To return, however, to our sketch of the Cæsars--at the head of the
third series we place Decius. He came to the throne at a moment of great
public embarrassment. The Goths were now beginning to press southwards
upon the empire. Dacia they had ravaged for some time; "and here," says
a German writer, "observe the shortsightedness of the Emperor Trajan."
Had he left the Dacians in possession of their independence, they would,
under their native kings, have made head against the Goths. But, being
compelled to assume the character of Roman citizens, they had lost their
warlike qualities. From Dacia the Goths had descended upon Moesia; and,
passing the Danube, they laid siege to Marcianopolis, a city built by
Trajan in honor of his sister. The inhabitants paid a heavy ransom for
their town; and the Goths were persuaded for the present to return home.
But sooner than was expected, they returned to Moesia, under their king,
Kniva; and they were already engaged in the siege of Nicopolis, when
Decius came in sight at the head of the Roman army. The Goths retired,
but it was to Thrace; and, in the conquest of Philippopolis, they found
an ample indemnity for their forced retreat and disappointment. Decius
pursued, but the king of the Goths turned suddenly upon him; the emperor
was obliged to fly; the Roman camp was plundered; Philippopolis was
taken by storm; and its whole population, reputed at more than a hundred
thousand souls, destroyed.
Such was the first great irruption of the barbarians into the Roman
territory: and panic was diffused on the wings of the winds over the
whole empire. Decius, however, was firm, and made prodigious efforts to
restore the balance of power to its ancient condition. For the moment he
had some partial successes. He cut off several detachments of Goths, on
their road to reinforce the enemy; and he strengthened the fortresses
and garrisons of the Danube. But his last success was the means of his
total ruin. He came up with the Goths at Forum Terebronii, and, having
surrounded their position, their destruction seemed inevitable. A great
battle ensued, and a mighty victory to the Goths. Nothing is now known
of the circumstances, except that the third line of the Romans was
entangled inextricably in a morass (as had happened in the Persian
expedition of Alexander). Decius perished on this occasion--nor was it
possible to find his dead body. This great defeat naturally raised the
authority of the senate, in the same proportion as it depressed that of
the army; and by the will of that body, Hostilianus, a son of Decius,
was raised to the empire; and ostensibly on account of his youth, but
really with a view to their standing policy of restoring the consulate,
and the whole machinery of the republic, Gallus, an experienced
commander, was associated in the empire. But no skill or experience
could avail to retrieve the sinking power of Rome upon the Illyrian,
frontier. The Roman army was disorganized, panic-stricken, reduced to
skeleton battalions. Without an army, what could be done? And thus it
may really have been no blame to Gallus, that he made a treaty with the
Goths more degrading than any previous act in the long annals of Rome.
By the terms of this infamous bargain, they were allowed to carry off an
immense booty, amongst which was a long roll of distinguished prisoners;
and Cæsar himself it was--not any lieutenant or agent that might have
been afterwards disavowed--who volunteered to purchase their future
absence by an annual tribute. The very army which had brought their
emperor into the necessity of submitting to such abject concessions,
were the first to be offended with this natural result of their own
failures. Gallus was already ruined in public opinion, when further
accumulations arose to his disgrace. It was now supposed to have been
discovered, that the late dreadful defeat of Forum Terebronii was due to
his bad advice; and, as the young Hostilianus happened to die about this
time of a contagious disorder, Gallus was charged with his murder.
Even a ray of prosperity, which just now gleamed upon the Roman arms,
aggravated the disgrace of Gallus, and was instantly made the handle of
his ruin. Æmilianus, the governor of Moesia and Pannonia, inflicted some
check or defeat upon the Goths; and in the enthusiasm of sudden pride,
upon an occasion which contrasted so advantageously for himself with the
military conduct of Decius and Gallus, the soldiers of his own legion
raised Æmilianus to the purple. No time was to be lost. Summoned by
the troops, Æmilianus marched into Italy; and no sooner had he made his
appearance there, than the prætorian guards murdered the Emperor Gallus
and his son Volusianus, by way of confirming the election of Æmilianus.
The new emperor offered to secure the frontiers, both in the east and
on the Danube, from the incursions of the barbarians. This offer may
be regarded as thrown out for the conciliation of all classes in the
empire. But to the senate in particular he addressed a message, which
forcibly illustrates the political position of that body in those times.
Æmilianus proposed to resign the whole civil administration into the
hands of the senate, reserving to himself only the unenviable burthen of
the military interests. His hope was, that in this way making himself in
part the creation of the senate, he might strengthen his title against
competitors at Rome, whilst the entire military administration going on
under his own eyes, exclusively directed to that one object, would give
him some chance of defeating the hasty and tumultuary competitions
so apt to arise amongst the legions upon the frontier. We notice the
transaction chiefly as indicating the anomalous situation of the senate.
Without power in a proper sense, or no more, however, than the
indirect power of wealth, that ancient body retained an immense
_auctoritas_--that is, an influence built upon ancient reputation,
which, in their case, had the strength of a religious superstition in
all Italian minds. This influence the senators exerted with effect,
whenever the course of events had happened to reduce the power of the
army. And never did they make a more continuous and sustained effort for
retrieving their ancient power and place, together with the whole system
of the republic, than during the period at which we are now arrived.
From the time of Maximin, in fact, to the accession of Aurelian, the
senate perpetually interposed their credit and authority, like some
_Deus ex machinâ_ in the dramatic art. And if this one fact were
all that had survived of the public annals at this period, we might
sufficiently collect the situation of the two other parties in the
empire--the army and the imperator; the weakness and precarious tenure
of the one, and the anarchy of the other. And hence it is that we can
explain the hatred borne to the senate by vigorous emperors, such as
Aurelian, succeeding to a long course of weak and troubled reigns. Such
an emperor presumed in the senate, and not without reason, that same
spirit of domineering interference as ready to manifest itself, upon any
opportunity offered, against himself, which, in his earlier days, he
had witnessed so repeatedly in successful operation upon the fates and
prospects of others.
The situation indeed of the world--that is to say, of that great
centre of civilization, which, running round the Mediterranean in one
continuous belt of great breadth, still composed the Roman Empire, was
at this time most profoundly interesting. The crisis had arrived. In the
East, a new dynasty (the Sassanides) had remoulded ancient elements
into a new form, and breathed a new life into an empire, which else was
gradually becoming crazy from age, and which, at any rate, by losing
its unity, must have lost its vigor as an offensive power. Parthia was
languishing and drooping as an anti-Roman state, when the last of the
Arsacidæ expired. A perfect _Palingenesis_ was wrought by the restorer
of the Persian empire, which pretty nearly re-occupied (and gloried in
re-occupying) the very area that had once composed the empire of Cyrus.
Even this _Palingenesis_ might have terminated in a divided empire:
vigor might have been restored, but in the shape of a polyarchy, (such
as the Saxons established in England,) rather than a monarchy; and in
reality, at one moment that appeared to be a probable event. Now, had
this been the course of the revolution, an alliance with one of these
kingdoms would have tended to balance the hostility of another (as was
in fact the case when Alexander Severus saved himself from the Persian
power by a momentary alliance with Armenia.) But all the elements of
disorder had in that quarter re-combined themselves into severe unity:
and thus was Rome, upon her eastern frontier, laid open to a new power
of juvenile activity and vigor, just at the period when the languor of
the decaying Parthian had allowed the Roman discipline to fall into
a corresponding declension. Such was the condition of Rome upon her
oriental frontier. [Footnote: And it is a striking illustration of the
extent to which the revolution had gone, that, previously to the Persian
expedition of the last Gordian, Antioch, the Roman capital of Syria,
had been occupied by the enemy.] On the northern, it was much worse.
