THE
EIGHTEEN CHRISTIAN CENTURIES.
BY
THE REV. JAMES WHITE,
AUTHOR OF A "HISTORY OF FRANCE."
With a Copious Index.
FROM THE SECOND EDINBURGH EDITION.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
549 & 551 BROADWAY.
1878.
NOTE BY THE AMERICAN PUBLISHERS.
This valuable work, which has been received with much favour in Great
Britain, is reprinted without abridgment from the second Edinburgh
edition. The lists of names of remarkable persons in the present issue
have been somewhat enlarged, and additional dates appended, thereby
increasing the value of the book.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
FIRST CENTURY.
THE BAD EMPERORS 9
SECOND CENTURY.
THE GOOD EMPERORS. 41
THIRD CENTURY.
ANARCHY AND CONFUSION--GROWTH OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 65
FOURTH CENTURY.
THE REMOVAL TO CONSTANTINOPLE--ESTABLISHMENT OF
CHRISTIANITY--APOSTASY OF JULIAN--SETTLEMENT OF THE GOTHS. 83
FIFTH CENTURY.
END OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE--FORMATION OF MODERN STATES--GROWTH
OF ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 105
SIXTH CENTURY.
BELISARIUS AND NARSES IN ITALY--SETTLEMENT OF THE
LOMBARDS--LAWS OF JUSTINIAN--BIRTH OF MOHAMMED. 123
SEVENTH CENTURY.
POWER OF ROME SUPPORTED BY THE MONKS--CONQUESTS OF THE
MOHAMMEDANS. 141
EIGHTH CENTURY.
TEMPORAL POWER OF THE POPES--THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE. 171
NINTH CENTURY.
DISMEMBERMENT OF CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE--DANISH INVASION
OF ENGLAND--WEAKNESS OF FRANCE--REIGN OF ALFRED. 193
TENTH CENTURY.
DARKNESS AND DESPAIR. 219
ELEVENTH CENTURY.
THE COMMENCEMENT OF IMPROVEMENT--GREGORY THE SEVENTH--FIRST
CRUSADE. 241
TWELFTH CENTURY.
ELEVATION OF LEARNING--POWER OF THE CHURCH--THOMAS
À-BECKETT. 269
THIRTEENTH CENTURY.
FIRST CRUSADE AGAINST HERETICS--THE ALBIGENSES--MAGNA
CHARTA--EDWARD I. 297
FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
ABOLITION OF THE ORDER OF THE TEMPLARS--RISE OF MODERN
LITERATURES--SCHISM OF THE CHURCH. 325
FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
DECLINE OF FEUDALISM--AGINCOURT--JOAN OF ARC--THE
PRINTING-PRESS--DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 359
SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
THE REFORMATION--THE JESUITS--POLICY OF ELIZABETH. 401
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
ENGLISH REBELLION AND REVOLUTION--DESPOTISM OF LOUIS THE
FOURTEENTH. 447
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
INDIA--AMERICA--FRANCE 491
INDEX 527
FIRST CENTURY.
Emperors.
A.D.
AUGUSTUS CÆSAR.
14. TIBERIUS.
37. CAIUS CALIGULA.
41. CLAUDIUS.
54. NERO. First Persecution of the Christians.
68. GALBA.
69. OTHO. }
69. VITELLIUS.}
69. VESPASIAN.}
79. TITUS.
81. DOMITIAN. Second Persecution of the Christians.
96. NERVA.
98. TRAJAN.
Authors.
LIVY, OVID, TIBULLUS, STRABO, COLUMELLA, QUINTUS CURTIUS, SENECA,
LUCAN, PETRONIUS, SILIUS ITALICUS, PLINY THE ELDER, MARTIAL,
QUINCTILIAN, TACITUS.
Christian Fathers and Writers.
BARNABAS, CLEMENT OF ROME, HERMAS, IGNATIUS, POLYCARP.
THE
EIGHTEEN CHRISTIAN CENTURIES.
THE FIRST CENTURY.
THE BAD EMPERORS.
