Diocletian, provided not only for the exercise but also for the
transmission of power. The adoptive system, which had given to the Empire
all the noblest sovereigns of the Antonine period, was to be revived in
all its vigour. Two Emperors ruling as Augusti were to adopt two younger
colleagues as their sons, who were to bear the humbler title of Caesar,
and were to administer those Prefectures in which the danger of war was
the keenest, and the labour of ruling the most severe. As in the course
of nature the two senior partners, the Augusti, moved off the scene,
the Caesars were to take their place and adopt two new Caesars to ease
them of their burden, and one day inherit their dignity. An elaborate
and ingenious scheme, and one which might conceivably have preserved
the Empire from civil war at least for two or three generations, but
which in fact was broken to pieces by that longing after the hereditary
transmission of power and wealth which is one of the deepest instincts of
humanity. Diocletian and Maximian (a brave, uncultivated soldier) were
the two first Augusti: Constantius and Galerius the two first Caesars.
After a prosperous reign of twenty years, enfeebled health and perhaps a
desire to see with his own eyes the success of his great design, induced
Diocletian voluntarily to resign the purple, and Maximian, who had no
such philosophical inclinations and who was still in the lusty vigour
of middle life, was compelled to follow the example of his patron. Thus
did Constantius and Galerius become the two new Augusti, but Galerius,
who was the son-in-law and special confidant of Diocletian, had the
choice of the two new Caesars, and chose a nephew and a dependent of
his own, Maximin Daza and Severus, neither of them really fitted for
‘the rule of all things.’ Constantius, a man of mild and gentle temper,
away in distant Britain and already smitten by disease, acquiesced in
the nominations of his self-seeking partner; but the offspring and the
soldiers of Constantius rebelled against an arrangement so one-sided
and inequitable. Constantine, the brave young son of Constantius by his
concubine Helena, now in his thirty-second year, was at Nicomedia in
Bithynia when Diocletian’s abdication threw the direction of the affairs
of the Imperial partnership into the hands of Galerius, who viewed
him with no friendly eye, and would fain have kept him in honourable
captivity in Asia. Repeated letters from his colleague Constantius
at length wrung from him the required permission for the young man’s
departure, and Constantine, according to a well-known story, starting
on the long journey across Thrace by the Danube and the Rhine, caused
the horses at the first few Imperial post-stations to be hamstrung, in
order to prevent any courier from overtaking him with a revocation of
the order. He reached York in safety; he made a successful campaign in
Caledonia under his father’s auspices, and when that father returned to
York to die, the legionaries, led by a Teutonic chief Crocus, king of the
Alamanni, who held high command among them, insisted with one voice, that
the diadem and the purple of the deceased Emperor should adorn his noble
son, and that whatever the new-fangled constitution of Diocletian might
prescribe, his title should be not Caesar but Augustus. Of the myriads
of travellers who hurry to and fro through the magnificent railway
station of York, how few find time to visit the admirable museum of Roman
antiquities which is within a few hundred yards of the station, to gaze
upon the ‘multangular tower’ with its courses of square Roman bricks,
and in thought to retrace the history of York, Eoforwic, Eboracum, up to
that day when the shouting soldiery, enraptured with the donative which
each man had received, acclaimed the young hero ‘Constantine Imperator
tu vincas.’ Strange is it to reflect that then what we call ‘the Eternal
Eastern Question’ had no existence, since he who was to give his name to
Constantinople was only setting his foot on the first rung of the ladder
of power, and the Bosphorus, with the inconsiderable city of Byzantium on
its shores, was still a silent and solitary water-way, while Eboracum was
making and unmaking Emperors.
[Sidenote: _Confusion and Civil War._]
[Sidenote: _Suicide of Diocletian, 313._]
By the elevation of Constantine to the Imperial dignity—an elevation
which Galerius found himself eventually forced to consent to—the whole
of Diocletian’s elaborate scheme of adoption, partnership and succession
was shattered into atoms. The son of Maximian, Maxentius, followed the
example of the son of Constantius and declared himself Augustus. Then
old Maximian himself resumed the purple. In the year 308 there were six
Emperors reigning at once, all styling themselves Augusti. Civil war in
such conditions as these became the chronic condition of the Empire. The
fable of the armed men who sprang from the dragon’s teeth sown by Cadmus,
and who fought with one another all the long summer’s day till only five
were left, became a terrible truth. Such was the scene, such the utter
failure of his grand project for promoting the peace of the Empire upon
which the weary eyes of Diocletian closed, when, seeking refuge in death
from the indignities which his young successors would have put upon him,
he passed away from earth in his stately palace by the Adriatic, that
palace which in the Middle Ages became a city[5].
