THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN
Although we have already indicated the fate of Aurelian, we have not
yet referred to the woman who shared his Imperial title and his great
renown. Her personality is, in fact, entirely unknown; even her name is
preserved for us only on the coinage. We may fairly conjecture that she
disliked the plebeian ways of her husband, and discharged the duties
of a consort without enthusiasm. Daughter of a wealthy and prominent
noble, Ulpius Crinitus, she had conferred a useful distinction on the
ambitious peasant at a time when he was making his way in the Imperial
service, and it is conjectured, on somewhat slender grounds, that she
accompanied him on his campaigns. But his life at the palace was short
and inglorious. He disliked its pomp and luxury, and found his chief
delight in pitting his comedians against each other in eating-contests.
He pampered the common citizens by increasing their free ration of
bread, and adding pork to it. When he went on to meditate a free
distribution of wine, one of his ministers sarcastically suggested that
he might add geese and chickens. When the Empress, Ulpia Severina,
thought it fitting that she should wear silk mantles, her husband
forbade her to indulge in that rare and costly product of a precarious
commerce with China.
Aurelian was, in fact, essentially a soldier. His manner, and even the
reforms which he endeavoured to make, caused grave dissatisfaction
at Rome, and a conspiracy against him was discovered within a few
months of the magnificent triumph he had enjoyed. He crushed it with a
fierceness that almost obliterated the memory of his great services,
and then returned to Asia to meet the Persians. On his march he was
assassinated, in the beginning of the year 275, and the great promise
of his reign was unfulfilled. Ulpia Severina seems to have died before
him, as the historian speaks only of a daughter who survived him.
Once more we pass swiftly over a number of turbulent years until we
come to an Empress of whom we have a comparatively ample knowledge.
It is generally admitted, though not entirely beyond doubt, that the
throne remained vacant for the greater part of the year 275. The
“Historia Augusta,” at least, which was written in the next generation,
describes a situation in remarkable contrast to the earlier haste in
appointing Emperors. We are asked to believe that the Senate and the
army spent many months in a most edifying encounter, each endeavouring
to induce the other to choose a ruler. At length the Senators chose
one of their number, the aged and upright Tacitus, who set out to take
command of the troops in Asia. Within a few weeks, worn by the unwonted
fatigue and pained by the unruly behaviour of the soldiers, he passed
away. Some of the historians declare that he died of actual violence.
There is no trace of an Empress. We read that Tacitus, like Aurelian,
forbade his wife to wear sumptuous clothing, but this was probably in
earlier days. The absence of coins leads us to think that she had died.
He was succeeded by a young and vigorous officer, of peasant
extraction, named Probus, under whom the Empire recovered much of
its strength. For six years he laboured successfully to restore the
prestige of Rome, but his severity led at length to assassination.
During a mutiny of the soldiers, in the year 282, “a thousand swords
were plunged at once into the bosom of the unfortunate Probus,” as
Gibbon too floridly expresses it. From the absence of coins we may
almost gather that his wife had died before his accession. Carus, who
succeeded him, was an aged general of sixty years. He died after a
year of strenuous warfare, and left the Empire to his sons Carinus and
Numerianus. The younger Emperor was dispatched to the East, and Carinus
virtually reigned alone.
Even the experience of our own time has so frequently taught us to
expect a mediocre or effeminate issue from a distinguished and virile
stock that we do not wonder at this happening constantly in the history
of Rome. We need not refer it to the mystery of heredity. The vigorous
sire had developed and enhanced his strength in the laborious climb
to the heights of his chosen world. The son, finding the paths to
the summit smoothed, and an engaging luxury at his command without
exertion, allows it to degenerate. The finest steel and the purest gold
yield and crumble in a corroding atmosphere. We cannot, therefore,
affect astonishment at the almost invariable failure of the Roman
practice of eagerly welcoming a son to the place of his gifted father.