Nobody disputes the usefulness of History. Many prefer it, even for
interest and amusement, to the best novels and romances. But the
extent of time over which it has stretched its range is appalling to
the most laborious of readers. And as History is growing every day,
and every nation is engaged in the manufacture of memorable events, it
is pitiable to contemplate the fate of the historic student a hundred
years hence. He is not allowed to cut off at one end, in proportion as
he increases at the other. He is not allowed to forget Marlborough,
in consideration of his accurate acquaintance with Wellington. His
knowledge of the career of Napoleon is no excuse for ignorance of
Julius Cæsar. All must be retained--victories, defeats--battles,
sieges--knights in armour, soldiers in red; the charge at Marathon,
the struggle at Inkermann--all these things, a thousand other things,
at first apparently of no importance, but growing larger and larger
as time develops their effects, till men look back in wonder that
the acorn escaped their notice which has produced such a majestic
oak,--a thousand other things still, for a moment rising in apparently
irresistible power, and dying off apparently without cause, must be
folded up in niches of the memory, ready to be brought forth when
needed, and yet room be left for the future. And who can pretend
to be qualified for so great a work? Most of us confess to rather
dim recollections of things occurring in our own time,--in our own
country--in our own parish; and some, contemplating the vast expanse
of human history, its innumerable windings and perplexing variations,
are inclined to give it up in despair, and have a sulky sort of
gratification in determining to know nothing, since they cannot
know all. All kings, they say, are pretty much alike, and whether
he is called John in England, or Louis in France, doesn't make much
difference. Nobles also are as similar as possible, and peoples are
everywhere the same. Now, this, you see, though it ambitiously pretends
to be ignorance, is, in fact, something infinitely worse. It is false
knowledge. It might be very injurious to liberty, to honour, and to
religion itself, if this wretched idea were to become common, for where
would be the inducement to noble endeavour? to reform of abuses? to
purity of life? Kings and nobles and peoples are not everywhere the
same. They are not even _like_ each other, or like themselves in the
same land at different periods. They are in a perpetual series, not
only of change, but of contrast. They are "variable as the sea,"--calm
and turbulent, brilliant and dark by turns. And it is this which
gives us the only chance of attaining clearness and distinctness
in our historic views. It is by dissimilarities that things are
individualized: now, how pleasant it would be if we could simplify and
strengthen our recollections of different times, by getting personal
portraits, as it were, of the various centuries, so as to escape the
danger of confounding their dress or features. It would be impossible
in that case to mistake the Spanish hat and feather of the sixteenth
century for the steel helmet and closed vizor of the fourteenth. We
should be able, in the same way, to distinguish between the modes of
thought and principles of action of the early ages, and those of the
present time. We should be able to point out anachronisms of feeling
and manners if they occurred in the course of our reading, as well
as of dress and language. It is surely worth while, therefore, to
make an attempt to individualize the centuries, not by affixing to
them any arbitrary marks of one's own, but by taking notice of the
distinguishing quality they possess, and grouping round that, as a
centre, the incidents which either produce this characteristic or are
produced by it. What should we call the present century, for instance?
We should at once name it the Century of Invention. The great war with
Napoleon ending in 1815, exciting so many passions, and calling forth
such energy, was but the natural introduction to the wider efforts and
amazing progress of the succeeding forty years. Battles and bulletins,
alliances and quarrels, ceased, but the intellect aroused by the
struggle dashed into other channels. Commerce spread its humanizing
influences over hitherto closed and unexplored regions; the steamboat
and railway began their wondrous career. The lightning was trained
to be our courier in the electric telegraph, and the sun took our
likenesses in the daguerreotype. How changed this century is in all its
attributes and tendencies from its predecessor, let any man judge for
himself, who compares the reigns of our first Hanoverian kings with
that of our gracious queen.
In nothing, indeed, is the course of European history so remarkable as
in the immense differences which intervals of a few years introduce.
In the old monarchies of Asia, time and the world seem almost to stand
still. The Indian, the Arab, the Chinese of a thousand years ago, wore
the same clothes, thought the same thoughts, and led the same life as
his successor of to-day. But with us the whole character of a people
is changed in a lifetime. In a few years we are whirled out of all our
associations. Names perhaps remain unaltered, but the inner life is
different; modes of living, states of education, religious sentiments,
great national events, foreign wars, or deep internal struggles--all
leave such ineffaceable marks on the history of certain periods, that
their influence can be traced through all the particulars of the time.
The art of printing can be followed, on its first introduction, into
the recesses of private life, as well as in the intercourse of nations.
The Reformation of religion so entirely altered the relations which the
states of the world bore to each other, that it may be said to have put
a limit between old history and new, so that human character itself
received a new development; and actions, both public and private, were
regulated by principles hitherto unknown.
In one respect all the past centuries are alike,--that they have done
their part towards the formation of this. We bear the impress, at this
hour, of the great thoughts and high aspirations, the struggles, and
even the crimes, of our ancestral ages; and yet they have no greater
resemblance to the present, except in the unchangeable characteristics
of human nature itself, than the remotest forefathers in a long line
of ancestry, whose likenesses hang in the galleries of our hereditary
nobles, bear to the existing owner of title and estate. The ancestor
who fought in the wars of the Roses has a very different expression
and dress from the other ancestor who cheated and lied (politically,
of course) in the days of the early Georges. Yet from both the present
proprietor is descended. He retains the somewhat rusty armour on an
ostentatious nail in the hall, and the somewhat insincere memoirs in a
secret drawer in the library, and we cannot deny that he is the joint
production of the courage of the warrior and the duplicity of the
statesman; anxious to defend what he believes to be the right, like the
supporter of York or Lancaster--but trammelled by the ties of party,
like the patriot of Sir Robert Walpole.
If we could affix to each century as characteristic a presentment as
those portraits do of the steel-clad hero of Towton, or the be-wigged,
be-buckled courtier of George the Second, our object would be gained.
We should see a whole history in a glance at a century's face. If
it were peculiarly marked by nature or accident, so much the more
easy would it be to recognise the likeness. If the century was a
warlike, quarrelsome century, and had scars across its brow; if it
was a learned, plodding century, and wore spectacles on nose; if it
was a frivolous, gay century, and simpered forever behind bouquets of
flowers, or tripped on fantastic toe with a jewelled rapier at its
side, there would be no mistaking the resemblance; there would also be
no chance of confusing the actions: the legal century would not fight,
the dancing century would not depose its king.