Precisely at the crisis of a great revolution in Asia, which demanded in
that quarter more than the total strength of the empire, and threatened
to demand it for ages to come, did the Goths, under their earliest
denomination of _Getæ_ with many other associate tribes, begin to push
with their horns against the northern gates of the empire: the whole
line of the Danube, and, pretty nearly about the same time, of the
Rhine, (upon which the tribes from Swabia, Bavaria, and Franconia, were
beginning to descend,) now became insecure; and these two rivers ceased
in effect to be the barriers of Rome. Taking a middle point of time
between the Parthian revolution and the fatal overthrow of Forum
Terebronii, we may fix upon the reign of Philip the Arab, [who
naturalized himself in Rome by the appellation of Marcus Julius,] as
the epoch from which the Roman empire, already sapped and undermined by
changes from within, began to give way, and to dilapidate from without.
And this reign dates itself in the series by those ever-memorable
secular or jubilee games, which celebrated the completion of the
thousandth year from the foundation of Rome. [Footnote: This Arab
emperor reigned about five years; and the jubilee celebration occurred
in his second year. Another circumstance gives importance to the
Arabian, that, according to one tradition, he was the first Christian
emperor. If so, it is singular that one of the bitterest persecutors of
Christianity should have been his immediate successor--Decius.]
Resuming our sketch of the Imperial history, we may remark the natural
embarrassment which must have possessed the senate, when two candidates
for the purple were equally earnest in appealing to them, and their
deliberate choice, as the best foundation for a valid election. Scarcely
had the ground been cleared for Æmilianus, by the murder of Gallus and
his son, when Valerian, a Roman senator, of such eminent merit, and
confessedly so much the foremost noble in all the qualities essential to
the very delicate and comprehensive functions of a Censor, [Footnote:
It has proved a most difficult problem, in the hands of all speculators
upon the imperial history, to fathom the purposes, or throw any light
upon the purposes, of the Emperor Decius, in attempting the revival
of the ancient but necessarily obsolete office of a public censorship.
Either it was an act of pure verbal pedantry, or a mere titular
decoration of honor, (as if a modern prince should create a person
Arch-Grand-Elector, with no objects assigned to his electing faculty,)
or else, if it really meant to revive the old duties of the censorship,
and to assign the very same field for the exercise of those duties, it
must be viewed as the very grossest practical anachronism that has ever
been committed. We mean by an anachronism, in common usage, that sort of
blunder when a man ascribes to one age the habits, customs, or generally
the characteristics of another. This, however, may be a mere lapse
of memory, as to a matter of fact, and implying nothing at all
discreditable to the understanding, but only that a man has shifted the
boundaries of chronology a little this way or that; as if, for example,
a writer should speak of printed books as existing at the day of
Agincourt, or of artillery as existing in the first Crusade, here would
be an error, but a venial one. A far worse kind of anachronism, though
rarely noticed as such, is where a writer ascribes sentiments and modes
of thought incapable of co-existing with the sort or the degree of
civilization then attained, or otherwise incompatible with the structure
of society in the age or the country assigned. For instance, in
Southey's Don Roderick there is a cast of sentiment in the Gothic
king's remorse and contrition of heart, which has struck many readers as
utterly unsuitable to the social and moral development of that age,
and redolent of modern methodism. This, however, we mention only as an
illustration, without wishing to hazard an opinion upon the justice
of that criticism. But even such an anachronism is less startling and
extravagant when it is confined to an ideal representation of things,
than where it is practically embodied and brought into play amongst the
realities of life. What would be thought of a man who should attempt, in
1833, to revive the ancient office of _Fool_, as it existed down to
the reign, suppose, of our Henry VIII. in England? Yet the error of the
Emperor Decius was far greater, if he did in sincerity and good faith
believe that the Rome of his times was amenable to that license of
unlimited correction, and of interference with private affairs, which
republican freedom and simplicity had once conceded to the censor. In
reality, the ancient censor, in some parts of his office, was neither
more nor less than a compendious legislator. Acts of attainder, divorce
bills, &c., illustrate the case in England; they are cases of law,
modified to meet the case of an individual; and the censor, having a
sort of equity jurisdiction, was intrusted with discretionary powers
for reviewing, revising, and amending, _pro re nata_, whatever in the
private life of a Roman citizen seemed, to his experienced eye, alien
to the simplicity of an austere republic; whatever seemed vicious
or capable of becoming vicious, according to their rude notions of
political economy; and, generally, whatever touched the interests of
the commonwealth, though not falling within the general province
of legislation, either because it might appear undignified in its
circumstances, or too narrow in its range of operation for a public
anxiety, or because considerations of delicacy and prudence might
render it unfit for a public scrutiny. Take one case, drawn from actual
experience, as an illustration: A Roman nobleman, under one of the early
emperors, had thought fit, by way of increasing his income, to retire
into rural lodgings, or into some small villa, whilst his splendid
mansion in Rome was let to a rich tenant. That a man, who wore the
_laticlave_, (which in practical effect of splendor we may consider
equal to the ribbon and star of a modern order,) should descend to such
a degrading method of raising money, was felt as a scandal to the whole
nobility. [Footnote: This feeling still exists in France. "One winter,"
says the author of _The English Army in France_, vol. ii. p. 106-7,
"our commanding officer's wife formed the project of hiring the chateau
during the absence of the owner; but a more profound insult could not
have been offered to a Chevalier de St. Louis. Hire his house! What
could these people take him for? A sordid wretch who would stoop to make
money by such means? They ought to be ashamed of themselves. He could
never respect an Englishman again." "And yet," adds the writer, "this
gentleman (had an officer been billeted there) would have _sold_ him a
bottle of wine out of his cellar, or a billet of wood from his stack,
or an egg from his hen-house, at a profit of fifty per cent., not only
without scruple, but upon no other terms. It was as common as ordering
wine at a tavern, to call the servant of any man's establishment where
we happened to be quartered, and demand an account of the cellar, as
well as the price of the wine we selected!" This feeling existed, and
perhaps to the same extent, two centuries ago, in England. Not only did
the aristocracy think it a degradation to act the part of landlord with
respect to their own houses, but also, except in select cases, to
act that of tenant. Thus, the first Lord Brooke, (the famous Fulke
Greville,) writing to inform his next neighbor, a woman of rank, that
the house she occupied had been purchased by a London citizen, confesses
his fears that he shall in consequence lose so valuable a neighbor; for,
doubtless, he adds, your ladyship will not remain as tenant to "such a
fellow." And yet the man had notoriously held the office of Lord Mayor,
which made him, for the time, _Right Honorable_. The Italians of this
day make no scruple to let off the whole, or even part, of their fine
mansions to strangers.]
Yet what could be done? To have interfered with his conduct by an
express law, would be to infringe the sacred rights of property, and
to say, in effect, that a man should not do what he would with his own.