[Sidenote: _Constantine and Licinius, 315._]
[Sidenote: _Constantine sole ruler, 323._]
Of the dragon’s brood of combatants, at the time of the death of
Diocletian only two were left, Constantine in the West and Licinius in
the East. A short civil war was terminated by an apparent reconciliation
between the two kinsmen (Licinius had married the sister of Constantine),
and for eight years Licinius seemed to be satisfied with an arrangement
which left him only the Eastern quarter of the Roman world, while the
Gauls, Italy and Illyricum obeyed his more fortunate and far abler rival.
But
‘Never could true reconcilement grow,
Where wounds of deadly hate had pierced so deep.’
The terrible loneliness of those who climb to the high places of power,
their incapacity of tolerating a rival near the throne produced the usual
results, and in 323 the second civil war broke out. Over land and sea
the two mighty storm-clouds moved with terrific momentum against one
another. Thirty-four thousand men fell on the hardly-contested field of
Hadrianople. Crispus, the brave young son of Constantine, forced the
passage of the Dardanelles and laid siege to Byzantium. The final battle
was fought in September, 323, at Chrysopolis in Bithynia. Licinius was
defeated after a most bloody encounter, in which 25,000 of his followers
were slain. He implored and seemed to receive the pardon of his ‘Emperor
and Master’ Constantine, but in the following year, on some suspicion of
conspiracy, was put to death. Seventeen years after his being proclaimed
at York, Constantine was sole and absolute master of the Roman world.
[Sidenote: _Christianity and the Empire. (303-313.)_]
The generation which witnessed the break-down of Diocletian’s scheme of
adoptive succession witnessed also the final triumph of Christianity
over its persecutors. By a somewhat undeserved fate, the name of the
great restorer of the Empire has been handed down to after ages as that
of the fiercest and most cruel of the oppressors of the Church. The
persecution of the Christians which was commenced under Diocletian, and
which continued, with some intermission, for the two last years of his
reign and till the eighth year after his abdication, was not apparently
originated by him, but by his younger and infinitely less statesmanlike
colleague Galerius, who obtained the sanction indeed, but not the hearty
co-operation of the aged and now valetudinarian Emperor. Still it must
be admitted that Diocletian, though no fanatical adorer of the Olympian
gods, believed in the necessity, on political grounds, of one great and
relentless struggle for the suppression of the ‘new and illicit religion’
which had grown up in the bosom of the Roman State, and which, as all men
of clear insight perceived, must either conquer it or be conquered by it.
[Sidenote: _Constantine’s attitude towards Christianity._]
The same purely political instinct which made Diocletian persecute,
led Constantine to foster and favour the Christian Church. Could we
penetrate the secrets of the hearts of these two men, we might find
that their religious convictions were not very dissimilar. Both were
probably at heart Monotheists, both had that belief in a just and
overruling Providence, which comes to most men who are in authority, and
who, seeing the endless labour and contrivance which is needed in an
earthly ruler to keep his world in any degree of order and peace, cannot
easily persuade themselves that the whole of this fair system of things
which we see around us came by chance. It may be doubted whether, in
his heart of hearts, Diocletian went much beyond this position in his
worship of Jupiter, or Constantine—at any rate till near the close of
his life—in his belief in Christ. But the younger Emperor saw clearly
that no fresh attempt to extirpate Christianity by force could succeed
when Diocletian had failed; that the new religion made of its votaries
not only better men, but, upon the whole, better citizens and more loyal
subjects; that it possessed a force which, wisely guided, might be used
for the preservation and not for the disruption of the Empire; above all,
that the zealous partisanship of Christian bishops and priests would
be a far more valuable ally to him in the desperate strife with his
competitors—first with Maxentius and then with Licinius—than the languid
half-hearted acquiescence of the Pagans in the religion which was a
fashion rather than a faith, handed down to them from their forefathers.
Thus, then, the alliance of Constantine with the Christian Church was
formed, that alliance of which the imposing Council of Nicaea, consisting
of 318 bishops, presided over by the great Augustus himself, glorious
in purple and gold, was the most conspicuous seal and symbol. But though
Constantine fostered, and, if I may so say, petted the Christian Church,
he did not bring about that complete and intimate union of the State and
the Church which was to be the distinguishing mark of the later, and
pre-eminently of the Eastern Empire. Christian ideas indeed coloured
much of his legislation. An edict was passed for the observance of ‘the
Saviour’s day, the day of Light and of the Sun;’ and the soldiers, even
those who did not profess Christianity, were enjoined to meet on that day
in some open space near the city in which they were quartered and to lift
up their hands to heaven thanking God for past victories, and imploring
Him long to preserve in safety and triumph their Emperor Constantine
and his pious sons. Every attempt to compel Christians to be present
at idolatrous sacrifices was rigorously forbidden. The more licentious
of the heathen orgies were forcibly suppressed. Many idol temples were
thrown open to the gaze of the vulgar, and some were stripped of their
treasures and their revenues for the benefit of the Imperial Treasury.