Taking our stand at the beginning of our era, there are only eighteen
centuries with which we have to do, and how easily any of us get
acquainted with the features and expression of eighteen of our friends!
Not that we know every particular of their birth and education, or can
enter into the minute parts of their character and feelings; but we
soon know enough of them to distinguish them from each other. We soon
can say of which of the eighteen such or such an action or opinion
is characteristic. We shall not mistake the bold deed or eloquent
statement of one as proceeding from another.
"Boastful and rough, your first son is a squire.
The next a tradesman, meek, and much a liar:
Tom struts a soldier, open, bold, and brave:
Will sneaks a scrivener, an exceeding knave.
Is he a churchman? then he's fond of power:
A Quaker? sly: a Presbyterian? sour:
A smart free-thinker? all things in an hour."
Now, though it is impossible to put the characteristics of a whole
century into such terse and powerful language as this, it cannot be
doubted that each century, or considerable period, has its prevailing
Thought,--a thought which it works out in almost all the ramifications
of its course; which it receives from its predecessor in a totally
different shape, and passes on to its successor in a still more
altered form. Else why do we find the faith of one generation the
ridicule and laughing-stock of the next? How did knighthood rise
into the heroic regions of chivalry, and then sink in a succeeding
period into the domain of burlesque? How did aristocracy in one age
concentrate into kingship in another? And in a third, how did the
golden ring of sovereignty lose its controlling power, and republics
take their rise? How did the reverence of Europe settle at one time on
the sword of Edward the Third, and at another on the periwig of Louis
the Fourteenth? These and similar inquiries will lead us to the real
principles and motive forces of a particular age, as they distinguished
it from other ages. We shall label the centuries, as it were, with
their characteristic marks, and know where to look for thoughts and
incidents of a particular class and type.
Let us look at the first century.
Throughout the civilized world there is nothing but Rome. Under
whatever form of government--under consuls, or triumvirs, or
dictators--that wonderful city was mistress of the globe. Her internal
dissensions had not weakened her power. While her streets were running
with the blood of her citizens, her eagles were flying triumphant in
Farther Asia and on the Rhine. Her old constitution had finally died
off almost without a blow, and unconsciously the people, still talking
of Cato and Brutus, became accustomed to the yoke. For seven-and-twenty
years they had seen all the power of the state concentrated in one man;
but the names of the offices of which their ancestors had been so proud
were retained; and when Octavius, the nephew of the conqueror Julius
Cæsar, placed himself above the law, it was only by uniting in his own
person all the authority which the law had created. He was consul,
tribune, prætor, pontifex, imperator,--whatever denomination conferred
dignity and power; and by the legal exercise of all these trusts he had
no rival and no check. He was finally presented by the senate with the
lofty title of Augustus, which henceforth had a mysterious significance
as the seal of imperial greatness, and his commands were obeyed without
a murmur from the Tigris to the Tyne. But whilst in the enjoyment of
this pre-eminence, the Roman emperor was unconscious that in a village
of Judea, in the lowest rank of life, among the most contemned tribe of
his dominions, his Master was born. [A.D. 1.] By this event the whole
current of the world's history was changed. The great became small and
the small great. Rome itself ceased to be the capital of the world,
for men's eyes and hearts, when the wonderful story came to be known,
were turned to Jerusalem. From her, commissioned emissaries were to
proceed with greater powers than those of Roman prætors or governors.
From her gates went forth Peter and John to preach the gospel. Down
her steep streets rode Paul and his companions, breathing anger
against the Church, and ere they reached Damascus, behold, the eyes
of the persecutor are blinded with lightning, and his understanding
illuminated with the same flash; and henceforth he proceeds, in
lowliness and humility, to convey to others the glad tidings that had
been revealed to himself. Away in all directions, but all radiating
from Jerusalem, travelled the messengers of the amazing dispensation.
Everywhere--in all centuries--in all regions, we shall encounter the
results of their ministry; and as we watch the swelling of the mighty
tide, first of Christian faith and then of priestly ambition, which
overspread the fairest portions of the globe, we shall wonder more
and more at the apparent powerlessness of its source, and at the vast
effects for good and evil which it has produced upon mankind.
What were they doing at Rome during the thirty-three years of our
Saviour's sojourn upon earth? For the first fourteen of them Augustus
was gathering round him the wits, and poets, and sages, who have made
his reign immortal. [A.D. 14.] After that date his successor, Tiberius,
built up by stealthy and slow degrees the most dreadful tyranny the
world had ever seen,--a tyranny the results of which lasted long after
the founders of it had expired. For from this period mankind had
nothing to hope but from the bounty of the emperor. It is humiliating
to reflect that the history of the world for so long a period consists
of the deeds and dispositions of the successive rulers of Rome.
