qualifications was one Maximin, a Thracian peasant, of whose strength
and stature incredible things are told. He was upwards of eight feet
high, could tire down a horse at the gallop on foot, could break its
leg by a blow of his hand, could overthrow thirty wrestlers without
drawing breath, and maintained this prodigious force by eating forty
pounds of meat, and drinking an amphora and a half, or twelve quarts,
of wine. This giant had the bravery for which his countrymen the
Goths have always been celebrated. He rose to high rank in the Roman
service; and when at last nothing seemed to stand between him and the
throne but his patron and benefactor, ambition blinded him to every
thing but his own advancement. He murdered the wise and generous
Alexander, and presented for the first time in history the spectacle
of a barbarian master of the Roman world. Other emperors had been born
in distant portions of the empire; an African had trampled on Roman
greatness in the person of Septimius Severus; a Phoenician priest had
disgraced the purple in the person of Heliogabalus; Africa, however,
was a Roman province, and Emesa a Roman town. But here sat the colossal
representative of the terrible Goths of Thrace, speaking a language
half Getic, half Latin, which no one could easily understand; fierce,
haughty, and revengeful, and cherishing a ferocious hatred of the
subjects who trembled before him--a hatred probably implanted in him
in his childhood by the patriotic songs with which the warriors of his
tribe kept alive their enmity and contempt for the Roman name. The
Roman name had indeed by this time lost all its authority. The army,
recruited from all parts of the empire, and including a great number
of barbarians in its ranks, was no longer a bulwark against foreign
invasion. Maximin, bestowing the chief commands on Pannonians and other
mercenaries, treated the empire as a conquered country. He seized on
all the wealth he could discover--melted all the golden statues, as
valuable from their artistic beauty as for the metal of which they
were composed--and was threatening an approach to Rome to exterminate
the Senate and sack the devoted town. In this extremity the Senate
resumed its long-forgotten power, and named as emperors two men of
the name of Gordian--father and son--with instructions "to resist the
enemy." But father and son perished in a few weeks, and still the
terrible Goth came on. His son, a giant like himself, but beautiful as
the colossal statue of a young Apollo, shared in all the feelings of
his father. Terrified at its approaching doom, the Senate once more
nominated two men to the purple, Maximus and Balbinus: Balbinus, the
favourite, perhaps, of the aristocracy, by the descent he claimed from
an illustrious ancestry; while Maximus recommended himself to the now
perverted taste of the commonalty by having been a carter. Neither was
popular with the army; and, to please the soldiers, a son or nephew of
the younger Gordian was associated with them on the throne. But nothing
could have resisted the infuriated legions of the gigantic Maximin;
they were marching with wonderful expedition towards their revenge. At
Aquileia they met an opposition; the town shut its gates and manned its
walls, for it knew what would be the fate of a city given up to the
tender mercies of the Goths. Meanwhile the approach of the destroyer
produced great agitation in Rome. The people rose upon the Prætorians,
and enlisted the gladiators on their side. Many thousands were slain,
and at last a peace was made by the intercession of the youthful
Gordian. Glad of the cessation of this civic tumult, the population
of Rome betook itself to the theatres and shows. Suddenly, while the
games were going on, it was announced that the army before Aquileia
had mutinied and that both the Maximins were slain. [A.D. 235.] All at
once the amphitheatre was emptied; by an impulse of grateful piety, the
emperors and people hurried into the temples of the gods, and offered
up thanks for their deliverance. The wretched people were premature
in their rejoicing. In less than three months the spoiled Prætorians
were offended with the precaution taken by the emperors in surrounding
themselves with German guards. They assaulted the palace, and put
Maximus and Balbinus to death. Gordian the Third was now sole emperor,
and the final struggle with the barbarians drew nearer and nearer.