This would have been a remedy far worse than the evil to which it was
applied; nor could it have been possible so to shape the principle of
a law, as not to make it far more comprehensive than was desired. The
senator's trespass was in a matter of decorum; but the law would have
trespassed on the first principles of justice. Here, then, was a case
within the proper jurisdiction of the censor; he took notice, in his
public report, of the senator's error; or probably, before coming to
that extremity, he admonished him privately on the subject. Just as, in
England, had there been such an officer, he would have reproved those
men of rank who mounted the coach-box, who extended a public patronage
to the "fancy," or who rode their own horses at a race. Such a reproof,
however, unless it were made practically operative, and were powerfully
supported by the whole body of the aristocracy, would recoil upon its
author as a piece of impertinence, and would soon be resented as an
unwarrantable liberty taken with private rights; the censor would be
kicked, or challenged to private combat, according to the taste of the
parties aggrieved. The office is clearly in this dilemma: if the censor
is supported by the state, then he combines in his own person both
legislative and executive functions, and possesses a power which is
frightfully irresponsible; if, on the other hand, he is left to such
support as he can find in the prevailing spirit of manners, and the old
traditionary veneration for his sacred character, he stands very much
in the situation of a priesthood, which has great power or none at all,
according to the condition of a country in moral and religious feeling,
coupled with the more or less primitive state of manners. How, then,
with any rational prospect of success, could Decius attempt the revival
of an office depending so entirely on moral supports, in an age when
all those supports were withdrawn? The prevailing spirit of manners was
hardly fitted to sustain even a toleration of such an office; and as to
the traditionary veneration for the sacred character, from long disuse
of its practical functions, that probably was altogether extinct. If
these considerations are plain and intelligible even to us, by the men
of that day they must have been felt with a degree of force that could
leave no room for doubt or speculation on the matter. How was it, then,
that the emperor only should have been blind to such general light?
In the absence of all other, even plausible, solutions of this
difficulty, we shall state our own theory of the matter. Decius, as is
evident from his fierce persecution of the Christians, was not disposed
to treat Christianity with indifference, under any form which it might
assume, or however masked. Yet there were quarters in which it lurked
not liable to the ordinary modes of attack. Christianity was creeping up
with inaudible steps into high places,--nay, into the very highest. The
immediate predecessor of Decius upon the throne, Philip the Arab, was
known to be a disciple of the new faith; and amongst the nobles of Rome,
through the females and the slaves, that faith had spread its roots in
every direction. Some secrecy, however, attached to the profession of a
religion so often proscribed. Who should presume to tear away the mask
which prudence or timidity had taken up? A _delator_, or professional
informer, was an infamous character. To deal with the noble and
illustrious, the descendants of the Marcelli and the Gracchi, there must
be nothing less than a great state officer, supported by the censor
and the senate, having an unlimited privilege of scrutiny and censure,
authorized to inflict the brand of infamy for offences not challenged
by express law, and yet emanating from an elder institution, familiar
to the days of reputed liberty. Such an officer was the censor; and such
were the antichristian purposes of Decius in his revival.] that Decius
had revived that office expressly in his behalf, entered Italy at the
head of the army from Gaul. He had been summoned to his aid by the late
emperor, Gallus; but, arriving too late for his support, he determined
to avenge him. Both Æmilianus and Valerian recognised the authority of
the senate, and professed to act under that sanction; but it was
the soldiery who cut the knot, as usual, by the sword. Æmilianus was
encamped at Spoleto; but as the enemy drew near, his soldiers, shrinking
no doubt from a contest with veteran troops, made their peace by
murdering the new emperor, and Valerian was elected in his stead. This
prince was already an old man at the time of his election; but he
lived long enough to look back upon the day of his inauguration as the
blackest in his life. Memorable were the calamities which fell upon
himself, and upon the empire, during his reign. He began by associating
to himself his son Gallienus; partly, perhaps, for his own relief,
partly to indulge the senate in their steady plan of dividing the
imperial authority. The two emperors undertook the military defence of
the empire, Gallienus proceeding to the German frontier, Valerian to
the eastern. Under Gallienus, the Franks began first to make themselves
heard of. Breaking into Gaul they passed through that country and Spain;
captured Tarragona in their route; crossed over to Africa, and conquered
Mauritania. At the same time, the Alemanni, who had been in motion since
the time of Caracalla, broke into Lombardy, across the Rhætian Alps.
The senate, left without aid from either emperor, were obliged to make
preparations for the common defence against this host of barbarians.
Luckily, the very magnitude of the enemy's success, by overloading him
with booty, made it his interest to retire without fighting; and the
degraded senate, hanging upon the traces of their retiring footsteps,
without fighting, or daring to fight, claimed the honors of a victory.
Even then, however, they did more than was agreeable to the jealousies
of Gallienus, who, by an edict, publicly rebuked their presumption, and
forbade them in future to appear amongst the legions, or to exercise any
military functions. He himself, meanwhile, could devise no better way of
providing for the public security, than by marrying the daughter of his
chief enemy, the king of the Marcomanni. On this side of Europe, the
barbarians were thus quieted for the present; but the Goths of the
Ukraine, in three marauding expeditions of unprecedented violence,
ravaged the wealthy regions of Asia Minor, as well as the islands of the
Archipelago; and at length, under the guidance of deserters, landed in
the port of the Pyræus. Advancing from this point, after sacking Athens
and the chief cities of Greece, they marched upon Epirus, and began
to threaten Italy. But the defection at this crisis of a conspicuous
chieftain, and the burden of their booty, made these wild marauders
anxious to provide for a safe retreat; the imperial commanders in Moesia
listened eagerly to their offers: and it set the seal to the dishonors
of the state, that, after having traversed so vast a range of territory
almost without resistance, these blood-stained brigands were now
suffered to retire under the very guardianship of those whom they had
just visited with military execution.
Such were the terms upon which the Emperor Gallienus purchased a brief
respite from his haughty enemies. For the moment, however, he _did_
enjoy security. Far otherwise was the destiny of his unhappy father.
Sapor now ruled in Persia; the throne of Armenia had vainly striven to
maintain its independency against his armies, and the daggers of his
hired assassins. This revolution, which so much enfeebled the Roman
means of war, exactly in that proportion increased the necessity for it.
War, and that instantly, seemed to offer the only chance for maintaining
the Roman name or existence in Asia, Carrhæ and Nisibis, the two potent
fortresses in Mesopotamia, had fallen; and the Persian arms were
now triumphant on both banks of the Euphrates. Valerian was not of a
character to look with indifference upon such a scene, terminated by
such a prospect; prudence and temerity, fear and confidence, all spoke
a common language in this great emergency; and Valerian marched towards
the Euphrates with a fixed purpose of driving the enemy beyond that
river. By whose mismanagement the records of history do not enable us
to say, some think of Macrianus, the prætorian prefect, some of Valerian
himself, but doubtless by the treachery of guides co-operating with
errors in the general, the Roman army was entangled in marshy grounds;
partial actions followed, and skirmishes of cavalry, in which the Romans
became direfully aware of their situation; retreat was cut off, to
advance was impossible; and to fight was now found to be without hope.
In these circumstances they offered to capitulate. But the haughty Sapor
would hear of nothing but unconditional surrender; and to that course
the unhappy emperor submitted. Various traditions [Footnote: Some of
these traditions have been preserved, which represent Sapor as using his
imperial captive for his stepping-stone, or _anabathrum_, in mounting
his horse. Others go farther, and pretend that Sapor actually flayed his
unhappy prisoner whilst yet alive. The temptation to these stories was
perhaps found in the craving for the marvellous, and in the desire to
make the contrast more striking between the two extremes in Valerian's
life.] have been preserved by history concerning the fate of Valerian:
all agree that he died in misery and captivity; but some have
circumstantiated this general statement by features of excessive misery
and degradation, which possibly were added afterwards by scenical
romancers, in order to heighten the interest of the tale, or by ethical
writers, in order to point and strengthen the moral. Gallienus now ruled
alone, except as regarded the restless efforts of insurgents, thirty
of whom are said to have arisen in his single reign. This, however, is
probably an exaggeration. Nineteen such rebels are mentioned by name; of
whom the chief were Calpurnius Piso, a Roman senator; Tetricus, a man
of rank who claimed a descent from Pompey, Crassus, and even from
Numa Pompilius, and maintained himself some time in Gaul and Spain;
Trebellianus, who founded a republic of robbers in Isauria which
survived himself by centuries; and Odenathus, the Syrian. Others were
mere _Terra filii,_ or adventurers, who flourished and decayed in a few
days or weeks, of whom the most remarkable was a working armorer
named Marius. Not one of the whole number eventually prospered, except
Odenathus; and he, though originally a rebel, yet, in consideration of
services performed against Persia, was suffered to retain his power,
and to transmit his kingdom of Palmyra to his widow Zenobia. He was even
complimented with the title of Augustus. All the rest perished. Their
rise, however, and local prosperity at so many different points of the
empire, showed the distracted condition of the state, and its internal
weakness. That again proclaimed its external peril. No other cause had
called forth this diffusive spirit of insurrection than the general
consciousness, so fatally warranted, of the debility which had
emasculated the government, and its incompetency to deal vigorously with
the public enemies. [Footnote: And this incompetency was _permanently_
increased by rebellions that were brief and fugitive: for each insurgent
almost necessarily maintained himself for the moment by spoliations and
robberies which left lasting effects behind them; and too often he was
tempted to ally himself with some foreign enemy amongst the barbarians,
and perhaps to introduce him into the heart of the empire.] The very
granaries of Rome, Sicily and Egypt, were the seats of continued
distractions; in Alexandria, the second city of the empire, there was
even a civil war which lasted for twelve years. Weakness, dissension,
and misery were spread like a cloud over the whole face of the empire.
