DYNASTY OF THEODOSIUS
_HODGKIN_
London
HENRY FROWDE
[Illustration]
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE
AMEN CORNER, E.C.
THE
DYNASTY OF THEODOSIUS
OR
Eighty Years’ Struggle with the Barbarians
_A SERIES OF LECTURES DELIVERED TO
THE DURHAM LADIES’ EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION_
BY
THOMAS HODGKIN
_Hon. D.C.L. of Oxford and Durham_
AUTHOR OF ‘ITALY AND HER INVADERS’
Oxford
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
M.DCCC.LXXXIX
[_All rights reserved_]
Dedicated
TO
MY WIFE AND CHILDREN.
PREFACE.
This little book owes its existence to an invitation addressed to me by
the Durham Ladies’ Educational Association to deliver to them a short
course of historical lectures. Being allowed to choose my own subject,
I naturally chose that with which I was most familiar, the epoch of the
fall of the Western Empire: but in order to prevent my very familiarity
with that period from leading me into diffuseness, I took the precaution
of writing the lectures, and thus, I believe, was preserved from in any
case over-passing the prescribed limit of an hour and a quarter.
When my course was completed, I found that I had described in brief
outline so many of the leading events recorded in the first two volumes
of my book, _Italy and her Invaders_, that it seemed worth while to offer
the result of my labours to those who might not care to peruse the larger
work. In order to give a little more completeness to the book, I added a
lecture (the Second) on the political and social condition of the Romans
and barbarians, which was not included in the original course.
It will easily be understood that it is only by the rejection of many
minor details that it is possible to reduce the picture of eighty
eventful years within the limits of a compendium like the present. For
most of these details, and for all discussion of the authorities on
which the history of the period rests, I must refer to my larger work.
Occasionally, however, I have touched upon some points not thoroughly
discussed in _Italy and her Invaders_, and when I have done so, I have
stated my authority in the notes.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
LECTURE I.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
Limits of the Empire 1-7
Its political organisation—
The Senate 7-9
The People 9-13
The Emperor 13-17
Periods of Imperial History—
I. The Julian and Flavian dynasties 17
II. The Antonine 18
III. The Age of Anarchy 18-20
IV. Diocletian: the Age of Restoration 21-24
Constantine the Great 25-28
Christianity and the Empire 28-32
LECTURE II.
THE ROMAN AND THE TEUTON.
I. The Roman—
The Emperor 33-37
The official hierarchy 37-44
Social condition of the Empire 44-48
‘Panem et Circenses’ 49
The Slave 50
The Colonus 51
The Curialis 52
II. The Teuton—
Economic condition of the Germans 55-60
German land-system 60-62
Relation of the Village-community to the State 62-65
The Pagus or Gau 65
Kingship and national unity 67-70
The Folc-gemot 70-71
Election of the King 72
LECTURE III.
THE COMING OF THE HUNS.
German ethnology 73
The Goths 75
Ulfilas 77-79
Athanaric and Fritigern 79-80
Irruption of the Huns 80-83
The Visigoths seek an asylum in the Empire 86-87
The Visigoths cross the Danube 88
Roman Emperors: Valentinian, Valens, Gratian 90-91
The banquet at Marcianople 91-93
Gothic War: battle of Ad Salices 94
Battle of Hadrianople 96-99
LECTURE IV.
THEODOSIUS.
The Goths besiege Constantinople 101
Failures of the Goths as besiegers 102
The massacre of the Gothic boy-hostages 104
Parentage of Theodosius 106
Theodosius associated in the Empire 107
Orthodoxy of Theodosius 108-110
Athanaric at Constantinople 111
The Goths become Foederati 113-117
Insurrection of Antioch 117-120
Insurrection of Thessalonica 120-122
Usurpation of Maximus 123-126
His defeat and death 127
Eugenius and Arbogast 128-130
Battle of the Frigidus 131
Death of Theodosius 132
His character 133
LECTURE V.
ALARIC.
The sons of Theodosius, Arcadius and Honorius 134
Their ministers, Rufinus and Stilicho 135-137
Alaric chosen King of the Visigoths 137
Alaric invades Greece 139
Stilicho forbidden to defend it 139
Murder of Rufinus 141-142
Second campaign of Stilicho against Alaric 143
Alaric as Roman governor of Illyricum 143
Alaric’s first invasion of Italy 145-147
Invasion by Radagaisus 148-151
Revolt of Constantine in Britain 152
Negotiations between Stilicho and Alaric 153
Death of Arcadius 155
Mutiny at Ticinum. Stilicho slain 156-158
Alaric’s first siege of Rome 159-161
Alaric’s second siege of Rome 162
Attalus Emperor 162-164
Alaric’s third siege and capture of Rome 164-166
Death of Alaric 167
LECTURE VI.
PLACIDIA: ATTILA.