All men, wherever their country, or whatever their position, were
dependent, in greater or less degree, for their happiness or misery
on the good or bad temper of an individual man. If he was cruel, as
so many of them were, he filled the patricians of Rome with fear, and
terrified the distant inhabitants of Thrace or Gaul. His benevolence,
on the other hand, was felt at the extremities of the earth. No
wonder that every one was on the watch for the first glimpse of a new
emperor's character and disposition. What rejoicings in Italy and
Greece and Africa, and all through Europe, when a trait of goodness
was reported! and what a sinking of the heart when the old story was
renewed, and a monster of cruelty succeeded to a monster of deceit!
For the fearfullest thing in all the descriptions of Tiberius is the
duplicity of his behaviour. He withdrew to an island in the sunniest
part of the Mediterranean, and covered it with gorgeous buildings,
and supplied it with all the implements of luxury and enjoyment. From
this magnificent retirement he uttered a whisper, or made a motion
with his hand, which displaced an Eastern monarch from his throne, or
doomed a senator to death. He was never seen. He lived in the dreadful
privacy of some fabled deity, and was only felt at the farthest ends
of his empire by the unhappiness he occasioned; by his murders, and
imprisonments, and every species of suffering, men's hearts and minds
were bowed down beneath this invisible and irresistible oppressor.
Self-respect was at an end, and liberty was not even wished for. The
emperor had swallowed up the empire, and there was no authority or
influence beside. This is the main feature of the first or Imperial
Century, that, wherever we look, we see but one,--one gorged and
bloated brutalized man, sitting on the throne of earthly power, and
all the rest of mankind at his feet. [A.D. 37.] Humanity at its flower
had culminated into a Tiberius; and when at last he was slain, and the
world began to breathe, the sorrow was speedily deeper than before, for
it was found that the Imperial tree had blossomed again, and that its
fruit was a Caligula.
This was a person with much the same taste for blood as his
predecessor, but he was more open in the gratification of this
propensity. He did not wait for trial and sentence,--those dim
mockeries of justice in which Tiberius sometimes indulged. He had a
peculiar way of nodding with his head or pointing with his finger,
and the executioner knew the sign. The man he nodded to died. For the
more distinguished of the citizens he kept a box,--not of snuff, like
some monarchs of the present day, but of some strong and instantaneous
poison. Whoever refused a pinch died as a traitor, and whoever took one
died of the fatal drug. [A.D. 41.] Even the degenerate Romans could
not endure this long, and Chæreas, an officer of his guard, put him to
death, after a sanguinary reign of four years.
Still the hideous catalogue goes on. Claudius, a nephew of Tiberius,
is forced upon the unwilling senate by the spoilt soldiers of the
capital, the Prætorian Guards. Colder, duller, more brutal than the
rest, Claudius perhaps increased the misery of his country by the
apathy and stupidity of his mind. The other tyrants had some limit
to their wickedness, for they kept all the powers of the State in
their own hands, but this man enlisted a countless host of favourites
and courtiers in his crusade against the happiness of mankind. Badly
eminent among these was his wife, the infamous Messalina, whose name
has become a symbol of all that is detestable in the female sex. Some
people, indeed, in reading the history of this period, shut the book
with a shudder, and will not believe it true. They prefer to think that
authors of all lands and positions have agreed to paint a fancy picture
of depravity and horror, than that such things were. But the facts are
too well proved to be doubted. We see a dull, unimpassioned, moody
despot; fond of blood, but too indolent to shed it himself, unless at
the dictation of his fiendish partner and her friends; so brutalized
that nothing amazed or disturbed him; so unobservant that, relying on
his blindness, she went through the ostentatious ceremony of a public
marriage with one of her paramours during the lifetime, almost under
the eyes, of her husband; and yet to this frightful combination of
ferocity and stupidity England owes its subjection to the Roman power,
and all the blessings which Roman civilization--bringing as it did the
lessons of Christianity in its train--was calculated to bestow. In the
forty-fourth year of this century, and the third year of the reign of
Claudius, Aulus Plautius landed in Britain at the head of a powerful
army; and the tide of Victory and Settlement never subsided till the
whole country, as far north as the Solway, submitted to the Eagles.
The contrast between the central power at Rome, and the officials
employed at a distance, continued for a long time the most remarkable
circumstance in the history of the empire. Tiberius, Caligula,
Claudius, vied with each other in exciting the terror and destroying
the happiness of the world; but in the remote extremities of their
command, their generals displayed the courage and virtue of an earlier
age. They improved as well as conquered. They made roads, and built
bridges, and cut down woods. They established military stations, which
soon became centres of education and law. They deepened the Thames,
and commenced those enormous embankments of the river, to which, in
fact, London owes its existence, without being aware of the labour
they bestowed upon the work. If by some misfortune a great fissure
took place--as has occurred on a small scale once before--in these
artificial dikes, it would task the greatest skill of modern engineers
to repair the damage. They superseded the blood-stained ceremonies of
the Druids with the more refined worship of the heathen deities, making
Claudius himself a tutelary god, with priest and temple, in the town
of Colchester; and this, though in our eyes the deification of one of
the worst of men, was, perhaps, in the estimation of our predecessors,
only the visible embodiment of settled government and beneficent power.
