CHAPTER XIV.

INVASION CIVIL WAR, AND UNRELENTING PERSECUTION.

Æmilianus and Valerian.――Barbaric Hordes.――Slavery and its Retribution.――Awful Fate of Valerian.――Ruin of the Roman Empire.――Zenobia and her Captivity.――The Slave Diocletian becomes Emperor.――His Reign, Abdication, Death.――Division of the Empire.――Terrible Persecution.――The Glory of Christianity. ――Characteristics of the First Three Centuries.――Abasement of Rome.

ABOUT this time, near the close of the third century of the Christian era, the barbarians who surrounded the Roman empire commenced with great vigor their resistless ravages. Along the whole line of the Danube, they swarmed in locust legions across the frontiers. Still the infatuated Romans, instead of combining against the common foe, were wasting their energies in persecuting the Christians and in desolating civil wars.

A Roman general, by the name of Æmilianus, was in command of the army upon the Danube. His soldiers had chosen him emperor. There was another Roman army in France, then called Gaul. This Gallic army chose their general, Valerian, emperor. These two hostile forces marched to settle the question on the field of battle. As the antagonistic hosts drew near each other, the soldiers of Æmilianus, deeming the opposite army the stronger, murdered their general, whom they had chosen emperor, and, with loud huzzas, rallied around the banner of Valerian.

From the remote East, from Persia, and from the Indies, tribes of uncouth names, language, and dress, were ravaging all those wild frontiers of the empire. Valerian, an old man of seventy years, sent his son Gallienus with an army to drive back these hordes into Persia. He himself, in the mean time, repaired in person to the Danube to assail the barbarians there. But the irruption of these ferocious bands was like the resistless flood of the tide: it could not be arrested. In wave after wave of invasion, they swept over France and Spain. They even crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, and entered Africa. An immense tribe came howling through the defiles of the Rhætian Alps, and swept over the plains of Lombardy.

Another vast army descended those then unexplored rivers flowing from the north into the Black Sea, ravaging all the coasts of Asia Minor, glutting themselves with plunder, massacring the old, and carrying off the young. With how little emotion we read such a narrative! and yet how awful must have been the desolation and misery which were inflicted by these wolfish barbarians upon the wretched inhabitants!

These wild beings, in boats made of the skins of beasts, floated down the Bosphorus and the Hellespont; and the illustrious men and beautiful women of Greece were captured by these demons in human form. The descendants of Demosthenes and of Aristides, of Plato and of Aspasia, were dragged into hopeless and endless slavery.

Five hundred years before this, a distinguished Grecian philosopher, Aristotle, had written a book to prove that slavery was right; that it was right for the more powerful nations to enslave the weaker ones. The wheel had now turned, though it had been five hundred years in turning. The barbarian Goths were the more powerful, and the intellectual and polished Greeks the less powerful. These shaggy monsters, as wild as the beasts whose skins they wore, were but carrying out the philosophy of Aristotle as they dragged the boys and girls of Greece into bondage.

Gloriously the religion of Jesus beams forth amidst all these horrors. “God hath made of one blood all nations.”[176] “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”[177] “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”[178]

The Emperor Valerian pressed on with his Roman legions to attack the barbarians in the Far East. He crossed the Euphrates, and encountered the Persian host, drawn up in defiant battle-array on the plains of Mesopotamia. A terrible battle was fought, and the Roman army cut to pieces. The conquerors took Valerian prisoner; and God, in awful retribution, compelled the captive emperor to drink to the dregs that bitter cup of slavery which the Roman emperors, for so many centuries, had forced to the lips of all the other nations.

Derisively the Persians robed the captive emperor in imperial purple. He was compelled to kneel upon his hands and his feet in the mud, that Sapor, his conqueror, might use him as a block, putting his foot upon his back as he mounted his horse. For seven years, Valerian was kept as a slave in Persia. He was exposed to every indignity which pride and revenge could heap upon him. At last, with demoniac barbarity, they put out his eyes, and skinned him alive. His skin, dyed red, was stuffed, and preserved for ages in commemoration of Persia’s triumph over imperial Rome.

Gallienus, upon the captivity of his father, was invested with the imperial sceptre. Appalled by the fate of Valerian, he dared not march to attack the barbarians. Sheltering himself in Rome, he endeavored to bribe the Goths and Vandals to cease their ravages. The barbarians accepted his bribes, despised his weakness, and continued their forrays.

The Roman empire was in hopeless ruin. There was no longer recognized government or recognized law. In all directions, ambitious generals were rising in struggles for the crown. In the course of twelve years, more than thirty of these claimants appeared. The whole empire was swept by the blood-red surges of civil war. In those twelve years, it is estimated that the Roman empire, by civil war and barbaric invasion, lost one-half of its population. The sword, famine, and pestilence swept off a hundred and fifty millions of the inhabitants.

