that they only concealed what they would
have blushed to disclose. Their mistaken prudence afforded an opportunity
for malice to invent and for suspicious credulity to believe the horrid
tales which described the Christians as the most wicked of human kind,
who practised in their dark recesses every abomination that a depraved
fancy could suggest, and who solicited the favour of their unknown god
by the sacrifice of every moral virtue. There were many who pretended
to confess or to relate the ceremonies of this abhorred society. It was
asserted that a new-born infant, entirely covered over with flour, was
presented, like some mystic symbol of initiation, to the knife of the
proselyte, who unknowingly inflicted many a secret and mortal wound on
the innocent victim of his error; that as soon as the cruel deed was
perpetrated, the sectaries drank up the blood, greedily tore asunder
the quivering members, and pledged themselves to eternal secrecy by
a mutual consciousness of guilt. It was as confidently affirmed that
this inhuman sacrifice was succeeded by a suitable entertainment, in
which intemperance served as a provocative to brutal lust; till, at
the appointed moment, the lights were suddenly extinguished, shame was
banished, nature was forgotten; and, as accident might direct, the
darkness of the night was polluted by the incestuous commerce of sisters
and brothers, of sons and of mothers.


CHRISTIANITY AND THE LAW

But the perusal of the ancient apologies was sufficient to remove
even the slightest suspicion from the mind of a candid adversary. The
Christians, with the intrepid security of innocence, appeal from the
voice of rumour to the equity of the magistrates. They acknowledge that
if any proof can be produced of the crimes which calumny has imputed to
them, they are worthy of the most severe punishment. They provoke the
punishment, and they challenge the proof. At the same time they urge,
with equal truth and propriety, that the charge is not less devoid of
probability than it is destitute of evidence; they ask whether anyone
can seriously believe that the pure and holy precepts of the gospel,
which so frequently restrained the use of the most lawful enjoyments,
should inculcate the practice of the most abominable crimes; that a
large society should resolve to dishonour itself in the eyes of its own
members; and that a great number of persons of either sex, and every age
and character, insensible to the fear of death or infamy, should consent
to violate those principles which nature and education had imprinted most
deeply in their minds. Nothing, it should seem, could weaken the force
or destroy the effect of so unanswerable a justification, unless it were
the injudicious conduct of the apologists themselves, who betrayed the
common cause of religion to gratify their devout hatred to the domestic
enemies of the Church. It was sometimes faintly insinuated, and sometimes
boldly asserted, that the same bloody sacrifices and the same incestuous
festivals, which were so falsely ascribed to the orthodox believers,
were in reality celebrated by the Marcionites, by the Carpocratians, and
by several other sects of the Gnostics, who, notwithstanding they might
deviate into the paths of heresy, were still actuated by the sentiments
of men and still governed by the precepts of Christianity. Accusations
of a similar kind were retorted upon the Church by the schismatics who
had departed from its communion; and it was confessed on all sides
that the most scandalous licentiousness of manners prevailed among
great numbers of those who affected the name of Christians. A pagan
magistrate, who possessed neither leisure nor abilities to discern the
almost imperceptible line which divides the orthodox faith from heretical
depravity, might easily have imagined that their mutual animosity had
extorted the discovery of their common guilt.

It was fortunate for the repose, or at least for the reputation, of the
first Christians, that the magistrates sometimes proceeded with more
temper and moderation than is usually consistent with religious zeal; and
that they reported, as the impartial result of their judicial inquiry,
that the sectaries, who had deserted the established worship, appeared
to them sincere in their professions, and blameless in their manners;
however they might incur, by their absurd and excessive superstition, the
censure of the laws.

History, which undertakes to record the transactions of the past for the
instruction of future ages, would ill deserve the honourable office, if
she condescended to plead the cause of tyrants, or to justify the maxims
of persecution. It must, however, be acknowledged that the conduct of the
emperors who appeared the least favourable to the primitive church is by
no means so criminal as that of modern sovereigns, who have employed the
arm of violence and terror against the religious opinions of any part of
their subjects. From their reflections, or even from their own feelings,
a Charles V or a Louis XIV might have acquired a just knowledge of the
rights of conscience, of the obligation of faith, and of the innocence of
error. But the princes and magistrates of ancient Rome were strangers to
those principles which inspired and authorised the inflexible obstinacy
of the Christians in the cause of truth; nor could they themselves
discover in their own breasts any motive which would have prompted them
to refuse a legal, and as it were a natural, submission to the sacred
institutions of their country. The same reason which contributes to
alleviate the guilt, must have tended to abate the rigour of their
persecutions. As they were actuated, not by the furious zeal of bigots
but by the temperate policy of legislators, contempt must often have
relaxed and humanity must frequently have suspended the execution of
those laws which they enacted against the humble and obscure followers of
Christ. From the general view of their character and motives, we might
naturally conclude: (1) that a considerable time elapsed before they
considered the new sectaries as an object deserving of the attention
of government; (2) that in the conviction of any of their subjects who
were accused of so very singular a crime, they proceeded with caution
and reluctance; (3) that they were moderate in the use of punishments;
and (4) that the afflicted church enjoyed many intervals of peace and
tranquillity. Notwithstanding the careless indifference which the most
copious and the most minute of pagan writers have shown to the affairs
of the Christians, it may still be in our power to confirm each of these
probable suppositions by the evidence of authentic facts.


THE INFANCY OF THE CHURCH

By the wise dispensation of providence, a mysterious veil was cast over
the infancy of the church, which, till the faith of the Christians was
matured and their numbers were multiplied, served to protect them not
from the malice, but even from the knowledge, of the pagan world. The
slow and gradual abolition of the Mosaic ceremonies afforded a safe
and innocent disguise to the more early proselytes of the gospel. As
they were by far the greater part of the race of Abraham, they were
distinguished by the peculiar mark of circumcision, offered up their
devotions in the temple of Jerusalem till its final destruction, and
received both the law and the prophets as the genuine inspirations
of the Deity. The Gentile converts, who by a spiritual adoption had
been associated to the hope of Israel, were likewise confounded under
the garb and appearance of the Jews; and as the polytheists paid less
regard to articles of faith than to the external worship, the new sect,
which carefully concealed or faintly announced its future greatness and
ambition, was permitted to shelter itself under the general toleration
which was granted to an ancient and celebrated people in the Roman
Empire. It was not long, perhaps, before the Jews themselves, animated
with a fiercer zeal and a more jealous faith, perceived the gradual
separation of their Nazarene brethren from the doctrine of the synagogue;
and they would gladly have extinguished the dangerous heresy in the
blood of its adherents. But the decrees of heaven had already disarmed
their malice; and though they might sometimes exert the licentious
privilege of sedition, they no longer possessed the administration of
criminal justice; nor did they find it easy to infuse into the calm
breast of a Roman magistrate the rancour of their own zeal and prejudice.
The provincial governors declared themselves ready to listen to any
accusation that might affect the public safety; but as soon as they were
informed that it was a question not of facts but of words, a dispute
relating only to the interpretation of the Jewish laws and prophecies,
they deemed it unworthy of the majesty of Rome seriously to discuss the
obscure differences which might arise among a barbarous and superstitious
people. The innocence of the first Christians was protected by ignorance
and contempt; and the tribunal of the pagan magistrate often proved their
most assured refuge against the fury of the synagogue. If, indeed, we
were disposed to adopt the traditions of a too credulous antiquity, we
might relate the distant peregrination, the wonderful achievements, and
the various deaths, of the twelve Apostles; but a more accurate inquiry
will induce us to doubt whether any of those persons who had been
witnesses to the miracles of Christ were permitted, beyond the limits of
Palestine, to seal with their blood the truth of their testimony. From
the ordinary term of human life, it may very naturally be presumed that
most of them were deceased before the discontent of the Jews broke out
into that furious war, which was terminated only by the ruin of Jerusalem.


PERSECUTIONS UNDER NERO

During a long period, from the death of Christ to that memorable Jewish
rebellion, we cannot discover any traces of Roman intolerance, unless
they are to be found in the sudden, the transient, but the cruel
persecution which was exercised by Nero against the Christians of the
capital, thirty-five years after the former and only two years before the
latter of those great events. The character of the philosophic historian,
to whom we are principally indebted for the knowledge of this singular
transaction, would alone be sufficient to recommend it to our most
attentive consideration.

[Illustration: ROMAN SARCOPHAGUS]

We have seen that in the tenth year of the reign of Nero, Rome was
afflicted by a fire which raged beyond the memory or example of former
ages. The monuments of Grecian art and of Roman virtue, the trophies of
the Punic and Gallic wars, the most holy temples and the most splendid
palaces were involved in one common destruction. Of the fourteen
regions or quarters into which Rome was divided, four only subsisted
entire, three were levelled with the ground, and the remaining seven,
which had experienced the fury of the flames, displayed a melancholy
prospect of ruin and desolation. The vigilance of government appears
not to have neglected any of the precautions which might alleviate
the sense of so dreadful a calamity. The imperial gardens were thrown
open to the distressed multitude, temporary buildings were erected for
their accommodation, and a plentiful supply of corn and provisions was
distributed at a very moderate price. The most generous policy seemed to
have dictated the edicts which regulated the disposition of the streets
and the construction of private houses; and as usually happens in an age
of prosperity, the conflagration of Rome, in the course of a few years,
produced a new city, more regular and more beautiful than the former.
But all the prudence and humanity affected by Nero on this occasion were
insufficient to preserve him from the popular suspicion. Every crime
might be imputed to the assassin of his wife and mother; nor could the
prince who prostituted his person and dignity in the theatre be deemed
incapable of the most extravagant folly. The voice of rumour accused the
emperor as the incendiary of his own capital; and as the most incredible
stories are the best adapted to the genius of an enraged people, it was
gravely reported, and firmly believed, that Nero, enjoying the calamity
which he had occasioned, amused himself with singing to his lyre the
destruction of ancient Troy. To divert a suspicion which the power of
despotism was unable to suppress, the emperor resolved to substitute in
his own place some fictitious criminals.

“With this view,” continues Tacitus,[k] “he inflicted the most exquisite
tortures on those men who, under the vulgar appellation of Christians,
were already branded with deserved infamy. They derived their name and
origin from Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, had suffered death
by the sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate. For a while this dire
superstition was checked; but it again burst forth, and not only spread
itself over Judea, the first seat of this mischievous sect, but was even
introduced into Rome, the common asylum which receives and protects
whatever is impure, whatever is atrocious. The confessions of those who
were seized discovered a great multitude of their accomplices, and they
were all convicted, not so much for the crime of setting fire to the
city, as for their hatred of human kind. They died in torments, and their
torments were imbittered by insult and derision. Some were nailed on
crosses; others sewn up in the skins of wild beasts and exposed to the
fury of dogs; others again, smeared over with combustible materials, were
used as torches to illuminate the darkness of the night. The gardens of
Nero were destined for the melancholy spectacle, which was accompanied
with a horse race, and honoured with the presence of the emperor, who
mingled with the populace in the dress and attitude of a charioteer. The
guilt of the Christians deserved indeed the most exemplary punishment;
but the public abhorrence was changed into commiseration, from the
opinion that those unhappy wretches were sacrificed not so much to the
public welfare as to the cruelty of a jealous tyrant.”

Those who survey with a curious eye the revolutions of mankind may
observe that the gardens and circus of Nero on the Vatican, which were
polluted with the blood of the first Christians, have been rendered still
more famous by the triumph and by the abuse of the persecuted religion.
On the same spot a temple, which far surpasses the ancient glories of the
Capitol, has been since erected by the Christian pontiffs; who, deriving
their claim of universal dominion from a humble fisherman of Galilee,
have succeeded to the throne of the cæsars, given laws to the barbarian
conquerors of Rome, and extended their spiritual jurisdiction from the
coast of the Baltic to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

But it would be improper to dismiss this account of Nero’s persecution,
till we have made some observations that may serve to remove the
difficulties with which it is perplexed, and to throw some light on the
subsequent history of the church.

(1) The most sceptical criticism is obliged to respect the truth of
this extraordinary fact and the integrity of this celebrated passage of
Tacitus. The former is confirmed by the diligent and accurate Suetonius,
who mentions the punishment which Nero inflicted on the Christians, a
sect of men who had embraced a new and criminal superstition. The latter
may be proved by the consent of the most ancient manuscripts; by the
inimitable character of the style of Tacitus; by his reputation, which
guarded his text from the interpolations of pious fraud; and by the
purport of his narration, which accused the first Christians of the most
atrocious crimes, without insinuating that they possessed any miraculous
or even magical powers above the rest of mankind.

(2) Notwithstanding it is probable that Tacitus was born some years
before the fire of Rome, he could derive only from reading and
conversation the knowledge of an event which happened during his infancy.
Before he gave himself to the public, he calmly waited till his genius
had attained its full maturity; and he was more than forty years of age
when a grateful regard for the memory of the virtuous Agricola extorted
from him the most early of those historical compositions which will
delight and instruct the most distant posterity. After making a trial of
his strength in the life of Agricola and the description of Germany, he
conceived, and at length executed, a most arduous work--the history of
Rome, in thirty books, from the fall of Nero to the accession of Nerva.
The administration of Nerva introduced an age of justice and prosperity,
which Tacitus had destined for the occupation of his old age; but when
he took a nearer view of his subject, judging, perhaps, that it was a
more honourable or a less invidious office to record the vices of past
tyrants than to celebrate the virtues of a reigning monarch, he chose
rather to relate, under the form of annals, the actions of the four
immediate successors of Augustus. To collect, to dispose, and to adorn a
series of fourscore years in an immortal work, every sentence of which
is pregnant with the deepest observations and the most lively images,
was an undertaking sufficient to exercise the genius of Tacitus himself
during the greater part of his life. In the last years of the reign of
Trajan, whilst the victorious monarch extended the power of Rome beyond
its ancient limits, the historian was describing, in the second and
fourth books of his annals, the tyranny of Tiberius; and the emperor
Hadrian must have succeeded to the throne before Tacitus, in the regular
prosecution of his work, could relate the fire of the capital and the
cruelty of Nero towards the unfortunate Christians. At the distance of
sixty years, it was the duty of the annalist to adopt the narratives of
contemporaries; but it was natural for the philosopher to indulge himself
in the description of the origin, the progress, and the character of the
new sect, not so much according to the knowledge or prejudices of the age
of Nero, as according to those of the time of Hadrian.

(3) Tacitus very frequently trusts to the curiosity or reflection of
his readers to supply those intermediate circumstances and ideas which,
in his extreme conciseness, he has thought proper to suppress. We may,
therefore, presume to imagine some probable cause which could direct
the cruelty of Nero against the Christians of Rome, whose obscurity,
as well as innocence, should have shielded them from his indignation,
and even from his notice. The Jews, who were numerous in the capital,
and oppressed in their own country, were a much fitter object for the
suspicions of the emperor and of the people; nor did it seem unlikely
that a vanquished nation, who already discovered their abhorrence of
the Roman yoke, might have recourse to the most atrocious means of
gratifying their implacable revenge. But the Jews possessed very powerful
advocates in the palace, and even in the heart of the tyrant--his wife
and mistress, the beautiful Poppæa, and a favourite player of the race
of Abraham, who had already employed their intercession in behalf of the
obnoxious people. In their room it was necessary to offer some other
victims; and it might easily be suggested that, although the genuine
followers of Moses were innocent of the fire of Rome, there had arisen
among them a new and pernicious sect of Galilæans, which was capable
of the most horrid crimes. Under the appellation of Galilæans, two
distinctions of men were confounded, the most opposite to each other in
their manners and principles; the disciples who had embraced the faith
of Jesus of Nazareth, and the zealots who had followed the standard of
Judas the Gaulonite. The former were the friends, the latter were the
enemies, of human kind; and the only resemblance between them consisted
in the same inflexible constancy which, in the defence of their cause,
rendered them insensible of death and tortures. The followers of Judas,
who impelled their countrymen into rebellion, were soon buried under the
ruins of Jerusalem; whilst those of Jesus, known by the more celebrated
name of Christians, diffused themselves over the Roman Empire. How
natural was it for Tacitus, in the time of Hadrian, to appropriate to the
Christians the guilt and the sufferings which he might, with far greater
truth and justice, have attributed to a sect whose odious memory was
almost extinguished!

(4) Whatever opinion may be entertained of this conjecture (for it is
no more than a conjecture), it is evident that the effect, as well as
the cause, of Nero’s persecution was confined to the walls of Rome; that
the religious tenets of the Galilæans, or Christians, were never made a
subject of punishment, or even of inquiry; and that, as the idea of their
sufferings was for a long time connected with the idea of cruelty and
injustice, the moderation of succeeding princes inclined them to spare a
sect oppressed by a tyrant whose rage had been usually directed against
virtue and innocence.[c]

Thus the massacre of the year 64 is not, strictly speaking, a religious
persecution, although, in the opinion of the pagans, there remained
a stain on the Christians. Their name came out of the darkness in an
inauspicious manner. It remained linked with a great public disaster,
and perhaps with a terrible crime in which authority pretended to trace
their influence. The second traditional persecution took place in the
last year of the reign of Domitian. We have seen to what it has been
reduced. There is no trace of any edict, no explicit evidence in profane
or ecclesiastical literature, until the middle of the second century.
Several passages must be subtly combined to draw the inference of
actions brought against many of the Christians, and we are reduced to
suppositions to decide the cause. The accusation of impiety appears, but
it cannot be said whether this charge is of a religious character; and it
seems doubtful.


PERSECUTION UNDER TRAJAN AND THE ANTONINES

It is under the reign of Trajan that the persecution of Christianity is
really inaugurated. A thick cloud hovers over this new crime, however,
and over the proceedings which are to follow. Pliny does not know where
to find the proof of the crime. Trajan, in his reply, points to the
statute law. The Christians, from this time, are beyond the reach of the
law. However, if there are no complaints and no accusers come forward,
the authorities will leave them in peace. If they are impeached in the
court of justice they will be condemned unless they forswear themselves.
This equivocal law regulated the position of the Christians under the
rule of the first three successors of Trajan. Neither Hadrian, Antoninus
Pius, nor Marcus Aurelius softened or aggravated it.

Under the rule of these princes, the best, most just, and most humane the
empire ever knew, the condemnations of the Christians are more frequent.
It is because the Christians are more numerous, and here and there
bolder, doubtless, and more imprudent; it is also because there is a new
actor on the stage, an anonymous actor, passionate, capricious, easily
irritated, and formidable in anger--the crowd, whose injunctions and
whose cries for death sometimes take the place of that accuser required
by the edict of Trajan. Or in public calamities it is on the Christians
that the wrath of the crowd falls. A terrible fate overtakes their
conventicles and sacred rites. They hide themselves and avoid all feasts,
they smile when others weep, and seem sad in times of prosperity.

Neither their altars, the name, nor the symbol of their god is known.
Blood is shed at their nocturnal meetings. Children are sacrificed,
devoured by the initiated, and there are scenes of unspeakable
debauchery. This is what is said, and in certain circumstances the least
spark is sufficient to kindle the fury of the multitude assembled in
the amphitheatres or the circus. Will the magistrates contend with the
rioters? Will they take up the cause of men legally outside the common
law? The voice of the public speaks, and they obey. This, together with
certain enmities and private grudges, is, doubtless, the explanation of
the sentences pronounced in Rome, and especially in the provinces, under
the Antonines. This is what would seem to have taken place in Smyrna in
the year 155, and at Lyons in 177. The crowd is the accuser. It is the
crowd that singles out the Christians and sentences them to death, and
it is only occasionally that the sentence which it has pronounced is not
fulfilled.

[Illustration: ROMAN DOOR KEYS, IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM]

Three rescripts have been drawn up which Hadrian, Antoninus, and
Marcus Aurelius successively are said to have made out in favour of
the Christians, and from one to the other of these edicts there is, as
it were, a _crescendo_ of kindness and toleration. The first of these
princes forbids the legates to condemn the Christians to satisfy the
clamouring of the people. The last, Marcus Aurelius, testifies to the
power of the Christians, whose kindness he has experienced and whom
he fears to see turned against him, and grants them full liberty of
worship. In our opinion these edicts are manifestly apocryphal, although
it is perhaps true that the emperors, supreme guardians of the law,
saw with displeasure the violent caprices of popular brutality take
the place of legal measures, and violate, as it were, the majesty of
Roman justice; and they may have written in this sense to their agents.
Hadrian especially, the most vigilant guardian of order in the provincial
administration, may have done this.

But the sentences pronounced against the Christians under the rule of
the Antonines, and the numerous defences in which the apologists, even
at this moment, make an appeal to the justice of the emperors, claiming
common law for the Christians, prove clearly that the law which condemned
them on account of their profession of faith had not been repealed.

The Antonines invariably made kind and humane princes, lovers of justice,
sparing of the lives of their subjects. Marcus Aurelius, in particular,
went too far in his complaisance and goodness of heart. The principle
of the stoical philosophy he had embraced, and which he was proud to
follow, taught the inviolability of liberty in private life, and far from
advising the persecution of opinions, it must rather have taught respect
for them.

On the other hand, in spite of a visible tendency on the part of the
authorities at this time to restore or to strengthen the old Roman
discipline, in spite of the alliance entered upon between philosophy and
the popular religion, multifarious worships flourished freely throughout
the empire. The emperors, whose official devoutness has nothing
exclusive, are admitted, like Hadrian, into the alien churches; or, like
Marcus Aurelius, do not fear to make an appeal in urgent cases to all
known religions. Amongst the philosophers, some, regarding such matters
with contempt, state that the diversity matters but little provided that
the heavenly sentiment is in the soul; others, incredulous and sceptical
like Lucian, scoff with impunity at all the gods and religious symbols,
sparing none. There is nothing in the empire resembling a state religion;
it would even be difficult to say precisely which is the religion of the
majority of the citizens.

Polytheism means diversity and confusion. There is no common formulary,
or catechism, nothing resembling the doctrinal teaching of a fixed and
definite theology. All the gods are accounted good, and the newest seem
to possess extraordinary virtues. Whence comes it that Christianity alone
is excluded from universal toleration and is legally without the rights
of the law? Whilst striving to answer this question, there is the risk
of defining and exaggerating ideas which hovered vaguely in the minds
of the princes and statesmen of that time, and of reducing dim notions
to too fixed formulas. The Christians in the second century are usually
taxed with atheism and impiety. It is certain that the apologists have
fair play in replying to this imputation, and answer it triumphantly. The
fact however remains that Christianity was the absolute negation of all
the symbols of pagan naturalism, that it condemned and repudiated without
exception all the gods and all worships, and aspired to destroy and
replace them. Lucian, it is true, was not more respectful to the various
prevailing superstitions, but Lucian’s invectives were an individual
piece of wit. He did not attempt to raise altar against altar, he did not
do the work of destruction in view of propaganda. He did not work against
the institutions in the name of a new community. He remained faithful to
the old philosophical tradition. His burst of laughter was as the last
hostile note uttered by philosophy, before disarming and offering a hand
to the popular religion.

The Christian objectors, also bitter, were far more in earnest and more
formidable. Their attacks amounted to a general assault, and cloaked
a manifestly subversive design. They did not scoff for the mere sake
of scoffing, but to overthrow and to make a distinct place for their
own community, establishing it on new foundations. Authority respects
the individual conscience, and grants it the greatest license, but the
general conscience is what is called conspiracy.

There is here no room for doubt. Impiety and atheism are in fact not
purely religious names, in the modern sense, but political imputations.
Religions in the empire are matters of state, or rather religion and
the state form only one commonwealth, of which the emperor is the head.
Lucian was free to be impious or atheistical. No inference is to be drawn
from this, however, though he may here and there have either imitators or
disciples.

But the Christian is not an individual unit, his name is legion; he
is a member of an association, a party which cannot be confounded
with a philosophical school. He belongs to an organised body which
has its members everywhere; which possesses a distinctive language,
rallying signs, a hierarchy, and a common purse maintained by voluntary
contributions; which holds clandestine meetings, celebrates nocturnal
rites of which popular imagination is afraid, and possesses certain means
of operation at a distance by means of delegates or circulars. And what
an organisation it is! Its members in Gaul have communication with Rome,
and with the cities of Asia and Phrygia. It covers the entire empire with
an invisible network. Philosophy, the daughter of curiosity and the work
of the brain, divides; Christian belief unites.

Do not these associates, these _collegiati_ of a new species, whose
secret designs and whose nearest hopes are unknown, but are in any case
manifestly in accordance with hatred of the morals, the customs, and
the institutions of the empire, form the beginning of a state within a
state? Are they not a menace to the public class, that which at all times
is reported inseparable from the preservation of existing institutions?
These are enemies; the more so that community of faith, hatred of the
state, and the bond of a common fear in the presence of danger and of
proscription holds them together.

Pertinax, on attaining to the imperial dignity, gave this for the first
watchword: “Let us fight”--a virile watchword, and one suited also to the
reign of Marcus Aurelius. In fact, on the frontiers the barbarians are
hastening to arm. Of the thirty legions of which he has the disposal,
the emperor is forced to muster twenty with numerous auxiliaries to
drive them beyond the Danube, and hold them in awe. During this time,
other peaceful barbarians, as they are called, profess contempt for
their country, enervate their minds by an unnerving mysticism, detaching
themselves from masculine duties and the rough obligations of civil and
military life, and by their attacks and their counsels noiselessly lay
the mine which will engulf the fortunes of Rome.

They respect, they say, the established powers, and offer up prayers
to their gods on behalf of the emperor; but they are heard to say that
marriage is a corruption, and a Christian slave dares to reply to the
judge that Christ has freed him, and amongst the foundations on which the
state and society, decency, family ties, and religion rest, there is not
one institution which finds favour in their sight.

The state has need of the devotion of all. It is a critical moment.
A war, which all good citizens must consider as a holy war, is added
to the scourge which devastates the empire. The stake is, perhaps,
civilisation itself. The Christians are reluctant to serve the country
at home or abroad. They wish to be neither soldiers nor magistrates.
They glory in being citizens of heaven. They wrap themselves up in
meditation, controversy, and the exercises of their piety. The community
is threatened. In every town they have made for themselves a city of
their own choosing, a society separate and apart, of which, they say, God
himself is the founder, which they call their church, and to which they
dedicate all their attention and their zeal. The service of their church
is the sole thing which moves them. The duties it imposes are, in their
eyes, the only essential and necessary duties.

The prince, their country, the public good, civilisation, Roman
splendour, are to them merely resounding names or vain idols. The church
is their country, their city, and their camp. This doubtless is the
meaning of the accusation, “enemies of the public,” which is applied to
the Christians. Doubtless neither the princes nor the magistrates saw it
in precisely that light. The Christian prophets foretold the end of the
world in the year 195. They did not foresee Constantine and Theodosius,
the old religion persecuted in its turn, and forced to hide from the
revenge of the Christians, the apologists returned, Libanius imploring
in the name of art that the temples and statues of the gods might be
spared, and Simmachus in the name of Roman splendour asking mercy for the
threatened altar of victory.

The danger was neither so urgent nor so clear in the second century.
Melito of Sardis was wont to say with the gravity of conviction that
the power and splendour of the empire had augmented with Christianity.
Others, with equal sincerity, protested that the Christians did not think
of agitating the state, that they had never been found amongst those who
stirred up seditious and military revolutions; that, on the contrary,
they kept themselves aloof from all parties, and rendered unto Cæsar that
which was his due--neither adoration nor incense, but civil submission
and obedience. Several times since the destruction of their temple in the
year 70, the Jews had risen in arms to shake off the Roman despotism, to
save or avenge their independence. The Christians could not be reproached
with any revolt; it is true that, sprung from every race, and for the
greater part from pagan families, they had no nationality to vindicate
or re-establish. None of them, moreover, had asserted a mission to
revolutionise society.

Saving the spiritual jurisdiction, they freely abandoned all other
matters, or held them of small account. During the first two centuries
despised, maltreated, spat upon, under the ban of opinion and of the
law, and often put to death, they were everywhere seen to be patient
and resigned, speaking less of the world than of heaven, and full of
confidence in a master who does no wrong and who can repair injustice.

Thus no precise explanation can be advanced to account for their being
styled public enemies. They were the seeds of a new society; one of their
doctors stated that their presence deferred the terrestrial judgment and
preserved the empire from ruin and corruption.

The true and philosophical significance of the persecutions is thus the
defence of the empire and its institutions, threatened by a new and
incomprehensible spirit. The emperors during the second century did not
see this public danger clearly; they felt it instinctively, and on its
account they strove to fortify or to awaken religion and patriotism.[d]


FOOTNOTES

[34] The history of Christianity, in its earliest stage, is only to
be found in the _Acts of the Apostles_; from no other source can we
learn the first persecutions inflicted on the Christians. Limited to
a few individuals and a narrow space, these persecutions interested
none but those who were exposed to them, and have had no other
chroniclers.--GUIZOT.

[35] In Cyrene they massacred 220,000 Greeks; in Cyprus, 240,000; in
Egypt, a very great multitude. Many of these unhappy victims were sawed
asunder, according to a precedent to which David had given the sanction
of his example. The victorious Jews devoured the flesh, licked up the
blood, and twisted the entrails, like a girdle, round their bodies.[e]




[Illustration: ROMAN METAL WORKER]




CHAPTER XXXVIII. ASPECTS OF CIVILISATION OF THE FIRST TWO CENTURIES OF
THE EMPIRE


THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES

In the first century of the empire the political circumstances of the
world were in a deplorable condition. Power was entirely concentrated in
Rome and the legions, and there the most shameful and degrading scenes
occurred. The Roman aristocracy which had conquered the world, and which,
in fact, alone had a share in the government under the rule of the
Cæsars, gave themselves up to saturnalian crimes of the most unbridled
kind ever witnessed.

Cæsar and Augustus, when instituting the imperial office, had clearly
discerned the needs of their times. The world was politically so corrupt
that no other form of government would have been possible. Since Rome had
conquered numberless provinces, the ancient constitution, founded on the
privileges of the patrician families, who were a species of obstinate
and malevolent Tories, could no longer continue. But Augustus in leaving
the future to chance had entirely neglected his political duty. Without
legitimate heirs, without laws of election, without proper rules of
adoption, without constitutional limits, Cæsarism was like an enormous
weight on the deck of a ship without ballast. The most terrible upheavals
were inevitable.

Three times in one century, under Caligula, under Nero, and under
Domitian, the greatest power that has ever existed fell into the hands
of execrable or extravagant men. The results were seen in horrors which
have hardly been surpassed by the monsters of Mongolian dynasties.[36] In
the fatal succession of rulers, we are almost reduced to making excuses
for Tiberius, who was wholly wicked only towards the end of his life, or
Claudius, who was only eccentric, wanting in judgment, and surrounded by
evil counsellors.

The most shameful ignominies of the empire, such as the apotheosis of the
emperor and his deification when still living, came from the East and
more particularly from Egypt, which was then the most corrupt country
in the world. The true Roman spirit still existed. Human nobility was
far from being extinct. There was still great traditional pride in
some families, who came into power with Nerva, who rendered the age of
the Antonines glorious. An epoch during which such absolutely virtuous
people lived as, for example, Quintilian, Pliny the Younger, and Tacitus
[are reputed to have been], is not an epoch of which one need despair.
Outward debauchery did not touch the great foundation of honesty and
sobriety which still existed in good Roman society; a few families were
still models of good conduct, of devotion to duty, of concord and solid
virtue. Admirable wives and admirable sisters were still to be found in
the houses of the patricians. Was there ever a more touching fate than
that of the chaste and youthful Octavia, daughter of Claudius and wife of
Nero, who remained pure in the midst of all this infamy, and was put to
death at twenty-two years of age, without ever having known happiness?
Women who in inscriptions are called _castissimæ_, _univiræ_ are not
rare. Wives accompany their husbands into exile, others share their
heroic death. The old Roman simplicity was not entirely lost, children
were wisely and carefully educated. The most aristocratic women were
known to work in wool; the vanities of the toilet were almost unknown in
the best families.

[Illustration: ROMAN KITCHEN UTENSILS

(In the British Museum)]

Those excellent statesmen who under Trajan seemed to spring from the
ground were not the product of the moment. They had been in office during
the preceding reigns, only they had had but little influence, being kept
in the background by the freedmen and infamous favourites of the emperor.
Men of the greatest merit thus occupied high places under Nero. The
framework was good, and the rise of the bad emperors to power, although
disastrous, did not suffice to change the general order of things and the
principles of the state. The empire, far from being decadent, was in all
the vigour of a most robust youth. The decadence was to come two hundred
years later, and strange to say under far less wicked emperors.

Politically the situation was analogous to that of France, which since
the Revolution has never enjoyed a direct succession of its ruling
powers, and can pass through perilous fortunes without hopelessly
damaging its internal organisation and national force. We naturally
compare the first century of the empire to the eighteenth century, an
epoch absolutely corrupt if we judge from the collections of anecdotes
belonging to the times, and during which certain families nevertheless
maintained their austere customs.

Philosophy made alliance with the honest Roman families and offered a
noble resistance. The school of stoics produced such grand characters as
Cremutius Cordus, Thrasea, Helvidius Priscus, Annæus Cornutus, Musonius
Rufus--all admirable upholders of aristocratic virtue. The rigidity and
exaggeration of this school were due to the horrible cruelty of the
government of the cæsars. The one idea of a man of real worth was to
accustom himself to pain and to prepare for death. Lucan with bad taste,
and Persius with superior talent, expressed the highest sentiments of
a great spirit. Seneca the philosopher, Pliny the Elder, and Papirius
Fabianus kept up a high standard of learning and philosophy. All were
not corrupted; there were some shining lights; but too often their only
alternative was death. The ignoble portion of humanity from time to time
got the upper hand. The spirit of frenzy and of cruelty then burst forth
and turned Rome into a veritable hell.

The government, which in Rome was so uncertain, was far better in the
provinces, and the shocks which disturbed the capital were hardly felt
there. In spite of its faults the Roman administration was far superior
to the monarchies and republics which had disappeared through conquest.
The reign of sovereign municipalities had passed away many centuries
before. The small states had been killed by their egotism, their
jealousy, their ignorance, and their disregard of private rights. The old
Grecian life, made up of struggles entirely external, no longer satisfied
the people. It had been charming in its day; but that brilliant Olympus,
a democracy of demi-gods, having lost its freshness, had become hard,
unfeeling, vain, superficial, for lack of sincerity and real uprightness.
This was the cause which resulted in the Macedonian domination, followed
by Roman rule.

The evils of excessive centralization were yet unknown to the empire.
Up to the time of Diocletian the towns and provinces were allowed great
liberty. In Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Lower Armenia, and Thrace
there were independent kingdoms under the protection of Rome. These
kingdoms only became sources of danger from the time of Caligula onwards,
because the great and far-sighted policy which Augustus had traced
with regard to them had not been carried out. The free towns--and they
were numerous--governed themselves according to their own laws; they
had legislative power and administered justice as in a self-governing
country; until the third century, municipal decrees were promulgated
with the formula, “the senate and the people.” Theatres served not only
for scenic pleasures, they were everywhere centres of agitation and
public opinion. The favour of the Romans towards the human race was the
theme of some adulatory orations which were not, however, devoid of
all sincerity. The doctrine of the “Roman peace,” the idea of a great
democracy organised under the protection of Rome, was the basis of all
thought. A Greek orator displayed vast learning in proving that the glory
of Rome ought to be regarded by all the branches of the Hellenic race
as a sort of common inheritance. As far as Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt
are concerned, it may be said that the Roman conquest did not destroy a
single liberty. Those countries were either indifferent to political life
or had never known it.

In spite of the exactions of the governors and the acts of violence
inseparable from absolute government, the world, in many ways, had never
been so happy. An administration coming from a centre far away was such
an advantage, that even the pillage of the prætors of the latter end of
the republic did not succeed in rendering it odious. Moreover, the _lex
Julia_ had greatly limited the field of abuses and extortion. Excepting
under Nero, the follies or the cruelty of the emperor did not go beyond
the Roman aristocracy and the immediate surroundings of the prince. Never
had those who wished to leave politics alone lived in greater peace. The
republic of ancient times, where everyone was forced into party quarrels,
was not pleasant to live in; supersession and exile were too frequent.

Now it seemed as if the times were ripe for wide propagandism, superior
to the quarrels of little towns, to the rivalries of dynasties. Attempts
against liberty owed their origin to the independence which still
remained to the provinces and communities, rather than to the Roman
administration. In those conquered countries where political needs had
not existed for several centuries, and where the people were deprived
only of the power of tearing each other to pieces by continual warfare,
the empire was an era of prosperity and welfare until then unknown and,
we may add without paradox, of liberty. On the one hand the freedom of
trade, and industry, and that personal liberty of which the Greek had no
idea, became possible. On the other hand the freedom which consists in
liberty of opinion could only be benefited by the new régime.

This liberty always gains in dealing with kings and princes more than
in dealing with a jealous and narrow-minded middle class. The Greek
republics had no such liberty of opinion. The Greeks achieved great
things without it, thanks to the unequalled power of their genius, but
for all that, Athens was actually under an inquisition. The inquisitor
was the archon, the holy office was the royal portico where charges of
impiety were tried. Accusations of this nature were very frequent--it was
the favourite theme of Attic orators. Not only philosophical offences,
such as denying God or providence, but the slightest offence against
the municipal doctrines, preaching a strange religion, the most puerile
omissions of the scrupulous laws pertaining to the mysteries, were crimes
punished with death. The gods whom Aristophanes scoffed at on the stage
could sometimes slay. They slew Socrates, they all but slew Alcibiades;
Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Theodorus the atheist, Diagoras of Melos,
Prodicus of Ceos, Stilpo, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Aspasia, Euripides,
were more or less seriously threatened.

Liberty of thought was, in fact, the fruit of the kingdoms which sprang
from the Macedonian conquest. Attalus and Ptolemy were the first to give
to thinkers a liberty which none of the old republics had ever offered
them. The Roman Empire continued on the same lines. There existed, under
the empire, more than one severe law against philosophers, but that was
on account of their meddling in politics. One might look in vain, in the
collection of Roman laws previous to Constantine, for a passage against
liberty of thought, or in the history of the emperors for a lawsuit about
abstract doctrines. Not a scholar was disturbed. Men who would have
been burned in the Middle Ages, such as Galen, Lucian, Plotinus, lived
peacefully, protected by the law.

The empire inaugurated a period of liberty, in the sense that it
abolished absolute government in families, towns, and tribes, and
replaced or modified such governments by that of the state. Absolute
power is even more vexatious than usual when it exercises its power in
a narrower circle. The ancient republics and feudalism tyrannised over
the individual more than the state has ever done. Granted that the Roman
Empire, at certain epochs, cruelly persecuted Christianity, at least
it did not kill it. The republics would have made it quite impossible;
Judaism, if it had not felt the pressure of Roman authority, would have
sufficed to crush it. It was the Roman magistrates who prevented the
Pharisees from destroying Christianity.

A broad idea of universal brotherhood, the outcome for the most part of
stoicism, and a kind of general sentiment of humanity were the fruit
of the less narrow form of government, and of the less circumscribed
education to which the individual was subjected. A new era and new
worlds were dreamed of. The public wealth was great, and, in spite of
the imperfections of the economic doctrines of the times, comfort was
widespread. Manners were not what they are often imagined to be. In Rome,
certainly, vice vaunted itself with revolting cynicism. Theatres, above
all, had introduced horrible depravity; certain countries, such as Egypt,
had also fallen to the lowest depths. But in the greater number of the
provinces there existed a middle class, amongst whom kindness, conjugal
fidelity, domestic virtue, and uprightness were sufficiently common.

[Illustration: ROMAN MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS]

Does there exist a more charming and ideal picture of family life in
the world of the honest middle class of small towns than that described
by Plutarch? What good nature, what peaceful habits, what chaste and
amiable simplicity! Chæronea was certainly not the only town where life
was so pure and innocent. There still remained in the general customs,
even beyond Rome, something cruel, either as a relic of ancient habits,
everywhere equally sanguinary, or through the special influence of Roman
austerity. But there was improvement in that respect. What sweet and pure
sentiment, what an impression of melancholy tenderness there is in the
writings of Virgil and of Tibullus! The world was taking shape and losing
its ancient rigour, acquiring freedom and moral sensibility. Principles
of humanity spread everywhere; equality and abstract ideas of the rights
of man were loudly preached by stoicism. Woman, thanks to the system of
dowries under Roman law, became more and more her own mistress; rules as
to the treatment of slaves were made--Seneca dined with his. Slaves were
no longer necessarily the grotesque and evil beings who were introduced
into Latin plays to be laughed at, and of whom Cato urges that they
should be treated as beasts of burden. Times had changed. The slave was
his master’s moral equal, and admittedly capable of virtue and fidelity,
of which he gave proof. Prejudice concerning nobility of birth was
diminishing.

Humane and just laws were passed even under the worst emperors. Tiberius
was an able financier; he founded a system of land tenure on a sound
basis. Nero introduced into the system of taxation, until then iniquitous
and barbarous, improvements which might shame even the present day. The
progress made in legislation was considerable, although the death penalty
was much too common. Love for the poor, charity, and universal sympathy
were accounted virtues.

The theatre was one of the scandals which gave the greatest offence to
virtuous people, and one of the first causes to excite the antipathy of
Jews and Judaisers of all kinds against the profane civilisation of the
time. These gigantic cauldrons seemed to them sewers in which all the
vices simmered. Whilst the front rows were applauding, scenes of the
greatest repulsiveness and horror were often taking place on the upper
benches. In the provinces gladiatorial combats were only established
with difficulty. The Hellenic countries, at least, disapproved of them,
and kept for the most part to the ancient Greek exercises. In the East,
cruel games always preserved a marked stamp of their Roman origin. The
Athenians, wishing to rival the Corinthians, having one day discussed
the subject of imitating their barbarous games, a philosopher got up and
proposed that first of all the altar of Pity should be overthrown. The
horror of the theatre, the stadium, the gymnasium, that is of all public
places which were the essential elements of a Greek or Roman town, was
thus one of the deepest sentiments of the Christians, and one of those
which had the greatest results.

Ancient civilisation was of a public kind; everything took place in
the open air, before the assembled citizens; in opposition to ours,
where life is private and secluded within the precincts of the home.
The theatre had succeeded the agora and the Forum. The anathema hurled
against the theatres reflected upon the whole of society. A deep rivalry
was established between the church, on the one hand, and the public
games on the other. The slave, hunted from the games, took refuge in
the church. One cannot sit down in these gloomy arenas, which are
always the best preserved remains of an ancient town, without seeing in
spirit the struggle between the two classes; here, the poor honest man,
seated in the last row, hiding his face and going out indignant, there
a philosopher getting up suddenly and reproaching the crowd with its
depravity.

These instances were rare in the first century. Nevertheless
protestations began to be heard, and the theatre fell into disrepute.
The legislation and administration of the empire was still in a state
of chaos. The central despotism, municipal and provincial liberty, the
caprice of governors, the outrages of independent communities, jostled
each other violently. But religious liberty gained in these conflicts.
The perfected autocratic government which was established from the time
of Trajan was to be far more fatal to the newly born religion than the
state of disorder, fertile in surprises, and the absence of a regular
police which characterised the time of the cæsars.

The institutions for public relief, founded on the principle that the
state has paternal duties towards its subjects, only developed to any
great degree from the time of Nerva and Trajan onwards. A few instances
of it are however found during the first century. There already existed
asylums for children, organised distributions of food to the needy,
fixed prices for bread with indemnities to the bakers, precautions for
provisioning, premiums and insurance for ship-owners, bread bonuses,
which permitted the purchase of corn at a reduced rate. All the emperors,
without exception, showed the greatest solicitude for these questions,
minor ones, perhaps, but such as at certain epochs took precedence of
all others. In remote antiquity, it might be said, the world needed no
charity. The world was then young and vigorous, almshouses were useless.
The good and simple Homeric ethics, according to which the guest and the
beggar come from Jupiter, are the ethics of a robust and gay adolescence.

Greece, in her classical age, enunciated the most exquisite maxims of
pity, of beneficence, of humanity, without a latent thought of social
anxiety or of melancholy. Man in that epoch was still healthy and happy,
evil could not be realised. With respect to mutual assistance the Greeks
were far in advance of the Romans. No liberal and benevolent disposition
came from that cruel aristocracy which exercised such oppressive sway
during the republic. At the time of which we are writing the colossal
fortunes of the aristocracy, luxury, the concentration of population in
certain places, and especially the hardness of heart peculiar to the
Roman and his aversion to pity, resulted in the birth of “pauperism.”
The kindness shown by certain emperors towards the riff-raff of Rome
only aggravated the danger. Bribery and the _tesseræ frumentariæ_ not
only encouraged the vice of idleness, but brought no remedy to misery.
In this particular, as in many others, the East was really superior to
the Western world. The Jews had true charitable institutions. The temple
of Egypt seemed to have possessed alms-boxes. The college of monks and
nuns of the Serapeum of Memphis was also, in a manner, a charitable
institution. The terrible crisis through which mankind was passing in the
capital of Europe was little felt in remote lands, where everyday life
had remained more simple. The reproach of having poisoned the earth, the
comparison of Rome to a courtesan who has poured out to the world the
wine of her immorality, was true in many ways. The provinces were better
than Rome, or rather the impure elements from all parts, accumulating
in Rome as in a sink, had formed an infectious spot where the old Roman
virtues were stifled and where good seed germinated slowly.[b]


MANNERS AND CUSTOMS

But it is the life of the capital itself that must chiefly claim our
attention here. Let us turn from the glowing generalities of Renan to a
more specific consideration of some important phases of the everyday life
of the people in the great centre to which all roads were said to lead.

In the early days of the empire, Rome was in the crisis of that
transitional state which most great capitals have experienced, when a
rapid increase in their population and in the transactions of daily life
has begun to outstrip the extension of their means of accommodation. The
increase of numbers must necessarily multiply the operations of industry,
which cross and recross each other in the streets of a great city; and
though neither the commerce nor manufactures of Rome were conducted on
the scale to which our ideas are accustomed, the retail traffic which
passed from hand to hand, and the ordinary affairs of business and
pleasure, must have caused an ever increasing stir and circulation among
the vast assemblage of human beings collected within its walls. The
uninterrupted progress of building operations, and the extension of the
suburbs simultaneously with the restoration of the city, must have kept
every avenue constantly thronged with wagons and vehicles of all sorts,
engaged in the transport of the cumbrous materials employed therein; the
crush of these heavy-laden machines, and the portentous swinging of the
long beams they carried round the corners of the narrow streets, are
mentioned among the worst nuisances and even terrors of the citizen’s
daily walk.

Neither of the rival institutions of the shop and the bazaar had been
developed to any great extent in ancient Rome. A vast number of trades
was exercised there by itinerant vendors. The street cries, which have
almost ceased within our own memory in London, were rife in the city of
the cæsars. The incessant din of these discordant sounds is complained of
as making existence intolerable to the poor gentleman who is compelled to
reside in the midst of them. The streets were not contrived, nor was it
possible generally to adapt them, for the passage of the well-attended
litters and cumbrous carriages of the wealthy, which began to traverse
them with the pomp and circumstance of our own aristocratic vehicles
of a century since;[37] while the police of the city seems never to
have contemplated the removal of the most obvious causes of crowd and
obstruction, in the exhibition of gymnastic and gladiatorial spectacles,
of conjurors’ tricks and the buffoonery of the lowest class of
stage-players, in the centre of the most frequented thoroughfares.

The noble never crossed his threshold without a numerous train of clients
and retainers; the lower people congregated at the corners of the streets
to hear the gossip of the day and discuss the merits of racers and
dancers; the slaves hovered over the steam of the open cookshops, or
loitered, on their masters’ errands, to gaze on the rude drawings or pore
over the placards on the walls. The last century had filled the imperial
capital with multitudes of foreigners, attracted from curiosity as much
as from motives of business to the renowned emporium of the wonders of
the world, who added to the number of idlers and loungers in the streets
of Rome; men of strange costumes and figures and, when they spoke, of
speech still stranger, who, while they gazed around them with awe and
admiration, became themselves each a centre of remark to a crowd of
wondering citizens. The marked though casual manner in which the throng
of the streets is noticed by the Roman writers, shows, in the strongest
way, how ordinary a feature it was of life in the city.

The streets, or rather the narrow and winding alleys, of Rome were
miserably inadequate to the circulation of the people who thus moved
along or thronged them; for the vici were no better than lanes or alleys,
and there were only two viæ, or paved ways, fit for the transport of
heavy carriages, the Sacra and the Nova, in the central parts of the
city. The three interior hills, the Palatine, the Aventine, and the
Capitoline, were sore impediments to traffic; for no carriages could pass
over them, and it may be doubted whether they were even thoroughfares for
foot passengers. The occurrence, not unusual, of a fire or an inundation,
or the casual fall of a house, must have choked the circulation of
the life-blood of the city. The first, indeed, and the last of these,
were accidents to which every place of human resort is liable; but the
inundations of Rome were a marked and peculiar feature of her ancient
existence.

Augustus, with far-seeing economic sagacity, was anxious to employ all
men of rank and breeding in practical business, while at the same time
he proposed to them his own example as a follower both of the Muses and
the Graces. The Roman noble rose ordinarily at daybreak, and received
at his levée the crowd of clients and retainers who had thronged the
steps before his yet closed door from the hours of darkness. A few words
of greeting were expected on either side, and then, as the sun mounted
the eastern sky, he descended from his elevated mansion into the Forum.
He might walk surrounded by the still lingering crowd, or he might be
carried in a litter; but to ride in a wheeled vehicle on such occasions
was no Roman fashion.[38] Once arrived in the Forum, he was quickly
immersed in the business of the day. He presided as a judge in one of
the basilicas, or he appeared himself before the judges as an advocate, a
witness, or a suitor. He transacted his private affairs with his banker
or notary; he perused the public journal of yesterday, and inquired how
his friend’s cause had sped before the tribunal of the prætor. At every
step he crossed the path of some of the notables of his own class, and
the news of the day and interests of the hour were discussed between them
with dignified politeness.

Such were the morning occupations of a _dies fastus_, or working day: the
holy day had its appropriate occupation in attendance upon the temple
services, in offering a prayer for the safety of the emperor and people,
in sprinkling frankincense on the altar, and, on occasions of special
devotion, appeasing the gods with a sacrifice. But all transactions of
business, secular or divine, ceased at once when the voice of the herald
on the steps of the Hostilian Curia proclaimed that the shadow of the sun
had passed the line on the pavement before him, which marked the hour of
midday. Every door was now closed; every citizen, at least in summer,
plunged into the dark recesses of his sleeping chamber for the enjoyment
of his meridian slumber. The midday siesta terminated, generally
speaking, the affairs of the day, and every man was now released from
duty and free to devote himself, on rising again, to relaxation or
amusement till the return of night. If the senate had been used sometimes
to prolong or renew its sittings, there was a rule that after the tenth
hour, or four o’clock, no new business could be brought under its notice,
and we are told of Asinius Pollio that he would not even open a letter
after that hour.

[Illustration: ROMAN WRESTLERS]

Meanwhile Rome had risen again to amuse and recreate itself, and the
grave man of business had his amusements as well as the idler of the
Forum. The exercises of the Field of Mars were the relaxation of the
soldiers of the republic; and when the urban populace had withdrawn
itself from military service, the traditions of the Campus were still
cherished by the upper ranks, and the practice of its mimic war
confined, perhaps, exclusively to them. The swimming, running, riding,
and javelin-throwing of this public ground became under the emperors a
fashion of the nobility: the populace had no taste for such labours, and
witnessed perhaps with some surprise the toils to which men voluntarily
devoted themselves who possessed slaves to relieve them from the most
ordinary exertions of the day. But the young competitors in these
athletic contests were not without a throng of spectators; the porticoes
which bordered the field were crowded with the elder people and the
women, who shunned the heat of the declining sun; many a private dwelling
looked upon it from the opposite side of the river, which was esteemed
on that account a desirable place of residence. Augustus had promised
his favour to every revival of the gallant customs of antiquity, and all
the Roman world that lived in his smiles hastened to the scene of these
ancient amusements to gratify the emperor, if not to amuse themselves.

The ancients, it was said, had made choice of the Field of Mars for the
scene of their mimic warfare for the convenience of the stream of the
Tiber, in which the weary combatants might wash off the sweat and dust,
and return to their companions in the full glow of recruited health and
vigour. But the youth of Rome in more refined days were not satisfied
with these genial ablutions. They resorted to warm and vapour-baths, to
the use of perfumes to enhance the luxury of refreshment.

[Illustration: ROMAN BATH IMPLEMENTS]

The Romans had, indeed, a universal and extraordinary fondness for the
bath, which degenerated in their immoderate use of it into a voluptuous
and enervating luxury. The houses of the opulent were always furnished
with chambers for this purpose; they had their warm and cold baths as
well as their steam apparatus, and the application of oil and perfumes
was equally universal among them. From the earliest times there were
perhaps places of more general resort, where the plebeian paid a trifling
sum for the enjoyment of this luxury; and among other ways of courting
popular favour was that of subsidising the owners of these common baths,
and giving the people the free use of them for one or more days. Agrippa
carried this mode of popular bribery to excess. Besides the erection of
lesser baths to the number of 170, he was the first to construct public
establishments of the kind, or thermæ, in which the citizens might
assemble in large numbers, and combine the pleasure of purification with
the exercise of gymnastic sports; while at the same time their tastes
might be cultivated by the contemplation of paintings and sculptures, and
by listening to song and music.

The Roman, however, had his peculiar notion of personal dignity, and
it was not without a feeling of uneasiness that he stripped himself
in public below the waist, however accustomed he might be to exhibit
his chest and shoulders in the performance of his manly exercises. The
baths of Mæcenas and Agrippa remained without rivals for more than
one generation, though they were ultimately supplanted by imperial
constructions on a far more extensive scale. In the time of Augustus the
resort of women to the public baths was forbidden, if indeed such an
indecorum had yet been imagined. At a later period, whatever might be
the absence of costume among the men, the women at least were partially
covered. An ingenious writer has remarked on the effect produced on
the spirits by the action of air and water upon the naked body. The
unusual lightness and coolness, the disembarrassment of the limbs, the
elasticity of the circulation, combine to stimulate the sensibility of
the nervous system. Hence the thermæ of the great city resounded with the
shouts and laughter of the bathers, who, when emerged from the water and
resigned to the manipulations of the barbers and perfumers, gazed with
voluptuous languor on the brilliant decorations of the halls around them,
or listened with charmed ears to the singers and musicians, and even to
the poets who presumed upon their helplessness to recite to them their
choicest compositions.


SUPPERS AND BANQUETS

The bath was a preparation for the _cæna_ or supper, which deserves
to be described as a national institution; it had from the first its
prescriptions and traditions, its laws and usages; it was sanctified by
religious observances, and its whole system of etiquette was held as
binding as if it had had a religious significance. Under the protection
of the gods to whom they poured their libations, friends met together for
the recreation equally of mind and body. If the conversation flagged, it
was relieved by the aid of minstrels, who recited the gallant deeds of
the national heroes; but in the best days of the republic the guests of
the noble Roman were men of speech not less than of deeds, men instructed
in all the knowledge of their times, and there was more room to fear lest
their converse should degenerate into the argumentative and didactic than
languish from the want of matter or interest.

It is probable, however, that the table talk of the higher classes at
Rome was peculiarly terse and epigrammatic. Many specimens have been
preserved to us of the dry, sententious style which they seem to have
cultivated; their remarks on life and manners were commonly conveyed
in solemn or caustic aphorisms, and they condemned as undignified and
Greekish any superfluous abundance in the use of words. The graceful and
flowing conversations of Cicero’s dialogues were imitated from Athenian
writings, rather than drawn after the types of actual life around him.
“People at supper,” said Varro, himself not the least sententious of his
nation, “should neither be loquacious nor mute; eloquence is for the
Forum, silence for the bed chamber.” Another rule of the same master of
etiquette, that the number of the guests should not exceed nine, the
number of the Muses, nor fall short of three, the number of the Graces,
was dictated by a sense of the decorous proprieties of the Roman banquet,
which the love of ostentation and pride of wealth were now constantly
violating.

Luxury and the appetite for excitement were engaged in multiplying
occasions of more than ordinary festivity, on which the most rigid of
the sumptuary laws allowed a wider license to the expenses of the table.
On such high days the numbers of the guests were limited neither by law
nor custom; the entertainer, the master or father, as he was called, of
the supper, was required to abdicate the ordinary functions of host,
and, according to the Greek custom, a king of the wine or arbiter of the
drinking, was chosen from among themselves by lot, or for his convivial
qualities, by the bacchanalian crew around him.

Our own more polished but not unmanly taste must look with amazement and
even disgust at the convivial excesses of the Romans at this period,
such as they have themselves represented them to us. Their luxury was a
coarse and low imitation of Greek voluptuousness; and for nothing perhaps
did the Greeks more despise their rude conquerors than for the manifest
failure of their attempts at imitating the vices of their betters.

The Romans vied with one another in the cost rather than the elegance of
their banquets, and accumulated with absurd pride the rarest and most
expensive viands on their boards, to excite the admiration of their
parasites, not to gratify their palates. Cleopatra’s famous conceit, in
dissolving the pearl in vinegar, may have been the fine satire of an
elegant Grecian upon the tasteless extravagance of her barbarian lover.
Antony, indeed, though he degraded himself to the manners of a gladiator,
was a man of noble birth, and might have imbibed purer tastes at the
tables of the men of his own class; but the establishment of the imperial
régime thrust into the high places of society a number of low-born
upstarts, the sons of the speculators and contractors of the preceding
generation, who knew not how to dispense with grace the unbounded wealth
their sires had accumulated.

[Illustration: ROMAN DINNER-TABLE

(After De Montfaucon)]

Augustus would fain have restrained these excesses, which shamed the
dignified reserve which he wished to characterise the imperial court; he
exerted himself by counsel and example, as well as by formal enactments,
to educate his people in the simpler tastes of the older time, refined
but not yet enervated by the infusion of Hellenic culture.[39] His laws,
indeed, shared the fate of the sumptuary regulations of his predecessors,
and soon passed from neglect into oblivion. His example was too austere,
perhaps, to be generally followed even by the most sedulous of his own
courtiers. He ate but little, and was content with the simplest fare:
his bread was of the second quality, at a time when the best was far
less fine than ours; and he was satisfied with dining on a few small
fishes, curds or cheese, figs and dates, taken at any hour when he had
an appetite rather than at regular and formal meals. He was careful,
however, to keep a moderately furnished table for his associates, at
which he commonly appeared himself, though he was often the last to
arrive, and the first to retire from it.

The ordinary arrangement of a Roman supper consisted of three low
couches, disposed, horse-shoe fashion, before a low table, at which
the attendant slaves could minister without incommoding the recumbent
guests. Upon each couch three persons reclined, a mode which had been
introduced from Greece, where it had been in use for centuries, though
not from heroic times. The Egyptians and Persians sat at meat; so, till
the Greeks corrupted them, did also the Jews; the poetical traditions
of Hellas represented the gods as sitting at their celestial banquets.
The Macedonians also, down to the time of Alexander, are said to have
adopted the more ordinary practice; and such was the custom at Rome till
a late period. When the men first allowed themselves the indulgence of
reclining, they required boys and women to maintain an erect posture,
from notions of delicacy; but in the time of Augustus no such distinction
was observed, and the inferiority of the weaker sex was only marked by
setting them together on one of the side couches, the place of honour
being always in the centre.

Reclined on stuffed and cushioned sofas, leaning on the left elbow, the
neck and right arm bare and his sandals removed, the Roman abandoned
himself, after the exhaustion of the palæstra and the bath, to all the
luxury of languor. His slaves relieved him from every effort, however
trifling; they carved for him,[40] filled his cup for him, supplied every
dish for him with such fragmentary viands as he could raise to his mouth
with his fingers only, and poured water upon his hands at every remove.
Men of genius and learning might amuse themselves with conversation
alone; those for whom this resource was insufficient had many other
means of entertainment to resort to. Music and dancing were performed
before them; actors and clowns exhibited in their presence; dwarfs and
hunchbacks were introduced to make sport for them; Augustus himself
sometimes escaped from these miserable vulgarities by playing at dice
between the courses; but the stale wit and practical humour, with which
in many houses the banquet seems to have been seasoned, give us a lower
idea of the manners of the Roman gentlemen than any perhaps of these
trifling pastimes. The vulgarity, however, of the revellers of Rome was
far less shocking than their indecency, and nothing perhaps contributed
more to break down the sense of dignity and self-respect, the last
safeguard of pagan virtue, than the easy familiarity engendered by their
attitude at meals.

Some persons, indeed, men no doubt of peculiar assurance and conceit,
ventured to startle the voluptuous languor of the supper-table by
repeating their own compositions to the captive guests. But for the
most part the last sentiments of expiring liberty revolted against this
intolerable oppression. The Romans compounded for the inviolate sanctity
of their convivial hours by surrendering to the inevitable enemy a solid
portion of the day. They resigned themselves to the task of listening as
part of the business of the morning.[c]

Banquets of a more pretentious order played a very important part in the
life of the Romans of all classes. Anniversaries, religious festivals,
the necessity also that those who belonged to the same college should
treat common affairs together, or simply the desire of spending life
more enjoyably, had multiplied them during the empire to an unlimited
degree. Men of distinction especially sought at them the pleasure of
conversing freely with their friends. During the endless and capricious
conversations politics were not forgotten. What was said after dinner,
when the heat of festivity had animated the guests and loosened their
tongues was not always favourable to the imperial government. It was
during one of these repasts that the prætor Antistius read those
insulting verses concerning Nero which led to his banishment. As has just
been said, however, the banquet-hall was not the place usually chosen
for reading verses or other compositions. Freer scope for this and for
the public promulgation of serious ideas in general was found in the
so-called “circles.”


THE CIRCLES

It is not so easy to know what was meant by the circles. To form an
exact idea of them, the habits of the ancient nations must be taken into
account. In those delightful climates people do not remain shut up all
day at home; on the contrary, the day is generally spent out of doors.
The inhabitants of Rome when they were not at the theatre or the circus
walked about looking at the perpetual sights the Eternal City offered to
the curious of all nations. They went about the streets, they stopped
in the public squares, seated themselves when they were tired, on the
benches and _exedræ_, with which the public places were supplied. These
groups of idlers, gathered together to look at something or to talk,
were called _circuli_. They collected especially in the Campus Martius
and in the Forum, around the quacks selling their remedies, the showmen
with their rare or performing animals and those who performed feats of
strength. Sometimes a miserable poet, unhappy at having no readers,
took advantage of these groups to venture to spout his verses to the
assembly. Very often they were gathered together only to listen to those
people who posed as persons of importance, and professed to be well
informed. There were a great number of such in Rome, and at times of
crisis, in those moments of anxiety and expectation when men are anxious
to hear what they tremble to know, they acquired much credit. After
having listened to them, everybody gave his opinion. Blame or praise
was gravely meted out to the generals, plans of campaign were made, and
treaties of peace discussed. Towards the end of the republic and during
the beginning of the empire these street politicians assembled together
at the foot of the tribune reserved for speeches, which won them the name
of _subrostrani_. Thence were spread gloomy rumours which alarmed Rome.
It was said that the Parthians had invaded Armenia, that the Germani had
crossed the Rhine, and the crowd that listened to this sinister news
did not always spare the emperor and his ministers, who were not taking
strong enough measures for the protection of the frontiers. The emperor
had consequently taken steps to have these bold speakers watched. He sent
disguised soldiers who mingled in these groups, and reported to their
chiefs what they had heard.

These open-air discussions which the spies of the prince could hear, were
thus not without danger. Those who did not care to run the risk of being
ruined took care to say nothing there; they only spoke out in company in
which they thought themselves safe. Besides, opportunities for speaking
were not wanting. I do not doubt that there existed in Rome at that time
something similar to what is nowadays called society, that is to say,
meetings of people, usually unknown to each other, of different origin
and fortune, who have no affairs to discuss, no common interests to
debate, and who in collecting only seek the pleasure of being together.
What is for us the peculiar characteristic of society, that the women
freely associate with the men, was often found at Rome also. It was not
forbidden to the women to appear at the banquets, even when strangers to
the family were invited, and Cornelius Nepos tells us that nobody was
astonished to see a Roman taking his wife with him when he went to dine
out, a thing which would have greatly shocked the Greeks. Thus repasts
were already social assemblies, but it may be safely asserted that
there were many others although accounts of them have not reached us.
I even believe that as early as the first century, the habit of living
together had sometimes given rise to a certain gallantry between the two
sexes, hitherto unknown in ancient society, and which at moments might
resemble the customs of our seventeenth century. Here is the portrait
which Martial sketches, of a dandy of his time: “A dandy is a man whose
hair is nicely parted, who breathes perfumes, who hums between his teeth
songs from Spain and Egypt, and knows how to beat time with his hairless
arms; he does not leave the chairs of the ladies during the whole day, he
has always something to whisper in their ears, knows all the scandal of
Rome, will tell you the name of the woman with whom so-and-so is in love,
whose society another person frequents, and knows by heart the genealogy
of the horse Hirpinus.” It seems to me this dandy is not very different
from Molière’s marquis, and like him he has the habit of not “leaving the
chairs of the ladies.” There were some people at Rome whose assiduity
took them far; and Tacitus tells us of a consul, a clever man, and a
terrible banterer as well, who owed his political rank to the influence
of women.

When men are alone together they discuss and discourse; in presence of
ladies they are forced to converse. Seneca described wonderfully well
these society conversations where everything was treated and nothing
thoroughly discussed, and where one subject followed another so easily.
In a few hours the conversation of these clever people wandered far from
the starting-point. They talked doubtless much of themselves and other
people. The habit of living together encouraged a taste for studying each
other, and everyone’s passions and characteristics became thoroughly
known. In that immense town, which might easily, as Lucan says, have
contained the whole world, where so many bitter battles were waged daily
to conquer power and wealth, subjects of study were not wanting to these
worldly moralists. They collected amusing anecdotes of well-known people
and came in the evening to relate them to their friends. Literature was
also an absorbing topic. The whole of Roman society liked and cultivated
it. As a rule Romans were orators by occupation; poets simply as a means
of distraction. A little poetry flourished in those days which has not
lived until our time; it did not deserve to live, being merely written
to charm the elegant society of those days. As in the time of the Abbé
Delille, games of dice or chess, fishing and swimming, dancing and music,
the art of ordering a dinner or receiving guests, were all sung in verse.
However agreeable this poetry might be, it could not always charm, and
new subjects had constantly to be thought of to animate the conversation.
It was thus that, when literature and scandal had been thoroughly
exhausted, politics followed in the natural course.

It is quite conceivable that much raillery was indulged in by these
clever people who above everything did not wish to appear fools, and
would not take seriously all the comedies that were being played in the
senate. Reserved and sharp lookers-on, little disposed towards any kind
of enthusiasm, they must have smiled at the excessive flattery with which
the prince was overwhelmed, and the deification of the dead or living
emperor must have left them quite unmoved. Society generally develops
a leaning towards irony; to know how to lash a neighbour agreeably is
doubtless a very estimable quality, and probably it was valued still more
when this neighbour was an emperor. A dangerous game it must have been,
and raillery aimed so high might have cost dear, but danger was not a
sufficient reason for stopping a joke when it was clever and appreciated.
“I cannot be sorry,” said Seneca, “for those people who would rather
lose their heads than a clever saying.” In this charming but frivolous
society, nobody would miss uttering a clever repartee, even at the risk
of losing his head. All had to compensate themselves for the restraint
they had gone through in the senate, where they were forced to have
smiling faces and to second the praises which were showered upon the
prince by his friends. They always left dissatisfied with themselves
and with others, their hearts filled with rage that must find vent. They
expressed themselves freely directly they were sure of being amongst
friends whom they could trust. In these secret meetings they above all
liked to communicate news “which could not be spoken of or listened to
without danger.”

Rome was then overrun by those bearers of news which newspapers and
telegraphy have done away with. We met some just now in the clubs; they
were still more numerous in society gatherings. They knew everything
that was being talked of in the army and in the provinces, and gave
the most precise information on whatever happened. When an important
personage died, they related all the circumstances of his death, they
said without hesitation who had held the dagger or poured out the poison.
Such a number of wicked rumours had never circulated in Rome as since
the right of free speech had been denied the people. The authorities in
trying to find those who spread the rumours only gave them more credit
than they deserved. Besides it is in nature with difficulty to believe
what is openly told and to accept without a word what is whispered in
the ear. Thus all measures taken by the government were used against
itself. Everything became known; everything was believed; reasons were
found for everything; and the most natural reasons were not those most
readily believed; to be listened to it was necessary to imagine strange
and improbable explanations for everything.

[Illustration: ROMAN NETTING NEEDLES

(In the British Museum)]

This opposition took many different forms and changed according to
circumstances. Sometimes it was very much on the surface, at others it
was hidden in the shade, but bold or timid, visible or hidden, it never
died out, and it was this suppleness and obstinacy which composed its
strength. Sometimes it dared to reveal itself to all through the medium
of a pamphlet; one of those satirical testaments, for example, which it
was the fashion to invent for important personages, in which the dead
said exactly what they thought of the living. Sometimes it took the
form of malicious verses which were whispered around, and after having
travelled through every rank of this discontented population ended by
being written, by an unknown hand, on the walls of the Forum. “Tiberius
disdains wine,” they said, “now that he thirsts for blood; he drinks
blood to-day as formerly he drank wine.” If this audacity seemed too
risky, they fell back on malicious allusions which were easily grasped
by wide-awake minds. When these allusions were followed up and punished,
a few furtive words were exchanged by friends at meeting. If it became
impossible to speak at all there was an eloquence in the people’s
silence, which showed what they were thinking of, and means were found to
render even silence seditious.


PUBLIC READINGS

Public lectures or readings became the fashion about the middle of
the reign of Augustus--they were introduced by Pollio. They attained
rapid success, which is not to be wondered at, taking into account the
occupations and tastes of the people of that period. Literature was much
liked, and if we believe Horace, nearly everyone cherished a belief
in his ability to write. It is never customary to keep one’s writings
for one’s self, seeming sin not to let them be known to the public.
Unfortunately in antiquity books could not be so easily propagated as
to-day. Those of celebrated writers spread quickly enough and went far,
but the others ran the risk of remaining in obscurity. Thus the authors,
to escape this sad destiny and to make themselves known in some manner,
thought of reading their words in public, thereby saving their works from
the death which threatened them. If these authors were poor they went
where crowds were likely to gather, to the Forum, under the porticoes,
in the public baths; they even stopped the passers-by and spouted their
poetry to them at the risk of being hissed or torn to pieces, if the
people were not in a humour to listen to them. If rich they invited their
clients and friends to dinner, treated them well, and took advantage of
their gratitude to cause themselves to be listened to and admired. Horace
tells us the amusing story of a terrible creditor who gathered together
his insolvent victims on the day of reckoning to read to them the very
dull works he had written; they had to come or pay. In order to obtain
leniency the unfortunate guests had to bend their backs as resigned
victims and applaud.

Pollio was not poor enough to have to resort to the public places nor
foolish enough to be satisfied with bought praise. He wished particularly
to have his tragedies and tales become known. This vain person who had
helped Cæsar and Octavius to the first place was not satisfied with the
second, and expected to obtain in literature the importance and place
that he had failed to get in politics. This gave him the idea of choosing
a room in a house, of arranging it like a theatre, that is, with an
orchestra and galleries, and inviting by tickets people whom he knew or
wished to know, to come to hear his works read. Soon others followed his
example, and it was soon the fashion to do nothing else in Rome during
the months of April and August but to assemble in these lecture rooms.

It is easy to form an idea of the sentiments brought by the guests to
these literary festivals. Auditors and lecturers belonged, as a rule,
to the best society, and shared in all the hates and prejudices of the
upper class. Opposition, as it may be supposed, flourished in these
public lectures. It was here that one could speak, when speech was not
forbidden; here that Titinius Capito, after the death of Domitian, read
the story of his victims. It was a duty to come and listen. “It seemed,”
says Pliny, “that we were listening to the melancholy praises of the
victims who had not been given funeral honours.” Under the harsh rulers
caution was naturally necessary, yet nevertheless a way was found to
speak. In the darkest times of the reign of Nero, Curiatius Maternus, the
poet, dared to read a poem full of disagreeable allusions to the emperor.
He continued, under Vespasian, his little war of epigrams. “He read one
day of Cato, and forgot himself,” says Tacitus, “to think only of his
hero.” Applause was not wanting to the bold tirades of the poet; the next
day the whole of Rome spoke about his audacity and the dangers to which
it would expose him.

The tragedies of Curiatius Maternus are lost, but those of Seneca remain,
and give us an idea of what was allowed to be said in the lecture rooms.
These works are second rate, and could be judged very severely if
considered in the light of plays for the theatre, or if compared to the
works of Sophocles and Euripides. It must be remembered, however, that
they were not written for the stage, being destined for public reading.
They are drawing-room tragedy, hence must not be treated as tragedy for
the theatre. This order of play may seem unworthy or false; it can be
severely condemned; it is a distinct order, nevertheless, and is not
subject to the rules that govern others; also, having a different public,
certain defects are necessary to enable it to please. Seneca, who was
eager to succeed, submitted to these conditions willingly. His aim was to
flatter the tastes of his audience, and he knew that he could interest
them only by speaking of their times and their friends; he did this
openly and without hesitation; it might be said from the way he expressed
himself that he wished them to see for themselves that the present
interested him more than the past; that he was always thinking of Rome
even when speaking of Argos or of Thebes. This is why political allusions
are so frequent in his works.[e]


LIBRARIES AND BOOK-MAKING

It must not be supposed, however, that the author in Rome depended solely
upon verbal utterance for the circulation of his ideas. Nothing could be
further from the fact. The publishing no less than the writing of books
was a recognised form of business and one that apparently flourished.

Notwithstanding the entire loss of all the books produced in Rome in the
early days, we are supplied with tolerably full information as to the
making and use of books there during the later period of the republic,
and throughout the empire.

The private library discovered at Herculaneum gives a perfectly clear
idea of the way in which the books were kept in an ordinary house. This
library contained seventeen hundred books. It was so small a room,
however, that all its shelves could be reached from its centre. The
books themselves, consisting of rolls, were contained in round cases
called _capsæ_, and we have the further evidence of various statues and
pictures, as well as written descriptions, to prove that this was the
usual method of caring for manuscripts.

The books of this period were always in rolls, never folded after the
modern method. This applies not merely to papyrus books, but to the
parchment ones also. Generally the strip of papyrus or parchment was
inserted at one end into a slit in a reed or cane about which the
manuscript was rolled as written. Usually a corresponding cane was
supplied at the other end after the book was completed, so that the
book could be rolled either way, thus greatly facilitating the reading.
Presumably the book as ordinarily kept ready for use would be rolled on
the lower reed, so that anyone unrolling it began at once with the first
column, the columns being arranged transversely. A tag or label was
usually attached to the manuscript, and these tags are represented in the
paintings on the walls of Pompeii as projecting from the cases in which
the books are stored. The length of a papyrus or parchment strip varied
indefinitely, but it appears to have been usual to write an entire
book of any given work on a single strip. The relatively short books
into which most classical works were divided facilitated this method;
or perhaps it became customary to divide works into small books for the
convenience of the scribe, rather than because of any logicality in the
method itself.

It appears that in the later Roman times it was quite the fashion to
have a library in every ordinary house, and some of these libraries
attained very respectable proportions. Thus it is said that the
grammarian Epaphroditus had a library of thirty thousand volumes, and
that Sammanicus Serenus had one of sixty-two thousand volumes. The fact
that Augustus confiscated two thousand copies of the pseudo-sibylline
oracles testifies to the wide prevalence of the reading, or at least the
book-buying, habit. No doubt this distinction between the buying and
the reading of books should be clearly drawn in the case of the Romans
as elsewhere. Still, it will not do to draw too sweeping conclusions
from the sneers of Seneca and Cicero, which are so often quoted as
implying that the Romans bought books as ornaments, rather than for their
contents. Doubtless the reproach was true then as now of a large number
of purchasers; still, the making and the selling of books must always
imply the existence of a taste for books, and such a fashion could never
have come into vogue unless a very large number of people were actually
book readers. In point of fact, the book business in Rome assumed
proportions that seem almost incredible. Book stores were numerous in
the more frequented parts of the city, and, as far as one can learn, the
trade flourished quite in the modern fashion. Within the shop the rolls
were ranged on shelves for the inspection of the would-be purchaser, and
outside on pillars were advertised the names of the authors represented.

Naturally enough, when private libraries were the fashion there were
numerous public libraries as well. According to Publius Victor, there
were no fewer than twenty-nine of these public libraries in Rome. Asinius
Pollio, the friend of Cæsar, and the famous patron of literature of his
time, who died in the year 6 B.C., was credited with being the founder
of the first public library, although there is a tradition that Orielus
Paullus, the conqueror of Macedonia, brought back with him to Rome a
large collection of books in 168 B.C. Be that as it may, there probably
was no very great taste for reading in Rome at that early period, and it
was not until the time of Augustus that public libraries began to assume
real importance.

Augustus himself, carrying out the intention of Julius Cæsar, founded two
public libraries, one called the Octavian, and the other the Palatine.
From that time the founding of public libraries became a fashion with the
emperors, Tiberius, Vespasian, Domitian, and Trajan successively adding
to the number, the most famous collection of all being the Ulpian library
of Trajan. No available data have come down to us as to the exact size of
these libraries, but the respectable proportions of some of the private
collections make it a safe inference that some, at least, of these public
libraries must have contained hundreds of thousands of books, since we
can hardly suppose that a private library would be allowed to outrival
the imperial collections.

When one reflects on this prevalence of books, the very natural query
arises as to how they were produced, and the answer throws a vivid
light on the social conditions in Rome. The enormous output of books,
almost rivalling the productions of the modern press, was possible
solely because of the great number of slaves in Rome. Book-making
was a profession, but it was a profession apparently followed almost
exclusively by slaves, who were known as _librarii_. These educated
slaves were usually Greeks, and a large publishing house, of which there
were several in Rome, would keep a great number of them for purposes
both of making the materials for books, and of transcribing the books
themselves.

It is known that shorthand was practised extensively in Rome, and it
has been supposed that a very large number of the current books were
written in this abbreviated hand. This supposition, however, appears
more than doubtful, for it is hardly to be supposed that the general
public took the trouble to learn the Tironian system, by which name
the shorthand script was known; Tiron, the secretary of Cicero, being
commonly, though no doubt incorrectly, credited with its invention. As
to the latter point, there are various references in the Greek classical
authors to the practice of shorthand in ancient times. It is said even
that Xenophon took down the lectures of Socrates in this way, and whether
or not that statement is true, the existence of the rumour is in itself
evidence of the prevalence of the custom from an early day. Very probably
Tiron developed a modified and greatly improved system of shorthand
writing, and doubtless this became popular, since lexicons were written
interpreting the Tironian script in terms of ordinary Latin. But, as has
been said, all this does not make it probable that the average reader
understood the script, and it seems much more likely that the popular
authors were represented in the ordinary script, subject, however, to
numerous abbreviations. The writers who were most in vogue in imperial
Rome are said to have been Ovid, Propertius, and Martial among the
satirists; Homer, Virgil, and Horace among the poets; and Cicero, Livy,
and Pliny among prose writers. It is alleged that the works of most
of these were in every private collection. Of all this great store of
literary treasures not a single line has been preserved in the original
manuscript, save only a few rolls from the library at Herculaneum, and
most of these are charred and damaged beyond recognition.

Thanks to the use of slave labour, it would appear that the Roman
publisher was able, not merely to put out large editions of books, but
to sell these at a very reasonable price. According to a statement of
Martial himself, a very good copy of the first book of his epigrams
could be purchased for five denarii. This presumably must refer to the
cheapest edition, probably a papyrus roll, though no definite data as
to the relative cost of papyrus and parchment are available. Naturally,
there were more expensive editions put out for those who could afford
them. It was customary, for example, to tint the back of the parchment
roll with purple; at a later day the inscribed part itself was sometimes
tinted with the same colour, and this custom also may have prevailed as
early as the Roman time. Certain books were illustrated with pictures,
as appears from a remark of Pliny; but this practice was undoubtedly
very exceptional. It may not have been unusual, however, to ornament or
emphasise portions of the manuscript by using red ink, for the ink wells
illustrated in the paintings of Pompeii are often shown to be double, and
the presumable object of this was to facilitate the use of ink of two
colours.

The pen employed by the Roman scribe was made of a reed and known as a
_calamus_. It was sharpened and split, not unlike a modern quill pen.
The question has been raised many times as to whether the Romans did not
employ the quill pen itself. Certain pictures seem to suggest that the
quill pen was used not merely by the Romans, but by the Egyptians as
well. There seems little ground for this supposition, however, and the
first specific reference to a quill pen was in the writings of Isidorus,
who died in 636 A.D. This proves that the use of quills had begun not
later than the seventh century, but it is extremely doubtful whether the
Romans employed them, though the quill seems so obvious a substitute for
the reed that its non-employment causes wonder. But the history of all
simple inventions shows how fallacious would be any argument drawn from
this obvious inference. Incidentally it may be noted that the reed pen
held its own against the quill for some centuries after the invention
of the latter. Even in the late Middle Ages the reed was still employed
for particular kinds of writing in preference to the quill, and no doubt
a certain number of people for generations continued to prefer the
reed, just as there are people now who prefer a quill pen to the steel
pens that were perfected in 1830. Every desk in the reading room at the
British Museum to-day is supplied with a quill as well as a steel pen;
and a fair proportion of the readers there seem to prefer the former.

It would not do to leave the subject of Roman books without at least
incidental mention of the tablets which were in universal use. These were
probably not employed in writing books for the market, but it is quite
probable that many authors used them in making the first drafts of their
books. The so-called wax tablet was really made of wood, quite in the
form of a modern child’s slate, the wax to receive the writing being put
upon the portion that corresponds to the slate proper. These tablets were
usually bound together in twos or threes, and only the inner surfaces
were employed to receive the writing, the outer surface being reserved
for a title in the case of business documents, or for the address when
the tablet was used as a letter. When used as business records or in
correspondence, the tablets were bound together with a cord, upon which
a seal was placed. It was quite the rule for a Roman citizen to carry
a tablet about with him for the purpose of making notes. The implement
used in writing was a pointed metal needle known as the _stylus_. It was
almost dagger-like in proportions, and was sometimes used as a weapon. It
was said that Cæsar once transfixed the arm of Cassius with his stylus in
a fit of anger in the senate chamber itself. The other end of the stylus
was curved or flattened, and was used to erase the writing on the tablet
for corrections or to prepare the surface for a new inscription.[j]

Turning from the practicalities of literature to a yet more important
phase of everyday life, let us witness


THE CEREMONY OF A ROMAN MARRIAGE

The solemn ritual of marriage was based on the virginity of the bride,
and so appeared in a curtailed version when a widow married again,
which, even in later times, was regarded as somewhat shocking and in the
earliest period of antiquity was of rare occurrence.

Particular care was taken in choosing the wedding-day, because certain
times of the year were, from a religious point of view, ill adapted for
the wedding ceremony, particularly the whole month of May and the first
half of June. For the Lemuria and the sacrifice of the Argei fall in
May, and in the beginning of June come the _dies religiosi_, devoted
to the holiness of Vesta, which come to a close on the 15th of June
with the purification of the temple of Vesta. Other days to be avoided
were the _dies parentales_ (from the 13th to the 21st of February), the
first half of March, the three days on which the Nether World was open
(_mundus patet_ on the 24th of August, the 5th of October, and the 8th
of November), all _dies religiosi_, the calends, the nones, and the
ides. But solemn marriages were not conducted on festival days chiefly
because, in early times at all events, the participators in the marriage
were hindered by the festival. Widows on the other hand did not exclude
such days from their selection.

All that we are told of the decoration of the bride is again concerned
with virgins. On the day before marriage the girl laid aside her virginal
attire (_toga prætexta_), sacrificing it with her toys to the gods and
perhaps originally to the Lares of her father’s house. As was the custom
for a youth before taking the _toga_, she was invested (_ominis causa_)
with a new garment suitable to her new condition before going to sleep, a
_tunica recta_ or _regilla_, and upon her head was placed a red hair net.
The bridal dress itself was a _tunica recta_, that is to say a garment
woven according to ancient custom with vertical, not horizontal, threads,
held together with a woollen girdle (_cingulum_) that was bound with a
_nodus herculeus_; instead of the hair net she was provided with a red
scarf (_flammeum_) with which she veiled her head (_nubit_, _obnubit_);
its red colour only distinguished it from those scarfs which all women
wore when they went out. Her hair was arranged in _sex crines_, that is,
plaits or locks held together not with a comb but with a crisping pin
bent at the end (_hasta cælibaris_) and separated by ribbons. Beneath the
scarf on her head she wore a wreath of flowers gathered by herself, and
at a later period the bridegroom himself also wears a wreath.

The ceremony of the marriage day falls into three parts: the handing
over of the bride, her home taking, and her reception into the
husband’s house; with regard to the disposition of the separate customs
appertaining to these three acts we are to some extent left to conjecture.

The solemnisation of marriage began with _auspicia_, which were usually
taken by proper _auspices_ in the silence of early morning, just as at
the _sponsalia_ it was sought to inquire into the will of the gods by
an omen before sunrise. In the earliest times the flight of birds was
observed, this kind of divination being later on replaced in private
life (as it already existed in public) by the easier process of causing
a _haruspica_ to examine entrails. But the sacrifice made with a view
of consulting the gods, the performers of which have also been called
_auspices_, must not be confounded with the main sacrifice, for it took
place before the handing over of the bride. The sacrificial animal
was probably a sheep, the skin of which was afterwards used for the
_confarreatio_.

On the assembly of the guests the _auspices_ entered to announce the
result of their investigation. After this only is the marriage contract
completed, and even in later times before ten witnesses such as were
accustomed to be present at the ancient _confarreatio_; the bride and
bridegroom then declare their consent to the wedding, and where there
is a _confarreatio_ the former declares her will to enter into the
_manus_ and thereby the family of her husband, originally announcing also
her readiness to exchange her own name for that of her husband in the
formula _quando tu Caius ego Caia_. After this declaration the bridal
pair are brought together by a married woman (_pronuba_) and take each
other’s hands (_dextras jungunt_), upon which, at the _confarreatio_, in
accordance with the most ancient Roman sacrificial custom, a bloodless
sacrifice is brought consisting of fruits and a _panis farreus_. It was
dedicated to Jupiter and so was probably performed by the _flamen Dialis_
present; he pronounced the forms of prayer in which the gods of wedlock,
especially Juno, and the rustic deities Tellus, Picumnus, and Pilumnus
were invoked. During the sacrifice the bridal pair sat upon two chairs
joined together, over which the skin of the sheep that had been slain was
stretched; at the prayer they wandered round the altar from right to
left; a _camillus_ lent his services, bearing a _cumerum_ in which _mola
salsa_ and other requisites of the sacrifice were received.

Whether at the _confarreatio_ there was an animal sacrifice besides the
sacrifice of grain, or not, we do not know; Ulpian seems to assume that
there was. In later times the sacrifice of corn fell into desuetude, but
for the rest the old ritual was maintained as far as possible, so that
for instance there was always a prayer delivered, if not by a priest,
by an _auspex nuptiarum_ and addressed to other gods. Also in these
later times the celebration of marriage centred round the sacrifice of a
calf or even of a pig, and the newly wedded pair set out this sacrifice
themselves, not always in the house but sometimes before a public temple.
Not only have we express witnesses to testify to this, but also pictorial
representations in which partly the temple is sketched and partly the
sacrifice in process of performance, which would have no sense if the
sacrifice took place in the house. So it comes that sacrifice of animals
could only be conducted in the house, as in the temple, under certain
conditions, whereas it was quite common on the sacrificial altars erected
especially for private sacrifice in front of the temples. The witnesses
having expressed their congratulations (_feliciter_) in a shout of
approval, the sacrifice was followed by the _cena_, which, like all
earlier portions of the celebration, was usually held in the house of the
bride’s father.

[Illustration: HEAD-DRESSES]

The guests having risen from this at fall of night, the _deductio_
begins. The bride is taken from the arms of her mother and conducted in
solemn procession to the new house, the procession including not only the
guests but also the interested public. Flute-players and torch-bearers
lead the way, the procession sings a fescennine song and echoes the cry
_talasse_; the boys bid the bridegroom strew walnuts as he is now taking
leave of the games of childhood. The bride is accompanied by three _pueri
patrimi et matrimi_, one of them bearing a torch in front, the other two
leading the bride; after her are borne distaff and spinning-wheel. The
bridegroom’s torch is not, like the others, made of fine resin, but of
white thorn (_Spina alba_), which is sacred to Ceres and a charm against
witchery; it is captured by the guests and carried away by violence. The
procession having reached the new house, the bride anoints the door-posts
with fat or oil and binds them with woollen fillets; then she is borne
over the threshold of the house and received in the atrium by her husband
into the common possession of fire and water; that is to say, she is made
a partner in domestic life and the service of the gods. In the atrium,
her future living room, opposite the door, the _lectus genialis_ is made
ready by the _pronuba_; here she prays to the gods of the new home for a
happy marriage. On the day after the wedding she receives relations at
the feast of _repotia_ as a matron and presents her first sacrifice to
the gods of the house.[f]


THE STATUS OF WOMEN

The restoration of the temples of Juno by Augustus and his consort
indicated the interest the new government felt in the institution of
marriage. Neither the history nor literature of Rome can be understood
without clear ideas upon this branch of her social economy. All nations
have agreed in investing marriage with a religious sanction; but religion
and policy were closely connected through every phase of the social life
of the Romans, and in none more closely than in this. Marriage they
regarded as an institution hallowed by the national divinities for the
propagation of the Roman race, the special favourite of the gods. Its
object was not to chasten the affections and purify the appetites of man,
but to replenish the curies and centuries, to maintain the service of
the national temples, recruit the legions and establish Roman garrisons
in conquered lands. The marriage therefore of Caius and Caia, of a Roman
with a Roman, was a far higher and holier matter, in the view of their
priests and legislators, than the union of a Roman with a foreigner, of
aliens with aliens, or of slaves with slaves. Even the legitimate union
of the sexes among the citizens was regulated by descending scale of
confarreation, coemption, and mere cohabitation; and the offspring of the
former only were qualified for the highest religious functions, such as
those of the flamen of Jupiter, and apparently of the vestal virgins, on
which the safety of the state was deemed most strictly to depend.

These jealous regulations were fostered in the first instance by a
grave political necessity; but the increase of the power of Rome, the
enlargement of her resources, the multiplication of her allies, her
clients and dependents, had long relaxed her vigilance in maintaining
the purity of her children’s descent. The dictates of nature, reinforced
by the observation of foreign examples, had long rebelled in this matter
against the tyrannical prescriptions of a barbarous antiquity. After the
eastern conquests of the republic it became impossible to maintain the
race in its state of social isolation. In his winter quarters at Athens,
Samos, or Ephesus, the rude husbandman of Alba or the Volscian hills
was dazzled by the fascinations of women whose accomplishments fatally
eclipsed the homely virtues of the Latin and Sabine matrons. To form
legitimate connections with these foreign charmers was forbidden him by
the harsh institutions of a Servius or Numa; while his ideas were so
narrowed and debased by bad laws, that he never dreamt of raising his own
countrywomen by education to the level of their superior attractions.
Gravely impressing upon his wife and daughters that to sing and dance,
to cultivate the knowledge of languages, to exercise the taste and
understanding, was the business of the hired courtesan, it was to the
courtesan that he repaired himself for the solace of his own lighter
hours. The hetæræ of Greece had been driven to the voluptuous courts of
Asia by the impoverishment, and perhaps the declining refinement, of
their native entertainers. They were now invited to the great western
capital of wealth and luxury, where they shared with viler objects the
admiration of the Roman nobles, and imparted perhaps a shade of sentiment
and delicacy to their most sensual carouses. The unnatural restrictions
of the law formed a decent excuse for this class of unions, which were
often productive of mutual regard, and were hallowed at least at the
shrine of public opinion.

Such fortunate cases were, however, at the best, only exceptional. For
the most part, the Grecian mistress of the proconsul or imperator, the
object of a transient appetite, sought to indemnify herself by venal
rapacity for actual contempt and anticipated desertion. The influence of
these seductive intriguers poisoned the springs of justice before the
provincial tribunals. At an earlier period a brutal general could order a
criminal to be beheaded at his supper table, to exhibit to his paramour
the spectacle of death; at a later, the luxurious governor of a province
allowed his freedwoman to negotiate with his subjects for the price of
their rights and privileges, or carried her at his side in his progress
through Italy itself. The frantic declamations of Cicero against the
licentiousness of Verres and Antony in this respect were a fruitless and,
it must be admitted, a hollow attempt to play upon an extinct religious
sentiment.

The results of this vicious indulgence were more depraving than the vice
itself. The unmarried Roman, thus cohabiting with a freedwoman or slave,
became the father of a bastard brood, against whom the gates of the city
were shut. His pride was wounded in the tenderest part; his loyalty to
the commonwealth was shaken. He chose rather to abandon the wretched
offspring of his amours, than to breed them up as a reproach to himself,
and see them sink below the rank in which their father was born.

In the absence of all true religious feeling, the possession of children
was the surest pledge to the state of the public morality of her
citizens. By the renunciation of marriage, which it became the fashion
to avow and boast, public confidence was shaken to its centre. On the
other hand, the women themselves, insulted by the neglect of the other
sex, and exasperated at the inferiority of their position, revenged
themselves by holding the institution of legitimate marriage with almost
equal aversion. They were indignant at the servitude to which it bound
them, the state of dependence and legal incapacity in which it kept
them; for it left them without rights, and without the enjoyment of
their own property; it reduced them to the status of mere children,
or rather transferred them from the power of their parent to that of
their husband. They continued through life, in spite of the mockery of
respect with which the laws surrounded them, things rather than persons;
things that could be sold, transferred backwards and forwards, from one
master to another, for the sake of their dowry or even their powers of
child-bearing. For the smallest fault they might be placed on trial
before their husbands, or if one were more than usually considerate in
judging upon his own case, before a council of their relations. They
might be beaten with rods, even to death itself, for adultery or any
other heinous crime; while they might suffer divorce from the merest
caprice, and simply for the alleged departure of their youth or beauty.

The latter centuries of the Roman commonwealth are filled with the
domestic struggles occasioned by the obstinacy with which political
restrictions were maintained upon the most sensitive of the social
relations. Beginning with wild and romantic legends, the account of these
troubles becomes in the end an important feature in history. As early as
the year 330 B.C., it is said, a great number of Roman matrons attempted
the lives of their husbands by poison. They were dragged before the
tribunals, probably domestic, and adjudged to death. As many as 170 are
said to have suffered. In the following century, after the promulgation
of the Oppian law, which forbade women to keep more than half an ounce
of gold, to wear robes of various colours, and to ride in the carpentum,
they formed a new conspiracy--such at least was the story--not to destroy
their husbands, but to refuse conversation with them and frustrate their
hopes of progeny. This was followed at the distance of half a century
by the _lex Voconia_, “the most unjust of laws,” in the judgment of the
Christian Augustine, which excluded women from the right of inheriting.
Of these laws, however, the first was speedily abrogated, the other was
evaded, and, by underhand and circuitous means, women came to receive
inheritances, to the great scandal, as afterward appeared, of the
reformers under the empire. But the continued quarrel of the sexes was
exaggerated by mutual jealousy, and at the outbreak of the Catilinarian
conspiracy, it was currently reported among the men that the traitors
obtained money for their enterprise from a multitude of matrons, who
longed for a bloody revolution to exterminate their husbands.

In the primitive ages the state had not only regulated the forms of
marriage, but had undertaken to enforce it. Among the duties of the
censors was that of levying fines upon the citizen who persisted in
remaining single to the detriment of the public weal. The censure of
Camillus and Postumius, 403 B.C., was celebrated for the patriotic vigour
with which this inquisition was made. In process of time the milder
method of encouraging marriage by rewards was introduced, the earliest
mention of which, perhaps, is in a speech of Scipio, censor in the
year 199 B.C. At this time it appears, certain immunities were already
granted to the fathers of legitimate, and even of adopted, children,
which last the censor denounced as an abuse. But neither rewards nor
penalties proved effectual to check the increasing tendency to celibacy,
and at the period of the Gracchi an alarm was sounded that the old
Roman race was becoming rapidly extinguished. The censor of the year
131 B.C., Metellus Macedonicus, expounded the evil to the senate in a
speech which seems to have been among the most curious productions of
antiquity. “Could we exist without wives at all,” it began, “doubtless we
should all rid ourselves of the plague they are to us; since, however,
nature has decreed that we cannot dispense with the infliction, it is
best to bear it manfully, and rather look to the permanent conservation
of the state than to our own transient satisfaction.” It is still more
curious, perhaps, that above a hundred years afterwards Augustus should
have ventured to recite in the polished senate of his own generation
the cynical invective of a ruder age. But, so it was, that when the
legislation of Julius Cæsar was found ineffectual for controlling
the still growing evil, it was reinforced by his successor with an
enhancement both of penalties and rewards, and the bitter measure
recommended by the arguments and even the language of the ancient censor.

The importance attached by the emperor to this fruitless legislation
appears from his turning his efforts in this direction from the first
year of his return to Rome. When he took the census with Agrippa in 28
B.C., he insisted on carrying into execution the regulations of the
dictator, which had been neglected during the interval of anarchy, and
were destined speedily to fall into similar neglect again. Upon this one
point the master of the Romans could make no impression upon the dogged
disobedience of his subjects. Both the men and the women preferred the
loose terms of union upon which they had consented to cohabit to the
harsh provisions of antiquity. They despised rewards, and penalties they
audaciously defied. Eleven years later Augustus caused the senate to pass
a new law of increased stringency, by which the marriage of citizens of
competent age was positively required. Three years grace was allowed
for making a choice and settling preliminaries; but when the allotted
interval was expired, it was found expedient to prolong it for two years
more; from time to time a further respite seems to have been conceded,
and we find the emperor still struggling almost to the close of his life
to impose this intolerable restraint upon the liberty or licence of the
times.

The consent of the fathers themselves, subservient as they generally
were, was given with murmurs of reluctance, the more so, perhaps, as they
alone were excepted from the indulgence, which was now prudently extended
to every lower order of citizens, of permission to form a legitimate
marriage with a freed woman. The measure was received indeed with outward
deference, but an inward determination to evade or overthrow it. Even the
poets, who were instructed to sing its praises, renounced the obligation
to fulfil its conditions; while others, whose voices were generally tuned
to accents of adulation, exulted openly in its relaxation or postponement.

The nature of the penalties and rewards assigned by this law shows
that the views of Augustus were for the most part confined to the
rehabilitation of marriage in the higher classes, and the restoration
of the purest blood of Rome. On the one hand, celibacy was punished by
incapacity to receive bequests, and even the married man who happened
to be childless was regarded with suspicion, and mulcted of one-half
of every legacy. On the other, the father of a family enjoyed a place
of distinction in the theatres, and preference in competition for
public office. He was relieved from the responsibilities of a tutor or
a judex, and, as by the earlier measure of the dictator, was excused
from a portion of the public burdens, if father of three children at
Rome, of four in Italy, or of five in the provinces. Of the two consuls,
precedence was given, not to the senior in age, according to ancient
usage, but to the husband and the father of the most numerous offspring.
It is clear that such provisions as these could have had little
application to the great mass of the citizens, who lived on the favour of
their noble patrons or the bounty of the treasury, and bred up a horde of
paupers to eat into the vitals of the state.

[Illustration: ROMAN TERRA-COTTA TOY

(Naples Museum)]

The perverse subjects of this domestic legislation seem at first to have
sought to evade it by entering into contracts of marriage which they
afterwards omitted to fulfil. It was necessary to enact new provisions
to meet this subterfuge. The facility allowed by the ancient usage
to divorce formed another obvious means of escape; but again did the
vigilant reformer interfere by appointing the observation of onerous
forms for the legal separation of married parties. When a divorce had
actually taken place, the parties fell again under the provisions of
the marriage law, and were required to find themselves fresh consorts
within a specified interval. Another mode of driving the reluctant
citizens within the marriage pale was the infliction of penalties and
disgrace upon unchastity beyond it; while now, for the first time,
adultery, which had been left to be punished by the domestic tribunal as
a private injury, was branded as a crime against the general well-being,
and subjected to the animadversion of the state. But Augustus was not
satisfied with directing his thunders against the guilty; he sought to
anticipate criminality by imposing fresh restraints upon the licentious
manners of the age. After the example of his predecessors in the
censorship, he fixed a scale of expense for the luxuries of the table,
and pretended to regulate the taste of the women for personal ornaments.
At the gladiatorial shows, from which they could no longer be excluded,
he assigned different places for the two sexes, removing the women to
the hinder rows, the least favourable either for seeing or being seen,
and altogether forbade them to attend the exhibitions of wrestling and
boxing.[c]


PATERNAL AUTHORITY AND ADOPTION: THE SLAVERY OF CHILDREN

If the Roman custom in relation to marriage and the position of women
generally is decidedly to be preferred to that of the Greeks, it cannot
be denied that the reverse was the case as regards the relations of
children, as the arbitrary power which the father had over them in Rome
was a flagrant injustice: the freedom of an individual was thus limited
in a most unjust manner, and the child held in an unnatural dependence on
his father. The great mistake consisted in the Roman father considering
the power which Nature imposes as a duty on the elders, of guiding
and protecting a child during infancy, as extending over his freedom,
involving his life and death, and continuing during his entire existence.
The Grecian law differed in two respects from the Roman: first, that the
father’s power ceased with the son’s independence, and this he attained
either by arriving at a certain period of life, or by marriage, or by
being entered on the list of citizens. Secondly, the Grecian father had
merely the right of terminating the relation between child and parent,
by banishing him from his house, or disinheriting him, without daring to
injure either his liberty or life.

The _patria potestas_ of the Romans was in theory indeed very different
from absolute possession (_dominium_), but in reality it approached very
near to it, especially in ancient times; only the latter extended over
things, the former over persons. Consequently this _potestas_ gave the
father the right over the life and liberty of his child. This law, said
to be as early as Romulus, but at any rate very ancient, was revived in
all its severity in the Twelve Tables. The unnatural part of this decree
was somewhat modified, in that the right of life and death belonged in
fact to that of discipline and punishment, which was permitted by the
state to the _pater familias_, and as the father could not act on his own
judgment, but must, conformably to custom, summon a family council. This
judgment is mentioned by Valerius Maximus,[k] where he says of T. Manlius
Torquatus, _ne consilio quidem necessariorum indigere se credidit_, as
his son had been accused by the Macedonians on account of extortion. The
father sat in judgment for three days, hearing witnesses and so on, and
at last banished his son from his presence, whereupon he killed himself.

Other examples are related, of sentence being passed on sons by their
fathers, without mention of the family council, and probably because
the official position of the father rendered such aid unnecessary, as
in the harsh judgment of Brutus and T. Manlius Imperiosus. In capital
offences, too, the father could by himself inflict punishment, as it is
deemed more proper that he should himself condemn his son, than that
he should come himself as his accuser. Valerius Maximus relates two
instances of a father’s judgment in the time of Augustus. In the latter
case the father condemned the son for parricide, letting him off with
exile only. A solemn family council also preceded, to which the emperor
was invited; there the kindness of the father openly prevailed, and
whilst he made use of his right, he protected his son from the punishment
which he would have found in the public court of justice. The second case
proves the harshness and misuse to which this right could be applied.
But after all, not one case of absolute death is mentioned, but only
of cruel punishment. If a misuse of the _patria potestas_ occurred in
earlier times, the censor could resent it. Orosius even speaks of a
public indictment; in later days the emperor saw to it, as it is related
of Trajan and Hadrian. In the two-hundredth year of the empire this power
was taken away from the father by law.

Although the right of sale undeniably existed, and was recognised by the
Twelve Tables, no recorded instance of it exists; and we may therefore
suppose that it was early abolished, and used only as a form in the
_emancipatio_. Numa even seems to have limited this right, according to
Dionysius. In the form of _emancipatio_, the father had the right to sell
the son three times; after the third time he did not again come into the
_patria potestas_.

From the _patria potestas_ must be entirely separated the right with
which we frequently meet in antiquity, of killing or exposing new-born
children. In Rome it did not exist to so great an extent as elsewhere.
Romulus is said to have interdicted sons and first-born daughters from
being killed. On the other hand, it seems to have been commanded that
the deformed should be put to death. That the exposure and murder of the
new-born was not infrequent, even in the most important families, many
instances show.

The son remained in the father’s power until his death, unless either of
them had suffered a _capitis diminutio_. The _patria potestas_ ceased if
the son became a _flamen dialis_. Other dignities made no difference.
In the case of a daughter it ceased when she entered into marriage with
_manus_, or became a vestal virgin. If a father wished to renounce the
_patria potestas_ over his son, it must be done either by adoption
(by which he passed into another _potestas_) or by the formality of
emancipation.[l]

Created by nature or transferred by adoption, the paternal authority
could be replaced, at the death of the father of the family, by
guardianship (_tutela_) for the protection of children (_tutela
impuberum_, _pupillaris_) and women (_tutela muliebris_), or it could
even be revived after it had expired under the name of trusteeship
(_cura_), for the protection of persons of full age but recognised as
incapable of managing for themselves.

Jurisprudence concerning guardianship and trusteeship was first of all
dominated by the principles of the ancient gentilitious law as sanctioned
by the Twelve Tables.

At the death of a father the feminine portion of a family--the widow
and grown-up but unmarried daughters, were looked upon as _sui juris_
in the sense that they could administer their own property, but as they
could not bring actions (except in the case of the vestals), they needed
for all legal acts which concerned them, the authority (_auctoritas_)
of a guardian. The sons reached the age of puberty at fourteen; under
that age they required a guardian. If the family had a new head over
fourteen years old, he was the guardian of all those under age and of all
the females of the family; in the contrary case the guardian came from
outside the family.

The law of the Twelve Tables did not allow those interested the choice
of their guardian; the legitimate guardian was the nearest relation
(_agnat_) of the deceased, or, in default, one of the members of the
gens. It was exactly the same for the trusteeship which came into
operation when a citizen _sui juris_ was recognised as mad, or decreed
by the interdictum of the prætor to be in the position of a maniac on
account of prodigality. The trustee had the most unlimited powers over
the person and property of the person so decreed.

The lawyers laboured to make the guardianship of the young secure
and effective, to suppress the guardianship of women and to abolish
the interference of the gentilitious customs in favour of natural
relationship.

A first step had already been taken in the time of the Twelve Tables--the
father of the family was permitted to choose and appoint by will the
guardian of his children. The legitimate guardian according to the
gentilitious law was called upon to replace the testamentary guardian
in case the latter refused to undertake the guardianship. Later the law
_Atilia_, about 190 B.C., empowered the prætor urbanus or the college
of the tribunes of the plebs to nominate a guardian (_tutor atilianus_)
in default of a legitimate or testamentary guardian in case the latter
refused to undertake the guardianship. The custom was even introduced
at this epoch of leaving to the widows, by will, the choice of their
guardian (_tutor optivus_), either allowing them to change them once or
twice (_optio angusta_), or as many times as it pleased them (_optio
plena_). Women could even escape effective guardianship--especially with
the object of acquiring the right to make wills--by tricks of procedure.
For this purpose they made use of fiduciary co-emption. Co-emption
substituted the co-emptionator for the guardian. The man who thus
acquired the rights of a husband ceded the woman to a third person by
mancipation. The latter emancipated the woman whose guardian he remained
in form (_tutor fiduciarius_). This procedure was well known in the time
of Cicero. It must be added that it was not applied in such an easy
fashion when the guardian was the _tutor legitimus_ of gentilitious law;
the latter could not be forced to give his consent to the fictitious
marriage which began the work of deliverance.

Thus it was against the legitimate guardianship that the legists directed
their efforts. Augustus released from ordinary guardianship all women
having three children, and freed women who were mothers of four children.
Claudius absolutely suppressed gentilitious guardianship for women. It
was only kept up for children. There remained only ordinary guardianship
to be annihilated. Hadrian rendered fiduciary co-emptions unnecessary
by giving women the right of making wills with the consent of their
guardians, and Antoninus in certain cases recognised the legality of
wills made without this sanction. As women had already received the
right of administration of their property, guardianship was from that
time almost objectless as far as they were concerned. It disappeared
of itself. The movement of emancipation continued; from the time of
Diocletian women began to acquire the right of guardianship over their
own children.

As to the guardianship of young boys the legists had tried to extend,
not the liberty of the wards, but the responsibility of the guardians.
They even thought good to extend the guardianship under another name
beyond the age fixed by the ancient law, which declared male children
to have attained puberty at the age of fourteen. From the commencement
of the second century before Christ, a law Plætoria created a state of
minority from fourteen to twenty-five; for fear the minors should be
“circumvented,” it decreed that the loans agreed to by them should only
be legal if they had been witnessed by a trustee named by the prætor.
Marcus Aurelius made it a duty of the magistrates to give permanent
trustees to all minors who requested them, and it was to the latter’s
interest to do so, because otherwise they could not appeal to the law.
The trusteeship of minors had, in spite of distinctions, a singular
resemblance to that of madmen and persons interdicted, and to the
guardianship of children. And, from the time of Constantine, it was much
the same as the other kinds. There was however one difference; this was
that the interdicted persons were reduced to a passive condition, and a
ward was only allowed to act with authorisation of the guardian, whilst
the minor could contract debts without the consent of his trustee.

Jurisprudence here became confused by its precautions; it hesitated
between respect for individual liberty and the far more potent anxiety to
safeguard the material interests of the family.[g]

It will be understood that the respect for individual liberty here
referred to has reference only to a relatively small portion of the
community. The larger number of the inhabitants of Rome had no individual
liberty; nor, indeed, any other right that commanded respect. In a
word, the mass of the population was made up of slaves; therefore, even
a casual glance at the manners and customs of Roman society cannot
disregard this unfortunate class.


THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY

The slaves in a large Roman house sprang from two different origins:
either they had been bought or they were born in the house of a slave
father and a slave mother. These latter were called _vernæ_, and were
more esteemed than the others. It is to them that their masters refer
in the inscriptions with the greatest respect and tenderness. They were
supposed to be attached to the family in which they had been born.
Besides, they had not been branded by the humiliation of a public
sale, and this meant a great deal. The bought slave had appeared in
the market-place, his feet marked with white and a label round his
neck, on which his merits and defects were inscribed; he had been set
on a platform and had been made to jump, turn a somersault, walk, run,
laugh, and talk. The slave born in the house had at least escaped this
ignominious ordeal. It was as though his dignity as a man had been less
entirely lost, and as though he must be more capable of noble feeling.
The man himself was so proud of this title of _verna_ that in some
instances it was retained even after liberation, and the freedman caused
it to be inscribed on his tomb.

[Illustration: ROMAN SLAVE WORKING IN THE FIELDS]

The number of slaves which these two sources of servitude, birth and
purchase, introduced into Rome must have been very considerable. The
Syrian or Numidian whom the steward of a great noble had bought in the
street of the Subura or near the temple of Castor, for the purpose of
making use of him as runner or cook, was sure, on entering the palace
of his new master, to find himself in a numerous company. The moralists
complain that in the great houses the servitors were counted by
thousands, and here they cannot be accused of exaggerating. Tacitus and
Pliny say the same. In a satire by Petronius, Trimalchio, who does not
know the tenth part of the slaves he possesses, is informed every morning
of the number of them born during the night on his domain. This is not,
as might be supposed, an imaginary scene, and history confirms the fable.
Seneca tells us nearly the same thing of one of Pompey’s freedmen. Even
this freedman had legions of slaves; and according to the custom of
good generals who keep a reckoning of the number of their soldiers, a
secretary was ordered to inform him every day of the changes that birth,
sales, or death had made in this army since the day before.

At the present time wealth is more equally distributed, life has become
more simple, and we have some difficulty in forming a conception of
the households of the great nobles of ancient Rome. Let us imagine
one of those rich patricians or knights who possessed four or five
thousand slaves, like that Cæcilius of whom Pliny the Elder speaks. This
multitude, crowded together in the palaces or scattered amongst the
farms, belong to different nations and speak different tongues. Besides,
each nation has its specialty. Greece furnishes chiefly grammarians
and scholars; the Asiatics are musicians or cooks; from Egypt come the
beautiful children whose chatter amuses their masters; the Africans run
in front of the litter to clear the way. As for the Germans, with their
huge bodies and their heads perched none knows where (_caput necio ubi
impositum_), their only use is to get killed in the arena for the greater
diversion of the Roman people. Some order must be established in this
confusion: they are classed according to their nation, and are known by
the colour of their skin (_per nationes et colores_) or, which is oftener
the case, they are divided into groups of ten, or decuries, with a
decurion to command them. Above the decurions are placed, in the country
the farmers (_villici_), in the town the stewards (_dispensatores_).

It is easy to see that to feed all these people was no easy matter, and
it is a rule that in a well-regulated establishment the master buys
nothing outside, but has enough on his own estates to supply his whole
household. His domains supply him with every kind of commodity, his
town houses contain workmen of every trade. To guard against failure
of supplies he lays up stores of every kind in huge storehouses, whose
riches he does not always know. It is related that during the time
when, as at the present day, the theatre sought to attract the crowd
by the brilliancy of the _mise-en-scène_, a manager who had to provide
dresses for a large number of the chorus, and did not want to go to
this expense, went to Lucullus and asked him to lend him one hundred
tunics. “A hundred tunics,” answered the rich Roman, “where do you expect
me to find them? Nevertheless I will see.” The next day he sent five
thousand. The management of these huge fortunes must have given a great
deal of trouble, and consequently the master often excused himself from
attending to it. Given up entirely to pleasure, he left all his affairs
in the hands of stewards, who robbed him. When he consented to manage
his business himself the laborious task was not without profit. It has
been said with reason that if the Roman nobles had for many centuries a
keen political sense, and if they showed themselves capable of ruling
the world, this was because each one could undergo in his own domains
an apprenticeship in the art of governing. The working of these vast
estates, the millions of sesterces to be handled, the nations of slaves
to be managed, rendered the great nobles administrators and financiers
from their youth up.

It is the rule that everyone imitates those above him, and it is the
custom for the inferior classes to follow as much as possible the
examples set them by the aristocracy. We have seen that the nobles of
Rome displayed their wealth by the number of their slaves; the middle
class did likewise. Perhaps, even, this great number of servitors
is still more striking in a modest house, so little does it seem to
correspond with the owner’s means. Marcus Scaurus, who afterwards became
a great personage, began by being very poor. He said in his memoirs
that his father only left him thirty-seven thousand sesterces [£296
or $1,480], and ten slaves. Certainly at the present day no one who
possessed only £296 in the world would have ten servants. The poet Horace
was not very rich either: he lived on the liberality of Mæcenas, who gave
him ease rather than riches. And yet he tells us that when he returned
home in the evening he had three slaves ready to serve his dinner. He
gives us the bill of fare of this dinner; there are leeks, chick peas,
and a few cakes. It would seem that three waiters are a great many for
such a poor dinner, and that the repast is not in keeping with the
service.

And though the expense was small, it is impossible that the great number
of superfluous slaves could have failed to be a general nuisance. Why
did people have them? Why did the middle classes impose upon themselves
a burden which weighed heavily on the rich? The answer is easy--they
desired to make a show. Everybody wished to dazzle the eyes by an
imposing retinue. The great personages, when they went to the Forum,
trailed after them a whole army of clients and friends. They required
hundreds of servitors or of freedmen whenever they left Rome. This is why
they had to turn their country or town houses into veritable barracks.

Under Nero the prefect of Rome, Pedanius Secundus, having been
assassinated by one of his slaves, all those that had that night slept
under his roof were arrested as accomplices. There were four hundred
of them. The man who walked out alone had to defy prejudice, as Horace
did. A magistrate who went out with only five servants, was pointed at
in the streets. The people had even begun to measure their esteem for a
man according to the number of servants who accompanied him. An advocate
was not considered eloquent if he did not have at least eight servitors
behind his litter. When he was not rich enough to buy them he hired
them, this being the only way by which he could get causes to plead and
be listened to when he spoke. Women also made use of them to attract
public attention. Juvenal says that Ogulnia took good care not to go to
the theatre alone; who would have turned round to look at her? She hired
female attendants and a fair-haired damsel, to whom she pretended to
give frequent orders. She carried display to such an extent that she was
always accompanied by a respectable nurse and some female friends of good
appearance. In this way Ogulnia was sure to create a sensation wherever
she went.

Thus the slaves were very useful out of doors; they accompanied
their masters, created a good opinion of him, and contributed to his
importance; but what was to be done with them in the house? There were
too many for occupation to be found for all in an ordinary household, and
in order to give them something to do each had his particular office.
“I use my slaves,” said a Greek, “like my limbs, one for each thing.”
From this arose the extreme division of labour in ancient houses; it was
never carried farther than at Rome. There were slaves to open the door
to a visitor, others to bring him in, others to lift up before him the
heavy draperies, and others to announce him. There were some to carry
the dishes to the table, others to carve, some to taste them before
the guests, and others to offer them. “These unhappy creatures,” says
Seneca, “live only to carve the poultry well.” Each portion of a woman’s
toilet was given to a different slave.

The slave who had charge of the clothes was not the same as the one who
looked after the jewels or the purple. There were special artists for
hairdressing and for perfuming. The tomb has even been discovered of an
unhappy man whose sole function in life was to paint the aged Livia. Thus
the master as soon as he returns home finds a crowd of servitors who are
on the lookout for his wants and anticipate his orders. “I sit down,”
says a character in a comedy, “my slaves run up to me and take off my
shoes, others hasten to arrange the couches and to prepare the repasts.
They all take as much trouble as possible.” What is the result? That by
force of being surrounded and waited upon the master contracts the habit
of doing absolutely nothing. All these people who gather around him,
and to whom he is so grateful, render him the worst service possible;
they take from him the necessity of doing anything for himself. The
Roman of the early days of the republic, who had hardly more than one
personal servant and who waited upon himself, was active and energetic;
he conquered the world. The Roman of the empire, continually surrounded
by a troop of slaves, became cowardly, effeminate, and a dreamer. Of all
the furniture in his house, his couch is the one he is most ready to
use. He lies down to sleep, to eat, to read, and to think. His servants
divide amongst themselves all the functions of life, and all is minutely
calculated to give him nothing to do. But this regularity which he
admires so much is full of danger. Physical activity cannot be relaxed
without moral activity suffering as well, and he who ceases to act ends
by ceasing to have any will. This race of men who had given up exercising
their bodies and keeping themselves in condition, also allowed their
souls to become enervated. It is therefore a true saying that the large
number of slaves which the Romans kept up contributed in no small measure
to render themselves the slaves of the cæsars.

[Illustration: ROMAN FISH HOOKS

(In the British Museum)]

Let us suppose the newly purchased slave thrown amidst the multitude
of servants that fills the Roman house; his first thought is naturally
for his new master. He tries anxiously to know him, that he will see
what he may expect from him, and how he will be treated. Let us do
like him, and let us ask first of all to what treatment he will be
subjected, and what will be the relations between master and slave.
The answer to this question is not easy; the lot of the slave may be
conceived of in different ways, and, for instance, it entirely changes
its aspect according to whether we study it from the laws or from the
facts. Until the days of the Antonines, the law in relation to him is
terribly hard. It abandons him wholly to his master, whose property
he is as much as a field or a flock of sheep. He has the right to use
him or abuse him according to his fancy. He is free to inflict upon
him all kinds of insults and dishonour; he can beat and kill him.
We are therefore forced to admit that according to the laws there
has never been a worse condition than that of a Roman slave; but it
must be remembered that human institutions never do all the good or
harm of which they are capable. In public morals and in the general
feeling there exist obstacles which cannot be surmounted. Laws may be
excellent or detestable; man, who is little capable of perfection and
who is instinctively averse to barbarism, corrects their exaggeration
in practice; as a rule he only carries them out in so far as they are
not opposed to the mediocrity of his nature. We are therefore liable
to mistake, if we judge the social condition of a nation according to
its legislation. The first thing to discover is in what manner it was
actually applied. There is reason to think that in Rome, even at the
time when manners were most barbaric, the terrible rights that the law
gave to the masters were rarely taken advantage of. Cato might say that
it is wise to sell a slave when he is old and can be of no further use;
custom might allow him to be abandoned without mercy when he was ill and
left in the island of the Tiber near the temple of Æsculapius, in order
that he might recover or die without any expense; but it is probable
that, in generous souls, nature has always revolted against such cowardly
desertion. There are several reasons for thinking that even in Cato’s
time the slave was as a rule humanely treated, that he lived on familiar
terms with his master, and that he nearly always grew old in his master’s
house. After the battle of Cannæ, Rome having no more soldiers did not
hesitate to arm eight thousand slaves. They fought bravely side by side
with the legions, and deserved their liberty. Would they have exposed
themselves to die for masters whom they detested?

All slaves, however, were not treated alike, and distinctions must be
made between them. They were as a rule less well treated in the country
than in the town. The agriculturists, in describing the stock of a farm
and the instruments of cultivation, have no hesitation in classing the
slave in the same category with the oxen. In reality the master does not
make much difference between him and the cattle. At night he is shut up
in a species of stables or underground prisons (ergastula), with narrow
windows, at such a distance above ground that he cannot reach them with
his hand. During the day, if he is to work alone, irons are put on his
feet in case the fresh air and open field should suggest to him the idea
of escape. This is certainly rigorous treatment, and nevertheless the
slave seems to support it with no great difficulty. A comic author makes
him say, “When one’s work is in a distant field, where the master rarely
comes, one is not a servitor but master.”

When a day of festival comes round and work is suspended, he celebrates
it with such noisy joy that “those in the neighbourhood can hardly
support his outbursts of delight.” It would have been difficult to
imagine--seeing him after the harvest or the vintage, amusing himself
with such good will, laughing and singing at the games of the cross-ways
(compitalia) or jumping gaily over the straw fires at the Palilia--that
he was so harshly treated the rest of the year. What proves that on
the whole this lot was not thought so wretched is that the town slave
sometimes envied his country brother. Horace had at Rome a slave of an
unstable disposition who asked his master as a favour to send him to his
Sabine farm. It is true he soon repented this.

As a rule the slave was sent to the fields only as a punishment when he
had given dissatisfaction. It is certain that he was better treated and
happier in town. Placed near his master he might have to suffer more
from his caprice, but he also reaped advantage from it. He had the best
chance of obtaining his liberty and making his fortune. There were some
whose situations were even brilliant and envied, namely the imperial
slaves. To belong to Cæsar’s household was to be somebody, and the great
lords who esteemed themselves happy to be known by the porter of Sejanus
bought the good graces of the stewards of Tiberius by presents and
degrading acts. Even before being liberated these slaves often filled
real public offices; they were officers of the mint, the finances, and
the commissariat of Rome. They had also a sense of their own importance.
They were proud and insolent and thought they were under an obligation to
see that the dignity of the emperor was respected in their own persons.
After these we should naturally place the slaves belonging to the towns,
the temples, and the different civil and religious bodies. When authority
is thus divided and when nobody takes the entire burden, not only is the
servitor not under control but in reality it is he who dominates. Thus
the slaves of this class appear as a rule to be rich and contented with
their lot. Some there are who make large donations to the societies which
have bought them, giving themselves the piquant pleasure of being the
benefactors of their masters.

Nor are those belonging to some great houses much to be pitied. If
they attain high functions in the establishment they make good profit.
Sometimes the steward of a rich man found the position so lucrative
that he preferred to remain a slave, rather than give it up. The most
fortunate were those who happened to fall to a master who prided himself
upon being humane and enlightened, who cultivated literature and
practised the lessons of the philosophers. Pliny the Younger treated
his dependents with the greatest kindness. Not only did he forbid irons
to be put on them when they were tilling his fields, but he did not
allow them to be crowded together in narrow cells or dark prisons. In
his house at Laurentum the accommodation was so good that he could put
guests there. He looked after them whenever they were ill, he allowed
them to make wills and leave their small possessions to their friends;
his humanity went so far that he wept at losing them. In the service of
a rich and wise man like Pliny the slave is not really very unhappy. It
is when he is with humbler people that his lot is harder. As he shares
the fortune of the house, with the poor he is of course poor, and he may
chance to fall into the hands of a master in very wretched circumstances.
Everybody, even the workmen and soldiers, had slaves in those days. Even
the peasant of the _Moretum_ whose worldly wealth consists of a little
garden, and who gets up so early to prepare his dish of garlic, cheese,
and salt, is not alone in his hut; he has for maidservant a negress, whom
the poet describes to us with such striking realism: “Her hair is woolly,
her lips thick, her skin black; her body badly made, her legs lank, and
nature has given her a foot which spreads at ease” (spatiosa prodiga
planta). In the poor houses little money was made and life was hard.

The only compensation the slave had in his miserable life was that
he lived near his master, that he was more familiarly treated; that,
being obliged to help him in his sufferings and share his hard lot, he
was looked upon less as a slave than a kinsman. Moreover, it must be
noted that, in Rome as in the East to-day, he always formed part of the
family. In modern times master and servants, being both free and united
by a temporary contract on conditions already agreed upon between them,
live apart from one another, although under the same roof. They are two
jealous individualities who keep a watch on each other and are very
determined to maintain their respective rights. At Rome the slave had
no rights; he was not a citizen and hardly a man. His dignity did not
prevent him from wholly abandoning himself to the man to whom he belonged
and becoming one with him.

There was thus more intimacy and less reserve in their bearing towards
each other. There remain many tombs erected by masters in memory of their
servitors. They often bear the expression of the most tender feelings;
not only is homage paid to their good service, they are also thanked for
their affection. In return it must be remembered that they were treated
with kindness,“like sons of the house,” and some significant words are
even ascribed to them: “Servitude, thou hast never been too heavy for
me.” On the tomb of a centurion of the fourth legion, which was erected
by his freedmen, are these words: “I never married, and I possessed
children,” and the slaves’ answer, “Thanks and farewell.”

What strikes us most of all in studying Roman society is that most of
the vices which devoured it and caused its ruin were due to slavery. We
have seen that it favoured the corruption of the higher classes, that
in accustoming a man to rely continually on the activity of others it
paralysed his strength and enfeebled his will. It is also responsible
for having nourished a contempt of human life. Cruelty may be learned.
Perhaps it is naturally repugnant to mankind, but it feeds on example.
It may be said that the houses of many of the rich were public schools
of inhumanity. The slave long suffered from it and the master also ended
by being its victim. If under the cæsars the crowd saw the deaths of
so many illustrious people with great indifference, was it not because
tortures and death were no new things to them, and because, when they
had become used to seeing manhood no longer respected in the slave, they
were less moved to anger at seeing it outraged in the noble? Another
graver reproach which can be made against slavery is that it created
that miserable populace of the time of the empire which disgusts us so
much in the narratives of Tacitus. Its baseness and cowardice are no
longer astonishing when we remember its origin. It was the outcome of
slavery; slavery formed it, and naturally it was formed for slavery. Not
only did its moral degradation and political indifference render the
tyranny of the cæsars possible, but the recollection of the injustice it
had suffered must have nourished in it those feelings of bitterness and
hostility which exposed society to perils little dreamed of.

If there was no servile war in Italy after Spartacus, it is none the
less true that slavery kept up a kind of perpetual conspiracy against
the public safety. Above all it was the most determined enemy of that
spirit of conservatism and tradition which had been the strength of
the Roman race. The slaves did not spring from the soil of Rome, their
recollections and affections were elsewhere, and when they became
citizens they did not hesitate to welcome foreign customs and to
introduce them into the city. Whilst the statesmen and leading men wore
themselves out in trying to preserve what remained of the ancient spirit
and the old customs, down below, amongst those classes of the populace
which were constantly being recruited from slavery, there was a continual
working to destroy it. It was thus that, thanks to this secret and
powerful influence, new religions easily spread throughout the empire.

At the time nobody seems to have perceived the amount of the evil, and
as its extent was not realised only partial remedies were proposed.
Efforts, often successful, were made to render the slaves’ lot less hard.
They were given some security against their masters; the philosophers
proclaimed, and all recognised with them, that these were men; lawyers
even inscribed in the codes that slavery was contrary to nature. It seems
as if this principle, had it been followed out in all its consequences,
must have eventually led to the abolition of slavery; but when would
the day for it have come, or would it have come at all, if the ancient
world had continued? It may well be doubted, in view of the slowness with
which progress is accomplished and the frequent recurrence of causeless
reactions. Even in the most enlightened times, when opinion seems to give
the strongest impulse towards liberal measures, it may chance on a sudden
that power, obeying other instincts, again becomes cruel or severe, or
that it hovers between severity and indulgence, unable to decide which
course to pursue.

[Illustration: ROMAN DOLLS

(From the British Museum)]

It is under Augustus, just when manners are becoming milder and humanity
seems to triumph, that a _senatus-consultum_ ordains that when a master
has been assassinated by a servant, all those who slept under his roof
that night, innocent or guilty, shall be put to death. It is no less a
matter of surprise that under Constantine, in Christian times, the laws,
which since the Antonines had become much more humane, all at once revert
to the ancient severities against slaves. These sudden relapses made them
lose in a moment all the ground that they had gained during centuries,
and all had to be begun again. Let us add that the measures taken to
protect slaves were not always so efficacious as might be expected.
Humane laws were hardly ever carried out except by well-disposed men,
who were themselves inclined to humanity. Others found ways to evade
the laws. Authority, always averse to interfering with the family and
restraining the sacred power of the master, generally shut its eyes, and
thus abuses, practically beyond the reach of the law, became general.

What is most remarkable of all is that no ancient writer ever expressed,
either as a far-away hope, or as a fugitive wish, or as an improbable
hypothesis, the idea that slavery might one day be abolished. Whether
favourable to slavery or not, no one so much as imagined that it could
cease to be. Those even who complain of it with bitterness, who count up
the dangers that it occasions and the annoyances to which it gives rise,
those who say with Seneca: “How many starving animals, whose voracity we
have to gratify! What expense to clothe them! What anxiety to watch all
those rapacious hands! What pleasure is there in being waited upon by
people who murmur against us and detest us?”--even they did not seem to
think that some day these people might be dispensed with. The institution
was so ancient, and had so entered into the habits of the nation,
that life could not be imagined without it. Men who thought slavery
indispensable were not inclined, even when they knew it to be unjust, to
take much trouble to abolish it. It was one of those radical reforms that
one is scarcely justified in expecting in the ordinary course of events,
and we may say that such a complete change, which no one either desired
or foresaw, could only be accomplished by one of those revolutions which
renovate the world.[h]

Let us turn from this depressing picture of the one labouring class in
Rome to the complementary theme of games and recreations.


GAMES AND RECREATIONS

Nothing is more enlightening to the understanding both of the
peculiarities of the individual and of the character of a nation, than to
observe the free motion which begins where work leaves off. Professional
activity is illustrated more or less in the same fashion all the world
over, and it is forced into a more or less perfect uniformity, for it
always follows the same aim. Recreation, on the other hand, opens the
door to play, in which spontaneous inclination embodies its expression.
As the traveller will note with particular attention the games and
entertainments in which a nation spends its leisure, so the student of
antiquity is prompted to direct his gaze to this side of life. But on no
question are the sources of information so reticent, so far as the Romans
are concerned, as on the question before us.

If we take as our basis the description which the ancients themselves
give us of the activity peculiar to the Romans and their rooted
disinclination for the Greek _far niente_ (otium Græcum), the dignified
motion and bearing (gravitas) that was so little fitted for gaiety that
even Cicero says that only a man drunk or mad can dance; if we bear
in mind the foreign nature of the apparatus which, at all events in
the time of the emperors, was engaged for the carrying on of games and
festivals--the actors, mimes, pantomimes, athletes, gladiators who were
employed for amusement, paid and despised,--we shall be inclined to infer
that the Romans had altogether little talent for a spirited enjoyment of
life and for national rejoicing.

But one piece of general information at least has been unequivocally
handed down to us, and this is the fact that they took an early and
religious pleasure in dancing, in studying, and in games. At the _pompa
circensis_ in the _ludi magni_, which were celebrated between the 4th and
the 19th of September, two detachments of dancers were employed; first
those bearing arms in three choruses of men, youths, and boys, all in red
tunics with bronze girdles, equipped with swords, lances, and crested
helmets, then the comic dancers in sheepskins. Similarly dancing was a
part of the ritual of the salii and of the arvales long before it became
fashionable with the youths of distinction. Music, too, is acceptable to
the gods, and not only in foreign rites, but it is a necessary ingredient
in Roman ritual for which the old college of the _tubicines_ and the
_tibinices_ provided. Music was indispensable in all festal celebrations,
triumphs, funeral processions; and at the feast of Pales (on the 21st
of April) the whole town was a blare of wind instruments, cymbals, and
kettledrums. Songs and mimic representations were not missing either in
the ceremonial of worship, or at home, or on the occasion of popular
rejoicing, as we may see from the songs of the salii and of the arvales,
from the songs of praise during meals, from the _fescennini_, _saturæ_,
and _atellanæ_, as well as from the comic interludes at the Saturnalia,
at the Floralia, at the Megalesia, at triumphs, and at funeral
processions.

True, these beginnings of an original Roman national poetry never reached
their perfect development, because they submitted to the influence of
Greek literature, so much admired by the educated classes; but, on the
other hand, they resisted this influence so strenuously that Augustus
still continued to make _fescennini_, and the four masked types are
still unchanged to-day in the Italian _commedia dell’ arte_. We may
assume the same to have been generally the case with the games of
amusement. What was specially Greek in them was absorbed by the higher
orders chiefly; what was really national is still to be traced more or
less in the Italy of to-day. So the well-known game _mora_, in which
two players hold out a number of fingers at the same moment and let
their adversary guess how many they were, is found certainly with the
Greeks, but is of extreme antiquity in Italy, where it is described
by the expression _micare digitis_, and was used on grave occasions,
and particularly on the occasion of business transactions, as a kind
of lottery (_sors_). On the whole, the information on Roman games is
uncommonly scanty, and it is vain to attempt to imagine a definite
picture of the entertainments at the Matronalia, the Vinalia, and the
Saturnalia.