Constantly crossing the frontiers, and willingly received in the Roman
ranks, the communities who had been long settled on the Roman confines
were not the utterly uncultivated tribes which their name would seem
to denote. There was a conterminous civilization which made the two
peoples scarcely distinguishable at their point of contact, but which
died off as the distance from the Roman line increased. Thus, an
original settler on the eastern bank of the Rhine was probably as
cultivated and intelligent as a Roman colonist on the other side; but
farther up, at the Weser and the Elbe, the old ferocity and roughness
remained. Fresh importations from the unknown East were continually
taking place; the dwellers in the plains of Pannonia, now habituated
to pasturage and trade, found safety from the hordes which pressed
upon them from their own original settlements beyond the Caucasus, by
crossing the boundary river; and by this means the banks were held by
cognate but hostile peoples, who could, however, easily be reconciled
by a joint expedition against Rome. New combinations had taken place
in the interior of the great expanses not included in the Roman
limits. The Germans were no longer the natural enemies of the empire.
They furnished many soldiers for its defence, and several chiefs
to command its forces. But all round the external circuit of those
half-conciliated tribes rose up vast confederacies of warlike nations.
There were Cheruski, and Sicambri, and Attuarians, and Bruttuarians,
and Catti, all regularly enrolled under the name of "Franks," or
the brave. The Sarmatians or Sclaves performed the same part on the
northeastern frontier; and we have already seen that the irresistible
Goths had found their way, one by one, across the boundary, and
cleared the path for their successors. The old enemies of Rome on the
extreme east, the Parthians, had fallen under the power of a renovated
mountain-race, and of a king, who founded the great dynasty of the
Sassanides, and claimed the restoration of Egypt and Armenia as ancient
dependencies of the Persian crown. To resist all these, there was, in
the year 241, only a gentle-tempered youth, dressed in the purple which
had so lost its original grandeur, and relying for his guidance on
the wisdom of his tutors, and for his life on the forbearance of the
Prætorians. The tutors were wise and just, and victory at first gave
some sort of dignity to the reign of Gordian. [A.D. 244.] The Franks
were conquered at Mayence; but Gordian, three years after, was murdered
in the East; and Philip, an Arabian, whose father had been a robber of
the desert, was acknowledged emperor by senate and army. Treachery,
ambition, and murder pursued their course. There was no succession to
the throne. Sometimes one general, luckier or wiser than the rest,
appeared the sole governor of the State. At other times there were
numberless rivals all claiming the empire and threatening vengeance
on their opponents. Yet amidst this tumult of undistinguishable
pretenders, fortune placed at the head of affairs some of the best
and greatest men whom the Roman world ever produced. There was
Valerian, whom all parties agreed in considering the most virtuous and
enlightened man of his time. [A.D. 253.] Scarcely any opposition was
made to his promotion; and yet, with all his good qualities, he was the
man to whom Rome owed the greatest degradation it had yet sustained.
He was taken prisoner by Sapor, the Persian king, and condemned, with
other captive monarchs, to draw the car of his conqueror. No offers of
ransom could deliver the brave and unfortunate prince. He died amid his
deriding enemies, who hung up his skin as an offering to their gods.
Then, after some years, in which there were twenty emperors at one
time, with army drawn up against army, and cities delivered to massacre
and rapine by all parties in turn, there arose one of the strong minds
which make themselves felt throughout a whole period, and arrest for a
while the downward course of states. [A.D. 276.] The emperor Probus,
son of a man who had originally been a gardener, had distinguished
himself under Aurelian, the conqueror of Palmyra, and, having survived
all his competitors, had time to devote himself to the restoration
of discipline and the introduction of purer laws. His victories over
the encroaching barbarians were decided, but ineffectual. New myriads
still pressed forward to take the place of the slain. On one occasion
he crossed the Rhine in pursuit of the revolted Germans, overtook them
at the Necker, and killed in battle four hundred thousand men. Nine
kings threw themselves at the emperor's feet. Many thousand barbarians
enlisted in the Roman army. Sixty great cities were taken, and made
offerings of golden crowns. The whole country was laid waste. "There
was nothing left," he boasted to the Senate, "but bare fields, as if
they had never been cultivated." So much the worse for the Romans. The
barbarians looked with keener eyes across the river at the rich lands
which had never been ravaged, and sent messages to all the tribes
in the distant forests, that, having no occasion for pruning-hooks,
they had turned them into swords. But Probus showed a still more
doubtful policy in other quarters. When he conquered the Vandals
and Burgundians, he sent their warriors to keep the Caledonians in
subjection on the Tyne. The Britons he transported to Moesia or Greece.