The last of the rebels who directed his rebellion personally against
Gallienus was Aureolus. Passing the Rhætian Alps, this leader sought out
and defied the emperor. He was defeated, and retreated upon Milan; but
Gallienus, in pursuing him, was lured into an ambuscade, and perished
from the wound inflicted by an archer. With his dying breath he is said
to have recommended Claudius to the favor of the senate; and at all
events Claudius it was who succeeded. Scarcely was the new emperor
installed, before he was summoned to a trial not only arduous in itself,
but terrific by the very name of the enemy. The Goths of the Ukraine,
in a new armament of six thousand vessels, had again descended by the
Bosphorus into the south, and had sat down before Thessalonica,
the capitol of Macedonia. Claudius marched against them with the
determination to vindicate the Roman name and honor: "Know," said he,
writing to the senate, "that 320,000 Goths have set foot upon the Roman
soil. Should I conquer them, your gratitude will be my reward. Should
I fall, do not forget who it is that I have succeeded; and that the
republic is exhausted." No sooner did the Goths hear of his approach,
than, with transports of ferocious joy, they gave up the siege, and
hurried to annihilate the last pillar of the empire. The mighty battle
which ensued, neither party seeking to evade it, took place at Naissus.
At one time the legions were giving way, when suddenly, by some happy
manoeuvre of the emperor, a Roman corps found its way to the rear of the
enemy. The Goths gave way, and their defeat was total. According to
most accounts they left 50,000 dead upon the field. The campaign still
lingered, however, at other points, until at last the emperor succeeded
in driving back the relics of the Gothic host into the fastnesses of
the Balkan; and there the greater part of them died of hunger and
pestilence. These great services performed, within two years from his
accession to the throne, by the rarest of fates the Emperor Claudius
died in his bed at Sirmium, the capitol of Pannonia. His brother
Quintilius who had a great command at Aquileia, immediately assumed
the purple; but his usurpation lasted only seventeen days, for the last
emperor, with a single eye to the public good, had recommended Aurelian
as his successor, guided by his personal knowledge of that general's
strategic qualities. The army of the Danube confirmed the appointment;
and Quintilius committed suicide. Aurelian was of the same harsh and
forbidding character as the Emperor Severus: he had, however, the
qualities demanded by the times; energetic and not amiable princes were
required by the exigences of the state. The hydra-headed Goths were
again in the field on the Illyrian quarter: Italy itself was invaded by
the Alemanni; and Tetricus, the rebel, still survived as a monument of
the weakness of Gallienus. All these enemies were speedily repressed, or
vanquished, by Aurelian. But it marks the real declension of the empire,
a declension which no personal vigor in the emperor was now sufficient
to disguise, that, even in the midst of victory, Aurelian found it
necessary to make a formal surrender, by treaty, of that Dacia which
Trajan had united with so much ostentation to the empire. Europe was
now again in repose; and Aurelian found himself at liberty to apply his
powers as a reorganizer and restorer to the East. In that quarter of the
world a marvellous revolution had occurred. The little oasis of Palmyra,
from a Roman colony, had grown into the leading province of a great
empire. This island of the desert, together with Syria and Egypt, formed
an independent monarchy under the sceptre of Zenobia. [Footnote: Zenobia
is complimented by all historians for her magnanimity; but with no
foundation in truth. Her first salutation to Aurelian was a specimen
of abject flattery; and her last _public_ words were evidences of the
basest treachery in giving up her generals, and her chief counsellor
Longinus, to the vengeance of the ungenerous enemy.] After two battles
lost in Syria, Zenobia retreated to Palmyra. With great difficulty
Aurelian pursued her; and with still greater difficulty he pressed the
siege of Palmyra. Zenobia looked for relief from Persia; but at that
moment Sapor died, and the Queen of Palmyra fled upon a dromedary,
but was pursued and captured. Palmyra surrendered and was spared; but
unfortunately, with a folly which marks the haughty spirit of the place
unfitted to brook submission, scarcely had the conquering army retired
when a tumult arose, and the Roman garrison was slaughtered. Little
knowledge could those have had of Aurelian's character, who tempted him
to acts but too welcome to his cruel nature by such an outrage as this.
The news overtook the emperor on the Hellespont. Instantly, without
pause, "like Até hot from hell," Aurelian retraced his steps--reached
the guilty city--and consigned it, with all its population, to that
utter destruction from which it has never since arisen. The energetic
administration of Aurelian had now restored the empire--not to its lost
vigor, that was impossible--but to a condition of repose. That was a
condition more agreeable to the empire than to the emperor. Peace was
hateful to Aurelian; and he sought for war, where it could seldom be
sought in vain, upon the Persian frontier. But he was not destined
to reach the Euphrates; and it is worthy of notice, as a providential
ordinance, that his own unmerciful nature was the ultimate cause of his
fate. Anticipating the emperor's severity in punishing some errors of
his own, Mucassor, a general officer in whom Aurelian placed especial
confidence, assassinated him between Byzantium and Heraclea. An
interregnum of eight months succeeded, during which there occurred a
contest of a memorable nature. Some historians have described it as
strange and surprising. To us, on the contrary, it seems that no contest
could be more natural. Heretofore the great strife had been in what way
to secure the reversion or possession of that great dignity; whereas now
the rivalship lay in declining it. But surely such a competition had
in it, under the circumstances of the empire, little that can justly
surprise us. Always a post of danger, and so regularly closed by
assassination, that in a course of two centuries there are hardly to be
found three or four cases of exception, the imperatorial dignity had
now become burdened with a public responsibility which exacted great
military talents, and imposed a perpetual and personal activity.
Formerly, if the emperor knew himself to be surrounded with assassins,
he might at least make his throne, so long as he enjoyed it, the couch
of a voluptuary. The "_ave imperator!_" was then the summons, if to
the supremacy in passive danger, so also to the supremacy in power, and
honor, and enjoyment. But now it was a summons to never-ending
tumults and alarms; an injunction to that sort of vigilance without
intermission, which, even from the poor sentinel, is exacted only when
on duty. Not Rome, but the frontier; not the _aurea domus,_ but a camp,
was the imperial residence. Power and rank, whilst in that residence,
could be had in no larger measure by Cæsar _as_ Cæsar, than by the
same individual as a military commander-in-chief; and, as to enjoyment,
_that_ for the Roman imperator was now extinct. Rest there could be none
for him. Battle was the tenure by which he held his office; and beyond
the range of his trumpet's blare, his sceptre was a broken reed. The
office of Cæsar at this time resembled the situation (as it is sometimes
described in romances) of a knight who has achieved the favor of some
capricious lady, with the present possession of her castle and ample
domains, but which he holds under the known and accepted condition
of meeting all challenges whatsoever offered at the gate by wandering
strangers, and also of jousting at any moment with each and all amongst
the inmates of the castle, as often as a wish may arise to benefit by
the chances in disputing his supremacy.
