Part 122

"Under the humane pretext of gratifying the world with a flattering title, an Antoninus, in one of his edicts, called by the name of Roman citizens the tributaries of the Roman empire, those men whom a proconsul might legally torture, flog with rods, or crush with labour and taxes. Thus the power of that formerly inviolable title, before which the most shameless tyranny stopped short, was contradicted; thus perished that ancient safety-cry which made the executioners fall back; I am a Roman citizen. From that period Rome no longer existed; there was a court and provinces: we do not understand by that word what it now signifies in the vulgar languages, but what it signified primitively in the Roman language, a country conquered by arms; we mean to say, that the primitive distinction between conquering Rome and those it had conquered, then became established between the men in the palace and those out of the palace; that Rome itself lived only for one family, and a handful of courtiers, as formerly the nations it had conquered had only lived by it. It was then that the name of subjugated, subjecti, which our language has corrupted into that of subjects, was transported from the conquered inhabitants of the East or Gaul, to the victorious inhabitants of Italy, attached in future to the yoke of a small number of men, as these had been attached to their yoke; the property of those men, as well as the others, had been their property, worthy, in a word, of the degrading title of subjects, subjecti, which must be taken literally. Such was the order of things which had been gradually forming since the time of Augustus; each emperor gloried in hastening the moment of its perfection; Constantine gave it the finishing stroke. He effaced the name of Rome from the Roman standards, and put in its place the symbol of the religion which the empire had just embraced. He degraded the revered name of the civil magistrature below the domestic offices of his house. An inspector of the wardrobe took precedence of the consuls. The aspect of Rome importuned him; he thought he saw the image of liberty still engraved on its old walls; fear drove him thence; he fled to the coasts of Byzantia, and there built Constantinople, placing the sea as a barrier between the new city of the Cæsars and the ancient city of the Brutus. If Rome had been the home of independence, Constantinople was the home of slavery; from thence issued the dogmas of passive obedience to the Church and throne; there was but one right—that of the empire; but one duty—that of obedience. The general name of citizen, which was equivalent, in language, to men living under the same law, was replaced by epithets graduated according to the credit of the powerful or the cowardice of the weak. The qualifications of Eminence, Royal Highness, and Reverence, were bestowed on what was lowest and most despicable in the world. The empire, like a private domain, was transmitted to children, wives, and sons-in-law; it was given, bequeathed, substituted; the universe was exhausting itself for the establishment of the family; taxes increased immoderately; Constantinople alone was exempted; that privilege of Roman liberty was the price of its infamy. The rest of the cities and nations were treated like beasts of burden, which are used without scruple, flogged when they are restive, and killed when there is cause to fear them. Witness the population of Antioch, condemned to death by the pious Theodosius; and that of Thessalonica, entirely massacred by him for a tax refused, and an unfortunate creature secured from the justice of his provosts. Meanwhile savage and free nations armed against the enslaved world, as if to chastise it for its baseness. Italy, oppressed by the empire, soon found pitiless revengers in its heart. Rome was menaced by the Goths. The people, weary of the imperial yoke, did not defend themselves. The men of the country, still imbued with the old Roman manners and religion, those men, the only ones whose arms were still robust and souls capable of pride, rejoiced to see among them free men and gods resembling the ancient gods of Italy. Stilico, the general to whom the empire entrusted its defence, appeared at the foot of the Alps; he called to arms, and no one arose; he promised liberty to the slaves, he lavished the treasures of the fisc; and out of the immense extent of the empire, he only assembled 40,000 men, the fifth part of the warriors that Hannibal had encountered at the gates of free Rome."

_A. Thierry, Narratives of the Merovingian Era and Historical Essays, essay 13._

"It was not the division into two empires, nor merely the power of external enemies, that destroyed the domination of Rome. Republican Rome had ended in monarchy by the decadence of her institutions and customs, by the very effect of her victories and conquests, by the necessity of giving to this immense dominion a dominus. But after she had begun to submit to the reality of a monarchy, she retained the worship of republican forms. The Empire was for a long time a piece of hypocrisy; for it did not dare to give to its rulers the first condition of stability, a law of succession. The death of every emperor was followed by troubles, and the choice of a master of the world was often left to chance. At length the monarchy had to be organized, but thenceforth it was absolute, without restraint or opposition. Its proposed aim was to exploit the world, an aim which in practice was carried to an extreme. Hence it exhausted the orbis romanus."

_E. Lavisse, General View of the Political History of Europe, chapter 1._

ROME: A. D. 486. The last Roman sovereignty in Gaul.

See GAUL: A. D. 457-486.

ROME: A. D. 488. Theodoric the king of the Ostrogoths authorized and commissioned by the Emperor Zeno to conquer a kingdom in Italy.