What intermixtures of race may have arisen from these transplantations
it is impossible to say; but the one feeling was common to all the
barbarians, that Rome was weak and they were strong. He settled a large
detachment of Franks on the shores of the Black Sea; and of these an
almost incredible but well-authenticated story is told. They seized or
built themselves boats. They swept through the Dardanelles, and ravaged
the isles of Greece. They pursued their piratical career down the
Mediterranean, passed the pillars of Hercules into the Great Sea, and,
rounding Spain and France, rowed up the Elbe into the midst of their
astonished countrymen, who had long given them up for dead. A fatal
adventure this for the safety of the Roman shores; for there were the
wild fishermen of Friesland, and the audacious Angles of Schleswig and
Holstein, who heard of this strange exploit, and saw that no coast was
too distant to be reached by their oar and sail. But if these forced
settlements of barbarians on Roman soil were impolitic, the generous
Probus did not feel their bad effect. His warlike qualities awed his
foes, and his inflexible justice was appreciated by the hardy warriors
of the North, who had not yet sunk under the debasing civilization of
Rome. In Asia his arms were attended with equal success. He subdued the
Persians, and extended his conquests into Ethiopia and the farthest
regions of the East, bringing back some of its conquered natives to
swell the triumph at Rome and terrify the citizens with their strange
and hideous appearance. But Probus himself must yield to the law
which regulated the fate of Roman emperors. He died by treachery and
the sword. All that the empire could do was to join in the epitaph
pronounced over him by the barbarians, "Here lies the emperor Probus,
whose life and actions corresponded to his name."
Three or four more fantastic figures, "which the likeness of a kingly
crown have on," pass before our eyes, and at last we observe the
powerful and substantial form of Diocletian, and feel once more we
have to do with a real man. [A.D. 284.] A Druidess, we are told,
had prophesied that he should attain his highest wish if he killed
a wild boar. In all his hunting expeditions he was constantly on
the look-out, spear in hand, for an encounter with the long-tusked
monster. Unluckily for a man who had offended Diocletian before,
and who had basely murdered his predecessor, his name was Aper; and
unluckily, also, _aper_ is Latin for a boar. This fact will perhaps be
thought to account for the prophecy. It accounts, at all events, for
its fulfilment; for, the wretched Aper being led before the throne,
Diocletian descended the steps and plunged a dagger into his chest,
exclaiming, "I have killed the wild boar of the prediction." This is
a painful example of how unlucky it is to have a name that can be
punned upon. Determined to secure the support of what he thought the
strongest body in the State, he gratified the priests by the severest
of all the many persecutions to which the Christians had been exposed.
By way of further showing his adhesion to the old faith, he solemnly
assumed the name of Jove, and bestowed on his partner on the throne
the inferior title of Hercules. In spite of these truculent and absurd
proceedings, Diocletian was not altogether destitute of the softer
feelings. The friend he associated with him on the throne--dividing
the empire between them as too large a burden for one to sustain--was
called Maximian. They had both originally been slaves, and had neither
of them received a liberal education. Yet they protected the arts, they
encouraged literature, and were the patrons of modest merit wherever it
could be found. They each adopted a Cæsar, or lieutenant of the empire,
and hoped that, by a legal division of duties among four, the ambition
of their generals would be prevented. But the limits of the empire
were too extended even for the vigilance of them all. In Britain,
Carausius raised the standard of revolt, giving it the noble name of
national independence; and, with the instinctive wisdom which has been
the safeguard of our island ever since, he rested his whole chance of
success upon his fleet. Invasion was rendered impossible by the care
with which he guarded the shore, and it is not inconceivable that even
at that early time the maritime career of Britain might have been begun
and maintained, if treason, as usual, had not cut short the efforts of
Carausius, who was soon after murdered by his friend Allectus. The
subdivision of the empire was a successful experiment as regarded its
external safety, but within, it was the cause of bitter complaining.
