Cappadocia, and afterwards condemned to a still more remote prison at
Pityus on the Euxine. He died on his way thither, leaving a wonderful
reputation for patience and cheerfulness under affliction. This
fifth-century Becket was well-nigh the only patriarch of Constantinople
who ever fell out with the imperial Court on a question of morals as
distinguished from dogma. Chrysostom’s quarrel was with the luxury,
insolence, and frivolity of the Empress and her Court; no real
ecclesiastical question was involved in his deposition, for the charges
against him were mere pretexts to cover the hatred of his disloyal clergy
and the revenge of the insulted Aelia Eudoxia. [A.D. 407.]
V. THE REORGANIZATION OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE. (A.D. 408-518.)
The feeble and inert Arcadius died in A.D. 408, at the early age of
thirty-one; his imperious consort had preceded him to the grave, and the
empire of the East was left to Theodosius II., a child of seven years,
their only son. There was hardly an instance in Roman history of a minor
succeeding quietly to his father’s throne. An ambitious relative or a
disloyal general had habitually supplanted the helpless heir. But the
ministers of Arcadius were exceptionally virtuous or exceptionally
destitute of ambition. The little emperor was duly crowned, and the
administration of the East undertaken in his name by the able Anthemius,
who held the office of Praetorian Praefect. History relates nothing but
good of this minister; he made a wise commercial treaty with the king of
Persia; he repelled with ease a Hunnish invasion of Moesia; he built a
flotilla on the Danube, where Roman warships had not been seen since the
death of Valens, forty years before; he reorganized the corn supply of
Constantinople; and did much to get back into order and cultivation the
desolated north-western lands of the Balkan Peninsula, from which Alaric
and his Visigothic hordes had now taken their final departure. The empire
was still more indebted to him for bringing up the young Theodosius as an
honest and god-fearing man. The palace under Anthemius’ rule was the
school of the virtues: the lives of the emperor and his three sisters,
Pulcheria, Arcadia, and Marina, were the model and the marvel of their
subjects. Theodosius inherited the piety and honesty of his grandfather
and namesake, but was a youth of slender capacity, though he took some
interest in literature, and was renowned for his beautiful penmanship. His
eldest sister, Pulcheria, was the ruling spirit of the family, and
possessed unlimited influence over him, though she was but two years his
senior. When Anthemius died in A.D. 414, she took the title of Augusta,
and assumed the regency of the East. Pulcheria was an extraordinary woman:
on gathering up the reins of power she took a vow of chastity, and lived
as a crowned nun for thirty-six years; her fear had been that, if she
married, her husband might cherish ambitious schemes against her brother’s
crown; she therefore kept single herself and persuaded her sisters to make
a similar vow. Austere, indefatigable, and unselfish, she proved equal to
ruling the realms of the East with success, though no woman had ever made
the attempt before.
When Theodosius came of age he refused to remove his sister from power,
and treated her as his colleague and equal. By her advice he married in
A.D. 421, the year that he came of age, the beautiful and accomplished
Athenaïs, daughter of the philosopher Leontius. The emperor’s chosen
spouse had been brought up as a pagan, but was converted before her
marriage, and baptized by the name of Eudocia. She displayed her literary
tastes in writing religious poetry, which had some merit, according to the
critics of the succeeding age. The austere Pulcheria—always immersed in
state business or occupied in religious observances—found herself ere long
ill at ease in the company of the lively, beautiful, and volatile literary
lady whom she had chosen as sister-in-law. If Theodosius had been less
easy-going and good-hearted he must have sent away either his sister or
his wife, but he long contrived to dwell affectionately with both, though
their bickerings were unending. After many years of married life, however,
a final quarrel came, and the empress retired to spend the last years of
her life in seclusion at Jerusalem. The cause of her exile is not really
known: we have only a wild story concerning it, which finds an exact
parallel in one of the tales of the “Arabian Nights.”