Ovid once describes the festival of Anna Perenna that was celebrated on
a heath on the Via Flaminia, but there is nothing characteristic in the
whole description; people eat, drink, dance, and sing, but what they
sing are not national songs. “_Cantant_,” says Ovid, “_cantant quidquid
didicere theatris_.” What we hear of games in Rome is all Greek or is
reckoned as such at least; even the old game of jumping upon full leather
bottles that were oiled, and trying, it would appear, to stand on one’s
head upon them, is mentioned by Virgil as Attic, and in fact identical
with the Greek ἀσκωλιάξειν. Under these circumstances we must not attempt
to prove the existence of any form of national rejoicing peculiar to the
Romans, and must confine ourselves to gathering together those games
which, although customary in Greece also, are frequently mentioned in
Rome. On the one hand, we have children’s and young men’s games; on the
other, games of hazard and board games.

The game of ball, which is known to all antiquity, is certainly a game
for young men, but owing to the healthy movement which it affords, and
which Galen quite particularly recommends in a singular pamphlet on the
little ball, it was also a recreation for elder persons as useful as
it was agreeable. In Rome and Italy generally ball was played, both on
the Campus Martius, where the younger Cato himself might have been seen
taking part in the game, and in the _sphæristeria_ especially laid out
for the purpose in the baths and villas. Among the players of ball were
Mucius Scævola, Cæsar, the emperor Augustus, Mæcenas, the old Spurinna
the friend of Pliny, the emperor Alexander Severus; and there were people
who spent their whole time in this amusement.

During the empire five kinds of balls were employed, one small, one
middle-sized, one large, one very large, one full of air. Perhaps these
five kinds correspond to the Latin expressions _pila_, _trigon_ or _pila
trigonalis_, _pila paganica_, _harpastum_, perhaps identical with _pila
arenaria_, and _follis_. The ordinary ball was stuffed with hair and sewn
with bright or at all events coloured patches; the _paganica_, the name
of which indicates a game between people _en masse_, in which the whole
village (pagus) in the country took part, was a large ball stuffed with
feathers; the _follis_, which was first discovered in the time of Pompey,
was the largest and was full of air (κενή); of the _harpastum_ we know
nothing further than that it was a small hard ball.

The different kinds of games may be determined first by the nature of
the throw and secondly by the number of people engaged in the games.
First the ball may be thrown up and caught by the thrower himself or by
another--this is the Greek οὐρανία; secondly the ball may pass between
two or more players (datatim ludere), the object being skill in throwing
(διδόναι), _dare, ittere_, _jactare_, in catching (λαμβάνειν, δέχεσθαι,
facere, excipere), and in throwing back (remittere, repercutere). Finally
the ball may be bounced violently on the ground or against the wall, so
that it rebounds and may be repeatedly slapped with the hand. In this
game, which is the Greek ἀποῤῥαξις and the Latin _expulsim ludere_,
the number of bounces are counted, and if several play, the winner is
he who can keep it up longest without letting the ball fall. The true
significance of the word _pilicrepus_ is certainly to be found from this
game, as elsewhere the ball makes no especial kind of noise. According to
this, apart from the height of the throw, we may indicate all the methods
of playing ball by the formulæ of _datatim_, _reptim_, _expulsim ludere_.

[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE COLOSSEUM]

So far as the number of players is concerned, first of all there was the
single game in which one played alone with one, or also with two and
three balls, keeping them in perpetual motion as he sat or walked. From
this juggler’s game was derived the art of Ursus Togatus, who, proud of
his steadiness, first used glass balls. Then there was the double game in
which two played and threw the ball to each other, and then one of the
most popular games, which was played before the bath and very frequently
in the Campus Martius, was the _trigon_, in which three players took
part. It is often mentioned but never described. The stations of the
three players were at the three corners of an equilateral triangle; but
the ball did not travel simply from one player to another; it was thrown
at one of them arbitrarily, so that he had to rid himself of two balls
at the same time, a process which involved the use of both hands, and
not only the catching of the two balls but their discharge at one of
the other players. Besides the players themselves, three persons were
necessary for the _trigon_ to pick up the balls, and three others to keep
the score.

The games for players _en masse_ (sphæromachiæ) were particularly
interesting to the Romans. There were three kinds, ἡ ἐπίσκυρος or
ἐπίκοινος τὸ φενίνδα, and τὸ ἁρπαστόν. We are only partially informed
of the difference between them; according to the latest investigation
however the following may be assumed to be probably correct particulars.
In the ἐπίσκυρος, the players divide into sides of equal numbers which
are separated by a line marked in stones (σκῦρος): they also had a limit
at the back of them beyond which they were not allowed to go. The ball is
placed on the σκῦρος. One of the sides, whichever is the first to capture
the placed ball, throws off as far as possible; the other side remains
where it is caught and in turn throws it back. The object is to throw
the ball with such force that the opposite side are driven back, and to
drive them right back to the boundaries of the court, in which case they
have lost the game.

In the second game, the φενίνδα, two sides are also engaged. The man who
throws off challenges a definite person on the opposing side to catch the
ball, but then throws it in quite another direction, in which case it has
to be caught by someone else. If it falls to the ground, the side which
failed to catch it has lost. We know least of all about the _harpastum_,
but the ball seems to have been thrown up in the air so that the thrower
himself is in a position to catch it again. In order to stop this all
the players scrum up, and while they are struggling for the ball upset
one another to the accompaniment of a tremendous noise. Finally, the
game described by Cinnamus the Byzantine, which Meineke and after him
Grasberger have identified with the _harpastum_, has nothing whatever to
do with it. It was quite a particular game for the imperial family, was
played on horseback, and the ball was hit with a racket, none of these
features being characteristic of the _harpastum_.[f]


_The Roman Theatre and Amphitheatre_

[Illustration: ROMAN LAMP]

If the Roman people was ill accommodated in its streets, it might derive
compensation in the vast constructions which were erected for its
amusement, the ample walks and gardens devoted to its recreation, and
the area which was sedulously preserved for its exercise in the Campus
Martius, and the circuses of Romulus and Flaminius. The theatre of
Pompey, the first fabricated of stone for permanent use, was rivalled by
that of Balbus, and Augustus dedicated a third to the pleasures of the
citizens under the title of the theatre of Marcellus. From the enormous
size of these celebrated edifices, it is clear that the idea of reserving
them for dramatic performances entered but little into the views of
their builders. The Roman theatre was an institution very different from
ours, where a select audience pay their price of admission to a private
spectacle on a large scale. They were the houses of the Roman people, to
which every citizen claimed the right of entrance; for they were given
to him for his own by their munificent founders, and the performances
which took place in them were provided gratuitously by the magistrates.
The first object, therefore, was to seat the greatest number of people
possible; and when that was accomplished, the question followed of how
they should be safely and conveniently entertained.

An assemblage of thirty thousand spectators, gathering excitement from
the consciousness of their own multitude, could not sit tamely under
the blaze of an Italian sun, tempered only by an awning, in the steam
and dust of their own creating, which streams of perfumed waters were
required to allay, to hear the formal dialogue of the ancient tragedy
declaimed by human puppets from brass-lipped masques, staggering on
the stilted cothurnus. Whatever might be the case with the Greeks, it
was impossible, at least for the plainer Romans, so to abstract their
imaginations from the ungraceful realities thus placed before them as to
behold in them a symbolic adumbration of the heroic and the divine. For
the charms, however, both of music and dancing, which are also considered
pleasures of the imagination, they appear to have had a genuine though
perhaps a rude taste. Their dramatic representations, accordingly, were
mostly conducted in pantomime; this form at least of the drama was that
which most flourished among them, and produced men of genius, inventors,
and creators in their own line.

Some of the most famous of the mimic actors were themselves Romans; but
the ancient prejudice against the exercise of histrionic art by citizens
was never perhaps wholly overcome. Accordingly Greek names figure more
conspicuously than Roman in the roll of actors on the Roman stage; and
two of these, Bathyllus and Pylades, divided between them, under the mild
autocracy of Augustus, the dearest sympathies and favours of the masters
of the world. The rivalry of these two competitors for public applause,
or rather of their admirers and adherents, broke out in tumultuous
disorders, which engaged at last the interference of the emperor himself.
“It is better for your government,” said one of them to him, when
required to desist from a professional emulation which imperilled the
tranquillity of the city--“it is better that the citizens should quarrel
about a Pylades and a Bathyllus than about a Pompey and a Cæsar.”

But whatever claims pantomime might have as a legitimate child of the
drama, the Roman stage was invaded by another class of exhibitions,
for which no such pretensions could be advanced. The vast proportions
of the theatre invited a grander display of scenic effects than could
be supplied by the chaste simplicity of the Greek chorus, in which the
priests or virgins, whatever their number might be, could only present
so many repetitions of a single type. The finer sentiment of the upper
classes was overpowered by the vulgar multitude, who demanded with noisy
violence the gratification of their coarse and rude tastes. Processions
swept before their eyes of horses and chariots, of wild and unfamiliar
animals; the long show of a triumph wound its way across the stage; the
spoils of captured cities, and the figures of the cities themselves
were represented in painting or sculpture; the boards were occupied in
every interval of more serious entertainment by crowds of rope-dancers,
conjurers, boxers, clowns, and posture-makers, men who walked on their
hands, or stood on their heads, or let themselves be whirled aloft by
machinery, or suspended upon wires, or who danced on stilts, or exhibited
feats of skill with cups and balls. But these degenerate spectacles were
not the lowest degradation to which the theatres were subjected. They
were polluted with the grossest indecencies; and the luxury of the stage,
as the Romans delicately phrased it, drew down the loudest indignation of
the reformers of a later age. Hitherto at least legislators and moralists
had been content with branding with civil infamy the instruments of the
people’s licentious pleasures; but the pretext even for this was rather
the supposed baseness of exhibiting one’s person for money than the
iniquity of the performances themselves. The legitimate drama, which was
still an exercise of skill among the Romans, was relegated, perhaps,
to the smaller theatres of wood, which were erected year by year for
temporary use. There were also certain private theatres, in which knights
and senators could exercise their genius for singing and acting without
incurring the stigma of public representation.

The appetite for grandeur and magnificence, developed so rapidly among
the Romans by the pride of opulence and power, was stimulated by the
furious rivalry of the great nobles. The bold and ingenious tribune,
Curio, whose talents found a more fatal arena in the contests of the
civil wars, was perhaps the first to imagine the form of the double
hemicycle, which he executed with an immense wooden structure and a vast
mechanical apparatus, by which two theatres, after doing their legitimate
duty to the drama, could be wheeled front to front, and combined into a
single amphitheatre for gladiatorial spectacles. There can be no doubt
that this extraordinary edifice was adapted to contain many thousands of
spectators; and there are few perhaps, even of our own engineers, who
build tubular bridges and suspend acres of iron network over our heads,
who would not shrink from the problem of moving the population of a great
city upon a single pair of pivots.

The amphitheatre of Julius Cæsar in the Campus was of wood also, and
this, as well as its predecessors, seems to have been taken down after
serving the purpose of the day. It remained for Statilius Taurus, the
legate of Augustus, to construct the first edifice of this character
in stone, and to bequeath to future ages the original model of the
magnificent structures which bear that name, some of which still attest
the grandeur of the empire in her provinces; but the most amazing
specimen of which, and indeed the noblest existing monument of all
ancient architecture, is the glorious Colosseum at Rome.

Like most of the splendid buildings of this period, the amphitheatre of
Taurus was erected in the Campus Martius, the interior of the city not
admitting of the dedication of so large a space to the purpose; though it
was rumoured indeed that Augustus had purposed to crown the series of his
public works by an edifice of this nature, in the centre of his capital,
to be attached perhaps to his forum. While the amphitheatre, however, was
a novel invention, the circus, to which it was in a manner supplementary,
was one of the most ancient institutions of the city. The founder himself
had convened his subjects in the Murcian valley, beneath his cabin on the
Palatine, to celebrate games of riding, hunting, and charioteering.

The enclosure in which these shows were annually exhibited was an oblong,
curved at the farther end, above six hundred yards in length, but
comparatively narrow. The seats which ranged round the two larger sides
and extremity of this area (which derived its name of arena from the sand
with which it was strewed) were originally cut for the most part out of
the rising ground and turfed; less rude accommodation was afterwards
supplied by wooden scaffoldings, but the whole space was eventually
surrounded by masonry and decorated with all the forms and members of
Roman architecture.

The arena was adapted for chariot racing by a partition, a dwarf wall,
surmounted with various emblematic devices, which ran along the middle
and terminated at either end in goals or ornamented pillars, round which
the contending cars were driven a stated number of times. The eye of the
spectator, from his position aloft, was carried over this spinal ridge,
and he obtained a complete view of the contest, which thus passed and
repassed, amidst clouds of dust and roars of sympathising excitement,
before his feet. The Romans had from the first an intense delight in
these races; and many of the most graphic passages of their poets
describe the ardour of the horses, the emulation of their drivers, and
the tumultuous enthusiasm of the spectators.

These contests maintained their interest from the cradle to the very
grave of the Roman people. The circus of Constantinople, under the Greek
designation of Hippodrome, was copied from the pattern of the Roman; and
the factions, which divided the favour of the tribes almost from the
beginning of the empire, continued to agitate the city of Theodosius
and Justinian. The citizens were never satiated with this spectacle, and
could sit without flagging through a hundred heats, which the liberality
of the exhibiter sometimes provided for them. But the races were more
commonly varied with contests of other kinds. All the varieties of the
Greek pancratium, such as boxing, wrestling, and running, were exhibited
in the circus; gladiators fought one another with naked swords, sometimes
in single combat, sometimes in opposing bands.

The immense size of the arena, unfavourable for the exhibition of the
duel, was turned to advantage for the display of vast multitudes of
wild animals, which were let loose in it to be transfixed with spears
and arrows. This practice seems to date from the sixth century, when
victorious generals first returned to Rome from the far regions of the
teeming East, to ingratiate themselves with the populace by showing
them the strange monsters of unknown continents, lions and elephants,
giraffes and hippopotami. As in other things, the rivalry of the nobles
soon displayed itself in the number of these creatures they produced for
massacre; and the favour of the citizens appears to have followed with
constancy the champion who treated it with the largest effusion of blood.
The circus was too spacious for the eye to gloat upon the expression
of conflicting passions, and watch the last ebbings of life; but the
amphitheatre brought the greatest possible number of spectators within
easy distance of the dead and dying, and fostered the passion for the
sight of blood, which continued for centuries to vie in interest with the
harmless excitement of the race.

The idea of the theatre is representation and illusion, and the stage is,
as it were, magic ground, over which the imagination may glance without
restraint and wander at will from Thebes to Athens, from the present to
the past or future. But in the amphitheatre all is reality. The citizen,
seated face to face with his fellow-citizens, could not for a moment
forget either his country or his times. The spectacles here presented
to him made no appeal to the discursive faculties; they brought before
his senses, in all the hardness of actuality, the consummation of those
efforts of strength, skill, and dexterity in the use of arms to which
much of his own time and thoughts were necessarily directed.

The exhibition of gladiatorial combats, which generally preceded the
departure of a general upon a foreign campaign, was part of the soldier’s
training (and every citizen was regarded as a soldier), from which he
received the last finish of his education, and was taught to regard
wounds and death as the natural incidents of his calling. These were
probably the most ancient of the military spectacles. The combats of wild
beasts, and of men with beasts, were a corruption of the noble science
of war which the gladiatorial contests were supposed to teach; they
were a concession to the prurient appetite for excitement, engendered
by an indulgence which, however natural in a rude and barbarous age,
was actually hardening and degrading. The interest these exercises at
first naturally excited degenerated into a mere passion for the sight of
death; and as the imagination can never be wholly inactive in the face
of the barest realities, the Romans learned to feast their thoughts on
the deepest mystery of humanity, and to pry with insatiate curiosity into
the secrets of the last moments of existence. In proportion as they lost
their faith in a future life, they became more restlessly inquisitive
into the conditions of the present.

The eagerness with which the great mass of the citizens crowded to
witness these bloody shows, on every occasion of their exhibition, became
one of the most striking features of Roman society, and none of their
customs has, accordingly, attracted more of the notice of the ancient
writers who profess to describe the manners of their times. By them they
are often represented as an idle and frivolous recreation, unworthy of
the great nation of kings; nor do we find the excuse officially offered
for the combats of gladiators, as a means of cherishing courage and
fostering the ruder virtues of antiquity, generally put forward as their
apology by private moralists. Men of reflection, who were far themselves
from sharing the vulgar delight in these horrid spectacles (and it should
be noticed that no Roman author speaks of them with favour, or gloats
with interest on their abominations), acquiesced without an effort in the
belief that it was necessary to amuse the multitude, and was better to
gratify them with any indulgence they craved for than to risk the more
fearful consequences of thwarting and controlling them. The blood thus
shed on the arena was the price they calculated on paying for the safety
and tranquillity of the realm.

[Illustration: ROMAN WEIGHTS]

In theory, at least, the men who were thus thrust forth to engage the
wild beasts were condemned criminals; but it was often necessary to
resort to the expedient of hiring volunteers to furnish the numbers
required, and this seems to prove that the advantage was generally on the
side of the human combatant. The gladiators, although their profession
might be traced by antiquarians to the combats of armed slaves around the
pyre of their master, ending in their mutual destruction in his honour,
were devoted to no certain death. They were generally slaves purchased
for the purpose, but not unfrequently free men hired with liberal wages;
and they were in either case too costly articles to be thrown away with
indifference. They were entitled to their discharge after a few years’
service, and their profession was regarded in many respects as a public
service, conducted under fixed regulations. Under the emperors, indeed,
express laws were required to moderate the ardour even of knights and
senators to descend into the arena, where they delighted to exhibit
their courage and address in the face of danger. Such was the ferocity
engendered by the habitual use of arms, so soothing to the swordsman’s
vanity the consciousness of skill and valour, so stimulating to his pride
the thunders of applause from a hundred thousand admirers, that the
practice of mortal combat, however unsophisticated nature may blench at
its horrors, was actually the source perhaps of more pleasure than pain
to the Roman prize-fighters. If the companions of Spartacus revolted and
slew their trainers and masters, we may set against this instance of
despair and hostility the signal devotion of the gladiators of Antonius,
who cut their way through so many obstacles in a fruitless effort to
succour him. But the effect of such exhibitions upon the spectators
themselves was wholly evil; for while they utterly failed in supplying
the bastard courage for which they were said to be designed, they
destroyed the nerve of sympathy for suffering which distinguishes the
human from the brute creation.[c]

[Illustration: TO THE TIGERS]


SHEPPARD’S ESTIMATE OF THE GLADIATORIAL CONTEST

The gladiatorial combats were, above all things else, the distinctive
characteristics of Rome. Rome, in her fallen days, without virtue,
without faith, without trust in her gods or in herself, loved, believed
in, deified one idol still--Homicide. The butcheries of the amphitheatre
exerted a charm upon the minds of men, for which literature, art,
philosophy, religion, and the simple enjoyments of domestic life were
flung aside. Existence became a frightful phantasmagoria--an alternation
of debauch and blood.

The practice itself can be traced back to one of the darkest
superstitions of the human mind. It originated in the barbarous instinct
of the savage to sacrifice his victim upon the tomb of the dead as a
satisfaction, and perhaps as an attendant upon the departed spirit.
The example, from whatever source derived, was first set to the Roman
people by Marcus and Decimus Brutus, who matched together gladiators in
the Forum Boarium, for the purpose of casting unprecedented éclat upon
the obsequies of their father, 264 B.C. The seed fell upon fruitful
ground, for it soon grew and ripened into a harvest more destructive
than the dragon’s teeth of Grecian fable. The wealth and ingenuity
of the Roman aristocracy were taxed to the uttermost to content the
populace and provide food for the indiscriminate slaughter of the circus,
where brute fought with brute and man with man, or where the skill and
weapons of the latter were matched against the strength and ferocity of
the first. In one day Pompey poured six hundred lions into the arena.
Augustus delighted the multitude with the sight of four hundred and
twenty panthers. Twenty elephants, Pliny tells us, contended against a
band of six hundred Gætulian captives. The games given by Trajan lasted
for more than one hundred and twenty days. Ten thousand gladiators
descended to combat, and more than ten thousand beasts were slain. Titus,
that “delight of the human race,” had upwards of five thousand animals
slaughtered in a single day. Every corner of the earth was ransacked for
some strange creature whose appearance was hailed with frantic applause
by the spectators. We hear of camelopards, white elephants, and the
rhinoceros. Scaurus produced upon the stage a hippopotamus and five
crocodiles. Game of the nobler sorts became scarce. The Roman populace
was as indignant with those who in any way damaged its supplies, as the
country sportsman is with a poacher or with the unlucky culprit who has
made away with a fox. In the time of Theodosius it was forbidden by law
to destroy a Gætulian lion, even in self-defence.

But the death-agonies of the wild animals of the desert were too tame a
spectacle to satisfy the Roman thirst for blood. It was when man strove
with man, and when all that human strength and skill, increased by
elaborate training and taxed to the uttermost, could do, was put forth
before their unrelenting eyes, that the transport of their sanguinary
enthusiasm was at its height. It is impossible to describe the aspect
of the amphitheatre at such a time. The audience became frantic with
excitement; they rose from their seats; they yelled; they shouted their
applause, as one blow more ghastly than another was dealt by lance, or
sword, or dagger, and the life-blood spouted forth. “Hoc habet”--“he has
it, he has it!”--was the cry which burst from ten thousand throats, and
was re-echoed, not only by a debased and brutalised populace, but by the
lips of royalty, by purple-clad senators and knights, by noble matrons,
and even by those consecrated maids whose presence elsewhere saved the
criminal from his fate, but whose function here it was to consign the
suppliant to his doom by reversing the thumb upon his appeal for mercy.
His blood was soon licked up by the thirsty sand, or concealed beneath
the sawdust sprinkled over it by the ready attendant; his body dragged
hastily from the stage by an iron hook, and flung into a gory pit; his
existence forgotten, and his place supplied by another and yet another
victim, as the untiring work of death went on.

And we must remember that these things were not done casually, or under
the influence of some strange fit of popular frenzy. They were done
purposely, systematically, and calmly; they formed the staple amusement,
I had almost said the normal employment, of a whole people, whose one
audible cry was for “panem et circenses”--“bread and blood.” Neither were
they fostered by the brutalised habits and associations which surround
the cockpit or the prize-ring. When men were “butchered to make a Roman
holiday,” it was among all the delicate appliances of the most refined
sensualism. An awning, gorgeous with purple and gold, excluded the rays
of the midday sun; sweet strains of music floated in the air, drowning
the cries of death; the odour of Syrian perfumes overpowered the scent
of blood; the eye was feasted by the most brilliant scenic decoration,
and amused by elaborate machinery; and, as a crowning degradation to the
whole, the Paphian chamber of the courtesan arose beside the bloody den
into which were flung the mangled bodies of men and brutes.

Such things seem impossible to those who live beneath a civilisation
which Christianity has influenced, however imperfectly, by its presence.
And indeed it needs much--the concurrent testimony of poet, historian,
and philosopher; the ruins of a hundred amphitheatres before our
eyes; the frescoes of the Museo Borbonico; the very programmes of the
performance, which something higher than accident has preserved; the
incidental witness of an inspired apostle--it needs all this to convince
us of the truth. But they are true, undisputed facts of history, and
facts which carry with them no obscure intimation of the reasons which
worked the fall of the imperial city. They prove that she deserved
to fall, and by the hands of those in whose persons she had outraged
humanity. It was not a poet remarkable for overstraining the religious
sentiment of divine retribution, who wrote:

                                “Shall he expire,
    And unavenged! Arise, ye Goths! and glut your ire.”

The gladiator, whether directly a captive or a refractory slave, was
generally the child of those races who wreaked, in after times, a bloody
vengeance upon the city of blood. And if her own degenerate sons,
freedman, knight, or senator, nay, even her degraded daughters, descended
into the arena and combated by his side, this could only bespeak her more
entire debasement and unfitness to direct the destinies of the world.[i]


FOOTNOTES

[36] [It is well to bear in mind that a more optimistic view of the early
empire has its supporters. As has already been pointed out, there are
different estimates of such emperors as Tiberius. It is urged, also, that
the cruelties and vices of the emperors affected but a limited circle;
and that meantime the provinces might be well governed, healthful, and
prosperous. It has been alleged, _e.g._, that Tiberius and Domitian ruled
the provinces better than the Antonines.]

[37] The Appian way was the fashionable drive of the Roman nobility.

[38] The Romans rode in carriages on a journey, but rarely for amusement,
and never within the city. Even beyond the wall it was considered
disreputable to hold the reins one’s self, such being the occupation of
the slave or hired driver. Juvenal ranks the consul, who creeps out at
night to drive his own chariot, with the most degraded of characters:
that he should venture to drive by daylight, while still in office, is an
excess of turpitude transcending the imagination of the most sarcastic
painter of manners as they were. And this was a hundred years later than
the age of Augustus. See Juvenal, VIII, 145.

[39] The _leges Juliæ_ allowed two hundred sesterces for a repast on
ordinary days, three hundred on holidays, one thousand for special
occasions, such as a wedding, etc. Gellius[d] II, 24.

[40] The structor or carver was an important officer at the sideboard.
Carving was even taught as an art, which, as the ancients had no forks
(χειρονομᾶν, to manipulate, was the Greek term for it), must have
required grace as well as dexterity. Moreau de Jonnès observes, with some
reason, that the invention of the fork, apparently so simple, deserves to
be considered difficult and recondite. The Chinese, with their ancient
and elaborate civilisation, have failed to attain to it.




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XXXIX. A HALF CENTURY OF DECLINE: COMMODUS TO ALEXANDER SEVERUS

    The day of the death of Marcus Aurelius may be taken as the
    decisive moment in which the ruin of the old civilisation was
    determined.

    Now after the great effort of reason in high places, after
    Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, the reign
    of evil begins again, and is worse than ever. Farewell to
    goodness, farewell to reason! Now, all hail, folly! All hail,
    absurdity! All hail to the Syrian and his questionable gods!
    Genuine physicians have been able to do nothing; the sick man
    is more sick than ever: send for the charlatans.--RENAN.


[Sidenote: [161-183 A.D.]]

We come now to a time of obvious decline. Even in the golden epoch the
nation was probably static rather than progressive, notwithstanding
the glory that surrounds the great names of its emperors. But now the
deterioration is too rapid and too marked to be questioned. The period
has no importance except as a transition time from the great days of
the empire to the days of its degradation. Nevertheless, the events of
this transition age marshal themselves before the eye in one of the most
striking panoramas in all history. These events group themselves into a
few strange scenes. The first shows us a philosopher’s son given over to
the lowest forms of vice; demeaning himself in the arena; associating
with gladiators and slaves; and finally coming to an ignominious death at
the hands of his wife and freedmen, who kill him that their own lives may
be saved.

The second scene shows us, in sharp contrast to the ignoble son of the
philosopher, the noble son of a slave assuming the purple. Pertinax
passes across the stage as a good old man, well-meaning, but incompetent
to stem the tide of the times. He meets what may be called the normal
imperial fate--assassination; and the historic stage is cleared for one
of the strangest spectacles that it has yet witnessed--the auction of an
empire. This, to be sure, is not the first time that money has made its
power felt in the disposal of the imperial office. It has long been the
custom for a new emperor to make “presents” to the soldiers. But now the
affair is reduced to the frank terms of sale and purchase.

In due course the man who has thus bargained for an empire pays the
penalty of his ambition; then a turmoil ensues between the rival
aspirants to the succession, which ends, naturally enough, with the death
of all but one; he, Septimius Severus by name, gives to the empire a
moment of relative tranquillity; and at last presents a spectacle hardly
less strange than all the others,--the spectacle of a Roman emperor dying
a natural death. We shall not see the like again for many a reign.

Following Severus come his two sons, Caracalla and Geta. The former plays
well the part of heartless despot; he kills his brother and slaughters a
host of helpless subjects in the East; and then, to emphasise a paradox,
grants the bauble of Roman citizenship to all subjects of the empire. In
due course he meets the imperial death, and is succeeded by Macrinus,
who, slain at once, is followed by Elagabalus. This degenerate youth
typifies his era; sinks to depths of debauchery which horrify even the
Roman conscience; introduces new forms of worship from the East; wins the
title of Sardanapalus; and, finally, slaughtered, his body thrown into
the Tiber, is nicknamed Tiberinus, in mocking remembrance of his ignoble
death and yet more ignoble life.

And now, at last, a ray of light pierces the gloom, and with the coming
of Alexander Severus there is a brief recrudescence of the days when Rome
was something more than the battle-ground of mercenaries and the court of
voluptuaries. Yet, in the end, even this good emperor meets the fate of
all the rest. Truly, the time is out of joint.

Let us take up now in more detailed presentation--yet still as briefly as
historical completeness will permit--the story of these strange events,
beginning with the reign of that renegade Commodus, who owed his position
on the throne to the parental affection rather than the philosophic
judgment of the best of emperors.[a]


COMMODUS (180-192 A.D.)

Marcus Aurelius was succeeded by his son, usually known as Commodus,
whose full name was Marcus Lucius Ælius Aurelius Commodus Antoninus. This
unworthy scion of a glorious house was born at Lanuvium on the 31st of
August, 161, and proclaimed cæsar on the 12th of October, 166. In the
year 177 the tribunician authority was bestowed on Commodus and he was
summoned to take his place as “augustus” by his father’s side.

Three years later, on the 17th of March, 180, Aurelius died, and
Commodus, who was at that time less than nineteen years of age, assumed
the reins of government without difficulty. But he was not the man to
rise to the occasion and reap the advantage of his father’s victories.
He made a peace with the Germani, which might pass for honourable, but
was far from furnishing a satisfactory safeguard for the interests of
Rome. The principal conditions were the same that Marcus Aurelius had
imposed upon the enemy five or six years before, but Commodus yielded
up all the strongholds which the Romans had established in the heart of
the enemy’s country. The lustre of the Roman arms was restored for the
time, it is true, and the old and new commanders, trained in the school
of the Parthian and German wars, guarded the frontiers of the empire at
all points. But the change for the worse soon manifested itself in the
internal policy of the empire.[b]

At Rome, for the space of about three years, all was tranquillity; for
Commodus, whose natural character, as we are assured, was weak and
timid rather than wicked, allowed himself to be directed by the able
and upright men to whom his father had recommended him. His hours were
devoted to luxury and indulgence, till at length (183) an event occurred
which revealed the latent cruelty of his nature.

[Sidenote: [183-186 A.D.]]

After the death of L. Verus, Marcus had given his daughter Lucilla in
marriage to Pompeianus, a most respectable senator; and after the death
of her mother he allowed her all the honours of an empress, which her
brother also continued to her. But on the marriage of Commodus with a
lady named Crispina, Lucilla was obliged to yield precedence to the
reigning empress. Her haughty spirit deemed this an indignity, and she
resolved on revenge. Fearing to entrust her design to her noble-minded
husband, she first communicated it to Quadratus, a wealthy young
nobleman, with whom she carried on an adulterous intercourse; she also
engaged in the plot Claudius Pompeianus, another of her paramours, who
was betrothed to her daughter; some senators also were aware of it.
As Commodus was entering the amphitheatre through a dusky passage,
Pompeianus, who was lying in wait, drew his sword and cried, “The senate
sends thee this.” But the words prevented the execution of his design,
and he was seized by the guards. He, Quadratus, and some others were
executed; Lucilla was for the present confined in the isle of Capreæ, but
she was erelong put to death, and a similar fate soon befell her rival
Crispina on account of adultery. In her place Commodus took a freedwoman
named Marcia, who had been the concubine of Quadratus, and to whom he
gave all the honours of an empress, except that of having fire borne
before her.


CRUELTIES AND DEATH OF COMMODUS

[Sidenote: [186-189 A.D.]]

The unwise exclamation of Pompeianus sank deep in the mind of Commodus;
he learned to regard the senate as his deadly enemies, and many of its
most illustrious members were put to death on various pretexts. His only
reliance was now on the guards, and the prætorian prefects soon became
as important as in former times. The prefects now were Tarruntenus
Paternus and Perennis, but the arts of the latter caused the former to
be removed and put to death, and the whole power of the state fell into
his hands, for the timid Commodus no longer ventured to appear in public.
The prefect removed all he dreaded by false accusations, and he amassed
wealth by the confiscation of the properties of the nobility. His son was
in command of the Illyrian legions, and he now aspired to the empire.
But he had offended the army of Britain--the army that in 184 had won
brilliant success,--and they deputed (186) fifteen hundred of their
number to accuse him to Commodus of designs on the empire. They were
supported by the secret influence of the freedman Cleander, and Perennis
was given up to their vengeance. Himself, his wife, his sister, and two
of his children were massacred; his eldest son was recalled and murdered
on the way to Rome.

The character of Perennis is doubtful, but that of Cleander who succeeded
to his power was one of pure evil. Cleander, a Phrygian by birth, had
been brought to Rome as a slave and sold in the public market. He was
purchased for the palace, and placed about the person of Commodus,
with whom he speedily ingratiated himself; and when the prince became
emperor he made Cleander his chamberlain. The power of the freedman, when
Perennis was removed, became absolute; avarice, the passion of a vulgar
mind, was his guiding principle. All the honours and all the posts of
the empire were put to sale; pardons for any crime were to be had for
money; and in the short space of three years the wealth of Cleander
exceeded that of the Pallas and Narcissus of the early days of the empire.

A conspiracy of an extraordinary nature occurred not long after the death
of Perennis. A great number of men who had deserted from the armies put
themselves under the command of a common soldier named Maternus; they
were joined by slaves whom they freed from their bonds, and they ravaged
for some time with impunity the provinces of Gaul and Spain. At length
(187) when Maternus found the governors preparing to act with vigour
against him, he resolved to make a desperate effort and be emperor or
perish. He directed his followers to disperse and repair secretly to
Rome, where he proposed that they should assume the dress of the guards,
and fall on the emperor during the license of the festival of the
Megalesia. All succeeded to his wishes; they repaired safely to Rome,
but some of them out of envy betrayed the secret, and Maternus and some
others were taken and executed.

[Illustration: PECULIAR HEAD-DRESS OF A STANDARD-BEARER]

[Sidenote: [189-193 A.D.]]

The power of Cleander was now at its height; by gifts to Commodus and
his mistresses he maintained his influence at court, and by the erection
of baths and other public edifices he sought to ingratiate himself with
the people. He had also the command of the guards, for whom he had for
some time caused prætorian prefects to be made and unmade at his will. He
at length divided the office between himself and two others, but he did
not assume the title. As an instance of the way in which he disposed of
offices, we find in one year (189) no less than five-and-twenty consuls.

What the ultimate views of Cleander may have been is unknown, for he
shared the usual fate of aspiring freedmen. Rome was visited at this time
by a direful pestilence, and the emperor on account of it resided out
of the city. The pestilence was as usual attended by famine, and this
visitation of heaven was by the people laid to the charge of the odious
favourite. As they were one day (189) viewing the horse races in the
circus, a party of children entered, headed by a fierce-looking girl,
and began to exclaim against Cleander. The people joined in the cries,
and then rising rushed to where Commodus was residing in the suburbs,
demanding the death of Cleander. But the favourite instantly ordered
the prætorian cavalry to charge them, and they were driven back to the
city with the loss of many lives. When, however, the cavalry entered the
streets they were assailed by missiles from the roofs of the houses, and
the people being joined by the urban cohorts rallied and drove them back
to the palace, where Commodus still lay in total ignorance of all that
had occurred, for fear of Cleander had kept all silent. But now Marcia,
or as others said the emperor’s sister Fadilla, seeing the danger so
imminent, rushed into his presence and informed him of the truth. Without
a moment’s hesitation he ordered Cleander and his son to be put to death.
The people placed the head of Cleander on a pole and dragged his body
through the streets, and when they had massacred some of his creatures
the tumult ceased.

The cruelty of Commodus displayed itself more and more every day, and
several men of rank became its victims.[c] Thus, after many years of
tranquillity, the upper classes of Roman society again found themselves
in the intolerable position of going in perpetual fear of death. Once
more Rome witnessed the spectacle of a wicked lad on the throne of
the Cæsars, falling a victim to the “madness of empire,” trampling
the dignity of his great office underfoot in furious lust of pleasure
of every sort, and, in pompous dull-wittedness, playing the part of a
sanguinary practical joker and a foolish spendthrift.[b] At the same time
his lust was unbounded; three hundred beautiful women and as many boys
of all ages and countries filled his seraglio, and he abstained from no
kind of infamy. He delighted also to exhibit proofs of his skill as a
marksman, and he assumed the title and attributes of the hero Hercules.
For some time, like Nero, he confined his displays to the interior of
his residences, but at length the senate and people were permitted to
witness his skill in the amphitheatre. A gallery ran round it for the
safety and convenience of the emperor, from which he discharged his darts
and arrows with unerring aim at the larger and fiercer animals, while he
ventured into the arena to destroy the deer and other timid creatures. A
hundred lions were at once let loose, and each fell by a single wound;
an irritated panther had just seized a man, a dart was flung by the
emperor and the beast fell dead, while the man remained uninjured. With
crescent-headed arrows he cut off the heads of ostriches as they ran at
full speed.

But his greatest delight was to combat as a gladiator. He appeared in
the character of a secutor: he caused to be recorded 735 victories which
he had gained, and he received each time an immense stipend out of the
gladiatorial fund. Instead of Hercules he now styled himself Paulus,
after a celebrated secutor, and caused it to be inscribed on his statues.
He also took up his abode in the residence of the gladiators.

At length the tyrant met the fate he merited. It was his design to put
to death the two consuls-elect for the year 193, and on New Year’s Day
to proceed from the gladiators’ school in his gladiatorial habit and
enter on the consulate. On the preceding day he communicated his design
to Marcia, who tried in vain to dissuade him from it. Q. Æmilius Lætus,
the prætorian prefect, and the chamberlain, Eclectus, also reasoned with
him, but to as little purpose. He testified much wrath, and uttered some
menaces. Knowing that the threats of the tyrant were the sure precursors
of death, they saw their only hopes of safety lay in anticipation; they
took their resolution on the moment;[41] and when Commodus came from the
bath, Marcia, as was her usual practice, handed him a bowl (in which she
had now infused a strong poison), to quench his thirst.

He drank the liquor off, and then laid himself down to sleep. The
attendants were all sent away. The conspirators were expecting the effect
of the poison when the emperor began to vomit profusely. Fearing now that
the poison would not take effect, they brought in a vigorous wrestler
named Narcissus; and induced by the promise of a large reward, he laid
hold on and strangled the emperor.[42]


PERTINAX (P. HELVIUS PERTINAX), 193 A.D.

[Sidenote: [193 A.D.]]

The conspirators had, it is probable, already fixed on the person who
should succeed to the empire, and their choice was one calculated to do
them credit. It was P. Helvius Pertinax, the prefect of the city, a man
now advanced in years, who had with an unblemished character, though born
in a humble rank, passed through all the civil and military gradations
of the state. Pertinax was the son of a freedman who was engaged in
the manufacture of charcoal at Alba Pompeia in the Apennines. He
commenced life as a man of letters, but finding the literary profession
unprofitable, he entered the army as a centurion, and his career of
advancement was rapid.

It was yet night when Lætus and Eclectus proceeded with some soldiers to
the house of Pertinax. When informed of their arrival he ordered them
to be brought to his chamber, and then, without rising, told them that
he had long expected every night to be his last, and bade them execute
their office; for he was certain that Commodus had sent them to put him
to death. But they informed him that the tyrant himself was no more, and
that they were come to offer him the empire. He hesitated to give credit
to them, but having sent one on whom he could depend, and ascertained
that Commodus was dead, he consented to accept the proffered dignity.
Though it was not yet day they all repaired to the prætorian camp,
and Lætus, having assembled the soldiers, told them that Commodus was
suddenly dead of apoplexy, and that he had brought them his successor, a
man whose merits were known to them all. Pertinax then addressed them,
promising a large donative. The soldiers swore fidelity to the emperor.

Before dawn the senate was summoned to the temple of Concord, whither
Pertinax had proceeded from the camp. He told them what had occurred,
and, noticing his age and his humble extraction, pointed out divers
senators as more worthy of the empire than himself. But they would not
listen to his excuses, and they decreed him all the imperial titles.
Then giving loose to their rage against the fallen tyrant, they termed
him parricide, gladiator, the enemy of the gods and of his country, and
decreed that his statues should be cast down, his titles be erased,
and his body dragged with the hook through the streets. But Pertinax
respected too much the memory of Marcus to suffer the remains of his
son to be thus treated, and they were by his order placed in the tomb of
Hadrian.

Pertinax was cheerfully acknowledged by all the armies. Like Vespasian,
he was simple and modest in his dress and mode of life, and he lived on
terms of intimacy with the respectable members of the senate. He resigned
his private property to his wife and son, but would not suffer the senate
to bestow on them any titles. He regulated the finances with the greatest
care, remitting oppressive taxes and cancelling unjust claims. He sold
by auction all the late tyrant’s instruments of luxury, and obliged his
favourites to disgorge a portion of their plunder. He granted the waste
lands in Italy and elsewhere for a term of years rent free to those who
would undertake to improve them.

The reforming hand of the emperor was extended to all departments of the
state; and men looked for a return of the age of the Antonines. But the
soldiers dreaded the restoration of the ancient discipline; and Lætus,
who found that he did not enjoy the power he had expected, secretly
fomented their discontent. So early as the 3d of January they had seized
a senator named Triarius Maternus, intending to make him emperor, but he
escaped from them and fled to Pertinax for protection. Some time after,
while the emperor was on the sea coast attending to the supply of corn,
they prepared to raise Sosius Falco, then consul, to the empire; but
Pertinax came suddenly to Rome, and having complained of Falco to the
senate, they were about to proclaim him a public enemy, when the emperor
cried that no senator should suffer death while he reigned; and Falco was
thus suffered to escape punishment.

Some expressions which Pertinax used on this occasion irritated the
soldiers; and Lætus, to exasperate them still more, put several of them
to death, as if by his orders. Accordingly on the twenty-eighth of March
a general mutiny broke out in the camp, and two or three hundred of the
most desperate proceeded with drawn swords to the palace. No one opposed
their entrance. Pertinax, when informed of their approach, advanced to
meet them. He addressed them, reminding them of his own innocence and
of the obligation of their oath. They were silent for a few moments;
at length a Tungrian soldier struck him with his sword, crying, “The
soldiers send thee this.” They all then fell on him, and cutting off his
head set it on a lance and carried it to the camp. Eclectus, faithful to
the last, perished with the emperor; Lætus had fled in disguise at the
approach of the mutineers. The reign of the virtuous Pertinax had lasted
only eighty-six days; he was in the sixty-seventh year of his age.


JULIANUS (M. DIDIUS SEVERUS JULIANUS), 193 A.D.

The mutineers on their return to the camp found there Sulpicianus, the
prefect of the city, the late emperor’s father-in-law, who had been sent
thither to try to appease the mutiny. The bloody proof which they bore
of the empire’s being vacant excited when it should have extinguished
his ambition, and he forthwith began to treat for the dangerous prize.
Immediately some of the soldiers ran and ascending the ramparts cried
out aloud that the empire was for sale, and would be given to the
highest bidder. The news reached the ears of Didius Julianus, a wealthy
and luxurious senator, as he sat at table; and urged by his wife and
daughter and his parasites, he rose and hastened to the camp. The
military auctioneers stood on the wall, one bidder within, the other
without. Sulpicianus had gone as high as five thousand denarii a man,
when his rival at one bidding rose to 6250. This spirited offer carried
it; the soldiers also had a secret dread that Sulpicianus, if emperor,
might avenge the death of his son-in-law. The gates were thrown open,
and Julian was admitted and saluted emperor; but the soldiers had the
generosity to stipulate for the safety of his rival.

From the camp Julian, escorted by the soldiers, proceeded to the senate
house. He was there received with affected joy, and the usual titles and
honours were decreed him; but the people stood aloof and in silence, and
those who were more distant uttered loud curses on him. When Julian came
to the palace, the first object that met his eyes was the corpse of his
predecessor; he ordered it to be buried, and then it is said sat down and
passed the greater part of the night at a luxurious banquet, and playing
at dice. In the morning the senate repaired to him with their feigned
compliments; but the people still were gloomy, and when he went down to
the senate house and was about to offer incense to the Janus before the
doors, they cried out that he was a parricide and had stolen the empire.
He promised them money, but they would have none of it; and at length
he ordered the soldiers to fall on them, and several were killed and
wounded. Still they ceased not to revile him and the soldiers, and to
call on the other armies, especially that of Pescennius Niger, to come to
their aid.

The principal armies were that of Syria commanded by Niger; that of
Pannonia under Septimius Severus, and that of Britain under Clodius
Albinus, each composed of three legions, with its suitable number of
auxiliaries.

C. Pescennius Niger was a native of Aquinum, of a simple equestrian
family. He entered the army as a centurion, and rose almost solely by
merit till he attained the lucrative government of Syria. As an officer
Niger was a rigorous maintainer of discipline; as a governor he was just,
but mild and indulgent, and he succeeded in gaining alike the affections
of the soldiers and the subjects. In his private life he was chaste and
temperate.

L. Septimius Severus was born at Leptis in Africa. He received a learned
education, and devoted himself to the bar, and M. Aurelius made him
advocate of the Fisc. He acted as civil governor of several provinces,
and had occasionally a military command, but had seen little or no
actual service. After his consulate, Commodus, through the influence of
Lætus, gave him the command of the Pannonian legions, as reported in the
_Augustan History_.

D. Clodius Albinus was also an African. He was born at Hadrumetum, of an
honourable family, which derived its origin from the Postumii and Ceionii
of Rome. He entered the army early, and rose through all the gradations
of the service, being highly esteemed by M. Aurelius. He commanded in
Bithynia, at the time of the revolt of Cassius, and kept his legions in
their duty. Commodus gave him the command in Gaul and in Britain, and
designed him for his successor. Albinus was a strict and even severe
officer. He was fond of agriculture, on which subject he wrote some
books. He was charged with private vices, but probably without reason.

When the intelligence of the murder of Pertinax and the sale of the
empire to Julian reached the armies of Syria and Pannonia, their
generals saw the prospect of empire open to them as the avengers of the
emperor whom they had acknowledged. Each of them assembled his troops
and expatiated on the atrocity of the deed which had been perpetrated
at Rome, and each was saluted Augustus by his army and the subjects.
But while Niger, seeing all the provinces and allied princes of Asia
unanimous in his favour, and therefore indulging in confidence, remained
inactive at Antioch, Severus resolved to push on for the capital, and
possess himself of that seat of empire. Having secured the adherence of
the army of Gaul, he wrote a most friendly letter to Albinus, giving
him the title of cæsar, and adopting him as his son; by which he made
sure of his neutrality, if not of his co-operation. He then advanced by
rapid marches for Rome. Day and night he appeared in full armour, and
surrounded by a guard of six hundred chosen men, who never laid aside
their corslets. Resistance was nowhere offered; all hailed him as the
avenger of Pertinax.

The wretched Julian was filled with dismay when he heard of the approach
of the formidable Pannonian army. He made the senate declare Severus a
public enemy; he distributed large sums of money to the prætorians to
induce them to prepare to defend him; but these dissolute troops were
vigorous only for evil, and they could not resume the discipline they
had lost; the marines summoned from Misenum were still more inefficient;
and an attempt at training elephants for war in the oriental manner only
excited derision. Julian also caused an entrenchment to be run in front
of the city, and he secured the palace with strong doors and bars, as if
that could be maintained when all else was lost. He put to death Marcia,
Lætus, and all concerned in the murder of Commodus, probably with a view
to the favour of the soldiery.

Severus meantime had reached Ravenna and secured the fleet. Julian,
having made some fruitless attempts on his life, caused the senate to
declare him his associate in the empire. But Severus now disdained
such divided power; he had written to the prætorians, assuring safety
to all but the actual assassins of Pertinax, and they had accepted the
conditions. The consul, Silius Messalla, assembled the senate, and it
was resolved to put Julian to death and give the empire to Severus. When
those charged with the mandate for his death came to Julian, his only
words were, “What evil have I done? Whom have I slain?” He was then
killed by a common soldier, after a reign of only sixty-six days.


SEVERUS (L. SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS), 193-211 A.D.

[Sidenote: [193-194 A.D.]]

Severus was met at Interamna (Terni), in Umbria, seventy miles from
Rome, by deputies from the senate. He received them with favour, and
still continued to advance. As he drew nigh to Rome he commanded the
execution of the murderers of Pertinax, and he sent orders to the
remaining prætorians to leave their arms in their camp and come to meet
him, dressed as they were wont when attending the emperors on solemn
occasions. They obeyed, and Severus received them in the plain before
his camp, and addressed them from a tribunal, reproaching them with
the murder of Pertinax and the sale of the empire to Julian. He would
spare their lives, he said, but he would leave them nothing save their
tunics, and death should be the fate of any of them who ever came within
a hundred miles of the capital. While he was speaking his soldiers had
imperceptibly surrounded them; resistance was vain, and they quietly
yielded up their swords and their rich habiliments, and mournfully
retired. A detachment had meantime taken possession of their camp, to
obviate the effects of their despair.

Severus entered the city at the head of his army. The senate and people
met him with all the marks of joy and festivity. He ascended the Capitol
and worshipped; he then visited the other temples, and at length
proceeded to the palace. In the morning he met the senate, to whom he
made a speech full of the fairest promises, assuring them that Marcus
should be his model and swearing that he would put no senator to death
unless condemned by themselves--an oath which he kept but indifferently.
The usual titles and powers had been already decreed him; among these was
the title of Pertinax, of which prince he affected to be the avenger,
and the ceremony of whose deification he performed with the greatest
magnificence and solemnity. He distributed large sums of money among
the soldiers and people; he regulated the supply of provisions, and he
examined into the conduct of several governors of provinces, and punished
those who were proved guilty of oppression.

[Illustration: SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS

(From a bust in the Capitoline Museum)]

Severus restored the prætorian guards on a new model, and raised them
to four times their original number. Augustus had admitted none but
Italians into this body; the youth of Spain, Noricum, and Macedonia had
gradually been suffered to enlist in it; but Severus threw it open to
all, selecting the ablest and most faithful soldiers from the legions for
the higher pay and more easy life of the guardsmen.

[Sidenote: [194-197 A.D.]]

After a stay of only thirty days in Rome, Severus set out for the war
against Niger, who was master of all Asia and held the strong city of
Byzantium in Europe. The preparations on both sides occupied some time;
at length Severus took the field, and leaving part of his troops to carry
on the siege of Byzantium, he sent the main body of his army, under his
generals, over the Hellespont. Æmilianus, the proconsul of Asia, gave
them battle (194) near Cyzicus, but was defeated. He fled to Cyzicus, and
thence to another unnamed town, where he was seized and put to death.
Niger in person afterwards engaged the Severian general, Candidus,
between Nicæa and Cius. The contest was long and arduous, but victory
declared for the European army, and Niger, leaving troops to guard the
passes of Mount Taurus, hastened to Antioch to raise men and money.
The elements, however, favoured Severus; heavy falls of rain and snow
destroyed the defences constructed by Niger, and his troops were obliged
to abandon the passes and leave Cilicia open to the enemy.

Niger made his final stand at the Cilician Gates, as the pass from
Cilicia into Syria at the head of the Bay of Issus was named, a place
famous for the defeat of Darius by Alexander the Great. The troops of
Niger were more numerous, but they were mostly raw levies, yet they
fought with constancy; but the elements, we are told, again favoured the
Severians, a storm of rain and thunder came over the sea and blew full
in the faces of the Nigrians, and they fled with the loss of twenty
thousand men. Niger hastened to Antioch, and thence, on the approach of
the enemy, he fled to the Euphrates, in order to seek refuge with the
Parthians; but he had hardly quitted the town when he was seized, and his
head was cut off and sent to Severus.


CONQUESTS OF SEVERUS

This emperor, who had been in none of the preceding actions, now
appeared. He put to death all the senators who had borne arms for Niger;
he banished some, and seized the property of others. He put numbers of
inferior rank to death, and he treated severely Antioch and some other
towns. He then (195) led his army over the Euphrates, and his generals
employed this and a part of the following year in reducing the various
tribes and princes of Mesopotamia. While he was thus engaged (196), he
received the joyful intelligence of the surrender of Byzantium, which,
strong by situation and fortifications, had held out for nearly three
years against the valour and skill of the besieging army, and was only
subdued at last by famine. The magistrates and soldiers were all put to
death; the property of the inhabitants was sold; the walls and the public
edifices were demolished; Byzantium was deprived of its title of city,
and subjected as a village to the jurisdiction of Perinthus.

It is said that Severus was meditating an invasion of Parthia, but his
thoughts were more fixed on securing the succession to his children by
removing Albinus. Suitably to his character, he resolved to proceed
by treachery rather than by force. He wrote to Albinus in the most
affectionate terms, as to his dearest brother; but the bearers of the
letter were instructed to ask a private audience, as having matters
of greater importance to communicate, and then to assassinate him.
The suspicions of Albinus, however, being awaked, he put them to the
torture, and extracted the truth. He saw that he had no alternative,
that he must be emperor or nothing, and he therefore declared himself
Augustus and passed with his army over to Gaul. Severus returned with all
possible speed from the East, and advanced in person into Gaul against
his rival. He crossed the Alps in the depth of winter, and after some
minor engagements a decisive battle was fought on the 19th of February,
197, in the neighbourhood of Lyons. The united number of the combatants
was 150,000 men; the battle was long and dubious, the left wing on each
side was routed, but Severus, who now fought for the first time, brought
up the prætorians to the support of his beaten troops, and though he
received a wound and was driven back, he rallied them once more, and
being supported by the cavalry, under his general, Lætus, he defeated
and pursued the enemy to Lyons. The loss on both sides was considerable;
Albinus slew himself, and his head was cut off and brought to his
ungenerous enemy, who meanly insulted it; his wife and children were at
first spared, but they were soon after put to death, and their bodies
cast into the Rhine.

The city of Lyons was pillaged and burned; the chief supporters of
Albinus, both men and women, Romans and provincials, were put to death,
and their properties confiscated. Having spent some time in regulating
the affairs of Gaul and Britain, Severus returned to Rome, breathing
vengeance against the senate, for he knew that that body was in general
more inclined to Albinus than himself, and he had found, among his
rival’s papers, the letters of several individual senators. The very
day after his arrival he addressed them, commending the stern policy
of Sulla, Marius, and Augustus, and blaming the mildness of Pompey and
Cæsar, which proved their ruin. He spoke in terms of praise of Commodus,
saying that the senate had no right to dishonour him, as many of
themselves lived worse than he had done. He spoke severely of those who
had written letters or sent presents to Albinus. Of these he pardoned
five-and-thirty, but he put to death nine-and-twenty, among whom was
Sulpicianus, the father-in-law of Pertinax. These, however, were not the
only victims; the whole family of Niger, and several other illustrious
persons perished. The properties of all were confiscated; [wherefore the
usual charge of avarice was brought against Severus.]

[Sidenote: [197-202 A.D.]]

After a short stay at Rome Severus set out again for the East; for the
Parthians, taking advantage of his absence, had invaded Mesopotamia,
and laid siege to Nisibis. They retired, however, when they heard of
his approach, and Severus, having passed the winter in Syria making
preparations for the war, crossed the Tigris the following summer (198)
and laid siege to Ctesiphon. The Roman soldiers suffered greatly for
want of supplies, and were reduced to feed on roots and herbage, which
produced dysenteries, but the emperor persevered, and the city at length
was taken. All the full-grown males were massacred, and the women and
children, to the number of one hundred thousand, were sold for slaves. As
want of supplies did not permit the Romans to remain beyond the Tigris,
they returned to Mesopotamia, and on his way to Syria (199) Severus laid
siege to the redoubtable Atræ, but he was forced to retire, with a great
loss both of men and machines. He renewed the attack some time after (it
is uncertain in what year) but with as little success, being obliged to
retire with loss and disgrace from before the impregnable fortress.

Severus remained in the East till the year 202. He spent a part of that
time in Egypt, where he took great pleasure in examining the pyramids and
the other curiosities of that country. He at length returned to Rome, to
celebrate the marriage of his elder son.

The family of Severus consisted of his wife and two sons. The empress,
named Julia Domna, was a native of Emesa in Syria, whom Severus, who
was addicted to astrology, is said to have espoused because she had a
royal nativity. She was a woman of great beauty, sense, and spirit,
and a cultivator of literature and philosophy. The elder son was at
first named Bassianus; but his father, at the time of the war against
Albinus, created him cæsar, by the name of Aurelius Antoninus;[43] and
he was subsequently nicknamed Caracalla, which, to avoid confusion, is
the name employed by modern historians. In the year 198 Severus created
him augustus, and made him his associate in the empire. The name of the
emperor’s younger son was Geta, and he also was styled Antoninus.

The bride selected for Caracalla was Plautilla, the daughter of
Plautianus, the prætorian prefect. This man was a second Sejanus, and it
is very remarkable that two emperors of such superior mental powers as
Tiberius and Severus should have been so completely under the influence
of their ministers. Plautianus, like his master, was an African by birth;
he was of mean extraction, and he seems to have early attached himself
to the fortune of his aspiring countryman, whose favour and confidence
he won in an extraordinary degree; and when Severus attained the empire,
the power of Plautianus grew to such a height, that he, the historian
observes, was, as it were, emperor, and Severus captain of the guards.
Persons like Plautianus, when elevated, rarely bear their faculties
meekly. He was therefore proud, cruel, and avaricious; he was the chief
cause of so many persons of rank and fortune being put to death, in
order that he might gain their properties. He seized whatever took his
fancy, whether sacred or profane, and he thus amassed such wealth that
it was commonly said he was richer than Severus and his sons. Such was
his pride that no one dared approach him without his permission; and
when he appeared in public criers preceded him, ordering that no one
should stop and gaze at him, but turn aside and look down. He would
not allow his wife to visit or to receive visits, not even excepting
the empress. As his power was so great, he was of course the object of
universal adulation. The senators and soldiers swore by his fortune, and
his statues were set up in all parts of the empire. He was in effect more
dreaded and more honoured than the emperor himself.

[Sidenote: [202-208 A.D.]]

Such power is, however, unstable in its very nature, and the marriage
of his daughter with the son of the emperor caused the downfall of
Plautianus. The wedding was celebrated with the utmost magnificence; the
dower of the bride, we are told, would have portioned fifty princesses.
[But the usual allowances must be made for exaggerations of the
gossipers. Some of the tales related by Dion Cassius[e] are not worthy
of repetition even, though perhaps told in good faith. Doubtless all
details as to the death of Plautianus must be heard with reservations.]
Plautilla was haughty like himself; and Caracalla, who had been forced
to marry her, hated father and daughter alike, and resolved on their
destruction. He induced one Saturninus and two other centurions to
declare that Plautianus had ordered them and seven of their comrades to
murder Severus and his son. A written order to this effect was forged and
shown to the emperor, who forthwith summoned Plautianus to his presence.
He came suspecting nothing; he was admitted, but his followers were
excluded. Severus, however, addressed him in a mild tone, and asked him
why he had meditated killing him. Plautianus was expressing his surprise
and commencing his defence, when Caracalla sprang forward, tore his sword
from him, struck him with his fist, and would have slain him with his own
hand but for the interference of his father. He then made some of his
attendants despatch him, and sent his head to the empress and Plautilla,
a joyful sight to the one, a mournful spectacle to the other. Plautilla
and her brother Plautius were sent to the isle of Lipara, where they
lived in poverty and misery for the remainder of the reign of Severus,
and their murder was one of the first acts of Caracalla when emperor.

Severus now remained in Italy for a space of four years, actively engaged
in the administration of justice, the regulation of the finances, and
the correction of all kinds of abuses. He conferred the important post
of prætorian prefect on Papinian, the most renowned of jurisconsults;
and as it was now a part of this officer’s duty to try civil causes,
Papinian appointed as his assessors Paulus and Ulpian--names nearly as
distinguished as his own.

[Sidenote: [208-211 A.D.]]

In the year 208, Severus, though far advanced in years and a martyr
to the gout, set out for Britain, where the northern tribes had for
some time been making their usual incursions into the Roman part of
the island. Various motives are assigned for this resolution; the most
probable is that he wished to remove his sons from the luxury of Rome,
and to restore the relaxed discipline of the legions. He entered the
wild country north of the Roman wall, cut down the woods, and passed
the marshes, and succeeded in penetrating to the extremity of the
island, though with a loss, it is said, of fifty thousand men; for the
barbarians, who would never venture to give him battle, hung on his
flanks and rear, formed numerous ambuscades, and cut off all stragglers.
In order to check their future incursions, he repaired and strengthened
the mound or wall which Hadrian had constructed from the shore of Solway
Firth to the mouth of the Tyne.

Severus had associated his second son Geta in the empire the year he came
to Britain. But the two brothers hated each other mortally, and Caracalla
made little secret of his resolution to reign alone. This abandoned
youth, it is said, even attempted to kill his father in the very sight
of the Roman legions and the barbarian enemies; for as the emperor was
riding one day to receive the arms of the Caledonians, Caracalla drew his
sword to stab him in the back; those who were about them cried out, and
Severus, on turning round, saw the drawn sword in the hand of his son.
He said nothing at the time, but when he returned he called Caracalla
with Papinian and the chamberlain Castor to him in private, and causing
a sword to be laid before him, rebuked his son, and then told him if he
desired his death to slay him with his own hand, or to order Papinian
the prefect to do it, who of course would obey him as he was emperor.
Caracalla showed no signs of remorse; and though Severus had often blamed
M. Aurelius for subordinating his public duty to his private affections
in the case of Commodus, he himself exhibited even more culpable weakness.

Severus was once more about to take the field against the barbarians, who
had renewed their ravages (211), when a severe fit of the gout carried
him off at York (Eboracum), in the sixty-sixth year of his age and the
eighteenth of his reign.

Though this emperor had passed the greater part of his life in civil
rather than military employments, it is remarkable that his government
relied more on the arms of the soldiery than that of any of his
predecessors. We have seen the important changes which he made in
the prætorian guards, whom he also seems to have been the first to
employ on foreign service. Hitherto the legions of the frontiers had
maintained something of the appearance of those of the republic, but
Severus allowed them to have their wives and families in their camps,
and to wear gold rings like the knights. He also increased their pay and
accustomed them to donatives. His dying counsel to his sons, “Be united,
enrich the soldiers, despise all others,” revealed his principles of
despotic government.[c] In judging Severus, however, it is necessary
to recall that the entire period through which we are now passing--up
to the time of Diocletian--is in a sense an epoch of revolution, the
contending forces being the senate, the emperor, the populace of Rome,
the prætorians, and the legions. The weakness and brutality of Commodus
precipitated the revolution. The prætorians not only trampled upon the
senate and the residents of the capital, but also asserted the right to
make and to unmake emperors. This was the first stage of the revolution.
In the second stage, beginning with Septimius Severus, the legions,
jealous of the pampered guard, fought against it, against the senate,
and against one another. This civil war, after rendering the prætorians
helpless and depriving the senate of its last remnant of authority,
decided that the sovereign should be a general, the choice of the
soldiers who protected the empire. Thus far the result of the revolution
was in a great degree just and beneficent. It is to be noted that Severus
was the anti-senatorial candidate for the imperial office,--hence his
unfavourable treatment at the hands of the historian. Though harsh in the
punishment of political offences, Severus was in other respects a great
and admirable ruler. The fact that the three great jurists, Papirian,
Ulpian, and Paulus co-operated with him speaks volumes in his favour.
He strengthened the empire, encouraged education, and made his reign an
epoch in wise legislation.[a]


CARACALLA (M. AURELIUS ANTONINUS CARACALLA), 211-217 A.D.

[Sidenote: [211-212 A.D.]]

In spite of the efforts of Caracalla to the contrary, the army proclaimed
the two sons of Severus joint-emperors. The Caledonian war was abandoned,
and the emperors returned to Rome to celebrate the obsequies of their
father. On the way Caracalla made various attempts on the life of his
brother, but Geta was protected by the soldiery, of whom he was the
favourite. The brothers adopted every precaution against each other
on the road, and at Rome they divided the palace, securing all the
approaches to their several portions. The court, the camp, the senate,
and the people were divided in their affections to the brothers, neither
of whom was in reality deserving of the attachment of any man of worth;
but Geta had a certain degree of mildness and humanity, of affability and
of devotion to literature, which gave him the advantage over his more
ferocious brother, and gained him the affection of their mother Julia.

[Sidenote: [212-216 A.D.]]

As there seemed no probability of concord between the brothers, a
division of the empire was proposed and arranged, by which Caracalla
was to retain the European portion, while Geta was to rule in Asia and
Egypt, residing at Antioch or Alexandria. This arrangement, it is said,
was defeated by the tears and entreaties of Julia; and Caracalla, bent on
reigning alone, then resolved on the murder of his brother. At his desire
(212) Julia invited her two sons to a meeting in her apartments. Geta
came suspecting no danger; suddenly some centurions, whom Caracalla had
placed in concealment, rushed out and fell on him. He threw himself on
his mother’s bosom for protection, but her efforts to save him were vain;
she herself received a wound in the arm, and was covered with the blood
of her murdered son. When the deed was done Caracalla hastened to the
camp, crying all the way that a plot had been laid for his life. He flung
himself down before the standards in the camp chapel to return thanks for
his preservation; and then addressed the soldiers, assuring them that
he was one of themselves, and depended on them alone. He promised to
raise their pay one half, and to distribute among them all the treasures
accumulated by his father. Such arguments could not fail of convincing,
and he was readily proclaimed sole emperor. He thence proceeded to the
camp at the Alban Mount, where he found more difficulty, as the soldiers
there were much attached to Geta; but by dint of promises he gained them
also to acknowledge him.

Followed by the soldiers, Caracalla then proceeded to the senate house;
he had a cuirass under his robe, and he brought some of his military
followers into the house. He justified his conduct by the example of
Romulus and others; but he spoke of Geta with regret, and gave him a
magnificent funeral, and placed him among the gods.

The unhappy empress dared not lament the death of her son; she was even
obliged to wear an aspect of joy for the safety of the emperor, who
all through his reign continued to treat her with respect, and to give
her a share in the affairs of state. But on all the other friends and
favourers of Geta, both civil and military, he let his vengeance fall
without restraint, and the number of those who perished on this account
is estimated at twenty thousand. Among these the most regretted was the
great Papinian. Caracalla, it is said, wished him to compose an apology
for the murder of Geta, but he replied with virtuous intrepidity that it
was not so easy to excuse a parricide as to commit it. A soldier cut off
his head with an axe, and Caracalla rebuked him for not having used a
sword. Fadilla, the surviving daughter of M. Aurelius, was put to death
for having lamented Geta. Helvius Pertinax, son of the emperor, Thrasea
Priscus, a descendant of the great lover of liberty, and many other
persons of rank and virtue were involved in the common ruin. To such an
extent it is said did Caracalla carry his hatred to his brother that the
comic poets no longer ventured to employ the name of Geta in their plays.

Like Commodus, the emperor devoted most of his time to the circus and
amphitheatre. In order to defray his enormous expenses he increased
the taxes and confiscated all the properties he could lay hold on.
When his mother one day blamed him for bestowing such enormous sums on
the soldiers, and said that he would soon have no source of revenue
remaining, he laid his hand on his sword, and said, in the true spirit of
despotism, “Never fear, mother; while we have this we shall not want for
money.”

One of the acts of Caracalla at this time was to confer the rights of
citizenship, of which the old republicans had been so chary, on all the
subjects of the empire.

His restless temper soon urged him to seek for glory in a contest with
the Germans. He marched to the Rhine and obtained (by purchase as it
would seem) some advantages over the confederacy of the Alamanni, whose
name now first appears in history. He henceforth wonderfully affected the
Germans, even wearing a blond periwig to resemble them; and he placed
a number of them about him as guards. It is thought that it was on the
occasion of his return to Rome from Gaul after this war (214) that he
distributed among the people the long Gallic coats named _caracals_,
whence he derived the appellation by which he is usually known. After
his German war, he marched to the Danube (215), visited the province of
Dacia, and had some skirmishes with the neighbouring barbarians. He then
passed over to Asia with the intention of making war on the Parthians,
and spent the winter at Nicomedia.

As he professed an especial regard for the memory of Achilles, he visited
the remains of Ilium, offered sacrifices at the tomb of the hero, led
his troops in arms round it, and erected a brazen statue on its summit.
One of his freedmen happening to die, or being poisoned by him for the
purpose, he acted over again the Homeric funeral of Patroclus, pouring,
like Achilles, wine to the winds to induce them to inflame the pyre, and
cutting off the hair, with which nature had furnished him most scantily,
to cast into the flames. In thus honouring Achilles, he sought to follow
the example of Alexander the Great, a prince of whom his admiration was
such that he erected statues of him everywhere; and he formed a phalanx
of sixteen thousand Macedonians armed as in the time of that prince,
whom he styled the Eastern Augustus. He even persecuted the peripatetic
philosophers, because Aristotle was accused of being concerned in the
death of his royal pupil.

[Sidenote: [216-217 A.D.]]

In the spring (216) Caracalla set out for Antioch. The Parthians averted
a war by the surrender of two persons whom he demanded. By treachery
he made himself master of the persons of the king of Armenia and his
sons, and of the prince of Edessa; but the Armenians defeated the troops
which he sent against them under Theocritus, a common player, whom he
had raised to the dignity of prætorian prefect. He then proceeded to
Alexandria with the secret resolve of taking a bloody vengeance on the
inhabitants for their railleries and witticisms against him on the
occasion of the murder of his brother. When he approached the city the
people came forth to meet him with all the marks of joy and respect,
and he received them graciously, and entered the town. Then pretending
a design of forming a phalanx in honour of Alexander, he directed all
the youth to appear in the plain without the walls. When they had done
as required, he went through them as it were to inspect them; and then
retiring to the temple of Serapis, he gave the signal to his soldiers to
fall on them and massacre them. The slaughter was dreadful both within
and without the walls, for no age or rank was spared. Trenches were dug,
and the dead and dying were flung into them in order to conceal the
extent of the massacre. He deprived the city of all its privileges, and
its total ruin was only averted by his death.

After this slaughter of his helpless subjects, Caracalla returned to
Antioch, and in order to have a pretext for making war on the Parthians
he sent to Artabanus their king, demanding his daughter in marriage. The
Parthian monarch having refused this strange suit, Caracalla invaded and
ravaged his territories; and having taken Arbela, where were the royal
tombs, he opened them and scattered the bones of the monarchs which were
deposited within them. He then took up his winter quarters in Edessa.

In the spring (217) both sides were engaged in active preparation for
war; when a conspiracy in his own army terminated the life and reign of
the Roman emperor. Of the two prætorian prefects, the one, Adventus, was
a mere soldier, the other, Macrinus, was a civilian well versed in the
laws. The rough and brutal Caracalla often ridiculed him on this account,
and even menaced his life; and Macrinus, having got sure information
that his destruction was designed, resolved to anticipate the tyrant.
He accordingly communicated his designs to some of the officers of the
guards, among whom was one Martial, whom Caracalla had mortally offended
by refusing him the post of centurion, or, as others say, by putting his
brother to death. Accordingly on the 8th of April, 217, as the emperor
was riding from Edessa to Carrhæ in order to worship at the temple of the
Moon, and had retired and alighted for a private occasion, Martial ran up
as if called, and stabbed him in the throat. The emperor fell down dead.
Martial mounted his horse and fled; but he was shot by a Scythian archer
of the guard.


MACRINUS (M. OPILIUS MACRINUS), 217-218 A.D.

[Sidenote: [217-218 A.D.]]

When the news of the murder of the emperor was divulged, Macrinus was
the first to hasten to the spot, and to deplore his death. As Caracalla
had left no heir, the army was uncertain whom to proclaim emperor in his
stead, and the empire was for four days without a chief. Meantime the
officers who were in the interests of Macrinus used all their influence
with their men, and on the fourth day he was saluted emperor. He accepted
the office with feigned reluctance, and he distributed, according to
custom, large sums of money among the soldiers. Adventus was the bearer
of the ashes of Caracalla to Rome, where they were deposited in the tomb
of the Antonines; and Macrinus and the senate were obliged to yield to
the instances of the soldiers, and place the monster among the gods.
The senate received with joy the letter in which Macrinus announced his
elevation to the empire, and they decreed him all the usual titles and
honours.

While these changes were taking place in the Roman Empire, Artabanus had
passed the Tigris with a large army. Macrinus having in vain proposed
terms of accommodation, led out his legions, and some fighting took place
in the neighbourhood of Nisibis, in which the advantage was on the side
of the Parthians; but as they now began to feel the want of supplies,
and were anxious to return home, they readily listened to the renewed
proposals of the Roman emperor, and a peace was concluded. Macrinus then
led his troops back to Antioch for the winter.

[Illustration: ROMAN GENERAL

(From a vase)]

Macrinus, as we have already observed, was not a military man. He was
a native of Cæsarea in Africa (Algiers), of humble origin, and he was
indebted for his elevation to his countryman Plautianus. He was a man
of an amiable disposition, and a sincere lover of justice. He therefore
turned his attention chiefly to civil regulations, and he made some
necessary reforms and excellent laws; but he was timid by nature, and in
his anxiety to serve and advance his friends, he did not sufficiently
consider their fitness for the employments which he bestowed on them.
He committed a great and irreparable fault in not setting out for Rome
at once, and in keeping the army all together in Syria; and he further
commenced too soon a necessary, but imprudent attempt at bringing back
the discipline of the legions to what it had been under Severus; for
though he applied it only to recruits and did not interfere with the old
soldiers, these last apprehended that the reform would at length reach
themselves, and they became highly discontented. This feeling of the
soldiers was soon taken advantage of, and a rival set up to Macrinus.

The empress Julia was at Antioch at the time of the murder of Caracalla.
Macrinus wrote to her in very obliging terms; but in the first transports
of her grief at the death of her son or the loss of her power, she had
given herself several blows on the breast, and thus irritated a cancer
with which she was afflicted, and her death ensued. Her sister, named
Mæsa, who had lived at court during the last two reigns and had acquired
immense wealth, retired by order of Macrinus to her native town of Emesa.
She had two daughters named Soæmias and Mamæa, each of whom was a widow
with an only son; that of the former was named Bassianus; he was now
a handsome youth of seventeen years of age, and the influence of his
family had procured for him the lucrative priesthood of the Sun, who
was worshipped at Emesa under the title of Elagabalus. The Roman troops
who were encamped near the town used to frequent the temple, and they
greatly admired the comely young priest, whom they knew to be a cousin
of their lamented Caracalla. The artful Mæsa resolved to take advantage
of that feeling, and she made no scruple to sacrifice the reputation
of her daughters to the hopes of empire: she therefore declared (what
was perhaps true) that Caracalla used to cohabit with her daughters in
the palace, and that Bassianus was in reality his son. Her assertion,
backed with large sums of money and lavish promises of more, found easy
acceptance with the soldiers. On the night of the 15th of May, 218, she
and her daughter and grandson, and the rest of her family, conducted by
their eunuch Gannys, a man of great talent, stole out of the city and
proceeded to the camp, where they were joyfully received; and Bassianus
was proclaimed emperor by the title of M. Aurelius Antoninus. The camp
was immediately put into a state of defence against a siege; and numbers
of the other soldiers hastened to sustain the cause of the son of
Caracalla.

Macrinus sent the prætorian prefect Ulpius Julianus against the rebels.
This officer was successful in his first attack on their camp; but having
neglected to push his advantage, he gave the enemy time for tampering
with his troops, a part of whom abandoned him; and he was taken and
slain. Macrinus had meantime advanced as far as Apamea, where he declared
his son Diadumenianus, a boy of only ten years of age, Augustus, and
took this opportunity of promising a large gratuity to the army; he also
wrote against Bassianus to the senate and governors of provinces. But
instead of advancing rapidly against the rebels, he fell back to Antioch,
whither they speedily followed him, and he was forced to give them battle
near that town. The troops of Bassianus were ably disposed by the eunuch
Gannys, who now in arms for the first time in his life showed the talents
of a general. But the prætorians on the side of Macrinus fought with
such determined valour that the rebels were on the point of flying, when
Mæsa and Soæmias rushed out and stopped them; and Bassianus, sword in
hand, led them on to the combat. Still the prætorians gave not way, and
victory would have declared for Macrinus had he not shamefully fled in
the midst of the battle. His troops when assured of his flight declared
for Bassianus.

Macrinus fled in disguise, and never stopped till he came to Chalcedon,
where he was taken and put to death, and his innocent son shared his
fate. His reign had lasted only fourteen months.[c]


ELAGABALUS (NARIUS AVIBUS BASSIANUS), 218-222 A.D.

[Sidenote: [218-222 A.D.]]

Bassianus now hastened to assert his claim to the succession. He was
entirely successful; ascending the throne under title of M. Aurelius
Antoninus Elagabalus, or, as the Latins called him, Heliogabalus. Dion
Cassius[e] (as preserved by Xiphilinus[i]) has left us a picturesque
account of the accession and brief reign of this effeminate youth, whose
name has become a proverb for sensuality of the most degenerate type.
We turn to his account, making such omissions as the restrictions of
modern taste demand;--the classical writers, as we have had occasion to
note heretofore, adjudged the limits between frankness and prudery by
standards quite different from ours.

This narrative of Dion Cassius has the unique interest of being the
account of an exact contemporary. The author was a member of the Roman
senate, at the time of Elagabalus’ accession. The following year he was
governor of Pergamus and Smyrna. “He had conversed with Macrinus after
his elevation, and yet was in the senate when the letters of Macrinus
were read on the elevation of Elagabalus” (Clinton[g]).

Here, then, is the story of Rome’s most degenerate emperor, as told by
this contemporary witness. The account is the most authoritative one that
has come down to us; but it will be observed that allowance must be made
for current superstitions in parts of the narrative.[a]


DION CASSIUS ON THE ACCESSION AND REIGN OF ELAGABALUS

Avitus [Elagabalus], who is called pseudo Antoninus, or the Assyrian,
or, again, Sardanapalus or Tiberinus (the last name having been bestowed
upon him after his body was cast into the Tiber), made his entry next
day [after the defeat of Macrinus] into Antioch, having promised five
hundred drachmæ to the soldiers if they refrained from pillaging the
city, as they greatly desired to do. This sum he of course exacted from
the inhabitants. He likewise wrote a letter to Rome, in which, among
other matters befitting the occasion, he heaped invectives upon Macrinus
for the obscurity of his origin and his conspiracy against Antoninus,
and made lavish promises, not only to the soldiers but to the senate and
populace (pretending to act in all things after the example of Augustus,
whose age he compared with his own, and of Marcus Antoninus); and, in
allusion to the censures passed upon him by Macrinus, he added, “He took
upon himself to censure my youth, he who nominated his six-year-old son
emperor.”

Such was his message to the senate. To that assembly and to the legions
he despatched an account of what had taken place among the soldiers,
together with the letter written by Macrinus to Maximus, in order further
to inflame their hatred of Macrinus and their attachment to his own
person. In his letter to the senate and his address to the people he
styled himself emperor, Cæsar, the son of Antoninus, the grandson of
Severus, the pious, the fortunate, Augustus, proconsul, prince invested
with tribunician authority. He is also reported to have said, “Let them
give me no titles which have to do with war; in ‘the pious’ and ‘the
fortunate’ I have enough.”

A number of persons having, in both a public and a private capacity,
committed offences in word and deed against him and against Caracalla,
he declared that he would punish no man whatever; nor did he punish any,
although in the rest of his conduct he carried debauchery, injustice,
and cruelty to such lengths that certain customs wholly unknown at Rome
were practised there as having come down from our forefathers, and that
crimes committed in single instances by other men and in other places
there flourished freely for the three years and nine months of his reign,
reckoning from the battle which put him in possession of the sovereign
power.

In Syria he shed the blood of Nestor and of Fabius Agrippinus, governor
of the province, and of the chief of the knights who had been about
Macrinus, and at Rome he acted likewise towards those who had been
most strongly attached to the cause of the late monarch; in Arabia he
slew Picas Cærianus, to whom the government of that country had been
committed, for not having immediately come over to his side; in Cyprus,
Claudius Attalus, a former governor of Thrace, who had been expelled from
the senate by Severus at the time of the war with Niger, restored to his
honours by Tarantus,[44] and placed by fate at the head of the province
of Cyprus, merely because he had given offence to Comazon. For while the
latter was serving in Thrace Attalus had placed him among the oarsmen as
a punishment for dereliction of duty.

Thus the pseudo Antoninus put Attalus to death,--though he had written
concerning him to the senate saying that he had recalled him to Rome,
whence he had been banished by Macrinus, together with Julius Asper,--and
Sulla, a former governor of Cappadocia, because he was involved in
certain intrigues and because, having been summoned to Rome, he had gone
before some Celtic soldiers on their way home from Bithynia, where they
had passed the winter, and had stirred up some disorders. Such were the
motives from which these two personages perished, no word thereof being
sent to the senate. As for Seius Carus, the grandson of Fuscianus, a
former prefect of Rome, the reason was that he was rich and noble, and
a man of ability; the pretext, that he had incited the soldiers of the
Alban legion to mutiny.

The monarch being his only accuser, the trial of Seius was held in the
palace, where he was slain. Valerianus Pætus was put to death because he
had caused portraits of himself to be made in gold as ornaments for his
mistresses. This action brought upon him the charge of intending to go
into Cappadocia, a province bordering on his native land (for he was a
Galatian) to stir up a rebellion, and having for this purpose made gold
pieces bearing his own image.

Besides these, Silius Messalla and Pomponius Bassus were put to death by
the senate on a charge of having disapproved of the emperor’s conduct,
as he said. He did not hesitate to write to the senate, which he styled
the examiner of his life and the censor of what took place in the palace:
“As for the proofs of their conspiracy, I have not sent them, for it
would be idle to read them, since the men are already dead.” Messalla
had frequently expressed his opinions forcibly in the senate, for which
reason the emperor had commanded his attendance in Syria, as though he
were indispensable to him, but really lest he should cause an opinion
different to his own to prevail in that assembly; as for Bassus, he had
a beautiful wife of noble birth (a granddaughter of Claudius Severus and
of Marcus Antoninus); whom Elagabalus himself wedded, not permitting
her (such was the terror with which he inspired her) to weep for her
husband’s unhappy fate. We shall presently hear of espousals in which
he played the part of bridegroom and bride, for he gave himself out as
man or woman indifferently, and behaved with the utmost shamelessness in
either character.

The murder of Gannys, who had paved the way for the rebellion, had
brought him to the camp and procured him the victory over Macrinus--of
Gannys, his foster-father and guardian, which he committed in Nicomedia,
caused him to be regarded from the very beginning of his reign as the
most impious of men. Gannys lived an effeminate life and loved to receive
presents, but, far from doing injury to any man, he conferred many
benefits upon numbers of persons; and, what was still more important, he
was zealously devoted to his sovereign and enjoyed the favour of Mæsa and
Soæmias. But this was not the reason why the emperor put him to death.
His real motive was that Gannys obliged him to observe the rules of
temperance and wisdom. The monarch, with his own hand, dealt Gannys the
first wound, since none of the soldiers dared to begin the attack. In
such wise did matters go.

Thus much we have said of the blood that was shed. As for the things
done by Elagabalus contrary to the customs of our forefathers, they were
matters of small account and did no great harm; unless, indeed, it be
that he introduced innovations contrary to our usage, by assuming of his
own accord, as I have said, titles of office, substituting himself for
Macrinus in the consulate without being elected, and so forth.

He wedded Cornelia Paula, desiring, as he said, to become a father
quickly; he, who was not so much as a man. At the celebration of these
nuptials, not the senate and the knights alone, but even the wives of
the senators received liberal presents. There was a banquet for the
populace which cost 150 drachmæ, and one for the soldiers which cost
more than 100. He also gave gladiatorial shows, at which he was present
clad in the toga prætexta, and he appeared in the same garb at the
votive games. He likewise caused a great number of wild beasts to be
slaughtered, among the rest an elephant and fifty-one tigers, a larger
number than had ever been exhibited at one time. Afterwards, having put
away Paula under the pretext that she had a blemish on her body, he
wedded Aquilia Severa, in open violation of the laws, for with flagrant
impiety he defiled a woman who was a vestal. He was bold enough to say,
“I have done it that of myself, the pontifex maximus, and of her, the
vestalis maxima, divine children may be born”; nor did he hesitate to
boast of these sacrilegious acts, for which he should have been first
scourged with rods in the Forum and then cast into prison and put to
death. Nevertheless he did not keep Severa long, but took another wife,
and then another and another, after which he went back to her.

[Illustration: A ROMAN MATRON

(From the Capitol)]

Among his most flagrant violations of the law was the worship of the
god Elagabalus, not only by reason of the introduction of a foreign
divinity into Rome and the granting of new and gorgeous honours to such
a divinity, but by reason of the superiority which the emperor gave him
over Jupiter; and the priesthood of Elagabalus which he caused to be
bestowed upon himself, by reason of his circumcision and abstinence from
pork (as though this abstinence made the worship of this god purer),
and also by reason of the barbarous vestments worn by Syrian priests,
in which he was often to be seen, a fact which had much to do with his
surname of the Assyrian.

As the height of absurdity he bestowed a wife upon Elagabalus, as though
the god had need of a wife and children. Moreover, since this wife ought
not to be poor or of humble birth, he chose the Urania of Carthage, had
the goddess brought from thence, established her in the palace, and
exacted wedding gifts for her from all the subjects of his empire, as he
had done for his own wives.

Nevertheless this Sardanapalus, who must needs unite the gods by regular
marriages, himself led the most irregular of lives. He married several
wives, and had relations with many other women with whom he formed no
legal tie.

Such was his conduct to all who had to do with him; yet this did not
prevent him from playing the part of a bride to a favourite, by name
Hierocles, on whom he wished to bestow the title of cæsar, himself being
called imperatrix. Being opposed by his grandmother in this design,
he broke out into threats against her, and by his shameful conduct no
less than for other reasons incurred the hatred of the soldiery. These
extravagances were the cause of his ruin.

He was destined soon to receive the due reward of his infamy. By the
things he did and suffered to be done he brought upon himself the hatred
of the people and of the soldiers, the main prop of his throne, and was
finally assassinated by them in his own camp. The thing came to pass on
this fashion. He had brought his cousin Bassianus into the senate, and,
taking his place beside Mæsa and Soæmias, he adopted him as his son;
he boasted of his good fortune in having become all at once the father
of such a child, as though he himself were already far more advanced
in years, and he declared that he had no need of any other son, since
his house was henceforth safe from extinction. Elagabalus himself had
commanded him to take this course and to bestow on his cousin the name
of Alexander. For my own part I am convinced that these occurrences
were actually the work of a god, not because of the emperor’s words but
because of the saying that one Alexander, from Emesa, would succeed him,
and also because of what took place in Upper Mysia and in Thrace.

Shortly before this time a genius appeared, I know not how, in the
countries about the Ister, claiming to be the celebrated Alexander of
Macedon, and bearing the form and all the equipments of that prince.
Starting thence he traversed Mœsia and Thrace after the manner of
Bacchus, accompanied by four hundred men, armed with thyrsi and
wearing goatskins. They did no harm, and, as those who then dwelt in
Thrace are convinced, everything was supplied them, both lodging and
provisions, at the expense of the cities; for no one dared oppose him
either by word or deed, neither chief, nor soldier, nor procurator,
nor provincial governor; and in open daylight, as he had announced, he
advanced in procession as far as Byzantium. Thence, returning upon his
footsteps, he crossed over into Chalcedon, and there, having performed
certain sacrifices by night and buried a wooden horse in the ground,
he disappeared. These facts I learned in Asia, as I have said, before
anything was done at Rome with regard to Bassianus.

As long as Sardanapalus loved his cousin he himself remained alive,
but when he began to suspect all men and learned that popular favour
was turning towards Alexander, he changed his purpose and did all he
could to get rid of him. He was not only unsuccessful in an attempt
to destroy him, but came near to perishing himself, for Alexander was
jealously guarded by his mother, his grandmother, and the soldiery. The
prætorian guards, becoming aware of his intentions, stirred up a fearful
riot, which did not cease until Sardanapalus, coming into the camp with
Alexander, appealed to them with urgent entreaties, yielded up, under
compulsion, the companions of his debaucheries whose death they demanded,
only pleading piteously in favour of Hierocles, and finally succeeded in
mollifying them.

Afterwards, having again laid snares for Alexander, and having gone with
the latter to the camp to appease a tumult which had been excited among
the prætorians by this attempt, he perceived that they were watching him
with intent to put him to death, and strove to flee while his mother and
Alexander’s, more openly at strife than before, were endeavouring to
excite the soldiers. He tried to escape by hiding in a chest, but was
caught and slain at the age of eighteen. His mother perished with him.
Their heads were cut off and their bodies stripped of their ornaments and
dragged through the streets of the city; then that of the woman was cast
forth unburied, and that of Sardanapalus thrown into the Tiber. The god
Elagabalus was banished from Rome.[e] The administration has not suffered
greatly through Elagabalus, for while he abandoned himself to his sensual
worship, he left the government in the hands of his prudent grandmother
Mæsa.[a]


ALEXANDER SEVERUS (M. AURELIUS ALEXANDER SEVERUS), 222-235 A.D.

[Sidenote: [222-232 A.D.]]

Both the senate and the army joyfully concurred in the elevation of
Alexander Severus; and the former body, lest any competitor should
appear, hastened to confer on him all the imperial titles and powers.
On account of his youth and his extremely amiable disposition he was
entirely directed by his grandmother and mother, but Mæsa dying soon
after his accession, the sole direction of her son fell to Mamæa. [The
statues and coins of this woman show that she was a pagan, though
the contrary has been inferred from the correspondence with Origen.]
Nevertheless in her guidance of public affairs she exhibited a spirit of
wisdom, justice, and moderation such as had not appeared in any preceding
empress. Her enemies laid to her charge the love of power and the love
of money, and blamed her son for deferring too much to her; but their
accusations are vague, and no act of cruelty caused by avarice stains the
annals of this reign.

The first care of Mamæa was to form a wise and upright council for her
son. Sixteen of the most respectable of the senate, with the learned
Ulpian, the prætorian prefect, at their head, composed this council, and
nothing was ever done without their consent and approbation. A general
system of reformation was commenced and steadily pursued. All the absurd
acts of the late tyrant were reversed. His god was sent back to Emesa;
the statues of the other deities were restored to their temples; the
ministers of his vices and pleasures were sold or banished, some of the
worst were drowned; the unworthy persons whom he had placed in public
situations were dismissed, and men of knowledge and probity put in their
places.

Mamæa used the utmost care to keep away from her son all those persons by
whom his morals might be corrupted, and in order to have his time fully
occupied she induced him to devote the greater part of each day to the
administration of justice, where none but the wise and good would be his
associates. The good seed fortunately fell into a kindly soil. Alexander
was naturally disposed to every virtue, and all his efforts were directed
to the promotion of the welfare of the empire over which he ruled.

The first ten years of the reign of this prince were passed at Rome
and devoted to civil occupations. His daily course of life has been
thus transmitted to us. He usually rose early and entered his private
chapel (_lararium_), in which he had caused to be placed the images of
those who had been teachers and benefactors of the human race, among
whom he included the divine founder of the Christian religion. Having
performed his devotions he took some kind of exercise, and then applied
himself for some hours to public business with his council. He then read
for some time, his favourite works being the _Republics_ of Plato and
Cicero, and the verses of Horace, and the _Life of Alexander the Great_,
whom he greatly admired. Gymnastic exercises, in which he excelled,
succeeded. He then was anointed and bathed, and took a light breakfast,
usually of bread, milk, and eggs. In the afternoon he was attended by
his secretaries, and he heard his letters read and signed the answers to
them. The business of the day being concluded, his friends in general
were admitted, and a frugal and simple dinner followed, at which the
conversation was mostly of a serious instructive nature, or some literary
work was read out to the emperor and his guests.

The dress of Alexander was plain and simple, his manners were free from
all pride and haughtiness; he lived with the senators on a footing of
friendly equality, like Augustus, Vespasian, and the wiser and better
emperors. He was liberal and generous to all orders of the people, and he
took an especial pleasure in assisting those persons of good family who
had fallen into poverty without reproach. Among the virtues of Alexander
was the somewhat rare one in that age of chastity. His mother early
caused him to espouse a lady of noble birth named Memnia, whom however
he afterwards divorced and even banished to Africa. The accounts of this
affair differ greatly. According to one, the father of the empress formed
a conspiracy against his son-in-law, which being discovered, he was put
to death and his daughter divorced. Others say that as Alexander showed
great respect for his father-in-law, Mamæa’s jealousy was excited, and
she caused him to be slain and his daughter to be divorced or banished.
It appears that Alexander soon married again.

We have already observed that a portion of the civil jurisdiction had
fallen to the prætorian prefects. This imposed a necessity that one
of them should be a civilian, and Mamæa had therefore caused this
dignity to be conferred on Ulpian. From the love of law and order which
distinguished this prefect, he naturally sought to bring back discipline
in the prætorian camp; the consequence was that repeated attempts were
made on his life, and the emperor more than once found it necessary to
cast his purple over him to save him from the fury of the soldiers. At
length (228) they fell on him in the night; he escaped from them to the
palace, but they pursued and slaughtered him in the presence of the
emperor and his mother.

Some slight actions on the German and Moorish frontiers were the only
occupation given to the Roman arms during the early years of the reign
of Alexander, but in the year 232 so powerful an enemy menaced the
oriental provinces of the empire, that the presence of the emperor became
absolutely requisite in the East.

The Parthians, whom we have had such frequent occasion to mention, are
said to have been a Scythian (_i.e._, Turkish) people of the north of
Persia, who, taking advantage of the declining power of the Macedonian
kings of Syria, cast off their yoke (250 B.C.), and then gradually made
themselves masters of the whole of Persia. Their dominion had now lasted
for five hundred years, and their power had from the usual causes, such
as family dissensions, contested successions, and such like, been long
on the decline; and in the fourth year of Alexander Severus (226) a
native Persian, named Artaxerxes (Ardashir), who pretended to be of the
ancient royal line but who is said to have been of humble birth and a
mere soldier of fortune, raised a rebellion against the Parthian king,
Artabanus. Fortune favoured the rebel, and Artabanus was defeated and
slain. Artaxerxes then assumed the tiara, and his line, which existed
till the Mohammedan conquest, was named the Sassanian, from the name of
his father.

[Sidenote: [232-235 A.D.]]

Affecting to be the descendant of the ancient Achæmenians, Artaxerxes
sought to restore Persia to its condition under those princes. The Magian
or Light religion resumed the rank from which it had fallen under the
sway of the Parthians, and flourished in its pristine glory. As the
dominions of the house of Cyrus had extended to the coasts of the Ægean
Sea, Artaxerxes ordered the Romans to quit Asia, and when his mandate was
unheeded he led his troops over the Tigris. But his ill fortune induced
him to attack the invincible Atræ, and he was forced to retire with loss
and disgrace. He then turned his arms against the Medes and some other of
the more northern tribes, and when he had reduced them he again invaded
Mesopotamia (232). Alexander now resolved to take the command of his
troops in person. He left Rome, followed by the tears and prayers of the
people, and proceeded through Illyricum to the East. On his march the
strictest discipline was maintained, while every attention was paid to
the wants of the soldiers and care taken that they should be abundantly
supplied with clothes and arms. The emperor himself used the same fare
as the men, and he caused his tent to be thrown open when he was at his
meals that they might perceive his mode of life.

[Illustration: CENTURION IN STREET COSTUME SHOWING THE WAY HIS MEDALS
WERE WORN]

Alexander halted at Antioch to make preparations for the war; meantime
he sent an embassy with proposals of peace to Artaxerxes. The Persian
in return sent four hundred of his most stately men splendidly clothed
and armed to order the Romans to quit Asia; and if we can believe
Herodian (for the circumstance is almost incredible), Alexander was so
regardless of the laws of nations as to seize and strip them, and send
them prisoners to Phrygia. It is also said that while he was at Antioch,
finding that some of the soldiers frequented the Paphian grove of Daphne,
he cast them into prison; and that when a mutiny broke out in the legion
to which they belonged, he ascended his tribunal, had the prisoners
brought before him, and addressed their comrades, who stood around in
arms, dwelling on the necessity of maintaining discipline. But when his
arguments proved of no effect, and they even menaced him with their arms,
he cried out, in imitation of Cæsar, “Quirites, depart, and lay down your
arms.” The legion obeyed, and the men, no longer soldiers, took up their
abode in the houses of the town instead of the camp. After a month the
emperor was prevailed on to pardon them, but he punished their tribunes
with death; and this legion was henceforth equally distinguished by
valour and fidelity.

In imitation of Alexander the Great, the emperor formed six of his
legions into a phalanx of thirty thousand men, to whom he gave higher
pay. He also had, like that conqueror, bodies of men distinguished by
gold-adorned and silver-adorned shields--chrysoaspids and argyroaspids.

The details of the war cannot be learned with any certainty. One
historian says that Alexander made three divisions of his army; one of
which was to enter Media through Armenia, another Persia at the junction
of the Tigris and Euphrates, while the emperor was in person to lead
the third through Mesopotamia, and all were to join in the enemy’s
country; but that, owing to the timidity of Alexander, who loitered on
the way, the second division was cut to pieces, and the first nearly all
perished while retreating through Armenia in the winter. This account
labours under many difficulties; for the emperor certainly triumphed on
his return to Rome; and in his speech to the senate on that occasion he
asserted that of 700 war elephants which were in the enemy’s array he
had killed 200, and taken 300; of 1000 scythed chariots he had taken
200; and of 120,000 heavy-armed horsemen he had slain 10,000, besides
taking a great number of prisoners.[c] Notwithstanding this report to the
senate, the Romans were probably beaten in this war, though the Persians
likewise suffered great loss. The latter made no further attempts on
Mesopotamia for some years.[a]

The Germans had taken advantage of the absence of the emperor and the
greater part of the troops in the East, to pass the Rhine and ravage
Gaul. Alexander therefore, leaving sufficient garrisons in Syria, led
home the Illyrian and other legions, and having celebrated a triumph for
the Persian War at Rome, where he was received with the most abundant
demonstrations of joy, he departed with a large army for the defence of
Gaul. The Germans retired at his approach; he advanced to the Rhine and
took up his winter quarters in the neighbourhood of Mogontiacum (Mainz),
with the intention of opening the campaign beyond the river in the spring
(235).

The narratives of the events of this reign are so very discordant that
we cannot hope often to arrive at the real truth. In no part are they
more at variance than in their account of the circumstances of the
emperor’s death. We can only collect that, whether from his efforts to
restore discipline, from the intrigues of Maximin, an ambitious officer
who had the charge of disciplining the young troops, or from some other
cause, a general discontent prevailed in the army, and that Alexander was
assassinated in his tent, either by his own guards or by a party sent for
the purpose by Maximin, and that his mother and several of his friends
perished with him. The troops forthwith proclaimed Maximin emperor, and
the senate and people of Rome, deeply lamenting the fate of the virtuous
Alexander, were forced to acquiesce in the choice of the army.

Alexander had reigned thirteen years. Even the historian least partial
to him acknowledges that towards his subjects his conduct was blameless,
and that no bloodshed or unjust condemnations stain the annals of his
reign. His fault seems to have been a certain degree of effeminacy and
weakness, the consequence probably of his Syrian origin, which led to his
extreme submission to his mother, against whom the charges of avarice and
meanness are not perhaps wholly unfounded.[45]

Dion Cassius, whose history ends with this reign, gives the following
view of the numbers and disposition of the legions, at this period. Of
the twenty-five which were formed by Augustus, only nineteen remained,
the rest having been broken or distributed through the others; but the
emperors, from Nero to Severus inclusive, had formed thirteen new ones,
and the whole now amounted to thirty-two legions. Of these, three were
in Britain, one in Upper and two in Lower Germany, one in Italy, one in
Spain, one in Numidia, one in Arabia, two in Palestine, one in Phœnicia,
two in Syria, two in Mesopotamia, two in Cappadocia, two in Lower and
one in Upper Mœsia, two in Dacia, and four in Pannonia, one in Noricum,
and one in Rætia. He does not tell us where the two remaining ones were
quartered, neither does he give the number of men in a legion at this
time, but it is conjectured to have been five thousand.[c]


RENAN’S CHARACTERISATION OF THE PERIOD

[Sidenote: [180-235 A.D.]]

On principles less disastrous than those of unbridled military despotism,
the empire might have survived the ruin of the Roman spirit in the death
of Marcus Aurelius, might have given peace to Christianity a century
earlier and have avoided the streams of blood shed to no purpose by
Decius and Diocletian. The part of the Roman aristocracy was played
out; after having worn folly threadbare in the first century, it had
worn virtue threadbare in the second. But the hidden forces of the great
Mediterranean confederacy were not exhausted. Thus, after the downfall
of the political edifice founded on the sovereignty of the family of
Augustus, a provincial dynasty, that of the Flavians, was found to
restore the empire, even as after the downfall of the edifice built up
by the adoptions of the Roman aristocracy, there were found provincials,
Orientals and Syrians, to restore the great association in which all men
found peace and profit. Septimius Severus did, without moral grandeur but
not without glory, what Vespasian had done.

It is true that the representatives of this new dynasty are not to be
compared to the great emperors of the second century. Even Alexander
Severus, who equals Antoninus and Marcus in kindliness, is very inferior
to them in intelligence and greatness of soul. The principles of the
government are detestable; men outbid one another for the favour of the
legions; a price is set on mutiny; none approaches the soldier except
with purse in hand. Military despotism never took a more shameless form;
but military despotism can be long-lived.

Side by side with hideous spectacles, under the Syrian emperors, what
reforms do we find! What progress in legislation! What a day was that
when, under Caracalla, all free men dwelling within the empire attained
equal rights!

We must not exaggerate the advantages offered by such equality; yet in
politics words are never wholly void of meaning. Many excellent things
had been inherited. The philosophers of the school of Marcus Aurelius had
disappeared, but their place was taken by the masters of jurisprudence.
Papinian, Ulpian, Paul, Gaius, Modestinus, Florentinus, Marcian, during
years of execrable evil, created masterpieces and actually brought the
law of the future into being. The Syrian emperors, though far inferior to
Trajan and to the Antonines as far as political traditions are concerned,
inasmuch as they were not Romans and had none of the Roman prejudices,
often give proof of an openness of mind which would have been impossible
to the great emperors of the second century, all of whom were intensely
conservative. They permitted and even encouraged colleges or syndicates.
They went to extreme lengths in this matter, and they would have
organised the trade guilds as castes with a distinctive garb. They flung
the doors of the empire wide open. One of them, that noble and pathetic
figure Alexander Severus, the son of Mamæa, almost equalled in his
plebeian goodness the patrician virtues of the great age; the loftiest
ideas pale before the honest effusions of his heart.

It was in religion above all that these Syrian emperors inaugurated a
liberality of mind and a tolerance unknown before.[46] The Syrian women
of Emesa, Julia Domna, Julia Mæsa, Julia Mamæa, Julia Soæmias, beautiful,
intelligent, venturous to the point of utopianism, are hampered by no
tradition or conventionality. They dared to do what no Roman woman had
ever done; they entered the senate, took part in its deliberations, and
practically governed the empire, dreaming of Semiramis and Nitocris. It
was a thing that such a woman as Faustina would not have done for all
her frivolity; she would have been checked by tact, by the sense of
absurdity, by the rules of good Roman society. The Syrian women hesitated
at nothing. They had a senate of women, which enacted every sort of
absurdity. The Roman religion seemed to them cold and meaningless.
They had no family reasons for attachment to it, and being more in
harmony, imaginatively, with Christianity than with Italian paganism,
they delighted in the tales of the travels of gods upon the earth.
Philostratus enchanted them with his _Apollonius_; perhaps they had a
secret leaning towards Christianity.

During this time the last noble ladies of the older society, such as the
elderly daughter of Marcus Aurelius, honoured by all men and put to death
by Caracalla, lived in obscurity, looking on at an orgy which formed so
strange a contrast to the memories of their youth.

The provinces, and those of the East more particularly, which were far
more active and enlightened than those of the West, gained a decided
ascendency. Elagabalus was certainly a madman, but nevertheless his
chimerical idea of a central monotheistic religion, established
in Rome and absorbing all others, shows that the narrow circle of
Antonine conceptions had been to a great extent broken through. Mamæa
and Alexander Severus were to go further; whilst the jurisconsults
continued to transcribe their old and ferocious maxims against liberty
of conscience with the calmness of habit, the Syrian emperor and his
mother studied Christianity, and manifested sympathy with it. Not content
with granting security to the Christians, Alexander, with touching
eclecticism, introduced the name of Jesus among his household gods.
Peace seemed made, not, as under Constantine, by the abasement of one
party, but by a generous reconciliation. In all this there was certainly
a daring attempt at reform, inferior in rationality to that of the
Antonines, but more likely to succeed because it was much more popular
and took the provinces and the East more into account.

In such a democratic work, people with no ancestors, such as these
Africans and Syrians, had more chance of success than rigid men of
irreproachable bearing, like the aristocratic emperors. But the innate
viciousness of the imperial system revealed itself for the tenth time.
Alexander Severus was assassinated by the soldiers on the 19th of
March, 235. It was clear that the army would tolerate none but tyrants.
The empire had fallen successively from the Roman aristocracy to
provincial officers, now it passed to subordinate officers and military
assassins. Whereas, until the time of Commodus, the murdered emperors are
intolerable monsters, it is now the good emperor, the man who desires to
restore some kind of discipline and represses the crimes of the army,
who is inevitably marked for death.[j] Still, it cannot be denied that
there was need of strong, able commanders on the eve of the barbarian
invasions. With all his virtues, Alexander was a weakling, unfit to rule
at such a time. With his death the military revolution entered upon
a third stage. It became more than ever necessary to strengthen the
imperial office, because, it having been decided that the emperor should
be a soldier, the choice of the soldiers, rival claimants of the office
were threatening, by their civil strife, to break up the Roman world into
a multitude of warring states.[a]


FOOTNOTES

[41] Herodian[d] tells us of a list of those destined to be put to death
taken by a child, and read by Marcia, as in the case of Domitian. But he
is a very inaccurate writer, and Dion[e], who was a senator and in Rome
at the time, could hardly have been ignorant of the circumstance if it
were true.

[42] [During this reign the disciplined legions under able commanders
still protected the frontiers. Most of the empire was peaceful and
prosperous. The government still carried on great public works and
benevolently succoured the afflicted. The Christians were tolerated, and
those of the sect who were in prison were released. The great official
machine was little disturbed by the caprices of the emperor.]

[43] Severus, not content with expressing his veneration and respect for
the memory of M. Aurelius, had the folly to pretend to be his son. “What
most amazed us,” says Dion,[e] “was his saying that he was the son of
Marcus and brother of Commodus.”

[44] [Tarantus was a nickname given to Caracalla after his death. It was
the name of a gladiator of ignoble aspect.]

[45] _The Life of Alexander_, by Lampridius, in the _Augustan
History_,[f] is, as Gibbon observes, “the mere idea of a perfect prince,
an awkward imitation of the Cyropædia.” [The best rulers had to bear the
charge of avarice.]

[46] [The substitution of the Syro-Phœnician sun-god by Elagabalus
naturally recalls the monotheistic reformation of Amenhotep IV
(Khun-aten) in Egypt more than sixteen centuries before. In Amenhotep’s
day, Syrian influence predominated at the Egyptian court, as it did at
Rome in the beginning of the third century A.D. That the culminating
result of this should have been so much the same in both cases is a
matter that seems to call for at least passing notice.]




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XL. CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED: THE SECOND HALF OF THE THIRD
CENTURY OF EMPIRE (235-285 A.D.)

    “Now begins the inferno of half a century (235-284), in which
    all philosophy, all civil order, all delicacy founders; with
    power put up to auction, the soldiery masters of everything;
    with sometimes ten tyrants at once; with the barbarian entering
    through all the breaches of a shattered world; with Athens
    destroying her ancient monuments, to girdle herself with
    ill-built walls as a protection against the Goths. If anything
    can show the intrinsic necessity of the Roman Empire, it is
    the fact that it was not wholly put out of joint by this
    anarchy and retained breath enough to revive under the vigorous
    action of Diocletian, and to endure for two centuries more.
    In every class the decadence is terrible. In fifty years the
    art of sculpture is forgotten. Latin literature comes to an
    end. It is as if a vampire brooded over society, drinking its
    life-blood.”--RENAN.


Bad matters become worse in the period we are now entering. Old evils
remain, and new ones are added. The rule of the soldiers is absolute,
and as before, money affords the only channel to the suffrage of these
rulers of the empire. As before, there is an incessant scramble after
the honours and emoluments of the imperial office; as before, successful
and unsuccessful aspirants alike place themselves on the sure road to an
early death, so soon as they attempt to grasp the purple.

In the half century we are now entering, some seventeen emperors who
may be styled legitimate holders of the title, pass in rapid succession
before the view; and with only one or two doubtful exceptions they all
meet a tragic end. Some reign for a few weeks or months, some for a few
years; some are young, some are old; but neither the tender years of
a Gordian nor the senility of a Tacitus can give protection from the
imperial fate.

All this indeed is but a repetition of what we have seen in the half
century just gone. There is no sudden transition, no marked revolution.
And yet the time upon which we are entering has in other respects a
character that is peculiarly its own. It marks a condition towards which
the empire has been steadily tending; a condition that is the logical,
the necessary outcome of the antecedent conditions we have studied. The
essence of this new condition is found in the de-romanisation of the
empire. From now on the rulers of Rome, with rare exceptions, are no
longer Romans in the old sense of the word. Caracalla, to be sure, gave
Roman citizenship to all free men in the empire, which list, it may be
noted, included vast numbers of persons who had once been slaves. But
the sweep of the imperial stylus, while it may make the Gaul and the
Goth, the Dalmatian and the Dacian, the Syrian and the Arab, each and all
Romans in the official sense, is impotent to change the racial traits of
this heterogeneous company. The man from the provinces, who has never
been within a thousand miles of Rome, may count himself a Roman citizen,
may even glory in the name, but beyond peradventure his closest interests
lie with his own kith and kin, with his own race, as against those others
of his fellow-citizens who live in far-distant lands, and have habits,
customs, and languages different from his own.

In the present connection this natural instinct comes to have much
importance. It becomes increasingly evident that we no longer have a
strongly centralised government. In the first instance nearly all the
emperors are themselves men from the provinces. A great city is seldom
the birthplace of the great men of any epoch. It has been said that Rome
never produced a poet, and the briefest analysis of her great names will
show that few men indeed whom posterity remembers were born within the
confines of the city itself. But in the early day the great Romans were,
for the most part, born in Italy, if not at the capital. In the first
century, indeed, importance attaches, as we have seen, to a good many
adoptive Romans who were born in Asia Minor, and to others who came from
Spain--such men as the Senecas, Lucan, and Quintilian. In the second
century of the empire, it will be recalled, two of the greatest emperors,
Trajan and Hadrian, were Spaniards. But these are exceptional instances.

Now, however, we are entering upon a period when the Roman emperor,
almost as a matter of course, is not an Italian. Maximin is a Thracian
peasant, Philip is an Arab, Decius comes from Pannonia, Æmilianus is said
to be a Moor; Claudius, Probus, Carus, and Carinus come from various
regions of Illyricum. Some of these provincials visit Rome whenever a
lull in the border warfares will permit. Philip the Arab, for example,
makes Rome his headquarters; and by an odd freak of fortune it is this
man of alien blood who is on the throne when Rome comes, in the year 248,
to her one thousandth anniversary: it is he who conducts the magnificent
secular games that mark the millennium.

There are rulers too, like Aurelian, who take an interest in the more
intimate economical affairs of the empire, and who strenuously apply
their energies to a reform of the currency, the debasement of which is
one of the most significant features of the time. Aurelian fixes an
honest value for the gold and silver coins, takes from the senate and
from all cities but Alexandria the right of coinage, striving thus to fix
more firmly the position of the seat of empire as the financial centre,
and to give stability to the economic system. But his best efforts lead
to mutiny in the present, and fall far short of hoped-for results in
the future. Moreover, even an Aurelian, whatever his regard for Rome,
finds his time chiefly occupied with the warlike affairs of the outlying
provinces. He must dash from Syria to Egypt, from Egypt to Gaul; one
revolt is not put down before another begins. And in this day it is no
easy matter to transport an army from one part of the bulky empire to
another.

Then again, there are emperors who scorn the capital; Maximin, for
example, who for a time transfers the seat of empire to distant Pannonia.
It is a strange spectacle when Italian citizens are brought from their
residences in Rome to have punishment--punishment, be it understood,
not justice--meted out to them in a province on the Danube. Few other
emperors go quite to such extremes as this; but more and more as
time goes on we feel that the interests of the empire are everywhere
except in Rome. After the time of Claudius, who occupies the throne
just as the empire is rounding out its third century, it is almost a
foregone conclusion that Illyricum will supply the empire with its
rulers. The significance of this fact is at once evident, if we recall
that Illyricum is that territory north of Greece including Macedonia,
Thrace, and Mœsia, which a future emperor will fix on as the seat of New
Rome--Constantinople.

The decentralisation of the empire, of which these are significant
marks, is still more strikingly manifested in the ever increasing number
of rival claimants to the purple. Again and again it happens that the
soldiers in different portions of the empire raise different chiefs to
nominal imperial power. At one time, while Gallienus is the legitimate
holder of the title, there are spurious emperors in Illyricum, Gaul,
Greece, Egypt,--everywhere. The time comes to be known as the epoch
of the Thirty Tyrants. Doubtless there were not thirty of these rival
emperors; but there may have been fifteen or twenty--just how many no one
knows or need greatly care to know.

And while internal dissensions are thus weakening the empire, an even
greater danger threatens it from without. The peoples whom we have
come to speak of rather loosely as barbarian hordes--Franks, Alamanni,
Goths--are piercing through the cordon of steel which is the sole
safeguard of the empire. The Persians contest the eastern border. They
capture a Roman emperor, Valerian, and carry him off to ignominious
servitude. The Goths sweep down to the Bosporus, invade Asia Minor, and
coast along the shores of Greece. The Alamanni invade Italy, and come
almost to Rome itself. For the time being these hordes are repelled. A
pest from Egypt carries off the Goths by thousands and renders their
motley array of warriors powerless. The arms of Aurelian drive back the
Alamanni. For the moment the imperial seat is secure. But so dreadful
appears this new threat of the old northern enemies that now, just at
the close of the third century of empire, a wall is built about the
imperial city. A few generations back that far-outlying wall of steel was
all-sufficient; now a narrow circle of stone must safeguard the capital,
as in the days of long ago, when Rome had not yet conquered Italy.

This fact alone sufficiently characterises the time. When the proud city,
whose subject territories are bounded by the Euphrates and the Atlantic,
acknowledges the fear of an enemy at her very portals, the beginning of
the end is at hand. The Roman Empire at the close of its third century
is no longer dreaming of more distant conquests; it is struggling for
life itself. Some salient features of this struggle will now claim our
attention.[a]


MAXIMIN (C. JULIUS VERUS MAXIMINUS), 235-238 A.D.

[Sidenote: [235-237 A.D.]]

Maximin was originally a Thracian peasant, of enormous size and strength;
his stature, we are told, “exceeded eight feet; his wife’s bracelet
made him a thumb-ring; he could draw a loaded wagon, break a horse’s
leg with a kick, and crumble sandstones in his hands”; he often, it is
added, “ate forty pounds of meat in the day, and washed them down with
seven gallons of wine.” Hence he was named Hercules, Antæus, and Milo
of Croton. He became known to the emperor Severus on the occasion of
his celebrating the birthday of his son Geta one time in Thrace. The
young barbarian approached him, and in broken Latin craved permission to
wrestle with some of the strongest of the camp followers; he vanquished
sixteen of them, and received as many prizes, and was admitted into the
service. A couple of days after, Severus seeing him exulting at his good
fortune, spoke to a tribune about him, and Maximin perceiving that he
was the object of the emperor’s discourse began to run on foot by his
horse; Severus to try his speed put his horse to the gallop, but the
young soldier kept up with him till the aged emperor was tired. Severus
asked him if he felt inclined to wrestle after his running: he replied
in the affirmative, and overthrew seven of the strongest soldiers. He
rose rapidly in the service under Severus and his son; he retired to his
native village when Macrinus seized the empire; he disdained to serve
Elagabalus, but the accession of Alexander induced him to return to Rome.
He received the command of a legion, was made a senator, and the emperor
even had thoughts of giving his sister in marriage to the son of the
Thracian peasant.

The first care of Maximin when raised to the empire was to dismiss
from their employments all who were in the council or family of his
predecessor, and several were put to death as conspirators. He speedily
displayed the native ferocity of his temper; for when, having completed a
bridge of boats over the Rhine commenced by Alexander, he was preparing
to pass over into Germany, a conspiracy headed by one Magnus, a consular,
was discovered, the plan of which was to loose the further end of the
bridge when Maximin had passed over, and thus to leave him in the hands
of the Germani, and meantime Magnus was to be proclaimed emperor. On this
occasion he massacred upwards of four thousand persons, without any form
of trial whatever; and he was accused of having invented the conspiracy
with this design.

A revolt of the eastern archers, which occurred a few days after, being
quelled, Maximin led his army into Germany. As no large force opposed
him, he wasted and burned the country through an extent of four hundred
miles. Occasional skirmishes took place in the woods and marshes, which
gave Maximin opportunities of displaying his personal prowess; and he
caused pictures of his victories to be painted, which he sent to Rome to
be placed at the door of the senate house.

Maximin employed the two first years of his reign in wars against the
Germans and the Sarmatians. His winter residence was Sirmium in Pannonia,
and he never condescended to visit Italy. But his absence was no benefit;
for Italy and all parts of the empire groaned alike beneath his merciless
tyranny. The vile race of delators once more came into life; men of all
ranks were dragged from every part of the empire to Pannonia, where
some were sewed up in the skins of animals, others were exposed to wild
beasts, others beaten to death with clubs, and the properties of all were
confiscated. This had been the usual course of the preceding despotism,
and the people in general therefore took little heed of it; but Maximin
stretched his rapacious hands to the corporate funds of the cities of
the empire, which were destined for the support or the amusement of the
people; and he seized on the treasures of the temples, and stripped the
public edifices of their ornaments. The spirit of disaffection thus
excited was general, and even his soldiers were wearied of his severity
and cruelty.


RIVAL EMPERORS, AND THE DEATH OF MAXIMIN

[Sidenote: [237-238 A.D.]]

The whole empire was now therefore ripe for revolt; the rapacity of the
procurator of Africa caused it to break out in that province (237). This
officer, who was worthy of his master, had condemned two young men of
rank to pay such sums as would have quite ruined them. In despair, they
assembled the peasantry on their estates, and having gained over part of
the soldiers, they one night surprised the procurator and slew him and
those who defended him. Knowing that they had no safety but in a general
revolt, they resolved to offer the empire to M. Antonius Gordianus, the
governor of the province, an illustrious senator of the venerable age of
eighty years. They came to him as he was resting after giving audience in
the morning, and flinging the purple of a standard over him hailed him as
Augustus. Gordian declined the proffered dignity, but when he reflected
that Maximin would never pardon a man who had been proclaimed emperor,
he deemed it the safer course to run the hazard of the contest, and he
consented to accept the empire, making his son his colleague. He then
proceeded to Carthage, whence he wrote to the senate and people, and his
friends at Rome, notifying his elevation to the empire.

[Illustration: THE CAMPAGNA]

The intelligence was received with the greatest joy at Rome. The two
Gordians were declared Augusti; and Maximin and his son, whom he had
associated with him in the empire, and their friends, public enemies,
and rewards were promised to those who would kill them; but the decree
was ordered to be kept secret till all the necessary preparations should
have been made. Soon after it was given out that Maximin was slain. The
edicts of the Gordians were then published, their images and letters
were carried into the prætorian camp, and forthwith the people rose in
fury, cast down and broke the images of Maximin, fell on and massacred
his officers and the informers; and many seized this pretext for getting
rid of their creditors and their private enemies. Murder and pillage
prevailed through the city. The senate meantime having advanced too
far to recede, wrote a circular to all the governors of provinces, and
appointed twenty of their body to put Italy into a state of defence.

Maximin was preparing to cross the Danube against the Sarmatians when
he heard of what had taken place at Rome. His rage and fury passed all
bounds. He menaced the whole of the senate with bonds or death, and
promised their properties, and those of the Africans, to his soldiers;
but finding that they did not show all the alacrity he had expected,
he began to fear for his power. His spirits, however, soon rose when
tidings came that his rivals were no more; for Capelianus, governor of
Mauretania, being ordered by the Gordians to quit that province, marched
against Carthage at the head of a body of legionaries and Moors. The
younger Gordian gave him battle, and was defeated and slain, and his
father on hearing the melancholy tidings strangled himself. Capelianus
pillaged Carthage and the other towns, and exercised all the rights of a
conqueror (237).

When the fatal tidings reached Rome the consternation was great, but
the senate, seeing they could not now recede, chose as emperors in the
place of the Gordians M. Clodius Pupienus Maximus and D. Cælius Balbinus,
the former to conduct the military, the latter the civil affairs of the
state. To satisfy the people, a grandson of the elder Gordian, a boy of
twelve years of age, was associated with them as cæsar.

The new emperors were elected about the beginning of July, and Pupienus
forthwith left Rome to oppose Maximin. The remainder of the year was
spent on both sides in making preparations for the war, and in the
following spring (238) Maximin put his troops in motion for Italy. He
passed the Alps unopposed, but found the gates of Aquileia closed against
him. His offers of pardon being rejected, he laid siege to the town; it
was defended with the obstinacy of despair. Ill success augmented the
innate ferocity of Maximin; he put to death several of his officers;
these executions irritated the soldiers, who were besides suffering
all kinds of privations, and discontent became general. As Maximin was
reposing one day at noon in his tent, a party of the Alban soldiers
approached it with the intention of killing him. They were joined by his
guards, and when he awoke and came forth with his son they would not
listen to him, but killed them both on the spot, and cut off their heads.
Maximin’s principal ministers shared his fate. His reign had lasted only
three years.


PUPIENUS (M. CLODIUS PUPIENUS MAXIMUS), BALBINUS (D. CÆLIUS BALBINUS),
AND GORDIAN (M. ANTONIUS GORDIANUS), 238-244 A.D.

[Sidenote: [238-248 A.D.]]

The joy at Rome was extreme when the news of the death of Maximin
arrived. Pupienus, who was at Ravenna, hastened to Aquileia, and received
the submission of the army. He distributed money to the legions, and
then sending them back to their usual quarters returned to Rome with
the prætorians and a part of the army of the Rhine, in which he could
confide. He and his colleagues entered the city in a kind of triumph.

The administration of Pupienus and Balbinus was of the best kind, and
the senate and people congratulated themselves on the choice they had
made. But the prætorians were far from being contented; they felt as if
robbed of their right of appointing an emperor; and they were annoyed at
the German troops being retained in the city, as arguing a distrust of
themselves. Unfortunately, too, there prevailed a secret jealousy between
the two emperors, and it is probable that concord would not long have
subsisted between them under any circumstances.

The prætorians, having to no purpose sought a pretext for getting
rid of the emperors, at length took advantage of the celebration of
the Capitoline games, at which almost everyone was present, and the
emperors remained nearly alone in the palace. They proceeded thither in
fury. Pupienus, when aware of their approach, proposed to send for the
Germani, but Balbinus, fearing that it was meant to employ them against
himself, refused his consent. Meantime the prætorians arrived, forced
the entrance, seized the two aged emperors, tore their garments, treated
them with every kind of indignity, and were dragging them to their camp,
till hearing that the Germans were coming to their aid, they killed them
and left their bodies lying in the street. They carried the young Gordian
with them to their camp, where they proclaimed him emperor, and the
senate, the people, and the provinces readily acquiesced in his elevation.

The youthful emperor was the object of general affection; the soldiers
called him their child, the senate their son, the people their delight.
He was of a lively and agreeable temper; and he was zealous in the
acquisition of knowledge, in order that he might not be deceived by those
about him. In the first years, however, of his reign public affairs were
indifferently managed. His mother, who was not a Mamæa, allowed her
eunuchs and freedmen to sell all the great offices of the state (perhaps
she shared in their gains), and in consequence many improper appointments
were made. But the marriage of the young emperor (241) brought about
a thorough reformation. He espoused the daughter of Misitheus, a
man distinguished in the cultivation of letters, and he made his
father-in-law his prætorian prefect, and guided himself by his counsels.
Misitheus, who was a man of virtue and talent as well as of learning,
discharged the duties of his office in the ablest manner.

A Persian war soon called the emperor to the East (242). Sapor (Shapur),
the son and successor of Artaxerxes, had invaded Mesopotamia, taken
Nisibis, Carrhæ, and other towns, and menaced Antioch. But the able
conduct of Misitheus, when the emperor arrived in Syria, speedily assured
victory to the Roman arms; the towns were all recovered, and the Persian
monarch was obliged to repass the Tigris. Unfortunately for Gordian and
the empire, Misitheus died in the following year (243), to the great
regret of the whole army, by whom he was both beloved and feared. The
office of prætorian prefect was given to M. Julius Philippus, who is
accused, though apparently without reason, of having caused the death
of his predecessor. Now, however, having in effect the command of the
army, Philip aspired to the empire. He spoke disparagingly of the youth
of Gordian; he contrived, by diverting the supplies, to cause the army
to be in want, and then laid the blame on the emperor. At length (244),
after a victory gained over the Persians on the banks of the Chaboras, he
led the troops into a country where no provisions could be procured: a
mutiny in consequence ensued, in which the emperor was slain, and Philip
was proclaimed in his place. Gordian was only nineteen years of age when
he met his untimely fate; he had reigned five years and eight months. The
soldiers raised him a tomb on the spot, and the senate placed him among
the gods.


PHILIP (M. JULIUS PHILIPPUS), 244-249 A.D.

The adventurer who had now attained the imperial purple was an Arab by
birth, and it is even pretended a Christian in religion. He probably
entered the Roman service in his youth, and gradually rose to rank in the
army.

Being anxious to proceed to Rome, Philip lost no time in concluding
a treaty with Sapor. He then, after a short stay at Antioch, set out
for Italy. At Rome he used every means to conciliate the senators by
liberality and kindness, and he never mentioned the late emperor but
in terms of respect. To gain the affections of the people, he formed a
reservoir to supply with water the part of the city beyond the Tiber.

[Sidenote: [248-250 A.D.]]

In the fifth year of his reign (248), Rome having then attained her one
thousandth year, Philip, in conjunction with his son, now associated with
him in the empire, celebrated with great magnificence the secular games.
These had been already solemnised by Augustus, by Claudius, by Domitian,
and Severus, and Rome now witnessed them for the last time.

[Illustration: A ROMAN HELMET]

Philip would appear to have acted unwisely in committing extensive
commands to his own relations; for in Syria, where his brother Priscus,
and in Mœsia, where his father-in-law Severianus commanded, rival
emperors were proclaimed. The Syrian rebel was named Jotapianus; the
Mœsian was a centurion, named P. Carvilius Marinus. Philip, it is
said, in alarm, called on the senate to support him or to accept his
resignation (249); but while the other senators maintained silence,
Decius, a man of rank and talent, reassured him, speaking slightingly
of the rebels, and asserting that they could not stand against him. His
prediction proved correct, for they both were shortly after slain. Philip
then obliged Decius, much, it is said, against his inclination, to take
the command of the Mœsian and Pannonian legions. But when Decius reached
the army, the soldiers insisted on investing him with the purple. He
wrote to the emperor assuring him of his fidelity; but Philip would not
trust to his declarations, and leaving his son at Rome with a part of the
prætorians, he put himself at the head of his troops to chastise him. The
armies met near Verona; Philip was defeated and slain, and when the news
reached Rome, the prætorians slew his son and proclaimed Decius.


DECIUS (C. MESSIUS QUINTUS TRAJANUS DECIUS), 249-251 A.D.

Decius was born at Bubalia, a town near Sirmium in Pannonia. He was
either forty-eight or fifty-eight years of age, it is uncertain which,
when he was proclaimed emperor; and from the imperfect accounts which
we have of his reign he would seem to have been a man of considerable
ability. His reign was, however, brief and unquiet. It had hardly
commenced when he had to go in person to quell an insurrection in Gaul,
and all the rest of it was occupied in war with the Goths.

[Sidenote: [250-253 A.D.]]

This people, whose original seat seems to have been the Scandinavian
peninsula, had at an early period crossed the Baltic, and settled on its
southern coast. They had gradually advanced southwards, and they now
had reached the Euxine. In the time of Alexander Severus they had made
inroads into Dacia; and in that of Philip they ravaged both that province
and Mœsia. In the first year of Decius (250) the Gothic king Cniva passed
the Danube at the head of seventy thousand warriors, and laid siege
to the town of Eustesium (Novi); being repelled by the Roman general
Gallus, he advanced against Nicopolis, whence he was driven by the
emperor or his son (it is uncertain which) with a loss of thirty thousand
men. Undismayed by his reverses he crossed Mount Hæmus, in the hope of
surprising Philippopolis; Decius followed him, but his camp at Berœa was
surprised by the Goths and his troops were cut to pieces. Philippopolis
stood a siege of some duration; but it was taken, and the greater part of
its inhabitants were massacred. The Goths now spread their ravages into
Macedonia, the governor of which, Philip’s brother Priscus, assumed the
purple under their protection.

It seems most probable that it was the younger Decius who met with these
reverses, for the emperor must have been at Rome, as we find that on his
leaving it (251) to direct the Gothic war, a person named Julius Valens
was declared emperor, to the great joy of the people. He was, however,
killed shortly after. Decius, who was worthy of empire, was meantime
amidst the cares of war engaged in the visionary project of restoring
the long-departed public virtue which had once ennobled Rome. With this
view he proposed to revive the office of censor, and the choice of the
person being left to the senate they unanimously voted it (October 27),
to P. Licinius Valerianus as being the man most worthy of it. The decree
was transmitted to the emperor, who was in Thrace; he read it aloud in
a large assembly, and exhorted Valerian, who was present, to accept the
proffered dignity. Valerian would fain excuse himself. We know not if the
emperor was satisfied with his excuses, but from the turn which public
affairs took the censorship was never exercised.

Decius was successful against the Goths, who offered to surrender their
booty and prisoners if allowed to repass the Danube; but the emperor,
who was resolved to strike such a blow as would daunt the barbarians
and make them henceforth respect the Roman arms, refused all terms. The
Goths therefore gave him battle in a place where a part of their front
was covered by a morass. The younger Decius was slain by an arrow in the
beginning of the action; but the emperor crying out that the loss of one
soldier did not signify, led on his troops. In the attempt to cross the
morass they were pierced by the arrows of the enemy, or swallowed up in
the mire, and the body of the emperor was never found.


GALLUS (C. VIBIUS TREBONIANUS GALLUS), 251-253 A.D.

The senate, it is said, but more probably the army, conferred the vacant
purple on Gallus, the governor of Mœsia. He adopted Hostilianus, the
remaining son of Decius, and gave him the title of Augustus; but this
youth dying soon after of the plague, Gallus associated his own son
Volusianus in the empire. Unable probably to resist the victorious Goths,
Gallus agreed that they should depart with their booty and prisoners, and
even consented to pay them annually a large sum of gold. He then set out
for Rome, where he remained for the rest of his reign, ruling with great
mildness and equity.

[Sidenote: [253-256 A.D.]]

The Goths and their allies, heedless of treaties, again (253) poured over
the Danube; but Æmilianus, the governor of Mœsia, gave them a signal
defeat, and his victorious troops forthwith proclaimed him emperor.
Without a moment’s delay he put them in motion for Rome. Gallus advanced
to engage him; the troops came in sight of each other at Interamna
(Terni), and those of Gallus seeing themselves the weaker, and gained by
the promises of Æmilianus, murdered the emperor and his son, and passed
over to the side of the rebel.


ÆMILIANUS (C. JULIUS ÆMILIANUS), 253 A.D.

Æmilianus is said to have been a Moor by birth. Of his previous history
nothing is known. He wrote to the senate to say that they should have
the whole civil administration, and that he would be no more than their
general, and that assembly readily acquiesced in his elevation.

But Valerian had been sent by Gallus to fetch the legions of Gaul and
Germany to his aid; and these troops, as soon as they heard of his death,
proclaimed their general emperor. He led them into Italy; and the troops
of Æmilianus, which were encamped at Spoletium (Spoleto), fearing the
strength and number of the advancing army, murdered their emperor to
obviate a conflict. The reign of Æmilianus had not lasted four months.


VALERIAN (P. LICINIUS VALERIANUS) AND GALLIENUS (P. LICINIUS GALLIENUS),
253-260 A.D.

Valerian is said to have been sixty years of age when thus raised to the
empire. Feeling the infirmities of age, or in imitation of the practice
of so many preceding emperors, he associated with him his son Gallienus,
a young man devoid neither of courage nor ability, but immoderately
addicted to pleasure.

[Illustration: WEAPONS AND HELMET OF THE GAULS]

Had the Roman Empire been in the condition in which it was left by
Augustus, Valerian might have emulated that emperor, and have displayed
his virtues and beneficence in promoting the happiness of his subjects.
But a great change had taken place in the condition of Rome; her legions
no longer inspired their ancient terror; her northern and eastern
provinces were exposed to the ravages of those who had formerly cowered
before her eagles. Valerian could therefore only exhibit his wisdom in
the selection of his generals; and it is to be observed that his choice
never fell on an unworthy subject.

The enemies by whom the empire was assailed at this period were the
Franks, the Alamanni, the Goths, and the Persians. As the scanty notices
of these times do not enable us to arrange events chronologically, we
will give a separate view of the wars with each of these peoples during
the reigns of Valerian and his son.

[Sidenote: [256-262 A.D.]]

We have already observed the proneness of the Germanic tribes to form
confederations. The Chauci, Cherusci, Chatti, and some adjoining states,
had lately, it would seem, entered into one of these political unions
under the name of Franks--_i.e._, freemen. Their strength and number now
causing uneasiness for Gaul, the young emperor Gallienus was sent to that
country; but the chief military command was conferred on Postumus, a
man of considerable ability. The arms of the legions were successful in
various encounters; but they were finally unable to prevent the passage
of an army of the Franks through Gaul, whence surmounting the barrier
of the Pyrenees they poured down into the now unwarlike Spain. The rich
city of Tarraco was taken and sacked; the whole country was devastated,
and the Franks, then seizing the vessels which they found in the ports,
embarked to ravage Africa. We know not what was their ultimate fate; they
were probably, however, destroyed in detail by the Roman troops and the
provincials.