Placidia—
Historical perspective 170
Early life of Placidia: her captivity 171
Ataulfus, successor of Alaric 172
His marriage with Placidia 174
Death of Ataulfus 175
Second marriage, widowhood, and exile of Placidia 176
Death of Honorius 176
Rise and fall of Joannes. Valentinian III, Emperor 177
Regency of Placidia 178
Aetius 179
Attila—
Accession of Attila: his character and appearance 180-182
Extent of his Empire 182-184
His Embassies to Constantinople 184
The vases of Sirmium 185
Honoria’s ring 185
Description by Priscus of Attila’s palace 186
” ” the banquet 187-190
Deaths of Placidia and Theodosius II 191
Marcian and Pulcheria reign 191
Attila prepares for war with the West 192
Alliance between the Empire and the Visigoths 192-193
Attila’s invasion of Gaul 193
Siege of Orleans 194
Battle of Châlons (so called) 195-197
Attila’s retreat 197
Attila invades Italy 198
Capture of Aquileia 198
The founders of Venice 199
Attila at Milan 200
Embassy of Pope Leo 201
Return and death of Attila 202
The Hunnish power broken 203
LECTURE VII.
GAISERIC.
Early history of the Vandals 204
The Vandals enter Gaul 205-207
They cross the Pyrenees and enter Spain 207
Death of Gunderic: accession of Gaiseric 209
Bonifacius invites the Vandals to enter Africa 209-211
The Vandals transported to Africa 212
Bonifacius repents and returns to Ravenna 215
Siege of Hippo 216
Capture of Carthage 217
Appearance, character, and career of Gaiseric 218-220
Vandal land-settlement 220
Law of succession to the throne 221
Persecution of the Catholics 221-225
Valentinian murders Aetius 226
Death of Valentinian III. Accession of Maximus 228
Gaiseric’s Expedition to Rome. Plunder of the City 229-232
Captivity of the widow and daughters of Valentinian 232
Further fortunes of the Theodosian family 233
Conclusion 234
FAMILY OF VALENTINIAN.
[Emperors of the East are printed in _Italic_ capitals.]
GRATIAN,
of Cibalis in Pannonia.
|
+-------------+-------------------+
| |
SEVERA, or = VALENTINIAN I, = JUSTINA, _VALENS_,
Marina (divorced). | born 321, | widow of born about
| proclaimed Emperor | the usurper 329, Emperor
| 364, died 375. | Magnentius 364, slain
| | (he was at the battle
A daughter = GRATIAN, = LAETA | slain 353). of Hadrianople
of Emperor born about 359, (present with | 378.
Constantius associated with her mother at | |
II. his father as the siege of | VALENS,
Augustus 367, Rome 408). | surnamed
slain by order | Galata,
of Maximus 383. | born 366,
| died 371.
+----------------+------+--+--------+
| | | |
VALENTINIAN II, JUSTA. GRATA. GALLA,
born about 371, married in
Emperor 375, 387 to
dethroned by Maximus 387, _THEODOSIUS I_,
restored 388, slain by died 394.
order of Arbogast 392. |
GALLA PLACIDIA.
|
VALENTINIAN III, &c.
FAMILY OF THEODOSIUS.
[Emperors of the East are printed in _Italic_ capitals.]
|
+----------------+----------------+
| |
THEODOSIUS, EUCHERIUS,
Magister Equitum cons. 381.
under Valentinian I,
beheaded at Carthage 376.
|
+---------------------------+
| (387) |
AELIA = _THEODOSIUS I_, = GALLA, HONORIUS,
FLACCILLA, | b. about 346, | dau. of Emp. d. in Spain
d. 386. | Emp. 379, | Valentinian before his
| d. 395. | I, d. 394. brother’s
| | accession?
| | |
| | SERENA, = STILICHO,
| | killed | killed
| | 408. | 408.
| | |
| | +---------+-----------+
| | | | |
| |MARIA THERMANTIA, EUCHERIUS,
| | {1} d. 415. killed 408.
| | {2}
| |
+-----+----------+ +--------------------+ CONSTANTIUS
| | | III,
| (398) | (408) (414) | (417) d.
EUDOXIA, = _ARCADIUS_, {1} = HONORIUS = {2} ATAULFUS = GALLA = 421.
dau of | b. 377, b. 384, K. of the | PLACIDIA,|
Bauto | Augustus Augustus Visigoths |b. between|
the |383, Emp. 393, Emp. (brother-in-law|388 and |
Frank, |of the East of West of Alaric), |393, d. |
d. 404. |395, d. 408. 395, d. 423. murd. 415. |about 450.|
| | |
| THEODOSIUS, d. |
| in infancy. |
| |
+--------+----------+----------+----------+-------+ |
| | | | | |
EUDOCIA = _THEODOSIUS FLACCILLA, _PULCHERIA_ ARCADIA, MARINA,|
(Athenais),| II_, b. 401, b. 397. b. 399, b. 400. b. 403.|
dau. of | Augustus 402, d. 453. |
Leontius, | succeeded = (451) +------+---+
Prof. of | his father _MARCIAN_, | |
Rhetoric | 408, d. 450. d. 457. | |
at Athens, +--------------------------------+ | |
d. 454. | (PLACIDUS) HONORIA,
EUDOXIA, = VALENTINIAN b. 418.
b. 422. | III, b. 419,
| Emp. 425,
+------------------+----------+ assassinated 455.
| |
OLYBRIUS, = PLACIDIA, EUDOXIA, = HUNERIC,
Emp. 472. | | K. of Vandals,
| | d. 484.
AREOBINDUS, = JULIANA HILDERIC,
cons. 506. | K. of Vandals,
OLYBRIUS. d. 533.
Transcriber’s Note: Whilst this proves that a complex family tree _can_
be fitted into 75 characters wide, that doesn’t mean that it _should_.