The reign of Carinus affords one of the worst illustrations of the
evil. Indolent, insolent, and luxurious, he saw in his Imperial power
an opulent ministry to his depraved tastes. He did indeed provide Rome
with the most splendid entertainments. The amphitheatre rang once more
with the coarse applause of the ninety thousand spectators of its
bloody contests; the Circus was transformed into a forest, in which
the strange or beautiful beasts of remote lands lived under the eyes
of three hundred thousand Romans. But this indulgence of the people’s
appetites was held to excuse an unbridled ministry to those of the
prince. The whisper went once more through the fetid depths of Roman
life that there were rich awards for the ingenious and industrious
pandar to a sated voluptuary, and the palace exhibited again the
loathsome spectacles that had long been expelled from it.
They have little interest for us, as although Carinus made and unmade
nine Empresses in little over a year, they are lost in the riot of
the time. One poor name, that of Magnia Urbica, has survived on a
few coins. She is given by Serviez as the wife of Carus, because she
is represented with two children on one of the coins. Cohen points
out, however, that the group does not properly consist of a mother
and two children, and he concludes that she was one of the nine wives
of Carinus. In the number of his consorts Carinus surpassed the high
record of Imperial license, and he was not less original in the grounds
for his divorces. Sterility has often been pleaded by monarchs as a
fit reason for repudiating their wives; it was reserved to Carinus to
dismiss them the moment they gave proof of fertility. So the women of
Rome succeeded each other rapidly in the dissolute palace, where the
Emperor, surrounded by his courtesans, glittering down to his shoes
with diamonds and emeralds, sat on rose-strewn couches to his costly
banquets.
The new pestilence was blown out of the Imperial city by a storm from
the East. The younger Emperor, Numerianus, was a gentle, cultured, and
delicate youth. As he led the troops home from the East, he sheltered
his eyes from the burning sun by keeping to his tent or his closed
litter. At length his complete seclusion gave rise to suspicion, and
the soldiers broke into his tent, only to find a mouldering body. The
ambition of Aper, his father-in-law, who commanded the guards, fastened
the guilt upon him, and a general assembly of the soldiers appointed
one of their abler officers, Diocletian, to judge him. Diocletian,
possibly with reason, preferred to execute rather than to try Aper, and
he was at once saluted as Emperor by the troops. The son of two slaves,
he had educated himself and pushed his way to the highest offices and
commands; and he now composedly donned the purple mantle which the
soldiers offered him, and led the legions toward Rome. Carinus marched
out against him, but was assassinated by an officer whose wife he had
appropriated, and a new chapter opened in the annals of Rome. A strong
man and judicious statesman had come to the throne, and he would occupy
it for twenty years.
From our point of view it is disappointing that the wife of Diocletian
does not come to our notice until his reign is nearly over. Her very
name was disputed for ages; even now her personality is only faintly
illumined by the adventures of her later years. Her daughter is a
more commanding figure, and other Imperial ladies stand out in the
chronicle of the times. Some of these, such as the mother and wife of
Constantine, we reserve for the next chapter; and we may compress into
a few lines the story of the twenty years’ reign of Diocletian.
A year after his accession, which took place in the year 285,
Diocletian chose a colleague to share the control of the vast Empire.
This friend and partner, Maximian, was the son of peasants, rough,
ignorant, and unscrupulous, but an effective commander. He was
entrusted with the care of the West, Diocletian passed to the East,
and several years were profitably spent in restoring the crumbling
frontiers. The task proved so formidable that, in 292, they chose two
officers for the inferior dignity of “Cæsars”--a title which implied
that they would probably one day be Augusti, and should meantime wear
the purple, but have no power to make laws or control finance. Of the
two, Galerius again was a child of the soil, while Constantius was the
son of a provincial noble; and they were compelled to dismiss their
humbler wives, and wed the daughters of the Emperors. Four courts
were thus set up within the Empire, while Rome found itself coldly
neglected, its palace deserted, and its Senate impotent.
To the court of Galerius we shall return presently, while we leave the
affairs of Constantius and his wife to the next chapter. The court and
the Empress of Maximian need not detain us. He chose Milan as his seat,
and began to adorn the northern town with the marble edifices that
befitted its new dignity. His wife was a very attractive Syrian woman,
Galeria Valeria Eutropia. Her name has led some to conjecture that
she was related to the father of Constantius, Eutropius, one of the
chief nobles of Dardania, though the connexion is feeble. She seems, in
any case, to have regarded her uncultivated husband with disdain, and
sought more genial company. Her son Maxentius is said by some to have
been the issue of a liaison with a compatriot, while others declare
that he was a boy substituted for the daughter she bore, because
Maximian desired a son. We may leave these disputable scandals and come
to the court of Diocletian.