A portion of the great Suevian confederation had formed a new combination
under the name of Alamanni--_i.e._, all men, on account of the variety
of tribes which composed it. Like the Suevi, their forces were chiefly
composed of cavalry, with active footmen mingled with them; and they
always proved a formidable foe. While Gallienus was in Gaul a body of
them entered Italy, penetrated as far as Ravenna, and their advanced
troops came nearly within sight of Rome. The senate drew out the
prætorian guards, and added to them a portion of the populace to oppose
them; and the barbarians, finding themselves greatly outnumbered,
hastened to get beyond the Danube with their plunder. Gallienus it is
said was so much alarmed at the spirit and energy shown by the senate
on this occasion, that he issued an edict interdicting all military
employments to the senators, and even prohibiting their access to the
camps of the legions. It is added that the luxurious nobles viewed this
indignity as a favour rather than an insult.

Gallienus is also said to have overcome a large army of Alamanni in the
vicinity of Mediolanum.[47] He afterwards espoused Pipa, daughter of
the king of the Marcomanni (one of the confederates), to whom he gave
a territory in Pannonia, as a means of averting the hostilities of the
barbarians.

The Goths were now masters of the northern coast of the Euxine, and
finding their attacks on the northern provinces generally repelled with
vigour, they resolved to direct their efforts against more unwarlike
districts. Collecting a quantity of the vessels used for navigating the
Euxine, they embarked (258) and crossed that sea. They made their first
attempt on the frontier town of Pityus, which was long ably defended
against them; but they at length succeeded in reducing it. They thence
sailed to the wealthy city of Trapezus (Trebizond); and though it was
defended by a numerous garrison, they effected an entrance during the
night. The cowardly garrison fled without making any resistance; the
inhabitants were massacred in great numbers; the booty and number of
captives were immense, and the victors having ravaged the province of
Pontus embarked there on board of the ships which they found in the
harbours, and returned to their settlement in the Tauric Chersonesus.

The next expedition of the Goths was directed to the Bosporus (261). They
took and plundered Chalcedon and Nicomedia, Nicæa, Apamea, Prusa, and
other cities of Bithynia. The accidental swelling of the little river
Rhyndacus saved the town of Cyzicus from pillage.

The third expedition of the Goths was on a larger scale (262). Their
fleet consisted of five hundred vessels of all sizes. They sailed along
the Bosporus and Propontis; took and plundered Cyzicus; passed the
Hellespont, and entered the Ægean. They directed their course to the
Piræus; Athens could offer no resistance; the Goths ravaged Greece with
impunity, and advanced to the shores of the Adriatic. Gallienus roused
himself from his pleasures and appeared in arms. A Herulian chief with
his men was induced to enter the Roman service; the Goths, weakened by
this defection, broke up; a part forced their way to the Danube overland;
the rest embarked and, pillaging and burning the temple of Diana at
Ephesus on their way, returned to the Euxine.

Sapor of Persia had been long engaged in war with Chosroes king of
Armenia, a prince of the house of Arsaces. Unable to reduce the brave
Armenian, he caused him to be assassinated; and Armenia then received the
Persian yoke. Elated with his success, Sapor invaded the Roman territory,
took Nisibis and Carrhæ, and spread his ravages over Mesopotamia.
Valerian, alarmed for the safety of the Eastern provinces, proceeded
thither in person (259). The events of the war which ensued have not
reached us. All that we know with certainty is that Valerian was finally
defeated and made a captive (260). The circumstances of his capture
were somewhat similar to those of the taking of Crassus. His army, by
ignorance or treachery, got into a position where neither discipline nor
courage could avail, being without supplies and suffering from disease.
The soldiers clamoured for a capitulation; Sapor detained the deputies
that were sent to him, and led his troops up to the camp; and Valerian
was obliged to consent to a conference, at which he was made a prisoner.

Valerian ended his days a captive in Persia. We are told that Sapor
treated him with every kind of indignity; that he led him about in chains
clad in his imperial purple; that when the haughty Persian would mount
his horse, the captive emperor was made to go on his hands and knees to
serve as his horse-block; and that when death at length released him
from his sufferings, his skin was stripped off, tanned and stuffed, and
placed in one of the most celebrated temples of Persia. The sufferings
of Valerian are, however, probably of the same kind with the tortures of
Regulus and the iron cage of Bajazet--gross exaggerations of some degree
of ill treatment or of necessary precaution.


GALLIENUS (P. LICINIUS GALLIENUS), 260-268 A.D.

[Sidenote: [260-262 A.D.]]

The captivity of Valerian was lamented by all but his son, who felt
himself relieved by it from the restraint imposed on him by his father’s
virtue. He even affected to act the philosopher on the occasion, saying
in imitation of Xenophon, “I knew that my father was mortal”; but he
never made any attempt to procure his liberty, and he abandoned himself
without restraint to sensual indulgence.

The reign of Gallienus is termed the time of the Thirty Tyrants. This
word [in its present sense deviating slightly from old Greek usage],
merely signified prince, or rather usurper--that is, one who claims the
supreme power already held by another. The tyrants of this time were in
general men of excellent character, who had been placed in the command of
armies by Valerian, and were invested with the purple by their soldiers
often against their will. The number of these usurpers who rose and fell
in succession did not exceed eighteen or nineteen, but some very fanciful
analogy led to a comparison of them with the Thirty of Athens, and in the
_Augustan History_ an effort is made, by including women and children, to
raise them to that number.

The East, Illyricum, Gaul, Greece, and Egypt were the places in which
these tyrants appeared. We will notice them in order.

After the defeat of Valerian, Sapor conferred the title of emperor on
a person named Cyriades, the son of a citizen of Antioch. This vassal
forthwith conducted the Persian troops to the pillage of his native
city, and so rapid and so secret was their march that they surprised the
Antiochians while engaged at the theatre. The massacre and devastation
usual in the East ensued. The Persian monarch then poured his troops
into Cilicia, took and plundered Tarsus and other towns; then crossing
Mount Taurus, he laid siege to Cæsarea in Cappadocia, a city with four
hundred thousand inhabitants. It was stoutly defended for some time,
but treachery at length delivered it into the hands of the Persians,
and massacre and pillage followed. Sapor now spread his ravages on all
sides; but the Roman troops having rallied under the command of Ser.
Anicius Balista, who had been prætorian prefect, checked his career, and
as he was retiring towards his own states he found himself assailed by an
unexpected enemy.

Soon after the defeat and capture of Valerian, a train of camels laden
with presents entered the camp of Sapor. They were accompanied by a
letter from Odenathus, a wealthy citizen of Palmyra (the ancient Tadmor),
containing an assurance that he had never acted against the Persians.
Sapor, enraged at such insolence (as he deemed it), tore the letter,
flung the gifts into the river, and declared that he would exterminate
the insolent writer and his family unless he came before his throne with
his hands bound behind his back. Odenathus at once resolved to join the
Romans; he collected a force chiefly composed of the Bedouins, or Arabs
of the desert, over whom he had great influence. He hovered about the
Persian army, and attacking it at the passage of the Euphrates, carried
off much treasure and some of the women of the Great King, who was forced
to seek safety in a precipitate retreat. Odenathus made himself master
of all Mesopotamia, and he even passed the Tigris and made an attempt on
Ctesiphon (261). Gallienus gave him the title of his general of the East,
and Odenathus himself took soon after that of king of Palmyra.


THE THIRTY TYRANTS

[Sidenote: [260-268 A.D.]]

The Roman troops in the East meantime, being resolved not to submit to
Gallienus, were deliberating on whom they would bestow the purple. Acting
under the advice of Balista, they fixed on the prætorian prefect, M.
Fulvius Macrianus, a man of great military talents and, what was perhaps
of more importance in their eyes, extremely wealthy. Macrianus conferred
the office of prætorian prefect on Balista, and leaving with him his
younger son and a part of the army to defend the East, he put himself at
the head of forty-five thousand men, and taking with him his elder son,
set out for Europe (261). On the borders of Illyricum he was encountered
by M. Acilius Aureolus, the governor (or as some say the tyrant) of that
province, and in the battle which ensued, himself and his son were slain,
and his troops surrendered. After the death of Macrianus, Balista assumed
the purple, but he was slain by order of Odenathus, whom Gallienus (264),
with the full consent of the senate and people of Rome, had made his
associate in the empire, giving him the titles of cæsar, augustus, and
all the other tokens of sovereignty.

Ti. Cestius Æmilianus, who commanded in Egypt, assumed the purple in
that province (262), in consequence it is said of a sedition in the most
turbulent city of Alexandria; but he was defeated the following year,
taken prisoner, and sent to Gallienus, who caused him to be strangled.

It was in Gaul that the usurpers had most success. As soon as Gallienus
left that country (260), the general M. Cassianus Latinius Postumus was
proclaimed emperor, and his authority appears to have been acknowledged
in both Spain and Britain. He is described as a man of most noble and
upright character; he administered justice impartially, and he defended
the frontier against the Germans with valour and success. Possessed of
the affections of the people, he easily maintained himself against all
the efforts of Gallienus; but he was slain at last (267) in a mutiny
of his own soldiers, to whom he had refused the plunder of the city
of Mogontiacum, in which a rival emperor had appeared. Postumus had
associated with himself in the empire Victorinus, the son of a lady named
Aurelia Victoria, who was called the Mother of the Camp, and who had such
influence with the troops, we know not how acquired, but probably by her
wealth, as to be able to give the purple to whom she pleased. Victorinus
being slain by a man whose wife he had violated, a simple armourer,
named Marius, wore the purple for two days, at the end of which he was
murdered; and Victoria then caused a senator named C. Pivesus Tetricus to
be proclaimed emperor, who maintained his power for some years.

At the time when Macrianus claimed the empire, P. Valerius Valens, the
governor of Greece, finding that that usurper, who was resolved on his
destruction, had sent L. Calpurnius Piso against him, assumed the purple
in his own defence. Piso, being forced to retire into Thessaly, caused
himself to be proclaimed emperor there; but few joined him, and he was
slain by a party of soldiers sent against him by Valens, who was himself
shortly after put to death by his own troops. Both Valens and Piso were
men of high character, especially the latter, to whom the senate decreed
divine honours, and respecting whom Valens himself said that he would
not be able to account to the gods below for having ordered Piso, though
his enemy, to be slain, a man whose like the Roman Republic did not then
possess.

C. Annius Trebellianus declared himself independent in Isauria, and T.
Cornelius Celsus was proclaimed emperor in Africa; but both speedily
perished (265). Among the calamities of this reign was an insurrection of
the slaves in Sicily, similar to those in the time of the republic.

While his empire was thus torn asunder, Gallienus thought only of
indulgence, and the loss of a province only gave him occasion for a
joke. When Egypt revolted, “Well,” said he, “cannot we do without
Egyptian linen?” So when Gaul was lost, he asked if the republic could
not be secure without cloaks from Arras. He was content to retain Italy,
satisfied with a nominal sovereignty over the rest of the empire; and
whenever this seat of dominion was menaced, he exhibited in its defence
the vigour and personal courage which he really possessed.

Gaul and Illyricum were the quarters from which Italy had most to
apprehend. Gallienus therefore headed his troops against Postumus, and
when D. Lælius Ingenuus revolted in Pannonia, he marched against him,
defeated and slew him, and made the most cruel use of his victory to
deter others (260). Q. Nonius Regalianus, who afterwards revolted in the
same country, was slain by his own soldiers (263); but when Aureolus was
induced to assume the purple (267) the Illyrian legions advanced and
made themselves masters of Mediolanum (the modern Milan). Gallienus,
shaking off sloth, appeared at the head of his troops; the hostile
armies encountered on the banks of the Addua, and Aureolus was defeated,
wounded, and forced to shut himself up in Mediolanum. During the siege
a conspiracy was formed against the emperor by some of the principal
officers of his army, and one night as he was sitting at table a report
was spread that Aureolus had made a sally. Gallienus instantly threw
himself on horseback to hasten to the point of danger, and in the dark he
received a mortal wound from an unknown hand.

We now enter on a series of emperors of a new order. Born nearly all in
humble stations, and natives of the province of Illyricum, they rose by
merit through the gradations of military service, attained the empire in
general without crime, maintained its dignity, and checked or punished
the inroads of the barbarians. This series commences with the death of
Gallienus and terminates with that of Licinius, embracing a period of
somewhat more than half a century, and marked, as we shall find, by most
important changes in the Roman Empire. [Thus the military revolution now
begins to bear good fruit.]


CLAUDIUS (M. AURELIUS CLAUDIUS), 268-270 A.D.

[Sidenote: [268-270 A.D.]]

The murmurs of the soldiers on the death of Gallienus were easily stilled
by the promise of a donative of twenty pieces of gold a man. To justify
themselves in the eyes of the world, the conspirators resolved to bestow
the empire on one who should form an advantageous contrast to its late
unworthy possessor, and they fixed on M. Aurelius Claudius, who commanded
a division of the army at Ticinum (modern Pavia). The soldiers, the
senate, and the people alike approved their choice, and Claudius assumed
the purple with universal approbation.

This excellent man, in whose praise writers of all parties are agreed,
was a native of Illyricum, born apparently in humble circumstances.
His merit raised him through the inferior gradations of the army; he
attracted the notice of the emperor Decius, and the discerning Valerian
made him general of the Illyrian frontier, with an assurance of the
consulate.

Aureolus was soon obliged to surrender, and he was put to death by the
soldiers. An army of Alamanni, coming perhaps to his aid, was then, it
is said, defeated by Claudius near Verona. After his victory the emperor
proceeded to Rome, where during the remainder of the year he devoted his
time and thoughts to the reformation of abuses in the state. Among other
just and prudent regulations, he directed that the properties confiscated
by Gallienus should be restored to their original owners. A woman, it is
said, came on this occasion to the emperor and claimed her land, which
she said had been given to Claudius, the commander of the cavalry. This
officer was the emperor himself, and he replied that the emperor Claudius
must restore what he took when he was a private man and less bound to
obey the laws.

The following year (269) the Goths and their allies embarked, we are
told, to the number of 320,000 warriors, with their wives, children,
and slaves, in two or, as some say, six thousand vessels, and directed
their course to the Bosporus. In passing that narrow channel the number
of their vessels and the rapidity of the current caused them to suffer
considerable loss. Their attempts on Byzantium and Cyzicus having failed,
they proceeded along the northern coast of the Ægean, and laid siege
to the cities of Cassandrea and Thessalonica. While thus engaged they
learned that the emperor was on his march to oppose them, and breaking
up they advanced into the interior, wasting and plundering the country
on their way. Near the town of Naisus, in Dardania, they encountered the
Roman legions. The battle was long and bloody, and the Romans were at one
time on the verge of defeat; but the skill of Claudius turned the beam,
and the Goths were finally routed with a loss of fifty thousand men.
During the remainder of the year numerous desultory actions occurred, in
which the Goths sustained great losses; and being finally hemmed in on
all sides by the Roman troops, they were forced to seek refuge in Mount
Hæmus, and pass the winter amidst its snows. Famine and pestilence alike
preyed on them, and when on the return of spring (270) the emperor took
the field against them, they were obliged to surrender at discretion.
A portion of their youth were enrolled in the imperial troops; vast
numbers both of men and women were reduced to slavery; on some lands were
bestowed in the provinces; few returned to their seats on the Euxine.

The pestilence which had afflicted the Goths proved also fatal to
the emperor. He was attacked and carried off by it at Sirmium in the
fifty-seventh year of his age. In the presence of his principal officers
he named, it is said, Aurelian, one of his generals, as the fittest
person to succeed him; but his brother Quintilius, when he heard of
his death, assumed the purple at Aquileia, and was acknowledged by the
senate. Hearing, however, that Aurelian was on his march against him, he
gave up all hopes of success, and opening his veins died after a reign of
seventeen days.


AURELIAN (L. DOMITIUS AURELIANUS), 270-275 A.D.

Aurelian, like his able predecessor, was a man of humble birth. His
father is said to have been a small farmer, and his mother a priestess
of the Sun, in a village near Sirmium. He entered the army as a common
soldier, and rose through the successive gradations of the service to the
rank of general of a frontier. He was adopted in the presence of Valerian
(some said at his request) by Ulpius Crinitus, a senator of the same
family with the emperor Trajan, who gave him his daughter in marriage,
and Valerian bestowed on him the office of consul. In the Gothic War
Claudius had committed to him the command of the cavalry.

Immediately on his election Aurelian hastened to Rome, whence he was
speedily recalled to Pannonia by the intelligence of an irruption of the
Goths. A great battle was fought, which was terminated by night without
any decisive advantage on either side. Next day the Goths retired over
the river and sent proposals of peace, which was cheerfully accorded,
and for many years no hostilities of any account occurred between the
Goths and Romans. But while Aurelian was thus occupied in Pannonia,
the Alamanni, with a force of forty thousand horse and eighty thousand
foot, had passed the Alps and spread their ravages to the Po. Instead of
following them into Italy, Aurelian, learning that they were on their
return home with their booty, marched along the Danube to intercept their
retreat, and attacking them unawares, he reduced them to such straits
that they sent to sue for peace.

The emperor received the envoys at the head of his legions, surrounded
by his principal officers. After a silence of some moments they spoke by
their interpreter, saying that it was the desire of peace and not the
fear of war that had brought them thither. They spoke of the uncertainty
of war, and enlarged on the number of their forces. As a condition of
peace they required the usual presents, and the same annual payments in
silver and gold that they had had before the war. Aurelian replied in a
long speech, the sum of which was that nothing short of unconditional
surrender would be accepted. The envoys returning to their countrymen
reported the ill success of their embassy, and forthwith the army turned
back and re-entered Italy. Aurelian followed and came up with them at
Placentia. The Alamanni, who had stationed themselves in the woods,
fell suddenly on the legions in the dusk of the evening, and nothing
but the firmness and skill of the emperor saved the Romans from a total
overthrow. A second battle was fought near Fanum in Umbria, on the spot
where Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal was defeated and slain five hundred
years before. The Alamanni were totally routed, and a concluding
victory at Ticinum delivered Italy from their ravages. Aurelian pursued
the barbarians beyond the Alps, and then turned to Pannonia, which the
Vandals had invaded. He engaged and defeated them (271). They sent to
sue for peace, and he referred the matter to his soldiers, who loudly
expressed their desire for an accommodation. The Vandals gave the
children of their two kings and of their principal nobles for hostages,
and Aurelian took two thousand of them into his service.


AURELIAN WALLS ROME AND INVADES THE EAST

[Sidenote: [267-271 A.D.]]

There had been some seditions at Rome during the time of the Alamannian
War, and Aurelian on his return to the capital acted with great severity,
and even cruelty, in punishing those engaged in them. He is accused of
having put to death senators of high rank on the slightest evidence,
and for the most trifling offences. Aware, too, that neither Alps nor
Apennines could now check the barbarians, he resolved to put Rome into a
posture to stand a siege, and he commenced the erection of massive walls
around it, which, when completed by his successors, formed a circuit of
twenty-one miles, and yielded a striking proof of the declining strength
of the empire.

Aurelian, victorious against the barbarians, had still two rivals to
subdue before he could be regarded as perfect master of the empire.
Tetricus was acknowledged in Gaul, Spain, and Britain; Zenobia, the widow
of Odenathus, ruled the East. It is uncertain against which he first
turned his arms, but as the greater number of writers give the priority
to the Syrian War, we will here follow their example.

Odenathus and his eldest son Herod were treacherously slain by his nephew
Mæonius; but Zenobia, the widow of the murdered prince, speedily punished
the traitor, and then held the government in the name of her remaining
sons. This extraordinary woman claimed a descent from the Ptolemies of
Egypt. In her person she displayed the beauty of the East, being of a
clear dark complexion, with pearly white teeth and brilliant black eyes.
Her voice was strong and harmonious; she spoke the Greek, Syrian, and
Egyptian languages, and understood the Latin. She was fond of study, but
at the same time she loved vigorous exercises; and she accompanied her
husband to the chase of the lion, the panther, and the other wild beasts
of the wood and desert, and by her counsels and her vigour of mind she
greatly contributed to his success in war. To these manly qualities was
united a chastity rarely to be found in the East. Viewing the union of
the sexes as the appointed means of continuing the species, Zenobia would
admit the embraces of her husband only in order to have offspring. She
was temperate and sober, yet when needful she could quaff wine with her
generals, and even vanquish in the combats of the table the wine-loving
Persians and Armenians. As a sovereign Zenobia was severe or clement as
the occasion required; she was frugal of her treasure beyond what was
ordinary with a woman, but when her affairs called for liberality no one
dispensed them more freely.

After the death of Odenathus, which occurred in the year 267, Zenobia
styled her three sons Augusti, but she held the government in her own
hands; she bore the title of Queen of the East, wore royal robes and the
diadem, caused herself to be adored in the oriental fashion, and put the
years of her reign on her coins. She defeated an army sent against her
by Gallienus; she made herself mistress of Egypt, and her rule extended
northwards as far as the confines of Bithynia.

Aurelian on passing over to Asia reduced to order the province of
Bithynia. The city of Tyana in Cappadocia resisted him, but the treachery
of one of its inhabitants put it into his hands. He pardoned the people,
and he abandoned the traitor to the just indignation of the soldiers. On
the banks of the Orontes he encountered the troops of the Queen of the
East.[c] Let us turn to Zosimus for an account of what then took place:


ZOSIMUS DESCRIBES THE DEFEAT OF ZENOBIA

[Sidenote: [271-273 A.D.]]

Aurelian observing that the Palmyrenian cavalry placed great confidence
in their armour, which was very strong and secure, and that they were
much better horsemen than his soldiers, he planted his infantry by
themselves on the other side the Orontes. He charged the cavalry not to
engage immediately with the vigorous cavalry of the Palmyrenians, but to
wait for their attack, and then, pretending to fly, to continue so doing
until they had wearied both the men and their horses through excess of
heat and the weight of their armour; so that they could pursue them no
longer. This project succeeded, and as soon as the cavalry of the emperor
saw their enemy tired and their horses scarcely able to stand under them,
or themselves to move, they drew up the reins of their horses, and,
wheeling round, charged them, and trod them under foot as they fell from
their horses. By which means the slaughter was promiscuous, some falling
by the sword and others by their own and the enemy’s horses.

After this defeat, the remains of the enemy fled into Antioch. Labdas,
the general of Zenobia, fearing that the Antiochians on hearing of it
should mutiny, chose a man resembling the emperor, and clothing him in a
dress such as Aurelian was accustomed to wear, led him through the city
as if he had taken the emperor prisoner. By this contrivance he imposed
on the Antiochians, stole out of the city by night, and took with him
Zenobia with the remainder of the army to Emesa. In the meantime the
emperor was intent on his affairs, and as soon as it was day called the
foot soldiers around him, intending to attack the defeated enemy on both
sides; but, hearing of the escape of Zenobia, he entered Antioch, where
he was joyfully received by the citizens. Finding that many had left the
city, under apprehensions that they should suffer for having espoused the
party of Zenobia, he published edicts in every place to recall them, and
told them that such events had happened more through necessity than of
his own inclination. When this was known to the fugitives they returned
in crowds and were kindly received by the emperor, who, having arranged
affairs in that city, proceeded to Emesa.

Finding that a party of the Palmyrenians had got possession of a hill
above the suburbs of Daphne, thinking that its steepness would enable
them to obstruct the enemy’s passage, he commanded his soldiers to march
with their bucklers so near to each other, and in so compact a form, as
to keep off any darts and stones that might be thrown at them. This being
observed, as soon as they ascended the hill, being in all points equal to
their adversaries, they put them to flight in such disorder that some of
them were dashed in pieces from the precipices, and others slaughtered in
the pursuit by those that were on the hill and those that were mounting
it. Having gained the victory, they marched on with great satisfaction
at the success of the emperor, who was liberally entertained at Apamea,
Larissa, and Arethusa. Finding the Palmyrenian army drawn up before
Emesa, amounting to seventy thousand men, consisting of Palmyrenians and
their allies, he opposed to them the Dalmatian cavalry, the Mœsians and
Pannonians, and the Celtic legions of Noricum and Rætia, and besides
these the choicest of the imperial regiment selected man by man, the
Mauretanian horse, the Tyanæans, the Mesopotamians, the Syrians, the
Phœnicians, and the Palestinians, all men of acknowledged valour; the
Palestinians besides other arms wielding clubs and staves.

At the commencement of the engagement the Roman cavalry receded, lest
the Palmyrenians, who exceeded them in number and were better horsemen,
should by some stratagem surround the Roman army. But the Palmyrenian
cavalry pursued them so fiercely, though their ranks were broken, that
the event was quite contrary to the expectation of the Roman cavalry.
For they were pursued by an enemy much their superior in strength, and
therefore most of them fell. The foot had to bear the brunt of the
action. Observing that the Palmyrenians had broken their ranks when the
horse commenced their pursuit, they wheeled about, and attacked them
while they were scattered and out of order. Upon which many were killed,
because the one side fought with the usual weapons, while those of
Palestine brought clubs and staves against coats of mail made of iron and
brass. The Palmyrenians therefore ran away with the utmost precipitation,
and in their flight trod each other to pieces, as if the enemy did not
make sufficient slaughter; the field was filled with dead men and horses,
whilst the few that could escape took refuge in the city.

Zenobia was not a little disturbed by this defeat, and therefore
consulted on what measures to adopt. It was the opinion of all her
friends that it would be prudent to relinquish all pretensions to Emesa,
because the Emesenians were disaffected towards her and friendly to the
Romans. They advised her to remain within Palmyra, and when they were
in security in that strong city, they would deliberate at leisure on
their important affairs. This was no sooner proposed than done, with
the concurrence of the whole assembly. Aurelian, upon hearing of the
flight of Zenobia, entered Emesa, where he was cordially welcomed by the
citizens, and found a treasure which Zenobia could not carry along with
her. He then marched immediately to Palmyra, which he invested on every
side, while his troops were supplied with provisions of every kind by the
neighbouring country.


THE FALL OF PALMYRA

[Sidenote: [273 A.D.]]

Meantime [continues Zosimus] the Palmyrenians only derided the Romans,
as if they thought it impossible for them to take the city; and one man
spoke in very indecent terms of the emperor’s own person. Upon this,
a Persian who stood by the emperor said, “If you will allow me, sir,
you shall see me kill that insolent soldier,” to which the emperor
consented, and the Persian, placing himself behind some other men that he
might not be seen, shot at the man while in the act of looking over the
battlements, and hit him whilst still uttering his insulting language, so
that he fell down from the wall before the soldiers and the emperor. The
besieged however still held out, in hopes that the enemy would withdraw
for want of provisions, and persisted in their resolution, until they
were themselves without necessaries. They then called a council, in
which it was determined to fly to the Euphrates, and request aid of the
Persians against the Romans. Having thus determined, they set Zenobia on
a female camel, which is the swiftest of that kind of animals, and much
more swift than horses, and conveyed her out of the city.

Aurelian was much displeased at the escape of Zenobia; and therefore
exerted all his industry to send out horsemen in pursuit of her. They
succeeded in taking her, as she was crossing the Euphrates in a boat,
and brought her to Aurelian. Though much pleased at this sight, yet
being of an ambitious disposition, he became uneasy at the reflection
that in future ages it would not redound to his honour to have conquered
a woman. Meantime some of the Palmyrenians, that were shut up in the
town, resolved to expose themselves courageously, and to hazard their
being made captives in defence of their city. While others on the
contrary employed humble and submissive gestures from the walls, and
entreated pardon for what was past. The emperor accepting these tokens,
and commanding them to fear nothing, they poured out of the town with
presents and sacrifices in their hands. Aurelian paid due respect to the
holy things, received their gifts, and sent them away without injury.

But having made himself master of the city, with all the treasure it
contained, he returned to Emesa, where he brought Zenobia and her
accomplices to a judiciary trial. Zenobia coming into court pleaded
strongly in excuse of herself, and produced many persons, who had seduced
her as a simple woman, and among the rest Longinus, whose writings are
highly beneficial to all lovers of learning. Being found guilty of the
crimes laid to his charge, he received from the emperor sentence of
death, which he bore with so much courage as to console his friends, who
were much concerned at his misfortunes. Several besides Longinus suffered
upon the accusation of Zenobia.

I cannot here omit to mention [Zosimus continues] what happened before
the ruin of Palmyra, though I profess only to write a transient history.
For as Polybius informs us by what means the Romans in a short space
of time attained a vast empire, it is my purpose to show, on the other
hand, that by their ill management in as short a time they lost it. But
I am now speaking of the Palmyrenians who, having as I related acquired
a large portion of the Roman Empire, were warned by several declarations
from the gods of the overthrow which they afterwards sustained. For
example, at Seleucia in Cilicia there was a temple of Apollo (called
there Sarpedonius) and in that temple an oracle. It is reported of this
deity that he used to give to those that were infested with locusts a
species of birds, called seleuciades, which used to hover about his
temple, and would send them along with any that desired it; that these
birds would fly amongst the locusts, catch them in their mouths, and in
a moment destroy a vast number of them, thus delivering the people from
the mischief they produced. This I ascribe to the felicity of that age;
our own generation has not merited such kindness from heaven.[48] The
Palmyrenians, having consulted this oracle, to learn if they should ever
gain the empire of the East, received this answer:

    “Accursed race! avoid my sacred fane,
    Whose treach’rous deeds the angry gods disdain.”

And some persons inquiring there concerning the success of the expedition
of Aurelian against the Palmyrenians, the gods told them,

    “One falcon many doves commands, whose end
    On his destructive pounces must depend.”

Another story was likewise much circulated of the Palmyrenians. Between
Heliopolis and Byblus is a place called Aphaca, where is a temple
dedicated to Venus Aphacitis, and near it a pond resembling an artificial
cistern. Here is frequently seen, near the temple and in the adjacent
places, a fire in the air, resembling a lamp, of a round figure, which
has appeared even in our time, as often as people have assembled there
on particular days. Whoever resorted hither, brought to the pond some
offering for the goddess, either in gold, silver, linen, silk, or
anything of like value. If she accepted it, the cloth sunk to the bottom,
like substances of greater weight; but if rejected, they would float on
the water; and not only cloth and such substances, but even gold, silver,
or any other of those materials which usually sink. For an experiment
of this miracle, the Palmyrenians, in the year before their overthrow,
assembled on a festival, and threw into the pond several presents of
gold, silver, and cloth, in honour of the goddess, all of which sank to
the bottom. In the following year, at the same festival, they were all
seen floating on the surface; by which the goddess foretold what would
happen. In this manner was the regard of heaven shown to the Romans,
so long as they kept up their sacred rites. But it is my lot to speak
of these times, wherein the Roman Empire degenerated to a species of
barbarity, and fell to decay.[d]


AURELIAN QUELLS REVOLTS; ATTEMPTS REFORMS; IS MURDERED

[Sidenote: [273-274 A.D.]]

Aurelian had passed the Bosporus on his return to Rome when intelligence
reached him that the Palmyrenians had risen on and massacred the small
garrison he had left in their city. He instantly retraced his steps,
arrived at Antioch before it was known that he had set out, hastened to
Palmyra, took the city, and massacred men, women, and children, citizens
and peasants, without distinction. As he was on his way back to Europe,
news came that Egypt had revolted and made a wealthy merchant named
Firmus emperor, and that the export of corn to Rome had been stopped. The
indefatigable Aurelian soon appeared on the banks of the Nile, defeated
the usurper, and took and put him to death.

The overthrow of Tetricus left Aurelian without a rival. Tetricus, it is
said, was so wearied with the state of thraldom in which he was held by
his mutinous troops, that he secretly wrote to Aurelian to come to his
deliverance. When the emperor entered Gaul, Tetricus found it necessary
to affect the alacrity of one determined to conquer or die; but when the
armies encountered in the territory of the Catalauni on the plains of
Châlons, he betrayed his troops, and deserted in the very commencement of
the battle. His legions fought, notwithstanding, with desperation, and
perished nearly to a man.

Victorious over all his rivals and all the enemies of Rome, Aurelian
celebrated a triumph with unusual magnificence. Wild beasts of various
kinds, troops of gladiators, and bands of captives of many nations opened
the procession. Tetricus and his son walked, clad in the Gallic habit;
Zenobia also moved on foot covered with jewels and bound with golden
chains, which were borne up by slaves. The splendid cars of Odenathus and
Zenobia, and one the gift of the Persian king to the emperor, preceded
the chariot drawn by four stags, once the car of a Gothic king, in which
Aurelian himself rode. The senate, the people, the army, horse and foot,
succeeded; and it was late in the day when the monarch reached the
Capitol.

The view of a Roman senator led in triumph in the person of Tetricus
(an act of which there was no example), cast a gloom over the minds of
the senators. The insult, if intended for such, ended however with the
procession. Aurelian made him governor of the southern part of Italy, and
honoured him with his friendship. He also bestowed on the Palmyrenian
queen an estate at Tibur, where she lived many years, and her daughters
matched into some of the noblest Roman families.

[Sidenote: [274-275 A.D.]]

The improvement of the city by useful public works, the establishment of
daily distributions of bread and pork to the people, and the burning of
all accounts of moneys due to the treasury, were measures calculated to
gain Aurelian the popular favour. But a reformation of the coinage became
the cause or pretext of an insurrection, the quelling of which cost
him the lives of seven thousand of his veteran soldiers. [Aurelian had
attempted to put the depreciated currency on a sound basis. He restored
the aurene to its normal weight of one-fiftieth of a pound, made the
imperial gold piece the standard, and took from the senate, and from
all cities except Alexandria, the right of coinage.] The senators must
have been implicated in the insurrection, for Aurelian’s vengeance fell
heavily on the whole body of the nobility. Numbers of them were cast into
prison, and several were executed.

Aurelian quitted Rome once more for the East, in order to carry on war
against the Persians. On the road in Thrace, having detected his private
secretary Mnestheus in some act of extortion, he menaced him with his
anger. Aware that he never threatened in vain, Mnestheus saw that himself
or the emperor must die; he therefore, imitating Aurelian’s writing, drew
up a list containing his own name and those of the principal officers of
the army as marked out for death. He showed this bloody list to those
who were named in it, advising them to anticipate the emperor’s cruelty.
Without further inquiry they resolved on his murder, and falling on him
between Byzantium and Heraclea, they despatched him with their swords.


TACITUS (M. CLAUDIUS TACITUS), 275-276 A.D.

[Sidenote: [275-276 A.D.]]

After the death of the emperor Aurelian a scene without example presented
itself--an amicable strife between the senate and the army, each wishing
the other to appoint an emperor, and the empire without a head and
without a tumult for the greater part of a year. It originated in the
following manner.

The assassins of Aurelian speedily discovered their error, and Mnestheus
expiated his treason with his life. The soldiers, who lamented the
emperor, would not raise to his place any of those concerned in his
death, however innocently, and they wrote to the senate requesting them
to appoint his successor. The senate, though gratified by the deference
shown to them by the army, deemed it prudent to decline the invidious
honour. The legions again pressed them, and eight months passed away
in the friendly contest. At length (September 28) the consul assembled
the senate and laying before them the perilous condition of the empire,
called on Tacitus the first of the senate to give his opinion. But ere
he could speak he was saluted emperor and augustus from all parts of the
house, and after having in vain represented his unfitness for the office
on account of his advanced age, he was obliged to yield to their wishes
and accept the purple. The prætorian guards willingly acquiesced in the
choice of the senate; and when Tacitus proceeded to the camp in Thrace,
the soldiers, true to their engagement, submitted willingly to his
authority.

Tacitus was now seventy-five years old. He was one of those men who
were perhaps less rare at Rome than we generally imagine, who in the
possession of a splendid fortune spent a life dignified by the honours
of the state in the cultivation of philosophy and elegant literature.
He claimed a descent from the historian of his name, whose works formed
his constant study, and after his accession to the empire he directed
that ten copies of them should be annually made and placed in the public
libraries.

Viewing himself only as the minister of the laws and the senate, Tacitus
sought to raise that body to its former consideration, by restoring the
privileges of which it had been deprived. Once more it began to appoint
magistrates, to hear appeals, and to give validity to the imperial
edicts. But this was merely a glimpse of sunshine irradiating the decline
of its greatness. In history there is no return, and the real power of
the once mighty Roman senate had departed forever.

Aurelian had engaged a body of the Alani, a Sarmatian tribe who dwelt
about Lake Mæotis, for the war against Persia. On the death of that
emperor, and the suspension of the war, they ravaged the provinces south
of the Euxine to indemnify themselves for their disappointment. Tacitus
on taking the command of the army offered to make good to them the
engagements contracted by his predecessor. A good number of them accepted
the terms and retired, and he led the legions against the remainder, and
speedily reduced them. As these military operations fell in the winter,
the emperor’s constitution, enervated by age and the relaxing clime of
southern Italy, proved unequal to them. His mind was also harassed by the
factions which broke out in the camp and even reached his tent, and he
sank under mental and corporeal suffering at Tyana on the 22nd of April,
276, after a brief reign of six months and twenty days.[49]


PROBUS (M. AURELIUS PROBUS), 276-282 A.D.

[Sidenote: [276-279 A.D.]]

On the death of Tacitus his brother Florianus claimed the empire as
if fallen to him by inheritance, and the legions yielded him their
obedience; but the army of the East obliged their general, Probus, to
assume the purple, and a civil war commenced. The constitution of the
European troops soon, however, began to give way under the heat of the
sun of Asia; sickness spread among them, desertions became numerous, and
when at Tarsus in Cilicia the army of Probus came to give them battle,
they averted the contest by proclaiming Probus, and putting their emperor
to death after a reign of less than three months.

Probus was another of those Illyrians who, born in a humble station,
attained the empire by their merit, and honoured it by their virtues.
He entered the army young, and speedily became distinguished for his
courage and his probity. His merit did not escape the discerning eye of
Valerian, who made him a tribune, though under the usual age; gave him
the command of a body of auxiliary troops, and recommended him strongly
to Gallienus, by whom and by the succeeding emperors he was greatly
esteemed, and trusted with important commands. Aurelian rated him very
highly, and is even thought to have destined him for his successor.

After the death of Florianus, Probus wrote to the senate, apologising
for having accepted the empire from the hands of the soldiery, but
assuring them that he would submit himself to their pleasure. A decree
was unanimously passed investing him with all the imperial titles and
powers. In return Probus continued to the senate the right of hearing
appeals, appointing magistrates, and of giving force to his edicts by
their decrees.

Tacitus had punished severely some of those concerned in the murder of
Aurelian; Probus sought out and punished the remainder, but with less
rigour. He exhibited no enmity toward those who had supported Florianus.

The Germans had taken advantage of the interregnum which succeeded the
death of Aurelian to make a formidable irruption into Gaul, where they
made themselves masters of not less than seventy cities, and were in
possession of nearly the whole of the country. Probus, however, as soon
as his affairs permitted (277), entered Gaul at the head of a numerous
and well-appointed army. He gave the Germans several defeats, and forced
them to repass the Rhine with a loss, it is said, of four hundred
thousand men.[50] He pursued them over that river, and nine of their
kings were obliged to come in person to sue for peace. The terms which
the emperor imposed were the restoration of all their booty, the annual
delivery of a large quantity of corn and cattle, and sixteen thousand
men to recruit the Roman armies. These Probus distributed in parties of
fifty and sixty throughout the legions, for it was his wise maxim that
the aid derived from the barbarians should be felt, not seen. He also
placed colonies of the Germans and other tribes in Britain, and some of
the other provinces. He had further, it is said, conceived the idea of
making the conquered Germans renounce the use of arms and trust for their
defence to those of the Romans; but on considering the number of troops
it would require he gave it up, contenting himself with making them
retire behind the Nicer (Neckar) and Albis (Elbe), with building forts
and towns in the country between these rivers and the Rhine, and running
a wall two hundred miles in length from the Rhine to the Danube as a
defence to Italy and the provinces against the Alamanni.

[Sidenote: [278-281 A.D.]]

After the conquest of the Germans the emperor led his troops into
Rætia and Illyricum, where the terror of his name and his arms daunted
the Goths and Sarmatians, and gave security to the provinces. He then
(279) passed over to Asia, subdued the brigands of Isauria, expelled
them from their fastnesses in the mountains, in which he settled some
of his veterans, under the condition that they should send their sons
when eighteen years of age to the army, in order that they might not be
induced by the natural advantages of the country to take to a life of
freebooting, and prove as dangerous as their predecessors. Proceeding
through Syria he entered Egypt and reduced the people named Blemyes,[51]
who had taken the cities of Coptos and Ptolemais. He concluded a peace
with the king of Persia, and on his return through Thrace he bestowed
lands on a body of two hundred thousand Bastarnæ, and on some of the
Gepidæ, Vandals, and other tribes. He triumphed for the Germans and
Blemyes on his return to Rome.

A prince so just and upright, and at the same time so warlike as Probus,
might have been expected to have no competitors for empire; yet even he
had to take the field against rival emperors. The first of these was
Saturninus, whom he himself had made general of the East, a man of both
talent and virtue, and for whom he had a most cordial esteem. But the
light-minded and turbulent people of Alexandria, on occasion of his entry
into their city, saluted him augustus; and though he rejected the title
and retired to Palestine, he yet, not reflecting on the generous nature
of Probus, deemed that he could no longer live in a private station. He
therefore assumed the purple, saying with tears to his friends that the
republic had lost a useful man, and that his own ruin and that of many
others was inevitable. Probus tried in vain to induce him to trust to
his clemency. A part of his troops joined those sent against him by the
emperor; he was besieged in the castle of Apamea, and taken and slain.

After the defeat of Saturninus, two officers, named Proculus and Bonosus,
assumed the purple in Germany. They were both men of ability, and the
emperor found it necessary to take the field against them in person.
Proculus being defeated fled for succour to the Franks, by whom he was
betrayed, and he fell in battle against the imperial troops. Bonosus held
out for some time, but having received a decisive overthrow, he hanged
himself. As he had been remarkable for his drinking powers, one who saw
him hanging cried, “There hangs a jar, not a man.” Probus treated the
families of both with great humanity.[c]


THE ISAURIAN ROBBERS

[Sidenote: [278-283 A.D.]]

In the year 278 the Isaurian marauders were reduced to submission.
Zosimus gives us an account of the incident that led up to the capture
of their city of Crymna. “There was an Isaurian named Lydius,” he says,
“who had been a robber from his youth, and with a gang like himself had
committed depredations throughout Pamphylia and Lycia. This gang being
attacked by the soldiers, Lydius, not being able to oppose the whole
Roman army, retreated to a place in Lycia called Crymna, which stands
on a precipice and is secured on one side by large and deep ditches.
Finding many who had fled there for refuge, and observing that the Romans
were very intent on the siege and that they bore the fatigue of it with
great resolution, he pulled down the houses, and making the ground fit
for tillage, sowed corn for the maintenance of those that were in the
town. But the number being so great that they were in need of much more
provisions, he turned out of the place all that were of no service, both
male and female.

“The enemy, perceiving his design, forced them back again, on which
Lydius threw them headlong into the trenches that surrounded the walls,
where they died. Having done this, he constructed a mine from the town
beyond the enemy’s camp, through which he sent persons to steal cattle
and other provisions. By these means he provided for the besieged a
considerable time, until the affair was discovered to the enemy by a
woman. Lydius, however, still did not despond, but gradually retrenched
his men in their wine, and gave them a smaller allowance of corn. But
this not answering the end, he was at length driven to such straits
that he killed all that were in the town, except a few of his adherents
sufficient as he thought to defend it, and some women, whom he ordered
to be in common among them all. But when he had resolved to persevere
against all dangers, there happened at length this accident. There was
with him in the town a man who was expert in making engines, and in using
them with such dexterity that when Lydius ordered him to shoot a dart at
any of the enemy, he never missed his aim. It happened that Lydius had
ordered him to hit a particular person, whom either accidentally or on
purpose he missed, for which he stripped and scourged him severely, and
moreover threatened him with death.

“The man was so exasperated on account of the blows he had received, and
so affrighted at the menaces, that he took an opportunity to steal out of
the town; and falling in with some soldiers to whom he gave an account
of his actions and sufferings, he showed them an aperture in the wall
through which Lydius used to inspect all that was done in their camp,
and promised them to shoot him as he was looking through it in his usual
manner. The commander of the expedition on this took the man into favour,
who, having planted his engine, and placed some men before him that he
might not be discovered by the enemy, took aim at Lydius as he looked
through the aperture, and with a dart shot him and gave him a mortal
wound. He had no sooner received this wound than he became still more
strict with some of his own men. Having enjoined them upon oath never to
surrender the place, he expired with much struggling.”[d]

Notwithstanding the admonition of the dying chief, the city capitulated
presently to Probus. In the same year the Blemyes of Nubia were expelled
from Upper Egypt. And, as the wars on the Rhine had been followed by the
settlement of numbers of captive Germani in Gaul and Britain, so in the
year 279 large bodies of Bastarnæ, a Germanic tribe which was giving
ground before the advancing Goths, were transplanted to Mœsia and Thrace,
with a view to the romanisation of those provinces.

But gradually the disgust of the soldiers at the laborious tasks to which
they were set, such as agriculture, the draining of swamps, and the
laying out of vineyards, objects which the excellent emperor pursued with
the utmost zeal, grew to be a menace to his personal safety. As early
as the summer of 282, mutinous troops in Rætia and Noricum had forced
M. Aurelius Carus, a Dalmatian general and a native of Narona, who had
always been on friendly terms with Probus, to come forward as a rival
emperor; and in the October of the same year Probus himself was slain by
his own soldiers, in a revolt that broke out suddenly, after the fashion
common in this century, among the men employed in digging a canal at
Sirmium.


CARUS, NUMERIANUS, AND CARINUS (282-285 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [282-285 A.D.]]

Carus, the new emperor, an old man of stern temper, set about the war
with Persia in earnest. The elder of his sons, the cæsar M. Aurelius
Carinus, managed the affairs of Rome and Gaul, and the emperor,
accompanied by M. Aurelius Numerianus, the other cæsar, set out before
the end of 282 for Asia, where he gained some considerable successes.
Favoured by the internecine disorders of the Persian Empire, he first
brought Armenia once more under the dominion of Rome, in the year 283;
and then proceeded to reconquer Mesopotamia. At length Ctesiphon itself
fell into the hands of the Romans. But the army had no desire to follow
the emperor into the interior of Iran, and Carus perished, apparently
by a conspiracy among the officers of high rank, in December, 283. His
son Numerianus fell ill during the retreat of the army to the Bosporus
(284); and when, at the beginning of September, one part of the force
reached Chalcedon and the other Perinthus, the soldiers discovered that
the young emperor, who had accompanied the latter body, was dead. His
father-in-law, Arrius Aper, prætorian prefect, who then tried to win the
people for himself, was arrested on a strong suspicion of having murdered
him.

Meanwhile the officers at Chalcedon, taking into consideration the
profligate and disgraceful conduct of the youthful cæsar, Carinus, at
Rome, proclaimed Diocles, the commander of the imperial bodyguard,
emperor on September 17th, 284.

This general, who was at that time thirty-nine years of age, was born in
245, at Doclea or Dioclea, near Scodra, in Dalmatia, of humble parents.
He owed his promotion to his extraordinary ability and exceptional
intellectual gifts. Though addicted, like all his comrades, to the
superstition of the age, he was superior to them all in administrative
capacity, as in penetration, discretion, and resolution. Having slain
Aper before his tribunal--whether from motives purely superstitious or,
as the pessimistic criticism of our day would have it, as an accomplice
in his own designs, he took up the dynastic war against Carinus, under
the name of Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus. It ended in favour of
Diocletian, after a somewhat protracted struggle, by a battle on the
lower Margus (Morava), in which, while the fortune of the day hung yet
undecided, an officer whose wife had been seduced by the Roman débauché,
struck Carinus down in the thick of the fray (summer of 285).[b]


FOOTNOTES

[47] Zonaras,[e] xii. He says the Alamanni were 300,000, the Romans only
10,000 strong.

[48] [Zosimus writes in the first half of the fifth century, A.D. It is
interesting to observe that he thus looks back upon the time of Aurelian
as an “age of felicity.” To some minds the past is always glorious.]

[49] [Zosimus [d] gives the following brief account of this emperor,
with, it will be observed, a different version of the end of Tacitus:
“Upon Aurelian’s death the empire fell into the hands of Tacitus, in
whose time the Scythians crossed the Palus Mæotis, and made incursions
through Pontus even into Cilicia, until he opposed them. Partly in person
and partly by Florianus, prefect of the court, whom he left in commission
for that purpose, this emperor completely routed and destroyed them. He
himself was going into Europe, but was thus circumvented and killed.
He had committed the government of Syria to his cousin Maximinus, who
treated the nobility of that country with such austerity that he caused
them both to hate and fear him. Their hatred became so excessive that
at length, conspiring with the murderers of Aurelianus, they assaulted
Maximinus; and having killed him, fell on and slew Tacitus also as he was
upon his departure.”]

[50] [Zosimus[d] calmly tells the following tale, as to the manner in
which Probus was enabled to defeat the Germans: “When the war began
there, a grievous famine prevailed throughout the surrounding country;
but a heavy shower of rain and corn fell together, so that in some places
were great heaps of it made by its own descent. At this prodigy, all were
so astonished that at first they dared not touch the corn to satisfy
their hunger, but being at length forced to it by necessity, which expels
all fear, they made bread of it, which not only allayed their hunger, but
enabled them to gain the victory with great ease.” Zosimus, it will be
recalled, was a pagan; but obviously the Christians had no monopoly of
the belief in miracles, in the fifth century A.D.]

[51] This people inhabited the mountains between Upper Egypt and the Red
Sea.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XLI. NEW HOPE FOR THE EMPIRE: THE AGE OF DIOCLETIAN AND
CONSTANTINE

    “Diocletian inaugurated … the period of the Partnership
    Emperors. Himself borne to power by something not very unlike a
    mutiny of the troops on the Persian frontier, he nevertheless
    represented and gave voice to the passionate longing of the
    world that the age of mutinies might cease. With this intention
    he remodelled the internal constitution of the state and
    moulded it into a bureaucracy so strong, so stable, so wisely
    organised, that it subsisted virtually the same for more than
    a thousand years, and by its endurance prolonged for many ages
    the duration of the Byzantine Empire.”--HODGKIN, _Italy and her
    Invaders_.


DIOCLETIAN APPOINTS MAXIMIAN CO-REGENT

[Sidenote: [286-293 A.D.]]

From what we know of Diocletian, he had aspired to the throne long before
his accession, and maintained the power he had won by military force.
Soon after the death of Carinus, he appointed his colleague Maximian as
cæsar or assistant in the government (286), either because the latter had
been initiated into his ambitious plans, or perhaps because Diocletian,
on account of the almost uninterrupted war carried on in the remote parts
of the kingdom, saw the necessity of a divided rule and of a second seat
of government in the neighbourhood of the threatened provinces. Maximian,
whom the emperor shortly afterwards invested with the title of augustus
and charged with the government of the West of the empire, generally
lived in Augusta Trevirorum (Trèves) or in the town of Arelate (Arles) in
the south of France; whilst Diocletian raised Nicomedia in Bithynia to be
the capital of the East, and, as often as circumstances allowed, took up
his residence there.

Maximian was, like Diocletian, a good general and a brave soldier, but
differed from him essentially in his want of education and refinement.
As he felt the superiority of Diocletian and was led by him, the results
of a divided government were not very perceptible in the first years. At
first Diocletian was principally engaged in war with the Persians, who
had again invaded the kingdom; Maximian found sufficient occupation for
his martial activity in Gaul and Britain. In the first-named country,
Maximian had at the very beginning to suppress a terrible insurrection
of the peasants, occasioned by the internal condition of the province.
In Gaul, even in Cæsar’s time, the same oppressive conditions existed
amongst the inhabitants, which afterwards were to be found in all the
states of Europe during the Middle Ages, and these conditions became
still more burdensome under the Roman Empire.

The entire nation was split up into three classes: a landed nobility
which had usurped the government; a clergy who formed a caste and
compelled the poor to contribute to their maintenance and comfort; and
the townspeople and peasants who, as the two other classes managed to
avoid public burdens, had to meet all the expenses of the administration
unaided and were also exposed to the harshest despotism and exaction.
Want and misery finally drove the peasants to despair, and under the
name of Bagaudæ, or banditti, they began an insurrection which may be
placed on a level with the most terrible peasant wars which find a place
in history. They assembled and gathered round them all manner of slaves
and rabble, and roamed about in great hordes, ravaging and plundering.
Soon all the roads were unsafe, commerce ceased, and even the large towns
were destroyed or pillaged by the enraged hordes. Maximian had to wage a
regular war with the Bagaudæ, and cut down whole troops of them. In this
manner he restored peace, but only for a short time; for the cause of the
misery of the unfortunate peasants was not removed, and the insurrection
and devastations of the Bagaudæ lasted until the fall of the Roman
dominion in Gaul.

Maximian had to hasten the suppression of internal disturbances for he
needed his army to fight the barbarians. At that time the Franks and
Saxons, who lived on the North Sea, and had learned shipbuilding from
the Romans, began their piratical expeditions into Gaul and Britain,
whilst their predatory excursions continued on land. In order to meet
this new evil, Maximian prepared a fleet for the guarding of the channel,
and gave it into the hands of a capable seaman, the Netherlander
Carausius. The latter made use of the command entrusted to him to make
friends for himself in Britain by means of the booty seized from the
barbarians, to excite the troops there to rebellion and set up himself
as emperor. Maximian marched against him, failed in his enterprise, and
had to concede to the usurper the title he had assumed, as well as the
government of Britain (289). Carausius remained in undisturbed possession
of the island, until one of his generals, Allectus, murdered him and
seized the government (293).


THE FOURFOLD DIVISION OF POWER

[Sidenote: [292-297 A.D.]]

The situation of the empire in the East was also very critical.
Diocletian not only had to make war against the Persians but also to
fight the people of the Danube; and as in Britain, a usurper also arose
in Egypt, Achilleus by name. This state of affairs compelled the emperor
Diocletian to alter the entire organisation of the empire (292). He
consulted his colleague Maximian about this important step, but in
taking it showed not the slightest regard for the Roman senate, which he
never thought worthy of attention. In his new organisation, Diocletian
endeavoured to further the prompt introduction of necessary measures and
thereby to anticipate all disturbances and insurrections, and carried
still further the division of the imperial power begun at the appointment
of Maximian. But as he was not in the least inclined to lessen his own
authority, he only appointed as his co-rulers men on whose respect and
obedience he could rely.

The change which he undertook to introduce into the government of the
empire was therefore entirely based on his personal relations with his
co-rulers. For this reason alone it could not possibly have been of any
duration, even if it had not stood in direct opposition to the prejudices
of the Romans [which latter, indeed, now had but slight influence].
The newly chosen co-rulers were the generals Galerius and Constantius
Chlorus. They received the title of Cæsar, and were thus in outward
rank both subordinate to the two augusti, Diocletian and Maximian.
Constantius was assigned to Maximian and received the government of
Spain, Gaul, and Britain, whilst Maximian took Italy and Africa under his
immediate superintendence; Galerius was entrusted with the administration
of Thrace, Illyricum, and Greece and appointed to be coadjutor to
Diocletian, who retained the East for himself. Each of the four regents
had therefore his appointed provinces to govern, and his appointed
boundaries to defend; yet each could deal with the affairs of government
and lead the troops in the provinces of the others; also the commands of
either of the four emperors held good in all provinces, and generally all
four regents were considered as one.

Four courts, four imperial armies, and a fourfold military government
were necessarily very oppressive for the empire. Unfortunately, in
consequence of this new organisation, the number of officials was also
considerably increased and the divisions of the provinces multiplied, so
that not only the entire administration proceeded with much delay and
difficulty, but for the first time its despotic character was much felt
even in the smallest districts and towns. All this must have been the
more oppressive, as Diocletian permanently introduced Eastern forms of
government. Until his time the outward appearance of the emperor, his
position with regard to the nation and the court, had only had a passing
air of orientalism, but with Diocletian this character of the government
was firmly established for all time to come. The ordering of the court
and the official hierarchy were, so to speak, established by law, the
relations between the classes from thenceforth formed, as it were, the
soul of the state, and the head of the empire was outwardly separated
from the nation by a great gulf. From Diocletian the white bandeau or
diadem, borrowed from the East, became the distinctive sign of the ruler,
whilst formerly the purple raiment had been the sole sign. Diocletian and
his next successor, besides this, introduced the remaining oriental regal
ornaments. [The emperor Aurelian had, indeed, set them the example here.]

Now came the gloomy period when honour and consideration, power and
influence, were entirely dependent on the court, when the services
rendered to the person of the emperor were considered before all
other services, when all patriotism and all effort for the general
good disappeared. As is the case in the East up to the present time,
everything became the ruler’s property, the court and the officials
consumed all private wealth, and soon none could attain to distinctions
and wealth but the servants of the court and the officials.

Out of the four regents, three were equally brave, but equally harsh
and cruel; Constantius Chlorus alone was of a milder disposition, and
distinguished by birth, education, and culture. The latter was now
commissioned to reunite Britain with the empire. He did not find the task
easy, and was only able to accomplish it after some years. Besides this,
Constantius, as well as the three other emperors, had to fight against
barbarians and insurgents. A war with Persia was most honourable for the
Roman Empire; like nearly all Parthian wars since Nero’s time, it was
caused by the succession to the Armenian throne. Diocletian had placed a
Roman protégé in Armenia as king. The latter banished the Persian king
Narses I, and the result was a war (294), the conduct of which Diocletian
and Galerius undertook together. The latter, by his carelessness,
brought on himself a terrible defeat in the same region where Crassus
had once been annihilated. He afterwards obliterated the disgrace by a
brilliant victory, and obliged the Persians to make a peace, by which
they not only relinquished several provinces on the Tigris but for the
first time had to renounce all claim to Mesopotamia. Diocletian secured
the newly acquired lands of the eastern border by erecting considerable
fortifications. He now stood at the height of his fortune.[52] Meanwhile
Maximian had subdued the warlike Quinquegentiani which had been spreading
terror in Africa.


DIOCLETIAN PERSECUTES THE CHRISTIANS

[Sidenote: [297-303 A.D.]]

Soon after the end of the Persian War, Diocletian ordered a persecution
of the Christians (303), the harshness of which would be incomprehensible
in such a sagacious ruler if we did not know, from other actions,
how jealously he watched his authority. Every act of disobedience,
every attempt at rebellion, he punished with inexorable severity and
cruelty, often in a paroxysm of rage giving orders which had the
most fatal results. For instance, in Egypt, after the defeat of the
usurper Achilleus, he exterminated all the latter’s adherents and
destroyed entire towns, the inhabitants of which had shown themselves
insubordinate. When a certain Eugenius had set himself up as emperor in
Syria, he caused the inhabitants of Antioch to expiate this presumption
by suffering revolting cruelties, although they had helped to suppress
the insurrection and had killed the rebel.

Diocletian’s persecution of the Christians at first only struck at the
Christians in the army. Latterly, whenever they had to witness a heathen
sacrifice they had fastened the sign of the cross to their helmets, so as
to prevent the raising of the devil, which, according to their belief,
took place at the inspection of the entrails of the victim; they thereby
roused the anger of one of the high priests, and he incited the emperor
against them. Nevertheless Diocletian did not yet determine on cruel
measures, as he was wise and thoughtful enough to perceive that the new
sect could not be rooted out, on account of its wide diffusion, and
that to persecute it would occasion dangerous disturbances throughout
the kingdom. On this account he would not have determined on a general
persecution had not Galerius, who was passionately attached to the
mystical fantasies of the Phrygian worship, drawn him into it by every
sort of intrigue. Even then his orders were directed less against the
persons of the Christians than against their religion and against the
acknowledgment of their congregation as a body.

The Christians were to fill no public offices, and not to seek justice
before the tribunals; their churches were to be closed or pulled down,
crosses and pictures of Christ were not allowed. This ordinance was
publicly posted up in Nicomedia, where Diocletian and Galerius were.
A man of great distinction among the Christians tore it down in full
daylight with loud mockery, and it was only then that Diocletian, who, as
soon as he thought his imperial dignity touched, became terribly cruel,
gave free scope to a cruel persecution of individuals. His rage was
further increased by a fire in the imperial palace, which, as it seems
not unjustly, was attributed to the Christians. The execution of the
imperial orders was left to the soldiers and the populace, and a number
of Christians suffered death. These extreme measures were restricted to
the East, to Africa, and to the south of Europe.


ABDICATION OF DIOCLETIAN AND MAXIMIAN; THE TWO NEW CÆSARS

[Sidenote: [303-306 A.D.]]

Soon after the beginning of this persecution Diocletian fell ill, and
his illness, which lasted almost a year, became so dangerous that the
news of his death was repeatedly spread. When he recovered, traces of a
weakening of intellect often showed themselves, and made it impossible
for him to continue to conduct the business of administration. Therefore
in May, 305, he laid down the government, and at the same time Maximian
did likewise, Galerius having previously extorted from him a promise to
abdicate.

[Illustration: DIOCLETIAN

(From a bust in the Vatican)]

The two cæsars, Galerius and Constantius Chlorus, were then acclaimed as
emperors. The former immediately named two new cæsars without consulting
his co-rulers, but in so doing paid no heed to either Maximian’s son
Maxentius, or the son of Constantius, afterwards the emperor Constantine
the Great. It is probable that his own father did not deem the former
worthy to ascend the throne; the latter had already distinguished himself
in the field, and possessed the favour of Diocletian, but he was also
friendly towards the Christians, and seemed dangerous to Galerius. The
new cæsars were rough officers, undistinguished by any superiority of
merit. One of them, Severus, received the government of Africa and Italy;
the other, Maximinus, was invested with Syria and Egypt.

Diocletian and Maximian, in abdicating, secured themselves in the
possession of considerable property and peculiar revenues. Maximian
could not accustom himself to the tranquillity of private life and
seized the first opportunity to resume the purple. Diocletian on the
contrary returned to his own country, Dalmatia, and lived there until
his death (313) as a private person at Salona. On his property in the
vicinity of the present Spalatro, he occupied himself with gardening
and with the erection of enormous buildings, the remains of which show
us that architecture had entirely lost its noble character, and that
attempts were made to supply the place of the taste of the olden times by
elaboration and splendour.

Constantius Chlorus, whose health had long been failing, died a year
after the abdication of Diocletian (306). Before his death he had
earnestly commended his son Constantine to the army, and as soon as
Constantius was dead it proclaimed his son emperor. Galerius was at first
in great anxiety, but was satisfied when Constantine agreed to content
himself with the title of Cæsar, granting Severus, as the elder man, the
honours of an augustus or emperor. Constantine was the son of Helena, a
woman of humble origin. Constantius had divorced her by command of the
emperors Diocletian and Maximian in 292, in order to marry Theodora.


STRIFE AMONG THE RULERS

[Sidenote: [306-307 A.D.]]

In the autumn of the same year, the relations of the rulers of the empire
again changed. Galerius and Severus, by their oppressive measures, had
roused the anger of the citizens and soldiers of Rome. They rebelled and
proclaimed Maxentius, the son of Maximian, emperor.[b]

Zosimus declares that Maxentius incited the rebellion, moved thereto
by jealousy of Constantine, a quite plausible supposition. “When
Constantine’s effigy according to custom was exhibited at Rome,” he
says, “Maxentius, the son of Maximian, could not endure the sight of
Constantine’s good fortune, who was the son of a harlot, while himself,
who was the son of so great an emperor, remained at home in indolence,
and his father’s empire was enjoyed by others. He therefore associated
with himself in the enterprise Marcellianus and Marcellus, two military
tribunes, and Lucianus, who distributed the swine’s flesh with which
the people of Rome were provided by the treasury, and the court-guards
called prætoriani. By them he was promoted to the imperial throne, having
promised liberally to reward all that assisted him in it. For this
purpose they first murdered Abellius, because he, being prefect of the
city, opposed their enterprise.

“When Galerius learned this,” Zosimus continues, “he sent Severus Cæsar
against Maxentius with an army. But while he advanced from Milan with
several legions of Moors, Maxentius corrupted his troops with money,
and even the prefect of the court, Anullinus, and thereby conquered him
with great ease. On which Severus fled to Ravenna, which is a strong
and populous city, provided with necessaries sufficient for himself and
soldiers. When Maximian[53] knew this, he was doubtless greatly concerned
for his son Maxentius, and therefore, leaving Lucania where he then was,
he went to Ravenna. Finding that Severus could not by any means be forced
out of this city, it being well fortified and stored with provisions, he
deluded him with false oaths, and persuaded him to go to Rome. But on his
way thither, coming to a place called the Three Tabernæ, he was taken
by a stratagem of Maxentius. [Hoping to save his life, he renounced the
dignity of emperor; notwithstanding which he was] immediately executed.
Galerius could not patiently endure these injuries done to Severus, and
therefore resolved to go from the east to Rome, and to punish Maxentius
as he deserved. On his arrival in Italy, he found the soldiers about
him so treacherous, that he returned into the east without fighting a
battle.”[d]

On the retreat from Italy, after this unsuccessful foray, Galerius
allowed his army to commit the most horrible outrages and thereby gained
the deadly hatred of all the inhabitants of the peninsula. Meanwhile,
Maximian had gone to Gaul to ally himself with Constantine against
Galerius. He married his daughter Fausta to the young cæsar and invested
him with the title of Augustus, but did not attain his special object, as
Constantine did not consider it wise to allow himself to be drawn into
open war with Galerius. Soon after this, Maximian quarrelled with his own
son, again tried without success to win over Constantine, and then formed
the strange resolve to betake himself to Galerius.

The latter had long thought of naming his old friend and comrade,
Licinius, as augustus, and had just dragged Diocletian from his
retirement and induced him to journey to Pannonia, to help celebrate the
promotion of Licinius in the most brilliant manner. He also made use of
Maximian’s unexpected appearance, and so Licinius was proclaimed augustus
in the presence of three emperors (307).

[Sidenote: [307-311 A.D.]]

As Maximian found no help in Galerius, he immediately afterwards resigned
the purple for the second time. From Pannonia he returned to his
son-in-law in Gaul, who received him in a friendly manner, and during
his absence on a campaign against the Germans intrusted him with a share
in the government. Maximian, who was manifestly suffering from senility,
formed the ridiculous idea of using this opportunity to overthrow his
son-in-law and forcibly supersede him, although naturally neither the
country of Gaul, now almost entirely Christian, nor the troops of
Constantine, can have been in the least disposed to prefer him to their
former master. When Maximian really made this foolish attempt, he was
easily vanquished by Constantine and taken prisoner. Two years later,
when he had made an attempt on the life of Constantine, the latter had
him strangled (310).

Of the six emperors, Maximian, Galerius, Maximin, Maxentius, Constantine,
and Licinius, only one had thus passed away; but another had already
arisen in Africa and had established himself in possession of the
government. This was Alexander, a wretched old man who had himself
proclaimed emperor by the troops. He maintained his position for three
years, and was then in 311 overthrown and killed by Maxentius, who sent
a skilled general and a picked army against him. Galerius died at about
the same time. Maximin and Licinius divided his dominions among them. Now
only four emperors ruled the empire: Maximin, Licinius, Maxentius, and
Constantine; but there was no thought of friendly relations among them.

It remained therefore for the one among them who possessed the most
ability, strength, and skill to overthrow the others and to gain
undivided sway. This could only be successfully effected by Constantine,
whose dignified, judicious, and moderate demeanour deserves our greatest
admiration. The crucial point, that which must finally determine the
issue of the struggle between the emperors, was the relation of each
individual ruler to the Christians. In all parts of the realm the latter
formed a very considerable number, they were very closely united amongst
themselves, their hierarchies and synods had remained unweakened; whilst
not only had the old system of government long been undermined, but
also the adherents to the old religion had been divided by a crowd of
different opinions and views, and were neither held together by an inward
nor an external hierarchical union. Whoever therefore had the Christians
in the empire on his side must sooner or later carry the victory over his
co-rulers.

Galerius perceived this shortly before his death, and had therefore
issued an edict in his own name and those of his colleagues, by which the
persecution of the Christians ordered by Diocletian was arrested, and the
bloody strife so often begun between the state and the church forever
ended (311). Even Maxentius seems to have felt it; for he had scarcely
become master in Rome before he assured the Christians of toleration. But
his entire conduct towards them contradicted the mild terms of the edict;
the Christians could rely on him just as little as the pagans.


CONSTANTINE WARS WITH MAXENTIUS

[Sidenote: [311-313 A.D.]]

Of the other emperors, only Constantine seemed to be sincerely
attached to the Christians. For a long time he remained a pagan, but
continually showed himself friendly towards the Christians; and they
were powerfully supported by the most influential ladies of the court.
These were his wife Fausta, her mother Eutropia, but especially the
mother of Constantine, Helena, who became celebrated by her great zeal
for the teaching of the cross. Besides the good will of the Christians,
Constantine had the great advantage that from the beginning he alone
exhibited a care for law and order, whilst all his fellow-emperors showed
only military violence and despotic will. Moreover he alone seemed to be
satisfied with his share of the empire; the three other emperors, on the
contrary, sought with utter recklessness to extend their provinces at the
expense of their co-rulers.

The first whom the sagacious Constantine defeated was Maxentius, who from
his speedy victory over Alexander had manifestly conceived too high an
idea of his power, and in his arrogance decided to attack Constantine.
That he was not in the least to be compared to him and that it was
foolhardy to seek a quarrel with him, is shown by one glance at the
lives of the two emperors. Maxentius had never found himself at the head
of an army in real warfare; he had continually enjoyed his pleasures
in idle tranquillity, and on account of his tyranny and cruelty he was
loved by no one, save by his guards and a small number of other troops
whom he enriched by robbing the citizens. Constantine’s life, on the
contrary, had been one of constant exertion and discipline. He had served
with distinction, first under Diocletian, and then under his father
Constantius, and had afterwards long contended against the Frankish
peoples on the Rhine. The result of the war between the two emperors
could not therefore be doubtful.[b]

Zosimus gives an interesting account of the struggle, with certain
embellishments that do not detract from the accuracy of his main
narrative. “Constantine,” he tells us, “had raised an army amongst the
barbarians, Germans, and Celts, whom he had conquered, and likewise drawn
a force out of Britain, amounting in the whole to ninety thousand foot
and eight thousand horse. He marched from the Alps into Italy, passing
those towns that surrendered without doing them any damage, but taking by
storm those which resisted. While he was making this progress, Maxentius
had collected a much stronger army, consisting of eighty thousand Romans
and Italians, all the Tuscans on the sea coast, forty thousand men from
Carthage, besides what the Sicilians sent him; his whole force amounting
to one hundred and seventy thousand foot and eighteen thousand horse.

“Both being thus prepared, Maxentius threw a bridge over the Tiber [the
Milvian bridge], which was not of one entire piece but divided into two
parts, the centre of the bridge being made to fasten with irons, which
might be drawn out upon occasion. He gave orders to the workmen that, as
soon as they saw the army of Constantine upon the juncture of the bridge,
they should draw out the iron fastenings, that the enemy who stood upon
it might fall into the river.

“Constantine, advancing with his army to Rome, encamped in a field before
the city, which was broad and therefore convenient for cavalry. Maxentius
in the meantime shut himself up within the walls and sacrificed to the
gods, and, moreover, consulted the Sibylline oracles concerning the event
of the war. Finding a prediction that, whoever designed any harm to the
Romans should die a miserable death, he applied it to himself, because
he withstood those that came against Rome, and wished to take it. His
application indeed proved just. For when Maxentius drew out his army
before the city, and was marching over the bridge that he himself had
constructed, an infinite number of owls flew down and covered the wall.

[Illustration: CONSTANTINE’S DEFEAT OF MAXENTIUS

(FROM A CARTOON BY RAPHAEL)]

“When Constantine saw this, he ordered his men to stand to their arms.
And the two armies being drawn up opposite to each other, Constantine
sent his cavalry against that of the enemy, whom they charged with such
impetuosity that they threw them into disorder. The signal being given
to the infantry, they likewise marched in good order towards the enemy.
A furious battle having commenced, the Romans themselves, and their
foreign allies, were unwilling to risk their lives, as they wished for
deliverance from the bitter tyranny with which they were burdened, though
the other troops were slain in great numbers, being either trod to death
by the horse or killed by the foot.

“As long as the cavalry kept their ground, Maxentius retained some hopes,
but when they gave way, he fled with the rest over the bridge into the
city. The beams not being strong enough to bear so great a weight, they
broke, and Maxentius, with the others, was carried with the stream down
the river. [The date of the battle was October 27, 313.]

“When the news of this victory was reported in the city,” Zosimus
concludes, “none dared to show any joy for what had happened, because
many thought it was an unfounded report. But when the head of Maxentius
was brought upon a spear, their fear and dejection were changed to joy
and pleasure. On this occasion Constantine punished very few, and they
were only some few of the nearest friends of Maxentius, but he abolished
the prætorian troops, and destroyed the fortress in which they used to
reside.”[d]

Before the decisive battle, Constantine had tried to win over the
enthusiasm of the Christians in his own and his adversaries’ army to his
cause, and therefore the sign of the cross was made the principal ensign
of the Roman army. The report was spread that a shining cross with this
inscription, “By this sign thou shalt conquer,” had appeared to him in
the sky, and that in the following night, Christ himself had commanded
him in a dream to make the sign of the cross his standard against the
enemy. On the day before the battle, the cross and the monogram of the
redeemer appeared on the imperial standard, which from thenceforth bore
the name of Labarum; and afterwards Constantine publicly announced that
he had seen the cross in the sky, and had conquered his enemy by the
direct aid of God.

After his victory over Maxentius the character of Constantine changed,
and his subsequent proceedings often stand in opposition to the
principles which he publicly acknowledged. He went over to Christianity,
although in prudent fashion, not formally nor irrevocably, and for this
the Christian priests permitted and forgave him everything. The miserable
senate, which for a long time had ceased to be a governmental institution
and to be consulted in affairs of state, declared him the first of the
three emperors of the realm, and in this manner he passed naturally to
the idea of undivided sway. Although he made the cross the imperial
standard, he took part in the heathen sacrifices, allowed himself to
consult soothsayers, and bore the title of a high priest of the old
religion as before. Moreover he postponed the rite of baptism until his
death-bed, that he might pass, according to the teaching of the priests
at his court, into the next life washed clean from all sin.

From Rome Constantine went to Milan,[54] where he met Licinius and gave
him his sister Constantia in marriage. Then he went to his province of
Gaul, to repulse the German tribes which had again invaded the country;
but Licinius hastened to meet the emperor Maximin, who was trying to
wrest from him his share of the empire, and had already seized the towns
of Byzantium and Heraclea, or Perinthus.

To the south of Hadrianopolis there was a decisive battle between the two
emperors. Licinius won it, and tradition has also attributed his victory
to a divine miracle, although the victor was in no way inclined towards
Christianity. It is said that an angel appeared to Licinius and taught
him a prayer, which on his awakening he immediately caused to be written
out and distributed to the soldiers. This prayer was sung before the
beginning of the battle and helped them to victory (313). Maximin fled;
on the way he took poison, which brought on a severe illness of which he
died after great tortures. With terrible harshness and cruelty Licinius
proceeded against the relations and friends of Maximin. They were all put
to death without mercy and the widow and daughter of Diocletian, as well
as the sons of Galerius and Severus, perished as sacrifices to the wanton
brutality of Licinius.[b]


STRUGGLE BETWEEN CONSTANTINE AND LICINIUS

[Sidenote: [314 A.D.]]

The Roman world was now divided between Constantine and Licinius, the
former of whom was master of the West, and the latter of the East. It
might perhaps have been expected that the conquerors, fatigued with
civil war and connected by a private as well as a public alliance, would
have renounced, or at least would have suspended, any further designs of
ambition; and yet a year had scarcely elapsed after the death of Maximin,
before the victorious emperors turned their arms against each other. The
genius, the success, and the aspiring temper of Constantine may seem to
mark him out as the aggressor; but the perfidious character of Licinius
justifies the most unfavourable suspicions, and by the faint light which
history reflects on this transaction, we may discover a conspiracy
fomented by his arts against the authority of his colleague.[55]

Constantine had lately given his sister Anastasia in marriage to
Bassianus, a man of a considerable family and fortune, and had elevated
his new kinsman to the rank of cæsar. According to the system of
government instituted by Diocletian, Italy and perhaps Africa were
designed for his departments in the empire. But the performance of the
promised favour was either attended with so much delay, or accompanied
with so many unequal conditions, that the fidelity of Bassianus was
alienated rather than secured by the honourable distinction which he had
obtained. His nomination had been ratified by the consent of Licinius;
and that artful prince, by the means of his emissaries, soon contrived
to enter into a secret and dangerous correspondence with the new cæsar,
to irritate his discontent, and to urge him to the rash enterprise of
extorting by violence what he might in vain solicit from the justice of
Constantine. But the vigilant emperor discovered the conspiracy before
it was ripe for execution; and after solemnly renouncing the alliance
of Bassianus, despoiled him of the purple, and inflicted the deserved
punishment on his treason and ingratitude. The haughty refusal of
Licinius, when he was required to deliver up the criminals who had taken
refuge in his dominions, confirmed the suspicions already entertained
of his perfidy; and the indignities offered at Æmona, on the frontiers
of Italy, to the statues of Constantine, became the signal of discord
between the two princes.

[Illustration: ARCH OF CONSTANTINE, ROME]

The first battle was fought near Cibalis, a city of Pannonia, situated on
the river Savus, about fifty miles from Sirmium. From the inconsiderable
forces which in this important contest two such powerful monarchs brought
into the field, it may be inferred that the one was suddenly provoked,
and that the other was unexpectedly surprised. The emperor of the West
had only twenty thousand, and the sovereign of the East no more than
five-and-thirty thousand men. The inferiority of number was, however,
compensated by the advantage of the ground. Constantine had taken post
in a defile about half a mile in breadth, between a steep hill and a
deep morass, and in that situation he steadily expected and repulsed the
first attack of the enemy. He pursued his success, and advanced into the
plain. But the veteran legions of Illyricum rallied under the standard
of a leader who had been trained to arms in the school of Probus and
Diocletian. The missile weapons on both sides were soon exhausted; the
two armies, with equal valour, rushed to a closer engagement of swords
and spears, and the doubtful contest had already lasted from the dawn
of the day to a late hour of the evening, when the right wing, which
Constantine led in person, made a vigorous and decisive charge. The
judicious retreat of Licinius saved the remainder of his troops from
a total defeat; but when he computed his loss, which amounted to more
than twenty thousand men, he thought it unsafe to pass the night in the
presence of an active and victorious enemy. Abandoning his camp and
magazines, he marched away with secrecy and diligence at the head of the
greatest part of his cavalry, and was soon removed beyond the danger of
a pursuit. His diligence preserved his wife, his son, and his treasures,
which he had deposited at Sirmium.[56] Licinius passed through that city,
and breaking down the bridge on the Savus, hastened to collect a new
army in Dacia and Thrace. In his flight he bestowed the precarious title
of Cæsar on Valens, his general of the Illyrian frontier.[57]

The plain of Mardia in Thrace was the theatre of a second battle, no less
obstinate and bloody than the former. The troops on both sides displayed
the same valour and discipline; and the victory was once more decided
by the superior abilities of Constantine.[c] Licinius drew up his army
[says Zosimus] in order of battle, extending from a mountain which is
above the town two hundred stadia, as far as the junction of another
river with the Hebrus; thus the armies continued opposite to each other
for several days. Constantine, observing where the river was least broad,
concerted this plan. He ordered his men to bring trees from the mountain,
and to tie ropes around them, as if he intended to throw a bridge over
the river for the passage of his army. By this stratagem he deluded the
enemy, and, ascending a hill on which were thick woods sufficient to
conceal any that were in them, he planted there five thousand archers
and eight hundred horse. Having done this, he crossed the Hebrus at the
narrowest place, and so surprised the enemy that many fled with all their
speed, while others, who were amazed at his unexpected approach, were
struck with wonder at his coming over so suddenly. In the meantime, the
rest of his army crossed the river in security, and a great slaughter
commenced. Nearly thirty thousand fell; and about sunset Constantine took
their camp, while Licinius, with all the forces he could muster, hastened
through Thrace to his ships.[d]

The loss of two battles reduced the fierce spirit of Licinius to sue
for peace. His ambassador Mistrianus was admitted to the audience of
Constantine; he expatiated on the common topics of moderation and
humanity, which are so familiar to the eloquence of the vanquished;
represented, in the most insinuating language, that the event of the
war was still doubtful, whilst its inevitable calamities were alike
pernicious to both the contending parties; and declared, that he was
authorised to propose a lasting and honourable peace in the name of the
two emperors, his masters. Constantine received the mention of Valens
with indignation and contempt.

“It was not for such a purpose,” he sternly replied, “that we have
advanced from the shores of the western ocean in an uninterrupted course
of combats and victories, that, after rejecting an ungrateful kinsman, we
should accept for our colleague a contemptible slave. The abdication of
Valens is the first article of the treaty.” It was necessary to accept
this humiliating condition; the unhappy Valens, after a few days’ reign,
was deprived of the purple and of his life. As soon as this obstacle
was removed, the tranquillity of the Roman world was easily restored.
The successive defeats of Licinius had ruined his forces, but they had
displayed his courage and abilities. His situation was almost desperate,
but the efforts of despair are sometimes formidable; and the good sense
of Constantine preferred a great and certain advantage to a third trial
of the chance of arms. He consented to leave his rival, or, as he again
styled Licinius, his friend and brother, in the possession of Thrace,
Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt; but the provinces of Pannonia, Dalmatia,
Dacia, Macedonia, and Greece were yielded to the Western Empire; and the
dominions of Constantine now extended from the confines of Caledonia
to the extremity of Peloponnesus. It was stipulated by the same treaty
that three royal youths, the sons of the emperors, should be called to
the hopes of the succession. Crispus and the young Constantine were soon
afterwards declared cæsars in the West, while the younger Licinius was
invested with the same dignity in the East. In this double proportion of
honours, the conqueror asserted the superiority of his arms and power.


THE LONG TRUCE BETWEEN THE EMPERORS; REFORMS OF CONSTANTINE

[Sidenote: [314-322 A.D.]]

The reconciliation of Constantine and Licinius, though it was embittered
by resentment and jealousy, by the remembrance of recent injuries, and
by the apprehension of future dangers, maintained however above eight
years the tranquillity of the Roman world. As a very regular series of
the imperial laws commences about this period, it would not be difficult
to transcribe the civil regulations which employed the leisure of
Constantine. But the most important of his institutions are intimately
connected with the new system of policy and religion, which was not
perfectly established till the last and peaceful years of his reign.
There are many of his laws which, as they concern the rights and property
of individuals and the practice of the bar, are more properly referred
to the private than to the public jurisprudence of the empire; and he
published many edicts of so local and temporary a nature that they would
ill deserve the notice of a general history.

Two laws may be selected from the crowd--the one for its importance, the
other for its singularity; the former for its remarkable benevolence,
and the latter for its excessive severity. (1) The horrid practice,
so familiar to the ancients, of exposing or murdering their new-born
infants, was become every day more frequent in the provinces, and
especially in Italy. It was the effect of distress; and the distress was
principally occasioned by the intolerable burden of taxes, and by the
vexatious as well as cruel prosecutions of the officers of the revenue
against their insolvent debtors. The less opulent or less industrious
part of mankind, instead of rejoicing in an increase of family, deemed
it an act of paternal tenderness to release their children from the
impending miseries of a life which they themselves were unable to
support. The humanity of Constantine, moved perhaps by some recent and
extraordinary instances of despair, engaged him to address an edict to
all the cities of Italy, and afterwards of Africa, directing immediate
and sufficient relief to be given to those parents who should produce
before the magistrates the children whom their own poverty would not
allow them to educate. But the promise was too liberal, and the provision
too vague, to effect any general or permanent benefit. The law, though
it may merit some praise, served rather to display than to alleviate the
public distress. It still remains an authentic monument to contradict and
confound those venal orators who were too well satisfied with their own
situation to discover either vice or misery under the government of a
generous sovereign.

(2) The laws of Constantine against rapes were dictated with small
indulgence for the most amiable weaknesses of human nature; since the
description of that crime was applied not only to the brutal violence
which compelled, but even to the gentle seduction which might persuade
an unmarried woman, under the age of twenty-five, to leave the house of
her parents. The successful ravisher was punished with death; and, as if
simple death was inadequate to the enormity of his guilt, he was either
burned alive or torn in pieces by wild beasts in the amphitheatre. The
virgin’s declaration that she had been carried away with her own consent,
instead of saving her lover, exposed her to share his fate. The duty
of a public prosecution was intrusted to the parents of the guilty or
unfortunate maid; and if the sentiments of nature prevailed on them to
dissemble the injury, and to repair by a subsequent marriage the honour
of their family, they were themselves punished by exile and confiscation.
The slaves, whether male or female, who were convicted of having been
accessory to the rape or seduction, were burned alive, or put to death by
the ingenious torture of pouring down their throats a quantity of melted
lead.

As the crime was of a public kind, the accusation was permitted even to
strangers. The commencement of the action was not limited to any term of
years, and the consequences of the sentence were extended to the innocent
offspring of such an irregular union. But whenever the offence inspires
less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to
give way to the common feelings of mankind. The most odious parts of
this edict were softened or repealed in the subsequent reigns; and even
Constantine himself very frequently alleviated, by partial acts of mercy,
the stern temper of his general institutions. Such, indeed, was the
singular humour of that emperor, who showed himself as indulgent and even
remiss in the execution of his laws, as he was severe and even cruel in
the enacting of them. It is scarcely possible to observe a more decisive
symptom of weakness, either in the character of the prince or in the
constitution of the government.

The civil administration was sometimes interrupted by the military
defence of the empire. Crispus, a youth of the most amiable character,
who had received with the title of Cæsar the command of the Rhine,
distinguished himself by his conduct in several victories over the Franks
and Alamanni, and taught the barbarians of that frontier to dread the
eldest son of Constantine and the grandson of Constantius. The emperor
himself had assumed the more difficult and important province of the
Danube. The Goths, who in the time of Claudius and Aurelian had felt the
weight of the Roman arms, respected the power of the empire, even in
the midst of its intestine divisions. But the strength of that warlike
nation was now restored by a peace of near fifty years; a new generation
had arisen, who no longer remembered the misfortunes of ancient days:
the Sarmatians of the lake Mæotis followed the Gothic standard, either
as subjects or as allies, and their united force was poured upon the
countries of Illyricum. Campona, Margus, and Bononia[58] appear to have
been the scenes of several memorable sieges and battles; and though
Constantine encountered a very obstinate resistance, he prevailed at
length in the contest, and the Goths were compelled to purchase an
ignominious retreat, by restoring the booty and prisoners they had taken.
Nor was this advantage sufficient to satisfy the indignation of the
emperor. He resolved to chastise, as well as to repulse, the insolent
barbarians who had dared to invade the territories of Rome.

At the head of his legions he passed over the Danube, after repairing
the bridge which had been constructed by Trajan, penetrated into the
strongest recesses of Dacia, and when he had inflicted a severe revenge,
condescended to give peace to the suppliant Goths on condition that,
as often as they were required, they should supply his armies with a
body of forty thousand soldiers. Exploits like these were no doubt
honourable to Constantine, and beneficial to the state; but it may surely
be questioned, whether they can justify the exaggerated assertion of
Eusebius that all Scythia, as far as the extremity of the north, divided
as it was into so many names and nations of the most various and savage
manners, had been added by his victorious arms to the Roman Empire.


CONSTANTINE AND LICINIUS AGAIN AT WAR

[Sidenote: [323 A.D.]]

In this exalted state of glory it was impossible that Constantine should
any longer endure a partner in the empire. Confiding in the superiority
of his genius and military power, he determined, without any previous
injury, to exert them for the destruction of Licinius, whose advanced age
and unpopular vices seemed to offer a very easy conquest. But the old
emperor, awakened by the approaching danger, deceived the expectations
of his friends, as well as of his enemies. Calling forth that spirit and
those abilities by which he had deserved the friendship of Galerius and
the imperial purple, he prepared himself for the contest, collected the
forces of the East, and soon filled the plains of Hadrianopolis with
his troops, and the straits of the Hellespont with his fleet. The army
consisted of 150,000 foot and 15,000 horse; and as the cavalry was drawn,
for the most part, from Phrygia and Cappadocia, we may conceive a more
favourable opinion of the beauty of the horses than of the courage and
dexterity of their riders. The fleet was composed of 350 galleys of three
ranks of oars. A hundred and thirty of these were furnished by Egypt and
the adjacent coast of Africa. A hundred and ten sailed from the ports of
Phœnicia and the isle of Cyprus; and the maritime countries of Bithynia,
Ionia, and Caria were likewise obliged to provide 110 galleys. The troops
of Constantine were ordered to rendezvous at Thessalonica; they amounted
to above 120,000 horse and foot. The emperor was satisfied with their
martial appearance, and his army contained more soldiers, though fewer
men, than that of his eastern competitor.

[Illustration: ROMAN GENERAL

(From the Arch of Constantine)]

The legions of Constantine were levied in the warlike provinces of
Europe; action had confirmed their discipline, victory had elevated their
hopes, and there were among them a great number of veterans who, after
seventeen glorious campaigns under the same leader, prepared themselves
to deserve an honourable dismission by a last effort of their valour. But
the naval preparations of Constantine were in every respect much inferior
to those of Licinius. The maritime cities of Greece sent their respective
quotas of men and ships to the celebrated harbour of Piræus, and their
united forces consisted of no more than two hundred small vessels--a
very feeble armament, if it is compared with those formidable fleets
which were equipped and maintained by the republic of Athens during the
Peloponnesian War. Since Italy was no longer the seat of government, the
naval establishments of Misenum and Ravenna had been gradually neglected;
and as the shipping and mariners of the empire were supported by commerce
rather than by war, it was natural that they should the most abound in
the industrious provinces of Egypt and Asia. It is only surprising that
the eastern emperor, who possessed so great a superiority at sea, should
have neglected the opportunity of carrying an offensive war into the
centre of his rival’s dominions.

Instead of embracing such an active resolution, which might have changed
the whole face of the war, the prudent Licinius expected the approach of
his rival in a camp near Hadrianopolis, which he had fortified with an
anxious care that betrayed his apprehension of the event. Constantine
directed his march from Thessalonica towards that part of Thrace, till he
found himself stopped by the broad and rapid stream of the Hebrus, and
discovered the numerous army of Licinius, which filled the steep ascent
of the hill, from the river to the city of Hadrianopolis. Many days were
spent in doubtful and distant skirmishes; but at length the obstacles
of the passages and of the attack were removed by the intrepid conduct
of Constantine. In this place we might relate a wonderful exploit of
Constantine, which, though it can scarcely be paralleled either in poetry
or romance, is celebrated, not by a venal orator devoted to his fortune,
but by an historian, the partial enemy of his fame. We are assured that
the valiant emperor threw himself into the river Hebrus, accompanied only
by twelve horsemen, and that by the effort or terror of his invincible
arm he broke, slaughtered, and put to flight a host of a hundred and
fifty thousand men.

The credulity of Zosimus prevailed so strongly over his passion that,
among the events of the memorable battle of Hadrianopolis, he seems
to have selected and embellished not the most important but the most
marvellous. The valour and danger of Constantine are attested by a slight
wound, which he received in the thigh; but it may be discovered, even
from an imperfect narration, and perhaps a corrupted text, that the
victory was obtained no less by the conduct of the general than by the
courage of the hero; that a body of five thousand archers marched round
to occupy a thick wood in the rear of the enemy, whose attention was
diverted by the construction of a bridge, and that Licinius, perplexed by
so many artful evolutions, was reluctantly drawn from his advantageous
post to combat on equal ground in the plain. The contest was no longer
equal. His confused multitude of new levies was easily vanquished by the
experienced veterans of the West. Thirty-four thousand men are reported
to have been slain. The fortified camp of Licinius was taken by assault
the evening of the battle; the greater part of the fugitives, who had
retired to the mountains, surrendered themselves the next day to the
discretion of the conqueror; and his rival, who could no longer keep the
field, confined himself within the walls of Byzantium.


_Constantine besieges Byzantium_

[Sidenote: [323-324 A.D.]]

The siege of Byzantium, which was immediately undertaken by Constantine,
was attended with great labour and uncertainty. In the late civil wars,
the fortifications of that place, so justly considered as the key of
Europe and Asia, had been repaired and strengthened; and as long as
Licinius remained master of the sea, the garrison was much less exposed
to the danger of famine than the army of the besiegers. The naval
commanders of Constantine were summoned to his camp, and received his
positive orders to force the passage of the Hellespont, as the fleet of
Licinius, instead of seeking and destroying their feeble enemy, continued
inactive in those narrow straits where its superiority of numbers was of
little use or advantage. Crispus, the emperor’s eldest son, was intrusted
with the execution of this daring enterprise, which he performed with so
much courage and success that he deserved the esteem, and most probably
excited the jealousy, of his father. The engagement lasted two days; and
in the evening of the first, the contending fleets, after a considerable
and mutual loss, retired to their respective harbours of Europe and
Asia. The second day, about noon, a strong south wind sprang up, which
carried the vessels of Crispus against the enemy; and as the casual
advantage was improved by his skilful intrepidity, he soon obtained a
complete victory. A hundred and thirty vessels were destroyed, five
thousand men were slain, and Amandus, the admiral of the Asiatic fleet,
escaped with the utmost difficulty to the shores of Chalcedon. As soon
as the Hellespont was open, a plentiful convoy of provisions flowed into
the camp of Constantine, who had already advanced the operations of the
siege. He constructed artificial mounds of earth of an equal height
with the ramparts of Byzantium. The lofty towers which were erected on
that foundation galled the besieged with large stones and darts from
the military engines, and the battering-rams had shaken the walls in
several places. If Licinius persisted much longer in the defence, he
exposed himself to be involved in the ruin of the place. Before he was
surrounded he prudently removed his person and treasures to Chalcedon,
in Asia; and as he was always desirous of associating companions to the
hopes and dangers of his fortune, he now bestowed the title of Cæsar
on Martinianus, who exercised one of the most important offices of the
empire.

Such were still the resources, and such the abilities of Licinius,
that, after so many successive defeats, he collected in Bithynia a new
army of fifty or sixty thousand men, while the activity of Constantine
was employed in the siege of Byzantium. The vigilant emperor did not,
however, neglect the last struggles of his antagonist. A considerable
part of his victorious army was transported over the Bosporus in
small vessels, and the decisive engagement was fought soon after the
landing, on the heights of Chrysopolis, or, as it is now called,
Scutari. The troops of Licinius, though they were lately raised, ill
armed, and worse disciplined, made head against their conquerors with
fruitless but desperate valour, till a total defeat, and the slaughter
of five-and-twenty thousand men, irretrievably determined the fate of
their leader. He retired to Nicomedia, rather with the view of gaining
some time for negotiation than with the hope of any effectual defence.
Constantia, his wife and the sister of Constantine, interceded with her
brother in favour of her husband, and obtained from his policy rather
than from his compassion a solemn promise, confirmed by an oath, that
after the sacrifice of Martinianus and the resignation of the purple,
Licinius himself should be permitted to pass the remainder of his life
in peace and affluence. The behaviour of Constantia, and her relation to
the contending parties, naturally recall the remembrance of that virtuous
matron who was the sister of Augustus, and the wife of Antony. But the
temper of mankind was altered; and it was no longer esteemed infamous for
a Roman to survive his honour and independence. Licinius solicited and
accepted the pardon of his offences, laid himself and his purple at the
feet of his lord and master, was raised from the ground with insulting
pity, was admitted the same day to the imperial banquet, and soon
afterward was sent away to Thessalonica, which had been chosen for the
place of his confinement.

His confinement was soon terminated by death; and it is doubtful whether
a tumult of the soldiers, or a decree of the senate, was suggested
as a motive for his execution. According to the rules of tyranny he
was accused of forming a conspiracy, and of holding a treasonable
correspondence with the barbarians; but as he was never convicted either
by his own conduct or by any legal evidence, we may perhaps be allowed,
from his weakness, to presume his innocence.

The memory of Licinius was branded with infamy, his statues were
thrown down, and by a hasty edict, of such mischievous tendency that
it was almost immediately corrected, all his laws and all the judicial
proceedings of his reign were at once abolished. By this victory of
Constantine, the Roman world was again united under the authority of one
emperor, thirty-seven years after Diocletian had divided his power and
provinces with his associate Maximian.


CONSTANTINE, SOLE RULER, FOUNDS CONSTANTINOPLE

[Sidenote: [323-330 A.D.]]

The successive steps of the elevation of Constantine, from his first
assuming the purple at York to the resignation of Licinius at Nicomedia,
have been related with some minuteness and precision, not only as the
events are in themselves both interesting and important, but still more
as they contributed to the decline of the empire by the expense of blood
and treasure, and by the perpetual increase as well of the taxes as of
the military establishment. The foundation of Constantinople and the
establishment of the Christian religion were the immediate and memorable
consequences of this revolution.

But the prospect of beauty, of safety, and of wealth, united in a
single spot, was sufficient to justify the choice of Constantine. But
as some decent mixture of prodigy and fable has, in every age, been
supposed to reflect a becoming majesty on the origin of great cities,
the emperor was desirous of ascribing his resolution not so much to the
uncertain counsels of human policy as to the infallible and eternal
decrees of divine wisdom. In one of his laws he has been careful to
instruct posterity that, in obedience to the commands of God, he laid
the everlasting foundations of Constantinople; and though he has not
condescended to relate in what manner the celestial inspiration was
communicated to his mind, the defect of his modest silence has been
liberally supplied by the ingenuity of succeeding writers, who describe
the nocturnal vision which appeared to the fancy of Constantine, as he
slept within the walls of Byzantium. The tutelar genius of the city,
a venerable matron sinking under the weight of years and infirmities,
was suddenly transformed into a blooming maid, whom his own hands
adorned with all the symbols of imperial greatness. The monarch awoke,
interpreted the auspicious omen and obeyed, without hesitation, the will
of heaven. The day which gave birth to a city or colony was celebrated
by the Romans with such ceremonies as had been ordained by a generous
superstition; and though Constantine might omit some rites which savoured
too strongly of their pagan origin, yet he was anxious to leave a deep
impression of hope and respect on the minds of the spectators. On foot,
with a lance in his hand, the emperor himself led the solemn procession,
and directed the line which was traced as the boundary of the destined
capital; till the growing circumference was observed with astonishment
by the assistants, who at length ventured to observe that he had already
exceeded the most ample measure of a great city. “I shall still advance,”
replied Constantine, “till he, the invisible guide, who marches before
me, thinks proper to stop.” Without presuming to investigate the nature
or motives of this extraordinary conductor, we shall content ourselves
with the more humble task of describing the extent and limits of
Constantinople.

In the actual state of the city, the palace and gardens of the seraglio
occupy the eastern promontory, the first of the seven hills, and cover
about 150 acres of our own measure. The seat of Turkish jealousy and
despotism is erected on the foundations of a Grecian republic; but it
may be supposed that the Byzantines were tempted by the conveniency of
the harbour to extend their habitations on that side beyond the modern
limits of the seraglio. The new walls of Constantine stretched from the
port to the Propontis across the enlarged breadth of the triangle, at
the distance of fifteen stadia from the ancient fortification; and with
the city of Byzantium they enclosed five of the seven hills which, to
the eyes of those who approach Constantinople, appear to rise above each
other in beautiful order. About a century after the death of the founder,
the new buildings, extending on one side up the harbour and on the other
along the Propontis, already covered the narrow ridge of the sixth,
and the broad summit of the seventh hill. The necessity of protecting
those suburbs from the incessant inroads of the barbarians engaged the
younger Theodosius to surround his capital with an adequate and permanent
enclosure of walls. From the eastern promontory to the golden gate,
the extreme length of Constantinople was about three Roman miles; the
circumference measured between ten and eleven; and the surface might be
computed as equal to about two thousand English acres.

[Illustration: A PLEBEIAN

(Based on Vecellio)]

It is impossible to justify the vain and credulous exaggerations of
modern travellers, who sometimes stretch the limits of Constantinople
over the adjacent villages of the European, and even of the Asiatic
coast. But the suburbs of Pera and Galata, though situate beyond the
harbour, may deserve to be considered as a part of the city, and this
addition may perhaps authorise the measure of a Byzantine historian, who
assigns sixteen Greek (about fourteen Roman) miles for the circumference
of his native city. Such an extent may seem not unworthy of an imperial
residence. Yet Constantinople must yield to Babylon and Thebes, to
ancient Rome, to London, and even to Paris.

The master of the Roman world, who aspired to erect an eternal monument
of the glories of his reign, could employ in the prosecution of that
great work the wealth, the labour, and all that yet remained of the
genius of obedient millions. Some estimate may be formed of the expense
bestowed with imperial liberality on the foundation of Constantinople,
by the allowance of about £2,500,000 [$12,500,000] for the construction
of the walls, the porticoes, and the aqueducts. The forests that
overshadowed the shores of the Euxine, and the celebrated quarries
of white marble in the little island of Proconnesus, supplied an
inexhaustible stock of materials ready to be conveyed, by the convenience
of a short water-carriage, to the harbour of Byzantium. A multitude of
labourers and artificers urged the conclusion of the work with incessant
toil; but the impatience of Constantine soon discovered that, in the
decline of the arts, the skill as well as numbers of his architects
bore a very unequal proportion to the greatness of his designs. The
magistrates of the most distant provinces were therefore directed to
institute schools, to appoint professors, and by the hopes of rewards
and privileges to engage in the study and practice of architecture
a sufficient number of ingenious youths who had received a liberal
education. The buildings of the new city were executed by such artificers
as the reign of Constantine could afford; but they were decorated by
the hands of the most celebrated masters of the age of Pericles and
Alexander. To revive the genius of Phidias and Lysippus surpassed
indeed the power of a Roman emperor; but the immortal productions which
they had bequeathed to posterity were exposed without defence to the
rapacious vanity of a despot. By his commands the cities of Greece and
Asia were despoiled of their most valuable ornaments. The trophies of
memorable wars, the objects of religious veneration, the most finished
statues of the gods and heroes, of the sages and poets, of ancient
times, contributed to the splendid triumph of Constantinople; and
gave occasion to the remark of the historian Cedrenus, who observes
with much enthusiasm that nothing seemed wanting except the souls of
the illustrious men whom those admirable monuments were intended to
represent. But it is not in the city of Constantine, nor in the declining
period of an empire, when the human mind was depressed by civil and
religious slavery, that we should seek for the souls of Homer and of
Demosthenes.

During the siege of Byzantium, the conqueror had pitched his tent on
the commanding eminence of the second hill. To perpetuate the memory of
his success, he chose the same advantageous position for the principal
forum, which appears to have been of a circular, or rather elliptical
form. The two opposite entrances formed triumphal arches; the porticoes,
which enclosed it on every side, were filled with statues; and the
centre of the forum was occupied by a lofty column, of which a mutilated
fragment is now degraded by the appellation of “the burnt pillar.” This
column was erected on a pedestal of white marble twenty feet high, and
was composed of ten pieces of porphyry, each of which measured about ten
feet in height and about thirty-three in circumference. On the summit of
the pillar, above 120 feet from the ground, stood the colossal statue of
Apollo. It was of bronze, had been transported either from Athens or from
a town of Phrygia, and was supposed to be the work of Phidias. The artist
had represented the god of day, or, as it was afterwards interpreted, the
emperor Constantine himself, with a sceptre in his right hand, the globe
of the world in his left, and a crown of rays glittering on his head. The
Circus, or Hippodrome, was a stately building, about four hundred paces
in length and one hundred in breadth. The space between the two _metæ_,
or goals, was filled with statues and obelisks; and we may still remark
a very singular fragment of antiquity--the bodies of three serpents,
twisted into one pillar of brass. Their triple heads had once supported
the golden tripod which, after the defeat of Xerxes, was consecrated
in the temple of Delphi by the victorious Greeks. The beauty of the
Hippodrome has been long since defaced by the rude hands of the Turkish
conquerors; but under the similar appellation of Atmeidan, it still
serves a place of exercise for their horses.

From the throne, whence the emperor viewed the Circensian games, a
winding staircase descended to the palace--a magnificent edifice, which
scarcely yielded to the residence of Rome itself, and which, together
with the dependent courts, gardens, and porticoes, covered a considerable
extent of ground upon the banks of the Propontis, between the Hippodrome
and the church of St. Sophia. We might likewise celebrate the baths,
which still retained the name of Zeuxippus after they had been enriched,
by the munificence of Constantine, with lofty columns, various marbles,
and above threescore statues of bronze. But we should deviate from the
design of this history if we attempted minutely to describe the different
buildings or quarters of the city. It may be sufficient to observe that
whatever could adorn the dignity of a great capital, or contribute to
the benefit or pleasure of its numerous inhabitants, was contained
within the walls of Constantinople. A particular description, composed
about a century after its foundation, enumerates a capitol or school of
learning, a circus, two theatres, eight public and 153 private baths,
fifty-two porticoes, five granaries, eight aqueducts or reservoirs of
water, four spacious halls for the meetings of the senate or courts of
justice, fourteen churches, fourteen palaces, and 4388 houses which, for
their size or beauty, deserved to be distinguished from the multitude of
plebeian habitations.


THE OLD METROPOLIS AND THE NEW: ROME AND CONSTANTINOPLE

The populousness of this favoured city was the next and most serious
object of the attention of its founder. In the dark ages which succeeded
the translation of the empire, the remote and the immediate consequences
of that memorable event were strangely confounded by the vanity of the
Greeks and the credulity of the Latins. It was asserted and believed
that all the noble families of Rome, the senate, and the equestrian
order, with their innumerable attendants, had followed their emperor
to the banks of the Propontis; that a spurious race of strangers and
plebeians was left to possess the solitude of the ancient capital, and
that the lands of Italy, long since converted into gardens, were at once
deprived of cultivation and inhabitants. In the course of this history
such exaggerations will be reduced to their just value. Yet, since the
growth of Constantinople cannot be ascribed to the general increase
of mankind and of industry, it must be admitted that this artificial
colony was raised at the expense of the ancient cities of the empire.
Many opulent senators of Rome and of the eastern provinces were probably
invited by Constantine to adopt for their country the fortunate spot
which he had chosen for his own residence. The invitations of a master
are scarcely to be distinguished from commands; and the liberality of
the emperor obtained a ready and cheerful obedience. He bestowed on his
favourites the palaces which he had built in the several quarters of the
city, assigned them lands and pensions for the support of their dignity,
and alienated the demesnes of Pontus and Asia to grant the hereditary
estates by the easy tenure of maintaining a house in the capital. But
these encouragements and obligations soon became superfluous, and
were gradually abolished. Wherever the seat of government is fixed, a
considerable part of the public revenue will be expended by the prince
himself, by his ministers, by the officers of justice, and by the
domestics of the palace. The most wealthy of the provincials will be
attracted by the powerful motives of interest and duty, of amusement and
curiosity. A third and more numerous class of inhabitants will insensibly
be formed, of servants, of artificers, and of merchants, who derive their
subsistence from their own labour, and from the wants or luxury of the
superior ranks. In less than a century Constantinople disputed with Rome
itself the pre-eminence of riches and numbers. New piles of buildings,
crowded together with too little regard to health or convenience,
scarcely allowed the intervals of narrow streets for the perpetual
throng of men, of horses, and of carriages. The allotted space of ground
was insufficient to contain the increasing people; and the additional
foundations, which, on either side, were advanced into the sea, might
alone have composed a very considerable city.

The frequent and regular distributions of wine and oil, of corn or bread,
of money or provisions, had almost exempted the poorest citizens of
Rome from the necessity of labour. The magnificence of the first Cæsars
was in some measure imitated by the founder of Constantinople; but his
liberality, however it might excite the applause of the people, has
incurred the censure of posterity. A nation of legislators and conquerors
might assert its claim to the harvest of Africa, which had been purchased
with its blood; and it was artfully contrived by Augustus that in the
enjoyment of plenty the Romans should lose the memory of freedom. But
the prodigality of Constantine could not be excused by any consideration
either of public or private interest; and the annual tribute of corn
imposed upon Egypt for the benefit of his new capital was applied to
feed a lazy and indolent populace, at the expense of the husbandmen of
an industrious province. Some other regulations of this emperor are
less liable to blame, but they are less deserving of notice. He divided
Constantinople into fourteen regions or quarters, dignified the public
council with the appellation of senate, communicated to the citizens the
privileges of Italy, and bestowed on the rising city the title of Colony,
the first and most favoured daughter of ancient Rome. The venerable
parent still maintained the legal and acknowledged supremacy, which was
due to her age, to her dignity, and to the remembrance of her former
greatness.

As Constantine urged the process of the work with the impatience of
a lover, the walls, the porticoes, and the principal edifices were
completed in a few years, or, according to another account, in a few
months; but this extraordinary diligence should excite less admiration,
since many of the buildings were finished in so hasty and imperfect
a manner that, under the succeeding reign, they were preserved with
difficulty from impending ruin. But while they displayed the vigour and
freshness of youth, the founder prepared to celebrate the dedication
of his city. The games and largesses which crowned the pomp of this
memorable festival may easily be supposed; but there is one circumstance
of a more singular and permanent nature, which ought not entirely to be
overlooked. As often as the birthday of the city returned, the statue of
Constantine, framed by his order, of gilt wood, and bearing in his right
hand a small image of the genius of the place, was erected on a triumphal
car. The guards, carrying white tapers, and clothed in their richest
apparel, accompanied the solemn procession as it moved through the
Hippodrome. When it was opposite to the throne of the reigning emperor,
he rose from his seat, and with a grateful reverence adored the memory
of his predecessor. At the festival of dedication an edict, engraved on
a column of marble, bestowed the title of Second or New Rome on the city
of Constantine. But the name of Constantinople has prevailed over that
honourable epithet, and after the revolution of fifteen centuries still
perpetuates the fame of the author.


CHARACTER OF CONSTANTINE THE GREAT

The character of the prince who removed the seat of empire, and
introduced such important changes into the civil and religious
constitution of his country, has fixed the attention and divided the
opinions of mankind. By the grateful zeal of the Christians, the
deliverer of the church has been decorated with every attribute of a
hero, even of a saint; while the discontent of the vanquished party has
compared Constantine to the most abhorred of those tyrants who by their
vice and weakness, dishonoured the imperial purple.

The same passions have in some degree been perpetuated to succeeding
generations, and the character of Constantine is considered, even in
the present age, as an object either of satire or of panegyric. By the
impartial union of those defects which are confessed by his warmest
admirers, and of those virtues which are acknowledged by his most
implacable enemies, we might hope to delineate a just portrait of that
extraordinary man, which the truth and candour of history should adopt
without a blush. But it would soon appear that the vain attempt to blend
such discordant colours, and to reconcile such inconsistent qualities,
must produce a figure monstrous rather than human, unless it is viewed in
its proper and distinct lights by a careful separation of the different
periods of the reign of Constantine.

[Illustration: ROMAN GLASSWARE]

The person, as well as the mind, of Constantine had been enriched
by nature with her choicest endowments. His stature was lofty, his
countenance majestic, his deportment graceful; his strength and activity
were displayed in every manly exercise, and from his earliest youth to a
very advanced season of life he preserved the vigour of his constitution
by a strict adherence to the domestic virtues of chastity and temperance.
He delighted in the social intercourse of familiar conversation; and
though he might sometimes indulge his disposition to raillery with less
reserve than was required by the severe dignity of his station, the
courtesy and liberality of his manners gained the hearts of all who
approached him. The sincerity of his friendship has been suspected; yet
he showed, on some occasions, that he was not incapable of a warm and
lasting attachment. The disadvantage of a deficient education had not
prevented him from forming a just estimate of the value of learning; and
the arts and sciences derived some encouragement from the munificent
protection of Constantine. In the despatch of business, his diligence was
indefatigable; and the active powers of his mind were almost continually
exercised in reading, writing, or meditating, in giving audience to
ambassadors, and in examining the complaints of his subjects. Even those
who censured the propriety of his measures were compelled to acknowledge
that he possessed magnanimity to conceive and patience to execute the
most arduous designs, without being checked either by the prejudices of
education or by the clamours of the multitude. In the field, he infused
his own intrepid spirit into the troops, whom he conducted with the
talents of a consummate general; and to his abilities, rather than to his
fortune, we may ascribe the signal victories which he obtained over the
foreign and domestic foes of the republic.

He loved glory, as the reward, perhaps even as the motive, of his
labours. The boundless ambition which, from the moment of his accepting
the purple at York, appears as the ruling passion of his soul, may be
justified by the dangers of his own situation, by the character of his
rivals, by the consciousness of superior merit, and by the prospect that
his success would enable him to restore peace and order to the distracted
empire. In his civil wars against Maxentius and Licinius, he had engaged
on his side the inclinations of the people, who compared the undissembled
vices of those tyrants with the spirit of wisdom and justice which seemed
to direct the general tenor of the administration of Constantine.

Had Constantine fallen on the banks of the Tiber, or even in the plains
of Hadrianopolis, such is the character which, with few exceptions, he
might have transmitted to posterity. But the conclusion of his reign
(according to the moderate and indeed tender sentence of a writer of the
same age) degraded him from the rank which he had acquired among the
most deserving of the Roman princes. In the life of Augustus, we behold
the tyrant of the republic converted, almost by imperceptible degrees,
into the father of his country and of human kind. In that of Constantine
we may contemplate a hero who had so long inspired his subjects with
love and his enemies with terror degenerating into a cruel and dissolute
monarch, corrupted by his fortune, or raised by conquest above the
necessity of dissimulation. The general peace which he maintained during
the last fourteen years of his reign was a period of apparent splendour
rather than of real prosperity; and the old age of Constantine was
disgraced by the opposite yet reconcilable vices of rapaciousness and
prodigality. The accumulated treasures found in the palaces of Maxentius
and Licinius were lavishly consumed; the various innovations introduced
by the conqueror were attended with an increasing expense; the cost of
his buildings, his court, and his festivals required an immediate and
plentiful supply; and the oppression of the people was the only fund
which could support the magnificence of the sovereign. His unworthy
favourites, enriched by the boundless liberality of their master, usurped
with impunity the privilege of rapine and corruption.

A secret but universal decay was felt in every part of the public
administration; the emperor himself, though he still retained the
obedience, gradually lost the esteem of his subjects. The dress and
manners which, towards the decline of life, he chose to affect, served
only to degrade him in the eyes of mankind. The Asiatic pomp, which had
been adopted by the pride of Diocletian, assumed an air of softness and
effeminacy in the person of Constantine. He is represented with false
hair of various colours, laboriously arranged by the skilful artists of
the times; a diadem of a new and more expensive fashion; a profusion
of gems and pearls, of collars and bracelets, and a variegated flowing
robe of silk, most curiously embroidered with flowers of gold. In such
apparel, scarcely to be excused by the youth and folly of Elagabalus,
we are at a loss to discover the wisdom of an aged monarch and the
simplicity of a Roman veteran. A mind thus relaxed by prosperity and
indulgence was incapable of rising to that magnanimity which disdains
suspicion and dares to forgive. The deaths of Maximian and Licinius may
perhaps be justified by the maxims of policy as they are taught in the
schools of tyrants; but an impartial narrative of the executions, or
rather murders, which sullied the declining age of Constantine, will
suggest to our most candid thoughts the idea of a prince who could
sacrifice without reluctance the laws of justice and the feelings of
nature to the dictates either of his passions or of his interest.

The same fortune which so invariably followed the standard of Constantine
seemed to secure the hopes and comforts of his domestic life. Those among
his predecessors who had enjoyed the longest and most prosperous reigns,
Augustus, Trajan, and Diocletian, had been disappointed of posterity;
and the frequent revolutions had never allowed sufficient time for any
imperial family to grow up and multiply under the shade of the purple.
But the royalty of the Flavian line, which had been first ennobled by the
Gothic Claudius, descended through several generations; and Constantine
himself derived from his royal father the hereditary honours which
he transmitted to his children. The emperor had been twice married.
Minervina, the obscure but lawful object of his youthful attachment,
had left him only one son, who was called Crispus. By Fausta, the
daughter of Maximian, he had three daughters and three sons, known by the
kindred names of Constantine, Constantius, and Constans. The unambitious
brothers of the great Constantine, Julius Constantius, Dalmatius, and
Hannibalianus, were permitted to enjoy the most honourable rank and the
most affluent fortune that could be consistent with a private station.
The youngest of the three lived without a name, and died without
posterity. His two elder brothers obtained in marriage the daughters
of wealthy senators, and propagated new branches of the imperial race.
Gallus and Julian afterwards became the most illustrious of the children
of Julius Constantius, the patrician. The two sons of Dalmatius, who
had been decorated with the vain title of censor, were named Dalmatius
and Hannibalianus. The two sisters of the great Constantine, Anastasia
and Eutropia, were bestowed on Optatus and Nepotianus, two senators
of noble birth and of consular dignity. His third sister, Constantia,
was distinguished by her pre-eminence of greatness and of misery.
She remained the widow of the vanquished Licinius; and it was by her
entreaties that an innocent boy, the offspring of their marriage,
preserved for some time his life, the title of Cæsar, and a precarious
hope of the succession. Besides the females and the allies of the Flavian
house, ten or twelve males, to whom the language of modern courts would
apply the title of princes of the blood, seemed, according to the order
of their birth, to be destined either to inherit or to support the
throne of Constantine. But in less than thirty years, this numerous and
increasing family was reduced to the persons of Constantius and Julian,
who alone had survived a series of crimes and calamities such as the
tragic poets have deplored in the devoted lines of Pelops and of Cadmus.


CONSTANTINE AND CRISPUS

[Sidenote: [323-326 A.D.]]

Crispus, the eldest son of Constantine, and the presumptive heir of
the empire, is represented by impartial historians as an amiable
and accomplished youth. The care of his education, or at least of
his studies, was intrusted to Lactantius, the most eloquent of the
Christians; a preceptor admirably qualified to form the taste and to
excite the virtues of his illustrious disciple. At the age of seventeen
Crispus was invested with the title of Cæsar and the administration of
the Gallic provinces, where the inroads of the Germans gave him an early
occasion of signalising his military prowess. In the civil war which
broke out soon afterwards the father and son divided their powers; the
latter displayed great valour in forcing the straits of the Hellespont,
despite the superior fleet of Licinius. This naval victory contributed
to determine the event of the war; and the names of Constantine and of
Crispus were united in the joyful acclamations of their eastern subjects,
who loudly proclaimed that the world had been subdued, and was now
governed by an emperor endowed with every virtue; and by his illustrious
son, a prince beloved of heaven, and the lively image of his father’s
perfections. The public favour, which seldom accompanies old age,
diffused its lustre over the youth of Crispus. He deserved the esteem and
he engaged the affections of the court, the army, and the people. The
experienced merit of a reigning monarch is acknowledged by his subjects
with reluctance, and frequently denied with partial and discontented
murmurs; while, from the opening virtues of his successor, they fondly
conceive the most unbounded hopes of private as well as public felicity.

This dangerous popularity soon excited the attention of Constantine,
who, both as a father and as a king, was impatient of an equal. Instead
of attempting to secure the allegiance of his son by the generous ties
of confidence and gratitude, he resolved to prevent the mischiefs which
might be apprehended from dissatisfied ambition. Crispus soon had reason
to complain that while his infant brother Constantius was sent, with
the title of Cæsar, to reign over his peculiar department of the Gallic
provinces, he, a prince of mature years, who had performed such recent
and signal services, instead of being raised to the superior rank of
augustus, was confined almost a prisoner to his father’s court; and
exposed, without power or defence, to every calumny which the malice of
his enemies could suggest. Under such painful circumstances, the royal
youth might not always be able to compose his behaviour or suppress
his discontent; and we may be assured that he was encompassed by a
train of indiscreet or perfidious followers, who assiduously studied to
inflame and who were perhaps instructed to betray the unguarded warmth
of his resentment. An edict of Constantine, published about this time,
manifestly indicates his real or affected suspicions that a secret
conspiracy had been formed against his person and government. By all the
allurements of honours and rewards, he invites informers of every degree
to accuse without exception his magistrates or ministers, his friends or
his most intimate favourites, protesting with a solemn asseveration that
he himself will listen to the charge, that he himself will revenge his
injuries; and concluding with a prayer, which discovers some apprehension
of danger, that the providence of the supreme Being may still continue to
protect the safety of the emperor and of the empire.

The informers who complied with so liberal an invitation were
sufficiently versed in the arts of courts to select the friends and
adherents of Crispus as the guilty persons; nor is there any reason to
distrust the veracity of the emperor, who had promised an ample measure
of revenge and punishment. The policy of Constantine maintained, however,
the same appearances of regard and confidence towards a son whom he began
to consider as his most irreconcilable enemy. Medals were struck with
the customary vows for the long and auspicious reign of the young cæsar;
and as the people, who were not admitted into the secrets of the palace,
still loved his virtues and respected his dignity, a poet, who solicits
his recall from exile, adores with equal devotion the majesty of the
father and that of the son.

[Sidenote: [326 A.D.]]

The time was now arrived for celebrating the august ceremony of the
twentieth year of the reign of Constantine; and the emperor, for that
purpose, removed his court from Nicomedia to Rome, where the most
splendid preparations had been made for his reception. Every eye and
every tongue affected to express its sense of the general happiness,
and the veil of ceremony and dissimulation was drawn for a while over
the darkest designs of revenge and murder. In the midst of the festival,
the unfortunate Crispus was apprehended by order of the emperor, who
laid aside the tenderness of a father, without assuming the equity of
a judge. The examination was short and private; and, as it was thought
decent to conceal the fate of the young prince from the eyes of the Roman
people, he was sent under a strong guard to Pola, in Istria, where soon
afterwards he was put to death, either by the hand of the executioner, or
by the more gentle operation of poison.

The cæsar Licinius, a youth of amiable manners, was involved in the ruin
of Crispus; the stern jealousy of Constantine was unmoved by the prayers
and tears of his favourite sister, pleading for the life of a son whose
rank was his only crime, and whose loss she did not long survive. The
story of these unhappy princes, the nature and evidence of their guilt,
the forms of their trial, and the circumstances of their death were
buried in mysterious obscurity; and the courtly bishop who has celebrated
in an elaborate work the virtues and piety of his hero observes a prudent
silence on the subject of these tragic events. Such haughty contempt for
the opinion of mankind, whilst it imprints an indelible stain on the
memory of Constantine, must remind us of the very different behaviour of
one of the greatest monarchs of a later age. The czar Peter, in the full
possession of despotic power, submitted to the judgment of Russia, of
Europe, and of posterity the reasons which had compelled him to subscribe
the condemnation of a criminal, or at least of a degenerate son.

[Illustration: ROMAN SPOONS AND LADLES]

The innocence of Crispus was so universally acknowledged that the modern
Greeks, who adore the memory of their founder, are reduced to palliate
the guilt of parricide, which the common feelings of human nature forbade
them to justify. They pretend that, as soon as the afflicted father
discovered the falsehood of the accusation by which his credulity had
been so fatally misled, he published to the world his repentance and
remorse; that he mourned forty days, during which he abstained from the
use of the bath and all the ordinary comforts of life; and that, for the
lasting instruction of posterity, he erected a golden statue of Crispus,
with this memorable inscription: “To my son, whom I unjustly condemned.”
A tale so moral and so interesting would deserve to be supported by less
exceptional authority; but if we consult the more ancient and authentic
writers, they will inform us that the repentance of Constantine was
manifested only in acts of blood and revenge; and that he atoned for the
murder of an innocent son by the execution, perhaps, of a guilty wife.
They ascribe the misfortunes of Crispus to the arts of his stepmother
Fausta, whose implacable hatred, or whose disappointed love, renewed
in the palace of Constantine the ancient tragedy of Hippolytus and of
Phædra. Like the daughter of Minos, the daughter of Maximian accused
her son-in-law of an incestuous attempt on the chastity of his father’s
wife; and easily obtained, from the jealousy of the emperor, a sentence
of death against a young prince whom she considered with reason as
the most formidable rival of her own children. But Helena, the aged
mother of Constantine, lamented and revenged the untimely fate of her
grandson Crispus; nor was it long before a real or pretended discovery
was made that Fausta herself entertained a criminal connection with a
slave belonging to the imperial stables. Her condemnation and punishment
were the instant consequences of the charge; and the adulteress was
suffocated by the steam of a bath, which for that purpose had been heated
to an extraordinary degree. By some it will perhaps be thought that the
remembrance of a conjugal union of twenty years, and the honour of their
common offspring, the destined heirs of the throne, might have softened
the obdurate heart of Constantine, and persuaded him to suffer his wife,
however guilty she might appear, to expiate her offences in a solitary
prison. But it seems a superfluous labour to weigh the propriety, unless
we could ascertain the truth, of this singular event; which is attended
with some circumstances of doubt and perplexity.


THE HEIRS OF CONSTANTINE

[Sidenote: [326-335 A.D.]]

Those who have attacked and those who have defended the character of
Constantine, have alike disregarded two very remarkable passages of two
orations pronounced under the succeeding reign. The former celebrates the
virtues, the beauty, and the fortune of the empress Fausta, the daughter,
wife, sister, and mother of so many princes. The latter asserts, in
explicit terms, that the mother of the younger Constantine, who was slain
three years after his father’s death, survived to weep over the fate of
her son. Notwithstanding the positive testimony of several writers of
the pagan as well as of the Christian religion, there may still remain
some reason to believe, or at least to suspect, that Fausta escaped the
blind and suspicious cruelty of her husband. The deaths of a son and of a
nephew, with the execution of a great number of respectable, and perhaps
innocent friends, who were involved in their fall, may be sufficient,
however, to justify the discontent of the Roman people, and to explain
the satirical verses affixed to the palace gate, comparing the splendid
and bloody reigns of Constantine and Nero.

By the death of Crispus, the inheritance of the empire seemed to devolve
on the three sons of Fausta, who have been already mentioned under the
names of Constantine, of Constantius, and of Constans. These young
princes were successively invested with the title of Cæsar; and the dates
of their promotion may be referred to the tenth, the twentieth, and
the thirtieth years of the reign of their father. This conduct, though
it tended to multiply the future masters of the Roman world, might be
excused by the partiality of paternal affection; but it is not easy to
understand the motives of the emperor when he endangered the safety both
of his family and of his people, by the unnecessary elevation of his
two nephews, Dalmatius and Hannibalianus. The former was raised, by the
title of Cæsar, to an equality with his cousins. In favour of the latter,
Constantine invented the new and singular appellation of “nobilissimus”;
to which he annexed the flattering distinction of a robe of purple and
gold. But of the whole series of Roman princes in any age of the empire,
Hannibalianus alone was distinguished by the title of king, a name which
the subjects of Tiberius would have detested as the profane and cruel
insult of capricious tyranny. The use of such a title, even as it appears
under the reign of Constantine, is a strange and unconnected fact, which
can scarcely be admitted on the joint authority of imperial medals and
contemporary writers.

The whole empire was deeply interested in the education of these five
youths, the acknowledged successors of Constantine. The exercises
of the body prepared them for the fatigues of war and the duties of
active life. Those who occasionally mention the education or talents
of Constantius allow that he excelled in the gymnastic arts of leaping
and running; that he was a dexterous archer, a skilful horseman, and a
master of all the different weapons used in the service either of the
cavalry or of the infantry. The same assiduous cultivation was bestowed,
though not perhaps with equal success, to improve the minds of the other
sons and the nephews of Constantine. The most celebrated professors
of the Christian faith, of the Grecian philosophy, and of the Roman
jurisprudence were invited by the liberality of the emperor, who reserved
for himself the important task of instructing the royal youths in the
science of government and the knowledge of mankind. But the genius of
Constantine himself had been formed by adversity and experience. In the
free intercourse of private life and amidst the dangers of the court of
Galerius, he had learned to command his own passions, to encounter those
of his equals, and to depend for his present safety and future greatness
on the prudence and firmness of his conduct. His destined successors
had the misfortune of being born and educated in the imperial purple.
Incessantly surrounded by a train of flatterers, they passed their youth
in the enjoyment of luxury and the expectation of a throne; nor would the
dignity of their rank permit them to descend from that elevated station
from whence the various characters of human nature appear to wear a
smooth and uniform aspect.

The indulgence of Constantine admitted them, at a very tender age, to
share the administration of the empire; and they studied the art of
reigning at the expense of the people intrusted to their care. The
younger Constantine was appointed to hold his court in Gaul; and his
brother Constantius exchanged that department, the ancient patrimony
of their father, for the more opulent, but less martial, countries of
the east. Italy, the western Illyricum, and Africa were accustomed to
revere Constans, the third of his sons, as the representative of the
great Constantine. He fixed Dalmatius on the Gothic frontier, to which
he annexed the government of Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece. The city of
Cæsarea was chosen for the residence of Hannibalianus; and the provinces
of Pontus, Cappadocia, and the lesser Armenia were destined to form
the extent of his new kingdom. For each of these princes a suitable
establishment was provided. A just proportion of guards, of legions, and
of auxiliaries was allotted for their respective dignity and defence. The
ministers and generals who were placed about their persons were such as
Constantine could trust to assist, and even to control, these youthful
sovereigns in the exercise of their delegated power. As they advanced
in years and experience the limits of their authority were insensibly
enlarged: but the emperor always reserved for himself the title of
Augustus; and while he showed the cæsars to the armies and provinces, he
maintained every part of the empire in equal obedience to its supreme
head. The tranquillity of the last fourteen years of his reign was
scarcely interrupted by the contemptible insurrection of a camel-driver
in the island of Cyprus, or by the active part which the policy of
Constantine engaged him to assume in the wars of the Goths and Sarmatians.


THE AGED CONSTANTINE AND THE SARMATIANS

[Sidenote: [332-337 A.D.]]

Among the different branches of the human race, the Sarmatians form a
very remarkable shade, as they seem to unite the manners of the Asiatic
barbarians with the figure and complexion of the ancient inhabitants of
Europe. According to the various accidents of peace and war, of alliance
or conquest, the Sarmatians were sometimes confined to the banks of the
Tanaïs; and they sometimes spread themselves over the immense plains
which lie between the Vistula and the Volga. The care of their numerous
flocks and herds, the pursuit of game, and the exercise of war, or rather
of rapine, directed the vagrant motions of the Sarmatians. The movable
camps or cities, the ordinary residence of their wives and children,
consisted only of large wagons drawn by oxen, and covered in the form
of tents. The military strength of the nation was composed of cavalry;
and the custom of the warriors, to lead in their hand one or two spare
horses, enabled them to advance and to retreat with a rapid diligence,
which surprised the security and eluded the pursuit of a distant enemy.
Their poverty of iron prompted their rude industry to invent a sort of
cuirass, which was capable of resisting a sword or javelin, though it
was formed only of horses’ hoofs, cut into thin and polished slices,
carefully laid over each other in the manner of scales or feathers,
and strongly sewed upon an undergarment of coarse linen. The offensive
arms of the Sarmatians were short daggers, long lances, and a weighty
bow with a quiver of arrows. They were reduced to the necessity of
employing fish bones for the points of their weapons; but the custom of
dipping them in a venomous liquor, that poisoned the wounds which they
inflicted, is alone sufficient to prove the most savage manners; since a
people impressed with a sense of humanity would have abhorred so cruel a
practice, and a nation skilled in the arts of war would have disdained so
impotent a resource. Whenever these barbarians issued from their deserts
in quest of prey, their shaggy beards, uncombed locks, the furs with
which they were covered from head to foot, and their fierce countenances,
which seemed to express the innate cruelty of their minds, inspired the
more civilised provincials of Rome with horror and dismay.

The tender Ovid, after a youth spent in the enjoyment of fame and luxury,
was condemned to a hopeless exile on the frozen banks of the Danube,
where he was exposed, almost without defence, to the fury of these
monsters of the desert, with whose stern spirits he feared that his
gentle shade might hereafter be confounded. In his pathetic but sometimes
unmanly lamentations, he describes in the most lively colours the dress
and manners, the arms and inroads, of the Getæ and Sarmatians, who were
associated for the purposes of destruction; and from the accounts of
history there is some reason to believe that these Sarmatians were the
Iazyges, one of the most numerous and warlike tribes of the nation. The
allurements of plenty engaged them to seek a permanent establishment
on the frontiers of the empire. Soon after the reign of Augustus, they
obliged the Dacians, who subsisted by fishing on the banks of the river
Theiss or Tibiscus, to retire into the hilly country, and to abandon to
the victorious Sarmatians the fertile plains of Upper Hungary, which
are bounded by the course of the Danube and the semicircular enclosure
of the Carpathian Mountains. In this advantageous position they watched
or suspended the moment of attack, as they were provoked by injuries or
appeased by presents; they gradually acquired the skill of using more
dangerous weapons; and although the Sarmatians did not illustrate their
name by any memorable exploits, they occasionally assisted their eastern
and western neighbours, the Goths and the Germans, with a formidable
body of cavalry. They lived under the irregular aristocracy of their
chieftains; but after they had received into their bosom the fugitive
Vandals, who yielded to the pressure of the Gothic power, they seem to
have chosen a king from that nation, and from the illustrious race of the
Astingi, who had formerly dwelt on the shores of the Northern Ocean.

[Illustration: ROMAN CANDELABRUM]

This motive of enmity must have inflamed the subjects of contention which
perpetually arise on the confines of warlike and independent nations.
The Vandal princes were stimulated by fear and revenge; the Gothic kings
aspired to extend their dominion from the Euxine to the frontiers of
Germany; and the waters of the Marus, a small river which falls into the
Theiss, were stained with the blood of the contending barbarians. After
some experience of the superior strength and number of their adversaries,
the Sarmatians implored the protection of the Roman monarch, who beheld
with pleasure the discord of the nations but who was justly alarmed by
the progress of the Gothic arms. As soon as Constantine had declared
himself in favour of the weaker party, the haughty Araric, king of the
Goths, instead of expecting the attack of the legions, boldly passed
the Danube, and spread terror and devastation through the province of
Mœsia. To oppose the inroad of this destroying host, the aged emperor
took the field in person; but on this occasion either his conduct or his
fortune betrayed the glory which he had acquired in so many foreign and
domestic wars. He had the mortification of seeing his troops fly before
an inconsiderable detachment of the barbarians, who pursued them to the
edge of their fortified camp and obliged him to consult his safety by
a precipitate and ignominious retreat. The event of a second and more
successful action retrieved the honour of the Roman name; and the powers
of art and discipline prevailed, after an obstinate contest, over the
efforts of irregular valour. The broken army of the Goths abandoned the
field of battle, the wasted province, and the passage of the Danube;
and although the eldest of the sons of Constantine was permitted to
supply the place of his father, the merit of the victory, which diffused
universal joy, was ascribed to the auspicious counsels of the emperor
himself.