These genealogies are included as illustrations in the HTML version, to
which the reader is recommended to refer.
ERRATA.
Page 27, line 5 from bottom, _for_ 523 _read_ 323
” 91, ” 16, _for_ get _read_ yet
Transcriber’s Note: The errata have been corrected, although the first
one was printed correctly in the first place and didn’t need to be listed
here.
[Illustration: =Shield of Theodosius=
(_SILVER_)
FOUND NEAR MERIDA IN 1847, NOW IN THE MUSEUM OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL
ACADEMY AT MADRID.
(_Copied from A. Delgado’s ‘Memoria historico-critica sobre el gran disco
di Teodosio,’ Madrid, 1849._)
Theodosius, seated on the central throne, receives from a nobleman
of ‘illustrious’ rank an address, perhaps congratulating him on the
_decennalia_ of Arcadius (393). Arcadius is seated on his right, Honorius
on his left, each attended by two _protectores_ (guardsmen). In the lower
part of the shield is the recumbent figure of Hispania, surrounded by
emblems of prosperity. Above, ‘D(ominus) N(oster) Theodosius Perpet(uus)
Aug(ustus) ob diem felicissimum X.’
_Hodgkin’s Theodosius._] [_Clarendon Press._]
THE DYNASTY OF THEODOSIUS.
LECTURE I.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
In Longfellow’s Golden Legend the following question is asked:—
‘Say to me
What the great Voices Four may be
That quite across the world do flee
And are not heard by men?’
and this answer given:—
‘The Voice of the Sun in heaven’s dome,
The Voice of the murmuring of Rome,
The Voice of a Soul that goeth home,
And the Angel of the Rain.’
‘The voice of the murmuring of Rome.’ That was indeed a mighty voice; how
all-powerful, how nearly equivalent to the voice of the whole civilised
human race, is more vividly impressed upon us by every year of deeper
study of the history of the world fifteen centuries ago.
[Sidenote: _Extent of the Roman Empire._]
Let us try by a very rapid summary to indicate the meaning which the
words ‘Imperium Romanum’ conveyed to him who heard them in the days when
the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was still standing and still thronged
with earnest worshippers.
[Sidenote: _North Britain._]
Let us go forth from this city which clusters on its seven hills
around the Tomb of St. Cuthbert. Those hills are untrodden forest or
undistinguished pasture-ground, and all the glory of architecture and
all the wealth of sacred associations which will one day crown them are
unknown, for we are now in the second century after Christ, and Durham is
neither _castra_ nor _mansio_ nor _mutatio_ in the map of Roman Britain.
But if we go a few miles up the Wear, near to that place in ‘the land
of Oaks,’ where the Bishop of Durham will one day build his castle, we
shall find there, upon a high promontory of table-land overlooking the
stream, the spacious camp of Vinovia with its baths and its hypocausts,
doubtless also with its temple and its magazines. Here we strike a great
Roman road. Follow that road northwards over the hills, and you will
come to the camp of Lanchester on the Browney. Another stretch over wild
moorlands, and we reach Ebchester, in the pleasant valley of the Derwent.
Another, and we strike the Tyne at Corstopitum (Corbridge). And so on by
more camps and stations than I need weary you with the names of, till we
reach the great camp, or rather series of camps, which surround the high
altar-like hill of Birrenswark in Dumfriesshire, overlooking the sandy
Solway. Yet still the Roman road is running northwards, till at last it
reaches the Wall of Antoninus, somewhere near the Frith of Clyde.
[Sidenote: _Midland and Southern Britain._]
Southwards the same road pursues its course, uncompromising and
undeviating, over the great ridge of hills which separates you from the
Tees. Across the Swale at Cataractonium it leads us to Isurium, which
will one day be represented by the pleasant old-fashioned village of
Boroughbridge, and where we see for the first time those pictured floors,
the tesselated pavements which are so abundant in Southern Britain and in
Gaul. Then it takes us to Eboracum, the great Roman city of the North,
the home of the Sixth Legion, the place where the aged Severus will lay
down the purple at the bidding of Death, and where the young Constantine
will assume it at the bidding of the soldiery. Thence across the country
south-westwards, over those hills and dales of Yorkshire and Lancashire,
which are now among the poorest and most solitary, as they will one day
be among the richest and the most thickly populated portions of the
island of the Britons. So we reach Deva, or Chester on the Dee, where
the Twentieth Legion have built their stately city, with its temples,
its baths, and its spacious praetorium for their commanding officer. And
so from thence, through Cheshire and Staffordshire, and on by a route
pretty nearly coinciding with that which will, after many centuries, be
taken by the North-Western Railway, till at last we reach that city,
comparatively unimportant in the official map of Roman Britain, but which
the concourse of merchants is even now making important in spite of
prefects and procurators, ‘the city formerly known as Londinium, but now
named Augusta.’
