THE DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE
The causes that led to the dividing up of the Empire are easily
understood. What is far less easy to understand is how Rome ruled
the world, as the world then was known, so long as she did. Remember
this: at that time you could only travel, and you could only send a
message, as fast as a horse could gallop, if it was by land that you
went or sent; and only as fast as a ship--a ship with a very simple
and primitive way of setting the sails--could be urged through the
water by sailing or by rowing, if your going was by sea. For
practical purposes of getting news or of moving troops, the world of
the Romans of that date, say from Egypt to Britain at its furthest
points, was a very great deal larger than the whole of the globe is
to us to-day. If you can understand it in that sense, their Empire
was very much larger, much less under the eye and the direction of
the centre of government, than the whole British Empire to-day. And
we find that large enough. The Romans had the further trouble, which
we have not, that the leaders of the legions in the provinces, when
they had repelled the barbarians, sometimes claimed to be independent
of the central authority, as we saw both in Gaul and in Asia Minor.
So the wonder really is, not that Rome should at length fail to
govern all this Empire from one centre, but that she should have
succeeded in doing so at all, {24} and for so long. From causes
which I have spoken of already, the home government was not as strong
as it had been; and as the power at the centre grew less the pressure
of the barbarians on the boundaries grew more. Especially it became
convenient to have a centre of government nearer the boundary on the
south-east, where the eastern barbarians were constantly making their
attacks and where a great leader of the army, if he checked the
attack, might become too strong for the authority of Rome to control
unless it put forth all its force. A solution of the trouble was
attempted by the Emperor Diocletian, who came to the imperial throne
in 284. What he did was to appoint a colleague for himself to whom
he gave his own title of Augustus, though he also retained the title
for himself. There were, therefore, two Augusti. And besides the
Augusti, he appointed two leaders of armies in the provinces to bear
the title of Cæsar. Thus there were two Cæsars and two Augusti. The
Empire and its armies were portioned out between these four great
persons. Diocletian himself had the command of the army of Syria.
His colleague, the other Augustus, commanded the armies of Italy and
of Africa. One of the Cæsars had the armies guarding the Rhine, and
the other the armies guarding the Danube boundary.
In this way were the Empire and its defending forces divided up. The
Cæsars were considered to be in an inferior position to the Augusti,
and as between the Augusti themselves Diocletian was supposed to to
be the superior of the other. We may think it likely that the
Emperor, in making these appointments, did little more than give his
formal approval to arrangements that already existed, in fact. Very
probably these important persons would have been able to make
themselves practically independent of the Emperor, even if he had not
given them these {25} offices, and very likely they were the more
ready to pay him some show of deference because he had given them his
approval.
There is one point about the arrangement to which I would call your
attention, and that is that Diocletian, who claimed to be the
superior of them all, assumed, for his own command, the army of
Syria, of the East. You will perceive what that seems to
indicate--that the Romans had begun to look upon the Eastern side of
the Empire as more important than the Western. As early as the year
300, or even earlier, this was their view.
In Diocletian's time we find that any claim of power by the people,
the democracy, was entirely given up. The government was an
autocracy; though there might be more than one autocrat. There was
no longer any value in being a citizen of Rome. Rome and Italy had
no privileges above the rest of the Empire. They were administered
and taxed in the same way as all the provinces.
[Sidenote: Constantine the Great]
This formal division of authority under Diocletian did not long
answer the purpose for which he designed it, and he and his fellow
"Augustus" abdicated in 305, and for nearly twenty years there was
continual fighting between rival "Emperors" elected by the different
armies. For a time, but for a time only, peace within the Empire was
gained under Constantine I.--Constantine the Great, as he was
deservedly called. He deserves that distinguishing title if only for
two acts of his reign which made a very great impression on the story
of the world: he accepted the Christian religion as the recognised
religion of the Empire, and he built the City of
Constantine--Constantinople--to be the new capital of the Empire, the
new centre.
He died, however, in 337, and immediately the fighting between rival
Emperors was resumed. It {26} was nearly thirty years before the
world had any peace from these rivalries. At length Valentinian is
proclaimed Emperor by his soldiers, and he appoints, as his colleague
and fellow "Augustus," his own brother Valens. To Valens he gives
the title of Emperor of the East, with the capital of that Eastern
Empire at Constantinople. For himself he takes the Empire of the
West, with its capital still at Rome. It appears that the
independence of the two Empires is complete. Their boundaries are
defined, the limit of the Eastern Empire being drawn so far to the
west as to include Macedonia and Greece.
Of all the Indo-European tribes or nations the most powerful, the
most numerous and that which occupied the largest territory, was the
great nation of the Goths. They may have come down from
Scandinavia--from Norway and Sweden. There are some evidences which
make that likely, but the evidence is not very clear. They owned the
country along the boundary of the Roman Empire from the Danube to the
Vistula.