See GOTHS (OSTROGOTHS): A. D. 473-488.

ROME: A. D. 488-526. The Ostrogothic kingdom of Theodoric.

It was in the autumn of the year 488 that Theodoric, commissioned by the Eastern Emperor, Zeno, to wrest Italy from Odoacer (or Odovacar), broke up his camp or settlement on the Danube, in the neighborhood of Sistova, and moved towards the west. The movement was a national migration—of wives and children as well as of warriors—and the total number is estimated at not less than 200,000. Following the course of the Danube, the Gothic host met with no opposition until it came to Singidunum, near the junction of the Save. There, on the banks of a stream called the Ulca, they fought a great battle with the Gepidæ, who held possession of Pannonia, and who disputed their advance. {2739} Victorious in this encounter, Theodoric pushed on, along the course of the Save; but the movement of his cumbrous train was so slow and the hardships of the march so great, that nearly a year passed before he had surmounted the passes of the Julian Alps and entered Italy. He found Odoacer waiting to give him battle on the Isonzo; but the forces of the latter were not courageous enough or not faithful enough for their duty, and the invading Goths forced the passage of the stream on the 28th of August, 489. Odoacer retreated to Verona, followed by Theodoric, and there, on the 30th of September, a great and terrible battle was fought, from which not many of the Rugian and Herulian troops of Odoacer escaped. Odoacer, himself, with some followers, got clear of the rout and made their way to the safe stronghold of Ravenna. For a time, Odoacer's cause seemed abandoned by all who had supported him; but it was a treacherous show of submission to the victor. Theodoric, ere long, found reactions at work which recruited the forces of his opponent and diminished his own. He was driven to retreat to Ticinum (Pavia) for the winter. But having solicited and received aid from the Visigoths of southern Gaul, he regained, in the summer of 490 (August 11) in a battle on the Adda, not far from Milan, all the ground that he had lost, and more. Odoacer was now driven again into Ravenna, and shut up within its walls by a blockade which was endured until February in the third year afterwards (493), when famine compelled a surrender. Theodoric promised life to his rival and respect to his royal dignity; but he no sooner had the old self-crowned king Odoacer in his power than he slew him with his own hand. Notwithstanding this savagery in the inauguration of it, the reign of the Ostrogothic king in Italy appears to have been, on the whole, wise and just, with more approximation to the chivalric half-civilization of later mediæval times than appears in the government of any of his Gothic or German neighbors. "Although Theoderic did not care to run the risk of offending both his Goths and the Court of Constantinople by calling himself Cæsar or Emperor, yet those titles would have exactly expressed the character of his rule—so far at least as his Roman subjects were concerned. When the Emperor Anastasius in 497 acknowledged him as ruler of Italy, he sent him the purple cloak and the diadem of the Western emperors; and the act showed that Anastasius quite understood the difference between Theodoric's government and that of Odovacar. In fact, though not in name, the Western empire had been restored with much the same institutions it had under the best of the Cæsars." The reign of Theodoric, dating it, as he did, from his first victory on Italian soil, was thirty-seven years in duration. When he died, August 30, A. D. 526, he left to his grandson, Athalaric, a kingdom which extended, beyond Italy, over Rhætia, Noricum, Pannonia and Illyricum (the modern Austrian empire south and west of the Danube), together with Provence in southern Gaul and a district north of it embracing much of modern Dauphiné. His government extended, likewise, over the Visigothic kingdom, as guardian of its young king, his grandson. But this great kingdom of the heroic Ostrogoth was not destined to endure. One who lived the common measure of life might have seen the beginning of it and the end. It vanished in one quarter of a century after he who founded it was laid away in his great tomb at Ravenna, leaving nothing to later history which can be counted as a survival of it,—not even a known remnant of the Ostrogothic race.