[Sidenote: _Existing traces of Roman occupation._]
In our own day, at nearly every step of our course along this great
highway, which our ancestors named the Watling Street, there is some
trace of the Roman legionary and his sojourn in our island. Here
the coins of some military treasure chest buried in haste and never
reclaimed; there the shells of the oysters or the bones of the beef which
the soldiers consumed; here a dedication to some native god bearing an
uncouth name, with whom they thought it safer to be on friendly terms;
there the pathetic epitaph of a departed wife ‘who lived with her husband
xxx years, “_sine ulla macula_,”’ with no spot upon her goodness; here
the walls of a camp turned by centuries into mere grassy mounds, but
still by their rectangular shape rounded at the corners, showing the
handiwork of the Roman surveyor; there an inscription recording the
rebuilding of a bath or a granary, ‘_vetustate conlapsum_’ (which had
fallen in through age), and reminding us how old and venerable the
buildings erected by the first conquerors of Britain must have appeared
long before the last Roman soldier, standing upon the stern of the
departing vessel, waved his sad ‘_Vale Britannia_’ to our island.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _Boundaries of the Roman World._]
All these vestiges of the great world-Empire, when one examines them
patiently day after day, as it has often been my privilege to do in
travelling along one of the great Roman roads in our own country or
abroad, produce an effect upon the mind incomparably stronger and deeper
than results from simply reading the story of the conquest of a province
in the pages of Caesar or Tacitus. And now multiply this picture at
least thirty-fold in order to make it justly represent the whole extent
of the Empire. Cross the sea from ‘Londinium, now Augusta,’ to the
mouth of the Rhine. Travel for days up that stately river and see the
legionaries swarming upon its western, and not unknown upon its eastern
bank. Trace the 300 miles of stake-covered rampart which join the Middle
Rhine to the Middle Danube, and along every mile of which a Roman soldier
is tramping. Descend the Danube from Ratisbon to the Euxine and see every
foot of its right bank held by Rome, who for more than a century holds a
province on the left bank also (the province of Dacia), and stations her
legionaries on the crests of the Carpathian Mountains. Take ship and sail
over the foggy Euxine, and there, in its extreme south-eastern corner,
near where Jason and his companions sought the Golden Fleece, recognise
once more the Roman boundary. Follow that boundary over the mountains of
Armenia to the upper waters of the Tigris. Cross ‘the great river, the
River Euphrates,’ near the place where Eliezer waited for Rebekah by the
well; and then encompassing Damascus and the mysterious cities of Bashan,
let the border come down past the Dead Sea, past Mount Pisgah and Mount
Sinai, and so overleaping the Red Sea, let it reach the valley of the
Nile. Here the frontier towards the barbarism of Ethiopia is the same
that the modern protectors of Egypt have drawn close to the city of Syene
(now Assouan); leaving 800 miles of the rich Nile valley as the granary
of Rome. All along the northern coast of Africa, Cyrene, Tripolis,
Carthage, Numidia, Mauretania, whatever there is of civilised, stable,
wealth-producing life (and it is a broad enough belt in some places)
is all Roman by obedience, and much of it Latin by speech. At last the
boundary goes out at the Atlantic Ocean where Hercules once relieved
Atlas of his load. Men gazing forth upon the waste of waters, and half
discovering, half dreaming, concerning the Fortunate Isles beyond, are
constrained at length to admit the fact that the great Empire has found
its limit, and that if there be other worlds to the West they are worlds
beyond the world of Rome.
[Sidenote: _The Orbis Romanus nearly coincided with the Orbis Terrarum._]
It was an immense extent of territory which the Roman god Terminus thus
marked out, and (as has been often pointed out, but is a fact of the
greatest importance) it more nearly embraced the whole of the then known
and civilised world than any Empire that has since been seen. True, the
mysterious river of Asiatic civilisation, as represented by China and
India, flowed on, not blending its waters with those which the Tiber
ruled. But these countries were practically altogether beyond the horizon
of the Empire. During the first three centuries of our era there was only
one civilised power of which Rome was conscious as a possible rival to
herself, and that was the power of Persia. Her sovereign, whether he were
known as Parthian or Persian, as Arsacid or Sassanid, took to himself
proud titles, calling himself ‘King of Kings,’ and so forth, and often by
his devastating raids inflicted sore disaster on the Eastern provinces
of Rome; but the Empire was certainly far the stronger power, and many
of the abler Emperors could probably, if they had deemed it wise to make
the attempt, have accomplished what Julian so narrowly missed and what
Heraclius triumphantly performed, the overthrow of the Persian monarchy.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _Government of the Roman State._]
[Sidenote: _Senatus Populus Que Romanus._]
This vast territory had been acquired by the municipality of an Italian
city under a government which was in some respects the best adapted for
gaining and for consolidating dominion that the world has ever seen.
S.P.Q.R.: these four letters formed the talisman which floated on the
victorious standards of Rome, whether they crowned the misty heights of
the Cheviots or were mirrored in the waters of the Orontes. The Senate
and the People of Rome: we must pause for a few moments on these words to
consider what they implied.
[Sidenote: _The Roman Senate under the Republic._]
(1) The Senate of Rome, in its best days reminding the beholder of an
assembly of Kings, debating the affairs of the Republic with a gravity,
an earnestness and a conciseness very unlike the showy rhetoric of a
Greek _Ecclesia_ or the vapid verbiage of a modern House of Commons or
House of Representatives: this was the body which gave coherence and
unity to the policy of the great Latin city, which prevented it from
being swayed to and fro by such gusts of passion or misplaced sentiment
as ruined the Empire of Athens; which caused it to pursue, century after
century, the same undeviating course, and to act upon the same maxims
of statesmanship—hard maxims often, and inspired by a terrible egotism,
but successful. It was the Senate which enabled the Roman State to feel
the proud confidence that was expressed with less justice by that patient
toiler, Philip of Spain, ‘Time and I against any one else in the world.’