These barbarians ravaged the empire in all directions, perpetrating horrors indescribable. Several times they flaunted their defiant flag within sight of the dome of the capitol at Rome. Aureolus, an insurgent general, marched upon Rome with an army from the Upper Danube. Gallienus advanced to meet him. In the tumult of a midnight battle, he was slain by one of his own soldiers. With his dying breath he named one of his most distinguished generals, Claudius, emperor. The senate accepted him.

Claudius captured Aureolus, and put him to death. The barbarians now, in armaments more formidable than ever before, were crossing the frontiers in a line fifteen hundred miles in length, extending from the German Ocean to the waves of the Euxine.

An immense army of Goths, numbering three hundred and twenty thousand men, in six thousand barges, descended the Dneister to the Black Sea. Hence, passing through the Bosphorus, they entered the Sea of Marmora, and swept resistlessly over all the provinces of ancient Greece. Claudius attacked them. In a momentary revival of the ancient Roman vigor, he drove them back to their forests. In the pursuit, Claudius died; and the sceptre passed to Aurelian, the son of a peasant, but one of Rome’s ablest generals. He pursued the Goths with astonishing energy, smiting them with a rod of iron. He drove them from France, Spain, and Britain, and then prepared to attack them in the Far East.

Among the many rivals for the imperial throne who at this time sprang up, there was one named Odenathus, at Palmyra, near the Euphrates. He maintained his sovereignty over many wide provinces there for twelve years. Dying, he transmitted his sceptre to his widow Zenobia. Her history was so wonderful as to merit particular notice.

Queen Zenobia was an extraordinary woman. She was as graceful in form as a sylph, marvellously beautiful in features, and endowed with the highest intelligence. She spoke fluently four languages,――Latin, Greek, Egyptian, and Syriac. What was still more wonderful for a woman in those days, she was an author, and had written an epitome of Oriental history. Her domain extended from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean. The celebrated Longinus, whose fame is known to every student, was her secretary.

Without assuming any hostility with the powers at Rome, Zenobia, for five years, maintained uncontrolled command over this eastern division of the empire. Aurelian marched against her. The witty satirists of Rome lampooned him for making war against a woman. Aurelian replied in a communication to the senate,――

“Some speak with contempt of war against a woman. They know not the character or the power of Zenobia. It is impossible to enumerate her warlike preparations, of stones, arrows, and every species of missile weapon. She has numerous and powerful military engines from which artificial fire is thrown. The dread of punishment has armed her with desperation. Yet I trust in the protecting deities of Rome.”

After several sanguinary battles, in which Zenobia was worsted, she retired to her citadel within the walls of Palmyra. As the Romans vigorously pressed the siege, she, conscious of the doom that awaited her should she be captured, attempted to escape on one of her fleetest dromedaries. She had reached the distance of sixty miles, when she was overtaken, and brought back, a captive, to Aurelian.

The Roman victor showed no mercy. Longinus, the illustrious scholar, was sent to the block. Palmyra was sacked, and nearly destroyed. All the aged men and women and the young children were put to the sword. Zenobia and a multitude of boys and girls were carried captive to Rome. Such a triumph the decaying city had not witnessed for years. It was the dying flickering of the lamp. Twenty elephants, four tigers, and two hundred of the most imposing animals of the East, led the pompous procession. The vast plunder of the Oriental cities was ostentatiously paraded.

An immense train of captives followed to give _éclat_ to the triumph. Conspicuous among these slaves was Zenobia, radiant with pensive beauty. She was robed in the most gorgeous attire of the Orient. Fetters of gold bound her beautiful arms; and she tottered beneath the burden of jewelry and precious stones with which she was decorated. Her magnificent chariot was drawn by Arabian chargers richly caparisoned. The captive queen followed it on foot. All eyes were riveted upon her.

Aurelian rode in a triumphal car drawn by four stags. The Roman senate in flowing robes, the bannered army, and the countless populace, closed the procession. This was the last of Rome’s triumphs. The reign of anarchy commenced. Aurelian was cut down by assassins.

For two or three hundred years, but three or four Roman emperors had died a natural death. For eight months after the assassination of Aurelian, there was no emperor. No man seemed willing to accept the crown,――it was so sure to bring upon him the assassin’s dagger. The glory of Rome had departed forever.

Such was the condition of the world about the middle of the third century. Pagan Rome had fallen through her own corruption. Her polluted shrines were abandoned, and her idolatrous temples were mouldering to decay. Christianity was steadily undermining the proudest temples of pagan worship. The disciples of Jesus, purified by persecution, were preaching that pure faith which was dethroning idols, breaking fetters, educating the ignorant, and regenerating the wicked.