But murder and treachery, and unspeakable iniquity, went their way
as usual in the city of the Cæsars. Messalina was put to death, and
another disgrace to womanhood, in the person of Agrippina, took her
place beside the phlegmatic tyrant. Thirteen years had passed, when
the boundary of human patience was attained, and Rome was startled one
morning with the joyful news that her master was no more. [A.D. 54.]
The combined cares of his loving spouse and a favourite physician had
produced this happy result,--the one presenting him with a dish of
deadly mushrooms, and the other painting his throat for a hoarseness
with a poisoned feather.
Is there no hope for Rome or for mankind? Is there to be a perpetual
succession of monster after monster, with no cessation in the dreadful
line? It would be pleasant to conceal for a minute or two the name of
the next emperor, that we might point to the glorious prospect now
opening on the world. But the name has become so descriptive that
deception is impossible. When the word Nero is said, little more is
required. But it was not so at first; a brilliant sunrise never had so
terrible a course, or so dark a setting. We still see in the earlier
statues which remain of him the fine outline of his face, and can fancy
what its expression must have been before the qualities of his heart
had stamped their indelible impression on his features. For the first
five years of his reign the world seemed lost as much in surprise as in
admiration. Some of his actions were generous; none of them were cruel
or revengeful. He was young, and seemed anxious to fulfil the duties of
his position. But power and flattery had their usual effect. All that
was good in him was turned into evil. He tortured the noblest of the
citizens; and degraded the throne to such a degree by the expositions
he made of himself, sometimes as a musician on the stage, sometimes
as a charioteer in the arena, that if there had been any Romans left
they would have despised the tyrant more than they feared him. But
there were no Romans left. The senators, the knights, the populace,
vied with each other in submission to his power and encouragement of
his vices. The rage of the monster, once excited, knew no bounds. He
burned the city in the mere wantonness of crime, and fixed the blame
on the unoffending Christians. These, regardless of age or condition
or sex, he destroyed by every means in his power. He threw young
maidens into the amphitheatre, where the hungry tigers leapt out upon
them; he exposed the aged professors of the gospel to fight in single
combat with the trained murderers of the circus, called the Gladiators;
and once, in ferocious mockery of human suffering, he enclosed whole
Christian families in a coating of pitch and other inflammable
materials, and, setting fire to the covering, pursued his sport all
night by the light of these living flambeaux. Some of his actions it
is impossible to name. It will be sufficient to say that at the end of
thirteen years the purple he disgraced was again reddened with blood.
Terrified at the opposition that at last rose against him--deserted, of
course, by the confederates of his wickedness--shrinking with unmanly
cowardice from a defence which might have put off the evil day, he
fled and hid himself from his pursuers. Agonized with fear, howling
with repentant horror, he was indebted to one of his attendants for
the blow which his own cowardly hand could not administer, and he
died the basest, lowest, and most pitiless of all the emperors. And
all those hopes he had disappointed, and all those iniquities he had
perpetrated, at the age of thirty-two. He was the last of the line
of Cæsar; and if that conqueror had foreseen that in so few years
after his death the Senate of Rome would have been so debased, and the
people of Rome so brutalized, he would have pardoned to Brutus the
precautionary blow which was intended to prevent so great a calamity.
[A.D. 68.]
Galba was elected to fill his place, and was murdered in a few months.
The degraded prætorians then elevated one of the companions of Nero's
guilty excesses to the throne in the person of Otho, but resistance was
made to their selection. [A.D. 69.] The forces in Germany nominated
Vitellius to the supreme authority; and Otho, either a voluptuary tired
of life, or a craven incapable of exertion, committed suicide to save
the miseries of civil war. But this calamity was averted by a nobler
hand. Vitellius had only time to show that, in addition to the usual
vices of the throne, he was addicted to the animal enjoyments of eating
and drinking to an almost incredible degree, when he heard a voice from
the walls of Jerusalem which hurled him from the seat he had so lately
taken; for the legions engaged in that most memorable of sieges had
decided on giving the empire of the world to the man who deserved it
best, and had proclaimed their general, Flavius Vespasian, Imperator
and Master of Rome.
[A.D. 70.]
Now we will pause, for we have come to the year seventy of this
century, and a fit breathing-time to look round us and see what
condition mankind has fallen into within a hundred years of the end of
the Republic. We leave out of view the great empires of the farther
East, where battles were won, and dynasties established on the plains
of Hindostan, and within the Chinese Wall. The extent of our knowledge
of Oriental affairs is limited to the circumference of the Roman
power. Following that vast circle, we see it on all sides surrounded by
tribes and nations who derive their sole illumination from its light,
for unless the Roman conquests had extended to the confines of those
barbaric states, we should have known nothing of their existence.
