CHAPTER XLVII. THE FALL OF ROME

The Vandals were of the Low German stock and closely allied to the Goths. We first hear of them in the time of Pliny and Tacitus as occupying a district nearly corresponding to Brandenburg and Pomerania. From thence, in the second century, they pressed southwards to the confines of Bohemia, where they gave their name to the mountains now called the Riesengebirge.

After a century of hostile and desultory operations against the Roman Empire, having been signally defeated by Aurelian (271) they made peace with Rome, one of the conditions being that they should supply two thousand _fœderati_ to the imperial army. Sixty years later they sustained a great defeat from the Goths under their king Geberic, after which they humbly sought and obtained permission from Constantine to settle as Roman subjects within the province of Pannonia. Here they remained seventy years, and during this period they probably made some advances in civilisation and became Christians of the Arian type.

In 406, when the empire under Honorius was falling into ruin, they crossed the Rhine and entered Gaul. Stilicho, the chief adviser of Honorius, who was a man of Vandal extraction, was accused by his enemies of having invited them into the empire, but this is probably a groundless calumny. In Gaul they fought a great battle with the Franks, in which they were defeated with the loss of two thousand men, and their king Godigisclus was slain. In 409 his son Gunderic led them across the Pyrenees. They appear to have settled in Spain in two detachments. One, the Asdingian Vandals, occupied Gallæcia, the other, the Silingian, part of Bætica (Andalusia). Twenty years of bloody and purposeless warfare with the armies of the empire and with their fellow-barbarians, the Goths and the Suevi, followed. The Silingian Vandals were well-nigh exterminated, but their Asdingian brethren (with whom were now associated the remains of a Turanian people, the Alans, who had been utterly defeated by the Goths) marched across Spain and took possession of Andalusia.

In 428 or 429 the whole nation set sail for Africa, upon an invitation received by their king from Boniface, count of Africa, who had fallen into disgrace with the court of Ravenna. Gunderic was now dead and supreme power was in the hands of his bastard brother, who is generally known in history as Genseric, though the more correct form of his name is Gaiseric. This man, short of stature and with limping gait, but with a great natural capacity for war and dominion, reckless of human life and unrestrained by conscience or pity, was for fifty years the hero of the Vandal race and the terror of Constantinople and Rome. In the month of May 428 (?) he assembled all his people on the shore of Andalusia, and numbering the males among them from the graybeard down to the new-born infant found them to amount to eighty thousand souls. The passage was effected in the ships of Boniface, who, however, soon returning to his old loyalty, besought his new allies to depart from Africa. They, of course, refused, and Boniface turned against them, too late, however, to repair the mischief which he had caused. Notwithstanding his opposition the progress of the Vandals was rapid, and by May 430 only three cities of Roman Africa--Carthage, Hippo, and Cirta--remained untaken.

[Sidenote: [430-455 A.D.]]

The long siege of Hippo (May 430 to July 431), memorable for the last illness and death of St. Augustine, which occurred during its progress, ended unsuccessfully for the Vandals. At length (30th of January, 435) peace was made between the emperor Valentinian III and Genseric. The emperor was to retain Carthage and the small but rich proconsular province in which it was situated, while Hippo and the other six provinces of Africa were abandoned to the Vandal. Genseric observed this treaty no longer than suited his purpose. On the 19th of October 439, without any declaration of war, he suddenly attacked Carthage and took it. The Vandal occupation of this great city, the third among the cities of the Roman Empire, lasted for ninety-four years. Genseric seems to have counted the years of his sovereignty from the date of its capture. Though most of the remaining years of Genseric’s life were passed in war, plunder rather than territorial conquest seems to have been the object of his expeditions. He made, in fact, of Carthage a pirates’ stronghold, from whence he issued forth, like the Barbary pirates of a later day, to attack, as he himself said, “the dwellings of the men with whom God is angry,” leaving the question who those men might be to the decision of the elements. Almost alone among the Teutonic invaders of the empire, he set himself to form a powerful fleet, and was probably for thirty years the leading maritime power in the Mediterranean.[b]

The revolutions of the palace, which left the Western Empire without a defender, and without a lawful prince, dispelled the apprehensions and stimulated the avarice of Genseric. He immediately equipped a numerous fleet of Vandals and Moors, and cast anchor at the mouth of the Tiber, about three months after the death of Valentinian and the elevation of Maximus to the imperial throne.

The private life of the senator Petronius Maximus was often alleged as a rare example of human felicity. His birth was noble and illustrious, since he descended from the Anician family, his dignity was supported by an adequate patrimony in land and money; and these advantages of fortune were accompanied with liberal arts and decent manners, which adorn or imitate the inestimable gifts of genius and virtue. The luxury of his palace and table was hospitable and elegant. Whenever Maximus appeared in public, he was surrounded by a train of grateful and obsequious clients; and it is possible that, among these clients, he might deserve and possess some real friends. His merit was rewarded by the favour of the prince and senate; he thrice exercised the office of prætorian prefect of Italy; he was twice invested with the consulship, and he obtained the rank of patrician.

These civil honours were not incompatible with the enjoyment of leisure and tranquillity; his hours, according to the demands of pleasure or reason, were accurately distributed by a water-clock; and this avarice of time may be allowed to prove the sense which Maximus entertained of his own happiness. The injury which he received from the emperor Valentinian appears to excuse the most bloody revenge. Yet a philosopher might have reflected that, if the resistance of his wife had been sincere, her chastity was still inviolate, and that it could never be restored if she had consented to the will of the adulterer. A patriot would have hesitated, before plunging himself and his country into those inevitable calamities which must follow the extinction of the royal house of Theodosius. The imprudent Maximus disregarded these salutary considerations; he gratified his resentment and ambition, he saw the bleeding corpse of Valentinian at his feet, and heard himself saluted emperor by the unanimous voice of the senate and people. But the day of his inauguration was the last day of his happiness. He was imprisoned (such is the lively expression of Sidonius) in the palace; and, after passing a sleepless night, he sighed that he had attained the summit of his wishes, and aspired only to descend from the dangerous elevation. Oppressed by the weight of the diadem, he communicated his anxious thoughts to his friend and quæstor Fulgentius; and when he looked back with unavailing regret on the secure pleasures of his former life, the emperor exclaimed, “O fortunate Damocles, thy reign began and ended with the same dinner!” a well-known allusion, which Fulgentius afterwards repeated as an instructive lesson for princes and subjects.

[Sidenote: [455-456 A.D.]]

The reign of Maximus continued about three months. His hours, of which he had lost the command, were disturbed by remorse, or guilt, or terror; and his throne was shaken by the seditions of the soldiers, the people, and the confederate barbarians. The marriage of his son Palladius with the eldest daughter of the late emperor might tend to establish the hereditary succession of his family; but the violence which he offered to the empress Eudoxia could proceed only from the blind impulse of lust or revenge. His own wife, the cause of these tragic events, had been seasonably removed by death; and the widow of Valentinian was compelled to violate her decent mourning, perhaps her real grief, and to submit to the embraces of a presumptuous usurper, whom she suspected as the assassin of her deceased husband.

These suspicions were soon justified by the indiscreet confession of Maximus himself; and he wantonly provoked the hatred of his reluctant bride, who was still conscious that she was descended from a line of emperors. From the East, however, Eudoxia could not hope to obtain any effectual assistance; her father and her aunt Pulcheria were dead; her mother languished at Jerusalem in disgrace and exile; and the sceptre of Constantinople was in the hands of a stranger. She directed her eyes towards Carthage, secretly implored the aid of the king of the Vandals; and persuaded Genseric to improve the fair opportunity of disguising his rapacious designs by the specious names of honour, justice, and compassion. Whatever abilities Maximus might have shown in a subordinate station, he was found incapable of administering an empire; and though he might easily have been informed of the naval preparations which were made on the opposite shores of Africa, he expected with supine indifference the approach of the enemy, without adopting any measures of defence, of negotiation, or of a timely retreat.

When the Vandals disembarked at the mouth of the Tiber, the emperor was suddenly roused from his lethargy by the clamours of a trembling and exasperated multitude. The only hope which presented itself to his astonished mind was that of a precipitate flight, and he exhorted the senators to imitate the example of their prince. But no sooner did Maximus appear in the streets than he was assaulted by a shower of stones; a Roman, or a Burgundian soldier, claimed the honour of the first wound; his mangled body was ignominiously cast into the Tiber; the Roman people rejoiced in the punishment which they had inflicted on the author of the public calamities, and the domestics of Eudoxia signalised their zeal in the service of their mistress.

On the third day after the tumult, Genseric boldly advanced from the port of Ostia to the gates of the defenceless city. Instead of a sally of the Roman youth, there issued from the gates an unarmed and venerable procession of the bishop at the head of his clergy. The fearless spirit of Leo, his authority and eloquence, again mitigated the fierceness of a barbarian conqueror; the king of the Vandals promised to spare the unresisting multitude, to protect the buildings from fire, and to exempt the captives from torture; and although such orders were neither seriously given nor strictly obeyed, the mediation of Leo was glorious to himself and in some degree beneficial to his country. But Rome and its inhabitants were delivered to the licentiousness of the Vandals and Moors, whose blind passions revenged the injuries of Carthage.

The pillage lasted fourteen days and nights; and all that yet remained of public or private wealth, of sacred or profane treasure, was diligently transported to the vessels of Genseric. Among the spoils, the splendid relics of two temples, or rather of two religions, exhibited a memorable example of the vicissitudes of human and divine things. Since the abolition of paganism, the Capitol had been violated and abandoned; yet the statues of the gods and heroes were still respected, and the curious roof of gilt bronze was reserved for the rapacious hands of Genseric. The holy instruments of the Jewish worship, the gold table and the gold candlestick with seven branches, originally framed according to the particular instructions of God himself, and which were placed in the sanctuary of his temple, had been ostentatiously displayed to the Roman people in the triumph of Titus. They were afterwards deposited in the temple of Peace; and, at the end of four hundred years, the spoils of Jerusalem were transferred from Rome to Carthage, by a barbarian who derived his origin from the shores of the Baltic. These ancient monuments might attract the notice of curiosity, as well as of avarice.

But the Christian churches, enriched and adorned by the prevailing superstition of the times, afforded more plentiful materials for sacrilege; and the pious liberality of Pope Leo, who melted six silver vases, the gift of Constantine, each of a hundred pounds’ weight, is evidence of the damage which he attempted to repair. In the forty-five years that had elapsed since the Gothic invasion, the pomp and luxury of Rome were in some measure restored; and it was difficult either to escape or to satisfy the avarice of a conqueror, who possessed leisure to collect and ships to transport the wealth of the capital. The imperial ornaments of the palace, the magnificent furniture and wardrobe, the sideboards of massy plate, were accumulated with disorderly rapine; the gold and silver amounted to several thousand talents; yet even the brass and copper were laboriously removed.

Eudoxia herself, who advanced to meet her friend and deliverer, soon bewailed the imprudence of her own conduct. She was rudely stripped of her jewels; and the unfortunate empress, with her two daughters, the only surviving remains of the great Theodosius, was compelled as a captive to follow the haughty Vandal; who immediately hoisted sail and returned with a prosperous navigation to the port of Carthage. Many thousand Romans of both sexes, chosen for some useful or agreeable qualifications, reluctantly embarked on board the fleet of Genseric; and their distress was aggravated by the unfeeling barbarians, who, in the division of the booty, separated the wives from their husbands and the children from their parents. The charity of Deogratias, bishop of Carthage, was their only consolation and support. He generously sold the gold and silver plate of the church to purchase the freedom of some, to alleviate the slavery of others, and to assist the wants and infirmities of a captive multitude, whose health was impaired by the hardships which they had suffered in their passage from Italy to Africa. By his order two spacious churches were converted into hospitals; the sick were distributed in convenient beds, and liberally supplied with food and medicines, and the aged prelate repeated his visits, both in the day and night, with an assiduity that surpassed the value of his services. Compare this scene with the field of Cannæ; and judge between Hannibal and the successor of St. Cyprian.

The deaths of Aëtius and Valentinian had relaxed the ties which held the barbarians of Gaul in peace and subordination. The sea coast was infested by the Saxons; the Alamanni and the Franks advanced from the Rhine to the Seine; and the ambition of the Goths seemed to meditate more extensive and permanent conquests. The emperor Maximus relieved himself, by a judicious choice, from the weight of these distant cares; he silenced the solicitations of his friends, listened to the voice of fame, and promoted a stranger to the general command of the forces in Gaul. Avitus, the stranger, whose merit was so nobly rewarded, descended from a wealthy and honourable family in the diocese of Auvergne. The convulsions of the times urged him to embrace, with the same ardour, the civil and military professions; and the indefatigable youth blended the studies of literature and jurisprudence with the exercise of arms and hunting. Thirty years of his life were laudably spent in the public service; he alternately displayed his talents in war and negotiation; and the soldier of Aëtius, after executing the most important embassies, was raised to the station of prætorian prefect of Gaul. Either the merit of Avitus excited envy, or his moderation was desirous of repose, since he calmly retired to an estate which he possessed in the neighbourhood of Clermont. In this retreat, where Avitus amused his leisure with books, rural sports, the practice of husbandry, and the society of his friends, he received the imperial diploma, which constituted him master-general of the cavalry and infantry of Gaul. He assumed the military command; the barbarians suspended their fury; and whatever means he might employ, whatever concessions he might be forced to make, the people enjoyed the benefits of actual tranquillity. But the fate of Gaul depended on the Visigoths; and the Roman general, less attentive to his dignity than to the public interest, did not disdain to visit Tolosa in the character of an ambassador.

He was received with courteous hospitality by Theodoric, the king of the Goths; but while Avitus laid the foundations of a solid alliance with that powerful nation, he was astonished by the intelligence that the emperor Maximus was slain, and that Rome had been pillaged by the Vandals. A vacant throne, which he might ascend without guilt or danger, tempted his ambition; and the Visigoths were easily persuaded to support his claim by their irresistible suffrage. They loved the person of Avitus, they respected his virtues; and they were not insensible of the advantage, as well as honour, of giving an emperor to the West.

The season was now approaching in which the annual assembly of the seven provinces was held at Arelate (Arles); their deliberations might perhaps be influenced by the presence of Theodoric and his martial brothers, but their choice would naturally incline to the most illustrious of their countrymen. Avitus, after a decent resistance, accepted the imperial diadem from the representatives of Gaul; and his election was ratified by the acclamations of the barbarians and provincials. The formal consent of Marcian, emperor of the East, was solicited and obtained; but the senate, Rome, and Italy, though humbled by their recent calamities, submitted with a secret murmur to the presumption of the Gallic usurper.

Theodoric, to whom Avitus was indebted for the purple, had acquired the Gothic sceptre by the murder of his elder brother Torismond; and he justified this atrocious deed by the design which his predecessor had formed of violating his alliance with the empire. Such a crime might not be incompatible with the virtues of a barbarian, but the manners of Theodoric were gentle and humane; and posterity may contemplate without terror the original picture of a Gothic king, whom Sidonius had intimately observed in the hours of peace and of social intercourse.

When the king of the Visigoths encouraged Avitus to assume the purple, he offered his person and his forces as a faithful soldier of the republic. The exploits of Theodoric soon convinced the world that he had not degenerated from the warlike virtues of his ancestors. After the establishment of the Goths in Aquitania, and the passage of the Vandals into Africa, the Suevi, who had fixed their kingdom in Gallæcia, aspired to the conquest of Spain and threatened to extinguish the feeble remains of the Roman dominion. The provincials of Carthago (Cartagena), and Tarraco (Tarragona), afflicted by a hostile invasion, represented their injuries and their apprehensions.