_H. Bradley, Story of the Goths, chapters 16-20._

"Theodoric professed a great reverence for the Roman civilization. He had asked for and obtained from the Emperor Anastasius the imperial insignia that Odovakar had disdainfully sent back to Constantinople, and he gave up the dress of the barbarians for the Roman purple. Although he lived at Ravenna he was accustomed to consult the Roman senate, to whom he wrote: 'We desire, conscript fathers, that the genius of liberty may look with favor upon your assembly.' He established a consul of the West, three prætorian prefects, and three dioceses,—that of northern Italy, that of Rome, and that of Gaul. He retained the municipal government, but appointed the decurions himself. He reduced the severity of the taxes, and his palace was always open to those who wished to complain of the iniquities of the judges. … Thus a barbarian gave back to Italy the prosperity which she had lost under the emperors. The public buildings, aqueducts, theatres, and baths were repaired, and palaces and churches were built. The uncultivated lands were cleared and companies were formed to drain the Pontine marshes and the marshes of Spoleto. The iron mines of Dalmatia and a gold mine in Bruttii were worked. The coasts were protected from pirates by numerous flotillas. The population increased greatly. Theodoric, though he did not know how to write, gathered around him the best literary merit of the time,—Boethius, the bishop Ennodius, and Cassiodorus. The latter, whom he made his minister, has left us twelve books of letters. Theodoric seems in many ways like a first sketch of Charlemagne. Though himself an Arian, he respected the rights of the Catholics from the first. … When, however, the Emperor Justin I. persecuted the Arians in the East, he threatened to retaliate, and as a great commotion was observed among his Italian subjects, he believed that a conspiracy was being formed against himself. … The prefect Symmachus and his son-in-law, Boethius, were implicated. Theodoric confined them in the tower of Pavia, and it was there that Boethius wrote his great work, The Consolations of Philosophy. They were both executed in 525. Theodoric, however, finally recognized their innocence, and felt such great regret that his reason is said to have been unbalanced and that remorse hastened his end."

_V. Duruy, History of the Middle Ages, book 1, chapter 3._

"The personal greatness of Theodoric overshadowed Emperor and Empire; from his palace at Ravenna, by one title or another, by direct dominion, as guardian, as elder kinsman, as representative of the Roman power, as head by natural selection of the whole Teutonic world, he ruled over all the western lands save one; and even to the conquering Frank he could say, Thus far shalt thou come and no further. In true majesty such a position was more than Imperial; moreover there was nothing in the rule of Theodoric which touched the Roman life of Italy. … As far as we can see, it was the very greatness of Theodoric which kept his power from being lasting. {2740} Like so many others of the very greatest of men, he set on foot a system which he himself could work, but which none but himself could work. He sought to set up a kingdom of Goths and Romans, under which the two nations should live side by side, distinct but friendly, each keeping its own law and doing its own work. And for one life-time the thing was done. Theodoric could keep the whole fabric of Roman life untouched, with the Goth standing by as an armed protector. He could as he said, leave to the Roman consul the honours of government and take for the Gothic king only the toils. Smaller men neither could nor would do this. … It was the necessary result of his position that he gave Italy one generation of peace and prosperity such as has no fellow for ages on either side of it, but that, when he was gone, a fabric which had no foundation but his personal qualities broke down with a crash."

_E. A. Freeman, Chief Periods of European History, lecture 3._

ALSO IN: _E. A. Freeman, The Goths at Ravenna (Historical Essays, volume 3, chapter 4)._

_T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, book 4, chapters 6-13 (volume 3)._

_Cassiodorus, Letters, translated and edited by T. Hodgkin._

_H. F. Stewart, Boethius, chapter 2._

ROME: A. D. 527-565. The reign of Justinian.

"In the year after the great Theoderic died (526), the most famous in the time of Eastern emperors, since Constantine, began his long and eventful reign (527-567). Justinian was born a Slavonian peasant, near what was then Sardica, and is now Sofia; his original Slave name, Uprawda, was latinized into Justinian, when he became an officer in the imperial guard. Since the death of the second Theodosius (450), the Eastern emperors had been, as they were continually to be, men not of Roman or Greek, but of barbarian or half barbarian origin, whom the imperial city and service attracted, naturalized, and clothed with civilized names and Roman character. Justinian's reign, so great and so unhappy, was marked by magnificent works, the administrative organization of the empire, the great buildings at Constantinople, the last and grandest codification of Roman law.

See CORPUS JURIS CIVILIS.

But it was also marked by domestic shame, by sanguinary factions, by all the vices and crimes of a rapacious and ungrateful despotism.

See CIRCUS, FACTIONS OF THE ROMAN.

Yet it seemed for a while like the revival of the power and fortune of Rome. Justinian rose to the highest ideas of imperial ambition; and he was served by two great masters of war, foreigners in origin like himself, Belisarius the Thracian, and Narses the Armenian, who were able to turn to full account the resources, still enormous, of the empire, its immense riches, its technical and mechanical skill, its supplies of troops, its military traditions, its command of the sea. Africa was wrested from the Vandals;

See VANDALS: A. D. 533-534;

Italy from the successors of Theoderic [see below]; much of Spain from the West Goths."