There were four sumptuous courts to be maintained, and four imperial
armies to be paid. Taxes rose, and allegiance waxed cold. The Cæsars
were young, and looked probably with an evil eye on the two old men who
stood between them and the name of emperor. However it may be, after
many victories and much domestic trouble, Diocletian resolved to lay
aside the burden of empire and retire into private life. His colleague
Maximian felt, or affected to feel, the same distaste for power, and
on the same day they quitted the purple; one at Nicomedia, the other
at Milan. Diocletian retired to Salona, a town in his native Dalmatia,
and occupied himself with rural pursuits. He was asked after a while
to reassume his authority, but he said to the persons who made him the
request, "I wish you would come to Salona and see the cabbages I have
planted with my own hands, and after that you would never wish me to
remount the throne."
The characteristic of this century is its utter confusion and want
of order. There was no longer the unity even of despotism at Rome to
make a common centre round which every thing revolved. There were
tyrants and competitors for power in every quarter of the empire--no
settled authority, no government or security, left. In the midst of
this relaxation of every rule of life, grew surely, but unobserved, the
Christian Church, which drew strength from the very helplessness of the
civil state, and was forced, in self-defence, to establish a regular
organization in order to extend to its members the inestimable benefits
of regularity and law. Under many of the emperors Christianity was
proscribed; its disciples were put to excruciating deaths, and their
property confiscated; but at that very time its inner development
increased and strengthened. The community appointed its teachers, its
deacons, its office-bearers of every kind; it supported them in their
endeavours--it yielded to their directions; and in time a certain
amount of authority was considered to be inherent in the office of
pastor, which extended beyond the mere expounding of the gospel or
administration of the sacraments. The chief pastor became the guide,
perhaps the judge, of the whole flock. While it is absurd, therefore,
in those disastrous times of weakness and persecution to talk in
pompous terms of the succession of the Bishops of Rome, and make out
vain catalogues of lordly prelates who sat on the throne of St. Peter,
it is incontestable that, from the earliest period, the Christian
converts held their meetings--by stealth indeed, and under fear of
detection--and obeyed certain canons of their own constitution. These
secret associations rapidly spread their ramifications into every
great city of the empire. When by the friendship, or the fellowship,
of the emperor, as in the case of the Arabian Philip, a pause was
given to their fears and sufferings, certain buildings were set apart
for their religious exercises; and we read, during this century, of
basilicas, or churches, in Rome and other towns. The subtlety of the
Greek intellect had already led to endless heresies and the wildest
departures from the simplicity of the gospel. The Western mind was
more calm, and better adapted to be the lawgiver of a new order of
society composed of elements so rough and discordant as the barbarians,
whose approach was now inevitably foreseen. With its well-defined
hierarchy--its graduated ranks, and the fitness of the offices for
the purposes of their creation; with its array of martyrs ready to
suffer, and clear-headed leaders fitted to command, the Western Church
could look calmly forward to the time when its organization would
make it the most powerful, or perhaps the only, body in the State; and
so early as the middle of this century the seeds of worldly ambition
developed themselves in a schism, not on a point of doctrine, but on
the possession of authority. A double nomination had made the anomalous
appointment of two chief pastors at the same time. Neither would yield,
and each had his supporters. All were under the ban of the civil power.
They had recourse to spiritual weapons; and we read, for the first time
in ecclesiastical history, of mutual excommunications. Novatian--under
his breath, however, for fear of being thrown to the wild beasts for
raising a disturbance--thundered his anathemas against Cornelius as an
intruder, while Cornelius retorted by proclaiming Novatian an impostor,
as he had not the concurrence of the people in his election. This gives
us a convincing proof of the popular form of appointing bishops or
presbyters in those early days, and prepares us for the energy with
which the electors supported the authority of their favourite priests.