Count Fronto was despatched, in the name of the emperor Avitus, with advantageous offers of peace and alliance; and Theodoric interposed his weighty mediation to declare that, unless his brother-in-law, the king of the Suevi, immediately retired, he should be obliged to arm in the cause of justice and of Rome. “Tell him,” replied the haughty Rechiarius, “that I despise his friendship and his arms; but that I shall soon try whether he will dare to expect my arrival under the walls of Tolosa.” Such a challenge urged Theodoric to prevent the bold designs of his enemy; he passed the Pyrenees at the head of the Visigoths, the Franks and Burgundians served under his standard, and though he professed himself the dutiful servant of Avitus, he privately stipulated for himself and his successors the absolute possession of his Spanish conquests. The two armies, or rather the two nations, encountered each other on the banks of the river Urbicus, about twelve miles from Augusta Asturica (Astorga); and the decisive victory of the Goths appeared for a while to have extirpated the name and kingdom of the Suevi. From the field of battle Theodoric advanced to Bracara (Braga), their metropolis, which still retained the splendid vestiges of its ancient commerce and dignity. His entrance was not polluted with blood, and the Goths respected the chastity of their female captives, more especially of the consecrated virgins; but the greatest part of the clergy and people were made slaves, and even the churches and altars were confounded in the universal pillage.

The unfortunate king of the Suevi had escaped to one of the ports of the ocean, but the obstinacy of the winds opposed his flight; he was delivered to his implacable rival; and Rechiarius, who neither desired nor expected mercy, received with manly constancy the death which he would probably have inflicted. After this bloody sacrifice to policy and resentment, Theodoric carried his victorious arms as far as Augusta Emerita (Merida), the principal town of Lusitania, without meeting any resistance, except from the miraculous powers of St. Eulalia; but he was stopped in the full career of success, and recalled from Spain, before he could provide for the security of his conquests. In his retreat towards the Pyrenees he revenged his disappointment on the country through which he passed; and in the sack of Pallantia and Augusta Asturica he showed himself a faithless ally as well as a cruel enemy.

Whilst the king of the Visigoths fought and vanquished in the name of Avitus, the reign of Avitus had expired, and both the honour and the interest of Theodoric were deeply wounded by the disgrace of a friend whom he had seated on the throne of the Western Empire.

The pressing solicitations of the senate and people persuaded the emperor Avitus to fix his residence at Rome, and to accept the consulship for the ensuing year. Avitus, at a time when the imperial dignity was reduced to a pre-eminence of toil and danger, indulged himself in the pleasures of Italian luxury; age had not extinguished his amorous inclinations, and he is accused of insulting, with indiscreet and ungenerous raillery, the husbands whose wives he had seduced or violated.[69] But the Romans were not inclined either to excuse his faults or to acknowledge his virtues. The several parts of the empire became every day more alienated from each other; and the stranger of Gaul was the object of popular hatred and contempt.

The senate asserted their legitimate claim in the election of an emperor; and their authority, which had been originally derived from the old constitution, was again fortified by the actual weakness of a declining monarchy. Yet even such a monarchy might have resisted the votes of an unarmed senate, if their discontent had not been supported, or perhaps inflamed, by Count Ricimer, one of the principal commanders of the barbarian troops, who formed the military defence of Italy. The daughter of Wallia, king of the Visigoths, was the mother of Ricimer; but he was descended, on the father’s side, from the nation of the Suevi; his pride or patriotism might be exasperated by the misfortunes of his countrymen, and he obeyed with reluctance an emperor in whose elevation he had not been consulted. His faithful and important services against the common enemy rendered him still more formidable; and after destroying on the coast of Corsica a fleet of Vandals, which consisted of sixty galleys, Ricimer returned in triumph with the appellation of the Deliverer of Italy. He chose that moment to signify to Avitus that his reign was at an end; and the feeble emperor, at a distance from his Gothic allies, was compelled after a short and unavailing struggle to abdicate the purple. By the clemency, however, or the contempt of Ricimer, he was permitted to descend from the throne to the more desirable station of bishop of Placentia; but the resentment of the senate was still unsatisfied, and their inflexible severity pronounced the sentence of his death. He fled towards the Alps, with the humble hope not of arming the Visigoths in his cause but of securing his person and treasures in the sanctuary of Julian, one of the tutelar saints of Auvergne. Disease, or the hand of the executioner, arrested him on the road; yet his remains were decently transported to Brivas or Brioude, in his native province, and he reposed at the feet of his holy patron.

[Sidenote: [456-457 A.D.]]

The successor of Avitus presents the welcome discovery of a great and heroic character, such as sometimes arises in a degenerate age, to vindicate the honour of the human species. The emperor Majorian has deserved the praises of his contemporaries and of posterity; and these praises may be strongly expressed in the words of a judicious and disinterested historian: “That he was gentle to his subjects; that he was terrible to his enemies; and that he excelled in every virtue all of his predecessors who had reigned over the Romans.” Such a testimony may justify at least the panegyric of Sidonius; and we may acquiesce in the assurance that, although the obsequious orator would have flattered, with equal zeal, the most worthless of princes, the extraordinary merit of his object confined him, on this occasion, within the bounds of truth. Majorian derived his name from his maternal grandfather who, in the reign of the great Theodosius had commanded the troops of the Illyrian frontier. He gave his daughter in marriage to the father of Majorian, a respectable officer, who administered the revenues of Gaul with skill and integrity; and generously preferred the friendship of Aëtius to the tempting offers of an insidious court. His son, the future emperor, who was educated in the profession of arms, displayed, from his early youth, intrepid courage, premature wisdom, and unbounded liberality in a scanty fortune. He followed the standard of Aëtius, contributed to his success, shared, and sometimes eclipsed, his glory, and at last excited the jealousy of the patrician, or rather of his wife, who forced him to retire from the service. Majorian, after the death of Aëtius, was recalled and promoted, and his intimate connection with Count Ricimer was the immediate step by which he ascended the throne of the Western Empire. During the vacancy that succeeded the abdication of Avitus, the ambitious barbarian whose birth excluded him from the imperial dignity governed Italy, with the title of patrician; resigned to his friend the conspicuous station of master-general of the cavalry and infantry; and, after an interval of some months, consented to the unanimous wish of the Romans, whose favour Majorian had solicited by a recent victory over the Alamanni.

[Sidenote: [457-461 A.D.]]

The public and private actions of Majorian are very imperfectly known; but his laws, remarkable for an original cast of thought and expression, faithfully represent the character of a sovereign who loved his people, who sympathised in their distress, who had studied the causes of the decline of the empire, and who was capable of applying (as far as such reformation was practicable) judicious and effectual remedies to the public disorders. His regulations concerning the finances manifestly tended to remove, or at least to mitigate, the most intolerable grievances.

(1) From the first hour of his reign, he was solicitous (these are his own words) to relieve the weary fortunes of the provincials, oppressed by the accumulated weight of indictions and superindictions. With this view, he granted a universal amnesty, a final and absolute discharge of all arrears of tribute, of all debts which, under any pretence, the fiscal officers might demand from the people. This wise dereliction of obsolete, vexatious, and unprofitable claims improved and purified the sources of the public revenue; and the subject, who could now look back without despair, might labour with hope and gratitude for himself and for his country.

(2) In the assessment and collection of taxes, Majorian restored the ordinary jurisdiction of the provincial magistrates; and suppressed the extraordinary commissions which had been introduced, in the name of the emperor himself, or of the prætorian prefects. The favourite servants, who obtained such irregular powers, were insolent in their behaviour and arbitrary in their demands; they affected to despise the subordinate tribunals, and they were discontented if their fees and profits did not twice exceed the sum which they condescended to pay into the treasury. One instance of their extortion would appear incredible, were it not authenticated by the legislator himself. They exacted the whole payment in gold; but they refused the current coin of the empire, and would accept only such ancient pieces as were stamped with the names of Faustina or the Antonines. The subject who was unprovided with these curious medals had recourse to the expedient of compounding with their rapacious demands; or, if he succeeded in the research, his imposition was doubled, according to the weight and value of the money of former times.

(3) “The municipal corporation,” says the emperor, “the lesser senates (so antiquity has justly styled them), deserve to be considered as the heart of the cities, and the sinews of the republic. And yet so low are they now reduced, by the injustice of magistrates and the venality of collectors, that many of their members, renouncing their dignity and their country, have taken refuge in distant and obscure exile.” He urges and even compels their return to their respective cities; but he removes the grievance which had forced them to desert the exercise of their municipal functions. They are directed, under the authority of the provincial magistrates, to resume their office of levying the tribute; but, instead of being made responsible for the whole sum assessed on their district, they are only required to produce a regular account of the payments which they have actually received, and of the defaulters who are still indebted to the public.

(4) But Majorian was not ignorant that these corporate bodies were too much inclined to retaliate the injustice and oppression which they had suffered; and he therefore revives the useful office of the defenders of cities. He exhorts the people to elect, in a full and free assembly, some man of discretion and integrity, who would dare to assert their privileges, to represent their grievances, to protect the poor from the tyranny of the rich, and to inform the emperor of the abuses that were committed.

The spectator who casts a mournful view over the ruins of ancient Rome is tempted to accuse the memory of the Goths and Vandals for the mischief which they had neither leisure nor power, nor perhaps inclination, to perpetrate. The tempest of war might strike some lofty turrets to the ground; but the destruction which undermined the foundations of those massy fabrics was prosecuted, slowly and silently, during a period of ten centuries; and the motives of interest that afterwards operated without shame or control were severely checked by the taste and spirit of the emperor Majorian.

The decay of the city had gradually impaired the value of the public works. The circus and theatres might still excite, but they seldom gratified the desires of the people; the temples, which had escaped the zeal of the Christians, were no longer inhabited either by gods or men; the diminished crowds of the Romans were lost in the immense space of their baths and porticoes; and the stately libraries and halls of justice became useless to an indolent generation, whose repose was seldom disturbed either by study or business. The monuments of consular or imperial greatness were no longer revered as the immortal glory of the capital; they were only esteemed as an inexhaustible mine of materials, cheaper and more convenient than the distant quarry. Specious petitions were continually addressed to the easy magistrates of Rome, which stated the want of stones or bricks for some necessary service; the fairest forms of architecture were rudely defaced for the sake of some paltry or pretended repairs; and the degenerate Romans, who converted the spoil to their own emolument, demolished with sacrilegious hands the labours of their ancestors. Majorian, who had often sighed over the desolation of the city, applied a severe remedy to the growing evil. He reserved to the prince and senate the sole cognisance of the extreme cases which might justify the destruction of an ancient edifice; imposed a fine of fifty pounds of gold [£2000 or $10,000] on every magistrate who should presume to grant such illegal and scandalous license; and threatened to chastise the criminal obedience of their subordinate officers by a severe whipping and the amputation of both their hands.

In the last instance, the legislator might seem to forget the proportion of guilt and punishment; but his zeal arose from a generous principle, and Majorian was anxious to protect the monuments of those ages in which he would have desired and deserved to live. The emperor conceived that it was his interest to increase the number of his subjects, that it was his duty to guard the purity of the marriage bed; but the means which he employed to accomplish these salutary purposes are of an ambiguous and perhaps exceptionable kind. The pious maids who consecrated their virginity to Christ were restrained from taking the veil till they had reached their fortieth year. Widows under that age were compelled to form a second alliance within the term of five years, by the forfeiture of half their wealth to their nearest relatives or to the state. Unequal marriages were condemned or annulled. The punishment of confiscation and exile was deemed so inadequate to the guilt of adultery, that if the criminal returned to Italy he might, by the express declaration of Majorian, be slain with impunity.

While the emperor Majorian assiduously laboured to restore the happiness and virtue of the Romans, he encountered the arms of Genseric, from his character and situation their most formidable enemy. A fleet of Vandals and Moors landed at the mouth of the Liris or Garigliano: but the imperial troops surprised and attacked the disorderly barbarians, who were encumbered with the spoils of Campania; they were chased with slaughter to their ships, and their leader, the king’s brother-in-law, was found in the number of the slain. Such vigilance might announce the character of the new reign; but the strictest vigilance and the most numerous forces were insufficient to protect the long-extended coast of Italy from the depredations of a naval war. The public opinion had imposed a nobler and most arduous task on the genius of Majorian. Rome expected from him alone the restitution of Africa; and the design which he formed of attacking the Vandals in their new settlements was the result of bold and judicious policy. If the intrepid emperor could have infused his own spirit into the youth of Italy, if he could have revived in the Field of Mars the manly exercises in which he had always surpassed his equals--he might have marched against Genseric at the head of a Roman army.

Such a reformation of national manners might be embraced by the rising generation; but it is the misfortune of those princes who laboriously sustain a declining monarchy that, to obtain some immediate advantage or to avert some impending danger, they are forced to countenance and even to multiply the most pernicious abuses. Majorian, like the weakest of his predecessors, was reduced to the disgraceful expedient of substituting barbarian auxiliaries in the place of his unwarlike subjects; and his superior abilities could only be displayed in the vigour and dexterity with which he wielded a dangerous instrument, so apt to recoil on the hand that used it.

Besides the confederates who were already engaged in the service of the empire, the fame of his liberality and valour attracted the nations of the Danube, the Borysthenes, and perhaps of the Tanaïs. Many thousands of the bravest subjects of Attila, the Gepidæ, the Ostrogoths, the Rugians, the Burgundiones, the Suevi, the Alani, assembled in the plains of Liguria; and their formidable strength was balanced by their mutual animosities. They passed the Alps in a severe winter. The emperor led the way on foot, and in complete armour; sounding, with his long staff, the depth of the ice or snow, and encouraging the Scythians, who complained of the extreme cold, by the cheerful assurance that they should be satisfied with the heat of Africa. The citizens of Lugdunum had presumed to shut their gates; they soon implored and experienced the clemency of Majorian. He vanquished Theodoric in the field; and admitted to his friendship and alliance a king whom he had found not unworthy of his arms. The beneficial though precarious reunion of the greatest part of Gaul and Spain was the effect of persuasion as well as of force; and the independent Bagaudæ, who had escaped or resisted the oppression of former reigns, were disposed to confide in the virtues of Majorian.

His camp was filled with barbarian allies, his throne was supported by the zeal of an affectionate people; but the emperor had foreseen that it was impossible, without a maritime power, to achieve the conquest of Africa. In the First Punic War, the republic had exerted such incredible diligence that, within sixty days after the first stroke of the axe had been given in the forest, a fleet of 160 galleys proudly rode at anchor in the sea. Under circumstances much less favourable, Majorian equalled the spirit and perseverance of the ancient Romans. The woods of the Apennine were felled; the arsenals and manufactures of Ravenna and Misenum were restored; Italy and Gaul vied with each other in liberal contributions to the public service; and the imperial navy of three hundred large galleys, with an adequate proportion of transports and smaller vessels, was collected in the secure and capacious harbour of Carthago Nova (Cartagena) in Spain.

The intrepid countenance of Majorian animated his troops with a confidence of victory; and if we might credit the historian Procopius, his courage sometimes hurried him beyond the bounds of prudence. Anxious to explore, with his own eyes, the state of the Vandals, he ventured after disguising the colour of his hair to visit Carthage in the character of his own ambassador; and Genseric was afterwards mortified by the discovery that he had entertained and dismissed the emperor of the Romans. Such an anecdote may be rejected as an improbable fiction; but it is a fiction which would not have been imagined unless in the life of a hero.