He contributed at least to improve this advantage by his negotiations
with the free and warlike people of Chersonesus, whose capital, situated
on the western coast of the Tauric or Crimæan peninsula, still retained
some vestiges of a Grecian colony, and was governed by a perpetual
magistrate, assisted by a council of senators, emphatically styled
the fathers of the city. The Chersonites were animated against the
Goths by the memory of the wars which, in the preceding century,
they had maintained with unequal forces against the invaders of their
country. They were connected with the Romans by the mutual benefits of
commerce, as they were supplied from the provinces of Asia with corn and
manufactures, which they purchased with their own productions, salt, wax,
and hides. Obedient to the requisition of Constantine, they prepared,
under the conduct of their magistrate Diogenes, a considerable army,
of which the principal strength consisted in crossbows and military
chariots. The speedy march and intrepid attack of the Chersonites, by
diverting the attention of the Goths, assisted the operations of the
imperial generals.

The Goths, vanquished on every side, were driven into the mountains,
where in the course of a severe campaign about a hundred thousand were
computed to have perished by cold and hunger. Peace was at length granted
to their humble supplications; the eldest son of Araric was accepted
as the most valuable hostage; and Constantine endeavoured to convince
their chiefs, by a liberal distribution of honours and rewards, how
far the friendship of the Romans was preferable to their enmity. In
the expressions of his gratitude towards the faithful Chersonites, the
emperor was still more magnificent. The pride of the nation was gratified
by the splendid and almost royal decorations bestowed on their magistrate
and his successors. A perpetual exemption from all duties was stipulated
for their vessels which traded to the ports of the Black Sea. A regular
subsidy was promised of iron, corn, oil, and every supply which could be
useful either in peace or war. But it was thought that the Sarmatians
were sufficiently rewarded by their deliverance from impending ruin;
and the emperor, perhaps with too strict an economy, deducted some part
of the expenses of the war from the customary gratifications which were
allowed to that turbulent nation.

Exasperated by this apparent neglect the Sarmatians soon forgot, with the
levity of barbarians, the services which they had so lately received, and
the dangers which still threatened their safety. Their inroads on the
territory of the empire provoked the indignation of Constantine to leave
them to their fate, and he no longer opposed the ambition of Geberic, a
renowned warrior, who had recently ascended the Gothic throne. Wisumar,
the Vandal king, whilst alone and unassisted he defended his dominions
with undaunted courage, was vanquished and slain in a decisive battle,
which swept away the flower of the Sarmatian youth. The remainder of the
nation embraced the desperate expedient of arming their slaves, a hardy
race of hunters and herdsmen, by whose tumultuary aid they revenged
their defeat and expelled the invader from their confines. But they
soon discovered that they had exchanged a foreign for a domestic enemy,
more dangerous and more implacable. Enraged by their former servitude,
elated by their present glory, the slaves, under the name of Limigantes,
claimed and usurped the possession of the country which they had saved.
Their masters, unable to withstand the ungoverned fury of the populace,
preferred the hardships of exile to the tyranny of their servants. Some
of the fugitive Sarmatians solicited a less ignominious dependence under
the hostile standard of the Goths. A more numerous band retired beyond
the Carpathian Mountains, among the Quadi, their German allies, and were
easily admitted to share a superfluous waste of uncultivated land. But
the far greater part of the distressed nation turned their eyes towards
the fruitful provinces of Rome. Imploring the protection and forgiveness
of the emperor, they solemnly promised, as subjects in peace and as
soldiers in war, the most inviolable fidelity to the empire which should
graciously receive them into its bosom. According to the maxims adopted
by Probus and his successors, the offers of this barbarian colony were
eagerly accepted; and a competent portion of lands in the provinces of
Pannonia, Thrace, Macedonia, and Italy were immediately assigned for the
habitation and subsistence of three hundred thousand Sarmatians.


LAST DAYS OF CONSTANTINE

[Sidenote: [337 A.D.]]

By chastising the pride of the Goths, and by accepting the homage of a
suppliant nation, Constantine asserted the majesty of the Roman Empire;
and the ambassadors of Ethiopia, Persia, and the most remote countries
of India congratulated the peace and prosperity of his government. If he
reckoned among the favours of fortune the death of his eldest son, of
his nephew, and perhaps of his wife, he enjoyed an uninterrupted flow
of private as well as public felicity, till the thirtieth year of his
reign; a period which none of his predecessors, since Augustus, had been
permitted to celebrate. Constantine survived that solemn festival about
ten months; and, at the mature age of sixty-four, after a short illness,
he ended his memorable life at the palace of Aquyrion, in the suburbs of
Nicomedia, whither he had retired for the benefit of the air and with the
hope of recruiting his exhausted strength by the use of the warm baths.
The excessive demonstrations of grief, or at least of mourning, surpassed
whatever had been practised on any former occasion. Notwithstanding
the claims of the senate and people of ancient Rome, the corpse of the
deceased emperor, according to his last request, was transported to the
city which was destined to preserve the name and memory of its founder.
The body of Constantine, adorned with the vain symbols of greatness, the
purple and diadem, was deposited on a golden bed in one of the apartments
of the palace, which for that purpose had been splendidly furnished and
illuminated. The forms of the court were strictly maintained. Every day,
at the appointed hours, the principal officers of the state, the army,
and the household, approaching the person of their sovereign with bended
knees and a composed countenance, offered their respectful homage as
seriously as if he had been still alive. From motives of policy this
theatrical representation was for some time continued; nor could flattery
neglect the opportunity of remarking that Constantine alone, by the
peculiar indulgence of heaven, had reigned after his death.[c]


FOOTNOTES

[52] [Diocletian’s administrative system was efficient; but the multitude
of officials and the expenses of the four imperial courts weighed heavily
upon the people. The arrangement for the succession was also defective.
Nevertheless Diocletian added strength to the empire and gave it a new
lease of life.]

[53] [Maximian had renounced the purple reluctantly at the bidding of
Diocletian, and had probably never been content to remain in retirement.
His attempted resumption of authority was ultimately to cost him his
life, as we shall see.]

[54] [The city bore the Latin name of Mediolanum. Maximian had made it
the capital of his division of the empire.]

[55] [Zosimus,[d] however, takes a different view. He says: “The empire
having thus devolved on Constantine and Licinius, they soon quarrelled;
not because Licinius gave any cause for it, but that Constantine, in
his usual manner, was unfaithful to his agreement, by endeavouring to
alienate from Licinius some nations that belonged to his dominions.
By this means an open rupture ensued and both prepared for war.” But
Zosimus is always hostile to Constantine, and this prejudice must not be
overlooked.]

[56] [Sirmium was the capital of the Pannonian division of the empire.]

[57] Zosimus[d] (1. 2, pp. 90, 91) gives a particular account of this
battle; but the descriptions of Zosimus are rhetorical rather than
military.

[58] The first of these places is now Old Buda, in Hungary; the
second, Hastolatz; and the third, Biddin, or Widden, in Mœsia on the
Danube.--GUIZOT.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XLII. THE SUCCESSORS OF CONSTANTINE TO THE DEATH OF JULIAN
(337-363 A.D.)


[Sidenote: [337-338 A.D.]]

The voice of the dying emperor had recommended the care of his funeral
to the piety of Constantius; and that prince, by the vicinity of his
eastern station, could easily prevent the diligence of his brothers,
who resided in their distant governments of Italy and Gaul. As soon as
he had taken possession of the palace of Constantinople, his first care
was to remove the apprehensions of his kinsmen by a solemn oath which he
pledged for their security. His next employment was to find some specious
pretence which might release his conscience from the obligation of an
imprudent promise. The arts of fraud were made subservient to the designs
of cruelty, and a manifest forgery was attested by a person of the most
sacred character. From the hands of the bishop of Nicomedia Constantius
received a fatal scroll, affirmed to be the genuine testament of his
father; in which the emperor expressed his suspicions that he had been
poisoned by his brothers, and conjured his sons to revenge his death, and
to consult their own safety, by the punishment of the guilty. Whatever
reasons might have been alleged by these unfortunate princes to defend
their life and honour against so incredible an accusation, they were
silenced by the furious clamours of the soldiers, who declared themselves
at once their enemies, their judges, and their executioners. The spirit
and even the forms of legal proceedings were repeatedly violated in a
promiscuous massacre, which involved the two uncles of Constantius,
seven of his cousins, of whom Dalmatius and Hannibalianus were the most
illustrious, the patrician Optatus, who had married a sister of the late
emperor, and the prefect Ablavius, whose power and riches had inspired
him with some hopes of obtaining the purple. If it were necessary to
aggravate the horrors of this bloody scene, we might add that Constantius
himself had espoused the daughter of his uncle Julius, and that he had
bestowed his sister in marriage on his cousin Hannibalianus. Of so
numerous a family, Gallus and Julian alone, the two youngest children
of Julius Constantius, were saved from the hands of the assassins, till
their rage, satiated with slaughter, had in some measure subsided.

The massacre of the Flavian race was succeeded by a new division of
the provinces; which was ratified in a personal interview of the three
brothers. Constantine, the eldest of the cæsars, obtained, with a certain
pre-eminence of rank, the possession of the new capital, which bore
his own name and that of his father. Thrace and the countries of the
East were allotted for the patrimony of Constantius; and Constans was
acknowledged as the lawful sovereign of Italy, Africa, and the western
Illyricum. The armies submitted to their hereditary right, and they
condescended, after some delay, to accept from the Roman senate the title
of Augustus. When they first assumed the reins of government, the eldest
of these princes was twenty-one, the second twenty, and the third only
seventeen years of age.

[Sidenote: [338-350 A.D.]]

While the martial nations of Europe followed the standards of his
brothers, Constantius, at the head of the effeminate troops of Asia,
was left to sustain the weight of the Persian War. At the decease of
Constantine, the throne of the East was filled by Sapor, son of Hormuz or
Hormisdas, and grandson of Narses, who, after the victory of Galerius,
had humbly confessed the superiority of the Roman power. Although Sapor
was in the thirtieth year of his long reign, he was still in the vigour
of youth, as the date of his accession, by a very strange fatality, had
preceded that of his birth. The wife of Hormuz remained pregnant at the
time of her husband’s death; and the uncertainty of the sex, as well as
of the event, excited the ambitious hopes of the princes of the house
of Sassan. The apprehensions of civil war were at length removed by the
positive assurance of the magi that the widow of Hormuz had conceived
and would safely produce a son. Obedient to the voice of superstition,
the Persians prepared, without delay, the ceremony of his coronation. A
royal bed, on which the queen lay in state, was exhibited in the midst of
the palace; the diadem was placed on the spot which might be supposed to
conceal the future heir of Artaxerxes, and the prostrate satraps adored
the majesty of their invisible and insensible sovereign.

If any credit can be given to this marvellous tale, which seems however
to be countenanced by the manners of the people and by the extraordinary
duration of his reign, we must admire not only the fortune but the
genius of Sapor. In the soft sequestrated education of a Persian harem,
the royal youth could discover the importance of exercising the vigour
of his mind and body; and by his personal merit deserved a throne, on
which he had been seated while he was yet unconscious of the duties and
temptations of absolute power. His minority was exposed to the almost
inevitable calamities of domestic discord; his capital was surprised
and plundered by Thair, a powerful king of Yemen, or Arabia; and the
majesty of the royal family was degraded by the captivity of a princess,
the sister of the deceased king. But as soon as Sapor attained the age
of manhood, the presumptuous Thair, his nation, and his country fell
beneath the first effort of the young warrior, who used his victory with
so judicious a mixture of rigour and clemency that he obtained from the
fears and gratitude of the Arabs the title of _dhoulacnaf_, or protector
of the nation.

The ambition of the Persian, to whom his enemies ascribe the virtues of
a soldier and a statesman, was animated by the desire of revenging the
disgrace of his fathers and of wresting from the hands of the Romans the
five provinces beyond the Tigris. The military fame of Constantine and
the real or apparent strength of his government suspended the attack; and
while the hostile conduct of Sapor provoked the resentment his artful
negotiations amused the patience of the imperial court. The death of
Constantine was the signal of war, and the actual condition of the Syrian
and Armenian frontier seemed to encourage the Persians by the prospect of
a rich spoil and an easy conquest. The example of the massacres of the
palace diffused a spirit of licentiousness and sedition among the troops
of the East, who were no longer restrained by the habits of obedience
to a veteran commander. By the prudence of Constantius, who from the
interview with his brothers in Pannonia immediately hastened to the
banks of the Euphrates, the legions were gradually restored to a sense
of duty; but the season of anarchy had permitted Sapor to form the siege
of Nisibis, and to occupy several of the most important fortresses of
Mesopotamia.

During the long period of the reign of Constantius, the provinces of the
East were afflicted by the calamities of the Persian War. The irregular
incursions of the light troops alternately spread terror and devastation
beyond the Tigris and beyond the Euphrates, from the gates of Ctesiphon
to those of Antioch; and this active service was performed by the Arabs
of the desert, who were divided in their interests and affections,
some of their independent chiefs being enlisted in the party of Sapor,
whilst others had engaged their doubtful fidelity to the emperor. The
more grave and important operations of the war were conducted with equal
vigour, and the armies of Rome and Persia encountered each other in nine
bloody fields, in two of which Constantius himself commanded in person.
The event of the day was most commonly averse to the Romans, but in the
battle of Singara their imprudent valour had almost achieved a signal
and decisive victory. The stationary troops of Singara retired on the
approach of Sapor, who passed the Tigris over three bridges and occupied
near the village of Hilleh an advantageous camp, which, by the labour of
his numerous pioneers, he surrounded in one day with a deep ditch and a
lofty rampart. His formidable host, when it was drawn out in order of
battle, covered the banks of the river, the adjacent heights, and the
whole extent of a plain of above twelve miles which separated the two
armies.

Both were alike impatient for a trial of strength; but the barbarians,
after a slight resistance, fled in disorder, unable to resist or desirous
to weary the strength of the heavy legions, who, fainting with heat and
thirst, pursued them across the plain and cut in pieces a line of cavalry
clothed in complete armour which had been posted before the gates of the
camp to protect their retreat (348).

Constantius, hurried along in the pursuit, attempted, without effect, to
restrain the ardour of his troops by representing to them the dangers
of the approaching night and the certainty of completing their success
with the return of day. They, depending much more on their own valour
than on the experience or the abilities of their chief, silenced by their
clamours his timid remonstrances; and rushing with fury to the charge,
filled up the ditch, broke down the rampart, and dispersed themselves
through the tents to recruit their exhausted strength and to enjoy the
rich harvest of their labours. But the prudent Sapor had watched the
moment of victory. His army, of which the greater part securely posted on
the heights had been spectators of the action, advanced in silence and
under the shadow of the night; and his Persian archers, guided by the
illumination of the camp, poured a shower of arrows on the disarmed and
licentious crowd. The sincerity of history declares that the Romans were
vanquished with a dreadful slaughter, and that the flying remnant of the
legions was exposed to the most intolerable hardships.

Whatever advantages might attend the arms of Sapor in the field, though
nine repeated victories diffused among the nations the fame of his valour
and conduct, he could not hope to succeed in the execution of his designs
while the fortified towns of Mesopotamia, and above all the strong and
ancient city of Nisibis, remained in the possession of the Romans. This
large city was situated about two days’ journey from the Tigris, in
the midst of a fertile plain at the foot of Mt. Masius. In the space
of twelve years, Nisibis, which since the time of Lucullus had been
deservedly esteemed the bulwark of the East, sustained three memorable
sieges against the power of Sapor; and the disappointed monarch, after
urging his attacks above sixty, eighty, and a hundred days, was thrice
repulsed with loss and ignominy.


WAR OF THE BROTHER EMPERORS

[Illustration: A ROMAN EMPEROR]

After the partition of the empire, three years had scarcely elapsed
before the sons of Constantine seemed impatient to convince mankind
that they were incapable of contenting themselves with the dominions
which they were unqualified to govern. The eldest of those princes soon
complained that he was defrauded of his just proportion of the spoils of
their murdered kinsmen; and though he might yield to the superior guilt
and merit of Constantius, he exacted from Constans the cession of the
African provinces, as an equivalent for the rich countries of Macedonia
and Greece, which his brother had acquired by the death of Dalmatius.
The want of sincerity which Constantine experienced in a tedious and
fruitless negotiation exasperated the fierceness of his temper; and
he eagerly listened to those favourites who suggested to him that his
honour, as well as his interest, was concerned in the prosecution of the
quarrel. At the head of a tumultuary band, suited for rapine rather than
for conquest, he suddenly broke into the dominions of Constans, by way of
the Julian Alps, and the country round Aquileia felt the first effects of
his resentment. The measures of Constans, who then resided in Dacia, were
directed with more prudence and ability. On the news of his brother’s
invasion, he detached a select and disciplined body of his Illyrian
troops, proposing to follow them in person with the remainder of his
forces. But the conduct of his lieutenants soon terminated the unnatural
contest. By the artful appearances of flight Constantine was betrayed
into an ambuscade, which had been concealed in a wood, where the rash
youth, with a few attendants, was surprised, surrounded, and slain. His
body, after it had been found in the obscure stream of the Alsa, obtained
the honours of an imperial sepulchre; but his provinces transferred their
allegiance to the conqueror, who, refusing to admit his elder brother
Constantius to any share in these new acquisitions, maintained the
undisputed possession of more than two-thirds of the Roman Empire (340).

[Sidenote: [350-351 A.D.]]

The fate of Constans himself was delayed about ten years longer, and the
revenge of his brother’s death was reserved for the more ignoble hand
of a domestic traitor. The pernicious tendency of the system introduced
by Constantine was displayed in the feeble administration of his sons,
who, by their vices and weakness, soon lost the esteem and affections of
their people. The pride assumed by Constans, from the unmerited success
of his arms, was rendered more contemptible by his want of abilities
and application. His fond partiality towards some German captives,
distinguished only by the charms of youth, was an object of scandal to
the people; and Magnentius, an ambitious soldier, who was himself of
barbarian extraction, was encouraged by the public discontent to assert
the honour of the Roman name. The chosen bands of Jovians and Herculians,
who acknowledged Magnentius as their leader, maintained the most
respectable and important station in the imperial camp. The friendship
of Marcellinus, count of the sacred largesses, supplied with a liberal
hand the means of seduction. The soldiers were convinced by the most
specious arguments, that the republic summoned them to break the bonds
of hereditary servitude; and by the choice of an active and vigilant
prince, to reward the same virtues which had raised the ancestors of the
degenerate Constans from a private condition to the throne of the world.

As soon as the conspiracy was in readiness for execution, Marcellinus,
under the pretence of celebrating his son’s birthday, gave a splendid
entertainment to the illustrious and honourable persons of the court of
Gaul, which then resided in the city of Augustodunum. The intemperance
of the feast was protracted till a very late hour of the night; and the
unsuspecting guests were tempted to indulge themselves in a dangerous and
guilty freedom of conversation. On a sudden the doors were thrown open,
and Magnentius, who had retired for a few moments, returned into the
apartment invested with the diadem and purple. The conspirators instantly
saluted him with the titles of Augustus and emperor. The surprise, the
terror, the intoxication, the ambitious hopes, and the mutual ignorance
of the rest of the assembly, prompted them to join their voices to the
general acclamation. The guards hastened to take the oath of fidelity,
the gates of the town were shut, and before the dawn of day, Magnentius
became master of the troops and treasure of the city of Augustodunum. By
his secrecy and diligence he entertained some hopes of surprising the
person of Constans, who was pursuing in the adjacent forest his favourite
amusement of hunting, or perhaps some pleasures of a more private and
criminal nature. The rapid progress of fame allowed him, however, an
instant for flight, though the desertion of his soldiers and subjects
deprived him of the power of resistance. Before he could reach a seaport
in Spain, where he intended to embark, he was overtaken near Helena,
at the foot of the Pyrenees, by a party of light cavalry, whose chief,
regardless of the sanctity of a temple, executed his commission by the
murder of the son of Constantine (350).

As soon as the death of Constans had decided this easy but important
revolution, the example of the court of Autun was imitated by the
provinces of the West. The authority of Magnentius was acknowledged
through the whole extent of the two great prefectures of Gaul and Italy;
and the usurper prepared, by every act of oppression, to collect a
treasure, which might discharge the obligation of an immense donative,
and supply the expenses of a civil war.


CONSTANTIUS AND MAGNENTIUS

[Sidenote: [351-352 A.D.]]

The intelligence of these important events, which so deeply affected the
honour and safety of the imperial house, recalled the arms of Constantius
from the inglorious prosecution of the Persian War. He recommended the
care of the East to his lieutenants, and afterwards to his cousin Gallus,
whom he raised from a prison to a throne; and marched towards Europe,
with a mind agitated by the conflict of hope and fear, of grief and
indignation.

The city of Mursa, or Essek, celebrated in modern times for a bridge
of boats five miles in length over the river Drave and the adjacent
morasses, has been always considered as a place of importance in the
wars of Hungary. Magnentius, directing his march towards Mursa, set
fire to the gates, and by a sudden assault had almost scaled the walls
of the town. The vigilance of the garrison extinguished the flames, the
approach of Constantius left him no time to continue the operations of
the siege, and the emperor soon removed the only obstacle that could
embarrass his motions by forcing a body of troops which had taken post in
an adjoining amphitheatre. The field of battle round Mursa was a naked
and level plain; on this ground the army of Constantius formed, with
the Drave on their right, while their left, either from the nature of
their disposition or from the superiority of their cavalry, extended far
beyond the right flank of Magnentius. The troops on both sides remained
under arms in anxious expectation during the greater part of the morning;
and the son of Constantine, after animating his soldiers by an eloquent
speech, retired into a church at some distance from the field of battle
and committed to his generals the conduct of this decisive day. They
deserved his confidence by the valour and military skill which they
exerted. They wisely began the action upon the left; and, advancing their
whole wing of cavalry in an oblique line, they suddenly wheeled it on the
right flank of the enemy, which was unprepared to resist the impetuosity
of their charge. But the Romans of the West soon rallied by the habits of
discipline, and the barbarians of Germany supported the renown of their
national bravery. The engagement soon became general, was maintained
with various and singular turns of fortune, and scarcely ended with the
darkness of the night. The signal victory which Constantius obtained is
attributed to the arms of his cavalry.

His cuirassiers are described as so many massy statues of steel,
glittering with their scaly armour, and breaking with their ponderous
lances the firm array of the Gallic legions. As soon as the legions
gave way, the lighter and more active squadrons of the second line rode
sword in hand into the intervals, and completed the disorder. In the
meanwhile the huge bodies of the Germans were exposed, almost naked,
to the dexterity of the oriental archers; and whole troops of those
barbarians were urged by anguish and despair to precipitate themselves
into the broad and rapid stream of the Drave. The number of the slain was
computed at fifty-four thousand men and the slaughter of the conquerors
was more considerable than that of the vanquished, a circumstance which
proves the obstinacy of the contest, and justifies the observation of an
ancient writer, that the forces of the empire were consumed in the fatal
battle of Mursa by the loss of a veteran army sufficient to defend the
frontiers or to add new triumphs to the glory of Rome. Notwithstanding
the invectives of a servile orator, there is not the least reason to
believe that the tyrant deserted his own standard in the beginning of
the engagement. He seems to have displayed the virtues of a general and
of a soldier till the day was irrecoverably lost and his camp in the
possession of the enemy. Magnentius then consulted his safety, and,
throwing away the imperial ornaments, escaped with some difficulty from
the pursuit of the light horse, who incessantly followed his rapid flight
from the banks of the Drave to the foot of the Julian Alps.

The detachments, however, which were ordered either to press or to
intercept the flight of Magnentius, conducted themselves with the usual
imprudence of success; and allowed him, in the plains of Ticinium, an
opportunity of turning on his pursuers, and of gratifying his despair, by
the carnage of a useless victory.

The pride of Magnentius was reduced by repeated misfortunes to sue, and
to sue in vain, for peace. He first despatched a senator, in whose
abilities he confided, and afterwards several bishops, whose holy
character might obtain a more favourable audience, with the offer of
resigning the purple, and the promise of devoting the remainder of his
life to the service of the emperor. But Constantius, though he granted
fair terms of pardon and reconciliation to all who abandoned the standard
of rebellion, avowed his inflexible resolution to inflict a just
punishment on the crimes of an assassin, whom he prepared to overwhelm
on every side by the effort of his victorious arms. An imperial fleet
acquired the easy possession of Africa and Spain, confirmed the wavering
faith of the Moorish nations, and landed a considerable force, which
passed the Pyrenees, and advanced towards Lyons, the last and fatal
station of Magnentius. The temper of the tyrant, which was never inclined
to clemency, was urged by distress to exercise every act of oppression
which could extort an immediate supply from the cities of Gaul. Their
patience was at length exhausted; and Trèves, the seat of prætorian
government, gave the signal of revolt, by shutting her gates against
Decentius, who had been raised by his brother to the rank either of cæsar
or of augustus. From Trèves, Decentius was obliged to retire to Sens,
where he was soon surrounded by an army of Germans, whom the pernicious
arts of Constantius had introduced into the civil dissensions of Rome.
In the meantime, the imperial troops forced the passages of the Cottian
Alps, and in the bloody combat of Mount Seleucus, irrevocably fixed the
title of rebels on the party of Magnentius.

He was unable to bring another army in the field, the fidelity of his
guards was corrupted, and when he appeared in public to animate them
by his exhortations, he was saluted with the unanimous shout of “Long
live the emperor Constantius!” The tyrant, who perceived that they were
preparing to deserve pardon and rewards by the sacrifice of the most
obnoxious criminal, prevented their design by falling on his sword--a
death more easy and more honourable than he could hope to obtain from
the hands of an enemy, whose revenge would have been coloured with the
specious pretence of justice and fraternal piety. The example of suicide
was imitated by Decentius, who strangled himself on the news of his
brother’s death. The author of the conspiracy, Marcellinus, had long
since disappeared in the battle of Mursa, and the public tranquillity
was confirmed by the execution of the surviving leaders of a guilty and
unsuccessful faction.

A severe inquisition was extended over all who, either from choice or
from compulsion, had been involved in the cause of rebellion. Paul,
surnamed Catena, from his superior skill in the judicial exercise of
tyranny, was sent to explore the latent remains of the conspiracy in the
remote province of Britain. The honest indignation expressed by Martin,
vice-prefect of the island, was interpreted as an evidence of his own
guilt; and the governor was urged to the necessity of turning against his
breast the sword with which he had been provoked to wound the imperial
minister. The most innocent subjects of the West were exposed to exile
and confiscation, to death and torture; and, as the timid are always
cruel, the mind of Constantius was inaccessible to mercy.


CONSTANTIUS SOLE EMPEROR

[Sidenote: [337-353 A.D.]]

The divided provinces of the empire were again united by the victory
of Constantius; but as that feeble prince was destitute of personal
merit, either in peace or war; as he feared his generals, and distrusted
his ministers; the triumph of his arms served only to establish the
reign of the eunuchs over the Roman world. Those unhappy beings, the
ancient production of oriental jealousy and despotism, were introduced
into Greece and Rome by the contagion of Asiatic luxury. Their progress
was rapid; and the eunuchs, who, in the time of Augustus, had been
abhorred, as the monstrous retinue of an Egyptian queen, were gradually
admitted into the families of matrons, of senators, and of the emperors
themselves. Restrained by the severe edicts of Domitian and Nerva,
cherished by the pride of Diocletian, reduced to an humble station by the
prudence of Constantine, they multiplied in the palaces of his degenerate
sons, and insensibly acquired the knowledge, and at length the direction,
of the secret councils of Constantius.

The aversion and contempt which mankind has so uniformly entertained for
that imperfect species appears to have degraded their character, and to
have rendered them almost as incapable as they were supposed to be, of
conceiving any generous sentiment or of performing any worthy action.
But the eunuchs were skilled in the arts of flattery and intrigue; and
they alternately governed the mind of Constantius by his fears, his
indolence, and his vanity. Whilst he viewed in a deceitful mirror the
fair appearance of public prosperity, he supinely permitted them to
intercept the complaints of the injured provinces, to accumulate immense
treasures by the sale of justice and of honours; to disgrace the most
important dignities, by the promotion of those who had purchased at
their hands the power of oppression, and to gratify their resentment
against the few independent spirits who arrogantly refused to solicit
the protection of slaves. Of these slaves the most distinguished was
the chamberlain Eusebius, who ruled the monarch and the palace with
such absolute sway, that Constantius, according to the sarcasm of an
impartial historian, possessed some credit with his haughty favourite.
By his artful suggestions, the emperor was persuaded to subscribe the
condemnation of the unfortunate Gallus, and to add a new crime to the
long list of unnatural murders which pollute the honour of the house of
Constantine.

When the two nephews of Constantine, Gallus and Julian, were saved from
the fury of the soldiers, the former was about twelve, and the latter
about six years of age; and as the eldest was thought to be of a sickly
constitution, they obtained with the less difficulty a precarious and
dependent life from the affected pity of Constantius, who was sensible
that the execution of these helpless orphans would have been esteemed,
by all mankind, an act of the most deliberate cruelty. Different cities
of Ionia and Bithynia were assigned for the places of their exile and
education; but as soon as their growing years excited the jealousy of the
emperor, he judged it more prudent to secure those unhappy youths in the
strong castle of Macellum, near Cæsarea.

The treatment which they experienced during a six years’ confinement
was partly such as they could hope from a careful guardian, and partly
such as they might dread from a suspicious tyrant. Their prison was an
ancient palace, the residence of the kings of Cappadocia; the situation
was pleasant, the building stately, the enclosure spacious. They pursued
their studies and practised their exercises under the tuition of the
most skilful masters, and the numerous household appointed to attend, or
rather to guard, the nephews of Constantine was not unworthy the dignity
of their birth. But they could not disguise to themselves that they were
deprived of fortune, of freedom, and of safety; secluded from the society
of all whom they could trust or esteem, and condemned to pass their
melancholy hours in the company of slaves, devoted to the commands of a
tyrant, who had already injured them beyond the hope of reconciliation.
At length, however, the emergencies of the state compelled the emperor,
or rather his eunuchs, to invest Gallus, in the twenty-fifth year of his
age, with the title of Cæsar, and to cement this political connection by
his marriage with the princess Constantina.

After a formal interview, in which the two princes mutually engaged
their faith never to undertake anything to the prejudice of each other,
they repaired without delay to their respective stations. Constantius
continued his march towards the west, and Gallus fixed his residence at
Antioch, from whence, with a delegated authority, he administered the
five great dioceses of the eastern prefecture. In this fortunate change
the new cæsar was not unmindful of his brother Julian, who obtained the
honours of his rank, the appearances of liberty, and the restitution of
an ample patrimony.

The writers the most indulgent to the memory of Gallus, and even Julian
himself, though he wished to cast a veil over the frailties of his
brother, are obliged to confess that the cæsar was incapable of reigning.
Transported from a prison to a throne, he possessed neither genius, nor
application, nor docility, to compensate for the want of knowledge and
experience. A temper naturally morose and violent, instead of being
corrected, was soured by solitude and adversity; the remembrance of what
he had endured disposed him to retaliation rather than to sympathy;
and the ungoverned sallies of his rage were often fatal to those who
approached his person, or were subject to his power.

Constantina, his wife, has been described, not as a woman, but as one
of the infernal furies, tormented with an insatiate thirst for human
blood. Instead of employing her influence to insinuate the mild counsels
of prudence and humanity, she exasperated the fierce passions of her
husband; and as she retained the vanity, though she had renounced the
gentleness, of her sex, a pearl necklace was esteemed an equivalent price
for the murder of an innocent and virtuous nobleman.[59] The cruelty of
Gallus was sometimes displayed in the undissembled violence of popular
or military executions; and was sometimes disguised by the abuse of law,
and the forms of judicial proceedings. The private houses of Antioch,
and the places of public resort, were besieged by spies and informers;
and the cæsar himself, concealed in a plebeian habit, very frequently
condescended to assume that odious character. Every apartment of the
palace was adorned with the instruments of death and torture, and a
general consternation was diffused through the capital of Syria. The
prince of the East, as if he had been conscious how much he had to fear,
and how little he deserved to reign, selected for the objects of his
resentment, the provincials accused of some imaginary treason, and his
own courtiers, whom with more reason he suspected of incensing, by their
secret correspondence, the timid and suspicious mind of Constantius.
But he forgot that he was depriving himself of his only support, the
affection of the people; whilst he furnished the malice of his enemies
with the arms of truth, and afforded the emperor the fairest pretence of
exacting the forfeit of his purple, and of his life.

As long as the civil war suspended the fate of the Roman world,
Constantius dissembled his knowledge of the weak and cruel administration
to which his choice had subjected the East; and the discovery of some
assassins secretly despatched to Antioch by the tyrant of Gaul, was
employed to convince the public that the emperor and the cæsar were
united by the same interest and pursued by the same enemies. But when
the victory was decided in favour of Constantius, his dependent colleague
became less useful and less formidable. Every circumstance of his conduct
was severely and suspiciously examined; and it was privately resolved,
either to deprive Gallus of the purple, or at least to remove him from
the indolent luxury of Asia to the hardships and dangers of a German
war. The death of Theophilus, consular of the province of Syria, who in
a time of scarcity had been massacred by the people of Antioch, with
the connivance, and almost at the instigation, of Gallus, was justly
resented, not only as an act of wanton cruelty, but as a dangerous insult
on the supreme majesty of Constantius. Two ministers of illustrious rank,
Domitian, the oriental prefect, and Montius, quæstor of the palace, were
empowered by a special commission to visit and reform the state of the
East. They were instructed to behave towards Gallus with moderation and
respect, and, by the gentlest arts of persuasion, to engage him to comply
with the invitation of his brother and colleague. The rashness of the
prefect disappointed these prudent measures, and hastened his own ruin,
as well as that of his enemy.

[Illustration: ROMAN KNIVES

(In the British Museum)]

On his arrival at Antioch, Domitian passed disdainfully before the gates
of the palace, and alleging a slight pretence of indisposition, continued
several days in sullen retirement to prepare an inflammatory memorial
which he transmitted to the imperial court. Yielding at length to the
pressing solicitations of Gallus, the prefect condescended to take his
seat in council, but his first step was to signify a concise and haughty
mandate, importing that the cæsar should immediately repair to Italy,
and threatening that he himself would punish his delay or hesitation by
suspending the usual allowance of his household. The nephew and daughter
of Constantine, who could ill brook the insolence of a subject, expressed
their resentment by instantly delivering Domitian to the custody of a
guard. The quarrel still admitted of some terms of accommodation. They
were rendered impracticable by the imprudent behaviour of Montius, a
statesman, whose art and experience were frequently betrayed by the
levity of his disposition. The quæstor reproached Gallus in haughty
language, that a prince who was scarcely authorised to remove a municipal
magistrate should presume to imprison a prætorian prefect; convoked
a meeting of the civil and military officers; and required them, in
the name of their sovereign, to defend the person and dignity of his
representatives.

By this rash declaration of war, Gallus was provoked to embrace the
most desperate councils. He ordered his guards to stand to their arms,
assembled the populace of Antioch, and recommended to their zeal the care
of his safety and revenge. His commands were too fatally obeyed. They
rudely seized the prefect and the quæstor, and tying their legs together
with ropes, they dragged them through the streets of the city, inflicted
a thousand insults and a thousand wounds on these unhappy victims, and at
last precipitated their mangled and lifeless bodies into the stream of
the Orontes.


THE FATE OF GALLUS

[Sidenote: [354 A.D.]]

After such a deed, whatever might have been the designs of Gallus,
it was only in a field of battle that he could assert his innocence
with any hope of success. But the mind of that prince was formed of
an equal mixture of violence and weakness. Instead of assuming the
title of Augustus, instead of employing in his defence the troops and
treasures of the East, he suffered himself to be deceived by the affected
tranquillity of Constantius, who, leaving him the vain pageantry of a
court, imperceptibly recalled the veteran legions from the provinces
of Asia. But as it still appeared dangerous to arrest Gallus in his
capital, the slow and safer arts of dissimulation were practised with
success. The frequent and pressing epistles of Constantius were filled
with professions of confidence and friendship; exhorting the cæsar to
discharge the duties of his high station, to relieve his colleague from
a part of the public cares, and to assist the West by his presence, his
counsels, and his arms. After so many reciprocal injuries, Gallus had
reason to fear and to distrust. But he had neglected the opportunities
of flight and of resistance; he was seduced by the flattering assurances
of the tribune Scudilo, who, under the semblance of a rough soldier,
disguised the most artful insinuation; and he depended on the credit
of his wife Constantina, till the unseasonable death of that princess
completed the ruin in which he had been involved by her impetuous
passions.

After a long delay, the reluctant cæsar set forward on his journey to
the imperial court. From Antioch to Hadrianopolis, he traversed the wide
extent of his dominions with a numerous and stately train; and as he
laboured to conceal his apprehension from the world, and perhaps from
himself, he entertained the people of Constantinople with an exhibition
of the games of the circus. The progress of the journey might, however,
have warned him of the impending danger. In all the principal cities he
was met by ministers of confidence, commissioned to seize the offices of
government, to observe his motions, and to prevent the hasty sallies of
his despair. The persons despatched to secure the provinces which he left
behind, passed him with cold salutations, or affected disdain; and the
troops, whose station lay along the public road, were studiously removed
on his approach, lest they might be tempted to offer their swords for
the service of a civil war. After Gallus had been permitted to repose
himself a few days at Hadrianopolis, he received a mandate, expressed in
the most haughty and absolute style, that his splendid retinue should
halt in that city, while the cæsar himself, with only ten post-carriages,
should hasten to the imperial residence at Mediolanum. In this rapid
journey, the profound respect which was due to the brother and colleague
of Constantius, was insensibly changed into rude familiarity; and Gallus,
discovering in the countenances of the attendants, that they already
considered themselves as his guards, and might soon be employed as his
executioners, began to accuse his fatal rashness, and to recollect
with terror and remorse the conduct by which he had provoked his fate.
The dissimulation which had hitherto been preserved, was laid aside at
Petovio in Pannonia. He was conducted to a palace in the suburbs, where
the general Barbatio, with a select band of soldiers, who could neither
be moved by pity, nor corrupted by rewards, expected the arrival of his
illustrious victim.

In the evening he was arrested, ignominiously stripped of the ensigns of
cæsar, and hurried away to Pola in Istria, a sequestered prison which
had been so recently polluted with royal blood. The horror which he felt
was soon increased by the appearance of his implacable enemy the eunuch
Eusebius, who, with the assistance of a notary and a tribune, proceeded
to interrogate him concerning the administration of the East. The cæsar
sank under the weight of shame and guilt, confessed all the criminal
actions, and all the treasonable designs, with which he was charged; and
by imputing them to the advice of his wife, exasperated the indignation
of Constantius, who reviewed with partial prejudice the minutes of the
examination.

The emperor was convinced that his own safety was incompatible with the
life of his cousin; the sentence of death was signed, despatched, and
executed; and the nephew of Constantine, with his hands tied behind his
back, was beheaded in prison like the vilest malefactor. Those who are
inclined to palliate the cruelties of Constantius, assert that he soon
relented, and endeavoured to recall the bloody mandate; but that the
second messenger intrusted with the reprieve was detained by the eunuchs,
who dreaded the unforgiving temper of Gallus, and were desirous of
reuniting to their empire the wealthy provinces of the East.


CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN

[Sidenote: [354-356 A.D.]]

Besides the reigning emperor, Julian alone survived, of all the numerous
posterity of Constantius Chlorus. The misfortune of his royal birth
involved him in the disgrace of Gallus. From his retirement in the happy
country of Ionia he was conveyed under a strong guard to the court
of Mediolanum, where he languished above seven months in continual
apprehension of suffering the same ignominious death, which was daily
inflicted, almost before his eyes, on the friends and adherents of his
persecuted family. His looks, his gestures, his silence, were scrutinised
with malignant curiosity, and he was perpetually assaulted by enemies
whom he had never offended, and by arts to which he was a stranger. But
in the school of adversity, Julian insensibly acquired the virtues of
firmness and discretion. He defended his honour, as well as his life,
against the ensnaring subtleties of the eunuchs, who endeavoured to
extort some declaration of his sentiments; and whilst he cautiously
suppressed his grief and resentment, he nobly disdained to flatter the
tyrant, by any seeming approbation of his brother’s murder. Julian most
devoutly ascribes his miraculous deliverance to the protection of the
gods, who had exempted his innocence from the sentence of destruction
pronounced by their justice against the impious house of Constantine.
As the most effectual instrument of their providence, he gratefully
acknowledges the steady and generous friendship of the empress Eusebia,
a woman of beauty and merit, who, by the ascendant which she had gained
over the mind of her husband, counterbalanced in some measure the
powerful conspiracy of the eunuchs. By the intercession of his patroness,
Julian was admitted into the imperial presence; he pleaded his cause
with a decent freedom, he was heard with favour; and, notwithstanding
the efforts of his enemies, who urged the danger of sparing an avenger
of the blood of Gallus, the milder sentiment of Eusebia prevailed in
the council. But the effects of a second interview were dreaded by
the eunuchs; and Julian was advised to withdraw for a while into the
neighbourhood of Mediolanum, till the emperor thought proper to assign
the city of Athens for the place of his honourable exile.

Whilst his hours were passed in studious retirement, the empress,
resolute to achieve the generous design which she had undertaken, was
not unmindful of the care of his fortune. After an obstinate, though
secret struggle, the opposition of the favourite eunuchs submitted to
the ascendency of the empress; and it was resolved that Julian, after
celebrating his nuptials with Helena, sister of Constantius, should be
appointed, with the title of Cæsar, to reign over the countries beyond
the Alps.

Although the order which recalled him to court was probably accompanied
by some intimation of his approaching greatness, he appeals to the people
of Athens to witness his tears of undissembled sorrow, when he was
reluctantly torn away from his beloved retirement.

The emperors of the age of Constantine no longer deigned to consult with
the senate in the choice of a colleague, but they were anxious that
their nomination should be ratified by the consent of the army. On this
solemn occasion, the guards, with the other troops whose stations were
in the neighbourhood of Mediolanum, appeared under arms; and Constantius
ascended his lofty tribunal, holding by the hand his cousin Julian, who
entered the same day on the twenty-fifth year of his age. In a studied
speech, conceived and delivered with dignity, the emperor represented
the various dangers which threatened the prosperity of the republic, the
necessity of naming a cæsar for the administration of the West, and his
own intention, if it was agreeable to their wishes, of rewarding with the
honours of the purple the promising virtues of the nephew of Constantine.

The two princes returned to the palace in the same chariot; and during
the slow procession, Julian repeated to himself a verse of his favourite
Homer, which he might equally apply to his fortune and to his fears.
The twenty-four days which the cæsar spent at Mediolanum after his
investiture, and the first months of his Gallic reign, were devoted to
a splendid but severe captivity; nor could the acquisition of honour
compensate for the loss of freedom.

The protection of the Rhætian frontier, and the persecution of the
western church, detained Constantius in Italy above eighteen months after
the departure of Julian. Before the emperor returned into the East, he
indulged his pride and curiosity in a visit to the ancient capital.

The satisfaction which Constantius had received from this journey excited
him to the generous emulation of bestowing on the Romans some memorial
of his own gratitude and munificence. His first idea was to imitate the
equestrian and colossal statue which he had seen in the forum of Trajan;
but when he had maturely weighed the difficulties of the execution, he
chose rather to embellish the capital by the gift of an Egyptian obelisk.


THE QUADIAN AND SARMATIAN WARS

The departure of Constantius from Rome was hastened by the alarming
intelligence of the distress and danger of the Illyrian provinces. The
distractions of civil war, and the irreparable loss which the Roman
legions had sustained in the battle of Mursa, exposed those countries,
almost without defence, to the light cavalry of the barbarians; and
particularly to the inroads of the Quadi, a fierce and powerful nation,
who seem to have exchanged the institutions of Germany for the arms and
military arts of their Sarmatian allies. The garrisons of the frontier
were insufficient to check their progress; and the indolent monarch was
at length compelled to assemble, from the extremities of his dominions,
the flower of the Palatine troops, to take the field in person, and
to employ a whole campaign, with the preceding autumn and the ensuing
spring, in the serious prosecution of the war. The emperor passed
the Danube on a bridge of boats, cut in pieces all that encountered
his march, penetrated into the heart of the country of the Quadi, and
severely retaliated the calamities which they had inflicted on the Roman
province. The dismayed barbarians were soon reduced to sue for peace;
they offered the restitution of his captive subjects, as an atonement for
the past, and the noblest hostages as a pledge of their future conduct.
While Constantius gave laws to the barbarians beyond the Danube, he
distinguished with specious compassion the Sarmatian exiles, who had been
expelled from their native country by the rebellion of their slaves,
and who formed a very considerable accession to the power of the Quadi.
The emperor, embracing a generous but artful system of policy, released
the Sarmatians from the bands of this humiliating dependence, and
restored them, by a separate treaty, to the dignity of a nation united
under the government of a king, the friend and ally of the republic. He
declared his resolution of asserting the justice of their cause, and of
securing the peace of the provinces by the extirpation, or at least the
banishment, of the Limigantes, whose manners were still infected with the
vices of their servile origin; and the final combat was only terminated
by the extinction of the name and nation of the Limigantes. The free
Sarmatians were reinstated in the possession of their ancient seats;
and although Constantius distrusted the levity of their character, he
entertained some hopes that a sense of gratitude might influence their
future conduct.


SAPOR’S INVASION OF MESOPOTAMIA

[Sidenote: [355-356 A.D.]]

While the Roman emperor and the Persian monarch, at the distance of three
thousand miles, defended their extreme limits against the barbarians of
the Danube and of the Oxus, their intermediate frontier experienced the
vicissitudes of a languid war, and a precarious truce. Two of the eastern
ministers of Constantius, the prætorian prefect Musonian, whose abilities
were disgraced by the want of truth and integrity, and Cassian, duke of
Mesopotamia, a hardy and veteran soldier, opened a secret negotiation
with the satrap Tamsapor. These overtures of peace, translated into the
servile and flattering language of Asia, were transmitted to the camp
of the Great King; who resolved to signify, by an ambassador, the terms
which he was inclined to grant to the suppliant Romans. Narses, whom he
invested with that character, was honourably received in his passage
through Antioch and Constantinople; he reached Sirmium after a long
journey, and at his first audience, respectfully unfolded the silken veil
which covered the haughty epistle of his sovereign. A few days after the
departure of Narses, three ambassadors were sent to the court of Sapor,
who was already returned from the Scythian expedition to his ordinary
residence of Ctesiphon. The ambassadors of Rome retired without success,
and a second embassy of a still more honourable rank was detained in
strict confinement, and threatened either with death or exile.

The military historian, Ammianus, who was himself despatched to observe
the army of the Persians as they were preparing to construct a bridge
of boats over the Tigris, beheld from an eminence the plain of Assyria,
as far as the edge of the horizon, covered with men, with horses, and
with arms. Sapor appeared in the front, conspicuous by the splendour of
his purple. The Roman deserter, who in some measure guided the councils
of Sapor, had prudently advised that instead of wasting the summer in
tedious and difficult sieges, he should march directly to the Euphrates,
and press forwards without delay to seize the feeble and wealthy
metropolis of Syria. But the Persians were no sooner advanced into the
plains of Mesopotamia than they discovered that every precaution had been
used which could retard their progress or defeat their design. Their
skilful guide, changing his plan of operations, then conducted the army
by a longer circuit, but through a fertile territory, towards the head
of the Euphrates, where the infant river is reduced to a shallow and
accessible stream. Sapor overlooked, with prudent disdain, the strength
of Nisibis; but as he passed under the walls of Amida, he resolved to
try whether the majesty of his presence would not awe the garrison
into immediate submission. The sacrilegious insult of a random dart,
which glanced against the royal tiara, convinced him of his error; and
the indignant monarch listened with impatience to the advice of his
ministers, who conjured him not to sacrifice the success of his ambition
to the gratification of his resentment. The following day Grumbates
advanced towards the gates with a select body of troops, and required
the instant surrender of the city as the only atonement which could
be accepted for such an act of rashness and insolence. His proposals
were answered by a general discharge, and his only son, a beautiful and
valiant youth, was pierced through the heart by a javelin shot from one
of the ballistæ.

The ancient city of Amid, or Amida, was provided with an arsenal of
military engines, and the ordinary garrison had been reinforced to
the amount of seven legions, when the place was invested by the arms
of Sapor. In one of the fiercest of his repeated assaults, Amida was
betrayed by the treachery of a deserter, who indicated to the barbarians
a secret and neglected staircase scooped out of the rock that hangs over
the stream of the Tigris. The soldiers, the citizens, their wives, their
children, all who had not time to escape through the opposite gate, were
involved by the conquerors in a promiscuous massacre.

But the ruin of Amida was the safety of the Roman provinces. As soon
as the first transports of victory had subsided, Sapor was at leisure
to reflect that to chastise a disobedient city, he had lost the flower
of his troops, and the most favourable season for conquest. Thirty
thousand of his veterans had fallen under the walls of Amida, during
the continuance of a siege which lasted seventy-three days; and the
disappointed monarch returned to his capital with affected triumph and
secret mortification. Instead of aspiring in the ensuing spring to
the conquest of the East, he was obliged to content himself with the
reduction of two fortified cities of Mesopotamia, Singara, and Bezabde.
Five Roman legions, of the diminutive size to which they had been reduced
in the age of Constantine, were made prisoners, and sent into remote
captivity on the extreme confines of Persia. After dismantling the walls
of Singara, the conqueror abandoned that solitary and sequestered place;
but he carefully restored the fortifications of Bezabde, and fixed in
that important post a garrison or colony of veterans, amply supplied with
every means of defence, and animated by high sentiments of honour and
fidelity.

The defence of the East against the arms of Sapor required, and would
have exercised, the abilities of the most consummate general; and it
seemed fortunate for the state, that it was the actual province of the
brave Ursicinus, who alone deserved the confidence of the soldiers and
people. In the hour of danger, Ursicinus was removed from his station
by the intrigues of the eunuchs; and the military command of the
East was bestowed, by the same influence, on Sabinian, a wealthy and
subtle veteran, who had attained the infirmities, without acquiring
the experience, of age. By a second order, which issued from the same
jealous and inconstant counsels, Ursicinus was again despatched to the
frontier of Mesopotamia, and condemned to sustain the labours of a war,
the honours of which had been transferred to his unworthy rival. Sabinian
fixed his indolent station under the walls of Edessa, and whenever
Ursicinus recommended any vigorous plan of operations to relieve the
distress of Amida, the timid and envious commander alleged that he was
restrained by his positive orders from endangering the safety of the
troops. Amida was at length taken; its bravest defenders, who had escaped
the sword of the barbarians, died in the Roman camp by the hand of the
executioner; and Ursicinus himself, after supporting the disgrace of
a partial inquiry, was punished for the misconduct of Sabinian by the
loss of his military rank. After Constantius had subdued or pacified
the barbarians of the Danube, he proceeded by slow marches into the
East; and after he had wept over the smoking ruins of Amida, he formed
with a powerful army the siege of Bezabde. The walls were shaken by the
reiterated efforts of the most enormous of the battering-rams; the town
was reduced to the last extremity; but it was still defended by the
patient and intrepid valour of the garrison, till the approach of the
rainy season obliged the emperor to raise the siege, and ingloriously to
retreat into his winter quarters at Antioch. The pride of Constantius,
and the ingenuity of his courtiers, were at a loss to discover any
materials for panegyric in the events of the Persian War; while the glory
of his cousin Julian, to whose military command he had intrusted the
provinces of Gaul, was proclaimed to the world in the concise narrative
of his exploits.


JULIAN IN GAUL

[Sidenote: [356-357 A.D.]]

In the blind fury of civil discord, Constantius had abandoned to the
barbarians of Germany the countries of Gaul, which still acknowledged
the authority of his rival. A numerous swarm of Franks and Alamanni were
invited to cross the Rhine by presents and promises, by the hopes of
spoil, and by a perpetual grant of all the territories which they might
subdue.

Julian had been sent to Gaul immediately after he had received the purple
at Mediolanum, with a feeble retinue of 360 soldiers. At Vienna, where he
passed a painful and anxious winter in the hands of those ministers to
whom Constantius had intrusted the direction of his conduct, the cæsar
was informed of the siege and deliverance of Augustodunum. That large and
ancient city, protected only by a ruined wall and pusillanimous garrison,
was saved by the generous resolution of a few veterans, who resumed their
arms for the defence of their country. In his march from Augustodunum,
through the heart of the Gallic provinces, Julian embraced with ardour
the earliest opportunity of signalising his courage. At the head of a
small body of archers and heavy cavalry, he preferred the shorter but
the more dangerous of two roads; and sometimes eluding, and sometimes
resisting, the attacks of the barbarians, he arrived with honour and
safety at the Roman camp near Rheims. The aspect of their young prince
revived the drooping spirit of the soldiers, and they marched from Rheims
in search of the enemy with a confidence which had almost proved fatal
to them. The Alamanni, familiarised to the knowledge of the country,
secretly collected their scattered forces, and seizing the opportunity of
a dark and rainy day, poured with unexpected fury on the rear-guard of
the Romans. Before the inevitable disorder could be remedied, two legions
were destroyed; and Julian was taught by experience, that caution and
vigilance are the most important lessons of the art of war. In a second
and more successful action, he recovered and established his military
fame; but as the agility of the barbarians saved them from the pursuit,
his victory was neither bloody nor decisive. He advanced, however, to
the banks of the Rhine, surveyed the ruins of Cologne,[60] convinced
himself of the difficulties of the war, and retreated on the approach
of winter, discontented with the court, with his army, and with his own
success. The power of the enemy was yet unbroken, and the cæsar had no
sooner separated his troops, and fixed his own quarters at Sens, in
the centre of Gaul, than he was surrounded and besieged by a numerous
host of Germans. Reduced in this extremity to the resources of his own
mind, he displayed a prudent intrepidity, which compensated for all the
deficiencies of the place and garrison; and the barbarians, at the end of
thirty days, were obliged to retire with disappointed rage.

The conscious pride of Julian, who was indebted only to his sword for
this signal deliverance, was embittered by the reflection that he was
abandoned, betrayed, and perhaps devoted to destruction, by those who
were bound to assist him by every tie of honour and fidelity. Marcellus,
master-general of the cavalry in Gaul, interpreting too strictly the
jealous orders of the court, beheld with supine indifference the distress
of Julian, and had restrained the troops under his command from marching
to the relief of Sens. If the cæsar had dissembled in silence so
dangerous an insult, his person and authority would have been exposed to
the contempt of the world; and if an action so criminal had been suffered
to pass with impunity, the emperor would have confirmed the suspicions
which received a very specious colour from his past conduct towards
the princes of the Flavian family. Marcellus was recalled and gently
dismissed from his office. In his room Severus was appointed general of
the cavalry; an experienced soldier, of approved courage and fidelity,
who could advise with respect and execute with zeal and who submitted,
without reluctance, to the supreme command which Julian, by the interest
of his patroness Eusebia, at length obtained over the armies of Gaul.

A very judicious plan of operations was adopted for the approaching
campaign. Julian himself, at the head of the remains of the veteran
bands and of some new levies, boldly penetrated into the centre of the
German cantonments and carefully re-established the fortifications
of Saverne[61] in an advantageous post, which would either check the
incursions or intercept the retreat of the enemy. At the same time
Barbatio, general of the infantry, advanced from Mediolanum with an army
of thirty thousand men, and passing the mountains, prepared to throw a
bridge over the Rhine near Basilia. It was reasonable to expect that
the Alamanni, pressed on either side by the Roman arms, would soon be
forced to evacuate the provinces of Gaul, and to hasten to the defence
of their native country. But the hopes of the campaign were defeated by
the incapacity, or the envy, or the secret instructions, of Barbatio,
who acted as if he had been the enemy of the cæsar, and the secret ally
of the barbarians. The negligence with which he permitted a troop of
pillagers freely to pass, and to return almost before the gates of his
camp, may be imputed to his want of abilities; but the treasonable act of
burning a number of boats, and a superfluous stock of provisions, which
would have been of the most essential service to the army of Gaul, was
an evidence of his hostile and criminal intentions. The Germans despised
an enemy who appeared destitute either of power or of inclination to
offend them; and the ignominious retreat of Barbatio deprived Julian of
the expected support, and left him to extricate himself from a hazardous
situation, where he could neither remain with safety, nor retire with
honour.


JULIAN REPULSES THE ALAMANNI AND THE FRANKS

[Sidenote: [357-358 A.D.]]

As soon as they were delivered from the fears of invasion, the Alamanni
prepared to chastise the Roman youth, who presumed to dispute the
possession of that country, which they claimed as their own by the
right of conquest and of treaties. They employed three days and as
many nights, in transporting over the Rhine their military powers.
The fierce Chnodomar, shaking the ponderous javelin which he had
victoriously wielded against the brother of Magnentius, led the van of
the barbarians, and moderated by his experience the martial ardour which
his example inspired. He was followed by six other kings, by ten princes
of regal extraction, by a long train of high-spirited nobles, and by
thirty-five thousand of the bravest warriors of the tribes of Germany.
The confidence derived from the view of their own strength was increased
by the intelligence which they received from a deserter, that the cæsar,
with a feeble army of thirteen thousand men, occupied a post about
one-and-twenty miles from their camp of Strasburg.

With this inadequate force, Julian resolved to encounter the barbarian
host; and the chance of a general action was preferred to the tedious
and uncertain operation of separately engaging the dispersed parties of
the Alamanni. The Romans marched in close order, and in two columns, the
cavalry on the right, the infantry on the left; and the day was so far
spent when they appeared in sight of the enemy, that Julian was desirous
of deferring the battle till the next morning, and of allowing his troops
to recruit their exhausted strength by the necessary refreshments of
sleep and food. Yielding, however, with some reluctance to the clamours
of the soldiers, and even to the opinion of his council, he exhorted
them to justify by their valour the eager impatience, which, in case of
a defeat, would be universally branded with the epithets of rashness and
presumption. The trumpets sounded, the military shout was heard through
the field, and the two armies rushed with equal fury to the charge. The
cæsar, who conducted in person his right wing, depended on the dexterity
of his archers and the weight of his cuirassiers. But his ranks were
instantly broken by an irregular mixture of light horse and of light
infantry, and he had the mortification of beholding the flight of six
hundred of his most renowned cuirassiers. The fugitives were stopped and
rallied by the presence and authority of Julian, who, careless of his own
safety, threw himself before them, and, urging every motive of shame and
honour, led them back against the victorious enemy. The conflict between
the two lines of infantry was obstinate and bloody. The Germans possessed
the superiority of strength and stature, the Romans that of discipline
and temper; and as the barbarians, who served under the standard of the
empire, united the respective advantages of both parties, their strenuous
efforts, guided by a skilful leader, at length determined the event of
the day.

The Romans lost four tribunes and 243 soldiers in this memorable battle
of Strasburg, which was so glorious to the cæsar and so salutary to the
afflicted provinces of Gaul. Six thousand of the Alamanni were slain in
the field, without including those who were drowned in the Rhine, or
transfixed with darts while they attempted to swim across the river.
Chnodomar himself was surrounded and taken prisoner, with three of
his brave companions who had devoted themselves to follow in life or
death the fate of their chieftain. Julian received him with military
pomp in the council of his officers; and expressing a generous pity
for the fallen state, dissembled his inward contempt for the abject
humiliation of his captive. Instead of exhibiting the vanquished king
of the Alamanni, as a grateful spectacle to the cities of Gaul, he
respectfully laid at the feet of the emperor this splendid trophy of his
victory. Chnodomar experienced an honourable treatment, but the impatient
barbarian could not long survive his defeat, his confinement, and his
exile.

After Julian had repulsed the Alamanni from the provinces of the
upper Rhine, he turned his arms against the Franks, who were seated
nearer to the ocean on the confines of Gaul and Germany; and who, from
their numbers, and still more from their intrepid valour, had ever
been esteemed the most formidable of the barbarians. Although they
were strongly actuated by the allurements of rapine, they professed
a disinterested love of war, which they considered as the supreme
honour and felicity of human nature; and their minds and bodies were so
completely hardened by perpetual action, that, according to the lively
expression of an orator, the snows of winter were as pleasant to them
as the flowers of spring. In the month of December which followed the
battle of Strasburg, Julian attacked a body of six hundred Franks, who
had thrown themselves into two castles on the Mosa. In that severe season
they sustained, with inflexible constancy, a siege of fifty-four days;
till at length, exhausted by hunger, and satisfied that the vigilance of
the enemy in breaking the ice of the river left them no hopes of escape,
the Franks consented, for the first time, to dispense with the ancient
law, which commanded them to conquer or to die.

The cæsar at once sent his captives to the court of Constantius, who,
accepting them as a valuable present, rejoiced in the opportunity of
adding so many heroes to the choicest troops of his domestic guards. The
obstinate resistance of this handful of Franks apprised Julian of the
difficulties of the expedition which he meditated for the ensuing spring,
against the whole body of the nation. His rapid diligence surprised
and astonished the active barbarians. Ordering his soldiers to provide
themselves with biscuit for twenty days, he suddenly pitched his camp
near Tongres, while the enemy still supposed him in his winter quarters
at Paris, expecting the slow arrival of his convoys from Aquitania.
Without allowing the Franks to unite or deliberate, he skilfully spread
his legions from Cologne to the ocean; and by the terror as well as by
the success of his arms, soon reduced the suppliant tribes to implore
the clemency and to obey the commands of their conqueror. The Chamavians
submissively retired to their former habitations beyond the Rhine,
but the Salians were permitted to possess their new establishment of
Toxandria as the subjects and auxiliaries of the Roman Empire. The treaty
was ratified by solemn oaths, and perpetual inspectors were appointed
to reside among the Franks with the authority of enforcing the strict
observance of the conditions. An incident is related, interesting enough
in itself and by no means repugnant to the character of Julian, who
ingeniously contrived both the plot and the catastrophe of the tragedy.
When the Chamavians sued for peace, he required the son of their king as
the only hostage on whom he could rely. A mournful silence, interrupted
by tears and groans, declared the sad perplexity of the barbarians; and
their aged chief lamented in pathetic language that his private loss was
now embittered by a sense of the public calamity. While the Chamavians
lay prostrate at the foot of his throne, the royal captive, whom they
believed to have been slain, unexpectedly appeared before their eyes;
and as soon as the tumult of joy was hushed into attention, the cæsar
addressed the assembly in the following terms: “Behold the son, the
prince whom you wept. You had lost him by your fault. God and the Romans
have restored him to you. I shall still preserve and educate the youth,
rather as a monument of my own virtue than as a pledge of your sincerity.
Should you presume to violate the faith which you have sworn, the arms
of the republic will avenge the perfidy not on the innocent but on the
guilty.” The barbarians withdrew from his presence, impressed with the
warmest sentiments of gratitude and admiration.


EXPEDITION BEYOND THE RHINE

[Illustration: A GERMAN ARCHER]

[Sidenote: [358-359 A.D.]]

It was not enough for Julian to have delivered the provinces of Gaul from
the barbarians of Germany. He aspired to emulate the glory of the first
and most illustrious of the emperors, after whose example he composed
his own commentaries of the Gallic War. Cæsar has related with conscious
pride the manner in which he twice passed the Rhine. Julian could boast
that before he assumed the title of Augustus, he had carried the Roman
eagles beyond that great river in three successful expeditions. The
consternation of the Germans after the battle of Strasburg encouraged
him to the first attempt, and the reluctance of the troops soon yielded
to the persuasive eloquence of a leader who shared the fatigues and
dangers which he imposed on the meanest of the soldiers. The villages
on either side of the Mœnus (Main), which were plentifully stored with
corn and cattle, felt the ravages of an invading army. The principal
houses, constructed with some imitation of Roman elegance, were consumed
by the flames; and the cæsar boldly advanced about ten miles, till his
progress was stopped by a dark and impenetrable forest, undermined by
subterraneous passages, which threatened, with secret snares and ambush,
every step of the assailants.

The ground was already covered with snow; and Julian, after repairing
an ancient castle which had been erected by Trajan, granted a truce of
ten months to the submissive barbarians. At the expiration of the truce
Julian undertook a second expedition beyond the Rhine to humble the pride
of Surmar and Hortaire, two of the kings of the Alamanni, who had been
present at the battle of Strasburg. They promised to restore all the
Roman captives who yet remained alive; and as the cæsar had procured an
exact account from the cities and villages of Gaul of the inhabitants
whom they had lost, he detected every attempt to deceive him with a
degree of readiness and accuracy which almost established the belief of
his supernatural knowledge.

His third expedition was still more splendid and important than the
two former. The Germans had collected their military powers and moved
along the opposite banks of the river with a design of destroying the
bridge and of preventing the passage of the Romans. But this judicious
plan of defence was disconcerted by a skilful diversion. Three hundred
light-armed and active soldiers were detached in forty small boats, to
fall down the stream in silence, and to land at some distance from the
posts of the enemy. They executed their orders with so much boldness
and celerity that they had almost surprised the barbarian chiefs, who
returned in the fearless confidence of intoxication from one of their
nocturnal festivals. Without repeating the uniform and disgusting tale
of slaughter and devastation, it is sufficient to observe that Julian
dictated his own conditions of peace to six of the haughtiest kings of
the Alamanni, three of whom were permitted to view the severe discipline
and martial pomp of a Roman camp. Followed by twenty thousand captives,
whom he had rescued from the chains of the barbarians, the cæsar repassed
the Rhine, after terminating a war, the success of which has been
compared to the ancient glories of the Punic and Cimbric victories.


JULIAN AS CIVIC RULER

[Sidenote: [359-360 A.D.]]

As soon as the valour and conduct of Julian had secured an interval
of peace, he applied himself to a work more congenial to his humane
and philosophic temper. The cities of Gaul, which had suffered from
the inroads of the barbarians, he diligently repaired; and seven
important posts, between Mogontiacum and the mouth of the Rhine, are
mentioned, as having been rebuilt and fortified by order of Julian. The
vanquished Germans had submitted to the just but humiliating condition
of preparing and conveying the necessary materials. The active zeal
of Julian urged the prosecution of the work, and such was the spirit
which he diffused among the troops that the auxiliaries themselves,
waiving their exemption from any duties of fatigue, contended in the
most servile labours with the diligence of the Roman soldiers. It was
incumbent on the cæsar to provide for the subsistence, as well as for
the safety, of the inhabitants and of the garrisons. The desertion of
the former, and the mutiny of the latter, must have been the fatal and
inevitable consequences of famine. The tillage of the provinces of Gaul
had been interrupted by the calamities of war; but the scanty harvests
of the continent were supplied, by his paternal care, from the plenty
of the adjacent island. Six hundred large barks, framed in the forest
of the Ardennes, made several voyages to the coast of Britain; and,
returning laden with corn, sailed up the Rhine, and distributed their
cargoes to the several towns and fortresses along the banks of the river.
The arms of Julian had restored a free and secure navigation, which
Constantius had offered to purchase at the expense of his dignity, and
of a tributary present of two thousand pounds of silver. The emperor
parsimoniously refused to his soldiers the sums which he granted with a
lavish and trembling hand to the barbarians. The dexterity, as well as
the firmness, of Julian was put to a severe trial, when he took the field
with a discontented army which had already served two campaigns without
receiving any regular pay or any extraordinary donative.

A tender regard for the peace and happiness of his subjects was the
ruling principle which directed, or seemed to direct, the administration
of Julian. He devoted the leisure of his winter quarters to the offices
of civil government; and affected to assume, with more pleasure, the
character of a magistrate, than that of a general. Before he took the
field, he devolved on the provincial governors most of the public and
private causes which had been referred to his tribunal; but, on his
return, he carefully revised their proceedings, mitigated the rigour
of the law, and pronounced a second judgment on the judges themselves.
Superior to the last temptation of virtuous minds, and indiscreet and
intemperate zeal for justice, he restrained with calmness and dignity
the warmth of an advocate who prosecuted, for extortion, the president
of the Narbonnese province. “Who will ever be found guilty,” exclaimed
the vehement Delphidius, “if it be enough to deny?” “And who,” replied
Julian, “will ever be innocent, if it be sufficient to affirm?”

In the general administration of peace and war the interest of the
sovereign is commonly the same as that of his people; but Constantius
would have thought himself deeply injured if the virtues of Julian had
defrauded him of any part of the tribute which he extorted from an
oppressed and exhausted country. The prince who was invested with the
ensigns of royalty might sometimes presume to correct the rapacious
insolence of his inferior agents; to expose their corrupt arts, and to
introduce an equal and easier mode of collection. But the management of
the finances was more safely entrusted to Florentius, prætorian prefect
of Gaul, an effeminate tyrant, incapable of pity or remorse; and the
haughty minister complained of the most decent and gentle opposition,
while Julian himself was rather inclined to censure the weakness of his
own behaviour. The cæsar had rejected with abhorrence a mandate for the
levy of an extraordinary tax, a new superindiction, which the prefect had
offered for his signature; and the faithful picture of the public misery,
by which he had been obliged to justify his refusal, offended the court
of Constantius.

We may enjoy reading of the sentiments of Julian, as he expresses them
with warmth and freedom, in a letter to one of his most intimate friends.
After stating his own conduct, he proceeds in the following terms: “Was
it possible for the disciple of Plato and Aristotle to act otherwise
than I have done? Could I abandon the unhappy subjects entrusted to my
care? Was I not called upon to defend them from the repeated injuries of
these unfeeling robbers? A tribune who deserts his post is punished with
death, and deprived of the honours of burial. With what justice could I
pronounce his sentence, if, in the hour of danger, I myself neglected
a duty far more sacred and far more important? God has placed me in
this elevated post--His providence will guard and support me. Should I
be condemned to suffer, I shall derive comfort from the testimony of a
pure and upright conscience. Would to heaven that I still possessed a
counsellor like Sallust! If they think proper to send me a successor, I
shall submit without reluctance; and had much rather improve the short
opportunity of doing good, than enjoy a long and lasting impunity of
evil.” The precarious and dependent situation of Julian displayed his
virtues and concealed his defects. The young hero, who supported in Gaul
the throne of Constantius, was not permitted to reform the vices of the
government; but he had courage to alleviate or to pity the distress of
the people. Unless he had been able to revive the martial spirit of the
Romans, or to introduce the arts of industry and refinement among their
savage enemies, he could not entertain any rational hopes of securing
the public tranquillity either by the peace or conquest of Germany. Yet
the victories of Julian suspended for a short time the inroads of the
barbarians, and delayed the ruin of the Western Empire.

His salutary influence restored the cities of Gaul, which had been
so long exposed to the evils of civil discord, barbarian war, and
domestic tyranny; and the spirit of industry was revived with the hope
of enjoyment. Agriculture, manufactures, and commerce again flourished
under the protection of the laws; and the curiæ, or civil corporations,
were again filled with useful and respectable members; the youth were
no longer apprehensive of marriage, and married persons were no longer
apprehensive of posterity; the public and private festivals were
celebrated with customary pomp, and the frequent and secure intercourse
of the provinces displayed the image of national prosperity. A mind like
that of Julian must have felt the general happiness of which he was the
author, but he viewed with peculiar satisfaction and complacency the
city of Paris, the seat of his winter residence and the object even of
his partial affection. That splendid capital, which now embraces an
ample territory on either side of the Seine, was originally confined to
the small island in the midst of the river, from whence the inhabitants
derived a supply of pure water. The river bathed the foot of the walls,
and the town was accessible only by two wooden bridges.

A forest overspread the northern side of the Seine, but on the south,
the ground, which now bears the name of the university, was covered with
houses and adorned with a palace and amphitheatre, baths, an aqueduct,
and a Field of Mars for the exercise of the Roman troops. The severity
of the climate was tempered by the neighbourhood of the ocean; and with
some precautions, which experience had taught, the vine and fig tree
were successfully cultivated. But, in remarkable winters, the Seine
was deeply frozen; and the huge pieces of ice that floated down the
stream, might be compared, by an Asiatic, to the blocks of white marble
which were extracted from the quarries of Phrygia. The licentiousness
and corruption of Antioch recalled to the memory of Julian the severe
and simple manners of his beloved Lutetia, where the amusements of
the theatre were unknown or despised. He indignantly contrasted the
effeminate Syrians with the brave and honest simplicity of the Gauls,
and almost forgave the intemperance, which was the only stain of the
Celtic character. If Julian could now revisit the capital of France, he
might converse with men of science and genius, capable of understanding
and of instructing a disciple of the Greeks; he might excuse the lively
and graceful follies of a nation, whose martial spirit has never been
enervated by the indulgence of luxury, and he must applaud the perfection
of that inestimable art, which softens and refines and embellishes the
intercourse of social life.


THE JEALOUSY OF CONSTANTIUS

While the Romans languished under the ignominious tyranny of eunuchs and
bishops, the praises of Julian were repeated with transport in every
part of the empire, except in the palace of Constantius. The barbarians
of Germany had felt, and still dreaded, the arms of the young cæsar; his
soldiers were the companions of his victory; the grateful provincials
enjoyed the blessings of his reign; but the favourites, who had opposed
his elevation, were offended by his virtues; and they justly considered
the friend of the people as the enemy of the court. As long as the fame
of Julian was doubtful, the buffoons of the palace, who were skilled
in the language of satire, tried the efficacy of those arts which they
had so often practised with success. They easily discovered that his
simplicity was not exempt from affectation; the ridiculous epithets of
a hairy savage, of an ape invested with the purple, were applied to the
dress and person of the philosophic warrior; and his modest despatches
were stigmatised as the vain and elaborate fictions of a loquacious
Greek, a speculative soldier, who had studied the art of war amidst
the groves of the academy. The voice of malicious folly was at length
silenced by the shouts of victory; the conqueror of the Franks and
Alamanni could no longer be painted as an object of contempt; and the
monarch himself was meanly ambitious of stealing from his lieutenant the
honourable reward of his labours. In the letters crowned with laurel,
which, according to ancient custom, were addressed to the provinces,
the name of Julian was omitted. Constantius had made his dispositions
in person; he had signalised his valour in the foremost ranks; his
military conduct had secured the victory; and the captive king of the
barbarians was presented to him on the field of battle, from which he
was at that time distant about forty days’ journey. So extravagant a
fable was incapable, however, of deceiving the public credulity, or even
of satisfying the pride of the emperor himself. Secretly conscious that
the applause and favour of the Romans accompanied the rising fortunes of
Julian, his discontented mind was prepared to receive the subtle poison
of those artful sycophants, who coloured their mischievous designs with
the fairest appearances of truth and candour. Instead of depreciating
the merits of Julian, they acknowledged, and even exaggerated, his
popular fame, superior talents, and important services. But they darkly
insinuated that the virtues of the cæsar might instantly be converted
into the most dangerous crimes, if the inconstant multitude should prefer
their inclinations to their duty; or if the general of a victorious
army should be tempted from his allegiance by the hopes of revenge, and
independent greatness.

[Illustration: ROMAN LIGHT BATTERING-RAM]

[Sidenote: [360 A.D.]]

The apparent tranquillity of Gaul, and the imminent danger of the
eastern provinces, offered a specious pretence for the design which was
artfully concerted by the imperial ministers. They resolved to disarm
the cæsar; to recall those faithful troops who guarded his person and
dignity; and to employ, in a distant war against the Persian monarch,
the hardy veterans who had vanquished, on the banks of the Rhine, the
fiercest nations of Germany. While Julian used the laborious hours of
his winter quarters at Paris in the administration of power, which, in
his hands, was the exercise of virtue, he was surprised by the hasty
arrival of a tribune and a notary, with positive orders from the emperor
which they were directed to execute, and he was commanded not to oppose.
Constantius signified his pleasure, that four entire legions, the Celtæ
and Petulants, the Heruli, and the Batavians, should be separated from
the standard of Julian, under which they had acquired their fame and
discipline; that in each of the remaining bands three hundred of the
bravest youths should be selected; and that this numerous detachment,
the strength of the Gallic army, should instantly begin their march,
and exert their utmost diligence to arrive, before the opening of the
campaign, on the frontiers of Persia. The cæsar foresaw and lamented the
consequences of this fatal mandate. Most of the auxiliaries, who engaged
their voluntary service, had stipulated that they should never be obliged
to pass the Alps. The public faith of Rome and the personal honour of
Julian had been pledged for the observance of this condition. Such an act
of treachery and oppression would destroy the confidence and excite the
resentment of the independent warriors of Germany, who considered truth
as the noblest of their virtues, and freedom as the most valuable of
their possessions. The legionaries, who enjoyed the titles and privileges
of Romans, were enlisted for the general defence of the republic; but
those mercenary troops heard with cold indifference the antiquated names
of the republic and of Rome. Attached, either from birth or long habit,
to the climate and manners of Gaul, they loved and admired Julian; they
despised, and perhaps hated, the emperor; they dreaded the laborious
march, the Persian arrows, and the burning deserts of Asia. They claimed
as their own the country which they had saved; and excused their want
of spirit, by pleading the sacred and more immediate duty of protecting
their families and friends.

The apprehensions of the Gauls were derived from the knowledge of the
inevitable danger. As soon as the provinces were exhausted of their
military strength, the Germans would violate a treaty which had been
imposed on their fears; and, notwithstanding the abilities and valour
of Julian, the general of a nominal army, to whom the public calamities
would be imputed, must find himself, after a vain resistance, either a
prisoner in the camp of the barbarians, or a criminal in the palace of
Constantius. If Julian complied with the orders which he had received,
he would subscribe to his own destruction, and that of a people who
deserved his affection. But a positive refusal was an act of rebellion,
and a declaration of war. The inexorable jealousy of the emperor, the
peremptory, and perhaps insidious, nature of his commands, left not any
room for a fair apology or candid interpretation; and the dependent
station of the cæsar scarcely allowed him to pause or to deliberate.
Solitude increased the perplexity of Julian; he could no longer apply to
the faithful counsels of Sallust, who had been removed from his office
by the judicious malice of the eunuchs. Unable to resist, unwilling to
comply, Julian expressed, in the most serious terms, his wish, and even
his intention of resigning the purple, which he could not preserve with
honour, but which he could not abdicate with safety.

After a painful conflict, Julian was compelled to acknowledge that
obedience was the virtue of the most eminent subject; and that the
sovereign alone was entitled to judge of the public welfare. He issued
the necessary orders for carrying into execution the commands of
Constantius; a part of the troops began their march for the Alps; and the
detachments from the several garrisons moved towards their respective
places of assembly. They advanced with difficulty through the trembling
and affrighted crowds of provincials, who attempted to excite their
pity by silent despair, or loud lamentations; while the wives of the
soldiers, holding their infants in their arms, accused the desertion of
their husbands, in the mixed language of grief, of tenderness, and of
indignation. This scene of general distress afflicted the humanity of
the cæsar; he granted a sufficient number of post-wagons to transport
the wives and families of the soldiers, endeavoured to alleviate the
hardships which he was constrained to inflict, and increased, by the
most laudable arts, his own popularity, and the discontent of the exiled
troops.


JULIAN ACCLAIMED AUGUSTUS

As soon as the approach of the troops was announced, the cæsar went out
to meet them, and ascended his tribunal, which had been erected in a
plain before the gates of the city. After distinguishing the officers and
soldiers who by their rank or merit deserved a peculiar attention, Julian
addressed himself in a studied oration to the surrounding multitude; he
celebrated their exploits with grateful applause; encouraged them to
accept, with alacrity, the honour of serving under the eye of a powerful
and liberal monarch; and admonished them, that the commands of the
augustus required an instant and cheerful obedience. The soldiers, who
were apprehensive of offending their general by an indecent clamour, or
of belying their sentiments by false and venal acclamations, maintained
an obstinate silence, and, after a short pause, were dismissed to their
quarters. The principal officers were entertained by the cæsar, who
professed, in the warmest language of friendship, his desire and his
inability to reward, according to their deserts, the brave companions of
his victories. They retired from the feast full of grief and perplexity;
and lamented the hardship of their fate, which tore them from their
beloved general and their native country.

The only expedient which could prevent their separation was boldly
agitated and approved; the popular resentment was insensibly moulded into
a regular conspiracy; their just reasons of complaint were heightened by
passion, and their passions were inflamed by wine; as on the eve of their
departure the troops were indulged in licentious festivity. At the hour
of midnight, the impetuous multitude, with swords, and bows, and torches
in their hands, rushed into the suburbs; encompassed the palace, and
careless of future dangers, pronounced the fatal and irrevocable words,
JULIAN AUGUSTUS! The prince, whose anxious suspense was interrupted by
their disorderly acclamations, secured the doors against their intrusion;
and, as long as it was in his power, secluded his person and dignity from
the accidents of a nocturnal tumult. At the dawn of day, the soldiers,
whose zeal was irritated by opposition, forcibly entered the palace,
seized, with respectful violence, the object of their choice, guarded
Julian with drawn swords through the streets of Paris, placed him on
the tribunal, and with repeated shouts saluted him as their emperor.
Prudence as well as loyalty inculcated the propriety of resisting their
treasonable designs, and of preparing, for his oppressed virtue, the
excuse of violence.

Addressing himself by turns to the multitude and to individuals, he
implored their mercy, and expressed his indignation; conjured them not to
sully the fame of their immortal victories; and ventured to promise, that
if they would immediately return to their allegiance, he would undertake
to obtain from the emperor, not only a free and gracious pardon, but even
the revocation of the orders which had excited their resentment. But the
soldiers, who were conscious of their guilt, chose rather to depend on
the gratitude of Julian, than on the clemency of the emperor. Their zeal
was insensibly turned into impatience, and their impatience into rage.
The inflexible cæsar sustained, till the third hour of the day, their
prayers, their reproaches, and their menaces; nor did he yield, till he
had been repeatedly assured, that if he wished to live, he must consent
to reign. He was exalted on a shield in the presence, and amidst the
unanimous acclamations, of the troops; a rich military collar, which
was offered by chance, supplied the want of a diadem; the ceremony was
concluded by the promise of a moderate donative; and the new emperor,
overwhelmed with real or affected grief, retired into the most secret
recesses of his apartment.

[Illustration: PROWS OF ROMAN WAR GALLEYS]

To moderate the zeal of his party, to protect the persons of his enemies,
to defeat and to despise the secret enterprises which were formed against
his life and dignity, were the cares which employed the first days of the
reign of the new emperor. Although he was firmly resolved to maintain
the station which he had assumed, he was still desirous of saving his
country from the calamities of civil war, of declining a contest with
the superior forces of Constantius, and of preserving his own character
from the reproach of perfidy and ingratitude. Adorned with the ensigns of
military and imperial pomp, Julian showed himself in the Field of Mars
to the soldiers, who glowed with ardent enthusiasm in the cause of their
pupil, their leader, and their friend. He recapitulated their victories,
lamented their sufferings, applauded their resolution, animated their
hopes, and checked their impetuosity; nor did he dismiss the assembly,
till he had obtained a solemn promise from the troops that if the emperor
of the East would subscribe an equitable treaty, they would renounce any
views of conquest, and satisfy themselves with the tranquil possession of
the Gallic provinces. On this foundation he composed, in his own name,
and in that of the army, a specious and moderate epistle, which was
delivered to Pentadius, his master of the offices, and to his chamberlain
Eutherius; two ambassadors whom he appointed to receive the answer, and
observe the dispositions of Constantius. This epistle is inscribed with
the modest appellation of Cæsar; but Julian solicits, in a peremptory,
though respectful manner, the confirmation of the title of Augustus. He
acknowledges the irregularity of his own election; while he justifies
in some measure the resentment and violence of the troops which had
extorted his reluctant consent. He allows the supremacy of his brother
Constantius; and engages to send him an annual present of Spanish horses,
to recruit his army with a select number of barbarian youths, and to
accept from his choice a prætorian prefect of approved discretion and
fidelity. But he reserves for himself the nomination of his other civil
and military officers, with the troops, the revenue, and the sovereignty,
of the provinces beyond the Alps. He admonishes the emperor to consult
the dictates of justice; to distrust the arts of those venal flatterers
who subsist only by the discord of princes; and to embrace the offer of
a fair and honourable treaty, equally advantageous to the republic and
to the house of Constantine. In this negotiation, Julian claimed no more
than he already possessed.

The negotiations of peace were accompanied and supported by the most
vigorous preparations for war. The army, which Julian held in readiness
for immediate action, was recruited and augmented by the disorders of
the times. The cruel persecutions of the faction of Magnentius had
filled Gaul with numerous bands of outlaws and robbers. They cheerfully
accepted the offer of a general pardon from a prince whom they could
trust, submitted to the restraints of military discipline, and retained
only their implacable hatred to the person and government of Constantius.
As soon as the season of the year permitted Julian to take the field, he
appeared at the head of his legions; threw a bridge over the Rhine in
the neighbourhood of Cleves; and prepared to chastise the perfidy of the
Attuarii, a tribe of Franks, who presumed that they might ravage, with
impunity, the frontiers of a divided empire. The difficulty, as well as
glory, of this enterprise, consisted in a laborious march; and Julian
had conquered, as soon as he could penetrate into a country which former
princes had considered as inaccessible.


CONSTANTIUS _versus_ JULIAN

[Sidenote: [360-361 A.D.]]

The ambassadors of Julian had been instructed to execute with the utmost
diligence, their important commission. But in their passage through
Italy and Illyricum, they were detained by the tedious and affected
delays of the provincial governors; they were conducted by slow journeys
from Constantinople to Cæsarea in Cappadocia; and when at length they
were admitted to the presence of Constantius, they found that he had
already conceived from the despatches of his own officers, the most
unfavourable opinion of the conduct of Julian, and of the Gallic army.
The letters were heard with impatience; the trembling messengers were
dismissed with indignation and contempt; and the looks, the gestures,
the furious language of the monarch, expressed the disorder of his soul.
The domestic connection which might have reconciled the brother and the
husband of Helena, was recently dissolved by the death of that princess,
whose pregnancy had been several times fruitless, and was at last fatal
to herself. The empress Eusebia had preserved to the last moment of her
life, the warm and even jealous affection which she had conceived for
Julian; and her mild influence might have moderated the resentment of a
prince, who, since her death, was abandoned to his own passions, and to
the arts of his eunuchs.

But the terror of a foreign invasion obliged him to suspend the
punishment of a private enemy; he continued his march towards Persia,
and thought it sufficient to signify the conditions which might entitle
Julian and his guilty followers to the clemency of their offended
sovereign. He required that the presumptuous cæsar should expressly
renounce the appellation and rank of augustus, which he had accepted from
the rebels; that he should descend to his former station of a limited
and dependent minister; that he should vest the powers of the state and
army in the hands of those officers who were appointed by the imperial
court; and that he should trust his safety to the assurances of pardon
which were announced by Epictetus, a Gallic bishop, and one of the Arian
favourites of Constantius. Several months were ineffectually consumed in
a treaty which was negotiated at the distance of three thousand miles
between Paris and Antioch; and as soon as Julian perceived that his
moderate and respectful behaviour served only to irritate the pride of an
implacable adversary, he boldly resolved to commit his life and fortune
to the chance of a civil war. He gave a public and military audience
to the quæstor Leonas; the haughty epistle of Constantius was read to
the attentive multitude; and Julian protested with the most flattering
deference, that he was ready to resign the title of Augustus, if he
could obtain the consent of those whom he acknowledged as the authors
of his elevation. The faint proposal was impetuously silenced; and the
acclamations of “Julian Augustus, continue to reign, by the authority
of the army, of the people, of the republic, which you have saved,”
thundered at once from every part of the field, and terrified the pale
ambassador of Constantius.

The situation of Julian required a vigorous and immediate resolution. He
had discovered, from intercepted letters, that his adversary, sacrificing
the interest of the state to that of the monarch, had again excited the
barbarians to invade the provinces of the West.

The hopes of Julian depended much less on the number of his troops, than
on the celerity of his motions. In the execution of a daring enterprise,
he availed himself of every precaution, as far as prudence could suggest;
and where prudence could no longer accompany his steps, he trusted the
event to valour and to fortune. In the neighbourhood of Bâle he assembled
and divided his army. One body, which consisted of ten thousand men, was
directed under the command of Nevitta, general of the cavalry, to advance
through the midland parts of Rætia and Noricum. A similar division of
troops, under the orders of Jovius and Jovinus, prepared to follow the
oblique course of the highways, through the Alps, and the northern
confines of Italy. The instructions to the generals were conceived
with energy and precision; to hasten their march in close and compact
columns, which, according to the disposition of the ground, might readily
be changed into any order of battle; to secure themselves against the
surprises of the night by strong posts and vigilant guards; to prevent
resistance by their unexpected arrival; to elude examination by their
sudden departure; to spread the opinion of their strength, and the terror
of his name; and to join their sovereign under the walls of Sirmium.

For himself, Julian had reserved a more difficult part. He selected three
thousand active volunteers, resolved, like their leader, to cast behind
them every hope of a retreat; at the head of this band, he fearlessly
plunged into the recesses of the Marcian or Black Forest, which conceals
the sources of the Danube, and for many days, the fate of Julian was
unknown to the world. The secrecy of his march, his diligence and vigour,
surmounted every obstacle; he forced his way over mountains and morasses,
occupied the bridges, or swam the rivers, pursued his direct course,
without reflecting whether he traversed the territory of the Romans or
of the barbarians, and emerged, between Castra Regina (Ratisbon) and
Vindobona (Vienna) at the place where he designed to embark his troops
on the Danube. By a stratagem, he seized a fleet of light brigantines,
as it lay at anchor; secured a supply of coarse provisions, sufficient
to satisfy the indelicate, but voracious, appetite of a Gallic army;
and boldly committed himself to the stream of the Danube. The labours
of his mariners, who plied their oars with incessant diligence, and
the steady continuance of a favourable wind, carried his fleet above
seven hundred miles in eleven days, and he had already disembarked his
troops at Bononia, only nineteen miles from Sirmium, before his enemies
could receive any certain intelligence that he had left the banks of
the Rhine. In the course of this long and rapid navigation, the mind of
Julian was fixed on the object of his enterprise; and though he accepted
the deputation of some cities, which hastened to claim the merit of an
early submission, he passed before the hostile stations, which were
placed along the river, without indulging the temptation of signalising a
useless and ill-timed valour.

[Illustration: SANDALS WORN BY OFFICERS]

The banks of the Danube were crowded with spectators, who gazed on the
military pomp, anticipated the importance of the event, and diffused
through the adjacent country the fame of a young hero, who advanced with
more than mortal speed at the head of the innumerable forces of the West.
Lucilian, who, with the rank of general of the cavalry, commanded the
military powers of Illyricum, was alarmed and perplexed by the doubtful
reports, which he could neither reject nor believe. He had taken some
slow and irresolute measures for the purpose of collecting his troops,
when he was surprised by Dagalaiphus, an active officer, whom Julian,
as soon as he landed at Bononia, had pushed forward with some light
infantry. The captive general, uncertain of his life or death, was
hastily thrown upon a horse, and conducted to the presence of Julian,
who kindly raised him from the ground and dispelled the terror and
amazement which seemed to stupefy his faculties. But Lucilian had no
sooner recovered his spirits, than he betrayed his want of discretion,
by presuming to admonish his conqueror, that he had rashly ventured,
with a handful of men, to expose his person in the midst of his enemies.
“Reserve for your master Constantius these timid remonstrances,” replied
Julian, with a smile of contempt; “when I gave you my purple to kiss, I
received you not as a counsellor, but as a suppliant.”

Conscious that success alone could justify his attempt, and that boldness
only could command success, he advanced at the head of three thousand
soldiers to attack the strongest and most populous city of the Illyrian
provinces. As he entered the long suburb of Sirmium, he was received by
the joyful acclamations of the army and people; who, crowned with flowers
and holding lighted tapers in their hands, conducted their acknowledged
sovereign to his imperial residence. Two days were devoted to the public
joy, which was celebrated by the games of the circus; but, early on the
morning of the third day, Julian marched to occupy the narrow pass of
Succi, in the defiles of Mount Hæmus; which, almost in the midway between
Sirmium and Constantinople, separates the provinces of Thrace and Dacia,
by an abrupt descent towards the former, and a gentle declivity on the
side of the latter. The defence of this important post was entrusted to
the brave Nevitta; who, as well as the generals of the Italian division,
successfully executed the plan of the march and junction which their
master had so ably conceived.

From his palace, or, more properly, from his headquarters, of Sirmium
and Naissus, he distributed to the principal cities of the empire a
laboured apology for his own conduct; published the secret despatches
of Constantius; and solicited the judgment of mankind between two
competitors, the one of whom had expelled, and the other had invited
the barbarians. Julian, whose mind was deeply wounded by the reproach
of ingratitude, aspired to maintain, by argument as well as by arms,
the superior merits of his cause; and to excel, not only in the arts of
war, but in those of composition. His epistle to the senate and people
of Athens seems to have been dictated by an elegant enthusiasm, which
prompted him to submit his actions and his motives to the degenerate
Athenians of his own times, with the same humble deference, as if he
had been pleading in the days of Aristides, before the tribunal of
the Areopagus. His application to the senate of Rome, which was still
permitted to bestow the titles of imperial power, was agreeable to the
forms of the expiring republic. An assembly was summoned by Tertullus,
prefect of the city; the epistle of Julian was read; and as he appeared
to be master of Italy, his claims were admitted without a dissenting
voice. His oblique censure of the innovations of Constantine, and his
passionate invective against the vices of Constantius, were heard with
less satisfaction; and the senate, as if Julian had been present,
unanimously exclaimed: “Respect, we beseech you, the author of your own
fortune,” an artful expression, which, according to the chance of war,
might be differently explained, as a manly reproof of the ingratitude of
the usurper, or as a flattering confession, that a single act of such
benefit to the state ought to atone for all the failings of Constantius.

The intelligence of the march and rapid progress of Julian was speedily
transmitted to his rival, who, by the retreat of Sapor, had obtained
some respite from the Persian War. Disguising the anguish of his soul
under the semblance of contempt, Constantius professed his intention of
returning into Europe, and of giving chase to Julian; for he never spoke
of his military expedition in any other light than that of a hunting
party. In the camp of Hierapolis, in Syria, he communicated this design
to his army; slightly mentioned the guilt and rashness of the cæsar; and
ventured to assure them, that if the mutineers of Gaul presumed to meet
them in the field, they would be unable to sustain the fire of their
eyes, and the irresistible weight of their shout of onset. The speech
of the emperor was received with military applause, and Theodotus,
the president of the council of Hierapolis, requested, with tears of
adulation, that his city might be adorned with the head of the vanquished
rebel. A chosen detachment was despatched away in post wagons, to secure,
if it were yet possible, the pass of Succi; the recruits, the horses,
the arms, and the magazines which had been prepared against Sapor, were
appropriated to the service of the civil war; and the domestic victories
of Constantius inspired his partisans with the most sanguine assurances
of success. The notary Gaudentius had occupied in his name the provinces
of Africa; the subsistence of Rome was intercepted; and the distress
of Julian was increased, by an unexpected event, which might have been
productive of fatal consequences. Julian had received the submission of
two legions and a cohort of archers, who were stationed at Sirmium; but
he suspected, with reason, the fidelity of those troops which had been
distinguished by the emperor; and it was thought expedient, under the
pretence of the exposed state of the Gallic frontier, to dismiss them
from the most important scene of action. They advanced, with reluctance,
as far as the confines of Italy; but, as they dreaded the length of the
way, and the savage fierceness of the Germans, they resolved, by the
instigation of one of their tribunes, to halt at Aquileia, and to erect
the banners of Constantius on the walls of that impregnable city. The
vigilance of Julian perceived at once the extent of the mischief, and the
necessity of applying an immediate remedy. By his order, Jovinus led back
a part of the army into Italy; and the siege of Aquileia was formed with
diligence, and prosecuted with vigour. But the legionaries, who seemed
to have rejected the yoke of discipline, conducted the defence of the
place with skill and perseverance; invited the rest of Italy to imitate
the example of their courage and loyalty; and threatened the retreat of
Julian, if he should be forced to yield to the superior numbers of the
armies of the East.


THE DEATH OF CONSTANTIUS; JULIAN SOLE EMPEROR

But the humanity of Julian was preserved from the cruel alternative,
which he pathetically laments, of destroying, or of being himself
destroyed; and the seasonable death of Constantius delivered the Roman
Empire from the calamities of civil war. The approach of winter could
not detain the monarch at Antioch; and his favourites durst not oppose
his impatient desire of revenge. A slight fever, which was perhaps
occasioned by the agitation of his spirits, was increased by the fatigues
of the journey; and Constantius was obliged to halt at the little town
of Mopsucrene, twelve miles beyond Tarsus, where he expired, after a
short illness, in the forty-fifth year of his age, and the twenty-fourth
of his reign. His genuine character was composed of pride and weakness,
of superstition and cruelty. The long abuse of power rendered him a
considerable object in the eyes of his contemporaries; but as personal
merit can alone deserve the notice of posterity, the last of the sons
of Constantine may be dismissed from the world with the remark, that he
inherited the defects, without the abilities, of his father.

Before Constantius expired, he is said to have named Julian for his
successor; nor does it seem improbable, that his anxious concern for
the fate of a young and tender wife, whom he left with child, may have
prevailed, in his last moments, over the harsher passions of hatred and
revenge. Eusebius and his guilty associates made a faint attempt to
prolong the reign of the eunuchs, by the election of another emperor; but
their intrigues were rejected with disdain by an army which now abhorred
the thought of civil discord; and two officers of rank were instantly
despatched, to assure Julian, that every sword in the empire would be
drawn for his service. The military designs of that prince, who had
formed three different attacks against Thrace, were prevented by this
fortunate event. Without shedding the blood of his fellow-citizens he
escaped the dangers of a doubtful conflict, and acquired the advantages
of a complete victory. Impatient to visit the place of his birth, and the
new capital of the empire, he advanced from Naissus through the mountains
of Hæmus and the cities of Thrace. When he reached Heraclea, at the
distance of sixty miles, all Constantinople was poured forth to receive
him; and he made his triumphal entry amidst the dutiful acclamations
of the soldiers, the people, and the senate. An innumerable multitude
pressed around him with eager respect, and were perhaps disappointed,
when they beheld the small stature, and simple garb, of a hero whose
unexperienced youth had vanquished the barbarians of Germany, and who
had now traversed, in a successful career, the whole continent of
Europe, from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Bosporus. A few
days afterward, when the remains of the deceased emperor were landed
in the harbour, the subjects of Julian applauded the real or affected
humanity of their sovereign. On foot, without his diadem, and clothed
in a mourning habit, he accompanied the funeral as far as the church of
the Holy Apostles, where the body was deposited; and if these marks of
respect may be interpreted as a selfish tribute to the birth and dignity
of his imperial kinsman, the tears of Julian professed to the world, that
he had forgotten the injuries, and remembered only the obligations, which
he had received from Constantius. As soon as the legions of Aquileia were
assured of the death of the emperor, they opened the gates of the city,
and, by the sacrifice of their guilty leaders, obtained an easy pardon
from the prudence or lenity of Julian; who, in the thirty-second year of
his age, acquired the undisputed possession of the Roman Empire.[b]


THE RELIGION OF JULIAN

The love of justice and the correct sense of the duties of a ruler
which Julian had displayed when a cæsar in Gaul, did not desert him
on the imperial throne in Constantinople; and had it not been for one
fatal circumstance, he might have been the object of general applause
and admiration. But Julian had renounced the religion of the empire and
adopted that of ancient Greece, which he entertained the chimerical
idea of restoring to its primitive importance; and in the pursuit of
this object he did not attend sufficiently to the principles of justice
and equity. From his change of faith he has been styled the Apostate,
unjustly as appears to us, for of his sincerity there can be no doubt;
and however we may lament for, pity, or even despise those who change
from conviction, we are not justified in condemning or reviling them.

Gallus and Julian after the massacre of their relatives had been
committed to the charge of Eusebius, the bishop of Nicomedia. They were
instructed in the articles of faith and practice then prevalent, with
all of which they complied without any hesitation; and Julian it was
remembered had publicly read the Holy Scriptures in the church of that
city. But while the rude, sullen Gallus became a steady and bigoted
believer, the milder and more philosophic and studious Julian took a
distaste to the religion in which he was instructed. He had been made
familiar with the great writers of ancient Hellas by his tutor the eunuch
Mardonius; and the admiration he felt for the works of Homer and other
eminent poets, the veneration for antiquity, and the brilliant colours
with which the ancient poetic Olympus stood invested, as contrasted with
the grovelling superstition with which he was surrounded; and the noble
spirit and glorious deeds of the believers in the ancient creed, compared
with the base arts and paltry actions of the men of his own time--all
combined to operate on the mind of the young prince, and he became a
believer in the theology of Homer and Hesiod. But it was not the charming
poetic creed of the early and best days of Hellas that Julian adopted,
it was the absurd, contemptible mysticism of the Neo-Platonists; and as
in his Christianity he neglected the beautiful simplicity of the Gospel,
confounding it with the intricate metaphysics and abject superstition
which then prevailed in the church; so in his paganism he lost the poetic
creed of the old times in the tasteless, unsubstantial vagaries and
allegories of the school of Alexandria. In fact, he had not that original
vigour of intellect which would have emancipated him from the spirit of
the age. Superstition was the prevailing sentiment, and the philosophic
emperor was in his way as deeply immersed in it as the most grovelling
ascetic.

According to the emperor’s own account, he was a Christian till he
reached his twentieth year. He then, after being instructed by various
sophists, was by the archimage Maximus secretly initiated at Ephesus with
all those ceremonies which imposture and superstition had imported from
Asia and incorporated with the mythic faith of Hellas. During his short
abode some years after at Athens, Julian was solemnly initiated in the
mysteries of Eleusis. Still he was to outward appearance a Christian,
and the empress Eusebia had not probably a shade of doubt respecting the
faith of her distinguished protégé. In Gaul he appears to have still
dissembled, and to have openly assisted at the Christian worship, while
in his closet he offered his homage to the Sun and Hermes. When he
assumed the imperial dignity he disdained all further concealment of his
sentiments and boldly proclaimed himself a votary of the ancient gods.

Julian was by nature just and humane; he was also a philosopher and
statesman enough to know that persecution, if it does not go the full
length of extermination, adds strength and numbers and energy to the
persecuted and irritated party. He therefore, instead of imitating
Diocletian, proclaimed a general toleration. The pagans were directed to
open their temples and offer victims as heretofore; the contending sects
of Christians were commanded to abstain from harassing and tormenting
each other. The Catholic prelates and clergy, whom the Arian Constantius
had banished, were accordingly restored to their sees and churches.[e]


JULIAN INVADES THE EAST

[Sidenote: [361-362 A.D.]]

As soon as Sapor was informed that the throne of Constantius was
filled by a prince of a very different character, he condescended to
make some artful, or perhaps sincere, overtures towards a negotiation
of peace. But the pride of the Persian monarch was astonished by the
firmness of Julian, who sternly declared that he would never consent
to hold a peaceful conference among the flames and ruins of the cities
of Mesopotamia; and who added, with a smile of contempt, that it was
needless to treat by ambassadors, as he himself had determined to visit
speedily the court of Persia. The impatience of the emperor urged the
diligence of the military preparations. The generals were named; a
formidable army was destined for this important service; and Julian,
marching from Constantinople through the provinces of Asia Minor, arrived
at Antioch about eight months after the death of his predecessor. His
ardent desire to march into the heart of Persia was checked by the
indispensable duty of regulating the state of the empire; by his zeal to
revive the worship of the gods; and by the advice of his wisest friends,
who represented the necessity of allowing the salutary interval of winter
quarters, to restore the exhausted strength of the legions of Gaul, and
the discipline and spirit of the eastern troops. Julian was persuaded to
fix, till the ensuing spring, his residence at Antioch, among a people
maliciously disposed to deride the haste, and to censure the delays, of
their sovereign.

If Julian had flattered himself, that his personal connection with the
capital of the East would be productive of mutual satisfaction to the
prince and people, he made a very false estimate of his own character,
and of the manners of Antioch. The warmth of the climate disposed the
natives to the most intemperate enjoyment of tranquillity and opulence;
and the lively licentiousness of the Greeks was blended with the
hereditary softness of the Syrians. Fashion was the only law, pleasure
the only pursuit, and the splendour of dress and furniture was the only
distinction of the citizens of Antioch. The arts of luxury were honoured;
the serious and manly virtues were the subject of ridicule; and the
contempt for female modesty and reverend age, announced the universal
corruption of the capital of the East. The love of spectacles was the
taste, or rather passion, of the Syrians: the most skilful artists
were procured from the adjacent cities; a considerable share of the
revenue was devoted to the public amusements; and the magnificence of
the games of the theatre and circus was considered as the happiness and
as the glory of Antioch. The rustic manners of a prince who disdained
such glory, and was insensible of such happiness, soon disgusted the
delicacy of his subjects; and the effeminate Orientals could neither
imitate nor admire the severe simplicity which Julian always maintained,
and sometimes affected. The days of festivity, consecrated by ancient
custom to the honour of the gods, were the only occasions on which
Julian relaxed his philosophic severity; and those festivals were the
only days in which the Syrians of Antioch could reject the allurements
of pleasure. The majority of the people supported the glory of the
Christian name, which had been first invented by their ancestors; they
contented themselves with disobeying the moral precepts, but they were
scrupulously attached to the speculative doctrines of their religion. The
church of Antioch was distracted by heresy and schism; but the Arians and
the Athanasians, the followers of Meletius and those of Paulinus, were
actuated by the same pious hatred of their common adversary.

The martial impatience of Julian urged him to take the field in the
beginning of the spring; and he dismissed, with contempt and reproach,
the senate of Antioch, who accompanied the emperor beyond the limits of
their own territory, to which he was resolved never to return.

[Sidenote: [362-363 A.D.]]

As the warlike emperor, instead of Constantius, had chosen Alexander
for his model, he advanced without delay to Carrhæ, a very ancient city
of Mesopotamia, at the distance of fourscore miles from Hierapolis. The
temple of the Moon attracted the devotion of Julian; but the halt of a
few days was principally employed in completing the immense preparations
of the Persian War. The secret of the expedition had hitherto remained
in his own breast; but as Carrhæ is the point of separation of the two
great roads, he could no longer conceal, whether it was his design to
attack the dominions of Sapor on the side of the Tigris, or on that of
the Euphrates. The emperor detached an army of thirty thousand men, under
the command of his kinsman Procopius, and of Sebastian, who had been duke
of Egypt. They were ordered to direct their march towards Nisibis, and to
secure the frontier from the desultory incursions of the enemy, before
they attempted the passage of the Tigris. Their subsequent operations
were left to the discretion of the generals; but Julian expected, that
after wasting with fire and sword the fertile districts of Media and
Adiabene, they might arrive under the walls of Ctesiphon about the same
time that he himself, advancing with equal steps along the banks of
the Euphrates, should besiege the capital of the Persian monarchy. The
success of this well-concerted plan depended, in a great measure, on
the powerful and ready assistance of the king of Armenia, who, without
exposing the safety of his own dominions, might detach an army of four
thousand horse, and twenty thousand foot, to the assistance of the
Romans. But the feeble Arsaces Tiranus, king of Armenia, had degenerated
still more shamefully than his father Chosroes, from the manly virtues of
the great Tiridates; and as the pusillanimous monarch was averse to any
enterprise of danger and glory, he could disguise his timid indolence by
the more decent excuses of religion and gratitude.

The military dispositions of Julian were skilfully contrived to deceive
the spies, and to divert the attention of Sapor. The legions appeared
to direct their march towards Nisibis and the Tigris. On a sudden they
wheeled to the right; traversed the level and naked plain of Carrhæ; and
reached, on the third day, the banks of the Euphrates, where the strong
town of Nicephorium, or Callinicum, had been founded by the Macedonian
kings. From thence the emperor pursued his march, above ninety miles,
along the winding stream of the Euphrates, till, at length, about one
month after his departure from Antioch, he discovered the towers of
Circesium, the extreme limit of the Roman dominions. The river Chaboras
falls into the Euphrates at Circesium, and as soon as the trumpet gave
the signal of march, the Romans passed the little stream which separated
two mighty and hostile empires.

[Sidenote: [363 A.D.]]

Two cities of Assyria presumed to resist the arms of a Roman emperor;
and they both paid the severe penalty of their rashness. At the distance
of fifty miles from the royal residence of Ctesiphon, Perisabor, or
Anbar, held the second rank in the province: a city, large, populous,
and well-fortified, surrounded with a double wall, almost encompassed
by a branch of the Euphrates, and defended by the valour of a numerous
garrison. The exhortations of Hormisdas were repulsed with contempt;
and the ears of the Persian prince were wounded by a just reproach,
that, unmindful of his royal birth, he conducted an army of strangers
against his king and country. The Assyrians maintained their loyalty
by a skilful, as well as vigorous, defence; till the lucky stroke of a
battering-ram having opened a large breach, by shattering one of the
angles of the wall, they hastily retired into the fortifications of
the interior citadel. The soldiers of Julian rushed impetuously into
the town, and after the full gratification of every military appetite,
Perisabor was reduced to ashes; and the engines which assaulted the
citadel were planted on the ruins of the smoking houses. The contest was
continued by an incessant and mutual discharge of missile weapons; and
the superiority which the Romans might derive from the mechanical powers
of their ballistæ and catapultæ was counterbalanced by the advantage of
the ground on the side of the besieged. But as soon as an _helepolis_ had
been constructed, which could engage on equal terms with the loftiest
ramparts, the tremendous aspect of a moving turret, that would leave no
hope of resistance or of mercy, terrified the defenders of the citadel
into an humble submission; and the place was surrendered only two days
after Julian first appeared under the walls of Perisabor. Twenty-five
hundred persons, of both sexes, the feeble remnant of a flourishing
people, were permitted to retire; the plentiful magazines of corn, of
arms, and of splendid furniture were partly distributed among the troops,
and partly reserved for the public service; the useless stores were
destroyed by fire, or thrown into the stream of the Euphrates; and the
fate of Amida was revenged by the total ruin of Perisabor.

The city, or rather the fortress, of Maogamalcha, which was defended by
sixteen large towers, a deep ditch, and two strong and solid walls of
brick and bitumen, appears to have been constructed at the distance of
eleven miles, as the safeguard of the capital of Persia. The emperor,
apprehensive of leaving such an important fortress in his rear,
immediately formed the siege of Maogamalcha; and the Roman army was
distributed for that purpose into three divisions. Victor, at the head
of the cavalry, and of a detachment of heavy-armed foot, was ordered to
clear the country, as far as the banks of the Tigris, and the suburbs of
Ctesiphon. The conduct of the attack was assumed by Julian himself, who
seemed to place his whole dependence in the military engines which he
erected against the walls, while he secretly contrived a more efficacious
method of introducing his troops into the heart of the city. Under the
direction of Nevitta and Dagalaiphus, the trenches were opened at a
considerable distance, and gradually prolonged as far as the edge of the
ditch. The ditch was speedily filled with earth; and, by the incessant
labour of the troops, a mine was carried under the foundations of the
walls, and sustained, at sufficient intervals, by props of timber.
Three chosen cohorts, advancing in a single file, silently explored
the dark and dangerous passage, till their intrepid leader whispered
back the intelligence, that he was ready to issue from his confinement
into the streets of the hostile city. Julian checked their ardour, that
he might insure their success; and immediately diverted the attention
of the garrison by the tumult and clamour of a general assault. The
Persians, who, from their walls, contemptuously beheld the progress of an
impotent attack, celebrated, with songs of triumph, the glory of Sapor;
and ventured to assure the emperor, that he might ascend the starry
mansion of Ormuzd, before he could hope to take the impregnable city of
Maogamalcha. The city was already taken. History has recorded the name of
a private soldier, the first who ascended from the mine into a deserted
tower. The passage was widened by his companions, who pressed forward
with impatient valour. Fifteen hundred enemies were already in the midst
of the city. The astonished garrison abandoned the walls, and their only
hope of safety; the gates were instantly burst open; and the revenge of
the soldier, unless it were suspended by lust or avarice, was satiated by
an undistinguishing massacre. The governor, who had yielded on a promise
of mercy, was burned alive a few days afterwards, on a charge of having
uttered some disrespectful words against the honour of Prince Hormisdas.
The fortifications were razed to the ground; and not a vestige was left
to indicate that the city of Maogamalcha had ever existed.

The successful valour of Julian had triumphed over all the obstacles
that opposed his march to the gates of Ctesiphon. But the reduction, or
even the siege, of the capital of Persia, was still at a distance; nor
can the military conduct of the emperor be clearly apprehended, without
a knowledge of the country which was the theatre of his bold and skilful
operations. Twenty miles to the south of Baghdad, and on the eastern
bank of the Tigris, the curiosity of travellers has observed some ruins
of the palaces of Ctesiphon, which, in the time of Julian, was a great
and populous city. The name and glory of the adjacent Seleucia were
forever extinguished; and the only remaining quarter of that Greek colony
had resumed, with the Assyrian language and manners, the primitive
appellation of Coche.

Coche was situated on the western side of the Tigris; but it was
naturally considered as a suburb of Ctesiphon, being supposedly connected
with it by a permanent bridge of boats. The united parts contributed to
form the common epithet of Al Modain, “the cities,” which the Orientals
have bestowed on the winter residence of the Sassanids; and the whole
circumference of the Persian capital was strongly fortified by the
waters of the river, by lofty walls, and by impracticable morasses. Near
the ruins of Seleucia the camp of Julian was fixed, and secured by a
ditch and rampart against the sallies of the numerous and enterprising
garrison of Coche. In this fruitful and pleasant country the Romans were
plentifully supplied with water and forage; and several forts which
might have embarrassed the motions of the army submitted, after some
resistance, to the efforts of their valour. The fleet passed from the
Euphrates into an artificial derivation of that river, which pours a
copious and navigable stream into the Tigris, at a small distance below
the great city. If they had followed this royal canal, which bore the
name of Nahar-Malcha, the intermediate situation of Coche would have
separated the fleet and army of Julian; and the rash attempt of steering
against the current of the Tigris, and forcing their way through the
midst of a hostile capital, must have been attended with the total
destruction of the Roman navy. The prudence of the emperor foresaw
the danger, and provided the remedy. As he had minutely studied the
operations of Trajan in the same country, he soon recollected that his
warlike predecessor had dug a new and navigable canal, which, leaving
Coche on the right hand, conveyed the waters of the Nahar-Malcha into the
river Tigris, at some distance above the cities. From the information
of the peasants Julian ascertained the vestiges of this ancient work,
which were almost obliterated by design or accident. By the indefatigable
labour of the soldiers, a broad and deep channel was speedily prepared
for the reception of the Euphrates. A strong dike was constructed to
interrupt the ordinary current of the Nahar-Malcha: a flood of waters
rushed impetuously into their new bed; and the Roman fleet, steering
their triumphant course into the Tigris, derided the vain and ineffectual
barriers which the Persians of Ctesiphon had erected to oppose their
passage.


A BATTLE BY THE TIGRIS

As it became necessary to transport the Roman army over the Tigris,
another labour presented itself, of less toil, but of more danger, than
the preceding expedition. The stream was broad and rapid; the ascent
steep and difficult; and the entrenchments, which had been formed on the
ridge of the opposite bank, were lined with a numerous army of heavy
cuirassiers, dexterous archers, and huge elephants, which (according to
the extravagant hyperbole of Libanius) could trample, with the same ease,
a field of corn or a legion of Romans. In the presence of such an enemy,
the construction of a bridge was impracticable; and the intrepid prince,
who instantly seized the only possible expedient, concealed his design
till the moment of execution from the knowledge of the barbarians, of
his own troops, and even of his generals themselves. Under the specious
pretence of examining the state of the magazines, fourscore vessels
were gradually unladen; and a select detachment, apparently destined
for some secret expedition, was ordered to stand to their arms on the
first signal. Julian disguised the silent anxiety of his own mind with
smiles of confidence and joy; and amused the hostile nations with the
spectacle of military games, which he insultingly celebrated under the
walls of Coche. The day was consecrated to pleasure; but, as soon as the
hour of supper was past, the emperor summoned his generals to his tent,
and acquainted them that he had fixed that night for the passage of the
Tigris. They stood in silent and respectful astonishment; but, when the
venerable Sallust assumed the privilege of his age and experience, the
rest of the chiefs supported with freedom the weight of his prudent
remonstrances.

Julian however contented himself with observing that conquest and safety
depended on the attempt; that, instead of diminishing, the number of
their enemies would certainly be increased, by successive reinforcements;
and that a longer delay would neither contract the breadth of the stream
nor level the height of the bank. The signal was instantly given and
obeyed: the most impatient of the legionaries leaped into five vessels
that lay nearest to the bank; and as they plied their oars with intrepid
diligence, they were lost, after a few moments, in the darkness of the
night. A flame arose on the opposite side, and Julian, who too clearly
understood that his foremost vessels, in attempting to land, had been
fired by the enemy, dexterously converted their extreme danger into a
presage of victory. “Our fellow-soldiers,” he eagerly exclaimed, “are
already masters of the bank; see, they make the appointed signal. Let us
hasten to emulate and assist their courage.” The united and rapid motion
of a great fleet broke the violence of the current, and they reached
the eastern shore of the Tigris with sufficient speed to extinguish
the flames and rescue their adventurous companions. The difficulties
of a steep and lofty ascent were increased by the weight of armour and
the darkness of the night. A shower of stones, darts, and fire was
incessantly discharged on the heads of the assailants, who, after an
arduous struggle, climbed the bank and stood victorious upon the rampart.

As soon as they were possessed of a more equal field, Julian, who,
with his light infantry, had led the attack, darted through the ranks
a skilful and experienced eye; his bravest soldiers, according to the
precepts of Homer, were distributed in the front and rear; and all the
trumpets of the imperial army sounded to battle. The Romans, after
sending up a military shout, advanced in measured steps to the animating
notes of martial music, launched their formidable javelins, and rushed
forwards with drawn swords, to deprive the barbarians, by a closer onset,
of the advantage of their missile weapons. The whole engagement lasted
above twelve hours; till the gradual retreat of the Persians was changed
into a disorderly flight, of which the shameful example was given by the
principal leader, and the Surenas himself. They were pursued to the gates
of Ctesiphon; and the conquerors might have entered the dismayed city if
their general, Victor, who was dangerously wounded with an arrow, had
not conjured them to desist from a rash attempt, which must be fatal if
it were not successful. On their side, the Romans acknowledged the loss
of only seventy-five men; while they affirmed that the barbarians had
left on the field of battle twenty-five hundred, or even six thousand,
of their bravest soldiers. The spoil was such as might be expected from
the riches and luxury of an oriental camp: large quantities of silver
and gold, splendid arms and trappings, and beds and tables of massy
silver. The victorious emperor distributed, as the rewards of valour,
some honourable gifts, civic, and mural, and naval crowns; which he,
and perhaps he alone, esteemed more precious than the wealth of Asia.
A solemn sacrifice was offered to the god of war, but the appearances
of the victims threatened the most inauspicious events; and Julian soon
discovered, by less ambiguous signs, that he had now reached the term of
his prosperity.

On the second day after the battle, the domestic guards, the Jovians and
Herculians, and the remaining troops, which composed near two-thirds of
the whole army, were securely wafted over the Tigris. While the Persians
beheld from Ctesiphon the desolation of the adjacent country, Julian
cast many an anxious look towards the north, in full expectation that,
as he himself had victoriously penetrated to the capital of Sapor, the
march and junction of his lieutenants, Sebastian and Procopius, would
be executed with the same courage and diligence. His expectations were
disappointed by the treachery of the Armenian king, who permitted, and
most probably directed, the desertion of his auxiliary troops from the
camp of the Romans; and by the dissensions of the two generals, who were
incapable of forming or executing any plan for the public service. When
the emperor had relinquished the hope of this important reinforcement, he
condescended to hold a council of war, and approved, after a full debate,
the sentiment of those generals who dissuaded him from the siege of
Ctesiphon as being a fruitless and pernicious undertaking. It is not easy
for us to conceive by what arts of fortification a city thrice besieged
and taken by the predecessors of Julian could be rendered impregnable
against an army of sixty thousand Romans, commanded by a brave and
experienced general, and abundantly supplied with ships, provisions,
battering engines, and military stores. But we may rest assured, from
the love of glory and contempt of danger which formed the character
of Julian, that he was not discouraged by any trivial or imaginary
obstacles. At the very time when he declined the siege of Ctesiphon, he
rejected, with obstinacy and disdain, the most flattering offers of a
negotiation of peace.

Sapor, who had been so long accustomed to the negligence and tardy
ostentation of Constantius, was surprised by the intrepid diligence of
his successor. As far as the confines of India and Scythia, the satraps
of the distant provinces were ordered to assemble their troops, and to
march, without delay, to the assistance of their monarch. But their
preparations were dilatory, their motions slow; and before Sapor could
lead an army into the field, he received the melancholy intelligence of
the devastation of Assyria, the ruin of his palaces, and the slaughter
of his bravest troops, who defended the passage of the Tigris. The
pride of royalty was humbled in the dust; he took his repasts on the
ground; and the disorder of his hair expressed the grief and anxiety of
his mind. Perhaps he would not have refused to purchase, with one-half
of his kingdom, the safety of the remainder; and he would have gladly
subscribed himself, in a treaty of peace, the faithful and dependent
ally of the Roman conqueror. Under the pretence of private business, a
minister of rank and confidence was despatched secretly to embrace the
knees of Hormisdas, and to request, in the language of a suppliant, that
he might be introduced into the presence of the emperor. The Sassanian
prince, whether he listened to the voice of pride or humanity, whether he
consulted the sentiments of his birth or the duties of his situation, was
equally inclined to promote a salutary measure which would terminate the
calamities of Persia and secure the triumph of Rome. He was astonished
by the inflexible firmness of a hero who remembered, most unfortunately
for himself and for his country, that Alexander had uniformly rejected
the propositions of Darius. But as Julian was sensible that the hope
of a safe and honourable peace might cool the ardour of his troops, he
earnestly requested that Hormisdas would privately dismiss the minister
of Sapor, and conceal this dangerous temptation from the knowledge of the
camp.


THE PURSUIT OF SAPOR

The honour, as well as interest, of Julian forbade him to consume his
time under the impregnable walls of Ctesiphon; and as often as he defied
the barbarians who defended the city to meet him on the open plain,
they prudently replied that, if he desired to exercise his valour,
he might seek the army of the Great King. He felt the insult, and he
accepted the advice. Instead of confining his servile march to the banks
of the Euphrates and Tigris, he resolved to imitate the adventurous
spirit of Alexander, and boldly to advance into the inland provinces,
till he forced his rival to contend with him, perhaps in the plains of
Arbela, for the empire of Asia. The magnanimity of Julian was applauded
and betrayed by the arts of a noble Persian, who, in the cause of his
country, had generously submitted to act a part full of danger, of
falsehood, and of shame. With a train of faithful followers, he deserted
to the imperial camp, exposed, in a specious tale, the injuries which he
had sustained; exaggerated the cruelty of Sapor, the discontent of the
people, and the weakness of the monarchy; and confidently offered himself
as the hostage and guide of the Roman march. The most rational grounds
of suspicion were urged, without effect, by the wisdom and experience
of Hormisdas; and the credulous Julian, receiving the traitor into his
bosom, was persuaded to issue a hasty order which, in the opinion of
mankind, appeared to arraign his prudence and to endanger his safety.

He destroyed in a single hour the whole navy, which had been transported
above five hundred miles, at such expense of toil, of treasure, and of
blood. Twelve or, at the most, twenty-two small vessels were saved, to
accompany on carriages the march of the army, and to form occasional
bridges for the passage of the rivers. A supply of twenty days’
provisions was reserved for the use of the soldiers; and the rest of the
magazines, with a fleet of eleven hundred vessels which rode at anchor
in the Tigris, were abandoned to the flames, by the absolute command of
the emperor. The Christian bishops, Gregory and Augustine, insult the
madness of the apostate, who executed, with his own hands, the sentence
of divine justice. Their authority, of less weight, perhaps, in a
military question, is confirmed by the cool judgment of an experienced
soldier, who was himself spectator of the conflagration, and who could
not disapprove the reluctant murmurs of the troops.

Yet there are not wanting some specious and perhaps solid reasons which
might appear to justify the resolution of Julian. The navigation of the
Euphrates never ascended above Babylon, nor that of the Tigris above
Opis. The distance of the last-mentioned city from the Roman camp was
not very considerable; and Julian must soon have renounced the vain and
impracticable attempt of forcing upwards a great fleet against the stream
of a rapid river, which in several places was embarrassed by natural or
artificial cataracts. The power of sails and oars was insufficient; it
became necessary to tow the ships against the current of the river; the
strength of twenty thousand soldiers was exhausted in this tedious and
servile labour; and if the Romans continued to march along the banks
of the Tigris, they could only expect to return home without achieving
any enterprise worthy of the genius or fortune of their leader. If, on
the contrary, it was advisable to advance into the inland country, the
destruction of the fleet and magazines was the only measure which could
save that valuable prize from the hands of the numerous and active troops
which might suddenly be poured from the gates of Ctesiphon. Had the arms
of Julian been victorious, we should now admire the conduct as well as
the courage of a hero who, by depriving his soldiers of the hopes of a
retreat, left them only the alternative of death or conquest.

The cumbersome train of artillery and wagons, which retards the
operations of a modern army, was in a great measure unknown in the camps
of the Romans. Yet, in every age, the subsistence of sixty thousand men
must have been one of the most important cares of a prudent general;
and that subsistence could only be drawn from his own or from the
enemy’s country. Had it been possible for Julian to maintain a bridge
of communication on the Tigris, and to preserve the conquered places
of Assyria, a desolated province could not afford any large or regular
supplies, in a season of the year when the lands were covered by the
inundation of the Euphrates and the unwholesome air was darkened with
swarms of innumerable insects.

The appearance of the hostile country was far more inviting. The
extensive region lying between the river Tigris and the mountains of
Media was filled with villages and towns; and the fertile soil, for the
most part, was in a very improved state of cultivation. Julian might
expect that a conqueror who possessed the two forcible instruments of
persuasion, steel and gold, would easily procure a plentiful subsistence
from the fears or avarice of the natives. But on the approach of the
Romans this rich and smiling prospect was instantly blasted. Wherever
they moved, the inhabitants deserted the open villages and took shelter
in the fortified towns; the cattle were driven away; the grass and ripe
corn were consumed with fire; and as soon as the flames had subsided
which interrupted the march of Julian, he beheld the melancholy face
of a smoking and naked desert. This desperate and effectual method of
defence can only be executed by the enthusiasm of a people who prefer
their independence to their property; or by the rigour of an arbitrary
government which consults the public safety, without submitting to their
inclinations the liberty of choice. On the present occasion, the zeal and
obedience of the Persians seconded the commands of Sapor; and the emperor
was soon reduced to the scanty stock of provisions, which continually
wasted in his hands. Before they were entirely consumed, he might still
have reached the wealthy and unwarlike cities of Ecbatana or Susa, by the
effort of a rapid and well-directed march; but he was deprived of this
last resource by his ignorance of the roads and by the perfidy of his
guides.

The Romans wandered several days in the country east of Baghdad; the
Persian deserter, who had artfully led them into the snare, escaped from
their resentment; and his followers, as soon as they were put to the
torture, confessed the secret of the conspiracy. The visionary conquests
of Hyrcania and India, which had so long amused, now tormented the mind
of Julian. Conscious that his own imprudence was the cause of the public
distress, he anxiously balanced the hopes of safety or success, without
obtaining a satisfactory answer either from gods or men. At length, as
the only practicable measure, he embraced the resolution of directing
his steps towards the banks of the Tigris, with the design of saving the
army by a hasty march to the confines of Gordyene, a fertile and friendly
province, which acknowledged the sovereignty of Rome. The desponding
troops obeyed the signal of retreat, only seventy days after they had
passed the Chaboras with the sanguine expectation of subverting the
throne of Persia.

As long as the Romans seemed to advance into the country, their march
was observed and insulted from a distance by several bodies of Persian
cavalry; who, showing themselves sometimes in loose, and sometimes
in closer order, faintly skirmished with the advanced guards. These
detachments were however supported by a much greater force; and the
heads of the columns were no sooner pointed towards the Tigris, than a
cloud of dust arose on the plain. The Romans, who now aspired only to
the permission of a safe and speedy retreat, endeavoured to persuade
themselves that this formidable appearance was occasioned by a troop of
wild asses, or perhaps by the approach of some friendly Arabs. They
halted, pitched their tents, fortified their camp, passed the whole night
in continual alarms; and discovered at the dawn of day that they were
surrounded by an army of Persians. This army, which might be considered
only as the van of the barbarians, was soon followed by the main body of
cuirassiers, archers, and elephants, commanded by Nermanes, a general of
rank and reputation. He was accompanied by two of the king’s sons, and
many of the principal satraps; and fame and expectation exaggerated the
strength of the remaining powers, which slowly advanced under the conduct
of Sapor himself. As the Romans continued their march, their long array,
which was forced to bend, or divide, according to the varieties of the
ground, afforded frequent and favourable opportunities to their vigilant
enemies. The Persians repeatedly charged with fury, they were repeatedly
repulsed with firmness; and the action at Maronga, which almost deserved
the name of a battle, was marked by a considerable loss of satraps and
elephants, perhaps of equal value in the eyes of their monarch.


JULIAN’S DEATH

These splendid advantages were not obtained without considerable
slaughter on the Roman side; several officers of distinction were
either killed or wounded; the emperor himself, who, on all occasions of
danger, inspired and guided the valour of his troops, was obliged to
expose his person and exert his abilities. The weight of offensive and
defensive arms, which still constituted the strength and safety of the
Romans, disabled them from making any long or effectual pursuit; and as
the horsemen of the East were trained to dart their javelins and shoot
their arrows at full speed, and in every possible direction, the cavalry
of Persia was never more formidable than in the moment of a rapid and
disorderly flight. But the most certain and irreparable loss of the
Romans was that of time. The hardy veterans, accustomed to the cold
climate of Gaul and Germany, fainted under the sultry heat of an Assyrian
summer; their vigour was exhausted by the incessant repetition of march
and combat; and the progress of the army was suspended by the precautions
of a slow and dangerous retreat, in the presence of an active enemy.
Every day, every hour, as the supply diminished, the value and price of
subsistence increased in the Roman camp. Julian, who always contented
himself with such food as a hungry soldier would have disdained,
distributed, for the use of the troops, the provisions of the imperial
household, and whatever could be spared from the sumpter-horses of the
tribunes and generals. But this feeble relief served only to aggravate
the sense of the public distress; and the Romans began to entertain the
most gloomy apprehensions that before they could reach the frontiers of
the empire they should all perish, either by famine or by the sword of
the barbarians.[b]

In the early hours of the 26th of June the army advanced and was
immediately followed by the Persians, who marched on the wings, on the
hilly ground at either side of the way, watching to seize a favourable
opportunity for attack. This soon offered itself, for whilst Julian had
ridden a little in advance, unarmed, to reconnoitre, he was suddenly
informed that the army had been attacked in the rear. He went there
immediately to render assistance, seizing a shield, but in his haste
forgetting to put on the coat of mail which he had taken off on account
of its weight and the oppressive heat. No sooner had he reached the rear
than the news came that the army was also engaged with the enemy in the
van. The emperor was promptly on the spot, and the Roman light infantry,
encouraged by his splendid example, succeeded in repulsing the Persians.

The Romans immediately started in pursuit, the emperor himself giving
the signal, and, transported with ardour and eager desire for combat,
himself taking part in it. Unarmed as he was, and without any thought of
himself, he was carried away in the throng of the fugitives. He no longer
heard the warning cries of his companions, who had been parted from him
in the general confusion; evil fate had already overtaken him, for the
spear of a horseman, coming suddenly from an unknown quarter, grazed his
arm and pierced his ribs, where it remained. He tried to extract it with
his right hand, but it was useless; he only wounded his fingers with the
sharp iron. He then fell from his horse, but was soon brought into camp.

Meanwhile the fighting continued; the Romans, amongst whom the news of
the fall of the emperor had soon spread, advanced, full of rage and
without thought of their own safety, on the Persians who were again
closing their ranks. A protracted struggle ensued and the air was filled
with the cries of the dying, the neighing of horses, and the whir of
arrows. At last night put an end to the bloodshed. The loss on both sides
was considerable.

Let us return to the emperor. He lay dying in his tent, surrounded by
his faithful followers, who could not suppress their anguish. He tried
to console them by long speeches, in which he alluded to the honourable
death granted him by favour of the gods; death was made easy to him,
since he had nothing to repent of in the actions of his life, for he had
always considered the happiness and welfare of his subjects as the object
of his government, and had had them in view in all his undertakings.

He would not express any desire as to his successor, lest he should
pass over anyone worthy. Who does not recall the death of Alexander,
his great model? All that he desired was the best possible ruler for
the empire. After thus speaking in a tranquil tone, the emperor gave
some directions concerning his private property; he also inquired for
the chancellor Anatolius, whose absence he had noticed. When he heard
from Sallust that he was dead, he lamented him bitterly, he who shortly
before had considered his own death as a favour of the gods. He soon
recovered himself and reproached those around him who had burst into
tears, as he considered it unseemly to lament a prince who was so soon
to become united to the gods. He then engaged in conversation with the
philosophers, Maximus and Priscus, on the immortal destiny of the soul.
This continual conversation was not favourable to his condition, for the
wound suddenly began to bleed again, his breath became laboured, and
after taking a drink of fresh water, he expired quietly about midnight.

Such was the end of the last emperor of the house of Constantine, on
whom the pagans had set such great hopes, at the early age of barely
thirty-two years, and after a reign of barely twenty months.[c]


FOOTNOTES

[59] His name was Clematius of Alexandria, and his only crime was a
refusal to gratify the desires of his mother-in-law; who solicited his
death because she had been disappointed of his love. Ammianus,[d] l. 14,
c. l.

[60] [Colonia Agrippina.]

[61] [Tres Tabernæ.]




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XLIII. JOVIAN TO THEODOSIUS (363-395 A.D.)


ELECTION OF JOVIAN (FLAVIUS CLAUDIUS JOVIANUS)

Three or four hours of the night had not passed away without some secret
cabals; and when the election of an emperor was proposed, the spirit of
faction began to agitate the assembly. Victor and Arinthæus collected
the remains of the court of Constantius; the friends of Julian attached
themselves to the Gallic chiefs, Dagalaiphus and Nevitta; and the
most fatal consequences might be apprehended from the discord of two
factions, so opposite in their character and interest, in their maxims
of government, and perhaps in their religious principles. The superior
virtues of Sallust could alone reconcile their divisions, and unite their
suffrages; and the venerable prefect would immediately have been declared
the successor of Julian if he himself, with sincere and modest firmness,
had not alleged his age and infirmities, so unequal to the weight of the
diadem.