There was at this time in Rome a venerable old man, of vast wealth and singular purity of character, named Tacitus. He had been a kind friend to the poor. Weary of anarchy, the people gathered in tumultuous thousands around his mansion, demanding that he should be emperor. Earnestly he begged to be excused.

But, just at this time, tidings came that the barbarians from the East were crowding across the Euphrates and the Tigris. They were plundering, burning, and massacring in all directions. The soldiers were clamorous for an emperor to lead them to repel this invasion. This noble old man of seventy-five years was compelled to yield. He put himself at the head of the army, and had advanced to within a hundred and fifty miles of the Euphrates, when the soldiers rose in mutiny, and killed him.

Diocletian, who had been a slave, grasped the crown by the energies of his strong mind and his brawny arm. A few bloody conflicts ensued; but he was a resolute man, and opposition soon melted before him. As it was no longer possible to hold the empire together, assailed as it was in every quarter by the barbarians, Diocletian sagaciously divided it into four parts:――

1. France, Spain, and England were made one kingdom, and assigned to Constantius.

2. The German provinces on the Danube made another kingdom, which was allotted to Galerius.

3. A third realm was composed of Italy and Africa, where Maximian was invested with the sovereignty.

4. Diocletian took for himself the whole of Greece, Egypt, and Asia.

The Roman empire was thus divided into four kingdoms, which were in some respects independent; yet, as Diocletian had created them, and appointed their sovereigns, they were all in a degree under his energetic sway, and bound to support each other against the common foe. But Rome seemed to have filled up the measure of its iniquity. No human sagacity could avert its doom. For ages she had been gathering “wrath against the day of wrath.”

Soon the savage Britons rose in arms. German tribes, clad in skins and swinging gory clubs, blackened the banks of the Danube and the Rhine. The wild hordes of Africa, from the Nile to Mount Atlas, were in arms. Moorish nations, issuing from unknown fastnesses, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, and swept like the sirocco of the desert over the Spanish peninsula; then, gathering upon the cliffs of the Pyrenees, they descended in an avalanche of destruction upon the plains of France. The Persian hordes, emerging from the steppes of Tartary in countless bands, were roused to new efforts to chastise Rome, their old hereditary enemy. Thus the shouts of war reverberated over the whole of the then known world. All its fields were crimsoned with blood.

There were four royal capitals. Rome was abandoned as the metropolitan centre. Diocletian was still the ruling spirit over all those kingdoms which his sagacity had formed. He chose for his own capital Nicomedia, on the Asiatic coast of the Sea of Marmora. Though he spent his life in the camp, he endeavored to invest his capital with splendor which should outvie all the ancient glories of Rome.

Diocletian was a shrewd man. Being aware how much the masses were influenced by outward show, he robed himself in garments of satin and gold. He wore a diadem of most exquisite pearls. Even his shoes were studded with glittering gems. All who approached him were compelled to prostrate themselves, and address him with the titles of deity. Gradually this extraordinary man became supreme emperor. The other three kings were crowded into the position of merely governors of subordinate provinces.

Diocletian resolved to uphold paganism, and consecrated all the energies of his vigorous mind to the extirpation of Christianity. We need not enter into the details of this persecution, its scourgings and its bloody enormities: such details are harrowing to the soul. We have already given examples sufficient to show what persecution was under the Roman emperors. The heroism with which many young persons of both sexes braved death, from love to Christ, is ennobling to humanity.

A decree was passed ordering every soldier in the army to join in idolatrous worship. The penalty for refusal was a terrible scourging, and to be driven from the ranks. There were many Christian soldiers in the army. With wonderful fortitude they met their fate.

Diocletian issued a decree that every church should be burned, that every copy of the Scriptures should be consigned to the flames, and that every Christian, of whatever rank, sex, or age, should be tortured, and thus compelled to renounce Christianity. No pen can describe the horrors of this persecution, the dismay with which it crushed all Christian hearts, or the fortitude with which the disciples of Jesus bore the scourgings, fire, and death.

We might fill pages with narratives of individual cases of suffering and of heroism. How little do we in this nineteenth century appreciate the blessing of being permitted to worship God according to the dictates of our consciences, with none to molest or make afraid!

While Diocletian was thus persecuting the Christians, he was also struggling with almost superhuman energy to hold together the crumbling elements of the Roman empire, assailed at every point by the barbarians. Nations die slowly: their groans are deep, their convulsions awful. For several centuries, Rome was writhing in death’s agonies.

