monotheism. “God is a Spirit” would find an instant acquiescence among
educated Romans, even though they frequented the temples of a hundred
different gods. Philosophy among Greeks and Romans alike had always
been monotheistic. On the subject of immortality the philosophers were
divided. Marcus Aurelius and Seneca are on the whole not hopeful.
Probably the beliefs of the common folk--as testified in the epitaphs
of their cemeteries--were equally divided. The laconic epitaph: “I
was not, I was: I am not, I care not,” is common. But other epitaphs
equally common express the hope of reunions in the other world or even
of being “received among the number of the gods.” But on the whole the
commonest view of Death was as a happy release and an unending sleep.
It was the immediate hope of eternal bliss, which was the greatest
thing that Christianity had to offer to the pagan world.
Rome, then, was in many ways prepared for the reception of
Christianity, whose doctrines found an echo in the aspirations of the
day. She did much to give to Christian theology its Western form, and
of course the ritual and practice of the Roman Church was in many ways
merely a continuation of old pagan rites and ceremonies. Ancient
deities became Christian saints without change of rite or cult; images
were often adapted and even names scarcely altered. But, in fact, the
whole conception of that mighty Church which conquered the world,
including the barbarian invaders, was the offspring of the Roman
political system. It was her genius for statecraft which made Rome the
Eternal City. In one form or another she has governed the world for
twenty centuries.
EPILOGUE
Musæ quid facimus? τὶ κεναῖσιν ἐν ἐλπίσιν αὔτως
ludimus ἀϕραδίῃσιν ἐν ἤματι γηράσκοντες;
Σαντονικοῖς camp οισν, ὄπῃ κρύος ἄσπετον ἐστίν,
erramus gelido-τρομεροὶ rigidique poetæ.
AUSONIUS
I should have preferred to leave the Roman world at
the height of its grandeur, when the whole vast territory was enjoying
prosperity, if not peace, under the virtuous and benevolent Antonines.
In that way this book would best create the true impression of Rome,
not as a lamentable failure, but as the conspicuous success which it
assuredly was. But as the reader will probably follow the old Greek
maxim and desire to see the end before recording a judgment, a few
pages are added containing a very brief summary of the closing scenes.
It is necessary to notice that even the closing scenes cover a period
of two hundred years, and that this progress is not even yet entirely
downhill. They include good and bad reigns, periods of prosperity as
well as disaster.
Here again the impression of pessimism which we get from reading the
account of the Empire is due to the historians as much as to the
history. Lampridius and the other writers of the Augustan History
are small-minded writers who label the various princes as good or
bad largely according to their treatment of the senate. The Augustan
historians are trained in the school of Suetonius, they dwell upon
gossip and can form no large political judgments. Very little of the
gossip is authentic. If they have decided to revile an emperor they
repeat the scandals narrated by Suetonius about Tiberius or Nero. It is
only in their accounts of military action that they can be trusted, and
this fact creates a false preponderance of warfare in the annals of the
period.