Without the help of a personal interview, Genseric was sufficiently acquainted with the genius and designs of his adversary. He practised his customary arts of fraud and delay; but he practised them without success. His applications for peace became each hour more submissive, and perhaps more sincere; but the inflexible Majorian had adopted the ancient maxim that Rome could not be safe, so long as Carthage existed in a hostile state. The king of the Vandals distrusted the valour of his native subjects, who were enervated by the luxury of the south; he suspected the fidelity of the vanquished people, who abhorred him as an Arian tyrant; and the desperate measure which he executed, of reducing Mauretania into a desert, could not defeat the operations of the Roman emperor, who was at liberty to land his troops on any part of the African coast.

But Genseric was saved from impending and inevitable ruin by the treachery of some powerful subjects, envious or apprehensive of their master’s success. Guided by their secret intelligence, he surprised the unguarded fleet in the Bay of Cartagena; many of the ships were sunk, or taken, or burned, and the preparations of three years were destroyed in a single day. After this event, the behaviour of the two antagonists showed them superior to their fortune. The Vandal, instead of being elated by this accidental victory, immediately renewed his solicitations for peace. The emperor of the West, who was capable of forming great designs and of supporting heavy disappointments, consented to a treaty, or rather to a suspension of arms; in the full assurance that before he could restore his navy he should be supplied with provocations to justify a second war. Majorian returned to Italy, to prosecute his labours for the public happiness; and as he was conscious of his own integrity, he might long remain ignorant of the dark conspiracy which threatened his throne and his life.

The recent misfortune of Cartagena sullied the glory which had dazzled the eyes of the multitude. Almost every description of civil and military officers were exasperated against the reformer, since they all derived some advantage from the abuses which he endeavoured to suppress; and the patrician Ricimer impelled the inconstant passions of the barbarians against a prince whom he esteemed and hated. The virtues of Majorian could not protect him from the impetuous sedition which broke out in the camp near Tortona, at the foot of the Alps. He was compelled to abdicate the imperial purple; five days after his abdication it was reported that he died of a dysentery,[70] and the humble tomb which covered his remains was consecrated by the respect and gratitude of succeeding generations. The private character of Majorian inspired love and respect. Malicious calumny and satire excited his indignation, or, if he himself were the object, his contempt; but he protected the freedom of wit, and in the hours which the emperor gave to the familiar society of his friends he could indulge his taste for pleasantry, without degrading the majesty of his rank.[c]

THE BARBARIAN EMPEROR-MAKERS

[Sidenote: [456-461 A.D.]]

The spoliation of Rome by Genseric was only a beginning of sorrows; for, during the sixteen years that ensued Italy remained at the mercy of her own paid leader, Count Ricimer, by birth and family alliances a barbarian, who defeated every attempt to re-establish legal government. After the fall of Aëtius, Ricimer obtained the command of the Western forces and the patrician dignity. The career of Ricimer resembled in some degree those of Stilicho and of Aëtius; for though his delinquencies were more numerous and of a far deeper dye than theirs, like them he possessed great military abilities, and like them he had personal interests that could not be reconciled with those of the “Respublica Romana.”[d] The prestige which he gained by his services against the Vandal Corsairs enabled him to make himself virtual master of Empire and emperors for almost twenty years (456-472). The attack of Avitus upon the Suevi in Spain offended the Suevian Ricimer; and although it was an imperial duty which Avitus performed in withstanding the encroachments of the Suevi, the commander of the Roman troops found the way to his undoing. For the next ten months Ricimer ruled under the title of patrician, which was now very much akin to that of tyrant in the Greek sense of the word or our modern political “boss.” He chose to be maker of emperors rather than emperor himself and thus initiated a policy which was continued to the fall of the Empire in the West. The history of these last years is not that of the shadow emperors who flit across the scene, powerless in themselves and in their circumstances, but of the great leaders like Ricimer the Suevic-Goth, Orestes of Pannonia, or Bauto the Frank.

Meantime in the East conditions prevailed that were not altogether dissimilar. The death of Marcian, after a reign of seven years, left no hereditary claimant to the Eastern throne.[a] The man of most authority in the army was the general Aspar (_magister militum per orientem_), an Alan by descent, who with his father Ardaburius had distinguished himself thirty-five years before in suppressing the usurper John and helping Valentinian III to his legitimate succession. Aspar’s position in the East resembled that of Ricimer in the West. He and his three sons, being Arians and foreigners, could not hope to sit on the imperial throne; and thus the only course open to Aspar was to secure the elevation of one on whose pliancy he might count. He chose Leo, a native of Dacia and an orthodox Christian, who was steward of his own household. Thus Aspar, like Ricimer, was a king-maker.

But when Leo assumed the purple (7th February, 457)--on which occasion the ceremony of coronation by the Patriarch of Constantinople (then Anatolius) was first introduced--he did not prove as amenable to influence as Aspar had hoped; on the contrary, he took measures to reduce the resources of Aspar’s family, which by its close relations with the army had considerable power, and was the centre of a large faction of Arians and barbarians. In fact Aspar, though an Alan and not a German, was the representative of German influence in the Empire, and the danger which had threatened the Empire in the reign of Arcadius through the power of Gainas was now repeated. Leo however firmly resisted the aggressiveness of this influence, and in order to neutralise the great fact which worked in Aspar’s favour, namely that the bulk and flower of the army consisted of Germans, he formed the plan of recruiting the line from native subjects. For this purpose he chose the hardy race of Isaurian mountaineers, who lived almost like an independent people, little touched by the influence of Hellenism, in the wild regions of Mount Taurus. This is Leo’s great original work, for which he deserves the title “Great,” more than for his orthodoxy, for which he probably received it. He conceived an idea, whose execution, begun by himself and carried out by his successor, counteracted that danger of German preponderance which threatened the State throughout the fifth century.

Aspar appears to have possessed all the characteristics of an untutored barbarian. Brave and active in war, he was idle and frivolous in peace. During the reign of Marcian, and doubtless also in the reign of Leo, while the Empire enjoyed rest, “he betook himself to relaxation and womanly ease. His pleasures consisted in actors and jugglers and all stage amusements, and spending his time on these ill-famed occupations he lost all count of the things that make for glory.” But if he was no longer active as a warrior, he won repute in the humbler part of an energetic citizen or a competent policeman, for in the great fire which laid waste a large part of Constantinople in 465 it is recorded that Aspar exerted himself unsparingly for the public interest.

Leo had made a promise, apparently at the time of his elevation, to raise one of Aspar’s sons to the rank of cæsar, and thereby designate him as his successor, in spite of the fact that he was a barbarian. When he delayed to perform this promise, Aspar is said to have seized him by his purple robe and said, “Emperor, it is not meet that he who wears this robe should speak falsely;” to which Leo replied, “Nor yet is it meet that he should be constrained and driven like a slave.”[j]

After this extraordinary scene, it was impossible that the reconciliation of the emperor and the patrician could be sincere; or, at least, that it could be solid and permanent. An army of Isaurians was secretly levied and introduced into Constantinople; and while Leo undermined the authority, and prepared the disgrace of the family of Aspar, his mild and cautious behaviour restrained them from any rash and desperate attempts, which might have been fatal to themselves or their enemies. The measures of peace and war were affected by this internal revolution. As long as Aspar degraded the majesty of the throne, the secret correspondence of religion and interest engaged him to favour the cause of Genseric. When Leo had delivered himself from that ignominious servitude, he listened to the complaints of the Italians; resolved to extirpate the tyranny of the Vandals; and declared his alliance with Anthemius.[c]

[Sidenote: [460-467 A.D.]]

Even the genius and energy of Majorian is of no avail against the dictatorship of Ricimer. But the spell of the imperial dignity was still strong, and the commander of the army was not long in nominating another to the purple.[a]

Severus, as the nominee of Ricimer, next wore the purple, and decrees were registered in his name; but his appointment obtained no confirmation at Constantinople, and the usurped power of Ricimer himself never extended beyond the limits of Italy. In Gaul and in Dalmatia, the Roman governors, Egidius and Marcellinus, continued to hold their respective provinces in trust for the “sancta res publica,” acknowledging no emperor but Leo; and Leo nominated both consuls. After four years of confusion and misery Severus died; and when Ricimer, as patrician, had exercised for above a year the power of the executive, he appears to have become satisfied that, without a combined effort in which the naval resources of the East should be brought to bear, the plague of Vandal descents could not be stayed. Yielding, it would seem, to necessity, he concurred with the senate in a request to the emperor Leo that he would name an emperor of the West (465).

In this attempt to establish closer relations with the East, the senate appears to have acted in conformity with the original constitution of the two empires, and at the same time to have adopted a policy that might under other circumstances have relieved the Roman world from its besetting danger--namely, that of a military despotism exercised by men who derived their wealth and importance from Roman sources and yet failed to entertain any exclusive attachment to Roman interests.

The choice of Leo fell on Anthemius, who some years previously had served as consul, and whose hereditary influence placed him at the head of the Eastern magnates.[d] The virtues of Anthemius have perhaps been magnified, since the imperial descent, which he could only deduce from the usurper Procopius, has been swelled into a line of emperors. But the merit of his immediate parents, their honours, and their riches, rendered Anthemius one of the most illustrious subjects of the East. His father, Procopius, obtained, after his Persian embassy, the rank of general and patrician; and the name of Anthemius was derived from his maternal grandfather, the celebrated prefect, who protected, with so much ability and success, the infant reign of Theodosius. The grandson of the prefect was raised above the condition of a private subject, by his marriage with Euphemia, the daughter of the emperor Marcian.

This splendid alliance, which might supersede the necessity of merit, hastened the promotion of Anthemius to the successive dignities of count, of master-general, of consul, and of patrician; and his merit or fortune claimed the honours of a victory, which was obtained, on the banks of the Danube, over the Huns. Without indulging an extravagant ambition, the son-in-law of Marcian might hope to be his successor; but Anthemius supported the disappointment with courage and patience; and his subsequent elevation was universally approved by the public, who esteemed him worthy to reign till he ascended the throne.

The solemn inauguration of Anthemius was followed by the nuptials of his daughter and the patrician Ricimer; a fortunate event, which was considered as the firmest security of the union and happiness of the state. The wealth of two empires was on this occasion most ostentatiously displayed: and many senators completed their ruin by an expensive effort to disguise their poverty. All serious business was suspended during the time of this festival; the courts of justice were shut; the streets of Rome, the theatres, the places of public and private resort resounded with hymeneal songs and dances; and the royal bride, clothed in silken robes, with a crown on her head, was conducted to the palace of Ricimer, who had changed his military dress for the habit of a consul and a senator.[c]

The unprecedented task intrusted to the emperor Leo of selecting the man with whom he was to share the administration and defence of the whole Roman world, makes it requisite to consider his actual position. Leo had now attained the eleventh year of his reign, which, from the first, had been beset with difficulties. Aspar, with his barbarian satellites, overawed the Eastern senate; and it was only by compliances savouring of duplicity that the government could be carried on. Leo could do no more than turn to advantage any opportunity that might arise for the extension of his influence. When the Huns invaded Thrace, he gained a battle in which one of Attila’s sons was slain; a success which increased his influence. By enlisting the services of an Isaurian prince, whose barbaric name he changed to that of the stoic Zeno, he at length obtained a counterpoise to Aspar. The Isaurian, though no philosopher and though in his manners a barbarian, had at his disposal a considerable array of hardy combatants, whose services Leo secured by accepting their leader for his son-in-law. The resources of the Eastern Empire were then freely devoted to an enterprise on the success and failure of which the weal or woe of Italy depended.

Coins were struck representing the two emperors with joined hands, and sanguine hopes were once more entertained that, by their combined efforts, Africa with the command of the Mediterranean would be regained.

[Sidenote: [467-468 A.D.]]

In fitting out an armada of fabulous magnitude, the sum expended by Leo exceeded £5,000,000 [$25,000,000]. Marcellinus, under whose government Dalmatia had prospered and who had refused to obey Ricimer, declared his allegiance to Anthemius, and the successes which his galleys obtained over those of the Vandals enabled him to liberate the island of Sardinia from their oppression. About the same time, the prefect Heraclius landed at Tripolis, reconquered the adjacent settlements, and commenced his march to co-operate with the main expedition in an attack on Carthage. Such were the signs of an irresistible superiority with which the war commenced, and which so far shook the confidence of Genseric that he protested his willingness to submit to whatever terms the two emperors might dictate; and there appears to be no doubt that his apprehensions were shared by his coreligionists, Ricimer and Aspar, to whom a subversion of the Arian ascendency in Africa would have been fatal. Fortunately for them, the chief command was given to Basiliscus, a brother of the empress consort Verina. As Leo had no son, Basiliscus, if Procopius is to be relied upon, already aspired to the imperial succession, and was anxious to stand well with Aspar.

The landing took place at a small seaport about forty miles from Carthage; and while the disembarkation of stores and other impedimenta was in progress, envoys from Genseric arrived. Basiliscus, whether yielding to a desire to gratify Aspar, to the allurements of Vandal gold, or to the suggestions of his own weak judgment, lent a willing ear to their assurances. They asked and obtained a truce of five days, during which the terms of submission might be arranged.

The panic, which would have made the reconquest of Carthage an easy achievement, subsided, and Genseric having time for a careful examination took note of the crowded order in which the Roman Armada lay at anchor. His fire-ships, the torpedoes of ancient warfare, were in readiness, supported by galleys which, however inferior to those of the Romans in number, were the best manned and the most efficient in existence.

At nightfall the fire-ships were so placed that they drifted on the very centre of the unsuspecting enemy, the flames spread, and when the confusion was at its height a bold and well-timed attack did the rest. The store-ships, on which the army depended for subsistence, were captured or sunk; and acts of individual heroism on the part of the Roman commander, of which there were many, were of no avail. A hopeless resistance was for a while maintained, but the losses were irreparable.

Basiliscus saved himself by an early flight. On arriving at Constantinople, he took refuge in the church of St. Sophia, until he obtained a reprieve from capital punishment through the intercession of his sister. Such was the disastrous ending of the combined effort made for the recovery of Africa. Its success would have consolidated the power of the two emperors; by its failure, Ricimer and Aspar were relieved from their fears, and their arrogance became greater than ever. Leo found it necessary to pacify Aspar by investing his son Patricius with the dignity of cæsar, a title which conferred on its bearer a prospective claim to the throne.

[Sidenote: [468-473 A.D.]]

To Aspar and his family, whose unpopularity was already great, the acquisition of this dangerous honour brought no advantage, but only an increase of hostility; for to the orthodox East Romans the idea of an Arian emperor was insufferable. Owing to the losses incurred during the late disastrous expedition the forces on which Aspar formerly relied were no longer at his beck; and, rightly or wrongly, he and his son were charged with treasonable designs against the government, over which they had long domineered, and against the life of the emperor.

The circumstances preceding and attending their assassination are variously and obscurely related; but no plea of state necessity can relieve the memory of Leo from the stain of participation in the death of his benefactor. In Italy, the reckless energy of Ricimer led to a very different result. Having resolved to break up the alliances of the emperors, he fixed his headquarters at Mediolanum, enlisted forces, while Anthemius, relying on the cordial support of the senate and the bulk of the people, remained inactive at Rome.

The Mediolanians, wishing to prevent a civil war, employed Epiphanius, bishop of Ticinum (Pavia), as negotiator; and from the account given by Ennodius of the bishop’s embassy, some estimate may be formed of the difficulties that stood in the way of any attempt on the part of the West Romans to reconstruct their dilapidated empire.