Still there was no formal renunciation of the worship of the gods of the
Capitol—no formal recognition of Christianity as _the_ religion of the
Empire. The temples, though in some cases robbed of their gold and silver
ornaments, remained standing; nay, even in the new and Christian capital,
in Constantinople itself, new temples were erected, of course not
without the Emperor’s cognisance, to Rhea, to the Great Twin Brethren,
to the Fortune of the New Rome.
[Sidenote: _Religious policy of Constantine’s successors._]
Two generations passed after the foundation of Constantinople, during
which the relation of the Empire to the Christian Church was the central
question of all politics. These were the years during which the strife
between Athanasian and Arian was being waged in all its bitterness, and
the influence of Constantius, the survivor of the sons of Constantine,
and eventually the sole ruler of the Roman Empire, was thrown with
passionate earnestness on the side of the Arians, on whose behalf he
exerted a severity which sometimes amounted to actual persecution of
their opponents. Then came the short and fruitless attempt of Julian
to restore the worship of the old gods. After his death followed some
further struggles with Arianism, which could again boast the protection
of an Eastern Emperor[6]. All these events tended to bring the
supreme civil power more and more deeply into the innermost circle of
ecclesiastical politics. Men’s minds became familiarised with the idea of
one supreme and triumphant form of the Christian faith, professed by the
Emperor, inscribed on the forefront of the State, and rigorously imposed
on all citizens as an essential condition of their citizenship. This
consummation was reached under that Emperor whose fortunes I shall before
long have to describe to you, under Theodosius, who proclaimed the final
triumph of the Athanasian faith, commanded all his subjects to adhere
to it, prohibited the meetings of heretics, destroyed the temples of the
gods, and made orthodox Christianity, what it continued for more than a
thousand years, the State religion of the Roman Empire.
LECTURE II.
THE ROMAN AND THE TEUTON.
_Comparison of the Political and Social Condition of the Empire and its
German Neighbours._
§ 1. THE ROMAN.
Before I proceed to describe the collision between the Roman Empire and
its Northern neighbours, I wish to sketch, in rapid outline, the chief
features of the political and social condition of these two worlds, so
close to one another in geographical position, so far removed from one
another in the stages of their respective development.
[Sidenote: _The Imperial Majesty._]
We saw something in the last lecture of the process by which the Roman
Augustus had grown to be what he was, the man with the mightiest
opportunities for good or for evil of any on the surface of our planet.
Let us now look for a few minutes at the outward presentation of this
greatness to the eyes of his subjects. If we enter the Imperial palace
and pass the first veil which guards the ante-chamber of the sovereign
we find ourselves at length before a second veil, in front of which
are watching thirty _Silentiarii_ in brightly burnished helmet and
breastplate, defending the ‘Silence’ of the innermost sanctuary from any
rude intrusion. Without the favour of some ‘illustrious’ functionary
there would be for us but little hope of entrance into that august
seclusion: but we who have travelled back over fifteen centuries of time
can push aside the spectral _Silentiarius_ who would forbid our entrance,
and can gaze, without the humiliating ceremony of prostration (exacted
from all his contemporary subjects), upon the face and figure of the
dread Augustus. He has perhaps just returned from the amphitheatre, and
wears therefore the full robes of royalty in which he displays himself on
state occasions to his subjects. On his head is the diadem, a broad white
band studded with two rows of pearls, and with an emerald or a carbuncle
blazing in the centre. Jewelled ear-rings hang down on either side of his
face. Over his shoulders is hung a purple robe, richly embroidered with
gold, similar to the _vestis picta_ which a conquering general used to
wear in old times when he was drawn in triumph to the Capitol. The use of
that purple colour is now jealously reserved to the Emperor himself, the
members of the Imperial family, the Consuls, and a few of the most highly
placed officers of state. For any ordinary subject to wear it would be
an act of _laesa majestas_ (high treason). More than once has a Roman
citizen lost his life, simply because a purple robe has been found in his
possession. Upon his feet the Emperor wears sandals of the same purple
dye, and these also are richly studded with jewels.