The succession to the imperial throne continued to be the weak point
of the whole system. The throne itself passed through unspeakable
degradations. The guards who murdered Pertinax formally put the
succession up to auction in the prætorian camp. Septimius Severus
(193-198) gave a brief respite of strong government which almost
destroyed the fiction of senatorial authority, for Severus held the
proconsular power even over Rome and Italy. Caracalla was probably
the worst of all the emperors in personal vice and brutality, but he
was the author of that famous decree which conferred the citizenship
on all the western provinces. In Elagabalus (218-222) Rome had for
master the vile and effeminate priest of the Sungod, who brought the
fetish-stone of Emesa into the city and attempted to make all the
gods bow down to it. Alexander Severus was a blameless prince, and
Maximin the Thracian drove the barbarians back behind the _limites_
of the Rhine and Danube. After the Gordians the senate enjoyed for a
brief space the opportunity of governing Rome through their nominee
Pupienus, but the disorders of the period may be gauged from the fact
that in the eighteen years following Alexander Severus, who died in
235, twelve persons wore the purple. Then Gallienus assumed it, having
for his colleague that Valerian who was the first of Roman emperors to
be taken prisoner by the enemy. Strange and horrible tales hung about
his mysterious fate when taken captive by Shapur, the Persian king. In
the latter years of Gallienus the Empire was practically divided, for
his rebellious general Postumus was recognised as emperor throughout
Gaul, Spain, and Britain. In this period, too, Palmyra rose into
independent power as the meeting-place of the caravan routes across
the Syrian plains. Under the famous Queen Zenobia it practically ruled
over the eastern parts of the Empire, and its splendid ruins prove its
wealth and magnificence. Gallienus then almost allowed the Empire
to disintegrate under his feeble grasp, but his successor Claudius
Gothicus (268) was a man and a soldier. He smote the Goths and would
have restored the Empire in full, but the plague, which had never
wholly disappeared since the time of Marcus Aurelius, carried him off
in the third year of his reign. The task was left for Aurelian, that
Pannonian peasant whose brilliant generalship hurled back the enemy
on every side, while his statesmanship restored the authority of the
emperor and even the financial credit of the Empire. The mighty wall
with which he surrounded Rome is, however, a sad testimony of the dark
days upon which the imperial city had fallen. The Palmyrene kingdom was
defeated and the rich city plundered. The rebel Empire of the Gauls was
destroyed for ever. The grandest triumph ever witnessed in Rome was
that of Aurelian in 274. It is thus described by Vopiscus:
“There were three royal chariots. One was that of Odenathus,
brilliant with jewellery in gold, silver, and gems; the second,
similarly constructed, was the gift of the Persian king to
Aurelian; the third was the design of Zenobia herself, who hoped
to visit Rome in it. Wherein she was not deceived, for she entered
the city in it after her defeat. There was another chariot yoked
to four stags, which is said to have belonged to the king of the
Goths. On this Aurelian rode to the Capitol, there to sacrifice
the stags which he had vowed to Jupiter the Highest and Mightiest.
Twenty elephants went before, tamed beasts of Libya and two hundred
different beasts from Palestine, which Aurelian immediately
presented to private individuals in order that the treasury might
not be burdened with their maintenance. Four tigers, giraffes,
elks, and other creatures were led in procession. Eight hundred
pairs of gladiators, as well as captives from the barbarian tribes,
Blemyes, Axiomitæ, Arabs, Eudæmones, Ludians, Bactrians, Hiberi,
Saracens, Persians, all with their various treasures; Goths, Alani,
Roxolani, Sarmatians, Franks, Suevi, Vandals, Germans advanced as
captives with their hands bound. Among them also were the Palmyrene
chiefs, who survived, and the Egyptian rebels. Ten women whom
Aurelian had taken fighting in male attire among the Goths were in
the procession, while many of these ‘Amazons’ had been slain. In
front of each contingent a placard bearing the name of the tribe
was carried. Among them was Tetricus (the ‘emperor’ of the Gallic
Empire) in a scarlet cloak, a yellow tunic, and Gallic breeches.
There walked Zenobia too, laden with jewels and chained with gold
chains which others carried. In front of the conquered princes
their crowns were borne along labelled with their names. And next
the Roman People followed, the banners of the guilds and camps, the
mailed soldiers, the royal spoils, the whole army and the senate
(although it was saddened to see that some members of its body were
among the captives) added much to the splendour of the show. It
was not until the ninth hour that the Capitol was reached, and the
palace much later.”
Aurelian endeavoured to establish Mithraism as the state religion,
and earned the gratitude of the vulgar by supplementing the free
supply of corn with a daily ration of pork. Oil and salt were given
gratuitously, and he even prepared to supply free wine. The three
emperors who succeeded Aurelian, Tacitus, Probus, and Carus, were men
of good character, and the first two were, once more, the nominees of
the senate.
Throughout this troubled age the causes of confusion were twofold. On
the one hand the Empire itself was so vast and scattered that it tended
now to fall to pieces of its own momentum, as the seedbox opens to
scatter its seeds. Britain, Gaul, Germany, Palmyra--each in its turn
began to feel a unity of its own. Rome was far away, and the government
was often weak and negligent. Here was an opportunity for the local
generals to carve out thrones for themselves. While the emperor hurried
this way and that fresh rebellions broke out in his rear. It was no
one’s fault in particular. The world-state was impossible in theory as
in practice. It was only possible while the provinces were barbarian.