[Sidenote: _Not a mere hereditary aristocracy._]
One source of the Senate’s strength was derived from the fact that it was
never in theory and seldom in practice a mere hereditary aristocracy.
Election to some one of the great offices of the State into which the
kingly power had been divided, Consulship, Praetorship, Quaestorship, was
the door by which entrance was gained into the ‘assembly of Kings’—and
this election in the better days of the Republic implied a certain
amount of popular respect if not of popular favour—but once admitted,
the Senator had his seat practically for life, and needed not to tremble
at every changing wind of popular opinion, lest the withdrawal of the
favour of his constituents should doom him to political annihilation. The
chasm which once separated the Patrician from the Plebeian, and which
made it impossible for the latter to enter the Senate, had been filled
up long before Rome began to play her great part among the nations of
the earth: but it is true that a new aristocracy of consular families,
partly Patrician and partly Plebeian, had arisen on the ruins of the old.
A Terentius Varro, a Marius, a Cicero could by great energy, by military
successes, or by surpassing eloquence, break through into the charmed
circle, but the outcry that was raised at the presumption of such a
_novus homo_ showed that the event was a rare one.
[Sidenote: _The Censorship._]
One institution, however, which modern aristocracies would do well to
copy, tended to save the Senate from the worst perils of a hereditary
oligarchy. To be ruled by a proud nobility which respects itself is
perhaps not pleasant, but it is endurable. But to be ruled by ‘hereditary
legislators’ who do not observe the ordinary decencies of life is an
ignominy too galling to be borne. The power of the _Censor_ to degrade
from his Senatorial office any man who offended against the strict
old-fashioned code of Roman morality, a power which in the best days of
the Republic was wielded with merciless severity and without respect of
persons, must have largely contributed to that moral ascendency of the
Senate which made it for four centuries as supreme in Roman politics as
the House of Commons has been for the last two centuries in the politics
of Britain.
[Sidenote: _The People of Rome._]
(2) The People of Rome, the Quirites, assembled by their centuries,
or their tribes, under an Italian sky, in the Campus Martius or the
Forum—these also had their allotted share in the development of the
greatness of Rome: these formed the strong steadily beating heart,
without which all the accumulated wisdom of the Senate, the brain of
the State, would have been of no avail. Questions of peace and war, and
questions of political reform, were brought before them, generally,
it is true, on the motion of the Senate, but so as to cast the final
responsibility on the people; and during the greater part of the lifetime
of the Republic those solemn trials of political offenders which
correspond most nearly to our own impeachments took place at the bar of
the popular assembly.
[Sidenote: _The Tribunes._]
To guard these rights and to secure the meanest citizen of Rome from
oppression on the part of some haughty aristocrat, the Tribunes of the
Commonalty were called into being, that unique class of magistrates
whose power of ‘intercession’ could bring the whole machinery of the
State to a deadlock, and upon whose ‘sacro-sanct’ persons the proudest
Consul, fresh from victory over the enemies of Rome, might not lay hands
without incurring the penalty of outlawry. The office which the Member
of Parliament has hitherto discharged when he brings the grievance of
a constituent before the House of Commons; the office of redresser of
all wrongs and browbeater of all magistrates, which the Public Press
has of later time arrogated to itself—these offices were for centuries
discharged by the Tribunes of the Commonalty. Upon the whole we may
believe that the Tribunician power was a useful counterpoise to the
immense authority vested in Consuls and Praetors: but it was always a
power which in the hands of a dishonest demagogue might be abused for the
purpose of obstruction. It was always useful only as a brake is useful to
the driver of a railway train; and in the latter days of the Republic
it was a brake suddenly and clumsily applied, by which the Engine of the
State was being continually thrown off the line.
[Sidenote: _Political decline._]
[Sidenote: _B.C. 367-146._]
But, such as they were, these two great depositaries of power, the Senate
and the People, wrought together in reasonable harmony, and upon the
whole for the good of Rome and the fast widening Roman world, during
the two centuries which intervened between the admission of Plebeians
to the Consulate and the Third Punic War. With the fall of Rome’s old
rival, Carthage, a rapid change for the worse manifested itself in the
Roman character. Corruption entered the Senate and brutal violence
disgraced the Assembly of the People. The young Roman politician half
ruined himself over the shows of gladiators and wild beasts that were
to purchase from the commonalty his election to the successive offices
which were the steps in the ladder of his promotion. The mob cheered and
laughed, but the provinces groaned, for out of their plundered cities
and beggared agriculture the Propraetor or Proconsul reckoned to recoup
himself for the heavy entrance-fees which he had paid to gain admission
to the Roman Senate. These abuses became at length too glaring for even
the seared consciences of Roman politicians to endure. Laws against
official extortion, ‘_de repetundis pecuniis_,’ were passed by the
people—a doubtful boon to the provincials, for now the governor robbed
them, not for himself only, but for the rivals and the demagogues whose
silence he had to purchase by bribes. In the train of the governor went
the usurer, lending money at ruinous rates to the provincial to enable
him to pay the clamorous tax-gatherer. Even Brutus, that Puritan among
Roman statesmen, sought to compel the inhabitants of Salamis to pay him
compound interest at the rate of 48 per cent. per annum. Under these
accumulated oppressions the fair countries round the Mediterranean were
fast sinking into misery and despair, the very life-blood being drained
out of them by the insatiable oligarchs of Rome. And during the greater
part of this time, while the Senators were treating the civilised world
as their own private farm, and farming it like a tenant who is under
notice to quit and will get all he can out of the soil, the so-called
People of Rome were every year sinking lower and lower into degradation,
becoming a mere mob of freedmen and foreigners, the collected sewage of
the world. The Constitution—notwithstanding a temporary reaction under
Sulla—was becoming more and more democratic, as the people were becoming
more utterly unworthy to be trusted with power. Armed bands of hired
bravoes fought with one another in the streets of Rome, and on the day of
a hotly-disputed election or the passing of an unpopular law, the statues
in the Forum were splashed with the blood of the slain.