“The emperor,” so runs the tale, “was one day met by a peasant who
presented him with a Phrygian apple of enormous size, so that the
whole Court marvelled at it. And he gave the man a hundred and
fifty gold pieces in reward, and sent the apple to the Empress
Eudocia. But she sent it as a present to Paulinus, the ‘Master of
the Offices,’ because he was a friend of the emperor. But
Paulinus, not knowing the history of the apple, took it and gave
it to the emperor as he reëntered the Palace. And Theodosius
having received it, recognized it and concealed it, and called his
wife and questioned her, saying, ‘Where is the apple that I sent
you?’ She answered, ‘I have eaten it.’ Then he bade her swear by
his salvation the truth, whether she had eaten it or sent it to
some one. And Eudocia swore that she had sent it to no man, but
had herself eaten it. Then the emperor showed her the apple, and
was exceedingly wrath, suspecting that she was enamoured of
Paulinus, and had sent it to him as a love-gift; for he was a very
handsome man. And on this account he put Paulinus to death, but he
permitted Eudocia to go to the Holy Places to pray. And she went
down from Constantinople to Jerusalem, and dwelt there all her
days.”
That Paulinus was executed, and that Eudocia spent her last years of
retirement in Palestine, we know for certain. All the rest of the story is
in reality hidden from us. The chief improbability of the tale is that
Eudocia had reached the age of forty when the breach between her and her
husband took place, and that Paulinus was also an official of mature
years.
Theodosius’ long reign passed by in comparative quiet. Its only serious
troubles were a short war with the Persians, and a longer one with Attila,
the great king of the Huns, whose empire now stretched over all the lands
north of the Black Sea and Danube, where the Goths had once dwelt. In this
struggle the Roman armies were almost invariably unfortunate. The Huns
ravaged the country as far as Adrianople and Philippopolis, and had to be
bought off by the annual payment of 700 lbs. of gold [£31,000]. It is true
that they fell on Theodosius while his main force was engaged on the
Persian frontier, but the constant ill-success of the imperial generals
seems to show that the armies of the East had never been properly
reorganized since the military system of Theodosius I. had been broken up
by the revolt of Gainas forty years before. His grandson had neither a
trustworthy body of German auxiliaries nor a sufficiently large native
levy of born subjects of the empire to protect his borders.
[Illustration]
Angel Of Victory. (_From a Fifth-century Diptych._) _Reproduced from
"L’Art Byzantin." Par Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883._
The reconstruction of the Roman military forces was reserved for the
successors of Theodosius II. He himself was killed by a fall from his
horse in 450 A.D., leaving an only daughter, who was married to her cousin
Valentinian III., Emperor of the West. Theodosius, with great wisdom, had
designated as his successor, not his young-son-in-law, a cruel and
profligate prince, but his sister Pulcheria, who at the same time ended
her vow of celibacy and married Marcianus, a veteran soldier and a
prominent member of the Senate. The marriage was but formal, for both were
now well advanced in years: as a political expedient it was all that could
be desired. The empire had peace and prosperity under their rule, and
freed itself from the ignominious tribute to the Huns. Before Attila died
in 452, he had met and been checked by the succours which Marcianus sent
to the distressed Romans of the West.
When Marcianus and Pulcheria passed away, the empire came into the hands
of a series of three men of ability. They were all bred as high civil
officials, not as generals; all ascended the throne at a ripe age; not one
of them won his crown by arms, all were peaceably designated either by
their predecessors, or by the Senate and army. These princes were Leo I.
(457-474), Zeno (474-491), Anastasius (491-518). Their chief merit was
that they guided the Roman Empire in the East safely through the stormy
times which saw its extinction in the West. While, beyond the Adriatic,
province after province was being lopped off and formed into a new
Germanic kingdom, the emperors who reigned at Constantinople kept a tight
grip on the Balkan Peninsula and on Asia, and succeeded in maintaining
their realm absolutely intact. Both East and West were equally exposed to
the barbarian in the fifth century, and the difference of their fate came
from the character of their rulers, not from the diversity of their
political conditions. In the West, after the extinction of the house of
Theodosius (455 A.D.), the emperors were ephemeral puppets, made and
unmade by the generals of their armies, who were invariably Germans. The
two _Magistri militum_, Ricimer and Gundovald—one Suabian, the other
Burgundian by birth—deposed or slew no less than five of their nominal
masters in seventeen years. In the East, on the other hand, it was the
emperors who destroyed one after another the ambitious generals, who, by
arms or intrigue, threatened their throne.