The pacific exhortations of the bishop resulted in a truce, which gave time for Ricimer to engage the requisite number of Suevi and Burgundiones. Having done this he threw off the mask, and making the death of Aspar his plea, refused to acknowledge either Leo or Anthemius, proclaimed Olybrius, an enemy of his father-in-law, emperor, and commenced his march to Rome.

When the Roman governor of Gaul brought an army to support Anthemius, he was defeated and slain. Rome nevertheless held out bravely until reduced by famine when, with the exception of a few streets, occupied by his own adherents, Ricimer condemned it to be sacked. He then added to the list of emperors whom he had put to death the name of his own father-in-law, and died the same year (472).[d]

Whilst the vacant throne of Italy was abandoned to lawless barbarians, the election of a new colleague was seriously agitated in the council of Leo. The empress Verina, studious to promote the greatness of her own family, had married one of her nieces to Julius Nepos, who succeeded his uncle Marcellinus in the sovereignty of Dalmatia, a more solid possession than the title, which he was persuaded to accept, of emperor of the West.

But the measures of the Byzantine court were so languid and irresolute that many months elapsed after the death of Anthemius, and even of Olybrius, before their destined successor could show himself, with a respectable force, to his Italian subjects. During that interval, Glycerius, an obscure soldier, was invested with the purple by his patron Gundobald; but the Burgundionian prince was unable, or unwilling, to support his nomination by a civil war; the pursuits of domestic ambition recalled him beyond the Alps, and his client was permitted to exchange the Roman sceptre for the bishopric of Salona. After extinguishing such a competitor, the emperor Nepos was acknowledged by the senate, by the Italians, and by the provincials of Gaul; his moral virtues, and military talents, were loudly celebrated, and those who derived any private benefit from his government announced, in prophetic strains, the restoration of the public felicity. Their hopes (if such hopes had been entertained) were confounded within the term of a single year; and the treaty of peace, which ceded Auvergne to the Visigoths, is the only event of his short and inglorious reign.

[Sidenote: [473-475 A.D.]]

The most faithful subjects of Gaul were sacrificed by the Italian emperor to the hope of domestic security; but his repose was soon invaded by a furious sedition of the barbarian confederates, who, under the command of Orestes, their general, were in full march from Rome to Ravenna. Nepos trembled at their approach; and, instead of placing a just confidence in the strength of Ravenna, he hastily escaped to his ships and retired to his Dalmatian principality, on the opposite coast of the Adriatic. By this shameful abdication he protracted his life about five years, in a very ambiguous state between an emperor and an exile, till he was assassinated at Salona by the ungrateful Glycerius, who was translated, perhaps as the reward of his crime, to the archbishopric of Milan.

The nations who had asserted their independence after the death of Attila were established, by the right of possession or conquest, in the boundless countries to the north of the Danube, or in the Roman provinces between the river and the Alps. But the bravest of their youth enlisted in the army of confederates, who formed the defence and the terror of Italy; and in this promiscuous multitude the names of the Heruli, the Scyrri, the Alani, the Turcilingi, and the Rugi appear to have predominated.

The example of these warriors was imitated by Orestes, the son of Tatullus, and the father of the last Roman emperor of the West. Orestes, who has been already mentioned in this history, had never deserted his country. His birth and fortunes rendered him one of the most illustrious subjects of Pannonia. When that province was ceded to the Huns, he entered into the service of Attila, his lawful sovereign, obtained the office of his secretary, and was repeatedly sent ambassador to Constantinople, to represent the person and signify the commands of the imperious monarch. The death of that conqueror restored him to his freedom, and Orestes might honourably refuse either to follow the sons of Attila into the Scythian desert, or to obey the Ostrogoths, who had usurped the dominion of Pannonia. He preferred the service of the Italian princes, the successors of Valentinian; and as he possessed the qualifications of courage, industry, and experience, he advanced with rapid steps in the military profession, till he was elevated, by the favour of Nepos himself, to the dignities of patrician and master-general of the troops.

These troops had been long accustomed to reverence the character and authority of Orestes, who affected their manners, conversed with them in their own language, and was intimately connected with their national chieftains by long habits of familiarity and friendship. At his solicitation they rose in arms against the obscure Greek who presumed to claim their obedience; and when Orestes, from some secret motive, declined the purple, they consented, with the same facility, to acknowledge his son Augustulus as the emperor of the West. By the abdication of Nepos, Orestes had now attained the summit of his ambitious hopes; but he soon discovered, before the end of the first year, that the lessons of perjury and ingratitude which a rebel must inculcate will be retorted against himself; and that the precarious sovereign of Italy was only permitted to choose whether he would be the slave, or the victim, of his barbarian mercenaries. The dangerous alliance of these strangers had oppressed and insulted the last remains of Roman freedom and dignity. At each revolution, their pay and privileges were augmented; but their insolence increased in a still more extravagant degree. They envied the fortune of their brethren in Gaul, Spain, and Africa, whose victorious arms had acquired an independent and perpetual inheritance; and they insisted on their peremptory demand that a third part of the lands of Italy should be immediately divided among them.

[Sidenote: [475-476 A.D.]]

Orestes, with a spirit which, in another situation, might be entitled to our esteem, chose rather to encounter the rage of an armed multitude than to subscribe the ruin of an innocent people. He rejected the audacious demand; and his refusal was favourable to the ambition of Odoacer, a bold barbarian, who assured his fellow-soldiers that, if they dared to associate under his command, they might soon extort the justice which had been denied to their dutiful petitions. From all the camps and garrisons of Italy the confederates, actuated by the same resentment and the same hopes, impatiently flocked to the standard of this popular leader; and the unfortunate patrician, overwhelmed by the torrent, hastily retreated to the strong city of Ticinum, the episcopal seat of the holy Epiphanius. Ticinum was immediately besieged, the fortifications were stormed, the town was pillaged; and although the bishop might labour with much zeal and some success to save the property of the church and the chastity of female captives, the tumult could only be appeased by the execution of Orestes. His brother Paul was slain in an action near Ravenna; and the helpless Augustulus, who could no longer command the respect was reduced to implore the clemency of Odoacer. That successful barbarian was the son of Edecon; who, in some remarkable transactions, had been the colleague of Orestes himself.

The honour of an ambassador should be exempt from suspicion; and Edecon had listened to a conspiracy against the life of his sovereign. But this apparent guilt was expiated by his merit or repentance; his rank was eminent and conspicuous, he enjoyed the favour of Attila; and the troops under his command, who guarded in their turn the royal village, consisted of a tribe of Scyrri, his immediate and hereditary subjects. In the revolt of the nations, they still adhered to the Huns; and more than twelve years afterwards the name of Edecon is honourably mentioned, in their unequal contest with the Ostrogoths; which was terminated, after two bloody battles, by the defeat and dispersion of the Scyrri. Their gallant leader, who did not survive this national calamity, left two sons, Onulf and Odoacer, to struggle with adversity, and to maintain as they might, by rapine or service, the faithful followers of their exile.

Onulf directed his steps towards Constantinople, where he sullied, by the assassination of a generous benefactor, the fame which he had acquired in arms. His brother Odoacer led a wandering life among the barbarians of Noricum, with a mind and a fortune suited to the most desperate adventures; and when he had fixed his choice, he piously visited the cell of Severinus, the popular saint of the country, to solicit his approbation and blessing. The lowness of the door would not admit the lofty stature of Odoacer. He was obliged to stoop, but in that humble attitude the saint could discern the symptoms of his future greatness; and addressing him in a prophetic tone, “Pursue,” said he, “your design; proceed to Italy; you will soon cast away this coarse garment of skins; and your wealth will be adequate to the liberality of your mind.” The barbarian, whose daring spirit accepted and ratified the prediction, was admitted into the service of the Western Empire, and soon obtained an honourable rank in the guards. His manners were gradually polished, his military skill was improved, and the confederates of Italy would not have elected him for their general unless the exploits of Odoacer had established a high opinion of his courage and capacity. Their military acclamations saluted him with the title of king: but he abstained, during his whole reign, from the use of the purple and diadem, lest he should offend those princes whose subjects, by their accidental mixture, had formed the victorious army which time and policy might insensibly unite into a great nation.

Royalty was familiar to the barbarians, and the submissive people of Italy was prepared to obey, without a murmur, the authority which he should condescend to exercise as the vice-gerent of the emperor of the West. But Odoacer had resolved to abolish that useless and expensive office; and such is the weight of ancient prejudice that it required some boldness and penetration to discover the extreme facility of the enterprise. The unfortunate Augustulus was made the instrument of his own disgrace; he signified his resignation to the senate; and that assembly, in their last act of obedience to a Roman prince, still affected the spirit of freedom and the forms of the constitution. An epistle was addressed, by their unanimous decree, to the emperor Zeno, the son-in-law and successor of Leo; who had lately been restored, after a short rebellion, to the Byzantine throne. They solemnly disclaim the necessity, or even the wish, of continuing any longer the imperial succession in Italy; since, in their opinion, the majesty of a sole monarch is sufficient to pervade and protect, at the same time, both the East and the West. In their own name, and in the name of the people, they consent that the seat of universal empire shall be transferred from Rome to Constantinople; and they basely renounce the right of choosing their master, the only vestige that yet remained of the authority which had given laws to the world. The republic--they repeat that name without a blush--might safely confide in the civil and military virtues of Odoacer; and they humbly request that the emperor would invest him with the title of patrician and the administration of the diocese of Italy.

The deputies of the senate were received at Constantinople with some marks of displeasure and indignation; and when they were admitted to the audience of Zeno, he sternly reproached them with their treatment of the two emperors, Anthemius and Nepos, whom the East had successively granted to the prayers of Italy. “The first,” continued he, “you have murdered, the second you have expelled; but the second is still alive, and whilst he lives he is your lawful sovereign.” But the prudent Zeno soon deserted the hopeless cause of his abdicated colleague. His vanity was gratified by the title of sole emperor, and by the statues erected to his honour in the several quarters of Rome; he entertained a friendly, though ambiguous, correspondence with the patrician Odoacer; and he gratefully accepted the imperial ensigns, the sacred ornaments of the throne and palace, which the barbarian was not unwilling to remove from the sight of the people.

In the space of twenty years since the death of Valentinian nine emperors had successively disappeared; and the son of Orestes, a youth recommended only by his beauty, would be the least entitled to the notice of posterity if his reign, which was marked by the extinction of the Roman Empire in the West, did not leave a memorable era in the history of mankind. The patrician Orestes had married the daughter of Count Romulus, of Petovio in Noricum. The name of Augustus, notwithstanding the jealousy of power, was known at Aquileia as a familiar surname; and the appellations of the two great founders of the city and of the monarchy were thus strangely united in the last of their successors. The son of Orestes assumed and disgraced the names of Romulus Augustus; but the first was corrupted into Momylus by the Greeks, and the second has been changed by the Latins into the contemptible diminutive Augustulus. The life of this inoffensive youth was spared by the generous clemency of Odoacer, who fixed his annual allowance at six thousand pieces of gold, and assigned the castle of Lucullus, in Campania, for the place of his exile or retirement.[c]

A REVIEW OF THE BARBARIAN ADVANCE

[Sidenote: [150-268 A.D.]]

There were two ways to Europe for the Indo-Germanic tribes,--south and north of the Black Sea. First the Hellenic and Italic tribes came over the sea and settled in the two countries lying near them and connected by islands, which form the southeastern limits of one continent--Greece and Italy.[71] The peoples in these beautiful countries quickly attained to a wonderful state of civilisation, isolated for more than a thousand years from northern Europe. This was the period of classical antiquity which, for its art and literature, its statecraft and military system, unrivalled almost up to the present day, has become the best school of later mankind.

The second way from Asia to Europe lay north of the Pontus, and was far longer and more fraught with weariness and danger than the first; thus it was all the more adapted to the strengthening both of body and spirit. At the northwest corner of the Black Sea it divided into a south and a north road. Along the former, by the Danube between the Alps and the Carpathians, the Celts migrated; later, along the second, north of the Carpathians, the Germanic tribes entered western Europe, and were soon followed by the Slavonic. Rome was already at the height of its empire over the world when the first conflict took place between the Romans and the Germanic tribes. The contact of the two races was of course that of a rude primitive people with the members of a civilised state. Rome at first tried the system of gradual repulse by the attack and subjection of the Germans. When this policy was defeated by the battle fought by Varus, she adopted the system of frontier protection, which lasted nearly two centuries.

But the destinies of the future were being prepared in another way. The remarkable aptitude for civilisation of the Germanic races made them early recognise the value of that of Rome. Young nobles were educated in the capital of the empire and trained in the army; the actual commercial interests, the servitude of the one race in the countries of the other, brought about a mutual relation whose most powerful lever was the Roman military service, which thousands of Germans joined, satisfying in that way their thirst for war and glory as well as their desire for monetary gains.

Thus Rome itself trained the officers and military leaders of its subsequent foes and final destroyers, from whom it had already seriously suffered in the revolt of Civilis. The first act of the “barbarian advance” opened with the war which we call the Marcomannic.

Towards the beginning of the last half of the second century the tribes living between the Pregel, Vistula, and Baltic--now East and West Prussia--left their unfavoured home to seek a better one in the proximity of the Roman frontiers. It was the great Gothic family which made this first migration, in which it carried along with it other allied races, as the Vandals and Burgundiones. The mass separated; the chief tribe, the Goths, went towards the Black Sea between the Don and the Dnieper, where they only arrived after a long time on account of the long distance and of the necessity of fighting their way.

The secondary tribes went up the Vistula through the Carpathians to the Danube. Beyond this stream, in the year 165, one of the unceasing wars between the Marcomanni and the Romans was in progress. The pressure of the new rovers from the north gave fresh weight and importance to the pressure of the Danubian Germans. The Marcomannic War lasted nearly fifteen years; its course was terrible, and similar to that of the Punic War.

Marcus Aurelius, however, was greater than the danger; he became its master. Not a foot of Roman territory was lost; on the contrary, many thousand homeless Germans settled in the empire as new brave subjects. There was now for half a century an apparent cessation of the process of destruction, but only of its external manifestations, not of the internal efforts and preparations towards this end. The Roman tithe province (agri decumates) between the Rhine and the Danube, unprotected by any natural boundaries, was the first field of Germanic occupation. At what date the chief mass of Vandals and Burgundiones, together with the Lygii, migrated from their settlements between the Oder and the Vistula to the Roman frontiers, we have no knowledge. We first encounter them under Probus in the year 277, acting in the rear of the older frontier tribes as their allies.

For over half a century, from 211 to 268, Rome had no great emperor; indeed, with the exception of Maximinus, 235-238, not even a warrior. He, however, was a rude barbarian who knew only how to fight and to conquer, not how to organise. Then began the period of decline, in which one emperor, Decius, fell upon the battle-field, and another, Valerian, was carried into lifelong captivity. Simultaneously there rose up in the East (about the year 226) a new and terrible foe, the powerful Sapor, one of the Persian Sassanidæ, by whom the rule of the Parthians was overthrown, and who was burning to become a second Cyrus. Under Gallienus, Valerian’s son, 260-268, the misery of Rome reached its height. In expeditions of hitherto unheard-of magnitude, the Goths during ten years overran Asia Minor and Greece to Macedonia; the noblest and finest towns of antiquity fell in flames.

[Sidenote: [268-367 A.D.]]