The son of a Roman slave had created a glittering court at Nicomedia.
His palace, round which the city quickly grew in size and magnificence,
was adorned and served with an Oriental pomp. The successive approaches
to the chamber of the Emperor were guarded by splendid officials,
and when the suppliant or ambassador penetrated at length to the
inner apartment, he found the stately Diocletian in purple and gold
robes, his brow encircled by a glistening diadem, and was compelled
to prostrate himself before the divine majesty. It was not, however,
the vanity or folly of a Caligula, but a calculated policy, that had
prompted Diocletian to clothe himself with this Olympic dignity.
Earlier Emperors, of the same mean extraction, had refused to put
a barrier of royal ceremony between themselves and their subjects
or soldiers, and had invariably fallen by the hand of the assassin.
Diocletian was too shrewd, too much attached to life, and too sensible
of his beneficent use of power, to incur the risk. He had restored
Egypt to obedience, humiliated the Persians, and devoted an even
greater ability to the reform of the administration. Co-operating with
his vigorous colleague in the West, he had brought peace and prosperity
back to the Empire.
In the settled years of his reign we begin again to recognize the
various personalities of the court. The Empress herself is more or
less involved in a piquant obscurity. Until the end of the seventeenth
century her name was unknown, and a great deal of romantic legend
was reproduced in regard to her. Cardinal Baronius found in “Acts of
St. Susanna” that her name was St. Serena, a martyr for the Christian
faith. Other “Acts” of the martyrs furnished a St. Eleuthera and a St.
Alexandra as consorts of Diocletian. He seemed to have been an Imperial
Bluebeard. But in 1679 the manuscript was found of an early Christian
work, “On the Deaths of the Persecutors,” and the earlier writings
were proved, in the words of the learned Franciscan, Father Pagi, to
be fictitious and full of untruths. The many saintly martyrs gave way
to an Empress Prisca, who broke down lamentably at the first test of
her faith. It is very curious that we have no coins whatever of Prisca,
though she must have lived through the whole reign of Diocletian. This,
and the fact that she left him many years before his death, suggest
either that she was not married to him at all or that he had little
regard for her. She was, in any case, a woman of weak and retiring
character, and is mentioned only in association with her daughter.
Valeria was a beautiful, attractive, and spirited young woman, with a
good deal of the strength, and not a little of the ambition, of her
father. She was married to Galerius, the Cæsar whom Diocletian had
chosen, and remained with him by the side of the Emperor. Galerius was,
as I said, of peasant origin, and never laid aside the uncultivated
roughness of his class. Diocletian had, by diligent education, erased
the traces of his own lowly origin, but his peasant colleagues had
gone straight from the soil to the camp, and the work of a soldier had
not given them the least inclination to seek culture. The character of
Galerius has been painted in the most lurid colours on account of his
persecution of the Christians, but it is significant that both Valeria
and Prisca clung to his court when Diocletian retired. His mother,
Romula, and other rustic relatives were attracted to his court. There
was, it is clear, a most incongruous group of personalities about the
court of Diocletian, and in the nineteenth year of his reign they were
shaken by a severe storm. The great and final struggle began between
the old faith and the new, and Prisca and Valeria favoured the latter.
Christianity had not been persecuted for half a century, and had made
great progress. The cult of the old gods was palpably insincere,
and half-a-dozen Asiatic creeds were steadily supplanting it. On
the streets of Nicomedia, as on the streets of Rome or any other
large city, one might meet any day the white-robed shaven priests of
Isis, the painted and effeminate ministers of Cybele, the Persian
representatives of the popular cult of Mithra, and--until they were
expelled by Diocletian--the black-garbed clergy of the Manichæans
and the Christians. The Christians were now advancing. There had
been some slight and irregular repression of them from time to time
since the days of Nero, but more than forty years of toleration, and
the knowledge that their adherents were now occupying high places in
the camp and the court, and that even the wives of the Emperor and
the Cæsar favoured them, gave them strong confidence. One of their
churches occupied a central and commanding position in Nicomedia.