While this comparison bears witness to the personal ability of the three
emperors who ruled at Constantinople between A.D. 457 and A.D. 518, it is
only fair to remember they were greatly helped by the fact that the German
element in their armies had never reached the pitch of power to which it
had attained in the West; the suppression of Gainas forty years before had
saved them from that danger. But unruly and aspiring generals were not
wanting in the East; the greatest danger of Leo I. was the conspiracy of
the great _Magister militum_ Aspar, whom he detected and slew when he was
on the eve of rebelling. Zeno was once chased out of his capital by
rebels, and twice vexed by dangerous risings in Asia Minor, but on each
occasion he triumphed over his adversaries, and celebrated his victory by
the execution of the leaders of the revolt. Anastasius was vexed for
several years by the raids of a certain Count Vitalian, who ranged over
the Thracian provinces with armies recruited from the barbarians beyond
the Danube. But, in spite of all these rebellions, the empire was never in
serious danger of sinking into disorder or breaking up, as the Western
realm had done, into new un-Roman kingdoms. So far was it from this fate,
that Anastasius left his successor, when he died in A.D. 518, a loyal army
of 150,000 men, a treasure of 320,000 lbs. of gold, and an unbroken
frontier to East and West.
The main secret of the success of the emperors of the fifth century in
holding their own came from the fact that they had reorganized their
armies, and filled them up with native troops in great numbers. Leo I. was
the first ruler who utilized the military virtues of the Isaurians, or
mountain populations of Southern Asia Minor. He added several regiments of
them to the army of the East, but it was his son-in-law and successor,
Zeno, himself an Isaurian born, who developed the scheme. He raised an
imperial guard from his countrymen, and enlisted as many corps of them as
could be raised; moreover, he formed regiments of Armenians and other
inhabitants of the Roman frontier of the East, and handed over to his
successor, Anastasius, an army in which the barbarian auxiliaries—now
composed of Teutons and Huns in about equal numbers—were decidedly
dominated by the native elements.
The last danger which the Eastern Empire was to experience from the hands
of the Germans fell into the reign of Zeno. The Ostrogoths had submitted
to the Huns ninety years before, when their brethren the Visigoths fled
into Roman territory, in the reign of Valens. But when the Hunnish Empire
broke up at the death of Attila [A.D. 452], the Ostrogoths freed
themselves, and replaced their late masters as the main danger on the
Danube. The bulk of them streamed south-westward, and settled in Pannonia,
the border-province of the Western Empire, on the frontier of the
East-Roman districts of Dacia and Moesia. They soon fell out with Zeno,
and two Ostrogothic chiefs, Theodoric, the son of Theodemir, and
Theodoric, the son of Triarius, were the scourges of the Balkan Peninsula
for more than twenty years. While the bulk of their tribesmen settled down
on the banks of the Save and Mid-Danube, the two Theodorics harried the
whole of Macedonia and Moesia by never-ending raids. Zeno tried to turn
them against each other, offering first to the one, then to the other, the
title of _Magister militum_, and a large pension. But now—as in the time
of Alaric and Stilicho—it was seen that “dog will not eat dog”; the two
Theodorics, after quarrelling for a while, banded themselves together
against Zeno. The story of their reconciliation is curious.
Theodoric, the son of Theodemir, the ally of Rome for the moment, had
surrounded his rival on a rocky hill in a defile of the Balkans. While
they lay opposite each other, Theodoric, the son of Triarius [he is
usually known as Theodoric the One-Eyed], rode down to his enemy’s lines
and called to him, “Madman, betrayer of your race, do you not see that the
Roman plan is always to destroy Goths by Goths? Whichever of us fails,
they, not we, will be the stronger. They never give you real help, but
send you out against me to perish here in the Desert.” Then all the Goths
cried out, “The One-Eyed is right. These men are Goths like ourselves.” So
the two Theodorics made peace, and Zeno had to cope with them both at once
[A.D. 479]. Two years later Theodoric the One-Eyed was slain by
accident—his horse flung him, as he mounted, against a spear fixed by the
door of his tent—but his namesake continued a thorn in the side of the
empire till 488 A.D.