The generals, perplexed by his refusal, showed a disposition to adopt
the salutary advice of an inferior officer, that they should act as they
would have acted in the absence of the emperor; that they should exert
their abilities to extricate the army from the present distress; and, if
they were fortunate enough to reach the confines of Mesopotamia, they
should proceed with united and deliberate counsels in the election of
a lawful sovereign. While they debated, a few voices saluted Jovian,
who was no more than first of the domestics, with the names of emperor
and augustus. The tumultuary acclamation was instantly repeated by the
guards who surrounded the tent, and passed, in a few minutes, to the
extremities of the line. The new prince, astonished with his own fortune,
was hastily invested with the imperial ornaments, and received an oath
of fidelity from the generals, whose favour and protection he so lately
solicited. The strongest recommendation of Jovian was the merit of his
father, Count Varronian, who enjoyed in honourable retirement the fruit
of his long services. In the obscure freedom of a private station, the
son indulged his taste for wine and women; yet he supported, with credit,
the character of a Christian and a soldier. Without being conspicuous
for any of the ambitious qualifications which excite the admiration and
envy of mankind, the comely person of Jovian, his cheerful temper and
familiar wit, had gained the affection of his fellow-soldiers; and the
generals of both parties acquiesced in a popular election, which had not
been conducted by the arts of their enemies. The pride of this unexpected
elevation was moderated by the just apprehension that the same day might
terminate the life and reign of the new emperor. The pressing voice
of necessity was obeyed without delay; and the first orders issued by
Jovian, a few hours after his predecessor had expired, were to prosecute
a march, which could alone extricate the Romans from their actual
distress.


SAPOR ASSAILS THE ROMANS

The welcome news of the death of Julian, which a deserter revealed to the
camp of Sapor, inspired the desponding monarch with a sudden confidence
of victory. He immediately detached the royal cavalry, perhaps the ten
thousand _Immortals_, to second and support the pursuit; and discharged
the whole weight of his united forces on the rear-guard of the Romans.
The rear-guard was thrown into disorder; the renowned legions, which
derived their titles from Diocletian and his warlike colleague, were
broken and trampled down by the elephants; and three tribunes lost their
lives in attempting to stop the flight of their soldiers. The battle
was at length restored by the persevering valour of the Romans; the
Persians were repulsed with a great slaughter of men and elephants; and
the army, after marching and fighting a long summer’s day, arrived, in
the evening, at Samara on the banks of the Tigris, about one hundred
miles above Ctesiphon. On the ensuing day, the barbarians, instead of
harassing the march, attacked the camp of Jovian, which had been seated
in a deep and sequestered valley. From the hills, the archers of Persia
insulted and annoyed the weary legionaries, and a body of cavalry,
which had penetrated with desperate courage through the prætorian gate,
was cut in pieces, after a doubtful conflict, near the imperial tent.
In the succeeding night the camp at Carche was protected by the lofty
dikes of the river; and the Roman army, though incessantly exposed to
the vexatious pursuit of the Saracens, pitched their tents near the city
of Dura, four days after the death of Julian. The Tigris was still on
their left; their hopes and provisions were almost consumed; and the
impatient soldiers who had fondly persuaded themselves that the frontiers
of the empire were not far distant, requested their new sovereign, that
they might be permitted to hazard the passage of the river. With the
assistance of his wisest officers, Jovian endeavoured to check their
rashness, by representing that if they possessed sufficient skill and
vigour to stem the torrent of a deep and rapid stream, they would only
deliver themselves naked and defenceless to the barbarians who had
occupied the opposite banks.

Yielding at length to their clamorous importunities, he consented that
five hundred Gauls and Germans, accustomed from their infancy to the
waters of the Rhine and Danube, should attempt the bold adventure, which
might serve either as an encouragement, or as a warning, for the rest of
the army. In the silence of the night they swam the Tigris, surprised an
unguarded post of the enemy, and displayed at the dawn of day the signal
of their resolution and fortune. The success of this trial disposed the
emperor to listen to the promises of his architects, who proposed to
construct a floating bridge of the inflated skins of sheep, oxen, and
goats, covered with a floor of earth and fascines. Two important days
were spent in the ineffectual labour; and the Romans, who already endured
the miseries of famine, cast a look of despair on the Tigris, and upon
the barbarians, whose numbers and obstinacy increased with the distress
of the imperial army.


THE HUMILIATION OF THE ROMANS

In this hopeless situation, the fainting spirits of the Romans were
revived by the sound of peace. The transient presumption of Sapor had
vanished: he observed with serious concern, that in the repetition of
doubtful combats, he had lost his most faithful and intrepid nobles, his
bravest troops, and the greatest part of his train of elephants; and the
experienced monarch feared to provoke the resistance of despair, the
vicissitudes of fortune, and the unexhausted powers of the Roman Empire;
which might soon advance to relieve, or to revenge, the successor of
Julian. The Surenas himself, accompanied by another satrap, appeared in
the camp of Jovian; and declared that the clemency of his sovereign was
not averse to signify the conditions on which he would consent to spare
and to dismiss the cæsar, with the relics of his captive army. The hopes
of safety subdued the firmness of the Romans; the emperor was compelled,
by the advice of his council, and the cries of his soldiers, to embrace
the offer of peace; and the prefect Sallust was immediately sent, with
the general Arinthæus, to understand the pleasure of the Great King.
The crafty Persian delayed, under various pretences, the conclusion of
the agreement; started difficulties, required explanations, suggested
expedients, receded from his concessions, increased his demands, and
wasted four days in the arts of negotiation, till he had consumed the
stock of provisions which yet remained in the camp of the Romans. Had
Jovian been capable of executing a bold and prudent measure, he would
have continued his march with unremitting diligence; the progress of
the treaty would have suspended the attacks of the barbarians; and,
before the expiration of the fourth day, he might have safely reached
the fruitful province of Gordyene, at the distance of only one hundred
miles. The irresolute emperor, instead of breaking through the toils of
the enemy, expected his fate with patient resignation; and accepted the
humiliating conditions of peace, which it was no longer in his power to
refuse.

As the price of his disgraceful concessions, the emperor might perhaps
have stipulated, that the camp of the hungry Romans should be plentifully
supplied; and that they should be permitted to pass the Tigris on the
bridge which was constructed by the hands of the Persians. But if Jovian
presumed to solicit those equitable terms, they were sternly refused by
the haughty tyrant of the East whose clemency had pardoned the invaders
of his country. The Saracens sometimes intercepted the stragglers of the
march; but the generals and troops of Sapor respected the cessation of
arms, and Jovian was suffered to explore the most convenient place for
the passage of the river.[b]

“But when the trumpets openly gave the signal for crossing the river,”
says Ammianus, “it was dreadful to see with what ardour every individual
hastened to rush into this danger, preferring himself to all his comrades
in the desire of avoiding the many dangers and distresses behind him.
Some tried to guide the beasts who were swimming about at random, with
hurdles hurriedly put together; others, seated on bladders, and others,
being driven by necessity to all kinds of expedients, sought to pass
through the opposing waves by crossing them obliquely. The emperor
himself with a few others crossed over in the small boats, which we said
were saved when the fleet was burnt, and then sent the same vessels
backwards and forwards till our whole body was brought across. And at
length all of us, except such as were drowned, reached the opposite bank
of the river, being saved amid our difficulties by the favour of the
Supreme Deity.”[d]

As soon as the Romans had landed on the western bank, they were delivered
from the hostile pursuit of the barbarians; but, in a laborious march
of two hundred miles over the plains of Mesopotamia, they endured the
last extremities of thirst and hunger. At Thilsaphata, the emperor most
graciously received the generals of Mesopotamia; and the remains of a
once flourishing army at length reposed themselves under the walls of
Nisibis. The messengers of Jovian had proclaimed, in the language of
flattery, his election, his treaty, and his return; and the new prince
had taken the most effectual measures to secure the allegiance of the
armies and provinces of Europe, by placing the military command in the
hands of those officers who, from motives of interest or inclination,
would firmly support the cause of their benefactor.

The minds of the people were filled with astonishment and grief, with
indignation and terror, when they were informed that the unworthy
successor of Julian relinquished the five provinces which had been
acquired by the victory of Galerius, and shamefully surrendered to the
barbarians the important city of Nisibis, the firmest bulwark of the
provinces of the East. The deep and dangerous question, how far the
public faith should be observed, when it becomes incompatible with the
public safety, was freely agitated in popular conversation; and some
hopes were entertained, that the emperor would redeem his pusillanimous
behaviour by a splendid act of patriotic perfidy. The inflexible spirit
of the Roman senate had always disclaimed the unequal conditions which
were extorted from the distress of her captive armies; and, if it were
necessary to satisfy the national honour by delivering the guilty general
into the hands of the barbarians, the greatest part of the subjects of
Jovian would have cheerfully acquiesced in the precedent of ancient times.

But the emperor, whatever might be the limits of his constitutional
authority, was the absolute master of the laws and arms of the state;
and the same motives which had forced him to subscribe, now pressed
him to execute, the treaty of peace. He was impatient to secure an
empire at the expense of a few provinces; and the respectable names
of religion and honour concealed the personal fears and ambition of
Jovian. Notwithstanding the dutiful solicitations of the inhabitants,
decency, as well as prudence, forbade the emperor to lodge in the
palace of Nisibis; but the next morning after his arrival, Bineses, the
ambassador of Persia, entered the place, displayed from the citadel
the standard of the Great King, and proclaimed, in his name, the cruel
alternative of exile or servitude. The principal citizens of Nisibis,
who till that fatal moment had confided in the protection of their
sovereign, threw themselves at his feet. They conjured him not to
abandon, or at least not to deliver, a faithful colony to the rage of a
barbarian tyrant, exasperated by the three successive defeats which he
had experienced under the walls of Nisibis. They still possessed arms
and courage to repel the invaders of their country; they requested only
the permission of using them in their own defence; and as soon as they
had asserted their independence, they should implore the favour of being
again admitted into the ranks of his subjects. Their arguments, their
eloquence, their tears, were ineffectual. Jovian alleged, with some
confusion, the sanctity of oaths; and, as the reluctance with which he
accepted the present of a crown of gold convinced the citizens of their
hopeless condition, the advocate Sylvanus was provoked to exclaim, “O
emperor! may you thus be crowned by all the cities of your dominions!”

Jovian, who in a few weeks had easily learned to assume the habits of a
prince, was displeased with freedom and offended with truth; and as he
reasonably supposed that the discontent of the people might incline them
to submit to the Persian government, he published an edict, under pain of
death, that they should leave the city within the term of three days. The
savage insensibility of Jovian appears to have aggravated the hardships
of these unhappy fugitives. They were seated, however, in a new-built
quarter of Amida; and that rising city, with the reinforcement of a very
considerable colony, soon recovered its former splendour, and became the
capital of Mesopotamia. Similar orders were despatched by the emperor
for the evacuation of Singara and the castle of the Moors; and for the
restitution of the five provinces beyond the Tigris. Sapor enjoyed the
glory and the fruits of his victory; and this ignominious peace has
justly been considered as a memorable era in the decline and fall of the
Roman Empire.

After Jovian had performed those engagements, which the voice of his
people might have tempted him to violate, he hastened away from the scene
of his disgrace, and proceeded with his whole court to enjoy the luxury
of Antioch.[b]

Ammianus has left us a terse description of the personal traits of the
emperor. “Jovian,” he says, “was slow in his movements, of a cheerful
countenance, with blue eyes, very tall, so much so that it was long
before any of the royal robes could be found to fit him. He was anxious
to imitate Constantius, often occupying himself with serious business
till after midday, and being fond of jesting with his friends in public.
He was given to the study of the Christian law, sometimes doing it
marked honour; he was tolerably learned in it, very well inclined to its
professors, and disposed to promote them to be judges, as was seen in
some of his appointments. He was fond of eating and addicted to wine and
women.”[d]

Jovian was educated in the profession of Christianity; and as he marched
from Nisibis to Antioch, the banner of the cross, the _Labarum_ of
Constantine, which was again displayed at the head of the legions,
announced to the people the faith of their new emperor. As soon as
he ascended the throne, he transmitted a circular epistle to all the
governors of provinces; in which he confessed the divine truth, and
secured the legal establishment, of the Christian religion. The insidious
edicts of Julian were abolished; the ecclesiastical immunities were
restored and enlarged; and Jovian condescended to lament, that the
distress of the times obliged him to diminish the measure of charitable
contributions. The Christians were unanimous in the loud and sincere
applause which they bestowed on the pious successor of Julian. But they
were still ignorant what creed, or what synod, he would choose for the
standard of orthodoxy; and the peace of the church immediately revived
those eager disputes which had been suspended during the season of
persecution. The episcopal leaders of the contending sects, convinced
from experience how much their fate would depend on the earliest
impressions that were made on the mind of an untutored soldier, hastened
to the court of Edessa, or Antioch. The highways of the East were crowded
with Homoöusian, and Arian, and semi-Arian, and Eunomian bishops, who
struggled to outstrip each other in the holy race; the apartments of
the palace resounded with their clamours; and the ears of their prince
were assaulted, and perhaps astonished, by the singular mixture of
metaphysical argument and passionate invective. The moderation of
Jovian, who recommended concord and charity, and referred the disputants
to the sentence of a future council, was interpreted as a symptom of
indifference; but his attachment to the Nicene creed was at length
discovered and declared, by the reverence which he expressed for the
celestial virtues of the great Athanasius. The intrepid veteran of the
faith, at the age of seventy, had issued from his retreat on the first
intelligence of the tyrant’s death. The acclamations of the people seated
him once more on the archiepiscopal throne; and he wisely accepted, or
anticipated, the invitation of Jovian. Before his departure from Antioch,
he assured Jovian that his orthodox devotion would be rewarded by a long
and peaceful reign. Athanasius had reason to hope, that he should be
allowed either the merit of a successful prediction, or the excuse of a
grateful, though ineffectual, prayer.

The slightest force, when it is applied to assist and guide the natural
descent of its object, operates with irresistible weight; and Jovian had
the good fortune to embrace the religious opinions which were supported
by the spirit of the times, and the zeal and numbers of the most powerful
sect. Under his reign, Christianity obtained an easy and lasting victory;
and as soon as the smile of royal patronage was withdrawn, the genius
of paganism, which had been fondly raised and cherished by the arts of
Julian, sank irrecoverably in the dust.

[Sidenote: [363-364 A.D.]]

In the space of seven months, the Roman troops, who were now returned
to Antioch, had performed a march of fifteen hundred miles; in which
they had endured all the hardships of war, of famine, and of climate.
Notwithstanding their services, their fatigues, and the approach of
winter, the timid and impatient Jovian allowed only, to the men and
horses, a respite of six weeks. The emperor could not sustain the
indiscreet and malicious raillery of the people of Antioch. He was
impatient to possess the palace of Constantinople; and to prevent the
ambition of some competitor, who might occupy the vacant allegiance
of Europe. But he soon received the grateful intelligence, that his
authority was acknowledged from the Thracian Bosporus to the Atlantic
Ocean. By the first letters which the emperor had despatched from the
camp of Mesopotamia, he had delegated the military command of Gaul and
Illyricum to Malarich, a brave and faithful officer of the nation of
the Franks; and to his father-in-law Count Lucillian, who had formerly
distinguished his courage and conduct in the defence of Nisibis. Malarich
had declined an office to which he thought himself unequal; and Lucillian
was massacred at Remi [Rheims], in an accidental mutiny of the Batavian
cohorts. But the moderation of Jovinus, master-general of the cavalry,
who forgave the intention of his disgrace, soon appeased the tumult, and
confirmed the uncertain minds of the soldiers. The oath of fidelity was
administered, and taken with loyal acclamations; and the deputies of the
western armies saluted their new sovereign as he descended from Mount
Taurus to the city of Tyana, in Cappadocia. From Tyana he continued his
hasty march to Ancyra, capital of the province of Galatia; where Jovian
assumed, with his infant son, the name and ensigns of the consulship.
Dadastana, an obscure town, almost at an equal distance between Ancyra
and Nicæa, was marked for the fatal term of his journey and his life.
After indulging himself with a plentiful, perhaps an intemperate, supper,
he retired to rest; and the next morning the emperor Jovian was found
dead in his bed.

The cause of the sudden death of Jovian was variously understood. By some
it was ascribed to the consequences of an indigestion, occasioned either
by the quantity of the wine, or the quality of the mushrooms, which he
had swallowed in the evening. According to others, he was suffocated
in his sleep by the vapour of charcoal, which extracted from the walls
of the apartment the unwholesome moisture of the fresh plaster. The
body of Jovian was sent to Constantinople, to be interred with his
predecessors’; and the sad procession was met on the road by his wife
Charito, the daughter of Count Lucillian; who still wept the recent death
of her father, and was hastening to dry her tears in the embraces of an
imperial husband. Her disappointment and grief were embittered by the
anxiety of maternal tenderness. Six weeks before the death of Jovian, his
infant son had been placed in the curule chair, adorned with the title
of _Nobilissimus_, and the vain ensigns of the consulship. Unconscious
of his fortune, the royal youth, who, from his grandfather, assumed the
name of Varronian, was reminded only by the jealousy of the government,
that he was the son of an emperor. Sixteen years afterwards he was still
alive, but he had already been deprived of an eye; and his afflicted
mother expected, every hour, that the innocent victim would be torn from
her arms, to appease with his blood the suspicions of the reigning prince.


VALENTINIAN AND VALENS

After the death of Jovian, the throne of the Roman world remained ten
days without a master. The ministers and generals still continued to
meet in council; to exercise their respective functions; to maintain the
public order; and peaceably to conduct the army to the city of Nicæa in
Bithynia, which was chosen for the place of the election. In a solemn
assembly of the civil and military powers of the empire, the diadem was
again unanimously offered to the prefect Sallust. He enjoyed the glory
of a second refusal; and when the virtues of the father were alleged in
favour of his son, the prefect, with the firmness of a disinterested
patriot, declared to the electors, that the feeble age of the one,
and the inexperienced youth of the other, were equally incapable of
the laborious duties of government. Several candidates were proposed;
and, after weighing the objections of character or situation, they
were successively rejected; but as soon as the name of Valentinian was
pronounced, the merit of that officer united the suffrages of the whole
assembly, and obtained the sincere approbation of Sallust himself.

Valentinian was the son of Count Gratian, who was a native of Cibalis
in Pannonia, and who, from an obscure condition, had raised himself,
by matchless strength and dexterity, to the military commands of
Africa and Britain; from which he retired with an ample fortune and
suspicious integrity. The rank and services of Gratian contributed,
however, to smooth the first steps of the promotion of his son, and
afforded him an early opportunity of displaying those solid and useful
qualifications, which raised his character above the ordinary level of
his fellow-soldiers.

The person of Valentinian was tall, graceful, and majestic. His manly
countenance, marked with the impressions of sense and spirit, inspired
his friends with awe, and his enemies with fear; and, to second the
efforts of his undaunted courage, the son of Gratian had inherited
the advantages of a strong and healthy constitution. By the habits of
chastity and temperance, which restrain the appetites and invigorate
the faculties, Valentinian preserved his own and the public esteem. The
avocations of a military life had diverted his youth from the elegant
pursuits of literature; he was ignorant of the Greek language, and the
arts of rhetoric; but as the mind of the orator was never disconcerted
by timid perplexity, he was able, as often as the occasion prompted
him, to deliver his decided sentiments with bold and ready elocution.
The laws of martial discipline were the only laws that he had studied;
and he was soon distinguished by the laborious diligence and inflexible
severity with which he discharged and enforced the duties of the camp.
In the time of Julian he provoked the danger of disgrace by the contempt
which he publicly expressed for the reigning religion; and it should
seem from his subsequent conduct that the indiscreet and unseasonable
freedom of Valentinian was the effect of military spirit, rather than of
Christian zeal. He was pardoned, however, and still employed by a prince
who esteemed his merit; and in the various events of the Persian War, he
improved the reputation which he had already acquired on the banks of
the Rhine. The celerity and success with which he executed an important
commission recommended him to the favour of Jovian, and to the honourable
command of the second school, or company, of targeteers, of the domestic
guards. In the march from Antioch, he had reached his quarters at Ancyra,
when he was unexpectedly summoned, without guilt, and without intrigue,
to assume, in the forty-third year of his age, the absolute government of
the Roman Empire.

The invitation of the ministers and generals at Nicæa was of little
moment, unless it were confirmed by the voice of the army. The aged
Sallust, who had long observed the irregular fluctuations of popular
assemblies, proposed, under pain of death, that none of those persons,
whose rank in the service might excite a party in their favour, should
appear in public on the day of the inauguration. Yet such was the
prevalence of ancient superstition, that a whole day was voluntarily
added to this dangerous interval, because it happened to be the
intercalation of the bissextile. At length, when the hour was supposed
to be propitious, Valentinian showed himself from a lofty tribunal; the
judicious choice was applauded; and the new prince solemnly invested with
the diadem and the purple amidst the acclamations of the troops, who were
disposed in martial order round the tribunal. But when he stretched forth
his hand to address the armed multitude, a busy whisper was accidentally
started in the ranks, and insensibly swelled into a loud and imperious
clamour, that he should name, without delay, a colleague in the empire.

The intrepid calmness of Valentinian at last obtained silence, and
commanded respect; and he thus addressed the assembly: “A few minutes
since it was in your power, fellow-soldiers, to have left me in the
obscurity of a private station. Judging, from the testimony of my past
life, that I deserved to reign, you have placed me on the throne. It
is now my duty to consult the safety and interest of the republic. The
weight of the universe is undoubtedly too great for the hands of a
feeble mortal. I am conscious of the limits of my abilities, and the
uncertainty of my life; and far from declining, I am anxious to solicit,
the assistance of a worthy colleague. But, where discord may be fatal,
the choice of a faithful friend requires mature and serious deliberation.
That deliberation shall be my care. Let your conduct be dutiful and
consistent. Retire to your quarters, refresh your minds and bodies; and
expect the accustomed donative on the accession of the new emperor.”

The astonished troops, with a mixture of pride, of satisfaction, and
of terror, confessed the voice of their master. Their angry clamours
subsided into silent reverence; and Valentinian, encompassed with the
eagles of the legions, and the various banners of the cavalry and
infantry, was conducted, in warlike pomp, to the palace of Nicæa. As
he was sensible, however, of the importance of preventing some rash
declaration of the soldiers, he consulted the assembly of the chiefs; and
their real sentiments were concisely expressed by the generous freedom
of Dagalaiphus. “Most excellent prince,” said that officer, “if you
consider only your family, you have a brother; if you love the republic,
look round for the most deserving of the Romans.”

The emperor, who suppressed his displeasure, without altering his
intention, slowly proceeded from Nicæa to Nicomedia and Constantinople.
In one of the suburbs of that capital, thirty days after his own
elevation, he bestowed the title of Augustus on his brother Valens; and
as the boldest patriots were convinced that their opposition, without
being serviceable to their country, would be fatal to themselves, the
declaration of his absolute will was received with silent submission.
Valens was now in the thirty-sixth year of his age; but his abilities
had never been exercised in any employment, military or civil, and his
character had not inspired the world with any sanguine expectations. He
possessed, however, one quality, which recommended him to Valentinian,
and preserved the domestic peace of the empire: a devout and grateful
attachment to his benefactor, whose superiority of genius, as well as of
authority, Valens humbly and cheerfully acknowledged in every action of
his life.

Before Valentinian divided the provinces, he reformed the administration
of the empire. All ranks of subjects, who had been injured or oppressed
under the reign of Julian, were invited to support their public
accusations. The silence of mankind attested the spotless integrity of
the prefect Sallust; and his own pressing solicitations that he might
be permitted to retire from the business of the state were rejected
by Valentinian with the most honourable expressions of friendship and
esteem. But among the favourites of the late emperor, there were many
who had abused his credulity or superstition, and who could no longer
hope to be protected either by favour or justice.[62] The greater part
of the ministers of the palace, and the governors of the provinces,
were removed from their respective stations; yet the eminent merit
of some officers was distinguished from the obnoxious crowd; and,
notwithstanding the opposite clamours of zeal and resentment, the whole
proceedings of this delicate inquiry appear to have been conducted with a
reasonable share of wisdom and moderation. The festivity of a new reign
received a short and suspicious interruption from the sudden illness of
the two princes; but as soon as their health was restored, they left
Constantinople in the beginning of the spring. In the castle or palace
of Mediana, only three miles from Naissus, they executed the solemn and
final division of the Roman Empire. Valentinian bestowed on his brother
the rich prefecture of the East, from the lower Danube to the confines
of Persia; whilst he reserved for his immediate government the warlike
prefectures of Illyricum, Italy, and Gaul, from the extremity of Greece
to the Caledonian rampart; and from the rampart of Caledonia to the foot
of Mount Atlas. The provincial administration remained on its former
basis; but a double supply of generals and magistrates was required for
two councils and two courts: the division was made with a just regard to
their peculiar merit and situation, and seven master-generals were soon
created, either of the cavalry or infantry. When this important business
had been amicably transacted, Valentinian and Valens embraced for the
last time. The emperor of the West established his temporary residence at
Mediolanum; and the emperor of the East returned to Constantinople, to
assume the dominion of fifty provinces, of whose language he was totally
ignorant.[b]

[Sidenote: [363-369 A.D.]]

When Julian had gone, the barbarians, repulsed for a while, had once
more turned towards the Roman provinces. The Alamanni and Burgundians
crossed the upper Rhine, the Quadi and Sarmatians the Danube. The Franks
had come out of their cantonments on the lower Rhine, and Saxon pirates
again swarmed on the seas. In Britain the Picts and Scots had come down
from their mountains. In Africa a Moorish chief, Firmus, had revolted.
It seemed as if the whole barbarian world had risen to assail a falling
and humiliated empire. Valentinian had the courage necessary to face the
danger; able generals, Jovin, Sebastian, above all Theodosius, helped
in this difficult task. In the year 365 he established himself in Paris
that he might keep a closer watch over the barbarians, degraded the corps
which had allowed their standards to be seized, and, feeling more sure of
his troops after this revival of ancient discipline, he marched against
the Alamanni, whom he defeated near Catelauni (Châlons) (366).

[Illustration: PROWS OF ROMAN WAR GALLEYS]

Two years later, one of their kings, Randon, surprised Mogontiacum when
_en fête_ and took much booty and many captives. Similar expeditions were
on foot, and the whole Alamannic league was astir. The emperor resumed
the policy of Diocletian, Tiberius, and Augustus, and sowed division
among the barbarians. The Burgundians, who had already attained to a
certain degree of civilisation, were gained over and opposed to the
Alamanni. He himself crossed the Rhine with a numerous army and conquered
the rebellious tribes near Solicinium[63] (368). He employed part of the
following year in raising the fortifications which guarded the river
passages, and on the Neckar, near Mannheim, began works to which he
wished to attach great importance. To make the barbarians understand that
the empire intended to resume its aggressive position towards them, he
entered the great valley of the Mœnus (Main), which flows through the
heart of Germany. Macrianus, the Alamannic king, was alarmed and sued for
peace, and Valentinian returned in triumph to Augusta Trevirorum (Trèves)
with his son Gratian. The poet Ausonius of Burdigala (Bordeaux), the
young prince’s tutor, and Symmachus, the last orator of Rome, celebrated
these exploits which gave security to Gaul.

During these operations on the Rhine those “kings of the sea,” the
Saxons, had been chased from the shores they had been accustomed to
pillage, and the count Theodosius, the father of the future emperor, had
acquired in Britain a renown almost equal among his contemporaries to
that of Agricola; but he had not a Tacitus for son-in-law. He saved the
Britons from pillage by the Picts, re-established the Roman dominion,
which had been nearly driven from the island, and consolidated it by a
wise administration. Some time after, he brought the same talents into
Africa. The exactions of the last governors and their cruelties towards
the Donatists had excited such great disaffection that Firmus the
Moor had been able to conquer a large part of the country. Theodosius
suppressed the revolt, and, after the death of Valentinian, restored
peace to the province; but, becoming involved in some obscure intrigue,
in spite of his innocence and his services, he was beheaded at Carthage.

In the internal government of the provinces Valentinian was hard and
often cruel. He had hardly any other punishment for crimes save death.
And if we are to credit a not very reliable story, he had lodged in his
palace two immense bears, which tore criminals to pieces before his
eyes. In religious matters he followed the principles of tolerance, with
regard to all religions, although he himself belonged to the orthodox
church. The magicians alone, who were then rapidly increasing in number,
were diligently hunted down. Wise laws against the exposing of children,
for the management of schools, the retaining of paid doctors in Rome
and the establishment in provincial towns of protectors or defensors of
the city, show that he was not only a man of war. Unfortunately for the
empire he died in an expedition against the Quadi. When these people,
whom he intended to punish for an incursion into Illyricum, heard of
his coming, they sent him a humble embassy to which he refused to
listen. When he had pitilessly devastated their country, he consented
to receive their deputies, but spoke to them with so much passion that
he burst a blood vessel, and some moments after expired (375). The
successor of Valentinian was his son Gratian, who had borne the title of
Augustus since 367, and was now only seventeen. He accepted his brother
Valentinian II, then only four years old, as colleague, and abandoned in
his favour the prefectures of Italy and Illyricum.


INVASION OF THE GOTHS IN THE EAST (375); BATTLE OF HADRIANOPOLIS AND
DEATH OF VALENS (378)

[Sidenote: [366-375 A.D.]]

During these events there reigned in the East a suspicious and weak
prince, Valens, who had had to suppress the revolt of Procopius, cousin
to Julian. That usurper being detected in treason was beheaded (366); but
Valens, far from imitating the prudent reserve of his brother, disturbed
the whole Orient by a cruel persecution directed against the magicians
and those who consulted them, and also by his partiality for the Arians.
The faithful of the orthodox church were once more disturbed, the bishops
driven from their sees, and an Arian placed on the archiepiscopal throne
at Constantinople. Still worse sufferings would have been inflicted on
the Church if the gravity of the political events which filled this reign
had left Valens sufficient leisure to respond to all the demands of the
heretic leaders. Sapor had expelled the kings of Armenia and Iberia.
Valens restored them and forced the Great King to agree to a treaty with
the empire. This was a success, but unfortunately a frightful catastrophe
was preparing on the Thracian border.

Procopius, when he revolted, had taken into his pay a corps of three
thousand Visigoths. When the usurper was overthrown Valens endeavoured
to punish the barbarians for the help they had furnished. A three years’
war ended in a treaty by which the barbarians were sent beyond the
Danube, the subsidies which the empire had paid them were suppressed, and
two frontier towns given in exchange. Athanaric, one of the principal
leaders of the western Goths or Visigoths who lived to the north of the
lower Danube, accepted this convention for his people. Bishop Ulfilas
had just converted a number of the Goths to Arianism. He had compiled a
translation of the Gospels in their tongue, the first written monument of
their language. The manuscript is preserved at Upsala. Ulfilas had first
to make an alphabet, which he borrowed in great part from that of the
Greeks. Arianism was therefore to return with the barbarians during the
invasion.

To that invasion we are approaching, after having seen it constantly
threatening for nearly two hundred years. The people who brought it about
were strangers to the Germanic race, being tribes of Huns belonging
to the Mongolian race, as far as can be judged from the description
which ancient writers have left us of the features and customs of these
ferocious hordes. The Huns were nomads and scarcely recognised social
ties. The tribes in their expeditions followed particular leaders, who
sometimes, however, united for common enterprises. Attila, one of them,
is apparently the first who contrived to make the entire nation recognise
his authority.

All the Huns were horsemen, and knew no other dwellings than their tents
or huts. As greedy and cruel as those Mongols of the Middle Ages who
killed five or six million men under Jenghiz Khan, they ravaged gold and
silver--not for use, because that they did not understand, but simply
to possess it. Following their vagabond instincts, and in order to
augment these useless treasures, they undertook disastrous expeditions
against civilised peoples. Their incursions, so rapid and unlooked for,
spread more terror than those of any other barbarous people of the time,
for wherever they passed they destroyed, merely for the pleasure of
destroying. Attila, their great chief, boasted later that grass would
not spring again where his horse had passed. There was a legend that
they were born in the desert of demons and witches, and their cruelty
towards women, whom even the Germans in their ravages respected, seemed
to confirm this unclean origin.

[Sidenote: [375-378 A.D.]]

Where they first lived and what led them to migrate towards the west,
is unknown, but it seems to be established that, at the time when the
Scandinavian and German tribes began to stir, the nomadic hordes of
western Asia furled their tents and advanced on the west. Their march,
many times interrupted and by long intervals, owing to the obstinate
resistance of certain tribes, resumed its course when the obstacle had
been overcome or they had attracted to them the peoples who had stopped
their way. This is what happened in the time of Valens. The Huns crossed
the Urals and subjugated the Alans who lived between the Volga and the
Black Sea. A part of these people fled beyond the Caucasus, where their
descendants still live; the rest followed the conquerors, who, spreading
over the vast plains of Sarmatia, found themselves confronted by the
great kingdom of the Goths.

That great German nation, which had gradually descended from the mouth
of the Oder, on the Danube and Pontus Euxinus, had long remained divided
under a great number of chiefs. But Hermanric had united the greater part
of his tribes and founded a powerful state, the kingdom of the Ostrogoths
or eastern Goths, which extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and
a number of peoples had submitted to him. This kingdom barred the whole
continent and, had it not already been in full course of dissolution,
would no doubt have stopped the invasion.

When the aged Hermanric learned of the enemy’s approach, he made great
preparations, despite his 110 years. But the vassal tribes showed little
zeal for such a formidable war. Two chiefs of the Roxolani, whose sister
he had caused to be trampled to death under his horse’s hoofs because
her husband refused to arm for him, tried to assassinate him. Other
chiefs also refused obedience and the old king in desperation fell upon
his sword. His successor Whithimer was vanquished and killed. He left an
infant son who was saved by Alatheus and Saphrax, two Gothic warriors who
had served for a long time in the Roman armies. Leaving the bulk of the
nation to make submission to the conquerors, they, with the royal child,
gained the interior of the country by skilful marches and escaped the
pursuit of the Huns, now occupied in fighting a new enemy. Athanaric,
a chief of the western Goths, had advanced as far as the Danastris
(Dniester) to defend the passage; their cavalry crossed the river during
the night and attacked him in the rear. There was nothing for it but to
retreat as far as the Pyretus (Pruth). There Athanaric wanted to raise
fortifications from the Carpathians to the sea and might thus have
arrested the Huns, but his discouraged people preferred going to beg an
asylum in the territories of the empire. The brave chief himself refused
such a disgrace, or did not venture to trust to the hospitality of
Valens, and fled to the mountains with a few faithful warriors (375).

When the emperor was told that what remained of the Gothic nation was
now suppliant to him, his flattered pride made him forget his prudence,
and he opened the empire to this multitude, which still numbered two
hundred thousand fighting men. The only condition imposed was that they
should lay down their arms and give some of their children as hostages,
who were sent to the small towns of Asia Minor. The barbarians submitted
to anything. But when the imperial officers saw them disarmed they would
sell them no provisions except at the highest prices. All their money
was first exhausted, then their slaves, and afterwards their children,
whom they sold. When they had nothing more they were reduced to taking by
force what was refused to them, and went marauding through the country.
They had not given up all their arms and they manufactured more. Alatheus
and Saphrax, who, about the same time, forced the Danube passage and came
with their comrades to join them, augmented both their numbers and their
confidence. All Thrace was given up to pillage. Even Huns and Alans ran
to share in the prey.

Valens collected his forces to fight them and also invoked the aid of
his nephew. Gratian promised help, but a young Alamannian of his guard,
away on leave among his own people, having spoken of these preparations,
the Alamanni thought it a favourable opportunity to attack the denuded
frontiers and their movement made it necessary to keep back the troops
destined for Valens. Yet every day added to the peril of this prince.
All the barbarians settled in the Danubian provinces, all the Germanic
captives whom the emperors had transported there, hastened to join
their brethren. For a whole year the legions vainly tried to stay the
devastation. At last, in 378, Valens arrived with a part of the army of
the East. Gratian was also on the march; but Valens wanted to prevent the
concentration of the barbarians in a single body and advanced against
them.[c]

The Goths had proposed to occupy the defiles on the road from
Constantinople to Hadrianopolis, but the march of the imperial troops was
conducted with so much skill and celerity, that they reached the latter
place unimpeded and secured themselves in a strong camp beneath its
walls. A council was held to decide on future operations.[e]


VALENS MARCHES AGAINST THE GOTHS

[Sidenote: [378 A.D.]]

On the ninth of August, a day which has deserved to be marked among the
most inauspicious of the Roman calendar, the emperor Valens, leaving
under a strong guard his baggage and military treasure, marched from
Hadrianopolis to attack the Goths, who were encamped about twelve miles
from the city. By some mistake of the orders, or some ignorance of the
ground, the right wing or column of cavalry arrived in sight of the
enemy whilst the left was still at a considerable distance; the soldiers
were compelled, in the sultry heat of summer, to precipitate their pace;
and the line of battle was formed with tedious confusion and irregular
delay. The Gothic cavalry had been detached to forage in the adjacent
country; and Fritigern still continued to practise his customary arts. He
despatched messengers of peace, made proposals, required hostages, and
wasted the hours, till the Romans, exposed without shelter to the burning
rays of the sun, were exhausted by thirst, hunger, and intolerable
fatigue. The emperor was persuaded to send an ambassador to the Gothic
camp; the zeal of Richomer, who alone had courage to accept the dangerous
commission, was applauded.

[Illustration: A GOTHIC WARRIOR

(After Hothmoth)]

The count of the domestics, adorned with the splendid ensigns of his
dignity, had proceeded some way in the space between the two armies, when
he was suddenly recalled by the alarm of battle. The hasty and imprudent
attack was made by Bacurius the Iberian, who commanded a body of archers
and targeteers; and as they advanced with rashness, they retreated with
loss and disgrace. In the same moment the flying squadrons of Alatheus
and Saphrax, whose return was anxiously expected by the general of the
Goths, descended like a whirlwind from the hills, swept across the plain,
and added new terrors to the tumultuous but irresistible charge of the
barbarian host. The event of the battle of Hadrianopolis, so fatal to
Valens and to the empire, may be described in a few words; the Roman
cavalry fled; the infantry was abandoned, surrounded, and cut in pieces.
The most skilful evolutions, the firmest courage, are scarcely sufficient
to extricate a body of foot, encompassed on an open plain by superior
numbers of horse; but the troops of Valens, oppressed by the weight of
the enemy and their own fears, were crowded into a narrow space, where it
was impossible for them to extend their ranks, or even to use with effect
their swords and javelins.

In the midst of tumult, slaughter, and dismay, the emperor, deserted
by his guards, and wounded, as it was supposed, with an arrow, sought
protection among the lancearii and the mattiarii, who still maintained
their ground with some appearance of order and firmness. His faithful
generals, Trajan and Victor, who perceived his danger, loudly exclaimed
that all was lost unless the person of the emperor could be saved.
Some troops, animated by their exhortation, advanced to his relief;
they found only a bloody spot, covered with a heap of broken arms and
mangled bodies, without being able to discover their unfortunate prince,
either among the living or the dead. Their search could not indeed be
successful, if there is any truth in the circumstances with which some
historians have related the death of the emperor. By the care of his
attendants, Valens was removed from the field of battle to a neighbouring
cottage, where they attempted to dress his wound, and to provide for his
future safety. But his humble retreat was instantly surrounded by the
enemy; they tried to force the door; they were provoked by a discharge
of arrows from the roof, till at length, impatient of delay, they set
fire to a pile of dry fagots, and consumed the cottage with the Roman
emperor and his train. Valens perished in the flames; and a youth who
dropped from the window alone escaped, to attest the melancholy tale and
to inform the Goths of the inestimable prize which they had lost by their
own rashness. A great number of brave and distinguished officers perished
in the battle of Hadrianopolis, which equalled in the actual loss, and
far surpassed in the fatal consequences, the misfortune which Rome had
formerly sustained in the fields of Cannæ.

The pride of the Goths was elated by this memorable victory; but their
avarice was disappointed by the mortifying discovery that the richest
part of the imperial spoil had been within the walls of Hadrianopolis.
They hastened to possess the reward of their valour; but they were
encountered by the remains of a vanquished army, with an intrepid
resolution which was the effect of their despair and the only hope of
their safety. The walls of the city, and the ramparts of the adjacent
camp, were lined with military engines, that threw stones of an enormous
weight, and astonished the ignorant barbarians by the noise and velocity,
still more than by the real effects, of the discharge. The soldiers,
the citizens, the provincials, the domestics of the palace were united
in the danger and in the defence; the furious assault of the Goths was
repulsed; their secret arts of treachery and treason were discovered;
and, after an obstinate conflict of many hours, they retired to their
tents; convinced, by experience, that it would be far more advisable to
observe the treaty which their sagacious leader had tacitly stipulated
with the fortifications of great and populous cities. After the hasty
and impolitic massacre of three hundred deserters, an act of justice
extremely useful to the discipline of the Roman armies, the Goths
indignantly raised the siege of Hadrianopolis. The scene of war and
tumult was instantly converted into a silent solitude: the multitude
suddenly disappeared; the secret paths of the woods and mountains were
marked with the footsteps of the trembling fugitives, who sought a refuge
in the distant cities of Illyricum and Macedonia; and the faithful
officers of the household and the treasury cautiously proceeded in
search of the emperor, of whose death they were still ignorant. The tide
of the Gothic inundation rolled from the walls of Hadrianopolis to the
suburbs of Constantinople.

The barbarians were surprised with the splendid appearance of the
capital of the East, the height and extent of the walls, the myriads of
wealthy and affrighted citizens who crowded the ramparts, the various
prospect of the sea and land. While they gazed with hopeless desire on
the inaccessible beauties of Constantinople, a sally was made from one
of the gates by a party of Saracens, who had been fortunately engaged in
the service of Valens. The cavalry of Scythia was forced to yield to the
admirable swiftness and spirit of the Arabian horses; their riders were
skilled in the evolutions of irregular war, and the northern barbarians
were astonished and dismayed by the inhuman ferocity of the barbarians of
the south. A Gothic soldier was slain by the dagger of an Arab; and the
hairy, naked savage, applying his lips to the wound, expressed a horrid
delight while he sucked the blood of his vanquished enemy. The army of
the Goths, laden with the spoils of the wealthy suburbs and the adjacent
territory, slowly moved from the Bosporus to the mountains which form the
western boundary of Thrace. The important pass of Succi was betrayed by
the fear, or the misconduct, of Maurus; and the barbarians, who no longer
had any resistance to apprehend from the scattered and vanquished troops
of the east, spread themselves over the face of a fertile and cultivated
country, as far as the confines of Italy and the Adriatic Sea.[b]

[Sidenote: [378-382 A.D.]]

Gratian, more fortunate, at the same time defeated the Alamanni near
Colmar. But the Eastern Empire was without a head. Gratian could not
think of adding this heavy crown to that which he already wore, and to
help him in the difficult task of repairing the great catastrophe under
which the nation groaned, he cast his eyes on Theodosius, son of the
valiant count Theodosius.


THEODOSIUS NAMED AUGUSTUS

After his father’s unhappy end Theodosius had retired to Spain, his
native country. Gratian recalled him, and on the Jan. 19, 379, gave
him the title of Augustus and the two prefectures of the East and of
Illyricum. Theodosius set to work bravely. Asia was quiet, thanks to an
atrocious measure. All the Goths sent as hostages into the provinces
had been convoked on the same day in the chief cities to receive gifts
in money and land. But troops awaited them there; taken by surprise
and defenceless, they had been massacred. In Thrace their brothers and
fathers were avenging them. Theodosius had to reform an army, and, above
all, to raise the courage of the soldiers. He succeeded in so doing
by giving them the opportunity of fighting a great many small battles
wherein he was careful to insure their success. These were the old
tactics of Fabius Cunctator against Hannibal; and in this case they were
even more successful. He allowed no stronghold to fall into the hands of
the enemy, whose numbers he diminished by provoking desertions, so that,
without gaining a great victory, he brought the Goths to treat.

[Sidenote: [382-388 A.D.]]

Fritigern, the conqueror of Hadrianopolis, was dead; the gallant
Athanaric, his successor, had allowed himself to be allured to
Constantinople, and there, dazzled by the brilliance of the gorgeous
court, he persuaded his people to accept the emperor’s offers (October,
382). Theodosius, as a matter of fact, gave them what they wanted. He
settled them in Thrace and Mœsia, with the charge of defending the
passage of the Danube. Forty thousand warriors of the Goths were enrolled
among the imperial troops.

This was really to deliver the empire into their hands; for these
Goths--remaining a national body under their national leaders, with a
military organisation of their own--soon felt the instincts of pillage
and the need of adventure reawaken in them. A few years more, and they
would take Rome after ravaging Greece and Italy, and the war they would
thus carry to the very heart of the empire would level the barriers over
which this flood of invasion was destined to pass.

For the time being, however, Theodosius had put an end to a deplorable
situation, and the empire, believing itself saved, showed its gratitude.
Those sad events of which the West was the scene, and which would lead
to a reunion of the whole empire of Augustus under his authority, for a
while increased his renown. The church, above all, delivered by him from
Arianism, looked upon him as a second Constantine, and the epithet of
“the great” has remained joined to the name of the last master of the
Roman world.

Gratian, active, intelligent, and brave, was nevertheless overthrown by
a usurper. Passionately fond of hunting, he forgot his princely duties,
and was now usually seen surrounded by Alan archers. This preference
irritated the soldiers, and the British legions proclaimed their chief,
Maximus, one of the able comrades of Count Theodosius, emperor. Maximus
immediately marched into Gaul. Gratian, abandoned by his troops, tried
to reach the Alps, but, being overtaken near Lyons, he was put to death
(August 25, 383). For this expedition Maximus had withdrawn the legions
from Britain. The island, left defenceless, was soon desolated by the
inroads of the Picts and Scots, and by the invasions of Saxons and
Frisians.

Theodosius would gladly have avenged his benefactor, but tranquillity was
not yet restored in the East, and a civil war might have lost all. He
recognised the usurper as master of the Gallic prefecture on condition
that he should leave that of Italy to the young Valentinian II (385). The
latter’s mother, Justina, in her zeal for Arianism, sought to propagate
heresy in her son’s provinces, which were by no means favourably disposed
towards it. At Mediolanum the opposition was very strong. She tried to
overcome it by threatening to exile Saint Ambrose, the archbishop, but
the people repulsed her barbarian guards. Maximus thought the occasion
favourable. He crossed the Alps, and Valentinian II fled (387) to
Theodosius at Thessalonica.

This prince had already declared himself strongly opposed to the Arians.
As early as the year 380 he had received baptism, had promulgated
edicts in favour of orthodoxy, and expelled Damophilus, patriarch of
Constantinople, from his see, which was given to Gregory of Nazianzus. A
council which met in Constantinople (381) condemned the heresy afresh and
confirmed the Nicene creed. Justina owed her misfortunes to her zeal for
Arianism, but Theodosius had married her daughter, the beautiful Galla,
so the empress, despite her imprudence, could count on the support of her
son-in-law. He hesitated, however, for nearly a year until he learned
that Maximus by his harshness had stirred up all the Italians against
him.

[Illustration: THEODOSIUS FORBIDDEN THE TEMPLE BY SAINT AMBROSE]

[Sidenote: [388-395 A.D.]]

Theodosius entered Pannonia in the year 388, and made a diversion in Gaul
by means of the Saxons and Franks. Maximus used the same weapons against
him and tampered with the fidelity of his barbaric troops. Dangerous
defections would have ensued had he not anticipated them by severe
measures. The usurper, vanquished on the banks of the Save, was given
up by his own soldiers and put to death in Aquileia. Theodosius kept no
part of his conquest, but gave it up to Valentinian. To confirm the young
prince’s power and extirpate both heresy and the last remains of paganism
which yet lingered in the Western provinces, he stayed three years in his
brother-in-law’s province. On his departure he gave him as chief minister
Arbogast the Frank, who had just delivered Gaul from the Germans, and
filled all offices, civil and military, with barbarians. Valentinian did
not long endure this guardianship; he wished to deprive the count of
all his offices. “I hold my charge from Theodosius,” answered Arbogast
before the whole court, “he alone can take it from me.” Valentinian, in a
violent rage, threw himself upon Arbogast, sword in hand. Some days after
he was found dead (May 15, 392).

[Illustration: THE PALATINE, ROME]

Arbogast could not hope that Theodosius would leave this murder
unpunished. Not daring to proclaim himself emperor, he threw the purple
robe on the shoulders of an imperial secretary, the rhetorician Eugenius.
Theodosius, the avenger of orthodoxy, had the Catholic clergy on his
side. Arbogast and Eugenius tried to rally to their cause all that were
left of the pagans. This conduct raised the Christian population against
them. A single battle, near Aquileia, put an end to this rule. Eugenius,
being taken prisoner, was put to death; Arbogast slew himself (394). This
time the victor retained his conquests.

This victory redoubled Theodosius’ zeal for orthodoxy. He forbade, under
severe penalties, the worship of the gods, who, driven from the towns,
took refuge amongst the country people (_pagani_), and he deprived
heretics not only of all claim to honours but of the right of disposing
of their property. On the other hand, numerous and wise regulations
showed the monarch’s constant preoccupation with remedies for some of
the evils which were harassing this moribund social order. He could
not succeed, for the ills were incurable, but at least he did honour
to the last days of the empire by displaying such virtue on the throne
as subjects rarely had been called upon to reverence. We have seen his
disinterestedness and his gratitude to his benefactor’s family; let us
add that peace always reigned in his numerous family--that if he retained
courtiers he also had friends.

Before his death (January 17, 395) he divided the empire between his two
sons Arcadius and Honorius; an irrevocable separation which still endures
in the different religion and civilisation of these two halves of the
ancient world.

One great act does Theodosius honour. The people of Thessalonica had
killed the governor and several imperial officers in a sedition. Under
similar circumstances Theodosius had pardoned the people of Antioch
(387). This time he fell into a violent rage and gave orders which cost
the lives of seven thousand persons. This massacre excited a feeling of
horror throughout the empire. When, some time after, Theodosius presented
himself at the doors of Milan cathedral, St. Ambrose had the courage
to stop him. Before all the crowd he reproached him for his crime,
forbidding him to enter or approach the Holy Table. Theodosius accepted
the public penance which the bishop imposed upon him in the name of God
and outraged humanity. For eight months he never crossed the threshold of
the church.[c]


VIRTUES OF THEODOSIUS

The orator, who may be silent without danger, may praise without
difficulty and without reluctance; and posterity will confess that the
character of Theodosius might furnish the subject of a sincere and ample
panegyric. The wisdom of his laws and the success of his arms rendered
his administration respectable in the eyes both of his subjects and
of his enemies. He loved and practised the virtues of domestic life,
which seldom hold their residence in the palaces of kings. Theodosius
was chaste and temperate; he enjoyed, without excess, the sensual and
social pleasures of the table; and the warmth of his amorous passions
was never diverted from their lawful objects. The proud titles of
imperial greatness were adorned by the tender names of a faithful
husband, an indulgent father; his uncle was raised, by his affectionate
esteem, to the rank of a second parent. Theodosius embraced, as his
own, the children of his brother and sister; and the expressions of his
regard were extended to the most distant and obscure branches of his
numerous kindred. His familiar friends were judiciously selected from
among those persons who, in the equal intercourse of private life, had
appeared before his eyes without a mask. The consciousness of personal
and superior merit enabled him to despise the accidental distinction of
the purple; and he proved, by his conduct, that he had forgotten all
the injuries, while he most gratefully remembered all the favours and
services, which he had received before he ascended the throne of the
Roman Empire.

The serious or lively tone of his conversation was adapted to the age,
the rank, or the character of subjects whom he admitted into his society;
and the affability of his manners displayed the image of his mind.
Theodosius respected the simplicity of the good and virtuous; every art,
every talent, of a useful or even of an innocent nature, was rewarded by
his judicious liberality; and, except the heretics, whom he persecuted
with implacable hatred, the diffusive circle of his benevolence was
circumscribed only by the limits of the human race. The government of a
mighty empire may assuredly suffice to occupy the time and the abilities
of a mortal; yet the diligent prince, without aspiring to the unsuitable
reputation of profound learning, always reserved some moments of his
leisure for the instructive amusement of reading. History, which enlarged
his experience, was his favourite study. The annals of Rome, in the
long period of eleven hundred years, presented him with a various and
splendid picture of human life; and it has been particularly observed
that whenever he perused the cruel acts of Cinna, of Marius, or of Sulla,
he warmly expressed his generous detestation of those enemies of humanity
and freedom. His disinterested opinion of past events was usefully
applied as the rule of his own actions; and Theodosius has deserved the
singular commendation, that his virtues always seemed to expand with his
fortune. The season of his prosperity was that of his moderation; and
his clemency appeared the most conspicuous after the danger and success
of the civil war. The Moorish guards of the tyrant had been massacred in
the first heat of the victory, and a small number of the most obnoxious
criminals suffered the punishment of the law. But the emperor showed
himself much more attentive to relieve the innocent than to chastise
the guilty. The oppressed subjects of the West, who would have deemed
themselves happy in the restoration of their lands, were astonished to
receive a sum of money equivalent to their losses; and the liberality of
the conqueror supported the aged mother and educated the orphan daughters
of Maximus. A character thus accomplished might almost excuse the
extravagant supposition of the orator Pacatus that if the elder Brutus
could be permitted to revisit the earth, the stern republican would
abjure, at the feet of Theodosius, his hatred of kings; and ingenuously
confess that such a monarch was the most faithful guardian of the
happiness and dignity of the Roman people.

Yet the piercing eye of the founder of the republic must have discerned
two essential imperfections, which might perhaps have abated his recent
love of despotism. The virtuous mind of Theodosius was often relaxed by
indolence, and it was sometimes inflamed by passion. In the pursuit of
an important object, his active courage was capable of the most vigorous
exertions; but, as soon as the design was accomplished or the danger was
surmounted, the hero sunk into inglorious repose; and, forgetful that
the time of a prince is the property of his people, resigned himself
to the enjoyment of the innocent but trifling pleasures of a luxurious
court. The natural disposition of Theodosius was hasty and choleric;
and, in a station where none could resist and few would dissuade the
fatal consequence of his resentment, the humane monarch was justly
alarmed by the consciousness of his infirmity and of his power. It was
the constant study of his life to suppress or regulate the intemperate
sallies of passion; and the success of his efforts enhanced the merit of
his clemency. But the painful virtue which claims the merit of victory
is exposed to the danger of defeat; and the reign of a wise and merciful
prince was polluted by an act of cruelty which would stain the annals
of Nero or Domitian. Within the space of three years, the inconsistent
historian of Theodosius must relate the generous pardon of the citizens
of Antioch and the inhuman massacre of the people of Thessalonica.


TUMULT IN ANTIOCH

[Sidenote: [387 A.D.]]

The lively impatience of the inhabitants of Antioch was never satisfied
with their own situation, or with the character and conduct of their
successive sovereigns. The Arian subjects of Theodosius deplored the loss
of their churches; and, as three rival bishops disputed the throne of
Antioch, the sentence which decided their pretensions excited the murmurs
of the two unsuccessful congregations. The exigencies of the Gothic
War, and the inevitable expense that accompanied the conclusion of the
peace, had constrained the emperor to aggravate the weight of the public
impositions; and the provinces of Asia, as they had not been involved
in the distress were the less inclined to contribute to the relief of
Europe. The auspicious period now approached of the tenth year of his
reign; a festival more grateful to the soldiers, who received a liberal
donative, than to the subjects, whose voluntary offerings had been long
since converted into an extraordinary and oppressive burden. The edicts
of taxation interrupted the repose and pleasures of Antioch; and the
tribunal of the magistrate was besieged by a suppliant crowd, who, in
pathetic but at first in respectful language, solicited the redress of
their grievances. They were gradually incensed by the pride of their
haughty rulers, who treated their complaints as a criminal resistance;
their satirical wit degenerated into sharp and angry invectives; and,
from the subordinate powers of government, the invectives of the people
insensibly rose to attack the sacred character of the emperor himself.

[Illustration: ROMAN ARMS]

Their fury, provoked by a feeble opposition, discharged itself on the
images of the imperial family, erected, as objects of public veneration,
in the most conspicuous places of the city. The statues of Theodosius, of
his father, of his wife Flaccilla, of his two sons Arcadius and Honorius,
were insolently thrown down from their pedestals, broken in pieces, or
dragged with contempt through the streets; and the indignities which
were offered to the representations of imperial majesty sufficiently
declared the impious and treasonable wishes of the populace. The tumult
was almost immediately suppressed by the arrival of a body of archers;
and Antioch had leisure to reflect on the nature and consequences of
her crime. According to the duty of his office, the governor of the
province despatched a faithful narrative of the whole transaction; while
the trembling citizens entrusted the confession of their crime and the
assurances of their repentance to the zeal of Flavian their bishop, and
to the eloquence of the senator Hilarius, the friend and most probably
the disciple of Libanius, whose genius, on this melancholy occasion,
was not useless to his country. But the two capitals, Antioch and
Constantinople, were separated by the distance of eight hundred miles;
and, notwithstanding the diligence of the imperial posts, the guilty
city was severely punished by a long and dreadful interval of suspense.
Every rumour agitated the hopes and fears of the Antiochians, and they
heard with terror that their sovereign, exasperated by the insult which
had been offered to his own statues, and more especially to those of
his beloved wife, had resolved to level with the ground the offending
city; and to massacre, without distinction of age or sex, the criminal
inhabitants, many of whom were actually driven, by their apprehensions,
to seek a refuge in the mountains of Syria and the adjacent desert. At
length, twenty-four days after the sedition, the general Hellebicus,
and Cæsarius, master of the offices, declared the will of the emperor
and the sentence of Antioch. That proud capital was degraded from the
rank of a city; and the metropolis of the East, stripped of its lands,
its privileges, and its revenues, was subjected, under the humiliating
denomination of a village, to the jurisdiction of Laodicea.

The baths, the circus, and the theatres were shut; and, that every
source of plenty and pleasure might at the same time be intercepted,
the distribution of corn was abolished, by the severe instructions of
Theodosius. His commissioners then proceeded to inquire into the guilt
of individuals; of those who had perpetrated, and of those who had
not prevented, the destruction of the sacred statues. The tribunal of
Hellebicus and Cæsarius, encompassed with armed soldiers, was erected in
the midst of the Forum. The noblest and most wealthy of the citizens of
Antioch, appeared before them in chains; the examination was assisted
by the use of torture, and their sentence was pronounced or suspended
according to the judgment of these extraordinary magistrates. The houses
of the criminals were exposed to sale, their wives and children were
suddenly reduced from affluence and luxury to the most abject distress;
and a bloody execution was expected to conclude the horrors of a day,
which the preacher of Antioch, the eloquent Chrysostom, has represented
as a lively image of the last and universal judgment of the world.
But the ministers of Theodosius performed, with reluctance, the cruel
task which had been assigned them; they dropped a gentle tear over
the calamities of the people; and they listened with reverence to the
pressing solicitations of the monks and hermits, who descended in swarms
from the mountains. Hellebicus and Cæsarius were persuaded to suspend the
execution of their sentence; and it was agreed that the former should
remain at Antioch, while the latter returned, with all possible speed,
to Constantinople, and presumed once more to consult the will of his
sovereign.

The resentment of Theodosius had already subsided; the deputies of
the people, both the bishop and the orator, had obtained a favourable
audience; and the reproaches of the emperor were the complaints of
injured friendship, rather than the stern menaces of pride and power.
A free and general pardon was granted to the city and citizens of
Antioch; the prison-doors were thrown open; the senators who despaired
of their lives recovered the possession of their houses and estates; and
the capital of the East was restored to the enjoyment of her ancient
dignity and splendour. Theodosius condescended to praise the senate
of Constantinople, who had generously interceded for their distressed
brethren; he rewarded the eloquence of Hilarius with the government
of Palestine, and dismissed the bishop of Antioch with the warmest
expressions of his respect and gratitude. A thousand new statues arose to
the clemency of Theodosius; the applause of his subjects was ratified by
the approbation of his own heart; and the emperor confessed that, if the
exercise of justice is the most important duty, the indulgence of mercy
is the most exquisite pleasure of a sovereign.


THE SEDITION OF THESSALONICA

[Sidenote: [387-390 A.D.]]

The sedition of Thessalonica is ascribed to a more shameful cause, and
was productive of much more dreadful consequences. That great city,
the metropolis of all the Illyrian provinces, had been protected from
the dangers of the Gothic war by strong fortifications and a numerous
garrison. Botheric, the general of those troops, and, as it should
seem from his name, a barbarian, had among his slaves a beautiful
boy, who excited the impure desires of one of the charioteers of the
circus. The insolent and brutal lover was thrown into prison by the
order of Botheric; and he sternly rejected the importunate clamours
of the multitude, who, on the day of the public games, lamented the
absence of their favourite, and considered the skill of a charioteer
as an object of more importance than his virtue. The resentment of the
people was imbittered by some previous disputes; and, as the strength
of the garrison had been drawn away for the service of the Italian War,
the feeble remnant, whose numbers were reduced by desertion, could
not save the unhappy general from their licentious fury. Botheric,
and several of his principal officers, were inhumanly murdered: their
mangled bodies were dragged about the streets; and the emperor, who
then resided at Mediolanum, was surprised by the intelligence of the
audacious and wanton cruelty of the people of Thessalonica. The sentence
of a dispassionate judge would have inflicted a severe punishment on
the authors of the crime; and the merit of Botheric might contribute
to exasperate the grief and indignation of his master. The fiery and
choleric temper of Theodosius was impatient of the dilatory forms of
a judicial inquiry; and he hastily resolved that the blood of his
lieutenant should be expiated by the blood of the guilty people.

Yet his mind still fluctuated between the counsels of clemency and of
revenge; the zeal of the bishops had almost extorted from the reluctant
emperor the promise of a general pardon; his passion was again inflamed
by the flattering suggestions of his minister, Rufinus; and, after
Theodosius had despatched the messengers of death, he attempted, too
late, to prevent the execution of his orders. The punishment of a
Roman city was blindly committed to the undistinguishing sword of the
barbarians; and the hostile preparations were concerted with the dark and
perfidious artifice of an illegal conspiracy. The people of Thessalonica
were treacherously invited, in the name of their sovereign, to the games
of the circus; and such was their insatiate avidity for those amusements
that every consideration of fear, or suspicion, was disregarded by the
numerous spectators. As soon as the assembly was complete, the soldiers,
who had been secretly posted round the circus, received the signal, not
of the races but of a general massacre. The promiscuous carnage continued
three hours, without discrimination of strangers or natives, of age or
sex, of innocence or guilt; the most moderate accounts state the number
of the slain at seven thousand; and it is affirmed by some writers that
more than fifteen thousand victims were sacrificed to the manes of
Botheric. A foreign merchant, who had probably no concern in his murder,
offered his own life, and all his wealth, to supply the place of one of
his two sons; but, while the father hesitated with equal tenderness,
while he was doubtful to choose and unwilling to condemn, the soldiers
determined his suspense by plunging their daggers at the same moment
into the breasts of the defenceless youths. The apology of the assassins
that they were obliged to produce the prescribed number of heads, serves
only to increase, by an appearance of order and design, the horrors of
the massacre, which was executed by the commands of Theodosius. The
guilt of the emperor is aggravated by his long and frequent residence
at Thessalonica. The situation of the unfortunate city, the aspect of
the streets and buildings, the dress and faces of the inhabitants, were
familiar, and even present to his imagination; and Theodosius possessed a
quick and lively sense of the existence of the people whom he destroyed.


THEODOSIUS AND AMBROSE

The respectful attachment of the emperor for the orthodox clergy had
disposed him to love and admire the character of Ambrose, who united
all the episcopal virtues in the most eminent degree. The friends and
ministers of Theodosius imitated the example of their sovereign; and
he observed, with more surprise than displeasure, that all his secret
counsels were immediately communicated to the archbishop, who acted from
the laudable persuasion that every measure of civil government may have
some connection with the glory of God and the interests of the true
religion. The monks and populace of Callinicum, an obscure town on the
frontier of Persia, excited by their own fanaticism and by that of their
bishop, had tumultuously burned a conventicle of the Valentinians and a
synagogue of the Jews.

The seditious prelate was condemned, by the magistrate of the province,
either to rebuild the synagogue or to repay the damage; this moderate
sentence was confirmed by the emperor. But it was not confirmed by the
archbishop of Milan. He dictated an epistle of censure and reproach, more
suitable, perhaps, if the emperor had received the mark of circumcision
and renounced the faith of his baptism. Ambrose considers the toleration
of the Jewish, as the persecution of the Christian, religion; boldly
declares that he himself, and every true believer, would eagerly dispute
with the bishop of Callinicum the merit of the deed, and the crown of
martyrdom; and laments in the most pathetic terms that the execution of
the sentence would be fatal to the fame and salvation of Theodosius.
As this private admonition did not produce an immediate effect, the
archbishop, from his pulpit, publicly addressed the emperor on his
throne; nor would he consent to offer the oblation of the altar, till
he had obtained from Theodosius a solemn and positive declaration,
which secured the impunity of the bishop and monks of Callinicum. The
recantation of Theodosius was sincere; and during the term of his
residence at Milan his affection for Ambrose was continually increased by
the habits of pious and familiar conversation.

When Ambrose was informed of the massacre of Thessalonica, his mind was
filled with horror and anguish. He retired into the country to indulge
his grief, and to avoid the presence of Theodosius. But as the archbishop
was satisfied that a timid silence would render him the accomplice of his
guilt, he represented, in a private letter, the enormity of the crime;
which could only be effaced by the tears of penitence. The episcopal
vigour of Ambrose was tempered by prudence; and he contented himself with
signifying an indirect sort of excommunication, by the assurance that
he had been warned in a vision not to offer the oblation in the name or
in the presence of Theodosius; and by the advice that he would confine
himself to the use of prayer, without presuming to approach the altar of
Christ, or to receive the Holy Eucharist with those hands that were still
polluted with the blood of an innocent people. The emperor was deeply
affected by his own reproaches and by those of his spiritual father;
and, after he had bewailed the mischievous and irreparable consequences
of his rash fury, he proceeded, in the accustomed manner, to perform his
devotions in the great church of Milan.

He was stopped in the porch by the archbishop, who, in the tone and
language of an ambassador of heaven, declared to his sovereign that
private contrition was not sufficient to atone for a public fault, or to
appease the justice of the offended Deity. Theodosius humbly represented
that, if he had contracted the guilt of homicide, David, the man after
God’s own heart, had been guilty, not only of murder but of adultery.
“You have imitated David in his crime, imitate then his repentance,” was
the reply of the undaunted Ambrose. The rigorous conditions of peace and
pardon were accepted; and the public penance of the emperor Theodosius
has been recorded as one of the most honourable events in the annals of
the Church. According to the mildest rules of ecclesiastical discipline,
which were established in the fourth century, the crime of homicide was
expiated by the penitence of twenty years; and as it was impossible, in
the period of human life, to purge the accumulated guilt of the massacre
of Thessalonica, the murderer should have been excluded from the Holy
Communion till the hour of his death. But the archbishop, consulting
the maxims of religious policy, granted some indulgence to the rank
of his illustrious penitent, who humbled in the dust the pride of the
diadem; and the public edification might be admitted as a weighty reason
to abridge the duration of his punishment. It was sufficient that the
emperor of the Romans, stripped of the ensigns of royalty, should appear
in a mournful and suppliant posture; and that, in the midst of the church
of Milan, he should humbly solicit, with sighs and tears, the pardon of
his sins.


LAST DAYS OF THEODOSIUS

[Sidenote: [390-395 A.D.]]

After the defeat and death of the tyrant of Gaul, the Roman world was
in the possession of Theodosius. He derived from the choice of Gratian
his honourable title to the provinces of the East: he had acquired the
West by the right of conquest; and the three years which he spent in
Italy were usefully employed to restore the authority of the laws and to
correct the abuses which had prevailed with impunity under the usurpation
of Maximus and the minority of Valentinian. The name of Valentinian was
regularly inserted in the public acts; but the tender age and doubtful
faith of the son of Justina appeared to require the prudent care of an
orthodox guardian; and his specious ambition might have excluded the
unfortunate youth, without a struggle, and almost without a murmur, from
the administration, and even from the inheritance, of the empire. If
Theodosius had consulted the rigid maxims of interest and policy, his
conduct would have been justified by his friends; but the generosity of
his behaviour on this memorable occasion has extorted the applause of his
most inveterate enemies. He seated Valentinian on the throne of Milan;
and, without stipulating any present or future advantages, restored him
to the absolute dominion of all the provinces from which he had been
driven by the arms of Maximus. To the restitution of his ample patrimony,
Theodosius added the free and generous gift of the countries beyond the
Alps, which his successful valour had recovered from the assassin of
Gratian. Satisfied with the glory which he had acquired, by revenging
the death of his benefactor and delivering the West from the yoke of
tyranny, the emperor returned from Milan to Constantinople; and, in the
peaceful possession of the East, insensibly relapsed into his former
habits of luxury and indolence. Theodosius discharged his obligation
to the brother, he indulged his conjugal tenderness to the sister of
Valentinian; and posterity, which admires the pure and singular glory
of his elevation, must applaud his unrivalled generosity in the use of
victory.[b]


FOOTNOTES

[62] Eunapius celebrates and exaggerates the sufferings of Maximus, yet
he allows that this sophist or magician, the guilty favourite of Julian
and the personal enemy of Valentinian, was dismissed on the payment of a
small fine.

[63] [Salzbach according to Duruy.]




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XLIV. THE DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE (395)


ARCADIUS AND HONORIUS SUCCEED THEODOSIUS

[Sidenote: [395-397 A.D.]]

The genius of Rome expired with Theodosius, the last of the successors of
Augustus and Constantine who appeared in the field at the head of their
armies, and whose authority was universally acknowledged throughout the
whole extent of the empire. The memory of his virtues still continued,
however, to protect the feeble and inexperienced youth of his two sons.
After the death of their father, Arcadius and Honorius were saluted, by
the unanimous consent of mankind, as the lawful emperors of the East and
of the West; and the oath of fidelity was eagerly taken by every order of
the state--the senates of old and new Rome, the clergy, the magistrates,
the soldiers, and the people. Arcadius, who then was about eighteen years
of age, was born in Spain, in the humble habitation of a private family.
But he received a princely education in the palace of Constantinople;
and his inglorious life was spent in that peaceful and splendid seat of
royalty, from whence he appeared to reign over the provinces of Thrace,
Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, from the lower Danube to the confines of
Persia and Ethiopia. His younger brother, Honorius, assumed, in the
eleventh year of his age, the nominal government of Italy, Africa, Gaul,
Spain, and Britain; and the troops, which guarded the frontiers of his
kingdom, were opposed on one side to the Caledonians, and on the other to
the Moors.

The great and martial prefecture of Illyricum was divided between the
two princes; the defence and possession of the provinces of Noricum,
Pannonia, and Dalmatia still belonged to the Western Empire;[64] but the
two large dioceses of Dacia and Macedonia, which Gratian had intrusted
to the valour of Theodosius, were forever united to the empire of the
East. The boundary in Europe was not very different from the line which
now separates the Germans and the Turks; and the respective advantages
of territory, riches, populousness, and military strength, were fairly
balanced and compensated. The hereditary sceptre of the sons of
Theodosius appeared to be the gift of nature and of their father; the
generals and ministers had been accustomed to adore the majesty of the
royal infants. The gradual discovery of the weakness of Arcadius and
Honorius, and the repeated calamities of their reign, were not sufficient
to obliterate the deep and early impressions of loyalty.

Theodosius had tarnished the glory of his reign by the elevation of
Rufinus; an odious favourite, who, in an age of civil and religious
faction, has deserved, from every party, the imputation of every crime.
The strong impulse of ambition and avarice had urged Rufinus to abandon
his native country, an obscure corner of Gaul, to advance his fortune in
the capital of the East: the talent of bold and ready elocution qualified
him to succeed in the lucrative profession of the law; and his success in
that profession was a regular step to the most honourable and important
employments of the state. He was raised by just degrees to the station
of master of the offices. In the exercise of his various functions, so
essentially connected with the whole system of civil government, he
acquired the confidence of a monarch who soon discovered his diligence
and capacity in business, and who long remained ignorant of the pride,
the malice, and the covetousness of his disposition.

The character of Theodosius imposed on his minister the task of
hypocrisy, which disguised, and sometimes restrained, the abuse of
power; and Rufinus was apprehensive of disturbing the indolent slumber
of a prince still capable of exerting the abilities and the virtue which
had raised him to the throne. But the absence, and soon afterwards the
death, of the emperor confirmed the absolute authority of Rufinus over
the person and dominions of Arcadius; a feeble youth, whom the imperious
prefect considered as his pupil rather than his sovereign. Regardless
of the public opinion, he indulged his passions without remorse and
without resistance; and his malignant and rapacious spirit rejected every
passion that might have contributed to his own glory or the happiness of
the people. His avarice, which seems to have prevailed in his corrupt
mind over every other sentiment, attracted the wealth of the East by
the various arts of partial and general extortion: oppressive taxes,
scandalous bribery, immoderate fines, unjust confiscations, forced or
fictitious testaments, by which the tyrant despoiled of their lawful
inheritance the children of strangers or enemies; and the public sale
of justice, as well as of favour, which he instituted in the palace of
Constantinople.

The ambitious candidate eagerly solicited, at the expense of the fairest
part of his patrimony, the honours and emoluments of some provincial
government; the lives and fortunes of the unhappy people were abandoned
to the most liberal purchaser; the public discontent was sometimes
appeased by the sacrifice of an unpopular criminal, whose punishment
was profitable only to the prefect of the East, his accomplice and his
judge. The fate of Lucian proclaimed to the East that the prefect, whose
industry was much abated in the despatch of ordinary business, was
indefatigable in the pursuit of revenge. Lucian, the son of the prefect
Florentius, the oppressor of Gaul and the enemy of Julian, had employed a
considerable part of his inheritance, the fruit of rapine and corruption,
to purchase the friendship of Rufinus and the high office of count of the
East. But the new magistrate imprudently departed from the maxims of the
court and of the times; disgraced his benefactor by the contrast of a
virtuous and temperate administration; and presumed to refuse an act of
injustice, which might have tended to the profit of the emperor’s uncle.

Arcadius was easily persuaded to resent the supposed insult; and the
prefect of the East resolved to execute in person the cruel vengeance
which he meditated against this ungrateful delegate of his power. He
performed with incessant speed the journey of seven or eight hundred
miles from Constantinople to Antioch, entered the capital of Syria
at the dead of the night, and spread universal consternation among a
people ignorant of his design but not ignorant of his character. The
count of the fifteen provinces of the East was dragged, like the vilest
malefactor, before the arbitrary tribunal of Rufinus. Notwithstanding the
clearest evidence of his integrity, which was not impeached even by the
voice of an accuser, Lucian was condemned, almost without a trial, to
suffer a cruel and ignominious punishment. The ministers of the tyrant,
by the order and in the presence of their master, beat him on the neck
with leather thongs, armed at the extremities with lead; and when he
fainted under the violence of the pain, he was removed in a close litter,
to conceal his dying agonies from the eyes of the indignant city. No
sooner had Rufinus perpetrated this inhuman act, the sole object of his
expedition, than he returned, amidst the deep and silent curses of a
trembling people, from Antioch to Constantinople; and his diligence was
accelerated by the hope of accomplishing without delay the nuptials of
his daughter with the emperor of the East.

But Rufinus soon experienced that a prudent minister should constantly
secure his royal captive by the strong though invisible chain of habit;
and that the merit, and much more easily the favour, of the absent are
obliterated in a short time from the mind of a weak and capricious
sovereign. While the prefect satiated his revenge at Antioch, a secret
conspiracy of the favourite eunuchs, directed by the great chamberlain
Eutropius, undermined his power in the palace of Constantinople. They
discovered that Arcadius was not inclined to love the daughter of
Rufinus, who had been chosen, without his consent, for his bride; and
they contrived to substitute in her place the fair Eudoxia, the daughter
of Bauto, a general of the Franks in the service of Rome; and who was
educated, since the death of her father, in the family of the sons of
Promotus.

The young emperor, whose chastity had been strictly guarded by the
pious care of his tutor Arsenius, eagerly listened to the artful and
flattering descriptions of the charms of Eudoxia: he gazed with impatient
ardour on her picture, and he understood the necessity of concealing
his amorous designs from the knowledge of a minister who was so deeply
interested to oppose the consummation of his happiness. Soon after the
return of Rufinus, the approaching ceremony of the royal nuptials was
announced to the people of Constantinople, who prepared to celebrate,
with false and hollow acclamations, the fortune of his daughter. A
splendid train of eunuchs and officers issued, in hymeneal pomp, from
the gates of the palace; bearing aloft the diadem, the robes, and the
inestimable ornaments of the future empress. The solemn procession
passed through the streets of the city, which were adorned with garlands
and filled with spectators; but when it reached the house of the sons
of Promotus, the principal eunuch respectfully entered the mansion,
invested the fair Eudoxia with the imperial robes, and conducted her
in triumph to the palace and bed of Arcadius. The secrecy and success
with which this conspiracy against Rufinus had been conducted imprinted
a mark of indelible ridicule on the character of a minister who had
suffered himself to be deceived in a post where the arts of deceit and
dissimulation constitute the most distinguished merit. He considered,
with a mixture of indignation and fear, the victory of an aspiring
eunuch, who had secretly captivated the favour of his sovereign; and the
disgrace of his daughter, whose interest was inseparably connected with
his own, wounded the tenderness, or at least the pride, of Rufinus. The
character of Rufinus seemed to justify the accusations that he conspired
against the person of his sovereign to seat himself on the vacant throne,
and that he had secretly invited the Huns and the Goths to invade the
provinces of the empire, and to increase the public confusion. The subtle
prefect, whose life had been spent in the intrigues of the palace,
opposed, with equal arms, the artful measures of the eunuch Eutropius;
but the timid soul of Rufinus was astonished by the hostile approach of a
more formidable rival--of the great Stilicho, the general, or rather the
master, of the empire of the West.

The celestial gift which Achilles obtained, and Alexander envied, of
a poet worthy to celebrate the actions of heroes, has been enjoyed by
Stilicho, in a much higher degree than might have been expected from the
declining state of genius and of art. The muse of Claudian, devoted to
his service, was always prepared to stigmatise his adversaries, Rufinus
or Eutropius, with eternal infamy; or to paint in the most splendid
colours the victories and virtues of a powerful benefactor. In the
review of a period indifferently supplied with authentic materials, we
cannot refuse to illustrate the annals of Honorius from the invectives
or the panegyrics of a contemporary writer; but as Claudian appears to
have indulged the most ample privilege of a poet and a courtier, some
criticism will be requisite to translate the language of fiction or
exaggeration into the truth and simplicity of historic prose. His silence
concerning the family of Stilicho may be admitted as a proof that his
patron was neither able, nor desirous, to boast of a long series of
illustrious progenitors; and the slight mention of his father, an officer
of barbarian cavalry, in the service of Valens, seems to countenance the
assertion, that the general, who so long commanded the armies of Rome,
was descended from the savage and perfidious race of the Vandals. From
his earliest youth he embraced the profession of arms; his prudence and
valour were soon distinguished in the field; the horsemen and archers
of the East admired his superior dexterity; and in each degree of his
military promotions the public judgment always forestalled and approved
the choice of the sovereign. He was named by Theodosius to ratify a
solemn treaty with the monarch of Persia; he supported during that
important embassy the dignity of the Roman name; and after his return
to Constantinople, his merit was rewarded by an intimate and honourable
alliance with the imperial family. Theodosius had been prompted, by a
pious motive of fraternal affection, to adopt for his own the daughter
of his brother Honorius; the beauty and accomplishments of Serena were
universally admired by the obsequious court; and Stilicho obtained the
preference over a crowd of rivals, who ambitiously disputed the hand
of the princess and the favour of her adoptive father. The assurance
that the husband of Serena would be faithful to the throne which he
was permitted to approach, engaged the emperor to exalt the fortunes
and to employ the abilities of the sagacious and intrepid Stilicho.
He rose through the successive steps of master of the horse and count
of the domestics, to the supreme rank of master-general of all the
cavalry and infantry of the Roman, or at least of the Western, Empire;
and his enemies confessed that he invariably disdained to barter for
gold the rewards of merit, or to defraud the soldiers of the pay and
gratifications which they deserved or claimed from the liberality of the
state.

The virtues and victories of Stilicho deserved the hatred of Rufinus;
and the arts of calumny might have been successful, if the tender and
vigilant Serena had not protected her husband against his domestic
foes, whilst he vanquished in the field the enemies of the empire.
Theodosius continued to support an unworthy minister, to whose diligence
he delegated the government of the palace and of the East; but when he
marched against the tyrant Eugenius, he associated his faithful general
to the labours and glories of the civil war; and, in the last moments of
his life, the dying monarch recommended to Stilicho the care of his sons
and of the republic. The ambition and the abilities of Stilicho were
not unequal to the important trust; and he claimed the guardianship of
the two empires, during the minority of Arcadius and Honorius. The first
measure of his administration, or rather of his reign, displayed to the
nations the vigour and activity of a spirit worthy to command. He passed
the Alps in the depth of winter; descended the stream of the Rhine, from
the fortress of Basilia (Bâle) to the marshes of Batavia; reviewed the
state of the garrisons; repressed the enterprises of the Germans; and,
after establishing along the banks a firm and honourable peace, returned
with incredible speed to the palace of Mediolanum. The person and court
of Honorius were subject to the master-general of the West; and the
armies and provinces of Europe obeyed, without hesitation, a regular
authority which was exercised in the name of their young sovereign. Two
rivals only remained to dispute the claims and to provoke the vengeance
of Stilicho. Within the limits of Africa, Gildo the Moor maintained a
proud and dangerous independence; and the minister of Constantinople
asserted his equal reign over the emperor and the empire of the East.

[Illustration: ROMAN WATER BOTTLE]

The impartiality which Stilicho affected, as the common guardian of the
royal brothers, engaged him to regulate the equal division of the arms,
the jewels, and the magnificent wardrobe and furniture of the deceased
emperor. But the most important object of the inheritance consisted of
the numerous legions, cohorts, and squadrons of Romans, or barbarians,
whom the event of the civil war had united under the standard of
Theodosius. The various multitudes of Europe and Asia, exasperated by
recent animosities, were overawed by the authority of a single man; and
the rigid discipline of Stilicho protected the lands of the citizen from
the rapine of the licentious soldiers. Anxious, however, and impatient
to relieve Italy from the presence of this formidable host, which could
be useful only on the frontiers of the empire, he listened to the just
requisition of the minister of Arcadius, declared his intention of
reconducting in person the troops of the East, and dexterously employed
the rumour of a Gothic tumult to conceal his private designs of ambition
and revenge. The guilty soul of Rufinus was alarmed by the approach
of a warrior and a rival, whose enmity he deserved; he computed, with
increasing terror, the narrow space of his life and greatness; and, as
the last hope of safety, he interposed the authority of the emperor
Arcadius.

Stilicho, who appears to have directed his march along the sea coast of
the Adriatic, was not far distant from the city of Thessalonica when he
received a peremptory message to recall the troops of the East, and to
declare that his nearer approach would be considered by the Byzantine
court as an act of hostility. The prompt and unexpected obedience of the
general of the West convinced the vulgar of his loyalty and moderation;
and as he had already engaged the affection of the eastern troops, he
recommended to their zeal the execution of his bloody design, which
might be accomplished in his absence, with less danger, perhaps, and
with less reproach. Stilicho left the command of the troops of the
East to Gainas the Goth, on whose fidelity he firmly relied; with an
assurance, at least, that the hardy barbarian would never be diverted
from his purpose by any consideration of fear or remorse. The soldiers
were easily persuaded to punish the enemy of Stilicho and of Rome; and
such was the general hatred which Rufinus had excited, that the fatal
secret, communicated to thousands, was faithfully preserved during the
long march from Thessalonica to the gates of Constantinople. As soon as
they had resolved his death, they condescended to flatter his pride; the
ambitious prefect was seduced to believe that those powerful auxiliaries
might be tempted to place the diadem on his head; and the treasures which
he distributed with a tardy and reluctant hand were accepted by the
indignant multitude as an insult rather than as a gift. At a distance
of a mile from the capital, in the Field of Mars, before the palace of
Hebdomon, the troops halted; and the emperor as well as his minister
advanced, according to ancient custom, respectfully to salute the power
which supported their throne.

As Rufinus passed along the ranks, and disguised with studied courtesy
his innate haughtiness, the wings insensibly wheeled from the right and
left, and enclosed the devoted victim within the circle of their arms.
Before he could reflect on the danger of his situation, Gainas gave the
signal of death; a daring and forward soldier plunged his sword into the
breast of the guilty prefect, and Rufinus fell, groaned, and expired at
the feet of the affrighted emperor. If the agonies of a moment could
expiate the crimes of a whole life, or if the outrages inflicted on a
breathless corpse could be the object of pity, our humanity might perhaps
be affected by the horrid circumstances which accompanied the murder
of Rufinus. His mangled body was abandoned to the brutal fury of the
populace of either sex, who hastened in crowds from every quarter of the
city, to trample on the remains of the haughty minister, at whose frown
they had so lately trembled. His right hand was cut off and carried
through the streets of Constantinople, in cruel mockery, to extort
contributions for the avaricious tyrant, whose head was publicly exposed,
borne aloft on the point of a long lance. According to the savage maxims
of the Greek republics, his innocent family would have shared the
punishment of his crimes. The wife and daughter of Rufinus were indebted
for their safety to the influence of religion. Her sanctuary protected
them from the raging madness of the people; and they were permitted to
spend the remainder of their lives in the exercise of Christian devotion,
in the peaceful retirement of Jerusalem.

Even Stilicho did not derive from the murder of his rival the fruit which
he had proposed; and though he gratified his revenge, his ambition was
disappointed. Under the name of a favourite, the weakness of Arcadius
required a master; but he naturally preferred the obsequious arts of
the eunuch Eutropius, who had obtained his domestic confidence; and the
emperor contemplated, with terror and aversion, the stern genius of a
foreign warrior. Till they were divided by the jealousy of power, the
sword of Gainas and the charms of Eudoxia supported the favour of the
great chamberlain of the palace; the perfidious Goth, who was appointed
master-general of the East, betrayed without scruple the interest of his
benefactor; and the same troops which had so lately massacred the enemy
of Stilicho, were engaged to support against him the independence of the
throne of Constantinople. The life of Stilicho was repeatedly attempted
by the daggers of hired assassins; and a decree was obtained from the
senate of Constantinople to declare him an enemy of the republic, and
to confiscate his ample possessions in the provinces of the east. At a
time when the only hope of delaying the ruin of the Roman name depended
on the firm union and reciprocal aid of all the nations to whom it had
been gradually communicated, the subjects of Arcadius and Honorius were
instructed by their respective masters to view each other in a foreign
and even hostile light; to rejoice in their mutual calamities, and to
embrace, as their faithful allies, the barbarians, whom they excited to
invade the territories of their countrymen. The natives of Italy affected
to despise the servile and effeminate Greeks of Byzantium, who presumed
to imitate the dress and to usurp the dignity of Roman senators; and the
Greeks had not yet forgotten the sentiments of hatred and contempt which
their polished ancestors had so long entertained for the rude inhabitants
of the west. The prudent Stilicho, instead of persisting to force the
inclinations of a prince and people who rejected his government, wisely
abandoned Arcadius to his unworthy favourites; and his reluctance to
involve the two empires in a civil war displayed the moderation of a
minister who had so often signalised his military spirit and abilities.
But if Stilicho had any longer endured the revolt of Africa, he would
have betrayed the security of the capital, and the majesty of the western
emperor, to the capricious insolence of a Moorish rebel. Gildo, the
brother of the tyrant Firmus, had preserved and obtained, as the reward
of his apparent fidelity, the immense patrimony which was forfeited by
treason; long and meritorious service in the armies of Rome raised him
to the dignity of a military count; the narrow policy of the court of
Theodosius had adopted the mischievous expedient of supporting a legal
government by the interest of a powerful family; and the brother of
Firmus was invested with the command of Africa. His ambition soon usurped
the administration of justice and of the finances without account, and
without control; and he maintained, during a reign of twelve years, the
possession of an office from which it was impossible to remove him,
without the danger of a civil war.

During those twelve years, the province of Africa groaned under the
dominion of a tyrant who seemed to unite the unfeeling temper of a
stranger with the partial resentments of domestic faction. The forms of
law were often superseded by the use of poison; and if the trembling
guests who were invited to the table of Gildo presumed to express their
fears, the insolent suspicion served only to excite his fury, and he
loudly summoned the ministers of death. Gildo alternately indulged the
passions of avarice and lust; and if his days were terrible to the
rich, his nights were not less dreadful to husbands and parents. The
image of the republic was revived, after a long interval, under the
reign of Honorius. The emperor transmitted an accurate and ample detail
of the complaints of the provincials and the crimes of Gildo, to the
Roman senate; and the members of that venerable assembly were required
to pronounce the condemnation of the rebel. Their unanimous suffrage
declared him the enemy of the republic; and the decree of the senate
added a sacred and legitimate sanction to the Roman arms. The prudence
of Stilicho conceived and executed without delay the most effectual
measure for the relief of the Roman people. A large and seasonable supply
of corn, collected in the inland provinces of Gaul, was embarked on the
rapid stream of the Rhone, and transported by an easy navigation from
the Rhone to the Tiber. During the whole term of the African war, the
granaries of Rome were continually filled, her dignity was vindicated
from the humiliating dependence, and the minds of an immense people were
quieted by the calm confidence of peace and plenty.

[Sidenote: [397-398 A.D.]]

The cause of Rome and the conduct of the African war were entrusted by
Stilicho to a general, active and ardent to avenge his private injuries
on the head of the tyrant. The spirit of discord which prevailed in the
house of Nabal had excited a deadly quarrel between two of his sons,
Gildo and Mascezel. The usurper pursued with implacable rage the life of
his younger brother, whose courage and abilities he feared; and Mascezel,
oppressed by superior power, took refuge in the court of Mediolanum,
where he soon received the cruel intelligence that his two innocent
and helpless children had been murdered by their inhuman uncle. The
affliction of the father was suspended only by the desire of revenge. The
vigilant Stilicho judged it advisable that Mascezel should attempt this
arduous adventure at the head of a chosen body of Gallic veterans, who
had lately served under the standard of Eugenius.

[Illustration: ROMAN LAMP]

Gildo was prepared to resist the invasion with all the forces of Africa.
By the liberality of his gifts and promises, he endeavoured to secure
the doubtful allegiance of the Roman soldiers whilst he attracted to his
standard the distant tribes of Gætulia and Ethiopia. He proudly reviewed
an army of seventy thousand men, and boasted, with the rash presumption
which is the forerunner of disgrace, that his numerous cavalry would
trample under their horses’ feet the troops of Mascezel, and involve
in a cloud of burning sand the natives of the cold regions of Gaul and
Germany. As Mascezel advanced before the front with fair offers of peace
and pardon, he encountered one of the foremost standard-bearers of the
Africans, and, on his refusal to yield, struck him on the arm with his
sword. The arm, and the standard, sunk under the weight of the blow;
and the imaginary act of submission was hastily repeated by all the
standards of the line. At this signal, the disaffected cohorts proclaimed
the name of their lawful sovereign; the barbarians, astonished by the
defection of their Roman allies, dispersed, according to their custom,
in tumultuary flight; and Mascezel obtained the honours of an easy and
almost bloodless victory. The tyrant escaped from the field of battle to
the sea shore; and threw himself into a small vessel, with the hope of
reaching in safety some friendly port of the empire of the East; but the
obstinacy of the wind drove him back into the harbour of Thabraca, which
had acknowledged, with the rest of the province, the dominion of Honorius
and the authority of his lieutenant. The inhabitants, as a proof of their
repentance and loyalty, seized and confined the person of Gildo in a
dungeon; and his own despair saved him from the intolerable torture of
supporting the presence of an injured and victorious brother.

After he had finished an important war in a single winter, Mascezel
was received at the court of Mediolanum with loud applause, affected
gratitude, and secret jealousy; and his death, which perhaps was the
effect of accident, has been considered as the crime of Stilicho.
In the passage of a bridge, the Moorish prince who accompanied the
master-general of the West was suddenly thrown from his horse into the
river; the officious haste of the attendants was restrained by a cruel
and perfidious smile which they observed on the countenance of Stilicho;
and while they delayed the necessary assistance, the unfortunate Mascezel
was irrecoverably drowned.

The joy of the African triumph was happily connected with the nuptials of
the emperor Honorius and of his cousin Maria, the daughter of Stilicho;
and this equal and honourable alliance seemed to invest the powerful
minister with the authority of a parent over his submissive pupil.
Honorius was only in the fourteenth year of his age; Serena, the mother
of his bride, deferred by art or persuasion the consummation of the royal
nuptials; Maria died a virgin, after she had been ten years a wife; and
the chastity of the emperor was secured by the coldness, or perhaps the
debility, of his constitution. His subjects, who attentively studied the
character of their young sovereign, discovered that Honorius was without
passions, and consequently without talents; and that his feeble and
languid disposition was alike incapable of discharging the duties of his
rank, or of enjoying the pleasures of his age. In his early youth he made
some progress in the exercises of riding and drawing the bow: but he soon
relinquished these fatiguing occupations, and the amusement of feeding
poultry became the serious and daily care of the monarch of the West, who
resigned the reins of empire to the firm and skilful hand of his guardian
Stilicho.

The experience of history will countenance the suspicion that a prince
who was born in the purple received a worse education than the meanest
peasant of his dominions; and the ambitious minister suffered him to
attain the age of manhood without attempting to excite his courage or to
enlighten his understanding. The predecessors of Honorius were accustomed
to animate by their example, or at least by their presence, the valour of
the legions; and the dates of their laws attest the perpetual activity
of their motions through the provinces of the Roman world. But the son
of Theodosius passed the slumber of his life, a captive in his palace,
a stranger in his country, and the patient, almost the indifferent,
spectator of the ruin of the Western Empire, which was repeatedly
attacked, and finally subverted, by the arms of the barbarians. In the
eventful history of a reign of twenty-eight years, it will seldom be
necessary to mention the name of the emperor Honorius.


ALARIC INVADES GREECE

[Sidenote: [395-403 A.D.]]

If the subjects of Rome could be ignorant of their obligations to the
great Theodosius, they were too soon convinced how painfully the spirit
and abilities of their deceased emperor had supported the frail and
mouldering edifice of the republic. He died in the month of January; and
before the end of the winter of the same year the Gothic nation was in
arms.

The Goths, instead of being impelled by the blind and headstrong passions
of their chiefs, were now directed by the bold and artful genius of
Alaric. That renowned leader was descended from the noble race of the
Balti, which yielded only to the royal dignity of the Amali; he had
solicited the command of the Roman armies, and the imperial court
provoked him to demonstrate the folly of their refusal and the importance
of their loss. Whatever hopes might be entertained of the conquest of
Constantinople, the judicious general soon abandoned an impracticable
enterprise. In the midst of a divided court and a discontented people,
the emperor Arcadius was terrified by the aspect of the Gothic arms: but
the want of wisdom and valour was supplied by the strength of the city;
and the fortifications, both of the sea and land, might securely brave
the impotent and random darts of the barbarians. Alaric disdained to
trample any longer on the prostrate and ruined countries of Thrace and
Dacia, and he resolved to seek a plentiful harvest of fame and riches in
a province which had hitherto escaped the ravages of war.

The character of the civil and military officers, on whom Rufinus had
devolved the government of Greece, confirmed the public suspicion that
he had betrayed the ancient seat of freedom and learning to the Gothic
invader. The proconsul Antiochus was the unworthy son of a respectable
father; and Gerontius, who commanded the provincial troops, was much
better qualified to execute the oppressive orders of a tyrant than to
defend with courage and ability a country most remarkably fortified by
the hand of nature. Alaric had traversed, without resistance, the plains
of Macedonia and Thessaly, as far as the foot of Mount Œta, a steep and
woody range of hills, almost impervious to his cavalry.

The troops which had been posted to defend the straits of Thermopylæ
retired, as they were directed, without attempting to disturb the secure
and rapid passage of Alaric; and the fertile fields of Phocis and Bœotia
were instantly covered by a deluge of barbarians; who massacred the
males of an age to bear arms, and drove away the beautiful females, with
the spoil and cattle, of the flaming villages. As soon as the Athenians
heard the voice of the Gothic herald, they were easily persuaded to
deliver the greatest part of their wealth as the ransom of the city of
Minerva and its inhabitants. The treaty was ratified by solemn oaths,
and observed with mutual fidelity. The Gothic prince, with a small and
select train, was admitted within the walls; he indulged himself in the
refreshment of the bath, accepted a splendid banquet which was provided
by the magistrate, and affected to show that he was not ignorant of the
manners of civilised nations. But the whole territory of Attica, from the
promontory of Sunium to the town of Megara, was blasted by his baleful
presence; and if we may use the comparison of a contemporary philosopher,
Athens itself resembled the bleeding and empty skin of a slaughtered
victim.

Corinth, Argos, Sparta, yielded without resistance to the arms of the
Goths; and the most fortunate of the inhabitants were saved, by death,
from beholding the slavery of their families and the conflagration of
their cities.

The last hope of a people who could no longer depend on their arms, their
gods, or their sovereign, was placed in the powerful assistance of the
general of the West; and Stilicho, who had not been permitted to repulse,
advanced to chastise, the invaders of Greece.[b]

It was impossible for Stilicho to remain quiet. He hastened to anticipate
a landing in Italy, and crossed over to Peloponnesus with his troops.
Alaric retreated before him to the mountains of Arcadia, and was there
closely hemmed in, but escaped the threatening danger of destruction. He
either availed himself of a momentary negligence on the part of the Roman
general, or else the latter allowed him to escape for political reasons.
The Goths went from Peloponnesus to Illyricum, and here suddenly, to the
astonishment of the world, the Gothic king was made commander-in-chief
of this border province, and his troops declared the auxiliaries of the
Eastern Roman Empire. In taking this course it was the intention of
Eutropius to make use of the Goths against the hated Stilicho.

The Eastern Roman Empire was then in a terrible condition. Most of the
provinces had been devastated by the Goths; Alans and other barbarians
had been settled in Asia for the defence of the northern frontier, and
incited by Tribigildus, one of their princes, they devastated the lands
entrusted to their charge. Tribigildus was led to do this by the Goth
Gainas, who sought to overthrow the minister Eutropius, and for this
purpose had contrived a plot in which he had persuaded Tribigildus to
join. An army sent by Eutropius against the latter was beaten; the
populace of Constantinople raised a furious outcry against the minister
on account of this defeat and of the devastation of Asia Minor, and
Gainas, who was to have marched against Tribigildus with his Gothic
troops, refused to obey unless Eutropius were dismissed. As the latter
had also quarrelled with the empress, he could no longer avoid the
threatening storm. He was dismissed and not only deprived of his property
but also of his life. He had sought refuge from his enemies in one of the
churches of the capital; in this sanctuary St. Chrysostom, who was then
patriarch of Constantinople, in vain sought to protect him. Eutropius had
to be given up, and was first banished to Cyprus, and then executed (399).

After his fall, the empress Eudoxia carried on the government; Gainas
now openly allied himself with Tribigildus, and together they committed
such fearful ravages in Asia Minor that the government had to submit
to negotiate with them and at their request to deliver up three
distinguished officials for execution. Fortunately Tribigildus soon died.
Gainas with his hordes inflicted terrible suffering on the capital and
the surrounding country, until finally the people took courage and killed
more than seven thousand Goths. Another Goth, Fravitta, who had been for
a long time in the service of Greece, and was summoned from Asia to help
against Gainas, completely defeated him, so that the devastator had to
retreat with his armies to the neighbourhood of the Danube. Soon after
this he was killed in a war with the Huns.

Meanwhile, Stilicho held the reins of the government of the West with a
powerful hand, and distinguished himself by brilliant achievements both
as statesman and general. He vindicated the fame of the Roman arms in war
against the Franks and Alamanni, and successfully and quickly suppressed
a dangerous rebellion by which Gildo, the brother of Firmus, had made
himself master of Africa. We know too little of the private life and
character of Stilicho to determine whether he, as some writers allege,
really plotted the overthrow of the emperor Honorius, so as to place his
own son on the throne.

Directly after Gildo’s victory, Stilicho had to protect the empire from
a new danger which was threatening it from a different quarter. The
title of general of the East Roman Empire, bestowed on Alaric, had been
utilised by him to such good purpose that he had completely equipped his
Goths with arms from the arsenals in Illyricum, and now, incited by the
court of Constantinople, he broke into the Western Empire, devastating
as he went (400). As, for unknown reasons, he only pushed forward into
Venetia, Stilicho had time to arm himself. He gathered troops from all
sides, and when, two years later, Alaric again appeared (402), Stilicho
alone did not lose courage, while all Italy trembled, and the emperor
fled from Mediolanum to the stronghold of Ravenna. Stilicho conducted the
war with much caution, and did not engage in battle until he could attack
under favourable circumstances. The opportunity offered itself at the
town of Pollentia in Liguria, and here, in the spring of 403, he accepted
battle.

[Sidenote: [403-406 A.D.]]

Both sides claimed the victory, but the chief advantage was undoubtedly
on the side of the Romans, who in this fight freed thousands of their
imprisoned countrymen and plundered the enemy’s baggage. But the Goths
were by no means conquered; for throughout the summer they maintained
themselves in the vicinity of the Apennines, and held the city of Rome in
constant fear. They only began to retire from Italy in the autumn; and
Stilicho let them depart with their booty, thinking it advisable to build
golden bridges for a flying enemy. Nevertheless he observed their march,
and tried to induce individual tribes who served under Alaric to leave
him; and delivered a second battle at Verona, which was more disastrous
to the king of the Goths than the battle of Pollentia, for it was with
only a small portion of his army that he reached his own country.

[Illustration: THE APPIAN WAY]

For a few years the Goths remained quiet; but soon after their departure,
other Germans visited Italy with far worse devastations than theirs had
been (406). Radagaisus, one of the German princes who had accompanied
Alaric in his first expedition to Italy, collected to the north of the
upper Danube a number of private adventurers and whole tribes, whom he
promised to lead to Rome itself, saying he had heard of an opportunity
and a way of getting there. His expedition resembled a national
migration, as women and children accompanied the army, which according
to the lowest computation amounted to two hundred thousand men, and
according to another and more probable one, to double that number.
Stilicho did not dare to oppose this flood, but rather tried to keep it
within bounds by the manner in which he divided and disposed his troops.

[Sidenote: [407-411 A.D.]]

Watched from all sides, the barbaric hordes advanced through Lombardy
and over the Apennines to the neighbourhood of Florence. Here Stilicho,
who had followed the expedition, took possession of all the approaches
to the mountains, threw reinforcements into the towns, had his own army
supplied from the sea, and quietly awaited the result of the want which
an innumerable and disorderly crowd must soon begin to feel. Hemmed in on
all sides by the Roman troops, in a short time the barbarians suffered
from famine, disease, and every kind of misery. Stilicho destroyed a part
of this great body, but the remaining and larger portion died from want.
Etruria resembled a vast grave; the leader of the unfortunate swarm in
vain tried to fight his way through--he was captured and executed.

Alan horsemen, Huns, Goths, and other barbarians, who were among the
Roman mercenaries, here did the best service. This is especially worthy
of attention, as it shows us that the inhabitants of the most beautiful
of countries, whose predecessors had conquered all nations of the earth,
had sunk so low that they actually called in barbarians to defend
them from other barbarians. On their weakness, their love of ease and
pleasure, every law of their own government was wrecked, even when the
latter sought to compel them to military service by severe punishments.
They even preferred to mutilate themselves, as many did at this time so
as to escape from serving in war, rather than risk dangers and hardships
for the sake of their country.

For the second time Stilicho had saved Italy; his merit was greater than
that of a Camillus or a Marius, as he had not, like these men, to lead
a warlike nation into battle, but had first to create his army. Besides
this, his whole life was not only a fight of civilisation with barbarism,
but at the same time the struggle of force with underhand intrigue.
For this reason we can no more weigh his private character against his
political merits than we can those of other Roman heroes, especially
of Camillus and Marius. Much of what has been made matter of reproach
against him should rather be counted to him for merit. For instance,
he kept his emperor under perpetual tutelage, but immediately after
Stilicho’s death the advantage of depriving Honorius of a personal share
in the government became apparent.

It is with still greater injustice that the ruin of the prosperity of
Gaul and Spain in the period immediately following the expedition of
Radagaisus has been attributed to him as a crime. Stilicho had brought
the Roman troops from Gaul and kept them with him after the liberation
of Italy, as he intended seeking out the Goths in Illyricum. The
barbarians in Germany seized this opportunity to invade Gaul (407). The
Quadi, Vandals, Suevi, Alani, Heruli, Saxons, Burgundiones, Franks, and
other barbarians broke into the unfortunate country, wasting it as they
advanced, whilst the Gepidæ, Sarmatæ, and Huns pressed into the Danubian
provinces which some of these peoples had hitherto occupied, and settled
there. Argentoratum (Strasburg), Noviomagus (Speier), Borbetomagus
(Worms), Mogontiacum, and other towns, which until then had opposed a
barrier to the barbarians, were destroyed, and like a rushing stream the
invaders poured themselves over all parts of Gaul.

The like misfortune overtook the province of Britain, whence Stilicho
had just recalled the Roman forces. In 407 the troops of this country,
amongst whom there were only a few Roman soldiers, finding themselves
thus abandoned to their fate, proclaimed one of their number,
Constantine, emperor, and under his leadership crossed over into
Gaul. Here Constantine was universally acknowledged as ruler by the
inhabitants, who stood in much need of help. An army under the general
Sarus, whom Honorius sent against him, was beaten, and Constantine also
fought the barbarians successfully. As, owing to the gravity of the
situation in Italy and Gaul, Honorius and his ministers could not for
the moment concern themselves with Spain, Constantine considered the
moment propitious to subject that country also. The religious dissensions
by which Spain as well as Africa was then rent, and the persecutions
which the Donatists and Arians had to suffer from the orthodox Honorius
and his court ecclesiastics, facilitated Constantine’s undertaking. The
Roman troops and militia were vanquished by him and almost the whole land
conquered. Unfortunately Constantine replaced the brave national militia
of the mountaineers, who until then had defended the passes of the
Pyrenees, by mercenaries of all nations, and these shortly after made
common cause with the barbarians who wandered across the mountains from
Gaul, and became their companions and guides.[c]

Zosimus[d] has said of Stilicho that, during the twenty-three years that
he commanded the army, never had he used the funds for his own profit,
nor did he resort to any dishonest means to advance the interests of his
only son. This son, however, was only twenty years old, and, although
Stilicho was faithful under Theodosius and during the first part of the
reign of Honorius, he might have later allowed himself to be corrupted
in his official capacity. Several writers have accused him of having
thought to elevate his son to the throne at the sacrifice of Honorius,
his prince, his pupil, and his son-in-law, and with this point in view to
have brought about the invasion of the barbarians which resulted in such
evil to the Romans. Olympiodorus[e] and Zosimus, both pagans, defend him
on this point: this they did because perhaps they would have been content
to see Eucher usurp the empire and re-establish paganism.

Zosimus does not hesitate to say that as his trust made him minister of
justice it was necessary to buy it from him either with money or with
favour; that “all the best and richest lands in the empire fell into his
hands either through fear of incurring his disfavour or in the desire
to lean upon his reputation to pillage the people; that he acquired
immense riches by despoiling the most illustrious families and ruining
the provinces.” One reads the same thing, and written in a more odious
manner, in Suidas,[f] who seems to have taken it from Eunape, a pagan
historian of that time. Zosimus also accuses Stilicho of amusing himself
“by pleasures unworthy of him and even criminal, just at the time when he
had most need to husband all his time.”[h]

Whilst these events were taking place, Italy was also a prey to the
barbarians. Stilicho had induced the Gothic king Alaric to quit the
service of the Greek Empire for that of the Latin, and had come to
some secret understanding with him, about which we are completely in
the dark. According to a highly improbable report, Stilicho wished to
employ Alaric’s Goths against his own master; according to another,
which is just as unreliable, he intended marching with the Goths against
Constantinople, and placing his son on the Greek throne. Whatever the
facts may have been, Stilicho and Alaric had come to some agreement;
for just as the former was marching against Constantine with his army,
Alaric suddenly appeared on the frontiers of Italy, complained that he
had been deceived, and demanded an indemnity. The Roman senate, which
was intrusted with the management of the affair, was extremely unwilling
to grant this shameful tribute and only consented at Stilicho’s urgent
request.

[Sidenote: [408 A.D.]]

The minister’s enemies seized this opportunity to bring about his fall,
and the weak Honorius listened to the miserable persons who in their
jealousy of Stilicho worked on the emperor’s timidity to make him
suspicious of the only man who could save the empire.[c]

Four days after the emperor had arrived at Pavia the soldiers, incited
by Olympius, revolted. Zosimus exaggerates this sedition as much as
possible. Sozomen, in speaking of it, says that all those were killed who
were believed to be accomplices of Stilicho.

Zosimus narrates at length the sorrow of Stilicho when he heard of this
revolt, the news of which reached him at Boulogne, and how he withdrew to
Ravenna where Honorius sent two separate orders; the one for his arrest,
the other for his death. When the officer who carried them handed in the
first, Stilicho took refuge in the church. The next day he came forth
and delivered himself into the hands of the soldiers, after they had
taken an oath, in the presence of the bishop, that they had orders only
to hold him as a prisoner. The officer however having given the second
order, he was beheaded the 23rd of August, according to Zosimus. In which
statement he is upheld by history.

Eucher, sometime before the death of his father, had retired to Rome,
where he also had sought refuge in a church, and, although orders had
been given to kill him wherever he was found, respect for the place
prevented the officers from using violence until a special order arrived
from the emperor commanding them to drag him forth. He was conducted out
of Rome, probably to the emperor, who condemned him to death, whereupon
he was sent back to Rome to be executed. He was almost rescued on the
way by the troops of Alaric, who, as we shall see, overran all Italy.
Eucher was finally executed before the first siege of Rome. “Thus,” says
Orosius,[g] “was the emperor Honorius and the church also (which had
everything to fear from Eucher) delivered from a great peril and avenged
with scarcely any noise and by the chastisement of but a few people.”[h]
Olympius, who took the place of the fallen minister, from the first used
his power to ruin the empire. He filled the positions in the army and
state with his creatures, put to death all Stilicho’s family, friends,
and clients, on whom he could lay hands, tried in every way to gratify
the ecclesiastics’ greed of power, and went so far in his hypocritical
piety that when Alaric threatened Rome he appointed not the bravest and
most experienced, but the most pious men as commanders.

At a time when unity was of the first necessity, he prevailed upon
the emperor to make a number of intolerant decrees. It was not only
ordained that no Arian was to fill a public office, but the persecution
of heretics on behalf of the state was made a duty binding upon all
magistrates; more than this, Honorius even gave the investigation of
heresies into the hands of the clergy, and set up a special inquisitorial
tribunal for the purpose. The Arian Goths in the Roman army were reduced
to despair by these measures, and as, after the murder of Stilicho, the
wives and children of barbarian soldiers whom the Romans held as security
for their fidelity had been put to death, many thousands of Goths, Alans,
and other foreigners belonging to the Roman army fled to Alaric, and
offered themselves to him as combatants and guides that they might take
vengeance on the Romans.[c]


FOOTNOTES

[64] [Legally the division was of the same nature as that made by
Diocletian; there was still one empire divided into two administrative
districts, and the two Augusti were colleagues, as before. The division
was not intended to be final, and we shall see (Volume VII) that it was
not absolutely so in fact; for after the abdication of Romulus, the
emperor at Constantinople not only claimed sovereignty over the whole
empire, but at times actually exercised his sovereignty over parts of the
West.]

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XLV. THE GOTHS IN ITALY


ALARIC INVADES ITALY

The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the
appearance and produce the effects of a treasonable correspondence with
the public enemy. If Alaric himself had been introduced into the council
of Ravenna, he would probably have advised the same measures which were
actually pursued by the ministers of Honorius. The king of the Goths
would have conspired, perhaps with some reluctance, to destroy the
formidable adversary by whose arms, in Italy as well as in Greece, he had
been twice overthrown. Their active and interested hatred laboriously
accomplished the disgrace and ruin of the great Stilicho. The valour
of Sarus, his fame in arms, and his personal or hereditary influence
over the confederate barbarians could recommend him only to the friends
of their country, who despised or detested the worthless characters of
Turpilio, Varanes, and Vigilantius. By the pressing instances of the
new favourites, these generals, unworthy as they had shown themselves
of the name of soldiers, were promoted to the command of the cavalry,
of the infantry, and of the domestic troops. The Gothic prince would
have subscribed with pleasure the edict which the fanaticism of Olympius
dictated to the simple and devout emperor.

Honorius excluded all persons adverse to the Catholic church from
holding any office in the state; obstinately rejected the service of
all those who dissented from his religion; and rashly disqualified many
of his bravest and most skilful officers, who adhered to the pagan
worship or who had imbibed the opinions of Arianism. These measures, so
advantageous to an enemy, Alaric would have approved, and might perhaps
have suggested; but it may seem doubtful whether the barbarian would
have promoted his interest at the expense of the inhuman and absurd
cruelty which was perpetrated by the direction or at least with the
connivance of the imperial ministers. The foreign auxiliaries who had
been attached to the person of Stilicho lamented his death; but the
desire of revenge was checked by a natural apprehension for the safety
of their wives and children, who were detained as hostages in the strong
cities of Italy, where they had likewise deposited their most valuable
effects. At the same hour, and as if by a common signal, the cities of
Italy were polluted by the same horrid scenes of universal massacre and
pillage, which involved in promiscuous destruction the families and
fortunes of the barbarians. Exasperated by such an injury, which might
have awakened the tamest and most servile spirit, they cast a look of
indignation and hope towards the camp of Alaric, and unanimously swore
to pursue with just and implacable war the perfidious nation that had so
basely violated the laws of hospitality. By the imprudent conduct of the
ministers of Honorius, the republic lost the assistance and deserved the
enmity of thirty thousand of her bravest soldiers; and the weight of that
formidable army, which alone might have determined the event of the war,
was transferred from the scale of the Romans into that of the Goths.

[Sidenote: [408-409 A.D.]]

In the arts of negotiation, as well as in those of war, the Gothic king
maintained his superiority over an enemy whose seeming changes proceeded
from the total want of counsel and design. From his camp on the confines
of Italy, Alaric attentively observed the revolutions of the palace,
watched the progress of faction and discontent, disguised the hostile
aspect of a barbarian invader, and assumed the more popular appearance
of the friend and ally of the great Stilicho; to whose virtues, when
they were no longer formidable, he could pay a just tribute of sincere
praise and regret. The pressing invitation of the malcontents, who
urged the king of the Goths to invade Italy, was enforced by a lively
sense of his personal injuries; and he might speciously complain that
the imperial ministers still delayed and eluded the payment of the four
thousand pounds of gold which had been granted by the Roman senate,
either to reward his services or to appease his fury. His decent firmness
was supported by an artful moderation, which contributed to the success
of his designs. He required a fair and reasonable satisfaction; but he
gave the strongest assurances that as soon as he had obtained it he
would immediately retire. He refused to trust the faith of the Romans,
unless Ætius and Jason, the sons of two great officers of state, were
sent as hostages to his camp; but he offered to deliver, in exchange,
several of the noblest youths of the Gothic nation. The modesty of
Alaric was interpreted by the ministers of Ravenna as a sure evidence
of his weakness and fear. They disdained either to negotiate a treaty,
or to assemble an army; and, with a rash confidence, derived only from
their ignorance of the extreme danger, irretrievably wasted the decisive
moments of peace and war.

While they expected that the barbarians would evacuate Italy, Alaric,
with bold and rapid marches, passed the Alps and the Po; hastily pillaged
the cities of Aquileia, Altinum, Concordia, and Cremona, which yielded
to his arms; increased his forces by the accession of thirty thousand
auxiliaries; and, without meeting a single enemy in the field, advanced
as far as the edge of the morass which protected the impregnable
residence of the emperor of the West. Instead of attempting the hopeless
siege of Ravenna, the prudent leader of the Goths proceeded to Ariminum,
stretched his ravages along the seacoast of the Adriatic, and meditated
the conquest of the ancient mistress of the world. An Italian hermit,
whose zeal and sanctity were respected by the barbarians themselves,
encountered the victorious monarch, and boldly denounced the indignation
of heaven against the oppressors of the earth; but the saint himself was
confounded by the solemn asseveration of Alaric that he felt a secret
preternatural impulse, which directed and even compelled his march to
the gates of Rome. He felt that his genius and his fortune were equal to
the most arduous enterprises; and the enthusiasm which he communicated
to the Goths insensibly removed the popular and almost superstitious
reverence of the nations for the majesty of the Roman name. His troops,
animated by the hopes of spoil, followed the course of the Flaminian way,
occupied the unguarded passages of the Apennines, descended into the rich
plains of Umbria; and as they lay encamped on the banks of the Clitumnus,
might wantonly slaughter and devour the milk-white oxen which had been
so long reserved for the use of Roman triumphs. A lofty situation, and a
seasonable tempest of thunder and lightning, preserved the little city
of Narnia (Narni); but the king of the Goths, despising the ignoble prey,
still advanced with unabated vigour; and after he had passed through the
stately arches adorned with the spoils of barbaric victories, he pitched
his camp under the walls of Rome.

By a skilful disposition of his numerous forces, who impatiently watched
the moment of an assault, Alaric encompassed the walls, commanded the
twelve principal gates, intercepted all communication with the adjacent
country, and vigilantly guarded the navigation of the Tiber, from which
the Romans derived the surest and most plentiful supply of provisions.

The first emotions of the nobles and of the people were those of surprise
and indignation that a vile barbarian should dare to insult the capital
of the world; but their arrogance was soon humbled by misfortune, and
their unmanly rage, instead of being directed against an enemy in arms,
was meanly exercised on a defenceless and innocent victim. Perhaps in
the person of Serena, the Romans might have respected the niece of
Theodosius, the aunt, nay even the adoptive mother, of the reigning
emperor; but they abhorred the widow of Stilicho, and they listened with
credulous passion to the tale of calumny which accused her of maintaining
a secret and criminal correspondence with the Gothic invader. Actuated or
overawed by the same popular frenzy, the senate, without requiring any
evidence of her guilt, pronounced the sentence of her death.

Serena was ignominiously strangled, and the infatuated multitude were
astonished to find that this cruel act of injustice did not immediately
produce the retreat of the barbarians and the deliverance of the city.
That unfortunate city gradually experienced the distress of scarcity,
and at length the horrid calamities of famine. The daily allowance
of three pounds of bread was reduced to one-half, to one-third, to
nothing; and the price of corn still continued to rise in a rapid and
extravagant proportion. The poorer citizens, who were unable to purchase
the necessaries of life, solicited the precarious charity of the rich;
and for a while the public misery was alleviated by the humanity of
Læta, the widow of the emperor Gratian, who had fixed her residence at
Rome, and consecrated to the use of the indigent the princely revenue
which she annually received from the grateful successors of her husband.
But these private and temporary donatives were insufficient to appease
the hunger of a numerous people; and the progress of famine invaded the
marble palaces of the senators themselves. The persons of both sexes who
had been educated in the enjoyment of ease and luxury discovered how
little is requisite to supply the demands of nature; and lavished their
unavailing treasures of gold and silver to obtain the coarse and scanty
sustenance which they would formerly have rejected with disdain. The
food the most repugnant to sense or imagination, the aliments the most
unwholesome and pernicious to the constitution, were eagerly devoured and
fiercely disputed by the rage of hunger. A dark suspicion was entertained
that some desperate wretches fed on the bodies of their fellow-creatures,
whom they had secretly murdered; and even mothers (such was the horrid
conflict of the two most powerful instincts implanted by nature in the
human breast), even mothers are said to have tasted the flesh of their
slaughtered infants.

Many thousands of the inhabitants of Rome expired in their houses, or
in the streets, for want of sustenance; and as the public sepulchres
without the walls were in the power of the enemy, the stench which
arose from so many putrid and unburied carcasses infected the air; and
the miseries of famine were succeeded and aggravated by the contagion
of a pestilential disease. The assurances of speedy and effectual
relief, which were repeatedly transmitted from the court of Ravenna,
supported for some time the fainting resolution of the Romans, till at
length the despair of any human aid tempted them to accept the offers
of a preternatural deliverance. Pompeianus, prefect of the city, had
been persuaded by the art or fanaticism of some Tuscan diviners that,
by the mysterious force of spells and sacrifices, they could extract
the lightning from the clouds, and point those celestial fires against
the camp of the barbarians. The important secret was communicated to
Innocent, the bishop of Rome; and the successor of St. Peter is accused,
perhaps without foundation, of preferring the safety of the republic
to the rigid severity of the Christian worship. But when the question
was agitated in the senate; when it was proposed, as an essential
condition, that those sacrifices should be performed in the Capitol, by
the authority and in the presence of the magistrates; the majority of
that respectable assembly, apprehensive either of the divine or of the
imperial displeasure, refused to join in an act which appeared almost
equivalent to the public restoration of paganism.

[Illustration: ROMAN LAMP]

The last resource of the Romans was in the clemency, or at least in the
moderation, of the king of the Goths. The senate, who in this emergency
assumed the supreme powers of government, appointed two ambassadors
to negotiate with the enemy. This important trust was delegated to
Basilius, a senator, of Spanish extraction, and already conspicuous in
the administration of provinces; and to Joannes, the first tribune of
the notaries, who was peculiarly qualified, by his dexterity in business
as well as by his former intimacy with the Gothic prince. When they were
introduced into his presence, they declared, perhaps in a more lofty
style than became their abject condition, that the Romans were resolved
to maintain their dignity, either in peace or war; and that if Alaric
refused them a fair and honourable capitulation, he might sound his
trumpets and prepare to give battle to an innumerable people, exercised
in arms and animated by despair. “The thicker the hay, the easier it is
mowed,” was the concise reply of the barbarian; and this rustic metaphor
was accompanied by a loud and insulting laugh, expressive of his contempt
for the menaces of an unwarlike populace, enervated by luxury before they
were emaciated by famine. He then condescended to fix the ransom which he
would accept as the price of his retreat from the walls of Rome: all the
gold and silver in the city, whether it were the property of the state or
of individuals; all the rich and precious movables; and all the slaves
who could prove their title to the name of barbarians. The ministers of
the senate presumed to ask, in a modest and suppliant tone: “If such, O
king! are your demands, what do you intend to leave us?” “Your lives,”
replied the haughty conqueror.

They trembled and retired. Yet before they retired, a short suspension
of arms was granted, which allowed some time for a more temperate
negotiation. The stern features of Alaric were insensibly relaxed; he
abated much of the rigour of his terms; and at length consented to raise
the siege on the immediate payment of five thousand pounds of gold, of
thirty thousand pounds of silver, of four thousand robes of silk, of
three thousand pieces of fine scarlet cloth, and of three thousand pounds
weight of pepper. But the public treasury was exhausted; the annual rents
of the great estates in Italy and the provinces were intercepted by the
calamities of war; the gold and gems had been exchanged, during the
famine, for the vilest sustenance; the hoards of secret wealth were still
concealed by the obstinacy of avarice; and some remains of consecrated
spoils afforded the only resource that could avert the impending ruin of
the city.

As soon as the Romans had satisfied the rapacious demands of Alaric
they were restored in some measure to the enjoyment of peace and
plenty. Several of the gates were cautiously opened; the importation
of provisions from the river, and the adjacent country, was no longer
obstructed by the Goths; the citizens resorted in crowds to the free
market, which was held during three days in the suburbs; and while
the merchants who undertook this gainful trade made a considerable
profit, the future subsistence of the city was secured by the ample
magazines which were deposited in the public and private granaries. A
more regular discipline than could have been expected was maintained
in the camp of Alaric; and the wise barbarian justified his regard for
the faith of treaties by the just severity with which he chastised a
party of licentious Goths who had insulted some Roman citizens on the
road to Ostia. His army, enriched by the contributions of the capital,
slowly advanced into the fair and fruitful province of Tuscany, where
he proposed to establish his winter quarters; and the Gothic standard
became the refuge of forty thousand barbarian slaves, who had broken
their chains, and aspired, under the command of their great deliverer,
to revenge the injuries and the disgrace of their cruel servitude. About
the same time he received a more honourable reinforcement of Goths
and Huns, whom Atawulf the brother of his wife, had conducted, at his
pressing invitation, from the banks of the Danube to those of the Tiber,
and who had cut their way, with some difficulty and loss, through the
superior numbers of the imperial troops. A victorious leader, who united
the daring spirit of a barbarian with the art and discipline of a Roman
general, was at the head of a hundred thousand fighting men; and Italy
pronounced with terror and respect the formidable name of Alaric.

At the distance of fifteen centuries we may be satisfied with relating
the military exploits of the conquerors of Rome, without presuming to
investigate the motives of their political conduct.

In the midst of his apparent prosperity, Alaric was conscious perhaps of
some secret weakness, some internal defect; or perhaps the moderation
which he displayed was intended only to deceive and disarm the easy
credulity of the ministers of Honorius. The king of the Goths repeatedly
declared that it was his desire to be considered as the friend of
peace and of the Romans. Three senators, at his earnest request, were
sent ambassadors to the court of Ravenna, to solicit the exchange of
hostages and the conclusion of the treaty; and the proposals, which he
more clearly expressed during the course of the negotiations, could
only inspire a doubt of his sincerity as they might seem inadequate
to the state of his fortune. The barbarian still aspired to the rank
of master-general of the armies of the West; he stipulated an annual
subsidy of corn and money; and he chose the provinces of Dalmatia,
Noricum, and Venetia, for the seat of his new kingdom, which would have
commanded the important communication between Italy and the Danube. If
these modest terms should be rejected Alaric showed a disposition to
relinquish his pecuniary demands, and even to content himself with the
possession of Noricum, an exhausted and impoverished country perpetually
exposed to the inroads of the barbarians of Germany. But the hopes of
peace were disappointed by the weak obstinacy or interested views of
the minister Olympius. Without listening to the salutary remonstrances
of the senate he dismissed their ambassadors under the conduct of a
military escort, too numerous for a retinue of honour and too feeble for
an army of defence. Six thousand Dalmatians, the flower of the imperial
legions, were ordered to march from Ravenna to Rome, through an open
country, which was occupied by the formidable myriads of the barbarians.
These brave legionaries, encompassed and betrayed, fell a sacrifice to
ministerial folly; their general Valens, with a hundred soldiers, escaped
from the field of battle; and one of the ambassadors, who could no longer
claim the protection of the law of nations, was obliged to purchase his
freedom with a ransom of thirty thousand pieces of gold. Yet Alaric,
instead of resenting this act of impotent hostility, immediately renewed
his proposals of peace; and the second embassy of the Roman senate, which
derived weight and dignity from the presence of Innocent, bishop of the
city, was guarded from the dangers of the road by a detachment of Gothic
soldiers.

Olympius might have continued to insult the just resentment of a people
who loudly accused him as the author of the public calamities; but his
power was undermined by the secret intrigues of the palace. The favourite
eunuchs transferred the government of Honorius and the empire to Jovius,
the prætorian prefect; an unworthy servant, who did not atone, by the
merit of personal attachment, for the errors and misfortunes of his
administration. The exile or escape of the guilty Olympius reserved him
for more vicissitudes of fortune; he experienced the adventures of an
obscure and wandering life; he again rose to power; he fell a second
time into disgrace; his ears were cut off; he expired under the lash;
and his ignominious death afforded a grateful spectacle to the friends
of Stilicho. After the removal of Olympius, whose character was deeply
tainted with religious fanaticism, the pagans and heretics were delivered
from the impolitic proscription which excluded them from the dignities of
the state. The brave Gennerid, a soldier of barbarian origin, who still
adhered to the worship of his ancestors, had been obliged to lay aside
the military belt; and though he was repeatedly assured by the emperor
himself that laws were not made for persons of his rank or merit, he
refused to accept any partial dispensation, and persevered in honourable
disgrace till he had extorted a general act of justice from the distress
of the Roman government. The conduct of Gennerid, in the important
station to which he was promoted or restored of master-general of
Dalmatia, Pannonia, Noricum, and Rætia, seemed to revive the discipline
and spirit of the republic. From a life of idleness and want, his troops
were soon habituated to severe exercise and plentiful subsistence; and
his private generosity often supplied the rewards which were denied by
the avarice or poverty of the court of Ravenna. The valour of Gennerid,
formidable to the adjacent barbarians, was the firmest bulwark of the
Illyrian frontier; and his vigilant care assisted the empire with a
reinforcement of ten thousand Huns, who arrived on the confines of
Italy, attended by such a convoy of provisions and such a numerous train
of sheep and oxen as might have been sufficient, not only for the march
of an army but for the settlement of a colony.

But the court and councils of Honorius still remained a scene of weakness
and distraction, of corruption and anarchy. Instigated by the prefect
Jovius, the guards rose in furious mutiny, and demanded the heads of
two generals and of the two principal eunuchs. The generals, under a
perfidious promise of safety, were sent on shipboard and privately
executed; while the favour of the eunuchs procured them a mild and secure
exile at Mediolanum and Constantinople. Eusebius the eunuch, and the
barbarian Allobich succeeded to the command of the bedchamber and of the
guards; and the mutual jealousy of these subordinate ministers was the
cause of their mutual destruction. By the insolent order of the count of
the domestics, the great chamberlain was shamefully beaten to death with
sticks, before the eyes of the astonished emperor; and the subsequent
assassination of Allobich, in the midst of a public procession, is the
only circumstance of his life in which Honorius discovered the faintest
symptom of courage or resentment.

Yet before they fell, Eusebius and Allobich contributed their part to
the ruin of the empire by opposing the conclusion of a treaty which
Jovius, from a selfish and perhaps a criminal motive, had negotiated with
Alaric, in a personal interview under the walls of Ariminum. During the
absence of Jovius, the emperor was persuaded to assume a lofty tone of
inflexible dignity, such as neither his situation nor his character could
enable him to support; and a letter, signed with the name of Honorius,
was immediately despatched to the prætorian prefect, granting him a
free permission to dispose of the public money, but sternly refusing
to prostitute the military honours of Rome to the proud demands of a
barbarian. This letter was imprudently communicated to Alaric himself;
and the Goth, who in the whole transaction had behaved with temper and
decency, expressed, in the most outrageous language, his lively sense
of the insult so wantonly offered to his person and to his nation. The
conference of Ariminum was hastily interrupted; and the prefect Jovius,
on his return to Ravenna, was compelled to adopt, and even to encourage,
the fashionable opinions of the court. By his advice and example, the
principal officers of the state and army were obliged to swear that
without listening, in any circumstances, to any conditions of peace, they
would still persevere in perpetual and implacable war against the enemy
of the republic. This rash engagement opposed an insuperable bar to all
future negotiation. The ministers had sworn by the sacred head of the
emperor himself the most inviolable of oaths.


HONORIUS RETIRES TO RAVENNA; ATTALUS NAMED EMPEROR

While the emperor and his court enjoyed, with sullen pride, the security
of the marshes and fortifications of Ravenna, they abandoned Rome, almost
without defence, to the resentment of Alaric. Yet such was the moderation
which he still preserved or affected, that, as he moved with his army
along the Flaminian way, he successively despatched the bishops of the
towns of Italy to reiterate his offers of peace, and to conjure the
emperor that he would save the city and its inhabitants from hostile fire
and the sword of the barbarians. These impending calamities were however
averted, not indeed by the wisdom of Honorius but by the prudence or
humanity of the Gothic king; who employed a milder, though not less
effectual, method of conquest. Instead of assaulting the capital, he
successfully directed his efforts against the port of Ostia, one of the
boldest and most stupendous works of Roman magnificence. The accidents
to which the precarious subsistence of the city was continually exposed
in a winter navigation and an open road had suggested to the genius of
the first Cæsar the useful design which was executed under the reign of
Claudius. The artificial moles which formed the narrow entrance advanced
far into the sea, and firmly repelled the fury of the waves; while the
largest vessels securely rode at anchor within three deep and capacious
basins, which received the northern branch of the Tiber, about two miles
from the ancient colony of Ostia. The Roman port insensibly swelled to
the size of an episcopal city, where the corn of Africa was deposited in
spacious granaries for the use of the capital. As soon as Alaric was in
possession of that important place, he summoned the city to surrender at
discretion; and his demands were enforced by the positive declaration
that a refusal, or even a delay, should be instantly followed by the
destruction of the magazines on which the life of the Roman people
depended. The clamours of that people and the terror of famine subdued
the pride of the senate; they listened without reluctance to the proposal
of placing a new emperor on the throne of the unworthy Honorius; and the
suffrage of the Gothic conqueror bestowed the purple on Attalus, prefect
of the city. The grateful monarch immediately acknowledged his protector
as master-general of the armies of the West; Atawulf, with the rank of
count of the domestics, obtained the custody of the person of Attalus;
and the two hostile nations seemed to be united in the closest bands of
friendship and alliance.

[Illustration: RUINS OF THE TRIUMPHAL ARCH OF DRUSUS]

The gates of the city were thrown open, and the new emperor of the
Romans, encompassed on every side by the Gothic arms, was conducted in
tumultuous procession to the palace of Augustus and Trajan. After he
had distributed the civil and military dignities among his favourites
and followers, Attalus convened an assembly of the senate; before whom,
in a formal and florid speech, he asserted his resolution of restoring
the majesty of the republic and of uniting to the empire the provinces
of Egypt and the East, which had once acknowledged the sovereignty
of Rome. Such extravagant promises inspired every reasonable citizen
with a just contempt for the character of an unwarlike usurper, whose
elevation was the deepest and most ignominious wound which the republic
had yet sustained from the insolence of the barbarians. But the populace,
with their usual levity, applauded the change of masters. The public
discontent was favourable to the rival of Honorius; and the sectaries,
oppressed by his persecuting edicts, expected some degree of countenance,
or at least of toleration, from a prince who, in his native country of
Ionia, had been educated in the pagan superstition, and who had since
received the sacrament of baptism from the hands of an Arian bishop.

