The Historians' History of the World in Twenty-Five Volumes, Volume 06, Henry Smith Williams

 

 

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THE HISTORIANS’ HISTORY OF THE WORLD

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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.

IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES
VOLUME VI—THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE

1904

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Copyright, 1904,
By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

All rights reserved.

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

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Contributors, and Editorial Revisers.

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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 [viii]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 [ix]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 [x]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 [xi]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 [xii]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

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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[2] 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[3] 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[4] 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.

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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:

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.

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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[7] 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.

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.”

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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[9] 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[10] 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[11] 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[12] 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.

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[13] 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[14] 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

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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[16] 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.

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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[18] 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.

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[19] 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.

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.

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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.

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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.

[22]

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[23] 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.

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[24] 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

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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).

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[26] 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[27] 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.

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[28] 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[29] 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.

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[30] 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[31] 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[32] 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[33] 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[34] 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[35] 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[36] 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[37] 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.

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[38] 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[39] 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[40] 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,[41] 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.

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,[42] 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

[43]

AUGUSTUS MAKES EGYPT HIS PRIVATE PROVINCE

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[44] 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.

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.

[45]

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[46] 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.

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[47] 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;[48] 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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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[53] 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

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[54] 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[55] 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

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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.

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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[58] 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[59] 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[60] 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.

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[61] 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.

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[62] 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.

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[63] with more than German savagery,” and the fleet meanwhile sailed along the coast of the North Sea and joined hands with the land forces.

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,[64] 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

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.

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[65] 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.

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.[66] 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.

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[67] 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[68] 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.

Velleiuse 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[69] 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.

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 Velleiuse 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[70] 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.

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[71] 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.

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.

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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[73] 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.

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[74] 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[75] 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.

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GERMANICUS RECALLED TO ROME

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).

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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.

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 Tacitusg 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

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

EMPIRE IS PEACE

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[79] 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):

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):

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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.

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”;[81] 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[82] 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.

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.

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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[84] 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[85] 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.

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[86] 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[87] 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[88] 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[89] 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.

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[90] 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.

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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.

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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

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[93] 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.

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.

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“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[95] 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.

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.

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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:

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[97] 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[98] 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:

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:

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.

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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.

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[100] 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[101] 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[102] 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[103] 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[104] 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.

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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[106] 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,[107] 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[108] 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[109] 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[110] 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[111] 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.

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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.

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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[114] 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[115] 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

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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.

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[117] 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[118] 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.

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[119] 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[120] the neighbourhood of Apulia, and compelled to pass the rest of her days—twenty long years—in exile.

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;[121] 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,[122] 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[123] 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[124] 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.

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[125] 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[126] 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[127] 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,

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[128] 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[129] 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.

[130]

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[131] 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.[132] 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

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[133]

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[134] 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

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[135] 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.

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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.

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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.

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.]

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[138] 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[139] 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.].

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,[140] 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,[141] and presented probably a change for the better from the tyranny of their own regal dynasties.

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

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INTERNAL GOVERNMENT

During the earlier years of Tiberius’ sway, his administration was happy for the state. Even Tacitusd 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[143] 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.

[144]

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[145] 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.

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[146] 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.”

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.

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[147] 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.

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[148] 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.

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

“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,[149] 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[150] 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.

“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[151] 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

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[152] 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,[153] 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.

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,[154] which last had been married to her cousin Nero, and now was given in marriage to Rubellius Blandus.

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

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[155] 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[156] 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[157] 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[158] 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.

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[159] 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 Philoi 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

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[160] 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.

[161]

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[162] 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

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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 Cassiusj; 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.

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[164] 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.

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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.

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,[166] 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[167] 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[168] 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.

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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.

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[170] 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.

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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[172] 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[173] 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.”

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[174] 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[175] 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[176] 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

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[177] 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.

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.

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.

[178]

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

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,”[179] 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[180] 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.”

[181]

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.

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[182] 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[183] 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

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

Nero Claudius Cæsar Drusus Germanicus: 54-68 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.

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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

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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

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,[187] 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.

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.

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THE ROMAN PROVINCE OF BRITAIN

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[189] 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.[190] 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[191] 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[192] 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[193] 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

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BURRUS AND SENECA

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.

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.

[195]

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[196] 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

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[197] 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[198] 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[199] 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

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[200] 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[201] 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[202] 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

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,[203] 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.

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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.

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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.”

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.[206] 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

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[207] 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.

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.

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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[209] 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[210] 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[211] 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.

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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[213] 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.

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.

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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.

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NERO IN GREECE

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[216] 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[217] 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.

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[218] 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[219] 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

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[220] 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,[221] 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.

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[222] 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.

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?”

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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.

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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

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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[226] 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.

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[227] 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.

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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.

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[229] 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[230] 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.