But the greatest evil of all, at least in the West, was the civil war. Nineteen tyrants, usurpers, rose against the ruler; amongst whom, however, two, Odenathus and his wife Zenobia, victoriously defended the empire against the Persians. For fifteen years the West languished under tyrants, of whom the first, Postumus, was certainly more powerful than the rightful emperor.

There was no longer any talk of repulsing the foreign foe; the fact that a great number of Germans were in both armies fighting for and against each other was only a diminution of the danger. Further districts of Gaul were being constantly annexed and won back from the barbarians, and a small host of Franks pressed fighting into Spain, and after twelve years lost itself in Africa. Not only the beginning of the end, but the end itself seemed to have set in, when Rome was again saved and raised almost to its former glory by a series of brave and great emperors. But the true saviour of the empire was Diocletian (285-305), the wisest if not the bravest of these. By his state reforms he built up the empire on a new foundation, suitable to the needs of his time. His predecessors had rendered harmless the most dangerous foes of the empire, the Goths--Claudius by his glorious victory at Naissus, and Aurelian by the cession of the large province of Dacia.

The new Probus, however, had so completely vanquished the peoples of the West with their allies, Vandals, Burgundiones, and Lygii, that he was able to announce to the senate: “The whole of Germania, as far as it reaches, is subdued. Nine kings of different peoples lie at your feet.” In the next two years, however, the conquered people uprose once more, and the old state of affairs seemed to be returning, when Diocletian in the year 285 brought permanent succour.

The division of the imperial government among those brave and able men whom he appointed “cæsars” checked the German peril. His successor and the completer of his work, Constantine the Great, brought (at all events to the eastern portion of the empire) fresh life and more than a thousand years’ duration, by establishing his own place of residence at Constantinople. But once again, under the reign of Constantius, weak son of a great father, the lust of war and plunder was awakened in the barbarians of the West by the rise of a new tyrant in Gaul, and the civil war resulting therefrom. Already the Rhenish strongholds, amongst them Colonia Agrippina (Cologne), were in their hands when a new preserver, the youthful Julian, came upon the scene.

He, like Cæsar, knew how to fight and conquer. The Salian Franks, who had usurped the country between the Schelde and the Maas, Toxandria, were taken as subjects; the Ripuarians, even the Saxon Chauci, were forced to a submissive peace, and the Alamanni compelled, after four campaigns, to the condition of tributaries.

[Sidenote: [367-476 A.D.]]

Valentinian I continued Julian’s work with an iron hand and will. During this interlude of more than a century in the migration of the tribes the victory of Christendom was effected in Rome, and also its entry amongst the Germanic peoples in the form of Arianism, The Germans received a fresh impetus by the incursions of the Huns, which extended from the Crimean wall to the Loire. The western Goths, who were already in a state of transition from barbarism to civilisation, fled before these Mongols to the Romans. Tricked by imperial officers, wronged and deceived, they seized upon the sword; the decisive battle at Hadrianopolis, in which the emperor Valens fell, made them lords of the European provinces of the Eastern Empire. The joint empire was once more saved by Theodosius, the last of the great emperors, who contrived to appease the Goths. But when in 395 the last and permanent division of the empire took place under Arcadius and Honorius, the two weak sons of Theodosius, who were still in their boyhood, the danger to western Rome flared up again, even more terrible than before.

For nearly eight hundred years the capital of the world had seen no conqueror within its walls. Alaric the Visigoth, a fearless warrior, became after the emperor had caused his best commander Stilicho to be put to death the first successor of the Gallic Brennus.

But the twofold occupation of Rome by Alaric was of no more importance as an epoch in the barbarian invasion than was the later occupation by Genseric in the year 455. Alaric did not wish to destroy the empire, only to rule over his people in and with it; the Vandal wished for nothing but plunder. From the passage of the Rhine by the Vandals and Suevi, at the beginning of the year 406, to the incursion of the Visigoths into Gaul in 412, was a far more important period in the barbaric advance. In the year 409 the first went across the Pyrenees, and in 411 permanently established themselves in Spain. In the year 413 the Burgundiones took possession of the country now bearing their name; in the year 419 southwestern Gaul was at last formally ceded to the Visigoths by the emperor Honorius. This people acknowledged a certain, though only nominal, supremacy on the part of Rome. Rome, through its last great commander Aëtius, brought into subjection the whole of the rest of Gaul and the greater part of Spain. Far worse, however, was the loss it suffered at the hands of the most terrible of all the Germanic conquerors, Genseric the king of the Vandals; who in the year 427 deprived it of the distant and rich Africa, its granary, as well as of the islands of the Mediterranean, and founded a piratical state which became for him the source of enormous wealth during half a century, but for Italy and other countries of the coast one of indescribable devastations.

One hundred and seven years had the Vandal empire stood when, after the Germans had become greatly degenerated, it was overthrown with ease in the year 534 by Justinian’s general, Belisarius. Only indirectly, as lever and impelling force, had the incursions of the Huns from 375 onwards influenced the tribal migrations, particularly the entrance of the Germans into Gaul, Spain, and Africa.

It would seem as though the terrible Attila, that mighty scourge of God, had determined to complete the work of destruction. But Attila’s empire was built up on his personality; with his death it fell to pieces.

Therefore his campaigns of the years 451 and 452 in Gaul and Italy--with the battle at Châlons, so famous in the world’s history--were only a remarkable interlude in the great drama of race migration, and of no decisive import in its real progress. After Attila’s death, when Valentinian III had himself deprived the empire of its last support by the murder of Aëtius in 454, the decline of the Western Roman Empire set in, and continued during the next twenty years.

Not external pressure, whose severest shock had been happily averted, but the inward germ of death, the growing power of the barbarians within the empire itself, brought this occurrence, so important in the world’s history, to maturity. For centuries the Roman army had consisted for the most part of foreigners, chiefly Germans. With the need the number increased, and at the same time their self-confidence and pretensions, and consequently the hatred of the barbarians on the part of the Romans. So long as the son and grandson of Theodosius reigned, the great generals, by the habit of obedience and the magic of legitimate rights, masked the inner dissensions and the weakness of the empire. But when Nemesis had avenged the death of Aëtius on Valentinian III by his own death in a similar manner, the internal corruption of the state revealed itself under the growing pressure from without.

A bold adventurer of Suevian descent, the patrician Ricimer, acquired as leader of the foreign troops the highest power in the state, and for nineteen years raised emperors and overturned them at his pleasure. Within twenty-one years nine ascended the throne. Even the ablest, and the one among them of eminent talents, Majorian, succumbed to the stealthy cunning and superior military strength of the barbarian mercenaries. Their pretensions rose higher until they demanded a third of the territories of Italy; and in Odoacer, an officer of the bodyguard, they found the man who procured them their desire after he had forced the abdication, in 476, of the last emperor of Rome, an immature youth who bore the proud names of Romulus and Augustulus.

[Sidenote: [476-568 A.D.]]

Until the year 480 the emperor Nepos, driven from Italy, reigned in Dalmatia; Odoacer accepted from Zeno, the emperor of the East, the title of administrator, and reigned over Italy according to the old forms.

So at least in appearance. In reality it was a Germanic kingdom which was raised on the foundation of the Eternal City which had ruled the world for seven centuries. We now therefore consider the year 476 as that of the fall of Western Rome, which up till then had stood for 109 years, with short interruptions, as a separate empire, in fact, at all events, if not in public recognition. With its fall, and Odoacer’s elevation, the great work of expansion, distinction, and building up anew, which we call the migration of races, was completed. Now the ground was clear for the German colonisation on Roman territory, already in progress at various points since the year 411.

Suevi, Vandals and Alans, Burgundiones and Visigoths, had founded new kingdoms in Spain, Gaul, and Africa, some transitional, some of more permanent duration, whose origin and progress were closely bound up with the history of Western Rome. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the most powerful of all the German tribes arose, the Franks under Childeric’s son Clovis, who in the year 486 destroyed the last remnant of Roman supremacy in western Europe--that of Syagrius over a great part of northern Gaul--by the battle of Soissons. This outer limb, as far as it had any connection with the main body, belonged to the empire of Eastern Rome.

Ostrogoths and Langobardi (Lombards) took part in the destruction of Western Rome only in the second and third periods, not the first, which was in so far an advantage that they drove out again their former conquerors and possessors from the heart of the empire.

The moment of settlement for them came when, leaving their former country, they prepared for colonisation on Roman territory--that is, for the conquest of Italy; this was for the Ostrogoths in the year 488, for the Lombards in 568.[e] [For it was in April of the latter year that the Lombards, under Alboin, entered Italy. Fifteen years before Narses had dealt a death blow to the Ostrogothic kingdom, and Italy once more became a part of the Roman Empire. But now the exarch was left but a small district to rule over and the peninsula passed forever from undivided Roman rule.]

A FULFILLED AUGURY

[Sidenote: [476 A.D.]]

It is not to be imagined that the fall of the Roman Empire in the West created so much stir among contemporaries as it has since done in history. A century of constant reverse had led up to it. It was predicted by religion, foreseen by politicians, and expected, as one might say, at a fixed date.

An inexplicable fatality hovered over Rome from its cradle. It cannot be denied that the failure of the town of Romulus, or the decline of its power at the end of twelve centuries, was predicted almost from its birth. The story of the portent of the twelve vultures appearing to its founder on the Mount Palatine, embodied this instinctive belief, fortified by all the authority of augural science. The Tuscan soothsayers had, in effect, declared the twelve vultures to signify twelve centuries of power, after which the fate of Rome would be consummated.

This political faith, already strong in the brightest days of the republican epoch, was transmitted from generation to generation, proudly when the end was far distant; fearfully, as it drew near. Even as the historic date of the foundation was disputed, so there was disagreement as to its end. The soothsayers all calculated in their own way as they themselves understood it, but all expected it.

According to the most generally received chronology, Rome had passed the middle of the eleventh century when Alaric took and burned it. One might almost think the augury accomplished--allowing for a difference of a few years. After the departure of the Goths, hope revived and calculation recommenced. After the second sack of Rome by Genseric, in the twelve hundred and seventh year from its foundation (455 A.D.) the fatal and definite hour was declared to have arrived. “The twelfth vulture has finished his flight. Now, O Rome, thou knowest thy destiny,” wrote Sidonius Apollinaris, a firm Christian, but imbued, like every Roman subject, with the superstitious traditions of the city of the Seven Hills. Thenceforward began the real death throes of the empire, as it passed to barbarian masters--from Ricimer to Gundobald, from Gundobald to Odoacer, ever growing weaker, more despised, more crushed. When names were heard, long strange to the nomenclature of the Cæsars--names such as Julius and Augustus, coming from the grave of history like so many spectres announcing the last day, and that of Romulus expiring in a child--public consternation knew no bounds. These fortuitous combinations presented in their fantastic aspect something of the supernatural, and troubled the strongest minds. Men bowed their heads and were silent.

The obsequies of Rome were carried out in mournful silence. We find in contemporary historians no accent either of regret or joy, no declamations either in prose or verse; just a few dates and a bare record of facts, that is all. It might almost be believed that nothing of importance took place in the year 476. Jordanes alone, a little later, sounds his barbarian trumpet over the grave of the empire, but only to celebrate the coming of the Goths.

BREYSIG’S OBSERVATIONS ON THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST

It is of the death of a great nation that we have here to speak. For it is not the physical, nor the spiritual, nor certainly a merely formal political continuance--like that of Byzantium--which determines the historical existence of the nations, but a political independence at once material and powerful, and containing the essentials of civilisation. And if we inquire once again into the reason of such a death of nations, in the end we shall not venture to assign as a cause some form of political or social organisation; some condition of sexual morality; the invasion of Christianity (as Nietzsche thought), and still less the cessation of mechanical inventions, as the folly of some natural philosophers dabbling in history, has assumed: but solely the waning of the nation’s vigour. We shall be compelled to consider not a few of the political, social, moral, and intellectual phenomena towards the end of the period as symptoms of this decay, as, for example, the degeneration of Cæsarism and its hierarchy of officials, the social reaction of the romancists of guilds and castes, the extravagant luxury, the complete torpor of economical activity, and still more the decay of intellectual life. But all these cannot have been the causes, but only tokens and effects of the same disease of the innermost core.

But who shall say to what last final causes are to be referred the rotting and crumbling of this nation which in the days of the flower of its youth and manhood seemed to be possessed of eternal vigour. The Roman nation was certainly not as short-lived as the Greek. If we measure the periods of their development, one against the other, which is the only possible form of comparison, we shall find that from the beginning of their later middle age down to the loss of their political independence, the Greeks are granted not quite half and the Romans almost the whole of a millennium of autonomous history. Perhaps the compact and more continental conformation of the Italian peninsula essentially contributed to this duration; the connecting links between the two facts of the great longevity of the Roman people and the broad surface and less broken outline of their country might be represented by their far less rapid economical and especially commercial development, and their much more phlegmatic intellectual growth, and, in the sphere of politics, by the far wider extent of the domains of the state, which consequently afforded a much firmer base.

But, indeed, if it is permissible to enlarge further upon these anthropogeographical conjectures, the sea was not here able to exercise its animating, but also agitating and therefore strength-consuming effects to the same extent as in Hellas, although it may nevertheless have exercised sufficient influence. The fact that on the soil of Greece there flourished an extraordinary wealth of intellectual growth and an over-refined political civilisation, is just as explicable as that Italy produced such a tardy, intellectual, and at the same time such a powerful and yet carefully planned political, organisation. Italy was, to speak in entirely hypothetical language, narrow and washed by the sea,--but it was also sunny, and yet not too much split up into small sections to allow of its bringing forth political institutions which were not only sound but also really permeated with intellectual thought, and to permit it to produce its art of government and its law. In other words, this peninsula everywhere offered so wide a surface that it was able to produce a state more extensive, stronger, more full of life, and, above all, less threatened by natural separation of interests. But it was not so continental as to permit of the formation of a despotically governed state, stretching over a wide plain as in the vast countries of the East. The sea had been able to exercise its invigorating effects in so far that Italy attained a form of government, strong indeed, but also free. And if no such finely organised intellectual culture was assigned to it, at least its political institutions were intellectually elaborated to a singular degree. For in all essentials they were as much the peculiar product of her otherwise less remarkable intellectual culture as of her political civilisation.

On the other hand Italy shares equally with Greece a life-giving but also life-shortening effect of her geographical position: a mild climate. Perhaps its effects in accelerating her bloom but also her decay have been here somewhat arrested by other territorial conditions, yet perhaps they too finally succeeded in making their influence felt. Else why have Germans and Slavs, that is to say the only civilised peoples of the north alone on the globe maintained themselves so much longer in their strength, and why have they, and perhaps they only, still to-day a prospect of millenniums of an equally robust life of political and intellectual activity?[h]

FOOTNOTES

[69] [“The charges made by Gibbon … rest on no solid basis of evidence; … except for a vague and feebly supported charge of ‘luxury,’ the moral character of Avitus is without a stain.” Hodgkin.[g]]

[70] [The manner in which Majorian met his death is in dispute. While Gibbon[c] gives credence to the report that he died from dysentery, Samuel Dill,[i] who speaks of Majorian as “that great soldier and far-sighted statesman,” says: “Majorian, the ‘young Marcellus’ of the last years of the Western Empire, with all his old Roman spirit and statesmanlike insight, failed in his mission and was treacherously slain by Ricimer.” J. B. Bury,[j] expressing the same view, says “that Majorian returned from Spain to Gaul, and after a sojourn in Arles passed into Italy, without an army. At Tortona the officers of Count Ricimer, who had judged him unworthy of empire, seized him, stripped him of the imperial purple, and beheaded him (7th August, 461).” Niebuhr,[k] on the other hand, tells us that “when Majorian returned, a conspiracy was formed against him at the instigation of Ricimer; he was compelled to abdicate, and died a few days afterwards.”]