In that year Zeno bethought him of a device for ridding himself of the
Ostrogoth, who, though he made no permanent settlement in Moesia or
Macedonia, was gradually depopulating the realm by his incursions. The
line of ephemeral emperors who reigned in Italy over the shrunken Western
realm had ended in 476, when the German general Odoacer deposed Romulus
Augustulus, and did not trouble himself to nominate another puppet-Cæsar
to succeed him. By his order a deputation from the Roman Senate visited
Zeno at Constantinople, to inform him that they did not require an emperor
of their own to govern Italy, but would acknowledge him as ruler alike of
East and West; at the same time they besought Zeno to nominate, as his
representative in the Italian lands, their defender, the great Odoacer.
Zeno replied by advising the Romans to persuade Odoacer to recognize as
his lord Julius Nepos, one of the dethroned nominees of Ricimer, who had
survived his loss of the imperial diadem. Odoacer refused, and proclaimed
himself king in Italy, while still affecting—against Zeno’s own will—to
recognize the Constantinopolitan emperor as his suzerain.
In 488 A.D. it occurred to Zeno to offer Theodoric the government of
Italy, if he would conquer it from Odoacer. The Ostrogoth, who had harried
the inland of the Balkan Peninsula bare, and had met several reverses of
late from the Roman arms, took the offer. He was made “patrician” and
consul, and started off with all the Ostrogothic nation at his back to win
the realm of Italy. After hard fighting with Odoacer and the mixed
multitude of mercenaries that followed him, the Goths conquered Italy, and
Theodoric—German king and Roman patrician—began to reign at Ravenna. He
always professed to be the vassal and deputy of the emperor at
Constantinople, and theoretically his conquest of Italy meant the reunion
of the East and the West. But the Western realm had shrunk down to Italy
and Illyricum, and the power of Zeno therein was purely nominal.
With the departure of the Ostrogoths we have seen our last of the Germans
in the Balkan Peninsula; after 488 the Slavs take their place as the
molesters of the Roman frontier on the Danube.
VI. JUSTINIAN.
The Emperor Anastasius died in A.D. 518 at the ripe age of eighty-eight,
and his sceptre passed to Justinus, the commander of his body-guard, whom
Senate and army alike hailed as most worthy to succeed the good old man.
The late emperor had nephews, but he had never designated them as his
heirs, and they retired into private life at his death. Justinus was well
advanced in years, as all his three predecessors had been when they
mounted the throne. But unlike Leo, Zeno, and Anastasius, he had won his
way to the front in the army, not in the civil service. He had risen from
the ranks, was a rough uncultured soldier, and is said to have been hardly
able to sign his own name. His reign of nine years would have been of
little note in history—for he made no wars and spent no treasure—if he had
not been the means of placing on the throne of the East the greatest ruler
since the death of Constantine.
Justinus had no children himself, but had adopted as his heir his nephew
Justinian, son of his deceased brother Sabatius. This young man, born
after his father and uncle had won their way to high places in the army,
was no uncultured peasant as they had been, but had been reared, as the
heir of a wealthy house, in all the learning of the day. He showed from
the first a keen intelligence, and applied himself with zeal to almost
every department of civil life. Law, finance, administrative economy,
theology, music, architecture, fortification, all were dear to him. The
only thing in which he seems to have taken little personal interest was
military matters. His uncle trusted everything to him, and finally made
him his colleague on the throne.
Justinian was heir designate to the empire, and had passed the age of
thirty-five, giving his contemporaries the impression that he was a staid,
business-like, and eminently practical personage. “No one ever remembered
him young,” it was said, and most certainly no one ever expected him to
scandalize the empire by a sensational marriage. But in A.D. 526 the world
learnt, to the horror of the respectable and the joy of all
scandal-mongers, that he had declared his intention of taking to wife the
dancer Theodora, the star of the Byzantine comic stage.