It is a circumstance, moreover, to be noticed in the aspect of the
Roman monarchy at this period, that the pressure of the evils we are
now considering, applied to this particular age of the empire beyond
all others, as being an age of transition from a greater to an inferior
power. Had the power been either greater or conspicuously less, in that
proportion would the pressure have been easier, or none at all. Being
greater, for example, the danger would have been repelled to a distance
so great that mere remoteness would have disarmed its terrors, or
otherwise it would have been violently overawed. Being less, on the
other hand, and less in an eminent degree, it would have disposed all
parties, as it did at an after period, to regular and formal compromises
in the shape of fixed annual tributes. At present the policy of the
barbarians along the vast line of the northern frontier, was, to
tease and irritate the provinces which they were not entirely able,
or prudentially unwilling, to dismember. Yet, as the almost
annual irruptions were at every instant ready to be converted into
_coup-de-mains_ upon Aquileia--upon Verona--or even upon Rome itself,
unless vigorously curbed at the outset,--each emperor at this period
found himself under the necessity of standing in the attitude of a
champion or propugnator on the frontier line of his territory--ready
for all comers--and with a pretty certain prospect of having one pitched
battle at the least to fight in every successive summer. There were
nations abroad at this epoch in Europe who did not migrate occasionally,
or occasionally project themselves upon the civilized portion of the
globe, but who made it their steady regular occupation to do so, and
lived for no other purpose. For seven hundred years the Roman Republic
might be styled a republic militant: for about one century further it
was an empire triumphant; and now, long retrograde, it had reached that
point at which again, but in a different sense, it might be styled an
empire militant. Originally it had militated for glory and power; now
its militancy was for mere existence. War was again the trade of Rome,
as it had been once before: but in that earlier period war had been its
highest glory now it was its dire necessity.
Under this analysis of the Roman condition, need we wonder, with
the crowd of unreflecting historians, that the senate, at the era of
Aurelian's death, should dispute amongst each other--not, as once, for
the possession of the sacred purple, but for the luxury and safety of
declining it? The sad pre-eminence was finally imposed upon Tacitus, a
senator who traced his descent from the historian of that name, who had
reached an age of seventy--five years, and who possessed a fortune of
three millions sterling. Vainly did the agitated old senator open his
lips to decline the perilous honor; five hundred voices insisted upon
the necessity of his compliance; and thus, as a foreign writer observes,
was the descendant of him, whose glory it had been to signalize himself
as the hater of despotism, under the absolute necessity of becoming, in
his own person, a despot.
The aged senator then was compelled to be emperor, and forced, in spite
of his vehement reluctance, to quit the comforts of a palace, which he
was never to revisit, for the hardships of a distant camp. His first
act was strikingly illustrative of the Roman condition, as we have just
described it. Aurelian had attempted to disarm one set of enemies by
turning the current of their fury upon another. The Alani were in search
of plunder, and strongly disposed to obtain it from Roman provinces.
"But no," said Aurelian; "if you do that, I shall unchain my legions
upon you. Be better advised: keep those excellent dispositions of mind,
and that admirable taste for plunder, until you come whither I will
conduct you. Then discharge your fury, and welcome; besides which, I
will pay you wages for your immediate abstinence; and on the other side
the Euphrates you shall pay yourselves." Such was the outline of the
contract; and the Alans had accordingly held themselves in readiness
to accompany Aurelian from Europe to his meditated Persian campaign.
Meantime, that emperor had perished by treason; and the Alani were still
waiting for his successor on the throne to complete his engagements with
themselves, as being of necessity the successor also to his wars and to
his responsibilities. It happened, from the state of the empire, as
we have sketched it above, that Tacitus really _did_ succeed to the
military plans of Aurelian. The Persian expedition was ordained to go
forward; and Tacitus began, as a preliminary step in that expedition, to
look about for his good allies the barbarians. Where might they be,
and how employed? Naturally, they had long been weary of waiting. The
Persian booty might be good after _its_ kind; but it was far away; and,
_en attendant_, Roman booty was doubtless good after _its_ kind. And
so, throughout the provinces of Cappadocia, Pontus, &c., far as the eye
could stretch, nothing was to be seen but cities and villages in flames.
The Roman army hungered and thirsted to be unmuzzled and slipped upon
these false friends. But this, for the present, Tacitus would not
allow. He began by punctually fulfilling all the terms of Aurelian's
contract,--a measure which barbarians inevitably construed into the
language of fear. But then came the retribution. Having satisfied public
justice, the emperor now thought of vengeance: he unchained his legions:
a brief space of time sufficed for a long course of vengeance: and
through every outlet of Asia Minor the Alani fled from the wrath of the
Roman soldier. Here, however, terminated the military labors of Tacitus:
he died at Tyana in Cappadocia, as some say, from the effects of
the climate of the Caucasus, co-operating with irritations from the
insolence of the soldiery; but, as Zosimus and Zonaras expressly assure
us, under the murderous hands of his own troops. His brother Florianus
at first usurped the purple, by the aid of the Illyrian army; but the
choice of other armies, afterwards confirmed by the senate, settled upon
Probus, a general already celebrated under Aurelian. The two competitors
drew near to each other for the usual decision by the sword, when the
dastardly supporters of Florian offered up their chosen prince as a
sacrifice to his antagonist. Probus, settled in his seat, addressed
himself to the regular business of those times,--to the reduction
of insurgent provinces, and the liberation of others from hostile
molestations. Isauria and Egypt he visited in the character of a
conqueror, Gaul in the character of a deliverer. From the Gaulish
provinces he chased in succession the Franks, the Burgundians, and the
Lygians. He pursued the intruders far into their German thickets; and
nine of the native German princes came spontaneously into his camp,
subscribed such conditions as he thought fit to dictate, and complied
with his requisitions of tribute in horses and provisions. This,
however, is a delusive gleam of Roman energy, little corresponding
with the true condition of the Roman power, and entirely due to the
_personal_ qualities of Probus. Probus himself showed his sense of the
true state of affairs, by carrying a stone wall, of considerable height,
from the Danube to the Neckar. He made various attempts also to effect
a better distribution of barbarous tribes, by dislocating their
settlements, and making extensive translations of their clans, according
to the circumstances of those times. These arrangements, however,
suggested often by short-sighted views, and carried into effect by mere
violence, were sometimes defeated visibly at the time, and, doubtless,
in very few cases accomplished the ends proposed. In one instance, where
a party of Franks had been transported into the Asiatic province of
Pontus, as a column of defence against the intrusive Alans, being
determined to revisit their own country, they swam the Hellespont,
landed on the coasts of Asia Minor and of Greece, plundered Syracuse,
steered for the Straits of Gibraltar, sailed along the shores of Spain
and Gaul, passing finally through the English Channel and the German
Ocean, right onwards to the Frisic and Batavian coasts, where they
exultingly rejoined their exulting friends. Meantime, all the energy
and military skill of Probus could not save him from the competition of
various rivals. Indeed, it must then have been felt, as by us who look
back on those times it is now felt, that, amidst so continued a series
of brief reigns, interrupted by murders, scarcely any idea could arise
answering to our modern ideas of treason and usurpation. For the ideas
of fealty and allegiance, as to a sacred and anointed monarch, could
have no time to take root. Candidates for the purple must have been
viewed rather as military rivals than as traitors to the reigning
Cæsar. And hence one reason for the slight resistance which was often
experienced by the seducers of armies. Probus, however, as accident in
his case ordered it, subdued all his personal opponents,--Saturninus in
the East, Proculus and Bonoses in Gaul. For these victories he triumphed
in the year 281. But his last hour was even then at hand. One point of
his military discipline, which he brought back from elder days, was,
to suffer no idleness in his camps. He it was who, by military labor,
transferred to Gaul and to Hungary the Italian vine, to the great
indignation of the Italian monopolist. The culture of vineyards, the
laying of military roads, the draining of marshes, and similar labors,
perpetually employed the hands of his stubborn and contumacious troops.