In the midst of all this pomp, though sleek eunuchs and brilliantly
dressed pages are moving obsequiously through the chamber, eager to
anticipate the slightest wish of their master, the Lord of the Universe
does not present the outward show of happiness. There is a look of
weariness and anxiety in his face, dark lines under his eyes; languor and
satiety in the very tones of his voice. Though there are some exceptions
to the rule, the Augustus, since the changes introduced by Diocletian,
leads generally an indoor life, unfavourable to health. He does not take
those long and varied journeys which filled up the life of Hadrian: he
does not, except in dire necessity, march at the head of his troops like
Trajan: he does not even drive chariots and contend for prizes in the
theatre like Nero. He has now to keep himself aloof from his subjects
in dignified seclusion: his chief business in life is to be worshipped:
and the life of an idol must, as it seems to us, be always a tedious
life. The one thing that varies the monotony of the slowly-pacing days
is fear—that fear which, even under this new and more settled order of
things, no Emperor can wholly banish from his mind—that in some camp of
misty Britain, or by the mob of some Syrian city, a rival Augustus may
be suddenly acclaimed, and that it may be necessary to struggle not for
dominion only but for bare life against the desperate antagonist.
[Sidenote: _Deification of the Emperor._]
The being who dwelt in this stately seclusion was not only raised to the
ranks of the gods after his death (‘_Divus_’ being the regular official
prefix of the name of a deceased Emperor): he was occasionally even
addressed as ‘_Deus Noster_,’ ‘our God,’ during his life. ‘_Dominus
Noster_,’ ‘our Lord’ or ‘our Master,’ was, however, his more usual
title, this appellation which the modesty of Augustus had waived (since,
as he said, it implied that those who used it were his slaves) having
been freely accepted, and then jealously claimed, by his successors of
the Lower Empire. Everything belonging to the Emperor was habitually,
and without any trace of irony, spoken of as ‘Sacred.’ The ‘sacred
bedchamber’ meant the Emperor’s bedroom: the ‘sacred largesses,’ the
Imperial subscription-list. ‘Our Mildness,’ ‘our Tranquillity,’ ‘our
Clemency,’ are the terms which the Emperors generally use when they
are speaking of themselves, though occasionally we find an Emperor
soaring even to higher regions of august self-contemplation and speaking
of himself as ‘my Eternity[7].’ This reverential mode of speaking of
the Emperor’s dignity by no means disappeared with the adoption of
Christianity. A writer on military affairs, who was probably contemporary
with Theodosius[8], says of the oath taken by the army: ‘The soldiers
swear by God and Christ and the Holy Spirit, and by the Majesty of
the Emperor, which, according to the will of God, is to be loved and
worshipped by the human race. For when the Emperor has received the name
of Augustus, faithful devotion is to be rendered, life-long service is
to be paid, to him as to God present in a human body[9]. For that man,
whether soldier or civilian, serves God who faithfully loves him who
reigns by God’s ordinance.’
[Sidenote: _The Imperial Consistory._]
In one of the apartments of the palace was assembled the _Consistory_ of
the Emperor, a body somewhat resembling our Privy Council, and consisting
of all the highest officials of the State. From this Consistory now went
forth all laws, addressed in the Emperor’s name to some great functionary
charged to see to their execution. Here, too, were announced the names
of those persons whom the Emperor nominated to the highest places in the
civil and military service. All this legislative and administrative work,
which in the days of the Republic had required the concurrence of the
Senate and People of Rome, and a large share of which had been left even
by Augustus and Tiberius to the Senate, was now done by the mere _fiat_
of the Emperor; and only slight traces of even a theoretical right of
confirmation by the Senate, none at all of such a right of confirmation
by the People, seem to have been preserved.
[Sidenote: _Three classes in the Imperial hierarchy._]
The officials, civil and military, by whom the work of ruling the vast
Roman Empire was carried on, were divided into three great classes:—
1. The _Illustres_, nearly corresponding to our Cabinet Ministers and
Commander-in-Chief.
2. The _Spectabiles_, whose rank was not unlike that of our Privy
Councillors, and who included most of the governors of provinces and
military officers of rank.
3. The _Clarissimi_. This title was given to all Senators, and was also
shared by some of the governors of provinces of inferior rank, and
subordinate commissioned officers.