Beyond that ring of fire it is almost matter of conjecture what must
have been going on. Yet we learn from the traditions of many peoples,
and can guess with some accuracy from the occurrences of a later
period, what was the condition of those "outsiders," and what were
their feelings and intentions with regard to the civilized portions of
the world. Bend your eyes in any direction you please, and what names,
what thoughts, suggest themselves to our minds! We see swarms of wild
adventurers with wives and cattle traversing with no definite object
the uncultivated districts beyond the Danube; occasionally pitching
their tents, or even forming more permanent establishments, around
the roots of Caucasus and north of the Caspian Sea, where grass was
more plentiful, and hills or marshes formed an easily defended barrier
against enemies as uncivilized as themselves. Coming from no certain
region--that is, forgetting in a few years of wandering the precise
point from which they set out, pushed forward by the advancing waves
of great national migrations in their rear--moving onward across the
upper fields of Europe, but keeping themselves still cautiously from
actual contact with the Roman limits, from those hordes of homeless,
lawless savages are derived the most polished and greatest nations
of the present day. Forming into newer combinations, and taking
different names, their identity is scarcely to be recognised when,
three or four centuries after this, they come into the daylight of
history; but nobody can doubt that, during these preliminary ages,
they were gathering their power together, hereafter, under the
impulse of fresh additions, to be hurled like a dammed-up river upon
the prostrate realm, carrying ruin and destruction in their course,
but no less certainly than the overflowing Nile leaving the germs of
future fertility, and enriching with newer vegetation the fields they
had so ruthlessly submerged. And year by year the mighty mass goes on
accumulating. The northern plains become peopled no one knows how. The
vast forests eastward of the Rhine receive new accessions of warriors,
who rapidly assimilate with the old. United in one common object of
retaining the wild freedom of their tribe, and the possession of the
lands they have seized, they have opposed the advance of the Roman
legions into the uncultivated districts they call their own; they
have even succeeded in destroying the military forces which guarded
the Rhine, and have with difficulty been restrained from crossing
the great river by a strong line of forts and castles, of which the
remains astonish the traveller of the present day, as, with Murray's
Guide-Book in his hand, he gazes upon their ruins between Bingen and
Aix-la-Chapelle.
Repelled by these barriers, they cluster thicker than ever in the woods
and valleys, to which the Romans have no means of penetrating. Southern
Gaul submits, and becomes a civilized outpost of the central power; but
far up in the wild regions of the north, and even to the eastward of
the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland, the assemblage goes on. Scandinavia
itself becomes over-crowded by the perpetual arrival of thousands of
these armed and expatriated families, and sends her teeming populations
to the east and south. But all these incidents, I must remind you,
are occurring in darkness. We only know that the desert is becoming
peopled with crowded millions, and that among them all there floats
a confused notion of the greatness of the Roman power, the wealth
of the cities and plains of Italy; and that, clustering in thicker
swarms on the confines of civil government, the watchful eyes of
unnumbered savage warriors are fixed on the territories lying rich
and beautiful within the protection of the Roman name. So the whole
Roman boundary gets gradually surrounded by barbaric hosts. Their
trampings may be heard as they marshal their myriads and skirt the
upper boundaries of Thrace; but as yet no actual conflict has occurred.
A commotion may become observable among some of the farthest distant
of the half intimidated of the German tribes; or an enterprising
Roman settler beyond the frontier, or travelling merchant, who has
penetrated to the neighbourhood of the Baltic, may bring back amazing
reports of the fresh accumulations of unknown hordes of strange and
threatening aspect; but the luxurious public in Rome receive them
merely as interesting anecdotes to amuse their leisure or gratify their
curiosity: they have no apprehension of what may be the result of those
multitudinous arrivals. They do not foresee the gradual drawing closer
to their outward defences--the struggle to get within their guarded
lines--the fight that is surely coming between a sated, dull, degraded
civilization on the one side, and a hungry, bold, ambitious savagery
on the other. They trust every thing to the dignity of the Eternal
City, and the watchfulness of the Emperor: for to this, his one idea
of irresistible power equally for good or evil, the heart of the Roman
was sure to turn. And for the eleven years of the reigns of Vespasian
and Titus, the Roman did not appeal for protection against a foreign
enemy in vain. Rome itself was compensated by shows and buildings--with
a triumph and an arch--for the degradation in which it was held. But
prætor and proconsul still pursued their course of oppressing the
lands committed to their defence; and the subject, stripped of his
goods, and hopeless of getting his wrongs redressed, had only the
satisfaction of feeling that the sword he trembled at was in the hand
of a man and not of an incarnate demon. A poor consolation this when
the blow was equally fatal. Vespasian, in fact, was fonder of money
than of blood, and the empire rejoiced in having exchanged the agony of
being murdered for the luxury of being fleeced. [A.D. 79.] With Titus,
whom the fond gratitude of his subjects named the Delight of the human
race, a new age of happiness was about to open on the world; but all
the old horrors of the Cæsars were revived and magnified when he was
succeeded, after a reign of two years, by his brother, the savage and
cowardly Domitian. [A.D. 81.] With the exception of the brief period
between the years 70 and 81, the whole century was spent in suffering
and inflicting pain. The worst excesses of Nero and Caligula were now
imitated and surpassed. The bonds of society became rapidly loosened.
As in a shipwreck, the law of self-preservation was the only rule.