The first days of the reign of Attalus were fair and prosperous. An
officer of confidence was sent with an inconsiderable body of troops to
secure the obedience of Africa; the greatest part of Italy submitted to
the terror of the Gothic powers; the city of Bononia made a vigorous and
effectual resistance; the people of Mediolanum, dissatisfied perhaps with
the absence of Honorius, accepted, with loud acclamations, the choice of
the Roman senate. At the head of a formidable army, Alaric conducted his
royal captive almost to the gates of Ravenna; and a solemn embassy of the
principal ministers, of Jovius, the prætorian prefect, of Valens, master
of the cavalry and infantry, of the quæstor Potamius, and of Julian, the
first of the notaries, was introduced with martial pomp into the Gothic
camp. In the name of their sovereign, they consented to acknowledge the
lawful election of his competitor, and to divide the provinces of Italy
and the West between the two emperors. Their proposals were rejected with
disdain; and the refusal was aggravated by the insulting clemency of
Attalus, who condescended to promise that, if Honorius would instantly
resign the purple, he should be permitted to pass the remainder of his
life in the peaceful exile of some remote island. So desperate, indeed,
did the situation of the son of Theodosius appear to those who were the
best acquainted with his strength and resources, that Jovius and Valens,
his minister and his general, betrayed their trust, infamously deserted
the sinking cause of their benefactor, and devoted their treacherous
allegiance to the service of his more fortunate rival. Astonished by such
examples of domestic treason, Honorius trembled at the approach of every
servant, at the arrival of every messenger. He dreaded the secret enemies
who might lurk in his capital, his palace, his bedchamber; and some ships
lay ready in the harbour of Ravenna to transport the abdicated monarch to
the dominions of his infant nephew, the emperor of the East.

But there is a providence (such at least was the opinion of the historian
Procopius) that watches over innocence and folly; and the pretensions
of Honorius to its peculiar care cannot reasonably be disputed. At the
moment when his despair, incapable of any wise or manly resolution,
meditated a shameful flight, a seasonable reinforcement of four thousand
veterans unexpectedly landed in the port of Ravenna. To these valiant
strangers, whose fidelity had not been corrupted by the factions of the
court, he committed the walls and gates of the city; and the slumbers
of the emperor were no longer disturbed by the apprehension of imminent
and internal danger. The favourable intelligence which was received
from Africa, suddenly changed the opinions of men, and the state of
public affairs. The troops and officers, whom Attalus had sent into that
province, were defeated and slain; and the active zeal of Heraclian
maintained his own allegiance, and that of his people. The faithful count
of Africa transmitted a large sum of money, which fixed the attachment of
the imperial guards; and his vigilance in preventing the exportation of
corn and oil, introduced famine, tumult, and discontent into the walls of
Rome.


ATTALUS DEPOSED; ROME SACKED BY ALARIC

[Sidenote: [409-410 A.D.]]

The failure of the African expedition was the source of mutual complaint
and recrimination in the party of Attalus; and the mind of his protector
was insensibly alienated from the interest of a prince, who wanted
spirit to command or docility to obey. The most imprudent measures were
adopted, without the knowledge, or against the advice, of Alaric; and
the obstinate refusal of the senate, to allow, in the embarkation, the
mixture even of five hundred Goths, betrayed a suspicious and distrustful
temper, which, in their situation, was neither generous nor prudent. The
resentment of the Gothic king was exasperated by the malicious arts of
Jovius, who had been raised to the rank of patrician, and who afterward
excused his double perfidy by declaring, without a blush, that he had
only seemed to abandon the service of Honorius, more effectually to
ruin the cause of the usurper. In a large plain near Ariminum, and in
the presence of an innumerable multitude of Romans and barbarians, the
wretched Attalus was publicly despoiled of the diadem and purple; and
those ensigns of royalty were sent by Alaric, as the pledge of peace and
friendship, to the son of Theodosius.

The degradation of Attalus removed the only real obstacle to the
conclusion of the peace; and Alaric advanced within three miles of
Ravenna, to press the irresolution of the imperial ministers, whose
insolence soon returned with the return of fortune. His indignation was
kindled by the report that a rival chieftain, that Sarus, the personal
enemy of Atawulf and the hereditary foe of the house of Balti, had
been received into the palace. At the head of three hundred followers,
that fearless barbarian immediately sallied from the gates of Ravenna;
surprised, and cut in pieces, a considerable body of Goths; re-entered
the city in triumph; and was permitted to insult his adversary, by the
voice of a herald, who publicly declared that the guilt of Alaric had
forever excluded him from the friendship and alliance of the emperor.

The crime and folly of the court of Ravenna was expiated a third time by
the calamities of Rome. The king of the Goths, who no longer dissembled
his appetite for plunder and revenge, appeared in arms under the walls
of the capital; and the trembling senate, without any hope of relief,
prepared, by a desperate resistance, to delay the ruin of their country.
But they were unable to guard against the secret conspiracy of their
slaves and domestics; who, either from birth or interest, were attached
to the cause of the enemy. At the hour of midnight, the Salarian gate
was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous
sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and sixty-three years
after the foundation of Rome, the imperial city, which had subdued
and civilised so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered to the
licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia.

The proclamation of Alaric, when he forced his entrance into a vanquished
city, discovered some regard for the laws of humanity and religion.
He encouraged his troops boldly to seize the rewards of valour and to
enrich themselves with the spoils of a wealthy and effeminate people;
but he exhorted them, at the same time, to spare the lives of the
unresisting citizens, and to respect the churches of the apostles St.
Peter and St. Paul, as holy and inviolable sanctuaries. Amidst the
horrors of a nocturnal tumult, several of the Christian Goths displayed
the fervour of a recent conversion; and some instances of their uncommon
piety and moderation are related, and perhaps adorned, by the zeal of
ecclesiastical writers.

While the barbarians roamed through the city in quest of prey, the humble
dwelling of an aged virgin, who had devoted her life to the service of
the altar, was forced open by one of the powerful Goths. He immediately
demanded, though in civil language, all the gold and silver in her
possession; and was astonished at the readiness with which she conducted
him to a splendid hoard of massy plate, of the richest materials and
the most curious workmanship. The barbarian viewed with wonder and
delight this valuable acquisition, till he was interrupted by a serious
admonition, addressed to him in the following words: “These,” said she,
“are the consecrated vessels belonging to St. Peter; if you presume to
touch them, the sacrilegious deed will remain on your conscience. For my
part, I dare not keep what I am unable to defend.” The Gothic captain,
struck with reverential awe, despatched a messenger to inform the king
of the treasure which he had discovered; and received a peremptory order
from Alaric, that all the consecrated plate and ornaments should be
transported, without damage or delay, to the church of the Apostle. From
the extremity, perhaps, of the Quirinal Hill, to the distant quarter
of the Vatican, a numerous detachment of Goths, marching in order of
battle through the principal streets, protected, with glittering arms,
the long train of their devout companions, who bore aloft on their heads
the sacred vessels of gold and silver; and the martial shouts of the
barbarians were mingled with the sound of religious psalmody. From all
the adjacent houses a crowd of Christians hastened to join this edifying
procession; and a multitude of fugitives, without distinction of age
or rank, or even of sect, had the good fortune to escape to the secure
and hospitable sanctuary of the Vatican. The learned work, Concerning
the City of God, was professedly composed by St. Augustine to justify
the ways of Providence in the destruction of the Roman greatness. He
celebrates, with peculiar satisfaction, this memorable triumph of
Christ; and insults his adversaries by challenging them to produce some
similar example, of a town taken by storm, in which the fabulous gods of
antiquity had been able to protect either themselves or their deluded
votaries.

In the sack of Rome some rare and extraordinary examples of barbarian
virtue have been deservedly applauded. But the holy precincts of the
Vatican and the Apostolic churches could receive a very small proportion
of the Roman people; many thousand warriors, more especially of the Huns,
who served under the standard of Alaric, were strangers to the name, or
at least to the faith, of Christ; and we may suspect, without any breach
of charity or candour, that in the hour of savage license, when every
passion was inflamed and every restraint was removed, the precepts of
the gospel seldom influenced the behaviour of the Gothic Christians.
The writers the best disposed to exaggerate their clemency, have freely
confessed that a cruel slaughter was made of the Romans; and that the
streets of the city were filled with dead bodies, which remained without
burial during the general consternation. The despair of the citizens was
sometimes converted into fury; and whenever the barbarians were provoked
by opposition, they extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the
innocent, and the helpless. The private revenge of forty thousand slaves
was exercised without pity or remorse; and the ignominious lashes which
they had formerly received were washed away in the blood of the guilty
or obnoxious families. The matrons and virgins of Rome were exposed to
injuries more dreadful, in the apprehension of chastity, than death
itself; and the ecclesiastical historian has selected an example of
female virtue for the admiration of future ages.

A Roman lady, of singular beauty and orthodox faith, had excited the
impatient desires of a young Goth, who, according to the sagacious
remark of Sozomen, was attached to the Arian heresy. Exasperated by her
obstinate resistance he drew his sword, and with the anger of a lover
slightly wounded her neck. The bleeding heroine still continued to brave
his resentment and to repel his love, till the ravisher desisted from
his unavailing efforts, respectfully conducted her to the sanctuary of
the Vatican, and gave six pieces of gold to the guards of the church,
on condition that they should restore her inviolate to the arms of her
husband. Such instances of courage and generosity were not extremely
common. The brutal soldiers satisfied their sensual appetites without
consulting either the inclination or the duties of their female captives;
and a nice question of casuistry was seriously agitated, whether those
tender victims, who had inflexibly refused their consent to the violation
which they sustained, had lost by their misfortune the glorious crown of
virginity? There were other losses indeed of a more substantial kind,
and more general concern. It cannot be presumed that all the barbarians
were at all times capable of perpetrating such amorous outrages; and the
want of youth, or beauty, or chastity, protected the greatest part of the
Roman women from the danger of a rape. But avarice is an insatiate and
universal passion; since the enjoyment of almost every object that can
afford pleasure to the different tastes and tempers of mankind, may be
procured by the possession of wealth.

[Illustration: ROMAN GOLD BRACELET]

In the pillage of Rome, a just preference was given to gold and jewels,
which contain the greatest value in the smallest compass and weight;
but after these portable riches had been removed by the more diligent
robbers, the palaces of Rome were rudely stripped of their splendid and
costly furniture. The sideboards of massy plate, and the variegated
wardrobes of silk and purple, were irregularly piled in the wagons that
always followed the march of a Gothic army. The most exquisite works
of art were roughly handled, or wantonly destroyed; many a statue was
melted for the sake of the precious materials; and many a vase, in
the division of the spoil, was shivered into fragments by the stroke
of a battle-axe. The acquisition of riches served only to stimulate
the avarice of the rapacious barbarians, who proceeded by threats, by
blows, and by tortures, to force from their prisoners the confession
of hidden treasure. Visible splendour and expense were alleged as the
proof of a plentiful fortune; the appearance of poverty was imputed to a
parsimonious disposition; and the obstinacy of some misers, who endured
the most cruel torments before they would discover the secret object of
their affection, was fatal to many unhappy wretches, who expired under
the lash for refusing to reveal their imaginary treasures.

The edifices of Rome, though the damage has been much exaggerated,
received some injury from the violence of the Goths. At their entrance
through the Salarian Gate they fired the adjacent houses to guide their
march, and to distract the attention of the citizens; the flames, which
encountered no obstacle in the disorder of the night, consumed many
private and public buildings; and the ruins of the palace of Sallust
remained in the age of Justinian a stately monument of the Gothic
conflagration. Yet a contemporary historian has observed that fire could
scarcely consume the enormous beams of solid brass, and that the strength
of man was insufficient to subvert the foundations of ancient structures.
Some truth may possibly be concealed in his devout assertion, that the
wrath of heaven supplied the imperfections of hostile rage; and that
the proud Forum of Rome, decorated with the statues of so many gods and
heroes, was levelled in the dust by the stroke of lightning.

Whatever might be the numbers of equestrian or plebeian rank who perished
in the massacre of Rome, it is confidently affirmed that only one senator
lost his life by the sword of the enemy. But it was not easy to compute
the multitudes who, from an honourable station and a prosperous fortune,
were suddenly reduced to the miserable condition of captives and exiles.
As the barbarians had more occasion for money than for slaves, they
fixed at a moderate price the redemption of their indigent prisoners;
and the ransom was often paid by the benevolence of their friends or the
charity of strangers. The captives who were regularly sold, either in
open market or by private contract, would have legally regained their
native freedom, which it was impossible for a citizen to lose or to
alienate. But as it was soon discovered that the vindication of their
liberty would endanger their lives; and that the Goths, unless they were
tempted to sell, might be provoked to murder their useless prisoners; the
civil jurisprudence had been already qualified by a wise regulation that
they should be obliged to serve the moderate term of five years, till
they had discharged by their labour the price of their redemption. The
nations who invaded the Roman Empire had driven before them into Italy
whole troops of hungry and affrighted provincials, less apprehensive of
servitude than of famine. The calamities of Rome and Italy dispersed the
inhabitants to the most lonely, the most secure, the most distant places
of refuge. While the Gothic cavalry spread terror and desolation along
the sea coast of Campania and Tuscany, the little island of Igilium,
separated by a narrow channel from the Argentarian promontory, repulsed
or eluded their hostile attempts; and at so small a distance from Rome
great numbers of citizens were securely concealed in the thick woods
of that sequestered spot. The ample patrimonies which many senatorian
families possessed in Africa invited them, if they had time and prudence
to escape from the ruin of their country, to embrace the shelter of that
hospitable province. The Italian fugitives were dispersed through the
provinces, along the coast of Egypt and Asia, as far as Constantinople
and Jerusalem; and the village of Bethlehem, the solitary residence of
St. Jerome and his female converts, was crowded with illustrious beggars
of either sex and every age, who excited the public compassion by the
remembrance of their past fortune. This awful catastrophe of Rome filled
the astonished empire with grief and terror. So interesting a contrast
of greatness and ruin disposed the fond credulity of the people to
deplore, and even to exaggerate, the afflictions of the queen of cities.
The clergy, who applied to recent events the lofty metaphors of oriental
prophecy, were sometimes tempted to confound the destruction of the
capital and the dissolution of the globe.

There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the
advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times. Yet, when the
first emotions had subsided, and a fair estimate was made of the real
damage, the more learned and judicious contemporaries were forced to
confess that infant Rome had formerly received more essential injury from
the Gauls, than she had now sustained from the Goths in her declining
age. The experience of eleven centuries has enabled posterity to produce
a much more singular parallel; and to affirm with confidence that the
ravages of the barbarians, whom Alaric had led from the banks of the
Danube, were less destructive than the hostilities exercised by the
troops of Charles V, a Catholic prince, who styled himself emperor of the
Romans.

The Goths evacuated the city at the end of six days, but Rome remained
above nine months in the possession of the imperialists; and every
hour was stained by some atrocious act of cruelty, lust, and rapine.
The authority of Alaric preserved some order and moderation among the
ferocious multitude, but in the later capture under Charles V, the
commander, the constable of Bourbon had gloriously fallen in the attack
on the walls; and the death of the general removed every restraint of
discipline from an army which consisted of three independent nations,
the Italians, the Spaniards, and the Germans. In the beginning of the
sixteenth century, the manners of Italy exhibited a remarkable scene of
the depravity of mankind. They united the sanguinary crimes that prevail
in an unsettled state of society, with the polished vices which spring
from the abuse of art and luxury; and the loose adventurers, who had
violated every prejudice of patriotism and superstition, to assault the
palace of the Roman pontiff, must deserve to be considered as the most
profligate of the Italians. At the same era, the Spaniards were the
terror both of the Old and New World; but their high-spirited valour was
disgraced by gloomy pride, rapacious avarice, and unrelenting cruelty.
Indefatigable in the pursuit of fame and riches, they had improved, by
repeated practice, the most exquisite and effectual methods of torturing
their prisoners; many of the Castilians who pillaged Rome were familiars
of the holy inquisition; and some volunteers, perhaps, were lately
returned from the conquest of Mexico. The Germans were less corrupt than
the Italians, less cruel than the Spaniards; and the rustic or even
savage aspect of those Tramontane warriors, often disguised a simple
and merciful disposition. But they had imbibed, in the first fervour of
the Reformation, the spirit as well as the principles of Luther. It was
their favourite amusement to insult or destroy the consecrated objects of
Catholic superstition: they indulged, without pity or remorse, a devout
hatred against the clergy of every denomination and degree, who form so
considerable a part of the inhabitants of modern Rome; and their fanatic
zeal might aspire to subvert the throne of Antichrist, to purify, with
blood and fire, the abominations of the spiritual Babylon.

The retreat of the victorious Goths, who evacuated Rome on the sixth day,
might be the result of prudence; but it was not surely the effect of
fear. At the head of an army, encumbered with rich and weighty spoils,
their intrepid leader advanced along the Appian Way into the southern
provinces of Italy, destroying whatever dared to oppose his passage, and
contenting himself with the plunder of the unresisting country.


DEATH OF ALARIC; SUCCESSION OF ATAWULF

[Sidenote: [410-412 A.D.]]

Whether fame, or conquest, or riches were the object of Alaric, he
pursued that object with an indefatigable ardour which could neither be
quelled by adversity nor satiated by success. No sooner had he reached
the extreme land of Italy, than he was attracted by the neighbouring
prospect of a fertile and peaceful island. Yet even the possession of
Sicily he considered only as an intermediate step to the important
expedition which he already meditated against the continent of Africa.
The straits of Rhegium and Messina are twelve miles in length, and, in
the narrowest passage, about one mile and a half broad; and the fabulous
monsters of the deep, the rocks of Scylla and the whirlpool of Charybdis,
could terrify none but the most timid and unskilful mariners. Yet as soon
as the first division of the Goths had embarked, a sudden tempest arose,
which sunk or scattered many of the transports; their courage was daunted
by the terrors of a new element; and the whole design was defeated by the
premature death of Alaric, which fixed, after a short illness, the fatal
term of his conquests.

The brave Atawulf, the brother-in-law of the deceased monarch, was
unanimously elected to succeed to his throne. The character and
political system of the new king of the Goths may be best understood
from his conversation with an illustrious citizen of Narbo Martius, who
afterwards, in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, related it to St. Jerome,
in the presence of the historian Orosius. “In the full confidence of
valour and victory, I once aspired,” said Atawulf, “to change the face
of the universe; to obliterate the name of Rome; to erect on its ruins
the dominion of the Goths; and to acquire, like Augustus, the immortal
fame of the founder of a new empire. By repeated experiments, I was
gradually convinced that laws are essentially necessary to maintain
and regulate a well-constituted state; and that the fierce untractable
humour of the Goths was incapable of bearing the salutary yoke of laws
and civil government. From that moment I proposed to myself a different
object of glory and ambition; and it is now my sincere wish, that the
gratitude of future ages should acknowledge the merit of a stranger,
who employed the sword of the Goths, not to subvert, but to restore
and maintain, the prosperity of the Roman Empire.” With these pacific
views, the successor of Alaric suspended the operations of war, and
seriously negotiated with the imperial court a treaty of friendship and
alliance. It was the interest of the ministers of Honorius, who were
now released from the obligation of their extravagant oath, to deliver
Italy from the intolerable weight of the Gothic powers; and they readily
accepted their service against the tyrants and barbarians who infested
the provinces beyond the Alps. Atawulf, assuming the character of the
Roman general, directed his march from the extremity of Campania to the
southern province of Gaul. His troops, either by force or agreement,
occupied the cities of Narbo Martius, Tolosa (Toulouse), and Burdigala
(Bordeaux); and though they were repulsed by Count Bonifacius from
the walls of Massilia, they soon extended their quarters from the
Mediterranean to the ocean. The oppressed provincials might exclaim, that
the miserable remnant, which the enemy had spared, was cruelly ravished
by their pretended allies; yet some specious colours were not wanting to
palliate or justify the violence of the Goths. The cities of Gaul, which
they attacked, might perhaps be considered as in a state of rebellion
against the government of Honorius; the articles of the treaty, or the
secret instructions of the court, might sometimes be alleged in favour
of the seeming usurpations of Atawulf; and the guilt of any irregular,
unsuccessful act of hostility might always be imputed, with an appearance
of truth, to the ungovernable spirit of a barbarian host, impatient of
peace or discipline. The luxury of Italy had been less effectual to
soften the temper, than to relax the courage, of the Goths; and they
had imbibed the vices, without imitating the arts and institutions, of
civilised society.

[Sidenote: [412-414 A.D.]]

The professions of Atawulf were probably sincere, and his attachment
to the cause of the republic was secured by the ascendant which a
Roman princess had acquired over the heart and understanding of the
barbarian king. Placidia, the daughter of the great Theodosius, and of
Galla his second wife, had received a royal education in the palace of
Constantinople. The marriage of Atawulf and Placidia was consummated
before the Goths retired from Italy; and the solemn, perhaps the
anniversary, day of their nuptials was afterwards celebrated in the house
of Ingenuus, one of the most illustrious citizens of Narbo Martius in
Gaul. The bride, attired and adorned like a Roman empress, was placed
on a throne of state; and the king of the Goths, who assumed, on this
occasion, the Roman habit, contented himself with a less honourable seat
by her side (414).

After the deliverance of Italy from the oppression of the Goths, some
secret counsellor was permitted, amidst the factions of the palace,
to heal the wounds of that afflicted country. By a wise and humane
regulation, the eight provinces which had been the most deeply injured,
Campania, Tuscany, Picenum, Samnium, Apulia, Calabria, Bruttium, and
Lucania, obtained an indulgence of five years; the ordinary tribute
was reduced to one-fifth, and even that fifth was destined to restore
and support the useful institution of the public posts. By another law
the lands which had been left without inhabitants or cultivation, were
granted, with some diminution of taxes, to the neighbours who should
occupy, or the strangers who should solicit them; and the new possessors
were secured against the future claims of the fugitive proprietors. About
the same time a general amnesty was published in the name of Honorius,
to abolish the guilt and memory of all the involuntary offences, which
had been committed by his unhappy subjects during the term of the public
disorder and calamity.

A decent and respectful attention was paid to the restoration of the
capital; the citizens were encouraged to rebuild the edifices which had
been destroyed or damaged by hostile fire; and extraordinary supplies of
corn were imported from the coast of Africa. The crowds that so lately
fled before the sword of the barbarians, were soon recalled by the hopes
of plenty and pleasure; and Albinus, prefect of Rome, informed the court
that in a single day he had taken an account of the arrival of fourteen
thousand strangers. In less than seven years, the vestiges of the Gothic
invasion were almost obliterated; and the city appeared to resume its
former splendour and tranquillity.

This apparent tranquillity was soon disturbed by the approach of a
hostile armament from the country which afforded the daily subsistence
of the Roman people. Heraclian, count of Africa, who, under the most
difficult and distressful circumstances, had supported with active
loyalty the cause of Honorius, was tempted, in the year of his
consulship, to assume the character of a rebel and the title of emperor.
The ports of Africa were immediately filled with the naval forces at the
head of which he prepared to invade Italy; and his fleet, when it cast
anchor at the mouth of the Tiber, indeed surpassed the fleets of Xerxes
and Alexander, if all the vessels, including the royal galley and the
smallest boat, did actually amount to the incredible number of thirty-two
hundred.

Yet with such an armament, which might have subverted or restored the
greatest empire of the earth, the African usurper made a very faint
and feeble impression on the provinces of his rival. As he marched
from the port, along the road which leads to the gates of Rome, he was
encountered, terrified, and routed, by one of the imperial captains; and
the lord of this mighty host, deserting his fortune and his friends,
ignominiously fled with a single ship. When Heraclian landed in the
harbour of Carthage, he found that the whole province, disdaining such an
unworthy ruler, had returned to their allegiance. The rebel was beheaded
in the ancient temple of Memory; his consulship was abolished, and the
remains of his private fortune, not exceeding the moderate sum of four
thousand pounds of gold, were granted to the brave Constantius, who had
already defended the throne which he afterwards shared with his feeble
sovereign. Honorius viewed with supine indifference the calamities of
Rome and Italy, but the rebellious attempts of Attalus and Heraclian
against his personal safety awakened for a moment the torpid instinct
of his nature. He was probably ignorant of the causes and events which
preserved him from these impending dangers; and as Italy was no longer
invaded by any foreign or domestic enemies, he peaceably existed in the
palace of Ravenna, while the tyrants beyond the Alps were repeatedly
vanquished in the name, and by the lieutenants, of the son of Theodosius.


CONSTANTINE AND GERONTIUS; CONSTANTIUS

[Sidenote: [411-413 A.D.]]

The usurpation of Constantine, who received the purple from the legions
of Britain, had been successful; and seemed to be secure. His title was
acknowledged from the wall of Antoninus to the columns of Hercules;
and, in the midst of the public disorder, he shared the dominion and
the plunder of Gaul and Spain with the tribes of barbarians, whose
destructive progress was no longer checked by the Rhine or Pyrenees.
Stained with the blood of the kinsmen of Honorius, he extorted from the
court of Ravenna, with which he secretly corresponded, the ratification
of his rebellious claims. Constantine engaged himself, by a solemn
promise, to deliver Italy from the Goths; advanced as far as the banks
of the Po; and after alarming, rather than assisting, his pusillanimous
ally, hastily returned to the palace of Arles, to celebrate, with
intemperate luxury, his vain and ostentatious triumph. But this transient
prosperity was soon interrupted and destroyed by the revolt of Count
Gerontius, the bravest of his generals, who, during the absence of his
son Constans, a prince already invested with the imperial purple, had
been left to command in the provinces of Spain.

For some reason, of which we are ignorant, Gerontius, instead of assuming
the diadem, placed it on the head of his friend Maximus, who fixed his
residence at Tarraco (Tarragona), while the active count pressed forwards
through the Pyrenees, to surprise the two emperors, Constantine and
Constans, before they could prepare for their defence. The son was made
prisoner at Vienna, and immediately put to death; and the unfortunate
youth had scarcely leisure to deplore the elevation of his family, which
had tempted or compelled him sacrilegiously to desert the peaceful
obscurity of the monastic life. The father maintained a siege within
the walls of Arelate (Arles); but those walls must have yielded to the
assailants, had not the city been unexpectedly relieved by the approach
of an Italian army.

The name of Honorius, the proclamation of a lawful emperor, astonished
the contending parties of the rebels. Gerontius, abandoned by his
own troops, escaped to the confines of Spain, and rescued his name
from oblivion by the Roman courage which appeared to animate the last
moments of his life. In the middle of the night, a great body of his
perfidious soldiers surrounded and attacked his house, which he had
strongly barricaded. His wife, a valiant friend of the nation of the
Alani, and some faithful slaves, were still attached to his person; and
he used, with so much skill and resolution, a large magazine of darts
and arrows, that above three hundred of the assailants lost their lives
in the attempt. His slaves, when all the missile weapons were spent,
fled at the dawn of day; and Gerontius, if he had not been restrained
by conjugal tenderness, might have imitated their example; till the
soldiers, provoked by such obstinate resistance, applied fire on all
sides to the house. In this fatal extremity he complied with the request
of his barbarian friend, and cut off his head. The wife of Gerontius, who
conjured him not to abandon her to a life of misery and disgrace, eagerly
presented her neck to his sword; and the tragic scene was terminated by
the death of the count himself, who, after three ineffectual strokes,
drew a short dagger, and sheathed it in his heart.[65] The unprotected
Maximus, whom he had invested with the purple, was indebted for his
life to the contempt that was entertained of his power and abilities.
The caprice of the barbarians who ravaged Spain, once more seated this
imperial phantom on the throne; but they soon resigned him to the justice
of Honorius; and the tyrant Maximus, after he had been shown to the
people of Ravenna and of Rome, was publicly executed.

The general, Constantius was his name, who raised by his approach the
siege of Arles and dissipated the troops of Gerontius, was born a Roman;
and this remarkable distinction is strongly expressive of the decay
of military spirit among the subjects of the empire. The strength and
majesty which were conspicuous in the person of that general marked him,
in the popular opinion, as a candidate worthy of the throne, which he
afterwards ascended. In the familiar intercourse of private life, his
manners were cheerful and engaging: nor would he sometimes disdain, in
the license of convivial mirth, to vie with the pantomimes themselves
in the exercises of their ridiculous profession. But when the trumpet
summoned him to arms; when he mounted his horse, and bending down (for
such was his singular practice) almost upon the neck, fiercely rolled
his large animated eyes round the field, Constantius then struck terror
into his foes, and inspired his soldiers with the assurance of victory.
He had received from the court of Ravenna the important commission of
extirpating rebellion in the provinces of the West; and the pretended
emperor Constantine, after enjoying a short and anxious respite, was
again besieged in his capital by the arms of a more formidable enemy. Yet
this interval allowed time for a successful negotiation with the Franks
and Alamanni; and his ambassador, Edobic, soon returned, at the head of
an army, to disturb the operations of the siege of Arles.

The Roman general, instead of expecting the attack in his lines,
boldly, and perhaps wisely, resolved to pass the Rhone and to meet the
barbarians. His measures were conducted with so much skill and secrecy,
that while they engaged the infantry of Constantius in the front, they
were suddenly attacked, surrounded, and destroyed by the cavalry of
his lieutenant Ulfilas, who had silently gained an advantageous post in
their rear. The remains of the army of Edobic were preserved by flight
or submission, and their leader escaped from the field of battle to the
house of a faithless friend, who too clearly understood that the head
of his obnoxious guest would be an acceptable and lucrative present for
the imperial general. On this occasion, Constantius behaved with the
magnanimity of a genuine Roman. Subduing or suppressing every sentiment
of jealousy, he publicly acknowledged the merit and services of Ulfilas;
but he turned with horror from the assassin of Edobic, and sternly
intimated his commands, that the camp should no longer be polluted by the
presence of an ungrateful wretch, who had violated the laws of friendship
and hospitality.

The usurper, who beheld from the walls of Arelate the ruin of his last
hopes, was tempted to place some confidence in so generous a conqueror.
He required a solemn promise for his security; and after receiving, by
the imposition of hands, the sacred character of a Christian presbyter,
he ventured to open the gates of the city. But he soon experienced
that the principles of honour and integrity, which might regulate the
ordinary conduct of Constantius, were superseded by the loose doctrines
of political morality. The Roman general, indeed, refused to sully his
laurels with the blood of Constantine; but the abdicated emperor and his
son Julian were sent under a strong guard into Italy; and before they
reached the palace of Ravenna, they met the ministers of death.

At a time when it was universally confessed that almost every man in the
empire was superior in personal merit to the princes whom the accident
of their birth had seated on the throne, a rapid succession of usurpers,
regardless of the fate of their predecessors, still continued to arise.
This mischief was peculiarly felt in the provinces of Spain and Gaul,
where the principles of order and obedience had been extinguished by
war and rebellion. Before Constantine resigned the purple, and in the
fourth month of the siege of Arles, intelligence was received in the
imperial camp that Jovinus had assumed the diadem at Mogontiacum, in the
Upper Germany, at the instigation of Goar, king of the Alani, and of
Guntiarius, king of the Burgundians; and that the candidate, on whom they
had bestowed the empire, advanced with a formidable host of barbarians,
from the banks of the Rhine to those of the Rhone. Every circumstance is
dark and extraordinary in the short history of the reign of Jovinus. It
was natural to expect that a brave and skilful general, at the head of a
victorious army, would have asserted, in a field of battle, the justice
of the cause of Honorius.

The hasty retreat of Constantius might be justified by weighty reasons;
but he resigned, without a struggle, the possession of Gaul; and
Dardanus, the prætorian prefect, is recorded as the only magistrate who
refused to yield obedience to the usurper. When the Goths, two years
after the siege of Rome, established their quarters in Gaul, it was
natural to suppose that their inclination could be divided only between
the emperor Honorius, with whom they had formed a recent alliance, and
the degraded Attalus, whom they reserved in their camp for the occasional
purpose of acting the part of a musician or a monarch. Yet in a moment of
disgust (for which it is not easy to assign a cause or a date), Atawulf
connected himself with the usurper of Gaul; and imposed on Attalus the
ignominious task of negotiating the treaty, which ratified his own
disgrace. We are again surprised to read that, instead of considering the
Gothic alliance as the firmest support of his throne, Jovinus upbraided,
in dark and ambiguous language, the officious importunity of Attalus;
that, scorning the advice of his great ally, he invested with the purple
his brother Sebastian; and that he most imprudently accepted the service
of Sarus, when that gallant chief, the soldier of Honorius, was provoked
to desert the court of a prince who knew not how to reward or punish.

[Sidenote: [413-415 A.D.]]

Atawulf, educated among a race of warriors, who esteemed the duty of
revenge as the most precious and sacred portion of their inheritance,
advanced with a body of ten thousand Goths to encounter the hereditary
enemy of the house of Balti. He attacked Sarus at an unguarded moment,
when he was accompanied only by eighteen or twenty of his valiant
followers. United by friendship, animated by despair, but at length
oppressed by multitudes, this band of heroes deserved the esteem, without
exciting the compassion, of their enemies; and the lion was no sooner
taken in the toils, than he was instantly despatched. The death of Sarus
dissolved the loose alliance which Atawulf still maintained with the
usurpers of Gaul. He again listened to the dictates of love and prudence;
and soon satisfied the brother of Placidia, by the assurance that he
would immediately transmit to the palace of Ravenna the heads of the two
tyrants, Jovinus and Sebastian.

The king of the Goths executed his promise without difficulty or delay;
the helpless brothers, unsupported by any personal merit, were abandoned
by their barbarian auxiliaries; and the short opposition of Valentia was
expiated by the ruin of one of the noblest cities of Gaul. The emperor,
chosen by the Roman senate, who had been promoted, degraded, insulted,
restored, again degraded, and again insulted, was finally abandoned
to his fate; but when the Gothic king withdrew his protection, he was
restrained, by pity or contempt, from offering any violence to the person
of Attalus. The unfortunate Attalus, who was left without subjects or
allies, embarked in one of the ports of Spain in search of some secure
and solitary retreat; but he was intercepted at sea, conducted to the
presence of Honorius, led in triumph through the streets of Rome or
Ravenna, and publicly exposed to the gazing multitude on the second step
of the throne of his invincible conqueror. The same measure of punishment
with which, in the days of his prosperity, he was accused of menacing
his rival, was inflicted on Attalus himself; he was condemned, after the
amputation of two fingers, to a perpetual exile in the isle of Lipara,
where he was supplied with the decent necessaries of life. The remainder
of the reign of Honorius was undisturbed by rebellion; and it may be
observed, that in the space of five years, seven usurpers had yielded to
the fortune of a prince who was himself incapable either of counsel or of
action.

The important present of the heads of Jovinus and Sebastian had
approved the friendship of Atawulf, and restored Gaul to the obedience
of his brother Honorius. Peace was incompatible with the situation
and temper of the king of the Goths. He readily accepted the proposal
of turning his victorious arms against the barbarians of Spain; the
troops of Constantius intercepted his communication with the seaports
of Gaul, and gently pressed his march towards the Pyrenees; he passed
the mountains, and surprised, in the name of the emperor, the city of
Barcino (Barcelona). The course of his victories was soon interrupted by
domestic treason. He had imprudently received into his service one of the
followers of Sarus, a barbarian of a daring spirit but of a diminutive
stature, whose secret desire of revenging the death of his beloved patron
was continually irritated by the sarcasms of his insolent master. Atawulf
was assassinated in the palace of Barcelona; the laws of the succession
were violated by a tumultuous faction; and a stranger to the royal race,
Sigeric, the brother of Sarus himself, was seated on the Gothic throne.
The first act of his reign was the inhuman murder of the six children of
Atawulf, the issue of a former marriage, whom he tore without pity from
the feeble arms of a venerable bishop. The unfortunate Placidia, instead
of the respectful compassion which she might have excited in the most
savage breasts, was treated with cruel and wanton insult. The daughter
of the emperor Theodosius, confounded among a crowd of vulgar captives,
was compelled to march on foot above twelve miles, before the horse of a
barbarian, the assassin of a husband whom Placidia loved and lamented.

[Sidenote: [415-418 A.D.]]

But Placidia soon obtained the pleasure of revenge; and the view of
her ignominious sufferings might rouse an indignant people against the
tyrant, who was assassinated on the seventh day of his usurpation. After
the death of Sigeric, the free choice of the nation bestowed the Gothic
sceptre on Wallia, whose warlike and ambitious temper appeared in the
beginning of his reign extremely hostile to the republic. He marched in
arms from Barcino to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, which the ancients
revered and dreaded as the boundary of the world. But when he reached
the southern promontory of Spain, and from the rock now covered by the
fortress of Gibraltar contemplated the neighbouring and fertile coast of
Africa, Wallia resumed the designs of conquest which had been interrupted
by the death of Alaric. The winds and waves again disappointed the
enterprise of the Goths; and the minds of a superstitious people were
deeply affected by the repeated disasters of storms and shipwrecks. In
this disposition, the successor of Atawulf no longer refused to listen to
a Roman ambassador, whose proposals were enforced by the real or supposed
approach of a numerous army, under the conduct of the brave Constantius.
A solemn treaty was stipulated and observed, Placidia was honourably
restored to her brother, six hundred thousand measures of wheat were
delivered to the hungry Goths, and Wallia engaged to draw his sword in
the service of the empire.

A bloody war was instantly excited among the barbarians of Spain; and
the contending princes are said to have addressed their letters, their
ambassadors, and their hostages, to the throne of the Western emperor,
exhorting him to remain a tranquil spectator of their contest, the event
of which must be favourable to the Romans, by the mutual slaughter
of their common enemies. The Spanish War was obstinately supported
during three campaigns, with desperate valour and various success; and
the martial achievements of Wallia diffused through the empire the
superior renown of the Gothic hero. He exterminated the Silingi, who had
irretrievably ruined the elegant plenty of the province of Bætica. He
slew in battle the king of the Alani; and the remains of those Scythian
wanderers who escaped from the field, instead of choosing a new leader,
humbly sought a refuge under the standard of the Vandals, with whom
they were ever afterwards confounded. The Vandals themselves, and the
Suevi, yielded to the efforts of the invincible Goths. The promiscuous
multitude of barbarians, whose retreat had been intercepted, were
driven into the mountains of Gallæcia; where they still continued, in
a narrow compass, and on a barren soil, to exercise their domestic and
implacable hostilities. In the pride of victory, Wallia was faithful
to his engagements; he restored his Spanish conquests to the obedience
of Honorius; and the tyranny of the imperial officers soon reduced an
oppressed people to regret the time of their barbarian servitude.

His victorious Goths, forty-three years after they had passed the
Danube, were established, according to the faith of treaties, in the
possession of the second Aquitania, a maritime province between the
Garumna (Garonne) and the Liger (Loire), under the jurisdiction of
Bordeaux. The Gothic limits were enlarged by the additional gift of some
neighbouring dioceses; and the successors of Alaric fixed their royal
residence at Tolosa, which included five populous quarters, or cities,
within the spacious circuit of its walls. About the same time, in the
last years of the reign of Honorius, the Goths, the Burgundiones, and the
Franks obtained a permanent seat and dominion in the provinces of Gaul.
The liberal grant of the usurper Jovinus to his Burgundian allies was
confirmed by the lawful emperor; the lands of the First or Upper Germany
were ceded to those formidable barbarians; and they gradually occupied,
either by conquest or treaty, the two provinces which still retain, with
the titles of Duchy and of County, the national appellation of Burgundy.

The Franks, the valiant and faithful allies of the Roman Republic, were
soon tempted to imitate the invaders whom they had so bravely resisted.
Augusta Trevirorum, the capital of Gaul, was pillaged by their lawless
bands; and the humble colony which they so long maintained in the
district of Toxandria, in Brabant, insensibly multiplied along the banks
of the Meuse and Scheldt, till their independent power filled the whole
extent of the Second or Lower Germany.

The ruin of the opulent provinces of Gaul may be dated from the
establishment of these barbarians, whose alliance was dangerous and
oppressive, and who were capriciously impelled, by interest or passion,
to violate the public peace. The odious name of conquerors was softened
into the mild and friendly appellation of the “guests” of the Romans; and
the barbarians of Gaul, more especially the Goths, repeatedly declared
that they were bound to the people by the ties of hospitality, and to the
emperor by the duty of allegiance and military service.

[Sidenote: [409-423 A.D.]]

Whilst Italy was ravaged by the Goths, and a succession of feeble tyrants
oppressed the provinces beyond the Alps, the British island separated
itself from the body of the Roman Empire. The regular forces which
guarded that remote province had been gradually withdrawn; and Britain
was abandoned, without defence, to the Saxon pirates and the savages
of Ireland and Caledonia. The Britons, reduced to this extremity, no
longer relied on the tardy and doubtful aid of a declining monarchy. They
assembled in arms, repelled the invaders, and rejoiced in the important
discovery of their own strength. Afflicted by similar calamities, and
actuated by the same spirit, the Armorican provinces (a name which
comprehended the maritime countries of Gaul, between the Seine and the
Loire) resolved to imitate the example of the neighbouring island.
They expelled the Roman magistrates, who acted under the authority of
the usurper Constantine; and a free government was established among a
people who had so long been subject to the arbitrary will of a master.
The independence of Britain and Armorica was soon confirmed by Honorius
himself, the lawful emperor of the West; and the letters, by which he
committed to the new states the care of their own safety, might be
interpreted as an absolute and perpetual abdication of the exercise and
rights of sovereignty (409).[b]


FOOTNOTES

[65] The praises which Sozomen has bestowed on this act of despair,
appear strange and scandalous in the mouth of an ecclesiastical
historian. He observes that the wife of Gerontius was a Christian, and
that her death was worthy of her religion and of immortal fame.




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XLVI. THE HUNS AND THE VANDALS


During a long and disgraceful reign of twenty-eight years, Honorius,
emperor of the West, was separated from the friendship of his
brother, and afterwards of his nephew, who reigned over the East; and
Constantinople beheld, with apparent indifference and secret joy, the
calamities of Rome. The strange adventures of Placidia gradually renewed
and cemented the alliance of the two empires. The daughter of the great
Theodosius had been the captive and the queen of the Goths; she lost
an affectionate husband, she was dragged in chains by his insulting
assassin, she tasted the pleasure of revenge, and was exchanged in the
treaty of peace, for six hundred thousand measures of wheat.

After her return from Spain to Italy, Placidia experienced a new
persecution in the bosom of her family. She was averse to a marriage
which had been stipulated without her consent; and the brave Constantius,
as a noble reward for the tyrants whom he had vanquished, received from
the hand of Honorius himself the struggling and reluctant hand of the
widow of Atawulf. But her resistance ended with the ceremony of the
nuptials; nor did Placidia refuse to become the mother of Honoria and
Valentinian III or to assume and exercise an absolute dominion over
the mind of her grateful husband. The generous soldier, whose time had
hitherto been divided between social pleasure and military service, was
taught new lessons of avarice and ambition. He extorted the title of
Augustus; and the servant of Honorius was associated to the empire of
the West. The death of Constantius, in the seventh month of his reign,
instead of diminishing, seemed to increase the power of Placidia. On a
sudden, by some base intrigues the city of Ravenna was agitated with
bloody and dangerous tumults, which could only be appeased by the forced
or voluntary retreat of Placidia and her children.

The royal exiles landed at Constantinople, soon after the marriage of
Theodosius, during the festival of the Persian victories. They were
treated with kindness and magnificence; but as the statues of the emperor
Constantius had been rejected by the Eastern court, the title of Augusta
could not decently be allowed to his widow. Within a few months after the
arrival of Placidia, a swift messenger announced the death of Honorius,
the consequence of a dropsy; but the important secret was not divulged
till the necessary orders had been despatched for the march of a large
body of troops to the seacoast of Dalmatia. The shops and the gates of
Constantinople remained shut during seven days; and the loss of a foreign
prince, who could neither be esteemed nor regretted, was celebrated with
loud and affected demonstrations of the public grief.

[Sidenote: [423-424 A.D.]]

While the ministers of Constantinople deliberated, the vacant throne
of Honorius was usurped by the ambition of a stranger. The name of the
rebel was Joannes. He filled the confidential office of _primicerius_,
or principal secretary; and history has attributed to his character
more virtues than can easily be reconciled with the violation of the
most sacred duty. Elated by the submission of Italy, and the hope of an
alliance with the Huns, Joannes presumed to insult, by an embassy, the
majesty of the Eastern emperor; but when he understood that his agents
had been banished, imprisoned, and at length chased away with deserved
ignominy, Joannes prepared to assert by arms the injustice of his claims.

In such a cause, the grandson of the great Theodosius should have marched
in person; but the young emperor was easily diverted by his physicians
from so rash and hazardous a design, and the conduct of the Italian
expedition was prudently entrusted to Ardaburius and his son Aspar, who
had already signalised their valour against the Persians. It was resolved
that Ardaburius should embark with the infantry, whilst Aspar, at the
head of the cavalry, conducted Placidia and her son Valentinian along
the seacoast of the Adriatic. The march of the cavalry was performed
with such active diligence that they surprised, without resistance, the
important city of Aquileia; when the hopes of Aspar were unexpectedly
confounded by the intelligence that a storm had dispersed the imperial
fleet; and that his father, with only two galleys, was taken and carried
a prisoner into the port of Ravenna. Yet this incident, unfortunate as it
might seem, facilitated the conquest of Italy. Ardaburius employed, or
abused, the courteous freedom which he was permitted to enjoy, to revive
among the troops a sense of loyalty and gratitude; and as soon as the
conspiracy was ripe for execution, he invited by private messages and
pressed the approach of Aspar. A shepherd, whom the popular credulity
transformed into an angel, guided the Eastern cavalry, by a secret and,
it was thought, an impassable road through the morasses of the Padus
(Po); the gates of Ravenna, after a short struggle, were thrown open;
and the defenceless tyrant was delivered to the mercy, or rather to the
cruelty, of the conquerors. His right hand was first cut off; and, after
he had been exposed, mounted on an ass, to the public derision, Joannes
was beheaded in the circus of Aquileia.

In a monarchy which, according to various precedents, might be considered
as elective, or hereditary, or patrimonial, it was impossible that the
intricate claims of female and collateral succession should be clearly
defined; and Theodosius, by the right of consanguinity or conquest,
might have reigned the sole legitimate emperor of the Romans. For a
moment, perhaps, his eyes were dazzled by the prospect of unbounded
sway; but his indolent temper gradually acquiesced in the dictates of
sound policy. He contented himself with the possession of the East;
and wisely relinquished the laborious task of waging a distant and
doubtful war against the barbarians beyond the Alps; or of securing the
obedience of the Italians and Africans, whose minds were alienated by the
irreconcilable difference of language and interest.

[Sidenote: [424-427 A.D.]]

Instead of listening to the voice of ambition, Theodosius resolved
to imitate the moderation of his grandfather, and to seat his
cousin Valentinian on the throne of the West. The royal infant was
distinguished at Constantinople by the title of _nobilissimus_: he was
promoted, before his departure from Thessalonica, to the rank and dignity
of Cæsar; and, after the conquest of Italy, the patrician Helion, by
the authority of Theodosius and in the presence of the senate, saluted
Valentinian III by the name of Augustus, and solemnly invested him
with the diadem and the imperial purple. By the agreement of the three
females who governed the Roman world, the son of Placidia was betrothed
to Eudoxia, the daughter of Theodosius and Athenais; and, as soon as the
lover and his bride had attained the age of puberty, this honourable
alliance was faithfully accomplished. At the same time, as a compensation
perhaps for the expenses of the war, the western Illyricum was detached
from the Italian dominions and yielded to the throne of Constantinople.

[Illustration: A HUN

(From a painting)]

The emperor of the East acquired the useful dominion of the rich and
maritime province of Dalmatia, and the dangerous sovereignty of Pannonia
and Noricum, which had been filled and ravaged above twenty years by a
promiscuous crowd of Huns, Ostrogoths, Vandals, and Bavarians. Theodosius
and Valentinian continued to respect the obligations of their public and
domestic alliance; but the unity of the Roman government was finally
dissolved. By a positive declaration, the validity of all future laws
was limited to the dominions of their peculiar author; unless he should
think proper to communicate them, subscribed with his own hand, for the
approbation of his independent colleague.

Valentinian, when he received the title of Augustus, was no more than
six years of age; and his long minority was intrusted to the guardian
care of a mother, who might assert a female claim to the succession
of the Western Empire. Placidia envied, but she could not equal, the
reputation and virtues of the wife and sister of Theodosius, the elegant
genius of Eudocia, the wise and successful policy of Pulcheria. The
mother of Valentinian was jealous of the power which she was incapable
of exercising. She reigned twenty-five years, in the name of her son;
and the character of that unworthy emperor gradually countenanced the
suspicion that Placidia had enervated his youth by a dissolute education,
and studiously diverted his attention from every manly and honourable
pursuit. Amidst the decay of military spirit her armies were commanded
by two generals, Aëtius and Boniface, who may be deservedly named as the
last of the Romans. Their union might have supported a sinking empire;
their discord was the fatal and immediate cause of the loss of Africa.
The invasion and defeat of Attila have immortalised the fame of Aëtius;
and though time has thrown a shade over the exploits of his rival, the
defence of Marseilles and the deliverance of Africa attest the military
talents of Count Boniface.

The abilities of Aëtius and Boniface might have been usefully employed
against the public enemies, in separate and important commands; but the
experience of their past conduct should have decided the real favour
and confidence of the empress Placidia. In the melancholy season of
her exile and distress, Boniface alone had maintained her cause with
unshaken fidelity; and the troops and treasures of Africa had essentially
contributed to extinguish the rebellion. The same rebellion had been
supported by the zeal and activity of Aëtius, who brought an army of
sixty thousand Huns from the Danube to the confines of Italy, for the
service of the usurper. The untimely death of Joannes compelled him to
accept an advantageous treaty; but he still continued, the subject and
the soldier of Valentinian, to entertain a secret, perhaps a treasonable
correspondence with his barbarian allies, whose retreat had been
purchased by liberal gifts and more liberal promises.

But Aëtius possessed an advantage of singular moment in a female reign;
he was present; he besieged, with artful and assiduous flattery, the
palace of Ravenna; disguised his dark designs with the mask of loyalty
and friendship; and at length deceived both his mistress and his absent
rival by a subtle conspiracy which a weak woman and a brave man could
not easily suspect. He secretly persuaded Placidia to recall Boniface
from the government of Africa; he secretly advised Boniface to disobey
the imperial summons. To the one he represented the order as a sentence
of death, to the other he stated the refusal as a signal of revolt; and
when the credulous and unsuspecting count had armed the province in his
defence, Aëtius applauded his sagacity in foreseeing the rebellion which
his own perfidy had excited.

A temperate inquiry into the real motives of Boniface would have restored
a faithful servant to his duty and to the republic; but the arts of
Aëtius still continued to betray and to inflame, and the count was urged,
by persecution, to embrace the most desperate counsels. The success with
which he eluded or repelled the first attacks could not inspire a vain
confidence that, at the head of some loose, disorderly Africans, he
should be able to withstand the regular forces of the West, commanded by
a rival whose military character it was impossible for him to despise.
After some hesitation, the last struggles of prudence and loyalty,
Boniface despatched a trusty friend to the court, or rather to the camp,
of Gonderic, king of the Vandals, with the proposal of a strict alliance
and the offer of an advantageous and perpetual settlement.

[Sidenote: [427-429 A.D.]]

The experience of navigation, and perhaps the prospect of Africa,
encouraged the Vandals to accept the invitation which they received from
Count Boniface; and the death of Gonderic served only to forward and
animate the bold enterprise. In the room of a prince not conspicuous
for any superior powers of the mind or body, they acquired his bastard
brother, the terrible Genseric, a name which, in the destruction of
the Roman Empire, has deserved an equal rank with the names of Alaric
and Attila. The king of the Vandals is described to have been of a
middle stature, with a lameness in one leg, which he had contracted by
an accidental fall from his horse. His slow and cautious speech seldom
declared the deep purposes of his soul; he disdained to imitate the
luxury of the vanquished, but he indulged the sterner passions of anger
and revenge.

The ambition of Genseric was without bounds and without scruples; and the
warrior could dexterously employ the dark engines of policy to solicit
the allies who might be useful to his success, or to scatter among his
enemies the seeds of hatred and contention. Almost in the moment of his
departure he was informed that Hermanric, king of the Suevi, had presumed
to ravage the Spanish territories, which he was resolved to abandon.
Impatient of the insult, Genseric pursued the hasty retreat of the Suevi
as far as Augusta Emerita (Merida); precipitated the king and his army
into the river Anas, and calmly returned to the seashore to embark his
victorious troops. The vessels which transported the Vandals over the
modern straits of Gibraltar, a channel only twelve miles in breadth, were
furnished by the Spaniards, who anxiously wished their departure, and by
the African general, who had implored their formidable assistance.

Our fancy, so long accustomed to exaggerate and multiply the martial
swarms of barbarians that seemed to issue from the north, will perhaps
be surprised by the account of the army which Genseric mustered on the
coast of Mauretania. The Vandals, who in twenty years had penetrated from
the Elbe to Mount Atlas, were united under the command of their warlike
king; and he reigned with equal authority over the Alani, who had passed,
within the term of human life, from the cold of Scythia to the excessive
heat of an African climate. The hopes of the bold enterprise had
excited many brave adventurers of the Gothic nation; and many desperate
provincials were tempted to repair their fortunes by the same means which
had occasioned their ruin.

Yet this various multitude amounted only to fifty thousand effective
men; and though Genseric artfully magnified his apparent strength
by appointing eighty _chiliarchs_, or commanders of thousands, the
fallacious increase of old men, of children, and of slaves would scarcely
have swelled his army to fourscore thousand persons. But his own
dexterity and the discontents of Africa soon fortified the Vandal powers
by the accession of numerous and active allies. The parts of Mauretania
which border on the great desert and the Atlantic Ocean were filled
with a fierce and untractable race of men, whose savage temper had been
exasperated, rather than reclaimed, by their dread of the Roman arms.

The wandering Moors, as they gradually ventured to approach the
seashore and the camp of the Vandals, must have viewed with terror and
astonishment the dress, the armour, the martial pride and discipline
of the unknown strangers who had landed on their coast; and the fair
complexions of the blue-eyed warriors of Germany formed a very singular
contrast with the swarthy or olive hue which is derived from the
neighbourhood of the torrid zone. After the first difficulties had in
some measure been removed, which arose from the mutual ignorance of their
respective languages, the Moors, regardless of any future consequence,
embraced the alliance of the enemies of Rome; and a crowd of naked
savages rushed from the woods and valleys of Mount Atlas, to satiate
their revenge on the polished tyrants who had injuriously expelled them
from their native sovereignty of the land.

[Sidenote: [429-430 A.D.]]

The persecution of the Donatists was an event not less favourable to
the designs of Genseric. Seventeen years before he landed in Africa a
public conference was held at Carthage by the order of the magistrate.
The Catholics were satisfied that, after the invincible reasons which
they had alleged, the obstinacy of the schismatics must be inexcusable
and voluntary; and the emperor Honorius was persuaded to inflict the most
rigorous penalties on a faction which had so long abused his patience
and clemency. Three hundred bishops, with many thousands of the inferior
clergy, were torn from their churches, stripped of their ecclesiastical
possessions, banished to the islands, and proscribed by the laws, if
they presumed to conceal themselves in the provinces of Africa. By these
severities, which obtained the warmest approbation of St. Augustine,
great numbers of Donatists were reconciled to the Catholic church; but
the fanatics, who still persevered in their opposition, were provoked to
madness and despair; the distracted country was filled with tumult and
bloodshed. The armed troops of Circumcellions alternately pointed their
rage against themselves or against their adversaries; and the calendar
of martyrs received on both sides a considerable augmentation. Under
these circumstances Genseric, a Christian but an enemy of the orthodox
communion, showed himself to the Donatists as a powerful deliverer, from
whom they might reasonably expect the repeal of the odious and oppressive
edicts of the Roman emperors. The conquest of Africa was facilitated by
the active zeal or the secret favour of a domestic faction; the wanton
outrages against the churches and the clergy, of which the Vandals are
accused, may be fairly imputed to the fanaticism of their allies; and the
intolerant spirit which disgraced the triumph of Christianity contributed
to the loss of the most important province of the West.

The court and the people were astonished by the strange intelligence
that a virtuous hero, after so many favours and so many services, had
renounced his allegiance and invited the barbarians to destroy the
province intrusted to his command. The friends of Boniface, who still
believed that his criminal behaviour might be excused by some honourable
motive, solicited, during the absence of Aëtius, a free conference with
the count of Africa; and Darius, an officer of high distinction, was
named for the important embassy. In their first interview at Carthage,
the imaginary provocations were mutually explained; the opposite letters
of Aëtius were produced and compared, and the fraud was easily detected.
Placidia and Boniface lamented their fatal error; and the count had
sufficient magnanimity to confide in the forgiveness of his sovereign, or
to expose his head to her future resentment. His repentance was fervent
and sincere; but he soon discovered that it was no longer in his power
to restore the edifice which he had shaken to its foundations. Carthage
and the Roman garrisons returned with their general to the allegiance of
Valentinian, but the rest of Africa was still distracted with war and
faction; and the inexorable king of the Vandals, disdaining all terms of
accommodation, sternly refused to relinquish the possession of his prey.
The band of veterans who marched under the standard of Boniface and his
hasty levies of provincial troops were defeated with considerable loss;
the victorious barbarians insulted the open country; and Carthage, Cirta,
and Hippo Regius were the only cities that appeared to rise above the
general inundation.

[Sidenote: [430-431 A.D.]]

On a sudden the seven fruitful provinces, from Tingis (Tangier) to
Tripolis, were overwhelmed by the invasion of the Vandals, whose
destructive rage has perhaps been exaggerated by popular animosity,
religious zeal, and extravagant declamation. War, in its fairest
form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice; and the
hostilities of barbarians are inflamed by the fierce and lawless spirit
which incessantly disturbs their peaceful and domestic society. The
Vandals, where they found resistance, seldom gave quarter; and the deaths
of their valiant countrymen were expiated by the ruin of the cities under
whose walls they had fallen. Careless of the distinctions of age, or sex,
or rank, they employed every species of indignity and torture to force
from the captives a discovery of their hidden wealth. The stern policy of
Genseric justified his frequent examples of military execution. He was
not always the master of his own passions, nor of those of his followers;
and the calamities of war were aggravated by the licentiousness of the
Moors and the fanaticism of the Donatists. Yet I shall not easily be
persuaded that it was the common practice of the Vandals to extirpate the
olive and other fruit trees of a country where they intended to settle;
nor can I believe that it was a usual stratagem to slaughter great
numbers of their prisoners before the walls of a besieged city, for the
sole purpose of infecting the air and producing a pestilence of which
they themselves must have been the first victims.

The generous mind of Count Boniface was tortured by the exquisite
distress of beholding the ruin which he had occasioned, and whose rapid
progress he was unable to check. After the loss of a battle he retired
into Hippo Regius, where he was immediately besieged by an enemy who
considered him as the real bulwark of Africa. By the skill of Boniface,
and perhaps by the ignorance of the Vandals, the siege of Hippo was
protracted above fourteen months; the sea was continually open; and
when the adjacent country had been exhausted by irregular rapine, the
besiegers themselves were compelled by famine to relinquish their
enterprise. The importance and danger of Africa were deeply felt by the
regent of the West. Placidia implored the assistance of her Eastern ally;
and the Italian fleet and army were reinforced by Aspar, who sailed from
Constantinople with a powerful armament. As soon as the force of the
two empires was united under the command of Boniface, he boldly marched
against the Vandals; and the loss of a second battle irretrievably
decided the fate of Africa. He embarked with the precipitation of
despair; and the people of Hippo were permitted, with their families and
effects, to occupy the vacant place of the soldiers, the greatest part of
whom were either slain or made prisoners by the Vandals. The count, whose
fatal credulity had wounded the vitals of the republic, might enter the
palace of Ravenna with some anxiety, which was soon removed by the smiles
of Placidia.

Boniface accepted with gratitude the rank of patrician and the dignity of
master-general of the Roman armies; but he must have blushed at the sight
of those medals in which he was represented with the name and attributes
of Victory. The discovery of his fraud, the displeasure of the empress,
and the distinguished favour of his rival, exasperated the haughty and
perfidious soul of Aëtius. He hastily returned from Gaul to Italy with a
retinue, or rather with an army, of barbarian followers; and such was the
weakness of the government that the two generals decided their private
quarrel in a bloody battle. Boniface was successful; but he received in
the conflict a mortal wound from the spear of his adversary, of which he
expired within a few days, in such Christian and charitable sentiments
that he exhorted his wife, a rich heiress of Spain, to accept Aëtius for
her second husband. But Aëtius could not derive any immediate advantage
from the generosity of his dying enemy; he was proclaimed a rebel by
the justice of Placidia; and though he attempted to defend some strong
fortresses erected on his patrimonial estate, the imperial power soon
compelled him to retire into Pannonia, to the tents of his faithful Huns.
The republic was deprived by their mutual discord of the service of her
two most illustrious champions.[66]

[Sidenote: [431-439 A.D.]]

It might naturally be expected, after the retreat of Boniface, that
the Vandals would achieve without resistance or delay the conquest of
Africa. Eight years, however, elapsed from the evacuation of Hippo to
the reduction of Carthage. In the midst of that interval, the ambitious
Genseric, in the full tide of apparent prosperity, negotiated a treaty
of peace, by which he gave his son Hunneric for a hostage and consented
to leave the Western emperor in the undisturbed possession of the
three Mauretanias.[67] The vigilance of his enemies was relaxed by the
protestations of friendship which concealed his hostile approach; and
Carthage was at length surprised by the Vandals, 585 years after the
destruction of the city and republic by the younger Scipio.

The king of the Vandals severely reformed the vices of a voluptuous
people; and the ancient, noble, ingenuous freedom of Carthage (these
expressions of Victor are not without energy) was reduced by Genseric
into a state of ignominious servitude. After he had permitted his
licentious troops to satiate their rage and avarice, he instituted a more
regular system of rapine and oppression. An edict was promulgated, which
enjoined all persons, without fraud or delay, to deliver their gold,
silver, jewels, and valuable furniture or apparel to the royal officers;
and the attempt to secrete any part of their patrimony was inexorably
punished with death and torture, as an act of treason against the state.
The lands of the proconsular province, which formed the immediate
district of Carthage, were accurately measured and divided among the
barbarians; and the conqueror reserved, for his peculiar domain, the
fertile territory of Byzacium and the adjacent parts of Numidia and
Gætulia.

It was natural enough that Genseric should hate those whom he had
injured; the nobility and senators of Carthage were exposed to his
jealousy and resentment, and all those who refused the ignominious terms,
which their honour and religion forbade them to accept, were compelled
by the Arian tyrant to embrace the condition of perpetual banishment.
Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the East were filled with a crowd of
exiles, of fugitives, and of ingenuous captives, who solicited the public
compassion.

After the death of his rival Boniface, Aëtius had prudently retired
to the tents of the Huns; and he was indented to their alliance for
his safety and his restoration. Instead of the suppliant language of
a guilty exile, he solicited his pardon at the head of sixty thousand
barbarians; and the empress Placidia confessed, by a feeble resistance,
that the condescension which might have been ascribed to clemency was the
effect of weakness or fear. She delivered herself, her son Valentinian,
and the Western Empire into the hands of an insolent subject; nor could
Placidia protect the son-in-law of Boniface, the virtuous and faithful
Sebastian, from the implacable persecution which urged him from one
kingdom to another, till he miserably perished in the service of the
Vandals. The fortunate Aëtius, who was immediately promoted to the rank
of patrician and thrice invested with the honours of the consulship,
assumed, with the title of master of the cavalry and infantry, the whole
military power of the state; and he is sometimes styled, by contemporary
writers, the duke, or general, of the Romans of the West. His prudence,
rather than his virtue, engaged him to leave the grandson of Theodosius
in the possession of the purple; and Valentinian was permitted to enjoy
the peace and luxury of Italy, while the patrician appeared in the
glorious light of a hero and a patriot, who supported near twenty years
the ruins of the Western Empire.

The barbarians, who had seated themselves in the western provinces,
were insensibly taught to respect the faith and valour of the patrician
Aëtius. He soothed their passions, consulted their prejudices, balanced
their interests, and checked their ambition. A seasonable treaty, which
he concluded with Genseric, protected Italy from the depredations of the
Vandals; the independent Britons implored and acknowledged his salutary
aid; the imperial authority was restored and maintained in Gaul and
Spain; and he compelled the Franks and the Suevi, whom he had vanquished
in the field, to become the useful confederates of the republic.

From a principle of interest as well as gratitude, Aëtius assiduously
cultivated the alliance of the Huns. While he resided in their tents
as a hostage, or an exile, he had familiarly conversed with Attila
himself, the nephew of his benefactor; and the two famous antagonists
appear to have been connected by a personal and military friendship,
which they afterwards confirmed by mutual gifts, frequent embassies, and
the education of Carpilio, the son of Aëtius, in the camp of Attila.
By the specious professions of gratitude and voluntary attachment, the
patrician might disguise his apprehensions of the Scythian conqueror, who
pressed the two empires with his innumerable armies. His demands were
obeyed or eluded. When he claimed the spoils of a vanquished city--some
vases of gold, which had been fraudulently embezzled--the civil and
military governors of Noricum were immediately despatched to satisfy his
complaints; and it is evident, from their conversation with Maximin and
Priscus in the royal village, that the valour and prudence of Aëtius had
not saved the western Romans from the common ignominy of tribute. Yet
his dexterous policy prolonged the advantages of a salutary peace; and
a numerous army of Huns and Alani, whom he had attached to his person,
was employed in the defence of Gaul. Two colonies of these barbarians
were judiciously fixed in the territories of Valence and Orleans, and
their active cavalry secured the important passages of the Rhone and
of the Loire. These savage allies were not indeed less formidable to
the subjects than to the enemies of Rome. Their original settlement was
enforced with the licentious violence of conquest; and the province
through which they marched was exposed to all the calamities of a hostile
invasion. Strangers to the emperor or the republic, the Alani of Gaul
were devoted to the ambition of Aëtius; and though he might suspect that,
in a contest with Attila himself, they would revolt to the standard of
their national king, the patrician laboured to restrain, rather than to
excite, their zeal and resentment against the Goths, the Burgundiones,
and the Franks.

[Sidenote: [418-439 A.D.]]

The kingdom established by the Visigoths, in the southern provinces of
Gaul, had gradually acquired strength and maturity; and the conduct of
those ambitious barbarians, either in peace or war, engaged the perpetual
vigilance of Aëtius. After the death of Wallia the Gothic sceptre
devolved to Theodoric, the son of the great Alaric; and his prosperous
reign, of more than thirty years, over a turbulent people may be allowed
to prove that his prudence was supported by uncommon vigour, both of
mind and body. Impatient of his narrow limits, Theodoric aspired to the
possession of Arles, the wealthy seat of government and commerce; but the
city was saved by the timely approach of Aëtius; and the Gothic king,
who had raised the siege with some loss and disgrace, was persuaded
for an adequate subsidy to divert the martial valour of his subjects
in a Spanish war. Yet Theodoric still watched, and eagerly seized the
favourable moment of renewing his hostile attempts. The Goths besieged
Narbo Martius (Narbonne), while the Belgic provinces were invaded by the
Burgundiones; and the public safety was threatened on every side by the
apparent union of the enemies of Rome. On every side the activity of
Aëtius and his Scythian cavalry opposed a firm and successful resistance.
Twenty thousand Burgundiones were slain in battle, and the remains of the
nation humbly accepted a dependent seat in the mountains of Savoy.

The walls of Narbo had been shaken by the battering engines, and the
inhabitants had endured the last extremities of famine, when Count
Litorius, approaching in silence, and directing each horseman to carry
behind him two sacks of flour, cut his way through the entrenchments of
the besiegers. The siege was immediately raised, and the more decisive
victory, which is ascribed to the personal conduct of Aëtius himself, was
marked with the blood of eight thousand Goths. But in the absence of the
patrician, who was hastily summoned to Italy by some public or private
interest, Count Litorius succeeded to the command; and his presumption
soon discovered that far different talents are required to lead a wing of
cavalry or to direct the operations of an important war. At the head of
an army of Huns, he rashly advanced to the gates of Tolosa (Toulouse),
full of careless contempt for an enemy whom misfortune had rendered both
prudent and desperate.

The predictions of the augurs had inspired Litorius with the profane
confidence that he should enter the Gothic capital in triumph; and the
trust which he reposed in his pagan allies encouraged him to reject the
fair conditions of peace, which were repeatedly proposed by the bishops
in the name of Theodoric. The king of the Goths exhibited in his distress
the edifying contrast of Christian piety and moderation; nor did he lay
aside his sackcloth and ashes till he was prepared to arm for the combat.
His soldiers, animated with martial and religious enthusiasm, assaulted
the camp of Litorius. The conflict was obstinate, the slaughter was
mutual. The Roman general, after a total defeat, which could be imputed
only to his unskilful rashness, was actually led through the streets of
Tolosa, not in his own, but in a hostile triumph. [His captors in a few
days put an end to his shame and his life.]

Such a loss, in a country whose spirit and finances were long since
exhausted, could not easily be repaired; and the Goths, assuming, in
their turn, the sentiments of ambition and revenge, would have planted
their victorious standards on the banks of the Rhone, if the presence
of Aëtius had not restored strength and discipline to the Romans. The
two armies expected the signal of a decisive action; but the generals,
who were conscious of each other’s force and doubtful of their own
superiority, prudently sheathed their swords in the field of battle;
and their reconciliation was permanent and sincere. Theodoric, king of
the Visigoths, appears to have deserved the love of his subjects, the
confidence of his allies, and the esteem of mankind. His throne was
surrounded by six valiant sons, who were educated with equal care in the
exercises of the barbarian camp and in those of the Gallic schools; from
the study of the Roman jurisprudence, they acquired the theory, at least,
of law and justice, and the harmonious sense of Virgil contributed to
soften the asperity of their native manners.

[Illustration: COSTUME OF A GOTH WOMAN]

[Sidenote: [439-450 A.D.]]

The two daughters of the Gothic king were given in marriage to the eldest
sons of the kings of the Suevi and of the Vandals, who reigned in Spain
and Africa; but these illustrious alliances were pregnant with guilt
and discord. The queen of the Suevi bewailed the death of a husband,
inhumanly massacred by her brother. The princess of the Vandals was
the victim of a jealous tyrant, whom she called her father. The cruel
Genseric suspected that his son’s wife had conspired to poison him; the
supposed crime was punished by the amputation of her nose and ears, and
the unhappy daughter of Theodoric was ignominiously returned to the court
of Tolosa in that deformed and mutilated condition. This horrid act,
which must seem incredible to a civilised age, drew tears from every
spectator; but Theodoric was urged, by the feelings of a parent and a
king, to revenge such irreparable injuries.

The imperial ministers, who always cherished the discord of the
barbarians, would have supplied the Goths with arms, and ships, and
treasures, for the African War; and the cruelty of Genseric might
have been fatal to himself, if the artful Vandal had not armed in his
cause the formidable power of the Huns. His rich gifts and pressing
solicitations inflamed the ambition of Attila; and the designs of Aëtius
and Theodoric were prevented by the invasion of Gaul.

[Sidenote: [429-450 A.D.]]

The Franks, whose monarchy was still confined to the neighbourhood of the
lower Rhine, had wisely established the right of hereditary succession
in the noble family of the Merovingians. These princes were elevated
on a buckler, the symbol of military command, and the royal fashion
of long hair was the ensign of their birth and dignity. Their flaxen
locks, which they combed and dressed with singular care, hung down in
flowing ringlets on their backs and shoulders; while the rest of the
nation were obliged, either by law or custom, to shave the hinder part
of their head, to comb their hair over the forehead, and to content
themselves with the ornament of two small whiskers. The lofty stature of
the Franks, and their blue eyes, denoted a Germanic origin; their close
apparel accurately expressed the figure of their limbs; a weighty sword
was suspended from a broad belt; their bodies were protected by a large
shield. And these warlike barbarians were trained, from their earliest
youth, to run, to leap, to swim; to dart the javelin or battle-axe with
unerring aim; to advance without hesitation against a superior enemy; and
to maintain, either in life or death, the invincible reputation of their
ancestors.

Clodion, the first of their long-haired kings, whose name and actions
are mentioned in authentic history, held his residence at Dispargum, a
village or fortress, whose place may be assigned between Louvain and
Brussels. From the report of his spies, the king of the Franks was
informed that the defenceless state of the second Belgic must yield, on
the slightest attack, to the valour of his subjects. He boldly penetrated
through the thickets and morasses of the Carbonarian forest, occupied
Turnacum (Tournay) and Camaracum (Cambray), the only cities which
existed in the fifth century, and extended his conquests as far as the
river Samara (Somme), over a desolate country, whose cultivation and
populousness are the effects of more recent industry (429).

While Clodion lay encamped in the plains of Artois, and celebrated with
vain and ostentatious security the marriage perhaps of his son, the
nuptial feast was interrupted by the unexpected and unwelcome presence
of Aëtius, who had passed the Samara at the head of his light cavalry.
The tables, which had been spread under the shelter of a hill, along
the banks of a pleasant stream, were rudely overturned; the Franks were
oppressed before they could recover their arms or their ranks; and their
unavailing valour was fatal only to themselves. The loaded wagons which
had followed their march afforded a rich booty; and the virgin bride,
with her female attendants, submitted to the new lovers who were imposed
on them by the chance of war. This advantage, which had been obtained
by the skill and activity of Aëtius, might reflect some disgrace on the
military prudence of Clodion; but the king of the Franks soon regained
his strength and reputation, and still maintained the possession of his
Gallic kingdom from the Rhine to the Samara.

Under his reign, and most probably from the enterprising spirit of
his subjects, the three capitals, Mogontiacum, Augusta Trevirorum,
and Colonia Agrippina, experienced the effects of hostile cruelty and
avarice. The distress of Colonia Agrippina was prolonged by the same
barbarians who evacuated the ruins of Augusta Trevirorum; and Augusta
Trevirorum, which in the space of forty years had been four times
pillaged, was disposed to lose the memory of her afflictions in the vain
amusements of the circus. The death of Clodion, after a reign of twenty
years, exposed his kingdom to the discord and ambition of his two sons.
Merovæus, the younger, was persuaded to implore the protection of Rome;
he was received at the imperial court as the ally of Valentinian, and the
adopted son of the patrician Aëtius; and dismissed to his native country,
with splendid gifts and the strongest assurances of friendship and
support. During his absence, his elder brother had solicited with equal
ardour the formidable aid of Attila; and the king of the Huns embraced an
alliance which facilitated the passage of the Rhine and justified by a
specious and honourable pretence the invasion of Gaul.

When Attila declared his resolution of supporting the cause of his allies
the Vandals and the Franks, at the same time and almost in the spirit
of romantic chivalry, the savage monarch professed himself the lover
and the champion of the princess Honoria. The sister of Valentinian
was educated in the palace of Ravenna; and as her marriage might be
productive of some danger to the state, she was raised by the title of
Augusta above the hopes of the most presumptuous subject. But the fair
Honoria had no sooner attained the sixteenth year of her age than she
detested the importunate greatness which must forever exclude her from
the comforts of honourable love; in the midst of vain and unsatisfactory
pomp, Honoria sighed, yielded to the impulse of nature, and threw
herself into the arms of her chamberlain Eugenius. Her guilt and shame
(such is the absurd language of imperious man) were soon betrayed by
the appearances of pregnancy; but the disgrace of the royal family was
published to the world by the imprudence of the empress Placidia, who
dismissed her daughter, after a strict and shameful confinement, to a
remote exile at Constantinople. The unhappy princess passed twelve or
fourteen years in the irksome society of the sisters of Theodosius and
their chosen virgins; to whose crown Honoria could no longer aspire, and
whose monastic assiduity of prayer, fasting, and vigils she reluctantly
imitated. Her impatience of long and hopeless celibacy urged her to
embrace a strange and desperate resolution.

The name of Attila was familiar and formidable at Constantinople; and his
frequent embassies entertained a perpetual intercourse between his camp
and the imperial palace. In the pursuit of love, or rather of revenge,
the daughter of Placidia sacrificed every duty and every pretence; and
offered to deliver her person into the arms of the barbarian, of whose
language she was ignorant, whose figure was scarcely human, and whose
religion and manners she abhorred. By the ministry of a faithful eunuch,
she transmitted to Attila a ring, the pledge of her affection; and
earnestly conjured him to claim her as a lawful spouse, to whom he had
been secretly betrothed. These indecent advances were received however
with coldness and disdain; and the king of the Huns continued to multiply
the number of his wives, till his love was awakened by the more forcible
passions of ambition and avarice.

The invasion of Gaul was preceded and justified by a formal demand
of the princess Honoria, with a just and equal share of the imperial
patrimony. His predecessors, the ancient Tanjous, had often addressed, in
the same hostile and peremptory manner, the daughters of China; and the
pretensions of Attila were not less offensive to the majesty of Rome. A
firm but temperate refusal was communicated to his ambassadors. The right
of female succession, though it might derive a specious argument from the
recent examples of Placidia and Pulcheria, was strenuously denied; and
the indissoluble engagements of Honoria were opposed to the claims of her
Scythian lover. On the discovery of her connection with the king of the
Huns, the guilty princess had been sent away as an object of horror from
Constantinople to Italy. Her life was spared; but the ceremony of her
marriage was performed with some obscure and nominal husband, before she
was immured in a perpetual prison, to bewail those crimes and misfortunes
which Honoria might have escaped, had she not been born the daughter of
an emperor.

A native of Gaul, and a contemporary, the learned and eloquent Sidonius,
who was afterwards bishop of Clermont, had made a promise to one of his
friends that he would compose a regular history of the war of Attila.
If the modesty of Sidonius had not discouraged him from the prosecution
of this interesting work, the historian would have related with the
simplicity of truth those memorable events to which the poet, in vague
and doubtful metaphors, has concisely alluded. The kings and nations
of Germany and Scythia, from the Volga perhaps to the Danube, obeyed
the warlike summons of Attila. From the royal village, in the plains
of Hungary, his standard moved towards the west and, after a march of
seven or eight hundred miles he reached the conflux of the Rhine and the
Nicer (Neckar); where he was joined by the Franks, who adhered to his
ally, the elder of the sons of Clodion. A troop of light barbarians, who
roamed in quest of plunder, might choose the winter for the convenience
of passing the river on the ice; but the innumerable cavalry of the Huns
required such plenty of forage and provisions as could be procured only
in a milder season; the Hercynian forest supplied materials for a bridge
of boats; and the hostile myriads were poured, with resistless violence,
into the Belgic provinces.

[Sidenote: [450-451 A.D.]]

The consternation of Gaul was universal; and the various fortunes of
its cities have been adorned by tradition with martyrdoms and miracles.
Tricassæ (Troyes) was saved by the merits of St. Lupus; St. Servatius was
removed from the world, that he might not behold the ruin of Aduataca
Tungrorum (Tongres); and the prayers of St. Genevieve diverted the march
of Attila from the neighbourhood of Lutetia Parisiarum (Paris). But as
the greatest part of the Gallic cities were alike destitute of saints
and soldiers, they were besieged and stormed by the Huns, who practised,
in the example of Mettis (Metz), their customary maxims of war. They
involved, in a promiscuous massacre, the priests who served at the
altar, and the infants, who, in the hour of danger, had been providently
baptised by the bishop; the flourishing city was delivered to the flames,
and a solitary chapel of St. Stephen marked the place where it formerly
stood. From the Rhine and the Mosella (Moselle), Attila advanced into the
heart of Gaul, crossed the Sequana (Seine) at Autesiodorum (Auxerre),
and, after a long and laborious march, fixed his camp under the walls of
Orleans. He was desirous of securing his conquests by the possession of
an advantageous post, which commanded the passage of the Loire; and he
depended on the secret invitation of Sangiban, king of the Alani, who had
promised to betray the city and to revolt from the service of the empire.
But this treacherous conspiracy was detected and disappointed. Orleans
had been strengthened with recent fortifications; and the assaults of the
Huns were vigorously repelled by the faithful valour of the soldiers or
citizens, who defended the place.

The pastoral diligence of Anianus, a bishop of primitive sanctity and
consummate prudence, exhausted every art of religious policy to support
their courage till the arrival of the expected succours. After an
obstinate siege, the walls were shaken by the battering-rams; the Huns
had already occupied the suburbs; and the people who were incapable of
bearing arms lay prostrate in prayer. Anianus, who anxiously counted
the days and hours, despatched a trusty messenger to observe, from the
rampart, the face of the distant country. He returned twice, without
any intelligence that could inspire hope or comfort; but in his third
report he mentioned a small cloud which he had faintly descried at the
extremity of the horizon. “It is the aid of God!” exclaimed the bishop,
in a tone of pious confidence; and the whole multitude repeated after
him, “It is the aid of God!” The remote object, on which every eye was
fixed, became each moment larger and more distinct; the Roman and Gothic
banners were gradually perceived; and a favourable wind blowing aside the
dust discovered, in deep array, the impatient squadrons of Aëtius and
Theodoric, who pressed forward to the relief of Orleans.

The facility with which Attila had penetrated into the heart of Gaul may
be ascribed to his insidious policy, as well as to the terror of his
arms. His public declarations were skilfully mitigated by his private
assurances; he alternately soothed and threatened the Romans and the
Goths; and the courts of Ravenna and Tolosa, mutually suspicious of each
other’s intentions, beheld with supine indifference the approach of
their common enemy. Aëtius was the sole guardian of the public safety;
but his wisest measures were embarrassed by a faction which, since the
death of Placidia, infested the imperial palace; the youth of Italy
trembled at the sound of the trumpet; and the barbarians, who, from
fear or affection, were inclined to the cause of Attila, awaited with
doubtful and venal faith the event of the war. The patrician passed the
Alps at the head of some troops, whose strength and numbers scarcely
deserved the name of an army. But on his arrival at Arelate, or Lugdunum
he was confounded by the intelligence that the Visigoths, refusing to
embrace the defence of Gaul, had determined to expect within their own
territories the formidable invader whom they professed to despise.

The senator Avitus, who after the honourable exercise of the prætorian
prefecture had retired to his estate in Auvergne, was persuaded to accept
the important embassy, which he executed with ability and success. He
represented to Theodoric that an ambitious conqueror, who aspired to the
dominion of the earth, could be resisted only by the firm and unanimous
alliance of the powers whom he laboured to oppress. The lively eloquence
of Avitus inflamed the Gothic warriors by the description of the injuries
which their ancestors had suffered from the Huns; whose implacable
fury still pursued them from the Danube to the foot of the Pyrenees.
He strenuously urged that it was the duty of every Christian to save
from sacrilegious violation the churches of God and the relics of the
saints; that it was the interest of every barbarian, who had acquired
a settlement in Gaul, to defend the fields and vineyards which were
cultivated for his use against the desolation of the Scythian shepherds.
Theodoric yielded to the evidence of truth; adopted the measure at once
the most prudent and the most honourable, and declared that, as the
faithful ally of Aëtius and the Romans, he was ready to expose his life
and kingdom for the common safety of Gaul.

The Visigoths, who at that time were in the mature vigour of their fame
and power, obeyed with alacrity the signal of war; prepared their arms
and horses, and assembled under the standard of their aged king, who was
resolved with his two eldest sons Torismond and Theodoric, to command
in person his numerous and valiant people. The example of the Goths
determined several tribes or nations, that seemed to fluctuate between
the Huns and the Romans. The indefatigable diligence of the patrician
gradually collected the troops of Gaul and Germany, who had formerly
acknowledged themselves the subjects, or soldiers, of the republic,
but who now claimed the rewards of voluntary service and the rank of
independent allies--the Læti, the Armoricans, the Breones, the Saxons,
the Burgundiones, the Sarmatians or Alani, the Ripuarians, and the Franks
who followed Meroveus as their lawful prince. Such was the various army
which, under the conduct of Aëtius and Theodoric, advanced by rapid
marches to relieve Orleans and to give battle to the innumerable host of
Attila.

On their approach, the king of the Huns immediately raised the siege,
and sounded a retreat to recall the foremost of his troops from the
pillage of a city which they had already entered. The valour of
Attila was always guided by his prudence; and as he foresaw the fatal
consequences of a defeat in the heart of Gaul, he repassed the Seine,
and expected the enemy in the plains of Châlons, whose smooth and level
surface was adapted to the operations of his Scythian cavalry. But in
this tumultuary retreat the vanguard of the Romans and their allies
continually pressed, and sometimes engaged, the troops which Attila had
posted in the rear; the hostile columns, in the darkness of the night
and the perplexity of the roads, might encounter each other without
design; and the bloody conflict of the Franks and Gepids, in which
fifteen thousand barbarians were slain, was a prelude to a more general
and decisive action. The Catalaunian fields spread themselves round
Châlons,[68] and extend, according to the vague measurement of Jordanes,
to the length of 150 and the breadth of 100 miles over the whole
province, which is entitled to the appellation of a champaign country.[b]

[Illustration: ANCIENT SPEAR HEADS]


THE GOTHIC HISTORIAN JORDANES ON THE BATTLE OF CHÂLONS

But before entering upon the actual encounter, we had better here refer
to some preliminary details, all the more that this battle was no less
ample in scale and complicated in details than the day of its date
was famous. Sangiban, king of the Alans, solicitous for his future,
promised Attila submission and to hand over his then residence, Aureliani
(Orleans). This treacherous move coming to the ears of Theodoric and
Aëtius, they constructed great outworks around the city, keeping the
suspected Sangiban under surveillance, and posted him and his people
among their own auxiliaries. Consequently Attila, impressed by this
occurrence and distrustful of his own strength, hesitated to join action.
Yet fearing flight as he did death, he resolved to scan the future by
help of augury.

As usual the augurs pried into the entrails of a sheep, and inspected its
bones and veins as the latter showed on some scraped bones, announcing,
as a result, misfortune to the Huns. A morsel of contentment was added,
however, in the prediction that the enemy’s commander-in-chief should
die in the hour of victory, and sully his laurels. Now Attila, in his
eager desire for the death of Aëtius even at the risk of his own, and his
army’s defeat, although disturbed by the prospect held out by the augurs,
yet, being skilled in the refinements of military tactics, after some
hesitation resolved to join battle about three in the afternoon and thus
obviate suspicion of yielding by trusting to darkness in case of defeat.

The field, from a gentle slope, gradually assumed the character of a
hill. As the advantages presented by such conformation were by no means
slight, both parties made this slope their objective, the Huns with their
auxiliaries seizing upon the right flank, the Romans and Visigoths the
left, leaving the crest for future decision. The contest commences,
Aëtius on the left with his Romans, with the Visigoths as his right
support, and Sangiban leader of the Alans between--a piece of military
precaution by which they doubly flanked this rather doubtful leader,
since fighting is the more probable where flight is impossible.

The battle array of the Huns was on a different plan. Attila with his
bravest held the centre. By this arrangement he had his personal safety
in view, trusting that a stand amid the valiant of his race would insure
himself, at least as king, from imminent danger. On the flanks there
deployed in disorder multitudes of subject nations and people, chief
among whom were the Ostrogoths’ forces under the leadership of the three
brothers, Walamir, Theodomir, and Widemir, nobler than the very king
himself whom they served, since resplendent with the hereditary glories
of the Amal race. There might be seen also at the head of countless bands
of the Gepidæ their most renowned king, Ardaric, who from his all too
great loyalty to Attila was of his inner counsels. For Attila, well aware
of his wisdom, prized him and Walamir of the Ostrogoths above all the
pettier royalties--Walamir, the reticent, the affable, the guileless, and
Ardaric the knightly and the loyal. Not without reason was it that Attila
trusted them to match their Visigothic kindred.

As for the rest,--the kingly mob, if I am not irreverent,--and the
chiefs of this nation and that, retainers rather than kings, they hung
on each move of Attila’s; and did his eye beckon them, then, speechless,
terrified, and trembling they stood at call, or at least were subservient
to his every order. Yet king of kings though he was, was Attila solitary
amid all, and over all solicitous.

The battle began over the possession of the ridge already mentioned.
Leading his men on to secure this summit, Attila was in this forestalled
by Torismund and Aëtius who, striving with all their might to reach
the crest, first won it, and from their superior vantage ground easily
dispersed the Huns. When Attila beheld his troops disorganised by this
occurrence, he thought a harangue at this juncture would rally them and
said:

“Victorious so often over so many nations, and masters of the world,
if to-day you flinch not, I should think myself a fool to rouse you to
courage by speech as if you were raw recruits. Consign such conduct to
the juvenile general and the untrained militia. It as little befits me to
deal in commonplace as you to listen. You are warriors, or nothing, and
what to such is more satisfying than to carve out his vengeance by the
sword? Ah! Revenge, nature’s first gift and sweetest soother of the soul!
Let your feet then be swift to the attack since ever is the attacker
the bolder! Heed not that mongrel mass of foreign speech, who but prove
their fear by herding together. Look at them! Look! how even before
our first charge they are swayed to and fro from fear; they make for
hill and height; again, too late for regret, are back for safety to the
battle-field. You need no telling as to the flimsiness of Roman defence,
or how, not a wound, but a speck of dust merely lays them low. Be your
old selves, and, while they are punctiliously peddling away at formations
and shield-locking, charge with your unflinching courage, laugh at their
‘formations.’ On against Visigoth and down with the Alans! There lies
speedy victory for us, and there the struggle lies. Sunder the sinew and
the limbs collapse; hack the bones and the body falls!

“Huns of mine! Rouse your rage, and let your fury swell as of old!
Craftily now, and by the sword-stroke then! Some death mid the enemy let
the wounded man seek, and the scatheless fight till he sicken with the
slaughter! The child of victory the dart will not smite, but fate deals
the doomed one his death at the board. Nor did fortune deal the Hun such
a roll of victories, if not to make him blithe over this one victory
the more. Who unbared the Mœtic swamp, the secret of the centuries?
Who weaponless vanquished the weaponed? These herded outcasts dare not
confront the Hun! That this shall be my new field of victory, the long
tale of my former assures me! Yea! and first am I whose shaft shall be
sped! And doomed is he who fights not when Attila leads the fight.”

Spurred on by this dithyramb, headlong into fight they rush.

The juncture had its terrors, yet the king’s presence overcame the fear
even of the coward. It was soon a case of man to man. It was a battle,
savage, tangled, widespread, dogged. Antiquity has not its parallel. Such
deeds are told of, that he who has not been privileged to witness them,
though witnessing much that is marvellous, yet must ever lack the marvel
of this. For, to believe tradition, a brook whose feeble current rolled
through the plain already spoken of, swollen by the blood of the wounded
and enlarged not as usual by rains but by an all too rare flood, was
converted into a torrent by this sanguine contribution. Those, moreover,
parched by loss of blood, who were driven to its bank, were reduced to
drinking this gruesome draught--drinking by an enforced fate the very
gushings of their own wounds.

Then, too, King Theodoric, riding up and down his ranks in cheering
exhortation, fell from his steed and was trampled under foot by his own
soldiery, terminating his career at an advanced age. Another tale has it
that he fell by the javelin of Andagis, Attila’s lieutenant. Thus was
accomplished the prediction of Attila’s augurs, which Attila had set down
to Aëtius.

Next the Visigoths, leaving the Alans, fell on the Hunnish bands with
fury, and Attila himself were as good as dead, had not his prudence
led him to take refuge with his followers within his camp and its
fortification of wagons. Weak as was this shelter, yet there, for
protection of their lives, trooped the warriors whom but a little
previously no ordinary obstacle could withstand.

Torismond, son of Theodoric, who, with Aëtius, had seized the hill and
repelled the enemy from its summit, in the belief that he was rejoining
his men, and misled by the darkness of the night, stepped inside the
wagon enclosure of the Huns. While fighting bravely, he fell to the
ground from his wounded horse, but though rescued by his men he was
persuaded to give up further fighting. Aëtius, too, during the night’s
confusion, wandered amid the enemy. Dreading some disaster to the Goths,
he persisted in his search for the correct way, arriving at length at the
allied camp, where under the protection of shields he passed the night.

At dawn a plain is seen heaped and covered with corpses, but the Huns do
not venture to issue from their retreat, and so the confederates judge
the victory theirs. They judged, too, that it was no common disaster
which had induced the flight of Attila from the battle-field. Yet was his
action not that of one who acknowledged defeat.

He showed his usual courage, for within his camp was the clash of
arms, the brattle of the trumpet, ever threatening a sortie; as a
lion might, when hard beset by the hunters, ramp and rave at entrance
to his den, without venturing to emerge, yet nevertheless terrifying
the neighbourhood by his roaring, so did the warlike king, secure in
his retreat, supply a source of fear to his conquerors. These latter
resolved to wear him out by a siege, since he lacked provisions, and as
he could from his archers placed inside the barrier rain down showers of
missiles on them should they attempt an assault by force. It is reported,
however, that the king, haughty as ever even in a situation so desperate,
had formed a pyre from saddlery, having resolved to throw himself into
its flames should the enemy force his camp, that none might boast of
having wounded him, or that the lord of so many nations should have ever
been in an enemy’s power.

[Illustration: GALLIC WEAPONS]

Whilst this siege bred delay, the Visigoths busied themselves in search
for their king,--the father of Torismond,--wondering at his absence while
success had crowned their arms. When after long search they found him,
as is not infrequent among brave men, amid a dense heap of bodies, they
honoured him in song, bearing away his body under the eyes of the enemy.
Then it was possible to see crowds of Goths, with uncouth accent that
rent the air in song, render the last and most sacred rites to the dead
while all around was war. Tears there were, but such as a warrior merits.
The death was ours, to be sure, but even to the Hun it was glorious,
nor did Attila’s pride feel aught but humbled to see the Goths bear to
burial with all its trappings the body of a mighty king. These Goths,
while paying last and merited honours to Theodoric, at the same hour made
over to his son the royal dignity, and amid clash of arms the brave and
glorious warrior Torismond followed the funeral rites of his dear father
as was fitting for a son.

These rites accomplished, urged by grief through his bereavement and
impelled by natural valour, Torismond resolved to avenge the death of
his father upon the remnant of the Huns. On this point he consulted the
patrician Aëtius, his senior in years and of riper experience, and craved
advice as to his action. He in his fear lest the thorough overthrow of
the Huns might leave the Roman power at the mercy of the Goths, advised
him as follows:

That he should retrace his steps to his own state, and firmly secure
the throne now vacant by his father’s death, as otherwise his brothers
might seize upon the royal treasure, and usurp the regal power over the
Visigoths, in which case was no alternative left but a laborious contest
made all the more squalid as being between relatives. Torismond listened
to this advice not as to a piece of duplicity but as if it advanced
his own interests, and leaving the Huns behind him, he returned to his
district of Gaul. Thus does man’s weakness give way to suspicion, and
amid momentous events lose the opportune hour.

In this most famous battle, waged between the bravest of races, report
says that one hundred and sixty-five thousand men fell on both sides,
not to mention fifteen thousand of the Gepids and Franks, who one night
before the general engagement meeting by chance fell by mutual assault,
the Franks siding with Romans, the Gepids with the Huns.

On Attila’s learning the departure of the Goths, he pursued such course
as is customary in abnormal circumstances. He suspected a ruse, and so
for some time longer lurked in camp. But when the enemy’s absence was
conjoined to lengthened quiet, the spirit of a victor returned to him,
gaiety gained the upper hand, and the musings of this mighty monarch
resumed the path of their ancient destiny.

Meanwhile Torismond, who had succeeded to the throne, marched into
Tolosa, and none was found to dispute his succession.[d]


THE INVASION OF ITALY: THE FOUNDATION OF VENICE

[Sidenote: [451-452 A.D.]]

Neither the spirit, nor the forces, nor the reputation of Attila were
impaired by the failure of the Gallic expedition. In the ensuing spring,
he repeated his demand of the princess Honoria and her patrimonial
treasures. The demand was again rejected, or eluded; and the indignant
lover immediately took the field, passed the Alps, invaded Italy,
and besieged Aquileia with an innumerable host of barbarians. Those
barbarians were unskilled in the methods of conducting a regular siege,
which, even among the ancients, required some knowledge, or at least
some practice, of the mechanical arts. But the labour of many thousand
provincials and captives, whose lives were sacrificed without pity, might
execute the most painful and dangerous work. The skill of the Roman
artists might be corrupted to the destruction of their country. The walls
of Aquileia were assaulted by a formidable train of battering-rams,
movable turrets, and engines, that threw stones, darts, and fire; and
the monarch of the Huns employed the forcible impulse of hope, fear,
emulation, and interest to subvert the only barrier which delayed the
conquest of Italy.

Aquileia was at that period one of the richest, the most populous, and
the strongest of the maritime cities of the Adriatic coast. The Gothic
auxiliaries, who appeared to have served under their native princes
Alaric and Antala, communicated their intrepid spirit; and the citizens
still remembered the glorious and successful resistance which their
ancestors had opposed to a fierce, inexorable barbarian who disgraced the
majesty of the Roman purple. Three months were consumed without effect in
the siege of Aquileia; till the want of provisions and the clamours of
his army compelled Attila to relinquish the enterprise, and reluctantly
to issue his orders that the troops should strike their tents the next
morning, and begin their retreat. But, as he rode round the walls,
pensive, angry, and disappointed, he observed a stork preparing to leave
her nest in one of the towers, and to fly with her infant family towards
the country. He seized, with the ready penetration of a statesman,
this trifling incident which chance had offered to superstition, and
exclaimed, in a loud and cheerful tone, that such a domestic bird, so
constantly attached to human society, would never have abandoned her
ancient seats unless these towers had been devoted to impending ruin and
solitude.

The favourable omen inspired an assurance of victory; the siege was
renewed and prosecuted with fresh vigour; a large breach was made in
the part of the wall from whence the stork had taken her flight; the
Huns mounted to the assault with irresistible fury; and the succeeding
generation could scarcely discover the ruins of Aquileia. After this
dreadful chastisement, Attila pursued his march; and, as he passed, the
cities of Altinum, Concordia, and Patavium (Padua) were reduced into
heaps of stones and ashes. The inland towns, Vicentia (Vicenza), Verona,
and Bergomum (Bergamo) were exposed to the rapacious cruelty of the
Huns. Mediolanum and Ticinum submitted without resistance to the loss
of their wealth; and applauded the unusual clemency which preserved
from the flames the public as well as private buildings, and spared the
lives of the captive multitude. The popular traditions of Comum, Turin,
or Modena may justly be suspected; yet they concur with more authentic
evidence to prove that Attila spread his ravages over the rich plains of
modern Lombardy, which are divided by the Po, and bounded by the Alps and
Apennine. When he took possession of the royal palace of Mediolanum, he
was surprised and offended at the sight of a picture, which represented
the Cæsars seated on their throne and the princes of Scythia prostrate at
their feet. The revenge which Attila inflicted on this monument of Roman
vanity was harmless and ingenious. He commanded a painter to reverse
the figures and the attitudes; and the emperors were delineated, on the
same canvas, approaching in a suppliant posture to empty their bags of
tributary gold before the throne of the Scythian monarch. The spectators
must have confessed the truth and propriety of the alteration; and were
perhaps tempted to apply, on this singular occasion, the well-known fable
of the dispute between the lion and the man.

It is a saying worthy of the ferocious pride of Attila that the grass
never grew on the spot where his horse had trod. Yet the savage destroyer
undesignedly laid the foundation of a republic which revived, in the
feudal state of Europe, the art and spirit of commercial industry. The
celebrated name of Venice, or Venetia, was formerly diffused over a large
and fertile province of Italy, from the confines of Pannonia to the
river Addua, and from the Po to the Rætian and Julian Alps. Before the
irruption of the barbarians, fifty Venetian cities flourished in peace
and prosperity; Aquileia was placed in the most conspicuous station,
but the ancient dignity of Patavium was supported by agriculture and
manufactures; and the property of five hundred citizens who were entitled
to the equestrian rank must have amounted, at the strictest computation,
to 1,700,000 pounds. Many families of Aquileia, Patavium, and the
adjacent towns, who fled from the sword of the Huns, found a safe though
obscure refuge in the neighbouring islands.

At the extremity of the gulf, where the Adriatic feebly imitates the
tides of the ocean, near a hundred small islands are separated by shallow
water from the continent, and protected from the waves by several long
slips of land, which admit the entrance of vessels through some secret
and narrow channels. Till the middle of the fifth century, these remote
and sequestered spots remained without cultivation, with few inhabitants,
and almost without a name. But the manners of the Venetian fugitives,
their arts and their government, were gradually formed by their new
situation; and one of the epistles of Cassiodorus, which describes their
condition about seventy years afterwards, may be considered as the
primitive monument of the republic.


THE RETREAT OF ATTILA

[Sidenote: [452-453 A.D.]]

The Italians, who had long since renounced the exercise of arms, were
surprised, after forty years’ peace, by the approach of a formidable
barbarian, whom they abhorred as the enemy of their religion as well as
of their republic. Amidst the general consternation, Aëtius alone was
incapable of fear; but it was impossible that he should achieve, alone
and unassisted, any military exploits worthy of his former renown. The
barbarians, who had defended Gaul, refused to march to the relief of
Italy; and the succours promised by the Eastern emperor were distant
and doubtful. Since Aëtius, at the head of his domestic troops, still
maintained the field, and harassed or retarded the march of Attila, he
never showed himself more truly great than at the time when his conduct
was blamed by an ignorant and ungrateful people.

If the mind of Valentinian had been susceptible of any generous
sentiments, he would have chosen such a general for his example and his
guide. But the timid grandson of Theodosius, instead of sharing the
dangers escaped from the sound of war; and his hasty retreat from Ravenna
to Rome, from an impregnable fortress to an open capital, betrayed his
secret intention of abandoning Italy, as soon as the danger should
approach his imperial person. This shameful abdication was suspended,
however, by the spirit of doubt and delay, which commonly adheres to
pusillanimous counsels and sometimes corrects their pernicious tendency.
The Western emperor, with the senate and people of Rome, embraced the
more salutary resolution of deprecating, by a solemn and suppliant
embassy, the wrath of Attila. This important commission was accepted
by Avienus, who, from his birth and riches, his consular dignity, the
numerous train of his clients, and his personal abilities, held the first
rank in the Roman senate.

[Illustration: A ROMAN COFFER]

The specious and artful character of Avienus was admirably qualified
to conduct a negotiation either of public or private interest; his
colleague Trigetius had exercised the prætorian prefecture of Italy;
and Leo, bishop of Rome, consented to expose his life for the safety of
his flock. The genius of Leo was exercised and displayed in the public
misfortunes; and he has deserved the appellation of “great,” by the
successful zeal with which he laboured to establish his opinions and his
authority, under the venerable names of orthodox faith and ecclesiastical
discipline. The Roman ambassadors were introduced to the tent of Attila,
as he lay encamped at the place where the slow-winding Mincius is lost in
the foaming waves of the lake Benacus, and trampled, with the Scythian
cavalry, the farms of Catullus and Virgil. The barbarian monarch listened
with favourable, and even respectful, attention; and the deliverance of
Italy was purchased by the immense ransom, or dowry, of the princess
Honoria. The state of his army might facilitate the treaty and hasten his
retreat. Their martial spirit was relaxed by the wealth and indolence of
a warm climate.

The shepherds of the north, whose ordinary food consisted of milk and raw
flesh, indulged themselves too freely in the use of bread, of wine, and
of meat prepared and seasoned by the arts of cookery; and the progress
of disease revenged in some measure the injuries of the Italians. When
Attila declared his resolution of carrying his victorious arms to the
gates of Rome, he was admonished by his friends as well as by his enemies
that Alaric had not long survived the conquest of the Eternal City. His
mind, superior to real danger, was assaulted by imaginary terrors; nor
could he escape the influence of superstition, which had so often been
subservient to his designs. The pressing eloquence of Leo, his majestic
aspect and sacerdotal robes, excited the veneration of Attila for the
spiritual father of the Christians. The apparition of the two Apostles,
St. Peter and St. Paul, who menaced the barbarian with instant death if
he rejected the prayer of their successor, is one of the noblest legends
of ecclesiastical tradition. The safety of Rome might deserve the
interposition of celestial beings; and some indulgence is due to a fable
which has been represented by the pencil of Raphael and the chisel of
Algardi.

Before the king of the Huns evacuated Italy, he threatened to return
more dreadful and more implacable, if his bride, the princess Honoria,
were not delivered to his ambassadors within the term stipulated by
the treaty. Yet, in the meantime, Attila relieved his tender anxiety
by adding a beautiful maid, whose name was Ildico, to the list of his
innumerable wives. Their marriage was celebrated with barbaric pomp and
festivity, at his wooden palace beyond the Danube; and the monarch,
oppressed with wine and sleep, retired at a late hour from the banquet
to the nuptial bed. His attendants continued to respect his pleasures
or his repose the greatest part of the ensuing day, till the unusual
silence alarmed their fears and suspicions; and, after attempting to
awaken Attila by loud and repeated cries, they at length broke into the
royal apartment. They found the trembling bride sitting by the bedside,
hiding her face with her veil, and lamenting her own danger as well as
the death of the king, who had expired during the night. An artery had
suddenly burst; and as Attila lay in a supine posture, he was suffocated
by a torrent of blood, which, instead of finding a passage through the
nostrils, regurgitated into the lungs and stomach. His body was solemnly
exposed in the midst of the plain, under a silken pavilion, and the
chosen squadrons of the Huns, wheeling round in measured evolutions,
chanted a funeral song to the memory of a hero glorious in his life,
invincible in his death, the father of his people, the scourge of his
enemies, and the terror of the world. According to their national custom,
the barbarians cut off a part of their hair, gashed their faces with
unseemly wounds, and bewailed their valiant leader as he deserved, not
with the tears of women but with the blood of warriors (453).

[Sidenote: [453-454 A.D.]]

The remains of Attila were enclosed within three coffins, of gold, of
silver, and of iron, and privately buried in the night: the spoils of
nations were thrown into his grave; the captives who had opened the
ground were inhumanly massacred; and the same Huns who had indulged such
excessive grief, feasted with dissolute and intemperate mirth about the
recent sepulchre of their king. It was reported at Constantinople that,
on the fortunate night on which he expired, Marcian beheld in a dream the
bow of Attila broken asunder; and the report may be allowed to prove how
seldom the image of that formidable barbarian was absent from the mind of
a Roman emperor.

The revolution which subverted the empire of the Huns established the
fame of Attila, whose genius alone had sustained the huge and disjointed
fabric. After his death the boldest chieftains aspired to the rank of
kings; the most powerful kings refused to acknowledge a superior; and the
numerous sons whom so many various mothers bore to the deceased monarch
divided and disputed, like a private inheritance, the sovereign command
of the nations of Germany and Scythia. The bold Ardaric felt and resented
the disgrace of this servile partition; and his subjects, the warlike
Gepidæ, with the Ostrogoths, under the conduct of three valiant brothers,
encouraged their allies to vindicate the rights of freedom and royalty.

In a bloody and decisive conflict on the banks of the river Netad, in
Pannonia, the lance of the Gepidæ, the sword of the Goths, the arrows
of the Huns, the Suevic infantry, the light arms of the Heruli, and the
heavy weapons of the Alani, encountered or supported each other; and the
victory of Ardaric was accompanied with the slaughter of thirty thousand
of his enemies. Ellac, the eldest son of Attila, lost his life and
crown in the memorable battle of Netad; his early valour had raised him
to the throne of the Acatzires, a Scythian people whom he subdued, and
his father, who loved the superior merit, would have envied the death
of Ellac. His brother Dengisich, with an army of Huns, still formidable
in their flight and ruin, maintained his ground above fifteen years on
the banks of the Danube. The palace of Attila, with the old country of
Dacia, from the Carpathian hills to the Euxine, became the seat of a new
power which was erected by Ardaric, king of the Gepidæ. The Pannonian
conquests, from Vindobona to Sirmium, were occupied by the Ostrogoths;
and the settlements of the tribes who had so bravely asserted their
native freedom were irregularly distributed, according to the measure
of their respective strength. Surrounded and oppressed by the multitude
of his father’s slaves, the kingdom of Dengisich was confined to the
circle of his wagons; his desperate courage urged him to invade the
Eastern Empire; he fell in battle; and his head, ignominiously exposed
in the Hippodrome, exhibited a grateful spectacle to the people of
Constantinople.

Attila had fondly or superstitiously believed that Irnac, the youngest
of his sons, was destined to perpetuate the glories of his race. The
character of that prince, who attempted to moderate the rashness of
his brother Dengisich, was more suitable to the declining condition of
the Huns; and Irnac, with his subject hordes, retired into the heart
of the Lesser Scythia. They were soon overwhelmed by a torrent of new
barbarians, who followed the same road which their own ancestors had
formerly discovered. The Geougen or Avars, whose residence is assigned
by the Greek writers to the shores of the ocean, impelled the adjacent
tribes; till at length the Igours of the north, issuing from the cold
Siberian regions, which produce the most valuable furs, spread themselves
over the desert, as far as the Borysthenes and the Caspian gates; and
finally extinguished the empire of the Huns.

Such an event might contribute to the safety of the Eastern Empire, under
the reign of a prince who conciliated the friendship without forfeiting
the esteem of the barbarians. But the emperor of the West, the feeble
and dissolute Valentinian, who had reached his thirty-fifth year without
attaining the age of reason or courage, abused this apparent security
to undermine the foundations of his own throne by the murder of the
patrician Aëtius. From the instinct of a base and jealous mind, he hated
the man who was universally celebrated as the terror of the barbarians,
and the support of the republic; and his new favourite, the eunuch
Heraclius, awakened the emperor from the supine lethargy which might be
disguised, during the life of Placidia, by the excuse of filial piety.
The fame of Aëtius, his wealth and dignity, the numerous and martial
train of barbarian followers, his powerful dependents, who filled the
civil offices of the state, and the hopes of his son Gaudentius, who was
already contracted to Eudoxia, the emperor’s daughter, had raised him
above the rank of a subject.

The ambitious designs of which he was secretly accused, excited the
fears, as well as the resentment, of Valentinian. Aëtius himself,
supported by the consciousness of his merit, his services, and perhaps
his innocence, seems to have maintained a haughty and indiscreet
behaviour. The patrician offended his sovereign by a hostile declaration;
he aggravated the offence, by compelling him to ratify with a solemn oath
a treaty of reconciliation and alliance; he proclaimed his suspicions;
he neglected his safety; and from a vain confidence that the enemy whom
he despised was incapable even of a manly crime, he rashly ventured his
person in the palace of Rome. Whilst he urged, perhaps with intemperate
vehemence, the marriage of his son, Valentinian, drawing his sword, the
first sword he had ever drawn, plunged it in the breast of a general who
had saved his empire; his courtiers and eunuchs ambitiously struggled to
imitate their master; and Aëtius, pierced with a hundred wounds, fell
dead in the royal presence. Boethius, the prætorian prefect, was killed
at the same moment; and before the event could be divulged, the principal
friends of the patrician were summoned to the palace and separately
murdered. The horrid deed, palliated by the specious names of justice and
necessity, was immediately communicated by the emperor to his soldiers,
his subjects, and his allies.

[Sidenote: [454-455 A.D.]]

The nations who were strangers or enemies to Aëtius generously deplored
the unworthy fate of a hero; the barbarians who had been attached to his
service dissembled their grief and resentment; and the public contempt
which had been so long entertained for Valentinian, was at once converted
into deep and universal abhorrence. Such sentiments seldom pervade the
walls of a palace; yet the emperor was confounded by the honest reply
of a Roman, whose approbation he had not disdained to solicit: “I am
ignorant, sir, of your motives or provocations; I only know that you have
acted like a man who cuts off his right hand with his left.”

The luxury of Rome seems to have attracted the long and frequent visits
of Valentinian; who was consequently more despised at Rome than in any
other part of his dominions. A republican spirit was insensibly revived
in the senate, as their authority, and even their supplies, became
necessary for the support of his feeble government. The stately demeanour
of an hereditary monarch offended their pride; and the pleasures of
Valentinian were injurious to the peace and honour of noble families. The
birth of the empress Eudoxia was equal to his own, and her charms and
tender affection deserved those testimonies of love which her inconstant
husband dissipated in vague and unlawful amours.

Petronius Maximus, a wealthy senator of the Anician family, who had
been twice consul, was possessed of a chaste and beautiful wife; her
obstinate resistance served only to irritate the desires of Valentinian,
and he resolved to accomplish them either by stratagem or force. Deep
gaming was one of the vices of the court; the emperor, who by chance or
contrivance had gained from Maximus a considerable sum, uncourteously
exacted his ring as a security for the debt; and sent it by a trusty
messenger to his wife, with an order in her husband’s name that she
should immediately attend the empress Eudoxia. The unsuspecting wife of
Maximus was conveyed in her litter to the imperial palace; the emissaries
of her impatient lover conducted her to a remote and silent bedchamber;
and Valentinian violated, without remorse, the laws of hospitality.
Her tears when she returned home, her deep affliction, and her bitter
reproaches against her husband, whom she considered as the accomplice of
his own shame, excited Maximus to a just revenge; the desire of revenge
was stimulated by ambition; and he might reasonably aspire by the free
suffrage of the Roman senate to the throne of a detested and despicable
rival. Valentinian, who supposed that every human breast was devoid, like
his own, of friendship and gratitude, had imprudently admitted among
his guards several domestics and followers of Aëtius. Two of these, of
barbarian race, were persuaded to execute a sacred and honourable duty
by punishing with death the assassin of their patron; and their intrepid
courage did not long expect a favourable moment. Whilst Valentinian
amused himself in the Field of Mars with the spectacle of some military
sports, they suddenly rushed upon him with drawn weapons, despatched the
guilty Heraclius, and stabbed the emperor to the heart, without the least
opposition from his numerous train, who seemed to rejoice in the tyrant’s
death.

Such was the fate of Valentinian III, the last Roman emperor of the
family of Theodosius. He faithfully imitated the hereditary weakness of
his cousin and his two uncles, without inheriting the gentleness, the
purity, the innocence, which alleviate in their characters the want of
spirit and ability. Valentinian was less excusable, since he had passions
without virtues; even his religion was questionable; and though he never
deviated into the paths of heresy, he scandalised the pious Christians by
his attachment to the profane arts of magic and divination.[b]


FOOTNOTES

[66] [This story of the feud between Boniface and Aëtius was the subject
of a severe onslaught by Freeman, who calls it “the Procopian legend.”
Hodgkin, however, thinks that it “has still a reasonable claim to be
accepted as history.” _Italy and her Invaders_, Vol. I, pp. 889-898.]

[67] [See Procopius _de Bell. Vandal._ I. 1. c. 4, p. 186. Valentinian
published several humane laws, to relieve the distress of his Numidian
and Mauretanian subjects; he discharged them, in a great measure, from
the payment of their debts, reduced their tribute to one-eighth, and gave
them a right of appeal from the provincial magistrates to the prefect of
Rome.]

[68] [The place which we now call Châlons was probably under the Romans
named Duro-Catalaunum. It was the chief place of the Catalauni, a tribe
who dwelt next to the Suessiones. In Roman miles (10 of which are about
equal to 9 English), and by the Roman roads, Châlons was 170 miles
distant from Metz, and 51 from Troyes.[c]]

[Illustration: ROMAN TERRA-COTTA FIGURES]




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XLVII. THE FALL OF ROME


The Vandals were of the Low German stock and closely allied to the Goths.
We first hear of them in the time of Pliny and Tacitus as occupying
a district nearly corresponding to Brandenburg and Pomerania. From
thence, in the second century, they pressed southwards to the confines
of Bohemia, where they gave their name to the mountains now called the
Riesengebirge.

After a century of hostile and desultory operations against the Roman
Empire, having been signally defeated by Aurelian (271) they made
peace with Rome, one of the conditions being that they should supply
two thousand _fœderati_ to the imperial army. Sixty years later they
sustained a great defeat from the Goths under their king Geberic, after
which they humbly sought and obtained permission from Constantine to
settle as Roman subjects within the province of Pannonia. Here they
remained seventy years, and during this period they probably made some
advances in civilisation and became Christians of the Arian type.

In 406, when the empire under Honorius was falling into ruin, they
crossed the Rhine and entered Gaul. Stilicho, the chief adviser of
Honorius, who was a man of Vandal extraction, was accused by his enemies
of having invited them into the empire, but this is probably a groundless
calumny. In Gaul they fought a great battle with the Franks, in which
they were defeated with the loss of two thousand men, and their king
Godigisclus was slain. In 409 his son Gunderic led them across the
Pyrenees. They appear to have settled in Spain in two detachments. One,
the Asdingian Vandals, occupied Gallæcia, the other, the Silingian, part
of Bætica (Andalusia). Twenty years of bloody and purposeless warfare
with the armies of the empire and with their fellow-barbarians, the
Goths and the Suevi, followed. The Silingian Vandals were well-nigh
exterminated, but their Asdingian brethren (with whom were now associated
the remains of a Turanian people, the Alans, who had been utterly
defeated by the Goths) marched across Spain and took possession of
Andalusia.

[Illustration: THE HUNS APPROACHING ROME]

In 428 or 429 the whole nation set sail for Africa, upon an invitation
received by their king from Boniface, count of Africa, who had fallen
into disgrace with the court of Ravenna. Gunderic was now dead and
supreme power was in the hands of his bastard brother, who is generally
known in history as Genseric, though the more correct form of his name is
Gaiseric. This man, short of stature and with limping gait, but with a
great natural capacity for war and dominion, reckless of human life and
unrestrained by conscience or pity, was for fifty years the hero of the
Vandal race and the terror of Constantinople and Rome. In the month of
May 428 (?) he assembled all his people on the shore of Andalusia, and
numbering the males among them from the graybeard down to the new-born
infant found them to amount to eighty thousand souls. The passage was
effected in the ships of Boniface, who, however, soon returning to his
old loyalty, besought his new allies to depart from Africa. They, of
course, refused, and Boniface turned against them, too late, however, to
repair the mischief which he had caused. Notwithstanding his opposition
the progress of the Vandals was rapid, and by May 430 only three cities
of Roman Africa--Carthage, Hippo, and Cirta--remained untaken.

[Sidenote: [430-455 A.D.]]

The long siege of Hippo (May 430 to July 431), memorable for the last
illness and death of St. Augustine, which occurred during its progress,
ended unsuccessfully for the Vandals. At length (30th of January,
435) peace was made between the emperor Valentinian III and Genseric.
The emperor was to retain Carthage and the small but rich proconsular
province in which it was situated, while Hippo and the other six
provinces of Africa were abandoned to the Vandal. Genseric observed this
treaty no longer than suited his purpose. On the 19th of October 439,
without any declaration of war, he suddenly attacked Carthage and took
it. The Vandal occupation of this great city, the third among the cities
of the Roman Empire, lasted for ninety-four years. Genseric seems to
have counted the years of his sovereignty from the date of its capture.
Though most of the remaining years of Genseric’s life were passed in war,
plunder rather than territorial conquest seems to have been the object
of his expeditions. He made, in fact, of Carthage a pirates’ stronghold,
from whence he issued forth, like the Barbary pirates of a later day, to
attack, as he himself said, “the dwellings of the men with whom God is
angry,” leaving the question who those men might be to the decision of
the elements. Almost alone among the Teutonic invaders of the empire, he
set himself to form a powerful fleet, and was probably for thirty years
the leading maritime power in the Mediterranean.[b]

The revolutions of the palace, which left the Western Empire without a
defender, and without a lawful prince, dispelled the apprehensions and
stimulated the avarice of Genseric. He immediately equipped a numerous
fleet of Vandals and Moors, and cast anchor at the mouth of the Tiber,
about three months after the death of Valentinian and the elevation of
Maximus to the imperial throne.

The private life of the senator Petronius Maximus was often alleged as
a rare example of human felicity. His birth was noble and illustrious,
since he descended from the Anician family, his dignity was supported by
an adequate patrimony in land and money; and these advantages of fortune
were accompanied with liberal arts and decent manners, which adorn or
imitate the inestimable gifts of genius and virtue. The luxury of his
palace and table was hospitable and elegant. Whenever Maximus appeared in
public, he was surrounded by a train of grateful and obsequious clients;
and it is possible that, among these clients, he might deserve and
possess some real friends. His merit was rewarded by the favour of the
prince and senate; he thrice exercised the office of prætorian prefect
of Italy; he was twice invested with the consulship, and he obtained the
rank of patrician.

These civil honours were not incompatible with the enjoyment of leisure
and tranquillity; his hours, according to the demands of pleasure or
reason, were accurately distributed by a water-clock; and this avarice
of time may be allowed to prove the sense which Maximus entertained
of his own happiness. The injury which he received from the emperor
Valentinian appears to excuse the most bloody revenge. Yet a philosopher
might have reflected that, if the resistance of his wife had been
sincere, her chastity was still inviolate, and that it could never be
restored if she had consented to the will of the adulterer. A patriot
would have hesitated, before plunging himself and his country into those
inevitable calamities which must follow the extinction of the royal
house of Theodosius. The imprudent Maximus disregarded these salutary
considerations; he gratified his resentment and ambition, he saw the
bleeding corpse of Valentinian at his feet, and heard himself saluted
emperor by the unanimous voice of the senate and people. But the day of
his inauguration was the last day of his happiness. He was imprisoned
(such is the lively expression of Sidonius) in the palace; and, after
passing a sleepless night, he sighed that he had attained the summit of
his wishes, and aspired only to descend from the dangerous elevation.
Oppressed by the weight of the diadem, he communicated his anxious
thoughts to his friend and quæstor Fulgentius; and when he looked back
with unavailing regret on the secure pleasures of his former life, the
emperor exclaimed, “O fortunate Damocles, thy reign began and ended with
the same dinner!” a well-known allusion, which Fulgentius afterwards
repeated as an instructive lesson for princes and subjects.

[Sidenote: [455-456 A.D.]]

The reign of Maximus continued about three months. His hours, of which
he had lost the command, were disturbed by remorse, or guilt, or terror;
and his throne was shaken by the seditions of the soldiers, the people,
and the confederate barbarians. The marriage of his son Palladius with
the eldest daughter of the late emperor might tend to establish the
hereditary succession of his family; but the violence which he offered
to the empress Eudoxia could proceed only from the blind impulse of lust
or revenge. His own wife, the cause of these tragic events, had been
seasonably removed by death; and the widow of Valentinian was compelled
to violate her decent mourning, perhaps her real grief, and to submit
to the embraces of a presumptuous usurper, whom she suspected as the
assassin of her deceased husband.

These suspicions were soon justified by the indiscreet confession of
Maximus himself; and he wantonly provoked the hatred of his reluctant
bride, who was still conscious that she was descended from a line of
emperors. From the East, however, Eudoxia could not hope to obtain any
effectual assistance; her father and her aunt Pulcheria were dead; her
mother languished at Jerusalem in disgrace and exile; and the sceptre
of Constantinople was in the hands of a stranger. She directed her eyes
towards Carthage, secretly implored the aid of the king of the Vandals;
and persuaded Genseric to improve the fair opportunity of disguising
his rapacious designs by the specious names of honour, justice, and
compassion. Whatever abilities Maximus might have shown in a subordinate
station, he was found incapable of administering an empire; and though he
might easily have been informed of the naval preparations which were made
on the opposite shores of Africa, he expected with supine indifference
the approach of the enemy, without adopting any measures of defence, of
negotiation, or of a timely retreat.

When the Vandals disembarked at the mouth of the Tiber, the emperor
was suddenly roused from his lethargy by the clamours of a trembling
and exasperated multitude. The only hope which presented itself to his
astonished mind was that of a precipitate flight, and he exhorted the
senators to imitate the example of their prince. But no sooner did
Maximus appear in the streets than he was assaulted by a shower of
stones; a Roman, or a Burgundian soldier, claimed the honour of the first
wound; his mangled body was ignominiously cast into the Tiber; the Roman
people rejoiced in the punishment which they had inflicted on the author
of the public calamities, and the domestics of Eudoxia signalised their
zeal in the service of their mistress.

On the third day after the tumult, Genseric boldly advanced from the
port of Ostia to the gates of the defenceless city. Instead of a sally
of the Roman youth, there issued from the gates an unarmed and venerable
procession of the bishop at the head of his clergy. The fearless spirit
of Leo, his authority and eloquence, again mitigated the fierceness
of a barbarian conqueror; the king of the Vandals promised to spare
the unresisting multitude, to protect the buildings from fire, and to
exempt the captives from torture; and although such orders were neither
seriously given nor strictly obeyed, the mediation of Leo was glorious
to himself and in some degree beneficial to his country. But Rome and
its inhabitants were delivered to the licentiousness of the Vandals and
Moors, whose blind passions revenged the injuries of Carthage.

[Illustration: ROMAN PIN AND BRACELET

(In the British Museum)]

The pillage lasted fourteen days and nights; and all that yet remained of
public or private wealth, of sacred or profane treasure, was diligently
transported to the vessels of Genseric. Among the spoils, the splendid
relics of two temples, or rather of two religions, exhibited a memorable
example of the vicissitudes of human and divine things. Since the
abolition of paganism, the Capitol had been violated and abandoned; yet
the statues of the gods and heroes were still respected, and the curious
roof of gilt bronze was reserved for the rapacious hands of Genseric.
The holy instruments of the Jewish worship, the gold table and the gold
candlestick with seven branches, originally framed according to the
particular instructions of God himself, and which were placed in the
sanctuary of his temple, had been ostentatiously displayed to the Roman
people in the triumph of Titus. They were afterwards deposited in the
temple of Peace; and, at the end of four hundred years, the spoils of
Jerusalem were transferred from Rome to Carthage, by a barbarian who
derived his origin from the shores of the Baltic. These ancient monuments
might attract the notice of curiosity, as well as of avarice.

But the Christian churches, enriched and adorned by the prevailing
superstition of the times, afforded more plentiful materials for
sacrilege; and the pious liberality of Pope Leo, who melted six silver
vases, the gift of Constantine, each of a hundred pounds’ weight, is
evidence of the damage which he attempted to repair. In the forty-five
years that had elapsed since the Gothic invasion, the pomp and luxury
of Rome were in some measure restored; and it was difficult either to
escape or to satisfy the avarice of a conqueror, who possessed leisure to
collect and ships to transport the wealth of the capital. The imperial
ornaments of the palace, the magnificent furniture and wardrobe, the
sideboards of massy plate, were accumulated with disorderly rapine; the
gold and silver amounted to several thousand talents; yet even the brass
and copper were laboriously removed.

Eudoxia herself, who advanced to meet her friend and deliverer, soon
bewailed the imprudence of her own conduct. She was rudely stripped of
her jewels; and the unfortunate empress, with her two daughters, the only
surviving remains of the great Theodosius, was compelled as a captive
to follow the haughty Vandal; who immediately hoisted sail and returned
with a prosperous navigation to the port of Carthage. Many thousand
Romans of both sexes, chosen for some useful or agreeable qualifications,
reluctantly embarked on board the fleet of Genseric; and their distress
was aggravated by the unfeeling barbarians, who, in the division of the
booty, separated the wives from their husbands and the children from
their parents. The charity of Deogratias, bishop of Carthage, was their
only consolation and support. He generously sold the gold and silver
plate of the church to purchase the freedom of some, to alleviate the
slavery of others, and to assist the wants and infirmities of a captive
multitude, whose health was impaired by the hardships which they had
suffered in their passage from Italy to Africa. By his order two spacious
churches were converted into hospitals; the sick were distributed in
convenient beds, and liberally supplied with food and medicines, and the
aged prelate repeated his visits, both in the day and night, with an
assiduity that surpassed the value of his services. Compare this scene
with the field of Cannæ; and judge between Hannibal and the successor of
St. Cyprian.

The deaths of Aëtius and Valentinian had relaxed the ties which held
the barbarians of Gaul in peace and subordination. The sea coast was
infested by the Saxons; the Alamanni and the Franks advanced from the
Rhine to the Seine; and the ambition of the Goths seemed to meditate
more extensive and permanent conquests. The emperor Maximus relieved
himself, by a judicious choice, from the weight of these distant cares;
he silenced the solicitations of his friends, listened to the voice of
fame, and promoted a stranger to the general command of the forces in
Gaul. Avitus, the stranger, whose merit was so nobly rewarded, descended
from a wealthy and honourable family in the diocese of Auvergne. The
convulsions of the times urged him to embrace, with the same ardour,
the civil and military professions; and the indefatigable youth blended
the studies of literature and jurisprudence with the exercise of arms
and hunting. Thirty years of his life were laudably spent in the public
service; he alternately displayed his talents in war and negotiation; and
the soldier of Aëtius, after executing the most important embassies, was
raised to the station of prætorian prefect of Gaul. Either the merit of
Avitus excited envy, or his moderation was desirous of repose, since he
calmly retired to an estate which he possessed in the neighbourhood of
Clermont. In this retreat, where Avitus amused his leisure with books,
rural sports, the practice of husbandry, and the society of his friends,
he received the imperial diploma, which constituted him master-general
of the cavalry and infantry of Gaul. He assumed the military command;
the barbarians suspended their fury; and whatever means he might employ,
whatever concessions he might be forced to make, the people enjoyed the
benefits of actual tranquillity. But the fate of Gaul depended on the
Visigoths; and the Roman general, less attentive to his dignity than to
the public interest, did not disdain to visit Tolosa in the character of
an ambassador.

He was received with courteous hospitality by Theodoric, the king of
the Goths; but while Avitus laid the foundations of a solid alliance
with that powerful nation, he was astonished by the intelligence that
the emperor Maximus was slain, and that Rome had been pillaged by the
Vandals. A vacant throne, which he might ascend without guilt or danger,
tempted his ambition; and the Visigoths were easily persuaded to support
his claim by their irresistible suffrage. They loved the person of
Avitus, they respected his virtues; and they were not insensible of the
advantage, as well as honour, of giving an emperor to the West.

The season was now approaching in which the annual assembly of the seven
provinces was held at Arelate (Arles); their deliberations might perhaps
be influenced by the presence of Theodoric and his martial brothers, but
their choice would naturally incline to the most illustrious of their
countrymen. Avitus, after a decent resistance, accepted the imperial
diadem from the representatives of Gaul; and his election was ratified by
the acclamations of the barbarians and provincials. The formal consent of
Marcian, emperor of the East, was solicited and obtained; but the senate,
Rome, and Italy, though humbled by their recent calamities, submitted
with a secret murmur to the presumption of the Gallic usurper.

[Illustration: COSTUME OF A VISIGOTH]

Theodoric, to whom Avitus was indebted for the purple, had acquired the
Gothic sceptre by the murder of his elder brother Torismond; and he
justified this atrocious deed by the design which his predecessor had
formed of violating his alliance with the empire. Such a crime might
not be incompatible with the virtues of a barbarian, but the manners
of Theodoric were gentle and humane; and posterity may contemplate
without terror the original picture of a Gothic king, whom Sidonius had
intimately observed in the hours of peace and of social intercourse.

When the king of the Visigoths encouraged Avitus to assume the purple,
he offered his person and his forces as a faithful soldier of the
republic. The exploits of Theodoric soon convinced the world that he had
not degenerated from the warlike virtues of his ancestors. After the
establishment of the Goths in Aquitania, and the passage of the Vandals
into Africa, the Suevi, who had fixed their kingdom in Gallæcia, aspired
to the conquest of Spain and threatened to extinguish the feeble remains
of the Roman dominion. The provincials of Carthago (Cartagena), and
Tarraco (Tarragona), afflicted by a hostile invasion, represented their
injuries and their apprehensions.

Count Fronto was despatched, in the name of the emperor Avitus, with
advantageous offers of peace and alliance; and Theodoric interposed
his weighty mediation to declare that, unless his brother-in-law, the
king of the Suevi, immediately retired, he should be obliged to arm
in the cause of justice and of Rome. “Tell him,” replied the haughty
Rechiarius, “that I despise his friendship and his arms; but that I shall
soon try whether he will dare to expect my arrival under the walls of
Tolosa.” Such a challenge urged Theodoric to prevent the bold designs
of his enemy; he passed the Pyrenees at the head of the Visigoths,
the Franks and Burgundians served under his standard, and though he
professed himself the dutiful servant of Avitus, he privately stipulated
for himself and his successors the absolute possession of his Spanish
conquests. The two armies, or rather the two nations, encountered each
other on the banks of the river Urbicus, about twelve miles from Augusta
Asturica (Astorga); and the decisive victory of the Goths appeared for
a while to have extirpated the name and kingdom of the Suevi. From the
field of battle Theodoric advanced to Bracara (Braga), their metropolis,
which still retained the splendid vestiges of its ancient commerce
and dignity. His entrance was not polluted with blood, and the Goths
respected the chastity of their female captives, more especially of the
consecrated virgins; but the greatest part of the clergy and people were
made slaves, and even the churches and altars were confounded in the
universal pillage.

The unfortunate king of the Suevi had escaped to one of the ports of
the ocean, but the obstinacy of the winds opposed his flight; he was
delivered to his implacable rival; and Rechiarius, who neither desired
nor expected mercy, received with manly constancy the death which he
would probably have inflicted. After this bloody sacrifice to policy
and resentment, Theodoric carried his victorious arms as far as Augusta
Emerita (Merida), the principal town of Lusitania, without meeting any
resistance, except from the miraculous powers of St. Eulalia; but he was
stopped in the full career of success, and recalled from Spain, before he
could provide for the security of his conquests. In his retreat towards
the Pyrenees he revenged his disappointment on the country through which
he passed; and in the sack of Pallantia and Augusta Asturica he showed
himself a faithless ally as well as a cruel enemy.

Whilst the king of the Visigoths fought and vanquished in the name of
Avitus, the reign of Avitus had expired, and both the honour and the
interest of Theodoric were deeply wounded by the disgrace of a friend
whom he had seated on the throne of the Western Empire.

The pressing solicitations of the senate and people persuaded the emperor
Avitus to fix his residence at Rome, and to accept the consulship for the
ensuing year. Avitus, at a time when the imperial dignity was reduced to
a pre-eminence of toil and danger, indulged himself in the pleasures of
Italian luxury; age had not extinguished his amorous inclinations, and
he is accused of insulting, with indiscreet and ungenerous raillery, the
husbands whose wives he had seduced or violated.[69] But the Romans were
not inclined either to excuse his faults or to acknowledge his virtues.
The several parts of the empire became every day more alienated from each
other; and the stranger of Gaul was the object of popular hatred and
contempt.