[Sidenote: _The Notitia._]
The various degrees and orders of this great official hierarchy were
accurately described in a treatise called the _Notitia Utriusque
Imperii_, which, there is some reason to think, was written up by
each Emperor afresh on his accession to the throne. This document is
illustrated by somewhat grotesque pictures, emblematic of the contents
of the various chapters, which may have been drawn by the unskilful
fingers of the Imperial scribe. The copies of the _Notitia_ which we
possess describe the state of things existing about the beginning of the
fifth century, and bring before us in a wonderful manner the various
and skilfully contrived channels by which, in theory at least, the
great Imperial power flowed down to, and was brought in contact with,
the meanest of its subjects. The first chapter enumerates all the chief
officers of the Eastern Empire. The second takes up the office of the
PRAETORIAN PREFECT, greatest of all the Illustres, a man who, after his
office had undergone great mutations, had at length become, so to speak,
the Grand Vizier of the Emperor, his _alter ego_ and vicegerent, the
official who took as much as possible of the drudgery of ruling off the
shoulders of a monarch, who, if ill-disposed, wanted to take his fill of
luxury and sensual enjoyment, or if earnest to perform the duties of his
station, was generally busy on the frontier, warring with the barbarians.
Though the scheme of Diocletian for ‘adoptive succession, and
partnership’ had broken down, his skilful division of the vast spaces of
the Empire still endured, and each one of the four Prefectures founded by
him was still under the rule of its own special Praetorian Prefect. This
second chapter, then, of the _Notitia_ describes the various provincial
governors, who are, in its phrase, ‘under the disposition’ of the
Illustrious Praetorian Prefect of the East. Then follows an enumeration
of the official staff—the registrars, the shorthand-writers, the
process-servers, the beadles, the gaolers who were employed in the court
of the Praetorian Prefect, himself not merely a great Minister of State,
but also the highest Judge of Appeal, Premier, and Lord Chancellor in one.
[Sidenote: _Magister Militiae._]
[Sidenote: _Probable size of the Imperial army._]
Another chapter of the _Notitia_ gives the emblems of the dignity of
the Illustrious MASTER OF THE SOLDIERY in the East, and enumerates
the various legions which were under his disposition. And here we are
brought face to face with the interesting question, What was the size
of the Roman army at the time when its greatest struggle with the
barbarians began? Unfortunately the _Notitia_, though it gives us much
detailed information as to the disposition of various bodies of infantry
and cavalry, does not enable us to give a definite answer to this
question; and unfortunately also an impression has been produced, one
can hardly tell how, that by this time the Legion, the well-known unit
of computation in the Roman army, had been formally reduced from its old
strength of 6100 men to about 1000. Of course this suggestion throws
all calculations as to the size of the army, derived from the number of
legions contained in it, into confusion. But as no proof of this formal
reduction of the legion has yet been offered, I prefer to take it at its
old valuation: and so doing, I come to the conclusion that the Roman army
at the end of the fourth century consisted on paper of at least 950,000
men[10]. To deduce from this its actual effective strength can be only
a matter of conjecture; but my conjecture would be that fully one-half
of the above number, or 475,000 men, were at that time serving under the
banners of the Empire[11].
[Sidenote: _Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi._]
If I am not wearying you, we will turn over a few more pages of this
wonderful handbook, which I have often in my own mind compared to a
_Whitaker’s Almanack_ and an _Army List_ for the fifth century after
Christ, bound up together. Even that comparison hardly does justice to
the _Notitia_. I doubt if we have any book which in our own country shows
so clearly and so concisely the relations of the various departments of
our State to one another (for instance, of the Exchequer to the Treasury,
or of the Privy Council to the Poor Law Board) as this treatise shows
the functions of the great officers of the Roman State and the classes
of civil servants over whom they bore sway. After the Master of the
Soldiery, that is, the Commander-in-Chief, we come to the Illustrious
Grand Chamberlain, or, as he was called in the high-flown language of
the Court, the SUPERINTENDENT OF THE SACRED CUBICLE. Our MSS. of the
_Notitia_ are defective in the chapters relating to this magnificent
personage, but we know from other sources that he ruled over an army of
pages, scullions, keepers of the wardrobe, grooms of the bedchamber, and
the like, and that the thirty gleaming _Silentiarii_ who watched outside
the purple veil took their orders from him.
[Sidenote: _Magister Officiorum_.]
The Illustrious MASTER OF THE OFFICES is next described. In a quaint
picture are represented the emblems of his rank, a table with the
likeness of the Emperor standing upon it, and underneath shields,
spears, greaves and helmets. We learn from the text that the arsenals
of the Empire, the Postal Service, the four great bureaux[12] which
were responsible for the Imperial correspondence and for receiving and
answering petitions, the swarm of King’s Messengers (as they would now
be called) or _Agentes in Rebus_, who rode up and down through the
provinces, executing the orders of the Sovereign, were all under the
disposition of this hard-worked and useful functionary.
[Sidenote: _Quaestor._]