No man could rely upon his neighbour, or his friend, or his nearest
of kin. There were spies in every house, and an executioner at every
door. An unconsidered word maliciously reported, or an accusation
entirely false, brought death to the rich and great. To the unhappy
class of men who in other times are called the favourites of fortune,
because they are born to the possession of great ancestral names and
hereditary estates, there was no escape from the jealous and avaricious
hatred of the Emperor. If a patrician of this description lived in the
splendour befitting his rank--he was currying favour with the mob! If
he lived retired--he was trying to gain reputation by a pretence of
giving up the world! If he had great talents--he was dangerous to the
state! If he was dull and stupid--oh! don't believe it--he was only an
imitative Brutus, concealing his deep designs under the semblance of
fatuity! If a man of distinguished birth was rich, it was not a fitting
condition for a subject--if he was poor, he was likely to be seduced
into the wildest enterprises. So the prisons were filled by calumny and
suspicion, and emptied by the executioner. A dreadful century this--the
worst that ever entered into tale or history; for the memory of former
glories and comparative freedom was still recent. A man who was sixty
years old, in the midst of the terrors of Tiberius, had associated
in his youth with the survivors of the Civil War, with men who had
embraced Brutus and Cassius; he had seen the mild administration of
Augustus, and perhaps had supped with Virgil and Horace in the house
of Mæcenas. And now he was tortured till he named a slave or freedman
of the Emperor his heir, and then executed to expedite the succession.
There was a hideous jocularity in some of these imperial proceedings,
which, however, was no laughing-matter at the time. When a senator was
very wealthy, it was no unusual thing for Tiberius and his successors
to create themselves the rich man's nearest relations by a decree of
the Senate. The person so honoured by this graft upon his family tree
seldom survived the operation many days. The emperor took possession of
the property as heir-at-law and next of kin; and mourned for his uncle
or brother--as the case might be--with the most edifying decorum.
But besides giving the general likeness of a period, it is necessary
to individualize it still further by introducing, in the background of
the picture, some incident by which it is peculiarly known, as we find
Nelson generally represented with Trafalgar going on at the horizon,
and Wellington sitting thoughtful on horseback in the foreground of the
fire of Waterloo. Now, there cannot be a more distinguishing mark than
a certain great military achievement which happened in the year 70 of
this century, and is brought home to us, not only as a great historical
event in itself, but as the commencement of a new era in human affairs,
and the completion of a long line of threats and prophecies. This was
the capture and destruction of Jerusalem. The accounts given us of this
siege transcend in horror all other records of human sorrow. It was at
the great annual feast of the Passover, when Jews from all parts of the
world flocked to the capital of their nation to worship in the Temple,
which to them was the earthly dwelling-place of Jehovah. The time was
come, and they did not know it, when God was to be worshipped in spirit
and in truth. More than a million strangers were resident within the
walls. There was no room in house or hall for so vast a multitude; so
they bivouacked in the streets, and lay thick as leaves in the courts
of the holy place. Suddenly the Roman trumpets blew. The Jews became
inspired with fanatical hatred of the enemy, and insane confidence that
some miracle would be wrought for their deliverance. They deliberated,
and chose for their leaders the wildest and most enthusiastic of the
crowd. They refused the offers of mercy and reconciliation made to
them by Titus. They sent back insulting messages to the Roman general,
and stood expectant on the walls to see the idolatrous legions smitten
by lightning or swallowed up by an earthquake. But Titus advanced his
forces and hemmed in the countless multitude of men, and women, and
children--few able to resist, but all requiring to be fed. Famine and
pestilence came on; but still the mad fanatics of the Temple determined
to persevere. They occasionally opened a gate and rushed out with the
cry of "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!" and were slaughtered
by the unpitying hatred of the Roman soldiers. Their cruelty to
their prisoners, when they succeeded in carrying off a few of their
enemies, was great; but the patience of Titus at last gave way, and
he soon bettered the instruction they gave him in pitilessness and
blood. He drew a line of circumvallation closer round the city, and
intercepted every supply; when deserters came over, he crucified them
all round the trenches; when the worn-out people came forth, imploring
to be suffered to pass through his ranks, he drove them back, that
they might increase the scarcity by their lives, or the pestilence
by adding to the heaps of unburied dead. Dissensions were raging all
this time among the defenders themselves. They fought in the streets,
in the houses, and heaped the floor and outcourts of the Temple with
thousands of the slain. There was no help either from heaven or earth;
eleven hundred thousand people had died of plague and the sword; and
the rest were doomed to perish by more lingering torments. Nearest
relations--sisters, brothers, fathers, wives--all forgot the ties of
natural affection under this great necessity, and fought for a handful
of meal, or the possession of some reptile's body if they were lucky
enough to trace it to its hiding-place; and at last--the crown of all
horrors--the daughter of Eleazer killed her own child and converted it
into food. The measure of man's wrong and Heaven's vengeance was now
full. The daily sacrifice ceased to be offered; voices were audible
to the popular ear uttering in the Holy of Holies, "Let us go hence."
The Romans rushed on--climbed over the neglected walls--forced their
way into the upper Temple, and the gore flowed in streams so rapid and
so deep that it seemed like a purple river! Large conduits had been
made for the rapid conveyance away of the blood of bulls and goats
offered in sacrifice; they all became choked now with the blood of
the slaughtered people. At last the city was taken; the inhabitants
were either dead or dying. Many were crushed as they lay expiring in
the great tramplings of the triumphant Romans; many were recovered by
food and shelter, and sold into slavery. The Temple and walls were
levelled with the ground, and not one stone was left upon another. The
plough passed over where palace and tower had been, and the Jewish
dispensation was brought to a close.