The senate asserted their legitimate claim in the election of an emperor;
and their authority, which had been originally derived from the old
constitution, was again fortified by the actual weakness of a declining
monarchy. Yet even such a monarchy might have resisted the votes of an
unarmed senate, if their discontent had not been supported, or perhaps
inflamed, by Count Ricimer, one of the principal commanders of the
barbarian troops, who formed the military defence of Italy. The daughter
of Wallia, king of the Visigoths, was the mother of Ricimer; but he was
descended, on the father’s side, from the nation of the Suevi; his pride
or patriotism might be exasperated by the misfortunes of his countrymen,
and he obeyed with reluctance an emperor in whose elevation he had not
been consulted. His faithful and important services against the common
enemy rendered him still more formidable; and after destroying on the
coast of Corsica a fleet of Vandals, which consisted of sixty galleys,
Ricimer returned in triumph with the appellation of the Deliverer of
Italy. He chose that moment to signify to Avitus that his reign was at an
end; and the feeble emperor, at a distance from his Gothic allies, was
compelled after a short and unavailing struggle to abdicate the purple.
By the clemency, however, or the contempt of Ricimer, he was permitted
to descend from the throne to the more desirable station of bishop of
Placentia; but the resentment of the senate was still unsatisfied, and
their inflexible severity pronounced the sentence of his death. He fled
towards the Alps, with the humble hope not of arming the Visigoths in
his cause but of securing his person and treasures in the sanctuary of
Julian, one of the tutelar saints of Auvergne. Disease, or the hand of
the executioner, arrested him on the road; yet his remains were decently
transported to Brivas or Brioude, in his native province, and he reposed
at the feet of his holy patron.

[Sidenote: [456-457 A.D.]]

The successor of Avitus presents the welcome discovery of a great and
heroic character, such as sometimes arises in a degenerate age, to
vindicate the honour of the human species. The emperor Majorian has
deserved the praises of his contemporaries and of posterity; and these
praises may be strongly expressed in the words of a judicious and
disinterested historian: “That he was gentle to his subjects; that he
was terrible to his enemies; and that he excelled in every virtue all of
his predecessors who had reigned over the Romans.” Such a testimony may
justify at least the panegyric of Sidonius; and we may acquiesce in the
assurance that, although the obsequious orator would have flattered, with
equal zeal, the most worthless of princes, the extraordinary merit of
his object confined him, on this occasion, within the bounds of truth.
Majorian derived his name from his maternal grandfather who, in the
reign of the great Theodosius had commanded the troops of the Illyrian
frontier. He gave his daughter in marriage to the father of Majorian, a
respectable officer, who administered the revenues of Gaul with skill
and integrity; and generously preferred the friendship of Aëtius to the
tempting offers of an insidious court. His son, the future emperor,
who was educated in the profession of arms, displayed, from his early
youth, intrepid courage, premature wisdom, and unbounded liberality in a
scanty fortune. He followed the standard of Aëtius, contributed to his
success, shared, and sometimes eclipsed, his glory, and at last excited
the jealousy of the patrician, or rather of his wife, who forced him
to retire from the service. Majorian, after the death of Aëtius, was
recalled and promoted, and his intimate connection with Count Ricimer
was the immediate step by which he ascended the throne of the Western
Empire. During the vacancy that succeeded the abdication of Avitus, the
ambitious barbarian whose birth excluded him from the imperial dignity
governed Italy, with the title of patrician; resigned to his friend the
conspicuous station of master-general of the cavalry and infantry; and,
after an interval of some months, consented to the unanimous wish of the
Romans, whose favour Majorian had solicited by a recent victory over the
Alamanni.

[Sidenote: [457-461 A.D.]]

The public and private actions of Majorian are very imperfectly known;
but his laws, remarkable for an original cast of thought and expression,
faithfully represent the character of a sovereign who loved his people,
who sympathised in their distress, who had studied the causes of the
decline of the empire, and who was capable of applying (as far as such
reformation was practicable) judicious and effectual remedies to the
public disorders. His regulations concerning the finances manifestly
tended to remove, or at least to mitigate, the most intolerable
grievances.

(1) From the first hour of his reign, he was solicitous (these are his
own words) to relieve the weary fortunes of the provincials, oppressed by
the accumulated weight of indictions and superindictions. With this view,
he granted a universal amnesty, a final and absolute discharge of all
arrears of tribute, of all debts which, under any pretence, the fiscal
officers might demand from the people. This wise dereliction of obsolete,
vexatious, and unprofitable claims improved and purified the sources of
the public revenue; and the subject, who could now look back without
despair, might labour with hope and gratitude for himself and for his
country.

(2) In the assessment and collection of taxes, Majorian restored the
ordinary jurisdiction of the provincial magistrates; and suppressed
the extraordinary commissions which had been introduced, in the name
of the emperor himself, or of the prætorian prefects. The favourite
servants, who obtained such irregular powers, were insolent in their
behaviour and arbitrary in their demands; they affected to despise the
subordinate tribunals, and they were discontented if their fees and
profits did not twice exceed the sum which they condescended to pay into
the treasury. One instance of their extortion would appear incredible,
were it not authenticated by the legislator himself. They exacted the
whole payment in gold; but they refused the current coin of the empire,
and would accept only such ancient pieces as were stamped with the names
of Faustina or the Antonines. The subject who was unprovided with these
curious medals had recourse to the expedient of compounding with their
rapacious demands; or, if he succeeded in the research, his imposition
was doubled, according to the weight and value of the money of former
times.

(3) “The municipal corporation,” says the emperor, “the lesser senates
(so antiquity has justly styled them), deserve to be considered as the
heart of the cities, and the sinews of the republic. And yet so low
are they now reduced, by the injustice of magistrates and the venality
of collectors, that many of their members, renouncing their dignity
and their country, have taken refuge in distant and obscure exile.” He
urges and even compels their return to their respective cities; but he
removes the grievance which had forced them to desert the exercise of
their municipal functions. They are directed, under the authority of the
provincial magistrates, to resume their office of levying the tribute;
but, instead of being made responsible for the whole sum assessed on
their district, they are only required to produce a regular account of
the payments which they have actually received, and of the defaulters who
are still indebted to the public.

(4) But Majorian was not ignorant that these corporate bodies were too
much inclined to retaliate the injustice and oppression which they had
suffered; and he therefore revives the useful office of the defenders
of cities. He exhorts the people to elect, in a full and free assembly,
some man of discretion and integrity, who would dare to assert their
privileges, to represent their grievances, to protect the poor from the
tyranny of the rich, and to inform the emperor of the abuses that were
committed.

The spectator who casts a mournful view over the ruins of ancient Rome is
tempted to accuse the memory of the Goths and Vandals for the mischief
which they had neither leisure nor power, nor perhaps inclination, to
perpetrate. The tempest of war might strike some lofty turrets to the
ground; but the destruction which undermined the foundations of those
massy fabrics was prosecuted, slowly and silently, during a period of ten
centuries; and the motives of interest that afterwards operated without
shame or control were severely checked by the taste and spirit of the
emperor Majorian.

The decay of the city had gradually impaired the value of the public
works. The circus and theatres might still excite, but they seldom
gratified the desires of the people; the temples, which had escaped
the zeal of the Christians, were no longer inhabited either by gods or
men; the diminished crowds of the Romans were lost in the immense space
of their baths and porticoes; and the stately libraries and halls of
justice became useless to an indolent generation, whose repose was seldom
disturbed either by study or business. The monuments of consular or
imperial greatness were no longer revered as the immortal glory of the
capital; they were only esteemed as an inexhaustible mine of materials,
cheaper and more convenient than the distant quarry. Specious petitions
were continually addressed to the easy magistrates of Rome, which stated
the want of stones or bricks for some necessary service; the fairest
forms of architecture were rudely defaced for the sake of some paltry or
pretended repairs; and the degenerate Romans, who converted the spoil to
their own emolument, demolished with sacrilegious hands the labours of
their ancestors. Majorian, who had often sighed over the desolation of
the city, applied a severe remedy to the growing evil. He reserved to the
prince and senate the sole cognisance of the extreme cases which might
justify the destruction of an ancient edifice; imposed a fine of fifty
pounds of gold [£2000 or $10,000] on every magistrate who should presume
to grant such illegal and scandalous license; and threatened to chastise
the criminal obedience of their subordinate officers by a severe whipping
and the amputation of both their hands.

In the last instance, the legislator might seem to forget the proportion
of guilt and punishment; but his zeal arose from a generous principle,
and Majorian was anxious to protect the monuments of those ages in which
he would have desired and deserved to live. The emperor conceived that
it was his interest to increase the number of his subjects, that it was
his duty to guard the purity of the marriage bed; but the means which
he employed to accomplish these salutary purposes are of an ambiguous
and perhaps exceptionable kind. The pious maids who consecrated their
virginity to Christ were restrained from taking the veil till they had
reached their fortieth year. Widows under that age were compelled to
form a second alliance within the term of five years, by the forfeiture
of half their wealth to their nearest relatives or to the state. Unequal
marriages were condemned or annulled. The punishment of confiscation
and exile was deemed so inadequate to the guilt of adultery, that if
the criminal returned to Italy he might, by the express declaration of
Majorian, be slain with impunity.

While the emperor Majorian assiduously laboured to restore the happiness
and virtue of the Romans, he encountered the arms of Genseric, from
his character and situation their most formidable enemy. A fleet of
Vandals and Moors landed at the mouth of the Liris or Garigliano: but
the imperial troops surprised and attacked the disorderly barbarians,
who were encumbered with the spoils of Campania; they were chased with
slaughter to their ships, and their leader, the king’s brother-in-law,
was found in the number of the slain. Such vigilance might announce the
character of the new reign; but the strictest vigilance and the most
numerous forces were insufficient to protect the long-extended coast
of Italy from the depredations of a naval war. The public opinion had
imposed a nobler and most arduous task on the genius of Majorian. Rome
expected from him alone the restitution of Africa; and the design which
he formed of attacking the Vandals in their new settlements was the
result of bold and judicious policy. If the intrepid emperor could have
infused his own spirit into the youth of Italy, if he could have revived
in the Field of Mars the manly exercises in which he had always surpassed
his equals--he might have marched against Genseric at the head of a Roman
army.

Such a reformation of national manners might be embraced by the rising
generation; but it is the misfortune of those princes who laboriously
sustain a declining monarchy that, to obtain some immediate advantage or
to avert some impending danger, they are forced to countenance and even
to multiply the most pernicious abuses. Majorian, like the weakest of his
predecessors, was reduced to the disgraceful expedient of substituting
barbarian auxiliaries in the place of his unwarlike subjects; and his
superior abilities could only be displayed in the vigour and dexterity
with which he wielded a dangerous instrument, so apt to recoil on the
hand that used it.

Besides the confederates who were already engaged in the service of the
empire, the fame of his liberality and valour attracted the nations of
the Danube, the Borysthenes, and perhaps of the Tanaïs. Many thousands
of the bravest subjects of Attila, the Gepidæ, the Ostrogoths, the
Rugians, the Burgundiones, the Suevi, the Alani, assembled in the plains
of Liguria; and their formidable strength was balanced by their mutual
animosities. They passed the Alps in a severe winter. The emperor led the
way on foot, and in complete armour; sounding, with his long staff, the
depth of the ice or snow, and encouraging the Scythians, who complained
of the extreme cold, by the cheerful assurance that they should be
satisfied with the heat of Africa. The citizens of Lugdunum had presumed
to shut their gates; they soon implored and experienced the clemency
of Majorian. He vanquished Theodoric in the field; and admitted to his
friendship and alliance a king whom he had found not unworthy of his
arms. The beneficial though precarious reunion of the greatest part of
Gaul and Spain was the effect of persuasion as well as of force; and the
independent Bagaudæ, who had escaped or resisted the oppression of former
reigns, were disposed to confide in the virtues of Majorian.

His camp was filled with barbarian allies, his throne was supported by
the zeal of an affectionate people; but the emperor had foreseen that
it was impossible, without a maritime power, to achieve the conquest of
Africa. In the First Punic War, the republic had exerted such incredible
diligence that, within sixty days after the first stroke of the axe
had been given in the forest, a fleet of 160 galleys proudly rode at
anchor in the sea. Under circumstances much less favourable, Majorian
equalled the spirit and perseverance of the ancient Romans. The woods of
the Apennine were felled; the arsenals and manufactures of Ravenna and
Misenum were restored; Italy and Gaul vied with each other in liberal
contributions to the public service; and the imperial navy of three
hundred large galleys, with an adequate proportion of transports and
smaller vessels, was collected in the secure and capacious harbour of
Carthago Nova (Cartagena) in Spain.

The intrepid countenance of Majorian animated his troops with a
confidence of victory; and if we might credit the historian Procopius,
his courage sometimes hurried him beyond the bounds of prudence. Anxious
to explore, with his own eyes, the state of the Vandals, he ventured
after disguising the colour of his hair to visit Carthage in the
character of his own ambassador; and Genseric was afterwards mortified by
the discovery that he had entertained and dismissed the emperor of the
Romans. Such an anecdote may be rejected as an improbable fiction; but it
is a fiction which would not have been imagined unless in the life of a
hero.

Without the help of a personal interview, Genseric was sufficiently
acquainted with the genius and designs of his adversary. He practised his
customary arts of fraud and delay; but he practised them without success.
His applications for peace became each hour more submissive, and perhaps
more sincere; but the inflexible Majorian had adopted the ancient maxim
that Rome could not be safe, so long as Carthage existed in a hostile
state. The king of the Vandals distrusted the valour of his native
subjects, who were enervated by the luxury of the south; he suspected the
fidelity of the vanquished people, who abhorred him as an Arian tyrant;
and the desperate measure which he executed, of reducing Mauretania into
a desert, could not defeat the operations of the Roman emperor, who was
at liberty to land his troops on any part of the African coast.

But Genseric was saved from impending and inevitable ruin by the
treachery of some powerful subjects, envious or apprehensive of their
master’s success. Guided by their secret intelligence, he surprised the
unguarded fleet in the Bay of Cartagena; many of the ships were sunk, or
taken, or burned, and the preparations of three years were destroyed in a
single day. After this event, the behaviour of the two antagonists showed
them superior to their fortune. The Vandal, instead of being elated by
this accidental victory, immediately renewed his solicitations for peace.
The emperor of the West, who was capable of forming great designs and of
supporting heavy disappointments, consented to a treaty, or rather to a
suspension of arms; in the full assurance that before he could restore
his navy he should be supplied with provocations to justify a second
war. Majorian returned to Italy, to prosecute his labours for the public
happiness; and as he was conscious of his own integrity, he might long
remain ignorant of the dark conspiracy which threatened his throne and
his life.

The recent misfortune of Cartagena sullied the glory which had dazzled
the eyes of the multitude. Almost every description of civil and military
officers were exasperated against the reformer, since they all derived
some advantage from the abuses which he endeavoured to suppress; and the
patrician Ricimer impelled the inconstant passions of the barbarians
against a prince whom he esteemed and hated. The virtues of Majorian
could not protect him from the impetuous sedition which broke out in the
camp near Tortona, at the foot of the Alps. He was compelled to abdicate
the imperial purple; five days after his abdication it was reported that
he died of a dysentery,[70] and the humble tomb which covered his remains
was consecrated by the respect and gratitude of succeeding generations.
The private character of Majorian inspired love and respect. Malicious
calumny and satire excited his indignation, or, if he himself were the
object, his contempt; but he protected the freedom of wit, and in the
hours which the emperor gave to the familiar society of his friends he
could indulge his taste for pleasantry, without degrading the majesty of
his rank.[c]


THE BARBARIAN EMPEROR-MAKERS

[Sidenote: [456-461 A.D.]]

The spoliation of Rome by Genseric was only a beginning of sorrows;
for, during the sixteen years that ensued Italy remained at the mercy
of her own paid leader, Count Ricimer, by birth and family alliances a
barbarian, who defeated every attempt to re-establish legal government.
After the fall of Aëtius, Ricimer obtained the command of the Western
forces and the patrician dignity. The career of Ricimer resembled in some
degree those of Stilicho and of Aëtius; for though his delinquencies were
more numerous and of a far deeper dye than theirs, like them he possessed
great military abilities, and like them he had personal interests that
could not be reconciled with those of the “Respublica Romana.”[d] The
prestige which he gained by his services against the Vandal Corsairs
enabled him to make himself virtual master of Empire and emperors for
almost twenty years (456-472). The attack of Avitus upon the Suevi in
Spain offended the Suevian Ricimer; and although it was an imperial duty
which Avitus performed in withstanding the encroachments of the Suevi,
the commander of the Roman troops found the way to his undoing. For the
next ten months Ricimer ruled under the title of patrician, which was
now very much akin to that of tyrant in the Greek sense of the word or
our modern political “boss.” He chose to be maker of emperors rather
than emperor himself and thus initiated a policy which was continued to
the fall of the Empire in the West. The history of these last years is
not that of the shadow emperors who flit across the scene, powerless in
themselves and in their circumstances, but of the great leaders like
Ricimer the Suevic-Goth, Orestes of Pannonia, or Bauto the Frank.

Meantime in the East conditions prevailed that were not altogether
dissimilar. The death of Marcian, after a reign of seven years, left no
hereditary claimant to the Eastern throne.[a] The man of most authority
in the army was the general Aspar (_magister militum per orientem_), an
Alan by descent, who with his father Ardaburius had distinguished himself
thirty-five years before in suppressing the usurper John and helping
Valentinian III to his legitimate succession. Aspar’s position in the
East resembled that of Ricimer in the West. He and his three sons, being
Arians and foreigners, could not hope to sit on the imperial throne; and
thus the only course open to Aspar was to secure the elevation of one
on whose pliancy he might count. He chose Leo, a native of Dacia and an
orthodox Christian, who was steward of his own household. Thus Aspar,
like Ricimer, was a king-maker.

But when Leo assumed the purple (7th February, 457)--on which occasion
the ceremony of coronation by the Patriarch of Constantinople (then
Anatolius) was first introduced--he did not prove as amenable to
influence as Aspar had hoped; on the contrary, he took measures to reduce
the resources of Aspar’s family, which by its close relations with the
army had considerable power, and was the centre of a large faction of
Arians and barbarians. In fact Aspar, though an Alan and not a German,
was the representative of German influence in the Empire, and the
danger which had threatened the Empire in the reign of Arcadius through
the power of Gainas was now repeated. Leo however firmly resisted the
aggressiveness of this influence, and in order to neutralise the great
fact which worked in Aspar’s favour, namely that the bulk and flower
of the army consisted of Germans, he formed the plan of recruiting the
line from native subjects. For this purpose he chose the hardy race of
Isaurian mountaineers, who lived almost like an independent people,
little touched by the influence of Hellenism, in the wild regions of
Mount Taurus. This is Leo’s great original work, for which he deserves
the title “Great,” more than for his orthodoxy, for which he probably
received it. He conceived an idea, whose execution, begun by himself
and carried out by his successor, counteracted that danger of German
preponderance which threatened the State throughout the fifth century.

Aspar appears to have possessed all the characteristics of an untutored
barbarian. Brave and active in war, he was idle and frivolous in peace.
During the reign of Marcian, and doubtless also in the reign of Leo,
while the Empire enjoyed rest, “he betook himself to relaxation and
womanly ease. His pleasures consisted in actors and jugglers and all
stage amusements, and spending his time on these ill-famed occupations
he lost all count of the things that make for glory.” But if he was no
longer active as a warrior, he won repute in the humbler part of an
energetic citizen or a competent policeman, for in the great fire which
laid waste a large part of Constantinople in 465 it is recorded that
Aspar exerted himself unsparingly for the public interest.

Leo had made a promise, apparently at the time of his elevation, to raise
one of Aspar’s sons to the rank of cæsar, and thereby designate him as
his successor, in spite of the fact that he was a barbarian. When he
delayed to perform this promise, Aspar is said to have seized him by his
purple robe and said, “Emperor, it is not meet that he who wears this
robe should speak falsely;” to which Leo replied, “Nor yet is it meet
that he should be constrained and driven like a slave.”[j]

After this extraordinary scene, it was impossible that the reconciliation
of the emperor and the patrician could be sincere; or, at least, that
it could be solid and permanent. An army of Isaurians was secretly
levied and introduced into Constantinople; and while Leo undermined the
authority, and prepared the disgrace of the family of Aspar, his mild and
cautious behaviour restrained them from any rash and desperate attempts,
which might have been fatal to themselves or their enemies. The measures
of peace and war were affected by this internal revolution. As long as
Aspar degraded the majesty of the throne, the secret correspondence of
religion and interest engaged him to favour the cause of Genseric. When
Leo had delivered himself from that ignominious servitude, he listened to
the complaints of the Italians; resolved to extirpate the tyranny of the
Vandals; and declared his alliance with Anthemius.[c]

[Sidenote: [460-467 A.D.]]

Even the genius and energy of Majorian is of no avail against the
dictatorship of Ricimer. But the spell of the imperial dignity was still
strong, and the commander of the army was not long in nominating another
to the purple.[a]

Severus, as the nominee of Ricimer, next wore the purple, and decrees
were registered in his name; but his appointment obtained no confirmation
at Constantinople, and the usurped power of Ricimer himself never
extended beyond the limits of Italy. In Gaul and in Dalmatia, the Roman
governors, Egidius and Marcellinus, continued to hold their respective
provinces in trust for the “sancta res publica,” acknowledging no
emperor but Leo; and Leo nominated both consuls. After four years of
confusion and misery Severus died; and when Ricimer, as patrician, had
exercised for above a year the power of the executive, he appears to
have become satisfied that, without a combined effort in which the naval
resources of the East should be brought to bear, the plague of Vandal
descents could not be stayed. Yielding, it would seem, to necessity, he
concurred with the senate in a request to the emperor Leo that he would
name an emperor of the West (465).

In this attempt to establish closer relations with the East, the senate
appears to have acted in conformity with the original constitution of
the two empires, and at the same time to have adopted a policy that
might under other circumstances have relieved the Roman world from its
besetting danger--namely, that of a military despotism exercised by men
who derived their wealth and importance from Roman sources and yet failed
to entertain any exclusive attachment to Roman interests.

The choice of Leo fell on Anthemius, who some years previously had
served as consul, and whose hereditary influence placed him at the head
of the Eastern magnates.[d] The virtues of Anthemius have perhaps been
magnified, since the imperial descent, which he could only deduce from
the usurper Procopius, has been swelled into a line of emperors. But the
merit of his immediate parents, their honours, and their riches, rendered
Anthemius one of the most illustrious subjects of the East. His father,
Procopius, obtained, after his Persian embassy, the rank of general
and patrician; and the name of Anthemius was derived from his maternal
grandfather, the celebrated prefect, who protected, with so much ability
and success, the infant reign of Theodosius. The grandson of the prefect
was raised above the condition of a private subject, by his marriage with
Euphemia, the daughter of the emperor Marcian.

This splendid alliance, which might supersede the necessity of merit,
hastened the promotion of Anthemius to the successive dignities of
count, of master-general, of consul, and of patrician; and his merit or
fortune claimed the honours of a victory, which was obtained, on the
banks of the Danube, over the Huns. Without indulging an extravagant
ambition, the son-in-law of Marcian might hope to be his successor; but
Anthemius supported the disappointment with courage and patience; and his
subsequent elevation was universally approved by the public, who esteemed
him worthy to reign till he ascended the throne.

The solemn inauguration of Anthemius was followed by the nuptials of
his daughter and the patrician Ricimer; a fortunate event, which was
considered as the firmest security of the union and happiness of the
state. The wealth of two empires was on this occasion most ostentatiously
displayed: and many senators completed their ruin by an expensive effort
to disguise their poverty. All serious business was suspended during the
time of this festival; the courts of justice were shut; the streets of
Rome, the theatres, the places of public and private resort resounded
with hymeneal songs and dances; and the royal bride, clothed in silken
robes, with a crown on her head, was conducted to the palace of Ricimer,
who had changed his military dress for the habit of a consul and a
senator.[c]

The unprecedented task intrusted to the emperor Leo of selecting the man
with whom he was to share the administration and defence of the whole
Roman world, makes it requisite to consider his actual position. Leo had
now attained the eleventh year of his reign, which, from the first, had
been beset with difficulties. Aspar, with his barbarian satellites,
overawed the Eastern senate; and it was only by compliances savouring
of duplicity that the government could be carried on. Leo could do no
more than turn to advantage any opportunity that might arise for the
extension of his influence. When the Huns invaded Thrace, he gained a
battle in which one of Attila’s sons was slain; a success which increased
his influence. By enlisting the services of an Isaurian prince, whose
barbaric name he changed to that of the stoic Zeno, he at length obtained
a counterpoise to Aspar. The Isaurian, though no philosopher and though
in his manners a barbarian, had at his disposal a considerable array of
hardy combatants, whose services Leo secured by accepting their leader
for his son-in-law. The resources of the Eastern Empire were then freely
devoted to an enterprise on the success and failure of which the weal or
woe of Italy depended.

Coins were struck representing the two emperors with joined hands,
and sanguine hopes were once more entertained that, by their combined
efforts, Africa with the command of the Mediterranean would be regained.

[Sidenote: [467-468 A.D.]]

In fitting out an armada of fabulous magnitude, the sum expended by Leo
exceeded £5,000,000 [$25,000,000]. Marcellinus, under whose government
Dalmatia had prospered and who had refused to obey Ricimer, declared
his allegiance to Anthemius, and the successes which his galleys
obtained over those of the Vandals enabled him to liberate the island
of Sardinia from their oppression. About the same time, the prefect
Heraclius landed at Tripolis, reconquered the adjacent settlements,
and commenced his march to co-operate with the main expedition in an
attack on Carthage. Such were the signs of an irresistible superiority
with which the war commenced, and which so far shook the confidence of
Genseric that he protested his willingness to submit to whatever terms
the two emperors might dictate; and there appears to be no doubt that
his apprehensions were shared by his coreligionists, Ricimer and Aspar,
to whom a subversion of the Arian ascendency in Africa would have been
fatal. Fortunately for them, the chief command was given to Basiliscus,
a brother of the empress consort Verina. As Leo had no son, Basiliscus,
if Procopius is to be relied upon, already aspired to the imperial
succession, and was anxious to stand well with Aspar.

The landing took place at a small seaport about forty miles from
Carthage; and while the disembarkation of stores and other impedimenta
was in progress, envoys from Genseric arrived. Basiliscus, whether
yielding to a desire to gratify Aspar, to the allurements of Vandal gold,
or to the suggestions of his own weak judgment, lent a willing ear to
their assurances. They asked and obtained a truce of five days, during
which the terms of submission might be arranged.

The panic, which would have made the reconquest of Carthage an easy
achievement, subsided, and Genseric having time for a careful examination
took note of the crowded order in which the Roman Armada lay at anchor.
His fire-ships, the torpedoes of ancient warfare, were in readiness,
supported by galleys which, however inferior to those of the Romans in
number, were the best manned and the most efficient in existence.

At nightfall the fire-ships were so placed that they drifted on the
very centre of the unsuspecting enemy, the flames spread, and when
the confusion was at its height a bold and well-timed attack did the
rest. The store-ships, on which the army depended for subsistence, were
captured or sunk; and acts of individual heroism on the part of the
Roman commander, of which there were many, were of no avail. A hopeless
resistance was for a while maintained, but the losses were irreparable.

Basiliscus saved himself by an early flight. On arriving at
Constantinople, he took refuge in the church of St. Sophia, until he
obtained a reprieve from capital punishment through the intercession of
his sister. Such was the disastrous ending of the combined effort made
for the recovery of Africa. Its success would have consolidated the power
of the two emperors; by its failure, Ricimer and Aspar were relieved from
their fears, and their arrogance became greater than ever. Leo found it
necessary to pacify Aspar by investing his son Patricius with the dignity
of cæsar, a title which conferred on its bearer a prospective claim to
the throne.

[Sidenote: [468-473 A.D.]]

To Aspar and his family, whose unpopularity was already great, the
acquisition of this dangerous honour brought no advantage, but only an
increase of hostility; for to the orthodox East Romans the idea of an
Arian emperor was insufferable. Owing to the losses incurred during the
late disastrous expedition the forces on which Aspar formerly relied
were no longer at his beck; and, rightly or wrongly, he and his son were
charged with treasonable designs against the government, over which they
had long domineered, and against the life of the emperor.

The circumstances preceding and attending their assassination are
variously and obscurely related; but no plea of state necessity can
relieve the memory of Leo from the stain of participation in the death
of his benefactor. In Italy, the reckless energy of Ricimer led to a
very different result. Having resolved to break up the alliances of the
emperors, he fixed his headquarters at Mediolanum, enlisted forces, while
Anthemius, relying on the cordial support of the senate and the bulk of
the people, remained inactive at Rome.

The Mediolanians, wishing to prevent a civil war, employed Epiphanius,
bishop of Ticinum (Pavia), as negotiator; and from the account given by
Ennodius of the bishop’s embassy, some estimate may be formed of the
difficulties that stood in the way of any attempt on the part of the West
Romans to reconstruct their dilapidated empire.

The pacific exhortations of the bishop resulted in a truce, which
gave time for Ricimer to engage the requisite number of Suevi and
Burgundiones. Having done this he threw off the mask, and making the
death of Aspar his plea, refused to acknowledge either Leo or Anthemius,
proclaimed Olybrius, an enemy of his father-in-law, emperor, and
commenced his march to Rome.

When the Roman governor of Gaul brought an army to support Anthemius, he
was defeated and slain. Rome nevertheless held out bravely until reduced
by famine when, with the exception of a few streets, occupied by his own
adherents, Ricimer condemned it to be sacked. He then added to the list
of emperors whom he had put to death the name of his own father-in-law,
and died the same year (472).[d]

Whilst the vacant throne of Italy was abandoned to lawless barbarians,
the election of a new colleague was seriously agitated in the council of
Leo. The empress Verina, studious to promote the greatness of her own
family, had married one of her nieces to Julius Nepos, who succeeded his
uncle Marcellinus in the sovereignty of Dalmatia, a more solid possession
than the title, which he was persuaded to accept, of emperor of the West.

But the measures of the Byzantine court were so languid and irresolute
that many months elapsed after the death of Anthemius, and even of
Olybrius, before their destined successor could show himself, with
a respectable force, to his Italian subjects. During that interval,
Glycerius, an obscure soldier, was invested with the purple by his patron
Gundobald; but the Burgundionian prince was unable, or unwilling, to
support his nomination by a civil war; the pursuits of domestic ambition
recalled him beyond the Alps, and his client was permitted to exchange
the Roman sceptre for the bishopric of Salona. After extinguishing such
a competitor, the emperor Nepos was acknowledged by the senate, by
the Italians, and by the provincials of Gaul; his moral virtues, and
military talents, were loudly celebrated, and those who derived any
private benefit from his government announced, in prophetic strains, the
restoration of the public felicity. Their hopes (if such hopes had been
entertained) were confounded within the term of a single year; and the
treaty of peace, which ceded Auvergne to the Visigoths, is the only event
of his short and inglorious reign.

[Sidenote: [473-475 A.D.]]

The most faithful subjects of Gaul were sacrificed by the Italian emperor
to the hope of domestic security; but his repose was soon invaded by a
furious sedition of the barbarian confederates, who, under the command of
Orestes, their general, were in full march from Rome to Ravenna. Nepos
trembled at their approach; and, instead of placing a just confidence
in the strength of Ravenna, he hastily escaped to his ships and retired
to his Dalmatian principality, on the opposite coast of the Adriatic.
By this shameful abdication he protracted his life about five years,
in a very ambiguous state between an emperor and an exile, till he was
assassinated at Salona by the ungrateful Glycerius, who was translated,
perhaps as the reward of his crime, to the archbishopric of Milan.

The nations who had asserted their independence after the death of
Attila were established, by the right of possession or conquest, in the
boundless countries to the north of the Danube, or in the Roman provinces
between the river and the Alps. But the bravest of their youth enlisted
in the army of confederates, who formed the defence and the terror
of Italy; and in this promiscuous multitude the names of the Heruli,
the Scyrri, the Alani, the Turcilingi, and the Rugi appear to have
predominated.

The example of these warriors was imitated by Orestes, the son of
Tatullus, and the father of the last Roman emperor of the West. Orestes,
who has been already mentioned in this history, had never deserted his
country. His birth and fortunes rendered him one of the most illustrious
subjects of Pannonia. When that province was ceded to the Huns, he
entered into the service of Attila, his lawful sovereign, obtained
the office of his secretary, and was repeatedly sent ambassador to
Constantinople, to represent the person and signify the commands of
the imperious monarch. The death of that conqueror restored him to his
freedom, and Orestes might honourably refuse either to follow the sons
of Attila into the Scythian desert, or to obey the Ostrogoths, who
had usurped the dominion of Pannonia. He preferred the service of the
Italian princes, the successors of Valentinian; and as he possessed the
qualifications of courage, industry, and experience, he advanced with
rapid steps in the military profession, till he was elevated, by the
favour of Nepos himself, to the dignities of patrician and master-general
of the troops.

These troops had been long accustomed to reverence the character and
authority of Orestes, who affected their manners, conversed with
them in their own language, and was intimately connected with their
national chieftains by long habits of familiarity and friendship.
At his solicitation they rose in arms against the obscure Greek who
presumed to claim their obedience; and when Orestes, from some secret
motive, declined the purple, they consented, with the same facility,
to acknowledge his son Augustulus as the emperor of the West. By the
abdication of Nepos, Orestes had now attained the summit of his ambitious
hopes; but he soon discovered, before the end of the first year, that
the lessons of perjury and ingratitude which a rebel must inculcate
will be retorted against himself; and that the precarious sovereign of
Italy was only permitted to choose whether he would be the slave, or the
victim, of his barbarian mercenaries. The dangerous alliance of these
strangers had oppressed and insulted the last remains of Roman freedom
and dignity. At each revolution, their pay and privileges were augmented;
but their insolence increased in a still more extravagant degree. They
envied the fortune of their brethren in Gaul, Spain, and Africa, whose
victorious arms had acquired an independent and perpetual inheritance;
and they insisted on their peremptory demand that a third part of the
lands of Italy should be immediately divided among them.

[Illustration: ROMAN PINS AND BRACELET]

[Sidenote: [475-476 A.D.]]

Orestes, with a spirit which, in another situation, might be entitled to
our esteem, chose rather to encounter the rage of an armed multitude than
to subscribe the ruin of an innocent people. He rejected the audacious
demand; and his refusal was favourable to the ambition of Odoacer, a
bold barbarian, who assured his fellow-soldiers that, if they dared to
associate under his command, they might soon extort the justice which had
been denied to their dutiful petitions. From all the camps and garrisons
of Italy the confederates, actuated by the same resentment and the same
hopes, impatiently flocked to the standard of this popular leader; and
the unfortunate patrician, overwhelmed by the torrent, hastily retreated
to the strong city of Ticinum, the episcopal seat of the holy Epiphanius.
Ticinum was immediately besieged, the fortifications were stormed, the
town was pillaged; and although the bishop might labour with much zeal
and some success to save the property of the church and the chastity of
female captives, the tumult could only be appeased by the execution of
Orestes. His brother Paul was slain in an action near Ravenna; and the
helpless Augustulus, who could no longer command the respect was reduced
to implore the clemency of Odoacer. That successful barbarian was the son
of Edecon; who, in some remarkable transactions, had been the colleague
of Orestes himself.

The honour of an ambassador should be exempt from suspicion; and Edecon
had listened to a conspiracy against the life of his sovereign. But
this apparent guilt was expiated by his merit or repentance; his rank
was eminent and conspicuous, he enjoyed the favour of Attila; and the
troops under his command, who guarded in their turn the royal village,
consisted of a tribe of Scyrri, his immediate and hereditary subjects. In
the revolt of the nations, they still adhered to the Huns; and more than
twelve years afterwards the name of Edecon is honourably mentioned, in
their unequal contest with the Ostrogoths; which was terminated, after
two bloody battles, by the defeat and dispersion of the Scyrri. Their
gallant leader, who did not survive this national calamity, left two
sons, Onulf and Odoacer, to struggle with adversity, and to maintain as
they might, by rapine or service, the faithful followers of their exile.

Onulf directed his steps towards Constantinople, where he sullied, by the
assassination of a generous benefactor, the fame which he had acquired
in arms. His brother Odoacer led a wandering life among the barbarians
of Noricum, with a mind and a fortune suited to the most desperate
adventures; and when he had fixed his choice, he piously visited the
cell of Severinus, the popular saint of the country, to solicit his
approbation and blessing. The lowness of the door would not admit the
lofty stature of Odoacer. He was obliged to stoop, but in that humble
attitude the saint could discern the symptoms of his future greatness;
and addressing him in a prophetic tone, “Pursue,” said he, “your design;
proceed to Italy; you will soon cast away this coarse garment of skins;
and your wealth will be adequate to the liberality of your mind.” The
barbarian, whose daring spirit accepted and ratified the prediction,
was admitted into the service of the Western Empire, and soon obtained
an honourable rank in the guards. His manners were gradually polished,
his military skill was improved, and the confederates of Italy would not
have elected him for their general unless the exploits of Odoacer had
established a high opinion of his courage and capacity. Their military
acclamations saluted him with the title of king: but he abstained, during
his whole reign, from the use of the purple and diadem, lest he should
offend those princes whose subjects, by their accidental mixture, had
formed the victorious army which time and policy might insensibly unite
into a great nation.

Royalty was familiar to the barbarians, and the submissive people of
Italy was prepared to obey, without a murmur, the authority which he
should condescend to exercise as the vice-gerent of the emperor of the
West. But Odoacer had resolved to abolish that useless and expensive
office; and such is the weight of ancient prejudice that it required
some boldness and penetration to discover the extreme facility of the
enterprise. The unfortunate Augustulus was made the instrument of his
own disgrace; he signified his resignation to the senate; and that
assembly, in their last act of obedience to a Roman prince, still
affected the spirit of freedom and the forms of the constitution. An
epistle was addressed, by their unanimous decree, to the emperor Zeno,
the son-in-law and successor of Leo; who had lately been restored, after
a short rebellion, to the Byzantine throne. They solemnly disclaim the
necessity, or even the wish, of continuing any longer the imperial
succession in Italy; since, in their opinion, the majesty of a sole
monarch is sufficient to pervade and protect, at the same time, both the
East and the West. In their own name, and in the name of the people, they
consent that the seat of universal empire shall be transferred from Rome
to Constantinople; and they basely renounce the right of choosing their
master, the only vestige that yet remained of the authority which had
given laws to the world. The republic--they repeat that name without a
blush--might safely confide in the civil and military virtues of Odoacer;
and they humbly request that the emperor would invest him with the title
of patrician and the administration of the diocese of Italy.

The deputies of the senate were received at Constantinople with some
marks of displeasure and indignation; and when they were admitted to the
audience of Zeno, he sternly reproached them with their treatment of the
two emperors, Anthemius and Nepos, whom the East had successively granted
to the prayers of Italy. “The first,” continued he, “you have murdered,
the second you have expelled; but the second is still alive, and whilst
he lives he is your lawful sovereign.” But the prudent Zeno soon deserted
the hopeless cause of his abdicated colleague. His vanity was gratified
by the title of sole emperor, and by the statues erected to his honour
in the several quarters of Rome; he entertained a friendly, though
ambiguous, correspondence with the patrician Odoacer; and he gratefully
accepted the imperial ensigns, the sacred ornaments of the throne and
palace, which the barbarian was not unwilling to remove from the sight of
the people.

In the space of twenty years since the death of Valentinian nine
emperors had successively disappeared; and the son of Orestes, a youth
recommended only by his beauty, would be the least entitled to the notice
of posterity if his reign, which was marked by the extinction of the
Roman Empire in the West, did not leave a memorable era in the history
of mankind. The patrician Orestes had married the daughter of Count
Romulus, of Petovio in Noricum. The name of Augustus, notwithstanding the
jealousy of power, was known at Aquileia as a familiar surname; and the
appellations of the two great founders of the city and of the monarchy
were thus strangely united in the last of their successors. The son of
Orestes assumed and disgraced the names of Romulus Augustus; but the
first was corrupted into Momylus by the Greeks, and the second has been
changed by the Latins into the contemptible diminutive Augustulus. The
life of this inoffensive youth was spared by the generous clemency of
Odoacer, who fixed his annual allowance at six thousand pieces of gold,
and assigned the castle of Lucullus, in Campania, for the place of his
exile or retirement.[c]


A REVIEW OF THE BARBARIAN ADVANCE

[Sidenote: [150-268 A.D.]]

There were two ways to Europe for the Indo-Germanic tribes,--south and
north of the Black Sea. First the Hellenic and Italic tribes came over
the sea and settled in the two countries lying near them and connected
by islands, which form the southeastern limits of one continent--Greece
and Italy.[71] The peoples in these beautiful countries quickly attained
to a wonderful state of civilisation, isolated for more than a thousand
years from northern Europe. This was the period of classical antiquity
which, for its art and literature, its statecraft and military system,
unrivalled almost up to the present day, has become the best school of
later mankind.

The second way from Asia to Europe lay north of the Pontus, and was far
longer and more fraught with weariness and danger than the first; thus it
was all the more adapted to the strengthening both of body and spirit.
At the northwest corner of the Black Sea it divided into a south and a
north road. Along the former, by the Danube between the Alps and the
Carpathians, the Celts migrated; later, along the second, north of the
Carpathians, the Germanic tribes entered western Europe, and were soon
followed by the Slavonic. Rome was already at the height of its empire
over the world when the first conflict took place between the Romans and
the Germanic tribes. The contact of the two races was of course that of
a rude primitive people with the members of a civilised state. Rome at
first tried the system of gradual repulse by the attack and subjection of
the Germans. When this policy was defeated by the battle fought by Varus,
she adopted the system of frontier protection, which lasted nearly two
centuries.

But the destinies of the future were being prepared in another way. The
remarkable aptitude for civilisation of the Germanic races made them
early recognise the value of that of Rome. Young nobles were educated in
the capital of the empire and trained in the army; the actual commercial
interests, the servitude of the one race in the countries of the other,
brought about a mutual relation whose most powerful lever was the Roman
military service, which thousands of Germans joined, satisfying in that
way their thirst for war and glory as well as their desire for monetary
gains.

Thus Rome itself trained the officers and military leaders of its
subsequent foes and final destroyers, from whom it had already seriously
suffered in the revolt of Civilis. The first act of the “barbarian
advance” opened with the war which we call the Marcomannic.

Towards the beginning of the last half of the second century the tribes
living between the Pregel, Vistula, and Baltic--now East and West
Prussia--left their unfavoured home to seek a better one in the proximity
of the Roman frontiers. It was the great Gothic family which made this
first migration, in which it carried along with it other allied races, as
the Vandals and Burgundiones. The mass separated; the chief tribe, the
Goths, went towards the Black Sea between the Don and the Dnieper, where
they only arrived after a long time on account of the long distance and
of the necessity of fighting their way.

The secondary tribes went up the Vistula through the Carpathians to the
Danube. Beyond this stream, in the year 165, one of the unceasing wars
between the Marcomanni and the Romans was in progress. The pressure of
the new rovers from the north gave fresh weight and importance to the
pressure of the Danubian Germans. The Marcomannic War lasted nearly
fifteen years; its course was terrible, and similar to that of the Punic
War.

Marcus Aurelius, however, was greater than the danger; he became its
master. Not a foot of Roman territory was lost; on the contrary, many
thousand homeless Germans settled in the empire as new brave subjects.
There was now for half a century an apparent cessation of the process of
destruction, but only of its external manifestations, not of the internal
efforts and preparations towards this end. The Roman tithe province (agri
decumates) between the Rhine and the Danube, unprotected by any natural
boundaries, was the first field of Germanic occupation. At what date the
chief mass of Vandals and Burgundiones, together with the Lygii, migrated
from their settlements between the Oder and the Vistula to the Roman
frontiers, we have no knowledge. We first encounter them under Probus in
the year 277, acting in the rear of the older frontier tribes as their
allies.

For over half a century, from 211 to 268, Rome had no great emperor;
indeed, with the exception of Maximinus, 235-238, not even a warrior. He,
however, was a rude barbarian who knew only how to fight and to conquer,
not how to organise. Then began the period of decline, in which one
emperor, Decius, fell upon the battle-field, and another, Valerian, was
carried into lifelong captivity. Simultaneously there rose up in the East
(about the year 226) a new and terrible foe, the powerful Sapor, one of
the Persian Sassanidæ, by whom the rule of the Parthians was overthrown,
and who was burning to become a second Cyrus. Under Gallienus, Valerian’s
son, 260-268, the misery of Rome reached its height. In expeditions of
hitherto unheard-of magnitude, the Goths during ten years overran Asia
Minor and Greece to Macedonia; the noblest and finest towns of antiquity
fell in flames.

[Sidenote: [268-367 A.D.]]

But the greatest evil of all, at least in the West, was the civil war.
Nineteen tyrants, usurpers, rose against the ruler; amongst whom,
however, two, Odenathus and his wife Zenobia, victoriously defended the
empire against the Persians. For fifteen years the West languished under
tyrants, of whom the first, Postumus, was certainly more powerful than
the rightful emperor.

There was no longer any talk of repulsing the foreign foe; the fact that
a great number of Germans were in both armies fighting for and against
each other was only a diminution of the danger. Further districts of
Gaul were being constantly annexed and won back from the barbarians, and
a small host of Franks pressed fighting into Spain, and after twelve
years lost itself in Africa. Not only the beginning of the end, but the
end itself seemed to have set in, when Rome was again saved and raised
almost to its former glory by a series of brave and great emperors. But
the true saviour of the empire was Diocletian (285-305), the wisest if
not the bravest of these. By his state reforms he built up the empire on
a new foundation, suitable to the needs of his time. His predecessors
had rendered harmless the most dangerous foes of the empire, the
Goths--Claudius by his glorious victory at Naissus, and Aurelian by the
cession of the large province of Dacia.

[Illustration: A BARBARIAN]

The new Probus, however, had so completely vanquished the peoples of the
West with their allies, Vandals, Burgundiones, and Lygii, that he was
able to announce to the senate: “The whole of Germania, as far as it
reaches, is subdued. Nine kings of different peoples lie at your feet.”
In the next two years, however, the conquered people uprose once more,
and the old state of affairs seemed to be returning, when Diocletian in
the year 285 brought permanent succour.

The division of the imperial government among those brave and able men
whom he appointed “cæsars” checked the German peril. His successor
and the completer of his work, Constantine the Great, brought (at all
events to the eastern portion of the empire) fresh life and more than
a thousand years’ duration, by establishing his own place of residence
at Constantinople. But once again, under the reign of Constantius, weak
son of a great father, the lust of war and plunder was awakened in the
barbarians of the West by the rise of a new tyrant in Gaul, and the civil
war resulting therefrom. Already the Rhenish strongholds, amongst them
Colonia Agrippina (Cologne), were in their hands when a new preserver,
the youthful Julian, came upon the scene.

He, like Cæsar, knew how to fight and conquer. The Salian Franks, who had
usurped the country between the Schelde and the Maas, Toxandria, were
taken as subjects; the Ripuarians, even the Saxon Chauci, were forced to
a submissive peace, and the Alamanni compelled, after four campaigns, to
the condition of tributaries.

[Sidenote: [367-476 A.D.]]

Valentinian I continued Julian’s work with an iron hand and will. During
this interlude of more than a century in the migration of the tribes the
victory of Christendom was effected in Rome, and also its entry amongst
the Germanic peoples in the form of Arianism, The Germans received a
fresh impetus by the incursions of the Huns, which extended from the
Crimean wall to the Loire. The western Goths, who were already in a state
of transition from barbarism to civilisation, fled before these Mongols
to the Romans. Tricked by imperial officers, wronged and deceived, they
seized upon the sword; the decisive battle at Hadrianopolis, in which the
emperor Valens fell, made them lords of the European provinces of the
Eastern Empire. The joint empire was once more saved by Theodosius, the
last of the great emperors, who contrived to appease the Goths. But when
in 395 the last and permanent division of the empire took place under
Arcadius and Honorius, the two weak sons of Theodosius, who were still
in their boyhood, the danger to western Rome flared up again, even more
terrible than before.

For nearly eight hundred years the capital of the world had seen no
conqueror within its walls. Alaric the Visigoth, a fearless warrior,
became after the emperor had caused his best commander Stilicho to be put
to death the first successor of the Gallic Brennus.

But the twofold occupation of Rome by Alaric was of no more importance
as an epoch in the barbarian invasion than was the later occupation by
Genseric in the year 455. Alaric did not wish to destroy the empire,
only to rule over his people in and with it; the Vandal wished for
nothing but plunder. From the passage of the Rhine by the Vandals
and Suevi, at the beginning of the year 406, to the incursion of the
Visigoths into Gaul in 412, was a far more important period in the
barbaric advance. In the year 409 the first went across the Pyrenees,
and in 411 permanently established themselves in Spain. In the year 413
the Burgundiones took possession of the country now bearing their name;
in the year 419 southwestern Gaul was at last formally ceded to the
Visigoths by the emperor Honorius. This people acknowledged a certain,
though only nominal, supremacy on the part of Rome. Rome, through its
last great commander Aëtius, brought into subjection the whole of the
rest of Gaul and the greater part of Spain. Far worse, however, was the
loss it suffered at the hands of the most terrible of all the Germanic
conquerors, Genseric the king of the Vandals; who in the year 427
deprived it of the distant and rich Africa, its granary, as well as of
the islands of the Mediterranean, and founded a piratical state which
became for him the source of enormous wealth during half a century,
but for Italy and other countries of the coast one of indescribable
devastations.

One hundred and seven years had the Vandal empire stood when, after the
Germans had become greatly degenerated, it was overthrown with ease
in the year 534 by Justinian’s general, Belisarius. Only indirectly,
as lever and impelling force, had the incursions of the Huns from 375
onwards influenced the tribal migrations, particularly the entrance of
the Germans into Gaul, Spain, and Africa.

It would seem as though the terrible Attila, that mighty scourge of God,
had determined to complete the work of destruction. But Attila’s empire
was built up on his personality; with his death it fell to pieces.

Therefore his campaigns of the years 451 and 452 in Gaul and Italy--with
the battle at Châlons, so famous in the world’s history--were only
a remarkable interlude in the great drama of race migration, and of
no decisive import in its real progress. After Attila’s death, when
Valentinian III had himself deprived the empire of its last support by
the murder of Aëtius in 454, the decline of the Western Roman Empire set
in, and continued during the next twenty years.

Not external pressure, whose severest shock had been happily averted, but
the inward germ of death, the growing power of the barbarians within
the empire itself, brought this occurrence, so important in the world’s
history, to maturity. For centuries the Roman army had consisted for
the most part of foreigners, chiefly Germans. With the need the number
increased, and at the same time their self-confidence and pretensions,
and consequently the hatred of the barbarians on the part of the Romans.
So long as the son and grandson of Theodosius reigned, the great
generals, by the habit of obedience and the magic of legitimate rights,
masked the inner dissensions and the weakness of the empire. But when
Nemesis had avenged the death of Aëtius on Valentinian III by his own
death in a similar manner, the internal corruption of the state revealed
itself under the growing pressure from without.

A bold adventurer of Suevian descent, the patrician Ricimer, acquired
as leader of the foreign troops the highest power in the state, and for
nineteen years raised emperors and overturned them at his pleasure.
Within twenty-one years nine ascended the throne. Even the ablest,
and the one among them of eminent talents, Majorian, succumbed to
the stealthy cunning and superior military strength of the barbarian
mercenaries. Their pretensions rose higher until they demanded a third of
the territories of Italy; and in Odoacer, an officer of the bodyguard,
they found the man who procured them their desire after he had forced the
abdication, in 476, of the last emperor of Rome, an immature youth who
bore the proud names of Romulus and Augustulus.

[Sidenote: [476-568 A.D.]]

Until the year 480 the emperor Nepos, driven from Italy, reigned in
Dalmatia; Odoacer accepted from Zeno, the emperor of the East, the title
of administrator, and reigned over Italy according to the old forms.

So at least in appearance. In reality it was a Germanic kingdom which was
raised on the foundation of the Eternal City which had ruled the world
for seven centuries. We now therefore consider the year 476 as that of
the fall of Western Rome, which up till then had stood for 109 years,
with short interruptions, as a separate empire, in fact, at all events,
if not in public recognition. With its fall, and Odoacer’s elevation, the
great work of expansion, distinction, and building up anew, which we call
the migration of races, was completed. Now the ground was clear for the
German colonisation on Roman territory, already in progress at various
points since the year 411.

Suevi, Vandals and Alans, Burgundiones and Visigoths, had founded new
kingdoms in Spain, Gaul, and Africa, some transitional, some of more
permanent duration, whose origin and progress were closely bound up with
the history of Western Rome. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire,
the most powerful of all the German tribes arose, the Franks under
Childeric’s son Clovis, who in the year 486 destroyed the last remnant of
Roman supremacy in western Europe--that of Syagrius over a great part of
northern Gaul--by the battle of Soissons. This outer limb, as far as it
had any connection with the main body, belonged to the empire of Eastern
Rome.

Ostrogoths and Langobardi (Lombards) took part in the destruction of
Western Rome only in the second and third periods, not the first, which
was in so far an advantage that they drove out again their former
conquerors and possessors from the heart of the empire.

The moment of settlement for them came when, leaving their former
country, they prepared for colonisation on Roman territory--that is, for
the conquest of Italy; this was for the Ostrogoths in the year 488, for
the Lombards in 568.[e] [For it was in April of the latter year that the
Lombards, under Alboin, entered Italy. Fifteen years before Narses had
dealt a death blow to the Ostrogothic kingdom, and Italy once more became
a part of the Roman Empire. But now the exarch was left but a small
district to rule over and the peninsula passed forever from undivided
Roman rule.]


A FULFILLED AUGURY

[Sidenote: [476 A.D.]]

It is not to be imagined that the fall of the Roman Empire in the West
created so much stir among contemporaries as it has since done in
history. A century of constant reverse had led up to it. It was predicted
by religion, foreseen by politicians, and expected, as one might say, at
a fixed date.

An inexplicable fatality hovered over Rome from its cradle. It cannot
be denied that the failure of the town of Romulus, or the decline of
its power at the end of twelve centuries, was predicted almost from its
birth. The story of the portent of the twelve vultures appearing to
its founder on the Mount Palatine, embodied this instinctive belief,
fortified by all the authority of augural science. The Tuscan soothsayers
had, in effect, declared the twelve vultures to signify twelve centuries
of power, after which the fate of Rome would be consummated.

This political faith, already strong in the brightest days of the
republican epoch, was transmitted from generation to generation, proudly
when the end was far distant; fearfully, as it drew near. Even as the
historic date of the foundation was disputed, so there was disagreement
as to its end. The soothsayers all calculated in their own way as they
themselves understood it, but all expected it.

According to the most generally received chronology, Rome had passed the
middle of the eleventh century when Alaric took and burned it. One might
almost think the augury accomplished--allowing for a difference of a few
years. After the departure of the Goths, hope revived and calculation
recommenced. After the second sack of Rome by Genseric, in the twelve
hundred and seventh year from its foundation (455 A.D.) the fatal and
definite hour was declared to have arrived. “The twelfth vulture has
finished his flight. Now, O Rome, thou knowest thy destiny,” wrote
Sidonius Apollinaris, a firm Christian, but imbued, like every Roman
subject, with the superstitious traditions of the city of the Seven
Hills. Thenceforward began the real death throes of the empire, as it
passed to barbarian masters--from Ricimer to Gundobald, from Gundobald
to Odoacer, ever growing weaker, more despised, more crushed. When names
were heard, long strange to the nomenclature of the Cæsars--names such
as Julius and Augustus, coming from the grave of history like so many
spectres announcing the last day, and that of Romulus expiring in a
child--public consternation knew no bounds. These fortuitous combinations
presented in their fantastic aspect something of the supernatural, and
troubled the strongest minds. Men bowed their heads and were silent.

The obsequies of Rome were carried out in mournful silence. We find
in contemporary historians no accent either of regret or joy, no
declamations either in prose or verse; just a few dates and a bare record
of facts, that is all. It might almost be believed that nothing of
importance took place in the year 476. Jordanes alone, a little later,
sounds his barbarian trumpet over the grave of the empire, but only to
celebrate the coming of the Goths.


BREYSIG’S OBSERVATIONS ON THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST

It is of the death of a great nation that we have here to speak. For it
is not the physical, nor the spiritual, nor certainly a merely formal
political continuance--like that of Byzantium--which determines the
historical existence of the nations, but a political independence
at once material and powerful, and containing the essentials of
civilisation. And if we inquire once again into the reason of such a
death of nations, in the end we shall not venture to assign as a cause
some form of political or social organisation; some condition of sexual
morality; the invasion of Christianity (as Nietzsche thought), and still
less the cessation of mechanical inventions, as the folly of some natural
philosophers dabbling in history, has assumed: but solely the waning of
the nation’s vigour. We shall be compelled to consider not a few of the
political, social, moral, and intellectual phenomena towards the end of
the period as symptoms of this decay, as, for example, the degeneration
of Cæsarism and its hierarchy of officials, the social reaction of the
romancists of guilds and castes, the extravagant luxury, the complete
torpor of economical activity, and still more the decay of intellectual
life. But all these cannot have been the causes, but only tokens and
effects of the same disease of the innermost core.

But who shall say to what last final causes are to be referred the
rotting and crumbling of this nation which in the days of the flower of
its youth and manhood seemed to be possessed of eternal vigour. The Roman
nation was certainly not as short-lived as the Greek. If we measure the
periods of their development, one against the other, which is the only
possible form of comparison, we shall find that from the beginning of
their later middle age down to the loss of their political independence,
the Greeks are granted not quite half and the Romans almost the whole
of a millennium of autonomous history. Perhaps the compact and more
continental conformation of the Italian peninsula essentially contributed
to this duration; the connecting links between the two facts of the great
longevity of the Roman people and the broad surface and less broken
outline of their country might be represented by their far less rapid
economical and especially commercial development, and their much more
phlegmatic intellectual growth, and, in the sphere of politics, by the
far wider extent of the domains of the state, which consequently afforded
a much firmer base.

But, indeed, if it is permissible to enlarge further upon these
anthropogeographical conjectures, the sea was not here able to exercise
its animating, but also agitating and therefore strength-consuming
effects to the same extent as in Hellas, although it may nevertheless
have exercised sufficient influence. The fact that on the soil of Greece
there flourished an extraordinary wealth of intellectual growth and an
over-refined political civilisation, is just as explicable as that Italy
produced such a tardy, intellectual, and at the same time such a powerful
and yet carefully planned political, organisation. Italy was, to speak
in entirely hypothetical language, narrow and washed by the sea,--but
it was also sunny, and yet not too much split up into small sections
to allow of its bringing forth political institutions which were not
only sound but also really permeated with intellectual thought, and to
permit it to produce its art of government and its law. In other words,
this peninsula everywhere offered so wide a surface that it was able to
produce a state more extensive, stronger, more full of life, and, above
all, less threatened by natural separation of interests. But it was not
so continental as to permit of the formation of a despotically governed
state, stretching over a wide plain as in the vast countries of the East.
The sea had been able to exercise its invigorating effects in so far
that Italy attained a form of government, strong indeed, but also free.
And if no such finely organised intellectual culture was assigned to it,
at least its political institutions were intellectually elaborated to a
singular degree. For in all essentials they were as much the peculiar
product of her otherwise less remarkable intellectual culture as of her
political civilisation.

On the other hand Italy shares equally with Greece a life-giving but also
life-shortening effect of her geographical position: a mild climate.
Perhaps its effects in accelerating her bloom but also her decay have
been here somewhat arrested by other territorial conditions, yet perhaps
they too finally succeeded in making their influence felt. Else why
have Germans and Slavs, that is to say the only civilised peoples of
the north alone on the globe maintained themselves so much longer in
their strength, and why have they, and perhaps they only, still to-day
a prospect of millenniums of an equally robust life of political and
intellectual activity?[h]


FOOTNOTES

[69] [“The charges made by Gibbon … rest on no solid basis of evidence;
… except for a vague and feebly supported charge of ‘luxury,’ the moral
character of Avitus is without a stain.” Hodgkin.[g]]

[70] [The manner in which Majorian met his death is in dispute. While
Gibbon[c] gives credence to the report that he died from dysentery,
Samuel Dill,[i] who speaks of Majorian as “that great soldier and
far-sighted statesman,” says: “Majorian, the ‘young Marcellus’ of the
last years of the Western Empire, with all his old Roman spirit and
statesmanlike insight, failed in his mission and was treacherously slain
by Ricimer.” J. B. Bury,[j] expressing the same view, says “that Majorian
returned from Spain to Gaul, and after a sojourn in Arles passed into
Italy, without an army. At Tortona the officers of Count Ricimer, who had
judged him unworthy of empire, seized him, stripped him of the imperial
purple, and beheaded him (7th August, 461).” Niebuhr,[k] on the other
hand, tells us that “when Majorian returned, a conspiracy was formed
against him at the instigation of Ricimer; he was compelled to abdicate,
and died a few days afterwards.”]

[71] [There is great uncertainty as to these prehistoric migrations.]

[Illustration: ROMAN BRACELET

(In the British Museum)]




[Illustration]




APPENDIX A. HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF SOME LESSER NATIONS OF ASIA MINOR


Our studies of Roman history have brought us into incidental contact with
several nations of Asia Minor that from time to time have held friendly
or hostile relations with the Romans. The two most important of these,
the Parthians and the Sassanids, who successfully disputed the mastery of
the Orient with the Romans, will be given fuller individual treatment in
a later volume. But the lesser kingdoms of Pergamus, Bithynia, Pontus,
and Cappadocia, each of which had a somewhat picturesque and interesting
history when taken by itself, were hardly of sufficient importance from
a world-historical standpoint to be given individual treatment in our
text. It will be of interest, however, and will aid the reader in gaining
a clear idea of the opponents of Rome, and of the true relations of the
Roman Empire to the eastern peoples, if a brief outline of the history
of each of these nations is introduced. Such a chronological epitome of
their history is given here.


THE KINGDOM OF PERGAMUS (283-133 B.C.)

  B.C.

  283 =Philetærus=, governor of the Greek fortress of Pergamus,
      in Mysia, revolts and founds a small principality. Owing to
      the troubles incident to the Gallic invasion of Greece and
      Asia Minor, he is not disturbed.

  263 His nephew, =Eumenes I=, succeeds. His power increases, and
      he defeats the Seleucidæ in a battle.

  241 =Attalus I= succeeds. He achieves a decisive victory over
      the Gauls, and makes friends with Rome. Pergamus becomes a
      great art centre.

  197 =Eumenes II= succeeds. Height of splendour of the kingdom,
      which now covers the greater part of western Asia Minor.
      Eumenes becomes the ally of Rome in her wars against the
      Persians and Syrians. Building of the temple of Zeus Soter
      to commemorate the great victory over the Gauls.

  159 =Attalus (II) Philadelphus=, his brother, succeeds.

  138 =Attalus (III) Philometor=, son of Eumenes II, succeeds.

  133 Death of Attalus III, who bequeaths his kingdom to the
      Romans. They form it into the province of Asia.


THE KINGDOM OF BITHYNIA (278-74 B.C.)

  278 =Nicomedes I= assumes title of king, and maintains himself
      on the throne in spite of civil discord and threatened invasion
      by Antiochus I. He allies himself with the Gauls, who have
      invaded Asia Minor.

  250 His son, =Zielas=, succeeds after asserting his rights
      against his half-brother.

  228 His son, =Prusias I=, succeeds.

  220 Prusias at war with the Byzantines in conjunction with the
      Romans.

  216 Prusias defeats a Gallic army invited into Asia by Attalus.

  207 Prusias assists Philip of Macedon in war with Romans, and
      invades Pergamus.

  188 Prusias at war with Eumenes II of Pergamus. Hannibal lends
      him assistance.

  180 =Prusias II= succeeds his father.

  156 War with Pergamus. Defeat of Attalus II.

  154 Peace with Pergamus.

  149 Prusias slain in a revolt in favour of his son =Nicomedes
      II=, who succeeds.

  131 Nicomedes assists the Romans in their war against Aristonicus.

  102 He unites with Mithridates VI of Pontus in the conquest of
      the vacant throne of Paphlagonia.

   96 Nicomedes marries Laodice, widow of Ariarathes VI of
      Cappadocia, and attempts to seize the kingdom. Rome compels him
      to abandon it. The senate also deprives him of Paphlagonia.

   91 =Nicomedes III= succeeds his father.

   90 Mithridates VI of Pontus drives Nicomedes from his throne.

   84 He is restored by Rome.

   74 Death of Nicomedes. He bequeaths his kingdom to Rome and it
      becomes a province.


THE KINGDOM OF PONTUS (337 B.C.-63 A.D.)

      The dynasty of Pontine kings is reckoned from Ariobarzanes
      I, about the beginning of the fourth century B.C. But
      both he and his son Mithridates I, and grandson, Ariobarzanes
      II, are Persian satraps, and it is not until
  337 that Mithridates II, son of the last satrap, makes
      himself independent. His rule is not uninterrupted.

  318 About this time, Antigonus I forms a plan to kill him,
      and he flees to Paphlagonia, and afterwards supports Eumenes
      against Antigonus. He then recovers his throne and fixes
      himself firmly on it.

  302 =Mithridates III= succeeds his father. He adds part of
      Cappadocia and Paphlagonia to his dominions. He allies himself
      with the Heracleans, and obtains help of the Gauls to overthrow
      a force sent against him by Ptolemy, king of Egypt.

  266 =Ariobarzanes III= succeeds his father.

  240 =Mithridates IV= succeeds his father. He repels the Gauls
      shortly after his accession.

  220 Unsuccessful attempt to capture Sinope.

  190 =Pharnaces I= succeeds his father.

  183 Capture of Sinope. The frontiers of Pontus are extended to
      Bithynia.

  181 Pharnaces attacks Eumenes of Pergamus and Ariarathes of
      Cappadocia.

  179 Pharnaces purchases peace, ceding all his possessions in
      Galatia and Paphlagonia, excepting Sinope.

  156 =Mithridates (V) Euergetes= succeeds his father.

  154 He assists Attalus II of Pergamus against Prusias II of
      Bithynia.

  149-146 During the Third Punic War, Mithridates makes alliance
      with Rome, supplying ships and men.

  131-129 Mithridates aids Rome against Aristonicus, for which he
      receives Phrygia.

  120 Assassination of Mithridates at Sinope. Succeeded by his
      son =Mithridates (VI) Eupator, the Great=. The Romans take
      Phrygia from him. In the early years of his reign he subdues
      many warlike tribes, and incorporates the kingdom of Bosporus
      in his dominions. He attempts to gain control of Cappadocia,
      and drives Nicomedes III of Bithynia from his throne.

   88 War breaks out with Rome on account of the Bithynian succession.
      Mithridates overruns Asia Minor, massacring Roman citizens.

   84 Mithridates makes peace with Sulla.

   83 Murena invades Pontus without reason and is defeated the
      following year.

   74 War with Rome renewed.

   72 Mithridates flees to Armenia, taking refuge with his
      son-in-law, Tigranes.

   65 Total defeat of Mithridates by Pompey.

   63 Revolt of the troops. It is put down, but Mithridates orders
      a Gallic mercenary to kill him. His son, =Pharnaces II=, who
      has been in revolt, succeeds him. He submits to Pompey, who
      grants him the kingdom of the Bosporus.

   47 Death of Pharnaces in putting down the rebellion of Asander,
      governor of Bosporus.

   36 Antony puts =Polemon I=, son-in-law of Pharnaces, over a
      part of Pontus known as Pontus Polemoniacus. He is succeeded
      about 2 B.C. by his son =Polemon II=, whose mother is nominal
      ruler until 39 A.D., when Caligula invests Polemon with the
      kingdom.

   63 Polemon abdicates the throne and Pontus becomes a Roman
      province.


THE KINGDOM OF CAPPADOCIA (_c._ 333 B.C.-17 A.D.)

      The Cappadocian dynasty dates back to the time of Alexander
      the Great, when =Ariarathes I= maintains himself on the throne
      after the fall of the Persian monarchy.

  322 Ariarathes captured by Perdiccas and crucified.

  315 =Ariarathes II=, his nephew, recovers Cappadocia at death
      of Eumenes. He is succeeded by his son, =Ariamnes II=, and he
      in turn by =Ariarathes III= (date unknown).

  220 =Ariarathes IV= succeeds his father. He joins Antiochus the
      Great against the Romans, and afterwards assists Rome against
      Perseus of Macedon.

  163 =Mithridates=, afterwards called =Ariarathes V=, succeeds
      his father.

  158 Ariarathes deprived of his kingdom by Orophernes (Olophernes),
      a creature of Demetrius Soter, but is restored by the Romans.

  154 Ariarathes assists Attalus II in his war against Prusias II.

  130 Death of Ariarathes in war of the Romans against Aristonicus.
      His wife =Laodice= kills all her children except the youngest,
      in order that she may rule. The people put her to death and
      place her surviving child, =Ariarathes VI=, on the throne.

   96 Ariarathes poisoned at instigation of Mithridates the Great
      of Pontus, whose daughter he has married. Nicomedes II of
      Bithynia seizes Cappadocia, but Mithridates soon expels him and
      places =Ariarathes VII=, son of Ariarathes VI, on the throne.
      This prince goes to war with and defeats Nicomedes.

   93 He quarrels with Mithridates, who stabs him during an
      interview. The Cappadocians recall the late king’s brother,
      =Ariarathes VIII=, from exile and make him king. Mithridates
      compels him to abandon his kingdom. The Romans now intervene
      and appoint =Ariobarzanes I= king. He is several times expelled
      by Mithridates and Tigranes of Armenia, but always recovers his
      throne.

   63 Ariobarzanes resigns Cappadocia to his son =Ariobarzanes
      II=. He remains, like his father, the true ally of Rome and is
   42 put to death for refusing to join Brutus and Cassius.
      (Some writers say this was an Ariobarzanes III, who succeeded
      Ariobarzanes II about 52.) =Ariarathes IX=, brother of
      Ariobarzanes II, succeeds.

   36 Antony puts him to death, and appoints =Archelaus= king.
      Although an ally of Antony, Octavian leaves him in possession
      of the kingdom and even adds to it.

   14 Tiberius summons Archelaus to Rome.

   17 Death of Archelaus. Cappadocia becomes a Roman province.




[Illustration]




APPENDIX B. THE ROMAN STATE AND THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH

WRITTEN SPECIALLY FOR THE PRESENT WORK

BY DR. ADOLPH HARNACK

Professor in the University of Berlin; Member of the Imperial Academy of
Sciences.


During the period between the reign of Diocletian and the fall of the
Western Roman Empire, were laid the foundations of the history of the
Middle Ages; and of these the most important was the recognition of the
Christian church by the state and the privileged position thus accorded
to it. This union of state and church involved an amalgamation of their
intellectual forces, their rights and powers, and also to a certain
extent of their system of government. There arose a type of culture and
literature which was profane and Christian at one and the same time, a
Roman-Christian system of law, and an established church. An alliance was
made which would have passed for impossible down to the middle of the
third century. Had Tertullian been told that a time was coming when the
emperors would be Christians he would have stigmatised the prophecy as
impious; had any man proclaimed to Decius that in his persecuting edict
he was fighting against the future pillars of the state, he would have
flouted the suggestion as absurd. Even as late as the third century the
state and church seemed to be irreconcilable antagonists.

And yet Constantine’s resolution to recognise the church and grant her
privileges has a long and well-marked preliminary history--and that
in the case of both parties, state and church alike. If we study this
preliminary history, Constantine’s act appears in the light of the close
of a historic process of development which could not have ended otherwise
than it did. Constantine’s greatness is not impaired by this fact; he
realised and accomplished the one thing needful, and no statesman can do
more.

In the following pages we shall attempt to sketch this preliminary
history of the alliance between state and church. More than a mere
sketch, in which headings take the place of detailed statements, is out
of the question, since detailed statements would involve voluminous
treatment of the subject; but anyone familiar with the historical facts
will be able easily to fill in the brief outline. Our principal task will
be to show how the line of development in the Christian church during
the first three centuries tended towards conformity with the state; and
in conclusion we shall point out in a few brief touches how the state on
its part, as it developed, drew towards the church.


I

The Christians of the first century felt themselves aliens in the
world, and consequently in the state likewise. They had put faith in
a supernatural message which told them that they were citizens of a
heavenly kingdom, that this world would shortly come to an end, and the
new kingdom, the visible reign of God upon earth, begin. What further
interest could they take in things temporal or in the state? Yet the
state was not a mere matter of indifference to them. Since it protected
idolaters and enforced the worship of idols, it was obviously under
the influence of demons; and, being the strongest prop of polytheism,
was manifestly the chief seat of the devil. The whole world “lieth in
wickedness,” and the state no less. Between church and state, between
Christ and Belial, there could be no fellowship. Such, for example, is
the spirit in which John wrote his _Revelation_.

But from the very beginning this simple and confident view was traversed
in the minds of many Christians by other views which seemed no less
certain: such as (1) this same state, with the emperor at its head,
punishes evil-doers and checks injustice in countless instances; (2) this
same state not unfrequently protects Christians, the friends of God,
against outbreaks of savage hatred on the part of the godless people of
the Jews: (3) by the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple this same
state has accomplished the judgment pronounced upon the Jewish nation
by the prophets and Christ, and wreaked vengeance upon it for Christ’s
death; (4) Jesus and his Apostles did not permit men to revolt against
the state, but rather commanded them to obey it and to submit willingly
to the punishment it imposed: nay, the Apostles actually commanded that
men should pray for the emperor and the magistrates by him appointed.

The early Christians thus occupied an anomalous position towards the
state: they judged it to be the chief seat of demons on the one hand,
and on the other “the minister of God”; they abhorred it and prayed for
it; they besought God that “this world might pass away” and prayed for
the continuance of the emperor’s sovereignty. It was as though they had
been commanded to adopt different views alternately. They must also have
watched with varying feelings the extension of the empire over the “whole
world.” When they saw, after the time of Augustus, how one ruler was
reverenced upon earth and glorified as king and saviour, nay, as Lord
and God, when they were led away to death because they would not worship
his image, how could they fail to conclude that here the mystery of sin
was revealed and Satan sat upon the throne of God? And yet, on the other
hand, was not this rule of a single monarch on earth a type of the rule
of God in heaven, the blessed conjunction of all men in one body, the
victory over the divisions and animosities of the nations?

And how about the culture of this same state, with its precepts,
institutions, and usages? At first sight it all seemed reprehensible,
since it was everywhere permeated with idolatry, and not least in
philosophy and literature. “Be ye not seduced by philosophy” was the
Christian watchword; nay, men went a step further, saying that the
Christian had no need of inquiry and learning; in his religion he
possessed all things and held the key to the riddles of the world. He was
to shut up his reason in prison and despise the lore of the heathen;
he was to read the Holy Scriptures, but no worldly books. And yet, does
not this same lore teach much that religion teaches? Was nothing but
lies to be met with in Socrates, Plato, and the poets? Nay, more, is
there not a natural knowledge of God, a natural grasp of truth, and
has not every soul obtained a spark of the eternal light? Has it not
received knowledge, freedom, and immortality from God? Or are these
false doctrines? Yet if they be false, how is it possible to lead men to
God? But if they are not lies, a man must read and learn what poets and
philosophers have written, and study the inner life that he may learn to
know the soul and see what God the creator has bestowed upon it.

Thus here again we have a hesitating “yes,” side by side with an
uncompromising “no.” That which but now seemed to be the darkness that
opposed itself against the light appears in another aspect as itself a
dim degree of light--nay, as the early twilight before the rising sun.
Nevertheless, during the first two or three generations the spirit of
repudiation was in the ascendant. We can only see that hidden at the
heart of things were the germs destined to bring about a change of
opinion. A religion which claims to be not national but universal cannot
permanently take up a wholly negative attitude towards the history of
the human race, nor can it persist in recognising its own preliminary
history only along the narrow line of the history of a few prophets or a
single small nation. Paul, the great Apostle of the Gentiles, had taught
that God had everywhere manifested his being and his will, and in moments
of lofty inspiration and joy had proclaimed to the little flock of his
brother converts, “All things are yours.”


II

In the second century of the existence of Christian communities (_circa_
130-230) the development of a tendency towards reconciliation with the
state and society is apparent in every direction. This I will proceed
to demonstrate as regards (1) the constitution and organisation of the
communities; (2) their life; (3) their doctrine; (4) their literature;
(5) their form of worship; and (6) their estimate of the state.

(1) As early as the year 140 most Christian communities possessed a
system of government widely different from their original organisation.
The question of how it came into being is one upon which we cannot
enter here. It appears as a combination of monarchical and collegiate
government. At the head of the community stood the bishop, with the
college of presbyters--in some cases on an equal footing with him and
in others his subordinates--at his side; the assistant and executive
officers were the deacons. The duties and rights of these clergy extended
to matters of discipline, financial administration, the care of souls and
the relief of the poor, doctrine, and public worship. The officers were
elected by the community, but nevertheless formed a superior class which,
decade by decade, assumed more and more the guardianship of the “lay
people.” Thus, out of a communion in which the “Spirit” and brotherly
love alone were to bear sway, there had arisen a legally constituted
community with ordinances in many points analogous to those of municipal
administration. The community acquired property and administered it; the
officers, under the superintendence of the bishop, cared for the needy;
and, together with the oversight of discipline, it exercised a certain
amount of jurisdiction in family affairs.

But statutory organisation was not confined to the individual community;
the various communities of one province joined in closer bonds and formed
a larger confederation. Provincial synods arose, corresponding to the
diet of the provinces, met once or twice a year, and dealt with matters
of common interest under the direction of a president (the metropolitan).
But even this association did not suffice. From the very beginning
Christians were conscious of belonging to one great and holy fellowship,
to one universal brotherhood. Conceived of, in the first instance, as
something ideal and supernatural, it had nevertheless been held with
strong and lively convictions, and at this stage the attempt was made
to realise it upon earth. The outward conditions were in its favour;
Christian doctrine had assumed many forms, a large number of which
appeared very questionable in the eyes of the bishops and the majority of
the church, and they consequently desired to define their own position
in contradistinction to these “pseudo-Christians.” Hence after the end
of the second century a great number of communities in the West and East
joined to form a single confederation, and presently asserted that only
those who belonged to this confederation, the one Holy Catholic church,
were real Christians. At the beginning of the third century there was no
longer only a heavenly church,--the children of God scattered throughout
the world and waiting for the revelation of the kingdom of which they
were citizens,--but a visible church extending from the Euphrates to
Spain, resting upon fixed laws and ordinances, and thus constituting a
political organisation within boundaries that coincided roughly with the
frontiers of the Roman Empire.

By this development the church approximated to the state--as its rival
in the first instance, it is true; but rivals may become friends. The
decisive factor was that Christianity had assumed definite political form.

(2) The Christian life was to be “unspotted from the world.” Most
Christians of primitive times interpreted this to mean that they should
have as little as possible to do with “the world.” Nor was this a
difficult matter, for the greater number of them were people in humble
life whose conduct was subject to little outward control if only they
performed the hard work required of them. Few of them were “in society”;
and hence it was of no consequence what religion they professed or what
manner of life they led.

By degrees, however, the situation changed, and the labours of
missionaries drew men of all ranks into the church. As early as the
reign of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, Christians were numerous in every
class, even among officials and scholars and men of rank and wealth. The
question of the attitude one should assume towards the world, which had
hitherto been a difficult problem only in individual cases, now became
pressing to the whole community. In addition to this the state police
and the public (especially the mob) took far more heed of Christianity
than before. Any man who made an open confession of Christianity exposed
himself to great danger, nay, to death itself. What was the church to do?
Should she say to the faithful: “You must confess your faith under all
circumstances, and avoid all contact, even the most superficial, with
idolatry”? The consequences were obvious: the soldier would be bound
to leave his colours, for they bore a heathen emblem; the magistrate
to resign his office, for he could not protest against the worship of
the emperor; the teacher to cease to teach, for he could not avoid
mythological subjects; the tiler to abandon his handicraft, since he
could not work on the roof of a temple; the goldsmith, the joiner,
the merchant--they all ran the risk of abetting idolatry. The austere
members of the communities did actually insist that every Christian ought
to renounce his calling if it rendered him liable to the risk of the
remotest contact with idolatry. Tertullian explicitly makes this demand
in his pamphlet, _De Idololatria_, nor did he suffer himself to be
confounded by the retort: “We shall die of starvation.”--“Who is he that
hath promised ye shall live?”

But the great majority of Christians, and first and foremost the bishops
their leaders, decided otherwise. It was enough for a man to keep God
in his heart and to confess him when open confession was required by
magisterial authority--it was enough to refrain from actual idolatry;
for the rest the Christian might abide in any honest calling, might
come, in the pursuit of it, in contact with the externals of idolatry,
and ought to conduct himself prudently and discreetly so as neither
to defile himself nor call down persecution upon himself and others.
The church everywhere adopted this attitude after the beginning of
the third century; and the state thus became the richer by numbers of
peaceable, law-abiding, and conscientious citizens, who, far from placing
difficulties in its way, were pillars of order and peace in society. The
fact that the Christians were remarkable for morality was acknowledged by
Galen, the famous physician, as early as the reign of Marcus Aurelius.
Thus, by abandoning her attitude of uncompromising repudiation of the
“world,” the church developed into a force that made for public order.

(3) There was nothing in Christian doctrine, considered on its merits,
that either was dangerous to the state or was bound to be judged
dangerous by it, except its exclusiveness. The utterances of Christians
concerning Christ their “king” might, indeed, have a revolutionary sound;
but the fact that they were harmless was soon patent to all observers.
It was not what Christianity taught but what it precluded--tolerance
of other religions and the worship of the emperors--that roused
well-grounded objections. For the rest, Christian doctrine showed
a double face, so to speak, to the Greeks and Romans. Its teaching
concerning God, the world, the creation, divine providence, immortality,
and the freedom, dignity, and responsibility of man, was both sublime
and akin to the loftiest intuitions of the honoured philosophers of
old; but mixed up with it was much that sounded to them like myth or
fable, or seemed actually repulsive. Such, above all, was the history of
Christ (his birth of a virgin, miracles, crucifixion, and ascension).
Ordinary Christians laid stress upon the latter element, and hence their
religion appeared “outlandish,” absurd, and full of lies. After the
time of Hadrian, however, there arose men who expounded and brought to
light the philosophico-religious element in Christianity,--monotheism
more particularly,--and endeavoured to remove the offence excited by
the history and worship of Christ by conceiving of him as the corporeal
manifestation of the _Logos_, the existence and operation of which was
recognised by many of the Greeks. At the same time they endeavoured to
force their opponents to accept the facts of his history by demonstrating
them to be the fulfilment of prophecy; for that which has been prophesied
is brought about by God himself, and human criticism must keep silent in
face thereof.

During the course of the second century Christian doctrine did not
abandon its peculiar character, but it assimilated more and more the
ideas of Greek philosophy and so rendered itself more intelligible. At
the beginning of the third century a great Greek philosopher testified
of Origen, the most eminent teacher of the church, that concerning God
and the world he thought like a Greek; the philosopher only deplored the
intermixture of alien fables. When this same Origen is invited to lecture
upon immortality before the queen-mother at Antioch, when another doctor
of the church corresponds with an empress upon religious questions, and
the emperor Alexander Severus listens with admiring attention to the
words of Christ, we cannot but see how “doctrine” is becoming by degrees
a connecting link between Hellenism and Christianity. Such a fact could
not be devoid of consequences as regards the relations between state and
church, for no state can permanently maintain a hostile attitude towards
a spiritual movement which is held in high esteem by large bodies of its
citizens.

(4) Nor must literature be ignored in this connection. Christianity was
never altogether without literature, nay, rather, it possessed from the
outset a literary work of the highest rank in the Old Testament, of which
it had usurped possession. But its title to ownership was contested by
the Jews and the heathen, and moreover early Christians produced the
impression that they were unlettered folk. This made their claims appear
singularly presumptuous and unjustifiable. But the beginning of the
second century witnessed a change; the Christians, who at first would
have nothing to do with the scribbling art--for why should one write if
the end is at hand?--began to make use of this method.

Even in the first century brief writings, gospels, epistles, and
apocalypses, had been drawn up for the edification of the congregation,
but, being regarded as _memorabilia_ to keep the truth in remembrance and
in a measure as a gift of the Holy Ghost, they differed in plan and style
from what was known as “literature.” Now, however, works began to be
composed in which Christianity was endued with the garment of literature.
Between the years 140 and 170 the smaller Christian party which is known
as the Gnostic party all at once began to avail itself of every literary
form, scientific monograph, commentary, systematic statement, scientific
dialogue, didactic epistle, polemic, historical description, the novel,
the tale, the ode, the hymn, etc. The great church, less apt and more
cautious, gave place to this development slowly and hesitatingly. She was
fully conscious of her responsibility; she was not blind to the lurking
danger--the danger, that is, of the profanation of religion; nevertheless
she gradually admitted one literary form after another, until, at the
beginning of the third century, she also had a Christian literature,
with every means of expression that Greek art and learning had created
at command. But the fact that she was thus equipped with literary forms
could not but have some bearing on the relations between state and
church, for no state can persist in regarding a movement which has taken
literature into its service as a negligible quantity. Through the medium
of literature it influences all political conditions, and in so far as
the state itself is the exponent of culture, and not merely of law and
authority, such a spiritual movement becomes a part of it by the mere
fact of its literary existence.

(5) Though public worship is essentially esoteric and the private concern
of any particular religion, yet we must here take its development into
consideration. As long as Christian worship consisted only in homely
prayers, rude psalmody, and preaching, and in the simple celebration of
the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, it differed so widely from other
forms of worship that the adversaries of Christianity did not regard
it as worship at all. A few Greeks, it is true, were impressed by this
purely spiritual worship, but the great multitude despised it. They
saw no images, and consequently concluded that the Christians were
“atheists”; they saw no priests, and felt that their worship lacked
legitimate authority, solemnity, and dignity; they saw no sacrifice,
and consequently doubted its efficacy with the Deity. Many of them held
that the Christians had other religious services which they carefully
concealed from other men, and that there they exhibited the secret
“Sacra,” held wild orgies, and feasted at horrible banquets. There were,
as a matter of fact, a few small Christian communities which practised
evil rites in secret. But it is unlikely that these constituted the
starting-point of the vile aspersions cast upon all Christians; they
arose rather from the evil tendency, prevalent in all ages, to regard
adherents of an alien faith as persons of evil life and to say the worst
that can be said concerning both them and their assemblies. The populace
takes every religion which differs from its own and which it does not
understand for devil worship.

This view of Christian worship underwent no great change in the second
century, but towards the end of that period the preliminary signs of
change set in, and the development of Christian worship met the change
halfway. Three great alterations were made in the services, and brought
it nearer to the comprehension of the Græco-Roman mind: (1) after _circa_
190 a separate class of priests arose (under that title) in the Christian
church; (2) the Lord’s Supper was elaborated into a solemn sacrificial
rite; (3) the Lord’s Supper and certain other acts of public worship
were invested with the glamour of mysteries. By these developments,
which are to be accounted for by the unconscious influence of the world
around, Christian worship approximated to the ceremonials of the Greeks
and Romans. The absence of image worship, it is true, still marked the
distinction between them, but there was no lack of pictures of saints
and symbols of holy things. Already there began to grow up about the
sacramental elements, the water of baptism, the sign of the cross, etc.,
a superstition second to none of the fancies of the heathen, and the
sensuous element steadily encroached upon the spiritual. These changes
were likewise bound to exercise a certain though indirect influence on
the relations between state and church, the Christian religion adapted
itself to conditions in which it could act upon the widest possible
circle, and in the process modified the exclusiveness it had resolved to
maintain.

(6) But perhaps the point best worth noticing is the way in which, in
spite of persecution, the Christian estimate of the state grew more
favourable in the course of the second century--not indeed in the
whole body, by a long way, but among the most influential teachers. It
is true that the suspicion that the Roman Empire was the kingdom of
antichrist never wholly died away, and that it still came to the surface
occasionally; but a succession of admirable emperors--Trajan, Hadrian,
Pius, and Marcus Aurelius--made a profound impression upon Christians,
and the world-wide monarchy of which Augustus had laid the foundations
bore the aspect of peace, and hence of a fulfilment of the divine will.
Justin was convinced--as was even Tertullian--that the “good” emperors
could not have been and were not unfriendly to Christians; both believed
that none but the wicked were really the adversaries of the Christian
religion, and that nothing but better information was required to make
the emperors extend toleration to their faith. It is possible that even
Luke had a dim sense of a certain solidarity between the empire and
Christianity, between Augustus and Christ; the apologists of the age of
the Antonines were more decided in their utterances, the most decided
of all being Bishop Melito of Sardis. In the _Apology for Christianity_
which he dedicates to Marcus Aurelius, he writes:

“This our philosophy did indeed first flourish among an alien people. But
when it began to prosper in the provinces of thy empire under the rule
of thy mighty predecessor Augustus it brought a rich blessing upon thy
empire in singular wise. For from that time forth the Roman Empire hath
ever increased in greatness and glory, whereof thou art and wilt be the
desired ruler, even as thy son also, if thou wilt protect this philosophy
which began under Augustus and hath grown with the growth of the empire,
and which thy forefathers likewise held in honour among other religions.
And the strongest proof that our religion hath arisen together with the
monarchy so happily begun and for the benefit of the same is supplied by
the fact that since the reign of Augustus the latter hath been smitten
by no calamity, but on the contrary, all things have but augmented the
fame and glory thereof, according to the desires of all men. The only
emperors who, led away by malicious men, strove to cry down our religion
were Nero and Domitian, and from their time forward calumnious falsehoods
concerning the Christians have been propagated abroad by the evil custom
of the common people, who believe all rumours without examination.”

We read these words with amazement, for they imply nothing less
than an assertion that the empire and the Christian religion are
fellow-institutions. God himself, so this bishop teaches, joined them
together, for he has brought them into being at the same time as
brethren, as it were; and to Christianity is due the greatness and glory
of the monarchy! True, we must not forget that these are the words of
an apologist, and of an Asiatic apologist to boot--and emperor worship
flourished in Asia more than elsewhere; but the fact that he should
have gone so far in his bold and flattering historical speculation is
in the highest degree remarkable. “God,” “Saviour,” “Prince of Peace,”
were titles bestowed upon the emperor in Asia, and his appearance was
there spoken of as an epiphany of the Deity. Hence Melito deduced the
conclusion that a “pre-established harmony” existed between the emperor
and Christ, to whom these same titles were applied. His “philosophy of
history” was an augury of the future.

We have seen that down to the reign of the emperor Alexander Severus the
church approximated to the state along every line of development; but
in practical life the two were still remote from each other. The state
firmly upheld the opinion that it was impossible, on principle, to extend
toleration to the intolerant Christian religion--though many governors
and some emperors tolerated it tacitly; while the church was still far
from taking Melito’s idea seriously.


III

In the seventy years that elapsed between the death of the emperor
Alexander Severus and the rise of Constantine, the affairs of the church
continued to develop in the same direction as they had taken during the
preceding century. This I shall again proceed to prove from (1) its
constitution, (2) life, (3) doctrine, (4) literature, (5) worship, and
(6) its estimate of the state.

(1) The political organisation of the church attained its complete
development, and the result was a structure so stable, homogeneous, and
comprehensive that no other association within the empire could vie with
it. While the framework of the state grew looser and looser, and the
several parts began to exhibit symptoms of falling apart, the edifice of
the church grew steadily firmer and stronger. The bishops, as successors
of the Apostles, everywhere concentrated the power in their own hands
and suppressed all other forms of authority; the church became an
episcopal church. But the bishops were not only united among themselves
by provincial synods, they kept up an active and intimate correspondence
throughout the whole empire by means of letters and emissaries, and even
at this time all matters of importance were settled by common consent.
If we take the provincial synods as corresponding to the diets of the
provinces, the organisation of the church had advanced a step beyond
the latter. As early as the second half of the third century synods
were held at Rome to which bishops came from every part of Italy, and
sixty years before the Council of Nicæa a synod sat at Antioch to which
bishops flocked from all the countries between the Halys and the Nile.
Thus the episcopal confederation which ruled the Christian communities
was a state within a state. The fact could not be hidden from the chiefs
of the state. Under Maximinus Thrax the bishops had borne the brunt of
persecution; Decius is reported to have said that he could sooner endure
a rival emperor in Rome than a Christian bishop; and the persecutions of
Gallus, Valerian, Diocletian, Galerius, and Maximinus Daza were directed
in the first instance against the bishops. Gallienus and Aurelian
addressed letters to the bishops, the former to those of Egypt, the
latter to those of Syria, and thus made it plain that they were well
aware of the authoritative position of the bishops in the churches.

More than this, Aurelian appreciated the value of the episcopate which
had Rome for its centre as a conservative and patriotic element in the
state; for when a quarrel was raging at Antioch as to the ecclesiastical
party to which the church buildings, and consequently the church
property, belonged of right, he ignored the theoretical disqualifications
of the church before the law and decided that possession was due to that
party which was “in epistolary correspondence with the bishops of Italy
and the city of Rome.” That is to say, he was already using the church
to reinforce the Roman spirit in the East. But what warrant had he to
interfere? Thus much: the disputant parties in the church had themselves
applied to him to decide their quarrel. Thus, forty years before the time
of Constantine the church had appealed to the emperor to arbitrate in a
question of canon law, and the emperor had practically acknowledged the
existence of the church and its value as a pillar of imperial authority.

If, in addition to this, we consider that the church already possessed
buildings, land, and property in every province of the empire; that the
clergy, in the large towns, at least, were very numerous and represented
a strictly organised scale of hierarchical degrees; that by their
assistance the bishops directed and superintended all the affairs of
the communities in even the most trivial details; that each community
was likewise an effective organisation for the relief of the poor; and,
finally, that in many provinces the country districts were overspread
by a close network of provincial bishoprics and parishes, we shall no
longer be surprised that even the emperor Alexander regarded the system
of church government with envious eyes.

The civil and military system of the empire was falling into decay,
the legions were permanent centres of revolution, the generals born
pretenders; but the _milites Christi_ were everywhere united in compact
squadrons, and, though many internal dissensions might prevail amongst
these troops, they confronted the state as a single army. The state
had no other alternative than to try and destroy this army, as Decius,
Valerian, Diocletian, and Maximinus Daza would fain have done, or to
enter into alliance with it, as Constantine did. After the middle
of the third century a policy of _laissez-aller_ or weak toleration
was an impossibility. The church seems also to have been numerically
strong--though this is a point which has not been exhaustively examined
as yet. As early as the year 251 the Roman bishop Cornelius wrote:
“Besides the one bishop, there are at Rome forty-six priests, seven
deacons, seven sub-deacons, forty-two acolytes, fifty-two exorcists,
lectors, and ostiarii, and more than fifteen hundred widows and needy
persons, all of whom are maintained by the grace and goodness of the
Lord.”

(2) During the last decades of the third century Christian life underwent
a virtual amalgamation with that of the world. The Christian who desired
to live a life apart from the world became a member of a distinct class,
the ascetics, or withdrew into the desert; the rest--_i.e._, the vast
majority, had come to terms with the world. There was no class, from
senators to artisans, in which Christians were not to be found, and in
each class they fulfilled the obligations of their station. They were,
indeed, bound to eschew certain callings (_e.g._, municipal appointments,
which were all too closely bound up with “idolatry,” the theatrical
profession, etc.), but the admonitions and penalties which were
promulgated and denounced against the infringement of these prohibitions
show that they were not always regarded. Certain facts, such as that, in
the year 255, a Christian bishop in Spain was at the same time a member
of a pagan society and had his children interred in the burying-ground of
the said society; that a Syrian presbyter was director of the imperial
purple-dye factory at Tyre; that a metropolitan bishop of Antioch was a
_ducenarius_; that not a few of the clergy engaged in trade and travelled
to the annual fairs--give us a clear insight into the amalgamation of
Christian life with the life of the world. And it is very significant
that Origen, in his pamphlet against Celsus, draws a comparison between
Christian and municipal communities in order to commend the moral
advantage of the former, and merely demands an admission of their
superiority. That is, he insists on a difference of degree only, and
refrains from contrasting the Christian communities with the municipal
communities, like light with darkness.

Thus Christianity was no longer separated from the “world” in practical
life, as every persecution made abundantly plain, for at first the
number of apostates always exceeded that of confessors. The Christians
only gathered strength as the persecutions proceeded. They were
practically “exclusive” no longer, except in matters of religion in
the strict sense of the word. Why should not the state tolerate them?
The malicious aspersions on their moral character had died away into
silence. Was it not madness on the part of the government to continue
to persecute people, who were more conscientious and peaceable citizens
than many others, and did not disturb the organisation and functions of
public life? If they would not give up their exclusive faith, then the
government must give them leave to hold it--a way out of the difficulty
so simple that it would have been adopted long before the time of
Constantine if the Christians, on their part, had not stipulated for
certain conditions. Their God was not to be merely tolerated, he was to
reign alone in the sphere of belief. With the world they had already come
to terms.

(3) With regard to doctrine, the astounding labours of Origen brought
the preparatory work of earlier Christian theologians to a kind of
conclusion in the East; in the West, doctrine and learning never played
more than a subordinate part. Origen worked the doctrines of Christianity
up into a religious system which was able to vie with the systems of
the neo-Platonists and give them battle upon equal terms. His schools
at Alexandria and Cæsarea were attended by even pagan young men, and
continued to flourish after his death; his pupils and their pupils
occupied the episcopal sees of the most important cities. It was no
longer possible to esteem Christianity a religion for mechanics, slaves,
and old women. The Christian “mythology” which gave so much offence was
not actually altered, but it was spiritualised by the application of
the allegoric method. In this form the majority of philosophers and men
of culture found it endurable; for they were accustomed to employ the
allegoric method in the interpretation of their own religious traditions,
and to transmute base images and repulsive tales into sublime conceptions
and the history of ideas. Even the solemn confession of Jesus Christ
was so expressed by philosophical bishops that it sounded like a brief
philosophical dissertation.

Strictly speaking, there were only three points on which Christian
dogma differed essentially from the neo-Platonic which was then in the
ascendant; the former taught the creation of the world in time, the
incarnation of the _Logos_, and the resurrection of the flesh; the
latter rejected all these three doctrines. Nevertheless the pupils of
Origen conceived of these theological propositions in such wise that
the assertion was very like a denial, and they made common cause with
the neo-Platonists in their contest with the dualistic-pessimistic
school of philosophy. Christian philosophy was in the mid-current of the
intellectual movement, and it was therefore a singular anachronism that
the state could not as yet bring itself to place those who professed it
upon the same footing as other citizens.

(4) The literature produced and read by Christians was by this time
hardly to be distinguished from literature in general. It differed only
in name; the spirit was the same, if we leave out of consideration the
texts of Scripture which the Christians interwove in their books. The
legends of Apostles and Martyrs took the place of the old stories of
gods and heroes, and adopted from the latter whatever element of fiction
they could make serve their turn. The forms of epistolary and literary
correspondence had already won full acceptance among Christians; their
dedications, plots, titles, and headings were those of pagan literature.
In this last connection we note particularly how ceremonious the
“brethren” have become. Finally, educated Christians were familiar with
the whole body of profane scholastic literature, derived their culture
from it and used it for example and quotation. The shoot of Christian
literature had been grafted on the stock of Hellenism, and the sap of it
streamed through the new branch.

(5) With regard to public worship we note the following changes during
the sixty years before the time of Constantine. In the first place the
ritual became more solemn and mysterious; the prayers more studied and
rhetorical; symbols and symbolic acts were multiplied; and secondly,
there was an increased tendency to meet halfway the polytheistic leanings
which swayed the Christian masses. This is indicated, on the one hand, by
the constantly increasing importance attached to “intercessors” (angels,
saints, and martyrs) both in public worship and in private life; and, on
the other, by the “naturalisation” and differentiation of religious rites
after the manner of pagan ceremonials. An observer watching a Christian
religious service about the year 300 would hardly have realised that
these Christians were monotheists, and in words proudly professed their
monotheism and spiritual worship. Except the bloody sacrifice, they had
adopted almost every part and form of pagan ritual ceremonial; and, in
fact, the bloody sacrifice was not lacking, for the death of Christ and
the celebration of the Lord’s Supper were dealt with in materialistic
fashion as bloody sacrifices. They were fond of appealing to the Old
Testament to warrant the innovations, and in virtue of this appeal nearly
the whole pagan system of worship could be dragged into the church.

Chapels were dedicated to angels, saints, and martyrs and decorated on
their festivals; a habit grew up of sleeping in churches or chapels
in the expectation of holy dreams or miraculous cures; holydays were
multiplied and differentiated more and more; superstitious ceremonies,
usually associated with the holy cross or consecrated bread, were woven
into the tenor of ordinary life; nor were charms in the name of Jesus or
of holy men, nor even amulets wanting; wakes and banquets for the dead
were celebrated; the relics of saints were collected and adored, etc.
What more was lacking to complete the analogy with heathen cults? Was not
a sagacious Roman statesman bound to confess that this church, with the
form of divine worship it had adopted, met every religious need? And how
then could he fail to wish that the senseless state of war that prevailed
between state and church should come to an end? A monotheistic form of
doctrine, combined with a worship so diversified, so adapted to every
need--no better device could possibly be invented.

(6) In considering the church’s estimate of the state there are two
points of importance to be observed. In the first place we note that
Christians now began to profess that those emperors who had not shown
active hostility towards the church, or whose personal piety had borne
a certain kindred likeness to that of Christians, had really been
Christians in secret. Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria (about 260 A.D.)
merely repeats an opinion widely received when he states that Alexander
Severus and Philip the Arab were Christians; of Philip it was even
reported that he had on one occasion done penance at the bidding of a
bishop.

Such legends are eloquent; they disclose the daring wishes of the
Christians and show that they no longer thought the empire and
Christianity incompatible. This is likewise evident from the fact that
this same Dionysius does not shrink from applying a Messianic prophecy in
the Old Testament to the emperor Valerian. Gallienus had cancelled his
father’s writ for the persecution of Christians, and Dionysius therefore
applies to him the prophecy of Isaiah, and styles him, moreover, “our
sanctified emperor, well-pleasing in God’s sight.” This is the very
language which Christian bishops used of Constantine sixty years later.
Secondly, it is a significant token of change that Origen, in his great
work against Celsus, written towards the end of his life, in the reign
of the emperor Philip, expressed the hope that by gradual advances
Christianity would attain to victory in this world. This is the exact
opposite of what primitive Christians had believed and hoped. Origen
could not have put the anticipation into words, unless, in spite of all
the differences which still subsisted between state and church, these two
great powers had drawn considerably nearer to each other. At bottom the
only question was that of the removal of “misunderstandings”; in actual
fact, nothing blocked the way to the conclusion of peace except the
church’s demand not for mere toleration but for exclusive recognition.


IV

In the foregoing pages we have shown how the church, as it developed,
drew nearer to the state; all that now remains to be done is to point out
how, in the second century, and still more in the third, the state, on
its part, drew nearer to the Christian religion and to the church. I will
confine myself to a few suggestive indications.

(1) During the imperial period the Roman state wielded no real influence
upon the religious life of the citizens of its domains, except by
means of the worship of the emperors; the other Roman cults were of
local importance only, and were perpetually being thrust into the
background by alien religions. Under these circumstances the state had
made an attempt to develop emperor worship into the actual universal
religion of the empire. Sagacious statesmen and religious politicians
were, however, constrained to own that this cult, the adoration of the
_secunda majestas_, was not enough. The state accordingly had recourse
to the expedient of officially recognising as many alien religions as
it possibly could (indeed, it was in a manner forced to accord them
recognition), in order that these alien religions might not constitute a
barrier between it and its subjects. By this means there gradually arose
a medley and diversity of religions in the empire which was bewildering
and rendered a sound religious policy impossible.

A single, new, universal religion was the crying need of the hour. It
seemed that this need might be met in various ways. Elagabalus, Alexander
Severus, and Maximinus Daza were the emperors who tried to strike out a
fresh line before the time of Constantine. Elagabalus wished to do this
by exalting one Syrian divinity to the position of Supreme God of the
empire and giving a subordinate place to all other cults; Alexander, by
endeavouring to discover the common element in all religious doctrines
and forms of worship and uniting them in peaceful conjunction (as all,
at bottom, meaning the same thing); Maximinus Daza by making regulations
for the administrative union of all the religions and cults of a single
province under one high priest appointed by the state, and for the
control of these priests by the civil government. These were all attempts
to create a new church, and an established church to boot, and must all
be regarded as preliminaries to Constantine’s achievement.

A certain bias towards monotheism was involved in the case of Elagabalus
and Alexander; towards an oriental monotheism in the former. Diocletian,
indeed, attempted once more to make the old Roman religious system serve
the purpose; but as he had placed the political administration and
government of the empire on an entirely new basis, and introduced a new
oriental and despotic system after the dissolution of the ancient state,
his reactionary religious policy was a grave error. It was foredoomed
to utter failure--the new state could not possibly rest upon the scanty
foundations of the old cults; and Constantine, who witnessed its
collapse, drew from it the only correct inference. The new basis of the
state must be a monotheistic religion--an oriental monotheism. So much
the third century had taught.

(2) The Roman state approximated to Christianity and the church by a
steady process of levelling up from within and by its transformation
from a Roman state into a state of provinces. Caracalla bestowed the
rights of Roman citizenship on the inhabitants of all the provinces;
the influence of the old Roman aristocracy steadily declined, the state
became really cosmopolitan. But the church was cosmopolitan likewise;
indeed, Christianity was at bottom the only really universal religion. It
was not bound up with Judaism, like the religion of the Old Testament;
nor with Egypt, like Isis-worship; nor with Persia, like Mithras-worship;
it had shaken itself free from all national elements. Hence every step by
which the state lost something of its exclusively Roman character brought
it nearer to the church.

(3) The legislation begun by Nerva and Trajan and continued by the
Antonines and the emperors of the first half of the third century under
the guidance of great jurists marked an enormous advance in the sphere
of law. The Stoic ideas of the “rights of man” and the leavening of law
by morality were introduced into legislation and operated by countless
wholesome ordinances. By this means the state met halfway the feeling
which prevailed in the church as a matter of principle. By the beginning
of the fourth century there were but few points in Roman civil law to
which the church (which, it must be owned, had somewhat lowered its
moral standard) could fairly take objection, and many, on the other hand,
which it hailed with joyful assent. Thus the development of Roman law
must be recognised as a preliminary step to the amalgamation of state and
church.

(4) At first sight it seems as though after the middle of the third
century the state had met the church in a far more hostile spirit and had
therefore been far less capable of appreciating it than in the preceding
epoch. But although it is true that the systematic persecution of the
church first began under Decius, yet the conclusion that therefore
the state cannot have appreciated the church does not hold good in
fact. Rather, the persecutions of Decius and Valerian prove, as has
been suggested before, that these emperors realised the danger the old
political system implied in the existence of the church more clearly than
their predecessors had done. They accordingly endeavoured to extirpate
the church, as Diocletian’s co-emperor did likewise. But these attempts
must be regarded as desperate and (with the exception of the last
named) short-lived experiments. During the early years of the reign of
Valerian and from 260 to 302 the church enjoyed almost absolute peace
within the empire; and, above all, the imperial government recognised
the importance of the bishops and the ecclesiastical hierarchy. This is
proved not only by the persecutory edicts, but, as has been said above,
by peaceful acts. Gallienus and Aurelian wrote letters to the bishops,
and the latter even tried by peaceful means to use their influence to
strengthen Roman dominion; nay, Maximinus Daza actually attempted to
copy the constitution of the church and to organise the pagan system of
worship in similar fashion. Under the circumstances it was much simpler
to ally the hierarchy of the church itself with the state than to make
any such attempt. That the strength of the church lay in the hierarchy
the despots had long recognised. Accordingly as soon as he had decided in
favour of Christianity, Constantine joined hands with the bishops. He not
only joined hands with them, but he honoured them and bestowed privileges
upon them, for he was anxious to secure their power for the state. His
success was immediate; the hierarchy put itself--unreservedly, we may
say--at his disposal when once he had set the cross upon his standard.
Thus the state within the state was abolished; the strongest political
force then existent, to wit, the church, was made the cornerstone of
the state. Both parties, the emperor and the bishops, were equally well
pleased; history seldom has a conclusion of peace like this to record,
in which both contracting parties broke forth into rejoicings. And both
were fully justified in their rejoicing, for a thing for which a way had
been slowly made ready now had come to light; the empire gained a strong
support and the church was delivered from an undignified position, in
which she could not avail herself freely of the forces at her disposal.
The church of the fourth century not only accomplished much more than the
church of the period between 250 and 325, but she brought forth men of
greater distinction and more commanding character.




[Illustration]




BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter]


CHAPTER XXIX.

[b] GEORG WEBER, _Allgemeine Weltgeschichte_.

[c] VICTOR GARDTHAUSEN, _Augustus und seine Zeit_.

[d] JOACHIM MARQUARDT (in collab. with Theodor Mommsen), _Römische
Staatsverwaltung_.

[e] CHARLES MERIVALE, _A History of the Romans under the Empire_.


CHAPTER XXX.

[b] F. C. SCHLOSSER, _Weltgeschichte für das Deutsche Volk_.

[c] GEORG WEBER, _op. cit._

[d] EDUARD MEYER, _Untersuchungen über die Schlacht im Teutoberger Walde_.

[e] CAIUS VELLEIUS PATERCULUS, _Compendium of the History of Rome_
(translated from the Latin by J. S. Watson).

[f] FLORUS, _Epitome of Roman History_ (translated from the Latin by J.
S. Watson).

[g] CORNELIUS TACITUS, _Annales_.


CHAPTER XXXI.

[b] VICTOR GARDTHAUSEN, _op. cit._

[c] GEORG WEBER, _op. cit._

[d] KARL HOECK, _Römische Geschichte vom Verfall der Republik bis zur
Vollendung der Monarchie unter Constantin_.

[e] _Monumentum Ancyranum._

[f] JOHANN HEINRICH KARL FRIEDRICH HERMANN SCHILLER, _Geschichte der
römischen Kaiserzeit bis auf Theodosius den Grossen_.

[g] CHARLES MERIVALE, _op. cit._

[h] B. G. NIEBUHR, _The History of Rome_ (translated from the German by
J. C. Hare, C. Thirlwall, W. Smith, and L. Schmitz).

[i] H. TAINE, _Essai sur Tite Live_.


CHAPTER XXXII.

[b] GEORG WEBER, _op. cit._

[c] CAIUS SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS, _The Lives of the Twelve Cæsars_
(translated from the Latin by A. Thomson).

[d] THOMAS ARNOLD, _History of the Later Roman Commonwealth_.

[e] VICTOR GARDTHAUSEN, _op. cit._


CHAPTER XXXIII.

[b] VICTOR DURUY, _Histoire Romaine jusqu’à l’invasion des barbares_.

[c] CAIUS SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS, _op. cit._

[d] CORNELIUS TACITUS, _op. cit._

[e] THOMAS KEIGHTLEY, _The History of Rome to the End of the Republic_.

[f] CHARLES MERIVALE, _op. cit._

[g] CAIUS VELLEIUS PATERCULUS, _op. cit._

[h] FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS, _The Works of Josephus_ (translated from the Greek
by William Whiston).

[i] HERENNIUS BYBLIUS PHILON, Περὶ τῆς Βασιλείας.

[j] DION-CASSIUS COCCEIANUS, Ῥωμαϊκή ἱστορία.

[k] PLINIUS SECUNDUS, _Historia Naturalis_.

[l] LUCIUS ANNÆUS SENECA, _Apocolocyntosis_.

[m] G. F. HERTZBERG, _Geschichte der Römer im Alterthum_.

[n] TARVER, _Tiberius_.


CHAPTER XXXIV.

[b] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._

[c] CORNELIUS TACITUS, _op. cit._

[d] CAIUS SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS, _op. cit._

[e] CHARLES MERIVALE, _op. cit._

[f] THOMAS KEIGHTLEY, _op. cit._


CHAPTER XXXV.

[b] OLIVER GOLDSMITH, _History of Rome_.

[c] CAIUS SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS, _op. cit._

[d] F. C. SCHLOSSER, _op. cit._

[e] THOMAS KEIGHTLEY, _op. cit._

[f] DION-CASSIUS COCCEIANUS, _op. cit._

[g] PLINIUS, _op. cit._

[h] WILLIAM GELL (in collab. with John P. Gandy), _Pompeiana: the
Topography, Edifices, and Ornaments of Pompeii_.

[i] CORNELIUS TACITUS, _Historiæ_.

[j] ARTHUR MURPHY, in the Appendix to Book V of his translation of _The
Works of Cornelius Tacitus_.

[k] CHARLES MERIVALE, _op. cit._

[l] FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS, _op. cit._

[m] G. W. BOTSFORD, _A History of Rome_.

[n] V. DURUY, _op. cit._


CHAPTER XXXVI.

[b] OLIVER GOLDSMITH, _op. cit._

[c] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._

[d] J. ERNEST RENAN, _Histoire des origines du Christianisme_.

[e] EDWARD GIBBON, _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire_.

[f] F. C. SCHLOSSER, _op. cit._

[g] DION-CASSIUS COCCEIANUS, _op. cit._

[h] XIPHILINUS, Ἐπιτωμή τῆς Δίωνος Νικαέως ῥωμαϊκῆς ἱστορίας.

[i] R. W. BROWN, _History of Roman Classical Literature_.

[j] PLINIUS, _op. cit._

[k] R. BURN, _Old Rome: a Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the
Campagna_.

[l] CHARLES MERIVALE, _op. cit._

[m] G. F. HERTZBERG, _op. cit._

[n] J. B. BURY, _Student’s Roman Empire_.


CHAPTER XXXVII.

[b] JEAN-FRANÇOIS DENIS, _Histoire des théories et des idées morales de
l’antiquité_.

[c] EDWARD GIBBON, _op. cit._

[d] BENJAMIN AUBE, _Les Chrétiens dans l’empire romain_.

[e] DION-CASSIUS COCCEIANUS, _op. cit._

[f] EPICTETUS, in Arrian’s Διατριβαὶ Ἐπικτὴτου and Ἐγχειρίδιον Ἐπικτήτου.

[g] COCCEIANUS DION CHRYSOSTOM, Δόγοι περὶ βασιλείας.

[h] SENECA, _Opera_.

[i] MARCUS AURELIUS, Μάρκου Ἀντωνίνου το αὐτοκρατορος τῶν εἰς ἐαυτὸν
Βιβλία ιβ (translated from the Greek by Jeremy Collier).

[j] PLINIUS MINOR, _Epistolæ_.

[k] CORNELIUS TACITUS, _op. cit._


CHAPTER XXXVIII.

[b] J. ERNEST RENAN, _op. cit._

[c] CHARLES MERIVALE, _op. cit._

[d] AULUS GELLIUS, _Noctes Atticæ_.

[e] M. L. G. BOISSIER, _L’Opposition sous les Césars_.

[f] JOACHIM MARQUARDT, _op. cit._

[g] A. BOUCHE-LECLERCQ, _Manuel des institutions romaines_.

[h] M. L. G. BOISSIER, _La religion romaine d’Auguste aux Antonins_.

[i] J. Y. SHEPPARD, _The Fall of Rome and the Rise of New Nationalities_.

[j] H. S. WILLIAMS, _History of the Art of Writing_.

[k] VALERIUS MAXIMUS, _De Factis Dictisque Memorabilibus Libri IX_.

[l] W. A. BECKER, _Gallus, oder römische Scenen aus der Zeit Augusts_.


CHAPTER XXXIX.

[b] G. F. HERTZBERG, _op. cit._

[c] THOMAS KEIGHTLEY, _op. cit._

[d] HERODIANUS, Ἡρωδιανοῦ τῆς μετὰ Μάρκον Βασιλείας ἱστοριῶν βιβλὶα ὀκτώ.

[e] DION-CASSIUS COCCEIANUS, _op. cit._

[f] AUGUSTAN HISTORY (_Historiæ Augustæ Scriptores_).

[g] HENRY FYNES CLINTON, _Fasti Romani_.

[h] ZOSIMUS, _The History of Count Zosimus_ (translated from the Greek).

[i] XIPHILINUS, _op. cit._

[j] J. ERNEST RENAN, _op. cit._


CHAPTER XL.

[b] G. F. HERTZBERG, _op. cit._

[c] THOMAS KEIGHTLEY, _op. cit._

[d] ZOSIMUS, _op. cit._

[e] JOHANNES ZONARAS, Χρονικόν (_Annales_).


CHAPTER XLI.

[b] F. C. SCHLOSSER, _op. cit._

[c] EDWARD GIBBON, _op. cit._

[d] ZOSIMUS, _op. cit._

[e] THOMAS HODGKIN, _Italy and her Invaders_.


CHAPTER XLII.

[b] EDWARD GIBBON, _op. cit._

[c] S. REINHARDT, _Der Perserkrieg des Kaisers Julian_.

[d] AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, _The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus_
(translated from the Latin by C. D. Yonge).

[e] THOMAS KEIGHTLEY, _op. cit._


CHAPTER XLIII.

[b] EDWARD GIBBON, _op. cit._

[c] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._

[d] AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, _op. cit._

[e] THOMAS KEIGHTLEY, _op. cit._


CHAPTER XLIV.

[b] EDWARD GIBBON, _op. cit._

[c] F. C. SCHLOSSER, _op. cit._


CHAPTER XLV.

[b] EDWARD GIBBON, _op. cit._


CHAPTER XLVI.

[b] EDWARD GIBBON, _op. cit._

[c] THOMAS HODGKIN, _Italy and her Invaders_.

[d] JORDANES, _De Getarum origine et rebus gestis_.


CHAPTER XLVII.

[b] T. HODGKIN, article “Vandals,” in the Ninth Edition of the
_Encyclopædia Britannica_.

[c] EDWARD GIBBON, _op. cit._

[d] R. H. WRIGHTSON, _The Sancta Republica Romana_.

[e] EDUARD VON WIETERSHEIM, _Geschichte der Völkerwanderung_.

[f] AMÉDÉE THIERRY, _Récits de l’histoire romaine au cinquème siécle_.

[g] T. HODGKIN, _Italy and her Invaders_.

[h] KURT BREYSIG, _Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit_.




A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ROMAN HISTORY

BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE WORKS QUOTED, CITED, OR CONSULTED IN THE
PREPARATION OF THE PRESENT WORK; WITH CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

    [For convenience of reference, the Byzantine historians are
    included here, though their work has to do chiefly with the
    period treated in vol. VII. Further notes on many of the Roman
    historians may be found above (p. 15), and in vols. V (p. 25)
    and VII (p. 1)].


_A. Classical and Later Latin Works_

=Ælianus=, Claudius, Ποικίλη Ἱστορία, edited by Perizonius, Leyden, 1701;
translated from the Greek by A. Fleming, The Variable History of Ælian,
London, 1576. (A biographical notice of this writer has been given in
vol. I, p. 295.)--=Agobardus=, Works, edited by Baluze, Paris, 1666;
edited by Migne, in his Patrologiæ Latine, vol. CIV, Paris, 1844-1855;
edited by Chevallard, Lyons, 1869.--=Ammianus Marcellinus=, Rerum
Gestarum Libri XXXI, edited by Accorsi, Augsburg, 1532, 5 vols.; edited
by Wagner and Erfurdt, Leipsic, 1808, 3 vols.; English translation by C.
D. Yonge, The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus, London, 1862.

    _Ammianus Marcellinus_, by birth a Syrian Greek, served many
    years in the imperial bodyguards. His history covered a period
    of 282 years, from the accession of Nerva, 96 A.D., to the
    death of Valens, 378 A.D. Of its thirty-one books the last
    eighteen have been preserved. These include the transactions
    of twenty-five years only, but they are valuable as a source
    because of the author’s conscientious effort to be truthful and
    of his first-hand knowledge of the events he describes.

=Anastasius=, see Liber Pontificalis.--=Annales Alamannici= (741-779),
founded on Annales Mosellani.--=Annales S. Amandi= (708-810), founded
on Annales Mosellani.--=Annales Fuldenses=, records of the monastery
of Fulda.--=Annales Guelferbytani=, or Wolfenbüttel Codex (741-805),
founded on Annales Mosellani.--=Annales Laurissenses= or =Laureshamenses=
(741-829), composed at Lorsch.--=Annales Maximiani= (710-811), founded on
Annales Mosellani.--=Annales Mettenses=, composed at Metz or Laon about
the end of the tenth century.--=Annales Mosellani= (703-797), composed at
the monastery of St. Martin in Cologne.--=Annales Nazariani= (741-790),
founded on Annales Mosellani.--=Annales Petaviani= (708-799), founded on
Annales Mosellani; original from 717-799.

    The foregoing annals of the German monasteries possess varying
    historical value. They have all been edited by Pertz, in
    Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, Hanover, 1819, in progress.

=Appianus Alexandrinus=, Πωμαϊκὴ ἱστορία, edited by Schweighauser,
Leipsic, 1785, 3 vols.; translated from the Greek by J. D(ancer),“The
History of Appian of Alexandria,” London, 1679. (See Introduction, vol.
V.)--=Apuleius=, Lucius, Metamorphoseon seu de Asino Aureo Libri XI,
edited by Andrew, bishop of Aleria, Rome, 1469; translated from the Latin
by Thomas Tylor, London, 1822; and by Sir G. Head, The Metamorphoses of
Apuleius, London, 1851.--=Augustan History=, Historiæ Augustæ Scriptores
(Ælius Spartianus, Julius Capitolinus, Ælius Lampridius, Vulcatius
Gallicanus, Trebellius Pollio and Flavius Vopiscus), Milan, 1475; Venice,
1489; edited by Casarabon, Paris, 1603; by Salmasius, Paris, 1620; by
Schrevelius, Leyden, 1671; by Jordan and Eyssenhardt, Berlin, 1863. (See
also Dirksen, Paucker and Plew.)

    _Augustan History_ is the title given to a series of
    biographies of the Roman emperors from Hadrian to Carinus,
    ostensibly written by the six authors above mentioned in the
    time of Diocletian and Constantine. The most recent research
    tends to show that the collection, at least, in the form in
    which we have it, is a compilation of the end of the fourth
    or beginning of the fifth century and that the authors’
    names formerly attached to it are entirely fictitious. The
    authenticity of the official documents contained in it is also
    questioned. It is, nevertheless, an important, for many facts
    almost the only, source of our knowledge of imperial Rome.

=Augustine=, Saint, De Civitate Dei, Paris, 1679-1700: reprint,
1836-1838. Edited by Strange, Cologne, 1850-1851, 2 vols.; by Dombart,
Leipsic, 1877.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Cæsar=, Caius Julius, Commentarii de bello Gallico; Commentarii de
bello civili, Rome, 1440; edited by Jungerman, Frankfort, 1606; by C.
E. Moberly, with English notes, 1871-1872; 1877; 1882 (translated by
Edmunds); Cæsar’s Commentaries, on the Gallic and Civil Wars, London,
1609 (translated by W. H. McDevitte and W. S. Bohn, London, 1857).

    _Julius Cæsar_, who shares with Alexander and Napoleon the
    honours of unapproachable military genius, was born on July
    12th, B.C. 100, or according to Mommsen, in B.C. 102. His
    merits and demerits as a soldier and statesman have been
    fully dealt with in volume V. Here note need only be taken
    of his celebrated writings--the _Commentaries_--which relate
    the history of the first seven years of the Gallic War, and
    the progress of the Civil War up to the Alexandrine, and the
    main object of which was the justification of the author’s
    course in war and in politics. The opening words of _De bello
    Gallico_ are often noted as a model of literary perspicuity,
    and throughout the whole work there is a rigorous exclusion of
    every expression for the use of which no standard authority
    could be found. It is the utterance of a man who, knowing
    precisely what he means to say, says it with directness and
    lucidity. The _Commentaries_ may indeed be regarded as a kind
    of high-class classical journalism, written down, as we have
    reason to assume, from day to day from the dictation of the
    chief actor in the events narrated.

=Capitolinus=, Julius, see Augustan History.--=Cassiodorus=, Senator
Magnus Aurelius, Variarum (Epistolarum) Libri XII; Libri XII De Rebus
Gestis Gothorum, Augsburg, 1533; Paris, 1584; Rouen, 1679, 2 vols.

    _Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus_ (about 480-575 A.D.), although
    a scion of a noble Roman family, spent the best part of his
    long life in the service of the Gothic kings, and filled the
    most important offices under Theodoric and his successors.
    In his later years, after retirement to a monastery, he was
    no less active as a writer and a protector of learning. His
    most important work, _De Rebus Gestis Gothorum_, is preserved
    only in the barbarous version of Jordanes. The _Variarum_, a
    collection of letters and official documents, forms the best
    source of information concerning the kingdom of the Ostrogoths
    in Italy.

=Chronicle= of Moissiac (Chronicon Moissiacense), in the Monumenta
Germaniæ Historica, Hanover, 1819-1904, in progress.

    The _Chronicle of Moissiac_, which seems to have had its origin
    in Aquitaine, is of some value for the history of southern Gaul
    in the early part of the ninth century.

=Chronicon Cuspiniani=, Basel, 1552.

    These annals, an outgrowth of the consular _fasti_ and more
    recently known as _Fasti Vindobonenses_ or _Consularia
    Italica_, are important for their accurate chronological data
    of the fourth and fifth centuries.

=Cicero=, Marcus Tullius, Orationes (Pro Sex. Roscio Amerino), edited
by Andrew, bishop of Aleria, Rome, 1471; German translation by Klotz,
Leipsic, 1835, 3 vols.; English translation by Wm. Guthrie, London,
1806, 2 vols.; and by C. D. Yonge, London, 1851-1852, 4 vols. Cicero’s
writings, though not primarily historical, furnish valuable material for
the historian.--=Claudian(us)=, Claudius, Opera, Vincenza, 1482; Vienna,
1510; edited by Palmannus, Antwerp, 1571; by Burmann, Amsterdam, 1760;
English translation by A. Hawkins, London, 1817, 2 vols.

    _Claudian_ was the last Latin classic poet. He was a native
    of Alexandria, but came to Rome about the end of the fourth
    century. He enjoyed the patronage of Stilicho, who granted
    him wealth and honours, but probably shared his patron’s ruin
    in 408. Claudian wrote numerous panegyrical poems, three
    historical epics, and many occasional verses. His epics are not
    without value as historical sources, as they follow the facts
    of history closely.

=Cluverius= (Cluver), Philip, Germania Antiqua, Leyden,
1616.--=Cochtaens=, Joannes, Vita Theodorici regis Ostrogothorum et
Italiæ, annotated by J. Peringskiöld, Stockholm, 1699.--=Codex Carolinus=
(Letters from the Popes to Frankish Kings), edited by Philip Jaffé in his
Monumenta Carolina, Berlin, 1867.

    The _Codex Carolinus_, Letters from the Popes to the Frankish
    Kings, collected by the order of Charlemagne, is one of the
    most important of historical sources.

=Codex Gothanus=, edited by Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniæ, Historica,
Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum, Hanover, 1819, in
progress.

    Composed probably about 810, and prefixed to a manuscript of
    Lombard laws now in the Ducal Library at Gotha.

=Codex Theodosianus=, Paris, 1686; edited by Hanel in the Corpus Juris
Antejustinia neum, vol. II, Bonn, 1842.

    A compilation in the year 438, of the constitutions of the
    Roman emperors from Constantine the Great to Theodosius II. It
    formed the basis for the Code of Justinian, and is the great
    authority for the social and political history of the period.
    These decrees with their appendices were officially recognised
    in the eastern empire, but in the west they had force only in
    an abbreviated version. The original work was in sixteen books,
    arranged chronologically by subjects, but at least a third of
    the entire work exists only in the abbreviated form.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Dion Cassius Cocceianus=, Ῥωμαϊκὴ ἱστορία; Latin translation by N.
Leonicenus, Venice, 1526; edited by Leunclavius, Frankfort, 1592; by J.
A. Fabricius and H. S. Reimarus, Hamburg, 1750-1752, 2 vols.; by Sturz,
Leipsic, 1824, 8 vols.; English translation by Manning, The History of
Dion-Cassius, London, 1704, 8 vols.

    _Dion Cassius Cocceianus_, born 155 A.D. at Nicæa, in Bithynia,
    was a grandson of Dion Chrysostom. He held many official
    positions under different Roman emperors from Commodus to
    Alexander Severus, but about 230 returned to Nicæa where he
    passed the remainder of his life. His great work consists of 80
    books, divided into decades. It originally covered the whole
    history of Rome from the landing of Æneas in Italy down to 229
    A.D., but unfortunately only a small portion of it has come
    down to us entire. We have books 36-54 complete, but of all the
    rest of the work only fragments and abridgments are extant. It
    was compiled with great diligence and judgment, and is one of
    the most important sources for the later republic and the first
    centuries of the empire. We have had occasion to quote the
    abridgment of Xiphilinus.

=Dion Chrysostomos Cocceianus=, λόγοι περὶ βασιλείας, edited by D.
Paravisinus, Milan, 1476; and by Reiske, Leipsic, 1784, 2 vols.

    _Dion Chrysostom_ one of the most eminent rhetoricians and
    sophists, was born at Prusa, in Bithynia, about 50 A.D. His
    first visit to Rome was cut short by an edict of Domitian
    expelling all philosophers. After extended travels through
    Thrace and Scythia, he returned to Rome in the reign of Trajan,
    who showed him marked favour. He died at Rome about 117 A.D.
    Eighty of his orations are still extant, all the production of
    his later years. They possess only the form of orations, being
    in reality essays on moral, political, and religious subjects.
    They are distinguished for their refined and elegant style,
    being modelled upon the best writers of classic Greece.

=Dionysius Halicarnassensis=, Ῥωμαϊκὴ Ἀρχαιολογία, edited by F. Sylburg,
Frankfort, 1586, 2 vols.; Latin translation by L. Biragus, Treviso, 1480;
translated into English from the Greek by Edward Spelman, under the
title of The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius Halicarnassensis, London,
1758.--=Duchesne=, André, Historiæ Francorum scriptores coetanei ab
ipsius gentis origine ad Philippi IV tempora, Paris, 1636-1649, 5 vols.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Edictum Theodorici Regis=, in Nivellius’ edition of Cassiodorus, Paris,
1579.--=Eugippius=, Vita Sancti Severini, in vol. I of Kirschengeschichte
Deutschlands, also in vol. I of Auctores Antiquissimi, in the Monumenta
Germaniæ Historica.

    _Eugippius_ was abbot of the monastery of St. Severinus in the
    sixth century. His work is valuable as a picture of life in the
    Roman provinces after the barbarian invasions.

=Eusebius=, ἐκκλησιαστικὴ ἱστορία, edited by Valesius, with Latin
translation, Paris, 1659; edited by Dindorf, Leipsic, 1871; English
translation by Hanmer, 1584; by C. F. Cruse, New York, 1865; Χρόνικόν,
edited by A. Schone, Berlin, 1866; 1875.

    _Eusebius_, who has been called the “Father of Church History,”
    was born in Palestine about 260 A.D.; died at Cæsarea in 340.
    He was made bishop of Cæsarea in 313, and became one of the
    leaders of the Arians, and a conspicuous figure in the church
    in the time of Constantine. Both his _Ecclesiastical History_
    and his _Chronicle_ are important sources.

=Eutropius=, Breviarium Historiæ Romanæ, Rome, 1471; Basel, 1546-1552;
edited by Grosse, Leipsic, 1825; translated from the Latin by J. S.
Watson, under the title of Abridgement of Roman History.

    _Flavius Eutropius_, a Latin historian of the fourth century,
    was a secretary of Constantine the Great, and accompanied
    Julian in his Persian expedition. He wrote an abridgment of
    Roman history, in ten books, from the founding of the city
    to the accession of Valens, 364 A.D., by whose command it
    was composed, and to whom it is inscribed. Its merits are
    impartiality, brevity, and clearness, but it possesses little
    independent value.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Fabretti=, Raphael, Corpus Inscriptionum Italicarum, Rome,
1699.--=Fabricius=, Johannes Albert, Bibliotheca Latina, sive Notitia
Auctorum Veterum Latinorum, quorumcunque scripta ad nos pervenerunt,
Hamburg, 1697, 3 vols.; Bibliotheca Latina mediæ et infirmæ ætatis,
Hamburg, 1734-1736, 5 vols.; Bibliotheca Græca, sive Notitia Scriptorum
Veterum Græcorum, quorumcunque Monumenta integra aut fragmenta edita
extant, tum plerorumque ex manuscriptis ac deperditis, Hamburg,
1705-1728, 14 vols.; edited by Harless, 1790-1809.--=Florus=, Lucius
Annæus, Rerum Romanorum Libri IV (Epitome de Gestis Romanorum), Paris,
1471; translated from the Latin by J. S. Watson, Epitome of Roman
History, London, 1861.

    The identity of this author is unsettled. The work is of
    scarcely any value as a source.

=Frontinus=, Sextus Julius, De Aquæductibus Urbis Romæ Libri II, edited
by Bucheler, Leipsic, 1858.

    _Sectus Julius Frontinus_ was governor of Britain from 75-78
    A.D. In 97 he was appointed _curator aquæum_. He died about
    106. Frontinus was possessed of considerable engineering
    knowledge, and is the main authority upon the water system of
    ancient Rome.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Herodianus=, or Herodian, Τῆς μετὰ Μάρκον βασιλείας ἱστοριῶν βιβλία
ὀκτώ, edited by Irmish, Leipsic, 1789-1805, 5 vols.; and by F. A. Wolf,
Halle, 1792.

    Born about 170 (?) A.D., died about 240 A.D.; a Greek
    historian, resident in Italy, author of a Roman history for the
    period 180-238 A.D. (Commodus to Gordian).

=Historia, Miscella=, in Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, Hanover, 1819, in
progress.

    A compilation in three parts; the first a version of Eutropius,
    ascribed to Paulus Diaconus, the second and third are credited
    to Landulf the Wise (eleventh century). It includes extracts
    from the annalists as well as from Jordanes and Orosius.

=Hormisdas=, Pope, Epistolæ, in Migne’s Patrologiæ latine, vol. LXIII,
Paris, 1844-1855, 221 vols.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Isidorus Hispalensis=, Historia Gothorum, Paris, 1580; Rome, 1797-1803,
7 vols., Chronicon, Turin, 1593.