[Sidenote: The Huns]
And behind all these tribes of Indo-Europeans settled for the most
part in what we now call Germany and Austria--behind them, that is to
say to the north and east, in the region of that great hive or
nursery of mankind which seems to have been somewhere in the north of
Asia--there was another nation, not belonging to the Indo-European
family, not speaking a language that resembled theirs, not made up of
persons at all like these Indo-Europeans in appearance. The
Indo-Europeans, whom it will perhaps be more convenient to call
Germans, because they lived in the countries now occupied by Germans
and Austrians--these German tribesmen were tall and fair. This other
nation, to the eastward, was of small dark men. They were called
Huns.
You may remember that antiquaries--men learned {27} in ancient
history--tell us that man, in his progress to civilisation, has
passed through two rather distinct stages--the hunting stage and the
pastoral stage--and through them came to a third stage, the
agricultural, when he settled down to grow crops. The German tribes
were already in this third stage, at the point which our story has
reached, but the Huns were in the second stage only; they wandered,
with their flocks and herds.
This nation of little dark men seems, by their language and by other
evidences, as if it must have been related to the Finns, of Finland.
The evidences, however, are not very clear; but what is tolerably
clear is that they were a numerous and a warlike race of little dark
men, and that they kept up a constant pressure, from the north and
east, upon the Goths and other German tribes; especially on the more
eastern Goths, called Ostrogoths.
And very often it seems to have been that pressure of the Huns from
the North and East that made the Germans try and try again to break
through the boundary of the Roman Empire and work their way towards
the west. The first of these breaks through, however, which had any
success, was in a southward, rather than a westward direction. It
was a break through of the Goths towards Constantinople, and it was
very formidable indeed.
When Diocletian appointed a colleague for himself, a second
"Augustus," he, as we saw, took the Eastern command for himself and
gave the Western to the colleague. When Valentinian finally divided
the Empire between himself and his brother Valens, he took the West
and gave the East to his brother. It is possible that he may have
foreseen something of the trouble that was soon to come on that
eastern side. Within three years of his accession to the throne of
Constantinople Valens was called upon to lead his legions to {28}
repel a great incursion of the Goths. He met them at Adrianople and
suffered a terrible defeat. He himself was killed in the battle.
The barbarians pressed on. They were at the walls of Constantinople.
[Sidenote: Barbarian tribes]
A hundred years before this, Goths, crossing the Danube, had fought
and conquered Roman legions and had killed an Emperor, namely Decius,
who is notorious for his cruel persecution of the Christians known in
history as "the Decian persecutions." The Goths had at this time
been checked by further Roman forces that were brought against them,
but it was then that the Empire lost the province of Dacia, which lay
north and east of the Danube, and the Danube thereafter became the
boundary.
Now the children of these Goths, rather more than a hundred years
later, were across the Danube again, had again conquered the legions
and again a Roman Emperor had been slain by them in battle.
Constantine had himself been forced to fight the Goths in Thrace,
and, when building his new capital, had encircled it with defensive
walls. It was well for his successors that he did so. The Gothic
army was held before the walls. A large number of their nation had
already crossed the Danube and had been admitted as peaceful settlers
within the bounds of the Empire. It is certain that Gothic invaders
from north of the Danube would find many friends, for the Goths
already settled in the Empire were dissatisfied with their treatment
by the Romans. And even in the Roman legions that they defeated
there would be many of their countrymen, for the recruiting of
barbarians among the legionaries had been going on for more than one
century. Theodosius the Great, who had succeeded Valens, killed by
the Goths, as Emperor of the East, made a treaty with the conquerors,
which was faithfully observed until the death of Theodosius in 395.
But then the Goths {29} threw off the yoke which the treaty had put
upon their necks.
It was fortunate indeed for the Empire that the Persians were no
longer a danger on the eastern boundary. A peace with that nation
had been arranged in 364, and was not broken for nearly 150 years.
The Goths were divided into several different tribes, not always at
peace with each other; and especially into Visigoths and
Ostrogoths--that is Western Goths and Eastern. They were so
completely divided by the end of the fourth century that the
Ostrogoths had fallen under the domination of the Huns, while the
Visigoths, further westward, were independent of that fierce and
strange people.
But even these Western Goths felt the pressure, pushing them
westward, of the Hun, though not so directly. They had the
Ostrogoths in between, and sometimes we actually find the Ostrogoths,
with the Huns, fighting against the Visigoths. Thus intermixed was
the fighting.
And you should know too that although the Romans still called these
nations barbarians, many barbarians had come to high honour and great
power in one or other of the Roman cities. The division between
Roman and barbarian was not nearly so distinct and sharp as the word
"barbarian" suggests to us. It was not possible that there should be
much idea of inequality between them, seeing that the barbarian could
hold such high honour in the chief places of the Empire.
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