History in ancient days was as exclusive as the court newsman in ours,
and never published the movements of anybody below a senator or a
consul. All the Browns and Smiths were left out of consideration; and
yet to us who live in the days when those families--with the Joneses
and Robinsons--form the great majority both in number and influence,
it would be very interesting to have any certain intelligence of their
predecessors during the first furies of the Empire. We have but faint
descriptions even of the aristocracy, but what we hear of them shows,
more clearly than any thing else, the frightful effect on morals and
manliness of so uncontrolled a power as was vested in the Cæsars, and
teaches us that the worst of despotisms is that which is established by
the unholy union of the dregs of the population and the ruling power,
against the peace and happiness and security of the middle class. You
see how this combination of tyrant and mob succeeded in crushing all
the layers of society which lay between them, till there were left
only two agencies in all the world--the Emperor on his throne, and the
millions fed by his bounty. The hereditary nobility--the safest bulwark
of a people and least dangerous support of a throne--were extirpated
before the end of the century, and impartiality makes us confess that
they fell by their own fault. As if the restraints of shame had been
thrown off with the last hope of liberty, the whole population broke
forth into the most incredible licentiousness. If the luxury of
Lucullus had offended the common sense of propriety in the later days
of the republic, there were numbers now who looked back upon his feasts
as paltry entertainments, and on the wealth of Croesus as poverty. The
last of the Pompeys, in the time of Caligula, had estates so vast, that
navigable rivers larger than the Thames performed the whole of their
course from their fountain-head to the sea without leaving his domain.
There were spendthrifts in the time of Tiberius who lavished thousands
of pounds upon a supper. The pillage of the world had fallen into the
hands of a few favoured families, and their example had introduced a
prodigality and ostentation unheard of before. No one who regarded
appearances travelled anywhere without a troop of Numidian horsemen,
and outriders to clear the way. He was followed by a train of mules
and sumpter-horses loaded with his vases of crystal--his richly-carved
cups and dishes of silver and gold. But this profusion had its natural
result in debt and degradation. The patricians who had been rivals of
the imperial splendour became dependants on the imperial gifts; and the
grandson of the conqueror of a kingdom, or the proconsul of the half of
Asia, sold his ancestral palace, lived for a while on the contemptuous
bounty of his master, and sank in the next generation into the nameless
mass. Others, more skilful, preserved or improved their fortunes while
they rioted in expense. By threats or promises, they prevailed on
the less powerful to constitute them their heirs; they traded on the
strength, or talents, or the beauty of their slaves, and lent money
at such usurious interest that the borrower tried in vain to escape
the shackles of the law, and ended by becoming the bondsman of the
kind-hearted gentleman who had induced him to accept the loan.
If these were the habits of the rich, how were the poor treated? The
free and penniless citizens of the capital were degraded and gratified
at the same time. The wealthy vied with each other in buying the favour
of the mob by shows and other entertainments, by gifts of money and
donations of food. But when these arts failed, and popularity could
no longer be obtained by merely defraying the expense of a combat of
gladiators, the descendants of the old patricians--of the men who
had bought the land on which the Gauls were encamped outside the
gates of Rome--went down into the arena themselves and fought for
the public entertainment. Laws indeed were passed even in the reign
of Tiberius, and renewed at intervals after that time, against this
shameful degradation, and the stage was interdicted to all who were
not previously declared infamous by sentence of a court. But all was
in vain. Ladies of the highest rank, and the loftiest-born of the
nobility, actually petitioned for a decree of defamation, that they
might give themselves up undisturbed to their favourite amusement. This
perhaps added a zest to their enjoyment, and rapturous applauses must
have hailed the entrance of the beautiful grandchild of Anthony or
Agrippa, in the character and drapery of a warlike amazon--the louder
the applause and greater the admiration. Yet in order to gratify them
with such a sight, she had descended to the level of the convict, and
received the brand of qualifying disgrace from a legal tribunal. But
the faint barrier of this useless prohibition was thrown down by the
policy and example of Domitian. The emperor himself appeared in the
arena, and all restraint was at an end. Rather, there was a fury of
emulation to copy so great a model, and "Rome's proud dames, whose
garments swept the ground," forgot more than ever their rank and
sex, and were proud, like their lovers and brothers, not merely to
mount the stage in the lascivious costume of nymph or dryad, but to
descend into the blood-stained lists of the Coliseum and murder each
other with sword and spear. There is something strangely horrible in
this transaction, when we read that it occurred for the first time in
celebration of the games of Flora--the goddess of flowers and gardens,
who, in old times, was worshipped under the blossomed apple-trees in
the little orchards surrounding each cottage within the walls, and was
propitiated with children's games and chaplets hung upon the boughs.
But now the loveliest of the noble daughters of the city lay dead upon
the trampled sand. What was the effect upon the populace of these
extraordinary shows?