On some work of this nature the army happened to be employed near
Sirmium, and Probus was looking on from a tower, when a sudden frenzy of
disobedience seized upon the men: a party of the mutineers ran up to the
emperor, and with a hundred wounds laid him instantly dead. We are told
by some writers that the army was immediately seized with remorse for
its own act; which, if truly reported, rather tends to confirm the
image, otherwise impressed upon us, of the relations between the army
and Cæsar as pretty closely corresponding with those between some fierce
wild beast and its keeper; the keeper, if not uniformly vigilant as an
Argus, is continually liable to fall a sacrifice to the wild instincts
of the brute, mastering at intervals the reverence and fear under which
it has been habitually trained. In this case, both the murdering impulse
and the remorse seem alike the effects of a brute instinct, and to have
arisen under no guidance of rational purpose or reflection. The person
who profited by this murder was Carus, the captain of the guard, a
man of advanced years, and a soldier, both by experience and by his
propensities. He was proclaimed emperor by the army; and on this
occasion there was no further reference to the senate, than by a dry
statement of the facts for its information. Troubling himself little
about the approbation of a body not likely in any way to affect his
purposes (which were purely martial, and adapted to the tumultuous
state of the empire), Carus made immediate preparations for pursuing the
Persian expedition,--so long promised, and so often interrupted. Having
provided for the security of the Illyrian frontier by a bloody victory
over the Sarmatians, of whom we now hear for the first time, Carus
advanced towards the Euphrates; and from the summit of a mountain
he pointed the eyes of his eager army upon the rich provinces of the
Persian empire. Varanes, the successor of Artaxerxes, vainly endeavored
to negotiate a peace. From some unknown cause, the Persian armies were
not at this juncture disposable against Carus: it has been conjectured
by some writers that they were engaged in an Indian war. Carus, it is
certain, met with little resistance. He insisted on having the Roman
supremacy acknowledged as a preliminary to any treaty; and, having
threatened to make Persia as bare as his own skull, he is supposed
to have kept his word with regard to Mesopotamia. The great cities of
Ctesiphon and Seleucia he took; and vast expectations were formed at
Rome of the events which stood next in succession, when, on Christmas
day, 283, a sudden and mysterious end overtook Carus and his victorious
advance. The story transmitted to Rome was, that a great storm, and
a sudden darkness, had surprised the camp of Carus; that the emperor,
previously ill, and reposing in his tent, was obscured from sight; that
at length a cry had arisen,--"The emperor is dead!" and that, at the
same moment, the imperial tent had taken fire. The fire was traced
to the confusion of his attendants; and this confusion was imputed by
themselves to grief for their master's death. In all this it is easy
to read pretty circumstantially a murder committed on the emperor by
corrupted servants, and an attempt afterwards to conceal the indications
of murder by the ravages of fire. The report propagated through the
army, and at that time received with credit, was, that Carus had
been struck by lightning: and that omen, according to the Roman
interpretation, implied a necessity of retiring from the expedition. So
that, apparently, the whole was a bloody intrigue, set on foot for the
purpose of counteracting the emperor's resolution to prosecute the war.
His son Numerian succeeded to the rank of emperor by the choice of the
army. But the mysterious faction of murderers were still at work. After
eight months' march from the Tigris to the Thracian Bosphorus, the army
halted at Chalcedon. At this point of time a report arose suddenly,
that the Emperor Numerian was dead. The impatience of the soldiery would
brook no uncertainty: they rushed to the spot; satisfied themselves of
the fact; and, loudly denouncing as the murderer Aper, the captain of
the guard, committed him to custody, and assigned to Dioclesian, whom
at the same time they invested with the supreme power, the duty of
investigating the case. Dioclesian acquitted himself of this task in
a very summary way, by passing his sword through the captain before he
could say a word in his defence. It seems that Dioclesian, having been
promised the empire by a prophetess as soon as he should have killed a
wild boar [Aper], was anxious to realize the omen. The whole proceeding
has been taxed with injustice so manifest, as not even to seek a
disguise. Meantime, it should be remembered that, _first,_ Aper, as
the captain of the guard, was answerable for the emperor's safety;
_secondly,_ that his anxiety to profit by the emperor's murder was a
sure sign that he had participated in that act; and, _thirdly,_ that the
assent of the soldiery to the open and public act of Dioclesian, implies
a conviction on their part of Aper's guilt. Here let us pause, having
now arrived at the fourth and last group of the Cæsars, to notice the
changes which had been wrought by time, co-operating with political
events, in the very nature and constitution of the imperial office.
If it should unfortunately happen, that the palace of the Vatican, with
its thirteen thousand [Footnote: "_Thirteen thousand chambers_."--The
number of the chambers in this prodigious palace is usually estimated
at that amount. But Lady Miller, who made particular inquiries on
this subject, ascertained that the total amount, including cellars and
closets, capable of receiving a bed, was fifteen thousand.] chambers,
were to take fire--for a considerable space of time the fire would be
retarded by the mere enormity of extent which it would have to traverse.
But there would come at length a critical moment, at which the maximum
of the retarding effect having been attained, the bulk and volume of the
flaming mass would thenceforward assist the flames in the rapidity of
their progress. Such was the effect upon the declension of the Roman
empire from the vast extent of its territory. For a very long period
that very extent, which finally became the overwhelming cause of its
ruin, served to retard and to disguise it. A small encroachment, made
at any one point upon the integrity of the empire, was neither much
regarded at Rome, nor perhaps in and for itself much deserved to be
regarded. But a very narrow belt of encroachments, made upon almost
every part of so enormous a circumference, was sufficient of itself
to compose something of an antagonist force. And to these external
dilapidations, we must add the far more important dilapidations from
within, affecting all the institutions of the State, and all the forces,
whether moral or political, which had originally raised it or maintained
it. Causes which had been latent in the public arrangements ever since
the time of Augustus, and had been silently preying upon its vitals, had
now reached a height which would no longer brook concealment. The fire
which had smouldered through generations had broken out at length
into an open conflagration. Uproar and disorder, and the anarchy of a
superannuated empire, strong only to punish and impotent to defend, were
at this time convulsing the provinces in every point of the compass.
Rome herself had been menaced repeatedly. And a still more awful
indication of the coming storm had been felt far to the south of Rome.
One long wave of the great German deluge had stretched beyond the
Pyrenees and the Pillars of Hercules, to the very soil of ancient
Carthage. Victorious banners were already floating on the margin of the
Great Desert, and they were not the banners of Cæsar. Some vigorous hand
was demanded at this moment, or else the funeral knell of Rome was on
the point of sounding. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that,
had the imbecile Carinus (the brother of Numerian) succeeded to the
command of the Roman armies at this time, or any other than Dioclesian,
the empire of the west would have fallen to pieces within the next ten
years.