When they became civilised and self-conscious they were bound to feel
their natural unity.
In the second place, the barbarians were now grown to full stature.
They were no longer quarrelsome tribes which could be turned against
one another by adroit statecraft, but nations much less barbarous
than of old, with some organisation and a purpose above that of mere
plunder. No artificial ramparts could hold them. It is very doubtful
whether even the legions of Rome at their best could have resisted
these repeated assaults on all sides. The first great inroad across
the Danube took place in the reign of M. Aurelius. It was crushed, as
the column of that emperor depicts, and Sarmatia and Marcomannia were
added as short-lived provinces. It is in the third century that we
begin to hear of the greater barbarian nations, or groups of tribes, of
the Alemanni and the Suevi, the Franks, the Saxons, the Goths, and the
Vandals. Battle after battle was fought and triumph after triumph won
against them, but they still pressed on. The weaker emperors essayed
to buy them with gold, the wiser with land, the craftier set them to
slay one another, but still they moved forward resistlessly, wave after
wave, like the sea. This again was nobody’s fault. It may have been the
movement of Tartar savages in the Far East which set the Wandering of
the Nations in motion. Whatever it was, all eastern and northern Europe
was seething with restless movement and the tide rolled on irresistibly
against the bulwarks of civilisation. Triumphs as great and glorious
as those of Scipio and Marius were gained by Roman armies even in the
fourth century. But the enemy was ubiquitous, the task impossible.
It is, however, true that those bulwarks were weaker than they should
have been, partly by reason of the internal disorganisation caused by
perpetual struggles for the succession, and partly through certain
visible errors in Roman statesmanship. For one thing, the spirit of
peace and humanity which was ripening in the securer central parts of
the Empire had probably impaired its instincts of defence. The modern
world is trying just now to believe that you can retain the power of
defence when you have given up all thoughts of aggression. It may be
so. The Roman world failed in the attempt. Rome’s statesmen were now
no longer soldiers, but lawyers and financiers. Even the prefects of
the prætorian guard were lawyers. The army was a profession apart.
Moreover, even the army had become so civilised that it had lost
many of its martial qualities. Hadrian more than any other ruler is
responsible for allowing the _cannabæ_ or “booths” which had sprung up
around the camps to grow into towns and even cities. The legions were
now permanently established in their quarters, the soldiers married
wives and occupied their leisure in business or husbandry. Hadrian it
was, too, who in his large cosmopolitan spirit had introduced many and
doubtless useful barbarian methods of fighting, so that the old Roman
military traditions had fallen into desuetude. A legion was now no
better than its auxiliaries. The auxiliaries were often barbarians and
soon the legions themselves became completely barbarised. It was only a
step further when barbarians were recruited in tribes to fight Rome’s
battles under their own commanders.
Secondly, the whole Roman world was being slowly strangled with
good intentions. The bureaucracy had grown so highly organised and
efficient, so nicely ordered through its various grades of official
life, that everybody walked in leading-strings to the music of
official proclamations. Paternalism regulated everything with its
watchful and benignant eye. The triumph of the system may be seen in
the famous Edict of Prices issued by Diocletian in A.D. 301. Here we
find scheduled a maximum price for every possible commodity of trade
and a maximum wage for every kind of service. Death is the penalty
for any trader who asks, or any purchaser who pays a higher price. No
difference of locality or season is permitted. Trade is forbidden to
fluctuate under penalty of death. This delightful scheme, which was
engraved on stone in every market in Europe, was evidently the product
of a highly efficient Board of Trade, which had sat late of nights over
the study of statistics and political economy. Benevolent officials
of this type swarmed all over the empire, spying and reporting on one
another as well as on the general public.
The same system of blear-eyed officialism had found a still more
ingenious method of throttling the society which it was endeavouring
to nurse back into infancy. It was under Severus Alexander (about
A.D. 230) that the various _collegia_ or guilds were incorporated by
charter, so that every industry whatever became a close corporation.