Four influential officers of the court attended it, and it seems that
Valeria and Prisca were, if not Christians, openly disposed to the new
religion. All we know in that regard is that they were “compelled” to
sacrifice when the persecution began.
Persecution on account of religion, as such, was not natural to
the cosmopolitan builders of the Pantheon, and Diocletian was a
broad-minded statesman, so that the origin of the persecution is not
so clear as it was once held to be. The literary remains which we
have to use have to be handled with caution. The “Historia Augusta”
has ended with Carinus, and we shall greatly miss its minute and
gossipy descriptions. Zosimus, a pagan writing in a Christian age, has
an appearance of sullen reticence at times and a perceptible bias.
Aurelius Victor and Eutropius are scanty, and the immediate Christian
writers are used very cautiously by modern historians. Bishop Eusebius
says frankly, in his “Life of Constantine,” that he will write
only what tends to edify, and the little work “On the Deaths of the
Persecutors” is obviously imaginative in many pages and inaccurate in
others. Experts still differ as to whether it comes from the pen of the
brilliant Christian rhetorician Lactantius, but all warn us to take
account of its strong feeling. Our authorities, in a word, now belong
to two antagonistic and bitterly hostile creeds, and, as all subsequent
historians favour one side or the other, we have to proceed with
caution. I have endeavoured, in the remaining chapters, to make my way
between them with more than ordinary care and independence.
A few incautious hints given in Lactantius throw a faint light on
the origin of the great persecution. The writer of the treatise has
himself a very positive theory. The root of the evil was, he says,
Romula, the peasant-mother of the Cæsar. Fanatically attached to the
gods of her native mountains, she inspired her son with a hatred of
Christianity, and Galerius bullied the older Emperor into issuing the
Edict of Persecution. We feel that the policy of Diocletian would
hardly yield to the prejudice of a superstitious woman. There is more
enlightenment in the incidental statements that Romula was stung by
the disdain of Christian officers in the palace, and that Diocletian
was greatly annoyed at seeing Christian soldiers disturb the harmony,
if not the efficacy, of his sacrificial ceremonies by making the sign
of the cross. Galerius may have been moved by the growing reluctance
of Christians to bear arms, and the very pronounced rejection by
some of the arms they bore. There is no need to trust the imaginary
conversation which Lactantius puts in the mouths of Diocletian and
Galerius. They agreed that the zeal of the Christians was impertinent
or dangerous, and, in the month of February (303), a troop of soldiers
was sent to raze to the ground their large and commanding church. On
the following day Diocletian published an Edict forbidding the cult
under grave penalties. When the Imperial decree was torn down by a
zealous Christian, and this act of treason was openly applauded by his
fellows, Diocletian was embittered, and blood began to flow. During the
next fortnight the Emperor’s quarters in the palace were twice found
to be in flames. Diocletian was convinced that the fire was kindled by
Christian officers, and gave a full sanction to the work of repressing
them.
Prisca and Valeria were not among the heroines of the persecution.
Lactantius destroys all the myths of martyred Empresses by telling
us that they consented to burn a few grains of incense in honour
of Jupiter, and impotently witnessed the dark roll of the wave of
persecution through the provinces. He does not even say that they
joined, or rejoined, the Church when the persecution was over, and we
lose sight of them for a few years. Probably they went with Diocletian
to Rome for his triumph in November, and returned with him to Nicomedia
in the summer of 304. He was confined to the palace by a serious
illness during the following winter, and as soon as he recovered he
abdicated the throne. It is untrue that the threats of Galerius forced
him to do this. He had expressed the intention years before.