Dioclesian was doubtless that man of iron whom the times demanded; and
a foreign writer has gone so far as to class him amongst the greatest
of men, if he were not even himself the greatest. But the position of
Dioclesian was remarkable beyond all precedent, and was alone sufficient
to prevent his being the greatest of men, by making it necessary that
he should be the most selfish. For the case stood thus: If Rome were in
danger, much more so was Cæsar. If the condition of the empire were such
that hardly any energy or any foresight was adequate to its defence, for
the emperor, on the other hand, there was scarcely a possibility that
he should escape destruction. The chances were in an overbalance against
the empire; but for the emperor there was no chance at all. He shared in
all the hazards of the empire; and had others so peculiarly pointed
at himself, that his assassination was now become as much a matter of
certain calculation, as seed-time or harvest, summer or winter, or any
other revolution of the seasons. The problem, therefore, for Dioclesian
was a double one,--so to provide for the defence and maintenance of
the empire, as simultaneously (and, if possible, through the very same
institution) to provide for the personal security of Cæsar. This problem
he solved, in some imperfect degree, by the only expedient perhaps open
to him in that despotism, and in those times. But it is remarkable,
that, by the revolution which he effected, the office of Roman Imperator
was completely altered, and Cæsar became henceforwards an Oriental
Sultan or Padishah. Augustus, when moulding for his future purposes
the form and constitution of that supremacy which he had obtained by
inheritance and by arms, proceeded with so much caution and prudence,
that even the style and title of his office was discussed in council as
a matter of the first moment. The principle of his policy was to absorb
into his own functions all those offices which conferred any real power
to balance or to control his own. For this reason he appropriated the
tribunitian power; because that was a popular and representative office,
which, as occasions arose, would have given some opening to democratic
influences. But the consular office he left untouched; because all its
power was transferred to the imperator, by the entire command of
the army, and by the new organization of the provincial governments.
[Footnote: In no point of his policy was the cunning or the sagacity
of Augustus so much displayed, as in his treaty of partition with the
senate, which settled the distribution of the provinces, and their
future administration. Seeming to take upon himself all the trouble
and hazard, he did in effect appropriate all the power, and left to the
senate little more than trophies of show and ornament. As a first step,
all the greater provinces, as Spain and Gaul, were subdivided into
many smaller ones. This done, Augustus proposed that the senate should
preside over the administration of those amongst them which were
peaceably settled, and which paid a regular tribute; whilst all those
which were the seats of danger,--either as being exposed to hostile
inroads, or to internal commotions,--all, therefore, in fact, _which
could justify the keeping up of a military force,_ he assigned to
himself. In virtue of this arrangement, the senate possessed in Africa
those provinces which had been formed out of Carthage, Cyrene, and the
kingdom of Numidia; in Europe, the richest and most quiet part of
Spain _(Hispania Bætica),_ with the large islands of Sicily, Sardinia,
Corsica, and Crete, and some districts of Greece; in Asia, the kingdoms
of Pontus and Bithynia, with that part of Asia Minor technically called
Asia; whilst, for his own share, Augustus retained Gaul, Syria, the
chief part of Spain, and Egypt, the granary of Rome; finally, all the
military posts on the Euphrates, on the Danube, or the Rhine.
Yet even the showy concessions here made to the senate were defeated
by another political institution, settled at the same time. It had
been agreed that the governors of provinces should be appointed by the
emperor and the senate jointly. But within the senatorian jurisdiction,
these governors, with the title of _Proconsuls,_ were to have no
military power whatsoever; and the appointments were good only for a
single year. Whereas, in the imperatorial provinces, where the governor
bore the title of _Proprætor,_ there was provision made for a military
establishment; and as to duration, the office was regulated entirely by
the emperor's pleasure. One other ordinance, on the same head, riveted
the vassalage of the senate. Hitherto, a great source of the senate's
power had been found in the uncontrolled management of the provincial
revenues; but at this time, Augustus so arranged that branch of
the administration, that, throughout the senatorian or proconsular
provinces, all taxes were immediately paid into the _ararium_, or
treasury of the state; whilst the whole revenues of the proprætorian
(or imperatorial) provinces, from this time forward, flowed into the
_fiscus_, or private treasure of the individual emperor.] And in all
the rest of his arrangements, Augustus had proceeded on the principle
of leaving as many openings to civic influences, and impressing upon all
his institutions as much of the old Roman character, as was compatible
with the real and substantial supremacy established in the person of the
emperor. Neither is it at all certain, as regarded even this aspect of
the imperatorial office, that Augustus had the purpose, or so much as
the wish, to annihilate all collateral power, and to invest the chief
magistrate with absolute irresponsibility. For himself, as called upon
to restore a shattered government, and out of the anarchy of civil wars
to recombine the elements of power into some shape better fitted for
duration (and, by consequence, for insuring peace and protection to the
world) than the extinct republic, it might be reasonable to seek such an
irresponsibility. But, as regarded his successors, considering the great
pains he took to discourage all manifestations of princely arrogance,
and to develop, by education and example, the civic virtues of
patriotism and affability in their whole bearing towards the people
of Rome, there is reason to presume that he wished to remove them
from popular control, without, therefore, removing them from popular
influence.
Hence it was, and from this original precedent of Augustus, aided by the
constitution which he had given to the office of imperator, that up
to the era of Dioclesian, no prince had dared utterly to neglect the
senate, or the people of Rome. He might hate the senate, like Severus,
or Aurelian; he might even meditate their extermination, like the brutal
Maximin. But this arose from any cause rather than from contempt. He
hated them precisely because he feared them, or because he paid them an
involuntary tribute of superstitious reverence, or because the malice of
a tyrant interpreted into a sort of treason the rival influence of the
senate over the minds of men. But, before Dioclesian, the undervaluing
of the senate, or the harshest treatment of that body, had arisen from
views which were _personal_ to the individual Cæsar. It was now made
to arise from the very constitution of the office, and the mode of the
appointment. To defend the empire, it was the opinion of Dioclesian
that a single emperor was not sufficient. And it struck him, at the same
time, that by the very institution of a plurality of emperors, which
was now destined to secure the integrity of the empire, ample provision
might be made for the personal security of each emperor. He carried his
plan into immediate execution, by appointing an associate to his own
rank of Augustus in the person of Maximian--an experienced general;
whilst each of them in effect multiplied his own office still farther
by severally appointing a Cæsar, or hereditary prince. And thus the
very same partition of the public authority, by means of a duality of
emperors, to which the senate had often resorted of late, as the best
means of restoring their own republican aristocracy, was now adopted by
Dioclesian as the simplest engine for overthrowing finally the power of
either senate or army to interfere with the elective privilege. This he
endeavored to centre in the existing emperors; and, at the same moment,
to discourage treason or usurpation generally, whether in the party
choosing or the party chosen, by securing to each emperor, in the case
of his own assassination, an avenger in the person of his surviving
associate, as also in the persons of the two Cæsars, or adopted heirs
and lieutenants. The associate emperor, Maximian, together with the
two Cæsars--Galerius appointed by himself, and Constantius Chlorus by
Maximian--were all bound to himself by ties of gratitude; all owing
their stations ultimately to his own favor. And these ties he endeavored
to strengthen by other ties of affinity; each of the Augusti having
given his daughter in marriage to his own adopted Cæsar. And thus it
seemed scarcely possible that a usurpation should be successful against
so firm a league of friends and relations.
The direct purposes of Dioclesian were but imperfectly attained; the
internal peace of the empire lasted only during his own reign; and with
his abdication of the empire commenced the bloodiest civil wars which
had desolated the world since the contests of the great triumvirate.