[71] [There is great uncertainty as to these prehistoric migrations.]

APPENDIX A. HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF SOME LESSER NATIONS OF ASIA MINOR

Our studies of Roman history have brought us into incidental contact with several nations of Asia Minor that from time to time have held friendly or hostile relations with the Romans. The two most important of these, the Parthians and the Sassanids, who successfully disputed the mastery of the Orient with the Romans, will be given fuller individual treatment in a later volume. But the lesser kingdoms of Pergamus, Bithynia, Pontus, and Cappadocia, each of which had a somewhat picturesque and interesting history when taken by itself, were hardly of sufficient importance from a world-historical standpoint to be given individual treatment in our text. It will be of interest, however, and will aid the reader in gaining a clear idea of the opponents of Rome, and of the true relations of the Roman Empire to the eastern peoples, if a brief outline of the history of each of these nations is introduced. Such a chronological epitome of their history is given here.

THE KINGDOM OF PERGAMUS (283-133 B.C.)

B.C.

283 =Philetærus=, governor of the Greek fortress of Pergamus, in Mysia, revolts and founds a small principality. Owing to the troubles incident to the Gallic invasion of Greece and Asia Minor, he is not disturbed.

263 His nephew, =Eumenes I=, succeeds. His power increases, and he defeats the Seleucidæ in a battle.

241 =Attalus I= succeeds. He achieves a decisive victory over the Gauls, and makes friends with Rome. Pergamus becomes a great art centre.

197 =Eumenes II= succeeds. Height of splendour of the kingdom, which now covers the greater part of western Asia Minor. Eumenes becomes the ally of Rome in her wars against the Persians and Syrians. Building of the temple of Zeus Soter to commemorate the great victory over the Gauls.

159 =Attalus (II) Philadelphus=, his brother, succeeds.

138 =Attalus (III) Philometor=, son of Eumenes II, succeeds.

133 Death of Attalus III, who bequeaths his kingdom to the Romans. They form it into the province of Asia.

THE KINGDOM OF BITHYNIA (278-74 B.C.)

278 =Nicomedes I= assumes title of king, and maintains himself on the throne in spite of civil discord and threatened invasion by Antiochus I. He allies himself with the Gauls, who have invaded Asia Minor.

250 His son, =Zielas=, succeeds after asserting his rights against his half-brother.

228 His son, =Prusias I=, succeeds.

220 Prusias at war with the Byzantines in conjunction with the Romans.

216 Prusias defeats a Gallic army invited into Asia by Attalus.

207 Prusias assists Philip of Macedon in war with Romans, and invades Pergamus.

188 Prusias at war with Eumenes II of Pergamus. Hannibal lends him assistance.

180 =Prusias II= succeeds his father.

156 War with Pergamus. Defeat of Attalus II.

154 Peace with Pergamus.

149 Prusias slain in a revolt in favour of his son =Nicomedes II=, who succeeds.

131 Nicomedes assists the Romans in their war against Aristonicus.

102 He unites with Mithridates VI of Pontus in the conquest of the vacant throne of Paphlagonia.

96 Nicomedes marries Laodice, widow of Ariarathes VI of Cappadocia, and attempts to seize the kingdom. Rome compels him to abandon it. The senate also deprives him of Paphlagonia.

91 =Nicomedes III= succeeds his father.

90 Mithridates VI of Pontus drives Nicomedes from his throne.

84 He is restored by Rome.

74 Death of Nicomedes. He bequeaths his kingdom to Rome and it becomes a province.

THE KINGDOM OF PONTUS (337 B.C.-63 A.D.)

The dynasty of Pontine kings is reckoned from Ariobarzanes I, about the beginning of the fourth century B.C. But both he and his son Mithridates I, and grandson, Ariobarzanes II, are Persian satraps, and it is not until 337 that Mithridates II, son of the last satrap, makes himself independent. His rule is not uninterrupted.

318 About this time, Antigonus I forms a plan to kill him, and he flees to Paphlagonia, and afterwards supports Eumenes against Antigonus. He then recovers his throne and fixes himself firmly on it.

302 =Mithridates III= succeeds his father. He adds part of Cappadocia and Paphlagonia to his dominions. He allies himself with the Heracleans, and obtains help of the Gauls to overthrow a force sent against him by Ptolemy, king of Egypt.

266 =Ariobarzanes III= succeeds his father.

240 =Mithridates IV= succeeds his father. He repels the Gauls shortly after his accession.

220 Unsuccessful attempt to capture Sinope.

190 =Pharnaces I= succeeds his father.

183 Capture of Sinope. The frontiers of Pontus are extended to Bithynia.

181 Pharnaces attacks Eumenes of Pergamus and Ariarathes of Cappadocia.

179 Pharnaces purchases peace, ceding all his possessions in Galatia and Paphlagonia, excepting Sinope.

156 =Mithridates (V) Euergetes= succeeds his father.

154 He assists Attalus II of Pergamus against Prusias II of Bithynia.

149-146 During the Third Punic War, Mithridates makes alliance with Rome, supplying ships and men.

131-129 Mithridates aids Rome against Aristonicus, for which he receives Phrygia.

120 Assassination of Mithridates at Sinope. Succeeded by his son =Mithridates (VI) Eupator, the Great=. The Romans take Phrygia from him. In the early years of his reign he subdues many warlike tribes, and incorporates the kingdom of Bosporus in his dominions. He attempts to gain control of Cappadocia, and drives Nicomedes III of Bithynia from his throne.

88 War breaks out with Rome on account of the Bithynian succession. Mithridates overruns Asia Minor, massacring Roman citizens.

84 Mithridates makes peace with Sulla.

83 Murena invades Pontus without reason and is defeated the following year.

74 War with Rome renewed.

72 Mithridates flees to Armenia, taking refuge with his son-in-law, Tigranes.

65 Total defeat of Mithridates by Pompey.

63 Revolt of the troops. It is put down, but Mithridates orders a Gallic mercenary to kill him. His son, =Pharnaces II=, who has been in revolt, succeeds him. He submits to Pompey, who grants him the kingdom of the Bosporus.

47 Death of Pharnaces in putting down the rebellion of Asander, governor of Bosporus.

36 Antony puts =Polemon I=, son-in-law of Pharnaces, over a part of Pontus known as Pontus Polemoniacus. He is succeeded about 2 B.C. by his son =Polemon II=, whose mother is nominal ruler until 39 A.D., when Caligula invests Polemon with the kingdom.

63 Polemon abdicates the throne and Pontus becomes a Roman province.

THE KINGDOM OF CAPPADOCIA (_c._ 333 B.C.-17 A.D.)

The Cappadocian dynasty dates back to the time of Alexander the Great, when =Ariarathes I= maintains himself on the throne after the fall of the Persian monarchy.

322 Ariarathes captured by Perdiccas and crucified.

315 =Ariarathes II=, his nephew, recovers Cappadocia at death of Eumenes. He is succeeded by his son, =Ariamnes II=, and he in turn by =Ariarathes III= (date unknown).

220 =Ariarathes IV= succeeds his father. He joins Antiochus the Great against the Romans, and afterwards assists Rome against Perseus of Macedon.

163 =Mithridates=, afterwards called =Ariarathes V=, succeeds his father.

158 Ariarathes deprived of his kingdom by Orophernes (Olophernes), a creature of Demetrius Soter, but is restored by the Romans.

154 Ariarathes assists Attalus II in his war against Prusias II.

130 Death of Ariarathes in war of the Romans against Aristonicus. His wife =Laodice= kills all her children except the youngest, in order that she may rule. The people put her to death and place her surviving child, =Ariarathes VI=, on the throne.

96 Ariarathes poisoned at instigation of Mithridates the Great of Pontus, whose daughter he has married. Nicomedes II of Bithynia seizes Cappadocia, but Mithridates soon expels him and places =Ariarathes VII=, son of Ariarathes VI, on the throne. This prince goes to war with and defeats Nicomedes.

93 He quarrels with Mithridates, who stabs him during an interview. The Cappadocians recall the late king’s brother, =Ariarathes VIII=, from exile and make him king. Mithridates compels him to abandon his kingdom. The Romans now intervene and appoint =Ariobarzanes I= king. He is several times expelled by Mithridates and Tigranes of Armenia, but always recovers his throne.

63 Ariobarzanes resigns Cappadocia to his son =Ariobarzanes II=. He remains, like his father, the true ally of Rome and is 42 put to death for refusing to join Brutus and Cassius. (Some writers say this was an Ariobarzanes III, who succeeded Ariobarzanes II about 52.) =Ariarathes IX=, brother of Ariobarzanes II, succeeds.

36 Antony puts him to death, and appoints =Archelaus= king. Although an ally of Antony, Octavian leaves him in possession of the kingdom and even adds to it.

14 Tiberius summons Archelaus to Rome.

17 Death of Archelaus. Cappadocia becomes a Roman province.

APPENDIX B. THE ROMAN STATE AND THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH

WRITTEN SPECIALLY FOR THE PRESENT WORK

BY DR. ADOLPH HARNACK

Professor in the University of Berlin; Member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences.

During the period between the reign of Diocletian and the fall of the Western Roman Empire, were laid the foundations of the history of the Middle Ages; and of these the most important was the recognition of the Christian church by the state and the privileged position thus accorded to it. This union of state and church involved an amalgamation of their intellectual forces, their rights and powers, and also to a certain extent of their system of government. There arose a type of culture and literature which was profane and Christian at one and the same time, a Roman-Christian system of law, and an established church. An alliance was made which would have passed for impossible down to the middle of the third century. Had Tertullian been told that a time was coming when the emperors would be Christians he would have stigmatised the prophecy as impious; had any man proclaimed to Decius that in his persecuting edict he was fighting against the future pillars of the state, he would have flouted the suggestion as absurd. Even as late as the third century the state and church seemed to be irreconcilable antagonists.

And yet Constantine’s resolution to recognise the church and grant her privileges has a long and well-marked preliminary history--and that in the case of both parties, state and church alike. If we study this preliminary history, Constantine’s act appears in the light of the close of a historic process of development which could not have ended otherwise than it did. Constantine’s greatness is not impaired by this fact; he realised and accomplished the one thing needful, and no statesman can do more.

In the following pages we shall attempt to sketch this preliminary history of the alliance between state and church. More than a mere sketch, in which headings take the place of detailed statements, is out of the question, since detailed statements would involve voluminous treatment of the subject; but anyone familiar with the historical facts will be able easily to fill in the brief outline. Our principal task will be to show how the line of development in the Christian church during the first three centuries tended towards conformity with the state; and in conclusion we shall point out in a few brief touches how the state on its part, as it developed, drew towards the church.

I

The Christians of the first century felt themselves aliens in the world, and consequently in the state likewise. They had put faith in a supernatural message which told them that they were citizens of a heavenly kingdom, that this world would shortly come to an end, and the new kingdom, the visible reign of God upon earth, begin. What further interest could they take in things temporal or in the state? Yet the state was not a mere matter of indifference to them. Since it protected idolaters and enforced the worship of idols, it was obviously under the influence of demons; and, being the strongest prop of polytheism, was manifestly the chief seat of the devil. The whole world “lieth in wickedness,” and the state no less. Between church and state, between Christ and Belial, there could be no fellowship. Such, for example, is the spirit in which John wrote his _Revelation_.

But from the very beginning this simple and confident view was traversed in the minds of many Christians by other views which seemed no less certain: such as (1) this same state, with the emperor at its head, punishes evil-doers and checks injustice in countless instances; (2) this same state not unfrequently protects Christians, the friends of God, against outbreaks of savage hatred on the part of the godless people of the Jews: (3) by the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple this same state has accomplished the judgment pronounced upon the Jewish nation by the prophets and Christ, and wreaked vengeance upon it for Christ’s death; (4) Jesus and his Apostles did not permit men to revolt against the state, but rather commanded them to obey it and to submit willingly to the punishment it imposed: nay, the Apostles actually commanded that men should pray for the emperor and the magistrates by him appointed.

The early Christians thus occupied an anomalous position towards the state: they judged it to be the chief seat of demons on the one hand, and on the other “the minister of God”; they abhorred it and prayed for it; they besought God that “this world might pass away” and prayed for the continuance of the emperor’s sovereignty. It was as though they had been commanded to adopt different views alternately. They must also have watched with varying feelings the extension of the empire over the “whole world.” When they saw, after the time of Augustus, how one ruler was reverenced upon earth and glorified as king and saviour, nay, as Lord and God, when they were led away to death because they would not worship his image, how could they fail to conclude that here the mystery of sin was revealed and Satan sat upon the throne of God? And yet, on the other hand, was not this rule of a single monarch on earth a type of the rule of God in heaven, the blessed conjunction of all men in one body, the victory over the divisions and animosities of the nations?

And how about the culture of this same state, with its precepts, institutions, and usages? At first sight it all seemed reprehensible, since it was everywhere permeated with idolatry, and not least in philosophy and literature. “Be ye not seduced by philosophy” was the Christian watchword; nay, men went a step further, saying that the Christian had no need of inquiry and learning; in his religion he possessed all things and held the key to the riddles of the world. He was to shut up his reason in prison and despise the lore of the heathen; he was to read the Holy Scriptures, but no worldly books. And yet, does not this same lore teach much that religion teaches? Was nothing but lies to be met with in Socrates, Plato, and the poets? Nay, more, is there not a natural knowledge of God, a natural grasp of truth, and has not every soul obtained a spark of the eternal light? Has it not received knowledge, freedom, and immortality from God? Or are these false doctrines? Yet if they be false, how is it possible to lead men to God? But if they are not lies, a man must read and learn what poets and philosophers have written, and study the inner life that he may learn to know the soul and see what God the creator has bestowed upon it.

Thus here again we have a hesitating “yes,” side by side with an uncompromising “no.” That which but now seemed to be the darkness that opposed itself against the light appears in another aspect as itself a dim degree of light--nay, as the early twilight before the rising sun. Nevertheless, during the first two or three generations the spirit of repudiation was in the ascendant. We can only see that hidden at the heart of things were the germs destined to bring about a change of opinion. A religion which claims to be not national but universal cannot permanently take up a wholly negative attitude towards the history of the human race, nor can it persist in recognising its own preliminary history only along the narrow line of the history of a few prophets or a single small nation. Paul, the great Apostle of the Gentiles, had taught that God had everywhere manifested his being and his will, and in moments of lofty inspiration and joy had proclaimed to the little flock of his brother converts, “All things are yours.”

II

In the second century of the existence of Christian communities (_circa_ 130-230) the development of a tendency towards reconciliation with the state and society is apparent in every direction. This I will proceed to demonstrate as regards (1) the constitution and organisation of the communities; (2) their life; (3) their doctrine; (4) their literature; (5) their form of worship; and (6) their estimate of the state.