On a wide plain near Nicomedia the army assembled on May 1st, 305, for
the unexampled ceremony of the abdication of an Emperor. A little hill
in the centre was surmounted by a lofty throne and a statue of Jupiter,
and the ageing Emperor--he was in his fifty-ninth year--surrendered the
power he had wielded so well for more than twenty years. By a previous
arrangement, Maximian was abdicating on the same day at Milan. The two
Cæsars became Augusti, and two new Cæsars were appointed. In their
selection we recognize the partial and unskilful hand of Galerius. He
handed his own Cæsarean dignity to a rustic nephew, Daza--“who had just
left his herds in the forest,” Lactantius scornfully says--and sent a
loyal and undistinguished friend to receive that of Maximian in Italy.
From that selfish act would develop one of the greatest civil wars
since the founding of the Empire. In the ranks of the officers by the
platform was the tall, handsome, gifted, and disappointed young man who
would one day be known as Constantine the Great.
Diocletian retired to Salona, in his native province of Dalmatia, and
built, close to the town, what was for the age a magnificent palace.
Valeria remained in the palace of Galerius, and it seems that Prisca
stayed with her, as we shall presently find her sharing the hard lot of
her daughter. Why the mother, at least, chose to remain in Nicomedia is
left to our imaginations. The religion they had favoured was cruelly
suppressed, and, if we are to believe Lactantius, their virtue must
have been outraged by the unbridled license of the new Emperor. He is
described as an ogre, dragging the noblest women of Nicomedia from
their husbands, feeding his bears on innocent citizens, and “never
taking a meal without a taste of human blood.” Yet Valeria clung to
her husband even through the painful and repulsive illness which ended
his life; and her name was given by him to a part of his Empire. The
picture is evidently overdrawn, yet life in the palace, with Galerius
and his boorish relatives, cannot have been very congenial, and the
temper of Galerius would be soured by the events that followed.
The first mishap was the flight of Constantine. He had been living for
some years at the court of Diocletian, and was deeply disappointed and
rightly indignant at the choice of the new Cæsars. By birth and ability
he had the clearest title to the purple. He was now a tall and manly
young officer, handsome, popular, and successful, and anxious to join
his father Constantius in Gaul. There is little doubt that he fled
during the night, though the romantic story told by Lactantius is now
generally regarded as a clumsy piece of fiction. It describes Galerius
as failing to take the youth’s life by engaging him in dangerous
contests, and at length devising an ingenious scheme. He one night
gives Constantine permission to depart after he has seen him in the
morning, and warns him that he will be put to death if he is still in
Nicomedia at noon. Then the ogre gives orders that he is not to be
awakened before noon on the morrow; but the young hero steals all the
horses in the stables--there were probably hundreds--cripples all other
horses along his route, and flies to his father. The only authentic
point is that Constantine fled. He would wade back through a sea of
blood. Within a few months his father was dead, Constantine was chosen
by the army to succeed him, and Galerius was forced to recognize him as
Cæsar.
Galerius gave the title of Augustus, which Constantius had left vacant
at his death, to his loyal Severus, but he was soon informed that the
troops, the people, and the Senate had chosen another Emperor at Rome.
A brief outline of the stirring events that followed will suffice here.
The new Emperor was Maxentius, son of the retired Maximian. The father
issued from his retreat to join in the fray, and Galerius was bound
to support Severus. Diocletian looked on quietly from his gardens at
Salona. When Maximian urged him to return to power, he said that if
Maximian could see the vegetables he was growing he would not make
such a request. Briefly, Severus was treacherously taken by Maximian,
and induced to ease the complication by taking his life. Maximian,
Galerius, and Diocletian met at Carnuntum, on the Danube, and it was
settled that Galerius and Licinius (one of his officers) should be
recognized as Emperors, and Constantine and Maximin (Daza) as Cæsars.
Maxentius was disregarded, and Maximian was persuaded to retire once
more. How the restless and ambitious old man then clung to Constantine,
and attempted to murder and displace him, we shall see later.
The expedition of Galerius into Italy proved disastrous, as he returned
in bad health and temper to his dominions. He died in 311, of an
unpleasant disease, of which the morbid reader may find a luxurious
description in Lactantius. Valeria remained with him to the end, and
then a new and more romantic chapter opened for her and her mother.