In the twenty-first year of his reign, and the fifty-ninth of his age, Diocletian, enfeebled by sickness, and exhausted by the cares of empire, resolved to abdicate his throne. At the same time, he compelled Maximian to abdicate at Milan. It was his design to re-organize the Roman empire into two kingdoms, instead of four. This was the origin of the division of the Roman world into the Eastern and Western empires. The morning sun rose upon the Oriental realms of Galerius: its evening rays fell upon the Occidental kingdom of Constantius.

The ceremony of abdicating the empire of the world by Diocletian was very imposing. About three miles from the city of Nicomedia there is a spacious plain, which was selected for the pageant. Upon a lofty throne, Diocletian, pale and emaciate, announced to the immense multitude assembled his resignation of the diadem. Then, laying aside his imperial robes, he entered a closed chariot, and repaired to a rural retreat which he had selected at Salona, on the Grecian shore of the Adriatic Sea. It was the 1st of May, A.D. 305.

Accustomed for many years to luxury, he surrounded himself in a magnificent castle with the highest appliances of wealth and grandeur. With the eye of an artist he had selected the spot. From the portico there was a view of wondrous beauty. The wide panorama spread out before him an enchanting landscape of the cloud-capped mountains of Greece, with towering Olympus, the blue waters of the Mediterranean, and the green, luxuriant, and Eden-like islands of the Adriatic.

Ten acres were covered by the splendid palace he had here constructed. It was built of freestone, and flanked by sixteen towers. The principal entrance was appropriately named “the Golden Gate.” Gorgeous temples were reared in honor of the pagan gods, whom Diocletian ostentatiously adored. The surrounding grounds were embellished in the highest style of landscape-gardening. The saloons and banqueting-halls were filled with exquisite paintings and statuary.

But even here, in the most lovely retreat which nature and art could create, man’s doom of sorrow pursued the emperor. The keenest of domestic griefs pierced his heart, darkening the splendors of his saloons, and blighting the flowers of his arbors and parterres.

Bitterly had Diocletian persecuted the Christians. He had made every effort to infuse new vigor into pagan worship. Was this his earthly punishment? We know not: we simply know that for long years he wandered woe-stricken, consumed by remorse, through those magnificent saloons, into which one ray of joy never penetrated. The dread future was before him. Pagan as he assumed to be, he had no faith in paganism: he upheld the institution simply as a means of overawing the populace.

There is a marked difference between Christianity and all forms of idolatry. The intellectual men of olden time――Cicero, Plato, Aristotle――despised the popular religion: they regarded it merely as an instrument to intimidate the ignorant masses.

But, with Christianity, the ablest men, the profoundest thinkers, are its most earnest advocates. The presidents of our colleges, the most prominent men at the bar, the most distinguished of our statesmen, our ablest scientific men, our most heroic generals, are men who revere Christianity; who seek its guidance through life, and its support in death.

The death of Diocletian is shrouded in mystery. Some say he was poisoned. Some affirm, that, tortured by remorse, he committed suicide. We simply know that he died with no beam of hope illuminating the gloom of his dying-bed. He passed away to the judgment-seat of Christ, there to answer for persecuting Christ’s disciples with cruelty never surpassed.

Such was the condition of the world at the commencement of the fourth century.

In the first century of the Christian era, we have mainly a series of execrable emperors, who, by their extravagance and their crimes, were sowing the seeds for the dissolution of the empire.

In the second century, Christianity begins slowly to make itself felt. We have some very good emperors, but with no power to stem the torrent of corruption at full flood. One after another they are swept away by poison and the dagger. Corruption rolls on in resistless surges. Christianity, earnest, active, and heroic, then in its infancy, could do very little to stay such billows in their impetuous career. It could only work upon individual hearts. But thus it gradually spread its life, giving leaven through the mass.

The third century dawns upon us, black with clouds and storms. Apocalyptic vials of woe are emptied upon the world. There is dread among the nations. Death on the pale horse stalks through Europe. The fetlocks of the horse are red with blood. Rome, the Babylon of that day, drunk with sensuality and oppression, falls in convulsions,――shrieks and struggles and dies. It was needful that such a Rome, the tyrant and oppressor of humanity, should die. In prophetic vision we can see this Babylon descending to the realms of woe:――

“Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: It stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; It hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak, and say unto thee, ‘Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: The worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!’”[179]

During this century, Christianity made rapid progress. It is alike the testimony of pagan and Christian writers that this progress is mainly to be attributed to the zeal of the Christians, their kindness to the poor, their sympathy with the afflicted, their purity of morals, and their fortitude under the severest pangs of martyrdom.

Notwithstanding the fiery persecutions with which paganism with all its energies had assailed Christianity, it continued steadily to multiply its converts and to extend its peaceful conquests.