[231]

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 Duruyn) “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.

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[232] 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

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[233] 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

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[234] 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

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[235] 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[236] themselves with absurd and false expectations, while many false prophets deluded the multitude, declaring they should soon have assistance from God.

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

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[237] 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[238] 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[239] 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.

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.

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

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THE EMPIRE IN PEACE

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,[241] 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.

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[242] 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

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THE CHARACTER AND END OF VESPASIAN

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.

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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.[245] 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.”

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[246] 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.”

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Titus (T. Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus II) 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[248] 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.”

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.

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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[250] 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

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[251] 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.

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“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.

“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.

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PLINY’S ACCOUNT OF THE ERUPTION

Further details of the disaster at Pompeii are given by Pliny the Youngerg 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.

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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?

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

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AGRICOLA IN BRITAIN

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

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[256] 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.

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

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Domitian (Titus Flavius Domitianus), 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,[258] 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[259] 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[260] 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

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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[262] 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:

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

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[263] 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.

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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;[265] 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[266] 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

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

Nerva (M. Cocceius Nerva), 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:

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“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.

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[269] 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

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[270] 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

Xiphilinush 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[271] 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

“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[272] 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[273] 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

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[274] 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

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[275] 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.

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[276] 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

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’sj 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[277] 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[278] 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:

“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.

“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[279] 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

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[280] 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.

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.

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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[282] 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

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[283] autumn of 129, and one and the same priest presided there over the worship of the Olympian Zeus and of the Philhellene emperor.

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.

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.

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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[285] 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[286] 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[287] 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.

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,[288] 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.

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

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[289] 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

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Antoninus (Titus Aurelius Antoninus Pius), 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.

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[291] 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[292] 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,[293] 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[294] 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.

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.

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[295] 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.

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[296] 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

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

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[297] 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 Cassiuse 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)[298] 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[299] 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.

THE REVOLT OF AVIDIUS

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,[300] 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

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[301] 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[302] apostle in gilded bronze. A temple of Marcus Aurelius probably stood to the west of it, on what is now Monte Citorio.

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[303] 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).

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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[305] 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

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[306] 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

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CHAPTER XXXVII. THE PAGAN CREEDS AND THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY

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[308] 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.

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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.

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 Epictetusf 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[310] 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 Aureliusi 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[311] 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:

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.

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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

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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

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[314] 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.

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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[316] 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.

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[317] 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[318] 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 Plinyj) 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[319] 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[320] 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[321] 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.

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[322] 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.

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(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[324] 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[325] 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.

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[326] 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[327] 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[328] 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

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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[330] 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.

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[331] 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.

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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[333] 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.

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[334] 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[335] 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[336] 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[337] 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.

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[338] 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.

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[339] 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.

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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.

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[341] 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.”

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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[343] 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[344] 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.

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[345] 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,[346] “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[347] 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[348] 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[349] 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[350] 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[351] 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.

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

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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[353] 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,[354] 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.

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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.

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[356] 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[357] 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.

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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;[359] 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.

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[360] 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.

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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[362] 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.

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[363] 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[364] 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[365] 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,[366] 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.

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,[367] 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[368] 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,[369] 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.

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[370] 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

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[371] 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[372] 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[373] 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[374] 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.

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

[375]

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[376] 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:

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

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CHAPTER XXXIX. A HALF CENTURY OF DECLINE: COMMODUS TO ALEXANDER SEVERUS

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.

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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[379] 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.

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

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[380] 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.

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[381] 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[382] 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.

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[383] 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,[384] 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,[385] 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.

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[386] 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.

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.

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,[387] 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[388] 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.]

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[389] 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.

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 Cassiuse 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.

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[390] 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[391] 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.

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.

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[392] 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.

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[393] 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.

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.

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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.

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[395] 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.

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 Cassiuse (as preserved by Xiphilinusi) 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” (Clintong).

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

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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[397] 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[398] 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.

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.

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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

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Alexander Severus (M. Aurelius Alexander Severus), 222-235 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[401] 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.

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[402] 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.

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[403] 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

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[404] 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[405] 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

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

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,[407] 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.[408] 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.

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[409] 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

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[410] 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.

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[411] 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.

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,[412] 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.

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.[413] These had been already solemnised by Augustus, by Claudius, by Domitian, and Severus, and Rome now witnessed them for the last time.

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.

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.[414] 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.

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.

[415]

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.

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.

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[416] 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.

[417]

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.

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[418] 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

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[419] 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[420] 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.

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[421] 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[422] 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

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.

[423]

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

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[424] 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

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.

[425]

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:

And some persons inquiring there concerning the success of the expedition of Aurelian against the Palmyrenians, the gods told them,

[426]

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

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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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.

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,[429] 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.

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[430] 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

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.[431] 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.)