The two Emperors of the East made rival offers of their hospitality;
for Maximin had exacted an equal dignity with Licinius. Valeria was
at that time in her early thirties, and her mourning garments did not
detract from her ripe beauty of face and figure. She is represented
as weighing the respective immoralities of the two Eastern Emperors,
and considering to which of the two it would be the less dangerous to
entrust her virtue. Lactantius does not tell us why she was forced
to choose at all; why she and her mother did not retire to the
luxurious and unsullied palace of Diocletian. The end of his life was
approaching, it is true, but the palace would still shelter them. On
the other hand, Maximin and Licinius are both very thickly tarred
with the brush of Lactantius. We shall see something of the conduct
of Licinius later. As to Maximin, if one half of what Lactantius and
Eusebius say is true, he must have been known over the whole Empire as
an erotic maniac. He may not have been this romantic combination of
Nero, Elagabalus, and Carinus, but we know from other writers that he
was much more vicious than Licinius. When, therefore, we find Valeria
choosing to live in his palace, we cannot repress a suspicion that the
beautiful widow was not quite so unworldly as she is represented to
have been.
She had not been long in her new home when certain officers came to
tell her that Maximin loved her, and was prepared to divorce his wife
and wed her. When she refused, the baffled passion turned to rage,
and mother and daughter were expelled from the palace. When we learn,
from a later passage, that Valeria refused to yield her right to the
property of Galerius, the episode seems more human. A story of adultery
was invented, a Jew--the villain of early Christian literature--was
suborned to give false evidence, and several of Valeria’s friends were
implicated. A number of ladies of high rank were publicly executed,
and the Empresses, spoiled of their goods, were driven from province
to province, until they found themselves lodged in a mean village
on the edge of the Syrian desert. Valeria contrived to acquaint her
father with their situation, but the rough Maximin rejected his
feeble entreaties. They seem to have spent the winter (312–13) in
this miserable exile. The only comfort was that they had with them
Candidian, a natural son of Galerius, whom Valeria had adopted, and
Severian, the son of Severus.
[Illustration: SALONINA
VALERIA
ENLARGED FROM COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM]
In the early spring the little group were inspirited by the news that
the tyrant had fallen in a struggle with Licinius, who was now sole
Emperor in the East. What follows, in the narrative of Lactantius,
is even more obscure, and suggests still more strongly that much is
concealed from us. Candidian went openly to the court of Licinius, and
was cordially received and promoted. The other young man followed.
Licinius was naturally hostile to all who had taken the side of
Maximin, but he could hardly be angry with these poor victims of
Maximin’s rage. Valeria, however, went in disguise to Nicæa, where the
court was, to follow the fortunes of her adopted son.
Suddenly something happened which brought upon them all the sword of
the executioner. What it was we can only conjecture. A writer like
Lactantius is so accustomed to regard a savage outbreak on the part of
one of the last pagan Emperors as a natural event that he disdains to
enlighten us. A part of the story has been concealed, and it would not
be fantastic to suppose that the spirited, young, and ambitious Valeria
meditated an intrigue for the advancement of Candidian to the throne.
It is plain that Licinius suspected this. The royal birth and manly
bearing of the youth might suffice to draw such a suspicion on him, but
do not plausibly explain the treatment of the Empresses. Nor is there
any apparent reason for her disguise. She was willing, Lactantius says,
to cede her rights to Licinius, and the sentence unjustly passed on her
by Maximin would have no weight with him.
Whatever the cause of the trouble was, Valeria learned one day
that Candidian and Severian were arrested, and they were presently
executed. She fled to the remote Syrian village, but she was so plainly
implicated, in some way, that she dare not remain there. Dressing
in the rough robes of the common people, the aged mother and her
brilliant daughter set out on a painful and aimless journey. Either
a sentence of death had been passed on them, or they had ground to
apprehend one; for their flight would certainly elicit it. Lactantius
says that they wandered in this disguise for fifteen months, but it is
difficult to believe that they could so long evade the Imperial troops
who hunted them.[21] At length they were recognized and arrested in
Thessalonica, and the tragedy of their unfortunate and, so far as we
know, innocent lives was brought to a close. Under the eyes of the
assembled citizens the wife and daughter of the great Emperor were
beheaded, and their remains were contemptuously flung into the sea.