But, while this new internal element was spreading life among the
decayed institutions of the empire, we have, in this century, the first
appearance, in great force, of the future conquerors and renovators
of the body politic from without. It is pleasant to think that the
centuries cast themselves more and more loose from their connection
with Rome after this date, and that the barbarians can vindicate
a separate place in history for themselves. In the first century,
the bad emperors broke the strength of Rome by their cruelty and
extravagance. In the second century, the good emperors carried on the
work of weakening the empire by the softening and enervating effects
of their gentle and protective policy. The third century unites the
evil qualities of the other two, for the people were equally rendered
incapable of defending themselves by the unheard-of atrocities of some
of the tyrants who oppressed them and the mistaken measures of the
more benevolent rulers, in committing the guardianship of the citizens
to the swords of a foreign soldiery, leaving them but the wretched
alternative of being ravaged and massacred by an irruption of savage
tribes or pillaged and insulted by those in the emperor's pay.
The empire had long been surrounded by its foes. [A.D. 273.] It will
suffice to read the long list of captives who were led in triumph
behind the car of Aurelian when he returned from foreign war, to
see the fearful array of harsh-sounding names which have afterwards
been softened into those of great and civilized nations. It is in
following the course of some of these that we shall see how the
present distribution of forces in Europe took place, and escape from
the polluted atmosphere of Imperial Rome. In that memorable triumph
appeared Goths, Alans, Roxolans, Franks, Sarmatians, Vandals, Allemans,
Arabs, Indians, Bactrians, Iberians, Saracens, Armenians, Persians,
Palmyreans, Egyptians, and ten Gothic women dressed in men's apparel
and fully armed. These were, perhaps, the representatives of a large
body of female warriors, and are a sign of the recent settlement of the
tribe to which they belonged. They had not yet given up the habits of
their march, where all were equally engaged in carrying the property
and arms of the nation, and where the females encouraged the young men
of the expedition by witnessing and sometimes sharing their exploits in
battle.
The triumph of Probus, when only seven years had passed, presents us
with a list of the same peoples, often conquered but never subdued.
Their defeats, indeed, had the double effect of showing to them
their own ability to recruit their forces, and of strengthening the
degraded people of Rome in the belief of their invincibility. After
the loss of a battle, the Gothic or Burgundian chief fell back upon
the confederated tribes in his rear; a portion of his army either
visited Rome in the character of captives, or enlisted in the ranks of
the conquerors. In either case, the wealth of the great city and the
undefended state of the empire were permanently fixed in their minds;
the populace, on the other hand, had the luxury of a noble show and
double rations of bread--the more ambitious of the emperors acting
on the professed maxim that the citizen had no duty but to enjoy the
goods provided for him by the governing power, and that if he was fed
by public doles, and amused with public games, the purpose of his life
was attained. The idlest man was the safest subject. A triumph was,
therefore, more an instrument of degradation than an encouragement
to patriotic exertion. The name of Roman citizen was now extended to
all the inhabitants of the empire. The freeman of York was a Roman
citizen. Had he any patriotic pride in keeping the soil of Italy
undivided? The nation had become too diffuse for the exercise of this
local and combining virtue. The love of country, which in the small
states of Greece secured the individual's affection to his native city,
and yet was powerful enough to extend over the whole of the Hellenic
territories, was lost altogether when it was required to expand itself
over a region as wide as Europe. It is in this sense that empires fall
to pieces by their own weight. The Roman power broke up from within.
Its religion was a source of division, not of union--its mixture of
nations, and tongues, and usages, lost their cohesion. And nothing was
left at the end of this century to preserve it from total dissolution,
but the personal qualities of some great rulers and the memory of its
former fame.
FOURTH CENTURY.
Emperors.
A.D.
304. GALERIUS and CONSTANTIUS.
305. MAXIMIN.
306. CONSTANTINE.
337. CONSTANTINE II., CONSTANS and
CONSTANTIUS.
361. JULIAN THE APOSTATE.
363. JOVIAN.
A.D. _West._ A.D. _East._
364. VALENTINIAN. 364. VALENS.
367. GRATIAN.
375. VALENTINIAN II. 379. THEODOSIUS.
395. HONORIUS. 395. ARCADIUS.
Authors.