[Sidenote: _Shelley on the decay of Roman freedom._]
I know no words which more vividly bring before our minds the contrast
between the Rome of Cincinnatus and the Rome of Clodius than this verse
from Shelley’s ‘Ode to Liberty’:—
‘Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom, fairest
Like a wolf-cub, from some Cadmean Maenad
She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest[1]
From that Elysian food was yet unweanëd.
And many a deed of terrible uprightness
By thy sweet love was sanctified,
And in thy smile and by thy side
Saintly Camillus lived and firm Atilius[2] died.
But when blood stained thy robe of vestal whiteness,
And gold profaned thy Capitolian throne,
Thou didst desert with spirit-winged lightness
The Senate of the oppressors: they sank prone
Slaves of one tyrant: Palatinus sighed
Faint echoes of Ionian song. That tone
Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown.’
‘Slaves of one tyrant.’ That was the doom, the righteous doom of the
Roman Senate and People. Corruption above and anarchy below had slain
that Public Virtue without which a Republic cannot live: and now the only
hope of the world lay in the uprising of some one man who should save
Rome from herself, and rescue from her Senate and People the provinces
which they had won but could no longer govern.
[Sidenote: _Caesar._]
This necessary work was performed by the man who stands head and
shoulders above all other statesmen, as Isaiah above all other Prophets,
as Shakespeare above all other Dramatists,—the man whose name still
means Emperor to more than a hundred millions of mankind, GAIUS JULIUS
CAESAR. It may be truly said that the further we get away from Caesar
the Dictator, the greater his work appears. Superficial students of
history used to think of it as only lasting for five centuries (yet
five centuries, the interval of time that separates us from Chaucer and
Wycliffe, is not a contemptible interval in a nation’s life): but the
more scientific school of modern historians rightly claim that the work
of Julius Caesar, the organisation of _Imperium Romanum_, outlived not
only the fall of Rome, but the fall of Constantinople also, and was only
destroyed by ‘the bastard Caesar,’ Napoleon, in 1806, if indeed it be
not, in a sense, living still.
[Sidenote: _Theory of the Principate._]
As the various offices of the Republic had been formed chiefly out of
the power of the ancient kings, it might have seemed the obvious course
to recombine them into one, and crown Caesar king. Warned by the murmurs
of the crowd on the day of the Lupercalia, but also doubtless following
his own instinct as a statesman, Julius—and his nephew Augustus after
him—chose a wiser course. The name of Republic should still remain:
S.P.Q.R. should still be inscribed on the banners of the legions, but
the powers of the Republic should all be grasped in a single hand. There
had been Dictators created for special emergencies: Julius would be a
life-long Dictator. Successful generals had been saluted Imperator by
their soldiers on the field of battle: Julius would be emphatically
_the_ Imperator. Grave and reverend men, the fathers of the Senate, had
been hailed with the title _Princeps_: Augustus would now in middle life
be greeted as Princeps. Above all, the Tribunes of the Commonalty had
possessed enormous powers for the prevention of legislation of which
they disapproved, and their persons had been invested with especial
sanctity. Augustus would now gather into himself all the obstructive
powers of the whole College of Tribunes, and his person should be
‘sacro-sanct’ as theirs had been. Special defenders of the Commonalty
were now no longer needed. The new Imperator claimed, and not altogether
without reason, that _he_ was defender of the people, and therefore each
year by a fresh and solemn act he was ‘invested with the Tribunician
power.’
[Sidenote: _A Monarchy under Republican forms._]
[Sidenote: _Deference of the good Emperors to the Senate._]
[Sidenote: _The bad Emperors delighted in degrading it._]
Our own Constitutional monarchy is often called ‘a Republic veiled under
monarchical forms.’ The Empire of the Caesars was just the reverse: an
absolute monarchy veiled under the forms of a Republic. The analogy may
be carried a little further. Just as every really great and patriotic
Prime Minister, under a Constitutional monarchy like ours, veils somewhat
of the power which in fact is his under the forms of deference to the
throne, and does this not in servile adoration for rank, but because
he knows that in the institution of Monarchy there is a fund of latent
power which it were unwise to squander, and which may one day be sorely
needed for the defence of the life of the nation against enemies from
without or from within, even so the greatest and best of the Roman
Emperors, while holding all power in their hands, used that power as
much as possible in harmony with the Senate and in conformity with the
Senate’s advice; and thus, while preserving the prestige of an ancient
and venerable assembly, also retained in the State a force which might
operate as a counterpoise, though a feeble one, should the vast powers of
the Emperor pass into the keeping of a foolish or wicked successor. But
while the good and patriotic Emperors—Augustus, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius,
Claudius Gothicus, Probus—delighted to magnify the moral authority of the
Senate, the weak and dissolute Emperors, maddened by the possession of
absolute power, delighted to trample upon and insult it. Caligula forced
Senators of the highest rank to walk for miles before his chariot, or to
wait upon him at table, each clad in the linen girdle of a slave. Nero
wrung from the loathing Senate a formal approbation of the murder of his
mother, and insisted on 400 of its members performing as gladiators in
the Amphitheatre. And Domitian, according to the well-known story in the
pages of Juvenal, summoned the trembling Conscript Fathers in the dead of
night to deliberate on the best manner of cooking an enormous turbot.