    _Isidore_, bishop of Seville, was born 560 A.D. at Carthagena,
    or Seville; died at the latter city April 4, 636. He was a man
    of extensive scholarship and was zealously concerned for the
    maintenance and spread of the learning of classical times. To
    this end he compiled his _Originum seu etymologiarum libri
    XX_, a sort of encyclopædia of the sciences as known to his
    day. His historical works comprise a _Chronicon_, or series
    of chronological tables, from the creation to the year 627;
    _Historia Gothorum, Vandalorum et Suevorum_.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Jaffé=, Philip, Monumenta Carolina, Berlin, 1867; Bibliotheca rerum
Germanicarum, Berlin, 1864-1873, 6 vols.; Regesta pontificum Romanorum ad
annum 1198, Leipsic, 1881-1886.--=Jerome=, Saint, De Viris Illustribus,
s. de Scriptoribus ecclesiasticis; in Migne’s Patrologiæ latine,
Paris, 1844-1855; edited by Herding, Leipsic, 1879; Epistolæ, Basel,
1516-1520.--=Jordanes= (Jornandes), De Getarum origine actibusque,
Augsburg, 1515; Paris, 1679; edited by Mommsen, Berlin, 1882; De Regnorum
ac temporum Successione, edited by Grotius, Amsterdam, 1655.

    Very little is known of the personal history of Jordanes except
    that he was a Goth, perhaps of Alanic descent, that he was a
    notary and afterwards became a monk. His _De Getarum origine
    actibusque_, largely taken from the lost history of Cassidorus,
    is highly important for our knowledge of the Gothic kingdom in
    Italy. The other work cited above possesses scarcely any value.

=Josephus=, Flavius, Περὶ τοῦ Ἰουδαϊκοῦ ἢ Ἰουδαϊκῆς ἱστορίας περὶ
ἁλώσεως (History of the Jewish War) and Ἰουδαϊκὴ ἀρχαιολογία (Jewish
Antiquities), Augsburg, 1470; Basel, 1544; edited by Hudson, Oxford,
1720; translated from the Greek by William Whiston, The Works of
Josephus, London, 1737, 2 vols. A biographical note upon this author will
be found in vol. II, p. 232.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Lambert=, von Hersfeld (or Aschaffenburg), Annales, edited by Hesse,
in vol. V of Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, Scriptores, Hanover, 1819,
in progress.--=Lampridius=, Ælius, see Augustan History.--=Libanius=,
Λόγοι, edited by Reiske, Altenberg, 1791-1797, 4 vols.--=Livius=, Titus,
Annales, Rome, 1469; edited by Drakenborch, Leyden, 1738-1746, 7 vols.;
English translation by Philemon Holland, History of Rome, London, 1600;
English translation, The Romaine History written in Latine, London, 1686,
English translation by D. Spillan, C. Edmunds, and W. A. McDevitte,
London, 1849, 4 vols. (See vol. V, Introduction.)--=Lucanus=, M. Annæus,
Pharsalia, edited by Andrew, bishop of Aleria, Rome, 1469; by C. F.
Weber, Leipsic, 1821-1831; by C. E. Haskins, with English notes, and
introduction by W. E. Heitland, London, 1887.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Marcellinus=, Comes, Chronikon, Paris, 1696.

    _Marcellinus_ was an officer of the court of Justinian in the
    sixth century. His chronicle covers the years 379-534 and deals
    chiefly with affairs of the Eastern Empire.

=Monumentum Ancyranum=. (This is the title of an inscription preserved
at Ancyra, of which the text has been published by Mommsen, 1865; and
Bergk, 1873, for which see these authors in the third section of the
bibliography, pages 661, 667.) The text also appears in the _Delphin
Classics_, London, 1827.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Notitia= dignitatum omnium, tam civilium quam militarium, in partibus
orientis et occidentis, edited by E. Bocking, Bonn, 1839-1853.

    This work is an official directory and army list of the Roman
    Empire, compiled about the end of the fifth century, and was
    preserved in a (now lost) Codex Spirensis.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Olympiodorus=, Ἱστορικοὶ λόγοι, abridgment edited by Ph. Labbé, in his
Eclogæ Historicorum de Rebus Byzantinis, included in D. Hoeschelius’
Excerpta de Legationibus, Paris, 1645.

    _Olympiodorus_, a native of Thebes, in Egypt, lived in the
    fifth century. His history which is preserved only in the
    abridgment of Photius was in 22 books, and dealt with the
    Western Empire under Honorius from 407 to 425. It was a
    compilation of historical material, rather than a history.
    Olympiodorus wrote a continuation of Eunapius, one of the
    Byzantine historians.

=Origo Gentis Longobardorum=, edited by F. Bluhme, in Monumenta Germaniæ
Historica, Hanover, 1819, in progress.

    The oldest document for the history of the Lombards, prefixed
    to the code of King Rothari.

=Orosius=, Paulus, Historiarum adversus Paganos Libri VII: Vienna, 1471;
edited by Havercamp, Leyden, 1738; English translation edited by D.
Barrington and J. R. Foster, with the Anglo-Saxon, by Alfred the Great,
London, 1773.

    _Paulus Orosius_, born probably at Tarrayonce in Spain: lived
    in the first part of the fifth century, A.D. At the request of
    the Bishop of Hippo (St. Augustine) Orosius in early manhood
    compiled a history of the world, remembered partly because
    Alfred the Great translated it into Anglo-Saxon.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Panegyrici Veteres= latine, edited by H. J. Arntzenius, Utrecht, 1790;
edited by Bährens, Leipsic, 1874. A collection of eleven complimentary
orations delivered at Rome, in praise of different emperors. While these
orations are notable examples of rhetorical skill, they are naturally
valueless for historical study, being coloured and distorted to suit the
occasion.--=Paterculus=, Caius Velleius, Historiæ Romanæ, ad M. Vinicium
Cos. Libri II, Basel, 1520; Leyden, 1789; (translated by J. S. Watson,
London, 1861).

    _Caius Velleius Paterculus_, born about 19 B.C.; died after
    30 A.D., contemporary with Augustus and Tiberius. The work of
    Paterculus, apparently the only one he ever wrote, appears
    to have been written in 30 A.D. The beginning of the work is
    wanting, and there is also a portion lost after the eighth
    chapter of the first book. It commenced apparently with the
    destruction of Troy, and ended with the year 30 A.D.

=Paulus Diaconus=, Historia Langobardorum, edited by Lappenburg, in the
Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, Hanover, 1819, in progress.

    _Paulus Diaconus_, “Paul the Deacon,” born about 720-725
    A.D.: died at Monte Cassino, Italy, before 800 A.D. The first
    important historian of the Middle Ages. His chief works are
    a _History of the Lombards_, and a continuation of the Roman
    history of Eutropius.

=Philostorgius=, Ἐκκλησιαστική ἱστορία, abstract, edited by J. Godefroi,
Geneva, 1643; by H. Valesius, Paris, 1673.

    _Philostorgius_ was born in Borissus, Cappadocia, 358 A.D. His
    history of the church, from the heresy of Arius, 300 A.D., to
    the accession of Valentinian III, 425 A.D., exists only in an
    abstract by Photius. He possessed considerable learning but was
    strongly prejudiced in favour of the Arians and Eunomians, and
    unsparing in abuse of their opponents.

=Plinius= (Minor), C. Cæcilius Secundus, Epistolæ, Venice, 1485;
Amsterdam, 1734; edited by W. Keil, Leipsic, 1853; 1873; English
translation by W. Melmoth, _The Letters of Pliny the Younger_, 1746; 1878.

    _Pliny “The Younger” (Caius Plinius Cæcilius Secundus)_. Born
    at Como, Italy, 62 A.D.; died 113. Nephew of the elder Pliny.
    He was a consul in 100, and later (111 or 112) governor of
    Bithynia and Pontica. He was a friend of Trajan and Tacitus.
    His _Epistles_ and a eulogy of Trajan have been preserved. The
    most celebrated of his letters is one to Trajan concerning the
    treatment of the Christians in his province.

=Plinius= (Major), Secundus C., Historia Naturalis, Venice, 1469; edited
by Sillig, Leipsic, 1831-1836, 5 vols.; edited by D. Detlefsen, Berlin,
1866-1873; 1882, 5 vols.; (translated into English by Philemon Holland,
London), 1601.--=Polybius=, Καθολικὴ, κοινη ἱστορία, Paris, 1609; English
translation by H. Shears, The History of Polybius the Megalopolitan;
containing a General Account of the Transactions of the World, and
Principally of the Roman People, during the First and Second Punick Wars,
London, 1693, 2 vols.; by James Hampton, The General History of Polybius,
London, 1772, 2 vols. For notes on _Polybius_, see the study of the
sources, in volume V.--=Possidius=, Vita Augustini, Rome, 1731; 2nd ed.
Augsburg, 1768.

    _Possidius_ or _Possidonius_ was bishop of Calama, in Africa.
    He gives an account of the siege of Hippo by the Vandals in 430.

=Prosper Aquitanicus=, Chronicon, edited by LeBrun and Mangeant, Paris,
1711.

    _Prosper Aquitanicus_, born in Aquitania, probably in the last
    decade of the fourth century. Died at Rome, date unknown. His
    Chronicle is in two parts; the first, to the year 378, is an
    extract from Eusebius, Jerome, and Augustine; the second, to
    455, is original.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Sallustius=, Caius Crispus, Bellum Catilinarum, Bellum Jugurthinum,
Rome, 1470; edited by W. W. Capes, with English notes, London, 1884;
(translated into English by J. S. Watson, The Conspiracy of Cataline;
The Jugurthine War, London, 1861).--=Salvianus=, of Marseilles, De
Gubernatione Dei, 1530, edited by C. Halm, Berlin, 1878.

    _Salvianus_, an accomplished ecclesiastical writer of the fifth
    century, was born near Trèves, and passed the most of his life
    at Marseilles. His writings are mainly theological, but are
    valuable for their portraiture of the life and morals of the
    period.

=Seneca=, Lucius Annæus, Opera, Naples, 1475, edited by Gronovius,
Leyden, 1649-1658, 4 vols.; by Ruhkopf, Leipsic, 1797-1811, 5 vols.;
English translation, The Works of L. Annæus Seneca, both Morall
and Naturall, translated by T. Lodge, D. in Physicke, London,
1614.--=Sidonius, Apollinaris= (C. Sollius), Epistolarum Libri IX, Paris,
1652; Berlin, 1887.

    _Sidonius_ was born at Lyons about 431 A.D. He became the
    son-in-law of the emperor Avitus, and afterwards a favourite of
    Anthemius, who raised him to senatorial rank, made him prefect
    of Rome, and placed his statue in the library of Trajan. In
    472, though not a priest, he was made bishop of Clermont
    in Auvergne. His writings afford considerable historical
    information.

=Solinus= (Grammaticus), C. Julius Polyhistor, Venice, 1473; Salmasius,
Utrecht, 1689; English translation. The excellent and pleasant works of
_Julius Solinus Polyhistor_, containing the noble actions of humaine
creatures, the Secretes and Providence of Nature, the description of
Countries, the manners of the People etc. etc. (translated out of Latin
by Arthur Golding, Gent.), London, 1587. (The work consists mainly of
selections from the _Natural History_ of Pliny, the additions of the
author being practically worthless.)

=Sozomenos=, Ecclesiastical History, edited by Valesius, Paris, 1659.

    The history of Sozomenos extends from 323 to 439.

=Spartianus=, Ælius, see Augustan History.--=Suetonius=, Caius
Tranquillus, Vitæ duodecim Cæsarum, Rome, 1470; English translation by
Philemon Holland, London, 1606; English translation by A. Thompson, The
Lives of the Twelve Cæsars, London, 1796; 1855.--=Suidas=, Lexicon,
edited by Kuster, Cambridge, 1705; by Gainsford, Oxford, 1834.

    Nothing is known of Suidas’ life, but he probably lived in
    the tenth or eleventh century. His _Lexicon_ is a sort of
    encyclopædia of biography, literature, geography, etc. Under
    the head of “Adam,” he gives a chronology which extends to the
    tenth century.

=Symmachus=, Epistolarum Libri IX, edited by Seeck, Berlin, 1883.

    _A. Aurelius Symmachus_ was a distinguished scholar and orator
    of the fourth century, and a strong adherent of the ancient
    pagan religion of Rome. His letters furnish much minor detail
    of the life of the period.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Tacitus=, C., Cornelius, Annales, Agricola, Germania, Historiæ, Venice,
1470; Zurich and Berlin, 1859-1884, 5 vols.; Agricola and Germania,
edited by A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribb, with English notes, London,
1882; Annales, edited by H. Furneaux, with English notes, London, 1883;
English translation by Greenway (Annals and Germany), London, 1598;
English translation by Saville (Histories and Agricola), London, 1598.

    _C. Cornelius Tacitus_ was born about 61 A.D., died probably
    after 117 A.D. Nothing is known of Tacitus’ ancestry. He tells
    us in the first chapter of his history that “his advancement
    was begun by Vespasian, forwarded by Titus, and carried to a
    far greater height by Domitian.” His first employment is said
    to have been as procurator in Gaul. Upon his return to Rome,
    Titus advanced him to a quæstorship, and we have Tacitus’ own
    testimony that he was made prætor by Domitian. He became consul
    under Nerva. Little further is known of his life, except his
    marriage to Julia, daughter of Agricola, whose life he wrote.
    We learn from the _Epistles_ of Pliny the Younger, the great
    respect and veneration paid to Tacitus by his contemporaries,
    and above all by Pliny himself.

=Thietmar of Merseburg=, Chronicon, edited by Lappenberg, in the
Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, vol. III, Hanover, 1819 in progress; German
translation by Laurent, 1849.

    _Thietmar of Merseburg_ was born July 25th, 976, died December
    1, 1018. Became bishop of Merseburg in 1009. The last four
    books of his chronicle comprising the reign of Henry II
    (1002-1018) are especially important.

=Trebellius Pollio=, see Augustan History.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Valerius=, Maximus, De factis dictisque memorabilibus Libri IX,
Strasburg, 1470; edited by Terrenius, Leyden, 1726; by C. Kempf,
Leipsic, 1889; English translation by W. Speed, The History of the Acts
and Sayings of the Ancient Romans, London, 1678.--=Valesian Fragment
(Anonymus Valesii).= This title is derived from Henricus Valesius (Henri
de Valois, 1603-1767) who was the first to publish the fragmentary
writings which bear this name. They generally form an appendix to
editions of Ammianus Marcelinus and have for subject the history of
Constantine the Great and that of Italy between the years 474 and
526.--=Valesius= (Valois, Adrien de), Gesta Francorum, seu de rebus
Fransicis, Paris, 1646-1658, 3 vols.

    _Valesius_’ history begins with the year 254 and ends with 752.
    It is written with care and in elegant Latin, but is more of a
    commentary upon ancient writers than a history.

=Victor=, Sextus Aurelius, De Cæsaribus, Amsterdam, 1733; edited by
Schröter, Leipsic, 1831.

    _Sextus Aurelius Victor_, a Latin writer of the fourth century,
    who rose to distinction by his literary ability. He was made
    governor of Pannonia by Julian, prefect of Constantinople by
    Theodosius, and is perhaps the Sextus Aurelius Victor who was
    consul in 373.

=Victor Tunnunensis=, Chronicon; edited by Scaliger, in Thesaurus
Tempori Eusebii, vol. II, Amsterdam, 1658.--=Victor Vitensis=, Historia
persecutionis Africanæ sub Genserico et Hunnerico, in Ruinart’s Historia
Persecutionis Vandalicæ, Paris, 1694; edited by Petschenig, Vienna,
1881.--=Virgilius, P.=, or =Vergilius Maro=, Opera, Rome, 1469; Venice,
1501.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Walafried Strabus=, De exordiis et incrementis rerum ecclesiasticarum,
in Hittorp’s Scriptores de officiis divinis, Cologne, 1568.

    _Walafried Strabus_ was of German birth, and in 842 A.D. became
    abbot of Reichenau. He died July 17, 849. A very prolific
    writer on both ecclesiastical and historical subjects.

=Wipo=, Gesta Chuonradi II, imperatoris, in Pistorius’ Scriptores Rerum
Germanicarum, Basel, 1582-1607, 3 vols.--=Wittekind=, Res gestæ Saxonicæ.


_B. The Byzantine or Later Greek Histories_

=Agathias=, Ἱστορία Ε, edited by B. Vulcanius, Leyden, 1594.

    _Agathias_, of Myrina, in Ætolia, was born about 536 A.D., and
    died about 580 A.D. He was an epigrammatist, edited a poetical
    anthology, and extended and repeated the history of Procopius
    for the years 553 to 558, a brief but remarkable period,
    comprising the exploits of Narses and Belisarius, the beginning
    of the wars with the Franks and with the Persians, the
    rebuilding of St. Sophia, the earthquakes of 554 and 557, and
    the great plague of 558, all related in a pleasant, diffuse,
    and impartial manner, but without much display of general
    knowledge. It is the work of a man practically acquainted with
    the affairs of his age, presented with poetical reminiscences,
    but never going below the surface. This work was continued by
    Menander Protector.

=Acropolita=, Georgius, Χρονικὸν, edited by Theodorus Douza, with a Latin
translation, Leyden, 1614; edited by Leo Allatius, Paris, 1651 (included
in the Venice reprint, 1729).

    _Georgius Acropolita_ was born at Constantinople in 1220. He
    studied at Nicæa under distinguished scholars, and was employed
    as a diplomat under the emperor, John Vatatzes Ducas. His
    history begins with the taking of Constantinople in 1204, to
    its delivery in 1261, the sequence of events being afterwards
    taken up by Pachymeres. Acropolita appears to have prepared his
    history for educational purposes.

=Anagnostes=, Joannes, Διήγησις περί τῆς τελευταίας ἁλώσεως τῆς
Θεσσαλονίκης συντεθεῖσα πρός τινα τῶν ἀξιολόγων πολλάκις αἰτλήσαντα περὶ
ταύτης, εν ἐπιτόμῳ, edited by Leo Allatius, in his Σύμμικτα, with a Latin
translation, Rome, 1653.

    _Anagnostes_, of whose life little is known, was present at the
    siege of his native city, Thessalonica, in 1430 A.D., and wrote
    an account of its conquest by Murad II.

=Anonymous=,

    Ἡ βασιλὶς τῶν πόλεων πῶς Ιταλοῖς ἑάλω
    Καὶ τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ὕστερον τῶς ἀπεδὸθη πάλιν,
    Ἐγράφη κατ’ ἀκρίβειαν, εἰ σὺ δὲ βούλῃ, μάθοις.

    The poem, in 749 “political” verses, generally designated by
    quoting the first three lines, as above, gives an account of
    the fall and recapture of Constantinople and other events up
    to the year 1282, the author stating in the course of the
    poem that it was composed in 1392. The facts as recorded are
    based upon Nicetas Acominatus and Georgius Acropolita, and are
    related in a picturesque manner. The work has been published
    by Bekker, in the _Abhandlungen_ of the Berlin Academy, 1841,
    and by J. A. Buchon, in his _Recherches historiques sur la
    principauté française de Morée_, Paris, 1845.

=Attaliata=, Michael, Ἱστορία ἐκτεθεῖσα παρὰ Μιχαὴλ αἰδεσιμωτάτου κριτοῦ
ἐπὶ τοῦ ἱπποδρόμου καὶ τοῦ Ἀτταλειάτου, translated into Latin by M.
Freheri, Frankfort, 1596.

    _Michael Attaliata_, a native of Attalia, served as a judge and
    proconsul under the emperor, Michael Ducas, by whose command
    he prepared a legal digest. His history treats of the period
    1034-1079, a time notable for the fall of the Macedonian
    dynasty and the rise of the family of Comnenus and Ducas,
    palace revolutions and feminine intrigues playing a large part
    in these events.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Bryennius=, Nicephorus, Ὕλη ἡιστορίας, edited by P. Poussines, Paris,
1661.

    _Bryennius_, born at Orestias in Macedonia, in the middle
    of the eleventh century, was the husband of Anna Comnena,
    daughter of the emperor Alexis. Distinguished for his physical
    and mental gifts, Bryennius took an active part against the
    Crusaders. The design of his history was to deal with the
    reigns of the emperors from Isaac Comnenus, and so far as it
    extends,--to Michael VII Ducas,--it affords a lucid narrative,
    written with all the judgment and directness of a leader and
    eye-witness of the times. His work was continued by his wife.

=Byzantinæ Historiæ Scriptores.= Paris, 1644-1711. 42 vols.

    The first collective edition of Byzantine historians, edited by
    Labbé, Fabrotus, Combefisius, and others. It was republished at
    Venice, 1729-1733, but is now superseded by the Bonn “Corpus,”
    _q.v._

       *       *       *       *       *

=Cameniata=, Joannes, Ἰωάννου κλερικοῦ καὶ κουβουκλεισίου τοῦ Καμενιάτου
εἰς τὴν ἅλωσιν τῆς Θεσσαλονίκης (De excidio Thessalonicensi), edited by
Leo Allatius, with a Latin translation, in his Σύμμικτα, Rome, 1653.

    _Joannes Cameniata_, a crosier-bearer to the bishop of
    Thessalonica, witnessed the taking of that city by the Arabs on
    July 31st, 904. Cameniata was himself carried away to Tarsus,
    and while held there as a prisoner for exchange, he wrote an
    account of the fall of Thessalonica, a narrative at once lively
    and valuable.

=Candidus Isaurus=, Ἱστορία, fragments as preserved by Photius and
Suidas, edited by Labbé in his Eclogæ Historicorum de Rebus Byzantinis,
in D. Hoeschelius’ Excerpta de Legationibus, Paris, 1648.

    _Candidus Isaurus_, whose Byzantine history exists now only in
    fragments, was a native of Isauria, and lived in the reign of
    the emperor Anastasius (491-518). His history appears to have
    related to the period 407-491.

=Cecaumenus= Περὶ παραδρομῆς πολέμου, edited by V. Vasiljevskij, in
his article “Ratschläge und Erzählungen (Sovêty i razskazy) eines
byzantinischen Magnaten des 11. Jahrhunderts,” in the Žurnal ministerstva
narodnago prosvješčenija, St. Petersburg, 1881, vols. 215-216.

    _Cecaumenus_ was a Byzantine aristocrat of the eleventh
    century, who late in life devoted himself to writing a
    treatise, presumably in imitation of Leo Diaconus, dealing
    with military tactics, morals, household economy, and an
    ethnological and historical account of the Byzantine Empire
    from the times of Basilius II to Romanus Diogenes.

=Cedrenus=, Georgius, Σύνοψις ἱστοριῶν (Compendium Historiarum ab Orbe
Condita ad Isaacum Comnenum), edited by G. Xylander, Basel, 1566.

    _Georgius Cedrenus_, a Greek monk, lived in the eleventh
    century, and compiled, largely from the synopsis of Joannes
    Scylitzes, an historical work which extends from the creation
    of the world to the year 1057 A.D. He was very deficient in
    historical knowledge and his work should be used with great
    caution.

=Chalcondyles=, Laonicus (Nicolaus), Ἰστορία, edited by J. R. Baumbach,
with a Latin translation, Geneva, 1615.

    _Chalcondyles_ was a native of Athens, but little is known of
    his life except that during the siege of Constantinople, in
    1446, he was sent by the emperor, John VII, as an ambassador to
    the Sultan. The ten books of his history deal with the Turks
    and the later period of the Byzantine Empire, from 1298 to the
    conquest of Corinth in 1463. The author has chosen a difficult
    period to describe, when Byzantine affairs were being merged in
    those of the Turks, Franks, Slavs, and of the Greek despots,
    and Constantinople no longer formed the chief centre about
    which events grouped themselves. The book is one of the most
    important sources for the history of the time. The style is
    interesting, but the matter is not well arranged. Extraneous
    observations are frequently introduced, and the author’s
    knowledge of European geography is amusingly deficient.
    England, according to his account, consists of three islands
    united under one government, with a flourishing metropolis,
    Λονδύνη; her inhabitants being courageous, and her bowmen the
    finest in the world. Their manners and habits, he says, were
    exactly like the French, and their speech had no affinity to
    any other language.

=Cinnamus=, Joannes, Ἐπιτομὴ τῶν κατορθωμάτων τῷ μακαρ ίτῃ βασιλεῖ καί
πορφυρογευνήτῳ κυρῷ Ἰωάννῃ τῷ Κομνηνῷ και ἀφήγησις τῶν πραχθέντων τῷ
ἀοιδίμῳ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ τῷ βασιλεῖ καὶ πορφυρογεννήτῳ κυρῷ Μανουὴλ τῷ Κομνηνῷ
πονηθεῖσα. Ἰοὰννῃ βασιλικῷ γραμματικῷ τῷ Κιννάμῳ, edited by Cornelius
Tollius, with a Latin translation, Utrecht, 1652.

    _Joannes Cinnamus_ lived in the twelfth century. He was engaged
    as an imperial notary under Manuel Comnenus, who reigned
    from 1143 to 1180, and accompanied him on his many military
    expeditions in Europe and Asia, the office of notary being
    equivalent to that of a modern secretary of state. His history
    of the reign of Manuel and of his father, Colo-Joannes, is one
    of the best of the Byzantine histories.

=Comnena=, Anna, Ἀλεξίας, Augsburg, 1610.

    _Anna Comnena_, daughter of Alexis I Comnenus, was born 1083
    A.D. Gifted by nature with rare talent, she was instructed in
    every branch of science. After the accession of John, 1118, she
    was exiled for conspiring to place her husband upon the throne.
    During her retirement she composed the biography of her father.
    The _Alexias_ is history in the form of artistic romance. The
    truth is embellished to suit the purpose of the author, whose
    aim was to glorify the father and his daughter; but with all
    its defects, it is still the most interesting and one of the
    most valuable products of Byzantine literature. Her work is
    practically a continuation of that of her husband, Nicephorus
    Bryennius, already mentioned.

=Comnenus= and =Proclus=, Ἰστορία Πρελούμπου καὶ ἄλλων διαφόρων Δεσποτῶν
τῶν Ἰωαννίνων ἀπὸ τῆς ἀλώσεως αὐτῶν παρὰ τῶν Σέρβων ἕως τῆς παραδόσεως
εἰς τοὺς Τούρκους, edited by Andreas Mustoxydes, in his Ἑλληνουμνήμων
(Corfu), 1843-1847; edited by G. Destunis, with a Russian translation,
St. Petersburg, 1858.

    This is a fragment of an alleged history of Epirus.

=Constantinus VII=, Flavius Porphyrogenitus, Ἱστορικὴ διήγησις τοῦ βίου
καί τῶν πράξεων τοῦ Βασιλείου τοῦ βασιλέως (Vita Basilii), edited by Leo
Allatius, in his Σύμμικτα, with a Latin translation, Cologne, 1653.

    _Constantinus VII_, _Flavius Porphyrogenitus_, only son of
    the emperor Leo (VI) Philosophus, was born in 905. He reigned
    nominally from 911 to 959, but from 912 to 944 the Eastern
    Empire was usurped by Lecapenus. In his enforced retirement
    he devoted himself to scholarship, and became an assiduous
    writer, compiler, and patron of learning. Besides the _Life of
    Basilius_, he wrote works dealing with imperial and provincial
    government, military and naval warfare, and court ceremonial.
    His surname, _Porphyrogenitus_ (“born in the purple”), was
    acquired from πόρφυρα, the name of an apartment in the imperial
    palace in which he was born, and hence the origin of the
    expression as applied to royalty.

=Corippus=, Flavius Cresconius, Corippi Africani fragmentum carminis
in laudem imperatoris Justini Minoris; Carmen panegyricum in laudem
Anastasii quæstoris et magistri; de laudibus Justini Augusti Minoris
heroico carmine libri IV, edited by Michael Ruiz (Madrid, 1579); Antwerp,
1581; Johannis, Milan, 1820.

    _Flavius Cresconius Corippus_, the Latin poet, left two
    poems which are useful in tracing the history of his times;
    one, _Johannis_, reciting the history of the war of Johannes
    Patricius against the Moors; the other, _De Laudibus Justini_,
    an extravagant panegyric of the younger Justin (565-578 A.D.).
    A remarkable fact about this work is that the identity of its
    author with that of the _Johannis_ was not established until
    more than two centuries after its publication, for Ruiz merely
    asserted that he copied the book from an ancient manuscript,
    of which he gave no description. Corippus, however, having
    mentioned in his preface that he had previously composed a poem
    on the African wars, researches brought the missing _Johannis_
    to light in the Royal Library at Buda in 1814, the work having
    been wrongly catalogued. Of the life of Corippus we know but
    little, except that he was born in Africa in 530 A.D. and died
    in 585. His works are found in best form in the Bonn “Corpus.”

=Corpus scriptorum historiæ Byzantinæ=, Bonn, 1828-1878, 49 vols.

    This great work was commenced on the recommendation and under
    the superintendence of Niebuhr, and after his death continued
    by the Royal Prussian Academy. The separate volumes have been
    edited by Bekker, Hase, Dindorf, and other distinguished
    scholars.

=Critobulus of Imbros=, Ἱστορία, edited by C. Müller in his Fragmenta
Historicorum Græcorum, vol. V, Paris, 1870 (trans. into Hungarian by K.
Szabo, in Monumenta Hungariæ Historica, Scriptores, vol. XXII, Budapest,
1875).

    _Critobulus of Imbros_, in about the year 1470, wrote a history
    of the sultan Mohammed II, covering the period 1457-1467.
    Diffuse in style, and feebly imitating the manner of Greek
    classic writers, the only value of Critobulus is that he
    represents the Greek mind at the period when it became
    reconciled to the rule of the Turkish conquerors.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Dexippus=, P. Herennius, fragments preserved in the Bonn “Corpus.”

    _Dexippus_ wrote three historical works, only fragments of
    which are extant. He was a native of Attica, and distinguished
    himself in the Gothic invasion of Greece, 262 A.D. His history
    was continued by Eunapius.

=Ducas=, Michael, Historia Byzantina, in the Paris, Venice, and Bonn
_corpora_.

    _Michael Ducas_, the historian, lived during the latter part
    of the fifteenth century. His history embraces the period from
    1391 A.D. to the capture of Lesbos in 1462, and is valuable
    for judicious, prudent, and impartial statement of facts. He
    wrote however, in most barbarous Greek, using quite a number
    of foreign phrases, and being seemingly unacquainted with the
    Greek classics.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Easter Chronicle=, Ἐπιτομὴ χρόνων τῶν ἀπο Ἀδὰμ τοῦ προτοπλάστου ἀνθρώπου
ἕως κ’ ἔτους τῆς βασιλείας Ἡρακλείου τοῦ εὐσεβεστάτου καὶ μετὰ ὑπατείαν
ἔτους ιθ’ καὶ ιη’ ἔτους τῆς βασιλείας Ἡρακλείου νέου Κωνσταντίνου τοῦ
αὑτοῦ υἱοῦ ἱνδικτίωνος γ’ (Chronicon Paschale), edited by M. Raderi,
Munich, 1615.

    This is a comprehensive chronological table extending
    originally from the Creation to 629 A.D. It gets its name
    from the computation of the Easter canon upon which Christian
    chronology is based. After Eusebius and Syncellus it is the
    most important and influential production of Græco-Christian
    chronography. The compiler of the chronicle, which is largely
    put together out of earlier works, was a contemporary of
    the emperor Heraclius (610-641). The text, as it has been
    preserved, breaks off at 627 A.D.

=Ephræm of Constantinople=, Ἐφραιμίου χρονικοῦ Καίσαρες, edited by Angelo
Mai, in his Scriptorum veterum nova collectio, Rome, 1828.

    _Ephræm_ wrote a chronicle in iambic verse, giving
    Roman-Byzantine history from Julius Cæsar to the reconquest of
    Constantinople in 1261.

=Eunapius=, Μετά Δέξιππον χρονική ἱστορία, edited by D. Hoeschel,
Augsburg, 1603; by A. Mai, in his Scriptorum veterum nova collectio,
Rome, 1828.

    _Eunapius_ was born at Sardis in 347 A.D. He wrote a
    continuation of Dexippus, but most of the work is lost.
    Eunapius exhibits pagan sympathies, admires Julian, and gives a
    deal of information on the manners and customs of his age, the
    period covered being 270-404.

=Eustathius of Epiphaneia=, Χρονική ἐπιτομή, fragments preserved in the
Bonn “Corpus.”

    _Eustathius_ lived in the reign of Anastasius (491-521). His
    history of the world, to 502 A.D., is known only through the
    portions preserved by Evagrius.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Genesius=, Josephus, Βασιλειῶν Βιβλία Δ.

    _Genesius_ lived in the middle of the tenth century, and wrote
    his Greek history by the order of the emperor Constantine VII,
    Porphyrogenitus, whose literary activities have just been
    mentioned. His work comprises the histories of Leo V, 813-820,
    Michael II, 820-829, Theophilus, 829-842, Michael III, 842-867,
    and Basilius I Macedon, 867-886. The work was first printed in
    the Venice “corpus.”

=Georgius Monachus=, Βίοι τῶν Βασιλέων, edited by G. A. Fabricius in
volume VII of his Bibliotheca Græca, Hamburg, 1705-1728, 14 vols.

    _Georgius Monachus_ (George the Monk), probably lived in the
    tenth century, and compiled a chronicle which comprehends the
    period from 813 to 948 A.D., being a continuation of Theophanes
    Isaurus.

=Georgius Syncellus=, Ἐκλογὴ Χρονογραφίας συνταγεῖσα ὑπὸ Γεωργίου Μοναχοῦ
Συγκέλλου γεγονότος Ταρασίου Πατριάρχου Κωνσταντινουπόλεως ἀπὸ Ἀδὰμ μέχρι
Διολητιανοῦ, first printed in the Bonn “Corpus.”

    _George Syncellus_, Albas or Monachus, lived in the eighth and
    ninth centuries, and gained his epithet as being the personal
    attendant or _syncellus_ of the patriarch Tarsasius, who died
    in 806. His chronicle extends from Adam to Diocletian, but was
    intended to proceed to 800 A.D., Theophanes of Isaurus actually
    continuing it to 811. The chronicle of Syncellus is, together
    with Eusebius, the most important work for a knowledge of
    Christian chronography.

=Glycas=, Michael, Βίβλος χρονική (Annales), edited by J. Meurius,
Theodori Metochitæ, Historiæ Romanæ, etc., Leyden, 1618; Latin
translation by Leunclavius, Basel, 1572.

    _Michael Glycas_ was born either at Constantinople or in
    Sicily, but nothing is certain about his personality or period.
    His _Annals_, from the Creation, go down to the year 1118, so
    that he must have lived after that date. He writes clearly
    and concisely, and displays a knowledge of foreign languages.
    Meurius, in his edition, erroneously ascribed the book to
    Theodorus Metochita.

=Gregoras Nicephorus=, Ῥωμαϊκὴ ἱστορία, edited by H. Wolf, with a Latin
translation, Basel, 1562.

    _Gregoras_ (1295-1359) led a life of literary activity which
    covered nearly all fields of Byzantine learning. His history is
    a continuation of the work of Pachymeres, and commences with
    the capture of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204 and goes
    down to 1359.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Hankius=, Martin, De Byzantinarum rerum scriptoribus Græcis, Leipsic,
1677.--=Hesychius of Miletus=, Opuscula, edited by Junius, with a Latin
version, Antwerp, 1572; by Meursius, Leyden, 1613; by J. C. Orellius,
Leipsic, 1820.

    _Hesychius_, called the Illustrious, was born at Miletus, and
    lived in the times of the emperors Anastasius I, Justin I,
    and Justinian II. Accounts of his personality are vague, but
    he is known to be the author of the following works: Ἱστορία
    Ῥωμαϊκή τε καὶ παντοδαπή, or Χρονικὴ ἱστορία, a synopsis of
    world history, from the time of Belus, the alleged founder of
    the Assyrian Empire (1402 B.C.), to the death of Anastasius I
    in 518; Ὀνοματολόγος ἢ πίναξ τῶν ἐν παιδείᾳ ὀνομαστῶν, which
    comprises biographies of Hellenic writers, but of which only
    fragments were preserved; Πάτρια Κωνσταντινουπόλεως, a book on
    the primitive history of the city of Byzantium which originally
    formed part of his history.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Joannes VI, Cantacuzenus=, Ἱστοριῶν βιβλία Δ, published by Gretserus,
with a Latin translation by Jacob Pontanus, Ingolstadt, 1603; edited by
Pierre Seguier, Paris, 1645.

    _Joannes Angelus Comnenus Palæologus Cantacuzenus_, emperor
    of Constantinople from 1342 to 1355, is also sometimes styled
    Joannes VI, being confused with his ward and rival of the same
    name, who, nominally succeeding in 1342, did not actually rule
    until 1355. Cantacuzenus’ history covers the period from 1320
    to 1357, including his own reign. Its style is easy, dignified,
    and discriminative, but often vain and hypocritical when
    relating to his own life or friends. It should be compared with
    the work of Nicephorus Gregoras, who writes of the same period.
    Cantacuzenus also wrote a confutation of Mohammedanism.

=Joannes of Antioch=, Ἱστορία Χρονική ἀπὸ Ἁδάμ. (Historia Chronographica
ab Adamo), edited by Valesius in his Excerpta, Paris, 1634.

    _Joannes of Antioch_ wrote a chronicle at a period conjectured
    to be about 620 A.D. Nothing is known of his personal life, but
    Gelzer is inclined to identify him with the patriarch John of
    Antioch (631-649). His history, commencing with Adam, must have
    been written after the death of Phocas in 610, for he describes
    that ruler as “bloodthirsty,” “ὁ αὐτὸς Φωκᾶς ὑπῆρχεν αἰμοπότης.”

=Joannes of Epiphaneia=, Ἰωάννου σχολαστικοῦ καὶ ἀπὸ ἐπάρχων Ἐπιφανέως
περὶ τῆς τοῦ νέου Χοσρόου προσχωρήσεως πρὸς Μαυρίκιον τὸν Ῥωμαίων
αὑτοκράτορα ἱστοριῶν τόμος ά, edited by B. Hase (with Leo Diaconus),
Paris, 1819; by C. Müller, in his Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum, Paris,
1841-1870, 5 vols. (new edition 1883); by L. Dindorf, in his Historici
Græci Minores, Leipsic, 1870-1871, 2 vols.

    _Joannes of Epiphaneia_ flourished at the end of the sixth
    century, and his history deals with the Byzantine affairs from
    Justinian to Maurice. The manuscript of his work dates from the
    thirteenth century, and is in the Vatican.

=Joannes Laurentius=, Περὶ μηνῶν συγγραφή (De Mensibus Liber), edited by
Nicolaus Schow, Leipsic, 1794.

    _Joannes Laurentius_, of Philadelphia, was a Byzantine poet
    of the sixth century, but his poems have not survived. His
    historical commentary on the Roman calendar, named above, is
    compiled from numerous sources, mostly otherwise unknown. He
    also wrote Περὶ ἀρχῶν τῆς Ῥωμαίων πολιτείας (De Magistratibus
    Reipublicæ Romanæ), in which he gives an unfavourable picture
    of the emperor Zeno.

=Joannes Siculus=, Die Chronik des Johannes Sikeliota, edited by A.
Heinrich, Gratz, 1892.

    _Joannes Siculus_ is supposed to have written a compendium of
    history from the Creation to Michael III, 866 A.D., or perhaps
    1204. Much of the work is lost, the extant portion breaking
    off in the midst of the Trojan War, after reciting the ancient
    history of the Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Jews, Persians,
    and Ptolemeans.

=Joel=, Χρονογράφια ἐν συνόψει, first edited by Leo Allatius in the Paris
“Corpus.”

    _Joel_ lived in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and wrote
    a synopsis of the most important events of history, as known to
    him, laying stress on Byzantine affairs. The scope of the work
    is from Adam to 1204 A.D.

=John of Ephesus=, Ἱστορία ἐκκλησιάστικη, The third Book of the
Ecclesiastical History of John, Bishop of Ephesus, edited by William
Cureton, Oxford, 1853 (other fragments have been edited by J. P. N. Land,
the Dutch historian, in his Anecdota Syriaca, Leyden, 1856, 4 vols.).

    _John_, bishop of Asia, or Ephesus, was born at Amid about
    505. He led the Monophysite party and enjoyed the favour of
    Justinian. The third book of his history commences with the
    persecution under Justin in 571. He tells us that, “Most
    of these histories were written at the very time when the
    persecution was going on, and under the difficulties caused by
    its pressure; and it was even necessary that friends should
    remove the leaves on which these chapters were inscribed, and
    every other particle of writing, and conceal them in various
    places, where they sometimes remained for two or three years.
    When therefore matters occurred which the writer wished to
    record, it was possible that he might have partly spoken of
    them before, but he had no papers or notes by which to read and
    know whether they had been described or not. If therefore he
    did not remember that he had recorded them, at some subsequent
    time he probably again proceeded to their detail; and therefore
    occasionally the same subject is recorded in more chapters
    than one; nor afterwards did he ever find a fitting time for
    plainly and clearly arranging them in an orderly narrative.”
    This extract explains the cause of the confused condition of
    the _History_. John died in about his eightieth year. The
    first book of his history has been lost, the second is only
    in fragments; but a manuscript of the third, in the British
    Museum, is fairly complete.

=Julianus, Flavius Claudius=, Orationes, edited by P. Martinius and
C. Cantoclarus, in their edition of Julian’s works, Paris, 1583; by
Petavius, Paris, 1630; by Ezechiel Spanheim, Leipsic, 1696. (The orations
have also been published separately.)

    _Flavius Claudius Julianus_, better known as Julian the
    Apostate, was born at Constantinople, November 17th, 331.
    Julian, great as an emperor, was remarkable as an author. He
    wrote an immense number of elaborate works on varied subjects
    which are important sources of information regarding the
    religion and philosophy of his period. The _Orations_ of Julian
    are historically valuable, especially those dealing with the
    family of Constantine. He also deals in them with Platonic
    philosophy and sun-worship, and betrays in many ways his
    affection for Paganism as opposed to Christianity.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Leo Diaconus=, Ἱστορία βιβλίοις ύ, edited by C. B. Hase, with a Latin
translation, Paris, 1818.

    _Leo Diaconus_ lived in the tenth century, and was a native
    of Caloë, near Mt. Tmolus. He was a student at Constantinople
    in 966, and he served as military chaplain under Basilius II
    in the war against the Bulgarians (986). His history embraces
    the period between 959-975. Honest and fearless when relating
    contemporary events, the history, although badly written, and
    inaccurate on geography and classical history is important,
    since the author is the only contemporary writer on one
    of the most brilliant and successful periods of Byzantine
    history, that of Nicephorus Phocas and Joannes Zimisces. The
    book contains valuable data on the history and customs of the
    Bulgarians and Russians, on which Leo is the oldest authority.

=Leo Grammaticus=, Χρονογραφία, τὰ τῶν νέων Βασιλέων περιέχουτα
(Chronographia Res a Recentioribus Imperatoribus Gestas Complectens),
first printed in the Paris “Corpus.”

    _Leo Grammaticus_ was one of the continuators of Theophanes.
    Nothing certain is known of his life. His Chronicles extend
    from 813 A.D. to the death of Romanus Lecapenus in 948, or 949.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Malalas=, Joannes, Χρονογραφία, edited by Edmund Chilmead, with a Latin
translation, Oxford, 1691.

    _Joannes Malalas_ (Malelas) was born at Antioch, most
    probably at about the time of Justinian the Great (528-565),
    although some authorities assign him to the ninth century.
    His voluminous chronicle originally began with the creation
    of the world, but the commencement is lost, and the extant
    portion begins with the death of Vulcanus and the accession
    of his son Sol, and finishes with the expedition of Marcianus
    the nephew of Justinian the Great. Malalas relates much that
    is absurd, but his account of Justinian is valuable and his
    work is extremely important as being the first to represent the
    type of a Christian-Byzantine monk’s chronicle, which is so
    important in the history of literature. The book is also the
    first important monument of the popular Grecised idiom, and
    hence has great philological interest. The influence of Malalas
    on later Byzantine, oriental, and even western annalists is
    immeasurable. For six centuries he was so copied and recopied,
    that the original work became superfluous and now there is only
    one manuscript of it in existence.

=Malchus Philadelphus=, Βυζανταϊκα, printed in the Bonn “Corpus”
(Excerpta).

    _Malchus Philadelphus_, born in Syria, and a rhetorician
    of Constantinople, wrote a history which was used in the
    _Excerpta de Legationibus_, a compilation undertaken by order
    of Constantine VII, Porphyrogenitus. The portion of his work of
    which we have knowledge comprehends only the period from 473 to
    480 A.D., this part having been preserved by Photius.

=Manasses=, Constantinus, Σύνοψις ἱστορική, Latin version by Leunclavius,
Basel, 1573; edited by J. Meursius, Leyden, 1616; translated into
Slavonic by V. Jagíc, in the Archiv für slavische Philologie, Berlin,
1877; and by J. Bogdan, in his Vechile cronice Moldovenesci pana la
Urechia, Bukarest, 1891.

    _Constantinus Manasses_ lived under the emperor Manuel Comnenus
    in the middle of the twelfth century, and composed several
    works in both rhyme and prose. His history, curiously written
    in a kind of rhythmical prose (“political verse”), is a
    chronicle from the Creation to the accession of Alexis I in
    1081. The edition of Meurius was dedicated to Gustavus Adolphus.

=Menander Protector=, Ἱστορία, edited by Angelo Mai, in his Scriptorum
Veterum nova collectio, vol. II, Rome, 1825-1838, 10 vols.; edited by C.
Müller, in his Fragmenta Historicum Græcorum, vol. IV, Paris, 1841-1870,
5 vols., new edition 1883; by L. Dindorf, in his Historici Græci Minores,
Leipsic, 1870-1871, 2 vols.

    _Menander Protector_ was born at Byzantium in the middle of
    the sixth century. As a historian, he wrote a continuation of
    Agathias, from 558 to 582, and in his turn he was continued by
    Theophylactus Simocatta. Menander is often quoted by Suidas and
    is one of the best sources for the history of the sixth century.

=Michael Panaretus=, Περὶ τῶν τῆς Τραπεζοῦντος βασιλέων, τῶν Μεγάλων
Κομνῃνῶν, ὅπως καὶ πότς καὶ πόσον ἕκαστος ἐβασιλευσεν, edited by L. F.
Tafel, in his Eustathii Metropolitæ Thessalonicensis opuscula etc.,
Frankfort, 1832; and by Ph. Fallmerayer, in the Abhandlungen of the
Academy of Bavaria, 1844.

    _Michael Panaretus_ lived in the first half of the fifteenth
    century and gives a chronicle of the empire of Trebizond from
    1204 to 1426. He was an eye-witness of many of the events
    described, and is particularly valuable on this account.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Neophytus=, Νεοφύτου πρεσβυτέρου μοναχοῦ καὶ ἐγκλειστοῦ περὶ τῶν κατὰ
τὴν χώραν Κύπρον σκαιῶν (Neophyti Presbyteri Monachi et Inclusi, De
Calamitatibus Cypri), edited by J. B. Cotelier, in his Ecclesiæ Græcæ
Monumenta, Paris, 1677-1686, 3 vols.

    _Neophytus_ was born in 1134 and lived as priest and monk
    in his native Cyprus. His epistle, as named above, gives an
    account of the usurpation of Cyprus by Isaac Comnenus and of
    the imprisonment of Isaac by Richard Cœur-de-Lion.

=Nicephorus Callistus Xantoupulus=, Historia Ecclesiastica, Latin
version, edited by Joh. Lang, Basel, 1553; reprinted with scholia, 1560
(61); Antwerp, 1560; Paris, 1562, 1566, 1573; Frankfort, 1588; Greek
text, with Lang’s translation, Paris, 1630, 2 vols.

    _Nicephorus Callistus Xantoupulus_ died about 1350, and the
    date of his birth has been inferred as about 1290. There
    are now extant eighteen of the twenty-three books of his
    ecclesiastical history, which was compiled from Eusebius,
    Evagrius, and other writers, and covers the period from the
    time of Christ to the death of Phocas in 610. The work is
    characterised by its elegant style, which is far above that
    of his contemporaries. The author’s credulity and lack of
    judgment, however, cause the book to abound in fables.

=Nicephorus, Patriarcha=, Κωνσταντινουπόλεως Ἱστορία σύντομος (Breviarum
Historicum), edited, with Latin version, by D. Patavius, Paris, 1616;
translated into French by Monterole, Paris, 1618, and by F. Morel, Paris,
1634; Χρονογραφικὸν σύντομον, edited by Jos. Scaliger, in his Thesaurus
Temporum, Leyden, 1606; by J. Camerarius, in a Latin version, Basel, 1561.

    _Nicephorus_, patriarch of Constantinople from 806 to 815, when
    he was deposed by Leo Armenus, was born in 758, and held the
    office of notary to the emperor Constantine VI. His _Breviarum_
    begins with the murder of Maurice in 602 and is continued to
    the marriage of Leo IV in 770. The Chronology begins with Adam
    and is brought down to the death-year of the author, 828.
    Nicephorus is sometimes styled “Confessor” on account of his
    firm opposition to the iconoclasts.

=Nicetas Acominatus=, Ἱστορία, edited by H. Wolf, with a Latin version,
Basel, 1457, and by Simon Goulartius, Geneva, 1593.

    _Nicetas Acominatus_, was born at Chonæ, Phrygia, in the middle
    of the twelfth century, and died at Nicæa, Bithynia, about
    1216. He held high offices under Isaac II Angelus; and was at
    the taking of Constantinople in 1204, of which he relates an
    impressive account. His history in continuation of Zonares
    is in ten corollaries of 21 books and deals with the Eastern
    emperors from 1180 to 1206. In style at times bombastic,
    Nicetas is deeply incensed against the Latin conquerors, but he
    is impartial as to his facts.

=Nonnosus=, Ἱστορία, edited by C. Müller, in his Fragmenta Historicorum
Græcorum, Paris, 1841-1870, 5 vols., new edition 1883; by L. Dindorf, in
his Historici Græci Minores, Leipsic, 1870-1871, 2 vols.

    _Nonnosus_, who wrote a history of an embassy he undertook to
    the Saracens in 533, lived under Justinian I. His original work
    has perished, and exists only as an abridgment preserved by
    Photius.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Pachymeres=, Georgius, Historia Byzantina, edited by P. Possimus, Greek
and Latin text, Rome, 1666-1669, 7 vols.

    _Georgius Pachymeres_ was born about 1242 at Nicæa, whither his
    father had fled after the capture of Constantinople in 1204.
    After the recapture of the city, Pachymeres went there to study
    divinity and law, and became advocate general of the Eastern
    Church and chief justice. He was also employed diplomatically,
    and died either in 1310 or 1340. His portrait in wood-cut,
    alleged to be derived from an old manuscript is in Wolf’s
    edition of Nicephorus Gregoras, Basel, 1562. Pachymeres wrote a
    number of works, mainly philosophical, but the most important
    is his history, continuing that of Acropolita, in thirteen
    books, comprising the histories of the emperors Michael
    Palæologus and Andronicus Palæologus. It is written with
    calmness, dignity, and a fair amount of impartiality; but the
    work is often marred by the introduction of dogmatic theology
    in which the author seemed to take a keen delight. He was
    indeed the first Byzantine historian to deal with the history
    of a highly dogmatic age. Pachymeres was continued by Gregoras
    Nicephorus.

=Petrus Patricius=, Ἱστορίαι, edited by L. Dindorf, in his Historici
Græci Minores, Leipsic, 1870-1871, 2 vols.

    _Petrus Patricius_, was born at Thessalonica, in the year 500.
    He was employed in the diplomatic service by Justinian I, and
    died about 562 A.D. His history is supposed to include the
    period from the second Triumvirate to a little later than the
    time of Constantine the Great, although only the part extending
    to the reign of Julian is expressly attributed to him. The
    rest is from an excerpt _De sententiis_ the conclusion of
    which is usually called Anonymus post Dionem. Only extracts
    from it are preserved. Petrus also wrote a work entitled, περὶ
    πολιτικῆς καταστάσεως, i.e. on state organisation.

=Photius=, Μυριποβιβλου ἤ Βιβλιοθήκη, edited by David Hoeschelius,
Augsburg, 1601; Latin version by A. Schottus, Augsburg, 1606; Greek and
Latin reprints, Geneva, 1612, and Rouen, 1653; revised Greek text by L.
Bekker, Berlin, 1821-1825.

    _Photius_ was related by marriage to the emperor Theophilus,
    and in 858 was irregularly elected to the patriarchate of
    Constantinople, a circumstance which ultimately led to the
    separation of the Eastern and Western churches. These events
    will be fully detailed in volume VIII, in our account of the
    Papacy. Photius was a man of remarkable intellectual endowment,
    and held many high offices. His writings for these reasons are
    extremely valuable. His Βιβλιοθήκα is a comprehensive review of
    the then existent Greek literature, including historians, civil
    and ecclesiastical, biographers, philosophers, orators, poets,
    and story writers. Photius has thus preserved accounts of many
    writers and works that have otherwise been lost, including
    portions of the writings of such men as Demosthenes, Diodorus
    Siculus, Hyperides, and Lycurgus. Photius also wrote a number
    of theological and ecclesiastical works, a lexicon, and a great
    number of letters, all valuable for their pictures of the
    mentality of the age.

=Phranzes=, Georgios, Χρονικόν Γεωργίου Φραντζῆ τοῦ προτοβεστιαρίου … Νῦν
προῶτον ἐκδοθὲν ἐπιμελείᾳ φραγκίστου Καρόλου Αλτερ (Alter), Vienna, 1796;
Latin translation by Jacob Pontanus, Ingolstadt, 1604.

    _Georgius Phranzes_, the last of the Byzantine historians lived
    during the fifteenth century and held high official position
    under Constantine XIII. After the capture of Constantinople
    by the Turks he entered a monastery, where he composed his
    Chronikon, which is a valuable authority for the details of the
    capture of Constantinople, and extends from 1259 to 1477. He is
    trustworthy when dealing with contemporary events, but indulges
    in long digressions. Professor Alter’s edition is the standard;
    the translation of Pontanus was characterised by Gibbon as
    “deficient in accuracy and elegance.”

=Priscus=, Ἱστορία Βυζαντικὴ καὶ κατὰ Ἀττήλαν, fragments edited by D.
Hoeschelius, Augsburg, 1603, Latin translations by C. Cantoclarus, Paris,
1609; both reprinted by Fabrot in his Excerpta de Legationibus, Paris,
1648; and in Labbé’s Protrephticon, Paris, 1648.

    _Priscus_, an early Byzantine historian, was born in Thrace. We
    know hardly anything of his life, except for the years 445-447,
    when he was at the court of Attila as ambassador for Theodosius
    the Younger. His account of Attila was therefore first hand,
    but unfortunately only fragments of it have been preserved.

=Procopius=, Ἱστορικὸν ἐν βιβλίοις ὀκτώ, edited by Petrus Pithœus, in
his Codex Legum Wisigothorum, Paris, 1559; edited by D. Hoeschelius,
Augsburg, 1676; edited by B. Vulcanius, in his Scriptores Gothicarum,
Leyden, 1597, 1617; Latin version (claimed as original work by Leonardo
Aretino), De bello Italico adversus Gothos gesto, Foligno, 1470, Venice,
1471; translated into English by H. Holcroft, London, 1653; Ἀνέκδοτα
(Historia Arcana), edited by N. Allemannus, with a Latin version,
Lyons, 1623; Cologne, 1669; edited by Joh. Eichelius, Helmstadt, 1654;
translated into English, London, 1674; Κτίσματα (Libri VI de Ædificus
conditis vel restoratis auspicio Justiniani), edited by J. Hervagius,
Basel, 1531, Paris, 1543; with a Latin translation by F. Craneveld,
Paris, 1537.

    _Procopius_, the most important late Greek-Byzantine historian,
    was born at Cæsarea, in the beginning of the sixth century.
    After studying at Constantinople, his natural gifts gained
    him, in 527, a position as secretary to Belisarius, whom
    he accompanied in his several wars. He also served with
    distinction under Justinian, who created him prefect of
    Constantinople in 562. His literary work was extensive, and
    much dispute has centred around his name, some claiming, for
    instance, that he was a physician on account of his minute
    description of the plague. His _History_, is by far his
    most important work, dealing with the period 408-554, his
    description of his own times being written in a faithful and
    masterly manner. Indeed, he is said to have kept a diary when
    he accompanied Belisarius upon his expeditions against the
    Vandals. His history was continued by Agathias. The Κτίσματα
    is an interesting account of the architectural endeavours of
    Justinian, somewhat flattering to the emperor’s memory, but
    written with a full knowledge of the architectural art. The
    Ἀνέκδοτα is a collection of witty and curious stories--court
    scandal mostly--the authorship of which is generally ascribed
    to Procopius, though some have doubted that it could be the
    work of a grave statesman and historian.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Scylitzes=, Joannes, Σύνοψις ἱστοριῶν συγγραφεῖσα παρὰ Ἰωάννου
κουροπαλάτου καὶ μεγάλου δρουγγαρίου τῆς Βίγλας τοῦ Σκυλίτζη (Synopsis
Historiarum Scripta a Joanne Scylitze Curopalata et Magno Drungario
Vigiliæ), translated into Latin by J. B. Gabius, Venice, 1570.

    _Joannes Scylitzes_, surnamed _Curopalates_, held high official
    positions at the Byzantine court as late as 1081. The history
    now attributed to him, and of which the complete Greek text has
    never been published, resembles that of Cedrenus in several
    ways, and his claim to original authorship used to be hotly
    disputed. It is, however, now generally conceded that Cedrenus
    was the copyist. The chronicle includes the period from
    811-1079.

=Sicilian History=, edited by F. Batiffol with a Latin translation, in
the Comtes Rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres,
Paris, 1890.

    This work, by an unknown Greek, gives events in Sicily from 827
    to 965. The Greek text is preserved in two manuscripts,--Cod.
    Vatic. 1912 and Cod. Paris, suppl. gr. 920. An old Arabic
    manuscript at Cambridge has been recently proved to be a
    translation of this history.

=Symeon Metaphrastes=, Χρονογραφία (Annales), in the Paris, Venice, and
Bonn “Corpora.”

    _Symeon Metaphrastes_, also called _Magister_ and _Logotheta_,
    lived in the second half of the tenth century, and served as
    chief secretary of state under Leo VI and Constantine VII.
    He was a voluminous writer and compiler, and his _Sanctorum
    Vitæ_ gives the biographies of nearly seven hundred saints.
    His _Annals_ cover the period from Leo V, 813 A.D., to Romanus
    II, 960. His _Chronicle_, a work somewhat different from the
    _Annals_, has never been published, and is contained in a
    number of manuscripts with varying titles.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Themistius=, Πολιτικοὶ λόγοι, edited by Aldus, Venice, 1534, and by
Dindorf, Leipsic, 1832; Latin version by Hermolaus Barbarus, Venice,
1481, and often reprinted.

    _Themistius_, philosopher and rhetorician, lived at
    Constantinople and Rome in the reigns of Constantius, Julian,
    Jovian, Valens, Gratian, and Theodosius, all of whom regarded
    him with favour. He became a senator, and in the reign of
    Theodosius was appointed prefect of Constantinople. He was
    frequently employed on embassies and in other public business.
    Besides various philosophical works, thirty-five of his
    orations survive, several being congratulatory addresses to the
    emperors Constantius, Valentinianus, and Valens. He died about
    the year 390 A.D.

=Theodorus Anagnostes (Lector)=, Ἐκκλησιαστική ἱστορία, edited by R.
Stephens, in his Excerpta, Paris, 1544; by Christopherson, with a Latin
version, Geneva, 1612; by H. Valesius, Paris, 1673; reprinted, Cambridge,
1720; Turin, 1748.

    _Theodorus Anagnostes (Lector)_ lived probably in the reign
    of Justin I or Justinian I, and wrote a compendium of
    church histories from Constantine the Great to the death
    of Constantius II. His _Historia_ covers the period from
    Theodosius the Younger to Justin I or Justinian I, but it
    survives only in extracts by Nicephorus Callistus (fourteenth
    century), by Joannes Damascenus, and others. He is the chief
    authority for the reign of the emperors Zeno and Anastasius.

=Theodorus=, bishop of Cyzicus, Χρονικόν.

    _Theodorus of Cyzicus_ was supposed to be the author of
    a chronicle of the world from Adam to the reconquest of
    Constantinople in 1261, but very little is known of his
    personality, and his work exists only in fragments, which have
    never been published.

=Theodosius of Syracuse=, Θεοδοσίου μοναχοῦ τοῦ καὶ γραμματικοῦ ἐπιστολὴ
πρὸς Λέοντα διάκονον περὶ τῆς ἁλώσεως Συρακούσης, edited by B. Hase (with
Leo Diaconus), Paris, 1819.

    _Theodosius_ was a monk of Syracuse, taken away as a captive
    to Panormo when the Saracens took Syracuse in 880. While
    the events of the catastrophe were fresh in his memory, he
    committed them to writing in the form of a letter to Leo
    Diaconus.

=Theophanes= of Byzantium, Ἱστορικῶν λόγοι δέκα, fragments edited by
C. Müller, in his Fragmentorum Historicorum Græecorum, vol. IV, Paris,
1841-1870, 5 vols., new edition, 1883; by L. Dindorf, in his Historici
Græci Minores, Leipsic, 1870-1871, 2 vols.

    _Theophanes_ of Byzantium lived probably in the sixth century.
    His history deals with the Persian War under Justin II, from
    the breaking of the truce with Chosroes in 567, and going
    down to the tenth year of the war. Theophanes preserved the
    record of the bringing of the silkworm to Italy, the Romans not
    knowing previously that silk was the product of an insect.

=Theophanes Isaurus=, Χρονικόν, edited by J. Goar, Paris, 1655.

    _Theophanes Isaurus_, named also the Confessor, was born of
    noble parentage during the reign of Constantine V (741-775),
    and while a youth married the daughter of Leo the Patrician.
    After discharging sundry public offices he retired from the
    world and founded a monastery, his wife going into a convent.
    He attended the Council of Nicæa in 787, where he vehemently
    defended image worship, and when, in 813, he was called upon to
    recant his views, he preferred imprisonment and banishment. His
    history begins with Diocletian, 284 A.D., at the point where
    Georgius Syncellus stopped, and continues to 813, the time of
    his imprisonment, his death occurring in 818. The work is of no
    high order, but is valuable in the absence of better sources of
    information. His accounts of the affairs of the Eastern Empire
    are far more trustworthy than those relating to the Western
    Empire, in regard to which he makes the most extraordinary
    mistakes. A continuation of Theophanes’ _Chronicle_ was
    prepared at the command of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, and
    has come down to us under the title of Χρονογραφία συγγραφεῖσα
    ἐκ προστάγματος Κωνσταντίνου τοῦ φιλοχρλιστου δεσπότου καὶ
    αὐτοράτορος … ἀρχομένη ὅπου ἔληξε Θεοφάνης … τω βασιλεῖ Μιχαὴλ
    υἱοῦ Θεοφίλου τοῦ κουροπαλάτου, ἤγουν ἀπο τῆς βασιλεάς Λέοντος
    τοῦ Ἀρμενίου (Scriptores post Theophanen), edited by Leo
    Allatius, in his Σύμμικτα, Cologne, 1653; and by Combesius, in
    the Paris “Corpus.” The period dealt with is 813-961, and the
    compilation is by sundry anonymous writers. Georgius Monachus
    and Leo Grammaticus also took up his history from 813.

=Theophilus Abbas=, Life of Justinian, edited by James Bryce, in the
Archivio Storico of the Società Romana de Storia Patria, Rome, 1887.

    _Theophilus Abbas_ was cited by N. Allemannus, in his
    _Anecdota_, published in 1623, as the author of a life of
    Justinian. Nothing, however, was known of the work or of the
    author until 1887, when Mr. Bryce discovered the work in
    manuscript in the Barberini Library, Rome. The manuscript
    purports to be extracted from an original Slavonic manuscript,
    but the work appears to be of such a legendary character as
    not to be of much historical value. This Theophilus is not at
    all to be identified with the jurist Theophilus, who aided
    Justinian in the drawing up of his Code.

=Theophylactus Simocatta=, Ἱστορία οἰκουμενή, edited by B. Vulcanius,
Leyden, 1596; by Jacob Pontanus, with a Latin version, Ingolstadt, 1604;
translated into French by F. Morel, Paris, 1603, 1608.

    _Theophylactus Simocatta_ was of Egyptian descent, but was
    born in Locria. He is known to have held public office under
    Heraclius about 610-629 A.D. His history, in continuation of
    Menander’s, deals with the life of the emperor Maurice, who
    reigned from 582 to 602, and is the oldest and best authority
    on the period. It is related that when the author read a
    passage from his work after the death of the emperor, the
    audience was moved to tears.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Xiphilinus=, Joannes, Ἐπιτωμή, edited by Leunclavius, Frankfort, 1592;
(see also Dion-Cassius, whose works were abridged by Xiphilinus).

    _Xiphilinus_ of Trapezus, the historian, was a nephew of the
    patriarch of the same name, and lived in the second half of
    the 11th century. He made, at the command of Michael VII Ducas
    (1071-1078), an epitome of Dion-Cassius, which unfortunately
    includes only books 61-80, because the earlier ones were
    lacking in the copy of Dion used by Xiphilinus. His copy was
    incomplete in other places also. The work is of value as
    preserving the main facts of the original, the greater part of
    which is lost, for from book 61-80 of the History of Rome of
    Dion-Cassius we have only the abridgment made by Xiphilinus,
    and some other epitomes which were probably made by the same
    person who epitomised the portion from the 55th to the 60th
    book.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Zonaras=, Joannes, Χρονικόν (Annales), edited by H. Wolf, Basel, 1557, 3
vols.

    _Joannes Zonaras_ lived in the twelfth century under the
    emperors Alexis I Comnenus and Calo-Joannes. His _Chronicle_
    is in eighteen books, and extends from the creation of the
    world to the death of Alexis in A.D. 1118. It is compiled from
    various Greek authors, such as Josephus and Dion-Cassius. Of
    the first twenty books of Dion-Cassius we have nothing but the
    abstract of Zonaras. In the latter part of his work Zonaras
    wrote as an eye-witness of the events which he describes.
    Zonaras, who also wrote a lexicon and other works, was
    continued by Nicetas Acominatus.

=Zosimus=, Ἱστορία νεα, edited by F. Sylberg, in his Scriptores Historiæ
Romanæ Minores, Frankfort, 1590; by Ludwig Mendelssohn Dorpat, 1887;
Latin translation by Leunclavius, Basel, 1756; English translation, The
History of Count Zosimus, London, 1814.

    _Zosimus_ lived in the age of Theodosius the Younger (408-450),
    and probably resided at Constantinople. His history of the
    Roman empire, in six books, must have been written after the
    year 425, as appears from a record of that year, although
    the period actually covered by the history is from the death
    of Commodus (192 A.D.) to 410. It is mainly a compilation
    from previous historians, but when giving judgment he is
    strongly biased in favour of Paganism and against Constantine,
    Theodosius, and other champions of Christianity. He has a great
    love of the marvellous and his chronology is confused.


_C. Modern Works_

=Abel=, Sigurd, Der Untergang des Langobardenreichs in Italien,
Göttingen, 1859.--=Adams=, W. H. D., Remains of Pompeii and Herculaneum,
London, 1868; 2nd edition, 1878.--=Allcroft=, A. H., The Making of
the Monarchy, London, 1893; (in collaboration with W. F. Masom), Rome
under the Oligarchs, London, 1892; Tutorial History of Rome to 14 A.D.,
London, 1895.--=Aly=, F., Cicero, sein Leben und seine Schriften, Berlin,
1891.--=Alzog=, J. B., Lehrbuch der Universalgeschichte der christlichen
Kirche, Mayence, 1840.--=Ampère=, J. J. A., L’histoire romaine à Rome,
Paris, 1861-1864; L’empire romaine à Rome, Paris, 1867, 4 vols.

    _Jean Jacques Antoine Ampère_, French historian, born at Lyons,
    August 12th, 1800, died at Pau, March 27th, 1864. He was
    professor in the College of France and a member of the French
    Academy. In his book Ampère has tried to reconstruct Roman
    history from Roman monuments, and the first half is given up
    to the period of the kings. The work is rather ingenious than
    convincing, being based largely on conjecture, but it is full
    of scholarship and artistic enthusiasm.

=Arnold=, Thomas, History of Rome, London, 1840-1843; 1882; History of
the Later Roman Commonwealth, London, 1882, 2 vols.; The Second Punic
War, edited by W. T. Arnold, London, 1886.

    _Thomas Arnold_, born at West Cowes, Isle of Wight, June 13th,
    1795, was educated at Winchester and Oxford, being elected
    fellow of Oriel in 1815. He resided at Oxford until 1819,
    devoting himself to historical and theological studies. Upon
    leaving the university he settled in Laleham, where his spare
    time was occupied with the study of Thucydides and the new
    light which had been thrown on Roman history and historical
    method generally by the researches of Niebuhr. In August, 1828,
    he entered upon his duties as head-master of Rugby. Under his
    superintendence this school became a sphere of intellectual,
    moral, and religious discipline, where healthy character was
    formed and men fitted for the duties and responsibilities of
    life. In 1841 he was appointed to the chair of modern history
    at Oxford, where he had delivered eight lectures, when he died
    very suddenly June 12th, 1842.

    Owing to the author’s death his _History of Rome_ was not
    completed beyond the Spanish campaign in the Second Punic War
    (to B.C. 241). Based on Niebuhr, whose theories on early Roman
    history have now been abandoned, the book is thus superseded by
    several more recent ones, though its account of the Punic wars
    is as satisfactory as any in the English language. The memory
    of Arnold has been idealised in _Tom Brown’s Schooldays_, a
    novel by Thomas Hughes (1822-1896), who was educated under
    Arnold at Rugby.

=Arnold=, W. T., The Roman System of Provincial Administration, London,
1879.

    This work well shows the greatness of the Romans in the
    administration of provincial affairs. The author was a grandson
    of Thomas Arnold.

=Aschbach=, Jos., Geschichte der Westgothen, Frankfort,
1827.--=Assemann=, W., Handbuch der allgemeinen Geschichte, Brunswick,
1853-1864, 6 vols.--=Aube=, Barthélemy, Histoire des persécutions de
l’Église, Paris, 1875, 2 vols.--=Aube=, Benjamin, Les chrétiens dans
l’empire romain de la fin des Antonins jusqu’au milieu du IIIᵐᵉ siècle,
Paris, 1881.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Babelon=, E. C. F., Description historique et chronologique des monnaies
de la république romaine, Paris, 1885-1886, 2 vols.--=Bähr=, J. C. F.,
Geschichte der römischen Litteratur, Carlsruhe, 1828; 4th edition,
1868-1873, 3 vols.--=Baring-Gould=, S., The Tragedy of the Cæsars,
London, 1892.--=Beaufort=, Louis de, Dissertation sur l’incertitude des
cinq premiers siècles de l’histoire romaine, Paris and Utrecht, 1738;
2nd edition, 1866; English translation, London, 1738; Histoire de la
république romaine, Paris, 1766.--=Becker=, W. A., Handbuch der römischen
Altertümer, Leipsic, 1843-1846, 2 vols. (continued by Marquardt, which
see); Gallus, oder römische Scenen aus der Zeit Augustus, Berlin,
1880-1882, 3 vols.; English translation, Gallus: Roman Scenes in the Time
of Augustus, London, 1882 (in Becker’s _Gallus_ Roman life is represented
much in the same way as Greek life is pictured in his _Charicles_).

    _Wilhelm Adolf Becker_ was born at Dresden, 1796, and died at
    Meissen, September 30th, 1846. His handbook satisfied a need
    which was keenly felt towards the middle of the last century.
    The activity in the investigation of old Roman antiquities
    called forth by Niebuhr demanded a work giving a general survey
    of the certified results of previous investigation. This is
    precisely what the _Handbuch_ did. Single items were carefully
    examined and placed in their proper position, and the whole
    was accompanied by valuable notes giving the most important
    sources, a study of which had led the author to his positions,
    and giving also opinions differing from his, so that the book
    served as a guide to further independent study. The work was
    long considered indispensable to specialists, though it has of
    late years been superseded somewhat by the works of Mommsen.
    For biographical purposes it is still of great value.

=Beesly=, A. H., The Gracchi, Marius, and Sulla, London, 1877.--=Beesly=,
Edward S., Catiline, Clodius, and Tiberius, London, 1878.--=Bekker=, A.,
Corpus Scriptorum Historiæ Byzantinæ; see Byzantine History.--=Beloch=,
Julius, Campanien, Geschichte und Topographie des antiken Neapel und
seiner Umgebung, Berlin, 1879; Breslau, 1890.--=Bergk=, Theodor,
Kritische Bearbeitung des _Monumentum Ancyranum_, Göttingen,
1873.--=Bethmann-Hollweg=, M. A., Gerichtsverfassung und Prozess des
sinkenden römischen Reiches, Bonn, 1834.--=Bickersteth=, A., Outlines
of Roman History, London, 1891.--=Binding=, Karl, Geschichte des
burgundisch-romanischen Königreichs, Leipsic, 1868.--=Block=, G., Les
origines du sénat romain, Paris, 1883.--=Blondel=, J. E., Histoire
économique de la conjuration de Catilina, Paris, 1893.--=Bluhme=,
Friedrich, Die Gens Langobardorum und ihre Herkunft, Bonn, 1868-1874, 2
vols.--=Boissier=, M. L. G., Cicéron et les amis, Paris, 1866; 1872;
La religion romaine, d’Auguste aux Antonins, Paris, 1874, 2 vols.; 2nd
edition, 1878; L’opposition sous les Césars, Paris, 1878; 2nd edition,
1885; La fin du paganisme, Paris, 1891, 2 vols.

    _Marie Louis Gaston Boissier_, born at Nîmes, August 15th,
    1825, became professor of rhetoric at Nîmes and Paris, and,
    in 1861, of Latin eloquence in the College of France. He is a
    member of the Academy, and Commander of the Legion of Honour
    since 1888. All of Boissier’s works are of interest, presenting
    often a wholly new point of view. The work on Roman religion
    deals with the religious revolution which took place between
    the time of Cicero and of Marcus Aurelius. The change was
    from a state of general scepticism to a period when even the
    philosophers were religious, and the author traces the causes
    of this change. The picture showing the condition of the
    inferior classes is particularly interesting. Also in his book
    on Cicero the author gives a delightful picture of the society
    in which the great orator moved.

=Borsari=, L., Topografia di Roma antica, Milan.--=Botsford=,
George Willis, A History of Rome, London and New York, 1901; The
Story of Rome as Greeks and Romans tell it, London and New York,
1903.--=Bouche-Leclercq=, A., Histoire de la divination dans l’antiquité,
Paris, 1879-1882, 4 vols.; Manuel des institutions romaines, Paris,
1886.--=Bradley=, Henry, The Goths, London, 1888, Article in the
Academy, London, May 15th, 1886.--=Brandis=, C. G., Studien zur
römischen Verwaltungsgeschichte, in Hermes, vol. 31.--=Breal=, Michael,
Les tables Eugubines, texte, traduction et commentaire, avec une
grammaire et une introduction historique, Paris, 1875.--=Breysig=, K.,
Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit, Berlin, 1901, 2 vols.--=Breysig=, Theodor,
Die Zeit Karl Martels, in Jahrbücher der Deutschen Geschichte, Leipsic,
1869.--=Brosien=, Hermann, Karl der Grosse, Berlin, 1885.--=Browne=, R.
W., History of Roman Classical Literature, London, 1884.--=Brunengo=, G.,
Il Patriziato romano di Carlomagno, Prabo, 1893.--=Bryce=, James, The
Holy Roman Empire, London, 1862.

    Bryce’s book shows the mutual relations of Rome and Germany
    during the Middle Ages, and is invaluable in throwing clear
    light on their intricacies. The author shows that the Roman
    Empire continued to exist throughout the Middle Ages, which is
    the key to an understanding of the whole period.

=Budinger=, Max, Untersuchungen zur römischen Kaisergeschichte,
Leipsic, 1868-1871, 3 vols. (contains a good account of the Augustan
history).--=Bunbury=, S. H., A History of Ancient Geography, 1879, 2
vols.--=Burger=, C. P., Neue Forschungen zur alten Geschichte Roms,
Amsterdam, 1894.--=Burn=, R., Rome and the Campagna, London, 1870; 2nd
edition, 1875; Old Rome: a handbook to the ruins of the City and the
Campagna, London, 1880.--=Bury=, J. B., History of the Later Roman
Empire, from Arcadius to Irene, London, 1889, 2 vols.; A History of the
Roman Empire, London, 1893. (A biographical notice of this writer has
been given in vol. I, page 295.)

       *       *       *       *       *

=Canina=, Luigi, Gli edifizi di Roma antica, Rome, 1848-1856, 6
vols.--=Capes=, W. W., The Roman Empire of the Second Century; or the Age
of the Antonines, London, 1876; The Early Empire: from the Assassination
of Cæsar to that of Domitian, London, 1876.--=Capponi=, Gino, Sulla
dominazione dei Longobardi in Italia, in Scritti editi ed inediti,
Florence, 1877, 2 vols.--=Champagny=, F. J. R., Les Césars: Tableau
du monde romain sous les premiers empereurs, Paris, 1841-1853; Les
Césars du IIIᵐᵉ siècle, Paris, 1870.--=Chapot=, V., La classis prætoris
Misenansis, Paris, 1896.--=Charlemagne=, Capitularies of, in Migne’s
Patrologiæ latinæ, Paris, 1844-1855, 221 vols.--=Church=, A. J., Carthage
(Stories of the Nations), London, 1886; Pictures from Roman Life, London,
1893.--=Church=, R. W., The Beginnings of the Middle Ages, A.D. 500-1000,
London, 1877.

    This is a good introduction to a study of the Middle Ages,
    being one of the best short histories of the time from the fall
    of Rome to the dissolution of the Carolingian empire. The book
    shows the paths leading up to the union of church and empire
    under Otto the Great.

=Clinton=, H. Fynes, Fasti Romani, Oxford, 1845-1850, 2 vols.; An Epitome
of the Civil and Literary Chronology of Rome and Constantinople, from the
Death of Augustus to the Death of Heraclius, edited by H. Fynes Clinton,
London, 1853.

    _Clinton’s_ works are standards on the civil and literary
    chronology of Greece, Rome, and Constantinople and are
    indispensable to students of ancient history.

=Closset=, Leon de, Essai sur l’historiographie des romains,
Brussels, 1850.--=Comyn=, Robert, History of the Western Empire,
London, 1851, 2 vols.--=Coulton=, J. J., Inquiry into the meaning
of the name “Roma,” London, 1893.--=Creighton=, M., Rome, London,
1875.--=Crivellucci=, Amadeo, Papers on Lombard History, in Studi
Storici, Pisa, 1892.--=Cruchon=, G., Les banques dans l’antiquité, Paris,
1879.--=Cruttwell=, C. T., A History of Roman Literature, from the
earliest period to the death of Marcus Aurelius, London and New York,
1877.--=Cumont=, F., Textes et monuments figurés, relatifs aux mystères
de Mithra, Brussels, 1895, 1896, 2 vols.--=Curios=, J. G., Vorgeschichte
Roms, Leipsic, 1878.--=Curteis=, A. M., History of the Roman Empire from
the death of Theodosius to Charlemagne, London, 1875.

    This book covers the portion of mediæval history about which
    we have the least information. Curteis has based his work
    principally upon Gibbon, Milman, and Thierry and gives perhaps
    the most acceptable account of the period.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Dahn=, Felix, Die Könige der Germanen. Wesen und Geschichte des ältesten
Königtums der germanischen Stämme, Würzburg, 1861-1871, vols. 1-6; vol.
7, Leipsic, 1895; Prokopius von Cäserea, Berlin, 1865; Longobardische
Studien, Leipsic, 1876; Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen
Völker, Berlin, 1881-1890, 4 vols.--=Davidson=, J. L. S., Cicero and
the Fall of the Republic, in Heroes of the Nations, London and New
York, 1898.--=Deguignes=, Jos., Histoire Générale des Huns, des Turcs,
des Mongols, et des autres Tartares Occidentaux, avant et depuis Jesus
Christ jusqu’à présent, Paris, 1756-1758, 3 vols.--=Denis=, Jacques
François, Histoire des Théories et des idées morales de l’antiquité,
Paris, 1856, 2 vols.--=Dennis=, George, The Cities and Cemeteries of
Etruria, London, 1848, 2 vols.--=Desjardin=, E., Géographie historique et
administrative de la Gaule, Paris, 1876-1893, 4 vols.--=Dindorf=, Ludwig
August, Historici Græci minores, Leipsic, 1870-1871, 2 vols.--=Dirksen=,
H. E., Scriptores Historiæ Augustæ, Leipsic, 1842.--=Dodge=, Theodore
A., Hannibal: Cæsar (Great Captains), Boston, 1892.--=Doesburg=, J. J.,
Geschiedenis der Romenien, Amsterdam, 1890.--=Döllinger=, J. J. von,
Das Kaiserthum Karls des Grossen und seiner Nachfolger, in Akademische
Vorträge, vol. III.; The First Age of Christianity and the Church,
London, 1877.--=Domaszewski=, A. von, Die Heere der Bürgerkriege
in den Jahren 49-42, v. Chr., Neue Heidelberger Jahrbücher, 1894;
1895.--=Dreyfus=, R., Essai sur les lois agraires sous la république
romaine, Paris, 1894.--=Drumann=, W., Geschichte Roms in seinem Übergange
von der republikanischen zur monarchischen Verfassung, 2nd edition,
Berlin, 1899-1902, 2 vols, (contains an excellent account of Sulla).--=Du
Cange=, Charles du F., Histoire de l’empire de Constantinople sous les
empereurs français, Paris, 1657.

    _Charles du Fresne Du Cange_, a French lexicographer, was
    born at Amiens in 1610. His life was devoted to research into
    antiquity and the Middle Ages, and he merited the surname of
    the French Varro. His works are very valuable to the student of
    ancient or mediæval history.

=Dümmler=, Ernst, Geschichte des ostfränkischen Reiches, Leipsic,
1887-1888, 3 vols.--=Dunham=, S. Astley, History of Europe in the Middle
Ages, London, 1837.--=Duruy=, Jean-Victor, Histoire romaine depuis les
temps les plus reculés jusqu’à la mort de Théodose, Paris, 1879-1885,
7 vols.; Histoire romaine, Paris, 1889-1891; Histoire romaine jusqu’à
l’invasion des barbares, Paris, 1899.--=Dyer=, T. H., A History of the
City of Rome, its structures and monuments, from its foundation to the
end of the Middle Ages, London, 1865; History of the Kings of Rome,
London, 1868.

    _Thomas Henry Dyer_, born at London, May 4th, 1804; died
    at Bath, Jan. 30, 1888. He was for some time employed as a
    clerk in the West India House, but eventually devoted himself
    entirely to literature. In his history he finds fault with the
    scepticism of writers like Niebuhr, being himself inclined
    to accept early Roman history as definite. When he deals
    with later historic times, however, he becomes judicious and
    trustworthy, but the book has to do with antiquities rather
    than institutions and is not so much political as archæological.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Ebert=, A., Geschichte der christlich-lateinischen Litteratur, Leipsic,
1874-1880, 2 vols.; French translation of vol. II by Aymeric and
Condamin, Paris, 1882, 2 vols.--=Eichhorn=, Karl Friedrich, Deutsche
Staats- und Rechts-Geschichte, Göttingen, 1843-1845, 4 vols.--=Enmann=,
A., Zur römischen Königsgeschichte, St. Petersburg, 1892.--=Esmein=, J.
P. H. E. A., Mélanges d’histoire, du droit et de critique, Paris, 1887.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Fabia=, P., Les sources de Tacite dans les histoires et les annales,
Paris, 1893.--=Farrer=, T., Paganism and Christianity, London,
1891.--=Favé=, Ildephonse, L’ancienne Rome, Paris, 1880; L’empire
des Francs depuis sa fondation jusqu’à son démembrement, Paris,
1889.--=Finlay=, George, Greece under the Romans, London, 1857; The
History of Greece from its conquest by the Crusaders to its conquest by
the Turks, and of the Empire of Trebizond, London, 1851; History of the
Byzantine and the Greek Empires from 716-1453, Edinburgh and London,
1853-1854, 2 vols.; History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans to
the present time, edited by H. F. Tozer, Oxford, 1877, 7 vols.--=Fisher=,
G. P., The Beginnings of Christianity, New York, 1877.--=Fiske=, George
Converse, The Politics of the Patrician Claudii, in the Harvard Studies
in Classical Philology, vol. XII, Cambridge, Mass., 1902.--=Flasch=,
F. M., Constantin der Grosse, Würzburg, 1891.--=Förstemann=, Ernst
Wilhelm, Geschichte des deutschen Sprachstamms, Nordhausen, 1874-1875,
2 vols.--=Forsyth=, William, Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero, London,
1867.--=Fountain=, F. O., Defence of Nero, Chiswick, 1892.--=Freeman=, E.
A., General Sketch of European History, London, 1872; Cornelius, Sulla,
and Flavian Cæsars (in Essays, ser. II), London, 1872; Illyrian Emperors
(Essays, ser. III), London, 1880; History of Federal Government in Greece
and Italy, edited by J. B. Bury, London, 1893.--=Friedländer=, Ludwig,
Über den Kunstsinn der Römer in der Kaiserzeit, Königsberg, 1852; Über
die Spiele der alten Römer, in Marquardt’s Römische Staatsverwaltung,
Leipsic, 1873-1878; Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms, Leipsic,
1888-1890, 3 vols.

    _Ludwig Friedländer’s_ works represent the cultural side of
    Roman life rather than the political. His _Darstellungen aus
    der Sittengeschichte Roms_ is one of the most important books
    on the subject. In it we get a lifelike picture of the more
    important aspects of Roman civilisation during the first two
    centuries of the empire.

=Froude=, J. A., Cæsar, London and New York, 1866.--=Fuchs=, J.,
Der zweite punische Krieg und seine Quellen, Polybius und Livius,
Wiener-Neustadt, 1894.--=Furchheim=, Fr., Bibliografia di Pompei,
Ercolano e Stabia, Naples, 1892.--=Fustel de Coulanges=, N. D., La cité
antique, Paris, 1864.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Gaillard=, Gabriel H., Histoire de Charlemagne, Paris, 1782, 4
vols.--=Gardner=, A., Julian and the last Struggle of Paganism,
London and New York, 1895.--=Gardthausen=, Victor, Augustus und seine
Zeit, Leipsic, 1891, 2 vols.--=Geffcken=, H., Staat und Kirche in
ihrem Verhältniss geschichtlich entwickelt, Berlin, 1875; English
translation, Church and State, their relations historically considered,
London, 1877.--=Gell=, William (in collaboration with John P. Gandy),
Pompeiana: the Topography, Edifices and Ornaments of Pompeii, London,
1821.--=Gelzer=, H., Abriss der byzantinischen Kaisergeschichte, in
Karl Krumbacher’s _Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur_, Munich,
1897.--=Gerard=, Histoire des Francs d’Austrasie, Brussels, 1865, 2
vols.--=Gerdes=, Heinrich, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, Leipsic,
1891-1898, 2 vols.--=Gerlach=, F. D., Die Geschichtsschreiber der
Römer bis auf Orosius, Stuttgart, 1855.--=Gfrörer=, August Friedrich,
Geschichte der ost- und westfränkischen Karolinger, Freiburg, 1848, 2
vols.; Byzantinische Geschichten, edited by Weiss, Gratz, 1872-1874,
2 vols.--=Gibbon=, Edward, The History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, London, 1776-1788, 6 vols.; edited by H. H. Milman, London,
1838-1839, 12 vols.; edited by an English Churchman, London, 1853, 7
vols.; edited by W. Smith, London, 1854-1855, 8 vols.; edited by J. B.
Bury, London, 1896-1900, 7 vols. (see Prolegomena).

    _Edward Gibbon_, the most eminent of English historians, was
    born at Putney, 1737. His delicate constitution interfered
    with his early studies, but at fifteen he entered Magdalen
    College, Oxford. In his autobiography he speaks of the fourteen
    months he spent there as “the most idle and unprofitable of
    his whole life.” Becoming at this time a convert to Romanism,
    his father sent him to Lausanne, Switzerland, where he studied
    for five years under a Calvinist minister, who won him back
    to Protestantism. He returned to England in 1758, and in 1761
    published his first work, _Essay on the Study of Literature_,
    in French, with which language he was at the time, as he
    himself says in his autobiography, more familiar than with
    English. His visit to Rome about 1763 first suggested to him
    the idea of writing his famous history. The work was finished
    in 1787, after the author had spent eighteen years of labour
    upon it. It covers the whole period from Trajan to the
    conquest of Constantinople, relating not only the political
    events and situation, but representing all phases of life in
    a wonderfully attractive, frequently dramatic, manner. His
    strong bias against Christianity is the only point upon which
    he has been attacked. Otherwise, so thorough and exact were
    his investigations that although the book was completed over a
    century ago, few errors have been brought to light in it by the
    steady researches of a century. In 1783 he retired to Lausanne,
    where he lived for the remainder of his life. He died in London
    in 1794, on one of his visits to England.

=Giesebrecht=, F. W. B. von, Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit,
Brunswick, 1855-1888, 5 vols.--=Gilbert=, Otto, Geschichte und
Topographie der Stadt Rom im Alterthum, Leipsic, 1883, 3 vols.--=Gilman=,
A., General History of Rome (Story of the Nations), London and New York,
1886.--=Goldsmith=, Oliver, The History of Rome, from the Foundation
of the City of Rome to the Destruction of the Western Empire, London,
1769; 1825, 2 vols. (A biographical notice of this author has been
given in vol. IV, page 631.)--=Gray=, Elizabeth C. Hamilton, Tour to
the Sepulchres of Etruria, London, 1840.--=Greenidge=, A. H. J., Roman
Public Life, London, 1901.--=Gregorovius=, Ferdinand, Die Geschichte des
römischen Kaisers Hadrian und seiner Zeit, Königsberg, 1851, reprinted
under the title, Der Kaiser Hadrian, Gemälde der römisch-hellenischen
Welt zu seiner Zeit, Stuttgart, 1884; Die Grabdenkmäler der Päbste,
Leipsic, 1857; Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, Stuttgart,
1859-1873, 8 vols.; 4th edition, 1886-1895; English translation, History
of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages, London, 1894, 6 vols.; Italian
translation ordered by municipal authorities of Rome, Storia della città
di Roma nel medio evo, Venice, 1874-1876, 8 vols.

    _Ferdinand Gregorovius_ was born at Neidenburg, Prussia,
    January 19th, 1821. He studied theology at Königsberg, but a
    journey to Italy, in 1852, caused him to devote his future life
    to historical research. For his _History of Rome in the Middle
    Ages_, Gregorovius was granted the honorary citizenship of that
    city. He died at Munich, May 1st, 1891.

=Grimm=, J., Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, Göttingen, 1828.--=Grindle=,
G. E. A., The Destruction of Paganism in the Roman Empire, Oxford,
1892.--=Gueldenpenning=, A., Geschichte des oströmischen Reiches, Halle,
1885.--=Guillot=, C., Droit public romain, Mayenne, 1895.--=Guirand=, P.,
La différence entre César et le sénat, Paris, 1878.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Hadley=, J., Introduction to Roman Law, New York and London,
1874.--=Hagenback=, K. R., Kirchengeschichte von der ältesten Zeit bis
zum 19ten Jahrhundert, Leipsic, 1885, 7 vols.--=Hahn=, H., Jahrbücher
des fränkischen Reiches 741-752, in Jahrbücher der Deutschen Geschichte,
Berlin, 1863.--=Hallam=, H., The View of the State of Europe during
the Middle Ages, London, 1818.--=Hammer-Purgstall=, J. von, Geschichte
des osmanischen Reiches, Vienna, 1827-1834, 10 vols.--=Hardie=, W. R.,
Character and Genius of the Roman People, London, 1895.--=Harnack=,
A., Zur Quellenkritik der Geschichte des Gnosticismus, Leipsic,
1873; Die Zeit des Ignatius und die Chronologie der antiochenischen
Bischöfe, Leipsic, 1878; Das Mönchtum, Seine Ideale und Geschichte,
Giessen, 1881; 4th edition, 1895; Geschichte der altschriftlichen
Litteratur bis Eusebius, Leipsic, 1893; Das Christentum und die
Geschichte, Leipsic, 1896; =Hauréau=, J. B., Charlemagne et sa cour,
Paris, 1852-1855.--=Hegel=, G. W. F., Vorlesungen über die Philosophie
der Geschichte, Berlin, 1833, 8 vols.; English translation by J.
Sibree, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, London, 1857.--=Hegel=,
R., Geschichte der Städteverfassung von Italien, Leipsic, 1847,
2 vols.--=Hemans=, C., Historical and Monumental Rome, London,
1874.--=Herbert=, W., Attila, King of the Huns, London, 1838. (An epic
poem in twelve books, containing also an historical treatise on Attila
and his predecessors.)--=Hertzberg=, G. F., Geschichte Griechenlands
unter der Herrschaft der Römer, Berlin, 1875; Geschichte des römischen
Kaiserreiches, Berlin, 1880-1882; Geschichte der Byzantiner und des
osmanischen Reiches, Berlin, 1882-1884; Geschichte der Römer im
Alterthum, Berlin, 1885.--=Herzog=, E. von, Geschichte und System der
römischen Staatsverfassung, Tübingen, 1884-1891, 2 vols.--=Heyd=,
Wilhelm von, Geschichte des Levantehandels im Mittelalter, Leipsic,
1885-1886.--=Heyne=, C. G., Antiquitates Byzantinæ, 1808-1811.--=Hirsch=,
F., Das Herzogtum Benevent bis zum Untergang des Langobardenreiches,
Leipsic, 1847.--=Hirschfeld=, H. O., Untersuchungen auf dem Gebiete
der römischen Verwaltungsgeschichte, Berlin, 1877; Zur Geschichte des
lateinischen Rechts, Berlin, 1879; Inscriptiones Galliæ Narbonensis
Latinæ, Berlin, 1888; Timagones und die gallische Wanderung, in the
Sitzungsbericht der Berliner Akademie, Berlin, 1894.

    _Otto Hirschfeld_, a distinguished German historian and
    epigraphist, was born March 16, 1843, at Königsberg, Prussia.
    After pursuing philological and historical studies at the
    universities of Bonn and Berlin, he was engaged in epigraphical
    and historical research in Italy from 1865 to 1867. He was
    successively professor at Prague, Vienna, and Berlin, and has
    for many years been director of the Institute of Archæology at
    Berlin. In addition to several important historical works of
    his own production, he has collaborated with Mommsen in the
    _Ephemeris epigraphica_, and has contributed largely to the
    _Corpus inscriptionum latinarum_ and the _Inscriptiones Gallicæ
    Narbonensis latinæ_.

=Hodgkin=, Thomas, Vandals, article in the Ninth Edition of the
Encyclopædia Britannica; The Dynasty of Theodosius, Oxford, 1889; Italy
and her Invaders, Oxford, 1880-1889, 7 vols.; 1899, 8 vols.; Life of
Theodoric, Oxford, 1891; Charles the Great, London, 1899.--=Hœck=,
K., Römische Geschichte vom Verfall der Republik bis zur Vollendung
der Monarchie unter Constantin, Göttingen, 1841.--=How=, W. W. (in
collaboration with H. D. Leigh), A History of Rome to the Death of
Cæsar, London.--=Howorth=, H. H., The Westerly Drifting of Nomads,
article in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. V,
London, 1874.--=Hullman=, K. D., Geschichte des byzantinischen Handels,
Frankfort, 1808.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Ihne=, W., Römische Geschichte, Leipsic, 1868-1890, 8 vols.; English
translation by the author, The History of Rome, London, 1871-1882, 5
vols.; Rome: to its Capture by the Gauls, London, 1878.

    _Wilhelm Ihne_, German philologist and classical historian,
    was born February 2nd, 1821, at Fürth. He spent several years
    in England as a teacher and has, since 1863, been professor at
    Heidelberg. Ihne’s history deals with the early period of Rome
    up to the time when Augustus became sole ruler. It is addressed
    to a general audience, and consequently the author attempts to
    establish his position in a generally comprehensible manner. He
    succeeds better in his undertaking when he reaches the ground
    of more reliable tradition where he is not obliged to clothe
    difficult critical analysis in popular garb. The author takes a
    wholly unprejudiced stand, examining all evidence, separating
    fact from conjecture, and leaving the reader to form his own
    judgment. The work is marked by sound common sense.

=Ihne=, W. R., Society in Rome under the Cæsars, London, 1888. (A good
popular account of the daily life of the period.)

       *       *       *       *       *

=Jacobi=, R., Die Quellen der Langobardengeschichte des Paulus
Diaconus, Halle, 1877; =Jaffé=, Philip, Geschichte des deutschen
Reiches unter Lothar dem Sachsen, Berlin, 1843; (see also classical
section).--=Jäger=, O., Geschichte der Römer, Gütersloh, 1861.--=Jahn=,
A., Die Geschichte der Burgundionen, und Burgundiens, 1874, 2
vols.--=Jay=, B., Synopsis of Roman History, London, 1894.--=Jonson=,
Ben, Tragedy of Catiline, London, 1611.--=Jordan=, H., Topographie der
Stadt Rom im Altertum, Berlin, 1871, 1878, 1885, 2 vols.--=Jung=, J.,
Geographie und politische Geschichte des klassischen Altertums, in
Ivan Müller’s Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 3,
Nördlingen 1889.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Kärst=, F., Kritische Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des zweiten
Samniten-krieges, in Neues Jahrbuch für Philologie, Luppe, vol.
13.--=Kaufmann=, G. H., Deutsche Geschichte bis auf Karl den Grossen,
Leipsic, 1880-1881, 2 vols.--=Keightley=, Thomas, The History of Rome to
the End of the Republic, London, 1842.--=Kiepert=, H., Handbuch der alten
Geographie, Berlin, 1878.--=Kingsley=, Charles, The Roman and the Teuton,
London, 1875; 1889.--=Klein=, J., Die Verwaltungsbeamten der Provinzen
des römischen Reiches, Berlin, 1878.--=Köpke=, Der Anfang des Königthums
bei den Gothen, Berlin, 1854.--=Kornemann=, E., Zur Stadtentstehung
in den ehemals keltischen und germanischen Gebieten des Römerreiches,
Giessen, 1898.--=Körte=, G., Ein Wandgemälde von Vulci als Dokument
der römischen Königsgeschichte.--=Kraschenimkow=, M., Die Augustalen
und das Sacral-magisterium, St. Petersburg, 1895.--=Krumbacher=, K.,
Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Leipsic, 1892 (in collaboration with A.
Ehrhard and H. Gerzer); Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur, in
I. Müller’s Handbuch der klassischen Alterthumswissenschaften, vol. 9,
Munich, 1897.--=Kuhn=, E., Verfassung der Städte des römischen Reiches,
Leipsic, 1864.

       *       *       *       *       *

=La Barte=, J., History of the Arts of the Middle Ages, London,
1855.--=Lanciani=, Rodolfo, Le Acque e gli acquedotti di Roma antica,
Rome, 1880; Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, London,
1889; Pagan and Christian Rome, London and Boston, 1892; Forma urbis
Romæ, Milan and New York, 1893-1901; A Manual of Roman Antiquities,
London, 1894; New Tales of Old Rome, Boston, 1901.--=Lange=, L., Römische
Alterthümer, Berlin, 1876-1879, 2 vols.--=Lau=, G. J. T., Gregor I
der Grosse, nach seinem Leben und seiner Lehre geschildert, Leipsic,
1845.--=Laurent=, F., Études sur l’histoire de l’humanité, Paris,
1880.--=Lavisse=, E. (in collaboration with Alfred Rambaud), Histoire
générale du IVᵐᵉ siècle à nos jours, Paris, 1893, etc., 8 vols. in
progress.--=Le Beau=, Charles, Histoire du Bas-Empire depuis Constantin,
Paris, 1757-1779, 22 vols.--=Lecky=, W. E. H., History of European Morals
from Augustus to Charlemagne, London, 1870.--=Lecointe=, Charles, Annales
ecclésiastiques de la France, Paris, 1665-1680, 8 vols.--=Lehmann=, C.
F., Beiträge zur alten Geschichte, 1902.--=Leighton=, R. F., A History of
Rome, New York, 1880.--=Lemonnier=, H., Étude historique sur la condition
privée des Affranchis, Paris, 1887.--=Lenormant=, F., La grande Grèce,
Paris, 1881-1884, 3 vols.; (a biographical notice of this writer is given
in vol. I, p. 588).--=Lewis=, George Cornewall, An Inquiry into the
Credibility of the Early Roman History, London, 1855, 2 vols.

    _George Cornewall Lewis_, a statesman and man of letters,
    was born in London, April 21, 1806. Educated at Eton and
    Oxford, he was called to the bar in 1831. Although almost
    constantly engaged in public life, he devoted much attention
    to literature, writing numerous essays and contributions to
    reviews, besides publishing several translations from the
    German. All of his writings are distinguished for clear, sober,
    and original thought. He died in April, 1863. In his inquiry
    into the credibility of early Roman history Lewis submits early
    Roman history to the same tests that are applied in determining
    credibility in judicial investigation. In applying these tests
    to Niebuhr’s positions he decides that many of them are based
    on insufficient foundations, and comes to the conclusion that
    all efforts to clear up early Roman history are thrown away
    since there is no contemporary evidence.

=Lézardière=, Marie Pauline de, Théorie des lois politiques de la
monarchie française, Paris, 1844, 4 vols.--=Liddell=, H. G., A History of
Rome from the earliest Times to the Establishment of the Empire, London
and New York, 1865.

    _Henry George Liddell_ was born at Binchester, February 6th,
    1811. Educated at Oxford, he became a college tutor and in
    1846 was made head-master of Westminster School. In 1834, he
    began, in collaboration with Robert Scott, the preparation of
    the _Greek-English Lexicon_, which was his life-work. In 1855
    he was appointed dean of Christ Church, Oxford, which position
    he retained until 1891. Liddell’s history is a most valuable
    work, being as Mr. Adams says of it, “a storehouse of accurate
    information.”

=Liebenau=, W., Städteverwaltung im römischen Kaiserreich, Leipsic,
1900.--=Lilly=, W. S., Ancient Religion and Modern Thought, London,
1884.--=Lindner=, Theodor, Die sogenannten Schenkungen Pippins, Karls des
Grossen und Ottos I, Stuttgart, 1896.--=Lippert=, Julius, Die Religionen
der europäischen Kulturvölker, Berlin, 1881.--=Lockhart=, J. G.,
Velerius, a Roman Story, Edinburgh, 1821.--=Long=, G., The Decline of the
Roman Republic, London, 1864-1874, 5 vols. This book covers the period
from the destruction of Carthage to the death of Julius Cæsar.--=Lorenz=,
F., Karls des Grossen Privat- und Hofleben, in Von Raumer’s Historisches
Taschenbuch, Leipsic, 1832.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Macaulay=, T. B., Lays of Ancient Rome, London, 1812.--=Macdermot=,
T. B., Outline of Roman History, Dublin, 1892.--=Mackenzie=, Lord,
Studies of the Roman Law, with Comparative Views of the Laws of France,
England, and Scotland, 5th edition, edited by John Kirkpatrick,
London, 1880.--=Maclear=, G. F., Apostles of Mediæval Europe, London,
1868.--=Madvig=, J. N., Die Verfassung und Verwaltung des römischen
Staats, Leipsic, 1881-1882, 2 vols.--=Mahaffy=, J. P., The Greek World
under Roman Sway, London, 1890.--=Mahon=, Philip Henry Stanhope,
Life of Belisarius, London, 1848.--=Manso=, J. K. F., Geschichte des
ostgothischen Reiches in Italien, Breslau, 1824.--=Marioni=, G., I
Papiri Diplomatici, Rome, 1805 (a collection of documents, papal bulls,
legal documents of transactions between Byzantine merchants, officials,
clergy, etc.).--=Marlot=, E., Précis des institutions politiques de Rome,
Paris, 1886.--=Marquardt=, K. J., vols. 3 to 5 of Becker’s Handbuch der
römischen Altertümer, Leipsic, 1849-1868; second edition of complete
work (in collaboration with Th. Mommsen), Leipsic, 1881-1886, 7 vols.;
Römische Staatsverwaltung, forming vols. 4 to 6 of Handbuch der römischen
Altertümer, Leipsic, 1873-1878; 1881-1885; Privatleben der Römer,
forming vol. 7 of Handbuch der römischen Altertümer, Leipsic, 1879-1882;
2nd edition, 1886.--=Marrast=, A., Esquisses Byzantines, Paris,
1874.--=Martens=, W., Politische Geschichte des Langobardenreiches unter
König Luitbrand, Heidelberg, 1880.--=Martin=, H., Histoire de France,
Paris, 1838-1853; 1855-1860, 18 vols.--=Marx=, F., Die Beziehungen der
klassischen Völker des Altertums zu dem keltisch-germanischen Norden,
Beilage der Allgemeinen Zeitung, 1897, No. 162, 163.--=Mascov=, J. J.,
Geschichte der Deutschen bis zum Abgang der merovingischen Könige,
Leipsic, 1726-1737, 2 vols.--=Masom=, W. F., The Struggle for Empire,
287-202 B.C., London, 1894 (in collaboration with F. G. Plaistowe);
Synopsis of Roman History, London, 1891.--=Mason=, A. J., The Persecution
of Diocletian, Cambridge, 1876.--=Mayor=, J. E. B., Bibliographie Clue to
Latin Literature, London, 1875.--=Meitzen=, A., Siedelung und Agrarwesen
der Westgermanen und Ostgermanen, der Kelten, Römer, Finnen und Slaven,
Berlin, 1895, 3 vols.--=Meltzer=, O., Geschichte der Karthager, Berlin, 2
vols.--=Menzel=, W., Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung von der ältesten
bis auf die neueste Zeit, Leipsic, 1875, 2nd edition, 3 vols.; English
translation by Horrocks, History of Germany from the Earliest Period to
the Present Time, London, 1848, 3 vols.--=Merivale=, Charles, A History
of the Romans under the Empire, London, 1850-1862, 7 vols.; The Fall of
the Roman Republic, London, 1853; A General History of Rome, London,
1875; The Roman Triumvirates, London, 1876.

    _Charles Merivale_ was born March 8th, 1808, and educated at
    Harrow, Haileybury, and Cambridge. In 1833 he was elected
    fellow of St. Johns. In addition to gaining distinction as a
    student he was prominent in athletic sports, rowing in the
    first inter-university boat-race in 1829. He was ordained in
    1833, appointed chaplain to the speaker of the House of Commons
    in 1863, and in 1869 became dean of Ely. He died December 27th,
    1893. Merivale’s _History of the Romans under the Empire_ did
    much to foster the study of Roman history during the empire.
    Beginning with Sulla’s death, it follows the intellectual and
    social life of the period, up to the death of Marcus Aurelius,
    with a certain degree of completeness, although the author does
    not touch any of the deeper problems in connection with the
    history of the imperial period.

=Meyer=, Edward, Geschichte des Alterthums, Stuttgart, 1884-1893, 2
vols.; Untersuchungen über die Schlacht im Teutoburger Walde, Berlin,
1895; Über den Ursprung des Tribunats, in Hermes, vol. 30, 1895. A
biographical notice of this author appears in vol. I, p. 302. The second
volume of Meyer’s history, which is the last that has appeared, brings
us down to the Persian wars. In keeping with its general character it
gives a survey of the whole Occident, including the beginnings of Italian
history and the establishment of Etruscan power in Italy. But while
dealing with Italy as a whole, new light is thrown upon the history of
Rome in particular, as upon Etruscan dominion in Latium, the character
of patrician rule, the system of land ownership, etc. The oldest Italic
and Etruscan civilisation is also well portrayed. =Meyer=, K., Sprache
und Sprachdenkmäler der Langobarden, Paderborn, 1877.--=Michaud=, J.
F., L’histoire des croisades, Paris, 1841, 6 vols.; English translation
by W. Robson, London, 1852, 3 vols.--=Michelet=, J., Histoire romaine,
Paris, 1831, 2 vols.; English translation by W. Hazlitt, History of the
Roman Republic, London, 1847.--=Middleton=, J. H., Ancient Rome in 1888,
London, 1888; Article on Rome in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth
Edition; The Remains of Ancient Rome, London, 1892, 2 vols.--=Milman=, H.
H., History of Christianity from the Birth of Christ to the Abolition of
Paganism, London, 1867.--=Mispoulet=, Y. B., Les institutions politiques
des romains, Paris, 1882-1883, 2 vols.--=Mommsen=, Theodor, Corpus
inscriptionum neapolitanarum, Leipsic, 1851; Römische Geschichte, Berlin,
1853-1856, 3 vols.; 8th edition, 1888, 5 vols.; Die Rechtsfrage zwischen
Cæsar und dem Senat, Breslau, 1857; Die römische Chronologie bis auf
Cæsar, Berlin, 1858-1859; Geschichte des römischen Münzwesens, Breslau,
1860; Verzeichniss der römischen Provinzen um 297, Berlin, 1862; Römische
Forschungen, Berlin, 1865-1879, 2 vols.; translated into English by W. P.
Dickson, History of Rome to Time of Augustus, London, 1868-1875, 4 vols.;
Römisches Staatsrecht, Leipsic, 1871-1888, 3 vols. (in collaboration
with K. J. Marquardt); the second edition of the Handbuch der römischen
Altertümer, Leipsic, 1881-1886, 7 vols.; translated into English by W. P.
Dickson, The Roman Provinces, London, 1887, 2 vols.; History of the Roman
Republic (abridged by C. Bryans and F. J. P. Hendrick), London, 1888;
Abriss des römischen Staatsrechts, Leipsic, 1893.

    _Theodor Mommsen_, German historian and epigraphist, was of
    Danish origin, and was born at Garding in Schleswig, November
    30th, 1817. Educated at Altona and Kiel, he spent the years
    from 1844 to 1847 in archæological exploration in Rome.
    Appointed in 1848 a professor at Leipsic, he lost his position
    by participating in the stirring politics of that year. In 1852
    he became professor at Zurich and in 1858 at the university of
    Berlin. In 1874 he was made perpetual secretary of the Academy
    of Sciences at Berlin. From 1873 to 1882 he was a member of
    the Chamber of Deputies of Prussia. He declined an election to
    the Reichstag in 1881, protesting against the policy of Prince
    Bismarck, and particularly against the progress of socialism in
    the state. This criticism having roused the ire of the prince,
    Mommsen was, in 1882, prosecuted for defamation. The case
    gained great celebrity. Acquitted upon the first trial, the
    judgment was reversed upon appeal, and upon a second trial, in
    which he defended himself, he was again victorious.

    Professor Mommsen’s work marks an important epoch in the field
    of Roman history. His history of Rome appeared first in 1854,
    in a series of volumes intended for a more general public,
    so that only results of his investigation were given. There
    is a marked departure in Mommsen’s style from the reserve of
    the classical historians. He by no means regards the events
    he describes in the light of an outsider, but takes sides for
    or against different parties and leading characters. He has a
    special antipathy, for example, against the Etruscans, also
    against Cicero. It is this personal element, perhaps, which
    seems to make the whole work live. Persons and things are
    introduced with the utmost vividness. The different characters,
    men like Gracchus, Sulla, and Cæsar seem to be actually living,
    breathing persons, and no mere words on a page. But not alone
    was the style new--wholly new material was brought forward,
    making a new chapter of Italic history, based on a study of the
    country itself, on the monuments of old time, especially on
    finds in tombs in Italy. Above everything else the different
    aspects of the national development--the economic, artistic,
    and literary--are brought together with a master hand. The book
    at once aroused new interest in classical study throughout the
    country. Also to special departments Mommsen has contributed
    invaluable productions--epigraphy, numismatics, above all the
    constitutional law of the Romans, all have received the stamp
    of his genius.

=Montalembert=, C. F. de T., Les moines d’Occident, Paris, 1860-1867, 7
vols.; English translation, The Monks of the West from S. Benedict to S.
Bernard, Edinburgh and London, 1860-1870, 7 vols.--=Monticolo=, G., I
Manuscritti e le fonti della Cronica del Diacono Giovanni, Rome, 1889;
Cronache Veneziani Antichissime, Rome, 1890; Le Spedizioni di Luitprando
nell’ Escarto e la Lettera di Gregorio III al Doge Orso, in Archivio
della Società Romana di Storia Patria, 1892.--=Monumenta Germaniæ
Historica=, Hanover, 1826; in progress.

    Accurate texts of all the more important historical writers on
    Germany down to the year 1500, also laws, archives, and letters
    within this period. Edited by Pertz from 1826-1874, during
    which period 24 volumes were published. Since 1874 it has been
    continued by Waitz, Wattenbach, Dümmler, and others.

=Müller=, C., Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum, Paris, 1841-1870, 5
vols.; new edition, 1883.--=Müller=, I. von, Handbuch der klassischen
Altertumswissenschaft, Nördlingen, 1885, in progress, 9 vols. (part 4
to vol. V appeared in 1902).--=Müller=, D., Geschichte des deutschen
Volkes, Berlin, 1900.--=Müller=, F., Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft,
Vienna, 1876-1888, 3 vols.--=Müller=, K. O., Etrusker, Breslau, 1828,
2 vols.; edited by W. Deecke, Stuttgart, 1877.--=Munk=, E., Geschichte
der römischen Litteratur, London, 1858-1861, 3 vols.--=Muratori=, L. A.,
Rerum italicarum scriptores præcipui ab anno 500 ad annum 1500, Milan,
1723-1751, 29 vols.

    _Muratori_ was born at Vignola in Modena in 1672. He was
    educated for the church but in the year 1700 was appointed
    librarian for the duke of Modena. Muratori was one of the most
    distinguished savants of the eighteenth century.

=Murphy=, A., English translation of Tacitus, London, 1793.--=Murray=, A.
S., Terra-cotta Sarcophagi, Greek and Etruscan, London, 1898.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Napoleon III=, Histoire de Jules César, Paris, 1865-1866, 2 vols.;
English translation, History of Julius Cæsar, London, 1865, 2 vols.

    In this work the author declared that it was written to prove
    that when Providence raises up such men as Cæsar, Charlemagne,
    and Napoleon, it is to trace out to people the path they ought
    to follow; in effect it was an apology for the Napoleonic
    absolutism.

=Naudet=, J., Histoire de la monarchie des Goths en Italie, Paris,
1810.--=Neumann=, C., Weltstellung des byzantinischen Reiches,
Heidelberg, 1894; Die Grundherrschaft der römischen Republik,
Strassburg, 1900.--=Niccolini=, G., Fasti tribunorum plebis ab anno
269 ad annum 731, Studi storici, 1895.--=Nichols=, F. M., The Marvels
of Rome, London, 1889 (an English translation from the Latin of the
twelfth century guide-book).--=Niebuhr=, B. G., Römische Geschichte,
Berlin, 1811-1832, 3 vols.; new edition, 1873; English translation by
W. Smith, L. Schmitz, J. C. Hare, and C. Thirlwall, The History of
Rome, London, 1859, 3 vols.; Lectures on the History of Rome from the
First Punic War to the death of Constantine, edited by L. Schmitz from
Niebuhr’s lectures, London, 1844, 2 vols.; Vorträge über die römische
Geschichte, edited by Isler, Berlin, 1846-1848, 3 vols.; Vorträge über
alte Geschichte, edited by M. Niebuhr, Berlin, 1847-1851, 3 vols.;
English translation by L. Schmitz, Lectures on Ancient History, London,
1852; Vorträge über römische Altertümer, edited by Isler, Berlin, 1858;
contributions to the Geschichte der Stadt Rom, compiled by Bunsen,
Platner, and others, Stuttgart, 1830-1843, 3 vols.; Corpus Scriptorus
Historiæ Byzantiæ, see Byzantine History.

    _Berthold G. Niebuhr_ was born at Copenhagen, August 27th,
    1776. In his early life he was secretary to the minister of
    finance of Denmark, and afterwards director of the Bank. In
    1806 he removed to Berlin, where he was councillor of state
    in 1808, and upon the foundation of the University of Berlin
    in 1810 was named as professor of history. From 1816 to 1824
    he resided in Rome as ambassador of Prussia, profiting by
    his sojourn in the opportunity to make important researches
    in Roman history and philology. On his return he accepted a
    professorship at the University of Bonn, where he remained
    until his death, January 2nd, 1831. The critical methods of
    Niebuhr began a new era in the whole science of history; or,
    as Macaulay says, in the “history of European intelligence.”
    His Roman history appeared first in 1811, being made up
    primarily from lectures delivered at the University of Berlin
    during the winter of the same year. Various causes worked
    together to make Niebuhr’s achievement possible, his broad
    scholarship, his experience in political, judicial, economic,
    and even military questions--his acquaintance with Rome, its
    land and its people, his knowledge of persons gained through
    his travels and diplomatic positions, and above all his rare
    gift of combination and his comprehensive outlook. Niebuhr’s
    work stands for all time as an example of true historical
    criticism; his object can best be made plain in his own words:
    “We must strive to single out fable and falsification, and
    train our glance to recognise the outlines of truth freed from
    every gloss. The identification of fable and the refutation of
    deceit may be enough for the critic; he desires only to expose
    misleading accounts. The historian needs something positive;
    he must at least discover the connection of facts with some
    probability and discover a more probable narrative in place of
    that which is sacrificed to his convictions.”

=Niese=, B., Grundriss der römischen Geschichte nebst Quellenkunde, 1896,
2nd edition; De annalibus Romanis, 2 programme, Marburg.--=Nisard=, D.,
Les quatre grands historiens latins, Paris, 1874.--=Nitzsch=, K. W., Die
römische Annalistik, von ihren ersten Aufängen bis zu Valerius Antias,
Berlin, 1873; Die Geschichte der römischen Republik, edited by Thouret,
Berlin, 1884-1885, 2 vols.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Oberhammer=, E., Bericht über Landes- und Völkerkunde.--=Œlsner=,
Zur Chronologie der italienischen Ereignisse, in his Jahrbücher des
fränkischen Reiches unter König Pippin, Leipsic, 1871.--=Oman=, C. W. C.,
The Byzantine Empire (Story of the Nations), London, 1892; A History of
Europe from 476-918, London, 1893.--=Ozanam=, A. F., La Civilisation au
Vᵐᵉ siècle, Paris, 1855; English translation, History of Civilisation in
the Fifth Century, London and Philadelphia, 1867, 2 vols.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Pabst=, H., Geschichte des Langobardenherzogtums, in Forschungen
zur deutschen Geschichte, 1862, 2 vols.--=Pagi=, Antoine, Critica
historico-chronologica, Geneva, 1689-1705, 4 vols.--=Pais=, Ettore,
Storia di Roma, forming Part II of his Storia d’Italia dei tempi
più antichi, Turin, 1894-1899.--=Pallmann=, R., Geschichte der
Völkerwanderung, Berlin, 1863-1864, 2 vols.

    _R. Pallmann_, German geographer, historian, and publicist,
    born at Spremberg, June 14th, 1835. In his _Völkerwanderung_
    he attempts to prove that the migration of the nations who
    destroyed the Roman Empire was much less than has been
    supposed, and makes a very careful examination of the ancient
    authorities.

=Papencerdt=, J., Geschichte der Stadt Rom, Paderborn,
1857.--=Papencordt=, Felix, Geschichte der Vandalen, Paderborn,
1837.--=Parker=, J. H., The Archeology of Rome, Oxford, 1874-1880, 16
vols.--=Paucker=, C., De Latinitate Scritorum Historiæ Augustæ malemata,
Dorpat, 1870.--=Pelham=, H. F., Outlines of Roman History, London, 1893,
1895, 1903.--=Perrin=, R., Marche d’Annibal des Pyrenées au Po, Metz,
1887.--=Perry=, Walter C., The Franks from their First Appearance in
History to the Death of King Pepin, London, 1857.--=Person=, E., Essai
sur l’administration des provinces romaines sous la république, Paris,
1878.--=Pertz=, Georg Heinrich, Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, Hanover,
1826-1874, 24 vols.--=Peter=, Carl Ludwig, Geschichte Roms, Halle, 1853,
3 vols., 4th edition 1881; Zur Kritik der Quellen der älteren römischen
Geschichte, Halle, 1879.--=Peter=, Hermann, Historia Critica Scriptorum
Historiæ Augustæ, Leipsic, 1860; Exercitationes Criticæ in Scriptores
Historiæ Augustæ, Posen, 1863; Die Quellen Plutarchs in den Biographien
der Römer, Halle, 1865; Die Geschichtliche Litteratur über die römische
Kaiserzeit bis Theodosius, 2 vols.--=Peyre=, R., L’empire romain,
Paris, 1894.--=Pierron=, A., Histoire de la littérature romaine, Paris,
1857.--=Plew=, J., Marius Maximus als Quelle der Scriptores Historiæ
Augustæ, Strassburg, 1878.--=Pohlmann=, R., Die Anhänge der Socialismus
in Europa.--=Pollard=, A., Historische Zeitschrift, 1879-1880; Stories
from Roman History London, 1892.--=Potthast=, Aug., Bibliotheca historica
Medii Ævi, 375-1500 A.D., Berlin, 1868.--=Pressensé=, E. de, Histoire
des trois premiers siècles de l’Église chrétienne, Paris, 1887-1889, 3
vols.; English translation by A. Harewood Hohnden, The Early Years of
Christianity, London and New York, 1879, 4 vols.--=Prévost-Paradol=, L.
A., Essai, sur l’histoire universelle, Paris, 1890, 2 vols.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Quicheret=, J., Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire, Paris, 1885, 2
vols.--=Quidde=, F., Caligula, Leipsic, 1894.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Rambaud=, Alfred Nicolas (in collaboration with Ernest Lavisse),
Histoire Générale du IVᵐᵉ siècle à nos jours, Paris, 1893, 8 vols. in
progress.--=Ranke=, Leopold von, Weltgeschichte, Leipsic, 1880-1888, 9
vols. (vols. 7-9 edited by Dove, Wiedemann, and Winter); 2nd edition
1896, 4 vols.--=Rawlinson=, George, The Seventh Great Oriental
Monarchy, London, 1876. Gives history of the wars between Persia and
the empire. (A biographical notice of this author is given in vol. I,
p. 571.)--=Reinhardt=, S., Der Perserkrieg des Kaisers Julian, Gotha,
1892.--=Renan=, Joseph Ernest, Histoire des origines de Christianisme,
Paris, 1887. (A biographical notice of this writer has been given
in vol. II, p. 235.)--=Reumont=, A. U., Geschichte der Stadt Rom,
Berlin, 1867-1870, 3 vols.--=Reville=, J., La Religion à Rome sous
les Sévères, Paris, 1886.--=Richter=, Gustav, Annalen der deutschen
Geschichte im Mittelalter, Halle, 1873.--=Robinson=, W. S., First
History of Rome, London, 1890.--=Rodocanachi=, E., Les corporations
ouvrières à Rome depuis la chute de l’empire romaine, Paris, 1894,
2 vols.--=Rollin=, Charles, L’histoire romaine, Paris, 1738-1741, 5
vols.--=Rösler=, E., Robert, Romanische Studien, Untersuchungen zur alten
Geschichte Romaniens, Leipsic, 1871.--=Roth=, Paul von, Geschichte des
Beneficialwesen, Erlangen, 1850.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Sartorius=, Georg, Versuch über die Regierung der Ostrogothen während
ihrer Herrschaft in Italien, Hamburg, 1811.--=Saulcy=, F. J., Essai de
classification des suites monétaires byzantines, Paris, 1836.--=Savigny=,
Friedr. Karl von, Geschichte des römischen Rechts im Mittelalter,
Heidelberg, 1834-1851, 7 vols.--=Sayous=, Pierre Andrée, Les origines
et l’épopée païenne de l’histoire des Hongrois, Paris, 1874; Histoire
générale des Hongrois, Paris, 1877, 2 vols.--=Schäfer=, Arnold, Abriss
der Quellenkunde der griechischen und römischen Geschichte, Leipsic,
vol. I, 4th edition, 1889; vol. II, 2nd edition, 1885.--=Schenk=, K.,
in Byzantische Zeitschrift, Leipsic, 1896.--=Schiller=, Johann Heinrich
Karl Friedrich Hermann, Geschichte der römischen Kaiserzeit bis auf
Theodosius den Grossen, Gotha, 1886-1888, 2 vols. (in collaboration with
M. Voigt), Die römischen Staats-, Kriegs- und Privataltertümer, in I.
Müller’s Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaften, Nördlingen,
1887.--=Schlegel=, K. W. F. von, Lectures on the History of Literature,
New York, 1841.--=Schlosser=, F. C., Geschichte der bilderstürmenden
Kaiser des Oströmischen Reichs, Frankfort, 1812; Weltgeschichte für
das deutsche Volk, Oberhausen and Leipsic, 1874-1875, 19 vols. (A
biographical notice of this writer has been given in vol. IV, page
637.)--=Schmidt=, Ludwig, Zur Geschichte der Langobarden, Dresden,
1885.--=Schmidt=, O. E., in Spanier’s Illustrierte Weltgeschichte, vol.
II, von Alexander dem Grossen bis zu Beginn der Volkswanderung, 3rd
edition.--=Schmitz=, Leonard, A History of Rome from the Earliest Times
to the Death of Commodus, London, n.d.--=Schmitz=, M., Quellenkunde
der römischen Geschichte bis auf Paulus Diaconus, Gütersloh,
1881.--=Schneidewin=, M., Die antike Humanität.--=Schoener=, R., Rome,
London, 1898.--=Schön=, G., Das capitolinische Verzeichniss der römischen
Triumphe.--=Schroder=, W., De primordiis Artis Historici apud Græcos
et Romanos, Jena, 1868.--=Schubert=, Hans von, Die Unterwerfung der
Alamannen unter die Franken, Strassburg, 1884.--=Schuckburgh=, E. S.,
History of Rome to the Battle of Actium, London, 1894.--=Schwartz=, E.,
Die Berichte über die catilinarische Verschwörung, Hermes, vol. 32, p.
554.--=Schwegler=, Albert, Römische Geschichte, Tübingen, 1853-1858, 3
vols.

    _Albert Schwegler_, German historian and theologian (1819-1857)
    was greatly influenced by the great changes which took place
    in Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century and the
    bitterness caused by the disappointment of patriotic hopes, had
    an effect on his writing, although this is not so noticeable
    in Schwegler’s reserved style, which addresses itself more
    to scholars, as in Mommsen’s, who speaks to wider circles.
    Schwegler’s history extends only to the Licinian Rogations,
    and the author did not live even to see the third volume
    published. His object was to lay bare critical investigation
    in the widest range and he has admirably succeeded, conducting
    the reader through the mazes of fable and tradition as well
    as through the conflicting statement of modern writers, with
    a wonderful security of touch. At the same time he weaves
    together the authenticated results into a comprehensive picture
    of the whole and describes developments with keen political
    discernment. In one important point only does he differ from
    Niebuhr, refusing to admit that the history of ancient Rome is
    a product of folk ballads, holding rather that it originated in
    the class of aetiologic fables which were so richly developed
    among the ancients. This work was cast into the shade soon
    after its appearance by Mommsen’s brilliant achievements.

=Seeck=, O., Die Schätzungsordnung Diocletians; Gedichte des Untergangs
der antiken Welt, Berlin, 1897, 2nd edition.--=Seeley=, J. R., Roman
Imperialism, in his Lectures and Essays, London, 1870.--=Seignobos=,
C., Histoire narrative et descriptive du peuple romain, Paris,
1894.--=Sellar=, W. Y., The Roman Poets of the Republic, Oxford,
1881, 1889; The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age, Oxford, 1883, 1892,
1897.--=Sergeant=, L., The Franks (Stories of the Nations), London,
1888.--=Seyffert=, O., Lexicon der klassischen Alterthumskunde, Leipsic,
1882; Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, edited by Henry Nettleship and
J. E. Sandys, London, 1901.--=Sheppard=, J. Y., The Fall of Rome, and the
Rise of New Nationalities, London, 1874. (The author is opposed to the
views of Gibbon, but bases his work on original authorities.)--=Shumway=,
E. S., A Day in Ancient Rome, Boston, 1885.--=Sime=, J., article on
Germany in the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.--=Smith=,
R. Bosworth, Carthage and the Carthaginians, London, 1879; Rome and
Carthage, London, 1881.--=Smith=, W., Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Biography and Mythology, London, 1864-1866, 3 vols.; Dictionary of
Greek and Roman Geography, London, 1866-1867, 2 vols.; Dictionary
of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London, 1869; A Concise Dictionary
of Greek and Roman Antiquities, edited by F. Warre Cornish, London,
1898.--=Sohm=, R., Die altdeutsche Reichs- und Gerichtsverfassung,
Weimar, 1871.--=Soltau=, W. J., Über Entstehung und Zusammensetzung der
altrömischen Volksversammlungen, Berlin, 1880; Römische Chronologie,
1889; Zur Geschichte der römischen Annalistik, in Nord und Süd, 20th year
(1896); Livius’ Geschichtswerk, seine Quellen und seine Komposition,
1877.--=Stamford=, T. V., Das Schlachtfeld im Teutoburger Walde, Cassel,
1892.--=Stoll=, H. W., Die Helden Roms in Krieg und Frieden, Leipsic,
1866; Geschichte der Römer bis zum Untergang der Republik, Hanover,
1869, 2 vols.--=Stolzenberg-Luttmersen=, von, Die Spuren der Langobarden
vom Nordmeer bis zur Donau, Hanover, 1889.--=Stritter=, J. G., Memoriæ
populorum olim ad Danubium, Pontum Euxinum, Paludem Mæotidem, Causasum,
etc., incolentium, ex scriptoribus Byzantinis erutæ ac digestæ,
1771-1779.--=Stuckelberg=, E. A., Die Thronfolge von Augustus bis
Konstantin.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Taine=, H. A., Essai sur Tite-Live, Paris, 1856.--=Taylor=, T. M.,
Constitutional and Political History of Rome, from the earliest times
to the reign of Domitian, London, 1899.--=Teuffel=, W. S., Geschichte
der römischen Litteratur, Leipsic, 1868-1870, 5 vols.; English
translation by W. Wagner, History of Roman Literature, London, 1873, 2
vols.--=Thalheimer=, M. E., Mediæval and Modern History, Cincinnati,
1872.--=Thiancourt=, C., Les causes et l’origine de la seconde guerre
punique, Paris, 1890.--=Thierry=, Amedée, Histoire de la Gaule sous
l’administration romaine, Paris, 1840, 3 vols.; Histoire d’Attila,
Paris, 1856; Récits de l’histoire romaine au cinquième siècle, Paris,
1860; Tableau de l’empire romain depuis la fondation jusqu’à la fin du
gouvernement, Paris, 1860; Trois ministres des fils de Théodose, Rufin,
Eutrope, Stilicon, Paris, 1865.

    _Amedée Thierry’s_ works on the ancient history of Gaul are of
    the greatest importance. The relations of Gaul to Rome and the
    mutual influences of civilisation and barbarism have perhaps
    nowhere else been so well described.

=Thierry=, Augustin, Récit des temps Mérovingiens, Paris,
1847.--=Thomas=, E., Rome et l’empire aux deux premiers siècles de
notre ère.--=Thue=, Römische Geschichte.--=Tieffenbach=, R., Über die
Örtlichkeit der Varusschlacht, Berlin, 1891.--=Tillemont=, S., le
Nain de, Histoire des empereurs et des autres princes qui ont régné
pendant les six premiers siècles de l’Église, Paris, 1691-1738, 6
vols.--=Tiraboschi=, J., Storia della letteratura italiana, Modena,
1772-1781, 13 vols.; English translation, Literary History of Italy,
Edinburgh, 1835.--=Trollope=, Anthony, The Life of Cicero, London and New
York, 1880-1881, 2 vols. (Trollope defends Cicero against the opinions
of Froude, Merivale, and Mommsen.)--=Tromsdorff=, P., Quæstiones duæ ad
historiam legionum Romanorum spectantes, dissertation, Leipsic.--=Troya=,
C., Codice Diplomatico-Longobardo, Naples, 1852-1855.--=Tyrrell=, R. Y.,
Cicero in his Letters, London, 1891.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Ulrici=, H., Characteristik der alten Historiographie, Berlin, 1833.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Vendettini=, Del Senato Romano, Rome, 1782.--=Villehardouin=, Geoffrey
de, Histoire de la conquête de Constantinople, Paris, 1657; new edition,
1838.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Wachsmuth=, Curt., Einleitung in das Studium der alten Geschichte,
Leipsic, 1895 (an almost indispensable work for the bibliography of
ancient history).--=Waitz=, Georg, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte,
Kiel, 1843-1878, 8 vols.--=Wallon=, H. A., Histoire de l’esclavage dans
l’antiquité, Paris, 1848, 3 vols.--=Waltzing=, F. P., Étude historique
sur les corporations professionnelles chez les Romains.--=Wattenbach=,
Wilhelm, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter, bis zur Mitte des
15. Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1858, 6th edition, 1893-1894.--=Weber=, Georg,
Allgemeine Weltgeschichte, Leipsic, 1857-1880, 15 vols.--=Weise=, Julius,
Die älteste Geschichte der Langobarden, Jena, 1877; Italien und die
Langobardenherrscher von 568 bis 628, Halle, 1887.--=Westrum=, A., Die
Langobarden und ihre Herzöge, Celle, 1886.--=Wiegandt=, L., Julius Cæsar
und der tribunische Gewalt, Dresden, 1890.--=Wietersheim=, Eduard von,
Geschichte der Völkerwanderung, Leipsic, 1880-1881, 2 vols.--=Wilhelm=,
P., Le droit public romain, Louvain, 1883.--=Williams=, H. S., The
History of the Art of Writing, New York and London, 1903.--=Wirth=,
Johann G. A., Geschichte der deutschen Staaten, Stuttgart, 1843-1845, 4
vols.--=Wolfsgruber=, C., Gregor der Grosse, Saulgau, 1890.--=Wrightson=,
R. H., The Sancta Republica Romana, London, 1890.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Zachariæ von Lingenthal=, Karl Salomo, L. Cornelius Sulla, genannt
der Glückliche als Ordner des römischen Freystaates, Heidelberg,
1834.--=Zeuss=, Johann Kaspar, Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme,
Munich, 1837.--=Zielinski=, Th., Cicero im Wandel der Jahrhunderte,
Leipsic.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: MAP OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

BORMAY & CO.]