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[432] 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

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CHAPTER XLI. NEW HOPE FOR THE EMPIRE: THE AGE OF DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE

DIOCLETIAN APPOINTS MAXIMIAN CO-REGENT

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.

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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

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[435] 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[436] 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

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.

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ABDICATION OF DIOCLETIAN AND MAXIMIAN; THE TWO NEW CÆSARS

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.

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.

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STRIFE AMONG THE RULERS

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[439] 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).

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

Of the other emperors, only Constantine seemed to be sincerely attached to the Christians. For a long time he remained a pagan, but continually[440] 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.

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“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[442] 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

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[443] 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.

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[444] 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[445] 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

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[446] 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.

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CONSTANTINE AND LICINIUS AGAIN AT WAR

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.

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.

[448]

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

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[449] 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.

[450]

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

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[451] 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.

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[452] 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[453] 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[454] 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[455] 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.

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[456] 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[457] 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

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[458] 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.

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[459] 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.

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[460] 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

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[461] 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[462] 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

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[463] 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.

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[464] 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[465] 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

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

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CHAPTER XLII. THE SUCCESSORS OF CONSTANTINE TO THE DEATH OF JULIAN (337-363 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[467] reins of government, the eldest of these princes was twenty-one, the second twenty, and the third only seventeen years of age.

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.

[468]

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.

[469]

WAR OF THE BROTHER EMPERORS

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).

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,[470] 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

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.[471] 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[472] 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

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[473] 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[474] 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[475] 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.

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.

[476]

THE FATE OF GALLUS

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[477] 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

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[478] 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[479] 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

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[480] 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[481] 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

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.[482] 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[483] 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

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,[484] 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[485] 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

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[486] 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

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.

[487]

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[488] 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,[489] 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.

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,[490] 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,[491] 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,[492] 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.

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[493] 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

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[494] 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[495] 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.

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[496] 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[497] 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[498] 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[499] 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

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[500] 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.

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,[501] 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.

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[502] 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[503] 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.

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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[505] 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[506] 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[507] 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[508] 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[509] 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

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[510]

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[511] 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.

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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

[513]

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[514] 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[515] 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.

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[516] 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[517] 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[518] 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

[519]

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).

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;[520] 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)

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[521] 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.

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.

[522]

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

[523]

VALENS MARCHES AGAINST THE GOTHS

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.

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,[524] 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[525] 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

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.

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,[526] 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.

[527]

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).

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[528] 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[529] 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

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[530] 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.

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[531] 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

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,[532] 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[533] 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[534] 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

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

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[535]

CHAPTER XLIV. THE DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE (395)

ARCADIUS AND HONORIUS SUCCEED THEODOSIUS

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.

[536]

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[537] 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[538] 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[539] 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.

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[540] 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,[541] 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[542] 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.

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.

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,[543] 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

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[544] 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.

[545]

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.

[546]

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.

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.

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.

[547]

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[548] shortly after made common cause with the barbarians who wandered across the mountains from Gaul, and became their companions and guides.c

Zosimusd 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. Olympiodoruse 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.

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[549] 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

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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[551] 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.

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[552] 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[553] 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.

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[554] 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[555] 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[556] 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[557] 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.

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[558] 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[559] 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

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[560] 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[561] 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.

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[562] 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[563] 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[564] 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

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[565] 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.

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[566] 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

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.

[567]

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,[568] 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[569] 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.

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;[570] 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.

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[571] 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.

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

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[572]

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[573] 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.

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.

Instead of listening to the voice of ambition, Theodosius resolved to imitate the moderation of his grandfather, and to seat his cousin Valentinian[574] 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.

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[575] 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[576] 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.

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[577] 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.

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[578] 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.

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[579] 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]

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[580] 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[581] 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.

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[582] 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.

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.

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[583] 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[584] 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[585] 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.

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.[586] 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[587] 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

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[588] 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[589] 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[590] 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.

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[591] 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

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[592] 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

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,[593] 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.

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[594] 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).

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[595] 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.[596] 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.

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[597] 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

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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.

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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.

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[600] 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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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[603] 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.

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[604] 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[605] 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.

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.

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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.

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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[608] 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[609] 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[610] 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

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[611] 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

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[612] 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[613] 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.

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.

[614]

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.

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[615] 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.

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[616] 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.

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[617] 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[618] 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

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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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[621] 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[622] 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.

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.]

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A FULFILLED AUGURY

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[624] 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[625] 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

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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.

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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[630] 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[631] 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[632] 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[633] 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[634] “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[635] 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[636] 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[637] 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.”

[638]

(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[639] 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[640] 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[641] 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[642] 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.

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[643]

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.

[644]

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.

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[645]

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

C. Modern Works

Books

World

Index

Hellenica World - Scientific Library