[Sidenote: _The Provinces were the gainers by the Imperial system._]
But though the Senators groaned under the insults and the cruelty of
the bad Emperors (of whom in the first century of the Empire there was
undoubtedly a terrible preponderance over the good ones) there can be
little doubt that for the Empire at large the change to the Imperial
system was an enormous benefit. The populace of Rome had their rations
and their gladiatorial exhibitions (_panem et circenses_) regularly, and
what was more important, the police and the water supply of the great
City were attended to as they had never been before. The provinces were
no longer exposed to the unchecked cupidity of some dissolute aristocrat,
eager to suck them dry during his short term of office and then to hurry
back to play the great game of politics in Rome. Unjust governors, men
like Pontius Pilate and Felix, undoubtedly still bore sway; but at least
they had as a rule a longer term of office, and less need therefore to
drain the province all at once. And the thought of the terrible Caesar
at Rome, who, however cruel and rapacious himself, was generally quick
to punish cruelty and rapacity in others, the dread of hearing, after
a manifestly unjust sentence, the fateful words pronounced, ‘Provoco
ad Caesarem[3],’ kept many a provincial governor, who may have been at
heart no better than Verres or Gabinius, from shearing the helpless sheep
before him as closely as they would have been shorn in the later days of
the Republic. It is one of the commonplaces of history that even Nero
himself was hated only in Rome, and that after his death the story that
he still lived and would one day return and resume the purple, was told
and lovingly cherished in many of the provinces.
[Sidenote: _Chief periods of Imperial history._]
[Sidenote: _I. the Julian Dynasty, 99 years. (B.C. 31-A.D. 68.)_]
[Sidenote: _The Flavian Dynasty, 27 years. (69-96.)_]
[Sidenote: _II. The Antonines, 84 years. (96-180.)_]
The history of the Empire naturally groups itself into periods, each
of about a century in duration. The Julian dynasty, from the battle of
Actium (B.C. 31) to the death of Nero (A.D. 68), fills up ninety-nine
years. We pass lightly over the twenty-seven years of the Flavian
dynasty (69-96), which is in some respects like a copy of the Julian,
Vespasian being a somewhat commonplace Augustus and Domitian a vulgar
Nero, and we come to the great and glorious age of the Antonines[4]. For
eighty-four years (A.D. 96-180) a series of sovereigns, the best, the
wisest and the most statesmanlike that the world has ever seen—Nerva,
Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus, Marcus—sat upon the throne of the world.
What has been already said as to the happiness of the provinces under
the Julian dynasty might be said without any qualification, as far as
the rulers could bring happiness, of the century of Antonine rule. But
according to the trite quotation—
‘How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.’
The course of nature seems as if it had been out of joint during that
otherwise happy century. Destructive earthquakes, wide-wandering
pestilences and grievous famines marked its course; and at the close
of it came that terrible irruption of barbarians from the lands of the
Middle Danube which is known as the Marcomannic War, and which very
nearly brought about the fall of the Roman Empire two centuries too soon.
[Sidenote: _III. The Age of Anarchy, 105 years. (180-285.)_]
[Sidenote: _Debased Coinage._]
The stately and philosophic virtue of the Antonine Emperors led to a
terrible anti-climax—the mad sensuality and cruelty of the bull-necked
Commodus. And now began that terrible third century, in which the great
World-Empire seemed perpetually as if it were on the point of going to
pieces, through its own weakness and corruption, before the barbarians
were ready even to gather up its fragments. It had been discovered ‘that
an emperor could be made elsewhere than in Rome,’ and in every province,
almost in every legionary camp, there was an upstart General eager to
avail himself of this discovery, eager to wrap himself in the purple and
to lay hold of what the Greek historians call ἡ τῶν ὅλων ἀρχή, ‘the rule
of the universe.’ The strongest memory can hardly retain the names of
all the obscure adventurers who thus blossomed into a little temporary
notoriety, and who were murdered by a rival or fell on the field of
battle before their purple had lost the lustre of its newness. Province
thus fighting against province and civil war being the normal condition
of the Empire, the misery and poverty which everywhere prevailed can
hardly be imagined, and are but scantily pourtrayed for us by the
wretched historians of the time. Two things, however, always occur to
my mind as typical of this woeful age—its coinage and its camps. Take a
coin of one of the earlier Emperors, say a bronze sestertius of Domitian,
which lies before me while I write: see the clear bold relief of the
laurel-crowned head, the sharp, well-cut letters of the inscription,
and then compare it with a (so-called) silver denarius of Valerian or
Gallienus—a thin bit of copper with a wash of silver or pewter over it,
and upon it the barbarous effigy of a head wearing a radiated crown and
surrounded by an almost illegible inscription. From a mere glance at the
coins you feel at once that the owner of a sestertius (whose nominal
value was twopence-halfpenny) under Domitian was a richer man than the
owner of a denarius (the equivalent of four sestertii) under Gallienus.