(1) As early as the year 140 most Christian communities possessed a system of government widely different from their original organisation. The question of how it came into being is one upon which we cannot enter here. It appears as a combination of monarchical and collegiate government. At the head of the community stood the bishop, with the college of presbyters--in some cases on an equal footing with him and in others his subordinates--at his side; the assistant and executive officers were the deacons. The duties and rights of these clergy extended to matters of discipline, financial administration, the care of souls and the relief of the poor, doctrine, and public worship. The officers were elected by the community, but nevertheless formed a superior class which, decade by decade, assumed more and more the guardianship of the “lay people.” Thus, out of a communion in which the “Spirit” and brotherly love alone were to bear sway, there had arisen a legally constituted community with ordinances in many points analogous to those of municipal administration. The community acquired property and administered it; the officers, under the superintendence of the bishop, cared for the needy; and, together with the oversight of discipline, it exercised a certain amount of jurisdiction in family affairs.

But statutory organisation was not confined to the individual community; the various communities of one province joined in closer bonds and formed a larger confederation. Provincial synods arose, corresponding to the diet of the provinces, met once or twice a year, and dealt with matters of common interest under the direction of a president (the metropolitan). But even this association did not suffice. From the very beginning Christians were conscious of belonging to one great and holy fellowship, to one universal brotherhood. Conceived of, in the first instance, as something ideal and supernatural, it had nevertheless been held with strong and lively convictions, and at this stage the attempt was made to realise it upon earth. The outward conditions were in its favour; Christian doctrine had assumed many forms, a large number of which appeared very questionable in the eyes of the bishops and the majority of the church, and they consequently desired to define their own position in contradistinction to these “pseudo-Christians.” Hence after the end of the second century a great number of communities in the West and East joined to form a single confederation, and presently asserted that only those who belonged to this confederation, the one Holy Catholic church, were real Christians. At the beginning of the third century there was no longer only a heavenly church,--the children of God scattered throughout the world and waiting for the revelation of the kingdom of which they were citizens,--but a visible church extending from the Euphrates to Spain, resting upon fixed laws and ordinances, and thus constituting a political organisation within boundaries that coincided roughly with the frontiers of the Roman Empire.

By this development the church approximated to the state--as its rival in the first instance, it is true; but rivals may become friends. The decisive factor was that Christianity had assumed definite political form.

(2) The Christian life was to be “unspotted from the world.” Most Christians of primitive times interpreted this to mean that they should have as little as possible to do with “the world.” Nor was this a difficult matter, for the greater number of them were people in humble life whose conduct was subject to little outward control if only they performed the hard work required of them. Few of them were “in society”; and hence it was of no consequence what religion they professed or what manner of life they led.

By degrees, however, the situation changed, and the labours of missionaries drew men of all ranks into the church. As early as the reign of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, Christians were numerous in every class, even among officials and scholars and men of rank and wealth. The question of the attitude one should assume towards the world, which had hitherto been a difficult problem only in individual cases, now became pressing to the whole community. In addition to this the state police and the public (especially the mob) took far more heed of Christianity than before. Any man who made an open confession of Christianity exposed himself to great danger, nay, to death itself. What was the church to do? Should she say to the faithful: “You must confess your faith under all circumstances, and avoid all contact, even the most superficial, with idolatry”? The consequences were obvious: the soldier would be bound to leave his colours, for they bore a heathen emblem; the magistrate to resign his office, for he could not protest against the worship of the emperor; the teacher to cease to teach, for he could not avoid mythological subjects; the tiler to abandon his handicraft, since he could not work on the roof of a temple; the goldsmith, the joiner, the merchant--they all ran the risk of abetting idolatry. The austere members of the communities did actually insist that every Christian ought to renounce his calling if it rendered him liable to the risk of the remotest contact with idolatry. Tertullian explicitly makes this demand in his pamphlet, _De Idololatria_, nor did he suffer himself to be confounded by the retort: “We shall die of starvation.”--“Who is he that hath promised ye shall live?”

But the great majority of Christians, and first and foremost the bishops their leaders, decided otherwise. It was enough for a man to keep God in his heart and to confess him when open confession was required by magisterial authority--it was enough to refrain from actual idolatry; for the rest the Christian might abide in any honest calling, might come, in the pursuit of it, in contact with the externals of idolatry, and ought to conduct himself prudently and discreetly so as neither to defile himself nor call down persecution upon himself and others. The church everywhere adopted this attitude after the beginning of the third century; and the state thus became the richer by numbers of peaceable, law-abiding, and conscientious citizens, who, far from placing difficulties in its way, were pillars of order and peace in society. The fact that the Christians were remarkable for morality was acknowledged by Galen, the famous physician, as early as the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Thus, by abandoning her attitude of uncompromising repudiation of the “world,” the church developed into a force that made for public order.

(3) There was nothing in Christian doctrine, considered on its merits, that either was dangerous to the state or was bound to be judged dangerous by it, except its exclusiveness. The utterances of Christians concerning Christ their “king” might, indeed, have a revolutionary sound; but the fact that they were harmless was soon patent to all observers. It was not what Christianity taught but what it precluded--tolerance of other religions and the worship of the emperors--that roused well-grounded objections. For the rest, Christian doctrine showed a double face, so to speak, to the Greeks and Romans. Its teaching concerning God, the world, the creation, divine providence, immortality, and the freedom, dignity, and responsibility of man, was both sublime and akin to the loftiest intuitions of the honoured philosophers of old; but mixed up with it was much that sounded to them like myth or fable, or seemed actually repulsive. Such, above all, was the history of Christ (his birth of a virgin, miracles, crucifixion, and ascension). Ordinary Christians laid stress upon the latter element, and hence their religion appeared “outlandish,” absurd, and full of lies. After the time of Hadrian, however, there arose men who expounded and brought to light the philosophico-religious element in Christianity,--monotheism more particularly,--and endeavoured to remove the offence excited by the history and worship of Christ by conceiving of him as the corporeal manifestation of the _Logos_, the existence and operation of which was recognised by many of the Greeks. At the same time they endeavoured to force their opponents to accept the facts of his history by demonstrating them to be the fulfilment of prophecy; for that which has been prophesied is brought about by God himself, and human criticism must keep silent in face thereof.

During the course of the second century Christian doctrine did not abandon its peculiar character, but it assimilated more and more the ideas of Greek philosophy and so rendered itself more intelligible. At the beginning of the third century a great Greek philosopher testified of Origen, the most eminent teacher of the church, that concerning God and the world he thought like a Greek; the philosopher only deplored the intermixture of alien fables. When this same Origen is invited to lecture upon immortality before the queen-mother at Antioch, when another doctor of the church corresponds with an empress upon religious questions, and the emperor Alexander Severus listens with admiring attention to the words of Christ, we cannot but see how “doctrine” is becoming by degrees a connecting link between Hellenism and Christianity. Such a fact could not be devoid of consequences as regards the relations between state and church, for no state can permanently maintain a hostile attitude towards a spiritual movement which is held in high esteem by large bodies of its citizens.

(4) Nor must literature be ignored in this connection. Christianity was never altogether without literature, nay, rather, it possessed from the outset a literary work of the highest rank in the Old Testament, of which it had usurped possession. But its title to ownership was contested by the Jews and the heathen, and moreover early Christians produced the impression that they were unlettered folk. This made their claims appear singularly presumptuous and unjustifiable. But the beginning of the second century witnessed a change; the Christians, who at first would have nothing to do with the scribbling art--for why should one write if the end is at hand?--began to make use of this method.

Even in the first century brief writings, gospels, epistles, and apocalypses, had been drawn up for the edification of the congregation, but, being regarded as _memorabilia_ to keep the truth in remembrance and in a measure as a gift of the Holy Ghost, they differed in plan and style from what was known as “literature.” Now, however, works began to be composed in which Christianity was endued with the garment of literature. Between the years 140 and 170 the smaller Christian party which is known as the Gnostic party all at once began to avail itself of every literary form, scientific monograph, commentary, systematic statement, scientific dialogue, didactic epistle, polemic, historical description, the novel, the tale, the ode, the hymn, etc. The great church, less apt and more cautious, gave place to this development slowly and hesitatingly. She was fully conscious of her responsibility; she was not blind to the lurking danger--the danger, that is, of the profanation of religion; nevertheless she gradually admitted one literary form after another, until, at the beginning of the third century, she also had a Christian literature, with every means of expression that Greek art and learning had created at command. But the fact that she was thus equipped with literary forms could not but have some bearing on the relations between state and church, for no state can persist in regarding a movement which has taken literature into its service as a negligible quantity. Through the medium of literature it influences all political conditions, and in so far as the state itself is the exponent of culture, and not merely of law and authority, such a spiritual movement becomes a part of it by the mere fact of its literary existence.

(5) Though public worship is essentially esoteric and the private concern of any particular religion, yet we must here take its development into consideration. As long as Christian worship consisted only in homely prayers, rude psalmody, and preaching, and in the simple celebration of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, it differed so widely from other forms of worship that the adversaries of Christianity did not regard it as worship at all. A few Greeks, it is true, were impressed by this purely spiritual worship, but the great multitude despised it. They saw no images, and consequently concluded that the Christians were “atheists”; they saw no priests, and felt that their worship lacked legitimate authority, solemnity, and dignity; they saw no sacrifice, and consequently doubted its efficacy with the Deity. Many of them held that the Christians had other religious services which they carefully concealed from other men, and that there they exhibited the secret “Sacra,” held wild orgies, and feasted at horrible banquets. There were, as a matter of fact, a few small Christian communities which practised evil rites in secret. But it is unlikely that these constituted the starting-point of the vile aspersions cast upon all Christians; they arose rather from the evil tendency, prevalent in all ages, to regard adherents of an alien faith as persons of evil life and to say the worst that can be said concerning both them and their assemblies. The populace takes every religion which differs from its own and which it does not understand for devil worship.

This view of Christian worship underwent no great change in the second century, but towards the end of that period the preliminary signs of change set in, and the development of Christian worship met the change halfway. Three great alterations were made in the services, and brought it nearer to the comprehension of the Græco-Roman mind: (1) after _circa_ 190 a separate class of priests arose (under that title) in the Christian church; (2) the Lord’s Supper was elaborated into a solemn sacrificial rite; (3) the Lord’s Supper and certain other acts of public worship were invested with the glamour of mysteries. By these developments, which are to be accounted for by the unconscious influence of the world around, Christian worship approximated to the ceremonials of the Greeks and Romans. The absence of image worship, it is true, still marked the distinction between them, but there was no lack of pictures of saints and symbols of holy things. Already there began to grow up about the sacramental elements, the water of baptism, the sign of the cross, etc., a superstition second to none of the fancies of the heathen, and the sensuous element steadily encroached upon the spiritual. These changes were likewise bound to exercise a certain though indirect influence on the relations between state and church, the Christian religion adapted itself to conditions in which it could act upon the widest possible circle, and in the process modified the exclusiveness it had resolved to maintain.

(6) But perhaps the point best worth noticing is the way in which, in spite of persecution, the Christian estimate of the state grew more favourable in the course of the second century--not indeed in the whole body, by a long way, but among the most influential teachers. It is true that the suspicion that the Roman Empire was the kingdom of antichrist never wholly died away, and that it still came to the surface occasionally; but a succession of admirable emperors--Trajan, Hadrian, Pius, and Marcus Aurelius--made a profound impression upon Christians, and the world-wide monarchy of which Augustus had laid the foundations bore the aspect of peace, and hence of a fulfilment of the divine will. Justin was convinced--as was even Tertullian--that the “good” emperors could not have been and were not unfriendly to Christians; both believed that none but the wicked were really the adversaries of the Christian religion, and that nothing but better information was required to make the emperors extend toleration to their faith. It is possible that even Luke had a dim sense of a certain solidarity between the empire and Christianity, between Augustus and Christ; the apologists of the age of the Antonines were more decided in their utterances, the most decided of all being Bishop Melito of Sardis. In the _Apology for Christianity_ which he dedicates to Marcus Aurelius, he writes:

“This our philosophy did indeed first flourish among an alien people. But when it began to prosper in the provinces of thy empire under the rule of thy mighty predecessor Augustus it brought a rich blessing upon thy empire in singular wise. For from that time forth the Roman Empire hath ever increased in greatness and glory, whereof thou art and wilt be the desired ruler, even as thy son also, if thou wilt protect this philosophy which began under Augustus and hath grown with the growth of the empire, and which thy forefathers likewise held in honour among other religions. And the strongest proof that our religion hath arisen together with the monarchy so happily begun and for the benefit of the same is supplied by the fact that since the reign of Augustus the latter hath been smitten by no calamity, but on the contrary, all things have but augmented the fame and glory thereof, according to the desires of all men. The only emperors who, led away by malicious men, strove to cry down our religion were Nero and Domitian, and from their time forward calumnious falsehoods concerning the Christians have been propagated abroad by the evil custom of the common people, who believe all rumours without examination.”

We read these words with amazement, for they imply nothing less than an assertion that the empire and the Christian religion are fellow-institutions. God himself, so this bishop teaches, joined them together, for he has brought them into being at the same time as brethren, as it were; and to Christianity is due the greatness and glory of the monarchy! True, we must not forget that these are the words of an apologist, and of an Asiatic apologist to boot--and emperor worship flourished in Asia more than elsewhere; but the fact that he should have gone so far in his bold and flattering historical speculation is in the highest degree remarkable. “God,” “Saviour,” “Prince of Peace,” were titles bestowed upon the emperor in Asia, and his appearance was there spoken of as an epiphany of the Deity. Hence Melito deduced the conclusion that a “pre-established harmony” existed between the emperor and Christ, to whom these same titles were applied. His “philosophy of history” was an augury of the future.

We have seen that down to the reign of the emperor Alexander Severus the church approximated to the state along every line of development; but in practical life the two were still remote from each other. The state firmly upheld the opinion that it was impossible, on principle, to extend toleration to the intolerant Christian religion--though many governors and some emperors tolerated it tacitly; while the church was still far from taking Melito’s idea seriously.

III

In the seventy years that elapsed between the death of the emperor Alexander Severus and the rise of Constantine, the affairs of the church continued to develop in the same direction as they had taken during the preceding century. This I shall again proceed to prove from (1) its constitution, (2) life, (3) doctrine, (4) literature, (5) worship, and (6) its estimate of the state.

(1) The political organisation of the church attained its complete development, and the result was a structure so stable, homogeneous, and comprehensive that no other association within the empire could vie with it. While the framework of the state grew looser and looser, and the several parts began to exhibit symptoms of falling apart, the edifice of the church grew steadily firmer and stronger. The bishops, as successors of the Apostles, everywhere concentrated the power in their own hands and suppressed all other forms of authority; the church became an episcopal church. But the bishops were not only united among themselves by provincial synods, they kept up an active and intimate correspondence throughout the whole empire by means of letters and emissaries, and even at this time all matters of importance were settled by common consent. If we take the provincial synods as corresponding to the diets of the provinces, the organisation of the church had advanced a step beyond the latter. As early as the second half of the third century synods were held at Rome to which bishops came from every part of Italy, and sixty years before the Council of Nicæa a synod sat at Antioch to which bishops flocked from all the countries between the Halys and the Nile. Thus the episcopal confederation which ruled the Christian communities was a state within a state. The fact could not be hidden from the chiefs of the state. Under Maximinus Thrax the bishops had borne the brunt of persecution; Decius is reported to have said that he could sooner endure a rival emperor in Rome than a Christian bishop; and the persecutions of Gallus, Valerian, Diocletian, Galerius, and Maximinus Daza were directed in the first instance against the bishops. Gallienus and Aurelian addressed letters to the bishops, the former to those of Egypt, the latter to those of Syria, and thus made it plain that they were well aware of the authoritative position of the bishops in the churches.