_R. W. Church, The Beginning of the Middle Ages, chapter 6._

"In spite of the brilliant events which have given the reign of Justinian a prominent place in the annals of mankind, it is presented to us in a series of isolated and incongruous facts. Its chief interest is derived from the biographical memorials of Belisarius, Theodora, and Justinian; and its most instructive lesson has been drawn from the influence which its legislation has exercised on foreign nations. The unerring instinct of mankind has however fixed on this period as one of the greatest eras in man's annals. The actors may have been men of ordinary merit, but the events of which they were the agents effected the mightiest revolutions in society. The frame of the ancient world was broken to pieces, and men long looked back with wonder and admiration at the fragments which remained, to prove the existence of a nobler race than their own. The Eastern Empire, though too powerful to fear any external enemy, was withering away from the rapidity with which the State devoured the resources of the people. … The life of Belisarius, either in its reality or its romantic form, has typified his age. In his early youth, the world was populous and wealthy, the empire rich and powerful. He conquered extensive realms and mighty nations and led kings captive to the footstool of Justinian, the lawgiver of civilisation. Old age arrived; Belisarius sank into the grave suspected and impoverished by his feeble and ungrateful master; and the world, from the banks of the Euphrates to those of the Tagus, presented the awful spectacle of famine and plague, of ruined cities, and of nations on the brink of extermination. The impression on the hearts of men was profound."

_G. Finlay, Greece under the Romans, chapter 3, section 1._

See PLAGUE: A. D. 542-594.

ALSO IN: _Lord Mahon, Life of Belisarius._

ROME: A. D. 528-556. The Persian Wars and the Lazic War of Justinian.

See PERSIA: A. D. 226-627; also, LAZICA.

ROME: A. D. 535-553. Fall of the Gothic kingdom of Theodoric. Recovery of Italy by the Emperor Justinian. The long Gothic siege of Rome. The siege, capture and pillage by Totila. The forty days of lifeless desolation in the great city.

On the death of the great Theodoric, the Ostrogothic crown passed, not to his daughter, Amalasuntha, but to her son, Athalaric, a child of eight or ten years. The boy-king died at the age of sixteen, and Amalasuntha assumed the regal power and title, calling one of her cousins, named Theodatus, or Theodahad, to the throne, to share it with her. She had powerful enemies in the Gothic court and the ungrateful Theodatus was soon in conspiracy with them. Amalasuntha and her partisans were overcome, and the unhappy queen, after a short imprisonment on a little island in the lake of Bolsena, was put to death. These dissensions in the Gothic kingdom gave encouragement to the Eastern emperor, the ambitious Justinian, to undertake the reconquest of Italy. His great general, Belisarius, had just vanquished the Vandals and restored Carthaginian Africa to the imperial domain.

See VANDALS: A. D. 533-534.

With far smaller forces than that achievement demanded, Belisarius was now sent against the Goths. He landed, first, in Sicily (A. D. 535), and the whole island was surrendered to him, almost without a blow. The following spring (having crossed to Carthage meantime and quelled a formidable revolt), he passed the straits from Messina and landed his small army in Italy. Marching northwards, he encountered his first opposition at Neapolis—modern Naples—where he was detained for twenty days by the stout resistance of the city. {2741} It was surprised, at length, by a storming party which crept through one of the aqueducts of the town, and it suffered fearfully from the barbarians of the Roman army before Belisarius could recover control of his savage troops. Pausing for a few months to organize his easy conquest of southern Italy, he received, before he marched to Rome, the practical surrender of the capital. On the 9th of December, 536, he entered the city and the Gothic garrison marched out. The Goths, meantime, had deposed the cowardly Theodatus and raised to the throne their most trusty warrior, Witigis. They employed the winter of 537 in gathering all their available forces at Ravenna, and in the spring they returned to Rome, 150,000 strong, to expel the Byzantine invader. Belisarius had busily improved the intervening months, and the long-neglected fortifications of the city were wonderfully restored and improved. At the beginning of March, the Goths were thundering at the gates of Rome; and then began the long siege, which endured for a year and nine days, and which ended in the discomfiture of the huge army of the besiegers. Their retreat was a flight and great numbers were slain by the pursuing Romans. "The numbers and prowess of the Goths were rendered useless by the utter incapacity of their commander. Ignorant how to assault, ignorant how to blockade, he allowed even the sword of Hunger to be wrested from him and used against his army by Belisarius. He suffered the flower of the Gothic nation to perish, not so much by the weapons of the Romans as by the deadly dews of the Campagna." After the retreat of the Goths from Rome, the conquest of Italy would have been quickly completed, no doubt, if the jealousy of Justinian had not hampered Belisarius, by sending the eunuch Narses—who proved to be a remarkable soldier, in the end—to divide the command with him. As it was, the surrender to Belisarius of the Gothic capital, Ravenna, by the Gothic king, Witigis, in the spring of 540, seemed to make the conquest an accomplished fact. The unconquered Gothic warriors then held but two important cities—Verona and Pavia. Milan they had retaken after losing it, and had practically destroyed, massacring the inhabitants.

See MILAN: A. D. 539.