So many stories have gathered around Theodora’s name that it is hard to
say how far her early life had been discreditable. A libellous work called
the “Secret History,” written by an enemy of herself and her husband,(4)
gives us many scandalous details of her career; but the very virulence of
the book makes its tales incredible. It is indisputable, however, that
Theodora was an actress, and that Roman actresses enjoyed an unenviable
reputation for light morals. There was actually a law which forbade a
member of the senate to marry an actress, and Justinian had to repeal it
in order to legalize his own marriage. There had been scores of bad and
reckless men on the throne before, but none of them had ever dared to
commit an action which startled the world half so much as this freak of
the staid Justinian. His own mother used every effort to turn him from his
purpose, and his uncle the Emperor threatened to disinherit him: but he
was quietly persistent, and ere the aged Justinus died he had been induced
to acknowledge the marriage of his nephew, and to confer on Theodora the
title of “Patrician.”
[Illustration]
The Empress Theodora And Her Court. _Reproduced from "L’Art Byzantin." Par
Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883._
Theodora, as even her enemies allow, was the most beautiful woman of her
age. Procopius, the best historian of the day, says “that it was
impossible for mere man to describe her comeliness in words, or imitate it
in art.” All that her detractors could say was that she was below the
middle height, and that her complexion was rather pale, though not
unhealthy. It is unfortunate that we have no representation of her
surviving, save the famous mosaic in San Vitale at Ravenna, and mosaic is
of all forms of art that least suited to reproduce beauty.
Whatever her early life may have been, Theodora was in spirit and
intelligence well suited to be the mate of the Emperor of the East. After
her marriage no word of scandal was breathed against her life. She rose to
the height of her situation: once her courage saved her husband’s throne,
and always she was the ablest and the most trusted of his councillors. The
grave, studious, and hard-working Emperor never regretted his choice of a
consort.
It cannot be said, however, that either Justinian or Theodora are
sympathetic characters. The Emperor was a hard and suspicious master, and
not over grateful to subjects who served him well; he was intolerant in
religious, and unscrupulous in political matters. When his heart was set
on a project he was utterly unmindful of the slaughter and ruin which it
might bring upon his people. In the extent of his conquests and the
magnificence of his public works, he was incomparably the greatest of the
emperors who reigned at Constantinople. But the greatness was purely
personal: he left the empire weaker in resources, if broader in provinces,
than he found it. Of all the great sovereigns of history he may be most
fairly compared with Louis XIV. of France; but it may be remembered to his
credit in the comparison that Louis has nothing to set against Justinian’s
great legal work—the compilation of the _Pandects_ and _Institutes_, and
that Justinian’s private life, unlike that of the Frenchman, was strict
even to austerity. All night long, we read, he sat alone over his State
papers in his cabinet, or paced the dark halls in deep thought. His
sleepless vigilance so struck his subjects that the strangest legends
became current even in his life-time: his enemies whispered that he was no
mere man, but an evil spirit that required no rest. One grotesque tale
even said that the Emperor had been seen long after midnight traversing
the corridors of his palace—without his head.
If Justinian seemed hardly human to those who feared him, Theodora is
represented as entirely given up to pride and ambition, never forgiving an
offence, but hunting to death or exile all who had crossed her in the
smallest thing. She is reproached—but who that has risen from a low estate
is not?—of an inordinate love for the pomps and vanities of imperial
state. High officials complained that she had as great a voice in settling
political matters as her husband. Yet, on the whole, her influence would
appear not to have been an evil one—historians acknowledge that she was
liberal in almsgiving, religious after her own fashion, and that she often
interfered to aid the oppressed. It is particularly recorded that,
remembering the dangers of her own youth, she was zealous in establishing
institutions for the reclaiming of women who had fallen into sin.
The aged Justinus died in 527 A.D., and Justinian became the sole occupant
of the throne, which he was destined to occupy for thirty-eight years. It
was less than half the century, yet his personality seems to pervade the
whole period, and history hardly remembers the insignificant predecessors
and successors whose reigns eke out the remainder of the years between 500
and 600.