More than this, Aurelian appreciated the value of the episcopate which had Rome for its centre as a conservative and patriotic element in the state; for when a quarrel was raging at Antioch as to the ecclesiastical party to which the church buildings, and consequently the church property, belonged of right, he ignored the theoretical disqualifications of the church before the law and decided that possession was due to that party which was “in epistolary correspondence with the bishops of Italy and the city of Rome.” That is to say, he was already using the church to reinforce the Roman spirit in the East. But what warrant had he to interfere? Thus much: the disputant parties in the church had themselves applied to him to decide their quarrel. Thus, forty years before the time of Constantine the church had appealed to the emperor to arbitrate in a question of canon law, and the emperor had practically acknowledged the existence of the church and its value as a pillar of imperial authority.

If, in addition to this, we consider that the church already possessed buildings, land, and property in every province of the empire; that the clergy, in the large towns, at least, were very numerous and represented a strictly organised scale of hierarchical degrees; that by their assistance the bishops directed and superintended all the affairs of the communities in even the most trivial details; that each community was likewise an effective organisation for the relief of the poor; and, finally, that in many provinces the country districts were overspread by a close network of provincial bishoprics and parishes, we shall no longer be surprised that even the emperor Alexander regarded the system of church government with envious eyes.

The civil and military system of the empire was falling into decay, the legions were permanent centres of revolution, the generals born pretenders; but the _milites Christi_ were everywhere united in compact squadrons, and, though many internal dissensions might prevail amongst these troops, they confronted the state as a single army. The state had no other alternative than to try and destroy this army, as Decius, Valerian, Diocletian, and Maximinus Daza would fain have done, or to enter into alliance with it, as Constantine did. After the middle of the third century a policy of _laissez-aller_ or weak toleration was an impossibility. The church seems also to have been numerically strong--though this is a point which has not been exhaustively examined as yet. As early as the year 251 the Roman bishop Cornelius wrote: “Besides the one bishop, there are at Rome forty-six priests, seven deacons, seven sub-deacons, forty-two acolytes, fifty-two exorcists, lectors, and ostiarii, and more than fifteen hundred widows and needy persons, all of whom are maintained by the grace and goodness of the Lord.”

(2) During the last decades of the third century Christian life underwent a virtual amalgamation with that of the world. The Christian who desired to live a life apart from the world became a member of a distinct class, the ascetics, or withdrew into the desert; the rest--_i.e._, the vast majority, had come to terms with the world. There was no class, from senators to artisans, in which Christians were not to be found, and in each class they fulfilled the obligations of their station. They were, indeed, bound to eschew certain callings (_e.g._, municipal appointments, which were all too closely bound up with “idolatry,” the theatrical profession, etc.), but the admonitions and penalties which were promulgated and denounced against the infringement of these prohibitions show that they were not always regarded. Certain facts, such as that, in the year 255, a Christian bishop in Spain was at the same time a member of a pagan society and had his children interred in the burying-ground of the said society; that a Syrian presbyter was director of the imperial purple-dye factory at Tyre; that a metropolitan bishop of Antioch was a _ducenarius_; that not a few of the clergy engaged in trade and travelled to the annual fairs--give us a clear insight into the amalgamation of Christian life with the life of the world. And it is very significant that Origen, in his pamphlet against Celsus, draws a comparison between Christian and municipal communities in order to commend the moral advantage of the former, and merely demands an admission of their superiority. That is, he insists on a difference of degree only, and refrains from contrasting the Christian communities with the municipal communities, like light with darkness.

Thus Christianity was no longer separated from the “world” in practical life, as every persecution made abundantly plain, for at first the number of apostates always exceeded that of confessors. The Christians only gathered strength as the persecutions proceeded. They were practically “exclusive” no longer, except in matters of religion in the strict sense of the word. Why should not the state tolerate them? The malicious aspersions on their moral character had died away into silence. Was it not madness on the part of the government to continue to persecute people, who were more conscientious and peaceable citizens than many others, and did not disturb the organisation and functions of public life? If they would not give up their exclusive faith, then the government must give them leave to hold it--a way out of the difficulty so simple that it would have been adopted long before the time of Constantine if the Christians, on their part, had not stipulated for certain conditions. Their God was not to be merely tolerated, he was to reign alone in the sphere of belief. With the world they had already come to terms.

(3) With regard to doctrine, the astounding labours of Origen brought the preparatory work of earlier Christian theologians to a kind of conclusion in the East; in the West, doctrine and learning never played more than a subordinate part. Origen worked the doctrines of Christianity up into a religious system which was able to vie with the systems of the neo-Platonists and give them battle upon equal terms. His schools at Alexandria and Cæsarea were attended by even pagan young men, and continued to flourish after his death; his pupils and their pupils occupied the episcopal sees of the most important cities. It was no longer possible to esteem Christianity a religion for mechanics, slaves, and old women. The Christian “mythology” which gave so much offence was not actually altered, but it was spiritualised by the application of the allegoric method. In this form the majority of philosophers and men of culture found it endurable; for they were accustomed to employ the allegoric method in the interpretation of their own religious traditions, and to transmute base images and repulsive tales into sublime conceptions and the history of ideas. Even the solemn confession of Jesus Christ was so expressed by philosophical bishops that it sounded like a brief philosophical dissertation.

Strictly speaking, there were only three points on which Christian dogma differed essentially from the neo-Platonic which was then in the ascendant; the former taught the creation of the world in time, the incarnation of the _Logos_, and the resurrection of the flesh; the latter rejected all these three doctrines. Nevertheless the pupils of Origen conceived of these theological propositions in such wise that the assertion was very like a denial, and they made common cause with the neo-Platonists in their contest with the dualistic-pessimistic school of philosophy. Christian philosophy was in the mid-current of the intellectual movement, and it was therefore a singular anachronism that the state could not as yet bring itself to place those who professed it upon the same footing as other citizens.

(4) The literature produced and read by Christians was by this time hardly to be distinguished from literature in general. It differed only in name; the spirit was the same, if we leave out of consideration the texts of Scripture which the Christians interwove in their books. The legends of Apostles and Martyrs took the place of the old stories of gods and heroes, and adopted from the latter whatever element of fiction they could make serve their turn. The forms of epistolary and literary correspondence had already won full acceptance among Christians; their dedications, plots, titles, and headings were those of pagan literature. In this last connection we note particularly how ceremonious the “brethren” have become. Finally, educated Christians were familiar with the whole body of profane scholastic literature, derived their culture from it and used it for example and quotation. The shoot of Christian literature had been grafted on the stock of Hellenism, and the sap of it streamed through the new branch.

(5) With regard to public worship we note the following changes during the sixty years before the time of Constantine. In the first place the ritual became more solemn and mysterious; the prayers more studied and rhetorical; symbols and symbolic acts were multiplied; and secondly, there was an increased tendency to meet halfway the polytheistic leanings which swayed the Christian masses. This is indicated, on the one hand, by the constantly increasing importance attached to “intercessors” (angels, saints, and martyrs) both in public worship and in private life; and, on the other, by the “naturalisation” and differentiation of religious rites after the manner of pagan ceremonials. An observer watching a Christian religious service about the year 300 would hardly have realised that these Christians were monotheists, and in words proudly professed their monotheism and spiritual worship. Except the bloody sacrifice, they had adopted almost every part and form of pagan ritual ceremonial; and, in fact, the bloody sacrifice was not lacking, for the death of Christ and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper were dealt with in materialistic fashion as bloody sacrifices. They were fond of appealing to the Old Testament to warrant the innovations, and in virtue of this appeal nearly the whole pagan system of worship could be dragged into the church.

Chapels were dedicated to angels, saints, and martyrs and decorated on their festivals; a habit grew up of sleeping in churches or chapels in the expectation of holy dreams or miraculous cures; holydays were multiplied and differentiated more and more; superstitious ceremonies, usually associated with the holy cross or consecrated bread, were woven into the tenor of ordinary life; nor were charms in the name of Jesus or of holy men, nor even amulets wanting; wakes and banquets for the dead were celebrated; the relics of saints were collected and adored, etc. What more was lacking to complete the analogy with heathen cults? Was not a sagacious Roman statesman bound to confess that this church, with the form of divine worship it had adopted, met every religious need? And how then could he fail to wish that the senseless state of war that prevailed between state and church should come to an end? A monotheistic form of doctrine, combined with a worship so diversified, so adapted to every need--no better device could possibly be invented.

(6) In considering the church’s estimate of the state there are two points of importance to be observed. In the first place we note that Christians now began to profess that those emperors who had not shown active hostility towards the church, or whose personal piety had borne a certain kindred likeness to that of Christians, had really been Christians in secret. Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria (about 260 A.D.) merely repeats an opinion widely received when he states that Alexander Severus and Philip the Arab were Christians; of Philip it was even reported that he had on one occasion done penance at the bidding of a bishop.

Such legends are eloquent; they disclose the daring wishes of the Christians and show that they no longer thought the empire and Christianity incompatible. This is likewise evident from the fact that this same Dionysius does not shrink from applying a Messianic prophecy in the Old Testament to the emperor Valerian. Gallienus had cancelled his father’s writ for the persecution of Christians, and Dionysius therefore applies to him the prophecy of Isaiah, and styles him, moreover, “our sanctified emperor, well-pleasing in God’s sight.” This is the very language which Christian bishops used of Constantine sixty years later. Secondly, it is a significant token of change that Origen, in his great work against Celsus, written towards the end of his life, in the reign of the emperor Philip, expressed the hope that by gradual advances Christianity would attain to victory in this world. This is the exact opposite of what primitive Christians had believed and hoped. Origen could not have put the anticipation into words, unless, in spite of all the differences which still subsisted between state and church, these two great powers had drawn considerably nearer to each other. At bottom the only question was that of the removal of “misunderstandings”; in actual fact, nothing blocked the way to the conclusion of peace except the church’s demand not for mere toleration but for exclusive recognition.

IV

In the foregoing pages we have shown how the church, as it developed, drew nearer to the state; all that now remains to be done is to point out how, in the second century, and still more in the third, the state, on its part, drew nearer to the Christian religion and to the church. I will confine myself to a few suggestive indications.

(1) During the imperial period the Roman state wielded no real influence upon the religious life of the citizens of its domains, except by means of the worship of the emperors; the other Roman cults were of local importance only, and were perpetually being thrust into the background by alien religions. Under these circumstances the state had made an attempt to develop emperor worship into the actual universal religion of the empire. Sagacious statesmen and religious politicians were, however, constrained to own that this cult, the adoration of the _secunda majestas_, was not enough. The state accordingly had recourse to the expedient of officially recognising as many alien religions as it possibly could (indeed, it was in a manner forced to accord them recognition), in order that these alien religions might not constitute a barrier between it and its subjects. By this means there gradually arose a medley and diversity of religions in the empire which was bewildering and rendered a sound religious policy impossible.

A single, new, universal religion was the crying need of the hour. It seemed that this need might be met in various ways. Elagabalus, Alexander Severus, and Maximinus Daza were the emperors who tried to strike out a fresh line before the time of Constantine. Elagabalus wished to do this by exalting one Syrian divinity to the position of Supreme God of the empire and giving a subordinate place to all other cults; Alexander, by endeavouring to discover the common element in all religious doctrines and forms of worship and uniting them in peaceful conjunction (as all, at bottom, meaning the same thing); Maximinus Daza by making regulations for the administrative union of all the religions and cults of a single province under one high priest appointed by the state, and for the control of these priests by the civil government. These were all attempts to create a new church, and an established church to boot, and must all be regarded as preliminaries to Constantine’s achievement.

A certain bias towards monotheism was involved in the case of Elagabalus and Alexander; towards an oriental monotheism in the former. Diocletian, indeed, attempted once more to make the old Roman religious system serve the purpose; but as he had placed the political administration and government of the empire on an entirely new basis, and introduced a new oriental and despotic system after the dissolution of the ancient state, his reactionary religious policy was a grave error. It was foredoomed to utter failure--the new state could not possibly rest upon the scanty foundations of the old cults; and Constantine, who witnessed its collapse, drew from it the only correct inference. The new basis of the state must be a monotheistic religion--an oriental monotheism. So much the third century had taught.

(2) The Roman state approximated to Christianity and the church by a steady process of levelling up from within and by its transformation from a Roman state into a state of provinces. Caracalla bestowed the rights of Roman citizenship on the inhabitants of all the provinces; the influence of the old Roman aristocracy steadily declined, the state became really cosmopolitan. But the church was cosmopolitan likewise; indeed, Christianity was at bottom the only really universal religion. It was not bound up with Judaism, like the religion of the Old Testament; nor with Egypt, like Isis-worship; nor with Persia, like Mithras-worship; it had shaken itself free from all national elements. Hence every step by which the state lost something of its exclusively Roman character brought it nearer to the church.

(3) The legislation begun by Nerva and Trajan and continued by the Antonines and the emperors of the first half of the third century under the guidance of great jurists marked an enormous advance in the sphere of law. The Stoic ideas of the “rights of man” and the leavening of law by morality were introduced into legislation and operated by countless wholesome ordinances. By this means the state met halfway the feeling which prevailed in the church as a matter of principle. By the beginning of the fourth century there were but few points in Roman civil law to which the church (which, it must be owned, had somewhat lowered its moral standard) could fairly take objection, and many, on the other hand, which it hailed with joyful assent. Thus the development of Roman law must be recognised as a preliminary step to the amalgamation of state and church.

(4) At first sight it seems as though after the middle of the third century the state had met the church in a far more hostile spirit and had therefore been far less capable of appreciating it than in the preceding epoch. But although it is true that the systematic persecution of the church first began under Decius, yet the conclusion that therefore the state cannot have appreciated the church does not hold good in fact. Rather, the persecutions of Decius and Valerian prove, as has been suggested before, that these emperors realised the danger the old political system implied in the existence of the church more clearly than their predecessors had done. They accordingly endeavoured to extirpate the church, as Diocletian’s co-emperor did likewise. But these attempts must be regarded as desperate and (with the exception of the last named) short-lived experiments. During the early years of the reign of Valerian and from 260 to 302 the church enjoyed almost absolute peace within the empire; and, above all, the imperial government recognised the importance of the bishops and the ecclesiastical hierarchy. This is proved not only by the persecutory edicts, but, as has been said above, by peaceful acts. Gallienus and Aurelian wrote letters to the bishops, and the latter even tried by peaceful means to use their influence to strengthen Roman dominion; nay, Maximinus Daza actually attempted to copy the constitution of the church and to organise the pagan system of worship in similar fashion. Under the circumstances it was much simpler to ally the hierarchy of the church itself with the state than to make any such attempt. That the strength of the church lay in the hierarchy the despots had long recognised. Accordingly as soon as he had decided in favour of Christianity, Constantine joined hands with the bishops. He not only joined hands with them, but he honoured them and bestowed privileges upon them, for he was anxious to secure their power for the state. His success was immediate; the hierarchy put itself--unreservedly, we may say--at his disposal when once he had set the cross upon his standard. Thus the state within the state was abolished; the strongest political force then existent, to wit, the church, was made the cornerstone of the state. Both parties, the emperor and the bishops, were equally well pleased; history seldom has a conclusion of peace like this to record, in which both contracting parties broke forth into rejoicings. And both were fully justified in their rejoicing, for a thing for which a way had been slowly made ready now had come to light; the empire gained a strong support and the church was delivered from an undignified position, in which she could not avail herself freely of the forces at her disposal. The church of the fourth century not only accomplished much more than the church of the period between 250 and 325, but she brought forth men of greater distinction and more commanding character.

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

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