This rendered the task of administration much simpler. It meant that
every human occupation became hereditary. There was, for example, a
guild of the _coloni_ or tillers of the soil. The most benevolent
of the emperors, Marcus Aurelius and the two Severi, had planted
barbarians on Roman soil under condition of military service in lieu
of rent. This service became hereditary also. Before long each piece
of ground had to supply a recruit. The _decuriones_, moreover, or
municipal senators, who had once been the honoured magistrates of their
townships, also became a caste. As they were made responsible for the
collection of property tax in their boroughs, and as wealth began to
decline and taxation to increase, they were reduced to a condition of
penury and misery. The exemption from taxation of whole classes of
society, such as the soldiers and eventually the Christian clergy,
added to their burdens. Then, since many of them attempted to evade
the distresses entailed upon their rank by joining the army or even
selling themselves into slavery, a decree was issued which made their
office hereditary. It became a form of punishment to enrol an offender
among these _curiales_. A decree of Constantine bound all the tillers
of the soil in hereditary bondage for ever. In these ways Roman society
fell into stagnation. Since the progress of the Manchurian Empire in
China proceeded on very similar lines, it looks as if the benevolent
despotism engendered by highly centralised government of very large
areas was one of the methods by which Providence is accustomed to bring
great empires low.
At the close of the third century Diocletian endeavoured to save
the state by a bold revolution. He swept away the hollow pretence
of republicanism and frankly surrounded the throne with every
circumstance of majesty and ceremony. The free access which had
generally been granted by the most despotic princes was replaced by
an elaborate system of intermediaries. To meet the obvious needs
of devolution in government, as well as to stop the incessant
struggles for the succession, he invented an ingenious division of
responsibility. Henceforth there were to be two Augusti, one taking
the East and one the West. The Empire was not actually divided, for
the joint writ of the two colleagues was to run all over it. Moreover
each Augustus was to have a junior colleague, a “Cæsar,” acting as his
lieutenant and prepared to step into his place. Ties of marriage were
to unite all four into one close family alliance. There were now one
hundred and sixteen provinces and Diocletian grouped them into thirteen
“dioceses” each under a “vicar,” directly responsible to one of four
“prætorian prefects,” who shared the administration of the whole. The
troops were no longer subject to the provincial governors, but each
army had a “Duke” (_dux_) of its own. Each frontier--and these were
still further fortified--was under its own “Duke.” At the same time
steps were taken to organise a central striking force--the _comitatus_
of the emperors. The four Prefectures and thirteen Dioceses were as
follows:
/ Egypt ILLYRICUM / Macedonia / Italia
| Oriens \ Dacia | Illyricum
ORIENS | Pontus / Gallia ITALIA | (after
| Asia GALLIARUM | Hispania | Theodosius)
\ Thracia \ Britannia \ Africa
Italy, it will be observed, has now definitely declined into the status
of a province among many, and Rome itself was not sufficiently near
the frontier armies to be a convenient capital. Diocletian preferred
to make his residence at Nicomedia. The senate, as a necessary
consequence, receded into the background, and remained little more than
a title of dignity. The emperor’s Consistory, a privy council composed
of the heads of departments, took its place for practical purposes. The
new hierarchy of officials rejoiced in barbaric titles which would
have shocked the ears of a genuine Roman.
Naturally these advances in the direction of more and stronger
government proved no alleviation of the woes which sprang from too
much supervision. The most visible sign of decay was the decline of
population which began to lay the central parts of the Empire desolate,
and this sprang not only from economic burdens, but from racial
decline. Money became so debased and worthless that the world actually
went back to the system of barter.
Constantine signalised Diocletian’s plan of dividing the responsibility
of government by founding a new capital at Byzantium. His motives were
probably mixed. In the first place he would be free of the awkward
republican traditions which still kept reasserting themselves, and in
the second place Constantinople was a more central and a much more
defensible situation. But, more than all, in this new Rome he could
break away from the old religion. Constantine’s plan for restoring the
tired and afflicted world was the adoption of Christianity. The Decree
of Milan (313) made Christianity the official religion, though not
the only religion, of the Empire. It was already the religion of the
court--ever since Constantine had seen his famous vision of the Angel
descending from Heaven with the sign of the Cross and uttering the
words ἐν τούτω νίκα--“Hoc signo vinces.” Still half-pagan, the emperor
had made the Cross his mascot, and in the strength of it had defeated
his rival at the Milvian Bridge just outside Rome.[92] Constantine
himself was by no means a saint; in murdering kinsmen he was, in fact,
among the worst of the emperors, but unwittingly he saved the world by
his conversion. Meanwhile the extravagance with which he adorned his
new city afflicted the whole Empire with the burdens of fresh taxations.