But the collateral blow, which he meditated against the authority of
the senate, was entirely successful. Never again had the senate any real
influence on the fate of the world. And with the power of the senate
expired concurrently the weight and influence of Rome. Dioclesian is
supposed never to have seen Rome, except on the single occasion when
he entered it for the ceremonial purpose of a triumph. Even for that
purpose it ceased to be a city of resort; for Dioclesian's was the final
triumph. And, lastly, even as the chief city of the empire for business
or for pleasure, it ceased to claim the homage of mankind; the Cæsar
was already born whose destiny it was to cashier the metropolis of the
world, and to appoint her successor. This also may be regarded in
effect as the ordinance of Dioclesian; for he, by his long residence
at Nicomedia, expressed his opinion pretty plainly, that Rome was not
central enough to perform the functions of a capital to so vast an
empire; that this was one cause of the declension now become so visible
in the forces of the state; and that some city, not very far from the
Hellespont or the Aegean Sea, would be a capital better adapted by
position to the exigencies of the times.
But the revolutions effected by Dioclesian did not stop here. The
simplicity of its republican origin had so far affected the external
character and expression of the imperial office, that in the midst
of luxury the most unbounded, and spite of all other corruptions,
a majestic plainness of manners, deportment, and dress, had still
continued from generation to generation, characteristic of the Roman
imperator in his intercourse with his subjects. All this was now
changed; and for the Roman was substituted the Persian dress, the
Persian style of household, a Persian court, and Persian manners, A
diadem, or tiara beset with pearls, now encircled the temples of the
Roman Augustus; his sandals were studded with pearls, as in the Persian
court; and the other parts of his dress were in harmony with these. The
prince was instructed no longer to make himself familiar to the eyes
of men. He sequestered himself from his subjects in the recesses of his
palace. None, who sought him, could any longer gain easy admission
to his presence. It was a point of his new duties to be difficult of
access; and they who were at length admitted to an audience, found him
surrounded by eunuchs, and were expected to make their approaches by
genuflexions, by servile "adorations," and by real acts of worship as to
a visible god.
It is strange that a ritual of court ceremonies, so elaborate and
artificial as this, should first have been introduced by a soldier, and
a warlike soldier like Dioclesian. This, however, is in part explained
by his education and long residence in Eastern countries.
But the same eastern training fell to the lot of Constantine, who was in
effect his successor; [Footnote: On the abdication of Dioclesian and
of Maximian, Galerius and Constantius succeeded as the new Augusti. But
Galerius, as the more immediate representative of Dioclesian, thought
himself entitled to appoint both Cæsars,--the Daza (or Maximus) in
Syria, Severus in Italy. Meantime, Constantine, the son of Constantius,
with difficulty obtaining permission from Galerius, paid a visit to his
father; upon whose death, which followed soon after, Constantine came
forward as a Cæsar, under the appointment of his father. Galerius
submitted with a bad grace; but Maxentius, a reputed son of Maximian,
was roused by emulation with Constantine to assume the purple; and
being joined by his father, they jointly attacked and destroyed Severus.
Galerius, to revenge the death of his own Cæsar, advanced towards Rome;
but being compelled to a disastrous retreat, he resorted to the measure
of associating another emperor with himself, as a balance to his new
enemies. This was Licinius; and thus, at one time, there were six
emperors, either as Augusti or as Cæsars. Galerius, however, dying, all
the rest were in succession destroyed by Constantine.] and the Oriental
tone and standard established by these two emperors, though disturbed a
little by the plain and military bearing of Julian, and one or two
more emperors of the same breeding, finally re-established itself with
undisputed sway in the Byzantine court.
Meantime the institutions of Dioclesian, if they had destroyed Rome and
the senate as influences upon the course of public affairs, and if they
had destroyed the Roman features of the Cæsars, do, notwithstanding,
appear to have attained one of their purposes, in limiting the extent
of imperial murders. Travelling through the brief list of the remaining
Cæsars, we perceive a little more security for life; and hence the
successions are less rapid. Constantine, who (like Aaron's rod) had
swallowed up all his competitors _seriatim,_ left the empire to his
three sons; and the last of these most unwillingly to Julian. That
prince's Persian expedition, so much resembling in rashness and
presumption the Russian campaign of Napoleon, though so much below it in
the scale of its tragic results, led to the short reign of Jovian, (or
Jovinian,) which lasted only seven months. Upon his death succeeded the
house of Valentinian, [Footnote: Valentinian the First, who admitted his
brother Valens to a partnership in the empire, had, by his first
wife, an elder son, Gratian, who reigned and associated with himself
Theodosius, commonly called the Great. By his second wife he had
Valentinian the Second, who, upon the death of his brother Gratian,
was allowed to share the empire by Theodosius. Theodosius, by his first
wife, had two sons,--Arcadius, who afterwards reigned in the east, and
Honorius, whose western reign was so much illustrated by Stilicho. By
a second wife, daughter to Valentinian the First, Theodosius had
a daughter, (half-sister, therefore, to Honorius,) whose son was
Valentinian the Third.] in whose descendant, of the third generation,
the empire, properly speaking, expired. For the seven shadows who
succeeded, from Avitus and Majorian to Julius Nepos and Romulus
Augustulus, were in no proper sense Roman emperors,--they were not
even emperors of the West,--but had a limited kingdom in the Italian
peninsula. Valentinian the Third was, as we have said, the last emperor
of the West.
But, in a fuller and ampler sense, recurring to what we have said of
Dioclesian and the tenor of his great revolutions, we may affirm that
Probus and Carus were the final representatives of the majesty of Rome:
for they reigned over the whole empire, not yet incapable of sustaining
its own unity; and in them were still preserved, not yet obliterated by
oriental effeminacy, those majestic features which reflected republican
consuls, and, through them, the senate and people of Rome. That, which
had offended Dioclesian in the condition of the Roman emperors, was
the grandest feature of their dignity. It is true that the peril of
the office had become intolerable; each Cæsar submitted to his sad
inauguration with a certainty, liable even to hardly any disguise from
the delusions of youthful hope, that for him, within the boundless
empire which he governed, there was no coast of safety, no shelter
from the storm, no retreat, except the grave, from the dagger of the
assassin. Gibbon has described the hopeless condition of one who should
attempt to fly from the wrath of the almost omnipresent emperor. But
this dire impossibility of escape was in the end dreadfully retaliated
upon the emperor; persecutors and traitors were found every where: and
the vindictive or the ambitious subject found himself as omnipresent
as the jealous or the offended emperor. The crown of the Cæsars was
therefore a crown of thorns; and it must be admitted, that never in
this world have rank and power been purchased at so awful a cost
in tranquillity and peace of mind. The steps of Cæsar's throne were
absolutely saturated with the blood of those who had possessed it:
and so inexorable was that murderous fate which overhung that gloomy
eminence, that at length it demanded the spirit of martyrdom in him
who ventured to ascend it. In these circumstances, some change was
imperatively demanded. Human nature was no longer equal to the terrors
which it was summoned to face. But the changes of Dioclesian transmuted
that golden sceptre into a base oriental alloy. They left nothing behind
of what had so much challenged the veneration of man: for it was in the
union of republican simplicity with the irresponsibility of illimitable
power, it was in the antagonism between the merely human and
approachable condition of Cæsar as a man, and his divine supremacy as
a potentate and king of kings--that the secret lay of his unrivalled
grandeur. This perished utterly under the reforming hands of Dioclesian.
Cæsar only it was that could be permitted to extinguish Cæsar: and a
Roman imperator it was who, by remodelling, did in effect abolish,
by exorcising from its foul terrors, did in effect disenchant of its
sanctity, that imperatorial dignity, which having once perished, could
have no second existence, and which was undoubtedly the sublimest
incarnation of power, and a monument the mightiest of greatness built by
human hands, which upon this planet has been suffered to appear.