[Sidenote: _Degenerate Architecture._]
And the camps: go to Housesteads or Chesters and see the splendid blocks
of masonry which belong to the age of the Antonines; see the masonry
of a very different and far inferior kind, small and mean and easily
overthrown, which marks the age of Constantine, after the close of the
third century. But in between these two periods of original building and
late repair you may often find a mass of confused _débris_, sometimes
with the marks of fire upon them. That shapeless mound tells the story of
the third century. While every little Tribune or Centurion was coquetting
with the soldiers under his command, relaxing discipline and permitting
plunder, in the hope that they might some morning rush to the Praetorium,
put on him the purple robe and hail him as Imperator, meantime the _Pax
Romana_ was becoming a bitter bye-word over all the Empire, and in our
own country the savage Caledonians were breaking down the barrier of
Hadrian, setting fire to Cilurnum and Borcovicus, swarming across the
Tyne and Tees, and carrying fire and sword far into the heart of Britain.
[Sidenote: _IV. The Age of Restoration, 93 years. (285-378.)_]
The deliverer of the world from this tempest of anarchy and disruption,
the true Second Founder of the Empire was the son of a Dalmatian slave,
Diocletian. As his reign began A.D. 285, as the work of reorganisation
which was commenced by him was continued by Constantine (306-337), and
as the political system thus inaugurated lasted unimpaired till 378, the
date of the battle of Hadrianople, we may call this the fourth century of
the Empire, the period of Restoration.
[Sidenote: _Objects of the Diocletianic reform._]
The great objects aimed at and accomplished by Diocletian were the
increase of the majesty of the Imperial office, the equable diffusion
of defensive power through all parts of the Empire, the welding of a
strong chain of rights and responsibilities which should vibrate from the
Emperor on his throne to the lowest official in the most distant province.
[Sidenote: _Increased veneration for the Imperial dignity._]
(1) The increased majesty of the Emperor’s office. All pretence of his
being only the first citizen in a Republic, only the most eminent member
of the Senate, and so on, was now done away with. The Emperor now wore
on his head a pearl-bordered diadem, on his feet sandals studded with
gems; he was surrounded by a splendid retinue, and the petitioner who
approached him—though he were a member of one of the proudest families
in the Roman Senate—had to prostrate himself on the ground and _adore_
the Imperial Majesty. Thus at length the Roman Imperator stood fully
revealed, a monarch as haughty and as absolute as Darius or Sapor. In all
this, censorious critics traced the overweening pride of the Dalmatian
slave’s son exalted to the pinnacle of earthly greatness: yet it is
probable that policy had as much share as pride in the self-exaltation
of Diocletian. During the long troubles of the third century, when every
legion was making and unmaking Emperors, the highest office in the
State had lost all dignity and all prestige: and if it was really to
recover itself and become, as Diocletian would have it, the true centre
of gravity of the State, it was necessary that it should once again
seem awful and majestic. The same statesmanlike spirit which dictated
to Augustus the suppression of the visible signs of regal magnificence,
suggested to Diocletian their multiplication and embellishment.
[Sidenote: _Division of labour._]
(2) It had become manifest to a statesman’s eye that the vast Roman world
could no longer be ruled from Rome alone. On the Rhine, on the Danube,
on the Euphrates, strong armies were required to guard the frontiers:
yet it was precisely from these armies, strangers to the Imperial city
and to the person of the legitimate Augustus, that the brood of usurpers
and tyrants, claimants for the Imperial purple, was being perpetually
recruited. Diocletian now carved out the Roman Empire into four great
Prefectures, each large enough to satisfy the ambition of a Charles V or
a Louis XIV, and gave to each of these Prefectures its own court, its own
capital, its own elaborately organised official hierarchy.
[Sidenote: _The four Prefectures._]
I. ‘The Gauls,’ comprising Britain, Gaul, Spain, and part of Morocco,
and reaching from the Firth of Clyde to Mount Atlas, had its centre of
government at Augusta Trevirorum (Trier on the Moselle).
II. ‘Italy,’ comprising Raetia, Italy, Sicily, and the wealthy provinces
of Africa, was still in theory governed from Rome; but practically its
Emperor during the whole of the fourth century was generally resident at
Mediolanum (Milan).
III. Illyricum, the smallest of the four Prefectures, included the
provinces of the Middle Danube, the western portion of the country lately
known as Turkey in Europe, and Greece. Sirmium on the Save was generally
the residence of its Emperor.
IV. All the rest of the Empire formed the rich and important Prefecture
of the East (Oriens). Its Emperor for the most part resided at Antioch,
from whence he watched the ever menacing attitude of the Sassanid kings
of Persia.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _Transmission of the Imperial power._]
[Sidenote: _Abdication of Diocletian, 305._]
[Sidenote: _Death of Constantius. Elevation of Constantine, 25 July,
306._]