The scheme of a divided Empire failed. After Theodosius (395) the
division became permanent. The Eastern throne remained secure for
another thousand years, protected by the admirable strategic position
of Constantinople. The contempt with which it has hitherto been treated
by historians is now beginning to break down, and it is seen that the
Byzantine Empire not only stood as the bulwark for the West against the
East but preserved for us the inestimable treasures of Greek intellect.
The Roman tradition, now inextricably mingled with the Greek, lingered
on there unchanged, even to the very chariot-races which still threw
society into a ferment. To this day the inhabitants of Greece and
Roumania distinguish themselves from their oriental neighbours by the
proud title of “Romans.”
But in the West a series of phantoms succeeded one another upon the
throne. The floodgates of the Rhine and Danube frontiers broke down
completely and the new nations streamed into their heritage. Then
it was found how truly Constantine’s policy had saved the world.
Though the Goths took and plundered Rome (410), they came in not as
pagan destroyers, but as Christian immigrants, and it was Gothic
generals and Gothic armies who saved Europe from destruction. About
447 the Mongolian Huns under their terrible Attila came riding into
western Europe from the steppes of Russia. They crossed the Rhine
half a million strong, destroying and burning as they came. The Roman
emperor’s sister Honoria proposed marriage to Attila, and the proud
barbarian offered her a place in his harem if she would bring half
the Western Empire as her dowry. The Roman general Aetius with a
half-barbarian army in alliance with the Visigoths checked them at “The
Battle of Chalons” and the peril drifted away. Aetius who had saved
Rome was stabbed by his ungrateful emperor.
The Vandals had already overrun Spain and streamed across to Africa,
whence they issued forth to make a second sack of Rome. Britain had
been deserted rather by the choice of its army than by command of any
emperor, and left a prey to the pagans of the north in 406. Italy
itself was wholly in the hands of the barbarians, who lived on terms of
apparent equality with the Romans. Puppets wore the imperial purple
and did the behests of barbarian “Patricians,” Ricimer the Suevian,
Gundobald his nephew, and finally Odoacer, a tribeless barbarian from
the north. By this time the Western Empire was dismembered for ever,
and western Europe was merely a series of barbarian principalities.
In 476 Odoacer removed the last puppet-emperor of Rome, who bore the
significant name of Romulus Augustulus. The seat of the Western Empire
had long been removed from the twice-sacked city of Rome, and the later
princes had ruled from Ravenna, where the little mausoleum of the
Empress Placidia, sister of Honorius, still stands as a type of the
shrunken glories of the last successors of Augustus.[93]
In theory the Western Empire did not come to an end in 476. The Eastern
emperors now claimed authority over the whole Roman world and exercised
it so far as they could obtain obedience. Strong Cæsars like Justinian
made their rule respected far and wide. Geographically and politically,
the West had now begun its mediæval existence as a congeries of small
kingdoms generally of uncertain extent.
But in a far truer sense Rome continued to rule the world as before.
Her two great legacies, the Roman Law and the Roman Church, ruled it as
completely as ever the legions had done. Even in politics, the grand
conception of the Christian Republic, Church and State in one, with
the Pope as the successor of St. Peter bearing the keys of Heaven and
Hell, while the emperor as the successor of Augustus wielded its sword,
continued for another thousand years to dominate Europe. It was under
the ægis of this great idea that the young nations grew up and came
into their own.
Thus the true history of Rome from this point is the history of the
Church, and this is no place to relate it. But it may be contended here
that the visible Church was as truly a creation of the Roman spirit
as was the Empire itself. Rome had seized upon the teaching of One
who lived in poverty and obscurity among slaves and outcasts, who
preached against worldliness, formality, and ambition, who sent out
His disciples to beg their way, and out of this, with her wonderful
genius for government, she had created a powerful monarchy which could
humble kings, and an organised ecclesiastical state which spread like a
network over the earth and tamed the fury of the barbarians.